Times 26,225: Secret Birthday Message @ 9ac, 10ac?

53 comments on “Times 26,225: Secret Birthday Message @ 9ac, 10ac?”

1. Back to my usual slapdash ways today, biffing ALOFT at 22D, wondering why I only had one circle and a superfluous L, but never going back to review. Other than that a decent offering which I found of medium difficulty.

   Happy birthday verlaine. I had you down as a relatively young solver on this site, and now I know younger than me – 2 months until I am 2A.

   1. I do enjoy the fact that the crosswording community is the one place on earth where I am still occasionally described as “relatively young”…
      1. I look forward with trepidation to the day when I enter the hall for the Crossword Competition and can no longer be entirely sure I bring the average age down.
2. I assume the error at 22dn was ALOFT. Almost fell for that too. Ditto with RAISE THE (something). Didn’t know the phrase and so many things of 4-letters can be raised: “roof” being the obvious alternative here.

   Only other trouble was ASTERISM which I assumed was more than one star (astronomically) or more than one asterisk (typographically). Rather ruins an otherwise-tight &lit.

3. A struggle even with the iPad. Put in ALOFT instead of AFOOT and couldn’t get SHRAPNEL although I could see the word fitted. I don’t really understand your explanation. “one like this?”
   1. Well I assumed it was a quite loose attempt at a semi-&lit. “Charge carried by most of projectile”? Unless I’m missing something subtle (which I often am) I would probably agree that it doesn’t quite work..
      1. Surely the clue works fine as a semi-&lit. Chambers defines ‘shrapnel’ as ‘a shell filled with musketballs…’ Now we tend to think of shrapnel as the fragments rather than the shell itself, but the clue is kosher.
         1. Ah yes! Now that I know that definition, it all looks much better!
4. Many on the Club forum boobed on either 8d or 22d. I managed to boob on both.

   8d is pretty good on first sight but rather splinters on closer examination, making semi-sense as well as being semi-&lit.

5. Hadn’t heard RAISE THE WIND before but storm gave it away. Almost fell for aloft and made heavy weather of the
   SAVANT/RIVETING cross, my last in. A guy was a cat long before I was 29 and ever since.
6. I had all but two answers done and dusted (or so I thought) in 25 minutes but then came to grief and it wasn’t until an hour had passed that I sorted out the remainder eventually and with some resort to aids.

   One of the problems was the expression at 11dn where all that came to mind was “catch the wind”. When I discovered the answer I would have claimed I never heard of it but then remembered a film from the early 1960s (a “Carry-On” in every respect except its title) called “Raising the Wind” set in a music college. On checking this just now on imdb I found there are 7 entries in all under this title, so it must be a bona fide expression.

   My problems with my LOI at 14ac stemmed from biffing SPECTRUM at 7dn so I had a wrong checker in place. I’m not sure I’d ever have solved 14ac without cheating, thereby establishing that nothing fitted the checkers I’d written in. But I have to say I think “CAT” for “guy” is going it a bit as a “cat” is something more specific than just a man (or woman) that needed additional cluing.

   Edited at 2015-10-09 09:38 am (UTC)

   1. “It starred James Robertson Justice, Leslie Phillips, Kenneth Williams, Liz Fraser, Eric Barker and Sid James …”

      Now on my “must see” list!

      1. Directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers – what more is required to make it a genuine “Carry On”?
         1. Is it ironic that they stopped making Carry On films?

            The other day someone asked me how many Carry On films I’ve seen.

            “Phwoaar”.

            1. I think the final straw was when Hattie Jacques got into a quandary over whether to make another Carry On or do some of the other work she’d been offered. In the end she decided to try a bit of the other.
               1. I believe the turning point was in 1963 when Tony Hancock cast her in The Punch and Judy Man. Initially Hancock wasn’t sure that there was a suitable part for her but in the end he gave her one.
                  1. I’ve given up pretending that this isn’t exactly my level of humour!
                  2. Like again :-).
               2. Like :-).
7. I was going to say that about ASTERISM too. It really doesn’t work in my view.
   1. Isn’t the third Chambers definition a better fit? A star is certainly involved in that. So I’ve acquired a new word and three meanings for it in one day! Good job it wasn’t an anagram. Oh, wait a minute . .

      Edited at 2015-10-09 11:24 am (UTC)

      1. Yes, you’ve got to feel sorry for the members of the Texas Society of Association Executives who went for ‘tsaerism’. I may cancel my subscription if things don’t buck up a bit.
         1. Oh, and if I were actually paying one.
8. Thank you for the blog young man. I grew up in the 1950s and remember RAISE THE WIND from those days but, if I remember correctly, it seemed a bit dated at the time. ALOFT lasted a couple of seconds before I found the second circle. Slowed a bit towards the end, finishing in 18 minutes.

   Edited at 2015-10-09 10:43 am (UTC)

9. I too have never come across the expression “raise the wind” and am this year celebrating 50 years of solving the Times crossword!
   1. Not in hexadecimal I hope
   2. And I could have sworn I first came across the phrase in a Times crossword. But perhaps that was before 1965.
10. Surely the hidden birthday message to our esteemed blogger was PROFOUND SOPHISTICATE? I liked the anagram indicators in 4d, 13a and 18a. Probably COD to 10a.
11. Here’s another who’s never heard of RAISE THE WIND, and as I didn’t have 14 all I had to go on was the A; Like jackkt I wondered about ‘catch the wind’ but ended up using the Chambers CD search to get the answer. A poor clue to such an unfamiliar slang expression in my view. I also wasn’t keen on the other cryptic definition in 15, which seemed pretty weak; I thought of the answer immediately, but I didn’t have the confidence to write it in until I had the N and R to confirm it. On the other hand I don’t see anything wrong with 8; taking the original meaning of Shrapnel, it works for me as a semi-&lit.
12. 24:30 Many happy returns, Verlaine and thanks for alerting me to the fact that i’m still in my hexadecimal 30s. ‘Dodgy pundit….’ had me baffled at 14a – I just biffed the answer from the checkers. As for RAISE THE WIND – I vaguely remembered there was such a phrase, but not what it meant. I wondered fleetingly if there might be something called a PIGEON RAT for 13a, and was glad to find the butterfly. 10a my favourite.
    1. “Dodgy pundit” for SOPHIST makes a lot more sense if you’re a classicist steeped in Socrates and company… those dodgy pundits were ten an obol until Socrates came along.
13. I think it was 18 minutes for all except RAISE THE WIND, which I looked at every which way, went off and made a cup of coffee, came back, decided “raise the wind” might mean gather oneself for unleashing an angry tirade, and went with it. Amazed to find it was correct, even if it means something quite different. About 30 minutes in all.

    Many happy returns, Verlaine. Relieved to know I’m not twice your age, as I had begun to suspect from your musical adventures (not to mention your capacity to bounce back from a night on the tiles).

    Edited at 2015-10-09 12:55 pm (UTC)

14. Never heard of raise the wind, don’t know much about sophists or why a cat is a guy and a guy a cat, thought the CD at 15d very weak and failed to L&S “wrong letters”. All that led to a white flag with 4 gaps.

    Happy birthday V.

    1. I thought I’d help cheer you up by saying I thought the CD was rather good. You Bletchley Park types hate them, I know, but I see them as the duffers’ revenge.
    2. I thought I’d help cheer you up by saying I thought the CD was rather good. You Bletchley Park types hate them, I know, but I see them as the duffers’ revenge.
       1. Thank you so much.

          I withheld a little information earlier as well. One of my difficulties with IGNORANCE was the way I’d gone about filling in ADDENDUM. I’d got as far as ADEND, realised I was going to run out of word before I ran out of squares, remembered there was a double-D and ended up with ADENDDUM. DUM indeed.

          Having read the earlier comments I get the cat/guy thing now too. At the time I was wondering if a guy was a whip or a cat a tethering line.

          Edited at 2015-10-09 02:54 pm (UTC)

          1. I had absolutely no problem with ‘sophisticated’, as I never bothered to attempt to parse it. A good clue of its type, I still think, i.e. one which is got pretty quickly without causing any stress.
15. 
    I believe the expression arises from pawn-broking, borrowing or

    raising money that isn’t really there. OED

    COD 23ac

    horryd Shanghai

16. … and thanks for the idea, being nearly 44 sounds much preferable to the truth.
    Liked this one, nearly fell for ALOFT, knew the phrase for 11d, and agree with above that an asterism is a group of stars not a star.
    35 minutes over breakfast.
    Hope you’re not feeling too 23a tomorrow. Rule 7 of How to Drink: if possible never have a hangover in your own time.
    1. Pip, my cryptic comment above was meant to suggest that the clue refers not to ‘an asterism’ but to ‘asterism’ – “… a property of showing . . . a star-shaped luminous figure . .”. That seems to me to make the clue perfectly sound.
       1. Fair point.
17. Entered ASTERISM and (eventually) RAISE THE WIND with a shrug.

    COD to FREMANTLE, just because the wife and I had a lovely breakfast there this morning.

    Thanks setter and Verlaine.

18. I used to secure a load on my luggage-rack with lengths of coloured elastic called cats, and supposed – stretching it – one such might be a guy(-rope). Going for a time biffed asterisk, aloft (beautiful misdirection), and that well-known hardy material dakota. Having reached 48 hexadecimally have made a resolution not to biff till 96. Enjoyed the puzzle – had that something extra.
19. Happy Birthday Verlaine! I’m glad someone’s happy, because I’m not, with a big, if not epic, DNF. I was OK with all those that seem to have caused grief to others; I failed on the crossing RATTY and STROUD, both. Not much knowledge of children’s lit, apparently, and absolutely none of Gloucestershire. Oh well. I’ll console myself later by celebrating your obscenely low numbered birthday. Regards.
20. I’m another one who has never heard of raise the wind either. I didn’t have sophisticate so i had way too many opportunities. catch the wind seemed likely. I assumed it was to do with money but that didn’t help.

    I thought shrapnel was rather clever since it is indeed “most of the projectile”. Although clued in Chambers as having steel balls in, that is because that is what Mr (Dr, Colonel? I forget) Shrapnel invented and why it bears his name. But today shells are made with high explosive in the centre and the schrapnel is the outer casing designed to fragment. I remember reading the wikipedia page on shrapnel and it was quite interesting.

    I too did the aloft thing, wondering where the other O went and forgetting to go back and review.

    So about 15 minutes for all except sophisticate and raise the wind. and about 45 minutes before giving up biffing catch the wind and failing to find sophisticate

21. 22 mins. I started to lose concentration mid-solve but didn’t drop off so I’m happy with my time. RAISE THE WIND was my LOI after SOPHISTICATE, and I’m another who had been toying with “catch”. Until I checked my Chambers post-solve I had no idea the “ready” in the clue was the monetary kind. I was also relieved to see that ASTERISM is in my Chambers, and the third definition for it is definitely the one the setter must have had in mind.
22. Three quarters of an hour for me. NHO DIMITY (but clear enough from the clue), nor RAISE THE WIND. However, I figured one was more likely to raise wind than than to parse it (which was the only other thing I could think of that fit), so in it went.

    Many happy returns to our setter. I’ve adopted binary, myself, so I’m always in my 1s.

23. I had all but two done in 20 minutes, but those two took me another 25. Eventually I got the unknown RAISE THE WIND by twigging that ‘get ready’ might have something to do with money, and that enabled me to get SOPHISTICATE from the crossing letters alone. ‘Dodgy pundit’ is extremely oblique for SOPHIST, and the definition itself is completely baffling to me. What on earth does sophistication have to do with fashion?
    And happy birthday, verlaine.

    Edited at 2015-10-09 06:39 pm (UTC)

24. ….but at least I knew ‘raise the wind’. The expression is pretty common in popular literature of the 1890-1914 period. I also knew ‘asterism’, although I was surprised to find such a obscure word in the puzzle.

    I had no idea about ‘Stroud’, but just bunged it in because it seemed like it should be right. Bingo!

25. After another horribly slow start – including wondering whether there could be such a thing as a PIGEON-RAT (glad to see I wasn’t the only one) – and making heavy weather of some easy clues, my 11:25 felt distinctly sluggish, but I see that I’m currently (in the absence of Magoo) lying 5th on the TCC leaderboard. (Oh dear! Perhaps I’m peaking too early!?)

    AFOOT went straight in from the wordplay (without any checked letters, I didn’t even consider ALOFT) and I knew RAISE THE WIND, so no probs really. Nice puzzle.

26. I forgot to say: Happy Birthday. (If you’re working in hexadecimal, you could perhaps claim to be in your twenties until you’ve passed 2F.)
27. 2 down requires “sat” the past tense and past participle of an intransitive verb to be defined by “positioned”. I cannot think of a literate sentence in which one could substitute for the other. Try it with “Verlaine was positioned in a first-class carriage”.

    1. “I sat the baby on the chair” maybe?

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