Times 25,713 – Winter Weather Edition

There’s a fair amount of GK here but none of it really obscure. A pleasant enough solve but not a taxing puzzle.

Across
1 GROUP,CAPTAIN – (a cop it rang up)*; Sir Douglas Bader CBE DSO* DFC* perhaps;
9 LIPPI – sounds like “lippy”; Filippo 1406-1469 from Florence;
10 AGINCOURT – A-GIN-COURT; St Crispin’s Day 1415 English victory for Henry V;
11 HASH,MARK – HASH-MARK; drug=HASH; biblical book=MARK; #;
12 FENNEL – FE(N-N)EL; think=FEEL espicially in trite news interviews;
13 DETONATE – D(NOTE reversed)ATE;
15 LEANED – LEA(r)NED;
17 GENERA – GEN-(ARE reversed); dope=info=GEN;
18 VENTURER – (never)* surrounds TUR(n); as in the FORBES Midas list;
20 OOMPAH – OOMP(A)H; Salvation Army Band;
21 FLAT,SPIN – FLAT-S(P)IN; pawn=P (chess); Government response to winter weather;
24 CHEMISTRY – CHEMIS(e)-TRY; that certain je ne sais quoi – makes the world go round;
25 QUITO – QUIT-(eur)O; capital of Ecuador;
26 SECOND,PERSON – SECOND-PER-SON; bit=small amount of time=SECOND; a=PER; definition is “you”;
 
Down
1 GALAHAD – (A-LAG reversed)-HAD; Knight of Round Table, the illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic;
2 OPPOSITE,NUMBER – OPPO-SITE-NUMBER; china(plate)=mate=OPPO; a counterpart;
3 PRIAM – P-R(I)AM; king of Troy during the Trojan War;
4 ALACRITY – A-LA(CRIT)Y; opposite of Government’s reaction to winter rains;
5 TWIG – two meanings, “get”=suddenly understand=TWIG=PM once Tory heartlands flooded;
6 INCLEMENT – IN-C(L)EMENT; home=IN; litre=L; no comment;
7 RUNNING,REPAIRS – (in prang insurer)*; Government’s panic solution to winter weather;
8 STOLID – DI-LOTS reversed;
14 NARRATIVE – NA(R-RA)TIVE; R from R(elated); RA=Artist;
16 DEPLOYED – DE(PLOY)ED; the Army and Navy down here to counter flooding;
17 GROUCH – (tu)G-R-OUCH; me in the morning;
19 RANGOON – RAN-GOON; old Colonial centre now renamed Yangon;
22 TOQUE – TO(r)QUE; a chef’s brimless hat;
23 OTTO – OTT-O; rose scent;

45 comments on “Times 25,713 – Winter Weather Edition”

  1. 46, so 5 minutes adrift of my target. Didn’t know the hat, and the only Lippi I know is the one currently coaching Guangzhou Evergrande, just 70 miles from where I sit writing this. A nice little earner, if a bit of a comedown, for the silver fox, who led Juve to multiple scudetti and Italy to Il Mondiale.
  2. I had a problem getting started on this one but eventually found a foothold in the SE with RANGOON. I gradually worked up some steam and was surprised that I eventually completed it without resort to aids, though it took me 53 minutes.

    I associate OOMPAH more with Souzaphones and tubas than with trombones but can’t find any definition that’s more specific than brass instruments in general.

    Edited at 2014-02-18 08:47 am (UTC)

  3. Several good clues here: the octothorp (11ac), “mother” for NATIVE (14dn), the tiny def in 16dn but … best of all: 21ac which gets my COD.

    Seems the weather is another “off-topic” that passes without reprimand. So … it’s bloody boiling here today with 37˚ predicted tomorrow.

      1. Now … that would be in the category of politics. So definitely off-topic.

        However, the clod we call a “Prime Minister” went to Longreach the other day to inspect the drought … and it rained for the first time in years. We could send him to sort out your troubles if you like.

        Oops! Done it again eh?

        Edited at 2014-02-18 09:55 am (UTC)

  4. Enjoyed this despite quick excursions into Cairo instead of Quito, Lowry instead of Lippi and even thought maybe Runcorn instead of Rangoon, though dared not write it in…

    I saw this cartoon and thought of… well, no names, no pack drill!

    1. Mon Dieu! The topic of “off-topicality” will soon be, in itself, off topic. Don’t think I could stand that much reflexivity!
  5. 19 rather chewy minutes, some of them spent wondering how NATION could be “mother”, and how I could derive TAIL SPIN from “absolutely wrong”.
    LIPPI went in on vague memory. Wiki sternly reminds us not to confuse Filippo with his son Fillipino. Apparently Spurs failed repeatedly to attract the services of either when shopping for a manager.
    26 another of those clues (for me) which needed checkers before I worked out how clever it was being. Before that, I had thought of something with NIPPER involved, which might also have been clever. My CoD for being -um- clever.
    Didn’t know TOQUE as a chef’s hat, but as a 20’s flapper titfer. We live and learn.
    Will be passing close to AGINCOURT tomorrow on a day trip to France with my granddaughter to visit her great great grandfather’s memorial at Villiers Bretonneux.

    On edit: Apologies for anything that might be deemed off-topic.

    Edited at 2014-02-18 09:58 am (UTC)

    1. Stop off for a few minutes at Agincourt, if you previously haven’t, it’s quite an atmospheric place..
      1. Thanks, yes. There’s a very tidy museum well kept by the French, and the battlefield is well indicated and preserved. This time I’ll remember my camera!
  6. … and while we’re at it, lets see if we can get octothorp trending on Twitter at ##. I thank thee for teaching me that word!
    1. All I meant was … he’s “against” climate change and seems to be able to reverse it by his very presence. Obviously he has connections with a “Higher Power” given his religious affiliations. So he could probably make SW England warm and sunny again just by being there. Please, then, take him off our hands. We’ll have a few of those fox hunters in exchange to keep our introduced pests at bay.
  7. 17 mins and definitely a fair bit trickier than yesterday’s puzzle.

    I parsed 26ac slightly differently, with “a child?” as “person”, and both parsings work but I’m sure Jimbo’s is the one the setter intended. I was held up slightly in the SW because I didn’t read 17dn properly and entered “grouse”, and it was only when I couldn’t solve 24ac that I looked at it again, realised it was GROUCH, and then CHEMISTRY was my LOI.

    Count me as another who was sidetracked by thinking about Cairo for 25ac and Runcorn for 19dn, but I didn’t enter either because I couldn’t parse them, although it was only when I thought of TOQUE for 22dn that QUITO dropped into place.

  8. A very enjoyable puzzle, but I overshot my half-hour target by 5 minutes. I hesitated to write in the unknown LIPPI, and was almost certain it had to be OPPOSITE NUMBER but couldn’t see why, and once that element of doubt creeps in ……..

    I always associate TOQUEs with those sharp-tongued Edwardian aunts portrayed by Saki and P.G. Wodehouse. If you search images for “Edwardian toque hats” you will find some splendid examples and imagine the straight-backed, imperious ladies who wore them them.

    I came across the term “octothorpe” only recently in a review of a book about such symbols: Shady Characters by Keith Houston. It also enlightened me about pilcrows, interrobangs and manicules.

    SECOND PERSON has to be my favourite clue today for its economy.

  9. Going pretty well (albeit slowly) then the wheels came off in the SE corner. Joined the Runcorn / Cairo fraternity, but unlike wiser members of that guild, I stuck them in in the vague hope that a twerp may be some kind of corn husk I had not encountered, and Cairo… well, maybe I was missing something. Which of course put the kybosh on Toque (not that I’d have got it as this headgear has sadly passed me by, and torque is one of those words not front of mind for me).

    Particularly enjoyed 11ac.

    Learning new stuff each time. Today’s lesson was “on the radio” (as in “sounds like”)- spent ages trying to work in an AM/FM R1 (as in radio 1) or similar.


  10. Happy to finish it all unaided (but without FU of how OPPOSITE NUMBER or SECOND PERSON worked), but took about an hour all told.

    Got massively stuck in the SW, and could only finish once I’d changed grouse and narration. Also, the fact that OTTO was unknown vocab didn’t help at all. Cairo and Lowri almost went in too. Good puzzle, just the right difficulty for me.

  11. 25 minutes of a steady solve, nothing unknown today. Jimbo I hope your new avatar is short lived and you’re soon back on the fairway.
    1. Thanks. Rivers are slowly going down but it will be weeks before the land is dry. Water is still pouring off the hill behind me.
  12. Over the hour mark, so back to normal. Really good puzzle with fine clues and excellent surfaces. Rather astonishingly didn’t think of Runcorn at all, Rangoon came to mind as soon as I read the clue, as did Quito, maybe because I have had the dubious pleasure of visiting both cities in the last year.

    Nearly got bowled out by putting in Employed at 16d, no idea why, just seemed to fit in.

    Liked the clues for 17ac and 17d.

    Nairobi Wallah

  13. Steady stuff, pleasant but not memorable.

    The avatar celebrates Miss bt visiting and actually walking her dog.

  14. 13:01 held up in the SE corner by trying to put in CAIRO without any justification whatsoever.
  15. Made the ‘grouse’ mistake, and didn’t know OTTO, so the south was tough sledding. FLAT SPIN should have been a gimme, having once done flight control, but somehow I never seem to think that setters use those kinds of moderately technical terms and they don’t pop into my mind. Liked SECOND PERSON.
  16. 24:27 with about 7 or 8 minutes on my last triumvirate: deployed, flat spin and toque. I’d convinced nyself that the second word of 21 had to be open or upon but even when I saw sin/spin that still didn’t help with the first word until I got deployed. At 22, without the T, I was thinking of the wrong sort of revolutionary force (not that I know the names of any).

    As our esteemed blogger points out there was a lot of GK needed for this. In my case otto and toque were unknowns. I also thought a chemise was a shirt (from the french). I was also in the narration camp for a while.

    It was nice to see twerp used in a clue for a port that wasn’t Antwerp. As for inclement equating to awful, I’d wager that Jimbo would welcome some weather that was merely the former.

    Thanks J for explaining opposite number and second person which I only half understood.

  17. Another good puzzle for me. Somewhat surprised by 2d, as ‘oppo’, on which the clue depends as a synonym for ‘china’, is derived from “opposite number’.
  18. 22m. Tricky number, I thought, with several unknowns and some knotty wordplay. I know TOQUE as the sort of hat worn by hosers.
    I think you’re being a bit harsh on our esteemed leaders, Jimbo. I’ve been impressed by the ALACRITY with which they have appeared on TV in wet places wearing high-vis clothing and pretending they have a clue what to do.

    Edited at 2014-02-18 03:46 pm (UTC)

  19. Nothing too difficult today. Besides, the sun is shining and all’s right with the world. Which quote reminds me of 9a. Did anyone else have to do “Fra Lippo Lippi” at school? Browning seems to have gone out of fashion but I thought “Men and Women” was vastly more interesting than some of the other stuff we had to do. It’s so rewarding when poetry you learned in school helps with a crossword 60 years later! 24 minutes. Ann
    1. Yes. And My Last Duchess of course. And at university pretty much everything, because I did a dissertation on him. I was a fan. I even liked The Ring and the Book, which puts me in a pretty small category.
      1. I chose the collected works as a school prize. I can’t help thinking that the reason he’s gone out of fashion is because he’s easy to understand. I loved the dramatic monologues. This stuff sticks. Like Pippa and Porphyria’s Lover. “Three times her little neck around…etc” unforgettable. And Abu Ben Adam and the Pied Piper. Glad there’s another admirer on this site.
        1. I’ve no idea why he’s gone out of fashion, if he has. I’d still rather spend two hours in his company than five minutes with Yeats.
  20. About 25 minutes, ending with DEPLOYED. I only knew of the TOQUE as the chef’s white hat, but put it in anyway, and didn’t know OTTO either. We don’t use the phrase RUNNING REPAIRS over here, so glad that was an anagram. Happy the wordplay for those was so clear, unlike the wordplay for SECOND PERSON, which I didn’t see until reading the blog, so thanks to Jimbo. BTW Jimbo, you should be grateful all that rain isn’t snow. (Like it is here.) Regards to all.
    1. I forgot to mention that as far as I knew we don’t use the phrase RUNNING REPAIRS over here either, so I was also grateful for the anagram.
    2. Yes, I saw on TV you were having a tough time – hope all OK with you personally. I think if our inches of rain had been snow in those winds and with the massive tidal surges many of us would now be dead
  21. DNF after 40m and bogged down in SE today with the FLAT SPIN, TOQUE and QUITO doing for me. Did enjoy 26a when the penny finally dropped!
  22. Stared at the blank grid thinking that this would be a stinker, and then GROUP CAPTAIN and GALAHAD sprang up, fully formed, as it were, and the rest went in with only one or two chewy ones to halt steady progress. At 17dn, wrote in “grouse” almost on auto-pilot and equally quickly realised it was a neat piece of misdirection for GROUCH. Nice clue. QUITO gave TOQUE a bit too easily, ever a problem with a “Q” crosser. I seem to have come across old PRIAM quite a bit recently – someone been re-reading the Iliad, or more likely watching re-runs of Troy? HASH MARK was one of the ones that gave me pause – thanks, john_from_lancs, for pointing me at a book I think I’ll enjoy, although I’ll wait for the paperback while scouring the charity shops!

    A pleasant post-supper half-hour.

  23. A long slog petered out in the SE corner where I didn’t get TOQUE or QUITO. Not helped by being unable to see past Cairo for the capital and wondering if there was a Cair Desert which I’d never come across before.
    1. Just under 40 minutes here, with my CoD being 26ac which I thought was elegantly compact and with a well-hidden-in-plain view definition. I liked 1ac too, as well as 5d

      LOI was TOQUE – mainly because I didn’t think it was an “old” hat. Overall, though, it was a slow and steady solve, and easier than I had thought after a first pass.

      Shocked to discover that they’ve renamed Rangoon as Yangon – when will people stop meddling with perfectly reasonable place names that can be found in the finest English atlases? In the interests of conservation, I suggest that all these discarded but still serviceable place names be donated to Wales where they are sorely needed.

  24. For a variety of reasons I was feeling even more tired than usual for a Tuesday and took simply ages to find the setter’s wavelength. Which is a pity because it’s the sort of crossword that’s right up my street and which I’d expect to knock off in six or seven minutes instead of struggling to a miserable 13:14. (Sigh!)
  25. I am a novice and enjoy using this site, however, I find the comments about the current Australian Prime Minister offensive and believe they should be taken down. If not taken down, then I believe comment should be allowed about the incompetent economic vandals he replaced. It should also be noted that it is less than a year since the majority of Australians, by an overwhelming majority, voted the current PM in.

    It would be appreciated if the site could be used solely for its intended purpose.

  26. As another Australian visitor to this site, Anon, I just want to say “Pot, kettle, black”! You didn’t give your name or make any comment on the crossword itself, just used this site as a platform for your right-wing rant. At least out yourself or just shut up! Kate from Hobart.

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