Times 24755 Rooster Cogburn Rides Again

50 comments on “Times 24755 Rooster Cogburn Rides Again”

1. Ran out of time at 50 minutes with two missing in the SW corner BERBERIS and SUSPEND.
2. Well it taxed mine, Old Chap! But I thought it an excellent puzzle, with the blend of wit and general knowledge I like to see in a Times crossword. 37 minutes.
3. Enjoyable workout, with 25ac bringing back memories of the Classical Upper Sixth and a new word at 10ac. Right hand side went in first – I had problems in both NW and SW corners. The PILATES/RATTY crossing went in last, Pilates being so foreign to me that it doesn’t feature in my exercise lexicon. I suppose that will have to change now. Thanks to Jim for the lowdown on 11ac. COD to ALLUDE for the part-of-speech misdirection (‘advert’ as ‘turn attention to’). 75 minutes.
4. This felt very taxing! It took me 28 minutes but felt quite a bit harder than that.
   Several answers went in on a wing and a prayer so I’m surprised to find I have no errors: CISALPINE, BERBERIS, the ALLUDE meaning of “advert”. I’m still not sure I understand SUSPEND: when I wrote it in I figured a USG must be a kind of plug (like a USB). Is that it?
   RASTA was my last in: for quite a while I thought this would be a reference to a fictional baby penguin I hadn’t heard of!
   1. US in (or “plugged” in) SPEND
5. It’s US=useless=no good plugged into SPEND=exhaust. Hold up is definition.
   1. Ah, gotcha, thanks. In my mind the construction was US (“no good to plug”, USG without a G) in SPEND. This would have been a perfectly valid interpretation but for the admittedly non-trivial fact that a USG is not a plug.
      Now you mention it I’m sure I’ve come across US=useless before but it didn’t occur to me this morning. One for the memory bank.
      1. US is a common term in my field (aviation) for UnServiceable although it is commonly written as U/S.
   2. US = UnServiceable (RN radio jargon I think).
6. Started fairly slowly, then continued steadily until I ground to a halt with two remaining: RASTA (had thought of that, but couldn’t work out the why), and CISALPINE (an unfamiliar word, and I missed the anagrind). Didn’t know US was used for ‘useless’, so that was a lucky punt, as was 14ac (hadn’t a clue who Mimi was). Wasted time trying to fit in BULLDOZER once I had 4/5 of the crossers at 3dn…

   COD to ACROBAT for ‘Split personality’ – liked that.

   1. I presume you now know Mimi is a character in “La Boheme” who is the subject of Rodolfo’s aria “What a cold little hand”, often mistakenly translated as “Your tiny hand is frozen”.
      1. Presumably “your tiny shoulder is frozen” (following “your tiny elbow is frozen”) is how this scene would play out with Sid James as Rodolfo and Barbara Windsor as Mimi in Carry On La Boheme.
         1. Oh, what a wonderful scenario that conjures up! Mind you, I have as much difficulty imagining Barbara Windsor as a consumptive waif as Pavarotti as the poor, half-starved student, Rodolfo. Isn’t this blog wonderful! Sid James: Baritone or tenor?
            1. Well, if Montserrat Caballé can do it, why not Babs? Besides all thoughts of incongruity are banished when she sings the hauntingly beautiful aria Sei un Ragazzo Molto Cattivo.
               1. “Sei un ragazzo”…? That’s what my wife says about me all the time! My favourite soprano of all time is Gundula Janowitz but she was really a Straussian/Mozartian.
      2. Yes, thanks. It’s amazing the things I’ve learnt from the various Youtube links from this blog…!
7. Rooster Cogburn does indeed ride again. The Coen Brothers version has just opened in Sydney with Jeff Bridges as R.C. As one critic put it, ‘no other casting was possible’.
   Thanks for the decryption of Tchaikovsky. I got the right answer but had couldn’t work out why until now. Laughed at ‘split personality’ and I thought the play on Emperor was clever.
8. I thought this was great fun, right from the start with the delicious Split personality. I was principally held up by the myriad possibilities for the spelling of Mr Peter Illyich Seagull (F for fine? Ski or sky? Thai boxing?) in the process of unravelling the wordplay. Only Shakspere gets spelt more variously. Some very pretty anagrams – to Seville and In special particularly.
   21 minutes to complete; CoD to COD (just for the fun of being able to write that). Or ACROBAT. Or RASTA.
9. Add me to the list of those who found it more difficult than DoJi. 52 minutes, which puts it on the Heavier side of Medium-Heavy Gauge. Saw the split personality joke right away — it’s reserved by me as a salutation for a Croatian colleague. Then it just got harder and I had nothing much in the SW for ages. The PILATES / RATTY / WAYNE / SUSPEND bits proved the hardest of all.
   Moving across the page: I knew 25ac had to be something-INE in Latin and went for CAPELLINE which didn’t help because it’s a pasta! Doh: didn’t see the anagram at all.
   But, looking back, many fine clues … you try clewing TCHAIKOVSKY!
   Today’s lame joke is from 14ac: “Knock, knock”. “Who’s there?” “Martini”.

   Edited at 2011-01-25 10:20 am (UTC)

   1. Che gelida manina sounds so much better, especially when sung by Nicolai Gedda.
      1. Agreed. Mea culpa for being prosaic.
10. A slowish 40 minutes, held up at the end by Tchaikovsky and situation. Mimi’s problem seems a little arcane. Does anyone ever use the word sapid? And I’m not sure about treasonable as so described. Otherwise a testing and shrewd exercise.
11. Was all flowing nicely for me until the SW corner where 24 was my undoing. Put in ‘rower’ thinking a double def on someone rowing a boat and someone arguing (ie in a bad temper) which left 18, 22 and with a lack of checking letters 26 unsolved.
12. Done slowly with one eye on the tennis and eventually done in by CISALPINE; that was amongst my all seemingly equally unlikely alternatives. I also stared at TCHAIKOVSKY for some time trying to work him out and ventured WELCH at 22d before realizing she probably didn’t qualify on the morbidity front. COD to RASTA.
13. 37 minutes with the last 6, 3 in SW and 3 in NE taking at least a third of that time. A friend gave a hint to 6d (thanks crypticsue!).
    Favourites were 1a for the ‘split personality’ and the majestic Tchaikovsky. Good solid and fun workout.
14. 24 minutes, a lot of which was spent trying to figure out RASTA. I and I were baffled by that for a good ten minutes.
15. ….because I just could not see ‘Tchaikovsky’. I thought for sure when I had T _ H at the beginning that one of the crossing words must be wrong, because no English word fits. About 20 minutes later, I saw it, and then put in ‘Yiddish’ without understanding the cryptic.

    Many of the clues were really clever, this was my type of puzzle. Putting in ‘acrobat’ as my first, I saw what wavelength I should be on, and rode it. The ‘Berberis’/ratty/Pilates corner did give me a little trouble, but other than that it was smooth sailing until I got stuck on those last two.

16. Not only did I like this puzzle a lot, but for once I was obviously on the same wavelength as the setter, as I was able to submit after 16 min – although I still needed to come here for full unravelling of Mr Swan Lake and my grandparents’ native language. More like this, please!
17. 10:20 today so on the rapid side for me. Not sure about 1D advert = allude but have yet to trawl the many helpful and generally amusing comments.
18. I found this very enjoyable, with lots of clever wordplay. 15 mins, with 6D RASTA last in (also my COD). Afterwards, I reflected that 1D doesn’t quite work for me, as I pronounce ALLUDE to rhyme with COLLUDE, rather than PRELUDE, and LEWD to rhyme with MEWED and not MOOD. My dictionary gives both palatalized and unpalatalized pronunciations for ALLUDE and LEWD, so no complaints about the clue.

    Tom B.

19. Very enjoyable – loved all the clever wordplay and D’Oh moments. Under 20 mins which is probably my quickest time for a Times ever.
20. 35 minutes. This was mostly straightforward enough if you were familiar with all the words, which I was. CISALPINE didn’t even need the anagram fodder since I recalled the term from studying Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico” in my Fourth Form Latin classes (over 50 years ago, horribile dictu), and I had several berberis in my garden.

    Some good clues, several needing a bit of fathoming. I liked “Split personality” even though it’s been used before in one form or another, and the indication of D in 11 was neatly done, eluding me.

21. Enjoyable 30 minutes or so with no significant hold ups. Congratulations to jimbo working out the full wordplay of TCHAIKOVSKY and for presenting it so clearly. COD to ACROBAT for its clever use of ‘Split’: an entertaining start.
22. We two very much enjoyed this puzzle too, and not just because we managed a personal best of sub 50 minutes. Thanks to the setter and you bloggers for all the fun with Mimi’s tiny hand.
23. Great puzzle. Stumped by the rasta / sapid pair.

    A-level Chemistry came in handy for cis-

24. Under 45 mins here. Spent a couple of minutes decoding the complex word play for TCHAIKOVSKY to make sure I had the right variant of the spelling. Took way too long to get WAYNE and RATTY
25. I enjoyed this very much. It turned out to be a steady solve with no serious problems, except my not knowing exactly what SAPID meant. The Mimi clue was my first in – I suffered from this a couple of years ago and remembered having to put up with “your tiny shoulder is frozen” jokes. Completed in hotel bar in 32 minutes including interruption to order the beer.
26. About 40 minutes, and I found it on the harder side. I didn’t know SAPID, BERBERIS, ‘us’ as ‘useless, or the Mimi reference. So I needed checkers for all those to get the former two from wordplay, SUSPEND from the def., and FROZEN SHOULDER as the only thing that fit. Lots of clever items here, so a good puzzle I was pleased to complete unaided. COD to TCHAIKOVSKY, with some amazement that the setter got it to work, and appreciation for the misleading ‘scorer’s box’. Regards to all.
27. The rheumatologist who saw me this afternoon excused himself from the office to go down the hall to use a computer as his wasn’t working which left me to pick up an almost-completed puzzle and stab in 14a. I showed him the completed puzzle and he smiled and said “Yes, you have one. Fancy that.”
    It’s one of the manifestations of ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS. Should this appear as an answer in a cryptic soon, I am ready.
    1. It does look cluable.. too long for the daily cryptic but you might get lucky with a jumbo, if you see what I mean..
       1. I do see what you mean thanks. ‘Spondylitis’ on its own or even ‘ankylosing’ by itself
          could be fodder though somewhat obscure (perhaps for Club Monthly or a Listener)
          Always glad to see the avatar of that dear pusscat of yours. He still gives me a warm feeling.
28. 9:02 for me for an enjoyable puzzle. I should have been faster but missed some old chestnuts (like the “Split personality” at 1A) first time through.
29. I forgot to mention: more from Flanders and Swann, who described their revue At the Drop of a Hat as “An After-Dinner Farrago”.
30. This took me 40 minutes, with a lot of time on the SW corner, where at last, all of a sudden, ‘berberis’, ‘ratty’, and ‘suspend’ came to me. Spent a good deal of time afterwards trying to work out ‘Tchaikovsky’, but needed Jimbo’s explanation. I must, however, take exception to citing Jane Fonda as an example of a traitor, especially as the canard would apply equally to scores of millions of us who opposed the US invasion of Vietnam.
    1. In my defence I’ve just googled “famous traitors” and in a list of the top ten there she is with Quisling and the rest of them.

       My personal take at the time as one who also opposed the Vietnam War was that there is a difference between opposing a war and actively encouraging the people who are killing one’s own countrymen – which in my opinion she did. She has since expressed regret for her actions.

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