Times 24896

30 comments on “Times 24896”

1. Somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes–had to answer a couple of phone calls–so I guess it wasn’t particularly difficult, especially for a Friday; but I enjoyed it, by and large. I do not, however, like clues like 24ac, which say, in effect, ‘The solution contains any or all of the letters I,V,X,C,D,M’. I spent too much time trying to think of a composer named B______I, even when I got the L; for that I may give it a COD, although I also liked 5d, 6d, & 14d. Fortunately, we’ve had RATTY a couple of times recently, since in the US it means ‘tacky, shoddy’ not ‘testy’.
2. Untimed again: but felt like a medium difficulty puzzle where the top right was my downfall. I just couldn’t see the darn anagram at 10ac: looking for a reversal of “pose”. That made AND HOW almost impossible: so last in.
3. MAde a dog’s breakfast of this, being tricked like Kevin into looking for a composer beginning with B and ending in I. That was the last in after 72 minutes. Coming here I find I managed to get one wrong through carelessness: ‘sheerwater’ for SHEARWATER. Rather liked ASOCIAL, which is how I feel now with a bit of 27 thrown in.
4. Friday nerves must have got to me again (even though it’s not my turn to blog) because I looked at the clues for more than 5 minutes before finding one I could solve with any degree of certainty (5ac on my second read-through), however things improved rapidly after that and I completed in about 35 minutes.

   I was completed baffled by the wordplay in 2dn so I had a “Doh!” moment on arriving here. I knew THORIUM, as so often with elements, courtesy Mr Tom Lehrer.

   I knew ALBINONI too but that didn’t prevent him going in last having wasted time looking for a composer B??I??O?I. Incidentally, he’s probably best known for a work for many years ascribed to him but actually written more than 200 years after his death, the Adagio in G Minor for violin, strings and organ. It’s just possible he may have contributed a fragment of music on which it was based.

   Unknown to me but worked out from the wordplay were AQUA REGIA and ANANIAS.

5. I see Jack beat me to it, but I’ll post this anyway, if only for the Python sketch:

   Though you haven’t hard of Albinoni, it’s a safe bet that you’ve heard ‘his’ well-known Adagio in G minor for violin, strings and organ continuo, even if only as the ‘sombre music’ designed to protect Graham Chapman from the world’s funniest joke.

   1. It was also used ad nauseam to accompany Wendy Craig’s mooching about in the park in countless series of ‘Butterflies’.
   2. I believed until looking it up today that it also accompanied Julie Christie mooching about in a funeral vaporetto in Don’t Look Now. Turns out that indeed is “something completely similar”.
      1. Saw that film recently after it topped charts of Britain’s greatest ever film and wondered what all the fuss was about.
         1. Perhaps you had to be there at the time. Julie and Donald getting it on was the sexiest thing you could see in cinema without a dirty raincoat, and the denouement truly shocking for the first time audiences.
            Personally, I would not have it anywhere near my top ten: Roeg’s own Walkabout was a much better movie for one and the original Wicker Man a better British shocker. But it was quite a stand out in its time.
            1. Agree about Wicker Man – Walkabout’s greatest strength is its lack of sentimentalism. The Agutter character never gives a jot about the Aborigine, as most of us wouldn’t … in the circumstances. Faking It, a book edited by Digby Anderson, which includes a chapter on the outpouring of ‘grief’ after Diana’s death, is dedicated to this trait, which, if not peculiarly British, is at any rate peculiar.
      2. Before we finish with Albinoni… I was having lunch outside a bar in Venice a couple of years ago and got talking about music to a chap at the next table. (A local artist, Ludovico de Luigi, whose works can be viewed on

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         Before we finish with Albinoni… I was having lunch outside a bar in Venice a couple of years ago and got talking about music to a chap at the next table. (A local artist, Ludovico de Luigi, whose works can be viewed on <impossiblevenice.com>) He told me that he is currently living in the house once occupied by Albinoni. That’s the sort of name-dropping that I find impressive!
         1. I must find out how to post links! Sorry for that.
            1. It’s quite easy.

               1) use the following code, [a href= ]here[/a], where ‘here’ represents the part of your sentence you want to be linkable/clickable, but replace the square brackets with angle, or ‘diamond’, brackets

               2) get your link, i.e. this blog entry, http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/722160.html [no need to click this!], and place it in the space between the = and the > (which you’ve changed from ])

               3) instead of ‘here’, write whatever you want, in this case, ‘today’s blog’, and add it to whatever you’ve already written

               Thus, ‘This should take you to today’s blog.’

6. 16 minutes today, though I initially thought I was on for a really fast time. I tried hard to make FINAGLE fit 25 across, but it resolutely refused to be misspelt. It did, however, make getting FANDANGLE, today’s jamais couché avec, much harder. I also have to report the careless entry of SHEERWATER before counting the As. Humpty Dumpty was an OVALOID (yes, I know it’s not a word and abuses the cluing) before ALBINONI made it impossible – the composer I twigged when I realised that B, LA and I just didn’t provide enough letters.
   I agree that NORTHERN is poorly clued, but I liked both ASOCIAL and STEAM out of a relatively low key batch. Lots in this one to trip the speedy and unwary.
   Might I venture in advance that the presence of two “science” clues mitigates the obscure Scripture reference (though he does make it as a generic liar in most dictionaries)?
7. 19 minutes. I enjoyed this a lot. There’s quite a lot of rather arcane stuff in it, but when the unknown and unfamiliar can be teased out with certainty from wordplay the result is most satisfying.
   DUCK (in the sailing sense), AQUA REGIA, and ALBINONI were completely new to me. THORIUM, OBITER, DHOW and FANDANGLE were unfamiliar but rang a bell. At least I knew ANANIAS from crosswords past.
   Like others I spent ages trying to find a composer beginning with B.
   I didn’t understand NORTHERN, so thanks Dave.
8. Crippsian – a word invented by me this morning to describe my performance today.
   Harry Cripps, an erstwhile and much-loved captain of Millwall FC (a “character” – remember those?) was possibly the least gifted footballer ever to be paid for it, a fullback (remember those?) who aspired to pedestrianism and bought every feint and dummy of his opposing winger (remember those?).
   Just one of many examples: At 14 I had ???? R?G?S. Looking for “corrosive say”, well, lime is corrosive isn’t it? and it sounds like Lyme, so in went LYME REGIS even though it made no sense, and I never really recovered.
   Only got RATTY on first scan and thereafter only got rattier.
9. It isn’t the wittiest or cleverest puzzle, but I thought this was a Goldilocks puzzle for a weekday – not too easy, not too hard, enough obscurity to test the memory but ultimately nothing unknown. I agree 2dn is a bit weak but there was plenty of good stuff as well – I liked STEADY, AQUA REGIA and BEHEMOTH among others.
10. I seemed to get the difficult ones quickly and have a complete block on the most straight forward. It took me ages to get Vintage even with all the crossing letters. I stumbled in the top right corner as I couldn’t get 5 across for some time and as a result I struggled with 5/6/7 down. An enjoyable puzzle though.
    Louise
11. It is good to see the gradual increase in the use of terms scientific such as AQUA REGIA and THORIUM (used to be used in generating nuclear power – not sure if it still is) even if we do also have to endure the obscure composer.

    It’s about 2 years since I last did a topic analysis of answers and I might repeat the exercise in the autumn. 28A illustrates some of the difficulty in undertaking the exercise. I think ANANIAS is well known enough term to indicate liar to not really count as a “religious” reference but for sure not everybody will agree.

    Straightforward 20 minute puzzle. Agree 2D a bit weak.

    1. As someone whose ignorance spans all the disciplines I must say I enjoyed all of today’s obscurities: scientific, musical and religious.
12. minor quibble on the parsing, I think it is a nana’s around i
    1. Yes, I clearly miscounted the As and Is in my haste to post the blog. It could feasibly be A NAN IS about A, but yours is probably better. I have changed the blog accordingly.
13. 20:18 with one blooper.

    Today’s lesson learned: when it’s an anagram, check that the letters you enter correspond to the letters you’re jumbling in your head if it’s not a common word. And to think I patted myself metaphorically on the back for spotting sheerwater (sic) so quickly.

    COD to fandangle for the word itself if nothing else.

14. Defeated by all those ‘a’ words today: ANANIAS, AND HOW, AQUA REGIA, ALBINONI. Saw where the wordplay was trying to direct me but didn’t know enough to be able to come up with the right answer, even with checkers in place.

    Thanks, Dave, for the very helpful blog and to jackkt for reminding me where I had heard of the word THORIUM (I had no idea what it was).

15. I’m having a bad composer day today, because I could not for the life of me get ALBINONI – I thought there was someone called ALBIONI but it wouldn’t fit, and why wasn’t the B at the top. Similarly, the composer at 1 down in today’s Independent eludes me.
    This does not mean I’m going to spend the weekend listening to classical music.
16. I spent about 40 minutes on this, ending with LEVER and VANILLA, both of which had me stumped for ages. the rest I found largely straightforward. As has been observed the obscurities could be got from the wordplay mostly, though had to guess at SHEARWATER. I didn’t like the clue to 2 for reason given in the blog. I did like the rather neat anagram in 22 (which may be an old chestnut) and “Old Roman cardinals” in 24.
    Overall, a nice Friday puzzle.
17. Same story as others, trying for a composer beginning with B ,ending with I. That’s my last entry, needing all the checkers to come up with an answer (read: guess)that seemed to fit the wordplay. Happy it worked, both for the obscure composer, and the AQUA REGIS. I don’t think ANANIAS is obscure, although that didn’t stop me from at first misspelling it as ‘Ananais’. About 40 minutes, COD to the clever and succinct AND HOW. Regards to everyone.
18. I enjoyed this in spite of never having heard of AQUA REGIA. Knew THORIUM from Tom Lehrer’s element song. I got ALBINONI from the checking letters without fully working out the cryptic. Same for NORTHERN. Slowish but satisfying. 31 minutes.
19. 5:59 for me. Nice to post a half-decent time for once – so, yes, I enjoyed it: no problems, no complaints.
20. I thought perhaps Northern could be interpreted as a “norther” N ie a line going further north

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