Times 25,956: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered

60 comments on “Times 25,956: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered”

1. Thanks for parsing that. I just couldn’t see AD=BILL and AD=PROMOTION although I had the rest of it. Quite agree that this was an excellent puzzle. 19.14
   1. Mm, the duplication did give me pause, but I couldn’t see another reading (in the time allotted…)

      Edited at 2014-11-28 11:48 am (UTC)

2. 17m. Nice puzzle.
   I was a bit confused by the definition at 1ac, but it turns out I was thinking of ‘clutch’, which in this context is not synonymous with ‘grip’.
   I’m still a bit confused by ‘undergrad’ for BA. Isn’t the former by definition not the latter?
   1. I suppose it’s the idea of a B.A. being an “undergraduate degree”. The way it’s used in this clue does seem questionable unless you allow that B.A. functions as an adjective in “she’s a B.A. student”.
      1. Hmm. I suppose so. ‘B.A. student’ sounds like a line from Sam Cooke song.
3. Gadzooks…..zook was a union general killed at getysburg…thus “my” refers to gadzooks?
   1. I guess that works too. Blimey! And, indeed, gadzooks.
4. 45 min – held up by carelessly putting DUFFLE at 1ac, and a couple of distractions.
   Agree about BA. For TOQUE I had ‘queen’=QU, with it being a posh hat, as favoured by Mary, the Dowager Queen Mother.
   1. I spent over a year working in Edmonton, Alberta, so had a hard time de-fixating myself from TUQUE, which was a real essential out there if you didn’t want your ears to catch frostbite and fall off.
      1. I think it’s usually spelt TOQUE in Canada, too, verlaine.
         1. I think you’re right, as in the traditional Christmas song:
            On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
            5 GOLDEN TOQUES!
            4 pounds of back bacon
            3 french toast
            2 turtlenecks
            and a beer.
         2. That was not my experience “on the ground”, and this link seems to at least partially corroborate it too.

            Just to confuse matters though, my Canadian wife just told me “oh, no, it’s definitely only ever tuque!” before suggesting that even though it sounds like tuque, it might be *spelled* toque. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

            Edited at 2014-11-28 05:24 pm (UTC)

            1. My Canadian other half said “take your pick…I usually use toque”, which doesn’t help much, either. When I was living there I was sure it was mostly toque. I just looked online at the 2 most iconic Canadian stores I could think of, Canadian Tire and The Bay, the first uses TOQUE, the second uses tuque (but occasionally toque). But as The Bay is owned by Americans these days I don’t think it should count. This could run and run. I suspect the answer really is “either”.
               1. Yeah, from my continued searching I got the impression that it may well sound like “tuque” to English ears, but no one actually cares where it’s spelt tuque, toque or touque. (Not a hugely pedantic nation, Canada.) Of course it’s such a vast country that there are probably regional differences, and we must always bear in mind that these are people who can happily pronounce “about” as “aboat” or “aboot”.
                  1. I would say you’ve nailed it. I’m not sure why they bother writing vowels at all — they only ignore them.
               2. Or we could just call it a knit cap to avoid conflict!
               3. For the sake of completeness, my Canadian other half (there’s a lot of it about, eh?) prefers TUQUE.
                  1. Hang on, is there anyone here who isn’t married to a Canadian? I wonder what the Venn diagram between solving and having a thing for Canucks looks like.
5. 24:25 … well, that was great fun. I got a little tangled up in the north west corner but eventually plodded home.

   Nice to see a mini Canadian theme, with CANADA DAY and the TOQUE, which is practically national dress over there. Talking very vaguely of which, having returned to the UK this year after a decade in north America, I was really looking forward to “no more Black Friday”. Er, what happened?

   Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d, I said,
   Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead.
   The dog-star rages! nay ’tis past a doubt,
   All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
   Fire in each eye, and store cards in each hand,
   They rave, acquire, and market round the land.
   (apologies to Pope)

   I know, I know, I’ll go and sit in old fogey’s corner where I belong, where I’ve always belonged …

   1. From Harrods, Oxford street, and e’en to Wapping
      Have these poor fools not heard of online shopping?
6. Great stuff this, even if it took me 2.5 galsprays. No problem with BA meaning ‘undergraduate’ as per Sotira’s rationale. As K would say (!), we have to remember how language is actually used…

   Parsing of the Year Award to cruci_fixated! Pure genius.

   1. Ouch.. you will note I hope that I have not used the lack of dictionary ‘support’ as an argument!
      I still have a slight reservation about it on the basis that ‘XZ’ being synonymous with ‘YZ’ doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘X’ is synonymous with ‘Y’, but ‘slight’ is the operative word.
      1. You’ve done me with your algebra – no ‘slight’ intended. 🙂
7. Strictly speaking, Rangoon is no longer the current name for the capital of Burma, it’s Yangon. Same place, different name. But then the country is not Burma, but Myanmar. I know the US and UK don’t recognise those names, but they’re recognised and used by all Asian countries.
   Having said all that, a taxi-driver I used in Burma/Myanmar was very insistent that I should avoid using the new names, which were the inventions of an unelected junta.

   I found it difficult to get to grips with this puzzle, and for a long time I had only three entries in the grid. Part of the problem was some definitions that seemed slightly suspect, or at least out of kilter with normal usage, such as 12ac, 3dn (surely ‘execrable is far worse than fifth-rate), 14dn.
   Then there were deceptions that were not in themselves questionable, but cumulatively added to the problems of solving, such as ‘One tiny’ for ‘Tiny one’, and ‘somewhat disheartened’ for the more usual crosswordese, half-hearted.

   In the end it took an hour, with 7dn as LOI, which earns my COD for the very clever and neat use of ‘Giving more.’ As verlaine comments above, there are lots of nice surfaces throughout.

   1. I wondered about fifth rate, but reckoned that if you get (got – in the old days before the A* was invented) an E at A-level, it was pretty much a bare pass. Actually, it’s pretty much the same under the new ‘starry’ system, I see.
      1. I used to be quite pleased with my German A-Level result until you just described it as fifth rate.
         1. Oh, Gawd – just put it down to my talent for offending people.
            1. One day I’ll let slip what I got for English Lit.
               1. Eng Lit was my worst result at O-level (back in the days when it was still graded 1-9). I never even read some if the set books (Sassoon was one)!
8. A long but steady struggle today, 45 minutes to end with GAD (seemed the most likely for G*D) having started with 4d and 1a. Much to like here. SPONG(I)ER was a cracker.
9. 15 minutes, everything in with full understanding, so a nice clear puzzle. Happy Friday!
10. Another in a run of reasonably easy puzzles, for which I’m grateful being still a little below par

    There’s a sort of neatness about this puzzle laced with some very good stuff.

    I wonder if Jerry will comment about Bill in 8D after his Hamlet remarks on the Club Monthly?

    1. I haven’t read Jerry’s blog yet as I intend to have a stab at the thing since he calls it ‘easy’, but having read his musings on the bard before, is there perhaps a chance he had read his greatest play? ‘Hope may vanish but cannot die,’ as another arty type once said.

       I am glad to hear you are recovering from your virus, Jim, and hope you continue to thrive.

       1. Nothing to do with Waggledagger but musings on the use and misuse of capital letters in clues that rather took me down memory lane and the views of a certain crossword setter

          Thanks for your good wishes – the older I get longer it takes to recover from these wretched things

          Edited at 2014-11-28 02:46 pm (UTC)

11. 18:35 with a few instances of not seeing the obvious slowing me down (e.g. thinking “you and I” had to be “we” without the possibility of “us”). Actually, on reflection, wouldn’t “us” have to be “you and me”?

    I finshed with the same last two as Verlaine, but not necessarily in the same order.

    COD to 12 for “member of parliament” but I also enjoyed “what I reckon” for “my guess”.

    1. Well spotted. But it’s the kind of thing aspiring lower middle-class women* say as an over-correction, so it would pass the K usage test, I reckon.

       * no aspersions being cast as studies show this group drives language change, not to mention many PTAs.

       Edited at 2014-11-28 02:12 pm (UTC)

       1. Aspiring lower middle-class women… and T.S. Eliot. Presumably because ‘let us go then, you and me’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘sky’.
          1. Well, ‘let us’ is functioning here as a first person plural imperative so we can let Eliot off, I think.
12. 45m for the much heralded DNF; done for by the SE where the unknown hat and easily forgotten qua/as and the, unfathomable for me, theme and variations on a loaf of bread all scuppered me. I found even the parts I could do quite a challenge, such as the unknown maths function and rather unlikely definition of bemyguest as please. Not sure I’d accept it as the ‘magic word’ that opens the sweetie jar from my grand daughter! Thanks as ever for the enlightening and entertaining blog.

13. A very enjoyable puzzle that so nearly had me reaching for aids that it felt very satisfying to complete the grid without doing so. I was unable to explain ADAD in 8dn, but I had no problems with any of the meanings or references involved
14. Finished in a long 45 min, so relatively easy, but good fun. I was worried at first, because while I can see the connection I don’t think of a fogey as necessarily being a dodo, and I think of a grip and a duffel as being very different kinds of carriers; but then things settled down and tightened up. On the other hand, BA didn’t bother me.

    Edited at 2014-11-28 02:22 pm (UTC)

15. I had the same niggles as everyone else – ‘grip’, ‘BA’ etc. ‘You and I’ grated particularly. If us can’t rely on The Times to uphold the rules of grammar things have come to a pretty pass.
    1. I’m going to stick up for the setter here. Whilst “you and I” and “us” are not interchangable in a sentence, they both describe the same set of people.
       1. I take your point
16. EYEWASH, TITCH, TOQUE and ROACH are all words that I’ve only encountered in crossword-land, so I’m not sure how I’d have gone with this one a couple of years ago.

    Thought it was another excellent puzzle with some great surfaces, particularly enjoyed 14ac.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

17. The iPad clock said about 3.5 hours but as this included 2 dogwalks and lunch, I am guessing at around 40 mins. Found this hard with many stuck in unparsed so thank you blogger.
18. Please don’t laugh but I put in ‘eelmash’ for 24ac so couldn’t get 18d. Thought it must be some sort of cockney version of gibberish.
    Anyway, one man’s elm is another man’s yew, as my old gaffer used to say.
19. This abbreviation has been used twice recently – where does it come from?

    Finished in around an hour. LOI was 19 down – just after I realised that 22 was TOQUE and not TOPEE. Otherwise I’d have scribbled in POPTART and hoped for the best.

    1. I can’t remember when (or if) I’ve seen this in actual practice, but I always imagine it being on a train, bus or plane timetable, a. 1510 d. 1535.
20. You could reinflate yourself by listening to early 90s anthem “Ebenezer Goode” by The Shamen, with its refrain of “E’s are good”.
21. Eelmash sounds like a Cockney delicacy! “It’s gibberish, but oh so delicious.”
22. 12:33 for me, feeling very tired after a busy day. And no doubt a bit captious, as I was put off by: 1) RANGOON, as it’s no longer a capital); 2) BA, as I’m afraid I’m not at all convinced by sotira’s argument; and 3) “you and I” = US, when clearly it = WE. These spoilt (for me) what was otherwise an interesting and enjoyable puzzle. As usual these days, I made heavy weather of some easy clues, including old chestnuts like 24ac (EYEWASH).
    1. As mentioned above, in the first person plural imperative structure ‘let us [go]’, US stands for ‘you and I’, so I think we owe the setter this one.
       1. No it doesn’t! In “Let us [go]”, US stands for “you and me” – as in “Let me [go]” (not “Let I [go]”).
          1. I’m talking not of ‘let’ the main verb but ‘let us’ as the imperative marker, as often seen in the contraction ‘let’s’.
             1. So what? It makes not a hap’orth of difference.
                1. The Eliot poem quoted by Keriothe above gives a good example of the grammatical subject being made explicit: ‘Let us go then, you and I’. Eliot hadn’t, I’m sure, been reduced to solecism just to find a rhyme for ‘sky’.
                   1. It’s not a solecism if you regard “you and I” simply as vocative. (In any case, poetic usage – liberated by poetic licence – isn’t in general a reliable guide to English grammar.)
23. A BA is a graduate not an undergrad[uate]!
24. “Country’s Eastern border moving west when we’re due back” in the Oz today. Surely with the reversal indicator between RIM and ETA it can only apply to one? RIM reversed + ETA, or RIM + ETA reversed?
    Otherwise enjoyable, but couldn’t get it all in 1 sitting so left it for a while and polished off the last few almost immediately, including correcting DUFFLE to DUFFEL – careless.
    Rob

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