Words I Discovered Via The Times Crosswords 23484 & 23485

haver: hesitate
Lhasa Apso: a breed of dog
Sachs: (Hans) who was a "mastersinger"
loge: a box in the theatre or opera house

 
The painting is Renoir's "La Loge". I'll let you guess what those are on the left :-).

Now, it's 0515, time for bed ... how I love being on holidays !!

I Fought The Times, But The Times Won Lost

As you can tell from the blog title, the latest Times crossword beat me. Two damned crossing clues. If I could get one, I'd probably get the other, but no such luck.

I'm off to help my mate Greg with his website in a minute. If I can crack those last two clues before I get back and check the answers (they're not online yet), I figure I still won, but for the time being ...

Update: Got them (one was so straightforward I was thinking too hard and the other was very clever). So, it's now ...

HarryO 3, The Times 0

An Amazing Anagram

While waiting for the next Times crossword to appear online, I was reading an article about a book called The A-Z of Crosswords.

In the discussion, mention was made of Araucaria, one of my favourite compilers. He is known for his themed puzzles and for using very long anagrams.

They point out this one, from one of his Bah Humbug puzzles:

O hark the herald angels sing the boy’s descent which lifted up the world
which is an anagram of

While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground
Truly amazing! Here's a tribute the Guardian published for his 80^th birthday.