Times 27340 – not my cup of 14

52 comments on “Times 27340 – not my cup of 14”

1. ….without encountering any major difficulties, really quite an easy one. I didn’t quite get ‘blue plaque’, but the cryptic is very clearly pointing to it, so why not? I biffed ‘Nostromo’ instantly, but someone who is unfamiliar with the book might have trouble.
2. I typed in TIENANMEN SQUARE, failing to notice that that’s one E too many, not to mention making 12d wrong; 2 errors. I also found out this morning that I’d failed to notice a typing error in the Jumbo, giving me 3, count ’em, 3 more errors. I’d advise keeping your distance from me today.
   NOSTROMO was a gimme, NHO SHERBET, biffed 10ac. George, you haven’t underlined the definition for 14d, which I assumed was ‘Sign up for the famous’, i.e. the plaque on a building saying X was born here or whatever. BLUE=indecent, PLAQUE=film on teeth (‘covering canines’).
   1. that makes more sense – I read it as a cryptic definition for the technique for determining if you have brushed your teeth incorrectly, not thinking of the little blue circles that are on buildings in England. Neither definition is in Collins.
      1. but blue plaques are in ODO

         Edited at 2019-05-02 08:13 am (UTC)

3. I liked Ego for the well-hidden definition, and Too Good To Be True for the very terse compounding of some basic clue formats, all while making an agreeable surface. NHO the Australian tipple, but now I’m educated. thx George, and setter.
4. I can’t really see a problem with either PHAETON or TIANANMEN SQUARE, as both are well known entities – the former to the legion of Georgette Heyer fans and the latter to anyone who remembers the massacre.

   In 20 down, I think the literal is ‘with about that amount’, as Collins tells me that an old sense of THEREBY is ‘thereabouts’.

   1. It was NOSTOMO and TIANAMEN SQUARE I was intending as non-English proper nouns clued as anagrams.
      1. You have made one old Pole very unhappy, indeed, I fear…
5. No problem with this. I thought of BLUE PLAQUE immediately I had the Q. No problem with TIANANMEN since I speak some Chinese (TIAN = sky/heaven, AN = peace, MEN = gate/door). I vaguely heard of NOSTROMO but it couldn’t really be abything else with checkers. FORSTER and FORCEPS were my last ones in, since I was pretty certain that the intersecting letter had to be P…it wasn’t.
6. 18:54 .. getting stuck for a long time at the end on RECREATION — I don’t know why. I did like the CLAIRVOYANT anagram.

   I knew the spelling of TIANANMEN well enough, having many times attempted to get a confident grip on its pronunciation. In fact, I just tried again, consulting various websites and getting multiple quite different suggestions. I know we have some Sinologists hereabouts. Can someone offer a definitive guide?

7. 9:07.
   I don’t know how well-known NOSTROMO is these days (I have actually read it, which seems an unfair advantage) but where else are you going to put the T? Once you’ve done that all you’ve got left is Os.
   I needed the checking letter from 25ac not to spell it TIENANMEN, but if you haven’t heard of the square, where have you been for the last thirty years? The answer is probably China.
8. George, I liked it. Had to tread carefully to spell the SQUARE, which was clearly the answer. Liked BLUE PLAQUE with the canines diversion. Not so keen on ABRACADABRA with its two bras being the supports, but overall an easy but pleasant job.

   Edited at 2019-05-02 05:41 am (UTC)

9. It was only yesterday that Adam Hall’s novel Quiller Bamboo helped me with a clue: in it Quiller ventures over the BAMBOO CURTAIN to help foment rebellion, just post-TIANANMEN SQUARE. (Though I should quickly point out I’d have been quite familiar with the protests, if not the exact spelling, from news stories, too!)

   Also, although NOSTROMO is on my reading list, the word is of course most familiar as the name of the spaceship in Alien. PHAETON also familiar, though all it brought to mind were the spines of books; I suppose I must’ve read some of Phaeton Publishing‘s output.

   So, luckily I knew all the tricky ones, making this one fall into my “firm but fair” category at 52 minutes. FOI 1a OPEN-PLAN, LOI 18d FORSTER just after I realised that COD 18a FORCEPS wasn’t going to start with the “p” for “piano”. WOD PROMULGATE. I enjoyed the definition for 14d BLUE PLAQUE, familiar enough even if it isn’t in the dictionaries.

   Edited at 2019-05-02 06:47 am (UTC)

10. No problems today other than the spelling of TIANANMEN. However, having left this to last I figured it had to have a silent N in the middle (at least according to my pronunciation).

    COD to FORCEPS, for which I thought the clue had a particularly smooth surface.

11. Needed nearly an hour to complete this and had problems with both the clues that incurred our blogger’s displeasure. Having heard the name of the Chinese square a million times is no guarantee of knowing how to spell it correctly. Didn’t manage fully to parse RECREATION.

    BLUE PLAQUE has come up before and was the subject of some discussion but I have been unable to find it because the LJ Search field now seems to be returning more general results which are not specific to TftT as has always been the case in the past. This must be a very recent change as I use it a lot. Has anyone else experienced this?

    Edited at 2019-05-02 05:55 am (UTC)

    1. I take your point on the square (and in fact I didn’t know how to spell it myself) but once you’ve got T_A_A_M_N SQUARE and the letters I, N, N, E you can’t really go wrong.
       1. I did. I will say in my defense that most of the times I heard or saw the name it was in Japanese–天安門, TEN-AN-MON, pronounced TEN’AMMON. Not much of a defense, but.
          1. Perhaps I should have said ‘you can’t go wrong if you pay attention to the anagram fodder’. If the setter gives you all the elements you need to solve the clue properly you can’t really complain if you don’t use them!
             I was perhaps lucky to type in TIENANMEN before I got to 24dn, so a right answer corrected a wrong one rather than the other way round.
    2. I couldn’t find a previous blue plaque .. though there are several references in comments to individual ones. eg Beerbohm Tree!
       For searching I use the google advanced search page, and limit the search to Tftt site or domain .. much more flexible than LJ
       https://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search
       1. Thanks for the tip, Jerry. I use Google Advance search all the time but hadn’t thought of using it for TftT searches. I will from now on if needs be, but it’s still irritating if a facility we have enjoyed for the past 12 or so years has suddenly been removed without consultation or announcement.
    3. I noticed this a while back. I put times_xwd_times before the word or term I’m searching for, which seems to work.
       1. Yes, that helps a bit but ‘times-xwd-times’ is better (or is that what you meant?). I can’t swear to it, but I’m almost sure the old method was still working last week.

          Edited at 2019-05-02 02:11 pm (UTC)

12. 25ac Never heard of it.

    Over an hour again: I have to blame a lack of of melatonin.

    FOI 23dn MANIA

    LOI 14dn Blue Plaque (Shades of Benny Hill and people being born half-way up walls!)

    COD 12dn CLAIRVOYANT

    WOD 16dn NOSTROMO – not bad for someone who didn’t speak English until he was nearly thirty!

13. 35 mins and I’Phaeton yoghurt and granola.
    Didn’t spot the Re(noir), very clever.
    And schoolboy error on spelling TiaNNamen held up Fair for a couple of mins.
    Thanks setter and G.
14. Got there in the end after a steady trudge through some competent if unspectacular clues.

    Biffed both 10A and the Square (and used Google to get the spelling right). Knew the carriage but not the book – so derived answer from anagram fodder. Liked the BLUE PLAQUE

15. Didn’t parse RECREATION. I quite liked subtle deceptions like “out of place”, “admits defeat”, “indecent film” and “space shot”. No problem with, for me, the well known Square and Plaque.
16. Enjoyed this one .. clues might be unspectacular, but that seems pretty normal for a cryptic crossword, to me .. my only problem was working out how to spell the Chinese square. Read Nostromo. As has been remarked here before, Conrad was an excellent writer, especially considering English not his first lanquage. As a paid up Heyer groupie, no trouble with phaeton and in fact sherbet turns up there often enough, though not with that meaning
17. Mucked up the timing but about 10 minutes, sadly not seeming to impress my fellow passengers on the 8:02 York to that London.

    Carefully pieced together the Square and knew Nostromo as I remember my sister doing it for A level Eng Lit (which put me off reading it).

    Seeing Chinese Space shot immediately made me think of the Uxbridge, which has the definition “Chinese rocket launch” for “County Down”.

18. After a slow start I made steady progress to record a good time for me. But TIANAMMEN SQUARE tripped me up.

    COD: PHAETON.

    1. That was me.
19. 26 minutes or thereabouts in three sessions, after interruptions first for alarm company maintenance and then to drive youngest to the Underground after his National Rail train was cancelled. LOI PHAETON, which I must remember to remember. COD to OUTCROP. I parsed BLUE PLAQUE as an indecent film describing the ubiquitous signs of the famous on houses. I know nothing of a piece of tape which checks teeth cleaning. Have I missed out on a massive cultural phenomenon? I’ve not read NOSTROMO either. The Heart of Darkness was enough Conrad for me. I thought this was a decent enough puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
20. Thanks, George for MANIA and RECREATION, neither of which I could parse.
    I would have been quicker had I not read ‘americaN’ in the clue. That lead me to entering ‘colossAL on the basis that Al is a typical American name (“You Can Call Me Al”) Took ages to sort that out.
21. Musing on PHAETON I searched and found that there are 325 types of carriage – and I’ve been worried about antelopes (there are only 91 apparently). There’s even one pulled by an antelope called an Elandau.
    1. An elandau is just a glorified oribike with a couple of extra wheels.
22. Well, I really enjoyed this, solving in 26 mins. Wavelength, I suppose. The anagram for the famous Chinese plaza seemed very fair to me: though I diverted to solve the easy 24d to confirm the placing of A and E. I liked the BLUE PLAQUE clue, too.
    My only quibble would be with the definition of THEREBY.
    Sorry it didn’t work for you, George — but thanks anyway for your blog and for explaining the clever Re[noir] trick, which I didn’t get.
23. 18’04, seemed reasonably straightforward. Would have preferred the infinitely more usual meaning of ‘thereby’ to have been employed. For my money Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is the one to read and then some. Liked the forceps surface.
24. One of those puzzles which fitted my definition of “general” knowledge perfectly, and had some well-disguised definitions, meaning I enjoyed today’s challenge without eyebrow raises of any magnitude, though I took an unjustifiably long time at the end to finish off P_O_E_TIED.
25. DNF as beaten by the plaque and the square. Despite spotting the anagrind for the square, I couldn’t make any sense of the anagrist. If I had spotted the blue plaque, the crossing Q might have helped, but without it, I couldn’t trust my instinct that there was an anagram there for the square. Once I came here, however, I realised what a good clue 14d was!
26. Yes, sub one hour!

    I find if I do these puzzles electronically, I speed up – it might be because I’m abusing the Check function with guesses 🙂

    COD & LOI was TAPESTRY for me – took me ages to get that one. Had the puzzle done after 30 mins then got stuck on that and a couple of others.

    Straightforward clueing, no super-unusual words or acronyms meant for a nice fast clean solve.

    3 month challenge: 13/15.

    Thanks to all!
    WS

    Edited at 2019-05-02 10:18 am (UTC)

27. ….as my late father thought it was called (his hearing had diminished somewhat by the time it made the news) has always made me think hard about the correct spelling. Luckily, the checkers fell nicely.

    I biffed TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, and spent no little time post-solve trying to break it down, so thanks for that George.

    There is a suggestion on the QC blog that this was a straightforward puzzle, and decent fodder for the less seasoned solver. I must demur – there’s some quite tricky stuff in there, and I found it a challenging and enjoyable workout.

    FOI ACTS
    LOI THEREBY
    COD RECREATION (closely followed by BLUE PLAQUE)
    TIME 10:20

28. I thought this was going to be easy when the NW filled up rapidly and the NE followed it, but the SW in particular held me up along with 20d, 14d and 28a. I had the BLUE bit of 14d, but the plaque took a while to appear. I eventually finished off with FORSTER and FORCEPS. No trouble with PHAETON, and NOSTROMO from checkers and fodder. I perused the anagrist for the Chinese space very carefully. 34:22. Thanks setter and George.
29. Been off the wavelength all week. There’s no excuse for my not seeing the SQUARE much faster but my brain was out in left field looking for something like “Asian Quarter” – yes I know. Knew NOSTROMO from one of the TLS puzzles I blogged back in the day. Some nice stuff here so I’m sorry I wasn’t more on the ball. 20.58 P.S. Just to put the lid on it for you George, you have a pesky invisible typo in 10A – should be “risk” not “rish”.
30. No particular hold-ups here apart from my confusion with the clue for THEREBY, where the IN had me guessing at BHERETY until the anagram of it got me to the answer. I guess that ‘in multiplication’ means BY?? LOI chucked in was RECREATION with no idea what was going on.
31. Dawdled through this in 44 mins with my mind on other things. Great blog, cheers.
32. 20:03. Tried, and failed, to ignore the conversation at the desk opposite me in our 1A office as I tried to concentrate on solving. NHO the Conrad novel, and foolishly had PHANTOM for the carriage until the square gave me the M. I liked ABRACADABRA (despite the 2 bras), but COD to BLUE PLAQUE, parsed as Kevin did.
33. No great difficulties and some lovely clues. Especially liked Too good to be True and Outcrop. I have to say I no real problem with the proper nouns. As long as you can reasonably be expected to know them.
34. 😅
35. A very quick solve for me, maybe under 15 minutes. My LOI’s were FORSTER/FORCEPS. Didn’t remember NOSTROMO but the anagram led to it, upon which moment it looked vaguely familiar. And I was happy for the anagram re the Chinese landmark, which led me to the right spelling. Regards.
36. Stuck for the last 15 mins on FORCEPS/FORSTER (fell into place when I moved the P to the end) and ALWAYS. A pink gin helped.

    No problem with SHERBET, NOSTROMO, PHAETON nor T SQUARE.

37. Any crossword where my time ends up being only 7 seconds slower than that of the mighty mighty Mohn is a winner in my book. But then I’m a pretty good speller.

    Nostromo is the spaceship in the famous movie Alien, so even those who aren’t up on their Conrad have a fighting chance.

38. A DNF in 24 mins. Very annoying and perfectly avoidable had I taken a smidge more care. I was confident I knew how to spell the square. Turns out that confidence was sadly misplaced. I did wonder if I should pause to check off all the letters of the anagrist but foolishly decided that wasn’t necessary. To compound matters I did not notice that I had failed to enter anything at 24dn.
39. Thanks setter and George
    Found this at the easier end of the Times spectrum with my initial misspelling of Tiananmen Square the only real hold up. Needed to check the spelling to eventually get FAIR at 21d.
    SHERBET is not all that commonly used these days in this context, but was prevalent in my younger days – lead singer of Sherbet, Daryl Braithwaite, lingers on with his song “The Horses” becoming a bit of a racing anthem during the spring carnival here.
    Did like unravelling TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE and learning about BLUE PLAQUES (subsequently remembering that some of the older buildings in Collins Street have them). ROOM and FORCEPS were the last couple in.

Comments are closed.