Times 25,073 – messing about in boats

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’ve been shockingly busy with Real Life since my last blog, hence not even managing to find time to solve most of the intervening puzzles, let alone comment, so I hoped it wouldn’t be too tricky getting back in the saddle today. In the end, this was one of those puzzles where about half the answers went in comparatively easily on first perusal, but the rest required a fair bit of head scratching for a time of 24:07, which suggests either a fairly chewy (and enjoyable) puzzle or rustiness on my part.

Only time will tell, so for now I’ll insist it’s the former until and unless everyone else tells me I’m wrong.

P.S. I think 1dn is as clever a clue as I can remember seeing…I wonder if the setter had a moment of inspiration or laboured long and hard to make it work?

Across
1 GRILL ROOM – RILL(=stream) in GROOM; this meaning of “curry”, as seen in “curry-comb” for instance, has come up fairly recently, if memory serves. I think only extremely traditional hotels such as the Savoy tend to have grill rooms these days.
6 LAP UP – [PUPA + Left]rev.
9 ELEGANT – ELEPHANT, with Grand replacing ParisH.
10 YOU KNOW =”YEW NO”; defined by “filler in conversation”, i.e. one of those expressions – I think the technical term is “phatic” – which is used in everyday speech to convey a tone rather than express something meaningful, yeah? You know?
11 HEAVE – (EH)rev. + AVE.
13 PRESCRIBE – PopulaR + English + SCRIBE.
14 MAPPED OUT – (UPMADPOET)*.
16 MISS – generic female teacher hidden in terM IS Shattered.
18 SOLE – playing on the alternative “solitary” meaning of the word.
19 THEME PARK – MEP in THE ARK.
22 UNABASHED – (BEAUNASHDaughter)*.
24 GLEAN – A in GLEN.
25 FLIPPED – LIPPi in FED (the slang term for an agent of the FBI, also often seen in these parts as a G-MAN.
26 SHALLOP – SHALL(=is going to) + OPus; put in entirely on wordplay. One boat (of several) to feature today, and the one I’d never knowingly come across before.
28 LINEN – LINE (as in “What’s my line?”) + Name. With the wordplay and checkers L_N_N, it didn’t take a massive leap to deduce that there might be a fabric called Holland linen, though I was unfamiliar with it: anyone who cares can easily learn more than they probably wanted to know about linen elsewhere.
29 ASYNDETON – Time in (YESANDNO)*; the oratorical device where a speaker leaves out conjunctions (and thus makes his sentences shorter) for purposes of emphasis e.g. “…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”
 
Down
1 GRESHAM – RE in [Good + SHAM]; for economics students such as I once was, Gresham’s Law is usually summed up as “Bad money drives out good”; which means this is also an &lit, and an absolutely brilliant clue.
2 ICE – [Cold in I.E.] and another &lit.
3 LEAVENED – LEAVE + NED.
4 ON TOP – ONTO + Power.
5 MAY BEETLE – MAYBE + ET, LE (i.e. “and”, “the” in French, as spoken by M Fabre). This is one of those semi &lit. type clues, isn’t it, in that I think we can easily imagine a prominent entomologist writing an article on the insect in question.
6 LAUNCH – double def., noun and verb
7 PONTIFICATE – another double def.; as noun, the office of Pope; as verb, to pronounce with the same air of infallibility as if one actually was Pope.
8 PAWNEES – PAWN (“Pop goes the weasel” as the old song has it, whatever the weasel may have been) + SEE(rev.) gives the Native American tribe; slightly unusual for daily Times puzzles to use another clue (in this case FLIPPED from 25ac) in clueing, but not unknown.
12 APPELLATION =”APPALACHIAN“. I expect George or someone else with more local knowledge can comment on the accuracy of the homophone.
15 OCTAHEDRA – (CATHODERAy)*.
17 RED GUARD – (UNDERGRAD)* without the Name; the youthful part of the Cultural Revolution.
18 SOULFUL – SO(=like this) + Female in (LULU)rev.
20 KINGPIN – KIN + G.P. + IN.
21 SAMPAN – South AMerican PAN, and a boat which I did know.
23 DUSTY – Simpson in DUTY; I suspect this went in purely because the setter liked the Simpsons / Springfield nod.
27 LOT – double def., the thing that is subject to chance, and the Biblical character.

42 comments on “Times 25,073 – messing about in boats”

  1. The Americanisms in this – not to mention the boats – did for me as I staggered home in 86 minutes. Lots of unknowns, and unfamiliars, with GRESHAM having to be laboriously synthesised before the last three in the NW (1ac, 3 and 11) could fall. Despite intuiting that the ‘cast’ in 11 would be a ‘throw’, and despite reversing the ‘eh’, it was still my last in, so I suppose it should get my COD.

    But, no, in a fine, if exasperating, puzzle, the best of the ‘pentagrams’ (well, we had tetragrams the other day, and the insulating power of the context should preserve this invented sense) goes to LINEN, where I so nearly put in ‘Lenin’.


  2. Found it on the tricky side today, but managed the habitual ‘all bar one’, and that was only because I got the wretched E and O the wrong way around in ASYNDETON. Don’t you just hate anagrams of unknowns, where it really does come down to a complete stab in the dark?

    Other unknowns for me today: Holland LINEN, SHALLOP, GRESHAM, PAWNEES, LIPPI..

    Hesitated over HEAVE, as in my mind it’s more to do with pulling in, whereas cast is more to do with throwing out.

    Thanks, as ever, for clear blog.

    1. I did exactly the same with ASYNDETON which was totally unknown to me. However I did the rest of the puzzle in 65 minutes which is good for me. I don’t have a problem with heave as it’s common slang for throwing up after over indulging. I got FLIPPED but still don’t understand how LIPP comes from FRA FILLIPO. I hadn’t heard of SHALLOP but put it in second last from word play with ASYNDOTEN(sic) LOI. An enjoyable puzzle and thanks to Tim for the Blog.
        1. Thanks Ulaca, doing this crossword certainly expands one’s knowledge. I’ve Googled him now; shows how a science based education leaves one with gaps such as great artists and Greek declensions:-)
  3. 47 minutes for this one and I had gaps in all four quarters until the last 5 minutes when it suddenly all came together. There were three unknowns but I managed to work them out from wordplay: Holland as type of LINEN, SHALLOP (very tempted by ‘scallop’ which at least I knew existed) and ASYNDETON (fortunately the checkers left little room for manoeuvre when placing the remaining anagrist). I wasn’t sure of the reference at 25ac but having looked it up later I do recall meeting this artist before. Didn’t know Fabre but it was a fair guess he was French and that was all that was needed to understand the clue. Gresham’s Law had stuck in my head since school days – not the law itself of course, simply its name.

    Generally quite a testing puzzle, I thought, but enjoyable for all that.

    Edited at 2012-01-31 11:09 am (UTC)

  4. 25 minutes for this. Tricky.
    Unknown today: SHALLOP, Holland LINEN, ASYNDETON, GRESHAM’s law, RED GUARD. At least I remembered SAMPAN from crosswords past, and I knew Fra Lippo Lippi from Browning’s poem.
    I have a lot of sympathy with Janie over ASYNDETON. I guessed right but if you don’t know the term it looks pretty unlikely, and no more likely than ASYNDOTEN.
  5. Yes, Tim, the homophone is good – although I have known people to pronounce the ACH as if it were ATCH. I got stuck trying to make Holland mean gin (and I too toyed with Lenin), and it took a while to dredge up the Lulu. 36 minutes and quite a bout.
  6. …the first puzzle in a while where I have been able to complete it without too much trouble. I feared that, as so often, I would end up with two or three intractable ones, ending in a frustrated DNF. Last in SHALLOP and ASYNDETON, both unfamiliar to me.
  7. I decided to start with the down clues today, just to make a change, and walked into three crackers. 1D is absolutely superb with 2D not far behind and then we have 5D to complete the trio. Congratulations to the setter.

    The rest was straightforward and enjoyable with SHALLOP a guess based on wordplay. 20 minutes to complete

  8. 18 minutes but hoping that SCALLOP was also a boat and the wordplay was as tricky as some of the others.
    This was a lot cleverer than I thought, not knowing what Gresham’s Law was and wondering what Fabre was other than some French bloke. Lots of guesswork: ASYNDETON, with the E and O so placed because it was marginally more likely Greek, LINEN because cloth gets called all kinds of things.
    CoD might have gone to one of the really clever clues, but I liked and understood the smooth SOULFUL. Fine crossword, stretching the capacity of even the most seasoned polymaths.
  9. The Americanisms also influenced me for 8d as i got there with
    Paw (as in the deep south) with “seen” flipped but I prefer the blogger’s analysis that Pop is pawn and “see” flipped. Anyway all roads lead to Rome.
  10. I would question the explanation given for Pawnees. My thought is that Paw= father, and seen reversed represents set eyes on as a past participle.
    1. I certainly considered that reading, but went with PAWN/SEE because a) while I imagined PAW=”father” was almost certainly fine, I couldn’t provide any citation from the dictionaries I had immediately to hand, whereas “pop” as a synonym for PAWN is in the (concise) OED, and b) “set eyes on” has to be somewhat twisted to become “seen”, IMO, but not to make it into “see”. In other words, while not utterly dismissing the alternative reading, I didn’t see any reason to favour the more complex explanation over the simpler one…
  11. And lots to like here; especially the misdirections. Of course 1dn had to be ABRAHAM from the def. and the last two checkers. Pity it didn’t work. Also misdirected by the possibility of “stage”=LAP in 6ac; in this case helpfully. Too many good clues to pick one out in particular.
  12. Finally as January ends a better day! 34.32 here with last 10 on NW corner. I hadn’t come across Gresham and his law before so thanks to blogger for explaining the complexity of1 down and hence its quality. There were lots of enjoyable surfaces today; I especially liked19 ac with the underlying suggestion that Brussels will interfere with all things pleasurable!
    1. It’s Luxembourg and Strabourg’s interference with matters legal that worries me more.
  13. One of those puzzles where I stopped after 45 minutes or so and thought, that’s it, I’m never going to get the last 10 clues. Eventually limped home some time later, with ASYNDETON the likeliest of the set of unlikely alternatives. I join the chorus of congratulations to the setter. Very elegent indeed. COD to MAY BEETLE by the merest of margins from ICE. (I didn’t know Gresham or his law, so that went right over my head.)
  14. 29 minutes with a few outstanding word-plays to appreciate on the way … and one horror. I’m appelled at the e/a syzygy in 12 (never, never thought I’d use that word), though we’re assured the homophone’s OK. Surely there’s a clear trace of a pure e in the name and not in the range. Is it really all right simply to accept ‘uh’ as “correct” for both? It rankles and riles…and what’s almost worse, I’m the sole not in the shoal – are no other teeth set on edge?

    Edited at 2012-01-31 06:31 pm (UTC)

    1. For what it’s worth, the Oxford English Dictionary’s phonetic representations of Appellation and Appalachian are exactly the same, except for an optional (t) sound in the middle of Appalachian.
  15. ..that ASYNDETON was correct, so got through in about 1/2 hour. While there are many fine clues here, like 1D and the MAY BEETLE, I have to vote for DUSTY, for including The Simpsons reference with the songstress. I had already seen ‘Lulu’ in the other clue. This had me searching for ‘Petula’ elsewhere in the grid. Well done, setter, thanks, and regards to all.
  16. I enjoyed this very much, although it took me quite a long time to complete. I couldn’t remember ASYNDETON in spite of having learned about it in my far-off schooldays. I realised I was looking for an obscure grammatical term but ended up having to work it out from the anagram. HOLLAND as a kind of linen should be familiar to those of us who read period novels – “Holland blinds” are old-fashioned roller blinds and “Holland covers” wrapped the furniture when houses were closed up. Historical novels are not to be sneered at as an aid to solving these puzzles. I was grateful to “The Lady of Shallot” for the SHALLOP. “The shallop flitteth silken-sailed, skimming down to Camelot”. I’ve never come across it anywhere else but had to learn the poem in school and it stuck! 45 minutes.
    2. I can’t be certain but I imagine there’s a shallop or two knocking about in the novels of Patrick O’Brian.
      1. Could well be. He’s so good on nautical obscurities. I’ve only read them once but one of my best friends is a great O’Brian fan and is constantly rereading them. I’ll ask her.
  17. Just a slight quibble about pronunciation here. The ‘ch’ is almost never pronounced as ‘sh’. In fact residents of Appalachia pronounce it “A-puh-latch-uhn” both a’s short as in cat. But by far the most common is a-pə-ˈlā-ch(ē-)ən. Just my $0.02.
  18. Solved in bits when opportunity arose during the day so no time but quite long, I found several clues rather challenging. However, I agree with those who applaud a fine setting effort – quite a number of very elegant clues and some superb surface readings.
    Slightly to my surprise it does seem that appellation/appalachian are true homophones.
    My A level economics leads me to pick 1dn as cod. Asyndeton a new word to me; a good example would be Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I solved..”
  19. 17 minutes, sorry I can’t join in on the lauding of GRESHAM as I had no idea about the law and got it from wordplay, I thought maybe he was a novelist. Similarly SHALLOP and ASYNDETON from wordplay and FLIPPED from definition.

    I may be the closest messageboarder to the APPALACHIANS (one point on the trail is about 20 minutes drive from here), and the locals do not say the two words the same at all.

  20. 10:15 for me – disappointing, as this was an excellent puzzle that I really ought to have knocked off far more quickly and I kept thinking “how could I be so stupid?”

    All pretty straightforward, though I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Jean Henri Fabre, and had to look through the Fabre disambiguation page in wikipedia to identify him after I’d finished.

    I had PAW/NEES, but (as has already been remarked) it’ll do, even though the setter almost certainly had PAWN/EES in mind.

    1. There was a lovely paperback when I and maybe you were young, ‘The Insect Man’, about Fabre.
      1. Fascinating. Sadly I hadn’t come across it before, or The Microbe Man about Pasteur or The Radium Woman about Marie Curie, all by the same author, Eleanor Doorly.
  21. 47 minutes, slowed down in part by not noticing for the longest time that I’d put in YEW KNOW at 10d. I agree with slowittedyank: I’ve always said, and heard, AY-chn for the region. And I thought 1d was pretty easy; my COD goes to 18d.
    1. >…
      >GRESHAM though is not an &lit clue.

      It is (or, to be precise, the clue to it is), at least according to Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword, which most regard as the final arbiter on such matters. Ximenes describes this form of &lit as an “offshoot type”, and says of it:

      I am not quite so fond of this offshoot type as of the perfect type; but it is equally sound and often available when the perfect type won’t quite work.

      1. I can’t remember the clue now. When I saw the &lit comment I double-checked and found that it seemed to me to be a perfectly sound, normal clue with a definition followed by wordplay. I don’t have Ximenes’ book to hand either, so I don’t know if by “offshoot &lit” he means a clue with a bit of extra definition tagged on, or one where the combination of definition and wordplay sort of fits the definition. Either way it’s not a perfect %lit, which is what I meant tho’ that doesn’t make it any less of an excellent clue of course.
  23. Disappointed by this clue, brilliant surface reading notwithstanding. The very worst sin of a setter is cluing an obscure* word imprecisely: either an anagram where you have to guess which letters go where; or with other obscure* words.

    Otherwise a great crossword.

    *Standard definition of an obscure word: I don’t know it.

    Rob

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