Times Sep 19-24 Spoil Away!

So Saturday's answers for 25D and 26A were...?

ps I don't get The Oz on Monday....

So Saturday's answers for 25D and 26A were...?

ps I don't get The Oz on Monday....

@Rob: THAI & HOUND

For 9112 - never heard of PRESTONPANS. I get the wordplay, but thought the 'God' nod could have been more helpful. If you're not a student of history, jeez...

And how do we feel about recurrent implying a reversal. It's a clever clue, but the signpost was a tad too sly, I reckon.

And show me a CONFERENCE PEAR, and I'll show you a SEMINAR GUAVA. The wha - ?

First Barnet, now the pear? DA, you're not picking up the repeat offerings! The pear showed up a few weeks back - so today, it was my first one in.

I did spend a while trying to squeeze in MARS/ARES at the end, but the P forced my hand on PRESTONPANS. Never heard of it, but my Bacchus-meter went off ;-)

Recurrent, medically speaking, at least, means turning back to the origin. But if makes you feel any better, I assigned it to PA for per annum, gave GO for trouble, and then thought of you...well almost - I bludgeoned GOAD and moved on. A little red-faced on that one.

Ha. I had guessed hound (didn't get all the wordplay) but Thai escaped me. A "d'oh" moment.

Thanks DA for allowing me to get clozure.

I have a question about:

"A petrol fire put out by snowball (11)"

Surely "by" isn't right here. I can see that Answer by (from) Wordplay is logical, but it doesn't make sense the other way round, which it is here.

Stig

Interesting point of discussion, Stig. Does the parsing below work any better for you?

[anagram fodder] [put out = issued] ['by' fodder's synonym]?

How do others see it?

I think your parsing just gets it over the line, though it's close. If it didn't give such a great surface reading, you'd have to argue it should have been done differently.

In this case, I rather suspect the result of the game of Scissors Paper Rock in the surface could have been otherwise.

eg A petrol fire melts snowball - avoids the issue.

On other matters, I'd like to claim the glory of having HELIGOLAND in my GK. A small victory, even if there's still plenty of work ahead.

Come to think of it, a better version:

Snowball put out a petrol fire (11)

As for Heligoland...is that an answer within 9113? What am I missing?

Uh oh. You got spoiled. It's 22ac today. (sorry)

No worries. Looks like I needed the leg-up. So what's your GK? Aha! General Knowledge. Now I get it.

After yday's PRESTOPANS I'm grateful for any freebies I can weasel.

PRESTONPANS.

See, at least I've learnt something.

Thanks for giving some of us lesser mortals a chance with the Times Spoiler thread, DA. Am having a go this week and hope to learn something from the illuminati. Heligoland was familiar enough to get from the wordplay, so not cheering yet. If I'm right about 5D it's a cackle.

I mean, I was happy to get Heligoland too...all by myself! Setter could have had fun with snowball's chance in that one. And most of igloo. Lost opportunity, boring clue.

No luck in NE corner yet, hence hoping my 5D is correct. And I like 15A - thought I might have to ask Anthony about that - but pretty confident of my answer, despite not having 15D. ... yet. Maybe I'm just getting the funny ones and the straight ones are eluding me.

there was a famous battle at Prestonpans methinks

I didn't know 15ac - I've always used a more obvious term. It's a clever clue, but a bit nasty with 15dn which is even more obscure.

Ah! The link's back. Thought DA might have taken it down ... I see I'm the only newbie who's got on board. Maybe everyone else was having too much fun with Low-Hanging Fruit yesterday, and rightly so. Much more fun than 9113 which I gave away. But enjoying 9114. 14D brilliant! A DA-y clue. And there's one of those Sweet Sounds too .. again.

Criseyde - you've inspired me to take a plunge into 9114. (In the same way Anthony's Heligoland, and general time poverty, saw me skip the Tuesday Experience.) True confession. Life is too short for dud clues. And obscure Germanic islets on a weekday.

DA, you skipped the best puzzle in some time!

I should apologise for the link issues. I'm pretty confident that was me, confusing the server - my comment above was actually left on the other thread, but I jumped too quickly to this one and tied it all up in knots, it seems...

Oh, and:

Calling Geoff Bailey - today's puzzle is one for you.

B is for Boniface...

I've pulled up with 1A, 2D, 5A and 7D to go.
Was pleased for Google to confirm my guess of 24A. Likewise 23A, which would be easy if you knew it, but lots of tricky traps if you didn't (like me) eg very last=y, or ult. from assault.

Spent a lot of time on 4D ... I thought I'd use my 'GK' of Charlotte Church, singer, and her (ex)husband. A 5 letter word ending in H had to be Welsh something, and I could argue intro = 'Welcome, interrupted. But no, much simpler.

5A is about the first one i got....he has a Theorem.

Mmmmm twas me just then...

ORIG[AM]I is wonderful + original at 20ac.

But I really struggled with the last few. How do IMAGINE and DORMITORY TOWN work?

Very challenging puzzle.

Here's what I came up with:

DORMITORY TOWN:

RM - resident magistrate
I - upright character
Tory - right person [politically]
to - to
all in Down = depressed
suburb = definition

IMAGINE:
I'm agin= member of opposition's statement. Cute.

9114 1A: FOLKSONG I can now see the def, which is a start .. but could someone kindly explain the wordplay? Where does the 13 come in? OG around N

Funnily, my first attempt was 'funcrowd'. .. anagram of synonym for 'noon', ie 'crown' contained in FUD, which Wiki tells me is a sales tactic: fear, uncertainty and doubt = 13?!

Have made a start on 9115. Somewhat easier than yesterday's, so far, but enjoyable. And there's that number again! .. several numbers. Like 23D.

13 is a reference to clue 13. OG is short for own goal.

Thanks Boniface. Is that a common cross-referencing convention, or were we just supposed to twig?

@Criseyde - Seems to be the convention with the Times not to put in the across or down component to cross-referred clues. I have a rule that whenever I see a number in a Times clue, I treat it as a potential cross-reference.

Convention in Oz seems to be to make full reference. DA might be the better authority on this, though.

Um, that was me.

Yeah, in the FT and Guardian, all they need is a number to act as cross-ref.

9115 is medium difficulty and a lot of svelte clues. For a horrible moment I thought 15ac was 'stirred' with a homophone nod to a less than pleasant output...

Thanks again Boniface. Will watch out for numbers in future. I imagine too that OG is common in roundball land.

And thanks DA. I liked today's cluing of familiar expressions eg 11A, 3D, 25A and 13A, along with some of the clever clues that made me think.

Particularly liked 23D and 18A - a setter's joke? Tried 'tweaked' at first, 'put' can be either tense, it has a K in it, but I didn't know of any queens which were made up from the rest of the letters.

9115 a nice trot. Liked 10A. 1A was a bit confusing until I worked out that the three applied to Europeans, not to times. And 23D was very clever, I thought.

OMG!! own goal around midday? :)

9116: A good one. Lots to enjoy here, including a number of neat deletion tricks and some lovely containers. 14A and 20A my faves.
First in was 18D, last was 3D, also sweet.

Yes, this one, while relatively quick to fill, did have some gems. Quite liked 5D, and 21D which took me a while to get. The clue for 23A is memorable. Didn't know 15D.

Found time to complete 9117 tonight and it's not a huge challenge. I suffered some analysis paralysis on some of the longer clues but perserverance paid off. Some tricky defs throughout.