Times Cryptic 28004 – 500 not yet out

85 comments on “Times Cryptic 28004 – 500 not yet out”

1. Like Jeremy, I finished with MATRIX, although I took a lot longer to get the rest done. Since it’s never clear to me what a matrix is, ‘bed’ seemed fine as the definition. POI was IN THE CART, a phrase I didn’t know; I confess I checked before submitting. Also DNK RHODONITE, but assuming -ITE it seemed safe. DOSTOEVSKY came to me once I thought of DO. Biffed DECREE, parsed post-submission. Americans of my generation may associate VICUNA with the expensive vicuna coat that Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, received from a businessman; the scandal forced Adams to resign. That’s where I learned the word, anyway.
   Congratulations, Jack, and thanks, on your 500. Hope to see another 500.

   Edited at 2021-06-15 07:11 am (UTC)

   1. That scandal seems quaint now unfortunately Kevin.
2. I kid you not, I spent 11 minutes on the entire puzzle except for MATRIX, and another 11 minutes on MATRIX. If it weren’t for that clue, I would have beat Verlaine! (Except I’m sure that word was the reason he took as long as he did!)

   I wouldn’t be surprised if some put in RHONODITE. My knowledge of Verdi (not Monte) helped me with SICILIAN VESPERS, which I’d also never heard of.

   Congrats, Jack, on the great accomplishment!

   Edited at 2021-06-15 01:18 am (UTC)

3. DNF – the opposite of off is on, so I guessed ON THE CART. Lucky guess with the third word of the obscurity, not so lucky with the first. Might have got MATRIX if I’d guessed IN… for me it works in an engineering sense as well, steel fittings embedded in a matrix of carbon fibre.
   Rhodonite guessable as back-formed from rhodium. The obscure worm was annoying, having to guess between TRIp or TREk (or any other random 4-letter word). Liked SMASH HIT a lot, thanks setter and blogger and congratulations on your 500.
4. I assumed that it’s what lingers in undercooked pork and causes trichinosis.
   1. NHO of trichinosis either 😉
5. Well, I didn’t enjoy this. Too many obscurities!

   Congrats, Jack!

6. Can someone please remind me why this means “brilliant” in crosswords? I always forget!
   1. It’s not crossword specific — def is just slang for brilliant, from hip hop culture.
      1. Ah – as in Mos Def. Thank you.
   2. It’s slang, possibly from ‘ definitive’.
      1. OED says it’s probably a derivative of ‘death’.
7. The dedication and patience to do these blogs shouldn’t be underestimated. To get to 500 should be celebrated. Well done!
   1. Absolutely !
8. …Envy, and Malice to their native sty?

   After 30 mins pre-brekker, having proudly negotiated Trichina/Rhodonite and Sicilian Vespers, I was left with the ungettable In/On the something (probably cart, but ?) and the bed, pah.
   Pity.
   Thanks setter and congrats Jackkt.

   Edited at 2021-06-15 06:55 am (UTC)

9. DNF in half an hour. You’re not to blame. The setter’s crime was MATRIX and our punishment was trying to solve it. I didn’t know TRICHINA or RHODONITE either but the clueing and crossers were kinder. COD to ACUTE ACCENT. A good puzzle spoilt for me by obscurities. Thank you Jack and setter. Congratulations on the 500.

   Edited at 2021-06-15 06:56 am (UTC)

10. Three left after 30 minutes. Glad I set myself a time limit so that I don’t waste my life on bad clues like MATRIX.

    Congratulations jackkt on 500 and thank you as I needed you today for three of the answers.

    Edited at 2021-06-15 06:17 am (UTC)

11. …another one foxed by MATRIX. I put MATTIE only because it’s the diminution of a girl’s name.
    I also didn’t know how DEF = brilliant, so thanks for that, too.
    Well done on the 500, Jack!
    1. Another 6A Mattie.
       Was partly aware def = brilliant, but checked in the dictionary so another reason for DNF.
       Andyf
12. Several difficulties today — MATRIX, IN THE CART, RHODONITE, TRICHINA, SICILIAN VESPERS — so I was pleased to finish with all correct. Like others MATRIX was my big hold up where I considered the momble MOTOIS — sounds like “Mo toys” and thought maybe it was an obscure word for a bed. It just seemed too unlikely though. Elsewhere I thought I’d come up with a momble in the form of TRICHINA but that one actually proved to be correct. I have an inkling we’ve seen it before, as with SICILIAN VESPERS which felt vaguely familiar.

    Well done on the 500 Jack. Keep up the good work!

13. Many congratulations on the anniversary jack, a great service to us all.

    I was undone the same as nearly everyone else, by the nho IN THE CART, and MATRIX, after all the hard work of TRICHINA and RHODONITE.

    Thanks jack and setter.

14. Several that I NHO or only dimly remembered:

    IN THE CART, TRICHINA, DEF = brilliant, RHODONITE.

    Strangely I knew that meaning of MATRIX but it was still my LOI (I’d been thinking 8D began with ON and it was only when I desperately tried other letters that I .saw MATRIX fitted.

    Congratulations Jack

15. . . I wish I had given up on MATRIX because then I would not have submitted with a typo in GRAYLIGG. Need to up my grid checking game. Although it seemed unknown at the time of solving I’m sure I remember my great-grandfather using the expression ‘land him in the cart’ in the 1950s. MATRIX leapt out only after I tried IN after ON and UP.
16. DNF. Having navigated the other obscurities I considered ON THE CART for 8dn but I had never heard the expression and it didn’t seem particularly likely. I also considered IN THE CART but that seemed even less likely. That uncertainty and a preposterous definition made 6ac completely impenetrable, so I gave up.
    Congratulations and thanks to jacckt on your 500.

    Edited at 2021-06-15 07:02 am (UTC)

17. I’ve been doing the Times crossword for over fifty years and have been reading TfTT for the last seven of those. I stand in awe of people who can produce a blog with detailed parsing shortly after the puzzle is published. I thoroughly enjoy the blog, especially when the conversation moves to (vaguely) related subjects arising from the crossword.

    However, there are a couple of things that irritate me. The first is the complaint about obscurities. Of course, one person’s obscurity is another’s write-in and vice versa. Trust the wordplay should be the watchword. MATRIX was a case in point. I didn’t know that meaning of the word, but having considered all the female names I knew it eventually came to me. If setters were to exclude words that some people might not know the resuly would be very anodyne crosswords. ‘Obscure word clued as anagram’ is a frequent gripe. In my experience, if all the crossers are in place, it is almost always obvious where the unchecked letters must go.

    My other bugbear is the absurd expression of being on (or not on) the setter’s wavelength. This suggests that a setter constructs all his (or her, I suppose) clues in the same way, which is never the case. I guess ‘I struggled to get on the setter’s wavelength’ sounds less stark than ‘I found this puzzle difficult’, which is, of course, what it means.

    Apart from the above, I always look forward to reading the blog and the comments. More power to the bloggers’ elbows!

    DavidH

    1. Thanks for your thoughts, David. I imagine you’re not alone in your views on both bugbears but bloggers and commenters will say what’s on their minds, whether or not it’s entirely rational.

       Most of the complaints I recall about ‘obscure’ words clued as anagrams have been about foreign words, sometimes proper nouns, where the placement of letters may not be apparent unless one also has knowledge of the foreign tongue and word-construction.

       Thanks again for joining in and for expressing your appreciation of the TfTT blogs.

    2. The Wednesday blogger responds to David H.
       I agree, I don’t complain about obscurities (I hope), I just assume I know less about stuff than the setter does, and learn from it. Then forget.
       The ‘wavelength’ thing is a personal feeling, some days you seem to solve faster than others, just as some days the putts go in and some days they don’t, although your level of ability (or lack of) at putting is a constant.
       Thanks for your contribution, stay tuned. Pip
    3. Hi David.
       Good to hear from you, and I completely agree that the puzzles should include relatively little-known words: deriving unknowns from wordplay is perhaps the most satisfying thing about solving them. However the Times crossword is generally supposed to be solvable by someone with a reasonably good vocabulary without reference to a dictionary. To this end, setters and editor make some effort to ensure that more unusual words are indicated with clear wordplay, to give those who might not know the word a sporting chance of getting the answer.
       This intention has been explicitly stated by various editors over the years, and it is obvious to me as a solver of Mephisto puzzles. Take this clue for instance from a recent Mephisto:
       ‘Resident’s one to stop part of timber scaffolding’
       The answer here is LEIDGER (an obsolete word for a resident), the wordplay I (one) contained in LEDGER (a horizontal timber in scaffolding). Very few people are going to know either of these words, but this sort of thing is fair game in barred-grid puzzles, where there’s an expectation that you will use Chambers. I don’t think you would ever see a clue like this in the daily puzzles. This principle is applied very consistently: again I know this from my own experience, because I solve close to 100% of the daily puzzles without aids, whereas I solve precisely 0% of Mephistos without using Chambers. This is not an accident.
       Since the guiding principle undeniably exists and since (in my view at least) it is a desirable one, it seems only natural that we should discuss whether we feel that the puzzles meet the standard. Of course the question of what ‘a reasonably good vocabulary’ means, and what counts as an ‘obscurity’ will always be subjective, but to say that anything goes doesn’t in my view reflect what the puzzles are supposed to be about.
       On the subject of anagrams, I thought that yesterday’s CEMBALO, where there really wasn’t anywhere else to put the letters, was fine, but occasionally it is impossible to work this out if you don’t know the word (there was a particularly egregious example in a recent puzzle but the solution hasn’t been published yet so I won’t mention it). I think that sort of clue is unsporting on the part of the setter and I will say so.
       When I talk about ‘wavelength’ it’s more than just a reflection of the puzzle’s difficulty: it’s a way of expressing the fact that I personally found a puzzle more difficult or easy than others. So if it takes me 25 minutes to solve a puzzle that took George (glheard, whose average solving time is broadly similar to mine) 7 minutes, I would say I was ‘off the wavelength’. I’m open to other ways of expressing the same thing, but it’s a phenomenon I observe quite frequently so it’s useful to have a shorthand.
       Sorry for the rant but you started it! 😉

       Edited at 2021-06-15 11:16 am (UTC)

       1. That doesn’t feel like a rant to me – and I am grateful for your words on the different conventions for Mephisto puzzles and our daily fare: I didn’t know about the different expectations re dictionary usage, for example. I don’t mind the odd obscurity in the daily puzzles myself, but today there are at least four of them (in my admittedly subjective view). I’m reasonably well-read and literate, I think, and today’s setter has, for me, stepped too far out of the daylight for my enjoyment and comfort.
          1. As I said in my post, I found today’s “educational” and I wholeheartedly agree with keriothe on this subject. And if you want to discover some really interesting words, try the Monthly Club Special!
    4. What Keriothe said. Unknown words are par for the course, but there has to be some chance to solve them from the wordplay. Having no idea even after trying out the wordplay, requiring a guess, doesn’t cut the cloth.
       As for wavelength, I suspect it’s more about the solver than the setter. Sometimes I can spend ages looking at clues completely dumbfounded. And on seeing the answer feeling “I’d never get that.” Even when no-one else mentions it. Sometimes I see that answer and feel like an idiot, “I should have got that immediately.” Sometimes I immediately see the definition and wordplay elements and it seems easier than the QC, even when multiple other contributors say, “I had real difficulty with this clue.” Reading the blog, I’m not the only one; no matter what its origin, wavelength exists.
       1. An interesting discussion. I too think “being on the wavelength” exists, and that it is maybe related to the concept of “flow“. It is also, I think, influenced by self-confidence. Sometimes I, too, think “I’d never get that”, but in retrospect I realise I’d just abandoned thinking about the clue in a different way because I was sure I didn’t understand it. Hmm. The psychology of crossword-solving. That might make an interesting PhD thesis!
18. Tough in the tough places as others have stated, and def some unknowns, but all guessable. “TRICKS” was the key. I had originally put ON THE EDGE rather than IN THE CART but soon rubbed it out and scratched my head. Was held up more by working out how to spell the famous Russian…. My own view re obscurities is that one or two suffice(s) per puzzle; beyond that, can become a grind or force solvers to use aids. So this puzzle would have failed on that test. Most pertinent remark I saw in blog was about “copper” for COP (another one where I hesitatingly put in I CU (one copper) in middle of answer before erasing that too. Brilliant effort by blogger to reach 500, for which huggy thanks.
19. 33:05 of which over 13 were on the last two, MATRIX and then IN THE CART, both unknown meanings to me… along with several others… TRICHINA, RHODONITE, SICILIAN VESPERS and how to spell DOSTOEVSKY. Very educational. Congratulations jackkt on the fantastic milestone!
20. What an odd puzzle! A little on the ST side, with the obligatory loo, the Mephistoish worm and (shudder) mineral (could be any collection of letters) and of course the teasing, you’re never going to get this MATRIX.
    “Bed” wouldn’t yield matrix readily for me, the girl only emerges when you guess the answer, and tricks is a bit of a stretch for “jokes”: neither word has the other listed in my Chambers.
    Contrary to intuition, apparently I’ve never sung the SICILIAN VESPERS, but like the St Valentines day massacre it rang a faint historical note.
    IN the cart only because I was thinking of things like in the mire (and other unsavoury stickinesses) and it didn’t occur tome to change it.
    Got there in the end by guess and good luck, in 21.25
    An impressive 500 up, Jack. Nolite hic illegitimus te carborundum!
21. And I was a DNF. COD MATRIX – was defeated by the SW corner Rhodonite being my nemesis. But only 114 on the Snitch.
    Nice one (500) Jackkt!
22. Has ANYONE here EVER come across the phrase ‘in the cart’? I never have, but I’m not a Brit, and I just assumed this was yet one more UKism I knew nothing of. I just now looked it up in ODE, which marks it as , but says nothing about .
    1. I’ve never heard of it.
    2. “In the Cart” (Russian: На подводе, romanized: Na podvode) is an 1897 short story by Anton Chekhov.
    3. Yep, I knew the expression but then I’m in my mid seventies and English. I don’t think I’ve heard it for half a century or more. It was trying to find another word for trolley that brought it to mind.
    4. Soup, yes, cart, no.
    5. Well I can’t say I knew this one, but I have posted the alleged origin in the blog. It would appear to be associated with one of the interpretations of ‘drawn’ in the expression ‘hung, drawn and quartered’ as discussed here recently – not the meaning of ‘drawn’ as I had always understood it, btw.
    6. Full explanation will be apparent in my response, which will be posted shortly.
    7. Nope. New to me too.
23. Tough going today! Like many, my LOI was MATRIX. I vaguely knew the expression IN THE CART, and eventually postulated TRIX as jokes, which inclined me towards MOTRIX, with Mo for the girl as we had recently somewhere, but I guessed it had to be MATRIX and changed the O to A before submitting, having still failed to apply the “sounds like” to both parts of the wordplay. Lucky me! I used the wordplay to come up with the worm and the mineral. I was delayed by the VESPERS as I’d carelessly typed a D at the end of 1a, so ruled out the anagram until I’d noticed that. I have a boxed vinyl set of Monteverdi’s Vespers, which I will now have a listen to. I fixed the jammed cueing mechanism on my deck last week, so it’s back in service. PRIVY was my FOI. 38:03. Thanks setter and Jack, and congrats on the milestone!
    1. No doubt Monteverdi wrote some Vespers, as he did that sort of thing, but The Sicilian Vespers (presumably referring to that uprising) was an opera by Verdi.
24. I found this challenging, but enjoyed the test. I got MATRIX early on, guessed CART for -A-T and worked out the Sicilian rebellion anagram once I saw it was S- V- . Chose RHODONITE as the most likely mineral once I assumed it ended in ITE. Eventually saw MOLE and was left with the SW corner -E-A-E where DEF was unknown to me and never managed to find DEFAME. So DNF with 20d and 27a unfinished.

    Well done jackkt, I can’t be too far behind you but I don’t know how to find out how many I’ve blogged.

    1. Thanks, Pip. I can’t help with finding out how many blogs you have posted, short of going through TfTT week by week and counting them. I managed to keep track of mine because of the way I construct them, preparing them in local html files which I save permanently in a folder before copying and pasting into Live Journal.
    2. As a student I discovered that the finder of a new mineral was entitled to name it. With some fellow science undergraduate friends we mused over a pint or 3 of Greene King Abbot Ale on what we would call one we discovered. Out shortlist was Downingsite (we were at Cambridge), Trafficlite and Fryingtonite.
25. My grandfather, from Suffolk/Norfolk Borders, used it – ‘Now you’re in the cart!”. ‘Kartr’ is an Old Norse word and this was an area where they much influenced the language. Today cart is not used by my generation for shopping trolley – except on-line ‘Go to Your Cart/Check Out (image)’ etc.

    Kevin, there is a whole world out there!

    I was out and about today for my ‘MOT’ – at Shanghai No.1 and never had a good run at this beast. DNF but knew 6ac MATRIX due to my ‘A level Geology. Thus my COD

    FOI 2dn PRIVY – a council toilet

    (LOI) 22ac DEF-AME – DEF-man is modern Jamaican

    WOD 5dn SICILIAN VESPERS – I was once nearly killed by one – in Palermo

    ‘A vile princess’ certainly kick-starts the imagination -I can think of a couple!

    Jack that’s 500 – DEF-MAN!

    Edited at 2021-06-15 10:14 am (UTC)

    1. Vespa – “wasp”. Piaggio also make a little three-wheel motorcycle utility truck called an Ape – “bee”. Presumably both named for he noise they make.
26. After much frustration with the last 3, I reckoned that I was never going to them and resorted to coming here. As it turned out, my PROVOCATION turned out to be PROVOCATIVE, so my guess at SAGENETS was always wrong. Was also never going to get IN THE CART or DEFAME (well, I’ve been doing these for a while but didn’t know DEF was brilliant either).
    Annoyed of Chester.
27. I had to admit defeat on this one, looking up two answers after 16 mins or so, as I was utterly unable to come up with MATRIX (NHO that definition) or IN THE CART (considered it, but NHO it at all so it wasn’t much help).

    Plus, I was a RHONODITE, which seemed the more likely answer to the usual bugbear of foreign/obscure words clued as anagrams.

    Also NHO VICUNA or TRICHINA, but they were more gettable.

28. Another one sunk (in 30 mins) by MATRIX, with VICUNA, TRICHINA, (a bit more likely than TRE(k)CHINA, but not much), RHODONITE, SICILIAN VESPERS and IN THE CART co-starring in a depressingly large cast of guessed at or painstakingly assembled unknowns.
29. … in either sense. Like our blogger, I found this very unsatisfying. Too many obscurities (the same ones our blogger mentions) and an idiom I have never come across at 8D. Dischuffed about sums it up. Hoping for something closer to the mainstream tomorrow.
30. Was a series of movies I never saw. DNK the meaning so it might as well be a bed as far as I’m concerned. I got an assist from my granddaughter Mae who was 3 yesterday and unfortunately shares a birthday with the “former guy”. There are several ways the Russian is spelled in English so I was glad to see it spelled out clearly here. 22.13

    Congratulations to our blogger and also many thanks to him for being a behind-the-scenes mensch for some of us.

    1. Never saw “The Matrix”? The chef-d’œuvre of Keanu Reeves’s œuvres? Now I suppose you’re going to tell me you never saw any of the “Rambo” series.
       1. Absolutely! I also never saw “Starwars” or “The Godfather”. My knowledge of American popular culture finishes in the mid-1960’s. Not proud of it or making a point, but just saying how things are.
       2. Dude, the only part of his oeuvre I know is Dangerous Liaisons.
          1. Missed that one. Is that the one where he acted?
             1. Yes, he really wasn’t at all bad surprisingly.
       3. Haven’t seen the Matrix, Rambo, or any movie with Keanu Reeves as far as I know; wouldn’t recognise him if he turned up in the pub. Movies are the second hole in my GK, after poetry, followed by pop, rap, etc after 1980.

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