26188 I don’t want to go on the cart.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

By a considerable distance the hardest puzzle I have contended with for a very long time, taking over three qaurters of an hour. I hope that’s because the cluing is truly stretching, and not because my powers, such as they are, are fading. I guess I’ll find out if everybody else comes in under ten minutes, in which case I’ll stop watching Women’s Ashes cricket – Chelmsford today, a bit chilly, but a fine England win – as it clearly has a deletorious effect on my capacity for reasoning. No idea what the causal process might be.
I don’t think anything is exactly iffy in the cluing, but I do think there are often Rutherfordian leaps to be made from definition to answer, and several places, such as 6 down, where the usual conventions such as short=cut, park=p, have gone off to hide in the corner while their nastier cousins come out to play.
There follows the tortured reasoning of a frail and battered brain, after which I’m definitely going for a lie down. And to think, if I hadn’t been cut off from civilised connections last week, I could have left this one to George.

Across

1 COWCATCHER bar on train
Well I suppose so, but if I feed cowcatcher into my visualisation system, it gives me this:

…which doesn’t look very bar like to me. Perhaps we’re really in the related field of bull bars. You need to translate “fellow spectator” to the neologism CO-WATCHER, and insert a third rate C
7 CLIP punch box (thanks McT)
Or indeed prune, so a double definition. Clip was a long way down in my lexicon of punches
9 HANDCART hellish transport
The construction is Pass=HAND (as in over) craft=ART, and maximum speed=C, the speed of light. Assemble. Refering to serious deterioration, or a disastrous course of action, the phrase “going to hell in a handcart” is of older origin than I thought, and American: an early citation is from Elbridge Paige’s book of Short Patent Sermons, 1841: “[Those people] who would rather ride to hell in a hand-cart than walk to heaven supported by the staff of industry.” but there are earlier similar phrases and illustrations.
10 MEMOIR (reflecting) in this
REM is the US band, and our Man is the Isle Of. Insert one into the other and “reflect”, doing double duty in both wordplay and definition
11 FLUFFY frivolous
Miss gives FLUFF (think pool and snooker, or theatrical lines) and boY at last provides the Y
13 HANGABLE to be suspended
HAN is one of those convenient Chinese dynasties that save crossword compilers so much time and effort. The Hollywood actor, GABLE is presumably Clark
14 STANDARDISES regiments
Resistance: (eg Custer’s Last) STAND; occurs: ARISES, wisited by D(uke)
17 TARTARE SAUCE relish
Try not to waste time thinking of a twin brother for Jack. It’s just a pair of (Jack) TARS. The brother has to go with disinherited if you’re going to find ESAU, cf Genesis 25 et seq. Place all of the foregoing by CE for church (of England, in case you’ve ever wondered).
20 COLOMBIA State
I didn’t know that COLO was an alternative abbreviation for Colorado, so this puzzled me somewhat and my entry was with a bit of a shrug. (It is an abbreveiation for Colorado, acording to Chambers, but as Galspray points out, it’s also an abbreviated colon, as in :. Sneaky, I call it but it saves “state” having to do twice the work.) I do know the MBA degree and inserting 1 was easy too. “State” in this clue is doing a bit of double duty, otherwise briefly has nothing to work on.
21 MODERN Contemporary
If you look ath geNRE DOMinating retrospectively, you should spot our answer, here helpfully capitalised.
22 POCKET Appropriate
As in steal. Or an area of resistance, such as the American held Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge 1944. Read the story. Don’t watch the film, it’s terrible, especially the ridiculous speeded up train.
23 AUTUMNAL of season
Unreversed, network and shared give LAN and MUTUAL Remove the L and reverse all.
25 COPY Pirate (verb)
Not forthcoming is COY, and the “Source” of Plunder in crossword speak is the P, which you insert.
26 COACH SCREW Big fixer
Anything in a toolbox preceded by the word coach is a large version, though I didn’t know this one. Mentor’s give the COACH (keep the ‘S) and boasted gives CREW (verb)

Down

2 ON A PLATE evidently readily available
Clever, this. Since all are awake on time, 0 (zero/none) NAP LATE
3 COD There’s a catch!
Even the short ones weren’t a pushover. COD stands for Cash On Delivery, therefore not in advance
4 TOADY Flirt to gain promotion
An elegant and succinct &lit clue. Flirt also gives TOY, and a promotion might be an AD. Assemble.
5 HATCHED released clutch
Ah, right, that sort of clutch! A rare (in this crosswrod) anagram of THE, C(ar) – “initially” attaches here, and HAD
6  REMINISCE What to do in 10 (i.e. memoir).
Short here gives MINI, S(econds) provides the S, place both within REC and add E(nergy)
7 COMPASS CARD Navigational aid
You wait all this time for an anagram and suddenly a second pops up, this time of ACCORDS and MAPS. The compass card is that part of a compass on which are written the combinations of NEWS.
8 ICICLE one to hang outside
Today’s take it or leave it homophone. Spot hook – “eye sickle”
12 FUNCTON KEYthing on a computer
Do, crossword speak for a party, suggests FUNCTION, and important KEY. The function keys on a keyboard are those ones on the top row that sometimes do alarming things when you press them by accident.
15 ACROBATIC going tumbling
The reptile is not the cobra I tried to fit in, but a CROCodile. A stick might in some circumstances be a BAT, and one gives I
16 SCARFACE Gangster, so called
The nickname of the fictional Tony Montana. A stole is a SCARF, and one an ACE
18 ALABAMA State
Like, in the style of, À LA. The degrees are BA and MA, natch. Conferred only there for the flow
19 ROCOCO flowery pattern. ROO comes courtesy of jumper (remember your Winnie the Pooh). Extract and insert the rest from the odd letters of CrOuCh
21 MATCH union
…and (something) to strike. Possibly the weakest clue in the set, but no’ bad for a’ that.
24 MAC
Mace is the spray you’re looking for.  Leave it short of the E, and you have something you might use in a shower in the interests of keeping dry.

55 comments on “26188 I don’t want to go on the cart.”

  1. Confused me too Z, until the penny dropped. COLO is “:”, briefly.

    Nice touch I thought.

  2. Never saw CLIP, ended up going for CASE (something to do with pruning the ends off “can use”, was never going to work). This of course made ICICLE ungettable, although it was obvious with the correct checkers.

    Great puzzle though. Three-way dead heat between HATCHED, TOADY and COLOMBIA (not COD) for COD. Thanks setter and Z.

    Meanwhile, the slump continues…

    1. I also didn’t see CLIP. I went for SPAR (box) with SPARE (“you can use” as in “I have a pen spare”) being pruned.
  3. Like galspray, I had ‘case’, from the same reasoning, for want of a better word. I had TOADY, but found it hard to accept–especially as I was taking ‘flirt’ as the definition, but even ‘flirt to gain etc.’ strikes me as wide of the mark. (But then it would, wouldn’t it?) I had COLOMBIA, too, but couldn’t justify the COLO, galspray being unforthcoming at the time. Oh, well; tomorrow, rumor has it, is another day.
  4. Nice start to the day!

    FOI Compass card
    LOI Toady

    Plenty of angst twixt and between.

    Anyone under 15min?

    Horryd Shanghai

  5. … but enjoyable. Noticed SCARFACE in a recent Groan puzzle (26659): “Gangster seldom seen pocketing note”. COD to the &lit at 4dn … had me going for a while.

    Z8: you have “punch” as the def for 7ac. It’s “box”. Bad childhood memories of threats of a clip round the ear. Kids today would think you meant a wireless mic.

    Edited at 2015-08-27 04:47 am (UTC)

  6. I agree this was hard and I needed aids a couple of times once an hour had passed as I was fed up with it all by then.

    ‘Box’ = CLIP is fine of course, and as a matter of interest so would ‘punch’ have been, but with reference to tickets rather than ears.

    Edited at 2015-08-27 05:06 am (UTC)

  7. Didn’t enjoy that. As Z indicated, my idea of a cowcatcher (1ac) is a plough-shaped device and not a bar. I don’t associate ‘flirt’ with ‘toady’. The most difficult puzzle I can remember. I did like ‘handcart’ though.
  8. 43 minutes. I needed a break and a mental reboot to finish this one.

    The HANGABLE / ICICLE pair was the biggest obstacle, and solving them didn’t ultimately feel like time well spent.

    On the plus side, I loved HATCHED and the def. for HANDCART.

    1. I know what you mean about not feeling it was time well spent. That whole NE quarter was somehow unsatisfactory and particularly CLIP, ICICLE, MEMOIR and HANGABLE. No feeling of elation as the penny dropped, unlike the rest of the puzzle
      1. ICICLE was my last in, and I thought it was really good. Frozen Marmite!
        I liked MEMOIR too.
  9. DNF. Defeated by 26a, 9a, although I considered and rejected HANDCART, 14a, as I had ON A CLOCK for 2d and HATCHER for 5d – I had anagram of ‘The car h(ad)’. Tried in vain to remember the name of Charon’s ferryboat for 9a… and found on checking that it doesn’t have one.
  10. Dont think that this clue works at all!
    Agree this was the hardest for a long time
  11. Lucky I had plenty of time to spare today. Got held up at STANDARDISES so left it for a while and came back refreshed. The best for quite some time. TOADY the first among equals, and thanks to galspray for pointing out (what should have been) the obvious in COLOMBIA.
  12. Very difficult puzzle, 75% of which is clever and rewarding to solve. I loved COLO for : but didn’t think bar was good enough at 1A for COWCATCHER

    But, as I’ve said above, the NE corner has some questionable stuff in it – all already covered by others – and since they intersect it increases the difficulty.

    Greta blog Z8 – a nightmare puzzle to get on blogging duty!

    1. Something that might be of interest, Jim. While researching cowcatcher I came across “pilot” as another alternative name for the device familiar on a thousand Western movie trains. According to Wiki, “the pilot was invented by Charles Babbage in the 19th century, during his period of working for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway”. Yup, that Charles Babbage. Isn’t the world a strange place?
      As far as the “bar” is concerned, in some circles the terms “bull bar” and “cowcatcher” have become interchangeable, but not in any circles I move in. Here’s what appears to be a particularly unsuccessful version

      Edited at 2015-08-27 09:48 am (UTC)

      1. As an inept pom in the 1970s, I was told that if I went out bush, I’d need rhubarb on the car. Imagine!
  13. DNF

    45 minutes and 4 left.

    Didn’t like Acrobatic – when is a bat a stick?

    CODs to 17a and 20a.

    Thanks for the excellent blog.

    1. I wondered about bat and stick too: it seemed pretty loose even in this crossword. But Chambers has among its entries for bat “a heavy stick”, and Collins has “any stout stick, esp a wooden one” While I’d struggle to find a sentence in which they’re interchangeable (a guarantee that someone here will provide an immediate and obvious example) it’s within the rules.

      Edited at 2015-08-27 09:17 am (UTC)

  14. 22:25, which is only 1.4M (using the SI unit for crossword solving), so I seem to have been on the wavelength for this one.
    Very much my sort of puzzle in other ways too, with very little biffing and some unknowns that needed construction from wordplay: COWCATCHER, COMPASS CARD, COACH SCREW. I thought I hadn’t heard of the first of these, which may actually have helped, but now that I see Z8’s picture I realise I have come across it before.
    COD took me a while to see: the clue suggests a late payment, whereas cash on delivery is usually the opposite in my experience, something imposed on uncreditworty customers. Nothing wrong with it though, I hasten to add.
    Thanks setter and Z8 for unravelling it all. I didn’t understand TOADY. It seemed rather a poor clue, but actually it’s brilliant.

    Edited at 2015-08-27 09:30 am (UTC)

  15. 22 mins, so I’m another who must have been on the setter’s wavelength judging by the other comments. Like keriothe I needed the wordplay for COACH SCREW and anagram fodder for COMPASS CARD, and I would have had a quibble with COWCATCHER if it had been defined as “bar”, but “bar on train” made it fair IMHO. I would have been a minute or so quicker if I hadn’t taken the incorrect anagram fodder for 5dn (the+car+h) and entered “hatcher” even though I could have biffed HATCHED. It was only when I was left with 14ac and couldn’t solve it that I decided to revisit 5dn, saw the correct anagram fodder so fixed it, and then I saw STANDARDISES fairly quickly.
  16. Apart from some clever clues here and there I thought this was a very unsatisfying puzzle. Too many vague, cryptic or altogether dubious definitions, or very difficult clues crossing one another, so there was very little to get hold of. With barely a third of the grid filled after 35 minutes and completely stuck I resorted to aids to get three more, then struggled on to the end. The negatives masked the positives for me, so I cannot say the whole experience was enjoyable. TOADY was the last one in – another unsatisfactory clue I thought – toadying and flirting are not the same at all.
    1. If you think of flirtation as a form or method of flattery the definition seems fine to me.
      1. Sorry, that’s just sophistry. A flirt may flatter the person with whom he/she is flirting, but that is not part of the meaning and it does not establish synonymity with toadying, which is being sycophantic, fawning, servile. There’s no reciprocity.
        1. Chambers and Collins both include flattery in their definitions of the word TOADY. And to my mind flirtation – when done for ulterior motives, as is the case here – is precisely intended to flatter the flirtee. I confess I didn’t think this far when I put the answer in: flirting to gain promotion just struck me as a pretty precise definition of a type of toadying, and it still does.

          Edited at 2015-08-27 05:45 pm (UTC)

        2. The advantage of flirt is that, unlike toady, it stretches easily to deliver the synonym toy, which is part of the wordplay. I think a lot of solvers just thought this was a straight cryptic definition, which I agree would barely work, but it really is a fine &lit clue. Honest.
          1. I realized at the time that it was an &lit definition, but I thought, and still do think, that it was rather stretching the meaning of ‘flirt’. However, the question mark allows some latitude, so I’ll give way on this one.
  17. The sort of crossword that makes me wonder what I’m doing going up to London in October. 21:50 with Tippex and muttering and scribbling on the paper and all sorts.
  18. Over an hour, with TOADY LOI – I was thinking of trying TEASY, with ‘promotion’ referring to that tricky sort of advertisement where the object is only revealed at the last moment. I admit to resorting to an aid to suggest possibles to fit checkers a couple of times.
    As pictured above, I think a less misleading description of COWCATCHER would be bars on a train.
  20. I thought this the best puzzle for some time. Over an hour’s entertainment for me – well worth the price of the paper!
  21. 28:50 here, so definitely harder than most. Took a while to get on the setter’s wavelength at the start then ground to a halt about two-thirds through. Then had a rush of blood and polished off the last few within a minute. Must have been a lot of subconscious processing going on!
  22. Loved it up until the groaner homophone in the top right and the odd clue for CLIP. That clue for TARTARE SAUCE is a thing of beauty, as is AUTUMNAL.
  23. I just lost interest in this half way through. A standard of puzzle that we get from time to time which seems to be more of an ego-trip for the setter than a fair challenge to the solver.

    Too many obscurities involved. Sorry!

    1. Really? I though this scored pretty low on the obscurityometer (compared with, for example, Monday’s puzzle with ninon, sudatoria, kedge dogie & Dives). What did you have in mind?
  24. DNF. Discovered this blog only recently and today I’m glad I did – relieved to find so many others found this a real toughie.
  25. Thanks very much, I thought I was going a bit senile when I couldn’t finsh it, and even when I did with the aid of a dictionary, couldn’t fit 4 or 8 down.

    Also in my reasoning for 20 across, the ‘short’ refers to the colon.

  26. wow. over an hour.

    scarface was al capone’s nickname. even when gangster is not AL you can’t get away from him. i suppose that is why it got used in the sopranos that seems too modern for the times crossword.

    1. that was me. my computer ne er logs me put. my pjone seems to log me out with enthusiasm
  27. Whoa! That was a tough one. I fried my brain for 55 minutes but eventually got there, ending with CLIP/ICICLE. While the HANDCART reference may be cited as American, I’ve never heard it, and we actually speak of going to hell in a handbasket. So it didn’t spring easily to mind, no. Not much did. Many clues required a lot of concentration and mental leaps. But the surfaces are excellent throughout, AUTUMNAL being a standout. Regards.
    1. Yes, indeed, my research came up more often with handbasket (slightly odd, I thought) with handcart as a variation, though the citation I unearthed for the latter pre-dates written evidence for the basket by a few years.
      There is more than a suggestion that alliteration has more to do with the phrase than anything else: and “going to hell in a hovercraft” might do just as well in the modern era.
  28. Snuck in in under 20 minutes just now, after a long day travelling back from Wales to London with two fractious, squalling children on an interminable succession of trains. Quite pleasingly, this actually turns out to be quite a respectable time!

    Personally I love it when they’re this difficult. The hardest for me turns out to have been STANDARDISES, which I hadn’t parsed at all, just entered on a leap of faith, it now turns out. Thanks blogger for clarifying that one!

  30. 26:30 for me. I was too tired to enjoy this, but I don’t think I’d have liked it very much even at my most wide awake.

    You can indeed find a bull bar on a train, but I believe it means something rather different: “a wooden plank or metal bar used as a removable horizontal barrier across a doorway, esp. in a railway stock car” to quote the OED. Surely the sort of bull bars that deflect animals are found on (large) cars and other motor vehicles rather than trains?

    And is no-one else worried about HATCHED? Surely a clutch is made up of eggs, so the definition “released clutch” leads to LAID?

    There were some nice touches, but overall it didn’t offer the sort of difficulty I enjoy. I just hope it won’t take me too long to erase the vision that 4dn evoked of Tory MPs flirting with Mrs Thatcher!

    1. A collection of chicks has always been a clutch where I come from Tony, but I’m certainly no authority on the matter.
    2. ‘Clutch’ meaning birds, rather than eggs, is in all the usual dictionaries, Tony. For instance ODO has ‘the young birds that come out of a group of eggs at the same time’.
      1. Yes, of course you’re absolutely right. I even looked up the damned word in ODO too!!! I think I must have been simply too exhausted to read past the first entry.
  31. I eventually completed the puzzle successfully, without aids, and enjoyed the challenge very much. I did not time myself tonight, as I took several breaks to try to allow my brain recovery relief.
  32. “Try not to waste time thinking of a twin brother for Jack.” But I did, anyway, and no harm done, because wasn’t Esau’s twin Jacob?
    1. Ah yes, good old Jack Isaacson. Author of “101 Ways With Lentils”. With this setter, it’s more than possible the link was intended.
  33. I didn’t get round to this one until today, Sunday, but it’s just as well, as I needed around 90 minutes with a short break for brain recovery! On an optimistic note, I completed it correctly without aids, something I couldn’t have achieved without following this blog for the last 4 years; so thanks to all the bloggers and contributors. My first one in was TARTARE SAUCE, then I had a blank grid for a while before getting AUTUMNAL and SCARFACE. Then another long arid spell before grinding out the rest one by one. I managed to parse all except COLO and MODERN, which I really ought to have seen. MAC and COACH SCREW the last two in. John.

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