Times 27613 – Vive la révolution!

66 comments on “Times 27613 – Vive la révolution!”

1. ….as I wasn’t sure – is it ‘tumbril’ or ‘tumbrel’? Then I saw the cryptic, and confidently wrote in the right spelling. Same with ‘chapatti’, but much quicker, and I fortunately knew ‘wyvern’ – and how to spell it.

   I was thinking I didn’t know the northern town, but then remembered we have a blogger up there.

   1. Ah. But I’m in the East Anglian one.
      1. Well, I’m a little vague on UK geography – I didn’t think they could duplicate town names. Here in the US, of course, you can use the same name in each state, so the commonest town names have a maximum of fifty instances. I think Springfield is the most popular, with at least 33 of them scattered through 25 states.
         1. If there are 33 in 25 states, then the maximum possible is more than 50.
         2. To be fair, although it is known locally as Bury, the town I live in is properly called Bury St. Edmunds. That’s his statue on my latest userpic. True patron saint of England, some say. But there are plenty of duplicated names around the UK, mostly of villages rather than larger conurbations. They are generally distinguished by the name of the County they are in.
2. Yes, I or E in the farm cart was something of a bear trap designed to catch biffers out but I took my time to ensure the wordplay worked. NHO CARBONADO as ‘cheap diamond’ but it assembled itself quite nicely.

   What is it with the non-existent city of ‘Gt Manchester’ all of a sudden? That’s twice within 6 days now. ‘GT Manchester’ is however a brand of trainers made by Adidas so perhaps its appearance is subliminal advertising along with the increasing use of brand names in Times crosswords.

   40 minutes.

   Edited at 2020-03-16 06:29 am (UTC)

   1. I had to take care with the old farm cart!
3. 13:34, including a couple of minutes to answer a phone call. I got started very slowly on this – my first in was 20ac – so I thought we were in for a beast but then I gathered a bit of speed on the downs.
   A few spelling challenges in this that required close attention to wordplay: ALLELUIA (I wanted there to be an H and a J in there somewhere), WYVERN (not WIVERN), CHAPATTI (not CHAPATI), TUMBREL (not TUMBRIL). Also a few slightly unusual terms, or unfamiliar meanings: brown study, CAREEN, racehorse spy, CARBONADO.
   In fact looking back on it I’m surprised this wasn’t more of a stinker!
4. 17 minutes, the last several trying to prise LITERALLY (stuck with “naturally”) and therefore the fine GULLIBLE, which appeared to have too many clue bits to assemble: green, bird, born in French, island was just one variation.
   I believe (but am probably wrong) that the wonderful Carl Sagan was responsible for careen changing its meaning almost universally, “careening through the canyons of Mars”.

   Quite a lot of fringe words throughout that you initially thought you might not know, including the French département. Thanks U for guiding us safely through.

   1. That is typical US usage, meaning to veer off in various directions, bouncing off obstacles.
5. 25 mins (with yoghurt, etc.) to leave -A-E-N.
   After a couple of trawls, the best I could do were Cavern/Tavern so DNF.
   So I’ve learned a bit more nautical banter.
   Homage (COD) to the setter and U.
6. Tricky start to the week, might well have put TUMBRIL or BRIAR if I hadn’t double-checked the wordplay.

   Got stuck on HOMAGE and CAREEN.
   NHO RIBBAND with two Bs.
   COD 14dn MERGANSER, cricketing surface kept throughout

   Friday’s question inspired by an answer – Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile record stood for a mere 46 days before being beaten by John Landy of Australia. The current record of 3:43:13 has stood for over 20 years, though. Inspired by BANISTER.

   Today’s question inspired by an answer: what are the busiest single-runway and two-runway airports in the world, in terms of aircraft movements per year?

   1. The second answer (two-runway) must be Heathrow, since it runs at full capacity all the time.
      1. Apparently movements are restricted, between 23.30 and 06.00.
         1. Yes, that is true, although as someone who lives under the flightpath I can assure you that these rules are honoured more in the breach than the observance, Particularly in the morning!
            I’m still surprised there are busier two-runway airports, since the logical thing to do when you approach capacity like this is to build another runway, and most other countries don’t seem to suffer from the infrastructure decision paralysis that seems to afflict the UK.

            Edited at 2020-03-16 10:58 am (UTC)

            1. Certainly Heathrow is right up there.. it is nip and tuck for top spot, it seems.. i must say i would prefer fewer flights to more runways.. i dislike the profligate “stag nights in Prague” syndrome
               1. The logic for adding runways to Heathrow is all about hub status, which in turn is about long-haul connections.
   2. Mumbai and Beijing respectively.. though that could be changing 🙂 ..
7. Praise be! Finished in 35 mins but it should have been 25 due to 10 ac LITERALLY which held me up summat awful!

   POI 14ac DREAMILY – no idea if it was correct.

   FOI 3dn IDYLL

   COD 10ac LITERALLY

   WOD 8dn WYVERN

   No mistake with BRIER nor TUMBREL! Aslesson learnt.

8. I clearly couldn’t be much further off the wavelength with this one. I went to the SNITCH expecting to see this rated as hard but instead it’s just me standing out with a personal NITCH of 216.

   I don’t know why but I struggled with loads today – ALSACE LORRAINE, WYVERN, GULLIBLE, ALLELUIA to name but a few. I was actually relieved just to finish with no errors.

   1. I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one that struggled with this one.
      1. Definitley not alone. I had nothing in the NW corner for ages and ages.
9. Thanks, ulaca, especially for ELIA. I didn’t know that about Lamb.
   Some very nice clues here. I particularly liked 7d in that “Gang leaders’ girl” made me think of ‘moll’ as it was meant to do. LITERALLY was also very clever but my COD goes to GULLIBLE. For a long time I thought the answer must be an island ending in NE (‘born in French),except it’s normally née. I didn’t help myself by putting in DREAMING and only belatedly realising there is no female there.

   I have one small quibble and that is with CAREEN. When I think of ‘keel over’ I think of a ship that has overturned. To CAREEN is merely to lay a ship or boat on it’s side .

   1. Collins defines CAREEN as ‘(of a vessel) to keel over to one side’, which is interesting because their definition of ‘keel over’ is ‘to turn upside down; capsize’.
   2. Remember for future use Martin. The search function returns over 60 results for ELIA on TfTT and that fits my recollection that he crops up fairly often. I only learned that “fact” myself from these puzzles.
10. A nice solve going really well until I hit the buffers at CAREEN. Never knew it meant tip over; also career is waaay down my internal list of synonyms for race. Once that finally clicked I happily hit submit, only to see pink with the careless cart biff. How many times must I learn that every word counts, including on!

    Thanks Ulaca and setter.

11. 28 minutes, with most done in less than half that. As Art Garfunkel sang, Emily was hard to find when I needed her help to construct DREAMILY, a meaning I didn’t know. I’d have got CARBONADO quicker when I was younger. The first Xerox machine was 1959 and first electronic printer 1968. You received far fewer copies before then but they were carbons. LOI was CAREEN, a word I didn’t know the meaning of. LITERALLY nowadays rarely means EXACTLY, so that threw me for a while too. COD to ROLLING STOCK, disappointed as I was that it wasn’t The Stones. This was a strange mix of easy and tricky, meaning you didn’t know what to expect next, a bit like life at the moment. Thank you U and setter.

    Edited at 2020-03-16 08:56 am (UTC)

    1. When was the first Fax machine? Hunter S Thompson used to feed his copy down the “Mojo Wire” in “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” through 1972. From its description it sounds like it’s a fax machine.
       1. The first modern fax was 1964, again by Xerox, although a primitive version was available in 1843. Only seven years earlier and we could have had The Pickwick Faxes.
          1. I distinctly remember when I first came across a fax machine. It was in December 1983. I was working for Saudi Arabian Airlines in Riyadh and we had all just moved to a brand new airport way out of the city. I called what I thought was a telephone number only to be greeted with this strange noise. On enquiry I was told I had dialled a fax machine. Que? What’s one of those? Of course, I soon got used to the idea.
12. I really do need to learn the difference between spaghetti and diamonds – I was confusing 6d with “carbonara” for a while. Very similar experience to Keriothe’s with a slow start and pauses to sort out the spelling of ALLELUIA and TUMBREL. Just to confuse things further, I think it was Brer Rabbit who was “bred and bawn in the briAr patch”, so 25a was a thorny one too. 18.09
13. I’m another Spaghetti Carbonado, though of course that’s not possible in these End of Times with no supermarkets having any pasta left. Or maybe the Spanish (over)cook their steaks carbonado. It was one of the many unusual words & spellings and unknowns which barely slowed me down, a quick 17 minutes.
    One unknown was Bury as part of Gt (sic) Manchester. I believe they have a football team, Bury FC, which has always suggested a crossword clue to me:

    Bury Football Club (5)

    1. Molto bene. My local club is Bury Town FC
       1. Was?
          1. No. Still is. I live in Suffolk not Lancashire. My latest userpic shows he-who-is-buried.
    2. Unfortunately Bury FC went bust at the start of the season, so may be considered to have been interred…..
14. Same sensation here, grinding to a near standstill in the NE corner (largely because of the unknown CARBONADO, which was worked out piece by piece) and having to take extra time to avoid various bear-traps like TUMBREL. Fair enough, though, no reason for setters to encourage careless biffing, even if it doesn’t actually cost lives.
15. DNF. I was all but done in 13 1/2 minutes but then got stuck on my last one CAREEN, for which, after 5 minutes of futile head-scratching, I needed aids. And, furthermore, I had a careless mis-remembered TUMBRIL. No wonder I couldn’t parse it. At least I deduced the unknown CARBONADO. I liked LITERALLY best.
    1. It’s not mis-remembered, it’s an alternative spelling, and more common in my experience.

       Edited at 2020-03-16 11:06 am (UTC)

16. Slowed down in the north-east, with the dragon-diamond-keel threesome posing particular problems. But they fell in the end. Like others, I was lucky to watch the clueing on Tumbrel, otherwise I’d definitely have misspelled. Come to think of it, I’m nor sure I’d have spelled Ribband right either.
17. ….and not forgetting Mary and Lorraine. Three random women does seem rather extreme.

    I wasted too much time at 4D trying to conjure up a French island other than Madagascar. HINDSIGHT was parsed afterwards.

    Practically 25% of my solving time came at the end, where I needed a double alpha-trawl for my LOI.

    FOI ROLLING STOCK
    LOI CAREEN
    COD CHAPATTI
    TIME 11:50

    I’m unable to access the puzzles at the moment from my not-so-Smartphone, as I get a “BAD REQUEST” message. Can any other Smartphone user confirm whether it’s my particular phone (a One Plus model) or a general Android problem please ?

    1. I have the same problem with my one plus three.
       1. Looks like a One Plus problem then.
18. Now clear that it’s just my phone. I’ve cleared my browser history, but I’m still stymied. Bummer.
19. Hit the buffers on this one . 34 minutes and stumped by careen until I looked it up! Hope for better result tomorrow.
20. IDYLL was my FOI. I then progressed steadily in an anticlockwise direction, finishing in the NE where CARBONADO and CAREEN held me up for ages. Managed to negotiate the BRIER patch and the guillotine transport safely. Nice puzzle. 31:01. Thanks setter and U.
21. 16:57. My experience was similar to Ulaca’s, i.e. fairly steady progress then a bout of tooth-pulling at the end to tease out the half-dozen or so nasties.

    For the record I lived in the NW Bury for about ten years. Whilst it is part of Greater Manchester in terms of metropolitan administration it was postally, and spiritually, in Lancashire.

    1. Lancashire is nothing if not a movable feast .. they must have an entire department for plotting their boundary.
       On the Pennine Way you pass a marker stone that says “This is the most westerly point in Lancashire” .. but it is no longer in Lancashire 🙂
       1. Surely the most westerly point of Lancashire would be on the coast, not in the Pennines?
          1. Oh, pooh .. and I DID think about it, too. It is somewhere near Shap Fell, if that helps 🙂
22. Can anyone tell me why I suddenly can’t get the Club site to show crossword grids on an iPad? The home page appears but won’t load the grid, as of yesterday. Is this a common problem with a known solution?
    many thanks
    Graham
    1. First thing to try is clearing cookies.
       1. Ok clearing all browsing history worked. Thanks
          Graham
    2. Are you getting an error message? If so, what does it say?
       1. No message. I just get a blank page with the cogwheel button top right and all the other icons (pen, pencil, submit etc) clustered bottom left
          I’ll try clearing cookies as above
          Graham (long time and grateful lurker)
23. I thought I was very slow with this but it seems that others struggled too.
    LOI DREAMILY totally baffled by the definition. Some very Mondayish clues, but the final few caused me a lot of problems, and had difficulty identifying the literal (LITERALLY!), particularly the green bird threw me.
    The pronunciation of the northern Bury is a world away from the St Edmunds version, something along the lines of BOORAY, though that doesn’t really describe it either
24. Slowed down for at least a minute at the end as I realised I would have to properly parse the clue to be able to choose between TUMBRIL (my preferred spelling, it just looks nicer) and TUMBREL. This problem was aggravated by TUM not feeling fully convincing for ORGAN. But once I spotted the “invisible particle” ON in the clue I could finally hit submit. Needless to say, it looks like Magoo was not slowed down by any of these problems 😉
25. Lots I didn’t like here.

    CAREEN, GERMANSER, CARBONADO

26. what pray is one of them?
    The German merganser is a goosander – I believe. Or are we looking at mergus germanus merganser a new species?
    1. In these viral days GERMs are at the forefront of everybody’s mind…
27. I’ve washed my hands of it.
28. I took 35 minutes for this one, which I’m very happy with given that it stretches many of the crosswording muscles I’ve been trying to develop over the last few years.

    When I started this lark I didn’t even know who Charles Lamb was, but since then I’ve read both the Essays and the Last Essays, and I popped the right letters into the unlikely spelling of 11a with barely a pause. I now also think of MERGANSERs as quite common (at least in crosswords) and I know my TUMBRELs from my GAMBRELs. LOI was ALSACE-LORRAINE, as I’ve not been revising my French departments as much as I should…

    I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future, so I might stand a chance of popping in in the mornings, like I used to. Hopefully see you all then.

    PS: Site on sofa, ill? (4-9)

29. 56:13. Goodness. I was hopelessly off the pace with this one. Not thinking laterally enough to see literally, gullibly picking almost every element of gullible incorrectly, no idea what brown studies, wyverns or artesian wells were, incapable of honing in on anything from the fairly broad possibilities given by race, men, keel over and -a-e– in 15ac and nho carbonado. It’s a wonder I managed to finish at all.
30. 13 Medic, female, penning article in a brown study (8)
    DREAMILY – A in DR EMILY (random female); no, I had no clue that brown study had anything to do with a dreamy attitude, but it does – or did

    I thought that ‘female penning’ was Emily Bronte (rather than a random woman’s name) and that ‘article in’ was how the A was included.
    I now see that ‘penning’ can be the indicator to include the A makong Emily random.
    I am a slow solver and very much appreciate the explanations provided in this blog. Can you pleade tell me –
    Is it common for ‘female’ to indicate a name? I have so far only looked for a name from ‘woman’ or ‘girl’.
    Many thanks. Jean from Perth

31. Yes, female is pretty common, as it is the noun that is being used, not the adjective
    1. Thanks Ulaca

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