Times 26956, in which my feminine side comes out – at least at 27 across

62 comments on “Times 26956, in which my feminine side comes out – at least at 27 across”

1. 22 minutes for a puzzle made easier by the fact that Winchester, Riga and Tattoo have all popped up in crosswords recently. I’d never heard of WHITE TEA, while NUNEATON is a place forever associated with its Borough.
2. …to write the starting time, maybe 40 minutes? Nothing too difficult, although I struggled a while with ‘edentate’ and ‘tattooer’.

   The clue for ‘Georgina’ can be interpreted as GEORGI([woma]N)A, as ‘Georgia’ is certainly a ‘region abroad’ from the UK-centric point of view, and that is how I parsed it, an unintended &lit.

   1. FWIW I don’t think that really works since the whole clue doesn’t work as a definition: all the words after ‘woman’ are irrelevant.
      1. I’d think that was fair example of a double clue. I got it via visitinG and anag of A REGION. But surely womaN can both serve as a definition and provide the N inside GEORGIA?
         1. I don’t think so because that would be double duty, which as a general rule is not allowed. The exception is the &Lit or all-in-one, where the whole clue is both definition and wordplay. I don’t think that’s what this is because the whole thing doesn’t really work as a definition: why would a woman called GEORGINA in particular be visiting a region abroad? Contrast with 21ac where the whole clue serves as a definition with all the words contributing, as well as constituting the wordplay.
3. 37:23 for me. Not blitzing it like Ulaca, but I was happy to have it correct and almost fully parsed in that time. NUNEATON went in with fingers crossed, as I didn’t know the town and was hoping I’d got the spelling correct.

   Thanks to the setter for some variety in the clues. And to George for the prompt and efficient blog, though I’d register disagreement on his closing comment 🙂

4. I also guessed at NUNEATON and had never heard of WHITE TEA. I worked the top half of this, felt stuck so switched over to the Quickie on the subway, then solved the rest at dinner. WINO is an easy one, isn’t it? I was my LOI! What can I say, it was a long day… I had to get INITIATE first—tricky clue. I put in STONY BROKE without it crossing my mind that this differs from the expression I’m familiar with, “stone broke.”

   Edited at 2018-02-08 04:24 am (UTC)

5. Like Guy, I’d NHO WHITE TEA (what is it? surely not just tea with milk in it?), WINO was my LOI, depending on INITIATE. I had heard of NUNEATON, don’t know why. Also like Guy, ‘stone broke’ is the term in my idiolect, but the NY was necessary (there’s a Stonybrook in NY, by the way). Biffed TOGA.
   1. Yes tea with milk. No milk, black tea.
      1. White tea is my favourite

         It is a type of tea

         very subtle flavours and aromas

         not sure how it is constituted

6. Close but defeated by Georgina’s dumplings.

   COD wino.

   1. Easy to make a boob on that one
7. 13.07 – fast for me, helped by a generous sprinkling of real old chestnuts. TATTOOER my LOI and the only place the double unches threatened to cause a problem.
8. Heading for completion within my target 30 minutes I went 8 minutes over doing an alphabet trawl to come up with TATTOOER eventually as my last one in.

   WHITE TEA as Kevin Gregg rightly suggests is simply tea with milk in it. In the old days (i.e. before the proliferation of fancy coffee outlets) it was common practice to order ‘white coffee’, and similarly ‘white tea’ is a perfectly logical description to distinguish it from ‘black tea’ without milk.

   I’m aware that terminology varies considerably throughout the regions of the UK, but this Southerner would be very annoyed if he ordered buns and was presented with BREAD ROLLS, or vice versa for that matter.

   Edited at 2018-02-08 06:09 am (UTC)

   1. Actually, I was suggesting that it must be something other than the tea parallel to white coffee, although I had no idea what it would be. And then, when my Brit colleague told me that he had no idea, I Googled, and here’s a bit from Wikipedia:
      White tea may refer to one of several styles of tea which generally feature young or minimally processed leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. Currently there is no generally accepted definition of white tea and very little international agreement; some sources use the term to refer to tea that is merely dried with no additional processing, some to tea made from the buds and immature tea leaves picked shortly before the buds have fully opened and allowed to wither and dry in natural …
      1. Thanks for that Kevin. All very interesting, but just as it’s common enough to ask for black tea meaning tea without milk, asking for white tea is most likely to be understood in the UK as meaning tea with milk. No doubt if one was purchasing leaves to make white tea then the more specialised meaning would have to come into play.
         1. I don’t know: not so very long ago there was a fuss in in Hackney (and other super sensitive areas, no doubt) that ordering black or white anything could be seen as insulting to some ethnic groups, so for a while we were supposed to use “tea with milk” or “tea without milk”. People asking for green tea were assumed to be trendies from Hoxton.
      2. Should have posted this yesterday from the ODO:

         white tea
         NOUN
         1 Tea that is processed so as to prevent fermentation before drying, typically producing a light-coloured beverage.

         2 (Chiefly British) tea served with milk or cream.

         So we’re all correct!

         1. ‘or cream’? OR CREAM?
            1. Yes, I know! In the days when milk had cream floating on the top we always used to give the bottle a good shake before adding it to tea to even out and dilute the cream content.
   2. White tea is made from the ‘pe-ko’ tips of the tea bush before they gain their green hue, and is therefore most expensive and hardly known in the West – although I recall Brooke Bond Pekoe Tips – which was strangely fermented black tea! Thus 2dn my resounding COD

      This was a stroll and my fastest time for ages.

      FOI 1ac SWISHIEST

      LOI 13dn BREAD ROLLS

      WOD WHITE TEA too!

      1. I checked with my supplier, and they actually offer a number of white teas:

         http://www.uptontea.com/teas/c/white-tea/

         I never order any, but it is certainly available. The prices are certainly a bit on the high side.

9. 25 mins – so quick my croissant isn’t warmed yet!
   But it soon will be, accompanied by Frank Cooper.
   MER at ‘designer’ being enough for Tattooer.
   Mostly I liked: Pasta/port/tonic combo, Stony Broke, the Franklin (again), the firearm anagram, and COD WINO.
   Thanks setter and George.
10. I like tea with milk in it, generally, but have also tried 2d WHITE TEA, often available in the kind of place that also sells green tea. People say white tea is healthier and lower in caffeine while still actually tasting different from plain hot water, but I’m not quite convinced about any of those assertions.

    40m, with 7d EDENTATE from parsing and a vague recollection from a previous puzzle, and 27a GEORGINA unparsed, despite our blogger and Vinyl coming up with two different ways I could have done it. FOI 1a SWISHEST, LOI 24d WINO, which was fun. Good puzzle all round, I thought.

11. 12:10. Once again a single clue extended my time by a couple of minutes: this time it was the TATTOOIST. All in vain anyway as I had a silly typo on the form of EDENDATE. Honestly what’s the point of checking your answers if you’re not going to do it carefully enough to spot something like that?
    I took the WHITE TEA to be the stuff you see in selection boxes of teabags, alongside (as GM says) green tea, rooibos and the like. I’ve never tried it.

    Edited at 2018-02-08 08:32 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve tried rooibos by accident (Mrs Z has a stockpile). It makes the milk taste funny.
       1. Rooibos is a marketing con by a South African farmer who had all these bushes and didn’t know what to do with them .. though for all I know it tastes good, never tried it
    2. Thanks for rooibos – nice Scrabble word, if I can remember it.

       Typos are God’s way of keeping you humble.

12. Finally I got the rare sub-10 after a couple of close ones this week. No problems with NUNEATON, but I thought it might delay non-native solvers. Althought I think TATTOOER has come up before surely in practice it’s always tattooist (which indeed keriothe has inadvertantly typed instead of tattooer above!).
    1. Oops! I do think I was slowed down by this unusual form: I thought of OO for holes early on, but it still took me ages to get the answer.

13. Glad to finish all in good time today (the last few days I seem to have had one that’s taken an age…), ending with, like others, EDENTATE and TATTOOER. Biffed TOGA, and thought of WHITE TEA as that opposed to green tea, rather than as that opposed to tea without milk.

14. A real stroll in the park with no problems along the way. I don’t drink tea but what else could it be other than WHITE? The anteater appears from time to time so a write-in

    NUNEATON is quite a large town. I remember I visited it on business when Mary Whitehouse was at her complaining peak and a guy in a pub told me that she came from there

15. 18 and one half imperial minutes for this one, with a lot of smiles on the way, rain din, UNDERCUT EX-CHANGE and WINO for examples (well, they made me smile). I’m next to certain that this setter originally had a cannibalism reference for NUNEATON but the editor thought it in bad taste. Spoilsport.
    Decent time, again, George.
16. 29 minutes with the SE last to fall, an unparsed INITIATE followed by WINO. My wife alternates between black and white tea so I often ask her which one she wants. I only call BREAD ROLLS buns in a burger place; otherwise I expect something sweeter. I’ve been moaning since McDonald’s replaced Wimpy about how much better a burger tasted with a toasted bun. Sadly, I learnt recently, from my children of course, that’s a phrase which has gained other connotations. I wondered why people used to look at me strangely while I advanced this culinary preference. I guess I’ll have to make INITIATE COD as the wittiest clue, even if I didn’t spot the pun at the time. Isn’t NUNEATON now the bellwether election town? Can we just get them to vote next time to save the rest of us the bother? Mid-difficulty puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
17. Held up by FRANKLIN and finished in about 50 minutes. Might have spent a long time on SEASONED but it helped that it also appeared, with the same def anyway, in today’s Independent.

    I liked INITIATE and the &lit (maybe “all in one” is a better, less contentious term) TOGA.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

18. DNF. Did all but Tattoer in 20 mins and some secs. 10 mins more and the tattooer had failed to display his colours and reveal himself.
19. I thought Winchester was a nicely concealed anagram. Concealed to me for a while anyway!

    I repeatedly read 13 down as ending in “a funny feeling”. I was quite surprised to discover my mistake. This may be related to having a funny feeling myself today. Feeling a bit weird and light headed. I’ve just completed the “5 day fast mimicking diet”. Lost 12 lb!!

    Edited at 2018-02-08 10:19 am (UTC)

    1. Blimey! Steve Bruce will be signing you up.
20. ‘Buns’ as sold in fast food outlets aren’t real bread at all, there’s probably more nourishment in the cardboard containers. Lots of place names today, thinking liberally – RIGA, FRANKLIN, ETON, WINCHESTER, EDEN, NUNEATON, GEORGIA as mentioned, and even 12ac may be a pretty English village. COD to INITIATE. 21′. Thanks gl and setter.
21. Smokin’. My biro’s still cooling down.
22. 34 mins: but thought I was in for a 20min solve with only two left to fill in: EDENTATE, TATTOOER. I was convinced there was some kind of ‘echidna’ link in the anteater clue (and thought myself very clever), then eventually saw the straightforward wordplay for Eden + [s]tate. NHO the solution, but hey-ho! And the designer was surely going to be some non-English proper-name, designer of clothes, cars or skyscrapers. WINO was clued very neatly and amusingly, but too easy really.

    Enjoyed this one. Thanks to our blogger.

23. Not a write-in but all very gettable. My main thought after solving this one was what a peculiar word TOGS is.
24. 20’20. A tad surprised by initiate as train and men as staff (though the verb, to man, still seems OK). Neat puzzle, scarcely humorous – bit of a primwit?
25. I had to spend a couple of nights in hospital recently and the first morning I had the ultimate WHITE TEA. They’d sent me up a cup of hot water and a carton of milk. 17.32
    1. Maybe they wanted to keep you in hospital? To help pay for the budget deal?
26. An enjoyable puzzle with SWISHEST starting me off and FRANKLIN bringing up the rear from wordplay, although I did suspect he might have been an associate of the Pardoner. EDENTATE was somehow familiar. I thought of TOGA early on but didn’t enter it until I spotted the wordplay. I missed the parsing of INITIATE, otherwise all done and understood in 21:13. Thanks setter and George.
27. Makes no sense to me. Got the I ATE bit but not the IN IT. Please explain fully
    1. You have to consider the whole clue. The question mark indicates you might have eaten in the train’s dining car. IN IT(the dining car) I ATE. Different sort of train of course:-)
       1. Still struggling. Initiate does not mean ‘train’. But given the letters, only INITIATE will fit. But i didn’t because it didn’t make sense…..
          1. I think it’s pretty much equivalent in contexts such as ‘From her childhood, she was initiated in various performing arts’.
          2. I think there is a certain amount of licence here. An initiate is, for example, a person who is being brought into a society or cult, and training is, at least loosely, part of the initiation process.
             We are assured that initiation into membership of the Piers Gaveston Society at Oxford involved training in the art of embarrassing pigs, which our former Prime Minister accomplished successfully. Allegedly.
          3. Also, if you initiate something, you set it in train….
28. 15.05 as a paper solve. Knew the anteater (daughter insists on visiting the zoo in any town or city we ever visit), also smiled at the jilted fish.

    TOGA unparsed (but what else could it be) and TATTOOER with a shrub (mine were certainly always …ISTs).

    Nearly fell into a biff-trap with STONE BROKE but corrected in time (I blame it on Stone Broken being played on the radio-box during solving).

29. 12 minutes, after changing ‘rained on’ to ‘reined in’ when I was unhappy with my lack of parsing.

    (still annoyed by yesterday’s ‘homophone’)

30. George, if I had a feminine side I wouldn’t get it out in this weather – there’s a nip in the air.

    Thirty-four minutes, which is slightly on the long side even for me, so I was selfishly disappointed to see that the consensus is that this was an easy one. I wasn’t held up by anything in particular (not even by the strange TATTOOER) – it just took a while for each penny to drop.

31. I made a silly mistake in today’s QC but managed to get this one right. LOI was Edentate and before that Tattooer.
    It helped that I knew where Nuneaton is. David
32. Well, I didn’t know where NUNEATON is. In fact, I didn’t know it existed. I confess I looked it up, hence the DNF from me today. The rest took about 30 minutes, with TATTOOER and INITIATE holding me up. WINO is concisely clued, nice work setter, and thanks George. Regards.
33. DNF after 43 minutes, shot down by STONE BROKE (rather than STONY BROKE, not in my idiolect either). Somehow I found an explanation (ONE BR?) for the poor relative from my hometown without hitting upon the obvious wordplay for the correct answer. Oh well.
34. 20 mins. Nice puzzle and great blog. Cheers.
35. I romped through most of this enjoyable offering in 24 mins on the train before work intervened and rattled off the few remaining stragglers in 5 mins at lunchtime. Light and refreshing. Good fun.
36. Whoops I just turned into a neutrino, after doing the Xword on my iphone while playing a table tennis match, and then filling in on my return, and pressing the wrong button. Still there’s 20 people ahead of me! Again being a veggie I had no idea if there was such a thing as an UNDERCUT. Used to sell WHITE TEA in my shop, where we had aficionados of it, but to me it tasted of nothing
37. Not so slow today: about 22 minutes. I only learned about WHITE TEA yesterday, curious that it should occur today. Very simple: thanks all.

    On another subject, here’s a clue I designed to be the most annoying ever 🙂

    Actor digests it in another retrospective study (8)

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