Times 26835 – carnival of the animals

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I romped away with this one to start with, but was brought to heel by the setter with half a dozen clues to polish off; a bird I didn’t know, an animal I’d heard of but couldn’t at first see why it was relevant, and an insect order I hadn’t realised was the object being defined by the tricky clue. When I see “cricket” I (all too quickly) think of doosrahs, googlies, third men and short legs and all the usual arcane Bumble stuff we love to drag into crosswords to baffle the transatlantic brigade.
Because of the GK requirements if this puzzle is to be completed without resort to aids to check up on a few things, I think this counts as “difficult”, even if three-quarters of it is “normal” fare. It took me about 40 minutes to get it done and then check 7d was for real. After a barren few Wednesdays, from a ‘rambling on’ point of view, this one provided more scope, so I did enjoy blogging it.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Slow mover in wrong French department (8)
TORTOISE – TORT = wrong, OISE = French Department 60, not far south of Calais, pronounced ‘waz’, more or less. My FOI as I’m a quiz bore on French departments.
9 Brave politician? Not to conservationists! (8)
CONFRONT – I can see the definition. I can see CON relates to a politician. Ah, now prompted by flashman I see it. FRO = not to, then NT = National Trust, conservationists.
10 MP backed horse securing lead in Derby (6)
REDCAP – A PACER is a racehorse used as such, reverse and insert D (lead in Derby).Military Policemen wear red caps, as a rule.
11 Transport workers represented by main lawyer (10)
RAILWAYMEN – A straightforward clue at last. (MAIN LAWYERS)*. From what I hear about trains in England, or lack of, ‘transport workers’ is an oxymoron.
12 Goddess appearing impossibly early in a summer month? (4)
JUNO – Jun 1 would be as early in June as you could get, geddit?.
13 Leading musician’s mother engaged by detective in raillery (10)
BANDMASTER – BANTER = raillery, insert MA (mother) into DS (detective sergeant) and all that, DMAS, into BANTER.
16 Because of which, network telly finally absorbs her (7)
WHEREBY – Insert HER into WEB, add Y = telly finally.
17 Shock fussy pet badly, removing last of treats (7)
STUPEFY – Delete one S (last of treats) from FUSSY PET then anagram the remaining 7 letters.
20 Irritating complaint annoys husband touring academy (6,4)
NETTLE RASH – NETTLES = annoys, insert RA, add H(usband).
22 Anchor that may be square? (4)
ROOT – Cryptic DD, one where you have square root, cube root etc.
23 First of players rather too clumsy for the cricket class? (10)
ORTHOPTERA – Once I had the checkers including the terminal A, I stopped thinking about esoteric cricket terms and thought anagram. (P RATHER TOO)*.
25 Benevolent duke leaves for good, like the top man (6)
KINGLY – G replaces the D in KINDLY.
26 Witness old king and queen entertained by fool (6-2)
LOOKER-ON – Insert O, K, ER, into LOON = fool.
27 Deserter’s vessel beginning to cave in completely (8)
TURNCOAT – It seems in urban speak, TOAT SCROAT is a corruption of ‘totally scrotum’ meaning totally stupid; so we take TOAT (completely) and insert URN (vessel) and C (beginning to cave). Or we just plop in the answer and shrug, why bother, the blogger will work it out for us. EDIT janie l b has pointed out another parsing with a less ‘urban slang’ flavour, i.e. TO a T = completely.
Fair enough, probably what the setter had in mind.

Down
2 Male priest set up stabbing that hurt excessively (8)
OVERMUCH – Male priest – M REV, reverse that and insert it (‘stab it’) into OUCH = that hurt.
3 Contract he arranged for a practical expert (10)
TECHNOCRAT – (CONTRACT HE)*. Are technocrats always practical? I thought technocracy was government by scientists and technologists, and technocrats talk a lot about technology but don’t do much. But I’m a cynic.
4 Little devil suitable for clothing formally? Unlikely! (10)
IMPROBABLE – Little devil, as is often the case, gives us IMP, and ROBABLE could mean suitable for dressing formally.
5 Girl outside scolded one that takes in workers (7)
ECHIDNA – ENA is our girl, as in Mrs Sharples. Insert CHID = scolded. Voilà. I’ve just passed a few minutes on Wiki taking my knowledge level on the echidna or spiny anteater from zero to expert. Echidnas eat ‘worker ants’ which is what the clue refers to. The male echidna has a four-headed penis, which sounds interesting, although apparently no-one has yet seen one ejaculate in captivity. If I had a similar organ I’d probably be shy, too. [That’s enough of that – Ed.]
6 Precipitation ultimately unknown in Tamworth, perhaps? (4)
SNOW – Tamworth is a variety of pig, so insert N = unknown ultimately, into SOW.
7 Identical words from Louis identifying American bird (6)
MOTMOT – MOT being French for word, so stick two together. Mephisto solvers and nerds (and possibly Americans) will know that a motmot is a rather pretty Central American bird related to the kingfisher, prettier than but not as interesting as the echidna.
8 Saint at home with elegist? Something fishy here (8)
STINGRAY – ST (saint), IN (home), GRAY (elegist). I’ve been snorkeling with stingrays in shallow waters in Grand Cayman, they have cute ‘faces’, it’s an uplifting experience much to be recommended.
14 Union hopeful producing wherewithal for strike? (10)
MATCHMAKER – Cryptic definition.
15 Note from senior police officer shot in the arm (10)
SUPERTONIC – SUPER is the senior cop, TONIC is the shot in the arm. As music students will know, the supertonic is the next note above the tonic, i.e. Re above Doh.
16 Shamefully desire no more than … (8)
WANTONLY – WANT = desire, ONLY = no more than. A friendly clue, for a change.
18 … note about group sick in a small number of boats? (8)
FLOTILLA – Here’s the Doh Re Mi thing again; FA is the note, insert LOT (group) ILL (sick).
19 Long to cover mature show (7)
PAGEANT – PANT (long) covers AGE (mature). I suppose pant can mean long, as in ‘he was panting to see her again…?’
21 Volunteers to bind books about military spectacle (6)
TATTOO – TA = volunteers, OT = books, reverse OT into TO. I am curious to know who enjoys watching the Edinburgh Tattoo on TV, it seems pointless and boring to me, but some people apparently find golf and cricket boring so I guess it takes all sorts.
24 Scottish explorer’s short weatherproof coat (4)
PARK – PARKA loses its A, Mungo Park was a Scottish chap who explored West Africa for a few years around 1800. Rather him than me.

61 comments on “Times 26835 – carnival of the animals”

  1. 9a is CON + FRO (not to) + NT (National Trust)

    Cheated on confront, turncoat, and orthoptera.

    COD wantonly.

    Edited at 2017-09-20 05:57 am (UTC)

    1. I had ORTHOPRETA instead of ORTHOPTERA.

      Was still munching on my cheese toastie from Pret, though, so must have been a subconscious slip 🙂

  2. Similar story to yesterday’s… got there in the end, but with one pesky unknkown anagram blotting the whole: ottrophera anyone? Bah humbug, cursed science and how it rules our life…

    Biffed IMPROBABLE (couldn’t for the life of me work out why ABL meant ‘suitable for’). Hadn’t heard of Mr Park, and didn’t really get why ECHIDNA ‘takes in workers’, so thanks for working those out. I did however stop to make sure I had G and not D in at 25ac, and managed to struggle through the other parsings (even TO A T= completely…I’m assuming the ‘TOAT SCROAT’ above is facetious…?). Oh, and I’ve not only heard of the beautiful MOTMOT, but seen plenty of them on a holiday in Tobago some years back with my dear old ornithologist Dad.

    Edited at 2017-09-20 06:18 am (UTC)

    2. I stayed at Arnos Vale hotel in Tobago where the motmots came to your breakfast table.

      Enjoyed the crossword with CODs to ECHIDNA and ORTHOPTERA.

      I never got MAKER, TONIC or TURNCOAT.

      Thanks blogger and supporters.

  3. I’m not confident, but perhaps the idea is that a “Conservative front” organisation would not be one a conservationist wanted anything to do with.

    I found the whole thing very hard BTW.

  4. What with this and what with that and what with being dim, this took me heaps longer than it should have; 5 minutes maybe to realize (like Jack) that ‘thereby’ was WHEREBY, for instance. Like Jack, too, I started with ‘supersonic’, although this time I was pretty quick in fixing it. I had EDNA for ENA, leaving an unexplained CHI, as well as unexplained workers, as I’d forgotten what an ECHIDNA actually is. Thanks to Flashman for CONFRONT. DNK the bird. We’ve had ‘lepidoptera’ and probably other opteras before, so once I wrote the letters down it was easy to sort them out to best effect.
    1. “pter” is definitely a handy fragment to look out for, from pterodactyls onward.

      Was it someone here who once pointed out that “helicopter” is “helico”+”pter” “spiral wing”? If so, I thank them, because it’s now one of my favourite word facts.

      1. My youngest son couldn’t say helicopter in his formative years – it was always ‘hecilopter’ which is one of my favourite words!

        Edited at 2017-09-20 09:53 am (UTC)

  5. Hard work but completed in 54 minutes having been thrown by a number of things along the way e.g. thinking THEREBY at 16ac and bunging in (not from definition – obviously – but just because it fitted) SUPERSONIC at 15dn before going back to study the clue more carefully.

    Unknowns were the French province and the American bird.

    Edited at 2017-09-20 07:33 am (UTC)

    1. Much the same as Jack although about 6 minutes longer, with 16ac THEREBY holding things up magnificently! WHEREBY it was which finally got 16dn WONTONLY sorted – like Chinese dumpling soup?

      FOI 4dn IMPROBABLE LOI 19dn PAGEANT which was just a lousy clue IMhO!

      COD 11ac RAILWAYMAN a beautifully disguised backhand drop volley!

      WOD 17ac STUPEFY

      Iknew the French Province but not thne American bird

      Edited at 2017-09-20 09:48 am (UTC)

  6. I loved the tricky northeast of this, so I’m especially annoyed with a careless RAILWAYMAN. No point making a note to self about checking the fodder. I’ve done that before and look what good it did me. 17:16 with the error

    Great penny-drop moments on ORTHOPTERA, CONFRONT and especially ECHIDNA. Great fun. Thanks, setter and Pip

    1. I made the same mistake with a very careless RAILWAYMAN and am equally annoyed but some consolation that I’m not alone
      Groucho
  7. Managed to squeeze in under 25 for this one, which was not bad considering that I thought ALL of 1a was a French Department, and the slow mover either a LORIS or a SNAIL surrounded by “wrong”. My knowledge of French Departments is incomprehensive: there is ALWAYS one I haven’t heard of so either was just as likely.
    The two downs at 14 and 15 I had a MATCHblank and SUPERblank for a considerable period of time, which didn’t help with the bottom half.
    My Chambers says ORTHOPTERA are cockroaches and crickets are Gryllidae, but I had to go (post solve!) to Google to confirm that Gryllidae are ORTHOPTERA. Just as well it was an anagram, then. I thought I was doing well to recall that ECHIDNA eat ants (Haha, you better believe it! You’re going to love the way they tickle!), that a MOTMOT was a thing with wings, and that PARK was an explorer called Mungo by his imaginative parents.
    I guess this was a fun and engaging puzzle if you had the relevant GK, frustrating if you didn’t, so I had fun and count myself lucky. Great blog (again) Pip (and Janie and Flashman)
  8. This one reminded me of my holiday in the BVI – on a flotilla with stingrays. Sad to see the devastation there now.

    My penultimate one in was REDCAP which for ages I thought had to be teacup but couldn’t parse it. I did wonder if Derby referred to some sort of chinaware. LOI was MOTMOT which I was convinced was going to be wrong as I’d not heard of the bird and I had no idea who Louis was. Thanks to Pip for revealing that he was no more than a generic Frenchman (Louis that is, not Pip).

    2. I sort of wish I was a generic Frenchman, but after 10 years I don’t think they can kick us out now even if Theresa botches the B word.
  9. Surprised to come here after 57 minutes and find I’d got everything right, considering all the question marks littering my sheet.

    In the end, there wasn’t much unknown—PARK, ECHIDNA, MOTMOT, Oise—but mostly I just hadn’t twigged bits of the wordplay, like “to a T”, “robable”, or how the BANDMASTER fitted together.

    FOI 2 OVERMUCH, LOI a dead heat between 5 ECHIDNA, 7 MOTMOT and 9 CONFRONT, all pencilled in for quite a time before I worked out the CONFRONT parsing and convinced myself that the bird and what I thought might be a name for some kind of beehive or ant nest weren’t definitely wrong, at least.

    COD to either 12 JUNO for fun penny-dropping or 23 ORTHOPTERA for its brilliant misdirection.

  10. Rather proud of self for divining motmot, which I had never heard of. Very enjoyable crossword, so I won’t whinge about crickets being in the order Orthoptera, but the class Insecta.

    1. I rather thought you might as I was solving – Jerry won’t like that I wrote in the margin!
      1. Oh dear! Hate to be predictable .. of course the clue is incorrect in a strict taxonomic sense, but provided one takes a more broad usage of the word “class” as just a collection of things with something in common, it is probably acceptable
  11. A couple of minutes staring at C-N–O-T meant that I only just crept in under 20 minutes. An educational experience in fields ranging from urban slang to taxonomy. I bunged in PROTOTHERA but discovered later that not only was it the wrong type of insect (TATTOO dug me out of that hole) but it is also only one letter short of PROTOTHERIA, a group that includes the ECHIDNA. On edit, having read Jerry’s comment, I suspect I may have used the term ‘group’ rather loosely.

    Edited at 2017-09-20 08:19 am (UTC)

  12. 17:46. Another solve without my iPad keyboard, standing up on the train. I said after my first experience of this that I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m not sure the app is that much better so I just prodded my way through it, pausing after each letter to be sure it had gone into the grid.
    Even allowing for that, I found this quite tricky, but I progressed fairly steadily through it.
  13. For the second day in a row I had to resort to the dictionary / google for assistance – MOTMOT and OISE (despite being half French) – so my time of 48-and-a-bit minutes means little.

    Like others I had THEREBY but then realised it must be WHEREBY when I biffed in WANTLESS without sufficient thought, causing further delays. Ho-hum.

    Edited at 2017-09-20 08:39 am (UTC)

  14. I was all over the place in the NE today. I eventually correctly parsed CONFRONT having gone to and fro with ‘constant’, which then meant that I biffed MOTMOT, somewhat hesitantly as I also had a hankering for ‘format’ as identical words. We seem to holiday in less exotic places than some of you! Also spent a long time trying to justify a Royal Derby teacup before the obvious REDCAP arrested me. Never heard of PARK, but knew of the jacket he didn’t wear. Did they name all the National Parks after him? If only our setter had clued 11a as Crewe Alexandra, I would have saved a lot of time on the anagram. 45 minutes with all finally and thankfully correct. COD ECHIDNA as I was despairing until it suddenly dawned. Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. You might laugh, but just outside Perth is the Forrest Forest. Actually the John Forrest National Park, though no-one calls it that.
      Another slow tricky one, but guessed the unknowns correctly today: PARK, SUPERTONIC and MOTMOT. Orthoptera rang a faint bell, must have been in a previous crossword.
  15. As predicted by our esteemed blogger, MOTMOT a write in for this Mephisto solver, nerd and half-Canadian.

    Easier than yesterday I thought. The anagram solving tip concerning “opter” above is worth remembering

    Loved the original explanation of TURNCOAT Pip – Occam and his razor might apply?

    1. Indeed, but I was having a non shaving day and more fun blogging. I’d always thought it was spelt ‘scrote’ so I did learn something.
  16. A steady solve here, finishing somewhere under the 7 minute mark. (This was done in the sober morning, rather than at 1am under the influence of all manner of pints and shots, and perhaps appropriate conclusions should be drawn about my performance relative to other recent outings…)

    I liked the natural history feel of this one, and don’t mind admitting that I bunged in an optimistic but vaguely convincing PROTOTHERA (primal beast!) initially before common sense prevailed.

    1. By the way, can anyone tell me why when I return to my puzzles on the Club later on they are quite often missing the solution? It proved quite the hassle for the Jumbo I’m blogging this weekend – had to solve it all a second time!
      1. One requirement is that you must return to the crossword using the same machine you solved it on .. but some who do that have still found the solution missing, for no reason anyone has yet been able to fathom.
        1. There’ll be plenty of time for that after the Championship event in early Nov. Directly after, probably.
  17. I’ve found that the Club doesn’t recognise me if I try to return to it from my tablet instead of my desktop.
  19. Nearly 40 minutes – spent far too long trying to think of a Départment in 8 letters containing some sort of slow mover. I’d also entered IMPROBABLY at 4dn, hindering 20ac (where I was thinking of some sort of ITCH). No problem at 23ac – once I was on to the idea of insects, it had to end -PTERA, like lepidoptera etc. LOI was 9ac, after remembering CHID for ‘scolded’ in 5dn, so thanks to flashman for parsing.
  20. Threw a despairing ‘teacup’ at 10, forgetting to return to the checkers for ‘motmot’… tortoise, stingray and nettle rash should just about cover it. Those three and the rest took about half an hour – then the freeze. – joekobi
  21. I enjoyed this one over 24 minutes or so. Over 50 years ago, a guy at my school was known as Mungo Park (I think his real name was David) . Guessed the MOTMOT. NT seem to be anything other than conservationalists these days. Thanks s and pip.
  22. Took a bit over an hour but glad I persevered, with the excellent ECHIDNA (loved the def and one of my favourite animals to boot) and CONFRONT (‘Not to…’) being my last in. The ‘cricket class’ was also good and like horryd, I didn’t find 11a at all straightforward; I went through every possible word for ‘lawyer’ before spotting it is an anagram.

    Does word order matter? Is a FLOTILLA a ‘small number of boats’ or a ‘number of small boats’? Chambers has a bit both ways with the definition indicating the latter, but the derivation suggesting the former. I’d go with the def. myself.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  23. With a few of those juggling with the cricket-based anagram (I’m trying to speed my thinking by not writing any anagrist down at the moment, in the vain hope it might help come November. Writing it down would have helped today I think).

    LOI the bird, finally realising we were looking for the same word twice, so with -O-M-T in place, a swap of checkers seemed appropriate, so with fingers crossed and eyes shut, off it went.

    ECHIDNA was one of our daughter’s favourite animals on our trip to Oz earlier this year so not a problem (although remembering that CHID is equivalent to CHIDED was).

    Edited at 2017-09-20 11:25 am (UTC)

  24. 8d will be forever Troy Tempest and Marina, humming it now. ORTHOPTERA ok as prefix and suffix both known. 25′, thanks pip and setter.
  25. My experience was very similar – roaring along and then brought up short by general knowledge. Got there in the end, in 9m 7s, with fingers crossed for ECHIDNA, PARK, MOTMOT (to a lesser extent – it rang a vague bell) & ORTHOPTERA. The last of those does trigger my usual complaint about obscure foreign words & anagrams, but it was more deducible than some.
  26. Why I couldn’t biff MotMot I do not know. What has Louis got to do with the clue? Doh!
    Otherwise done in 40 mins. Was a Supertonic served on Concorde? Thanks all
    1. “Louis” tells you you’re looking for a French word (“mot,” for “word”). I can’t tell, but your question may have been rhetorical (i.e., you’d already figured this out).

      Edited at 2017-09-20 07:07 pm (UTC)

  27. Never heard of that bird, but what else could it have been? Creative Entomology Etymology Department: Does the “ortho” in the group crickets belong to have anything to do with “cricket”‘s being a synonym for “fair play”? (No.)

    Edited at 2017-09-20 11:13 pm (UTC)

  28. Well, having returned from a convivial lunch with retired colleagues, I continued today’s tradition of getting one letter wrong in each crossword, by reading 25a arse about face and substituting the letters the wrong way round, finishing up with KINDLY. Eejit! Annoying, as I was all done in 27:44, although I admit to looking up my tentative MOTMOT before submitting. An enjoyable puzzle where I had most of the GK. 23a started out on a sheet of paper as ____OPTERA and the remaining letters were quickly assembled into ORTH. Spotted CHID and the ant eater reference fairly quickly. A careful reading of the clue(which would have been really useful at 25a) encouraged me to quickly change BANDLEADER to BANDMASTER before it caused any problems elsewhere. The LAN I was flirting with for 16a became WAN after WANTONLY appeared, but soon morphed into WEB as the wordplay became clear. Liked JUNO a lot. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip.
  29. I know echidnas from having lived in Oz, but I shall look on them less kindly now that I know they eat other creatures! My COD was 9ac: very clever.
    Pip, if you are a quiz bore on French departements, you must have great fun explaining the difference between the two adjacent departements, Loir et Cher and Indre et Loire!
    39m 21s
    2. I don’t think class is something you can order. “You’ve either got, or you haven’t got, class” – Frank, Bing and Dean.
      Or was that an instruction to a teacher in a particularly liberal school?
  31. 15 minutes to do 90%, then another 10 to get tortoise and motmot. Took another 20 (!) to confront the echidna, both pretty great clues (but the girl should have been Edna, and “NT” is a little anglocentric)
    1. There’s nothing to be done about that. I take it as an opportunity to learn about another culture, as well as to do some serious decrypting to find out something I didn’t know at all before.. and a reason (not an excuse!) not to feel bad if something takes me a bit longer to figure out than it would a native Brit, Scot, Welshman, etc. But it does take some getting used to, at first.
  32. MOTMOT?? Seriously?

    When oh when will people who take it upon themselves to name plants and animals get a grip, for goodness’ sake?

  33. After 11 mins on the train this morning with only a handful going in I thought this was going to be problematic. I returned to it at lunchtime and polished it off in another 20 mins, so not as insoluble as I had feared. Felt like I was back on terra firma with a more familiar style than yesterday’s which caused me real difficulties. In the end this was a good level of challenge with the GK all either known or on the cusp of my knowledge / solvability, very satisfying. I liked “not to” and “to a t” but COD to 23ac for the brilliant misdirection of “cricket class”. I expect one’s toats scroats must be where one keeps one’s toats amazeballs.

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