Times Cryptic 26426

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
 I found this one quite hard and needed nearly 70 minutes to work my way steadily through it. With hindsight it doesn’t seem particularly difficult but there were a few references that took a while to dig from the recesses of my mind and I often struggle a bit with &lit definitions. 25 and 27ac were my last ones in and needed all the checkers.

 As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are in curly brackets} and [indicators in square ones] (PASTE TEMPLATE HERE)

Across
1 TV personality about to be seen in new westerns (10)
NEWSCASTER – CA (about) contained by [to be seen in] anagram [new] of WESTERNS
6 Page taken by Listener advertisement (4)
PLUG – P (page), LUG (listener – ear)
9 Expert at court regularly defending scoundrel? (10)
PROCURATOR – PRO (expert) + AT + {c}O{u}R{t} [regularly] containing [defending] CUR (scoundrel). The definition is &lit
10 Just one dropping round for card game (4)
FARO – FA{i}R (just) [one dropping], O (round)
12 Conservative party, needing billions, will back a rate increase (12)
ACCELERATION – A, C (Conservative), CELE{b}RATION (party) [needing billions]
15 Literary collection about Maine, Rhode Island and California? (9)
AMERICANA – ANA (literary collection) contains [about] ME (Maine), RI (Rhode Island), CA (California). Another & lit. SOED defines “Americana” as “publications or other items concerning or associated with America”
17 Cross about flipping fool taking precedence (5)
TIGON – ON (about) is preceded by GIT (fool) reversed [flip]
18 Old weapon found under settee is loaded just at the front (5)
FUSIL – First letters [just in front] of F{ound} U{nder} S{ettee} I{s} L{oaded}. It’s a type of musket. It may be a bit obscure as a weapon but “fusiliers” has survived in military regimental circles.
19 Keen soldier in WW1 battlefield? (9)
TRENCHANT – TRENCH (ref WW1 battlefield), ANT (soldier)
20 Difficult to comprehend Bengali translation by, for example, Cambridge graduate (12)
UNIMAGINABLE – UNI (for example, Cambridge), MA (graduate), anagram [translation] of BENGALI
24 Triplets oddly seen in bank (4)
TILT – T{r}I{p}L{e}T{s} [oddly]
25 Roster assembled for visiting island? (6,4)
MUSTER ROLL – Anagram [assembled] of ROSTER is contained by [visiting] MULL (island). I think the definition here has to be taken as &lit although “roster” on its own could pass muster, so to speak. Didn’t know this one as such
26 Welsh runner providing sustenance for baby? (4)
RUSK – R. USK (Welsh runner – river)
27 Flamboyantly-dressed trader in city once stocking top-quality line? (6,4)
PEARLY KING –  PEKING (city once) containing [stocking] A (top-quality) + RLY (line – railway)
Down
1 Definitely not what inactive pupils want on timetable? (4)
NOPE – NO P.E. A straight definition and a cryptic
2 Material helping make igloo warm up (4)
WOOL –  Hidden [helping make] and reversed [up] in {ig}LOO W{arm}
3 Former statesman’s to agitate briefly with South American, reportedly (12)
CHURCHILLIAN – CHUR{n} (agitate) [briefly], sounds like [reportedly] “Chilean” (South American)
4 Fish found beneath small rock (5)
SHAKE – S (small), HAKE (fish)
5 Free ecstasy? That’s wrong, I judge (9)
EXONERATE – E (ecstasy), X (that’s wrong), ONE (I), RATE (judge)
7 Top performer managed first of lines in plays (7,3)
LEADING MAN – Anagram [plays] of MANAGED + L{ine} [first of] + IN
8 Fruit crumbled onto crackers (6,4)
GROUND NUTS – GROUND (crumbled), NUTS (crackers – mad)
11 Very much concerned with knee, perhaps, during exercise (12)
PARTICULARLY – ARTICULAR (concerned with knee, perhaps) contained by [during] PLY (exercise)
13 Watch safari participant who’s not fully committed? (4-6)
HALF-HUNTER – HALF (not fully committed), HUNTER (safari participant). A watch with a hinged cover protecting the outer part of the glass.
14 Extremely short trips around the French palace (10)
VERSAILLES – VER{y} (extremely) [short], SAILS (trip) containing [around] LE (the, French)
16 Property tax introduced by a Trotskyist leader (9)
ATTRIBUTE – A, T{rotskyst} [leader], TRIBUTE (tax)
21 7 works avoiding extremes (5)
ACTOR – {f}ACTOR{y} (works) [avoiding extremes]. The definition refers to LEADING MAN at 7dn.
22 Places I pass, heading north (4)
LOCI – I + COL (pass) reversed [heading north]
23 Sell / leather (4)
FLOG – Two definitions

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 26426”

  1. Held up by missing a few (now obvious) anagrams such as LEADING MAN and failed on FARO, so took about an hour and a half. I liked this though and there were lots of good clues PARTICULARLY 11,TIGON, NOPE (applies to me I’m afraid) and TRENCHANT which was a stand-out for me and my COD.

    Thanks v. much to setter and blogger.

  2. Not quite a DNF, more like a DNP (=parse) which, for me, is a fail. Worst gaffes were not knowing ARTICULAR (11dn) and taking the fool at 17ac to be NIT! But there were others I care not to discuss in detail.

    Found the semi-&lits a bit hard to handle.

    No excuses except perhaps for a virus (or PUA?) which kept chucking up a fake Gmail log-in window.

  3. 44 minutes, with the unknown MUSTER ROLL last to fall. I agree with the &lit interpretation, given the dictionaries refer to a ship’s company as a prime area of usage.

    I particularly liked ATTRIBUTE, where I was trying to make ‘attainder’ fit before the PEARLY KING came to my aid.

  4. Another dismal performance, with only a miserable head cold to blame. Took ages over everything, then went back to sleep with PROCURATOR and the unknown PEARLY KING still unsolved.

    Couldn’t think of CUR for scoundrel, and I hadn’t seen RLY for railway before (thought it was usually RY?) so mombled PROMUGATOR and PEURAY KING, on the basis that a ray is a line, or something.

    Shame, as it was an excellent puzzle. Particularly liked PARTICULARLY, and the well-disguised anagram for LEADING MAN.

    Will probably attempt a drug-assisted solve tomorrow. Thanks setter and Jack.

      1. Thanks. My aim is to be fully fit in time for game one of Origin tomorrow night.
    2. Me too, especially since RAT was already there and some very odd letters of “court” were hanging around.
      1. And there was I thinking that the evocatively named procurator fiscal was some sort of glorified accountant – like an actuary…
  5. Tricky stuff – home in 33 minutes having struggled especially in the NE quadrant. I assumed “Top performer” was a circus act (clever, eh?) and “managed” was “ran” but got no further, even when I had the cross referenced ACTOR. Only when the actual answer dropped out of the ether like Mozart picking up yet another ravishing tune did I realise it was an anagram, and even then there seemed to be way too many letters. I had SOLO as my card game to mess things up (just one=sole, drop one letter, add 0 – sometimes I’m too clever), and wondered for ages how PEAR could mean advertisement. I’m sure it’s fine really, but I only reluctantly concede that GROUND and “crumbled” are the same species.
    And to cap it all, I’ve only just discovered that GIT, the backward fool from TIGON, is not and never has been a pregnant camel.
    Fine and challenging puzzle, compliments to setter and to Jack for dismantling it.

    Edited at 2016-05-31 07:18 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve never thought of a git as a fool, more a w****r. But I suppose that’s what the latter really means too. It’s just that when I say it at a motorist, I’m not so much referencing his/her folly as a quality I can’t quite name, but would be the qualitative noun from dipstick, I guess.
      1. Obvious: dipsticity!

        And, on lookup, it turns out that GIT and CUR are fairly similar. GIT is from “get”, an animal’s offspring — that which it gets; could be a CUR then?

        Now we need: gittitude and curness.

        Edited at 2016-05-31 07:29 am (UTC)

          1. Our fave bard and one of his 7dns happen to feature in today’s Graun. As does a differently-clued 26ac.
            What exactly is the venn diagram of Times/Graun setters?
      2. I agree with you on this. To indicate a fool requires a ‘daft’ or ‘stupid’ in front of ‘git’. On its own it can also stand for the closely associated ‘t*sser’, for which I haven’t learnt the rhyming slang.
    2. Circus? Check.

      Solo? Check.

      Pear? Check.

      33 minutes? In my dreams. Why? Add in a “TAILOR KING” for a start (a top quality line is an A1 L after all, and who hasn’t heard of the old city of TORKING?

      Way too long spent justifying PROCURATOR – fell into the RAT-trap as well so make that another “check”.

      All in all just under the hour. But still fun, in a masochistic kind of way.

  6. Started with a confident SCARP and went on from there but managed crawl back in 26:48. Knew MUSTER ROLL but it has never occurred to me that PEARLY KINGs were traders. Wondered what a baby would do with a TAFF. An enjoyable solve so thanks setter and Jack.
    1. The Pearly Kings and Queens are actually long standing charity workers through such organisations as the Pearly Guild
    2. Me too … that was one I didn’t mention above.

      I too thought pearly kings were just yer average jolly cockneys, thumbs in braces, singing “Let’s orl g’darn The Strand … av a banana” and “My ole man said … etc.”.
      Too much Alexei Sayle perhaps?

    3. Same here. I grew up in London, where you still see Pearly Kings and Queens quite regularly, but I never knew about their costermonger origins until today. I did at least manage to work it out before checking the dictionary!
  7. 11:47 .. not sure what happened but I found this easy.

    Some smart, pithy clueing. AMERICANA is especially neat, and something about RUSK made me smile.

  8. Opposite to Sotira, I found this tricky and had to work hard to complete it despite being glorified. Nice blog Jack. Well done setter.
      1. It was that wonderful judge of such matters Ulaca who bestowed that accolade upon me earlier in the blog
  9. DNF but really enjoyed the challenge. Much like z8 I was stuck on “circus acts”, “ran” and “pear”. Never solved the excellent MUSTER ROLL. Thanks setter and blogger.
  10. 20m, but it felt tougher than that. A bit rich for a Monday morning, which is what this is really.
    Thanks for parsing 9ac: I had PRO, CoUrT, and a RAT, but unsurprisingly couldn’t find a way of fitting them together.
    FUSIL from French, AMERICANA from its musical incarnation (fresh in my mind after watching Bonnie Raitt on Jools Holland the other night), FARO, HALF-HUNTER and TIGON from crosswords past.
    I don’t really see GIT and ‘fool’ as synonymous but Chambers does, and Collins says ‘often a fool’. The first definition in Chambers is ‘a person (derogatory)’, which is possibly the least helpful definition I have ever seen.
  11. I must have overslept as I found it was November when I woke up. Cold, blowing a gale and precipitating down here in North London. I bet the sun’s cracking the pavement in Blackpool. Nearly an hour today but enjoyable. Think we had it recently but had forgotten TIGON, last one biffed in.
    1. . . . Or was it its close colleague LIGER? I know that I always think of these two when I see ‘cross’ in a clue
  12. Nice puzzle, about 40 minutes, not keen on trenchant for keen though can more or less see it so not exactly trenchant in my opposition. These cross miscegenations keep dodging me for too long.
    1. A landmark day for me, as I wrote it straight in. Okay, I wrote ‘ligon’ originally, but it’s a start.
  13. I found this one particularly difficult. In fact it kept me busy for a hour and three quarters. Also a technical DNF as I had to resort to aids for ACCELERATION, as I’d confidently put in SCARP for 4d and couldn’t make any headway after that. Managed to parse the rest apart from totally missing the anagram at 7d, so thanks to Jack for the explanation. FOI, FLOG, LOI, MUSTER ROLL. Kudos to the setter for some well designed clues!
  14. Not really cross, an exellent puzzle. 36′ but with the non-existent TEGON (if you get someone you fool them?). MUSTER ROLL and PEARLY KING LOIs. FUSIL is French for rifle. Thanks setter for a real challenge, and blogger for parsing PROCURATOR and AMERICANA.
  15. I found this a tough one, stumbling over the finish line after 19m 32s. I was mostly held up in the SE corner, where I’d never come across a MUSTER ROLL or a PEARLY KING. I must say I didn’t think much of the definition for 7d (needs a ‘perhaps’, doesn’t it?), or the wordplay.
    1. ‘Perhaps’ would usually indicate a definition by example, which LEADING MAN as a definition for ‘top performer’ would be. This way round it’s fine, as it would be if the answer were LEADING LADY.
      In the same vein see 18ac in puzzle 26,163: ‘Leader of meeting — one seen by first article in daily’ for CHAIRWOMAN.

      Edited at 2016-05-31 12:49 pm (UTC)

  16. Over the half-hour this time:no problems in LH (FOI 15ac) except for the SCARP at 4dn, but RH blank except 22d and SOLO at 10ac.
    Once I realised what was wrong got on better, though held up by expecting 12ac to end -TORY. Getting the anagram at 7dn gave a breakthrough, so finished successfully with FARO LOI.
  17. I had an alternative parsing for tigon.Namely reversal of nit around go where go means “your go” or “you go first
    1. Ingenious, but there’s the problem of what function ‘about’ is performing, and GO doesn’t on its own indicate precedence.
  18. Forty minutes needed for this, so yes, a bit tricky, though as the blogger says, the individual clues aren’t especially hard. 25 and 27 were my last solves. There were some nice surfaces and cryptic constructions. Like keriothe, I had PRO CUT & RAT so didn’t quite see how 9 worked.
  19. Arrgh, I had TIGHT for ‘cross’ which completely confounded any attempt at finding a suitable fruit. Doh!
  20. Nope – could not get PEARLY KING or MUSTER ROLL, way out of my ken. Question marks next to HALF HUNTER, RUSK and FLOG so way out of the wavelength. Got dragged out to watch the hemi-final of a basketgame at the pub and this kept me frustratedly occupied at least.
  21. Looks like my 29 min solve was not too bad based on comments above. Put me down for a RAT and a NIT plus I can never remember ANA. Must have spent 5 minutes on my LOI which was PEARLY KING – just couldn’t see it.
  22. Yay! Took me all day (on and off), but got there in the end sans aids! Tricky one, for sure.
  23. Did this in bits and pieces throughout the day while putting up a new kitchen ceiling. Bit of a slog, I must say, and failed to get FARO, which I’ve never heard of. Also dithered for ages over MUSTER ROLL/FLOG. I attribute this to all the half-bricks and bits of rubble that fell on my head throughout the day.

    Edited at 2016-05-31 05:47 pm (UTC)

    1. Sounds like one of my DIY jobs. Hope you remembered to put the walls up first!
  24. No exact time because I had to do it in two sessions, but probably near the half hour mark. I was another who had “scarp” for quite a while before the “hake” penny dropped, and like a few others MUSTER ROLL was my LOI. I was glad to see plenty of you also found it a tricky puzzle, and congrats to Sotira for an excellent time.
    1. Thank you, Andy. I think I might have flown too close to the sun. It’s now tomorrow and back down to earth!

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