Times 27513 – botanical, ornithological, and what Daddy wouldn’t buy me.

Author   pipkirbyPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Plenty of plant and animal life in this amusing but gentle puzzle today, with a couple of more obscure trees or flowers guessable if you didn’t know them. I was a bit surprised to see the chap at 10a appearing, I hadn’t realised he had died in 2012. Or I’d just forgotten.

Just a reminder, as a few commenters last week seemed to miss spotting some anagrams: a word I’ve marked in italics is the anagrind, or anagram indicator; the anagram fodder or anagrist is shown (IN BRACKETS)*.

Across
1 Barking individual, East End success? (3-3)
BOW-WOW – A WOW from BOW being an East End success.
4 Opera produced by crew on river (8)
FALSTAFF – STAFF (crew) on the River FAL as in Falmouth, Cornwall.
10 Astronaut packing some punch, it’s implied? (9)
ARMSTRONG – If my ARM is STRONG I may be packing a punch.
11 Brilliant silver-blue combo? (5)
AGLOW – AG (Ag, silver), LOW (blue, down).
12 Activity of browser in operating system, so mad? (6,8)
WINDOW SHOPPING – WINDOWS (op system) HOPPING (mad). This tastes of chestnut for me.
14 Pack zero pastry cases (5)
TAROT – TART (pastry) has O (zero) in.
16 Tiny brain? Reptile with it going after half of mine! (9)
MICROCHIP – MI(ne), CROC (reptile), HIP (with it).
18 Part of flower trimmed, as going to seed (9)
MIDSTREAM – here flower = river. (TRIMMED AS)*.
20 Relish stripping gold from Pinochet, say? (5)
GUSTO – AUGUSTO Pinochet, Chilean dictator d. 2006, has AU (Au, gold) removed.
21 Aquatic game birds (5,3,6)
DUCKS AND DRAKES – Double definition, the first being a game based on skipping stones across calm water.
25 Mark of a writer in community, inconclusive (5)
COLON – COLONY is inconclusive.
26 Aim to be in Paris, beginning to experience some urban life? (5,4)
PLANE TREE – PLAN (aim) ÊTRE (French verb ‘to be’) E (beginning to experience). Plane trees are often found in London and other urban streets and along roadsides especially in France. The Trojan Horse was allegedly made from plane tree wood.
27 Drunken employee originally breathalysed, perhaps couldn’t stand (8)
DETESTED – D E (original letters of drunken employee) TESTED (breathalysed perhaps).
28 What may be diagnosed by doctor initially poking tongue? (6)
MALADY – D for doctor inside the MALAY tongue.
Down
1 Overheard invite to nudist club? Hang on a minute! (4,4,2)
BEAR WITH ME – Sounds like BARE WITH ME ha ha.
2 Female with place in the Middle East (5)
WOMAN – W (with) OMAN (Middle East country).
3 Published letters seen as settlement some way off (7)
OUTPOST – OUT (published) POST (letters).
5 Old king overwhelmed by past trouble (5)
AGGRO – GR (King George, any of six) has AGO (past) around it.
6 Utensil finally wiped, meat assumed to be cleaner (7)
SHAMPOO – SPOO(N) has HAM inserted.
7 A nail hammered like that in tree (9)
AILANTHUS – (A NAIL)*, THUS (like that). A fast growing tree also known as the Tree of Heaven.
8 Turkey perhaps unpalatable, by the sound of it (4)
FOWL – Homophone for FOUL = unpalatable.
9 Don’t fool everyone fed starter of mulligatawny soup (8)
CONSOMME – If you don’t fool everyone you can still CON SOME, then insert M first letter of mulligatawny.
13 Padding plus the story, no way necessary for a rewrite? (10)
UPHOLSTERY – Anagram of (PLUS THE ORY)*, the ST of story being removed, no ST = no way.
15 Swimmer studied, missing a certain style (3,6)
RED MULLET – RE(A)D = studied, missing the A; MULLET a certain hairstyle. Delicious when filleted, fried or BBQ.
17 Joker entered, having failed grammar, claiming top mark (8)
COMEDIAN – A bit weird, this one; I think it is COMED IN as ‘failed grammar’ for CAME IN, with A (top mark) inserted.
19 Cash received cheers college (7)
TAKINGS – TA (cheers), KINGS (College Cambridge, for example).
20 Daisy: elderly relative endlessly swigging beer, embarrassingly (7)
GERBERA – GRA(N) = elderly relative endlessly; insert (BEER)*. Gerbera is a genus of plants in the Asteraceae family, with large colourful flowers. It was named afer a German chap Traugott Gerber (1710-1743) who was a pal of Linnaeus.
22 Fruit horse possibly ignored at first (5)
APPLE – Dapple means having patches of a different colour from a background, often applied to horses and used as a noun for such. So, ‘horse possibly’. DAPPLE ignored at first = APPLE.
23 Serving of Dhansak or Madras, Indian dish (5)
KORMA – A hidden dish in DHANSA(K OR MA)DRAS, two more spicy Indian dishes.
24 Assistance required to cover top of charcoal burner (4)
ACID – AID (assistance) has C top of charcol inserted. Some acids can burn, but most don’t.

77 comments on “Times 27513 – botanical, ornithological, and what Daddy wouldn’t buy me.”

  1. Pretty much par for my course, with a NITCH of 102. As Pip said, the plants were easily enough guessable (I recognized GERBERA once I parsed the clue, but would never have come up with it from the definition [Pip, you’ve got a sort of misleading typo there]). Also DNK KORMA, but for once in my life spotted the hidden right off. I wasted some time in the NW, thinking that ‘East End success’ was ‘IT, and taking ‘Female’=F; unsurprisingly, 1ac was my POI. Liked 26ac.
  2. Most of the LH side went in easily enough but I really struggled with the RH, not helped by biffing PARSIFAL at 4ac when all I had were the checkers ?A?S????. Right river though!

    NHO (or had forgotten) AILANTHUS and GERBERA, which didn’t help.

    I didn’t think much of the bad grammar clue as I think that sort of thing only works if the error is a mistake that people would be likely to make (e.g. ‘he come in’ instead of ‘he came in’) but nobody would ever say ‘he comed in’.

    Edited at 2019-11-20 06:46 am (UTC)

    1. Jack my five year old daughter says that all the time, along with goed – very logical!

      Stuck for a long time searching for a dog to fit 1A and (being half Welsh) trying to work out how crew could be FALS. Once those fell, the rest fell like dominoes.

      Pleasuredome

      1. Thanks pleasuredome, I wasn’t aware of that so perhaps the clue should have mentioned baby-talk rather than bad grammar. This might have been useful at 1ac too, now I come to think of it.
    2. I actually think precisely the opposite, since if it’s something that people would habitually say then it can’t, by definition, be bad grammar. Grammar is the structure of language as it actually exists rather than some artificial ‘correct’ dialect. ‘Comed in’ would be pretty universally recognised as an error, I think, and kids say it because they are learning.

      Edited at 2019-11-20 10:45 am (UTC)

      1. See moi below. Here’s an example of a child (C, 3yrs 6mos.) (with a linguist father (A)) who’s got the rule but not yet mastered the exceptions:
        A: Where’s Mommy?
        C: Mommy goed to the store.
        A: Mommy goed to the store?
        C: NO! [irritated] Daddy, I say it that way, not you.
        A: Mommy wented to the store?
        C: NO!
        A: Mommy went to the store.
        C: That’s right, Mommy wennn… Mommy goed to the store.

        Edited at 2019-11-20 12:58 pm (UTC)

  3. Easy, but not too easy, though the two (three?… I was pretty sure about the PLANE TREE) botanical mysteries emerged quickly and clearly from the wordplay, and I’d never heard of KORMA but had not a second’s hesitation. I groaned at COMED IN.
    1. I know lots about Indian food, and hellish little about plants. Unfortunately, the latter crops up (geddit?) more frequently than the former.
  4. 70 minutes including emails and making coffee.

    Last few were D&D, Gerbera (dnk), takings, colon, and LOI midstream.

    Couldn’t parse bow wow or colon.

    Armstrong took ages. I was also dreading the 18a part of a flower being an obscure word anagrammed, until the river bit clicked.

    COD window shopping.

    1. A needless fear: it couldn’t be an obscure word anagrammed, because the anagrist has to be there in the clue. So e.g. ‘part of a flower’=(stamen)* is illegitimate.
      1. Well, I was the same, and thought it was a weird part of a plant and an anagram of TRIMMED AS. Something mediamart or whatever (didn’t have checkers)
  5. 21 minutes, with a bit of a Cary Grantesque double-take at the vocalic plant. I think COMED IN is fine, as it is attested in children’s early talk and was the kind of usage that prompted Chomsky to develop his Universal Grammar theory.

    Edited at 2019-11-20 07:03 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t think Chomsky was much influenced by facts of usage; I remember that at an early conference of Chomsky-influenced language acquisition researchers, he –in a perhaps rather left-handed compliment–commented that he was greatly surprised that so much could be accomplished from the kind of data that was collected. The use of ‘comed’, ‘eated’, etc. by young children has long been cited as evidence of rule-formation: children who use these forms earlier used the correct forms only, and then sometimes regularize them. They can’t be imitating, since no one they hear uses those forms.
      1. I shouldn’t have said prompted. But the point remains such usage supports such theories.

        And I imagine Chomsky may have been being a mite disingenuous. He has a proclivity for the sweeping in his own discourse, linguistic or political.

        Edited at 2019-11-20 08:31 am (UTC)

        1. Tell me about it. But a) I don’t think he’s ever bothered to base his proposals on usage data; b) the overgeneralization data don’t contradict the idea of a universal grammar, but neither do they support it in opposition to other theories: I could easily endorse a theory that posits a rule-generalizing mental capacity without ever approaching a theory that posits a language-specific mental capacity of any sort.
  6. DNF … I gave up on 1a, unable to solve it even after setting it aside for a while. I was sure I was looking for something-DOG. I suppose I’ve heard the song referenced in Pip’s blog title, but BOW-WOW for a dog just never stuck. Now the band, Bow Wow Wow, I did know (pop trivia, Boy George was briefly a member before Culture Club). Incidentally, Chambers has it as one word, bowwow.
      1. That and the fuss over their first album cover (which Malcolm McLaren was so sorry about that he used the same photo on the follow-up EP) are the only two things anyone remembers
        1. More to Malcolm McLaren than meets the eye .. I was fond of Double Dutch, when it came out
        2. Having looked up the album cover I was going to say it seems tame by today’s standards, but then I read the singer was 14 which puts a different spin on it. I was also reminded of another song of theirs I know – I Like Candy.

          1. I have that single tucked away in the attic (along with all the other records I can’t bear to throw away, but have no means of playing at this moment). The past really is a different country, isn’t it…
    3. British? You learn something new every day – I was in USA in 1982 when I first heard Bow Wow Wow, “I want candy” was all over the radio, so I just assumed they were American. Didn’t like the song much; Flock of Seagulls were equally banal, Wall of Voodoo not bad, but the cream was Billy Idol with White Wedding. It crawled up your spine like nine tarantulas, as the good doctor once said.

      Edited at 2019-11-20 12:34 pm (UTC)

  7. I’ll try not to reference members of other forums today like I mistakenly did yesterday, referring to clynelish, who is a member of a Tottenham Hotspur forum. That forum is in overdrive today with the sacking of Pochettino yesterday and the appointment of Mourinho this morning.

    I found it difficult to get going today, until I got DUCKS AND DRAKES, after which everything flowed nicely. I missed the parsing of COMEDIAN, having biffed it, but now I see it I like it. I’m all for original devices and that one works well for me.

    1. Sacked everywhere within three years, Spurs have given him a 3.5 year contract. A stupid mistake by Levy? A wily veteran-move by Mourinho, out-negotiating the arch negotiator to get the final year’s pay without doing any work? Or will he last?
      1. It’s certainly a controversial decision but Levy obviously must be aware of his shortcomings. If trophies arrive it will have proved a good move.
        1. Trophies will be a struggle, Champions League & Premier League seem out of reach, maybe an FA cup? Good luck.

          Edited at 2019-11-20 01:30 pm (UTC)

  8. 30 mins with yoghurt, blueberries, banana, granola.
    I liked it. Mostly, Malady, Bear with me and COD to Bow-wow!
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  9. According to my time, only half as difficult as yesterday’s, clocking in at 30 minutes exactly. FOI 1d BEAR WITH ME, or at least BEAR WITH, waiting for 18a to make sure it wasn’t BEAR WITH US.

    Not sure I knew Pinochet’s first name, or that 4d FALSTAFF was an opera. Definitely didn’t know that an 7d AILANTHUS or a 20d GERBERA were plants, or that DUCKS AND DRAKES was a game, but got there in the end anyway. It all seemed quite fair, though 7d was LOI as I needed all the checkers before I committed myself to the right arrangement of letters.

  10. 32 minutes with LOI MALADY. I parsed COMEDIAN as per our esteemed blogger. I had remembered the plant as an ALIANTHUS until AGLOW put me right. I don’t remember planting one in the garden. I liked RED MULLET but COD to CONSOMME. We used to have it with pasta letters of the alphabet in during my New College days. Embossed on the bottom of each soup bowl was the college motto “Manners makyth man”, so it wasn’t the done thing to slurp, but perfectly acceptable to spell out “This soup is crap” with the letters. Fortunately, the BOW-WOW barked at me early. Even I don’t go back as far as Vesta Victoria, but my Mum was seen as a ringer for Jessie Matthews in her younger days, so I can’t resist this.
    https://youtu.be/HhdrqldbTzg
    Another enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  11. Enjoyed this, just at the right level of difficulty for me, so the coffee and the crossword are finished at the same time..
    Slightly confused in parsing 4ac, having watched a TV programme only last night about the river Taff ..

    Pip you have a teeny typo at 7dn, hammered shd be italicised not underlined I think.

  12. Very pleasant, steady solve. B?W related to the East End has to be BOW (if like me you were born within the sound of Bow Bells you qualify as a cockney) so BOW-WOW not difficult. Laughed at the grammar clue once I twigged how it worked. Nice blog Pip
    1. I’d got so used to ‘East End’ in puzzles being used to trigger dodgy Cockney accents I never even though of Bow.
      1. Why would you? The place means something to me. Wouldn’t surprise me if you’d never been there!!
        1. You’d be lucky to hear Bow bells (if they still rang) in Bow these days as I sure that traffic noise would drown out the sound of bells tolling from St Mary le Bow, Cheapside, City of London. Quite a fair distance from Bow.

          Raffles 1958

          1. I’m sure you’re correct. It wasn’t always so. Whittington heard them on Highgate Hill for example
  13. I enjoyed this – and my times appear to be improving ahead of “the big day”.

    COD: MALADY. Nice surface.

  14. Slow going at 36’10. Don’t like the failed grammar element, partly for its infantile associations and partly for other such inane possibilities in the pipeline. Unaware of a dapple as a horse. Puzzled by the tree but T.S.Eliot’s ‘the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard’ bobbed up. All a good workout nonetheless. Like the icon ulaca.

    Edited at 2019-11-20 10:41 am (UTC)

  15. 30 mins. DNK gerbera or ailanthus, but the WP was helpful. LOI shampoo; took a while to see it. Once I twigged that spoon was required as the utensil I got it. Thanks pip.
      1. Not to mention that ‘bow-wow’ is a noun, meaning ‘dog’, i.e. a barking individual.
  17. I started slowly with this puzzle, only a lonely OUTPOST gracing the top of the grid until TAROT joined it after I caught a RED MULLET MIDSTREAM. DUCKS AND DRAKES followed TAKINGS and I was on a roll. GERBERA rang a bell once I’d constructed it, but AILANTHUS was a purely hypothetical construct which seemed likely. Back in the NW, BOW-WOW used up a few brain cells, and BEAR WITH ME raised a smile. I finished off with MALADY and was tempted to hit submit to get under the 20 minute mark, but wiser counsel prevailed and I found 2 typos. Phew! 20:57. Thanks setter and Pip.
  18. Around here it’s known as sumac, is invasive and grows rampantly on every vacant lot. It’s the tree referred to in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn which is invariably assigned reading for middle school students. The FOWL is timely – Thanksgiving next week. 16.33
  19. Nice steady solve today with 2 gettables. LOI UPHOLSTERY where I was a bit slow on recognising the anagram fodder. I do find that the art with DUCKS AND DRAKES is finding the right shaped stone, sometimes they’ve all been thrown already…
  20. A family story told by my aunt is that my great grandfather wrote ‘Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow’, and I’m Cockney too, so 1ac almost a write-in (I have found no evidence that this is true).

    Liked COMEDIAN, agree that’s often what children say. GERBERA and AILANTHUS unknown. Liked PLANE TREE too.

    18’37”, thanks pip and setter.

      1. The story is that great grandfather was a very talented pub musician who drank a lot, and sold his ideas for a pittance; but the most famous song changes with the retellings of the story.

        Edited at 2019-11-20 12:36 pm (UTC)

  21. Could have been my personal nightmare, with two plants which are well outside my horticultural comfort zone (which is a very narrowly defined area) but all fairly clued for the non-green fingered. My big hold-up was the NE corner, mostly trying to think of an opera which began MAN-, but which didn’t exist, or come up with some justification for CAMSHAFT (also non-existent). All good in the end.
  22. Generous clueing for the dreaded plants, even if I tried IALANTHUS before 4a corrected me. I had no idea that a PLANE TREE was a peculiarly urban phenomenon, and I suspect I will have forgotten that by tomorrow.

    MIDSTREAM was my LOI, and also my COD for a nice surface, well-hidden anagram, and a definition that still managed to mislead me after all these years. 8m 02s.

  23. …. whose experience with FALSTAFF was a large part of my hold-ups.

    I also shared Bolton Wanderer’s experience with “alianthus”, and didn’t crack it until seeing AGLOW late in the day.

    I had the bottom half completed in around 8 minutes, so should have built on that quicker than I did.

    FOI TAROT (slowish finish already on the cards)
    LOI AILANTHUS (all AGLOW to finally nail it)
    COD MIDSTREAM (I don’t often nominate anagrams)
    TIME 14:40

  24. Root canal work this afternoon at 2.30 (geddit!?) at my downtown Chinese dentist.

    About 45 mins with BOW-WOW arriving slowly. My COD.
    BTW – is Jerry’s cat a Tom?

    FOI 21ac DUCKS AND DRAKES

    LOI 5dn AGGRO

    WOD 26ac PLANE TREE as the London Planes line every street in ‘The French Concession’ hereabouts

    Now over to yet another chapter of ‘Malice in ‘Sondaland”. I can remember when Wolf Blitzer had acne!

    Edited at 2019-11-20 12:46 pm (UTC)

    1. Wolf Blitzer acne? Say it aint so. Maybe that’s why he grew that beard.
  25. 17:39. I didn’t know Pinochet’s first name, but I remembered GERBERA from garden centre window-shopping. I liked comedian, BEAR WITH ME and BOW-WOW. Fun puzzle in the end after a slowish start.
  26. Good company with ALIANTHUS as the unnknown plant, I see, until crossers forced a change. I did know GERBERA was a word, though I would have said a hairy rodent. Perhaps misportmanteuaing GERBIL and CAPYBARA (another crossword-only word). An enjoyable puzzle with the obscurities generously clued, a tad under my par of 20 minutes. Liked the comedian.
    1. Misportmanteauing ….. wonderful ….. it will echo around in my head like distant thunder.
  27. 11:54, GERBERA familiar (not sure why) but had there been double unches at 7 I’d have formed an unlikely Yorkshire/Lancashire pact with John (BW) and Phil and gone with alianthus.

    On the Bow Wow Wow front I also remember c30 c60 C90 go.

    1. Not as unlikely as you think, since I was born in Hull – and, although I live in Greater Manchester, this is traditionally Cheshire.
  28. I knew Sumac as an upside down(or backwards) French philosopher, but not as an Ailanthus:-)
    1. That’s one from the Absurdist school of thought.

      Edited at 2019-11-20 02:17 pm (UTC)

  29. 11:03. Lots of biffing today. Not the plants of course, but they were at least vaguely familiar. From crosswords past no doubt.
  30. Twenty-two minutes for this one. Just as well it was at the easier end of the scale, as my brain is still rebooting after a long (and only intermittently interesting) meeting.
  31. Getting better at biffing.

    DUCKS AND DRAKES went in with only the K in as a checker – NHO the game.

    GERBERA and AILANTHUS were unknown and completely failed to parse SHAMPOO – seems obvious now – and COMEDIAN – less obvious.

  32. 42 mins which is lightning for me on Big Puzzle – would have been even better had it not taken me 20 mins to crack the last four, being the ones which intersected to make the central square. That felt like pulling teeth after the rapid progress elsewhere. MIDSTREAM was a brilliantly concealed anagram, though I should have seen it faster. But COMEDIAN, CONSOMMÉ and MICROCHIP were all way above my pay grade! Got there in the end.

    Thanks for the blog, Pip – without it I’d still be baffled by FALSTAFF, because I’d got fixated on TAFF as the river and just couldn’t see what FALS had to do with the price of fish.

    Templar

  33. My laptop died halfway through this solve – hope that doesn’t happen during champs or I’m hooped.

    I wasn’t exactly blazing through this one anyway, staring at RED _U___T quite unable to think of anything but TURBOT for some reason. Stupid brain!

    1. Could there be something in the SF water that affects it? Trump brainwashing against CA Democrats? Russians? There again, why drink water? Hope it wears off before 7 Dec.
  34. A pleasant solve (although I fell asleep so finished it in the morning). Never heard of the plants but the wordplay was mephisto-level precise. I was a little unsure why plane trees are especially urban, but I suppose they show up in cities a fair bit (especially in France).
  35. 21:28 nice puzzle nothing too easy but never got stuck anywhere. With crew in the clue it was hard to see past Man-on for the opera but I twigged Falstaff eventually.
  36. Just over an hour, with the SW corner giving me trouble. RED MULLET was clear except for the wordplay, and the letters at least helped a bit in finding the crossing words (ACID, COLON, DETESTED — I was expecting a B, from breathalysed, in that). For COLON I tried TWAIN for a minute (MARK …, with AI as “a writer”) but fortunately couldn’t make it stick.
  37. ….. Keep me all aglow. Had a mental block on “Armstrong” which equally held me up on “Woman” and “Bow Wow” but got there in the end.

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