Times 27904 – maybe I had to go?

62 comments on “Times 27904 – maybe I had to go?”

1. I also biffed BATHROOM, not being able to think of anything else. I was slow to separate work, sign, a number, that were nicely integrated into their surfaces. DNK the musical ACCIDENTAL, DNK FP. Is MECCA a draw for tourists? Pilgrims hardly count as tourists.
   1. I bet the locals think of the pilgrims as tourists.
2. Three out of three so far for BATHROOM. A pity as I really liked this, especially the ‘Work’ and ‘A number’ defs for MOBY DICK and MR TAMBOURINE MAN respectively and the wordplay for APOCRYPHA. LENIN was a biff, but everything else was more or less parsed. Wasn’t so keen on FP for ‘former pupil’. I took the ‘draw for tourists’ as in a “tourist MECCA”.

   Thanks to setter and blogger – here in your (ex-) home town, it’s currently 29 degrees (C of course) so you’re allowed to be envious.

3. American does make you think of bathroom, since washroom is really Canadian and not US. However, I was already playing with saw backwards at the wrong end of the answer, so it wasn’t that hard for me – I just had to see that the whole thing was backwards.

   But really, this was a hard puzzle. Amen Ra was my FOI, and I realized at once that tough going was likely. I had my doubts about tunk and Bulawayo, although the cryptics point that way, but eventually finished. Time: 52 minutes.

4. Wondering how on earth tab was grasped. Otherwise tough but very enjoyable, interesting words and word-play. Bulawayo, Moby Dick and Capricorn were slow, but SE corner was last. Couldn’t parse either Lenin or out of play, so thank-you. At first mulled over whether e.g. Xerxes successor might be Xineo? Fortunately nailfile came along.
5. Why, why, to struggle over BULAWAYO for 12 minutes, only to have not spent 1.2 seconds thinking over WASHROOM? I’ll just join you all in the stupid club. First error in a long time.

   My only excuse was that a lot of the answers went in for me without complete understanding, so at a certain point I was just hoping.

   Edited at 2021-02-18 03:54 am (UTC)

6. The American custom of saying BATHROOM for WC – particularly in a public place such as a restaurant or theatre – has always amused me so I bunged it in without more than the mildest of MERs. TAB = ‘grasp’ didn’t seem entirely beyond the bounds of possibility at the time but is far less attractive with hindsight.

   Elsewhere I had no idea what was going on with LENIN and the Phoenix, and like others I have never heard of FP which I assume is a PC and all genders inclusive replacement for OB that’s less elitist than ‘alumnus/alumna’, though I imagine even fewer people know what it means.

   49 minutes with one error as aforementioned.

   Edited at 2021-02-18 06:12 am (UTC)

7. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to find this hard and thankfully managed to work out WASHROOM correctly.

   I was wondering about FP for Former Pupil. I see that it’s in Chambers, which also lists “Fireplug” and “Free Presbyterian”. The latter might be okay, but I reckon I’d be completely lost if the clue required parsing Fireplug as FP.

8. Fortunately BATHROOM never occured to me. If it had I’m pretty sure it would have gone straight in without nictitation. Instead, I was looking for a word like ‘Dames’or Broads’, couldn’t think of one and so decided to read the instructions carefully. As for LENIN, of course I had no idea how that worked.

   Edited at 2021-02-18 09:03 am (UTC)

9. Tuff stuff, I thought, with AMEN-RA and the unlikely APEDOM resisting until I could finally tackle B_L_W_Y_ scratching through my brief list of presumably Welsh cities.
   Congratulations on spotting how LENIN worked, George: it will be interesting to see if anyone else does.
   Fortunately, I’m ignorant enough to think Americans DO call loos WASHROOMs, which maintains my pink-free run . For a while I was trying to justify MUSHROOM.
   The Dylan/Byrds number flummoxed me for ages: I never remember that M? can, usually does, produce MR, and that number means song.
   25.41 was my time, which on the currently quite short list of solvers does not displease me.
10. Very difficult for me.
    Fortunately, I realised bathroom couldn’t be right and eventually came to realise it was WASHROOM.
    Thanks for LENIN, George and for your blog, generally.
    Like Jack, I had no idea what was going on with LENIN but it had to be that.
    FOI:VAPE LOI: AMEN RA and APEDOM
    COD: NAILFILE and TOM COLLINS.
    Clever juxtaposition of 5ac and 5d: ‘Work’ and ‘A number’

    Edited at 2021-02-18 08:03 am (UTC)

11. …Arched over me a dismal gloom,
    While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
    And left me deepening down to doom.

    40 mins pre-brekker. I knew it would take extra after Amen-Ra and Apedom.
    Spent a while trying to justify Lenin, but gave up. No issue with Washroom.
    Mostly I liked Apocrypha — good clue for a tricky word.
    I assume the Moby Dick ‘work’ is the film, as I am sure the novel has a hyphen. Possibly? Discuss.
    Thanks setter and G.

    Edited at 2021-02-18 08:31 am (UTC)

    1. Had a hyphen at times, but not always. The film was hardly a ‘work’.
12. 20:50 but… another BATHROOM. I took a while to remember AMEN-RA and failed to parse LENIN, otherwise it was slow but steady finishing in the NW corner. Tricky, though! COD to NEIGHBOUR. Thanks setter and George.
13. I was 53 minutes on this, with LOI and COD the brilliant OXYMORON. Down the foggy ruins of time, I watched his Bobship join The Byrds to sing Tambourine Man on YouTube only last week. I found this puzzle very hard but one which repaid the effort. I didn’t parse LENIN but fortunately I did WASHROOM. Call me unreformed but I still think ‘bog’ is the best name for the place. Thank you George and setter.
14. FP is the Scottish equivalent of Old Boys; hence Heriots FP is a rugby club for Old Boys of that school. Simpler than Old Heritonians, I suppose.
15. I managed to avoid the common pitfall of BATHROOM but I went with BOLAWAYO thinking that the brief cheer was “boo”. Annoying as I knew it was BULAWAYO but decided to trust what I thought was the correct parsing.
16. For me, this was an anti-clockwise journey around the grid starting in the SW, where SAGO and HANGER-ON went in quickly — saw the cryptic for OPPO as well, but does that really mean ‘colleague’ — when I played cricket, ‘oppo’ were the opposition i.e. entirely the opposite definition. Didn’t know the meaning of APOCRYPHA but it jumped to mind with those checkers in place.

    Nothing to write home about in the SE corner, other than LENIN — didn’t see the trick, but with the first N in place, he was the first person I thought of (having studied Russian at school), and then the second N in place was enough to write in.

    NE corner — OXYMORON was an ‘ah-ha’ moment, and BULAWAYO vaguely remembered from my days in Overseas Development though completely failed to parse. That long one down the middle was still troubling me, and it seemed clearly an anagram, but I just couldn’t see it until the NW was more or less complete.

    Some things come in a flash of inspiration — with only the N checker in place, I don’t know what made me think of AMEN/AMUN/AMON-RA (seems to exist in various spellings) other than a holiday in Luxor nearly thirty years ago.

    Then spent time trying to make APEISH work and also work out how the RH and MOO worked in 11a when suddenly twigged with WASHROOM and the rest was plain enough.

    Good puzzle, giving up its secrets gently.

    1. I, too, wrote the obvious Oppo in with a shrug — In addition to sports I thought of political oppo research. In both cases, same category of person as oneself, but definitely not a colleague

       Edited at 2021-02-23 12:22 am (UTC)

17. Third day in a room where I’ve made a typo – maybe my fingers are too cold – but on top of that today I didn’t know BULAWAYO and couldn’t piece it together from the cryptic. All perfectly fair, and LAW jumped out, but I don’t know enough about [googles] Zimbabwe.
18. for explaining the tricky answers – there were several, like APOCRYPHA and BULAWAYO, where they were the only feasible options, but I couldn’t understand how they got there.

    Evidently a tough one. It took me twice my usual time, and I am still as high as 51 on the leaderboard.

19. I biffed OUT OF PLAY so didn’t notice FP. Everything else parsed including LENIN and WASHROOM.

    Some very nice touches like WALK and A POP. Good puzzle and blog, thanks all round.

20. 16:35. Some very good stuff in here but I thought some of it was a bit of a stretch: FP, for instance, or the too-clever-for-its-own-good LENIN.
    I bunged in WASHROOM without parsing it, which seems to have been a bit of a lucky escape.
21. As the time suggests, I found myself right on the wavelength, and unsurprisingly enjoyed the ride. Took a while to realise there probably wasn’t something called an APENOT, however you pronounce it.

    FP is not a problem for rugby fans of a certain age (in my memory of watching in my youth, no Scotland game was allowed to be completed without Bill McLaren speculating on how the result would go down in the clubhouse at Heriot’s FP).

22. Some very sneaky traps here with unchecked letters in the sun god, the loo and the worshipper. Just to keep us on our toes. My late father was robbed in the men’s WASHROOM at BULAWAYO airport. I wondered if LENIN had something to do with a phoenix having nine lives but gave up on it so thanks for the parse George and I hope your power stays on. We had an ice storm here just this week and our newly installed and ruinously expensive generator did its stuff. Now we’re expecting snow (again) and we have to try to get my husband to NYC for his booster shot. We already had to put it off once after being snowed in. 25.09
23. Lower half completed smoothly and quickly, then ten times as long for upper (esp NW).
    Like Pootle and Topical Tim, fond memories of Bill McLaren!
24. I saw NINEL and thought aha, nine lives somehow abbreviated but wait that’s cats you twit and gave it up.
    1. This more or less exactly describes my experience.
       1. And me!
25. Abandoned after 60m with a few still to do, so came here for enlightenment and was very grateful to get it. AMEN RA and the cocktail, both never heard of, I would never have got. The ‘impenetrable’ clue for what turned out to be LENIN also flummoxed me. Even the ones I did get seemed obtuse eg ‘hood’s person’. Hey ho — always tomorrow. Thanks for the blog, especially appreciated today.
26. I seem to be the odd one out today because I was not keen on this at all. Did not like 2dn – calling an Islamic pilgrim a tourist to his face will get you in real trouble. Why is a neighbour defined as “Hood’s person?” Because he is in the neighbourhood? Do me a favour. When did you last talk about the hood that way? I also thought 24dn too tortuous to be fair. Hands up who parsed it before coming here. A dick is only an investigator in the US. Here, it means something very different ..
    Hmmph!

    1. I first parsed this as ‘Yankee investigator’=DICK, but then saw that the Y had to be accounted for. And it means the same very different thing in the US, too, Jerry.
       Doing Mecca? Don’t forget to check out the Kaaba!
    2. I mainly agree with you but Mecca (or mecca) is also a generic term for a place that attracts lots of visitors. Having said that it’s still a bit odd because a draw for tourists would normally be specifically called a ‘tourist Mecca’.
       1. Oh, quite right .. had not thought of the generic usage!
          1. See Bletchley above.
    3. Mecca is a tourist spot as per Chambers. e.g St Andrews is a Mecca for golfers .
27. FP perfectly OK. How could anyone criticise it? Just think of Bill M; watching international rugby isn’t the same without him. And it’s a very boring game nowadays, for people like me who don’t understand it fully.

    Never heard of Amen-Ra — it doesn’t seem to be in Chambers, although Collins has it. I was sure one of the downs was wrong, but they all seemed OK with the possible exception of MECCA (which doesn’t necessarily refer to the religious place — “St Andrews is a mecca for golfers” — so had to be right). And APEDOM is an odd word, but …

    Also couldn’t see LENIN but it seemed to be the answer.

    Edited at 2021-02-18 12:20 pm (UTC)

28. But it didn’t. Left with Bulawayo and Walk-in to find I landed the city and the old brain froze for the last. Had I left it and come back I’d have walked it, despite not knowing ‘walk’ for ‘be stolen'(?). Happy memories of the city and the Matopos Hills south of it. A fine puzzle – and a neat parse George on 24. About 40 min. dnf. Oh yes – the whale clue should technically have been hyphenated.

    Edited at 2021-02-18 12:31 pm (UTC)

29. Very good puzzle. Doubt if I’d ever have got Amen-Ra or Apedom and didn’t know the musical Accidental (…and that’s just the As)
30. Allow me to join the throng in the BATHROOM of shame.

    Put in “Tim Collins” for 26a before realising that the “im” was unaccounted for and remembering that “order” can give you “om”. And until today I thought OPPO was short for opposition, rather than a colleague, so I hesitated a bit over that one. Didn’t fully parse APOCRYPHA and didn’t understand LENIN, so thanks for the explanations, and AMEN-RA was an educated guess.

    Does “walk” for “stolen” come from baseball?

    1. No.
       1. don’t gush like that 🙂
31. Put it aside after staring at 3 clues in the NW for many minutes. Revisited after lunch, and eventually got MECCA, AMEN-RA and finally APEDOM. No problem with WASHROOM as, since I was slow anyway, I took the time to study the wordplay. Biffed LENIN but what else could it be with the checkers?
32. Stuck in the NW. The accidental washroom checkers for 2d gave ***C*A, so ACCRA seemed to parse ( note A, CC for copy, and RA for artist initials ), though why any tourists would want to visit the capital of Ghana was beyond me.
    It made LOI 1a impossible, and in despair after 54minutes I plumped for DAWN-RA as a possible hieroglyph for the rising sun.
    Maybe I should change the userpic to a pink Galah. Done.

    Edited at 2021-02-18 01:54 pm (UTC)

33. That was hard work! Never did parse Lenin, jsut assumed nine lives might have something to do with it, but nothing else seemed to fit anyway. DEVIL was my FOI and MOBY DICK followed. BULAWAYO arrived after the WALK-IN closet. Should’ve seen ACCIDENTAL far earlier than I did. That finally allowed me to complete the NE which had been sitting there mocking me with only NEIGHBOUR and SAGO in place. My POI was WASHROOM, which I carefully parsed to decide between that and BATHROOM. I then revisited APEMAN which was then ruled out by WASHROOM, so APEDOM was my LOI. 54:45. Sheesh! Thanks setter and George.
34. Another nine lives thinker here… doh!
35. …to “dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free”, and was certainly not “far beyond the reach of crazy sorrow”. I was convinced that the first word of 5D had to be “me” as “my” wouldn’t fit the anagrist, and totally failed to see Dylan’s masterpiece. This was perhaps partly down to being locked out of the WASHROOM by a lurking “apeman”.

    NHO AMEN-RA. Thanks to George for parsing BULAWAYO and LENIN. Gave up after 20 minutes.

    COD APOCRYPHA

36. That was hard. I went for RESTROOM at first although had to rethink. Top left corner took ages and needed help, not sure what AMEN-RA is about and was iffy about Mecca, like jerrywh, and APEDOM, is that a real word/ Some good stuff and some off beam. Didn’t see the rugby thing in ‘in touch’ either. But liked ACCIDENTAL, OXYMORON and Mr Tambourine Man jingle jangle earworm arriving…
37. 59.55 and absolutely delighted to have finished. Felt like Torquemada had come back from the grave to do a guest bit of tortured inquisiting.

    The last eight clues must have taken over 20 minutes and even after getting them, still had misgivings over Bulawayo , Amen Ra and accidental. Never saw the intricate clue play for Lenin but felt sure it had to be him- thanks blogger for enlightening me and well done for working it out.

    As for Mr Tambourine Man- Aaarrrggghhh! Should never have bothered reading more than the first two words, would have got it quicker. Thought there might be an anagram in there but two maidens meant 16 letters not 15.

    Now off to bed with a cold compress.

38. Not on the wavelength at all today. Biffing, mis-parsing and use of aids. The NW frontier proved impassable. Tried to fit flock into 5ac . Liked 9ac and the grinding out of 5dn. Keep forgetting cc as ‘copy’ , rather than ape. Definitely in the stupid club today.
    Thank you blogger for enlightenment and to setter for extinguishing any flame of complacency re. my efforts .
39. Another day, another error! In the BATHROOM club, alas. My own fault (again) for not checking wdp closely enough but was already muttering at some other clues by then: IXL hidden for NINE L(ine)< could set ugly precedent; Hood’s person overly forced just to get it to work with Robin in the anagram fodder…) But may just be sour grapes so thanks nonetheless for the workout. And especially to blogger.
40. Thought I had done rather well too. LOI LENIN no idea but had to be.
    Liked quite a lot of this, however I think this was more of a Friday crossword than a Thursday one. In fact for much of this morning I thought it was Friday now that the days just seem to blend together.
41. DNF with three left after an hour (in the paper) APEDOM, PROPEL and PRONG. Then came here and found i had to add BATHROOM to the list. I put in, but never did parse, LENIN and APOCRYPHA (i liked a pop). My moment of triumph was realising that M_ could be MR when i had M_N at the end. I may have had some crossers in between but i did not need them. Hard work. Struggled with the QC this morning too!
42. Rugby fans will recognise FP (in all the dictionaries) as in Heriots FP (as mentioned above), GHSFP, BRAFP as was, now Academy, etc

    MECCA is defined in Collins, COD and Chambers as any place which attracts a lot of tourists.

43. Accidentals aren’t always sharp. (Mr Grumpy)
    1. The setter knows that. That’s why he’s put a question mark.
44. 20.57. A decent time for me on a relative toughie. Amen-Ra was a bit of a hail Mary I expected pink squares but couldn’t see what else to make of it. Bulawayo was resistant to full parsing. Lenin was resistant to any parsing, so was grateful for definition and checkers.
45. Thought this was a quality puzzle — tough but as someone mentioned above it did slowly reveal its secrets

    BULAWAYO helped by reading too much Wilbur Smith when younger [*hangs head in shame*]. AMEN RA vaguely known; liked OXYMORON but like others in-bunged BATHROOM. Stupid as it was my LOI and I did briefly think of the correct answer but it still went in…

    Thanks all

46. I finally got NEIGHBOUR from the anagram but was hoping one of the comments would explain what the reference is. “Hood’s person?”
    1. It’s a whimsical play on the fact that neighbours are in the neighbourhood. People from the ‘hood.
47. Why have I been “barred” from commenting in this jouirnal?
48. I still don’t see how M becomes Maidens. The other 14 letters make up the anagram

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