Times 24181 It’s Giovanni Again

40 comments on “Times 24181 It’s Giovanni Again”

1. 9:48 for this – held up a bit by a careless BRASSICCA at 1A, seeing CA(n) for the container, probably influenced by “metal”, then seeing BRASS and thinking I could busk the other couple of letters. Slow start, with 14 and 17 my first two in, but did much better with the downs. My jotted note for 19 was ITMA! – nearly matching Jimbo’s title.

   Didn’t know about the brachiopod at 20 but trusted the wordplay.
   Better surfaces than yesterday – slightly puzzled by the “gay report”, but also wonder what those under 40 or so would make of “Daily Sketch” at 27. I was surprised to see from Wiki that it lasted until 1971.

2. 32 min. A real mixture. Didn’t understand 3 dn and 7 dn until coming here, but fair enough from the checking letters. (I assume the obscure wordplay you mentioned was for 3 dn, not 4 dn). COD: 4 dn is a little cracker (and surely must have been used before). It may give a brief pause to our American spelling cousins though. Poor old Tiepolo’s bones must be crying out for mercy. Overall a most satisfying puzzle.
   1. Now edited, thanks.
   2. …but realized eventually when I couldn’t make 12 across work.
3. Didn’t quite finish the NE corner. I didn’t get MAN U from Manchester United and have never heard of Martinu so 7dn was always going to be a bit tricky.

   I still don’t really see 6dn – I know TENOR meaning character or quality, but TENOR=course seems to be of Mephisto obscurity.

   What is “wanting” doing in 26ac?

   At 1ac I had BRASSICA for a long time (the container being a CA(n)) without being sure how to get the extra letter – was it an E or an S and why? Neither Chambers nor COED give any indication of the plural, or indeed whether there is a plural (since Brassica is a genus). Undoubtedly it is in Collins.

   1. Campanology, tenor bell, runs a course?
   2. Brassicas are turnips, cabbages, etc rather like pulses are peas and beans.

      I suspect “wanting” at 26A is surface padding.

   3. Works for me. That little comma appears to separate the currently from the previous two words and so can obfuscate somewhat. When a circuit breaker trips out, the current is cut so it stops working currently. The “wanting” now works as an alternative to “defined by” a trip out.
      1. I thought it was trip=stop working, currently; wanting=out and the definition was trip out = holiday abroad. I’ve only heard of circuits being tripped, rather than tripped out, althought I daresay they can be “tripped in” if they’re normally open rather than normally closed.
   4. …but I have only one LP side, the Sixth Symphony on Unicorn. He is a fairly standard minor east European composer, but never wrote a famous piece that everyone has heard like some of them.

      I did get one of my avatars out of that record.

4. Chambers gives tenor=general run or course
   1. Agree with all your comments, Jimbo. No problem with TENOR = “course” at 6dn. But, unless I’ve missed something, the wordplay also requires us to swallow TEN = “several”, which seems to me eminently niggle-worthy. Admittedly, the dictionaries are less than helpful on the matter – my Chambers has “more than one (usu. more than three), but not very many”, and my COED “more than two but not many”. In common usage, however, I would submit that “several” always implies less than 10. In my book, 10 might be “a few” but not “several”. Otherwise a pretty good puzzle. 3dn was first-class, and the surface reading for the anagram at 4dn equally good. No accurate timing as I completed the puzzle in spurts in-between doing other things, but in total probably close to 60 mins.
      1. I think the dictionaries are less than helpful because ‘several’ is not used in a precise numeric way. You certainly don’t agree with Collins, which says that several is “more than a few”.
         1. Fair point, Peter. I don’t possess a Collins, a drawback since it seems to be The Times’s dictionary of choice. But this does slightly confirm my impression that Collins tends to be out on its own with some of its definitions, which is possibly why The Times likes it so much!

            Re: 3dn. I wonder whether the setter, in alluding to SIND/H, had in mind the famous story about Sir Charles Napier who, after seizing the province on behalf of the Raj, sent a message to Lord Ellenborough, the Governor-General of India, informing him of the fact. It read simply: “Peccavi” – Latin for “I have sinned”. Now there’s a homophone for you! Expect to see it used in a Times puzzle sometime soon.

            1. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Shame’ is set in the fictional country of ‘Peccavistan’.

               This one took me 24 mins, badly stuck on the NW frontier – didn’t know BRASSICAS. I’m not very keen on ten=several, but wasn’t really held up by it.

               Tom B.

            2. The “peccavi” story is great fun but the editors of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations seem suspicious, attributing the quote not to Napier but to Catherine Winkworth, who got it into Punch about a year after Napier’s conquest. Later in life she translated German hymn lyrics into English, so her ODQ entry has both “I have sinned” and “Praise to the Lord the almighty, the King of creation”.
               1. Yes, I fear the tale is almost certainly invented. But, as an American journalist colleague used to say, “this story is too good to check out”.
5. Around 30 minutes for this with one error and several clues not fully worked out until after the event.

   The error was at 21, my last one in, where I had thought of SKIRT on first reading but couldn’t justify it. Later when the checking letters were in place they seemed to confirm it however unlikely, so I bunged it in and stopped the clock. Thinking through some of the other wordplay I came back to 21 and spotted SHIFT, which I assume is the correct answer.

   New to me were SIND/SINDH in either of its spellings and TATAR as I only knew its alternative.

   Generally a pleasant and entertaining puzzle though, that didn’t present too many problems.

   1. Yes, Jack, I had it as SHIFT (two meanings)
6. Just under the hour deadline for me. Generally held up rather than specifically. Third appearance of TIEPOLO this year in daily Times, a clear front runner in the frequency table. Some great surfaces and clues, as has already been mentioned. COD 7
7. 30 minutes to fill the grid, then another five working out the wordplay to a few I didn’t fully understand. Unfortunately I didn’t reconsider SKIRT for 21, so, like jackkt, came a cropper with that one.
8. COED and Collins both have “trip” = stop working, in the current context, but Collins also has “trip out” and I’m sure that’s what “Stop working, currently” is defining. I saw “holiday abroad” as charade wordplay rather than a definition for “trip out”. “wanting” is then just an indication that “TRIP=holiday, OUT=abroad” is what’s required to make the answer. Words or phrases like this linking def and wordplay are a Times (and other xwd) commonplace, and I don’t think it’s fair to call them “padding” unless they cannot logically be interpreted so that the clue makes sense. When “with” or “during” are inserted between def and wordplay, I’d always count them as padding, because I cannot see how the def or answer is ever “with” or “during” the wordplay in the cryptic reading. But I suspect each solver who cares about this stuff has slightly different lists of accepted and detested link-words.
9. 27 minutes for a much more enjoyable solve than yesterday. As Peter has said, the surfaces were far, far better today. Unaccountably 1d was my last in despite it being one of the easier clues.

   My only quibblette would be number one denoting i in 7 down. The surface wouldn’t work with just “one” I guess but I was trying work out where to put the other n (for number), not having heard of the composer in question. I was naturally suspicious of the clue mind you having a natural and deep-seated aversion to anything associated with that particular team.

   Q-0.5, E-7.5, D-7, COD reputedly.

   1ac rock Sam Bland (no relation to Bobby) and the Brassicas, whose vegetarian tribute to the Memphis Horns is currently going down a storm at the Frontier Club, Batley.

10. I had some frustrating moments with this one, quite a few answers that should have fallen into place sooner than they did.

    The minor quibbles have already been mentioned and I’m certainly with melrosemike on TEN=several at 6D. Ten out of eleven is certainly several, but not out of 177,309 it isn’t.

    For all that, 9A & 10A made it all worthwhile, the former a very carefully worked and convincing clue, the latter because NAM=handle that won’t stop turning is the kind of devilishness which always gets the big thumbs-up from me.

    Q-1 E-6 D-7 COD 9A AVIGNON

11. A slow 50 minutes, struggling somewhat in the NE corner for reasons that elude me now. A couple here we’ve seen before, including the infamous TIEPOLO. COD 17ac.
12. 15:45 .. Struggled with MARTINU, but otherwise straightforward. Nothing stood out for me.

    Also struggled with One Across Rock, though 1ac reminded me of the ironic ‘tribute’ act Brassick Monkeys and their fine album ‘Centre Stage in a Single Bed’.

13. I found this one quite hard, but managed to complete it in just under 45 minutes without resorting to aids.

    I understood ‘glebe’ once I reversed engineered SINGLE BED and had heard of Sind. Struggled with my Spanish geography a bit before landing on ALMERIA. North East corner gave me the greatest difficulty, but I couldn’t fault the cluing.

    1. Thought this was going to be easy, and indeed logged my start time as a PB looked possible. Nothing really held me up but progress did slow down and I got there in 26 mins, which is pretty average for me. Didn’t remember glebe (although it was buried in my brain somewhere, partly because of Glebe Street, home of the Broons) but I got the answer from the definition and checking letters. Lamp shell was also new but got it from wordplay.

       Similar to yesterdays, a mixture of easy and obscure that I completed without aids in average time, but this was a more enjoyable puzzle – wittier clues, and the obscurities were less provoking. bc

14. I was surprised to see glebe singled out… few villages lack glebe lands or a Glebe Cottage – evidently you are a city dweller, Jimbo 🙂

    I wrote martinu in with some confidence, but no actual knowledge at all..

    I would have said ten was a few more than several.

    1. Born within the sound of Bow Bells and grew up in those South London oases Brixton, Streatham, Clapham, etc. A bit more rural these days.

       Guessing what to say in the blog is an impossible game. One just never knows what people will find difficult or obscure. I thought “glebe” sufficiently obscure to warrant a mention but of course inevitably that reflects my personal experience.

15. I think the meaning of ‘tenor’ here is as in this passage from Gray’s wonderful ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’:-

    Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
    Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
    Along the cool sequestered vale of life
    They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

    Paul S.

16. Completed in snatched moments during a busy day. No time but very fast with no difficulties.
    Of the five proper nouns today, the answers are virtually the only possiblity from the checked letters. This suggests that the setter my be using proper nouns to dig himself out of holes of his own making. He could have chosen Tremolo at 19d to give us all a rest from our old friend. Mae West only gets her first name checked today but she reigns alongside Tiepolo in the crossword hall of fame.
    We had our third dog breed in two weeks today. As a cat lover I am not happy about this. At least I got basset hound having previously failed on Blenheim and Kerry Blue. It looks as though I shall have to print out a list of dog breeds and learn them off by heart.
    I hope I have not offended anyone by assuming a male pronoun for the setter. The only female setter I can think of is the late Ruth Crisp.
17. I don’t have a time to post due to interruptions, but my guess is this would have been in the 45-50 minute range, so I found it on the more difficult side. At 26 I had ‘trip off’ for quite a while, holding up 23D, until I finally figured out the down clue and switched to TRIP OUT. To me, circuit breakers ‘trip’, but as Peter says it’s in the dictionary, so OK. Didn’t get the 3D wordplay til reading Jimbo’s explanation, thanks. New to me today were MARTINU, SIND, ALMERIA. I won’t take sides in the ten=several(?) discussion other than to say it delayed solving until the checking letters were in. Regards all.
18. Cats do get rather a rough deal – the dictionaries seem to know about the Kerry Blue but not the British or Russian Blue, for example.

    There is one female setter at the Times – Joyce Cansfield. I can think of four others between Guardian, Daily/Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times and there are probably a few more.

    You’re right to some extent about the proper nouns – there are others like TRIPOLI which get setters out of awkward corners. But TREMOLO is an old friend too I think.

19. The wordplay seems to be (PART + (NAME that won’t stop)) turning (rev.) Could someone please explain how “that won’t stop” takes the E off the end of NAME to get NAM. I just cannot see how “won’t stop” removes anything.
    1. I guess it’s how you think of “stop”. There’s a meaning “come to an end”, but it’s maybe not clear that this can mean “reach the expected ending” as the clue seems to mean. In NAM, “name” has come to a premature end, so it has arguably “stopped”. “handle that won’t finish turning” might have got round the problem. (I don’t think the clue’s use of future tense makes a difference.)
    2. I was vexed – grumpy – grudging – appreciative in fairly short order while going through the mental hoops outlined by PB.
20. ….but I was determined to finish this one!

    It was not easy, and did not fit into the truncated evening solving time slot, so I had to take it to work.

    Curiously, ‘single bed’ was the first answer I entered. It was ‘brassicas’ and ‘Avignon’ that gave me the most difficulty, as well as not being able to see ‘see you later’, which is hardly a new turn of phrase – 20s, rather.

    As for Tiepolo, I think it’s time the setters explored him in more depth. His famous painting, ‘Death of Hyacinth’ is just 15 letters….

21. In response to the comment seeming as though it came from an old style decrepit high court judge, “what IS a gay report?”; may I suggest that among other things it is a report submitted by a gay reporter (of which there is no shortage these days in the more heavyweight newspapers) dealing with homosexuals/homosexuality. Recent instances have been a number of comments concerning the appallingly witless and crude caricatures by Matthew Horne and Al Murray in their current television sketch shows.
22. At 28a I just saw anagram fodder for PARTYGOER in (gay report) and did not contemplate the meaning any further. Surely a report by a reporter is a report regardless of their orientation?

    At 3d I was very pleased to have managed the Jimbo’s obscure GLEBE and SIND without any problem. I must be getting a bit better at this.

    There are 4 “easies”:

    14a Woman moaned regularly (3)
    MAE. MoAnEd. Ms West gets a well deserved rest.

    22a That is part of bride’s trousseau (2,3)
    ID EST. Hidden in the last 2 words.

    1d Dull British countryside (5)
    B LAND

    21d Change dress (5)
    SHIFT

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