Times 26,957: Inna Gadda Da Vida

50 comments on “Times 26,957: Inna Gadda Da Vida”

1. Didn’t like VAMOOSING much but I DID like HOMONYM! Very clever and, like verlaine, it was my COD. 74m 55s
2. Defeated by the crossers of 21a SALMONELLA and 19d HOMONYM, where I couldn’t see the definition and I didn’t know “hoy”, which wasn’t helping. Ah well. COD and WOD to VAMOOSING, for me… I’m late for my bus, so I’ll have to come back later for my missing parsings! Thanks V and setter.
3. I had trouble getting started and finishing, but in-between was a steady solve and I managed to complete the grid unaided in 49 minutes having wondered for a while whether I might need a few look-ups to help me on my way. I think ROTOR is by example as many don’t have anything to do with uplifting anything. MIASM was unknown but it’s close enough to ‘miasma’ not to have given me pause for thought.

   Edited at 2018-02-09 08:31 am (UTC)

4. Found this toughish, taking 41 minutes. LOI HOMONYM. Most ROTORs I’ve known have gone round but it could be nothing else. To call SAGO a sweet is an offence against all other school puddings. All the long anagrams were witty, making this an enjoyable puzzle. I was blinded by its charms. COD SALMONELLA. Thank you V and setter.
5. A full hour chewing yoghurt, granola, etc.
   Two issues: (a) maybe still thinking about yesterday’s bread rolls, I put BUNS in confidently at 23dn (Drop=snub reversed, obvs.) And that meant I stared at the 26ac Anagram for ages. (b) I didn’t spend enough time on each clue. Once I started giving them an extra 30 secs before moving on, they tumbled much more quickly.
   Thanks setter and V.

   Edited at 2018-02-09 08:48 am (UTC)

6. 15:35. No real problems today, and a fun puzzle. Whether or not MIASM is a bit obscure doesn’t matter, since the wordplay is perfectly clear.
   I have no problem with ‘something uplifting’ for ROTOR, since the thing on a helicopter is such an archetypal example. So much so in fact that it has its own separate definition in Collins.
   1. I can never look at a helicopter rotor without thinking that it was designed, manufactured, and is being maintained on three ‘lowest tender’ contracts.
      1. Well that’s true but you can take comfort in the fact that the standard of quality required just to get to tender in the first place is extremely high. Having said that I am absolutely terrified of helicopters!
         1. To save time, I often flew in one from Battersea to Dinorwig power station in the good old days. We’d be flying through low cloud and driving rain, massive hills looming on either side and me terrified. The pilot would say to me, “I’m not sure I’ve come down the right valley.”
            1. Terrifying. The scariest experience like that I’ve ever had was in a tiny plane flying from Oslo to Aalborg. As we approached our destination the pilot started flying in circles, and for about ten minutes we heard the noise of him lowering and re-raising the landing gear. I say ten minutes, it felt like about five hours. Anyway he got the wheels down properly in the end, and we landed on a runway lined with fire engines.
               1. Flying from Guernsey to Jersey with Aurigny Air (The Yellow Peril) involved the pilot aiming at the grass cliff on the western side of Jersey. We passengers could see this as were were sitting behind the pilot and could see out the front. Just when impact seems inevitable, the plane would be caught in an uplift and would be blown up just enough to land on the airfield at the top. Terrifying!
                  1. I used to fly to Guernsey with Aurigny regularly many years ago. I heard about the Jersey approach but never had that experience. The main risk was getting stuck over there because of fog!
                     1. On another Aurigny flight that I was on, a passenger asked the (only) pilot what would happen if he the pilot had a heart-attack. The answer “I imagine that you will too”
7. 22:15 … and feeling very dim when it came to the long perimeter lights, which all fell late and more from checkers than wordplay.

   Hard to see past the several crosswordy clues. HOMONYM is very smart, but ABSOLVE gets my vote for the sweeter surface

   Thanks to a search engine, I now know that v’s post title refer’s to a mishearing of ‘garden of Eden’ not unconnected to a gallon of Red Mountain wine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida#Background

   1. The song appears in a great Simpsons episode when Bart sneaks it into the hymn book in the church and the reverend announces it as being by I. Ron Butterfly.

      Nice time by the way 😉

      1. All the best people take 22.15

         Thanks for the Simpsons reference (I gather the episode is ‘Bart Sells his Soul’). I’m once again in awe of the cultural scope of the series

   2. Thanks to a search engine I can see that I watched Iron Butterfly with Yes and Dada on 17 January 1971 at the Colston Hall Bristol when I was 16.

      Did the crossword in 26 minutes with LEANT LOI.

8. Best puzzle this week for me, with some great definitions – I liked ‘Joy seemingly’ for FOOLS PARADISE. For some time I could only think of scatting as singing in a jazz style and indeed it was only after I’d seen VAMOOSING fitted that I thought of scatting as in scarpering.

   COD to HOMONYM – I thought ‘no relative to know’ was particularly cunning.

   1. You’re lucky: I could only think of animal – um – droppings and spent quite a while trying to think of a polite enough entry. And yes, I do know (now) it’s not a verb in this meaning.
      1. I’ve never encountered it as anything other than an imperative in the sense required in the clue, which slowed me down in much the same way as it did pootle73.
      2. I was in some very dark places too…
9. I had to work hard at this – easily the toughest of the week for me – but got home eventually finishing with HOMONYM, an excellent clue

   Could have done without memory of school dinners prompted by SAGO – awful stuff

   1. I’m not sure if it was that one or tapioca that we used to get at room temperature with a dollop of cold jam in the middle. Disgusting was certainly the word
10. Good stuff stretched me to 28 minutes, mostly living off scraps as I tried to construct 14 letter entries from single crossers. I started badly with HIT BACK for 4d, which (almost) fits the clue but lacks the hyphen.
    My only slight disappointment was that both the scientist and the epicure in 13 were generic rather than the specifics I gallantly attempted to recall from my polymathic memory banks, especially since the semi-themed long ones were more in my comfort zone (didn’t make them any easier, mind).
    Cheers V: pity I don’t like Oreos much or I might have been closer to your time. Chapeau to setter.
11. Normally in this grid, you get one or more of the long outside answers, and that gives you a way in to several clues; today, it was the complete opposite (I had to get at least half the checkers before any of the long ones fell) which reinforced my impression that this was a puzzle carefully designed to be biff-resistant. All in all, a proper Friday challenge, with HOMONYM the best of a good bunch.
12. I remember we had to endure both – just as you describe. One had cold jam and the other came with a biscuit that was so hard it was uneatable!
    1. As I recall, stirring the jam into the pudding was a huge mistake, turning the whole thing a watery pink colour which was somehow even worse
       1. Which one was universally known as frog spawn? On edit, have now seen pip’s comment below.

          Edited at 2018-02-09 12:24 pm (UTC)

          1. I feel the setter missed a chance to work the classic joke into this clue: How do you start a pudding race? Sago.
13. Call me odd, but I like the Stuff, frog spawn pud, even at school.
    Another fine puzzle on a par with Wednesday’s for me. 39 minutes of which 10 spent on 13d and 25th my loi; for some reason I was looking for the surname of a scientist although only one word fits the checkers. Then MIASM as a must-be variant on miasma.
    Our son is a helicopter engineer. The more he tells me about what can break, and occasionally does, especially the rotor head gearbox, the less I want to go in one again.
14. A real cracker of a puzzle as my birthday treat! Took 73 mins for this stinker. I cannot, cannot believe how V can do this in under 10mins, even when he’s Oreo’d out of his skull.

    I also couldn’t let go of the jazz-style vocalising (put in ‘vocalising’ for a while even tho’ it wouldn’t parse) in 15d. I don’t think ‘scat’ (in the ‘get outta here!’ sense) is a fully-fledged verb which will inflect — cf. ‘Scram!’ –> ‘…and they were all scramming as fast as possible’?? It only exists in the imperative form.

    I also love the linguistically tricksy clues like 19d, which is my COD. And the long edge clues were very witty. A great puzzle.

    1. Thanks to a search engine I discover that Oreos are named after the Greek for mountain – this is why Verlaine eats them, perhaps.
       1. Certainly the way I eat them is like heaping Pelion upon Ossa! Happy birthday P.
       2. Wow, never knew that about Oreos… So had to look it up, of course. Hmm. Wikipedia:
          “The origin of the name Oreo is unknown, but there are many hypotheses, including derivations from the French word ‘Or’, meaning gold (as early packaging was gold),[citation needed] or the Greek word “Ωραίο” (/ɔ.ˈɾɛ.ɔ/), meaning tasty, beautiful, nice or well done. Others believe that the cookie was named Oreo because it was short and easy to pronounce. Another theory is that the name derives from the Latin Oreodaphne[,] a genus of the laurel family. In her book BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, food writer Stella Parks notes that the original design of the Oreo includes a laurel wreath, and several of Nabisco’s cookies at the time had botanically derived names including Avena, Lotus, and Helicon (Heliconia).”
          However, an article on “How the Oreo was invented” on the GIzmodo site does say, in passing, ‘It could also come from the Greek word for mountain or mound – ” oros,” since an Oreo is a “mountain” of a cookie.’
          (I have a little trouble seeing how an Oreo is like a mountain.)
          It goes on to say, ‘It has also been speculated that maybe it was named for the cookie itself, two “O” shape cookies sandwiching the cream, O-cream-O.’
          But I don’t think that will satisfy anyone here, where the refrain would be, “what about the C, the A and the M?”

          As I’m here…
          Happy birthday, P.!

          Edited at 2018-02-09 08:00 pm (UTC)

15. An absolute orgy of biffing, although in most cases I spotted how the clue worked once (or while) I typed. Got the 4 long peripherals on the basis of a couple of checkers, without a clue as to what the connection with the clue was. I was another one puzzled by ‘scatting’, which only suggested Ella to me; like pserve, I toyed with ‘vocalising’. LOI OUTDO. Great puzzle.
16. Got there in the end, but this was 42:29 of struggle with the SE accounting for a large proportion of that. Despite constructing 19d correctly, I missed the clever “no relative to know” definition. SALMON for pink didn’t cross my mind until I had all the crossers, making 21a my LOI. A cracking puzzle. Thanks setter and V.
17. Or the number of minutes taken for this excellent puzzle..Did not help myself by putting in MINIMUM, which mostly parses, for 17ac. All the long answers were challenging. Many thanks verlaine and setter.
18. Thirty-eight minutes, with a depressing acreage of white left after the first pass. Quite a few went in unparsed. Full marks to the setter and, of course, thanks to our bloggist.
19. Over the hour and a DNF, so very grateful for the blog as defeated by the stomach ache and the scientist mostly. I had HOMONYM but couldn’t see the definition before coming here. Tough and a bit above my pay grade, I think, but good to be reminded of one’s limitations now and then. As ever grateful for blog and puzzle and impressed by the solving times of many of our regulars.
20. “Whatever’s the matter with Mary Jane, it’s lovely rice pudding for dinner again” (or sago or semolina). Whichever it is it leaves gastronomic scars on all(except for Pip). And speaking of pips, ours always seemed to come with raspberry jam which didn’t help. 21.15
21. The opposite of Grestyman, as I had the definition of HOMONYM but had no idea about the full wordplay due to my dry-bobness. Sago and tapioca were the lunchtime/dinner equivalent of the dreadful tepid porridge with the half inch skin.

    But did anyone else get served ‘Dead Man’s Leg’?

    Edited at 2018-02-09 01:44 pm (UTC)

    1. Going to Iron Butterfly concerts at 16 (see above) and eating (and enjoying) Dead Man’s Leg at school did me no harm as anyone who has read the twaddle I write on this blog can see.
       1. A superior kind of twaddle, if I might say, sir.
22. Which is not that great in either crosswords or 9-hole rounds, if you’re 64. But the puzzle was truly great, and so I persisted. In the end, all parsed and understood, with the only real biff being ‘neanderthal man’, which was carefully parsed after being written in – you can’t be too careful in a puzzle like this.
23. All complete and parsed in 102 minutes, which shows it’s worth persisting (if you’ve got the time).

24. All complete and unaided, but timing was off the scale. Glad to have managed to sort it all out in the end!

25. Having written in ELIMINATE unparsed I then forgot all about it, and it was only after submission that I discovered that I had ELAMINATE. Otherwise a fine piece despite the (presumably) alternative meaning of ‘scatting’. I thought it was scat-singing. Well, what do I know?
26. Agree totally with V on that word. I was reluctant to put it in. I really enjoyed this puzzle, though I feel it took me longer than it should have.
27. Firm but fair. I found this tough but everything fell into place with no question marks hanging over any of the answers. Vamoosing took a while. I also enjoyed the long ones at the edges, the crosswordy “crack about the bishop” and the “no relative to know”.
28. Same as Grestyman. DNF despite an hour’s effort. Too many missing to list. 😒

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