Times 27907 – Wilco (The Album)

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 16 minutes
Music: Bax, Tintagel, Boult/LPO

Another easy Monday, but I biffed so many I’m going to be spending a lot of time figuring out the cryptics as I write the blog.   There are also a number of points I will have to research.   So maybe this shouldn’t have been so easy, or maybe we don’t need the cryptics.   Well, at least we have a crypt.   There were not many actual chestnuts, although experienced solvers will know decaf/faced, the two sailors in Addis Ababa, the goat with no corn, and the upside-down help in India. 

Since we had Bax last week, I pulled out the Lyrita LP of his tone poems.   These are fine performances by Sir Adrian Boult, highly recommended if you like English-style classical music. 

Across
1 Very naughty boy outside a court, having arrived with large beast (8,5)
BACTRIAN CAMEL – B(A CT)RIAN + CAME + L, referring to Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
8 Bird’s nest is one being very high (4)
SOUP – SO + UP.   Fortunately, I didn’t biff coop.
9 Meat pie, served with coffee, sent back, looking anaemic (5-5)
PASTY-FACED – PASTY + DECAF backwards.
10 Start to accept fish in sea abroad seem diseased? (8)
MALINGER – M(A[ccept] LING)ER. 
11 Fox should cover conflict once in progress (6)
TOWARD – TO(WAR)D, where the “in progress” meaning of toward is obsolescent, although maybe not obsolete.
13 Combine with two sailors in an investment producing capital (5,5)
ADDIS ABABA – ADD IS(ABAB)A.  An ISA is a UK investment; here in the US we have the IRA, but that acronym was already taken over there.
16 Data coming back relating to an Ulster region (4)
INFO – OF N.I.  Northern Ireland is six out of the nine counties in Ulster, so it is properly called an Ulster region.
17 Sudden blast son’s taken in belly (4)
GUST – GU(S)T.
18 Trio snatching at Scots hooligan were menacing (10)
THREATENED – THRE(AT)E + NED.
20 Snooker break is met with difficulty in the end (6)
STYMIE – Anagram of IS MET + [difficult]Y.
22 Shoot the breeze with blonde in attempt to manipulate (8)
GASLIGHT – GAS + LIGHT, as modern language comes to the Times.   We’ll be back to bishops and barristers shortly, however.
24 He painted bishop with bad back gulping too much cold water (10)
BOTTICELLI –  B (OTT ICE) LLI, whichis ill backwards. 
26 Bottomless river associated with Parana’s source (4)
DEEP – DEE + P[arana] – fortunately, you don’t need to know who or what Parana is.
27 Direction Strehler originally provided in Aston theatre adaptation? (4-5-4)
EAST-NORTH-EAST – Anagram of S[rehler] + ASTON THEATRE – you don’t need to know who Strehler is, either!
Down
1 Shilling taken from chest with another in economic cycle (4,3,4)
BOOM AND BUST – BO[s]OM AND BUST.    Inflation and deflation, or something like that.
2 Goat denied grain comes to island (5)
CAPRI – CAPRI[corn]. 
3 Abhorrent ruling to imprison reversed before magistrates (9)
REPUGNANT – RE(UP backwards)GNANT.
4 Empire once so small and insubstantial to overturn (7)
ASSYRIA – AS + S + AIRY upside-down.
5 Weep over pint in church cellar (5)
CRYPT – CRY + PT.
6 Malicious trick takes in hospital for now (9)
MEANWHILE – MEAN W(H)ILE.
7 Some colliers are buried (3)
LIE – Hidden in [col]LIE]rs.
12 Royal seen among tree ferns ordered snack (11)
REFRESHMENT – Anagram of TREE FERNS containing HM.
14 Hints from close friends (9)
INTIMATES – Double definition.
15 Economist with German husband supporting second president (4,5)
ADAM SMITH – ADAMS + MIT H.
19 Artillery regiment with gun elevated in routine (7)
REGULAR – RA + LUGER upside-down.
21 One whose time is done in City, working with cross to bear (2-3)
EX-CON – E(X)C + ON.
23 Home help sent up country (5)
INDIA – IN + AID upside-down.
25 Mineral source almost disappeared from Pacific state (3)
ORE – ORE[gon[e]], an obvious biff.

89 comments on “Times 27907 – Wilco (The Album)”

  1. Thanks for the all the parsing — ORE in particular. (Yikes!)

    This one took me just a couple minutes longer than the quickie, so indeed on the easy side for me.

    However, I recognize that I was able to biff a lot. BACTRIAN CAMEL was in my head for some reason. As I went on, I wondered, is that a reference to Monty Python?! Botticelli also went in immediately.

    For solvers needing to really use all the wordplay, this might not be as easy.

  2. Likely a pb for me; I can’t remember when I was last under 10 minutes. But then, given that I biffed a large bunch of clues, the time isn’t that surprising. ‘court’ and the enumeration suggested the camel, but I waited a bit before biffing it. BRIAN didn’t register until post-submission. DNK ‘snooker’ in the relevant sense; in the US it means something like ‘trick’ or ‘entice’. And since I don’t know the game, I was wondering what a snooker break would be.
    1. Kevin, you might like to check out this page, where I’m experimenting with showing data about individual solvers. I’m interested in feedback.
      1. Impressive-not my times, but the presentation of the data. I wonder, though, if say Verlaine would find anything of interest in his data, where his top ten times would be within a few seconds of each other, and of his next ten.
        I still can’t believe I got in under 5′ once; and I can’t imagine not reporting it here, but evidently I didn’t.
        1. Perhaps for whatever reason that isn’t a real time? Have you ever been unable to log in, solved on the paper’s site then transcribed into the club site?
          4m 37s would have beaten all of Magoo, Jason, Verlaine, Eamon Ryan et al and left you high and dry alone atop the leaderboard. Eamon Ryan was the only other one to crack 5 minutes, with 4:56
          1. I do have a vague recollection, from years back though, of completing in a surprisingly low time–all the more surprising in that it was some years back–but I commented on it in TftT. I can’t account for the 4:37, unless, of course, it’s my evil twin; it’s the sort of thing he’d do.
        2. Thanks for the comments. Verlaine’s times, if you’re interested are here. All the reference and tracked solvers now have a link on the Neutrinos page. If there’s a general consensus that this is useful, I’ll make them more prominent.
      2. I discovered this page a few weeks ago, a “I wonder what happens when I click on ooooh look” moment. Today I got all of my top ten times under 30 mins.
        Thank you stastruck
      3. As ever, I am in awe of anyone who can programme in such a way as to produce these apparently endlessly flexible results. I found my individual top ten after a bit of uneducated poking around, and was suitably pleased. I now have a target of getting all my ten under 10, if you see what I mean.
        I’m now wondering whether there’s a point at which the SNITCH data and programming reaches a critical mass and starts thinking for itself.
      4. Just took a look at my page Starstruck and I see my two best times (4 and 7 minutes back in 2017) are definitely not kosher but I’ve no idea what I did to arrive at them. I vaguely remember one time I was sitting on top of the Club board and then along came Magoo to knock me off. It only happened once. Amazing work by you. Chapeau!
      5. Another who is in awe of people’s ability to produce this sort of thing. Brilliant stuff. Also, the fact that my fastest times aren’t all in the dim and distant past encourages me to think that I’m not losing my faculties as quickly as I sometimes fear. Which is nice.
    2. I spotted this a couple of weeks ago and think it’s brilliant. If you look at various people’s best times it certainly supports the “Monday is easier” theory.
  3. 18 minutes for me, so fast but not a PB. I never worked out which BRIAN was the naughty boy but I didn’t really need to. I wasted a minute or so putting WHITE FACED, completely ignoring the pastry and not noticing I had two coffees, one forward, one back. I’m glad I didn’t need to know who Parana or Strehlere were, since I didn’t. I was onto SOUP immediately, so I didn’t consider COOP or anything else that might have fitted.
  4. 24 minutes but with an error at 11ac where with a growing sense of confidence in this being an easy puzzle I biffed THWART defined by ‘fox’. I’d spotted the parsing of WAR of course but didn’t bother thinking about the rest of it.

    If GASLIGHT defined as ‘attempt to manipulate’ is modern language coming to The Times then heaven help us, as it has its origins in the 1938 stage play GAS LIGHT by Patrick Hamilton which was made into a feature film released in 1940, and an American remake in 1944 (neither to be confused with the 1944 film ‘Fanny by Gaslight’ which was something else entirely!). The first examples of its metaphorical usage appeared in the early 1950’s.

    My US geography is a bit vague so I never got to grips with the parsing of ORE, the only Pacific states I could think of were California and Washington and Hawaii, and of course there’s nothing in the clue to specify it had to be a US state anyway.

    It’s a brave setter prepared to pick a fight over whether pasties necessarily contain meat!

    I enjoyed the humour of the BACTRIAN CAMEL and BOOM AND BUST clues.

    Edited at 2021-02-22 05:25 am (UTC)

    1. I had exactly the same thought when I read vinyl’s comment about GASLIGHT but it has become annoyingly fashionable in recent years.
      1. The gaslight phenomenon did enter psychiatric terminology, the history goes back to the 1700s and there was a paper in the lancet about it in the 1960s. I’m sure family scapegoating remains alive and well.
        There was an enjoyable revival of the play at the theatre royal bath , a couple of years ago. Those were the days..
  5. After a week off for CNY this was a doddle at 17:30 mins

    FOI 8ac SOUP

    SOI BACTRIAN CAMEL – naughty boy indeed!

    LOI 22ac GASLIGHT – much used on ‘Fox & Fiends’

    COD 9ac PASTY-FACED

    WOD 24ac BOTTICELLI

  6. This puzzle was on my level with its lowbrow cultural reference to Monty Python — Life of Brian is a classic film and it’s probably about time I rewatched it. I sure I’m teaching many grandmothers to suck eggs here, but did you know you can tell the difference between a BACTRIAN CAMEL and a dromedary by the humps? A bactrian has two like a sideways B and a dromedary has one like a sideways D.
    1. My brother just told me about the camels last week, which may have made 1ac easier to biff.
  7. 15 mins pre brekker. No dramas.
    Took too long over Soup, but rushed through the Meat pie and Decaf.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  8. ….a terrible morning for me. Three errors on the QC (two typos! — one on a checker) and bunged in AUSTRIA instead of ASSYRIA — would have been a PB too by nearly a minute!!

    I’m going back to bed.

  9. 19 minutes with LOI MALINGER. I didn’t bother to parse ORE, which was probably as well as I don’t think I’d have come up with that in a month of Sundays. COD to ADAM SMITH.Thank you V and setter.
  10. 8:59. Very Mondayish. I did biff a couple (the camel and the painter), but not ORE. COD to BOOM AND BUST.
  11. Not only did I bung in THWART, like Jack, I also had COOP, so a DNF. Shame as my time was good. I hate words that start with unches.
    Thanks v for the explanations and setter.
  12. Reasonably straightforward but how does so = as in ASSYRIA?
    I liked BOOM AND BUST but COD to BACTRIAN CAMEL.
    1. In Chambers SO includes AS in its listing. Consider “as/so far as I know” where the two are interchangeable.
  13. I’ve often thought this would be a great addition to the SNITCH — nice work starstruck!
  14. Quite easy, but not all that fast
    One across was an absolute mast-
    Erpiece of a clue
    It’s a great film too
    And George Harrison’s one of the cast
  15. I thought I was going to break the Ten Minute Barrier – but hit some turbulence. In the end I did well to submit an all correct answer.

    While maligned, I couldn’t reach Assyria. Then, before pressing submit, I had to dispense with two false friends; Adam Snith and Bottocelli.

  17. 11:17. Easy enough, although the SNITCH tells me I was off the pace. I was held up by three or four at the end, including the CAPRI/SOUP crossing pair and ORE, which I failed to parse.

    Edited at 2021-02-22 09:09 am (UTC)

  18. 11.15 but DNF as very stupidly misspelt stymie . The urge to get a fast time sometimes dulls the wit to check answers properly. Perhaps one day I’ll learn.

    Enjoyable Monday treat with FOI lie. COD probably bactrian camel in honour of giving myself the hump.😊

  19. They were right (well nearly). Just what is needed on a wet Monday morning. Very fast and made me smile. Thanks setter.
  20. A serious case of trippy fingers slowed me down and shattered my error-free placing on the leaderboard: another month stretches dauntingly ahead.
    Otherwise 13.37, including an absurdly long alphabet trawl for SOUP, completely failing to split definition from wordplay. Did anyone else try to work an anagram (high) of IS I V(ery)?
    On the other hand, I had none of the difficulty with ORE that others seem to have had. I agree with V, it’s an obvious biff, but the wordplay was a gimme too: I don’t know of any other states which begin ORE and finish GON(e).
  21. LIE, CRYPT and MEANWHILE gave me all I needed to bung in BACTRIAN CAMEL, and I was off at a gallop. Unfortunately I came to a grinding halt at LOI, GASLIGHT, where I was trying to shoehorn GOSSIP in for shoot the breeze and wondering how I could get a 2 letter blond starting with H_. Five minutes later someone lit the GAS mantle. However, it was all in vain as I’d biffed THWART at 11a despite realising that I hadn’t parsed it fully and intending to go back, which didn’t happen. 18:03 WOE. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  22. Very enjoyable puzzle in the Monday style. Most amused by 1ac…led by a star? Led by a bottle more like. The role Terry Jones was born to play.
  23. Relieved to come here and find my hopeful TOWARD was right – I didn’t know that tod can mean fox. Spent some time trying to justify Austria for 4d before ASSYRIA came to me. BACTRIAN CAMEL took a while to come too, and once it did I really liked Brian as the naughty boy. Otherwise this was reasonably straightforward fare.

    FOI Lie
    LOI Toward
    COD Bactrian camel

  24. As said by many above, a pleasant Monday style solve, 18 minutes; LOI was GASLIGHT where I didn’t know that meaning but it had to be.
  25. … my haste in approaching a pb meant a typo and a dreaded pink square. The frustration!

    FOI and COD BACTRIAN CAMEL

    LOI THREATENED – held up by forgetting about Ned.

  26. 30m today, with once again a fast start, leading to a slow middle and an even slower finish. Like Jack and others I had THWART for a while but realised it didn’t parse just in time. Thank you for the blog and puzzle today.
  27. but a distinct lack of satisfaction with COOP for birds nest, made me go back and look again. THWART was also my first answer for what turned out to be TOWARD.

    Still very quick for me at 11:38.

  28. among a mineral of metals base
    shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

    A dnf 13’53 as threw in Coop and forgot to go back to it.

  29. I presume that was CHEST as in chest-feeding?
    Nearly a PB for me

    COD BRIAN you’re just a very naughty little boy

  30. Thought I had sailed through a Monday but too many incorrect biffs. I was a ‘Cooper’ too. Fortunately corrected repellant when I realised there must be a ling in 10ac.
    Got Iac with the word play then the parsing raised a chuckle.
    Addis Ababa has frequented this parish recently, maybe in the QC.
    FOI 9ac. Still not quite happy with the abbreviation for de caffeinated…
    COD 1ac.
    Thank you blogger and setter.
  31. I’m an interloper from the QC but picked up a hint that this might be a bit easier today. I enjoyed it and took 45 mins which is as good as I can hope for. Some smiles (Brian, life of) and great clues — STYMIE, BOOM AND BUST, EX-CON, and more.
    A fine puzzle — thanks to setter and to vinyl. Thanks, too, for the nod towards Bax. I have the complete Symphonies and Tone Poems (Handley, BBCSO) and will now revisit them over the week. JOHN M.
    1. My visit from QC wasn’t as successful, as distractions piled in to my day, but enough to keep me minded to try again. Did manage to answer and parse several of the clues commented on as less obvious so at least occasionally I can find the wavelength.
      1. It does depend so much on mood, interruptions, and ones ability to concentrate (on top of the variation in difficulty which I find to be much greater with the biggie than the QC).
  32. For my first ever comment on here let me say a huge thank you to the bloggers whose work I have been reading for years to help me slowly improve my solving ability. Your efforts are much appreciated. Thanks also to the commenters for your honesty. It was the first time that someone said they had difficulty with a clue which I found easy that I realised I might be able to hold my own here.
    My current standard (which has improved since lockdown brought about retirement and limited other activities) is that I am disappointed if I don’t finish the puzzle correctly each day. Sadly, this still means that I am disappointed most days. I haven’t commented previously because the puzzle usually takes me so long that by the time I have completed it and read the comments I have already spent far more time in crosswordland than I intended to.
    Today was a good day for a first post, with a time of 38 and a half minutes.
    I liked the very naughty boy and was disciplined enough to revisit thwart to work out what t h t was doing. Then saw I had the wrong definition.
    1. Welcome, joefbooth, and congrats on making your first comment. May it be the first of many. I’m ashamed I fell into the thwart/TOWARD beartrap.
  33. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold and unfortunately now I’ve got the thumping metre of Byron’s poem in my head. DNK Ned=Scottish hooligan but didn’t really need to. There’s a Brian in one of the Gaslight movies (the one with Ingrid Bergman). Nice start to the week. 12.09
      1. The whole poem was a complete mystery to me Kevin. Somehow the original OT story was one I missed in scripture class.
      2. I came to the occlusion that they were random words Byron picked on when he realised he’d saddled himself with anapaestic tetrameters and thought b****r what can I get to fit.
  34. A little behind the pace perhaps at 19m. Ashamed to admit I missed the Monty Python reference, hazarding it might be a Hilaire Belloc cautionary tale. Always a bit surprised to see a modern cultural reference in the Times crossword, but I suspect that says more about me.
  35. I used ‘a very naughty boy’ to clue part of INEBRIANT in the crossword I submitted here during the first lockdown, so it went straight in.
  36. write out one hundred times ” always check the parsing, do not biff for a fast time”
    Biffed ORE,CAPRI,REPUGNANT ( second biff after REPELLANT failed the checkers ) and AUSTRIA. But the Austrian empire and I were defeated by the Assyrians.
    13:07 with the mistake

    Edited at 2021-02-22 01:42 pm (UTC)

  37. Not too difficult today.
    I started in the South with EAST NORTH EAST and went from there. A few biffs, especially REPUGNANT which required quite a time to deconstruct.
    LOI GASLIGHT which I think has featured quite recently as I was caught out by it then.
    A fun hour or so. David
  38. A straightforward Monday solve. Toyed with ‘thwart’ and ‘coop’ but could not justify so looked further with SOUP being my LOI.
  39. Thought I was on for a much faster time, but the brain went walkabout half-way through. Happy enough to have managed to type it in correctly for once (though Repellant nearly led me astray).

    Thank you setter and blogger.

  40. An occasional visit, up from the QC. Very pleased with my time (30:30) but I failed with THWART. Spent time on it too, considering TOWARD, but DNK tod=fox so couldn’t parse either. Went with the wrong one. Otherwise very enjoyable
  41. Nice brisk canter, but got held up trying — and of course failing — to parse THWART and AUSTRIA. Thankfully Beatrix Potter and Lord Byron (his cohorts gleaming in purple and gold) eventually rode to my rescue.
      1. A (rather old-fashioned / dialect) term for the animal (and thus, for instance, the name of the fox in Disney’s The Fox and the Hound)
      2. Also see Beatrix Potter’s book “The Tale of Mr Tod” about a very naughty fox.
        Tod is an old country name for a fox just as Brock is an old country name for a badger.
        1. Thanks for the education.
          I see from a 2008 post that you may have played cricket in the Oxford ares. I played for the Oxford XIII Club late 50s early 60s. Home ground Queen’s. A small world.
  43. ….and had 7 parsings to check afterwards, all of them worked out fairly easily.

    FOI SOUP (I was fairly sure about BACTRIAN CAMEL, but didn’t chance it on a virgin grid !)
    LOI INFO
    COD EX-CON (but loved BOOM AND BUST when I parsed it afterwards)
    TIME 6:30

  44. A very enjoyable solve, with nearly everything parsed bar 11ac Thwart… Just the right level for those of us stepping up from the QC, with friendly enough cryptics for a few of the more tricky ones. Didn’t know Ned for hooligan, but it had to be, and only spotted the reference to (Life of) Brian post solve. Invariant
  45. Not too tricky today although I didn’t know Ned=hooligan and I didn’t spot naughty boy Brian.
    Probably around 30 minutes.
  46. Vinyl, I’ve just found and played a couple of pieces by Bax on YouTube: Tintagel (Scottish National Symphony Orchestra) and Enchanted Summer. Lovely music. I shall search for more.
  47. Could someone expand on the parsing of 3 down. Although I biffed this answer I do not understan how GNANT refers to magistrates. The answer given seems a litle baffling to this Monday only solver.
        1. Right, so either form is in sufficiently common usage to be represented in a mainstream dictionary and so, for crossword purposes, fine.
  49. Unlike everyone else I rather struggled with this. Couldnt get beyond COOP but the main problem was carelessly putting in EXCOP looking at the first four letters of working and not the whole word which made the direction clue impossible — should have checked the checkers. Nor did I know the camel though teased it out eventually. All fair enough — just not my day

    Liked BOOM AND BUST and ADAM SMITH

    Thanks all

  50. 10.52. This was great fun. I knew it was going to be when the penny dropped on the (he’s not the Messiah he’s a) very naughty boy. That long one across the top opened the puzzle up and it was pretty much a top to bottom write in after that. I didn’t parse stymie or ore but was pretty confident they were correct.

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