Times 27,221: He Who Laughs Last

38 comments on “Times 27,221: He Who Laughs Last”

1. Bang on 30m for this enjoyable puzzle. Had to think carefully about which letter went where in cachinnate but in truth there really was no alternative. Interesting word. Took a while over sunshade, too, but got there in the end. Thanks setter and Verlaine. By the way, my wife recently made me a coat like yours, with a cracking astrakhan collar. Mind you, I’m rubbish at poetry but have not entirely evaded a degree of decadence (in my youth, of course).
2. Thanks for this V. As you say, quite straightforward. I blinked a bit at ORATRESS and RULELESS as mildly clumsy bits of vocab unlikely to appear outside crosswordland. ECRU is a staple of the NY Times puzzles although I think of it as sort of ivory/beige rather than greyish in real life. Nice one to round off a quite difficult week. 19.01
   1. I was thinking pale beige, but then wondered if I had confused it with taupe .. silly names, both
3. Nice middle-of-the-road puzzle with a couple of rather gauche items of vocab., as Olivia says.
   Was wondering where everyone had got to, but I see V is late on parade today.. presumably, most have had to go off to work now (smirk)
4. A handful of comments and its all been said. Bog standard puzzle with top to bottom solve. No queries.
5. 51 minutes here. Given my hangover, poor sleep and the words I knew not at all or only slightly, I’m happy with that.

   FOI 4’d air-kiss. LOI the unknown 13d CACHINNATE. In fact, my time would have been 48 minutes but I decided to double-check that I couldn’t see a more word-like arrangement of the remaining blank squares. That double-N just looks a bit unlikely…

6. I have decided to limit myself to 30′, so had three unsolved, one of which was DIETRICH, my COD – spent ages trawling for a bird. Dnk CACHINNATE, but couldn’t be anything else.

   Thanks verlaine and setter.

7. 43 minutes but seemed longer as I made very slow progress at the beginning. Also I got my start in the lower half and was working uphill from there all the way.

   I’ve never seen the ugly word ‘oratress’ before, nor had it ever occurred to me that ‘orator’ might be exclusivly male. But anyway I’d have thought if there has to be a female version it would be ‘oratrix’ so I was pleased to find that also exists. Biffed WAR CHEST and forgot to return to parse it.

8. 20:15 A handful of stragglers took a little while to mop up, for no good reason in retrospect. A rather ECRU sort of puzzle after yesterday’s snorter.
9. Agree with above, 30 minutes, MOR puzzle with some clunky vocab, some forgettable clues, but do-able. Didn’t bother to parse STILETTO and had to fit the last 3 letters in once had all checkers and -ATE for 13d. Liked DIET RICH. Yesterday’s was more of a Friday style job I thought.
10. 36 minutes. I thought SHANGHAI must be being used for its press-gang meaning but took a while to think of “impress” for that and to add our normal port to its reduction. I knew 11 a from Young Girl seated at a Virginal, a painting print I once got as a free gift from the garage having saved up the petrol tokens. I remember it as a Fragonard but Wiki tells me it was Vermeer. High culture indeed. DNK the Americans loved their HOMIEs as themselves but their HOMICIDE rate when that doesn’t work made the answer obvious. COD to SUNSHADE. I’ve had Billy Fury’s version of JEALOUSY in my head all morning. He always made great records, and his statue at the Albert Dock is brilliant. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2018-12-14 12:21 pm (UTC)

11. Forty-four minutes, making this one quite tough (by my standards). It was a very slow start, followed by gradual progress and a final flurry at the end. CACHINNATE was new to me, and hence only went in once I had all the checkers. The north-left corner in general seemed to hold me up unaccountably.

    I think this is my most preferred level of difficulty, but I’ve enjoyed all this week’s puzzles, even though they include a couple of DNFs. Thanks to setter and blogger, and a good weekend to all.

12. Nice, if not as Friday-ish as yesterday. A few tricky words – the ORATRESS, the obviously-real-but-who-would-actually-ever-use-it RULELESS, working out the only viable spelling for CACHINNATE – and for some reason, a mental blank at 10ac, where it took a long alphabet trawl before I remembered that there is an obvious star which is worth trying to fit into a word on these occasions. Liked the American crime and the air kiss, which made this dangerously modern by Times standards.
13. hoping for a record time, but held up by SUNSHADE at the end despite having all the available help. DNK CACHINNATE but it had no other option. MWAH to you all!
    1. “cachinnate” is a write-in (if not a spell-in) for people who did the Cambridge Latin Course at school… I’m pretty sure someone in that was “cachinnans” on quite a regular basis.
14. ….what am I to do ? I can’t help it. I started out thinking of Birdland too, but once Marlene revealed herself, I chuckled to myself. Actually, I prefer Alan Price’s rather faster take on the song.

    I wrongly entered “cacchinate” but promptly checked the anagrind to save potential embarrassment.

    MER at the same dodgy words as others, but a tidy enough puzzle overall.

    FOI VIRGINAL
    LOI SUNSHADE
    COD OFFENCE
    TIME 12:57

15. 38 mins but one error at my LOI 19dn I presumed that RALLIERS were anarchic sellers in a doomed bear market – whatever! ALL was my everyone….drivel!

    FOI 24dn SCAR
    WOD 13dn CACHINNATE made me laugh out loud!
    COD 8dn JEALOUSY

    Nice to see SHANGHAI (The Amethyst!) get a mention.

    Edited at 2018-12-14 12:57 pm (UTC)

16. ORATRESS, for God’s sake; I almost wish I’d failed to get it.
17. I made solid progress with this one, with EPIDEMIC going straight in after pandemic was dismissed. MWAH followed, along with the sheep, but then I had to decamp to the SW as the NW yielded no more low hanging fruit. The strange ORATRESS went in with confidence once I’d taken OFFENCE. I awaited the crossers before inserting the unknown CACHINNATE. RULELESS also struck me as an odd word. Marlene went in after I’d spotted the cowboy, and I returned to my LOI, SUNSHADE, which made me smile. Nice puzzle. 29:16. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2018-12-14 01:22 pm (UTC)

18. Ugh ! Defeated by 4Down. Is this a word? I cannot find it in Chambers. Otherwise an entertaining puzzle … thank you
    1. It is not in the current Chambers.. but it is in Collins, and the ODE even has “Mwah-mwah,” as well..
       1. It’s in my Chambers app for Mac:

          mwah /mwä/

          interjection

          An exclamation intended to convey the sound of a kiss

          ORIGIN: Imit

          the “about” screen of the app suggests it’s the 13th edition.

19. well-crafted content
20. I do find the increasing use of American slang irritating. Homie is in Chambers but is defined as ‘a home boy’ not a neighbour. As has alredy been polnted out, mwah does not even exist in Chambers and it’s not as if the compiler was forced into into using this absurdity.
    I remain irritated !
    Pollyp
    1. To be fair, Chambers defines the linked “homeboy” as “A male acquaintance from one’s own neighbourhood or town”, so I think that it and its derivative “homie” would both indicate a neighbour. That’s certainly the meaning when I encounter the word in various US TV shows.
    2. Hear hear! At last someone who agrees with me re Americanisms. I thought I was a voice in the wilderness. There seems to an increasing justification of clues with recourse to Merriam-Webster too, which I find alarming. I would also add slang in general, along with the obsolete and archaic, plus words that are clearly foreign. I just don’t see the point of a clue that can only be justified by scouring various dictionaries and finding the answer as the 24th entry in the last one you look in. I can guarantee that is what the setter has done to compile that type of clue in the first place-and he/she presumably has plenty of time on their hands to do just that. The solver hasn’t. And If you’re doing the puzzle hard copy on a train, as many people do, you’re unlikely to have access to the dictionary anyway. It’s all so unnecessary. Mr Grumpy
       1. In my experience it’s extremely rare, in fact almost unheard of in modern times, for a word or meaning of a word in a Times crossword not to be in Collins, the Concise Oxford or Chambers so it’s not necessary to scour American dictionaries and elsewhere.
21. Not much to say here, except for the discovery of CACHINNATE. I also waited for the checking letters to appear, and arranged the rest in what seemed the only way possible. I took Latin, but I don’t remember this whatsoever. And despite being an American, I can sympathize with those who didn’t enjoy having to contend with HOMIE or MWAH (although I’m not admitting that MWAH is an Americanism; it might be, but I have no idea). Regards.
22. 24 minutes dead, after very slow start. Lots of spelling traps for the unwary and words never seen outside this place: RULELESS and ORATRESS? Really?
    Am I the only one who saw DIETRICH and thought Fischer Dieskau? I know we’re not supposed to be on first name terms here, but that’s the way the trigger pulled.

    Edited at 2018-12-14 05:53 pm (UTC)

    1. Me too. (Maybe because I’ve just sung the War Requiem. Btw, did you realise he did the German translation of that?) But also because I think of Marlene Dietrich as an actress rather than a singer. Could what she did be called “singing”? Singspiel vielleicht…
23. 21:55… but BINNACLE instead of PINNACLE for 7d. No wonder I couldn’t work out the parsing. I didn’t know what a binnacle is, but knew it was something boatie. As for pinnace – NHO. Nor CACHINNATE for that matter. SUSPICIOUS and DISCIPLINE my last 2 in. I liked the seasonal PLUM DUFF.
24. Nothing to add. I found this quite a challenge and thought I’d have to leave with a DNF. But it clicked in the end. 40 minutes. Ann
25. Surely dangerous = hairy, minus the h = airy?
    1. As already explained in Verlaine’s blog.

       phonetics
       ‘unaspirated’
       not pronounced with an initial h

       Edited at 2018-12-14 09:07 pm (UTC)

26. Found this quite tricky and had to swap answers with my husband which we hardly ever do. DNK cachinnate despite Latin A level (but no Cambridge Latin Course). LOI Sunshade which took me ages to think of. Mwah has appeared quite recently with similar clue so that was a write in.
27. And finished – spent ages trying to think of a bird ending in “rich” until the penny dropped. I worked out “cachinnate” but had to look it up to double-check. Feeling good.
28. Finished off this morning after a few drinks last night … A very slow time but happy to get there in the end. Held up by a careless pandemic and wanting to get All into 19d. LOI Dietrich.
29. Hi. I have sent you a message to your livejournal account.

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