Times Cryptic 26782 – July 20, 2017 Let there be, and eventually there was.

73 comments on “Times Cryptic 26782 – July 20, 2017 Let there be, and eventually there was.”

1. … as the paper came off the printer was the “E Ǝ” grid — an occasional visitor to the Times with, I’m told, some nostalgic reasons for keeping it in the arsenal of grids.
   So either you don’t need to solve 15ac and 17ac or, if you do solve them, you have 8 checkers in hand.
   All done and parsed under the 30 mins, though with much biffing. E.g., bunged in SLAVISH only to find HALS after the fact. (Not very Jimbo-esque … but effective.)
   Had a bit of trouble accounting for the 0-0 in 13ac (and also surprised to see the reprise after only two days). The chess notation for castling was a rather dim memory. Has the device been used before? Don’t think I’ve seen it.
   Do we really need “escaped” in 15ac? Reads better that way though.
   Last parsings were ON THE WAY (tricky) and LIGAMENT (not expecting a tennis reference).

   Edited at 2017-07-20 06:40 am (UTC)

2. is hard to form from NOT ABLE TO; it’s C(lubs) + (NOT ABLE)*
3. I started off slow, but picked up speed after a first pass through the clues. But the SE was recalcitrant; I think LIGAMENT, which I biffed, was my LOI. DNK WRONG-FOOT; I gather it’s a cricket term? I wondered about the O’s in 13ac, and thought (‘castles’) it might have something to do with chess, but got no farther. I also missed the EW in 2d. I imagine that a thick person is unsophisticated, by virtue of his thickness, but for me anyway, thick means stupid not unsophisticated. That’s today’s nit to pick. Today’s clue is JOHN PEEL. Z, you’ve got a couple of typos: JOHM PEEL, and comments on SLAVISH.
   1. I read this as GOT + HIC{k}. Probably wrong again because of the tense difference.
      1. Pity it wasn’t “Became…”
         1. My parsing of 1A was the same as Mctext’s — GOT + HIC[k]. It seems to me to work because “become” can also be read as a past participle, as in “he has become wiser over the years”, which could in turn be rendered as “he has got wiser etc …”
            1. FWIW this is how I parsed this one too.
               1. Given my user name, I feel I should adjudicate: my parsing was also GO THIC{K}!
      2. I’m with you on GOT HIC!
   2. Wrong-footing is what you do to a tennis player when you hit the ball behind him/her. “Contre pied”, in Paris.
4. Well, I did solve it! I suspect it will prove too tough for some of the less experienced solvers.
   1. Yes, I thought there was some hard stuff here. I worked through most of it but had to come back to 18d, 21a and 23a after a break to finish it off. Not knowing the Hunter (JOHN PEEL) meant that I had to wrest it from the cryptic (rejecting JUNE PEEL – as in summer sunburn, presumably not JULY PEEL, along the way).

      And LIGAMENT was tough, LINT as dresser, GAME as part of set and LIGAMENT as binder all required some thought.

      Was glad to have finished correctly in the end.

      Edited at 2017-07-20 06:07 am (UTC)

      1. “Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?
         Do ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
         Do ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away
         With his hounds and his horn in the morning?”

         All those answering “nae”, raise your hand!

5. I presume that is 1 Hour 43 mins! Why so long?

   I was home in 39 minutes. Started fast and slowed for the south-west where I should have had 15dn CONFOUND a lot quicker! Confound!

   FOI 19ac STUBBORN I still have to use cheques as internet banking is not highly recommended in China. One needs VPN which is technically illegal.

   LOI 24ac DAY SHIFT

   15ac CYAN is the printer’s term for blue – CMYK etc.

   COD 19dn SLAVISH

   WOD MNEMONIC my SOI.

   18dn JOHN PEEL was a shocker! My oath!

6. The number is wrong in the title. It is 26782.

   For some reason I always struggle with this grid and today was no different. I needed way too many checkers to get the “first commandment”

7. Thanks to my friendly proofreaders. I have corrected errors, which I think for the most part proceeded from a heat oppress’d brain: is this an obelus I see before me? The number (and date) error arose from having the Tuesday crossword open to check the answer repeat: I normally simply copy and paste to avoid any misprings, and copied the wrong one.
   1. I only noticed since I was looking to see if the blog post was up, and saw that it was not by the number. Then I realized the title could only mean that it was….if you get my meaning
8. On a train to Chester today so early and no brekker to assist. 35 mins and enjoyed them all. After 1a and 3dn, I was stumped in the NW so went SE and foraged north with effect. I liked the Megalith, the ‘castles’ and sunburn peel. I blenched badly at the Plant – but it had to be Rim and only one place to slot it. COD to Let the rebel…
   Thanks fascinating setter and witty Z.
9. I also struggled, somehwhat like yesterday except instead of have difficulties on one side of the grid, today I had a fair amount of answers around the edges but large gaps in the centre. Then, having come up with some possible solutions such as ONE OR TWO , LET THERE BE LIGHT and LIGAMENT, I was unable to justify them from wordplay so I couldn’t be sure that they were right and place complete faith in the checkers they provided for other clues as yet unsolved.

   I’m pretty sure that the OO chess reference has not come up before during my time or I would have remmebered it as an alternative to OO ‘spectacles’ which I’ve always thought of as rather feeble if not exactly a cheat. Anyway I didn’t know it, but revisiting the clue having completed the grid I deduced what it might mean and looked it up to check. Like our esteemed leader I was also some way over the hour, but I had nodded off, briefly I think, at one point.

   1. In chess o-o means castling on the king’s side and o-o-o means castling on the queen’s side. It would be a challenge to get the o-o-o version into a clue but octoroon has enough os in make it at least a possibility
10. 21:59 … another alarmingly lean first run-through. At 8am no one has gone under 10 minutes on the leader board so I think we can call this a tough one.

    Either the misdirection in this puzzle is exceptionally good or I was being exceptionally dim, but I barked up countless wrong trees. And there are quite a few clues I can’t imagine solving ‘the right way round’. Reverse engineering only.

    Last in LIGAMENT (just after JOHN PEEL, who is barely within my ken and who I’d forgotten was a hunter).

    COD to LET THERE BE LIGHT. Cleverly misleading definition.

    Edited at 2017-07-20 06:55 am (UTC)

11. A rare sub-Sotira for me, some of the answers presenting themselves more quickly than they might have on another day. I put it down to stress and lack of sleep.

    Some really good clues here, think I’ll give COD to ON THE WAY. Was relieved to see that AGRIMONY existed, though the wordplay was pretty compelling.

    Thanks setter and Z.

12. This grid always irritates me because I can never remember the name of the man, beginning with E, that it commemorates

    A number went in straight from definition (20A, 22A) but particularly the long 5D. Agree with Sotira – hard to imagine solving it from the cryptic

    I don’t recall o-o (castles king side) before from chess notation, so something original perhaps. I recall castles (queen side) is o-o-o so watch out for that!

    1. It’s Edmund Akenhead. Part of the very interesting material PB posted here:
       http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/227851.html
    2. Edmund Akenhead. See here.
       1. Great minds?
          Grid 23 in PB’s collection:
          http://www.biddlecombe.demon.co.uk/TFTT/Times_Crossword_Grids.pdf
          1. Speak for yourself!

             Edited at 2017-07-20 08:09 am (UTC)

             1. Should have said that, since PB’s posting, 4 more grids (93-96) have been added. As if there weren’t enough!
                1. How do you know this stuff, McT? Is there a catalogue of grids somewhere? Or do you just have an incredible visual memory? (I didn’t even know there was an E-grid until today, which shows how much I know)
                   1. I just have the above link in my bookmark. (The one to the TfT page.) It’s very handy if you (as I know you do) like to set the odd puzzle here and there. The linked .pdf (also above) is the basic catalogue.

                      Edited at 2017-07-20 08:32 am (UTC)

                      1. Ah, I had missed the pdf. Thanks. I always feel like the class dunce when these conversations come up, as I rarely even notice grids.
                         1. As noted above, there are 92 grids in the .pdf. There are now 4 more. Not sure where I got those. Email me if you want 93-96.
                            1. I think the 92 will keep me (and the Christmas Turkey) going for a while.
                   2. I known even less and there must be something wrong with my visual perseption because I can’t see why it’s called an E-grid even having been told that’s what it is. Where’s the E?
                      1. Jack, five of the black squares form the shape of an E in the northeast corner of the grid, and do the same thing again in the south-west corner with the difference that here the E faces backwards.
                         1. Jack, I should of course have said eight and not five of the black squares in my previous comment
                            1. Thanks. I wasn’t looking there. Perhaps it would have been more obvious if I’d been looking at a grid that wasn’t already filled in. But once seen, it’s hard to ignore.

                               Edited at 2017-07-20 11:29 am (UTC)

                               1. All this grid arcana is new territory for me. Like you I took some time to spot the Es from looking at my filled-in grid, but when you look at number 23 in PB’s collection of grids (thanks to Mctext for the link) the Es positively leap off the page.
13. Clever and testing puzzle, involving a good deal of biffing on my part (ON THE WAY, ONE OR TWO, OPIATE and LET THERE BE LIGHT), with the parsing being fully worked out, if at all, only much later. Thanks to Z8 for doing the hard work of filling in the gaps.
14. 20.39 I post-parsed 1ac as GOT-HIC and that’s the version that seems best supported by Chambers. I don’t think we need invoke bridge in 2d Z and that doesn’t seem to account for the ‘our’. ‘Our team’ is of course Tottenham, as in ‘We finished three places higher than Arsenal last season’.
15. 18:44, with well over five minutes at the end staring at 12ac. I had to solve it from wordplay in the end, and I didn’t know that PILATE was a judge, so it took a while.
    Good challenging puzzle. The chess notation is far too obscure/specialist for the Times crossword in my view but it didn’t stop me solving the clue.
    1. This slowed me down, too; and one might perhaps wish to raise an eyebrow about ‘Biblical judge’. He was procurator of Judaea, which I gather meant the emperor’s representative or viceroy. And he presided over Jesus’ trial, evidently; so I guess a judge to that extent.
16. As noted, some tricky parsing. A HEPTAGON is not necessarily regular, it can refer to any seven sided plane figure. The convict would need to be escaped or CONFOUND would not make sense. WRONG FOOT is not from cricket, and is my COD. 32′, thanks z and setter.
    1. There are all sorts of ways in which convicts can go missing!
17. …at OPIATE which I spent about 20 minutes on as my last in. Otherwise went in steadily and I came in at just under the hour. Had no idea about O-O for castles in chess, so had to guess that one, along with the dreaded ‘Plant’ at 16d, for which the wordplay at least was helpful.

    Liked ‘As jogger’ at 17d, and grudgingly ‘duller’ at 12 once it was safely in. Unfavourite word of the day to MOJO, the antithesis of charm to me.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

18. I didn’t raise an eyebrow, just because I didn’t know any better. I said that I didn’t know that PILATE was a judge, I should perhaps have added that I didn’t know he wasn’t, so for me this was just an exercise in thinking of people from the Bible.
    1. I believe this was my LOI too but there’s only so long you (or perhaps I) can look at _P_A_E before a “duller” finally presents itself. And then the wordplay made just enough sense to hit submit.
       1. I missed the (rather cunning) definition and got there from figuring that ‘old’ might give O and then trying to think of people from the bible who might give you P_A_E if you took out an L. Once I looked at it like this it was fairly easy but it took me ages to get there.
19. 22.40 so a similar time to yesterday, but this was a much better effort. On another day, with less caffeine onboard, it could have been a real struggle. Held up at the end by JOHN PEEL and LIGAMENT, the latter submitted hopefully as the binder definition does not spring to mind instantly, although it is first in Chambers.
20. An enjoyable wrestle with this one. My botanic blind spot held me up with AGRIMONY, which I think is too close to AGRONOMY for me to remember it as a plant without combing the memory banks first.
21. 22’47. I like the slavish definition. It seems to be the turn of ‘one or two’ for the fifteen minutes of fame. Pity the first two letters give mnemonic away, if you go through the acrosses first. ‘Bel Canto’ is a halfway-decent novel I read some years ago. Starting to feel a bit sorry for Man Friday. – joekobi
22. Held up for a long time by FOI Primrose with a prose being a great pain – too much Georgette Heyer I suppose

    Tim (must get a proper login)

23. I tussled with this one for 38:22, but found it a satisfying experience. I even managed to almost remember the plant, trying AGHEMONY, before spotting Crusoe’s Aide, which brought the penny drop moment. I needed a lot of crossers before 5d succumbed. FOI was GOTHIC and LOI BEL CANTO. Didn’t know the chess notation but didn’t worry about it. Liked OPIATE, which fell quickly once I’d got SHAMPOO. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and Z.
24. Well, that was splendid entertainment. I didn’t know the castling thingy in 13ac and, for a long time, I took ‘downed’ in 12ac to mean that the biblical judge had swallowed an L but it was all good fun. 17d, 18d and 21ac were also very good.
    Z8b8d8k, cheques are still widely used here in France, even at supermarket check-outs.
    50m 35s so about par for the course.

    Edited at 2017-07-20 12:47 pm (UTC)

25. A DNF for me, in about an hour, with 21a still unfilled. I even thought of LIGAMENT but simply couldn’t see either the wordplay or the definition. With the plethora of biffs and question marks from the other clues you’d have thought I’d just write it in and call it done, but I couldn’t convince myself I was right.

    Shame, as starting with GOTHIC{K} I really should have done well today, but to reference thud_n_blunder’s comment from yesterday, this did feel frustratingly like trying to find the end of the cellotape over and over again… Thanks for the many parsings that passed me by!

    Edited at 2017-07-20 04:10 pm (UTC)

26. About 25 minutes, ending with the hard to recall JOHN PEEL, as I only knew him from the ‘D’ye ken…’ thing without knowing any of the words to it, or what it’s actually about. That went in together with LIGAMENT, as a biff, since the ‘lint’ part as ‘dressing’ doesn’t mean anything to me either. Everything else, including chess notation, was within my ken, so it all went in understood, until those last couple. Regards.
27. Back from just local walks earlier today to face this beast which took 55 minutes. According to the weather app, tonight is the last of our sunny weather here, but four days in a row is pretty damn good. We’re back to London on Sunday. Didn’t know NOH so had to biff HEPTAGON which surely doesn’t need to be regular in its habits. Took too long on LEASABLE. Was looking for an OT figure from Judges before thinking of OPIATE and only then seeing Pilate. What is truth? Biffed LET THERE BE LIGHT from the crossers giving sight to the inly blind. BEL CANTO was somehow dredged from earth’s darkest place, Must have had COD DAY SHIFT recently as I saw it straightaway, or it may have been the twenty years of schoolin’. My MOJO was working at least. We didn’t ken JOHN PEEL on the way back from Keswick yesterday, but we used to sing about him at primary school. Thank you Z and setter fora good puzzle.
28. I remember my mother once telling me not to use words if I didn’t know what they meant. Well, I didn’t know what a “logement” was, and therefore shouldn’t have used it as the answer to 21ac. This instance of combined word-blindness and aparsia* was doubly embarrassing since LIGAMENT is blindingly obvious. I ask myself how I could have been so stupid, but the question is purely rhetorical.

    [*an inability to parse]

    1. A friend of mine from the NE is currently recovering in Hereford Hospital having had his ACL reattached yesterday following a holiday trip down some stairs. Apparently he will be there for a while yet to have some rehab!
       1. I wish him well. What did they decide to reattach it to?
          1. I’m not privy to that level of detail:-) Just relying on reports from his wife back in the NE. It’s a good job he’s retired and doesn’t play football!
             1. Well, the entire knee is an engineering disaster with all the hallmarks of having been designed by a committee. No provision has been made for ease of maintenance or repair. From a medical as well as aesthetic perspective, it would be far better if the thigh just continued all the way down to the ground.
                1. My artificial one seems to be doing nicely. It got me the mile and a bit to the pub tonight. Got a full metal jacket home though. Don’t want to overdo it:-)
29. Not so much a DNF as beaten into submission by this one. Very little went in on my first pass this morning or again at lunchtime. A second wind on the train home felt promising but I still had three which I just could not see: 12ac, 21ac and 18dn. Stared at them a while longer before giving up and coming here to be put out of my misery. At 12ac I was sure that downed either meant the judge had swallowed an “l” (as in downed a pint) or that a judge containing an “l” had moved it a letter or two further down from its original position in the word. My failure to read it as a removal indicator was my undoing there. The only John Peel within my ken is the DJ but I suspect I may well have seen the “D’ye ken John Peel” John Peel in a previous crossword. Although I might have seen it on another day I just could not see Ligament. DNK the castling notation. I also parsed 1ac as GOT HIC(K). COD-wise I liked both the jogger and the escaped prisoner.
30. I think on reflection the “got hick” version is probably the better, and possibly the setter’s intention. Thick for unsophisticated is perfectly OK in my unsophisticated opinion, but hick is less vulnerable to a charge of somethingorotherism. Thick is probably heading towards a banned list of some kind.
31. I felt I was on the wavelength right away with this one, with MOJO, SHAMPOO & STUBBORN (to name but three) all write-ins. Solving soon slowed down but I still thought I was heading for a steady solve with full parsing as I went along. But sadly I then fell at the last: 21a where I had all the checkers but made the stupid assumption that the G_M part must be GUM (=”binder”) which left me high & dry. So a DNF but a very enjoyable challenge nonetheless.
32. 11:45, so not a disaster, but looking back over the clues afterwards, I found I’d made depressingly heavy weather of several of them.

    When I returned to 1ac (having failed to solve it at the first two attempts) with all the checked letters in place – making GOTHIC pretty obvious – I went for GOT HIC(k) without bothering to read the clue through again, simply assuming that the first word was “Became”. On balance, I suspect the setter probably intended “Became”, since I’m not convinced by THICK = “unsophisticated”.

    No real problem with 10ac, but I’d have been faster if I hadn’t assumed that the judge was going to be from the Old Testament.

    A pleasant, straightforward solve (or at least it should have been).

    1. What’s wrong with GOT = become, Tony? Past participle in both cases.
       1. Oh dear! Nothing wrong at all of course. (Sigh!)
33. Well, there you go – sensible engineering; not some lash-up job held together with gristle. Glad to know it got you there!

    One other advantage of a metal knee: if you’re ever lost and disoriented at sea, just float calmly on your back and you’ll point due north.

    1. Funniest thing I’ve read here since Jack’s “rocket science” quip.
    2. One disadvantage is that when you go through security at Manchester Airport, you set off the alarm and get a thorough manual search!!!
       1. For some Mancunians that could be the highlight of their day… (apologies to Manchester).

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