Times 26,951: Reverend Spooner’s Free Hosiery

78 comments on “Times 26,951: Reverend Spooner’s Free Hosiery”

1. 12d is just KNOCK FOR SIX so no more Ss required!

   This was definitely on the easy side and a PB for me at 33:21.

   COD 21a closely followed by 25a.

   Hopefully the rest of the day will go this well as I’m well and truly ready for the weekend.

   Thanks for the blog.

   1. And another PB being the first to comment!!! It just gets better and better.
   2. Haha, thanks! I guess I should do less parsing at one in the morning, I’d probably be less unfairly grumpy about the puzzle if I did as well! Sorry unfortunate setter.

      Parsing/blog shamefacedly corrected.

2. As with Verlaine, I found this quite a “vanilla” puzzle, enjoyable enough but with little out of the ordinary to pass comment on. COD to ARMS LENGTH as I liked its construction.

   Well done to Mr Chumley on the PB.

   1. Thanks pootle
3. The top half was straightforward but I slowed down a lot, taking ages in the SW corner and to spot the definition, and hence answer, at 19ac.

4. Leisurely solve, ending like Jack with RATLIKE. I too was mildly troubled by the KNOCK rather than ‘knocks’ at 12dn. Thanks, V, and well done on your quizzing!

5. Not a PB for me: no struggle but just a painstaking straight through solve requiring 24 minutes.
   CLOTHES PIN delayed for a while, possibly because we always called them pegs: the unusual use of thespian was clever enough to make me wonder whether the setter had been saving it up.
   RATLIKE turned out to be my last, even though I could see what was supposed to be going on, the kilt bit and the definition didn’t come to mind. In (some of) the dictionaries, ratlike seems to have more to do with appearance than behaviour.
   I liked (once I understood it) the cryptic-clue-as-answer SUN-UP
   1. It’s quite oblique, isn’t it – I like that you can sort of see how, e.g. a love rat isn’t true, but you have to squint. I guess I like squinty clues…
      1. A bit too oblique, I felt. One of those clues you solve correctly but which leaves a lingering sense of dissatisfaction because the definition doesn’t really work.

         I also thought “crooks” questionable as an anagrind at 8dn.

         Certainly, one of the easier Friday offerings. 24dn was indeed clever.

6. Everything done bar RATLIKE in 25 minutes, finally gave up after another ten. I’m hoping it’s just the man-flu that’s producing this run of DNFs for me…
   1. I’ve got it too Matt; can’t shake it off – it’s a swine. Sympathy 🙂
7. With RATLIKE biffed. Have I missed something as “not true” does not equate to “ratlike”, does it?
   1. If you think of true in the loyal sense, and rat in the James Cagney sense?

      Edited at 2018-02-02 09:30 am (UTC)

      1. Thank you. Now I see it. I wonder sometimes how I miss the blindingly obvious.
         1. Not that obvious, especially since it’s wrong. See my comment way down there on the page…
      2. Re your def for RATLIKE: That’s what I was thinking at first, but it wasn’t convincing. See my comment near the bottom of the comments.
         1. From Collins:
            Rat: a person who deserts his or her friends or associates, esp in time of trouble.
            True: unswervingly faithful and loyal to friends, a cause, etc.
            Can’t see the problem.
            1. Only the setter and (presumably) the editor know for sure.

               But someone who isn’t true, in that sense, isn’t “ratlike.” He’s a full-blown rat, in the Cagney sense. No sense in having “like” then.

               1. What’s the difference? A rat behaves in a ratlike manner. It’s perhaps very mildly oblique but that’s what the question mark is there to indicate.
                  1. The difference is merely a matter of grammatical rigor, in a kind of puzzle that rather depends on that. Its being in any degree “oblique” Is not the problem. I would find it disappointing if your explanation is what the setter intended. I know why you think the question mark is there, but it goes just as well with my interpretation.

                     Edited at 2018-02-02 07:30 pm (UTC)

                     1. If RATLIKE is supposed to mean ‘not a true rat’ then it needs some reference to rats in the definition. To omit this is surely a greater leap than the assumption that a rat can be said to be like a rat (which incidentally is a matter of semantics rather than grammar, surely).
                        1. I was thinking of the syntax of the clue, and I keep seeing GRAMMAR on this page, but, yes, the meaning of RATLIKE is semantics.
                           I thought of the “Cagney” interpretation first, and was dissatisfied for the reason I have been at pains to explain.
                           That might be part of it, I’ll allow, but it seemed there should be something more to make it clever (which, otherwise, it ain’t very).

                           Edited at 2018-02-02 07:53 pm (UTC)

8. … be grateful for a less demanding Friday. 19 minutes which would have been quicker if I’d not carelessly put in clothes-peg first. As with others, LOI RATLIKE. COD KNOCK FOR SIX.Thank you V and setter.
9. Hello, just bitten the bullet and paid for a Times subscription. Can access the puzzle once more- used to subscribe to the crossword club until they closed that. How do I print out the puzzle? I like paper and pen solving. Couldn’t work out this morning how to print and was time pressured for work.
   Regards
   Andrew K
   1. Hi, Andrew. If you access via the Club there are Play Now / Stats / Print options underneath the puzzle number. But if you approach via the Puzzles section in the on-line newspaper you have to select Play Now to open the crossword and then the Print command is to be found by clicking the ‘hamburger’ icon above the clues. Welcome back, btw.

      Edited at 2018-02-02 10:21 am (UTC)

      1. Thank you very much Jack. I’ll try that later.

         Andrew

         1. Also, if you go in by the Club entrance you can chose PRINT instead of PLAY right on the sun page
10. 12m. No problems today, thankfully. I was in the mood for something vanilla after yesterday.
    I can’t see the problem with 12dn: it seems to have the right number of Ss in all the right places.
    1. It’s me who doesn’t have the right number of Ss in all the right places, it turns out! (Perhaps I can turn this phrase into the new “a few sandwiches short of a picnic”…)
11. Yes, the definition in 12d is ‘strike’ and the wordplay works. Took a while to see UFOS. LOI RATLIKE constructed from wordplay and only now get the definition. And what is a CLOTHES PIN? 27’, thanks verlaine and setter.
    1. I see we had the same word association to ‘gladsome’. It was a staple in our primary school morning assembly. I’d never called it a clothes-pin either. I seem to remember an Agatha Christie where the maid was killed and a clothes-peg put on her nose.
12. Like V I found this a bit mechanical – as if a computer had set the clues. I felt as if I trudged through it never really getting out of second gear. Pure vanilla.
    1. I was talking with some non-logodaedal friends about crosswords and the remuneration setters receive for them – as computer nerds they got quite excited about the possibility of using machine learning to generate them automatically for £100 a pop (or whatever the going rate is these days). I assured them that no machine could achieve the requisite level of poetry of a good crossword clue! But probably technological advances will prove us wrong within a few years.
       1. Indeed – who can say (and I’m not going to say it will never happen) but I would question “a few years”

          To develop genuine creativity will I suspect take a huge amount of time and money – resources that can better be deployed on fully utilising artificial intelligence in more straightforward applications

          Creativity is what we humans are best at so currently the best combination is using us to be inventive and the machines to do the analysis

          I’m out of touch now but it certainly used to be the case that when simulating war games the Spanish, French and Germans always win at Trafalgar, Waterloo, and the Battle of Britain!

          1. For a non-cryptic like the Concise it should be relatively straightforward to generate, but good cryptic clue-writing is a skill that machine learning cannot crack as it requires an understanding of semantics to write a decent surface. If you are interested in this, here is what you get when when you get machine learning to write a Harry Potter sequel… Botnik Harry Potter. It’s a good laugh!
13. Agree with above, easy for a Friday, with RATLIKE the only odd / slightly guessed last entry. 21 minutes.

    Nice clean formatting Verlaine; I think in your preamble 19dn should read 19ac. Pip

14. 18.12 (cue music) so about the same as yesterday’s much harder offering. The difference was the time taken to sort out RATLIKE, my LOI. Otherwise not one that will linger long in the memory.
15. Unlike my esteemed co-bloggers I found the bottom half rather chewy, with several DNK’s including ECON, CLOTHES PIN plus rather stuck looking for a religious centre (something like a sanhedrin maybe?) instead of the SYNDROME. And aren’t characteristic events plural? RATLIKE completely confused me.
    1. A group of symptoms or behaviours is certainly more central to the meaning of syndrome than events, but maybe a dictionary out there supports the latter.
16. 24 min 50 secs with one wrong. Ratrime for Ratlike.
17. Well, I a) found this quite tough and b) enjoyed it. The occasional John Henderson is quite enough for the likes of me. 41 minutes.

    Edited at 2018-02-02 11:11 am (UTC)

    1. Looking up “occasional table” I see the definition “a small decorative table for infrequent and varied use”, which presumably makes JH “a small decorative setter for infrequent and varied use”?
       1. Ah, now, he’s not *that* small!
18. I think I had a similar reaction to many others, except that the word that sprang to mind was “efficient”, rather than vanilla. Taking the long view, it shows how high the standards of the crossword are that for an offering to be merely workmanlike can be considered a bit of a disappointment. And yes, I ended up with RATLIKE as well.

    Edited at 2018-02-02 11:36 am (UTC)

19. Beaten by RATLIKE, alas.
20. 32 min, with around 5 min spent on 19ac – almost entered RATAILE in desperation, as possibly some sort of skirt, not to be found in the usual sources.
    I notice that Chambers does not actually list RATLIKE as a word, even though it uses ‘rat-like’ in several definitions ! (Hence mechanical aids don’t find it.)
    1. I considered RATAILE too, before seeing RATLIKE.
21. 16:11 with 4 or so minutes of that struggling to get syndrome and then, of course, ratlike.
22. I found the top half straightforward enough but was delayed by the southern sectors. It took me an age to see UFOS, and then only after I got the O from 12d, despite having been scanning for a hidden. I did like 12d once I saw it by separating the S from the KNOCK. I was also put off the scent by the unusual CLOTHES PIN where I’ve always know it as a PEG. My FOI was ARC and, like a lot of others, my last was RATLIKE. 35:47. Thanks setter and V.
23. ….but I found the bottom rather tough. I couldn’t even see ‘arms length’ and ‘instrument panel’, which are really quite easy, and came home in 33 minutes. The only one that really should have been tough was ‘ratlike’, a clue in a more difficult style than the rest of the puzzle.

    We never say ‘clothes peg’ in the US, it’s always ‘clothes pin’, which can even be one word.

    Edited at 2018-02-02 01:13 pm (UTC)

24. I found this almost a straight write-in until I hit 19a, where I was slow to see the wordplay and shrugged at the definition as ‘not true’ – then concluded it works quite well in the context of a ‘rat run’, which would hardly follow a direct or true course.

    Gandolf34

25. 24 mins. The old story with me; physically writing answers in slows everything up cos of the ET; the actual solve time is a lot shorter. So much quicker online, but that doesn’t help me to practise for competitions. RATLIKE held me up for about 6 mins; got a bit stuck trying to shoehorn mini or midi into the answer. Thought the definition was a bit wacky, notwithstanding the question mark. Thanks to setter, though, no offence intended – enjoyed the challenge. Cracking blog, V, thanks.
26. Similar experience to others: easyish but defeated by 19a in what would otherwise have been a fast time for me.
27. Also defeated by RATLIKE, never thought of skirt=kilt, and thought ‘skirt’ was the definition. Rats, as they say. Yes, as vinyl says, a CLOTHESPIN is the common US label for that thing, but the UK side was represented by the unfamiliar, to me, spelling of GRAMME in 1D (we spell it as GRAM), so I had to enter GRAMMAR without understanding the parsing at all. Regards.
28. My LOI was RATLIKE too. I don’t think anyone has finished parsing this here (excuse me if I simply missed it). Wikipedia entry for “rat”: “”True rats” are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus. Many members of other rodent genera and families are also referred to as rats…”—but are not “true” rats, merely RATLIKE.

    Edited at 2018-02-02 05:47 pm (UTC)

    1. This clue has nothing to do with rodents. It beat me entirely so thank you to the setter and keriothe.
       See keriothe’s reply to me about Cagney and loyalty.
       1. That the clue has nothing to do with rodents is the devious thing about it, I’d say.
          If a person is a rat in the Cagney sense, there’s no need for “like.”
          I’d like to hear from the editor on this.
29. Surprised to see that no one has commented on 10 ac being apposite to today’s date, being the 66th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne, if not her ‘ascent’ (which perhaps connotes coronation). Nonetheless surely not a coincidence by the compiler? Bas from Belsize.
30. RATLIKE is plainly the intended answer, OK. But to define it with “not true?” is frankly rubbish, whatever sense the setter may have had in mind for “true”. Not for the first time here, I appeal to the setters and their boss to understand that the English language isn’t indefinitely extensible just to suit some crossword setter. There are limits even for that peculiar trade, and this clue was plainly far beyond them.
    1. True means loyal. A rat is a disloyal person. There’s no need to extend anything: this is just the plain meaning of the words.
       1. So a “ratlike” person would be one who is “like” a disloyal person in some sense, but not really disloyal?
          1. By this standard a lady would be incapable of ladylike behaviour. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it logically cannot be a duck.
             This seems an unduly nice distinction to me.
             1. That doesn’t follow. Nice distinctions, though, are what cryptic clues are made of.
                A real rat, the four-footed mammal, is not disloyal, as far as i know. But humans rather unfairly typify as “vermin” the less shining exemplars of our own species. We don’t say they are “ratlike” (rats aren’t really like that). We simply call them rats. A person you can’t trust or rely on, a traitor, a backstabber… is not “ratlike” but the real thing, in the (speciesist) metaphorical sense in which we use the word.

                Actually, if you think both interpretations simultaneously, it makes “not true” a pun.

                Edited at 2018-02-02 07:41 pm (UTC)

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