Jumbo 1191

Author   PenfoldPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic

Sorry this is up later than scheduled. Let’s blame it on “technical issues”. I don’t “do” the Jumbo with any regularity and when I do I don’t time myself so I can’t say with any certainty where this puzzle sits on the difficulty spectrum.  That said, my overall impression is that it was very straightforward (just the job for my inaugural blog) and total time elapsed, including understanding all the clues and marking which ones to comment on, was 32 minutes.

Speaking of commenting on clues, I’m not going to cover them all, only those I though were a bit tricky, or particularly good, or otherwise worthy of comment.  If I’ve missed the one that was taxing you then feel free to ask and if I’m not around someone else is bound to help.

First in was EXCEL, last in was RIGHTO.


Across

6
AUBERGE – Uber in age.  For the uninitiated, Uber, at least according to Wikipedia,  is an American multinational mobile ride hail company headquartered in San Francisco, California.  It is “controversial” a) because its legality has been challenged by governments and taxi companies, who allege that its use of drivers who are not licensed to drive taxicabs is unsafe and illegal and b) because its drivers in London don’t mind going sarf of the river after dark.

10
ROBED – OBE in RD.  The definition is “wearing judge’s garments”.

13
GRIFTER – “Stops” is one of those devices that can be both a containment or insertion indicator, on the basis that you can stop a bottle, say, by putting something in it or stop a leak or stampede say by surrounding it with something.  Here it’s a case of RIFT bunging up the GER(man) to give a US slang term.

15
INTESTATE the definition being “one without will”.  What’s the opposite of “lift and separate”?  This is a relatively straightforward charade of IN (during), TEST examination and ATE (worried) with should get as a link between the second and third elements.

16
NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS – “Initially “ the N.U.S. which is a reversal of SUN, a tabloid “newspaper” of sorts in the UK. Presumably The Times has to call The Sun a newspaper what with it being part of the same empire and that.

17
CAESAR – if I’d been going for speed I daresay I’d just have bunged this in based on the leading C and the definition but I couldn’t see the wordplay straight away and I had to write the word down above the puzzle and figure it out.  It’s CA(g)ES + A R.

18
CAMELEER – CAME + LEER. Not a word that’s in much use here in Yorkshire.  My Chambers app defines it as someone who drives or rides a camel.  I’d better not tell the joke.

19
CHELSEA – made by inserting the abbreviation for the London School of Economics into CHEA(p), i.e. largely inexpensive.  Is this an attempt at irony?

23
PRESS RELEASE – DD, one a pun.  I like punning clues like this.

27
NOTED – George Edward “Ted” Heath (30 March 1902 – 18 November 1969) was a British musician and big band leader.  He led Britain’s greatest post-war big band recording more than 100 albums which sold over 20 million copies.  We do the research so you don’t have to.

32
HESITATE – SIT in HEAT with (seashore)E tacked on the end.

34
ARTICLE – “It could be the” being the nicely disguised definition.  ART + CL in I.E.

39
INAUGURATION – IN AUG + RATION with U.  Possibly tricky for overseas solvers who don’t know what A-levels are, never mind when their results are due. (In August, for the record)  We had to time our summer holiday in 2014 to allow daughter #1 to get her results before we went away.  Stressful times.

41
CONTRIBUTE – CON (=Conservative = Tory) + TRIBUTE  I’m not sure that a tribute is strictly a tax but I guess it’s close enough.

44
PIKELET – The wordplay is straightforward enough but not all Brits, never mind foreigners, will be familiar with pikelets.  It seems to be thinner and less round than a standard crumpet. In the antipodes it’s not even a crumpet, it’s a drop scone and in North Staffordshire it appears to be “a thicker form of oatcake with raisins added”.

46
REBELLED – BELLE in RED (wearing scarlet).

48
SPRYER – Hands up everyone who thought RE when confronted with “sapper”.  Thought so.  Hands up everyone who doesn’t know how to point at the ceiling.  RYE in SPR, the latter being a recognized abbreviation but I don’t think I’ve encountered it before.

50
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER – CD.  The “number” is a Beatles song, a double A side with Penny Lane.  In the UK “pick your own strawberries” is a bit of a tradition involving lazy farmers and vomiting children.

53
BUNFIGHTS – Fun bites in Spooner-speak.  Is this a peculiarly British term for a tea party.  The Concise Oxford has it hyphenated.  There was an episode of The Goodies called “Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms”.

56
EMOTE – Remote as in remote control as in zapper without its first letter.

57
MARENGO  – My mum used to dish up “chicken Marengo” but I’m not sure any of it was either Italian or sautéed.


Down

1
DIG IN – “First portions” isn’t the most obvious indicator for the first two letters of a word but I guess it’s OK.

2
WHISTLED IN THE DARK – Ho ho.  Like I said, I like punning DDs like this.

3
RATIONALE – Yay, another one!

4
VERBAL – Reversal of REV then BAL(d).  Not a meaning I knew but a verbal is “an oral statement… made to the police or claimed by them to have been made (slang)”.

6
ARCHIVES – (m)ARCH + IVES (probably Charles).  Two composers for the price of one.  When he wasn’t writing the Monty Python theme John Philip Sousa was developing the sousaphone.

8
RAIN FORESTS – INFO IN RARE ST then S(outhern).

9
ESTATE CAR – Another one I had to write down at the side before entering it.  It’s STATE inside a reversal of RACE.

11
BRAIN – being BRITAIN without the IT.

12
DEEP SEATED – yet another of those punning DDs.

17
CUBAN – CU + BAN.  Clever use of different forms of words here.  In the surface reading Republican is an adjective and outlaw a noun but in the definition and wordplay they’re noun and verb.

20
SHAFTESBURY AVENUE – The heart of London’s glittering West End and an anagram of BUSY EASTER HAVE FUN.

21
OMERTA – Hidden.  Don’t think monks and nuns, think Mafiosi.

24
RIGHTO – It took me an age to see how this works.  My initial thinking was that the wordplay was RIGHT for PC (politically correct) then O for mostly OK but that left no definition and it didn’t seem to work as an &Lit.  Anyway, we’re in Rik from the Young Ones territory, with RIGHT ON being truncated (PC mostly).

26
VIRAGO – A in VIRGO, an astrological house.  Virago and shrew can both be used to refer to a, um, “troublesome” woman.  No such thing, surely?

33
ENTERPRISER – ENTER + RISE in P(oo)R

35
CLOSET DRAMA – D(irector) in an anagram of MALE ACTORS.  Apparently it’s a play to be read rather than acted.

40
ROTHERHAM – OTHER in RH then AM.  A town in South Yorkshire so remember to lift & separate American from town.  One of those clues where at first glance you don’t know whether to put tab A in slot B (put all of additional American inside Royal Highness) or insert flap C in slot D and fold under to meet line E (put additional inside Royal Highness then add American.

42
IMPORTUNE – I + MP + (f)ORTUNE.  The conventional symbol for current is I, which originates from the French phrase intensité de courant, meaning current intensity.

43
ALTER EGO – (GET A ROLE)* with PLAYING as the anagrind.

47
BUFFOON – BUFF, as in a wine buff etc. + O ON.

51
RONDO – Hidden.  The only rondo I know is Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo à la Turk.

52
RESAT – RE (on) + SAT.  Does a week begin on Sunday or Monday?  Who knows.

 

15 comments on “Jumbo 1191”

  1. Welcome to the exclusive band of Jumbo bloggers! The crossword gods smiled on you with this one for your debut (and they obviously have it in for galspray, as his first one is a right stinker). I didn’t know the SPR abbreviation in 48A or the meaning of CLOSET DRAMA, and ENTERPRISER looked odd, but otherwise there was nothing especially taxing.
    1. Thanks for the welcome John and thanks for taking the trouble to comment – I get the impression that Jumbo-blogging land can be a lonely and desolate place.
      1. Kevin G (in Japan?), keriothe, and Charles from Kenya constitute the small but international group of regular commenters. I have no doubt that there are literally handfuls of lurkers though.
  2. Since I’m not a blogger, I can’t really say “Welcome”, but I’m glad to see you’ve joined that elite group. I was glad also to see that my DNKs are not just mine: 4d, 44ac, SPR; but also 20d. Knew 35d from Milton’s ‘Samson Agonistes’, which is certainly not one for the theater. Also DNK that GRIFTER was an Americanism, although that didn’t surprise me much. I still am not clear, though, on RIGHT-O.
    1. Hi Kevin, depending on where you look right on or right-on can mean “having or supporting liberal or left-wing beliefs and opinions about how people should be treated” or “modern, fashionable, and socially aware or relevant: right-on green politics.” In other words, PC or politically correct. In the UK is a reasonably common slang term for a Guardian-reading, yogurt-knitting lefty liberal. In the 1980s BBC sitcom The Young Ones, Rik, a left-wing student, played by the late Rik Mayall, often said things like “Right on, kids”.
      1. Aha. I think I’ve had problems with this before. In the US, ‘right on’ is pretty much a proprietary term in Black English, an expression of approval. Its use among whites is pretty much limited to people who don’t know how silly they sound.
  3. Hi Penfold, I’m just commenting in the hope that you’ll return the favour when I make my debut tomorrow. Personally I’m happy to start with a Jumbo. Under the radar you know.

    BTW, great blog. Really brilliant, insightful, erudite, entertaining, etc, etc

    Edited at 2016-02-26 09:23 am (UTC)

    1. I can see what you’re up to there!

      I’ll be in Rotterdam with no t’internet tomorrow but I’ll try and pop by on Sunday.

  4. Excellent debut matey. As the man said it was erudite, insightful and entertaining (and I don’t have a hidden agenda). I’m also impressed by your tactic of replying to everyone in order to up the comments count.

    As for the puzzle, I can’t remember ever solving a Bumjo as easy as this one, so it was a nice, gentle introduction for you. The only thing that held me up was spelling SHAFTESBURY without the E and having an empty space at the end of the word.

    There’s nothing wrong with an easy one now and again though. I didn’t time myself but I reckon it must have been less than 20 minutes from beginning to end.

    Thanks setter and our esteemed blogger.

    1. I don’t know what you mean about replying to every comment.

      I’m surprised you couldn’t spell Shaftesbury. Didn’t tramps in Beeston keep asking you the way to Shaftesbury House?

      Edit to say thanks for helping me with the tech.

      Edited at 2016-02-26 01:01 pm (UTC)

      1. Yes they did, but I didn’t ask them to spell it. Can you think why they may have thought that I would know the way the Shaftesbury House?

        Tech help – You’re welcome, but can I clarify that it was a different tech that caused your blog to be delivered late.

  5. Welcome aboard, Ian. I have a special regard for the jumbo bloggers – twice the work (at least, unless they cunningly miss out half the clues 🙂 and not too many comments as a rule.. dedicated, or what? I do comment whenever I can remember anything about the crossword, it being a fortnight or more old by the time the blog comes out!

    I found this one v easy btw

  6. Thanks Penfold for blog, re 39a, ‘formally’ was a dead giveaway though l am a foreign solver.23a a chestnut as l have seen it in various crosswords..A rather gentle jumbo. (Ong’ara, Nairobi, Kenya )
  7. Thanks for most entertaining blog. RIGHTO and DISPOSABLE (not covered in the blog) were the last two I understood. Re RESAT, I think international standards see the week starting on Monday but very many people think of Sunday as the start.

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