Times Cryptic No 26820, Saturday 2 September 2017. A good idea on paper.

20 comments on “Times Cryptic No 26820, Saturday 2 September 2017. A good idea on paper.”

1. ….indicates it took quite a while. As I recall, I couldn’t think of ‘haunch’ for two or three days; then, of course it was obvious. I had never heard of ‘agrimony’, but the cryptic is quite clear.

   Calling Byrd a scorer is a stretch, as he primarily wrote lute music.

   1. I’ll bite. Is lute music not scored?
      1. I’d say so, yes. One might find definitions of ‘score’ that only specify instrumental music, and meaning more than one instrument, but others defintions are wider and refer to the writing down of music in general.

         In any case it’s not correct that Byrd wrote mostly lute music as by far his largest output was in the realm of church music – masses of masses, motets, services etc and his style in many of these was polyphonic, with intricate lines of melody interweaving each other. If writing that down was not ‘scoring’ I don’t know what other verb one would use to describe it. In instrumental music he wrote a lot for keyboard and some for consorts of instruments – fantasias and the like.

         Edited at 2017-09-09 05:15 am (UTC)

2. Oh, and on the puzzle, I struggled a bit but got there eventually without error thanks to wordplay that stopped me writing LINAMENT at 21ac. Today’s I found an absolute nightmare.
   1. I had the same thought about LINIMENT
      1. Me too!
   2. I thought today’s was a nightmare to get a proper foothold, then once established it flowed ok. Getting the top line was helpful.
3. Found this difficult and took over the hour. I’ll give COD to ENGENDER, but this was more a solid slog than a series of light bulb moments. I had heard of William Byrd so I didn’t have to think of Jim McGuinn and even Pete Seeger. Didn’t have to but still did! Thank you B and setter.
4. 50 mins of fun with croissant and damson jam.
   I was almost undone by the plant and scorer – even though border is often rim and suffering is so often agony. Strange what you can’t see – and for a while I thought the scorer might be a BARD/DRAB.
   Now I will always remember how to spell Liniment.
   Cod to HAUNCH for surface and brevity without losing intrigue.
   Thanks smart setter and brnchn.
5. I found this a bit of a slog too. 53:56 in all, but at least with no errors. Can’t remember where I started, but I think it was either WALRUS or AGRIMONY. I’d never heard of Agrimony before I started doing Times crosswords, but I seem to recall it appearing several times and it has now stuck in my memory. RAG TRADE was my LOI. I knew William Byrd, so the B from BUCKSHOT made that straightforward. I also didn’t know that a THEOCRAT was the receiver of reverence. Challenging puzzle. Thanks setter and Bruce.
6. This was too hard for me. I didn’t help myself by falling into the trap Myrtilus mentioned and assuming that a BARD would be a prolific scorer, and being “drab” backwards clinched it. I never got 2d, which as a plant could quite plausibly have ended with an “A”.

   There were a few others that defeated me, too, and looking at my marginalia either I was really not in the mood or not on the wavelength. Ah well. Sometimes you just get days like that, don’t you? Happily, despite my current hangover, I’ve already polished off today’s and enjoyed it very much…

   1. As I mentioned in the blog, I pencilled in a wrong answer for 15ac. I confess: it was BARD. But, I don’t thing I really believed the Bard was a scorer, even as I put it in.
      1. Ah, I wasn’t thinking of the Bard, but a minstrel-style bard in general, which made more sense. I’d also only heard of Byrd a couple of times, and only from crosswords, so he wasn’t exactly leaping to mind.
7. 1hr 25mins for me. Made life difficult for myself firstly by reading “statute” in 1ac as “statue” for ages and secondly by entering 23ac at 21ac. Lots of good stuff my tomfoolery aside. I really liked “bandy” at 13ac, grinder at 17dn and the buckshot in 15dn. I was another grateful that the wordplay gave me the spelling of liniment.
8. Much too difficult for me this week. Recently I have been finishing or nearly finishing the Saturday puzzles. I got barely half of this, mainly at the top. Despite guessing the unknown 5d, the clues were too hard for me to get much else. Quite a few unknowns and clues like 13a very hard I thought. I did get Haunch but guessed Engineer for 7d. Also I learned how to spell Liniment , as did some others.
   Re Jim McGuinn of The Byrds, he called himself Roger for quite a bit of his career; I saw him live not that long ago and can’t now remember which name he used. I wonder why he changed things; beware for the pub quizzes. David
   1. David—
      I think I’m generally on the same wavelength as you, going by your previous weeks’ comments, and also by my failure to get anywhere near finishing this particular puzzle. Just didn’t click this week. Good luck (to both of us) on today’s. I find that this blog is an amazing masterclass for me. My thanks to all the learned bloggers. You are all my education and inspiration…
      — Peter
      1. Peter,
         Good to hear from you.
         I have found this site enormously helpful -and friendly.
         I have improved a lot but I have to say that today’s puzzle seems even harder than last week’s. I’ll have another look later. Sometimes after a break there are a few flashes of inspiration. David
9. No problems with the spelling of LINIMENT thanks to Ronnie Barker’s running gag in “The Navy Lark” about “My mum Min’s liniminiminiment”.
10. 13:06. I’m glad I paid attention to the wordplay for 21ac because otherwise I would certainly have put in LINAMENT.
11. Writing BARD caused me problems,so could not get AGRIMONY for ages.A toughie,this one.
    Ong’ara,
    Nairobi.

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