Times Cryptic 26276

40 comments on “Times Cryptic 26276”

1. … a great deal by the suspicion of a pangram early on. Some very well-constructed surfaces in this puzzle, of which that for 12ac stood out. Homage, too, to catatonia (21ac).

   24ac: now trying to think of a pop star who didn’t sing. Hank Marvin perhaps? (He once knocked on my door selling some variety of religion!)

2. I also toyed with OVERALL MAJORITY, but settled on WINNING MAJORITY after FOWLS went in. Not a smart move.

   Spent the last five minutes on BEGORRA. Saw it early enough but failed to parse it for some reason. Also struggled with EMBODY, BELABOUR, TETRA, ABDICATE and NUTHATCH, for no good reason that I can see in hindsight.

   Will find out soon enough whether I made my target.

   Thanks setter and Jack.

   1. Fortunately my score will have been cleared off the leaderboard very swiftly, not least because, after failing to find a word from the anagram fodder that would fit the unknown 2d, after 90 minutes of torture I forgot all about anagrams and put in ‘prestodigitator’ as my last in.
3. One of those I’ve-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this-one ones, where my first solve was NURSE. I put in WORKING MAJORITY, then took out the WORKING because I couldn’t figure out what to do with the R. Then put it in, and finally got BEGORRA. I did a good job of hanging on to the wrong definition and ignoring alternatives: the topographical ‘defiles’, the sailing ‘vessels’, that sort of thing.
   1. Funny, NURSE was my last one in. 16.11 in all, and I needed almost every checking letter before getting 2d. I completely misparsed 4d but biffed it on the basis that it couldn’t be anything else.
4. Fortunately I did not let the prospect of a possible pangram cloud my judgement on this one. 2d was a good write-in to start with and I had a nice symmetry quite quickly in completing the NW & SE corners but after that it was a steady plod. I’d not heard of Mr Emmet and I wavered between CATALONIA and CATALONIC as 15d eluded me until the last when I shrugged my shoulders and biffed BELABOUR.
5. About half an hour and another object lesson in the perils of biffing, half-biffing and generally taking liberties. As well as an OVERALL MAJORITY which I ‘corrected’ to an OUTRIGHT MAJORITY (failing to notice that it didn’t fit), I had a confident CROWS (which I decided to see as a line from a cricket scorecard — c. Rows), an emphasize, an Irish nationalist called Ethod … I could go on but I won’t.

   Thanks, setter and blogger.

   Edited at 2015-12-08 12:04 pm (UTC)

6. Just to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who blogs. It is your parsing that has made it possible for me to tackle the Times crossword – even if it still takes at least one hour. So even if we don’t say so , we do appreciate all your hard work.
   1. Thanks for your kind words. Please feel free to introduce yourself by adding a name or you can get a (free) Live Journal id and with a userpic of your choice.
      1. I missed the note about your 8th anniversary, Jack. Well done, sir, and thank you.
   2. You don’t know half of it – the panic when you can’t finish the puzzle, the ridiculous wrong answers you propose as the whole world watches, the incorrect puzzle numbers and clue numbers, the ‘leftover’ answer from the puzzle two weeks ago that wasn’t removed, etc, etc.

      I am glad our efforts are not for nought, however we may be struggling behind the scenes.

7. At 10A I had AS instead of EG for like giving me BASORRA which I presumed was a god I’d never heard of. Thus I couldn’t get FIGARO either. With hindsight, I feel I should have got both.

   For AGOG today it struck me as unusual to have a word referencing itself as a clue (midnight). On occasion when I do the Guardian I’ve seen such use but not that I remember in The Times. Anyone else think that or is it just me?

   1. Hi Pootle. I wouldn’t say it has never come up in the Times but it’s a lot rarer than it is in the Guardian.
8. No problems with this. Solved 6A before 7D so never even considered all the alternatives. 2D a write in from definition and word length

   Jack and I started blogging at the same time so just as surprised as he is by passing of time. Keep up the good work sir!

9. Good puzzle that required persistence, especially in the NE corner, where I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only person who was repeatedly misled. If there is to be a God of Mombles, BASORRA should be that deity.

   I can never remember who it was who said that the setter’s job is to be defeated by the solver – but not necessarily straight away. Perfectly illustrated today.

10. A bit too clever-clever for me. Gave up after 10 clues solved on an hour. I had a number of other clues right (Blague, Addiction, Computer, Begorra) but struggled to parse the cryptic.

    Some of the definitions were a bit weak or maybe I just didn’t get the joke, e.g. 24a or 23d.

11. It took a while to get going with this one but soon everything fell nicely in place for a pleasant exercise. I liked the couple of Irish references, so I did.
12. Rather dozed my way through this, which might account for coming in only 10 seconds shy of 30 minutes, and the rather shaky start in which I had no confidence whatever in the early entries. If EMMET could be an Irish Nationalist, then EXTRAVERT would do for outgoing, faute de mieux, and TACET could be a small fish instead of a musical instruction to shut up. As I progressed, and a bit to my surprise, AGOG did indeed do for “very curious”, UNDERLINE turned out to be right (clever use of strain, I thought), and WORKING – um – worked. 2015 turned out to be there just as an example, in an infinite set, of an INTEGER. By happenstance, I had an interesting discussion yesterday on the difference, if any, between a habit and and ADDICTION, which would have made that one easier if I hadn’t argued for the difference. Clearly the identity of the two is close enough for crosswords, and indeed Thesauri.
13. 21:04 with Emmet & blague from wordplay.

    Thanks for explaining where “line” and “working” came from Jack and congrats on the milestone. Stalwart barely seems adequate.

14. About 35 min – in fits and starts: after failing to see any of the acrosses, 1dn, 2dn and several of the other downs fell quickly, so that on my next pass the left side could be completed. Then came to a halt, trying for something like ‘exports’ of ‘expenses’ at 1ac, T-T-S for the fish at 11ac, and using ‘stalic’ at 21ac (immobile=static).
15. I echo anon’s earlier comments although my attempt to follow jackkt’s advice to join Live Journal and get a free ID didn’t work . Perhaps oiks without genuine I pads don’t qualify ! Mal
    1. A few people seem to have trouble with the sign-up process these days. You’ve probably already been there, but just in case you’ve not been able to reach the registration page, it’s here: https://www.livejournal.com/create.bml

       In theory you should be able to register from any device, I think.

    2. Anon,

       You would not necessarily want to use an iPad (I do) because you cannot enter the listings on The Times Crossword Club site.

16. 24:04. An enjoyable challenge. I didn’t know BLAGUE, wasn’t convinced by FOWLS and couldn’t find the headless pop star in 24a – thanks for the parsing of these two, Jack. Otherwise no great difficulties. Favourite 23d.
17. All correct, though ‘Emmet’ and ‘blague’ went in on hope rather than knowledge.
    I found it tough, but enjoyable.
18. Cantered through this, only held up for a couple of minutes by FOWLS. Pleasant puzzle.
19. 37 mins, but in mitigation I was very tired when I started it and dozed off mid-solve. Count me as another who had the most trouble in the NE and I finished with FOWLS, a word which looks plain wrong to me with an S on the end of it.
    1. I also looked twice at FOWLS and was surprised to find it listed in most of the usual sources. The ODE in particular is very hot on designating so-called “mass” nouns that cannot take -S in the plural, but this is not one such, apparently.
20. About 25 minutes, ending in a rush with AGOG, WORKING MAJORITY and FOWLS. I knew of EMMET but certainly not BLAGUE, and ‘bod’ for fellow seems to lack a bit of precision. But I echo the salute to jack’s long service here, along with the others who’ve laboured so long, so cheerfully. (And note the ‘ou’ spelling, as my small salute to the UK origins of all this.) Regards.
    1. Well, this was one of those operations from which neither patient nor doctor make a full recovery.

       I managed to make an almost perfect hash of the NE corner and (as is often the case in surgery), the fatal error happened quite early, with “overall majority” (full legal age) at 7d. This error was then sutured irreversibly into place when I put in “crows” at 6ac (caught=c; defiles = rows, as in in “walking in defile” – and yes, I appreciate that those two components are in the wrong order).

       The patient was probably deceased by the time I convinced myself that “Bashera” was a god (“as he” in “bra”, and yes I know it doesn’t really work either) at 10ac. All vital signs had been lost by the time I decided that “undertake” was the only thing that fit at 12ac. By this stage, though, I realized that the patient was beyond saving, and called it a day with 6d and 14ac left as unclosed incisions.

       There is a philosophy amongst medical insurers that it’s best to make all your blunders on one patient, so I am expecting the rest of the week to be trouble free.

       1. .. this is going to cost an absolute fortune in compensation though, isn’t it Thud?
          1. One death from several cockups generally costs less than several deaths from one cockup each…
             1. A fair point. Important for the nhs to be cost effective, these days. .
21. 37 minutes today (great time for me) and no unknowns except EMMET, which went in easily after seeing “embraces” (and having correctly decided that the river in 1ac is the EXE). I enjoyed this puzzle except for a few of what I consider to be no-nos (such as “midnight” cluing G). I thought DWELL was rather clever.

    Edited at 2015-12-08 10:59 pm (UTC)

22. Another desperately slow start before I eventually struggled through to a miserable 13:49.

    I thought this puzzle was very cleverly clued, but despite that I didn’t actually enjoy all that much. I suspect that’s because there wasn’t anything that made me smile.

23. Slow going for me. After 35 minutes I had only two answers in! And yet, five minutes later I had the entire left half of the puzzle. At 54:19 I had everything but the FOWLS/WORKING MAJORITY crossing, and after another 10 minutes gave up. I never can seem to finish off the final cross!

    I assumed BEGORRA was wrong… it looks like one of those nonsense words you get when you piece together little cryptic bits. Pleasantly surprised to have gotten it right!

    I dug the devious DIGS and AGOG, and the careful wordplay dissection needed to get COMPUTER (and not COMPUTES).

    Edited at 2015-12-09 07:12 am (UTC)

24. Perhaps my aging eyes deceive me because I cannot see an “X” in this crossword, so not a pangram.
    Thank you for your excellent blog and thanks to the setter for a difficult but fair crossword that took me over 60 minutes to solve.
    1. yes, keep looking 😉
25. Try 1 across
26. 20m. I enjoyed this one, despite tackling it at the end of a very long day.

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