Times 27933 – don’t trip over your sword, my Lord, eat my words.

66 comments on “Times 27933 – don’t trip over your sword, my Lord, eat my words.”

1. An enjoyable crossword with a slight cheekiness to it. Like Pip I stared at SWORD SWALLOWER until the penny dropped. Smiled at the EU PHOBIA but COD to ARDENCY.

   As I posted on the QC blog, my first novel The Collation Unit has just been published. A wonderful experience but akin to running down the street naked.

   1. Congratulations sawbill. The book sounds interesting — I’ve put it on my reading list.
   2. Congratulations. It must be a great feeling. The publication that is -not the naked running.
2. Nice to see some old friends appear in different guises today. I only know EUPHORBIA from crosswords and I’m sure it’s been clued more than once with reference to “euphoria” so well done setter for that one. I also liked seeing the ORDINARY SEAMAN in his full glory when he is so often abbreviated.

   A firm COD to FLAGELLATE for me. I thought of it for “thrash” noting it had an anagram of “legal” in it but held the thought as I couldn’t fully parse it. I later came back and justified it having extended the parsing to “legal” being reversed. But it was only when I read Pip’s blog that I realised it was fully reversed. The “Thrash metal” of the clue also reminded me that I’ve recently been listening back to some of the music from my teenage years. Anyone for Slayer?

   1. More of a Megadeth man myself….
      1. You’ve just guided my next dip into the archives 🤘
         1. And as a nod to a slight bit of refinement, you can’t go wrong with Metallica’s S&M album.

            Also for guitar nuts there’s a cracking video on Youtube of Steve Vai doing For the Love of God with a full orchestra.

            1. Not so much into thrash metal, but Stevie Vai cuttin’ heads in Crossroads is the best guitar ever recorded on film. Noting that he reputedly played all the guitar, Ralph Macchio’s bits as well.
3. 40 minutes. Yes, I noted in yesterday’s blog that it’s standard now for the plural CANDELABRA to be used in the singular rather than ‘candelabrum’ and this may or may not date from the days of the pianist Liberace who had a trade-mark candelabrum on his instrument which was always referred to as his candelabra. Data and datum have gone the same way amongst the general populace. Given the amount of stick we give setters for clueing BRA as ‘supporter’ time and again I welcomed ‘cups’ as something of an innovation and don’t see a problem as ‘cups’ are part of the design of the item and it’s fitted with reference to the measurement of cup size.

   ‘Losing heart’ would normally indicate removal of the middle letter or middle two letters of word, so I had a MER at 2dn where it’s used for removal of all but the first and last. That’s more like losing its guts!

   I meant to go back and untangle the wordplay of SWORD SWALLOWER, but forgot. I lost time wondering about FLATE surrounding a reversal of LEGAL at 21, and AG for metal was also in the mix. There was a mighty sigh of relief when I spotted the hidden answer.

   Edited at 2021-03-24 07:25 am (UTC)

4. …as I used aids for 1d, 2d, 11ac.
   Definite COD to SWORD SWALLOWER once I saw it.
5. …Oil of water body, neither fish nor beast…

   20 mins pre-brekker including time to parse the tricky Epee swallower and reverse hidden.
   Maybe COD to EU phobia for the topicality.
   Thanks setter and Pip.

6. Thanks for the parsing of SWORD SWALLOWER.

   AIOLI took a while.

   Never heard of CONSTRUE until I read Billy Bunter, does it really mean ‘infer’?

   Although KIWI was straightforward, I am not sure that WIKI is a website, it’s an acronym.

   19′ 55″, thanks pip and setter.

   1. I had (have) the same question: to construe is to interpret not to infer.
      1. SOED has deduce; infer. LME.

         Collins has (in British English) discover by inference; deduce

   2. From Wikipedia (and I guess they ought to know:)
      “A wiki is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.”
      I think wiki is Hawaiian for “quick”
      Andyf
7. 42 minutes with LOI OATES. There was a conspiracy stopping me seeing that one. SWORD SWALLOWER needed a mental trawl of circus acts and I can’t make it COD as I biffed it. I’m giving that to EUPHORBIA as I knew that. Toughish puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
8. I enjoyed this one. One or two clues unparsed, SWORD SWALLOWER and FLAGELLATE, so thanks Pip for the explanations. Very clever clues. I had a MER at the let part of NECKLET. whilst a “let” is always a serve, a serve is not necessarily a let. I have plenty of EUPHORBIA in the garden so that wasn’t a problem. I agree it was nice to OS spelled out. I thought 19 d was clever too. Thanks pip and setter.
9. 19:24 I wrote OCARINA in the space for 17A which created a lot of unnecessary difficulty until I found REGROUPED. Failed to parse SWORD SWALLOWER – thanks for that Pip. Very clever. I liked that “service” was “let” and, my COD, OATES.
10. “Kind of makes me wonder, scratch my head and kick the snow,
    Four years of overseas, who are these strangers in my home?
    Where are the country people does anybody know?
    Do you remember the Americans where did they go?”
11. 11:52. I thought this was great fun. Lots of good stuff but I particularly liked the remarkable hidden and the epee-swallowing lords.
12. 25:26
    Fun puzzle. The hidden was great – didn’t see it.
    Thanks pip.
13. I started from the bottom-up as I guessed 1+1 equalled two trickier clues.
    I felt that there might be a NINA based around 1dn & 21ac: 11dn DISCPLINE; 24ac EUPHOR(B)IA!; 4dn NECKLET; 8dn OS; 19ac ARDENCY; 22dn AIOLI 2dn OAT(E)S and 3dn TERMINATOR – perhaps not.

    FOI 26ac DETERMINATION

    LOI 2dn OATES – I was some time

    COD 24ac EUPHO(R)BIA

    WOD GRIT

    Edited at 2021-03-24 08:54 am (UTC)

14. I thought my 11.14 was too quick. I can’t spell FLAGELLATE without an I and I fearfully smudged the wordplay to make it happen. Discovering from the pink that, of all things, it was a reverse hidden was almost enough to make me hang up my solving keyboard. Is there a program which spellchecks clues as you tap them in? It would only be slightly cheaty.
    Speed also meant I missed the clever wordplay for SWORD SWALLOWER, and that for REGROUPED: I just thought “felt to keep united” was a clumsy way of saying GROUPED, which of course it isn’t.
    Annoyed with myself for not taking enough care and not taking time to enjoy some pleasant cluing.

    Edited at 2021-03-24 08:55 am (UTC)

15. Should have been a bit quicker really, but

    a) I have a cold (man flu, on death’s door etc)
    b) I spent way too long trying to find an anagram of METAL LEGAL at 21a.

    SWORD SWALLOWER went in from definition and checkers, and only parsed on reading the blog here. LOI OATES – saw how it was meant to work but couldn’t unscramble all those 5 letters until I had the 3 checkers. See a) above I think. At least that’s my excuse!

16. Didn’t enjoy this very much — found it hard to break into (just 5 clues down after 15 mins) but sped up a bit once a few checkers were in.

    Having seen the other comments, I guess it’s either a) a wavelength thing, or b) I’m just not in the right mindset for solving.

    Better tomorrow hopefully.

17. Over an hour – not on the wavelength at all – epic fail
18. I had no idea about the parsing of SWORD SWALLOWER until I came here – very clever. Otherwise, all understandable and parsed for a 33 minute solve. I was glad that EUPHORBIA came to me in a rare flash of inspiration, otherwise I might have spent as long again on that clue alone.

    Highlights were the absence of a certain bearded vulture today and the FLAGELLATE reverse hidden.

    It’s often been said before, but it is extraordinary how uncommon words or terms can appear in two crosswords on the same day. I won’t give the game away further.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

    1. Yes I too noticed the double exposure effect. It’s odd but it seems to happen now and then and may not necessarily mean the same setter.
19. Good fun.
    Couldn’t parse the sword swallower and thought it might be something to do with the two-swords-length that keeps MPs apart in the Commons.

    First construer I ever came across was Billy Bunter. He was always being asked by his form teacher, Mr Quelch, to construe passages from Virgil. I knew this would come in useful one day.

20. Well I couldn’t construe SWORD SWALLOWER so thanks for that Pip. I stalled on KIWI for a while (Fiji, Wifi?) and then got a sort of brain fog from the “double helix” thingy – which isn’t in the glossary but could be. 17.19
    1. I’ve always though that every so often the editor sends a memo to the setters: “See what you can due with this as an answer!”
       1. Somehow replied to your comment above in the wrong place – sorry.
          1. No problem Isla!
21. Slowish trawl, never entirely on wavelength, and had to biff some. Can’t see how “for” can be justified in the KIWI/WIKI clue (except to make better surface reading, MER). Enjoyed DETERMINATION clue imagery and SWORD SWALLOWER hidden. Thx all round nonetheless.
    1. Rather agree with you about ‘for’ in the KIWI clue. I’d always thought that [wordplay] for [def] was just about OK but not the reverse. But the setter could easily have arranged this.
       1. It was the ‘for’ in ‘for rave’ that puzzled me. Perhaps I am just missing something…
          – Rupert
22. Pressure increases by 1 bar for every 10 metres (approximately) underwater, so 1000 bars would be more than 6 miles down.

    Edited at 2021-03-24 11:15 am (UTC)

    1. Quite right, I got my 0’s in the wrong place. 90 metres, would be 10 bar in sea water not 1000. And 30 years ago I was down there in SCUBA gear. Senility looms.
23. Just on the hour today, most of it a struggle. All perfectly fair, though I was most definitely not on the wavelength. Thank you, setter, for the headache and, Pip, for the aspirin.
24. ….but finally put in discipline and necklet and finished in 37 minutes. I never saw the wordplay for sword swallower, but Jeremy filled me in on that. Not an easy puzzle, and Titus Oates was particularly elusive.
25. Gosh, this was tough. Couldn’t get a fingerhold anywhere for a good five minutes and gave up timing as I got close to an hour, laboriously solving from the bottom up. Surrendered with KIWI unsolved — for no good reason that I can see — and judging from comments here I was making unnecessarily heavy weather of things.
26. I was off to a flying start with NOTE, RUN INTO and SHOOTING RANGE, but it didn’t last and I had to grind out the rest of the answers. The NE yielded first, as I CONSTRUEd the Antipodean, the instrument and the learning. The SE eventually followed and I worked my way back to the previously intractable NW where an unparsed SWORD SWALLOWER(thanks Pip) finally allowed me to see DISCIPLINE and spend some time trying to sort out LOI OATES. This eventually succumbed to an alphabet trawl and led to a Doh! moment. 40:03. Thanks setter and Pip.
27. Thanks for the explanations of sword swallower and flagellate, neither of which I could parse. A DNF for me as I could not see Oates. Yet again, my mistake was not lifting and separating (to continue the theme) Titus and Andronicus. Frustrating when 3 of the 5 letters are in place. The only word I could see to fit was oaths!
28. Faster than my usual today — somehow just seemed to spot the answers — Sword Swallower came almost immediately although couldn’t see why for the life of me until I came here (I thought it must be some weird play on Law Lord). Ocarina seems to turn up quite regularly (and I have one, as an ornament, on the kitchen shelf, which helps).

    Edited at 2021-03-24 12:42 pm (UTC)

29. I had absolutely no idea what was going on with SWORD SWALLOWER, and I didn’t see how OBOE worked, so thanks for the explanations. I thought FLAGELLATE was very clever, though I only figured it out once all the checkers were in place and I was entering the remaining letters. EUPHORBIA and OCARINA were helped by remembering them from previous crosswords, and I wouldn’t have got CANDELABRA as quickly if it hadn’t been in yesterday’s crossword.

    FOI Run into
    LOI Necklet
    COD Flagellate

30. Good fun. Had to be sword swallower, but I confess to not seeing why.
31. Another totally bamboozled by sword swallower, but all the crossers (except one) meant it had to be. Great puzzle, but I was way off the wavelength, and eventually failed on discipline, just couldn’t see it or work it out. Particularly liked CONSTRUE: one of them was reported as actually making a true statement today!
    1. Knew Oates was a Titus, except it seems he wasn’t. Even so hard to get, as the anagram fodder wasn’t obvious, until it was. Oates famous for having his best line stolen by Scott: everyone *knows* it was Scott who said, I’m just stepping outside, I might be gone some time. I liked the Blundell/Spence take on it from about 1970, unrepeatable here.
32. I liked this one, though sadly failed to parse 1dn, even after getting the answer..
33. No problem although I only saw the “epee” in the peers later, and I never saw the hidden although I’d biffed the obvious FLAGELLATE. Like many others, it seems, my LOI was OATES. An enjoyable middle-of-the-road solve.
34. 15.35. FOI run into, LOI Oates. Couple of blocks on the way. Initially put none in for 6 dn but the fact that nothing seemed to fit at 10 ac convinced me of my error in time to repent.
    Oates took a while but thought of Titus of that ilk and put it in without parsing. Very pleased to get euphorbia usually struggle with flora .

    Guessed sword swallower without knowing why it was correct but couldn’t really see any reason why it wouldn’t be.

    Thanks blogger for giving me the reasoning behind 1 and 2 dn and setter for an enjoyable puzzle.

35. All good fun. Slapped my forehead like most other people when I realised that 21ac wasn’t some sort of complicated anagram of some parts of the clue – but which parts? – but was there in plain(ish) sight all the time. Took a while though…
36. ….which I rather blundered my way through.

    FOI WARRANT
    LOU DISCIPLINE
    COD KIWI
    TIME 13:53

37. And despite my obsessive knowledge of Springsteen lyrics the circus act evaded me forever until I’d worked out what kind of range we had at 1a.

    This slowed me down a lot while I built up from the bottom. Thanks for the parsing of 1d, I was baffled until I came here. COD to the beautifully hidden flagellate.

    43:23thanks Pip and setter.

38. I found this pretty smooth sailing (a few, like AFGHANI, seemed too easy to be true), biffed a few (so I forgot to—try to—parse SWORD SWALLOWER), was given some pause by NECKLET, which seems odd, and KILOBAR, a nice discovery, and lastly held up an unconscionable amount of time by Mr OATES, of whom I’d never made the acquaintance.
39. 25.20. I felt myself plodding through this one a little slower than I should’ve been. I liked sword swallower. Flagellate had me searching for an anagram until I finally clocked the reverse hidden. I needed a flash of inspiration to remember Titus Oates. Not sure I knew of necklet.
40. Very late solve today as I forgot that I hadn’t finished it. Time irrelevant as I fell asleep in the middle.
    LOI DISCIPLINE took far too long to twig this one.
41. I thought the RANT as “partner for rave” might maybe refer to the phrase “rant and rave”
    1. Surely it is.
42. This took all evening, off and on, but very pleasing to get there in the end. I even managed to parse Sword Swallower — but didn’t see how Flagellate worked until I read the blog! Invariant
43. I parsed 6 Down as “not E” with the “not” coming from expanding “isn’t” to is NOT, so the wordplay is ”small letter” [which is] NOT plus the fifth letter of the alphabet (or musical note I suppose) being E. Otherwise, unless I’m missing something I’m not clear where the NOT comes from or why “note” “isn’t the fifth”. I’m not keen on [is]n’t clueing NOT but it makes a little more sense to me this way.
    1. Exactly. It makes a lot more sense that way.
       I’m afraid that I often skip what a blogger writes for clues that I myself had no questions about.

       Edited at 2021-03-25 07:08 pm (UTC)

44. Got stuck on necklet as a let in tennis involves any instance where an entire point is replayed, it does not relate to the service per se.
45. Someone needs to remember that the purpose of a blog is to enlighten, not mystify. What, pray, is BHX ?
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