Times Cryptic 29354

77 comments on “Times Cryptic 29354”

1. 24:14
   Biffed EINDHOVEN, VENUS …, UTHER, parsed post-submission. Couldn’t figure out OSMOSIS or OUR FATHER, and got no farther than Jack on ON TAP. The only Welsh entertainer I could think of was Tom Jones, and it wasn’t until I finally–finally– thought of RIO GRANDE and got the O that I came up with POI NOVELLO, which gave me LOI VIADUCT.

2. 2dn If you’re regularly taking a drug you might be said to be on it?

   1. Yes! Thanks.

   2. Thanks, David.

3. I found this rather difficult, and was desperately hoping that a kestrel was a windhover – and it was. I NHO Novello, either, but once I got the crossing V it seemed likely enough. I’m lucky I knew ogham and langouste, or I would have been in real trouble.

   Time: 26:47

4. From memory of when I was young I think “on tap” relates to rubber trees where the milk-coloured sap slowly oozes from the trees from taps fitted to each into containers fixed to each tree. The sap is “regularly on tap” in that you simply harvest the container contents without affecting the tap or the flow.

   1. Actually not taps but incisions in the tree to allow the latex to flow

   2. Yes, or maple syrup from maple trees.

5. Oh, that king! The name rings a very distant bell but I would never have remembered it. Also never heard of the Welsh entertainer IVOR NOVELLO but eventually saw the wordplay and stopped trying to make an anagram of ‘look for’. Thought INITIATE and MIMER were very good. Never did parse OUR FATHER. TOODLE-PIP went in straight away which made me think it was going to be easier than it was. COD to INITIATE.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

6. Going by the comments so far, I’m hope I won’t be the only person today who has actually heard of Ivor NOVELLO (1893-1951)! He was a massive star of stage and screen in his day, composer of lavish musicals and operettas in which he starred (but didn’t sing) and dozens of popular songs. Apart from all that, his name is still commemorated in the annual Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting (aka now as ‘The Ivors’) and the Novello Theatre, in London’s West End, where he used to live on the top floor.

   1. I think there is an excellent Great Lives podcast with Matthew Parris in which he featured.

      1. Thanks for mentioning that as I tracked it down and just listened to it. Parris is the series host. Russell Grant was the proposer and another expert on Novello also took part. It cleared up the point about his singing. Apparently he had a beautiful voice as a boy chorister but it turned ugly when his voice broke.

   2. Nope, I also knew him from the awards, and also the Dalziel and Pascoe books: Detective Constable Shirley Novello is predictably nicknamed “Ivor” from the moment she appears, from what I remember.

   3. I knew of Novello because he was here in a cryptic, at least once.

   4. Another here who had definitely heard of him!

   5. Yes but didn’t know he was Welsh despite the Ivor being a bit of a clue

      1. And another. He was born David Ivor Davis.

   6. I certainly remember Novello’s picture from my grandmother’s sheet music when I was a little kid. She used to sing “And her mother came too” (very amusing lyrics) with great brio. And there was “Keep the home fires burning” from WWI.

      1. We’ll Gather Lilacs was another of his songs very popular around the home piano.

         1. Charming song. Was it from “Perchance to Dream?”

            1. Indeed, 1945.

7. I should have known windhover, given how often Myrtillus quoted the wonderful Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, but I didn’t, so I missed EINDHOVEN for a DNF in 27. Thanks to Jack for explaining OARED, ON TAP and OUR FATHER (though why is Ur original?) Ivor Novello popped up as a character in Robert Altman’s excellent (aren’t they all?) movie Gosford Park in 2001, singing And Her Mother Came Too. FWIW.

   From Talkin’ New York:
   After weeks and weeks of hanging around, I finally got a job in New York town
   In a bigger place, bigger money too, even joined the UNION, paid my dues
   Now a very great man once said that some people rob you with a fountain pen
   It didn’t take too long to find out just what he was talkin’ about

   1. Ur- is a prefix imported from German meaning ‘original’

      SOED has: Primitive, original, earliest.

      It’s used in words such as ‘ur-type’ and ‘ur-text’, the latter often seen on the covers of music scores where it indicates that no musical directions have been added by an editor.

      Iirc in Gosford Park Novello is at a house party and performs some songs at the piano for his own amusement and that of other guests milling around. That may well be something that he did, but it’s interesting to note that although he starred in his shows and wrote all the music he never sang on stage and no recordings of him singing were ever commercially released.

      1. I’d like to think that the German “Ur-” prefix had something to do with the very ancient city Ur of the Chaldees, but that seems to be a fanciful bit of folk etymology.

   2. Apologies! I replied to Jack before reading your post. He was played by Jeremy Northam.

8. Didn’t know the Welsh guy, so that came late. But I just finished Sunday’s and worked Monday’s and today’s tonight and all went pretty smoothly, after a few days’ break.

9. This was a strange one for me. I found it tough going, finishing in 24:20, before coming here to check my parsing on a couple of clues. Only then, having opened the blog and realising that I was in the wrong blog, did I realise that I had solved the 15×15, not the QC. I’m blaming the new layout of the website, the grid is smaller than it used to be, and the fact that I was doing it on the train, a situation which I have grown (thankfully) very unaccustomed to since the pandemic.

   So a pretty good time (in my top 10) for me. The only unknowns for me (knew OGHAM from Slaine in 2000AD from my youth) were, UR for original (judging by jackkt’s comment I’m not surprised) and that IVOR NOVELLO is / was Welsh (I knew the name and it couldn’t be anything else so it went in).

   Maybe I should always pretend I’m doing the QC…

   1. Love this!

10. A steady solve, no big holdups and no unknowns. I had heard of Mr Novello, though I doubt if I would have recognised him in the street. And eaten lots of langouste. and saw Uther Pendragon in that marvellous TV series Merlin, with Sam Neill.

11. They’re not getting any easier. 47 minutes with LOI OGHAM. When did it become compulsory to have a Danish pastry with coffee? There used to be an Ivor Novello award for something, probably still is. COD to UNION as I always think there is something inherently funny about a bunion, rhyming as it does with onion and funny ‘un. Nice to see my avatar clued at 14d. Another good puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.

12. 21.09

    Bit tardy on some of these but UTHER PENDRAGON gave a lot of checkers. LOI INITIATE where I had to abandon the w/p and just think of synonyms. If it doesn’t sound crazy when I have some checkers I tend to try to “hear” the sound of the word – here the “sh” sound of the “t” and the way the word scans made that tricky.

    Thanks Jackkt and setter.

    1. Look at you mixing it with the big boys! You’ll be a fantastic blogger, great choice.

13. Gave up with the unknown OGHAM and OARED & OSMOSIS beating me.

    Pretty tough I thought though I liked FOI TOODLE PIP.

    Thanks Jack and setter

14. 15:46. Held up at the end by RAVISHING and EINDHOVEN. I’d never heard of “windhover” for a kestrel but backtracking from the city name showed it to be. I liked INITIATE. Thanks Jackkt and setter.

15. 29.27 . Got myself tied up in knots in the bottom right. Not helped by thinking the Welsh entertainer was Secombe! Uther gave me proof that was wrong and finally recognised Novello.

    Some really good clues I thought- initiate was my favourite.

16. 22min . There is another very expressive name for the kestrel/windhover, but probably not suitable for the general tone of comments here!
    Nice puzzle, but was held up a bit by PILOT = TRIAL

    1. true!

    2. I’m sorry to be a nuisance but please could you at least hint at the unsuitable name for the windhover?
       Mr SR doesn’t know (unless he’s protecting innocent young me ) nor does Google afaics.
       I hate not knowing things 😄

       1. Windfucker, also fuckwind, are other names for a kestrel. Both in the OED

          1. Ah! I see I should have searched harder. Thank you for enlightening me – I’m too much like the elephant’s child, I fear.
             I can see the names make sense.

17. About 25 minutes, but with lots of unknowns.

    – Must have come across PITON before, but I didn’t remember it so had to construct from wordplay
    – Didn’t know a windhover is a kestrel, but once enough checkers were in EINDHOVEN had to be
    – OS for Old Saxon was new to me in the clue for OSMOSIS
    – Didn’t fully parse VENUS AND ADONIS and didn’t know it was by Shakespeare
    – Relied on the wordplay to get the first word of UTHER PENDRAGON
    – NHO DEAD MEN as slang for empty bottles but it sounded very plausible
    – Needed a lengthy alphabet trawl to get TOP-HEAVY
    – Didn’t see how ON TAP worked
    – Had no idea that PANDORA was the first woman in Greek mythology
    – NHO OGHAM but the cluing was kind and the M checker helped me forget about trying to fit an N in there and go for AM instead

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI + COD Toodle-pip
    LOI Top-heavy

    1. OS was new to me too, and my Chambers XWD abbreviations dictionary, which I am now adding to!

18. 25:29. I agree, very creative and enjoyable. Thank you for the parsings of DONIS and OUR FATHER. NHO the poem but know the story.
    Liked the Pendragon reminding me of Mary Stewart novels.
    LOI TOP HEAVY, COD to the lovely Windhover reference. Thanks jackkt and setter.

19. Undone! After yesterday’s Lord Mayor’s Show of a solve too.
    Had to resort to external sources for OGHAM of which I NH, and VENUS AND ADONIS for the same reason. Having miscounted the letters in Athenian, NATHANIEL also eluded me for too long. Very pleased to see the GMH allusion almost immediately in EINDHOVEN. COD INITIATE because it made me chuckle.
    Thanks to setter and jackkt.

20. NHO of VENUS AND ADONIS or OGHAM, which beat me even though I had everything else. Couldn’t for the life of me see OUR FATHER – and the ur=original is new to me. Also missed TOP-HEAVY, which was a gimme and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it. In short, I found this difficult. Was never on the wavelength.

21. 23.49, embarrassingly stuck on OUR FATHER, for which I received no divine help. I’ll have to have a word…
    Otherwise, PANTHER took a long time to emerge from the trees, and (again embarrassingly) I lost much time trying to identify the flower as a flower. I got as far as RID ORANGE before turning to rivers.
    Appreciated the HAIFA clue, with the Baháʼí World Centre dominating the Haifa skyline.
    I’ll complete my embarrassment for today by admitting I was going to add lots of info about NOVELLO, before realising I was thinking about Noel Coward. So not Mad Dogs and Englishmen, or In Which We Serve, then. Sorry.

    1. 
       Keep the Home Fires Burning, written during WWI and still performed today, is perhaps Novello’s most famous stand-alone song.

22. I thought 18d was ingeniously misleading, as I tried to fit NE (together), until I noticed the absence of a hyphen joining north and east.

23. Thoroughly enjoyed the solving, but needed the blog for the parsing of ON TAP and OUR FATHER for URFA.
    I didn’t know Windhover for Kestral, but having realised the city from checkers, it wasn’t much of a leap.
    Favourites: INITIATE and UNION for their fun word play.

24. 6:47. No major problems today.
    OGHAM has been stuck firmly in my mind since the OPHOD/MADRO debacle at the crossword championship which I think of as being a couple of years ago but a quick search here reveals was actually in 2013 (see here), so now I feel old.
    I knew the GMH poem but didn’t even register the bird once I had E_N_H_V_N and ‘city’.

    1. Ha, nice blog that … 🙂 .. and some erudite comments, too. I do miss thud_n_blunder.

25. TOODLE PIP was an easy starter and was fairly quickly followed by the rest of the NW. The SW was similarly dealt with, apart from DEAD MEN, which needed a PDM somewhat later. The RHS however, took some serious mental effort. UR for origial was unknown and it took an age before VIADUCT and NOVELLO (I had heard of him) came along and prodded me in the right direction. Once I’d biffed OUR FATHER, ADONIS popped up to join VENUS. Previously, EINDHOVEN materialised as the city, with the windhover being inferred. OGHAM was an early arrival in the NE, RAVISHING dropped into place after our Dutch city, and OSMOSIS gradually appeared. I think ADONIS was the last piece of the puzzle to fall. 28:35. Thanks setter and Jack.

26. Another great puzzle IMO, all done except DEAD MEN where I had no idea why dead men could be correct. I knew of Ivor Novello (and the awards), King Pendragon, and have been to Eindhoven (was a boring place with a great Chinese restaurant). VENUS and ADONIS was a guess, didn’t know it was by Wm S. 35 minutes. I liked IN IT I ATE.

27. As a former English student the GK needed here suited me and although I don’t normally time myself I’d have been comfortably under 15 minutes, quick by my standards. There was a very literary feel to it. As well Shakespeare’s VENUS AND ADONIS I knew TOODLE PIP from Wodehouse and UTHER PENDRAGON from Malory. There are various literary NATHANIELs including Hawthorne and West. NOVELLO was a playwright as well as a songwriter. And I knew the windhover as the subject of perhaps Hopkins most famous poem.

    1. Novello also worked in Hollywood as a writer and is credited for ‘Dialogue’ (as opposed to screenplay) on the original 1932 Tarzan talkie. He wasn’t particularly proud of his activities there.

28. Ivor Novello was a huge name in his day and it’s amazing to me that so many people haven’t heard of him. I wonder whether in 90 years’ time anyone will have heard of Adele or Lady Gaga. I bet Ivor N will still be remembered, though. By some.

    Pleasant crossword with what seemed a rather ancient set of knowledge required: OGHAM, VENUS AND ADONIS, windhover = kestrel, UTHER PENDRAGON, PANDORA, even NOVELLO! I knew of DEAD MEN from the last bit of (I think) ‘The League of Gentlemen’, where that buffoon gatecrashes the party. 36 minutes.

29. 18’38”. I won’t repeat what others have put.

    However, VENUS AND ADONIS I knew, and once read, it being the biggest selling work by Shakespeare in his lifetime. I studied The Windhover at ‘O’ level, but didn’t realise for many years that it is a kestrel. TOODLE-PIP probably originated as a mishearing by British soldiers in India of a Hindi phrase.

    Thanks jack and setter.

30. Very straightforward aside from VENUS AND ADONIS, which as a complete arts philistine, I’d NHO. However, the parsing was easy once I’d got the answer.

31. 26:10 – tough but fair, with most difficulty in the SE, where I overheated trying to work out if I was really expected to know that ovello was the Welsh word for look!

    1. Ha! I went through the same process, look you!

32. 38:35

    Too many unknowns for it to be enjoyable:

    Notes:
    NHO – OGHAM
    NHO – {w}INDHOVE{r} though the city was a write-in with all checkers in place
    VENUS AND ADONIS – tried for quite a while to make an anagram of WORLD A GIOVANNI*, then VENUS (A GIOVANNI*) before the scales fell
    UTHER PENDRAGON – I’d heard of ARTHUR PENDRAGON – assume they’re related/the same
    DEAD MEN – vaguely heard of this perhaps?
    ON TAP – failed to parse
    LANGOUSTE – again, looking at the wrong anagrist until I had the first three checkers
    PANTHER – failed to fully parse
    NOVELLO – write-in from the last two checkers
    OUR FATHER – NHO UR = original

    Thanks Jack and setter

    1. I also tried an anagram for VENUS AND ADONIS, which I’d not heard of, and continued stubbornly with that idea for much longer than I should have. Once I committed to LANGOUST (nho, but heard of LANGOUSTINE, which confused rather than clarified) I spotted VENUS, which let me piece together the answer, then TOP-HEAVY finally came.

33. The only unknown for me was WINDHOVER for the kestrel, but I’ve been to Eindhoven a dozen times (I worked in semiconductors and it is a sort of company town for Philips) so that lack of knowledge wasn’t essential. I knew the king, vaguely, and VENUS AND ADONIS went in once I stopped trying to anagram “world” and “a Giovanni”. Nearly fell into the trap of putting MIMED (with the foreign sea being the Med) before realizing that was not quite right. Also pretty certain that RIO GRANDE was actually going to start RED and be a real flower (plant) before getting a couple more checkers.

34. 32′ with over TWELVE MINUTES of staring at/alphatrawling for INITIATE. An experience I will move swiftly on from.

35. An ingenious and enjoyable puzzle, all done in 30 minutes after lunch. I knew of the windhover from Hopkins’ poem (though my favourite is Felix Randall), but was delayed for a time by DEAD MEN, as in my student barman days this usually referred to the used glasses ready for collection rather than empty bottles. OGHAM I know only from previous crosswords.
    FOI – PITON
    LOI – DEAD MEN
    COD – VIADUCT
    Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.

36. 38:30. I found that quite tricky down in the SE corner. I DNK that Ivor Novello was Welsh either, and I thought VIADUCT was very hard indeed. extremely enjoyable puzzle though

37. Another DNK Novello’s provenance, added to UR, OS or OGHAM. As a result, couldn’t parse OUR FATHER, which went in on a biff with INITIATE, LOsI, after a spell in the gym had interrupted proceedings. I knew the GMH poem, though VENUS AND ADONIS was another biff after realising that my angram fodder wouldn’t work, but I had already got VENUS AND, so ADONIS was post-parsed. My father used to refer to empties as DEAD MEN, so no brow furrowed over that. A puzzle that was both chewy and enjoyable, like toffee, but less destructive on the teeth. I have also learned a fair bit as a result.

38. All done in a little over 17 minutes.

    I started in the north-east, for no particular reason, and thought it was going to be tricky. In reality it wasn’t, although very enjoyable.

    I would never have equated piton with stanchion (although what else could it be ) but the dictionary supports it, so I have lived and learned.
    Thanks Jack and Setter.

39. 2 short at the one hour cut off.

    Wasted too long on the easy BUNION, and tried TRANSIT for River Crossing.
    NhO WINDHOVER
    Missed the “wild” anagrind and the flower=river chestnut so didn’t get RIO GRANDE. And without the final O the entertainer was too hard.

    I tried ODHAM, on the basis that try=DO and Wikipedia confirms “Odham,” or more accurately Oʼodham, refers to the Oʼodham people, a Native American group of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Sonora

    As Merlin, I’m relieved to have got UTHER PENDRAGON.

    COD FOI TOODLEPIP

40. Liked this one much more than yesterday ( which i did ealry this morning). I am dveloping a pet hate like “eton” for school; that is East Anglia is synonimous with flat. Parts of it are flat as parts of Yorkshire are hilly.

41. Slow-going but my first finish in a while (34:48). NATHANIEL was easy for me for obvious reasons. I’ve heard of a ‘windhover’ (and the crude synonym) and ‘dead soldiers’ means ‘empty bottles and cans’, as used in both the Tarantino film ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ and in ‘The Satanic Verses’ but I didn’t know DEAD MEN. RULER was FOI and OSMOSIS was LOI.

42. Satisfying puzzle, nailed all the references. Ivor Novello a big name in pre-war music, when the BBC more or less enforced a complete embargo on popular music. Ivor somehow slipped the net.

    Needed the explanation to parse ON TAP, got EINDHOVEN on checkers. 15 min.

43. Finally finished after plenty of rosé de Provence – our fellow solver! About an hour and a half alas. FOI TOODLE PIP. OARED and VIADUCT took me ages. All parsed though!

44. DNF on EINDHOVEN; 21 mins for the rest. Couldn’t parse OUR FATHER, NHO OGHAM, needed the V of the tortured VIADUCT to get Ivor. Also spent too long trying to get RIO GRANDE to be the wrong sort of flower, and was amazed to discover on reading the blog that the answer was LANGOUSTE when I knew I’d typed LANGOUSTINE and yet had no pink square … saved by overtype!

    Good fun, many thanks Jack.

45. As has been pointed out above, 26 ac is a very clever &lit. Haifa is indeed integral to Bahaism. Novello is remembered on a plaque opposite Bush House in Aldwych where I used to work. Is that the theatre? Or his home? I forget. A good meaty puzzle which I did in 28’28”. Many thanks.

    1. Yes, that would be the theatre. It opened as the Waldorf Theatre on 22 May 1905, and was renamed the Strand Theatre, in 1909. It was again renamed as the Whitney Theatre, in 1911 before again becoming the Strand Theatre, in 1913. In 2005, the theatre was renamed the Novello Theatre in honour of Ivor Novello, who lived in a flat above the theatre from 1913 to 1951. The renaming followed purchase and refurbishment by Cameron Mackintosh.

46. Loved it! ( But didn’t fare all that well!). Had forgotten all about V and A, also the old king, and NHO OS for old Saxon. Brilliant 16d and lots of lovely literary allusions – just my cup of tea. TOODLE PIP!

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