Times 28,253: Dougal Where’s Your Troosers

67 comments on “Times 28,253: Dougal Where’s Your Troosers”

1. I liked it as a nice end to the week, especially Gleaned. Thanks for parsing Resemble,v-dog. Thanks for the puzzle, setter
2. Got off to a very slow start–FOI 3d!–and continued like that for maybe 20′. The last time a clue began “As…” I thought ‘You can’t fool me, it’s arsenic’, and of course it was ‘as’. This time it took ages before ARSENIC occurred to me. Took a long time, too, to get past BLACKLIST/BLACKBALL. I had no idea what Battersea was doing, but worrying about it kept me from seeing (LIKE MEN AND)*. A tough puzzle, with no clue outstanding perhaps, but I’ll give the COD to KENNELMAID.
3. Great puzzle… but off the wavelength, feeling puzzled all the way through. Particularly the NE, epsadrille/reassemble/oblivion/kilt the last 4 in; ready to get in a sulk over obscure Scottish words until I realised how unobscure it was
   Liked INSTATE when I saw it, liked ARSENIC, realise reading the blog I didn’t parse GLEANED, stopping at “picked up” and not knowing the post-harvest meaning.
   Thanks setter and blogger.
   1. At first I took ‘picked up’ to indicate a homophone, with ‘field’=LEA, which of course led nowhere. There’s a famous painting by Millet of gleaners. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/gleaners/GgHsT2RumWxbtw?hl=en
      1. I recognise that painting.
         And somehow picture it with a lion on the left, burping after eating a gleaner, as re-imagined by some cartoonist?
         I also briefly went down the homophone/lea blind alley.
4. Enjoyed chinwag, espadrille,egresses and kennelmaid very much but unfortunately there were twice as many I couldn’t crack. Thanks, Mr V , for breaking down and explaining what was really happening in this puzzle!
5. Excellent Friday fare. KENNELMAID LOI and COD.

   Thanks setter and V-Dog.

6. ….as there were a number I couldn’t parse, and I was completely wrong about instate. I also kept putting weighted in the wrong place, until I finally got it all the way over to the right-hand side. I couldn’t figure out armature and resemble at all, but they were the evident answers.

   Time: 62 minutes.

7. Same experience as galspray, but a little longer.

   Slight MER at V-Dog, whatever that may be…

   1. He invited that appellation in his blog a month or so ago, and frankly who could resist?
      1. It seems all the more appropriate when I blog a puzzle that contains KENNELMAID!
8. 52 minutes for this one. My only NHO was CELLARET. BRASS HAT was obvious but only managed to parse it post-completion.
   1. Obvious to some! I had to assemble it from the wordplay, but the association of brass with officer was helpful.
9. “Oh, I remember CELLARET,” I thought, after following the wordplay, “That’s come up before and I saw one in an auction recently, too!” And then I confidently wrote in cellarAt for no discernible reason. D’oh!

   Apart from that egregious bish, I was done in 30m.

10. Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reprov’d.

    30 mins precisely pre-brekker, so just right and great clueing.
    The ‘lately’ lying in state was lost on me, but the fault is mine alone.
    Thanks setter and V.

11. LOI CELLARET, which was a new one on me. KENNELMAID was also a guess. “Battersea” only brought to mind Whistler’s Nocturne Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge, but Turner painted that edifice as well.

    I take the two parts of BRASH AT separately: BRASH, “pushy” + AT, “busy with”—makes a rather improbable phrase if you join them.

    Edited at 2022-04-01 07:00 am (UTC)

12. No PRO FORMA exercise this
    Got a RUSH from this crosswording bliss
    Most ARTFULLY done
    As I SAID, it was fun
    I’m EMAILING a platonic kiss
13. Yes, a good test!
    Thank you, Verlaine, for GLEANED, the AT part of BRASS HAT and the LES bit of EPISTLES.
    NHO CELLARET. Sounds as antiquated as ‘radiogram’.
    I liked ARSENIC and was ready for it when I saw ‘As’.
    COD to RESEMBLE
14. Yes, the painting is justifiably famous but from somewhere I remembered that there is a journal in Jamaica called the Daily Gleaner.
    1. And for those with a taste for art-house cinema, “The Gleaners and I” was one of the final offerings from the great Agnès Varda.
15. 36 minutes with LOI OBLIVION. I would have spelt SWEETBRIER with an A. I doubt I’ve ever had to write it down though. DNK CELLARET but the clue and crossers were kind. COD to KENNELMAID. I found this a bit tougher than it looked. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2022-04-01 07:46 am (UTC)

    1. Yes, that would be my spelling too but luckily the setter spelled it out.
16. 33:06
    Enjoyable puzzle, which I solved while being pestered relentlessly by my cat, who wanted me to tickle her ears the whole time.
    Thanks, v.
17. It took me three goes to complete this puzzle, which reflects how far off the wavelength I was. On my third visit I finally finished with KENNELMAID and ARMATURE. CELLARET was indicative of my experience today — I thought to myself, maybe Claret for wine, stick el in it and what do you get? Nothing, move on…
18. Special effort today in order to prevent a complete week of DNFs and errors – I was a bit worried at the start, but got a foothold near the bottom, and 30 minutes flew by before I completed the lower half, but almost nothing up top.

    Managed to get ESPADRILLE, but still felt stuck, so I broke off and stroked the cat for a while – and I confess to solving REGROWTH whilst doing so. This finally triggered proper progress towards completion, finishing off in the NE with OBLIVION then RESEMBLE (where I took a couple of mins to properly solve before final-char completion). Phew – that was most enjoyable, also a much needed confidence-booster + Friday completion. Thanks V and setter

    Edited at 2022-04-01 08:24 am (UTC)

    1. By no means the easiest one of the week, either … “Shows what you can do when you try,” as my school reports always used to say
       1. As opposed to mine: “Try to show what you can do!”
       2. Mine always said “could try harder”. Perhaps I should put that into practice doing the crossword:-)
19. 10:59. Interesting puzzle.
    I had forgotten this meaning of ‘glean’ and just bunged it in based on ‘picked up’ and field=LEA. Fortunately we don’t have to show our workings.
    We have a piece of furniture which I think is a CELLARET but I still needed the wordplay for that one.
20. Well, I started off at a clip thinking, cor, this is easy for a Friday, then hit the brick wall that was the Eastern side. RESEMBLE, OBLIVION, KILT, GLEANED, ARMATURE, ARTFULLY (still can’t quite see why drunk=full?) and the excellent KENNELMAID all taking a while to fathom.
    I was sure Battersea referred to the dogs home but I didn’t see the anagram for ages.

    Great stuff. I liked ARSENIC.

    Thanks V and setter.

    1. That was a new one to me too.
       1. I’ve come across it in Mephisto, I think, and Chambers has it as “informal”. Mildly surprised it isn’t Shakespeare!
          1. It has come up before I think and is an easy one for me as it’s the Norwegian for drunk — fyll.
             Toughish today but fun.
       2. That’s interesting Olivia. “Full” was easily the most prevalent term for drunk in my early years. Don’t hear it as much now, and had no idea that it was peculiarly Australian.
    2. Very Australian, but often qualified: full as a boot, full as a goog, full as a tick.
       1. A boot I get, could hold a fair bit o’booze! What the hell is a goog? I thought I knew my ‘strine. As for a tick, surely that wouldn’t hold much hooch!
          1. A goog is a googy-egg, a cackleberry (hen’s egg).
             If you’ve ever worked up north, had a tick latch on and not notice it until the end of the day, well, they’re pretty full. Grotesque and bulging ready to burst.
             1. Thanks for the goog. Re the tick, I’d stay down south, yoiks!
                1. It’s the ones that get you “down south” that are the most problematic, if you catch my drift.
                   1. I do, ouch!
21. A nice puzzle that took me two and a half minutes longer than our esteemed blogger. Having got none of the first half dozen or so I looked at, I did begin to wonder if this was an April fool.

    The SW corner also held me up before the word CELLARET (unknown to me) seemed plausible, and helped a great deal.

    KENNELMAIDEN was my COD for a great word and a really well-created anagram, and my penultimate entry, before ending on INSTATE.

22. 38:49 I was becalmed for an age in the SW corner until I eventually saw BLACKSHIRT and the K belatedly led me to KENNELMAID, my COD, although I also liked INSTATE and REGROWTH. I was bemused by the extra full stop on 28A and tried unsuccessfully to construct a reason for the answer to be ELLIPSIS while I had only the L for a checker. I never managed to parse RESEMBLE or BRASS HAT, so thanks for those, V. Great puzzle. Thanks to our setter too.
    1. A typo was my assumption, moved on and thought no more of it.
       Thinking now, it could have started off with a pair of ellipses between 26 and 27: different nationalities bring different drink devices – the clues could reasonably join together.
23. A very enjoyable puzzle with nothing too obscure. I needed help to parse ‘instate’ fully, so thanks to Verlaine for the elucidation.
24. Done on phone on TGV from La Rochelle to Paris. Much fun had. Thanks to all!
25. A very nice end to a fine week. I somehow learnt about the Jamaican Daily Gleaner as a schoolboy and have always thought it an excellent name for a newspaper – there’s a faint hint of Evelyn Waugh about it. COD KENNELMAID

    Tonight Matthew, I will be wearing a BLACKSHIRT, KILT and ESPADRILLES – a fitting outfit for April Fool’s Day.

    Thanks to Verlaine and the setter.

    1. And don’t neglect to don a Brass Hat if going out in case the weather turns to hail.
26. 78 minutes. I developed a “this is Friday so it’ll be hard” mindset, so many took longer than they should have. Still I was happy to have finished with KENNELMAID my last in; I didn’t spot the now obvious anagram for a while and couldn’t get “Power Station” out of my mind. CELLARET and the ‘Fragrant wild flower’ were both new but the usual crossers and wordplay helped. Favourite was ESPADRILLE.
27. First decent time from me for a while when tackling a tough puzzle. 19:36 but BLACK instead of BRASS HAT.

    COD: ARSENIC

28. Yes Martin and when I was a kid I thought it was the “daily cleaner” (my father had to do a lot of travelling in the W.I. at the time).
    1. The Daily Cleaner! I like that!
29. Thrown by the full stops in the clue for CELLARET, although to say that that was the reason why I needed aids would be a bit silly. Also needed aids for the KENNELMAID and even after using them I had three options and no clue as to which was the correct one. I googled KENNELMAID BATTERSEA and one of the replies pointed out the anagram, which I had missed. I’d thought that perhaps there was some literary connection. 68 minutes.
30. So I wasn’t the only one to miss the INSTATE nuance at first. We used to pass the Battersea kennels on the way to my paternal grandparents in Greenwich, otherwise I would have forgotten them. Quick start but slowed up a lot in the southern hemisphere. Good one. 24.24

    P.S. Since it’s April 1st, a tip of the hat to the late Dorset Jimbo for his superb poisson d’avril a few years ago.

    1. Was one of the first things that popped into my mind when I noticed the date today.

31. Despite my very first record being A Scottish Soldier by Andy Stewart, I couldn’t see past The Magic Roundabout’s Dougal and this was my LOI, despite having one in my McWardrobe . . .
32. Felt somewhat off the ball today even though was the expected Friday fare.

    A bit of a clunker with KENNELMAID (which I would have thought was two separate words) — when thinking about Battersea, I’d completely forgotten about the dogs — could only think of the power station and musing whether or not it was in SW1 (think it’s SW8) — so with the checkers available (sans the M from ARMATURE), I’d entered KINAESODIC (which means ‘conveying motion’) with a vague notion that KIN = ‘men and women’ and baffled about the rest!

    No idea about that meaning of GLEANED (I also went for LEA = field), but needed that to finally get OBLIVION (and then RESEMBLE), and ARMATURE (and finally to figure out KENNELMAID)

33. Finishing a Friday puzzle in just under the hour would have been a good outcome but my multiple crossings out hid from me that I had spelt espadrille with two i’s and one l which gave me _i_aned for 17ac. There are no answers for this so I gave up in exasperation. Otherwise a most enjoyable puzzle. DNK cellaret. Only knew imitable from inimitable. Failed to parse resemble and instate. COD 5d because I was so pleased with myself for spotting it. We’ve now had As and He in recent weeks. Time to revise the Periodic Table. Where’s Tom Lehrer when you need him?
    Thanks to setter and Verlaine.
34. Took me two goes, but I got there in the end. The PDM for KENNELMAID was a real “That’s a word?!” moment, all the more so after having misread ‘woman’ as ‘women’ in the clue for a long time. Had to trust that CELLARET is a word and didn’t know the agricultural meaning of GLEANED, but there was lots of enjoyable wordplay and satisfying solves after not completing any crosswords this week.

    FOI Espresso
    LOI Brass hat
    COD Arsenic

35. Much more entertaining than yesterday. A few nice misdirections to trip up the unwary.
36. A rare treeware solve today and surprised to finish in just over the 30m, especially when the snitch has it over the 100. Might need to go retro and start buying the paper regularly again! Most enjoyable, no ‘unknowns’ and some pleasant ‘aha’ moments — as/arsenic for one and ‘battersea kennels’ for another. Thank you, setter, for the fun challenge and of course V for the entertaining elucidation.
37. A most enjoyable puzzle. I started off apace in the NW and didn’t slow much throughout the solve. The NE corner took longest, but once OBLIVION was in place, its resistance tumbled. CELLARET was a new one on me. KENNELMAID brought a smile. KILT was LOI and needed an alphabet trawl before the penny dropped. ARSENIC needed crossers before the Doh! moment. 25:31. Thanks setter and V.
38. So a fairly whizzy solve, apparently, for me in 15 minutes – only Monday, I think, was quicker. Possibly helped by not spotting the two dots on the CELLARET clue, the benefit of working on a less than HD screen.
    KILT my last in, terrified that it might be some abstruse Scottish word for bottom that I didn’t know. A much appreciated miniature, cheeky (?) little &lit when the light dawned.
39. 20:24, but in two goes separated by a visit from the postman. If I can ignore that break then it was a speedy solve for me — particularly for a Friday. Only CELLARET was unknown. It sounds like the sort of word Nancy Mitford would have have despised and the sort of thing that would have been banished from her presence.
40. The snitch put me off, but it is so cold outside today that the puzzle was a welcome pastime, and I found the answers slowly dripping into place. Very pleased to finish, even though quite a bit of the parsing didn’t occur to me. Took me about an hour. Thanks, Verlaine, and setter.
41. Trouble in the SW put paid to a decent time. I always struggle with wines as a non drinker, but I had heard of this one, but not the furniture. LOI FREE REIN had to rack my brains to get the REIN bit.
42. Fun crossword. I didn’t know CELLARET and I don’t know that I’ve seen INSTATE before, just Reinstate. I’d forgotten about the dog’s home so the Battersea thing went over my head although given the anagrist it had to be KENNELMAID. I did it in two sittings so no time.
43. 31.56. A very satisfying puzzle.

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