Times 27,953: Am I My Blogger’s Keeper?

66 comments on “Times 27,953: Am I My Blogger’s Keeper?”

1. I had AT FIRST FLUSH, and a quick google seems to suggest it’s a legitimate alternative. It also sounds better, with the alliteration there

   Otherwise an easy puzzle I thought, easiest of the week in fact

   Edited at 2021-04-16 02:27 am (UTC)

   1. I put in blush, didn’t even think of flush. Flush does sound better, and while it might pass the google test it’s not in the dictionaries yet.
      1. My chambers has: “in the (or one’s) first flush: young or youthful”

         So not the same thing, no. Not yet, anyway

   2. The first flush is what they call the first tea harvest, the one in February. The second flush is in June.
      1. Yes that was in my mind when I entered it. Never heard of ‘at first blush’ so that did not occur.
2. I liked Leg Break, I liked the many well-hidden definitions, and I liked that all of the GK was just within my grasp. Thanks, setter. You too, Verlaine.
3. I guess PINETUM has come up before, but I’d forgotten so I struggled with that (my loi) plus I thought the ship was the PINTO for some reason. But I got there in the end.
4. Another fine puzzle, with some great definitions. Slowed down with the crossing obscurities in the NW i.e. things outside my GK: Unst, unstable being rocky, and cotoneaster. If I weren’t Australian I’d probably include drongo amongst the obscurities. Pineta known – the Stadio Adriatico, where Maradona played each year in the late 80s, is in the pineta in Pescara.
5. I was having trouble, but then thought of Uist – it’s an island somewhere, isn’t it? That led to unstable, the obvious answer, and then everything fell into place. Baguette was also a little tricky, as I wasn’t expecting that kind of stick, so it was my LOI.
   1. Uist is in the Outer Hebrides — a long way from Unst in the Shetlands!
      1. My instinctive reaction to your comment was ‘it’s all north Scotland, it can’t be that far’, so I checked. It turns out it’s more or less as far from Unst to Uist as it is from London to Edinburgh!
6. … so, just under my average. Another nice puzzle that kept me on my toes the whole way. I needed the cryptics to spell KILIMANJARO and COTONEASTER. Thankfully, I didn’t even consider “at first flush”

   Cain, of course, wasn’t a twin; so a Major Eyebrow Raise for that one.

   Thanks, V, for the excellent (as usual) blog and to the setter for an enjoyable challenge and for making the unknowns very gettable.

   Edited at 2021-04-16 03:03 am (UTC)

   1. According to the esteemed Dr. Google, Cain has a twin sister. Hence as he murdered his younger brother Abel, he would indeed be “a murderous twin.”
      1. Cain not only had a twin sister, he married his brother’s twin sister. Allegedly.
      2. Fair enough; thanks for the correction. I only checked the original story source.
7. A DNF in 28 minutes, managing to spell KILIMANJARO incorrectly despite the (now) clear wordplay. Otherwise not too difficult though a bit of wordplay-aided guesswork required for the ‘Shetland island’. I liked BAGUETTE for ‘Stick’.

   I think one particular LEG BREAK would have been pretty painful for Mike Gatting despite the absence of any lower limb fractures.

   Thanks to verlaine and setter

8. 37 minutes, but a technical DNF as I used aids for 19dn as my LOI as I suspected I didn’t know the word and I was getting nowhere with the ’15th-century ship’ element of wordplay. Annoying, as of course I knew ‘pinetum’ but had never had any reason to use its plural or consider what it might be. Also, I did think of Santa Maria as probably the only ’15th-century ship’ I could name but couldn’t for the life of me recall what Columbus’s other ships were called.

   Everything else seemed pretty straightforward for a Friday puzzle.

   Edited at 2021-04-16 05:18 am (UTC)

9. No Hungry generations tread thee down;

   After 15 mins pre-brekker I decided I didn’t know the plant or the woods. And not knowing the cargo ship or the Pinta didn’t help.
   Ticks for Leg Break, Baguette and Kilimanjaro.
   O well, tomorrow to fresh woods…
   Thanks setter and V.

10. 34 minutes with LOI PINETA after racking my memory back to primary school to remember Columbus’s other two ships. I’ll give COD to LEG BREAK since I bowled them. The best one of the day was usually an attempted googly. I constructed SUBWOOFER while only ever having heard of a woofer. The first bit of electronic equipment in our house could have been used by a woofer, the one in the HMV logo. I also constructed DRONGO, then realised I knew it. Decent puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
11. Didn’t know the ship or the plantation of trees, so no way to finish 🙁
    Thanks v.
12. About as off a wavelength as I could be without trying. DNK UNST, DNK SUB (or SUBWOOFER), DNK DRONGO, couldn’t remember COTONEASTER even with CO__ASTER. Biffed KILIMANJARO while failing to see the definition. (A challenger? KILIMA is Swahili for ‘hill’; about 30,000 people climb it every year.)
13. My time was tolerably good
    And i parsed everything (as one should)
    Some nice RIDDLEs today
    But my favourite I’d say
    Was the clue for “more than one wood”
14. I shall try to cover my BLUSH and FLUSH this one from my memory. Doh!
15. DNF. Another FLUSHer and I was defeated by PINETA too, not thinking of the plural and not knowing the ship. Otherwise I did quite well! I liked LEG BREAK best.
16. Not so tricky today, finished in 19.41.

    My first crack at 14a was AT FIRST LIGHT, which has precious little to do with the clue. The FLUSH variety never occurred: I think it’s another of those where, if that’s what you see first, you have very little incentive to revisit.

    Add me to the numbers who thought the Columbus ship ended with an O, which kept PINETA to last in.

    I think the setter should come clean about that murderous twin thing. Pace Energizing1’s astute Googling, that bit about a twin sister is not terribly common knowledge and Cain was certainly not his victim’s twin. I think it’s much more likely an conflation in the setter’s mind of Adam’s boys and Isaac’s.

    In compensation, I’ll offer thanks for the wordplay for the long downs, neither of which I could have confidently spelt otherwise.

17. I thought this was a fine crossword, really good. I laughed aloud at the litotes in 17ac and there were lots of other good clues and some excellent surface readings too, which I always appreciate.
    Surprised to note that some are not familiar with Aclima and Awan .. time to read the bible again? 🙂

    (yes, I had to look them up. Of course)

18. Cain a twin ?????? maybe in some obscure and very dubious traditions but not in the bible. Thank you for saving me from wasting any more time on this puzzle today.
19. Another one who flushed this down the pan. Apart from that I thought it was a fine puzzle. COD Shucks.

    France has nominated the baguette for inclusion on the UN Intangible Cultural Heritage Register, where it would join, amongst other things, Mongolian “knuckle-bone shooting” and Swiss “Avalanche Risk Management”.

    Thank you to Verlaine and setter.

    1. All the baguettes I’ve ever consumed have been tangible. It adds something to the flavor.
       1. True…if you can stand the pain.
          1. As Nietzsche said, what doesn’t kill you makes you fatter.
20. Very good crossword. did not know UNST but clear from wordplay. LOI was PINETA when I managed to remember PINTA but I still didn’t think of PINETUM. Didn’t even consider the Cain / twin problem as the answer was so clear.

    Thanks Verlaine and setter.

21. 16.45 which considering my first one in was idolater, I’m very content with. Once that was sorted and thorax straight after, the RH yielded reasonably quickly .
    LH side took a bit longer but the cluing was very good I thought, nothing too obscure and my LOI was outright- nice to see a variant on the usual c or con for Conservative.

    19 dn was a delight and brought back childhood memories of In fourteen hundred and ninety two etc.

    I thought that was a candidate for COD but eventually opted for shucks.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

22. I was another AT FIRST FLUSH, which I thought was the expression.

    Unfortunately I didn’t know either PINTA or PINETA, so, despite that being my first thought as a likely entry, I proceeded to spend another 3 minutes or so coming up with something “better”… LIBERA, as it turned out, was very much worse. A little over 10 mins with those errors.

23. With over half dedicated to the NW. I had most of the clues there upside down, especially HUNGRY, with UNST and COTONEASTER unknown. Also spent ages trying to work out what kind of Finn was involved, but after all that I was woofing up the wrong tree.
    COD AT FIRST BLUSH
24. Relatively plain sailing until it suddenly wasn’t. Pinta didn’t come to mind — if it was ever there at all — and neither did pinetum, probably for the same reason. Judging by other comments, both should have been gettable.
25. Found this much more straightforward than yesterday, and tad quicker overall, but still some very neat surface readings. It felt like there was quite a lot of containment clues, but haven’t checked whether more than usual. Many thanks to blogger and setter.
26. At the time of writing the Snitch shows 26 reference solvers with errors. That looks like an awful lot of flushers, myself included. Otherwise a great friday puzzle.
27. 43:28 with one pink square for AT FIRST FLUSH. I am sure I’ve come across both versions so this went in on the toss of a coin. Not happy that it’s wrong. Hey ho. COD SHUCKS
28. 11:25, with a fair chunk of that trying to put together PINETA, which did seem familiar.
29. 11:52. A good puzzle spoiled by PINETA, which is an awful clue IMO. And I got it, so that’s not sour grapes!
    I didn’t know UNST but it seemed possible on the basis of the existence of Uist and _N_TABLE left little other choice.
    1. I assume that you’re objecting to the fact that a pineta is one wood not more than one, rather than to PINETA itself, which we’ve had here not that long ago, or how would simple I have known it? I’m so glad you didn’t insert an H between the M and O, although of course the sentence should have ended at ‘clue’.
       1. We there’s that too! My main objection is that it’s a double obscurity, and I don’t regard a single appearance in the Times crossword as sufficient to qualify a word as not obscure. I did remember it but the definition is at best oblique so I was very unsure as I hit submit.
       2. “I assume that you’re objecting to the fact that a pineta is one wood not more than one”

          PINETA is the plural of PINETUM

          1. Oops! My bad.
    2. We have the Bedgebury National Pinetum just down the road, so not such a stretch for me perhaps. Still, any opportunity to learn more about pineta is not to be sneezed at 🙂
       1. I’m very happy to learn about pineta, or indeed about the names of Columbus’s ships. I would just prefer to learn about them in different clues!
30. Never having heard of COTONEASTER (which had flitted thru my mind while I considered the possibilities), I slept on that and finally gave up this morning and checked for the only word that fills all the blanks. Discovered Unst somewhat by accident but cheated a little for my POI too. I’m not persuaded that Cain’s sister had anything to do with it, and would have gotten CAPUCHIN a bit sooner if I’d accepted Cain as part of the answer (rejected first because he was older than Abel).

    Never heard of “at first flush,” and it seems quite odd to me, y’all (only bringing to mind, disagreeably enough, low-flow toilets, an obsession of a former American president).

    Edited at 2021-04-16 05:47 pm (UTC)

31. I first thought the clue for At FIRST BLUSH was one of those word-based ones – what do you have to do with the word embarrassment to make the word evident? Unsurprisingly that particular blind alley led precisely nowhere and the answer phrase seemed vaguely familiar and fitted the embarrassed bit so in it went. I think I was lucky that I never considered FLUSH.

    PINETA LOI after some thought. The ship and woody thing were just about lurking on the edges of my recallable knowledge.

32. A magic wand is a “baguette magique” in French.
33. I struggled a bit today. Around the hour mark but with a few interruptions as Madame’s new dishwasher was being installed right next to me. Some tricky clueing and clever misdirections. Managed to get the BLUSH right though. FOI LOB so you can see where I started from!

    COD BATTERING RAM. LOI BAGUETTE for some peculiar reason. Thank you V as ever and setter.

34. FLUSH not BLUSH at 14ac thus a DNF on a very decent Friday outing. Where’s Jeremiah gone? For a 26ac?

    FOI 7dn COD so not my COD!

    LOI 19dn PINEDA a pitcher Stateside, Michael?

    COD 16dn BAGUETTE – avec budon noire! Magic stick hereabouts!

    WOD 26ac LEG BREAK – I would hazard a guess that the Old Boltonian’s googly was quite unreadable?

    23ac STOLEN – Das Crimbleküchen. Couldn’t find one in Shanghai last time out. Love zem to bitz!

    Edited at 2021-04-16 02:25 pm (UTC)

    1. Well done, sir. And a moderately good pitcher. We’re only sad, for the sake of this discussion, that he didn’t quite overlap with Lou Pinnella.
35. Never heard of AT FIRST BLUSH and wrote in FLUSH with confidence. Equally good an answer, Editor, I suggest.
    Otherwise some great clues, UNST- and BAGUETTE and SUBWOOFER for example. Didn’t know CC had ships named other than Santa Maria so guessed PINETA.
36. ….before altering blush to flush, which seems far more sensible. The clue was unhelpful, and the answer was obscure. A crap end to a crap week.
    1. Sorry but do you have to so rude?
       1. Yes. I’m not wasting years of practice.
       2. Smelling-salts anyone? Thomas J Crapper inadvertently gave us the word ‘crap’, or so we are told. Honi soit qui mal y pense as it says on the Royal Coat of Arms.
37. My first attempt at a 15×15 assessed by SNITCH as ‘ Moderate’ — and I got there! Took me a couple of hours though. And of course I wrote in AT FIRST FLUSH — seemed reasonable at the time.
    1. Welcome to a different Hell!
38. DNF in 45 minutes, at first BLUSH (never thought of FLUSH). What defeated me were (1) the Shetland island (I completely misunderstood the cryptic definition of 9ac, assuming it would be the name of one of the islands, for which INSTABLE seemed more likely than UNSTABLE, rather than that the island was only part of the answer — that wouldn’t have helped much anyway), and (2) the LEG BREAK, which I did think of but couldn’t make any sense of, having completely forgotten that British crosswords often refer to cricket, in which there really could be such a term. At least I had DRONGO right. COD perhaps to IDLENESS, into which I shall now retreat.
39. 29.23 and somehow all correct. I was really expecting a pink square or two. Cotoneaster felt a bit made up. Didn’t know the Shetland island but felt on more solid ground with unstable. Battering ram was a great pdm. Was very nearly completely stumped by pineta but a last minute flash of inspiration got me there, possibly via pinetum. I feel like I squeaked through by the skin of my teeth on this one.
    1. is an incredibly common plant in suburban Britain. It hails from China and is in the rosa/hawthorn family.

       Its problem is that its is not quite pronounced as it appears – cot(t)on easter!

       COT-OWN-EE-ASTER or kəˈtoʊni:ˈæstər if you will.

       1. I’ve just googled cotoneaster horizontalis and seen a picture. I suspect I may, in my ignorance, have passed one almost everyday for the last few years on my commute to work. A sort of shrub that bears red berries in the summer whose leaves and berries look very like the image that came up. More common then than I realised!
40. I put FLUSH in without a second thought. I’m embarrassed to admit I never thought of BLUSH. 27’18”
41. Wasn’t familiar with BLUSH so put in FLUSH without a second thought. Perfectly acceptable as far as I’m concerned. However I had to look up PINETA as I didn’t know the ship. A biffed BIREME got me to IDOLATER and AUNTIE, but had to be removed when THORAX appeared. A bit of a disappointment after solving the rest of it in 30 minutes. 38:53 WOE and a look up. Thank setter and V.

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