Times 27,383: No Horses Were Startled In The Making Of This Puzzle

64 comments on “Times 27,383: No Horses Were Startled In The Making Of This Puzzle”

1. Gentle enough, except for the hard parts. SPROCKET took me a while, as did STRESS (2dLOI) and BESPATTER (LOI), where I was thinking TAR (pitch) for a while. DNK the card trick, but ‘haystack’ settled the matter.

   Edited at 2019-06-21 12:20 am (UTC)

2. How does ‘match’ = SEE?
   1. I’ll see your bet and raise you a thousand.
      1. Thanks. I must have heard the expression “see you and raise you” a million times in films etc but with my very limited knowledge of, and interest in, gambling games I’ve always assumed it was to do with seeing the other person’s cards and finishing the hand in progress.

         I found the top half of the puzzle very easy but the bottom half was more challenging. I started to lose interest as my target half-hour passed with two intersecting words missing (17ac and 14dn) and even after eventually spotting STRESS I was unable to think of anything to fit B?S?A?T?R so I gave up and resorted to aids. Having found the answer I can’t say I’m 100% convinced that ‘make a mess’ quite captures the meaning of ‘bespatter’ either literally or figuratively.

         Edited at 2019-06-21 04:45 am (UTC)

         1. “make a mess of” is the full def.
            1. Actually it’s ‘make mess of’, but either way it doesn’t alter my view as above. It’s a minor niggle though, and probably amplified in my mind because I didn’t come up with the answer!
3. ….as I raced through until I got stuck on ‘stress’ and ‘bespatter’ – at least I saw ‘sprocket’ quickly. I knew ‘dewlap’ was a word, but had no idea what it meant, but if it fits the cryptic, in it goes.

   Time 27 minutes.

4. 70 minutes which on a Monday would have taken half the time!

   My FOI 1ac did not help as I carelessly entered INCOMPATABLE. My LOI 5dn ISLE became impossible, until it was corrected to INCOMPATIBLE.

   COD 7dn DOUBLE CROSSING

   WOD 20ac DEWLAP

   ‘Find the Lady'(Queen of Spades) used to be the The Greater Oxford Street scam.

5. Happy to finish in this time, with steady and entertaining progress. DNK NIFF but the cryptic was clear. And happy to have done enough crosswords to know RHINO and NORMA. (Actually, I think I’ve seen the opera. To my recollection I’ve never heard rhino used for money.)

   Finished with the STRESS and BESPATTER crossers, as for vinyl and Kevin.

   Thanks, V, for the blog. Sorry that Friday’s aren’t living up to your talents and expectations. It still looks like the most challenging day overall. And thanks, as always, to the setter.

   1. Looking at the Snitch now the dust has settled a bit… this is certainly looking like one of the easiest Friday puzzles we’ve ever had!
6. I always wondered what a Dewlap Bag was. Just a lyrical error apparently, but a useful one.
7. The bottom half, especially the southwest, were harder for me too. I didn’t want to believe NIFF but it couldn’t be anything else. It’s only in games with balls and sticks on a table that “pot” equals POCKET, so I didn’t see that for a while. Likewise, ST as “stump” must be cricket; I was looking too long for a truncated word.
   STRESS was last for me too.

   Edited at 2019-06-21 06:24 am (UTC)

   1. I think it has to be “stumped” (as in the clue) rather than “stump” though I’m no cricket expert. It would appear in match statistics, score cards etc.
      1. Obviously, Jackkt… which is why I wrote “truncated.” But the verb is a reference to an action involving the noun, the stumps being “the three vertical posts that support the wicket,” says here.
         1. Sorry if I misunderstood your point, Guy, but I saw “ST as stump must be cricket” in your comment and thought I’d clarify that it actually stands for “stumped”. More usually (as I’ve now remembered) it stands for “stumped by” followed by the name of the fielder who did the stumping.
            1. So the notation goes by the name of the player who stumped, not the one who was stumped?
               It would be awkward fitting “by” into the clue
               1. It’d say e.g. Smith st Jones
                  The batsman then the method of dismissal then the name of the fielder responsible.

                  If bowled out the example would be: Smith b Jones

                  Edited at 2019-06-21 10:30 am (UTC)

                  1. As I understand it, the batsman can only be stumped by the STUMPER and otherwise it would be RUN OUT.
                  2. Is this the forum to teach our American friends the laws of cricket!? We could be here for some time! And wicket keeper not ‘stumper’

                     Edited at 2019-06-21 02:33 pm (UTC)

                     1. Rather delightfully I was doing a trivia quiz here where a baseball position was being asked for and I opined that it might be the shortstop. “No no,” they all said, “it’s the catcher.” I was forced to shamefully admit that I thought a shortstop WAS the wicketkeeper guy… he does crouch down short and stop the ball, doesn’t he?
                  3. Yeah, I figured that up just after sending.
                     Was sleeping fitfully last night.
                  4. Actually it would say Smith st. Jones, b. Brown, if Jones was the person who did the stumping (in 99.9% of cases the wicket-keeper) and Brown was the bowler responsible for getting the batsman to make a mistake and be stumped, so that Brown was credited with getting the wicket.
8. Stuck at the station waiting for a long-delayed service to Birmingham, solving on tablet rather than a “real” computer or paper, on a friday. Hardly the recipe for a PB. And yet……

   Thought it could be a quickish time when half the acrosses went in on first pass in a couple of minutes, but then the downs clinched it – only NIFF and BESPATTER really giving much delay.

   Find the Lady known (although as Three Card Monte) from watching way too many reruns of Hustle, although CON trick would probably have been a better definition to me. Except that wouldnt fit either wordplay or enumeration. Thats probably where match=see came from too now i come to think of it.

   Even managed to remember RHINO, albeit as LOI.

   6.26.

   (And still waiting for the train)

9. I see I’m not alone in being STRESSED and BESPATTERED at the end of this one, but not that badly, as I finished off in 29 minutes. It would’ve been 28 minutes, but I wanted to work out the wordplay for 17a before I declared. I thought it was going to start “SIR…” until I worked out the definition.

   FOI 1d ICECAPS, where having a brain that works in a different way from our illustrious blogger is apparently sometimes an advantage, and then a gradual slowing as I worked my way from top to bottom. Some of the harder wordplay (“pot” = “pocket”, “st” = “stump”, “see” = “match”) overcome by quickish biffing.

   Off to the airport now for a stag weekend in Newcastle. Hopefully I’ll see you all again on Monday. Morituri te salutant, etc.

   Edited at 2019-06-21 06:45 am (UTC)

   1. As jackkt has already said above, very gently and pleasantly, ‘st’ doesn’t stand for ‘stump’; it stands for ‘stumped’.
10. 12:49 and, similarly to others, I was held up most by STRESS and BESPATTER, my last two in too. Thanks for the reminder how match can = see. Thanks V and setter.
11. 10:56 .. friendly stuff indeed, and quite welcome for me.

    BESPATTER is a lovely word. I did a quote search and came up with Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse: “… she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.”

    1. Love the quote. Is an “unrebuked” a kind of raincoat?
       1. 🙂 It does sound like something that would have put in a regular appearance in literature of a certain vintage, likely paired with an unremarkable to cover one’s head.
12. As others, I raced through this until becoming becalmed in the SW, with STRESS, BEPATTER and SEDUCE holding me up. I spent time pondering if match could be set as in game set and match, but decided seduct wasn’t a word. Thanks for the explanation of match=see. GOINGS-ON and SUNDOWN also caused a brief pause. Nice puzzle though. 22:26. Thanks setter and V.
13. 18 minutes, so only 30% as hard as yesterday on my personal snitchometer. LOI GOINGS-ON. COD to DOUBLE-CROSSING. At least I can now get on with something else. Thank you V and setter.
14. …but several interruptions pushed my time to 21.32. As for everyone else, STRESS and BESPATTER didn’t want to become obvious.
    DEWLAP’s an odd sort of word, ain’t it, which I associate with those funny little bits of dangly skin that turn up as I age. I suppose they’re bits of one’s hide in a general sense, though I’d see hide as the more robust, tannable stuff should anyone ever want to make leather of me.
15. Done in 34 minutes with the 17a and 14d crossers my last two in as well. Didn’t know the CARD TRICK and missed the ‘match’ for SEE. Being self-righteously anti-gambling does have some disadvantages it seems.

    I don’t really know why, but SPROCKET for ‘tooth’ took my fancy.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

16. 9:58. I whizzed through most of this, biffing away merrily, but then got totally stuck on 2dn. No idea why: it was clearly an anagram of ‘dearth of screws’ and so blindingly obvious… once I’d seen it.
    I don’t know why but the phrase ‘DEWLAP sack’ sprang instantly to mind when I solved 20ac. I didn’t know until now what it meant.
    1. Surely burlap?
       1. Indeed – see below.
17. Finished my first Friday puzzle.

    Last 2 seduce and stress.
    Dnk rhino for money, or dewlap.

    Cod double crossing.
    Thanks.

18. Steady 20 min stroll. Thanks, v.
19. 11′ 12”, so flying (figuratively) today. No problem with the card trick, which is so common it’s known as the three-card trick. I’d be hopeless.

    In my sixty-odd years I have never known about ‘see’ in that sense, thanks for the lesson. We have recently acquired some chickens so DEWLAP sprang to mind quickly.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

20. ….while Bonnie loaded dollars in the DEWLAP bag (Georgie Fame).

    Having struggled through yesterday’s beast first, this was the relief I needed. Despite having to reconsider “incompatible” and “arteries”, I didn’t encounter a lot of resistance.

    FOI (correctly !) CHEST OF DRAWERS
    LOI SPROCKET
    COD BESPATTER
    TIME 8:22

    1. According to Mr Internet this is probably a mistake: the line was written as ‘burlap bag’. I think I was mixing up the two in my mind too, a silly mistake that might come from this song (which for some mysterious reason is familiar to me) but is more likely all my own work.

       Edited at 2019-06-21 04:32 pm (UTC)

21. A gentle Friday indeed, 20 minutes in chilly reception area while chap put the VW through the 134 checks for its controle technique and charged me 70 euros for the pain. I’d have liked it to be harder, as would our blogger. I finished before the car was finished.
22. This one slid right down the chute, which was nice. 1A reminded me of a dreadful old lawyers’ joke (they mostly are). The couple got a divorce on the grounds that the husband had no income and the wife wasn’t pattable. It sounds almost like Groucho but it’s still really bad. 12.41
    1. :))
       Not unlike the German couple who couldn’t agree about sausages; they had to get die Wurst…
    2. They may be the same couple who were fastidious. She was fast, he was ‘ideous.
23. Did this at Gatwick airport and would have been quicker at home. I was hoping for a difficult one to test me throughout the 9 hour flight. Back in a week’s time. COD to GOINGS-ON.
24. 25 min. after being shiftlessly stuck in SW. I suppose in snooker one pockets a ball as a change from potting it, yet not that often. Some nice surfaces.
25. A quick solve with no equine unrest here. The only modest delay involved weighing up the possibilities of SEDUCT before alighting on that particular meaning of SEE.
26. When 1a goes in within 10secs there’s a thought that either this is a doddle or that there’s something devilish ahead. Being a Friday I assumed the latter but no, not today. Held up at the end by not believing SEE for match, but STRESS confirmed it.
27. As others have remarked, RHINO has surely not been used to mean money in living memory.

    Chambers marks it as ‘archaic sl’, which seems about right.

    But the OED has a citation from 1988 (as well as one from Ulysses).

28. I don’t normally do these, but have completed a few recently and even the jumbo. I tend to think that more or less anything goes here and that sometimes puts me off a bit. This was all fair enough though. I thought ‘Find the lady’ was a card game ( with often with unrepeatable alternative names) rather than a card trick – or am I missing something?
    1. It can be both (this occurred to me when I first read the clue as well)
       1. thanks for that
29. I think a spell in the naughty chair for Cook G. for even mentioning it! Smelling salts please!
30. What everyone else has said about 17a and 14d, although TBH I couldn’t be bothered to struggle on with b…t.e.r (not feeling particularly bright today – in any sense!) So cheated – and was then really cross to see how easy Stress was 😕 I echo eniamtrauq’s remarks on 1a, but took a few minutes to get going after my flying start. Then all fine until those pesky afore-mentioned clues.

    Anyway, it’s not been my best week, especially yesterday! I have been completing the 15 x 15s without aids more frequently recently – although I’m never going to bother any of the big boys and girls. I don’t know if it’s because the puzzles have been a tad easier or if I’m getting any better!

    FOI incompatible
    LOI stress
    COD double crossing
    Penny drop moment (PDM) chest of drawers

    Penny

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