Times 24884 – Nice bunch of Bests anyone?

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 51:11

I was fairly quick to start, but slow to finish. Nearly resorted to aids, but managed to avoid it, other than to check a couple in the dictionary before writing them in.

The only one that had me really stumped was 3d. I pondered for ages how BEST = FLOWER, but I still don’t see it. I can’t find a River Best, a flowering plant, or a reference to George that might explain it. A pint of best might be considered to flow, I suppose, but that surely can’t be it. Any suggestions?

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 CON + FOUND
9 tROUSSEAU – that’s effects as in personal effects, a trousseau being a collection of possessions put aside by a woman for after she is married. Jean-Jacques is the philosopher. This was one of my last in – I always struggle with philosophers that aren’t in the Monty Python song!
10 GERONIMO – If I’m parsing this right, it’s an &lit – O + MINOR + EG all rev. I’m not, apparently. I was never very happy with it. It’s MINOR + EG rev (wheeled) + O (round). That’s a bit more satisfactory. Thanks to paulmcl.
11 deliberately omitted
12 FAIR ENOUGH = (FIGURE ON A)* + H
14 H + AIR
15 FESTIVE = FIVEs about EST (is from France)
17 E + GO + TRIP
21 NOOK – no & ok being opposing answers to a request
22 GREEN + LIGHT
23 LIBRETTI = BR in (TITLE)* + I
25 COL + ON + SAY – A pretty minor Hebridean Island which few will be familiar with, but gettable from the wordplay & the checkers.
26 ZARAGOZA = R + AGO in A-Z twice rev.
27 BOX + ELDER – a North American species of maple
Down
2 OVER RATE – Today’s compulsory cricket clue. The bowling side are required to bowl a certain number of overs per hour. This is known as their over rate. Deliberately bowling slowly to disrupt the batting side can result in a hefty fine.
3 FLOWERET – This one has me beat. I imagine ‘literally out of this world’ = ET, and ‘piece of broccoli’ is the definition, but I don’t see how ‘Best’ = FLOWER. Plus I’ve never heard of a FLOWERET, only a floret, so I had to guess at this, my last one in. Apparently flower can mean best as in ‘the flower of English youth’, thanks to mctext who got there first.
4 rev hidden
5 D + RO(PO)UT
6 JUMP + THE + GUN = skip over / article / piece
7 DEBONAIR = (B + ED) rev + ON AIR – for once ‘broadcast’ doesn’t mean a homophone.
8 RUNNER + UP – ‘good idea, maybe’ seems a pretty dubious definition for RUNNER. It’s an idea you might ‘run with’, I suppose.
13 NAVIGATION = (ON TV AGAIN + I)*
15 a straightforward anagram, deliberately omitted
16 SNOWBIRD = (BROWN IS)* + D – I hadn’t heard of it, but the wordplay was straightforward enough.
18 TRI(BUN)AL
19 IN + HU(MAN)E
20 PEDICAB = pooPED + I + BACk rev
24 FLEX – dd, the first of which is ‘supply contract’, as in ‘contract in a supple manner’

47 comments on “Times 24884 – Nice bunch of Bests anyone?”

    1. There’s the British folk song (18th cent.?) ‘The Trees They Grow High’, from which
      One day I was looking o’er my father’s castle wall
      I spied all the boys a-playing at the ball
      My own true love was the flower of them all
      He’s young, but he’s daily growing.
      1. Your reference has sent me digging through mounds of sheet music! I used to play the Benjamin Britten version of this which, unfortunately for today’s crossword solvers, doesn’t contain the important word.

        “I went up to the college and I looked over the wall,
        Saw four and twenty gentlemen playing at bat and ball.
        I called to my true love, but they would not let him come,
        All because he was a young boy and growing.”

        A wonderful song. I think a lot of folk singers have recorded it. It also works well in the more sophisticated Britten arrangement.

        1. I didn’t know Britten did a version; the only one I knew, and quoted from, was recorded by Joan Baez back in the 60s.
  2. Very enjoyable 49 minutes and would have been happier for it to be longer! I suspect the snowbird isn’t the avian variety but rather the metaphorical one:
    “informal, a northerner who moves to a warmer southern state in the winter”.
    (NOAD)
  4. Film buffs know Colonsay as the island that Wendy Hiller knew she was going to in the 1945 Powell and Pressburger film. Called Kiloran in the movie, she never actually gets there.

    71 minutes for this tricky pangram that wasn’t, finishing with HAIR. Bottom half went in first, after I’d narrowed down 8-letter cities beginning with ‘Z’ to the capital of Aragon best known through Orwell’s compelling account of the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia, and of course its football team Real.

    Agree that RUNNER is a bit dodgy; SNOWBIRD unknown but no problem. The Snowbirds for The Golden Girls would have had a nice ring. COD to the splendid anagram-plus FAIR ENOUGH.

  5. i think 10ac is not &lit but ‘cry of exhilaration’ is def. then minor eg ‘wheeled’ meaning reversed. round=o
    1. Thanks, Paul. I was puzzling over this and was not convinced by my own default parsing of it as an &lit.
  6. About 90 minutes to fathom this one out, but congratulations to the setter for a top quality puzzle. The almost-pangram cost me a lot of time at the end. With just the NW corner left to do, I was desperately trying to squeeze a Q in front of the U in 1ac.

    Another COD nomination for FAIR ENOUGH, although I shall celebrate the weekend by listening to Pavement’s BOX ELDER on the way home.

  7. COD defines RUNNER as ‘an idea that has a chance of being accepted’ which could cover ‘good’ ideas but not if on further reflection U-turns are required.

    Florets/flowerets are not necessarily broccoli so we have a classic DBE at 3dn.

    I finished in 50 minutes but needed a little help on the geographicals.

  8. Unlike daveperry, I was very slow to start. I went through all the acrosses and half the downs before my first solution, NAVIGATION at 13 down.
    Final solving time 29:50.
  9. Yet again online for lack of printer access, and worse, I started after dinner, which tonight meant 3 scotches before, a glass of pinot grigio with, and a Warre’s after (never mind; I deserved it, believe me). Managed to do it in 44:34, although once again I didn’t really understand a couple of the clues until now (GERONIMO, for instance, or ZARAGOZA, which I only got because I did know the name). Never heard of Colonsay, had to verify it afterwards, but was fairly confident. A number of lovely clues, I thought: 1ac, 9ac, 12ac, 17ac, 18d, 24d. My only quibble: Whoever equates ‘dropout’ with ‘rebel’ (5d) grossly misunderstands the vast majority of dropouts (and, probably, rebels; cf. D.H. Lawrence on the American Puritans).
  10. Too tough for me. Aids to finish but nothing helped with the city where I went the vinyl1 route with ZORAGOTA (A TO Z reversed around R and AGO). Much appreciated though as a learning experience with the tricky FLOWER = best, FOUND = get going, and the wicked anagrams. Quite the most difficult for a couple of weeks, for me at least.
  11. 26 minutes, so quicker than yesterday’s, but to my palate, much less fun. I’d have spelt ZARAGOZA with S’s (Peninsular war and all that) and was for a long time convinced it was ZARATOGA (A TO Z was in there, but nothing else made sense, and in any case it IS spelt with an S).
    To assist me with 7d, Devon Air radio flourished while I lived in the Totnes, and I think I still have the beanie hats.
    I took an age trying to stretch FLORET, which I knew well enough, to fit eight spaces, before twigging FLOWER=best – with WW1 overtones, I think, as in Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s encomion on trench slaughter
    I also toyed with OVERPACE at 2d, almost a good enough answer.
    COLONSAY and BOX ELDER (I bridle at both obscure tree names and Hebridean island names – the latter can be almost any combination of letters) went in on cryptic and dim memory. PEDICAB looked made-up.
    My turn to be (slightly) grumpy!
  12. Thanks z8 for the Ella Wheeler Wilcox poem. She, Eleanor Wylie and Edna St Vincent Millay are my favourite American poets after Emily Dickinson. Somewhat muzzy this morning after daughter’s birthday party last night and tottered through this in about an hour: a rather clever one, as yesterday’s. Wasn’t helped by inventing the ego-prop. COD to floweret for looking all too easy once it’s there but lurking all too well.
  13. 15 minutes for almost all of this. Left with _E_ICAB at 20dn I spent another 15 minutes trying to think of the relevant synonym for “pooped” before giving up. My left leg now has a large self-inflicted bruise. Dunce’s cap for me today.
    I enjoyed the rest of it.
      1. Actually if my mind had gone in that direction I would probably have got the answer.
  14. Needed to check (cheat?) for FLOWERET (thanks to those who have explained wordplay) and puzzled by defintion of LIBRETTI as ‘books’ (but couldn’t be anything else). COLONSAY existed only somewhere in deep recesses of my knowledge and was brought to the surface by unambiguous wordplay. Overall an enjoyable 40 minute challenge, though today’s cricketing clue looks a bit esoteric for those not enamoured with the game. Thanks, Dave, for, as ever, a helpful blog.
    1. I think that “book” meaning “libretto” is quite common in musical theatre. Though I’ve always thought it to be a rather strange usage.
      1. There was a memorable episode of Law & Order, in its heyday, featuring a couple of dumb but dangerous mob guys called Biscotti and Libretti, a.k.a ‘Biscuits and Books’.
        1. I love it! I used to be addicted to L&O but stopped watching some time ago. I think it clashed with something. Besides the spark seemed to have gone. It great to see real wit in a TV series. (That’s what drew me to Buffy and her vampires. I didn’t fit the teenage
          demographic being over 60 but I was entranced by the witty scriptwriting)
          1. The series lost its heart when the late Jerry Orbach left. His Lennie Briscoe is my all time favourite TV cop, and I suspect his drier than dust delivery inspired a lot of that humour from the scriptwriters. The episode was called ‘Nowhere Man’. If you ever come across it, it’s a classic, with Lennie and his best partner, Ed Green:

            Ed Green: Frederico Libretti, you’re under arrest for the murder of Robert Parenti.
            Frederico Libretti: Never heard of him.
            Ed Green: You should’ve, you killed him ten years ago.

  15. A bit harder than most of late. I thought the anagram at 12A was very well disguised.

    Don’t like 3D FLOWERET. The word itself is obscure, the use of FLOWER is a rare usage today and it should be “a piece of broccoli, perhaps”

    Didn’t realise what a SNOW-BIRD is, thougt it was of the feathered variety. Had no problem with ZARAGOZA or COLONSAY. 30 minutes to solve.

    1. Collins also has SNOWBIRD as a cocaine or heroin-user.

      Missed you yesterday, Jim. I was looking forward to reading your comments.

      1. Away all day playing golf Jack. Will get around to it, probably over the weekend
      2. Managed to do it Friday lunchtime Jack. Have added a post to your original entry
    2. Not as rare as the cruciverbal use of ‘flower’ to mean river, I’d imagine! A recent(ish) example of its use occurs in a 1989 article in the mainstream Scottish newspaper the Herald: ‘Scotland is losing the flower of its youth to greener pastures in England, Europe, North America and the Antipodes at an alarming rate.’
  16. Stumped today by the geographicals, as I’d heard of neither the city nor the island. The latter proved impossible in any case, as I’d thoughtlessly entered COAX at 24d.

    Best wishes to all for a lovely weekend.

  17. I gave up on this after 55 minutes with 25a unfinished. I left it at COLON?A?. I could have found it in a gazeteer but life’s too short.. This puzzle was a definate challenge and I was surprised that I ended up with only one unsolved answer. My brain hurts. (Maybe I need a new one from Curry’s)
  18. About 30 minutes, not helped by, lake Janie, trying COAX instead of FLEX for 24D before unravelling the wordplay for the unknown (to me) COLONSAY. I didn’t know the game of ‘fives’ either, but that couldn’t be anything else. I agree with the comments on the negative side of FLOWERET, which to me is a ‘floret’. The BOX ELDER is very common over here, in fact it’s almost rife, so from this vantage it can’t be considered obscure. And yes, I too thought the street maps were A TO Z’s, or A TO ZED’s, but I remembered the city after a couple of crossers went in. Regards to everyone.
  19. 12:08 for me for another immensely enjoyable puzzle. My compliments to the setter.

    Like others I wasted time with FLORET, but I have absolutely no objection to FLOWERET.

  20. Just over an hour (or rather just under an hour, but I managed to erase the grid twice, once while trying to pause and once while trying to submit) but with one wrong. I was convinced it would turn out to be COLONSAY (which I have never heard of) until I came here and discovered it was ZARAGOSA (now where did that S come from and why didn’t I check the wordplay?).

    COD to CONFOUND or maybe PIPE DOWN, but nothing else struck me as being particularly clever. I believe my American cookbook refers to flowerets of broccoli, so no problem with that.

  21. Always intrigued how solvers’ diverse interests mean simple answers to some people are impossible to others and vice versa. Zaragoza was my first in having spent two weeks there last month. I’m also familiar with Colonsay and had no problem there Conversely I had to guess Rousseau as had no idea of trousseau which my wife informs me features in ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’ ! Also stumped on 2d and 1ac. Yesterday I had no problem with the much lamented Miles and Mummerset (knowing both the actor term and the comic review skit – but had no clue about Pauling or Hooke or Montaigne. I guess breadth and diversity is the key to a good puzzle
  22. I am increasingly amazed at the lack of general word knowledge displayed on this blog day after day. Okay, so most commentators on the site are pretty good at solving cryptic crossword clues, but every day there seem to be various moans about never having heard of this word or that name.

    On Friday, there were various comments about “not knowing” the everyday words and names BOX ELDER, FLOWERET, ZARAGOZA, COLONSAY, SNOWBIRD and PEDICAB. Don’t the solvers on this site actually read the rest of The Times and pick up these items on a daily basis? Or read other newspapers and websites? Or even just browse dictionaries when they’re not solving crosswords?

    I shall be interested to see what complaints there are next week!

    1. I would like to know where on this blog anyone has ‘moaned’ about never having heard of this word or that name. And I would also like to know what issues of the Times contained everyday words and names like BOX ELDER, FLOWERET, ZARAGOZA, COLONSAY, SNOWBIRD, or PEDICAB. On the other hand, I am not in the least amazed to see someone–especially an anonymous someone–making implicit claims to intellectual superiority on the basis of a putative large vocabulary. Given the high standard of good manners maintained by contributors to this blog, I will have to confine myself to referring to, rather than expressing, my contempt for the sort of attitude Anonymous displays.
      1. I’ve only just read this thread, which is why I haven’t replied before now. I have to say that the general impression I get from this blog is that there is a certain amount of moaning about words that people don’t know, and I sometimes find it a little exhausting myself.

        I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve done a lot of crosswords, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that my vocabulary is larger than the average, and I certainly wouldn’t want to look down on anyone younger and less experienced whose vocabulary was smaller. But I groan when someone damns a clue as “terrible” simply because they haven’t previously come across one or more of the words involved. My advice to them would be: keep solving, keep reading, and your time will come. And don’t complain until you’ve put in your 10,000 hours of crossword solving.

  23. Don’t feed the troll Kevin!
    How right you are though. I’ll confess I don’t spend much of my life “browsing dictionaries” but I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
    1. I’m so far out of it, I sometimes surprise even myself: I just now Googled “Don’t feed the troll” to see–although I knew (so I thought) the meaning–if it was an anglicism, only to discover that there are people out there who do that sort of thing! Who knew? Well, everybody but me, no doubt. Anyway, point taken, Keriothe, and thanks for increasing my word knowledge!
      1. For what it’s worth this phenomenon is very new to me too, and I find it as amazing as you. Whether our new friend is a proper troll or just someone accustomed to browsing dictionaries I guess we’ll never know. Either way it’s someone with way too much time on their hands.

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