Times Cryptic 26120

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This one presented me some problems with a few unfamiliar words and meanings, however there were a number of really easy clues to make up for these difficulties and I never doubted that I would get through it unaided.

Deletions are in curly brackets

Across
1 BACK-FORMATION – Two definitions, one with reference to sport, the other to grammar where ‘couth’ is deemed to be a ‘back-formation’ derived from ‘uncouth’.
8 PLAN – PLAN{t} (works)
9 CANTONMENT – TO + N (north) + MEN (soldiers) inside CANT (slope). The first of my unknown words today.
10 SYNCOPAL – {admissio}N inside anagram of CALYPSO. And here’s my number two already.
11 OLDISH – LO (look) reversed, DISH (someone beautiful)
13 ACQUAINTED – ACE (expert) contains QUAINT (charmingly old), D (duke). I don’t quite understand the definition here, but I suppose if acquainted with someone one might feel at home with them. Maybe I’m missing something.
16 ARCH – Two definitions
17 BIND – Two definitions
18 TETRAMETER – MET (got together) inside anagram of RETREAT
20 AGORAS – OR (gold) inside AGAS (Ottoman bigwigs)
22 WHEATEAR – HEAT (passion) inside WEAR (don)
24 FLOORBOARD – R (river) + BOAR (animal) inside FLOOD (torrent)
26 PAIR – P (quiet), AIR (manner)
27 CLEAR THE DECKS – Anagram of ALERTS CHECKED

Down
1 BELLYACHING – BELL (warning), YACH{t}ING (sport at sea)
2 CONIC – {i}CONIC (of image)
3 FACE PAINT – PAIN (soreness) inside FACET (ingredient)
4 RINGLET – RING (call), TEL (telephone) reversed
5 A GOGO – AGOG (very eager), 0 (nothing)
6 IMMEDIATE – MEDIA (those bringing us news) inside anagram of TIME
7 NUN – N{0}UN (word identifying person)
12 SECRETARIES – SECRET (hidden), ARIES (stars)
14 UNDERGONE – UNDER (working for), G{overnment}, ONE (I)
15 DEAD-ENDED – A + DEN (haunt) + {ha}D inside DEED (performance). I assume ‘in Las Vegas’ is there to tell us that it’s an American term for ‘stopped’, yet another unknown for me.
19 TOWPATH – P (parking) inside anagram of WHAT TO
21 SOBER – SOB (weep), ER (hesitation)
23 TOPIC – TOP (chief), IC (in charge)
25 LAC – Sounds like “lack” (not enough). This alternative spelling of ‘lakh’ came up within the past couple of months and caught me out but I was on to it immediately today.

47 comments on “Times Cryptic 26120”

  1. … Jack’s experience — a few easy, quite a few needing more work.
    I took ACQUAINTED to be “at home” as per being acquainted with a way of doing something (such as knowing the rules of bridge).
    Didn’t know SYNCOPAL, but the anagram makes it clear enough. Don’t know why I had to think twice about BIND, maybe because I’ve never used it in the “nuisance” sense.
  2. DNF, partly due to difficult words, and partly to definitions – bind and acquainted here too, but also dead ended and a couple others – which make perfect sense when the crossers are in place, but which I don’t use in quite those senses. I tend to fall apart when I lose confidence in the nuances of definitions. Thanks for the blog

    Edited at 2015-06-09 02:17 am (UTC)

  3. A very lengthy Did Not Finish for me, first stopped in my tracks by unknowns/forgottens like LAC and SYNCOPAL and then totally stymied by inventing ‘A vido’ at 5d, which gave me an errant ‘i’ at 9a, where I was always going to struggle, since I didn’t know CANT in the required sense.

    Despite my travails, I thought this was a very fine puzzle and BELLYACHING particularly good – almost as if the setter had won first prize in an Azed competition for getting YACHTING into a clue.

  4. So that would explain Cantonment St in Fremantle. Always wondered about that.

    Other unknowns were TOWPATH, SYNCOPAL, TETRAMETER and WHEATEAR, but they all seemed likely to be real words and were generously clued.

    COD to BELLYACHING, as per Ulaca’s comment above.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. Yes … BELLYACHING was brilliant. So both of us are in agreement with U!! Must be as likely as lining up the planets eh?
      1. Pretty sure I’ll find some points of disagreement with him in the coming weeks. Looking forward to it immensely.
  5. Good puzzle I thought. As our esteemed blogger says, a nice mix of clue difficulties so I steamed into it to start with and then hit a succession of speedbumps and needed to apply some real thought, ending up with a time of 12:41.

    Add my name to the general chorus nominating BELLYACHING for the COD. (Sadiy I did biff it, but I appreciated it fully later.)

  6. About 45mins or so, ending with TETRAMETER. As Jack says, the easier clues (and clear wp) mitigate the several unknown bits of vocab.
  7. Managed finally to avoid the plausible-sounding A VIDO with the late arrival of A GOGO, thus confirming CONFIRMING was wrong and the implausible-sounding CANTONMENT was right. Sloping off to work now.
  8. I must have been asleep when my English teacher covered this but you are correct. A very obscure clue.
    1. I didn’t encounter it until university. It’s a long time since I picked up a linguistics text book, so I could be wrong, but I think we’ve recently produced rather a splendid example of BACK-FORMATION on this site:

      The acronym BIFD (Bunged In From Definition) from which we have chosen to infer the existence of a verb, to biff (verlaine uses it above)

      Edited at 2015-06-09 08:38 am (UTC)

          1. Well, I mean for example that ‘couth’ is formed from a pre-existing dictionary word.
            1. Ah, so a word isn’t available for back-formation until a lexicographer has given it the okay. Thank heavens no one told Shakespeare. Or Spenser.

              I don’t think you’re on the firmest ground here, ulaca.

  9. 20m. I didn’t really enjoy this much. Where it’s difficult it’s usually because of obscure words or slightly off-beat definitions: 9ac is a very typical example. I like this sort of thing in a Mephisto but I also like smoked fish and I never eat kippers for breakfast.
    BELLYACHING is very good, though.
    I had ACCUSTOMED at 13ac for a while. It sort of works if you think of (say) a 1955 custom Les Paul. Sort of.

    Edited at 2015-06-09 08:09 am (UTC)

  10. The full 45 mins today, held up for a long time with seeing the second word of 1ac (F-R-A—-) as somehow involving FORWARDS, conveniently ignoring the NO in the clue. Thanks jack for the blog and for coming up with a suggestion for the reference to Las Vegas, which I never saw
  11. 19 mins. I didn’t enjoy this one too much for the same reason as keriothe, although the puzzle also contained some very good clues. As soon as I read 1dn I thought of BELLYACHING but I didn’t have any checkers and didn’t want to biff it that early into the solve. I waited a while and entered it fully parsed and very much appreciated a little later. My last four were the UNDERGONE/BIND crossers, followed by ACQUAINTED and finally DEAD-ENDED from the wordplay. I thought I was going to struggle with the anagram at 10ac until I remembered “syncopation”.

    Edited at 2015-06-09 11:00 am (UTC)

  12. 27:11. I started thinking this was going to be quick when CLEAR THE DECKS went straight in and a few others fell soon after. I was then stumped for some time until BELLYACHING (agreed with others – good clue) which led to a surge to the finish.

    Several unknowns or half knowns but all fairly clued I thought.

  13. In spite of several easy ones I simply could not get going on this. Nice to be in good company. Anything to do with football and my eyes glaze over and brain shuts down for routine maintenance (and I didn’t know the grammatical meaning either). I think of BIND as a problem or predicament rather than a nuisance. Even after living most of my adult life in the States I don’t remember ever hearing DEAD-ENDED in that sense (or any sense). Does anyone know why CANTONMENT is pronounced as if spelled “cantoonment”?
    1. The first pronunciation given by ODO is Cantonment as if describing a camp up the road/river from here in Guangzhou!
      1. I picked up “cantoonment” from the Jewel in the Crown tv series so perhaps it was just spoken that way during the Raj. Forgot to enter a time – 25.33.
        1. Chambers agrees with you Olivia but does not suggest why.

          cantonment /kən-toonˈmənt/ noun (military)

          Most of the ‘How to pronounce English words ‘ sites that I have checked a) go with ton rhyming with con, and b) are pronounced by Americans.

        2. One never knows how much research these guys do, and how much they just zero in on pronunciation as a way to establish quickly the type and class of the character. American productions (or in the case of WWII propaganda films, British productions aimed at an American audience as much as a domestic one) are especially guilty of portraying stage Cockneys – even the otherwise excellent Band of Brothers falls into this trap.
  14. 40 minutes. Like Olivia I usually move on to the next clue if football’s involved, but as soon as i saw the word ‘couth’ I thought ‘that’s not even a proper word, it’s a . . AHA!’ We used to play a game in the car trying to think of back-formations like ‘shevelled’ (tidy) or ‘crete’ (can’t keep a secret).
    1. Ages ago I came across a poem – I have a feeling it may have been by Ogden Nash – composed largely of back-formed words. It ended with a description of gossiping women exchanging “nocuous nuendoes”. I’ve never been able to find it again.

      Dereklam

    2. Reminds me of my workplace, where the employees seem to be getting less gruntled by the day.
    3. Likewise, there were a few clues in this puzzle that threw me but I was perfectly combobulated by this one.
      1. I have no empathy for your position at all, I’m afraid, though I liked the clue too. Not often I feel so bobulated.
  15. A full 30 minutes, not easy, ending with ARCH. A lot of offbeat words today,-WHEATEAR, SYNCOPAL,etc. there are more but I’m on an i-phone and typing is a pain, so I’m brief. Agreed that BELLYACHING was today’s highlight. Regards.
  16. A stately 25.24, with cantonment, immediate and tetrameter putting up most resistance, and the Las Vegas? bit being ignored: I assume some regard the verb as an Americanism. I kept thinking of the Kinks, and still am.
    1. Inter-generational conflict at Chez Galspray this week over the playlist for daughter’s 21st this weekend. Very few of my selections survived the veto, but The Kinks did.
  17. Must be more careful with what I wish for after yesterday’s puzzle. Found this one tricky. Sometimes feel that once a puzzle makes you lose confidence even the easier clues become trickier. “Cantonment” anybody? Blimey—-DNF thanks to that.
  18. I’ve heard men described as being couth, kempt and shevelled. I made heavy weather of this. 38 minutes but felt even longer. Ann
  19. DNF – too many empty lights to list. Not at all enjoyable – too many unknowns, too much obscurity and too much stupidity, the last from me, epitomised by biffing TETRAMETRE and not spotting it. I’m finding the puzzles generally much harder over the last few weeks, often my own stupidity but also in my view because of some poor clues. DEAD-ENDED for example today – an obscure word, poorly clued, that would I suggest defeat all but the most experienced of solvers and even with the answer and our blogger’s explanation is still obscure. I think since the advent of the quick cryptic there is a deliberate policy to ratchet up the difficulty by the new editor by either looser or obscurer cluing. Result is half a dozen casual solvers of my acquaintance have stopped buying the paper and moved to other puzzles.
  20. Good puzzle for lovers of wordplay, as two of the unknowns went in from clear wordplay – SYNCOPAL and CANTONMENT. This just left BACK-FORMATION, which I thought of as the answer, but didn’t enter until all other checking letters were in place.
  21. Exactly the opposite experience to verlaine today: I made a horribly slow start with nothing at all coming from the first seven clues I attempted (including 11ac (OLDISH) – how on earth did I miss that?) but I eventually got going and plodded steadily through, finishing in 12:03 rather than the half-hour I’d originally feared.

    I hadn’t come across DEAD-ENDED before, but CANTONMENT (with its pronunciation) is an old fried, and I was happy enough to derive SYNCOPAL from “syncope”.

    With hindsight, a pleasant straightforward puzzle.

    1. Well, if Tony_Sever “plodded through” in 12:03, I’m not too ashamed of my 48 minutes. I found this one rather chewy throughout, in addition to not knowing SYNCOPAL, CANTONMENT or DEAD-ENDED. LAC was a close thing, but I half remembered it, probably from an earlier puzzle.
  22. 43:09. I struggled to get going with this. I began to wonder if I could finish it. Thanks for explaining BACK FORMATION and DEAD ENDED. CANTONMENT was an unknown for me, but I somehow dredged up SYNCOPAL. Got stuck on 12d trying to find an anagram of hidden stars. Doh. 17a LOI. 1d made me chuckle – another vote for that as COD from me.

    Edited at 2015-06-09 09:22 pm (UTC)

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