Times Cryptic No 26872 2nd Nov 2017 Quark? That’s cheese, isn’t it?

69 comments on “Times Cryptic No 26872 2nd Nov 2017 Quark? That’s cheese, isn’t it?”

1. Came here to understand how the practical joker, the table tennis, and the open sea work, and I still don’t get the the practical joker one…perhaps that’s the point?

   Anyway I got 1a straight away, but became increasingly mystified as I went on. Ground to a halt and had to consume a chocolate bar to get the juices flowing again. Some inventive cluing here, quite exhausting, but I like it

   Last 3 were CORNER, OVEREAT and STINKY. Had to write them all down to figure them out

2. ….and still had several to do after 75 minutes. I went down to the basement to get the laundry, and as I was folding it I realized that 17 must be ‘hospital corner’, allowing me to biff ‘table tennis’, and then get ‘bag’ and ‘righto’. So all complete in 80 minutes solving time, but 90 minutes elapsed.

   I think it is fair to say that this is a rather difficult one, and if they give you this sort of thing at the championship it should definitely separate out the better solvers.

3. I stayed online for a half-hour, then went off to lunch and finished then, for maybe an hour or so in total. Got DNK HAYDOCK PARK wrong; guessed that PARK was ‘moor’ (park the boat?), leaving me the _OCK, and COCK sounded most likely. Also misparsed 27ac, put in ‘tremble’ (treble without the M–humming, gettit? oh). Which made those 3 downs rather difficult. Never did parse OPEN SEA, but it pretty much had to be. Bags of time required to finish this, but enjoyable time.
4. This was hard going – 1dn was gettable through parsing, and baobab, like consensus the other day, always give me conniptions in the spelling. Having had both this week, I’m hopeful that neither will appear on Saturday. Hoping to see a number of you there and that I will know who is linked to which username.
5. I think the practical joker is PRACTICAL=virtual (easier to see as “those words are practically the same” or “virtually the same” but I’m not 100% sure it works as an adjective). JOKER is card. And it is sort of & littish that she is a trickster. But not 100% Ximinean for sure.

   Nice to see TOP QUARK instead of an obscure composer I’ve never heard of, and we already had PLANCK this week, which was a nice change from physicist always being Newton.

   I usually start by looking at all the 3 letter ansewrs since usually they yield easily, but BAG was my last-but-one-in (LBOI) and RIGHTHO was then obvious, whereas I didn’t have a clue without that G checker.

   Having lived in that part of the world, the Glastonbury clue was easy, but I suspect some people might have trouble since you pretty much have to have heard of Glastonbury Tor.

   And I got BAOBAB without reading the clue, since I guessed BOA must be the stole, giving 4 letters out of 6. So no surprise to find that the clue contained the word “tree”

   Edited at 2017-11-02 06:21 am (UTC)

   1. Maybe it’s practical = virtual and card (that takes) tricks = joker (e.g in 500)
      1. I’m ready to be shot down as my knowledge of card games is limited to half-a dozen that I like to think I play rather well, but in my experience although a Joker can be a wild card in some games they’re not usually games in which trick-taking is involved.
         1. In 500 the joker is always the highest trump

            But it’s a bit obscure, and I don’t know if trick is a verb in that context either

            1. Ah, there we are then! It’s not a game I recall ever coming across. I see it’s a variaton on euchre, a game I only know by name with no knoweldge of how it’s played. Thanks.
   2. I think I’m with Paul: my phrase “I think the ‘virtual card’ covers the answer” was intended to say what Paul said with much greater precision and attention to detail. Chambers gives a direct virtual/practical equivalence.
      1. And, of course, “hers” without “tricks” doesn’t lead to practical joker.
6. Only a few moments over an hour but after a flying start entering half-a-dozen easy answers around the grid this became like a war of attrition as each remaining clue set out to defy me for as long as possible.

   My unknowns were the TOR reference at 14ac, TOP QUARK, MATINAL and BAOBAB, which like Paulmcl, I worked out having previously biffed BOA at 23ac. I got the 0 PENS idea at 22ac but missed the ‘ea’ = ‘each’ device if that’s actually what’s intended. Might I suggest pedantically that if everybody has zero pens that is not a distibution of writing materials in any sense, useless or otherwise?

   I’m not at all keen on 5dn, probably because I fell into the ‘tricks’ = ‘jokes’ bear-trap considered but cleverly avoided by our blogger.

   Edited at 2017-11-02 06:47 am (UTC)

   1. I think “no pens each” works – assuming everyone got writing pads and post-it notes. I’ve been at many such meetings over the years!
7. is Collins’ Dictionary ‘Word(s) of the Year’.
   I wonder if POTUS considers the failing London Times Crossword below his ‘uge IQ level. Come on Donnie, you’ve little else to do on tomorrow’s flight! I don’t think ‘Fox and Friends’ hosts a Crossword online.

   This took me 55 minutes solving from the bottom up – with FOI 2dn CHA and LOI 1dn TOP QUARK – which has our paulmcl all of a quiver – bless!
   Quark is cheese!

   COD 17ac HAYDOCK PARK quintessentialy British Saturday afternoon!

   WOD 26ac BAKELITE happy daze!

   Edited at 2017-11-02 07:17 am (UTC)

8. Steady top to bottom solve with same problems as others with parsing 22A and 5D. Liked 10A

   Also pleased to see the fermion TOP QUARK – more usually referred to as the t-quark. I don’t recall seeing it in the Times before

9. Like many competitors at 13d, I fell at the last hurdle with 5d. Put me down as one for the “tricks”=JOKES brigade. And none of the suggested parsings is really convincing enough for me.
   Up to that point, I was quite enjoying it too.
10. Like yesterday, 30 mins of steady solving. BAOBAB is a perennial in Crosswordland but nice misdirection here as baobabs are typically massive. Being sent to boarding school aged 8 gave me 10 years of daily experience of HOSPITAL CORNERs (and other things) and as horseracing is my BAG, HAYDOCK PARK was a write-in. Thanks for the explanations Z

    Edited at 2017-11-02 08:56 am (UTC)

    1. My boarding school education introduced me to nothing more useful than the apple-pie bed.
       1. I am trying to remember the name of the bed where the first two blankets were both folded in half lengthwise and each tucked in on their respective sides, before being covered by a third one. The effect was that the covers just fell away to the sides when someone got in.

          On edit : Banana Split?

          Edited at 2017-11-02 03:55 pm (UTC)

11. I put several answers in today without really understanding them, so good to hear I’m not alone in some of them, PRACTICAL JOKER being the prime example. In my case I think part of the reason was rushing to get the crossword out the way so I could get to the sports pages and bask in the glory of reading about Tottenham’s victory last night.
    1. Tsk, Madrid is an ageing team on the skids. The acid test is beating the likes of Man United!
12. 15 is an anagram of electors a worry not as stated!
    1. How very kind of you to point out my wearied typo so gently. I shall treasure your generosity for ever. Now if you’ll only let me know to whom I address the monumental cheque so richly deserved, I will lose no time in sending it.
13. 26′ for this corker, really enjoyable. Liked 5d. 27ac STINKY is TIN = money, notes in SKY, I think. Loved the Ukcentricity of TORRENT, HAYDOCK PARK. Learned the phrase HOSPITAL CORNER from my ex-wife, who had briefly been a nurse. Thanks z and setter.
    1. I would have though tin would be money comprising anything but notes, but it’s ingenious.
       1. I’m with you in the Julie Andrews + n camp. TD
14. Never miss the ‘urgent’ out or you never get to lunch. 44 gruelling minutes on this. I felt I was being tested on whether I’d been bluffing on recent posts with ROYAL WORCESTER and TOP QUARK. The latter wasn’t postulated until 1973 which was rather late for me, but weighs as much as a tungsten atom so must form a strong attachment to the Higgs Boson during the ten to the minus 25 seconds of its life. Blame Wiki if that’s wrong. Never actually been in HAYDOCK PARK but driven past it many times. I’ve been to Ascot and Goodwood, so come the revolution I’ll deserve to be lined up against the wall and shot. Goodwood’s much classier. I do still play TABLE-TENNIS, the staple of fifties church youth clubs. Guessed Glastonbury was a TOR (on which ancient feet trod?) LOI HOSPITAL CORNER, needing all crossers, deducing HOSPITAL and eventually seeing hog as CORNER. Biffed STINKY. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Z and setter.
15. Cooer that was hard. For several long minutes I thought I wasn’t even going to start let alone finish. DNK HAYDOCK PARK but the clueing was generous. I won a BAKELITE Ovaltine mug many decades ago – I wonder what happened to it…. 25.58 P.S. Welcome back Z!

    Edited at 2017-11-02 10:19 am (UTC)

    1. Surel you were too young to have been an Ovaltiney, Olivia?
       1. I wasn’t an Ovalteeny BW but my oh-so-cool older cousin Caroline was and I wanted to be but Nanny said no. I think I won the mug at a village fete.
          1. I was an Ovalteeny and my 92yo mother still has her ‘special’ O badge. I cannot remember why it was special but I will ask her. When learning the piano, I used to play the ‘We are the Ovalteenies’ tune as the score was in the thin handbook that we received.

             On Edit : the special Ovalteenies badge was a silver star showing 5 years membership.

             Edited at 2017-11-02 07:48 pm (UTC)

16. Planck yesterday and Quarks today. I feel sorry for the social studies students. Lucky to complete in about an hour as I guessed stinky. Having played league ping pong for nearly fifty years I’ve finally hung up my bat, but this helped with the game. Never been to Haydock but often found myself in Ascot by mistake getting into wrong carriages at Waterloo! Excellent blog Z.
    1. “When we think of particle physics, James Joyce isn’t usually the first name that springs to mind. And Joyce wasn’t on the mind of physicist Murray Gell-Man in 1963, when he proposed a name for his concept of an elementary particle of matter that is smaller than a proton or a neutron. Since it had never been written down, there was no spelling for the term that he pronounced as “quork.”

       “According to his own account he was in the habit of using names like “squeak” and “squork” for peculiar objects, and “quork” (rhyming with pork) came out at the time. Some months later, he came across a line from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake:

       Three quarks for Muster Mark!

       Sure he has not got much of a bark

       And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

       “The line struck him as appropriate, since the hypothetical particles came in threes, and he adopted Joyce’s spelling for his “quork.” Joyce clearly meant quark to rhyme with Mark, bark, park, and so forth, but Gell-Mann worked out a rationale for his own pronunciation based on the vowel of the word quart: he told researchers at the Oxford English Dictionary that he imagined Joyce’s line “Three quarks for Muster Mark” to be a variation of a pub owner’s call of “Three quarts for Mister Mark.” Joyce himself apparently was thinking of a German word for a dairy product resembling cottage cheese; it is also used as a synonym for quatsch, meaning “trivial nonsense.”

       1. Canada’s CBC Radio has an always entertaining popular science program called Quirks & Quarks. When rendered in certain Canadian accents, it takes a good ear to hear the difference.
17. 40 minutes of wading through treacle with scarcely a gimme to be seen. For much of it the setter and I were like railway tracks – heading in roughly the same direction but failing to connect.
18. 21:35 … I really liked this, even if I wasn’t quite sure about a few things while solving.

    Maybe it’s my imagination, but it feels like we’re seeing the setters turning to some of the older tricks again — more in the way of cryptic refs and riddle-like posers, more in the way of lateral thinking. If that’s right, I welcome it, even if I’m not great at that kind of thing.

    TORRENT was fun, even if it might have had non-Brits scratching their heads. And I liked the BAOBAB/BOA thing.

    Welcome back, Z8. Even I know that Tottenham 3 Real Madrid 0 is one for the ages. I imagine that was quite a night.

    Edited at 2017-11-02 11:27 am (UTC)

    1. Sorry to rain on your parade but Christian Ronaldo scored for Real Madrid at the death making it 3-1!

       Will you be organising a Christmas Roast this year!?

       1. That’ll teach me to pretend I know something about football.

          It’s looking promising for the Christmas ritual of demonstrating how hard setting actually is. I’m still overseas but will have a think about it in a week or so once I’m home.

    2. Forget football; I think you’re right about increased quirkiness of the cluing, and also that it’s much more entertaining than a rambling lift and separate.
19. Quite a tussle with this one, but thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt like the sort of puzzle which could easily have featured on Saturday – difficult without being needlessly obscure, if you see what I mean.
20. 53m with a long time spent in the SE corner, mainly because I had confidently biffed SHREEK for the high notes, which almost worked apart from the fact it was a misspelling and was the wrong answer. Dear me or to quote my old dad ‘Ye gods and little fishes!’ A chewy puzzle which lived up to its name as I was, like others, puzzled by the OPEN SEA and the joker clue. I did like PINBALL, memories of wasted lunches in the JCR at university. Thank you, Z and setter.
21. Did this after flying overnight from Belize. “Aftermath of heavy rain” and “hot dishes” sums it up. Difficult but very enjoyable crossword to get me back in the swing.
22. All bar 3 in the allotted span then imagined myself in the crucible…no problem move on,rattle the next two out and return…mmm. Genuinely terrified but really looking forward to seeing those I know and meeting others on Saturday
23. A few unparsed, including OPEN SEA which I still don’t really get, but eventually completed in 45-50 minutes. The &lit PLASTER CAST was good and I also liked the ‘Gathered locks’ def.

    When I was at school we called a HOSPITAL CORNER a ‘hospital tuck’, which helped with 17a. I can still remember being taught by matron: Lift it up, tuck it in, turn it over, tuck it in again. Useful advice indeed.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

24. Is TOP QUARK more or less obscure than DIOGENES 🙂

    Quite tough this one. Best to all competing on Saturday. I’ll try to be at The George later on, if my very inconveniently-convened business meeting allows.

    Thanks setter and z8.

25. Which I’m happy enough with.

    I thought there were some really clever clues today and a welcome absence of classical references.

    I thought 5d worked well enough, but why “Hers”? Is this some kind of RIGHTO(N) Nina? Wouldn’t “Player of virtual card tricks” work just as well?

    Completely failed to parse OPEN SEA but the no pens each explanation works perfectly – presumably the participants were given paper but nothing to write with?

    Thanks as always for the blog.

26. That was tricky! After 15 minutes I had PLASTER CAST and INTERNS as lonely entries into an otherwise pristine grid. I’d like to say that the floodgates then opened and the rest came in a TORRENT, but they didn’t. After 36 minutes I had the LHS filled in and a couple of entries in the RHS, but as my cleaner was approaching threateningly with the vacuum cleaner, I hit pause and retreated for 15 minutes. On my return things improved and I was eventually left pondering over 11a and 8d. An alphabet run gave me BAG, which led to RIGHTO fairly quickly, and I submitted at 46:32, to see a nice green grid. Liked TOP QUARK and TABLET ENNIS, as well as OOTB and AOE. A fun puzzle with plenty of lateral thinking required. I got the spelling of the tree from the linked BOA. Never did parse OPEN SEA. PRACTICAL JOKER was only vaguely understood, but happily entered. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and welcome back Z.

    Edited at 2017-11-02 01:11 pm (UTC)

27. Tough going. Last in an unconsidered ‘practical jokes’ so a dnf; otherwise 39.52. I suppose ti+n is preferable to tin as the latter’s about more than notes. Surprised to see t-tennis unhyphenated. Some wicked thinking in this – loved it.
28. I’m another who had trouble parsing the PRACTICAL JOKER, and gave up entirely on OPEN SEA, as you can see if you wish at https://youtu.be/J1Rn5M8chK0 – thanks to z8b8d8k for the explanation.
    1. Very interesting. Your thought process is similar to mine…only I take ten times as long to come to the same conclusion. That’s why I’m not flying in from Connecticut on Saturday.

       It’s curious you couldn’t see ‘0 pens ea’, as I saw that one quite quickly, but struggled for a long time with ‘plaster cast’ and ‘hospital corner’, and especially ‘order of the boot’.

29. I’m going to say about 65 minutes for this, but hard to be exact as it took three bites of the cherry. Even then, several remained un-parsed. I had no idea where STINKY or OPEN SEA came from, never saw the practical/virtual connection, but an excellent workout anyway.

    I played with BUY and BEG before considering BAG, and made the SW more difficult than it should have been by putting in HAYDOWN PARK, a sort of portmanteau racecourse that really should exist outside of my head.

    Back in the early 70’s I used to pass, on the omnibus to work, a car salesroom called RIGHTON & Sons, which always made me smile. Back in those post-hippy days, RIGHTON had no connection to being socially aware, but was more often translated as ‘I absolutely agree with you old chap, now pass the duchy to the left hand side’ or words to that effect.

30. Couldn’t get through this, especially the unknown HAYDOCK PARK and ORDER OF THE BOOT. Biffed in ELBOW without knowing what 9 had to do with it, and also biffed OPEN SEA, TORRENT and BAOBAB, but I confess I resorted to aids for the mysterious ones. Not easy by any means but now I see it the ORDER… is pretty amusing. Overall, one up for the setter today. Regards.
31. I enjoyed my hour with this this morning so much that I carried on for another twenty minutes when I got home and finally finished.

    I wasn’t helped by the fact that two servants play a game of halfpenny nap in Leave It to Psmith, my reading material at the moment, convincing me that the “flipping game” in 18d meant it started PAN… rather than PIN. Took me ages to get past that.

    It also took me ages to see 5d, though I thought “practical magic” almost as soon as I saw it, and I still hadn’t really parsed the JOKER even after I’d finally got there.

    Further delayed by not wanting to put in 22a OPEN SEA until I’d parsed it, but I’m glad I did, because I rather enjoyed the penny dropping. Stunned to find I’ve managed to parse something our illustrious Magoo did not, but then I suppose I did spend the whole day on it, subconsciously at least 😀

    And speaking of pennies, my LOI, with a frown, was 27a STINKY, where I assumed liberties were being taken when comparing “notes” and “tin”, which felt like very different types of money. But TI + N seems to cover that nicely.

    Great crossword. Thanks to setter and blogger.

32. 16:25. I needed some of Sue’s Tippex in the extreme SW corner. Figuring that 23 could be BOA I glanced at the cross-referenced 20, quickly wrote in BONSAI on the strength of the B and A and then, returning to 23, discovered that somebody had written a S where my B should have been.

    In case anyone is keeping a tally of the rum clues:

    OPEN SEA – like Z I parsed this as 0 pens ea(ch);
    STINKY – TIN rather than TI N was how I saw it but I now think I’m wrong;
    PRACTICAL JOKER – *shrugs*.

33. A very enjoyable puzzle, and I was pleased to parse everything except ‘Open Sea’, which I entered with a shrug on the basis that it couldn’t really be anything else.
    Having been born about a quarter if a mile from White Hart Lane, and following Spurs from an early age, I share the pleasure in the 3-1 win over Real Madrid. As both teams are bound to qualify from the Group, I hope Spurs don’t meet them again later, with Real seeking revenge, especially if Gareth Bale is fit. Savour the day George, savour the day.
34. Found this quite tough and needed a half hour session on the way to work this morning, a half hour session at lunchtime and a further 10 mins after work to get 27ac, 22ac, 5dn and 19dn. I get so used to the very tight cluing in Times puzzles that I am very slow to adjust to any hint of looseness or perhaps any of the tricks from the old school which Sotira mentions above. COD 4ac where I liked the “a little bit shattered” def. FOI 20dn but only because I had got to 23 in the acrossers without entering anything, decided it had to be boa but wanted confirmation. LOI 5dn.
35. 34:55. I got to this late and I am clearly in a minority in not liking it at all. Too much by way of ‘oh well I suppose it has to be that’ rather than ‘eureka!’. For instance I figured out that 9dn was probably something OF THE BOOT but I had no idea what and didn’t get much pleasure working it out, and much the same can be said for HOSPITAL something or other. Both a case of ‘find a word that fits the checkers and makes a phrase that looks vaguely like something people might once have said’.
    5dn is just weird.
    Ah well, probably just my mood.

    Edited at 2017-11-02 09:59 pm (UTC)

36. Same problems as others, though 0 pens ea seemed very likely, while the practical joker didn’t. I saw ‘dock’ = moor right away, but not knowing the racecourse wrote ‘paddock area’ around it, which slowed the rest of the SW solve considerably. And I never figured unhinged out, and never would have. Thanks Z8, and thanks setter.

    Very much wishing I could make the trip to the George Saturday, and even more wishing everyone sharp pencils and fast times.

37. “STINKY I believe this is hit high SKY enclosing TI (a drink with jam and bread) and N(ote), two variations on a theme.”

    I got STINKY, but can’t make sense of the above explanation given for it. Does “stop” mean that TI-N interrupts SKY?

    And how does the transliteration of TEA help to explain anything?

    1. I think you may be missing an important reference source… (And yes, “stop” can mean to block or fill in; a cork stopping a bottle is the only example that springs to my mind at the moment…)

       Edited at 2017-11-02 10:50 pm (UTC)

38. TIN HERE SURELY IS TI, A NOTE ON THE TONAL SCALE, AND N FOR NOTE?
39. Thank you, Gothick, you’re dead right–I’ve never met the words of that song in The Sound of Music. But an important reference source this ain’t–we all know that TI is a note, nothing but confusion was added by shoving the unneeded quote from TSoM into the explanation.
    1. Wow. We’ve had a lot of unnecessarily snarky anonymous comments on here over the years but I think you’ve set a new low.

       Yes, we all know that TI is a note but among those of us who didn’t have a clavichord in our drawing room at home and have private piano lessons from Shostakovich (I’m making assumptions about you here but as you’re retaining a cloak of anonymity you leave me no choice) many only know that from watching The Sound of Music.

       If you’re that unhappy with the blog why don’t you send in an official complaint on your velour notepaper and maybe Z8 will have his wages docked for the week. Better still, why don’t you blog one of next week’s puzzles and show us how it should be done?

       Edited at 2017-11-03 08:34 am (UTC)

       1. Impressive response! Thanks PF, to the rescue again!

          Edited at 2017-11-03 02:44 pm (UTC)

40. I couldn’t make much headway with this on the subway headed to my karaoke session last night, did the Quickie instead, and I was too distracted after that, until I settled down with this at the office at end of day. But this would have been tough anyway. I had no prior knowledge of ROYAL WORCESTER or HAYDOCK PARK and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard AT ONE’S ELBOW or of the ORDER OF THE BOOT. TOP QUARK and BAKELITE are somewhat obscure too. I thought 7 down would be an Irish town I’ve never heard of, but that turned out to be only a part of the answer, which wasn’t hard to get. I worked the western half first, with the lone exception of BUN. I am glad I didn’t give up!
41. Happy to finish this one, even it did take a minute over the hour. NHO ORDER OF THE BOOT, but everything else was fairly straightforward in retrospect, so I have no idea why I was so slow.
42. Righto is not in Chambers. I pronounce the “h” in right-ho and Wodehouse writes it as two words
    1. Curious. My 2003 edition of Chambers (2003 electronic) has the entry: “righto or right-oh (interj) expressing acquiescence.” I’m not sure whether that means my edition is out of date or yours is.
43. DNF – problem with SE corner.

    In the main 🙂 I couldn’t parse “OPEN SEA”. Definition yes, PEN(S) = writing material yes. But why? Now I have read the answer here (0 PENS EA.), I feel the unreasonable absence of a question mark breaks the compact between setter and solver. The moral though is I need to learn how not to be unsettled by such unsatisfactory situations.

    DNK “HOSPITAL CORNER” although I parsed it correctly, I couldn’t find CORNER. Nice clue, but I have the Ximenesian aversion to self-congratulatory exclamation marks. It’s not British.

    PRACTICAL JOKER works ok if one simply assumes that they can’t be assumed to be male. Really wish English had a gender-neutral singular pronoun, I hope “they” can succeed, but it’s not there yet.

    Thanks to setter, blogger and commenters, including the youtube video chap.

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