Times 24,480 Virgil and The Day of Madness

44 comments on “Times 24,480 Virgil and The Day of Madness”

1. I didnt like 10 across and 8 down…thanks for an erudite Blog Jimbo!
   as you say harder than average but not a stinker!
2. 30 minutes for all but 5ac, 6dn and 10ac which required another 10 minutes all to themselves.

   IBADAN and FLAM were unknown to me.

   I assumed “Show” in 1dn is one of those instructions to the solver that crop up from time to time.

3. 54 minutes. COD to ECLOGUE, which took me back to Classical Upper Sixth days. Credit to the setter for spreading the 5-letter hidden word in 15, FINAL, across four words. Held me up for some time, especially as I was looking for a word meaning ‘some stuff’! Last in FLAM, after changing 22 from TONAGE to the correct LINAGE. Just as well I was on a *roll*, as I’d never heard of the word with this meaning.
4. 7:54 for this one. One over-hasty answer at 18 – BALLADE, which contains E for English, and the words ALL and BAD which I combined to make “nothing good”. But this was solving like Eric Morecambe playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto – all the components were there, but “not necessarily in the right order”.

   Possibly worth mentioning at 10A that one meaning of “cipher” is “zero” (i.e. “figure 0”) – your dictionary will show other strange meanings of “cipher” as well as the fact that “cipher” and “zero” both come from the same Arabic word.

   Best-known bit of Stanford is probably this.

   1. Ah, takes me back to prep school choir days, that does.
5. 22 minutes, but with a lot of entries where the entry preceeded an understanding of the wordplay: 6, 11, 13 in particular, so just lucky, I guess. Didn’t know LINAGE but fortunately knew (from somewhere) FLAM. We have another word where the changed letter is undefined at 16, and the homophone for FIGARO is pretty gruesome. Still, much to enjoy, not least in deducing how the clues work once you’ve got the answer, and a graceful interlinking of long entries.
   As for IBADAN, it helps if you’ve got lots of Nigerian friends!
   1. “We have another word where the changed letter is undefined at 16” – how so?
      1. “one letter to change” – to what? I agree that the two words are fairly obvious, and the clue makes sense, but my point is that it’s any one letter to any other letter, neither being defined.
         1. My apologies – I was looking at my print-out of Saturday’s puzzle and so, of course, your comment made no sense!
         2. I don’t know whether the setters impose this condition on themselves for unspecified one-letter swaps like this, but as long as you keep the -ed ending (pretty clear from two past tense words in the clue), the only one-letter change in “irritated” that makes a real word is “irrigated”, and vice versa. Unless you can think of another 9-letter pair with one letter different and the same pair of meanings, I can’t see how anyone can go wrong here.
            1. Point cheerfully conceded, though I can do it with six letters (roused and soused/doused). I wasn’t really complaining, though there was a similar comment a few days ago.
6. I suppose if at gunpoint I was asked to nominate the 5 greatest cultural achievements of Western Civilisation, Mozart’s operas Figaro, Giovanni, Cosi and Flute would, in any order, fill the minor places behind, of course, the B Minor Mass of Bach. I came within a whisker of coming here with ?I?A?O at 10ac. I very nearly stuck in MIKADO just to complete the grid, which, on being corrected by this blog, might just have caused me to shoot myself. Also had trouble with the daily composer where for ages I failed to resist the temptation to lift and separate church composer”.
   1. Barry: I was thinking Beaumarchais rather than Mozart. Had to study this for A-level and always wondered what he saw in that Suzanne. This may have had to do with the chap who was reading the part at our all-boys school.
7. Nice effort this, though I’m inclined to agree about 10ac.. perhaps if we don’t talk about the homophones, they’ll go away? 😉
8. 1a in instantly, and quite quick today helped by the down anagrams all coming smartly to heel. Last in noon & Figaro; first met linage with a central e, how I was paid for stringer bits for the local paper – which linked in my brain to 14, my favourite today. 15 m.
9. Got absolutely stuck with 5ac, 10ac and 8d remaining. Finally twigged to FIGARO and guessed IBADAN. I seem to have more questionmarks than ticks, but most have been covered in the blog; nicely done Jimbo. COD to FINAL, a cracking hidden word.
10. Another shower solve I’m afraid. Did most of it in about 20 minutes then couldn’t see the 6dn/10ac confluence for the life of me. The tendency of the shower to bring out the defs (in theme/rheme position, as we say in the ling-biz) worked again. Still wet, getting back to the puzzle I said to myself (there being no one else around): “It can’t be BEIJING because ‘being’ is in the clue”. Just goes to show something or other.
11. Some way off the pace today after a weekend away, and was eventually defeated by the evil twins at 8dn and 10ac. What an awful interlocking pair of clues.

    Meanwhile, whoever it was that wrote recently that a place in Africa would never be clued in The Times as ‘a place in Africa’ will presumably be standing in the corner today after seeing 5ac.

    1. I can’t remember who/when you’re talking about, but wonder if the statement about never seeing something in the Times may have referred to definitions like “in Africa”, with no mention of “a city” (as in today’s clue) or even “a place” – such definitions can still be found in some other papers. I dislike them strongly because “in Africa” is effectively an adjective, not a noun.
       1. Ok, I see what you mean. Haven’t got the exact clue from last time, but the relevant part was “game in Africa” leading to ELAND. I withdraw my earlier comment!
          1. Now identified from a site-based Google search as 24459, where wil_ransome’s final comment says exactly what I hoped it would.
12. I was pleased with my 40 mins as it was not that easy and I didn’t know ECLOGUE, FLAM or ADUMBRATED (in the sense of overshadowed). However, IBADAN is etched in my memory from two chaotic years in Nigeria in the 70’s oil-rush.

    Nick

13. What’s the fuss about? They sound similar enough for me!
    1. Ditto – the only difference I can hear is in the emphasis – “figure O” versus “Figaro”. It does rely on figure being “figger” rather than the American “figyur”, but that’s the norm in UK speech.
       1. Fascinating. I hear “figger” as against “figgar” and they are quite distinctive and different sounds. I also don’t slovenly leave pauses out. I am blessed/cursed with a very good ear but being as musical as you are I’d have thought you would have as well.
          1. What my ear tells me about Figaro (in this country) is that because the stress is on the I, the second vowel is just a schwa – like this version of decorate (the site doesn’t have “Figaro”, alas”).

             What my musical experience tells me is that in singing, you sometimes have to make a conscious effort to separate words, to avoid things that would be understood in speech but sound bad when the stresses from the music emphasise the things you get away with in normal speech. A classic example is “For unto us a child is born” in Handel’s Messiah. A good chorister’s copy of the score will have the words marked up as “For | unto | us …” to avoid “FouRRuntoWuss”.

          2. I have tested this with my perfect-diction husband, and he leaves the gap. Even when pressed to try, he did not turn it into Figaro. I think I put the little stop in too. But I enjoy the buzz about dodgy homophones, they are so part of the puzzle’s rich tapestry!
       2. The first syllable of ‘figure’ would be stressed in the phrase ‘figure O’ (as well as the ‘O’), so for most speakers of Standard British English who cannot or wish not to pronounce ‘Figaro’ in the Italian style, I’d say they were pretty good homophones. Especially if the phrase occurs in rapid connected speech, as in ‘I wanted to know what the figure O was doing in the crossword’.
14. Let’s ignore the fact that one would say “figure zero” or “figure nought” not “figure O” if you think “figure (pause) O” and “figaro” sound the same you either live somewhere very interesting or you need hearing aids.
    1. > you either live somewhere very interesting or you need hearing aids.

       I live somewhere very interesting: 31 Fig Row, Minjup WA. Asked locally (down the pub) about “hearing aids” and they said it’s what you get from listening to too many ****holes.

15. I did have ‘Mikado’. He may be said to be a cipher, but he didn’t fit the rest of the clue. Oh, well, will try again tonight.
16. But that pause is left out (or “leff tout”) in normal speech. That’s why the Two Ronnies had so much fun with “four candles” and “fork ‘andles”.
    1. “Got any Os?” I’ll now think of Jimbo whenever I see that sketch.
17. 17:28 here, after getting stuck on FLAM (didn’t know it) and MAYHEM (trouble parsing the clue) for about 5 minutes at the end. I also got stuck on FIGARO, but only because I convinced myself early on it had to end in -ANO. When I saw the homophone I was perfectly happy with it. Unlike NOON, which I thought was dreadful.

    Jimbo, I think you’re being a bit optimistic expecting everyone to use “figure zero” or “figure nought”. Most people are far too lazy and would certainly say “figure O”. For a crossword homophone it’s a lot closer than some we’ve seen, and for me the only difference is on the emphasis, first syllable or last syllable.

18. An enjoyable puzzle. Failed to get
19. Another enjoyable puzzle. I often find the three letter words quite tricky. It took ages to get EGO and the grid still remained blank with T*M. Neither FIGARO nor NOON entered the frame. I must watch the verb tenses as I had CHIDING before realising after a while that the other clues didn’t work. Particularly enjoyed ADUMBRATED and DANGER MONEY.
20. Okay, beaten by FIGARO (partly because I was also beaten by BEIJING).

    Homophone apart (it’s very dodgy for me, but mostly because I have a poncey way of pronouncing Figaro with a clear central vowel and slight roll of the ‘r’, so the less said about that the better) what’s the “mere” doing in there?

    That’s what did for me. I knew I was looking for a homphone but was thinking about things like ‘But-an-o’ in an attempt to account for the “mere”.

21. This was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar. Stevenson/Evensong and Eclogue are crossword favourites, as is noon for a time. The head meaning of nut was in yesterday’s puzzle so that came fairly easily. Less familiar was the Flam-Linage intersection.

    I finished my muesli with three to go and had to wait until lunchtime to finish. I quickly got Colour-fast, although I disliked the “show”. Then I got the hidden word final with the cunning definition. Finally I got Figaro, which surprised me a bit because, like Jimbo, I would normally say figure zero.

22. This was hard for me; about an hour. I got FIGARO only from the ‘married’ part of the clue, and the homophone part is still over my head. Didn’t know FLAM either, and didn’t see the half dance inside BEIJING until reading the blog – thanks Jimbo. I’m surprised that ‘jive’ is common UK parlance, thought it to be pretty much US slang. My last entry, though, was HEADREST, due to me being somewhat thick and insisting it needed to begin with ‘seed…’. Regards.
    1. Kevin, I think your lads brought the jive here during the last war. It was the teenage dance in the 1950s when rock around the clock and of course Elvis were going strong. We even now have a sedate ballroom jive which we pensioners do along with our tango and quickstep.
    2. “Jive” is one of the five standard “Latin” dances in ballroom dancing contests, now familiar to most of the English-speaking world (Canada and South Africa seem to have escaped so far), from Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing with the Stars.
       1. Thank you both for the jive on UK use of ‘jive’. PB, I have personally escaped from the Dancing with the Stars phenomenon, and plan to continue escaping for the forseeable future. That may indeed put me at a crossword disadvantage from time to time, but should do wonders for my sanity.
23. 35 mins here in one go. Doing fine until got into trouble with the clues many others seem to have toiled over as well, namely 5,6 and 10. Didn’t have a problem with the homonym myself.

    No COD today. Regards to all.

24. Wasn’t it Flanders and Swann who had a song about the weather, to a well known tune by Mozart, that included the line “the barometer has gone down to Figure 0”

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