Times 24,791 Give Me Pigalle Anytime

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

I never quite gelled with this setter and found myself working ant-clockwise from NW to NE. My last in was 17A where I can only see STAUNCH as an answer with the possibility of a word missing from the clue. (On edit – see comments) Only five literary references today so the arts folk may feel short changed. I’m interested to see if others found this difficult as I suspect I made rather heavy weather of it.

Across
1 LONDONER – LON(DON)ER;
9 ELONGATE – (c)E(l)L-ON-GATE; in Scotland a GATE is a street as in “Cowgate” in Glasgow;
10 SELFLESS – S-ELF-LESS; reference short story The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde;
11 TUTORIAL – TU-T(O)RIAL; workers=Trade Union=TU; tribunal=TRIAL; duck=zero (cricket)=O;
12 CINDERELLA – (“real nice lad” missing “a”)*;
14 FLIT – F-LIT; fine=F (on lead pencils);
15 FETLOCK – FE-T(his)-LOCK;
17 STAUNCH – is the word “gut” missing from this clue? “Reliable gut way to replace initiator of project” would give gut=paunch then replace p=initiator of project by st=street=way; On edit: no, its “launch” with “l” converted to “st”;
21 RORY – hidden (Lancaste)R-OR-Y(ork);
22 BETTER,HALF – BETTER-HAL-F; in Waggledagger’s Henry IV the future Henry V is known as Prince Hal; ‘er in doors;
23 SPINSTER – S-PIN(S)TER; reference Harold Pinter and Dicken’s character in Great Expectations;
25 DELIVERY – DE-LIVERY;
26 DOLOROSO – DO(L)OR-O(r)-SO; roughly=or so without resistance=r gives “oso”; musical direction for sadly;
27 MORALITY – MORA(LIT)Y; MORAY (pronounced Murray) is in the NE of Scotland. Not sure about the “old”;
 
Down
2 OVERTIME – OVERT-I-ME;
3 DAFFODIL – DA-(LID OFF reversed); opportunity for literary clue missed – what a shame;
4 NOEL – sounds like NO L (reference legal requirement that learner drivers display an L plate on their car;
5 RESTYLE – R(amshackl)E- STYLE; old pen (for writing on wax) = STYLE;
6 MONTMARTRE – MON-(term)* surrounds ART; night club area to the north of gay Paris;
7 CARILLON – CAR-ILL-ON; crushing=on top of; leg (cricket)=ON; an organ stop;
8 DECLUTCH – D(EC-L)UTCH; City (of London)=EC (post code); DUTCH(ess of Fyfe)=rhyming slang for wife;
13 ROCK,BOTTOM – reference Midsummer Night’s Dream character BOTTOM the weaver;
15 FIRESIDE – F(oxes)-I-RESIDE;
16 TORTILLA – T(OR-TILL)A; soldiers=ordinary ranks=OR; (Territorial) Army=TA;
18 UPHEAVAL – UP-HE-A-VAL;
19 CELLARET – CE-(real)*-LT; officer=lieutenant=LT; a drinks cabinet;
20 STARDOM – (RATS reversed)-DO-M; gathering=DO; mark=M (old German currency);
24 ALAR – A-LAR(k); it means “of or like wings”;

40 comments on “Times 24,791 Give Me Pigalle Anytime”

  1. Jim, I think the paunch is launch, with project in the sense “throw or cause to move forward or outward”
    1. My thanks to you and others for what is undoubtedly the correct explanation
  2. ST replaces the L in LAUNCH (project)n was my thinking.
    Well under the hour for second day running so yes Jimbo I think you made heavy weather of this one.
  3. I agree re ‘launch/staunch’.

    It’s not often I equal your time, Jim, but I did today so I think you must have had an off day.

  4. 17 minutes today, working piecemeal round the grid and leaving 1a, 10a and 3d until I had all all the crossing letters in. Just couldn’t see LONDONER, and assumed the bloomer was something ending in A that I hadn’t heard of, like it usually is. SELFLESS went in on cryptic alone, as I was ignorant of Wilde’s opus.
    I liked the “being at racecourse ” = BETTER once I saw it working in reverse, and surmised CELLARET (presumably small cellar) rather than CELLERAT which would have been possible from the cryptic if it existed.
    Deja vu all over again: another hello to NOEL with another working on the absent letter theme. I’m reminded of the myth that that Antediluvian order of Buffaloes was so named because it came from a time when there was “no a(h)” so B was the first letter. The RAOB website doesn’t confirm this.
    CoD, raising a smile rather than a determined grimace, to ROCK BOTTOM
  5. I don’t know about difficult. Timing myself “offline” I completed all but 7d in 66mins, a very good time for me, but then took a further 28mins over that last clue. I found it a mixture of the very familiar (Noel, Better Half (including our favourite prince) and Rory have all been seen recently I think) and the obscure. I found 19d and, as mentioned 7d difficult. I suspect many others initially put “flee” for 14ac and then could make no sense of 8d. Liked the double cockney reference in the clue for 1ac and the answer for 8d but COD for me was17ac, “staunch”.
  6. 35 minutes of reasonably hard work. I don’t think it was just you, Jimbo. I minorly quibbled “crushing” at 7d, thinking it more a containment indicator than simply “on top of”, but I grudgingly admit the analogy is there. I liked DOLOROSO for its “not offering resistance”, but COD to MONTMARTRE. Oh, and paunch was my first guess at 17, thinking it had more to do with projecting than launching did.
  7. Nothing wrong with 17a, except it was too easy. The whole puzzle was easy, infact, but for a couple of the downs. Under ten minutes here. Thanks for the insights, Dorsetjimbob.
  8. Not too easy for me, who staggered home in 15 “Barbara Teps”, or 1 hour and 13 minutes, including two cheats (the Wilde giant was unfamiliar and, unlike our Dave, Dee, Dozy Beaky Mick and Titch fan, I couldn’t get it from the cryptic; and I might have got 8dn if it was ‘double declutch’, since my father used to talk about doing that to Army trucks). Bottom half went in first, but that’s not much to boast about on a day like today.

    Hat doffed to all who finished in ‘well under the hour’, as Barry modestly puts it.

  9. 20 minutes here and was going really well till clobbered by a couple. Liked some of the rationales (Noel). Not too keen on fireside = home. No COD but still enjoyable overall, without being scintillating anywhere.
  10. Spent a while trying to justify CARILLON, last in and a bit of a toss-up with VANILLIN, before calling it a day without making the organ connection. MONTMARTRE is known for its daytime artists as well as its night-time artistes and I thought the clue’s double intersection of definition and cryptic was very neat – unless I am reading too much into it. 41 mins.

  11. 19m here. I was quite pleased with this (particularly after yesterday’s travails) because there was quite a lot in here I didn’t know: “gate” as a road, Wilde’s short story, style, carillon. Thanks to Jimbo for enlightening me on all of those, and the wordplay for NOEL, which I didn’t get.
  12. 24 minutes. Since he departed just over two years ago, Pinter has appeared regularly in the Times crossword; it’s one of those names that can be worked into so many English words. Setters might be forgiven for pondering other interestingly named celebrities and pinching themselves for thinking “If that old fellow popped off, I could use this wonderful clue.”
  13. Jimbo, We think the old in 27ac refers to the fact that the County of Moray dates back to the reorganisation of 1889, with subsequent reorganisations leaving the name intact. Perhaps any other Scots solvers will confirm.

  14. 21:05 .. middling tricky for me. CARILLON, SELFLESS and CELLARET both had to be dragged out of the abyss I call my long-term memory. Was foxed for a while by the presence of ‘off’ in 3d.

    I rather liked MONTMARTRE – hearing the name I certainly think first of the legions of painters and cartoonists who plant their easels around the wedding-cake church on the hill, rather than the artistes of the night (of all descriptions) in the streets below. But then I’ve led an unusually blameless life.

    Last in: SELFLESS

  15. I was quite pleased with my time of 14:21 as it wasn’t until I got to fetlock that I was able to write something in.

    Doloroso and selfless from wordplay, cellaret, alar and carillon vaguely remembered from other puzzles.

    Plenty of roads here in Yorkshire are called -gate such as Westgate in Wakefield and Elland, Eastgate in Leeds and dozens of the buggers in York such as Petergate, Gillygate and Micklegate.

    1. As it happens I’m in Stockholm at the moment and they’re all called gatan here. According to Collins the Scottish and northern English usage is from the Old Norse gata, meaning “path”, which in turn is related to the Old High German gazza meaning to cry inconsolably when given a yellow card.
      1. You can’t walk 10 yards (9.144 metres) in York without bumping into a Viking so the norse etymology makes sense.
      2. Loved that comment!The wit is one of the main reasons I like perusing this blog. Uou’re absolutely right about all the gatans in Sweden. Never made tha connection before. Thanks again!
        1. You are too kind.
          In Copenhagen the equivalent is gade (which the Danes seem to pronounce “ghuu”) and in Oslo it’s actually gate, but like you I’ve never made the connection. The things you learn from this crossword, and this blog.
  16. Some problems today with carillon and noel, both entered correctly but without understanding why.. 18 minutes overall, i would say it was average difficulty or even a bit easier, except for one or two..
  17. A steady solve today. I cantered home in 25 minutes. I didn’t get the cryptic for NOEL although it seems obvious in retrospect. I’ve got to the stage where I enjoy this blog almost as much as the crossword itself. I’ve been doing the Times crypic since the early 60s but always as a solitary solver, never knowing anyone else who was doing it. This site has been a revelation. Many thanks to all concerned, especially the blogging team.
  18. 25 minutes, with help from the plethora of checkers. On reading Jimbo’s excellent blog, I realize that I got a couple right for the wrong reasons: I didn’t know the rhyming-slang origin of ‘dutch’ (I thought it was short for ‘Dutch wife’), and I figured there must be a verb ‘paunch’ that I didn’t know, since it had to be ‘staunch’. ALAR, which I’ve never seen here, is one of those words, like ‘etui’, that seem to appear in every other NY Times crossword.
  19. Feeling totaly cream crackered, sat down with no expectations. 14 mins…where did that come from? Liked Montmartre..
  20. Found this on the easy side (a relief after yesterday’s struggle), and only left two blanks: CARILLON and CELLARET, both unfamiliar words (as was ALAR, but I mangaged this from wordplay). Hadn’t fully grasped the ‘roughly’ bit of 26a, but found the rest quite straightforward.
  21. ALAR? No need for this word/clue. Setter could easily have put something else in the space provided. Never heard of it…
    1. H’m. SLUR, BLUR and FLOR, I think. Anyway, now you know ALAR for future reference. Try to work it into everyday conversation!
    2. Give us a list of words you don’t know and we’ll see what we can do about ensuring they never appear in the Times crossword.
  22. This was no gift on this my 69th birthday having got most of
    the clues in jig time I struggled with CARILLON, ELONGATE AND TUTORIAL even though I had DECLUTCH (I’ve always owned standard-shift cars)
    20 minutes for most of it plus 35 or 40 for the few remaining.
    Having my pacemaker replaced tomorrow so will see how it is to tackle
    a puzzle having come out of light anaesthesia.
    1. Good luck. I have done some of my finest work in bed, when it comes to solving crosswords…
      1. Thank you Jerry, Kevin. The 3 B’s where genius is said to strike. In bed, in the bath and on the bus.
        1. Good luck, colonialboy! I had one of those fitted 2 years ago at St Vincents in Sydney. Still got 5 years battery life left!
          1. Thanks Martin. Just on the way to the hospital now. It’s amazing in that it only takes
            20-25 minutes for the whole thing to be swapped out. I am very fortunate as they come at about $25000 U.S. with the whole deal free on our national health in Canada. Even more grateful as I’m completely dependent on it.
  23. About 30 minutes, ending with CELLARET. Good Luck to colonial boy with pacemaker etc. Interestingly, I got to STAUNCH the same way jimbo did, via the paunch, and I thought it was that paunch=project, in the sense of projecting pot belly. I didn’t think I needed another ‘gut-like’ word in the clue to get there, so I was happy with it. CARILLON and MORALITY from wordplay only today, and the ‘Possible Cockney…’ gets my COD nod today. Regards to all.
  24. 9:05 for me, including a bit of final dithering over CARILLON.

    At the time I took the “gathering” in 20D to be a MOD (“a Highland Gaelic literary and musical festival, held annually”, to quote Chambers (2003)), but your explanation (which makes proper use of “to mark”) is definitely better.

  25. Struggled with DECLUTCH, CELLARET and DOLOROSO, but got there in the end, under an hour.
  26. Anyone else from downunder here?

    How do you get the ‘LESS’ from the wordplay in the clue:
    Small sprite, not so unlike Wilde’s beast.

    LESS must come from NOT or NOT SO, but I can’t think of a context they could be replaced by less. Anyone spotted it?

    Rob

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