Times 26,039: Going Dotty

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
12 minutes 30 seconds on the clock, which seems to be pretty par for me and a Friday puzzle recently, but sadly a DNF as I’d BIFD in “FRONT” at 2D. FRONT is clearly something to do with “forward” and, er, a bob is a shilling, which is pretty much a florin, which can probably justify and F… in it goes. I’ve let myself down, I’ve let my family down, but worst of all I’ve let Times_Xwd_Times down. My bags are packed for a long “vacation” on the Romanian Black Sea coast where I can reflect on the error of my ways.

After work the art department wanted to go to the pub, you see, and one pint turned to two, and then the head of department got bought a large wine but she’d only wanted a small wine because she was driving so half of it was going spare, and you can’t waste a nice Picpoul apparently; and then I headed back to South Norwood where there was a free showing of Mulholland Drive to be had, except when I got there someone had forgotten the DVD and they were showing Labyrinth instead, and I thought okay, that’s a very different vibe but I can get through it with the help of a large bottle of beer from the bar. Except then the projector packed in and stopped serving up any magenta, so we were watching a murky German Expressionist version of the movie, Das Kabinett des David Bowie, and the organiser was so contrite he gave me another one of whatever I was having on the house… by the time I got home I was lucky I could spell “crossword”, much less do one. If you need to warn any children off the perils of the demon drink, just show them this blog post and they’ll go straight for life.

Nice puzzle though I thought, not much in the way of unusual vocabulary or classical allusion but some inventive cluing, and all done with an obvious sense of humour. I particularly enjoyed the “three eighths” at 13A, whose penny dropped a fair length of time after the answer had gone in, and also the pantsless Amundsen at 16D. Isn’t it a bit cold at the South Pole for that kind of thing?

Can’t remember my FOI, possibly 3A after I’d dutifully fallen for and then quickly rejected RED HERRING, or else 5D? My LOI was definitely 21A though. Double definitions and puns are the hardest for me when I’m one over the eight, I find. Anyway, got to get some girls out of the door and to school – thanks so much to the setter and with any luck I’ll have sobered up in time for the next one!

Across
1 PUFF – double def: advertisement / a drag (i.e. on a cigarette)
3 RED SNAPPER – a fish: REDS NAPPER [Liverpool | kipper]
10 PROBOSCIS – trunk: PRO BOSS [for | big cheese] “packed with” C I [C{heddar} (and) I{lchester} “for starters”]
11 OUNCE – feline: {p}OUNCE [to strike “after heading off”]
12 RATHOLE – squalid room: (HER A LOT*) [“upset”]
13 LETHAL – “enough to finish you off”: LET [allowed] + HAL{f} [“three eighths?” i.e. 3/4 of “half”]
15 HONEYSUCKLE ROSE – old song: (CHORUS SO KEENLY*) [“jazzed up”] + E [{Basi}E’s “ultimate”]
18 SHRINK-RESISTANT – unlikely to diminish: a person “averse to analysis” would be resistant to their shrink
21 PERIOD – double def: in the US, (full) stop / a while
23 OUTSIDE – slim (as in an outside chance): (TEDIOUS*) [“exercises”]
26 RHINO – double def: money / “one might charge”
27 BARTENDER – cocktail maker: ART [skill] “amid” BENDER [drinking binge]
28 DINNER-TIME – when to feed: DIME [money] “safeguarding” INNER T [private | T{uition} “at first”]
29 EXAM – test: M AXE [marks | cut] “back”

Down
1 PAPER CHASE – hunting game: (APES*) [“wild”] “trapping” A PERCH [a fish]
2 FLOAT – triple def: bob / cash / put forward
4 EXCHEQUER – funds: ER [Queen] “investing” X CHEQUE [unknown amount (with) alternative to cash]
5 SISAL – coarse stuff: “among” {video}S IS AL{arming}
6 APOSTLE – preacher: A + ST [pious type] entering POLE [bar]
7 PENSACOLA – a port in Florida: PENS A COLA [more than one pound | a | drink]
8 REEL – spin: sounds like REAL [not made up, “as some might say”]
9 COLONY – community: COLON [“a couple of points”,i.e. “:”] + Y [“ending in” {controvers}Y]
14 KETTLEDRUM – musical instrument: kettles have whistles
16 NORWEGIAN – “Amundsen was”: (WEARING NO*) [“pants”]
17 KISSOGRAM – message passionately delivered: SS + ARGO [one ship (and) another “capsizing”] in KIM [novel]
19 NOISOME – offensive: NOISE [racket] “stealing” OM [“contents of” {t}OM{b}”]
20 SETTER – double def: crossword compiler / the Sun
22 DEBUT – first appearance: D E [“ends in” D{isgrac}E] + BUT [however]
24 INDEX – guide: {k}IND [type “missing heading”] on EX [old]
25 TRAD – classic: DART [flower (i.e. river) “uprooted”]

29 comments on “Times 26,039: Going Dotty”

  1. 30 minutes for this – not much to say, except that pound for pound it’s not a lot harder than the Quickie.

    Considered the ‘front’ trap but was sober enough to have a rethink.

  2. I found it a lot harder than the quickie, which I blogged a day or two ago. Like our hung-over blogger (my sympathies, V, I well remember how those creative people can lead one astray, from my advertising days), had entered kissAgram so had to re-think before seeing the error and then guessing my LOI OUTSIDE without parsing the ‘slim chance’ meaning. Crawled over the line in an hour of on-and-off solving while watching the Windies make another mess of it. Well blogged V under adverse circs, hope you weren’t breathalysed on the way to school.
    CoD 15a for the obscure anagram and good surface.
  3. 20m here, but I spent very nearly half of that staring at 21ac. So obvious once you’ve seen it! Otherwise I found this pretty straightforward.
    Another hasty RED HERRING here, quickly corrected when I saw the clue for SISAL.
    I was relieved to find PENSACOLA wasn’t a momble.
  4. As with today’s Quickie (comments under that blog in the unlikely event that anyone’s interested) I was unable to complete this without resorting to aids for the final clue. If I ever heard of PENSACOLA I didn’t know a) that it is a port, or b) that it is in Florida. I settled for the ending A,COLA having decided it was more likely than A,SODA but was completely foxed by “more than one pound” not having anything to do with money. I even considered PONY,A,COLA at one point!

    All but two solved in 31 minutes, then 19 minutes on the remainder before giving up and reaching for the dictionary.

    Edited at 2015-03-06 09:57 am (UTC)

  5. 18.20, with the fish at 3 LOI and taking most time. There are just too many epithets for Liverpool FC supporters down here to chose from, I suppose. No real difficulties, though, and admiration for the 3/8 ploy and the playing around with punctuation. I satisfied myself with (B)OUNCE for “strike” at 11, and though (P)OUNCE is surely better (in vino veritas?) since it’s the missing letter it shouldn’t really matter.
    How long before Sideshow Bob gets a look in to clue BARTENDER? Will we have to wait until it’s as old a reference as HONEYSUCKLE ROSE? We’ve had Harry Potter clues (and several themed Listeners). When does popular culture (I like it) become sufficiently high art to warrant inclusion?
    1. I neglected to mention my appreciation of the reference to the song written by the great Fats Waller and Andy Razaf. It’s still being performed and recoded today by modern artistes so there’s no reason to consign it to the scrapheap.

      Edited at 2015-03-06 10:23 am (UTC)

    2. I love it! Though surely Sideshow Bob is only a wannabe BARTENDER? unless I’ve missed a major development in one of the approximately 17 seasons since last I watched…
      1. I don’t think Robert (Bob) Underdunk (sic) Terwilliger has ever achieved his dream even in a Treehouse of Horror episode, so the clue would have to include some sort of would be element. But I’m sure that can be arranged.
  6. I am fortunate enough to have a father in Florida, don’t see him all that much these days but I’m sure I must have gone through Pensacola in a Greyhound bus at some point in my life. You’ve got to lay down the proper groundwork in your younger days if you want to be able to solve these tricky clues later in life…
  7. Two errors today (Front not Float and Kissagram not Kissogram). Doubt I’d have got the tricky Outside even if I’d spelled Kissogram correctly.
  8. Glad to see I’m not the only one to struggle with period. 20 minutes in all with 5 alone on that. Needed an alphabet trawl in the end.

    COD to shrink-resistant, thanks to V for the blog and Z for the Bart-ender clue.

  9. 19 mins. I had all but 1ac and 2dn done in 12 mins but then I had complete brain freeze. PUFF should have been a write-in but it took me what seemed like an eternity. Once I had it I saw FLOAT straight away and didn’t even consider “front”. Before I had the “F” checker for 2dn I had been finding it very hard to get away from the idea that I was looking at “S” for “bob” (a shilling) plus a four-letter word for money with “put forward” as the definition, and that had also caused me to fixate on the probability of P?S? for the advertisement until the penny dropped.
  10. Add me to the list of people who stared for ages at 21a before I remembered this clue’s ‘chestnut’ qualities as I must have solved many variations of it over the years. 10:17 so not quite as tricky as it first looked.
  11. 23:17 … steady, mostly quick solve, but it took me a good while to pick off my last few — FLOAT, KETTLEDRUM and PERIOD (doh!).

    Definitely heard of PENSACOLA but didn’t know how to spell it, so glad the wordplay was clear enough.

    Good fun all round, I thought.

  12. Me too, with period; I usually panic when I see “in US” because ala Vinyl, I’m never sure exactly how deep knowledge of locations, idiom, or history is expected to go. I wasn’t so sure about slim / outside. Otherwise, an enjoyable solve and a nice blog.
    1. I was US-ed out by the end with 21ac and 7dn as my stumbling blocks. It felt like it was an attempt at revenge for all the Anglo-centric stuff we are treated to daily.
      1. Every once in a while I think the Americans, and separately the Antipodals, should get together to set a puzzle for the rest of the gang using appropriately arcane slang and baseball or Aussie Rules references.
  13. If I’d bothered to parse KISSAGRAM I’d have noticed the mis-spelling, and I wouldn’t have stared at A_T_I_E for ages, amazed that it wasn’t asking for an anagram of tedious, and I wouldn’t have entered ATTRITE out of desperation (could sort of mean slim in a verb form, and TRITE could be tedious, and that just leaves two unparsed letters) and I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering why I even bother with these things.

    But I didn’t parse KISSAGRAM.

    Great blog Verlaine, well played setter. COD to the Norwegian.

  14. About 25 minutes, ending with OUTSIDE because it had to be the answer. Not parsed until arriving here, so thanks Verlaine. Otherwise, all went along well enough. I agree with galspray that the COD goes to NORWEGIAN. Regards.
  15. kipper=napper
    i have googled and looked at online thesauruses but cannot find any connection
    would somebody explain it to me
    DaveG
  16. OK finally seen it (after looking in Bradfords which has sleeper for kipper)
    DaveG
  17. 15:25 for me, finishing (like others) by taking ages over 21ac, even though I expect I’ve seen it many times before. (Sigh!)

    If “kettles have whistles” really is the explanation of 14dn (KETTLEDRUM), then it seems a very weak clue! (Or am I missing something?) I wasn’t all that keen on TRAD = “classic” in 25dn either.

    1. Mm, that tenuous semi-explanation felt weak when I was writing it up, but I couldn’t come up with anything better…

      I think I saw TRAD as a definition for classic somewhere else this week, which helped a lot. Possibly somewhere in the Graun.

  18. Well, it’s now technically Sunday (although, since I haven’t been asleep yet, it’s still Saturday), and I have just finished this one. 41 minutes on the timer, which I wasn’t very happy about until I realised that it’s a shade under 3 Severs, which cheered me up. My LOI was also 21ac.

    I enjoyed 13ac (with its “three eighths”), and 16d is my COD (although, this being Sunday, it’s technically my CODBY).

    Tomorrow (Sunday; although as noted that is technically today) is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tapio Rautavaara, the famous and only Finnish javelin-throwing actor. I intend to celebrate in the Finnish tradition, by drinking heavily.

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