Times Jumbo 957 (December 24th)

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
No meaningful time available for second Jumbo in a row; as a matter of fact, when I re-open the puzzle now, the clock is still ticking despite my crossword being safely submitted and given a score. It also seems a long time since Christmas Eve, and I can’t remember what my real time was, or how this one ranked (I suspect I’m not alone in having done a lot of puzzles over the holiday period) but no matter, let me see if I can remember how I found it as I blog…

With Jumbos I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think might be a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. However, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.

Across
1 FACE TO FACE – i.e. FACET OF A C.E.
14 ON A ROLL – the old pianist would be heard via a roll such as this.
16 ALBANIA – ALBAN + (A1)rev.; very British, combining Alban, the first British Christian martyr and the A1, formerly known as the Great North Road.
24 PUT IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE – “explain, very, simply” all being two syllable words, of course.
25 TAURINE – “bully” in the sense of being like a bull. As in “What’s brown and sticky? A stick.”
31 HIRED GUN – cryptic def. referring to the archetypal mercenary. Made me feel like watching a film noir.
36 CHESTS OF DRAWERS – cryptic def., with a properly placed apostrophe to make you look for the plural.
39 RUMPLE – RUMPOLE minus the round O. Horace Rumpole, self-styled Old Bailey hack, was the creation of John Mortimer on paper, and Leo McKern on screen.
46 SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW – (OTHERWISEBRAVEHOMEOWNER)*, the place where “skies are blue”, as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
48 NOWISE – NOW + IS + arrivE. “Nowise” is a somewhat archaic version of “no way”.
49 WALL – (LAW)rev + Line. The wall in question is that played by Tom Snout, one of the rude mechanicals who put on the play within a play in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
53 TUBBIER – (BUT)rev. + BIER.
56 ICED TEA – Time in I CEDE, A.
57 SLEDGEHAMMER – as in “using a s. to crack a nut”.
58 SUI GENERIS – E.R. in (GENIUSIS)*; Latin for “of its own particular type”.
 
Down
1 FLOWERPOT – FLOWER + PO + silT. Unusually, we find “river” being used as a clue for “flower”, rather than the other way round…
3 THOR – THORough.
5 CAP – double def., “limit” and CAP as in the Common Agricultural Policy.
6 ARGO – cARGO.
9 BLACK EYE – LACKEY in BravE. “Mouse” meaning black eye or other facial injury will be familiar to boxing fans, if nobody else.
12 ESAU – [Answer in USE]all rev. Esau was the Biblical brother who famously sold his birthright for a mess of potage.
13 HEIRLOOM – [IRish LOO] in HEM. “Ladies” perhaps, instead of “Gents”
23 BEARINGS – A in BERING’S.
29 FLOURISH – i.e. a bit like flour (meal). In the same way as vanish might be a bit like a van.
30 ADHESIVE – HE’S in A DIVE. Not all nightclubs are dives, of course, and not all dives are nightclubs, but I think this falls short of a real quibble.
32 GHETTO BLASTER – Hospital in GET TO BLASTER. The traditional ghetto blaster could incorporate a tape deck and/or radio; the important thing was that the music was LOUD.
35 CALL WAITING – Circa ALL WAITING; not sure if this is called by the same term in all territories – basically it’s the function which means you can keep one (mobile) phone call on hold while taking another.
37 AFRAID – AFRica AID.
40 MEMORABLE – MEMOrandum + RABbLE withoit one of the two Britishs.
45 PENNORTH – PEN + (Lord) NORTH; short for penny’s worth. A persistent phrase, as I regularly see contributors online to this day offering “their 2d”, which is clearly the same thing, but subject to inflation.
50 OTIS – hypnOTISm. As in the Cole Porter standard Miss Otis Regrets.
55 TAU – TAU being the Greek letter Talk.

Verdict: on the whole pretty straightforward, though I thought a few clues (WALL? OTIS?) require some fairly specialist cultural knowledge, so that I could anticipate people successfully working out what the answer must be without having a clue why…

3 comments on “Times Jumbo 957 (December 24th)”

  1. 20:03 for a nice straightforward puzzle (where the cultural references came to mind reasonably quickly). Slightly annoyed not to have broken 20 minutes though.

    I suspect no-one else has commented (so far) because you’ve covered all the angles so well. Good blogging, sir!

    1. Nice of you say so, Tony (though I fear the long gap between publication and entry date means interest in these holiday puzzles has vanished with the decorations…)
  2. We tend to do these puzzles several weeks (or months) in arrears. We have just (almost) finished this one. Didn’t get WALL. PAWL was our best guess *sigh*.

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