Times 26385, SOS: ANTE DRY … DOSH required

47 comments on “Times 26385, SOS: ANTE DRY … DOSH required”

1. I also had to do an alphabet run to get STAKE NET, my LOI (you need another C in ‘pisciculture’, Alec; unless you were animadverting on the toffs, in which case you need another S). I never did parse the non-OAST part of 24ac. And I slowed myself down at the start by bunging in HEROIC at 9ac, spotting the ‘eh?’ and putting off parsing the rest, until I was forced to revise. It took me a while to come up with Berg–didn’t know he was Austrian–I think this was my 2d to LOI.
   1. Thanks for the spelling update. Appreciated.
2. I fell into the MAN trap for 7D (I even think it is a better answer) and since 10A has an N in the anagrist it wasn’t immediately obvious it was wrong.

   I was just over the hour on the club timer but that involved doing various other things so probably more like 40 minutes.

   1. So we’ve both invented the TAMARD (via the famous grey DRAM) and the MAID NECK (part of the figurehead?).
      1. And another man trapped.

         Except that then led to a biffing of FILM NOIR (“dark empty cinema” – well it worked for me at the time) and not long after a complete train wreck of a grid and the loss of any will to fix it.

         Just wasn’t one for me today I guess. 40 mins at the point of giving up

      2. I did wonder how to get TAMBOUR to fit into 6 letters before realizing it was a drum not a jerkin. And NECK was the obvious second word in the anagram.

         Sometimes when the checkers don’t seem right a second look at the suspicious clue raises some alarms, a word in the clue not used, a letter that isn’t clued or something. MAN fitted the clue perfectly. It was only when I suddenly saw MAIN DECK (which was clearly right) that I realized it was incompatible with MAN and that it had to be BOD.

3. A minute under my 30 minute target on this one makes up for yesterday’s ordeal. It all flowed rather nicely with no unknowns and only one major delay, working out 10ac. Nice to have you blogging again, Alec.
4. Forgot to go back and work out why 10a was ‘mail deck’, which is turns out it isn’t. And I was so sure that was a thing.

   Quite tricky in parts. I had the same difficulty as above with STAKE NET but got there in the end after some time spent trying to make ‘seine net’ work.

   Very economical clueing. Nice.

5. I too am a member of the “I went through the alphabet to get stake net club”. I’d also never heard of Ibert so it was a good job the clue was so helpful.

   A very enjoyable 9 mins was spent on this crossword – I particularly liked 27a.

   Edited at 2016-04-13 08:20 am (UTC)

6. NIce and steady, 28′. LOI IBERT, who I had never heard of, had vaguely heard of BERG so worked it out.
   1. Remember BERG, he comes up pretty regularly. In fact he last appeared just three weeks ago (23 March). IBERT has also come up before I suspect, because he was vaguely familiar to me.
7. Artisan sort of puzzle – competent without ever rising to the heights. Nothing wrong with that but leaves little to comment on. Well done Alec – not easy when one is out of practice
8. Having failed to parse STAKE NET I instead went for SKATE NET, which might be a more specialised form of stake net.
   1. And SKATE would fit well with 25dn??
      1. Well I was floundering a bit.
         1. I’m struggling to think of a good fish pun. Let me go away and mullet over.
            1. Brill!
9. 15m: average sort of time for an average sort of Times crossword. Of course in this context (the puzzle, not the time) ‘average’ means ‘excellent’.
   I got a bit stuck at the end with ARID, IBERT and STAKE NET. The net was last in after an alphabet trawl (ho ho).
10. 13:16, about half the time it took me to do the Superfiendish Sudodu. I knew Berg but if someone had asked me who Ibert was, I would have suggested a mathematician. No real holdups but quite a few went in unparsed so thanks blogger. [on edit – the Mathematician rattling around in my head was Hilbert]

    Edited at 2016-04-13 09:18 am (UTC)

11. Similar experience to others. LOsI were IBERT and STAKE NET, and I needed the estimable blogger’s help to parse POT ROAST.

    Was a little worried by STIR as well, but I just hoped there was a Scottish city called STIRMULLET or BREAMSTIR. Should have realised it would be a crossword fish instead of a real one.

    Thanks setter and McT.

    1. The ling is very real and you can buy it locally. (Tell you where if you like.) Along with mackerel, it’s a good firm fish that will stand its ground, even in a curry.
       1. I’m sure it goes very nicely with tench and rudd. Sorry, if you can’t catch it in the Clarence River, it’s not real!
          1. Cods! (Eastern freshwater, that is).
    2. I spent a few moments trying to make sense of 11a as ‘stir fry’
       1. Stir fried Mars bars, perhaps? But then ‘disturbance’ would be doing double duty.

          Edited at 2016-04-13 09:35 am (UTC)

    3. I took enormous pleasure in eating an actual, physical ling on Monday night, ordered specifically to find out what this crossword fish I’d been writing in for all these years tasted like!
12. 17 minutes and small change, so very much mid range puzzle, which rather completes the set for the week (easy, bolshie and steady) and leaves me wondering what to expect in the rest of the week. The STAKE NET was also my last: I am to fishing what I also am to plants. I too tried to be clever with SEINE, but it clearly didn’t work. Neither did KEEP or – um – FISHING, so that pretty much exhausted my catalogue, unless DRAG (dum de DUM dum) counts)
13. I was disappointed 13d wasn’t buggeration. I’m not totally sure about ROUNDABOUT as APPROACHING. I guess in ’roundabout now’ it must be, unless time reversal can be proven, but in ’roundabout here’ you could be walking in the wrong direction. LOI IBERT, never heard of her/ him. 35 minutes.
14. Pushed for time, under competition conditions, I can guarantee you I would have gone for my initial impulse of SNARE NET. But I’d already gotten egg on my face for putting GARTER instead of GAITER in the Concise, so I held out for better… bit of a bland clue for such an unusual item, I must say.
15. After the top half I thought I might be on for a record time, but was held up by much of the lower half, particularly the SE. IBERT was my LOI – neither he nor Berg springing readily to mind – in 9m 16s.
16. 24min but for 19ac put in SNARE NET – meant to go back and check it….so DNF

    Mistake by the setter methink –

    23 dn Jacques IBERT was French (b. Paris) although he worked in Rome and had influence thereabouts.

    FOI 6 dn TRIADS COD 9 ac APACHE

    Where was Verlaine yesterday?

    horryd Shanghai

17. Forget the comment about IBERT I diddn’t pase IT – more egg!
18. Middling difficulty, completed in 30 minutes, but I found it hugely enjoyable, so I won’t be damning it with the faint praise accorded it by others. 8, 20, 26, 28 were all neat clues, and there were several others with just as neat surfaces.
    One minor hold-up after tentatively entering SEINE NET at first; I couldn’t justify it but it was the only net I could think of beginning with S. Got the right answer in the end but it was an unknown.
19. I did most of it quickly, but struggled in the end with ‘botheration’/’stake net’, and amazingly, ‘arid’. I also nearly put in ‘bud’ until I decided to try all five vowels in the middle. About 40 minutes.
20. Still a beginner and I actually did better with yesterday’s puzzle. Struggled in the SE corner having biffed Seine Net. But teacher will give me detention for tending to use simple convention of 1=one and not coming up with alternatives of Ace and Unity. Didn’t know the composer but guess he will be suing Led Zepplin for using his music.

    Must do Better
    Alan

21. 12:47 with Ibert last in. Not a great clue IMHO relying as it does on two composers who probably don’t appear very high up on the list of composers people have heard of. I think I only know Berg from crosswords and just had to trust to luck that Ibert was a person. Stake net also unknown. I’d add landing net and drift net to Zs list.
    1. Berg wrote a fairly famous violin concerto that I like, but if you’d asked his nationality I’d have been unsure. I was busy trying to get Greig in there, who I think was Norwegian. Ibert, I’ve never heard of. The Stake Net Suite maybe?

       Edited at 2016-04-13 01:17 pm (UTC)

22. That’s two finishes in a week for the first time ever, and no, yesterday’s wasn’t one of them. Fell into the seine net trap so the SE corner held me up and DNK Ibert so had to Wiki that one but at my level I still consider it a finish.

    By the way, I hate the term newbie as I fell it should only be used for a young sprog that you have just sent to the engineering department for a long stand, as happened to me, I’d still be there now if Eric the oiler and greaser hadn’t taken pity on me.

    Tyro Tim

    1. Congratulations Tim. Like you, I do not see why contributors (mainly of my advanced age) need to refer to people as newbies. Everyone has started from nothing.
23. I rather enjoyed the DRAB ‘AT and the puzzle overall, though I needed the wordplay to get STAKE NET. A very very good puzzle for wordplay fans, this one.
24. 37 minutes today with FOI CHOLERIC and LOI TRIP. Can’t think why it took me so long to spot the first letters of the words in the clue! Never spotted the anagram for 10ac or the PORK in 24ac, but biffed correctly so thanks to Alec for the explanations. Hadn’t heard of STAKE NET but deduced it from the word play. Found this an enjoyable solve. Liked BOD when I finally twigged it. Jaques Ibert is a regular on Classic FM and I’ve come across Berg a few times, although I would have guessed he was Scandinavian if asked.
25. A steady 33 mins. LOI “stake net” where as for many “seine” was foremost in my mind. No problems with the composers – it is a shame no one spotted Berg from the main deck and Ibert’s Italian connection is clearly that he is an anagram of Tiber.
26. About 20 minutes, nice puzzle, ending with IBERT from wordplay. He’s not on the tip of my tongue but Berg was eventually remembered from his frequent appearances here. I was thinking of ‘sieve’ instead of ‘seine’, but left it blank until I had the crossers. There are some very nice surfaces here today, most especially the OLIVER clue, which works quite well. By the way mct, your innovation with the font makes the whole blog take on an unimpeachable air. Well done. Regards.
27. Quite a pleasant puzzle, 40 minutes for me, with no real problems. LOI TABARD, after trying TIBARG (reverse of GR ‘ABIT) and other equally unlikely meanderings at first. Can’t really say what my favourite clue is, but I do like the word BOTHERATION. But yesterday’s puzzle was infinitely more satisfying (when after two hours I had the diagram complete with only one silly mistake — I didn’t get that far until this afternoon).
28. I didn’t time this one because I was disturbed a few times but I think it was probably somewhere near the middle of my usual range. IBERT went in with fingers crossed. My LOI was STAKE NET and it was almost a disastrous “shake net”.
29. 11:18 for me – slower than I’d thought as I found this a pleasant, straightforward solve. For some reason I dithered over POT ROAST as my LOI, which must have accounted for some of the lost time.

    Those who haven’t come across IBERT before should try his Divertissement (available on YouTube) incorporating music originally written for the play The Italian Straw Hat. Listen out for the police chase at the end.

30. I did the QC early today so had time for this.
    It took me a while but I got it all correct apart from Hog (instead of Pot) Roast which I carelessly failed to parse.
    Happy to have got Ibert -like others have never heard of him and he was my LOI. David

Comments are closed.