Times Cryptic 26408 by Hayley Dixon

70 comments on “Times Cryptic 26408 by Hayley Dixon”

1. Argh! About 4 minutes for all but 14ac, but that one took me another minute or so. When solving at speed, one doesn’t always have time to think outside the box in the manner demanded by this clue. I was so close to personal best territory, too!
   1. I knew every answer immediately in the QC today. However, by the time I had got the pencil out of the case, sharpened it, folded the paper and stared out of the window reflecting on the meaning of life, I realised that it had taken me 6 minutes (the pencil broke and needed to be re-sharpened).
      As Norbert Dentresangle would say, on a point of logistics, how do you and Magoo do it??

      Forgetting the enormous part that the solving plays (debated on this blog) , how do you physically do it?

      I imagine Edward Scissorhands or similar.

      I am in genuine awe.

2. Sheesh, defeated by a four-lettered word. DNF with 14Across stuck in my throat like a fish bone …. ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!
3. Didn’t know MAENAD, and I thought that MAEVAD was just as likely. There were also a few less likely possibilities, so I don’t agree that this was gettable from wordplay.

   I also failed to get BUREAUCRAT, for which there was no excuse, and I completely missed the whole TRIO thing, although I don’t mind that type of device.

   So as Kevin would say, oh well. Tomorrow is another day. Thanks Hayley and Jack. And congrats to Verlaine for a sizzling time.

   1. Fortunately for me, once I had found ENA by trawling through the alphabet I bunged it in and never considered EVA.

      Edited at 2016-05-10 04:26 am (UTC)

      1. I considered both and should have gone with ENA which seems quite popular in crosswordland. However I’ve never met an Ena, whereas my dear old paternal grandmother was an Eva.

         Of course if I knew MAENAD it wouldn’t have been an issue, so I’ll just blame a lack of GK.

         1. I also lacked the relevant GK but I knew Aeneas from Greek mythology (via Henry Purcell) so perhaps the combination of letters AEN looked right and made some sort of connection in my brain.

            The most famous ENA in the UK must surely be Ena Sharples, the battle-axe from the early days of Coronation Street.

            1. I mombled Mherad with “HER” as the girl so I’m another who doesn’t agree that the wordplay was helpful.
               1. Well I seriously considered MDEBAD. Should have just put OATBIN.
4. … perplexed by TRIO. But it had to be.
   As for 22dn, I remembered that aircraft have a pilot flying and a pilot not flying. (As opposed to pilot and co-pilot.) The signal to start the flight from the pilot flying is “My go”.
   A rather un-Timesish feel overall.
   1. All I could think of was “Thunderbirds are go!”.
      1. I’ve heard this style in the US military: “Am I go for launch?”, say.
      2. As the astronaut would say to Houston or vice versa, “you are go”
5. Few new words or terms such as MAENAD (I had ‘maevad’ as well), PROMETHEAN, OCTOPUS in the sense of someone influential and EDACIOUS. BIFD TRIO without any idea of the parsing. Spent way too long getting VETO which in retrospect was almost the easiest clue but was therefore my LOI. Liked AMIGO.

6. 38 minutes, with TRIO in last after I got the “r” from my penultimate COUNTERMAND. I didn’t know the old fossil, so took the very dangerous step of relying on my misty Classical education to decide it couldn’t be “triteracops”.

   A puzzle whose sum is not as hard as its parts.

7. Biffed TRIO, of course; good job, Jack, figuring it out. I’ve never cared for cross-referencing clues, so popular in the Guardian, and this seems to be taking it several steps in the wrong direction. Still, ‘composition’ _r_o, I mean. 12ac illustrates the importance of noticing articles: I hastily typed in an initial M, which didn’t help. My heart sank when I saw ‘place in Wales’, as I was sure of the answer and equally sure I’d never get it spelled right; but of course the clue was easily parsed. No problem with MAENAD, but as Galspray says.
8. Interesting about the setter’s name as this doesn’t appear in the paperware version, so it must be an on-line thing only.
   Well under the half-hour mark, dredging MAENAD up from somewhere and biffing TRIO like many others. DNK EDACIOUS, but it was pretty clear from the anagram.
   I liked the novel clue of “wine” for ROSE.
   All in all, I enjoyed this.
9. Similar experience as yesterday’s with one blank (TRIO) and one wrong (maevad) after about 30mins. Beginning to be a bit of a pattern. Will try harder tomorrow…
10. A curate’s egg puzzle that I chugged through without ever getting up a head of steam

    13D strikes me as plain wrong! There are synonyms for “fossil” – amber say – but TRICERATOPS isn’t one of them. It was a herbivorous dinosaur.

    I took 17A to be one of those weak cryptic definitions.

    No trouble with TRIO which is straight out of the Grauniad.

11. When I saw a 15 letter “Place in Wales” I presumed the setter was desperate for a pangram. 30 minutes exactly. Hesitated like others on EDACIOUS and MAENAD but saw TRIO/ROTISSERIE. How am I ever going to post a time like Verlaine’s if I think Duck, Citrous fruit, Language and Collar (and even Hotel) before Bureaucrat when I see the word Mandarin?
12. Every comment I had already noted: TRICERATOPS not really a fossil; EDACIOUS, MAENAD, TRIO written in mostly hopefully. 15’30” today.
13. Far be it for me to disagree with the learned Jimbo, but surely anything thing that has undergone fossilisation is thereby a fossil, be it a crinoid, trilobite or dinosaur – ergo a triceratops is a fossil – the only remains we have of such a creature. Amber is a resin and not organic matter that has been transformed into stone, so strictly is not a fossil (except by common usage).
    1. Agree . If you find one , these days, it has to be a fossil!
       1. I don’t follow the logic that extinct creatures or species can only be referred to in terms of their fossilised remains.

          Edited at 2016-05-10 01:16 pm (UTC)

14. I hesitated over whether the girl in 23A was HEN or HER but plumped for HEN giving me MHENAD. Could equally have been MAEVAD or MAENAD.
15. I suppose we can give the green light to this. Had to look up Bacchante to get MAENAD as LOI. Biffed TRIO as I wasn’t thinking outside the box today after a bad night’s sleep following the dog’s latest dietary indiscretion. It’s not quite as bad as having young kids again though. Otherwise straightforward in 35 minutes.
16. In CS Lewis’s Prince Caspian (undoubtedly his worst Narnian book), the Maenads – “fierce, madcap girls” – appear as Bacchus’s followers.
    1. …and it’s up against some pretty stiff competition. 😉
       1. That’s harsh. 🙂 But seriously, which one comes close to it in terms of lack of a compelling narrative line?

          Anyway, out of the mouths of babes and all that – I remember that your kids liked them…

          1. I’ve no idea: it was just gratuitous teasing 🙂
             I can’t really remember any of them, although I read them all and enjoyed them enormously when I was a kid. My eldest two got into them for a while but they were quickly distracted by more trendy stuff like the Hunger Games, Maze Runner and Percy Jackson series. And Harry Potter, of course. O tempura and all that.
17. 11m. Similar experience to Verlaine’s, just taking twice as long at every stage. For a couple of minutes at the beginning I thought I might be on for a very quick time as the answers just flew in. MAENAD slowed me down a bit, but it looks more Greek than MAEVAD, and Bacchus is, er… Roman? Greek? Filed somewhere under ‘Literae Humaniores’ anyway.
    And like everyone else, ages at the end agonising over TRIO before bunging it in without a clue about the wordplay.
    We’ve had EDACIOUS quite recently.
    1. I see Magoo managed another sub-4-minuter today, goodness me he’s good. And Jason agonised over TRIO for just a few seconds less than I did, it looks like 😀
       1. I was quite excited on Saturday when I did the puzzle faster than Jason and (dare I say it) you. A rare occasion up there with some of the pros for once, just maybe, I thought… sure enough Magoo came along a little later to blow us all out of the water.
          1. Saturday was my best for ages too – I think my 7:06 was better than everyone I know of apart from mohn at the time. A rare clear head on a Saturday morning and the chance to solve online for a change!
             1. Clear head on a Saturday morning! What is this mythical beast?
          2. I consider Jason a sporting kind of chap who’s not afraid to post a dodgy time once in a while, or admit to biffing or even fouling up in the Forum. Magoo though, more of a tennis player than a cricketer, blasting his non-interactive 200mph serves straight onto the leaderboard…
18. Around here a convicted felon would be “sent up the river” to Sing Sing – on the Hudson about 30 miles North of NYC. It still happens but with the explosion of the prison industry in the last few decades there are now quite a few more choices for the sentencing judge. The latest crop out of Albany (of both parties) have either gone or will be sent up shortly. 12.08 with an invisible typo – there’s only one U in OCTOPUS.
19. As my FOI was 24ac, I thought that this was going to be a toughie but come through with a (for me) respectable 20:01, Dithered between TRIO and BRIO and plumped for the former as it sounded like a composition. Definitely a Grauniad feel for this clueing. Thanks Jack.
20. 30 minutes for me with one wrong. Went with MHERAD for 23 across as I’d convinced myself that the MAD enclosure was the first letter with the last two. Biffed TRIO as I had no idea how it was parsed. Like Jack I fretted about CUT/CROSS, but put it in with a shrug. EDACIOUS seemed familiar somehow. Otherwise not too difficult. Thanks to Jack for the explanations.
21. … got me over the line. The reasoning behind TRIO and ROSE defeated me and like others I didn’t like TRICERATOPS as a fossil, nor (s)end up c.f. send down.
22. An interrupted time today, so let’s say 37 seconds just to annoy everyone. Rather an odd feel today, with several right answers entered with a sense that it could easily be something else – most of the tetragrams in particular. DRIP takes several Thesaurus turns to get to fool, and I initially thought BRIO was right. But then I also thought ALIENATE was right for 12ac, LIE (position) in A NATE with a misprint. It confused the eventual OCTOPUS enough to prompt a rethink, and besides, we never have misprints.
    Do you suppose Hayley Dixon is an alias?

    Edited at 2016-05-10 11:53 am (UTC)

    1. Alex Hoyindy obviously
    2. I thought the same about DRIP. My first thought was DERP.
23. An interesting 20 min solve. My classical education meant ” maenad” posed no problems. Threehorny McHornface can only be a fossil these days I think. Biffed “trio” as my LOI.

    Edited at 2016-05-10 02:29 pm (UTC)

24. As a QC convert I seemed to be in the groove and had all but 2 in around 15 minutes which would easily be my best time. But DNF because of Trio (I would have entered such but don’t like it if I cannot derive correctly) and I would have also guessed at Maevad. I agree with other points and this puzzle felt different to the norm, but this also helps me to improve. I don’t think I will aspire to Magoo (whoever they are) or Verlaine just yet. Thank you blogger.
    Alan
    1. Magoo is Mark Goodliffe, who has won the Times Crossword Championship the last eight years running. Typically here we aspire to finish within a personal multiple of Mark’s time, e.g. “I finished within three Magoos today” (I wish!).
25. If you count biffing trio. Defeated by priestess. Happy with Dino. Think the coelacanth is described as a living fossil, after all.
26. Fairly straightforward 25-minute solve despite not knowing EDACIOUS and guessing TRIO without having the slightest understanding of the wordplay. MAENAD crops up often enough in barred cryptics, so that posed no problem. My main hold-ups were in the NE with 2, 9 and 14 all crossing. I raised an eybrow at the definition for 13 but I think it’s OK. I haven’t come across the metaphorical meaning of octopus before. The grammar of 22d is just dire.
    1. Perfectly natural if you think of the expression
       “we’re go (for take-off)”

       FGBP

27. Undone by MHERAD, like others bunged in TRIO in hope and didn’t think fossil was right for triceratops.
28. It may be to you, not to me. Perhaps you’re a pilot. I never sit in the pilot’s cabin so I’m not privyy to their jargon.
    1. GO is in Collins and Chambers as an adjective meaning “ready (for action)” Although I used the example of a pilot, I think it’s not unheard of in lots of other contexts
       1. Quite common in a work perspective for me, with a looming implementation coming up, “are we go for the weekend?” is regularly heard, so not a problem for me.

          Getting within a single-figure number of Magoos, well, that’s another story.

       2. Quite common in a work perspective for me, with a looming implementation coming up, “are we go for the weekend?” is regularly heard, so not a problem for me.

          Getting within a single-figure number of Magoos, well, that’s another story.

       3. All I can say is thank goodness I’ve been out of the country for fourteen years and have been spared such ugly solecisms.
          1. I would call this a rather lovely neologism, personally. For me ‘we are go for launch’ is up there with ‘one small step for man’ in its association with some of the most exciting things mankind has done in the last hundred or so years.
             And I wasn’t even alive!
29. 11 minutes for this – I must be in the minority with 14, where I had ???O, figured it must be TRIO and used that to get ROTISSERIE. My question mark was against CARMARTHENSHIRE, which I got from wordplay.
30. All correct in 45 minutes. Can’t even say I biffed TRIO, because I didn’t spot ‘composition’ as the definition; let alone the cryptics. As far as I’m concerned, a trio is three people with bad haircuts playing Schubert. Or possibly stooges or musketeers. But a composition? Bah!
31. A train journey gave me the chance of a go at this for a change. Had fun, managed edacious and maenad but fell at the final fence of 14ac. Thanks for clearing that up.
32. 11 mins. I have a feeling this is a setter I’ve struggled with in the past because of the number of charade clues that I didn’t spot as charades first read through, but once I got on the setter’s wavelength I finished it relatively quickly. CHICKENPOX was my LOI after WOODCUT (with a shrug on the cross/cut synonym). I didn’t have a problem with MAENAD and I saw how TRIO worked fairly quickly once I had the checkers and 15ac.
33. Sorry to be late, but of course I’m always late. About 30 minutes today, held up at the end by STEW and especially TRIO, which I never parsed. No real complaints about anything else today. I surprised myself by having no problem at all with CARMART..etc., which of course I’d place in Wales, but without a clue as to how to be any more specific. Thanks to the setter for that wordplay. Regards.
34. This one beat me. Like many others, I struggled with 23ac. I figured that Greek was littered with ads (dryads, Aeniads and others too numerous to actually remember), but mis-plumped for “maevad”.

    I failed also on TRIO, partly due to the unfamiliar (but entirely non-unreasonable) style of the clue, and partly because I was misdirected into seeking a musical composition. Toyed briefly with BRIO, then decided that since my 23ac was likely to be wrong it didn’t really matter. At that point, I decided that the patient was probably not going to make it, and that the time spent on closing up could more profitably spent preparing a G&T. On this last point, at least, I believe I was right.

    1. But it is a musical composition! Here’s perhaps the best known example of the genre.

       Edited at 2016-05-11 01:31 am (UTC)

       1. Ah, well, culture was never my strong point!
35. 52 minutes (how many thousand Magoos is that?), but I did finish correctly, LOI being ELECTRODE and then TRIO, which with some perseverance I managed to parse correctly. MAENAD just seemed more likely than MAEVAD (even though I know tons of Evas of several nationalities but no Enas). Cut/cross drove me to the COED after solving and it refers to the intersection of two lines (they cut each other if they cross each other) — as a mathematician I really should have thought of that, but then thinking of things like that would get me too close to Magoo territory.
    1. From your userpic you look old enough to remember Ena Sharples!
       1. Old enough, yes. But not living in the UK, I never watched Coronation Street, so she didn’t quite spring to mind. And anyway, I meant real people, ones I know personally.

          But thanks for the tip; I’ve amended the userpic.

36. 8:41 for me. I’m in the same minority as glheard since I too guessed TRIO and used it to get ROTISSERIE.

    I wasn’t too worried about TRICERATOPS being clued as “fossil” as there aren’t too many live ones about these days – at least not in my part of London, though south of the river, who knows?

    A pleasant straightforward solve.

37. After all the discussion, I still don’t understand how the word “trio” was derived.
    1. 14ac: What’s altered at the beginning of the next composition (4) TRIO

       The next answer (at 15ac) begins with ROTI. Alter that to get TRIO.

       15ac: Restaurant serving rubbish is meeting with endless row (10) ROTISSERIE

       Edited at 2016-06-13 09:17 am (UTC)

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