Times 27357 – back to the North West Frontier, or the Great Lakes?

109 comments on “Times 27357 – back to the North West Frontier, or the Great Lakes?”

1. 26:11 … quite a battle.

   CREED totally unparsed, but Pip’s explanation makes sense, and Chambers has “spoken or written”.

   No Bugs Bunny avatar, but I offer Babs Bunny as a stand-in (though she was reportedly ‘no relation’).

   Now I’m hearing Paul Whitehouse’s Rowley Birkin QC reading the solutions to this by the fireside. yard of ale … juju man … charpoy …. dairymaid … unhat his terai …. rajpoot …. of course, I was very very drunk at the time …

2. Over an hour for this shocker with far too many unknowns for my liking – amongst them OUT AT ELBOW which appears to be a variation on ‘down at heel’.

   I had heard of ‘down the little red lane’ however, an example of kiddie-talk used at feeding time, and out of the same stable as ‘up the little wooden hill to Bedfordshire’ used at bedtime.

   Had problems parsing DAIRYMAID which I had thought of immediately on reading the clue but was reluctant to write it in until I understood how it worked. I had spotted AID reversed at the beginning of the answer and was left wondering how RYMAID or its reverse could possibly mean ‘crowds’.

   I gave up on 12ac as my LOI and bunged in SITU on the strength of ‘place’ as the most likely definition, which wasn’t an inaccurate assumption as things turned out. Shame about the wordplay though. I’m familar with ‘laid up’ as being confined to bed, but LIE UP as a variation on this would never have occurred to me.

   Edited at 2019-05-22 06:24 am (UTC)

3. pretty much did for poor Meldrew! A CNF! (Could not finish)
   Even though my FOI was 8dn ENTRUSTED and the 10ac RAJPOOT eventually revealed himself.
   I was completely stymied by 6dn JUJU and therefore ran out of 6ac JUICE!
   My main (no pun intended) moan was 20ac AWAY. I was utterly clueless: I believe this type of clue is impeachable.

   Was 26ac RED LANE an associate of HOPALONG CASSIDY?

   COD 14dn UPBRAIDED with the lovely DAIRYMAID at 28ac, a close second.
   WOD 17dn CHARPOY and 10ac RAJPOOT to lie on it.

   4dn ANNAL might raise eyebrows over in the Bible Belt.

   And what of 1ac? Is she still with us?

   Edited at 2019-05-22 06:55 am (UTC)

   1. Rather to my surprise, 4dn’s “fussy” alternative has turned up a few times before, but, not much to my surprise, searching the records also turns up some very dodgy stuff where people have attached inappropriate material to old entries. If we will trust the Russians…
      1. I’ve just remembered Bronco (no don’t!) Lane. Red was his sister! I think Hopalong went to the prom with her.
         1. For some reason I was looking up Red Buttons the other day. Oh yes, because he was in Sayonara, alongside the first Asian-American to win an Oscar!
   2. North East frontier?
      1. North West, dear thing, from the magnificent film with Kenneth More and the Eton Boating song
4. Another day, another DNF. A shame, as if I’d bunged in AWAY in desperation at 20a I’d actually have just finished in my hour, but I threw in the towel because I wasn’t sure I’d got the unknown CHARPOY right for the crosser and couldn’t see the wordplay or the definition.

   I also wasn’t sure about the unknowns of TERAI and RED LANE in the other bottom corner, and some of the other clues were written in rather shakily, too, so my confidence was already dented!

   Enjoyed 15a CRASH-TEST.

   Edited at 2019-05-22 07:28 am (UTC)

5. 25.18 for his wilfully tough offering from the North West Frontier. Except that I, like Jack, had SITU at 12 in the belief that “sit up” was a bit of a stretch, but not impossible, for being confined to bed. One of those clues where, in a crossword that’s already stretching points, you hit on a plausible answer and pass on.
   I’d have spelled RAJPOOT with a U, and just because dictionaries offer the alternatives doesn’t lower my eyebrow.
   Not that it matters, but I think JUJU is just JUT and JUT with their ends missing, but hey, Pip, you might just as well be right and you’ve been heroic in sorting out the rest of this.
   I entered AWAY with trepidation, not thinking of anchor, what?
   SCREEDs are either written or plastered in my book, but again (apparently) what do I know?
   I see UNHAT is indeed a real word, but no chapeau from me.
   I’d better stop before I run out of space, but this was a testing puzzle in more ways than one, and I remain a bit, um, testy.
   1. I got RAJPOOT not from knowing the meaning, but from a now-defunct Indian restaurant in Bristol with exactly that spelling. I’ll have to put both spellings on my Probably-Will-Never-Come-Up-Again-Now-They’re-On-This-List List.

      Edited at 2019-05-22 08:00 am (UTC)

   2. That’s how I read that one too, Z.
6. 45 mins with yoghurt and gave up on the Juju Juice.
   Thanks Pip and setter.
7. I think I will just concede defeat on this one. Thanks Pip for filling in the gaps.
8. …but never did get juju and juice. Guessed charpoy from wordplay…
9. I thought this was terrific, despite the DNKs (RED LANE, CHARPOY, TERAI–but OUT AT ELBOW was no problem, and I was surprised by Jack’s comment). Like Z, I would have expected a U in RAJPOOT; unlike him, I was under the impression it was a place (thinking of Rajputana). I did not care, however, for gossip=ANA. ANAL no prob (short for the Freudian’s ‘anal retentive’, the sort of criticism my mother would freely make of certain people). CODs to JUICE, LAMBKIN, JUJU, UPBRAIDED, AWAY (LOI). Took me forever, but I managed to parse every clue.
   1. I remembered seeing OUT AT ELBOW in a previous puzzle. Turns out it was OUT AT ELBOWS (26921, Dec 2017) but in any event I am pretty sure I’ve never encountered it anywhere else.

      Edited at 2019-05-22 08:21 am (UTC)

      1. Well, to repeat myself, I am surprised. It seems to me such an everyday expression, although I can’t come up with examples; and I’m sure it’s not an Americanism.
         1. It’s curious. It’s sufficiently common to be included in Collins (and indicated as British) but nowhere to be seen in ODO. It might be a regional thing.
            1. 15thC and early 16thC – American Heritage Dictionary
               1. Thanks!
                  1. Yeah, but I knew the phrase as ‘out at elbow’.
                     1. All obviously variants of the same phrase, no? None of which I’ve ever come across outside crosswords, even in Georgette Heyer, amazingly.
      2. Yet another Heyerism ..
         1. I’ve read three of them now and I don’t remember seeing it so far. I’ll be on the lookout next time…
         2. leather elbow patches in Heyer?
      3. I see I claimed then not to have met OUT AT ELBOWS before and I don’t think that was on account of the S. It doesn’t really work for me anyway as at one time it was quite fashionable to have a favourite jacket, usually made of tweed, of which the elbows had worn out and were patched with leather,rather than replacement of the whole garment. It was something of a badge of honour in the teaching profession and the landed gentry were’t averse to the practice.
         1. These days you can buy the jacket (or jumper) with the elbow patches sewn on already!
            1. Homer Simpson tried for the effect when he became a teacher at night school, but of course he got it wrong, ruining a leather jacket by stitching on tweed elbow patches.
10. Melanie’s psychotherapy song is always what comes to mind when the id is being mentioned. I’d be a great disappointment to Jung if he was expecting something more atavistic. ENID was LOI but only after I’d spent ages in the actual NE of the puzzle first. For too long I had a STYLITE stuck on a pedestal, for no other reason but that I liked the idea. Eventually, I happened on IDOLIZE, JUICE and JUJU and then the unknown RAJPOOT fitted the crossers. TERAI was unknown but it had to be. Didn’t know of RED LANE, or parse CREED but they were guessed correctly. CHARPOY also unknown but my Dad did rise to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in the war so I was determined to fit PO into something. I’m sure you’ve got the right explanation for CREED, Pip. COD to WHAT’S UP DOC? 53 minutes. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2019-05-22 08:47 am (UTC)

11. 28:53. I enjoyed the challenge of this one, but it was nice to have the odd clue with an English word in it to get you started.
12. Well there was certainly some good stuff here, but there was also some stuff I’d never heard of which was constructed wholly from wordplay. I think that if there are four words or expressions that you’ve never knowingly encountered before in a single puzzle, you can’t be blamed for feeling as if you’ve strayed unexpectedly far into Mephisto territory. Anyway, for the record, NHO RAJPOOT (though I, too, must have come across restaurants of the name, and rather incuriously, not picked up the actual meaning), RED LANE, CHARPOY, and TERAI. There again, I ended up being right with all my constructions, so what’s my problem?

    Anyway, having cracked the known unknowns, I was another who then threw in SITU, despite thinking as I did so that it didn’t quite work. Remember, doofus, if you can’t parse it satisfactorily, you’ve probably got it wrong.

13. I was reasonably happy with my construction of the unknowns, at which point I was 45 minutes in and counting with 20a left to do. After another 20 odd minutes, I bunged in AWAY in desperation, and submitted, only to be amazed that it was actually correct, along with all the rest. A spot of cogitation after submission finally came up with the anchor connection. What a beast! Didn’t know RAJPOOT, TERAI, RED LANE or CHARPOY(a dog perhaps??) but managed to assemble them from crossers and wordplay. Didn’t understand CREED either. Liked WHAT’S UP DOC. 66:09. Thanks setter and Pip.
14. 36 mins. Pretty tricky, with a few Indian unknowns. That said, the wp was fair overall. Lieu straight in; French teacher goes straight for French word, natch. Thanks pip and setter.
15. …was the biggest hit of the Canadian band CRASH TEST Dummies. I certainly mm’d and ah’d my way through this. I parsed no less than six clues after completion, and RAJPOOT and CHARPOY were SIBOOM (Somewhere In Back Of One’s Mind) without my knowing what they actually meant.

    I didn’t enjoy this much as a consequence of the above. Maybe it was being reminded of ENID Smith, my supervisor at NORWEB 1973/4. We never got on, and even though I’m not a Geordie I repelled her at every opportunity !

    FOI OUT AT ELBOW
    LOI JUICE
    COD FOLIO
    TIME 21:23 (into overtime yet again !)

16. How dare you sir! Our Enid was a lovely woman – well the one who lived in Skegness was. 21.23? Hang your head in shame!!
17. Too many unknowns for me, teased most of them out, but not RAJPOOT, JUJU, or juice. Didn’t enjoy it and consequently didn’t stick at it. Got LIEU and AWAY quickly, which seems to be against the run of play.
18. Yesterday at The Times setters lunch, it was suggested that the anonymity of setters should be abandoned, a view I support, as a creator wanting to be known for his work. The owner of this blog may wish to consider opening a new thread, inviting a straw poll, with the question: ‘Should The Times crossword continue to have anonymous back-page eetters? Explain your argument’. (But you might like to start the debate here!) Izetti
    1. It is a bit like Wimbledon .. holding out as the last grass court tournament eventually has given them a cachet that arguably, the surface does not really merit. Almost every crossword these days hints at or specifies the setter, including The Times own quick cryptic and the ST cryptic and Mephistos .. so the air of mystery retained by the daily cryptic gains an extra cachet that it maybe also does not really merit.
       On the upside, most of the Times setters do get a chance to have their work known, as you put it, elsewhere. I value traditions and would vote to keep this one.
       1. My vote, as today’s blogger, goes to anonymous, for reasons laid out above. But I shan’t be too upset if the conclave of setters decides to go otherwise. Maybe bloggers should be anonymous, too!
    2. I have always enjoyed not knowing the setter. I prefer not to have preconceptions or, indeed, prejudice against individual setters.
       1. Seconded. My feelings exactly.
       2. I’d definitely be against it. The anonymity adds to the thrill. You against the “Brain”.
       3. I like TopicalTim’s idea, too. I like not knowing what I’m getting into when I start an unsigned puzzle, and I wouldn’t relish starting each solve with an expectation of what was coming. But it would be nice to learn later who had done the work, and trying to figure that out during a solve would be an added bit of fun each day.
          1. I was going to say something similar – maybe give the setter of the puzzle alongside its solution, rather than at the top of the puzzle itself?
          2. I would hate to see TftT turned into a forum for discussing who we think the setter is on any given day, or holding post mortems once the name had been revealed.
             1. I see your point there jackkt.
                Is that what happens on Big Dave’s Guardian blog?
                1. I rarely visit there because I don’t often do the Guardian puzzle, but I imagine the matter doesn’t arise as that paper already has named compilers. But the suggestion here (as understood it) was that Times setters’ names would be withheld until the solution was published and it occurred to me that in the interim the identity might become a matter for speculation in the TftT forum, and I would not like to see that. I’m a great believer in the adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t mend it’ and I can’t see what there is to be gained by changing the current arrangements.

                   Edited at 2019-05-22 07:24 pm (UTC)

    3. Whenever I’ve had this discussion before, either here or over beers in the George on Crossword Pub Days, I’ve ended up feeling like that historical figure, (possibly a French king?) whose opinion on complex matters constantly changed, depending on who he’d last talked to. Like keriothe, this may not be massively helpful in reaching a consensus, but I think it confirms there is plenty of merit in both sides, in which case, it might make sense to preserve the status quo – let’s face it, recent events suggest it’s dangerous to settle a vexed issue by a binary decision, when something more nuanced is required…

       I have, however, always seen merit in the suggestion that the setter’s name is revealed along with the solution in the next day’s paper. A solver can then attach a setter to a given crossword, and build up a mental relationship, without pre-judging that puzzle when they solve it. How this would work for on-line puzzles, in an era where lots of solvers haven’t touched a physical newspaper in years…well, now you’re asking.

       1. I take your point. We might make this change and then find that the things we didn’t like about the puzzles had nothing to do with setter anonymity after all.
          Your suggested compromise seems an excellent one to me. The setter’s identity could be revealed in the comments, where anyone who wanted to find out would be able to go and look for it.
       2. I believe that Tsar Nicholas is the chap you’re after – apparently the joke was that the two most powerful people in Russia were the tsar and whomever he’d spoken to last.
          1. That’s the lad, thank you.
       3. Personally, I’m another fence-sitter on this. I like your suggestion, Tim.
    4. I honestly can’t make up my mind about this question. Which is obviously a very useful contribution to the debate.
       1. I can imagine what you’re all saying at this point: “Let’s ask Kevin, he’ll know!” Well, in fact I do, but not in respect of this question. I do the QCs, and have never yet tried to read the small print revealing the setter’s name, and I’m always surprised by the number of comments alluding to the setter of the day. I have no objection to revealing the name, but nor have I any reason to want to see it. There; I hope you’re all satisfied. Next question.
    5. In an age of TMI coming in on all sides (except for certain tax returns) it’s nice to hang onto a bit of mystery. And Sawbill has a point about preconceptions – whenever I see Enigmatist’s byline in the Guardian I think, oh boy here we go. I like it just the way it is.
    6. I quite like Tim’s suggestion of the setter being named the next day with the solution. Or will we then spend too much of our time and comments here in speculation?
    7. I’ve nothing against challenging puzzles but it seems to be the style of certain setters to try and achieve this through wilful obscurity, tortuous wordplay and anagram lotteries. Any heads-up on how to avoid these particular offerings in future would be welcome. I’m sure that root-canal filling I’ve been putting off would have been a more enjoyable use of my time today for instance.

       SJ

    8. When I’ve particularly enjoyed a puzzle I often wish I knew who the setter was so I could look forward to their next offering with anticipation.

       Having said that, in the absence of a particularly compelling reason to change, I’m minded to favour preserving the status quo.

       With regard to your own hankering to be known for your work, Don, don’t fret too much. Many of us on here can spot one of your puzzles a mile off as it comes breezing through the churchyard with the precision turned up to 11, then bursts in through the doors knocking bibles, prayer books and hymn sheets off shelves and sends various ranks of the clergy scurrying towards all the quaintly-named nooks and crannies of the holy edifice.

       1. And I believe he was also to be found as Pasquale in that other place only yesterday.
19. As our esteemed blogger says, a weird mix of relatively easy and mind-bogglingly hard clues. I managed to finish after more than an hour, but, like Jack, came to grief at 12A where I also had SITU, which almost works in the sense that if you “sit up” in bed you are still confined to it.

    Edited at 2019-05-22 12:27 pm (UTC)

20. Terrific puzzle, which defeated me finally after 45′ – would never have got RAJPOOT, didn’t have JUJU or JUICE.

    Thanks pip and setter.

21. You know where you can put your Raj. Ditto Z and Kevin on the spelling. This would have been a non-starter for me had I not read The Raj Quartet more than once (one of the principal characters is said to resemble a Rajput princess).

    I envisioned a CHARPOY as a sort of bedroll not stead, and I see from the Google pix that it looks more like a camp bed. “Anal” turns up with some regularity in the Guardian but it took a while before I was convinced it would appear here. Ive only heard OUT AT ELBOW in the plural.

    I don’t often think about AA Milne but this reminded me of The King’s Breakfast. The King asked the Queen and the Queen asked the DAIRYMAID to ask the Alderney for some butter for the royal slice of bread. They suggested marmalade instead (as per Myrtilus). Nobody, he whimpered, could call me a fussy man….. 27.09

    1. I swear I know out at elbows from the beloved Georgette .. at least there, there is no mention of bums, which seem otherwise almost universal. I have American friends who are almost incapable of producing a sentence that doesn’t mention them ..
       1. Is it in Georgette? – I can’t remember but you’re probably right.
          1. I occasionally look at a Georgette Heyer Appreciation group on FB. I’ll ask them. Someone is bound to know. They’ve got encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Georgette.
          2. The OED has a singular ‘out of elbow’ in Measure for Measure in the midst of a bunch of contemporary plurals. Plus other body parts – heels, knees, toes.
          3. A Georgette Heyer reader on FB has found it. It’s in “The Spanish Bride” when an officer of the Household Cavalry criticises the soldiers from another regiment. (“But my dear fellow, really, my dear fellow, is it necessary for your men to look so – so damned out-at-elbow?” one of their officers asked Kincaid.)
             1. Bingo!
                1. On that same GH Facebook site – I’ve just watched a wonderful speech by Stephen Fry (2018) at the unveiling of a blue plaque from British Heritage on Georgette Heyer’s birthplace. He’s obviously a reader who knows her work well. You can find it by Googling Stephen Fry Georgette Heyer. I’ve lost the link…
22. 11m 20s with a lot of unknown words or phrases, like everyone else – RAJPOOT, OUT AT ELBOW, RED LANE, CHARPOY, TERAI. A funny mix, as you say, but solid throughout. LAMBKIN was my LOI.

    A very minor point, but I think 6d must be derived from JUT JUT rather than JUTS JUTS.

    1. Thy exquisite reason, dear knight?
       1. Juts – sorry, just that “finishes”, in my book, has to be the last letter rather than the last two letters / latter half.
          1. I didn’t even consider that it could be anything other than JU{t} JU{t} when parsing, if that counts as a vote. And I still don’t.
       2. I agree, because it’s conventionally more usual for ‘finish’ to indicate just the last letter (particularly as in this case two letters is half the total!) It’s ‘finishes’ just because there are two of them (JUt JUt).

          Edited at 2019-05-22 01:10 pm (UTC)

          1. Not, mind you, that I think there’s actually an issue here, but:
             1)’finish’, so far as I know, conventionally indicates just the last letter always, not more usually;
             2) if JU[t] JU[t] were intended, why not ‘Finish off…’?
             3) the reason I asked mauefw for his reason was that he said ‘6d MUST BE [my caps] derived from JUT JUT …’ I don’t see why the ‘must’.
             I suppose–always assuming that any of us is concerned about this–that we could ask the setter. But then, as Lawrence so rightly said, Never trust the artist, trust the tale.
             1. ‘Finish off twin projects’ gives no indication that you have to take two finishes off. It leads logically to JUTJU.
                ‘Finishes off twin projects’ indicates clearly that you have to take each of the finishes off two projects.
                So if you’re right about 1) (which I think you probably are) then I think it does have to be JUt JUt.
                1. ‘Finish off twin projects’ leads logically (well, not logically, reasonably; logic is not involved here) to JUTJU if (I might dare to say, with the logicians, iff) ‘twin projects’ is JUTJUT; if it’s JUT JUT, on the other hand, I’d expect both T’s to be cut.
                   ‘Finishes off twin projects’ does not indicate clearly what to do; if it did, we wouldn’t be keeping me up past my bedtime now. It could mean ‘remove the ending of JUTS JUTS’–twin ‘projects’–leading to JUT JUT, which is too long. Or it could mean the endingS to JUTS JUTS, leading to JU JU. I rest my case. And my weary self.
                   1. When interpreting wordplay I would always take the result of something like ‘twin projects’ => JUTJUT as a single unit before applying the instructions (‘finish off’). I think that’s conventional.
                      I said

                      ‘Finishes off twin projects’ indicates clearly that you have to take each of the finishes off two projects.

                      I stand by that, but I agree that ‘twin projects’ can mean either JUT JUT or JUTS JUTS.
                      Taking the ‘finishes’ off JUTS JUTS to get JUJU means the ‘finish’ is two letters. So if you’re right about the convention, it has to be JUT JUT.
                      In short I think we agree, and win some kind of prize for ridiculous pedantry. I’m proud.

                      Edited at 2019-05-22 01:55 pm (UTC)

                      1. Yes, I think our work here is done.
                         1. Of course, if the setter had used the singular ‘twin project’, then that solves the problem doesn’t it?
             2. I took it that for each of the “projects” the finishes, plural, were off, so deduced JUTS twinned. I agree it is conventional to remove one letter not two, it depends whether you read the surface as the finish of JUT twice or the finishes of JUTS twice. JUTS beings a synonym of PROJECTS.
23. I stuck with this for just on 2 hours and eventually got there. The same unknown words / terms as for others but at least the wordplay made these possible. The SNITCH is currently at 156 so obviously not easy.

    The ‘Ducks’ and ‘from here’ defs were my favourite bits, especially as the latter was my LOI (with a big sigh of relief). Interesting to see the ‘zee’ in 7d – apparently not just US spelling, as has been pointed out before.

    I’m another for keeping the setter anonymous here.

    I won’t complain if tomorrow’s offering is a bit gentler.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

24. …well, 19:59 plus a bit of network latency! All parsed and correct in the end, but it was over three minutes before my first answer went in (8D ENTRUSTED). Pleased to learn it wasn’t just me!
25. Struggled but came in all correct at 39’23” , hopefully bunging in Away as my LOI. I don’t mind the obscure words as long as I have vaguely heard of them, and I had. So Charpoy, Rajpoot, Terai etc just needed parsing and then a pair of crossed fingers. I loved the Ducks clue. Wasn’t there a group called The Enid? What happened to them, I wonder.
26. I remembered RAJPUT from a long-ago tour of Rajasthan where all the landed gentry seemed to belong to this caste and swanned around in massive turbans. I knew CHARPOY from the same trip. We’d see old men lounging on them by the roadside. I managed to finish but I found this puzzle very difficult. 57 minutes. Ann
27. I really liked the puzzle – and would relish being able to learn tomorrow who had set it. I told someone that I could parse all the words I didn’t know, and couldn’t completely parse all the ones I did know, which was only a slight exaggeration.

    I never quite saw where the “s” in First Lady came from. And I was another Situ, for the same reasons as above, and with the same certainty that it was wrong.

    Edited at 2019-05-22 01:43 pm (UTC)

28. 🙂
    1. I’m very much for having the guilty parties named.

       How would we have been able to celebrate the four Johns – ‘Araucaria’, ‘Enigmatist’, ‘Paul’ and ‘Shed’?

       Or on the other side of the fence ‘Verlaine’, ‘Magoo’ and ‘Jason’?

       Anonymous

       1. Actually I’ve changed my mind. I think solvers and bloggers should now be anonymous too. “The winner of 10 crossword championships on the trot is a man who, legally, can only me named as ‘Mr X’…”
29. 30 minutes or thereabouts and I thought I was going to be a DNF with 3 missing in the NE corner. I eventually saw JUJU (for what it’s worth I’m in the JU{t} JU{t} camp) and the rest fell into place.

    Clever and mostly enjoyable (like me) but like others I thought there were probably just a few too many “funny” words and expressions.

    1. … (like you)
       1. Don’t get me wrong by the way, I do love your funny expressions.
30. Yet another DNF. It was the NE which did for me. I eventually got RAJPOOT but left with a wrong MOJO I couldn’t make sense of 6a. I also had SITU by the way. And AWAY was chucked in with a hope and prayer.
    Not much more to add. Without those tricky clues I’d have done this in half an hour.
31. Utterly new to me were CHARPOY, TERAI and RED LANE, with RAJPOOT ringing just a faint bell. MER at UNHAT, and my eyebrow is still raised at the way the S was finagled into the anagram for FIRST LADY.
    1. What like you mean: “the letter S”?

       Crazy man just crazy 🙂

32. 32:47. I looked at the SNITCH for this before starting and shuddered. But I did manage to finish all correct even if there were several unknowns and a couple of missing parsings. RAJPOOT, OUT AT ELBOW, RED LANE, LAMBKIN and CHARPOY all got via wordplay. I enjoyed REMATCH, CRASH TEST, UPBBRAIDED and WHIT SUNDAY. An entertaining challenge.
33. Not much fun. Didn’t bother finishing.
34. This was an exercise in mashing the dictionary and the check button and only using my brain to find sensible definitions, then having got the word, worked backwards to get the wordplay, if obvious. About 5 clues actually worked forwards, i.e. was able to see the answer or work it out from the wordplay, other than that this was on the HARD end of things but not totally slippery and unscalable.

    Quite a few DNKs here of Indian origin and UNHAT seems to be one of those dictionary words which I can see being used in literature but hardly in speech.

    Plenty of material here for the OneNotes, including AY, PO and PB.

    We had YARD OF ALE about two weeks ago.

    FOI 21a
    LOI 6a
    COD 16a (never thought of keyboards – nicely cryptic!)

    Yesterday’s stats mis-reported so I’m still at 27/29 on my 3 month challenge.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    WS

35. A DNF today with two, count them, two errors! First boob was having situ instead of lieu. I knew my reasoning didn’t quite hold water but situ for place was sufficiently convincing for me to overlook the flaws in the parsing. The second involved failing to think sensibly about 7dn and arriving at a patently made up word that cannot possibly have been correct. I think it was a case of finally succumbing as the culmination of feeling further and further out on a limb with some of the tricky vocab: lambkin, rajpoot, red lane, JuJu, charpoy and terai. I enjoyed the challenge though. Touché setter.
36. Well now, that was something unexpected.

    I had to look up RAJPOOT and TERAI, so a technical DNF, reinforced by an actual DNF since I entered SITU, not LIEU, and JOJO (job x two) instead of JUJU. Both sounded like they could fit the definition, but I went the wrong way. So roundly thrashed today, though we lack a load of words and phrases imported from India over here, so I don’t feel that dopey. Regards.

37. Came to this late and tired, glad to finish even if in 43’50. Didn’t hurt having lived in India (except that the rajput spelling as given is excruciating). All in all an interesting variation on the norm. As for the question of the day, I’m for anonymity, partly for the snobbish reason of it seeming to allow the Times a touch of class. The blog unforgettable however for the jut jut discussion, a classic of its mad kind.
38. Isn’t there an unaccounted for ‘S’ in 1a? And 13a doesn’t parse correctly because of the ‘in’. Not sure ‘lie up’ works in 12a either. Mr Grumpy
    1. The S is there in plain sight at 1a, right after the apostrophe.
       Agreed re IN at 13 dn (not across – you have made a mistake in your pedantry 😉
       12 works for me. Maybe the stray IN from 13 could replace the “confined to”?
       1. “In German AND”= UND
          1. Yes indeed… I misparsed UND as: German and. Rather than: in German, and. The in is correct.
39. Is this a record?
40. DNF, giving up with the north-right corner looking like row of high-street shops.
41. Thanks setter and pip
    This spanned across a couple of days and there was a lot of help required to get this one done. LIEU and AWAY both went in during the first half of the solve – it is odd what holds some up and not others, although it was those two crossers in the NE corner JUJU (I was a singular JU[T] JU[T] too) and RAJPOOT that held off to the last. In fact, I originally had put in REDCOAT and JUDO but could obviously not parse them and persevered until the correct ones eventually surfaced after a dictionary trawl found JUJU.
    Had written in IRADE at 23d initially – it actually works quite well but makes the crossers not!
    If I was taking bets, would have put this down to John Henderson – typically really difficult but all absolutely gettable if you stuck it out. Enjoyed the struggle a lot.

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