Times 26,513: The Noel Gallagher of Notting Hill

48 comments on “Times 26,513: The Noel Gallagher of Notting Hill”

1. ​Yes, I liked this too, though I was pretty slow and was held up by a few including PAROCHIAL and DAIMLER, even though he’s a much more well known engineer than ‘Bessemer’ who we had a little while ago. There were some v. good clues including MARTHA’S VINEYARD, OASIS and my favourite HALOGEN – it’s been a while since I’ve seen the old ‘I for iodine’ trick and it took me a while to spot.

   Thanks to setter and verlaine.

2. At 51:53, this was a bit of a slog but no complaints about any of the clues, apart from my usual question on why RALPH is a man and DES (Desmond?) is a boy. Interesting to see how the golfers fared with this one. Thanks setter and V.
   1. I guess there’s a notion that children get called by abbreviated names (Timmy) and grown-ups by the full appellation (Timothy West CBE) as befits their gravitas. Not that this seems to be the way things work in actual reality any more…
3. Yes, enjoyed this, even though it took me over 25 mins.
   My approach to jazz musicians is as follows: is it Armstong or Ellington? No? Oh. um.. Peterson? Kenny Ball? That one who did Stranger on the Shore? No? I give up, then…
   Fortunately I was able to drag up Grappelli from somewhere, he did some of the music for the film Chocolat. No problem otherwise bar thinking the engineer must be Doppler for quite some time .. strange, as he wasn’t one anyway!
4. I feel as though I went through the whole car wash with this one, but at least I came out the other side refreshed, although it seemed for quite a while I was going to suffer an abject failure. 16a was my FOI, 8d my LOI. Some were definitely biffed (11a) and I’d never heard of Appel, despite being reasonably up on painters.
5. Got there eventually in 65 minutes. A fellow dog walker has talked recently to me of the shtetls. Realised it must be MARTHAS VINEYARD before parsing it, I know lots of Yorkshire villages but it was only ever going to be HAWORTH. Never heard of APPEL but only knew one jazz musician ending with an i. And once the crossers only left HALOGEN as likely, another i, capital this time, hit me over the head. Great puzzle and blog. FOI LOSER. LOI UKRAINE even though George Formby lived just up the road in my childhood.
6. It’s a shame I hit this on a hangover day—a photographer’s get-together on the second Thursday of the month will always impinge on my second Friday solving.

   Nevertheless, I was impressed enough by this one to stick with it after my normal hour had elapsed, pressing on for another half-hour only to be defeated by the island and the engineer.

   I might have got DAIMLER with a bit more pushing, but I’m not sure I would have got MARTHA’S VINEYARD. Unfortunately, although I’ve heard of it, I crucially didn’t know it was an island, and these partially-built anagrams including words not in the clue are normally the kind of thing I can only put together after I’ve biffed the answer.

   Ah well. Reasonably pleased with myself for deriving the unknown Jewish village, conjuring the excellent SWAZI, remembering how to spell GRAPPELLI, finally working out the ha’porth, remembering what PAROCHIAL means and at least knowing enough Latin to spot the unknown UT SUPRA…

   I and my hangover thank both setter and blogger.

   Edited at 2016-09-09 09:40 am (UTC)

7. Yes, heavy-going on this old brain but very rewarding. Completed in 4 minutes over the hour with another 15 or so required to finalise some of the parsing e.g. didn’t know HALOGEN included Iodine, didn’t know SHTETL or APPEL and MARTHA’S VINEYARD needed careful dissection before I spotted (e)ARTH as the terminal that slotted everything else into place. Never felt on top of it until the final letter went in but never felt close to giving up and resorting to aids either. What more can one ask?

   Edited at 2016-09-09 08:58 am (UTC)

   1. I was certainly glad I knew Martha’s Vineyard beforehand (visited Cape Cod and it once, back in the late 90s… a long time ago, now) as it was definitely biffed at the time, and the parsing determined (much) later.
      1. Yes, fortunately I knew of MARTHA’S VINEYARD too since it came to universal notoriety over the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969, but I needed a lot of checkers in place before it occurred to me. It’s another of those clues where the unsignalled apostrophe is very misleading but it’d be a dead giveaway if it were indicated in the enumeration.
8. 20m. I confess I found this a bit of a slog, but I expect that’s just my mood. It’s undoubtedly a very high-quality crossword and whilst there are some fairly recherché odds and ends in here, it’s all perfectly fair.
9. Ulaca writes:

   An hour and a half of solid graft on this true Friday puzzle, ending with wield of all things. Never knew MV was an island and having coalesced on something vaguely resembling the correct word Jewish village-wise, I couldn’t get two ts into it, but it fell eventually. In fact, I was lucky that just yesterday evening I was looking something up in Chambers and I noted that sheltie was an abbreviation for a dog as well as a pony.

   So much to enjoy but I think I’d make 13d my pick.

10. 45 minutes of very good tough crossword. I wasn’t entirely convinced by GRUB-SCREW as a fixture rather than a fixing mechanism but it couldn’t be anything else.
11. Not a good day: 4 over, plus an error – I’d carelessly put WIERD at 8dn, and was well beaten by barracuda, too. Submitted with several unparsed, as didn’t check the anagrams, with 13dn LOI from definition only.
    Spent a couple of minutes trying to think why 20dn might be DRILLER, though ‘old’ excluded that, but otherwise most difficulty was in SW. At 16ac was stuck for a while with PINCH for the ‘small amount’, while at 23dn was looking for a 5-letter fascist that might make 21dn OCEAN somehow.

    Edited at 2016-09-09 10:48 am (UTC)

12. 24 mins. I took advantage of a day off to solve it before lunch, and I’m pleased I didn’t have to tackle it after a day’s work. It helped that I knew GRAPPELLI because I certainly don’t recall APPEL, and I’ve come across SHTETL enough times to make 25ac relatively straightforward. I confess that I biffed MARTHA’S VINEYARD once a few checkers were in place and never did try to parse it. I finished back in the NE with UKRAINE after GRUB-SCREW and WIELD. I parsed UKRAINE slightly differently, with “republic” as the definition and UK/uke RAIN/reign and E/European as the wordplay elements, but both work. Finally, I’m glad UT SUPRA was so helpfully clued.
13. This may seem odd, but I was going to recommend this as a counter example to the “Easy Monday” claim we had further debate on yesterday, as I sailed through right up until my LOI PAROCHIAL: even when I wrote it out flat my brain refused to accept the sequence as possible. So 20 minutes total, and I’ll still say this was an easier solve masquerading as a Friday Tricky.
    1. Only three (top!) solvers with scores on the board under 10 minutes… I find it hard to believe that that qualifies as an easy solve. Kudos though for doing so well on it!
14. As the instigator and arbitrator of (and possibly the only one interested in!) Galspray Golf, I have a decision to make. My error today (UI SUPRA) was clearly a typo. I mean it’s a hidden, for crying out loud.

    So I’ve decided to take a one-shot penalty rather than the statutory three. This isn’t as controversial as it might seem, as my 41:54 still leaves me at 12 over for the day and 20 over for the tournament. Oh well, it gives me something to improve on next week.

    Anyone wanting to claim victory for the week? I reckon anything near par would get the job done. Not that it matters, we’re not playing for sheep stations.

    Today’s crossword? Brilliant, as everyone seems to agree. SWAZI possibly my favourite, and LOI.

    Also great to see Verlaine back with a rediscovered ebullience.

    Thanks setter and V, and have a good weekend everyone.

15. I thought this was going to relatively easy when most of the NW corner went straight in but then came the trickier bits. It certainly helped to know shtetl, Grappelli and ut supra. LOI MARTHA’S VINEYARD only when I resorted to writing down the anagram fodder and spotted an unused Y.
16. Brilliant Sawbill. And spookily apposite.
17. … depends if they used a DRIVER up the middle like the setter?
    1. Great shot!
    2. I think there is more, Sawbill – after you pointed it out, I noticed that there is also TEAS, making for a BACK SEAT DRIVER.
       1. Well spotted!
18. I also thought this was going to be relatively easy after LOSER, RALPH and SPHERES went in in the first minute, but reality took over and I got another couple of clues, including 21a, scattered around the grid before slowing to a crawl, with a battle to tease out each new answer. The SW held me up for at least 30 minutes of my 75 minute slog, but it was worth it in the end to finish with all correct. I spent a bit of time trying to shoehorn DA into 17d before accepting that Attorney was going to be ATT. Took me an age to spot UT SUPRA and then it was because I was looking for a hidden in my last half dozen clues. I also struggled to get past OCEAN for 21d, but finally spotting the devious OASIS gave me the spur I needed to hole out and finish the course. A gruelling workout! Thanks setter and V for the usual entertaining blog, and kudos to Z for rattling through this monster!
19. So there was I, stuck on 4ac/8d as nearly LOsI, trying to fit in a J. After QUAKE and SWAZI I was convinced we had a pangram. I now see there’s no F either.

    This was a super puzzle, completed on my knee in the car (as a passenger), 43′ all told, and well-satisfying. The construction of HAWORTH was excellent, pity about the non-surface. LOI was in fact 13d, even though I’m on such a body. UT SUPRA we had a few weeks ago. Brilliant, thanks setter and Verlaine.

    As it’s an alternate Friday, I’ve blogged the QC and all comments are most welcome, please give it a go.

    1. I also spotted that, and was looking for an F and a J, which certainly didn’t help. I think a couple of the Sundays I’ve done have been pangrams-bar-one-letter, which has led me right up the garden path. “Notquiteagram”?
       1. You’ve reminded me… there is a word for that – LIPOGRAM. I refer you to the stunningly clever Quick Crossword number 357 by setter NOEL.
20. I was pleased to get within one today, having failed to get SWAZI. I’d decided that I was starting with STASI for fascist and having changed the S to an N I was left with STANI which sounded like Pakistani and therefore I thought could describe a race of people. My rationale can often seem questionable with hindight!
21. was the key. Once that was in UKRAINE – GRUBSCREW – UPHOLSTER et al fell into place.

    Excellent fare but it took me two forty minute sessions.

    We have had UT SUPRA before.

    FOI 3dn RALPH LOI (oddly)19dn PARADES COD 13dn PAROCHIAL

    WOD 24ac GRAPPELLI

    This was like the good old days!

    Shame about the Galspray Golf – did any one break par? Better luck next week!

    Thanks Verlaine.

    horryd Shanghai

22. Hmmm – very very tricky. I was so sure that the artist was going to be ARP that I was held up for a long time there. MARTHA’S VINEYARD went in with the checking letters for the first word, thankfully – I’m not too far from there right now.
23. Crikey, this was a good challenge. By the end, I was still trying to somehow make “marches homeward” fit the clue…
24. 60m DNF as the dogs – never heard of the villages – defeated me. Rather too gruelling for me, as unlike Jack I never expected to finish this one, even on a wet day on Arran. Most enjoyable blog though.
25. I was finally glad that it hadn’t been blogged yet when I almost gave up on parsing a couple of them! It took the longest time to figure out what accounted for the ARTH in MARTHA’S VINEYARD, and I had never heard of ha’p’orth, but that had to be HAWORTH.

    Edited at 2016-09-09 03:54 pm (UTC)

26. To assume is, as we know, to make an ass out of u and me. I had assumed that cerise was a shade of pink rather than red, while I had always thought that the Jewish village was a stetl and not a shtetl. Thanks to Verlaine for explaining the terminal in Martha’s Vineyard and also for decoding Halogen. I got the I part but couldn’t put it all together.
    1hr 2m 50s so on the difficult side pour moi.

    Edited at 2016-09-09 04:13 pm (UTC)

27. I was disappointed in my 15:29 (over 2 sessions 90 miles apart) but it now looks pretty decent. I didn’t know that M’s V was an island or the Dutchman or that as well as being ponies that look like dogs Shetlands can also be dogs. And thank the gods that the Latin was a hidden.

    So I reckon that’s 2 over for the round and by dint of taking full advantage of the favourable conditions on day 1 a mere 4 over for the week.

28. 19:26 here, although that was with pen and paper on the train so would have been faster online. LOI was 11ac – like Adrian Bailey I was willing it to be MARCHES HOMEWARD as it was all I could think of to fit the checkers. In the end I had to read the clue, but that probably cost a couple of minutes on its own as I kept looking back at it. UT SUPRA was in the TLS a few weeks ago (see Zabadak’s blog below), but this was a much easier clue to it.
29. 13:45 – so just inside the 2xMagoo target, but with a great deal of biffing. Or in some cases BIBIF (Bunging In Because It Fitted) when the answer seemed so obvious from the checked letters (MARTHA’S VINEYARD, for example) that there seemed no point in going back to the clue at the time.

    Like others, I hadn’t come across APPEL before – or if I had, I’d forgotten him (possibly deliberately). I see that Tate Modern says of him: “Appel often took inspiration from children’s drawings, believing that ‘the child in man is all that’s strongest, most receptive, most open and unpredictable’.” Exactly the sort of artist to bring out the stuckist in me.

    Tiredness at the end of an exhausting week meant that I perhaps didn’t enjoy this as much as I might have done, and I’m afraid it didn’t raise a smile in the way that the best Times puzzles do (even when I’m tired).

30. A couple unknowns did me in. I applaud the setter, and thank Verlaine.

    Edited at 2016-09-10 01:00 am (UTC)

Comments are closed.