Times 25074: A citizen of credit … and renown?

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 19:31.

Romped through the bottom half, helped by the crossing anagrams at 13dn and 23ac. But a bit slower in the North where I thought there was something terribly clever going on with the rhymes in 9ac, when in fact … read on. Only one relative obscurity (17ac); so there should be some fast times.

Across
 1 S,WIN(BURN)E. S=second; graves=WINE; all around (without) BURN.
 6 B(L)IND.
 9 MOTHERING SUNDAY. Turns out this is just an anagram of the first two words of the clue and not a complex rhyme play. Held me up for a while. Great clue on reflection if you know your Anglican calendar.
10 APERCU. {newsp}APERCU{tting}.
11 B(LOCK)AGE. Bits of hair tend to be LOCK or TRESS; the former in this case. Insert in a BAGE{l}. Yuk!
13 MAIDEN NAME. Our second straight anagram: ‘Need a man I’m’. Just a hint of the &lit.
14 FRAU{d}. Simple but very effective.
16 C,ASK.
17 JOHN GI(LP)IN. Almost a straight charade. JOHN=can (toilet synonyms); GI=soldier; LP=record; IN. As Cowper puts it: “a trainband captain eke was he”, where it’s expected that we know that a trainband is a citizens’ militia.
19 APPL(IQU)E. The insertion from I{s} Q{uite} U{nusually}. A russet is a variety of apple. There’s a hidden bit of info in this for history buffs who will know that russet cloth was coarse and used for simple attire: hence the strangeness of appliqué being used there.
20 VI(CT,1)M. Another one handed to us by the def.
23 INACCESSIBILITY. Third straight anagram: ‘I insist celibacy’.
24 Omitted? My oath!
25 DIE-SINKER. Otherwise split as ‘dies inker’.
Down
 1 SAMBA. First letters of the whole clue up to the indicator, ‘initially’. And since the Brazilians were the first to adopt it (from its African origins), a good &lit.
 2 IN THE FIRST PLACE. Two defs, the first slightly jocular. (I knew there had to be a FIRST in here and considered ‘at the first blush’.)
 3 B,R(EACH)ED. ‘Red’ in the clue and RED in the answer.
 4 RU,IN. Rugby Union, as it so often is.
 5 ENG,U,L(F,M)ENT. F for ‘following’; M for ‘millions’. LENT is the term.
 6 B(R)UNCH.
 7 INDIAN ROPE TRICK. A pun.
 8 DAY RE,TURN. Anagram of ‘ready’; go=TURN. Could perhaps have been ‘cheaper ticket’? Are there any cheap ones left?
12 U(N)FO,CUSSED. The latter as the adjective: annoying or stubborn.
13 MECHANICS. Fourth straight anagram: ‘mischance’.
15 PIRI-PIRI. Reverse these: {on}I{on}, RIP{e}, I, RIP. A sauce with a number of name variants.
18 MIN{C}ER. As in ‘leaf miner’. Little bastards they are too.
21 MAY,OR. OR (other ranks).
22 Omitted. (Do I hear a moan?)

40 comments on “Times 25074: A citizen of credit … and renown?”

  1. Zoomed through most of this then hit a brick wall occasioned by too many unknowns (PIRI-PIRI, JOHN GILPIN – had GILPIN, done for by the dunny – DIE-SINKER – this nominal meaning of DIE was new to me – and APPLIQUE – where I wanted to put ‘appiqule’ before Google put me right). The only one I’m kicking myself for is UNFOCUSSED, which I needed to cheat to get.

    1. The numbered cube is a DIE (pl. DICE) the stamp is a DIE (pl. DIES).

      As Ambrose Bierce put it

      “A piece of cheese no larger than a die,
      Can bait a trap to catch a nibbling mie.”

  2. 35 minutes. I didn’t know JOHN GILPIN which I got entirely from the wordplay, and still didn’t understand the ‘militia’ reference having looked him up. That one seems more suited to a literary puzzle to me. MINER as an insect was new too and DIE-SINKER at 25ac where I toyed with ‘die-caster’ for a while.The double use of WINE, at 1ac and 22dn was a bit feeble.

    But mostly this was very enjoyable with plenty of good wordplay to add some fun. At 1dn I considered parsing it as SAM (South American) BA (Brazilians Adopted initially) with ‘measure’ meaning ‘dance’ as the definition, before I spotted the &lit explanation.

    Edited at 2012-02-01 11:00 am (UTC)

  3. 18 minutes. My solving experience was the opposite of mctext’s: top half very quick indeed (I thought I was on for a sub-10 for a while), bottom half slow. I was slowed down by the unknown JOHN GILPIN, DIE SINKER and MINER. Enjoyable puzzle.
    As mctext says, the definition of DAY RETURN is a bit misleading. A friend of mine recently paid someone to drive him in his own car from Bristol to London and back because – including the petrol – it was cheaper than the train. I once got a taxi from London to Swindon and back for the same reason.
  4. I too sped around the top half and then came to grief on GILPIN, PIRI-PIRI anf the DIE-SINKER. The last was last in after a long pause. I think AT THE FIRST BLUSH is a much better answer for 2 than the intended one. I’m giving COD to 9ac, even though SUNDAYING MOTHER was my first thought.
  5. Easier than usual and good fun I thought, except for ‘die sinker’ which I didn’t get (die picker? die licker?) and still don’t fully understand the ‘dies inker’ alt, will look it up now. CoD definitely 1 ac Swinburne.
  6. Yet again a setter who struggles to think beyond poets and poetry. Why start the whole thing off with a poet when there is the whole gamut of human experience to choose from? Why the unknown and fictional GILPIN when there are so many inspirational real people available?

    An easy puzzle – 15 minutes to solve – with too many very obvious clue constructions and few redeeming features

    1. On the other hand, why not, Jimbo? If the setter had kicked off with, say, a scientist, a sportsman or a philosopher, the same objection would have applied surely?
      1. It’s the lack of balance that I object to Mike. If they did indeed have more subject matter from other fields there could be no complaint – although I suspect the GILPIN nonsense would always give rise to comment. Have a count and see how many contributors didn’t know the name.
        1. Point taken about balance, Jimbo, though I think one would have to to be pretty unlettered never to have heard of Swinburne. John Gilpin is rather more obscure, I agree, though a lot of us will have recited Cowper’s poem in the schoolroom even if we have never read it since.
  7. From Tringmardo (can’t make the ‘From’ thingy work)
    To my amusement and embarrassment, for 13 Ac I whacked in ‘maidenhead’ without really checking out the anagram letters properly. Thought this was a great clue but a bit on the risque side for the Times! Eventually realised the error of my ways, with some little relief when arriving at ‘engulfment’, thus immediately seeing the error of my ways. Shoud have known better.
  9. … one, and that one was DIE SINKER (but I did get the INKER bit).

    Didn’t see the anagram in 9ac, didn’t know the GILPIN character, nor the poet at 1ac, didn’t get the BAGEL ref at 11ac. Otherwise I quite liked this one.

    Cod: MAIDEN NAME.

  11. Having complained on two recent occasions about equating mechanic with engineer, I was very pleased to see the correct definition today, so congratulations to the setter and editor.
  12. I admit that was my first thought but only for a split second because it’s not spelt that way, it’s ‘baguette’. Also it’s unlikely that ‘cut’ on its own would indicate the removal of more than one letter.
  13. Just failed to beat the half-hour barrier on this, but still a pleasure to have something gentler than the usual fare.
    For anyone who is not familiar with John Gilpin, here is a link to the full poem – all 63 verses, but they are worth reading.
  14. And so with un- in front. Just thought it looked odd, and found a lot of undecided authorities online.
    1. Both are possible. The ODE comments that -ss- is commonly but irregularly used in the UK.
  15. As all have already said, relatively easy fare. Like Anon above I too briefly toyed – if you’ll forgive the indelicate image – with MAIDEN HEAD at 13ac before realising that it couldn’t be made to work from the available anagram fodder and is anyhow written as a single word. Pity, it could have made for a wonderfully risque clue! I was pleased to get DIE-SINKER – a term and craftsman unknown to me – from the cryptic clues alone.
  16. Couldn’t see past agency for 10 for ages – my penultimate. Last was JG though I was familiarish with the poem in my youth. Speaking of poets (who more than all others record the ‘gamut of human experience’), 1.ac. is neat but wickedly downgrades Swinburne, who at his best is so much better than Graves that the surface is painful. Slow time for the last two; fast up to there.
  17. late last night, just couldn’t get my head around JOHN GILPIN, so gave up with one empty, kicking myself for not seeing JOHN this morning.
  18. This was not easy for me, but I eventually got there after having to stop and start again. Probably about 90 minutes all told, due to unfamiliarity wiith JOHN GILPIN, PIRI-PIRI, the miner insect, and some more. Ouch. And that even after getting the 15 letter clues pretty quickly. Regards to everyone.
  19. My problem here was DIE SINKER. I got it finally from the cryptic but needed Google to confirm that it actually exists. I would never have got it without the checking letters because I would never have defined “forgotten” as DIES – or am I missing something? I got JOHN GILPIN straight away from the “militia captain” definition. I read it voluntarily in school because I thought it might be interesting. A big mistake. As a child I used to enjoy ballads – undemanding romps (Dick Turpin, Jessie James, Casey Jones, Robin Hood et al) JOHN GILPIN just didn’t cut the mustard. 31 minutes
    1. DIES = “is forgotten”, if that helps. Also, one might say the memory of something will never die, meaning that it will never be forgotten.
    1. Doh! I’ve just seen where I went wrong. I had misspelled INACCESSIBILITY, which made in impossible to get WINE.
  21. 11:54 for me. I thought I was heading for a time under 10 minutes, but then on my final check through wasted ages trying to justify the wordplay for BLOCKADE (which I’d put it hurriedly, feeling that it was a plausible match for “jam”) before spotting BLOCKAGE. And I was so freaked out by that that I made terribly heavy weather of justifying DIE-SINKER.

    The double S in UNFOCUSSED came as a bit of a surprise, but the wordplay made it pretty definite.

  22. I was distracted by the TV, which I should have turned off, but eventually was left with DIE-_INKER after the best part of 2 hours. Just didn’t know that one. I got the rest of the (to me) unknowns JOHN GILPIN, MINCER, APPLIQUE from word play and the rest went in steadily but slowly. Makes a change for me to complete (almost) the puzzle on the same day it came out. I’m usually a day or two behind.
  23. I’ve just checked: John Gilpin got a mention as recently as Jumbo 891 (2 October 2010): “Teach players – John Gilpin was amongst them (9)” (answer TRAINBAND). He must have appeared quite often over the years I’ve been solving the Times puzzle.

    Keith Doyle has kindly pointed us at Cowper’s verses, so perhaps those who hadn’t come across Gilpin before might like to read them now. Although there are 63 of them, they’re short, and they’re amusing – though of course Gradgrinds who are only interested in facts may not approve of such frivolity.

  24. Sorry to sound really dull, but could someone explain 25 ac, please?

    http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/die-sinker?q=die-sinker Oxford on-line says a die-sinker is an engraver (of dies for stamping metal), is that the definition?

    “Dies” as “is forgotten” I can see, just.

    “(By) one using metal stamp,” is that the inker? Being that you must ink your stamp before stamping it on the paper? Why a metal stamp – the stamps you ink are made of rubber?

    Or does metal stamp refer to stamps that stamp metal, such as those a die-sinker engraves?

    Yours in total confusion,
    Rob

    1. Possibly more to do with the printing industry?
      inker: a roller for spreading ink on type.
      1. Ta, that makes sense. Even to the style of clue, Times often having eds, subs, fonts, ems, ens and other newspaper-speak.

        Rob

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