Times 25,974: All That Glisters

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
So, apologies for the latest blog-delaying mini-catastrophe. Last Friday my two-year-old daughter fell quite ill; on Saturday I took her into the walk-in clinic where she was diagnosed with scarlet fever; a few days on antibiotics created no improvement at all; on Tuesday, looking like a junior extra from The Walking Dead she was seen by another GP and immediately hospitalised; on Wednesday a diagnosis of the much rarer (certainly outside of Japan!) Kawasaki’s disease was confirmed. This morning I was already on a mission of mercy (coffee, chocolate eclairs) to Rupert Bear Ward when I suddenly remembered what day it was. Anyway, Clara’s condition is much improved and an ECG yesterday showed no complications, so all’s well that ends well.

And apparently the crossword gods registered the difficult week we’ve been having and were lenient, because today’s puzzle was completely straightforward. I bought my copy of the Times outside West Croydon station, and had finished well over half the puzzle by the time the bus reached the hospital… four or five stops away? I then had to join a short queue for coffee in the reception area and challenged myself to finish before my order was taken, which I did easily, with even a couple of people ahead still to be served.

Can’t remember for sure where I started now, possibly 5A – a lot of clues went in thick and fast. LOI was 2D which probably should have been instantly obvious, “hidden in plain sight”, but it raised a smile. As I’m a classicist 2D and 21D were my favourites of the day, and I was also pleased to see 19D making an appearance. I had my learning Esperanto phase back in the day, before I realised that it was going to be impossible to find anyone else to speak it with – a noble ideal though it was, I think its time in the sun was brief. And it had the massive advantage over 19D of not sounding a bit like someone being sick, too…

Across
1 GENTRIFY – move up in class: IF in G ENTRY [good | intake]
5 MASSIF – “group of mounts”: M ASS IF [male | donkey | provided]
9 EMU – large bird: middle section of {f}EMU{r} [leg bone]
10 CASTIGATION – harsh criticism: (A{n}TAGONISTIC*) [“dashed” | when a name’s not provided]
12 HARD-BOILED – battle-toughened: cryptic def “perhaps prepared for shelling”, in an eggy sense
13 SPAN – the time of one’s life: SPA{w}N [bring about “losing weight”]
15 GLUTEN – foodstuff: GLUT E N [surplus | energy | nitrogen]
16 PYRITES – mineral: RITES [masses perhaps] found on P{aragua}Y [borders of Paraguay]
18 RAVIOLI – fare from Italy: R A VIOLI{n} [runs | a | fiddle “discounting new”]
20 RAFFLE – lottery: FLE{w} [“nearly” was successful in America] after FAR [“backing” extreme]
23 CULL – select for terminations: CU L L [copper | lines]
24 OTHER RANKS – soldiers: O TANKS [old | army vehicles] “carrying” HERR [German master]
26 PAPIER MACHE – stuff to mould: PIE [dish] in PARMA [city known for hard cheese] adds CHE [revolutionary]
27 AWL – tool: {b}AWL [“separating {B}eluga’s head from” blubber]
28 TAKING – settling on: TAG [name] outside KIN [the family]
29 EDITABLE – “for revision?”: E [candidat{E}’s “final”] + (LATE BID*) [“for revision”]

Down
1 GOETHE – author: GO E THE [run | key | article]
2 NEUTRAL – undecided: NE plus (ULTRA*) [“being far from still”]
3 ROCK-BOTTOM – very far down: ROCK BOTTOM [perhaps Hudson | river bed]
4 FASHION VICTIM – “one would want something more exclusive”: (VISIT CHAIN OF M{illions}*) [“for ordering”]
6 AHAB – Israelite king: “taking up” BAHA'{i} [religion “almost totally”]
7 SNIPPET – news item: PINS [sticks “up”] + PET [favourite]
8 FINENESS – delicate nature: NESS [head] after FINE [good French brandy]
11 INEXPERIENCED – still green: (EXCEED RIPENIN{g}*) [“without end” “curiously”]
14 PREFERMENT – promotion: PRE FERMENT [before | excitement]
17 CRACKPOT – off the wall: CRACK POT [break | plant container]
19 VOLAPUK – artificial language: PAL [friend “put up”] in V OK [very | satisfactory]
21 LINEAR B – “early signs of Greek”: BRAE NIL [bank | nothing] “raised”
22 ISOLDE – operatic role: I SOLD E [I | successfully promoted | English]
25 DEAN – college officer: A [answer] in DEN [study]

34 comments on “Times 25,974: All That Glisters”

  1. 13m. This was pretty straightforward, with quite a lot going in from definition without any real requirement to engage with the wordplay. The exceptions are LINEAR B, which strikes me as a devilish clue if you don’t know the term, and AHAB, which I was doubtful about, never having encountered Bahai (or more likely having forgotten it). BAHA_ has a sort of religionish look about it though so I put it in and crossed my fingers.
    Thanks for the blog, and best wishes to you and to Clara.
    1. I was a little bit fortunate that my elderly mother made some Baha’i friends a few years back, or else I might not have heard of it either. As religions go it’s a little bit niche. But no more niche than Volapuk.
        1. Linear B I’d heard of, went straight in with the B checker.
          Ahab was a bloke chasing a whale, who knew he was in ancient Israeli/biblical myth? Fairly certain there was an Abraham in the bible, so AHAB and ABRAHAM both being Israeli names seemed unlikely – similar but very different. And of course never heard of BHAI – considered AHAB, vaguely mis-remembering Bnai Brith from newspapers, but couldn’t make it work, so mombled AJAL -JA religion of Bob Marley upwards, almost ALL=totally.
          As you say, Volupak at least gave you a chance of guessing from the cryptic.
          20+5 mins with 1 wrong.
          Rob
  2. I am sorry to hear your daughter has been so poorly and hope she continues on her recovery through Christmas.

    As for the puzzle, 37 minutes. I left the sheet at work but hope I got the U and the O the right way in the weird clue. As another Classicist of yore, I should have remembered Linear B, but it has sadly slipped into the Lethean stream. Ne plus ultra, on the other hand, is too nouveau to bother about…

  3. 25 minutes.I found this the easiest of the week. 6 was a guess based on BAHA(I) and I worked out the completely unknown 19 from the unambiguous wordplay. The clue for 2 was very nice.
  4. Thanks for the blog volapuk and linear b unknown but straightforward enough from the lights.Is Flew American ? seem to remember something that worked ‘flying’ in my late 1950’s prep school days.

  5. Oh dear, I found this one tough, and after an hour I still had quite a few blanks, so resorted to a solver… and even when checkers proved RAFFLE beyond doubt, I still couldn’t work out the cryptic…

    Lots of unknown vocab today, some (VOLAPUK, PYRITES) more gettable than others (LINEAR B, which I’d never get, not knowing BRAE, either).

    Best wishes to little Clara, hope she perks up for Christmas.

  6. This one made me smile and reminded me of Pillow Talk and other ancient romcoms of that ilk. I seem to remember Jimbo is a Doris Day fan. Poor old Rock – forced to stay in the closet all those years. He was born a couple of decades too soon.

    Had a bit of a wrestle with the spelling of 19d because my brain kept saying “valuepak”, as in enormous supermarket house-brand cereal boxes.

    Very nice puzzle. Hope the small one continues to feel better Verlaine. 16.32

    1. I’m ashamed to say that too much exposure to Sherlock (which I don’t even like) made my brain fixate on Mrs Hudson the landlady, rather than Rock…
  7. 17.55. Didn’t know Volapuk but it patterned itself out. Not sure it isn’t a Russian in reverse. Hope little Clara has a fantastic Christmas and all around her as well. Nothing else matters when a child’s ill.
  8. Only just finished within the hour despite good progress most of the way. Didn’t know VOLAPUK, ‘baha’ (to parse AHAB) or FINE as ‘good brandy’ which both Chambers and Collins classify as ‘ordinary’ and SOED has as ‘house’, but for some reason the smaller COED defines as ‘high quality’ thus letting the setter off the hook.
  9. Held up for ages on FASHION VICTIM, for some reason not noticing that it was an anagram. Not helped by having HARD-BITTEN at 12ac. Once that mess was sorted, it was pretty straightforward.

    Trusted the wordplay for the unheard-of VOLAPUK.

    Thanks setter and blogger. Merry Christmas Clara!!!

  10. …. for the sickness of the young Verlaine, we much hope she makes a full recovery. Hopefully, or in future, you can get to Great Ormond St, in our experience (with a granddaughter at first wrongly diagnosed at another London hospital and then emergency rushed to GOSH where their amazing people saved her life) it’s the best children’s hospital on the planet and deserving of a charitable donation from everybody.
    The crossword was easy today I thought, done between Marmande and Langon on the train, 20 minutes, only half way to Bordeaux before it was light. Only unknown was the odd language but I guessed / parsed it as VOLAPUK not VULAPOK.
    Apparently the language died after an initial flurry because of non-Germans struggling with the umlauts; this from Wiki made me smile.
    A charming young student of Grük
    Once tried to acquire Volapük
    But it sounded so bad
    That her friends called her mad,
    And she quit it in less than a wük.
    1. It is enjoyable to me that Volapuk is a go-to term for gibberish/rubbish in Esperanto. And also, rather bizarrely, Danish…
  11. 19 min – several in from defs without parsing properly (I knew of 19 & 21m so no hold up there)
    vinyl: Azed has occasionally indulged in French clues, but I thought such were banned from daily cryptics.

    I must add my best wishes for Clara’s full recovery

  12. 30m with unexpectedly all correct – I found the cryptics for the obscure words clear and helpful. The Greek and the made up language were new to me – today’s learning taken care of! Thanks for the entertaining blog. Fingers crossed for the little one’s speedy recovery. We are just celebrating a second grandchild born on Monday – welcome Brendan!
  13. All this talk of artificial languages has reminded me of a college friend who owned a copy of “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “starring” William Shatner, in Esperanto, on Betamax cassette. If a more brilliantly useless object has ever existed I haven’t run across it.
      1. “The Shaw alphabet edition of Androcles and the Lion”, presumably. Goodness, that takes me back. My copy doesn’t seem to be in any obvious place on my bookshelves so I suppose I must have Oxfam’d it, though it’s hard to believe that anyone would have bought it.
  14. Merry Christmas, Clara – get well soon. My very best wishes to the family verlaine.

    23-odd minutes with an interruption. The clues were very good, but the grid is better: such interesting words. LINEAR B gave me an excuse to re-read a few articles on the remarkable Mr Ventris. For once I think the real story might be how he came not to be working at Bletchley Park in the war. It’s hard to imagine anyone better suited to it.

  15. 15 mins ish – luckily the things I’d never heard of had friendly clues.

    Best wishes to young Clara for a speedy recovery from a disease which sounds like a type of Japanese motorcycle.

  16. Best to young Clara, and Verlaine.

    Not to the setter. This offering took me an hour of hard toil, which I didn’t enjoy particularly. VOLAPUK and LINEAR B were totally unknown to me, and FASHION VICTIM was a mystery too. I’m surprised by how many of you breezed through this. By the way, as an American I would never have thought of ‘flew’ as clued in 20, which went in on the definition alone. But I did appreciate GENTRIFY, and the Rock Hudson reference. Regards.

  17. 31 mins, but I was falling asleep about a minute into the puzzle and didn’t become properly alert for another 20 mins or so. Anyway, my excuse notwithstanding, I thought this was a technically good puzzle but I also thought it lacked humour. Like a few of you I got VOLAPUK from the wordplay, and the NEUTRAL/GLUTEN crossers were my last ones in.
    1. I suspect you’d have enjoyed it more if you hadn’t been so tired – at least that tends to be my experience. True, there weren’t any belly-laughs, but there were enough good surface readings to keep me entertained.
  18. Very glad to hear that {verlaine}’s daughter is recovering well. Kawasaki Disease is indeed unusual outside of Japan, although nobody really knows why it’s more prevalent there. At least when she’s older, she’ll have a more interesting story to tell than scarlet fever.

    Got through this puzzle in just under 39 minutes of not-very-intensive effort. I liked the managras at 4d and 11d. Nice, too, to see VOLAPUK making an appearance, though you’d think that someone inventing a language would have taken the opportunity to give it a more euphonious name. LINEAR B went in easily enough once I had most of the checkers, but I agree with {keriothe} that it would have been a devil if you didn’t know it. I also enjoyed NEUTRAL for its misdirection and concealment of the “plus”.

    The festive season is in full swing here in the fens (despite the unseasonably warm weather), with an uptick in the traditional Yuletide ailments of PFO and PLF (standing, respectively, for Intoxicated: Fell Over and Intoxicated: Lost Fight).

  19. 12:31 for me, not really on the ball for what should have been a straightforward crossword given there was nothing unfamiliar in it – apart perhaps from FLE[w] which I wouldn’t have recognised as particularly American. Nice puzzle.

    I read your intro with increasing apprehension, but was relieved to find that Clara is making good progress. I join the others in wishing her a speedy recovery.

  20. Unue mi esperas ke Klara estas en pli bona sano nun. Having wished Clara well, I hope that you allow me to comment on your throw-away view of Esperanto. I thought that someone else would comment before now.

    I have found Esperanto easy to use. I’ve made friends around the world through Esperanto that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise. And then there’s the Pasporta Servo, which provides free lodging and local information to Esperanto-speaking travellers in over 90 countries. Over recent years I have had guided tours of Berlin, Douala and Milan in this planned language. I have discussed philosophy with a Slovene poet, humour on television with a Bulgarian TV producer. I’ve discussed what life was like in East Berlin before the wall came down and in Armenia when it was a Soviet republic, how to cook perfect spaghetti, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, and so on. I recommend it, not just as an ideal but as a very practical way to overcome language barriers.

    Incidentally, I will be one of 2200 Esperanto representatives from 65 countries coming together in Lille next summer for something like the parliament of the Esperanto-speaking people..

    1. I didn’t mean to do it down! I was really interested in it, but never found much evidence of modern Esperantist activity, or local groups for me to join. And every time I’ve found a Teach Yourself Esperanto volume it’s been dusty and decades-old on a library shelf, without much obvious action in the frontplate…

      But apparently I’ve been looking in the wrong places! Is there a London group that you know of? No one would be more delighted than I to discover that I’ve been wrong all along and this brilliant ideal is thriving and ongoing…

  21. The London Esperanto Club has been in continuous existence since 1905. The most recent bulletin of the Club which meets at the London Irish Centre is at http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/lek/Bulteno%202014.nov-dec_reta.pdf and it includes a map. I see there is an East London group, and there are a few more contact details in the bulletin.

    A search of the Esperanto Association of Britain webpages should bring you to recent magazines of that association with some indications of activity. I must say that I enjoy meeting people in other countries thanks to the language, but British Esperanto events like the national conference in Brighton in the spring are becoming increasingly international.

    With good wishes

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