Times 26,885: Popular Beat Combo in Purpler Blog Combat

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’m going to play the sleep deprivation “get out of jail free” card that I didn’t play yesterday on this one to explain my unprepossessing time on a puzzle that should have been right up this blogger’s personal alley – certainly I can’t think of any other excuse for staring at 17ac and thinking “David… Conip?”. Likewise, 19dn was my LOI, though I can partly justify that by the fact that after one false start I’d tidied up my previously correct 23ac to BRAHMS, as your unconscious brain will do, and neither The BUSTLES nor The BASALTS sold many records during their careers.

I did think that this was a largely impeccable Friday puzzle, requiring the solver’s brain to run the gamut from the aforementioned pop culture and 2dn (why does that word show up so often in crosswords these days?) to the full-on fust of 2dn, 5dn, 7dn, gods and kings and queens and philosophers. The surfaces are great (1ac for a start), the definitions often brilliantly misleading (9ac, 27ac, 18dn) and overall I had the strong impression I was in the hands of a setter who totally understands how crosswords works – thanks, whoever you may be! Perhaps someone will quibble minorly about the anagrind in 23ac, or the fact that Winner for “director” may be a bit past its use-by-date now, or wonder if ambient music is really definitionally free of beats, or remark that 22dn seemed familiar (was it in a championship puzzle a year or two back), but I shall refrain.

I’ll nominate 12ac as my COD as I like its innovative use of blogger shorthand for cryptic ends, but there were quite a few candidates today. And now I am off to Derbyshire (not far from 1dn, probably) for the weekend to read the collected works of Jane Austen (writer of 1dn Park) aloud while dressed in bonnets, as you do. Have a lovely weekend everyone, wrap up warm, see you next week!

ACROSS
1 The writer limited personal catastrophe (8)
MELTDOWN – ME LTD OWN [the writer | limited | personal]
5 Criminal snatching too much material (6)
COTTON – CON [criminal] “snatching” OTT [too much]
8 Retired lecturer gives green light (3)
NOD – reversed DON [“retired” lecturer]
9 Perhaps ennoble any person finding royal favour at first (4,6)
ANNE BOLEYN – (ENNOBLE ANY*) [“perhaps”]
10 Perceived as carrying much weight in diamonds (8)
FATHOMED – FAT HOME D [carrying much weight | in | diamonds]
11 Despicable British bishop breaking silence, indeed (6)
SHABBY – B B [British | bishop] “breaking” SH AY [silence | indeed]
12 Bottom left corner unseen in country paradise (4)
EDEN – {sw}EDEN [“bottom left corner (= southwest, = SW) unseen in” country]
14 Question came up after lunatic returned plant (6,4)
DAMASK ROSE – ASK ROSE [question | came up] after MAD reversed [lunatic “returned”]
17 Musician involves keen crook in decline (5,5)
DAVID BOWIE – AVID BOW [keen | crook] in DIE [decline]
20 Horse, observed outside wood (4)
SHAW – H [horse], SAW [observed] “outside”
23 Creator undoes harm in soul (6)
BRAHMA – (HARM*) [“undoes”] in BA [soul]
24 Patrolman on way shows new face (8)
STRANGER – RANGER [patrolman] on ST [= street = way]
25 Criminal presumably able to hold up store (10)
SHOPLIFTER – cryptic def, playing on the old “who is the strongest thief?” joke…
26 Left cuts excellent boxer (3)
ALI – L [left] “cuts” A1 [excellent]
27 Evil looks good put next to certain Roman deities (6)
GLARES – G [good] put next to LARES [certain Roman deities]
28 Short message recalled about hospital fundraiser (8)
TELETHON – NOTELET reversed [short message “recalled”] about H [hospital]

DOWN
1 Woman’s work never done in this Notts town (9)
MANSFIELD – a woman’s work is, presumably, never done in a MAN’S FIELD
2 Guzzling girl due after draining coffee cups (7)
LADETTE – D{u}E, that LATTE [coffee] “cups”
3 Cavalryman dispatches one over fierce woman (6)
DRAGON – DRAG{o}ON [cavalryman “dispatches one over (= O)”]
4 Film director not last to capture old Siouan native (9)
WINNEBAGO – WINNE{r} [Michael, film director, “not last”] + BAG O [to capture | old]
5 Wealthy man angry about EU split (7)
CROESUS – CROSS [angry] “about” E and U separately
6 Work to provide meaningful options in other words (9)
THESAURUS – cryptic def
7 Feature of city traffic in considerable volume (7)
OMNIBUS – double def
13 Local resident shows love for daughter in New Edinburgh (9)
NEIGHBOUR – (E{d->O)INBURGH*) [“new”, “love (= O) for daughter (= D)”]
15 Emerge bearing child close to natural philosopher (9)
ARISTOTLE – ARISE [emerge] “bearing” TOT L [child | “close to” {natura}L]
16 Edited alert to include donation sent up after king (9)
EDWARDIAN – ED WARN [edited | alert] “to include” AID reversed [donation “sent up”]
18 Mister Solo animated after a little hesitation (7)
AEROSOL – (SOLO*) [“animated”] after A ER [a | little hesitation]
19 Mostly ambient musical combo (7)
BEATLES – BEATLES{s} [“mostly” ambient]
21 Motorbike was taken by husband? Nonsense! (7)
HOGWASH – HOG WAS [motorbike | was] taken by H [husband]
22 Writer‘s block that’s endless (6)
BARRIE – BARRIE{r} [block “that’s endless”]

62 comments on “Times 26,885: Popular Beat Combo in Purpler Blog Combat”

  1. 40 mins with croissant hoorah.
    On Samsung so rushing. Driving to York today.
    Mostly I liked: Croesus, Omnibus.
    Didn’t like Beatles (clue).
    Brilliant work again.
    Thanks top setter and tardy V.
  2. 16.35. No particular problems here, and a very entertaining puzzle. I don’t remember coming across BA for soul before, so that will have to be stored for later.
    ‘Ambient’ for BEATLESS is downright weird. ODO uses the words ‘with no persistent beat’ in its definition for ‘ambient music’ but a) this isn’t necessarily true*, b) ‘no persistent beat’ isn’t the same as ‘no beat’ and c) picking out one of several characteristics as definitional like this is a bit of a stretch.

    * Little Fluffy Clouds. Case closed.

    Edited at 2017-11-17 09:56 am (UTC)

    1. We could probably say that ambient music de-emphasises beats, but yeah, that’s as far as I think I’d go.
    2. The orb’s stuff isn’t entirely ambient music, mainly because it has a beat

      Eno’s ambient stuff (#4 in particular) is certainly beatless

      1. Hmm, this reasoning strikes me as a bit circular. I would wager that if you asked 100 people to name one ambient track you would get a lot of mentions of Little Fluffy Clouds.
        1. I would wager most don’t listen to really ambient music. I’m about the only person I know who does
          1. Specialist knowledge doesn’t confer linguistic authority over more generalist usage. If most people who have some idea of what ambient music is think that Little Fluffy Clouds is ambient music, then it is ambient music. And I would argue that this is in fact the case.
            I used to listen to ambient music in my youth, usually in tents. However it was a long time ago and I wasn’t typically at my most lucid on these occasions so I don’t profess any particular expertise.
            1. Yeah I just meant that if you took the beat out of little fluffy clouds, it would become more ambient
              1. Depends how you define ‘ambient’ of course… for me it’s the archetypal ambient tune so the idea of making it ‘more ambient’ is like making Monet ‘more impressionist’.
                1. No persistent beat, de-emphasises beats, could ambient then be said to beat less rather than being beatless? Can the clue work that way? Just a thought.
  3. 19:46 … similarly slowed up by things that had me kicking myself afterwards (BOWIE, especially, but ANNE BOLEYN and ARISTOTLE, too).

    Another long delay with WINNEBAGO but less recrimination over that one — a pretty fiendish clue, and ‘film director’ always causes anxiety for me as I know it’s often going to be some Italian I’ve just vaguely heard of.

    I liked too many things to single one out so I’ll just say thanks, setter and sleep-deprived blogger.

  4. 40 minutes with at least half spent staring at six clues in the NW. I was criminally slow to see the anagram at 9a but once the fog lifted the rest fell in short order. BA and LARES taken on trust with crossed fingers.
  5. A struggle to finish this, had to resort to a solver,after a promising and enjoyable 20 minutes doing 95%; didn’t know BA = soul so had BRAHMS as a creator and (as V did) wondered about the unknown bands the BASALTS or BUSTLES. Don’t understand why LADETTE is a guzzler, or the bit about ambient music. Some great clues otherwise, my fav the decapitated queen.
    2. People keep mentioning that they were unaware that BA could be used for “soul.” OK. But WHY does BA mean soul?
      2. Courtesy of Wiki: The Egyptian Soul: the ka, the ba, and the akh. The Ancient Egyptians believed the soul had three parts, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The ka and ba were spiritual entities that everyone possessed, but the akh was an entity reserved for only the select few that were deserving of maat kheru
  6. 65 arduous minutes on this with one mistake, that famous SIOUX tribe the WANNAMAKO, named after a curtailed and misspelt Sam Wanamaker of old. Didn’t parse EDEN or BRAHMA, as BA unknown. Motorbike as HOG also not in my vocabulary but I dredged it up from somewhere when BSA and Harley Davidson didn’t fit. LOI GLARES when I decided that the combo must be The BEATLES, although ‘beatless’ isn’t a synonym for the way I’ve used ambient in my life. Cue for song. There are places…Yep, at least MANSFIELD was a write-in. COD to ANNE BOLEYN, nicely disguised anagram. Thank you setter and V.
  7. 39′. It had to be LADETTE, but why? What’s it got to do with ‘guzzling’? Really enjoyed this puzzle, especially the musical references, two of my all-time favourites. OMNIBUS recalls the Latin lessons where it was a running joke for, once a lesson, a different boy to ask ‘Sir, does OMNIBUS mean ‘for all’? Thanks verlaine and setter.

    Edited at 2017-11-17 10:25 am (UTC)

    2. Unlike a lack of beat for ambient music I would say that heavy drinking is a defining characteristic of the LADETTE. It features prominently in the definitions in Collins and ODO.
      Edit: posted before I saw your reply to yourself. It is a bit loose: like the definition for ‘ambient’ it takes one characteristic to define a broader concept.

      Edited at 2017-11-17 10:31 am (UTC)

    3. Caesar adsum jam forte
      Pompey ad erat
      Caesar sic in omnibus
      Pompey sic in at

      Edited at 2017-11-17 12:33 pm (UTC)

  8. FATHOMED did for me, which was disappointing after overcoming several unknowns in defintion or wordplay (HOG, LARES, BRAHAM and BA, SHAW, BEATLESS/ambient).
  9. And 5 minutes spent on 5d, so I thought the puzzle as a whole was about the easiest of the week. Looking at the scores, I’d say most have some kind of a complex about Fridays

    And the clues were really good—MELTDOWN and BEATLES in particular—not a single merely average clue to be found 5/5

  11. If ambient music plays in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it really have no beats?
  12. was a write in for me @ 4dn as there used to be a beauty at Shepperton.
    I am of course refering to the ‘Airstream’ Caravan favoured by film directors and thespians,
    and epomymously named after a tribe of Southern Canadian Injuns, the Winnebago.
    North American Indian names are popular for US vehicles – the ‘Chinook’ Helicopter; Pontiac etc

    It took me an hour as I was unable to clear my mind of STARES for27ac when GLARES was glaringly correct.
    Thus 18dn AEROSOL was my LOI (arse’oles!)

    FOI 10ac FATHOMED strangely so COD

    WOD WINNEBAGO

    I didn’t think much of 11ac SHABBY as a clue and it was a bit iffy here and there, for a Friday.

    2dn LADETTE’s do guzzle but HOG from 21dn – for bike was a DNK – I will thus presume that the HOG are a tribe from the Huron Districts.

    Edited at 2017-11-17 11:15 am (UTC)

  13. I thought the charades in 1ac and 10ac were excellent though lost on me at the time as I bunged in the answer from checkers. Felt perceived wasn’t quite right for fathomed, which was entered similarly. Also wrote in MADDER ROSE initially, getting the cart before the horse. Lots of post-solve education via Wiki including the meaning of ‘lake’ in relation to colours and, thanks to ambient, more post 1970s music genres than I shall bother to remember.
  14. So what’s wrong with David Conip? I know only slightly less about his music than David Bowie’s, so it wasn’t until I got WINNEBAGO that I was forced to give it up. DNK BA, of course, never heard of ambient music as a genre, so stupidly thought it meant ambient music, like the crap you hear in an elevator. Also never heard of the director. So all in all I was set up for a long solve. But enjoyable. I had thought that a hog was a big, Harley-D type of motorcycle, not a motorbike, but.
    1. Also wasn’t wholly sure with HOG, equally also ambient to me was “in the background” so 19d went in on the basis of “What on earth else could it be?”
  15. First Friday finish for a while in about an hour with many parsed after biffing. Worked in Mansfield for two days in the 70s – decided to quit there and then, possibly the horridest town in the world and no railway station in sight. Landlady chewing tobacco on my one night stay. Fortunate that Thesaurus came up recently. David Bowie easy once I had first name, but not my cup of (erm) coffee. Have fun in Mansfield V – I’ve never been back.
  16. Although the club site will tell a different story, showing me with a time of about 20 seconds with 30 wrong.

    I put this entirely down to trying to iPad solve the 15×15 on the train on a Friday morning, and my Bluetooth keyboard deciding to sever all communication links with the iPad itself. Which – in 7am commute mode – led me to hit “submit” instead of “Pause”.

    Twice

    TWICE I tell you.

    Sometimes I think that when the wife says I shouldn’t be let out alone, she may have a point..

  17. For me, this was one of the finest crosswords I can recall, though I found it very difficult. Didn’t know Ba for soul, hadn’t heard of Lares, don’t get hog for motorbike, don’t get shaw for wood. Finished eventually, very many thanks setter and V; I saw you in the morning session (I think it must have been you – younger than most of the rest of us?). COD aerosol – just loved ‘Mister Solo’ – first thought Han or Napoleon – then the d dropped. Great stuff indeed.
  19. I made a mess of the timing but somewhere between 13 and 120 minutes, round about the 15 mark I’d say. I really enjoyed this and didn’t feel I was thrown off wavelength at any point.

    I particularly liked the use of cups in 2 (made a nice change from sandwiches, boxes and fences and also dovetailed beautifully with coffee) and the “one over” device in 3.

    I also appreciated the mini musical theme as yesterday evening was “music club” night for me. No Beatles or Bowie this month, but based around the themes of drinking, cheating, killing and hell (according to Hayseed Dixie all the best songs are about one or more of these key ingredients) we went alphabetically from Bauhaus to Wild Beasts and musically from Aretha Franklin to The Jam. Nothing ambient though.

  20. Soul = BA??

    I’m afraid that Bridlington Grammar school (1966-1973) didn’t cover this one . .

    and for me, HOG = Harley Owners’ Group, not the ‘bikes” themselves.

    Edited at 2017-11-17 02:31 pm (UTC)

  21. Just over the hour today with some successful guesswork. Nothing to add to the previous comments. Thanks for puzzle and the blog.
  22. Technical DNF in 42 minutes, after getting all but NW in about 15, bar 1dn (my hotel in Nottingham last weekend is in Mansfield Road). Eventually had to resort to aid to find a catastrophe starting with M for 1ac, when the rest followed. (I had been sure that 2dn was C…..E from ’empty coffee’ ‘cups’, and so expected M.C….E).
    I’m once again not getting the crosswords from the club website on Windows, so am using the version on the paper’s main site. (Tablet in for repair, so don’t know about android.)
    1. Were you at Novacon? (Clue: Nottingham, Mansfield Rd, your rather fannish name) I gave it a miss this year but used to go quite regularly. Have we met in the past? Ann
        1. Another fan! How nice. My best friend is Margaret Austin, wife of Martin Easterbrook. My first Novacon was Mancon in ’75. I was persuaded to go by Rog Peyton, of Andromeda fame, and have been going intermttently ever since. Martin Hoare, who does the tech and, I suspect, the real ale component of the bar, is an old friend. I’ll maybe register next year if I’m still living and breathing and we could meet up to tackle the Saturday puzzle! Cheers. Ann
          1. I’ve already registered to attend Novacon 48, but am at the age when I’m hoping to survive and still be fit enough to attend. Best wishes, Peter
            1. I recognise you now. I’ve always thought you were an inspiration to all of us. Hope to see you at next year’s Novacon. Ann
  23. Gnawed away at this one for 74:00 before I got the coconut. Took forever to get moving in the NW. And the SW come to that. Never heard of BA for soul and was fiddling around with ID until I saw BRAHMS. That went by the board when I thought of BRAHMA and saw BEATLES which was biffed as I didn’t have a clue about ambient music. Lighting perhaps! ANNE BOLEYN was a late arrival too. Viragos and Maenads came and went before the Enniskillen Dragoons finally arrived. A biffed Molliere at 1a finally got me started in the NE by making LADETTE appear, and was then superseded by a more literal interpretation of the clue at 1a, thus paving the way for Michael and his motorhome. FATHOMED took some fathoming too. I actually knew SHAW, as I have a friend lives in Shaw Wood Close in Durham. I also almost put in DAVID CONIP, but wiser counsels prevailed. Liked AEROSOL where I tried various ways to include Han or Napoleon, or Uncle. FOI, NOD, LOI, BEATLES. Touche setter and thanks for the explanations V.
  25. No idea of the time as apparently I am not allowed to sit down for more than 10 minutes today as there is TOO MUCH TO DO. For me ambient refers to food not being refrigerated rather than music, so BEATLES went in on trust, as did many others here. COD ANNE BOLEYN for a beautifully smooth surface, and a very-slow-to-spot anagram. WD setter and thanks to blogger!
  26. a minute after getting David Bowie the above track came on the radio. I count that as a interesting coincidence, though only approximate I was musing that he probably hadn’t appeared in the Xxwd before having only recently died at that time. Then for the Beatles to appear when they are only half dead bit confusing; thought it was bit of a feeble clue meself. Ambient has to be one most stupid genre names imho if we agree that it means ‘relating to the immediate surroundings of something’ which could be applied to any music. I conjured the term trancient for more than one reason but the populous stuck with the stupid as they so often do. . .
  27. Soundly beaten by this one, with the northleft corner left almost untouched. Fortunately, this saves me from having to grumble about “beatless” equating to “ambient”.

    1. If you google for “music without beats”, ambient *does* come up pretty quickly, so you can see how such a clue came about…
  28. I loved this puzzle. I didn’t know BA as soul but you learn something new every day. I’m another who tried to fit Sam Wanamaker into 4 down. It was always hard to take Michael Winner seriously. I sort of forgot that he was a director as well as a restaurant critic. 32 minutes. Ann
  29. This lasted 40 minutes, with a lot of head scratching, ending with GLARES after finally entering BEATLES without any real understanding. Ambient as beatless isn’t within my knowledge, and I plan to keep it that way, same for BA as soul. Regards.
  30. 26 mins this morning and 31 mins this afternoon. A fun puzzle, tricky but pleasurably rather than impossibly so. Like others could not think of the most massively famous musical David for ages then remembered him, but it turned out not to be Van Day but Bowie. Crafty Def at 9ac meant the anagram took a while to unravel. LOI fathomed took ages to er, fathom. Knew Brahma but dnk Ba. Loved the audacity of putting in the Christmas cracker joke at 25ac. I bunged in Glares at 27ac thinking perhaps certain Roman deities was 50 Ares. However, I did know Lares from a short-lived period a few years ago when I picked up a Latin textbook and tried to re-study the language which I last studied aged 15. The book contained edited extracts from Plautus’s Aulularia where the household gods were oft mentioned and oversaw all the shenanigans.
  31. 20 ac. So SHAW means ‘wood’? How many centuries ago? Are we all expected to read Chaucer?

    22 ac. And BA means ‘soul’? In what language?

    And a wider point. Isn’t it time that The Times’s setters, or their editor, foreswore answers that have appeared within the past fortnight? I’d swear today’s NEIGHBOUR and DAMASK ROSE have both appeared more recently than that. And, I think, THESAURUS. I know it must be hard to abandon one good clue in favour of another good one that you’ve just used, but recent months have produced too much of this hasty recycling.

    1. I think the argument for SHAW is clear: it survives as a commonplace element in both place names and surnames (including, um, Shaw) in the UK so is not really obscure for anyone interested in words.

      Ba is a bit obscure. It’s a crossword regular — obviously useful to setters as an element of wordplay and perhaps a hangover from the time when a smattering of Egyptology was a must for a well-read chap. Egyptian mythology still informs a lot of our culture, though (the internet is awash with the stuff, and I gather that Game of Thrones owes a debt), and Ba is in most dictionaries as an English transliteration. It also has its own entry in Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

      As people often say on this blog, ‘obscure is stuff I don’t know’.

      DAMASK ROSE did appear about a month ago (26,880 … Oct 19) and NEIGHBOUR even more recently (26,878 … Nov 9). Both were clued completely differently and almost certainly by different setters, so I don’t think ‘recycling’ is fair. I imagine the editor would strive to avoid this kind of thing but I also know from occasional forays into setting that it’s hard enough for a single setter to come up with grids of ‘fresh’ words; trying to do it with a team of setters must be a colossal challenge.

  32. Just over the hour today with some successful guesswork. Nothing to add to the previous comments. Thanks for puzzle and the blog.
  33. Why is ba soul? Is this a technical term used in “pop” music. (Who are the Beatles as judges used to say.) I knew civilisation had collapsed when, in a letter to The Times I mentioned “The Beatles (a 60s pop group)” and the letters editor, without consulting me, cut out the explanatory gloss.

    And what do hogs have to do with motor-bikes?

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