Times 25895 – mind your D’s and K’s

57 comments on “Times 25895 – mind your D’s and K’s”

1. Was happy with that time as I thought this was a brilliant challenge.

   Similar problem to George with the mountain. I tossed a coin to decide between SLIPDAW and SKIDDAW, then googled the answer while the coin was in the air. The fact that I googled SKIDDAW rather than SLIPDAW possibly suggests that I was leaning that way, so I’m claiming an all-correct.

   And I don’t want to be picky, but is the definition for BUNKER MENTALITY accurate? I thought it referred to an exaggerated sense of being under threat. Not that it made much difference in the solving.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

   1. Here’s the Chambers definition of BUNKER MENTALITY

      A belief that one is secure and that one’s world will survive unchanged in spite of evidence to the contrary

      1. Thanks George, that gives the clue the all-clear, although my interpretation is supported by every other reference I can see on the net.
2. 70 minutes for a most enjoyable and inventive puzzle. I thought SUBSIST was particularly good. I can understand the vexation with the mountain, but as one who climbed it on a memorbale spring day more than 20 years ago when temperatures fell 20 degrees between lower slopes and peak (where the winds were hurricane force), it’s a place I’ll never forget.

   * Betjeman and Britten (sort of)

3. Thanks for the blog GL. I managed after quite a while ( some 2hrs+) to get all the answers in correctly; 3dn guessed fro ‘Ape’ and with 1ac and 5dn just guessed from the letters.

   Re 1ac despite your blog I still dont get it as ‘SUMMONED BY BELLS’ means nothing to me so I would be obliged if you, or someone, would be so kind as to explain it to me.

   Thanks again

   1. It’s a poem by Betjeman – I put a link to it in the answer
      1. Thanks GL, got it now but I had never heard of the poem. Thanks for the link, sorry I failed to notice it.
      2. It’s actually more than that link would suggest, as it’s a lengthy autobiographical piece of blank verse running to 111 pages in the original edition (or 144 in the illustrated version) covering Betjeman’s childhood in Highgate, holidays in his beloved Cornwall, first days at his prep school, his time at Marlborough public school and ending with his arrival up at Oxford. A fuller description can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summoned_by_Bells.

         He read an abridged version for radio back in the 1960s and made a TV film of the same title based upon it. Both are now commercially available. So in its way it’s very famous and worthy of inclusion in a crossword, not just one poem amongst a thousand others.

         Edited at 2014-09-18 06:02 am (UTC)

4. But quite a while on trains and in waiting rooms. Neither place is much good for crossword solving. Still, got there in the end with most of the problems caused by not knowing the poem.

   Thanks to George for explaining how ORANG-UTAN works. This remained unparsed to the end.

5. 25:48 … I’d echo jackkt’s comments on a terrific puzzle (just as long as you knew of SKIDDAW).

   Summoned by Bells has been on my ‘to read’ list for ever. This seems like a good time to put that right, so thank you twicely to the setter.

   Edited at 2014-09-18 06:26 am (UTC)

6. What a superb puzzle! If I’d been on blogging duty I’d have been in full panic mode after 7 minutes of being unable to write in a single answer on first or even second reading.

   But eventually I got started (at 11ac third time round) and after that the clues gave up their secrets steadily one by one. And it turned out to be a very tidy solve as the answers flowed and joined up, albeit quite slowly, around the grid so that I completed each quarter before moving on.

   It’s a long time since I enjoyed a tough puzzle as much as this one, mainly because the clues were very inventive and satisfying to solve and understand. There was nothing obscure or too clever by half.

   I take the point that others have made about 8dn, and I didn’t know the mountain so I relied on wordplay, but fortunately SKID was the first possibility for ‘slide’ that I thought of and the alternatives never occurred to me.

   55 minutes.

   Edited at 2014-09-18 05:54 am (UTC)

7. Thought I was going to have to come out with my hands up on this one but eventually limped home just over the hour.

   I remembered Skiddaw from my,ahem, trainspotting days (44003).

8. Found this a tough one, in particular due to not having heard of SUMMONED BY BELLS and not seeing the anagram of BUNKER MENTALITY for a while. Dimly remember climbing part-way up SKIDDAW as a child, and still have a sew-on patch as a souvenir lying around somewhere. Couldn’t get Overmars out of my head for 21A, but was unable to see how a footballer could equate to a service.
   1. Also, took me a while to see what “The blue” was doing in the clue for ETHER – it appears to be two definitions plus wordplay.
9. Thanks for the link to the Summoned by Bells extract. I am just about to head up to St Pancras where as usual I will admire his statue and doff a cap/hat to his beautiful sense of language
10. 
    Too tricky for me today… dnk 1a, so had SUMMONED BY CALLS for a bit, and had one left empty at the end: ACCUSTOM. Well half empty, as I had TOM. However, I would never have got this, as I had ‘put an end’ (unparsed) in at 18ac.

    Several others unparsed, too: ETHER, BENJAMIN, PROVERB, MONTHLY… Actually, I still don’t get ET=blue number. Is is that ether is used as a number (anaesthetic) too? And is it blue?

    1. Hi Janie. It’s “the blue”=ETHER; number (make numb)=ETHER; ET=alien=out of this world + HER=the girl. Rather convoluted for such a short word
       1. Ah, so it’s two (unconnected?) definitions + the cryptic… No wonder I couldn’t work it out! Thanks, J
11. A difficult puzzle that I found hard going but like others got there in the end. “EU trade” is new I think, don’t recall seeing it before and had to reverse engineer the cryptic – as I did with several others.

    Didn’t know SKIDDAW and looked it up as a derived answer. Isn’t a bread roll called a WAD somewhere in the UK?

    Thanks to setter and well done George

    1. In Wales a ‘wad’ is a sandwich, I seem to remember.
12. Most trouble with the NW corner, and loi was BENJAMIN because I had made another A for E substitution error by entering MEN OF GOD for 12a. In my head, staff is always plural rather than singular, and my brain also ignored the apostrophe in the clue (which could also work with the plural version of the answer). It wasn’t until I remembered that the spell-checker in MS Word always tries to make staff singular that I saw where I had gone wrong after many minutes of trying to fit something into B?N?E?I?.

    I didn’t parse PROVERB properly, but the answer was obvious once you recognised that the clue was SAW.

    1. I read ‘staff’ as a verb.
13. Stuck for ever on Antrim as had lounge bed, where one can be with one’s loafers off. 47′ finally. Gritty and enjoyable generally. Liked 23. But one fears for the child that chooses the over-grammatical father. The editor apologised for pranayama recently but I doubt the Slipdaw possibility will trouble the conscience. Yet I put them in the same basket – as a fair test of GK, word or name sense and if all else fails reference to aids. If there’s a significant difference it’ll be in the local GK I suppose, which may be fair enough, but it’s not the way I see it.
14. 33m. A very tough puzzle that I enjoyed immensely. Fortunately I knew 8dn, but I do think it’s a bit unfair. I vaguely remembered 1ac.
    I didn’t have a clue about 3dn apart from the first word, so thanks for clearing that one up. I still don’t understand it though: how does ORANGE TAN equate to ‘fake bronze’? I realise that fake tan is supposed to produce an orange colour but that doesn’t seem enough.
    I was also surprised by the definition of BUNKER MENTALITY. The Chambers definition strikes me as very strange: plain wrong, in fact. Collins online defines it as ‘a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile’, which is what it has meant whenever I’ve heard it used. You used to hear it quite a lot when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.
15. 26 mins. I agree that this was a fine puzzle even though three answers went in from definition alone; BENJAMIN (my LOI), ORANG UTAN and PROVERB.

    I like to solve anagrams in my head and I almost never write out the anagram fodder. I may have been slightly quicker today if I had made an exception for BUNKER MENTALITY, although the definition it was given didn’t help.

16. Orange Tan for a fake bronze seems ok to me. We used the term BRONZE as a verb in the Navy, i.e. to bronze (or sometimes to bronzie) was to soak up the sun and acquire a tan.

    I also thought that the “EU trade” was a clever device, but wondered at the hyphenation of the answer. Wikipedia and the Orangutan Foundation, as well as the BBC and others don’t hyphenate.

    I seem to remember that it means something like “old man of the forest” or similar, which I think is very apt.

    1. I have no problem with bronze = tan. But I can’t see how ‘orange’ means ‘fake’, so it can only work if ORANGE TAN is an expression meaning ‘fake tan’. If it is it’s one that I’ve never heard and it doesn’t appear to be in any of the dictionaries.
       Chambers hyphenates orang-utan.
       1. Sorry, I misunderstood your misunderstanding (I hope that doesn’t sound rude, it’s not meant to be). A real tan is never orange, and by popular logic therefore and orange tan is a fake tan, a la Dale Winton (see http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/celebrity-news/274200/dale-winton-i-don-t-use-fake-tan-or-sunbeds for a link).
          1. Unspammed
          2. Not at all. I suspect you’re right: it’s just whimsical reference to fake tan. I still find this a bit unsatisfactory: at the very least I’d have thought it merits a question mark.
             I like the link by the way. A bit intellectual by our standards, though.

             Edited at 2014-09-18 10:35 am (UTC)

17. Same as Jack – I took a very long time to get going and was relieved to see I was far from alone. Thanks for the parsing George, especially on “ether” and “Benjamin”. I’d just assumed the “fellow of note” was Britten without bothering to unpack it. It did strike me as I meandered about looking for a foothold that there might be several somewhat coded references to current events. “Tollbooth”, 28a, 6d, 18d, 25d. Thought I was having a slow week but now quite pleased with 26.47.
18. 33.13, so many, many thanks to George for taking over my watch at short notice: I am aux Alps Maritimes, where connectivity varies from pas de tout to un peu iffy, so had little confidence in creating a post.
    It also meant I didn’t have to parse the ape, for which relief much thanks.
    My long hold up at the end was the MAN OF GOD/BENJAMIN crossing where I had an early essay at BANJOIST for the former (it nearly works) and a compatible coinage of ROD OF GOD, failing to split minister from staff of office for the former. I was certain I was looking for either a composer or player at 5, not just any old bloke’s name.
19. A good and very enjoyable workout. 52 mins for me, so on the slow side. BENJAMIN the only one not fully parsed so thanks to the blogger for that. Some excellent clues, with ETHER and DICKY BOW my two favourites.
20. These puzzles are supposed to be solvable without reference to aids: as I understand it that was the policy of the previous editor and judging by his apology over yogagate the new one has retained the policy.
    1. Would you hope to see an apology for the Skiddaw clue?
       1. I wouldn’t dream of being so presumptuous!
          I do think that SKIDDAW is a word that merits unambiguous wordplay. To me SLIPDAW looks very unlikely but I had heard of SKIDDAW so it would, wouldn’t it? I suspect that neither setter nor editor realised there was an alternative or they might have changed the clue.
          1. I daresay you’re right in that.
21. That was a struggle and a half, taking me well over an hour, with the NE pretty empty apart from the early entry of ADUKI (nice topical clue). Like Z8 I was sure I needed a composer for 5, and I also considered ROD OF GOD.
    An excellent puzzle in many respects, just too many indirect or cryptic references for my poor brain to cope with at the end of the day.
22. A lot of fun with this tough puzzle, and I’m pretty glad ADUKI was ‘actually there’ in the clue, as it’s a bit deep for my (I like to think liberal) taste in such matters. But 44 mins!

    Thanks indeed all.

    1. I didn’t realise until Googling that the aduki is the dreaded red bean, my mortal enemy in Hong Kong, which finds its way into absolutely everything from doughnuts to cakes to drinks.

       Ulaca

       1. One of my family in-jokes is about the time we were served red bean ice cream in a Chinese restaurant, the waiter telling us it was like nothing we’d ever tasted before. It just tasted like ice cream!
23. 28:30 with a little trouble along the bottom. At 22 even though I knew I needed to write the word meaning “host” I still wrote hoard. And like Mohn it took me a while to spot the fodder for bunker mentality (I assumed it was a 5-letter word meaning liberty plus (meantnewuk)*.

    Very good puzzle, all parsed, no unknowns but the poem was only vaguely familiar. COD to tollbooth.

24. Very similar experience to Jack – couldn’t get started but once I did it was slow and steady, and I also finished in 55 minutes.

    I knew SKIDDAW as I planned to go cycling there last year until a medical condition put paid to my plans.

    Seeing the anagram at 28A I wanted to get blanket in there for some time, as in security blanket. MINUTE BLANKETRY was an unlikely answer I thankfully ignored. I did stymie myself at the end for a while by having ROD OF GOD at 12A. I got rod for staff and thought perhaps it was a term for a minister who conducts god like a lightning rod. After several bemused minutes I realised 5D had to be BENJAMIN and was able to correct ROD to MAN.

    1. Subsequent Googling returns many hits for Rod of God ministries!
25. A most enjoyable solve. No problem with SKIDDAW as I climbed it with relatively new father-in-law some 22 years ago. It has a very depressing long straight haul in which you can always see how far you still have to go and when you get there, you aren’t! I made the mistake of reading Summoned by Bells before boarding at public school (not Marlborough) but having already boarded since aged 8 there were no real surprises
26. Quite happy to finish in 65 minutes for what was evidently a fairly tough puzzle. Fortunately I’d heard of SKIDDAW, so no problems there. Thanks for parsing 26, 3 & 5, which all went in without full understanding.
    At 18ac, I read “top off” as being what you do to a cake, rather than a person. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many Great British Bake-offs.
    1. I think you must be right, Keith – even though I went down the ‘kill’ route – since as far as I’m aware, ‘top’ can mean to kill/ice and ‘off’ can mean the same, but in combination they cannot.
27. I think the def is ‘Fellow’ and the ‘note’ gives the N in the answer.
    1. Ah, just any old Benjamin then. Why were people above going on about Britten?
       1. I think “a Benjamin” is slang for a dollar note.
28. Did it all in 30 minutes except 1ac which was unknown and had to be looked up, then leaving me with B-N-A-I- for the chap. Seems a bit of a stretch to me to clue a composer (man of note) with only his first name as the answer. Or have I missed the point again?
    I did know the English mountain though, climbed it (well, walked up), some 45 years ago, along with the other pointy bits in that pleasant neck of the woods.
29. 52m and then surrendered with MAORI (and even with George’s excellent blog I still didn’t get it for a while) and ACUMEN still to do. I found this knotty and unsatisfying in the end but probably because I was struggling to see the definitions. I also took embarrassingly long to remember the poem at 1a and to get the anagram at 28a despite having the correct anagrist for ages.
30. I thought I was going to have to abandon this after 20 minutes when I only had KING COBRA and TOLLBOOTH. Then I saw the Betjeman at 1a and the rest just seemed to fall into place. Not a speedy solve but, at least, I got there in the end.53 minutes. Ann
31. Wonderful puzzle, though I had to resort to aids after 50 minutes for SKIDDAW and DICKY BOW. I got the poem from the wordplay despite never having heard of it (sorry). I enjoyed this thoroughly, so thanks to the setter and George for the hard work. Regards.
32. 16:59 for me – on the setter’s wavelength at least part of the time.

    Looking back at my (annotated) copy of Wainwright’s The Northern Fells (Book 5 of A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells), I see I’ve climbed SKIDDAW three times, the first in 1962. I’ve some sympathy for non-Brits who’ve not heard of it, but I would argue that the Times crossword is aimed primarily at Brits, and it’s something we really ought to know – even the southerners among us!

    There were one or two clues that were perhaps just a little too convoluted for my taste, but they were more than offset by the brilliance of some of the others. So, all in all, an exceptionally fine puzzle. (The one clue I’m not entirely convinced by is 14dn, since I’m not sure that MOTHER HEN really matches “nanny”.)

    1. ODO has ‘interfering’ in the definition of both (and incidentally limits neither to females) so I think it passes muster.
       1. Yes, you’re quite right. I thought I’d looked up both of them in ODO, but somehow I must have missed the secondary meaning of “nanny”.

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