Times 27,983: Please Do Not Use Thermometers Imprectically

53 comments on “Times 27,983: Please Do Not Use Thermometers Imprectically”

1. I parsed everything except temporally, but at least it was the obvious answer. I needed a lot of help from the cryptic to help spell Ceausescu, but it was easy once I saw it. I put in lifesaver without realizing it was a hidden, allowing me to biff Liszt and finish the puzzle.
2. Superb. Fantastic clueing. Very hard. Temporally LOI mostly because I’d misspelled Centre.
   How the brain works: guessed Lincoln was a see, saw C for about and enter for register, guessed there was a Lincoln Center in US, noted the clue mentioned US so we needed the Center spelling. Then the fingers did their own thing and typed in Centre.
   A few other unknowns, but easily deducable: Fireman, Reith, Echo as a paper, the exact meaning of nostrum.
   COD to ballast for the 5-1 thrashing, and the unexpected definition.
   1. I still do not understand the explanation for Lincoln Center.
      Why is Lincoln a SEE?
      1. A See is the diocese of a bishop, or the place within it where his or her cathedral or procathedral is situated, e.g. the UK city of Lincoln.
         1. Of course.
            Thanks for pointing this out
            1. Watch out for see = ELY (in Cambridgeshire). It comes up frequently as lots of words end in ELY!
3. A stiff but enjoyable test. I needed just under an hour with the last 10 minutes on 26ac. Seeing TEMPO for time got me to the answer eventually even though it wasn’t part of the intended wordplay. No problem with CENTER at 11dn as I’m familiar with the NYC venue, but in any case US in the clue drew attention to the American spelling.
4. All because of 1ac who I originally had down as Postman Pat but turned out to be an interloper by the name of FIREMAN SAM! I had never heard of him – even though he started back in 1987! (Both Bob the Builder and Peppa Pig are in my Lexicon)

   FOI POSTMAN PAT! Who became FIREMAN PAT – SAM”S twin brother, who sadly died in a blaze in Pontypandy! (No relation to Andy Pandy!)

   LOI 9ac ARISTOS

   COD 15dn CORNFIELD a bit corny…

   WOD 11dn LINCOLN CENTER

   I notice that today’s mini-NINA was to be found at 8dn OUT-TRAY and 25ac IN-TRAY! HO-HUM!

   As I forecast yesterday – we were due a Hurricane.

5. 35.49
   Yes, agree with you, v: a very nice puzzle. A little trickier than average, but a fun solve from start to finish.
   Great blog – cheers.
6. …you understand
   I say yes I understand…
   (Start of ‘Yesterday’, WS Merwin. I recommend it)

   After 30 mins I was still struggling with LOI the excellent Temp,orally. Mostly I liked this and Stet,son.
   Thanks setter and V.

7. 55 minutes with TEMPORALLY an unparsed LOI. I don’t know where I dredged LINCOLN CENTER up from, but fortunately it was in my mind’s eye with the US spelling of CENTER. COD to the witty BIRTHDAY HONOURS. FIREMAN SAM was beautifully written, and I can still remember, from when my children were young, the episode with Sarah and James stuck on their sledge in the middle on a frozen pond with the ice cracking. I didn’t think I’d finish this one until I did. Tough but in the end enjoyable. Thank you V and setter.
8. This was another crossword of the type that I recently mentioned appeals to me — where I feel challenged but never bogged down. Like keriothe I was convinced that CEAUSESCU had a C in the middle of it, so the fact that it doesn’t is news to me. My COD to LIFESAVER — it’s always a sign of a good hidden when you have to go back and look for it after having got the word.
9. Put me in the same “Oh, so THAT’S how you spell Ceausescu” camp – though in my case I didn’t help myself by not parsing it properly and putting it in with a C in the middle, which then held up REMINISCE. ‘Stet’ as in ‘don’t remove’ only rang the faintest of bells, but the clue left no room for anything else but STETSON. Wasted time trying to make an anagram involving ‘tearful’ before seeing FLASHBULB for 1d. Very enjoyable stuff.

   FOI Outre
   LOI Flashbulb
   COD Cornfield

   1. I did sort of the opposite: I had REMINISCE already but I was so sure that CEAUSESCU had a C in the middle that I thought at first that it couldn’t be him and left the clue.
10. 14:34 with TEMPORALLY unparsed. Nice one. COD to CORNFIELD. Thanks V and setter.
11. Excellent. Accomplished. Difficult. Too many to choose a COD.
12. I feared when i saw the word duck
    That the crossword might suddenly suck
    But then came the NOSTRUM
    There’s no need to HO-HUM
    We EVADE all the things that might cluck
13. 14:54. A fine puzzle. I spent quite a while at the end trying and failing to parse 26ac. I saw that ORALLY might relate to being open-mouthed, but not the TEMP bit.
    Other unknowns: this meaning of BALLAST, the precise meaning of NOSTRUM, that it’s not CEAUCESCU.
    Since I have numerous progeny and they’ve had differing tastes both between them and TEMPORALLY, I’ve watched an awful lot of kids TV, including vast amounts of FIREMAN SAM. There are worse fates: Paw Patrol for instance or – horror of horrors – LazyTown.

    Edited at 2021-05-21 07:44 am (UTC)

14. Very fine challenge, which I met in 12 seconds short of 30 minutes. After 10 minutes or so I had four in, but made better progress once I gave up the notion that 1d was something to do with a crocodile cleverly and insistently hinted at.
    I did think FIREMAN SAM and the BIRTHDAY HONOURS might be a bit tricky for overseas solvers, but I suppose there was the compensation of the LINCOLN CENTER. I knew it (wrongly, as it turns out) as the place opened by Bernstein’s Mass, which I love and others hate.
    Do you think the Aston Villa clue was so constructed to annoy one of our number? A 5-1 defeat? I wish! The other team was definitely the second rate one in their most recent match.
    Decent blog, V, though I might wish you had added your parsing time to the total and I might have been a little less than three times your time!
    1. Not a fan, but relying on them to beat or draw with Chelsea on Sunday; to give Leicester a chance for top 4. And LPL.
       1. I find myself in the strange position of wanting Arsenal to overtake Spurs so as to avoid the new European third tier competition.
15. Unthinkingly put in FIREMAN PAT … makes no justification of the wordplay, and knew it was AS< somewhere along the line … doh! But some great clues, really taxing, but always fair. Hesitated long & hard about CEAUSESCU but here (unlike 1A) followed wdp to the letter. Many thanks to setter and blogger, as ever.
    1. For some reason this made me chuckle — Fireman Pat is a marvellous momble. Thank you
16. Tough, but persistence saw it done in 35 minutes including 2 interruptions to do brief heavy lifting tasks for management. Like moving my drying golf gear so the cleaner could clean. I didn’t parse 28a, but it’s brilliant now I have seen it. Like others, I now know how to spell CEAUSESCU from the wordplay, before I would have guessed Ceaucescu. Held up briefly by thoughtlessly writing in CENTRE at the end of 11d but then realised not. Congrats to setter and thanks to Verlaine as ever.
17. A bit of a workout today! I had a fallow spell halfway through where I was totally stuck, but revisited the NW and spotted ARISTOS which got me going again. My first thought was that 1a was going to end …..E MAN, which allowed me to get ALBUMEN, but a rethink was required later. HO_HUM and REITH were early entries. The FLASHBULB moment engendered the BIRTHDAY HONOURS. I had REMINISCE before our dictator, so used the wordplay to complete his spelling. LINCOLN CENTER was my penultimate and I was alerted to the correct spelling of CENTER by the clue. I needed BALLAST to get LINCOLN. TEMPORALLY was my LOI and I saw the ORALLY bit but glossed over the rest of the wordplay. A fine puzzle. 43:38. Thanks setter and V.
18. TEMPORALLY was my LOI, which I didn’t parse at the time and I agree is wonderful. Unfortunately it’s been a week of typos for me, and today was as bad as any: BIRTHDAT HONOURS. Must get to the newsagent more often so I can use a pen instead. 10m 03s with that error.

    I biffed POSTMAN PAT, very carefully put together CEAUSESCU and didn’t really like BALLAST (the VI and the ON are removed separately, which wasn’t really indicated). Otherwise an excellent puzzle.

    1. We have the Times online, but print out the crosswords for solving on paper, as we find it more satisfactory. However, didn’t stop me miss-spelling Lincoln Center, which held me up for ages on LOI 26A.
       Gill D
19. I can recommend proofreading. I took it up recently to cut down on the number of typos I was managing.
20. 50m today, but helped by the serendipitous coincidence of talking to my son, temporarily working in New York, only 2 days ago, as he walked past the Lincoln Center. I had never heard of it and he explained what it was. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’ I enjoyed the puzzle’s challenge but needed help with some and also the very clear explanations from V for others. Thank you, setter — a very good reminder of the ‘lift and separate’ maxim today. And of course thank you, V, for the entertainment and enlightenment.
21. Failed to get LIFESAVER (fail on a hidden – albeit reversed!) and therefore LISZT – must remember that scorer = composer. Thought delivery agent had something to do with obstetrics or cricket.

    Good training – I normally ignore puzzles with such a high snitch, but I had a little bit of time this morning, so kept coming back to the puzzle and knocking it off bit by bit, before revealing LISZT and then getting the d’oh moment for LIFESAVER.

22. No skimping on the parsing here. Not being in Verlaine’s league I wasn’t going to risk post-submit proofing with this one. At least you didn’t have to worry about which came first, the S or the Z in LISZT. DNK the fireman so of course I went for the postman at first. LIFESAVER was exceptionally well-hidden. A hard fought 29.58.
23. Mixture of guesses and shrugs here.

    No idea what was going on with LINCOLN CENTER — assumed there was one in the US and spotted quickly that it should end with an R — consequently no problem parsing TEMPORALLY.

    Failed to parse REMINISCE (got RE but nowt else) — for an obscure piece of Latin legalese SC (scilicet) seems to be making an inordinate number of appearances lately.

    Bunged in CEAUSESCU without parsing, on the basis of the last three checkers, though had to think twice about how to spell it.

    LISZT — another shrug — not the greatest clue.

    1. I really liked LISZT — yeah, “homophone of LIST” sounds like a boring clue on paper, but to find a homophone indicator, a definition part and a synonym for “composer” that are all suggestive of football is, I think, quite impressive work.
       1. Surely this must be one of Dean’s crosswords ..
       2. It’s impressive if it works, but it doesn’t. ‘Favour’ suggests the listing is voluntary but it isn’t. It’s a natural consequence of a pre-condition.

          Even if it was voluntary, if you list to the left you are favouring your right. So you wouldn’t be listing to the side that is favoured as the clue implies. Mr Grumpy

          1. Clue just says “to favour one side”. It doesn’t have any indication of which side is being favoured, just that listing is taking place.
24. So very proud of myself just for finishing, albeit with the help of Google for spellings of Ceausescu.

    LOI 20d — it’s taken me a few years but I have finally come to recognise the word scorer as pretty much always being a reference to a composer. Likewise not being nonplussed at the appearance of the word aristo, which I have still never come across outside the holy grid.

25. I loved this. Worth every one of the 75 minutes it took to complete and parse correctly. Lots of highlights including LIFESAVER (as hard a reverse hidden as I’ve ever come across), the parsing of REMINISCE and of course the TEMP ORALLY.

    Thanks to setter for a “proper” Friday challenge and to verlaine

26. This is what I want on a Friday, something to wake up the brain on an overcast afternoon. No wilful obscurity, just (very concise) deviousness, though Today I Learned that I don’t know how to spell CEAUSESCU without helpful clues in the wordplay. And not only was it a lovely puzzle, it had a dig at the Villa, which is balm to the soul of Coventry City fans.
    1. I am amazed that Ceausescu does appear to be unambiguously spelt this way: I reckon if you’d asked us all to spell it yesterday, 90% plus would have had a C in the middle there.
27. This was a good moderately challenging one that I finished in about 35 minutes, save the HONOURS of BIRTHDAY HONOURS, which I don’t think I could have gotten if I’d thought about it for another 10 minutes (so I’m glad I didn’t)!

    I’ve not been finishing puzzles lately… don’t know what’s gotten into the water!

28. Another DNF here. Just couldn’t see EVADE (doh) and TEMPORALLY. Gave up after 1hr15 mins. NHO FIREMAN SAM though I eventually guessed it. Had RAITH for REITH? CENTRE also held me up. Shame because this was clearly a great crossword. Well done setter. Thanks V as ever.
29. Finally got there, don’t know what this will do to my averages. My main problem was that I couldn’t think what kind of HONOURS they were and the letters I had didn’t help. Likewise I got LINCOLN but didn’t know much about his CENTER.
    I must be too old for FIREMAN SAM , but I did work it out from the cryptic. Spent a long time working on RAT but Roland didn’t fit. Was very heartened to get UNCEREMONIOUSLY very early on.

30. Very enjoyable end of afternoon mental trot. Like a lot of others (including Verlaine – yay!) I had Temporally as my LOI and didn’t understand the clueing till I read the blog – so thanks. Hardtop came just before. The original Fireman Sams were fun. Later remakes ghastly (see children’s videos passim). Me I’m more of a Huxley than a Peppa Pig-man. The football clue reminds me of one I made up and have been itching to share:
    West Midlands derby’s second-half Spanish scorer (5-5). Annoyingly the letter count is a giveaway.
31. I took the more drastic option this week, and bought a tablet. The larger keyboard should make me less prone to fat finger than is the case with my phone !
32. ….since NHO LINCOLN CENTER (sic) and needed V to additionally explain the parsings of TEMPORALLY, LIFESAVER (duh !), and EVADE.

    FOI ECHO
    LOI EVADE
    COD REITH
    TIME 18:48

33. What seemed impossible at first became solvable with enjoyable persistence. I also failed to parse ‘temporally’ and was grateful for the wordplay and crossers for the spelling of the dreadful dictator.
34. A triumphant 50 mins until I came here and realised I had somehow left EVADE a trifle short-changed in the filling-in department (SCITFID). I rather think I wouldn’t have got it if I’d tried. So not so triumphant — and a DNF, albeit a very enjoyable one.
35. What a fine crossword! Some really good clues ..20ac one of the best reverse hiddens I’ve ever seen.
    Loved it.
36. DNF in a little under 33 minutes. Frustrating. I couldn’t see how temporally parsed and was expecting a pink square there, even though I couldn’t see what else it could be. Alas the pink square was to be found elsewhere. My metamorphosis had metamorphosed into metsmorphosis. A shame, I thought this was a very decent offering, tough and no little application required to get round the grid.
37. You don’t open your mouth wide to have your temperature taken orally. You open it normally, slip the thermometer under your tongue, and close it again around the thermometer. Indeed, if you don’t close your mouth again you get a false reading. Mr Grumpy
    1. Quibble quibble quibble. The clue doesn’t say anything about opening wide, nor about not closing the mouth. It’s a crossword clue not an instruction manual.
38. Some superb clues here — loved the Villa clue though a v painful reminder of the 7-2 drubbing Liverpool got this season when I had two Liverpool defenders in my FFL team. Rather more nightmare than fantasy after that. Also REITH HO-HUM and many others. Wasn’t sure about TEMPORALLY though. For me, if so many superb solvers don’t understand the parsing it’s probably a bit too obscure for mere mortals comme moi. But a minor quibble — a lot of care and effort clearly went into constructing this little gem and for that many thanks setter (and of course Mr V)

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