24493

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 11:38

A puzzle on the hard side for me – with a couple of new words or meanings – CHUM = salmon, and LICKERISH = lecherous. I don’t think any answers went in without full wordplay understanding today, and the last in were 23 and 17.

Today’s invented abbreviation is epr = Expert’s Pavlovian Response – the things (mostly unexpected word meanings) an experienced solver’s brain has gradually learned to come up with – or at least should have. Someone whose Pavlovian responses were quicker might have thrashed me like Simon and John last week. Now seems odds-on based on early comments – solving just after midnight may not be a great idea.

Across
1 R.E.=Royal Engineers,QU(IS)ITE – epr: “part of army” = some corps or regiment
6 DOUR=gloomy,epr:O=duck – the Douro is the Portuguese river (though it starts in Spain) down which port in its various stages is transported.
9 A,L(E from romancE,epr:W=with)IFE – the alewife is a kind of herring
10 I,epr:M.P.=representative,ASSE(t)
11 MA=old lady,NET=bag=to capture. epr: artist=M???? – MANET or MONET?
12 APOCRYPHA – (C=chapter (epr), in (happy or)*),A,
13 L(epr: newt=EFT)OVER
14 MINI = baby = small – reversal of (epr) say=e.g., deleted from twins=Gemini
17 CHUM – 2 def’s. First thought of PARR – a young salmon (epr), and a historical “mate”, but decided the second of these was too loose
18 BEGOTTEN = (gent to be)*
21 E(verto)N,DE(A)VOUR – epr: “wingers” = outside letters
22 G((d)ECK=floor)O
24 IGNORES – move the S in epr: signore =”Italian man”
25 DRASTIC – reversal of (C(IT’S)ARD) – epr: amusing chap = CARD, sex appeal = IT
26 HA((leader)S)TE – epr: expedition=HASTE
27 EAST(END)ER epr: festival=EASTER
 
Down
1 REA(L)M – epr: line briefly=L, lots of papers = REAM
2 QUEEN OF PUDDINGS – def and cryptic def.
3 I’D,1,OTBO=boot*,epr: X = vote
4 ITERATES = treaties*
5 EDIS=rev. of side = TV channel,ON = about – “side” is Brit. colloq. as in “I can’t stand all this arguing – what’s on the other side?” – Mrs B’s typical response to 5 seconds or so of “Question Time”
6 D(epr: EP=record)ART
7 omitted – ask if you can’t work it out from the checking letters
8 O(P.E.)RATION – epr: speech = ORATION, P.E. = (form of) exercise
13 L,ICKERISH = (Heck! Iris)* epr: arbitrary name (Iris) = part of anagram fodder
15 H.E.(B),RIDES – epr: Governor = HE (His/Her Excellency), and ‘s = has = “goes next to”
16 LONG=be eager,FACE=to deal with – “long face” is a possibly British term for a sad look
19 BARRIE(r) – J M Barrie is the creator of Peter Pan
20 MOUS(S=son)E
23 (c)ONCER(t) – “oncer” is old slang for a £1 note or “green drinking voucher” –

28 comments on “24493”

  1. Pudding’s Pavlovian Response.
    Without the above I would have met a watery grave with guesses at DOURO, CHUM, ALEWIFE, EFT. Further guess for the splendidly onomatopoeic LICKERISH.
    Didn’t know the sweet or that a pudding was a stupid person. Last in MINI, the only one with no understanding.
  2. Well this is a turn up! I’m usually at least Biddlecombe x 4 but I found today’s puzzle extremely easy and finished all but two answers (LONG FACE and BEGOTTEN) in 15 minutes, which is going some for me. I needed another 5 to polish them off. I also understood most of the wordplay as I went along and had only four clues marked for further comsideration. Of these I still don’t get where the END comes from in EAST (END)ER and I’ll probably need the boot when it’s explained. The CHUM and LICKERISH meanings were new to me too. It helped that I got off to a good start. The first clue I looked at was 2dn and thought of QUEEN OF PUDDINGS straight away.
  3. A shade under the half hour; so I’m guessing slightly on the rare side of medium. The anagram at 7dn was, I thought, very sophisticated, being a fan of such things. The only idiotic pudding I know is Brigadier Pudding from Gravity’s Rainbow; and the less said about his fate the better. Memo to self, start Lawrentian short (fishing) story entitled “The Alewife and Her Chum”.
  4. Like Jack I found this on the easy side. CHUM= salmon and LICKERISH were new, but not hard to get, and there were plenty of good old staples which produced the appropriate EPR (though I am no expert).

    Sidelight of the day – finding from the etymology of ALEWIFE that it’s a fish with a beer-gut.

    Jack, in 27ac END is “bound” in the sense of a limit or boundary (eg “beating the bounds”)

  5. With no Expert’s Pavlovian Response to help me (alhtough how I could do with some of my New Zealander mother’s pavlova – truly the queen of puds), I soldiered on like Corporal Jones (always a step behind the rest) and completed in 80 minutes.

    Chagrined to say I guessed wrong at 11ac – sticking in Monet instead of Manet. Even more chagrined that I actually looked for the cryptic and couldn’t see it through the flimsy camouflage of the quotation marks.

    Hadn’t heard of all the ones that everyone else hasn’t heard of, but, rather tellingly, I DID know dolt.

  6. Dead chuffed with 14 minutes today, dragging LICKERISH from some buried memory probably involving Richard Sharpe. Favourite for the day was the simple but chuckleworthy Manet. Last in was ONCER, as I strained to justify either OCCUR (O(ld) C curt somehow itself cut short and made to mean performance through an unknown alchemical process) or OSCAR (as above plus scarce even more limited and thoughts of a winning, if not especially musical performance).
    Bound=end didn’t occur to me at the time, but EASTENDER couldn’t be anything else. I wondered whether there was a subtle message in the inclusion of this and IDIOT BOX in the same square?
  7. not a successful day for me. the killer was coho for 17ac justified by company house = mate. farfetched i know but with a starting c i could not see beyond that. still an enjoyable solve with the cracking anagram at 7d cod.
    1. … never put in a 4-letter answer until you have both crossers.
      Even then, I was tempted by CHUB; but that’s a fish of a different kettle.
  8. Limped home in just over the hour having stared at ?I?I, O?C?R, C?U? and ?A?R?E for perhaps half of that time. Loud cheers when the answer to each finally became apparent and why. I too couldn’t get OSCAR out of my head at 23, never having heard of that particular Britishism. Likewise EDISON was a mystery unitl I remembered that other Britishism concerning changing sides. On the other hand, LICKERISH is a homophone for LICORICE in Australia, or at least it was where and when I grew up, so that one went straight in; all those bad puns finally paying their dues.

    I can’t say I enjoyed the solve very much, largely because I knew at some point I’d have to come back to ?I?I and such, but on reflection the clues are extremely well constructed with very smooth surfaces. COD to the cracking anagram at 7d.

  9. I like the EPR concept, though I have a theory that it’s fine if you want to be recruited to the Bletchley Park team, but can sometimes cause inappropriate and sometimes embarrassing connections in other social contexts. Do others find that extensive exposure to cryptic cluing trains the brain in some peculiar ways?
  10. Easier than yesterday for me (perhaps because not under the pressure of blogging it) but a 20 minute meander down Petticoat Lane. I like the concept of EPS (and no I’m not going to volunteer to keep an EPS count and convert to a HI (hackneyed index))

    I didn’t know LICKERISH but what a lovely word and enjoyed the misleading use of “expedition”. Agreed the anagram at 7D is very good with both anagrist and anagind convincing (in contrast to the EPS at 13D)

  11. A pleasant return after a few days riding the rails. The 21 min would have been shorter if I had not gone into a mental meltdown over BARRIE. COD has to go to UNSOPHISTICATED. One of the best anagrams, beautifully concealed.
  12. I didn’t just think about OSCAR, I decided it was the right word for the occasion. This was based on assumption that there had to be an opera called Toscara that I’d never heard of. Otherwise, not too bad, 49 minutes.

    I’m sure we’ve had LICKERISH since I started doing the crossword regularly about nine months ago. We’ve certainly had IDIOT BOX earlier this year. Rather oddly I didn’t get it on first reading but thought of it when I saw TV in 5dn.

  13. I found this difficult and did it in two parts. The break was because, after solving 5A I had to go to Sainsbury’s because it reminded me that they were doing 1/3 off Douro.

    The same unknown words as everyone else: chum and lickerish. On the other hand, a lot of words that crop up regularly: alewife, idiot box, Barrie, Edison. I finished with Haste: there was certainly no Pavlovian response from me to this meaning of expedition.

    “What’s on the other side?” was a common question in the 1950s and 1960s when there was only BBC and ITV. It does not really make sense today with a choice of several hundred channels.

  14. 39 minutes. I found this an enjoyable puzzle once I got started and was able to guess/convince myself I knew some of the more obscure answers. Last in was oncer, without understanding the wordplay and which became obvious once I stopped trying to fit o=old into the answer. Really like the epr tips – I hope they can be a regular feature of the blogs.
  15. Dragged away after 15 m with only the SW corner to do – “it’ll be quick” got no sympathy so returned to it after lunch, and it was only another 4-5 m, last in Barrie . 13d new meaning to me ( met as misspell of licorice) also chum as salmon. Like the concept of epr which is likely to make for speed though I think there is an equivalent Old Hand’s Response which is more like mine. I seem to remember mous(s)e from another recent puzzle, v. similar clueing. Pudding as doltish type may have arisen as short version of pudding-head which I first met in children’s books.
  16. 11:29 here, a rare victory over PB (although there are others usually quicker than me who haven’t posted yet, so I’m not optimistic of staying in pole position). I knew CHUM had a fish connection, but not sure what, but it went straight in anyway with the C already in place. I wasn’t 100% sure of LICKERISH either, but the anagram couldn’t really make anything else.
  17. Two errors (OPERATING not OPERATION and OSCAR not ONCER) and blanks for BEGOTTEN and LONG FACE. I was pleased to have lots of “epr” for the other clues!
    1. an EPR to go with “Monet or Manet?” is -ION or -ING, especially when looking at a ….I?? ending.
  18. Having failed to finish yesterdeay, at least I did manage to complete the grid today. But MIMI and OSCAR turned out to be wrong. I blame my head cold. I had never heard of LICKERISH, CHUM or ALEWIFE, either.
  19. Just under 28 minutes with a bit of a puase towards the end.

    Last in was ALEWIFE which I got from the wordplay rather than knowing the definition.

    I commented yesterday that we hadn’t had a word or phrase three times yet this year. richnorth, above, says we have had IDIOT BOX earlier this year. Indeed we have – twice – so it wins the prize for first ‘three time appearance’.

    I didn’t see ‘end’ = ‘bound’ in 27a. I just thought that there would be so many editions of EASTENDERS to be seen on the idiot box over Easter, so only ‘one’ of them would be EASTENDER which fitted nicely with the Pearly Queen.

  20. About 30 minutes, and I join the list of those who hadn’t seen CHUM or LICKERISH before. I join vinyl in not knowing of the QUEEN OF PUDDINGS, and I myself didn’t know ONCER or ‘side’=’TV channel’ either. My understanding of the fishy use of CHUM is that it’s the small fish (ALEWIVES?) that you chop up and keep in a bucket to ladle over the side of the boat in hopes of attracting a real big fish. I also join those who point out that UNSOPHISTICATED is a very fine piece of the setters’ art, so a salute to the author today. Regards.
  21. Nothing particularly UK about ‘long face’. ‘oncer’, ‘side’, & ‘queen of puddings’, on the other hand, were all new to me; the 1st two I was able to get from the checking letters, but I had to give up on ‘oncer’.
    Doesn’t it seem a bit much to equate begetting and breeding?
  22. I have a bee in my bonnet about the pronunciation of ‘licorice’ or ‘liquorice’ or however it’s spelt: it should be pronounced lickeriss. Lickerish is another word and why should we confuse the two by pronouncing them the same way?

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