Times 26008 – one letter away from Trogdor!

55 comments on “Times 26008 – one letter away from Trogdor!”

1. ….so I had to call my mother. After 15 minutes of inane chatter, I came back to the puzzle and finished solving it in another five minutes, putting in ‘water vole’, ‘Dinar’ and ‘aviatrix’.

   One objection: ‘client’ is defined as ‘patron’, but anyone who understands the original meaning of these words knows they are opposites. A client is one who depends on a patron.

   I was impressed by the clever letter-substitution in ‘water vole’, and even more so by the brilliant enclosure clue for ‘aviatrix’. I really needed those cryptics. For ‘dragoman’, I just put it in from the definition and then puzzled it out.

   I would agree this is certainly a top-quality puzzle.

   1. I’m sure you’re right about the original meaning – a patron was (and still is) a supporter of clients. But these days I am a patron of my local hotel and local shop (where I’m also a client). So it worked ok for me.
2. Completely off the scale with this one with several didn’t-knows or forgottens such as PELOTA, SHAD, DRAGOMAN and MIDRIB. The sound-alike at 11dn was completely lost on me and I had no idea what was going on there. Not sure why bordering something should equate with hemming it IN or why aviatrix equates with pioneer.
3. I thought ‘bad driver booked’ (referencing Toad’s being arrested and jailed for auto theft and dangerous driving) was up there with yesterday’s African leaf-eater. From the start of this one I knew I was in for the long haul, which turned out to be 85 minutes.

   Regarding Jack’s queries, Collins has ‘aviatrix’ as old-fashioned, so by extension it may be taken to refer to the early days of flying, I reckon. Given the right context, ‘hem in’ can I think stand for ‘border’, as when one block of flats comes very close to an adjacent one, as here in Hong Kong.

   So much good stuff, but the nudge-nudge of BRANDY wins it for me over CONGRATULATE and UNOPPOSED.

   1. “Bad driver booked” seems much better now you’ve explained that Toad was arrested and jailed. I knew he was a bad driver and assumed all “booked” was doing was telling us we needed a character from a book.

      I take your point about “aviatrix” though not all the usual sources agree that it’s dated. It had occurred to me that might be the idea but I find it a little hard to accept that all the people termed this before it became dated were “pioneers”.

      Edited at 2015-01-29 03:57 am (UTC)

      1. I think the setter is relying on the association of aviatrix with the likes of Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson.
         1. … I think you’re right!
   2. “African leaves fancier … “.
4. Limped home in just over an hour, but fatally wounded by POLOTA and TIDRIB.

   Geez I struggled with this one. All credit to the setter, though I do have a slight quibble with the substitution in WATER VOLE. Not sure it quite works, but that’s probably just sour grapes.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

   1. Galspray: it’s “v” for “see”.
      1. Yeah, I got that much. Just didn’t like the “when”. Would have preferred “where”, but I’m not sure how you’d work that into the surface.

         Will settle for our esteemed colleague’s explanation below. Seems plausible, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy with it!

   2. ‘In oasis when horse leaves, see small rodent’

      We need to imagine an abbreviated manner of speaking, whereby ‘when horse leaves, see’ translates to ‘at the point where (= “when”) H leaves WATER HOLE, put V (Latin “vide”)’.

      1. Thanks U.
         1. Think ‘Turn left when the path enters the forest’.
            1. Nice to see you two getting on! What’s next?
               1. You never know when you might need a contact in Honkers.
                  1. You’re welcome anytime. We just re-tiled the roof.
                     1. Hah. I notice you left the country when I came to town last week.
                     2. I’m flying to HK tomorrow: perhaps I’ll pop in.
                        1. You and the brood would be most welcome. Bit chilly on the roof at the moment, though.
                           1. Sadly I am travelling sans brood and my ultimate destination is Guangzhou, so I won’t actually be in HK for longer than it takes to have a shower. Next time, perhaps…
      2. I just read it as ‘in X, Y’, where X = ‘oasis when horse leaves’ = WATEROLE and Y = V.

         Edited at 2015-01-29 08:56 am (UTC)

         1. Yes, but that would leave no indication of what to do with WATEROLE and V.
            1. ‘In X, Y’, so you put Y in X.
               1. Oh right, I see what you mean. Clearly not my day today.
5. totally messed up by putting BACKFIRE in at 1A (FOI even). Then worked out how the VOLE worked but for me it had do be a FAIRY VOLE and I wondered if FAIRY HOLE was a name for an oasis (at least plausible). Then couldn’t get AVIATRIX of course, although the loose definition didn’t help since I’d already screwed up the wordplay.

   I guess FIRE doesn’t quite mean charge and BACKFIRE does’nt quite mean not at all apt. it would need to be BACKFIRES

   So DNF

   Edited at 2015-01-29 08:41 am (UTC)

6. An excellent puzzle slightly spoiled by the rather loose definition of AVIATRIX and the simply awful PAY ATTENTION. 25 minutes to solve with no real hold ups

   I think we could do with some skilled dragomen on the world scene right now

7. 27.16 after a total brain freeze once the top half was in. Too many tentative entries: at 16d, Conservative had to be C so the rest of it had to be the inexplicable fast food ASTIRON. I could see how 15d had to work, but essayed UNPO????D. I guessed ATTENTION had to be in 11, but was flummoxed over what ?A? could be and missed the homophone indicator, making that my last bit in. For once, I have sympathy with the rhotic collection of colonials and rebels. I think where one has a tentative entry, the crossing entries are not just harder because the checking letters are wrong, but also because they might be wrong.
   None of the sticky bits mentioned above really bothered me, though HEM IN was entered with a bit of a shrug.
8. The need is apparent, especially because they are “guides and interpreters in Eastern countries” (Chambers). Annoyingly, their plural is dragomans. I think I agree with you that it shouldn’t be.
   1. Thanks z8. I shall in future refer to them as dragopersons to better reflect the loony world we now inhabit

      I recall Napoleon used them a good deal and also the guys running the Ottoman Empire

   2. It’s a Semitic word, and has nothing to do with Germanic ‘man’. But you probably knew that…
      1. I did after looking it up this morning
9. 19m for another challenging but very enjoyable puzzle with quite a few unknowns to be teased out from wordplay. Like others I thought the definition for 9dn was a bit odd but I have no problem with the homophone. In fact I like it, so there!
10. 16:06 .. so I found it a lot easier than the last couple of days.

    Loved the aviatrix, the chicken and the water vole (which just happens to be the title of my upcoming avant-garde movie release).

    Edited at 2015-01-29 09:54 am (UTC)

    1. Amy Henratty perhaps – little known sister of James?
    2. 🙂 like. Let me know the release date
11. an epicurean is not a foodie: that’d be an epicure. Dammit!
    1. the definition is not foodie. It is “foodie’s” .. so it’s fine
12. Rattled through this in 1 Sotira exactly.
    I don’t think aviatrix really = pioneer. Earhart perhaps, not all of them though or even most

13. Nearly an hour, and even then had to resort to aid for 9ac, as couldn’t think of anything else than ALISTAIR. (I did wonder about the possibility of him being a pioneer, but couldn’t find a French town to make sensible wordplay.
14. 32 mins. My second straight struggle, although my problems were in areas of the puzzle that a lot of you seem to have sailed through so maybe I was just having a bad day. I had four blank crossing clues in the NE that didn’t open up until I remembered DRAGOMAN and mentally kicked myself for not having seen the “drag” element of the answer much sooner. Once I had got that I one I saw SHADOW (I hadn’t been able to get “follow” out of my mind even though I knew it couldn’t be the answer), followed by HEM IN and IMPALE. I then went back to 23ac and SPAIN was my LOI after I finally saw how it worked.

    Edited at 2015-01-29 02:56 pm (UTC)

15. … to find this was a struggle for many; it took me ten minutes or so to get going but then it flowed nicely and after 30 minutes (watching Murray v Berdych as well) I had all but 23a P_I_S. I couldn’t see why PAIRS or PAINS were right, until I saw the SPAIN idea (not PARIS); even now I find pains = labour a stretch. You can have ‘labour pains’ but IMO they aren’t synonyms. No doubt someone will prove me otherwise.
    I agree with the above comments (not jerryw) re AVIATRIX evoking EARHART and co, it was fine by me and my CoD.
    Thanks for blog George.
    1. I read it in the sense ‘take great pains’ to do something, which Chambers defines as ‘(now only in pl) great care or trouble taken in doing anything’.

       Edited at 2015-01-29 02:35 pm (UTC)

16. 23:53 so another chewy one to follow yesterday’s. Today I was able to keep my idiot gene in check and come through all correct.

    No quibbles from me, in fact I really liked the pilotess and the hen as well.

    LOI was pains for me too.

17. 14:32 although the fight seemed to take much longer than that.
18. Third day in a row that I required two goes at it, finishing in 59:00.

    I couldn’t get anything for about 5 minutes then I saw what I thought seemed an unlikely FOI in PELOTA. There were various holdups from then on, until I was left with an uncertain SHADOW, not knowing SHAD, finally confirmed when I got DRAGOMAN at 7D. I’ve not heard of a DRAGOMAN nor had I seen the DRAG part when I drew inspiration from the Maltese snooker player Tony Drago.

    I didn’t know V for see so thanks for the explanation above. I was partially inclined towards a parsed but unlikely WATER SOLE but thankfully the unparsed option proved correct in this instance.

19. During Antiques road trip yesterday , one of the presenters visited the Amy johnson museum , Tim wonnacot referred to her as an Aviatrix. Ss
20. Backward = apt? Really?
    1. It’s “not at all apt”.
21. 52m but at least I finished this one and all correct too! I enjoyed the tussle today; the top half apart from the guide proving straightforward but then a 15m pause before the bottom half gradually and grudgingly fell. The guide was the last one in and my COD to the WATERVOLE but I liked the terse cleverness of SHADOW too.

    Edited at 2015-01-29 04:23 pm (UTC)

22. My second DNF in a row. Foxed after about 45mins by –DRIB and P—S. My only excuse is the fact that I had, one hour before attempting the solve, undergone the French legalistic rituals for completion on a holiday home near Carcassonne.
23. Tricky but enjoyable puzzle, with much to like. I was defeated by the pilotess, I’d like to believe it was because of the tenuous equality of avatrix with pioneer, but…
    This got me thinking about gender specific issues. Most of these are now frowned upon, but ‘waitress’ seems to have escaped. Answers on a postcard please.
    1. If she called herself ‘waiter’, she’d get fewer tips?
24. 15:35 here for another very fine puzzle.

    Absolutely no complaints: 9ac (AVIATRIX) and 11dn (PAY ATTENTION) are just fine by me.

25. Not my cup of tea at all today. I found several of the definitions rather loose, as others have mentioned, and the puzzle, as a whole, seemed a bit Grauniadish to me. I’m glad that others enjoyed it though.

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