25847 Nocturne in slightly flat

Around 14 minutes (you’ll just have to take my word for it). My never-lets-you-down BT broadband threw one of its hissy fits just as I pressed submit, lost all the data and had to be restarted. I then neutrinoed my entry (which for me wouldn’t result in a particularly quick time) and recorded 25.28, not bad for that whole sequence. The crossword itself left me feeling slightly disappointed: after all those titanic struggles of the past week or so, this was a bit of a pussycat. A little bit of science, a little bit of geography, a little bit of Frenglish, a little nod in the direction of the Commonwealth Games and/or Scottish independence, a hint of Gandhi-Ji, a scattering of rather dated words, a couple of literary references, and one stand-out clue referencing a musical affaire de coeur which might test those who take no interest in such things. Then there’s a duck which, for once, has nothing to do with cricket.
Here’s my reasoning

Across

1 BOARDER  paying guest
The first of our slightly dated words, Marge needs to be distinguished from Mrs Simpson, and indeed from ersatz butter, and poetically taken to mean BORDER. Insert A as instructed.
5 ARGUE give reason for believing
A scoundrel is A ROGUE, from which you exclude the 0
9 ATLAS  a set of maps
Quick, think of another word that fits the definition. Neither could I. So it’s A followed by SALT for sailor reversed.
10 GAUCHERIE  awkward ways
One of the many ways in which language insults sinister or cack-handed people. G(rand) CHERIE (undoubtedly a woman) absorbs AU for gold for one of those words nicked from the French to serve in English dictionaries. And do you hear the Academie Anglaise complaining? I think not.
11 GLOSSOP  town in Derbyshire
Stick SOP for concession onto the end of GLOS, short for the shire that isn’t spelt that way.
12 DWARFED  made to look small
Nice one this: Start with DEFRAUD for dupe, reverse it and swap out the U(ranium) for W(olfram) the much more romantic version of tungsten.
13 BESMIRCHED dirty
HERBS and MEDIC are the pieces of anagram material which when “gathered” may give our answer.
15 PEEP Begin to appear
As in “the Sun peeped over the horizon”. Palindrome, which, since the crossers give you both letters, only has one answer.
18 ERST Long ago
Really just means “former”, and perhaps more familiar as “erstwhile”. Hidden in ChaucER’S Time, which is indeed long ago.
20 SAND PLOVER  bird
Chopin, who wrote some of the finest piano music ever committed to paper, and not just the Minute Waltz, was the sometime paramour (despite raging TB) of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, better known to history and literature as George Sand. Insert a musical soft P(iano). My CoD, though if you don’t know of that particular (demi?) monde, I can concede that it might not be yours.
23 SALTIRE cross
The word “flag” might also be a help here, not just because it means “TIRE” and follows the girl SAL. Best known version is the Scottish white cross on blue background, the diagonal placing making it a saltire. Tip for puzzled solvers: when the Times uses “boy” or “girl” it generally indicates a diminutive version of a name.
24 TACHYON that must travel faster than light
On the grounds that if it doesn’t, it’s not a tachyon, a “theoretical elementary particle moving faster than light”. Structure is in the imperative mood: ON YACHT is what you apply the instruction to.
25 PROVENDER  Food
Tested gives PROVEN, a half hearted DEER is a DER. Ruminants are not limited to cows.
26 EAGRE  bore
Such as the Severn bore, a tidal rise in water level. Take M(iles) away form MEAGRE
27 RISEN up
Another bit of French for you, signified by Norman. A Norman’s “nothing” is RIEN. make it hold S(on). I had to keep resisting the urge to enter RESIN, despite it having nothing to do with the clue
28 NEW YEAR  time for celebration
Crackers might nudge you towads Chritmas, but it’s just there so you can rough up WERE ANY. Simples.

Down

1 BELLOWS  accordion part
Be honest, how many other parts of an accordion can you think of? You need the extra ‘S on the end of Saul BELLOW, who wrote Herzog and won lots of literary prizes.
2 ASSASSIN  killer.
Get out your Dickens, and one of my favourite quotes, from the henpecked beadle, Bumble, in Oliver Twist (It survives intact into Oliver!) “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble “the law is a ass – a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience – by experience.”. If the law is a ASS, double it and append I N(ame)
3 DIG UP Find
D(etective) I(nspector) and a flipping PUG
4 ROUNDHEAD Combatant at Naseby
If you know your English Civil War history, this is easy. Cromwell’s New Model Army destroyed Charles 1’s forces at Naseby. Crudely, ROUNDHEADs on one side, Cavaliers on the other. Part of contest gives you ROUND, top gives you HEAD.
5 ASHRAM  religious community
R(asputin’s)leader inserted into A SHAM gives the Indian religious community. Some may have been fraudulent, Gandhi’s at Sabarmati wasn’t
6 GIRAFFE  animal
A solecism is a GAFFE. Insert IR(ish)
7 EMEND  this
A bit of an &lit. ED(itor) takes in MEN for what an editor does.
8 TANGIBLE  concrete
The final T of Poirot (Christie’s Belgian sleuth, anyone not know that?) attached a cracked BELGIAN. Nearly a good clue: needed to be less demolition-ish and more detective-ish.
14 CLARENDON  type
As in font. Derive it from CLARE (college, Cambridge) N(orthern) and lecturer DON. Clarendon looks like this: fonts_used_15
16 PYRENEES  the mountains
A pile of firewood is a PYRE, SEEN is “up” (reversed in a down clue) and attached. Had to be careful with the spelling, for which the wordplay was a great help.
17 BLACK EYE  mouse
Supposedly because it resembles a small rodent, dating from 1842 (we do the research so you don’t have to). Empty B(ottl)E, and place LACKEY for servant therein.
19 SALOONS  cars
Yet another bit of French, SANS (without) acts as a frame for LOO(M) for appear, without its last letter. Shakespeare used it in the All the World’s a Stage speech in As You Like It.
21 VOYAGER  traveller
VOYEUR is the observer. Non-U tells you to remove the U, the result housing A G(ood) The crossing of Voyager and tachyon set me off on a Star Trek reverie, though not for long
22 WIGEON  duck
I so wanted to spell it with a D in the middle, but the anagram fodder IN WE GO generously disabused me
23 SUPER  fabulous
Short version of SUPERintendent.
24 THROW  cast
Extremely T(oug)H is followed by ROW pronounced to mean line.

 

44 comments on “25847 Nocturne in slightly flat”

  1. And I stand in awe of Ulaca’s time!

    The first thing I noticed on the club leaderboard was that I was within five minutes of a z8b8d8k, so was feeling quite chuffed until I came here to find that he had done it twice in that time.

    Had no idea whether Chopin loved cards, bards, bands, land or any of the other possibilities, but sand seemed most likely for the bird. A test of courage in my childhood was to stir up the plover’s nest and then run for it, on the understanding that it would swoop you and could rip your face off with its spiky wings. Suspect we might have over-egged that one, as kids do.

    1. You’ll be sad to know that the Masked or Spurwinged Plover (Vanellus miles) is now the Masked Lapwing. They didn’t ask its opinion before making the change.
      1. Why do they do these things? First it was Upper Volta, then everyone started pronouncing Nepal differently. Where will it all end?

        Edited at 2014-07-24 06:44 am (UTC)

        1. I reckon Billy Birmingham’s got a lot to answer for. Renaming Graeme Labrooy “Gray-ee-me” opened the floodgates and soon enough we had Mumbai and Kolkata.
          1. “Experts” keep changing the names of things, Ulaca. Maybe it could happen to you too … if we knew what your name was!

            Hilda Bracegirdle (Dip. Ornithol.)

  2. Happy with my 24 minutes. While there are quite a few that are bungable in from the literal (led by GAUCHERIE in the acrosses and ASSASSIN in the downs), there are several others with the potential to catch out different solver groups, eg GLOSSOP, SAND PLOVER, TACHYON, BELLOWS and CLARENDON. At any rate, I note the times on the early leader board are slower than usual.

    After recent heavyweight offerings, I rather enjoyed this North by Northwest of a crossword, a romp best enjoyed without thinking too much.

    Zed, you have two ‘Chrit’s’ (at 28a and 8a). Sending coded messages – a new sect you are founding?

    1. Thanks: the memsahib spotted the one at 8d and I corrected it. I’ll leave the other one in as a reminder of the time when the young me embarrassed myself by creating a large Cristmas poster for my Church.

  3. Sadly I didn’t resist putting in resin despite it having nothing to do with the clue, and I also had tochyan for the unknown elementary particle.

    Thanks for parsing SALOONS and DWARFED.

    About 40 or so minutes.

  4. This was a bit of relief after yesterday’s travails, and none the worse for it. I thought it had some nice touches and GK to keep it interesting. Like z8, I wanted to put a D in the duck

    I had to chuckle at the innocent understatement of “perhaps” in 20ac.

    Edited at 2014-07-24 04:45 am (UTC)

  5. About 30m altogether. Did this after tackling yesterday’s headache. So it seemed quite easy by contrast. Really enjoyed the Chopin clue.
  6. 35 minutes, but after a racing start in the NW I found myself completely stuck on several occasions and really struggled with BESMIRCHED, CLARENDON (DK) and TACHYON (DK/HF). I have battled in the past with EAGRE and ‘mouse’ meaning BLACK EYE so I was pleased to remember them today. The parsing of SALOONS eluded me completely.

    After the past few days I don’t know what level of difficulty I shall face on my watch tomorrow. Normally by Friday I have a good idea of what to expect.

    Edited at 2014-07-24 06:06 am (UTC)

    1. From Futurama:

      FRY: This is great, as long as you don’t make me smell Uranus. Heh heh.
      LEELA: I don’t get it.
      PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: I’m sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
      FRY: Oh. What’s it called now?
      PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: Urectum.

  7. 12:54. I found this reasonably gentle, but very enjoyable. I like the range of references. I didn’t know about Fred and George, but now I do, which is as good a reason to like the clue as any. And it was eminently guessable.
    I had 19dn as SANS around LOOK. Either will do.
  8. What a strange mixture of vocab. 24A shows how far we have moved the Times towards a better arts/science mix in these puzzles but it appears alongside “border” and “eagre” from yesteryear to say nothing of “mouse” for BLACK EYE – really dated slang.

    This was a gentle 25 minute meander meeting old friends like “sand-lover” in the Chopin clue. Nice blog z8.

  9. Pretty slow today, almost 45′; and that after more than one or two DNFs in recent times. Alarmin’. On a happier note, 12 reminds me of a remarkable book, ‘Uncle Tungsten’ by Oliver Sachs, the neurologist. A wonderful account of a boyhood love affair with the periodic table, an eccentric and supportive family, and a potted history of chemical discoveries.
  10. An enjoyable 10 mins, although I think I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength. I got SAND PLOVER from the Sand/Chopin connection rather than remembering the name of the bird, and it was indeed an excellent clue. I finished in the NE with the PEEP/GIRAFFE/DWARFED trio, and I confess I only saw the parsing for the latter after I entered it.
  11. 32 mins but with a BALD PLOVER. I had no idea about the George Sand reference and didn’t know the bird so took a punt on Chopin being a slapheaded lothario.
  12. I was obviously mostly on the wavelength as well, and very much enjoyed this. I was ornithologically challenged, so like Galspray, having worked out it must be some sort of PLOVER, I had to work out what sort from my knowledge of Chopin (er, and by working through the alphabet); I decided you couldn’t call an orchestra a BAND, he probably wasn’t a CARD LOVER, and was almost tempted by LAND LOVER, though I didn’t really think he was any more patriotic than his fellow composers. When the penny dropped, I felt very slow, but I find this makes a clue feel even more satisfying.

    Edited at 2014-07-24 09:48 am (UTC)

  13. Well I finished, nearly. Couldn’t work out what BLACK EYE had to do with a mouse, so entered it without really knowing why – thanks blogger for opening mine.

    It was the SE corner that did for me. It all went wrong when I parsed 21 as SEAGOER fairly early on (another parsnip), which messed up the acrossers and took a while to sort out. It was TACHYON that showed me the error of my ways, but it took a disgusting amount of time for me to see that given that I count myself as something of a lay cosmologist (relatively speaking of course).

    Very enjoyable puzzle.

  14. So close but unfortunately a DNF. Had never heard of GAUCHERIE, SAND PLOVER or WIGEON and wasn’t able to guess them from the wordplay even though I had correctly identified definition and wordplay parts of each clue. Guessed BELLOWS, CLARENDON, TACHYON and BLACK EYE from the wordplay but only faintly recollected TACHYON from Star Trek where they were beamed onto an enemy ship shields to drain them.

    Some interesting wordplay devices new to me.

    Thanks very much for the blog z8.

  15. Enjoyed this after the struggles of the last few days. Correctly guessed SAND PLOVER, although I had no idea why Chopin could be so described. Thanks for the enlightenment.
  16. 31 minutes for a pretty straightforward one today, apart from the unfamiliar TACHYON, which I entered correctly since it sounded more likely than TOCHYAN. I was also influence in my choice by ‘tachometer’ assuming the two words had the same Greek derivation, but Chambers tells me otherwise. I knew the SAND/CHOPIN connection so that was no problem.
    1. We’re in the middle of a renovation so the Chambers is in a box, but both my memory of the Greek I studied and a brief Internet search suggest that tachy- and tacho- as prefixes are derived from the same root – ταχύς
      1. Yes, I read the Chambers entries rather hastily. It gives a different (anglicized) Greek word for each, but clearly they both have the same root. You’re one up on me – Latin was the extent of my classical education, and I’ve forgotten a fair amount of that.
  17. A steady solve today with FOI Atlas and LOI Argue. Thanks z8 for explaining the ones I couldn’t fully parse (Saloons, Sand Plover, Dwarfed and Clarendon).
  18. I enjoyed this puzzle. Relatively easy, certainly, but no push-over (at any rate for me). The “mouse” = “black eye” bit of ancient slang slowly emerged from the mists of memory. I’m sure it’s come up in the past. I’d never heard of TACHYON but it was perfectly possible to work out what the solution was most likely to be from the anagrind and the cross-checking letters. I liked the mix of wordplay and ornithological and musical GK in SAND-PLOVER. This may, as Jimbo informs us, be an “old friend” for seasoned solvers, but I’d not met it before.
  19. A rather good puzzle that felt a little dated, or perhaps obscure, butthe words and clues taken individually stand up to scrutiny, I think. 42 minutes.

    Liked a DER quite a lot.

  20. I was pleased to (just) duck under 15 minutes for this as it took a while to get going and I had to pause for thought a lot along the way.

    Much of the GK (marge, tachyon, Clarendon, Ashram, eagre) was right near the back of my fact store, behind the goalscorers from all the FA Cup Finals in the 1970s.

    I’m pretty sure the Chopin/Sand thing has been used before in this puzzle (though probably not as elegantly) so that was pretty straightforward once I had the V.

    Like K I got the LOO in 19 from LOOK but either seems to work fine.

    I didn’t know Bellows the writer but as Z says there aren’t many “known” parts to the instrument. Keyboard, strap, buttony things. I heard this on the radio recently from someone who clearly isn’t a fan:

    Q. What’s the difference between an accordion and a trampoline?

    A. You take your shoes off before you jump up and down on a trampoline.

    Entertaining blog Z, thanks.

  21. I call shenanigans on 11 across – I had the SOP part OK, but what county is G?O? for a town I have never heard of? I went for GLOUSOP. Oh well, better luck tomorrow.
    1. Gloucestershire becoming GLOS is indeed a tough one for non-locals, but seems almost obvious when you compare it with other local oddities such as Hants, Oxon or the entirely perverse Salop…
  22. Firstly found this too difficult for a novice. Is it fair to expect a French word for “without” without (ahem) indicating a foreign word? I’m really enjoying the quick cryptiics and these are helping me improve on the main puzzles – thank you setters for getting the difficulty levels right. My old physics master used to love telling the story of a pupil’s answer in an optics paper – ” light is brought to focus on the rectum”.
    Alan
    1. Why don’t you identify yourself properly , anon , it makes it easier to differentiate you from the others?

      Edited at 2014-07-24 03:58 pm (UTC)

    2. Well, it’s in all the dictionaries (the English ones!) and is, as Zed alludes to, familiar through Jaques’s ‘Seven ages of man’ speech in As You Like It:

      ‘Last scene of all,
      That ends this strange eventful history,
      Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
      Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’

  23. About 20 minutes, ending with PEEP after PROVENDER revealed the ‘p’. I didn’t know what Chopin was doing in 20A at all, but I did know the bird. No other real issues, except GLOSSOP, where ‘sop’ was apparent, and the checkers left, as George said, G?O?, so I went with ‘Glos’ on the same theory that sometimes gives us Lancs, Beds, etc. I thought the PYRENEES clue was best, but had I known of Chopin’s extracurricular interests I might have gone with that. Regards.
  24. 35 minutes, knew about F. Chopin and George Sand the lady, who was no oil painting but did the business with Freddie and many other notables. In fact I knew them all but struggled with the easy ones like SUPER and RISEN. Nice blog Z, 14 minutes is impressive in spite of BT tomfoolery.
  25. 38 minutes for me.

    Didn’t know EAGRE, and had no idea if I was looking for tedious person, the size of a hole or a tidal river-wave. ERST was another unknown (I was adtrapolating from “erstwhile” to justify it).

    “Marge” for “margin” is just another example of the persistent incompetence of poets. If they can’t make things scan and rhyme without having to lop off syllables, then they ought to consider an alternative career. I mean, it’s not as if they have anything better to do than find words that actually fit properly.

    Like many, I spent a long time wondering if Chopin was bald. Plumped for sand without getting the reference.

    All in all, I was glad to get out of this one in one piece. I am somewhat annoyed by the numerous wilfully obscure words that have cropped up lately, but one man’s obscure is another’s working vocabulary, I suppose. And I admit to enjoying TACHYON. Interestingly (or perhaps not – these things are very subjective), if tachyons exist then they have to travel backwards in time. They are widely used by us medics to ensure that our initial diagnosis corresponds with the findings at post mortem.

  26. 9:27 for me, which in retrospect feels disappointingly slow for a puzzle that was right up my street – its clues so much less convoluted than yesterday’s, making it a delight from start to finish.
  27. … if they exist, must travel faster than light – i.e., they cannot travel slower.

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