TImes 26,909: Blue Bayeux

45 comments on “TImes 26,909: Blue Bayeux”

1. Almost chucked in CONCEPT for 20dn otherwise my first sub-20 solve since last Friday, so pretty easy
2. Never heard of him! Unusually informative clue, if one knew, but one might be more likely to presume this, oh, odd name was a part of some devious wordplay. Nice. Fortunately, I could refer to the clue for ARRAS. I, too, don’t generally like clues that require that.

   Nothing (else) here was very obscure, except for the quite archaic ESURIENT. I wouldn’t, as our classicist blogger did, put it in the same category (“slighty more ornate vocabulary”) as ESCUTCHEON and (especially not) PORTRAITURE. Also new to me was GYMSLIP.

   I worked ACCUMULATOR and APPLICATOR one right after the other. Had to guess there was such a thing as an “accumulator bet.”

   Edited at 2017-12-15 06:54 am (UTC)

3. It was nice of the crossword gods to throw me a bone at the end of the week. Comfortably complete in 45 minutes. FOI 1d BACCHUS, LOI the unknown 28a ESURIENT, but I’d had it pencilled in for a while and was just waiting to make sure all the crossers fitted, really, as I hadn’t spotted URGES or APPLICATOR when I thought of “ruse”.

   Embarrassed not to have noticed “lie” for “porky” in 8d until I came here, but I didn’t let it trouble me too much at the time. I did at least clock the link between 4d and 16d, though I didn’t know who Odo was until I did, other than the shapeshifter in Deep Space Nine, which presumably was what I was watching when I should have been studying history.

   Really must get around to Moll Flanders at some point. (Or at least watch the Alex Kingston telly version…)

4. 21 minutes is good going for me. The odd minute was spent trying to justify CONCEPT at 20dn before realising and correcting my error. ODO unknown here also and will probably be forgotten by tomorrow.

   Edited at 2017-12-15 07:42 am (UTC)

5. Around 12 minutes but with a SNAFU resulting from a basic deficiency in the spelling department, especially when writing words in the vertical. So .. ACCUMULATER. I did think it might be an idea to go back and take another look at that one before submitting, but of course I didn’t. Funnily enough, I had no problem with APPLICATOR.

   I’m sure there’s one of Pip’s short stories in this grid, what with the HEADMASTER, the SACKBUT and a GYMSLIP, but maybe that one’s best left unpublished.

   No clue who Odo was so it’s nice to learn something else I can forget.

6. A surprising time, as nothing seemed to be coming easily; I think I ran through the acrosses without a hit, FOI being TEA. NHO GYMSLIP, my LOI. DNK ODO, and indeed got 16d from ARRAS, perhaps the first time I’ve benefited from a cross-referencing clue. I had thought that ESURIENT meant ‘hungry’, as my one encounter with the word was when John Cleese explained to Mr. Wensleydale what it meant: ‘Peckish?’ ‘Esurient.’ ‘Come again?’ ‘Hoongry, like.’ I’m embarrassed to admit that ‘Flanders’ only called up Ned, not Moll.
   1. I feel like I should have been on MOLL like a shot but I could only think of Belgium and Flanders fields. It was only 5am-ish in fairness to my brain, I haven’t been sleeping well lately…
7. 25mins with poached eggs , marmite toast and Italian coffee and half an apple!

   Bishop Odo we covered in the first form – terribly funny man apparently – had everyone in stitches.

   FOI 2dn TEA

   LOI 13ac TRIO

   COD St Trinian’s 18ac GYMSLIP!

   WOD 22ac ESCUTCHEON

   Why did Lord Verlaine take so long!

   Edited at 2017-12-15 08:18 am (UTC)

   1. Maybe the 5am start was a mistake. Looking at the SNITCH I “should” probably have been aiming for the 7-8 minute range!
8. 25 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberry compote, etc. I envy Horryd his marmitey eggs.

   After some talk of extraneous ‘a’s, the setter today has decided not to have any ‘a’s at all. Is this a first?

   LOI was 1ac where I was struggling until Mrs M glanced over and said, ‘And others – that might be et al’.

   Mostly I liked: simply formed tunic, Flanders, Nile, Burgess and Intercom (COD).

   Thanks erudite setter and V.

   1. Last week one of my beknighted sons popped over to Shangers with fresh supplies of the said Marmite.

      One of the jars has apparently got my name on it! I will use it as an occasional ‘avatar’ after I open it on Xmas morning so that you might share my good fortune.

      Edited at 2017-12-15 02:54 pm (UTC)

9. We are now very oversubscribed for the Christmas Turkey. Quite a few people have indicated that they don’t mind missing out this time, and I’ll see if excluding those people gets us down to the requisite number. If that’s not enough, it will be luck of the draw. I will make a note of those who miss out and will keep that list under ‘Turkey 2018’.

   I’ll try to get clues out to the lucky 32 some time today.

10. I enjoyed this very much, a lovely puzzle IMO. For me though, and unfortunately, unlike our (excellent) blogger I can’t claim to have found it ‘cryptically straightforward’! Lovely surfaces and constructions, I loved the clue for PORTRAITURE particularly.

    As gothick matt, FOI BACCHUS LOI ESURIENT, a lovely word.

    Many thanks to both principal players.

    1. “Cryptically straightforward” is not the same thing as easy necessarily of course! I just meant that there were a lot of standard devices, nothing too off the beaten track.
11. 17.26, though I’m not sure where the time went. I remembered who Odo was once I got TAPESTRY derived from ARRAS, mentally rehearsing the QI style objection that, of course, it wasn’t a tapestry (or an arras, come to that) at all.
    Funnily enough TRIO was my last, rather painfully dragged in, being uncertain about LIE DOWN until I parsed it properly. Perhaps it was the capital G for Group that put me off from seeing it as the definition.
12. Did this while watching the cricket, so time indeterminate. DNK ESURIENT, constructed from cryptic. GOT TAPESTRY from the ARRAS. In school, the power source used was always a big, heavy ACCUMULATOR. COD CHAPTER AND VERSE, a favourite expression of my Dad. He must have already known which book. Thank you V and setter.
    1. Had a brief look in the night, when I got up again England had lost the last six for 35. Hmmmm…
13. 21 min 24 secs.
14. 14′, flying today. I also feel there must be a story there…Knew Odo from actually having been to Bayeux. Thanks verlaine and setter.
15. 14 minutes on the nose, so for me the least Fridayish Friday for a long time. No real hold ups but the final few in the SE needed to be teased out. ESURIENT is not a word I use daily, although – oddly – ESCUTCHEON is very familiar. Horses and courses and all that.
    Breakfast? Zilch as usual. Damn this diet…
16. 9:43. I had the same spelling problem as sotira, not helped by the absence of wordplay (and not having a clue about the second half of the clue). However after agonising over it for a minute or two and crossing my fingers I found I had picked the right letter.
17. 27mins, which for a Friday is really whizzy. I found lots of biffable stuff here, with only a few needing close attention to the wordplay (esurient, escutcheon, accumulator). DNK esurient, but the -ient was obvious and ‘nalpient’ and ‘tolpient’ looked dodgy, so it was several minutes before ‘ruse’ made a plausible-looking configuration. Excellent crossword all round, I thought.

    gothick_matt: do the more lively TV Alex Kington “Moll Flanders” — reading Defoe’s version is a rather dry scholarly exercise.

18. Never heard of Odo, so I learnt something there. ACCUMULATOR has been gathering dust in the dimly lit backwaters of my vocabulary – I’ve not heard a battery called that since my schooldays. I failed to see LIEDON in 8d as two words, (Doh!), and I struggled for too long with PORTRAITURE having put CAPTAIN in for 17a, but got there in the end. 17:25
19. Aside from biffing LIE DOWN, no problems at all. Never thought of W for weight…. Some nice misdirections. Liked BETRAYAL for shopping and like our blogger I forgot about the ARRAS when it came to 16d.
20. 30m today with few hold-ups beyond searching for the unusual words such as the shield. LOI was TRIO and it took ages, well at least 2 minutes to make myself lift and separate properly. But all in all an encouraging end to the week, so thank you, setter and for the entertaining blog, V.
21. I have now selected the 32 setters for this year’s Turkey. If you threw your hat into the ring you should have received either an email with your allocated word or a ‘sorry’ email. If not, I probably messed up.
22. Surely there was a Kenyan marathon runner called Odo Nogo wasn’t there?

    Held up by 21 but at least managed to complete this in a vaguely respectable 10,000 metre time anyway.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

23. Pleasant solve which felt more like a Monday than a Friday in old money. ESCUTCHEON from crosswords past, ESURIENT from the aforementioned Arthur Wensleydale, which made me remember it’s time to get some cheese in for Christmas, and sent my mind racing through an extended list of them (if there is one thing for which the film Sliding Doors should be criticised, it’s for propagating the idea that sophisticated women will be utterly charmed by a man who demonstrates his ability to recite vast swathes of Monty Python from memory on a first date).

    Edited at 2017-12-15 12:25 pm (UTC)

    1. Let’s not forget that this “sophisticated woman” was Gwyneth Paltrow, who both used to find the music of Coldplay sexually irresistible and sells barking mad new age quackery to women via her company Goop. I feel that what works on Gwyneth is not necessarily guaranteed to work on more normal ladies.
       1. If you’re calling Gwyneth Paltrow a loony, I shall have to ask you to step outsi – no, wait, I’m doing it again.

          Edited at 2017-12-15 12:40 pm (UTC)

    2. Isn’t it tonight that a certain topicaltim is to be seen on our television screens in Only Connect???
       1. Ah yes, well done on remembering! The Detectives are back for their second appearance on OC tonight, playing the Arrowheads. Readers may note that the Detective in the middle is introduced as a crossword enthusiast (I think he is, anyway, this all happened some months ago), and that man is me. Please feel free to cheer us on / shout in frustration as we fail to spot obvious connections.
          1. Well done, Detectives.
             1. Cheers. Back in February!
24. ….equal to how long it took Maazel to run through the Tchaikovsky 2nd on Decca/London, but how long that is I neglected to note.

    I got stuck because I had biffed ‘set the right tone’, which worked on the right but gave trouble on the left. It took a bit to correct that, but it had to be ‘Gunther’, so there you go. I did remember who Odo was, and I’m surprised we’ve never seen him as an answer.

25. Definitely a TLS flavour here. ESURIENT used to turn up regularly in the NY Times puzzles though I don’t think I’ve seen it lately. In one of the Rumpole stories Horace thinks he’s going to get rich quick after placing a series of bets (culminating with a 4 horse ACCUMULATOR) through one of the screws at the Old Bailey. The screw takes off with the winnings. Odo Stevens is a character in Dance To The Music Of Time. I agree with Verlaine about NILE. 14.09
26. Crept in under the half hour at 29:12, with ESURIENT unknown and constructed from wp. TEA was my FOI closely followed by the god of the more potent beverages. ARRAS and TAPESTRY from wp and a bit of guesswork. A bit of biffing here and there with some casual checking of the parsing, led to my LOI, BETRAYAL, which kept me on tenterhooks for longer than it should have. When I were a lad, me Dad used to have a large charging machine in his cycle shop, and customers would bring the accumulators from their valve radios in to be recharged. If I remember correctly, they were glass with acid sloshing around in them. We kept the charger in the garage for years afterwards. It was about 2ft 6″ tall and 18″ square and rather heavy. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and V. Nice to see the familiar old moustachioed avatar making a reappearance.

    Edited at 2017-12-15 02:49 pm (UTC)

    1. Avatar on dude!
27. I got 50 minutes of entertainment out of this one – I was clearly on a different wavelength. Count me as one of those for whom ESURIENT was and NHO. Odo was also unknown, and for a long time I was trying to convince myself that it was a typeface (or, as printers might have referred to it but in fact didn’t) a “typesort”. Needless to say, TAPESTRY was therefore my LOI.
28. Will be glued and recording our Tim and co to be able to see them struggle over and over.
    Over confident 21 minutes with this straightforward offering, but bunged in CONCEPT without thinking it through. Doh. But knew about Oh Doh.
29. I completed this over tea and cake in the pretty cathedral city of Wells whilst enjoying a day off work. A very pleasant end to the week. Wanted 16d to be symmetry but whichever way you look at it Odo is not thus. Mistakenly wrote Gunther in 20d which held me up for a while. A normal (for me) combination of flights of fancy and muppetry … 42:53. Thanks to setter and V.
30. … that are embroidered. Odo was quite a character, erstwhile Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother to Norman Billy and wielder of the largest club ever stitched. Credited with a critical intervention at Hastings when many an invading knight felt all was lost. We might all have been Saxon yet were if not for him.
    Pleased with 23’ today but fell for ‘concept’ right at the end.
31. Should have come here earlier but have been out to eat and drink. I’ve heard of Odo of Cluny. Which helped. Have come across ESURIENTES as a word in the Magnificat – which I’ve sung quite a bit in the local choir. It’s the bit where Mary says that “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and weak. I think it’s the “mighty” that are ESURIENT here. Anyway, it helped. 27 minutes. Ann
32. Here I am with the late late show after lashings of turkey, vino and tiramisu at the office Xmas do. 23 mins for most of it this morning and 6 mins whilst still sober at lunchtime to tidy up. A fun puzzle with a hint of the TLS about it as others have said. 4dn solved first in splendid isolation from 16dn with thoughts of Polonius who I believe was stabbed right up the arras by Hamlet in his antic disposition. Dnk exactly sackbut and could not for some reason parse lie-down and its wonderful porky lecturer. LOI 22ac where I don’t think it was so much the relative arcaneness of the word itself, given the generous Def, so much as the good quality very natural “once and he’s crocked” which took some time to see.
33. It’s rare I finish but came very close here. Made the mistake of putting in CONCEPT like one or two others and changed ACCUMULATOR to ACCUMULATER bizarrely. A word I have known all my life from occasional visits to the bookies. Ah well, you may here from me again once or twice in 2018 but I really appreciate your blog.
    Phil R

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