Times Cryptic No 27120 – Saturday, 18 August 2018. No smoking gun, just smoked haddock.

48 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27120 – Saturday, 18 August 2018. No smoking gun, just smoked haddock.”

1. I found this fairly tricky too as it took me 52:10 and I needed aids to confirm ONER and to find ZEUS, which eluded me completely. I liked CONFINEMENT and PIC-KING. I’d never heard of daggy for scruffy, but the definition was conclusive with the rest of the wordplay. Thanks setter and Bruce.
2. ‘Time’ is part of the definition, so it’s not the source of the T. T is ‘mee t ing’ in the middle.
   1. Thanks.
3. A general question for all, and something already raised on the Crossword Club forum: is daughters fair for d, when d in dictionaries is defined as the singular daughter/’s (which would mess up the clue’s grammar). Daughters implies more than one d to me.
   – Nila Palin
   1. I thought that it was a bit strange, but the rest of the wordplay was enough to make the answer a cert.
   2. I think it’s OK; I’m pretty sure I’ve seen S for ‘sons’, on more than one occasion.
      1. But Chambers has son(s) under s, so that would be okay. It doesn’t have daughter(s) under d, illogical as it may be.
         – Nila Palin
         1. I wondered if the clue originally was “that is on much loved disc”? This would have required 2 daughters – if you see what I mean.
   3. D for daughters has certainly been used before. One of my favourite clues from only a few years ago used it: “Roman sex position daughters came to see”: VISITED. No double D there.
      1. The irony is that ‘daughter’ would have worked just as well for that particular clue!
         I don’t know – it’s a small point, but if d for daughters isn’t in any dictionary (unlike s for son and sons, m for mark and marks), what other liberties can be taken with initialisms?
         – Nila Palin
         1. “d” for daughter is in Collins, Chambers and Shorter Oxford. I imagine a genealogical entry like Elizabeth, m Philip, 3s 2d would be standard.

            Edited at 2018-08-25 11:13 pm (UTC)

            1. Brnchn, I realise that, but this is about daughters, plural, not daughter.
               – Nila Palin
               1. Understood,but to me it’s a dictionary problem, not a setter problem.
   4. I agree. Especially when “Daughter’s” would have worked as well, it looked like the plural was deliberate.
      1. I suspect it’s a typo, with the apostrophe missing.
      2. I think you mean ‘daughter’s would have worked as badly’. The surface of this clue is rubbish whichever of the three ds you choose.
         D Orton.
   5. Mr Grumpy here (and still not able to sign in). I agree-daughters must be plural. The problem is easily resolved by making daughters apostrophe ‘s’ (or ‘daughter is’) and inserting a full stop after ‘record’. It just seems a bit of careless setting for a prize crossword.
4. A couple of biffs, solved post-submission (DOS-A-DOS, IRREVERENT, NAN–I forgot finnan), a couple of DNKs (DOS-A-DOS again; I only knew that it was the source of ‘do-si-do’; DAGGY). Never did parse CHICHESTER, embarrassingly enough. NOWELL came to mind immediately, as I’d thought of it (in ‘Sir Christemas’) as an example of macaronic verse when that word came up in a recent cryptic. (Of course ‘scout master’ was rather a helpful definition.) Lots of nice smooth surfaces today.
5. Since I was an eighteenth-century specialist in the English lit PhD program, quarter days are well known. I knew ‘oner’, and have no fewer than 8 different recordings of Dido and Aeneas (I recommend the Colin Davis on Philips as the best overall). In Chaucer, John the carpenter in the Miller’s Tale is so ignorant he confuses ‘Nowell’ (Father Christmas) with Noah, much to the amusement of Nicholas and Alisoun.

   I should have known ‘finnan’ from some Scottish folk music, but just biffed the bread.

   Over here in the US, we say that we no longer use ‘divers’, but they still do over in the UK – go figure.

   Time about 30 minutes.

   1. Not just folk music:
      If I invite
      A boy some night
      To dine on my fine Finnan haddie,
      I just adore
      His asking for more,
      But my heart belongs to daddy.
6. I recall the term being used in the game of Conkers as confirmed by Google:

   The conker eventually breaking the other’s conker gains a point. This may be either the attacking conker or (more often) the defending one.
   A new conker is a none-er meaning that it has conquered none yet.
   If a none-er breaks another none-er then it becomes a one-er, if it was a one-er then it becomes a two-er etc. In some areas of Scotland, conker victories are counted using the terms bully-one, bully-two, etc. In some areas of the United States and Canada, conker victories are counted using the terms one-kinger, two-kinger, etc.
   In some regions the winning conker assimilates the previous score of the losing conker, as well as gaining the score from that particular game. For example, if a two-er plays a three-er, the surviving conker will become a six-er (the sum of the two previous scores plus one for the current game). In other regions the winning conker simply gains one point, irrespective of the points-value of the loser.

   1. I’m familiar with that usage but I think the defintion in teh clue refers to boxing – something like a knockout blow.
      1. Yes, in my neck of the woods, it was used in connection with fighting when one would say “that was a right oner”.
7. …not in Knightsbridge any more. 52 minutes with three solved from half the definition. DOS-A-DOS, NAN and PEDAGOGY. I think I’ve heard of DAGGY, but if so I’d forgotten. I liked ONER and CONFINEMENT, although “goner” as a body and “fine men” as “stalwarts” would never have occurred to me without getting the answer. COD to SUNDRY. Thank you B and setter for a nice work-out.
8. Hard work but rewarding having made the effort. My unknowns were DOS-A-DOS and DAGGY.

   The clue to 27 is a little misleading in its definition, ‘short distance’. The standard English ELL was 45 inches, in Scotland it was 37.2 and in Europe 27 inches. Perception of distance varies of course, but the ELL was used principally as a measure of cloth where 27-45 inches would not be particularly short. My point is illustrated in the old saying ‘give someone and inch and they’ll take an ell’ which contrasts the comparatively long ELL with the much shorter ‘inch’.

   It’s not of any consequence but in view of the reference to ‘Dido and Aeneas’ by Purcell I thought I’d mention that Purcell uses this couplet in his 1692 stage-work based on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and entitled ‘The Fairy Queen’:

   I’ll not trust you so far, I know you too well,
   should I give you an inch you’d soon take an ell.

   Edited at 2018-08-25 06:35 am (UTC)

   1. I agree that it is a very great distance. Think of the old saying, “To ell and back”.
9. FOI 5dn DUET
   LOI 22ac SUNDRY
   COD 24dn ZEUS
   WOD ex-23ac DAGGY
10. I rather whizzed through this in 20 minutes (this week took twice as long), fortunately knowing all the weirder bits and constructing a passable DOS-A-DOS from the supplied components.
    If you turn up at Carol Services, “The First Nowell” has it no less than 33 times (and an extra 4 in some versions). Goes on forever.
11. When looking at potted biographies and in genealogy, it is common to see d & s used to denote how many children they had, e.g. Queen Victoria b1819 d1901 m1840 4s 5d.
    So it’s OK by me.
    Incidentally, there is a cunning way to remember the quarter days: Christmas Day 25th December (natch), Lady Day 25th March (5 letters in “March”), Midsummer 24th June (4 letters in “June”) and Michaelmas 29th September (9 letters in “September”). In days of yore before 1752 in the UK, the year started on Lady Day, i.e. the year “changed” from say 1681 to 1682, not on 1st January.
    Good puzzle – from which you can imply I managed to finish it.
    1. You can imply it; I infer it.
       1. Well, yes and no.
          I admit I should have used “you infer”, but your statement should properly say “You can imply or infer it (the two are interchangeable), I infer it”.

          Edited at 2018-08-25 02:13 pm (UTC)

12. Does goner = body? I thought that calling someone a goner would be more likely in a situation where that person is doomed but still alive. And oner is obscure too. Not the best of clues. Finnan – well, okay, I suppose. NHO the dog. Great blog, thanks.
    1. I raised exactly this question a while back–no idea how much of a while–and was given an explanation, which I of course forget. But apparently goners can be dead.
       1. Thanks Kevin 🙂
13. Same experiences as jackkt, about half an hour with DAGGY not known although answer was clear. My Dad was a master tailor and as a lad I vaguely remember him saying an ELL was a yard and a quarter of cloth. Seems an odd distance to use, though.
    1. I think an ELL was the length of cloth you got by holding a roll of cloth with one hand and drawing off as much as you could reach with the other.
14. 37:55. Nice puzzle. I should have been quicker. There was much that could have been biffed But I failed to do. So I had to solve most of the clues! Which is of course how it should be and more satisfying. But less good for a fast time.

    COD: Corporation.

15. 52m 29s of enjoyment. And along the way, I learnt things, too; for example, we get the term used in square dancing, ‘do-si-do’ from DOS-A-DOS.
    COD for me was CASH COW. I like the idea of ASH CO = ‘timber business’.
16. Last Saturday we were returning by car from our holiday in Northumberland and, whilst my wife was driving, I was able to look at this. Looking is mainly what I did. It seemed a very hard puzzle. I kept it and see I had solved 17 clues before I gave up.
    I could comment on many clues but Dos a Dos unknown despite having “learnt” French;I got Pedagogy without knowing Daggy and I had a very confident Isis for 24d- did anyone else notice it’s contained forwards and backwards in the clue?-had to be right. So that made 25a impossible.
    A plug for Barter Books in Alnwick -great place for those who like books, and stations. David
17. 52:59. I found this tricky and a few went in on blind faith. Oner held me up for ages at the end. I struggled to see goner as a body, I also had difficulty seeing oner as a heavy blow. I eventually justified it to myself rightly or wrongly with the conkers connection. I’ve always been more of a shake a leg man rather than a show a leg man but had no doubt that the other version existed. DNK finnan so thankful that I was only looking at N-N for bread. Daggy at 23ac remembered from the argot of Ozzie soaps Neighbours and Home and Away which always seemed to be on telly in our house after school, people were always dags or daggy and being told to rack off (I never knew whether that expression existed in real life or was just invented because they could not use stronger language in the programme, like naff off in Porridge). Pleased to get through this one all correct in the end.
18. Spotting an encapsulation which, in fact, wasn’t one undid me. Had Isis at 24D, so couldn’t get CONFINEMENT.

    DNK DAGGY, or DOS-A-DOS, but they weren’t a problem. Wondered if there was a canine SHARPIE, but luckily it worked just as well !

    I was surprised to discover on the Tyne & Wear Metro last year that they pronounce the suburb of South Shields as “Ch-eye-chester”.

    Excellent puzzle. I already flagellated myself yesterday.

    Edited at 2018-08-26 01:12 pm (UTC)

19. Verlaine has posted a note about a Nina in Friday’s puzzle.
    Thanks to the NHS it seems. D
20. Same as others – liked it and found it a good level of difficulty. Pondered for a while over Dos-a-Dos and Show a Leg, knowing mostly Do se Do from square dancing and Shake a Leg from US usage, and not seeing the parsing at 1a wondered if there was a famous movie mogul called Picking. I lost a lot of time falling into the trap at 24d – Zeus should have been a write in, but with the “is” in the clue I got to the ancient Horus’ mother and modern ME terrorists Isis.
    1. Exactly the same problem with PICKING; a major d’oh! moment when it hit me.
    2. Like you and Kevin I spent time wondering who this guy Picking was!
21. What happened to puzzle 27126?
    1. Because there is a prize for the Saturday puzzle, we can’t put up the blog until after the competition closes. The blog will come up next Saturday.
22. I wondered what sort of dog a sharpie was
    Daggy only known in relation to a sheep’s fleece (around its rear)
    ONER and NAN entered with shrugs

    Since I’m (almost) commenting at the right time – I’m consistently almost a week behind, I would like to express my thanks and regard for this site; it’s helped me no end in being able to regularly complete the 15×15, kept me entertained in its own right and maintained my faith in man’s ability to comment online without recourse to the gutter

    jb

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