Times 27,491: You *Still* Can’t Wash Your Hands In A Hetero

57 comments on “Times 27,491: You *Still* Can’t Wash Your Hands In A Hetero”

1. Fun, and fairly easy for a Friday. Fortunately, we had an ‘interspersed’-type clue very recently, so TWICE wasn’t too hard today. I thought 10d was TAKE THE PLUNGE, but I’d rashly put in UMPIRES, ignoring the ‘youth’; wasted some time before correcting that. LANOLIN my COD, too.
2. So nearly hit my half-hour target but the alphabet trawl needed for my LOI (VOYEUR) took 10 minutes and I finished on 38.

   BONG as a water pipe was news to me and I understand it’s yet another import from the drug culture that Times setters appear to be obsessed with.

   I’m not sure I’ve come across UMP as an abbreviation of ‘umpire’ before but it’s hardly surprising considering that barely a week goes by without ‘ref’ for ‘referee’ featuring somewhere in wordplay.

   Edited at 2019-10-25 04:51 am (UTC)

   1. It’s been a while since I’ve used a bong, preferring a little vaporizing pipe these days (strictly herb, no oils, and no fancy electronics, just a ceramic filter between the lighter and the weed). As you can imagine, such references seem no more transgressive to me than mentions of the many varieties of alcohol. I guess anyone who works these puzzles every day knows something about addictive behavior.
      1. You just reminded me that my sister got a call from my 8 year old nephew’s school yesterday as he’d asked a dinner lady if she had any weed! When challenged on his question he said his dad is always smoking it and he’s tried it loads of times. Completely untrue but the school are obliged to take it seriously despite knowing he’s just pushing their buttons (he’s got history!).
   2. I think ‘obsessed’ is a bit strong: these are just quite common words. I have used and encountered ‘bong’ infinitely more frequently than ‘pi’ or ‘alecost’!
3. …although I certainly didn’t get a couple of the cryptics. BIT(ten) BY BIT was unusually devious, and I did enjoy BILL A BONG and the BI SON.
4. I thought in initially 10d was TAKE THE PLEDGE but there were UMPTEEN reasons why it was TAKE THE PLUNGE! I didn’t get the ‘ump at 25ac as it rings a distant bell from the school playing fields. I should have been par with Jack but as it’s Friday I was a further ten minutes. 28ac EYELID was blindingly obvious but I failed to catch on. So no MER.

   FOI 1ac COBBER

   LOI 22ac POTBOILER which seemed a bit iffy.

   COD 1dn CERVANTES a bloody-well-hidden anagram. Karl Mann’s Anja und Ester is a seven-act play, if you like that sort of mularkey! I’m sure there are many others. My avatar today is the Mann Mansion in Munich.

   WOD 14ac TURING TEST – which I don’t remember taking.

   Our last day of summer tomorrow, apparently – winter draws on!

   Edited at 2019-10-25 05:51 am (UTC)

   1. Isn’t the 11+ basically a test to determine if you’re suitable for imaginative human, or just repetitive mechanical tasks? This may be an overly reductive statement.
5. BIT BY BIT, I got all this, but the parsing of BIT BY BIT eluded me. I’ll call VOYEUR my favorite clue here just because it was my LOI, thanks to the masterfully deceptive melding of “grand” and “tour.”
6. I struggled to finish this with a handful of stubborn clues, finally ending with POTBOILER. I was tempted by PATROLLER as I couldn’t see anything else which fitted for a while but I’m still managing to stick with my “more haste less speed” approach.

   COD to VOYEUR, which I’m glad I managed to biff eventually as I didn’t get the parsing at the time and I now see is decidedly tricky.

7. 12:50. POTBOILER struck me as a bit weak but the rest was great fun.
8. 28 minutes with LOI VOYEUR. I wasn’t looking hard enough. I didn’t parse BILLABONG, but the first few lines of Waltzing Matilda are well enough known. We’ve been BENIGN somewhere else recently. I have done a couple of Grauniads though and it may have been there. COD to TAKE THE PLUNGE. I liked BOMB too. Nice middle-of-the-road puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
9. 30 mins.
   I liked it. COD to Lanolin.
   Thanks setter and V.
10. I can account for all of my 17+ minutes, but not for the mysterious Y which appeared at the top of VOYEUR.
    I keep thinking there’s more to the POTBOILER clue than we’re seeing at the moment. Certainly the blinking CD is better.
    1. I thought it was something to do with the class of people (potwallopers or potboilers) who were enfranchised by the 1832 Reform Act. But I don’t really see how either definition works.
       1. A potboiler is a trashy book you dash off to pay the rent, no? Michael Moorcock is infamous for having written an entire trilogy in a weekend, and dedicated it “to my creditors, a constant source of inspiration”.
          1. Well yes, quite. But the clue is barely cryptic, the marginal saving grace being that “one’s” replaces “something” to distinguish it from a plain, straight definition.
11. Good fun, and nicely paced at 37 minutes for this pommie. FOI 1a COBBER, and then most of the LHS went in fairly rapidly, apart from 22a and 10d, but then I had to keep cycling through and picking away at the more stubborn leftovers on the other side.

    7d BILLABONG took a while, and I couldn’t have defined it before today, but at least it was familiar once it appeared. I should’ve got the unknown 13a KNOTGRASS earlier too. Once I’d got those I finally worked out 10d TAKE THE PLUNGE and LOI 22a POTBOILER where like Pootle I found it hard to get a PATROLLER out of my head.

    Enjoyed the device of 23a TWICE and the maritime 17d BITTER END, among others.

12. Very enjoyable antipodean offering ….. I even read “it’s a blinking requirement” in an Aussie accent. Too many to pick a COD. Thanks all.
13. Stopped after thirty minutes without VOYEUR, overwhelmed by clue’s complexity. Also had TWINE, now rather like TWICE. As for drug culture, BONG must be over fifty years old. Came across ROSE TOPAZ while investigating gifts for my wife. Don’t get POTBOILER, what am I missing?

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

    On edit, this from a well-known website, I still think it is dubious: “A potboiler or pot-boiler is a novel, play, opera, film, or other creative work of dubious literary or artistic merit, whose main purpose was to pay for the creator’s daily expenses—thus the imagery of “boil the pot”, which means “to provide one’s livelihood”.

    Edited at 2019-10-25 09:32 am (UTC)

    1. Spike Milligan wrote a book called The Little Pot Boiler, which seemed pleasingly candid.
    2. I don’t understand the widespread dubious reaction to the word; it’s a word in English that means exactly what your website source says it means. The clue, mind you, like Keriothe and Sotira, I thought weak, but the word itself is unproblematic.
       1. It”s the clue that’s dubious, the word is fine. I found its origin in Brewer – nowadays ‘keep the pot boiling’ has a different meaning.
    3. All the main dictionaries (Collins, ODO, Chambers) have similar definitions. I thought it meant a certain type of novel (poor quality and scandalous) but apparently not. I still think the clue’s a bit weak.
       1. I agree that it is quite a weak cryptic def, in the sense that the “hidden” definition occurred to me at pretty much the same time as the “ostensible” one.
14. I started off quickly with COBBER and kept going. Didn’t know what a BONG was until I looked it up afterwards. I also thought POTBOILER was a bit weak. Didn’t quite see the parsing for BIT BY BIT, but managed to work out VOYEUR. Like BOMB and BISON. TURING TEST was LOI. 24:21. Thanks setter and V.
15. Good fun for me too. I liked LANOLIN, TWICE and DUE DATE, but was unimpressed by POTBOILER. LOI VOYEUR. 28A reminded me of the Billy Connolly sketch about *blinking* requirements. Don’t click on this link if you are offended by colourful language… The demands will be changed. 18:39.
16. A real Friday job I thought, most enjoyable. Under time pressure to be somewhere, I did finish all correct in 34 minutes, but with a lot of biffing and then coming to the blog to find how it worked, e.g. for 14a, 5d, and my LOI TWICE which held me for too long. My favs were 11a, 2d and 10d once I saw how they worked. Good blogging, V.
17. 19:56 … lot of fun, with a whole series of PDMs for me to finish it off. I did the same as verlaine, making myself stop and think about 23a, thus avoiding the tempting ‘twine’.

    POTBOILER does seem more like a def. than a cryptic def., which made it paradoxically hard to solve.

    Can’t argue with LANOLIN as a COD.

    cheers, all

    1. To avoid confusion with “Product Data Management”, do you think this should be in the TftT Glossary? Kind regards, Bob K.
       1. I do, Bob. Not that Product Data Management has ever been on the tip of my tongue, but I’m sure there are people who wake up thinking about it. Maybe Jerry or Vinyl, who are, I believe, the joint creators of the Glossary, might consider adding Penny-Drop Moment. It’s been around in crossword circles for a long time, if not so often used on this site.
          1. I certainly think it should be there! Penny 😊
          2. Added 🙂
             1. well done, Jerry. thanks
18. ….UMPTEEN opportunities for the unwary to go astray today. Fortunately I managed to avoid them !

    DNK TURING TEST, and am grateful to Verlaine for parsing BIT BY BIT.

    I was convinced for some time that “extremely wide” at 20A meant it would start with “we”. It took a fair while to see DUE DATE, and I was extremely careful before entering TWICE.

    I could see the potential for POTBOILER, but only grudgingly entered it so that I could join the mass alpha-trawl for my LOI.

    FOI COBBER
    LOI VOYEUR
    COD BISON
    TIME 19:47

19. I might as well put that time for every crossword these days. However it would have been a lot less if it wasn’t for the POTBOILER, similar to many above I had PATROLLER but no reason for it. Had no idea about the clue for TWICE so thanks, V!
20. I gave up after a little over 13 minutes, with VOYEUR unfilled and deeply uncertain about POTBOILER. I agree with the growing consensus that that was the weakest clue in the puzzle (even if it got me thinking, for the first time, about the definition of the word), but I also wasn’t terribly impressed by EYELID. Cryptic definitions are difficult to pull off.

    Otherwise, a very nice puzzle with some good constructions.

21. The words low-rent and hack are synonymous according to Roget. A potboilers are usually the work of hacks. Is ‘a rent’ thus an abbreviation of a low-rent and a hack?
22. ‘Young’ would have done it – ‘young children’ misled me. Couldn’t stop trying to think of synonyms for junior human beings.
23. 33:14. I didn’t quite parse bit by bit or bison when solving. Potboiler went in with a shrug I had always just thought of it as a page turner with limited artistic merit and had not appreciated that from the point of view of its creator it is also a way to pay the rent. Took ages over LOI 23ac, I couldn’t decide between twine and twice so that one had to be fully teased out before entering. I liked knotgrass, Turing test and voyeur.
24. Ump is the common name for umpire in baseball – easier to yell “Hey Ump – yer blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other” than “Mr Umpire…”. So another Brother Jonathan for us.
25. Got off to a great start with cobber FOI – a rare treat for me! Tootled along quite happily for most of the ride but then came unstuck with Turing test and potboiler, so – yet again – DNF. Voueur was a good challenge – I got the answer straightaway but had to work at it a bit to see the parsing. The same can’t be said for a couple of others, which I did biff, or at least only semi-parsed – ill-considered and lanolin.

    FOI Cobber
    COD A toss-up between Cervantes and Twice

    On the subject of facilities, I’m very glad people don’t refer to spending a penny anymore – it’s more like 50p these days anyway. And to add insult to injury, my husband’s name is John!

26. I liked the puzzle, like Sotira, for the string of PDMs. My saving grace was that once I saw that the setter intended to be as clever as possible I squinted twice at every clue. My failing was inexplicably spelling Cervantes with an S which made the less familiar Cobber a stretch. Today’s favorite was Lanolin.
    1. Whenever the Nirvana song “Serve The Servants” comes on the radio it always makes me think of Don Quixote… true fact.
27. Very enjoyable, possibly not unrelated to the fact that I felt on something resembling the wavelength for the first time in weeks. Very amused by both the BI SON and the VOYEUR. Cheeky.
28. Speaking as someone who’s been in both Colorado and California this week… drug culture is the mainstream where I am! Not that I partake myself, alcohol is enough for me.
29. Thirty-two minutes, but in two sessions with a 6 hour interval spent looking for a dog. It was our dog, and I’m the one who’d lost it, so I suppose I can’t complain too much. There’s a lot to be said for 6 hours of fresh air, but none of it’s printable.

    I found this one easier than yesterday’s by a mile, or perhaps I was just more switched on. BIT BY BIT went in only in a half-parsed sort of way, so thanks to Verlaine for the clarification.

    Nice to see TURING TEST which (as I’m sure you all know) was meant to be a pragmatic test of whether a computer is intelligent. However, it has long been superseded by Lighthill’s Principle, which says that an activity stops being “intelligent” as soon as a computer can be made to do it, and therefore we will never have AI. In contrast, of course, the development of Artificial Stupidity has proven to be remarkably straightforward.

30. SW corner was tough until POUCH appeared. Still didn’t like POTBOILER though.
31. I am another who had “Take the Pledge” for a long time until I finally saw “Umpteen”.
    Enjoyable puzzle.
32. Seems perfectly reasonable, if not very inventive. A potboiler is a work dashed off to provide cash, possibly while a more worthy piece is being more carefully crafted. Would replacing the first word with novel/book made the clue more accessible?! However, found the BIT BY BIT parsing more complicated than the answer and am still not totally convinced by it.
33. I think Verlaine’s parsing of 4 ac is not the composers intention. Ten being 10 is formed of the two “bits” 1 and 0 used in binary (computer) notation and so is “bit by bit”. Maybe this was a Turing Test. I wonder of the editor or subeditor altered 10 to ten, as they tend to do, to suit house style?

    from jeepyjay

    1. That’s such a lovely idea that I really want it to be true, but I think it doesn’t *quite* work for 10, and it certainly doesn’t work for 1010…
       1. No, Verlaine was right: [BITTEN BY BIT – TEN] was the intended wordplay.
34. Finished this off sunday evening – first spell interrupted by crying newborn. A good challenge, and I especially liked the bisexual offspring (mine’s a daughter). Thanks for explaining bit by bit and lanolin which I guessed had to be right without knowing why.
35. First time I’ve managed to complete the sacred grid against the clock…..and hoping 106 hours 32 minutes should prove not insurmountable in the very near future!!
    1. Dang…..just checked the answers and put tines instead of tongs!! Back to the drawing board…
36. I’ve just remembered I had this puzzle published and got around to checking the blog. My excuse for the uninspired POTBOILER clue is that it’s an example of itself: a clue dashed off because I had to.

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