Times Crossword 25,236 – Zen in the Art of Trainspotting

41 comments on “Times Crossword 25,236 – Zen in the Art of Trainspotting”

1. A puzzle with a fine starting point!

   A bit perplexed at first by ECONOMY until the famous phrase dawned. Incidentally, for the old use of the word: I once went back to look at popular usage and found the current sense (much loved by some anachronistic marxists) to be quite recent. For example, there’s a cartoon with a young Churchill as treasurer. He’s attacking a tree whose branches are labelled “health”, “education”, “defence” etc.; what we would now call “the economy”, except that it’s the axe that’s labelled “economy”.

   Suspect Jerry’s right about 20ac: just an ungrammatical sentence.

   Note to same esteemed blogger on 5dn: Does the DES not come from “some of the French”?

2. All correct today, but a few ?s along the way…

   I also wondered ‘why Kyoto?’; didn’t know LOUGH; I too wondered if there was more to GRAMMARIAN; didn’t know that meaning of DIE; didn’t take time to parse MAGNESIUM (was going down the wrong tract with ‘a girl originally’ = AG; didn’t know LAMPREY; also thought RIDER was a bit loose.

   I’m glad that I’m not alone in some of my queries. Many thanks, Jerry.

   1. I just assumed that it had to be somewhere/anywhere in Japan as Zen is a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism.
3. 41′, could have been a good deal quicker if I hadn’t misread 6d and put in ‘jealous’: with D_J_N, I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to justify ‘Dijon’. 10ac & 12ac: they had to be what in fact they were, but it took me ages to realize why. Not particularly happy with fan=adherent: a Man U adherent? a fan of string theory? And I could have done without 20ac, given that no normal human grammarian would find any problem with “It looks like it’s me”, unless, of course, by ‘grammarian’ the setter meant ‘pedant’. (I threw in ‘caricature’, until forced to delete it.) Janie, loughs are Irish lochs. Ough aye.
   1. I’m pleased you said that because I was thinking it too. I hear far worse, almost daily, from so-called professional broadcasters.
      1. What I meant, though, is that there’s nothing ungrammatical about the sentence, “It looks like it’s me”. Now, if you want ungrammatical, just listen, if you dare, to George W. Bush.
   2. While Lochs in Ireland are spelled LOUGH in English, in Irish (Gaelic) the spelling is still LOCH. Confusing.
      1. Especially as the correct word is “lake.” 🙂
         1. Quite
4. 30 minutes for all but four or five then half as long again to complete the grid is becoming a regular occurrence for me and it’s quite dispiriting.

   GRAMMARIAN was the major problem and my last one in. It seems to have a lot of support in the forum although no-one there has yet explained exactly why they think it’s so good. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a rotten clue which spoiled an otherwise excellent puzzle.

   As a follower of Aly Bain, one of the founders of The Boys of the Lough, I had no problems with 9ac once I had remembered that Slough was moved from Bucks to Berks since the days I learned my towns and counties.

   Edited at 2012-08-08 02:07 am (UTC)

5. One wrong, ‘revel’ for RAVEL. D’oh! Growing up in the area in the 60 and 70s, Slough wouldn’t have been allowed even to dream of being in the Royal County of Berkshire. No mention of CS Lewis’s old pupil’s poem is complete without this rendition.

6. Some excellent stuff here spoiled a little by RIDER, where I agree with Jerry that neither definition is strong enough and GRAMMARIAN which is simply awful. My last in and nearly a guess based on checkers and inability to think of anything else.

   I had to work in Slough once and its hard to think of a more souless place where modern development has created a really depressing place. I was very glad to get away.

7. Failed to get grammarian, annoyingly. I think it’s rather a good clue. Otherwise slow with the Games on. I really like 1. ac.: I thought it must be anagram, then rejected it as was looking at ‘t’ (starting-point for train) and ‘rain’ (spotting’) and getting confused – wonderful misdirection – if intended!
8. 30 minutes for this, the last 10 on GRAMMARIAN, which went in purely on the basis that it was the only word I could think of that fitted.
   Assuming this is the explanation, can someone explain to me why “it looks like it’s me” is ungrammatical?
   A first class puzzle apart from that baffling clue.
   1. It should be ‘It looks as if it’s me’ since ‘it’s me’ is a clause with its own verb.
      1. Really? I wonder what planet this particular grammarian lives on.
         1. Quite. If clues are going to start turning on arcane niceties of grammar I might as well give up.
            1. This grammarian lives on Earth, where the conventions evolved and are changing – quite soon ‘like’ will probably be accepted as correct. But it aint yet. I personally find it a little jarring when ‘as if’ in such a sentence isn’t used, but less so than I used to, and find myself using ‘like’ occasionally in conversation – ‘It looks like we’re going to be late.’ It’s a fine line sometimes as to what is “accepted” beyond the conversational level. But I also find it a little jarring to encounter an all too ready dismissiveness. I don’t scorn knowledge I don’t have.
               1. This grammarian may live on earth, but he or she doesn’t get out much. As you say conventions evolve, and I’d say this one has evolved: perhaps my education was defective but I for one have never come across it before. What I know about grammar comes more from Chomsky than Fowler, which perhaps explains my ignorance but it also means I don’t have much time for this sort of thing.
                  1. I think a grammarian (or pendant) would say ‘It looks as if it is I’. I put in grammarian as it was the only thing that would fit before I thought of this, though!
                  2. Grammarians get out as much as grammarians have to.
                     1. A grammarian who doesn’t get out is like an oenologist who doesn’t drink.
9. An hour and 20 on the clock, but I’d have liked to have had a run at this one uninterrupted, as there were some delicious clues here. 1ac didn’t go in until I had all the checkers, a real forehead slapping moment. GRAMMARIAN last in only from checkers and guesswork – it don’t look like it’s all that wrong to me, except that I though it might turn on “it’s I”, one of those grammatical oddities that looks and sounds wrong but might actually be correct. Or is “me” the object of something? I’m confused.
   For me, the whole of the SE yielded its secrets reluctantly: I was trying to be over-sophisticated by trying to fit INGE into 16d, and I think I use HANDRAILs more with fingers than palms.
   I always thought of a RAPIER as a sword with no edges, just the point. We live and learn.
   GESUNDHEIT competes with ANAGRAM for CoD – a finely disguised bit of wordplay added to a word pattern which even with all the checkers in place, you don’t think you know.
10. The setter is referring to himself. He should be a grammarian presumably
11. Sorry for my stupidity, but what does this I assume anagram stand for?
    1. LOI = last one in
       1. Ah! Thanks Jerry, you’ve put me out of my misery!
12. 32/32 today with a long hold up at the end with Grammarian and LOI Rapier. Several entered without full understanding – Anagram, Dozen, Relit, Grammarian, Minaret and Dole – so thanks Jerry for explaining those. The archaic word Relict = widow was unknown to me. I didn’t get Anagram in a recent puzzle so when I had all the checkers the word popped straight into my head.

    Dozen – I think of small numbers as being five or six or less, but suppose in the context of the infinite number line 12 is very small!
    Gesundheit – didn’t know this was an everyday English word – expected the clue to reference its German origin.
    23D – Ravel makes another appearance after the terrific Triangle clue of a couple of days ago.

13. 25 minutes, so on the harder side for me. Lots of eyebrow-raising. RELIT from definition alone, LEGISLATE originally without getting wordplay, saw it at the end, GRAMMARIAN because nothing else would fit in there. Lots that I had to pick through wordplay or “what would work with an A in here, what would work with a B in here…” fuzzy logic.
14. I got GRAMMARIAN by the “what would work with an A in here” method, but I had to get to _R_MMA_I_N before it clicked!
15. I found this hard to get into, and had to leave it overnight and complete it in the morning. Some very good things here, such as ANAGRAM, DOZEN and GESUNDHEIT, but I’m not too keen on GRAMMARIAN (LOI, like others have said, because I didn’t see anything else that fit) or RIDER. ECONOMY was second to LOI, because I thought it too American to really be what was intended. So on the harder side for me, probably around 40 minutes all told. Regards to all.
16. About 35 minutes. 1 across is a cracker, and I liked PARSLEY, too.

    ECONOMY: Hands up those who remember “economy drives”. Then there was that song in Half A Sixpence which began “System, Fishency, Economy”.

    RIDER: Justified this to myself by guessing that “cavalier” must be in essence the same word as “chevalier”, hence rider.

    GRAMMARIAN: This was my LOI. Wouldn’t the clue have worked just as well written simply “It’s me? I wouldn’t say that”? The pedant (and Teddy Bear) would say “It is I”.

    None of the people he could see
    “Is quite” (he said) “as fat as me!”
    Then, with a still more moving sigh,
    “I mean” (he said) “as fat as I!”

    Fowler describes “It’s me” as a “sturdy indefensible”. I imagine the other grammatical shibboleth in the clue is the use of “like”. Though Fowler warns against “going too far in anxiety to avoid all questionable uses of like”, he does note that treating “like” to mean “as if” is a “practice that that still grates on English ears”.

    Edited at 2012-08-08 05:41 pm (UTC)

    1. Armchair grammarians are people up with whom me (sic)and my PhD in Linguistics will not put.
       1. It was certainly not my intention to pose as an expert in grammar, from an armchair or anywhere else.

          I had been baffled by the first part of the clue to 20 across as had been, according to the comments, a few other people. I had vaguely remembered something about “It’s me” from A. A. Milne and Fowler but couldn’t understand what else was in the clue that a grammarian would disapprove of.

          After spending half an hour or so with my reference books, I thought I would share what I had found with everyone in the hope of clarifying the clue. My use of the word “shibboleth” was intended to convey that these distinctions were, in my opinion as a man on the Preston omnibus, somewhat pernickety.

          In future, I shall know not to venture into this specialist field and will leave all comments to qualified folk like (sic) yourself.

          1. I read Ulaca’s comment as reflecting on Fowler (and his ilk), not you. And (although I don’t have a Ph.D. in linguistics) –on that reading–I’d second it. I’m a native speaker of English, which is to say that I know the grammar of English, and I don’t need Fowler or Safire or any other soi-disant expert to tell me which forms are ‘preferable’–a term not to be found in the field of linguistics. Aside from the fact that the entire English-speaking population of the universe says “It’s me” not “It’s I”–or would, if they dared–a real grammarian, i.e. one who studies the nature of grammars, i.e. a linguist, would give you an empirically-based explanation of why we are correct and Fowler wrong.
          2. Kevingregg beat me to it – this is how I read ulaca’s comment too.
             I don’t have a PhD in anything but I did do a bit of linguistics at university, and most fascinating it was too. Fowler was regarded as about as intellectually respectable as a Daily Mail horoscope.
          3. I loved your comment and was moved merely to add to it. When one hears HRH railing against dropping aitches and doing it himself in the very speech he’s making towards that end, one has to fling open the windows like Peter Finch and declare his madness and unwillingness to take it any more? (Or should one say ‘anymore’ to remind the pedants* that language lives?)

             On edit: I hadn’t read the replies from the two Ks when I posted. Spot on, of course. And when I say ‘pedant’ above, perhaps, since I am proud to be one myself, I should really write something else like – there’s that word again – ‘people who lack understanding at times’.

             Edited at 2012-08-09 01:18 am (UTC)

    2. For “English” read “my”.
17. Some great clues here, but found it very tough.
    Main problem was smugly putting in REFLECTION for 20a, a reflection being the other way round. This failure causes a little bitterness towards what could have been a very good clue if the ungrammatical element had been a little more obvious.
    1a was a great clue. Time about 2 hours spread either side of a long French dinner.
    Many thanks for an excellent blog,
    Mike and Fay
18. 12:24 for me – slowed at the end by uncertainty about ECONOMY (annoyingly I remembered the quote only after I’d finished).

    A most enjoyable puzzle – no complaints whatsoever. I’m in complete agreement with joekobi’s explanation of (and views on) GRAMMARIAN, which went straight in – though I did have the checked R and M in place. I’m pretty sure The Pedant (aka Oliver Kamm) has mentioned this particular solecism quite recently in his Saturday column in The Times. (I don’t always agree with Kamm, particularly his views on the subjunctive, but, like Joe, I find that “It looks like it’s me” jars, even though I suspect I sometimes use a similar construction in conversation.)

19. just want to say thanks and well done to jerrywh – i tear my hair out with this crossword and i find the answers and explanation v helpful thanks

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