Times 25,247 – Bird Song

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Average to easyish puzzle with no obscure words, only one very old author and an engineer to provide balance. A little care is needed at 20D to enter the definition and not the cryptic homophone.

Across
1 CHITCHAT – C(HITCH)AT; rabbit (slang) =idle talk as in 12A;
5 OTTAWA – A-WATT-O all reversed; James Watt, influential engineer; Canadian capital city;
9 INITIATE – IN-IT-I-ATE; another 12A perhaps;
10 INSTEP – a trained army on the march is IN STEP except when crossing a bridge; Wellington=boot;
12 TWEET – T-WEE-T; modern mindless malarky;
13 DIRECTORS – two meanings, the second a reference to film directors;
14 LEADING,LIGHT – READING,RIGHT and change R to L; Jack Dorsey perhaps;
18 ANNOUNCEMENT – A-N-NOUN-CEMENT; more 12A;
21 BATTALION – BAT-TA-LION; colonel’s command;
23 ALIVE – A-LI(V)E; I tweet therefore I am;
24 DROWSY – Y-SWORD all reversed; sleepy after all that tweeting;
25 WHATNOTS – (hasn’t two)*; Victorian shelves for holding ornaments; usually hyphenated?;
26 SHERPA – S(HER)PA; Tenzing Norgay no doubt;
27 SPURIOUS – SPUR(IOU)S; SPURS=Tottenham Hotspur, enigmatic football club, subject of many a 12A;
 
Down
1 CHINTZ – C-H-I-N-T-Z are in alphabetical order; weak clue;
2 IRISES – I-RISES; another 12A produced by 4D;
3 COINTREAU – (a neurotic)*; delicious orange liqueur taken with ice sitting on a balcony by the Med;
4 AUTODIDACTIC – someone who is self taught is in a class of one – most tweeters when it comes to grammar, spelling, etc;
6 TUNIC – TUNI(s)-C=Cape;
7 ALTHOUGH – A-L-THOUGH(t);
8 APPOSITE – A-P-PO-SITE;
11 BRINKMANSHIP – B-RINKMANSHIP; the artistry of John Curry perhaps; Cold War strategy devised by John Foster Dulles;
15 LANCASTER – (ancestral)*; Kings Henry IV, V and VI descended from John of Gaunt;
16 BARBADOS – BARB(ADO)S; nasty tweets=BARBS;
17 KNOTHOLE – deal is a type of wood; sounds like “not whole”;
19 KIMONO – KI(MO)N-O;
20 VERSUS – sounds like “verses”; “recital” is homophone indicator;
22 AESOP – SEA reversed-OP; man of fables, born too early to tweet;

36 comments on “Times 25,247 – Bird Song”

  1. All the trouble in the NW: 1dn, 2dn, 9ac, 12ac. The latter took a while to parse aright; noting the lift-and-separate between “time” and “after”. Also wondered why a skater might be skilled in “inkmanship” (11dn) until the obvious dawned.

    24ac reminded me of Godfrey in Dad’s Army.

  2. So we had to wait until Tuesday for a Monday-type puzzle. Easyish, as Jimbo says, but enjoyable puzzle. Somewhere around 30-35 mins for me. KNOTHOLE was my LOI, preceded by WHATNOT, a word that took some time to emerge from the mists of memory. I think my grandmother had a piece of furniture of this sort.. I nearly fell into the trap Jimbo mentions in his intro and at first had VERSES at 20 dn. I liked INITIATE, OTTAWA, ALTHOUGH, TWEET and AESOP, and the cryptic def for AUTODIDACTIC (4 dn) was nice. But SHERPA was so obvious as barely to qualify as cryptic.

  3. Quite enjoyed this over 16′ 2″ online, with the last three being 1dn, 12 and 17. On 1d, I am exercised about 2 things: whether it’s possible to solve it without checkers (you can if you know what you’re trying to do and sift through Chambers Thesaurus entry on fabrics, but that’s by the by) and whether there’s an alternative entry that fills the conditions (not in that list, there isn’t, unless there’s a legitimate plural version of chino). It might go into my list of lexical oddities like facetious, strengths and Knightsbridge.

    I believe this present exercise is known as blogging. If I reduce my entry to 140 characters (perish the thought) would it become tweeting?

    1. With ulaca, I didn’t mind this either; even though I struggled. Given that 1ac is pretty easy to get, it has to be a 6-letter fabric starting with C. So, there’s COTTON, CALICO and CHINTZ. (Though I’m bound to be corrected here.) Then, eliminate the ones not fulfilling the alphabetic conditions.

      Edited at 2012-08-21 08:35 am (UTC)

      1. The former is the longest word with only one vowel. the latter has 6 consecutive consonants. Of course, I could be wrong, and I don’t count anything in Welsh.
        1. Interesting. In a similar vein, from wikipedia:
          Knightsbridge – compound nouns like catchphrase, sightscreen, watchstrap and bergschrund all have six consecutive consonants too
          Sequoia – one of several short words containing all five vowels once only
          Beefily, billowy and dikkops (South African bird) – a few words with all letters in alphabetical order
        2. Consonant letters, that is. In English, the longest stretch of consonant sounds, I believe, is 4, as in “sixths” [k,s,θ,s],

          Edited at 2012-08-21 05:15 pm (UTC)

  4. 39 minutes and don’t really mind CHINTZ or VERSUS. The latter is a homophone for many speakers of Standard British English when they’re not reading individual words from a cue card.

    Last in KNOTHOLE – wanted to lengthen APROPOS at 8dn. A tad uninspiring today compared to the very high standards we come to expect.

  5. I liked the Chintz clue – don’t think I’ve seen that construction before.
    The NW corner held me up longest until I’d had a good think about the middle “problem” part of 1A and thought from checkers it might be “itch” then “hitch” and then the answer came to me.
    In my Cheshire accent, Verses and Versus sound identical – but I made a mistake here momentarily by putting in Averse until realising that 23 was unlikely to be ????V.
    LOI Knothole.
  6. 40 minutes with time lost at the end in the NW corner. Saw CHAT for ‘rabbit’ immediately and was trying to find a 4-letter word for ‘pet’ to put in front and create a problem.

    Generally a very good and straightforward puzzle but I didn’t like the homophone or the feeble clue at 1dn which goes in the same category as assembling words from points of the compass or the musical scale, simply lazy setting.

    Edited at 2012-08-21 08:54 am (UTC)

  7. 11:36 with the same thoughts as lots of others, I imagine. I see I wasn’t the only one who was wondering about “inkmanship”, and 1 down was…well, a bit unusual, certainly. Someone in the club forum thought it shouldn’t be allowed because you can’t solve it without checkers, but in occasional puzzles one clue needs you to have solved another clue first, and I don’t think anyone regards that as an unfair ploy by the setter. Otherwise perfectly fine, standard daily fare.
  8. 22:13 with about the last 10 minutes on the CHINTZ / TWEET pair. My first thought for 1d was CHINOS, and although I knew it wasn’t quite right, I couldn’t get it out of my head (like ‘No More Heroes’, which is still hanging around after yesterday). ‘Chinos’ fits the cryptic, but I sort of knew that the material is ‘chino’.

    Otherwise, really enjoyable. I love BRINKMANSHIP. Great word, fun clue. Nods to CHITCHAT and KNOTHOLE, too. Thanks, setter.

    And thanks, jimbo, for the mention of John Curry. You prompted me to head to Wiki where I was shocked to learn he had died in the 90s aged just 44. That’s terribly sad. He was extraordinary.

    1. I so agree. With so much attention going to Torvill and Dean it is too easy to forget the mould breaking talent of John Curry.
  9. Zabadak was speculating on the official forum as to whether there were any other materials that fitted the alphabetic constraint of 1d. If anyone’s interested, I made a quick electronic search of the dictionary and came up with 15 possible words, although CHINTZ is probably the only bona fide material (singular) amongst them. The whole list is:
    ABHORS
    ACKNOW
    ALMOST
    BEGILT
    BEGINS
    BEGIRT
    BEKNOT
    BIJOUX
    BIOPSY
    CHIMPS
    CHINOS – qualifies as ‘materials’ which is close.
    CHINTZ
    DEHORT
    DIMPSY
    GHOSTY
    I doubt you’ll find a dictionary which has all of these in, but they all exist somewhere!
  10. Just over the half-hour for me. Was hoping to under it, but got held up by KNOTHOLE for a couple of minutes at the end. I had no objections to 1d, but then I blog the ST puzzle every week, so maybe I’m just accustomed to this sort of stuff! I found it all pretty enjoyable.
  11. I have not commented here for ages but this puzzle gave me almost no solving pleasure – luckily it did not waste much of my day either.
  12. 15m here, so quite straightforward. OTTAWA has appeared several times recently, which is why I no longer spell it OTTOWA. I rather liked CHINTZ: I don’t really see why a clue needs to be solvable without checkers (if I tried to do it like that I’d never finish!) but as it happens this one is.

    Edited at 2012-08-21 05:02 pm (UTC)

  13. 27 minutes for me makes it fairly easy for most. Held up inordinately by the CHINTZ/TWEET fusion; I thought a message had to convey some information and I didn’t much care for the former. But I did like INITIATE, being a sucker for that sort of thing.

    Speaking of chintz, a friend of mine can immediately put the letters of any word you give him into alphabetical order (and I mean instantaneously recite them back to you), not to mention count them to boot. He was a great asset in solving anagram clues. When asked how he had acquired this unfortunately unmarketable skill, he replied he had to do something to amuse himself when fielding at cricket.

  14. A very straightforward solve, top to bottom, left to right, ending with SPURIOUS, where I simply hoped there was a Spur Club in London. I have heard of Tottenham Hotspur, but I certainly did not know they are shortened to the Spurs. Other than that, I guess I was on the wavelength today, especially as, after reading 1D first time through, my mind immediately said “Ah, CHINTZ!”, out of nowhere. So I flounced through in about 15 minutes despite my wife chatting with me about various things. No real COD today except to say the surface of the AUTODIDACTIC clue was very clever in its succinctness (but a tad too obvious overall). Regards.
  15. 23 minutes, back on track, like a Monday as many have observed. LOI TWEET, CoD B-rinkmanship for me.
  16. 20:48; the last 5 whole minutes being devoted solely to getting KNOTHOLE. I’m in wholehearted agreement with jackkt about 1d and the other clue types he animadverts against. Also fell into the ‘averse’ trap, and don’t find VERSUS homophonous with ‘verses’. I seem to have been the only one in this group to have read 14ac at first as indicating a spoonerism.
  17. Solved on and off during a journey: about 40 minutes. Held up by initially going for calico (ic, parts of which, in calo, linking alphabetical order). Whom God would destroy he first sends mad. Irritated by the false homophone (with all respect to the Cheshire and no doubt other accents, there’s still a more widely “correct” versus and the setter shouldn’t be denying the distinction). Yes, that was a gold medal to be reminded of, John Curry’s. I saw him in an amazing show at the London Palladium about 35 years back, John Curry on Ice I think. A whole host of performers, including a young boy who glided to the Skye Boat Song. A magical afternoon.
  18. Just over an hour and I didn’t like the clue for 1d either. Also 1ac took a while, since rabbit for chitchat is not really in my vocabulary (but lurking in the back of my mind). Otherwise a sort of run-of-the-mill puzzle. Surprised that SWORD backwards can actually contribute to a genuine English word (well, not too surprising if you look at it, but it is surprising when it crops up in a clue).
  19. 6:29 here for a pleasantly easy puzzle, though I was slightly slowed by stupidly putting in AVERSE for 20dn (and by my usual poor typing).

    No objection to CHINTZ, which went straight in without any checked letters – as I expect it did for anyone who’s read the chapter on “filters” in Kernighan and Pike’s The UNIX Programming Environment which gives an example of how to extract words of six or more letters, with letters in alphabetical order, from /usr/dict/web2. At the time it was written (my copy is dated 1984) this yielded

    abdest acknow adipsy agnosy almost
    befist behint beknow bijoux biopsy
    chintz dehors dehort deinos dimpsy
    egilops ghosty

    They kindly provide the information that egilops is a disease that attacks wheat. Readers are presumably supposed to know the meaning of the others!

    1. It’s interesting to see how much your list differs from mine (above), Tony. Yours doesn’t seem to include plural nouns/verbs, I notice, as no mention of BEGINS, CHIMPS or CHINOS. As indeed mine is missing several of your more abstruse words.
      1. I believe /usr/dict/web2 is based on the 2nd edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which would account for the large number of obscure words.
    2. when I looked this up, I found that it has the alternative spelling “aegilops”!

      JB

      1. How splendid – I might have guessed that “egilops” was an American spelling.

        I see that the OED has it as an abscess or ulcer of the eye (or a lachrimal fistula), a Mediterranean oak (Quercus macrolepis), a cornfield weed, and any grass of the southern European genus Aegilops (or the genus itself). No mention of it as “a disease that attacks wheat”, though.

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