Times 27,323: Sandwich Watch

70 comments on “Times 27,323: Sandwich Watch”

1. ….and finished in about 50 minutes. I was thinking that 3 down was an anagram of TO BODY, RIGHT, and L, which nearly works, except there’s a G instead of an S. Ignoring that, I put in the obviously correct answer an continued. Then at 13 down, TRIPS OVER PACIFIC presents the solver with a tempting TOP, so the last word must be ‘stop’, right? Wrong!

   If anyone is wondering about Verlaine’s time, it was 9:30, pretty good for this puzzle.

2. I totally screwed up by putting ALOE for 24A (hey, it works, take O=love out and you get ALE=bitter) and then never noticed when I put SALMON LEAP in that it overwrote one of the letters. So DNF. Otherwise nothing too hard, although I don’t remember having heard of WATTEAU before.
   1. I had ALOE at first too, and noted that the absence of a definition would surely be commented on in the blog. HA.
3. Gee, V, I never got 17d (though I did finish).

   VEGEBURGER was my next-to-the-last in; odd spelling. EXTERNAL, of all things, was LOI, because “outward looking” didn’t seem to fit as a definition.

   I was very POKY in getting POKY.

   1. I had no recollection whatsoever of entering EXTERNAL and I certainly didn’t parse it until afterwards! Must have just entered it from the crossers on beer auto-pilot…
4. 17:30 … pitch perfect daily puzzle, I thought. Witty, creative, ultimately solvable.

   I sometimes feel a bit sorry for setters having to offer enumerations. Things like RUN TO EARTH, HOLD YOUR HORSES and COLD SHOULDER would be a good deal harder with ‘two words’ or ‘three words’. Enumerating the word lengths makes them much, much easier.

   PERVERSE got a chuckle from me, though I suspect I’ve seen it before.

   Thanks setter, and blogger drunk on ancient beer. I misread your line at first, Verlaine, and thought you were drinking a beer *made* in 1896. I was wondering if that made a chap tell bawdy jokes about Molly houses and pick fights with people by calling them zounderkites or rantallions

   1. I agree entirely. I am often able to biff most of the multi-word solutions with the aid of the enumerations. To instigate a “two/three words” policy in the clueing would be a significant step forward, I think.

      Edited at 2019-04-12 10:01 am (UTC)

      1. Please don’t- our hopes of a sub-hour solution would be totally dashed!
5. Quite a tricky puzzle, which took me some time to unpick, particularly the NW corner. Like keriothe I was tempted by VEGETARIAN but it seemed too loose for a type of sandwich so I managed to resist biffing it. It seemed it would have something to do with vegetables but it took me until near the end to see VEGEBURGER. I also hadn’t heard of RUN TO EARTH though it wasn’t too much of a leap of faith from the more familiar “run to ground”.
6. My first post, having just joined the Crossword Club. As a beginner, I realise that my times will be significantly longer than experienced solvers, coming in at 1 hour 28 minutes for today, but how is it physically possible to get times of two and three minutes? I couldn’t even type the answers in that quickly, if I knew them beforehand.
   1. Welcome, Danny. You can generally ignore the 2 and 3 minute times. They’re people who solve the puzzle in the paper then take great pride in typing the answers in quickly online (known around here as ‘neutrinos’). The top genuine speed solvers are usually Aphis, Magoo, Jason, mohn, and our blogger today Verlaine, and a few others you’ll get to know over time. Their times are quite impressive enough!

      Edited at 2019-04-12 07:51 am (UTC)

      1. I have wondered if these times could be explained by solvers who prefer to solve on paper but then put their answers in online to check them. Maybe that’s a too generous view though!
         1. The fact that they ignore the ‘Submit without leaderboard’ option suggests your view is indeed generous 🙂
            1. I think I did that the first time—from what I remember, there was absolutely nothing on the site which tells you what “submit without leaderboard” actually means, or why you should do it. Maybe that’s changed…
         2. I suspect you are being too generous, pootle. Genuine people who want to do that could time their solve on paper and then hold off submitting on-line until that time had elapsed.

            Also, it’s possible to check answers on-line by clicking ‘reveal’ without participating in the league table. I do that as part of the automated blogging process and my name has never appeared in the list.

            1. I don’t use the site myself so I wasn’t aware of the features mentioned. Clearly I was too generous!
      2. Thank you sotira, I had rather suspected some skullduggery of the type you refer to, but was a little baffled as to what they get out of it, who is one fooling? Thanks for the welcome, I am at the stage of just being happy to complete at the moment having started with the QC and migrated to the 15×15 fairly recently.
         1. Finishing them at all is an achievement. Nice to have you around!
         2. Indeed, welcome, and contributions always welcome too.
         3. Mostly they are not trying to fool anyone .. they just regard the website as flawed and unhelpful. Nobody is trying to pretend a 2 minute time is real. either they simply don’t understand the complexities Sotira mentions, or they don’t care, or they realise there is no way times there can be verified or relied upon .. pretending that they can be, is whistling in the wind
         4. I have seen Jason complete a puzzle fairly in 2m40, so it’s just about possible to achieve neutrino-like times if you’re very fast. I’ve only broken the 3minute mark once myself (on a 15×15; the QC is very doable in under 3!)
7. There was only one piece of French art that sprang to my mind after accepting that my LOI was actually WATTEAU…

   Took me 45 minutes to get there, and a pleasant journey it was. Slightly distracted halfway through by getting the Q and the J in quick succession and then looking for a nonexistent pangram. Also held up by really wanting 9a to be RUN TO HEATH, even though the anagram fodder wasn’t quite right.

   Never *quite* stuck, but never quite getting on enough of a roll to build momentum. FOI 6a CLUB. (It took me longer to come up with VEGEBURGER, though I’ve eaten plenty in my time. For a history on the long-running debates of sandwich classification and a survey of the current state-of-the-art, see The Cube Rule)

   WOD MALARKEY.

   Edited at 2019-04-12 06:59 am (UTC)

   1. Love the Cube Rule! .. however much I disagree with it
      1. Seconded
8. 44 minutes having taken ages to come up with VEGEBURGER as a type of sandwich, which I suppose it is if one orders it in a burger bar or wherever, but I tend to think of burgers as the meat (or in this case, vegetable) patties themselves, not the bun. Another hold-up was from thinking that 27ac was going to be an anagram. 15ac had too many letters for me as Faron Young’s ‘Yellow Bandana’ didn’t have a double ‘n’.

   Edited at 2019-04-12 06:03 am (UTC)

   1. I would agree. And it’s almost always ‘veggieburger’. Mr Grumpy
      1. I would have spelled it vegeburger… and I do eat quite a few of them!
9. 11:38. Fun puzzle.
   I slowed myself down by biffing VEGETARIAN at 1ac. As Sandy notes, VEGEBURGER is an odd spelling. Same for BANDANNA.
10. Got off to a fast start with this but then reduced to a plod with LOI, EROS taking close to 5 mins.

    COD: PERVERSE.

11. 24 minutes with LOI POKY. I think that I didn’t see this quickly as I would more naturally spell the phrase as Porkie Pies. I’ve just googled this and note that both spellings are permissible. Indeed, there is a pie shop in Liverpool trading to my spelling. Perhaps it’s a north-west thing. Overall, it was dodgy spelling day for me. I’ve frequently eaten the VEGEBURGER in Burger King as the least worst option when the children were younger, but I’d have had it as Veggieburger. And I thought that BANDANNA was spelt with a single N. This was an excellent puzzle with COD to NEGATIVE EQUITY, although there were many other nice clues including APATHY, HOLD YOUR HORSES and SEE-THROUGH. I was disappointed though that the place to see the flying fish wasn’t on the Road to Mandalay. Isn’t that where Kipling met Dorothy Lamour? Thank you V and setter.
12. Really enjoyed this, elegant and witty.
    Count me among the NNs for bandanna
13. 21:48. I enjoyed this, particularly HOLD YOUR HORSES, POKY and WATTEAU. Like others I was a little surprised at the spelling of 1A. Must try that Anchor Steam Beer. Thanks V and setter.
14. Classic excellent Times Crossword. Thank you setter.

    My one problem was VEGEBURGER but the V of VERB suggested VEER and with GRUB for food I had an answer – I just didn’t think of it as a sandwich!

    Well blogged V

15. Delightful puzzle which I chuckled through in a decent 15.39, ignoring qualms over spelling as listed above, plus MALARK(E)Y, though the VEGEBURGER took a while to emerge from the surrounding entries. I liked (and giggled at) the very neat weather presenter, but was peculiarly slow to recognise my last one in EROS.
    I noted that the deeply authoritative Wiktionary lists VEGEBURGER as “(Britain) Alternative spelling of veggie burger” though its citations are both American.

    Edited at 2019-04-12 09:39 am (UTC)

16. 44 mins and an enjoyable mental workout for me. My only gripe is with Y as an abbreviation for ‘yard’ in 14a: surely not so — Y=’year’ but YD for ‘yard’. On reflection, I would spell the headband with only one N, but didn’t bat an eyelid when solving. I wrestled with the clue for my LOI, EROS, for ages and enjoyed the eventual “Doh!” moment.
    I think VEGEBURGER is far superior to ‘veggie-‘: as a single word it represents the morphological blend of ‘vege[table]’ and ”[beef]burger’. The vernacular form is so much cruder.
    Thanks for your blog, V. And thanks to the setter.
    1. I’m not very keen on VEGEBURGER. It strikes me as contrived and a little pretentious, whereas ‘veggie burger’ is a no-nonsense description of a no-nonsense object: it’s a burger made out of veggies!
       1. A vegetarian burger may no longer be made out of veggies! Unless veggie = any food that isn’t actually meat, I think it’s become more complex than that.
          1. A burger for veggies then. Short for ‘vegetarian burger’. Either way I prefer it.
17. I’m quite happy not to have any more obscure ancient cities.

    I got through this one in 24min, which is on the fast side of my average, making it a relatively easy one for a Friday. Quite a few went in only vaguely parsed, and SEE-THROUGH was not parsed at all. Enjoyable Friday solve.

    1. It’s called education, Thud … must Troy harder 🙂
       1. It’s no coincidence that the words “pun” and “punishment” are related, you know.

          As for the French and their verbal kleptomania, they are shameless. They don’t even have their own word for quiche for gods’ sake. Too many four-hour lunchbreaks in the Académie if you ask me.

18. Always makes me think of Bertie Wooster. Nice puzzle and I’m glad the setter made his/her spelling for the burger perfectly clear. 18.59
19. Loved this one, as did others; 25 minutes with EROS and POKY my LOsI. No bones to pick, save to say I think what constitutes a sandwich in New York is not the same as in UK, where one expects 2 flat slices of a loaf with a filling. Except in McDonalds of course where the sandwich is a burger.
    In France the plural of ‘le sandwich’ is ‘les sandwichs’ which I find hard to swallow.
    1. If Brexit ever goes through, they will be obliged to fall back on their own resources and come up with a French word for ‘sandwich’.
       1. There is one .. it is “le sandwich.” they are often eaten pendant le weekend.
          Still, chacun a son gout

          Edited at 2019-04-12 02:29 pm (UTC)

20. Chambers gives both “y” and “yd” for yard. “y” is widely used in crossword land
    1. Chambers, huh? The Scrabble dictionary.
21. Having spotted VEER for change of direction, after getting VERB and GONDOLA, I started typing VEGGIEBURG and ran out of space, changed it to VEGIBURGER, then checked the wordplay and finally got to VEGEBURGER. I puzzled for a while over BANDANNA, wondering where the extra N came from in ANNA, then thought of ANNA(l). The top half of this puzzle flew in, but then I was dragged back to a much slower pace by the bottom half, where some cleverly disguised definitions made me work much harder. LOG-BOOK was the break through in the SW. Finally JESUIT was spotted and left me with the unknown(to me) WATTEAU, with the meal eventually presenting itself to complete the wordplay and puzzle. An enjoyable 31:24. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2019-04-12 10:40 am (UTC)

22. 25 minutes, with GROUND RENT last in – never heard of it. I think I merit some kind of envelope-pushing marketing award for putting ‘vegiburger’ in first before checking the anagrammatic letters. Enjoyable fare, as others have said, if lacking that little something that GATH can bring to a puzzle.

    Edited at 2019-04-12 09:46 am (UTC)

    1. This is an important concept in leasehold property in the UK. There have been a lot of articles lately in the Guardian and the Times about dishonest developers selling naive buyers leasehold properties with rapidly escalating ground rents.

       Ground rents are the reason the Duke of Grosvenor is so rich: he owns huge tracts of land in the West End, and is entitled to receive rents from a large number of very valuable properties.

       1. For many old properties the ground rent is minimal, hence the expression PEPPERCORN RENT which could well turn up in a Times crossword one of these days.
23. Very enjoyable and I felt bang on wavelength for most of it, spotting potential tricky bits straight away most of the time. 10:38 and again I lost time at the end on a trio in the NW corner.
24. Very nice Friday stuff. Another who was momentarily bamboozled by what I thought was an extra N in BANDANNA. Even after decades of being aware of their products, I still find it odd that McDonalds describe their main products as “sandwiches”, but it meant I didn’t think twice about 1ac. I thought the usage might have been abandoned in the UK, along with attempts to make us like root beer, but it appears not. West Coast craft beer is a different matter, of course.
25. Flying again today, swings and roundabouts. Never seen the VEGEBURGER spelling, despite being of that persuasion. Liked SALMON LEAP, and MALARKEY LOI.

    I also agree totally about getting rid of multiword enumeration, lovely clues which lose impact….

    14′ 30”, thanks verlaine and setter.

    1. No, she pulled her harpoon out of her dirty red bandanna. Best regards, Bobby McGee
       1. Hmmmm…I was playing sad while Bobby sang the blues.. the song is gender neutral…
          1. More gender-fluid: originally a girl (Kris Kristoffersen) but most famously a boy (Janis Joplin). But the gender is specified in the song.
             But the harpoon-puller-outer is undoubtedly the singer, not Bobby.
26. 36 min, having got stuck in SW for about 5, as I’d got ALOE at 24ac, reasoning as Paul though not happy about double duty of ‘bitter’. Hence, 13dn seemed some sort of CAMP but couldn’t find wordplay. (Also I’d biffed VEGETARIAN at 1ac – confirmed by 4dn, though no way to parse.)
27. Like everyone else, I enjoyed this and thought the clueing was A1. Especially liked malarkey, salmon leap and bandanna. The last was made easy by having the final ‘a’ crosschecking. And the crosschecking ‘k’ in malarkey triggered larked.
28. An extract from my current lease:

    

    1. As a retired lawyer, the nicest ground rent I ever saw in a lease was “one white rose on midsummers day” , but I have no idea how it was collected
       Roin
       1. Oh, that’s fab!
29. 30:25 very nice puzzle. Mostly a smooth solve but sufficiently bamboozled by a couple dotted around the grid (13dn, struggled to separate out the relevant pieces of anagrist, 17ac took ages to finally spot the larke- bit of it) to make it a satisfying workout. Didn’t parse see-through. Whenever I see ‘shower’ used as it is in 19ac to mean ‘one that shows’, like the more frequent ‘flower’ for ‘one that flows’, I always think of the following clue from a Saturday Times puzzle a few years ago:

    I run e.g. cold tap, resolved to damage shower (5,3)

    That represented a significant pdm moment in my Times solving experiences, seeing shower in that sense, which stuck with me ever since.

30. Did better than usual for a Friday.
    The only thing I had to check was “ers” = bitter.
    (But just noted that it is Eros reversed = sore. Could it not be Eros minus o = ers = bitter? Ers = Ervil = bitter vetch. That’s how I solved it but probably far too convoluted!!) Not seeing the wood for the trees again.

    Edited at 2019-04-12 03:44 pm (UTC)

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