24200 – Scum?

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 8:12 – which seems quite good based on the amount to talk about

Scum is a surface film – as seen in the two long answers today. A puzzle solved from the bottom upwards, last answers in order being 3, 1A, 4, 5, 10, 6D, 6A, 8. Which makes 6A a curious choice as my omitted clue, but the wordplay is simple and I can’t imagine any alternative to fit the checkers. Can’t see any quibbles except the odd bit of phrasing, as in 18A.

Across
1 ST.,RETCHER=one being sick – I was looking for an ailer/puker+ST at first
9 G,LASS – a 5-letter wine measure seems fairly clear – for 6 letters you’d have to ponder at least CARAFE, BOTTLE, BARREL (your Riviera holidays PICHERT of Rosé hasn’t made it into the references yet – though looking for it allows me to warn you in advance about the pichiciego, a tiny armadillo lurking in Collins).
10 D,IPSWI(T)CH – “East Anglian town” had me thinking of the fairly useful DISS – full marks for using a full-size place like Ipswich.
11 ANIMATED CARTOON – clue works fine as a cryptic def., but there’s more – (no actor) = CARTOON*, so there’s wordplay in the answer too.
13 HUG(U)E,NOT=”I don’t think so” (colloq.) – the Huguenots were Protestants from France who emigrated at various times to various countries.
14 CHAFER – 2 defs, one frivolous – if you don’t know chafer = beetle, it should be recognisable from cockchafer (no sniggering at the back)
16 LEAN-TO – hidden word. In Collins at least, it means a style of roof, as well as the rough-and-ready extension underneath it.
18 PEMMICAN = (camp mine)* – as I feared, it’s that stuff Arctic explorers had to make themselves learn to love.
21 WELLES (Orson),TABLISHED = (ad-libs the)* – “set” is the def.
23 TR(I LOB)ITE
25 IEUAN = i.e.,U,A,N – a Wlesh version of John, along with Evan, Siôn, Ioan, Iwan.
26 R.I.=state,PEN=prison. R.I. seems to have taken over from the GA/PA/VA triumvirate as the prime contender for “state”.
27 M.A.=clever chap.,KE(H)AS,TE – NZ’s kea has certainly taken firm control as the default parrot.
 
Down
1 S(t)IGMA
2 READING=”going through book”,GA(O)L – I suspect others will have been fooled like me into looking for “Russian doll” wordplay (a double container)
3 TOSCA,L(ik)E
4 HE’D=chap would,G(E)ROW – E being “either side of EstatE”
5 R(E.P.)ACK – three cheers for that crossword classic, the E.P. Why we get “in to” instead of into (in both print and web versions) I don’t know.
6 HA(s),WORTH – Haworth is where the Brontës came from. Another well-disguised wordplay, suggesting (village)+RAT(e) or similar – I even wrote “WORT(h)” with RAT(e) next to the clue, without seeing the light.
7 ZIT(her)
8 LOHENGRIN = (long, her in)*. If you think you don’t know any of this opera, you really do.
12 OFFICE HOURS – bunged in from def. and checking letters when solving, but a fiendish clue. GLASS and REPACK are the answers to clues 9 and 5, so “Glass to repack” is “Nine to five” and therefore a second def – a pair of “reverse x-ref’s”. A similar trick was played by John Henderson in the Independent about a month ago.
13 HOLD WATER – a double def. with plain x-ref referring to GLASS.
15 LEG BREAK – double def. – “delivery” (cricket) and a more technical description (“one turns away”). Wikipedia has the full story, complete with animation.
17 TIED, OWN – a “tied cottage” is the traditional dwelling for a farm worker. Classic part of speech switch for “secure” – adjective in the surface meaning, verb in the def.
19 MA,I,DISH – “maidish” is an odd word, but easy to understand
20 A,TRI(U)M (trim = cut, “closes” = container indicator) – an atrium was the hall of a Roman house before it was a central multi-floor void in a public building.
22 DAN(C)E
24 1 M.P. = the ration per consituency – watch out for the same trick with IMPEACH.

38 comments on “24200 – Scum?”

  1. As often recently, I had to do this in odd breaks between work, so no meaningful time. It took a while to get going, and like Peter I did the bottom half first. However it was one of those I actually felt quite pleased to finish unaided.

    I liked 11ac particularly, but I thought 1dn was a bit cheeky – it’s the part of plant that drops the temperature, or perhaps as the clue is written “drops temperature from..” (Perhaps I have missed something.)

    Very good puzzle though.

  2. I thought this an excellent puzzle with lots of challenging, tightly constructed clues. A real contrast to yesterday’s nonsense. About 30 minutes to solve.

    I thought ANIMATED CARTOON very good and don’t recall seeing it before. When I read the clue to 13D I wrote “glass” over the “9”. I was deeply puzzled by 12D. It had to be OFFICE HOURS – but why. Then I saw “glass” in 12D over the top of “glass” in 13D. I recalled REPACK from earlier and the penny dropped. I’m lost in admiration!

  3. Yet another nice one, this. I didn’t understand the office hours clue until coming here…

    Peter said: “your Riviera holidays PICHER of Rosé hasn’t made it into the references yet”

    – I thought it was PICHET, which is just French for jug, from the same root as pitcher

  4. Never stood a chance at this one trying to do it in dribs and drabs on the way to work. I arrived with the top half completed apart from HUGUENOT and a few other answers dotted around at the bottom, but I didn’t know PEMMICAN or TRILOBITE so I was stumped. I polished it off using on-line assistance as I have other things to think about today. My run of bad solves continues.
  5. I really struggled with this one, coming in at 38 min, then realising that I had not revisited a desperation punt, and had entered RIPON for 26 ac (There may have been an important prison there) so timing is irrelevant. Overall, slick and deceptive surfaces make this a frustrating but high quality puzzle.
  6. I saw animated cartoon on the first read-through but did not put it in until I had most of the checking letters because I thought it was a feeble CD. Peter’s explanation helps and I can see that “animated cartoon = no actor” but I still don’t think that the clue quite works in the opposite direction.

    Otherwise I was held up by not knowing how many Us there are in Huguenot and by my lack of cricketing knowledge, not knowing the difference between a leg-break and an off-break. I had to go for leg break to make a sensible anagram for the emergency rations. I tried Mempican and Mepmacin before I decided that Pemmican sounded the most delicious. On checking, I found that it is one of seven Cree words in the dictionary, the word Cree itself not being one of them.

    I was pleased to see two opera references today, and, Peter, Lohengrin is four hours of pure bliss, not just a wedding march.

    1. indeed – it also has the potential for one of those opera jokes – the next swan gag (about 50-1 on to be mentioned in a review of modern productions because the swan is as invisible as various other Wagnerian animals). (Today’s other opera Tosca has many of the remaining gags. If you don’t know about the “bouncing Tosca” or “exit with the principals”, it’s all here (end of article).

      Seriusly, I’m as happy as anyone to wallow in hours of Wagner, though for some reason I’ve never heard Lohengrin or Tannhauser (“not just a pilgrim’s chorus”) in full.

      1. Tosca does sound as though it is jinxed. And let us not forget that the great unipedal thespian Sarah Bernhardt lost her leg after a bad fall from the ramparts in the stage play La Tosca that preceded it. Why does an image of Dudley Moore auditioning for the role of Tarzan keep popping into my head?

        On reflection I have raised today’s opera count to two and a half on account of the singular version of Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots at 13A.

  7. I guessed wrong at 18A (PEMMACIN), otherwise it would have been around 15 mins. And it might have been a bit less, had I not put in OFF BREAK originally (I’ve never been clear about off/leg). A very good crossword, I think the two special clues (11A and 12D) work well. I’m not sure whether RIPEN (26A) can mean ‘get ready to open’, however – seems a bit strained.

    Tom B.

    1. Some types of pod do ripen before opening, so I suppose it’s justified from that angle.
  8. 29:18 – I really enjoyed this after the initial 10 minutes when I only had 3 clues solved.

    First in was IEUAN which shows how far I got through the acrosses without finding a clue I could solve, and last in were IMP, RIPEN and TRILOBITE.

    I thought the cluing was of a very high standard and the interconnections added to the fun.

    I took some time to suss out the right anagram at 18a, although minedeed* always looked a bit unlikely.

  9. I don’t have a time for this one; I was struggling along with it in bed when things interrupted (police looking for a missing child) and didn’t get back to it until this morning. At that point, it had taken me over 15 minutes to do the bottom half, with the top half almost empty.

    I also could make nothing of OFFICE HOURS, though it was obviously right. I don’t think I’ve come across this contrivance before, but hopefully I’ll remember it next time it shows up. Very clever. I also got caught out by “either end of estate” marking an E in 4dn; I was looking for double-E, which I shouldn’t have been as it didn’t say “both ends.”

    As for the rest, I was certain that 2dn would involve something surrounding “B”, and at 9ac I had “G, abbrev. for girls’ name, IS” (GDIIS obviously not being a word). I was trying to think of a French opera – Lully, perhaps – called “Le Something,” and I was expecting 1ac to end in ST, not begin with it. Coming back this morning, all of a sudden it all seems fairly obvious.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of PEMMICAN before. Something akin to bully beef? I thought from the start that it would be (mine camp*) but I needed the crossing letters to give me some idea of what.

    1. Oh, and SIGMA. Am I right to believe that “drops temperature” could just as easily mean “T moves down a few places” as it does “T is eliminated?” I was looking for something along the lines of DELAT, which led nowhere fast.
      1. Me too at first, but then I got GLASS so it became “think of a Greek letter with a G in the middle”.
    2. Pemmican seems similar to bully beef, but maybe more fatty.

      And the moving T was another possibility for 1D.

  10. 12:34 for me. The trick in OFFICE HOURS went over my head when I put it in, and I didn’t bother to go back and work it out. Other than that, a fairly straightforward solve this morning. I had to jump around a bit, but never got stuck for long.
    1. I found this tough and happy to finish without aids. Mightily impressed by Peter’s 8.12. I didn’t see the explanation for office hours until I came here. Briefly toyed with Rheingold before I spotted Lohengrin – just one letter away from being an anagram of it, something I hadn’t noticed before. bc
  11. I found this tough, clocking in at 43 whopping minutes. No complaints though. I liked “relatively accurate” as the def in 3 and set as the well disguised def in 21 but my COD is stretcher for its convincing surface and concise wordplay. I was pleased to discover on coming here that 11 was far more than a weak CD.

    Q-0, E-8.5, D-9

  12. 22 minutes, and last night I don’t think I understood fully some of the really nice clues, particularly 12 and 21. I wonder if this is a setter more regularly seen in a different paper?
  13. I had a top down solving experience, contrary to some others. Last in was IEUAN, which is actually somewhat ironic, but I had written MAIDSHH at 19 and was trying to make SHUAN work. You can tell my brain had stopped functioning several hours previously (puts index finger between lips and goes bubbubbubbubb). I stared at OFFICE HOURS for some time wondering why. Thought it was a bit of poor form using GLASS in a clue when it was also an answer. I’d forgotten REPACK also was an answer by this stage. Thanks to Peter for enlightening me and apologies to the setter. Great clue! Also 11ac, which I actually fully appreciated at the time, somewhat amazingly. Thanks again to setter.

    Wiki says pemmican was taken on the Burke & Wills expedition (the archetypal Australian French farce) but couldn’t be eaten because it went off. How could they tell?

  15. About 35 minutes or so for me. My last entries were the crossing PEMMICAN and LEG BREAK. To Americans PEMMICAN brings to mind ‘pancake’ or some such, so the leap to emergency rations took time. LEG BREAK was a half guess based on the vague memory that it appeared in this puzzle recently. I also confess I hadn’t caught the full wordplay for 11 and 12 until reading it here, and I think they’re great. Regards. By the way, what is a DIP SWITCH?

    1. It’s a switch to “dip” the car’s headlights to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers. The first car I drove had a large button on the floor expressly for the purpose; now of course it’s done by a flick of the stalk which controls the lights, and I suspect that as there is no longer a single switch for the purpose the word has fallen out of use.
      1. Thanks Kurihan, as in many other driving related matters, we do the opposite. That switch to us is the ‘brights’ or ‘high beams’, which we switch back on when the opposing driver has gone safely past. And yes, it used to be on the floor by the driver’s left foot, but now is a lever on the steering column.
        1. By the way I left a late postscript on “Harry” on yesterday’s blog in a reply to a Vinyl post, noting that it seemed to be used in American English as well. Whether it had the same derivation I don’t know.
  16. I thought ‘Delivery one turns away’ as a cryptic definition for LEG BREAK was outstanding. 1ac and 10ac also very good. A pleasure to solve shortly after looking at today’s Telegraph crossword which I thought was abysmal.
  17. I can’t really accept this clue distinguishes between an off-break and a leg-break. Doesn’t the question whether the ball turns away from you simply depend on where it is pitched, never mind whether you’re a left or right-handed batsman? Also is this really a cryptic clue?

    I also couldn’t decipher the Office Hours double reverse cryptic nonsense. I’m afraid I’m more irritated than impressed by the full solution to this one.

    James

    James

    1. My understanding is that both leg and off breaks “turn away” from their previous direction when they bounce, regardless of where they are pitched or who’s batting. For most (i.e. RH) batsmen, the leg break turns away from them too if pitched in the usual place, which maybe favours LEG BREAK a bit as the right answer.

      Whether the clue needs to distinguish between them is debatable. Most cryptic clues lead to only one answer, but ambiguities can arise (e.g. between -ing and -ion endings, or ONES and YOUR in multi-word answers), so unless you make this point a prime requirement, the solver still needs to be alert to the possibility of alternatives. In this case, I suspect the much greater frequency of LEG/ON than OFF in cryptic clues helped many solvers choose the right answer without even thinking about off breaks.

      Is it a cryptic clue? Yes, if you accept cryptic defs without wordplay as cryptic clues. If you don’t, then I’m afraid most UK daily paper cryptics will bother you, some far more so than the Times.

  18. 15d How do you tell a leg-break from an off-break?
    Do you need to watch the ball out of the hand?
    No – not in this case – all you need is checkers – in this case from PEMMICAN at 18a where we get the middle E for LEG.

    18a PEMMICAN – I liked the extra bit in the clue – “.. camp: mine needs cooking” – alluding to Pemmican – if indeed it IS the same as biltong – being dried but uncooked.

    Talking of uncooked “food” I don’t like Sushi but I do like biltong.

    One “easy” omitted from this blog:

    6a Tree seen in mist at length (5)
    HAZE L

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