Times 26985 – apparently, philosophy is a way of life

52 comments on “Times 26985 – apparently, philosophy is a way of life”

1. 16d cut work = opu(s)
   1. Edited thanks.
2. Is this when one says ‘snap’? I’ll delete my redundant comment. At the time, I biffed POPULIST from the LIST part and OP, and only thought about it when reading the blog. I also biffed, then parsed, PERADVENTURE; not an obscure word so much as a dead one, but then I’ve read a lot of dead stuff. A BUSBOY is precisely what a waiter is not; they set and clear the table, bring water, but do not take orders, recommend wines, or serve food. I remember the last time QUISLING appeared, I was surprised, and rather disappointed, at the number of DNKs it produced. Is a SMARTY-PANTS a poseur? the definition struck me as a bit wide of the mark.

   Edited at 2018-03-14 06:52 am (UTC)

3. I loved 5dn – brilliant.

   On the other hand, the crossing of 14ac and 15dn was a bit much, I thought.

4. After all that effort working through unknown words and meanings (GLYCEROL, ASTHENIC amongst them) I came a cropper and ended with a technical DNF as I failed to think of the EPIC part of EPICTETUS (also unknown, but I’d worked out the ‘suet’ business).

   I knew PERADVENTURE from bible readings in my days of being indoctrinated, not that I ever understood what it meant.

   I didn’t actually know PIG meaning to stuff oneself with food; I thought that was ‘pig out’.

   An enjoyable puzzle nevertheless, in a masochistic sort of way.

5. The onomatopoeic Vidkun QUISLING was my FOI and my WOD.

   LOI 10ac SATRAP

   COD 12ac GLYCEROL Pip – should read (CLERGY) not (CLERGY’S)
   well disguised anagram.

   DNK 15dn EPICTATUS but he was there for the taking, once Mr. SMARTY-PANTS ARISTOTLE had departed.

   DNL 18dn as the word ‘Mass’ was to me misleading and perhaps unecessary – I was however OK with the PIG element.

   Edited at 2018-03-14 07:25 am (UTC)

6. Too hard for me today, too. Felt like rather a slog and I had several left at the end of my hour. Ah well. At least I worked out ASTHENIC, even if I didn’t get my other unknowns….
7. 17:23 … and much enjoyed. Really interesting vocab. selection.

   I’m sure verlaine and other classical smarty-pants will have biffed EPICTETUS, but I had to grind it out bit by bit. It did seem familiar when it finally emerged, though.

   I loved PERADVENTURE — big penny-drop moment —but was also much taken by the very neat BEBOPPER.

   Props to the setter, and thanks, Pip

8. As a semi-classical non-smarty pants, I had to grind out the Greek chap, but at last I had heard of him. The other Greek word, ASTHENIC, took a bit of unravelling too. I didn’t know that INDIE could be used as the band itself, but then my days of listening to the likes of Ecstatic Treetops are well behind me.

   Took me an hour, did this, with two ticks against 14, and one against 1 and 4.

   1. I think the group in ‘pop group’ is intended to mean genre rather than band.
      1. Ah, yes. Thank you.
9. Done quickly before going out skiing. Or not quickly. Stuck on SATINY which didn’t help with EPICTETUS. Otherwise quite straightforward
10. I stymied myself by biffing ARISTOTLE and not thinking to question it when I was stuck on its crossers. Eventually I realised my mistake and was pleased to parse EPICTETUS only to err with my LOI, ANTHESIC.

    I watched Only Connect on catch up last night and saw Tim’s team win on a tie breaker. Exciting stuff; well done Tim!

    1. Thank you very much. That was possibly as nervous as I’ve been in my life, especially as we’d already discovered that, as a team, we were probably a couple of decades past our peak when it came to anything which involved a buzzer…
       1. I’ve just watched it too. Nerve racking stuff! Well done!
11. Difficulty through obscurity – not my favourite type of puzzle. Derived the philosopher and don’t recall anything of him. QUISLING a write in for my generation. Liked BEBOPPER
12. Or can information escape the black hole of death? This was battle and a half of a puzzle, but it solved in an acceptable 35 minutes. COD to penultimate BEBOPPER leading to LOI BUSBY, the American expression for waiter not being known. All crossers and a lot of stoicism needed for EPICTETUS. The hidden crew in 5d was neat too. Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. Except that it’s not an expression for waiter; see above.
       1. Not really seeking to justify, but Chambers has ‘assistant waiter’, so still a waiter of sorts, and undoubtedly a member of the waiting staff or team.
13. LOI EPICTETUS, dnk him, now understand that he was from Phrygia. How come QUISLING got to be the generic word? Why not PETAIN? Liked the familiar biblical quotation at 19d, the old governor and the cat cat. 20′, thanks pip and setter.
14. This is the sort of puzzle which I guess is only really straightforward if you’re a smug classicist smarty-pants who’s trying not to feel repulsively self-satisfied about today’s required lexicon…fortunately for me.

    I also raised an eyebrow at the BUSBOY, though it obviously didn’t stop it going in. Really, my only complaint about this puzzle is that I now can’t stop singing “BEBOPPER lula, she’s my baby…”

    1. … so you thought you’d inflict it on us too!
       1. The only way to get rid of ear-worms is to pass them on to someone else 🙂
    2. Cracking time! None of the smug classicist mob did badly, but looks like you were well ahead of the pack…
15. 35 mins with croissant and blackcurrant jam. Hoorah.
    Still on hols. Went to Achiltibuie yesterday and walked up the hill behind Ullapool (peak still capped with snow).
    Held up at the end by the winded/indie crossers.
    Mostly I liked: Crusoe and Tom tom.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
16. There may be a joke in there about a “Friday” puzzle, but I shall resist. Had a fair bit of trouble with this before eventually landing safely in 16.46

    FOI 12A
    LOI 15D (DNK but eventually cracked the surface once I stopped thinking of lard)
    COD 1A

    Also DNK 25A but the surface was clear.

    Biffed 5A due to not seeing by = per.

    Spent a long time on 5D trying to see where inserting C into a type of boat would give “worn out”.

    TOM-TOM was a “Duh !” moment.

    Thanks to Pip for explaining 2D where I failed to parse RE, and to the setter for a challenging but generally fair puzzle (my sole gripe was BUSBOY but it was merely borderline to be honest)

17. Usual 30 minutes with just EPIC missing from the philosopher. COD to PERADVENTURE.
18. Technical DNF as DNK battle, so resorted to aid to find something to fit checkers (and also disabuse me of idea that there was going to be a C in 5dn) So done in just under 35 min – but with a typo, as I always forget to check before submitting after having had a struggle.
19. I nearly put ‘boasted’, which would have given a lot of trouble, but couldn’t make ‘oasted’ mean ‘worn out’. Then I wrote ‘bragger’ anyway, which led to difficulties when I tried to parse ‘peradventure’, which I finally saw for my LOI.

    I nearly biffed ‘Epictetus’, but held back, thinking they would not use such an obscure philosopher. They would. And ‘asthenic’ is straight from Greek, so there you go. I wasn’t too happy about the setter’s mistake with ‘busboy’, but the answer was clear enough.

20. I originally thought of a word beginning with B and containing two Gs as ‘tired out’ but luckily, it had too many letters. Never heard of the Philosopher but got there in the end in a time about double my expected one. Chambers has ‘an assistant waiter or waitress; a person who buses’ for BUSBOY so I guess that this falls into the category of ‘if it’s in a dictionary its OK’, even though the experts disagree. Thanks setter and pip.
21. 11m 15s for me, with the last two to fall – after much head-scratching – being PERADVENTURE & EPICTETUS. I knew the former from a Paul McCartney song (English Tea), and I don’t think I’ve ever come across the latter.
    I was particularly lucky on 25a, the old bugbear of anagrams for obscure words (well, obscure to me at least), where I started with ANTHESIC and switched to the marginally more enticing ASTHENIC.
22. 36 which is a quick time for me. Unfortunately I biffed bebopped not seeing the by = per parsing (and failing to read the clue properly). Like others Epictetus required some cogitation and I guessed correctly with asthenic
23. 40 mins… like pulling teeth. Thanks setter and blogger.
24. Well, I did get SATRAP, but only by solving the clue, which maybe is the point of it all. Who, what or where a SATRAP is or was I had not the foggiest idea.

    PERADVENTURE, ASTHENIC and EPICTETUS all scraped in with crossed fingers. EPICTETUS in particular worried me, because he (or possibly she, for all I know) isn’t included in Monty Python’s musical list, my usual source of philosophers’ names.

    Total time was 45 minutes, but I was just glad to finish.

25. This ran on to 30 minutes or so, but certainly not carefully timed. Well, I never time carefully, so that isn’t a telling comment. Everything OK except for my last, Mr. EPICTETUS, whoever he is/was. It took me a while to think of ‘epic’, and when I did, the result wasn’t entirely convincing.
26. A meaty 25 minutes, panel beating the dents of obscurity with the tools of wordplay provided. EPICTETUS and ASTHENIC were the out of my ken, but I did know SATRAP. There are bits of the Hebrew Bible which sound as if they ought to be read by Oliver Postgate, and the repeated list of Medean officials is one in the tale of Daniel and the lions: the royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors. Do satraps give sitreps?
    I couldn’t quite parse ETHEREAL, but only because I thought “present” gave THERE rather than HERE and couldn’t work out how LAE accounted for the behind bit.
    I knew Petain was the collaborator of Vichy France, but I’ve not seen him identified as a Quisling before. But the cap fits, I suppose.
    Thanks for the blog Pip: I’ve been trying to work out where you drove that’s 1200km from London: My best guess is Ljubljana, but I bet that’s not right. Helluva drive, though.
    1. 100 Km further SW than Bordeaux, via Eurotunnel, Rouen, Le Mans and the A10. France is quite large. Fortunately Mrs Pip likes driving. We used to do Isle of Man to the Peloponnese and back, twice a year for 4 years, with dog, that was further but not in one day.

       1. I’ve almost done that run, stopping short on the Cote d’Argent, several times, sometimes with a stopover on the way. I once did it on Paris Vacances Day. Once.

          Edited at 2018-03-14 06:33 pm (UTC)

27. Never did find the wavelength which may have been the result of doing this at lunchtime instead of my preferred early morning. ETHEREAL appeared in today’s Guardian in a similar position but on the East side of the grid. PERADVENTURE sounds like one of those Wardour Street words that crop up in costume drama like “poltroon” and “dastardly” – quoth she. I knew “neurasthenic” as a description of a Victorian sort of malady, accompanied by fainting and the application of smelling salts and sal volatile – so ASTHENIC wasn’t too much of a stretch. The philosopher came via the TLS probably – certainly not in my O level Greek decades ago. 20.27
28. The battle of TARATOLE morphed into SARATOGA once BRAGGED took its rightful place. Not knowing the actual role of a busboy helped enormously with 6d, and PERADVENTURE was a word I sort of knew and biffed happily. No problems with BEBOPPER, QUISLING or ETHEREAL, but the unknown philosopher and unusual weakness took a bit of sorting out. A bit of juggling with the wordplay between the two clues and a feeling that SUET would be involved saw me safely through the conundrum and I submitted at 27:40. A toughish workout, and M(ajor)ER at the obscure Greek bits. Thanks setter and Pip.
29. I enjoyed this. 35 minutes with no major problems. But I still can’t see the point of the apostrophe in 5a. The definition was “crew” so why the redundant ‘s? “crew leader” would have indcated the initial C just as well. I wasted time on this… Ann
    1. Ed may disagree, but I thought the possessive use of crew’s, misleading you into thinking it was the leader of crew you needed, was better than ‘crew leader’ which makes it easier to realise you need to divide and separate. It’s not possessive at all, it’s ‘crew is.’ But either would work. What are you saying about the initial C being relevant? It’s leader of boat not leader of crew.
30. 8 and a half minutes or so, post quizzing and multiple Guinnesses? I too tried to cheekily biff ARISTOTLE to start with but EPICTETUS was not unknown to me. BRAGGED was my last one in, and not the first time I’ve admired a deceptive “crew” in recent weeks. It really should turn into the sort of thing that instantly rings warning bells, much like “flower” being a river 9 times out of 10.
31. 14:19. I enjoyed the range of references in this, and I thought the obscurities were fairly clued.
    I have found it mildly irritating in the past that busboys refuse to carry out any task that might be construed as waiting. Next time this happens I will show them the Chambers definition.
32. I was very busy and travelling yesterday so didn’t get a chance to do the puzzle. I just did, and got a new PB, woo hoo!
    1. Amazing time – well done!
       1. Thanks!
33. 25:05 so a straightforward solve for me, 25ac seen before and 15dn vaguely heard of. Didn’t quite twig the exact parsings of populist and bebopper but everything else understood.
34. Nearly an hour with breaks, with BRAGGED my LOI after I finally realised crew was a verb. Of course I was thinking of ARISTOTLE too, despite having PERADVENTURE (what a delightful word!) early on and not being able to find anything wrong with it. When I finally realised that “for example” in 27ac was not EG and hit on SATINY, I was able to solve the clue for EPICTETUS (and very proud of it, too). He must be the most obscure philosopher one can find, and of course I’d never heard of him.

    1. ‘…the most obscure philosopher one can find’ – is that a dare? I expect the setters will take you up on it.

       Check out this list in the Wiki:

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_philosophers

       Yes, there were hundreds of them.

       1. I see your point. One can understand why Domitian banned all philosophers from Rome — he must have been worried about overpopulation.
35. Dnf. Well and truly defeated by this. I biffed Aristotle too, even though I was very doubtful about it.

Comments are closed.