Times 25925 – in which I bomb

71 comments on “Times 25925 – in which I bomb”

1. ….and I put in ‘ambience’ rather than ‘ambiance’ based on the cryptic – who ever heard of ‘ambivalance’?
2. I followed in George’s eminent footsteps and typed AMBIANCE–is that how the French spell it? Or is it just a dumb typo? Never did figure out ENDGAME, and–until I came here–thought that SPEED was my one error. Oh, well. Very good puzzle, indeed, if I had been up to it.
3. 51 minutes for a very fine puzzle, with ROISTER last in having been amended from ‘rooster’ after ANNEX and MICRONESIA fell.

   COD to STYMIE in memory of the happy hours bombing up the M1 to HQ in Telford back in the day. (Okay, even in the early 80s, you had to leave before cock-crow to manage this.)

4. A similar E/A misspelling also led to my downfall having decided early on that 1ac was D(IS,SID)ANCE – after all ‘boy’ can be any abbreviated man’s name when it suits setters, so why not ‘child’? I was also convinced the word I was looking for at 9ac was PLEONISM so one way or another I wasted forever trying to figure out the answer to 3dn.
5. A straightforward puzzle apart from the unknown PLEONASM, which required a few minutes at the end playing the “Is this definitely an anagram?” and “Which arrangement of these letters looks likeliest?” games.
   1. ‘Pleonasm’ is usually used in the context of grammatical idiom. For example, there is a ‘pleonastic ne’ in formal French. The Wiki article discusses a wide variety of pleonastic expressions and usages in various languages.
6. … exactly.

   For some reason I didn’t get along with this well at all. I did, though, like the nods to logic and philosophy in PLEONASM and SOLIPSIST. The sci-mob here often complain about the absence of sci-type answers. But philosophy (as such, apart from a few philosophers — Mill? Plato?) rarely seems to get a guernsey.

   Attn: don’t say “tautology” when you mean “pleonasm”. The former is a whole sentence or proposition which is necessarily true. The latter mere redundancy in a phrase or expression.

   1. All omelettes are made of eggs.
   2. An egg omelette ….

   Can’t understand why the latter types are called tautologies. Forgive the lecture eh?

   Edited at 2014-10-23 07:13 am (UTC)

   1. No need for forgiveness, after all, if you can’t give a disquisition on exactitude of language here, where can you? Yesterday, I saw someone getting annoyed by other people confusing “parameters” and “variables”, and was rightly impressed.
   2. Readers of the Daily Mail (!) will be able to read extracts today from John Rentoul’s new book on quirks of the English language. He has a list of ‘tautologies’ defined as ‘saying the same thing twice’, like past history, safe haven etc. They are all pleonasms.
   3. Sorry to be a bore about this but I’m interested. Is your first sentence really a tautology? It’s true that all omelettes are made of eggs but this is not self-evident from the sentence itself, so it’s not necessarily true in the way ‘there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done’ is. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
      1. Since the word “omelette” necessarily means something made of eggs, it’s a tautology. The classic is “All bachelors are unmarried”.
         1. OK, thanks. By this definition any time you explain what a word means, it’s a tautology. There ought to be a tighter word to define phrases that stand as tautologies by their own internal structure, like ‘it is what it is’.
   4. Actually, I seem to recall Ayers and Russell showing up quite a bit in puzzles.
7. 
   About 45 mins for me today, but with a careless ambiance. Ended with the unknown PLEONASM.

   Thanks for the enlightenment re tautology vs pleonasms, McT, I’m sure I’ve been guilty of misuse in the past.

8. Does it really mean opposition? Thanks setter and blogger.
   1. I wondered about this too. I think in practice it does in sentences such as ‘the Thatcher government’s ambivalence towards the arts’, where speaker stance and context make the meaning more cut-and-dried than the essential meaning of the word would indicate.
9. 21 minutes for another good puzzle.

   My thanks also to McT for the tautology/pleonasm clarification – just the sort of anal knowledge I like!

10. 14.39 for this excellent spelling test – for which read I got ’em right, for once. I did wonder about ambivalence=opposition, but how about this from BRB to illuminate: “coexistence in one person of opposing emotional attitudes towards the same object.” Internal opposition? And yes, AMBIENCE is spelt with an A in French (and was my initial entry) but this is an English crossword. For English speakers. Notwithstanding the Greek, Arabic and Latin entries.
11. 21:02 … with PLEONASM having to be assembled Ikea-style over the course of several minutes, mainly because I’d always thought the word was pleonism.

    I didn’t give any thought to ambivalence but I did spend a long time scratching my head over SOLIPSISM, which I didn’t think of as being a subset of SCEPTICISM. I’m still not sure about that but will leave it to the philosophers among us to put me right (I Googled it and got as far as “Scepticism often leads to solipsism…” before deciding I was out of my depth.

    Good stuff. COD… NEAR MISS.

12. Excellent puzzle that made me struggle. Two phone interruptions from local press reporter made timing difficult but certainly 25 to 30 minutes.

    Hadn’t met PLEONASM before and am indebted to McT for clear explanation. And thanks to setter for a good mental workout.

13. Pfft! 21minutes but a momble at 8ac. Doubly annoying in that I failed to spot the ‘for one’ device and am very familiar with the word yet didn’t see it from the checkers. Ah well, should have pondered longer. Another quality puzzle.
14. Very good and challenging puzzle. That dratted SPEED was my last in as well, as I simply couldn’t see how it meant “start to harness”. Have to give that one to the setter, I think.
15. Tricky in places. 40.51. Ambivalence does not mean opposition. It may be used as code for such in political reporting (ulaca’s example, a government’s ambivalence towards the Arts) but code isn’t what it’s code for. I’m sceptical about the solipsist def. also, though there’s more of a case there. I’m all for adventurous clues but the envelope has to hold.
16. 18m, but another AMBIANCE here. It’s the French spelling, but it’s also in Chambers. There’s no ambivalence about the wordplay though.
    Like Sotira, I was curious about SOLIPSISM being classed as a subset of scepticism, but I’m no expert on such matters either.
    Thanks to mctext for the interesting pleonasm/tautology clarification. I’m in two minds about this one: the linguist in me says that if people use ‘tautology’ to describe phrases like ‘egg omelette’ – and they do – then that’s what it means. The pedant in me says that if you’re going to use precise technical words like that then you ought to take care to know what they mean. It’s a problematic dilemma.
    Anyhoo, I thought this a very good puzzle.

    Edited at 2014-10-23 09:38 am (UTC)

    1. “problematic dilemma” …. I see what you did there!

       I’m still not 100% clear on all this. Is “absolutely unique” a pleonasm? Ot a tautology? Or something else?

       1. I would call it ‘fine’, on the basis that ‘unique’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘one of a kind’ so ‘absolutely’ is a perfectly legitimate qualifier. In the context of this discussion though I think it’s a pleonasm. ‘This unique crossword is one of a kind’ would be a tautology. I think.
          1. I think also that ‘absolutely’ can be used as an intensifier with any adjective expressing quality, while ‘very’ is typically limited to those which do not indicate a superlative state. So, you can have ‘absolutely delicious’ but not so easily ‘very delicious’, and ‘absolutely horrendous’ but not so naturally ‘very horrendous’.
             1. As always with these things I’d say it’s a question of ‘is’ rather than ‘can be’: it’s a convention, and it applies except when it doesn’t. People say ‘very lovely’, for instance, and you also hear ‘very unique’.

                Edited at 2014-10-23 02:00 pm (UTC)

                1. But I wouldn’t place ‘lovely’ in the same category as ‘sublime’, say, and, as for ‘very unique’, it grates on my ears, at least. ‘Quite unique’, fine.
                   1. Not ‘sublime’, perhaps, but ‘delicious’? My main point is that these things are governed by convention – what people actually say – rather than hard and fast rules. So the fact that you’re more likely to hear ‘very lovely’ than ‘very delicious’ isn’t necessarily because of the characteristics of the words ‘lovely’ and ‘delicious’.
                      ‘Very unique’ is a prime example, and illustrates the way in which the meaning of the word ‘unique’ has shifted. It grates on my ears too, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
17. 21 mins. Count me as another who struggled with this one, but no complaints because the setting was devious and I thought it was a cracking puzzle. The previously unknown/forgotten PLEONASM was my LOI with fingers crossed after NEAR MISS. It was only when I finally saw start=seed that I was happy with SPEED.
18. First ever posting from a long-standing lurker. Some good vocabulary here (neoplasm and solipsist) and I was pleased with my time of 22.34,although took a while to come to speed on 14ac. However, embarrassingly, came a cropper on the spelling of ambience.
    1. Welcome to the world of thrust, parry and rapier-like wit. Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Though with a name like that, I’m surprised you’re joining the club.

    2. Welcome!
    3. It would be interesting to know how many lurkers there are. I certainly lurked for years before coming out earlier this year. Welcome!
19. Agree with all – a very enjoyable puzzle so thanks, setter.

    Chambers describes solipsism as “the theory that holds that self-existence is the only certainty, otherwise described as absolute egoism, the extreme form of subjective idealism”. Not sure where the sceptic bit comes from.

    1. I took it that if one’s own existence is the only thing one can be sure of, then one must be sceptical about everything else.
       1. Thanks justinw.

          This is what I said in the Crossword Club, having worked it out myself.
          “Yes and no. If your only certainty is that you yourself exist (solipsism) then you are naturally sceptic about everything else.”

          I did not want you to think that I had just quoted you without attribution.

          1. Glad we agree!
20. Anything involving philosophy gives me an instant brain freeze. I only really noticed the term in the 2008 presidential election when it was often invoked to describe Sarah Palin – not as a sceptic but as an egomaniac. I was reasonably sure it wasn’t a “neoplasm” so it had to be the other. O Level Greek occasionally comes in handy.

    It’s nice to come here and find that others struggled with this – I thought I was having a very slow morning. Good puzzle. 26.15

21. 32 min – LOI PLEONASM after eventually finding anagram, but without seeing that the definition was only provided as an example.
22. Yep, out of my depth 🙂
23. 11:55 for me with PLEONASM my last one, going in on a “that must be what the anagram is/I’m sure it rings a bell” A couple of applications of Tippex but not on AMBIENCE which I did know how to spell!
    1. AMBIANCE is given as an alternative in Collins, Chambers and ODO, so to be fair to those (like me) who put it in we are guilty of failure to pay attention to the clue rather than an inability to spell.
24. An excellent puzzle throughout I think, and very clever in several places. I really liked the MICRONESIA one, but escaped the AMBIENCE problem as I’m too stupid to realise that it can be spelled any other way.

    Congrats setter, great stuff, and nice blog too, many thanks.

    PS

    Tommy Cooper: ‘Doctor I’ve broken my arm in three places’
    Doctor: ‘Well stop going to those places’

    1. My late father (a GP) used the line

       Doctor, it hurts when I do this

       Well, don’t do it then

    2. I regale people with the ‘Will I be able to play the violin when I recover from this broken arm?’ one. ‘Certainly.’ ‘Great – I couldn’t play it before.’
       1. On the same line of (silly) thinking is

          Someone in the UK is mugged every 27 minutes, and he is getting fed up with it.

    3. Patient: “I’ve broken my leg in several places. It hurts if I touch it here…ouch!.. or here…ouch! … or here…ouch!”

       Doctor: “Nurse, take this man and have his finger X-rayed.”

25. 21:17 so I think that qualifies as trickier than average.

    The unknown pleonasm, which I hadn’t heard of, was finally last in at the end. Like Mohn I had to rearrange the letters in the most likely-looking fashion.

    Can someone please explain why appropriate = done?

    Had a bit of a brainstorm at 2, wondering if there was such a word as smedial, and even after I decided there probably wasn’t I was still left wondering what sort of training agents pecia might be. Books? Whiteboards?

    1. I would explain but it’s just not the done thing, old chap.

       Edited at 2014-10-23 12:40 pm (UTC)

26. I’ve been away fro a few days without access to eother the web or puzzles, so belated congrats to those who competed over the weekend. For this, about 30 minutes ending in SPEED, with the only other difficulty the unraveling of the PLEONASM, new to me. Regards.
27. No takers for my laying down the law on ambivalence I see. Am I wrong? I suppose you could say you were both sceptical as to whether I’m right, and ambivalent about it; yet they’re not the same thing: one’s much more negative.
    1. I forgot to mention it, but I agree with you. I’d say that if you oppose something, you are by definition not ambivalent about it.
       1. I thought z8’s rationale was quite good, ie ambivalence equating to “internal opposition”.

          Although I’m in two minds about it…

          1. Too much of a stretch for me.
    2. Ambivalence should take its place in the ‘value’ group including:

       Equivalent (equal); polyvalent or multivalent (many) etc.

       So it should be restricted to the ‘having two values’ or ‘being in two minds’ meaning. In either case a long way seemingly from ‘opposition’ except as in the quoted example of politicians refusing to say that they are against anything.

       1. I agree with the egg/omelette examples given above.

          For what it is worth both words emerge round about 1600 in French with pleonasm enjoying wide circulation today. The perceived difference – in Gaul – is that a pleonasm is an ADDITION which contributes nothing new. As such it is a stylistic fault. Those familiar with the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will know that pleonasms are tested on the ‘Sentence Correction’ part of that test. Candidates reject sentences which are stylistically poor or unacceptable, inter alia on the ground of redundancy. In French the excessive (because grammatically unwarranted) use of ‘y’ or ‘en’ would be typical pleonasms. The French lexicographer Robert cites Gautier’s famous quip “a house full of madmen or poets (almost a pleonasm)…”.

          A tautology, again for the French, is a logical proposition in which the predicate states nothing new about the subject. ‘All bachelors are unmarried’ is an example.

          Conclusion: both waste ink but pleonasms are perceived as defects of style whereas tautologies are defects of thinking.

          1. Sorry. My first two comments above were marked as anonymous.

             Final point. When we want to show off in French we use ‘superfetatoire’ meaning redundant (of language). The original biological meaning exists in English (superfetation) but I have seen neither the secondary literary meaning nor the adjective on this side of the Channel.

28. Oh dear. An hour, and I still couldn’t see PLEONASM. Shame on me. In desperation, I was trying to think of obscure places after which a [political] summit might have been named. In a fit of pique I put in “piergasm” (the overwhelming delight caused by the British seaside experience) and clicked ‘Submit’.

    Ah well. Nice to see DEPRESSED making a seasonal appearance as the days draw in.

    I’m not sure I get SPECIAL – in what context is it a synonym for “major”?

    1. I wondered about that too. I tried to think of a sentence where one could substitute one for the other. “My major/special interest is crossword solving.” Hmm.
29. Continuing a successful week for me so far, which inevitably will end in disaster tomorrow.

    Thanks setter and blogger, and thanks to McT for the educational lesson on PLEONASM. Can’t wait now for an opportunity to pounce on someone for misusing “tautology”. In fact I’m looking forward to it with anticipation.

30. Came to this late in the day and not at my sharpest. Surprised to find I had all but 8ac in half an hour or so, while one eye on the TV as well. Knew 8ac was an anagram but PLEONASM looked as likely or unlikely as any other version, so had to resort to aid. As a result – read the Wiki article on same, and am now wiser on the subject, for what it’s worth. I liked 17ac, which came to mind speedily after watching Homeland.
    1. Really? I’d be the first to declare the clue unfair if so, but I can’t see an alternative arrangement of the letters that looks credible. I knew the word though, and I recognise that is bound to prejudice me against alternatives, so I’d be happy to stand corrected.
31. 9:48 for me – but as usual making heavy weather of some straightforward clues. I suspect this may be the setter who regularly stretches definitions to (or perhaps beyond) their limits: I wasn’t too keen on either “Opposition” = AMBIVALENCE or “crow” = ROISTER.

    PLEONASM last came up in the daily cryptic in No. 24,597 (23 July 2010), so less than five years ago.

32. Any other chess players have concerns that ‘endgame’ does not mean the same as ‘time for mate’?
    The end game is the third stage after the opening and the middle game, when most of the pieces and pawns have been captured, but mate can occur at any stage, and most endgames finish in a resignation or a draw rather than a checkmate …
    Challenging puzzle though, took me most of the day on and off, and ended with looking up 8 across.
    John HM Proctor
    1. Oh, as a player I think it’s fair enough. The endgame’s the time when a mate is in the air (partly for the very reason that a draw hasn’t already been agreed to), even if its possibility evaporates and the resignation or agreed draw follows.
33. 17across your explanation does not convince me. Also a few other clues were “flaky” which you passed.
    1. I look forward to one of your blogs then. Doubtless it will be crammed full of convincing explanations and rabid tirades against flaky clues.

       In the meantime I’ll see if I can get George’s fee for this one reduced.

    2. “DRONE: R in DONE” do you mean? It sounds pretty good to me, and it’s amplified in subsequent comments for those who needed further explanation. If you’re going to damn clues as “flaky”, you’re going to have to do better than that, otherwise people are going to assume that you simply haven’t understood them!
34. Can someone please explain what Barnet has to do with hair

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