Times 27001 – Mini-monster

53 comments on “Times 27001 – Mini-monster”

1. Thanks U. I wondered whether it was a prize crossword, today being a Bank Holiday here. I cannot tell from the iPad.
   1. not a prize I’m afraid
2. 30 mins with croissant and unparalleled Gin&Lime Marmalade. Hoorah.
   Mostly I liked: ‘upsetting for one’, ‘not 100%’ and ‘bony age’.
   Thanks setter and Ulaca.
3. No worries! U are after all a Time Lord!

   27001 took me bang on an hour – steady but slow.

   FOI 7dn CHARD not hard at all.
   LOI 6ac SCAN
   COD 10ac POTHERB
   WOD 9dn TERRA INCOGNITA

   NE Hong Kong is fabulous – great floating fish restaurants hidden away on the coast.

   Edited at 2018-04-02 11:35 am (UTC)

4. 8m 55s. I was held up by writing GET WITH IT for 2d, which meant that I rejected a Q opener for 14d for a while (as Q?H?? didn’t look likely), and I also didn’t manage to parse 3d – ‘rev’ for revolution was new for me. Other than that it was mainly plain sailing, even the Latin.
   1. if rev(s) for revolution(s) is new, clearly you don’t watch Top Gear!
      1. Ah! I didn’t even think about that. Of course. Clearly not firing on all cylinders, as it were.
5. Well I thought this straightforward .. managed to go straight round all the outside clues, which usually means not hard. All done in 11 mins, my only thought was “high” just a little bit of a stretch to mean “anagrind.” Nice clue though, nevertheless. In fact I thought the surface readings generally were of a high order (haha)

   Edited at 2018-04-02 11:42 am (UTC)

6. Yet again I failed to fully check for typos in hope of beating 15-minute target, So 14:38, but with an error. Grr.
   I didn’t take time to parse everything, so thanks for explanations.
7. That will be great Ulaca. It wasn’t specially difficult but I’ve got a couple of queries.
8. ….as I had biffed ‘radar’, sounds like ‘raider’, but fortunately went back for a second look. I do seem to have missed a couple of subtle cryptics, including ‘high priest’, but my answers are all correct. I don’t think we’ve seen ‘paean’ for a while, which was my FOI.
9. So that was what was going on. Thank you Ulaca and enjoy the rest of your holiday. It’s an ordinary Monday here and it’s snowing – again. 15.23
   1. Indeed. Three inches have already fallen here.

      As a retiree, I always fear not knowing what day of the week it is…

10. So I had NOT …Y, and couldn’t for the life of me think what party ORIET could be most of. Puzzled about RIDER, until U came to the rescue. No problem with 1ac, but then I don’t have to worry about what to call No. 3. Liked ‘spare time’.
11. ….. because I am another HOLY SPIRIT amended to HIGH SPIRIT then HIGH PRIEST. HOP IT and IN BRIEF fitted immediately so it wasn’t until I was on my way back up that I needed 10 minutes to sort my bifferama out.
    1. ..and I went from HOLY SPIRIT to
       HOLY PRIEST to HIGH PRIEST.

       With apologies for the pedantry, the original sausage synonym is WIENER, I think – the Viennese alternative to a Frankfurter.

12. 12:52. I had about half done in 9 minutes then stopped to do some work (despite it being a holiday in the UK). When I came back to the puzzle for a break my pen was literally (i.e. not literally) smoking as the rest went in (largely biffed) in quick sticks.

    Thanks for the blog U, at 3d I think the AILING bit must be “not 100% able” otherwise “able” is unaccounted for.

    1. Thanks for the input, and thanks for reading the blog
13. Thanks, U, for the blog – glad you remembered eventually. Under 38 minutes for me (mostly parsed) suggests it wasn’t too hard. Perhaps it would have been a bit longer if I’d fully worked out 2d and 16d.

    I was similarly rescued from damnation after trying HOLY SPIRIT for some time (esprit contains spirit losing an “i” – does that make it “holy”). In the end we just offend the “high” clergy – a much safer option!

    LOI was CRUSTACEAN, after correcting to TERRA INCOGNITA (where I had an “O” on the end till I checked the anagram).

    1. Sadly, I never remembered. I was nudged by my Monday confrere. I also had ‘terra incognito’, but was too embarrassed to mention it.
14. Another one who wrote in HOLY SPIRIT too quickly, and then had to think again to get 3d at the end. No excuse really. 32 minutes. Dry here at last, back to gardening.
15. Gentle Monday stroll in the park for a steady top to bottom solve with no real hold ups. Some good surface readings.
16. 38:22 for a good solid bank holiday puzzle, a cut above the usual Monday fare. Took ages to get going, read clue after clue in the acrosses with nothing sparking the old brain until FOI 26ac. LOI 2dn. Slow on the uptake at 10ac where I wondered how Personal Best meant person in the lead (of a race for example), I now realise it’s our old friend the periodic table again and the chemical symbol for lead. Ah well, it proved no impediment to solving. Missed the significance of expressing a in 13ac which I wrongly had as an odd sort of double definition. Laminar was terra incognita but gettable. An enjoyable solve.

    Edited at 2018-04-02 01:35 pm (UTC)

17. 34 minutes here, recovering from my cold, so either I was on the wavelength or it wasn’t too hard. FOI 1d HOP IT, LOI 22d NYMPH followed quickly by 27a ECHO, which I’ve only just spotted is a hidden! It seemed so clear I didn’t bother checking the wordplay at the time…

    The unknown 14d QUADRILLE slowed me down a bit, but with the hint of the Q to remind me of “que”, which I often forget, I got there in the end. Thanks setter U.

    1. Thanks – I seem to be getting worse at this game
       1. It’s possible that I’ve discovered a new performance enhancing drug in the shape of a shot of Day Nurse with an espresso chaser…
          1. I used Tobermory 10 year old straight from the distillery last night:-)
             1. I’ve been very tempted to resort to whisky as a cold cure, but so far I’ve resisted this time around. (Just as well; the only thing I have in the house is a limited-edition Bruichladdich and I don’t want to waste it on Lemsip-impaired tastebuds!)
                1. A wise decision!
18. 16 mins, so back to some kind of form after Friday’s struggle. GRIMACE was my LOI after TEAR GAS, which is fairly surprising considering neither of them are the most difficult of clues. I was held up for a while by GET WISE TO. I think today’s Bank Holiday Jumbo is a cracker.
    1. Yes, today’s jumbo is a cut above – very little obvious stuff.
       1. I don’t know whether to be pleased or worried that the Jumbo is mine to blog.
19. Nice, straightforward puzzle. No time to log as I solved it while listening to Bryan Adams Prog Rocks on Radio 2, featuring all my favourite bands, and I had to keep breaking off from the crossword to sing along with King Crimson, and play the keyboard parts from ELP’s Fanfare and Firth of Fifth by Genesis on the arm of the sofa. Great blog, thanks.
20. First, my deep thanks to our blogger. Normally, when I sail through a puzzle and am feeling rather smug, I’m deflated by comments such as “no real difficulties here” or “easiest for some time”.

    I zipped (this is a relative term) through this one in 24 minutes, despite being jet-lagged and not expecting to make much headway. Everything just seemed to pop into place, apart from EMPEROR which I kept trying to parse as E(uropean) + MP (representative) + city reversed. I was prepared to accept that Rore was a city, and for all I know it might be.

    1. How wonderful it would have been, Thud, if you were jetlagged because you were returning from Rore …
21. 20 min and 33 secs. I couldn’t work out how rider was achieved – so thanks for the explanation.
22. 9:21. I thought this was quite straightforward.
23. Just over 20 mins with time spent wondering what a SNOWBAN was. Eventualy remembered that I am an MA. Much biffed so thanks U for the explanations.
24. 34:02 which is a good time for me.

    As gothick_matt points out, there’s a hidden in 27a (subset of “thE CHOsen”) so I think it’s a double definition.

    Many thanks for the blog.

    1. I think just 22 is the literal, while the first four words are the wordplay.
       1. I agree – not a double definition at all!
25. Hi all. Snowy and no holiday here. The puzzle didn’t hold me up too long, about 25 minutes or so. Only problem was throwing in RADAR at first, and realizing it was in no way related to the wordplay, nor to anything that looked like a definition. Eventually corrected, and OVERACT was the LOI. Regards.
    1. I had ‘radar’ too, my thought was ‘sounds like raider’. Then I saw that ‘a further requirement’ could not possibly define ‘radar’, and thought again.

       Edited at 2018-04-02 05:51 pm (UTC)

26. Done in 1hr 39!

    Not sure why bony = spare in 16d.

    1. Chambers has spare (as an adjective) as lean.
       1. Thanks
27. 24:18. I managed to confuse myself with my own handwriting, seeing the G in TERRA INCOGNITA as a C. But then PLAYSCHOOL wouldn’t fit with PAEAN. That took a bit of untangling. I admit too that I was also another who started with HOLY SPIRIT before seeing the light. GET WISE TO my LOI once I eventually deciphered the wordplay. A good test for a Monday, I thought, but maybe I was just a bit slow today after battering my grey matter with the Mephisto and Club Monthly yesterday. Thanks for the blog U.
28. …but I realised my HOLY SPIRIT error quickly (did it in ink AGAIN, when will I learn ?!).

    14:10 and no further comment necessary.

29. Very nice when it finally came together. But it took me ages to get started, mainly because of hold-ups in the NW corner. 36 minutes. Ann
30. I didn’t find this all that hard, at 43 minutes, but I also had one mistake, ICON instead of SCAN as my LOI. It fits the wordplay, I = cut IN + CON = study, and those little pictures on the computer desktop are sort of minimal, aren’t they? But obviously SCAN is better, if only I had had the patience to keep on looking. And I misread the wordplay for RIDER — that’s what I get for spicing my walks to the shops with the History of England podcast. In the 14th century and before riders were quite likely to be attackers, after all. But at least that answer was correct.

    Edited at 2018-04-02 06:01 pm (UTC)

31. 36 mins but with “get wise to” overlooked and left partly unsolved. Nice puzzle. Thanks for the explanation for “rider”.
32. After an Easter Monday visit to Tobermory, where I collected a nice 10 year old single malt directly from the conveniently placed distillery, I tackled this puzzle a day late, late in the afternoon, after a breakfast of cold ham, cheese, toast with pate, banana, grapes, blueberries and tea, consumed while watching the sheep milling about through the kitchen window, after which I had an enjoyable walk around the beaches of West Mull with Iona looming mistily across the Sound and the rain coming in, not quite horizontally, but with a bracing wind. Later a visit to the Keel Row in Fionnphort enabled a delicious pint of MacEwans 80/- to be consumed before I returned to our cosy cottage and looked at the puzzle. I Hopped to It, and after 24:42 rose to NOTORIETY. A biffed PRESCHOOL caused a delay in the SE, where I also pondered on the meaning of RIMGACE, before common sense prevailed. A most enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and U.
33. Just visiting some missed grids on 8th Jan 2020.

Comments are closed.