Solving Time: 16 minutes, so pretty fast for me for a blogging day, albeit with one or two not yet parsed. Still I was pleased. I suspect there may be some fairly quick times today, though a certain amount of general knowledge will be helpful here. I was a bit thrown by discovering that the Times website has kindly provided a choice of two cryptics today, 25798 and 799. I have blogged 798, the correct number for today, and I suspect the other has appeared a day early because of an error – always the likeliest answer on what must be the most error-prone website I know of. Perhaps it will disappear again in due course.. or, would you like to blog it for that swansong of yours, MC?
cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online
Across |
|
---|---|
1 |
grouchy – bunch mostly = GROU( |
5 | parable – horse – ARAB + L(ine) in training = PE |
9 | dreamboat – *(A DRAB TOME) I’m reasonably good with anagrams but I needed a checker or two for this, not a word I would ever use. |
10 |
gourd – glutton = GOUR( |
11 | social climber – party = SOCIAL + member = LIMB in play area = REC. rev. One I didn’t bother parsing til now |
13 | Chequers – dd. Chequers Court is near Aylesbury |
15 | change – dd, small change being coinage. |
17 | obtuse – just a cd, an obtuse angle being one larger than 90 degrees. What the Times IT department is |
19 | playgoer – operate = GO in member of team = PLAYER |
22 |
lance-corporal – cut = LANCE + my = COR (blimey, luv a duck etc) + P( |
25 |
op art – O( |
26 | britannia – *(IN A BARN IT). Rather obvious anagram.. britannia metal is a branded form of pewter, a base alloy mainly of tin, and not to be confused with britannia silver |
27 | knavery – church body = NAVE, in KeRrY |
28 | gamboge – marshy ground = BOG in willing = GAME. Not a familiar word exactly, but I had heard it before, somewhere. It is a yellow pigment made from tree resin, used amongst other things to dye the robes of Buddhist monks |
Down |
|
1 | gods – dd, mythical beings and the uppermost parts of a theatre |
2 | oversee – deliveries = OVER, the cricketing reference du jour, SEE? |
3 |
comic – COMIC( |
4 | yeomanry – the old = YE + O(ld), + N(ew) in Mary. The clue says “cavalrymen once,” but apparently there are still plenty about |
5 |
putsch – placed = PUT + SCH( |
6 | roguishly – My spelling is generally OK but it does let me down occasionally. I had the nonexistent rogueishly in my head so hesitated a while over this. But its an anagram – *(U + HIS GLORY) so I got there eventually |
7 | bourbon – a dd, though I might have gone for the whisky myself. Henry of Navarre was the first Bourbon king. His Wiki entry makes interesting reading.. I particularly liked the sentence “Henry’s popularity greatly improved posthumously.” That must have cheered him up no end. |
8 | elderberry – hmm, struggled to parse this.. it’s ELDER = more senior and bishop = RR (right reverend) in Turkish governor = BEY. For a while I thought it was B = bishop, and wondered what on earth an erry was. I’ve drunk a fair amount of country wine over the years, but never any I would have paid money for. |
12 | scrollwork – move around screen = SCROLL, + argument over = ROW rev., + K(ing). I bunged this in without parsing it properly either, but it sounded decorative enough |
14 | unsheathe – a French = UN + novel = SHE + H(ospital) in devoured = ATE |
16 | flipping – dd, one jocular, though indeed it is what one does during the course of a tiddlywinks match, m’lud.. |
18 | tantara – flay = TAN + sailor = TAR + A. An onomatopoeic word I had not met before, but clear enough from the cryptic |
20 | Orlando – ORLA + D(aughter) in NO, the Japanese plays so traditional, especially here in crosswordland. Hadn’t heard of the Irish name before but it didn’t matter because I only know one Florida city. Well, one-ish, there’s always Miami |
21 | wobbly – because you throw a wobbly.. you know, if you’re off on one, that is |
23 | rearm – state = REALM, with the L changed to a R |
24 | mate – dd, one relating to the glorious game of chess.. |
My LOI for this puzzle (25798) was WOBBLY. I was certain it had to have a letter I somewhere in there. Didn’t know BRITANNIA as a metal. Thanks for the parsing of ORLANDO, Jerry. Didn’t know the ORLA bit.
Edited at 2014-05-28 04:40 am (UTC)
We also have very fine Washington State Comice pears here in the US; you have to catch them when they’re at their peak in late September.
This is as close as I have ever come to the legendary ‘clean sweep’, putting in seven in a row before getting stuck on ‘social climber’, which I should have seen. The puzzle would have to be awfully easy for me to get much further than that.
As for the IT department, their duty is to provide the systems for the users to use. It is up to the users to follow instructions and load the correct clues and puzzles. Would they have a check to see if the users loaded two daily puzzles at once, and provide a warning message? “No, they’re not that careless….”
And maybe the extra grid is user error, assuming they let users do that sort of thing at The Times
When the system builds the pages, it just pulls puzzles whose date matches the system date. Everything flips automatically at midnight with no human intervention.
All you have to do to screw up is put a puzzle with an incorrect date.
So do we now get a day off solving and blogging on Thursday? Anyway I think I’m due to blog 25800 whenever that turns up.
Edited at 2014-05-28 01:34 am (UTC)
rednim
Loudly let the trumpet bray,
Tantantara! Tantantara!
Proudly bang the sounding brasses,
Tantantara, tzing, boom!
Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!
Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow , ye masses!
Blow the trumpets, bang the brasses!
Tantantara! Tzing! Boom!
Some pondering over REARM/REALM, and I think I could make some sort of case for either. REARM looks weird written in. I don’t think of YEOMANRY being on horseback – they’re not at the Tower, for example. But hey ho.
As far as I can see, The Times iPad app does not have tomorrow’s grid so hopefully I will have something to do then.
What am I supposed to do with the other puzzle? I haven’t tackled it, assuming it’ll appear as tomorrow’s official puzzle.
Does anyone else find that the selected clue isn’t highlighted in the grid? – when I found it was stuck on 1ac. I thought for a couple of minutes that the site wasn’t responding before I tried entering a solution and found that it did go in, in the right place.
I suspect this may have already been discussed at some stage but I absolutely do not believe anyone is capable of completing this puzzle online in the two and a half minutes or so claimed by Hedwig, closely followed by others with similarly preposterous times. I am assuming that they do the puzzle offline and then engage in a typing contest, or even more likely copy the answers from the unfailingly excellent blog in this forum because they are unable to do it for themselves. Either way it is pretty pathetic in my view and I do not understand how any pleasure can be gained from this.
I await a) hate mail from the guilty and b)agreement from some of you very fast solvers out there who really can motor. My own pb is 7:23 and the only time I witnessed a truly spectacular time was by the eminent Tony Sever in a distant Grand Final. Now he really can shift!
Edited at 2014-05-28 02:47 pm (UTC)
Separately, I am not sure why we are rushing to take down McT’s last blogging at the request of the Crossword Editor, even if it will appear again.. The puzzle in question is not a prize one, and McT’s fine effort is not the first thing that appears on this page. If you dont want to read it yet, dont read it.
Glad to see Alec’s blog is still up.
One way to know who’s cheating by peeking at this site is what happens on the days when the blog goes up late.
Hadn’t heard of GAMBOGE or ORLA but both easy to get from the clues. Was tempted for quite a while by DAUPHIN for the biscuit and for the future roi, which seemed reasonable, so it took me a bit to unscramble the NE corner!
As one who cannot even type in the grid online in 2 minutes even if I already knew the answers, I too would find the times given somewhat spurious.
FOI OP ART, LOI YEOMANRY (which we – certainly I – normally don’t think of as cavalry, although they were originally volunteer cavalry regiments). With no checkers in place, “Dragoons”, also not strictly cavalry, seemed likely but I couldn’t get the parsing …
Nice to see “She” making a reappearance – I dimly remember a time when she seemed to turn up in every other crossword! Do schoolboys read H Rider Haggard any more? Or are young imaginations confined within the bleak landscapes of computer games? Seems a poor exchange.
The problem with “She” and her ilk is their generous larding of unfashionable, not to say taboo, words.. young imaginations are not *allowed” to get their mitts on them any more.
As regards ‘Orla’, I have obviously misheard the name of the lady who regularly reads the traffic reports on the radio, and thought that she was called ‘Orna’ Merchant. What I would say though is that she has the most beautiful voice and a clarity of diction that I would love to see emulated by her colleagues.
A straightforward enjoyable solve.
Edited at 2014-05-29 04:36 pm (UTC)