Times 27,299: Got A Gridful Of Clues, It’s Dark And We’re Wearing Sunglasses. Hit It!

44 comments on “Times 27,299: Got A Gridful Of Clues, It’s Dark And We’re Wearing Sunglasses. Hit It!”

1. Did some biffing myself, or quasi-biffing (as with LITHUANIAN and GRAND OPERA, where there seemed to be the anagrist). AVERSION THERAPY, for instance, which I never parsed, because I was taking THE RAP to be ‘blame’. I don’t think I’ve seen ‘trace’=initial letter before; or have I? I was, ah, primed for 25d by a recent TLS puzzle; I wondered if it was the same setter today. A clever device, rather wasted here.
   1. Funny that we had that exchange on the subject just yesterday – otherwise without your prompting I might well have missed the prime significance here.
      1. As might I. Still T_E? As I said, rather wasted.
2. 11:10. This was an 80/20 puzzle for me: 80% of the time on 20% of the clues. I thought for while I might come in under 5 minutes but then it got much harder.
   I had particularly problems with AVERSION THERAPY, ENVELOPING (even after I had seen the answer and the ELOPING element I couldn’t see how the rest worked, doh!) and INJECTS/JERK until the J in the latter made the former easy.
   A fun puzzle for me though, and I thought ‘prime locations in store’ was particularly brilliant.
   1. My favorite aversion therapy story–well, it’s my only one–was given by a friend’s psych prof: A patient in a mental hospital was stealing and hoarding towels, so they tried the aversion approach. Every day a nurse would bring her a couple. At first she was thrilled, but slowly the enthusiasm failed, and finally she wasn’t even looking at the nurse when she came in. The room was just about filled with towels when one morning the nurse came in, and the patient said, coldly, “I have some.”
   2. I had much the same problem with ENVELOPING (14D). I don’t much care for the use of “traces” to denote the first letters of words, but no doubt an old hand like yourself will tell me that this is a well-established cryptic crossword device.
   3. I had much the same problem with ENVELOPING at 14D. I don’t much care for the use of “traces” to denote the first letters of words, but no doubt an old hand like yourself will tell me that it is a well-established cryptic crossword device.
3. …but the NE corner was very hard for me. I was sure that the definition for 10 was ‘people generally’, and that it started with an anagram ‘a model addict’. I couldn’t see ‘vox pop’, ‘played false’, ‘payroll’, and ‘Zeno’, either.

   Time 35 minutes, with most of it spent in the NE.

4. Three-fourths of it was done, and then, like Vinyl, I got bogged down in the Northeast. The broadcast term VOX POP was nearly my last in.
   If I were concerned about speed, I might biff more, but then I also wouldn’t enjoy the puzzle as much. I have a biff aversion when working this kind of puzzle. But I am reminded that I haven’t gotten around to working the Thursday New York Times puzzle yet (the one with the gimmick), where definitions are the whole show.

   Edited at 2019-03-15 04:27 am (UTC)

5. After a humbling experience with today’s QC (entirely down to me, not the puzzle) I approached this with some trepidation but was doing rather well with it until I came unstuck at the INJECTS / JERK intersection. If I’d realised the pangram sooner I’d have done myself some good working out which of the less common letters was still unaccounted for.

   Along the way I looked twice at PLAYED FALSE as it’s not an expression I’m particularly aware of, I didn’t get the ‘prime’ reference re TOE, and in my higgerance I thought ‘vox pops’ would be the equivalent of ‘interviews’.

   Edited at 2019-03-15 05:02 am (UTC)

6. A bit of an interrupted solve for me and a typo to spoil it, but that was a lot of fun. Nice surfaces and lots of smiles.

   IN JETS and the Rachel / CHARLES thing are both fun, but happy groan of the day to T(h)ANKFUL.

   Thanks setter and v

7. Nearly completed a Friday puzzle, but defeated by zeno, plumped for zero.
8. Today was probably the first time I’d spotted a pangram and been helped by it. I’d been unsure about the stoical leader until the Z have it away for me.

   I spent some time thinking the lost land was OTIANDES, thinking of the wrong biblical books and the wrong mountain range. Finally I got THANKFUL and was able to come up with my LOI ATLANTIS.

9. Today when I have plenty of time I took 13 minutes. Yesterday when pressed for time we have a difficult one. Probably one of Zeno’s paradoxes.
   Liked TOE, TRANSCRIBER and TANKFUL. Especially tankful to V for the Blues Brother reference and, subsequently, the earworms.
10. 16:40. Held up by JERK/INJECT for a couple of minutes at the end. Like Jack, I might have got it sooner if I’d thought of the pangram. Very straightforward for a Friday. I liked the prime locations in TOE, the gender changed CHARLES and GRAND OPERA, but COD to TANKFUL – what a great surface!
11. 21 minutes on this, with LOI ENVELOPING. I liked AVERSION THERAPY, though I don’t suppose I would if I had to undergo it, but COD to TANKFUL. I don’t think the distinction between wage earners and salaried staff holds nowadays, but both were paid through PAYROLL when it did. Thank you V and setter.
12. A sluggish 49 minutes, for which I’m going to blame my ongoing lurgy. What good is man-flu if it can’t be used as an excuse, after all?

    FOI 1a CERAMICS, LOI 7d PLAYED FALSE, where I didn’t recognise either definition. Grateful to the scripts for A Bit of Fry and Laurie I read as a youngster for introducing me to 5a VOX POP. Enjoyed quite a few along the way, including 19a SHELLAC’s tricksy definition, and 26d’s device, though I need to write “1 is not a prime number” on the board a hundred times for the future…

13. Well I would say this is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Anybody new to the 15×15 who wants to have a go at a Monday puzzle dressed up as a Friday I’d say dive in and have a go!
14. 25 mins. Steady solve. Thanks, v.
15. I didn’t know that meaning for it. The TLS puzzle Kevin mentions is still too recent to comment on but the device used here in TOE is used even more ingeniously there. 15.04
16. VOX POP was my first in, but I didn’t soar through the rest. The first time I saw ‘prime locations’ as a letter indicator was in a Listener puzzle by Tiburon, quite a few years ago – once seen, never forgotten, but the surface was very strong here.
17. I was going to say that the only reason I knew ‘vox pop’ was because it’s used in the stage directions for Monty Python–I have their collected works. I thought it meant everyday folks talking to the camera, not actual interviews.
18. Kevin’s mention of the Pythons reminds me.

    One of their production team used to be a tenant of my father’s back in the day. Once he threw away a load of their typewritten draft scripts and Dad found them while he was at the property one day and gave them to me. I think I still have them in my loft somewhere but had forgotten about them. Does anybody know if stuff like that might be worth anything? And if so any idea how much?

    1. To quote Monty Python …… “lots of lovely lira,
       Now the Deutschmark’s getting dearer.”
       1. Most apposite!
19. ….NAIVE this morning, but I never spotted the pangram or the prime number ruse (my only biff).

    Not quite an 80:20 experience, but I completed the left side in about 6 minutes, the NE corner took a further 2 minutes, and I got stuck at 14D 4 minutes later. Why that one took about three minutes to crack, I really can’t explain.

    FOI CERAMICS
    LOI ENVELOPING
    COD GRAND OPERA
    SILVER MEDAL TANKFUL
    TIME 14:55

20. Easy puzzle most notable for wasting a very good clueing device on T-E with “footwear” in the clue!
21. Managed to avoid biffing SEA GREEN by cunningly reading the clue and checking that every element made sense before moving on, so perhaps I am not too old to learn the lessons of previous similar carelessness. Nice puzzle, and as pointed out above, the primes device is excellent, but sadly, once you’ve seen it (even if you can’t remember where or when – I have a feeling it was in a Jumbo I blogged years ago) you probably can’t forget it, and get to enjoy the penny-drop moment again. My main hold-up came from wondering what were the chances that BOOTHFUL might exist? Not high, as it turned out, of course.
22. A gentle stroll to restore a sense of normality after the horrible, horrible news from New Zealand. I sometimes think that’s why I do these things, as a distraction from a naughty world.
    I’ll freely admit to not wholly parsing 22a, 25a and 3d, but then I’m not blogging today and can safely leave such niceties (with thanks) to Verlaine, who after all has much more time left than my 16.24 allowed.
23. Held up by checking why 1 isn’t a prime number ( prime has to have 2 different divisors apparently).
    VOX POP first in so NE held no problems for me. My LOI was SCRAWL where I had a brain freeze, and ENVELOPING where all I could see that fitted was UNBECOMING which wasn’t it and took a while to see the traces bit
24. 22 min – spotting the pangram put me slightly on the wrong track: at first I was expecting the J to be in 13ac., though the Z put me right. However I’d put OWED at 6dn (? ‘words’=ode) so spoiled chance of a good score.
25. I failed to see the significance of prime in 26d and spent a while agonising over it. I could see that TOE was made up from the second third and fifth letters of store but still didn’t twig it. Doh! ZENO, JERK and OWES also took careful thought, but ROE and KNOW went straight in. AVERSION THERAPY and INJECTS were other sticking points. The clock said 31:46 as I submitted, but 2 or 3 minutes of that were spent paying and chatting to the Window Cleaner as I forgot to pause it. Enjoyable puzzle. Didn’t notice the pangram either. Thanks setter and V.
26. Tipped off that a few of these clues had escaped from a QC, I had a go. I got the top half pretty much including VOX POP and ZENO but another visit to The Andes at 9D ( Otiandes???) led to severe complications and the lower half clues seemed more difficult. I had my eye on the clock with the Cheltenham Gold Cup happening soon so I came here for enlightenment. Watching Bryony Frost yesterday was uplifting.
    David
27. Can’t help feeling I should have been quicker. Spent too much time on Aversion Therapy, wondering how to parse ‘The Rap’ for blame – when I should have forgotten the article. Thanks for explaining Enveloping and Toe. I like ‘prime locations’ very much.
28. Os as in ‘ose and fork ‘andles. 😂
    1. 🙂
29. Just popping in to report a ~4m time by Magoo – still the king!
30. Great cod – how can anyone do these things in four minutes? That’s something like ten seconds per clue (and, indeed, per answer). Takes me longer than that to get comfy, find a pen, discover that it’s not working, find a replacement pen and then realize I don’t need one because I’m solving online.
31. Oh, and an apology to those of you who have responded to any of my comments, but then been ignored by me. I had an old email address as my default, and it stopped forwarding to my current address, so I wasn’t notified of any comments.
32. 30:08. Lively in parts but mostly a relief from a couple of epic struggles earlier in the week. Dnk that meaning of press in 25ac but didn’t need to be a genius to work it out. Had seen the prime device very recently too so saw what was required there straight away. Funnily enough I had a 12dn in the office today 12dn-ing away.
33. Another busy day – late posting – for the record

    Time 33 mins

    FOI 1ac CERAMICS

    LOI 5ac VOX POP (ad-speak version)

    COD 17ac TANKFUL

    WOD 19acv SHELLAC – also good as a verb – a right shellacking (Or. prison/political slang)

    1. that was from horryd – live journal have fouled up my access, due to change of email address! Anyone?
34. …completely forgot to enter ZENO (not that I know who he/she is) so two pink squares. FOI VOX POP. LOI ENVELOPING shortly after the INJECTS/JERK pairing. Ho hum
35. Thanks setter and verlaine
    Took a long time … over the hour … but a lot of distractions for the first part of it. Struck out with OWED (O and d) and failed to pick up on the pangram – still not expecting them in the Times puzzles for some reason.
    Had written in CABINET MINISTER without properly parsing it … hmmm.
    ROE was the first one in and like others ENVELOPING was the last … had LOPING as the ‘running off’ at first, but eventually twigged to the ENV bit and added the other E to the other ‘running off’.
    Saw the JETS part of 18d quite quickly, so getting the rest of it wasn’t too hard.
    Did like TANKFUL and thought NAIVE was quite good as well.

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