Times 26,525: Hymns and Hurts

45 comments on “Times 26,525: Hymns and Hurts”

1. 
   … so double the time it took yesterday… An excellent puzzle.

   FOI was BACCARAT (love it when that happens!), LOI: PIDGIN, biffed, as I too was unfamiliar with the requisite meaning of pigeon.

   In fact I finished with quite a few in the SW: PIDGIN, UPRISING (couldn’t parse, couldn’t get past ‘s’ for ‘son’ doh! Thanks, V) and MINCE PIE, which I don’t really like at all…

   Oh, and TIGRIS was the R Eaglis until ANTIPHON made me rethink.

2. 22:51 … very similar experience to our blogger though all happening about 65% slower, of course. Lovely puzzle with just the right amount of chewy.

   Last in PIDGIN. I think we’ve had this meaning of ‘pigeon’ before but it took a long while for that faint bell to ring. Narrow escape similar to Verlaine’s with a near-biffed azul.

   And I agree — it has to be MINCE PIE. Thanks setter and blogger.

3. Quite nicely, Verlaine, and thanks for asking.

   This marks the very first time I’ve completed each of the five daily crosswords in under 30 minutes, and error-free. Thank you linesmen, thank you ballboys.

   Nice way to finish the week. Thought MINCE PIE was perfect, a real Gestalt Switch type of clue.

   Well done setter and V. Have a good weekend everyone.

   Oh, in golf terms, two over par today, one over for the tournament, so thanks also to Ulaca for allowing me to adjust my handicap!

4. I was familiar with “pigeon”, as in “that’s his pigeon”, but sadly still didn’t get PIDGIN, nor a good half dozen others in the south besides, including the unknown ANTIPHON.

   I’d also managed to botch LARIARD (from a short lariat, plus RD), which, given I’d never heard of the alternative spelling of LANIARD seemed fair enough. Also, where does the “I” in LANIARD come from?

   I gave up coffee a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think I’ve completed a weekday puzzle since. Can’t be a coincidence, can it? I wonder if this is a temporary withdrawal symptom…

   Edited at 2016-09-23 07:35 am (UTC)

   1. Take a closer look at Verlaine’s explication, Matt.
      1. Thank you. See? Definitely the coffee.
5. Didn’t know what was going on with AQUA, but could think of nothing better, and as Sherlock Holmes says, if you can think of nothing better, you’re probably not thinking well enough. DNK COLL, DNK or as near as dammit ‘pigeon’, but PIDGIN was inevitable given the checkers. DNK MINCE PIE, and am rather chuffed to find that my guess that it was CRS was correct. Also pleased that at last a setter has used the only name I know from cricket.
6. 8:58, which was good enough for top of the leaderboard until Jason came along, so I seem to have fared very well today. Looking back over the last couple of weeks’ solving I am very much hoping that the championship features three puzzles like this, rather than the two I have failed to finish or the one that took me over half an hour.
   PIDGIN was my last in. I didn’t know the ‘concern’ meaning either so I dithered a bit. The study of these and creoles, their offspring, was perhaps the single most fascinating thing I covered at university.
   The GERBIL reminded me of our discussion about dwarf hamsters the other day. I had some of these creatures when I was a kid too. I had learned my lesson from the hamster incident, so they were well fed, but unfortunately my security arrangements proved inadequate against a very determined cat.
   1. Blistering time, keriothe. Well done.
      1. Thanks! I have absolutely no idea why I found this so easy, relatively speaking, but I was very surprised when I saw the leaderboard.
         1. I was a bit unhappy/the worse for drink/crossworded out last night and had the feeling I could have posted a much better time than I did, but perhaps not a sub-10-minute one… kudos!
   2. The cat’s name wasn’t Ulaca was it?
      1. No. And it definitely chewed.
         1. Oh, and you think he didn’t? Come on.
            1. Well maybe a little, but it was my understanding that at least some of the hamsters survived the experience. This was very much not the case for my gerbils.

               Edited at 2016-09-23 07:45 am (UTC)

   3. Yes, cracking time there, enough to put the wind up the rest of us – including verlaine!
7. This was hard work but rewarding. At 21dn if I’d thought of the expression “that’s your pigeon” I would have known it but unfortunately I was baffled as to how the clue was supposed to work – some dreadful homophone perhaps?

   The one I didn’t know was LANIARD with an I (rather than a Y) but I trusted the wordplay and got it right. COLL is a Hebridean island that has not come to my attention before, yet I’m usually quite good on those.

   Edited at 2016-09-23 07:26 am (UTC)

8. Good fun and just right for a Friday. AQUA did for me as I dismissed the obviously wrong AZUL for AZUR.
   1. I was at least lucky enough to be still chasing the pangram when confronted with A_U_—I still couldn’t parse it even after I’d put it in, though.
9. 30:12 according to the iPad app, but I blame the iPad for slowing me down (obviously). Steady stuff but the NE took almost as long as the rest. Liked MINCE PIE, which you can see behind sotira in her picture, and like Matt, knew ‘It’s not my pigeon” as in ‘it’s not my problem’. 25ac assisted by ‘See a U, try a Q’. Thanks setter and V
10. Well I seem to be the only one who didn’t really enjoy this one as much as usual! All finished and correct in about 35m but thought some of the clues were a bit dodgy, eg 15D (why from a chair?),12D
    (Is hymn a verb?), 14A (close up = collapse?). Took ages to get pidgin as I assumed the language must end in ‘c’. Also I thought pidgin was only a language if associated with English.
    Ho hum. Just me, I guess.
    1. The authors collapsed the variables so that they were barely distinguishable. Close enough, I think.
11. Just looked up ‘hymn’ and ‘pidgin’. Mea culpa. All is well with the world.
12. Now there was I going to be all clever and quote the hymn “O worship the King” in support of the use of “hymn” as a verb.
    I recall singing “..While angels delight to hymn thee above…” in one of the verses but almost all of the versions on Google have “…while angels delight to worship above…”. Maybe that was in a bygone age.
    1. Trust the memory where old hymns are concerned: http://youtu.be/DqcmeqESHBI
13. Got there having biffed PIDGIN. I’ve spent the last five minutes trying to convince myself that I’ve heard the expression ‘that’s his pigeon’ before but I’ve not quite succeeded. A par for me at about 35 minutes. ANTIPHON also at best half-known but cryptic was clear without divine guidance.
14. 28 min, so 2 under, but well beaten by barracuda.
    I was another who wasted time (in NE) looking for an X after getting Q and Z, and being helped by J.
    Spelling of 16ac unfamiliar, but wordplay is clear enough.
15. Fingers crossed over LANIARD, tick. Slightly concerned over PIDGIN, tick. Invented APUS as a colour, in my youth there were only motor bikes and push bikes, cross. So a 34′ dnf, despite the good start with BACCARAT, as played by James Bond, and the well known ANATHEMA. Lots of hymns yes, and knew ANTIPHON, but I think I’m right that the Catholic/church/hymn references are all in the down clues 2,3,4,8,12,17. Must be a discussion point there.

    May I strongly recommend today’s QC as a good one for regular 15×15 solvers to test themselves on? There’s an interesting blog too.

16. 10 days’ layoff seems to have improved my capability: 15.34 feeling like it must be Monday. 20 is a cracker.
17. I’ll join Tringmardo in the small group of people who didn’t like this puzzle so much. Mostly excellent, of course, but a few of the clues/answers were a bit dodgy, I thought. Not good, for example, to use a minor spelling of a word (LANIARD) as an answer. And the clues for ANTIPHON and PIDGIN are surely impossible to solve without checkers.
    1. The clue for ANTIPHON (or the more usual variation for ANTIPHONY) is an old chestnut, so long-standing solvers like me would have been able to bung the answer in without amy checkers needed.
18. Around 40 minutes, with more than half of that on the final three, aqua and pawn – especially – proving obstinate.
19. I couldn’t finish this on the commute this morning and when I came back to it the clock was still ticking so the ipad said it took me 3 hours. I think it was actually about 45 minutes. It was the SE corner which held me up, REINFUSE, ANTIPHON, AQUA and LANIARD all proving troublesome.

    Once I got it I liked ANTIPHON, and my COD is between that and EAVESDROPPER, both of which I thought to be neat devices.

20. Or from 3 days of torture (supposedly pleasure?) on fast, tricky greens. Only 3 out of 76 old lads broke 80 (not me unfortunately).
    Enjoyed this one, whizzed along appreciating the wit and ingenuity, but got stymied by 20a and 21d at the end; had to look up words in **D*I* looking for the language, so cheated, and once I had the P the penny dropped on 20a and I had a groan for not seeing it sooner.

    Like others, not seen LANIARD without a Y but trusted the word play.
    Well done Keriothe on your turn of speed.

21. I found this one tricky DNF as I thought 25ac was ANIL – 16ac LANIARD failed as was 18dn REINFUSE.

    21dn PIDGIN was well-known and I was somewhat surprised that ‘buiness’ English was generaly not known. My time in Hong Kong, where I think the word derives from, was not in vain.

    COD 20ac MINCE PIE was excellent CRS.

    FOI 1ac BACCARAT WOD 17 dn ANTIPHON

22. Good puzzle. Looked as if it would be reasonably easy till I got stuck in the SW quadrant. But I finally got there – did not help that the meaning of MINCE PIE was new to me, so a nice moment when I thought of the possibility and learned something new. Like in a comment above, I spent too long thinking of s = son and could not justify UPRISING – then I saw why so probably my COD.
23. 25 mins from start to finish with a severe knock in the middle of it. Like the last time that happened I finished the last half of the puzzle quite quickly once I’d snapped out of my lethargy, so I’d like to think I could have posted a decent time if I’d been fully alert for all of it, but I don’t think I’d have got near keriothe’s time. Like a few others PIDGIN was my LOI, in my case after UPRISING.
24. Having lived on the Cote d’azur for many years, I put that straight in without thinking too much about what the bike might be, I mean what else could fit A-U-. Same for PIDGIN, since I had no idea about that meaning of pigeon. I guess I got one out of two.

    Nearly put PROLAPSE for COLLAPSE. You know, that Hebridean island PROL out beyond EIGG, MUCK, CANNA and RUM. Then I remembered COLL (and TIREE).

25. I got a full three-quarters of an hour out of this one, finishing on PIDGIN after an alphabet-trawl and a sound forehead-slap. Like others, I was taken unawares by LANIARD, but the wordplay was fairly clear and I knew that there must have been a time when people hadn’t yet discovered Ys. AQUA wasn’t a problem (is it really such a rare term? Perhaps it is.), and I’m sure ANTIPHON has turned up here recently.

    All in all, I thought this was a little gem of a puzzle – my thanks to the setter and, as always, to our blogger.

26. Got through everything fairly quickly, until my last two, which were first, MINCE PIE, and then, with a shrug, PIDGIN, which I in my ignorance have always thought was ‘pigdin’. Neither would have been possible without checking letters. I don’t recall how often the MINCE PIE has appeared here, since these puzzles are my only source of knowledge of CRS and I can’t recall it appearing often. Unless my memory is faulty – which it often proves to be. Regards.
27. 12:09 for me, not really on the ball at all today and making heavy weather of several straightforward clues.

    With the C and L of 14ac in place, I wasted a stupid amount of time trying desperately to fit COLONSAY to the wordplay. And I took ages over MINCE PIE (without the P of PIDGIN to help me), which I agree is an excellent clue.

    All in all, a very fine puzzle.

28. I managed to complete this in 45 minutes while traveling from WHITBY to Grosmont on a NYMR steam train after testing my stamina going up and down the 199 steps to the Abbey. Started slowly but speeded up and finished with a biffed PIDGIN, knowing the language but missing the required meaning of pigeon. Liked EAVESDROPPING. John_dun
    1. Did a bit of a double take on that, John. When I did the 199 steps I also started slowly but speeded up. I neglected to finish with a biffed pidgin. Are you supposed to?
       1. Nice double take:-) I guess my comment lacked clarity as I posted it after calling in to the Adensfield Arms at Goathland for a very nice pint of Wainwrights, before getting back to Helmsley, where we partook of more refreshment (this time from the vine) with our evening meal at The Feathers, before a nightcap of especially well kept Pedigree at the Royal Oak, where we eventually laid our weary heads. If a pigeon had accosted me on the steps, I may well have biffed it too:-)
29. I had ‘Eddaic’- a dodgy homophone if ever there was one – which made 20A unsolvable. Enjoyed the rest though.

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