Times 24,636 Penthouse cohabits with The Iron Lady

33 comments on “Times 24,636 Penthouse cohabits with The Iron Lady”

1. 16 minutes today, working from home since the Central Line’s on strike. A slightly whimsical mix with some commonplace expressions mixing it with some more erudite material. SW was the most resistant, not least because I feared the composer was Messiaen, and I can’t spell that. GOAT MOTH was the only unknown, but with moths it’s usually an animal, so the toga moth remains undiscovered. Minor query as to whether a stage (coach, presumably) is a wagon.
   CoD (among several fine clues) to REPORTEDLY, with special mention to the deliciously naughty TOP SHELF and its wobbly bits.
2. First in SHINTOISM, last in SLUM. How’s that for weird. And speaking of How’s that?, off now for last county game of the season at the Oval to catch up on the latest corruption jokes and to see if KP can book his trip down under.
   1. Pietersen’s a cert. It’s the openers that are our biggest weakness.
      1. No worries. My team Surrey will give England Steve Davis. When bumping into KP at the Oval the other day I asked him if he could get Davis’s autograph.
      2. Our? Which country do you live in?
3. Something of a nonsense here: stuck for far too long on Massenet and then forgot to look again at O-a-e for the tribe. 23 minutes with that omission. No COD.
4. Not so easy for me at all. Couldn’t find the anagram in 21ac and even spent an age staring at ?U?E?Y, absolutely assured that the city was NY. So 42 minutes, alas.
   Like the Great | Dane separation in 4ac, so COD to that.
   Is the “so-called” in 2dn signalling doubt (unlikely!) or just that we’re to find a name?
   1. I took “so-called” to mean “name of a”
5. Very much a game of two halves, with the top going in quickly and the bottom going in only with liberal assistance from online aids. Was thinking ‘Messaien’ for a while at 27, in the mistaken belief that he was spelt that way.

   Elsewhere, an interesting mix of sport (LEEDS) and spice (TOP-SHELF), even if Leeds United will never ever be a “soccer” team to me, nor, I suppose, to the Elland Road faithful. On the day that Wayne Rooney will step out in Basel to win his 67th cap, COD to 16ac for combining the sport with the spice by reminding us of his little bit ON THE SIDE.

6. 9:25 – for me most of the tricky clues were at the top, though not sure why for 5D. I thought of CASTE first time, but somehow decided against it.

7. 35 minutes plus another 20 trying unsuccessfully to work out 23dn so it had to wait until I had access to aids. I’ve met OSAGE before but just couldn’t think of it or the relevant mode of transport for the wordplay. Didn’t understand the ‘topshelf” / ‘blue’ reference until reading the blog – such an innocent life I’ve led! I enjoyed the COMO reference of course and the animal at 20dn reminded me of Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen’ in which ‘caribous lie around and snooze for there’s nothing else to do.’
8. 23 minutes – Couldn’t get any momentum going on this. Last in was ON THE SIDE I just couldn’t make either connection. Liked the Wayne Rooney comment above!
   I remember when Leeds were a real ‘soccer’ team but then about half the team were Scots. Times have changed. We got a draw against Lithuania and have high hopes of edging it over Liechtenstein tonight.
   COD to DODO!
   1. And what Scots! The Grays, Lorimer, Bremner, McQueen, Jordan. Even David Harvey …
9. 13:08 here. I didn’t find it too hard but had a bit of a mental block with ON THE SIDE, and had to trawl through the alphabet for ?I?E at the end. The only 8-letter composer beginning with M I could think of was MASSENET, and I saw the wordplay afterwards. GOAT MOTH was the only unknown, but I put it in fairly confidently without any checkers.
10. Also solved at home, also because the Central Line’s down. The last time there was a strike I tried valiantly to get to work and it took me three hours.
    I found this very difficult, and needed aids to get the unknown MASSENET and OSAGE. Either was gettable from wordplay I suppose.
    Otherwise I struggled unduly throughout, including over some pretty straightforward clues, and limped home in about 40 minutes including the cheats.

11. Oh dear! Made good if unspectacular progress until narcotized by the roundball clue at 25 ac, and meeting another bete noir at 20 ac. Eventually cheated for the excellent REPORTEDLY, then all fell into place in 35 min.
12. About 15 mins until shot down by not knowing/figuring out 23d OSAGE. Some very nice clues, of which I’d choose 13D REPORTEDLY as COD.

    Tom B.

13. I just did not get the cryptic to ‘on the side’, and ‘top shelf’ was very difficult. In the US, ‘top shelf’ refers to the most expensive brands of liquor, so means ‘high quality’. I also considered ‘top whale’ as a possible alternative.

    The rest of it was not bad, with some easy starter clues, such as ‘Osage’, ‘Shintoism’ and ‘end of story’. I did try ‘enjoin’ for a bit in 1 across, but saw it wouldn’t do.

14. Another straightforward enough 45 minutes, though with a couple of unknowns in there that turned out to be correct (27ac / 23d). A few I didn’t fully understand along the way, most notably 13d, but with checking letters and RELY giving me RE.O.T.DLY, it was clear enough. COD 18ac.
15. I laboured for more than an hour on this, so my PB of last Friday now seems like a flash in the pan rather than the start of a new era of speed solving. The only consolation is that I managed to get the Indian tribe and the composer right, for once.

    Today’s musical reference, after Nirvana yesterday, was to the Pixies and CARIBOU. No wonder I struggle with chaps like MASSENET.

16. After filling the NW corner and a bit more of the top half in 3 minutes I thought I was in for a personal best time, but it was not to be. I came to an abrupt halt and only got going again at a slow pace,limping to the finish in 30 minutes.

    Last in was SLUM. My mind was fixed on ‘poor-quality’ as the definition and some sort of accommodation missing its last letter, then reversed as the wordplay. The truth was so much simpler.

    ‘In’ for HIP in 18 is neat, but the cryptic grammar that precedes it (no way cattle thief’s) is very ugly.

17. Not perhaps a stroll, more of an amble in 20 mins. Nothing particularly difficult but a nice inclusive puzzle I thought.

    LEEDS presented no problem as this is my team and where I am from (sorry, john-from-lancs!). COD to HUGELY which, like YARD yesterday, is simple but hugely misleading!!

18. 15:03, with the last couple of minutes spent on the unknown Oklahoman OSAGE (23dn).  Other unknowns were the easy-listening crooner Perry COMO (20ac), the operatic composer Jules MASSENET (27ac), the Israeli prime minister GOLDA Meir (2dn), and the hefty GOAT MOTH (9dn).  Quite a list.  I also failed to make the connection between “capped” and ON THE SIDE (16ac).

    There were a couple of dubious anagram indicators here – “alien” (21ac RULING THE ROOST), “Various” (1dn END OF STORY) – and 17dn isn’t my COD because of the unindicated definition by example (“tee shirt” for TOP).

    Clue of the Day: the straightforward 26ac (BILLBOARD).

    [Off-topic: thanks to Rich North for the reference to New Dawn Fades, my favourite Joy Division track.]

19. About 25 minutes today, and like others the only unknown was GOAT MOTH. Or so I thought. Like vinyl I knew TOP SHELF as US-speak for the position of best liquors, and I therefore equated it with ‘blue’ by the references to Oxford that often crop up here, and that Oxford would be commonly thought of as a very high quality school. I would never have figured out the ‘girlie mag’ bit. So I was able to blissfully enter the correct answer for the wrong reason. Last entry: UNLOOSE, not seeing the ‘facilities’ until the end. Regards all.
    1. Watch out for “top draw” meaning “the best”
20. I was surprised that Jimbo didn’t grumble about the definition by example in 17dn (and Peter I know that not everyone minds about them, but some of us still feel — at least — uncomfortable with them; to say that they don’t hold up the solve isn’t to justify them).

    And I couldn’t see why the setter bothered with ‘so-called’ in 2dn. If the clue had simply said ‘an Israeli leader’ would it have been any worse?

    And is a tenet (27ac) a religious belief rather than just a belief?

    1. But A is needed for the solution (not AN). “a leader of Israel” would have done but.
       1. Yes of course; how silly of me.
    2. If I hadn’t been writing the blog I probably would have done!!
21. An agreeably heterogenous mix.

    17dn – almost a quaint anachronism now.

    (richnorth): Caribou – what a song!

22. A busy day, so solved slowly in several sessions, and without getting MASSENET at the end: never heard of him and I agree with wil_ransome that tenet is any old belief, religious or not (so I didn’t think of that either). I was also playing with Messiaen, but of course he doesn’t fit the crossing letters. And although POLLUTERS was obvious, I couldn’t make the wordplay fit — ute seems to be from down under and I unfortunately am from up above; aren’t local dialects meant to be indicated in the clue?
    TOP SHELF very amusing, even if I understood the implications only after solving the clue — but “wobbly flesh” couldn’t be anything but SHELF.
    1. I forgot to chip in with the usual clip – here is the bit of Massenet “everyone” knows.

       “ute”: Concise Oxford describes it as “N. Amer & Austral/NZ”, but this may be a mistake – the more recent def here lacks the “N Amer.”.

       1. Thank you for the clip — the music does seem familiar even if the composer doesn’t.

Comments are closed.