25608 How many Northern towns can you think of?

This took me 26′ 46″, so rates about a 7 on my personal Mohs scale, though some of that may be bloggers nerves, A third or more of that time was spent in the Home Counties, including trying to think of a town north of Watford that might mean “chance”. That would be a fine thing. Several clues required very precise separation of definition and cryptic. By and large, the more esoteric bits of required knowledge are covered by generous enough wordplay: you don’t have to know where Pythagoras first drew breath or what the bird is in 19: like those painting by numbers canvasses, all you really have to do is fill in the letters you’re told to put in, and the result, however unlikely it looks, is probably right. Let’s see how it goes

Across

1    FETTLE  Condition, almost always fine, produced by the odd (actually even) letters of sTaLl inserted into FETE for “gala”.
4   SWADDLE Insert the first letter of Wear into SADDLE “seat”. Prince George first appeared for the camera swaddled.
9   UTTER  Your worker in tailoring is a cutter. Ignore the C(old) and you have your synonym for unqualified, as in “an utter
      failure”
10 COME OFF IT  You come off drugs when you stop taking them, I is “current” in physics and crossword clues T
      is temperature ditto.
11 DIANETICS L Ron Hubbard’s deliberately invented science/religion, the core of Scientology. Lisa Marie Presley, Neil Gaiman
      and Charles Manson are among those who have tried it and found it wanting.
12 TACKY  Turn back your kitty CAT, empty KilkennY, and you display poor taste.
13 ICKY And in another clue for sticky, this time codenamed “nasty”, the last piece of worK is framed by ICY “cold”.
14 AVOCATIONS, a “good spot” anagram of Nova Scotia, for what you’re doing now. Stop it and get on with your work.
18 GOOD FOR YOU  A rather facile double definition. Perhaps “may be” could be better rendered as “is” in this context.
20 VITA  Miss Sackville West was a poet, author, gardener and sometime lover of Virginia Wolff. JC would have used “vita” to
      mean life.
23 VOTER  Insert TO in REV(erend) and reverse the lot for your X man.
24 HUSBANDED  I’m not sure why I stumbled on this one. It’s just US (American) BAND (players) in (s)HED (cast – think reptile
      skins and remove the intro). The whole means “used sparingly”.
25 NILE GREEN  A rather wishy washy shade, made up by mixing the letters of engineer with L(eft)
26 PROMO  Among other possibilities, a promotional video created for the even letters of sPaRrOw leading the M(edical)
      O(fficer). Another clue that unaccountably held me up.
27 LINCTUS  The Quebequois allegedly speak French, so their “you” gives you TU: stick that into Lincolnshire rather than
      Massachusetts for cough medicine.
28 UNISON   Singing without harmony, S(on) inserted into UNION for “marriage”

Down

1   FOUNDLING  The last letter of grueL inserted into FOUNDING for a child typically found with a sad note on the doorstep.
2   TITLARK The Meadow Pipit’s or two birds for the price of one. Most of TITL(e) over Noah’s floating zoo.
3 LARGER I.e. “more stout” Take the D(aughter) out of LARDER and replace it with a G(ood)
4   SAMOS  Your triangular snack is a samosa (and not nacho as I first thought). Pythagoras was born on most of it, the isle of
     Samos. Take the setter’s word for it.
5   APOSTATE Anagram of “a teapot’s” to produce an apostate, such as Lisa Marie Presley, Neil Gaiman and Charles Manson
     from a Scientologist’s point of view.
6   DE FACTO The definition is just “Really” (Daniel) DEFOe is the author who is shortened and enclosing ACT for.”play”
7   ENTRY  Posh people (g(ENTRY) lose their first letter in the vestibule.
8   ACHIEVER  Defined as “a successful one”, built from A CH(urch), the first letter in Italy, and EVER for “always”
15 CROSSING As in a boat passage. CROWS sans W(ith) SING for chorus.
16 STAND DOWN  A partnership in cricket is a stand, machinery that’s not working is down, the whole meaning “withdraw”
17 AFFRIGHT Not, I would think, that old a word for “scare”, FR for “father” is inserted into A FIGHT for “a battle”
19 ORTOLAN Perhaps today’s lesser known bird. Build it form O(ther) R(anks) “men”, TO “closed” (expect complaints – we think
     here it means “nearly closed”) and L(oca) A(rea) N(etwork)
21  INDOORS Two definitions, “at home” and doors by which one is supposed to go in, not out.
22 HAPPEN   Means perhaps, or maybe in some northern (England) dialects. Took me forever. It’s not a place name.
23 VENAL Here means open to bribery, the heart of diNed with VEAL round it
24 HEELS  Sounds a lot like heals, here means cads or bounders. I was thinking too much of bacon. That sort of curing.
 

49 comments on “25608 How many Northern towns can you think of?”

  1. 17:47 .. I enjoyed this one. Always just enough going on to make you think. And, as ulaca says, quirky.

    About 25 years ago I spent a wonderful Easter on Samos. I remember being quite awed by the Tunnel of Eupalinos, which at the time was just sort of lying there unmarked and largely ignored (except by the goats who were using one opening for shade). That may all have changed a bit by now.

    On edit: I’ve just remembered that it was on Samos that Easter that I solved my first Times crossword, mainly because storms were stopping the ferries coming over and I ran out of reading material. After reading my one newspaper cover to cover a couple of times, I finally had no choice but to tackle the ‘weird’ crossword. I forget exactly how many days it took… Σιγά σιγά.

    Edited at 2013-10-17 02:07 am (UTC)

  2. Totally confused in the SE. HAPPEN will always be associated with “while” for me. As in: “Do not cross while lights flashing”. This confused some dialect speakers for whom “while” meant “until”. No deaths reported as far as I know but.

    Not a happy morning. More sort of TACKY and ICKY. And I had to explain to a dear guest about how they “cook” ortolans in France. Don’t go there if you’re a twitcher or a dying French President.

    Edited at 2013-10-17 05:48 am (UTC)

  3. had to check Ms S-W, fingers kept wanting to put VIVA, also DKN Dianetics, which was an obvious construction from wordplay.

    Was 100% on paper – then a check letter typo gave me two errors after I’d had to type the whole thing for a third time because The Times site kept timing out (not responding message on top of screen), and I had to close/reopen the link, ending up back to a blank grid each time.

    Has anyone else had a similar connection problem?
    My other on-line links are OK.

  4. Glad (in a misery-loves-company sort of way) to see the message from Keef_Lawrence. I finished in 28+ minutes, submitted, and nothing happened, other than the window shrinking to almost nothing. Summoned up the grid again, desperately typed in, finished at 29:40, submitted again, … I tried to submit a message to the Forum, no result. But aside from that, an enjoyable puzzle.
    On edit: I just went back to the club site, and found to my surprise that my score did make the leaderboard at last (27:26). Rosselliot must have had the same problem I did, as the leaderboard shows him with 4 successively longer times!

    Edited at 2013-10-17 03:35 am (UTC)

  5. Nice, quirky puzzle. Last in DIANETICS after the SE corner had fallen, with a bit of a guess at HAPPEN. So, thanks to Zabadak for unearthing the northern dialect meaning. Getting PROMO at least set me on the right track – until then I was going through my inventory of northern towns of the required pattern. Not a long list: Malton, Darwin…

  6. And that one letter was the M in PROMO, where I had ‘provo’, which I couldn’t parse, and I guess isn’t a real word anyway…

    Other than that, it took about 50 mins… would have been quicker were it not for my LOI, HAPPEN, which took a lot of head-scratching.

    Several from wp: DIANETICS, AVOCATIONS, TITLARK. DNK: STAND (cricket ref)

    Couldn’t parse COME OFF IT, so thanks for that, and all the other notes and links.

    1. The Provos were (are?) the Provisional Irish Republican Army in N Ireland, handy with explosives and machine guns and easily offended. Let’s hope they don’t read this blog!
    2. I dabble with this too. Provos were common in the 70s and 80s as militant members of the IRA.
  7. Mostly straightforward but I needed wordplay for the two unknowns, AVOCATION and DIANETICS, and whilst stuck on the latter, my LOI, I wondered what was going on in the NW corner with all the Hubbard, empty cupboard/larder/food store references. Also wondered briefly if Pythagoras may have come from Samoa!

    Since I only ever met 22ac, spoken, on TV shows such as Coronation Street, it never occurred to me that it carried an ‘H’. 40 minutes.

  8. 35 mins here, so another relatively easy ride.
    March 1968, arriving at Mossley, then in Lancashire (on the borders of W.Yorks and Cheshire) as a brand new straight from public school bobby and enquiring of an elderly local if I had reached my destination, his response was “Happen as like it were, lad”. Being affeart (as in 17dn) to ask him what he meant,I continued on hoping for the best. I later learned it to mean any variation of ‘might ‘ave’, ‘maybe’or even ‘the chances are that you have’.
  9. 12m. I feel I’m peaking early.
    Helped today by possessing almost all the required knowledge. The one exception was AVOCATIONS. I had to write out the letters to be sure of the anagram.
  10. 20 mins. I felt that this was one of those puzzles where close attention to the wordplay was needed for a lot of the clues so I enjoyed it. The only exception was VITA which required the solver to have at least one of two pieces of GK and no other way of getting to the answer.

    I was held up in the SE where it took me a while to see HAPPEN because I was another who was trying to think of a northern place name that fitted ???P?N. I was then able to get HUSBANDED and my LOI, CROSSING. I wasn’t 100% sure of AVOCATIONS but it was the most likely solution from the anagram fodder.

  11. Quirky, certainly, but enjoyably challenging. I had the odd experience of filling in the whole of the bottom half of the puzzle before solving a single clue in the top half. In the end finished with all correct, but only with resort to aids. At 11A I had worked out from the wordplay that the required word probably ended in … TICS and began with a woman’s name but still had to consult Wikipedia’s entry for Ron Hubbard to find out which one of his weird, pseudo-scientific notions fitted the bill. New to me.
  12. Indeed a quirky one this morning, with flashes of wit, and slightly old-fashioned, requiring both classical SAMOS and literary VITA knowledge. (Btw, “The Heir” is a delightful short read.)

    Nice surface on 26ac, making me think of Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice. Sneaky Lincolnshire at 27ac, tough on our cousins across the pond. TITLARK obscure (to me) but clear from wordplay. Wondered how TOTTY worked at 7dn before the penny dropped …

    Aye, a reet good one, happen. GOOD FOR YOU, setter (apart from that single clue, which was awful)!

  13. Its very sneaky the way ‘they’ lure you into a false sense of security and then present a puzzle like this one. 24 minutes about 8 of which were spent trying to work out what ‘chance’ was all about.
  14. 40m but eventually all correct though doubts over PROMO my LOI as not really a video to me but presumably as a film it might be on video? Also struggled with HAPPEN despite living ‘oop north’. The DNK today seemed like a well turned clue though but no standouts for me.
  15. 18:24 so I think I peaked last week and am now on t’slide.

    Same problem as others wi’ 22, despite living oop North. 20 were nearly Vida but I stopped missen just in time.

    Nowt else to say.


    1. I’ve noticed that the incomparable Magoo seems to vanish from the leader boards for a few weeks before every Championships. Does he stop solving crosswords? Does he go into monkish retreat? Or does he decamp, Federer-like, to a training camp in the Dubai desert to train with his entourage?

      I think we should be told (well, I think I should because happen I’m right nosy).

      1. I’ve a feeling he stores the puzzles up and solves them in batches before the big day.
        But I may be wrong about that.
        1. Surely he’s off somewhere doing altitude training? The champs are on the 13th floor!
          1. Ha! This is exactly the conversation I had with someone yesterday. I was picturing Magoo with his mentor, high in the Himalayas. “No, Grasshopper, do not attempt to fill the grid, you must become the grid…”
  16. 30/32 today with Titlark missing and Icky misspelt as Icke (!!). Careless that.
    Dianetics from wordplay and Happen from definition and checkers.
    I had question marks beside Entry and Indoors so thanks Z for explaining those.

    Am away tomorrow and won’t be able to comment so would like to wish all competitors the best of luck in Saturday’s Championship.

  17. You know when you reach the last one to enter, and you are reading the clue for only the first time? Very pleasing that.
  18. Georgette Heyer to the rescue again. In the Unknown Ajax the unlikely heir pretends to talk Yorkshire so as to annoy his unwelcoming relatives. Very pleased to bring it home in 20.58, then (horrors) double typo in the SE corner. Taking the vol de nuit to London later. I only wish it were as nice as it sounds. Solid work Z.
  19. Crept in a minute under my target of one hour.
    I knew ORTOLAN from the film “Gigi”, though as I remember it, she is instructed by her aunt to cut them in half before eating them bones and all.
  20. 20.10. Didn’t see the whole rationale for ortolan. Little to comment on, though I like the clue for crossing somehow. And the idea of the one-way-turning in-doors.
  21. Again a steady grind, but like most others worked on northern towns before seeing the light, AVOCATIONS caused no problem but I do wonder where I first heard it.
  22. Much the same experience as others with steady analysis providing the answers in a regular manner. 25 minutes to solve

    Didn’t know Sackville-West and didn’t like the clue. No real standout clues today

  23. ‘Happens’ that ‘while’ has, I’m told, a different connotation in the North, i.e. ‘until’. Story goes that a couple from the North came across a level crossing in the South with the instruction to ‘Wait while red light shows’ they duly did and when it showed proceeded to drive over the crossing, with unfortunate consequences. Apocryphal, I’m sure.
    John Mck
  24. About 35 minutes, held up like others in the SE, and by LINCTUS, trying to remember the word since it has appeared here before. I figured out the wordplay pointed to the original Boston, but whether it was in Lincs or Lancs, or somewhere else, was beyond me, but the full form of the word then rang a bell. LOI was HAPPEN, but not understanding it, so thanks to Z for the explanation. PROMO, HUSBANDED and INDOORS also took a while, or a happen. Regards.

    Edited at 2013-10-17 05:02 pm (UTC)

  25. 35min or so, with some dithering over “happen”. I couldn’t parse it for a while, as I was thinking of “chance” as a noun which didn’t tally. Finally twigged that “chance” was being verbed, as in “chance upon”, and it made sense.

    “Stand down” was a bit of a stab in the dark, since I know nothing about cricket except that it’s supposed to be a game played by gentlemen with odd-shaped balls. Or is that golf?

    I also agonised over “titlark” – it’s the sort of word that would have stuck in my mind if I’d heard it before, so I doubted its existence.

    Quiet night in A&E. The locals here seem quite well organised, and save all of their bingeing and brawling for Friday and Saturday nights so they can make a proper job of it. Still, it’s early yet.

    Edited at 2013-10-17 10:11 pm (UTC)

    1. Yes, never heard of titlark, but it certainly has a ring to it. It’s rugby that you are after, I believe. As a medical man, you will appreciate that ovaloid ‘pills’ are not the norm.
  26. 9:17 for me. I wouldn’t have minded three of those in the first preliminary on Saturday either, at least judging from the times of some of the opposition (hi there, crypticsue ;-).

    As a Yorkshireman I had no problem with HAPPEN = “perhaps”, though HAPPEN = “chance” took slightly longer to justify.

  27. I believe the clue to 1A is correct – ‘stall oddly ignored’ should imply the even letters of ‘stall’.
    1. You are of course correct, though my comment still works well enough. One can get carried away in the joy of blogging – I very nearly put the comment about cluing “to” at 23a rather than 19d where it belongs. Must make more notes.
      BTW, it’s free to register on this site and registering doesn’t induce spam. You can even choose your own avatar. Please feel free to disanonymise!
  28. I really cannot believe that I have finally achieved a faster completion time than both crypticsue (yes, I assure you that my earlier good-time girl comment was intended as a sincere compliment) and Andy Burrows (only just).
    My good completion time tonight, without aids, makes up somewhat for not knowing what day it was yesterday – senility approaches, but some grey cells holding out.
    George Clements
  29. Sorry for misspelling your name Andy, unfortunately the earlier comments disappear when the Comment Form is selected and I did not check back before submitting.
    George
  30. You might expect Australians to struggle with HAPPEN, but it went straight in on first read – sure it appeared very recently in another crossword. The SW held me up.
    Finished in 26:50 with one error – with the _A_K crossers wrote HAWK in for the bird, deduced (wrongly) that a TITHE was a right, saw the vessel must be ARK and ended up with the lesser-known TITHARK – very embarrassing.
    Rob

    Also knew DIANETICS. Repo Man, a quirky movie from the 80s full of sly visual jokes, showed a stand of paperback books at a supermarket checkout: DIURETICS, by Elroy Hubbard.

Comments are closed.