Times 26937 – of birds, flowers, plants and fungi, but none the worse for that.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I sat down to this and quickly had the NW corner all done, then the NE, but even then I was thinking ‘this is Wednesday, not Monday, you’re not the Friday-blogging genius, things will soon grind to a halt’. But they didn’t. I arrived in 13 minutes with only the six blanks in 28a and 29a to fill in. The penny dropped with a literal ‘Doh!’ on 28 and I popped in 29 with a ‘must be’ although I didn’t actually know the word. I hope it was actually one of my few ‘on song’ days and you all found it really hard. But I doubt it.

Across
1 Team poet’s hirsute growth (9)
SIDEBURNS – SIDE = team, Robert Burns a poet even I knew.
6 Colourful bird originally making a harsh cry (5)
MACAW – a large parrot, from M initial letter of ‘making’, A, CAW   a harsh cry.
9 Indian city taken in by ill-defined plan (7)
DIAGRAM – AGRA = Indian city, inside DIM = ill-defined.
10 Element one past student initially identified among miners (7)
NIOBIUM – I (one) OB (past student) I (initially identified) inside NUM (miners). Element 41, the 34th most abundant in the Earth’s crust, a metal used in alloys especially in jet engine turbines.
11 Emit shrill sound, having twisted foot? (3)
YAP – PAY = foot, as in foot the bill, reversed / twisted.
12 Breaking ice on, and in, a vast expanse of water (6,5)
INDIAN OCEAN – (ICE ON AND IN A)*. Not much ice there though.
14 Variable lodging-place, one by entrance to auto plant (6)
ZINNIA – Z (variable), INN, I, A(UTO). A pretty flower in the daisy family.
15 Polly abandons island for a place in the Low Countries (8)
FLANDERS – Polly Flinders (as in the nursery rhyme) loses an I and adds an A.
17 This writer refuses to accept singer’s distinctive property (8)
IDENTITY – I (this writer) DENY, insert TIT a singer.
19 Slate someone acting ineptly? (6)
HAMMER – Double def, = slate as in criticise, hammer as in a bad actor.
22 Sort of roast coming? It’s to do with good eating (11)
GASTRONOMIC – (ROAST COMING)*.
23 React emotionally when retired manager loses son (3)
SOB – BOSS loses S and is reversed.
25 US president introduces embargo primarily affecting Japanese craft (7)
IKEBANA – IKE = US President, BAN, A(ffecting). Japanese flower arranging, although I’m sure that’s a simplistic explanation.
27 Young chap entering libertine for run (7)
ROULADE –  LAD goes into ROUE. A roulade is a musical term for a run of notes, as well as a rolled up dish recipe.
28 Do taking place with team leader in charge (5)
TONIC – T(eam), ON (taking place), IC (in charge). Do, or Doh, the first note of the tonic scale.
29 Eg fungus identified by secret symbol, right away (9)
CRYPTOGAM – CRYPTOGRAM loses an R. All things which multiply with spores, I think.

Down
1 Sortie requires 500, not 50, in the centre, alas (5)
SADLY – SALLY = sortie, replace an L with a D.
2 Unemotional father framing “Head of Egyptian God” (7)
DEADPAN – E in DAD then PAN a God.
3 Pub sibling drinks in: a sign of shame once (3,8)
BAR SINISTER – BAR = pub, SISTER has IN inserted. A heraldic indication of illegitimacy.
4 Relief provided by Yankee on sea at first (6)
REMEDY – RE (on) MED (sea), Y (Yankee).
5 Partially composing a blessing apt for vocal performance (8)
SINGABLE – Hidden word in COMPO(SING A BLE)SSING.
6 Low state of mind duke’s shaken off (3)
MOO – MOOD loses D.
7 Asian revolutionary accommodating fashionable French art (7)
CHINESE – Our old friend CHE Guevara hosts IN = fashionable, ES as in tu es, French fhou art, or familiar you are.
8 Seducer’s old way to cross country river (9)
WOMANISER – WISE = old word for way, as in clockwise, insert OMAN a country, add R for river.
13 Completely unrecorded by bank? Emphatically not! (2,2,7)
ON NO ACCOUNT – Cryptic definition, and prosaic one.
14 European in spot gets confused about current spirit (9)
ZEITGEIST – ZIT is a spot, insert E, add (GETS)* insert I.
16 Like some poetry? Briefly stay around a New Zealand area (8)
STANZAIC – STIC(K) around A NZ A. Not a familiar word to a bardophobe but seems fair enough.
18 Oriental festival supported by unspecified number (7)
EASTERN – EASTER, add N.
20 Greek character flies over wild horse (7)
MUSTANG – MU Greek letter, GNATS reversed.
21 Obsequious sergeant-major and his sphere of influence (6)
SMARMY – SM and his ARMY.
24 Ray biting tail of another fish (5)
BREAM – R tail of another, into BEAM = ray.
26 Part of circle talking of animal rescue vessel? (3)
ARC – sound lke ARK. Simps, eh?

50 comments on “Times 26937 – of birds, flowers, plants and fungi, but none the worse for that.”

  1. My LOI—as the only word that fits the checkers—was NIOBIUM. I wondered about the name, and why an element might be associated with eternal mourning. It’s not, exactly, but it is associated with Niobe, for an interesting reason. Wikipedia says “Niobe…was the daughter of Tantalus, the namesake of tantalum. The name reflects the great similarity between the two elements in their physical and chemical properties, making them difficult to distinguish.”Maybe we’ll have tantalum here some day. The prospect is… tantalizing.
  2. 42 minutes, possibly helped by having a sea BREAM fish supper on Friday, the same day I was reminded of 1d’s “sally” by the story about the Crown Jewels being buried below a sally port…

    Luckily I biffed 15a—NHO Polly Flinders—and a few others, whereas the unknowns 10a NIOBIUM 14a ZINNIA and 29a CRYPTOGAM I had to work out from the wordplay. Gawd knows whence I dragged ROULADE; I barely knew roué, let alone ROULADE, but drag it I did.

    Anyway. Started well with FOsI 1a and 1d, finished with 28a TONIC with, as Pip says, a very literal d’oh! COD and WOD to 21d SMARMY for me. Thanks to Pip, and to our setter for an entertaining puzzle that nevertheless lets me set off for work a bit early…

      1. Little Polly Flinders
        Sat among the cinders
        Warming her pretty little toes …
        At least it made a change from Moll.
  3. 25 mins with croissant (hoorah) and plum jam.
    Niobium, Zinnia and Cryptogam all unknown but nicely doable from wordplay and checkers.
    I’m more used to the gastronomic version of Roulade.
    Like ‘Awn’ yesterday, I think Ikebana is becoming a standard.
    Lots of sound cluing. Mostly I liked, for its simplicity, Bream (COD).
    Thanks setter and Pip.
      1. It has here too, Kevin, which was why I was a little surprised by yesterday’s remark. I first came across it when I started solving the Telegraph cryptic regularly about 50 years ago.
  4. 28 minutes. Is there really a word STANZAIC? Fortunately the cryptic was clear. Never heard of CRYPTOGAM and ROULADE is a pleasant pudding in my world but both answers were spoon-fed. LOI surprisingly was HAMMER. If the ‘acting’ had been clued as ‘playing’, I’d have thought of West Ham United straightaway. I always like to feel with it so COD to ZEITGEIST, although SMARMY was a lovely clue. I just about remembered poor old Polly Flinders having first tried to tie it in with Moll FLANDERS, Thank you Pip and setter.
    1. Sad avatar, BW. Black and white camera in 1958? Celebrating only 60 years since BW won silverware?
      1. There have been a couple of second tier titles, Pip, two League Cup Finals, a Freight Rover and a Sherpa Van, the last item very useful for taking the youth teams to matches. But the economics of the town since King Cotton declined have left Boltonians wondering and wandering. They hate having been put in Greater Manchester rather than Lancashire of course, and it does seem to have done more harm than good. In fact, the Middlebrook development around the Reebok/ Macron football stadium has taken a lot of trade from the town centre. It’s now a shadow of the place that 20 years ago was acclaimed by the Telegraph as the best shopping centre in the country. What’s left is the Pevsner-acclaimed Town Hall and the comedians, Peter Kay being the best. The black and white picture of Nat with the silverware from sixty years ago holding the cup in an old LMS carriage at Euston seemed to sum up all that’s been lost.
  5. YAP & TONIC were my last in, even though I’d “got” them fairly early on; I just couldn’t come up with a parsing for either until the end. NHO the FLANDERS girl; thought maybe Moll went by the other nickname as well. (Pip, I think you want to begin the underline with ‘place’.) ODE says sv BAR SINISTER that it’s a ‘popular and erroneous term for bend sinister’, and that was ‘a supposed sign of bastardy’. And in any case, was it really a sign of shame?
    1. Exemplary use of “a”s today, I thought: in plain sight, in anagram, in hidden word, in substitution, in definition (correctly). Great work.
    2. The setter carefully puts in …once because in some circles it used to be. My grandmother was born out of wedlock, and all her life believed it disqualified her from all sorts of things, including heaven. Her mother was exiled to Norfolk and the child was brought up by relatives. The father emigrated to Australia to escape the stigma. I’d like to think his “shame” was expunged by joining the Australian Imperial Force in time to die on the western front in an heroic rearguard action in which his captain won a posthumous VC. How times change.
      Or again, “once”, marrying an American divorcee caused shame in the form of abdication. Now it’s a cause of universal rejoicing, and it doesn’t even matter that Harry’s a ginger.
      1. And I put in ‘was’; and I was asking about the bend sinister, not ‘illegitimacy’, although I should have been clearer about what ‘it’ was.
  6. 35 minutes (good for me), but like others I was delayed by 16dn, first thinkng of STANZAED (which does actually exist) and this added an extra layer of difficulty to working out the intersecting and unknown CRYPTOGAM from wordplay.

  7. 32 mins, ending with an alphabet trawl for HAMMER.

    dnk the musical meaning of ROULADE, Polly F, BAR SINISTER, NIOBIUM or CRYPTOGAM, and didn’t get the musical ref of ‘Do’. Pleasantly surprised to see the squares all turn green!

  8. Never parsed TONIC or ROULADE (Thanks Pip). Knew AWN from barley (and 100 crosswords). 7 or 8 lovely deceptive surfaces but COD to INDIAN OCEAN.
  9. 14 minutes, so yes, this was pretty straightforward in my book. Isn’t that STANZAED a “noun as verb” horror? And CRYPTOGAM looks far too much like a misprint.
    I got ZEITGEIST without spotting the – um – spot, so thanks for persisting, Pip. YAP was too nearly YIP until I realised it had to parse as well. NIOBIUM I constructed (slightly laboriously) from wordplay, though it is in my Pointless enhanced collection of elements and apparently jolly useful.
  10. 9:42, but with a stupid error: NUOBIUM. I assembled the various bits of the wordplay without taking care to ensure I had the right bits.
    Great puzzle though: one for those like me who like funny words with clear wordplay. I’ve never heard of Polly Flinders, though, so FLANDERS was a biff.
  11. 13:30 … less than confident this would come back oll korrect, but it’s a credit to the setter than most of us seem to have arrived at the odder words safely enough.

    I was as in the dark as many others about Polly Flinders. Looking up the nursery rhyme, it seems to be about a little girl who gets spanked (or whipped, in some versions) for wanting to be warm and showing a bit of initiative. As Z8 says , times change.

  12. Not really, celebrating after completion in 12’10”, doing fine this week. Histories of Bletchley Park tell the true story of the serviceman who was posted there because he was an expert in cryptogams. He stayed, and helped to win the war….

    Thanks Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-01-17 05:20 pm (UTC)

  13. Same unknowns as everybody else but no problem coasting home using wordplay. Entertaining but easy.
  14. I was feeling very lucky to finish in 25 minutes, even with a couple (including TONIC) having gone in unparsed with a shrug of the shoulders. But then I found I had a tyop in GASTRONOMIC (or “gastronimic”, as I had it).
  15. Curate’s egg of a crossword – several, including FLANDERS – went in unparsed, and ROULADE couldn’t be anything else, but never heard of it -my LOI. After yesterday’s muse, nice to be back to a bit of science, as NIOBIUM went straight in. Many thanks, Guy, for the explanation above.
  16. Just joined up after visiting this site for some years. I don’t do the Times xword every day but enjoy reading the comments here when I have done so. And I sometimes finish! Best wishes to all, Richard J
    1. ‘Welcome aboard’ doesn’t seem quite right for a long-time stowaway, so welcome on deck
    2. Welcome Richard on deck (cabins are preferable and follow in due course).
      I often wonder how many people read this blog. Is that a measurable quantum? It would be great to hear from some of them.
      1. I’m not exactly a stowaway, but I spend a lot of time below decks. Being a slow solver – though also slowly improving – I rarely have anything useful to add. This puzzle was on the easy side of the scale, for me, but the few obscurities were fairly clued. Fergus
        1. Welcome on the deck as well. I am sure that we can make room by clearing away the quoits area for new members.

          I have just googled quoits to find that the spike is called a hob, mott or pin. The sort of words setters love. You saw it here first.

          1. My wife and I played deck quoits on the Queen Elizabeth. We didn’t have a spike, so we couldn’t mott the hoople or whatever. Instead, there were circles painted on the deck and points were scored depending where the rope ring ended up. We made up the rest of the rules as we went along, broadly in line with bowls. Good game, good game.
          2. If you’re ever in Sheffield and see a lady who looks like she might enjoy a game of deck quoits, whatever you do don’t ask her to show you her mott.
            1. Thank you for saving me from any embarrassment. I also googled “hoople”, the meaning of which I never knew. Fascinating.
  17. Rather like yesterday’s, in that where the vocabulary was verging on the obscure, the wordplay left me in no doubt I’d hit upon the right answer, which is one definition of good setting.
  18. 28m today and much enjoyed, with the same unknowns and the same reaction to the helpful and fair clueing. Never heard of the sign of shame before but much enlightened by blog and Z’s personal example. Thanks to setter and blogger.
  19. I romped(for me) through this puzzle, and even though the required meaning of ROULADE was unknown, and CRYPTOGAM and STANZAIC were unfamiliar words, I confidently followed the wordplay and submitted at 19:04. I started with 1a and then filled most of the NW. I even vaguely knew the plant today. Polly Flinders didn’t ring any bells and I biffed FLANDERS from definition and crossers. NIOBIUM was familiar-ish, and I was helped by the wordplay again. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip.
  20. I’d just re-read a Ruth Rendell in which the nursery rhyme is mentioned, otherwise I’d have taken much longer. Even so I was led astray by thoughts of parrots and Polynesia. Husband never fails to annoy me when spraying his toes with Tinactin after his morning shower and chanting “there’s a fungus amongus”. CRYTPOGAM was new to me but clear. 15.18
  21. I’m with topicaltim (very much so – we are only separated by 2 seconds on the leaderboard). Clear wordplay for unusual words is one of my favorite things about cryptic crosswords and this one had it in spades! 7:42
  22. 26 minutes for the puzzle, which pleased me, but not half as much as coming here and reading of the Monday-blogging genius.

    On reflection, though, shouldn’t that be ‘geniuses’?

    1. Nice try, but I think I referred to the Friday chap, and to this being as easy as a Monday!
  23. About 15 years ago Mido, the Egyptian international who then played for Spurs, kept a flat next door to me in London. I bumped into him one Monday or Tuesday after Spurs had taken a spanking at Bolton in a very physical game. We chatted as usual, and he volunteered “We always know its going to be a tough game, playing Bolton at home in the winter. Makes you think.” For what it’s worth.
  24. A definite puzzle of three parts for me. A third went in easily as normal; a third went in from definition and crossers, but I couldn’t quite work out the wordplay (thank you Pip); and about a third were clear from the wordplay but the word itself was either unknown or just at (just past) the edge of familiarity. And, to break the tie, there was Cyptogram, which I couldn’t parse, didn’t know, and didn’t get. No genius here.
  25. Does anyone here remember the arrangements of nursery rhymes in the style of the classics (esp. Handel) by a chap called Diack? They included “Little Polly Flinders” a 2-part song for Sop & Alto. My favourite though was always “Sing a Song of Sixpence”. They were great fun to sing. I haven’t heard them for years but was reminded of them by the inclusion of the lovely Polly in today’s crossword. A steady solve. No real problems. 27 minutes. Ann
  26. I have been out and about on manoeuvers – thus email silence.

    For the record:

    Sunday 30 mins;
    FOI 2dn AID
    LOI 1ac COARSE!
    COD 18ac CHARLIE CHAPLIN ages old!
    WOD 26ac PHOTOBOMB so modern!

    Monday 25 mins;
    FOI 1ac HOPPING MAD a real gimme!
    LOI 21ac STEADY
    COD 20ac PATCHILY
    WOD 5den MILKSOP

    Tuesday 35 mins;
    FOI 2dn RUN
    LOI 9ac BANDLET
    COD 6ac FICHE
    WOD 17dn HARRUMPH!

    Mittwoch – 45 mins.
    FOI 1ac SIDEBURNS
    LOI 28ac TONIC unparsed – but it wasn’t TUNIC!
    COD 14ac ZINNIA lovely!
    WOD 21dn SMARMY lovely

    Didn’t STAN ZAÍC play wing-back for Dynamo Kiev between the wars? Later turned out for Portsmouth in 1944.

    Edited at 2018-01-17 04:14 pm (UTC)

  28. 12:52 I thought I was in QC land for this, but there were one or two obscurities for which I had to trust the wordplay. CRYPTOGAM – I liked the ‘looks like a misprint’ comment above, STANZAIC (is that really a word?) and the 2nd meaning of ROULADE, which I never knew was a synonym of MELISMA. 15a had me thinking of the yellow station in Melbourne. ZINNIA my LOI, having wondered for a while what an ‘auto plant’ might be. Doh! ZEITGEIST my favourite.
  29. Messed up big time with STANZAED – yeah, because, like, STED is obviously short for steady, innit – which made CRYPTOGRAM beyond impossible.
  30. 18:40 so a rare foray into sub-20 mins territory for me. This one must have been right up my alley. The wordplay for the unknowns, half-knowns or vaguely knowns (niobium, roulade in the music sense, cryptogam and zinnia) was rock solid. I knew bar sinister from not getting it in a previous puzzle, possibly in another publication, but again the wordplay was solid. Tonic was a bit of a bit and hope as more likely than tunic, only twigging the do, re, me sort of tonic post solve. I thought this was a really fun puzzle.
  31. Like the day before, this one must have been easy as I did it in less than 30 minutes, at 4am in an effort to break chain of thought that was keeping me awake – it worked!

    There were one or two words I hadn’t encountered, ROULADE for example as anything other than a pudding, but the clues generally made things pretty simple.

    The one that had me scratching my head was 8d. Not solving it, because WOMANISER was obvious given that I already had half the letters, but I couldn’t see how to get there from the clue, other than that it is a synonym for “libertine”. Now that, thanks to this blog, I know how the answer is derived from the clue, I’m still not convinced – ‘way’ = ‘wise’? hmm…..

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