Times 25,944 – Tygers of Pangram

50 comments on “Times 25,944 – Tygers of Pangram”

1. 31:45 … thanks for the blog, verlaine. You pretty much summed up how I felt about the puzzle. It seems wrong to pick out any one clue as the whole is a thing of beauty.
2. Great fun, indeed, and a beautifully crafted puzzle, able to turn what might in another’s hands have been clunkiness at 4a into the delightful and slightly wacky code-switching (Franglais?) of QUI’s instead of QUI EST. So much to enjoy, but ‘More work’ was a stunner. Besides ‘Utopia’, his ‘Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation’ (written in English rather than Latin) is a fine and moving work written in the shadow of the axeman’s block.

   Edited at 2014-11-14 01:27 pm (UTC)

3. 18m.
   I slowed myself down a bit by putting DIM SWITCH at 17dn.
   I thought I didn’t know the Himalayan mountain REKI, but it turns out I didn’t not know it after all, so thanks for clearing that one up.
   I was also a bit puzzled by ‘raising’ in 3dn, but I guess it just means something like ‘producing’.
   Super puzzle, a real pleasure to solve. Thank you setter.
4. Excellent puzzle utilising some very good definitions. SHIFT KEYS my last in also. Thank you setter.
5. Crumbs. Nearly 37 minutes for what was one of the hardest (for me) puzzles I can remember. A little bit too much aracne knowledge for my palate but I can appreciate the craftsmanship.

   LOI the not-too-hard charge of all things but with a puzzle like this you get to a point where you expect every clue to have a sting in the t and go looking for something that isn’t there.

6. An enjoyable time was had – just a smidge over 17 mins to sort it all out. Given the number of times a day I must press 15a, I really should have got that one earlier than I did.
   1. My time wasn’t very impressive today, was it? Perhaps my tactic of popping a biscuit into my two-year old every 30 seconds in order to keep her quiet wasn’t the amazing time-buying technique I’d hoped it might be…
      1. Somewhat past the 80-biscuit mark…she must think she’s onto a good thing.
7. About 45 minutes for this very inventive and witty puzzle, but I was defeated by 15a and resorted to an electronic aid. I thought 20dn was the best clue in an excellent and varied set. Not so keen on the Franglais in 4a, but no serious objection.
8. I kept up the pattern of increasingly long solves each day this week finishing up somewhere north of an hour today.

   An excellent puzzle with some beautifully hidden definitions, perhaps the best of which was for UTOPIA. Just last weekend I looked up who wrote Utopia, but even having noticed that the word fitted it took me a fair while longer to twig ‘More work’. Hats off to the setter.

   1. I’m sure I’ve seen “More work” to clue UTOPIA, on, erm, more than one occasion before. It seems like the sort of thing that would be irresistible to most seasoned setters…
      1. As long as it’s used infrequently enough I’m sure I’ll forget it between uses.
9. This one would have been on my watch and for the first time since the switch I’m really glad I wasn’t on blogging duty. I got there eventually but there were simply too many unknowns for me to complete the grid without resort to aids.
10. Yes it was a beauty. Two top notch ones in a row. Glad to see that others were equally flummoxed by the shift keys (shirt legs, skirt legs I dunno). It took me several minutes. Quite a few of us over on the Forum were utterly foxed by the Himalayan mountain. Score one for the setter and kudos to Verlaine for decoding it. 21.11.
    1. SHIRT HEMS was a front-runner with me for a while…
    2. SHIFT KEYS was my first one in after about 5 completely unproductive minutes. I knew ARBUTUS from the setting in “The New National Songbook” of the poem of the same title by AP Graves.

       Edited at 2014-11-14 03:01 pm (UTC)

11. Agree it was an excellent crossword, too excellent for me. I needed help to get ARBUTUS and BOILEAU (saw OILEAU, but assumed that “by” was cluing “x” as in “times”, so was tossing up between XOILEAU and OILEAUX).

    And SWIZ, never heard of it, never would have got it, so looked it up which allowed me to get ZESTY. Without assistance, the RHS would have been very sparse indeed.

    On the plus side, I spotted the pangram for possibly the first time ever and have noticed a glaring error at 1ac in Verlaine’s excellent blog.

    1. Argh! A typo rather than a genuine lapse of knowledge, honest!

       The fact that I was looking for a Z somewhere to complete the pangram was a *great* help in getting me to the, I thought rather difficult, SWIZ.

       Edited at 2014-11-14 02:36 pm (UTC)

       1. You young people obviously haven’t read enough Jennings books – swiz featured very regularly in his complaints about the world.
          1. Also Molesworth, as in moldy chiz. In my mind they both have two Zs for emphasis.
             1. Dangerous to rely on Molesworth for proper spelling, as any fule kno
             2. Mm, I’ve always thought of SWIZZ as ending in double-Z, I have to say. I must confess I’ve always been slightly baffled by what Molesworth is going on about in all that CHIZ CHIZzing.
                1. I associate it with Molesworth swiz swiz, a noun of sorts for which ‘do’ don’t really do. 50’38 for an excellent assortment.

                   Edited at 2014-11-14 03:25 pm (UTC)

                2. Chambers has Chiz (or Chizz) as a cheat, swindle or nuisance, or as a verb, to cheat.
                   Sort of there with
                   “Gosh chiz this is molesworth 2 my bro he is uterly wet and a weed it panes me to think i am of the same blud”
                   Molesworth first appeared in 1953 and I was in a prep school 8 years later where such words as swiz, chiz, cave and quis were common.

                   Edited at 2014-11-14 04:44 pm (UTC)

12. 31 minutes with a very slow start but what a great puzzle. My nod to senility today was spotting what was required at 15ac across fairly quickly, and then staring at them on my keyboard for some time trying to remember what they were called. K2 very familiar so the existence of a K1 seemed reasonable.
13. WOW! This was one to sort the men from the boys (or women from the girls)! I struggled for well over an hour (train and lunch) before finally admitting defeat with 3 or 4 to go. Amazingly, my first two in were LENTIGO and BOILEAU, neither of which I had ever heard of, and put in out of desperation from the clues just to put some letters in the grid; I was sure that the fellow sitting next to me on the train was quietly sniggering at my lack of progress. For the same reason, I stuck in the middle word of 2d, but with no clue as to what went either side. Unfortunately, I also confidently stuck NEW in as the first word of 21 which caused me grief later on.

    An excellent puzzle. I didn’t spot the pangram until I came here, so failed on that count too. Thanks blogger and setter.

    1. I have the same feeling whenever I’m struggling on the train. Of course if I knock one off quickly I’m sure to flourish it in front of the person next to me.
       1. Don’t forget the Trainmanship of the great Reggie Perrin who would sit in the carriage with his Telegraph, and write in MY NAME IS REGINALD IOLANTHE PERRIN in available squares until the whole was complete, before folding it up and commenting ‘Pretty straightforward today’.
       2. Pardon?
14. Can someone enlighten me as to why US can equate to Times? We are not a newspaper, or eras, or multiplicative etc.
    1. Well, just as “setter” can be I or ME, “the Times” can be US for a setter gainfully employed by that newspaper, I expect… certainly I refer to the company I work for in a similar way.
    2. I spent several minutes trying to work out why “the Times” would be US, coming up with several improbable ideas before the light dawned. Not capitalizing the “the” is very sneaky.

       On edit, I’ve just realised that makes no sense. But I did think The Times was supposed to have 2 capital Ts.

       Edited at 2014-11-14 06:01 pm (UTC)

15. 107 minutes, but very pleased to have finished at all, and spotted the pangram, which helped with the Q, which I had already suspected from the cryptic in 4. Like many, I had never heard of BOILEAU, LENTIGO or mount REKI, so thanks for explaining the last of those. I was puzzled by “chestnut” meaning CH, till I checked in Collins, and found that it is a standard abbreviation for the colour of a horse.

16. 37 dead, including a restart after a badly placed mouse closed chrome all by itself. Curiously, a couple of entries had to be re-solved as well as re-entered. There’s short term memory issues for you!
    The pangram helped me to get the V in the NW, and the poet was 100% generous wordplay. Excellent toughie.

17. Please, can someone explain to me how “a certain distance” becomes “ice”? Thank you to all you experts out there. I’m a beginner.
    1. I think “ice” is basically a synonym for “froideur” here… unfriendliness, reserve, etc.
       1. Thank you as well. This is a very helpful comments board.
    2. “Ice” can be a lack of friendlyness. Thus somebody keeping their distance from you. I think just an idiom.
       1. Thank you for your reply. Now I understand.
18. Too much unnecessary obscurity for my taste – lots of ‘did not knows’ and definitely won’t remember. I’m always intrigued that the definition of an ‘excellent puzzle’ is it appears ‘much harder than usual’. A glorious DNF for me after an hour but I did appreciate the blog if not the puzzle.
19. About 45 minutes to get through this, and I agree with those who say it’s a fine puzzle. To me, that’s due to the very well disguised definitions today, the best of which, as stated already, was ‘more work’. Lovely. The SHIFT KEYS were also good. Wordplay only led to LENTIGO, SWIZ and BOILEAU. MY LOI was AUDIO because it required that I correct TOP SWITCH to DIP SWITCH. Thanks to Verlaine and the setter, and regards.
20. This was the perfect example of why I retain my Novice handle. After half an hour, I only had BOILEAU (which was a guess from the generous wordplay) and BIKER (which was also a punt on the basis that if there is a K2, there has to be a sporting chance there’s a K1 out there somewhere!) It was time to run up the white flag…

    I could claim I was put off my game by the disturbing imagery of 28a, but the reality is that this was a case of a village cricketer facing Mitch Johnson with his dander up. Authentic reality check, as after completing Wednesday’s championship offering OK I thought I was starting to get my eye in…

    Thanks, Verlaine, for deciphering this beast. Great learning experience!

21. Loved this one, and managed all correct, but my time was shocking. Well over the hour. Not saying how much over…
22. 14:48 here for this excellent puzzle.

    I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t heard of BOILEAU – or, if I had, then I’d forgotten all about him. There’s a Boileau Road in Acton, which I suppose could be named after him, but that’s perhaps unlikely as it’s pronounced in a defiantly English fashion as “boil-oh”. (That’ll teach them to make the Rosetta lander sound like a piece of steak!)

23. Tony, I don’t think the pronunciation of “Boileau Road” as “boil-oh” discounts the possibility of its being named after the French poet. After all, we English have corrected the pronunciation of “Beaulieu” to “bewley”.

    I finished this one in about 4 Severs, and felt lucky to have got there. BOILEAU was, quite rightly, unknown to me. Like others here, I was held up by SWIZ, which I too would have spelled with a double Z, even if I’d recognised it as a verb rather than a noun. Then again, I’d have called a maestro a “whizz” – wrongly, I guess, if “wiz” is short for “wizard”.

    All in all, I found this one quite chewy.

24. No time recorded, but completed over two sessions which were quite protracted.
25. …since I had never heard of the word ‘swiz’. I’m sure I would have finished had I known it, and at least everything else was complete and understood.

    I give myself 24 hours, then give up.

26. There is an English baronetcy of Boileau, which I suspect is the more likely source.
27. Sorry to ask so late. Was hoping to sort out “archly” with help of a brother. Grateful if someone would explain why archly = in play?
    Many thanks.
    1. “in an arch manner” ie playfully or teasingly.

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