26386 Ecdysiasts in the 18th Century. Oiled chests, shapely legs, but no drawers.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Feeling a bit laboured, this one, with two that I couldn’t see until all the checkers were in, and even then it took a time, pushing me to 23.48. The short ones tuned out to be pretty easy,  there was a high count in insertion clues, and there’s at least one clue where, if you don’t know the word, you just have to make it up from the parts available and a basic knowledge of Greek roots.
I can’t see any major quirks in the grid, although a certain F K Pratt gets his/her moment in the sun in the fourth column, and a slightly misspelt Essex Chinese Restaurant manages a sneaky advert in the 14th.
Here’s how I saw through the wiles of the setter.

Across

1  MISFIT loner
Tempted by hermit but wondering where the SF comes from? You need IS FIT™, the modern replacement for our beloved IT for sex appeal, tagged on to the M of male. First appearance in the Times?
4  SPECIMEN Sample
MICE are rodents, put back(wards) into a S(mall) PEN. To spare blushes, please put yours back in a small brown paper bag until being forced to take it out at reception in front of the whole waiting room.
10 SHAKEDOWN Radical restructuring in Washington
Assuming that it’s not Tyne and Wear, we’re looking for an Americanism. ODO confirms that it’s a “chiefly North American” informal version of shake-up, a radical reorganisation, though I could make a case for it being an act of extortion, which also involves radical restructuring  vis-à-vis your wealth and mine. “Throw out” HEAD WONKS. Wonk is a word that I learned and remembered from discussion in the place in November 2014, and if it had not been for the crossing E I would still be trying to work out an appropriate anagram of (W)ashington.
11 ADOPT  Take in
Force A P(in)T to house DO for party
12 CHIPPENDALE Cabinetmaker…
…with a sideline in gentleladies’ entertainment demonstrating well-oiled fitness. Herself had the video for research purposes. CHIP comes from counter as in casino, then an anagram of PLANED and the finish of (pin)E.
14 SIR Title Queen bestows
Reverse IS, add R(epublican)
15 APPROVE Authorise
I see even Microsoft now calls its programs apps, so we are left without excuse. Follow the singular with ROVE for travel widely
17 TOCSIN  alarm
I hope that rings a bell… TO: closed, + C(lubs) + SIN: fault. I know, I know: when a door is to it’s not really closed but in crossword land it just is.
19 PRANCE  swagger
A rather neat clue which obliges you to “empty” PoweR AddictioN and CrudE
21 CONVENT a religious community
Disadvantage as a verb might stretch to CON. Opening more certainly gives VENT
23 AIM Intention
The wound from which you remove the head is mAIM
24 THISTLEDOWN Airborne seeds
For which the rather redundant parsing is “the one here”: THIS, “was the first”: LED inserted into “urban area”: TOWN
26 LOTTO  game
Discard B(achelor) from blotto, drunken.
27 INHALATOR  What asthmatic might use
Apparently an acceptable alternative to inhaler which rather spoils the joke about asthmatic vampires. Anybody seen it before? An anagram (“arranged”) of ON A TRIAL + H(ospital)
29 PARTSONG  choral piece
Stink gives you PONG, and skills are ARTS. Do ask if you can’t work out how to put them together.
30 SPUNKY  Courageous
On a good day not in ancient Greece the SKY might be “clearly blue”. Wordplay is PUN, and see previous comment.

Down

1  MUSICIAN  One on the fiddle, perhaps
Problem is SUM, reversed over CIA (agents) in IN.
2  SWAMI Indian mystic 
SWAM (floated) above 1 (one)
3  IRE &lit
Take the first letters of In, Rage and Exasperation
5  PENDANT Hanging
Insert END into PANT (gasp)
6  COALESCENCE  merger
Almost my last in, with the crossing letters looking mildly unlikely. Much easier than I made it, though: take N(ew) V(ersion) out of COnvALESCENCE,period of recovery.
7  MOONSHINE  rot
Without the gut rot is not the illicit whiskey, just “nonsense”. I rather liked “show bottom” for MOON (and see comment on 12). Part of leg below the knee rather pedantically give just SHIN, and the “pick any on form 7” note is E.
9  TOWNIE  No country dweller
My nomination for easy mistake of the day, though you’ll struggle to make “limit” TEE. Confess: OWN, limit TIE. Yet another Ikea “insert part A into part B” clue.
13 PROGNATHOUS  Having jaw extended
Now at last you have a word for all those times you’ve needed to talk knowledgably about extended jaws. Mess up GNASH OR POUT until you have something that looks likely and fits the crossers.
16 PARAMETER boundary
Back-up nominee for slip of the day, if you can persuade yourself that RIME is some sort of sheep. It isn’t, but A RAM is, and it’s inserted (again!) into PETER, which you now all know is a safe from discussion exactly 2 weeks ago.
18 STINGRAY  Large fish
Mariiiiina, Aquamarina… sorry, distracted there for a moment in Supermarionation™. Just add STING for burn to RAY for stream – I suppose think light streaming in through the window.
20 EDITION issue
SEDITION, or incitement to mutiny, without the head of S(tate)
21 CATCHY with instant appeal
A straightforward anagram of C(arbon) and YACHT
22 GALLOP Career
As in “go very fast” Bitterness is GALL, and work the ever popular OP(us)
25 OFTEN  In many instances
A rather rarer way of indicating that you miss the first letter, in this case of SOFTEN, temper
28 LAP double definition.
One of them, the polish version, noted as rare, so might not be in your lexicon.

51 comments on “26386 Ecdysiasts in the 18th Century. Oiled chests, shapely legs, but no drawers.”

  1. I am so glad to find that you approached 10ac as I did, Z. I wasted maybe 3 minutes at the end until I finally got TOWNIE. I might add that I don’t think I’ve ever seen SHAKEDOWN meaning ‘shakeup’. No problem with CONVENT; CONs are the opposite of pro’s. I had ‘convergence’ at 6d for a while, until reality intervened and made me actually solve the clue. I know there’s no point in complaining, but that’s never stopped me before, so, I don’t like PARAMETER being used for ‘perimeter’ (although not as much as I don’t like ‘is comprised of’; don’t get me started). I actually knew PROGNATHOUS and the other one for wide-jawed, but it refused to surface from memory for an irritatingly long time (the other one is still hiding). On edit:It’s not hiding, since I never knew it, and it doesn’t mean wide-jawed, of course, it means short-jawed; it’s ‘opisthognathous’, coming soon to a Mephisto near you. COD maybe to COALESCENCE.

    Edited at 2016-04-14 04:48 am (UTC)

  2. Another enjoyable solve, medium level of difficulty I would suggest.

    I entered the unknown PROGNATHOUS with confidence thanks to the wordplay. LOI was the equally unknown TOCSIN which I entered with trepidation, but it all ended well.

    Thanks setter and Z, great blog as usual.

  3. Especially by PROGNATHOUS, the Polish drink and the initial-deletion in 25dn. And not sure that “floated” = SWAM, as one who can swim a little but sinks like a lead weight when trying to float. (Some bodies are made like that.)

    Note that TftT has moved from UTC to local time, which isn’t very helpful if you don’t know where the poster resides.

    Thanks to Z8 for the memories of STINGRAY. Will now re-listen to my tape of Alexei Sayle & the Fish People. (Blobble your lips while saying “OK Mike Mercury” and steal someone’s sock from the washing machine.)

    Edited at 2016-04-14 04:42 am (UTC)

    1. As I know to my cost the bits of stuff swimming around in the human eye’s vitreous humour are called “floaters”.
  4. 80.42. I always thought shakedown meant blackmail. I suppose I was influenced by sneaking into the X-rated movie “The Shakedown” starring Terence Morgan and Donald Pleasance, whilst at school in Hereford in about 1960.
  5. 29 minutes for all but the three unchecked letters in 17ac, but technically a DNF because after 10 additional minutes on the remaining clue I threw in the towel and looked up ‘alarm’ in a thesaurus where I found TOCSIN. The only words that fitted the checkers that I had I considered were ‘techie’ and ‘tactic’, both obviously incorrect.

    Although TOCSIN has come up three times before, it had more user-friendly wordplay (sounds like “toxin” on two of the three occasions) and today’s was distinctly unfriendly, starting as it does with the controversial TO for “closed” whereas in my world it means “ajar”, so I was never going to get it from that. Shame.

      1. The latter, not according to some as alluded to in Z’s comment above. I know it can be both “closed” and “nearly closed” (COED, for one, supports both) but a lifetime of usage in one sense only is difficult to overcome at this late stage. I’ve always wondered why the expression “pull the door to” would need to exist if what was meant was “shut it”.

        Edited at 2016-04-14 05:07 am (UTC)

        1. I think that’s a fair point – it depends very much on how you’ve grown used to using it. Instinctively for me, “to” when related to doors comes somewhere between “shut” and “ajar”, so more or less filling the frame but not actually shut. If it’s shut I will need to turn the handle or lift the latch, if it’s to I could just push,and if it’s ajar my younger self might be able to squeeze through the gap.Search “ajar” in the index here (searching “to” makes no sense!) and you’ll find
          a) the crossword wilfully uses “to” to mean either ajar or shut and
          b) we’ve been debating it for years, never quite coming to blows

          Edited at 2016-04-14 05:36 am (UTC)

    2. I had a remarkably similar experience to yours, Jack, except that I managed to drag your 10 additional minutes out to 25, before finally throwing in the TACCIT which sounded like it might have an archaic meaning of “alarm”. I was immediately issued with an “Unlucky” message from the new Times Puzzle section Adjudication Panel, which I took to be fair comment. It’s funny how very often an enjoyable crossword experience is ruined by just one annoying clue.
  6. Another easy one I thought, only a one-cup. For me, a shakedown is what you do to a beta version of something before launching it
    Is it just me, or is this blog designed for the partially sighted today?
    1. Not just you. As per yesterday, the TftT default to (I think) MS-Trebuchet 13pt seems to have gawn.

      Edited at 2016-04-14 07:04 am (UTC)

      1. My bad: I was experimenting with writing in Word and pasting in, which is fine for spell checking and general formatting but apparently not for controlling font size. I have the TLS blog similarly prepared, so I’ll give it a shakedown and see whether I can make it work looking a bit less Janet and John.

        Edited at 2016-04-14 07:12 am (UTC)

        1. In Chrome (don’t know about other browsers), there’s an option to “Paste and Match Style”, which usually seems to get rid of any extraneous HTML guff picked up by composing the blog in other applications.
  7. 12:52 … great blog, Z8. A TfTT knees-up at the Epping Wok? Count me in.

    The ‘is fit’ and ‘show bottom’ suggests one of our cheekier setters at work. I’m another, perhaps influenced by a taste for American crime fiction, for whom a shakedown is a kind of scam, a restructuring always being a shake-up.

  8. Nice blog today, must stop competing for a few days, put PERIMETER, despite, or maybe because of, being a mathematician. Otherwise 23′. COD 10ac spent much time trying to use some letters of Washington, or alternatively having S-A-E… presuming STATE.
  9. Dog woke me at 5 am either for an urgent call of nature or a wish to interview next door’s cats. So I did the crossword early having walked him. I always was a morning person until I married a night owl and zipped through in under 20 minutes. And that included a couple of minutes trying to make RIME into ARAM. Didn’t know PROGNATHOUS but it fitted. 12a had to be CHIPPENDALE as SHERATON didn’t fit.

    Edited at 2016-04-14 07:53 am (UTC)

  10. Same experience as jackkt, had all but 17a in 20 minutes, decided to come here rather than resort to aids to find a word I didn’t know. The rest was good.
  11. Herself has no recollection whatsoever of said video, but when I said that, z8 immediately offered to find it & show me.

    Seeing as we live our lives in a state of mainly disorganised chaos, does this imply that z8 was bluffing or that he is fonder of ecdysiasts than I previously presumed?

    1. That reminds me of the time himself here came home unexpectedly early from a public dinner to find me watching The Full Monty. He was not convinced by my explanation for watching it in his absence – that he wouldn’t understand the dialect (he wouldn’t) – and unimpressed when I told him it was nominated for several Oscars. I haven’t been allowed to forget it.

      Edited at 2016-04-14 12:18 pm (UTC)

  12. Yes, we’ve had experiments in fonting this week with Alec yesterday and Z today. I’ll cop to considering HERMIT. Some time back I knew someone called Herman whose wife called him “Herm” but it seemed a bit of a stretch. (Oh no, that’s reminded me of Herman’s Hermits – eek). So, “is fit” is the new “has SA”? I entered it without much conviction.

    I agree with others about SHAKEDOWN=extortion in the US (and temporary bed in the UK) but I see the SOED has “restructuring” as a subsidiary def. 16.35

  13. 10m here. I found this mostly very easy, but the arcana and odd definitions held me up. I knew TOCSIN, but it’s not a word that springs instantly to mind. I didn’t know LAP or PROGNATHINGY, and the latter proved challenging standing up on the train with nowhere to write the letters in a circle. Like others this meaning of SHAKEDOWN was unfamiliar, as was the required meaning of MOONSHINE as ‘nonsense’.
    Lots of biffing today, and I very nearly came a cropper as a result. Somehow as I was writing in PERIMETER my brain made the connection between ‘sheep’ and R_M and made me pause. I put in PARAMETER based on the wordplay but the definition seemed odd.
  14. 19 min: did eventually go for PARAMETER, even though I don’t see how it could be described as a boundary. Knew LAP as to polish from lapping of valve seatings to prevent leakage, but the sense of SHAKEDOWN used was unfamiliar, though guessable.
    1. Parameter here, without considering any alternative. You might run a project within certain parameters (boundaries), or use integration to calculate the area beneath a graph between certain parameters (limits or boundaries) – here I am getting onto decidedly dodgy ground, given RobRolfe’s comment above.
      1. ODO agrees with you: ‘a limit or boundary which defines the scope of a particular process or activity.’
        1. As you no doubt understand, a dictionary entry only acknowledges that the usage exists, it doesn’t ‘approve’ it. I couldn’t bring myself to write in ‘parameter’. The world has moved on, leaving me behind, where a parameter is only an independently variable quantity, not a boundary.
          1. I couldn’t agree more. The role of a dictionary is to record, not to approve or validate. But for the purposes of crosswords I accept them as an arbiter when there’s doubt about a definition, even if I think they’ve got it wrong.
            I found the definition odd too, as I said, but therotter’s project example seems fine to me.
      2. I would not go to the wall over this, but consider what a parameter is: in mathematical terms it qualifies a variable to make an argument e.g in y= ax + b, x is the variable, a and b are parameters. Nowadays it has crept into jargon e.g ‘within the parameters’, and along with the similarity to the sound of perimeter, has made it into the dictionary in the sense used in today’s crossword.
        1. Rob, the practice here is that if a definition is in a recognised dictionary then it is fair game for the setter. As a mathematician, I know exactly what you are saying but there you go.
  15. The clock said 24:16 but with many interruptions caused in part by Mrs BT (a teacher) realising that it was week 1 and not week 2 and that she was meant to be at school teaching. I will have to learn from her (or perhaps our daughter) what IS FIT is. Knew TOCSIN and PROGNATHOUS (think Desperate Dan) and just went with the flow on SHAKEDOWN so thank you z8. COD 7d.

    [on edit} daughter confirms FIT as good-looking with the usual ‘ooooh, dad’ thing which reads better than it sounded

    Edited at 2016-04-14 08:29 pm (UTC)

  16. I found this pretty easy, finishing in 23 minutes, finally entering MISFIT because that’s all it could be, but didn’t like the definition and couldn’t equate “is fit” with has sexual appeal. Originally I considered HERMIT, which fits the definition better, and wondered if the indication RM had been accidentally omitted.
    11a was a nice clue.
  17. Tricky one today, and I was glad I got the right ordering of letters in PROGNATHOUS which was my question mark for the day, thankfully knowing SHAKEDOWN and TOCSIN (the latter from Mephistoland).
  18. About my usual 40 minutes, but like others, held up a little by TOCSIN. Strangely enough, my LOI was CONVENT, mostly because I just didn’t see it for some reason.
  19. I wish I’d spotted F.K. pratt and Epinn Wok as that might have saved me from the double-gaffe of MYSTIC and TACTIC.
  20. Sir Ernest Rutherford famously wrote:
    “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.”

    1. …and that television thingy will never catch on either. And don’t get me started on mobile phones…
      Nice quote, new to me.

      Edited at 2016-04-14 02:17 pm (UTC)

  21. 30 minutes for me with the last 10 spent on TOCSIN which I eventually worked out from wordplay having discounted TACTIC or TECHIE which were the only other words I could think of which fitted. I considered HERMIT until I solved 1d. Didn’t spot the parsing for PRANCE, apart from PR, so thanks to Z for that and for the parsing of OFTEN which I biffed. Liked COALESCENCE. Had a vague idea that PROGNATHOUS existed but waited for the crossers to spell it correctly. Considered PERIMETER but was guided in the right direction by the sheep in the clue. Nice puzzle and blog.
  22. I had a quick look at this before doing today’s QC.
    A few went in quite easily I thought including Hermit and Perimeter. I corrected Hermit when I got 1d but not the other. Nearly got the anagram at 13d but did not have enough checkers. Still puzzled by answer to 10a.
    Got about half in total.
    Anyway back to today’s QC which seemed very easy until I got stuck in SW. Four clues left. David
  23. Epping Wok often has moonshine under the counter and I believe is owned by Mr Pratt. I was watching Boogie Nights (excellent film) at a pretty uncomfortable moment when son walked in… Do parents really do this stuff?

    Excellent blog Z and, seriously, these help me improve week on week. Avoided all prattfalls (ahem) but failed on Tocsin trying to persuade myself that Tactic worked. I equate a fault with something a bit intrinsic with a sin (so I’m told) a bit more proactive.
    Alan

  24. 20 mins with no unknowns. Spent a lot of time on 1ac which was my LOI – HERMIT was first thought before the crossers went in, then MYSTIC but couldn’t justify it from the word play, finally got MISFIT after recalling a granddaughter’s description of a member of a popular singing ensemble called One Direction.
  25. My guess is NOTARY “no try” to include “a” but I only mention this because I was a DNF

    1. Gosh, yes, and after I cross checked with ticks and everything. You are also quite correct on the parsing, with the definition legal functionary. It’s a bit unusual to have zero giving NO, but here it does.

  26. A knock-free 18 mins. I’d have shaved a few minutes off my time if, like a few others, I hadn’t biffed “hermit” without thinking too much about the wordplay and then spending some time trying to justify “perimeter” before the pennies dropped. I also took way too long to see the COALESCENCE/CHIPPENDALE crossers, and it was only after I’d got the latter that the previously unknown PROGNATHOUS became my LOI.
  27. No one will see this due to the late hour, probably, but that’s not deliberate. I confess to being the dope who put in PERIMETER once I saw ‘boundary’, and never revisited. Oops, quite the gaffe. So a DNF, d’oh. Otherwise 20 evidently overconfident minutes. Regards.

    1. I thought there were two potential heffalump traps today not protected by crossers, and PERIMETER was one. As the technical discussions above strive to show, it fits the definition more accurately, and there are plenty of weird words for sheep, if you’re not checking (or is that cheating?). Under competition conditions it would be easy to do. The other was TOWNIE, where I thought TOWNEE was  the more common spelling. Easy to overlook the lack of backing in the wordplay

  28. Another tiring day, another slow time (12:37). I spent ages on HERMIT and attempted anagrams of ASHINGTON, but rather less on PERIMETER and TOWNEE. I don’t recall coming across INHALATOR before, suspect I may have met the required meaning of SHAKEDOWN (but, if so, had forgotten it), knew LAP from crosswords and PROGNATHOUS from somewhere that escapes me.

    An interesting puzzle, which I enjoyed despite tiredness.

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