Times 27,509: You May Take Our Lives, But You’ll Never Take Our 3 Down!

68 comments on “Times 27,509: You May Take Our Lives, But You’ll Never Take Our 3 Down!”

1. I was defeated by STONKING, not knowing tonking and guessing that “tunning” might have the same meaning. Otherwise, I found it quite hard but gradually pieced all the bits together after a slow start.

   Thanks, V, for the blog. You were certainly on the wavelength.

2. at 4ac was my WOD. At first I was playing with SPANKING (as one does, eh? Mr. Fleming!?) but STONKING is believe to be very English. The Gulf of TONKIN is very VIET-NAMESE and rather nice too. And whilst in Asia…

   …back in the day, a SINGAPORE SLING at Raffles was really something – today it isn’t. I was there with Willie Somerset Maugham a few years back. Today tourists are not allowed into the main part of the hotel to gawp. A Sikh gentleman sees that only guests can gain entrance. Tourists may use the bar via the courtyard, but it really has rather lost its ambiance/ambulance.Peanut shells everywhere. Same with The Oriental in Bangkok, where Jim Thompson used to trade his silks. Evocatively my COD.

   FOI 15dn SATINWOOD

   LOI 5dn THERE!

   Cognitus interruptus by a trip to Carrefour, say 50 minutes.

   Edited at 2019-11-15 07:05 am (UTC)

3. So hard I nearly gave up, but struggled through eventually in 70 minutes. NHO Queen Madeleine nor TONKING as ‘defeat’.
   1. Jack: I know you don’t go there but recently:-
      Southampton 0 Leicester City 9 was a tonking! The Saints were tonked!
      1. England 7 Montenegro 0 last night probably classes as a tonking as well.
         1. I very much like the Scots version, “gubbing”, which I always hear in the voice of Roddy Forsyth, usually saying that Celtic have delivered one to some unfortunate lower league team.
            1. In Scotland, a “lower league team” seems to be anybody below halfway in the SPL.
4. 15:41, and it felt to me like that was quite a decent time for this, so your time is amazing, v. Magoo will be worried!
   I found the acrosses particularly hard today, with only two answers in on my first pass. Fortunately the downs were a bit gentler.
   Smashing puzzle.
   1. Magoo is indeed a distant second (42 seconds).
   2. The only strategy I have is to get him worried enough that he feels like he has to rush to submit a bit more this year and makes another mistake…
5. Frustratingly I picked my way through this only to end up with a technical DNF due to a typo. Otherwise I particularly enjoyed this puzzle, feeling like I had to work hard on many of the clues but never feeling stumped.

   Verlaine – you were definitely on the wavelength today with a WITCH of 0.6!

   1. That would be a Times WITCH?
      1. Nice!
      2. It’s clearly a canonical term at this point!
   2. Typos do not constitute DNFs as you would not make the mistake in championship conditions. At least that’s what I like to tell myself…
      This morning I actually managed to notice a typo when I checked my answers, so there’s hope for me yet.
      1. Don’t kid yourself. I’m still haunted by “itss bitsy” in the 1979 final. I could have actually won that year.
         1. To be clear, my system is based on motivated reasoning the fact that you wouldn’t have made that mistake. Others remain available.
            Ouch, however.

            Edited at 2019-11-15 03:51 pm (UTC)

6. Tough today, but done in 35′. Had to resort to pencil and paper for the long anagrams. PINOT and JETTISONED took some time. Liked CHOCTAW.

   Only six posts by 8.40 GMT?

   Thanks verlaine and setter.

   1. Now you mention it, I do! 3d in my early days, containing 4-a-penny chews and some sort of made-in-Hong-Kong plastic. Much more exciting in anticipation than in reality!
   2. Is V in a different time-zone or his computer set to one? The 10:18pm 14th November date-line isn’t GMT because the blog didn’t appear until around 6am.
      1. There are times when I think V is on a different planet.
         1. Indeed, we are but mere mortals !
      2. I was blogging in Berkeley CA last night.
7. My turn to have the lurgy, dizziness included, so speed solving, or speed anything, is not on my agenda for today. I ambled through this, a little at a time, but loved doing it. A very engaging puzzle, and any puzzle that has something like the Times Witch is going to be alright with me.

   The witch and the boozy clues were great, and I liked the way the very similar GULL and BASS clues sort of bookend the grid. Nice work from the setter and a stonking good time from our blogger.

   on edit: I forgot to ask if anyone else had a temporarily misbiffed SAUVIGNON BLANC, which does fit most of the checkers

   Edited at 2019-11-15 11:06 am (UTC)

   1. Gull and Bass sounds like a crossover between 80s synth-pop and late-90s jungle.
   2. I spent my mis-directed minutes – on edit, some of my misdirected minutes – trying to make Sangriany Punch in to a thing.
8. 40 mins with yoghurt, granola, etc.
   What a brilliant puzzle, full of fun and cunning.
   Mostly I liked: Stonking, Pinot, Singapore Sling, Injustice, Minority – and COD to the cheeky Radon.
   Thanks excellent setter and V.
9. …up on Choctaw Ridge. Just short of the hour, with LOI and WOD STONKING. I wasn’t too sure about all the elements of JAMBOREE, but it had to be. I can remember the scout jamboree at Sutton Coldfield in 1957, my last year as a wolf cub, when we had a special train from Lancashire to take us there. I found it a pretty boring day, so I never did take my leaping wolf badge into the scouts. We still must DOB, DOB, DOB though and I think I did that on this puzzle today. It could easily have been COD ONE OF THOSE DAYS when I jumped off the bridge. Tough but satisfying to solve. Thank you V and setter.

   Edited at 2019-11-15 10:00 am (UTC)

   1. I was there too.
      1. Do you mean the Scout Jamboree or were you there when Billy Joe Mcallister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
10. Phew, that one gave the brain cells a run for their money! Got nothing for the first 5 minutes, then WALLACE hove into view. Next one in was SATINWOOD, and a goodly portion of the SW followed. AVIAN and LEONID gave me a start in the SE but the rest of the puzzle was a teeth pulling exercise. Really pleased to arrive with no pink squares in 51:44. Thanks setter and V(which should stand for velocity!)
11. “I think some of the clues might not have been so easy if you didn’t “just see them”.” Perfectly encapsulating my experience, in which precisely none of the entries leapt from the page. My first in was 15d SATINWOOD, and everything else was prised painfully slowly from the tangleweed clues. Not to say I didn’t like it – I certainly did – which meant my 36-some minutes were cheerfully if somewhat masochistically spent. My sense of achievement was slightly diminished by V’s ridiculously boy racer time (cheers, V) and other lesser mortals slithering through in perfectly normal times.

    Edited at 2019-11-15 10:51 am (UTC)

12. Championship standard puzzle, this: no wilful obscurities, and everything is there when you see it…although it might take you a while to see it. JAMBOREE was the perfect example; my LOI, and until I got the J at the beginning, I wasn’t even sure what the definition was, never mind what elements of wordplay I needed.
13. Yikes, that was hard. STONKING didn’t make it across the Atlantic and I’ve been NONPLUSed by it before so I really should remember it. Like Horryd the Gulf of Tonkin came to mind though I couldn’t say what really happened there. It didn’t quite parse but by then I was ready to go with anything. This also exposed some colossal lacunae in my knowledge of Scots history and lore. The only hero I could think of was Robert the Bruce and his spider. For some reason I blanked on Scots Wha Hae etc. And Queen MADELEINE drew a blank too. This one certainly weeded out the non-starters. 29.54
    1. It even weeded out some of the starters unfortunately !
       1. Oh you’ll make it Phil!
14. 39 mins. Good fun – enjoyed it. Snitch thinks it’s hard. Cheers v, great time there.
15. Oh dear. I gave up after 15 minutes, having spent 3-4 minutes trying to find something to fit J_M_E_E_ at 17d and only being able to come up with JAMMERED. Turns out, of course, that I’d made an error with ONE OF THESE DAYS at 21a. I guess it was just one of those…

    12a is COD for me, which I didn’t parse until just now.

    1. Yes it’s a very good clue indeed isn’t it. Sadly a bit too easy to just biff in from seeing SINGAPORE fitting the crossers…
       1. Unfortunately without the starting S , BANGALORE FLOAT looked like a less than appetising drink
16. Small inelegance: both 7dn and 9dn have the first word ‘Popular’, each time ‘in’ in the wordplay.

    But a small criticism. The usual excellent Times fare. How anyone can solve it in 6½ minutes is beyond me. I couldn’t do so even if I knew the answers beforehand.

    Edited at 2019-11-15 12:41 pm (UTC)

17. 56:50 but very happy to have actually completed a 140+ SNITCH puzzle (at time of writing). Nothing I didn’t know – just difficult. I have been toying with the idea of attending the championship, if only to observe Verlaine’s planet sized head, but I fear I would be well out of my depth. [On reflection that sounds as if I think V is big-headed – just mean to accommodate the brain!]

    Edited at 2019-11-15 01:27 pm (UTC)

18. I did this one late, tired and feeling a bit poorly, and started off as well as you’d expect—by putting the obvious “ROOK” in 8d. Things didn’t improve from there, and by minute 25 I only had four answers.

    At that point I gave myself a stern talking to, drained the last of my coffee and tried to kick my brain into gear, and it must’ve eventually worked as I finally dragged myself across the finish line in an hour and ten. NHO “tonking”, didn’t know the queen or the native Americans, thought “tiro” was only ever spelled with a “y”, and only got SATINWOOD so quickly because it’s also the brand name of a Dulux paint I happened to buy on Wednesday. Not easy!

    F(C)OI 28a LEONID, LOI 19d CHOCTAW, COD either the elegant 20a PINOT or the penny-dropping 6d NONPLUS.

    1. Count me as another who got SATINWOOD from the paint. I never knew it was a tree.
19. 48’40 but with stunning. Shd’ve looked at it a bit longer. A pleasantly testing puzzle, which won out in the end. 6.5 minutes? Strewth.
20. ….but I was pleased to finish, and be all correct. The reason I could finish is that the puzzle is perfectly fair, although I never heard of Madeleine of Valois and ‘stonking’ is too recent a UKism to be in my vocabulary.
    1. I’m going to admit I’d never heard of a queenly Scottish Madeleine before I blogged this puzzle.
21. I am still not sure how the force trial equates to JAM BORE.
    Could someone explain?

    Unless it’s someone boring you to death with their attempts at playing jazz.

    1. Came here to find the answer to that myself. Can see that jam is force ( jam something into a space) . But can’t get a meaning of bore to be trial.
       1. I suppose if something is a bore it is a bit of a trial.
          1. I think it’s more someone who’s a bore is a trial
       2. My dictionary has “a person, thing or activity that wearies” for bore, which can be a trial (“a troublesome thing, a nuisance”) if you squint.
22. Struggled in at 47’01. Not for the first time this week, felt the synapses were not fully firing. Dithered for ages on stonking-tonking, not being sure if the words — though I use them occasionally – were actually recognised.
23. ….wi’ Bruce and loyal WALLACE (Steeleye Span : ‘Rogues in a Nation’).

    I spent two 15 minute sessions on this, but retired hurt. On coming here to find INJUSTICE, I immediately spotted JAMBOREE.

    My FOI demonstrates how far down I had to read before the initial breakthrough. I didn’t know the Scottish queen, had to write out the anagrist for ONE OF THOSE DAYS (which it clearly was), and am grateful to Verlaine for parsing INVENTION (I spent more time on that clue than he did on the whole damned shooting match !)

    FOI SIDEWALK
    COD ISSUE

24. Took me ages this one. Found that almost every clue was tortuous, like a good crossword should be. LOI TROLL I got the r bit, but the bait being troll eluded me for some reason.
25. I didn’t know you were such a veteran Phil. Time to right that wrong 40 years on?
    1. I can dream. In those days, the emphasis was much more on speed, and the puzzles were more straightforward. I’m a fast reader and writer, and that gave me the edge back then. I’ve scraped into the last two finals, but finished out with the washing. Last year I had a full house of DNF’s !
26. Very enjoyable puzzle. I didn’t really have a hard time with it, although I confess that I entered STONKING because I believe it’s been used in this blog, not because I understand it, and ‘tonking’ on its own, well, beats me. But the TIMES WITCH was actually my LOI. And I also didn’t get why Capote was involved in the SIDEWALK clue. Still don’t really, although Verlaine seems to suggest the word is a US-ism. If so, what is a sidewalk in the UK? Regards.
    1. The pavement!!
       1. I see. Simple really, but I didn’t know that.
          1. I wonder if anyone’s ever started a Pavement tribute band in Britain called Sidewalk. I’d say the chances are quite high.
27. A humbling 70:55 for me today. I’ll say with no little understatement that I was definitely in the ‘might not have been so easy if you didn’t “just see them”‘ camp. FOI eventually Capote’s pavement. LOI (even more eventuall-ier) gull. Very tough.
28. 100 minutes to complete this enjoyable puzzle. Very pleased to finish with no errors. (S)tonking not a problem. Had strewn for a while which held me up in the NW. Choctaw an informed guess but able to parse the rest
29. I was pleased to finish this, and I enjoyed the tight cluing. Like Z I worked all the way around from a lower half clue – in my case Leonid. A lot of the definitions were not the second but the third or fourth thing I would think of, which slowed me considerably. Thanks setter. thanks Ed. thanks Verlaine
30. It was the north-right corner that nearly did for me, until I realised I had the wrong bird at 8d.

    This took me 44 minutes, so I was glad to see the SNITCH rating it as “very hard”!

    1. ROOK was my first thought too.
31. Slogged my way through this and was feeling pleased with myself, until I came here to discover that my LOI should have been “Gull” and not “Gall” as I entered. I was thinking of Gal as a 30’s flapper.
    Had a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel two years ago. Very touristy but very nice.
32. i don’t think Stonking or Tonking have made the journey to our part of the world. (We’ll put them on the list, but they’ll none of them be missed). So we were in Starstruck’s stunning group. We found it a tough 58 min. Two Olivias again . How does she manage to be so consistent?

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