23672 – truly old-fashioned

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time of 48:24

A slow start at the top – finished the bottom fairly quickly and then went back to fill in the gaps.
I don’t know enough Shakespearean words. I also need to know a few more resins.

I expect most will find this a gentle start to the week – there is a good mix of wordplay and some interesting definitions.

Across

1 REF,USED
5 THESE(U)S – I’ve seen similar clues for this a few times.
9 CER(VAN)TES – one of the last ones I got. I could see CERT (something to do with surely?) and VAN=leading position, as in vanguard. Looked up CERTES – an archaic word for surely.
11 MAN,MAN,AGE,MEN,T(=start to tackle).
15 BEETON=”beaten” – Mrs Beeton wrote Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
19 PEN,TAG,ON
22 REIN,CARNATION – briefly considered an anagram of ‘check plant for’!
25 ELEMI; E=drug and anagram of ‘lime’ – from recent exerience I think I need to know a few more resins.
26 CARES,SING
27 [g]ENTI(T)LE
28 DEE(PEN)D

Down

1 ROCK – a sweet, a type of music and a way to soothe a baby. Took me a while to get this one.
2 FIR(E)MAN – a firman is a decree or mandate issued by the ruler of an Asian country. Luckily I’d come across a very similar clue a month or so ago.
3 [boat]SWAIN
4 DETRAINS; anagram of ‘and tries’.
5 T,U,SCAN – TU last letters of ‘that you’
6 EL(OP)EMENT – I’ve seen ‘runnning mates’ for elopement or similar a few times now.
7 ENTREAT=ENTRECHAT-CH(Companion of Honour) – I wasn’t sure about the wordplay during solving – sorted out afterwards.
12 WINDER,MERE – Turner didn’t just paint Lake Windermere.
14 CON,SCRIPT
19 T(RIDE)NT – at first I thought that ‘journey curbed’=TRI[p].
21 CRE,CHE;CRE=Commission for Racial Equality,CHE Guevara is the first revolutionary to consider.
24 AGED=DEGA[s] reversed.

14 comments on “23672 – truly old-fashioned”

  1. 6:42 for this – struggled with the top half on first look, but then worked up from the bottom and understood the well-disguised answers (esp. 1A and D, 4, 5D, 8) and the unfamiliar bits of wordplay at 9 and 2.
  2. 6:00 for me, and I thought it a typical Monday (i.e. easy) puzzle. If it’s a resin in a crossword, it’s bound to be ELEMI (worth noting other otherwise obscure words ending in I too, many of which are Japanese thankfully). Jason J
    1. Other resins I’ve come across are LAC (quite common) and AMBER.

      And the pendantic point is that MERE in WINDERMERE means LAKE, so that LAKE WINDERMERE is tautologous!

      Harry Shipley

      1. Place-name tautologies are pretty common. Glendale and River Avon are two examples, but my favourite so far is Pendle Hill in which every syllable apparently means the same thing. The baseball team name “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” is a bit of a gem too.
        1. Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria pips Pendle Hill – tor from SW English, pen from Celtic, hōh from Anglo-Saxon and hill from English all meaning (approximately) the same thing.
          1. There is a River Alwin in Northumberland, Alwin being a celtic word for river
  3. Here’s a coincidence. I used Dictinary.com to look up ELEMI and todays Word of the Day is quixotic
  4. I thought this was a nice Monday puzzle, mainly easy, but with a few tricky definitions or bits of wordplay to present some challenge. I filled the bottom half fairly quickly, but was slower in the top half, being unfamiliar with FIRMAN. I was surprised to see CERTES as a clued element in 9 across, but was familiar enough with it to get the answer.
  5. Being new to crosswords… a lot of these left me a bit baffled… can some one explain in a bit more detail:

    13A 28A 8D and 23D

    Thanks!

    1. 13A: pub=INN, no money=O CENT

      28A: write=PEN within document=DEED (as in house deeds)

      8D:Double meaning SHORTENING=cutting and is also fat used for baking

      23D Tissue is a type of paper, without its heading (ie without its first letter)=ISSUE

  6. 12:07. Thought I was going to go under 10 minutes but 9A and 7D had me baffled for a while and I held off filling in 2D until I had all the checking letters as I couldn’t work out the wordplay – thanks for explaining FIRMAN.
  7. 7:15 for me. I knew CERTES and FIRMAN and all that stuff, so should have been faster. (Sigh!)
  8. 9:45 for me but I’m just happy to have kept a clean sheet, having been unsure about either spelling or wordplay for no fewer than 10 answers when I stopped the clock. Of these only DETRAINS, where somehow I completely missed the anagram, and perhaps TRIDENT (also fooled by TRI[p]) were straightforward.
  9. Just the 7 “easies” here not in the blog. I have a query with 20dn where the clue appears to equate Gentile (non-Jewish) with Christian. Agreed, Christians are non-Jews but there are quite a lot of non-Jewish people who are not Christians.

    10a Go one better with barbeque party (5)
    OUT DO. Having lived in RSA I call it a BRAAI anyway.

    13a Naive person seen in pub with no money (8)
    INN 0 CENT

    17a (Tin god)* excited excessive worship (6)
    DOTING

    8d Cutting out fat (10)
    SHORTENING. As in shortcrust pastry – full of fat!

    16d Went and got married again (8)
    REPAIRED. As this is a bit of a pun a ? at the end might have improved it.

    20d One protected by kindly Christian (7)
    GENT 1 LE. This clue would be fine with a ? after the Christian meaning the non-Jew could be a Christian.

    23d Edition of paper without its heading (5)
    (T) ISSUE

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