23971

41 comments on “23971”

1. 5:18 – might have scraped under 5 had I not looked for a double definition answer at 1A – I gave up on this after testing a fairly feeble HARRIS against the crossing downs.

   At 21A, West Side Story is a musical version of Romeo and Juliet, and Maria is both a character and the name of a song, both of which fit the clue.

   Cartmel racecourse was new to me, lummox rang enough bells to suggest that I’ve seen it before.

2. I found this quite tricky. About 22 mins, perhaps 7-8 of these to sort out 28A and 27D (Admiral Rodney minus Marshal Ney). 12D is strange – ‘overlooking’ to link homophones!

   Tom B.

   1. Thanks! Never heard of Rodney or Ney – thought it might be something obscure there.
3. I would guess at Admiral Rodney
4. I don’t follow your comment on 28, Foggy. As you have indicated the tailless cat (i.e.Manx cat) is PANTHE(r).

   I didn’t understand 27dn either but put ROD too. I’ve now seen the explanation above. Two obscure historical references in the same clue so far as I’m concerned. I’ve vaguely heard of both men but I don’t know quite why I should be expected to dredge up their surnames from the evidence supplied by the setter. But then I’ve never heard of Cartmel racecourse either. Looking Cartmel up on Wikipedia the fact that it has a racecourse is less important than it being “the home of sticky toffee pudding” if the order of mention is anything to go by.

   3dn for my COD.

   1. 28A – what I was trying to say was a Manx cat was a particular breed of cat – removing a panther’s tail does not make it a Manx cat.
   2. I forgot to say I don’t understand the “From” in 24dn.
   3. Cartmel racecourse is famous to me as part of the answer to that old quiz chestnut for sad folk like me:
      Name the n British racecourses containing the letters RACE – (its cousin: “name the courses WITHOUT RACE is probably slightly better known 🙂 )
5. Those 3 weeks flew by and here I am back in the office rather than under a spanish jacaranda with a long drink. With BODEGA and RIOJA in the puzzle I felt quite at home.

   A very easy one to come back to, less than 20 minutes to solve. Rodney and Ney are well known to me but can’t think why at the moment. Not keen on the homophones – but no surprise there. Jimbo.

6. I knew Rodney from the battleship HMS Rodney which was a Nelson class ship in WWII – a magnificent ship. My uncle served on her as a CPO.

   Straightforward puzzle even by Monday standards, I thought, about 5 and a half mins which is about as fast as I can go.

7. I’d breezed through this and expected to record a time pretty close to 5 minutes, but it all fell apart with one answer, 26, that just wouldn’t come. Rather hefty boot to the shin when I saw the answer here.
   I’d be with Jimbo as regards – especially – the homophone at 12 which I think is a bit loose. There were some very nice clues as well although I wouldn’t nom one as COD as they felt (I’d stand corrected) like I’d seen them before.
8. 10:26 for me, after getting a little bit bogged down in the bottom right corner. I put in ROD from the def. I’ve heard of Marshal Ney but not Admiral Rodney. I also left 9A till last, but got it straight away when I went back to it.

   19D for COD.

9. 10 minutes, pretty straightforward, though I guessed MOUNT CARMEL and ROD without knowing the wordplay. Lot of booze in this one for a Monday morning, and a place to get more.
10. Idiot of the year must surely go to me. I completed all but 9a in about 8 minutes and stared at that one for a further 10 minutes. I realised that game was probably GO but couldn’t find a word to fit in ?U?L?C. I came on here for the solution and saw that it wasn’t even mentioned, so it must be pretty easy. I finally gave in and went to Onelook. What a lummox to be flummoxed !
    Welcome back Jimbo
11. 27d has appeared before. It’s ROD(NEY) – Admiral Rodney minus Marshall NEY.
    Unlike the last 2 Mondays this was relatively easy (25 minutes for me), though 1 was a pure guess. I don’t have much to say about the clues. Most were fine, and there were one or two innovations. I thought 10 was poor. If you increase the exposure of a picture it would not be referred to as upping the shot, even loosely.
    1. Re 10, this is a charade rather than a dd or cd: upshot = outcome, up = increased, shot = exposure (“old” film used to come in, say, 24 or 36 exposure rolls which is how many shots you got).
12. I couldn’t see what could fit ?u?l?c for a while either, and started trying to find another dog to fit 5d before the proverbial p dropped (not sure that a cur is necessarily aggressive FWIW).

    18:08 in the end, with correct guesses for Mt Carmel and Rodders.

    I didn’t have a problem with Pantheon. For me Manx cat = cat without a tail. Panthe = cat without its tail.

    1. That’s what I tried to say about “Pantheon” but didn’t manage to explain myself.

       Did anyone else toy with “Jo Public”?

       I still can’t make sense of 24, assuming the answer is CABIN. “Lodge from taxi home” would make sense though the surface reading would then be rubbish, but I just can’t see how the clue as it is written works.

       1. I guess I didn’t think much about this when solving. On reflection, I did think that “from” was one of the “one-way” link words – you can get the answer from the wordplay, but not the other way round. If that’s right, this clue doesn’t work.
          1. The standard Ximenean rule is definition from wordplay, not the other way round. I don’t really see why the words in the wordplay cannot come from the answer. You can get ‘cab’ and ‘in’ from ‘cabin’, so “Taxi home from lodge” would strike me as OK, though I know many would object. I think the problem here is that the clue starts with ‘From’, so really it needs ‘this’ before ‘lodge’ to be a fair clue.
             1. The issue of one-way link-words came up last week, with ‘giving’ (used both ways in the same crossword). Perhaps there’s a relaxation in this respect.

                Tom B.

                1. I wonder if this kind of treatment should necessarily be problematical. To tell the solver that “In this answer X you can find this treatment Y” doesn’t seem outlandish or unfair.
13. 11:30. Very comfortable apart from some brain ache trying to recall those blasted Hebridean islands.

    Like Tom B I thought one homophone ‘overlooking’ another at 12d a little odd – a setter with synaesthesia, perhaps, which would be rather neat. Personally, I hear anagrams as choral symphonies.

    Having had ten years of almost daily beseeching that Our Lady of Mount Carmel pray for us, 6d was a breeze (especially as you could always hear the Irish nuns and priests at school adding “.. and for Lively Lad in the 2.30” under their breath).

    A groan and a cheer for the excruciating pun at 26a BORDEAUX but COD for the neatly arrayed SASH.

    1. Just noticed we’ve had two mentions of band leaders on consecutive weekdays.
14. No real problems although had no real idea why I was putting in styx, didn’t pick up on X=by.
    I thought Manx cat was ingenious – but could the clue have had a question mark at the end? Maybe someone can explain when you do have a ? and when you don’t.
    8.25 – not bad for a Monday
    Glad to see rioja and bodega as I look forward to flying off to Spain next weekend.
    JohnPMarshall
    1. I think “Manx cat” should at least have a question mark after it. I’ve never been all that happy with effectively using the word “Manx” to mean tailless when a Manx cat is just a breed of cat that happens not to have a tail – I suppose when it’s cat we’re talking about then the extension of meaning is more appropriate but I’ve seen “Manx” used to mean tailless anything, which strikes me as very wrong, although it’s probably no less logical.
       1. For the record Manx can mean Manx cat. It’s not in COD or Chambers or Collins but it’s in dictionary.com probably because it’s a term used in breeding/showing circles.
15. I just can’t see the explanation for (presumably) jo public. Please can someone help ?
    1. It’s GO PUBLIC – ‘go’ being the Oriental game, ‘out himself’ the personalised definition.
16. Whilst cutting 3 weeks worth of growth off the lawns I remembered how I’d heard of Ney and Rodney. In the 1970s barmy management courses were all the rage (watching a film of Henry Fonda convince a jury they were wrong and he was right and then analysing his management style!)

    One such was about military leaders. Contrast Nelson’s delegation technique with Napoleon’s and draw lessons. On this I learned that Bismark analysed people into four groups: clever and idle – directors; clever and active – managers; stupid and idle – foot soldiers; and finally stupid and active – trouble makers best shot on sight. No unions in his day.

    Anyway Rodney did something brilliant at sea to defeat the Spanish but Ney managed to get himself shot by his own firing squad, apparently giving the order to fire himself. Needless to say participants drew some unintended lessons from this scenario. Jimbo.

    1. Forgot to say it earlier, but a very warm welcome back into the blog Jimbo owd lad. Hope your break has left you suitably refreshed and ready for the fray.
    2. The film in Jimbo’s management class, I believe, was ‘Twelve Angry Men’, which starred Mr. Fonda and included a lot of young US character actors who later became more famous, i.e. E.G.Marshall, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, etc. etc. Very good movie, but probably would have done more for you Jimbo, had you been taking an acting class instead of a management class.
17. Of course! Thank you Sotira
    1. Welcome.
18. About 25 minutes here, with correct guesses for ‘Staffa’, ‘bodega’ and ‘styx’. Only saw the ‘x=times, i.e. by’ connection here, I had missed that. The bodega confusion is that in common American usage, a bodega is a corner grocery store in a Spanish/Latin neighborhood, not a wine store, but I couldn’t see any other answer that fit. On the other hand, I saw the Adm. Rodney/Marshal Ney connection right away, and I’m the American guy(!), so IMHO it can’t really be that obscure. Regards all.
19. Don’t understand all the quibbles. It took/takes me a lot longer than most on here, but I thought 12d Pommy over[looking] granite, when you hear them together [‘in sound’], was fair enough and 24d ‘From lodge,’ [‘you can get’, the comma says it all] ‘taxi’ [and] ‘home’ was fine. What I don’t see is how ‘No problem’ = ‘ease’. “That’s no problem” to me says “That’s easy”.
    1. Must admit, given the checkers my instinct was to place EASY and then parse the wordplay – which of course I couldn’t. EASE worked though. The def seems OK to me if you extend it to “He completed the job with no trouble” which can be translated to “He completed the job with ease” – a direct substitution of “ease” and “no trouble”.
       It’s the kind of tip Pete would post here with a far better turn of phrase than I, but it’s often a good idea to try and incorporate the def part of a clue into a sentence to see how it can work, as the def alone can look shaky until you do so.
20. 8:13 for me, following much the same path as Peter B only rather slower. I thought of HARRIS for 1A but resisted putting it in, and I agonised for far too long over MOUNT CARMEL as Cartmel Racecourse rang only the very faintest of bells.
21. Pretty straightforward, about 20min. Couldn’t see 27D although I had heard of both, and Ney=marshal is quite well used. Never heard of Cartmel racecourse – I though the heartless word might have been “car(a)mel” and wondered if “racecourse” might be one of those odd names given to varieties of home-made confections!
22. Pretty straightforward, about 20min. 12D should have been obvious for Australian solvers! Couldn’t see 27D although I had heard of both, and Ney=marshal is quite well used. Never heard of Cartmel racecourse – I though the heartless word might have been “car(a)mel” and wondered if “racecourse” might be one of those odd names given to varieties of home-made confections!
23. I finished this quite quickly for me in about 30 mins but failed to see Admiral Rodney and Marshal Ney in 27d so incorrectly entering RED (Admiral). I hope to do better if these military types turn up again.

    There are 9 “easies” left out:

    9a Game, general to out himself? (2,6)
    GO PUBLIC

    11a (Trip) with (mates I )* suspect, can demonstrate camaraderie (4,6)
    TEAM SPIRIT

    18a Man of the match? (10)
    BRIDEGROOM

    20a Leader of such a quiet band (4)
    S A SH!

    2d What could make (row? Estate)* car, perhaps (3-6)
    TWO SEATER

    5d Come back again about aggressive dog (5)
    RE CUR

    16d Royal Highness, old Greek character (3)
    R H O

    19d “Beer” in concise dictionary in “local” language? (7)
    DI ALE CT. No idea what all the “” marks are about?

    24d From lodge, taxi home (5)
    CAB IN. No problem for me with apparently reverse cluing – especially with checkers C?B?N?

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