Times 25361: Old Possum’s Books of Other Animals

30 comments on “Times 25361: Old Possum’s Books of Other Animals”

1. 30 mins for all bar the unknown dolphin and the unknown coin. My best guesses then failed me, as, despite knowing (vaguely) Gus, I could make head nor tail of ‘ramp’ for racket/swindle (tossing a coin, I plumped for ‘grampas’ – on 40 a day), and ‘moisote’ was the closest I got to a concatenation of unknowns at 20.

   Incidentally, I’d also never heard of ‘cheesecake’ in the smutty sense (beefcake, yes), and bunged it in on the assumption that cheesecake must be a variant of the cheesecloth stuff that was so, unaccountably, popular in the 70s.

   Edited at 2013-01-02 02:42 am (UTC)

2. ….since my second in was ‘high tables’, treating the clue as a weak cryptic definition of where the professors and members of the senior commons room sit in the dining hall. This thoroughly messed up my solve, since I was stuck in the NW for at least 20 minutes before I realized my error by seeing ‘regicidal’. So my time was a poorish 51 minutes.

   At least I had heard of ‘moidore’, and got ‘chamois’ without too much ado. It was ‘Assam’ that made me feel foolish, since I drink it frequently. But my last in was ‘grampus’, when I finally saw that the cat was ‘Gus’ and not ‘pus’ with the invisible shortening indicator.

3. 33 minutes. I was really pleased to work out the coin at 20dn, never having heard of it, but MOIRE came up recently and that helped me on my way.

   I also didn’t know the meanings required at 26 and solved it from what I thought was the literal i.e. ‘tart’ which turned out not to be quite what was intended.

   I knew the creature at 9ac but not its heavy-breathing quality which is mentioned in Chambers but not in the other usual sources. The sure-footedness of the CHAMOIS is covered only by Collins but has come up before so did not delay me. It seems a rather strange quality to single out for mention in a dictionary definition.

   Edited at 2013-01-02 02:52 am (UTC)

   1. Thanks for the heads-up re Chambers. I’d just assumed it was a ref. to the air-breathing nature and heaviness of the various cetaceans that go by the name. The etymology helps this:
      ORIGIN early 16th cent.: alteration (by association with grand [big]) of Old French grapois, from medieval Latin craspiscis, from Latin crassus piscis ‘fat fish’.

      Your more likely reading included on edit.

      Edited at 2013-01-02 03:17 am (UTC)

4. 35:27, slow enough but then made worse by a typo (LIBRETTOE) leading to 2 wrong. Didn’t help that I didn’t know CHOP AND CHANGE or ROUND THE TWIST, or RAMP in the required sense. Haven’t we had MOIDORE before? It was hiding just below consciousness for a long time.
   1. A site search doesn’t show a previous entry. However, PB’s useful search engine [http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=008203314607712666085%3Ap2lg1kotbqw%5D shows it was in a 2011 Azed where, interestingly, its anagram of ROMEO (19ac, here) was exploited.
5. Ref the LJ admin message at the top. Although my ISP is not blocked I tried downloading Opera and selecting Turbo mode (It’s an option at the foot of the screen) as suggested and this has definitely improved my speed of access to LJ and navigating around it. It’s not as good as normal service which hopefully will be restored soon, but it’s worth considering if you are fed up with waiting. Be sure to click Options when you run the .EXE installation and select accordingly if you don’t want Opera to take over as your default browser.
6. 24 minutes today, but without understanding ‘Cope without it’ in the first clue. The coins come up in John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’, second verse, a lovely poem I’ve made countless children learn.

   Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
   Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
   With a cargo of diamonds,
   Emeralds, amythysts,
   Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

   1. To cope is to “hack it” (slang). (Hope your countless kids could!)

      Edited at 2013-01-02 10:05 am (UTC)

      1. Of course. Neat. No, the kids all complained of coercion and restriction of personal choice and liberty and being “made” to do anything at all. At least in some parallel universe becoming all too real. No, they enjoyed it, particularly the final verse which I recommend to one and all.
   2. That’s where I got my MOIDORE from as well. I learned a lot from that poem when I was in school. “Quinquireme”, “Ophir”, “moidores” – plus how to spell “Isthmus”. Ann
      1. And do you remember the exhilarating last verse that starts, ‘Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack…’ – ?
         1. It’s so wonderful that after all the exotic cargoes we come to the 20th cantury with the “cheap tin trays”. I live by the sea and whenever I see boats on a rough day I think of that lovely phrase “butting through the channel”. (Btw, as a Star Trek fanzine editor in the 70s, I printed a version of this poem which added a verse about cargoes that might be carried through space in the 23rd century. It lends itself to imaginative updating. If I was still teaching, I’d set that as an assignment.) Cheers Ann
            1. Would you share that extra verse?
               1. I don’t know whether I’ve still got the fanzine but I found the verse in an online fanzine review site. I was amazed that this stuff is being sold for silly prices on ebay! My memory was a bit off. It’s 3 verses and it’s set in the Star Trek universe so a nodding acquaintance with the original series would help. Here goes:

                  Federation Starship from distant Orion
                  Scudding home from shoreleave on Starbase Nine
                  With a cargo of Cyborgs
                  Tribbles and IDICS
                  Quadrociticale and Denebian wine

                  Romulan Commandship, outward bound from Remus
                  Slipping past the Enterprise (while Sulu snores)
                  With a cargo of dilithium
                  Helmets, Amazons
                  “Teach-Yourself-Vulcanian” and gold-fringed drawers

                  Crafty Klingon Cruiser with a bloodstained poopdeck
                  Crawling through the Galaxy by devious ways.
                  With a cargo of glommers
                  Redeye, black-jacks,
                  Pornographic postcards – and Koloth’s stays.

                  This was written by a lady who is still one of my closest friends and who probably wishes to remain anonymous!

                  1. What a delight. As someone who’s never watched Star Trek it’s all the more interesting somehow. I mean, I can imagine Koloth as a Victorian belle dame, and maybe she was…but I’d rather not know. Many years ago I used to read Asimov and it reminds of his centuries of centuries forward to an extent, but with added neologistic spice. Many thanks.
                     1. Koloth is actually a commander/general. A bit like Mussolini where his image was concerned. Glad you liked it.
7. As an unathletic schoolchild one of my old aunties described me as ‘puffing like a grampus’, so that came to mind fairly readily.
8. It being part of my New Year resolution and general stoutness of heart to get back into regular solving (without the aid of Ford Pills) and taking the warning at the top of the page as a thinly disguised dare, I find myself logged in and commenting. Not much to say beyond that, except that I found it pretty easy except for GRAMPUS which I couldn’t find at all. I also got MOIDORES courtesy of Cargoes, which I memorised a few years back to stave of senility (no joy there). Word of the Day – DISINCENTIVIZE courtesy of a tennis commentator at the Brisbane International.
   1. I don’t believe this one little bit. A tennis commentator managing five whole syllables in one word? Impossible!
9. 12:04. Nice puzzle with a couple of things dragged back from the far recesses of memory just in time. I suspect childhood reading of Masefield may also have given me the trickiest one, and not Hart to Hart (I seem to remember that when they met, it was moidore).
10. Straightforward 11:16 here. I also knew of MOIDORE courtesy of John Masefield, so that went straight in. I knew GUS was the theatre cat, but waited for a couple of checkers before writing in GRAMPUS, as I wasn’t sure of the “heavy breather” bit. I also wasted far too much time early on sorting out the anagram at 6dn, otherwise it might have been a rare sub 10 mins.
11. Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir:
    such wonderfully sounding exotic words ,drilled into my brain by rote as a child!

12. I thought this was a rather good puzzle with some smooth surfaces and a few effective deceptions. A nice mix of clues, as the blogger says.
13. Didn’t time this, though no real hold-ups until the end where GRAMPUS and MOIDORE went in from the wordplay, PHARMACEUTICALS from the definition and CHEESECAKE went in based on fitting in the spaces.
14. About 30 minutes with some guessing at the end for MOIDORE, and also the (what must be) UKish expressions for ROUND THE TWIST and CHOP AND CHANGE. GRAMPUS also somewhat a stab in the dark as I didn’t recognize this meaning of ‘ramp’. But overall, fairly nice. Regards.
15. This is the first time I’ve been able to access LiveJournal for days. So Happy new year everyone.
    I didn’t like this. Both GRAMPUS and MOIDORE are the kind of clues I hate: obscurities clued by obscurities. There’s no need for this sort of thing and it just turns what should be a test of wits into a trial of general knowledge. As it happens I knew the fabric but I decided (correctly as it turned out) that I wasn’t going to get near GRAMPUS so I cheated. 20 minutes to that point.
16. Done in by the GRAMPUS/CHAMOIS crossing!
17. 8:17 for me. No problem with either GRAMPUS (a byword for puffing) or MOIDORE (familiar from Cargoes). However, I wasted a little time (clearly not nearly as much as vinyl1) agonising over HIGH TABLES for 1dn. And, with B,H and V in place, wasted rather more time trying to justify BEETHOVEN for 16dn. Nice puzzle.
18. All but one in less than 20 mins. Didn’t know Moidore and guess was wrong.

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