28 minutes for all but five clues which included the two errors (10 & 19), the dodgy definition (26) and the very clever BLAST at 24. The fifth one, CABLE at 23, should have gone in on first reading but eluded me until the very end when I closed out with 50 minutes on the clock. Because of the errors in the clues I don't think this was really a fair contest but other than that it was enjoyable enough. I was pleased to complete the qualifier without any difficulty other than that experienced trying to print the b***** thing off.

Edited at 2012-04-18 01:33 am (UTC)

Yes, but my problems were despite that. Print preview showed three pages two of which were virtually blank and the other had the grid and a few clues some of which were cut off half way through as the rest fell outside the designated print area. Eventually I did a screen-shot and pasted it into Word.

13:58 .. agreed - very enjoyable.

It says something (bad) about my approach that I didn't actually notice while solving either of the errors pointed out in the blog. Scratch me off that proof-reading shortlist.

Hi Jimbo. The survey results are still on my LJ home page: http://sotira.livejournal.com/

The pie chart for Q.4 is probably the one you were thinking of, but it's "How long have you been solving' rather than 'At what age did you start?'. The latter might be a good question for the 2012 Festive Survey (if there is one). I'll add it to the list of 'questions I should have asked'.

I'm sure starting young helps, but the decisive factor is probably the amount of practice. The sports writer and former Olympian Matthew Syed has been writing a lot on this over the last few years, highlighting research which suggests that very regular practice at anything over many years is a more decisive component of success than is talent. I seem to recall that one of the eminent music academies carried out similar research in the 80s and 90s with similar findings - the children learning to play music who ended up as successful musicians were the ones who practised hard, not the ones who showed the most talent early on. But then, of course, you have your Mozarts and your Chopins …

Malcolm Gladwell suggests that you need to put in 10,000 hours if you're going to achieve success in any field, and that almost certainly applies to crossword-solving. I think I can claim to have done my stint, especially if one takes into account all those Listener puzzles I tackled before the days of TEA and Bradford and Google and wikipedia!

Thank you, Tony. Questions added to the list.

Is 25,068 the right number? Can't find this one.

Thanks - I didn't look beyond the qualifier on the Club website.

This is peculiar. I went to the Times archive to see whether the typos were in the original and it's not showing up.

Thurs April 19, 1984 = 16409.
Sat April 21, 1984 = Jumbo & Concise only as far as I can see.

So 16,410 should have been out on Friday April 20: unless that happened to be Good Friday and there was no paper??
Still, that search draws a blank.

ON EDIT: Ah, found it. It's a prize puzzle (Times Atlas) and appears under the header of solutions to previous puzzles. Now I can confirm that the typos aren't in the original.

Edited at 2012-04-18 06:33 am (UTC)

I was fortunate enough to have read both Jerry's warning re errors and Sotira's comment that it didn't bother her, and this gave me, being on the slapdash side of the solving barometer, the confidence to plough on. In the end, the only one I couldn't parse was MOIST, 'though I saw all sorts of bits. In general, I like crypticky clues, so this puzzle was up my alley, as it were. COD to the BLAST/CABLE intersection, even if I had to assume the length meaning of the latter.

58mins for this and 36mins for the qualifier, so that's now 6 cryptics in a row either under the hour or just over. Can Nemesis be far away? Thanks for the warning about the errors, Jerry. I inadvertantly clicked on the Times forum for this crossword (instead of the one for yesterday)before solving so, although I gained no real assistance,your "heads-up" helped me spot "offer" and "imitator". I agree with your assessment that this wasn't hard. I made it so by looking for difficulties that weren't there. LOIs were 19d,20d,26ac. COD to 27ac.

Number in the heading now corrected, sorry about that.. 25068 was left over from a previous blog!

A thought occurs to me, is this puzzle in the paper, or only available on the crossword website? If so, I think that is good treatment and a point in favour of membership..

Edited at 2012-04-18 07:46 am (UTC)

One of the more pleasurable historic puzzles that get easier as you adjust your mindset to days of yore. No way that I prefer them to modern puzzles but I'm expecting Tony S to drool

The qualifier was easy again. I'm always left wondering wether it's really ethical to set the entry barrier so low compared to the usually excellent puzzles that are used in the championship

Enjoyed both this (despite misprints) and the qualifier (surely jimbo is right that they should be a bit more demanding - although 'time taken', if honestly submitted, would help sort the sheep from the goats - and certainly exclude me).

12:57 for an interesting piece of history. I'd have been 17 when this was first published, so it dates from the time when I began to finish the daily puzzle on a consistent basis. I wonder how I got on with this one first time round? Obviously it would have been easier without the typos (I worked out what 10ac must have intended, but TRAVAIL went in purely on definition, so well deduced, Jerry) and my LOI was BLAST, which suggests that in a nominally metric age, imperial measurements spring to mind less quickly, even though I still naturally think in pounds when I'm weighing anything.

Conclusion: has aged well (the puzzle, not me).

17 minutes for this. A really interesting puzzle: elegant and simple. I think it is indicative of the style that some of the clues that held me up were the easiest, because I was looking for something more devious. TAKE PLACE, for instance. DOG COLLAR and SLEEPER are also very simple clues that had me fooled for quite a while. I wonder how a time-travelling solver used to this sort of puzzle would fare with an Anax offering.
The only one I didn't understand was the omitted 23!

Thanks - yes I got the length meaning from Collins post-solve. New to me.

No accurate time but 15 minutes on the Jimbometer. Or possibly 20.

I spotted the error at 10 but just had a QM against 19 as I couldn't see how it worked and went for travail on the basis of def and checkers, hence this was my LOI.

Good puzzle though. I only used to do the Telegraph back in those days, on a smoky train up to Victoria.

Really didn't rate this at all in comparison to today's polished and letter-perfect offerings. I would have done this as a relative newcomer and taken hours over it I expect, but about 25 mins today and no satisfaction from most of the clues. Not sure why there has to be a puzzle from the past on Championship entry days; couldn't we just have a current one? Sorry to be a whinger.

I am clearly being thick. Where is the current one on Championship entry days?

Aaaaah. But the only problem is that doesn't appear on the Club website. I did it and thought it was great, though, having taken a photocopy of the puzzle from my workplace copy of the newspaper (the only time I ever need to do this). However I really haven't been able to think very highly of The Times as a newspaper ever since it went Sun shaped. My comment stands.

I am indeed thick. Not sure how I could have missed it. Grovel in extremis.

This was odd enough to slow me up in places. I couldn't believe the Times would allow sloppy typos to pass, so wasted time looking for alternatives. OFFER was my, slightly disbelieving, LOI. Then I thought of OFFICER and spotted the typo. It's interesting to see how straightforward these clues are compared with the puzzles we are now used to. It's interesting to tackle a vintage puzzle now and then but I wouldn't like to return to this style. 31 minutes, about the same time as the qualifier but less intersting.

As a paper and pen man, I was surprised to see this puzzle on the blog as I hadn't really noticed that today's crossword was a Qualifier. I was also surpised that I managed to finish it in 40 minutes, which is quick for me. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks now to confirm I have it all correct.

Edited at 2012-04-18 09:54 pm (UTC)

A rather sluggish 9:39 for me, helped by having all the correct clues (solving from the Times archive) but hindered (since I don't have a printer) by filling the answers into a spreadsheet. I expect I solved this rather faster originally, since I was still pretty brisk in 1984.

It didn't seem strikingly different from one of today's puzzles, at least not in the same way that puzzles from the 1940s and 1950s are.