Times Cryptic 26414

51 comments on “Times Cryptic 26414”

1. Somewhere a little north of ten minutes here. You may be right that nothing was *very* hard, but I did reach a stage where there were four or five blank spaces in the puzzle, each of which I’d had to leave to return to later – which is quite a rare occurrence for me these days. Probably a well-crafted puzzle with excellently pitched difficulty, then.

   I’d definitely be interested in mohn2’s secret new technique…

   1. I’ve described the process here. It may seem a little strange for bloggers of the main cryptic, but Quick cryptic solvers/bloggers are used to solving the puzzle from the Times website (since the Quicky doesn’t exist on the Crossword Club) and the format used on the Times website is much more amenable to manipulation (as well as time-travelling). Feel free to try it out and get back to me if you have any questions.
      1. Oh, superb! I am a web developer (though clearly a spectacularly indolent one, or else I might have thought of doing something like this years ago), so I’ll definitely get back to you if I think of any optimisations.
   2. That reminds me V, the reason I didn’t get back to you with my Object Rexx solution was that Mohn sent me his Java solution in the mean time, and it sounds like a better way to go.

      Having said that, in yet another act of procrastination, I haven’t got round to trying Mohn’s program yet. But I have to blog last Saturday’s Jumbo, so will do that and provide feedback some time this week.

      1. Ignore the Java one – the latest version is in JavaScript, so there’s no need for any compilation and the whole shebang can be done purely in the browser.
         1. I freely confess that when I do see http-ese (which I do when I accidentally press f12) I suddenly discover my inner dyslexia. I used to programme in Mallard Basic (via an apprenticeship in DR Logo, the one with the tortoise) and was very conscious that one letter or symbol out of place and weird and generally irrecoverable things would happen.
            My current (evolving) system includes copying the clues to word (via notepad if necessary to remove formatting), editing away to my hearts content, pasting (“as plain text” – I use Chrome) back into LJ’s visual editor and doing the links, bolds and italics there. Gives me the benefits of spell checking as I write and saves (me, at least) time.
         2. Enjoying trying to make it work in the Times Crossword Club. Check out what $(‘.crossword-CrosswordGridCell’).text() gives you in the console:

            “D1ES2EC3RA4TE5 L6AP7SE8R T O R M I R LO9XIDANT B10ENZENEO R T I E O V CP11ORTOFCALL J12EST  E F   L B13 N OH14YDRA L15EICESTERU   R A S A   AS16LO17WMATCH R18AT19ELB U S E   I U  A20LTO S21CAV22ENGING23N R W24 O E M T ID25IAGRAM N26OISIERR N E E U N O LY27UKON R28ESIDENCY”

            I’m sure this… could be made useful in some way.

            1. That grid string and the associated clues string in crossword-CrosswordCluesPanel look as though they contain all the raw material needed to create a blog, but parsing them and combining them looks a right faff …
2. An almost Mondayesque Tuesday, but still some excellent clues. I love a well-disguised definition, and I thought the one for PREVENT was pretty good.

   But I have to give COD to GIRLY. Good old rugby league, say what you like about it, but it IS a tough game.

   Whoops, on edit: Thanks setter and Jack!

   Edited at 2016-05-17 12:56 am (UTC)

   1. Or a game for toughs? The latter is (just about) readable from the clue.
3. Good puzzle and about the right difficulty level for me. Held up in the NW, with OXIDANT as my LOI. Missed PREVENT (good clue) and didn’t have any idea of the parsing of NOISIER which I also BIFD.

   I agree with GIRLY as COD. Reminds me that some in the Rugby League world dismissively refer to Australian Rules football, or AFL, a hard and physical game itself but not as tough as Rugby League, as GAYFL.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

4. Had no idea about the LOI, PREVENT and plucked PR,e-TEXT out of …erm … nowhere. Glad Jack could parse NOISIER. I surely couldn’t. Even missed the anagram at 3dn. A case of much biffing missing the mark.
5. A lot of the fine wordplay was lost on me, as so much stuff could be biffed, eg PREVENT, once I saw ‘bar’. I’m not 100% convinced by v for ‘fivesome’, and, anyway, I’d have thought a threesome was quite enough for most people. Maybe if you’re on Viagra, though…

   GIRLY was good for the picture it evoked, but I think ‘tough game = RL’ will be lost on many people for one reason or another, so my COD goes to the more conventionally clued HUSBANDRY.

6. Well, I’m now wondering which one I’ve been pronouncing wrong all my life. I’d say Venus the same way Jimmy Clanton sings her in blue jeans. And I’d pronounce veinous like vein with an ous on the end, so vane-ous. I mean, not so far apart you can’t get it if you’re ears squint a bit, but at least a bit dodgy.
   Otherwise, like Verlaine (in this respect only, because it took me twice as long at 22’55”) I had a few blank spaces in the grid I had to return to. PREVENT took some working out to avoid PRETEXT (chance, sort of) and PREFECT (there’s an official in there). OXIDANT I was annoyed by, because I smoothly thought of occident straight away but didn’t make the audio connection: again, -dent and -dant are close cousins only unless you reduce both vowels to a schwa. HYDRA: not convinced that hardy and in fine fettle are the same, but, but that didn’t matter too much as I wasn’t going to get there by that route anyway. I didn’t particularly think of the Hydra as a marine creature, but I see it’s not only Heracles’ headache.
   Mildly disappointed and slightly slowed by the absence of a Q that everything else seemed to be crying out for. Spent (a lot of) time parsing NOISIER trying to make a quin appear. Chapeau to setter if that dead end was played for.
   Thanks to Jackkt and (sort of) to setter.

   Edited at 2016-05-17 07:15 am (UTC)

   1. Try venous Z. On edit, sorry, I see that Jack mentioned it first.

      Edited at 2016-05-17 08:22 am (UTC)

      1. If I’d thought of venous, I’d still have struggled to pronounce it without reference to either Chambers or intra- (where it clearly calls for the goddess pronunciation). So I withdraw my objection, even if I can’t recall seeing venous on its own and would, if I needed a version to mean to do with veins I’d have probably gone for veinous.
         Curiously, nothing else ending in -enous (possibly because most of them are -genous) rhymes.
      2. I have now, malc, but I hadn’t when you posted! It was your contribution that encouraged me look at the clue again and confirm the homophone must refer to “venous” (relating to veins) which is pronounced like the planet, and not to “veinous” (consisting of veins) which is pronounced “vane-ous”. I have now amended the blog to reflect this.
      3. Yes thanks, malcj. I don’t think I even knew the word ‘venous’ existed, although It’s a logical inevitability given the existence of ‘intravenous’. If called upon to use it I think I’d have pronounced it ‘arterial’.

         Edited at 2016-05-17 09:40 am (UTC)

      4. Which all goes to show how difficult it is to catch these Times setters out.
         1. I wish to apologise to the community for inadvertently writing you’re instead of your. Mrs Z says it’s a grammar error of horrendous proportions, and I dare not disagree.
            “…my ending is despair,
            Unless I be relieved by prayer,
            Which pierces so that it assaults
            Mercy itself and frees all faults.
            As you from crimes would pardoned be,
            Let your indulgence set me free.”
            1. I believe the appropriate reparation for an unintentional solecism is a one year old female goat.
               1. You’re kidding, right? That’s justice by Numbers.
7. BENZENE is carcenogenic Jack

   Straightforward pleasant enough solve with same reservations as others over HYDRA and VENUS. No stand out clues.

   1. I assumed something of the sort, Jim, but I’m still not convinced that “harmful” adds anything to the definition. Can we expect “harmful” if the answer is “asbestos”, for example? Substances are surely better defined by some other quality.
8. 45 minutes and bifd PRETEXT. Pretty much the same as Z above on seeing Occident immediately but failing to make the leap. It had to be NOISIER but fivesome was lost on me. 45 minutes of scavenging but no real complaints.
9. 13m. I didn’t know the sheep or the lighter but the wordplay was kind. I had no idea about 22 (I would pronounce it like z8) but there the definition was kind.
   Nice to see that crossword stalwart the RATEL, or honey badger. So useful for the setter when those are the letters you end up with. As rare as the EFT in the real world.
   Jack I think the YON in YUKON is just ‘that’.

   1. Thanks for that!
10. Struggled badly today, an excellent challenge, so with two in NW remaining lost confidence and checked OXIDANT as a word, before remembering that antioxidants are common. Thanks for the parse of 26ac. So by my exacting self-standards a 60’dnf 🙁
11. 30:11. I hesitated over biffing PREVENT, VENUS and NOISIER, so thanks to Jack for sorting those out for me.

    Some nice clues today; COD to either BEAR IN MIND or OXIDANT.

    With EFT yesterday and RATEL today are we going for a week of crossword animals?

    1. Ounce for the trifecta!
       1. … and ELAND on Thursday.
       2. Apparently SPINY LUMPSUCKER is 5000 to 1 (then again, Leicester was in today’s crossword – what are the chances of them winning anything?)
          1. I tried Google imaging it, but all I got was pictures of the mother-in-law.
12. 45 minutes for me. FOI DROOP, LOI PREVENT. Saw the parsing for 26ac just after I’d finished the puzzle. I’d been trying to fit quins in too. Keriothe’s analysis of YUKON hits the spot for me. Liked PR EVENT. I’d also been considering PREFECT and PRETEXT. Nice puzzle. Thanks to Jack and the setter.
13. As a (slowly) improving beginner this made me feel that I still have much to learn. I got off to a very good start completing the NW in very quick time including full parsing of Oxidant, Hydra (back to school biology lessons!) and the dreaded Spooner clue. But failed to see Yukon as I kept trying to fit Yemen. Electorate and Prevent were also new techniques for me. Also got Derby in my head and couldn’t see Girly. Personally I don’t like the use of ‘tough’ when describing a game – it’s all relative and try playing ping pong at a competitive level! So overall I found there were too many traps for me. But that’s good as I can now look out for such. There are some funny YouTube videos of honey badgers – vicious brutes they are. Thank you blogger.
    1. I looked them up and loved the descriptions. Eats anything, attacks anything, impervious to pointy things, virtually unkillable, clever enough to use tools, smelly enough to knock out bees, fast and ferocious. Nobody know how long they live in the wild. The B team?
       1. Last week someone sent me this honey badger clip. You can keep your meerkets, these guys rule:

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c36UNSoJenI

          1. Absolutely brilliant. But what would you expect from the male of the species?

          2. The future of the planet is in safe hands. We might as well retire and leave it to the ratels.

             1. From what I’ve read, it would seem to be wise to wear a cricketer’s box when going anywhere near them, or we WILL need to leave it to them!!
14. Like some others I made a quick start then got bogged down. 35 minutes in the end. I thought the clues rather good on the whole, though I share the blogger’s reservations about ‘in fine fettle’, and the two definitions in 2d are too close for my liking. The best dd’s use clearly contrasting definitions, preferably from different headwords.
15. 28 mins with some biffing of the usual suspects. Nothing particularly obscure but I was off wavelength today.

    Edited at 2016-05-17 12:37 pm (UTC)

16. I have been on the wavelength since I whizzed through this late last night with question marks next to EMBELLISH and ELECTORAL which went in without figuring out the wordplay. OXIDANT and BENZENE on the same row must be some sort of Times Chemistry miracle!
17. Mark Wynter had the hit in Britain I think, heard by me on my first transistor radio on Radio Luxembourg, your station of the stars. I couldn’t parse the clue at all, nor HYDRA. Had a deadline this morning so it was an afternoon puzzle. They say there are morning people and evening people but no afternooners. I support this assertion nearly an hour later.
18. That took around 35 minutes, but I was doing a few things at once, so a very unscientific timing report, there. LOI was OXIDANT, which I thought very clever when it finally dawned on me. The ‘RL’ abbreviation went over my head, but I put in GIRLY anyway as the clearly correct answer. To find it’s a rugby reference instead of the ‘RU’ I’ve become used to is a new one on me. Regards.
19. 23 mins and I found some it hard going. I went up a few blind alleys, two mental and one on paper, that made the puzzle more difficult than it need have been. With only the L and R for the cheesy sheep I wasted time pondering if there was such a breed as a “Limburger” before I realised that 7dn was unlikely to end in E?G and the more obvious (and correct) solution came to mind. I also didn’t think too much about 16ac and bunged in “Test Match” on the basis that it was a whimsical definition, and SLOW MATCH ended up being my LOI after I realised 14dn and 17dn were HUSBANDRY and OUTRANK. Earlier in the solve it took me a while to see PREVENT because I couldn’t get away from thinking the answer was going to be “pretext”, although I obviously couldn’t see why. I also confess to having biffed NOISIER.
20. I found this one dishearteningly tough, especially after starting off getting 1ac at first glance. It was all downhill from there; twenty minutes later I’d scanned across and down and only got about three answers. I rallied a bit in the second half of my allotted hour, finishing off the bottom half, though with quite a bit of biffing, but really foundered on the top.

    An hour-long DNF with too many unanswered to detail. The rest of my day’s been a bit like that, too. Ah well. Thanks for letting me see my missed opportunities in the top half and for debiffination of the buttom.

21. A bit over an hour, with my LOIs being PREVENT (it took a while to understand the wordplay, but of course it would have taken much longer, say forever, to understand the wordplay for PRETEXT), NOISIER (just biffed) and SLOW MATCH, which I simply prayed might reasonably be correct. Of course I didn’t finish yesterday’s puzzle until coming back to it this afternoon either. Must be getting old (see picture).
22. Thirty-nine minutes for me, which puts me roughly on a par with the ratels, as far as I can tell.
23. 16:17 for me, tired and never really on the setter’s wavelength.
24. That was due to Ron and me, actually.

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