25859* “The streets were dark with something more then night.” Raymond Chandler *edited

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Either this was pretty dense or I am, or possibly both. 32’11” with the bottom half very much more slippery than the top. There’s a Dashiell Hammett/ Raymond Chandler thing going on here, with a couple of slices of American slang which would sound pretty good snarled by Bogart in full Philip Marlowe mode, and a likely sounding dame at the bottom left (try pronouncing her with a D instead of a T). I’m convinced it would be possible to write a pastiche crime story featuring almost every word in the grid, though I’m not at all sure that the cocktail would be one enjoyed by our main protagonist. The dame might like it. Or that piece of skirt with the mafia connections and a penchant for ham.
As for me, I blundered my way around the dark and rainy sidewalks of the grid until I’d twisted every last clue into some sort of shape, and here’s the story of how I cracked the case of the empty grid.

Across
1 GUSHIEST  most voluble
An invited one is a GUEST, and quiet gives you the SH, one gives you the I for your guest to keep. “You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.” RC
5 SIDE ON  in profile
Add EON for age to a S(mall) passport, which is an example of ID
8 MID-MORNING  Around 10 or 11
Probably depends on when your morning starts. Separate the numbers from the D(eutsch)M(arks), tack on the O(ther) R(anks), which are men, and the two abbreviations acquire a surrounding MINING, which digging could properly be.
9 MUSH triple definition
A command to husky dogs; features, (British?) slang for a person’s face; mawkishness or sentimentality.
10 HOLD ONE’S TONGUE keep mum
Not hard to work out what the answer must be, but tricky to gather together the anagram fodder. OLD HOUSE ON GET and N(ame. “Off the wall” is the instruction to give the letters a quick whiz in the blender.
11 EMBLEMS  tokens
Unfinished perfume gives SMEL(l), the note is ME (more commonly mi) and the book just the B. insert part 3 into parts 1 and 2 and reverse all as per instruction.
13 MINDSET thinking normally
Which I took to mean thinking in the way that you usually do, which might not, of course, be normal at all. Watches=MINDS, the rest is a two letter film, so that’s ether If… or ET. Guess which.
15 EGG ROLL  fare
This one gave me perhaps the most trouble because I failed to separate flat and fare, It had to be EGG ROLL, but they’re by definition roundish. And how was render ROLL? (Sound of cent dropping) it’s render flat, as in roll out .
18 CABBALA  special scripture reading
One of six possible spellings (Shakespeare would have added a few more) of the arcane reading of Hebrew scriptures. Ask Madonna: she knows all about it. CA(lifornia), this time not the more familiar Cal, plus two B(ishops) and À LA for “prepared with” as in à la Florentine, with spinach.
21 IT’S A SMALL WORLD  fancy meeting (you here assumed)
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. And orders a Sea Breeze, And I’m fresh out of cranberry. There goes the beginning of a beautiful friendship. OK, do it this way. Take the T off the end of point, and surround it with IS AS (like) MALL (arcade) WORLD (globe) You can get into all kinds of tangle by trying to put the globe outside everything else. I did.
22 OSLO location
A bogglingly vague definition. Select odd letters as instructed from Or SeLdOm
23 OXYGEN TENT this
It’s a bit of an &lit. To get it, you have to accept the whimsy of bovine becoming OXY, like an ox. Fellow is GENT, the hospital department is the ever faithful E(ar) N(ose) and T(hroat)
24 MYRTLE  maybe miss
Reverse hidden (quite well) in hotEL TRY Motel
25 MEATHEAD Idiot
MEAT sounds a lot like meet, run into. Van is the HEAD of a military column. I wanted it to be BUTTHEAD, but the city at 18d didn’t seem likely with a final U.

Down
1 GUMSHOE Possible US version of Morse
Morse is a fictional detective (like you didn’t know?), and his American cousin would be a GUMSHOE. GUM for stick, and an Oxford is not just Morse’s stamping ground, but also a style of SHOE. Morse did crosswords, but not, I think, this one.
2 SADDLEBAG  storage place for bicycles
I wanted shed somewhere in here, but this is a storage place on a bicycle not for one. Blue is SAD, and the rest is an anagram of GABLED
3 ISOTOPE  Element in certain form
Proper bit of science. Very=SO, first=TOP, that is=IE, combine and contain as instructed.
4 SUNLESS dark
A straight construction of S(afe) and UNLESS for except if.
5 SIGNORINA Girl from Parma, maybe.
The location and the wordplay ensure your second N is not a T. Passing by (briefly) gives you IGNORIN(g) and “it” (as in the It girl) is crossword convention for S(ex) A(ppeal)
6 DEMIGOD issue of Mercury
There were many, many of them: Mercury/Hermes seems to have been fairly frisky in his time. Reverse DOG (follow) and I’M ED, the newspaper man’s self introduction.
7 OBSCENE  blue
Not in the sense used in 2. O(ld) B(oy) for former pupil, SCENE for something painted, a pretty vague indication, I thought.
12 MILESTONE  Pillar
As it might be.Take SMILE for beam, causing the first letter to fall to the bottom, and then add TONE for “pitch”
14 SEA BREEZE  cocktail
Made with vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice (really? Yuck). I took SEA to mean host as in looking out over a sea of faces. Any better suggestions welcome. BREEZE for a simple task, that sort of piece of cake. Not a slice in sight.
16 GAINSAY dispute
A simple joining of GAIN (achieve) and SAY (Influence)
17 RESHOOT Do take over
Filmspeak here: do a “take” over again. A rearrangement of OTHERS and 0 (nothing)
18 COLOGNE city
Tricky if “record” makes you think LP, EP, disc or tape. Solid is CONE, the inserted record is in this case a LOG. Does that make scents?
19 BOWKNOT  decorative fastening
Went in on wordplay of BOW for buckle (pronounced bough) and TONK for clobber, smite, raised or reversed. I think from the description it’s what I use to tie my laces, but it didn’t feel familiar.
20 AUDITED not cooked
Hm. OK. I’ll hold the cynicism. Anagram of DID TEA and (men)U

49 comments on “25859* “The streets were dark with something more then night.” Raymond Chandler *edited”

  1. A top puzzle with eveything hidden in clear sight and no recourse to obscurity. 21a is a terrific multi-word clue.

    Such an enjoyable workout, I don’t even feel too bad about fouling up on the ‘signorita’.

  2. In other words an almost-unprecedented sub-Z for me today, which suggests that he was blogging as he solved.

    Slowed up in the SE, LTI being BOWKNOT and MEATHEAD.

    I guess AUDITED should mean not cooked, but it doesn’t seem to work that way in practice.

    Good fun puzzle, and the usual high-standard blog from the Z man.

  3. A novel idea certainly to graft the top half of a Quick Cryptic onto the bottom half of an oh-so-slow main Cryptic. All in all I was pleased to have a bogey-free round, finishing in just over the hour.
  4. *Either the Zeeman had had one Sea Breeze too many or he was trying to send me a coded message.*
    2. I’ll never touch another See Breeze. It looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food, and I still didn’t spot it.
      1. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”
  5. Everything above the row containing 15/18ac was a write-in for me, but everything from there downwards except 18dn 20dn 21ac and 24ac was a struggle.

    I’d class CABBALA as obscure and I’m not sure I have ever heard of BOWKNOT in my life (both words are underlined in red as I type this, which I take as support for my comment). And GAINSAY went out with the Ark. Shame I didn’t get that one sooner or it would have saved me wasting what seemed like hours trying to justify FIG ROLL at 15ac. I resorted to aids eventually and even then had serious doubts for a while that I would ever finish.

    Edited at 2014-08-07 05:14 am (UTC)

    1. From Monty Python’s Argument Sketch, 1972:

      Mr Vibrating Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
      Man But it isn’t just saying ‘No it isn’t’.
      Mr Vibrating Yes it is.
      Man No it isn’t, Argument is an intellectual process … contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
      Mr Vibrating No it isn’t.

    2. CABBALA is very well-known these days, thanks to Madonna, who is famously a devotee.
        1. My comment was not intended as a value judgement on Madonna! Like her or not she’s one of the most famous people in the world, and I’d wager she’s made Cabbala more famous than Gilbert and Sullivan.
  6. 23:23 … lovely puzzle, and a top blog — thanks, Z8. For those of us with a weakness for the mean streets, irresistible.

    There’s a Myrtle in Red Harvest, who doubtless frequented sleazy motels (she did help cover up a murder so she’s no better than she ought to be).

    And as any self-respecting conspiracy theorist would tell you it’s pretty much a straight line from Cabbala to the Maltese falcon (via the Knights Templar, naturally)

    Great fun all round.

    1. Just read Ivanhoe by Scott. Two things amused me: 1) Scott equipped his Grand Master with a fancy staff of office, which he called an abacus, (mis)remember (no Googling then) the latin ‘baculus’; 2) Cedric (Ivanhoe’s dad) was an (unintended?) invention based on the old Saxon name Cerdic.
  7. . . . with many going in unparsed so thanks for the blog z8. A fine and fair puzzle so congratulations setter.
  8. Good, wholesome fare; bottom half much more difficult than top, as others have said. Some very clever, misleading clues, I thought; excellent exercise for the brain.

    The across lights read like a collection of late sixties rock bands: I think Myrtle Meathead was the singer with Egg Roll Cabbala on their Emblems Mindset album.

    40 minutes and well worth the effort.

    1. Quite an eclectic musical mix in the bottom half with Montserrat Cabbala, Myrtle Meathead, “It’s a small world (after all)” and Miles Davis’s Miletones album all appearing.
  9. 40 minutes commuting plus walking time from Waterloo to sort out the last two in my head. When I eventually twigged that FIG ROLL should have been EGG ROLL then GAINSAY finally arrived.

    Can’t see IT’S A SMALL WORLD without thinking of the Disney World ride and the annoyingly catchy song which it plays.

    1. Thanks a lot for the earworm.

      Grrrr.

      Incidentally, it’s not just the disney ride. Half the electronic toys my kids had seemed to have that tune.

      Edited at 2014-08-07 12:40 pm (UTC)

      1. I have it on my doorbell if I’m not expecting welcome guests. Gets me in just the right mood. The drawback is that earworm, which I was conscientiously try to keep out of the blog. Oh well. Daa di da da da di daa…
        1. I dont know what this tune is and I am going to keep it that way so fingers in the ears and LA LA LA . . .
  10. 18 mins, and I’m another who got throught the top half rapidly but then had a lot more difficulty down below, although my problems were mostly in the SW where it took me a while to see what was going on in some of the clues. At 15ac, much like Z8, I took a while breaking up “render flat fare” in the correct way, and at 17dn (my LOI) it took a while to isolate “do take over” as the definition, and it was only after I did that I saw the anagram fodder. I thought MYRTLE was excellently hidden, and I also thought OSLO had one of the better alternate letter clues.

    I admit I raised an eyebrow at the “not cooked” definition for AUDITED, but I could see where the setter was coming from so no real quibbles. All in all a very enjoyable puzzle, as was Z8’s blog.

  11. 27.24 here after a real struggle in the SE. Great blog Z. As you intuit, a gumshoe is more a Paul Drake than a Lt. Tragg (to cite a more recent example of the genre). Thanks for parsing “audited” – I got but I didn’t get it.

    Of all people, Chief Justice Roberts of the US Supreme Court wrote an opinion not all that long ago in Hammett/Chandler-speak. Apologies if this gets spammed. http://lawhaha.com/justice-roberts%E2%80%99-gritty-detective-drama/

    1. Unspammed.

      Your first para reminds me of a pet annoyance that Perry Mason has been clued as ‘detective’ in the Times puzzle on more than one occasion.

    2. Olivia, if you can access the rest of The Times, check out today’s Law Report. A slightly whimsical Supreme Court judgement published yesterday discussing the legal passengers on the Clapham omnibus.
      1. Thanks bigtone – I’d have missed it otherwise and it was a good one.
      2. Thanks for pointer to this decision.would have missed it otherwise and it is brilliant
  12. Overall time about 80 min – completed top half fairly quickly, then failed to get any further, so went away to deal with a warning I’d had from my security software.
    On return, saw that 16dn need not begin with a vowel, got GAINSAY, when remaining acrosses fell in short order. LOI 14dn – I don’t like ‘host’=’sea’ at all, so had to verify from list of cocktails in Bradford.
  13. I need a lie down in a 23a after that because it was the only one I got besides COLOGNE in the bottom half after quickly completing the top. I thought the clues in this one were excellent.

    Thanks very much for the excellent blog z8.

  14. 55 minutes for this, but I was pleased to finish without resorting to aids, as I thought I might with 13, 14 and 25 still unsolved. However, just as I was about to throw in the towel I saw MINDSET, and guessed at a cocktail I’d never heard of, leaving me with 25, which took another minute to decide on MEAT for the opening. The egg roll was tough for me as well, as I’ve never seen one or eaten one. I still don’t know what it is precisely as it’s not in Chambers.
    I agree with vinyl1 that the answers could be got from close scrutiny of the clues (plus a bit of lateral thinking, abandoning one’s mindset).
  15. I just loved this – and the blog. Many thanks to setter and to Z. Nearly 45 minutes of struggle, almost wholly in the bottom half, to finish, fully parsed. Real feel of achievement at the end. I liked all the clues in the bottom half – all there to find, and perfectly fair, but some very smooth surfaces coupled with excellent misdirection. More like this one, please!
  16. Three missing today (Reshoot, Cabbala and Oxygen Tent) and one mistake (Signorita not Signorina). FOI Mush.
    1. Damn! Thought I was all correct until I read your comment. I’m also a signorita.
  17. Bit weird as to consistency this one, but some good stuff. It shunted me around a bit though, because I couldn’t really find a groove due to the variability. Just over the hour, in the end.
  18. Definitely a puzzle of two halves as stated. The top half went in as a clean sweep and I got through to the end in 15:14.

    I got a bit becalmed and couldn’t find a way back in but I hadn’t looked at 24 so Myrtle came to my rescue.

    Re Vinyl’s comment about needing wordplay 6 of the acrosses went in on def and checkers with wordplay unliquidised post-solve.

    Thanks to S&B.

    I was expecting Ulaca to proclaim that he doesn’t like Chandler given his dislike of Wodehouse. For me they’re very similar in that the plot is incidental and the beauty is in the dialogue and prose.

    1. Never read either author, but particularly like two of the films Marlowe wrote the screenplay for, Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train.
      2. “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

        “She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

        “I’m an occational drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”

        “The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings.”

  19. 16:51 which somehow still puts me in the top 10 in the mid-afternoon UK time. Should have been a lot quicker if I hadn’t thought more about putting MID EVENING in at 8 and GUSHYEST thinking the element might be YTTRIUM.
  20. 18m, the top half a lot quicker than the bottom, like everyone else. Absolutely top-class puzzle I thought, with several very well-hidden definitions. I particularly liked ‘fancy meeting’. Thanks setter, and z8 for a very entertaining blog.
  21. Thanks for the blog. The fact that one can come here for enlightenment usually encourages me to struggle on but I finally gave up from mental exhaustion on the bottom left side partly due to putting in fig roll and not reconsidering. Like others I found the top half straightforward and enjoyed discovering the hidden Myrtle.
  22. About 40 minutes, an entertaining challenge from an excellent puzzle, although I do quibble with the ‘sea’=host as a tad too airy for my taste, and with the ‘oxy gent’ as perhaps taking license a tad too far. Beyond that, I parsed everything but the SIGNORINA, so thanks to our blogger for that. LOI was BOWKNOT, after CABBALA. Despite some cynicism hinted at here, I liked AUDITED. Regards to all, setter as well.
  23. 13:04 for me. All clever stuff I suppose, but not really my sort of puzzle.

    The trouble is that I’ve been tackling lots of old-style Times puzzles recently and enjoying the brevity and wit of their clues. Here the clues were generally too convoluted for my taste – in particular the long across answers both took me some time to sort out exactly how they worked – and over all there was nothing about this puzzle that said to me “this is a Times crossword” rather than one from any of the other (ex) broadsheets.

  24. Defeated by 5 in SW – even after a night to sleep on it – but I thoroughly enjoyed the struggle – as much as the blog. Haven’t heard from munk1puzl (if I remember the name correctly) for a while. Hope not put off by my Quickie blogging?
    1. Herself has been embroiled in marking exam papers and all other considerations take something of a back seat. Normal service should be resumed shortly.
    2. Chris you are so lovely to ask after me!

      In short I resigned my oompa-loompa job in May before they accused me of gross misconduct – essentially trying to help people which was outside the rules & regs. So I was lucky to be able to resort to my former tutelary occupation and team lead 2 groups of 7 examiners for 2 A Level papers. I like doing it properly but that means it redefines ‘time-consuming’.

      I’m now back in circulation and am just about to blog Friday’s quickie which I did this morning 🙂

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