Times 29092 – not so Tricky Thursday

117 comments on “Times 29092 – not so Tricky Thursday”

1. Enjoyable array of some obscure vocab with easyish clues. George, you’ve omitted the wordplay for 17a (which is screamingly obvious), and typoed ENERGY in 2d. With the large number of incorrect submissions today, I reckon many will have entered TAPESTRIES at 8d – which I nearly did…

   1. Ta – yeah, there is a trap for the lazy there. I can blame my friend’s dog jumping up on my lap for the sloppier than usual blog. P.S. I did not finish, but I enjoyed your recent Inquisitor.

      1. Damn, that’s what I did. I put it down to being distracted rather than lazy, though. 🙂

         1. Me too. I saw the “wall hangings” and entered TAPESTRIES, without paying attention to the fact that it was attempted rather than attempts.

2. Good effort at around 30 minutes with one pink square, which I think might trap others: TAPESTRIES not -D.

   I got TRANSVERSE with a fluke, I had TS as the initial letters of T{wenty} S{ix}. Clue says “26 initially”, and so that seems perfectly reasonable.

   And I lacked the GK for the GK Chesterton clue, which is apposite.

   Last few were in the SW, opened up by ESCAPEMENT, I tried SA-MEN, and BOKS but eventually decided to attach it by thinking of clock movements, WEIGHT fitted at the end which was another distraction.

   The usual crop of NHOs BAROUCHE, SCOTER and TURNCOCK, but gettable, as opposed to that damn rock in the QC yesterday. I learnt PEMMICAN from “The song of Hiawatha” which I sang at school many moons ago.

   The easy 15 letter clues opened up lots of the puzzle. LOI And COD ELIOT, FOI CRAVAT

   1. I think you are right about ‘26’. After all there were 2 Eliot’s so ‘initially would be ambiguous.

3. Not very hard, but some interesting words. I knew them all, except for the relevant definition of TURNCOCK, and I was hoping the blog would enlighten me as to why COCK is “mate in Peckham.” I did try to look that up…

   1. Collins dictionary has for cock: British informal, a friend, mate or fellow. So I figured it just referring to a colloquialism.

      1. D’oh! Thanks. I should have been able to put two and two together, as I’d actually seen that in Collins and it should certainly have been enough, but somehow the specificity of “Peckham” had me looking for something more.

         1. It’s very Estuary English, though also a standard bit of schoolboy bullying: “wotcha cock” followed by a knee to the groin. Painful memories!

      2. But why Peckham specifically?
         I took it to be a London thing (as specified by the clue). And as a Londoner I would certainly expect to hear it in the East End, but not south of the river.

   2. “Where’s the stopcock?”
      “I dunno, cock!”

4. A fail. I’m one of the lazy ones who didn’t read the wordplay for 7d closely enough, just seeing ‘wall hangings’ and thinking “Easy!”. A few not so common words / more difficult clues like SWITCHBACK which I was pleased to get and some compensation in learning what PEMMICAN is.

5. Around 40 minutes. Reasonably straightforward. Able to parse most as i did them. FOI ESCAPEMENT was a write-in because of its previous appearances. VANCOUVER ISLAND has very simple wordplay in that “is light” makes it an island and Vancouver is a familiar Canadian name. 2D is also reasonably obvious. You get a lot of crossers ensuring good progress.
   Thanks G

6. Another TAPESTRIES here. This was mostly easy up until it wasn’t, with the clock thing, TURNCOCK and SWITCHBACK (not sure a switchback railroad and a big dipper are the same) taking me to my non-finish in about 25. Some terrific clues, thanks George for the blog. Are people from Peckham occasionally disadvantaged when travelling by assuming that COCK is universally a word for mate?

   From Desolation Row:
   Praise be to Nero’s Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
   And everybody’s shouting, which side are you on?
   And Ezra Pound and T. S. ELIOT, fighting in the captain’s tower
   While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
   Between the windows of the sea, where lovely mermaids flow
   And nobody has to think too much about
   Desolation Row

   1. See my comment below re SWITCHBACK.

   2. You didn’t risk the “gentle like a fawn” from Ballad in Plain D then. He did say himself that he was a schmuck to write it. Would have been a great song without the “parasite sister” comments.

      1. TBH I didn’t remember the fawn ref but for me it’s not a song that endures. You probably saw Guy and me talking about it a week or so ago, Guy said Dylan thought later that his comments were ignoble which is about right I think. About the sister and the mother. I suspect young Bob must have been a real handful. Probably still is, come to think…

7. 30 minutes, and I was going to say not difficult but I see now I was another to put TAPESTRIES at 8d.

   PEMMICAN has appeared here only once before, in a puzzle blogged by Peter B in April 2009 when I also didn’t know it.

   The only Chesterton character known to me is Father Brown but THURSDAY was easy enough to deduce from wordplay.

8. 13:41
   I got TAPESTRIED right when I submitted, but wrote in S when I filled in a hard copy. DNK TURNCOCK; Peckham puzzled me, but I assumed it was some sort of man on the Clapham omnibus. I finally got around to reading Chesterton’s book a few years ago, and found it increasingly tedious reading. I saw ‘clock mechanism’ and immediately typed in ESCAPEMENT without bothering to read the rest of the clue. Didn’t understand ‘dipper’ at all; only looking up SWITCHBACK now do I find that the UK and US have different meanings.

9. A quite easy DNF, if there us such a thing. Tapestries obviously, just seeing the plural in hangings and not really reading the clue. However also couldn’t find ELIOT in my head as “one of two writers” although I can’t think of others, so gave up while still inside 20′. Found the already mentioned NHOs from wordplay, though they did sound unlikely. Thanks George and setter

   1. Kingsley and Martin Amis, Washington and John Irving, Sinclair and C.D. Lewis, and D. M., R.S. and Dylan Thomas possibly.

      1. Yeah I meant whether there are any “other” Eliots. But I didn’t see the meaning of the clue anyway, though I’m surprised my alphabet trawl didn’t at least come up with Eliot as a possibility.

10. Tricky enough for me, and with a typo to boot. I wasn’t helped by taking unaccountably long to see FRICTION, with TURNCOCK and the quite strange MERC bringing up the rear.

    Thanks both.

11. 27 minutes, possibly avoiding the 8d trap because I was working my way up from the bottom at that point and saw the TRIED bit first. PEMMICAN reminds me of the Famous Five; fairly sure they packed it in their boat supplies on an adventure or two. Also lucky that I read The Man Who Was THURSDAY while on my hols this year. I think LOI TURNCOCK was my only unknown.

    1. I’m pretty sure that was Swallows and Amazons rather than the Famous Five, who weren’t very imaginative – they normally lived off rounds of sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer from obliging farmers’ wives!

       1. You’re quite right! Swallows and Amazons is stuffed with references to pemmican, but I can’t see it at all in the Famous Five books.

12. Well, I’ll be the first to say that overall I found this difficult, unable to finish and having to look up SWITCHBACK and TURNCOCK. In line with my less than stellar performance, I also shoved in TAPESTRIES.

    Epic fail in almost 45 minutes.

    I think ‘Peckham’ helps narrow down the clue to indicate that ‘cock’ is the sort of thing working-class Londoners would say. Not to say others from other regions of England wouldn’t say it, but it’s common in the Great Wen.

13. 6:36. Not so Tricky Thursday indeed. No quibbles. MERC LOI as I was stuck on BENZ!

14. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
    (The Waste Land, Eliot)

    20 mins pre-brekker. Nice and gentle, even the NHO Pemmican. Dried meat mixed with animal fat and fruit. Sounds yummy.
    Ta setter and G.

    1. Thanks for the information on PEMMICAN. I had always thought it was simply corned beef, as it possibly was when it featured in the S. & A. tales. Research indicated that the “fruit” was wild berries. Also the word itself comes from the Cree word for grease.

15. 12 minutes, but sadly I invented a bird called a PELICON and so my emergency food was PEMMICON. Doh!

16. I’m at least glad I wasn’t the only one to fall for the TAPESTRIES trap. That will teach me to just bung something in without fully parsing the wordplay in the name of achieving a good solving time (which I was pleased with until I saw the error).
    Four straight puzzles on the easier side this week makes me wonder if we are in for a beast tomorrow…

17. 9.15
    Not too tricky, apart from starting to write ASCOT in at 5ac before seeing there weren’t enough letters. I quite liked “rail union down” for RUN-UP, wondering why it was “former” until I realised that it had subsumed into the RMT in 1990.
    LOI TURNCOCK

    1. I always thought Ray Buckton of ASLEF was handicapped by the fact he didn’t have a magnificent trainy name like his rival Sid Weighell (you can guess how it was pronounced) from the NUR.

18. I think, george and all, that the SWITCHBACK clue references roller coasters, notably those at Blackpool, where there was one known as Switchback (cf the Texas original) and now one known as the Big Dipper. I was a fan of such rides, but lost my nerve about twenty years ago.

    Thanks george and setter.

    Let us go then, you and I, to Peckham, where ‘me ol’ cock’ can be heard as a term of affection.

    I was well on the way to a sub 9′, when I came to a halt at FRICTION / TURNCOCK, and eventually finished in 12’42”.

    1. I read there was a Coney Island roller coaster called that, but I always thought a switchback railroad was one that got up a hill by…it’s too hard to explain. Forward then back, slowly ascending, zig-zagging up a hillside. In the 90s I saw Springsteen when he was doing a solo tour at the Palais in St Kilda, Melbourne, next to Luna Park. He said it had been a long time since he’d looked out of his dressing room window and seen a roller coaster…Asbury Park indeed.

19. Another TAPESTRIES here but, in any case , I was never going to get PEMMICAN. Silly now that I see that it could have been worked out from wp. D’oh.

    I thought TRANSVERSE was a bit clunky, but I liked the two long clues.

    Thanks G and setter.

20. All good fun bar my tapestries crapestries.

    Thanks to George and the setter

21. Another failure to take advantage of an easy day.
    NHO TURNCOCK, PEMMICAN, BAROUCHE, SCOTER or that instance of THURSDAY but trusted the wordplay and got them all so was prepared to believe EDEY might be a word. Using Ed up when of course it was DG.
    And that after feeling so pleased with parsing TAPESTRIED.

22. Quick today, and managed to negotiate the wall hangings OK.
    Ruse/roos a very dodgy homophone indeed. Ruse rhymes with loose, and roos with ooze. Fortunately I like dodgy homophones..
    I agree that switchback/big dipper is referring to scary amusement rides and not roads. Or constellations.
    Barouche, a write-in for the G Heyer brigade.

    1. Or the insufferable Mrs. Elton, with her friend’s barouche-landau.

    2. Not according to me or Collins. The standard British English pronunciation of ‘ruse’ rhymes with ooze. You’ve gone all trans-Atlantic on us, Jerry.

       1. ODE and Chambers confirm. As do I!

          1. How strange, that so many have had it wrong all these years 🙂

             1. They were all out of step but Jerry 😉

       2. Hey, don’t blame us! It’s [ru:z] on this side [well, it would be this side, if I were there] too.

          1. Maybe dictionaries should just give alternative pronunciations without ascribing it to any specific country.

             I spent the first 20-odd years of my life saying ‘schedule’ the American way, thinking that you had a choice, like with ‘either.’ Of course, there is always a choice, but you can send funny and unintended messages.

             1. A dictionary giving alternatives? Whatever next?
                It flies in the face of their ceaseless quest to be the arbiters of truth in the English language, and anyone straying from that truth to be cast into the wilderness.
                Strange though that ODE, Collins and Chambers all seem to have different truths . . .

                1. Dictionaries don’t seek to be arbiters. They record.

                   1. Ok, they ‘record’ things. But they record different, often inaccurate versions of the same thing.
                      I wish we could just stick with the OED. It has 600,000 words in 20 beautiful treeware volumes, so it’s not going to miss very much out is it?
                      There’s no reason to head to Chambers or Collins. By doing so, we’re all sort of ‘hedging our bets’ in a sense, just to facilitate the eccentricities of a crossword-solve.

                      1. I agree with you about the OED. The written version is a thing of true beauty. Unfortunately I am reduced to using the online version now, which somehow is not the same, broken into segments as it is.
                         It wouldn’t do as a crossword reference, though: too many “obscurities.”

                      2. There is no such thing as an ‘accurate’ definition of a word. Language is almost always ambiguous, meanings change across geography and time. So dictionaries will inevitably vary and consulting a variety to try to understand a definition is perfectly valid IMO.
                         I love the OED, it’s a really extraordinary resource.

             2. Of course you have a choice. I hear both versions all the time. I say shedule (and ither, fwiw), and feel like a bit of an old fart sometimes. So what? No one really gives a sh** these days.

          2. The OED gives both pronunciations for the US, but only one for the UK. Strange to think I’ve been pronouncing it wrong (or as I prefer to think of it, differently) for 73 years, give or take.

             1. In matters of language there is no such thing as wrong.

                1. Try telling that to the Academie Francaise!
                   (OK, but no accents on my tablet)

                   1. The Académie Française is, in linguistic terms, a joke.

    3. Where I come from, ruse definitely rhymes with ooze, or lose!

       1. Same where everybody comes from, apparently.. still waiting for a fellow traveller

          1. Here I am, Jerry, I say ruse like loose. Definitely an allowable UK option.
             https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/ruse

             1. Thank you Pip. I knew I wasn’t completely alone 🙂

                1. ‘Allowable’ be damned! If that’s how you say it that’s how you say it. As a linguist I’d be interested to study this rare and unconventional pronunciation, which seems limited to a small population of crossword enthusiasts. Fascinating.

                   1. Oops!

       2. I think it depends on where it appears in the sentence? ‘It was ruse to. . . would maybe be a hissy ‘s’ because the hard ‘s’ and the ‘t’ sounds a bit ugly. But ‘it was obviously a ruse.’ might be a hard ‘s’ because there’s nothing following it and it closes the sentence more effectively.

23. About 15 minutes, but completed with very little confidence in several answers.

    – Didn’t know the Chesterton reference for THURSDAY, but the wordplay was kind and the checkers helped
    – NHO TURNCOCK, and still not quite sure about the turn=shock equivalence
    – Also NHO PEMMICAN, which I parsed but thought looked an unlikely word
    – Those two uncertainties made me less confident about SWITCHBACK
    – Relied on the wordplay for ESCAPEMENT, BAROUCHE and SCOTER

    I parsed TRANSVERSE in the same way as glh, but I’m intrigued by Merlin’s logic above, which seems equally plausible.

    Thanks glh and setter.

    FOI + COD Cravat
    LOI Turncock

    1. People used to say ‘That gave me a nasty turn!’ meaning nasty shock. I think that’s the sense intended…

24. 18 minutes, briefly trying BENZ for MERC. LOI a constructed PEMMICAN. It was COCKER rather than COCK in Bolton. I vaguely knew of a SWITCHBACK ride being an alternative to roller coaster, a recollection from my Blackpool days. I thought I was on for a sub 10, but I don’t have the concentration these days. Thank you George and setter.

25. A very rapid for me 8:12 but with a careless typo in my rush to the finish line. I knew all but the carriage of the unusual words but they were all generously clued.

26. If the final letter’s wrong, but it makes no odds to the puzzle, then as far as I’m concerned it’s right… so happy days with either TAPESTRIES or TAPESTRIED. DNK SCOTER, which finally beat me, but otherwise an easy romp in under 10 mins.

    1. Nope. The wordplay includes “son attempted” which gives TRIED, and the definition “having wall hangings”, which doesn’t give the S ending. Sometimes, the VAR computer says no!

27. Five unusuals there for me, so no total biff today. Liked ‘in time’s nick’, very droll.

    21 minutos.

28. 6:39. An interesting puzzle, which somehow managed to be very easy in spite a smattering of funny words. I didn’t know what a SWITCHBACK was, had never come across TURNCOCK or PEMMICAN (thank goodness for very clear wordplay!). Or WATER (as opposed to WATERING) HOLE, come to that.
    I tried Chesterton’s Father Brown short stories once, but didn’t get far. I thought they were silly and boring.
    Relieved to have avoided the TAPESTRIES trap: just the kind I’m very prone to falling into.

29. 30:35
    NHO pemmican. Avoided the tapestries trap.
    Thanks, g.

30. DNF. Another TAPESTRIES. I knew I needed to check that one – but then didn’t.

31. 43;28 for me. plenty of NHOs which were ultimately gettable from wordplay. LOI the NHO SCOTER. Cant say I really got on with this puzzle -didn’t like the writer clue ELIOT but I guess with the link to TRANSVERSE it was more solvable than might have been.

    I grew up in Southport , a place which is like a Berni Inn to Blackpool’s Wetherspoons but despite the then existence (controversially knocked down) of antique rollercoasters I never knew that SWITCHBACK was a synonym and cant say I’ve ever heard it used.

    I spent ages trying to solve the Peckham one using T*****IE or variants thereof a Peckham Rye being an item of neckwear – I thought this was poor – I live in SE London and have never heard the word cock used in that context and I would more associate it with Bet Gilroy in the Rovers Return.

    Anyway cheers GLH good show in talking us through this.

    1. The third point on my Lancashire upbringing is Southport (KGV 1957-1964), before the steak bars. Favourite restaurant The Boulevard Grill.

       1. I’ve been to Southport a few times but never seen the sea.

          1. Head west from the Pier and see whether you encounter the sea or Ireland first. It could be either.

    2. I first thought of the TV comedy Desmond’s with its humorous Peckham Prince.

32. Avoided the wall-hangings trap. NHO SCOTER which I had to confirm was indeed a duck with Chambers, so a technical DNF. A pleasingly steady solve. But I’m not keen on brand names like MERC creeping in to the Times Cryptic. Is it a recent relaxation of the rules, I wonder? Where will it stop?

    1. Brand names have been appearing regularly in the Times crossword for at least 15 years.

33. Regarding the Peckham issue, I’m reminded by gnomethang and ulaca of a Liverpool quip:
    Geography teacher to cheeky pupil: “Where’s Sarawak?”
    Pupil: “I dunno, cock!”
    I was told this one when at uni there in the 60s and I quote it as evidence that the Peckham connection is perhaps misleadingly London-centric.

34. Very easy I thought.
    12a Merc, BIFD. We must have had it before as I’ve added it to Cheating Machine in the past.
    20a Transverse was very easy, and gave me the TS which made 26a Eliot easy too, but I never parsed the latter; too obvious to waste brainpower on (it is in short supply here.)
    29a POI, The man… Thursday. HHO but never read.
    3d NHO Turncock, but worked it out. Added to C.M. Looked it up; he activated the fire hydrants as appropriate. I guess so that people don’t turn them on for fun when the weather’s hot. Spoilsport!
    9d PEmmICAN:
    An incredible bird is the pelican
    His bill can hold more than his belly can
    He can hold in his beak enough food for a week
    And I never can see how the hell-he-can.

    1. Nearly right:

       A wonderful bird is the pelican.
       His bill will hold more than his belican.
       He can take in his beak,
       Food enough for a week,
       I’m damned if I know how the hell he can!”

35. Thanks for the blog. Enjoyable crossword, but RUN UP would have worked much better as a down clue rather than across.

36. 22.28, a lot of it spent on 1a 3 and 4 which didn’t want to emerge from the shadows, and SUMPTUOUS, where I spent an age trying to get it from an anagram of AMOUNT plus O US. There isn’t one, it seems.
    Just as well nobody, it seems, tried to work George into 20a: that’s the other Eliot, of course.
    Cock was a common enough salutation even in genteel St Albans when I was growing up. Might have migrated from Peckham, I suppose.

    1. In terms of the river, south is south and north is north, so I doubt it.

37. Yes I biffed TAPESTRIES.

    No, I don’t want to talk about it.

    Also, PEMMICAN is an extremely silly word. More of this sort of thing please. 🙂

38. DNF

    TAPESTRIES of course. Annoying having successfully negotiated five unknowns and stopping the clock at just under 24’.

    Good puzzle, thanks G and setter.

39. 16:50 – a brisk romp in spite of some less/un familiar but generously clued vocab. PEMMICAN brought back memories of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, a series which is no doubt considered unsuitable reading these days for a variety of unconvincing reasons.

40. As I recall, a diet of pemmican was one of the contributing factors to the demise of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the south pole. They slowly starved to death and suffered from scurvy whilst Amundsen had peas in his pemmican rations to prevent it.

    1. Lovely stuff – this is the kind of knowledge I love to come here and read.

    2. Many sources describe traditional pemmican as containing dried berries. Robert Peary, Ernest Shackleton and Alexander Mackenzie all were successful explorers using pemmican.

    3. Absolutely – The reason I know the word is from watching ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ what must have been decades ago now.

       I know “barouche” as well from reading a lot of 19th century French fiction – all the posh people ride around in barouches. and “scoter” because I’m a nature buff.

       The only NHO for me was “turncock”, but I got there eventually from the word play and having all the checkers.

       However, I have just noticed from re-reading comments here that I screwed up; yes – tapestrieS

41. I had Merc(edes)

    1. So did we all .. but the wordplay is MERC(hant)..

42. I managed to avoid the wall hanging trap as, like Gothic, I clocked the attempted bit of the wordplay first. I knew Chesterton’s Father Brown, but not THURSDAY, however Endeavour and the checkers came to the rescue. PEMMICAN was vaguely remembered once I’d assembled it. FAWN was FOI and the unfamiliar TURNCOCK was LOI. 15:24. Thanks setter and George.

43. All but one clue completed very quickly this morning, and I was sure I’d finish, but it was not to be – I simply couldn’t bring to mind the clock mechanism – previously encountered only here a few months or it may be years back. I had all the crossers and the MENT ending, and the ES beginning, but never thought of cape for SA. So the fact that I fell into the careless TAPESTRIES trap is neither here nor there, though ironic, since I carefully parsed the TAPE S part of it! A lovely pair of puzzles this morning – Jimmy’s Quick Cryptic is also great fun.

44. As with others, mostly straightforward, but slowed down a bit in the NW corner by the LOI and NHO TURNCOCK, for which I needed all the checkers and still wasn’t fully confident about, although I could see how a ‘turncock’ might be somebody who turned a water supply on or off, and vaguely remembered ‘wotcha cock’ as a term of address in my distant youth – short for ‘cock-sparrow’ maybe?

45. Another silly pink square on the wall hangings clue, and I’d spent an age working out PEMMICAN, MERC and TURNCOCK.
    Drat! Not a good week, and we will no doubt get a SnITCH>120 tomorrow.

46. 23’09”

    Got NHO TURNCOCK and ESCAPEMENT from wordplay but they both sounded plausible. Surprised MERC is allowed?

    Thanks setter & blogger

47. 23’50”
    Got off to a flier, stayed on well.

    I’m not a fan of unchecked letters in obscurities tripping up the unwary, but here the setter has flagged the d with both the past tense and the ‘having’, so I’m very surprised so many stumbled. Then again, I’ve had the advantage of years of highlighting such things to exam students.
    Thank you Jack for unearthing PEMMICAN from 2009; that’s where I must have seen it as I never missed a puzzle in that period.
    14d was a gimme as I have an Arnfield gravity version in Lego just to my right; for clock fans there are some beautiful tear-shaped, brass examples in video clips on the interweb.
    If your artist’s tin lacks A Piece of White Chalk, Chesterton’s short story has the solution.
    Thanks to Myrtilus for the fearsome quote, setter, lots to like, and George.

48. DNF. Revealed PEMMICAN (just didn’t sound like a word), TURNCOCK and SWITCHBACK. Pleased to get everything else, eventually. Couldn’t parse RUN-UP or TRANSVERSE – thanks G. SCOTER and BAROUCHE were new to me, so… four new words today – I’ll take that! Thanks all.

49. 46.09 with two pink squares for TAPESTRIES and SUMPTIOUS, which I’ve misspelt before. SCOTER and TURNCOCK were new and some of the other obscurities took a while to come to mind. FRICTION was slow too. ELIOT and TRANSVERSE were the last two. Thanks glh.

50. Under thirty minutes I think, but untimed as completed in two sessions. TURNCOCK and finally FRICTION held me up quite a bit, but my pleasure at finishing was somewhat diminished by joining the long list of those who entered TAPESTRIES.

    1. Managed to finish this. Took a while.
       LOI ELIOT.
       And of course I had TAPESTRIES which was quite late in and with a sense of relief- should have parsed it.
       I live in SE London and a while ago in Forest Hill, next door to Peckham. I’m still wondering why the setter chose Peckham to clue Cock this way. Did it ever occur in Only Fools and Horses?
       David

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