Times 27208 – take it away, setter…

58 comments on “Times 27208 – take it away, setter…”

1. Re 5ac: I guess technically BRAN is an anagram of BRAN, but it seems a bit lazy…

   Edited at 2018-11-29 02:07 am (UTC)

2. Some DNKs and missed parses, but they didn’t seem to slow me down too much. VIBRANT and BOWLINE were my LOsI. I didn’t expect BRAN to be an anagram of ‘bran’; and I still don’t, nor do I understand what ‘flakes’ is doing if it’s not the anagrind. The definition gave me pause, too, but I’ll take George’s word for it; although ‘rolling’ would seem to be apter. I had a hard time getting past ‘towline’, even though I could make no sense of it. I finally saw the BOWLIN, but failed to see the galley-deletion; a great clue wasted on me. (The setter does the same thing with LUDICROUS, but I got that one.) Another wasted clue was TWITCHER, since I didn’t know the word. An asp is a VIPER; does that not make 5d a DBE? (Not that I mind.)
3. …but is ‘vibrant’ really ‘rolled’? I would expect ‘vibrato’, which I could not make to work. Perhaps this clue was reworked into incoherence.

   I biffed a lot, and my time was still very slow. Not on the wavelength at all.

   Edited to add: the correct parsing of 24 is probably NA + CHO[w].

   Edited at 2018-11-29 03:11 am (UTC)

   1. Collins has VIBRANT – trilled or rolled (phonetics)
      1. That was news to me. The Japanese Ministry of Education’s (extensive) J-E/E-J glossary for linguistics doesn’t list ‘vibrant’, although it does give ‘rolled sound’ as one translation of ふるえ音 hurueon, ‘trill’. On edit: My phonetician colleague knows the term, but notes that it is much less common than ‘trill’. He does cite the noted phonetician John C. Wells — who gave us the term ‘rhotic’–mentioning Italian, Spanish, and Russian [r]s as often being called vibrants. Seems a bit arcane, maybe fitter for a Mephisto.

         Edited at 2018-11-29 08:12 am (UTC)

4. Hmmm… I didn’t think of the non-anagram and now I’m a little puzzled. I wondered if there was a breakfast cereal named Vibrant, but there doesn’t seem to be one. I thought that vibrant meant something in heraldry, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Hmmm…
   Good catch on CHOW instead of CHOP, that didn’t occur to me.
5. I got there in the end, but took ages to get VIBRANT, BOWLINE, and TAYBERRY. I knew I was looking for that sort of cross, but I was looking for an animal. I still don’t quite get VIBRANT, like everyone else it seems dubious at best. I liked the GUID E-BOOK too.

   If you’ve never come across it, then you should take a look at the McGonagall’s poem on the (real) Tay Bridge disaster (when the bridge collapsed). I’ll get put in the penalty box if I put a link, but here’s the first verse:

   Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
   Alas! I am very sorry to say
   That ninety lives have been taken away
   On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
   Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

   1. MacGonagall has his own website
6. Oh, and in the UK, MOUSETRAP Is just slang for any cheap cheese, typically industrial cheddar.
   1. I assumed that that was the reason for the ? And don’t worry about posting a link: LJ will tell you that your message has been classified as spam, but one of the folks running this show will de-spam it. That’s been my experience, anyway.
      If you’re a McGonagall fan, you should get hold of a copy of “The Stuffed Owl”, an anthology of bad verse; I imagine he’s in there.

      Edited at 2018-11-29 06:18 am (UTC)

7. Biffed WAREHOUSE and was unable to find out what was going on in the wordplay until reading George’s explanation (thanks for that!), but I had at least given up on trying to construct it from wordplay and assumed, correctly as things turned out, that it was a cryptic reference to something I never heard of.

   By contrast at 5ac I pieced the answer together from wordplay (albeit a bit odd with ‘branflakes’ cluing BRAN) but had no idea what the defintion was supposed to be. I looked it up afterwards as mentioned in my comment above.

   Overall this was great fun though, with BOWLIN{galley},E as the best clue construction of the day, and probably the week.

   In my childhood in the early 1950s with shortages still in food shops the only cheese usually available was known as MOUSETRAP. A little later the choice was between that and Danish Blue.

   Edited at 2018-11-29 06:33 am (UTC)

8. The Great Bed of Ware! Thanks, I had no idea.
9. DNF, with the top-right corner pushing my hour out to an hour and twenty, and still not getting the unknown TAYBERRY. I’d thought of Tay for the bridge, but in the end I’d convinced myself that VIBRATO was more likely for 5a, as I couldn’t see the parsing either way for that or VIBRANT, and VIBRATO seemed to fit better with “rolled”. Plus “O” is a little appeal, right? And there were quite a few others unparsed, so it didn’t seem unlikely that I just wasn’t understanding what was going on.

   I’d eliminated BRAN as an anagram of BRAN. Sigh.

10. Got there in the end but without understanding Bowline or Vibrant. So thanks George for the explanations, but like others, I think 5ac is not a very good clue at all. I don’t think ‘rolled’ and ‘vibrant’ are really equivalent, whatever the expert linguists say! And ‘bran’ for ‘bran flakes’ is ridiculous (IMNVHO). Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
11. 45 mins with a croissant and G&L Marmalade, hoorah.
    DNK the great bed and struggled to parse the Shrew.
    Vibrant is just dodgy.
    Most time lost on the ‘preserved’ bit of well preserved, which eventually yielded the V for LOI Vincent.
    Thanks setter and G.
    Altogether now… Starry, starry night, Paint your palette blue and gray…
12. 15:33. I remembered the Great Bed of Ware from another puzzle… just looked it up – it was a rather good Jumbo I blogged back in February. Like others I am mystified by VIBRANT. Thanks for parsing a couple I never got, George – BOWLINE. where I got the BOWLING bit but didn’t see the missing alley, and HAIKU. JOCKEY my COD. I never knew TAYBERRY was a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry, but I do now.

    Edited at 2018-11-29 08:44 am (UTC)

13. Biffing all over the place and no time to notice the weirdness of 1ac or the neatness of 6dn. Time spent proof reading post-solve saved me from MUUSETRAP, which would otherwise have left me very grumpy.
14. Like many of us, I spent a lot of time in the NE with VIBRANT, TAYBERRY and BOWLINE my last 3 in. I was torn between VIBRATO and VIBRANT for a while, but eventually TAYBERRY arrived and clinched it. I saw the G subtraction, but missed the alley bit for BOWLINE. Clever! Didn’t know The Great Bed of Ware, so postulated WAREHOUSE and waited for the checkers to confirm or otherwise. My Maternal Grandad always slurped his tea from the saucer. It was a source of amusement to me and my brother. He lost an eye in WW1 and spent a lot of his later life confined to bed. He was a great raconteur of children’s stories but sadly passed away when I was aged 8. An enjoyable puzzle. 29:01. Thanks setter and George.
15. Assuming “rolled” and VIBRANT are the same thing, the clue works just fine without the word bran. That would make sense of “flakes” (= bran) and would eliminate any suggestion of an anagram, which it isn’t. Ed?
    I submitted without leaderboard, having had a lengthy interruption, but I’m embarrassed by your time, George, as BOWLINE and the troublesome VIBRANT took at least as long between them as the you took for the whole grid.
    JOCKEY also took longer than it should, not least because I forgot the required salmon and was working with cOHo.
    I eventually liked the GUID BOOK, didn’t see all of LUDICROUS, bluffed my way to TAYBERRY (the disastrous Tay bridge was my way in) and ended up with a typo. Not one of my better days, so I’m glad it was your turn George, for which many thanks.

    Edited at 2018-11-29 09:12 am (UTC)

16. I also wonder (having looked it up post solve) whether the setter checked the definition for vibrant in Chambers, saw “thrilling” and read it without the H. That might work.
    1. Well I’m crushed! Do you mean to say that the setter too has to scrabble around umpteen dictionaries, desperately searching for the most arcane meaning or alternative spelling, cunningly listed as the 24th entry (“archaic”) or (“obs”) ? And there was me thinking they were the founts of all wisdom, deigning to share their knowledge with we mere mortals. You might have let me down a little more gently. (Mr Grumpy)
17. Interesting puzzle with some lovely clues.

    BOWLINE is as stated an amazing spot, but I’m not sure the surface makes much sense. VIBRANT was a bit horrible for wordplay (as, for example, simply ‘very’ is usually enough for a V), although I certainly agree with the sentiment the setter expresses in that one!

    Thanks to you both.

18. Liked this one, about 15 mins because held up in the top right corner.
    5ac looks like a cockup to me but 26ac and 6dn are so good they more than cancel it out..
    Seen the great bed of Ware (it’s great, but not *that* great)and have a warm regard for MacGonagall, so bad he is rather good
    1. You might want to try Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan; here on the great Chicago fire:
       The great Chicago Fire, friends,
       Will never be forgot;
       In the history of Chicago
       It will remain a darken spot.
       It was a dreadful horrid sight
       To see that City in flames;
       But no human aid could save it,
       For all skill was tried in vain.

       She’s in “The Stuffed Owl” too.

       Edited at 2018-11-29 10:37 am (UTC)

       1. Yes, that’s the way .. a fine and complete disregard for all known rules of rhyme and metre. I might have to look out that book!

          I tend to have a problem with poetry, in that the message the author conveys to me, 99% of the time, is only “Look at me, aren’t I clever, I wrote a poem!” .. So poets like Julia and William, who aren’t even clever, I have an empathy with. Probably just me…

19. 37 minutes. BOWLIN(GALLEY)E is brilliant but I biffed it, still unsure of the underwhelming VIBRANT and needing to get a move on. So COD to John Knox and the GUIDEBOOK. I trust it was mouldy Cheddar that went into the MOUSETRAP. I was once doing some negotiations over lunch with the Commercial Director of EDF on the use of the 2000 MW cross channel power cable. Trying to be the good host, I’d asked our catering manager to ensure that the cheeseboard was full of good French cheese. The EDF guy went straight for the Cheddar, saying it was his favourite cheese. I enjoyed the Brie. The deal was done. Thank you George and setter.
20. 27 mins. Like everyone else, I was held up by the top-right trio. I biffed BOWLINE and never saw the clever wordplay. Now that paulmcl reminds me, I *do* remember McGonagall’s atrocious poem, but when solving I simply picked on the river Tay for a plausible Scottish bridge. VIBRANT is – as jerrywh concludes – a right porridge.

    Unlike everyone else, I didn’t rate this as an enjoyable puzzle. Quite a few bland clues (FORTUNE-TELLER, WELL-PRESERVED, PASTURE, AORTA), I thought.

    Anyway, many thanks to our blogger for explaining it all so clearly.

21. Spent so long trying to make sense of VIBRANT that I got rather fed up with the whole thing. Lots of very unimaginative definitions and three simple anagrams added to my (possibly weather induced) general grumpiness.
22. 53 minutes for me, but with some biffing. BOWLINE, WAREHOUSE and VIBRANT were never fully understood, although I did parse TWITCHER, LUDICROUS and TREE SHREW. I would have struggled greatly had I been doing blogging duty for this one. I don’t think I would have spotted the missing GALLEY in a month of Sunday’s, and VIBRANT remains a mystery to me even now. Great blog, thanks.
23. Drinking tea from the saucer may indeed be gross but there is a scientific logic in increasing the surface area so as to cool the tea down more quickly
    1. What’s the hurry?
    2. If you hold the cup high above your head and tip it, that would work just as well, and be more entertaining..
24. Nearly 25 minutes, with at least 5 spent in NE corner – I never did parse 6dn, and so was trying to make TOWLINE work until I found that BOWLINE wasn’t a knot here. I was also trying to find —R for a queen in which to insert P at 5dn, and though I eventually saw how that clue works, I couldn’t make sense of that to 5ac – it didn’t occur to me to check Collins when Chambers proved unhelpful.
    So thanks to all for explanations.
25. This was all fairly straightforward until I ran into BOWLINE and VIBRANT. For the former, I could see the anagram but could not equate the answer with “rolling” – indeed, I still can’t unless I look at it sideways and squint. BOWLINE was the obvious answer, but I missed the very clever wordplay. In the end, I shrugged and put them both in, expecting several pink squares when I submitted, and was pleasantly surprised.

    Thanks to the setter, and to our blogger for clarifying BOWLINE.

    1. I think you meant “latter” not former but hey, who is counting? You are in good company and I still think the latter clue is a cockup (on edit: now confirmed, see below..)

       Edited at 2018-11-29 04:14 pm (UTC)

26. Same as everyone else with VIBRANT – these double-exposure clues (I think we had one with a duck recently) make for a very itchy head. I think I read somewhere that Tay Bridge was the code-name for the Queen-mother’s funeral arrangements. 14.33 and I also missed the “alley”.
27. Very nice puzzle (well, almost entirely), with a number of clues where I had to think hard to parse before submitting, not least the BOWLINE. Also very much liked the GUID BOOK, ye ken?

    Unsurprisingly, my last one in was 5ac, where it doesn’t help that the definition is, while not exactly tenuous, the most obscure possible; after weighing it up, my parsing there was that the clue’s been edited, but somehow the process was never completed (I’d agree with Z’s suggestion that “flakes” was supposed to replace bran, not supplement it, but got left in). Shame, as it meant a rather anticlimactic end to a good puzzle.

28. I started this one speedily but hit a wall in the lower half, finally crawling over the line in 16m 17s. I wasn’t helped by having WELL-PRESENTED for 17a, which didn’t work… but since I couldn’t understand the parsing of WAREHOUSE (never heard of that bed), HAIKU, VIBRANT (bran flakes = bran??), TAYBERRY, VIPER or GUIDEBOOK, I thought one more wouldn’t hurt. And that was before I got to JOCKEY, where the sockeye was unknown to me – albeit I’m sure I’ve bumped up against it in any number of crosswords.

    For a while I tried DETER at 22d, which works cryptically but stretches the definition of ‘anger’ to breaking point.

    Edited at 2018-11-29 12:44 pm (UTC)

29. Was on a mission for record time (failed) so I somewhat missed the nuances of this puzzle with a goodly number of the clues unparsed. Held up at the end in the SE where I tried to make the salmon a cOHo and finally got the answer from the literal. COD TWITCHER I’m surrounded by them.
30. Same as others – VIBRANT – yuk. I suspect the ‘bran’ is a typo as it is not needed.

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