Times 26536 – you could ski straight through this one

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 9:33 – I thought I was going to be inside 7 minutes, but the ski resort held me up for a long time trying to work through the possibilities. Either I was on the wavelength of the setter to a great extent or this was a particularly straightforward one.

Hmmm – just as I am ready to submit there’s only one better time than me and it is Verlaine. So it might be more wavelength.

Away we go…

Across
1 S,CREAM
5 CHENILLE: inside CE, put HEN(female) and ILL(evil)
9 DEFENDANTS: anagram of SENT,DAD containing FEN(since 12 is MARSHY)
10 TOAD: this may trick a few – TOD is scots for FOX, stick A inside. Why knot? Some sources (though not Collins or Chambers) give knot as the collective noun for toads
11 SOLECISM: anagram of SEMICOLONS missing ON
12 MARSHY: MARS, H(astil)Y
13 M,EAT
15 TELEMARK: eventually dredged this up – L inside two targets – TEE(the mark in quoits) and MARK
18 SHILLING: SING(grass, spill the beans) around HILL
19 NODE: N,ODE – a work with several meanings
21 EMBALM: MBA in ELM
23 AMARANTH: AMAH (not our most common nurse, but one we have seen before) surrounding RANT
25 ERGO: or ER, GO!
26 UPHOLSTERY: anagram of POULTRY,SHE
27 BLIGHTER: B, and then once you shed pounds you are LIGHTER
28 DEN,TON: got this from wordplay
 
Down
2 CREDO: CO containing RED
3 ELEMENTAL: ET AL surrounding LE(the french),MEN
4 MAD,RID
5 CINEMATOGRAPHER: anagram of CHARIMAN and PROTEGE
6 ENSEMBLE: double definition
7 INTER: Harold PINTER’s plays have been described as comedies of menace, so chop his head off for the answer
8 LEATHERED: THERE in LEAD
14 EPHEMERAL: anagram of HARPE(r),LEE surrounding M
16 MANHATTAN: this raised a smile – MAN(guy),HAT(busby),TAN(brown)
17 DISMOUNT: I think this is a cryptic definition, I don’t think there is a mountain anywhere called Clydesdale
20 BALLAD: ALL in BAD
22 AMONG: hidden in gleAM ON Gabled
24 TORSO: T, OR SO

68 comments on “Times 26536 – you could ski straight through this one”

  1. I seemed to be on the wavelength too. Although the only reason I got TELEMARK is that I’d heard of a ski-turn with that name, although I assumed it was named after a person.

    I tentatively thought the long anagram would start CAMERA once I had the C, but it took several more checkers before I got it. I wasn’t even sure I had the right anagrist, it seems just too neat that there was an anagram of chairman and protege.

    2. I got the Norwegian clue from remembering that great film The Heroes of….not heard of that definition of tee. I like the image of a knot of toads.
  2. I was done and dusted in 27 minutes – as easy as they come – for me these days. I have the rest of the day to myself.

    FOI 2dn CREDO followed by a SCREAM 1ac. LOI EMBALM only cos I couldn’t read by own letter M – taking it for an H. [EMBASH!]

    Once the CINEMATOGRAPHER had revealed himself (sorry ladies but he was once the Chairman)at 5dn, it was plain sailing.

    A good’un for beginners.

    28ac DENTON rarely if ever gets a mention. Hats and batteries – ‘I told ’em OLDHAM’ were the mark of the town.

    COD 14dn EPHEMERAL

    WOD BLIGHTER

    horryd Shanghai

  3. Made a couple of missteps, like taking ‘extremely funny’ to be F,Y, and ‘angry tirade’ as (TIRADE)*, and wondered if there were a CONTON in Greater Manchester until I finally remembered ‘den’. I’d heard of TOD (probably here), assumed that toads came in knots. Didn’t understand the ‘menacing’, but didn’t need to. My LOI was BLIGHTER; I’d only ever come across the word with ‘poor’. Nice to get one quickly, and get it all right.
  4. A rare sub-20 for me, enjoying the distinctly non-Boolean obscurities along the way.

    Having once sat through No Man’s Land with Gielgud and Richardson, I get the menace part of Pinter’s work (as in, to society) but not the comedic bit. He certainly never gave it plenty of hoke.

  5. An obvious LOI for me too. Totally distracted by the “knot”. J. Joyce would have liked 23ac. I found it rather obscure. DENTON from “A Touch of Frost” … perhaps?
  6. Half-knowing the nurse and the plant was almost enough. Just needed the last letter of AMARANT_. Faced with a choice between the vowels and Y, I opted for O. Pretty sure that if I’d considered H I’d have gone for it, but them’s the breaks.

    Can’t complain, as I was very lucky to get TELEMARK. No idea which murky depth I plucked it from, but I dithered over it for ten minutes as we all know that a tee is not a target. In the end I decided that maybe the setter knows nothing about golf, so in it went. Turns out he/she knows something about quoits. Or bowls, or curling apparently.

    Anyway, seven over par today, five over for the tournament. Big last round needed tomorrow, must remember to wear the red shirt.

    Thanks setter and George.

  7. I’d forgotten about ‘ayah’, but AMAH is yet another chestnut from the NY Times, so it came to mind quickly.
  8. I never heard of the plant so I was relying on wordplay to complete the parsing that seemed obvious, namely RANT (angry tirade) contained by A?A? (nurse). I was then delighted to remember a word for nurse I’d met before that fitted, namely AYAH (a nurse or maid servant especially of Europeans in India). I was not pleased then to find that this was incorrect as the word the setter had in mind was AMAH (in parts of the Indian subcontinent and the Far East: a wet nurse, children’s nurse, or house servant). An obscure answer clued with obscure wordplay where alternatives are possible. Rotten swizz, say I!

    Apart from TELEMARK (only known from the film as mentioned above) and 10ac which involved two further obscurities the remainder of the clues could have appeared in the QC on an easy day.

    Edited at 2016-10-06 05:16 am (UTC)

    1. And one of today’s QC clues would not have been out of place in the 15×15. In fact it would have been at the tougher end of the scale, IMHO. Unless you knew it, of course.
  9. Dnk TEE in that sense, but had to be TELEMARK. Assumed wrongly that a TOAD was a type of knot. AMARANTH just looked right, no idea what they are but have seen the word. Dnk DENTON either, since its the home town of the TV detective Frost thought it was in the South, must be a different one. Nonetheless, got there, thanks gl and setter.
    1. Seems you’re right. The Wik has:

      The series is set in the fictional South Midlands town of Denton, and is marked by a gritty tone. It is believed that Denton is in either Berkshire or Oxfordshire, though there are many references to Reading, Oxford, and in particular, Swindon. In the earlier episodes, the M4 and A417 were often seen, and the map of Swindon was seen in the control room, although a map of Reading was used occasionally. The programme is produced by ITV in Leeds, and most of the outdoor locations are shot in West Yorkshire. Several scenes are filmed in and around the city and district of Wakefield and neighbouring small towns of Pontefract and Castleford, West Yorkshire.

      1. I always thought Frost’s Denton was, well, Denton. I suppose that if you cross Swindon with Wakefield you wouldn’t be far away from East Manchester, in atmosphere, if not in map co-ordinates.
        1. Denton is also where Rocky Horror Show is set – not the one near Manchester though.
  10. Quick for me today, with all done in 20mins, but then another 3 with T_A_. Assumed Tod Fox was an actor (there are so many of them), and the knot bit… well, who knew? DENTON unknown, but so many of the clues seemed to be so very simple* (2dn, 13ac, 25ac) that it had to be that.

    * so very simple=using crossie conventions that seem to crop up fairly regularly

    PS Was wondering why AMARANTH was familiar to me, whilst unknown to so many others (note, this is highly unusual)… my route to it is through cooking: two of my sons are coeliac, and amaranth flour is one of many weird and wonderful gluten-free alternatives to wheat flour

    Edited at 2016-10-06 07:44 am (UTC)

  11. AYI is auntie/maid in Mandarin Chinese and AMAH is commonly used in Guandong Chinese in HK, GZ, KL and Singapore – a servant/maid who looks after the kids.

    TELEMARK is the Nowegian county where the Germans (IG Farben) were making heavy weather of making ‘heavy water’ during the WWII occupation. By the mid-thirties the Norsk Hydro at Vermorkas the world’s largest hydro power plant. It was ‘smithereened’ by the Allies in July 1943.

    BLIGHTER doesn’t always go with poor – as per my grandfather: everyone was a blighter – which suggested criminality, rather than a misfortunate. Wasps were blighters.

    horryd Shanghai

  12. 20 minutes, had a rant but not an amah. Oh well.
    “Toad numbers fall by two-thirds in 30 years” was a news item on the way into work this morning.
  13. 11m. The clues for TOAD, AMARANTH and TELEMARK are all poor efforts in my opinion, reliant on double obscurities, and in one case ambiguous. I happened to possess enough of the arcane knowledge so I can’t be accused of sour grapes on this occasion!
    I did pause at the end wondering how a tee could be a mark, but eventually just bunged in the answer. I knew it as some sort of skiing-related thing but the association of skiing with Norway made it seem likely enough.
    AMARANTH has appeared before: as I think I remarked at the time I knew the word as the name of a hedge fund that went pop in spectacular fashion a few years ago. Now I also know it as the name of a flower that occasionally appears in crosswords.

    Edited at 2016-10-06 07:40 am (UTC)

    2. Based on the golden rule I’ve come to the conclusion that two of these are shining examples of the setter’s art and the other one is an utter abomination.
      1. I see that you are wisely applying my favoured definition:
        ‘Obscurity (noun): a word that I don’t know in circumstances where not knowing it prevents me from solving a crossword clue’.
  14. A squidge under 12 minutes put me on page 3 this morning – this wasn’t a hard one, though had I been blogging I could have accurately predicted the complaints department.
    TELEMARK from the film, of course, skiing being only a passing interest. Serendipitous research reveals that, rather wonderfully, Joachim Rønneberg, who led the real raid, is still alive at 97.
  15. PS: I couldn’t fathom why Denton Ohio was more familiar to me than Denton Gtr Manchester. A step to the right, perhaps.

    Edited at 2016-10-06 08:54 am (UTC)

  16. Dont quite understand your comment on 17dn, George, although I am probably missing something. A Clydesdale is a horse.
    Anyway, under the 20 min mark with TOAD a complete guess from the crossers and ‘creature’. Other than that, a pleasant stroll so thanks setter and George.
    1. Ah! I’d assumed it was a horse, but didn’t know. My first thought, the image of someone dismounting from a Clydesdale terrier, was enough to point me in the right direction!

      Edited at 2016-10-06 12:13 pm (UTC)

  17. This was a bit like the Quick Crossword with three or four snorters added. Fortunately knew Amah so AMARANTH went in. I don’t think I’ve any left in the garden. Never heard of a KNOT of toads, but then they’re mainly encountered singly when weeding out the AMARANTHS. Eventually biffed TELEMARK, using tee as in golf when driving from the green. Finished in the half hour.
  18. A Monday puzzle on a Thursday? I’ve been thrown into a state of confusion. The only stumbles today were AMAH (really?) and LOI TOAD, which was my second guess after TRAP.
  19. 9 mins. I did this even earlier than I usually do on days when I’m not in work and it seemed to pay off. I finished in the SE with AMARANTH (after remembering AMAH) after the TORSO/DENTON crossers. I’d have struggled with TELEMARK if I hadn’t remembered the film title.
  20. Down to three left at the wire today. Let down by vocabulary gaps. I’d considered TOAD but knew neither the fox nor the collective noun; similarly I hadn’t got to the unknown TELEMARK or AMARANTH as I also didn’t know “amah” or that meaning of “tee”. Never thought I’d be sad that there wasn’t a golf reference!

    Glad at least that my watching of A Touch of Frost led me to remember “ton”, which I’ve recently added to my crossword vocab; it came up a few weeks ago.

    Edited at 2016-10-06 09:01 am (UTC)

  21. Much the same as many others – a collection of crossword cliches with a levening of obscurities gathered together in some below par offerings. Not one to remember.
  22. Raced through all bar 10a, 15a and 23a in about 15 minutes and then spent another 25 on those 3. Unfortunately while I correctly pulled TOD from the recesses of my brain and chose the vaguely remembered AMAH rather than AMAI or AMAO, I was unable to conjure up the Norwegian region, mombling TALIMSRA(it at least has L(ib) in AIMS) and mentally chucking in the towel. A definite sting in the tail to this apparently easy puzzle!
  23. Oh dear. I gave up a little after ten minutes with two gaps – having never heard of TEE (in that sense), TELEMARK, AMAH or AMARANTH, I couldn’t work out reasonable entries for 15a or 23a.
  24. Surprised that no-one has mentioned Beatrix Potter’s story ‘The Tale of Mr Tod’ – about (of course) a fox. fourlegger
  25. Just under 14 min, with 10ac LOI – I’d not come across the collective before, so spent a couple of minutes thinking about knots before recalling Tod from Beatrix Potter etc.
    15ac went in from checkers and skiing manoeuvre – assumed ‘tee’ was some sort of target, as referred to in expression “to a T”.
    At 28ac, Denton is a fairly common placename, so went in without knowing of the particular one mentioned.
  26. 10:01 .. several minutes on TOAD. I did know tod for fox but had to convince myself that toads could be knotty.

    How good to know that Joachim Rønneberg is still around. I hope it’s a good while yet before we’re reading his obit. Talking of which, there’s a cracking obit of one Andrew Vicari in The Times today. If you don’t read and wonder if your life is rather dull then I’d like to hear more about your life.

    Edited at 2016-10-06 12:23 pm (UTC)

    1. I had to check the date to make sure that wasn’t a poisson d’Avril! Don’t think much of his paintings, but I doubt he cared much for critical acclaim when they won the approval (and rewards) of the insanely rich.
      Joachim Rønneberg’s international collection of medals must be unrivalled: fair enough for the man who conceivably saved the world from a nuclear-armed Third Reich, and escaped with his entire team to tell the story
      1. I had never heard of Vicari (which is what obits are for, of course). The paintings don’t look that great to my ignorant eye, but the life was something. Really, if Truman Capote hasn’t opened the door to you wearing a babydoll nightie, you haven’t lived.
  27. I came in about on par with 19:51. Would have been a lot quicker if I’d not spent so long thinking about my LOI TOAD before I went with it unparsed. Also delayed by putting EARTHY instead of MARSHY not acknowledging that I’d lost an H.

    My FOI was CINEMATOGRAPHER, having spotted the anagram straight away which gave me a good start. When I had all the crossers in the flower at 23A I thought I was done for until I dredged up AMAH from somewhere. As with some others, I only knew DENTON as a fictional TV place.

  28. A silly thought has been ricocheting around my brain all day involving some quip about our age being more interested in the heroes of telemarketing than those of Telemark. Perhaps if I write it down, it’ll go away.

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