JUMBO 1281 – Times for The Times

While other Jumbo bloggers are dropping like flies I’m afraid I’m still here.

I’m not really sure if this was tricky or I was just taking things at a leisurely pace in the balmy bank holiday weekend weather, but I took about 90 minutes across three (admittedly not intense) sessions to complete this. First in was ULCER, last was RATIONAL.

Across
1	RECIPIENT – PI (irrational) following I all in RECENT, with “person who gets” being the definition hiding in plain sight
6	ULCER – hidden backwards in obscuRE CLUes
9	APPEASE – PEAS in APE
13	MAPLE – AMPLE with M for marks moved to the front
14	STAND IN – DIN after NAT’S reversed
15	GABARDINE – (bargained)*
16	TRADING POST – DD, one “whimsical”. For ages I was trying to justify STAGING POST (unsuccessfully would you believe).
18	SINK IN – KIN afre SIN (short for sine, a trig function)
19	PEAR DROP – DROP (sink) after PEAR. Conference appears to be a setter’s favourite pear. The Peardrop Explodes would make a great tribute act name.
21	NAUSEA – E in N.A. U.S.A. I tried to put a reversal of EBUG into N.A. to make a country (gawd knows why as the East would have being double duty) but NGUBEA hasn’t been discovered yet.
25	INFLATED – (andileft)*
26	NIL DESPERANDUM – ER AND UM after (spinled)*. I really like “er and um” for “express doubt” and the definition (soldier on!) was beautifully disguised.
28	MANLY – MANY “fencing” L(andowner)
29	GRAZES – GAZES around R(oot). Some ambiguity here – wouldn’t GRAPES have worked just as well? Gapes = looks and a grape is a crop. Hmmmm.
30	IMPERSONAL – A[nswer] in I’M PERSON L (if the first man is person A…)
33	SQUARE SAIL – SQUARES AIL
35	CHERUB – CHE (a revolutionary so he “rose”) + RUB (difficulty as in “Aye there’s the rub” in one of the plays wot Shakespeare wrote). Interstingly (or not) CHERUB appeared in the last Jumbo I blogged, clued as CUB around HER.
38	EXTREME UNCTION – (onecentmixture)*. Unfamiliarity with this term led me to have EXTREME CAUTION for a while. In the Roman Catholic Church this was the sacrament of anointing of the sick, especially when administered to the dying
40	HORNBEAM – BEAM after HORN. I didn’t know horn as a verb meaning to butt (of an animal) but it’s in the dictionary.
42	SYMBOL – S{adl}Y + M[ale] + LOB reversed
43	LIMPIDLY – LIMP + IDLY
44	BURSAR – URSA R[ight] after (clu)B
47	SAVING GRACE – A DD of sorts. Grace Horsley Darling was an English lighthouse keeper’s daughter, famed for participating in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838.
50	GREEN PAPERS – GREEN + PAPERS
52	APPOINTEE – “chap getting post” as in a job. A + POINT (in time) in PEE (the letter)
53	OUTLINE – OUT + LINE
54	ILIAD – I (S.I. unit of current) + DAIL reversed.
55	PARAGON – PA then GON{E} after R.A.
56	MATER – MATE + (fathe)R &Lit
57	REMINISCE – RE the SIN I’M reversed then CE

Down
1	REMIT – triple def
2	CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY – DD and guess what? Yup, one of the defs is “whimsical”.
3	PRELIMINARY – MILER reversed in PIN then R in AY
4	ENSIGN – DD, not much whimsy here folks.
9	AMBULANCE – delightful CD (vehicle handling poorly)
11	ABIDE – DD scoring a big fat zero on the whimsy scale but regsitering very highly on the “economy of clueing” ometer
12	EXERTS – EX y{E}a{R}s{T}e{S}t
18	SHIPMASTER – (haspermits)
20	POSTMARK – DD. Do I need to say it?
22	ENDANGERED SPECIES – (greenpeacesendsid)*
23	WEIGHS – homophone for ways
12	THE OLD HEAVE-HO – THE OLD (= elderly people) then E(mpty) in HAVE and HO[use]. A phrase with nautical origins which may be peculiarly British.
20	BOHEMIAN – OB reversed + IAN all around HEM. Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austrian Empire.
24	SMALL TIMER – DD with a moderate measure of whimsicality
27	RATIONAL – RAT + IONA + L(ondon) with the def cross-referencing to 17a (intelligent). This was my LOI on account of my having extreme caution at 38a.
31	EN BLOC – B(uyer) in a reversal of COLNE, which isn’t exactly the first Lancashire town I’d think of, but I’ve been through it driving between the White Rose & Red Rose counties. I think I once stopped for a pee in Waitrose.
32	SHOOTING STAR – Semi-whimsical DD, would you believe?
34	REED BUNTING – (pol)E in RED BUNTING. I don’t know, I’ve never bunted.
36	CONJUGATION – CON + JUG replacing the N in NATION
37	STAMPED OUT – STAMPED + OUT for abroad
39	ENLIGHTEN – LIGHT before and after N.E. reveresd
41	FLEECIER – FLIER around EEC
45	ESCARP – (capers)*
46	ANSELM – (laments)* without the T. Saint Anselm was Archbish of Cant and was feted for his intellect.
48	VIPER – VIP then RE reversed
49	ABEAM – AB then EXAM without X (by as in times)
51	SEDGE – D[irector] G[eneral] in SEE

10 comments on “JUMBO 1281”

Thanks for excellent blog. I found this a most enjoyable puzzle with some very tricky clues, quite a bit harder than average for me, but very satisfying. LOI HORNBEAM. Like you I liked AMBULANCE a lot. The GRAPES alternative did not occur to me – perhaps crops would be a bit of a stretch as a definition but I’m not an expert in that area to say the very least! It took me ages to see how MAPLE worked though I’d guessed the answer. Minor observation: Notes re 5 to 8 down seem to have been missed out – inadvertently I guess.

Penfold says:

8 September 2017 at 10:37 PM

Hi Anon. Thank you so much a) for reading the entire blog and b) for taking the time and trouble to comment. I’ve actually intentionally (is there such a word as advertently?) missed out several clues from my deposition on this puzzle. I do that for every blog as it’s a lengthy process and I tend to limit my explanations to clues that some solvers might have struggled with or which I think are worthy of mention for some reason or other.

I think I found this one of about average difficulty, but it’s harder now to compare on the basis of time alone as entering letters in the laggy grid is a non-trivial skill. What wasn’t average was the care that was taken over the surfaces, which I find especially impressive in a Jumbo where it must surely be tempting to mail in that aspect of setting. Didn’t know EXTREME UNCTION, despite being brought up in that faith, though I do have an abiding fear of PEAR DROPs due to one causing an alarming childhood choking episode. A now-defunct chippy in my town used to have a sign depicting the Grace Darling rescue, together with the exhortation to “Enjoy fish and chips”.

Thanks for that elucidation. You did not miss out on too many and it did not occur to me that it might have been intended!

Aha, finally got logged in on my laptop and I see that I completed the puzzle correctly, but it took 1:46:38, so obviously a bit of a slog. I shall say no more. Thanks setter and Penfold.

I knew Extreme Unction as Latin was in full flow when I was growing up. By the time I was given it twice in 1979, it had benn renamed as The Sacrament of the Sick. Haven’t had a chance to review the rest of the puzzle yet. I’m on my iPhone in a reception free area of the Lake District, with occasional access to wifi. My thanks go to Penfold for keeping the Jumbo blog going:-)

And I’ve just noticed I’m not signed in. John_dun

COD AMBULANCE.
ONG’ARA,
NAIROBI.

I was on the road for a while, just now got around to checking here. Not a lot to say after all this time, other than a) THE OLD H-H never struck me, anyway, as particularly UK; b) If I recall correctly, and there’s no good reason to think I do, Flaubert’s description of the administration of extreme unction to Emma Bovary got him in major trouble with the church; c) 26ac, Penfold!

In 43 across the definition part of the clue is “calmly”. In Collins, one definition for “limpid” is “calm”. That definition does not appear in Chambers. A reminder of who provides the Jumbo prizes.

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