Times Cryptic 26504

41 comments on “Times Cryptic 26504”

1. …as I finished the right-hand half readily enough, and then got thoroughly stuck on left side. I ended up stuck on ‘soft spot’, ‘moving’ and ‘vanish’ for a while, which should not have been that difficult. My earlier misspelling of ‘Nefertiti’ did not help much, either.

   ‘Wisconsinite’ has to be the COD, but we’ve seen ‘statesman’ perform a similar function in the past. Watch out for it!

   Edit: Sorry, forgot my time, it was a bit over 46 minutes, beating the blogger but probably no one else.

   Edited at 2016-08-29 11:57 pm (UTC)

   1. Thanks for rubbing it in! 🙂

      Edited at 2016-08-30 05:23 am (UTC)

2. Felt quite difficult as I slogged through, but there were no major hold-ups at the end. Last one to fall with a bit of a penny-drop was WISCONSINITE, so I’ll make that COD.

   Thanks setter and Jack.

   BTW, a PACER in horse-racing is very different to a PACER in athletics. Well one’s a horse, so obviously they’re different, but I mean the word has a different meaning.

3. About 45 – 50 minutes with a few bunged in. Held up in the SE by CHIN for ‘punch’ and the ‘false anagram’ at 16. Had to take a guess at CHARON. I’m another who liked VANISH, as well as the ‘statesman’ misdirection in 1a and SWISS ARMY KNIFE. As galspray points out, one meaning for an (equine) PACER is a horse trained for harness racing, colloquially still known here as “the trots”, a term seen as not particularly favourable for the image of the sport. Must remember to add MAY to the (long) list of 3 lettered tree names.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

   1. Or more colloquially as the “red-hots”. Either way, they’re travelling a bit better than the poor old dish-lickers at the moment!
      1. One of my fave radio comedies from the past. In the intro there were great lines such as “… from the ABC, the station that gives you the trots”.
      2. ARSONIST with MOVING SOFT SPOT is now bothering me.
4. LOI 1ac WISCONSONITE but I initially had 3dn as BUGLE. My same sentiments as Jack. Like 10ac FORT WORTH both clues were a bit tortuous. So COD to 20ac VANISH for its unobvious simplicity.

   Cow corner wasn’t easy but once 2dn SWISS ARMY KNIFE was in it all fell into place in 53 minutes.

   26ac PRETTY PRETTY was very Larry David.

   WOD RUNYON

   horryd Shanghai

5. … easy after yesterday: but only in that context. More cases (as per yesterday’s PROBOSCIS) where initial mis-parsings helped. E.g., finding an anagram of “great” in INTEGRAL, then wondering about the final L.

   Main problem was sweating over the 4 longest answers (2dn, 7dn, 1ac, 26ac) and wondering how to get CLEOPATRA into NEFERTITI’s slot (24ac). I was almost sure that the def. at 1ac was “party transgression”, signalling GATECRASHING. Maybe these things are setter-intended. Maybe they’re just phantoms of a twisted brain. In which case, I have the latter in spades. Sometimes it helps; sometimes it’s a handicap.

   Surprised that Pedanticus (© Chris Maslanka) hasn’t appeared yet re “greatness” for ENORMITY. Here the note in ODO is informative:

   Enormity traditionally means ‘the extreme scale or seriousness of something bad or morally wrong’, as in residents of the town were struggling to deal with the enormity of the crime. Today, however, a more neutral sense as a synonym for hugeness or immensity, as in he soon discovered the enormity of the task, is common. Some people regard this use as wrong, arguing that enormity in its original sense meant ‘a crime’ and should therefore continue to be used only of contexts in which a negative moral judgement is implied. Nevertheless, the sense is now broadly accepted in standard English, although it generally relates to something difficult, such as a task, challenge, or achievement.

6. I was quite pleased with my completion in 53 minutes, even though I knew the simplicity of the Classical and musical references (and the lack of a really obscure English town, a nice bit of Scots or a Greek nymph) would play into the hands of the speed merchants – Magoo, Galspray, Jason, etc.

   I was never quite sure I would get RUNYON, as I kept thinking of ingenious ways to shoehorn ‘Bunyan’ into the clue.

   1. Can’t speak for Mags and Jayce, but the more Greek nymphs the better I reckon.
   2. After a morning’s worth of trying to think what _U_ could be for print whilst considering just throwing in BUNYAN even though I knew it to be wrong, I finally just came up with RUNYON. It’s satisfying when the perseverance pays off (unlike yesterday!).
7. Could 1ac be an accidental tribute to the great Gene Wilder? His first movie was Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) where he played Eugene Grizzard, the gangsters’ hostage. His first line in that, his first film, was “I’m from Wisconsin”.

   And on edit … I just found, he was in fact born in Milwaukee.

   On edit again … don’t know why I bother.

   Edited at 2016-08-30 10:12 am (UTC)

8. 28m. I had most of this done pretty quickly but then found myself with the NW corner completely blank apart from THING, and the remaining clues took me approximately forever. I think I went for nearly 15 minutes without solving a clue, and very nearly gave up, but I managed to grind it out eventually, somehow. None of it seems particularly hard now, of course, and it’s all perfectly fair. I’ll put it down to getting up at 5 and solving without caffeine assistance.
9. I actually put in BUNYON, somehow, but fortunately even in my sleep-and-caffeine-deprived state it looked wrong.
10. I ground to a halt with most of the NW half incomplete, then after a quarter of an hour or so worked out the rather nice VANISH and the obvious-when-you-see-it MOVING, leading me to finally get my SWISS ARMY KNIFE out.

    Sadly my remaining time wasn’t enough for the tricksy WISCONSINITE, or my leftovers of WETLAND, ARSONIST, SOFT SPOT or ORGAN (I also had “bugle” for a while, Horryd; it’s a popular newspaper name, after all!)

    I would have failed anyway, having bunged in BUNYAN for 15a even though I had a strong feeling he was English. RUNYON was even more unknown to me, and I didn’t see the wordplay. If the Times iPad app had the handy “pencil” feature I might have remembered to revisit it…

    Thanks to the blogger for letting me off the hook, and the setter for a fine challenge.

11. Worth the struggle just for the Uxbridge English Dictionary’s VANISH, after yesterday’s declaimed and unless. But it was a struggle over 37 minutes and some, in which nothing except THING and NERO went in on first reading. On another day, I’d see “blades all over this” and reach in my pocket for the trusty Victorinox clone, but today it was more blades? skin? wolf gutted – where do you put WF in a word? misery compounded – twist the knife? and similar such panic.
    I may have to reboot, though where God hid the ctrl alt del keys I have yet to discover
12. 14:31 … no kernel panics here though I did have a bit of a spinning hourglass / wheel with SOFT SPOT and a ‘Loading: please wait’ for TOWNHOUSE, partly thanks to initially biffing WISCONSINNER (a bad person from Wisconsin?)

    Like Z8, I feel like I got my money’s worth with VANISH alone. I love stuff like that.

    Thanks, jackkt and setter.

13. Another good effort.. also liked vanish. 2dn would have been a *great* clue if only the surface reading wasn’t such gibberish. loi 1ac, like everyone else apparently
14. It’s not often I solve a puzzle clockwise from NE to NW but a complete failure to get 1A and 2D until the very end caused just that. 2D has to be the biggest train crash of a clue in a long time. Annoyed with myself over 1A because the cryptic is very good but I needed all the checkers to see it.

    It was working too many GRAVEYARD SHIFTS in the early days of IT that turned me into a coffeeholic!

15. Also bunged BUNYAN, then erased it and thought for a second. COD SOFT SPOT. Solid workout in 21′, so pleased. Not sure about PRETTY PRETTY at all. Was going to expostulate about ‘enormity’ but it’s been done above. Thanks jack and setter.
    1. The trouble with 4d is that ‘oft[en]’ is not strictly speaking synonymous with ‘regularly’
16. 35 minutes but had a blind spot for SOFT SPOT and didn’t think of RUN in 15a.
17. 31:47 with a lot of time trying to twist the knife. I have always liked Runyon’s one-liners, such as his twist on Ecclesiastes “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong but that’s the way to bet”. COD PRETTY PRETTY. Thanks setter and Jack.
18. Runyon’s take on Ecclesiastes 9:11 : “The race is not always to the swift, nor the victory to the strong- but that’s how you bet.” Good advice for anyone fancying my chances with this today. I finished eventually after an hour and a half. And that’s with writing NEFERTITI straight in as a result of the research for a short story I’ve just written. Took ages to see SWISS ARMY KNIFE, that once-essential piece of equipment for taking boy scouts out of horses’ hooves.DNK LULLY so LULLABY a biff. Did not parse SOFT SPOT. Only with WETLAND eventually emerging did WISCONSONITE come. I was looking for something more Churchillian. But at least we had a proper horse in PACER or is that another name for Speed? It was a very good puzzle and blog.
19. First finish for a while, golf and allotment work has been pressing. I too enjoyed VANISH. Now, I am not complaining about GRAVEYARD SHIFT, but I have always known it as the 2 to 10 shift or afternoon shift, can’t drink before and, in the days of “time gentlemen please”, only time for a couple afterwards. Still it was better than 5 12 hour nights or in one case 4 14 hour nights, mind you that was in wet textile processing, where 40 hours meant redundancies were just round the corner.
    P.S. anyone want any cucumbers? even the guinea pigs are fed up with them.
20. This one caused me problems in the SE, where I biffed BUNYON, suspecting it was wrong, but unable to think of anything else. No accurate time as I had to go out for an appointment with about a quarter of the puzzle left. Something under an hour I would guess. FOI was NERO, followed by BUGLE, which I corrected after solving ARSONIST. That helped me with the statesman as the B made that slightly unsolvable. No trouble with the ‘orses ‘ooves device. Liked VANISH, which I have a feeling of deja vu about. CHARON was a write in remembered from previous puzzles. Lots of very good clues. Thanks setter and Jack for unravelling the couple I didn’t.

    Edited at 2016-08-30 12:30 pm (UTC)

21. I think this could be a record even for me – I kept getting distracted while solving this one – unusual to have three other people in the room, then when I confidently wrote in SWISS ARMY KNIFE as my last one in and hit sumbit I had… 5 errors! Checked the grid and saw I had put in something like SWIFF AMMY KNIVS. Well done, George! I liked the puzzle though, challenging stuff.
    1. What do you expect George if you hit Sumbit?

       Edited at 2016-08-30 06:10 pm (UTC)

22. 36 mins though it felt much longer. In completely opposite fashion to yesterday’s, I solved this clockwise from the NE ending up with the usual suspects in the NW. LOI was DURATION. I was pleased to eventually work out 1ac from the wordplay but must own up to a fair amount of biffing.
23. Limped over the finish line after 53 minutes, feeling a bit battered. Some tricky stuff here.
24. Like others I had to proceed clockwise, but eventually got back to the NW area to unravel WISONSINITE and SWISS ARMY KNIFE. But my LOI’s were actually the crossing WETLAND and DURATION, where I dumbly miscounted the letters in (around it) and discounted the anagram until the end. A lot less taxing than yesterday’s struggle, which I missed commenting on here, but this still stretched me out to 30-35 minutes. Regards.
25. 15 mins, the last 4 of which were spent on SOFT SPOT, so apart from that bit of brain freeze it looks like I was on the setter’s wavelength. Count me as another who really liked the clue for VANISH.
26. Like sotira, I just loved VANISH. 20ac yesterday also had a V in it (VANILLA) and was very clever, but I rate today’s as better. That was my COD but 2d gets a mention for making look at the wrong end of the clue for the definition.
    I join those who initially put BUGLE and BUNYAN. WISCONSINITE was clever but I reckon the AA (Average American) would say “I’m from Wisconsin”, as mctext says Gene Wilder once said in a movie.
    Succinct blog, thanks jackkt. 1hr 3m 47sec
27. I didn’t think of BUNYAN. Possible because I love Damon Runyon and dislike John Bunyan. This was very enjoyable. Checked out at 32 minutes. I wasted about 5 minutes on 1 across. Like others, I was looking for a politician. A nice bit of misdirection which kept me puzzling even after I had got ******SINITE to work with. Ann

    Edited at 2016-08-30 07:27 pm (UTC)

28. 37 min, but with a careless typo – I did eventually work out a possible solution for 1ac from the wordplay, but it looked so unlikely that I spent a few minutes thinking about possible errors in the checkers. In particular I’d not parsed 1dn, so was wondering whether the party might be a DISCO, but that didn’t get me anywhere, so reluctantly submitted without a thorough check, assuming a reference to some famous US political story I’d never heard of (which I was going to google for after coming here – so comments above have shown I needn’t).
    I must take this opportunity to thank jackkt for clarification of parsing of 1dn and some other clues I’d not seen right through, and to add my praise for VANISH.
29. Very good puzzle. On the hard side, as solving times by contributors here show. But totally fair with everything fully understood once solved – the difficulty coming, I’d say, from some definitions that were very cleverly concealed. Favourite clues (in order of preference), INTEGRAL, MOVING, ARSONIST, but many other good ones too.
30. Why not Bunyan. The Times is a British not an American paper. And “Enormity” does not mean greatness whatever ODO (who he) may say.
    1. I assume you’re not saying Bunyan is a valid alternative answer to the clue as it wouldn’t fit the definition or the wordplay, so you seem to be suggesting that setters should exclude Americans in any field in favour of the British, which seems a very odd idea to say the least.

       On ENORMITY, your point has already been made above, but for crossword purposes if a meaning is in one of the source dictionaries, which “enormity/greatness” is, it’s valid for inclusion.

       Edited at 2016-08-30 11:03 pm (UTC)

31. 10:01 for this interesting and emjoyable puzzle (though I did raise an eyebrow at ENORMITY).
32. First failure for a while. Tired today so that’s as good excuse as any. I could see that 3 had to end in “knife” but couldn’t get the rest despite having three crossers. 4 also failed to materialise. But I would’ve got both eventually if I’d managed to parse the relatively straightforward 11 and 17. Still, you can’t win ’em all.

    COD 13 for a well concealed anagram.

    1 and 26 are wilfully obscure, but it is good when the setter feels a duty to help us work on our wordpower. 🙂

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