Times 28540 – no, she went on a plane

68 comments on “Times 28540 – no, she went on a plane”

1. I liked Singleton, didn’t know that sense of tile, and got duped into writing Rune where Role belonged, so my slowness in putting the long anagram together (like tile, nho, but both made sense once they were the obvious choices) was only a part of a mezza mezza time. thanks, gh

2. Raced through the top half only slightly discombobulated by seeing RACE for run and wondering why champion was in the clue, so thanks for the parsing. The NHO war story slowed me down in the southeast, finally finishing with erectly/flattery. Liked it, but didn’t quite have the wit of yesterday’s.
   COD manicurist ahead of singleton.

3. Well, I thought a lot of people would be here before me. I went into the office today (the first time in three years! It’ll be one day a week now, usually, for me) and didn’t get started on this till late, by which time a headache was coming on. But none of the clues were headaches, although if I had ever heard of the film for 21 (directed by Noël Coward!), the anagram would have been solved much sooner. A top-to-bottom solve, with the top half all finished before I had anything but DENTED in the bottom. I finished, like isla, with ERECTLY/FLATTERY—right at the end.

4. 50 minutes with the LH side going in very easily but I had trouble on the RH side. No problems with IN WHICH WE SERVE, an absolute classic film written, produced, co-directed and almost everything else by Noël Coward who also took the leading role.

   Further down the cast, not a ‘Sir’ in those days, was John Mills who was also in the 1966 film THE FAMILY WAY mentioned in the other long across answer. I don’t suppose this connection was in the setter’s mind, but one never knows. John’s daughter, Hayley, played one of the leads, possibly her first adult role. She’s still around – a year older than me – and currently appearing in the new series of Unforgotten.

   TILE for ‘hat’ has come up many a time and the lyric of the Music Hall song Any Old Iron is often quoted as an example of its use.

   1. When I saw THE FAMILY WAY, I thought of that film, too, Jack. I thought the music for it was written just by Paul McCartney but I see George Martin is listed as co-writer.

   2. Thanks jack for the tip about Hayley Mills and the new Unforgotten, which we’ve just started watching. I saw Hayley in ‘In Search of the Castaways’ when I was about eight.

      From memory, IN WHICH WE SERVE was a propaganda film, doesn’t make it any less good.

      1. Rather a morale booster, I think, and who could blame them at a time of all-out war. Despite that, the ship was sunk with many British lives lost so the message was one of heroism and devotion to duty, King and country. It was based on the true story of the sinking of Mountbatten’s ship.

   3. Funnily enough, I know ’tile’ from that other music hall standard …

      ‘Where did you get that hat,
      Where did you get that tile?
      Isn’t it a nobby one
      And quite the proper style?’

      1. Me too

5. HALCYON appeared recently
   It’s “birdiness” unknown to me
   For an aviphobic
   This was a mean trick
   This time I can moan properly

6. 39m 09s but I spoilt it by putting CERAMICA, the Italian spelling, for some reason.
   I like this a lot; much to admire, particularly SNAFFLE, MANICURIST, CARDIAC and PERIWIG; but COD goes to ROCK GARDEN.
   Regarding George’s comment about the leaderboard not showing. I’ve been unable to access the comments on yesterday’s Concise to acknowledge two comments directed at me.

7. 38 minutes. I too thought of the movie The Family Way, shot as it was in Bolton. IN WHICH WE SERVE wasn’t! COD to INFERTILE. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you George and setter.

8. The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking,
   When Ariadne in her bower was waking;

   20 mins mid-brekker. I enjoyed it. Ticks for Elf Fans, Infer Tile and Sing Let On.
   I too thought of The Family Way film – which I really like – some great lines, e.g. “He walked in ‘ere like it were a public convenience”.
   Ta setter and G.

9. 28 minutes. Not too many difficult ones, but with a few less obvious words such as PERIWIG and the ‘flannel’ def for FLATTERY. I know nothing about ARIADNE but presume the ‘Strauss’ isn’t “The Blue Danube” one. Favourite was the ROCK GARDEN reverse anagram.

   For HALCYON, I’m not sure if ‘old-fashioned’ applies to the preceding ‘that’ or to the following ‘calm’, therefore being part of the def as shown above in the blog. Like Astro_Nowt, I didn’t know the avian sense until last week and now learn the term HALCYON days means a period of peace and happiness, rather than being a synonym for “heyday” as I’d imagined.

   1. I’m pretty sure it’s ‘that’. YON is marked as archaic in Collins (and poetic in Chambers), whereas HALCYON isn’t, and the latter is still in current use in the phrase you mention.

   2. Yes. Not Johann. I love the music of Richard Strauss. The clue refers to his opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

10. 14:04. I was slow to get going but gradually everything fell into place, finishing in the NW helped by some Ninja Turtling – I only knew MAGNETO as a Marvel character.
    I participated in a quiz with friends last night and one question was which author’s name is an anagram of PRE HUMAN RED AUDI? As the sole crossworder amongst us my pride was dented by failing to solve it.

    1. Just got the anagram. Instead of George’s ‘My wife’s gone to Indonesia’ joke, perhaps, ‘My wife’s gone to the Caribbean’ might have yielded a better hint?

       1. Indeed it would! At some point the author lived near where I live now and several roads are named after them but that didn’t help me last night.

    2. Got quite quickly, but only after writing down the letters randomly…

       1. I wrote the letters out randomly but it didn’t work for me. I think the problem is I was naturally looking for regular patterns of letters but the name doesn’t fit regular patterns.

          1. I imagine the stress of being put on the spot in a quiz didn’t help. I tend to get brain freeze even from watching University Challenge!

    3. I too fail to solve this, even after trying my usual anagram trick of writing the letters in a random circle. I don’t suppose you’d care to reveal the enumeration?

       1. The enumeration is 6, 2, 7

11. 7:06 – One of those rare days when you feel like you’ve cracked it and the right crosswordese comes to mind immediately and certain old favourites went straight in such as IN THE FAMILY WAY, SNAFFLE

    Back to normality tomorrow!

    Thanks George and setter

12. 15 minutes. Didn’t fully parse RACETRACK (like isla3 above, I thought ‘run’ was giving ‘race’), but otherwise this was fairly straightforward, helped by getting IN WHICH WE SERVE and IN THE FAMILY WAY pretty quickly and the generous cluing for ARIADNE.

    FOI Jakarta
    LOI Erectly
    COD Singleton

13. 8:31. I whizzed through most of this but then got bogged down with three or four at the end. The unknown film was the biggest hold-up -I had to construct it carefully from the anagrist, at which point it seemed completely obvious – but ROLE and SAWMILL also caused me problems.
    Good one. Now to try and crack Pootle’s anagram!

14. 20:20
    Good fun. INFERTILE was the pick of a good bunch. I got both of the long ones from their cinematic versions

    A recent letter in The Guardian complains about “out of date” references in their cryptic crossword clues. I quote: ” the definition part of the clue for 14 across is “Something found on desktop” and the solution “blotting paper”. I haven’t seen blotting paper on a desk for 50 years.”

    Tile and Etui are other examples that are often cited. I don’t see this as a big problem. One quickly learns the relevant meanings and to me it’s all part of the fun. Also, setters are no slouches at adding new words to the standard crossword vocabulary; App springs to mind as does the opportunities presented by both Harry and Potter.

    Thanks to George and the setter

    1. When I started doing the Times crosswords a few years ago I was quite irritated by the use of obsolete slang, like ‘tin’ and ‘rhino’ for money, or ‘quod’ for prison. I don’t suppose anyone has used these words (with their slang meanings) except in crosswords since the 1930s. When the Times Crossword itself started (1930) they may have still been current (but surely already dated), and I suspect they have lingered on in the setters’ armoury by force of habit. I think it is time to give them a decent burial.

       1. I do actually use “rhino”occasionally, albeit facetiously. “Quod” for prison is a new one on me. It’s now almost certain to turn up in the next few days

       2. I do sympathise.. however reading a bit of Wodehouse and a couple of Georgette Heyers will give you all the vocab. you need 😉

15. 17′, liked SNAFFLE once again, being an avid LOTR reader.

    I would highly recommend IN WHICH WE SERVE.

    Thanks george and setter.

16. An enjoyable puzzle with several very elegant clues. Was held up for a little while in the NE corner, but still managed to complete in 26 minutes despite constant coughs and sneezes. I put in SINGLETON as it was clearly right but needed this blog to explain why, so thanks for the enlightenment.
    FOI – CERAMICS
    LOI – SAPPHO
    COD – PERIWIG.
    Thanks to george and other contributors.

17. George, I got on fine, enjoying a steady solve and a few smiles in 21 minutes. As others, I liked SINGLETON, SNAFFLE and ROCK GARDEN especially.

18. John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
    On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill

    40:58. A nice crossword, solved at a steady pace. I was baffled for too long by SAWBILL until I realised MILL was a much more convincing philosopher. I liked SNAFFLE (it doesn’t matter that I’ve seen it before) and FLATTERY and SINGLETON

    1. Probably my best reference guide for philosopher lists 🙂

       1. Me too

19. Made heavy work of this, and not sure why: Looking back, nothing was all that tricky. Got bogged down especially in the NW corner because I became convinced I was looking for a dog ending in -back. But there’s really only Ridgeback, and that didn’t work. I forgot the key rule: if it ain’t working, rethink. Anyway, a rather shaming 50 mins to complete. Liked SNAFFLE and PERIWIG.

20. INFERTILE fitted in for me,but couldn’t understand the Panama connection. On looking up ‘Panama tile’ however,I did discover there is such a product. Nothing to do with a hat at all then.

21. Apparently In Which We Serve, one of my desert island films despite the fact that it was blatant propaganda, was based on Mountbatten’s ship being torpedoed and lost (I’d always thought that he was just unfortunate, but recently I read somewhere that it was due to his own stupidity; goodness knows) and the stirring speech in which Noel Coward addresses the crew was taken almost verbatim from Mountbatten — I’m pretty sure I read that I think in the biography of Noel Coward by Sheridan Morley. 32 minutes on a pleasant crossword. I’d always thought that a magneto was something in a microwave: certainly I had it replaced years ago in the days when one had things repaired. But I suppose it may still provide current.

    1. I agree with both your and RobR’s comments about IN WHICH WE SERVE being much better than “just” a war propaganda film. I’ve since looked it up (guess where) and see it was directed by David Lean (which I didn’t know) as well as Noel Coward. The baby in the film is played by Hayley Mills’ older sister Juliet (“Nanny and the Professor”) who would have been less than one year old at the time. I knew about the Mountbatten link, but not some of the scuttlebutt surrounding the torpedoing of his ship.

    2. A magnetron in a microwave.
       Moutbatten. Boat. Blown up… I’d put the year at 1980… can picture a friend of mine that year, and his penchant for topical jokes: “What’s made of rubber and shoots across the Irish Sea at 100 mph? Lord Mountabtten’s thong”. Apparently (King) Charles was heartbroken, and changed his surname from Windsor to Mountbatten-Windsor. So since last year we have a new house on the throne as King/Queen of Australia. The progression now goes: Windsor, Mountbatten-Windsor.

22. 18:50. I enjoyed SNAFFLE but suspect from other comments it is an oldie. I don’t remember coming across it before, but no doubt have.

23. 08:29, and thought this a very serviceable puzzle, but one which could easily have appeared two or three decades ago, so let’s call it “classic” rather than “dated” to indicate that I enjoyed it, which is the main thing. There again, I am certainly edging towards my own “classic” years, so perhaps I don’t need to look for any explanation of its appeal.

    And yes, the Crossword Club seems a bit patchy at the moment – no leader board for me either, and I needed to have a couple of cracks at it before the puzzle loaded properly.

24. 27 minutes
    I had ERECTED at 20dn which caused me to get completely stuck on 25ac for several minutes before I decided to „question my assumptions“ at which point my mistake was obvious and FLATTERY went straight in.
    Apart from that SAPPHO (and hence PERIWIG) took me a while even though it‘s an easy clue (and I had the S—-HO part) because I see poets (or plants) mentioned and I get kind of mentally defeatist and beaten before Ive started

25. I was sailing along quite nicely with this one getting the Noel Coward film quite quickly, and seemingly on for a quickish time until I got to the bottom right hand corner. I was about 15 minutes on my last 5 clues, but eventually got there with all parsed in 42.55. I did have a minor blip at 8ac where I put in ROSE GARDEN, thinking at the time that rose was a very loose definition of an anagram indicator!
    Finally finished with ASSAULT where for too long I was trying to get a word commencing with ABS.

26. Regarding Panama / Tile, I always thought tile was slang for a hat??

    1. Yes, as the blogger has it.

       1. You are right of course sorry
          I was reacting to the posts above mine talking about Panama tiles and suchlike

27. 6m 6s, fairly gentle today. Nice definition for MANICURIST.

28. FOI was CARDIAC, then after solving most of the LHS, I came to a sudden halt and was becalmed for some time until I managed to get IN WHICH WE SERVE. In the NE SNGLETON finally allowed me to see SAPPHO and HALCYON. Then SNAFFLE was the key to the SE. SAWMILL brought up the rear. 25:32. Thanks setter and George.

29. 21:31. Nothing too tricky but I made slow progress.

    COD: Singleton

30. 38 mins. More of a slog than anything. FLUMMERY held me up for a while, but it was the NW which was my bete noir. Never understood CARDIAC till I got here. Tx

31. Threw in the ‘tile’ in the SE. I had ABS_U__ for being offensive. Also couldn’t see the obvious jet=fly in flattery and count=rely in erectly. Rather a noisy cafe is a poor excuse.

    1. I had exactly the same roadblock with the now-rather-obvious ASSAULT ( probably a chestnut!) and got nowhere with FLATTERY. But overall thoroughly enjoyed this, even though it occupied a couple of hours in my morning schedule, constantly going back over clues I couldn’t “see”. Happily the two films were well known, and I had a bit of a chuckle over MANICURIST and INFERTILE. Many clever clues here.

32. 27:43

    I’m with Andy Pandy in that all was going fairly swimmingly except for the SE corner (not including IN WHICH WE SERVE having seen the film within the last year or two). Took around ten minutes to unravel the remaining half dozen clues.

    Enjoyed SNAFFLE the most.

33. Hi folks, this morning’s Crossword Club glitch that knocked out the leaderboards and the forums has been fixed now, but you may need to clear your cache first to access them (I did). Apologies.

34. Enjoyable, but I needed a look at Chambers to get INFERTILE. You learn something new every day on this site- well I do anyway. I didn’t understand how to parse SINGLETON and FLATTERY, so thanks for the blog, George.
    COD is definitely ROCK GARDEN.
    The film was discussed on the excellent war film podcast, ‘A pod too far’ very recently.

35. I thought this a really excellent puzzle that forced me to think very hard about some of the surfaces – CARDIAC, for instance, which had to be my COD when I finally got it, near the end. FOI JAKARTA followed quickly by HALCYON, both straight off from the cryptic. I suspect that those who get most of the answers from enlightened biffing will be slower on this one, though ARIADNE and ODER were write-ins. Liked MANICURIST and SINGLETON amongst many others.

36. 14:41 early this evening. I really enjoyed this puzzle, although it was an inconsistent solve for me with clues being solved in flurries.
    I got 5 ac only after trying app for program, which arises quite often in crosswordland.
    MER at 22 ac “oder” because to me “redo” is more than just having another look. “German, or German river (4)” maybe??
    21 ac film – one for us oldsters perhaps?
    Among many, liked “snaffles” and “singleton”
    Thanks to setter and George for the blog

37. 41 minutes. Enjoyed this one. LOI was CERAMICS with its rather tricksy anagramatising.

38. I’d say that ‘at worst’ is the optimistic view, and ‘at best’ is the pessimistic view.

    ‘Olé’ isn’t encouragement. It’s a marker or an albeit distasteful vocal celebration of something that happened immediately before.

39. 18 mins of steady solving. LOI erectly after I twigged flattery. Nice to see another classical reference with Sappho. Knew both the films, must be getting ancient.

    COD snaffle.

40. 21.05. At 20d, surely ‘count’ and ‘rely’ both require the addition of ‘on’.

41. A fast solve for me, in 23:48. ASSAULT was my last one in. Like several others, my knowledge of tile=hat comes from the music hall song, and whenever a philosopher is needed I run through Monty Python’s excellent philosophers song.

42. I enjoyed all 35 minutes of this, not too hard but with some very good clues. Among them were A TWO RST (17 dm) and SNAF FLE, but my COD would be SING LE TON –sometimes I wonder how anyone actually sees these things. The only difficulty at all, taking a bit of time to sort out, were my LOI FLATTERY and then SAWMILL.

43. 14:45. Solving this 2 days late after 3 consecutive days of long walks and hence a little sluggish. I failed to parse the SHO? = attempt in 5A, but the answer had to be SAPPHO. COD to SINGLETON. Thanks George and setter.

44. As above reply to Chris.

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