Times 29179 – OK, but how about the parsing?

116 comments on “Times 29179 – OK, but how about the parsing?”

1. Didn’t know the meaning of ‘ in one’s cups’ but I assume it means drunk. NHO DIABOLO but had to be.
   Pretty much everything else was a write in.
   Thank V and setter.

2. 13:23
   I could have done this faster if I hadn’t put in COME instead of TURN. I finally decided to check, and changed to TURN, and the NW was filled in almost instantly. (ODE has ‘come (or turn)’, and 9 of its 10 example sentences have ‘come’.) I didn’t understand the TV part of 10d, until I came here and remembered (from a cryptic here) side=channel. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lower SNITCH number.

   1. You have a good memory. With the benefit of a search algorithm, there have only been two lower than the current value of 47:
      – Crossword 28183 with a SNITCH of 46 on 10 Jan 2022, and
      – Crossword 27181 with the all-time SNITCH low of 44 in on 29 Oct 2018.
      Both were on a Monday.

      And I guess we might still see today’s number drop 🙂

   2. How does IN = BELONGING TO?

      1. Scroll down to the same question I asked.

3. 6:55 is a weekday PB for me, so safe to call it a gentle one I think. The only hold-ups were having COME UP TRUMPS (which is how I use the expression), and thinking “west for example” would involve Mae, which it almost did.

   I only know of POETASTER from crosswords but it came in handy today. And was lucky enough to spot the “part of Ben” device straight away.

   Everything else was straight out of Quickieland, more of a skip down the hill than a walk in the park. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

   1. Congratulations, sir!

4. Cracking time, V – well done! Is that another PB after last Monday’s? (BTW, I’m guessing the top entry in your top 10 on the SNITCH is an anomaly and I should remove it.)

   I found this pretty easy, too. Just outside my top 10 times.

   Thanks for the blog.

   1. That is correct – I blogged puzzle 27847, and gave my time as 20 minutes. I’m not sure what the SNITCH did to get that time. If you look at the detailed solving times for 27847, I am not there at all.

      1. Hmm … sorry about the previous behaviour. I’ve now removed the spurious entry.

   2. Starry, if you’re in there and it’s no great effort, could you wipe out my “fastest three” times as well? There’s three bogus ones there from 2017, not sure what was going on at the time.

      1. Thanks – now removed.

   3. Ditto for my fastest!

      1. Ditto for the removal. Thanks.

         1. Hi starstruck – if you’re still looking in, you can also delete my top time when I accidentally submitted a Championship puzzle that I had already solved!

            The time of 3.35 does stick out a bit.

            Thanks

            Deane Short

            1. Only a bit 😉 But now removed.

               1. Thanks

         2. Ditto for my 4:38 from 2022. I have never managed to solve that fast. Today is definitely my PB.

            Thanks

            1. Done – and congratulations on the PB 🙂

               1. Thanks

   4. Hi Stuart, I seem to have a bogus fastest time of 3 minutes and something from 2017 which is most implausible, if you wouldn’t mind deleting. Thanks.

      1. Sure – done 🙂

5. 13.25, or just under two Galsprays. All good fun and, as we all agree, very much on the easy side of the ledger. Thanks vinyl.

   From Talkin’ New York:
   I walked down there and ENDED up
   In one of them coffee-houses on the block
   Got on the stage to sing and play
   Man there said ‘Come back some other day
   You sound like a hillbilly
   We want folk singers here’

   And on that note I’m off to see A Complete Unknown again…

   1. Superb movie – it had me right from the start (the Pete Seeger in court scene). My mate, who is an absolute Bob ultrafan and veteran of countless concerts, also loved it; I was worried that with his incredible command of Bob detail he’d pick holes in it, but he didn’t.

      1. If any pedant wants to get picky about what actually happened there are lots of opportunities, but who cares? I thought it really captured the vibe of the time and it also captured the way Dylan was driven to break out of the highly restrictive ‘folk’ straitjacket in the most confrontational Dylanesque way imaginable, and open up his horizons. Loved it just as much the second time.

         1. Exactly what my mate said! Glad you enjoyed the second go round 🙂

6. Thanks for the blog and especially for the tip for QC solvers, this is probably the third 15×15 I’ve ever finished (I very rarely try).
   I got through in a bit over 36 minutes and made slow but steady progress throughout. There were a few clues I couldn’t parse (IN SIDE for TV channel, and ALIASES) but everything else came with enough thinking and crossing letters, so I’m quite satisfied.

7. About 60 minutes which should have been more like 35 to 40 minutes (around my personal best). My problems were mostly due to biffing wrong answers in the top of the puzzle. I put COME instead of TURN and then since 1ac started with B biffed BILLINGSGATE for aggressive, put in LIONESS for TIGRESS and thought the female bird was REE instead of HEN. I biffed PRAISED for elevated. I battled with this for quite a while and it wasn’t until I got MOUNTAINSIDE that I started to clean up the mess. It cost me nearly 30 minutes for quickly filling in quick guesses.
   Thanks V.
   Shouldn’t the definition of 21ac be “where boats are tied up” as “a space” is needed for the wordplay. Also in 10dn ‘s perhaps should be removed to give “Perhaps part of Ben”.

   1. I was going to say the same about Ben; and you’re right about MOORAGE.

8. A huge PB for me. Not even ruined by an erroneous COME UP TRUMPS which was soon corrected by a kindly clued ‘old relative’. I could have probably shaved a minute or two off that if I hadn’t focused on the wrong literals for MOUNTAINSIDE and EXTENSION and didn’t do a double check on BRITISH that it really was that easy. I even double checked I hadn’t opened the QC by mistake.

   It would great to get the message out to the QC stalwarts to give this one a go.

   DIABOLO is a word I’ve not heard since school. If I remember correctly they were popular around the same time as the yo-yo craze of the late 90s. Although both have had various peaks of popularity before and after that time.

   From BUTTERSCOTCH to CRIMERA. COD POETASTER

   Thanks blogger.

   1. Thanks – they did, and we did and enjoyed the ride!

9. Can someone explain ‘belonging to’ in 10d. I get the mount/stage, a/area and side/tv channel but can’t put it together. Having trouble accounting for the ‘in’. I’m probably being slow!

   1. I also had it as a query and am still not sure I’ve resolved it. There are probably examples of substitutions where it works, but I haven’t thought of any yet. The only direct dictionary definition (in = belonging to) I have found is in Collins on-line , but it’s meaning 17 of 22 as a preposition in the American English section – i.e. imported from Websters.

      1. Thank you. Perhaps someone may shed more light on it.

         1. Chambers definition 14 is “belonging to”. If you’re in a group, you belong to it, I suppose?

            1. Thank you. I also later thought of belonging to a (soccer/cricket) team, which fits maybe with ‘in side’.

            2. Thanks. Yes, that works. I knew there’s be a simple example but was unable to think of one at this time of day.

10. Also a very rapid 19:38.

    Actually knew of RHENIUM, but Rhodium also fitted, and “hod” for a female bird could well be some country slang for a female bird.

    COD TURN UP TRUMPS

11. 20 minutes, so also fast for me, but I parsed as I went (as far as I was able) as I never set out to break records. One of my delays along the way was caused by writing in MOORING at 21ac before reconsidering because of wordplay having previously considered MARINA like 0ur blogger.

    Another was failing to write in CHIMERA at 6dn which I had thought of immediately until I had all the checkers. This was because I was unable to parse it – my mistake was taking CH as ‘church’ and wondering how to get IME from ‘half of High Mass’.

    I also lost time trying to parse MOUNTAINSIDE before giving up on it and stopping the clock. I got ‘side’ as I’m perfectly familiar with that but I drew a blank on ‘stage / MOUNT’ (doh!) and ‘belonging to / IN’ as mentioned in my earlier posting.

    It may be a while since we had what some think of as a typical Monday puzzle, but I am more than happy for setters / the editor to jumble things up and not be predictable on any given day.

12. 9:01
    Very pleased to have gone under 10 minutes for the first time ever.

    1. Congratulations, and the first of many, I trust!

13. 14.13 so like others I found this a gentle delivery to get off the mark. That said I thought TURN UP TRUMPS and DIABOLO were good, and was about to biff MOORING until I stopped to think and realised how MOORAGE worked. Thanks V and setter.

14. 4.22, blimey. That’s over 30 seconds taken off my PB, which I only set last week. Helped by familiar treatments for crossword favourites like POETASTER.

    Thanks both.

    PS. ‘Space’ is wordplay, not definition, in MOORAGE.

    1. See KensoGhost above.

    2. Scorchio!

    3. Congratulations on the times! On fire like our blogger 🙂

15. 7’12”, 2nd fastest ever.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

16. 9:39
    Another PB to add to the club and my first under 10′.

    This is what it must be like for the speedsters, reading a clue and then immediately typing the answers. My cogs don’t rotate as quickly as theirs but it’s nice to peek behind the curtain every now and again.

    Hoping for something a bit stiffer tomorrow.

    Thanks to both.

17. Our revels now are Ended. These our actors,
    As I foretold you, were all spirits and
    Are melted into air, into thin air
    (The Tempest)

    15 mins pre-brekker. Only slight MER was at ‘belonging to’.
    Ta setter and V

18. 6:03. Just 5 seconds over my PB and I could have been quicker if I hadn’t had to change pens half way through. A fine example of a Quick Crossword in 15×15 format. Thanks Vinyl and setter.

19. 29 mins so pretty easy and straightforward as others have shown above. Well done all those with a PB today.

    LOI POETASTER was an unknown but worked out after a minute or two.

    I first whacked in MOORING which changed when I saw ENDED.

    THANKS v and setter

20. Yes, at 17 minutes indeedy a speedy solve for a slowcoach such as myself, so this must have been ultra easy. And that’s after a hectic Paddy’s Day weekend. How?

    Thanks setter for the breeze, and Vinyl.

21. 14 minutes, but then I do solve on paper and parse as I go along. The only pause was RECORDERSHIP, and that was only for a few seconds. A bit too Mondayish. Thank you V and setter.

22. A PB by miles at 09:04. I spent longer than that on Saturday’s QC!

    All parsed except MOUNTAINSIDE; grateful for the explanations of that above.

    Thanks vinyl.

    1. Don’t mention the Saturday QC! 🙂

       1. 😁🫢

23. Just outside PB at nearly 19 mins. All fully parsed though. Very easy.
    Held up by NHO pair DIABOLO and RECORDERSHIP. Was convinced the former would mean Bad Blood.
    Thanks both

24. Generally as a beginner I wouldn’t comment, but I can assure the blogger that for me this is not appreciably easier than days that are supposedly harder. Far too many synonyms needed. Thank you for your work, but this is not the sort of puzzle I enjoy or do well at.

25. Not fast, but finished, on one of my very rare excursions from the QC.
    Interesting that whilst it is clearly, as the Snitch shows, a very easy 15×15, I found a definite “step up” from the QC in clueing style, and some vocabulary. I doubt RHENIUM will make it to the QC any time soon, nor POETASTER, or at least not in the same QC! MOORAGE, NANKEEN DIABOLO also didn’t leap to mind, although kindly clued.

26. About 10 minutes.

    – Didn’t know in one’s cups=tight for UPTIGHT
    – Couldn’t tell you what RECORDERSHIP is and needed all the checkers before I got it
    – Like others, first put COME UP TRUMPS at first before UPTIGHT and NANKEEN forced a rethink
    – Remembered POETASTER from previous crosswords

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    FOI Butterscotch
    LOI Recordership
    COD Residence

27. 8:21 – and completed on my iPhone.

    COD: STEROID.

28. Not my fastest, but under 20 minutes (yep, 19:59). Got stuck on MOUNTAINSIDE cos I didn’t spot the Ben bit – sigh.

29. 17:41 …
    … but I was eating Weetabix, drinking latte and tuning the radio at the same time, so would have probably been a sub-15. Easy start to the week.
    Thanks, v.

30. 21a Moorage. Yes, marina didn’t fit but mooring did which delayed me. As jackkt said above.
    10d Mountainside, biffed. Thanks for the parsing vinyl.
    18d Diabolo, had forgotten about them, nice to be reminded.
    Thanks setter and blogger.

31. 03:30, so almost a PB. I’m normally too old and creaky these days to relish an out-and-out sprint, physical or mental, but this one barely touched the sides.

    1. Obviously not too creaky Tim. Superb time.

32. 11.41 – I don’t get much quicker. The abandoned “living persons” rule made me briefly wonder if I’d missed some startling news overnight, while I also briefly tried to fit in Quincy.

33. 11:24

    Another PB. Alerted by the QC blog to have a go for a quick time, so no striking through done clue numbers, and biffs for L2I, MOUNTAINSIDE STEROID.

    Thanks all

34. 40 mins and another PB. I enjoyed being able to get the more difficult words from the wordplay e.g. RHENIUM
    Thanks to setter and to vinyl1

35. 4:31 Third fastest ever for me too. I only paused to parse a few, like RHENIUM (I was looking for a ree too) and MOUNTAINSIDE, but in general a total biff-fest. I don’t do the QC but I can’t imagine it’s ever much easier than that. COD to POETASTER I think.

    1. The QC has the benefit of being a smaller grid, to be fair.

36. 10:20 – Roughly my terminal velocity, which says it all.

37. 10:59
    A new PB, beating my previous best by over 4 minutes.
    LOI was STEROID, which I did not immediately see, despite using a steroid inhaler for my own asthma!

    Thanks vinyl and setter

38. 9:44. Clearly well off the wavelength today! I got particularly stuck in the SW corner, taking ages over SLOVENE, STEROID and DIABOLO, and even longer over RECORDERSHIP, which I considered as an answer quite early on but couldn’t for the life of me figure out the wordplay.

39. I never thought 8:24 would feel slow!

40. 12:39

    I had already seen in the QC blog that this 15×15 had a very low Snitch, but I found that my first pass of acrosses yielded only two answers (PICKS, IMPORTANT). Thankfully, the downs were somewhat friendlier, providing plenty of much-needed checkers for the second pass. A few notes:

    TURN UP TRUMPS – like almost everyone solving this puzzle, started with COME UP TRUMPS which is surely the normal usage. I would struggle to use the answer in a sentence, whereas ‘Everything has come up trumps’ works easily.
    NHO MOORAGE – I had MOORING at first, but this was kyboshed by DIABOLO – I didn’t notice initially which for some time, had me thinking that 22d began with a G.
    RHENIUM was an educated guess. MOUNTAINSIDE was bunged in from the U T I and D checkers – didn’t bother to fully parse.

    Thanks V and setter

41. What’s the point of a crossword this easy? I prefer to have to work at it for a while. Buck up setter, you can do better than this.

    1. I think there is a definite point to crosswords this easy. I well remember, about 20 years ago, when I completed my first 15×15 which was a puzzle like this. The first ever completed, the joy, the ecstasy! At last I had finished one! From then on, I was absolutely hooked. I knew it could be done, and now I finish them all. THAT’s the point.

       1. Well said Robin!

          Edinburghian, I take your point, but if you have a look at the comments on last Saturday’s Quickie you’ll see that the setters are very much damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

          Anyway an easy Monday gives you a chance to catch up on the previous day’s Mephisto, if you’re looking for a challenge!

42. 10 mins. Possibly a PB but felt slow. Didn’t remember POETASTER being an inferior poet. I won’t call my wife (who’s doing precisely that at the moment in Gladstones Library) that in future…

43. I never knew that inhalers for asthma used steroids, indeed I had no idea what the treatment for asthma was, so 24ac delayed me for six minutes after I expected to finish in about 20. Was also unsure how in = belonging to in 10dn but now I’ve been told it’s obvious. Liked the POETASTER.

44. Yet another one with a PB breaking the twelve minute barrier in 11.53, beating my previous best by just short of thirty seconds. I think I was in the right frame of mind thanks to Vinyl’s heads-up that this was perhaps more QCish than 15×15 standard. It was fortunate that POETASTER has come up recently, otherwise this may have delayed me as it’s not a word that comes readily to mind.
    I must say I thought my best times would be a thing of the past, so it’s a nice surprise. Rejuvenated, my next objective is to beat the four minute barrier for the QC; my best currently stands at 4.14. It does I think make something of a handicap to solve with a pen directly from the paper, so this may preclude any improvement there.

45. 8.49

    Top three time I think (another COME which delayed things) but like Plymouthian there were definitely some non-QC bits in here, though easy when this is the nth time you’ve seen POETASTER. I remember in one of the v first puzzles I did, an answer was ELEMI which absolutely no one on the blog made any comment about, as if it were as common as “the”. RO(E)NTGEN was another example. I wish other NHOs stuck with me as well as those two have.

    Thanks Vinyl and setter

    1. I’ll never forget my first oread!

46. Over from the QC so thanks to those who signposted. Finished all correct in two sittings. Held up by SLOVENE, RHENIUM and TURN UP TRUMPS (more used to ‘come up trumps’). POETASTER known only from crosswords. Struggled to parse CHIMERA for same reason as Jack. Very unusually for me I felt a little pressure to solve quickly having read some of the comments above. This took away some of the pleasure of the solve. Note to self…
    Many thanks setter and V.

47. Probably a PB, all parsed, in about 10 minutes – quicker than I did the quickie today. It might have been even faster if I hadn’t been eating at the same time – not quite enough hands for knife, fork and pen!
    Unlikely ever to be achieved again 😅
    So many thanks kind setter and Vinyl

48. Another careless one letter error, inserting PIETASTER (got fixated on the sampling and Rod Marsh’s description of county bowlers as “pie chuckers ” I think). I’ve never heard of POETASTER, but I presume they live on Grubb Street?
    The rest was straightforward.
    Did we ever get a ruling on GROWN v GROAN last week? Not sure whether to classify it as a success or a failure at the moment.
    Many thanks Vinyl and Setter.

    1. The editor confirmed either answer was sound (and graciously apologised), but the system can’t handle multiple correct options. Whichever you picked, you can count it as a success – which it would be with manual marking.

       1. Thanks. I went for GROWN at the time (after much agonising).
          Never heard of the POETAsTER in today’s.
          Monday seems to lead to careless errors for me

          1. I thought I was going to be completely alone putting PIETASTER for my LOI.
             Everyone else seemed to find that clue easy. I don’t recall seeing POETASTER before but I think I’ll remember from now on.

49. The first few acrosses went in as I read the clues, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to fill in the downs as well, so the top half was completed in record time. I slowed down slightly in the nether regions, but still managed to ponder for a while over LOI, RECORDERSHIP, and submit in 11:17. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

50. About 17′ which is on the very quick side for me. Might have been quicker had I not (like Merlin above) wondered how “hod” might be a female bird… Also saw “Poe” and “taster” pretty quickly, but being an NHO, I looked for alternatives until biffing it as LOI. Did not parse UPTIGHT. Thanks Vinyl and setter.

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