Times 24850 – Musical Madness!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 27 minutes

Music: John Coltrane, The Last Trane

A very moderate puzzle, but I was a little slow on the uptake for some of the clues. In many cases, the literal parts of the clues were either very well-concealed or a bit obscure.

The orientation of this puzzle is almost entirely musical, and entirely rooted in previous eras. This will not be easy for many solvers; you really have to trust the cryptics and hope your answer is right.

Across
1 SUGAR LOAF, anagram of A FLAG, OURS. Not the mountain I was expecting. A ski resort in Maine, among many other mountains of the same name.
6 BRASH, B[unch] + RASH. The meaning of broken rock is not the first thing you think of, and I had to check it after solving.
9 ARIADNE, ARIA + END backwards. Title heroine of the Strauss opera, so continuing the musical theme.
10 NATURAL, TAN backwards + URAL.
11 LOTTE LENYA, anagram of ON TELLY ATE. More music, but at least I’d heard of her.
12 GARB, GARB[o]. Finally, a non-musical actress.
14 Omitted.
15 PAIR ROYAL, PAIR + ROYAL [flush]. Three of a kind in certain card games, which I did not know. I nearly put in ‘full house’, then noticed the literal didn’t fit.
16 IN GENERAL, IN + GENERA + L[ake].
18 Omitted.
20 EARN, EA + R.N. Strangely difficult for me, I could only think of the RAF for a bit.
21 BLITHERING, BLITHE + RING. The phrase ‘blithering idiot’ can help here.
25 OFFBEAT, OFF + BEAT. Should be easy if you have the right crossing letters.
26 ANDANTE, AN + DANTE. We have been seeing a lot of Dante lately, time to go back to Tasso.
27 Omitted.
28 CUT AND RUN, double definition, where ‘section’ is a verb, as in dissection.
 
Down
1 Omitted, this should certainly be your first in.
2 GLISTEN, G + LISTEN.
3 RED HERRING, RED + H + ERRING.
4 OBESE, OBEs + [chequ]E.
5 FUNNY GIRL, double definition referring to the musical that made Barbra Steisand’s career. Thousands of unwanted LPs of the soundtrack can still be found in charity shops everywhere.
6 BUTT, BUT + T[enor]. I put this in, erased it, and put it in again. If you have never heard of Clara Butt, you have to trust the cryptic and the crossing letters.
7 ALREADY. A L + READY.
8 HILLBILLY, HILL + BILLY where a down is a hill and a billy is a policeman’s truncheon. ‘Hillbilly’ is a sub-genre of country music.
13 ARMAGEDDON, ARM + AGED + DON. A frequently-used clue, to say the least.
14 DRIVE HOME, double definition.
15 PARALYTIC, PA + anagram of CLARITY. A rather old-fashioned expression, but I suppose if you can remember Clara Butt…….
17 GIRAFFE, G(IR)AFFE. Not an Irish bull, at least.
19 THINNER, TH[e] + INNER.
22 TRACT, sounds like TRACKED. This literal is rather obscure. ‘Tract’ is a technical term of Roman Catholic church music, as I discovered when I looked it up in the OED.
23 Omitted.
24 BENT, BEN + [everes]T. I had had ‘tort’, having noted the setter’s predilection for obscure meanings of words, but then I saw ‘offbeat’.

42 comments on “Times 24850 – Musical Madness!”

  1. 12:11 .. like you, vinyl, I had to put some faith in the cryptic elements a few times. And had to come here to learn how EARN worked, for which, thank you.

    COD BLITHERING .. is this a fossilized word? I can’t recall ever hearing it without ‘idiot’.

    Last in: LOTTE LENYA (which sounded the least unlikely possibility)

  2. 8:49 – EARN from definition, LOTTE LENYA from wordplay. Nothing too out there, but I had an awful typing day, hit submit and was told I had three errors, which turned out to be AIRADNE, GLRSTEN and RED HEERING. I’m becoming Spenserian!
  3. 25′, the last minute or so spent pondering on BUTT. With a name like that, I bet she had a wonderful voice. I also hadn’t heard of a PAIR ROYAL or TRACT in the relevant sense, but wotthehell wotthehell. But Sotira, you must have heard of Lotte Lenya, no? Kurt Weill, Brecht, ‘From Russia with Love’ even?
    1. I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t. I only knew her as the divinely awful Rosa Klebb. I know a lot of Kurt Weill’s music, but had no idea the two were married. Yawning gap in knowlege now filled.
  4. Didn’t Huckleberry Finn decide to ‘light out for the territory’? Anyway, I assumed that that was the definition, although, come to think of it, I don’t think the expression implies any particular haste. And while I’m thinking–carpe diem, it doesn’t happen that often– ‘sharply’ doesn’t seem necessary.
  5. Comparatively … an absolute age … 32m, with a good deal of that pondering over TRACT. Kevin and Keriothe’s parsing of 28ac seems right to me. Though I’ll admit to not seeing it at all.
  6. This should have been right up my street, so to speak, and indeed it was (LOTTE LENYA first in – I have two of her LPs) until I got stuck with four unsolved in the SE and E?R? at 20ac where I wasted time trying to justify EARL as in ‘Earl Grey’ as the tea connection.

    I’m still not sure I understand CUT AND RUN or why the COD defines BENT as ‘sharply curved’ (justifying the clue) when the SOED, Collins and Chambers don’t.

    20 minutes for all but five and another 18 for them.

  7. Managed it all correctly in quickish time (albeit with several question marks against clues that had gone in on wordplay alone: BRASH, BUTT, LL, PAIR ROYAL), except for the 21/22 crossing pair. After long enough, I stuffed in FLICKERING and CHANT, and was not at all surprised to find them wrong.

    Also, I’m surprised to find some old-hands needed the blog to parse EARN – I know for sure I’m not one of the quicker/better solvers, but this one was one of my first in!

  8. Another easy, and unfortunately arts based, effort today.
    No problem with Lotte, but I confess I didn’t know she could sing, as well as kill you with a poisoned toe-knife..
      1. Thank you.. I listened to it and for the first 20secs I wondered why bother, but by the end it had somehow got quite gripping!
        1. Second vote of thanks. I’ve got some serious Lotte catching up to do. Definitely a compelling voice. And I do miss the days when actresses posed for moody black and white photos, cigarette burning…
  9. 14 minutes.
    I said the other day that I like it when the construction of a clue enables you to get the answer even when something in it is unfamiliar. On that measure this is possibly the best puzzle ever: the vast expanse of my ignorance provided me a large number of opportunities for enjoyment.
    Unknown: SUGAR LOAF, BRASH, LOTTE LENYA, PAIR ROYAL, FUNNY GIRL, Clara BUTT, BILLY, TRACT.
    I think CUT AND RUN is CUT for “section”, RUN for “single” (cricket again) with the definition “light out”. ODE has this as “North American informal depart hurriedly”, which I also didn’t know.
  10. 14 minutes, with some of them idly wondering whether this was a failed TLS, with a clue or two short. Lots of answers (mostly listed above) flickered on the very edges of memory, and I wouldn’t have spelt Lotte right (or known she was Austrian or other than a singer) without the clue. TRACT is a downright obscurity, even to someone like me familiar with Church music. A strange, 1950’s experience.
    Are we running out of ways to clue ARMAGEDDON?
  11. Lotte Lenya? Neva Erdova. On the other hand my parents had a thing for Barbra Streisand and those big musical numbers are lodged in my brain for all time, unfortunately. COD to EARN; ‘service’ gets me every time. 33 minutes.
  12. Fascinating to read her Wiki entry for how, for example, Louis Armstrong, added her name to the original list of Macheath conquests as the composer’s wife. Also, how she found that, after the release of Goldfinger, everyone looked at her shoes when they were introduced to her. But were they poisoned? (In the book, perhaps – I’ve never read any Fleming.)

    34 minutes, finishing with the 6s in the NE.

    Vinyl, you left out an ‘e’ from ‘blithe’. That’s my COD – nice word, and *taking up the cudgels* ‘blithering idiot’ is a real collocation, unlike last week’s ‘bloated capitalist’!

    2. Poisoned with fugu venom, as the indefatigable Wikipedia tells us, complete with photos of Lotte and the offending shoe..
  13. 29:45. No unknown words, but several unknown meanings – BRASH, BUTT, TRACT & PAIR ROYAL. I didn’t recognize the name LOTTE LENYA, but it seemed the most likely arrangement of the letters. Once I saw her picture afterwards on IMDb, I immediately recognised her as Rosa Klebb. I didn’t know she sang until I came here, though.
  14. I started by whizzing through this and thought it was going to be one of my quicker times. I hadn’t heard of BRASH meaning “rocks” or of BILLY as a club. Neither had I heard of PAIR ROYAL. However, all these were easily gettable from the cryptic. I was familiar with all the musical references. Dame Clara Butt used to be a favourite of my parents. And years ago I saw LOTTE LENYA on the stage before her Rosa Klebb role. All done in 16 minutes except for BLITHERING which held me up for another 7. So not my day, after all. Btw, it seems odd that ARMAGEDDON appeared with an almost identical clue in the May 8th Sunday Times cryptic.
  15. 9:20 here, so definitely an easy one. I’d never heard of Clara BUTT, but everything else was OK. I didn’t know LOTTE LENYA played Rosa Klebb, but I’d heard of her from the lyrics to Mack the Knife (Bobby Darin version). I also knew she was married to Kurt Weill, but didn’t know he’d composed it.
  16. Got there in the end but without really knowing quite a lot of the answers (most of the culprits mentioned above). So thank you, vinyl1, and others for spelling things out so clearly. A sense of achievement to complete but, perhaps because there was so much I didn’t know, somewhat lacking in enjoyment.
  17. Please ignore – posting is the only way I can read comments left since my last visit.
  18. 20 minutes in the 19th. Guessed LOTTE, like others knew her by the film name. Knew BUTT but not PAIR ROYAL. Stuffy old puzzle.
  19. Greetings, I always thought that “blithering” meant “complete, utter” so while I can accept “blithe + ring” as thoughtlessly indifferent group, where does “foolish” come in?
    1. According to ODE “blither” is a variant of “blather” meaning “talk long-windedly without making very much sense”.
  20. I don’t know my Austrian actresses and guessed wrongly at Lotte Nelya. Rest straightforward. Wordplay very clear for the few unknowns, e.g. brash.
  21. 18 minutes; must have been right up my alley. Hmm, what does that say about me? Mind you, as with others, I just went with the cryptic on a number of clues. My defining Lotte Lenya piece comes from Mahagony, which The Doors also recorded. I liked CUT AND RUN but COD to BLITHERING
  22. Flew through most of it but ground to a halt with 1 across and 8 down. Was not familar with Brash.

    Louise

  23. About 20 minutes, on the easier side, ending with BRASH, which I didn’t know. I didn’t know of Ms. BUTT either, or PAIR ROYAL, but the wordplay seeemed clear enough. I knew LOTTE from the many versions of Weill’s ‘Mack the Knife’ recorded in the late ’50’s and ’60’s by Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, etc., and that she was Kurt Weill’s wife (correct?). COD to the BLITHE RING.
    On another note, the Sunday New York Times magazine runs a cryptic puzzle every month or so. Yesterday’s version of a cryptic was attributed to ‘Don Manley’, who I expect is the same Mr. Manley familiar to the contributors here, making an appearance on our side of the pond. The puzzle itself was quite easy, which I chalked up to Mr. Manley’s taking it easy on the Yanks in order to initiate them into the joy of cryptics. Thanks to the setter today, to Mr. Manley, and regards to all.
    1. Of course – a year and a continent, give or take a scene or two, out! And thanks to jerrywh for the fugu venom. Wonder when that will crop up in a puzzle, if it hasn’t already.
  25. I would echo everything that keriothe said earlier except, sadly, his time. Mine was more like 46 minutes.
  27. Just under 20 minutes today, which made me think it was easier than usual, perhaps being a Monday!

    Lotte Lenya remembered from Bobby Darin’s “Mack the knife”. Nothing unknown amongst the remainder of the answers. I’m sure Tuesday’s puzzle will be harder.

  28. 8:03 here, for an interesting and enjoyable puzzle. I’m another fan of Lotte Lenya, with her recording of Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden a great favourite.
  29. This was indeed easier than usual (one of the few occasions on which I beat the hour — 44 minutes, says the timer), despite a few obscure entries (BUTT, TRACT, etc.) easily gettable from wordplay. Actually, the clues I liked best were for EARN (very neat surface) and HILLBILLY. Last in were SUGAR LOAF, GLISTEN (reflect?) and ARIADNE.

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