Times 29104: Trickyish Thursday?

67 comments on “Times 29104: Trickyish Thursday?”

1. 50 minutes, so not particularly easy for me but I got through it without error.

   I didn’t know AKEE so my parsing of OAK TREE was incomplete. This may well have been its first appearance here but since it’s part of the word ‘parakeet’ it’s not easy to isolate in the archive.

   BLACK MARIA is in the ODE as a card game, and also as the name given to the Queen of Spades within that game. For those who may not know, ODE and Collins are the two official reference sources for The Times 15×15 and QC puzzles, however it wouldn’t be unusual for something only in Chambers to creep in occasionally.

   1. Thought it was the COD not the OED they used, Jackkt?
      If they use the OED, no need for anything else!

      1. Sorry, Jerry, that was a double typo which I have corrected. It was supposed to be ODE (Oxford Dictionary of English), the single volume edition, not the massive multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary. The Concise was certainly a cited source when I started here but I think they moved up to the slightly larger ODE at some point – the same volume Susie Dent used to use on Countdown before they computerised. Certainly I’ve seen many words and meanings in Times crosswords that are taken from the ODE rather than the Concise Oxford.

         The state of Oxford Dictionaries is a bit of a mess now as the printed editions haven’t been updated in years and online versions cost a lot money and are an unknown quantity.

         1. In the UK if you have a library card you get full access to the OED, normal price is a tenner a month. I use mine all the time.

            1. My library withdrew the service about 10 years ago but my interest is mostly for crossword purposes and the OED is OTT for that as The Times limits itself to a smaller range of words.

               The shame is that the printed ODE and Concise were last revised in 2010 and 2011 respectively and we no longer have access to the updated ODE (if such a thing still exists) online. In its last incarnation it was available as Lexico which then became subsumed into dictionary.com and seems to have disappeared completely.

   2. Don’t trust me on this but if you search using a space before AKEE and putting it in speech marks – ” AKEE” – then only today’s crossword comes up without any of the parakeets.

      1. Thanks. I should have done that. I tried using quotation marks including a space afterwards which brought up a few hits but not including today’s puzzle.

         That you only found today’s puzzle suggests this was the first time out for AKEE.

         1. Not that this would have helped, but AKEE is the same thing as ACKEE, which we’ve had three times in Mephisto. It’s mentioned in “Jamaica Farewell” by Harry Belafonte – no idea how well known the song is but we used to sing it at school and the lyrics have stuck in my mind from then (“A(c)kee, rice, salt fish are nice and the rum is fine any time of year”).

            1. We sang it at school too. I thought it was “salt fish on ice”!
               32 mins, nice puzzle.

               1. I Googled the song just to make sure I hadn’t misremembered the a(c)kee bit, and there didn’t seem to be a consensus on several of the lyrics including “are nice” vs “on ice”. Perhaps “are nice” is slightly better as it’s a (mild!) compliment that fits with the rum then being described as fine.

                  1. Good point.

            2. Lovely song. Well known in the US. There’s also “carry me ackee to Linstead Market, not a quarter worth sell”.

               1. Knew that song but never knew what it meant.

2. 25:38 and I reckon George’s “trickyish” could be shortened by three letters.

   Struggled from go to whoa but maybe should have been a bit quicker on a few of the half-knowns. Didn’t help matters by taking forever to see RELAYED from which BLACK MARIA quickly followed.

   Felt a bit like a Friday but then at this time of year every day feels like a Friday.

   Thanks George and setter.

3. Got all but NE corner in under 60 minutes but spent another 60 minutes on the rest. Could not parse LOI LIGHT YEAR and had no idea if it was right. Thought it was wrong until an hour or so after finishing when I saw the light. All the goods gets one befuddled. I had MIXED BLESSING early but working on the NE corner I couldn’t see how the X was correct. I finally biffed BLACK MARIA as NHO card game. Until I got MAXILLA I thought a number of my answers might be wrong. NHO COMTE and got tricked by AYAH in the middle including housemaid first letter so no real definition.
   Thanks G

4. Well it all looks pretty straightforward now, but it took me roughly 70 minutes (over a two-hour period involving a lot of coming and going, which never helps) and for a long time I feared an epic fail. Got there in the end and felt quite chuffed to get the congrats! message. So much very clever cluing, often too clever for me but eventually I ground it out. Thanks g, I’m ignoring your time!

   From I Was Young When I Left Home:
   I was young when I LEFT home
   But I been out a-ramblin’ round
   And I never wrote a letter to my home
   To my home
   Lord to my home
   And I never wrote a letter to my home

5. 28:09. Like Lindsay, looking at the puzzle now it seems more straightforward than it did whilst solving. However looking further I think it’s some of the tricksy definitions that caused me problems, e.g. “a good, good way” for LIGHT YEAR, “a series of grunts” for OINKING and “Feeding time” for SHROVE TUESDAY. Seeing as I find myself with one of the worst personal NITCHes possibly I’m better at those puzzles that allow for more biffing.

6. Took me about an hour. MACE went straight in but then it took a long time to get a second one. Like others, I’ve never heard of BLACK MARIA as a card game but I knew the police van. FLEECIEST (or at least the FLEET bit) took far too long, as was the MOONS part of MOONSTRUCK. But all correct.

7. 64 minutes, but with ENFILADES left open as there were other possibilities for the vowel order and I registered my protest against an obscurity being clued as an anagram with several possibilities by going on strike. MAXILLA POI. OAK TREE solved itself, which was as well.Hard. Thank you George and setter. Don’t you go on strike too.

8. Took the best part of an hour with a breakfast pause; very few easy ones but only a couple of eyebrow raisers (RELAYED – perhaps a bit of a stretch to describe “reed” as an “orchestral part” – “musical” or “instrumental” might have been more precise). Thanks G and setter.

9. About 25 minutes.

   – Didn’t know BLACK MARIA as a card game and took a while to remember it as the police car
   – Relied on the wordplay for the unknown MAXILLA, and even then I didn’t immediately see how ‘funny’ can equate to ‘ill’
   – Couldn’t have told you what ENFILADES means
   – NHO the akee fruit, but OAK TREE had to be

   Thanks glh and setter.

   FOI Stour
   LOI Maxilla
   COD Mixed blessing

10. I too remember BLACK MARIA as a card game, and it being something to do with the queen of spades. I can also just about remember the police van, although that may have been in films – nowadays you get ghastly vans with single cells inside.

    I really liked this puzzle, having been initially crestfallen after not getting any for a while. But STOUR was FOI, having lived in Suffolk, and the crucial breakthrough came with the brilliant IN VINO VERITAS.

    19’03”, thanks george and setter.

    1. There’s another Stour in Worcs.

11. Fun puzzle this, enjoyed it. Frog went in with a shrug, wondering what orf meant..
    My father told me there is no such thing as a white lie, you are either telling the truth or you aren’t and motivation is irrelevant. I tend to agree though it has caused one or two awkward moments…

    1. That’s all well and good until you are invited back to a New Year’s Eve party you really don’t want to go to again.

       Your dad clearly wasn’t a lawyer or a judge…

       1. Just decline. No need to lie, is there?
          Silence is very helpful sometimes..

12. A well-deserved DNF, with one very daft mistake making another answer impossible. Roll on Christmas!

    Thanks both.

13. 15:21. I must have been on the right wavelength for a change.

    COD: IN VINO VERITAS

14. 9:25. On the wavelength. Liked IN VINO VERITAS.

15. Gave up on the hour with pitifully few complete. Now that I look at it, nothing was actually all that horribly hard. Must be a wavelength thing.

16. 21:05. Yes. Definitely tricky. MAXILLA went in with fingers crossed as I didn’t know the bone and couldn’t equate ILL with “funny”. It still looks odd to me. But otherwise good fun. Thanks George and setter.

17. Found this tricky and ENFILADES was a case of my guessing the order of the vowels came good. I did a have a fat finger issue solving on my phone but knew what the answer was so I’m claiming the win!

18. 26.49, a lot of it spent (as with others, it seems) in the NE, though I knew AYAH. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d noticed I’d entered the last day before Lent with a T at the end.
    My Cornwell inspired knowledge of ENFILADE is that it’s firing along a line of soldiers, something you don’t want to be caught in. I was therefore put off a bit by “drills”, which looks a bit iffy for shoots. But hey ho.
    MAXILLA held me up because “greatest” is usually ALI, and funny is very odd for ILL. COMTÉ, it turns out, is in Tesco’s: maybe I’ll try it, but that spelling’s daft. Needs a P.
    Should have remembered my alternative Daisy, Daisy: “They’ll tie you up with wire, inside a Black Maria”, but I was too busy trying to work the Met or something into the answer.
    All rather sticky progress.

19. Well over an hour. Very hard crossword.
    Thanks, g.

20. DNF. 27a Left. Never occurred to me. Doh! Clever.
    6d Mixed Blessing. I didn’t see where the Mixed came from. Bother.
    7d Relayed. As Inverleith says above, is Reed part of an orchestra? Part of an instrument, yes.
    10d In Vino V. More litotes after yesterday?
    22d Narco. I thought a narco was a cop? Looked it up; it is both.
    23d Frog LOI apart from 27a. “To and fro” didn’t at first come to me. I hadn’t been sure of 24a Roaster, but the frog convinced me.

21. 58:15. I’m a yank who has fallen in love with cryptics over the past year. I’ve reduced my average from around 2 hours to around 30 minutes in that time. I really, really wish cryptics got greater traction in The States because they’re an incredible test of wit and knowledge far superior to what’s required in the NYT crosswords. Sorry to say this one was a perfect example of why they don’t. SHROVE TUESDAY, BLACK MARIA, COMTE, ENFILADES, STOUR, IN VINO VERITAS, PASSATA; c’mon, it’s just too much.

    Again, I fully embrace — and absolutely adore — that cryptics are quintessentially British and require all sorts of knowledge outside the typical American purview. I have happily taken on the task of acquiring that knowledge, and will continue to do so because it’s fascinating and fun. But after the torture of doing a puzzle like this one, I just wonder how much of a motivation The Times has to expand the audience.

    This isn’t about me. I will keep on keeping on. It’s about attracting more people like me.

    Despite the harsh words, thank you George and setter.

    1. I found this very tricky, and I’m having a bad week, but last week, I was all correct every day except for the beast that we had on the Friday.
       Keep going!

    2. Is it really torture? You finished in under an hour, better than I managed, and I would suggest occasionally difficult puzzles as part of the mix is what we sign up for here. Those of us outside the UK (I’m in Oz) accept there will be times when certain references elude us, but I don’t see how the audience is going to be expanded by eliminating any of the clues you referenced. Sure they were obscure, but isn’t that the point? All that aside, pleased to see you here and involved.

    3. Your in good company! Leonard Bernstein thought The Times, beside the Listener, was the greatest crossword in the world. There are rumours that when he and Sondheim were together, you couldn’t get anything out of them until they’d finished. Keep going – it’s worth it!

22. 27:22

    Slow to get going but improved considerably once there was some material to work with, and enjoyed how several answers just gave enough checkers to have a fair crack at another. Played a lot of BLACK MARIA in my youth (though we knew it by a far more risqué name), though wouldn’t have known what ENFILADES was/were or an AKEE was before coming here. Liked OINKING and COMTE.

    Thanks G and setter

23. another DNF
    A bad week compared to last week.
    Hoping for something more on my wavelength tomorrow.
    I’m going to to try and finish off the most recent Mephisto now.

24. 50 minutes and it did all seem rather tricky, but got there in the end. Had never heard of BLACK MARIA as a card game. ill = funny seemed funny, but I suppose it’s all right. In 23dn isn’t the definition just ‘Frog’, with the ‘possibly’ applying to ‘back’? But actually the solver could surely have omitted the ‘possibly’? I thought ‘dissimilar’ in 12ac was a rather dodgy anagram indicator. Isn’t ENFILADES about drilling as in firing?

    Yes I can never understand why cryptic crosswords haven’t really caught on in the USA. Indeed, why have they never caught on in European countries?

25. 27 – Tough, with very few collected on the first sweep. I thought AKEE might be a variant spelling of acai, and I took it on trust that Black Maria was a card game. I wasn’t aware of narco as a drug dealer so much as its law enforcement opposite. Does the “our dealer” suggest that this is exclusively UK usage?

26. Like our blogger, this took me a while to get into and I feared failure, but slowly things went in and eventually in nearly an hour it was done. Some fine clues included IN VINO VERITAS and ENFILADES and SPRING CHICKEN. The bottom left corner was last in as I was looking for a real bird not a ROASTER and didn’t think a roster was a table. Thanks George.

27. Black Maria is a family staple chez nous. It’s a game a little like Whist but with the value of any hearts you win counting as minus points, and the eponymous Queen of Spades the worst card of all. I suspect that our family has added our own little twists to the game over the years. I remember it well as the source of many apocalyptic family arguments.

    Nice puzzle. I biffed MAXODDA with zero hope of success, and I am not sure I’m quite as serene about ‘ill’ for ‘funny’ as some of you. But it’s Christmas, so I’ll let it slide.

28. MACE was FOI, then reasonable progress in the NW followed. The arrivals of SHROVE TUESDAY and IN VINO VERITAS were a big help. ENFILADES was unknown, but pronouncing it in a French accent seemed to confirm my arrangement of the spare vowels. MIXED BLESSING was the breakthrough in the NE, leading to MAXILLA, which I knew through having made an emergency visit to A&E to see a maxillofacial surgeon after a tooth extraction led to copious blood loss during the night, requiring stiches and a gel pack, although I also though ILL for funny was funny! COMTE then called up the BLACK MARIA. GRASS ROOTS and FROG were last 2 in and caused some puzzlement for a while. 29:52. Thanks setter and George.

29. Hard I thought – I had hardly anything filled in after about 15 mins and was going to flounce off to do something else instead. I then got MIXED BLESSING, LIGHT YEAR and FLEECIEST in a little burst of inspiration, and that seemed to open everything up a bit and I started to pick things off more quickly. Bravo for crossers.

    LOI FROG after finally seeing table=roster and getting the unknown fowl.

    26:13

30. Just trying to get a handle on the 15×15 having entered via the QC route – seems to me that my lack of French and Latin is going to be a handicap with these puzzles with several clues this week having key aspects – is it just the case that I need to learn some of these in the same was as musical notation, cricket terminology and the odd chess reference which I have picked up via the QC. Also NHO ‘Ayah’ – I assume its a Malayan word for housemaid – any context?

    1. I think the short answer to this is ‘yes’. I never did Latin at school but I have picked up a fair bit over the years of doing these things. ‘Ayah’ is the same: it seems to crop up here quite frequently, but I’m not sure I’ve ever come across it in the wild.

       1. I remember “ayah” from “The Secret Garden”.

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