Times 26668 – quelque choise?

73 comments on “Times 26668 – quelque choise?”

1. Some of the vocabulary is a little obscure; I don’t think ‘sagamore’ and ‘dolman’ comes up in everyday conversation, although I have heard of them. We seem to be getting more and more foreign words as part of the wordplay, and I’m not sure how many with no French will know ‘plage’. I’m OK, just as long as they don’t start in with Welsh or Chinese.

   But a ‘record changer’? Really? Back in the day, maybe, but now we clamp our vinyl to a four-inch-thick platter and gently lower the stylus of a kilobuck cartridge.

2. A very nice mixture of science and the arts, with a nice little clue in MUSHY PEAS to get me started. They’re definitely best on paper. ‘Meat’ for ‘sweet spot’ – as in the part of a cricket bat I failed to connect with with no mean regularity – was cunning.

   Didn’t know the mathematical, chemical and tribal terms, but then some will not know the Biblical or classical, so all very fair. 35 minutes.

3. Stellar time, George. I decided to do this now as sleep was not being my friend, and clocked 20.20, which I doubt I’d better by much at a more orthodox time.
   Another very nice clue-as-solution today. MUSHY PEAS are an essential on a plate of fish and chips for me, though having had some yesterday did not seem to help that much with solving. We’ve had quite a few of these recently, and I wonder if there is some kind of competition amongst our setters to pander to our (usual) appreciation of the genre.
   I accept from our Main Man that RECORD CHANGERs should not be inflicted on your prize discs, but there was something satisfying, and occasionally manic at the higher speeds, in the balletic movement of the various component parts.
   1. I was going to mention their use at high speeds too, Z. I loaded mine with 12″ shellac 78s on occasion and when the records changed I’d swear the house used to shake!
   2. What often happens is that when I am completely stuck on a puzzle, the record comes to the end of a side, so I have to get up, lift the arm, turn off the motor, remove the clamp, flip the record, apply the clamp, restart the turntable, and cue the second side.

      By the time I get back to my listening/solving seat, my brain has cleared itself, and I effortlessly enter the remaining answers in just a few minutes.

4. Started off slowly, and continued that way for a while, but then I stopped. Then a belated burst of speed, ending with LUPIN and EMPEROR; I had the latter early on, like George it would seem (although my early was a lot later), but I couldn’t see how it worked. In fact I had to come here to find out. As Vinyl says, it shouldn’t have been that hard.
5. Slow start and finish but a 1dn SWEET SPOT in the middle.

   8dn NUDGE was my FOI and the knotty 22dn ARABS my LOI

   2dn LUPIN one my favourite flowers (the smell is divine) always reminds me of ‘The Diary of a Nobody’.

   DNK 6dn DOLMEN but vaguely knew 27ac SAGAMORE.

   COD 17dn MUSHY PEAS WOD LUPIN

   Excellent challenge – all done in 45 minutes.

   fyi – the Cardigan is not named after the town but James Brudenell – the 7th Earl of Cardigan (Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava etc)

   1. Perhaps HE was named after the town?
      1. The family roots are on the Leicestershire/Northamptonshire borders so not sure what the Welsh connection is.

         Edited at 2017-03-09 08:54 am (UTC)

6. You mean “Quelque chose,” je crois bien (unless there’s some odd pun I’m missing).
   Last one parsed: EMPEROR. That had to be the answer, but I couldn’t see “commoner” for the longest time.

   Edited at 2017-03-09 06:14 am (UTC)

7. Slipped to two over par for the week, but was relieved to be all-correct. Wordplay needed for the unknown DOLMEN, MOABITE and SAGAMORE. Also for OSMIUM, which I though was COD.

   Thanks setter and George.

8. DNF without aids I’m afraid. It was one of those puzzles where I solved nearly all of it quickly (for me, that is) but after 23 minutes I was left with two intersecting clues at 22dn and 27ac.

   I had ??G, AMORE (Italian love) at 27 and then after another 10 minutes, having worked through the alphabet, I thought SAG the best option for the first part although I didn’t remember SAGAMORE as a word and didn’t think SAG and “flop down” meant quite the same (I still don’t – nor do any of the usual sources, although Collins Thesaurus includes it).

   Anyway I looked up SAGAMORE, found it existed and bunged it in assuming that the final checker would hand me 22dn on a plate, so to speak. But it didn’t so I looked it up too, only to be very annoyed with myself for not persevering longer with what should have been a very easy clue. ARABS for “horses” and “rabies” for “beastly disease” should have come to mind immediately.

9. Ran out of time without getting 4a, 13a, 16a, 25a, 5d, 22d, 24d.

   Does ague = fit come up often?

   COD 8d.

   1. Indeed it does. Almost a “chestnut”.
      1. Thanks, I will add it to the expanding list.
10. Under 6 minutes, but with a dimwitted record CHARGER instead of CHANGER… not quite sure what that would be when it’s at home. I’m going to put it down to being distracted by the looming prospect of a job interview!
    1. 4’s horse perhaps?

       Edited at 2017-03-09 10:45 am (UTC)

    2. As a DJ?

11. … and that One Error was a mombled ‘moarice’, as I’d never heard of the tribe. Works for me! Other dnks: TENON, SAGAMORE (never heard of that tribal thing either…). Also, dnk the meat=SWEET SPOT cricketing term. Ho hum. HERMES took the longest time, and was LOI by some minutes. Those pesky little hiddens… Good luck with the interview, V!

    1. Not UK based, Janie? Hermes are a large parcel delivery company here, who always seem to be ringing our bell. And whatever they’re delivering, it’s never for me. I spend every morning like an adopted foundling at Christmas watching the family open their presents, without there finally being a surprise item for me.
       1. But in the puzzle, the Greek god Hermes, in his function of ‘messenger of the gods’, was probably meant.
          1. I assumed that was understood!
          2. Or possibly Hermes the letter delivering owl belonging to Percy Weasley 🙂

       2. Yep, UK based, but must admit to never having made the connection between the ubiquitous courier company and the Greek god… *facepalm!*

    2. In case it comes up Janie SWEET SPOT isn’t limited to cricket. A golf club for example has one which the pros hit rather more often than us amateurs
12. Obviously you have never seen my stomach Jack. Or my wife’s .. no, won’t go there
13. Glad to have navigated the nimiety of unknowns successfully in 52 minutes this morning, especially the tribal chief.

    FOI LUPIN, LOI SWEET SPOT, where I had “SWEET…” from the start, but no idea of the “meat” meaning. Still, once I finally got PLUNDERAGE (I was trying to do something with “sub” for “ship below” for the longest time…) it couldn’t really be anything else.

    Enjoyed the MUSHY PEAS, even though I got it almost immediately—I’m getting better as spotting these reversals!

    Thanks setter and blogger.

14. You are indeed improving – whilst some of us are going backwards!
    1. Thank you. I think today’s victory was secured by my gradual progression from “how could I possibly have got that complete unknown?” to “well, it *looks* like it could be a word…”
15. I confidently entered my FOI, SOMBRE at 1a and it was downhill from there. I thought HOMBRE for man, lose the H for heart – what else could it be?

    COD to MUSHY PEAS. I do like a reverse anagram.

16. Got off a great start parsing 1ac S for single (H)ombre for fellow losing Heart giving Sombre for glum i thought. So pleased to at getting antilogarithm only to slip in a typo. Loved Mushy Peas only they have to be done right
17. 11:56 … ending with MOABITE, which just led me to a fascinating 10 minutes reading reading about Moab online. According to Wikipedia, the plateau where the Moabites lived “is dotted with hundreds of DOLMENs”. It does sound like a great place for ancient history buffs to wander and wonder.
18. Just under 20 mins so normal service resumed after yesterday. At my prep school, there was a little scullery-type room known as Moab, from the biblical ‘Moab is my washpot’, a quote later used by the ghastly Stephen Fry as the title for his autobiography. Meanwhile, in the mid-seventies, my daily lunch at the Salisbury Arms in Cambridge was a pork pie in a bowl, covered in mushy peas, microwaved and served with lashings of mint sauce. Had to be the right type of peas though. Thanks setter and George.
    1. I used to have mine in the Whim off Trinity St, and try to avoid noticing the little wee scurrying creatures that eventually got it closed down… the Salisbury Arms in Tenison Rd was a gay pub when I was there, not much the worse for that mind

       Edited at 2017-03-09 10:13 am (UTC)

       1. I’m guessing that you were around after me, as I remember the Whim. The Salisbury was bought by CAMRA as their first (and only?) pub in 1975 or so and I was plying my trade as an articled clerk in Station Road.
          1. No before, 70, 71,72 .. not saying they closed the Whim down quickly 😉

             1. Thanks Jerry. Matriculated 1971, sadly (in retrospect) in same College as ghastly Stephen Fry.
19. I’d have never got SAGAMORE without Dean Martin.This was in my sweet spot today solved in quarter of an hour, including finishing while sitting in the middle of the lawn in the sun as the old dog decided it was summer. It’s not. Saw TENON straightaway and wondered if the whole crossword was the reverse of the day before yesterday’s. Did MOAB only become RUTHLESS after Boaz married her? 10d had me hearing the John Barry Seven playing that unforgettable theme music for Juke Box Jury. I can still remember them voting the Big O’s Running Scared a miss in disbelief. I think they did the same with The Animals House of the Rising Sun a few years later. Those were the days when I used log tables. Maybe it’s the sunshine but I really enjoyed this.
    1. I forgot to say that I really enjoyed this, too. Thanks, setter.
20. 30 minutes with only the unknown heavy metal left on the record changer. Good crossword (as above) done in beautiful spring sunshine.
21. … in the NW with this one. As pootle and alanjc above, I put in SOMBRE as hombre/less h, then put in TOTEM as MOTET music composition reversed, and stared at 2d and 3d for an age until coming here. Did the all tricky or obscure ones like osmium and the French bits no problem, so 20 minutes before my DNF. Bunged in HERMES but missed the hidden parsing once again. Liked MUSHY PEAS not least because I actually like them. A good puzzle, but once you’ve gone wrong thinking you’re right, plausibly, twice, you’re going to struggle to recover. Good time, George.
    1. Not channelling Andy Borrows, but if you’d had the correct unches in 2 down it would have spelled MUPIT!
       A day late but managed to get through this without error in a reasonable 21 minutes. Guessed the Sagamore was a Scottish tribal chief… thinking Mel Gibson blue with cold in a checked skirt putting on an appalling accent – worse perhaps than a real Scottish accent. Maybe the more reminded me of claymore.
       Rob
22. Not on message today brain like 17 couldn’t get clanger out of my head at 10. Thought 14 good but a tad misleading as plunder not specific to maritime theft but I guess the question mark covers it. A good crossword. 25 TY to glheard and setter.

    Edited at 2017-03-09 10:24 am (UTC)

23. Teddy Roosevelt’s House, Sagamore Hill, on Long Island is near where my in-laws used to live so no trouble with that. It’s worth a visit, as is his cousin’s house in Hyde Park near us upstate, both run by the National Park Service. Somehow I don’t see them ever running Trump Tower. Good puzzle. 16.19
24. Funny old puzzle this one – a right potpourri. Quite satisfying to finish with its mix of GK and clues of variable levels of difficulty

    5D brought back memories – and not just using the tables but having to understand the theory behind it all. Rather like using a slide rule, its a lost art I suspect

    1. I still have, burned into my memory banks, the expression ‘the logarithm is the power to which the base must be raised in order to arrive at the number’.
       1. Indeed. I suspect for many of us this was our first exposure to using a base other than 10 leading on directly to both binary and hex
    2. I might even have lost the art of using antilogs myself .. still have the tables tucked away somewhere though, just in case 🙂
25. 22m, in a few goes running between hotel and meetings. So I never really got a head of steam on this but I enjoyed it very much. Lots to work out from wordplay, including unknowns like MOABITE. I actually read the Stephen Fry book but didn’t make the connection. SAGAMORE was also new to me.
    10dn held me up for a while, too. Surely this needs an indicator of obsolescence: ‘in ancient times’, or some such. 😉

    Edited at 2017-03-09 12:03 pm (UTC)

    1. You’ve made a happy man feel very old.
26. Quick solve, but like others I confidently put in SOMBRE (S + [H]OMBRE) at 1 ac, which caused subsequent delays at 2 and 3 dn until I figured out 3 dn and had to revisit 1 ac. To be honest, I think SOMBRE is the better solution as it’s closer in meaning to ‘glum’ than SOLEMN, which to me suggests stately and serious, but not necessarily gloomy. That apart, nice puzzle and great blog; thanks.
    1. The problem with this is that H is an abbreviation for ‘hearts’, not ‘heart’.
       1. Thanks k 🙂
27. Oh dear. 7m 28s, but with an error in my LOI – having never heard of the chief and not being too hot on my Italian word endings, I plumped for SAGAMORA – narrowly rejecting sagamoro and not even considering sagamore.
28. Must stop trying to speed type and then finding I’ve filled in an across clue instead of the down one I thought I was doing and then having to go back and correct all the correct answers I’ve overwritten. Frustrating or what! Anyway all correct in 39:14. FOI was OVUM and LOI MOABITE after I finally spotted the reverse anagram at 17d, bringing back memories of “has tha’ nowt moist” as Peter Kay memorably asked in a fish and chip chop down south. Had to work out SAGAMORE and DOLMEN from the wordplay. Liked ANTILOGARITHM. The record changer mechanism often caused problems when the rubber tyre that drove the turntable got worn and slipped due to the extra load of tripping the mechanism that allowed the next disc to crash onto the one below. An interesting puzzle. Thanks setter and George.

    Edited at 2017-03-09 12:52 pm (UTC)

    1. I used chippies most in my bedsit years, the late sixties, pre-microwave. The mushy peas were soaked overnight then and left simmering all day. I was into that era’s fusion cuisine, that’s steak and kidney pudding, chips, mushy peas, all with curry sauce on top.
       1. I remember it well 🙂
       2. Desist Lofthousian! You are making me homesick for my student days on Stockport Hill!

          Edited at 2017-03-09 03:30 pm (UTC)

          1. When up in Lancashire (posh Lytham St Annes now, nothing industrial) we go to a smart fish and chip shop called Seafarers. I can still manage the steak pudding and peas, but not the chips. I think I’d still prefer curry sauce to the onion gravy it comes with. My wife and kids adopt the mantle and have fish, chips, mushy peas, a large pot of tea and white bread and butter. So I haven’t failed totally as husband and father.
       3. In the 80s I used to enjoy Chicken Foo Yung and chips topped off with curry sauce!
          1. But that really is Fusion!
29. Hi K, sorry, only just got around to finishing yesterday’s puzzle so missed the opportunity to help you remember what you’d rather forget.

    At the champs we both managed to invent OPHOD and MADRO where OGHAM and MAMBO were supposed to cross.

    1. Ah yes, thanks.
30. 
    Given the number of non-quotidian vocabulary items, I found this unusually straightforward – either a wavelength thing or, more unsettling, a possible late-life surge in solving ability……

    I did think, however, that it was very fairly clued, so that must have helped.

    Time: 35 mins. in two sessions either side of some decorating.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

31. It took me ages to start (TASK was my FOI) but not to finish, 30 minutes or so, close to my best time. And no difficulties at all, really, except perhaps for SAGAMORE, which required the wordplay. Osmium not a problem, but I was once able to recite Tom Lehrer’s delightful song on the elements by heart (“… there’s lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium etc. etc.”). SOLEMN my LOI, once I realised “singular” could be SOLE and not just S. And MUSHY PEAS my COD.
32. Hi all. About 20 minutes, nothing too frightening today. I knew of SAGAMORE and OSMIUM, so no problems there. LOI ended up as CARDIGAN because I know the sweater and the Light Brigade guy, but whether there was a town involved wasn’t within my range. But it stands to reason there could be, and the checkers were present, so it went in. Regards.
33. This was a bit tougher than yesterday’s, at least by my reckoning, keeping me entertained for 36 minutes. My first pass only yielded two or three answers, but then the pace picked up a little.

    SAGAMORE and PLUNDERAGE were NHOs for me. DOLMEN was half-remembered, though I’d have been hard pressed to say whether you ate it, looked at it or sat on it.

34. 3d is the second recent incorrect definition of marinade, which is the liquid in which the soaking occurs, not the verb: that would be marinate. I do wish the editor would get a grip.
    1. Collins, ODO and Chambers all have MARINADE as a verb. Perhaps they all need to get a grip.
35. 9:09 for another pleasant solve.

    Annoyingly I wasted a lot of time trying to work out the anagram in 5dn with just the initial A in place. I could see the letters of the word ALGORITHM were in there, but somehow failed to remember that the same letters could also make LOGARITHM, and so missed an easy win. I expect I still have a book of log tables somewhere, but it must be a great many years since I last used them.

36. I stand corrected. Usage must have changed in the years since I first learnt the difference.
    1. I’d be surprised if the distinction was ever that hard and fast. As a general rule this sort of very fine distinction often turns out to be completely baseless. Cf. less/fewer, that/which, disinterested, etc.
       Incidentally sorry for what now looks to me like a rather rude reply. I must have been drunker than I thought 😉
37. sorry for late message, I’m in Australia the puzzle only just printed in The Australian on Tuesday 11th April.

    15dn I have U.S…I.G and for “Out of bed with surroundings causing distress”
    I go for UPSKIRTING. one too many letters, but SKIRTING is creeping around the
    edge and the surrounds, and UPSKIRTING certainly causes distress.

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