Times 26,345: If You Can’t Stand The Beat, Get Out Of The Kitchen

49 comments on “Times 26,345: If You Can’t Stand The Beat, Get Out Of The Kitchen”

1. 20:57 … standing ovation for the setter, I think. I’m in awe of some of the deviousness and invention on show here. If I had to pick a COD it would be WAS. That’s brilliant. But then the whole thing’s brilliant. Thank you, whoever you are.
2. Excellent stuff indeed, with a further misdirection that we might be looking for a full set – or even a double set – of letters.
   Thanks for cracking OASES (which means I think you’re right!). Not a device I can remember seeing before. Visual clues for single letters? Let’s not give the setters ideas.
   I didn’t know SNOW JOB, but might well be using it: once you’ve deduced it from the wordplay there’s no doubt about its meaning.
3. Oh, and ICHOR. I knew it was divine blood, but had to look it up afterwards to see what sort of flower it also was. D’oh.
4. Phew! 45 minutes but it took me a long time to get attuned to the setter’s wavelength and even then I had to use the good offices of Verlaine to explain quite why some of the answers are what they are (so many thanks V).
   It didn’t help that for a long time I thought 1a would end in LABOUR (i.e. a party) with BALL reversed (crashed) plus OUR. Turned out it wasn’t that simple…
   Perversely, 11a was my FOI.
   I’m not sure I’d fancy this setter every day thank you very much – good as it is, it’s far too rich a diet for me.

   Edited at 2016-02-26 08:19 am (UTC)

5. Brilliant clueing, thank you.
6. Yep, can’t put it any better than our esteemed blogger. This was a work of art.

   Very happy to finish inside 2V after a pretty undistinguished week of solving.

   A 32-way dead heat for COD. Thanks setter and thanks Verlaine, particularly for the parsing of OASES. Nice.

7. It’s always a sign there’s a rough road ahead for me when I’m unable to begin with any of the 3-letter answers on offer so that I have something in the grid to build on, but I failed that task completely today.

   My FOI eventually was ASSOCIATE but I would have been in panic mode by then if it had been my day on blogging duty (which it may well have been if I hadn’t swapped with Jimbo when he retired).

   In the end I counted myself as fortunate to finish in under an hour if only by 4 minutes, and I didn’t need to look anything up during the solve – in fact my only unknown was the SUR{a} part of the biffed answer at 28ac.

   I also biffed 5d and later spotted the ‘cases/patients’ element I but was too busy trying to square the circle so that I missed that I only needed to complete it exactly as instructed by the clue.

   Edited at 2016-02-26 09:51 am (UTC)

8. 19m. Yes indeed, quite brilliant stuff. I thought it was going to be a proper stinker when my first pass through the acrosses yielded only three answers, but I managed to build it steadily from the bottom up, finishing in the NW corner with the shrub, which I was surprised to find I knew. Such a pleasure to solve from start to finish.
   Thanks setter, and verlaine for the blog in general and solving the riddle of the OASES in particular.

   Edited at 2016-02-26 09:58 am (UTC)

9. 38 minutes of enjoyable solving. Agree with all above that this was a cracking puzzle with some highly misleading surfaces so thanks setter (and V for the blog)
10. Well over the hour, but all correct eventually. So many either biffed or built from wp that any felling of satisfaction is probably undeserved.

    Am almost certainly being a bit thick, but I still don’t really get 1dn: “reverse of SAW [dated “when done up”]”. Could anyone please spell it out more clearly for me…?

    1. If we were dating, Janie, I would be ‘seeing’ you. If there was a time when we had dated, I saw you then. So SAW in this context means dated and the ‘done up’ instructs you to turn it over, ie WAS

       Edited at 2016-02-26 10:35 am (UTC)

       1. Thanks! Janie
11. 19:32 and I’m completely in agreement with Verlaine that this was a masterpiece of the setter’s art. The “hugs” in 11d made me think it might be one of Dean’s and if it isn’t him then he has a true peer. It’s got everything hasn’t it? From superbly hidden definitions like hit players and once again prime via baby-smooth surfaces to clever and inventive wordplay like the oases clue, doubled annually and formal do after crashing.

    I didn’t know snow job or Sura and ichor was only vaguely familiar and I still don’t know what reactors and moderators have to do with each other. Science probably.

    Thanks V for the blog but huge thanks to the setter for a real treat. I do, however, feel sorry for any novice solvers trying to crack this one. It’s a bit of a back run.

    1. I expect one of our science correspondents will be along soon to offer a definitive explanation, but I guessed they are both something to do with nuclear fission and my dictionary confirms it in broad terms.

       I was confused by ‘Church of Ireland’ in that clue as the parish I grew up in in darkest Middlesex always had a Rector at its C of E church.

       1. In a classic atomic reactor pile, U-238 is the reactor and graphite is the moderator. The scientists gradually withdrew the graphite rods until the pile became self-sustaining.
12. Pretty well gave up on this – at 2dn ??a?? suggested Blair – not permissible in The Times – eventually got 1ac. but then could only guess REAMS, making 11ac impossible. The device at 5dn also defeated me – something surprising for a daily puzzle. although I have a vague memory of that sort of idea being used in a Listener (or perhaps a Magpie).
    1. Well, he’s dead to us in the figurative sense, if that could count – a possibility, given the rest of the puzzle. And he’s dead to ol’ Rupert these days as well, by all accounts (wikipedia a while back), so it could also have been a case of good setter politic, had it fitted of course.
       Agree with other comments about puzzle quality: rearm and timpani still left wanting at the hour mark though, which is where I left it. Thanks setter and blogger.
       rolytoly
13. I agree this was an excellent puzzle. Too many good clues to highlight but FLATLINER, JUKEBOXES, ARCTIC FOX and HIGH JINKS were just a few. I put in ‘REAMS’ for 2d as well so I couldn’t get 11a and also missed DITTANY. I groan whenever I see ‘shrub’ as a clue as I’ve virtually never heard of any that appear in cryptics, including this one.

    Anyway, really good stuff. Thanks to setter & blogger.

14. Agree this was a cracker. After one go in about 20 minutes I had a third of it done, mainly LHS. then two hours later after dreaded shopping, finished it correctly in another 15, but with a few biffed, so thanks V for unravelling 2d, 5d, and 28a. My COD is GRANDPAPA.
15. An unreserved thank you to the setter. This is why I do the Times crossword. Not one bad clue.
16. Can only echo all the other comments, a great example of the setting art, and certainly not for beginners.

    After a painfully slow start with only a handful of answers, all in the SW, after 10 minutes, this looked like it was going to be a slog, then pennies gradually starting dropping and was please to finish in 23 plus some small change in the end.

    DNK sura but with the checkers 28 couldn’t really have been anything else, and also completely missed the device at 5d making that my LOI. SNOW JOB I’ve seen before, and forgotten I suspect more than once, but wordplay led to it nicely.

    Nice to at last finish one this week as well, amazing how long it takes to get back into the groove after a week of not solving.

17. I just could make nothing of the crossing of ‘dittany’ and ‘timpani’ at the end. If you do get those, then ‘rearm’ is obvious and you can finish.

    The rest of it wasn’t that easy, either.

    1. I was very very grateful indeed that DITTANY rang a faint bell as a plant. Not a clue I’d have relished having to solve if it didn’t.
       1. DITTANY also rang a faint bell for me and I now know that it has turned up previously in April 2009, May 2011 and October 2013. Jumbo solvers (of which I’m not one) would have been at an advantage as it appeared there as recently as the New Year’s Day puzzle, 2016.
       2. I have Harry Potter to thank for my knowledge of dittany. Hermione uses essence of dittany to heal Ron when he was splinched (don’t ask).
          1. Equally geekily, I recalled “snow job” from a review of a Doctor Who episode, in which the writers remarked that it is “hilarious that the Doctor has managed to snow even Davros into thinking that he never uses a gun”.
18. If I’d known the level of difficulty of this puzzle I definitely wouldn’t have attempted in the morning after less than 5 hours sleep at a time when I was losing concentration even before I had started it. I then took the knock mid-solve and limped home in 40 mins, but at least it was all correct after I’d fixed the stupid misbiffed answers I’d put in when my mind was starting to wander; the misbiffs were “chignon”, “trumpet”, an inked in “tic” instead of FOX as the last word of 4dn when I had no checkers, and an inexplicable (d)awn at 26dn. All of those incorrect answers lead me to suspect I put my daft head on (a la Worzel Gummidge) by mistake when I got up this morning. A biffed OASES was my LOI after the WORLD FAMOUS/DITTANY crossers, and like others I didn’t know the “Sura” element of 28ac.

    I echo the sentiment that this was an absolutely superb puzzle.

19. 54 minutes, as I recall, with REARM my favourite, I think. I must have been in a contrary mood when I solved it, since the brilliance passed me by. But I tend to think virtually all Times puzzles are pretty damned good.

    DITTANY sounds like an unknown plant ought to sound.

20. Late start and even later finish today. All biffs worked but took more than the hour. Never heard of snow job and would have assumed it meant something a bit different. Tear jerking last in.
    1. Yes, it sounds a sure-fire recipe for frostbite to me.
21. Agree with everyone’s comments that this was a wonderful crossword. As someone said – that’s why we do them!
    But being a miserable so-and so, I would also comment that I am surprised that no-one has objected to the homophone juke for duke. Really?
    In 11 ac – would I be right in assuming that pan=roast=severely criticise and nowt to do with cooking?
    1. Apologies for the anonymity – I hadn’t awakened my Google avatar. Will it work this time?
       1. I had the same thought on duke/juke but decided that 1) some people do say ‘duke’ like this and 2) it’s close enough anyway.
          That’s the way I read pan/roast.
       2. Interesting one. If I were asked how I pronounce ‘duke’, then I would say same as ‘juke’ in rapid connected speech, i.e. normally. Reading it in isolation off a cue-card, yes, probably with a glide, ‘dyuke’.

          Interestingly again, while ODO, Collins and even M-W (besides ‘dook’) give ‘dyuke’, Cambridge [learners] Dictionary Online gives ‘djuke’. It may well be based on a corpus of spoken British English.

22. Something of a red letter day, having a faster time than Andy (please put your Worsel head on routinely in future). Joy will be unconstrained if Dr Thud takes more than the half-hour (lovely girl, Joy).
    On the down side, there were plenty I failed to parse until after completion (especially ‘oases’, which I doubt that I would ever have unravelled, and ‘reactor’), but I’m always willing to put guesswork down to subconscious knowledge.

    Edited at 2016-02-26 04:43 pm (UTC)

23. Awe-inspiring – and delighted we had Verlaine on hand for the commentary. Glad simply to finish – and finally to appreciate the neatest of twists in 5 dn. I often feel the mechanics are good but the wit’s lacking, but here, my God, let it be framed on the desks of all setters, against any rough patch at any time in the future, a bit like Nature and Shakespeare’s young man,
    ‘O him she stores, to show what wealth she had
    In days long since, before these last so bad.’

    Better stop there – wouldn’t want to start
    exaggerating.

24. Threw in the towel with “timpani” and “dittany” missing and “reams” instead of “rearm”. Ah well, there is always tomorrow.
25. Agreed, brilliant puzzle, taking something over the half hour. Luckily remembered DITTANY from earlier appearances, but DNK FLATLINER or the ‘sur(a)’ part of the Koran. SNOW JOB may be more of an Americanism, so no problem at all there. Thanks much to the setter, and Verlaine. Regards.
26. I agree with all that’s been said in praise of this puzzle.
27. If Andy (linxit) happens by, I would certainly propose this puzzle for inclusion in the blog’s Memories -> Good Puzzles section (apparently there hasn’t been a Good Puzzle since 2011!).
    1. Thanks for reminding me – there’s an update there now!
28. Wow! I can only echo all the comments about the brilliance of this puzzle. It did defeat me as I just didn’t know the Shrub. I almost finished with 3 missing, but read Verlaine’s comments before checking the answers and was inspired to revisit 2dn, spotting it almost immediately! This confirmed my suspicion that retired was going to indicate timi(d) and then the vague depths of my memory let me associate TIMPANI with kitchen. Still couldn’t get the shrub even though I was almost sure it was going to end with ANY. My FOI was FLAIR rapidly followed by AID and GRANDPAPA. Couldn’t see the parsing for OASES, so thanks for that Verlaine. Didn’t know SURA but the answer was fairly obvious with the checkers. Knew about moderators and fission, so no problem with 20ac. Also knew ICHOR from recent puzzles. Spotted WAS quite late in the solve. No time for this as I did it in several sessions before during and after my hospital visits for physio and a pharmacy visit to pick up the warfarin for the nice new clot behind my nice new knee. Did some more while some nice men washed my car and then gave up with 3dn undone when I got home. John
    1. Sorry to hear about the blood clot following your op. My brother had a similar problem, but it cleared up fairly quickly and he’s back to doing 10 mile walks. Hope yours disperses rapidly too.
       1. Yes, I’m keeping an optimistic view and just getting on with it. At least being retired means it’s not such a chore to have to keep visiting the hospital 🙂
29. Between this and today’s TLS offering I needed a little mid-morning lie-down. I don’t think I was ever going to parse OASES (thank you V) and I hope this setter doesn’t get ideas about trying the ploy again with a less forgiving definition and set of crossing letters. Where would we be without dodgy homophones to moan about. I’m DEEYOUKAL myself not JOOKAL, so that took some passes, but the setter was kind with the J, K and X so no complaints.
30. It’s been a busy day so I’m late again coming here. A great puzzle. I was pleased and rather relieved to finish. I spent the last 5 minutes on the NW corner and, like Janie above, I couldn’t parse 1d even after reading this blog. WAS and SASHA both had to be biffed. 41 enjoyable minutes. (Now back to watching the rugby – we’re winning at the moment) Ann
31. A day late and perhaps a dollar short, but I wanted to add my two penn’rth. I think verlaine liked it! And so did I. A.N. Other commenter had given me advance warning that it was a difficult puzzle but although it took me longer than normal (1hr 5m 35s True Solving Time -around the rugby…wish I hadn’t bothered watching it), I really enjoyed it and only OASES gave me real problems. I had come across that use of ‘kitchen’ before so that was no problem. I biffed JUKEBOX but didn’t really like the homophone but it was a splendid puzzle and an even more splendidly enthusiastic blog! Thank you, verlaine!
32. Failed. Beaten by DITTANY, and I had “tympani” at 11ac, which makes more sense to me, but was unparseable. Fortunately, I seem to be a day late here, which means there should be fewer people around to notice my shame.

    1. 
       There’s always someone watching!

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