Times 25941

48 comments on “Times 25941”

1. ….I solved it in 25 minutes, about the same time as yesterday’s. I really am better at more difficult clues and more obscure words.

   ‘Wildfowler’ was the first one in, since I have often considered that possibility when seeing my copy of Modern English Usage next to my crossword-cheating books. He is not exactly a grammarian, being more concerned with cliched language.

   I did unthinkingly put in ‘Atlanta’ when I had the two As, but quickly corrected it when I came to the obvious ‘side-splitting’.

   If you don’t like dubious homophones, you’re probably not very happy with ‘starfish’. But all the Rs that non-rhotic speakers don’t pronounce have a habit of turning up elsewhere, usually in the middle of words. If English wasn’t a written language, we would have great sound-changes and dialects for Germanic philologists to document.

   ‘Lastly’ was my LOI. ‘Sty’ without the E always gives me difficulty too.

   1. His Oxford entry is interesting:

      (1858–1933), English lexicographer and grammarian; full name Henry Watson Fowler. He compiled the first Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911) with his brother F. G. Fowler, and wrote the moderately prescriptive guide to style and idiom, Modern English Usage, first published in 1926.

      You’ll find a great deal more than embargoes on clichés in MEU. I still use it, especially in the revised edition, to explain, for example, the difference between “uninterested” and “disinterested” — and a host of others. Should be required reading for ABC radio presenters.

      1. “Uninterested” and “disinterested” are a most interesting case. They meant the opposite of what they mean today in the 18th century. Now they are switching meanings once again; apparently, they are on a 250-year cycle.
         1. That’s probably why Fowler was sensible enough to include the word “Modern” in the title, even though that word itself goes back a fair bit.
   2. It would be remiss of me not to raise the Scottish hackles at the non-existent (IMHO) homophone.
      1. People who don’t speak London English – us Aussies, you Scots, Amerrrrricans, Irish, Welsh and nearly the entire population of England – have a couple of choices: Do local crosswords for accurate homophones, or accept that there is an implicit “Estuarine English” qualifier in all homophones in The Times of London crossword. That implicit qualifier is occasionally over-ridden, my dodgy memory thinks.
         To paraphrase, we take it as a given that you disapprove of all homophones. I have no such problem – not because I speak London English (I don’t), but because I have to change my whole mindset to a foreign argot – English – to do the crossword.
         Rob in Oz, 25 mins for all except Fowler, which needed aids.
2. Which I think is a PB. And sub-10s on consecutive days is unheard of in this house.
   I suspect 3ac refers to Henry Watson Fowler (of Mod. Eng. Usage fame) rather than his brother. In terms of “wild” though, I’d go for Robbie. He always has a few choice words.

   16dn prompted me to listen again to the strange-but-wonderful combination of Sandy Denny with Led Zeppelin:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJik3FPyoQE

   Appropriately, 7dn was my last in.

   1. You may well be right but I plumped for the other one because his Wiki listing under “Fowler (surname)” specifically mentions grammar whereas his brother’s doesn’t. Not that it matters a jot of course.

      Edited at 2014-11-11 02:34 am (UTC)

   2. So what’s your excuse for the sluggish effort on Saturday?
      1. I was hoping not to be outed! In my (shaky) defence: that was a much harder puzzle, as we’ll no doubt see when the blog comes up.
3. I managed to stymie myself at 1d and 4d by thinking only of SEA***** for the former and writing in OMANI at the latter. I’m not certain I’ve ever heard ‘clever-clever’ used, and ‘wildfowler’ is one of those words like ‘longshore’ that just mean what they say. 57 minutes all told.
   1. I wondered about that too so I looked it up and found it in all the usual sources.
4. The older brother (HG) actually dedicated his ‘Modern English Usage’ to his younger sibling, who died in the war. HG was also responsible for another reference work still in print today, the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

   HG is referred to as a grammarian in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

   Edited at 2014-11-11 02:44 am (UTC)

   1. See above. And so he should be, given that MEU promises (and delivers):
      “… comprehensive and practical advice on grammar, syntax, style, and choice of words”.
5. So normal transmission has been resumed. Like Jack, I thought I was in for another speedy solve, but ground to a halt with six clues left.

   The rest fell steadily after I got CLEVER-CLEVER (what the?), but I went for a desperate BIRDFOWLER at 3ac. Saw WILDFOWLER after submitting, for all the good that does.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

6. 14m. Most of this went in very quickly, but I got stuck for a while in the NE, including on 3ac. As vinyl points out, Fowler wasn’t really a grammarian – Modern English Usage is a style guide – but that didn’t hold me up. My problem was that the pursuit of grouse is not ‘wildfowling’, so it took me ages to see it. Not that I have a problem with it, I hasten to add: it’s close enough.

   Edited at 2014-11-11 06:34 am (UTC)

   1. There’s not just the Mod. Usage dictionary, there are also scholarly papers on ‘as to’, ‘-ing’, ‘Grammatical Inversions’ and ‘Subjunctives’, to name but a few. What would you call someone who published on those topics?

      Bit like saying Marx was not a political economist because The Communist Manifesto, his best seller, was mere polemics.

      Edited at 2014-11-11 09:42 am (UTC)

      1. Well I can’t remember everything he wrote but at uni we studied Fowler as the leading proponent of the linguistic error of confusing preferences of style and usage with rules of grammar. An error that remains extremely common.
         To be fair though Fowler was relatively non-prescriptive in his prescriptivism (compared to some at least) and as style guides go you can do worse than MEU.

         Edited at 2014-11-11 10:59 am (UTC)

7. I seem to have done pretty much what everyone else did: try BIRD- at 1ac (LOI) and SEA- at 1d, wonder if CLEVER-CLEVER was a term, doubted that Fowler–any of them–was a grammarian (I’ve never opened his book). I also tried ‘d’ for ‘pound at the end at 7d, for good measure. As someone who’s rhotic to the core, I had difficulty parsing 1d, and indeed didn’t until after submitting. I rather liked DUL for ‘law lord’.
   1. Great expression! As one who can only use short As in such environments, I had to wonder if there was such a thing as a STAFFISH.
      1. There’s a whole pondful of them in Havvad Yadd.
8. 
   … and my One Error today was WILDFOWLER, where I had birdboiler. Was thinking it may mean ‘mad’ (cf the bunny-boiler in that film) and that Boiler was the grammarian. Oh dear. Otherwise another speedy solve, with all done in under 30mins.
   1. I love birdboiler. That deserves to be a real word.
      1. Like bunny boiler? My kids use the term for a stalker, from the movie with Sharon Stone and her non-pet-friendly gesture.
         1. Glenn Close.
9. A moderate 16.12 for me today, with a feeling earlier on that I should have been able to change up from steady solve of a fairly tricky one to speedy solve of a relatively easy one. Didn’t.
   WILDFOWLER was my last in, though just the front bit where the only thing I had was BIRD- and the certainty that wasn’t right. I couldn’t call the Fowlers (there were two of them??) to mind until the grid gave me some help.
   I wondered if there was a Remembrance thing going on – SOLDIERS, RENOWN, EVERMORE – but I don’t think there’s enough for that.
   Needed help from the wordplay for spelling the (arrrgh!) shrub with an I. HUGUENOT was my favourite, just for “hug not”. One of my help centres was in Elder Street E1 which still has traces of the Huguenot refugees that Britain’s great hospitality tradition gave shelter to.
10. Another very easy offering although I had to guess CLEVER-CLEVER from cryptic never having come across it. Also didn’t know there were two Fowlers – one more than enough. Again no stand out clues – 20 minute ramble to solve

    Rain is teeming down and has been for some hours!

11. About 25 minutes. Off to another false start today, confidently writing in POOL for 1 ac. with the expectation of PERCH (rod or pole) being the first five letters of 1 dn.

    Is PAELLA exotic? I suppose it was in my youth when adventurous cooking was a Vesta Chow Mein; or perhaps the setter is hinting at the theatrical display you sometimes get in Spanish restaurants when a paella is prepared

    The clue for 15 is a variation on an old music-hall gag (was it Jimmy Wheeler I first heard using it?):

    “Eavesdropping again? As Adam said when his wife fell out of the apple tree.”

    1. If memory serves, one of the four or five Vesta meals in the original range was Paella with desiccated prawns and chicken. It’s still available now but no longer contains chicken pieces.
       1. I still have a 46-year-old packet of Vesta prawn and chicken paella (price 1/3d) from my student days sitting in the back of the larder, from where I have never been able to bring myself to throw it out. It may prove a lifesaver one day…

          29 minutes, so a great time by my standards, with no quibbles.
          I have all three editions of M.E.U., the original Fowler (with notes by David Crystal), the Gowers, and the Burchfield. It is fascinating comparing them to see how usage has changed over time.

       2. I just recall Vesta chow mein with seriously odd fried noodles
    2. I rather enjoyed the tongue in cheek (setters are such a cosmopolitan lot) ‘exotic’. It conjured visions of Catherine Tate’s gloriously insular Yorkshire couple who don’t get on with gazpacho: http://youtu.be/hfVYRHHSt0U
12. “Aye aye, that’s yer lot…”
    1. And occasionally:
       (picking up violin) “I’d like to leave you by playing a song about the famous little onion: aye aye, that shallot.”
13. Couldn’t get 3ac – the Countryside Alliance has Grouse as a game bird, not wildfowl, for the purposes of establishing whether it can be legally shot on a particular day… I usually hate the obscure names of plants and shrubs, but enjoyed seeing Frangipane – used to have a glorious tree in the garden in Singapore in the ’80s. Hard to find an outstanding clue but STARFISH did make me smile
    1. All the usual sources support wildfowl = game birds. Collins has wildfowl as “any bird that is hunted by man” which most definitely would include grouse.
       1. ‘Wildfowling’ refers specifically to hunting aquatic birds (ducks and geese mostly) on the shoreline or in estuaries. The word is never used to refer to shooting grouse. This is kind of reflected in some of the dictionaries, which say ‘especially aquatic birds’ or something similar for ‘wildfowl’, but the distinction doesn’t make it to the definition of ‘wildfowling’. As I said though, it doesn’t bother me as the meaning is close enough and setters can’t be expected to know this sort of very fine distinction – especially if it’s not in the dictionaries.
14. I had most of this done in 10 minutes but was held up by the DUTEOUS/AIDAN and WILDFOWLER/LASTLY crossers which pushed it out to 25 minutes. I had ARIAN pencilled in instead of AIDAN for some time which didn’t help, and like others had trouble trying to fit stye in 7D.

15. Glad (or perhaps sorry) to see that Fowler didn’t get the literature-science row re-kindled, but was consuming enough to distract us from proper discussion of starf. I tried to expand clever-clogs in some way for a long time. Needed a reference, not Fowler, for Aidan, and didn’t (still don’t) understand the ‘identify’ in 27a. Thanks for the blog.
    1. I think the ‘identify’ functions to refer back to (identify)the excavation, while making the surface make sense!
16. Failed to finish because of 3a and 7d, I didn’t think grouse was a fowl; tried BIRDPOTTER for a grouse hunter, hoping Mr Potter was a stickler for grammar. I didn’t know you could spell the eye thing without a terminal E so was looking for a city as the definition. These problems seem to happen on golfing days; I am much less dim when solving in the mornings than late afternoons.
    Apart from those two, about twenty minutes of pleasure, and the golf was a passable 78 for third prize.
    1. Luck you and well done – our local courses are again under water and I can’t see sensible golf being back on the agenda for some time
       1. Yes Jim I saw my county of birth was suffering again, must be a pain when the courses are flooded; there are some disadvantages of living here but dry warm golf is a plus, although it gets muddy after Xmas (then we escape to Denia). Jump on a plane So’ton to Bergerac and we’ll make you welcome.
    2. I took the sty to be a pig-sty style eye-sore, as in “Your room is a sty!”
17. 31m here but with a delay having bunged in WINDHOVER for WILDFOWLER and the rest was pretty straightforward so there must be a stinker on the way soon.
18. About 20 minutes, ending with WILDFOWLER, hoping there was a Fowler grammarian. I’m not familiar with the identified Fowlers. FIENDLIKE was also a bit difficult to unravel, and I needed all the checking letters. And of course, a groan from me at STARFISH. Regards.
19. 10:09 for me, still feeling horribly tired. I was held up at the end by 7dn (LASTLY) – I thought of STYE straight away, but wasn’t aware (or more likely had forgotten) that it can be spelled STY (in fact the latter spelling is listed first in both Oxford Dictionaries (online) and Chambers) – and 25ac (DUTEOUS), having read “compliant” as “complaint”. (Doh!)
20. Not too taxing, but a good puzzle for me. In a previous life, when I had to work for a living, Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ was an invaluable reference, as were Gowers’ ‘Complete Plain Words’ and Partridge’s ‘Usage and Abusage’.

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