TImes 26,401

34 comments on “TImes 26,401”

1. A lot of biffery today: No idea about Cleveland, so merely BIFD. Biffed COHESION, too, figuring there had to be an HE in there somewhere. Had no idea what Rumpole had to do with anything, so biffed. Biffed 7d from checkers and def. DNK POPPY-HEAD. Not a fun puzzle. Ulaca, when you’ve sated yourself, there are a couple of typos: 12ac CH + etc; 21ac harlotly.
   1. Sated and sorted, thankee.
      1. With two Belshazzar’s Feasts and a decent quantity of Yum Cha, it might be an idea to avoid being weighed in the balance for a while, though I hope you’ll not be found wanting, at least.
         1. A bit low on cardomon, sheep, psalterys and all manner sackbuts at the moment, but expecting a delivery of concubines in the next few days, if Amazon is good to its word.
2. ….some problems with ‘adhesion’ instead of ‘cohesion’, plus the crossing of ‘red carpet’ and ‘apple charlotte’ gave more difficulty than it should have. Most of the answers were pretty obvious, but I was convinced you had to insert something in ‘stoic’ to get 17.

   Without these three holdups, my time would have been much better, kind of like EBITDA.

   1. Don’t know if I’ve shared this before…

      Edited at 2016-05-02 09:45 am (UTC)

3. I thought this was going to be a doddle of a Biff-fest, but I was held up for a while by having ADHESION at 13ac and became well and truly stuck with 5 or 6 answers missing RH, mainly in the NE. Having eventually solved it, 10ac was my COD. I completely failed to parse 7dn having completed the grid in 37 minutes. I thought an anagram of TEACHER might be involved but was baffled by the rest of it. On reflection do we normally have other elements (such as LOT here) contained by anagrist? It looks odd to me but perhaps I’m having a senior moment!

   Incidentally, U, there’s no S in the answer so the anagrist stops before the apostrophe.

   1. Thanks – blog amended accordingly.

      The whole clue is a bit quirky, especially the order in which the words need to be encrypted, but I like it. The insertion of the single element in the anagrist is another aspect of the quirkiness, and perhaps something you’ll see more frequently in the Guardian.

      Edited at 2016-05-02 05:38 am (UTC)

      1. It’s a common Mephisto construction – a partial anagram inside or surrounding another component plus other elements. Not difficult once you get the hang of it.
4. For a Monday it was harder than average – but not as hard as I made it! 1ac should have been a write-in but I thought it started with WHOLE- so ‘Cow Corner’ became a problem.

   Forunately I was put right last week by the spelling of OPHALMOLOGY so 2dn was FOI

   Nice to see 17dn KIM PHILBY is still with us!

   17ac appeared to be STAID but STOLID it was.

   COD 8dn STATIN

   I thought the cluing of 11ac COHESION was very poor.

   3dn ‘ORRICE RUMPOLE was just fine. 50 mins.

   Tomorrow I head to London with ‘her indoors’ for the merry month of May, so it’ll be to pen to newsprint (rather than print-out).

   Lovely jubbly!

   horryd Shanghai

   1. Sorry to be picky, but shouldn’t that be ‘Orace Rumpole? And if Kim Philby (ob 1988) is “still with us”, just whose side are we on?
   2. Not she who must be obeyed, horryd?

      Have a good time.

5. A rather stolid 22.34, with the editor being picky about my fat finger/short sighted entry of an S at the intersection of 5 and 10, producing 2 errors. I look forward to the day when computer software can tell the difference between a genuine error and FF/SS bishery, and give one the benefit of the doubt.
   I spent a lot longer on my last two, LUKEWARM and QUEENDOM, looking for a Liberal with half a heart to produce gardens in the former, and wondering what “looking down on” was doing in the latter. Just because it’s a down clue?
   “Fellow ambassador” has to be COHE something, doesn’t it? It was the “something” that gave me pause.
   Happy Labour Day everyone, relabelled over here Early May Bank Holiday to avoid any unpleasant political associations. That would never do. Dear me, no.
6. Just over 20 mins on the app clock. LOI APPLE CHARLOTTE which I did not know. Confidently biffed in TRACTOR before coming unstuck at 11ac. Hit lucky on 16d by seeing the DOM and a U and applying the usual trick of trying out a Q first. COD RED CARPET.
7. Steady trudge through this with 10A biffed from “traditional welcome” and all the stuff about Cleveland and boxers going right over my head. Quite a lot of it solved straight from definition. Glad 2D was an anagram as would have got spelling wrong I suspect otherwise.
8. Jack and k – yup I’m all over the place – I’m muddlin’ up ‘Orace Rumpole and Arfur Daley – however, I’m sure the twain did meet!

   As for H.A.R.Philby – ‘Kim’ to his mates – he makes a nice change from Kipling!I’m sure those two never met – intellectually speaking.

   Keep up the good work!

   horryd Shanghai

9. Very nice Monday puzzle, 27′ today. Some time spent on APPLE CHARLOTTE, until the very good photos of the one-year-old drifted through my mind. I read about a ‘queendom’ the other day, was it here? As noted above, was also grateful for the wordplay on 2d, have been missing out an ‘h’ all these years.
10. I agree with Jimbo, a bit chewier than usual for a Monday, but a good plod, half an hour with the long pudding biffed but not parsed. Liked REDCAR PET. LOI QUEENDOM, I keep forgetting about cats and queens.
11. I took advantage of the day off to go for a mid-morning solve and came home in 15 mins, which doesn’t look too bad based on the early comments. I’d have been a couple of minutes quicker but I had trouble with LUKEWARM for the same reason Z8 did, and like him QUEENDOM took a while to go in beforehand. I also initially misbiffed “cohesive” because I hadn’t bothered to parse the clue properly and I assumed “cove” was the “fellow” in the clue, and I didn’t go back to it until I was sure 4dn was GARROTTE.
    1. Snap!
12. 17:44, held up for a while at the end by having put COHESIVE at 11ac. My fellow was a COVE, and he was ‘about’ HE’S, Instructions. It works absolutely perfectly… apart from the fact that the insertion is the wrong way round. But it was sufficiently convincing that I wasted ages with G_R_V_T_ at 4dn. I considered GAREVOTE, but that is obviously the French for ‘polling station’.
    I had no idea about 10ac. Cleveland for me is only a place in Ohio, and I always get Redcar and Redruth mixed up so I was in the wrong part of the country anyway.

    Edited at 2016-05-02 09:56 am (UTC)

    1. Garevote! Merveillous!

13. 14:20. Rather a lot of initial letter indicators in here, including no fewer than three “originally”s. Roadhouse and the pud biffed and I wasn’t overly familiar with RAMC although I can guess what it stands for.

    I’m another who originally (sic) had ADHESION which made TRAMCAR my LOI.

    1. On RAMC, my grandad was in the Corps during WW1, with Allenby through the Middle East. Yet I didn’t spot the acronym, preferring to split RA and MC for the doctors, which of course it is’nt.

14. Which I would have caught sooner if I hadn’t fallen into the ADHESION trap. FOI ORRIS, COD RED CARPET, LOI BEFALLEN. i mustn’t have been feeling judgmental today. About half a pleasant hour.
15. Slow but steady, LOI BEFALLEN . I seem to have fallen into all of the traps, ADHESION etc but struggled manfully on. Thanks to the blogger for explaining too many but a finish is a finish that’s what I say.
16. I’m sure this is the third occurrence of OPHTHALMOSCOPE in the last couple of weeks, which is why I was able to spell it. Maybe it was OPHTHALMOLOGIST. But I think we’ve also had MESH, THOROUGHFARE, GARROTTE (or GARROTTING) and CHARLOTTE RUSSE in the very recent past.

    What’s going on, are they running out of words?

    Not that it matters, it was another good puzzle. Thanks setter and thanks U, you reminded me that our dim sum group at work is overdue for a catch-up.

    1. Ah yes, the discussion last week about opthalm… vs ophthalm… was a great help today.
17. Sounds like I wasn’t alone in the biffing of this one – my question marks were next to TRAMCAR, APPLE CHARLOTTE, ORRIS and OPHTHALMOSCOPE, while the one that went in from wordplay alone was POPPY-HEAD
18. About 25 minutes, ending with APPLE CHARLOTTE. That really was from the crossing letters, and wordplay, since I don’t know the actual item. I also didn’t know of Redcar or what Cleveland had to do with 10A, but the definition made it a fairly obvious biff after those checking letters appeared. Those two were my only real problems, saw COHESION right off after figuring out the wordplay meant that, and not cohesive. POPPY-HEAD was also new but unmistakable. Regards.
19. Despite living in the now defunct County of Cleveland(we’re back in North Yorkshire) ten minutes from Redcar, I totally missed the obvious and concentrated on Ohio, which didn’t work at all and I biffed RED CARPET from definition and checkers! Smiled broadly when U pointed out the proper wordplay. Tried to fit MOS into 1d but eventually saw TRAMCARS after changing ADHESION TO COHESION. Biffed the pudding from definition and checkers, having seen some of the parsing but not the anagram. FOI ABHOR. LOI QUEENDOM. 40 minutes. Enjoyable puzzle and thanks to U for clearing up the ones I didn’t parse.
20. 13:19 for me, dithering over QUEENDOM at the end (I wasn’t entirely sure about QUEENDOM = “state” (we didn’t suddenly become the United Queendom in 1952) and was worried that there might be a better alternative). I’d been a bit slow with LUKEWARM as well, but apart from those, I found this a pleasant straightforward solve.
21. pace Tony Sever, the received wisdom in some quarters is that we live in the Disunited Queendom! As for ROADHOUSE, I had ‘move’ = ‘rehouse’ rather than ‘rouse’ and so solved a clue in which the words ‘originally hanging’ were superfluous.
22. Well, here I am again, having my Monday on a Tuesday. This one kept me happy for 33 minutes, with LUKEWARM and QUEENDOM my LOsI. I’m sure QUEENDOM is one of those madey-uppy words, although I suppose all of them are now that I think about it. In any case, it is an ugly word.

    I was surprised to see GARROTTE appear, after the recent garrotting (if memory serves) on these same pages. Why do uncommon words so often recur here? Is it some sub-conscious act on the part of the setters? Or do they have a discounted word-of-the-month?

    On coming to this site this evening, I was briefly alarmed to see that none of the answers seemed to match mine. Then I realized that I was looking at the answers for 26,402, which I have not yet tackled and now cannot, in good faith. Therefore, I have the rest of the evening off, and will catch up on some overdue port-drinking before it goes off.

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