Times Cryptic 27464

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 27464”

1. I was annoyed by STADIA, for the reason Jack gives: RP is assumed here for homonyms, so a non-RP pronunciation needs to be indicated as such. Biffed 16d, parsed post-submission. I spent too much time trying to work OR into 5d, one reason why it was my POI. LOI was HUDSON: with the H in from the start, I thought of the river immediately, but couldn’t make sense of ‘rock’. Fortunately, the checkers forced it on me, and then at last I saw the light.
2. Odd; my message only gives three options: link, reply, thread. When I tried to edit my message, I produced a new message, even though I only edited it. Jack, maybe you could delete my first message? (‘delete’ is also not available to me)
   1. I have deleted the duplicate as requested, Kevin. I noticed yesterday that some of the controls for messages already posted have been transferred to a row of icons just below the poster’s name, but these only appear when viewed on a PC when you hover the mouse-pointer over the message.

      I have higher-level ‘maintainer’ rights here so I don’t necessarily see the same controls as you, but I think if you go to one of your messages that has not already been replied to (e.g. the one below timed at 02:26 re LATAKIA) you should see a ‘dustbin’ icon which would allow you to delete it if you so wished.

      I will look into duplication of messages when attempting to edit and perhaps post something more on the subject later.

      Later: I have just edited this message successfully without duplication, so that seems okay, although as mentioned above I have different access rights so I can’t be sure it’s not down to that. Hopefully comments from other users throughout the day will pick up if there is a general problem and we can then experiment to find out what’s going on. I note the Edit option is now an icon in the aforementioned row of controls instead of an item at the foot of the message.

      These changes to the Live Journal format would seem to bring the layout as viewed on a PC more in line with how it has appeared on a phone or tablet for some time.

      Edited at 2019-09-24 05:44 am (UTC)

      1. I just now noticed the icons when posting another message, having accidentally passed my cursor over the appropriate area; so hopefully all is well. ON EDIT: And now I’m attempting to edit this message.

         Edited at 2019-09-24 05:47 am (UTC)

         1. Excellent! If anyone can throw light on what the other icons do I’d be interested. They are:

            Screen (Human eye crossed through)

            Freeze (Snowflake)

            Track this (Pin)

            1. I don’t get the Screen and Freeze icons, only Edit (pencil), Delete (trashcan), and Track (pushpin). I also get the Track icon with other people’s postings. (The Screen icon sounds rather ugly; it conjured up that unpleasant bit of ‘Un Chien Andalou’ where it appears a razor blade is cutting across an eyeball.)
               1. Screen and Freeze must be just for those with blogging or maintainer rights then. I wonder what they do. And Track come to that, but perhaps that allows one to be notified by email when somebody replies to someone else’s comment. Previously this has only applied to one’s own postings.

                  On Edit: A little experimentation has revealed that Freeze prevents further replies to the comment to which it is applied, and Screen hides it.

                  Edited at 2019-09-24 08:21 am (UTC)

                  1. Oooh, I want a Freeze icon!
      2. Thanks for the explanations Jack. I noticed the icons for the first time yesterday but thought I’d just missed them hitherto.
3. I’d never heard of LATAKIA either, but I was reasonably confident that’s what it had to be. Same for MATRIC, which Chambers says is an entrance exam, and despite having taken an entrance exam and matriculated, I never heard the word before. I don’t think I’ve come across “sherd” before either, but I knew “potsherd” so it seemed plausible it could be found on its own too.
   1. I knew LATAKIA from my pipe-smoking days (long gone); it’s a type of tobacco. Didn’t know it was a port, but knew it was a city in Syria.
      1. Yes, I knew it from the umpteen kinds of tobacco Sherlock Holmes can identify.
         1. I didn’t see you as a pipe smoker Olivia, so thank goodness for Sherlock ! My late father worked for a tobacco company, and I’d often help him to tot up his sales figures, so I knew Latakia from there rather than as a port.
4. ….and wasn’t really sure if Latakia was a port or not – it sounds rather old-fashioned. I also spelled ‘Friesland’ incorrectly, delaying my solve for about ten minutes. Time: 45 minutes.
5. As per, Kev I knew 18dn LATAKIA as a form of tobacco.

   I had 27ac as STALLS initially, but STADIA it was – one has to embrace both RP and non-RP hereabouts, Kev! Dick van Dyke managed it brilliantly.

   FOI 1ac BUTCHERY

   LOI 4dn REVERSION for no reason

   COD 3dn HUDSON

   WOD 19dn LAGER LOUT

6. Finished with LOI MATRIC which I hadn’t heard of and so could quite easily have been BATRIC. I only plumped for the former on the basis that it sounded more like a word.
7. 25′ without HUDSON, despite all the checkers.

   There’s a dodgy homonym in the QC today too.

   Dnk LATAKIA, MATRIC with crossed fingers.

   Looking forward to 10.30 this morning.

   Thanks jack and setter.

8. 43 minutes. Did this before my morning constitutional as it is positively precipitating down here. The LHS was quick, although it took longer than it should have done for Rock HUDSON to dawn. The RHS was like pulling teeth. (One’s choice of imagery isn’t all that freewheeling after all.) LOI was SQUARED. I reached FRIESLAND via the black and white cows of the Fylde. I liked RENEWAL and LAGER LOUT but COD to the faithful old RETAINER. STADIA could win this year’s prize for worst homophone. A tricky puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
9. 25 mins.
   The eyebrow flickered a few times. I mean, why use ‘that’ in 2dn to indicate you put the Op into, er, ‘that’?
   Mostly I liked Devolution.
   Thanks setter and J.
   1. I think it’s the “which” that gives you the that, otherwise start to slide is in the wrong place. I thought it was a very good clue.
10. 38 minutes, with a quick start at FOI 1a gradually slowing to more of a crawl as I encountered the unknowns of FRIESLAND (happily the Friesian cow convinced me I was mooing up the right tree), MATRIC and LATAKIA.

    I sympathise with those who didn’t get 3d HUDSON, as it was my last one in, and I only know the name from childhood memories of my parents being mildly discombobulated by his untimely death. Apparently I would have seen him in Ice Station Zebra when I caught it on the telly a decade or so back, but I was probably paying more attention to Patrick McGoohan, being a Prisoner fan…

11. 15:01 … LATAKIA vaguely known from news reports on Syria’s troubles of recent times. Among other things it’s the site of a Russian air base, visited by Putin a couple of years ago.

    ROSS is a particularly nice clue.

12. Steady 25m solve with Latakia unknown but gettable; I think the question mark at the end of 27ac gives the necessary latitude for the slightly dodgy cockneyism.
13. 44 minutes with COD to STADIA. Many Brits – Prince Charles included – would say it something like that in rapid connected speech.

    Edited at 2019-09-24 07:51 am (UTC)

    1. Not sure I’d agree with that as I don’t drop h’s under any circumstaces. On reflection the homphone works better in Mummerset than in Cockney. I can just hear Pam Ayres saying ‘Stayed yere’
14. 20’48, the port unknown but writing itself in with checkers. I think ‘did you say?’ in 27 gives the homophone its leeway; i.e. ‘I might have incorrectly heard.’
15. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Rock HUDSON/Doris Day movie but they were certainly popular back when and it was a nice clue. There’s a rather unpleasant bit in the OT that has Job among the PotSHERDS and I knew Friesland from one of my favourite books – Riddle Of The Sands. 18.57 with a longish pause at the end before I could see MATRIC.
16. I, too, have matriculated but never heard it abbreviated. My main hold-up, however, was doing an alphabet trawl at 3dn, and assumed it was just me being word-blind – apparently far from it.
17. ….had been clued by a 18D, but otherwise this was pretty accessible. I do need to thank Jack for parsing HOSTELLER though. I solved MATRIC “bottom first”.

    FOI BUTCHERY
    LOI SQUARED
    COD LAGER LOUT
    TIME 11:41

18. 8:47. The homophone at 27ac is absolutely disgracefully awful: leaving aside the unindicated cockneyism, the emphasis (stayed here vs STADIA) is all wrong.
    I love it.

    Edited at 2019-09-24 10:47 am (UTC)

    1. +1
    2. The stress depends on the context. If someone says ‘What do you think of this place?’, then you might reply ‘Well, I STAYED ‘ere once and it was okay.’
    3. The stress depends on the context. If someone says ‘What do you think of this place?’, then you might reply ‘Well, I STAYED ‘ere once and it was okay.’
    4. The stress depends on the context. If someone says ‘What do you think of this place?’, then you might reply ‘Well, I STAYED ‘ere once and it was okay.’
19. I took “with first signs of inebriation apparent” to be an instruction to bung the I and N of inebriation into the anagram fodder with A TALK so I came up with LATIKNA for the port.

    I have a couple of pipes but never put tobacco in them so they were no help. I take one along for an evening out so I can point out interesting things on the menu, give directions, and jab in the chest anyone who doesn’t agree with my views.

20. … and wished I’d got it, because it was COD
21. About 20 minutes, maybe 25. LOI was 1a, LOI was 16d. I always work from NW to SE. HUDSON was a write-in.
22. 9m 32s. LATAKIA, MATRIC & FRIESLAND all unknowns but not too much difficulty with them; STADIA was awful. Otherwise a nice puzzle.

    I got HUDSON from the river and only realised the Rock Hudson connection when I came here.

23. Took rather a long time over this but driving all over Exmoor probably didn’t help. Had most trouble with the RETAINER LOI. it’s always the easy ones that get me at the end.
24. Being a Saaf Lahndaner, I had no probs with STADIA.

    MATRIC, RETAINER troubled me and the unknown Tiles = Hats did not expedite the NHO explorer in any hurry.

25. 34:29. Not entirely straightforward. Matric, Latakia and sherd were unknowns. I liked 6 & 7dn. COD to 3dn though which only succumbed after an alphabet trawl. I initially thought it was going to be an obscure mineral and river which I’d never heard of and was getting ready to complain about unfair and obscure gk. Nice pdm when it arrived.
26. Matric a word used by my Mother b.1912 to describe the passing of school exams equivalent to o level gce etc. Often feel I myself must be twice the age of many other solvers.
27. His pal Rock’s death was what made President Ronald Reagan finally (and much too late) take the AIDS crisis seriously.
28. Why do people fuss so about homophones? It’s quite obvious that ‘stadia’ and ‘stayed here’ are close enough. Do the people who think that homophones must be absolutely identical also think that it’s wrong when two words are used in a puzzle as synonyms and they don’t have precisely the same meaning? In 1ac does butchery mean exactly the same thing as savage treatment? In 5ac does shelter = safety? In 8ac does limit = cap?

    And so on. Nearly all clues allow of a slippage in the equivalences.

29. Thirty-eight minutes, so a little disappointed to see the SNITH rating this one as only average. On the plus side, though, a traumatic amputation today left someone with knuckle tattoos that read “LOVE HAT”.
    1. The neon sign of the Hotel Essex in San Francisco–a tenderloiny part of SF at that–for quite a while was out of order, so that the EL and ES failed to light up.
       1. Just as well there aren’t many neon signs in Scunthorpe.
       2. 🙂
30. I think I may need to delay my attempt to catch up with the 15x15s from last week and allow my eyes to focus properly. I did this in 29:56, but failed to count my As and Is in LATIKIA. Drat! Nice puzzle otherwise. Thanks setter and Jack.

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