Times 26092 – international incident

37 comments on “Times 26092 – international incident”

1. I was fairly certain I was in for a DNF, but finally I realized what ‘floor’ meant at 24d, which convinced me that ROLLOVER was right (or as near to right as I was going to get–had no idea of the other meaning), and that LOI PLAYA had to be. I thought I was so clever in spotting the ‘my’ in 12ac–got to be COR, right? Fortunately the phrase had appeared in a recent cryptic. 3d was lovely, but with the enumeration and definition it was all too biffable; which is what I did, then took it out because I couldn’t parse it, then parsed it. COD to 16d, I think.
2. I was certainly a B-solver today. Mainly because I couldn’t work out how TALKER worked. So many possibilities there. Thanks to George for pulling me out of the fog.

   And his speculation about 4ac certanly worked for me. Never had a very high opinion of mid-Cheshire.

   Edited at 2015-05-07 03:08 am (UTC)

3. Great leaps of faith to get WHITLOW and FROWST, but BETISE was a bridge too far.

   And now I see that I had PHASA instead of PLAYA. Meant to go back and check that, but it wouldn’t have made any difference.

   Oh well, nice to have an outing with the big boys occasionally, even if it means being sent home with a black eye.

   Thanks setter and (astonishingly fast) blogger.

4. Needed aids to finish off (at 21d and 1a) after what seemed like an eternity spent on this one. The ‘with’ clues at 29a and 21d, clueing two unknown words, are especially fiendish.
5. A very similar experience to Ulaca’s and Galspray’s above, surprising myself by coming up with some almost unknown words, but BETISE was one step too far (I had plumped for BETESE before reaching for the dictionary) and PLAYA and SHAKO also proved impossible without help, though I’m pretty sure I have met both before. Not sure I have come across BOWER as my lady’s boudoir, and I lost time wondering between TELL and TICK OFF at 2dn. I agree SNARE DRUM was a delightful clue.

   Edited at 2015-05-07 04:39 am (UTC)

6. 
   Toughie for me too, but managed it all eventually, even guessing correctly for TALKER (rather than ‘teller’), my LOI at 8dn. Thanks, G, for the explanation.

   Started writing ‘potty’ at 1ac, but soon realised that there weren’t enough letters…For once I managed to spot the French word.

   PLAYA and SHAKO from wordplay, but the two that caused the most angst were the unknown WICKLOW and the semi-known FROWST. This whole corner was held up by having ‘frosty’ pencilled in for some time.

   1. I’m not sure the good folk living to the south of Dublin will take kindly to being describe as a nasty abscess…
      1. ooops…!
7. A tricky but satisfying one this: 40 minutes of grit and determination, dredging up obscure information from the darker recesses of my mind. However like Jackkt I plumped for BETESE – that was a step too far. There are a number of lovely clues here, with possibly my favourite being 18a.
8. It’s not often I find myself on a par with the Bogota Eagle (well, nearly). I skittered around the wavelength of this one like Tony Hancock on an even worse night – it is are frowsty here in Tokyo. My mayday moment came with BÊTISE – a nasty word to stick at 1 across, especially clued with the stupid adjective not the noun. All right, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Used the I because it looked marginally more likely in a word I had previously ignored. Do we get an extra point for putting the circumflex in?
   PLAYA I thought was just a plain, but something meeting the wordplay had to go in, so it did. Again, I am educated.
   I join the chorus of approval for murdering bridge players, but there were plenty of other choices for favourite.
   1. Interestingly, the dictionary (ODO, not Urban) has the following second sense for ‘playa’ (also ‘player’):

      ‘A confident, successful man with many sexual partners:
      “she’s so wary of playas, she’s declared herself celibate”.’

9. Tricky one. Well done George, great time. My Mephisto experiences helped here and I suspect yours too in putting together unknown words from wordplay elements

   The clues are all fair and if you do exactly what they tell you the answer emerges with the possible exception of 1A where I think you need to know the word to solve the clue – which is a pity

   1. You hit the nail on the head Jim. There were eight unknowns for me in this puzzle. Five of them I solved by trusting the wordplay (SAMOS, HIDALGO, WHITLOW, FROWST and SHAKO). Two others I could and should have solved (COLCANNON and PLAYA).

      But I’m not sure how one could decide between BETESE and BETISE without being familiar with the word. As you say, a pity, but an excellent puzzle aside from that.

      1. In the plural, a favourite exclamation of my old French master, vis-à-vis the class’s stupid answers. So the word stuck — unlike a fair chunk of other vocab.

         He didn’t have a Scots accent, pace George, though one of my favourite lecturers (later on) did. I can still hear him giving his two-hour lectures on the history of French art (in French) with that wonderful hybrid accent.

10. I rattled through all but 1a and the WHITLOW/FROWST crossing before a phone call put paid to any sort of timed solve. Which is a good thing, because the crossing pair in the SW took me ages to get, with WHITLOW an unknown; and as for 1 Across … like a couple of others, Chambers to the rescue.

    Some terrific clues, for sure. Thanks, George, especially for the observation about the grid. It’s the sort of thing I never notice.

    1. I think your compass needs new batteries.
       1. Oh, blast. I do that a lot. It’s a wonder we didn’t end up living in Kent when we moved to Cornwall.
11. Just had a message from Macavity to say that he’s been delayed at the hospital and probably won’t be able to do the Quick Crossword blog until at least after lunch.

    He’d be grateful if someone could stand in for him but if this isn’t possible, he will put something up this afternoon.

    Thank you.

    1. Okay, I’ll do it.
12. Same as Kevin et al on PLAYA and ROLLOVER, both new to me with those meanings. Slight hint of the insufferable Hercule Poirot. It is a mere bagatelle mon ami, une tasse de betises. Yes, some of my tea wound up on the keyboard when parsing SMASH HIT. 20.07
    1. Gosh. I biffed that one and hadn’t noticed George’s reference to the container. I think that would have made me splutter, too.

       It’s not easy to see the parsing. Having parts of the wordplay presented as is — “it” giving “it” — seems more common in the Telegraph and Guardian than The Times.

13. Got the answers from the wordplay but had to Google them to confirm they were real words with the appropriate meaning. Does that make me betise?
    1. I think it makes you a solver – usually I make a note of which words I got from wordplay alone, but in this case it was only WHITLOW (though I remember it the lyrics of a Jazz Butcher Conspiracy song). I don’t usually put the definition in explicitly, assuming people reading will know it’s the other part of the clue.
14. Quite tough in places, but my French came in handy for 1a. Whitlow was the only unknown, but wordplay was clear. I spent ages on 8d, ending up resorting to an aid to see the full range of possibilities. 43 minutes. Great anagram for 9d.
15. Between Magoo and Verlaine at 7:59:96. Probably helped that the unknowns were ‘knowns’.
16. 22:25 with shako and hidalgo unknown, both to me and, as it turns out, to Google Chrome’s spellchecker, as was the required meaning of invest and playa. Whitlow, frowst, betise and Oran were only just within reach at the back of the old brain-shelf.

    This is a the sort of puzzle which a few years ago, if I’d looked at the answers, I would have decided I had no hope of completing.

17. Tricky today – 35 minutes but enjoyable nevertheless. COLCANNON was my only DNK though some of the other more obscure words had to be dredged from deep. I toyed with “phasa” for a while but it didn’t feel quite right – my LOI was WHITLOW.
18. 12 minutes here, which probably puts paid to my dreams of a sub-10-minute Mon-Fri average, unless tomorrow’s is uncommonly lenient!

    I did find this was a hard one, with lots of minor leaps of vocab faith required… PLAYA, WHITLOW, FROWST, SHAKO… As a reader of boy’s own adventure comic 2000AD in my youth I will always think of SHAKO as being a homicidal polar bear above all else.

    1. If your youthful reading involved Billy Bunter, you will recall that he was constantly accused by the Famous Five of frowsting.
19. 19 mins but a technical DNF because I went for “betese” from the wordplay. I wasn’t aware of the French etymology of the answer so I didn’t consider the spelling and pronunciation of BETISE. I wasn’t happy with my answer so I checked my Chambers post-solve and saw what it should have been. A poor clue by Times standards IMHO. As others have already said, it is a shame that this clue spoiled what was otherwise an excellent puzzle.
20. 19m. Some of this seems to have escaped from a Mephisto, but it’s all fair… with the exception of 1ac. I knew it because I speak French but I don’t think that should be a prerequisite. A bit of a shame indeed, in a puzzle otherwise full of difficult words that can be constructed from wordplay.
21. Yep—-I failed with “betese”. Stupid of me?
    1. Not stupid at all. It’s a poor clue of an obscure word that offered no guidance on alternative spellings
22. Didn’t know either FROWST nor WHITLOW and they intersected so I definitely was wondering if there was something I was missing or whether those unlikely words were going to turn out to be good. More Mephisto like where you invent some seemingly impossible combination of letters and it turns out to be a word.

    No problem with BETISE since I lived in France for 5 years. Faire des betises is the normal french for being naughty.

23. About 30 minutes, but had to throw in the towel on BETISE. It’s news to me. WHITLOW, FROWST and this sense of PLAYA all unknown, but I solved them from wordplay. Regards. By the way George, the blog indicates the answer of 22D as TIPPLER. When the tippler gets tipsy he may leave a bigger tip, I suppose, so that slip is unerstandable.

    Edited at 2015-05-07 07:06 pm (UTC)

24. 10:06 for me. I thought I was heading for a decent time at one point, but I got stuck in the SE corner.

    No problem with BETISE (probably because I’ve made enough of them over the years – Sigh!), but I wasn’t familiar with BOWER as a lady’s bedroom, and I had to think hard to match PLAYA with “bed”.

    Like others I had a double take at 4ac.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

25. I think my extra neuron must have been a flash in the pan. DNF for me.

    I half-got BETISE, but had to resort to aids to decide between that and BETESE. Utterly failed to get SHAKO, for no good reason. Failed also with PLAYA (which I would not have equated with “bed”) – nearest I got was PLATO, as an “old man”.

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