Times 26980 – but do they speak 13 in 3 (or 17 or 23)

87 comments on “Times 26980 – but do they speak 13 in 3 (or 17 or 23)”

1. My dear Lord Verlaine,

   Your wish is my command!

   A DNF from Shanghai – the culprits were:

   1dn POKEWEED whatsdat? Ah! It’s American! I imagine it has been smoked by Stormy Daniels.

   11ac WING NUT I had the NUT but was unable to wing WING!

   FOI 6dn AESOP

   COD 9ac KIROV

   WOD 17ac CONSTANTINOPLE

   George, the parsing of 20dn is incorrect HOL(M)ES surely?
   But are holes-cases? NQS!

   1. Ta – updated, along with my best guess as to how holes = cases.
      1. I read it as M being surrounded (encased) by HOLES; M that HOLES cases. I didn’t like it, but. On edit: oops, I see that Guy was saying the same thing.

         Edited at 2018-03-08 05:23 am (UTC)

         1. Great minds!
            1. I think holes = cracks in this instance?
               1. Yes, that’s the idea.
                  1. Thanks, as in makes a hole in something, as opposed to solving something?
                     1. Well, I was reading it as a plural noun, but that doesn’t matter. The word HOLES, whether noun or verb, “cases” the letter M, to form the word we’re looking for.
                        1. An ingenious clue–based on a sheer abuse of the English language. HOLES manifestly does not mean ‘solves’, a verb, nor yet does it mean ‘cracks’, whether as verb or plural noun. For the manyeth time, I suggest that setters put bounds to their imagination.
                           1. I don’t know why in the world you would expect HOLES to mean “solves.” I tend to think of holes as more or less circular, and cracks as thinner and longer, but a crack is a fissure, and is listed as a synonym under aperture, noun. hole at thesaurius dot com.
                        2. Sure, HOLES does indeed, in the solution, ‘case’ the letter M; or, if you prefer, the letter M ‘holes’ the letters surrounding it, fair enough—–but, whichever version of those two parsings one may prefer, there’s nothing whatever in the clue to imply HOLES.
                           1. No, except that it’s sort of a synonym for “cracks,” in some contexts. As in the list of synonyms for “crack”—and vice versa—at Thesaurus dot com, under “Breach” (too).
2. Not sold on either explanation for HOLMES. It still looks to me like a (slightly) cryptic definition (like the one for APRON) engineered to deceptively look like there is something else going on; after all, there is an M in there… Because I don’t see how “holes” can be “cases.” For a while, I was looking for a sense in which “cracks” (noun) “cases” (verb) M.

   Was glad to find that the name of a place in Kent over there was decipherable. PLAUSIBLE is far from the first synonym I would think of for “glib.” And MATCH can mean “fellow”—really?

   1. I had the one sock, and finally found its match/fellow in a different drawer.
      1. Facetiously anthropomorphizing the footwear.
         1. Not facetious, although I don’t talk that way.
            1. I can’t find any serious definition of the word “fellow” that doesn’t mean a person, not an inanimate object.
               1. ODE sv ‘fellow’ includes this definition: ‘a thing of the same kind as or otherwise associated with another’

                  and as an example gives ‘The page has been torn away from its fellows’, and ‘It sank quickly, and hit the bottom, settling back in place with its fellows.’

                  1. “ODE”? The OED? It’s no surprise that this sense would be listed in a compendium like that, as we’ve certainly heard the word used this way before. It always struck me as somewhat jocular. The anthropomorphism is part of the charm.

                     Edited at 2018-03-08 06:49 am (UTC)

                     1. No, the ODE; Oxford Dictionary of English, a one-volume job. It’s one of several dozen reference works in my electronic dictionary thingy. I just now went to the Oxford Thesaurus of English, something I’ve never done before, and sv ‘fellow’ gives counterpart, mate, partner, match [nudge, nudge], twin, brother, double; copy, duplicate.
                        1. Aha. I see that there are free and paid iOS versions. I’ll look into it.
                           1. The ODE is actually one of the sources for the built-in dictionary on iOS (i.e. when you highlight a word and then choose “Define”.) You can see that by defining a word, then scrolling down to the bottom of the definitions and hitting “Manage”; I believe it’s top of the list by default for iPhones configured for British English, but I may be wrong…

                              Apple don’t expose this built-in feature as a full-on dictionary app, sadly. Not sure why. They do on actual Macs; the ODE is also in the source list for the macOS Dictionary app.

                           2. ODE is also the source for ODO (Oxford Dictionaries Online), so it’s freely available online.
                  2. Sorry, guilty as charged for ignorance, but “sv”?
                     1. sub verbo (I just looked it up): ‘under the word’, i.e. referring to the word (in a dictionary, etc., where e.g. a page reference would be useless). Sorry about that; I sometimes say ‘qua’, too.
                        1. Thanks for replying so quickly. We all have our little isms I suppose.
3. Never heard of SEVENOAKS, and couldn’t get away from ‘sots’, thus guaranteeing failure. Didn’t know of KIROV, and was totally at sea with that clue. But I thought of POE, thought of ED of course, and thought of KEW, and I knew POKEWEED, and yet it still escaped me. I rather liked CONSTANTINOPLE, although I biffed it from the enumeration and the P E.
   1. In the Great Storm of October 1987, reportedly Sevenoaks became Oneoak. About 15-20 miles from where I grew up.
4. Count me as one having problems with HOLMES. Holes = cracks,solves or even cases? And MATCH = fellow? Would appreciate enlightenment!
   Did like Estuary English, though. Learnt somwething new in Edmund Crouchback and Silhouette but I have always associated Kirov with a ballet company.
   68m 46s
   1. I knew I knew Kirov from somewhere! Alas, not from the revolution. For match=fellow, see moi above s.v.
      1. Thanks, Kevin.
      2. The Kirov ballet is named after Kirov the revolutionary (who was assassinated – maybe on Stalin’s orders).
   2. MATCH appears as a synonym of “fellow,” in the sense of “male or female colleague, friend,” at triple-w DOT thesaurus DOT com SLASH browse SLASH fellow.
5. A technical DNF for me too with OPERATE, AWESOME and HOLMES needing reference to aids. I think I’d simply run out of steam by then as the first two of these clues and answers are dead easy and I had already done well to deal with all the really meaty stuff in the other three quarters.

   I never got on with Sherlock Holmes so he is not foremost in my mind when I think of detectives, but anyway I had failed to spot that particular angle to 20dn. I became fixated on CRIMES as ‘cases’ and couldn’t think past that even though I realised it didn’t parse.

   The clue at 23ac appeared almost word-for-word in the cryptic puzzle due to be blogged this Saturday but as the competition entry has already closed I am not giving away anything by mentioning it here.

   Edited at 2018-03-08 06:44 am (UTC)

6. Never felt far off the wavelength on this one, despite a few bits of GK that were outside my ken. 37 minutes all told, which seems pretty good given all the places I could’ve got hung up if I’d been feeling less confident.

   FOI 1a PLAUSIBLY LOI 11a WING NUT just following the unknowns of 9a KIROV and 1d POKEWEED. I’m glad I eventually considered that there might not be more going on with “Kew” than it clueing “KEW”!

   Also glad nobody else seems entirely sure what’s going on with HOLMES, a crossing semi-biff with MATCHWOOD for me, though I love the word “shivers” now I’ve discovered it. Presumably it’s where “shiver me timbers!” comes from?

   Anyway. Thanks to setter and blogger. Fun workout!

   1. Good time. I usually compare my efforts with yours as we seem to be a similar standard (and we both live / work in Bristol) and you’ve beaten me hands down today. I did at least succeed in completing it though not without difficulty.
7. Couldn’t parse HOLMES, though I think I now get it. PLAUSIBLE didn’t spring to mind for ‘Glib’ though it’s there in Chambers. Liked MATCHWOOD for ‘shivers’. In the singular, noted to be ‘now rare’ but deserves a revival.

   From the OED (ordering of letters correct):
   fellow v.
   1.b To put on a level with; to make, or represent as, an equal or match to.
   “1450–1530 Myrr. our Ladye 251 O moder of lyfe, whiche by thyne obedience ys mekely felowed vnto vs.”
   Translation welcomed.

   Forty minutes of enjoyment (mostly).

   Thanks to setter and blogger

8. 45 mins with pancakes and maple syrup. Nice.
   MERs at:Fellow=Match, sort of. Model=Toy, sort of.
   Mostly I liked: Bigotry (COD), Holmes &Lit.

   “M that cracks=holes encases.” I think it is neat, although I grant that cracks aren’t always holes and vice versa.

   Edited at 2018-03-08 08:23 am (UTC)

9. RING NUT (why not?) made the top left no less hard. I have recently waded through a biography of Stalin, sufficiently recently not to have forgotten everything in it. KIROV (and the recent KULAK) were therefore words currently known to me.
10. I struggled mightily to get my LOI, HOLMES. I’d even thought of holes for cracks, and with the M already in place I should have got it then but somehow I still spent at least another 5 minutes before the penny dropped.

    COD to TWEET which follows a nice line of CODs I’ve awarded recently for their simplicity. APRON was the easiest clue I’ve seen in some while.

11. Quirky, certainly, but I really enjoyed this, spending the last 12-15 minutes of my 35 on the MATCHWOOD HOLMES bit. Mycroft’s brother, I am assuming.
12. No time, having got completely becalmed in the northwest and needing to take a break from it and come back later.

    Brilliant in parts, a bit weird in others. I loved the HOLMES clue, which made complete sense to me (for what that’s worth). Also enjoyed the ESTUARY ENGLISH and the Oedipal strings.

    Not so keen on the EPONYM definition, and 1d just infuriates me, with ‘grower’ as a definition for a plant and the en clair ‘Kew’.

    All told, a bit of a deacon’s oosphere

    1. I heartily agree with Lady Sotira.

       On Ladies Day our best wishes to you, Lady Olivia and all the grand dames who puzzle-away on a daily basis. We simply need a few more of you! Surely there are budding Lady Verlaines waiting in the wings?

       1. Ladies Day? I think you mean International Wimmin’s Day!

          In truth, I ain’t no grand dame, more of a guttersnipe, and I’m afraid Verlaine doesn’t need to look over his shoulder for me, not unless he thinks I’m copying his answers at the Champs (a distinct possibility)

       2. I came very late to the puzzle and the blog today but I must quickly thank you for the tip of the flat cap Horryd. I have no idea why there aren’t more of us of the female persuasion in crosswordland – it’s not that we few who are here are queen bees. And it can’t be, nowadays, that the man of the house always gets the crossword first and fills it in in ink before the little woman gets a shot at it. A mystery.
          1. It is mysterious, Olivia, the more so as, before I got involved with this site and the Champs, nearly everyone I knew who solved crosswords was female. I can only think that girls remain less keen to get involved with the competitive side of things
    2. I thought the clue for Holmes was a lemon entry .
13. – with OPERATE and HOLMES left. I liked ESTUARY ENGLISH but didn’t enjoy some of the other stuff.
14. 18:30. Tricky one. I got particularly stuck in the SW corner.
15. How do you spell it? Solved this while looking out of the window waiting for Dyno-rod to arrive, so I was expecting a stinker. I took about 45 minutes with interruptions so it was on the cusp of one. LOI and COD to APRON. I nearly gagged at the EXECRABLE thought that I’d ever spoken ESTUARY ENGLISH. The match of MATCHWOOD wasn’t understood. I parsed HOLMES as per George having already seen it had to be Sherlock. Dyno-rod are here! All hands to the pump. Thank you George and setter.
    1. How you spell it is nobody’s business but the Turks’ —

       https://youtu.be/lG7xMTMdaLA

       1. Thanks for the memory, S. How lovely it was. 1953 apparently, when The Four Lads recorded this. I was 7 or 8 but was nearly word perfect just now as I sang along.
          1. It is lovely, isn’t it. Impossible not to smile at it, especially with the four ‘lads’ now grey-haired. They’ve still got it, though.
             1. Never heard of them .. and not at all my type of music .. but even so I really enjoyed that video, Sotira. Also enjoyed the Chordettes, which youtube served up for dessert
       2. I used to know a spelling song about CONSTANTINOPLE but can’t find the tune on google. Goes “Constantinople, C-O-N S-T-A N-T-I N-O-P L-E. Constantinople, It’s as easy to spell as it is to say A-B-C (etc)

          Edited at 2018-03-08 05:58 pm (UTC)

          1. The answer to my initial conundrum “Constantinople is a very long word. How do you spell it?” is of course IT. This was considered very clever in Junior School back in 1953.
             1. Yes, I remember that one as well. How witty we were!
16. Very tricky. I obviously wasn’t alone in struggling in the NW corner with the previously unknown weed, and it wasn’t until I got the K that KIROV sprang to mind as a candidate (I found myself watching The Hunt for Red October for the umpteenth time last week, a film in which the eponymous warship appears, so perhaps should have been quicker to that one). And then, of course, there was the junction of HOLMES and MATCHWOOD, both of which I thought involved our old friend, the three-point turn in the thesaurus. All in all, curate’s egg seems a fair verdict.
17. Like it seems everybody else ended up in the NW corner scratching my head. Stuck in HOLMES to see where it led and the M prompted MATCHWOOD, so went with that. I agree with criticism of POKEWEED – “Grower” is far too vague. Strange puzzle!
18. Finished in 25 minutes, but with several right but not fully understood, as above, glad it was not my day to enlighten you all. I thought KIROV was a ballet company not a revolutionary chap. I put in HOLMES but no real idea why and don’t much like the explanations discussed above either. Didn’t think PLAUSIBLE usually meant glib although can see the link. The rest was OK, but not a prize winning puzzle. CoD for me = APRON for a dash of much needed humour.
    1. My first thought was POPOV. It’s based on the cheap version of KIROV i.e. no champagne. And there must be a revolutionary called Popov?
19. COD to ESTUARY ENGLISH, which unlike proper cockney, sounds lazy. NW and SE took a while, esp. the unknown POKEWEED. 40′, thanks gl and setter.
    1. I was born in Dartford, which every local knows is pronounced with no t. Glottal stops rule.
20. 33 min 16 secs.

    Tough one. I think Holmes works well enough as, “M” that “holes” cases – and is a very clever & lit.

    Pokeweed frustrated me as I had considered both Poe and the obvious Ed, but it hadn’t occur to me to just lob Kew in between the two – until I got the K from Kirov. Grower as a definition of the unknown Pokeweed was perhaps a bit mean but I think allowable.

    1. Seemed easy enough to me. M in HOLES &lit. And equal, equivalent, peer, counterpart, fellow… that too seems pretty straightforward, even for a Thursday in the Times.

       Didn’t think this strange at all. Nice puzzle, and very tightly clued.

21. This is correct. The seven oaks in question were around the Vine cricket ground, a candidate for the oldest cricket ground in the world.

    Edited at 2018-03-08 12:14 pm (UTC)

    1. Not a candidate, a charlatan 😉 .. down the road from me is a plaque recording the “First cricket match ever played in Kent” .. at West Malling.
       1. Who believes anything said in West Malling?
22. This took me longer than it should have, I suspect, with the top left corner the biggest time-waster (although AWESOME was my last one in – I got it into my head that I needed a fantastic doctor). I agree with other comments that ‘glib’ is only just plausible, and it took me a while to spot that Kew was KEW. 11m 50s for me.
23. DNF in 35 min: after spending at least 10 trying to make something of 18dn (was looking for a thread to reverse in A—–E to give a doctor from a work of fantasy) eventually bunged in ANEMONE as nothing else seemed to fit checkers, and there could be a Dr Nemo somewhere.
    No real problem with KIROV – I remembered the ballet company was named for the theatre, and guessed that the latter honoured a Soviet hero.
24. About 39 minutes. Very much liked the Holmes clue – he could have written it. A clear path suddenly discernible past all sorts of distractions. Pokeweed eh? One lives and learns, in this instance not much. Odd how the aphids flock to the crossword pastures with the continuing little twitch in their code.
25. Phew, relieved to escape without even a typo, but it took 60:20. As for others, the NW and SW proved particularly resistant. KIROV was my last entry in the NE sector after considering that perhaps the Ballet was named after a revolutionary, and eventually working out the parsing from that. OPERATE and AWESOME held me up for much longer than they should’ve, as I was fixated on FRE(e) for unrestricted and LINE for thread. I eventually managed to construct MATCHWOOD, which left me with _O_M_S as my LOI. Another couple of minutes cogitation, and the surface of the leading criminologist flashed before my eyes. I didn’t worry about any other wordplay. Tough stuff. Thanks setter and George.
26. FOI 1A, which I was perfectly happy about. But then only 3D went into the NW corner before I moved to NE which enabled me to progress steadily until 13A allowed me to zap the pesky NW.

    DNK 1D, but got it after biffing 9A simply because I’d heard of the ballet company.

    After 12 minutes or so I began some type of warfare with the chewy SW quadrant. I felt that 21A should have been a “write in” and I should have got it much quicker. 25A wasn’t a major problem, though I felt the surface was a little unhelpful.

    COD 18D which exercised my grey matter for a minute or so, as “close with thread” didn’t leap out at me.

    It was about two and a half minutes later that I solved the two pipe puzzle at 20D (no violin necessary) and finished with 17.02 on the stopwatch.

    Thanks George and setter.

27. A full three-quarters of an hour for this one, meaning that I found it difficult. The northleft corner gave me the most trouble, with KIROV, POKEWEED and SEVENOAKS finally falling in quick succession. However, I have to admit to a little inadvertent cheating: a colleague popped in for a chat, and SEVENOAKS came up in our conversation, bringing it to the front of my mind when I returned to the puzzle.

    A few went in unparsed, including CONSTANTINOPLE. ACERB was an NHO but reverse-engineerable from “acerbic”.

28. Very pleased with this one to clock in just under 30 mins. Really wasn’t sure about the ‘our’in 13a. Who is that referring to? – definitely not me! LOI MATCHWOOD took a while to make court woo instead of ct and then AWESOME (one for the Americans among us, I think) fell in place.
    As I have mentioned before, have recently completed Stephen Fry’s 60 hour audiobook epic of complete works of Conan Doyle. Wonderful!
    1. I took this to be a reference to the mouth of the Thames, which is ‘ours’ in so far as ‘we’ are the Times of London.
29. 35 mins. NW corner a bit tricky, but otherwise a steady solve.
30. Hey, steady, it’s carved in stone and everything. So it must be true.
31. Sorry to have ben absent for some time. Around 35 minutes, ending with HOLMES. I had a long time pondering both SEVENOAKS and MATCHWOOD which delayed things considerably. The names of all the towns in the UK aren’t on the tip of my tongue. Nevertheless, some fun was had, and I liked CONSTANTINOPLE. Regards.
32. 30 minutes for everything except HOLMES. That one took another quarter of an hour to get. Frustrating to be held up by a single clue. I’m still not convinced by the parsing but it has to be…
33. Holmes – did not like that one. Fellow = match is odd but the clue is otherwise pleasing. Why is em a dash – is it Morse code? Did not know Pokeweed – I got the weed but not the poke! Estuary English was a nice clue.
    1. em and en are printers terms for spaces
       1. Many thanks – I did look it up in the dictionary to find it meant a “printer’s space” – but that’s not exactly a dash. Will try to remember em/en in future.
34. Comments pretty much like others. I’m in the didn’t like the ‘Holmes’ clue camp.
35. I had all but the NW and 20dn done in about 40mins this a.m. but had to put the puzzle away to start work. I returned to it at lunchtime and polished it off in another 10mins. I did not enter plausible at 1ac for the longest time despite it becoming increasingly apparent that it had to be the answer, I could sort of see it but not confidently enough to enter it until checkers were all in. Once wing nut went in I could see 1dn was going to be a weed (that was probably going to begin with ‘p’ given my thoughts about 1ac) so 1dn fell shortly thereafter, the ‘k’ helping me remember Kirov. The ‘v’ then gave me the “still” part and a way into my LOI 3dn. 8dn from wp. Disappointed to see 23ac again so soon, it meant no actual solving of the clue was required, apart from a brief moment wondering whether it was a double bluff by the editor.
36. I struggled with this one and came close to giving up but did finally manage to finish in 1:19 with everything correct and mostly fully parsed. Pokeweed my LOI once Kirov had come to mind (after mentally trying Rumov Sipov Supov and even Totov and Ginov). Also held up in the SW where like John Dunn I wanted 21ac to start with “fre…” and Holmes and Matchwood were slow to surface. A fair challenge though so thanks to setter blogger alike.
37. Don’t I remember almost exactly this clue and this solution from within the past few days? We often get solutions soon repeated with a nice new clue. Fair enough, I’d say, why waste all that thought. But both????

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