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. 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…
  2. DNF in 30 mins. Stumped three – and by not knowing Meerschaum, Macaroni, Macaronic and Cochin.

    COD – Adelphi

  3. 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.

  4. 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!
  5. 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.
  6. I managed to solve the bottom half of this and wanted to register another vote in favour of TUN. David
  7. 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.
  8. 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)

  9. 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.
  10. 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?
  11. 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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