Times 27595 – Not too fishy….

90 comments on “Times 27595 – Not too fishy….”

1. Under 23 mins for me is a reasonably easy solve. A few of these seemed to have escaped from the QC, but some vocab held me up (e.g. TOURACO, GOUACHE and the unknown Cleon). However, the cryptics were very fair.

   One question: is “Kyle of Localsh” an alternative spelling? I had no idea what it was (other than guessing it was in Scotland) and so looked it up. Wikipedia only has “Kyle of Lochalsh” (or the Gaelic “Caol Loch Aillse”).

   1. ‘Localsh’ is a typo or an error. The correct English spelling is Lochalsh. Very scenic railway goes there from Inverness, though what you do when you get there is rather limited. (You can always stop off at Plockton, which is a charming wee place.)
      1. Should have added that Kyle means strait or narrows, as in the Kyles of Bute. There is a Glen Garry – two words, as in the valley of the River Garry – but it’s a long way from Kyle of Lochalsh.
      2. Thanks for the explanation and further insight
2. Must have seen the cheese here before, and maybe the bird. Was especially glad to remember that GLENGARRY is the name of a place (since it features in the name of a play—not that I’ve seen it).
   1. WENSLEYDALE is the name of the proprietor of the Natural Cheese Emporium (as well as one more cheese not to be found there) in the Python sketch; that’s what allowed me to biff it. I’ve never seen ‘Glengarry, Glenross’, which is about real estate agents under brutal pressure to sell, but at one point the boss offers a sales contest; 1st place, a new Cadillac, 2d place a set of steak knives, 3d place, you’re fired.
      1. Wensleydale is also familiar to many from Wallace and Gromit.
         1. I have some in my fridge.
      2. Wensleydale is a fine cheese provided it’s not mucked about with by adding cranberries or other things to it. My Dad used to enjoy a slice on top of a piece of fruit cake.
         1. Christmas cake with Wensleydale is very much a “thing” in Yorkshire.
            1. Especially with a nice single malt:)
               1. Ooh, good tip JD, will try that this year.
      3. There are some other famous lines (from the movie, I’ve never seen the play). ABC…always be closing. And “coffee is for closers”. Every salesperson can recite most of Alec Baldwin’s speech, the most intense part of the movie. He is only on screen for some small number of minutes like 12, and yet he is who you remember.
3. 25 minutes but there were enough tricky bits to provide food for thought. I had two unknowns marked up, GOUACHE and TOURACO, but a little research has confirmed I have met them both before and each of them once when on blogging duty, although GOUACHE was a long time ago as it has not appeared in 7 years. I think the main problem with them today was that they intersected.

   Then there was 6dn which might have been NUCLEON or NUCLEAN as I had only passing acquaintance with the target word and I have never heard of the the Athenian demagogue.

   3dn was a write-in as ‘Russian writer’ = T??????, but the wordplay needed some thinking about.

   1. I thought it was a write in for ??????? without any checkers. How many Russian authors are famous enough to show up in the grid. CHECKOV I suppose, now I think about it. I just wrote TOLSTOY in without parsing the wordplay, other than spotting the “model” that could be TOY.
4. I had no idea what Kyle of Localsh (however spelled) was, and decided not to worry about it. Not that it bothered me (and not that I was correct), but I didn’t think the BASILISK was a serpent (it’s usually depicted with legs). Similarly, I knew Cleon, but I was confusing him with Creon of Antigone fame, and I knew TOURACO but thought it was South American. LOI 11d. Didn’t care for the non-homophonous MITIGATE. Vinyl, you’ve got a typo at 15ac: you meant LAD + ENERGY.
   1. Kyle of Lochalsh (never seen today’s spelling before) was noteworthy as the point of the shortest ferry crossing from the mainland to the Isle of Skye and is now the site of the only road bridge.
   2. The homophone works ok for me Kevin. Would you pronounce Walter as Middy? But wouldn’t that also work for an American saying MITIGATE.
      1. It’s not the t (‘North American intervocalic flapping’) that’s the problem, it’s the final vowel in MITI/MITTY: no one says [mItiget], and no one says (Walter) [mItI]. ([I] is the [lax] vowel in ‘ship’, and [i] is the [tense] vowel in ‘sheep’.) This tense/lax thing isn’t a UK/US distinction, it’s pretty much universal in English, across dialects.
         1. Guess I’m no one Kevin. That’s just how I say it!
            1. As Chico might say, Who are you going to trust: me, or your own mouth? If we ever, DV, actually meet, I’ll bring a tape recorder; but in the meantime I’ll bet big bucks that your ‘mitty’ does not rhyme with your ‘miti[gate]’. The initial vowel is identical: [I]; in Mitty the 2d vowel is [i]; in ‘mitigate’ the 2d vowel is [I] or a reduced form like the so-called barred i [ɨ], as in ‘music’.
            2. I say mittygate too, never mittergate. As it’s a word I’ll have used more in my commercial career than in my youth, I don’t think this is just Lancashire RP.
               1. I don’t think anyone’s claiming mittergate as an option. The question is whether the I in the middle sounds like the vowel in bin or been. I’m definitely a bin man, as it were, but I do think miteegate is reasonably common.
                  1. In which case, I think I’m more a ‘been’ pronouncer, but I don’t go the full ee on either Mitty or Mitigate. I do pronounce them both the same.
   3. Thanks, fixed.
5. I got through this quickly but submitted with a couple of nagging doubts. Not knowing Cleon like Jack I wasn’t completely confident in NUCLEON. I also wasn’t 100% sure about TOURACO, wondering if I was missing something in ‘agency’. So I feared that my attempt to get down from 12 erroneous puzzles in a month was in jeopardy but I do now have it down to a mere 11.
6. …After the cups, the Marmalade, the tea…
   20 mins, with yoghurt (no lime marmalade for me today).
   The only stutters were “the bird and the demagogue” (sounds like an Oxford pub).
   Thanks setter and Vinyl.
   1. Dear Mr. Marmalade,
      Believe it or not, ‘The Bird & Demagogue’ is a boozer in Trumpton.
7. Rushed through a lot of this with multiple biffs but then slowed right down in the SE corner by entering SAWFISH. Can anyone please explain why spotted = dog? Can’t see that unless it’s a reference to the Woodentops!

   Once that got resolved LOI was BASILISKS, which I ninja turtled from a Harry Potter film. Still a fast time for me though just outside 6V (I would be hard pushed to type in all the answers on my iPhone in four minutes let alone solve them!).

   1. The definition is Shark that’s spotted = dogfish, DOG = trail.
      1. Ahhhhh! Many thanks!
      2. Its full name is lesser spotted dogfish, I think.
      3. Ah, thanks from me too. I’ve been ploughing through the comments hoping someone would explain this once I saw it wasn’t in the blog! (I started with SAWFISH too.)
8. I too thought TOURACO was South American, Kevin. But it is indeed Sub-Saharan. COCRICO is a famed Trinidadian avian – I saw one only once in the wild.

   At 1ac I have a MER as I would have thought that ‘later’ rather than ‘late’ would be more applicable. Capricorn, of which I am one and being the last of the Zodiacs. Remember the Ford Zodiac – we had the lesser a Zephyr.

   Time 29 mins.

   FOI 26dn ERR um…!

   LOI 24ac ESTER I am not fimiliar with any Hesters! I thought a wester might just be a Scottish pony, sheltie that sort of thing! Fortunately ESTER is an old Telegraph chestnut (mare).

   COD 14dn MITIGATED – my old mate Walter!

   WOD 18ac PARTY POOPER qui moi!?

   The ‘Lockdown’ continues…..I dream of gorgonzola not 8dn.

   Edited at 2020-02-24 08:26 am (UTC)

   1. Prayers for you and yours, and all affected, my friend is in Milan……
   2. Especially for a New Englander like Vinyl, perhaps, Hester Prynne (she of the Scarlet A) comes to mind; like several others–see below–I started from Esther.
   3. I thought it was ESTHER not Hester. Or am I stating the obvious already stated?
   4. Hester Prynne ? However, I never thought of Hester, being more persuaded by Est(h)er.
   5. I thought it was Esther (as in Esther Williams – American swimmer and actress) without the H. MM
9. Back from holiday to a relatively easy one. It may be that doing one Times crossword a day on the beach kept my hand in.
10. 9:57, although failed to parse a couple. Like horryd I thought of (w)ESTER for 24A and I didn’t know CLEON. I liked TOURACO and TOLSTOY.
11. Nearly a lifetime PB, at 9′ 08″.

    TOURACO LOI, with crossed fingers. Considered TROTSKY for T******.

    I’ve never understood star signs, apart from astrology being nonsense, but doesn’t it depend a) where you live and b) what year you’re using? Can I ever see my star sign?

    18d a write in, immediately bringing to mind the Collect for the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity.

    I see that a Classics degree may now no longer include compulsory study of the Iliad.

    Loved WENSLEYDALE, which is also a very nice cheese, for its UK popular culture allusions as noted.

    Many thanks vinyl and setter.

    1. ‘I’ve never understood star signs, apart from astrology being nonsense’
       You seem to have understood perfectly!
       1. I’ve always thought that astrology was nonsense, but then, as a Libra I suppose I would.
          1. I’m a Libran too. On balance, I rejected Astrology.
12. 19 minutes with two constructed (TETRA and TOURACO) and one inspired biff (GLENGARRY). I also didn’t know of the Athenian Cleon but NUCLEON was a write-in to a physicist with the crossers available. I saw GLENGARRY Glen Ross when the National first played it back in 1983. And last week, at a corporate hospitality viewing of the Picasso exhibition at the Royal Academy, there were several examples of GOUACHE on paper. Before I get put into Pseuds’ Corner, can I confess that I asked Mrs BW what was GOUACHE when it was at home? She wondered it was the same as ganache. COD to CANDIED PEEL. We’re both better on cakes. Decent Monday puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
13. 7:03. Easy today, but not quite in the easiest category for me because of the smattering of slightly funny words: GOUACHE, TOURACO, CANDIED PEEL, GLENGARRY. I knew most of them (apart from the hat, which went in on wordplay, checkers and a sense that the clue seemed to be asking for something Scottish) but they didn’t come to mind immediately.
    Not that it makes any difference but my woman at 24ac was ESTHER.

    Edited at 2020-02-24 08:47 am (UTC)

14. easy today .. “A man who is tired of Wensleydale is tired of life” (Johnson, S)
    My only holdup was that unlike Jackkt I had I*L*T*Y for a while, being unable apparently, to spell my own star sign ..
    The Wikipedia entry for basilisk makes interesting reading. Eg: “…its gaze is likewise lethal. Its weakness is the odour of the weasel & the tears of a griffin..”
    I also had Esther not Hester

    Edited at 2020-02-24 08:54 am (UTC)

15. Tried to get under 10 mins but missed out. 10:54 with one typo and two errors. Australla, Nuclean and Tourano.

    COD: CANDIED PEEL..

    Edited at 2020-02-24 09:51 am (UTC)

16. BASILISKS is a write-in if you have followed Harry Potter with your children.

    Lots of biffs here – TOLSTOY, an 11-letter cheese beginning with W, MARMALADE without spotting the MAE device.

    Slowed down by TOURACO, ESTER and cheated on NUCLEON – had biffed SAGITTARIUS so had the wrong starting letter and zero knowledge of Athenian demagogues.

17. Pretty smooth one, with the unknowns either being obvious from the wordplay or not “need to know”. I thought BASILISKS were lizards and dnk the saint was a recluse. Paused to distinguish my ancient Greek Creons from my Cleons and to remember that a vise can also be a vice (as Vinyl says). I thought (to the extent I did think) that the mob boss was a “capo” and wondered where the N came from having temporarily forgotten Al. 12.04
18. Wasn’t helped on ESTER by the fact that my only experience of a Hester is male. I assumed (wrongly, it seems) that it was one of those names that could be used for male or female. Esther never occurred to me.
19. All the knowledge was general as far as I was concerned (although I thought, even as I solved it, that CLEON was a gimme for smug classicists, possibly much less so for everyone else). TOURACO regularly comes up in the sort of quiz round where you have to say whether something is a fish, a bird or a vegetable.

    I didn’t even spot the misprint till coming here; Sean Connery, of course, could have told you that Localsh are the places where Regularsh drink Whishky.

    1. Love it!
20. As someone who holidays in Africa to look at birds, the ‘u’ in ‘touraco’ had me scratching my head. Not the spelling I’m used to.
    1. I meant “o” – I’m used to ‘turaco’, not ‘touraco’. Hope that’s clearer!
21. No problems with this one, 16 minutes, with some BIFD, notably Basilisks where I didn’t know St Basil was a recluse.
22. An encouraging start to the week with a sub 15 for me. SAGITTARIAN was FOI and CANDIED PEEL LOI. My SAWFISH was ejected by MITIGATED during the proceedings. Didn’t know the Athenian demagogue, but did know NU and the particle. BASILISKS suddenly sprang to mind once the checkers were in and Harry Potter chucked in a cross reference. TOLSTOY went in unparsed. I once sat in a car park and looked across the water at the Isle of Skye, in Kyle of Lochalsh. A pretty view, with the new bridge in the distance. Shortly afterwards I stopped and admired a brooding view over Glen Garry. TOURACO rang a bell once I’d constructed it, as did GOUACHE. 14:30. Thanks setter and V.
    1. Just checked. Glen Garry is nearer to Kyle than I remembered – 50 miles, and just over an hour in a car.
       1. I was going to point out that it’s not *that* far from KoL. It’s not as if it is in the borders or something. I canoed on it in my youth.
23. ….take ISSUE with today, and this was my fastest solve for a couple of years. I biffed TOLSTOY (thanks Vinyl).

    A CAPON was our Christmas dinner of choice when I was growing up in the 50’s.

    FOI SAGITTARIAN (1 G, 2 T’s, checked anagrist)
    LOI GLENGARRY (didn’t spot the missing H)
    COD CANDIED PEEL (yum !)
    TIME 5:49

24. For a brief while I thought I was heading for a rare under 10, but got snagged on Basilisk, Touraco and (would you believe it?) Tolstoy. I was trying to work out if there was a type of horse called a Wester before it clicked.
25. A bit of a cock-up on the timing front, Reggie, but about 9 minutes.

    For all I know CLEON might as well have been the love child of Cleo Laine and Leon Trotsky. For that reason I had to correct Nucleus

26. You’re on!
    1. Mind you, I didn’t say MY big bucks.
27. Same here, in Scottish RP.
28. 10.47. An easy puzzle but that’s a PB for me, knocking 10 secs off my previous best so I’m very pleased nonetheless. A few bits of tricky GK or vocab but I was confident enough not to take any time to wonder about St Basil’s reclusivity, what Kyle of Localsh was or who the Athenian Demagogue was, just put in the obvious and moved on.
29. About an hour for me over lunch. As Keriothe says this was easy apart from the four or five which weren’t.
    Much of my time was spent on LOI 11d; I knew Canning was an old PM (one of the shortest serving) and wasn’t willing to give that idea up. Coupled with the LAGFISH shark (lag =trail), I had quite a bit of unravelling to do. Prior to that Ester emerged as did DOGFISH so Canning was canned.
    I DNK NUCLEON or TETRA and TOURACO was nearly Tourafo.
    Anyway all correct -pleasing.
    The spelling of Lochalsh put me off but did remind me of a wonderful TV programmme on at Christmas where the nearby rail journey from Fort William to Mallaig was shown live; no words or music. Blissful.
    David
    1. I remember the Michael Palin journey to Kyle of Lochalsh on his Great Railway Journeys as a delight.
30. Have had much hilarity over the weekend with my Yorkshire grandchildren staying over, and my wife perpetually trying to ‘copy’ their accents, entirely without success.
    Time was 13.17 which is def a record, despite only knowing the bird and the hat somewhere in the recesses of my mind.
31. Here’s a link to some pics of Glen Garry and Skye/Kyle of Lochalsh. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtISbwJlBmVWh7hlvZ-revbSfBQ–w?e=c4CS3j
32. Funny isn’t it how we all have different gaps in our knowledge. I freely confess to not having a scooby when Sagittarians are born, which saints didn’t get out much or who Rameau is or was, but I do have hazy recollections of ploughing through Thucydides at school (Cleon was a notorious demagogue, sometimes known as the Trump of ancient Athens), and I know my birds, fish and cheeses (especially the ones that keep coming up in crosswords). So all in all a very good Monday offering – easy but requiring a little thought to work out the more obscure bits. I do however think the glengarry clue was rather feeble – what on earth was the surface reading meant to denote – something to do with 1930s insurance brokers? And Kyle of Lochalsh seems a bit random. And I wonder why the typo wasn’t fixed…
33. Nice start to the week and my best this year, 8.31. LOI was touraco , managed to recall from having seen one in the wild. Ancient History A level sorted out NuCleon, Cleon being a less than impressive contemporary of Pericles and the butt in every sense for Aristophanes.

    Easiest Monday for a while but no doubt hubris awaits later in the week.

    1. Surely nemesis?!
       1. Absolutely right, sloppy on my part!
34. Interesting that the blogger cites this as the more common spelling for the clamp on the workbench. My OED is unequivocal: it’s a US spelling of vice. My Collins doesn’t have vise at all.
    1. Yes, here in America, we are careful to differentiate a workshop tool from smoking and drinking!
35. Well after Fridays disaster when I managed only 1 clue I did nearly all of this will only minimal cheating! After a good quick cryptic this morning I am feeling encouraged ( that is a word!) Hoping that I am actually learning to do this and that it hasn’t just been an easy day. Thanks to you all again from this beginner. I need to learn how to comment with my name – I have registered but am obviously not signing in or something!
    1. The place to login may vary with device. On a PC/Laptop it’s at the top of the web page.
       1. Thanks!
36. Phew. A recent run of DNFs and glacial times ended today, with this one taking only (!) 22 minutes. All fine and dandy, even though Cleon meant nothing to me. TOURACO took a little thought, as I was looking for a toucan.
37. DNF in 32 minutes, so very easy except for the bits that weren’t (NIMBY, which I have never heard, and TOURAPO, which was the mistake). CO as an agency never occurred to me, so I guessed PO for Post Office, perhaps, once upon a time and hit the submit button because I was obviously never going to figure this one out. The rest was not very intriguing and for once, I just wanted to be rid of it.
    1. I’m not sure that ‘agency’ = ‘company/co’ would occur to many, but ‘travel agency’ = ‘tour company/co’ is a more comfortable fit I think.
38. I put sawfish for dogfish and destroyed my finish.

    Rate that one clue can have two valid answers?

    1. I started with SAWFISH, too; but 1) a sawfish is not a shark, 2) this leaves ‘trail’ unaccounted for. So not a valid answer.
39. So easy even I could finish it before Orpington. Thoroughly enjoyed it too, especially because I had to trust the word play for the unknown (to me!) TETRA and TOURACO (I tried so hard to get a toucan in there). Thanks all. (I see Phil had a super fast time here as well as on the QC – on fire today!)

    Templar

40. A sprightly 24 minutes here, and nothing to add that hasn’t already been covered. One day I’ll return to morning solving!
41. Held up by banging in SAGITTARIUS without thinking. And taking too long to convince myself TOURACO was right. CLEON was also a stretch but it seemed locked-in. Otherwise gentle enough.
42. Sorry to be so late. The puzzle wasn’t the toughest, maybe 20 minutes or so. My LOI was BASILISKS, which I thought was a structure of some kind, only entered after I saw the ‘risks’ element in the wordplay, and simply assuming St. Basil fit the description. Regards.
43. 5m 15s, so I agree that this was easy but I have to disagree with the idea that there were no obscure words – I’ve never come across GOUACHE or TOURACO, so to have them crossing meant I entered both with trepidation, as my last ones in.

    Glengarry Glen Ross is a fine film with one of the worst titles ever – I was discussing that with my family only this weekend.

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