Times 26,933: A Stern Talking To

71 comments on “Times 26,933: A Stern Talking To”

1. 30 minutes, which came as a bit of a surprise as there were a few words or references I wasn’t completely sure of, PHILIPPIC as ‘denunciation’ for a start.

   I needed all the checkers in place to get to DONATELLO, as sculptors are possibly my weakest area when it come to “the arts”, and a bit of guesswork as once again I note we have a foreign name/word clued as an anagram.

   I was thrown a little by ‘for men’ at 8dn but I suppose it’s fair enough considering we accept almost daily that OR can be clued by ‘men’.

   Edited at 2018-01-12 06:24 am (UTC)

   1. I’d call DONATELLO fair game: if you don’t know your sculptors knowledge of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should get you there. 😉
      1. I have even less knowledge of the turtles.
   2. “…Or, How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission” is a song by Paul Simon (& Garfunkel) whose name stuck with me but which I may never have heard till now (via YouTube… but it’s probably just been a very long time). It’s obviously meant to be a parody of Bob Dylan (“I lost my harmonica, Albert…”).

      Edited at 2018-01-12 07:36 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks for the memory, Guy. For all Albert Grossman’s faults, none of it would have happened without him. He found the harmonica.
2. 9:50. Another early solver, but in my case it was the combination of an early start with the fact that I’m in Helsinki, which means that getting up at 6 is really getting up at 4. No real problems with the puzzle in spite of this: ORMER was the only unfamiliar word, but the wordplay couldn’t have been much kinder. ‘Burden’ in this sense is rather obscure but I’ve seen it before… in crosswords of course.
   I would dispute the use of the word ‘possible’ in 29dn. ‘Presumed’ would be more accurate.
3. I don’t know from seafood, so this was my LOI, which I did not get unaided. I might quibble that “to get out of” seems to imply that the F for “force” would have to be removed from somewhere inside the word for “mould” and not from the beginning.
4. Biffed a few, and never figured out BANDEAU. I tried for too long to work ‘rey’ into 1ac once I’d counted the letters in ‘jeremiad’. We must have had ORMER at least once before, or I wouldn’t have known it.
5. Goodness. Pushed out to an hour and three minutes to complete the SE corner, and I’m very surprised to find I got everything right.

   I’d try to list everything I didn’t know, from ORMER to the chef by way of the denunciation and the “jolly”, but it would probably be quicker to go through the clues that *didn’t* have question marks.

   Given all that, the fact that I managed it all (and didn’t despair) point to this being a very fair puzzle, as well as entertaining, though I’m not sure I’d be saying the same thing if I hadn’t been on the wavelength 😀

   Enjoyed 2d the most. FOI was 11a RIGHT, though FOPIL—First One Pencilled In Lightly—was 7d SLUG, which I didn’t know was a mollusc. LOI 23a ESCOFFIER.

   Thanks for the help with the many I needed parsed, V. And all Matts are interesting!

   Edited at 2018-01-12 07:59 am (UTC)

6. This took me about 15 minutes but I didn’t know CHORUS for burden and wasn’t sure of the Egyptian god, so went for CHORES (whilst wondering why it would be plural). With hindsight I hear eye of Horus mentioned every week on the TV quiz show Only Connect so should have done better.
   1. I find that all you really need for the Egyptian stuff in crosswords is to have watched every episode of Stargate: SG1, but I realise that might not be an attractive prospect for everyone!
      1. Tried that for a series or two…..
      2. My youngest used to watch a TV programme called House of Anubis which helps a bit too.

         Edited at 2018-01-12 01:56 pm (UTC)

      3. Been there watched that! 🙂 It also helped reinforce that Daedalus is Icarus’s Dad, and much better at flying close to stars….

         Edited at 2018-01-12 07:05 pm (UTC)

         1. All the benefits of a classical education plus lasers and flying pyramids. It doesn’t get much better than that.
   2. – although the subtitler once called it the eye of Horace !
7. 18 minutes today, a second sub 20 in a row. This seemed quite easy for a Friday. The weekend starts here. But I’ll no doubt louse up the Killer Sudoku now. I did yesterday. DNK LOI PHILIPPIC but fortunately did remember which Spanish King had his beard singed. COD SUBSONIC by a short head from INTONATION. Thank you V and setter.
   1. I love a good 56m killer sudoku (a thing of beauty today done in under 20m but goodness knows how they form them). I found today’s 15×15 on the easy side but lucky with the seafood and 1a entered without full knowledge. About 30 mins with lots of biffing going on in the SE.
      1. I didn’t goof today but I was slower than you at about half an hour. Our combined times in the biathlon must have been similar. Hope you’ve spotted the pictures of Nat, at Horryd’s request. He seems to think Harry Gregg was fouled back in 1958. I wonder what the video ref would make of it.
8. 34 mins with FOI 17ac SPINE

   Breakfast 8.45am – Boiled egg with soldiers from Captain Marmite’s Regiment.
   Fresh yoghurt with fresh blackberries – for it is the season herabouts.

   LOI 21dn EARFUL and my WOD

   COD 2n INTONATION

   TfTT Avatar of the Year winners book prizes ordered.
   I notice Lord Notlob has responded well.

   I note the briefest of blogs from the somnambulant Lord Verlaine.
   Dame Joan Collins drooled over your likeness as did Mr. Scaramucci –
   make sure the latch is on at all times.

   Also a big thank-you to the Duchess of Cornwall for addressing my shortcomings.

9. 30 mins (plus 10 guessing the seafood) while enjoying yoghurt, compote, granola.
   Yes, we have no bananas.
   Very enjoyable – with a few MERs – but the edge was taken off by that seafood. Has anyone really heard of it? I like my seafood, but it is new to me. And ‘former’ as the “couldn’t have been kinder” wordplay. Good grief.
   MERs at: Chorus (DNK Burden), Drives=pumps.
   Mostly I liked: Bandeau, Immigration by definition and (COD) Jolly cartoon bird.
   Thanks shellfish setter and V.
   1. ORMER definitely had the air of a real word to do with sea creatures to me, but one more likely to come up in vocabulary quizzes than in real world contexts, it must be said.
10. And a second sub-30-minute in a row for me, so definitely not a normal hard Friday. DNK that scoff could be a noun. Others, including burden as a chorus and ormer, I managed to dredge up from somewhere. I didn’t fully parse SEQUESTER, so thanks for the explanation, V. I did quite like 29a despite the questionable theology.
11. 
    30mins then another 5 for the SW: ORMER was unknown, BANDEAU was unparsed (doh!), and SUBSONIC and INTRUDE took an age to see.

    COD: INTONATION

12. Had a peep (oh please) at the BEAU clue and got it straight away for some reason. And indeed found the rest of this nice puzzle quite easy for a Friday.

    Thanks Verlaine & setter.

13. Easy today but some very deft touches, I thought; and some good surface readings.
    Ormer (aka abalone?) is a crossword regular, though I wouldn’t recognise one on a fishmonger’s slab
14. 16’36” so not a typical Friday. As others have noted, PHILIPPIC from S & G, DONATELLO fron TMNT. Only knew SEQUESTER from when trade unions were always being threatened with having their funds taken away. Thanks verlaine and setter.
15. 17 minutes for this curiosity, which must surely hold some sort of record for verbosity. Nothing actually superfluous. I did have DONALETTO for a while before learning how to count, with a similar hesitation over Ls and Ps in the diatribe, which was nearly my last.
    I liked both INTO NATION and B&EAU for their playful qualities.
    Is QATAR particularly noted for sand? The pictures on Google suggest rocky rather than sandy, even at the seaside, and surely by 2022, given how little room they have to play with, most of it will be football pitches? It already has a grass farm occupying a considerable chunk of the available land.
    Thanks to setter and the somnambulist V.
16. 21.39 and should have been quicker as I got sidetracked by a couple that wouldn’t quite come to mind , instead of just moving on as I normally do. For once the more obscure words fell kindly, although chorus/burden was deeply buried and I played with several vowel combinations before spotting the sculptor. Altogether not very Fridayish as others have noted.
17. 35 mins. Enjoyed this puzzle – a good mix of some easy short ones (SLUG, CORGI), then some slightly more tricky medium ones (ESCOFFIER, INTONATION) and then some really knotty ones (SUBSONIC, BANDEAU). I could see ‘beau’ as lover and the ‘and’ but still couldn’t parse BANDEAU so thank you, V, for explaining. These “how might one cryptically reverse engineer the solution” clues are really clever, and keep catching me out. Never heard of ORMER, but saw the wordplay: and I agree with Guy that clue implies that the ‘F’ needs to be removed from *inside* the word for ‘mould’, not lopped off the front.

    Like Myrtilus, I thought “pump = drive” a bit iffy. (What is a “MER”???)

    But otherwise a jolly good puzzle. Thanks to blogger and setter.

    1. I had to investigate pump = drive, because of not being 100% sure whether to underline “drives” or “drives in” in the parsing. My conclusion was that “drive” definitely appears in online thesauri as an approximate synonym of “pump”, but you might not want to investigate too closely.
    2. MER=Minor Eyebrow Raise.
       This is my attempt to coin a new acronym.
       It is a tactful way to say ‘You what?’
18. 20’35. Took time to see why intonation could be right, the simplest thing. Subsonic reminded me of the booms I used to hear as a child when a plane went super, or so I was told. Rather like the drollery in its clue.
19. Held up at the end by ROUSING and PRAGUE, which were pretty obvious on reflection. I agree with comments about the F coming off FORMER – was left scratching my head for a while, esp since ORMER was unknown. Was unsure about PARODY = TRAVESTY – surely a travesty has totally negative connotations, whereas parody is irony, a totally different thing?
20. Must be a useful filler because it used to turn up a lot in the NY Times puzzles. I’m never sure what letter gets doubled where in PHILIPPIC but the setter was generous. INTONATION was amusing and immigration has been in the news in the last 24 hours along with a word that came with a warning label on the evening news. Despite the early hour I note that Matt the far-from-dull blogger pipped Magoo on the Club board. 14.14
21. Not to be confused with the MER, or Major Eyebrow Raise?
    1. Perhaps mer vs MER
22. Fortunately I’ve seen ORMER in enough crosswords that I didn’t have a problem with it, although I must admit I didn’t parse the ‘mould’ part properly. There were a few unknowns for me: PHILIPPIC, CHORUS as a burden, and most particularly ESCOFFIER, which I entered with minimal hope. Fair clueing all round, though, and not too tricky. 6m 45s.
23. 15:05, so rather easy for a Friday. PHILIPPIC was unknown so needed all the checkers. 2d had me puzzled until I twigged what the rising and falling was about – no it wasn’t a palindrome. I knew the word ORMER, but thought it was a sea-bird… until being educated here today. All good fun. Thanks setter and V.
    1. If this is the puzzle that puts the ORMER into CORMORANT, I’m sure the cormorant won’t be too upset about it!
       1. Seabird cannot get ormer in, we hear?
24. An enjoyable 21 minutes today, no hold-ups. and not at 4 a.m. either. I remember seeing one of those TV progs about finding ormers on Channel Island beaches or diving for them perhaps. Tasty but chewy like most of those clam things.
25. Nowt to say that hasn’t already been said, 11:30.
26. Odd word-blindness here, in that nothing went in for ages as I started in the NW corner, as is traditional, and there still wasn’t anything there when the rest was all done. At which point PHILIPPIC sprang to mind and they all went in with a rush, despite looking in retrospect to be no tougher than any other part of the grid. I must know 25ac from crosswords, as I’ve never knowingly eaten one; he was a bold man who first ate an ormer, as Jonathan Swift almost said. Pleasant, if not traditionally Fridayish.
27. Still struggling to make the jump from the QC. New Years resolution- not to come here too soon for assistance. So, this week I was one or two short every day, until today, when I finished (don’t mention the time!). Aim for 2 finishes next week..
    This site is a great source of enlightenment though, so thanks to you all.
    Roin
28. About 30m for this but probably half of that in the SW corner. I liked INTONATION best despite the pesky question mark. It helps when you know the obscurities as then they are not … well, obscure, I guess. Happy day as me and my mate defeated the club pro and the secretary 3 and 1 on a soggy course, to bag the first trophy of the year. Bring on the weekend! Thanks for the puzzle and the blog today – I wanted to write the last bit in a smaller font so as not to wake you up, V, but didn’t know how to!
29. Submarines are BOATS not WARSHIPS
    1. As usual, the argument should be with the lexicographers rather than the setters. My Oxford Dictionary of English has:

       submarine | ˈsʌbməriːn, sʌbməˈriːn |
       noun
       1 a warship with a streamlined hull designed to operate completely submerged in the sea for long periods, equipped with a periscope and typically armed with torpedoes or missiles.

    2. Hello anon. What did you think of the puzzle? Did you find it hard, easy, or somewhere in between? How long did it take you to solve? Did you enjoy the blog or even appreciate it?
30. Again too late to comment and on way out to dinner. Nice puzzle. No unknowns. 20 mins. Ann
31. I did this puzzle around midday, but didn’t have time to comment then as I had to rush off to see a Physio about my new knee which has been playing up over the festive period. Nothing drastic, he reckons I must have over-stressed it at some point, and to carry on the exercises and tender care, so I followed up with a visit to the Snooker club. Now that I’m home and wined and dined, I can report that I did the puzzle in 31:18, but crashed and burned on BANDEAU, for which I had to use a word finder after flapping about for over 5 minutes. I could see the BEAU bit, but that was it. Even with the word in front of me I couldn’t see the parsing. Thanks V! Where does the “girl’s head” bit of the clue come from? Google reckons it’s a support normally provided by that other crossword stalwart, a Bra. I was able to deduce the other unknowns, ORMER, PHILIPPIC and the half known ESCOFFIER. Liked RAIN DANCE. A fun puzzle. Thanks setter and V.
    1. I had a vague recollection of BANDEAU from the last time it came up, and I think back then it was used in its “boob tube” sense, but it can also mean a hairband. A search for ‘bandeau hair’ does the trick.

       Edited at 2018-01-12 08:24 pm (UTC)

       1. There’s a definition somewhere for every occasion!
32. 36 minutes, which is pleasing for me. But, if anyone can help me with “RM” and “jolly”, I’d be very grateful.
    1. Hi. A “jolly” is an old slang term for a Royal Marine. Crops up from time to time in crosswords and is always worth considering when you see the word jolly in a clue.
       1. Grrrr
          1. Tee hee. I win 🙂

             (though I’m far too mature to care about such things …. )

             Edited at 2018-01-12 08:24 pm (UTC)

             1. I was severely impeded by some stoopid spellchecker repeatedly changing arine to rain in the bit in brackets.

                Not that I’m bothered who won and who lost of course.

                1. I sympathise. My spellchecker says Penfold isn’t a thing. Imagine!
    2. In some dictionaries you’ll find jolly as a noun being slang for a R(oyal) M(arine).

       File it away as it will come up again.

33. 9:10 … breezy but fun. Burden and Philippic vaguely known from crosswords. Cheers, all
34. Submarines are BOATS not WARSHIPS
    1. Source?
       1. See penfold? Just the same way that we get the same slightly annoying words over and over again (Tiepolo, etc) we get the same complaints over and over, too!

          I know i knew how to spell Horus, but chores were so obviously burdens that in they went. And we had that version of burden a couple months ago, too.

          Meantime, I still don’t understand bandeau. I think I’m not seeing the and. What am I missing?

          1. I struggled with BANDEAU too. It’s a “B” and an “EAU” collectively give a lover, BEAU, thus B-AND-EAU is the hair band or boob tube depending on which definition you need.
             1. Of course. Hard now to see how I got misdirected and missed that. Thank you, John

                Edited at 2018-01-12 11:50 pm (UTC)

35. I got off to a quick start, and for a moment I had a horrible fear that it might be Monday again. However, I then got bogged down in the south-left corner. EARFUL still looks for me like it’s missing an L, but only because my spelling is awfull. ORMER was half-known, and turns out to abalone – I have a polished shell of one or the other just next to my desk now. BANDEAU held me up for a very long time; I’ve never heard the word, and it wasn’t until I’d tentatively put it in that the parsing clicked. That left SUBSONIC, my LOI, for a total of 40 minutes.

    Thanks, as ever, for the blog, and a happy weekend to one, all and others.

36. 18 mins. Nice puzzle and great blog, cheers.
37. 30:03 – always nice to see Monday’s setter escape and take over on a Friday once in a while. A very pleasant puzzle and I was not held up by not knowing ormer. FOI 9ac. LOI 8dn.
38. DNF. Found this very hard, not helped by entering 2d incorrectly which utterly threw me off on the NW – I had as a write in as borderline – which I think arguably works with the clue, but none of the crossers bar spine! Rest of the puzzle ok except DNK escoffier or ormer and didn’t get from wordplay.

    Mighty

39. 29 mins 23 secs with one wrong/typo/slip up. Vespa for Vesta.

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