Times 27741 – Is it a bird? Is it the TLS? It’s certainly different.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
It took me far too long to untangle all this, I needed Wiki afterwards to check a couple, and it had a feeling that I was wrestling with a TLS puzzle by mistake at times. Shakespeare, Greek Classics, Greek geography, linguistics, musicology, and – if I’m correct at 5d – a memory of Dylan lyrics, all were called upon if you were to get through this fully parsed and ship shape. Fortunately, there were some easy clues like 11a, 2d, and the anagram at 21a to give us some early checkers, else I’d probably still be chewing the pencil. I look forward to your wise comments.

Across
1 Stop working because of line in operating system (4,5)
DOWN TOOLS – DOWN TO = because of, then L inside OS.
6 One shoe, not quite the pair, going with it (5)
SABOT – SA (it, sex appeal) BOT(H) = not quite the pair.
9 Run away from anger and depression in Greece (5)
TEMPE – TEMPER (anger) loses its R. The wordplay is simple but you’d have to be a fan of Greek geography to know the reference. I lived for nearly 4 years in Greece (the Peloponnese, not the northern region where the Valley of Tempe is to be found), and I’d not heard of it. Maybe it’s famous in the Classical canon. OHO! I see, on reading Wiki, it is.
10 Ladies, staying on, visit New Zealand tourist attraction (6,3)
LONDON ZOO – LOO (ladies) has ON, then DO NZ (visit New Zealand) inserted. Seems not quite right to me, the ‘staying’ piece, to indicate it’s all inserted, but that’s the answer.
11 Easy reward from getting on line? (5,3,3,4)
MONEY FOR OLD ROPE – Cryptic definition.
13 Laments day-old fails (8)
MONODIES – MON(day), O(ld), DIES = fails. A monody is an ode of lament by one person e.g. in a Greek tragedy.
14 One outlet accepts new coin (6)
INVENT – I (one) VENT (outlet) accepts N(ew). Coin, as in coin a new word or expression.
16 Stupid that hotel do only flipping sandwiches! (6)
NOODLE – Hidden word reversed in HOT(EL DO ON)LY. Well, stupid is an adjective, and noodle is a noun (at least I can’t find it listed as an adjective) but doubtless someone else will. Or is stupid a noun here?
18 Press chief with another cider, too inebriated! (8)
COEDITOR – (CIDER TOO)*.
21 New MP, one come to help folk in general (3,6,6)
THE COMMON PEOPLE – (MP ONE COME TO HELP)*.
23 Fights to finish or to drive out soliciting? (9)
SHOOTOUTS – If you said “Shoo, touts!” you could be driving out soliciting people.
25 Sound unstressed after chief visiting was abused (5)
SCHWA – Insert CH for chief into (WAS)*. SCHWA, symbol (), is the indistinct vowel sound of an unstressed syllable, e.g. the ‘e’ in ‘the’ in rapid speech. As opposed the e in ‘the’ pronounced ‘thee’. Hope you followed that. Did you have S-H-A and wing it from wordplay?
26 Refuse when beginning to recycle to break bed down (5)
DROSS – First letter of Recycle goes into DOSS = bed down.
27 Moderating playtime instruction often led by ma (3,6)
NON TROPPO – a clue for musicians; e.g. ALLEGRO MA NON TROPPO is a common marking meaning ‘fast but not too fast’ in Italian.

Down
1 Lady briefly taking you for a Parisian in fact (5)
DATUM – DAM(E) = lady briefly, insert TU being French for you singular; a piece of information, Latin for ‘a thing given’.
2 Book token given by wife — and with it, nothing (5,2,4)
WOMEN IN LOVE – W (wife) OMEN = token, sign; IN (with it, trendy), LOVE (nothing, zero). Seems a complicated way to clue this example of a novel.
3 Drawing you had coloured a certain way (3-4)
TIE-DYED – TIED (drawing, all square), YE’D (you had), punctuation revised to suit.
4 Witness, removed from case, won’t peach (8)
ONLOOKER – WON’T has its ‘case’ removed, giving ON, LOOKER = peach, good looking lady.
5 Narrator’s understood the reader’s older (6)
SENIOR – I think this is a homophone clue, we’re due for one. SENIOR sounding like SENOR addressed by the narrator as in the song lyric by Bob Dylan? Seems a long shot but I can’t see another reference that fits the surface. No doubt it’s not that obscure?
6 Fellow with TV spots royal photographer (7)
SNOWDON – DON a fellow goes on the end of SNOW = white noise, TV spots. AKA Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, snapper who married Princess Margaret.
7 Bachelor place Dorothy visits to see sketch writer (3)
BOZ – B plus OZ. Sketches by Boz were by Dickens.
8 Once on the outside, we start to work in tandem? (3-6)
TWO-SEATER – (O E WE START)*, where O E is ‘once on the outside’.
12 A person ends short trip in general store (3-4,4)
ONE-STOP SHOP – ONE (a person) STOPS (ends) HOP (short trip).
13 Painter papers around bottom right corner made ready (9)
MONETISED – MONET (painter) ID (papers) around SE (south-east, bottom right corner).
15 Leaving possible heir a dodgy business? (6-2)
GOINGS-ON – GOING (leaving) SON (possible heir).
17 Paranoid old ruler putting Trotsky on trial briefly (7)
LEONTES – LEON Trotsky + TES(T). As TLS solvers will know, King Leontes was the paranoid character in A Winter’s Tale. I didn’t know it though, I’ve never seen or read it.
19 Furniture you’ll find in different sorts of theatre (7)
DRESSER – Double definition, you have dressers in theatres. I’m not a luvvy so I don’t understand why ‘different sorts of’. That sounds like an anagrind, but it isn’t.
20 Challenge on reflection no good: how to go from London to Leeds? (6)
IMPUGN – All reversed; NG, UP M1.
22 Retroaction not oddly one to inspire (5)
ERATO – Even letters of rEtRoAcTiOn, Erato was the Muse of love poetry so can inspire you.
24 That’s a surprise, the Hoops eclipsing Hearts (3)
OHO – O O (hoops) around H(earts).

77 comments on “Times 27741 – Is it a bird? Is it the TLS? It’s certainly different.”

  2. Well it is winter here. Worked out LEONTES from the parsing. Thought this might be another Greek reference, perhaps a mad Spartan king, but looked it up afterwards to find it was a character in a Shakespeare play. And people complained about dicotyledons!
    27:20
  3. Biffed a bunch, including three–DOWN TOOLS, SENIOR, TWO-SEATER–that I never parsed. WOMEN IN LOVE, ONLOOKER, SNOWDON parsed post-submission. ‘sound unstressed’ and ‘soliciting’ were biff-inviting, although it took a moment to get SHOO. I took ‘stupid’ to be a noun here. Given my whatever the reverse of a gift is for hiddens, NOODLE was naturally enough my LOI. DRESSER: I thought the ‘different sorts’ alluded to the stage theater and the operating theater, where I assume someone dresses the wounds. But neither of those dressers is furniture; shouldn’t there at least be a ‘that’?

    Edited at 2020-08-12 05:50 am (UTC)

    1. As a medical student “ on the wards” at Barts in the 1970s on attachment to surgical wards we were known as “ dressers” though no dressings done or expected.
  5. I have no idea where I plucked NON TROPPO from (probably from the French “trop” rather than the Italian), but that guess let me finish all-correct in exactly one hour. Given that I also didn’t know TEMPE, NOODLE, MONODIES, SNOWDON or LEONTES, I’m not too unhappy with simply finishing unscathed. Enjoyed 23 SHOOTOUTS and 20d IMPUGN along the way.
  6. Terrible time, but pleased to have finished without aids. Thanks to the setter for a fine challenge.
  7. I’m another one who bunged in a number of answers either from the definitions (sans parsing) or the wordplay without understanding/knowing them. Took a while over SHOOTOUTS which I thought should be SHOOT-OUTS, but my on-line dictionary has it as one word. Certainly didn’t fathom what the MA was doing in 27ac. Thank you pip for all the clarifications. 44 mins
  8. At 37 minutes I wasn’t delayed too much past my target solving time which considering there were a number of unknowns words or references, I didn’t think was a bad effort on my part.The unknown answers were TEMPE and LEONTES but in both cases the wordplay was clear and helpful

    I groaned (naturally)at “seen your” for SENIOR but also smiled as I prefer dodgy homophones to be outrageous like this one, rather than simply dodgy.

    On Kevin’s point about DRESSER I took the clue to be a variation on a triple definition. The stage and surgical meanings are effectively the same anyway as in the early days of surgery operating theatres were generally open to those interested, and people would pay money to see star surgeons of the day demonstrate their skills.

    Edited at 2020-08-12 06:48 am (UTC)

  9. I abandoned this somewhere down the Lincoln County Road, just short of Armageddon. (Sorry, I know Dylan’s lyrics rather better than Jarvis Cocker’s.) At least I saw SEEN YOUR, and I agree that a terrible homophone is better than a dodgy one. But I didn’t know NON TROPPO so the MA hint was of no earthly use to me. I abandoned MONODIES too, which I maybe could have solved if I hadn’t got an eight week old puppy chewing me at the same time. COD to SHOOTOUTS. Thank you Pip for the enlightenment and setter for the challenge.
  10. Just back from a driving tour of most of the North Coast 500, which is highly recommended, especially the Applecross peninsula (with the stunning Bealach na Ba mountain pass) and Glen Shiel. Torridon hotel was a highlight, including a whisky bar with a different malt for every day of the year.

    I really enjoyed this – though, as others report, several biffs were needed to get over the line. Thanks to the setter for a fun puzzle and to Pip for unravelling the biffs.

  11. As a non musical person I’ve never heard of NON TROPPO. Still at least there was the cryptic way into the answer. Oh no, there wasn’t. Pah!
  12. Thanks, Pip.
    We had a house in Marrickville in Sydney for 10 years. Tempe was a neighbouring suburb. There is an IKEA there which, I believe is the largest in the southern hemisphere.
    In 24d I started with OOH instead of OHO so that messed things up for a while.
    I have heard of threnodies but never of MONODIES.
    No real COD for me.
  14. Stiff going, and certainly a bit TLS-y. TEMPE turns up in that parish often enough to be (almost) a write in, but I misplaced LEONTES to a place far from his Winters Tale habitat. MONODIES are another occasional visitor
    I managed to make SENIOR even more of a wonderfully dire homophone, concluding in desperation with SEEN EYER, the latter a smudge for reader and for the second half.
    Does anyone other than a Times crossworder refer to the bottom right as the SE? Setter, art thou revealed, at least a bit?
    A decent, rather eccentric, workout. 23 minutes
    1. About 40-50 years ago our geography teacher excoriated a pupil who’d written, “Chicago is a large city at the bottom of Lake Michigan”, and I think that has scarred me for life.
      1. And this pupil of 65 years back is still scarred by his location of Rio de Janeiro as halfway up the right-hand side of South America being read out to the class! joekobi
    2. I’d thought of SE as the bottom RH corner of the UK rather than crossword territory, but you may well be right that’s what the setter had in mind.
  15. Well that was a gift for the smug classicists, so no problems with Tempe, schwa and the like. It’s sadly not necessary to invoke his Bobness to derive SENIOR from “seen ya”, the final vowel of which is a fine example of a SCHWA, so it’s actually not a bad homophone. Very enjoyable puzzle but a bit too biffable for my liking. COD SHOOTOUTS (“shoo” is surely a verb here).
  16. 16:57. Held up for a minute at the end trying to find and alternative for SHORTCUTS, which fitted the checkers but was clearly wrong, got 23A. SHOO TOUTS indeed. I know TEMPE and SCHWA, but only from previous crosswords, so I was spared getting terminally stuck on those. I see the comments I was going to make on SENIOR and DRESSER have already been made. Pleased to be able to parse everything as some were quite tricky. COD to monetised.

    Edited at 2020-08-12 07:41 am (UTC)

  17. Rather erudite and tricky cluing, so I think I did quite well there, although it only has a Snitch of 109 so far. Of muses, ERATO appears about 80% of the time, with Clio a distant second. No doubt a useful word that goes E-A-O.

    COD: SNOWDON – I loved TV spots

    Yesterday’s answer: feta is unusual in being a protected designation of origin product because there is no place called ‘Feta’, whereas almost all others have a place name to identify them.

    Today’s question: which other zoo apart from the one in Regent’s Park is owned by the Zoological Society of London?

    3. It’s just up the road from me. I can see the chalk lion on the hillside from my study window (if I lean out and crane my neck a bit!)
  18. Well I found this one quite hard. Harder than yesterday, so a bit surprised by some of the other comments, not to mention the Snitch being (slightly) lower too. Perhaps it is a wavelength thing.. or it oculd be my hangover, I suppose
  19. Not quite sure why I found this relatively straightforward. Two unknowns – TEMPE: assumed Tempe Arizona (from where hail Gin Blossoms one my favourite groups) must be named after somewhere Greek; and SCHWA: indeed winged from S-H-A.

    Thanks Pip for SABOT. If not for you I just wouldn’t have a clue how that one worked.

    1. thanks for the reminder – what a great group they were, listening to Hey Jealousy now.
  20. She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge – am I the only one to be channelling Pulp? (not Tiny Tempe) a satisfying slower solve, ma non troppo.
    3. Encouraged by Pip, I channelled my inner Bob, but I was ready for Jarvis Cocker as early as a quarter to eight, as you can see.
  21. I thought this was a cracker. Lots of fun and clever stuff. Most of it done in seven or eight minutes, so on the wavelength. Absolutely no problem with SENIOR. Works exactly in my accent, which makes a change from having to identify the invisible rhotics. And yet another mention of Glasgow Celtic. Do we have a Hoops fan as a setter?
  22. What everyone else said, lots of unkowns mostly fairly clued. Schwa was a known, and the unfairly-clued non troppo known too, from the fine Italian film “Allegro Ma Non Troppo”. A kind of satirical mickey-take of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Got 2 of the 3 dressers, but not the surgical dresser – briefly wondered if they had furniture in the corner of the theatre on which they put the machine that goes “bing”.
    I liked monetised, if not the whole of its clueing, SE for bottom-right.
  23. 16:49. A puzzle that revives the old SA=it nonsense was always going to irritate me but there was something to annoy everyone here: obscure musical terms clued without wordplay, obscure classical references, obscure characters from Shakespeare…
    There was some clever stuff though and in the end the most annoying thing was my own silly mistake: I saw exactly how the wordplay for 6dn worked but still managed to type SNOWDEN. Unfortunately this could well be how his name was spelled for all I knew so I didn’t pick up the error when checking my answers at the end.
    Drat.
    1. I did consider SNOWDEN but decided that “fellow” was steering us towards an academician rather than random chap A (DEN, being a shortening, would probably have been clued as “boy”).

      But then you know all that.

      1. I didn’t even consider DEN as the fellow while solving. If the photographer had been spelled that way this could have been turned into a neat Eastenders clue!
  24. Plenty of scary-looking unknowns but all fairly clued making this a decent challenge. I can understand Pootle’s objection to the troppo clue. Luckily I somehow remembered it from somewhere but I’m not a musician.
    1. I was rescued on troppo by Spike Milligan in the book Puckoon. I think it was “agitato ma non troppo,” and I think I had to ask my mum what it meant. She didn’t know either and sent me to the dictionary.
      Andyf
  26. ….was molto troppo, and was glad yet again to have my Latin ‘O’ Level. Thanks to Pip for parsing SABOT (yawn) and I parsed SNOWDON quickly afterwards.

    FOI COEDITOR
    LOI ONLOOKER
    COD IMPUGN
    TIME 14:38

  27. Clever and testing crossword (perhaps let down by NON TROPPO). There are 34 ‘O’ s , I think, which distracted me. I was looking for GLORIOUS or GROUSE.
    1. Today would have been the day for grouse, too, wouldn’t it?

      Edited at 2020-08-12 04:36 pm (UTC)

  28. Off the wavelength for this curio, although not too badly, finishing in 10m 38s. SENIOR = ‘seen your’ was rather painful. Lots of biffing, so I’m grateful for the explanations here.

    MONETISED is my COD, a nice cryptic definition… which always goes nicely alongside some wordplay, doesn’t it?

  29. Enjoyed this as much as I enjoy any crossword that slows down the computer programmers a bit…
  30. with NON TROPPO looked up I’m afraid. Turns out it was an interloper from the general knowledge crossword, which I failed. Fortunately the rest of the unknowns were gettable. Quite pleased with my time considering that I also nodded off in the middle.
  31. 24’33. V. enjoyable and especially liked (ma) non troppo, an eminently fair clue as I see it. Held up by putting a heavy black line in 15 down to indicate 2,6 rather than the reverse, by no means the first time I’ve done that. Foxed by the sabot parsing – to be defeated by simplicity always goes down as a fine minor win for the setter. joekobi
  32. At least 3 mins spent on trying to parse Non Troppo. Lucky guess in the end. I was expecting pink squares.

    COD: Monetised. Made ready made me smile Mesdames.

  33. Slow but very enjoyable. It took me almost 10 minutes to get the first answer, BOZ, but after that a steady solve. My only unparsed answer was SENIOR. I knew LEONTES from A Level Eng Lit and “MA NON TROPPO” was a write in. (Piano exams, amateur orchestras etc) 46 minutes. Ann
  34. A tricky one, with the SW giving me most trouble. Only DROSS and THE COMMON PEOPLE went in without a struggle in that corner. DATUM was my FOI and led imediately to DOWN TOOLS. TEMPE(NHO) and TIE DYED arrived much later. No trouble with (ma) NON TROPPO, but my LOI, GOINGS ON took ages to see. I dithered over KNOCKOOUTS at 23a, but decided that LEONTES(also NHO) had to be correct, and MONETISED eventually put me within range of SHOOTOUTS. An enjoyable solve with lots of PDMs. Thanks setter and Pip. 35:44.
  35. LEONTES joins Geraint on the list of the most horrible husbands in literature. Channeled the TLS side of the brain (as others have pointed out) and clocked in at 19.35 which would be a good time for one of those.
    1. So true. I did Winter’s Tale for A Level. Such a monstrous man – he should have done an Othello in the last act. That play doesn’t really deserve a happy ending.
  36. It felt good to finish with no aids. I managed to drag the NON TROPPO out of somewhere. A few things I missed (like the “tv spots” for snow) but I biffed SNOWDON anyway. I had no idea who LEONTES was and I only know TEMPE from Arizona but like many places in the US I assumed it was named after somewhere else (as it is).
  37. Some odd words in the answers.

    I hadn’t regarded 13A as just a cryptic definition and thought it was
    “Reward from” (MONEY FOR) “getting on” (OLD) “line” (ROPE).

    Agree about the triple definition at 19D. Isn’t a dresser in the entertainment industry someone who helps an actor with costume changes in the wings and, as such, distinct from an operating theatre dresser, who is more concerned with draping, bandaging and assisting with surgery?

    1. Yes, and with that meaning in mind ‘The Dresser’ was successful play by Ronald Harwood starring Tom Courtenay that ran successfully in the West End and transferred to Broadway. Later it was made as a feature film also starring Courtenay.
  38. Not sure how long this took because I had a few interruptions, but I didn’t find it easy. However, I plodded on with a little flurry of PDMs abut halfway through, and finished with nearly everything parsed and without resorting to aids, so that’s a win. NHO MONODIES so pleased to have worked that out just from wordplay; I didn’t know SCHWA until I met it here in crosswordland a while back, but it went in fully parsed today; rather liked NON TROPPO – I have just enough musical education to have got that one and it raised a smile; and I never quite worked out SENIOR. I could see it was a homophone but had ‘you = the reader’ as a note instead of ‘your / you’re’ – so close, and yet so far!

    I agree with keriothe – time to stop the IT / SA nonsense. In fact, I’m not overly keen on looker / peach either – smacks of the Stranglers hit from the 70s, which despite the great riff, was horribly sexist even then. I liked TANDEM and IMPUGN – the M1 bit was obvious (especially to someone who lives a mile from that noisy if convenient motorway) but it took a while to get the ‘up’ bit. I wouldn’t recommend taking a tandem up the M1 though 😉

    FOI Coeditor – looks so wrong
    LOI Onlookers
    COD Shootouts
    Time about 50 mins

    Thanks setter and Pip for the wise and witty blog

  39. …but I found it easier than Monday’s or Tuesday’s and only had to biff MONODIES, SCHWA and SENIOR.
    I smiled at IMPUGN and enjoyed unravelling COEDITOR (although I would hyphenate it) and ONE STOP SHOP.
    My COD is MONEY FOR OLD ROPE, if only for providing lots of checkers for several down clues!
    Finished in just under 38 minutes so not a bad day.
    Thanks to the setter and to Pip for his helpful blog.
  40. Think yourself lucky you didn’t enter KNOCKOUTS by mistake. Guaranteed to cause a hold up
  41. 34.55 . Had to take an enforced break at 27 minutes but the interval definitely helped get me on track. Found this puzzle tough going as shown in my FOI being 21 ac.

    Some real pearls in the cluing- monetised, monodies and schwa being the stand outs for me. Had to work hard to achieve results but rewarding.

  42. DNF. Too many vaguely knowns with definitions which didn’t occur to me.
    I assumed it was seen ya ( or seen you ), with you being the reader. Nice blog, pip
  43. Yes, thanks for all the entitled Oxbridge obscurities. Narcissistic instead of clever
  44. ‘Monetised has been expunged from my brain by overuse in too many ‘town halls’- an American multinational took over and destroyed our lovely British company of almost 200 yrs standing.
  45. A DNF in 32 something minutes. I came a cropper on Snowden. Very frustrating to piece together a number of trickier ones and then fail on that. Had I tarried a while longer on ‘fellow’ I’m sure I would’ve got there. I generally enjoyed what was quite a novel offering. Knew the Greek valley, heard of threnodies so monodies was guessable, knew the ‘ma non troppo’ musical direction from sleeve notes or track listings on classical CDs, enjoyed if slightly cringed at the homophone, thought the bottom in monetised might be nates for a while and took ages over oho and dross at the end for some reason.
  46. Tempe reminded me that on a Greek holiday many years ago, on the way to the courier pointed out that ‘on the left is the famed Vale of Tempe’ – which explains the snap of an apparently anonymous woodland among my pics.
  47. a hard crossword ruined by 27a, I can’t see how a non-musician like me can access that clue. I cry foul play
  48. so not quite a PB. Meg pictured isn’t quite a sheltie but definitely a collie, now a grand old lady of 17.
    Can I be boring and reiterate topicaltim’s comment?

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