Times 26959 – A new Olympic sport?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 20 Minutes
Music: George Lloyd, Symphony #8

I suppose easy Monday is back, provided you are thoroughly familiar with butterflies, Indian religions, and cookery.   If not, you may have to rely on relatively straightforward cryptics to give you the answers.   In any case, experienced solvers are going to fly through this one.   My time was in part due to lack of knowledge, and a bit of inaccurate spelling.   But in the end, really quite simple, giving me time to turn to Mephisto.

I had not played the Lloyd piece for a long time, and I have to say he is not the finest British music has to offer.   He would, however, make an interesting cryptic clue, along the lines “Composer confused old PM”, but probably few people would understand the wordplay.

Across

1 Unusually fab, iconic name for a series (9)
FIBONACCI – Anagram of FAB, ICONIC.   The gateway to some interesting parts of math.
6 Gone to get a meal from an Italian? (5)
PASTA –  PAST + A.
9 One corrupting prophet ensnares French noble (7)
SEDUCER – SE(DUC)ER.
10 Half the rally place advert for passengers (7)
CARLOAD – CARLO[w, eire] + AD, or something along those lines.   I have to admit I just biffed this one, and got the cryptic only by doing research
11 Heading for London, group is trouble (5)
UPSET – UP + SET, a Quickie clue.
13 What’s lab beaker if mistreated? (9)
BREAKABLE – anagram of LAB BEAKER.
14 Widespread disturbing pain vexes (9)
EXPANSIVE – anagram of PAIN VEXES
16 Burden of working with America (4)
ONUS – ON + US.
18 Attempt to keep old system of weights (4)
TROY – TR(O)Y.
19 Left making improvements, removing black text (9)
LETTERING – L + [b]ETTERIING.
22 Nearly run over brownish-grey butterfly (9)
BRIMSTONE – BRIM + STONE, where ‘brim’ is a verb.
24 Pop concert books joint (5)
GIGOT – GIG + O.T.   One I DNK, but the cryptic is absolutely clear.
25 Ancient religion’s home is in Jamaica (7)
JAINISM – JA(IN, IS)M, one I just biffed.
26 Good film for an actor: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, say (7)
VEHICLE – double definition.
28 Courteous man entertaining English author (5)
GENET – GEN(E)T, far from a ‘gent’.
29 Drug agent is suspect plant (9)
NARCISSUS – NARC + IS + SUS.   ‘Narc’ is actually the Romany word for ‘nose’, and indicates a police spy, but crosswords are not the place for historically correct word usage.

Down
1 Split with female’s certain (7)
FISSURE – F IS SURE.
2 Shoot mate in Chicago (3)
BUD – double defintion, one US slang, as we don’t have chinas over here.
3 What attracts smokers — nearly ten outside one small building (8)
NICOTINE –  N(I COT)INE.   For usage of ‘cot’ to mean ‘cottage’, check out the poetry of Coleridge.
4 What some substitute for chocolate over cutting sugar, perhaps (5)
CAROB – CAR(O)B.
5 Like wet weather to increase, making river into lake (9)
INCLEMENT – INC[-r,+L]EMENT, a chestnutty letter-substitution clue.
6 Father on the continent imports British wig (6)
PERUKE – PER(UK)E.
7 Present flags in support of squadron’s foremost flyer (4,7)
SNOW BUNTING – S[quardon] + NOW BUNTING.
8 Formal speech where one usually sleeps (7)
ADDRESS – double definition.
12 Belief in lie after drink is taken (11)
SUPPOSITION –  SUP + POSITION
15 Where Douglas is stirring semolina with force (4,2,3)
ISLE OF MAN –  anagram of SEMOLINA + F, a place that is seldom fully named in the crossword, usually appearing as ‘Man’ or ‘IOM’.
17 Iron is hung all over the place in a Chinese system (4,4)
FENG SHUI – FE + anagram of IS HUNG
18 Mug finding something amusing about British prison (4,3)
TOBY JUG – TO(B)Y + JUG
20 Conjecture about origins of the latest chicken (7)
GUTLESS – GU(T[he] L[atest])ESS
21 String player needing no book for help (6)
ASSIST – [b]ASSIST
23 Young fish always around loch (5)
ELVER – E(L)VER, a stock fish in US puzzles.
27 Reduced price for lettuce (3)
COS – COS[t]

74 comments on “Times 26959 – A new Olympic sport?”

  1. Thanks, Vinyl, for the promptly posted blog. Agree that this was easy for experienced solvers. I was on track for a PB of under 18 minutes when I failed to parse SNOW BUNTING correctly and guessed at SHOW BUNTING (assuming it was some military term, which was, perhaps, the setter’s intended trap). Note to self: take time to check!

    On 10a I took the rally to be half of the MONTE CARLO Formula One rally, which I dredged up from somewhere.

    Edited at 2018-02-12 03:43 am (UTC)

  3. Two different words, Jonathan.
    The former is short for “narcotics agent.” Here in America, mate. It dates only from the 1960s.
    “Nark,” however, is UK slang for a police informer. Apparently the first known usage was around 1710 (Collins). This is the word that probably originates from the word for “nose” in Romany.

    I thought the surfaces in this puzzle were brilliant.

    Edited at 2018-02-12 04:42 am (UTC)

    1. And see the use in the interplay between Robert de Niro and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver where he jokingly admits “I am a narc.” As I remember it anyway. Some time since I’ve seen it.
  4. 31 minutes, finding the SW quite resistant. I had a chuckle when I read FENG SHUI described as a system.
  5. I also threw in ‘show bunting’; saw ‘present’, managed to overlook ‘support of squadron’. Dumb. And the first time I’ve been under 10′ in ages.
  6. 17 minutes but with an error at 1ac where I thought Fabonicci more likely than what turned out to be the correct answer, but I suppose the order of letters in the anagrist as presented in the clue should have alerted me to FAB being unlikely as the first three letters.

    The mathematician has come up 3 times before, in 2008, 2011 and 2012 and I didn’t know him on any of those occasions either, but I got him correct in 2011 when he was clued by a charade-type clue. Both other times, like today, he was an anagram and at 1ac! In 2008 he was clued as: Fab trips with iconic mathematician (9). (Grrrr!!! once again at a foreign name or word being clued as an anagram, especially when it bu**ered up my best solving time in ages).

    We don’t see L = Loch very often, though L = Lake is common enough. L can also be Lough, but I don’t recall ever seeing that one.

    Edited at 2018-02-12 05:48 am (UTC)

    1. It’s a tricky one that, as to anagram or not. I’m well familiar with the name, though not by any stretch a mathematician, so it was pretty much a write-in.

      Is there anyway of telling what one is or can be ‘expected’ to know as a Times solver?

  7. Finished with minor cheating to check the answers as I went along.

    Struggled with the parsing of Jainism, narcis[sus] and carload.

    Guessed brimstone (nice hotel in the Lake District) and dnk genet, gigot, peruke or snow bunting and got from the wordplay.

    Liked breakable, address, isle of man and COD bud.

    Edited at 2018-02-12 06:11 am (UTC)

  8. 1ac FIBONACCI my FOI and my COD! And my WOD! as I adore the simplicity of his work – nature’s numbers. All hail Leonardo Pisano Bigollo!

    And another fast time for me at 18 minutes.

    LOI 10ac CARLOAD as I did not get the MONTE CARLO bit!

    Happy Mondays Mr. Bigalow!

    Edited at 2018-02-12 06:22 am (UTC)

  9. A quick 29m for me, with FOI 1a FIBOANACCI, instantly familiar to anyone with a computer science background, LOI 22a BRIMSTONE, more than likely unknown to anyone with a CS background, so a nice spread of GK!

    Slowed by the unknown SNOW BUNTING and the barely-remembered-from-previous puzzles PERUKE and GIGOT, on the whole this flowed very nicely. I’ve been halfway through Our Lady of the Flowers for about a year now, but at least that means I knew enough about GENET to put in 28a.

    Thanks to setter and Vinyl.

  10. 11:01 … I’m perfectly familiar with FIBONACCI, though again that’s as much as I can say about him: “His name was Fibonacci”. That’s not said with any pride. I wish I had warmed up to maths at school, especially when seeing something like the synchronised landings of Falcon Heavy’s boosters the other day and thinking how unutterably brilliant it must be to be part of something like that. Maths is cool, shame I can’t do it. [in case anyone’s been living under a rock, or just wants to watch it again, and why wouldn’t you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0-pfzKbh2k%5D

    I was glad of the helpful checking letters for FENG SHUI. Why is it transliterated as ‘feng’ and pronounced ‘fung’? Why not just render it as ‘fung’? Any Orientalists want to explain?

    1. I’m utterly at one with you over the Falcon Heavy stuff: that landing is so perfect it looks like CGI from an episode of Thunderbirds. Everything about it is brilliant, from the mathematical geniuses that made it work to the insane whimsy to put a car into orbit (round the sun, mind) with DON’T PANIC in large friendly letters on the dashboard. And all at about a millionth of the cost of NASA even trying to do anything similar. We live in an age of wonder.
      1. The first time I saw the clip I honestly thought it was a joke. Thunderbirds certainly came to mind. And I agree, the daft touches are also joyous.
    2. By no means an expert, but I think perhaps what is happening here is that the letter ‘u’ (for transliteration purposes) is reserved (typically) for the sound found in ‘school’ and ‘rue’.
  11. 25 mins with a Fat Rascal (hoorah).
    Having visited Northallerton yesterday, I now have a stock of them and the best Lime marmalade (Lewis and Cooper).
    Very mondayish. A little bit more disguise on the definitions could have made this a good one. Even I can biff: ‘where Douglas is’ and ‘what attracts smokers’.
    Mostly I liked the less biffable: Carload and (COD) Snow Bunting.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.
    1. Have to correct you there, Myrtilus, my wife makes the best marmalade.. lime, lemon and/or orange .. if ever you find yourself down here in Kent, a sampling could be arranged
      1. I beg to differ, Jerry and Myrtilus, Mrs K’s has the edge I believe. If you’re passing Rutland on the A1 before March pop in for a late breakfast.
        1. Ha, some sort of comparative tasting beckons. Though something tells me that when I inform my wife that I have bet large sums on her marmalade being better than Mrs K’s, she may not be amused..
          1. I suspect some sort of ‘neither of them could be any better’ would be an appropriate result. Marmalade, like Art, is a subjective thing.
            1. Thank you both for the offer. I’m sure both Mrs K and Mrs J make great marmalade. However, my quest has been to find the best ever shop-bought Lime marmalade. It has to be Lime – and there are so many where it is Lemon/Lime or ‘three fruit’ or some such. Pah.
              The Lewis and Cooper (Northallerton) which is currently in my first place – is actually ‘Lime and Gin’ (but I allow Gin as not detracting from the fruit content). It features a remarkable 44% Limes.

  12. Was this meant to be to be the Quickie? 9 minutes, level with my PB I think. I wish I’d observed the second hand of my watch more closely. Only hold up was the CARLOAD/ SNOW BUNTING crosser where I toyed with a bird of real ambition, the star bunting. DNK GIGOT but what else? Naff they may be, but I’ve always liked TOBY JUGs. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2018-02-12 09:17 am (UTC)

  13. 11:15 including the time taken to rise from my sun lounger to accept a cold towel and some fruit from a passing waiter. My brain obviously functions well at 30 degrees. Without the interruption I may have been entering PB territory but it would be churlish to hold that against the waiter who is normally such a welcome sight. Happy days…

  14. All very quick, but took a little longer over SNOW BUNTING, misreading the clue (thought it was S+flyer, and the whole thing meant ‘present’), and then LOI CARLOAD.

    BRIMSTONE from wp, as dnk the butterfly.

  15. 9:38. I reflected as I solved this, standing up on a crowded train, that I will never get close to my best times in these conditions. This proved trickier than that in the end anyway, with a few unfamiliar words and not entirely obvious wordplay. As so often of late I was significantly held up by one clue at the end: CARLOAD. It’s not a word that springs instantly to mind (well mine anyway) and my attempts to think of a rally starting with a C proved unsurprisingly fruitless.
    1. DNF in 30 mins after doing most of it in 12 mins. I had Oboist for Assist and so couldn’t get Brimstone. Not that I’d heard of the butterfly. Also Show Bunting for Snow Bunting.
  16. Not much to add – a real rather short stroll in the park

    I’d just about managed to forget Sotira’s memory jog of school meals, cold jam and lumpy semolina when it pops up again – is this a subtle form of torture?

  18. Very nearly 12 minutes, which is as fast as I get these days. Wanting to understand everything (in the crossword, that is: a broader application would be a tad overambitious for a Monday) I spent time over BRIMSTONE.
    JAINISM is remembered as the one where adherents carefully sweep the path ahead of them to avoid stepping on insects. I always meant to find out how they feel about antibiotics.
    I hugely admire Vinyl’s conjecture for the CARLO bit of 10ac: now that’s real research, especially if they ever drive cars through the county at speed. The (probably correct) wordplay is much less exciting.
  19. FOI FIBONACCI, can do a good few hours on him and his work, he is most important for spreading and popularising the use of Hindu Arabic numerals. Delayed by SNOW BUNTING today, thinking the second word must be BANNERS. 14’, thanks vinyl and setter.
  20. 6:45 which I think is my 3rd best time so it’s definitely Monday – a useful reminder as I’m at home waiting for the carpet fitter to arrive and when he’s gone I can look forward to the delights of putting daughter’s bedroom back together. Yippee.
  21. I’d like to say I wouldn’t have “done a verlaine” on this on under competition conditions, but never say never, I am verlaine after all. I’d polished off all but 2 clues of this in about 4 minutes, leaving me with question marks for both 22ac and 7dn – BRIMSTONE seemed like a very probable butterfly but I couldn’t parse it at all, for which thanks Vinyl (very clever now I see it!) and SHOW BUNTING just didn’t seem like it could be a real thing but… I was in a big hurry this morning, alright? It’s not really a venial error, there’s just too much going on in the middle of the clue. Ho hum!
  22. Fibonacci is famous, the mathematical equivalent of say, Durer or Purcell. It is a complete mystery to me why folks think it OK to be innumerate but not illiterate, when it is the former that our lives are so completely dependent on
    1. Well said Jerry

      The 1228 edition of his Liber Abaci was a seminal work that had a huge effect upon business transactions including compound interest and currency conversion. It underpinned the growing banking sector which in turn underpinned world trade

      1. Without passing a verdict on its merits from a critic’s perspective, I would have thought that the ubiquitous book/film The Da Vinci Code would have given a lot of people at least a passing acquaintance with Fibonacci and his sequence. What’s that, m’lud? Ah yes, a popular work of fiction by an American gentleman, in the early stages of which a code is broken by knowledge of these particular numbers.
        1. I gave up pretending not to enjoy the Dan Brown books a while ago. And he does always pack a lot of “well I never” stuff into them.
            1. 🙂 yeah, I’ve seen it before. He’s a soft target for parody, no question, but I don’t care. When I’m in the mood for some bravura save-the-world ripping yarn stuff, he does it better than most. I do get a kick from his books
              1. I have never read a word of Dan Brown and that still makes me laugh.
                Actually that’s not quite true: I have read some of his words but only in the context of ‘someone actually wrote this sentence in a book that got published’ type commentary.
                But hey I’m not judging, I like Jason Statham movies.

                Edited at 2018-02-12 01:31 pm (UTC)

                1. I’ve seen much worse writing in books that take themselves much more seriously, to be honest. The odd thing with Brown is that now and then he writes pretty darned well — just for a few pages — then it goes back to being functional, at best, a bit painful at worst. I suspect he can write well enough if he wants, he just knows that what sells his books are the page-turning storylines and the intriguing detail he has a knack of turning up, so that’s where he spends his time. I have some respect for that
  23. 7 mins, and after I’d finished I thought I should have been a little quicker. FIBONACCI went in straight away, I built out from there, and the only clue I didn’t crack on first read through was BRIMSTONE which ended up being my LOI. I’d thought of it as soon as I read the clue but I couldn’t parse it, and it was only when I went back to it that I realised “nearly run over” was one element of the WP rather than a separate “nearly run” and “over”. I don’t feel so bad now that I know V couldn’t immediately parse it either.
  24. Piece of cake today, 13 minutes, of which 2 or 3 spent on the LOI CARLOAD wondering why CARLO, then thought (as did our blogger on researching) about the Gordon Bennett race 1903 which started in /near Carlow and Athy in Ireland. There’s a fine golf course at Carlow if you’re passing that way. Then I realised the MONTE thing and wished I’d seen it sooner as a PB was on the cards. FIBONACCI was a FOI write-in.
  25. The traditional (or at least fairly frequent) Monday morning sprint. Not completely vanilla, but as has already been observed, nothing here to startle the more seasoned solver, even if he is built for comfort rather than speed these days.
  26. A PB for me at a whisker under 10min – my first sub-ten solve, I think.

    I share Horryd’s liking of Fibonacci and his sequence, and in fact I’m a fan of number theory in general. Sadly, I lack the brain to follow it very far. I have a copy of Hardy and Wright’s “Introduction”, and every couple of years I take it with me on holiday determined to get through it. So far I can handle about the first 40 pages.

    I think my only unknown was GIGOT. I actually knew both the word and the meaning, but not the fact that they went together.

  27. Well I suppose it could have been quicker… However for me that is possibly a fastest ever. Held up by SNOW BUNTING and CARLOAD, not that I didn’t know them, just looking for present as the literal rather than flyer. Several crossword-only words here, eg GENET, PERUKE, GIGOT. CAROB well-known from my health food shop owning days.
  28. 19’19. Threw in Unlit (for Upset) at first which didn’t help. Impressed by all the speed artists – I found it more a stumble in the park. Vaguely remembered the bird of the magical name.
  29. 20 minutes – was hoping to break quarter-hour mark, as I was nearly done in 13 min, but then spent five minutes failing to think anything better than CARGOED to fit checkers at 10ac. After being shown right word, decided to bung it in unparsed, not being able to think of anything like ‘rally’ starting CARLO–, so effectively a DNF.
  30. Woe, woe and thrice woe! Having got close to a PB at 18:29, I found I’d ruined it all by biffing 1a as I read the clue. Unfortunately I got my languages screwed up and put FIBONACHI. A pity as I carefully teased out the unknowns, GIGOT, GENET, BRIMSTONE and JAINISM. Fun puzzle though. Liked BREAKABLE. Ah well tea break over and back into the bathroom to finish fitting the new carpet. A small job, but lots of fiddly cuts. Thank goodness I still have the carpet scissors from my Dad’s old shop. Good luck with the furniture shifting, Penfold. I had a similar job a few weeks ago when water started dripping through the dining room ceiling and the plumber had to rip up floorboards to find the leak. Definitely not a pleasure! Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  32. 12:59 so for me definitely on the easy side. I remember having to look up Jain at the tender age of 15 in 1964 on first hearing Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song “Universal Soldier” and it has stuck in my mind ever since.
  33. My hope of a sub-10 was done in by ADDRESS which was one of my “is that all there is?” ones – I didn’t quite believe it. I note that TfTT’s own Mohn came in comfortably under 4…. Not school puddings again. I’m thinking instead of a GIGOT d’agneau done a la Julia Child. If only it weren’t so expensive it would be on the menu at this address far more often. 10.28
  34. Easy peasy, though I was uncertain about UK being equated with British. I thought Britain was only England, Scotland, and Wales, excluding NI, and that the larger British Isles includes the Republic in addition to the UK.
      1. I didn’t recall ever seeing that before, and maybe I just know too many Northern Irish – if I had a penny for every time I’ve been chastised… or maybe that’s just another way of needling me. It’s not much different to irking the Canadians, Mexicans and Central Americans, and South Americans by equating America with US.
        1. Yes I’m sure it grates in NI… rather as the inclusion of Finland in Scandinavia does to the Finns. Usage doesn’t always respect political sensitivities!
  35. Easy enough, but held up by tiredness and maybe a bit more wine last night than needed for optimal solving. Like vinyl I never thought of Monte Carlo, but unlike vinyl I didn’t bother trying to explain that (I’m not blogging) so I just biffed in CARLOAD when the checkers appeared. Didn’t catch the wordplay on the butterfly clue either, so it was just a guess and my LOI. About 20 minutes or so despite not presenting a huge challenge. Regards.
  36. My wife took the T2 this morning so I looked at the main puzzle first. Was not confident after a no return on yesterday’s Dean puzzle.
    Some easy ways in and I continued without too much delay. I knew pretty much all the GK including the plant for once. Parsed Carload and LOI was the butterfly -unknown but clearly clued. I don’t time my efforts on the 15x15s but under an hour and therefore a PB. David
    PS the QC seems harder to finish -stuck on two!
  37. 20m or thereabouts in an interrupted solve. I might have twitched under 20, had I kept up the concentrated flow. But I didn’t and so I didn’t. But I did enjoy the puzzle and the blog so thank you setter and blogger. COD to 16a for yet again reminding us of why those schooldays weren’t the best days of our lives after all.
  38. Well, I beat the blogger (by all of three seconds) and this is certainly my best time ever. Very easy, but I put in SNOW BUNTING from wordplay and fortunately didn’t take the time to check it later, as I was intending to do. JAINISM and TOBY JUG were my only unknowns, but they went in from wordplay. And FIBONACCI was no problem for a mathematician, of course. The really cool thing about Fibonacci numbers is that they can be found in nature in the strangest places, for example if on a pine cone you follow the line of scales in two different directions from a common starting point and count scales along each path until the two paths meet, you will have counted two successive Fibonacci numbers. And as a reminder about what they are: the first two are 0 and 1, and then you keep generating a new one by adding the last two already generated. So 0,1 is followed by 1=1+0, 2=1+1, 3=2+1, 5=3+2, then 8, 13, 21 and so on. Fibonacci considered these numbers in order to answer a question about breeding rabbits: if a pair of rabbits produces one new male-female pair of children every month, the children also breed, and rabbits never die, how many rabbits will a single pair engender in a year?

    Edited at 2018-02-12 09:45 pm (UTC)

  39. 21:20. Nice n’ easy. I had all but 22ac done in around 15 mins and was on course for a PB but needed an alphabet trawl to get the “brim” bit of it. That pushed my time out to way over 20 mins. Though now I think I have seen this particular butterfly in a previous puzzle. I liked it when the penny dropped (with a clang) on “half the rally” and the image of Douglas and his frenzied semolina stirring.
      1. Yes, well done Dr Thud. I meant to reply yesterday but I was sunk in misery at my inability to splee Fibonacci 🙂
  42. 6:55 and a PB by more than a minute. Count me in as another who enjoyed 1a. And if anyone cares here is a programme in Olivetti P101 machine code that prints it…
    AV
    +
    Exchange
    Print
    V
    1 up
    V
  43. 28 mins so quick for me even if ponderous compared to others. Would have been faster if I hadn’t been eating lunch at the same time …

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