Times Jumbo 917 (March 26, 2011)

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
34:58 according to the Club timer, which suggests I didn’t find this especially easy, mainly because of a number of playfully cryptic definitions which needed teasing out. I think as a litmus test, if you liked “academic stream” as a description of the Isis in 45 across, you’ll have liked this puzzle overall. For my part, I was entertained.

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
14 FLOW CHART – Following + LOW + CHAR (=daily) + Temperature.
16 PHOTOGRAPHER – nice cryptic def. (this is going to be a recurring theme…)
18 EASILY – (LIE SAY)*; referencing Shakespeare (Henry IV, Pt 2) on the perils of kingship, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”.
19 HARDSHIP – HARD (=stern) + SHIP (=serve aboard). Nice misdirection by the use of a stern which has nothing to do with ships; “ship” here is the less obvious meaning of “serve aboard a ship”, as in “he shipped with Captain Bligh”.
21 SCARAB – RA in SCAB, using one Egyptian reference to produce another.
24 SAFARI PARK – cryptic def. Not sure if safari parks these days allow monkeys to climb over your car and steal the windscreen wipers.
26 LINE OF BATTLE – (BENEFIT TO ALL)*.
29 FOOT – double def.; before being given their modern names, British infantry regiments were known as the x Regiment of Foot
34 EYESORES =”I SOARS”.
35 MISSPELT – MISS + PELT with the cunning cryptic definition “showing character flaw”.
36 IGOR – i.e. Stravinsky’s own name and that of Borodin’s hero, the Prince.
40 TIME SWITCH – TIMES + WITCH; “off-putting later” i.e. something which puts an appliance into the OFF position, later on.
44 LITTORAL =”LITERAL”, i.e. a typographical error involving a letter – so I suppose this is a literal meaning of literal. Literally.
45 CRISIS – CRedit + ISIS (the local name of the Thames in the academic setting of Oxford) gives us “head”, as in “matters came to a head”.
51 POPULAR FRONT – double/cryptic def. which, as so often, makes me think of Monty Python. Popular Front of Judaea? Splitters.
53 TAXIING – 1 in TAXING.
54 HANDLEBAR – HANDLE (=name) + BAR (=piece of music). Elegant surface.
56 LENINGRAD – Rex in (ENGLAND I)*; “recalled” meaning it was given the same name again after being called something else.
 
Down
1 LIFE PEERS – cryptic def. For those outside the UK, life peers are those members of the House of Lords (traditionally referred to within the House of Commons as “an/the other place” – see comment below) appointed politically, as opposed to the hereditary peers whose numbers have been reduced of late.
5 GROUP THERAPY – another of those cryptic defs which we are presumably used to by now…
9 SAFETY – i.e. doubly because one can be safe as houses, and have safety in numbers.
22 RETHOUGHT – theatRE THOUGH Typecast.
23 UPSTREAM – UP (=revolting) + STREAM (=group of students); insert your own joke about revolting students here.
29 FIELD HOSPITAL – cryptic def. (we should be looking for these now…)
33 SERIAL NUMBER – “EastEnders” is a popular television drama, m’lud.
37 UNFINISHED – pleasingly self-referential double def.
41 HESITATOR – (ORETHATIS)*; he who hesitates is lost, of course.
46 SNOWDON – SNOW (“English author”) + DON (=”academic”) making together the highest point in Wales. Snow started a debate about the gulf between science and the humanities which is revisited in this blog on a near-daily basis.
48 BARRIO – BAR (“apart from”) + RIO. Other Portuguese speaking cities are available, of course, making this a little loose, but it was reasonably obvious where it was going.
50 NIXON – i.e. NIX(nothing) ON.
52 KNOW =”NO”.

2 comments on “Times Jumbo 917 (March 26, 2011)”

  1. I don’t seem to have timed myself on this one, but the absence of flagged clues suggests that it went fairly smoothly for me, although no doubt slowly. I suspect that what some non-UK solvers might not know about 1d is that in the House of Commons members do not refer to the House of Lords by name, but rather as ‘another place’ (or, I gather, ‘the other place’).

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