JUMBO 1296

Author   PenfoldPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic

Season’s greetings all.  This puzzle appears to have detained me for a little over 50 minutes so I’d say that put it just on the easy side of average.  In places there seem to be intentional attempts to make sure this wasn’t too hard, for example at 1d the use of “Cockney” rather than some oblique reference to an East End chappie and at 6d where “old boy” is a bigger hint than something like “former pupil”.  That said, if you don’t know your British towns and cities beginning with B you might have struggled with a couple of the early acrosses.

If one of the clues I’ve omitted for the sake of brevity is one that had you flummoxed then pipe up and someone will provide enlightenment.

First in was WIDTH, last was DOTTY, initially unparsed but the eureka moment came several minutes later.


Across

1
JABBERWOCKY – JAB then BERWICK with O for I (nothing for one) then Y[ear]

7
AND THEN SOME – THEN in {h}ANDSOME

13
MAUSOLEUM – AU SOLE in MUM

14
BRISTLY – BRIST{o}L + (read)Y

15
WIDTH – D[iamonds] & H[earts] in WIT

16
AT SIGN – GIST reversed in AN for one of these: @

17 
PODIATRY – TRY on (after) PODIA

20
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL – ALL SWELL THAT END + SWELL

23
GOSLING – GO SLING

24
WESTERN – WE STERN

26 
OTALGIA – Clever construction.  It’s NOSTALGIA with the N and S missing (separately wasted).  It’s pain in yer lug ‘oles.

28
NARK – {s}NARK.  In The Hunting of the Snark it was the baker who found the creature, and a nark is a police informant.

32
GOLD MEDAL – GAL around OLD MED, with “this taken by first” being the clever definition.

35
MOUSETRAP – MOUE and TRAP around S[mall].  My very brief bout of research didn’t come up with any particular origin for the trap/mouth connection.

36
DRAW NEAR – DRAWN EAR. Nice bit of misdirection with the definition, close up, playing the part of a noun in the surface reading.

39
DISMISS – DIS(respect) MISS.  Innit.

41
RADIATE – (a tirade)*

44
FAIR SEX – FAIRS EX

45
THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN – One of those clues where the answer is a clue itself, i.e. the answer could clue LOTH ({mid}LOTH{ian}).  I didnae ken that it was a Walter Scott book.

49
ADAMANT – AD A MANT{a}.  When I put this in I assumed that granite could be used as an adjective to mean adamant, but it turns out that adamant is a hard rock. 

50
OLEASTER – O{i}L EASTER

51
FRIEZE – Sounds like FREEZE = are still

54
HAITIAN – AIT I in HAN.  Altogether now… Babs and Clean Willy…

55
SNOW WHITE – (whose twin)*.  Nice anagram

56
STRIDE PIANO – (I patronised)*.  I’d never heard of this jazz style but it was guessable.

57
CRYSTAL BALL – CRY + LATS reversed + homophone for BAWL


Down

1
JAM JAR – JAM (stick) + JAR (jolt) leading to cockney rhyming slang for car, for which wheels is also a slang term.

2
BRUSSELS SPROUTS – “Brussels” being interchangeable with the European Union and sprouts in a verbal sense equating to grow.  Yuk, by the way.

3
ENOUGH SAID – AID after ONE reversed and UGHS

4
WREN – WREN{ch}

5
COMMON-LAW – COMMON (not from top class) + L.A. + W[ife] for a sort of semi &Lit bordering on the snobbish with its implication that if you’re “living over the brush” you might be from somewhere unsophisticated.

6
YOBBISH – O[ld] B[oy] surrounded by Y(ard) and BISH

8
DOTTY – I’m not convinced that the cryptic reading is 100% watertight but I took the definition to be scatterbrained with the remainder an allusion to the fact that a lower case i has a dot.

9
HEY PRESTO – “Look what I’ve done” is the neat definition: HEY & PRESTO{n}

10
NEW MODEL ARMY – (am merely down)*

11
OLD BILL  – DD, one whimsical, the other a slang term for the police with which overseas solvers might not be familiar

12
EXHUME – EX HUME, Cardinal Basil Hume having been a well-known Roman Catholic Bishop

19
PEIGNOIR – I in PEG then NOIR. A peignoir is a long outer garment for women which is frequently sheer and made of chiffon or another translucent fabric. I normally put mine on when I need to get some milk from the all night ASDA, in order to distinguish myself from the common-law wives shopping in their pyjamas.

21
NONAGON – NO NO +(woma)N around A G[ood]

22
TABLEAUX – a Russian doll or even a turducken clue, with L for pounds stuffed into BEAU stuffed into TAX

25
SHRED – (prosecuto)R in SHED for one of those words that seems to have a particular meaning only in conjunction with a limited number of other words (shred of evidence, credibility, truth, marmalade etc)

27
GOD BLESS AMERICA – (blogs as medicare)*

30
EMPEROR – PER (a) in a reversal of ROME.  This took me a while to get as I kept wanting RC to be in there somewhere to account for the Catholic church bit.

31
DHAKA – D(o) + HAKA.  If you were asked to write down the name of the capital of Bangladesh how many goes would it take you to get the H in the right place?

33
LEAPFROG – LEAP then FOG around R[iver]

34
SEMI-DETACHED – S.E. (London postal area) + (i met D[uke])* + ACHED

38
WITHDRAWAL – sounds like WITH DRAWL 

40
SWEATSHOP – SWEET SHOP with A replacing E[nergy]

42
DUODECIMO – DUO then MO after DEC I

43
ENDLESSLY – (idleness)* minus the I then L{az}Y

45
TOASTER – TO ASTER

46
MASONIC – MANIC around SO

47
PAMPAS – M[arried] inside (stayed by) PAPAS

48
REPEAL – REPEL around A[rea]

50
OUIJA – OUI JA

52
HOOT – DD

 

10 comments on “JUMBO 1296”

  1. DNK 1d. I never did parse 20ac, biffing from enumeration and checkers. I was pretty sure about NARK, but what the baker found was a boojum, if I recall correctly. There seemed to be a lot of cryptic definitions, if that’s the right term; clues ending in a ? DOTTY took a while, partly because I also thought of ‘ditzy’; finally figured it out as Penfold elucidates, and I don’t see any problem with it. COD to 54ac.
    1. Hi Kevin, thanks for commenting. If the definition at 8d is “scatterbrained” then the definition is “In another case, I might be described as”. Something like “this” is needed IMHO.

      Edit to add that I kept trying to justify DITZY as well.

      Edited at 2017-12-16 02:54 pm (UTC)

      1. I also hovered between DOTTY and DITZY, and took a blind stab in the end. Thanks to the blogger for explaining! I have to say I think a lower case “i” is ‘dotted’, not ‘dotty’, but the clue still deserves recognition for originality.
      2. I just now went back and actually looked at the clue, and I see your [sc. Penfold’s] point. But if read as ‘[that which] in another case [is] I might be described as scatterbrained’? i is dotty (while noting brnchn’s demurral), dotty=scatterbrained.

        Edited at 2017-12-17 12:01 am (UTC)

  2. This one kept me busy for 1:48:28. I noticed the OLEANDER turned into an OLEASTER for this puzzle. Nothing totally unknown, but OTALGIA was a bit unfamiliar. Madame PEIGNOIR brought back memories of Fawlty Towers and “you notty boy!” Thanks setter and Penfold.
  3. Nothing too scary here,even the Britishisms which were gettable from wlpay.COD OUIJA despite it being a chestnut in crosswordland.
    Ong’ara,
    Nairobi.
  4. Nothing to hard here with a bit of whimsy along the way. About 45 mins, I think, but I seem to have lost my copy… the disadvantage of having to wait 2 weeks to get to a conclusion! I remember rather liking 32a, though.
  5. Another one who couldn’t initially see which of DOTTY/DITSY/DITZY was correct. Kind of shocked by your Brussels sprouts comment as all previous encounters both online and in person had indicated that you were a thoroughly decent chap. (Though hope you have a good Christmas anyway!)
  6. It took me some days after solving to see how DOTTY worked, but when I did see it, I was happy with it. Fine puzzle, which I saw as considerably more difficult than the blogger did with some very good clues. My favourites were PLEA, and WREN and my LOI was AT SIGN. Two clues requiring a little Lewis Carroll knowledge so I struggled with them at first. Thanks for the excellent blog.

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