26179 Of Jules Verne and Durex*

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
First time I’ve written up one of these things by moonlight, marginally aided by a rather feeble lamp,  sitting on a balcony overlooking a picturesque corner of Crete. Might help to excuse the usual typos for which fat fingers and inattention are the usual cause. No such issue with today’s crossword, completed at a sedate pace to occupy 24’36”. Some hesitation over the lexicon of Spanish cookery, partly because of the simplicity of the wordplay, one concatenation of two commonplace words to make a third that I don’t think I knew, and one case of “I didn’t know it meant that” all added spice to the event. There could also be a case of an appeal to the third umpire, though please remember that you only get two of those (unless you’re right) before the second new ball.

Here’s my moonlight serenade (theme and variations) designed to enchant the ear and enlighten the soul of both seasoned and novice devotees of this noble art.

Across

1 WHISTLED  blew
THE, WILD and S(outherly) winds (pronounce it with a long I), Ah, Kathleen Ferrier, contralto accompaniment to my youth.
9 EMPANADA  Fried dish
A Spanish turnover of variable content sometimes fried. Here the recipe is add MADE to A PAN and cook gently. The PAN doesn’t break up at all, which slightly threw me, but que sera.
10 DALE  depression
Ignore the “leads to”. ALE is your beer, and pick a note from the usual seven. Unlucky if you went alphabetical and stopped at B: it’s not much of a stretch from “misery, woe” to depression, though Chambers says it’s archaic.
11 PASSE-PARTOUT
You may have heard of him from such epics as “Around the World in 80 Days”, but it’s also a master key (natch) and, bizarrely, sticky tape holding a picture to a frame. PASSE obsolete, PART component, OUT misaligned
13 SPLEEN  Bad temper
Witnessed gives SEEN, wrapped aroung P(arking) and L(earner). Too readily conjures up a scene at the roadside.
14 CANBERRA  capital
Will always be for me the Airfix kit of the famous liner and veteran of the Falklands, all those fiddly rear decks to paint before assembly. Tin CAN, fruit shortly BERR(y), plus start of Autumn. G’day.
15 STUDIED   Deliberately contrived
“A studied air of nonchalance”. Stop working DIE, “crossed” by centre-of-a-shield boss STUD.
16 SPUTNIK  Spacecraft
The beep that shook the world. PUTS in orbit (might be more than just anagram) plus KIN family reading from the East.
20 TRIPWIRE  security barrier
TRIPE rubbish wrapped around W(ith) – so easily overlooked – and Infra Red
22 ICE TEA  “a drink…
…with frozen jam and bread”. I so wanted to add a D as I thought Lipton’s did, but apparently they don’t care either. Kill ICE (slang), vacant T(im)E and A. So I can’t really have the A in the definition, then. That brings us back to D’oh.
23 INVESTIGATOR  Sleuth
A neat anagram of OR AGENT VISIT
25 GRIN  broad smile
Corn is one variety of GRAIN, from which you remove the A as instructed
26 CHACONNE  dance
Tea is CHA, joined by a tailless CONNED derived from fiddled. Whether or not you like this entry is a matter of taste. “… à son goût“?
27 DETONATE  go off
Romantic engagement is DATE, and the school ETON. Well, it could hardly be Charterhouse.

Down

2 HEATSPOT  Sensitive area
Apparently as in part of the skin sensitive to heat. Take the word OSTEOPATH, remove an O(ver), and mix.
3 SHEPHERD’S PIE mince cooked with potatoes
A SHEPHERD is a tender (of sheep, surprisingly), add SPIE(d) for seen mostly.
4 LAUSANNE  Swiss city
Generous of the setter to narrow it down a bit. The rather gruesome (S)USAN in LANE
5 DEFENCE  protection
I biffed a dodgy American DEFENSE, (saw the marshland, thought Fens). It’s a singular FEN, the C derives from about (circa) and DEE is the river both cut into.
6 SPRAIN  wrench
Any old turner’s motion is SPIN, an artist is an R(oyal) A(cademician)
7 IAGO  bad character
The villain from Othello, hidden in the bad girls from Lear.
8 FASTBACK  Style of car
In fashion again provides BACK, FAST for fleet (adj) precedes.
12 THEATRE ORGAN  Screen instrument
A cutesy definition, backed up by THEATRE for where doctors operate and heart as a species of ORGAN. Hands up if you tried to put an anagram of heart in there.
15 SET PIECE  formal speech
Placed SET, Queen (on a chessboard) PIECE
17 POINT OUT  Direct attention to
A POINT is a head when part of the lanscape, and openly gay provides OUT.
18 IDEALIST  Visionary
Compiled from IDEA concept and LIST record. Today’s easiest, I think
19 FEIGNED   Faked
Constructed from FE for iron (chemical symbol) and caught fire IGNITED. Bin the IT to make it fit.
21 INTEND  plan (verb)
I mind translates to I TEND (as in shepherd above). Insert an N(ew)
24 VEAL  meat
The word VENAL kills off its N(umber). Corrupted defines venal

*The Australian sticky tape is a source of constant amusement and occasional extreme pain to us Brits

42 comments on “26179 Of Jules Verne and Durex*”

  1. But a bit too hard in the SW for me. LOI was VEAL … which I didn’t understand at all. So a “hats off” to CANBERRA … which is frozen right now. And so it should be. The expression “grubby partisanship” was on the radio just now. How apt.

    BTW: Durex tape no longer exists far as I know.

    Edited at 2015-08-06 04:34 am (UTC)

    1. On Durex: I did my checking meticulously and you are correct, the brand no longer exists, mostly because the non sticky rubber items are now commonly marketed. My sources also said that the use of Durex as a generic term for sticky tape (much as Sellotape here) is fading but still happens. It would be a pity to lose such a source of ribaldry altogether, don’t you think?

      1. Yes, I do think. I was warned about the confusion prior to arrival in Australia in 1975. Buy it never arose. And hasn’t since. (Back to Jimbo and his American eraser?)
  2. I thought this was going to be a toughie, but it turned out to be a pretty straightforawrd solve – well, mostly.

    At 14ac I saw tin=CAN then spent ages trying to think of a capital to fit. And I was there last weekend.

    I had VALE at 10ac on the basis of V(ide)=note.

    I enjoyed the blog, thank you, but at 7dn Cordelia is the sweetie – Regan is the other rotter.

    Dereklam

    1. My only excuse might be that I only did Hamlet and the Scottish play for A level, but I did know the relative virtues of the Lear girls. Shakespear rather clued it in the names: the two bad lots just sound nasty – a US president-to-be and a social disease. Put my aberration down to lunacy, given the light by which I was working.

  3. I had VALE at 10ac. And I’m sitting here with my left elbow raised and my right fist firmly supporting my left forearm.

    Ok, yes, legitimate delivery…give me the front on…ok, now hotspot…right, nothing there, now RTS please….thanks, just rock and roll it….ok, no sign of bat, now ball-tracking thanks….pitched outside off, struck in line, hitting middle. Editor, I’m going to ask you to reverse your decision.

    Or am I dreaming?

    1. Just a couple of seconds too late getting your arms into position, if you ask me. I thought Bale had the better shout, but then he plays the wrong game.

      1. Don’t want to go all Pontingesque here, but this is how I see it:

        Vale and dale are effectively interchangeable, both match the definition. “V” is the common abbreviation of vide, and it’s not a huge trip through the thesaurus to link vide to note via “observe” or “take a look at”.

        I rest my case, and await the judgment of the mob.

        Edited at 2015-08-06 06:28 am (UTC)

        1. I get your point, but since ‘vide’ is defined as ‘see’, ‘consult’ or ‘refer to’, rather than ‘note’, I reckon this is one that will stand as Editor’s call, and will be debated for years like a Tendulkar LBW dismissal by enraged subcontinentals.
  4. 48 minutes, with the left-hand side in fast and then a lot of time on t’other side, especially the NE, where three of my four unknowns (FASTBACK, EMPANADA and this sense of PASSE-PARTOUT) were located. The other was the prosaic HEATSPOT, “nominally” Hotspot’s cousin, I guess.

    Rather liked the VEAL, as in real life.

    Edited at 2015-08-06 07:58 am (UTC)

  5. 33 minutes is pretty good for me these days so I enjoyed this one and I might have beaten my half-hour target for the second time this week (Monday was the first occasion) if I had biffed VEAL on first reading the clue instead of being over-cautious and waiting for both checkers to appear at which point the wordplay jumped out at me by way of confirmation.

    I got lucky at 9ac with my guess as to how to place the unchecked anagram fodder, never having heard of the dish which incidentally my dictionary describes as a ‘pastry’ so the definition including ‘fried’ seemed a bit odd.

    The required meaning at 12ac was also unknown

    Edited at 2015-08-06 05:48 am (UTC)

    1. Like a samosa – a pastry which it resembles – it is commonly fried, so it seems fair enough to me.
      1. Point taken. It hadn’t occurred to me that samosas are fried as the ones I generally have are pre-prepared and heated up in an oven.
        1. You live out east and you get used to just about everything being fried*, since few households have ovens. (* or steamed)
  6. … as I gave up on PASSE PARTOUT and FASTBACK, both unknowns, although I was so close to getting them through wp for both.

    Otherwise, I biffed VEAL, and dnk CHACONNE, and got the ICE bit of 22ac thanks to having learnt that def on some recent crossie.

    About 30 or so mins for the ones I got.

  7. Add me to those ignorant of PASSE PARTOUT – only knew it as another of those irritating literary characters

    I was anticipating ignorance of THEATRE ORGAN because there can’t be many left (I believe there’s one still in the Pavilion Bournemouth but can’t swear to it). I remember listening to the Wurlitzer in The Gaumont Tooting in my courting days

    Nice puzzle well blogged

    1. That takes me back. All the way to the 1950s when one of my earliest cinema experiences was David Niven as Phileas Fogg (I’ve never read the book) at the Odeon High Street Kensington. Radio City in NYC still has 2 working Wurlitzers either side of the stage.

      Edited at 2015-08-06 10:28 am (UTC)

  8. 34.08. Nice puzzle except for the arcane tape meaning. Why not the more “natural” master key, or indeed the (engaging rather than irritating) literary character?
  9. Another ~7 minuter here, much to my surprise this morning as I’d been up till past 3am last night doing the nightbus shuffle across London thanks to the double whammy a Proms concert that didn’t finish till close to midnight and a tube strike. As far as I can tell the secret to a good time for me is treating my body and brain with as much contempt as possible…
  10. I knew PASSE-PARTOUT only as a master key, so a quick check needed on that one. Otherwise all straightforward in a pretty good crossword. SPUTNIK my COD, for the memories of lying on the lawn each evening to watch it pass over.
    Maybe Australians get a giggle out of the English using condoms as sticky(!) tape.
  11. 20:03. Quite quick for me but I had a couple of unknowns where I “rowed” (relied on the wordplay)… never heard FASTBACK or HEATSPOT and had no idea what PASSE PARTOUT was. 19d my LOI when I finally realised I had to bin the IT. 26a my COD.
  12. 16 mins. TRIPWIRE was my LOI after CHACONNE and FEIGNED. I needed all the checkers for it, together with the wordplay, because I see a tripwire as a trap for the unwary rather than a security barrier. Count me as another who didn’t know that meaning of PASSE-PARTOUT and needed the wordplay for it. Congrats to V on such an impressive time considering his solving conditions.
  13. 11:50, no issues.

    I didn’t know the required meaning of PP but I did know fastback. I remember my dad buying a Sunbeam Rapier fastback (DRV 567F) in the late sixties.

    I see Cook and Lyth are still both there at lunch so England must have had a decent morning.

  14. Not quite as exotic as Crete but I solved this on the bastion of Walmer Castle in just over 7 mins – if I’d know I needed to be exact to continue my ‘competition’ with Verlaine) I’d have used a stopwatch.
  15. BALE and DALE both work for 10a. VALE seems a bit too much of a stretch, so plumped for DALE, but we shouldn’t really be faced with this degree of ambiguity. Needed aids for CHACONNE, but otherwise no problems.
    Z – The puzzle number is 26170, not 26179.
    1. I swear I typed the right digit, but it was pretty dark out there on the balcony; even the moon was only half full. And I had no printed copy to work from, switching back and forth between tabs with all the concomitant risk of inadvertently closing the wrong tab and losing everything. May sound like a feeble set of excuses, but wait until you hear Michael Clarke this evening.
  16. 25 minutes, knew all except CHACONNE guessed from wordplay. My Dad used to talk about the sticky tape (PP) for repairing that old thread binding on his golf clubs and for framing pictures.

    Broadly speaking, I think the cricket is going fine except for those people who live south of Ulaca… or have tickets for Sunday. ‘The belief is there’… goodbye, Mr Clarke.

  17. 14:34. I started quickly on this but the bottom proved chewier than the top. The definition of PASSE-PARTOUT seems terribly obscure but the wordplay was kind.
    There was some discussion on ICE(D) TEA the last time it came up, the conclusion of which I think was that both versions are in common usage.
  18. Hmm…I seem to be the only one who had gale instead of dale or vale!

    I would argue a more logical connection between low pressure/depression/gale than the geographic features. When did anyone look out over a valley and exclaim Oh what a lovely depression!

    SouthernExile

  19. Interesting idea, S Exile, but I don’t think ‘depression’ and ‘gale’ are synonymous, even if linked; a depression or low may have a gale blowing around its centre, if the pressure gradient is severe, but the gale is one possible result of the low, not the low itself.

    Pity, because G is a note and I also agree dales are usually long valleys (e.g. Yorkshire) and depressions are more often (geographically) more circular, like sink holes.

    I don’t like the V for vale idea either, v. = note is a stretch too far, q.v. may be often used ‘which see’, but v alone as an abbreviation for vide is not used for ‘note’.

    Edited at 2015-08-06 03:34 pm (UTC)

  20. About 20 minutes, ending with DALE as the most likely among the choices. I didn’t know of PASSE-PARTOUT and put it in from wordplay, and I confess I needed aids to find CHACONNE, so a technical DNF due to the dance. Otherwise, good fun. Regards.
  22. 12:33 for me, with the unknown FASTBACK doing the most damage, and the barely known EMPANADA and the known-but-not-with-that-meaning PASSE-PARTOUT also holding me up to a lesser degree.

    1. I dunno, you make one little slip…  Ah well, at least it’s given people the chance to brush up my Shakespeare. I’m sort of grateful.

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