Times 26,969: Northern Powerhouse

85 comments on “Times 26,969: Northern Powerhouse”

1. 50 mins with yoghurt, granola, parkin, and a glass of tawny.
   But the cheese (and surroundings) took ages to come. And I spent many minutes on what had to be Forswore trying to fathom what the SWOR was all about. MER at ‘recurrent’ as reversal indicator.
   The other that threw me was the stuntwoman despite the excellent wordplay.
   Mostly I liked: Stuntwoman, Rivals, two short bananas, Aglow and Jolly Roger (COD).
   Thanks cheesy setter and V.

   PS – I’ve looked up recurrent and see the ‘medical’ meaning.

   Edited at 2018-02-23 08:25 am (UTC)

2. 15:24 … classy offering with some lovely surfaces. I especially liked the GOSPELLER and the FREEMASON.

   The JOLLY ROGER was, I suppose, an early version of gang colours. They liked their ink, too. There’s a Social Studies dissertation in that

3. Wondrously good crossword today I thought. 26m of sheer enjoyment. For me, 4ac, 13d and 24d were outstanding examples of the setter’s art. Many thanks to the setter and V. My only very tiny gripe is with ‘swiped’ as meaning ‘stolen’. Surely swiped and ‘stole’ are the equivalents? I don’t really see how swiped can operate adjectivally.
   1. “My biscuit was stolen” = “My biscuit was swiped”: it’s the past participle form of the verb that’s required here.
      1. Roger that. Of course. Thanks.
4. 28 minutes. JOLLY ROGER deserves its top billing, but me, I just loves me the word VISIGOTH. So much more cachet than the weaselling Goth.
   1. I mean, Ostrogoths are *okay*, but they’re no Visigoths.
5. 48 mins held up by 22ac FORSWORE – had stuck in FOREWENT which made 13dn JOLLY ROGER my LOI and COD.

   FOI 2dn LUCID

   WOD VISIGOTH

   So all a bit FRIDAY here in in Shangers.

   Golly Gosh! Lord Ulaca agree on two points!

   Edited at 2018-02-23 09:03 am (UTC)

   1. I was intending – and then of course forgot in the heat of the moment – to use FORSWORE as a springboard to talk about my observation that, if you want to beat people at the noble game of Hangman, find a word like this, and it will leave your opposition in the dust. FORWENT is one of my go-tos, because even if you find most of the letters the F and W remain unobvious!

      Edited at 2018-02-23 10:26 am (UTC)

      1. I don’t know if you’re a Thurber aficionado, v., but he wrote a glorious essay on a word-game, Superghosts, which I played obsessively in classrooms of all secondary age and general ability levels for several decades, and now with grand-children, hopefully ditto.
6. 43 minutes. Very enjoyable but thought the definition at 22dn a bit feeble – unless I’m missing something.
   1. you talk about the ‘essential facts’ of a case (?)
      1. Thanks, Rob, I can’t say I’d heard of ‘essential’ in this context but following your lead I researched further and came up with the legal term ‘Questions of Fact’ (to be decided by the jury) as opposed to ‘Questions of Law’ (to be determined by the judge). All relevant to ‘case’ anyway.
         1. Facta probanda as opposed to facta probantia
7. FOLIO LIO, as I spent much time looking for an anagram of ‘man’ and ‘secret’ to mean an obscure art term for a mother and child. Held up in SW, eventually parsed FACTS. Dnk SAGE DERBY, but presume it’s one of those cheeses that taste of anything but cheese. Nice Friday puzzle, 33′, thanks verlaine and setter.
   1. I knew SAGE DERBY only because it’s one of the cheeses John Cleese asks for in vain at Wensleydale’s Natural Cheese Emporium.
8. No, I didn’t walk to the front but I’d like to think 27a was a tribute to Billy Graham. 38 minutes today in a puzzle of two halves. I set off like a house on fire before grinding to a halt towards the bottom and then slowly crawling to the finish line with FORSWORE which I’d have misspelt if it had been possible. I liked the innocuous TOOL and the UNDERLING but COD has to go to the JOLLY ROGER. PARKIN was a great favourite of mine as a small boy in post-war austerity, before cream cakes re-appeared. I still love the stuff. Great puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
   1. Two minds with but a single thought! Always the shining exception to his fleece-the-flock rivals.

      Edited at 2018-02-23 10:36 am (UTC)

      1. He certainly managed to get quite a lot of money from *somewhere,* by all accounts
   2. I can’t hear the refrain of “Just As I Am” without thinking about religious adoration as sublimated sexuality (see Bernini’s Saint Teresa).

      Billy Graham once urged President Nixon to commit a war crime by bombing the dikes that prevented flooding in North Vietnam—with nukes, no less. Even Kissinger said this would be “too much.”

      And then there were his comments (again, to Nixon and company) about “the Jews”…

      1. That much religious adoration comes from sublimated sexual feeling, I will not deny. That doesn’t necessarily impugn its integrity. I was aware of neither story you mention and I will readily admit that most of my knowledge of Graham is fifty plus years old, when he was at the peak of his powers. From a google scan, the first, the nuke story, seems to be covered mainly on news web sites I don’t know and whose reliability I therefore cannot judge. The second has been covered in the New York Times but without compelling evidence that there was that much behind it. Matthew Avery Sutton this week argues in the Guardian that Graham was on the wrong side of history on civil rights and global warming by propounding doctrines of personal as opposed to social transformation, which I think gets to the crux of modern critiques of Graham. If so, he is at least faithfully giving the evangelical message, which is not one I wholly share. I’m a middle of the road cradle Anglican, old Labour cum Liberal in political values, so would also argue the need for social transformation. But he was a remarkable man who changed lives, for better or worse.
         REPLY
         1. Just Google site-colon-nytimes DOT com + Kissinger + “Billy Graham” + nuclear + dams + “North Vietnam” (probably don’t need all those) and you’ll find a Times story on it, if that’s what you need: nytimes DOT com DOT 2002 SLASH 03 SLASH 01 SLASH world SLASH nixon-proposed-using-a-bomb-in-vietnam-war DOT htm.

            And I find, evidently, that there was more “behind” his comments about Jewish people than you say you see.

            Edited at 2018-02-23 08:58 pm (UTC)

            1. I’ve read all I can Google in the NY TImes, including much that is favourable to Graham as a non-partisan figure. A life that long with so much on public and private record will be bound to produce unfortunate, even stupid, remarks. I’d no intention when mentioning him in my original post as acting as his apologist. I’ve never been that keen on disputation as a mode of ascertaining facts and current politics both sides of the Atlantic more than demonstrates why. He lived a life.
               1. Sure. We have nothing to dispute, as the facts I presented are undeniable. What those facts prompt one to think or feel is another matter altogether
9. 23.16, overcomplicating things again, as on Wednesday. In 1d, I was thrown by the clue being a perfect offering for SON: your man with secret order being a MASON, release MA. Couldn’t see how to stretch SON to a 9 letter light.
   Spent a while trying to make the acid at 5d an anagram of laminate (off) with the CID of child regularly picked – it works cryptically except for the rather obvious surfeit of letters.
   I also froze trying to remember whether EXCHEQUER had an O at the end: one of those spelling tests which is eminently failable.
   GOSPELLER a nicely timed tribute to Billy Graham, perhaps. I heard him in the pouring rain on his last rally in England at Wembley. His singing sidekick George Beverley Shea was singing How Great Thou Art’s “I hear the mighty thunder” at the exact moment lightning hit the twin towers with a simultaneous crack. Never quite sure whether that was divine approval (couldn’t be stage managed!) or a dire warning.
   1. Listening to George Beverley Shea singing How Great Thou Art or Great is Thy Faithfulness still brings me out in goosebumps.
10. Excellent clues here with JOLLY ROGER a stand out

    Very enjoyable puzzle which demonstrated that numerous obscure literary references are not necessary in order to provide a good test and considerable satisfaction after solving

    1. I might have to put a sign up in my study “You don’t have to enjoy numerous obscure literary references to work here… but it helps”.
       1. I have two quotations from Einstein in my office:

          You can’t solve a problem using the same way of thinking that created it

          and

          The true sign of intelligence isn’t knowledge – it’s imagination

          1. I am applying the latter quote to my burgeoning adventures in the Quiz League of London… with mixed results so far, but I’m still optimistic.
             1. But the London Quiz League is measuring knowledge, not intelligence, V. The value of Einstein’s quotation lies in its usefulness to explain why you haven’t won…
11. Like horryd I could only think of FOREWENT rather than FORSWORE but unlike horryd I failed to move beyond it. I was nowhere near JOLLY ROGER anyway, with my assumption that I was looking for a term for a takeover bid, possibly latin and maybe something to do with chess or bridge. Well done setter on such a good clue and in defeating me comprehensively.
12. A steady 21.50 for this enjoyable offering. Like our esteemed blogger I too found the SW corner the chewiest.
    A good test relying on wordplay skills rather than GK, although the cheese might not be so familiar.
13. I didn’t even note the wordplay, and wondered what was cryptic about the clue: A rastafarian believes in the return of Haile Selassie. So an &lit?
    1. I wondered if it might be an &lit! But then forgot to go and check it up. Thanks!

       Edited at 2018-02-23 10:23 am (UTC)

    2. Yes, yes: certainly an &lit because of Haile Selassie. And I didn’t see the wordplay, either. Lovely clue.
       1. Am I right in thinking it’s a semi-&lit rather than an &lit because “believer” is no part of the wordplay? I keep doubting myself now after Gerund-gate last week (I will never again be sure which is a gerund and which a gerundive now).
          1. Oh, oh, yes — you’re right. I’m getting carried away. The definition stands apart as a separate component, as you rightly point out. But a clever self-referential surface anyway.

14. Great puzzle, with the top going in quicker that the bottom. A biffed forsaken held me up, and the DERBY bit of 28ac took some time to see too, as did CLOISTERED (some anagrams are just ‘better’ than others…). Yep, I too thought of Billy Graham too at GOSPELLER.

15. Odd; I clearly remember just typing this and posting it; anyway,
    I was glad to see I wasn’t alone in putting in ‘forewent’; wasted maybe 5′ working on ‘went’ before remembering that it’s ‘forgo’ not ‘forego’. Got PARKIN only because it appeared recently; DNK at the time. Also DNK, alas, was JOLLY=party, which meant biffing a lovely clue without having a clue. I’m with Sotira on FREEMASON & GOSPELLER.
16. 42m today with at least 10 of them on the pesky girl on the set, my LOI. When it eventually clicked, much grumbling at my dimness! Another here who thought this an excellent offering with ticks for JOLLY ROGER and GOSPELLER but lots of other pleasing surfaces and satisfying solves. Thank you, setter, and also our esteemed blogger. Oh and this was solved over a high fat, fried breakfast today. So double the pleasures.
17. Whoever this setter is, they are clearly sympathetic to my way of thinking. Very nice. SAGE DERBY set me off on a John Cleese-inspired list, as well. Good revision for other cheesy comestibles which might appear in crosswords. Tilsit, Caerphilly, Bel Paese…
    1. Tilsit certainly does appear in crosswords, even having an entry in the Crossword Who’s Who. Are there any other equally cheesy setters? Great time by the way!

       Edited at 2018-02-23 11:16 am (UTC)

    2. Never knew Tilsit was a cheese. Tilsit is known to me through Leon Feuchtwanger’s remarkably prescient novel, The Oppermanns, published in 1933. Of course, the place, though not the cheese, is now Sovetsk.

       Edited at 2018-02-24 11:16 am (UTC)

18. 25’47 except that threw ferric acid into the works and forgot to go back to it, so technically, effort ruined. But an enjoyable charge-about nonetheless. Amazing how Times cluing keeps working the changes. Give them all medals. Jolly Roger the stand-out for me today.
19. Yes, very good one. I was another who didn’t know where to put the E in FOR?????. Also held up by a couple of definitions – “wiped”=disposed of and NODE=crossing. 22.18. P.S. Verlaine, in the last paragraph of your intro, it’s 28A (not D) that goes with the PARKIN (oh picky picky).
    1. Grazie! My children getting to school on time usually depends entirely on me not bothering to check these things.
20. Excellent crossword. PARKIN LOI. A long time ago my aunt lived with us. She was chief cheese taster at Cow & Gate. She absolutely hated sage derby and red windsor. Her favourites were Canadian Black Diamond and Dorset Blue. She died young which is not surprising if you eat cheese every few minutes for decades.
    1. But can you just as well replace “young” with “happy” in that sentence? That’s the real question.
       1. Certainly in all the photos of the family she took on her Brownie we were in hysterics. As soon as she said “say cheese” we all cracked up.
    2. Clearly a lady of good taste. Full name is Dorset Vinney and it’s made in Sturminster Newton in deepest Dorset. A crumbly blue cheese it’s best eaten with Dorset Knobs – hard biscuits that feature in an annual throwing contest. There’s all sorts go on here my lovely!
21. Definitely chewy, this one: took me 70mins. But that was 70 minutes of very enjoyable puzzling. I got held up for … well, probably for 20mins! … on FOR????? crossing with JOLLY ROGER. Like many others I couldn’t let go of the conviction that it began FORE- and I also tried FOREWENT (from ‘forego’!) for about 10 mins. The piratical clue was splendid. Once that penny dropped, the LOI FORSWORE came to me — “Oh! put the E[nglish] at the *end*. Doh!”.

    I also had a MER at “disposed of” = “wiped”.

    No arty, TLS-y solutions (boo!) but no European physicists either (hooray!). So a well-balanced and fun puzzle. Let’s hear it for the setter. And a classic Verlaine blog to round off the Friday fun.

22. ….I can’t get this blog to accept the profile I set up yesterday (or indeed very much else !) so will retain my anonymity, while placing my moniker in the heading.

    Excellent puzzle, around 12 minutes. I concur re the chewiness of the SW quadrant.

    I seem to have regained my enthusiasm for matters cruciverbal, and MAY reconsider my decision not to enter the Championships any more.

    FOI 9A
    LOI 22A (after light finally dawned re 22D)
    COD 13D

    Can one still buy Formica ?

    1. Formica is very much still available, complete with the same cheesy 1970s capital F logo. It describes itself as “the world’s largest manufacturer of High Pressure Laminate (HPL)”, though that may just mean it’s the worlds largest manufacturer of Formica. I could never get to cut and shape it without it cracking where it shouldn’t.
       1. Oh, and keep trying with the registration thing. It works eventually.
          I have every reason not to go to the championships, having fallen apart 2 years running after my high point 23rd. But I probably still will.
       2. Can it really be a coincidence that High Pressure Laminate has the same initials as Howard Phillips Lovecraft?
23. Not being in the UK, I had never heard of ‘Parkin’, but the cryptic is clear enough. On the other hand, when I lived in Manhattan, you could buy Sage Derby at the local shop, along with 500 other cheeses from around the world.

    There were, however, three chestnuts in ‘rasta’, ‘exchequer’, and ‘freemason’. I wonder if the setters put them in on purpose to keep their puzzles from being too hard?

    1. One man’s chestnut, another man’s enigma……
24. Tough today. 33 min 01 secs. Agreed – some very clever clues.
25. Stretched out to 38:23 by this chewy puzzle, with FOLIO, NODE, FACTS, RASTA and my LOI, JOLLY ROGER(slap round the head with a wet fish moment when the penny dropped) taking up a large portion of that. I thought 13d was going to be some Latin phrase when I had R_G_R for the second word. A most enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and V for the usual erudite blog.
26. 24 mins. Cool puzzle, great blog.
27. 16:01. I whizzed through the NE corner but that didn’t give me anything useful to work with in the other three quadrants so I effectively had to start again somewhere else.
28. 16:38, with about five minutes at the end failing to get STUNTWOMAN. Very nice puzzle.
    I think in 1ac the definition is ‘turning over leaf’: a FOLIO is a ‘sheet of paper folded in half’ (Collins). ‘Essence derived from’ gives OIL OF – oil of evening primrose is an essence derived from evening primrose – and ‘revolutionary’ is a reversal indicator. Keeping things turning doesn’t come into it: wrong sort of oil.
    1. Hmm, possibly. “Turning over leaf” seems like a verrrry oblique way of defining “sheet of paper folded in half” though, he said in an unconvinced tone of voice.
       1. I agree it’s a bit oblique, but assuming that an essential oil is lubricating a wheel strikes me as much more so.
          And I’m pretty sure that OIL OF is ‘essence derived from’.

          Edited at 2018-02-23 04:57 pm (UTC)

          1. Good point well made! I know very little about lubricating wheels, or indeed anything practical. I couldn’t tell the difference between a screw and a pulley in a quiz of Tuesday.
          2. Neither explanation seems quite right. I thought “revolutionary essence” referred to oil’s role in the industrial revolution, but that’s probably not it either.
             1. I was very much seduced by the common phrase “oil the wheels”, but didn’t consider that “essence” becomes a strange word to use to clue the oil in that metaphor…
             2. I agree that ‘turning over leaf’ for FOLIO is unsatisfactory but I can’t think of a better explanation. It seems clear to me that the oil in the clue is an essential oil, not an industrial oil or lubricant.
                1. Interestingly, it would make more sense as a down clue.
          3. That’s how I parsed it too.
29. Perhaps equanimity in the face of one’s inevitable passing could be defined as ROGER MORTIS.
    1. 🙂
30. Phew. I have no idea of my time, because the Crossword Club decided I wasn’t allowed to resume my puzzle after a pause, so I had to restart it. But, in any event, definitely over the half hour mark, which makes this one well worth the money.

    I got off to a slow start, and then maintained that pace all the way through, with GOSPELLER/JOLLY ROGER being my LOsI – the former was an NHO for me, and the latter was my COD. FORSWORE held me up for a while as I was determined to spell it with an additional E, but on reflection perhaps “foreswearing” would be anticipatory cursing.

    I’m with Verlaine in having thought there were one to many revolutions in 1ac, and I’m not convinced that one of them refers to keeping wheels lubricated; the clue would have been eleganter without the second one.

    Is it Friday already? The week has flown by, and it seems only a few days ago that it was Monday. Ah well. As Kipling said, “If you can fill the unforgiving work-week/With sixty seconds worth of distance run…”. A good weekend to all.

31. I found this one tough but fair and resorted to aids to finish once I hit the hour.

    RASTA eluded me – I’ve obviously heard of them but learnt a lot from this blog. SAGE DERBY didn’t come to me either, though I do now remember the MP sketch. It’s in the Midlands by the way V!

    COD 13d but closely followed by 19a which I thought was rather clever.

    Thanks setter and blogger and fellow readers for some interesting comments.

    1. North of Watford = in the north. Or maybe I’ve just been in London too long at this point…
       1. Possibly. I’m never quite sure if the correct expression is “North of Watford” or “North of Watford Gap”, which is just down the road from me.
32. Around 15 minutes ending with RIVALS. Didn’t know of a PARKIN, so it came via the simple wordplay. I parsed FOLIO as keriothe: ‘turning over leaf’ as the def. But either way works, I suppose. Agree that JOLLY ROGER is today’s highlight. Regards.
33. I don’t think I’d ever come across PARKIN or SAGE DERBY. Certainly not on a menu.
34. Well that was 42 minutes I’ll never get back! I wouldn’t want to either – excellent fare. Unlike others I started with FORSWORE but had to come here to find out what it was about. On the other hand I finished with one of the easier clues RASTA as is my wont.
35. 38 minutes, seems to be becoming my standard time. Except for PARKIN, no real difficulties. A bit of pleasant subtlety in some of the clues (FACTS, for example, or SNUG). Not a bad puzzle.
36. 54 minutes, and all very enjoyable.

    A few bits of handy GK helped: I’d looked up Haile Selassie the last time he appeared in a puzzle (though I still can’t spell him without help) and I use Kilrock de-scaler, which is basically just FORMIC ACID, to combat the effects of Bristol’s hard water on my kettle, shower head and what-have-ye.

    Luckily I wasn’t completely stumped by the ones I didn’t know, like SAGE DERBY… Glad I spotted the pangram, too, otherwise I might’ve been looking for JOLLY ROGER for a lot longer!

    FOI 2d LUCID, LOI 14a STUNTWOMAN.

    Thanks setter and V, that was a fun workout.

37. 28:36. I didn’t find this too taxing, perhaps because it was such a pleasure to solve. I rather enjoyed the cluster of colour clues in the SW at 25dn, 24dn and especially 29ac which latter word, in concert with the majestic picture on the front of today’s Times of a short-eared owl on the wing, inevitably brought to mind one of our esteemed bloggers. Super puzzle, no unknowns, all parsed though I seem to have glossed over the double reversal indicator in 1ac when solving.
38. 18:15. But I was interrupted with my last 2 left and had to come back later to see FORSWORE and JOLLY ROGER. Count me as another who puzzled for ages how FOREWENT could be the answer 22a. My LOI, JOLLY ROGER is COD. Super puzzle and entertaining blog as ever, so thanks to setter and V.
39. 35 minutes, split into 2 sections divided by a nap. I love JOLLY ROGER, and generally the whole thing is really enjoyable – thanks all

Comments are closed.