25955 I say, ding dong!

Touch of the nursery slopes about this one with the few, perhaps less familiar, words well clued so that it’s quite hard to go wrong. No doubt someone will manage it, but I expect some quickish times today. Mine was 13.25, and if it slowed down anywhere it was in the bottom right corner. Perhaps it was just the excitement of approaching a really quick time. There are no hidden nursery rhymes, no subtle messages or themes, though there’s quite a decent meal included and somewhere to eat it, perhaps located in a rather pleasant part of the planet – all rather genteel. Here’s my progression through the grid.

Across

i COWARDLY  Lily-livered
The fish course, as the WARD, your protégé, tucks into COLeY without the Energy
5 SHADOW  suspicion
As in the shadow of a smile crossed her face. Assemble the given pieces: S(on) HAD (entertained) OW (that hurt). Exclamation marks not required
8 MARTINIQUE Island
Being French(ish) it doesn’t seem to go in for TEAROOMS (18 qv), but it looks a nice enough place to have one. The make of car, despite M?R?I at the start, is not Morris, but just the generic MARQUE, in which you place the metal TIN and 1.
9 PUMA  Big cat
UP for over (the game’s up, sonny) “retreats” unaccountably accompanied by MA
10 APPLES AND PEARS  flights for some Londoners…
… or “They bear fruit” if you prefer. presumably the “trees” is understood, just as the “of stairs” other bit. A+P is CRS for stairs. CRS is an abbreviation for Cockney Rhyming Slang, though I don’t think this example can do the CRS trick of just using the first word: I’m orf up the apples for a sooty?
11 DRAFTEE US conscipt
Say what you see  D(eparts) download
13 FINESSE bluff at table
Probably a bridge table. It’s where you attempt to win a hand by leading with a lower card than the high one you’re holding. Or something. FIE one of the many expressions of disgust that any lead of mine would elicit from ‘er indoors what knows how to play proper, NESS is the head. I’m off back to the tearoom
15 PRECEPT  Canon
Both are ” a rule of action”, nothing to do with clerics. P(arking) by REC(reation ground) and a PET exercised beyond its capacity to stay in order.
18 TEA ROOM Where Earl Grey could be
Ah, there it is! TOO M(odest) grabs EAR
21 SCOTCH PANCAKES  griddled food
Pleasant accompaniment to your Earl Grey. made by dropping thickish batter mix on a suitably hot surface. PANCAKES: makes an emergency landing, wheels up. SCOTCH is a version of 24 ac’s SPIRIT. Not to worry, this is Martinique, and there’s this nice little tearoom…
22 CHAD  Land in Africa
Conservative give you the C, “owned” HAD
23 AQUAMARINE  Maybe beryl
Three years back we celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary, so I had to do some research on beryl, which is why this was a gimme. QU(estion) and A(nswer) are embraced by A MARINE, who might indeed be a commando.
24 SPIRIT strong drink
Dillon rum is Martinique’s favourite tipple, apparently. Here the concoction is a suble blend of SIT (convene) penning RIP, the “final exhortation” reversed.
25 FLUMMERY  oatmeal pudding
Those unfamiliar with the ouevre of Leslie Phillips may not recognise LUMME as an expression of surprise, but it is. FRY is “cook”. I know flummery more from its derived sense of “empty compliment, humbug or pretentiousness”. Not sure the tearoom sells oatmeal pudding, nor whether I’d buy it if it did.

Down

1 COMMAND  Charge
Again, assemble the pieces. MAN, fellow, CO Care Of, MD doctor. keep jiggling until they fit.
2 WORKPLACE  the office
Not while we’re here in Martinique, it’s not. Anagram, “woefully”, of LACK POWER.
3 RAIMENT Clothing
Anagram, “unfortunately” of MINE, chewed, so to speak, by a RAT.
4 LAIRAGE  animal accommodation
Today’s best candidate for a made up word not found outside crosswords. EG from “for example”, A from “a”, RIAL from “sum abroad” (Saudi Arabia et al) all “raised”
5 SHEEPLIKE  being similar to Jacob, perhaps
I SEEK HELP which is found by taking “desperately” to be an anagram indicator.
6 APPEASE  Calm down
Verb  transitive here, and “download” APP with “rest” EASE. Auntie Crossword gets down and dirty with the kids.
7 OSMOSIS  assimilation
As in the process by which poms are integrated into Australian culture. Follow carefully: OS has to be “outstanding” (I think), MOSES is the lawgiver, but his E(astern) is nicked and replaced by a 1.
12 EXPECTANT  in the club
Lumme.Surviving is EXTANT, insert P for quiet, and EC for what the Times still thinks of as London’s business area.
14 STOCKPILE Accumulate
“Standard food” is, slightly whimsically, a STOCK PIE. insert L(eft)
16 ROSE HIP Fruit
Though I couldn’t eat a whole one without a lot of processing. Perhaps the tearoom sells it in infusion form. Moved upwards (ignore the “is”) gives ROSE, HIP means “with it”. Auntie Crossword gets down and dirty with the kids. Again
17 CHOWDER  stew
A mélange of “way in which” HOW, trotskyist RED (reversed) and C(old). More gastronimic delight.
18 TRAVAIL Laborious effort
Troop leaders are the T and the R, benefit translates as AVAIL
19 ACCLAIM praise
A C(onstant) CLAIM, “demand”. Simple, really.
20 MASTERY  Dominion
MARY, undoubtedly a girl, is “visited” by SET “out”. Here’s Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’ “And death shall have no Dominion” to give the word a bit of context.

 

46 comments on “25955 I say, ding dong!”

  1. I just knew someone would comment on how easy this one was, given that I was convinced I’d never get in under the half-hour. DNK 21ac, barely recalled FLUMMERY in this meaning and APPLES AND PEARS. Found LAIRAGE hard to believe; but then I recall a friend referring to the babeage of a certain bar, i.e. the relative density on site of babes. Didn’t understand SPIRIT, and was thus reluctant to put it in until I had all the checkers; twigged almost immediately after submitting. It gets my COD.
  2. Under the half hour (despite being over on the timer since I didn’t start for about 6 minutes doing something else). I never thought of chowder as a stew, it is more of a soup, although I suppose the dividing line is not exactly clear. Chambers has it as both.
  3. 42 minutes, so average for me, with LAIRAGE unknown (as it ought to be) and that meaning of PANCAKE unknown, though the pikelets themselves are a great favourite. Thanks to Zed for unravelling SPIRIT. After reading the explanation, I asked myself if I would have got it on blogging day.
  4. Gentle one, though FLUMMERY and SCOTCH PANCAKES went in from wordplay only. The Saudi riyal is usually spelled with a y, though I would imagine they’re all from the same root. 3D brought to mind the recent story about Vogue’s new offices in New York supposedly having a rat problem.
  5. A rare morning (as opposed to middle of the night) solve for me that didn’t go too well and in fact turned out to be a DNF because I forgot to go back and deal with 5ac which had managed to elude me.

    I lost a lot of time at 17dn because I couldn’t read my own writing and thought I was looking for a word to fit C?O?O?R.

    Running late and short of time I eventually gave up on 4dn and cheated as I was unable to come up with any word that fitted the checkers, so I was quite pleased to find the answer is a silly made-up word that’s somehow found its way into respectable dictionaries. I also excuse myself by doubting that any unit of currency clued as ‘sum’ is entirely fair. And as mohn2 has pointed out ‘rial’ is not the usual spelling anyway.

    Edited at 2014-11-27 09:16 am (UTC)

    1. My comment about the ri(y)al was more that Saudi maybe wasn’t the best example to use in the blog – I wasn’t objecting to the spelling in the answer, as that’s the one used in Yemen, Oman, and others.
      1. I bow to superior knowledge – my skimpy research (looking it up in Chambers) gave me “the standard monetary unit of Iran, Oman and (also riyal) Saudi Arabia and the Yemen Arab Republic”, which suggested to this careless reader that it can be spelt either way in Saudi. GT suggests بالريال for one and الريال for the other, so I guess that’s conclusive.
        1. I was going off the spelling on the Saudi bank notes and my experience of the FX markets but the dictionary is king in Crosswordland and it isn’t backing me up, so let me offer a retraction and an apology instead!
      1. I would agree with that, but the indicator is ‘sum abroad’, which made me at least think almost immediately of a foreign currency (once I’d given up trying to come up with German words for ‘total’).
  6. 30mins + a few more for LAIRAGE.

    dnk PANCAKES=emergency landings, half-knew FLUMMERY, I too would think of CHOWDER more as soup than stew.

    PS I found yesterday’s very tough, but as someone else on here commented, once I realise that it’s a prize one, I get a kind of brain-freeze…

  7. I enjoyed this, and it’s a grid which (especially if you get the long acrosses early on) gives you lots of good checkers, which lowers the degree of difficulty. I didn’t know LAIRAGE either but for the first time ever in my life, I found that I’d learned something from having watched the 80s slacker comedy California Man (it features a lot of period and location-specific slang which involves adding “-age” to the end of random words). I’m going to take this as a happy reminder that crossword knowledge doesn’t come from dry academic study alone. Clueage.

    Edited at 2014-11-27 09:37 am (UTC)

  8. My first day back after being laid low by a rather nasty virus so grateful for a gentle but interesting puzzle that I could chug along with, knowing I would finish but not quite sure when. About 30 minutes in the end

    Help up by SPIRIT where “convene to pen” set me thinking of poteen until I saw through “final exhortation”. Nice blog z8

  9. This reminded me of the Alan Bennett skit in Beyond the Fringe that takes off on the OT story in which Jacob dresses up in sheepskin to trick his blind old dad Isaac into blessing him instead of his brother Esau. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOsYN—eGk

    Count me as a chowder=soup person. I only knew “flummery” from Georgette Heyer as flattery.

    Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers!

        1. And thanks Olivia: happy memories of a visiting preacher at my College who really did start with “My brother Esau is a hairy man, but I am a smooth man”. Either the others didn’t know the sketch or disapproved of it on anti-fun ground. I had to explain why I had fallen off my chair laughing.
  10. 33 min – SPIRIT LOI from 22ac and checkers. I knew LAIRAGE in relation to farm animals, so not a ‘made-up’ word

    Edited at 2014-11-27 11:04 am (UTC)

    1. I’m pleased to see LAIRAGE has a life, even if a not particularly attractive one, outside of the crossword. One day, I hope to have one too.
      1. I’m surprised no theologians (or even rank-and-file members of the God Squad) have pointed you at the start of St John’s gospel, perhaps via the word “Logos” in OOD.
  11. In the extended hot summer of 1976, I spent time auditing slaughterhouse companies around Cambridge. This is not to be recommended but you do get to learn that the LAIRAGE is the first stop for the (live) animals, so not a made-up word.

    I agree with z8 that the best CRS is where only the first word is used, sometimes developing a life of its own with some unaware that it even is CRS. Eg, ‘lets have a butchers’, derived from butcher’s hook = look.

    Liked SPIRIT.

    Edited at 2014-11-27 11:47 am (UTC)

  12. 14:28 .. some nice stuffage in here. And a nice grid of vocabulary.

    I’m not sure there isn’t a Nina in here, Z8. With suitably nuanced delivery, the across clues, read in sequence, produce a thoroughly postmodern version of what Dave Gorman likes to call “a found poem”.

  13. 12:19 – was relieved to find FLUMMERY was right, it was one of those “I think these go together this way” hit and hopes. That bottom right quadrant with MASTERY, AQUAMARINE and FLUMMERY was my trickiest part.
  14. 11:58 with lairage LOI, partly because I didn’t know the word, and partly due to the sum/currency paradigm mentioned above.

    I’m actually quite fond of the practice of making new words by adding -age to existing ones. At beer festival organising committee meetings we’d make sure we had plenty of crispage to soak up the beer.

    1. Years back I worked with a group of people from Leeds who all had a penchant for that one, and also for -ington. They had a penchant for pubs, too, so, crispage with beerington was not unknown.
  15. 37 entertaining minutes for me. DK LAIRAGE, and as a bridge player I’d dispute that a finesse is really a bluff.
    A decent crossword and an excellent blog. Thanks z8b8d8k.
    1. You see, that’s what I mean. “As a bridge player…”. As a not before hell freezes over Bridge player, I have to get my info from Chambers, rather than the internal lexicon of Yarboroughs, singletons, adverse vulnerability, sucker-double and -um- stuff that Bridge players have at their beck and call. I tried, honestly I tried (flings down cards and exits stage left weeping. Again) Shall Dummy play? I think not.
    2. Agree with you about FINESSE – a calculated risk surely

      Perhaps we should explain. If the hand in open view contains the Ace and Queen of Spades and declarer, lacking the King, plays a spade from his hand then if declarer’s left hand opponent holds the King he has a problem. Play it and declarer tops it with an Ace. Don’t play it and declarer wins with the Queen – which is called a FINESSE. If declarer’s right hand opponent holds the King then the FINESSE fails.

  16. You can certainly use ROSE HIPS as an infusion, but it is necessary to take out the hairy seeds before chopping (and ideally drying) the residue. In my youth, the hairy seeds were used for sticking down people’s necks as itching powder.
    1. I have some rosehip teabags in my Cupboard of Infusions. Its popularity may be gauged by  it sell by date: July 2004.

      1. I’ve a new stock of rose hip syrup maturing, makes a nice hot toddy on the cold nights of the Co Durham winter.
  17. Found this tricky in places, glad I wasn’t on b-duty. Didn’t know LAIRAGE which as noted is a crossword-word at best. IMO a finesse is definitely not a bluff, it’s a technique used – often unnecessarily – to minimise losing tricks. Mrs K confirmed my suspicion that FLUMMERY was a pudding as well as meaning insincere flattery; oatmeal is apparently not an essential ingredient. 40 minutes or so, and I liked the 2 clues whose answers contained the Qs, but my CoD was OSMOSIS. Thanks z8 for explaining 24a and a jolly blog.
  18. I wish I could say otherwise but I gave up after 30 minutes with only 1a solved -my least successful attempt at any crossword in about four years. Should have got the anagrams but among my many failings were simply not knowing that precept=canon, pancakes =emergency landing, flummery, raiment and lairage. This was a St Anton black in icy conditions for me.
    1. I think I slightly regret the “nursery slope” comment. It was, for me, on the easier side, but I often find when I’m doing the commentary it does go quicker and I’m quite surprised when others (who are more often ahead of me) find it more of a struggle.
      It certainly looks as if you can count today’s brick wall experience as a complete aberration, and I look forward to hearing that you find tomorrow’s Friday stinker an absolute breeze!
    2. Well done for having the courage to post that. Don’t get down hearted. Read the clues again, read the blog, make sure you understand what has gone on. Put the crossword away and try it again in about a month

      When I was learning with a group of friends, before we had blogs, we had to wait until the next day for the solution and then we used to sit round in a group and discuss clues and answers. Any we couldn’t work out we took to our English master who then enlightened us.

      Whatever you do don’t give up!

  19. Despite my prediction I did finish this in 36m though the SE held me up for the last 15 until I worked out TEAROOM. Otherwise a steady pleasant solve with no standouts for me.
  20. 19m. I found this pretty tricky, with the unknown LAIRAGE, FINESSE (whether it is or isn’t a bluff being neither here nor there to me) and FLUMMERY (unknown in the baking sense) causing problems. I also slowed myself down with a couple of typos (DRAFTIE and ASMOSIS) that took a while to see. It all seems perfectly fair to me but I found it a bit of a grind.
    1. Yes I realised that. My point is just that all words are made up, but I thought I’d only make it once! As it turns out it had already been made below anyway.
  21. One missing today – Lairage (I couldn’t think of any word to fit the checkers so couldn’t even take a wild guess!).
  22. 10:20 for me, with the top half going in quite briskly but the bottom half taking an age. As usual the only unfamiliar answer was the foodie one: SCOTCH PANCAKES. Nice puzzle.

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