Times 28953 – keep your eyes wide open. – Times for The Times (2024)

I see that I hurried past OUTPOST without really trying to parse, and I must thank Jackkt.
I also neglected to fully parse MARRIAGE BROKER.
I’ve always thought of LAMBENT in the sense of the first two Merriam-Webster definitions, of “playing lightly on or over a surface: FLICKERING” or “softly bright or radiant,” rather than the third, which fits here. (I think it’s the LAMB part that gets me.)
I have all but one of the Kubrick films Pip mentioned, and some others (in digital form, on hard drives). He really went his own way.
REHAB was one of my last few in, and the definition seems to me rather… adventurous. Bravo, setter.

12:28. A steady solve today, not getting stuck on anything but with many clues requiring some thought. I think we might have had a Britpop reference recently, and both then and now I instinctively thought of it as a modern reference. Then I stopped and thought that Britpop was about 30 years ago!

I totally blanked in the NW corner with 6 clues not solved. On reading Pip’s usual excellent blog I have to conclude that OUTPOST and NHO DRAFTSMAN would still have eluded me had I paused and come back later – but I have no excuse as regards ODDITY or ON THE TROT.

9:30. Not too hard but required some concentration. Good stuff.

11:50, not helped by initially entering EIGHTEENTH HOLE. Quite a cultural NE corner. I liked “You shouldn’t have” as indicator of TA. I once fell into Lake Tahoe from the upper hull of a windsurfing catamaran (not as much fun as it sounds).
The young Pavarotti
Was terribly spotty
His appearance in ‘Lakme’
Was disfigured by acne.
LOI OUPOST
COD BLUER

41 minutes with LOI E-LEARNING. I might have known BLUR but I’m not getting that modern. I was on the Oasis side of the fence anyway. I was still a middle-aged man back then. Quite a tough but rewarding puzzle. I just about had all the knowledge. COD to VINEGARY. Thank you Pip and setter.

41m 32s
Thanks, Pip, especially for NABOKOV, TEMPERAMENT and TAHOE.
Mention of KUBRICK reminded me of the movie ‘Colour me Kubrick’ a ‘truish’ story about a conman who impersonated the great director. It starred John Malkovich.

15.18, not quite parsing everything but as one with Jackkt on OUTPOST and with Chrislu*tton for the minor emendation on NABOKOV.
Mildly distracted by the leaky surface for TAHOE, and by the (prescient?) football commentary at 14a: “Match organiser arranged one boring game….” Perhaps England will get more exciting when they actually have to score.

39 minutes, so I was very off the pace today, I was held up at the end by NABOKOV, KUBRICK and VINEGARY.
I think half I was slow this morning, half it was definitely a good challenging puzzle today.
Thanks setter and blogger

KensoGhost I think the wordplay at 8dn is fine: (v in ry) round (eg A). And I agree with Jack about the parsing of OUTPOST, although out = off seems a bit weak, also with Chrislu*tton about it being (boko) in the NABOKOV clue. 39 minutes. In rushing to be in under 40 minutes I biffed TAHOE and MARRIAGE BROKER because that’s what they obviously were, only parsing them afterwards. ‘Ta’ = ‘you shouldn’t have’ strikes me as a bit extreme. If someone picks up my golf tee after a drive and hands it to me, I hardly say ‘you shouldn’t have’.

Smooth 25′ or so. OUTPOST only half parsed, and TEST BAN one of the few times I got a spoonerism pretty quickly. Enjoyed TRACHEA. Like LindsayO I was interested to watch Clockwork Orange again for the first time since I saw it on its release when I was 14. Oh my it was awful. Thanks Piquet and setter

25 mins, but had no idea how OUTPOST and DRAFTSMAN worked, so tx for that.
Several biffs inc NABOKOV and UNEASIEST.

DNF. Froze in the NE corner, never thought of Kubrick which should have kick-started me but didn’t, and cheated for NABOKOV, then the rest OK.
On many occasions I got part way there, for instance with 11a TAHOE I thought of “ta” for “you shouldn’t have” immediately, but then stopped thinking for 20 mins whilst I went off elsewhere.
The long ones I generally failed to parse.
Can’t spell PAVeROTTI, so he took an age and wasn’t in Cheating Machine, not sure why not. I did think of VAR eventually (always reluctant to contemplate footie) but thinking he had too few As I stopped thinking and moved on.
Actually got a Spoonerism from just the (pencilled) N! Unheard-of for me.
22d REHAB seemed like cheating but it surely isn’t, just clever and unusual.

I found this a good challenge – not easy, but all very gettable with a bit of thought. Finished in just under 45 mins. Liked REHAB , NAVVIES and TEST BAN, though they tested me and took up the best part of half my time.

My LOI was TAHOE, which is a bit embarrassing since it is less than two hours drive from my home. But LAMBENT was my downfall, since I’d never heard of it and I put LAMBERT which is a unit of brightness, and seemed close enough to “brilliance”. Of course I couldn’t see how the wordplay worked, but that went for several other clues too so I just assumed it worked in some way I had not fully discovered. Fun crossword.

I enjoyed this one. I initially put NABUKOV at 5a then reread the clue and changed it to NABOKOV. FOI was ON THE TROT followed by ODDITY. Next came OUTPOST which I parsed as Jack did. DRAFTSMAN seemed likely for 9a but I didn’t put it in until I had all the crossers. Then I managed to parse it. Surprisingly, BLUR popped straight to mind at 6d. VINEGARY prompted the removal of the posited NIB at the front of 5a and the arrival of the aforementioned NABOKOV, after which KUBRICK hove into view. The SW was the last area to succumb and IRISH was LOI. 16:51. Thanks setter and Pip.

No golf today so I had time to look at this over and after lunch. Struggled at first but it all came together pretty quickly (for me) once I had some letters. NINETEENTH HOLE was a gimme; should have been there now.
LOI was OUTPOST which I struggled to parse; the anagram of STOP was clear and then OUT =OFF as per Jackkt. POI TEMPERAMENT- another hard one to parse.
Very enjoyable puzzle. COD to TAHOE.
David

17:20 – Neatly put-together puzzle solved in a somewhat messier fashion. Never parsed OUTPOST – having bunged in a similarly unparsed OUTBACK – until the crossers sorted me out, so thanks for the explanation, which was less convoluted than seemed likely at first glance.

Finished most of it fairly quickly but had a few left in the SE, including the NHO ‘lambent’, surely more obscure than ‘Rishi’? I misspelt NABOKOV as ‘Nabakov’, so that was another wrong one, which I couldn’t parse. I didn’t quite understand PAVAROTTI till I looked at the blog either , as I thought ‘Varpaotti’ would make more sense but the parsing seems obvious now I’ve looked at the explanation.

Thought I’d finished with all correct and only one unparsed in 36.43, only to discover that, like quite a few others, I thought it was NABUKOV. I didn’t take the hint that because I couldn’t parse it, it must be wrong, but I was so convinced that I’d seen it spelt in this way it must be right.

37:46
Vaguely remembered LAMBENT as the sort of word used by Derek Jewell on his radio 3 programme in the late seventies. “Verily it is a lambent benison” comes to mind.

Just over 24 mins for me – felt like longer, sitting on a very delayed train home from London. FOI and COD NINETEENTH HOLE. Didn’t understand OUTPOST so grateful for explanations

It looks like I was the only one who went down the (L)USAKA route at 10a. It made the NE corner somewhat trickier than it was!

I forgive YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE for TA, because it allowed the wonderful double-meaning of WEED. Never parsed NABOKOV because I presumed the VOLUME was V. But it couldn’t have been anything else with those checkers. Can’t remember where I first heard of Lake Tahoe. The Godfather? Near Las Vegas, no? 23’44”.

Excellent puzzle today, with lots of twisting and very witty clues. Almost no unknowns (maybe LAMBENT and ON THE TROT) and the wordplay was always clear, but that didn’t make the puzzle easy and I took 40 minutes for it. Clues I liked especially were DRAFTSMAN (with DRAMA for “acting”), TAHOE with its wonderful surface reading, TRACHEA, VINEGARY and STATUE. A very enjoyable and refreshing solve.