Times 26908. In which George stares at his phone in a dressing room and a bar

45 comments on “Times 26908. In which George stares at his phone in a dressing room and a bar”

1. But I spelled amethyst with an I…probably because I started with celbrity being a-list and never figured out how the parsing worked
2. When I saw George’s solving time I thought I had done really well (33 minutes) but having read the constraints he was working with I think I’d have been lucky to finish at all under those conditions.

   Just fancy having ETTY on consecutive days when I’d never even heard of him before writing yesterday’s blog! Unfortunately I hadn’t registered that he was British so his name didn’t come to mind today until I’d solved 3dn (as my LOI) and was working on the parsing.

   Never heard of CROSSCUT as a tunnel or PINOTAGE (knew ‘pinot’ as a grape though, so that helped). Failed to parse ASIATIC.

   Edited at 2017-12-14 05:56 am (UTC)

3. You have a typo in 1D since it is singular. But I put in CROSSDUG failing to see how the clue worked and never having heard of any appropriate tunnels (I figured OSS must be some sort of scout) but apparently it is a forerunner of the CIA, so scouts is pushing it.

   I also thought “I can’t think of an artist that starts ETT” before realizing that we had him just a day or two ago (and I’d never heard of him before). This time it isn’t one of those occasions when you come across a new word, look it up, and then run into it several times in the next few days and wonder how you never noticed it before.

   Anyway, a DNF for me.

4. Enjoyed decreasing, the accelerator, and the smooth surfaces everywhere. 25 minutes with the 1s last in – cheapo from an alphabet trawl, never heard of crosscut and still don’t see excavated as an anagram indicator. I parsed 28 as celebrity (noun) = name, which I think works equally as well as fame (adjective).
   1. For what it’s worth, Chambers doesn’t have ‘excavated’ on its extensive list of anagrinds. I thought perhaps in the sense of ‘dug up’ but I’m not totally convinced either.
      1. 
         That’s ‘dug out’ for me. Perfect for the removal of (all the) central letters, wouldn’t you say?
5. Lucky indeed to have had Etty show up (for the first time in my life) yesterday, especially as I wouldn’t have thought of ‘pretty’ as a synonym of ‘effeminate’ (although ‘pretty boy’ fits). And lucky to have had TRANSPORT CAFE recently, too. DNK CROSSCUT (not in ODE) or PINOTAGE. And I never parsed TITCH, and thought it meant ‘short person’ not ‘youngster’, so I put it in pretty much because of the checkers. I’m going to pretend I didn’t read George’s explanation of his time and just gloat quietly over beating the pants off him for once.
6. Failed on this one. With a quarter of an hour left I was staring at 1d and 3d. Eventually I thought Etty might have something to do with 3d and put in PRETTIEST even though I didn’t think it fitted the definition and I hadn’t spotted “priest” for “minister”, having been stuck on verbs rather than nouns, oddly.

   However, I couldn’t do anything with 1d. I bunged in “crossrun” on the grounds that “SS” was “scouts evacuated” and “R” was “river”, but I couldn’t see any further than that, and I’d never heard of CROSSCUT.

   I’m also still working on yesterday’s, so I have yet to finish a 15×15 this week.

7. A fail for me, getting totally stuck in the northwest and ending up using an aid to get restarted with CROSSCUT.

   I also managed a typo, positing the rarely glimpsed DRAWFISH, which of course means I have a WEMIT in my grid (Elmer Fudd’s brief).

   Really nice surfaces in this, helped by some indefinite articles that don’t figure in the wordplay (for CROSSCUT and TITCH). Myrtilus mentioned this the other day. Are the rules changing? I always thought this was considered okay in the Telegraph but not in The Times. One of the problems I had with 1d was trying to start it with an A (from “a hundred”).

8. 21.37, never quite sure whether this was easy or hard. Some of the definitions were a bit wacko, with CROSSCUT, for example, being much more likely in my understanding to be a canal, or a bit of woodwork, “a bit of South Pacific” cluing SAMOA (you have an extra S in it, George). And excavated as an anagram indicator.? Hm. PRETTIEST clued by “most effete” felt a bit of a stretch, and “youngster” rather than, say, “shortie” for TITCH was pushing it a bit

   But I did like the nomad’s profession, and “decreases”, and much more besides.

   Congratulations, George, on completing at all under those conditions, an astronomical rather than a stellar time, perhaps.

   1. “Most effeminate”, z, not “effete”; that would have been stretching things even more, I think!
9. 40 mins with jam tarts and cheapo pinotage (if only) – no, it was porridge and banana.

   Like Sotira above, the extraneous ‘a’s had worried me too. I am sort of ok with ‘a hundred’ = C, but ‘a pain’ is ‘a stitch’. But as others said the other day, they are relaxed about these things.

   What really raised an eyebrow was excavated as an anagram indicator. I also have a thing about ‘fellow’ on its own meaning ‘he’.

   However – what I really liked was: Dwarfish, Pinotage, Jam Tarts (hoorah)(COD), “hippy”, Etty (again), and “Decreasing”.

   Thanks clever setter and George.

10. ..with this one, 17′. Must have read CROSSCUT somewhere, and, as noted, we have had ETTY and TRANSPORT CAFE recently. Lots of geography and people – SAMOA, HITTITE, ASIATIC, TAIWANESE, MAORI. Thanks gl and setter.
11. I developed a feeling that this was a setter trying just a tad too hard to be clever and original and overstretching things as a result. A lot of the remarks above appear to confirm that with solvers appreciating the good clues but having reservations about the ones that also gave me pause.
12. 29 min 59 secs with one wrong. Cheaps for cheapo.
13. Found this easy, solved while watching cricket. I took about half an hour I guess. I’m watching Starc with the new ball right now. Stick in there, lads. DNK PINOTAGE but the grape helped. CROSSCUT also unknown. FOI HITTITE. LOI CHEAPO. I guess accelerator and collider are effectively synonymous as in large hadron. But PRETTIEST for most effeminate? McCartney for instance? I don’t think so. Anyway, a decent puzzle. Thank you George and setter. Malan’s just got his ton. Brilliant.

    Edited at 2017-12-14 09:44 am (UTC)

    1. Yep we finally turned up today. I find the 4 second delay between TMS and the telly most conducive to crosswording, it breaks the bad news early and you get two goes at the good news.
       1. That’s multi-tasking on a grand scale.
14. …so welcome relief after the travails of the last two days, albeit with a couple not properly parsed.
    Our blogger’s time has messed up today’s Snitch rating good and proper, it would probably make sense to exclude it.
15. Struggled rather with yesterday’s, but rattled through todays much ore easily .. only a one-cup. Went and had a look at the SNITCH and was surprised to find that today’s was rated much harder – and still is, though it has come down somewhat. [on edit: Rinteff above explains why .. put that phone away, George!] I rather agree with Jimbo and others that a couple of the defs. stretch the boundaries somewhat. Not bothered however by the extra “a”s in 1dn and 24dn .. a tad inelegant perhaps to put them there purely for the surface; but I never pay attention to “unwritten rules.”

    Edited at 2017-12-14 09:52 am (UTC)

    1. The extra As don’t bother me either, in themselves. It’s just that I’ve spent a long time training myself to think that Times wordplay has to be precise — that if there’s an A it had to be there for a reason. It’s especially pertinent as I’m soon going to be reviewing clues for the Turkey puzzle and I’d like to know what’s what. It feels like Times policy on this might have changed.
16. 13:40. I enjoyed this, but have some of the same reservations as others. 1dn was my last in, and the combination of a a rather obscure definition with a questionable anagrind makes for rather poor clue IMO.
    The extra As don’t bother me.

    Edited at 2017-12-14 10:18 am (UTC)

17. I have an image of a Cheapo version of CERN as the DWARFISH HAILER COLLIDER. COD to de-creasing.
18. Today was proof that my subconscious does solving a lot better than my conscious brain. After 15 mins I had most of it done, but with 5 separate holes to fill. After absorbing each clue, I went round and round, paused, made a cup of tea, and then it all fell into place with DWARFISH not being seafood, celebrity not being STAR, 1a not beginning CO, ‘from the continent’ not being from somewhere in Europe etc etc. I agree about the excavation – very dubious. LOI AT ISSUE, which should have been FOI on reflection.
19. 35.43 after being stuck for ages at the end on crosscut. I think people are a little hard on ‘excavated’: to my mind it goes nicely with the surface sense, the letters dug out and landing in a new heap. Literalism is king with a jester at its side.
20. 35 minutes, with 1dn not properly parsed – I’d been thinking ‘scouts excavated’ gives SS, but if ‘tunnel’ gives CUT, I can’t see a definition, or where the O comes from.
    Congratulations to George for completing in those circumstances – when I’m delayed I usually remember to submit off leaderboard, but I suppose that’s not an option for a blogger.
21. The deja vu was certainly a help. I didn’t associate CROSSCUT with a tunnel – I’d have imagined it a sort of cricket stroke. When Muhammad Ali called himself the PRETTIEST he didn’t mean most effeminate. 19.41
22. When I read Jonathan’s comment in the QC, I prepared myself for a slog here, but was pleasantly surprised to complete in 30:38 with fingers crossed for IMAGO and everything else parsed. I started with MAORI, loved “decreasing” and finished with CROSSCUT, with furrowed brow over the anagram indicator(deferring to horryd’s sensitivity here). Like others, I had worries about the extraneous articles, but put them aside. Otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and George.
    1. Experience really helps in a puzzle like this. You have to understand the how the cryptic works in every clue in order to guide you to the literal, and this is something less experienced solvers have trouble doing.

       Some of us have that magic skill that turns ‘impossible’ into ‘not that hard’, but we forget how many years we’ve been solving, and how many of these tricks we’ve seen before.

23. “Curate’s egg” is what sprang to mind here, as well. There are some excellent devices – I love an Uxbridge English Dictionary type definition, where it’s staring you in the face once you imagine Barry Cryer saying “hippy” or “decreasing”, for instance. However, I do feel 1dn shouldn’t have made it past the editor. When it comes to those nebulous and largely unwritten crossword “rules”, I’ll take a slight tweaking of the nose of convention if it’s necessary for a particularly witty or elegant clue, but this seemed to me to verge into Humpty Dumpty territory where words mean whatever the setter feels like making them mean on that day. Presumably this will always remain a matter of opinion.
24. Like others, I was dubious about 1d, but that didn’t stop me completing the NW corner first – perhaps because of familiarity with crosscut saws and files. It revealed itself to me from the crossers, and fitted the wordplay, and having seen it fairly quickly, I didn’t think too hard about either the definition or the anagrind. However, I agree that it was an unsatisfactory clue.

    Other than that, I liked the misdirection of the continent, I am very familiar with pinotage, and nothing else was too difficult. Completed in about 45 minutes in two sessions (commute and lunch).

25. …as I got most of it very quickly, but struggled to finish. ‘Crosscut’, ‘prettiest’, and ‘cheapo’ gave a lot of trouble, and was left with T _ T _ H, which could only be ‘titch’, but I had no idea how or what.

    Yes, the setter was aiming for a memorable puzzle, but fell short in various ways.

26. 15:23 with CROSSCUT last in. I didn’t really notice the extra A.
27. Breakfast porridge with dried cranberry’s, Marmite toast, Italian Coffee.

    Finished this off in a taxi ride into Shanghai to see Mr. Churchill in ‘Darkest Hour’.

    Time about an hour.

    FOI 16ac JAM TARTS

    LOI 29ac SENDER forf some inexplicable reason

    COD 4ac DWARFISH

    WOD 13ac HITTITE

    Did not like 5dn WATCH ONE’S MOUTH as one’s was also in the clue!

    Enjoyed a lot.

    Edited at 2017-12-15 12:38 am (UTC)

28. could it be c+ros (a river in Ukraine)+ sc(o)ut?
29. No
30. 64m but needed help to complete. Bunged in CROSSCUT with no idea why it fitted -must be a kind of osmosis going on. Found it hard to get going and didn’t get any of the down clues on first pass, my FOI being appropriately UNTIE. I’m not enamoured of wandering ‘a’s In clues especially with these tricky setters; tends to vowel up any strict reading of the clue. But I did find this one entertaining too and liked the decreasing and hippy, once I’d twigged th parsing. Thanks for the blog, George.
31. Another LOI CROSSCUT here. I was sure that “excavated” SCOUTS should be SS, not an anagram. Mind you, when I helped out on archaeology digs as a teenager I smashed a lot of stuff up that I should probably have been painstakingly scraping away at, so there may be something in this clue after all…
    1. I’d imagine that any archaeologist worth their salt would be more excited by the discovery of dozens of shards than one measly pot so I wouldn’t worry.
32. The S on the end of scouts wouldn’t be accounted for and the river Ros would be too obscure.
33. I didn’t find this easy, taking 46 minutes, but it wasn’t as tough as yesterday’s. That said, I am still in a sufficiently grumpy mood to take issue with “excavated” as an anagram pointer, and with PRETTIEST meaning “most effeminate”. I’m also unhappy with the ETT coming from Etty since (a) he (or she?) is fairly obscure and (b) notwithstanding (a), he (or she) came up yesterday. There must have been much prettier ways to clue that one. And I agree with Horryd that having “one’s” in the clue for 5d was clumsy.

34. Pretty much agree with the comments that have already been made. I nearly came a cropper entering ‘cheapy’ at 1a but realised in time that 1. it didn’t parse, and 2. it would probably be spelled ‘cheapie’ if that was the right word. Somewhat underwhelmed, but better luck tomorrow maybe.
35. “France’s top star,” that is. He could appear here any day now, though, having just kicked the bucket.
    I also balked at PRETTIEST for “most effeminate,” but it’s one of those British slang things, according to Collins: “informal | lacking in masculinity; effeminate; foppish.”
    We had our office holiday party yesterday, so I couldn’t really tackle this until today.
    PINOTAGE is a new one for me.
    As for CROSSCUT, I was assuming there must be a Ross River somewhere (and there is, with a viral disorder named after it), and so the “excavated” SCOUTS would refer to… actually, I don’t know what I was thinking! Ha.

    Edited at 2017-12-15 08:22 am (UTC)

36. I did pretty much all but the SW in 23 mins this morning. I then had all but my LOI tidied up in 10 mins at lunch with amethyst opening things up in the SW but parsing that LOI 23ac pushed me on for another 8 mins beyond that. I just took ages to see hippy as anything apart from the sixties flower child sort, even though it was in inverted commas, and in a cryptic crossword clue. Eventually twigged the “not the first Conservative” bit and saw “sciatic”. I also was not sure about prettiest for most effeminate or excavated as an anagrind it feels like it lends itself more readily to indicating that all of the letters in the middle of the word should be thrown out, Concise OED: excavate 1. make (a hole or channel) by digging; dig out (material from the ground. 2. carefully remove earth from (an area) in order to find buried remains. Other dictionaries and definitions are of course available but this does feel more like a remove the insides type of a word than a mix them all up type.
37. Busy all through the day today — so did this one just before bedtime: 46mins after wasting ages on ‘crosscut’ (LOI) and ‘Taiwanese’ (POI – penultimate one in). I agree that the setter seemed to be trying too hard: I’m uneasy about the wonky definitions (prettiest = most effeminate? titch = youngster? crosscut = tunnel?), the stray ‘a’, ‘excavated’ as an anagrind, and the repeat of ‘one’s’ in 5d.

    And these Ettys? Just like buses, aren’t they?

    I have many times done the Cryptic on my clapped-out iPhone4 — it’s a bit like looking up words in the Morse-code version of the OED. I reckon under 2 hours is pretty damn good!

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