Times Cryptic 27482

57 comments on “Times Cryptic 27482”

1. Got the first 2 acrosses, which seldom happens, although ALBATROSS was biffed and only worked out much later. Biffed 10ac, parsed post-submission; a lovely clue, but with checkers like those, not much could go wrong. I knew APHELION (and perihelion) along with apogee and perigee, and I just discovered there’s also apolune and perilune, coming soon to a Mephisto near you. DNK MARTINGALE or STAG (there hasn’t been a REICHSTAG, of course, since 1945, not that that matters). I wondered briefly about MAGMA, but figured that just as mercury is a metal although liquid, there can be molten rock.

   Edited at 2019-10-15 03:36 am (UTC)

2. I found this much more enjoyable than yesterday’s, with a strong sense that, even without all the required knowledge, I had a high level of confidence that the answer would be correct.

   ALBATROSS was my LOI and requiring a bit of thought. I was not familiar with MARTINGALE (and wouldn’t have associated it with betting) but the cryptic made it straightforward. I was happy to know APHELION from a love of astronomy.

   Thanks to the setter for a nice workout and to you, Jack, for the early and helpful blog.

3. Thanks to those who took an interest in the Neutrino analysis yesterday and provided feedback. It’s lovely to be part of an encouraging and supportive community of interest.

   There was a question from sawbill on where we all (on the TfTT blog) come from. The SNITCH site statistics might reflect a similar mix – in September it had 726 unique visitors from the following countries:

   United Kingdom (560)
   United States (59)
   Australia (24)
   Hong Kong (11)
   France (7)
   Ireland (7)
   Germany (6)
   Spain (6)
   New Zealand (6)
   Italy (5)
   Other (35)

   1. I’m still trying to figure out how the neutrino analysis works, but I noticed the absence of some familiar names, like Abramowitz, whose times are virtually identical for cryptic, QC, and Concise. I’ve become a daily devotee of the SNITCH.

      Edited at 2019-10-15 07:53 am (UTC)

      1. I’m glad you’re enjoying the SNITCH, Kevin, and thanks for your many contributions to the TftT blog. With regard to Abramowitz, the latest 15×15 cryptic I found was on 8 April, though there are certainly recent QC entries. Do you know of any later ones? (If so, I might need to track down an error…)
         1. Actually, I’ve got so used to seeing his name on the leaderboard with an under 2′ time that I had just assumed that he was cheating on all 3 puzzles. I’m sure you haven’t missed any.
   2. Thank you so much. Fascinating.

      I am looking forward to meeting 2 or 3% of them in the George on 7 December.

      20 minutes for today’s crossword which I liked. Only the gambling meaning of MARTINGALE unknown.

   3. Great website, quick question, why does the number of reference solvers peak then decrease, for example on puzzle 27479.
      1. Thanks for your interest. The quick answer is that I only use Reference solvers in the top 100 in the leaderboard for calculation of the SNITCH, which is what this count measures. So some Reference solvers begin the day in the top 100 of the leaderboard but get pushed out as the day progresses.

         There’s some argument about whether this approach is still the right thing to do, given that we now have a longer leaderboard. But I’ve stayed consistent to my original algorithm, as it has worked well so far.

         I’ve also been meaning to add a note on this to the site, as it gets asked often.

         1. Aha. I wondered about the tailing off of number of solvers too. And now I’m wondering what sort of bias that might introduce into your calculation. I think it means that reference solvers who have a particularly bad day (but still finish all correct) might be excluded. So does that make the SNITCH potentially lower than it might be?
            1. Thanks as always, John, for your interest. You might be happy to know that your original questions about outliers, medians and the distribution of solving times kicked off some of my Neutrino analysis.

               With regard to bias in the calculation method, my bush-pilot-statistician point of view is the following:

               a. The SNITCH listing of a Reference solver’s average solving time is an unbiased estimate of the error-free solving time they will record should they land in the top 100 on the leaderboard. It is not an unbiased estimate of their overall error-free solving time (as we have clearly excluded some cases).

               b. The SNITCH is a biased estimate of the crossword’s final NITCH value, since we will routinely include in the SNITCH calculation some solving times that will eventually get pushed out. Those pushed-out times will be longer than the rest, so the SNITCH bias is to the higher side. [My guess is that this bias is quite small, so I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. And, in any event, I show the movement of the SNITCH each day, so people can make up their own minds on the trends.]

               c. The NITCH itself is unbiased, since it is calculated the same way for each crossword (i.e. using only scores in the top 100 on the leaderboard). It doesn’t depend, for example, on whether fast or slow solvers complete the crossword earlier in the day; I always base it on the reference solvers in the top 100 and can reproduce it from that list. In the days when these top 100 were the only results that the Club site listed, this was a key concern of mine. I wanted the results to be strictly reproducible.

               d. Of course, in the end the NITCH just measures what it measures. Whether there’s a better measure of “hardness” will always be debatable. It seems to be useful to the TftT community so far, so I’m being quite conservative on changing the rules.

               e. Now that the Club site shows a much longer list of results, I have thought quite often about including them in some way. Apart from my conservative bent (as noted above) I think there are some issues with including solvers’ longer times. These include:
               – the fact that they might not complete the crossword in one sitting
               – the temptation for them to consult aids or get help before submitting
               – potential for the timer to remain running while they are not actually solving
               – the fact that some reference solvers (Ulaca, for example) might decide not to submit their longer times on the leaderboard
               While these sources of inconsistency are ever-present, my guess is that they get worse with longer solving times, so we will get a better result by having a cutoff point. The top 100 list fulfils this role for the moment.

               Thanks again for your ongoing interest. And if you’ve made it down to the end of this screed – well done 🙂

   4. The neutrino analysis was interesting, many thanks Starstruck. The neutrino who never failed to annoy me wasn’t on your list because he only appeared on the TLS charts when we still got those puzzles from the club – I think his name was Zingesser and I’m sorry to say he seems to be a fellow New Yorker and a doctor.
   5. I wish we could locate the mysterious Eamon Ryan! Many of the “top solvers” I have at least a remote handle on their identity, but he has long been a mystery. Hopefully he will turn up in disguised to Champs this year and win a prize, Robin Hood-style…
      1. eamon ryan ….. or any name??
4. I managed to heed one of my crosswording rules today, that if a word sounds like I made it up it’s probably wrong. I was tempted by PLUACE as Lorraine’s partner, with ‘plus’ instead of ‘also’ for too. I get the feeling that solving via the crossword club is focusing me as I don’t like it telling me I’ve got one wrong (famous last words).

   I feel in need of another rule as my LOI was CONVERGENT for which I’d had CONV___ERT for some time. I must consider that an enclosing word could be split differently!

5. I tried in vain to make 22A APOGEE (with a double P and double G, perhaps) before I realised there was another related word when in orbit around the sun. I’d heard the word but never knew what MARTINGALE was and failed to parse ALSACE, otherwise no difficulties. BRICK RED LOI. I liked ENTANGLED and IMPARTIAL 17:50

   Edited at 2019-10-15 06:57 am (UTC)

6. 35 mins.
   Mostly I liked: Entangled.
   Thanks setter and J.
7. 21 minutes with LOI the straightforward ACTION. I’m on a roll. I knew the word MARTINGALE but not what it meant, so that was a bonus. It wasn’t a bird after all. COD to another one, ALBATROSS, because I felt smug when I solved it. I’ve never been persuaded that a chairperson of either gender should be executive. Maybe that’s because I was a lazy bugger when I had the role. Another enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter
8. 12:25 … that was fun, and the helpful checking letters for less common things were much appreciated in a daily puzzle.

   COD to COMBE, one of those clues that would be utterly confounding if you didn’t know how these things work. I love the surface, which sounds like something Prof. Higgins would make Eliza practise.

   There’s a weird near nina in the northwest, as ‘Combe Magna’ is the Somerset village where Jane Austen’s John Willoughby resides (Sense and Sensibility)

9. Just like Boltonwanderer, if you’d asked me what a MARTINGALE was before this morning, I’d’ve assumed a bird. At least I knew it from somewhere, somehow. I also had no idea where Alba was, but once you’d got the TROSS there wasn’t much else 4a could be, luckily.

   A fairly fast start from FOI 1a saw me slowing down to 51 minutes all told, with LOI 21d ALSACE. Didn’t have a clue what Lorraine was doing there, but geography isn’t my strong suit. Enjoyed 19a NOIR, the “copy cat” of 22a and 24’s “hippy”.

10. Very enjoyable puzzle with some tricky clues

    MARTINGALE from probability theory. It started life as a betting strategy but morphed into theoretical work designed to demonstrate the foolishness of such strategies. And they are foolish!

    1. It’s a perfectly good strategy, just as long as you have infinite money!
       1. Correct. It also assumes unlimited time, no house limit on the size of a bet and everything above board in the gambling establishment. So, all in all, not the most promising of strategies
       2. If you had infinite money, surely there would be better things you could be doing with it?
          1. My son asked me the other day ‘if you had infinite money wouldn’t it be worthless?’ Which I thought was rather a good question. I started explaining that central banks do have infinite money but he quickly lost interest.
11. 10:48. No problems today, and the funny words were all vaguely familiar.
    Rock is (in human experience) the normal or default state so it seems OK to define MAGMA this way. By the same token it feels natural to define ice as a form of water but not the other way round.
    In 9ac I read ‘fellow respected’ as defining GENT, which means you don’t have to worry about whether ‘respected in’ is a valid containment indicator (it isn’t, IMO).
    1. You’re probably right about ‘fellow respected’. I was thinking of ‘respected’ meaning ‘regarded’ in the sense of ‘seen’ but on reflection I don’t think it quite works.
12. Less straightforward for me over nearly 26 minutes. MARTINGALE on wordplay alone – I thought it was an item of clothing like the farthing version, but it turns out it’s horsey stuff when it isn’t the betting system, to which I am blissfully indifferent.
    Nice to have three examples of the I before E except when it’s German rule.
    I had CHAR? for ages at 1d before I realised what was going on, briefly wondering how CHARABANC would work.
    WEALTH my last in consumed by looking for a capital city that would fit.
13. 31 mins. Nice puzzle. LOI convergent. Thanks jack.
14. Off to a flying start with COMBE, only known from these puzzles, confirmed by MAGMA. The rest of the NW also filled rapidly, apart from MARTINGALE, which I only knew as a piece of horsey equipment. A biffed MONTECARLO was soon ousted by AGRONOMIST, although not before the helpful L gave me the molten rock for BRATISLAVA. I knew APHELION and EGGBEATER has cropped up before. I had CONVERT for a while, and tried to insert COL into it for a while, but eventually got the right split and GEN. BRICK RED followed and I was left with a couple of gaps in the NE. WATER came first and then TOWNIE, my LOI. A quick proof read showed that my propensity for generating typos is still plaguing me(2 Concise and a QC so far this week!) and an infuriating period ensued as I tried to correct REICHSTAG and the 3 other answers my mistyping had corrupted. Does anyone else find that the cursor always moves in the wrong direction when you select a square to correct something? As has been said already, a more entertaining puzzle than yesterday’s. 24:30. Thanks setter and Jack.
15. As others have said, a much more enjoyable job than yesterday’s, if a little easier. 25 minutes with 20a my LOI. Knew the word martingale as 1. something to do with horse tackle 2. to do with risky investment startegies – shorts and longs. The Ancient Mariner tale is one of few poems I remember from O level so liked Albatross. And the orbital one at 20a. Trivia – Mrs K’s second cousin lives in Combe Magna, I think we went there once on way to Bristol airport.
    1. Is she a fictional character? I’m pretty sure Combe Magna only exists in Jane Austen
       1. Chew Magna maybe.
          1. That would be my guess, too. tbh, I had to check ‘Combe Magna’ before my original post, as my mother’s family are from round there, and we used to play ‘up the combe’ next door to my aunt’s house, so it all sounded very familiar
          2. “Chew magma, punk” is probably what David shouted at Goliath as he let fly.
             1. 🙂
16. Is it only me or are other people suffering the same thing: the little thing like ‘(read blog)’ or something like that, below the preamble, hasn’t worked for the last couple of Jack’s blogs. Nothing happens when you click on it. The only way to get the clues is to click on the ‘n comments’ below this preamble and they then appear, together with the blog.

    Not really a problem, though.

    1. I’ve not had that problem. And I think if others had they would have posted about it.
    2. Sorry you’re having a problem, Will. I think it’s likely to be a device / software thing rather than a fault with Live Journal. I know it’s a cliche, but if you experience it again try closing the application and reopening, or rebooting the whole device.
17. Phew. So much easier than yesterday’s. Thirty-four minutes, but with a few interruptions. NHO MARTINGALE as a betting system, though I half-knew it as something to do with horse harnesses, which seem to have a language of their own.

    A couple were unparsed in my haste – ON THIN ICE and ALSACE. I did spend a while with 26ac as the woefully implausible “utrau” (jUsT gReAt bUt) until AISLE set me straight. All good fun.

18. Of course, here in Welsh Patagonia, we spell it in its original form, Cwm. I live in Cwm Hyfryd (no vowels allowed in these parts).
19. Enjoyable, though I made heavy weather of this, as I seem to be doing rather a lot these days. I think I knew MARTINGALE as a word, though possibly only as something I regularly confuse with FARTHINGALE.
    1. I’m preemptively putting FARTHINGALE on my Big List of Words.

       Just after today’s puzzle, I did my weights workout accompanied by an episode of Psych (I usually accompany my exercise with some distracting pabulum or other) and it turned out to be based around a Civil War reenactment society and featured both MARTINGALEs and FARTHINGALEs. I do love my almost-daily cruciverbal coincidences.

20. I got off to a very slow start, all the way down to FIFE before anything registered. Several DNKs for me – ALBA=Scotland and the betting term among them. From my horse enthusiast days I knew MARTINGALE as a kind of extra rein that was used on nags that had a habit of throwing their heads up and biffing the rider in the face. 17.27. And now I’m going to have a go at yesterday’s, poor PR notwithstanding.
21. To me Alba is a town in Piedmont famous for white truffles, but as you say it was pretty obvious what was required.
22. DNK ALBA = Scotland.

    MARTINGALE is a word I’d heard before but forgotten the meaning of.

    Also failed to (fully) parse BRATISLAVA, BRICK RED, CONVERGENT (which seemed to have several shortened officers (CONstable, GENeral, VERGEr)), ALSACE.

    But who’s complaining? Under 40 mins is a good day for me.

23. Like Tim I felt I made heavy weather of this (e.g. panicking about 23 being a specific battle I didn’t know and trying to work out the doubtless complicated wordplay) but at 13:08 my weather must have been considerably lighter than his.

    I’d never heard of Martingale (and although it looked plausible as a word I couldn’t see how it might fit the definition, other than being a fictional bankrupt who did something or other in a Casino) but I did recall aphelion from somewhere, probably a past puzzle.

24. 33 mins on the nose. I got a bit bogged down in this one. I struggled to get from baggage to albatross in 4ac until I found the reversed ssort. Division for commons vote wouldn’t come to mind and that was my LOI when all checkers were available. Martingale was heard of but unknown and had to trust to wp. Took time to break down convergent and to see convergent and meeting as equivalent parts of speech. Only saw how brat meant horror in 5dn post-solve – too busy looking for a synonym meaning fear or dread. Didn’t stop to parse townie or Alsace at the time either. Liked 24dn but COD 19ac.
25. This was a first for me – I took 35m 50s, slightly under the blogger’s time! I did not know that “ice” meant (N Am informal) to kill, but no other unknown vocab here for me!
26. ….is the BBC’s Gaelic language TV channel.
    1. As mentioned in my blog!
    2. Hmm yes think I’ll stick with the white truffles!
27. ….TOWNIE, and I wasted a little time on that particular misdirection !

    I’m grateful for Jack’s parsings of WEALTH, BRATISLAVA, and MARTINGALE (I knew its horsey meaning but not the gambling usage. Chambers tells me it’s also a type of nautical rope).

    FOI COMBE
    LOI NOIR
    COD ALBATROSS
    TIME 10:55

28. Got the tough ones and then was left pondering Division for about 5 minutes! Thanks for defining Martingale. What’s that word that means a cruel taskmaster(eg teacher)? oh yes martinet! COD Albatross
29. nice and gentle today, but I’m too sleepy to be record breaking. EINSTEIN took longer than it should have, and like all of you, NHO MARTINGALE as other than some kind of tack.
30. I started this at 10.27am and finished at 11.03am in a rather smart DD taxi, heading into town for a long meeting.

    A ‘Neutrino’ I am not! I have only done it once like that, as an experiment, and recorded about 3.22 – a most unsatisfying time; why do these people persist!?
    A new ‘N’ word is born.

    FOI 26ac DICED

    LOI 10ac WATER

    COD 4ac ALBATROSS

    WOD 14ac MARTINGALE (fyi there is a remote village in Lincolnshire named Martindales)

31. I have only ever known this to mean an item of harness which prevents the horse from tossing its head. Sue S.

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