26038 In which Marx fails both as economist and film maker.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
No push over this one, though I did manage to scrape in 59 seconds before the big hand hit the 6. That’ll be 29.01 for those of you who are too young to be bothered with analogue. A certain amount of transatlantic co-operation is necessary for this one, with one clue that manages to combine both cricket and footie, and an Americanism (which I had to make assumptions about) which ignores a much more familiar reference. There’s an obscure (to me, at least) French location, but fortunately you don’t really have to know very much about it. You do need to know quite a bit of belligerent stuff and little bits of Latin, Greek, German and French. Any complaints should be addressed to the editor, but feel free to let off steam here. Here are my inklings:

Across
1 TEABAG  One used….
In other words, it’s a cryptic definition, and rather a twisty one. A fortune teller might want to use the pattern of tealeaves left in the bottom of your cuppa, If you’ve used a teabag, or even (shudder) left one in the cup, the tasseomancer is thwarted, Unless your future involves being suffocated by a large pillow, which it probably should if you leave the teabag in the cup. You are advised not to look up teabag in the Urban Dictionary. This is not, after all, Sunday.
4 DUCK SOUP  a walk in Central Park
A walk in the park is something easy to do, and Central Park signals that, in this case, it’s an American stroll. Shun (DUCK) course (SOUP) provides the remaining wordplay. Nothing to do with Groucho and brothers: I learned today that DUCK SOUP is also American for something very easy. UD references Raymond Chandler and such. You are advised not to read on (again).
9 ACADEMIA Dons, perhaps
And an anagram of A MAC and IDEA
10 LYCEUM  a garden once
Clearly an anagram of LUCY and ME, though the garden definition is not the most obvious. Aristotle used to stroll in Athens Central Park, which carried the LYCEUM tag, while philosophing. Now a generic name for a posh school.
11 SHANGHAI  Eastern port
And also railroad (verb) to force or trick into doing something, such as join a ship’s crew. Did you know it’s also to score a single, double and treble of the same number in darts? Neither did I.
12 BOFFIN Lab worker
Two unpleasant smells, B O and NIFF, the second backwards
13 GRENOBLE  (far from it) here?
Tourcoing manages to be a city suburb of Lille, but you only need the G on the end, with RE (touching) and NOBLE for far from base. I’ll leave you to decide whether the distance between the two places, 813 kilometres, qualifies as “far from” doing double duty.
15 DOZE  Drop off
At last an easy one. Notes might be Do(h)s. Auditors here hear things.
17 FESS  Something maybe to put on an escutcheon
A broad horizontal band on an heraldic shield. Own translates to FESS as in confess something, both more usually with “up”. Thanks again, America. I initially thought BOSS worked just as well – Federer totally owned/bossed Centre Court.
19 EDGEHILL  battle
Sunday 23 October 1642, the first major engagement in the English Civil War. Ease gives you EDGE (he eased past the guards), pain gives ILL, H(ard) is placed between the two.
20 EXOCET  missile
The cryptic works thus. Your golf driver starts on the TEE, steer is COX, insert one into t’other and reverse. Exocets were French built anti-ship missiles which played a major role in the 1982 Falklands conflict, such as sinking HMS Sheffield. It’s French for flying fish. Subtle.
21 HOME BIRD  one to stay in, mostly
PM is Prime Minister Alec Douglas HOME (October 1963 to October 1964) the last member of the House of Lords to serve in that office. BIRD and time are both slang terms for a prison sentence.
22 OPORTO  City
Left is PORT (if you’re facing forward) and 0-0 your goalless draw which hems it in.
23 RETROFIT  later upgrade
Row gives TIER, defensive facility FORT. Insert one into t’other and reverse.
24 BARONESS an English lady
Such as Margaret Thatcher (Falklands again – is this deliberate?). Nudity gives BARENESS, swap the first of the E’s to a 0 (nothing). I expect a scattering of annoyed solvers who sub the other way round. A rather juicy surface.
25 FINING Means to clarify
I would have expected the plural, but Chambers says it’s ok. Result of research “FINDING” from which the central D escapes.

Down
2 ECCE HOMO  religious act
A slightly odd definition, which might have been meant to be “religious art”. ECCE HOMO, Latin for “behold the man”, the words of Pontius Pilate presenting a scourged and humiliated Jesus to the crowd, and the subject of many, often gruesomely graphic, works of art. I’m not aware of it being a specific ritual. The wordplay is one of the standard abbreviations for the Church of England, CE, doubled and placed head to head, plus HOM (in, HOMe, short), plus O(ver), cricket already.
3 BADINAGE  teasing
The horrible slang pants gives BAD, “old” gives IN AGE. French for banter. Banter is now redefined as (probably illegal) verbal harassment.
4 GUMSHIELD player’s protection
Sticks GUMS, retained HELD, covering 1.
5 DRAW IN ONES HORNS save
As in economise. I think this works as an imaginary completion of picture of a lone rhino, which you might do by drawing in the horns. There might be some more subtle wordplay, but I haven’t spotted it.
6 KEYNOTE  Theme
The economist is KEYNES, here produced without his S, and including O(ld) T(estament) books. Not the sixth Marx brother, Commo, then.
7 OPEN FIRE  Take first shot
Tournament is OPEN (as in the French…) kick out is FIRE, as in dismiss in a Sugary way.
8 PIMENTOS Peppers
Top of Paint (in a down clue), plus an anagram of TIN and SOME  indicated by “shot”. Another good credible surface
14 LEITMOTIF  thread
I liked this definition, accurate but somewhat misleading. Anagram (embroider) of OMIT TILE with F(ine) at the end
15 DIVE BOMB Attack
A bit of Yodaspeak: club thought little of is a DIVE, high cost in British slang is a BOMB. Though in Falklands corner, not really a Falklands action, as Argentine planes attempting to dive from height were usually shot down, They came in fast and low, and had some success with the Luke Skywalker shot.
16 ZERO HOUR  when one’s carried out (sc “attack” from previous clue)
Hidden, not very well, since it looks really odd, in booZER – OHO! – URgently
17 FLYBLOWN with eggs, repulsively
“Infested with fly eggs, rotten” Fan is BLOW, pelt produces FLY, where pelt means run headlong, not skin, or throw. Pole provides the final N(orth)
18 STAR SIGN  House
A celebrity autograph hunter wants to see the pursued star sign. Duh..
19 EVERTON  Football club
To turn out is to EVERT, and ON is a (cricket) side at Old Trafford, not the MU field of dreams but the Test ground (almost) next door.

34 comments on “26038 In which Marx fails both as economist and film maker.”

  1. A very lengthy solve for me, somewhat over 100 minutes whether analogue or digital. I managed to be bamboozled by two that Zed found easy (DOZE, where I had ‘ease’, and ZERO HOUR, where I had nothing), while FLYBLOWN was, as it will be for many, I suspect, last in.

    Also baffled by ECCE HOMO and suspect that Zed is as accurate with his explanation of that one as Andros Townsend firing Spurs’ third past Swansea.

    Edited at 2015-03-05 04:22 am (UTC)

  2. Not far short of 90 minutes for this one. The LH went in quite easily but the RH had me struggling for nearly every word, not helped by writing BOSS at 17ac thinking that might just fit both meanings. I never knew what DUCK SOUP meant though of course I heard of the film. Congrats on the blog, Z8, it can’t have been easy.
  3. Had to struggle for pretty much every square. Took close to the hour, more or less, including coffee making. This is lift-and-separate city! Just for one: spotting the def in FLYBLOWN, my last in.

    Interesting pair at 9ac and 10ac. Before founding the Lyceum, Aristotle attended Plato’s Academia — named after the gardener who looked after the place … if I remember right.*

    As ever, an informative blog Z8. And ditto for FINING — only heard it in the plural. But, as noted, the usual sources allow the singular.

    * On edit: no I don’t! It has much less humble origins:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

    Edited at 2015-03-05 05:17 am (UTC)

  4. After 35 minutes of tough going I finally had it all except 5a; D*** *O*P. I can see why a walk in the park is an easy task, and shun = duck, soup is a course; but duck soup? I don’t see why Americanisms which have no currency at all in Britain are acceptable answers in a Times Crossword. I did look it up, so earned a DNF; I am now somewhat better informed, and amused by the Groucho Marx quote when asked why the famous 1933 movie was so called:
    “Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you’ll duck soup the rest of your life.”
    1. the clue for 5a does mention Central Park, signalling the Americanism. I assume the one in Birkenhead is not intended.
    2. “I don’t see why Americanisms which have no currency at all in Britain are acceptable answers in a Times Crossword.”

      I quite agree.

  5. Was convinced 5ac started with ‘walk’ and gave an expression ‘to shun’, so that meant I didn’t get 5dn.

    Played with the momble ‘retaomit’ at 23 ac for a bit, and didn’t manage the second part of ECCE HOMO. A couple of other blanks too (would never have got FINING, despite having all the checkers).

    But I did get FLYBLOWN.

    Lots of devious cluing here, a really challenging puzzle. Well done setter, and thanks Z8 for putting me out of my misery…

    1. That reminds me to add that I never saw this expression to mean “save”. Rather, with ODO, I’d have said “become less assertive or ambitious”.
      1. I drew the “economise” definition from Collins, but I’m inclined to agree that save is not a give-away definition. I needed most of the crossers and that rather twisted look at the wordplay before getting (I think) the only answer possible. Only then could I strain to connect it with the definition, and I needed to look it up post solve to do that.
  6. 36:35. What a monster. I can’t say I enjoyed it much. There are some very cunningly hidden definitions in here, but also too much that is difficult by dint of obscurity and/or obtuse definitions for my taste.
    I never did get FESS: it just happened, which alerted me to the fact that this is the old grid devised by Edward Akenhead with the fully crossed answers: note the E for ‘Edward’ formed by the black squares (in case you’re wondering, it came up on one of my blogs a few weeks ago).

    Edited at 2015-03-05 11:03 am (UTC)

    2. Interesting – 64 grids extant in 2008. As a bit of an anorak I’ve been collecting the published grids; there have been 73 different Times crossword grids published since I started doing them, which was about 2007 or 2008. Will have to work out which 9 weren’t on the Biddlecombe list.
  8. About 35 minutes, but I’m claiming back the better part of 10 for having to deal with cat + (briefly) live vole in study. I’m afraid the vole didn’t make it.

    Definitely an offbeat puzzle, but I enjoyed it once I got my heart rate back under control. I’ll fess to not actually getting FESS at all, but then I don’t recall ever hearing it without the “up”.

    LEITMOTIF and STAR SIGN are very good, but BARONESS gets my vote for making me smile.

  9. Muppet alert – 24 mins but with a very careless “bareness” at 24ac because I didn’t read the clue properly. Very annoying because I managed to parse all the tricky ones, although I spent about four minutes at the end on the FLYBLOWN/FINING crossers.
  10. Golly, that was tricky, but I could see what was going on most of the time and got there in 25:25 (Zager & Evans anyone?)

    I nearly failed on my last, 2d, having worked out the Ecce, and put in Hoco for the second word (on the basis that HOC means summat in Latin, so why not IN SHORT?) but it didn’t look right and I vaguely remembered the homo bit from, I think, a previous puzzle.

    Fess only got from the 100% checking as I didn’t know the heraldry meaning.

    Some great clues here, among them retrofit and flyblown.

    1. It came up in a Saturday puzzle on 1 November (25933). The art/act question passed me by entirely: to me it was just a Latin thing I remembered seeing in another puzzle.
  11. quite agree z that this was an odd clue. it reminded me of when my children used to watch mr. bean. back then, i thought the introductory ECCE HOMO anthem was a real c-of-e real thing, not realising it had been specially written for the series.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzGimN2H2oQ

    this was a real wrestling match of a puzzle. we’ve had that BADINAGE thing before. 35.42

  12. I didn’t really enjoy this. The left hand side went in more or less straight away but I finally gave up on the rest after 50 minutes. The intractable problem turned out to be that I had BOSS at 17a. I’ve never heard of FESS in the heraldic sense and would never have got it. I had DUCK ***P but couldn’t see a definition. Usually when I have a DNF I look at the answers and mentally kick myself for not getting it – “could do better” as my teachers used to say. But without this blog I would never have understood some of these clues. Ann
  13. Let’s just say that the setter – as Bobby Jones famously said of Jack Nicklaus – “..plays a game with which I am not familiar”.

    Thank you jimbo for pointing me to this weeks’s Mephisto which was much more diverting.

    Edited at 2015-03-05 10:01 pm (UTC)

  14. 12:32 for me. I seem to be rather out on a limb here since I found this a fairly average sort of Times crossword, where (as usual nowadays) I ended up kicking myself for making heavy weather of some straightforward clues. It hadn’t really occurred to me that others (including some heavy hitters, judging from the Times Crossword Club leaderboard!) might find it difficult.

    The “stroll in the park” meaning of DUCK SOUP has come up in the last ten years in No. 22,965 (2 May 2005) – “An easy task in dense fog? There’s nothing to it! (4,4)” – but, as a Marx Brothers fan, I expect I was aware of it before that. I reckon this is something Brits might reasonably be expected to know.

  15. Why is badinage the cause of teasing? It’s arguably the teasing itself, but the cause is all sorts of things nothing to do with badinage. I should have thought.
    1. I thought so too, but shrugged and decided the definition was indeed just teasing, and the wordplay causes the word to appear. The surface is meant to mislead into the short story about how my old pants gave rise to much ribald comment. Personally, I think we should start a campaign against the use of the word “pants” to indicate any negative word the setter needs. It’s just – what’s the word? – pants.
      1. I disagree. I think ‘pants’ is sick.
        I read BADINAGE like you: ‘the cause of’ is part of the wordplay.
  16. It’s tomorrow for you by now, but I’m arriving late to confess a DNF due to FLYBLOWN and FINING, the latter of which I’d never have solved. Also tossing out my own US based feeling that DUCK SOUP is not in current use here, and befuddled me also. Got it from wordplay. Regards.
  17. I did this to “warm up” for my Friday puzzle and it turned out to be a bit of a workout – 28.5 minutes I think, with some resorting to aids at the end because time was wearing on. I was as you may have gathered rather drunk. What a night! Glad to learn more about the true meaning of DUCK SOUP, as I just assumed that the definition was the plot of the Marx Brothers film. Shameful really, as I’m currently reading Harpo Marx’s autobiography, so I should be more clued up about these things…
    1. I also (in my cups) rebelled against the idea of a rhino having multiple horns but apparently I’m just Indian/Javan-rhino-centric. Hope I’m not a rhino racist!
  18. My first comment, indeed my first contribution to a blog.
    I have been looking at this site for some months now, often with a sinking heart as I aim to and do usually finish in around the 30 minutes – but am lost in admiration at those who seem to knock these off in a few minutes every day. My most recent best time I think was 8 but this week Monday was a DNF ( bloody Oribi! ), Tuesday 32, Wednesday 32 and yesterday, I thought a shaming 91 – but at least I persevered. Phew – others found it difficult as well.
    Incidentally, to a pedant like me (who lives in Ceredigion, formerly part of Dyfed, formerly Cardiganshire) Dyfed is an ex-county and one not remembered with any fondness by inhabitants of Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire or Pembrokeshire.
    Chris M-W
    1. Welcome to the blog, and congratulations on completing this one. By common consent it was a true beast, and there were several members who recorded both longer times and less accuracy than you.
      Even though it’s called “Times for the Times”, it’s not that competitive: we leave that to the leaderboard on the Times Crossword Club, where in any case it’s common for times quicker than, say, Magoo and Jason to be faked for reasons no-one understands!
      Feel free to comment at any time, and make that easy by becoming a member: its free, doesn’t involve being deluged with spam and enables you to add your own tag and picture(s)
  19. Quite hard, almost 40 minutes, and much to like. But a few not to like as well, too many unknowns to be really enjoyable. DUCK SOUP as something easy, LYCEUM as a garden, TOURCOING as a place close to Grenoble (I couldn’t even decide if it looked like a Celtic word and might be in Ireland or Scotland). Which it isn’t – close to Grenoble – so far from it IS doing double duty. FESS in both its meanings – guessed heraldry and it’s probably cropped up before, but forgotten since. HOME BIRD. ECCE HOMO phrase forgotten since last time, was tempted by Italian ecco. GUMSHIELD is mouthguard hereabouts. PULL, not DRAW, in one’s horns, and not meaning save. No, that’s wrong – pull your head in.
    Pencilled in EASE for notes/drop off; luckily zero hour fixed it quickly.
    And one wrong – MOFFIN – with MO for second. So annoyed by all the unknowns I guessed this was another unknown, from a UK kids books involving labrador dogs. Hey Ho.
    And 2 unparsed: didn’t see HOM as short IN. For exocet I had about and steer as C then OX, and wondered how it all reversed.
    Rob

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