Times 27823 – Shelter from the storm

69 comments on “Times 27823 – Shelter from the storm”

1. 29 minutes with ASHET the only unknown. With regard to ‘corpse’, Lexico surprisingly permits it as ‘to forget one’s lines’ i.e. to dry. This is wrong, and if actors are using it to mean that then they are wrong too!
   1. LOL
   2. Chambers 2008 offers ‘(of an actor is stage) to forget one’s lines, etc, to be incapable of speaking one’s lines because of a sudden attack of hysterical laughter.
   3. Are they, though? The OED says: “Of an actor: to forget one’s lines; = dry v. 2; to spoil one’s performance by being confused or made to laugh by one’s colleagues.”
      The examples given start from a dictionary definition of 1874
2. I was doing fine, except that I’d biffed HIGHPOINTS (while briefly thinking that should be two words), which kept COLONNADE out of reach, not to mention NHO ASHET. Finally, about 10 minutes too late, noticed the problem, leaving me with ASHET, where I failed to think novel=SHE and did an alphabet trawl. GATE is an old kind of street, surviving in place names. I wondered about ‘corpse’, but it had to be.
   1. As a thespian I can assert that to CORPSE did originally start as ‘to dry’, but laughter ensued. Corpses are silent not hysterical! In filming actors will resort to the ‘f’ word and other bad language to ensure a take is not used if they forget their lines. Words develop.
3. What seemed like a 20 minute romp nearly turned into a DNF. Vinyl’s advice is of course the right one, but it can be hard to trust the cryptics when you’re not sure there isn’t something you’re missing. Was STOVE going to be right, or was I going to get some pink squares and be told, “Of course that doesn’t fit the second definition.”? Turns out it was right. Hesitated on LUCKNOW and ASHET as well — good thing I know SHE, otherwise I’d never have gotten that last answer.

   Of course, I was totally screwed by my inability to get SCHOLIAST until the last minute, having started at first with HIST-, and I couldn’t get HIGHLIGHTS either, thinking we were going to get CLIP in there somehow. The GATE in LEGATEE was also a complete head-scratcher for me, and naturally I wasted plenty of time trying to fit NST in there.

   Other than these handful of clues, everything else went in quickly, so I guess I agree that this was an easier puzzle. I ended up with an average time for me, 35 minutes.

4. A bit like McIlroy, I stuttered at the start, enjoyed a purple patch and then was a bit wayward towards the end. I was with Oxford/Lexico on 18, so will obviously never be a thespian…

   Never seen a jocular dead ‘un, now I think about it, but not a few dry ones.

5. LOI ASHET, of course. That was the only real unknown. Did wonder a bit about GATE.
   1. The four main throughfares of my home town Sleaford are Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate and Westgate, after the old toll gates to Lincoln, Boston, Bourne and Grantham. All the gates will be locked presently, I imagine. Wonder no longer.

      Edited at 2020-11-16 11:14 am (UTC)

6. Nice to have a clear round. It’s been a bad month for errors. 27:39
   Having never been to the championship before, perhaps those of you with more experience could tell me when carbohydrate loading should begin? I’ve started, but this may be another error.

   Edited at 2020-11-16 05:27 am (UTC)

7. I found much of this straightforward except for the NW corner. No unknowns, but there was a collection of less common words – SCHOLIAST, SILICA, LEGATEE and LATINIST – which between then conspired to delay me from finishing. I hadn’t parsed NUMERATOR and was wondering how it was a source of inspiration, so now having seen vinyl’s explanation that is the COD for me.
8. A bit chestnutty and it’s not even December yet.
9. Confident, unhesitating, accurate, unerring and resulting in a record. For him, 20 under par; for me, 12:25 with a WITCH of 52. One of those rare experiences where I floated through, biffing a few, trusting the wordplay on the unknowns (SCHOLIAST and ASHET) and seeing the rest straight away. Lovely.

   Thanks setter and Vinyl – what a band Burning Spear were, but I’m not sure I could solve a Times Cryptic with that much bass!

10. A smidge under the half-hour here. I had trouble getting started, but eventually kicked things off with 11a GONER and then worked my way around and back to the NW. Reading She a few years back as part of my crossword-inspired education was clearly a good idea, as was walking past a local COLONNADE on Saturday. I think SCHOLIAST was LOI, though it had been pencilled in for a while in my mind, at least.
11. Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!

    30 mins pre-brekker. Well I for one weren’t reet quick.
    NHO Ashet. But I am used to ‘gates’. We used to live in York where the streets are gates and the gates are Bars.
    Mostly I liked “to who’ll listen” as homophone indicator. I’ll use that.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

12. LEGATEE fairly quickly in, also having been to York. ASHET, nhoi, LOI. SILICA had to wait for SCHOLIAST. Liked DETRITUS, though Motown was a giveaway.

    15′ 45″, thanks vinyl and setter.

13. Problems in NW corner, pressed ‘reveal grid after 75 mins’ and was relieved that my missing ones were out of reach for me. I did pencil in SCHOLIAST, but still don’t see ANA =stories, did not know SHE=novel as a chestnut, and had NST for Northern Street.

    I grew up in Manchester, and never heard a street called a gate.
    Is Gallowgate not a gate in Newcastle’s walls, like Moorgate or Bishopsgate?

    Should have got HIGHLIGHTS, though.

    COD Overgrown.

    Now for the QC,

    1. ANA seems to have quite a range of meanings in crosswords. Defined by Collins as:

       1. a collection of reminiscences, sketches, etc, of or about a person or place
       2. an item of or for such a collection

       I’ve even seen it clued as ‘gossip’.

       ‘She’ came up here in discussions last week about the novelist Rider Haggard – I think the answer under discussion was RIDER which had been clued with reference to the author. More famous perhaps than the book these days is the saying from it ‘She who must be obeyed’ famously adopted with reference to his formidable wife by ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ as created for TV by Sir John Mortimer.

    2. Have you come across a Briggate (Bridge Street) or Kirkgate (Church Street)?
14. 50mins so slow today for some reason. I was interrupted for 20 mins (not included in my time) so that’s my excuse. Finally held up, like others in the NW. NHO ASHET,(LOI) of course and could not get past novel=Emma or n. COD DETRITUS. Thanks v and setter.
15. 12:06. Like others I found the NW corner hardest. Held up at the end by the unknown SCHOLIAST constructed from the anagrist, and SILICA. Pretty Mondayish otherwise, although I was a bit slow getting going. I liked the good Scottish dish most – must put it on the shopping list for 2 weeks today.
    1. I’ll save my haggis for two months from next Wednesday, but I’ll probably enjoy a nip or two in 14 days.
16. Just under the ten for a Monday, but starting at 1 was the wrong tactic, that’s where I finished. Enjoyable start to the week.
17. 21:15
    Ashet. Oh, okay. Yep, corpse = laugh.
    Thanks v.
18. …a good title for a novel. 24 minutes with LOI CORPS. I suppose that you can’t find your words when corpsing on stage. DNK ASHET or SCHOLIAST but with crossers, there was little choice. COD to GREAT OUSE for the relief when something recognisable emerged. I liked STOVE too for its simplicity. A decent puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
19. Quite a Scottish feel today, with HAGGIS, STOVE and ASHET. I don’t have a time due to an untimed interruption for delivery and fitting of a kitchen appliance (not a stove), but I’d guess around 50 minutes. ASHET well known to me – Mrs Rotter hails from north of the border, so my only unknown was SCHOLIAST, which was guessable from the anagrist. Thanks Setter and Vinyl,
20. An odd mix of being easy like Monday morning, but with a scattering of more advanced words like SCHOLIAST, and the previously unknown ASHET, but as per our blogger, everything you need to solve is there, so no complaints or any great hold ups. I have visited York enough times to remember that a Gate is a street, and a Bar is a gate.
21. 7:39. Easy in spite of a few less-than-familiar words: I did know them all (even ASHET rang a bell) but I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tell you what they all mean. I was surprised by the definition of ‘corpse’, which has only ever meant to laugh as far as I’m concerned.
    As Kevin says GATE is a very old word for street, from Old Norse via Old English. It’s still the word for street in the Scandinavian languages: gata in Swedish, gade in Danish, gate in Norwegian.

    Edited at 2020-11-16 09:59 am (UTC)

    1. Please see my note above to Kevin. He is incorrect – it does not mean street ‘per se’. Gate is a gate as you clearly point out in several languages! Watergate in Sleaford was not a road but a canal with a toll gate!
       1. Sorry H, but it is you who are wrong. Of course there are lots of places whose names contain the word ‘gate’ where it is referring to… a gate. In London for instance all the famous ones (Billingsgate etc) fall into this category. But in York ‘Walmgate Bar’ would be ‘Walm Street Gate’ in modern English. As for the other languages, look at a map of Stockholm: almost all the streets are called something-gatan, on account of the fact that the word means ‘street’.
          1. And Gallowgate in Newcastle was the road to the gallows. The two “gate”s are homonyms, the first (opening) derived from Old English and the second (path) from Old Norse (hence localised to North (East) England)
             1. I always thought they had the same origin, but it seems you are right. Fascinating stuff, etymology.
                1. The influence of French (Norman French) on our language is known, but the no less important influence of Old Danish is much less widely appreciated. But it has certainly shaped the language. Sometimes the Danish and Anglo-Saxon words both still exist, and have very slightly different meanings (cold and chilled for example, or skirt and shirt, or looking at today’s puzzle skipper and shipper – in every case the first is Danish in origin and the second with the softer less harsh initial sound is Saxon).

                   Occasionally, the Danish word completely dominated and the Anglo-Saxon word is no longer used at all. The most interesting of these is sister, from the old Danish systir. The Saxon word, something like swester (cf the modern German schwester) no longer exists. It says a lot about the intermingling and intermarriage of the Saxons and Danes that for even as basic a word as one’s female sibling, the native Saxons ended up using the foreigners’ word.

                   Cedric

                   1. Thank you! I am so glad I looked back at this discussion.
          2. Watergate?
             1. Norse gata = road agreed.

                Danish vej (way) = road.

                Saxon rad = road.

                My example Sleaford,the most northerly part of Danish Mercia, was ever under the Saxon and Dane Law, and definitively not Norse! Danish Mercia is where they encountered Hereward the Wake. Those chaps were found up in parts of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and as far as Durham. Also south of Cambridge and throughout Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire, all where ‘gates’ as roads abound.

                The Kesteven area was heavily ‘turnpiked’ from 1725. Toll bars (gates) were installed in the early nineteenth century. (Coal for Corn at Sleaford, William Handley MP etc)

                Between 1829 and 1831 was the town of Sleaford was completely re-configurated and pavemented. Newly created Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, Westgate, and Watergate only came into being then. Turnpikes were now all the rage the Norse were long gone.

                Thus, I stand by my original post for Sleaford. I apologise if it is unique.

                ‘This last road soon grew to be the most important highway in the Fens. The two other major through routes in the county were the Great North Road, turnpiked between Grantham and Newark in 1725-6 (the earliest Act for the county) and between Grantham and Stamford in 1738-9, and secondly the route from London to the Humber. The first part of this road, from Peterborough to Lincoln, was turnpiked in 1755; it entered the county at Market Deeping where the London-Lincoln coaches (posting at the Bull Inn) met the Boston-Leicester coaches (the New Inn) and passed via Bourne and Sleaford to Lincoln; the Lincoln-Barton ferry road was turnpiked in 1765. The Lincoln-Peterborough was the most powerful trust in the county. Divided into six districts, it controlled a number of branch routes; roads ran from Bourne, for instance, westwards to the Great North Road at Colsterworth, eastwards into the Fens at Spalding and northwards to Donington and Boston. It abandoned the prehistoric Mareham Lane south of Sleaford in favour of the road through Folkingham, and early in the 19th century created a new road from Sleaford to Lincoln across open wasteland so bare that Sir Francis Dashwood had built a ‘land lighthouse’ at Dunston to guide travellers. The Act for this route was the most costly Turnpike Act of all.’ © 2004 EnglandGenWeb Project

22. 28 mins. Just could not get going today. Not helped by getting impatient and rushing to put in brainwaves as the answer to the trichologist clue. Took me ages to unravel the NW frontier as a result.

    Got there in the end. FOI Nascent, LOI silica which I thought a cracking clue.

    Hopefully I’ll speed up in time for Saturday’s online extravaganza.

23. Should have been quicker but it took me 3 or 4 minutes just to get off the mark, and the top-left quadrant stubbornly resisted at the end. Never heard of ashet but it couldn’t be anything else. OED says it’s northern dialect and comes from the French assiette. 1827: “A board of oysters or ashet o’ rizzered haddies”.
24. This felt tricky for a Monday, especially in the NW corner, where I thought the SH bit had to be on the end because of the wordplay.
    In the end, it was a simple enough cruise in 15 minutes, counterclockwise once that NW corner yielded.
    I once had occasion to visit Cutgate in Rochdale, which is not a street, but the street meaning is familiar enough.
    I liked EX-AMPLE, and the appearance of Senior Sergeant DETRITUS, source of my headline quote. “Amazing t’ing, trouble,” rumbled Detritus thoughtfully. “Always I go lookin’ for trouble, an’ when I find it people say it ain’t dere.”
    1. 15 or so years ago Cutgate chippy used to do a stonking steak and ale pie, I wonder if it still does.
25. Found this harder then advertised, maybe went to bed too late. DNF as no idea whether ASHET was a thing, or another unknown word like ACHET. I DK the laugh meaning of CORPS(E) either, but bunged in as nothing else likely fits. 1a took a long time to unravel but got it eventually. A disappointing performance on an otherwise good puzzle.
26. the terrors of the earth! The setter’s dream. Nothing too troubling here, going for a hit-and-run on ashet, tutting at the silly homophone. It’s strange how ana has come to be a crossword staple when it’s never now used otherwise. Or is it? 18’09.
27. It was all going well until the NE corner, which I really struggled with – even though COLONNADE and HIGHLIGHTS shouldn’t really have been that difficult. Failed on SILICA, which might be my least favourite clue for a long while – I’m always against partial homophones, and particularly so where they don’t sound much like each other. At least not the way I say them – it’s CILLA rather than SILLY, no?
    1. You refer to the NE when I think you mean NW! Rather cilly no?

       Edited at 2020-11-16 11:29 am (UTC)

       1. How right you are! And how wrong I am.
28. I abandoned the NW corner after failing to gain a toehold, apart from LATINIST, and found the NE more tractable, starting with HAGGIS and moving in a clockwise direction back to the NW. Didn’t know ASHET, but thought it more likely than ANEWT, and was glad when HIGHLIGHTS confirmed my suspicion. When I gave up trying to shoehorn YPRES into 4d and saw ARENA that allowed me to cast aside NST for northern street and insert the GATE into LEE. ARENA allowed me to make sense of the anagrist and come up with SCHOLIAST, then COLONNADE hove into view leaving me with 1d. An alphabet trawl was required to find SILICA and the job was done. 27:32. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
    1. … I even considered the Flemish Ipres!
29. A trip to the quack after my shoes exploded, put me out of kilter! Did not enjoy this much.

    FOI 27ac SKIPPER read from the printer.

    LOI 17ac ASHET She certainly helped!

    COD 17dn AIREDALE

    WOD GATE

    Time n/a

    I note that Des O’Connor has died and can now feature ligit. RIP.

    Edited at 2020-11-16 11:35 am (UTC)

30. Championship looms, so online solving practice started today. Alas, all is not well so far !

    One typo, so a 50% improvement on the QC. A time of 9:11 wouldn’t have been disastrous. Will try the boss’s iPad tomorrow instead of the Smartphone.

    I was in correspondence with three of my old crossword friends yesterday, and neilr said that it wasn’t just two finger typing that would slow us down, but the difficulty of exercising peripheral vision when not solving on paper. It’s actually a very relevant point – I’m often starting to solve my next clue while still writing in the answer I’ve just cracked – that just doesn’t work online.

    COD OVERGROWN

31. If you grew up in Manchester you’ll be familiar with Deansgate:

    “The road is named after the lost River Dene, which may have flowed along the Hanging Ditch connecting the River Irk to the River Irwell, at the street’s northern end. (“Gate” derives from the Norse gata, meaning way).”

    1. Gate meaning road is just one of many indicators that part of England used to be ruled by the Danes and spoke Danish – it comes from the old Danish gata (the modern Danish word for street is gade). It is unusual though in that it is also used in southern (Anglo Saxon-speaking) England, where it has the meaning of gate, portal. So in London we also have our gates – Moorgate, Aldgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate – but they are openings in the City walls not thoroughfares.
       1. Milton Keynes has several major roads in the town centre called Gates. Also some Boulevards!
32. with a nice cheesecake and coffee after a walk on Talacre beach. A few holdups in the NW where most of the DNK’s were concentrated. I concur. COD OVERGROAN
33. Not happy with northern being included in clue for 10a – Leicester, home to Gallowtree Gate, Humberstone Gate, Sanvey Gate et al. is NOT in the north. Clue works perfectly well without this unnecessarily misleading addition. Not delighted with corpse being used for drying rather than giggling, but at least it was the obvious answer.
    FOI yuck (found NW tricky) LOI and NHO ashet (no surprise) COD between Great ouse and Detritus
    1. You may not be be happy but Leicestershire was a Viking stronghold hence all your gates – which I know well.
       Please see my long note on all of this under SLEAFORDGATE.

       Edited at 2020-11-16 03:56 pm (UTC)

34. Slow but all correct in 47m. Similar solve to another contributor: nothing for several minutes then almost the whole puzzle completed in 20 mins or so but then becalmed in the NW. Took far too long to see the easy highlights. Couldn’t get head_ out of my head …

    Agree that sili_ and silly do not sound at all alike and I’m normally someone who doesn’t object to some slight taking of liberties with homophonics.

    Thanks all for the erudition regarding gates. I must say I had always assumed _gate referred to, well, a gate …

35. I thought this was going to be a hard Monday when I read 1A and realized that not only did I not know the answer, it was going to be a word I’d never heard of. In the end, there was only one reasonable way to arrange the letters once I had crossers. And that gave me SILICA my LOI.
36. 19:51 off to a slow start trying to shoehorn scholastic into 1ac before giving up on that and finding FOI goner. Rest of the solve went smoothly until I returned to the NW where I was very slow to discard the idea that northern street was going to be N ST. Had I seen the more obvious highlights first and got the checking G I would not have been delayed so long. DNK ashet but familiar enough with the elements that went into its construction.
37. … but parsing some of the answers well beyond me. Knew the word 17A Ashet but not the novel She, could guess 4D Arena but no idea what Ana is (I see from the above that it is indeed a collection of stories, but does anyone ever use it in real life these days?), and NHO 1A Scholiast, though very generous cluing and 5 checkers for a 9 letter word made the answer gettable. On the other hand Erato came up not that long ago I recall, so 29A Numerator troubled me less than it might have.

    Much discussion on Gate above; I must learn to read all through the blog and only contribute in one place!

    Many thanks to Vinyl for the blog
    Cedric

38. I started solving this on paper after lunch only to notice my name as a winner for 27,816. That encouraged me.
    FOI was DETRITUS; after that pretty solid progress ending inevitably with ASHET. Also wondered about the meaning of Corpse but CORPS had to be right; and Gate seemed odd. Knew ANA from puzzles so all this practice is working.
    29:22 on the clock, plus a fair amount of time on paper. David
39. This must have been a very easy one. I don’t time myself, but I think it was less than quarter of an hour.
    FOI – EAR TRUMPET – biffed, but then checked against wordplay.
    LOI – ASHET, simply because I didn’t know the word existed; it suddenly dawned on me that the only novel I knew that would fit was ‘She’, so in it went.

    I had also never heard of ‘San’ as a short from of ‘Sanitarium’. Does any one say that? Really? But I was sure that the answer had to be NASCENT so I put it in.

    1. It’s school slang from a bygone era. Jennings and Bunter and St Trinian’s etc.
    2. San for sanitorium is largely restricted to ex-public schoolboys of ancient vintage.
40. Came to this after a favourable report in the QC blog, and then spent 10mins in the NW wondering if I had a) picked up the wrong puzzle, or b) completely lost what little ability I thought I had. I persevered, and found the rest of the grid much more accommodating, bar the DNK but had to be Ashet. Came back to the NW, where Colonnade, Highlights and Latinist gave enough crossers to let me slowly unpick the remaining unknowns. So, not quite the anticipated walk in the park, but still doable. Invariant
41. How?
    I didn’t find anything relevant in Collins (online).
    Seems it didn’t bother anyone else…
    1. Chambers: “to go nimbly or quickly”.

       I’ll just nip out to get a paper.
       I’ll just pop out to get a paper.

42. Oh, OK. That is in Collins, too, and it crossed my mind that might be it. Thanks.
43. It is very common English!
    ‘I’ll just pop out to vote.’, is an exemplar.

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