Times 27,437: Double Def Con One

65 comments on “Times 27,437: Double Def Con One”

1. I also struggled with the spelling of panettone but got there in the end.

   LOI: Deejay

   COD: Squeeze Box.

2. Went offline at 30′, did the rest–a lot of rest–during lunch, when things started to fall into place at last. I was lucky to remember ARTHURS SEAT and MONKEY NUT (the English mother of my best friend used it, to our amusement; she was also given to saying, “It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,” which I’ve stored in memory. But I digress.). Never did parse PRINCETON; I thought ‘college’=ETON, which put an end to parsing. DNK TROUSER SUIT, but the checkers came through. COD to LIONESSES. All in all, tough but fair; unlike today’s QC. Happy birthday-to-be, V; I had no idea you were already 59.
   1. I thought ETON for college in 4ac as well. Wasn’t Hillary Clinton fond of wearing trouser suits?
      1. Hadn’t even made the connection: we call them pants suits!
3. 17:31 … so exactly a par score for me, and an extremely enjoyable solve. I thought it felt exactly like one of Dean Meyer’s less fiendish offerings — if it’s not him, I hope the setter will take that as the compliment intended!

   I appreciated the precision of “Trunks, rarely …” for TORSI, snickered at the American behind and especially enjoyed the fox letting its hair down in BEWILDER.

   Ta, setter and verlaine

   1. It’s often enough mentioned when some term is not used or known in the US (not complained about, mentioned); but I find that the reverse can be a problem, too. Most of us have a general sense that WE (whichever ‘we’ are) don’t say that; but it’s harder to know that THEY don’t, and that can throw one off, as ‘American behind’ did me: I had no idea that BUTT was a murcanism. (Fortunately the other def came to the rescue.)
      1. There is a tale of an English preacher who caused great hilarity in an American congregation when he announced his sermon title as “Great Buts of the Bible”.
         1. When somebody says that a sentence has a big ‘but’ attached to it, I find it impossible not to remark that I like big buts and I cannot lie.
      2. I agree with Kevin about the confusion to us B Jonathans. A related difficulty is not knowing what US trivia (State capitals, third rank cities, US sports terms) the setter expects a UK solver to know.
      3. We’d never say BUTT in the UK when BUM would do!
4. Off the wavelength, feeling a bit thick, but got there in the end. LOI squeeze box, after correcting the dyslexic damp-coures; it was that sort of day. Quite liked the trouser suit, and spin the bottle.
   Interesting to see collateral spelled exactly as expected, I was one of the many last week surprised at the spelling of collinear.
5. Great puzzle full of neat DDs and other chewy bits. Ticks all over my paper copy and all parsed bar PRINCETON. DATED, RESURFACE, SQUEEZE-BOX and TROUSER SUIT all raised a smile, but COD to WHEAT for the business hotel breakfast image. 26:41
6. Two sessions with interruption for sleep, so no solving time to offer other than to say I must have missed my target half-hour by a very long way. Some answers went in easily enough but their parsing was more tricky, and then I found myself with only 3-4 answers missing that almost proved intractable. LOI, as for our blogger, was AHEAD in which I still don’t quite get the relevance of ‘me’. Was very pleased to biff PRINCETON having remembered it from a recent debacle in another puzzle.

   Edited at 2019-08-23 06:51 am (UTC)

7. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberry compote.
   Very clever, but some of the linguistic gymnastics was a bit too much for me – e.g. Princeton.
   Mostly I liked: Squeeze-box and Arthur’s Seat.
   V, I live in Edinburgh and would have loved to join you for a pint – but I am celebrating my birthday (8 Oct) on a week jaunt to Ullapool. Maybe some other time.
   Thanks setter and V
8. 23 minutes with LOI DEEJAY. My favourite of those was Jack Jackson, after he stopped leading his band. Anybody remember? I got on well with this puzzle, with COD BEWILDER and special mention to SQUEEZE-BOX. The ‘what’ of WHEAT has always troubled me. As a child, I was told that to say it was rude, and to use ‘pardon’ instead. I got to Oxford to find that ‘pardon’ was infra-dig. I never did decide upon a good alternative. Nowadays, it’s usually something like, “I missed that. Can you speak up a bit?” Thank you V and setter.
   1. Same life-long problems with those words. I still wince reflexively at ‘What?’ I’ve ended up with ‘Sorry?’, which is hardly satisfactory, either.

      I was trying to think if there was a twenty-first century coinage that could rescue us from our torments, but “Not recognized. Please try again” is a bit wordy

   2. “Say again?” .. has the merit of sounding all technical as well as being specific and reasonably polite.
      1. “Say again” infuriates my missus. Closely followed by “no, sorry, still didn’t get that”.
         1. My deafness seems to infuriate a lot of people but it is not deliberate.
      2. For added effect try leaving a short pause then saying “over” after “say again”. Sounds even more technical then.
   3. Yes, I remember listening to Jack Jackson with his ‘Record Roundup’ in a Saturday midday slot on the Light Progamme around 1960. He used to splice together conversations and made-up stories in which he interacted with snippets taken from comedy shows – Hancock in particular at the time I was listening. Surely a huge influence on Kenny Everett who was beginning to make his name around that time too on the pirate stations.

      Edited at 2019-08-23 09:30 am (UTC)

   4. I once suggested to one of my kids (when he was very young) that he shouldn’t say ‘pardon’, because that is what I was told when I was a kid. But his teacher had told him the opposite, and these contradictory messages from two great authority figures in his life induced such traumatic cognitive dissonance that I immediately dropped the subject and have never mentioned it again.
      1. Ages ago I learned–from Mitford?–1) that ‘Pardon?’ was non-U, and 2) that pulling one’s trousers up at the knee when sitting down was non-U. I thought 1) What crap!, and 2) What crap!
         1. Indeed. ‘Toilet’ is the other big one, which is even more so.
            1. I’ve more or less got over all that, but “toilet” and “serviette” still make me wince, nevertheless..
               1. Serviette ? Most people use toilet roll….
                  1. I knew it was wrong to engage with the hoi polloi .. they are lavatory rolls, and napkins.. need a lie down, now 😉
                     1. The hoi polloi? Et tu, Jerry?
                  2. Bog rolls in this part of the world….
                     1. Bum wad to non-u Americans.
                        1. This discussion is going down the toilet 🙂
               2. All these things still make me wince, in spite of knowing how stupid it is. Silly prejudices like this can be remarkably persistent when picked up at a young age.
                  1. Yes, totally daft .. but class, and class indicators, are still pervasive in England, come what may. Until we can prise our “royalty” and “aristocracy” away from their positions of social dominance, it won’t ever change..
            2. was originally came from an article Alan S. C. Ross of the University of Birmingham. Nancy Mitford leaped on it and tormented the British middle classes for many a year. It was actually published first in Finland, which is somewhat non-U!

               Late to this due to pressure of work. And I DNQF.

               FOI 26ac WHEAT

               LOI 3dn DEE-JAY

               COD 7dn TROUSER SUIT (pants suit is terribly non-U)

               WOD Nothing really caught my eye.

               What news of Mr. Snitch- is he with Bob and Margaret?

               Edited at 2019-08-23 04:10 pm (UTC)

9. …but needed help to get DEEJAY.
   Thank you, Verlaine, particularly for PRINCETON.
   PANETTONE is yummy!
   Joint COD to WHEAT and BEWILDER.
   SQUEEZE BOX has given me a Who earworm.
10. A lovely puzzle to end the week on, tough (54 minutes) but happily lacking in obscure words from other languages clued as anagrams, so for a change I was pretty sure I’d got everything right before coming here.

    Enjoyed 28a WHEAT and the plain-living females of 16d. FOI 1d DAMP COURSE LOI 7d TROUSER SUIT, just after finding the university at 4a.

    I should have got 4a rather more quickly, given that I’m re-watching House at the moment, which is set in PRINCETON Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (the real Princeton’s First Campus Centre is the building shown in the title sequence, trivia buffs!)

11. Really good finish to the (weekday) week .. some lovely clues here, good surfaces and rock solid technically. Particularly liked 11ac and 15ac but lots of others too
12. DEEJAY the last one in, mostly because I forgot the running river convention. 20 pleasant minutes marred by yet another dorky (as in next-dorky) wrong letter not spotted in review. If only the crossword has a spell-check red line facility.
    I did essay PRAT for the tushie clue, but rescued myself from being a complete Arthur’s seat.
    Enjoy the last days of your youth, V, “before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “’I find no pleasure in them’”. (I’m still defiantly bucking that trend well into my – ahem – late middle age)
13. I’m still struggling with the verbal gymnastics that put case of college (CE) inside PRINT ON, rather than around it, but did see what the parsing was supposed to be. PANNETTONE and TROUSER SUIT were my leads into biffing PRINCETON, which I then reverse engineered(almost). I also had difficulty getting my thinker around 24a. Liked SPIN THE BOTTLE, LIONESSES and RESURFACED. DATED and DAMP COURSE were my first 2 in. DEEJAY was last by a long way and took some alphabet trawling. The JAY came first, then I saw the required meaning of runner. An enjoyable tussle, seeing as no pink squares appeared! 34:11. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2019-08-23 09:25 am (UTC)

14. Happy to see my fellow Librans are Verlaine and Myrtilus (I’m the 7th) and welcome to the grown-up table V. Last year, for a special birthday, my family treated me to a bespoke TLS puzzle to mark the occasion. Neat.

    I never did find the wavelength here but it was an excellent work-out. I only knew PANETTONE because it appears in all the up-market food shops here at Christmas time. The plain-living females were very nice. 20.58

    1. Another Libran here (4th). Well-balanced, with a chip on both shoulders!
       1. Oi! No nicking Billy Connolly’s joke about the Australians.
          1. I think it was a joke…
15. An earlier solve than normal for me as I’m off to Leeds Festival in a bit.

    15:20 for a fun puzzle. I started at the bottom which I found fairly straightforward, the top half not so much. Plain-living females was a great def.

    1. Is that Leeds Beer Week (they apparently have a nine day week in Leeds !) ? I’m thinking of retracing my steps on Thursday next when there are three one off events I like the look of.
16. I think I fell into every trap listed above, but still managed to limp home in 45 mins. With SQUEEZE BOX I thought there might be a pangram, but there’s no V that I can see. Had no idea about MONKEY NUT, so thanks, V. Seen TORSI so often in crosswords I didn’t realise they were rare!
17. ….where they played SPIN THE BOTTLE. Perhaps my youth was less misspent than I thought.

    I missed my target by a smidgen, probably due to failing to solve a single across clue on first reading, and really feared I was in for a marathon session. It all came together pretty well in the end, though the NW corner took a good five minutes to yield. I’m another who suspects Dean Meyer – lovely economical clueing, though 8D is one I’ve seen before.

    Thanks to V for parsing SPIN THE BOTTLE and PANETTONE – I might have got there eventually but me and ‘er indoors are shortly “out to lunch” in a more literal way than usual.

    FOI INTER
    LOI DEEJAY
    COD DATED
    TIME 20:19

    1. Probably bicycle clips in the fishbowl in your days
       1. I do wish LJ had a “like” button! 🙂
18. I came to this after getting that error on the QC but these days I seem to shrug these things off more easily. Perhaps this is an upside of being a long way past the start of middle age (there must be some consolation). Anyway, this was a pleasant, if not typically Friday-ish solve, with a brief pause to check the Ts and Es in PANNETTONE.
19. A reasonably pleasant puzzle but not a great one, IMO, 27 minutes ending with CASSETTE and the American uni. HIT OR MISS seemed odd, I usually expect HIT AND MISS for that kind of affair. BEWILDER was good, my CoD. Or maybe BUTT.
20. I solved this from Edinburgh today, having come up for work (and managed to sneak to a few Fringe events too), so ARTHUR’S SEAT suggested itself relatively quickly. A fine puzzle today, with some beauties – plain-living females being the best of the bunch.

    PANETTONE was my last one in after having to make sure of the parsing for the spelling; for ALL THE BEST I completely failed to recognise it was an anagram but biffed it with some hope. 9m 23s.

21. 16:59. I really enjoyed this one: a good level of chewy.
    PANETTONE took me a while even after I had the P and figured out a PANE would be involved because it’s filed under ‘cake’ in my mental bakery lexicon. This isn’t an objection: if making it requires both eggs and yeast I guess you can take your pick. Whatever you call it, it’s delicious. The only foodstuff that disappears more quickly in our house is crisps. Actually that not quite right: the only human foodstuff.
    1. My God! You can’t be getting your crisps from M&S. They draw the line at pig flesh.
22. 32:26 I found this more fiddly than friday-ish in places but another satisfying solve. The only one where I really had fingers crossed between submission and seeing the all green grid come up was 24ac. Head didn’t seem great for thinker on my first reading though I’m happier with it now and I wasn’t entirely convinced I was on the right lines with the rest of the clue either. I seem to have missed or glossed over the runner in 3dn and the excellent plain-living in 16dn which was entered without further ado once I’d twigged that Cape was Ness and not C.
23. Couldn’t solve this one. I had 24ac as AMERY presumably Leo Amery, a military thinker, showing ME the (rail)WAY. Also 18ac DRUMMER-BOY. But these 1, 4, 7dn difficult.

    from Jeepyjay

24. I liked this one a lot (they’ve all been good this week, but I worked them all late besides this one). The vocab was none too obscure, but the wordplay took some pondering. The one I couldn’t quite parse was PRINCETON (like some others, I see).
25. Took me a bit of a while to get through, because I didn’t know of ARTHURS SEAT, or that you Brits called it a TROUSER SUIT. The plain-living females were the highlight today. Regards.
26. Why has my entry been diminished? Please expand!

    Edited at 2019-08-23 04:15 pm (UTC)

27. I miss the SNITCH 🙁
28. Nice puzzle – esp the Lionesses, though Prioresses gave them a run for their grid space for a sad 10 minutes – and nice blog. I had trouble trusting till = Unto, I’d’ve used the ‘til contraction of until. I had equal trouble trusting Ahead as the way itself or the showing me thereof. With that cleverness I wasted a lot of time on Emmer before the more prosaic Wheat occurred to me.
29. A generally nice puzzle, but the Princeton clue doesn’t work. 30 mins. Thanks v.
    1. I thought that about PRINCETON. The clue seems to be inside out.
       1. The comma disambiguates it I think? No one would object to “Covering case in college”, and that’s basically the same, active for passive.

          Edited at 2019-08-25 10:05 pm (UTC)

30. Well, I didn’t even parse PRINCETON so I can’t complain.

    This one took an unconscionably long time, split over a couple of sessions. I don’t know about you but I find that if I’m stumped, I can generally take a break and then come back and suddenly I’m still stumped.

    However, I did like this puzzle, which struck me as well put together.

    And what exactly has happened to the SNITCH? Is the Snitchmeister on holiday?

    Edited at 2019-08-23 10:41 pm (UTC)

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