I sped through the top half of this one, thinking maybe another PB, only to grind to a halt in the SE corner, with 12d and the intersecting bird clues unfinished. I guessed MIGNON had something to do with Goethe, whom I know as much about as our dog does, then TINAMOU ending in U rang a faint bell. But I had to resort to an aid to find the other NZ bird. I tried to construct it from the wordplay, but it sounded an implausible name for a bird to me.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Citizen, bound to be heard, large landowner (8,5) |
| NATIONAL TRUST – NATIONAL = citizen, TRUST sounds like trussed = bound. | |
| 8 | Periodically saw firms float (4) |
| SWIM – alternate letters as above. | |
| 9 | Struggled rather to concede first lost game (10) |
| BATTLEDORE – BATTLED = struggled, [M]ORE = rather, losing the first letter. A game related to badminton. | |
| 10 | Pub-o’clock, getting round in very quickly (2,2,4) |
| IN NO TIME – INN TIME would be pub o’clock, insert O (round). | |
| 11 | Street artist needing iron to make raking fire (6) |
| STRAFE – ST[reet], RA (artist), FE (Fe, iron). | |
| 13 | Bear devouring unruly lad as punishment (4,6) |
| HARD LABOUR – HARBOUR (bear, as in bear a grudge), insert (LAD)*. | |
| 16 | Woman has everyone back on MDMA (4) |
| ELLA – E (ecstasy, MDMA, short for 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), ALL reversed. |
|
| 17 | Spoils of War? (4) |
| MARS – A DD I think, mars = spoils, Mars the God of War. | |
| 18 | Not willing to accept Republican way for America (10) |
| INTERSTATE – INTESTATE (without a Will, so not willing), insert R. | |
| 20 | Releasing uranium, home visitor’s put away (6) |
| INGEST – IN (home) GUEST loses U. | |
| 22 | NZ Rail in evil nonsense about going westward (8) |
| NOTORNIS – SIN (evil) ROT (nonsense) ON (about), all reversed. A notornis is a flightless bird like a rail found in New Zealand, which was news to me. | |
| 24 | Trooper left ragtag army in Irish county (10) |
| CAVALRYMAN – CAVAN in our Irish county, the land of lakes; insert L (left) and (ARMY)*. | |
| 26 | Degenerate son with tattoos (4) |
| SINK -S[on], INK = tattoos. | |
| 27 | Restrictive practice a signal to turn nasty (13) |
| STRANGULATION – (A SIGNAL TO TURN)*. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Lacking staff an advantage at times (3,3,5) |
| NOW AND AGAIN – NO WAND = lacking a staff, A GAIN = an advantage. | |
| 2 | Point about author raised over time (5) |
| TEMPO – PT (point) around ME (the author), reversed = TEMP, add O for over. | |
| 3 | Big Oil and BAT playing essential parts (9) |
| OBBLIGATI – (BIG OIL BAT)*. Go to the naughty step if you biffed OBBLIGATO and ignored the anagrist and plural parts. Luckily I had INTERSTATE already. | |
| 4 | God elevated Dail member and writer in style (3,4) |
| ART DECO – RA (a god) reversed = AR, TD = Teachta Dala, Irish MP; ECO as in Umberto Eco. | |
| 5 | Bone set in hospital usually (5) |
| TALUS – hidden word; the heel bone. | |
| 6 | Bore in one Parisian river (9) |
| UNDERWENT – UN (one in French), DERWENT a river in the Lake District. | |
| 7 | Prominent feature from Left? (3) |
| TOR – if it’s from Left, it’s TO R[ight]. | |
| 12 | Cut the French introduced to suit Goethe’s heroine (5,6) |
| FILET MIGNON – LE (the in French) inside FIT (suit), MIGNON a poem by Goethe about a heroine, of which I was proudly ignorant. | |
| 14 | Ruin beginning to show in desperate couple (9) |
| DISREPAIR – DIRE (desperate) PAIR (couple) insert S[how]. | |
| 15 | Kingdom where fruitarians peeled bananas? (9) |
| RURITANIA – (RUITARIAN)*, the F and S of fruitarians are lost for the anagrist. | |
| 19 | Flyer soon welcomed by workers’ association (7) |
| TINAMOU – IN A MO (soon) inside TU (trade union). Another bird, this one from South America, I’d just about heard of it. | |
| 21 | Retire having abandoned one North European city (5) |
| TURIN – retire = TURN IN, lose one N[orth]. My favourite Italian city, for the food. | |
| 23 | Sage from Dublin bringing down leader? (5) |
| RISHI – IRISH (from Dublin) has the I moved down. | |
| 25 | Commercials Saudis used at regular intervals (3) |
| ADS – alternate letters as above. | |
31 minutes delayed by the obscure intersecting birds at22ac and 19dn. Actually I made a mistake in the first of these by arriving at INTORNIS via wordplay instead of NOTORNIS. I suspected I wouldn’t know either answer so I looked up INTORNIS to check it and found my error. After that, with its final checker in place TINAMOU fell into place to complete the grid. I didn’t recognise it, but it appeared in a puzzle I blogged in December 2023.
ELLA has featured on three consecutive days now. I mentioned RISHI here on Monday in my comment about PANDIT. NHO County CAVAN.
MARS was not difficult but I’m not sure how it’s defined by ‘of war’. Maybe just ‘war’? But even then I don’t think it’s very satisfactory. I wondered if the definition of RURITANIA should have indicated that it’s fictional.
7:59. For me the hardest thing about this puzzle was hitting ‘submit’ with the obviously wrong NOTORNIS in the grid. After a minute or two trying and failing to come up with anything better I decided that the wordplay was sufficiently clear that I was at least entitled to a bit of righteous indignation when I discovered what the answer actually was, and bit the bullet.
A similar experience, although a few minutes behind. To be honest I hadn’t even clocked I was looking for a bird…
DNF thanks to NOTORNIS. Putting “Rail” rather than “rail” seemed like a gratuitous twist of the knife. Commiserations P.
Baled at about 35 with BATTLEDORE and TINAMOU (both NHO) outstanding. I had ‘battled’ but couldn’t finish it off and still find the cryptic a challenge. I didn’t know ‘rather’ and ‘more’ were the same, and if the first letter of more is ‘conceded’ I don’t see what ‘lost’ is doing. Guessed TOR and figured NOTORNIS from the cryptic but, like others, thought it was simply weird and unlikely to be correct. Thanks piquet, nice work.
From The Times They Are A-Changin’:
Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving
Then you better start swimming or you’ll SINK like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
I think ‘lost’ is part of the definition, indicating that (as per Chambers) the word is archaic/obsolete.
It could read:
Then you better start SWIMming or you’ll SINK like a stone. 8a.
Ha! Yes it could!
40m 00s
According to my guide book to local birds here in NZ, “Birds of the Eastern Bay of Plenty”, there are Banded Rails in the area but I’ve never seen any and have definitely never heard of the term NOTORNIS.
And it was pretty mean of our setter to have that as an intersecting clue with the equally obscure TINAMOU!
Otherwise, pretty straightforward.
Thanks, Pip!
50 challenging minutes with NOTORNIS constructed without real hope. TINAMOU was perhaps vaguely known. I was delighted to find them right, along with the other liberties I’d taken along the way. COD to UNDERWENT. Thank you Pip and setter.
14’05”, with at least 2′ constructing the obscure NOTORNIS, submitted off board.
RISHI is approaching chestnut territory, and is there some hidden message in the ubiquitous ELLA? – as noted by jack, above.
Thanks pip and setter.
Well Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday is coming up this month but not until the 25th so if that’s the idea it’s a little early. She would have been 108.
DNF. Well that was a whole bunch of no fun. Gave up on 45 mins with the same missing as everyone else plus ORE/TOR which I considered but couldn’t parse. Oh, and CAVALRYMAN.
Wondered if Rail might be a bird but it didn’t help.
It wasn’t just the NHOs, I found this difficult to get into even when the answers did come. Somehow very off my wavelength.
Thanks for battling through that so I didn’t have to.
Just under half an hour.
– Didn’t know BATTLEDORE and only went for it over the (to me) equally plausible BATTLEDOWN once I’d figured out the annoyingly tricky TOR
– NHO NOTORNIS and had no idea that I was looking for a bird, but I got there from the wordplay
– Had no idea how ART DECO worked
– Also ignorant of the Mignon bit of FILET MIGNON
– Not familiar with TINAMOU but the wordplay was helpful
– Same quibbles as Jack above re MARS and RURITANIA
piquet – for IN NO TIME I think it’s O that’s inserted, not ‘in’
Thanks piquet and setter.
FOI Swim
LOI Notornis
COD Underwent
Both Tinamou and Notornis unknown to me. I did guess in the end but checked before submitting – so that is a cheat. And now, I will happily forget that those darned tweety things exist.
Not cheating, in my book. If you think up the word all on your own and then check before submission that’s OK, according to me anyhow!
And would be according to every other poster on here I would think?
Not Napasai above. Or some others I suspect, who prefer to stick to “exam conditions.”
27:27*
Submitted off-board as I used aids for the unknown TINAMOU and NOTORNIS. I had ACTORNIS for the latter and that made the former impossible.
Otherwise this was a game of 2 halves as I raced through the top and struggled badly with the rest. CAVALRYMAN and STRANGULATION took far too long to construct and somewhat knocked the stuffing out of me.
After 5 greens last week I’m so far 3 nil down thanks to today and typos at the start of the week.
Thanks to both.
Easy to start, tough to finish. I got there but looked up the unlikely NOTORNIS before submitting.
12:50. Hesitated over the unknown NOTORNIS at the end, but TINAMOU resolved whether it was ACTORNIS, RETORNIS or NOTORNIS. I failed to parse ART DECO, but apart from those two, no other issues. Thanks Pip and setter.
Got two mistakes, had never heard of battledore, so guessed battledope??? Because I had Top as prominent feature, which was Pot backwards, and if you have one, you do think it is prominent! Delighted that I parsed the others that I had never heard of, Notornis and Tinamou. Great fun, thanks, C
25:05, funnily enough it was the SE corner that I started with. (I was fairly sure about NOTORNIS)
I ended up a bit stuck on 19 dn and 24 ac, which took several minutes at the end. I finally posited that 24 ac might end in MAN then I saw IN A MO being the centre of 19dn (though NHO TINAMOU). Then going back to 24 ac I saw maybe I had the letters of army, put an l in front, and then finally saw CAVALRYMAN.
Thanks setter and blogger, always appreciate the work that goes into all this
DNF
All done in under 10 minutes bar the intersecting and doubly unknown birds. I nearly constructed the rail from the wordplay but the options all looked equally unlikely and the dog needed a walk so I threw in the towel.
17.22, slowed a little in the SW corner, after feeling smug about both birds. Irish counties are lost in Irish mist for me, so CAVAN didn’t help the solving, and MARS looked like the sort of clue which would only fall with a flash if inspiration. I wanted REGULATION somewhere in the bottom clue, and the definition for 20a to be releasing and the answer starting with U.
Mind you, I thought Goethe’s heroine was either Margaret or Helen (neither is true!) and guessed MIGNON.
No complaints though and liked pub o’clock and TO-R best.
45 mins.
Odd puzzle, really, with those two strange birds and yet another dose of Ella. Got through it okay.
Thanks, p.
Defeated by the mighty tag team of TINAMOU and NOTORNIS. One day I will just sit down and memorise a large list of birds and fish.
The rest I found tough but was all green squares. A hiccup when I entered BATTLESHIP (which today I learned I had been incorrectly pluralising) but changed to the NHO of BATTLEDORE once the crossers disagreed.
Hopefully two feathered friends today means they have migrated for the rest of the week.
Gutted to DNF as I had a great first pass and managed to correctly get a couple of other NHOs.
COD: STRANGULATION
Thanks blogger and setter.
NHO 22a Notornis, cheated. Seems pointless to me, in a fairly easy puzzle to have a stinker like this clue, oh and 19d Tinamou, HHO, but only here in the Xword.
24a Cavalryman was quite hard; have forgotten County Cavan again already. Carmarthen looked as though it might fit for a while but with no I in it I couldn’t account for Irish in the clue, so I left it awhile.
3d Obbligati, noticed the surplus I and changed obbligato. I see obligatos is allowed in Wiktionary.
4d Art Deco, phew! Biffed this one.
NHO 5d Talus, but the hidden was clear.
NHO 12a poem Mignon.
POI 21d Turin, home of Fiat.
23d Rishi, nice to get our previous PM.
COD 10a Inn ‘o time.
Re your point on NOTORNIS, inconsistency across the grid seems to be a regular occurrence in The Times these days. The levels of required solving-skill fluctuate wildly within the same crossword.
Like you, I just don’t see the point. It just demoralises the less experienced solvers, who might think they are well on the way to a rare unaided solve before they come up against a clue like this.
From TALUS to NOTORNIS in 19:02. TINAMOU rang a faint bell after I assembled it from wordplay. I also assembled the NHO NOTORNIS from wordplay, but checked it as it seemed so unlikely. Quite an enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip.
Regarding NOTORNIS I can well imagine the setter’s relief in finding that there was a possiblity for N_T_R_I_ after all!
NOTORNIS is not in my (2001) edition of Chambers Crossword Completer. Incidentally this copy is a replacement for one bought earlier that eventually fell to pieces. Good value at £2.00 second hand despite not having a screen.
18:27 but…
…cheated with the unknown NOTORNIS – not sure why UK solvers should be expected to know a random NZ bird, but hey ho.
By chance, in the bath last night, happened to be reading chapter fifteen of Jane Eyre, where following a discussion with Rochester in the grounds of Thornfield, Jane stays out a few minutes longer and plays a game of BATTLEDORE and shuttlecock with Adèle – basically, the game of badminton with no net. So the word was very fresh in my mind…
Possible allusions to ELLA Fitzgerald seems to have popped up a lot lately, in clues and in answers.
Bits missed:
ART DECO – no idea about the Dail member!
TINAMOU – only vaguely recalled – bit unfair to have this crossing with the random NZ bird though!
MIGNON – no idea about Goethe, nor his heroine
Thanks P for puzzling it all out, and setter
NHO BATTLEDORE or TINAMOU, but constructed both with crossed fingers from wordplay. Beaten at the last by the NOTORNIS/RISHI pairing. One weird bird too many!
Gave up after 30′ or so with the NZ Rail missing though I did construct the other NHO bird TINAMOU from wordplay. I had NHO BATTLEdOME until I sort of worked out TOR to give the correct NHO game. Biffed MIGNON but couldn’t be much else. Altogether a bit patchy and didn’t enjoy the crossing birds. Expecting a Rihanna clue about umbrella, ella, ella, ella tomorrow…
Thanks Piquet and setter
19:16, in spite of the mephisto bird guessing game and a SIW in the SW where Trier went in without reading the clue properly.
When is a bird not a bird? when it’s NOT ORNIS. Ornis being Greek for bird, but oh dear – really a bit unfair. And I think that clue for MIGNON belongs in a TLS puzzle.
17.23 (with a typo)
Doing these things for a while does pay off as BATTLEDORE straight in and TINAMOU at least remembered when I worked it out. Like JohnI it resolved which of the reversed “about”s came at the beginning.
Love references like “Pub O’Clock”. Nice one setter and thanks Pip.
Couldn’t quickly create NHO Notornis, so gave up without trying. Already a bit annoyed at all the obscure GK in the puzzle. Don’t like puzzles where you guess the answer then have to guess how the parsing works, making up unknowns like TD, MIGNON, etc. Guessed BATTLEDORE, vaguely familiar, though thought he was in Harry Potter. Couldn’t see “more” and like Lindsay thought there were too many words in the clue. Tinamu (sic?) vaguely known from some crap book about 40 years ago… Jason Bourne? No, says google. Unimpressed by MARS. And in my ignorance, I always thought troopers were infantry – I see they’re mostly in tanks nowadays.
A pleasant crossword, completed in 37 minutes on the train somewhere between Reading and Taunton. NHO the two birds, but the clueing instructions were fairly straightforward. Agree with Olivia hugill about the irony of NOTORNIS. Most of this was easy to parse, and the rest were easily biffable.
FOI – SWIM
LOI – NOTORNIS
COD – INTERSTATE
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
Oops, submitted on leaderboard despite looking up ERTORNIS to see if it was right, seeing it wasn’t and getting the answer by mistake. Getting the N gave me the barely heard of TINAMOU and was BATTLEDORE equally foggy. Weird, mostly fine, but with a couple of unknowns.
15:55 with a cheat.
Good and enjoyable solve for me, with the two birds fairly clued. Had they been anagrammed, for example, I’d have had my own feathers ruffled. But they weren’t.
Loved IN NO TIME, MARS, NOW AND AGAIN and TOR.
Cheers Piquet & setter.
I was thrown by ART DECO and by the MIGNON in F M, with no idea how they worked, and NOTORNIS I managed to assemble simply from wordplay, and I used the check button afterwards. Perfectly acceptable in my opinion. TINAMOU was familiar: I’m sure I’ve seen that clueing device before, with in a mo for soon, and it was almost certainly for this word — off the top of my head I can’t think of any other word that contains the string ‘inamo’ (I just checked and inamorata/o is the only other one I think). Despite what the dictionaries say I’m very uncomfortable with SWIM = float in 8ac. At 10ac I had INN = pub, TIME = o’clock (?). 39 minutes.
7.54, but only after checking NOTORNIS. No other probs. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope was the book which introduced the fictional country of Ruritania – a childhood favourite of mine. The setters are clearly having a bet on getting mentions of Ella Fitzgerald in every puzzle this week. The only Goethe heroine I knew about was Dorothea, but the answer was obvious from the intersecting letters.
I liked Tinamou.
46 mins. A toughie. All parsed during the time, but solved NOTORNIS purely through the wordplay, although I realised it must be a bird. TOR LOI, oddly enough, as it took me a while to parse.
I had thought that the game was called “battledore and shuttlecock” and was a precursor of badminton.
I wonder whether ELLA will appear again tomorrow!
Did not enjoy in the end as I was defeated by the two intersecting birds – as someone unversed in flora and fauna this was a step too far, not helped by not even knowing a rail was a bird and struggling to even see a definition.
Same story as Pip and others with the final bird. My POI was the other bird, which was vaguely familiar.
I wonder where Astro_Nowt is these days?
I was thinking the same; wherever he is, like the flightless rail, he’ll be hopping mad.
DNF. NHO either of the birds or the game. Didn’t much care for the ‘Spoils of War’ either. As I understand it, MARS is the god’s name; using an adjectival construction to get there, even with a capital W which I noted, doesn’t work for me. Another day tomorrow.
47:17. Quite challenging, I think the birds were only a part of the problem … they at least were fairly clearly clued. the CAVALRYMAN was a bit of a holdup as I don’t know many Irish counties and for a while was considering Carmarthen… Otherwise I enjoyed the challenge!
28.21 with about 5 mins devoted to rishi and notornis. NHO the latter so very pleased to have worked it out. Pretty chewy today but worth the effort.
33’30”
Fortunate to avoid the heffalump traps, kept up a reasonable gallop throughout.
Memories of Grandpa George, who very nearly, but didn’t, take me from Dublin to County CAVAN to visit a retired Captain Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochford, one of whose charges nearly killed George, who, arm tangled in a rein, was dragged and trampled up Warren Hill. “Why didn’t another horse catch him Grandad?” “There wasn’t a horse in Newmarket fast enough; he’d just won the 2000 Guineas! The owner sent a telegram to the Captain every week enquiring after’the lad’s progress’.”
“That was very kind of the gentleman, Grandad.” “It wasn’t a gentleman, it was a lady. You might have heard of her – HM The Queen!”
Another coincidence is that George’s bizzare younger brother “Master” worked for NZ RAIL after giving up sheep farming in creepy-crawly infested Queensland.
Enjoyed this a lot more than Astro-Nowt; thank you setter and Pip.
Enough with the obscure birds…
Re: 9ac BATTLEDORE, I thought that “lost” was part of the definition because it is a “lost game”, i.e. one no longer played and “to concede first” is the direction to remove the initial letter from SOME.
I really liked this puzzle. NHO TINAMOU and NOTORNIS but constructed them from wordplay and crossers, I couldn’t see what “soon” would be except “in a mo” once I had the M. NOTORNIS seemed implausible but I couldn’t think of anything else so I gave it a shot as my LOI. I dredged BATTLEDORE up from somewhere, no doubt an earlier crossword. Perhaps one day I’ll remember it as a precursor to badminton.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Hmm. The setters are winning easily this week so far. I’m blaming it on moving house.
Had ACTORNIS till I saw TINAMOU then changed. Tough, but doable. I don’t mind SPOILS OF WAR. MARS the god was the personification of war, thus war. Anyway it was too good not to use. 21’35” all up.
43 minutes and the wordplay was absolutely necessary to find the two obscure birds. I also had to take it on faith that CAVAN is an Irish county. This, once again, is a puzzle with lots of inane surface readings (firms floating? perhaps not going bankrupt, I suppose). I did enjoy seeing ELLA again — I have a granddaughter named Ella and I shall tell her I’ve been running into her in the crossword all week.