Times 26,363: Beware Greeks Bearing Fire

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Your Honour, the case for the prosecution has certainly been an impassioned one. If we were to believe everything they tell us, my client M. Verlaine would be an unprincipled, destructive monster who should not be allowed within thirty feet of a cryptic crossword for fear that he would cruelly mangle it without regard for the hard work of the setter who painstakingly brought it into the world, or the sensibilities of any onlooker. However, the defence believes there are various factors acting in mitigation of the incident, and these we shall enumerate:

(a) Our client had been out all evening seeing Savages playing the Roundhouse, which we understand to be some kind of “post-punk band” and “musical venue” respectively. The aggressive, propulsive nature of the entertainment may have riled him up somewhat, especially given a supporting slot for what he describes as “the relentless sonic barrage of Bo Ningen”, who apparently whirled their instruments around their heads at the end in an exciting but reckless manner that could easily rub off on the impressionable.

(b) A certain amount of alcohol consumption is the done thing at the above events, especially once my client had fallen in with his music industry colleagues. Not only this, but it being St Patrick’s Day, he felt obliged, perhaps against his better judgment, to go on and sink a couple of pints of Guinness on top of his usual quota, “in honour of the date”.

(c) By pure calendric accident, the previous night had been a pub boardgames event followed by arriving home to Times 26,362, a puzzle that has already been set down in the annals as a “stinker”, and which kept my client up well into the wee small hours. He was therefore even more addled by sleep deprivation when he sat down to his weekly blogging-related duties.

(d) To address the first charge levelled against my client, yes indeed, no conscientious solver should look at WE + ROMAN and biff in MAN-O-WAR with its two A’s. However we do feel that the setter had obviously laid this as a premeditated Biff Trap: was there really any need to employ “military craft” rather than a more obviously plural word for ships, other than to lure the unwary to their doom? Our client, in short, was led on.

(e) Once again, while our client cannot be held entirely blameless in the matter, let us look at the circumstances that resulted in him entering FIRE at 24dn. This was not done hastily: he had solved the rest of the puzzle (aforementioned peccadillo notwithstanding) in about 7 minutes, and then froze as he was confronted with _I_E, which let’s face it could be almost anything. Let us not forgot that only the previous night he had spent upwards of 10 minutes wrestling with a ZEBRINNY that was a one-way ticket to nowhere. As the clock ticked over the 10 minute mark 3 minutes later he felt he just “had to go for it”. And while FIRE is an obviously unsatisfactory answer, can we really say that “Scotch?”, despite its attractive contribution to the clue surface, adequately suggests a Scots pine tree? Maybe to an American it does, but my client has not dabbled in being American for many years no.

(f) Put yourself in my client’s shoes and you can imagine that all of the above, taken together, constituted a frightening ordeal for him as well. It is a testament to his character that he is still willing to unreservedly thank the setter and specially commend some very clever definition parts. In the light of this we would like to suggest that you do not recommend the maximum possible penalty in this case, but instead allow the client to show his contrition through several hundred hours of community service, let us say by blogging occasional numbers of the TLS Crossword going forward. The defence rests.

Across
1 MAGENTA – (green’s) complementary colour: MAT A [carpet | area] includes G{r}E{e}N [“odd bits of”…]
5 RIFLING – searching: RILING [upsetting] when it involves F [female]
9 NUT – headcase: “regularly used in” {i}N{s}U{l}T{s}
10 CATASTROPHE – final event: (TEACH A SPORT*) [“getting prepared”]
11 WEAPONRY – fighting equipment: WEARY [tired] keeping P ON [pressure | on]
12 SHRINK – decline: SH RINK [quiet | area used by skaters]
15 RHEA – larger bird (than a rook): HEAR [catch] with the R moving all the way to the left [“when rook flies west]
16 WASHINGTON – old present: (SAW NOTHING*) [“getting done”]
18 FACILITATE – further: AC I LIT [account | I | settled] when dividing FATE [fortune]
19 BARD – Gray, perhaps: reverse of DRAB [grey “on reflection”]
22 GRANGE – country house: G RANGE [good | area]
23 PEERLESS – unrivalled: “like the House of Commons” (the peers being in the House of Lords)
25 EXTRADITION – delivery to another country: EXTRA {e}DITION [further book printing, “not English”]
27 OWL – one flying about: {f}OWL [“headless” chicken]
28 THEATRE – where audiences may be present: (AT THREE*) [“plays”]
29 GAINSAY – deny: GAINS A “Y” [what Isla does in Islay]
Down
1 MEN-O-WAR – (WE + ROMAN*) [“destroyed”]
2 GUTTA-PERCHA – some insulation perhaps: TAPER CHA [spill | tea] under GUT [breadbasket]
3 NACHOS – snack: N.A. CHOS{e} [North America | “mostly” selected]
4 AFTERTASTE – lingering flavour: (FAST EATER*) [“awfully”] keeps T [time]
5 RASH – precipitate: {c}RASH [collision, “writing off front of car”]
6 FOREHAND – court (tennis, that is) action: FOR E HAND [on behalf of | European | worker]
7 IMP – naughty child: {w}IMP [mummy’s boy “has lost with (i.e. W)”]
8 GHERKIN – pickle: G KIN [good | relatives] eating HER [the woman’s]
13 INTRAVENOUS – in vessels carrying claret: RAVEN [crow species] penetrating INTO U.S. [into | America]
14 SHUTTERING – boards of construction companies: S{peec}H [“empty”] heads UTTERING [speaking]
17 FLAGRANT -shameless: FLAG [fail] with RANT [verbal onslaught]
18 FIGMENT – fancy: G-MEN [FBI agents] appearing in FIT [sudden attack]
20 DISPLAY – exhibition: D [daughter] and I SPLAY [I become widely separated]
21 BRUNEI – state: BRUNE{l} [railway engineer’s “not left”] + I{n} [in “unfinished”]
24 PINE – thirst (for): double def with “Scotch?” [Scots/Scotch pine tree]
26 TIE – limit: TI{m}E [duration “losing minutes”]

62 comments on “Times 26,363: Beware Greeks Bearing Fire”

  1. 22 minutes but I had MAN O WAR (guilty as charged) but FIRE must be acceptable and a better answer? Sentence commuted, I think.

    Z – You have FIRE as 10d in the case for the defence.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 08:23 am (UTC)

  2. Not only has this man been convicted as recently as last Monday of impersonating a Monday blogger, and of a wanton lack of care and attention to all crosswords bar those that come up in the Grand Final of the Championships, he has also for his own nefarious purposes – with malice aforethought, I would further submit – invented a clue as well as the solution thereto. 10 down indeed! We ask that the maximum sentence – that all TLS puzzles with the themes of “Modernist Studies” and “Cricket” – be devolved upon him, and rest our case, secure in our conviction that this will finally put an end to this fellow’s cavalier approach to solving and his dodgy musical taste.
    1. Throw the book at ‘im! Not the dictionary though, the vocabularian ruffian would only use it for evil.
  3. In the dock with you, Verlaine, though without most of your mitigation.

    I know I’m not the only one to go for a careless MAN- at 1d. And I also went with FIRE for 24d, feeling sure there was a clever cryptic somewhere in there involving firewater with the water removed, hence generating the ‘thirst’.

  4. Thanks, V, as ever for taking the time to brighten my Friday mornings… however, my life seems just so DULL in comparison… I clearly need to get out more… *Googles directions to the Roundhouse…*

    To the puzzle… thought this was going to be a cinch, what with MAGENTA and NUT going straight in, but it certainly got trickier. I too fell into the ‘man o war trap’ (yes, clearly a trap!), and put in RHEA without conviction. My one blank was GUTTA PERCHA, a concept I’ve never knowing met, but could probably have worked out. I did however get PINE, having vaguely heard of the Scots tree, and not thinking too hard about whether it was Scots/Scotch. About 45mins.

    1. I don’t think I could have told you what GUTTA-PERCHA actually *was*, but I’ve definitely come across the word before, so it quickly went in given a couple of the crossers. Actually it was mostly reminding me of Gormenghast (which has a character with the wonderful name of Perch-Prism).
      1. The word makes me think of golf balls, for some reason I will google later. As I alluded to below I remember being very surprised that it was the right answer in a puzzle in 2011. Amazing the things the brain retains in amongst the vast quantities of more useful information it doesn’t.
        2. I haven’t googled it, but I think it was used for golf balls at one time, and also I seem to remember that snooker / billiard balls were also gutta-percha, but I may be misremembering.
        3. Many years ago, it was a tradition at my (boarding) school that the leavers put on an evening of entertainment for the rest of the School. I vividly remember a group (which had no instruments) named GUTTA PERCHA AND HIS ELASTIC BAND
  5. Rather like Davies and Carruthers inching their way through the sand-banks of East Frisia, I navigated this puzzle with painstaking care and no mean lack of rapidity, which allowed me to revel in the glow of sitting second on the leaderboard when I submitted two and a half hours after the sluice gates had opened.

    The excellent PINE clue was my antepenultimate, with RHEA dropping last (unparsed – so my thanks to the V) after the resinous tree – vaguely remembered, perhaps from another puzzle, since I certainly don’t have one in the garden. Or a garden, for that matter.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 08:58 am (UTC)

    1. One of my absolute favourite books – re-read until the pages fell out. Pity about the movie.
  6. 12m. I’m feeling quite smug this morning, particularly having read the (very entertaining) blog:
    1) I bunged in MAN-O-WAR, but then paused to check the anagram fodder. For me this counts as a small miracle.
    2) I bunged in PINE with a shrug even though it seemed rather weak, just because it occurred to me before FIRE.
    3) I bunged in GUTTA PERCHA from the definition. From the definition, I tell you! Just occasionally these obscurities actually stick, in this case from a puzzle in 2011. Otherwise I’m not sure I’d have managed this one.
    4) Having put in MAD at 27 (a perfectly good answer) I managed not to get too distracted by the checkers at 20dn and so saved myself another ordeal like yesterday’s OVERDRAWN fiasco.
    All in all a morning of bullets dodged.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 09:07 am (UTC)

  7. Methinks he doth protest too much, especially as I humbly submit I fell into the two self-same mantraps (should that be mentraps?)
    And Mrs Deezzaa who hails from Caledonia is insistent that “Scotch” only refers to the golden nectar and nothing else. So that’s scotched that idea then.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 09:13 am (UTC)

    1. And tape. And broth. And eggs. I could go on…

      Edited at 2016-03-18 10:37 am (UTC)

      1. Look, if you want to take it up with Mrs Deezzaa, be my guest. But from experience I wouldn’t recommend it (see previous comment about her origins).
    2. CS Lewis always used Scotch to describe the makars – Douglas, Lyndsay, Dunbar, etc. He also commonly referred to RCs as Papists. He loved a wind-up!
  8. I wrote in GUTTAPERCHA very lightly as I expected to find it didn’t fit with other answers but it did. 13d was my favourite.
  9. Bullets dodged here too, all of them, so there’s something to be said for not racing to the finishing post – in fact I was hardly out of the blocks by the time our blogger had all but finished.

    RHEA occurred to me quite early but was my last one in because I was not going to enter it without understanding how it worked. PINE was an alphabet job but worth the effort and very rewarding once the penny had dropped.

    I wasn’t keen on the “boards of construction companies” thing for SHUTTERING which seemed a bit obscure as definitions go.

    Having clarified a point yesterday for an anon contributor who had failed to lift and separate I took things to the opposite extreme at 21dn where for ages I had ‘railway’ as BR and then wasted time trying to make an engineer’s name out of UNE and L (Lune, perhaps?).

    A very enjoyable puzzle with most time spent in the SW.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 09:53 am (UTC)

  11. Someone should point out that this is 26363, and yesterday’s stinker was of course 26362, not 26322, even if it’s the caitiff anon.
    1. Oh dear. I think I see the judge placing a 15×15 grid of all black squares on top of his head.
  12. Finally got there with Rhea biffed, in just about the hour. I went for pine while thinking it’s not a great synonym for thirst. Top half apart from Rhea done quickly, bottom took time. Enjoyable.
    1. Perhaps it is a better synonym for ‘thirst for’

      Edited at 2016-03-18 12:32 pm (UTC)

  13. Very amusing blog V, for which I award a degree of remission. Finished today in about 40 minutes, but having avoided all the traps. However, I was held up with the speech and speaking in 14d when I pencilled in CHATTERING, despite having spotted the empty speech device. Luckily, it rankled enough to make me revisit it and correct before completion.

    An excellent crossword, and equally excellent blog. Thank you both.

  14. Spent five minutes trying to think of four-letter words for churchyard, and wondered if dray=horse=grey.

    Deliberate biff-rrap in men o war was a masterstroke.

    1. Ah yes, my brain went down that very line of churchyard-and-drayhorse inquiry too. It was a masterstroke, wasn’t it? A cruel, borderline abusive masterstroke…
  15. Finally threw the towel in after an unfeasible amount of time spent staring blankly at 15a and 24d, with everything else being hunky dory and having fallen into place without undue alarm.

    Thought 29 was very neat. Thanks to V. for a splendid blog.

  16. After spending five minutes looking at 24dn – even resorting to aid for a list of -I-E words – failed to see anything possible, so bunged in VICE and submitted without going back to check anything else, so 1dn wrong, too.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 12:07 pm (UTC)

  17. No time today but definitely over 30 mins. 1 error – singular MOW. Top half went in (obviously too) quickly – then the lunchtime beers kicked in (case for the defence 1. I am retired 2. I am on holiday.)
  18. This one was worth waiting for all week. Enjoyable puzzle with traps for biffers together with a fine blog. Thanks setter and V

    Edited at 2016-03-18 12:14 pm (UTC)

  19. Not convinced by ‘fire’ at 24dn but couldn’t think of anything better. PINE is much better, better even than RHEA, which I had marked as COD. Also liked BARD, among others.
  20. Mmmm was not convinced by 24dn PINE which makes me a FIRE-MAN but there it is in Chambers.

    LOI 15ac RHEA COD 2dn GUTTA PERCHA

    Roll on Monday!

    horryd Shanghai

  21. Same as others on PINE and RHEA. Too much firewater not good for for tribe. I think m’learned friend for the defence should add that his client lacks the requisite “mens rhea” therefore any conviction should be quashed and scotched. Fiat justitia. 20.49
    1. Olivia

      Comments like yours are an utter joy.

      On a prosaic point I had a Fiat Justitia once. Crap car. Should have waited for the Fiat Lux.

  22. 42:15. I thought this a great puzzle, not least because I resisted a biffed MAN O WAR, only saw PINE for 24D and pieced together the unknown GUTTA PERCHA somehow remembering spill = taper en route. I put the chance of these three answers correctly aligning for me at about 0.1% so I’m allowing myself a rare feeling of smugness.

    Nice blog Verlaine, though in between gigging, drinking, hangover nursing, blogging and child-rearing I do sometimes wonder how you manage to do any work!

  23. 41m but DRAY for DRAB since I thought I would find GRAY in his (church)YARD. Just a pity that DRAY doesn’t mean grey. A drey sort of day perhaps? Very entertaining blog, V.
  24. Spotted the MEN-OF-WAR trap, bunged in PINE on a wing and a prayer and (like Keriothe) knew GUTTA-PERCHA as something to do with golf balls.

    Very satisfying solve, and a brilliantly entertaining blog. Thanks to all involved.

    Edited at 2016-03-18 02:35 pm (UTC)

  25. Never heard of a Scotch pine and I live in Scotland! You can have a Scotch pie or a Scots pine!!
    1. Agree with you completely, anon, but under the accepted rules of the game, if an answer is in one of the main dictionaries, it is fair play for the setter, even though countless experts know differently. Chambers has Scotch Pine.
  27. Well, at least my mistakes were original. I did spend a long time thinking about RHEA and PINE (my LOI of course), but did understand them in the end. But my 21d was BRUNAI, which sounded sort of right although I couldn’t for the life of me think of Brunel’s correct name, although I was thinking of the right person. And obviously I couldn’t parse that clue.

    Still, a very pleasant puzzle with many amusing and surprising clues (for example 22 really being a country house and not just a country, GHOMEA perhaps, wherever that might be). I rather liked THEATRE too and several others, too many to mention.

  28. No, I don’t think I’ll bother with the film. It depends so much on atmosphere that it would be very difficult to make a success of.
  29. Got through in 15 minutes, avoiding Verlaine’s problems. Although I did write a question mark beneath PINE. Not the best clue of all time. GUTTA PERCHA though, was quite good. Regards.
  30. A three hour effort for me with no error, LOI RHEA.Banked more on definitions then wordplay. (Ong’ara, Nairobi, Kenya )
  31. Great blog v. I too fell into the man o war trap but side stepped the tree obstacle. 25mins on treeware.
  32. ‘Rhea’ was unknown to me, so despite running through every kite, hawk, tern, and gull I could think of, I failed to complete for the second day in a row. But, like yesterday, it was an enjoyable fail. I particularly liked the ‘Gainsay’ clue, which had me running through the entire whisky-making process in my mind before finally twigging.
  33. Thanks, Verlaine, for the most inventive blog of one of my puzzles I’ve ever seen! And thanks to all for comments, interesting and instructive as ever.
    Your anonymous Times setter of the day.
  34. I only do the Times crossword when, as today, I get a free paper from Waitrose. This one was very enjoyable – easier and less obscure than today’s Telegraph cryptic.This was more or less read and write but I had “fire” for 24d. More haste less speed.
  35. 9:36 for me, rather annoyed at myself for attempting (and failing to achieve) a clean sweep, having wasted a ridiculous amount of time on 18ac (FACILITATE) imagining that it was going to end in TION – despite spotting ACILIT as a possibility. (Doh!)

    I approached 24dn and those terrifying vowels with extreme trepidation, but PINE occurred to me almost immediately. And although I thought of MAN-O-WAR straight away, the E in the anagram jumped out at me strongly enough to prompt the obvious correction. But then I was stony-cold sober apart from the limited after-effects of a small sherry earlier in the evening. (Drunk in charge of a crossword? Fined 23/6 and bound over to keep the peace, I reckon.)

    Although I’m definitely an old fogey nowadays, I have actually performed at the Roundhouse when younger. This was back in 1972 when the London Philharmonic Choir performed HUMMMMMMIIINNNNNNNNNG by Anna Lockwood and 5 ALLELUIAS by David Rowland as part of the International Carnival of Experimental Sound (organised and produced by Harvey Matusow, whom some may remember as author of that annoying, Luddite book The Beast of Business). The only thing I can remember about our performance was that the audience pressed in much closer than we were used to in the Festival Hall!

    1. Maybe that’s why Bo Ningen whirled their instruments around so alarmingly – to warn the notoriously pushy Roundhouse crowds to keep their distance!

      I’ve just woken up from a 10+ hour sleep so hopefully my batteries are recharged for some less haphazard solving, going forward.

      Edited at 2016-03-19 10:14 am (UTC)

  36. I managed to avoid the Man-O-War trap, but fell in the FIRE camp. Did this in about 55 minutes while having a coffee in JCUH Foyer after today’s blood test which was a much quicker affair than Wednesday’s. Happily my INR is now where they want it. Physio have also released me from their grasp on the understanding I continue the exercises at home and keep riding the push bike(off road I hasten to add; I don’t want to become an RTA statistic whilst pumped full of warfarin!). I quite enjoyed this puzzle although it took me ages to work out the parsing for RHEA, in fact it was my other half who actually nudged me in the right direction after I’d finished the puzzle. MAGENTA and NUT went straight in and I knew GUTTA PERCHA, as a golf ball filling, from reading PG Wodehouse as a teenager. Wasn’t totally happy with FIRE, but wouldn’t have got PINE if I’d stared at it all day! I’m with Penfold in laughing out loud at V’s blog. Excellent stuff 🙂
  37. Tony Sever, I wouldn’t dismiss yourself as an old fogey. If your profile picture is representative, you appear to be a fairly young fogey.

    I was beaten by PINE. I was really, really hoping that the answer would be some obscure piece of Scots dialect (as in “Ehh, Jimmy, but I’ve a fearful gike on me the noo”). Had it been, I would have felt justified in my outrage at having obscurities inadequately clued by the wordplay. As it was, though, I can’t really grumble. I even passed over PINE as I trawled the alphabet. (If anyone is interested, 92 of the possible 676 “_I_E” permutations are actual words. This is a piece of knowledge whose value is far below the effort of obtaining it.)

    1. My profile picture is indeed representative, but of me as I was at some point in the 1980s. Those were the days when the Championship had proper sponsors and it must have been a publicity shot for Collins Dictionaries (sponsors from 1983 to 1991) since the enlarged version shows that I’m actually solving a Championship puzzle with their name and logo on the puzzle sheet.

      I’ve replaced it with something more recent (and old-fogeyish :-), at least for the present.

      1. Ah – that’s more like it! Speaking as an old fogey myself, I feel it’s important not to let the age barrier drop too far. Cheers!
  38. Wonderful blog, Verlaine! I am glad the setter liked it, the crossword was very good too although one could quibble about pine – but I won’t, since I got it right…
    Unfortunately, I did put in man of war despite noticing the anagrammatic error. I felt smug at spotting an error by the setter that had clearly crept through.. that will teach me! I hope it will, anyway.
    Thanks again to both setter & blogger
  39. Came to this a day late, was off golfing all day yesterday; did the Saturday one first to warm up. Managed to avoid the singular craft in 1d and finished all but 24d in 20 minutes, then got bored with alphabet trawling for _I_E and read the blog.
    I am continually amazed with the way V manages to abuse his ears and body with regular overdoses of sound, alcohol and sleep deprivation, yet still churns out a rapid solve and a blog to make the rest of us seem lazy or boring.
    Ah well, perhaps it’s an age thing.
  40. This took me two days on and off during a conference.
    I got Pine which was my LOI.
    I also put Man O War so cannot claim this as one of my rare completions on visits from QC land. David

Comments are closed.