24770 – Happy Trails!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After my run of DNFs this week I approached this one with some trepidation but I got off to a quick start with most of the NW and SE going in quite easily. A little later I ran out of steam and struggled a bit and there were at least a couple of answers, 9dn and 21dn for example, which I needed to look up to be sure they were correct. Oh, and the first meaning clued at 4ac which I deal with in more detail below. Generally this was a more straightforward puzzle than of late with no verbose clues or convoluted wordplay (unlike yesterday’s ordeal) which I for one welcome at least for a change. Unfortunately it still took me the best part of an hour which I put down to Blogger’s nerves and a complete loss of confidence after a trying week.

Across
1 IN,SECT
4 WRANGLER – Well, this is the clue that found my level! If one is heducated one knows of course that a wrangler is “a candidate who has obtained first-class honours in Part II of the mathematics tripos at Cambridge”. However, those of us who aren’t have to find other means to get to the answer. In my case this involved thinking back to a childhood spent watching Westerns and listening to Marty Robbins singing about “Little Joe the Wrangler” who herded cattle, on his Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album. On edit: I doubt anyone reading this is likely to notice my partial error with reference to the song, but although Little Joe helped with herding cattle his main responsibility was looking after the horses so he was actually a horse wrangler.
10 STANDS OUT
11 C,HIPS – “Chips With Everything” is a 1962 play by Arnold Wesker.
12 ANTHOLOGIES – Anagram of THEOLOGIAN’S.
14 EYE – The eye of a storm and sounds like hurrIcane.
15 CUTTING – Double definition.
17 ARISTOtle – I wasted time here trying to remove Y (the last letter of trinity) from something, but it’s the last three letters of the philosopher that have to go. ARISTO came up only a few days ago, I think.
19 UPHILL – This is about the grand old Duke of York who had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again.
21 P(R,All)IRIE – As someone who detests most sport and has a particular loathing of athletics I surprised myself by knowing this reference to Gordon Pirie who ran round in circles faster than anyone else some time in the 1950s. I suspect this again demonstrates the power of TV in the days when there was only one channel and one often found oneself watching whatever happened to be on regardless of what it was.
23 Omitted.
24 A,(D)VAN,CEMENT
26 A,RL(homE)S – The Scottish author is Robert Louis Stevenson .
27 READY-MADE – Anagram of DAYDREAM + preferencE.
29 STRENGTH – As in the expression of exasperation “Give me strength!” and the strength of alcoholic spirits.
30 E,aNGELS – Financial backers are sometimes known as angels especially in the world of theatre.
 
Down
1 INSTANCE – After yesterday’s poem by John Milton today we have one by Shelley but fortunately one doesn’t have to know this in order to take the last letter of Ozymandias and jumble it with the letters of ANCIENT to find the answer to the clue.
2 S,HALT
3 Despite it being a COD I’m leaving this clue out.
5 RETSINA – Another anagram, of A STEIN + summeR. This disgusting Greek wine has the aroma (and I imagine taste) of disinfectant.
6 NECESSITATE – Yet another anagram, this time of CINEASTE SET.
7 LE(ICES)tTER – ‘Resident’ being the insertion indicator.
8 R,OSIER – The osier is a small willow whose shoots are used in basket weaving.
9 Overcome, One’s, LONG – This is a dark China tea that takes its name from the Chinese for ‘Black Dragon’.
13 ORIGINAL S,IN – Eccentric or unusual people can be said to be ORIGINALS.
16 TOPs, DOLLs, ARe
18 MEATLESS – The fourth Down anagram. This time of SET MEALS.
20 LEVERET – This is a young hare and a form is its lair.
21 PEN,TA,D – A period of five years.
22 A,LWAY,S – The boat turning is YAWL reversed.
25 ER(A)SE
28 Omitted.

36 comments on “24770 – Happy Trails!”

  1. Despite seeing that 6dn was an anagram, my set of possible endings didn’t stretch to ‘-ate’ (after ‘-nce’ and ‘-ise’), which meant I had to cheat to get me home safely. Although he strutted his stuff beofore I was born, being a sports fan I had heard of Pirie, but never saw him at 21 ac, another clue that caused me problems, as I tried ‘pasture’ and ‘plateau’. Thanks to Jack also for the parsing of 29 and 30ac and 13dn. WRANGLER was clever, but COD to CHIPS, even though I didn’t know the provenance of the popular saying.

    Spent a holiday in Greece before going to university and thoroughly endorse the verdict on retsina.

  2. 34 minutes; probably could have shaved 2 minutes off that if I had written the V of ‘advancement’ more accurately, so that I didn’t think it was a U afterwards.
    I was waiting eagerly for this blog, to find out what in God’s name was the explanation of 19 and 21, and, I’m ashamed to say, 17 (‘What does ELT have to do with the trinity?’ he asked, cluelessly.) I’m not ashamed, however, to admit ignorance of the nursery version of the Duke of York (nursery rhymes weren’t my strong suit as an infant; I mainly read slim French novels while reclining on my divan eating bonbons), and especially of Gordon Thing.
  3. 33 minutes – a sleepless night meant that I came to this early. Apart from annoying myself by mis-typing READY MADE which made ERASE impossible (until I noticed my mistake) the only one that really held me up at the end was SHALT. COD to 29a
  4. Nobody else seems to have paused for breath over SHALT, but it took me most of the afternoon and about a dozen runs through the alphabet to get it. Perhaps this is the same setter who gave us (thou) ART recently. I clearly learnt very little from that experience.
    1. Reading this made me realize that I never did parse this clue; I just associated ‘Shakespeare’s will’ with ‘singular’ and thought of ‘shalt’, ignoring ‘termination’. Sometimes it helps to be dim.
  5. There you go Jack, the waiting was worse than the event although I bet you read 1A and wondered if you were off down paths theological again! Well blogged, sir.

    Not a difficult puzzle if you’re old enough to remember dear old puffing Gordon. Watch out next for Jim Peters who used to train across Tooting Bec Common when I was playing football there.

    Nice piece of arcane terminology at 4A. I was hoping it might be an actual mathematician but I’ll settle for it. I can confirm that RETSINA is disgusting and probably on its own accounts for a great deal of Greece’s current problems

    1. Retsina is an acquired taste, admittedly, Jimbo, but can be quite quaffable if you buy the very best grade and only drink it ice cold, in Greece, on a very hot day and beside the sea!

      1. Count me in with the “ugh” crowd, first time I tried it I asked if I could have a chaser of fly spray
  6. SHALT added a goodly 15 minutes to my solve too, forsooth, which all up was about 50 minutes, and I can’t claim blooger’s nerves, unless maybe presciently. I also had question marks against 4ac (although I’m sure we’ve had it before), 13d (originals?), 20d (forms?) and 21ac (Pir? – well the IE was from “that’s”, which made Pir the runner; at the time I thought it must be a river somewhere in Russia or Persia but the closest Wiki can get is Pir, legendary King of the Britons. Wiki doesn’t go into his athletic ability, although his predecessor, who could have been either arrogant or humble and one person or two, apparently died running into a bog, so there is more than an outside chance that he could run like the very dickens themselves.) My COD also to STRENGTH.
  7. I think this has to go down as a DNF for me, as I wimped out on LEVERET (how was I supposed to know they went to sleep on a form?) and WRANGLER (browbeaten into forgetting stuff I did know).

    I think I’ve learned not to start on the TLS before doing the daily: it corrupts your mindset, and I found myself getting so frustrated I didn’t even spot ORIGINAL SIN or that 12ac was an anagram. Sometimes, those of us with a religious sort of background are at a disadvantage, because we start going through our lists of theologians beginning with A, or wondering how “apologetics” matched the clue. It also took me ages to crack the anagram at 6.

    Despite some frustration, and the fact that my plea for STRENGTH went unanswered, I thought this was a decent collection, if (for me) the hardest of the week. CoD to CHIPS (though I essayed CLIME to begin with) and a special mention for STRENGTH

  8. 25 minutes here.
    Today’s unknowns were Gordon Pirie and the fact that hares live in forms.
    WRANGLER rang a very vague bell, but it struck me as the kind of thing I could only possibly know from solving this great crossword. Fortunately I have a very good memory so I quickly “remembered” that it had appeared not in a clue or indeed answer, but in a recent blog.
    I also didn’t know the origin of the phrase in 11ac. Jay Leno’s gag – I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, ‘I’d like some fries.’ The girl at the counter said, ‘Would you like some fries with that?’ – is more my level.

  9. Good challenge; thank you setter. Good blog; thank you, jackkt. I remember Gordon Pirie and, in true British fashion, his heroic Olympic failures but had forgotten his puffing (thank you, jimbo).

    COD to SHALT: took as long as the rest of the crossword to unravel but, as is so often the case, elegantly simple when you’ve worked it out. By the time I got there, I was convinced that there must be hundreds of options for S?A?T: on checking, I find that Chambers only lists 18!

  10. Too many unknown meanings of otherwise familiar words (WRANGLER, form) made this a struggle, and impossible to finish without using aids. Not too much else to say about this one, except I hope I do better with next week’s lot than I have done with this week’s…one step forward, two back at the moment!

    CoD to EYE for its simplicity.

    Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

  11. Some good stuff here – UPHILL, ORIGINAL SIN, STRENGTH and SHALT all very neat, I thought. But if I were in a querulous mood I might be inclined to quibble over whether Waggledagger invariably wrote “shalt” rather than “will”. I suspect he used both fairly indiscriminately, as he does “thou/thee” and “you”, sometimes in the same sentence. My more erudite friends tell me that the late 16th/early 17th century was a time of rapid change in English usage and that the old and new forms were both still widely current.
    1. The development of English in the 16th and 17th centuries is a fascinating subject I spent some time studying at university. I’ve forgotten 95% of what I learned now of course, but what I remember most vividly were complaints about the corruption of the language from vulgar Italian imports, and the deleterious effect this would inevitably have on the intellectual capacity and general moral fibre of the country. You could take some of this stuff, update the language a bit, replace Italy with America, and publish it in the Daily Telegraph.
      And the Académie Française just makes me laugh.
    2. ‘whoever hath her wish thou hast thy will
      And will to boot and will in overplus’

      Shalt read the sonnets with me and be wiser than we were

  12. I was delighted to spot Gordon Pirie in 21a, not least because he was my uncle! Although I struggled a bit with the SW corner, a very enjoyable crossword.
  13. 16:54, last in SHALT. Was waiting with baited breath on the outcome, since I had a number of iffy answers, getting WRANGLER and LEVERET only from one part of the clue.

    Nice to see Engels in there, I was reading the communist manifesto yesterday, working on a musical version for an upcoming show.

    1. “I was reading the communist manifesto yesterday…”

      file under ‘Things you don’t Hear Every Day’.

  15. DNF – Just couldn’t see what 2 could be – wrote down all the possible fits to S-A-T which aren’t too many but didn’t even have SHALT on the list – had SHANT though!! I’ll take the dunce’s hat for the weekend.
    Liked 1d as a clue. Ozymandias being one of the better poems I remember having to recite at school
  16. Oh dear, another overnighter. I remembered the Duke of York rhyme from an earlier puzzle, but still took a long while to deal with ?P?I?? and get something that fit. Once I finally figured it out, then LEVERET and STRENGTH fell into place, but my last two were actually PRAIRIE and WRANGLER, from definitions only. These are very familiar words to Americans, but their wordplay was impenetrable to me. After reading the blog (nicely done, Jack) I can see why. George, I can’t wait for the musical Manifesto; invent a few brothers for Karl M. and they can whoop it up like the Marx Brothers. ENGELS can be the straight man. Regards to everyone.
    1. If you took A Night at the Opera and added the The Communist Manifesto you might get The Spectre of the Opera.
  17. thanks for a nice blog. i put in quite a few as guesses and only now have understood them. although i got 27ac, i don’t really see how “idly” is an anagram indicator.
  18. The Ozymandias clue was timely, given the fate of a modern as opposed to antique Egyptian tyrant today.
    jfr
  19. I too love the idea of a musical on the red manifesto. And my slight annoyance as to Gordon Pirie being added to the general knowledge Times base is disarmed by his being crypticsue’s uncle. I remember the fantastic race with Kuts in the ’56 Olympics. I’ve always followed athletics but don’t really agree with his new status; it’s like flipping Peter Cook’s Wisty character yesterday – there seems to have been a “broaden the base or you get fired” directive to setters. As long as the Times crossword doesn’t go the way of its columnists to whom the unspeakable Giles Coren makes an unwelcome addition. No doubt his asinine schoolboy style sells papers but the thought of a similar “broadening” in the crossword fills one with gloom. There’s breadth; and there’s being cheap. Keep hold of the distinction, editor. Oh yes – got held up in the NE – nearly an hour. Agreed COD 29.
    1. I think Uncle Gordon might have been rather pleased to have finally been accepted by the press enough to be included in a Times Crossword, given the trouble he had with newspapers in his heyday.
    2. To be fair to The Times, to counterbalance the schoolboy style of Giles Coren we have the intellectual heft of, er, Frank Skinner, and the searching analysis of, um, Caitlin Moran… er…
      1. At least the modest subtlety of the odoriferous Rod Liddle has been kept out lf the weekday pages. So far.
        1. On that one I couldn’t agree more!
          To try and restore some balance (as if we were the BBC), I do like Daniel Finkelstein.
  20. 34 min for this one, with SHALT last in, as for others. I kept wanting 29 to be STREWTH, but it wouldn’t fit! And I *like* retsina – I find it goes well with lukewarm oily food 😉
  21. 12:06 for me – about a third of which must have been spent on SHALT so I’m greatly relieved to find I wasn’t the only one to have difficulty with it.

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