Times Crossword 25,690 – S or Z?

Solving Time: I breezed through this comfortably in 22 minutes, but on blithely typing and submitting it, was taken aback to be told I had two errors. I do hate it when that happens. What is the point of relaxing with a glass of wine, printing it out, taking the time to parse everything, if you still can’t get it right? Hmff. On investigation, I messed up 12ac, so that’s one, not a great clue perhaps but still, my mistake. As for the other one, unless I have overlooked something, it must be 7dn, a clue that may well cause widespread 21ac. It’s a shame, because there are some nice clues otherwise, like 8dn or 22dn

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 buckle down – BUCK (dollar) + LED (light) + OWN (to have)
6 spiv – VIPs, rev.
9 grogram – develop = GRO(W) + GRAM, a light weight
10 ticking – jocular cd, ticking being what bombs are wont to do, as well as being a cloth used to make mattresses
12 tip up – I stupidly put top up, but it is, I think, tip up, ie more being left when paying the bill in a restaurant, and to overturn. Not my favourite clue of the day, though I might be somewhat biased
13 inebriate – AT in (W)INE + BRIE
14 leading question – “Who’s to be captain?” is a question about leading… the rest of the clue being the def.
17 early retirement – Another cd, although surely an F1 driver would normally have either a retirement OR an accident? Certainly I would normally tend to think of retirements being caused by mechanical problems rather than collisions, though I concede a collision can indeed cause a retirement
20 rare earth – military groups, RA + RE, gunners and engineers, + ground = EARTH, for a rare appearance of a scientific word
21 anger – stove = RANGE, with the R sent to the back.
23 modulus – simple game = LUDO in total = SUM, all rev. Modulus is defined by Collins as “the absolute value of a complex number.” Not my field really.
24 all hail – A reference to the witches in Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 3.
25 owed – = “ODE,” a poem
26 call it a day – phone = CALL, + volunteers = TA in I’d always = I’D AY. The def. being “Don’t work on.” A bit of a clumsy surface

Down
1 bagatelle – stone = AGATE + LL in BE
2 croup – it is GROUP, with one stroke missing, the one that turns a C into a G.. Croup is an unpleasant illness affecting children, much more common once upon a time, but apparently still fairly common
3 lord privy seal – my = good heavens = LORD, + little room = PRIVY, + make sure of = SEAL (eg, a victory)
4 dumping – DUMP(L)ING
5 Watteau – pardon = “what” = WATT + letter = “O” = EAU,” Watteau being a French painter I believe
7 privatize/ise – sounds like “private eye’s,” yes, but how shall we spell the answer? Take your pick, I chose a Z and I suspect the setter chose a S. The OED has only Z (Ha! You see?). Collins, ODO and Chambers each have both, though all three of them put the Z version first. Either way, highly unsatisfactory and an editing blunder, it seems to me, not that I care, oh no…
8 vague – Very + AGUE, a fever of which fits are a symptom.
11 corps de ballet – posh girl = DEB + entirely = ALL, in stiff = CORPSE + T(utu). A very neat clue indeed
15 air bridge – *(BRIGADIER)
16 naturally – Friend of the earth = NATUR(E) ALLY
18 Eurasia – is a herb = IS A RUE rev., + A(rea)
19 Ishmael – hidden in hellISH MAELstrom. Easy clue, especially if like me you have read and enjoyed Moby Dick, one of the very great novels of the world, both strange and wonderful. Required reading, not to mention being a good source of esoteric cruciverbal vocabulary.
20 Romeo – Vatican = ROME, + O. That makes Shakespeare 2, science 2.. so a score draw
22 guard – in other words blackguard, vanguard, bodyguard.. another neat clue

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

71 comments on “Times Crossword 25,690 – S or Z?”

  1. Unlike yesterday, got the long ones quite quickly. (Though I thought 17ac was about as weak as they come and was only prepared to pencil it in, despite its personal relevance — not in the F1 sense I hasten to add.)

    Re 7dn: I think we can assume the -ise spelling for most things Times, OED’s convention notwithstanding. But, as in the past, the pronunciation of Jean Antoine’s name (5dn) may be controversial. (What ho!) My lecturer in French Art insisted on “Vat—”, though he did speak French with a Scots accent.

    LOI: MODULUS. The wordplay gives it. But the obscurity (which will be popular in the county of the River Piddle) of the literal nearly done me in. What was wrong with MUDDLES or MIDDLES? (Guess they were excluded.)

    Edited at 2014-01-22 03:38 am (UTC)

  2. It is TIP UP and it is PRIVATISE; I don’t think I’ve ever heard the first–went with TIP because of ‘left on plate’, not that I’ve ever left a tip on a plate. And I went with S because I grew up with the received wisdom that -ise was UK and -ize was US, period. Had no idea what F1 meant, but went for EARLY RETIREMENT from the clue and a couple of checkers. Glad to see another fan of ‘Moby Dick’ (source of one of my favorite quotes: “There is a wisdom that is woe, but there is a woe that is madness”); fantastic novel. COD to WATTEAU; after any number of scorers, it’s good to see a canvasser.
  3. I didn’t submit this one. After about 22 minutes I was left with W.T.E.U and thinking “What the ….?” I was never, ever going to get that one, though no doubt he’s popped up before. Will file him away in my memory palace.

    ‘Canvasser’ seems a bit of a stretch (sorry) for ‘painter’ but I guess all’s fair in love, war and crosswords.

    I did a double-take at the PRIVAT-IZE/ISE clue. Bound to end in tears.

    1. I will never now be able to shake my vision of you sitting in a director’s chair in an empty room doing the crossword sans pen, sans paper and … sans crossword.
      1. I already have the chair and the room, ulaca. Now I just have to master waving my hands about manically while I navigate. Once that’s sorted, world domination will surely be mine.
        1. Don’t forget the key ingredient – the ability to overcome the aversion to licking your enemy’s face.
  4. Another hour+ solve for me. I took ages getting started and wasted time trying to parse the unparseable as I went along.

    I also had doubts about 12ac but settled for TIP UP as the most likely, having missed the gratuity reference.

    I’ve still no idea what the setter was trying to achieve at 17ac.

    I didn’t understand how 2dn worked or know RARE EARTH or MODULUS but worked them out from wordplay.

    Like Kevin G my default spelling of endings as in 7dn is -ISE rather than -IZE, so no problems on that front assuming -ISE is correct.

    1. My experience of the last hour and a bit seems to exactly match yours. Nothing else to add except to agree with Dorsetjimbo that I make it two extra lines to turn C into G.
  5. 53 minutes – with ticks against 1d and 22d, but I enjoyed the whole thing. Even three unknowns didn’t stymie me.

    In agreement with Jerry about 7d and 12a (surely ‘more left on plate’ is a much better definition for ‘tip’ than ‘tip up’?) but not about Moby Dick. (Anyone intereted in my review can read it here.) Now, Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse, on the other hand – magnificent stuff.

  6. 30:43 with the ize one wrong, or is it right? I’m sure QI dealt with this topic at length and concluded ize was in fact preferred UK spelling, contrary to all that I knew and held dear. Then again, my blotting paper memory usually gets these things backwards. And, on a recent episode (in the Australian sense of that term) I heard Stephen admit to Mythbusters being a source for the program, so who can tell?

    The irony of modulus, of course, is that its polar co-ordinate companion is called the argument. I wonder if this is the setter’s little joke on us.

  7. But with a very long interruption, so let’s call it about 50 minutes. No, let’s call it DNF, because I didn’t know WATTEAU (we spell it Watto down here, he bats at number three).

    Didn’t like WATTEAU (don’t mind Watto) because I’m not sure you could get to it with any certainty from the wordplay. I considered WATREAU (as in rho) before resorting to Google. The other reason I didn’t like it is the more familiar one, that I failed to get it.

    1. Don’t mean to sound churlish, but it’s a small step from WAT to WATT, working from ‘What?’. Once you have WATTE-U, there aren’t too many alternatives. I’d let the setter off on this one.
  8. Not my cup of tea – the sort of puzzle that irritates me. Far too many controversial clues. A couple in any one puzzle I can live with but this offering is littered with them.

    Not to beat about the bush 12A is rubbish “more left on plate” – eh? What is 17A all about? 26A should say “stop work” not “don’t work”. At 2D how does “not one stroke” make G into C – two strokes surely? 5D can really only be reverse engineered – tough if you don’t know the “canvasser”. And 7D has absolutely nothing going for it.

    1. Jim, as much as I share your dissatisfaction, I think the def for 26A is “don’t work on”, not “don’t work”.

      Agree on your other points.

    2. Can’t agree about the canvasser. Though we’d had him before, he was no longer in my mind palace so I put him together from the wordplay, which is very fair.
  9. I did not find this crossword objectionable. I knew all the solutions from somewhere and while I did not parse every answer completely, I have got it right ( assuming that unlike the ST apparently, the setter has inserted the correct answers into The Times app).This suggests -ISE.
    I enjoy 17A, not because of the brilliance or otherwise of the clueing but because I do not have to go to work.

    Edited at 2014-01-22 12:17 pm (UTC)

  10. 14’6″ so very quick for one who never looks at the screen when tapping away. What we need is a crossword app that works with a stylus. With auto-correct.
    Where would we be without foreign artists with funny sounding names, eh?
    The “strokes” thing went right over my head. I write my capital Gs in one fluid motion. CROUP went in with a shrug.
    The Z/S thing is all about the OED’s “I know Greek, me” snobbery, isn’t it? Words like baptize are direct from Greek versions with a Zeta. As far as I know, the Greeks didn’t have ΠΡΙΒΑΤΙΖΕΙΝ (apart from anything else, no V and no ΘΑΤΧΕΡ) so it can only really be argued from analogy. I put in the S spelling while thinking “there will be letters”. I suppose it could be the first signs of infection with Litsups disease, where there’s always one clue with alternative spellings, or sometimes bogus answers, to act as tie-breakers. It’s already spread to the ST, with an interesting new spelling introduced this week with no lexicographical or wordplay back-up which you had to guess to get an all-correct. Or just misspell.
    There were bits I liked in this one: Veronese (another canvasser?) to clue Romeo, and the one which had me scratching my head longest, RANGE (couldn’t work out how to fit in Aga). A rather friendly, if a bit loose sort of crossword, I thought.
    1. For me S or Z has nothing to do with Greek and everything to do with loose setting.

      Here we have two very obvious alternatives and the setter should in the wordplay make it clear which is required. Not only does the clue not do that it also relies on an at best debatable homophone – not good enough in my book

      1. No argument from me on that – the issue with the TLS crossword is exactly loose cluing, where a specific spelling required by the setter has no support in the clue. It’s frustrating to struggle through a tricky crossword (TLS I suspect not your cup of tea!) only to be defeated by an alternate spelling, often an arbitrary choice between a Greek and a Latin ending.
  11. 14 mins, and unlike some of you I enjoyed this one, although that may have something to do with being on the setter’s wavelength. At 7dn “ISE” went in without a second thought because that’s the ending I would expect to see in a Times puzzle, and I thought it was a decent clue. I saw the gratuity reference at 12ac and thought that was also a good clue. EURASIA was my LOI after ROMEO and MODULUS.

    Having said that, if I had entered “IZE” at 7dn in a competition I would expect it to be accepted because the clue doesn’t specify which of the alternatives is required.


  12. Glad to have it all finished correctly today, but it did take quite a while. Didn’t really get TIP UP, so thanks for that.

    Some unknowns: GROGRAM, RUE=herb, LPS (my LOI), but I did like canvasser=painter.

  13. 19min: 7dn LOI- I agree there should have been something to indicate S was needed, though I did choose correctly.
  14. In Spanish crosswords,they often use the clue for G, as ‘ C con bandeja’, which translates as a C with a tray, so in this case they would put ‘G sin ba déjà’ for C.
  15. Well, I enjoyed the puzzle very much, even though it took me nearly three-quarters of an hour. It had an old fashioned feel to it, which I always like, and some very neat, clever and innovative clues (assuming you can be both innovative and old fashioned).

    Although I normally use ize in preference to ise, I went with the latter as that is what I usually see printed in the paper.

    I didn’t ponder too long about 17 and (perhaps mistakenly) assumed it was something to do with having to change the (US) tyres.

    I wonder if there’s such a thing as late-onset dyslexia: I regularly reverse the order of letters as I write them into the grid. Usually, it holds me up for no longer than a minute or so, but today it took me a while to spot my error. Add that one to the list of our excuses you’re compiling, Sotira.

  16. I thought it was a cracking puzzle with all clues fair and many entertaining, tip on plate, the painter, good stuff. It took me an hour while watching Murray cling on. Loved PRIVATISE (always think of Z as an Americanism). LOI GROGRAM which Mrs K had to confirm was a fabric once we had the checkers.
    And the rain in Spain is falling on me today, not on the plain.

    Edited at 2014-01-22 11:30 am (UTC)

  17. 13m. I didn’t even notice the various problems with the puzzle, although I didn’t understand TIP UP. WATTEAU went in without a thought but if I hadn’t heard of him I’m sure I’d have struggled.
    I have worked in the city for the best part of twenty years and I don’t think I have ever seen the word PRIVATISE spelled with a Z in a UK context. The S version also appears to be the preferred spelling in the FT, Times, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph. Just saying…
      1. Interesting. Their explanation is delightfully pompous:

        there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic

        No reason other than the fact that everyone else is doing it… looks like the OED is the only one marching in step, which for a dictionary is not a good look.

        Edited at 2014-01-22 01:14 pm (UTC)

      2. Sotira, as a former employee of the Dirty Digger’s Times, I can confirm that the paper’s style book switched some while back to a general preference for the -ise ending, as is now generally common in British English usage. It’s also true that the Yanks prefer -ize. But the only thing that is relevant here is that dictionaries accept both spellings as valid, so it was surely a blunder by the setter not give some clue as to which one was required given that the pronunciations of both spellings work equally well for the homophone.

        That said, I thought this an excellent puzzle otherwise and don’t agree with the criticisms of other clues.

  18. 45 minutes. I thought this was going to be a quick solve until it came to getting MODULUS and some of the NW corner. Once I had DUMPING I guessed GROGRAM, but I’ve never heard of it. Wasn’t sure of TIP UP but couldn’t see what else it could be, so finally entered CROUP, mystified by the wordplay. I think it’s a poor clue that’s dependent on idiosyncrasies of the solver’s writing; it takes the removal of two strokes to make my upper case G look like C; ditto the Times New Roman font, so it’s particularly inappropriate for the Times. I also agree with those unhappy with ‘more left on plate’ for TIP.
    On the other hand 11 and 22 were very good clues.
    1. I have to agree with others who’ve posted here that “more left on plate” is not “TIP”, but “TIP UP” (as it is more).
      1. I inadvertently left ‘up’ out of my quotation, so to reiterate, I’m with those who are unhappy with ‘more left on plate’ for TIP UP. It’s technically ok, but idiomatically it’s a bit creaky. And by the time I leave a tip at the end of a meal the plates have been removed anyway.
  19. 9 mins – I went for the ISE as that seems to be the convention in most places these days.
  20. Whatever QI, or the OED, or any other dictionary may say, the normal spelling in this country is “privatiSe”. A google search comes up with 198,000 entries with the “S”, and only 41,700 with the “Z”.

    If the dictionaries have not kept up with this then they are wrong. But who uses a paper dictionary when they have access to the internet? I was going to suggest throwing them out since it is unwise to keep a guide that could mislead you, but I suppose they might be useful in he event of a power failure: you could burn them to keep warm.

    1. Don’t you have a name?

      First, when I do a google UK search for privatize I get 713,000 results. When I do one for privatise I get 323,000 – and the first three results are spelt with a z!

      Second, who is talking about paper dictionaries? OED online, ODO online, Collins online and Chambers, each use the z spelling as their primary entry and then say “or -ise”

      I am not saying that privatise is not a normal UK preference. I am saying that both are valid..

      1. Yes, it’s that last sentence that is key. All this stuff about “what I expect in the Times” is by the by. Today several people will attempted their first ever Times Cryptic – they have no idea what is “expected” (which as noted above has changed over time). It’s bad clue setting to leave two valid possibilities with no indication in the clue as to which is correct.
      2. Sorry, I had not realised that I was not logged on in my post above.

        Jerrywh, did you filter your search for results from the UK?

        I agree that the American spelling is common over here, and is therefore an acceptable variant. Since we often get answers to crossword clues that require us to use a minority variant spelling then I do agree that this clue is questionable, and that the parsing should have made clear that an S was required.

  21. All correct today with FOI Spiv and LOI Privatise (on which I almost gave up but having just that one to get went through the alphabet trying second letters and the answer popped into my head when I got to R. It didn’t occur to me that it might be spelled with a ‘z’).

    Tip Up, Croup, Watteau and All Hail all went in without any/full understanding of wordplay or definition so thanks Jerry for explaining those.

    I enjoyed Moby Dick when I read it a few years ago. I’d chosen it for my ‘cruise holiday’ read and being surrounded by sea and waves put me in the right frame of mind.

    1. Duly unspammed.
      Many thanks for providing the link.. I thought of that too, but couldn’t find it on youtube
        1. They appear on a separate list from which anyone here with admin rights can delete them or unspam them
  22. Spotted TIP UP and CROUP from the definitions early on but couldn’t parse either of them to my satisfaction, which distracted me for the rest of the puzzle and it seems that others also found them underwhelming. Put in WATTEAU from the checkers and was surprised canvasser didn’t merit a question mark. Didn’t even think of privatize as an alternative.

    COD to BAGATELLE

  23. I sticking my head up out of the foxhole to whisper that I liked this puzzle a lot. ROMEO, WATTEAU and PRIVATISE were, I thought, quite clever (I never considered the -ize ending, just as if I were writing something over here, I’d never consider the
    -ise ending). I didn’t know Ludo as a game and I never parsed CROUP either. And I assumed that there must have been some retired F1 driver from the UK named Early. Otherwise, a lot of fun, about 20 minutes. Regards.
  24. I very much enjoyed this puzzle, which I solved correctly in 46 minutes even though I had never heard of GROGRAM and probably some other things as well. To go along with Kevin, above, this is the first time I have actually found my American origins to be an advantage in solving these — we seem to just naturally assume a British puzzle will spell the -ize ending with an S and I saw no controversy at all in that.

    Some very audacious and enjoyable clues, CORPS DE BALLET being my favourite (you see I am good at foreign languages), but CROUP with the stroke removed from the G, GUARD with the various complements and “leaving more on the plate” all also very good. You simply had to read the clues very carefully and I found it quite a lot of fun (especially after several days not even being able to finish).

    Incidentally, as I am writing this I have decided to preview my comment with the spelling checker on — it objects to GROGRAM (no wonder) but also to “ize”, for which it suggests IE, Ice, ice, size, Ike, Ive, ire and I’ve as alternatives.

  25. Won’t duplicate other contributors comments.
    Time today would have been 15m 30s, but, once again, taking time to check the grid was worthwhile as I nearly missed out 2d.
  26. I think it’s about all been said. I was scratching my head a few times, I put in PRIVATISE thinking that was the UK spelling, and shrugged on EARLY RETIREMENT. Didn’t see the wordplay for CROUP or TIP UP or the other definition of TICKING. Odd crossword week, enjoy tomorrow, Z!
  27. Started this just before supper and finished it after – about 30 minutes. With a few niggles, well, maybe more than a few, I enjoyed this one tremendously – many clues were elegant, several showed wit, with CORPS DE BALLET my COD. If an ise/ize spat and the dreadful EARLY RETIREMENT is the price to pay for clues like that, bring ’em on, I say. And any crossword where my first clue in is a literary write-in – ISHMAEL – can’t be bad.

    Thank You, keithdoyle for the Frost Report link. I still smile at this one, nearly 50 years on!

    Those who drew a blank at WATTEAU have obviously never seen the heart-breakingly unforgettable “Gilles” at the Louvre. (They irritatingly now call the work just “Pierrot”.) There are also fine examples of his “fêtes galantes” paintings in the Wallace. I just regretted that the opportunity for a Wodehousian reference was not pursued … What Ho!

  28. Well, I’m a DNF* on this one.

    I don’t see how the distinction between “ise” and “ize” matters – either is correct, and both fit the grid. I agree it’s sloppy clueing, but I was happy with my “ize” and equally happy with anyone else’s “ise”.

    12ac, though…. I settled for “TOP UP”, on the very underadequate reasoning that a “top up” is a refill (more), and if you read it leftwards it’s “PUT” (“left”) around (“on”) PO (“plate”). Now, quite how I figured that a PO was in any sense a plate I am not sure, except that they are both ceramic (unless one of them is a river). I seem to have confounded a “left” and an “overturned” as well. Being slightly Pinoted probably didn’t help (those long coffee breaks can be killers).

    WATTEAU held me up for a while, but it’s a lovely name that was gathering dust in a bottom drawer of my memory. If he wasn’t a short, plump person with a walrus moustache then I shall be very disillusioned.

    GROGRAM… I’m not even going to discuss that. I don’t believe any such thing exists.

    Most embarrassingly, though, I failed to get 1ac. Whichever neuron was responsible for storing the word “BUCK” in my brain had obviously gone off on a little TIA of its own.

    So, all in all, this was a bit of a surgical blunder. Or, as we prefer to call it, a valiant attempt against insuperable odds which, regrettably, had a non-optimal outcome.

    *If you are bored and find yourself in a hospital, just write “DNR” on a few post-it notes and leave them on the wall above the bedheads of sleeping patients. The doctors will take no notice, but it scares the willies out of visiting relatives.

    1. Wiki has a portrait of him, Thud.. prepare to be very disillusioned. However he was only 36 when he died, so maybe if he’d been spared (or received better treatment?) who knows how he may have turned out..
  29. 13:28 for me after a horribly slow start. I agonised/agonized for a while over PRIVATISE, finding it difficult to believe that the setter hadn’t included some way of eliminating one of the alternatives. (And that the editor hadn’t spotted the ambiguity – presumably he’s starting to get demob happy!)

    No problem with WATTEAU, though whether I pronounce him in the French (Vat) or English (What) way depends on whom I’m talking to. I suspect the former will become the norm sometime in the next 50 years.

    1. For what it’s worth I went to a French school and he was always pronounced “Watteau” there. I never heard “Vatteau”.
      Edit: a little further investigation reveals that Watteau was from Valenciennes, which is very close to Waterloo in Wallonia. This may be relevant!
      Another Edit: sorry to keep on about this, but it was bugging me. I’ve consulted with some bona fide Frenchies who would all say “Vatteau” but also knew that “Watteau” is the regional pronounciation. For a Parisian to say “Watteau” would be regarded as a bit of an affection akin to a southerner pronouncing Newcastle “Newcassel”, or an English person pronouncing Paris “Paree”. The people who taught me arts subjects at school were all extremely affected so this is consistent with my own experience!
      No doubt you knew all this…

      Edited at 2014-01-23 10:09 am (UTC)

      1. You’ve got me wondering how a Parisian poseur would render a Walloon from Valenciennes. Walenciennois, I would wager.
        1. Yes, we have no doubt been remiss all these years in not spelling it Walenciennes…

          My own strategy of just speaking louder still works fine, however 🙂

      2. That tallies with my perception that the French tend to pronounce foreign proper names as if they were French, a classic example being (Irish) Dalkieth Holmes’s composer daughter Augusta, who was born in Paris and whose surname the French pronounce “Olmez” – as do we English, following their lead. If you want to keep the English pronunciation, you need to adapt their spelling – as presumably happened with one of Michel H’s “Welbeck” ancestors. Of course we do the same – as in Salvador Darley and Edgar Daygar – but perhaps not as aggressively as the French, nor quite as much as we used to.
  30. All I can say is if we had a nationalised spelling industry this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

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