25058 – FRIDAY 13th!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: Off the scale but not as bad as for last Sunday’s puzzle (my worst ever at 2 hours). I knew I was in for trouble when I noticed the grid had long answers at the perimeter and nothing with fewer than 5 letters. LH  went in reasonably easily (about 20 minutes) but I struggled every inch of the way RH. There were some easy answers on that side, particularly in the SE but my brain had seized up by then. I didn’t know the cube or the cow or the sprite or the cloth definition at 19ac. Here we go:

Across
1 SPIT-AND-SAWDUST – Anagram of PINT SAID then SAW (spotted) DUST (evidence of poor cleaning). This is a simple old-fashioned type of pub with sawdust on the floor.
9 SABREWING – SING (tweet) swallows A BREW (a drink). It’s an American hummingbird apparently.
10 NIXIE – More Americana here with NIX (nothing) then Irritate Except. It’s a water sprite that has managed to elude me until today.
11 ADULT – A DULl T
12 TESSERACT – TEST (exam) contains CARES (worries) reversed. It’s defined by Chambers as a cube within a cube. COED and Collins have never heard of it so I had difficulty verifying my answer once I had worked it out from wordplay.
13 NED KELLY – Anagram of LookeD KEENLY. The Australian outlaw.
15 MISTED – To ted is to spread out grass for drying so MIS-TED is to do it wrongly.
17 BOVVER – puB,OV(V)ER. This is a corruption of the word ‘bother’ – to make trouble – which in the 60s gave us  ‘bovver boys’ and then ‘bovver boots’.
19 PRUNELLA – PRUNE (cut),L,L,A. I knew this as a plant but not as a fabric until this morning.
22 LIBERTINE – Anagram of REBEL IN IT.
23 SNAIL – kisS,NAIL
24 TWANG – GNAT (one biting) reversed encloses Western. It’s a nasal way of speaking in certain accents and dialects.
25 FLOOR SHOW – FLOORS (confounds), H (husband), OW (it’s painful).
26 BOSTON TEA PARTY – Cryptic definition that took me for ever to see.
Down
1 SUSTAINABILITY – Anagram of IS SUITABLY ANTI
2 Better leave one out…
3 …and another to make up for nothing in the Acrosses.
4 DAINTILY – DAILY (paper) encloses I, New Testament (set of books).
5 ARGOSY – A, ROSY encloses Grand. It’s a merchant ship or a fleet thereof.
6 DANDELION – DAN (Judo expert), OILED (drunk) reversed, New. Not the kind of wine that I would like to drink, thank you very much. It has reminded me of Reggie Perrin’s son-in-law although he was capable of producing even worse concoctions.
7 SEXTANT – Sailor, EXTANT
8 BELTED GALLOWAY – Anagram of GOT LABELLED then WAY. I wasted forever on this clue trying to include COW in the anagrist to make a journey.
14 EYEBRIGHT – It’s a plant used to treat certain eye conditions. The reference in the clue is to the saying ‘Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed’ meaning alert and sprightly. According to Brewer’s this dates from the 1940s as a stereotypical image of a squirrel and was popularised in a song of the same name from 1953 by Bob Merrill. I’ve  never heard of it or him despite my interest in that sort of thing.
16 GRUESOME – Sounds like ‘grew some’.
18 VIBRATO – VIOlin (instrument in half) encloses BRAT (badly-behaved child).
20 LEATHER – Large, ETHER (number) encloses A (article).
21 TIFFIN – TIFF (row), IN (among). A light lunch from the days of the Raj to remind me again of the Noel Coward song referred to yesterday.
23 STRIP – ST (saint, so ‘holy’), Rest In Peace.

47 comments on “25058 – FRIDAY 13th!”

  1. 24:31 .. most of this in around ten minutes and then a spectacular arrival at the buffers with MISTED, BELTED GALLOWAY, TESSERACT and PRUNELLA all unknowns. Very painful crawl to the finish line.

    MISTED was the only one that went in with fingers crossed, but the cryptic was just about enough once the checkers were in. Can we have a straw pole on how many people actually knew this meaning of TED?

    1. It’s something obscure in the puzzle that I actually knew so I was grateful for that, however MISTED was my last in and the last I explained to myself.

      Edited at 2012-01-13 03:36 am (UTC)

    4. I know old TED well, though only because his name is on the list of obscure or obsolete words which we sometimes find ourselves discussing because of their usefulness to crossword setters. Er, like this. Never heard it used in spoken English, probably never will.
    5. After the event I’m pretty sure we’ve seen this use of TED before but in the heat of the solve I’d forgotten it and had to trust the definition and checkers.
    6. Yup. From my childhood. One of the many familiar agricultural implements on the farm surrounding our house was a tedder – a big open reel thingy with hooked fingers used to turn hay.
    8. Intentional malapropism? Dry some grass to get a straw pole?

      Ted appears often enough in the crossword that I know it’s something to do with grass or hay, but not often enough that I’d be able to define it. Maybe after today I’ll remember its definition.

      Rob

      1. Hi, Rob and welcome if you are a new contributor. Unfortunately when a comment is made on an old puzzle like this it is unlikely to be seen except by a casual browser or the day’s blogger (in this case myself) who gets notified by email when a new message is posted up. Why not join us discussing the latest puzzle as it goes up each day? If you don’t have access to the puzzle in the Times newspaper itself you can join the Times Crossword Club on-line for a modest annual fee, considering the hours of enjoyment it offers and access to the whole archive.

        Regards

        Jack

        Edited at 2012-02-14 04:46 am (UTC)

  2. Pleased to return to form in just over the hour (63 minutes), with the NE last to fall after BOVVER had clicked. All the usual suspects were unknown to me, and I have learned what an ‘argosy’ is, having previously had no clue besides thinking it must have something to do with Jason and his merry men. No, apparently it is derived from Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik), after a liberal application of Grimm’s Law.

    Must remember TED.

  3. The clock says 67 minutes but it felt longer. Maybe not putting FREAK SHOW would have got me under the hour? Maybe not. The SAWDUST, DANDELION & TED (add me to the completely unknown/forgotten list) must have taken 20 minutes on their own. COD to the TEA PARTY for its harbouring.
  4. Rather an exercise in obscurity, this one. MISTED was the only one I was unsure about at the end, but I got as far as checking sabeering for the bird at 9ac before I realised my stupidity. However, I did know the BELTED GALLOWAY; a farming friend pointed out a herd of them to me as we drove into Scotland a few years ago, and I’ve remembered the name ever since. It’s probably as handsome a cow as you’re ever likely to see. Oh, and I had freak show as well for a long time.

    Edited at 2012-01-13 08:17 am (UTC)

  5. I’d always thought it was a sort of elevenses for twee people, which apparently it can also be.

    If you come out of the closet, you will be able to edit your typos, be you not the setter!

  6. As others have said a collection of somewhat obscure references that began to mildly irritate after a while. A bit of a 35 minute slog but without huge enjoyment for some reason. I finished it more because I was determined to than because it stimulated me. Solved anti-clockwise for the second day running. Well blogged Jack – not an easy one.

    The pub was a trip down memory lane. One of my earlier memories is sitting on the step outside outside a Tooting pub drinking lemonade, eating Smiths Crisps, smelling the hops and playing with the sawdust.

  7. 35 minutes for this. Tough, as others have said, but I did enjoy it a lot. A narrow escape because I came very close indeed to bunging in SABEERING in desperation.
    Unknowns: SABREWING, NIXIE, TESSERACT, PRUNELLA, BELTED GALLOWAY, ARGOSY, EYEBRIGHT, TIFFIN as “lunch”. Almost quicker to list the things I did know.
    Dandelion wine? Really?
  8. 18:07 here, but NIXIE, BELTED GALLOWAY and PRUNELLA as a cloth were the only unknowns. I also spent a couple of minutes pondering (cow got labelled)*, and also wasted a bit on (act harbouring)* for 26ac until I got a couple of checkers. On the other hand 1ac and 1dn went in straight away, so the top left was filled very quickly.
    1. You might like to check the link I posted in a comment above, Andy. I didn’t remember it whilst solving either!
  9. I just noticed that, by coincidence, there was BILL SYKES/SIKES query in that blog too, in an early comment.
  10. Very challenging (and enjoyable) but I got there in the end (though trying, post-solve, to check TESSERACT in online OED gave me a sense of alarm; fortunately Google came through). My farming background made BELTED GALLOWAY relatively easy; MISTED went in with fingers crossed (I almost went for TINTED) – I guessed the definition was ‘obscured’ but could not resolve the wordplay at all. So thanks, jackkt, for a great blog which demisted this and much else.
  11. This immediately brought to mind the Heinlein story “… and he built a crooked house”, whilst “Dandelion Wine” is by Bradbury.
    Do we have a closet SF fan among us?
  12. 14:32 and thought this a thing of beauty – the things I didn’t know (or at least didn’t know for sure) were numerous, but (at least as far as I was concerned, your mileage may vary) were clued in such a way that there was scarcely room for doubt. There again, comments so far suggest this setter is one of those whose work causes Marmite-like divisions among solvers…
  13. Off to a brisk start with the 1s going straight in but eventually stopped the fake Rolex at 26:42.

    As with others I had most trouble in the NE with the fleet, cow, shape, pixie and grass. In fact I only got the sailor’s hornpipe once I remembered “nix” as US slang.

    Put me down as another who tried to recall if Bill Oddie had ever spotted a sabeering. I also misparsed leather as L + THE in EAR, though what sort of number ear is supposed to be I have no clue.

    I’m ambivalent on the puzzle as a whole, finding it neither irritating nor beautiful.

  14. By comparison with yesterday’s puzzle this was far less frustrating. Lassoed the cow from the crosses, only two words that made sense together. Had sabrebill for the bird, which it is, until fathoming 5 down. Nixie is an item of undeliverable mail in the US, a gas-filled electron tube in laboratories and a watery spirit in German folk tales and Times crosswords. Is bovver a word or a corruption?

    Enigma

  15. The definition of a TESSERACT as a ‘cube within a cube’ is a bit misleading. It’s actually a four-dimensional hypercube, and it’s only its projection into three dimensions that appears like this (with each vertex of the inner cube connected to the corresponding vertex of the outer one), just as a projection of a cube into two dimensions can appear as a ‘square within a square’. For more, see this article from Wikipedia.
  16. Some interesting words here, unfortunately not including sabeering, a most unlikely solution that (yet again) I forgot to go back to, so a technical dnf but an enjoyable solving experience nonetheless. I do like these perimetrics. ‘Tiffin’ is still said all the time in India.
    1. What a pleasure to be reminded of it and its ending, ‘the boom / of the far waterfall like doom.’
  18. About 50 minutes, so not easy. Held up mostly by the pub, the spirit, the wine, PRUNELLA, and my last entry, MISTED. I was particularly misled by NIXIE. As I note above, in the US “nix” is a verb usually meaning to turn down, or squelch. I don’t recall ever having heard it to mean “nothing”, which in US slang can be ‘zip’, ‘zilch’, or even, ‘squat’, but I can’t equate it to ‘nix’. So I was a bit cranky with that. I expect there’s a dictionary somewhere that supports it or it wouldn’t be here, but if it ever did carry that meaning, I don’t think it does any longer. Regards to all.

  19. Despite getting 1ac and 1dn straight off (and most of the left hand side), I took an age with this one, but eventually managed most ok. Needed to use dictionary to check the cow (I too spent a long time trying to work out ‘cow got labelled’ as an anagram), and the ship, despite thinking of this word early on, as we had this meaning of ROSY a couple of days ago.

    I too had FREAK SHOW for a while, and SABEERING (doh!).

    Didn’t enjoy this one nearly as much as yesterday’s, and I think that may be because of the amount of unknown vocab in today’s. Yesterday’s clueing seemed somehow more creative.

    Have a good weekend, everyone, see y’all next week!

  20. Yes, COED supports your interpretation of NIX in the US but Collins also has it as US and Canadian informal slang for ‘nothing’.
    1. See “Oklahoma” – “I’m just a girl who cain’t say no, I’m in a turrible fix. I always say come on let’s go, just when I orta say nix”. Got tiffin from the Raj Quartet. No idea how long this took me – eons and computer is on the fritz.
        1. But what she orta say is ‘No!’, not ‘Nothing’. I spent some time trying to force ‘nada’ to combine with ‘i’ in the right way to get ‘naiad’, but in any case gave up; two DNFs in a row.
          Ray Bradbury wrote ‘Dandelion Wine’, a short story collection, I believe; otherwise I’d never heard of the stuff.
  21. 18:50 here for another toughie. BELTED GALLOWAY was a complete unknown, and SABREWING (where, like keriothe, I came perilously close to bunging in SABEERING) and TESSERACT rang only faint bells.

    Some splendid clues, particularly those for MISTED and BOSTON TEA PARTY (whose Y fortunately ruled out COW from the anagram in 8dn).

    Edited at 2012-01-13 10:49 pm (UTC)

  22. From the dim dark mists: Tesseract – the equidimensional orthogonal projection of a cube into four-space. Well yes, of course. When you put it that way …

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