Times 26224 – 1 across makes perfect (and if not you can visit a 10 across)

50 comments on “Times 26224 – 1 across makes perfect (and if not you can visit a 10 across)”

1. … with KARELIA; known from Sibelius. But all sorts of trouble with SCHTICK — known but outside my regular vocab. Also a bit of trouble parsing DOWN AT HEEL and TOCCATA. COD has to go to OLIVER TWIST: great surface!
2. I had 4dn as a triple definition.

   I completed all but 9dn and 19ac in 25 minutes but sorting those out took me to a little over an hour, though I think I nodded off a couple of times in the process.

   I agree with the misgivings over 20dn, especially coming the next day after a similar example, but on this occasion I happened to know KARELIA, as the composer Jan Sibelius wrote a suite of that name which came to my attention quite early in life and I have remembered it ever since. One of the movements (Intermezzo) was used for many years as the theme to a current affairs TV programme which provoked considerable interest in it by a wider audience than would have heard of it otherwise. It’s on YouTube here, the relevant bit starting 1:19 in:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtIw5AkUEsE

   Edited at 2015-10-08 12:49 am (UTC)

3. The last 4+ minutes were taken up mainly by staring helplessly at the screen, followed by suddenly getting the last 5-6 clues, in the SE. I finally realized that 20d involved an anagram, which led to KARELIA; like Mctext and Jack, I knew it from Sibelius. That gave me SCHTICK,etc. LOI actually CHINA TEA, which I biffed, having forgotten about CH. I’d agree with McT about OLIVER TWIST, although 12d was no slouch.
4. …but a silly error that doesn’t bear mentioning.

   Correctly guessed the anagram for the unheard-of KARELIA. Would probably have got it from Sibelius, except that I’ve never heard of Sibelius either.

   COD to SCHTICK, just because it’s such a great word.

   Thanks setter and George.

   Edited at 2015-10-08 01:08 pm (UTC)

5. 39 minutes with Gallers’s silly error(?) at 16d – ‘drawings’ for DEALINGS. Sorry, Sir Alec, Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton et al. HIGH SEASON my pick.
   1. Spot on mate. Spooky.
6. 14 odd minutes but another Keralia. I have a friend who lives in the India province of Kerala and have addressed a number of letters there. In the way the brain can skip over inconsistencies, mine happily ignored the presence of a rogue ‘i’.

   But a super crossword, much enjoyed. Lots of COD possibles. I’ll give a nod to DEALINGS for a nice penny-drop moment.

7. SCHTICK and KARELIA were too much for me.
   GENEVANS I ought to have got.
   Try again tomorrow!
8. 18 minutes and I agree with Sotira – lovely crossword and LOI DEALINGS raised a smile when the penny dropped. Apart from 20d I wonder if anyone will find anything to moan about in this one?

   Edited at 2015-10-08 08:06 am (UTC)

   1. Oh, I do hope so!
      1. Was it Alice Longworth Roosevelt who once said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, sit here next to me”?
         1. It’s always good to have a schtick to beat someone else with.
9. I knew there was something bothering me about this: the spelling. It’s usually ‘shtick’ or ‘shtik’, in my experience (SOED also gives those spellings only). (The YIVO Institute’s transliteration guidelines specify ‘sh’ across the board for ‘sch’, but of course that’s for Yiddish not English.)
   1. Chambers and Collins both give the maximised version as an alternative, and for me, it looks wrong without the C. Maybe that’s because, with my eastern European/Jewish connections, I’m inured to extra and arguably unnecessary letters being thrown in.
      1. Without which C? I’d keep the second, toss the first.
         1. Like Z I find it looks strange without the C. Perhaps it’s because several of the Yiddish words in common (?) use in English are derived from German. Conversely I wouldn’t think of writing anything other than ‘sh’ if asked to transcribe from Hebrew. I checked in my treeware SOED to see if it made this distinction but it’s so old it doesn’t include most of them.
         2. My oath, we’ve got picky today. The C we were talking (sorry, writing) about was/is the first one, and the initial discussion was about that one. It’s not helpful, in this context, that Collins and Chambers allow the version with no Cs at all.
10. I have no excuse for KARELIA, which accounts for my two errors (I think that’s mean too, it’s only one clue wrong). I know the Sibelius suite – it was one of “Your Hundred Best Tunes” long before the advent of Classic FM, on the BBC Light programme, introduced by the increasingly breathy Alan Keith. Arguably, the two spellings could be pronounced pretty much the same, and you don’t get spelling on the radio, especially on one with valves.
    The rest of this was decent enough – easy for the first few, if with traps for biffers. Psychotherapist, anyone? Tricameral? TWIST probably the best of the bunch, BILE the worst, by which I mean it took me ages looking for either a politician (possibly a name) or ill-will, and therefore focusing on neither. ?I?E is only marginally less of a nightmare for alphabet soup strainers than ?A?E. 19.15 +2
    1. I’m fascinated how you can two errors out of Karelia…
       1. Ah, the ambiguities of language. I, of course, wrote KERALIA, another of those word which look wrong when written in the horizontal, which indeed gives two errors, but only if you count them both.
          1. I’m still none the wiser about the two errors.
             1. Well, I can only assume, and perhaps Sotira, who made the same error(s) may confirm, that my errors were that I put E for A and A for E. I, rather naively, I suppose, thought they only counted the whole clue entry as a single mistake, but this seems not to be the case. Each wrong letter. Also, if you get an intersecting single letter wrong, that also counts as two mistakes.
                I cannot find any other mistake in my submission.
                Of course, those who never make mistakes would have no idea what I was talking about!
                1. Yep, my “2 errors”, too
                2. Aha, so we’re talking online puzzles. I always thought one word wrong = 1 mark deducted*. Are you sure you don’t have another goof elsewhere?

                   *Indeed, Ulaca’s score is shown as having one error and he had two letters wrong (albeit not transposed).

                   1. Yeah, you’re right, and I was right in my previous supposition. I had a second mistake having not fully corrected PSYCHO/PHYSIOTHERAPIST. If I could pronounce it, I think I’d set myself up as a Psysiotherapist: twwice as much money for even less effect.
                      Only spotted when going through again hours after thoroughly checking.
                      1. Sorry, Zed, I didn’t mean to put you through the wringer. Send me the shrink bills and I’ll get my accountant to do something creative with them.
11. Similar experience to others. A lot to appreciate here and I would add 5A APLOMB to the list of well crafted clues.

    That makes the SCHTICK/KARELIA intersection even more unfortunate. A lot was said yesterday about the unfairness of anagrams to clue unusual words. Today its compounded by another unusual word itself presented with an unusual spelling intersecting with it. This is poor setting and editing.

    1. Your point is well made Jim but doesn’t a lot depend on what is or isn’t deemed to be ‘unusual’? If a word is familiar to both setter and editor by what criteria do they determine that others will not know it?
       1. I agree, it’s a judgement call – what Editors are paid for of course

          As George says in his intro – all cluing of proper nouns by anagram is potentially suspect and I go along with that

          I would add that any clearly foreign word that has several alternative spellings is also likely to cause problems. It should not be clued by homophone and nor should it intersect as this one does

          1. The first three checkers give us S_H_I__. Reasonable to assume the second letter is a C, and the wordplay tells us there’s a T in there, so we have SCHTI__, with the possibility of a K given the anagrist in 20dn.

             I would think that makes it a pretty fair clue, even if one had never heard the term. Certainly no OREAD or DEMIURGE!

             Agree that KARELIA was a bit dodgy, though I guessed right on this occasion.

          2. Thanks Jim. I fell foul of PRANAYAMA myself just over a year ago (in a puzzle that also happened to contain SHTOOK) and I agree that anagrams of that sort are better avoided. Take your point about homophones for foreign words (how about “Sean Connery’s walking aid?”) but I agree with Galspray that SCHTICK is very clearly clued and in this case the fact that it intersects is potentially helpful to anyone at a loss about the anagram in 20d.
12. I was misguidedly enthusiastic today; I had KERALIA and DRAWINGS. CODs to OLIVER TWIST and HIGH SEASON (and DEALINGS when I read the blog). A Mere Interlude, I hope or one of Life’s Little Ironies?
13. 27 min, with 24dn LOI by a long way, Several minutes spent trying to think of illness to give -I- (PIP no good as reversal not needed and in any case no politico Mr Pipe)
    No problem with Karelia as I’m fond of the Sibelius.
14. 20:16 and no particualr problems although I struggled to parse quite a few. Anyone else bung in OSTRICH for 18d at first? I enjoyed 14d for the surface, the triple definition at 4d and the reminder of the music of Jean Sibelius at 20d. Quite a musical puzzle all told, with CORNET PRACTICE of a TOCCATA and a CATCH to sing too.
15. 
    I think I learnt ‘schtick’ from Fozzie Bear and Kermit.

    14ac held me up as I couldn’t see where the HIGH came from

    a distracted forty-five minutes.

    KARELIA guessed correctly.

    COD OLIVER TWIST – nice twist

    horryd Shanghai

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki was from Karelia, as sung about by Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton on their last album… “The dawn of century, a boy born by a lake; Resettled from Karelia’s plains; Grown to a man in exile as the great war came”.

    About 25 minutes for me. Schtick certainly has 2 ‘c’s in my understanding. I struggled with ‘dealings’ and ‘Genevans’; was certain that the the ‘dop’ was an ‘ass’ at the end. Enjoyable clueing today I thought.

    1. unspammed
17. Fairly straightforward, but one wrong. Even though I’m familiar with the Sibelius piece I thought it was spelled Keralia because that’s how I’ve heard it pronounced. A slightly unfair clue considering the plausibility of the wrong spelling, but then I could have checked the atlas, I suppose.
18. Add me to the ‘grumpy about 20d’ gang today. Muttering over that one, and getting it wrong in the end, took me just over the 10 minute mark.
19. Whilst I guessed Areopagus correctly yesterday Lady Law of Averages came along today to ensure I couldn’t repeat the trick so in went Keralia.

    Is it just coincidence that they occupied the same spot in the grid? Does the setter get to the bottom right hand corner, discover that only a stupid word will fit and then be allowed to get away with a stupid clue?

20. Fairly hard going today, and I had to leave and come back to it to finish off.

    For whatever reason KERALIA never crossed my mind for 20D. Possibly I’ve heard KARELIA somewhere before, but it’s certainly not from Sibelius. I feel my luck is in having got AREOPAGUS yesterday.

21. 14 mins, so back to some kind of form after yesterday’s sleep-induced disaster. I had no problem with KARELIA or SCHTICK, and the province went in before the chat line. I finished with HIGH SEASON after AVIATOR.
22. 15m, but with the wrong guess for 20dn. A truly dreadful clue spoiling an otherwise enjoyable puzzle. No problems with SCHTICK: that’s how I would spell it, I think, and in any case it’s fairly indicated.

    Edited at 2015-10-12 12:26 pm (UTC)

23. First one in ages where I found myself on the right wavelength. Clearly I was lucky that Karelia was well within my definition of general knowledge – i.e. “stuff I happen to know” – from World War II history as much as Sibelius. Entertaining stuff all round.
24. I’m another Keraliaist. Apart from that, I was just shy of 40 minutes, a slow start being followed by a slow mid-game and then a slow end. I was held up for quite a while trying to untangle “psychotherapist” at 10ac. Enjoyed HIGH SEASON and OLIVER TWIST.
25. About 20 minutes ending with what I thought was the clever PEAK. I’m a tad surprised many had some trouble over KARELIA, which I knew from WWII and the Russo-Finnish conflict, not from Sibelius. Here I’ll whisper that while I know of Karelia, I don’t know of Sibelius at all. SCHTICK was OK because, well, I’m from NY and Yiddishisms are part of common vocab here, spelled every which way. Regards to all.
26. Set off at a good pace on this one despite biffing 10a as psychotherapist but 3d sorted that out in time. Also have to confess to being in the keralia camp. Perhaps suggested by the fact I went there a few years ago coupled with an unfamiliarity with Sibelius.Interested as always to read the thoughts on the fairness of certain clues being put in proximity to other types of clue. 7d was fairly straightforward but still an enjoyable surface. Biffed 11a so thanks to glheard for the explanation of that one.
27. I didn’t have any problem with the puzzle, but can anyone help me get rid of the Sibelius earworm for the time being?
    The Royal Northern Sinfonia are performing a load of Sibelius at The Sage, Gateshead, in the current season – Mrs C. and I are booked.
28. 26m all correct – no trouble with KARELIA as I knew it like others from Sibelius and war books. I guessed SCHTICK but I thought it was very helpfully clued. Lots to enjoy with APLOMB my standout. Thanks, setter and blogger today.
29. 9:24 for me – not too disastrous, but I never really found the setter’s wavelength.

    When I’m caught out by foodie clues, I just accept that it’s a subject I’m extremely ignorant about. On the other hand, I find words like AREOPAGUS and KARELIA utterly commonplace. You win some, you lose some.

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