Times 27,665: Craving “A Good Walk Spoiled”

82 comments on “Times 27,665: Craving “A Good Walk Spoiled””

1. 8:12, with the REARRANGE/UNRULY crossing the last in. Agree with the clue for BOTANICAL being a cracker.
2. a dispute over, and gas as a fuel, mix it all up to get a plant and come up with RAGWORTS as LOI. Couldn’t see the parsing of this……and unfortunately our blogger couldn’t either.24mins with this error.
   1. Verlaine’s parsing seems perfectly clear to me, and it matches how I eventually solved it.
      1. I agree completely with Verlaine’s solution and parsing It was just unfortunate that he didn’t have my erroneous solution and an ingenious parsing for it!
         1. I see now – mea culpa !
         2. I understood what you meant!
3. ….I returned to golf today after a two-month absence. I can’t say I was very successful, but that’s golf.

   Oh, the puzzle. I finished in 35 minutes without too much difficulty, puzzling over 25 at the end. The urge to put in ‘robot’ was strong, but I saw that couldn’t possibly be right.

   I thought ‘sprocket’ was very fine, as the clue taking the most unexpected turn.

   1. Funny, I had exactly the same experience with the golf and got fixated on robot but unfortunately I didn’t manage to unfixate!
4. This was just a lot of fun. Last one in REBUT, but just because I hadn’t gotten there yet. BOTANICAL was indeed a prize.

   Only write-over was when I very briefly has PLEASURE POINTS for PRESSURE POINTS… my goodness, what was I thinking?!

   1. Snap! But I managed to write-over for a happy ending.
5. If that’s what pops into your mind, I’d like the name of your masseuse, Guy.
   Having the D, and with the theme running strong, I very much wanted the R&A plot to resolve to divot. I knew Mr Tod as a fox, but not the origin, thanks for that Verlaine. And add Lie to the puzzle theme.
6. Nothing too taxing. My LOI was REBUT which took longer than it should have done since I was wondering how to fit in some “rooty” word that started with “R”. Then I saw it. I didn’t think of TOD as being particularly Scottish, so I was a bit confused by the St Andrews bit. BOTANICAL was worth the price of admission.
7. Less than 23 minutes well spent. Add me to the list admiring “Engineer in lab coat”.

   Lovely blog thanks, V, and best wishes to the setter.

8. The usual futile alphabet trawl at the end coming up with ‘felled’ for 29a. Fits the wordplay, but no consolation.

   A DNF in 38 minutes.

   1. If it fits the wordplay (I cant see it though), in the absence of revelatory crossers you should be allowed it? Mr Grumpy
      1. ‘Fell’ as in ‘cruel’ (‘wicked’), but the answer ‘felled’ can’t then be construed as ‘hidden’, so no there’s no way it’s correct, more’s the pity.
9. After my recent ability to finish most puzzles with one wrong I had pause for thought when I got to my LOI ELECTORS as I had no idea what German princes had to do with it. So I was relieved that my trust in the parsing was correct today. Other than that a fairly gentle offering which helps me to keep restoring my crosswording confidence.
   1. Don’t think of it as one wrong Pootle, think of it as 95% right…
      1. Thanks Jerry 🙂
10. Driving back to the Aberdeen ferry yesterday from a medical appointment in Glasgow, we stopped off at Gleneagles to pay homage. The hotel is closed and the flagsticks are in storage but the sun was out and the King’s and Queen’s looked magnificent. Deep sigh. My new Mizunos arrive soon, so all we need now is for the First Miniature to stop giving Boris the finger and legalise the national game again.

    A great crossword, both during my rapid 23m solve and after when V’s blog revealed the clever parsing for my four biffs, especially OLD SCHOOL and AFGHANI. Thanks V and golfing setter.

    1. I’d much rather have her than the gibbering buffoon, thanks very much. Without getting into politics, he’s going to look even more stupid (assuming such a thing is possible) in three or four weeks time.

       On second thoughts, maybe substitute ‘guilty’ for ‘stupid’.

       1. Not sure that’s much of a choice – never has it been more evident that the desire to be a politician should disqualify one from the job.

          Edited at 2020-05-15 06:07 pm (UTC)

       2. If that is not getting into politics, i will be interested to see what happens when you do.
          Badmouthing prime ministers, common but not classy
          1. “Common,” eh? So who’s pulling “class”?

             Some people in high office warrant “bad-mouthing,” and it is in fact the duty of a citizen of a democracy to point out malfeasance on the part of those who are supposed to represent and protect the citizenry.

             Now, I can see where badmouthing your queen could be considered bad form. After all, the queen doesn’t do anything, so the attack could only be personal.

             Your prime minister was once a journalist who made a name by promulgating falsehoods. This is just a fact. I leave it to you to decide whether it speaks to his character.

11. I also threw in a misplaced PRAYER MAT but luckily I didn’t stare at 14 and 19 for too long before I decided something must be terribly wrong somewhere. That did take me over my half-hour, but only by a single minute, so the rest of it can’t have been much trouble.

    In hindsight I do like 27a BOTANICAL, but I think 15 DIACRITIC is my COD. FOI 1a UPPITY, LOI and WOD 28a SPROCKET.

12. …or I found my love by the gasworks croft, if you prefer. Ewan had both. 23 minutes with LOI DIACRITIC, constructed with crossers and then vaguely recognised. I liked BOTANICAL but I saw it straightaway, so I’m making POLICE COD. I liked SPROCKET too, a great word. Sir Humphrey defines WIDE-RANGING as meaning ‘never intended to be concluded’. A nice puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
13. 20 mins pre-brekker.
    I liked Botanical.
    I seem to remember commenting on you=U a few weeks ago and hoping it didn’t become a thing. I think Horryd disagreed. Looks like he has got his way.
    Thanks U and V.
14. Another PRAYER MAT corrected by AFGHANI. The rest was very straightforward. BOTANICAL absolutely first class.
15. Another 38 minutes here, but I DID finish it. At least 8 minutes was spent on the last three in, the intersecting DEBAR, REBUT and SPROCKET in the SW corner.

    Whilst writing in PRAYER MAT at 2dn I was actually thinking that I’d never come across wig = MAT before whereas RUG would be more usual, but since I’d never heard of PRAYER RUG I didn’t even consider it as a possible answer until forced to reconsider by the answer that emerged at 19ac.

    1. ‘Prayer rug’ is actually the more usual term in the typical auction catalog. A ‘mat’ is generally no larger than two by three feet, but a prayer rug is typically about four by six.
       1. This is very inconsistent with “yoga mats”!
16. 11:58 but 1 wrong – SEALED for 29A, giving up my alphabet trawl for a better answer before I got to V. I too liked BOTANICAL but also SPROCKET and POLICE.
17. An easier crossword for a Friday.

    COD BOTANICAL, by general agreement

    Yesterday’s answer: ‘lout may long for meat offal, water for cava’ is a sentence comprised of Irish counties with the last letter missing (with a couple of added spaces). Cor!

    Today’s question: Afghanistan is one of two country names containing three consecutive letters of the alphabet; what’s the other one?

    1. Kirghizia?
18. Rug format replacement here too.

    Saw the light on 26A but only had the middle B at the time, and found it hard to decide which word I should turn around.

    Always find something of interest here.

    Loved the reference to the First Miniature

    1. I didn’t like the reference. This isn’t a political post-board.
       lurker1
       1. NSOH
19. One of those crosswords which achieves the feat of making you feel cleverer than usual, decent and proper clues, for the most part requiring decent and proper solving, with few giveaways. VEILED was the one that made me think longer than most, taking my time to almost 18 minutes.

    Chambers assures me that PRAYER RUG is a thing, though I’ve never before come across anything but the MAT variety. T’other way round with wig.

    I quite liked my initial UPPISH for 1ac, pish! being close enough to shame! for crosswords. Perhaps the Mikado was still lurking from a few days ago.

    Edited at 2020-05-15 08:14 am (UTC)

    1. I said above that it’s hard to put your finger on what makes a puzzle like this fun, but I think you’ve possibly hit the nail on the head!
    2. Maybe seeing and knowing it depends on whether you’ve ever lived and worked in Muslim countries – Malaysia & Indonesia for me – or not.

       1. Well, I ran a community charity in Tower Hamlets and Stoke Newington with Bengali and Turkish majority populations, and with mosques and Islamic associations in the area. And at one point, half my workforce were Moslem with an impressive range of religious commitment. Not without experience!

          1. Fair enough. You replied before I could delete – neither Indonesia nor Malaysia speak English, so “prayer rug” is a translation from the real words. Never met a translation I didn’t distrust.
20. 31:30
    Stuck on veiled for a bit at the end; flirted with sealed.
    Thanks v.
21. The state of you ladies! You tango backwards! (6)

    See my other comment earlier. It’s a thing.

    1. A fine clue sir !
    2. Needed to write it out to see it, but a fine clue (for Horrydites). I’m an antihorrydite, really disliked 1ac. Iac and 1 dn my last two in, but otherwise very quick and easy and un-Friday-like.
22. 8:11. Not hard at all, but I really enjoyed this. It’s quite hard to put your finger on exactly what it is that makes one puzzle more fun than another, but whatever it is, this had it. BOTANICAL is lovely of course but I liked a lot of these.
    My last in was REBUT, and I had a little panic as I realised I had absolutely no idea how it worked, until suddenly I did.
    One of these clues has appeared very recently in a more or less identical form, which is a little bit of a shame but not something that can be prevented or corrected I assume.
    1. Different editor n’est-ce pas?
       1. En effet. I suspect it’s difficult if not impossible to correct these things at such short notice, even if RR noticed.
23. Well, I thought BOTANICAL was a straightforward anagram. Nothing special about it. Ho hum. But I’m just a worker bee. what do I know.
    I DID like DIACRITIC, though.
    Thanks, Verlaine for UP-TO-DATE.
    Another one who initially put PRAYER MAT.

    1. I don’t know how much setting you’ve done but as a retired setter I appreciate “Engineer in lab coat dealing with plants” for several things.

       Its use of the word “Engineer”. The “lift and separate” required between “Engineer” and “in”. The economy of words. The overall reading sense of the clue. These things are hard to achieve and the setter is to be applauded.

       1. I’ve never done any setting but I think setters do a splendid job and are always to be applauded. For me that clue was good but not appreciably better than others I’ve come across, but, WTF do I know. I’m not TftT royalty. Somehow, I knew that if my comment was going to be criticised it would be by you. Goodnight and good luck.
          1. Nice hair cut , Martin .
          2. Tut tut. Golden rule on here: NEVER question the brilliance of a clue when it has been deemed so by the brethren. I learnt my lesson the hard way a long time ago. Mr Grumpy
             1. It’s a bit easy to be best-clue-ever material, but c’mon, that anagrist-grind combo!
                1. It was good and the clue read very well but for this bear of little brain who counts it a miracle along the lines of the marriage feast at Cana’a if I get to within V x 3, it was too easy to solve. A puzzleful of those and I would halve my PB.
                   On the other hand, I thought the Molière clue excellent.
             2. “brethren”….good description. Must remember that one.
24. 16:25. I felt I should have whizzed through this but got slowed in a couple of places, mostly in the case of ELECTORS – I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the ins and outs of German prince terminology and I was trying to justify (el)EVEN or (s)EVEN for “team omitting top”. I also did the MAT/RUG thing.

    I’m beginning to think that my mind blocks out anything work-related when I’m doing these puzzles. I work for a gas utility yet today GASWORKS was my LOI and the other day in a quick cryptic the only 3-letter fossil fuel I could think of was OIL.

25. I quite enjoyed the tussle, but never felt on the wavelength, especially when alphabet trawling at the end to unravel _E_L_D.
26. An enjoyable puzzle which was less intimidating than many Friday challenges. My FOI was TERMS. UP TO DATE followed, then I flitted hither and thither as the mood took me. I had PRUDES before looking at 2d, so the PRAYER MAT wasn’t a diversion. VEILED was my LOI, although a proof reading caused me to revisit my biffed RAGWORTS, thank goodness! I liked BOTANICAL too, even though I saw the answer immediately. 31:25. Thanks setter and V.
27. Fairly scooted through this but fell at the last jump. Eager to stay under 15, I shoved in robot for 26 across. The perverse reasoning was this: root is indeed around it, in the sense that the beginning and end spell root. And robots count, don’t they? Well, calculators do anyway. What a fool!
28. ….for spoiling a decent puzzle by resorting to textspeak. I also thought that “large” was a feeble definition for WIDE-RANGING, although a more precise wording would have probably spoiled the excellent wordplay.

    FOI LIE
    LOI GASWORKS
    COD OLD SCHOOL (OK, BOTANICAL was good too)
    TIME 11:28

    CUL8R 😝

    1. When I first encountered textspeak in a crossword it jarred but now I’m inclined to think that it provides a great opportunity for the setters to introduce some novelty.
29. Has acquired a particular meaning in the US as a racist slur on a person of colour who is perceived as not knowing his/her place. I had to reach back to Alevel history to recall that George I was the Elector of Hanover before he became King. After Queen Anne died without issue they needed a protestant Stuart to succeed and his grandmother was the sister of Charles I. Another prayer “mat” me. Nice puzzle. 12.04
30. 21m all correct so a rare success these days. Really enjoyed this for reasons highlighted by Z. Puzzles like this and I might become a regular solver again. Thanks , setter and V
31. 25 minutes. Same as Jimbo above, MAT for RUG until the Afghani came along. A MER at SPROCKET for tooth, I thought a sprocket was a wheel with teeth on it, like a cog.
    1. Just looked in Collins online, second meaing can be one of the teeth on such a wheel. Fair dos.
32. 25.35 but one mistake, just didn’t see rebut- dumb. Had trouble working out diacritic and sprocket as well but managed to work them out. A proper tester I thought today and kicking myself for missing rebut.
33. Enjoyed this, had that certain something. Needed an alphabet trawl for veiled, as others did, love the engineer in lab coat, but my cod was REBUT mostly for its simplicity and elegance, and because of a Simpsons episode where during a highly intellectual debate Bart was invited to present his rebuttal. Whereupon he dropped his shorts and mooned his opponent.
34. for me was just another anagram. A mere play on words. Sorry Jimbo – one man’s BOTANICAL is another’s CANTOBILA. My problem was that my pen failed after five minutes and I then got waylaid whilst looking for another. And then the postman arrived with a book I was keen to peruse (‘Mahfood’ by Spink & Shreeves, 2011, marvellous!)

    So that’s the second SQUASH COURT in a fortnight! Or do I have a complex?

    FOI 2dn PRAYER RUG – the wig bit came first.

    LOI 15dn DIACRITIC

    COD 14ac PRUDES – them’s with the ‘sal volatile’

    WOD BRIGHT

    Edited at 2020-05-15 01:28 pm (UTC)

    1. WOD BRIGHT? Which clue are you referring to?
       1. Not a clue!
    2. Yes SQUASH COURT and REARRANGE are both popular chestnuts aren’t they? I can cope with the occasional “familiar face” but probably best not to have a gang of them turn up.
    3. Yes, I thought BOTANICAL was a bit ho hum, too. Nicely worded clue but it only took about a couple of seconds to get the solution. However, in saying it was run-of-the-mill I upset one of the “brethren”, as “Mr Grumpy” put it, and received a broadside from one of them, Jimbo. Don’t feel you have to apologise, Horryd.
35. Was wondering if I’d seen the identical clue for SQUASH COURT somewhere else as no-one mentioned it until horryd above. And as someone else said, it must be a different editor. At least I could write it straight in, unlike my LOI VEILED which took at least 4 of my 21 minutes. Don’t remember E for tablet but there again I’ve only been doing this for 10 years.
    1. If no-one had mentioned it until Horryd, how can they have commented that it must have been a different editor?! 😉
36. I got UNQUESTIONABLE, but didn’t understand how it worked as I thought “alliance” was simply giving “UN” and was trying to figure out how “question” could mean “goal”, so thanks to the blogger.

    Another initial PRAYER MAT here before seeing my error. DIACRITIC took a long time to come, even when I’d figured out how the clue worked and that it was referring to the accent, as for some reason my brain took a while to link reviewer to critic. And I was delighted when I finally got SPROCKET, my LOI, as baby = pet came up recently and I didn’t get it.

    A very enjoyable workout – thanks setter!

    FOI Pressure points
    LOI Sprocket
    COD Botanical

37. Finished in a couple of hours, and that’s good for me.

    I always understood that, botanically, a tuber is a swollen underground stem – not a root. But in common parlance perhaps it could be considered a root.

38. Enjoyable 45 mins on this pleasant puzzle
39. 16:29 nice and gentle Monday-ish fare to take us into the weekend. The only pause for thought came at rebut where I had to stop and have a bit of a think to prevent myself from bunging in robot.
40. Not too hard, but it did take me 50 minutes, the last ten being spent on an alphabet trawl for VEILED, after having entertained FELLED and SEALED for a while, in which apparently I was not alone. I biffed PRESSURE POINTS and returned to it at the end to figure out the wordplay (and distinguish it from PLEASURE POINTS, for which the Times would be perhaps too “Victorian”). And I agree that “engineer in a lab coat” is superb and BOTANICAL should be the COD.
41. That’s three under 30 minutes this week. Working from home seems to be improving my scores.

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