Times 27891 – what was the largest city in the world, until 612 BC?

68 comments on “Times 27891 – what was the largest city in the world, until 612 BC?”

1. I was quite pleased to finish this in 40 minutes as there were several unknowns (CUBBY as squat, for example) but the shine has just been taken off because I realised I wrote ADIEUS at 21dn. I hadn’t seen any reason why the French word shouldn’t be pluralised using the English convention of adding an S, but of course this wasn’t taking full account of the wordplay.

   Has anyone used the new system of inserting quotes now offered by LJ? I think it only arrived yesterday, or at least the message promoting it which I find quite disconcerting as one section is in red and makes it look like it’s reporting an error.

   Edited at 2021-02-03 07:00 am (UTC)

2. A welcome change after two DNFs. I biffed OVERSPEND & SENT DOWN, parsed post-submission. It took a while to recall SP, and even then I had to look it up to see what it stands for. A slight MER at DOWSE, which ends in [z] for me, and for ODE; but I see Collins has it as a true homophone for ‘douse’. LOI CUBBY; I didn’t know the ‘squat’ meaning. COD to SENT DOWN.
3. I’m on the ADIEUS naughty step too. I was glad that I wasn’t going to have to come up with any Japanese rivers since I don’t think I know any. I also didn’t know CUBBY meaning squat but I just went with the cubby-hole meaning.

   There are a handful of nouns in French that end in “ou” and plural takes “x”. They make a sort of rhyme kids learn: Bijoux, Cailloux, Choux, Genoux, Hiboux, Joujoux, Poux.

4. And so it continues, today’s error being a biffed ADIEUS which I see Pip has anticipated. Thanks Pip! In turn I’m going to anticipate there may be some solvers disgruntled at VENIN. I reckon this and Nineveh to both be obscure, but fortunately I remembered Nineveh from its last time out. I’m guessing some others might not be so lucky.
   1. VENIN as poison came up in the recent Christmas Day puzzle when I claimed it was new to me, but prior to that it had appeared in January last year.
      1. In all likelihood if it comes up next week I’ll probably claim it’s new to me.
5. …and I’m a bit X about it.
   I thought the English plural was ADIEUS and considered ADIEUX only to reject it ( without seeing that it parsed in French!)
   28’51” with the pinkie.

   Edited at 2021-02-03 07:12 am (UTC)

6. After 30 mins pre-brekker I only had the Adieu? to fill in and I was puzzling about the wordplay and what the ‘for’ was doing. Surely ‘for’ as a link word would be the wrong way round? (I know some editors allow it). But of course! ‘For couple’=A deux. Bob’s your uncle — but what a clever elephant trap.
   Thanks setter and Pip.
7. and realized (realised) that my LOI had to be ADIEUX and not ADIEUS! Whew! So all done in 41 mins.

   As Pip notes this was a very fine puzzle. I should have finished far earlier but was held up in the SW as I was banking on ‘LOBBY’ at 17ac (nor small enough) and 28ac to be PRATTLE – (CUBBY and LECTURE) until CAME came slowly into view – with 17dn CAMOMILE my COD.

   FOI 22 BRIEFS – pants – are trousers ‘over there’ for some reason. Trousers never really took-off Stateside. It is a daft word, but then so is pantaloons! To trouser as a verb is good as is ‘trews’ up in the home of the kilt where pants are never worn!

   A slight MER at 20c MERMAID as they very much existed when I were a lad! As did Ethel Merman.

   ‘over there’ I was testing the ‘quote button’. So that’s what it does! Another first?

   Edited at 2021-02-03 05:00 pm (UTC)

8. Move over and make room on the naughty step for one more, please. Note to self: do read and parse clues properly. Oh well. Enjoyed the rest of this one, especially SENT DOWN. Very apt. Thanks pip and setter.
9. Thanks, Pip, particularly for VENIN, LION and INFER. I solved those without being able to parse them. I wonder if others thought of UR for ‘ancient city’
   I very nearly put VENOM before a last minute check showed that would have given me THIMNEST in 8d.
   Fortunately, I took the trouble to work out it was ADIEUX rather then adieus.
   I wonder if CUBBY Broccoli, the co-producer of the early Bond films, was short and stout?
   FOI: SENT DOWN
   LOI: ORBITAL
   COD: ANTIBODY

   Edited at 2021-02-03 08:02 am (UTC)

   1. I’m guessing Cubby Broccoli was short, stout, green and leafy.
      1. Tee hee!
      2. He acquired his nickname after his cousin, mobster Pat DiCicco, began calling him “Kabibble,” after a similarly-named cartoon character.
         This was eventually shortened to “Kubbie” and adopted by Broccoli as “Cubby.” The family later bought a farm in Smithtown, New York, on Long Island, near their relatives the DiCiccos.

         But he was short stout and connected.

10. 26 minutes with LOI CUBBY. I didn’t know the squat meaning. I did have some vague memory of the ADIEUX spelling from JMB O level French 1961, and the cryptic was clear enough. VENIN was not known but the crossers plus the quinquireme’s port of embarkation left little doubt. COD to CAMOMILE for its surface. A pleasant puzzle I thought was going to be tougher on a first reading. Thank you Pip and setter.
11. Surely 2dn is SUB (editor) + SCRIBE (writer) + R (beginning to Recognise)?
    1. Er….yes. I think Pip agrees with you
       1. Yes. So he does. My guess is he swiftly changed it before you arrived
          1. Pip-squeak!
12. 25 minutes for me
    With an x in adieux happily
    But it had to be so
    For in maths, as you know
    An x stands for ‘Times” frequently

    I’m hoping this contribution appears. I commented yesterday on the possible ambiguity of cyberspace and cyberscape but it’s nowhere to be seen

    1. Perhaps in cyberspace!?
13. 23:55
    I’ve been banned?! Thanks pip.
    1. Oh. Seems to have posted OK 🙂
    2. Just for the record, if you are able to post that you have been banned, you haven’t been banned!

       Somebody had the same experience yesterday on my blog. The message you are seeing must be a glitch in the Live Journal programme so if you see it again check whether your message has posted.

       1. Thanks jack 🙂
14. 1 wrong – another on the ADIEUS naughty step. I had a question mark against it but forgot to go back and check. DNK VENIN or that meaning of CUBBY. Having a university student forced to stay home, I liked SENT DOWN most.
15. CUBBY went in as a “nothing else fits”. Chambers is unconvinced by the squat definition, and my research has Collins giving that meaning as “Midlands dialect”, but then declining to pronounce it in a Brummie accent, so I’m still not entirely convinced.
    Otherwise, this was pretty decent and resisted for just over 16 minutes. I especially liked the area in fear device, and the extremely well hidden reverse for MERMAID, which I still couldn’t see after guessing the entry.
    Last in BRIEFS, because I couldn’t see that pants was/were just pants.
    Thanks Pip for the explications. I didn’t know about the size of Nineveh, even though it would have taken Jonah 3 days to walk from one side to the other.
16. 11:42, with a pause at the end over CUBBY. I didn’t know either of the definitions, but in the end figured it could be a variant of cubby hole. News to me: Australian or North American usage apparently, depending on which dictionary you believe.
    I liked this though: not as hard as it first seemed (I only got two answers from my first pass through the acrosses) but requiring engagement with wordplay, not least to avoid the ADIEUS elephant trap. As z8 says ‘where area in fear is’ and the hidden are very good.
    On a first glance at the anagrist in 23ac It thought the answer was going to be TERRORIST, and thought the definition a bit tasteless!
    1. It was always cubby hole when I was a child and had one assigned me in the classroom. The first (and only) time I heard ‘cubby’ was when, 40 or 50 years later, I visited a friend in her kindergarten class and she used the term.
17. 25.12 but fell into the adieus trap. Still, at one stage I didn’t think I’d get anywhere near finishing. My FOI was roisterer which was so far down the grid I could feel a panic attack coming on.

    Got cubby but can’t say I knew of two definitions. Another good mental exercise so thanks setter, not forgetting blogger.

    Incidentally, the last two days I’ve had a message on my comment box warning me No HTML allowed in subject and Notice! This user has turned on the option that logs IP addresses of anonymous posters.

    I’m not anonymous so have I hit a wrong button somewhere?

18. 35m today, after a very slow start, taking 5 minutes at least to find one I could do -ROISTERER- but then the bottom half quickly fell. Only to be followed by another longish pause as I stared blankly at the top half. But then PROFIT started me off again. Like others I didn’t know VENIN, cheerfully biffed VENOM, but luckliy noticed that THINNEST had slightly changed. Typically, another few minutes spent trying to work out another answer for 8 down before realising I should be concentrating on 11a! Thank you to setter and blogger.
19. Seemed on the harder side in places. Took ages to make head and tail of the NW corner, not realising until I had the first and last checker that 1a might actually be an anagram.

20. Adieus never even occurred to me because of Beethoven’s piano sonata called ‘Les Adieux’.
    1. This is probably what saved me as well!
21. Nice puzzle, though I had to assume the meaning of CUBBY, which went in on the grounds that I could see about half of it working, and it was definitely better than CABBY. I like the word ROISTERER. Presumably when life has returned to something resembling normal, the streets will be packed with people catching up on a year’s worth of missed roistering.
    1. In Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale the three men who set off to kill Death (running wild because of the plague!) and kill each other over a heap of gold, are called ‘roisterers’ so the word has a good pedigree.
       1. And there’s an old play called Ralph Roister Doister which often used to be performed in boys’ schools.
          1. .. which I know of, purely because of Flanders & Swann .. who from memory mentioned it in a song about Greensleeves
             1. You’re right Jerry and it’s also mentioned in A.N Wilson’s Incline Our Hearts.
22. Nice steady solve, 3rd good un in a row. LOI LION which I biffed as I couldn’t work out which capital it was – there are so many.. yes and I had a MER withy CUBBY too.
    Nice to see DOWSE there, it’s what I do these days, teach it, use it for geopathic stress etc. Wacky I know, but that’s me.
23. I think I was put off a bit by extraneous words like “exposed” in the clue for THINNEST and “big” in the WARDROBE clue.
24. Why is there a question mark at the end of 2 down
    1. To make up for the missing question mark in your comment.
    2. A more serious (and less mean) answer is that the question market indicates a definition by example, since you can subscribe to things that don’t have editors and writers.
25. Immediately bunged in CAMELLIA without hesitation or thought — always a good idea I find — so the SW corner was a bit awkward until the penny dropped. Otherwise, a gentle enough workout in 24 mins.
26. That was timely. Guy du Sable (a fellow New Yorker) and I recently received the attached and maddeningly disingenuous email from the Times in which they casually inform us that they are doubling our subscription. Anyone else had this? http://links.info.news.co.uk/servlet/MailView?ms=MTE5NjE2NTMS1&r=NTIzODQ2MTYwMzY3S0&j=MTY3NTQ4MzUwMQS2&mt=1&rt=0
    1. Prices we in the UK can only dream of! My sub doubled in October 2019 and is not far off double your new rate.

       Edited at 2021-02-03 12:38 pm (UTC)

       1. Thanks for the info Jack. I wasn’t sure whether to moan or not. It was the tone that annoyed me.
    2. Olivia, I pay £960 a year to have the T and ST delivered to my house together with electronic access to 5 devices.

       I am impressed by your reply to Tim regarding your experience of boys’ schools.

    3. Interesting .. I looked into (if you remember) overseas subscriptions to the Times a year or more ago having been told that you could get it for £5/month .. but found they would only offer me £10/month. So it maybe you are catching up now.

       For all us benighted souls in the UK, I have s Sunday Times subscription that for £10.83/month gives me full Internet access with a bonus printed ST each week .. subscribe here:
       https://www.thetimes.co.uk/subscribe/print/

27. I don’t blame you for complaining, Olivia, iirc the letter I received was couched in very similar terms and it almost seemed designed to cause the maximum irritation. You might find that a complaint threatening to cancel the sub might earn you a reprieve (I think I got 3 or 6 months out of them) but it was only delaying the inevitable.
28. Hi Olivia, Probably no consolation but I live in France and have been paying £10.00 per month for the last couple of years. François
29. I didn’t get the sense that this was an easy puzzle, yet I kept tackling the wordplay, getting reasonable-looking answers (ORBITAL, RUDGE, etc) and proceeding along my merry way until coming to ADIEUX. I did very nearly submit the incorrect answer but I couldn’t let myself do it without reconciling with the wordplay, so thankfully I was able to complete with all correct.
30. A lot of biffing but finished in just over an hour. Tricky for me , kept trying to fit MOT into 10ac , and ancient city always ‘UR’, but I’d seen venin in another crossword. Liked that clue , eventually.
    MER at 13ac, isn’t potable used in France and Spain, not here ?
    The last time I came across helot was when my father played golf in the ‘Helot’ league. The lower handicapped members played in the ‘Spartans’ league. When the classical allusion was unmasked, there were some disgruntled club members apparently.
    Put in ‘tinniest’ at 8dn which set me down a rabbit hole chasing rivers ending in ‘I’. Then saw
    the error of my ways.
    Thank you to setter and blogger.
31. A pretty easy drive, and I thankfully avoided potholes at Adieus and Tubby. Always perks me up when FOI is 1A.
32. I knew it didn’t parse but couldn’t make the leap to A DEUX. Drat! Managed to parse VENIN, after first biffing VENOM, when THINNEST made VENOM unviable. CUBBY deduced from cubby hole. Otherwise no major problems. Waste over 5 minutes getting ADIEUX wrong:-( 35:33. Thanks setter and Pip.
33. I know a little bit about boys’ school drama productions Sawbill because a beloved uncle was headmaster of Preston Grammar and then Whitgift.
34. Solved most of the grid today but we too must sit on the adieus naughty step. NHO venin (we tried to shoehorn Ur in) or Helot (but worked that one out). Overall quite happy.

    Thanks to the setter and blogger

35. I didn’t find this as easy as some, and got there in 11:25. CUBBY was my last one in with fingers crossed assuming it was from cubby hole. Took a long time to get VENIN, hazarding several incorrect guesses before spotting the city.
36. Narrowly missed the naughty step by the skin of my teeth.

    The BBC did a decent version of Camomile Lawn many years ago. Would happily watch it again during the current confinement.

37. ….due to the unknown CUBBY, and not parsing MERMAID and LION (both parsed afterwards, the former quickly, the latter not so. If you take something “off” a word in the clue, I expect it at either the beginning or the end — here the “BS” is taken “out”. Or is it just me ?)

    FOI VARNISH
    LOI ADIEUX
    COD INFER (I almost gave it a standing ovation !)
    TIME 9:16

38. even after looking at it askance, eventually persuading myself that A DEUS *must* be a term for couple. That was also LOI.

    Otherwise, I liked INFER, LION, ROISTERER.

    A shade under 20 mins, but one wrong.

39. Biffo the Bear would have been proud of me today. I did not know the toxin but, as well as reading the Beano, I did study ancient history in my youth so the wordplay got me there. My LOI was ADIEUX where, unusually, I spent some extra seconds to contemplate the parsing.
40. I note that Bruce Castor is POTUS45’s new legal representative and also an anagram of ‘curb case rot’.
    Meldrew
41. 20.43. I couldn’t get a foothold in this puzzle until well down the across clues, leading to something of a bottom up solve. Took a while to realise that ‘one’ in the anagrist for 1ac was actually ‘I’. Cubby was a bit of a punt. I never did quite parse overspend either. I came close to shrugging and supposing that ‘a deus’ somehow meant ‘for couple’ but fortunately it was just unconvincing enough for me to hold on until I got the correct answer. Nice puzzle.
42. I completed this in about 30 minutes while watching Liverpool v Brighton. Two of the clues gave me a lot of trouble. The first was ‘VENIN’; I put it in because I know that ‘venin’ is the French for venom and because I already had the ‘V’ and the two ‘N’s, plus it worked as a reversal of NINEVeh. I didn’t know it was used in English though. The other problem was ‘CUBBY’; it was my LOI and was half biffed based on ‘cubby-hole’. Having now looked it up on-line (the Concise OED doesn’t include the ‘squat’ meaning), I now know that it is used like that in East Midlands dialect. Unfortunately, I have lived all my life in Kent.

    Anyway, I have a question not related to this particular cross word. In the last Sunday Times GK crossword, the answer to one of the clues was Quai d’Orsay. No problem. However, the clue gave the length of the words in the answer as 4,6. Surely this is wrong – it should be 4,1,5 because the elision of the ‘e’ in ‘de’ before a vowel does not mean that what would otherwise be two words suddenly become one. Anyone agree or disagree?

43. The convention is that mid-word apostrophes are ignored in enumerations (e.g. the playwright O’NEILL is given as six letters)
44. DNF as the poisonous 11ac and 7dn got the better of me. I spent ages happily trying to do something with MINSK and MINK for 7dn. It very nearly works, but only if “Brits off” is a recognised expression, meaning “heads off”, or possibly something even more Anglo-Saxon. Which seemed quite plausible.

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