Times Cryptic 26984

60 comments on “Times Cryptic 26984”

1. ….and almost couldn’t believe how easy some of the clues were. I only hesitated a little with my LOI, ‘tiffany’, but it had to be. The clues for ‘user’, ‘envied’, ‘oral’, and ‘apse’ would not be out of place in the Quickie.

   I was a little disappointed to finish so quickly, so I went on to the Guardian. However, I did that one just as quickly, and one of the clues there actually was from today’s Quickie!

   1. Also 16 minutes, and also LOI tiffany. I sat looking at it going through the alphabet and inserting likely filler letters until I eventually parsed it after 5 minutes. Bit unfair of the setter to use a word I didn’t know for the last clue I had to solve……;)
2. Tuesdays are the new Mondays.

   This was a most unsatisfying breakfast accompaniment – a mere bagatelle.

   Over the finish line in 21 minutes, including a change of room, as the painters arrived mid-solve.

   FOI 14ac RESPONSE

   LOI 26ac OVERSEEN

   COD 6dn MAQUIS

   WOD 4dn EUCALYPT

   Ken Dodd died.
   Diddy?

   Naughty Chair!

   Edited at 2018-03-13 08:05 am (UTC)

3. I see the adoptive AM did this in Roger Bannister time. I imagine a John Landy will be along soon. A Marathonesque 14:54 for me.

   Sorry to be so cryptic, but I reckoned we could use a bit more.

4. Thought I might squeeze in under 10, but LOI ORATORIO slowed me down; I was looking for OP OR for too long. Biffed 11ac and 23ac, solved after. I wonder if we’re supposed to read something ninaesque into the crossing of KNOW FULL WELL and YOU NEVER KNOW; in any case, one doesn’t often see the same word twice in one puzzle. An anti-COD to BENEATH for its ‘some quarters’.
5. Finished in 63 mins, on my bday woohoo.
   FOI etch, LOI oratorio.

   Guessed Tiffany and the MA/BA in the unknown maquis.

   COD ballyhoo or know full well.

   1. I’ll admit I “ninja turtled” MAQUIS from the name of the resistance movement in Star Trek: Voyager rather than the original WWII brigade!
      1. Oo, I do like ‘to ninja turtle’ as a verb!
         1. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to verb it since it was suggested 😀
            1. I look forward to seeing you cited in the OED 😉
      2. My knowledge of the MAQUIS stems from Star Trek Voyager too, although a quick Google shows that the particular reincarnation of the term originated in Deep Space Nine!
6. Very smooth sailing. Didn’t last quite the entirety of my brief homeward subway ride. Which was cool, because last week’s Canard Enchaîné was in the mailbox to entertain me during dinner. TIFFANY was my last too, as I didn’t know that definition. Not sure I’d ever heard of MALAGA either.
7. After yesterday, I was quite pleased to find something Mondayish available this week, but that’s probably because something like this still takes me 29 minutes, rather than just 9, and I do have to get to work at some point…

   FOI 1a FRIPPERY LOI 27a ANTELOPE, WOD BALLYHOO. Most problems with IMMINENT, I think, not knowing “mine” for “store” and not being helped by a small crisis of spelling confidence!

   1. As in ‘ a mine of information ‘
8. 12:02 … I didn’t find this entirely straightforward. I spent time looking for a port in 9a (ORATORIO) and trying for some variant of patchouli at 4d (EUCALYPT), and got myself tangled up attempting to spell PRESBYTERIAN.

   We’ve been seeing a lot of the old TSARINA lately

9. 25 mins on IPad pre-brekker.
   On hols in Ullapool. Fantastic. But I felt compelled to contribute given the presence of Yoghurt.
   Mostly I liked: Lope, Nightcap and Sobriety (COD).
10. Waiting at an airport and managed to get the crossword on treeware which possibly contributed to a 15×15 PB – 19 minutes! Great start to a holiday. Had to parse Presbyterian fully to get the correct spelling, dnk the shortened version of eucalyptus but in it went, then finally Tiffany with a bit of a prayer. Came to the blog and was relieved it was right – thanks jackkt.
11. Pretty straightforward. Putting Brouhaha in 15d held me up for a while. Oratorio was my LOI. 26m 44s
12. Done in 10 minutes with one to go and, like others, finished with ORATORIO by way of Ontario, Otranto, Oporto and many other impossibilities. Great to see an antelope that wasn’t an obscure antelope.
13. Simples
14. I would have been under the 10 minute mark if I hadn’t hesitated for so long over TIFFANY. I couldn’t think of anything else that fitted but didn’t know the definition so resisted biffing it. Finally I saw the parsing to finish this straightforward offering.
15. 13 mins for me. Not quite a PB but about as fast as it gets. Wasn’t quite sure about TIFFANY.

    BTW do you know about the “Tiffany problem”. It’s a medieval name, short for Theophania. But it sounds too modern and if an author named a 12C woman Tiffany, it would be accurate but seem fake.

    It’s like the problem of how to pronounce “forte”. Usually, unless you mean loud music, the “e” is silent because it’s from the French but it makes you sound like you are a rube.

    1. I heard about this only last week (I think friends on my Facebook feed were discussing who writes the best historical fiction and this is obviously too good an observation for someone not to make it). See also: all the films and TV programmes where real historical events are so extraordinary that they have to be more or less fictionalised in order to make them credible to a new audience.
    2. The forte problem sounds a bit like the quinoa problem.

       If you pronounce it “quinn-ower” you sound like a pleb. If you pronounce it key-noir you sound like a ponce.

       A great reason to avoid it altogether.

16. 12.30 but very pleasant solving. My PB is 7.20 but that was when I had a few more functioning synapses I think. Unless it was just a staggeringly easy puzzle that day. Held up momentarily by biffing ‘know very well’ and not stopping to think it through. Then Malaga corrected me.
17. A stroll this morning at 6.53 with nothing biffed, clear understanding of every clue (words = tiff was the only brief headscratcher), and my sole dislike those damned men at 9A, who are appearing far too often.

    FOI 1A
    LOI 24D because it was simply the last I came to.
    COD 16A

    Thanks Jack and setter.

18. I suppose it’s conceivable I’ve had a quicker solve, back when I was a younger man with better reflexes and nimbler fingers, but I don’t think I can physically manage much quicker than this. TIFFANY was the closest thing to a delay, along with double-checking for the IMMANENT/IMMINENT elephant trap, which I’m sure I’ve fallen into before.

    Obviously my first thought on seeing 3dn was feeling sorry that it wasn’t PRESBYTERIANS in the plural, so that it could be clued as an anagram of BRITNEY SPEARS.

19. 14 minutes with MAQUIS LOI. We’ve got some TIFFANY lamps which look nice on our old brown furniture ( we’re so square) but I didn’t know it was a fabric too. I gather you can get breakfast at the Fifth Avenue store now. I bet they don’t have HP sauce. This was mainly straightforward. I gather you swash your buckler rather than buckle your swash. COD to KNOW FULL WELL. Thank you Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2018-03-13 09:47 am (UTC)

20. I agree with Sotira about this one actually: when I caught a glimpse of Aphis’s sub-4 time on the leaderboard I thought, oh oh, it might be a pure typing speed exercise today, but actually I found some of the clues and vocab moderately tricky. Not enough not to come in somewhere around the 4 minutes mark, and for sure there was a smattering of QC-level clues in here, but I didn’t think this was *egregiously* simplistic. Remember that one that took Jason 2.5 minutes or something ridiculous a year or so back?

    Edited at 2018-03-13 10:07 am (UTC)

21. For me, who will always be slow and steady at this game, this was a pleasant solve (easier than Sunday’s Everyman, which is a cracking puzzle these days BTW). FRIPPERY is a lovely word, and with BALLYHOO, SPRYLY and LAZINESS, I like to think the setter was in a benign mood when this puzzle was put together.
    I am sure a run of stinkers will be along soon.
    Regards
    Andrew K
22. TIFFANY nearly LOI. Singing along to the song, segueing to Bare Necessities. Once hitchhiked through Malaga, it was raining. Spent some time wondering how NAVE could be downloads. 10′ 31”, thanks jack and setter.
23. Straightforward (PB I think). FOI FRIPPERY, LOI ORATORIO as I was looking for a port starting OP-
24. No sub 10 for me this time thanks to ORATORIO. Tip of the hat to the setter for bamboozling so many of us. Foot traffic at Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue has dwindled mightily as a result of its uncomfortable location next to Trump Tower. Which is a little ironic because the founder’s middle name was Comfort. 10.16
25. A fast (for me) thirteen minutes. Correcting for three G&T’s and a headwind puts this only a little off my PB. Many were biffed unparsed. Like many of you, I’d never heard of TIFFANY as a fabric, but otherwise everything was straightforward.

    I was interested to discover that the quintessentially English-sounding “brouhaha” (which I too considered for 15d) comes from the French “brouhaha”. Zut alors – qui aurait deviné? Even more surprising, BALLYHOO is (if Wikipedia is to be taken at face value) a fish in the genus Hemiramphus, which itself sounds like a word for a half-hearted kerfuffle.

    Edited at 2018-03-13 11:20 am (UTC)

26. 16’22, couldn’t get moving as spryly as a swashbuckler. Wrong sort of bovid.
27. Super easy. Done on iPhone in 25 mins only held up by not being able to spell Presbyterian. Still a white-out in France!
28. 11.57, so it must have been easy. I’m never too sure these days whether slowing down towards the end is because the last few clues (TIFFANY, ANTELOPE, – FULL – and ORATORIO) were harder or because my peak solving capacity deserts me sooner than it used to.
    I did spend a little time wondering what brown was doing in the bear clue: he was grey in Disney, which suggests Kipling (thanks for the ref, Jack) got it wrong.
29. A pleasant romp in which I was heading for a 15 minute solve until I hit 6d, 9a and 16a. TIFFANY yielded first as I spotted the wordplay for the unknown fabric, then the port finally morphed into a work, and lastly Chakotay’s MAQUIS, where I’d failed to lift and separate Sorbonne and who, completed the event. FRIPPERY started the proceedings. 19:56. Thanks setter and Jack.
30. 9:24. Like others ORATORIO was my last in: I think it’s the WITH link word that had so many of us looking at the wrong end for the definition.
31. Solved this whilst watching Cheltenham and I’d finished (LOI Oratorio) just after the end of the first race. Say 51 minutes which would be a PB.
    1a went straight in; I knew Maquis from way back.
    Slight hold-up at 12d having biffed Know Very Well but easily corrected.
    The weather at Cheltenham looks beautiful; and no problems with the Irish border. David
32. This was a long list of biffs for me. A biffany?
    1. That’s a great word! It’s the complete opposite of epiphany..
33. Not very difficult, but I didn’t come near any PB with somewhere in the 15-20 minute range. I was quite tired while solving. LOI TIFFANY as an unknown fabric, pleased by the clear wordplay. Regards.

34. As a QC regular, I found this just about in reach. One short — MAQUIS.

    1. Well done Merlin 🙂
35. Well, yes, I found it very easy, too. I took 23 minutes, but that’s certainly my best time. No problems at all, except for some spelling uncertainties quickly cleared up by the wordplay (SPRILY? ANTILOPE? I think I’m getting old. No, I KNOW I’m getting old).
36. What everyone else said.
37. 21:18 – a breeze. Had a question mark at the singular “frippery” rather than “fripperies” to denote the plural “trifles” but the answer was clear. Tiffany from wordplay and Maquis preferred to Baquis.
    1. Various among the usual sources confirm that this can be an uncountable, collective, mass noun although ‘fripperies’ does exist as a plural. Collins actually has: frippery 3.
       unimportant considerations; trifles; trivia.
38. 9:54. I saw the SNITCH for this and thought I’d have a go before leaving for work. Nearly stopped after 9:15 with 3 to go, but then saw REPEOPLE, APSE and the parsing of ORATORIO to finish in a rare sub-10 minutes.. so wasn’t late for work!
39. Thanks Jakkt, I guessed it must have that sort of usage but knowing the plural fripperies it seemed a bit odd to me.
40. I don’t know if anyone looks at these after the day on which they were written but I hope somebody will. We always do the crossword the working day after it is published, so although I love the blogs, there is never any point in writing a comment.

    I have to ask: What is a “NINA”? i’ve seen the word/acronym/whatever appear regularly but not enough to make me understand what it is.

    If there is anyone out there reading this, please enlighten me.

    Many thanks

    1. I understand that a NINA refers to a series of answers to clues that have a common theme or relate to each other in some way. I can’t remember what it actually stands for. Like you I usually look st this blog the day after. For the record, I completed this quite quickly; I never time myself but I know that it was quite fast.
       Regards to all,
       Richard
       (I’ve got an account but I’ve forgotten my password!)
    2. As Richard says it can mean a theme in the answers, or if you look across or down the rows and columns which have letter in them but don’t form the actual answers, there may be hidden words there. For instance in yesterday’s Independent spread out across the grid in the answers, were, ALPHA an d OMEGA, NOUGHTS and CROSSES, WEAR and TEAR, and COCKLES and MUSSELS. In Sunday’s Indy, the setter had arranged it so that if you read all the letters around the outside of the grid, it said THIS IS CROSSWORD NUMBER FIFTY.
    3. It’s not an acronym, but a reference to artist Al Hirschfeld, who used to hide “Nina”, his daughter’s name, in his work.

       This came up in (SPOILER ALERT) Monday’s Guardian puzzle, where if you click through to the blog on Fifteen Squared you’ll see the word GUARDIAN spelled out in the centre row.

       A helpful article linked in the comments of that Fifteen Squared entry is What Is a Nina? on Crossword Unclued.

       Incidentally, here’s Fiddler on the Roof by Hirschfeld. If you look at the signature on the bottom, you’ll see a “2” at the end, indicating that there are two “Nina”s in the picture. There’s one to be found if you look at the sleeve below the raised pointing hand of the large gentleman centre stage…

       Edited at 2018-03-14 05:50 pm (UTC)

41. 4:12. No-one’s reading here any more, but I’ll post my time anyway so I have a record for my nerdy spreadsheet (which I haven’t updated for ages). Anyway, another PB here, woo hoo!
    1. Hell’s bells, that’s a good time!!! 🙂
       1. Thanks!
42. Many thanks to everyone who took the trouble to explain. I must say how much my wife and I enjoy reading the comments every day and being astounded at some of the times recorded by the speed merchants. We usually complete the crossword but it is very rare that we take less than 30 minutes. I actually write on the newspaper and I doubt if I could write in the answers in sub 5 minutes even if they were being read out to me!
43. 11 37 secs. Would have been under 11 mins if I had just biffed Tiffany and under 10 mins if I had not done this on my small I-phone.

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