23,578 – shades of the cricket…

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
… only scoring a RUN on the very last clue (24D). Some good stuff in here, including some “essence of Times xwd”.

Solving time 6:42

Across
1 THROUGH=via,comPUTing
10 BAN,JAX=”jacks” – with JERKIN as the next answer I wondered about a pangram…
13 TH(EB=be<=)IRDS – by Aristophanes? Yes
14 BL((g)UEST)OCKING
17 INTO THE WOODS – a musical by Stephen Sondheim. Sir Henry Wood was the founder of the Proms. Good crossword country – Sondheim made a valiant attempt to get the US interested in Listener-style puzzles in about 1969, and for a while in the 1990s you could bump into a couple of Times setters at the Proms, as well as plenty of people solving in the queue.
20 C(ON=working, CL=class)AVE – “working class” is an example of what Mr Magoo once called lift and separate.
23 TEA BREAK = “tea brake” – punny cryptic def. with the surface “char” being a cleaner.
25 HO., OK – the villain in Peter Pan
26 S.C.R.,U,TIN,E’ER – SCR = “Senior Common Room”
 
Down
2 HEAVENLY – A= (indefinite) article, in (Evelyn,H=”Waugh’s last”)*
4 G(I-V)EN – gen = information = dope
5 P(I RAT)IC – 25 = the aforementioned HOOK
6 TABLE WINE – ABLE = fit, in (I went)* – nice follow-on from VIN ORDINAIRE in 23,573
8 C(LAUD)E – CE = Church of England. Laud = worship, and an Archbishop of Canterbury too, though that seems coincidental to this clue.
12 KEEP=peke*,IN CHECK = (chicken)* – well-worded pair of anagrams
15 TE(TRAP O)DS – ah, those handy louts of the 1950s
16 ADVOCATE – only included to mention my inability to crack what should have been an easy double def. – one of my last two answers, with TEA BREAK
18 TWEE,TER(m)
19 TO BAG O=nothing
21 B(EA)UT(ter)

10 comments on “23,578 – shades of the cricket…”

  1. Managed everything except ‘banjax’ – which, incidentally, doesn’t appear in my 1979 Collins. Also never come across ‘throughput’ before, and ‘Into the Woods’ was a lucky guess after I’d been playing with ‘Into the Fords’.
    Colin
    1. Collins didn’t know about banjax in 1991 (my copy) either, but here it is in their online version.

      Ford: good thinking, but I don’t think Henry F. ever got a knighthood!

      1. And Collins didn’t have banjax in 1994 (my copy).
        Colin – I remember something weird going on under ‘kettledrum’ in my parents’ copy of the 1979 Collins – I wonder if it’s the same in yours?!
        I thought this was a really good one – a couple of bits and bobs I didn’t know, but quite doable. Last to go in were CONCLAVE and TOBAGO – I think my mind stop working when islands are mentioned.
        1. Doesn’t appear to be anything unusual about kettledrums… mine is a 1980 reprint, so they may have sorted it out.
  2. Fairly easy, apart from BANJAX that I had to comb through Chambers for, but not helped by carelessly putting FALL DOWN instead of FALL OVER for 9A. Nice change to see “wearing” simply meaning “in” in 11A (Yank wearing leather jacket) rather than being a containment indicator.
    R. Saunders
  3. An off day for me, with my brain flagging towards the end. I made exceptionally heavy weather of TEA BREAK, and finished in a tired 13:27.
  4. we had banger as in” wreck of a car”…..my chambers 1983 edition has it in as well….
    1. Fits the def., but I can’t see how the wordplay can make sense for the whole answer. If you get an answer that fits the def and part of the wordplay, you should really just jot it down outside the grid and wait until you’re sure that it fits all checking letters. At that point, the gamble against there being a better answer is probably worth taking.
    2. My first thought too, but doesn’t tie in with the forbidden sailors, or whatever it was.
  5. As often happens, my LOI was one of the un-blogged. Fortunately, these days, I do get them eventually and can complete the blog:

    7a As a writer, try to access unauthorised data (4)
    HACK. A 4 letter DD. Simple? Not for this bunny – it was my LOI. I only saw it when I got H?C? after my POI CLAUDE at 8d.

    9a Completely finished after onset of final collapse (4,4)
    F ALL OVER. I also nearly put in FALL DOWN from the definition but then re-read the clue and realised my near mistake.

    11a Yank wearing leather jacket (6)
    JERK IN

    21a MacaBRE-TONgue twister, partly French (6)
    BRETON

    22a Using what little is available, manage to arrange party (4,2)
    MAKE DO

    3d (Low)* flying bird (3)
    OWL. Wow – a 3 letter anagram.Top effort.

    7d Together get set for puppet show (4,2,5)
    HAND IN GLOVE

    24d Organise course (3)
    RUN

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