Times 26061 – not duck soup for me

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I was up and about early, not least because the neighbour was about to crank up his cement mixer adjacent to my car so it needed moving to a place of refuge; I’d hoped for a speedy solve and plenty of time to produce a careful, witty blog and post it while the boiled eggs were still having their tops sliced off across La Manche. However, I struggled; after half an hour I had only the LHS, blaming the cement mixer racket, until suddenly it unfolded like a new bloom and only 27a remained. I think it’s quite difficult, but maybe I was just sluggish this morning.

Across
1 FEEBLEST – FEE = payment, BLEST = most fortunate, in poetic speak; def. poorest.
9 OVERMUCH – OUCH = it hurts, around VERM = half of ‘it’, or verm(outh); def. to excess.
10 APEX – APE = do like, X = times; def. top.
11 JEREMY FISHER – Tricky. ‘to harry’ is the anagrind; (Y JIM HE REFERS)*; def. Potter character, The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, by Beatrix Potter. I was relieved to find out it didn’t require an extensive knowledge of HP characters.
13 VIOLET – V = see (vide), IO = moon (of Jupiter), LET = not stop; def. colour.
14 EUPHORIA – (UP I HEAR O)*; def. high. The feeling I had when I realised I had finished this one after all, and thought I understood it well enough to explain it.
15 NEW YEAR – NEAR = approaching, around WYE = river (in Wales); def. time maybe for party.
16 APOLOGY – AY = one who’s going for, around POLO G; def. defence. Couldn’t get this, for ages, until I had the checking Y and saw the GY ending.
20 NIJINSKY – NI = in, home, returning; J = initially just, IN SKY = wearing blue; Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet dancer.
22 URNFUL – URN sounds like EARN, take home, FU(E)L; def. a lot of ashes? What a great clue.
23 FOTHERINGHAY – FO = back ‘of’, THE RING = cycle, H = hard, AY= indeed; def. old castle. I suspected this early on, but couldn’t make it fit, until I twigged there’s an alternative spelling ending GHAY not GAY. Castle in Northamptonshire now demolished, birthplace of Richard III and prison for Mary Q of Scots.
25 AVER – (W)AVER = wobble, leader deposed; def. state. At last a short, easy clue.
26 LYNCH MOB – (NOBLY)* around C (clubs) HM (the Queen); LYN(C HM)OB; def. angry crew.
27 YIELDING – Well, yielding is one of the meanings of bearing, so I guess it’s a cryptic definition, and if it’s not iron, it would be more likely to yield? I’m not wholly convinved; explain please.

Down
2 EXPEDITE – EX PE = old gym, ‘clothing’ EDIT = change; def. hurry up.
3 BOX JELLYFISH – BOX = punch, JELLY = explosive, F = force, -ISH = sort of (!); def. swimmer.
4 EX GRATIA – (TAXI GEAR)*; def. as a favour, Latin for ‘out of thanks’.
5 TOMMIES – TOMES = heavy works, around MI = note; def. British soldiers. A nice change not to be using RE, TA, OR etc.
6 BEEF UP – Funny cryptic definition for reinforce, the price of beef going up is bad news, unless you’re the butcher.
7 RUSH – Hidden word ‘up’ in SMOOT(H SUR)FACE; def. tear.
8 CHARLADY – CHARY = suspicious, around LAD = youth; def. female who does.
12 SCOTLAND YARD – SOT = drunkard, around C = cape, then LAND = bag, YARD = a lot of ale; def. nick, police station.
15 NINEFOLD – Well, three treble 20’s = 180, a maximum, a ninefold twenty? Or maybe it’s because a nine dart finish is the fastest possible in 501 darts, so is a maximum? Take your pick.
17 PLUGHOLE – P = soft, LUGHOLE = slang for ear, a.k.a. shell-like; def. thing water runs down.
18 GLUHWEIN – (WHILE GUN)*. Def. drink. Took me an age to get this even though it was signalled as an anagram; German is a black hole in my language galaxy.
19 BY AND BY – Sounds like ‘buy and buy’. Def. soon.
21 SHRIMP – Alternate letters of iS tHeRe In MoP; def. crustacean.
24 TONG – TONGS pinch things, and a TONG is an Asian secret society, often criminal.

45 comments on “Times 26061 – not duck soup for me”

  1. Having posted a surprisingly good time after tackling the crossword less than fully sober the other night, I was hoping I could repeat the trick (a drunken boardgames night this time). Unfortunately this one proved way too subtle and tricky for my sodden brain and my final time was an unimpressive 32m. Glad to see it wasn’t a pushover even for those wise enough to tackle it sober. Puzzles like this are what I think give the lie to the idea that the Friday puzzle tends to be the week’s hardest – this seemed tougher than anything I’ve blogged in recent memory!
  2. Tricky puzzle that I had to work at. Loved the lift and separate for Harry-Potter. Pity about 27A which seems peculiar and 15D which I don’t understand.

    Today is Avril Poisson’s birthday

    2. 180 is the maximum in darts – a score is 20, so 20 ninefold is 180. Clever play on the two meanings of the word “score”, now that I look at it by the light of day.

      Edited at 2015-04-01 10:57 am (UTC)

        1. Let me try to remember – Quarriors, Splendor, Love Letters and Incan Gold I believe. The number of board, card and dice games on the market has exploded bewilderingly in the last couple of decades!
          1. Wow! I was thinking, supplementing the salary / pension at backgammon, as we do, or even chess in an alcoholic haze… I love games… any of those suitable for grandchildren (ages in single figures) or are they for grown-ups, or “adult”? I’ll have a Google.
            1. Quarriors is a bit silly but the other three were all quite fun. Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are some of the better known boardgames from the modern “Euro game” explosion, and might work for youngsters in the upper single figures. It’s a brave new world (not in the dystopian sense) of games…
      2. Ah yes, thanks. I missed the score = 20 link. It’s slightly strained, because the words ‘darts player’s’ are really in the wrong place: 20 is a score for anyone, whereas 180 is only a maximum for a darts player. But that’s a very minor quibble.

        Edited at 2015-04-01 11:17 am (UTC)

    3. There was a report on the radio this morning about a plan to widen the goal in professional football, and I thought of Mme Poisson!
      1. Ditto with the idea of cars in safari parks being swaddled in bubble wrap to deter monkeys etc. (Daily Mail)
  3. Ran out of steam on this one within time I was able to allocate, so a DNF. Very tricky, I thought.

    Really appreciate any further insights into the “poet’s” device in 1a – not something I have come across before in context of solving cryptics. Understand (with fluid spelling at the time) the likes of Spencer may have used BLEST. But, is there a broader convention / device type at work here regarding “poetic” terminology that I should learn about?

    Thanks for any help…

    1. I hate to break it to you, but you have seen it before! See 1ac in puzzle 26005 (Jan 26 this year). It’s a reasonably common device for olde style words.
      1. Ah yes – thanks for pointing that out. Although e’er somehow seems more familiar (hymns we sang in assembly?) than blest.

        Anyway, I was so smashed by this offering I probably lost the capacity to think clearly!

        1. Yes, e’er is much more common: a good resource for words like ‘buccaneer’! But be on the look out for indications of poetic language, because it does pop up.
          Mephisto takes this to a whole new level: the poet in question is invariably Spenser, who used a lot of unusual formations that are all recorded in Chambers and therefore considered fair game.
  4. 28 mins. I really struggled to get on this setter’s wavelength, although my LOI, PLUGHOLE, wasn’t the most difficult of the clues. Luckily I read a novel recently in which GLUHWEIN was mentioned a few times. At 16ac I’d convinced myself that “one who’s for” was going to be “pro” and I needed a couple of checkers before I saw APOLOGY and how it worked. Although this was hard work it was a very well constructed puzzle so I have no complaints.
  5. Really tricky one – so much so that the club board is clear of neutrinos at the moment. I’d certainly forgotten the H in the castle and that one took a lot of unpacking. Not to mention getting the letters in the right order in the drink. 20.16
  6. Too good for me. Never heard of the castle or the German wine (opted incorrectly for GLUWHEIN) and I don’t really know my Beatrix from my Harry. Unconvinced by NINEFOLD, was equally unconvinced by UNYIELDING until Keriothe stepped in.

    Not complaining, just a higher degree of difficulty than the last two days.

    Didn’t help by “topping” party (do) at 10ac on the basis that Times meetings might be “arty”, which meant I took way too long to get North Queensland’s favourite marine creature.

    On the bright side, you’ve gotta love an URNFUL of ashes. Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. Ah, score as in twenty. Didn’t read the blog closely enough. Right, that’s 15dn sorted.

      That leaves even less to complain about, aside from my lack of GK, which isn’t really the setter’s fault.

  7. This was just the sort of puzzle I feared turning up yesterday if I had not arranged cover. It took me 98 minutes but I got there in the end; I doubt if I would have resisted using aids that long if it’d been my blogging day.

    I didn’t know FOTHERINGAY could take a second H. To my shame my LOI was 7dn where I eventually biffed the answer RUSH and spent another 10 minutes wondering how it worked.

  8. Nice work by blogger and setter alike. One of those days where 25 minutes is good enough for a place well up Page 2 of the leaderboard, so it was clearly a struggle shared with nearly everyone else. Anyway, all good, and time well spent (with the exception of the mysterious 15dn).
  9. 18m, so I seem to have found this a bit easier than others. However if I was on any kind of wavelength it was a case of spot the definition, because over half the answers were BIFD with no real clue as to how they worked at the time.
    I still don’t understand 15dn, but I don’t have a problem with 27ac. Collins defines ‘iron’ as ‘cruel or unyielding’.
  10. By far the best puzzle of the week so far, with some lovely combinations of fine wordplay and natural surfaces such as 2 and 24, and no obscurities. I was feeling a bit drowsy so not at my speediest (not that I’m ever speedy), but managed to complete it in 40 minutes. 15dn seemed transparently clear even to this unsporty and non-pubby solver.
  11. I really loved 11a – took me ages to suss, but a great satisfaction when I finally did.
    Didn’t like 24d – I initially put in ‘NICK’ since this could also be a ‘criminal society mostly’ as well as meaning to ‘pinch’. Only after I got 23a did I realise it had to be ‘TONG’. Mind you, I was already beginning to have doubts after I saw the first word in 12d.
    That said, I’m amazed that you don’t get two possible answers to the same clue more often – so hats off to the crossword editor 🙂
  12. I couldn’t get TONG!

    FOTHERINGHAY and JEREMY FISHER went in from def, unparsed, and I didn’t take time to work out the maths for NINEFOLD. Figured it must have summat to do with ‘One hundred and eeeiiiiighty!’, which is about all I know about darts…

  13. 18.22, so quicker than yesterday but for a much harder crossword. I did wonder at one point whether we were going to be treated to a double pangram, what with 2 Js and 2 Xs quite early on, but not this time. I quite liked 22a: iron is also an adjective which means “…not to be broken; robust; insensitive; inflexible” all of which look perfectly like “unyielding”. Bearing is easily interchangeable in, for example “each tree bearing fruit in its season”. What’s not to like? Likewise, once you stop being put off by score not just being points gained but a good old-fashioned 20, the dartboard challenge is a decent, clean one.
    TOMMIES my LOI. Every word in the clue a familiar cryptic code word for something.
  14. Add me to the list of dismal non-finishers. Some really good stuff in there – I particularly liked the clue for TONG.
  15. Waved the white flag after 40 minutes.

    As a pub team darts player in my formative years I spotted immediately what was going on at 15 (9 x 20 = a max) but I mombled nontuple which unfortunately fitted 3 of the checkers.

    That made the castle impossible and the dangling criminals ungettable.

    Edit to say there were some super clues.

    Edited at 2015-04-01 12:34 pm (UTC)

  16. Great puzzle I failed to finish in 60m. No complaints – I never saw the anagram for 18d or 14a and couldn’t work out the Chinese gang. So hats off to the setter today and our esteemed blogger.
  17. Hardest for a long time, I thought. Managed it all in the end (over an hour) except the drink where I guessed the positions of H and W and got it wrong.
  18. Toughest for ages for me taking 65 minutes. After a PB yesterday I believe today was probably a PW. Finished the bottom half relatively quickly but then got really bogged down with LOI being TOMMIES. Was delighted to avoid a DNF even though I failed to parse many of the clues.
  19. I have had some success with the quick puzzle so I thought I would try the main one. What a mistake. Even looking at the blog I fail to see the reasoning behind some answers. Fir example om 9 ac how does vermouth arrive from it. What am I missing here. Clearly this level is going to be well beyond me.
    1. Italian Vermouth is known as IT eg a GIN AND IT was what my granny liked from time to time. Well worth remembering as it comes up in crosswords very regularly.

      As for today’s puzzle being beyond you – don’t worry it was beyond quite a lot of us.

      Edited at 2015-04-01 03:25 pm (UTC)

    2. Yeah, you picked a tough one Anon.

      I’m glad Sue explained it, because my explanation would have been “it just is”. After doing these things for a while you learn that cow=neat, busy=policeman, jolly=sailor, vermouth=it, along with many others that crop up regularly, without necessarily understanding why.

      You get better with experience, partly because the same conventions are used again and again. The trick (which I haven’t quite mastered) is to recognise them next time they arise.

      As to where to put the H and the W in GLUHWEIN, your guess is as good as mine. Or hopefully better on this occasion.

      1. Not to mention recognising when a cunning setter isn’t following convention, and a “flower” turns out not to be a river, but actually a flower. And as suggested above, crossword vocabulary pays no attention to the passage of time; apart from the It, a wine list based on regular Times usage would include a lot of tent, sack, and hock. And all this before we get to the sort of “it” which is actually S.A. – don’t worry, it does get easier (though in the case of puzzles like today’s, only relatively speaking).
    3. I’d recommend giving yesterday’s a go instead – not a pushover by any means, but a much less thorny puzzle!
    4. As others have mentioned, this perhaps was an unfortunate puzzle for Quicky solvers to have a crack at, with even grizzled crossword veterans struggling. We have had the it=vermouth equivalence a couple of times in the Quicky series but, like many of the conventions that the Quicky and main cryptic share, it will take dozens/hundreds/thousands of repetitions before making these connections becomes second nature to you. There’s no short-cut to that level of experience, so just keep persevering and over time you will accumulate the knowledge to make this kind of puzzle a rewarding challenge rather than an impossibility. I guarantee that every commenter on this blog, at some point in their crosswording career, will have felt like you’re feeling now, so just know that it’s part of the process!
  20. Finally finished in 55:55 after my second crack at this. A tough puzzle which I was pleased to finish all correct regardless of time.

    GLUHWEIN is popular at Christmas markets in the UK which helped me with 18D. I biffed OVERMUCH without seeing Vermouth though which I take to indicate that I need to drink more.

  22. A most enjoyable 35:26 with too many interruptions. The dog was walked with a smile on my face.
  23. I would have finished much faster if I could figure out how to spell GLUWHEIN. I wonder if the setter was trying for a pangram originally, as it appears to be only a Q and a Z short.
  24. 19:10 for me, still struggling to find some kind of form. A hugely enjoyable puzzle though. My compliments to the setter.

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