Times 27124 – What a strange bird…

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 15:46

Window of opportunity closing rapidly. Greetings from the spotty wifi at Charlotte Douglas Internation airport, where I am keeping the laptop alive by propping the connection into a power outlet with my leg, and there’s a dozen conversations going on within six feet of me, it’s stinking hot and humid outside and the air conditioning is busted.  Added to that there is one “I put this in because it was the only thing that could fit but I don’t quite know how it works” answer.  It turned out to be correct, but I may need the hive mind to help me with the full parsing of the clue.

I’ll be home in about four hours, pending the vagiaries of American airlines.  Oh, and I’m stone cold sober. That will also change when I get home.

The first definition in each clue is underlined.

Away we go…

Across
1 Note written by Queen’s friend sucking a pipe (10)
MEERSCHAUM – ME(musical note), ER’S (Queen’s), CHUM(friend) with A inside. A pipe that visits crosswordland every so often, last seen in a weekend puzzle in January
7 Part of US not entirely without a harvest (4)
UTAH – hidden in withoUT A Harvest
9 Nanny once willing to accept S African money (8)
GRANDAME – GAME(willing) containing RAND(South African money)
10 Fellow in combinations at church in Indian region (6)
COCHIN – the wordplay has me stumped – COCHIN is a region of India, now part of Kerala. So does CO mean fellow in combinations?  I can see CH(church) and IN…  See the first comments – yes, I’m being dense, put co- in front of something and it does mean “fellow”
11 Strip of plaster duke exchanged for new partition (6)
SCREEN – SCREED (strip of plaster) with D replacing N
13 S American traveller going west, one in posh vehicle (8)
PERUVIAN – REP(traveller) reversed, then I in U(posh), VAN(vehicle)
14 Citizen touring a Spanish port mostly directing course (12)
NAVIGATIONAL – NATIONAL(citizen) surrounding A, VIG(o)(Spanish port)
17 Oddly it’s a man’s car with a protective cover (12)
ANTIMACASSAR – anagram of IT’S,A,MAN’S,CAR + A
20 Frenzied English priest retires, taken in by pope, perhaps (8)
FEVERISH – E, REV(priest) reversed in sie FISH (pope, ruff)
21 Bloke given say before another’s opening wine store (6)
BODEGA – BOD(bloke), EG(say), then A(nother’s)
22 Way defence ministry covers the unexpected (6)
METHOD – MOD(Ministry of Defence) surrounding an anagram of THE
23 Chemist’s aid using public transport after match (4-4)
TEST-TUBE – TUBE(public transport) after a TEST match
25 Greenish-blue container with variable content (4)
CYAN – CAN(container) containing Y(variable)
26 American native travelled on, we hear, with messenger (10)
ROADRUNNER – sounds like RODE(travelled on), RUNNER(messenger). Meep meep.

Down
2 Continental bigwig throwing carer out (8)
EUROCRAT – anagram of CARER,OUT
3 Possibly extra accommodation for 8? (3)
RUN – double defitnion, since 8 is ANIMAL
4 Friend promoting a group of associated stores (5)
CHAIN – CHINA(friend) with the A moved up
5 London theatre — a place where ambiguous advice was given (7)
ADELPHI – A and then the site of the Oracle at DELPHI
6 Like some humorous verse dandy originally created (9)
MACARONIC – MACARONI(dandy) with C(reated)
7 Boorish university man upset about description of certain servants? (11)
UNCIVILISED – UNI, then DES(man) reversed surrounding CIVIL servants
8 Creature portrayed in plate that’s mounted? (6)
ANIMAL – LAMINA(plate) reversed
12 Heat in blaze disorientated Raleigh, for one (11)
ELIZABETHAN – anagram of HEAT,IN,BLAZE
15 Removal of rights of army trapped in a wood (9)
ATTAINDER – TA(army) inside A, TINDER(wood)
16 Manifest lie about Northern Rock! (8)
TANGIBLE – TALE(lie) surrounding N(Northern), GIB(Gibraltar, rock)
18 Sage’s mother going round Panama, for example (7)
MAHATMA – MAMA(mother) surrounding HAT(Panama, for example)
19 Unorthodox practice in this place is unknown (6)
HERESY – HERE’S (in this place is), Y(unknown)
21 More sordid compound north of river (5)
BASER – BASE(chemical compound, alkali), over R(river)
24 Heavyweight beer cask, by the sound of it (3)
TON – sounds like TUN(beer cask)

70 comments on “Times 27124 – What a strange bird…”

  1. I wondered about this, too, but it just now struck me: CO-partner, CO-equal, CO-owner, etc.
  3. I forgot to type in the U of RUN, so a DNF. DNK that meaning of ‘screed’, DNK that fish, but figured the odds were pretty good that there is a pope fish. With the V at 13ac, I flung in ‘Bolivian’, then wasted some time trying to parse it until the other country came to mind. MACARONIC was a long time coming, as I’d never associated macaronic verse with humor; indeed, the reverse if anything: ‘Timor mortis perturbat me’, for instance, doesn’t get many laughs. But ODE defines macaronic as ‘denoting language, especially burlesque verse, …’
  4. I got this the wrong way round. I don’t see that the clue works intended since HEAVYWEIGHT (as one word) is not a definition of TON.

    It seems to me that TUN is the better answer to the clue as it stands.

    Dereklam

    1. Impossible. “Tun” cannot be the answer because “by the sound of it” is over there on the other side of “beer cask.”
        1. But there is. So long as you are not too too pedantic!

          Edited at 2018-08-23 06:44 am (UTC)

    2. “Heavyweight” (with or without a space) precedes “beer cask”, which must therefore be the homophone. For “tun” to be acceptable, they would have to be transposed.
      1. Unless you take “heavyweight beer cask” as one phrase…

        It’s a beer cask. What sort of beer cask? A heavyweight beer cask, by the sound of it, because it’s a TUN.

        My personal view is that the clue is at least susceptible to misinterpretation.

        1. Thank you Tim for expressing my point better than I managed to do!

          I felt that was the better reading as I could see no justification for the definition of “ton” as “heavyweight “.

          Dereklam

          1. So if “heavyweight beer cask” is the definition of tun, what are we to make of “by the sound of it” ?
  5. Went in steadily while also carrying on a conversation. But I didn’t know MACARONIC (and only knew MACARONI because of Yankee Doodle and didn’t really know what it meant outside of pasta). I think of TINDER as being something more inflammable than wood that you use to get the wood started. For a time I wanted to put URCHIN for COCHIN (hidden) but it doesn’t really mean fellow, whether in or out of combination, plus UTAH was already our ration of 1 hidden for the day. Eventually came in all correct.
  6. Needed aids to be sure of my LOI at 10ac because even having considered the correct wordplay possibilities, the answer arrived at meant nothing whatsoever to me, cf SEMIRAMIS in yesterday’s puzzle although the possibilities for that one were limited by the anagarist.

    I was happy with everything else and especially pleased to get the other unknown word, MACARONIC, from wordplay having remembered the ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ who stuck a feather in his cap and called it ‘macaroni’ with reference to the wig of that name favoured by dandy-types.

    Edited at 2018-08-23 05:09 am (UTC)

      1. The TftT search is not infallible but when I did it I had 9 hits in addition to today’s. Of those, all but two were references to COCHIN or COCHIN-CHINA, a breed of chicken which as far as I can see has no connection with the Indian region as it originated somewhat further east – Vietnam seems to be the concensus on that. The other 2 hits brought up anagram clues to the word GNOCCHI for which COCHIN provided the bulk of the anagrist.

        So I can find no evidence that the Indian region has ever appeared before unless it had an alternative spelling in which case all bets are off.

        Edited at 2018-08-23 09:02 am (UTC)

  7. Good morning, George; thank you for the blog. No hold-ups today except 15D, a new word to me.
    The pause button on the north-east corner does not work … the clock ticked on and my registered time continues to be horrendously over the hour even though my actual solving time is around 30 minutes
    1. ATTAINDER may be more familiar to US solvers, who would have learned in high school that the US Constitution forbids bills of attainder. I’m sorry (and surprised) to hear the ‘pause’ button doesn’t work with you.
  8. 19:02 … we seem to be on a run of puzzles where the setters have thrown in one total curve ball to make you forget everything else.

    I spent a month last year staying just down the coast from COCHIN. But it’s a city more than a region, and now usually spelt as Kochi (and, by the by, setting for the very entertaining second season of The Real Marigold Hotel). There was a princedom of Cochin but these days that seems to be more notional than actual, which would seem to warrant something like ‘historic’ in the clue. Very odd wordplay, too.

    Forcing that one aside, some lovely stuff elsewhere. Favourites NAVIGATIONAL, MACARONIC and ROADRUNNER, which I can’t hear without saying Meep meep

    Edited at 2018-08-23 08:21 am (UTC)

  10. 10ac COCHIN ANCHAL produced their own stamps for several years (later Travancore-Cochin) and their own chickens.

    FOI 17ac ANTIMACASSAR also COD and WOD with 1ac MEERSCHAUM in the frame. Antimacassars were all the rage back in the day. Once the Brylcream Boys went so did they.

    LOI 8d ANIMAL

    I considered 3dn RUN to be a poor do!

    6dn MACARONIC I think that’s more American humor which can get quite serious.

    Time 37 mins

    Edited at 2018-08-23 08:29 am (UTC)

  11. A post-solve check shows that the non-pc North American natives I was trying to fit in – Cochise – don’t exist. He was a man not a tribe, an Apache dude. By then I’d guessed (never heard of) Cochin. I don’t think the clue really works.
    Otherwise quite a testing but enjoyably Times-like puzzle, 30 min – way over average.
  12. DNF – while eating a Fat Rascal (hoorah).
    Four scattered problems left me flummoxed: Attainder (DNK) which made Roadrunner too hard (should have thought of runner). Plus the Cochin/Animal combo (should have thought of lamina).
    Guessed macaroni without really knowing either part.
    Was there a distinctively North American feel to this one?
    Thanks setter and G for unravelling.
  13. 21 minutes (less 1 whole second), with COCHIN last in. If you had asked me, I’d have placed it vaguely in China, despite watching the latest episode of Marigold Hotel just last night.

    I’m delighted to see that the real ROADRUNNER is not a million pixels removed from its Looney counterpart. Meep (as Sotira says) meep!

    The Million-to-One Shot (but it might just work) Prize goes to George for completing and blogging this one under the most testing circumstances. Perhaps next time, George, you could try it with one hand tied behind your back> I am in awe.

  14. I was going steadily but ground to a halt after about 15 minutes, bemused by those long words across the middle and a sparse NW corner with BYE crossed out for 3d. Eventually ANTIMACASSAR and then MACARONIC surfaced to break the brain-freeze and everything else flowed from there. Count me as another who failed to parse COCHIN, my LOI. TANGIBLE my COD. 29:04
  15. I remembered Cochin from previous times here, though each time I think it should be in China.
    LOI 9ac which I found hard
    Well done George! And well done setter for a fine effort
    1. You may be thinking of, or associating with, Cochin-China, which is an old name for somewhere like Vietnam or something; just checked, and indeed it was part of Vietnam.
  16. Meep! Meep! The much loved ROADRUNNER what a dude! I also liked UTAH except for Romney County – ANTIMACASSAR, ELIZABETHAN, GRANDAME, MAC’n’CHEESE, HERESY, SCREEN and BASE – BASER. Coke! Did not like BODEGA, PERUVIAN, MAHATMA and specially not EUROCRAT (SAD)! ATTAINDER I’ll ignore that!

    Rudi turn on Fox! Nothing about Alexandria?

    Edited at 2018-08-23 08:31 am (UTC)

    1. I have enjoyed these considerably, horryd, although the premise is incredibly strained (to think that the person parodied would actually be puzzling these out)…
  17. ….was how I parsed the first part of COCHIN, as in Smith & Co, Stalky & Co etc. ANTIMACASSAR was too posh a word for most of my parents’ generation, so they said ‘chairbacks’ instead. ATTAINDER was a way for monarchs to get money in the olden days – enemies or traitors would have all their goods and lands taken, I have an idea this was the case with Richard II and John of Gaunt.

    36′, thanks George and setter.

  18. I was surprised that two posters so far claimed not to know ATTAINDER as it’s a word I learned only recently from a Times crossword. Then I searched and found it appeared on 18 April this year, but it was in a Quickie, so for once QC solvers might have had a slight advantage! Its last appearance I could find in a 15×15 was on 1 January 2014.
  19. 43 minutes with LOI COCHIN. Have never heard of GRANDAME before. DNK a fish could become pope either. COD ROADRUNNER even though I thought it must end in ANGEL for too long. Would be nice to get some regional clues sometimes, with ADELPHI as a Liverpool hotel maybe? London theatre was a bit lame. Found the NW tricky, needing the pipe for it to fall into place. Thank you George and setter.
  20. My second failure of the week—I also managed to guess wrong on yesterday’s obscurity/anagram—as I failed to get the three unknowns of COCHIN, MACARONIC and ATTAINDER. I’m still feeling quite slow after my holiday, and this week’s puzzles aren’t helping!
  21. Finally crawled across the line in 41 minutes (the seconds aren’t really important once you go beyond the half hour) with most of the delay caused by the MACARONIC/ COCHIN pairing. The first is a new word for me – my knowledge of humorous verse is limited to the ‘there was a young girl from Devizes’ variety – and, having been to the fascinating city of Cochin, I dismissed it as a region.
    Oh and ATTAINDER took forever too. Tinder – wood? I think not and Chambers seems to agree with me.
  22. ….as long as I….don’t have to put up with many more performances of such INEPTITUDE* from the England cricket team.
    *I know that was yesterday’s answer, but in context it would have been especially relevant to Tuesday. I, too, though that 3D was a little poor.

    10:38 with FOI UTAH (glory be, I spotted an encapsulation !)

    Biffed COCHIN as remarked earlier.

    DNK GRANDAME, or the piscine pope.

    Loved “the unexpected”. There may be “Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover”, but there must be even more ways of flagging an anagram !

    I’d met ATTAINDER before – probably in AZED – and, while “tinder” doesn’t strictly HAVE to be wood, I wouldn’t quibble with that definition.

    The “Acme” of today’s clues is COD/LOI ROADRUNNER, a cartoon that is far too clever for kids. The amount of planning that goes into Wylie E.Coyote being repeatedly hoist by his own petard verges on genius. The writer was almost certainly a fan of Mad magazine’s “Spy vs Spy” which was discussed on here recently.

  23. I also put TUN and it wasn’t a case of biffing and thinking “that’ll do”, I think my reading is just as good, if not better than the intended version. “Heavyweight” (one word) is not equivalent to “a heavy weight” (two words”) in my book. There’s also no reason why the definition can’t be the second part of the clue, to my mind. You’re effectively saying “This is a beer cask, and it sounds like this beer cask is particularly heavy”.

    Anyway, no troubles elsewhere. I remember from history lessons Bills of Attainder being issued against people whom various mediaeval monarchs disliked (or whose estates they had just taken a fancy to).

    2. Ah, I see. Well, in that case, you are still taking “heavyweight” to be synonymous with TON, though it would not define the answer.
      1. An interesting question is whether a space between words (or a non-space between two words) counts as punctuation, and can therefore be ignored.
  24. 30 minutes, but had biffed TUN at 24dn from surface without stopping to parse clue. (I assume you have to get ‘heavy weight’ as definition.) 1ac was LOI, as after eliminating CORGI, I had been trying to recall favourites of previous queens. 10ac went in with MER as I only knew it from the Vietnam region, and surely ‘wood’ isn’t TINDER for 13dn.
  25. I came here expecting to see lots of lengthy times & DNFs, so clearly it was me who was miles off the pace today. After something like 18 or 19 minutes I gave up, and since I didn’t know ATTAINER, ANTIMACASSAR, MACARONIC (or macaroni as a dandy) or COCHIN – which I still don’t quite understand – I’m not sure if I’d have got there given the whole afternoon. Seems like I’ve got to get better at remembering obscure words when they come up!
      1. Who said: “I know only two tunes. One is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn’t”? I thought it was Abraham Lincoln but Wiki has several other possibilities. Having listened to an Ed Sheeran concert on the box recently, I think he might only know one.
        1. You mean you managed to listen to an entire Ed Sheeran concert ? You deserve some kind of award ! Nice to see your team doing better by the way.
  26. If you’ve ever done Tudor history (even O level), you’ll have come across Attainder regularly…
  27. Some years ago one of the contributors (I think it was Vallaw) on the club forum so named the type of “tun/ton” and “screed/screen” clues because you can drive yourself nuts if you overthink them. I also had “tun” at first and was wobbly about SCREEN until CHAIN decided it. Brilliant blogging under adverse conditions (and then some) – enjoy your well-earned tipple George! The double helix phenomenon may still be at work on me but for 11A did you mean to say “N replacing D”? No matter. 18.44
    1. I’m almost positive it was Vallaw (the Judge Crater of this blog); didn’t she also give us ‘neutrino’? But I was under the impression that she was objecting to a clue that really was ambiguous.
      1. Judge Crater – yes indeed I’d forgotten about him. It’s been a while so I’ve also forgotten the exact context for the double helix appellation. Martin might remember. And yes I think Val also coined “neutrino”. I’m glad I met her – at the 2013 annual prom!
  28. Google confirms that Cochin or Kochi is a city in the Greater Cochin Region of South-West India.
  29. Considered, then dismissed, both COCHIN – which like a few others I thought was well to the east of India – and MACARONIC, so a DNF in 77 minutes.

    Managed to remember ATTAINDER and GRANDAME from somewhere in cryptic land, but didn’t know the piscatorial ‘pope’.

    Liked ANTIMCASSAR. Ah, the smell of grandma’s parlour.

    Thank you to setter and blogger

  30. You’d have thought the fact I start at the bottom would help, but no – by the time I get to 1 across I am like a fold to the wolves these days…
  31. DNF in 30 mins. Stumped three – and by not knowing Meerschaum, Macaroni, Macaronic and Cochin.

    COD – Adelphi

  32. Finished in about an hour and a half with two reveals 1a MEERSCHAUM and 6d MACARONIC. DNK but biffed correctly COCHIN and ANTIMACASSAR. It took ages before I could sort the letters for ELIZABETHAN.

    I was convinced before I had all the checkers that 21a was BARACK based on (B)efore (A)nother’s (opening) RACK (wine store – well it is in my house). Then I belatedly remembered some rule abut references being exclusively for those who are deceased! Apologies to Barack.

  33. I’m another TUN due to not reading the clue closely enough, and I also managed to enter NATIGATIONAL due to not completely reentering NAVIGATIONAL, having put a provisional NATIO at the front of the word when trying to construct the answer. I changed URCHIN to COCHIN once I got MACARONI, but didn’t really understand it. Knew ANTIMACASSAR and ATTAINDER though. 37:41 with 2 errors. Thanks setter and kudos George!
  34. Arrgh. At the end I threw in the towel and looked up MACARONIC. It’s unfamiliar, to say the least. But at least the “C” led me to COCHIN. Everything else OK, including TON, which I thought was pretty clear but I now see the points raised in favor of TUN. Regards.
  35. I managed to solve the bottom half of this and wanted to register another vote in favour of TUN. David
  36. 40:54. I thought there was some tricky vocab in this one but I managed to negotiate it all ok partly by dint of seeing how the word play worked and partly by dint of remembering obscure (to me) words from previous puzzles. So meerschaum, antimacassar, attainder and macaronic all went in ok. I once visited Cochin and so reverse engineered the “fellow in combinations” / co bit to justify it as an answer. I didn’t know it was a region as well as a city but it seemed reasonable to expect that it might be. At 14ac it helped to remember there is a spanish football team, Celta Vigo. I didn’t know the pope was a fish but the EVER in the middle of the word at 20ac was crying out for that to be the case. A very satisfying solve.
  37. This one took me about 35 minutes, which I think is the perfect degree of difficulty (for me, at least). I wasn’t sure I was going to finish at all after staring at the last three clues for a very long time.

    COCHIN held me up for a long time, partly because I failed to equate “co” with “fellow” (though it made sense in retrospect), and partly because I was pretty sure COCHIN was in China. However, if the Indians insist that it’s in India, and given that China doesn’t seem to think it’s in China, I’m prepared to concede.

    MACARONIC was completely new to me, so it’s just as well I knew Macaroni as a dandy. ATTAINDER was vaguely known, probably from earlier puzzles. I didn’t fall into the TON/TUN trap, but on re-reading the clue I agree with those who’ve said that TUN is an equally valid answer.

    All in all, I thought this was an excellent puzzle that rewarded persistence (my only virtue, and which I substitute for ability at all opportunities).

    [EDIT: a little Googling reveals that there is a region called Cochinchina, but they’ve put it in Vietnam, which is just silly.]

    Edited at 2018-08-23 06:57 pm (UTC)

  38. No time for this, because I got distracted and forgot to hit pause. Somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes I think. Like others I got badly stuck on COCHIN and MACARONIC. I also struggled with ANIMAL, convinced that it would be a species of rabbit.
    I thought 24dn was unambiguous but the case for TUN seems reasonable.
  39. Over an hour, with COCHIN and MACARONIC (and RUN) my LOI. Never heard of MACARONIC verse and, yes, Yankee Doodle is the only thing I know which suggested that MACARONI might really mean “dandy”. And I too thought COCHIN was in China, but the reason so many people thought that is probably the old name Cochin China for Vietnam, which in my youth (when it was still a French colony — oops, I’ve given away my age) was also called Indochina — could it be because Cochin is in India?
  40. Was I the only one who first thought 7A was MINE? It fits the wordplay and the definition. Even though I fixed that, still dnf due to MACARONI(C) – nho either – and FEVERISH, where I kept trying to fit ELI

    Martin in Bonn

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