Times 25865 – in which we revisit whirredploy

64 comments on “Times 25865 – in which we revisit whirredploy”

1. Puzzle number is wrong George.

   The CALVING / CARVING homophone works for me. To pronounce the L in CALVING would require some effort wooden it?

   1. whoops, ta
   2. It is not a homophone for those north of the border.
      1. Queenslanders?
   3. What about the ‘r’ in carving?
      1. Ed, that’s a good point. I meant that the homophone works for me, not necessarily for everyone. I’m an Aussie and we’re not exactly renowned for perfect enunciation. Rolling our R’s is just too hard, but it sounds great when you guys do it.

         BTW, my use of “wooden” was supposed to be a clever way of indicating how the “L” can be lost in pronunciation. Not so clever now that I look at it a day later.

2. ….since it’s not exactly synonymous with ‘sickly’, and a ‘goody’ seems like a dubious film hero, but what else could it be? The rest was easy enough, a Monday puzzle on Thursday as I romped through in 25 minutes, a good time for me.
   1. I think it’s sickly like emotional, oversentimental
3. With a few breaks for entries in my “barking dogs” complaint diary.

   As with yesterday, a few give-aways (YETI, STOP, BARMAID) with the rest a bit more difficult. The SE was most difficult with the CALVING and ROLL-CALL answers last in. No problems here with the homophone for the former. Works fine in my mixed Scouse-Australian-with-a-splash-of-RP. (Yuk!)

   PS: ODO has |kɑːv| for both “calve” and “carve”. Can’t see how they could be different.

   Edited at 2014-08-14 02:31 am (UTC)

4. A very pleasing puzzle completed in around 45 minutes.

   I’m sure SCOT as a tax has come up many times before but maybe not recently – I don’t do barred puzzles so I must have learnt it somewhere.

   I agree with the other contributors who have no problem with CALVING/carving. I speak RP and can’t imagine them being pronounced any other way.

   ABELE was unknown or forgotten.

   GOODY can also be ‘goodie’ according to my dictionaries, but the plural is always ‘goodies’.

   I looked twice at OVERCOAT with reference to painting as I’d tend to say ‘top coat’ or ‘final coat’ but once again Flanders and Swann came to my rescue:

   ‘Twas on a Friday morning the painter made a start.
   With undercoats and overcoats he painted every part:
   Every nook and every cranny – but I found when he was gone
   He’d painted over the gas tap and I couldn’t turn it on!
   (The Gas Man Cometh)

   Edited at 2014-08-14 05:15 am (UTC)

   1. SCOT as a tax is still in everyday use in the phrase “Escaping scot free”.
      1. Yes, but most people simply not aware of what they are actually saying
         1. I’m one of them. Glad to learn the origin of that phrase. I learn so much here.
      2. And ‘scot and lot’ was a category of pre-Reform Act voter, who qualified to vote by paying these taxes.
5. Rather happier today with 16’12”, two of those spent on the CALVING/CASTE crossing (once I’d remembered it’s not ROLE CALL because I couldn’t figure how ROLE=press).
   I thought this felt more Timeslike with fewer clues where you need a verbal machete to cut through the tangle.
   I paused around BAR=secure in 23ac, as it didn’t feel quite right but settled for “locked and barred”.
   On the other hand, no hesitation at all over sickly=GOOEY. I call in evidence that epitome of 1950’s dining sophistication, the Wimpy Rum Baba (1/6d), all synthetic cream, fake cherry and some sort of glistening syrup, designed to appeal to the wide-eyed 7 year old. Case closed.

   Edited at 2014-08-14 06:59 am (UTC)

   1. Ooh yes! And what did they call that frankfurter thing with slits cut in it so they could fold it into a ring?
      1. It was (is?) a Bender. I think I’ll leave it there.
         1. So it was! How unfortunate. Then there was that tiny square of fish in a bun…

            Edited at 2014-08-14 09:38 am (UTC)

   2. I never had the pleasure of eating a Wimpy Rum Baba, but in that context I don’t think ‘sickly’ and GOOEY mean the same thing. As George says I think we’re in Four Weddings and a Funeral territory. ‘Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed’.
6. Sorry, unintentional anonymity. 27 minutes with an inordinate amount spent on PEDIGREE and CALVING.
7. . . . including some heavy-duty licking from the dog Angus who felt that I should be walking him instead. No problem with CALVING/CARVING and I thought that SCOT as a tax was a regular here. LOI GOOEY/FAIRLY
8. Again no problems with this one which meandered to a close in 20 minutes. I think SCOT is reasonably well known in crosswordland as is RABBIE Burns. On the other hand I thought ABELE would be unknown to many but the wordplay is very clear. All very neat and tidy.
   1. ‘Abele’ is pretty common in US non-cryptic puzzles, owing to the nice distribution of vowels.
9. No Answers today ?
   1. Apparently not yet. I’ll give you a start. 1ac is HALLUCINATORY. Anagram of RHINO ACTUALLY.
      1. Yes, last time he said “Back to normal next week” (i.e.today) but who knows what that means. Has there ever been a normal Thursday?

         Edited at 2014-08-14 08:12 am (UTC)

         1. If you like I’ll stop blogging and let you take over. I have to have a fair amount of trips to the hospital and clinics for treatment. Appointments are only made with a couple of days notice as they depend on how things respond.

            I’ll drop linxit a mail and ask him to find someone else.

            1. Macavity, I have just sent a message to your LJ account.
      2. I won’t bother solving it now…
10. Don’t like the homophone, much as I don’t think a calf is a carf; though the l is half imagined in hearing it’s not entirely so. Generally I thought this too plain for a Times – viz. 7 – and was delayed by not being able to ratchet down to the simple approach. 19.40.
    1. So what is it then?
       1. As I suggest I think there’s the hint of an l in its saying.
          1. No L in any of the dictionaries I can find.
11. 14 mins. I wasted time on 1ac trying to justify “cloaked” before the penny dropped, I didn’t know ABELE but the wordplay could hardly have been clearer, and GOOEY was my LOI after TORONTO.

    As far as the CALVING/carving homophone comments are concerned, I’d love to know how those of you who don’t think they’re homophones pronounce them.

    1. Hi Andy. I think when setters venture into homophones they need to be very careful. The puzzle has an international following before one considers regional and mongrel accents. My father was Canadian, my mother Cockney and I’ve lived in Dorset for over 30 years and so have picked up some local dialect. I can’t imagine how many variations there must be of CALVING. Personally, it’s not a word I would have selected as a homophone clue – asking for trouble I think.
       1. 
          I agree that cryptic homophones tend to favour RP pronunciation, though I would have thought CALVING and CARVING are as near as damn it identical in sound for the vast majority of English speakers anywhere. It seems to me that setters must be allowed some leeway otherwise homophone clues would become impossible. Personally, I think that would be a pity (though many others would no doubt disagree!)

          Interesting puzzle, some of it easy, but with enough difficulty here and there to give one pause. I made life difficult for myself by carelessly having TASTE rather than CASTE for a while at 24D which made 24A impossible. In the end, I didn’t think there was much difference in difficulty between this puzzle and today’s Quickie, which for some reason I found tougher than usual.

    2. Many people would pronounce the R.
12. 13m. Didn’t know ABELE, but no problems. The homophone is an exact homophone when I say it.
13. …but at least I finished, and was able to parse them all.

    Like others, the last half of my time was spent in the SE, where I confused myself by getting fixated on NOTICES for 28, and trying BEARING for 24. Unable to satisfactorily parse either fully, I persevered to find the (much more satisfying) right answers and the rest then fell into place.

    My verdict; enjoyable! I don’t support the calping about the homophone – seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

14. Solve enough crosswords, write blogs and/or visit enough crossword blogs and you develop a sense while solving of which clues/words/solutions will cause the most muttering. I knew as I wrote it in that the carving/calving would be today’s mutter – I didn’t have any problem with it but…

    I hope I’m not causing concern to Mr Sever again when I say that today’s puzzle took me a teeny smidge over 9 mins.

15. 35 minutes for a mostly straightforward puzzle, with too much time getting 17 and 24 at the end. I didn’t have any complaints about the homophone, but the phonetics of the two words are differently indicated in Chambers, so it won’t satisfy purists. I noted a couple of DNF’s, that I’m not generally keen on. Crosby’s OK for BING, since it doesn’t suggest anything else; the other one is in 13 – only some ants are soldier ants, and the question mark is in the wrong place to indicate exemplification. Minor quibble apart, I thought the clues were a nice bunch – good surfaces and uncluttered wordplay, unlike some in the last few days.
    1. The Chambers indication is curious, because in RP the R in ‘carve’ is certainly not pronounced. I wonder if the phonetic spelling system used by Chambers incorporates an assumption that certain formations (in this case ‘är’) are pronounced differently in rhotic and non-rhotic accents.
       On the ant question, there seems to be a convention that the question mark can come at the end of the sentence. After all ‘Soldier? carried by army horse’ wouldn’t make any sense, and a requirement only to include DBEs at the end of a sentence would be unnecessarily restrictive.

       Edited at 2014-08-14 01:19 pm (UTC)

       1. To place an exemplifying question mark at a distance from the word it exemplifies is illogical, and is certainly not accepted by editors of some barred cryptics, so I would not agree that’s an accepted convention, though it does appear from time to time. I don’t really accept your “unnecessarily restrictive” argument either. There are all sorts of constraints restricting what a setter can do, and it is up to his/her ingenuity to work round these. Of course, we cannot be sure that the question mark is there to serve the purpose of exemplification; it might be there simply for the clues surface in the light of what follows.
          However, as I said in my original comment, it’s a very minor quibble and I don’t want to labour the point.
          1. Not at all. The q.mark refers to the proposition as a whole; any bit of it can be under question.
             1. As I said earlier, I don’t want to labour the issue, but your point merits a response. I don’t altogether agree with you. I would take a question mark at the end to either qualify the word or phrase immediately before as an example or otherwise deserving of a question mark, or to indicate the whole of what precedes is whimsical or unconventionally cryptic in some way. To use it indicate exemplification of a single word at the beginning of the clue does seem illogical to me, and a bit of a cop-out. Some setters who are scrupulous in indicating DBE’s would appear to share my view, otherwise why begin a clue with, say, “Setter perhaps” to indicate the letters DOG when they could easily disguise the exemplification by sticking a question mark at the end? Most don’t, and the detached question mark is the exception, not the norm.
                1. Your ‘in some way’ in my view covers, or can cover, ‘a single word at the beginning’. It would be good to have a setter’s comment on the general point.
          2. I can see your point, but I’m sure I’ve seen this sort of thing before, which is all I mean by ‘there seems to be a convention’. Of course I might just be imagining this.
             Edit: A bit of googling uncovers the following – courtesy of Tony Severs’ blog – from Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword:
             Sticking out for the potato insect? (11)
             The answer is PROTUBERANT, and ‘potato’ is the DBE.

             Edited at 2014-08-14 02:30 pm (UTC)

             1. You will have seen instances before, certainly in the Times. I was just suggesting it’s not universally accepted. Thank you anyway for that Ximenes quote, which does give the clue legitimacy. Funnily enough I was reading that chapter of Ximenes’ book only last week, but had forgotten that example. All I can say in my defence is that a similar clue of mine was rejected by the crossword editor of another publication. Despite the Ximenes precedent I think there’s room for further discussion, but this is not really the right forum for it. Incidentally,although I regard myself as broadly Ximenean, I don’t agree with everything he says – his disapproval of ‘return’ to indicate reversal in a down clue seems unreasonable to me.
                1. We could no doubt discuss this until the cows come home, but we’ll never arrive at a right or wrong answer. Why should a question mark be an acceptable indicator of a DBE, anyway? Come to that what’s so wrong with DBEs?! It’s all just a matter of convention and preference. Rather like language.
                   1. Ximenes approves of the use of a question mark in clues like the one for PROTUBERANT because it indicates “that a possible example is being referred to rather than the answer to a definition”. In his view “Sticking out for the potato insect” (without the question mark) is unacceptable because (and I quote)

                      there are other tubers besides potatoes. The point here is that it is not true of words that because A = B, B = A. “Tuber” is a definition of “potato”; “potato” is not a definition of “tuber” but merely an example. This is an important point which clue-writers sometimes forget.

                      It is certainly true that sometimes some Times [sorry, couldn’t resist the juxtaposition] cluewriters forget this – or simply ignore Ximenes – and some solvers are more annoyed about this than others. (I’m one of the not-so-annoyed.)

                      BTW, I don’t think Ximenes ever uses the term “definition by example” as such.

                      PS: Referring back to your earlier comment and its apostrophe, there’s only one of me. (Thank heavens, some might say.)

                      1. Sorry for the typo!
                         I’m not really bothered by DBEs either: it all depends. The discussion on crosswordunclued (I’d provide a link but I will get spammed) in which Peter B is quoted giving the example ‘Old MacDonald’ for ‘farmer’ sets out what I think is a sensible position. I don’t think the fact that ‘Old MacDonald’ is not a definition of ‘farmer’ is an important point, and I don’t mind if setters ignore it.
                         I don’t really see how a question mark would indicate to someone unversed in the ways of the crossword that ‘a possible example is being referred to’. It’s just a matter of convention: one of those little rules you have to learn.
16. Even after having seen the homophone, it took me a long time to see why bust = carving, until I remembered the classic Goldwynism –
    “My wife’s hands are very beautiful. I’m going to have a bust made of them.”
17. All done, but I don’t get why “Press” equates to “Roll”. I am expecting to need to kick myself, so please explain so I can hang my head in shame.

    As an amateur, the homophone seems close enough for me.

    I thought pedigree was very good.

    1. I thought the same, but one of the definitions of ‘roll’ in Chambers is ‘to press, flatten, spread out, thin or smooth with a roller or between rollers’. Think of an old-fashioned laundry press.
       1. My grandparents had a lawn roller. Big heavy thing to flatten and smooth out the grass after mowing. I don’t know if they still exist – perhaps the golfers among us would know. On the other hand some of us put rollers in our hair to do the opposite…
          1. Cricketers would know all about the Heavy Roller, in almost daily use in the season
18. 30 minutes with some chatty interruptions from ‘er indoors. No wish to labour a point already adressed at extreme length, but if there IS a difference in pronunciation between carving and calving, e.g in Ireland (where they say ‘filum’ for film) it is so minimal that the homophone is perfectly acceptable, indeed all the more amusing for the debate.

    Macavity please don’t un-blog, we need you! As far as I’ve ever been told, it’s OK to post mid-morning especially if you post a ‘coming shortly’ explanation earlier. Mine are never done before breakfast although I am at GMT+2 which helps a bit.

19. I thought I’d throw in my Murcan 2 cents’ worth and note that I was totally at a loss with the wordplay of 24ac, calving (kaeving) not sounding the least like carving (kahRving); I had to come here to find out what was going on. Fortunately, checkers and the definition were enough.
20. I found this a fairly straightforward puzzle to solve, though I did pause a little over the ‘bar’ element of 23a and the ‘gooey/sickly’ issue. For what it’s worth, I rarely have cause to utter either ‘calving’ or ‘carving’ but, when I do, I pronounce them slightly differently, though not to the extent of making the homophone clue unreasonable.
21. Sorry to be so late, but they actually expect me to work around here lately. About 40 minutes, ending with FAIRLY/GOOEY, which I thought convoluted. I agree with the other Kevin above, that the homophone does not work in the US, except perhaps in New England where they don’t pronounce their r’s. Didn’t work for me so it took a while to figure out. Regards.
22. 10:38 for me (so slower than crypticsue, but not enough to worry about :-). I made a ridiculously slow start, eventually got going, but then slowed towards the end. I spent a disproportionate amount of time on GOOEY, remembering that I’d come to grief with G‑O‑Y in the past, and feeling a bit nervous about “sickly”.
23. Three wrong – the wrong homophone leading to a vaguely plausible DOORBELL (of course I never noticed the dash!) and then a half remembered and wrong EBELE so all in all 1-0 to the setter!
24. Hope a comment a day late won’t annoy too many people.
    “The old” = “ye” is very familiar by now, and sanctified by folkloric usage. But it’s based on a misapprehension. It’s a printer’s error resulting from a misreading of thorn (Þ) +e, for ‘the’. ‘Ye’ never meant ‘the’: OED has it as a “pseudo-archaic article” as in “ye old oake”
25. 
    The Times is a London newspaper, in the English language. The Times crossword is in London English. If, like me, you don’t speak London English, well get over it – it’s not all about you. Bloody whinging Scotsmen and Yanks.
    And I hate homophones worse than Bill Gates!

    Rob

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