Times 26968 – 25 up your ears?

78 comments on “Times 26968 – 25 up your ears?”

1. At 48 minutes I found this quite challenging but very enjoyable.

   6dn is currently unparsed in the blog but is quite obviously THOUGH (however), T (time).

   At 11ac I tend to think of 1am as being an early hour rather than a late one but I suppose either is possible.

   Reluctantly I have to accept that usage trumps everything, but I’m mildy irritated by WAG being applied to the singular female. It’s derived from ‘wives and girlfriends’ meaning the significant others of members of a sports team, so the singular female (as in 27ac) would presumably have to be one or the other. But I suppose the acronym that included ‘or’ would be unfortunate and unacceptable because of other connotations, so we have to put up with illogical grammar instead.

   Edited at 2018-02-22 07:09 am (UTC)

   1. I don’t see WAG as being worse than taking BIFD and saying “I biffed 6ac”. Or fridge as an abbreviation of a word that has no D in it. Abbreviations don’t always seem to work 100% right since they usually have to be both short and pronounceable.
      1. Yes, in one version of the above I made a reference to the incongruity of ‘biffing’ but it got deleted in the edit. Nevertheless WAG used in the singular still mildy irritates me and that’s a fact, whether or not it’s justified.

         Edited at 2018-02-22 08:32 am (UTC)

2. Fell at the last hurdle here. Had all but the SE corner done in 25 minutes. Realised in the end that my perfectly reasonable-seeming “BRUSH” for 25a—”brush” being synonymous with “groom” and also what you get by putting the R inside “bush” for “carnation”—was wrong.

   That let me get the rest of the corner, but left me with 25a, still. Ten minutes later I finally put in “prick” as the only word I could think of. Sadly I didn’t know PRINK, or “pink” for carnation (or at least didn’t realise we might be talking about colours at the time. Are we?)

   A disappointing end to what was otherwise quite a straightforward puzzle. Curses!

   Edited at 2018-02-22 06:54 am (UTC)

   1. A pink is a type of carnation (flower). That could be better phrased the other way round, for all I know.
      1. Thank you. The main images that spring to mind when I hear “carnation” are those bright red carnations in Jean de Florette/Manon des Source (I just found out the director had 10,000 of them planted for the latter film…) and evaporated milk, so while I knew pink ones existed it just didn’t occur at the time…
   2. Your version certainly fits some weddings I’ve been to.
3. 23 minutes, ending with CASTELLAN and TUNIC, with BURST not far behind.

   PLENIPOTENTIARY is a grand word, though I would have been unable to define it more precisely than ‘officer’.

   ALB is rapidly becoming the new CEP.

   1. Another excellent time, U, even without the AM to keep you honest – well done! Sub-30-minutes is starting to look like the norm for you 🙂
      1. I think I am channeling his spirit. Occasionally, though, the kangaroos still go loose in the top paddock.
4. 40 mins with toast and the unparalleled Gin&Lime marmalade from Lewis and Cooper. Zingy.
   Last 15 mins in the SE, having painstakingly pieced together the Ambassador.
   Foolishly I wrote in -SAW for the power tool and then alphabet trawled for the Groom. If the setter intended for me to do that, he/she is a blaggard. I suppose this should get COD.
   Eventually I put the P in Saw and Bob was my uncle.
   Mostly I liked: Nasty poster, Wag and ‘turning around’.
   Thanks blaggard and George.
   1. Very nice TLS this week. I liked Roald Dahl’s poultry. The play in which one should (or should not) fancy a lass made me laugh.
      1. I’ve just had a crack at the TLS for the first time (Praxiteles from 16 Feb.) I had to use reference sources, but enjoyed it. Looking at the solution to 1209, it looks even tougher, so it may be above my pay grade, but I’ll try a few more and see how it goes.
         1. Nice to hear from you. They’re well worth the effort and vastly improved since PB took over as editor and he and 3 other new setters came on board. I’m just so very sorry the puzzles were dropped from the Club, and I also miss the blogs here on tftt. With the help of JerryW, Sotira, Pip, Zabadak and I continue to enjoy the puzzles off piste, as it were. As to using ref. sources – I didn’t need them for Myrtilus this week but that’s unusual (I think for all of us).
            1. Thanks for that, and good wishes.
               George C
5. 42 mins on the clock for me, but certainly under 30 mins of actual solving due to nagging washing machine and dryer beeping for attention. My only hold up was biffing TURN IN ONES SLEEP which is obviously wrong since “sleep” is in the clue (never mind not meaning serious).
6. Very minor correction to the blog. Sacred is scared after turning ‘around’ (CA)
7. Periodically there comes a puzzle with a long anagram which is much tougher to solve on the ipad compared to on paper, and today’s was one such puzzle with PLENIPOTENTIARY. I always think at the time I’ll carry a pen and paper with me as well then forget until the next such puzzle, and no doubt I’ll repeat that today.
   1. Yes. Related to that thought, whenever we get a clue like this I think “This is excellent. From now on I’ll remember where all the goofy letters go and I’ll be able to spell it properly”. Only remembering the clues is impossibly more work than just learning to spell would be. Doesn’t seem fair.
8. Normal service resumed after yesterday’s zenith. Thanks for the parsing of SACRED above(reversing CA). Nearly biffed RARE METAL. SACRED LOI and COD to BY NO MEANS. I hope that 12 minutes and then 30 minutes is not a trend or tomorrow’s must be a tough one.
9. 18.16, quite a lot of it panicking my way through the first few clues wondering if I’d stumbled across the wrong clues. Then I persisted with RECLOTHES until it gave in, and the rest pretty well flowed. Apart from 19d, of course: tool, 3 letters, ends in W, same stab as everyone else, I expect.
   Reading the comments, I wondered what on earth the debate on WAG was there for, and realised I had biffed BANDWAGON after accepting the pop group didn’t need to be one I’d heard of. (Note to setters. Please don’t). Like Jack, I’d rather not see it used as a singular term. I mean, Wayne Rooney for example might probably b**k his WAG, but probably not at the same time. Not with the long-suffering Coleen having the decisive voice.
10. 13 min 05 secs.
11. Nineteen minutes for me, with CASTELLAN my only NHO. My only query is over CAT’S-PAW – why the hyphen?
12. 34 minutes, evenly spread on this enjoyable puzzle, apart from spending time on 4d thinking there might be a hymn tune ALL SOULS. They fought the good fight in the great beyond, before the AIR FORCE finally came to their rescue flying (Burt) Lancasters. I’ve tried to google if the RAF do have an official hymn, equivalent to the Navy’ s ‘Eternal Father strong to save’, but all I’ve come up with is one to the Dambusters’ tune. At last I now know why roads are described as metalled on maps. Liked NTH, but it doesn’t always mean last. “For the NTH time, stop doing that” said to children is always followed by an (N+1)th occasion in my experience. COD to TURN IN ONES GRAVE. I enjoyed getting MAGELLAN straight too, and CASTELLAN was neat. Not sure I knew PRINK, but I usually call my carnations pinks, so it caused no problems. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Collins has all bases covered with this: being the last, most recent, or most extreme of a long series.

       In my experience (i.e. when addressed to me as a child) the expression was always ‘for the umpteenth time’.

13. Steady progress top to bottom – never easy but not particularly hard either. Very middle of the road. I liked AIR FORCE.
14. Maybe the singular for WAG should be WOG – wife or girlfriend…. I think therefore we should stick to WAG!

    34 mins of fairly MOR fare

    FOI 1ac BY NO MEANS
    LOI 17dn SLIMMER
    COD and WOD 21ac PLENIPOTENTIARY

    I also enjoyed 14ac STROLL and 25ac PRINK a common enough word
    in the last century.

    24ac ROAD METAL was clever enough but I like my stones slightly more precious.

    1. If you read my post on the subject you may see that I had alluded to that without stating it explicitly for fear of offending those of a delicate disposition. It now seems my efforts in that regard have been wasted.
       1. Sorry I missed it! Apologies to to one and all!
    2. Where angels fear to tread 🙂
15. Whoo-hoo! my only sub-30 mins since a fortnight ago. I was going for the time, writing in SACRED, AIR-FORCE, RECLOTHES, TURN IN ONES GRAVE and others without bothering to work out the parsing. A steady solve. ALB and CASTELLAN were NHOs for me, but both sounded plausible.
    Like boltonwanderer, I don’t think the NTH is the last: it’s just one of very many in a series.
    The 15-letter solution (as so often, I find, with the full length words) just seemed to pop into my head.
    Thanks, setter, for a good puzzle and thanks, George, for a good blog.
16. I was slow to see this but I agree with Napasai on the parsing. The hymn-like suggestion of 4d carried over to RECLOTHES which had a hint of “Dear lord and father of mankind”. And I liked the idea of Scotland Yard investigating the NUDIST who took a STROLL past CLARENCE House. 17.17
    1. Clarence Stroll b. Innsbruck 1846 d. Vienna 1922 -Austrian cellist, librettist worked under Mahler.
17. 18’25, seemed straightforward enough. Nth as latest (that ‘last’) time in a long series gets the setter away from a technical corner. Commendable brevity in clue and answer. I rather like the word-slide to the singular WAG, which as far as I know happened more or less as soon as the acronym came up. It’s a nice example of the rule-busting way language can develop. (Can’t say I care for the example of its use though, z. Crosses a line for me, though I know not for many.)
    1. Sorry Joe. I must stop reading the tabloid headlines in the supermarket rack. It seems after a while it blurs your sense of propriety.
18. For a footballer, the singular WAG, as in wife And girlfriend, is entirely appropriate as the two are not necessarily the same person😀
    1. But if a footballer has a wife AND girlfriend ‘not necessarily the same person’ that’s two people, not the single ‘female’ as in the clue.

       However, on reflection, since the clue mentions ‘pop group’ (not all of them exactly renowned for their exemplary behaviour in matters of the heart etc) it’d be quite possible for the ‘accompanying female’ to be the wife of one and girlfriend of another thus qualifying her as a WAG.

       Edited at 2018-02-22 01:56 pm (UTC)

19. I started in a similar way to Z., staring blankly at about a dozen clues, and thinking this must be one of those puzzles, but oddly, as soon as I got a handhold, it all flowed very pleasantly. No nasty unknowns today, though I might have struggled to give a precise definition of CASTELLAN and PLENIPOTENTIARY without the helpful context.
    1. Can’t have been staring for *too* long to finish in a time like that!

20. So continuing a not-too-bad run for the week (although glossing over the spectacular typo that left me with 4 wrong on Monday’s quickie).

    The WAG concept sits a bit uncomfortably, but does seem to be in broad usage now, so probably (just) fair game. And I have to admit to a chortle at z’s scenario.

    Also went down the route of bunging in the second part of the tool, before dragging PRINK up from the depths of somewhere, I’m sure there is a botanical distinction between pinks and carnations, but don’t ask me what please.

    Last one in PLENIPOwotsit – definitely a tricky one in your head on the train. Luckily I had pen and paper with me, although lost a minute finding them.

    Edited at 2018-02-22 12:26 pm (UTC)

    1. I believe there is a distinction between them. The sort of carnation that’s grown for buttonholes tends to have no scent whereas pinks (dianthus) have a very distinctive slightly peppery but sweet (not too) scent. Roger & Gallet used to have a soap that my mother kept in the linen cupboard called oeillet mignardise which had that scent. And I believe the Elizabethan name for pinks was sops-in-wine. And now you know more than you ever wanted to on the subject!
       1. I’ll certainly concede that the pinks in my garden wouldn’t be up to being buttonholes in a white sport(s) coat (UK recordings such as The King Brothers included the ‘s’) unless The Borrowers were to borrow them. I think they are all of the Dianthus species though. I ‘ve always followed the lead of my erstwhile gardening consultants, my mother and my sister, now sadly both gone.
21. all done in 31 mins, except that I had biffed SECRET meaning to come back to it later. Once I had PLENIPOTENTIARY (I started with plenitentiary….) which I guess is a blend of 2 words. Talking of which we were discussing malaphors yesterday. My favourite is “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”. Also like “damp squid” which my wife had been saying for years till it was pointed out to her! Any better offerings?
    1. I used to work with a chap who liked to put things ‘on ice’, on the back burner.
       My mother would sometimes refer to pee-hole surgery.
       1. Presumably, if you don’t opt out, urine.
    2. In the same vein, an old boss once reassured us that “Rome wasn’t burned in a day”. Which later turned up as the title of a Julian Cope album, though I’m pretty sure Julian wasn’t at that meeting.
    3. During the course of a telephone conversation with a garage, the mechanic, after listing the jobs needing attention, said: ‘ Just to be sure we are batting from the same hymn sheet!’ As my son would say, Absolute Legend!
       1. Laugh out loud!
22. Spent too long on PRINK, my last in, to finish in about 45 minutes. I liked the misdirection in CATS-PAW, even if I had no idea what one was – now rectified thanks to Chambers and Google. A ‘cat’ is also a “…bluff-bowed boat of shallow draught with rigging incomplete in the mizzen”. The HMS Endeavour is probably the most famous example (sorry, think I said that here a few months ago).

    Personally, I’d love to work in YUKON. I think.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

23. I found this one a bit tougher than usual. BURST was my FOI folloed by a biffed BE MY GUEST at 1a which slowed me down until I saw that 2d was an anagram without an M. Meagre pickings from there on saw TROLL and ALB go in, then the SW gave me a toehold. I hadn’t heard of PRINK, but the wordplay was clear enough. The 15 letter anagram didn’t surface until I wrote it down, at which point it was obvious with the checkers I had. I constructed the vaguely remembered CASTELLAN from wordplay. I was almost undone by a biffed TIN TUB which became TON TUB when 21a went in at 20d, but my recent run of typos has instilled a bit of discipline, and I spotted it before submitting. MALAISE was my LOI apart from that. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and George.
    On edit: Forgot to say, 39:18.

    Edited at 2018-02-22 01:35 pm (UTC)

    1. I had a BE MY GUEST written in the margin but fortunately didn’t feel confident enough to put it in the grid.
       1. One of the advantages of solving online is that you can try things out and then remove them without leaving a scratchy mess behind 🙂
          1. God Bless Mess!

             No angel.

          2. I’ve wondered how other people manage this with paper. Personally I’ve found the Fisher Space Pen pretty much perfect for crosswords, as you can write your guesses in very lightly with it, but it inks in beautifully when you’re feeling confident…
             1. I suppose you can always print it out again if you make a mess, unless you’ve only got the hard copy issue of the Times, that is:-)
24. Having resolved to do the puzzle earlier than 10pm, I’ve opened an account this afternoon (Phil Jordan for those who know me). I’m not in the Club, so timings are a little give and take, and, as I’m still a working cab driver, may be spread over two or three sessions !

    This one went in at around 13 minutes in one straight burst. I might have been quicker if I’d not spent a minute or so trying to justify UNCLOTHED.

    I didn’t think DI was a rank peculiar to the Met, so thought “Scotland Yard” was superfluous.

    Biffed 6A as I didn’t spot Cnut.

    COD to 12D, LOI 17D.

    1. Great time.

       Perhaps if you did your justification clothed next time ….?

       I suppose that you are good on ranks?

       1. I was when I was MUCH younger !
    2. Welcome, Phil. I know you fellows can multitask, but even a cabbie can’t get in the club, though, can he?
25. It would make a great ‘sounds like’ clue with UConn – the UK solvers get would stuck for sure.

    Edited at 2018-02-22 06:04 pm (UTC)

    1. Hello vinyl1,
       Coming from Antipodean latitudes, I’m er… a bit stuck myself. Would you be referring to Meg Ryan’s alma mater by any chance?
       1. Yes, she was from Fairfield, a couple of towns over from me.

          Both my nieces went to UConn, too, but they’re not famous.

          1. Unlike their eminent uncle.

             Yours humbly,

             etc.

26. ….as I just biffed ‘bandwagon’ from the clue, not knowing a WAG from a worthy oriental gent. I couldn’t see the parsing for ‘alb’, either – well it is backwards inside ‘black’, isn’t it? Like many, I thought 19 would turn out to be some sort of saw, and then just biffed ‘cat’s paw’ as the evident answer. The only word I didn’t know was ‘prink’, and the cryptic hands it to you.
27. 12 down: What is ‘bired’ as in ‘mina(bired)’ in the explanation?
    1. I believe it is a typo, which should read ‘bird’. Besides mina, you may also find myna and mynah.
       1. So it’s just a “mynah” aberration…..
28. 28 mins. Need to speed up 🙂
29. Not much to say, done in 20 minutes, ending with MAGELLAN because I suppose I was expecting a UK-ish explorer. Never saw PRINK before, but put it in anyway, and biffed BANDWAGON so I didn’t have the chance to muse on the suitability of the WAG. I’m surprised to see it here, now it’s been pointed out. Anyway, regards.
30. Another day, another careless error, misspelling CASTELLAN, but around 13:45 for this.

    Nice puzzle, requiring some thought at times. And of course PRINK, one of those words you sort of know but which doesn’t look quite right when you see it

31. Just on the 30m with fingers crossed on the CASTELLAN. Enjoyed the challenge and had a tick for BANDWAGON. Wondered why the opening ‘in’ for the CATSPAW clue but padding/surface I guess. Thank you setter and blogger today.
32. I quite agree with Sotira’s comment about PRINK, but of course, what else could it be. Nothing else really difficult except ALB and some doubts about NTH being the last (but then crossword setters are not mathematicians and if I were going to be difficult about that maybe I should be doing sudokus instead). Otherwise a pleasant puzzle with some tricky clues, which took me 39 minutes to solve. Better than my usual hour.
33. 34:21. Nothing entered until FOI 14ac so I did begin to worry that this was going to be an arduous solve. Fortunately things flowed smoothly thereafter. LOI (aptly) was the economical 7dn. Prink, cats-paw and castellan all sort of half-known I think. A pleasant solve. I believe that in 3dn the setter has pulled off the extraordinary feat of finding a homophone that hasn’t so much as raised an eyebrow (or should that be earlobe). I certainly had no problems with it, just a bit surprised to come here and find no one else did either, they usually generate an interesting discussion.
    1. I remember being slightly disappointed as I solved the clue to realise that there would be no entertaining disputations over this.

       I have noted with interest during my 30 years in the East a change in the pronunciation of their own country by said Malays. For years it was Malayzia, but recently my preferred Malaysha has started to pop up.

       1. Evidence that Sean Connery’s influence has spread to south east Asia? He truly is a global shupershtar.
          1. I’m not so keen on Connery now that I’ve discovered Rob Brydon.
             1. Well good luck to him, those P&O cruises aren’t going to flog themselves.
34. 33 minutes: great crossword: thanks to setter, blogger & commenters.

    ON+ON in SE corner both clued in the same way. Is this an indication that setter is a Hash House Harrier (fond of a STROLL which is also a REVEL)?

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