Times Cryptic No 27384 – Saturday, 22 June 2019. No jet lag yet.

46 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27384 – Saturday, 22 June 2019. No jet lag yet.”

1. There were a few unknowns here but I knew THE SILMARILLION as I tried to read it once and then decided life’s too short and gave up on it.

   I’m not sure what ‘standard’ is doing in 2dn.

   Edited at 2019-06-28 11:17 pm (UTC)

   1. According to Collins, ANCIENT is a FORMER STANDARD.
      1. I should have thought of that. The word comes from ‘ensign’: Iago is Othello’s ancient, i.e. standard-bearer.
         1. And Pistol Falstaff’s.
      2. Ah, I see it now, an archaic word for flag or banner. One lives and learns! Thanks for that.
2. I put in MUSCHATEL (H in MUSCATEL), never having heard of the plant, of course, and like Bruce spelling the other wine ‘Moselle’. DNK HET. I also briefly wondered about ‘standard’, but assumed that the MOT is a standard test required of all drivers. Like Jack, I tried to read THE SILMARILLION, and actually got a few pages further into it than I did with “The da Vinci Code” (2), but God, what an overpoweringly boring experience it was!
   1. MOT is a Vehicle Test otherwise I might have failed.
3. Having read Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion was a step too far and I never even attempted it. But I did half-remember the title. I didn’t know the plant either but I managed to work it out. I assumed PATRONYMIC was just a fancy word for a surname, so the O’Leary bit went over me. I guess all those Scandinavian Johanssons etc are also patronyms. I thought the gay preferring men was clever.
   1. And is Paul McL “son of L”?
   2. See also the Icelandic -dottir.
      1. Russians have it in their middle name?
         A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich(Shukhov).
      2. Oops, meant to reply to Paul.
      3. and the Hebrew ben, the Arabic ibn, the Welsh ap, …
         1. Yes there are loads, of course. Icelandic is unusual in having both -sson and -dottir though, isn’t it?
4. 39 minutes. LOI PATRONYMIC. I’ve used METASTABLE bith in Mechanics and Attomoc Physics, so that was easy. I didn’t know MOSCHATEL and like others I tried muscadet and muscatel before thinking of a strangely spelt MOSELLE. I did then check. I did read THE SILMARILLION after Lord of the Rings, and have considered that a big mistake until this crossword. Whether wasting several hours of life to solve a crossword clue fifty years later is a good investment is perhaps debatable. Isn’t it the ghosts and not the ghostbusters that do the haunting? COD to INCIDENTAL MUSIC. Thank you B and setter
   1. ‘Mosel’ is just the German spelling of the French MOSELLE, the river that flows through both countries. The wine can be spelt both ways too depending on which country it’s produced in.

      Edited at 2019-06-29 08:40 am (UTC)

   2. Hello BW, not sure if your question was tongue in cheek or not but FWIW I took ‘pursuit’ in the sense of recreational activity (e.g. trivial pursuits).
      1. Yep, that works. Some ghosts like haunting people, others play cricket, as in my favourite poem, ‘At Lord’s’
         1. Thanks BW, I haven’t come across that poem before. Very evocative. Ghostly batsman? James Vince in an England shirt maybe, never quite establishing himself as fully, corporeally present.
5. …. I’m not a creature of Hobbit, so another bloody Tolkien clue was not a welcome interruption to my weekend. At least I knew it, which is more than can be said for METASTABLE and MOSCHATEL.

   I was very lucky to get the latter, as I thought the gas was Hydrogen, and the wine Moscatel. I later realised the wine I was thinking of was Muscatel, but having submitted successfully I rather dodged a bullet ! Thanks for parsing that one Bruce – I still hadn’t got there.

   I parsed ANCIENT MONUMENT post-solve, and with recourse to Chambers.

   I didn’t care much for the clueing of PREFERMENT.

   FOI DEATH WISH
   LOI METASTABLE
   COD INCIDENTAL MUSIC
   TIME 14:39

6. I returned yesterday from a short break in Oxford. My wife and I did an Inspector Morse walking tour. We could have done the CS Lewis and Tolkien tour and I saw numerous references to The Silmarillion,just a week too late. But I did eventually solve that clue last week without having read the book or done the tour. Our Morse tour guide happened to say that Tolkien gave lectures in Anglo Saxon -is that right?
   I frowned at Moselle being shortened but could see no alternative.
   I came a cropper on 17a where I went for PREFERGENT as I was hurrying to fill in the blanks.
   David
   1. Tolkien was an Anglo-Saxon scholar of some note, and no doubt gave lectures ON Anglo-Saxon; probably not IN A-S. Although if we are to take Kingsley Amis’s assessment of him–the worst lecturer he ever heard at Oxford, an incomprehensible mumbler–he might as well have.
      1. Our guide mentioned that Tolkien taught the actor Robert Hardy. I have found this: “Tolkien taught me how to pronounce Chaucer, and to pronounce Anglo Saxon.” And he launches into a magical, word-perfect, near-cantation of the Prologue: “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote/The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich licour/ Of which vertu engendred is the flour.” And more.
7. Thank you, Bruce….The last time I said that was last Sunday when I was addressing Guy du Sable!
   ….but thank you for the decode of ANCIENT MONUMENT.
   My favourite was INCIDENTAL MUSIC, otherwise my notes have nothing to say about this puzzle.
   À Bientôt
8. A rather pleasant breeze this one, done in 15.48 and giggling at the gay clue, not being sure whether I should stifle the giggle or not.
   (The) (Sil)Marillion, lead singer at one time Fish, were/was a helpful memory jogger for the Tolkein, which is on the list of books I’m determined not even to try reading. I’m sure it’s wonderful.
   I think at the time I sniffed at the CD for something MUSIC, as “orchestral” is almost as credible and I dawdled a bit thinking of other possibilities.
9. I survived this one in 43:43, but gave up on trying to arrange the anagrist for the Tolkien book and looked it up. I also dithered between MOSEL and MUSCATEL, but saw CHAT for gas in time. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Bruce.
10. DNF. I left this one and ended up tackling it late last night when I was tired. It ended up being too much for me. I did manage the unknown silmarillion and rarely seen metastable but life ended up being too short for me not to resort to aids to get a leg up with the flower and one or two others. It did not help, musical ignoramus that I am, that I had accidental music in for ages.
11. Count me as another one who popped H in MUSCATEL to get one wrong letter. Damn. I’d just been reading a novella set in Trier, in the Mosel valley, and it was even specifically about wine, but if I’d thought of that as well I have no idea which way I’d have jumped. (The book also features a numen, though the book calls her a “genius loci”…)

    This was hard enough going with a hangover in a Travelodge on a stag do without ambiguous cluing of unusual words!

    Edited at 2019-07-25 09:12 am (UTC)

12. 16:02, but I had to look up the plant. The clue is faulty in my opinion – the answer is too obscure for ambiguous wordplay – but this is no doubt just unfortunate. It presumably wouldn’t have occurred to either setter or editor that another grape variety would lead to an equally valid* solution!
    Having looked one up already I did the same with the never-heard-of SILMARILLION but I was reasonably confident that I had the letters in the right place.

    *from a wordplay perspective, of course.

    1. Got lucky. Mosel/Muscatel both vaguely known, so the plant was a guess. Silmarillion vaguely heard of, but I would have spelled it without the first L and at least one Y for an I. And for Special Bitter above, accidentals appear as musical items often in the Times – glad I didn’t think of it.
       Quite liked Death wish, Brooklyn, and Heathcliff – because I got it, even though not being a Bronte/Austen/Eyre/Emma or whoever wrote it fan. But I do remember Kate Bush cartwheeling across the countryside in a red dress. Though having looked up the video I misremembered – not a single cartwheel.
       1. Thanks Isla. I will keep an eye out. I should’ve been quicker to see that accidental music probably wasn’t the right phrase though.
13. A week is a long time in Crosswordland.

    My FOI was 5dn HEATHCLIFF (Kate Bush?)

    LOI 18dn STRIDE

    COD 17ac PREFERMENT sorry Phil!

    WOD 25ac COPING SAW

    When I was at college 23ac THE SILMARILLION was the most unread book going. A long tome.

    A long time – 50 mins

    1. Surely there is no book in existence more unread than Finnegans Wake.
       1. I wonder; I probably haven’t read the Silmarillion as often as I haven’t read Finnegan, but still I do recognize Earwicker, say. And people write about Finnegan; whereas, while I’m sure that there’s a Journal of Silmarillion Studies out there, it’s only read by the people who gather at Tolkien’s tomb and sing hymns in Elvish, so it doesn’t count.
          1. 🙂
14. There are many unread books worthy of comment.
    Have you ever tackled John Kennedy Toole’s ‘A Confederacy of Dunces?’Ignatius J. Reilly is hardly recognised. I must have one more go at finishing it! It should take 8 hours 20 minutes at 250wpm. Nearly as long as that Greyhound journey from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

    1. Yes, I read it when it first came out. I think I enjoyed it at the time but have since completely forgotten it. Is the measure of a really good book the fact that it’s not easily forgotten? For instance, I’ve never forgotten Catch 22 and I read that decades before Confederacy of Dunces.
       1. I read the O’Toole around 30 years ago, and loved its eccentricity. Must try it again sometime !
    2. I really liked A Confederacy of Dunces, H. That might be because Ignatius remembers his childhood dog Rex. I had a Rex too, who came into my life when I was 3 and died when I was 19, the best pal a boy could have had.
15. Curious, the way folk lose no opportunity to make cheap remarks about Tolkien these days. Time was, he was regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time. At this rate I will have to start hiding my admiration for his writing and narrative talents and his immense learning.
16. I believe ‘ancient’ was the word for a standard bearer (Iago in ‘Othello’. It was how I worked the clue, anyway.
17. There were a couple of unknowns here, METASTABLE and MOSCHATEL. So the initial M was a problem. They certainly slowed up the SW corner. But I limped home in the end. 38 minutes. Ann
18. Sorry, that was a ‘logged-out’ me being maudlin.
19. He was certainly a notable scholar of Old English but he has never been regarded as a ‘proper’ writer by literary types.
20. With 3 of the crossers for 13d in place M-S———T—— was easily biffed as MISTLETOE. This was a metastable answer, but persisted for long enough to consume 5 of our total 31 mins. The parsing of MISTLETOE proved recalcitrant, necessitating a re-examination to eventually find the DNK MOSCHATEL, though the right answer came from inserting the gas H ( hydrogen) into the regional wine from moscatel, probably somewhere in Chile.
21. Thanks setter and bruce
    A pretty tough one that took over the hour to get through. Didn’t have as much of a problem with MOSCHATEL as others seem to have had, even not knowing the plant (very interesting flowers when one looked it up) – had seen MOSEL for the alternative spelling of MOSELLE previously.
    Had heard of THE SILMARILLION before, but still stumbled on the spelling initially. Didn’t know the PATRONYMIC (which needed help to get the anagram fodder right) nor METASTABLE terms.
    Finished with BROOKLYN and the very clever PREFERMENT (which gave me a chuckle) as the last couple in.

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