Times 27724… reverse engineering

58 comments on “Times 27724… reverse engineering”

1. …solved in 22 minutes. The NE was a little tough, and took some cracking. Thorniest was strangely elusive. Fortunately, I have learned about timbale from previous crosswords – not to be confused with brush timbales.

   Our blogger may not be old enough to remember when it came out, but Imagine was by John Lennon, not the Beatles – 1971.

   1. Ta – was alive, but only just
      1. For future reference, a handy way to remember that Imagine is by Lennon and not the Beatles is that it’s utterly execrable.
         1. It’s not that bad – I quite like it. And did at the time.
            1. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one!
         2. And just to imagine that only five years previously he’d given us the spectacular Tomorrow Never Knows. Hard to reconcile the two as being by the same writer. Mr Grumpy
2. Thanks for the clarification on my mistakes! I got most of the puzzle in 15 minutes (or thought I did), and then spent a full half hour hashing out three clues in the upper right. At 44:47, I clicked submit, only to find that I had NULLITY instead of NULLIFY (TILL seemed to work for ‘charge’, though it doesn’t), and ARCSINE instead of ARCHIVE, which is all I could think of, given ‘circle line’ (of course, ARCSINE is an angle, not a line, but there you have it).

   Serves me right for trying to go fast.

3. Thanks George. No problems here, after I realized that Considering wouldn’t parse. I liked Stoat.
4. FOI Sandpiper. Another bird to keep up the sequence. Are the setters twitchers?
   LOI and COD Stoat, when the parsing finally dawned. Until then Shoat seemed just as good.
   24’33”

   1. Indeed, the ornithologists got off to a flying start, (did you see what I did there), but the sun finally came out for the astrophysicists who equalised in the last minute
   2. 1d was also my LOI – for a while I wondered if there might be such an animal as a “Smoot”.
5. It never would have occurred to me to think of the awful Lennon song, so I biffed from the other definition. Also biffed 19d, parsed post-submission. My LOI was GREEK; I’d come up with it earlier, but I couldn’t make sense of it until the end.
6. I felt like I was struggling with this one, dotting around the grid from FOI 5d ROC to LOI 13d CONSIDERATE and never quite feeling like I was on a roll. Nevertheless I finished three minutes under my target half-hour, so it can’t have been as hard as I thought. Quite a few took a while to parse even though the answer sprang out fairly quickly, like 19d WICHITA. I also thought of DEEP STATE before I thought of DEEP SPACE; sign of the times, perhaps…

   COD to ARCHIVE, where I liked both “record store” and “circle line”.

7. Another ‘gnat’s crotchet’ day for me in that I got all but a small handful of answers within my target time and then ran out of steam and reached for assistance. I had an error anyway having missed the parsing at 10ac and written the name of the scruffy detective instead of COLOMBO.

   At 22ac I couldn’t think past BRAWN which would have covered the flesh and the artist but left ‘BWN’ unaccounted for so it never went in. Similarly at 28ac I thought of DEEP STATE completely unaware of its meaning which gave George a giggle, though I understand now that I’ve looked it up. The American city which intersects with both of these answers was also missing when I gave up the ghost.

   Edited at 2020-07-23 05:46 am (UTC)

8. Enjoyable puzzle. 28.56 for me
9. Fastest solve of the week so far even though Monday and Tuesday currently have a lower SNITCH. Took too long on ROMAN EMPIRE, trying to think of a more philosophical ‘system’.

   COD: IMAGINE, nothing mathematical, with CONSIDERATE – on-side in box, a close second

   Yesterday’s answer: Stephen Sondheim was a crossword complier in the 1970s, you can try one of his crosswords here: http://blogfott.blogspot.com/2014/07/putting-it-together.html

   Today’s question: what was the last name of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?

   1. Family in which Toto is playing a “lead” part? (4)
      1. The Beaufort Seven?
   2. Get bad wind from last of keg beer? (4)
      1. One of my favourite brewers before Fuller’s took them over and closed the brewery. Happy memories of the Commercial in Sandown IOW !
         1. My lawyers tell me to deny that I intended any reference to the brewery to which you allude; together with Morland, Watneys , Whitbread ….. oops.
   3. Pub quiz chestnut.
10. 25 mins with yoghurt, granola, blueberry compote.
    An excellent example of a clear, fair, well worked crossword. Thank you.
    My printed copy has no marks other than one tick (for Depot) and the letters of the Papier Mache anagram in the margin.
    As always, when a stoat pops up I ask: what is the difference between a stoat and a weasel?
    A weasel is weasily recognised. A stoat is stoatally different.
    Thanks setter and G.
11. 14:19. Needed an alphabet trawl to get the animal after the S at 1D, but remembered TO A T when I saw it eventually. COD to ARCHIVE, where I was doubly misdirected, looking for OL at the front or back and considering EQUATOR too. Perhaps we should start a Times aviary – we would have quite a collection adding SANDPIPER today.

    Edited at 2020-07-23 06:27 am (UTC)

    1. Talking of homophones as we were yesterday I’m reminded that on a previous outing (2015) we had SANDPIPER clued as ‘Bird being abrasive to Cockney when talking’. With delights such as that to enjoy I really can’t let myself worry about any slight perceived deviation from a perfect match in the way two words are pronounced. Just think of all the fun we’d miss!

       Edited at 2020-07-23 07:46 am (UTC)

12. Kevin thought Lennon’s song at 2ac was awful (no religion too!?). Recorded in NY by Phil Spector, it is surely a suitable anthem for a badly broken country.

    FOI 1ac SANDPIPER used on cricket balls down under.

    We’ll ignore 11ac!

    LOI 27ac GREEK

    COD 12ac EUCLIDEAN

    WOD 28ac DEEP SPACE – DEEP STATE, what you will.

    Time 40 mins.

13. Thank you, George for your decryption of ARCHIVE, GREEK and DEEP SPACE (No Deep State conspiracy theorist I). For the deceptive use of “expedition”, DEEP SPACE has to be COD.
    Id reminds me of the old joke about how do you tell the difference between a STOAT and a weasel but that is an old chestnut so I’ll spare you.
    I completely agree with Kevin Gregg about IMAGINE. What an awful dirge! I don’t know if it still is but the tagline for Liverpool Airport used to be “Above Us Only Sky”. Spare us!
    1. Alas, it is. But then Liverpool Airport is owned by Peel Holdings, so nothing crass should surprise us.
14. “Awful” is one way of describing IMAGINE. A dirge is another.
    1. ‘Awful dirge’ works for me.
15. Pleasant return to sanity after yesterday’s trip through Wonderland. No problems, liked EUCLIDEAN.
16. Solving in a bit of a hurry, and did what Jack did with COLUMBO, skipping over the bit about making the wordplay word.
    At least GREEK was right, though again I had no idea how the cryptic worked. 13.14 with one pink.
17. Easy today but a good, workmanlike puzzle I thought, thank you setter

    Technically “Imagine” was jointly credited to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, at his express wish. I don’t dislike the song, having always been impressed by John’s ability to imagine a world without possessions, whilst sitting in a rolling mansion (with built-in recording studio) playing a white grand piano. Also getting to near the top of the Billboard 100 with a song that tells folk to imagine a world with no religion, is no mean feat

18. No problems. Great crossword. DEEP SPACE my COD.
19. …a much better example of John Lennon’s craft. I’m a late arrival today having got lost in DEEP SPACE replying to an email. 29 minutes with LOI GREEK. I expected to be giving COD to EUCLIDEAN, which I solved early, and then the witty GET CRACKING, but the use of ‘onside‘ in CONSIDERATE scoops the prize. Nice puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Lennon didn’t write Twist And Shout. You Cant Do That on the other hand. . .( and based on T &S) Mr Grumpy
       1. I’m old enough, Mr Grumpy, to remember the Isley Brothers version and the very first debates about it being a rip-off of La Bamba. Nothing wrong with that, you’re allowed to borrow. I can remember playing an away table tennis match at a youth club in 1963 with Lennon’s version belting out at top volume, not even able to hear the ball bounce. I always liked You can’t do that, but TWIST was the answer to 11a, hence the reference. For the record, I was never keen on Imagine. As his Bobship wrote, John was cooped up on an island far too long.
20. Up at the crack of to get husband to an early train to the city and was pleasantly surprised to have a straightforward solve. Some years back he occasionally used to watch a tv series called DEEP SPACE Nine which had some people called the Kardashians or the like. Who knew? 15.23
21. 29 mins.
    Nice Lennon ref. Was expecting Back in the USSR.
    Thanks george.
22. ….all GREEK to me, so thanks George.

    The WICHITA line(s)man says ONSIDE !

    This was the perfect antidote to yesterday’s steaming pile of horse manure. Thanks to the very accomplished setter !

    FOI DRY
    LOI WICHITA
    COD IMAGINE
    TIME 8:28

23. 
    This was a real pleasure after yesterday’s ordeal, so, thank you setter.

    All correct in 24.27.

    Thanks to our esteemed blogger.

    Dave.

24. Would’ve come in under 30 minutes, except that my last 2, SEMIBREVE and BRICK, held me up for about 5 of my 32:13. THORNIEST and STOAT were holdups too. Liked CONSIDERATE and EUCLIDEAN. DEEP SPACE was good too. Thanks setter and George.
25. 9:59. I skipped checking my answers to get in under ten minutes and got away with it today.
    Not hard but as others have said, a perfectly formed crossword that was a nice antidote to yesterday’s shenanigans.
    I thought of WAT immediately based on Angkor but then was puzzled thinking that ‘temple’ must be part of the definition. Quite clever.
    Now I’m off to listen to someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard to get rid of the earworm.
26. 11.39 with regular if not lightning solves. FOI depot and LOI Pompeii, largely due to originally spelling Euclidean with an I instead of e. Enjoyed this effort eggspecially get cracking.

    My only slight criticism would be about timbale, easy enough to parse but I thought timbales were denoted by construction rather than ingredients. They aren’t necessarily meat dishes. I’m such a pedant.

    1. I don’t think I’ve ever had it, but Collins is the reference dictionary for the Times daily puzzles and has “a mixture of meat, fish, etc in a rich sauce cooked in a mould lined with potato or pastry”
       1. To correspond with reality that definition (which admittedly isn’t clear) needs to be read as meat or fish. You’re unlikely to come across one that contains both! And they don’t have to contain either.
27. But done on phone in office, so not ideal conditions. On rock references for Wichita, there is not just the lineman but – as Dead-heads will know – the eponymous Jack Straw from Wichita, who killed his buddy while on the lam. As for Lennon, a far better single was #9 dream, which I adored as a boy.
28. As others have said, a pleasant 15 minutes after the shocker I had to deal with yesterday. Liked DEEP SPACE and EUCLIDEAN. And unlike some above, I quite like IMAGINE. A world without religion would indeed be a good conflict resolver. Sadly, fat chance.
    1. We’d find something else to fight over I’m sure. Musical taste perhaps…
29. 41mins with LOI GREEK (Thank you glheard for the explanation) after BRICK. So much more fun than yesterday as others have said. Euclid came to me from remembering the Dinky toys, great cranes and bulldozers! I liked GET CRACKING and THORNIEST. COD to EUCLIDEAN. Thanks blogger and setter.
30. This only took me twice as long as today’s quickie. I’m not sure what was going on there – perhap I was still suffering from yesterday’s beast. But today’s biggie was most enjoyable, although I now realise that I semi-biffed a few in my haste – ROMAN EMPIRE, GREEK and CONSIDERATE. We had GAS LAMP the other day, now OIL LAMP – what other lamps might we see in days to come, I wonder.

    Lots of ticks and hard to choose a COD, so honourable mention goes to STOAT, ARCHIVE, and WICHITA – the last, mostly, because its lineman is in my absolute top 10! Unlike Imagine. On that subject, Twist and Shout wasn’t actually a Beatles original. I knew of the Isley Brothers recording which pre-dated the Beatles by a year, but apparently the song was first recorded by a group called the Top Notes in 1961.

    FOI Roc
    LOI Considerate
    COD Joint 1st prize today – BACON and GET CRACKING
    Time 34 minutes
    Today’s earworm The magnificent WICHITA Lineman 😊

    Thanks setter for the fun and George for the explanations. I hope you get out and about soon. I did my first supermarket shop yesterday since 22 March – who knew going food shopping could be something you’d aspire too!

    Edited at 2020-07-23 03:50 pm (UTC)

31. although I didn’t get the parsing of COLOMBO and as above nearly typed COLUMBO. Otherwise very straightforward.
32. Aargh! I finally thought I’d managed to complete a puzzle this week, but then I discovered that although I had checked all the down answers, I missed some of the across ones and also had COLUMBO, so DNF. That and IMAGINE were the answers I wanted to come back to, but didn’t, and for IMAGINE it was better that way, but COLOMBO would have been much easier to parse. My LOI was STOAT after finally seeing the TO A T in it, but I’m sure we’ve had that before. CODs to that and ARCHIVE, DEEP SPACE and EUCLIDEAN.
33. A witty offering. I loved the “disastrous coverage” at 7d and the “circle line” at 26a. Such a pleasure after yesterday’s turgid struggle. 21 minutes. Ann
34. 22’30. So we return to the tried and trusted. Some nice turns of wit here, esp. the disastrous coverage. I love ‘Imagine’, for the catching simplicity of the melody and the words together. The words would be merely banal on their own, but they’re not on their own, and in any case isn’t that the way with the overwhelming majority of lyrics? What I gathered of Lennon’s personality I found unimpressive but I guess he found himself in his art.
35. Alas, I known nothing about Peel Holdings.
36. DNF in a little under 20 mins. Took the requisite care over Colombo Columbo. Did not take the requisite care over nullify nullity so ended with one pink square. Fourth DNF in a row. I just need to find somewhere to make an error in tomorrow’s puzzle and I’ll have the full set.
37. Three of them plus one referenced in a clue. Hmm.

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