Times 27,803: Bonkbusted

108 comments on “Times 27,803: Bonkbusted”

1. Well, count me as a bonker. Grr. 35 minutes aside from that. I think I have heard “tonk” before, but only here rather than in the real world. Not only that, but it caught a blogger out the last time it was ambiguously clued, by the looks of things, though perhaps not as ambiguously as today’s example.

   Edited at 2020-10-23 06:18 am (UTC)

2. Knob seemed perfect for a bonk up. Didn’t think twice about entering it. Liked the rest. NHO tiercel but went with the parsing. One debatable pink square in 33:24
3. I did this desultorily, a bit at home, then in a hospital waiting room, and finally in my office, and have no idea of what the solving time was, so I submitted off leaderboard; and a good thing, too. After seeing the pink B, I did an alphabet trawl and inferred that there must be a verb TONK. Ah, well, one more Anglicism to remember, I thought, until I went to the leaderboard. Anyway, POI OTOSCOPE–I thought of it once I thought of SCOPE, but couldn’t figure out the wordplay–LOI OMELETTE. CODs to both. Anti-COD to KNOT.
4. I was greatly surprised to find myself in the rare position of 2nd on the leaderboard this morning. It didn’t take me long to guess why. I had gone the “right” way with KNOT on the basis that strike and tonk both suggested to me a harder hit than a bonk. Chambers didn’t bear out my view so I just got lucky.

   I really liked this puzzle, finding it just tough enough to slow me down to the point I enjoyed the scenery without ever feeling bogged down. I held myself up for a bit by putting ELBONNE at 8D, thinking it was a word I didn’t know rather than one I’d failed to reverse. I wasn’t confident on submitting as I hadn’t parsed OTOSCOPE at all so thanks to V for sorting that one out. It’s hard to tell just how hard this puzzle is from the SNITCH yet as there were very few correct solvers on there when I checked!

   1. A bit longer than that here, but I never even considered BONK, not sure why. Like you I failed to parse OTOSCOPE at 15a. As others, at 12a RENT A MOB I took a while to get BONER to be an error.
      Andyf
5. Insomnia, 6 am solve, BONK. Was 5/34 at 7am, having been error-free for weeks. Editor!

   Thanks for explaining OTOSCOPE, I now realise I have spent all my life without knowing the meaning of OTIOSE.

   22.50 otherwise

   *growls*

   Edited at 2020-10-23 06:29 am (UTC)

6. Yes, a rare error, remarkable with knobs on. Surely. I look forward to seeing our amended scores in due course.
   1. Look if you wish, but it’s not going to happen; they’ve never, to my knowledge, acknowledged two correct answers, and they’re not going to deprive the tonkers of a correct solve.
      1. I would be surprised if the software allows them to.
         1. It used to happen occasionally with the TLS, back in the day when it was in the club and endearingly often open to alternatives.
            1. So they can mark two answers as correct? Today is definitely the day to use that ability if so!
               1. I seem to recall David Parfitt, on the club forum, explicitly saying that they can’t acknowledge two correct solutions.
                  1. I expect they could probably amend the solution so that the old wrong answer becomes correct and the old correct answer becomes wrong. Bit means to throw the TONKERS to the wolves like that of course 🙂
7. And me. Recount please Ed! Two in one day with the Concise also falling foul of a clear and justifiable ambiguity.

   The rest of it was quite good, though MER at skiers defined as ‘they send up’. Surely people (mainly batsmen) send up skiers, so they themselves are sent up in the passive tense?

   About half an hour for me so no Friday beast this. As others have said, grrrr.

   Edited at 2020-10-23 06:47 am (UTC)

8. TONK for me, and luckily the alternative didn’t come to mind. I note that Chambers actually lists BOSS as one of the definitions of KNOT, but not for KNOB (though yes, I agree they are both good enough).

   I thought the OMELETTE clue may have been referring to the then-unsolved 1d, which resisted for a while – a well-disguised answer.

   1. The first words in the definition of BOSS in both Chambers and Collins are ‘a knob’.

      Edited at 2020-10-23 07:29 am (UTC)

   2. My dictionary gives TONK as meaning various things in Australian slang that it doesn’t in the UK – I’m going to give Antipodeans and very old solvers a pass on thinking of TONK before BONK, but nobody else 😉
9. I went BALLISTIC when I saw that pink square for 4d. Still, a moral victory and a variation on the “technical DNF” theme. Hope the powers that be will allow both answers (though not yet, having just looked again).

   The definition for OMELETTE fooled me as intended and was my favourite bit. Had to dredge up RATAFIA and TIERCEL.

   It is The Times, so probably serendipitous, but interesting to see the SILVER MEDAL, GREEN LIGHT, FALSE TEETH and maybe MIDDLE DUTCH crossing word pairs located at symmetrical places around the grid.

10. Somewhat telling I think that my 11:40 with one wrong (guess which one) is still enough for a top 10 spot (at the time of writing). And 25 minutes with all correct is 3rd.

    I think there would definitely be whatever passes for rioting amidst a crossword crowd if this were to come up at a championship weekend.

    1. They would actually adjudge the alternative answer correct at a live championship weekend, pretty sure. One hopes there are no ambiguities in the forthcoming online championship though, for the sake of everybody’s blood pressure.
11. More bonking here! It would have been my first one in but I wasn’t sure of it so I waited to test the checkers and then wrote it in with confidence. ‘Bonking heads’ or ‘bonking into something’ were common enough expressions in my childhood before the first word acquired another meaning.

    And speaking of which I’m afraid I was only aware of the less savoury meaning of the reversed word at 12ac so I looked twice at that one although I was in no doubt about the answer to the clue.

    It’s a shame about 4dn because until I read the blog I was of the opinion it was a rather fine if somewhat tricky puzzle, and now I feel cheated by a setter not playing fair.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 06:30 am (UTC)

12. Another BONKer. I was going to ask where KNOT is defined as BOSS but aphis99 says it’s in Chambers. It must be in a hard copy version as I can’t see it in Chambers Online.

    COD to OMELETTE.

    1. Collins has the following definitions:
       > KNOT: a protuberance or lump of plant tissues, such as that occurring on the trunks of certain trees
       > BOSS: any of various protuberances or swellings in plants and animals
       Based on this a KNOT seems (biologically speaking) to be an example of a BOSS.

       Edited at 2020-10-23 07:34 am (UTC)

       1. Thanks, keriothe, but, like many I suspect, I’m not impressed with our setter over this.
          1. The thing is, KNOT is a boss amongst many other things (I believe it was the 16th given definition in my dictionary). KNOB is pretty much just a boss.
       2. It’s the 18th listed definition under KNOT
          1. That’s Chambers, which often has rather odd definitions that aren’t reflected in the more ‘normal’ dictionaries. For that reason my personal view is that inclusion in the BRB alone shouldn’t always be considered sufficient to justify a particular definition.
13. …Upsoars, and darts into the eastern Light
    25 mins, plus 5 for the LOIs: Omelette/Otoscope.
    Quizzical MER at Boner so close to what is clearly Knob.
    Thanks setter and V.
14. …and right next door is KNOB in my Chambers (12 ed. defs 17 & 18 of KNOT are KNOB and BOSS).

    1a 1d straight in, but at the end in a bit of a hurry I looked up omelette, just couldn’t see it. Good clue, just me being thick. Overeats, operetta? No. Don’t feel so bad having one other wrong. Didn’t know of a scarifier except to dig up lawns or roads, Ruddigore & tiercel remembered from previous puzzles, only other problem was writing in Air-Vice Marshal and having an empty square at the end. And the definition of teeth… this law has teeth, or in the teeth of the gale?

    Edited at 2020-10-23 07:39 am (UTC)

    1. From an online dictionary: “9. teeth, effective power, esp. to enforce or accomplish something: to put teeth into a law.”
15. Verlaine, I think you have a nerror in your decrypt of COMMON KNOWLEDGE. It’s an anagram of LOCKDOWN MEME NO G(ood). NEW is the anagram indicator and not part of the anagram.
    1. Thanks for the spot! It is indeed common knowledge that common knowledge should have a G in i somewhere.

       Must’ve had other things on my mind as I was writing up the blog, or something 😉

16. I know of RATAFIA because I heard it mentioned in a song by The Kingston Trio nearly 60 years ago. It has cropped up in a crossword before as well, I believe.
    You can hear the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lik7nL4sSTg
    1. Unspammed.
       Ratafia, well known to the Heyer fans..

       Edited at 2020-10-23 08:09 am (UTC)

       1. Thanks!
       2. I was wondering where I’d come across it recently. Now it occurs to me that it was probably in The Reluctant Widow…
       3. Yes, Heyer ladies were often partial to a drop of ratafia. I don’t know what it is but suspect it’s something vile because you never get the men drinking it. It’s probably the Regency equivalent of Babycham.
17. 16:21 …but another bonker. Couldn’t parse OTOSCOPE, my LOI. Apart from the bonkers mistake a really nice puzzle. I enjoyed the lockdown meme at 1A, MEDAL and DREAMBOAT most. Thanks V and, a little grudgingly, setter.
18. 26 minutes but with KNOB written in while thinking of the suggestive remarks possible for this entry. Hopefully VAR will have to give it as a goal. My LOI was OTOSCOPE. RATAFIA and TIERCEL caused some head scratching but the cryptic led to words I had heard of. I have seen TIGHTWAD before, but I defy anyone to say it when another second syllable is in such common currency. Good puzzle otherwise. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 08:07 am (UTC)

    1. In the States, at least, the two words have different enough connotations that Tightwad is often used.
19. Another KNOB head here. Our setter and editor, too..
    1. The setter and editor are BOSSes, and only polite synonyms thereof, I’m sure.
       1. Me too .. some of my best friends are setters.. or editors. 🙂
20. TONK is a common word in club cricket parlance e.g. he’s tonked him for six!!

    Clive James referred to his um, er, KNOB as his TONK, being an Aussie and all that….

    NE corner held up the longest with OTOSCOPE last in – spent several minutes dredging the memory banks for something that vaguely fitted the checkers.

21. 10:23, but with KNOB of course. It’s clearly the better answer: you need a biological three-point turn in a thesaurus to get to KNOT.
    Nice puzzle other than that.
22. Well that crossword accidentally slipped through vetting with a clearly acceptable alternative. A reasonably hard but not super-hard Friday puzzle otherwise; last pair in OMELETTE and OTOSCOPE. Embarrassing mistake isn’t the first thing that comes to mind with ‘boner’. I note that the snitch has 6 correct and 37 incorrect at the time of writing!

    COD: COMMON KNOWLEDGE for topicality.

    Yesterday’s answer: Middlemarch could be clued cryptically by ‘R’.

    Today’s question: can you think of a chemical element of eight letters that has a one-word anagram?

    1. N(o) problem: ringtone!
    2. Gas as anagram – not hard, right? Neon! (8)

       Edited at 2020-10-23 09:12 am (UTC)

    3. Tin ? Goner ! Maybe it’s THIS element.
    4. A fop and music do mix!
    5. Antinomy and semilune would also like a word. Can you think of a chemical element of 8 letters that DOESN’T have a one-word anagram?
       1. There are 24 of them in total!
       2. As would Muscadin
          and the twins Sanitate and Tánaiste

          Glad to see the Editor finally saw sense over his knob fiasco
          Not sure bletchleyreject’s word pairs count as a nina or just a bit of setter’s whimsy

          Still enjoyable despite any gripes; it merely highlights the high standards to which we’ve become accustomed

          jb

          Edited at 2021-02-03 12:23 pm (UTC)

23. Chambers – Knot. Definition 18 – A boss.

    Just below definition 17, which is ‘A knob’, funnily enough.

    mw7000

24. Even if Ed succumbs to the righteous anger on display here, I’ll still have an error, having missed a typo. OTOSCOPE and OMELETTE between them in any case doubled my time to 20 minutes. RENT-A-MOB also took a while: I refused to believe the more common, not to say vulgar meaning of the “mistake” would appear in this genteel organ.
    Not a great start to the day, let’s hope the Listener’s a good one.
25. That’s how I saw 1ac Martin, as one needs 3 Os. Another Bonker here. Last 2 in OMELETTE and OTOSCOPE, though I had no idea about the wordplay. Thank you V.
26. Should “choice” be the underlined synonym in 25A?
    1. I think it’s PLUM (as in plum/plumb line) =perpendicular=sheer. That’s how I saw it anyway.
    2. Sorry, I meant to add choice is PLUM(P).
    3. Yes, you’re dead right. In the solving I thought “PLUM doesn’t mean sheer!”; I did see how it worked during blogging, but then managed to underline the wrong word anyway after several tries…
27. Knob works 100%.
    Editor needs to do the right thing, get on here and accept it as a viable answer – no excuses.
    Thanks v.
28. Well fancy that, a BONER is a mistake. That’s a stiff one. No difficulty with KNOT not knob. All a bit like one of Paul’s in the Guardian.
29. If want to meet a RARE BIRD
    Then the Times has the perfect crossword
    It’s TIERCEL today,
    But they’re never far away
    Cos the setter’s a massive great ornithologist
    1. KNOT to mention the second bird 🤣
       1. I’m even more in favour of KNOB now
30. I’m confident that the same knob-detecting software that’s removed several comments from the club website must have auto-corrected the puzzle itself, changing the obvious to the obscure… surely a human being—assuming The Times employ still employ such obsolete technology anymore—will be along soon to correct this glitch
31. Curious: a knot is not a knob and nor it would seem is a boner!
32. could someone please explain how we can know that the word in 8d is backwards? I also tried “elbonne”. Thanks
    1. I think it is that it is ‘covered UP’ by it.
33. Crumbling brain or mere ignorance, but can I be enlightened about “light = rest”?
    1. This setter seems to be a Chambers aficionado because ‘to rest’ is one of their definitions of ‘light’. The closest the more usual dictionaries come to this meaning is ‘to settle or land after flight’ (Collins) or ‘fall and settle on land’ (Lexico). I thought it a bit loose too.
34. I’ve had a poor week at this, but at least today’s is not my fault. A little shy of 12 minutes, and KNOB of course.

    TIERCEL rang a bell from previous crosswords; RARE BIRD was a bit more obscure and RUDDIGORE was completely unknown. COD to CORPSES, my LOI, with a nice definition and well-concealed wordplay.

35. I considered both knob and knot, but rejected the former on the grounds of taste and decorum (not mine) given the derivation of bonk as back-slang from knob = membrum virile.

    On the other hand, in my experience, a boner might have been embarrassing, but never a mistake.

    1. I’d wager good money that ‘bonk’ is just imitative, nothing to do with ‘knob’. Remember the golden rule: neat-sounding explanations of etymology are invariably false.

       Edited at 2020-10-23 07:58 pm (UTC)

36. People who hit other people….
    NHO KNOT as a boss
37. Decent crossword spoiled by the obvious irritant.
38. Me too (oh RUDDIGORE). There used to be a Toyota model called a “tercel” which must be the same bird. Took me a while to see what Barbie was doing and then recalled the actor who played Crocodile Dundee doing an ad for the Australian tourist board eons ago in which he invited us to visit and said he’d slip an extra shrimp on the barbie. Quel dommage. 21 on the nose.
39. Describing either the terminally doddery clue or possibly the setter. To be fair the rest is pretty good so let’s call it a boner and be done. 1 dn. a minor gem. Had a minor part in Ruddigore at school, or Ruddybore as it was known to the musical elite. ‘O, for a falc’ner’s voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again!’ sighs Juliet from the balcony. Somewhat slow here and there, 39 minutes.
40. 31:49 but with KNOB. Bah humbug! Thanks V.
    On edit: The SNITCH says it all. 67 Reference solvers excluded with errors.

    Edited at 2020-10-23 12:13 pm (UTC)

41. At time of writing todays Snitch shows 67 reference solvers with errors. ’nuff said!
42. After a slow start I was pleased with my eventual time. I’m not sure I knew the word TONK but regardless of that as others have said KNOB works perfectly well, and in my opinion is better defined by BOSS than KNOT is. Usually the “correct” answer is better in some way, but not today. Just wrong! Good job it’s just a bit of fun!
43. 2 pinks for me, KNOB of course but I also very carelessly did my deducting wrong at 15 and invented the OTISCOPE.

    I didn’t know BONER as a mistake but as something embarrassing? Yes.

44. A bird might light upon a branch and then fly off. That’s how I saw it anyway.
    1. I see it as closer to ‘land’ than ‘rest’ in that usage but I guess there’s a bit of both.
45. Police were called to the HQ of News International after violent protests broke out in the wake of a seemingly correct answer to one of the clues being disallowed.

    David Parfitt and Richard Rogan barricaded themselves into an office as an angry mob surged outside shouting “there’s two knobs in there – come out and avoid tying yourselves in knots”.

    Frankly, it’s not the standard we expect from this august journal.

    (COD CORPSES, TIME 9:42. I wuz robbed !)

    1. On the plus side, it’s nice to see a new face as the UK Crossword Champion! Even if it is Foinavon.
46. I must admit that I’m coming round to the possibility that the juxtaposition of KNO(T/B) and BONER may be some kind of truly brilliant Nina…
47. I liked Rent-a-Mob for the slang, Ruddigore for the GK, and Omelette for the cluing. Thank you, Verlaine, and bonk-you, ed
48. I’m a bonker too but very used to northerners giving it a tonk when playing cricket as a lad
49. and the first thing that struck me was 81 replies – something was up! And it was the usual suspect 4dn KNOB!

    One cannot blame the setter, who was obviously having a bit of fun, but the lack of editorial oversight is redolent of The Times presently. Little editorial discipline. Unless the editor was also the setter. Or POTUS perhaps?
    However, for us on paper it was fine! Thus no pink square hereabouts.

    FOI 2dn MEDAL or was it MYDOL? Thank- you Barbie.

    LOI 12ac RENT-A-MOB or was it RENT-A-KNOB?

    COD 11ac SILVER or was it SRIVEL

    WOD 4dn KNOB or was it KNOT?

    Time for a BONK!

    Edited at 2020-10-23 05:32 pm (UTC)

    1. I demand that you acquire a pink highlighter and colour in the appropriate square of your paper crossword forthwith!
       1. MyLud, ‘Forthwith’ demands swift action but I only have yellow, orange and green. The yellow and orange will have to do!

          If that does not satisfy then I might suggest a duel, with top of the range ‘Luxor Textliters’. You will be pink and I will be orange and yellow.

          Methink Ham Green would be a most suitable location, but I cannot guarantee a date or time as I am unable to get back to Blighty presently.

          Meldrew

50. Surely a skier is someone who skis and a skyer is someone who skies a shot in cricket…
    1. The OED agrees with you.

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