Times 27976 – nearly tripped up by chemistry of all things!

104 comments on “Times 27976 – nearly tripped up by chemistry of all things!”

1. I took it as HAW + AI (topping) + I.
2. I was the same for HAWAII with AI = topping. My loi was the Al Capone, obvious once you see it. THIEVE was another one that took time due to the weird word order in the clue. I got the POLY part of 1D but took far too long to see that BALZAC was just French=GALLIC and didn’t require detailed literary knowledge. But what a great crossword. I enjoyed it despite it being a bit of a brute.
   1. 20A — Al Capone’s version — never became obvious to me, alas. Can you enlighten me on the parsing of “version”?
      1. ALUMINUM (with no second I after the N) is the American version of the British metal.
      2. The UK spelling is ALUMINIUM. In the USA, (i.e. Capone’s version) would be ALUMINUM. It appears the reasons behind the different spellings go way back to the days when it was first synthesised as a separate element and for once do not seem to be due to national idiosyncrasies in orthography.
         1. Doh! As Paul rightly said “obvious once you see it”. Thanks for all the explanations.
      3. ALUMINUM is the American (Capone’s) version of ALUMINIUM.
3. Of course you meant Libra for the astrological house, not Aries
   1. Whoops that was a brain fade.
4. About half an hour for everything except HAWAII which I just couldn’t get, despite another half hour’s effort. I ended up putting in a lame and obviously wrong ‘Malawi’. Very frustrating, but that’s how it is.

   Really liked my first in, ‘Al Capone’s version’.

   Thanks to setter and blogger

5. OK – I’ll admit defeat. I’ve looked in Collins and Chambers. What does AI have to do with topping?
   1. A-1 = top grade. I’m sure you’ve seen A-1 with that meaning often enough in places like Mephisto, so it’s probably topping that you’re not parsing.
   2. AI and topping both mean very good (AI=A1 from Lloyd’s shipping ratings I think).
      1. OK – I’m with A1 being excellent, but I didn’t think of it equating to topping.
         1. ODE sv ‘topping’ (Brit.) (informal) (dated) excellent
            sv ‘A1’ (informal) very good or well; excellent
6. ….but on the other hand, I understood and enjoyed each highly misleading clue. This was really a very high-quality puzzle, completely fair and very difficult at the same time.

   I did have edges for a while instead of noses, which made the warehouse and the flag difficult. So I erased it, and then all was revealed. However, my LOI was polygamy. I don’t know if the setter should have defined it as illegal here, since who knows if some chap sitting in Saudi Arabia or the Sudan isn’t pondering the clues, pencil in hand!

   Edited at 2021-05-13 01:59 am (UTC)

   1. I think it has long been standard practice in Times puzzles for ‘here’ to mean ‘in the UK’. Presumably solvers elsewhere in the world are aware they are looking at a British newspaper.
   2. Pencil in hand! Cf. Yesterday’s blog. As a further comment, do solvers on-line not have the ability to substitute letters they have entered incorrectly before submitting?
7. Great crossword, very tricky. No problem with COD aluminum or bonded warehouse, but struggled to get Spanish Civil War, annihilate, librarian and LOI Hawaii where Malawi was lodged in my brain.
   WOD: accoutred just ahead of askew.
   Thanks setter and blogger.
8. How is NEST a venue for undesirables? I associate nests with cute little fluffy things.
   Or does the clue refer to “a nest of vipers?”
   1. I had the same reaction to NEST at first, but thought of ‘nest of thieves’ (or your ‘vipers’); seems OK to me.
9. Should that be ‘toeing’? I don’t see how one tows a line in a ball game.
   1. Agreed, I was reluctant to put in ONSIDE with the given ‘towing’ , even though it parsed well. Nearly fell into the MALAWI lion trap after a double alphabet trawl yielded nothing else, until the topping/spiffing parsing for A1 dawned.
      Tough workout today, but finally got there in 41’57”
10. A relief to see the SNITCH results and know it wasn’t just me. I think there were maybe a half-dozen clues that I could dispatch with relative ease; the rest I had to fight for, one by one. Didn’t like MARS appearing (then again, I’ve never liked Mars bars). THIEVE my LOI. COD to ALUMINUM.
    1. They are different in the UK, though — our Mars bar is the equivalent of the Milky Way bar in the US. Does that make them any more palatable? 😀
       1. As I recall, and it’s been countless decades since I’ve had either, they both gave me a headache.
       2. Long time no post Matt. Will you be sharing your experience of the crossword or are you solely restricted to confectionery based commentary now? 😉
          1. Yes, sadly, other commitments (including a somewhat random side-project to walk every street within a mile of me!) have meant that I barely have time for the puzzle at the moment, let alone the commenting.

             Today’s weather means I have a bit more spare time, so I can add that this one took me about 55 minutes and I’m very glad the blog was here to answer a few of the question marks I had in the margins…

             1. Nice to see you back from me too. And you beat my time despite me slaving away at these things in your absence!
       3. Nice to have you back even if temporarily. I’ve missed reading your posts which from recollection usually have some piece of arcane knowledge for us all to enjoy … and you live in Bristol which I guess is sort of my hometown now. Those other commitments must be very important for you to miss the daily crossword …
          1. Sadly it’s mostly work that’s getting in the way. But I suppose it pays for the crosswords…

             Yes, I’ve been enjoying my adopted hometown¹ recently, as I dig back through some of its history. Makes me feel more at home here in Hotwells, though I’ve been here since the mid-1990s. Maybe I’m arming myself with arcana to make a victorious return to the blogging scene!

             Hope you’re doing well.

             ¹ I’m originally from the liminal London Borough of Redbridge—not quite really London and not quite really Essex

             1. I lived on Jacobs Wells road in the late 1980s when a student — now living in the Mendips. Bristol is a great place to live. Shame it doesn’t have a decent football team …
11. I made the mistake of reading the blog this morning before remembering that I had given up for the night at 01:00 with three clues unsolved, so I shall never know whether the missing answers would have come to me after a few hours sleep. The ones that foxed me were ALUMINUM, THIEVE and MANIPULATE.

    There’s been discussion elsewhere (now slipped down the page so I am mentioning it here) about intrusive advertising, pop-ups etc on Live Journal, often in Russian, which is spoiling TfTT for some readers. I don’t get any of these on any of my devices – 2 PC’s, Android tablet and iPhone as long as I am logged in under my user-name and I am pretty sure this is because I use ABP adblocker on all my devices. I would therefore suggest anyone who has this problem should install it and give it a try. It’s free.

    Edited at 2021-05-13 04:29 am (UTC)

12. Agreed, and Chambers only has “toe the line”. It’s a common error though, so maybe it will evolve like antisocial (Tuesday) and ad hoc (yesterday).
    1. Or ‘could of’.
13. A tough grid for me today. I enjoyed unravelling it, apart from 10a, where for a very long time I had EDGES, which I think works just as well as the actual answer, i.e. to have the edge is to have a narrow margin/ to edge is to inch along. Thoughts?

    Edited at 2021-05-13 06:58 am (UTC)

    1. It works just as well up to the point that it doesn’t fit with BONDED. I also considered it for a while.
       1. Yes, of course. But a clue really oughtn’t to have more than one watertight answer.
    2. Ditto but like Vinyl realised it didnt work
14. To the setter: Please let me inveigle
    With a pun that’s so bad it’s illegal
    You’ll know me I’m sure
    As the anti-bird bore
    But why not eagre rather than eagle?

    (An eagre is a bore of the tidal variety)

15. Oh yes. One of my favourites 😩
16. Has legion’d all his battle; …to work, rest and play.

    30 mins left the Accoutred/Scot combo.
    I should have remembered that meaning of Scot, but didn’t.
    Some good stuff today. Mostly I liked MarsHMallows and Tree Frog.
    Thanks setter and G.

17. I very much enjoyed this, being tough enough to require substantial thought but never leaving me feeling stumped. 177 must be one of the highest SNITCH ratings. I don’t think we’ve ever had a 200, have we?

    I had lots of nice PDMs, probably the best being that for BUCKLE. I had the ELK and the CUB, then wondered to myself where on earth is the definition? Then finally I realised it was that sort of cave. I did also wonder for a while if Balzac was a “garlic”, this perhaps being a mild insult for the French like they call the English “roast beefs”.

    1. There have been three 200+ SNITCH ratings to date (since 28 Sept 2015 when SNITCH records appear to have begun), two of which were just eight days apart, and all three fewer than 100 grids apart:

       3rd Aug 2018 — 27107 — 202
       26th Jul 2018 — 27100 — 217
       18th Apr 2018 — 27015 — 222

       1. The closest since then seems to be:

          20th Oct 2020 — 27809 — 195

          Today’s grid seems to have been the highest since then.

       2. Ha I clicked on your link “2018…etc” and my phone dialled it as a number.
18. But very enjoyable – lots of tricky but fair clues and no obscure answers.

    I was trying to get AI in 20A to be Artificial Intelligence for a while before the penny dropped – this was my LOI. Also held up with THIEVE, RIBALDRY(easy once I got GALLIC), GALLIC, ….

    Thanks v much setter and blogger

19. 57 minutes with all parsed. LOI BUCKLE. COD to FLAT BROKE. Has Boris taken to setting crosswords to supplement his meagre income? My family think I’m well offside for liking pineapple on my pizza. Great puzzle, though nearly too tough for me. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Pineapple on pizza is an abomination, but widely popular down here. Called a Hawaiian of all things 😉
       You’d never see it in Italy, except you could once. Back in the 90s a pizzeria named Pizzamania in Torrevecchia (Chieti province of Abruzzo) had an “Aussie” (?maybe?) pizza with pineapple. And XXXX beer posters on the wall. The Italian padrone had lived in Australia in an earlier life.
       1. Always happy to be an abomination, although I sometimes have trouble living down to it.
    2. My family can barely bring themselves to order the very same pizza for me but I notice the leftover pieces are always gone by the morning 🙂
20. So pleased to finish correctly.

    LIBRARIAN LOI, unparsed until afterwards, and only came to mind as daughter is one such.

    I do know ‘riant’ from French, it means ‘laughing’. Nho it in English.

    Many super clues today, 34′, thanks george and setter.

21. Well now, that was hard graft, with Al’s version the last in trying to follow the “if there’s a U there’s usually a Q” rule. Very, very sneaky. Pushed my time to 28.15.

    I’m going to stick my neck out and say “towing the line” is plain wrong, a schoolboy howler. Apart from anything else, I can’t think of an interpretation of pulling on a rope that could remotely mean ONSIDE, not that anyone understands the rule anyway, especially not fans of Harry Kane when playing Leeds United.

    I’m also not too sanguine about RIANT meaning smiling: laughing, surely, from the French.

    Our setter made up for it with a bunch of brilliant, if not necessarily smile inducing clues. MARSHMALLOWS making it as my favourite over Al by a nose.

    Edited at 2021-05-13 09:02 am (UTC)

    1. Collins disagrees with you about RIANT but I can’t any dictionary that recognises ‘tow the line’, so that does indeed look like a clanger.
       1. I just don’t know. When I grumble about misuse of language I’m told that it’s a dialect or that language evolves and we just have to go along with it. That may well be true and our way of doing things in connection with language is far better than the ‘cast in stone’ attitude of the Académie Francaise, but here we’re being told that ‘towing the line’ is a howler and a clanger. I tend to agree.
22. I thought this was excellent. I got there in the end with last one in ALUMINUM, which has to be clue of the day. I also really liked MARSHMALLOWS.
23. 6a I first put in Speedhog instead of Sheepdog — seemed a reasonable answer at the time, until rescued by the checking letters.
24. 23:36 but 1 wrong as I had an unparsed MALAWI for 18D. Tough stuff, but very entertaining. I think I liked MARSHMALLOWS best.
25. 33:33. I found that an absolute beast, and unlike pootle I felt stumped on many occasions. In fact I nearly gave up with ALUMINUM and HAWAII unsolved, but persevered. I don’t know why I found HAWAII so hard: ‘state’, six letters, ends with I, should have been obvious. ‘Al Capone’s version’ is utterly impenetrable until suddenly isn’t.
    As vinyl says, this was very difficult but completely fair. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it but I certainly admired it.

    Edited at 2021-05-13 08:40 am (UTC)

26. Very tough but fair wordlplay, and as with many others, the element was my LOI by some distance, and far from elementary. Good work, with one exception…

    I’m also going to stick my neck out and say that I haven’t yet recovered from the wince induced by “towing the line”. I mean, what? How did this get past (presumably) multiple sets of eyes? Unless I’m completely misunderstanding the intention of the clue, it’s not a totally acceptable alternative, it’s just flat out wrong, and there is no reputable source that says otherwise.

    Yes, I know that language evolves. Does that mean we are all going to be happy if the Times decides it’s fine to use “pacific” in a clue when you mean “specific”? Apparently lots of people think that’s what it is, but I don’t think that makes it any less wrong. Just me?

    P.S. I am now expecting somebody to say that it doesn’t matter, it’s just one bad apple, because that, apparently, is another metaphorical expression which nobody understands these days.

    Edited at 2021-05-13 09:46 am (UTC)

    1. It makes me that mad I’ve literally blown my top.
    2. My pet peeve Tim is “unchartered waters”.
    3. The reality is of course that if enough people write ‘tow the line’, then dictionaries will reflect that usage. In these matters there’s simply no such thing as wrong.
       For the time being though ‘tow the line’ still seems to be sufficiently rare to be classed firmly as non-standard.
       1. Indeed, as I say, language evolves and that’s absolutely fine, even if it is likely to provoke debate in certain circles (I think the last time this sort of discussion cropped up here was over the use of the word “expresso”). At this moment, however, it certainly hasn’t evolved to include “tow the line”.

          Meanwhile, I shall fight my ever-lonelier fight for a) the distinction between the two words “lose” and “loose”; b) the proof of the pudding being in the eating, not just “in the pudding”; and c) as already stated, the fact that one bad apple in a barrel is actually a very bad thing, and not something negligible. Thank you for your indulgence.

          1. Lose/loose is slightly different, in that it’s a misspelling, and spellings are rather more standardised and static than meanings so you can more reasonably refer to them as ‘incorrect’.
             1. It all gives us something to talk about, anyway 🙂

                https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/dictionaries-give-up-and-add-second-o-to-lose-20180413147246

       2. or wrong
          1. Never.
             1. What, never?
                1. Never. In matters of language the concept of right and wrong just doesn’t make any sense.
                   (I’m talking specifically here about the way native speakers use words. If a French speaker says ‘a car blue’, this is obviously a mistake)

                   Edited at 2021-05-13 11:21 am (UTC)

                   1. But of course it does. (You and I agree almost 100% on this question, except of course when you’re wrong, that I hesitate to argue here, but.) There’s a rich and informative literature, for instance, on speaker errors, such as real Spoonerisms, providing evidence for underlying rules. Of course the concept of right and wrong in any moral or ethical sense makes no sense here; but if I say, say, “John and Max want Jane to hit each other”, I’m wrong.
                      1. Well OK but this is the same kind of error as ‘a car blue’ (or ‘a red big truck’): a breach of the fundamental grammatical rules of the language that you just don’t generally hear from native speakers. Similarly if someone pointed to a red car and said it was green, this would also be wrong (or indicate colour blindness). Of course these are mistakes but that’s not really relevant to the sort of discussion we have here. ‘Tow the line’ is currently not standard, but it could easily become so. It’s just not useful to talk about it being right or wrong.
27. Ran out of time, which is a pity because I was enjoying the challenge. Two DNFs in a row. Not a good week so far.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

28. 1.16. Before anyone gets overexcited, that’s hour followed by minutes.

    A complete beast but I was b******d if I was going to admit defeat as I thought it was such a good if , for me, fiendishly difficult puzzle. All there to be worked out via the very clever clues and my LOI , librarian, was a prime example.

    Thanks setter but please not too many like this or I’ll never be able to get out of the house. Thanks blogger as well and try not to get too depressed. Spare a thought for folks like me still striving for almost an hour longer than you!👍😊

29. I agree with above; an excellent and enjoyable crossword and toughest this week so far. I got all the way through, in half an hour, except hadn’t parsed GALLIC, and was stumped by 20a. Even though (or because) I had a chemistry degree I didn’t contemplate ALUMINUM as a real word, and missed the Al definition, trying to end it in GUN and / or put a Q in there before the U.
    I knew you Americans pronounced it as aluminum, to my and IUPAC’s opinion incorrectly, but I didn’t realise (or even realize) it was also spelt that way in USA. I’ve now read up the history of it since Davy discovered it in 1808; basically it was Webster’s fault that America stayed divergent with the rest of the world. If you’re keen to read more, see e.g.
    https://diecasting.com/blog/aluminum-vs-aluminium-the-etymology
    … and I agree with z8 that towing the line is an error.

    Edited at 2021-05-13 09:24 am (UTC)

30. About 9 mins for everything except ALUMINUM, BONDED WAREHOUSE and NOSES… another 4 mins or so to get ALUMINUM… and then another 4 mins or so to admit defeat.

    NHO BONDED WAREHOUSE so I could have been staring at it for much longer without getting that; probably should have got NOSES but having initially entered EDGES I was feeling pretty hopeless on that one. Bad day at the crossword office.

31. If this is Thursday, what will Friday be like? Very good puzzle (except for the towing). I got stuck on 11a having convinced myself that it was P****C (P[rivate] C[ollection] when it was much cleverer than that. I got all the way down to MISINTERPRET before anything registered. 27.39
    1. I missed that gaffe. Somehow I heard toeing in my head and didn’t read the clue.
       Andyf
32. I convinced myself that LIBRATION was Libation – gift of wine to the gods by spilling it, thus on the house – and forced it in by taking LIBRA as short library, yes, too short, and TION was an anag of it’s on, ignoring the “s”. Doh!
    Still didn’t get that meaning of cave even after reading the blog! Penny just dropped.
    Andyf
33. Had the same misgivings about towing and NOSES other have mentioned, plus a moment to wonder if Balzac had penned any gothic novels I wasn’t aware of. An entertaining 32 mins.
34. I battled with this for 46:16, and after the light dawned on my LOI, HAWAII, was devastated to discover I don’t know how to spell ANNAHILATE. Well I do really but didn’t spot my error on the proof read. Drat! Thanks setter and George.
    1. As far as I can see, you know how to spell ANNAHILATE perfectly.
35. I’m new here so this post is to help me find my place tomorrow. 👍
36. Malawi 🙁

    Thanks, g.

37. Towing the line? I’ve gone through life obeying my father’s advice to TOE the line.
38. I wish I knew what LOI and COD mean! I feel like a clothed person in a nudist camp!
    1. Last One In and Clue Of the Day. You should find a link to the glossary somewhere, depending on what device you are using.
    2. And in case you can’t find it – apparently hard to find on Android – the link is:
       Glossary
    3. Better than the reverse..
39. 24.55. A good time for me compared to other snitch solvers who are usually much quicker than me, so I’ll say I was on the wavelength for this one. I thought it was a superb puzzle, putting up substantial resistance but not impenetrable. I did have the advantage of solving online after the clue to onside had corrected “towing” to “toeing”. In a comment on the forum Richard Rogan has coughed to the error and admits it should’ve been toeing. I thought Aluminum was brilliant. Ribaldry and buckle also much enjoyed.
40. One too many Meldrewvian alternative answers!

    10ac EDGES; 25ac EARSHOT!; 22dn RENT; 18dn MALAWI – and I was hoping for the HUNDRED YEARS WAR at 3dn! All quickly corrected – but ‘towing the line’ was equally grim!
    It simply shows the editor is offside too! Schoolboy error Mr. Rogan – naughty chair.

    DNF with the much-loved ALUMINIUM clue!

    FOI 4ac FLAT BROKE

    COD 14ac MARSH MALLOWS

    WOD 24ac ACCOUTRED

    At 18dn HAWAII should contain an ‘okina’ – HAWAI’I but it will take an act of Congress to change the name of the state. Now that would be fun!

    170 on Mr. SNITCH! I predict Friday will be stinker too!

    Edited at 2021-05-13 01:55 pm (UTC)

41. Definitely a toughie, but seeing the above comments, I am a) glad to have finished, and b) to have done so in 55 mins. Towing the line was indeed very tricky. I just took it to mean that if one is towing the line, one is « onside » or maybe today, « on message ». Anyway, thank you glh and setter.
42. All but HAWAII and GALLIC in about 40 mins, but too tired after golf to think straight, not the best state to be in to do an epic crossword. I bunged GALLIC in with a Gallic shrug, and was going to bung MALAWI in until it dawned on me
    COD ALUMINUM
43. Well my fears expressed after yesterday’s puzzle turned out to be well-founded – in spades. Compounded by the fact I could only allocate a half hour time slot today because of other commitments, I finished a few clues down, including the 18-20 crossover.
    Thanks for the blog, glh, which explained things very well and thanks (I think) to the setter for demonstrating to me that I still have much to learn!
44. ….but today is truly a Red Letter Day ! Not only did I finish quicker than Verlaine, but I was a hair’s breadth ahead of Magoo ! Now I just need to transfer this sort of performance to competition, although I suspect it’s just the equivalent of an FA Cup giant killing. “Towing” had me a little puzzled, but I just assumed typo in the end.

    FOI MISINTERPRET
    LOI ONSIDE
    COD MARSHMALLOWS
    TIME 15:22

45. Surely, it is “toeing the line” not “towing the line”?
46. I didn’t enjoy this very much and it seemed to take forever. But I got there in the end with everything parsed to my satisfaction. 67 minutes. Ann
47. I use the Times browser version, and the clue had “toeing the line”. My husband uses the Times app, which had “towing the line”!🤔
    1. It was corrected to ‘toeing’ in the on-line versions sometime during the day. The newspaper version was wrong.
48. See the (interminable) discussion below!
    ‘Tow the line’ is increasingly common, and may become more so. This sort of evolution happens all the time and I wouldn’t call it ‘wrong’.
    But it’s still sufficiently rare not to be recognised in any of the main dictionaries, which for crossword purposes — they generally stick to standard English as reflected in those dictionaries — makes it a clanger.
49. We were thrown by my getting 12ac wrong. The anagram gives SPEEDHOG for ‘one put on trial’. And it’s ‘toEing’ the line (7d), for goodness’ sake
50. A beginner was never going to make much of this, but that’s fair enough. Managed exactly one quarter. Reading the explanations is informative as ever, and prompts many “it’s simple when you know” moments. One day, hopefully, I’ll see these for myself. FOI 17ac MISINTERPRET. LOI ( of my lowly seven) 1ac PARIS. Also got THIEVE, EAGLE, SPANISH CIVIL WAR, TREEFROG, ATTENDEE. IE, none of the very cryptic ones.

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