Times 28179 – birds of a different kettle of fish, perhaps.

73 comments on “Times 28179 – birds of a different kettle of fish, perhaps.”

1. I had to trust the wordplay on GLASSWARE since I had no idea of that meaning of fiasco. Took too long on AJAX wondering if AHAB could be considered a classical hero (and wondering where the H came from). Also wasn’t sure if RIGORISTS was a word, but once I realized it was an anagram, I figured it had to be. About 40 mins altogether.
2. Congratulations and thanks, Pip, for all your years of blogging. Much appreciated.

   I enjoyed this one for the manageable challenge. I took 27a as an anagram of all of (GIR IS SORT) but your parsing is more precise. And in 7d I took “one down the line from Victoria” to be Edward VII, who I thought would still be ER.

   Edited at 2022-01-05 01:17 am (UTC)

   1. I agree with you, Starstruck, as I think ‘falling’ as a reversal indicator should really only be valid with a Down clue. Enjoyable 19m solve and like others I had no idea of the glassware meaning of fiasco! Also I didn’t realise that all those aniseed balls I sucked when I was a kid were doing me so much good.
   2. My thanks also to Pip for his many years of excellent blogging.

      Reasonably straightforward puzzle, made harder by some tricky vocabulary — e.g dashpot, rigorist, palimpsest, and fiasco (in the sense required here). For me, “birds of a feather” passes muster. ‘Family” can mean not only a group of people related by blood but also any group of related things, e.g. sharing similar characteristics.

      Thanks setter.

3. 8:23 – I found this one pretty straightforward, though BIRDS OF A FEATHER went in with a shrug from the enumeration. Collins has the first definition as “people with the same characteristics” which could define a family. PALIMPSEST is the title of a fun and catty autobiography by Gore Vidal, so that one is burned on the old retinas.
4. 40 minutes. Fingers well and truly crossed for the NHO DASHPOT but luckily guessed correctly. Didn’t know the GLASSWARE sense of ‘fiasco’ (interesting) and was happy to remember PALIMPSEST. I agree with starstruck_au about the ER in 7d referring to Edward VII. I was expecting RIGORISTS to be spelt with a U, but apparently not.

   Thanks to setter and thanks and congrats to our blogger.

   1. Isn’t the U generally dropped when a suffix is added? laborious, rancorous, …
      1. Yes, you’re right with -ous and -ious suffixes, though the OED does give “rigourist” as another form and (in UK English at least) “humourist” is also given as an alternative spelling for “humorist”.
5. LOI PALIMPSEST, which is so obviously not a word that I chuckled at myself for bunging it in out of desperation. But even at that point there was a faint tinkling of a bell, pleasantly confirmed by the guy that delivers the green squares.

   Enjoyable puzzle as usual, and I learnt something about fiascos. Thanks Pip and setter.

6. Found it quite straightforward. Another who didn’t know fiasco, but as soon as you say it’s a bottle not a tumbler it’s obvious – flask must have the same root.
   LOI GOVERNMENT. It took a while to realise the clue was an anagram, and thrown by the definition. I think of elected councillors as the local government, and the council admin as permanent employees not government. Same distinction as between a country’s government and its public service.
   1. And German Flasche.
7. I liked Isaac, didn’t know that facet could mean regard or that fiasco could be a useful bottle, but mostly I fell into the trap at Local Gov where there are 15 letters, anagrind, and another 15 letters. Guess which 15 letters I wasted ten minutes pushing around. Congratulations on the anniversary, Pip.
   1. Yes I did that with 8d too Paul.
8. FIASCO The word fell into use in Italian slang among the actors and performers who referred to making a mistake on stage as, “far fiasco” or ‘to bottle it’. Perhaps copying those Venetians and other glassblowers who messed-up on Chianti bottles and the like. In the late fifties and sixties, old Chianti Bottles often became student lampshades for the room at the top. Hence 26ac my WOD – GLASSWARE.

   FOI 4dn AJAX – our Kitchen sink hero

   LOI 12dn BOTTLED GAS from the Calor people

   COD 21ac ANNEALER – Mr.Tough Guy who kept my mother busy embroidering

   This took me 40 minutes with 5dn PALIMPSEST (a re-scrape) an ancient chestnut.

   Paul in London, thanks for yesterday’s interesting note!

   Edited at 2022-01-05 04:30 am (UTC)

   1. As I recall Horryd, the bottle was the base and you went to Woolworths to get the shade plus the contraption to stick the bulb into that also had the electric flex to plug into the wall and you also bought the plug separately. We were still doing it into the early 70s.
      1. Years ago, at Baylor University in Texas, a woman I knew was called on the carpet by her college head for having a wine-bottle lamp in her dorm room. The campus then, and now, too, is dry, but they took it very serioulsy back then and even an empty wine bottle was forbidden.
         1. Wow!
      2. When I first lived in Australia, Olivia, it came as something of a surprise to find that they sold electrical appliances with the plug attached!
         1. Same in the US Martin!
9. Must try Vidal’s PALIMPSEST. Much enjoyed his collected short pieces, especially his description of the Republican and Democratic parties as the ‘property parties.’

   28 minutes for the puzzle, so very much in the Snitchmeister’s sights now.

   Edited at 2022-01-05 05:37 am (UTC)

10. Went offline at 20′ with BOTTLED GAS, GLASSWARE, & RIGORISTS to do, and did them over a sandwich. DNK DASHPOT or ‘fiasco’. FOI ISAAC. Biffed the two long anagrams, never did spot the anagrist for 8d; not that I looked that hard once I had a few checkers. It took me a long time to see RIG- as ‘girl falling’, or to see beyond BOTTLE, especially as I’d never come across the term BOTTLED GAS.
11. 51 minutes. This was a bit of a struggle with so many unknowns (ANNEALER, RIGORISTS, DASHPOT, PALIMPSEST and ‘fiascos’ as GLASSWARE).

    I never did figure out the parsing of SET-UPS, so thanks for that, Pip, and congrats on your milestone.

12. I had a good start with BIRDS OF A FEATHER going straight in. At the time I didn’t notice the questionable definition but now it does seem slightly off.
    It was interesting to see some mentions of PALIMPSEST as an unknown and likewise fiascos for GLASSWARE as both have come up before. Having said that I needed all the checkers to get PALIMPSEST and only remembered fiascos post solve.
    I didn’t realise ANISEED has medicinal problems but was pleased to hear it as I love it. I’m off for a raki.
13. An enjoyable puzzle. Well done, Pip, for 8 years before the mast. Do you miss France at all?
    15d was recently clued by Dean Mayer in an ST cryptic as “Joined Labour Party” which I thought was wonderfully succinct.
    FOI: BREAD
    LOI:REINSTALL
    COD: IMPERIAL
    I had never heard of the term fiasco in reference to wine bottles. I had a near fiasco, though, with a Chianti bottle back in the 70s. I was working for an airline at Gatwick and did a there-and-back work trip to Verona. I bought a bottle of Chianti from the little airport shop, complete with raffia. Friends came for dinner that evening but nobody present could pull the cork. I took the bottle to the pub next door and eventually someone in the public bar managed to pull it out.
    1. Yes!
       Especially as we can’t visit easily.
    2. Never a problem to a medical student with a sizeable syringe and a large needle , Martin ; if the cork was intact.
       1. I just bite off the neck.
       2. Gosh! You really do learn something new every day! Thanks!
14. … with my usual flare

    After 30 mins I gave up on Rigorists. I was never going to untangle that it was an anagram, let alone the fodder.
    Other MER at Regard=Facet?
    Thanks setter and Pip.

    1. The nearest I can see is “in that regard” = “in that facet” but i agree it’s a MER.
    2. I wondered if there was a T indicator which got dropped out at some point; I’d cringe at Face = regard, but I’d only really whine if I didn’t otherwise get the answer quickly.
15. Not really. I just like Chrissie Hynde. 22 minutes with LOI and COD ANNEALER. I didn’t know that meaning of fiasco, but the construction was well labelled. I knew the word PALIMPSEST without knowing the meaning. I get confused now whether to say AJAX as the foaming cleanser or the Dutch football team. We used Vim anyway. Not a hard but a pleasant puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
16. Just under 50 mins, but had bunged in AHAB. LIke paulmcl I had the dangling H but forgot to go back to it.

    LOI BOFFIN where I thought BIN was a bit loose as “wine supply”. I got the long anags quickly but then held up by REINSTALL, DASHPOT, PALIMPSEST.

    I Quite liked 1d for a smooth surface.

    Thank you and well done Pip.

17. After yesterdays PB, today my time is propping up the SNITCH. Needed the blog to explain GLASSWARE and SETUPS so thankyou blogger.
    To put the tin lid on it had a silly typo on the QC.
18. So a good time but a few I wasn’t sure about.

    I though regard = FACE and wondered where the T came from before I thought of FACET. NHO that sense of fiasco. RIGORISTS seems a strange word.

    And for some reason I would have spelt PALIMPSEST without the final S.

    But I enjoyed CHAIN GANG and AJAX

    Thanks setter and pip

19. 13:04 Some educational stuff hear today (not just 18D). DNK ANISEED had medicinal properties and had forgotten fiasco = flask. I thought “Give weary” for TIRE a bit odd. COD to the nice &lit hidden EDICT. Thanks Pip and setter, and well done on the 8th anniversary.
20. Some education, some slight grumbles, but all in all a fair puzzle with much to enjoy. Agree that EDICT was neat, nho FIASCO in that sense, not sure what a DASHPOT is, and was held up by thinking it was LEGAL not LOCAL at start of long ‘un on RH edge. Onwards …
21. Today was a good day where I felt that my practice was paying off as BIRDS OF A FEATHER and PALIMPSEST both went pretty much straight in having seen them before pretty recently.

    Thanks to all on here for all the help – both bloggers and commenters. I don’t comment often but read every day and it gives me both education and entertainment.

    I’m actually working my way backwards through the Times puzzles and the comments from the past are very amusing too. I just did a puzzle from April 2015 when Verlaine had a PB of 6.20 and commented that he thought it was inconceivable that he would ever be able to go sub-5! Those were the days…..and shows what practice can do.

    Here’s hoping!

    1. Hi Deane – where do you obtain the blank grids for your practice? Thanks
       1. Hi Denise,

          I do all my practice on-line.

          I started by using the brilliant Snitch website – https://xwdsnitch.herokuapp.com/ – as it grades the crosswords by difficulty. It goes back to October 2015 and I started by doing all the crosswords with a SNITCH rating of less than 70 as these were meant to be the easier ones and I didn’t want to spend an hour struggling on the really tough ones. You can click through to the crossword from that site assuming you are a Crossword Club member.

          Once I’d done all of those, I went up to a SNITCH rating of 80 and so on until I had completed (almost) all of them. The idea being that the difficulty increases as you improve as I didn’t want to spend more than half an hour on each one.

          I still haven’t done 70 of the most difficult ones with ratings above 150 as they’re still too tricky at the moment.

          I’m now just using the Crossword Club search facility and putting in 26091 as an example of one I’ve just done from mid 2015.

          1. Hi Deane

             Thanks a lot for the very detailed answer – going to go through that in detail and check out the suggestions…

             …I need the practice (and fairly often have time on my hands + the inclination to do more solving).

22. This was a pretty significant puzzle for me – success would have given me four consecutive correct solutions – a record for me. So I was very excited to get 1d right away – looked like an easy puzzle in the offing.

    Progress thereafter slowed progressively as I made my way through….
    GLASSWARE = “fiasco” seemed a crazy definition but had to go in
    RIGORISTS unknown to me but made sense
    ANNEALER: luckily I happened to see a YouTube vid yesterday that included some annealing

    Eventually found myself badly stuck in the NW, assuming that 11a had to be SET-TOS even though I( couldn’t parse it – finally corrected after I gave up trying to make any credible word out of the 3d anagram. This left me 4d which I entered as ATAS – not really believing it was correct. That old indiscipline creeping back….

    …and anyway, as it transpired, I’d put PALEMPSIST for 5d, pretty sure it was correct (half-remembered word encountered here, I think, a few months ago).

    Oh well, my 100% hit-rate return to the fray couldn’t last forever, thanks Pip and setter

23. 25:54
    No dramas.
    THanks, pip.
24. Hm,well I did enjoy this but I thought there were several rather loose definitions, in particular facet does not equal regard.

    Well done on your 8 year stint, Pip. I think you took over from Mctext? I remember we were Wednesday oppos, for a while

25. Thought I might be on for a PB with a quick start, but this one got stickier, and in the end I didn’t even get all green squares – PALEMPSIST was my dimly-recollected attempt at that anagram. DASHPOT was my LOI in a little under 7 minutes, as it had to be the answer but I’d never heard of it and it seemed an unlikely idea.

    Fiascos in that context was new to me, and very nice.

26. I parsed RIGORISTS in the same way as starstuck_au above, as an anagram of GIR (girl ‘falling short’) + IS SORT – does ‘falling’ really indicate reversal? Not that it matters too much.

    Didn’t parse CHAIN GANG or figure out how the ‘er’ in STATIONER worked, but with both there was no other option. I also didn’t know the GLASSWARE meaning of ‘fiasco’, I couldn’t have told you what a DASHPOT IS, and I’ll probably never remember what a PALIMPSEST is, but they were all gettable.

    FOI Bread
    LOI Bottled gas
    COD Appraisal

27. Enjoyably gentle. DASHPOT, RIGORISTS and ANNEALER all new to me but helpfully clued. I’ve had many Chianti fiascos.

    Thanks to the setter. Thanks and congratulations to Pip.

    1. I thought I used to have a Chianti Fiasco, but having checked my records it was actually a Fiat Cinquecento.
    2. I’ve also had a few chianti fiascos but these days a French wine is more likely to be the cause.
28. Just under my Snitch target again today (93 = 36m30s).

    DNK GLASSWARE = fiasco; DASHPOT (interested to know its etymology) — seemed more likely than DOSHPAT; RIGORISTS

    SET-UPS took ages to see.

29. Agree with chrislutton and others I think: surely ‘Girl falling’ is not a reversal. As it is it seems perfectly simple parsing: (gir[l] is sort)*. 41 minutes although dashpot and glassware were both entered on a wing and a prayer.
30. ….FLOTSAM (cheers Pip) and NHO my LOI despite having an honours degree in pedantry.

    FOI APPRAISAL
    LOI RIGORISTS
    COD BOFFIN
    TIME 12:02

31. When I started with Burrroughs Machines, back in 1973, we still had a large population of mechanical full keyboard adding machines, one of which formed the practical test during the interview for the job. The interviewer would ask how a particular function worked and you had to examine the workings and explain it. There was a dashpot which acted as a damper so the mechanism didn’t bounce after you’d let go of the handle and give wrong results, “miscasts”. This had to be checked and topped up with oil during preventative maintenance visits. Anyway, that one was a write it for me:-) PAILIMPSESTs were actually remembered, but I was glad of the checkers to get the spelling correct. FIASCOS as flasks was not known and GLASSWARE was my POI with LOI, AJAX, requiring an alphabet trawl. 22:03. Thanks setter and Pip, and congratulations on the blogging milestone.
32. With much of the time, as above, trying to work out where the H in AHAB came from. I had to run through in my head all the crossword sailors before the penny dropped. Nothing to add to what has already been said, just glad to have my brain back again.
33. Thanks for the parse on SET-UPS Pip. I thought it might be something to do with “upsets”=arguments and moved on. It took a few beats but I remembered our local Italian joint used to have FIASCOS of Chianti on the menu and it always made my husband giggle. 18.47
    1. A fiasco of Chianti!
34. Much like yesterday’s – another largely straightforward one taking 23 minutes. I didn’t know the definition given for GLASSWARE, but the wordplay was easy.It took a while to see SET-UPS, but my LOI was the unknown RIGORISTS. Otherwise nothing partcularly taxing.
35. 16:35, with a vaguely recalled DASHPOT and a leap of faith for the heavily signposted GLASSWARE. I thought “something deemed medicinal” was an overly general pointer for ANISEED. Isn’t just about every herb or spice deemed medicinal by somebody?

    Edited at 2022-01-05 12:41 pm (UTC)

36. Rigorist does seem to exist, surprisingly.
    Regard = facet if you are discussing say a facet of an argument?
    Dashpot no problem if you ever worked on an SU carburettor, but I was a bit surprised to see it.
    Fiasco=bottle OK. Botticelli’s name (really a nickname) = Little Bottle or Minor Fiasco, always worth a smile.
    Andyf
    1. SU carburettor – that takes me back 60 years, when I did mess around with the SU carburettors (on my MG, I think).
    2. I just watched Ed China refurbish a pair of twin SU carbs on an old Volvo PV544, and set them up, on Wheeler Dealers a couple of nights ago:-)
37. Struggled to get under twenty minutes but just made it. COD 5dn Palimpsest – with WOD to ‘fiasco’ which I DNK. Fortunately Glasswear wasn’t difficult. Had it been clued with Fiasco as the answer…..who knows?

    Edited at 2022-01-05 01:54 pm (UTC)

38. 16.10 with FOI appraisal. God, how glad I am that they are now only a bad memory. I don’t know which was worse, being appraised or appraising.

    Couple of unknowns, rigorists was a new one to me as was the glassware. Bit puzzled by annealer for a time. I thought that was a Cockney doctor. Boom ,boom.

    Thx setter and blogger

39. Thanks for explaining the first bit of RIGORISTS, my LOI. But I agree with others that this should have been a down clue with that reversal device.
    Held up a bit at the end, with the GLASSWARE sense of “fiasco” not entirely clear but dimly remembered and not seeing the Director General in BOTTLED GAS for a while.
    Hesitated a while on DASHPOT because “pot” is already altogether in the anagrind.

    Edited at 2022-01-05 04:52 pm (UTC)

40. I got palimpsest and glassware! Unfortunately ANNEALER was unknown to me. I quite liked the puzzle though, and was pleased to get the long anagrams to get me started.
    Congratulations Pip on your 8 years at the Wednesday helm!
    Andrew
41. 26m so I found this straightforward enough, probably because i didn’t agonise over the oddities for once — all mentioned above already. Just wanted to say thank you to Pip and all the other bloggers as well. Your efforts are always appreciated.
42. 46 minutes, ending fortunately with a proofread of the answers, thereby being reminded to reconsider AHAB, so I didn’t fall into that trap. I wasn’t quite sure about BOFFIN either, but I couldn’t find a more convincing alternative. Apart from those, no real problems. I remembered PALIMPSEST as a word, but not what it meant. My FOI was actually BIRDS OF A FEATHER after I couldn’t think of anything reasonable for 1ac right off and therefore decided to start with 1dn for a change.
43. 12:56. Out all day so late to this. I liked it.
    DNK DASHPOT or the bottle but did know PALIMPSEST.
    Fiasco is an interesting word, same root as German and Scandinavian equivalents as well as flask. ‘Bric del Fiasc’ is the name of a very good Barolo, I now realise it must mean ‘Bottle Hill’.
    I agree with others that regard/FACET is questionable. ‘In that regard’ is close but not quite close enough IMO.
    Congratulations on the milestone Pip. I have a similar one coming up.
44. Flying start but made heavy weather of northeast: aniseed, stationer, dingo and isaac taking up a good eight minutes. Never heard of either dashpot or fiasco as a bottle. Nearly had set-tos for 11ac, which would have worked for the definition part (arguments). Much fun as ever, Thanks to all
45. 20.07. Got through this one ok but never felt exactly on it. Odd that I was comfortable putting in the the unknown glassware definition of fiasco from wordplay straightaway but dithered for ages on the similarly unknown dashpot.
46. Liked it. Pleased to work out the nho ANNEALER. PALIMPSEST remembered but not its meaning.

    Anyway may I add my fulsome congratulations and thanks to all our wonderful bloggers and of course Mr K today. Your efforts really are appreciated

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