Times 26047 – One for the Yanks

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
One of the easiest Mondays to come along for a long time, especially for our transatlantic friends. Experts and those who relish a challenge will be singing along with Bob and his Rats. 15.5 minutes here, with at least ninety seconds (how nice it is to be able to speak in such fractions) spent on the spotted fish.

ACROSS

1. LEAFLETS – anagram* of SALE FELT.
6. KVETCH – abbreviation of V[ery] in KETCH for the Yiddish Moaning Minnie.
9. GUY FAWKES – hero to some (William Cobbett – no lover of the Scots – calls him ‘that honest Englishman’ and even James I was moved to call him ‘the English Scaevola’), villain to many, the Yorkshireman’s lineage is by ‘tease’ (GUY) out of ‘pirates’ (FAKES) around W[ith].
11. SPRAT – the setter cunningly offsets an easy solution with fiendish wordplay; to spot means to spit, which means to rain lightly: the past tense of that round R[iver].
12. CANTATA – CAN (meaning to dismiss Stateside) + TATA.
13. ANTHILL – ALL around NT (National Trust) + HI.
14. ALEXANDER POPE – he of the highly quotable lines, or misquotable in my case; after all, a little knowledge….
16. MARY BAKER EDDY – according to its webpage, the ‘discoverer (sic) and founder of Christian Science’; BY ME + DARKER DAY*.
20. CUBICLE – CUB + L[eft] in ICE.
21. GRAM+MAR
23. EXTOL – EX + LOT reversed.
24. TOUGH LUCK – TOUGH (‘gangster’) + lady LUCK.
25. SECURE – SURE around EC (where the City of London is).
26. MENSWEAR – M + S + ARE NEW*.

DOWNS

1. LEGACY – ‘sort of gift that’s left’; LACY around EG.
2. ARYAN – hidden.
3. LEAKAGE – ALE A KEG*.
4. TAKE A BACK SEAT – a clue in search of its crypticity?
6. VISITOR – VI + OR (‘Other Ranks’, viz soldiers, AKA men) around SIT (‘model’ – verb).
7. TERRITORY – ‘realm’; ERR + IT in TORY.
8. HOTELIER – a substitution clue, which is somewhat wasted as many people will just BIF it; HO (abbreviation for ‘house’) in place of A in ATELIER (dingy garret or incredibly overpriced French restaurant).
10. STANDARD GAUGE – SAD GUARD A GENT*; a write-in for many, but not for me, who was brought up on Scalextric rather than Hornby.
14. ACROBATIC – ‘with lots of twists and turns’; another letter substitution clue which is rather otiose, as well as being borderline grammatically. We have ACROSTIC, which changes to ACROBATIC according to the instruction ‘Arts graduate’s succeeded’, parsed as ‘Arts graduate (BA) has succeeded (S)’, where we must be as loose in our translation as Chapman with his Iliad to derive the meaning ‘Arts graduate takes the place of succeeded’. At least, that’s how I see it (through a glass darkly). For S as an abbreviation, we have no less an authority than Tim Moorey. On edit: The cryptic grammar of the clue is ‘Arts graduate (BA) is succeeded (S)’ (where ‘is’ operates as in ‘Olivier is [appears as] Hamlet’), while the surface grammar is as I had it.
15. SMACKERS – double definition (a sop to the British solvers!).
17. BUCKLER – a buckler is a small round shield typically worn on the forearm in all those sword and sandal epics; someone who gives way under pressure might be called a ‘buckler’, although he is usually called an English one-day cricketer.
18. DRACHMS – in the UK, one eighth of a fluid ounce, in the US one eight of an apothecaries’ ounce; either way, I’d never heard of it. SM + H + CARD (‘He’s a right card is that Jeffrey’) reversed.
19. BROKER – BROKE + [sti]R.
22. MOUSE – USE in MO.

53 comments on “Times 26047 – One for the Yanks”

  1. Thanks for the blog, ulaca. This did go fast, except for drachms (unknown here, too), and with hotelier, sprat, and acrobatic unparsed. Easy definitions, tricky wordplay.
  2. KVETCH & DRACHMS, two violations of English phonology in one cryptic. This went by quickly, speedwise, until I had to face 18d; and there was a mauvaise minute or two until I finally thought of reading the clue (you’d be surprised how much that can help). I had a bit of a problem with 16ac; it would never have occurred to me to define MBE as a ‘religious woman’. ‘Quasi-religious dingbat’, sure, but. Christian Science and Mormonism: Murca’s two great contributions to the spiritual development of the race. Show of hands, please: How many others of you immediately thought AL when you saw ‘gangster’?
    1. ‘The Book of Mormon’ is a fine antidote. So good I had to see it twice. (Okay, my musical theatre-mad daughter dragged me along on visits to her in the UK.)
      1. I can’t think of any better approach to the serious discussion of Mormonism than the creators of ‘South Park’. (Does the musical deal with the angel Moroni the way anyone of my generation would expect?) Still, Chri Sci holds a special place in my heart, in that my father’s mother was a CSer, which is why his sister died of TB.
    2. Don’t forget Scientology. What price L Ron and Joseph Smith defined as “religious men” ?
  3. First time in ages I’ve been all correct in well under 30mins, so definitely a quickie…

    Wasn’t helped by not having heard of MARY BAKER EDDY, nor by having ‘guage’ in for a while at 10dn. Couldn’t parse ACROBATIC, or GUY FAWKES, and put in TAKE A BACK SEAT without too much thought, but on rereading, I’m not sure I really get the ‘maybe not’ part of it?

    1. I had the same reaction at first: if you’re in the back seat, someone else is driving, no? But then I thought of back seat drivers, and the scales fell from my proverbials.
  4. … DK the founder of the oxymoronic cult. But at least she was an anagram. I suspect 14ac, if alive at the time, would have written a fine satire on the subject. Took a while, too, to spot the SPAT at 11ac. Otherwise, a gentle stroll with coffee.

    Anyone else spot the hidden alpaca?

    Edited at 2015-03-16 03:53 am (UTC)

  5. A rare foray into the sub-15min, but alas with one slip. At 14dn I saw the BA in the middle and chucked in AEROBATIC on definition.

    On looking at it now it seems to be “arts graduate is/has succeeded” (pace ulaca) but I’m not sure the substitution indicator really works either way. That is no excuse for my carelessness however.

    1. No, you’re being kind – it’s definitely ‘is’ and that makes sense. I’ll change it quickly before I get pounded like Wayne Rooney in his kitchen.
    2. Yep, another unparsed high (or low) flier. I have to add that, to a comitted atheist, the tenets of the”new” religions are no wierder than those with a couple of millenia behind them.
  6. Not bad, but I can only dream of matching the solving speed of our blogger.

    Ma Baker was unfamiliar, a gap in my GK which I won’t be aiming to rectify. KVETCH and DRACHMS are both great words, but I’m not sure I could have used either of them in a sentence. Biggest hold-up was in the Cape York corner, taking ages over HOTELIER and SPRAT.

    Nice start to the week though, thanks setter and blogger. I was going to ask if the “one-day” in 17ac was really required, but that would be unkind.

  7. 35 minutes, so my quickest solve in a while – maybe even more than a week, but I’m not going to revisit my accounts of the disasters in order to check.

    I expect my unknowns, MBE and KVETCH, have come up before. I only just about managed to dredge up the required meaning of CAN at 12ac. Solved 1dn from L (left), EG (say) and the definition (sort of gift),with ACY and ‘fancy packaging’ unexplained until post- completion.

    Edited at 2015-03-16 05:21 am (UTC)

    1. Yes Jack, Kvetch twice (though one a club monthly) and MBE is practically a regular, though normally just as “Eddy” rather than in full…
  8. Have waited over 2 years for a new PB. 9.26 won’t excite anyone but me, but made my day! Thanks for a fun puzzle to solve.
  9. . . . but completely thrown by finding the other anagram for 1ac first. Quickly changed but a bit unnerving in a Times crossword. Thanks ulaca.

    Edited at 2015-03-16 09:02 am (UTC)

  10. Always reluctant to go down the BIFD road (too many times I’ve come a cropper) but had to with last two in SPRAT and HOTELIER, neither of which I could parse in time I allotted to myself for this one.

    Everything else tickety boo. Thanks for the blog Ulaca.

  11. 15 minutes, ending with the NE corner like others, only unknown was KVETCH which went in on wordplay and a guess; my proud ignorance of things Yiddish has been noted before in these pages. Not much harder than a Quickie, but a nice gentle workout for a dreary Monday morning.
    CoD HOTELIER (Ulaca I’ve never seen a resto in France called an ‘atelier’, it’s always a place to find a carpenter, glassblower or other artisans?)
    The MBE reference sent me to Wiki for a refesher on Chri Sci, once again leaving me wondering how intelligent people can go in for this kind of guff. But there again, I am a Clinton Richard Dawkins fan.
      1. Ah, a French resto in a foreign bailiwick. Well it looks delicious, if a bit poncy. There are I see two Robuchon Ateliers in Paris, so I eat my words (they’re cheaper than the menu); I think they are using the word ‘atelier’ in a sort of tongue in cheek way, like you might say ‘Heston Blumenthal’s workshop’. Tripadvisor gives them a wide band of reviews from excellent through disappointing to rip-off.
  12. 15:01 … one of those ‘easy with tricky bits’ ones. Last two in were DRACHMS (DNK) and SPRAT (took ages to parse).

    I genuinely needed Chambers Word Wizards to discover what BigTone’s “other anagram” was. Good grief. I’m glad it wasn’t that.

    1. Those Cambridge types, you know, Sotira. Too much time spent pacing those corridors.
  13. 9 mins. I’d have easily had a PB if I had been able to complete the NE and SW as quickly as the NW and SE went in (no problem with DRACHMS because I remembered it from previous puzzles). In the end SPRAT was biffed, although I sussed the spat/spotted rain connection post-solve.

    A thousand years down the line any of the ridiculous pseudo-religions we find it easy to mock now may have turned into mainstream religions. All religions need to become entrenched are enough people subscribing to them, especially if backed by the state, and the further away you get from the source of a religion the harder it is to convince people that it is based on nonsense. Read into that what you will.

    1. Sounds like we should meet up and spend an evening furiously agreeing with each other over pints.
  14. 20:01. A relief to finish one after last week, though I was hesitant at the end when putting in KVETCH and DRACHMS. Thankfully my faith in the parsing was well placed.

    I also hadn’t seen the parsing for SPRAT so thanks for that.

  15. Something of a quickie, but I took time working on SPRAT to make sure it was right. In the end, I smudged the spit spat spot connection, or perhaps just waved in its general direction, and put the only available fish in place. Took my time up to nearly 13 minutes. Tut.

    Two rather splendid exotic consonant combinations and two A is B conceits in one crossword? Are you not entertained?

    Footnote: Spit spat spot is part of a charm to find birds’ nests. The rest requires a Boston adolescent. Apparently it can be adapted for anything lost, so long as you don’t mind saliva puddles on the floor. We do the research so you don’t have to.

  16. Around 20 mins with MBE and the other obscurities eventually dredged from the darker recesses but I had to biff SPRAT.
  17. 25m for all but the religious woman – though I was mostly there – and the Yiddish word. BIFD the only combination that would work and never got the whinger so a DNF after 40m. Not a great start to the week but there’s lots to come. Enjoyed the blog if not the puzzle.
  18. When the answer or part of the wordplay relies on a purely American word (kvetch, can) I really think the clue should say so, as is often the case in other puzzles. Never heard of the Eddy woman, but as Mctext says, thank god she was an anagram.
    1. Kvetch is Yiddish rather than American, and could well be heard around the London Jewish communities. Could someone back up the vague memory that “can it” meaning “shut up” is British (army?) slang. Admittedly no a particularly close match to “discharge”, but I didn’t go “stateside” to solve the clue myself
      1. Fair enough, but I had to look up the ‘kvetch’ post-solve – The OED acknowledges its Yiddish derivation, but describes it as “North American informal’. And it has the same label for the required meaning of ‘can’ and the expression ‘can it’.
        1. OED is, of course, a decent enough recorder of usage, but I know Kvetch from my Austro-Hungarian/Czech/Cambridge/Jewish Father-in-Law, whose use of it was untainted by connection with the States and definitely not informal.
          He was also the inventor of electric blankets that put 20mph on the top speed of the Spitfire, and a real mensch.
          1. Very interesting, especially the blanket which sounds most intriguing. Had to look up ‘mensch’. Guess what? North American informal. It seems OED thinks that Yiddish is only spoken in the US. Obviously not the case, though it’s probably spoken there more than in the UK.
            1. The blanket had to do with the riveting of the wing panels: Supermarine had problems with saggy and vibrating panels. Artur Goldstein picked up on an idea from Scientific American on heating the panels before riveting, and developed the technology to do it. result, stressed panels, very smooth, no sag, no vibration. I still have all the correspondence with Vickers Armstrong, which he typed out himself (in English!) on his ancient German typewriter. Not bad for the boy from Presov who escaped to England just before the borders closed.
              2. Not bad at all. Not just a mensch, but a lucky man too. We can only speculate as to the innovation, creativeness and genius that was lost to humanity in the ensuing years.

                1. Indeed. In his case, the ones whose future contributions to the planet were lost were almost all the rest of his family.  His wife stayed behind to organise taking the furniture out og the country.

  19. A very easy start to the week – helped by the fact that I knew KVETCH and the helpful anagram in 16a as I only could remember her surname.
  20. 11:54. Similar experience to others: glad the religious woman was an anagram, took me a while to see the spit/spot connection, didn’t know DRACHMS.
  21. A quick solve in about 15 minutes, ending with CANTATA, because it took me a while to see the Americanism for ‘discharge’, which it certainly is. KVETCH is pretty common over here too, but DRACHMS isn’t. No real problems, though. Regards.
  22. A rare completion so thankful for the tamer puzzle today. Not everything fully understood so many thanks to the blog for the explanations, esp. for how the replacement indicator works in ‘Acrobatic’.
    Regards,
    Harry.
  23. 7:52 for me. Despite feeling that SPRAT sounded plausible, I dithered over it in case there was a better solution to be had.

    I think I must have first come across DRACHMS on the back covers of school exercise books where they used to print tables of weights and measures including apothecaries’ weights.

  24. A quick start and a slow finish for me, and something like 40min overall. Like some others here, I had “standard GUAGE” for a long time. I still contend that GUAGE looks better than GAUGE. As with so many minor irritations in life, GAUGE apparently comes from the French.

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