Times 26,849: Hello Sailors

80 comments on “Times 26,849: Hello Sailors”

1. 35 mins with pancakes and maple syrup (hoorah) – and quite a smooth solve.
   The LHS went in at record speed – but Dilemmas was murder (geddit) until Recuperate gave Millennia away.
   Mostly I liked: Critters (great word) and Legit (a chestnut, but makes me smile every time).
   Minor eyebrow raisers (MERs): super-duper (hyphen?); lawman (too clever?)
   Thanks super-duper setter and V.
2. 18:00 .. greetings from the retreating monsoon. For the moment, I’m the Times (for the Times)’ woman in India, in a region where Malayalam is the lingua franca, not just a cruciverbalist’s plaything.

   So for a while I get to solve crosswords sitting on a balcony overlooking a dense, jungly garden of mangos and palms and no doubt a bunch of other plants I’ve previously only assembled from wordplay but can’t recognise now they’re right in front of my face. At least, I’ll be able to solve puzzles as long as the electricity doesn’t keep going out, as it did a few times last night while a seasonal thunderstorm raged a little further inland. This morning is peaceful and a little cooler, with a nice breeze blowing off the Lakshadweep Sea (there’s a challenge to setters).

   Lovely puzzle, with some really nice surfaces. CRITTERS is great, and INAPT actually made me laugh out loud, catching the attention of the lady sweeping the path below. Last in, without much confidence, was JELLICOE, which might have been spelt with a G for all I knew.

   1. My picture is from Kerala 20 years ago. Enjoy your holiday. I am meant to be going to Belize in a few days but Tropical Storm Nate may have other ideas.
      1. Ah, I thought I recognised that palm tree 🙂 Thanks, and I hope you make it to Belize.
         1. I hope so too as it is my honeymoon! I am widowed and not keen for the process to be repeated. I spent my first honeymoon in 1975 at Loggerheads (Flintshire??) and her sister had hers in Split. Yes, really.
            1. Ha, Loggerheads! I misspent much of my childhood in Flint and Mold so I know the place well.
               1. I read it differently… new couple at loggerheads – split is inevitable.
   2. Place of meditation to have shed tears with brine after numberless leaks? You’ll not ask me this year for a Christmas clue. Have a great time.
      1. Had sleep and awakes off Malabar coast.
         1. a) extra best wishes for Belize, now that I know why you’re going (namaste, and all that)

            b) blimey, that’s a good clue (sorry, boltonwanderer, but sawbill gets the nod)

            c) loggerheads and split? You couldn’t make it up. Double-namaste

         2. Well done for winning Sotira’s prize, Sawbill. And all the best for your joint futures.
3. 18.11 and no errors for once this week. The bare facts conceal a struggle throughout the left but a whizz through the right.
   Jellicoe is famous enough to have had a namesake in Star Trek the Next Generation, though they spelt him wrong.
   “Lawman” for Parkinson et al has scuppered me in the past, and will doubtless do so again.
   INAPT earworm for today: “Joshua fit the battle of Jellicoe”
   1. Aaargh no! I’ve been infected by it!
4. Congratulations for Monday V. 42 is overrated.
   I really liked this crossword which is right up my street. Too many good ones to choose a COD. Oh OK, INAPT.
5. Top anorak? That’s me. Knew JELLICOE from my trainspotting days. But anoraks hadn’t been invented then. and we wore windjammers. I have just googled to find its number. I wouldn’t wish to be accused of being anal retentive. 37 minutes so twice as easy as yesterday according to my personal snitch. Had forgotten ON THE TOWN as a movie, but anagram easy. I usually sing SUPER DUPER when trying to remember Abba’s song. LOI and COD DILEMMAS by a short head from C Northcote PARKINSON. I suppose there are circumstances when to fall asleep could be an apt response. I’d be more concerned though that the middle letter might be one vowel later in the after-match interview. Thank you V and setter.
   1. Reminds me of the misheard lyric: Super Trooper beans are going to bind me…
   2. If I recall correctly, Super Duper was a Not The Nine O’Clock News send up of Abba.

      Definitely my COD.

6. 33 minutes, and prevented from achieving my half-hour target by POMACE and CRITTERS. I thought ‘courtier’ for RALEIGH was a bit vague but I note Wikipedia ranks his position as such ahead of other activities including ‘explorer’ which I’d have thought above all else was responsible for his lasting place in history. Not that I have any particular knowledge of the subject.

   1. I’d have thought it was the bicycles, Jack 🙂

      .. or the tobacco and turkeys, viz. Bob Newhart

      1. I was mentally including the tobacco and turkeys (and spuds) in the ‘explorer’ bit.
   2. In My First Big Book of History I remember a picture of Raleigh laying his cloak over a puddle so that Queen Bess wouldn’t have to step in it. So, a courtier perhaps, although it seems the story is apocryphal.
7. Well I managed to get the crossword up on the puzzle site today, only to find the message ‘I don’t think you should be here’ when I submitted the completed version. However I seem to have got 707 points so it must have registered in there somehow.
   LOI DILEMMAS which, as above, I still don’t think it works. There isn’t a reversal indicator, so I feel I can justify some miffedness in the extra time it took to complete this.
   After being very pleased with myself with PARKINSON, I thought this was going to be a toughie, but many of the clues were more like quickies. My main problem was a friend looking over my shoulder and saying that 17d was WHOLEMEAL, which I duly typed in without reading the clue properly. I briefly considered RECUPERATO….
   1. I think the “round” is intended to (and does) act as the reversal indicator, concealed since the phrase “wrapped round” can have more than one meaning..
   2. I got the sod off message when I submitted too, but going back to the home page and selecting review showed the correctly completed puzzle.
8. A very pleasing 20:56 for this very pleasing puzzle. I will take under 1.5 Verlaines every Friday, ta very much.
   Lots to like but JELLICOE was silly enough to raise the biggest smile.
9. I had all but my last one done in about 22 minutes, but I eventually had to look up the admiral. Defeated by my own ignorance. Otherwise a lovely puzzle. POMACE was the only other unknown. I enjoyed PARKINSON as the lawman, PERMIT and the lovely surface of 22d, but, working for an organisation that issues millions of them a year, GRADE has to be my COD.
10. 12:04. I seem to have been on the wavelength for this. I also had very little to show for my efforts after going through all the acrosses, but the downs were much more manageable and so I picked up speed, and then the last few tricky ones proved less tricky than is sometimes the case. I put this largely down to luck: on another day I could easily have stared at 3dn and 4ac for much longer than I did before the penny dropped.
    I suspect our blogger is perhaps being deliberately polite but for me 4ac doesn’t work. The phrase ‘with small cover wrapped’ taken on its own indicates that the small cover is being wrapped by something else. ‘With small cover wrapped around’ would indicate that the small cover is wrapped around something, but then there’s no reversal indicator.

    Edited at 2017-10-06 08:37 am (UTC)

    1. Maybe ‘wrapped’ indicates crumpled up, the anagrind. -jk.
       1. I can’t see that. ‘Wrapped’ would be a very odd anagram indicator, and it would also be in indirect anagram, which is a Times no-no.
          1. I was imagining some sort of Shakespearesque “a lady entered, in samite wrapped”, but it does seem a tortuous mental convolution to have to engage in…
             1. I have no problem reading ‘book with small cover wrapped’ as a small cover round a book, but then ’round’ has to apply to the whole thing, giving DILAMMES.
                1. Oh yes, good point. That is exponential language-mangling!
11. This held me up for quite some time trying to make “pumice” match the clue, after convincing myself that, well, lava is a kind of residue…. Saw it in the end. I’m always slow to spot LEGIT even though Myrtilus is quite right – a chestnut. GRADE was well hidden. 19.08
12. 31.08. A number of sand-traps. 3 dn. a model of its kind. = joekobi
13. After yesterday’s disaster, I made a precautionary cup of coffee before sitting down to attempt this. After 5 hard minutes to put in Malta and Inapt, the wake-up juice kicked in and only the reveal/jellicoe crossing, which was tricky enough to warrant the use of some kinetic music in the form of car seat headrest and Jens lenkman, took me past the 20 minute mark

    Probably best crossword this week 5/5 not a single bad clue. Not even dilemmas, which does work, or close enough to it as makes no difference

14. (OK, that was Beatty…)

    Just my type of crossword – looks impossible at first glance, but with a bit of application and thought, the clues kept dropping in.

    LOI 18d – one of those odd names where none of the usual rules of English (double-L? double-E? -ache? –acte?) seem to help. Just kept staring and staring at it until the penny dropped.

    Only quibble is “naval admiral” – what other type of admiral is there (apart from the butterfly?).

    1. Which reminds me, part of my difficulty with 18d was that I really wanted it to end with HE (high explosive)!
       1. I wanted it to start with HE…
          1. I wanted it to start with HE until I saw that the last three letters were C_E and then I thought “CHE, that’s a plausible ending”…
    2. Yes, “naval admiral” is such an infelicity, that one might think that it was there for the sake of some wordplay. But no… Perhaps this is some setter’s idea of misdirection.
15. 20 minutes, with the tough for overseas solvers Jellicoe last in.
    1. If only JELLICOE had written a book of the Bible, then everyone who’d paid attention at school would have known him… Homophones of obscure names though, gah.
       1. You have to feel for the setter though – faced with JELLICOE
          1. what other clue could you put in. (sorry about the double entry, pressed tab by mistake and the message was sent!)
             1. I guess JELLICLE wouldn’t have been any less obscure, much though I love old TS and his cats.
       2. Nonsense. Everyone learned about the Battle of Jutland at School, it’s required knowledge.
          1. It’s Saratoga and Shiloh over here….
       3. An absolute must are the kings of Judah, especially the vital final four, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah.

    2. I’m not overseas, and my one blank today was….

16. As mentioned above, from the cryptic syntax I can get DILAMMES ({[book] with [small cover] wrapped} round) or SEMMALID ([book] with [small cover] wrapped round), but I can’t see how you get DILEMMAS.
17. my LOI in what was a 20 minute stroll round the cloister but seriously I do have at least one dilemma . Shall i tear the house apart trying to find the letter of acceptance to this years championship or shall i just ask here where and when (soon i think). Hope I am early enough in the day to get a reply. I have to say I’m surprised there is overt sign of the said chmpshp online. Is it really such a monastic exercise?
    1. November 4th (if that’s a Saturday) and I believe at the usual location outside London Bridge station. But I should double-check as I always lose my documents too…
       1. Thanks I was convinced it was in October and in the Times compound in Wapping . I haven’t been since Cheltenham
18. The story goes that Eliot originally wrote ‘Jellicoe’ cats but his ‘printer’s devil’ got it wrong and put in Jellicle cats. T.S. rather preferred it and dropped the cap J!! TRUE or BLUFF?

    This took me exactly 40 mins which wasn’t to bad for a Friday especially as the good Lord Verlaine wandered off!

    I stuck in WHEATGERM @ 17dn but latterly realised it was WHEATMEAL – which lost me at least 5 minutes! Doh!

    COD 3dn CRITTERS super-duper!

    24ac GRADE gets hon. mention.

    WOD 14ac SUPER-DUPER!

    Edited at 2017-10-06 11:53 am (UTC)

    1. I wrote in WHEATGERM but quickly had to correct it as I realised that the second half wasn’t parsing nearly as well as the first…
19. The NW was a no go area for most of my 51:10, and NANA was my FOI. The SW then became my entry point, although I never built up a head of steam, just paddled gently around the grid. Our Belgian PI helped to get the NE going, although DILEMMAS resisted my attentions until it was my penultimate entry. As V noted, there was some skilful misdirection which had me looking at the wrong end of many clues. My LOI, CRITTERS was another example of this, where even though I thought of CRITTERS, I failed to see the parsing, until the anagram finally hit me between the eyes. Doh! I also started with WHOLEMEAL for 17d, but quickly changed it on a second reading of the clue. Arriving back in the NW, MALTA was the first to yield, with Sir Walter following and Mr PARKINSON dropping by to help me with the unknown POMACE. Great puzzle. Thanks setter and V.
    1. Hi John, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve added you to the SNITCH reference solvers list from this month onwards, so your scores (and personal NITCH) will be listed for each puzzle with the other reference solvers.
       1. Hi Starstruck, I don’t mind at all. It’s a pleasure to be of use. I shall follow my future progress with interest 🙂
20. I got all in bar Jellicoe after 15 mins but that’s as far as I was ever going to get.
21. 10 minutes then interrupted by a visitor then about 12 to finish the NW and SE corners of this excellent puzzle. Echo those above, too many good ones to single out a CoD. Perhaps JELLICOE for its groanworthiness.
    The Laccadive Sea looks very pleasant, Sotira, I wish my Tardis could whisk me there now without the tedium of airline travel.
22. ….’Jellicoe’. I had biffed ‘wholemeal’, but that was soon corrected. I did have a surprisingly tough time with ‘Hercule Poirot’, and couldn’t see why ‘Parkinson’ should be a lawman.

    I suspected that ‘Jellicoe’ was an admiral every British schoolboy would know, but I hadn’t heard of. When I constructed him from the cryptic, he seemed vaguely familiar, so in he went.

23. I’m with our esteemed blogger in thinking this was rather hard. My downfall was a guess at “Gellicoe” – a bit disappointing, having got the cryptic and just not knowing the admiral, especially after having correctly parsed all the rest. Thanks to the setter for the challenge.

    I do apologise for the “stutter” in the SNITCH in the last couple of days. I have been making some minor adjustments to the reference solver list and combining some old and new results. There is a bug in the production environment that doesn’t show up in my test environment (also disappointing), which caused some scores to be counted twice. I’ve patched it for now so I’m hoping it will be okay. It looks like this error didn’t make much difference to the overall SNITCH score for today, so I’m still a bit surprised it wasn’t higher.

    Thanks, as always, to the setter and V.

24. 20 minutes, with the tough for overseas solvers Jellicoe last in.
25. Whatever are you on about, V.? I wonder what the median age of the solvers here is, hmm? I think most of us elders are maintaining a modicum of “dignity,” no?
    Like many people, I came to JELLICOE fairly late, and in my case, it was the only one I had to cheat to get (with all the crossers. It couldn’t be PELLICLE!). POMACE I got solely from the wordplay, was glad to see that it really is a word. (The first time I posted this, I confused this puzzle with the Jumbo I finished in the same evening and mentioned a clue there. It was a big night for puzzles.) SPECTATE is one of those words no one is likely to have used lately. And on the other side of the spectrum we have SUPER DUPER, which is said more often than it is writ, I would wager. 5d is incredibly easy for a long one (and for a Friday?). My LOI was pinstripe, which is odd, because I tend to wear them a lot.

    Edited at 2017-10-06 04:11 pm (UTC)

    1. Perhaps I was slightly in my cups but I had the definite impression at the New York meetup that you were all younger than me? Certainly at heart…
       1. You just made my day, V. I turn 62 in December. I must theorize that you assumed I was a natural platinum blond, or that I dye my hair in honor of Lady Gaga or Andy Warhol… or simply that you are a consummate charmer.

          Edited at 2017-10-06 05:12 pm (UTC)

26. So many people talked about this that I may well be repeating what has already been said, so I looked back through. Actually V seems to have it in his blog: what is being wrapped (round EMMA) is small cover reversed; it’s wrapped round, or in a more wordy version, it’s wrapped in a reversed [= round] state. All right, less than elegant perhaps, which is why V balked at it, but in my view that’s what it is.

    Apologies if I’m just repeating what someone has said.

    Agree that it is silly to talk of a naval admiral. You could hardly have an army admiral.

    1. Reading it like this though it would have to be the cover that’s wrapped in a reversed state.
       1. Well it is. It’s DILS that is wrapped wround EMMA.
          1. In the sentence ‘DILS is wrapped round EMMA’ it’s EMMA that’s wrapped.
             Although actually having spent far too much time thinking about it I’ve now decided it works. You have to read ‘book in cover wrapped’ in a Shakespearean way, but the word ’round’ can then apply grammatically just to the word ‘wrapped’. ‘A shield with golden stars adorned, diagonally’.

             Edited at 2017-10-06 05:09 pm (UTC)

             1. Yes, EMMA is indeed getting wrapped. It’s being wrapped by DILS.
                1. My point was that the clue is saying that DILS is wrapped.
                   However as I said I think the clue is saying ‘book wrapped with cover, round’ just with olde-worlde word-order.

                   Edited at 2017-10-06 05:16 pm (UTC)

27. For the avoidance of doubt, and lest those who struggled with the clue take offence, my comment that JELLICOE is ‘required knowledge’ was tongue in cheek, and intended purely as a dig at verlaine.
    JELLICOE is every bit as obscure as the bits of the bible no-one in their right mind has heard of, so shouldn’t really have been clued with an ambiguous homophone IMO.
    1. Hopefully people have deduced the fundamentally affectionate nature of our badinage by now…
28. Oh I don’t know it might be amusing if people thought we really meant it. 😉
29. So, how many Civil War generals other than Grant and Lee can the average UK punter name?
    1. Speaking for myself, I’d have been stuck after Lee! Although since you mention Ulysses S, he does sound familiar.
    2. Custer for sure. Perhaps Stonewall Jackson if they’re following the news at the moment.
30. A few drinks at a leaving do last night meant I was too late home to comment on this puzzle yesterday. DNF. Bah! A very silly error prevented me from getting 4ac. I like to think that if I’d been paying attention I would have sorted it all out in the end. 3dn and 12ac both super duper COD-worthy in my opinion. The naval admiral was a half-known and bunged in from the Jelly Co homophone. Although I didn’t get it due to self-sabotage, I think 4ac works ok with the “round” reversal indicator only needing to apply to the small cover which has wrapped Emma and not the whole kit and caboodle.
31. Lively, sound puzzle: thanks to setter and poster.

    Wasted a few minutes because of my hand-writing doh – I mistook an E for a C. I suppose I can improve on that. Otherwise it would have been about 40 mins.

    POMACE – new vocab for me – hey we were all straining apples together just the other day here.

    I wondered about the “naval” part of admiral too. Why only one level of redundancy? For even greater clarity, why not call him a “naval sea admiral brackets wet brackets”? Just to avoid confusion.

    COD: PARKINSON. And does his Law apply to times for the Times?

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