Times Crossword 25,966 – 2014 Championships second preliminary, puzzle 3

28 comments on “Times Crossword 25,966 – 2014 Championships second preliminary, puzzle 3”

1. Surprisingly good time for me, not quite sure why. Well, for one thing I put in a couple without parsing, like 5d and 25ac. (For another thing, I wasn’t there.) DNK STOP-OUT. Slowed myself down by throwing in ‘Himalayas’, and by sticking on ‘laudatory’ for ADULATORY. No COD, but it was enjoyable.
2. I found this reasonably straightforward but didn’t know SHOT TOWER or RECTORATE so relied on wordplay for those.

   The only other thing that foxed me was SIZE as “setter for paper” which I should have known having spent much time at school making masks and helmets etc for stage productions out of brown paper and size. I can still smell it now, just thinking about it!

3. 36 minutes, so the easiest of the six for me – the only unknown was SHOT TOWER – with the left hand side going in first. I finished with Kevin’s pair (5 unparsed and 26 parsed). “Play merry hell” was difficult to recall without its “with” – I couldn’t see beyond “create merry hell” for a time, not least because I was unable to parse the thing properly!
4. Easily the fastest of the six for me as well I think. Held up for a while by having MAKE MERRY HELL, and at the end by being afraid to submit with OUTSIZE unparsed. DNK that meaning of SIZE, so it was “has to be, can’t be, must be, nah, what else could it be? ah, bugger it, submit”.
   That conversation usually ends in tears, but I got lucky on this occasion.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

5. 
   About 40mins or so, with same unknowns as others (SHOT TOWER, SIZE). Like Gal, I had make MERRY HELL, before I went back and parsed it. That usually helps…

6. 14:08, with several minutes at the end agonising over OUTSIZE. I went through the same internal conversation as galspray, but about thirty-seven times. On a normal day I’d have just bunged it in but as this was a competition puzzle I thought I’d treat it as such. In the end I couldn’t come up with anything else and bunged it in anyway.
   Someone told me very recently that there used to be SHOT TOWERS all along the Thames in London that are no longer there. I’ve no idea if this is true but it certainly helped today.
   1. I recall a large tower on the south bank of the thames that was knocked down when they built the Queen Elizabeth Hall which I think I was told had been used to make lead shot in Victorian times
   2. If you pop along to The Tate some time I believe you may be able to see John Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, in which two shot towers may be observed close to the river. Or you could Google it (but where’s the romance?).

      The world’s oldest still stands in Chester.

      Edited at 2014-12-10 09:18 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks. That gives me a good reason to pop along to the Tate at some point.
      2. I thought it was in Bushmills!
      3. Not only the world’s oldest surviving, but one of the earlier ones built, in 1799. And in use until 2001 I find, to my surprise, a working life of over 200 years!
7. I also thought this the easiest of the 6 with steady progress across the grid. A very enjoyable puzzle. Jerry has anticipated my one query at 6D as to why Government Dept in particular. No real stand out clues but no duffers either. Good setting.
8. I can’t see how this works. Wouldn’t ‘Stuck’ = ‘Jammed’?
   1. I think it’s ‘be stuck’ rather than just ‘stuck’, so it works okay.
9. 21:57 … I’m glad I didn’t get this one on the day. I think I might have panicked over the northeast corner remaining resolutely blank with 20 minutes approaching. As it was, JAMBOREE popped up from somewhere and the rest of that corner fell in swiftly.

   Another nice puzzle, indeed.

   1. Jamboree is a nice word 🙂
10. Just couldn’t see anything to fit B_R_A_ at 6D other than BURSAR which went in with no justification other than it fitted. Kicking myself now I see the answer as BUREAU is not difficult with hindsight.

    Other than that a fairly straightforward 25 minutes.

11. This was the middle one of the 3 for me in terms of difficulty. SHOT TOWER and STOP-OUT went in from wordplay only. OUTSIZE was my LOI because I recalled size from previous puzzles as being something to do with paper but I didn’t want to put it in until I’d done an alphabet run-through (which revealed nothing better).
12. Just over the targeted 20 mins so an enjoyable failure. To me, STOP OUT is intimately connected with DIRTY (as in DSO) which has an interesting definition in the Urban Dictionary.

    I too remember at least one SHOT TOWER on the south bank of the Thames.

13. Found this straightforward. Must have been on the wavelength. DNK SHOT TOWER or STOP-OUT in the sense required here, but both perfectly getable from wordplay. I liked ACCOUTREMENTS. Very ingenious. Nice puzzle.
14. 23 mins. Like Sotira I had the most trouble in the NE and I finished with BUREAU after JAMBOREE. Because I missed a couple of the qualifiers while I was away I’m not in a position to say where this one ranked in terms of difficulty.

    10dn and 15dn went in from definition alone even though, in retrospect, I should have parsed them. I was also happy to see that OUTSIZE was correct.

15. I liked this one but could not believe that SHOT TOWER existed till I looked it up … every day’s a school day and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at pictures of shot towers in Australia and learning about the Bliemeister method – I’ve always wondered what “chilled lead shot” meant and now I know!

    Many thanks for the blog

16. No problems with SHOT TOWER – there’s a listed one encased in a mall in downtown Melbourne. Lots of problems everywhere else with my last in PLAY MERRY HELL. Also wasn’t familiar with the phrase at 4 which went through several permutations before the checking letters confirmed it.
17. I first learnt about one at the Festival of Btitain.
    There was one on the site and it wS incorporated into the exhibition. It stuck in my young mind, and has been there forevermore along with the Skylon and the Dome of Discovery!
18. I missed you all yesterday as live Journal refused to let me log on all day. Today’s was done in around 30 minutes, so I would have been very pressed for time in any competition. Happy to be safely over here in the US and not tempted to sneak into the champ’s. LOI was PLAY MERRY HELL, not a common phrase over here, although not really obscure either. It did require the checking letters, though, which only became available after I, like the other Kevin, finally changed LAUDATORY to the correct ADULATORY. Regards.

    Edited at 2014-12-10 08:15 pm (UTC)

19. I walk past a shot tower every morning to work in Bristol close to Castle Park. It’s a modern construction, probably 1960’s though it’s now an observation tower for an office block built around it. Until I saw this for the first time I thought they only existed in the imaginations of physics teachers.
20. 11:40 here for an enjoyable solve with no real problems.
21. Catching up days late. Like several, had trouble with play merry hell – made the laudatory error, and for too long thought drunk might point to reel instead of hell. Learned shot tower, and also stop out. Thx for a nice blog.

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