25620 One off the top shelf, perhaps.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
27.39 for this, so for me on the hard side, and a rather daunting 3 Andy Gilhams worth. Having only just returned from White Hart Lane, where at the tenth time of asking Spurs managed actually to win on penalties, I might claim some allowance for shredded nerved and heightened blood pressure. Be that as it may I do think this requires some quite intricate unpicking in places and there are few gimmes. My solving progressed in piecemeal fashion around the grid, even though long ‘un at 5 was my first in. This is how I saw it:

Across

1   CONSPIRING  Important to spot that the definition is “hatching plots” not “one hatching plots”. SPRING for bound
      impresses (takes in) I (one) after the criminal has been identified as a CON
6   DIRK  One of the easier ones, in which end of pointeD proceeds IRK, needle as in annoy, for what might be Macbeth’s
      dagger. Other Scots are available.
8   ADVOCAAT The end of game is E, so your supporter, in this case an ADVOCATe, loses his E and gains an included A for the
      drink I have never managed to savour, mostly because it looks like custard, which no self-respecting alcohol should.
9   REMAND  Clever this. A male debtor is a MAN in (the) RED. Remand is imprisonment or custody awaiting trial.
10 TERM  Probably the easiest of the lot. It’s hidden in winTER Months.
11 ELIMINATOR  A fair enough synonym for hitman. “Making threats” is MINATORy, non-stop indicating the removal of the last
      letter. it confronts, or stands against, our old friend ELI the priest
12 LANDSLIDE A sort of &lit, with the definition, overwhelming win, also needed for the wordplay: win=LAND, then SIDE (party)
      is overwhelming Liberal, conventionally abbreviated to L.
14 LINER reverse RE (on) NILe without its E(ast) for the big ship.
17 YAHOO Definition coarse person, then I think it’s YAH, “an affected upper-class person” (Chambers) and the heart of
      glOOmy.
19 TYRANNISE  Definition “Bully”. IS stalks (simply follows, in this case), the girl ANN, enclosed in the ancient port of TYRE
      almost always twinned in Biblical records with Sidon.
22 CONFIDENCE  Double definition, belief as in self-belief, secret as in confidential, i.e. bound to be revealed to the world
       by some earnest whistle-blower/hacker.
23 AMMO Contents of magazine not, in this case, the scantily clad ladies, but the bullets made up of A (article), two Males
      and a 0 for love.
24 TOBAGO “Island” the definition. Travel gives you the GO, John CABOT the explorer, loses his head and goes westwards to
      give the TOBA bit.. Nice surface with a touch of history to it.
25 AVIATING Flying, the definition, needs to be separated from the bomb, even though the V1 was indeed a flying bomb.
      The VI enters (A)rea with.A TING. A grossly inaccurate description.
26 EYRE as in Jane, the heroine, found by “despatching” odd letters of  vErY cRuEl
27 STEPHENSON  Engineer of Rocket fame (30 mph!). The Belgian port is Ostend. Extract the middle letters, and wrap them
      round an anagram (fixed) of PHONES.

Down

1    CHANTILLY I wanted this to be “One working hard”, but it’s not. It’s the French town, produced by the proverbially hard
      working ANT in CHILLY surroundings. See Proverbs 6 6-8 for the original.
2   NAVARIN Perhaps tricky for those with no chef pretensions. It is indeed a lamb stew, in this case made up of I RAV(e)
      reversed and inserted into NAN bread.
3   ISABELLA Anagram of LIABLE placed around S(outh) A(frica). Careful accounting for the letters disqualifies Isabelle as an
      answer.
4   IN THIS DAY AND AGE  Anagram of a Dane has dignity. Why not just “now”?
5   GIRLIE  I took this to be RIG for cook (the books, etc) reversed (up) followed by LIE for story. “Girlie” defined (for example)
      magazines with names like Razzle, Escort and Mayfair in my youth, usually kept out of our reach on the newsagent’s top
      shelf..
6   DAMNATION  D(emocrat) leading AM (American) NATION (people). The current example gets, in my opinion, far more than
      his fair share of the D word.
7   RANSOME Best known for Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome is clued by RAN for “published” (the Times ran a series
      of articles)  and SOME for “a bit”
13 DOOR FRAME  Easier than it looked. Anagram (specially) of “made for” surrounds O(ther) R(anks), “men”.
15 REED ORGAN an instrument that can certainly make a melody with a bit of help from some fingers. Today’s first soundalike
      clue REED/read, and then organ for newspaper.
16 MADE DISH  I had to check this in sources to make sure it was not just invented. The fish is IDE, the daughter D, serve
      both up in MASH/purée and you get something which the whole clue also (sort of) describes.
18 APOLOGY  Double definition as in “an apology for a clue” which might either be a rather rude assertion, or a word said in
      its defence.
20 IAMBICS Bits of poetry given by a second soundalike. Bix Beiderbecker, jazz musician, might conceivably announce himself
      as “I am Bix”. Bix was short for Bismarck, his middle name.
21 EDDOES are vegetable tubers edible if carefully processed,(toxic if raw!). Take off the R(ight) from red and add the does
      for deer, some female deer.
,   

40 comments on “25620 One off the top shelf, perhaps.”

  1. Thanks for the excellent blog Z, I had given up on MADE DISH.
    You have minor typos in 6D (US instead of AM) and 14A (ONE instead of ON).
  2. MADE DISH got me undone too. What is it? And if I ordered “mash”, I wouldn’t expect to be served purée.
  3. An hour for all bar 2dn, 8ac, 16dn and 21dn, and then needed aids. I think I’d enjoy my invented stew at 2 (Nifirin) rather more than the MADE DISH. Didn’t know that the noise made by Sloanes had been extended to mean them as well, but that was guessable. Never heard of the jazz man, so quite pleased with myself for getting IAMBICS. Always a silver lining…

    Was trying to fit Zeebrugge into 27, but not admittedly for long.

    Edited at 2013-10-31 06:52 am (UTC)

  4. Like Ulaca I resorted to aids eventually, once the hour had passed in my case. Never heard of EDDOES before, nor YAH as a type of person (thought they were ‘Hooray Henrys’) and if I ever knew what MINATORY meant I had forgotten it. Failed to think of either definition of APOLOGY so I wrote it in solely because it was the only word that fitted.

    MADE DISH was new to me too and the only definition I have found (in Collins) is “a dish consisting of a number of different ingredients cooked together”. As opposed to what, I wonder? A boiled egg? I wasted forever on 16ac having got my IDE+D the wrong way round after putting in SIDE DISH which so nearly fitted and at least I had heard of it.

    I hope I’m in for an easier time of it tonight.

    Edited at 2013-10-31 06:03 am (UTC)

    1. The conclusion from your post (which mirrors all my worries) is that this puzzle is … what can I say that’s sufficiently polite? … mmmm … an unmade dish perhaps?

      (Now Jim’ll be on telling me to do more Mephistos. Which is all very well except that I’m happy with the dailies and the odd Sunday puzzle as a level of achievement.)

  5. Good to see Y-words are still allowed in the Times crossword, even if they’ve been banned down the Lane.
      1. What is it with Spurs and pens? Twenty minutes of them yesterday and the softest penalty in EPL history at the weekend courtesy of Mr Oliver.
        1. Makes up for not getting any awarded last season, and only scoring one in our penalty shootout with Basel in the Europa.
  6. . . . but technically DNF as uncareful accounting for the letters in 3D gave me ISABELLE. Knew YAHOO but not YAH and MADE DISH was a complete guess. Odd concept. Not a particularly enjoyable solve.
  7. Too tricky for me with gaps at MADE DISH and TYRANNISE, not at all helped by putting in ‘a+he+a+ding’ in at 25ac. Seemed to make sense at the time.

    Got STEPHENSON without knowing where the STEN came from, and also couldn’t properly parse REMAND or ELIMINATOR.

    Didn’t know Mr Biededecke, so that didn’t help much either.

    Edited at 2013-10-31 09:22 am (UTC)

  8. Dnf, stumped by eddoes, which really should have got since discounted edroes; and a pointless dart. Not my finest hour. Made dish new but seemed to click. Liked iambics.
  9. Crept in just under the half-hour, and thought this was a tough but high-quality puzzle, with the exception of MADE DISH, my last one in after a lot of straining. To be fair to the setter, I think perhaps it’s not the clue, but the term itself I object to, for the same reasons as others above; as far as I can see, a “made dish” is pretty much what I would call a “dish”. How can you have a dish which isn’t “made”?
    2. Agreed. It does seem to be a bit of a nonsense term. The dictionaries says it’s any dish made up of different ingredients. There can be few dishes to which that description wouldn’t apply.
  10. A bit of a slog this one with two interruptions that didn’t help. I had some of the same problems as others particularly with MADE DISH which I looked up in the dictionary. I knew Bix, being something of a jazz fan.

    At 27A we aren’t told which STEPHENSON is referred to so the presumption about the Rocket is just that. They were a whole family of Engineers with George and his son Robert probably the best known now. It was George who beat Davy to the creation of the miners lamp but who received no credit outside of NE England. It is Robert who is the subject of the statue outside Euston Station.

    1. In my case, it was simple word association, as in Stephenson’s ——-. If I lived in NZ, it might have been Stephenson’s tunnel, in this case George Robert, nephew to George. An amazing family. At least I didn’t try spelling it with a V!
  11. 31 mins and I’m glad to see everyone else thought it was tough.

    A lot of the cluing was so well constructed that I was frequently misled definition-wise until I untangled the wordplay. Cases in point are TYRANNISE were I thought the ancient port was going to be the definition, CONSPIRING where I was originally looking for a noun, STEPHENSON were I was also looking for a port at first, and CHANTILLY where I was looking for a hard worker.

    I only got IAMBICS once I’d solved 19ac even though I knew Bix. I didn’t see the hidden TERM until I’d solved 1dn, and it took me far too long to see ISABELLA from the anagram fodder.

    I didn’t know MADE DISH, or had forgotten it if I’d seen it before, but I was able to construct it confidently from the wordplay. I don’t have a problem with mash=puree when they are verbs rather than nouns.

    I finished in the NE with GIRLIE and REMAND my last two in. A top quality puzzle.

  12. 35:15 … This was fun the way a five-mile run, twice over the assault course and straight into an ice cold shower is fun. Not much smiling along the way but if you manage to finish it without a rollocking from the Sergeant Major (or from the leader board computer) it doesn’t half feel good.

    COD .. to MADE DISH, which I refused to enter until I had the damn thing parsed (and which gave topicaltim the chance to bring out one of the truly great movie lines). Thanks Z8, and Sir, thank you, Sir! to the setter.

  13. A full hour needed for this. My breakthrough into the SW corner was getting 22. Andy Borrows’ comments above about the difficulty of distinguishing definition from wordplay applied here also.
    I threw in MADE DISH at the end simply because of the MASH container, but I didn’t recognize it as a set phrase.
  14. Tricky but excellent puzzle.

    I particularly liked REMAND, AMMO and IAMBICS. At 1A, I fell into exactly the time-wasting trap that Z warns us against in his first-rate blog, for which thanks. LOIs were GIRLIE and MADE DISH in that order. In the case of the latter, I had no problem with “purée”= MASH, which clearly had to be part of the solution, but, like quite a few others, I had to check in a dictionary that the term itself actually existed. By contrast, I did know NAVARIN, and have even eaten one on occasion.

  15. I had bouts of cruciverbal indigestion here, not knowing NAVARIN and certainly not MADE DISH. What an odd inclusion! Still, if you know it etc. I was helped by the chestnut (I think I’ve seen that one in The Indy and elsewhere) for RAN+SOME, but in general a tough solve from a good compiler, whoever it is.

    Many thanks to him or her, and z8.

  16. I’d heard of MADE DISH but didn’t think of it until I’d exhausted the possibilities of MAIN DISH. It was the SW corner that did for me. Had to look up EDDOES – never come across them before. There’s a Bangladeshi greengrocer at the corner of my street and I’m going to suss out his veg next time I pass. (He once gave me a box of mangos so maybe I can get a free sample of eddoes!) I only managed to finish this with aids so technically a DNF. 45 minutes. Ann
  17. 25m, with five at the end agonising over 21dn. Eventually I bunged in EDDOES but I was surprised to find it was right. I knew the term MADE DISH but I’ve always wondered what its opposite is supposed to be. Antipasto, perhaps?

    Edited at 2013-10-31 04:30 pm (UTC)

    1. That made me laugh. But of course we now all know that antipasto is dishES, since few days/weeks ago!

      50 minutes and a few guesses, and one wrong: Isabelle, after (not) carefully (enough) checking the anagram fodder. Didn’t enjoy it much.
      Rob

  18. After returning from a few days away, this took me about an hour. LOI was CHANTILLY, because I was convinced that cold meant just a “C”. MADE DISH from the wordplay, as well as EDDOES. REMAND was clever. A very challenging puzzle altogether. Thanks to the setter, and regards.
  19. Had to resort to aids for EDDOES and put in MADE DISH without liking it, as iterated above. Not much fun except for Bix which made me smile. Half an hour then a gap (to close the shutters) then ten minutes for correcting SIDE to MADE and my Loi TYRANNISE. Roll on tomorrow.

  20. A dreary slog, this one, to which I kept coming back in desultory fashion throughout the day. The four short (easy) clues went in first, then a few across clues, which unlocked the long anagram, and then I just stared for ages.

    Technically DNF, as I only put in MADE DISH (LOI) out of desperation, incompletely parsed. Didn’t particularly like CONFIDENCE or APOLOGY, and AVIATING is an ugly word. However, much can be forgiven a setter who comes up with the delightful I-AM-BICS, my clue of the day!

  21. 17:13 for me. I simply wasn’t on the ball today and made desperately heavy weather of some old chestnuts like 1ac (CONSPIRING).

    MADE DISH appeared (again as 16dn) in No. 24,251 (13 June 2009) with a rather similar clue: “Daughter served up fish covered in potatoes for main course, maybe (4,4)”, so anyone who’s been solving the Times crossword for five years should have been familiar with it. (Sadly, my brain is so addled that I found it hard to convince myself that I wasn’t just making it up, and wasted time searching for a better alternative.)

    All in all though, an interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

    1. …6 days a week 30 clues a day: anyone who can remember nearly 50,000 clues verbatim has my admiration.

      I can do a Times crossword when it’s published, then do it again 4 weeks later in The Australian, and be half way through it before having the slightest inkling I’ve done it before.
      Rob

  22. Late night solving session, but eventually completed successfully without aids. I did not fully parse ‘Stephenson’, and only got ‘made dish’ from the word play. Given the checkers, I think I would I would have come up with a suitable clue for ‘game fish’ rather than such an obscure expression. Just my opinion, as ever.
    George Clements
  23. That was a lucky one – no idea how I knew “EDDOES” or “NAVARIN”. MADE DISH also had me stymied for some time, and I was by no means sure it was right.

    Not convinced by “APOLOGY” meaning “defence” – I can think of no phrase where the two would be interchangeable. (Irrelevant Homer Simpson quote: “I never apologise. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I am.”)


    1. Surely, as a doc you must ‘have the Greek’, whence dictionary entry No.2:

      “a defense, excuse, or justification in speech or writing, as for a cause or doctrine.”

      Plato came up with a fairly good one. Or Socrates did, depending on how you look at it.

      1. We hewers of flesh tend to favour Latin; it’s just as effective as Greek in keeping the patient in the dark, and is backed by a stronger economy.
  24. A bit late coming here, and quite surprised to see all the bother about a made dish. A made dish is just one that needs assembly or preparation work as well as cooking.. so a pie would be a made dish, a pork chop would not. As such, “fish” is not a good example on its own as it would not be a made dish, hence the puree and in Tony’s example, the potatoes. It is a somewhat old-fashioned term, surely familiar to all my fellow Georgette Heyerites
    1. Ah, but I wouldn’t call a pork chop a “dish”, you see. Meanwhile, my wife reads GH, but I have never found myself drawn to her (Heyer, that is, not my wife).
  25. ” Wonder how long EP will persist in crosswordland – when was the last one pressed?”

    I think EPs have made a comeback (if they ever went away). An EP is any recording midway between single and album.
    I’d like to think that the crossword puzzle was responsible for the retention/revival of the term .. 🙂

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