Jumbo 804 – 14 March 2009

Author   7dpenguinPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
This was my first crossword solve after a week’s break. Quite a lot of really easy clues, a few good ones but very few smiles and far too much obscurity for my liking. Others will probably feel differently. It took me 33 minutes altogether but a lot of that was spent getting my last 8 or 9 clues. I had to confirm several answers later.

Across
1 CO GENT – Easy clue but I thought it was clever to merge both parts of wordplay into one word (BUSINESSMAN)
4 CON,FAB,BING – Bing being Mr Crosby. His film partner gets a mention in the checking 6dn – nice one setter
10 BACON – double def. I didn’t know this but some say that Francis Bacon once dabbled with the idea of frozen food and stuffed a chicken full of ice and snow, caught pneumonia doing so and subsequently died. Others say this is a load of old nonsense
14 ABOMINATE – (I’M NO)* inside ABATE
15 RORSCHACH TEST – if you’d heard of it, which I had, this is the easiest clue ever. If not, it may have been a bit tricky. I once had one of these tests done on me. They showed me a whole series of pictures of naked women in all kinds of weird and wonderful positions, then had the temerity to suggest that it was me who was disturbed!
16 GIM MICK –  GIM being MiG rev – the crossword world’s most favourite Russian aircraft, the Mikoyan-i-Gurevich
17 PROF,ANE
18 STAUNCH – double def
19 FOREGONE CONCLUSION – one to reverse engineer. It’s OREGON in FE then (COUNCILS)* + ON (about)
20 SHAW – a shaw is a thicket of shrubs or trees in the US midwest. Using definitions as obscure as this irks me a little, but then again it was also clued as H inside SAW
21 LAIR,D
26 FAL,LOVER – I think the FAL is a second division crossword river
27 REVOLVER – LOVER rev + VER[-y]. One of the very few times in crosswords where the ellipses (…) from one clue to another actually join the clues. LOVER was taken from the previous clue
29 MAGIC CIRCLE – easy anagram of MCCCII LARGE
30 INHERITANCE – today’s &lit clue. “It could be wasted by ancient heir”. Marvellous
32 GIBBERELLIN – one I only got with all the checkers in place. It’s GIBBERIN[-g] around ELL. You probably don’t need me to tell you that gibberellins are plant hormones which regulate growth
35 GOLD BRICK,ED – I’ve since found out that to gold brick is to shirk one’s assigned duties or responsibilities. I didn’t really like this one at all. It’s a pretty obscure term and I don’t think GOLD is clued – an ingot is any block of metal, not necessarily gold
37 HAL,F INCH – this Jumbo’s statutory cockney rhyming slang – the def is verb APPROPRIATE meaning steal. In C.R.S. HALF INCH=pinch
39 SMARTISH – TRAMS rev + IS,H
40  EYRIE – I in EYRE. This one gave me real trouble to solve but for no discernible reason 
43  TOYS – Odd letters of TWO BYES. We’ve waited a long time for a cricket clue today 
44  HANDLE,BAR M ,OUST,ACHE – beautifully built up clue 
47  EROTICA – T in EROICA. Even I’ve heard of the Eroica Symphony, but I didn’t know it was Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 in E Flat Major. 
48  TH[-e],UN,DER  
50  DIET,A,RY – a bad clue in my opinion. PARLIAMENT in the wordplay has the same meaning as the definition hasn’t it? 
51  PHYSICAL JERKS – much kudos to the setter for using “pillocks” in a Times crossword clue. 
52  PORT,F,OLIO – another obscure definition. Olio is a miscellany, a hotch-potch and rich Spanish stew. I was going to say that a rich spanish stew was one that has lots of petetas in it, but even I have principles. 
53  YOU,TH[-em] 
54  CLYDESDALE – S[tabled] in CLYDE+DALE 
55  SHERRY – ERR in SHY 

Down
1  CHANGEFUL – (EG FUNCHAL)* 
2 GOOD MORNING – (GORDON I’M NO)* + G
3  NAI,LING – our favourite fish following our favourite Scotsman reversed 
5  ONE UP – double def-ish. A jockey is ONE UP (on a horse) 
6  FOR,LORN,HOPE – here’s Bing’s partner, as promised. I was well aware of the expression “forlorn hope” but had no idea that it is a military term that comes from the Dutch verloren hoop, literally “lost heap”, and adapted as “lost troop”.
7  BERSAGLIERI – obviously an anagram of (RISIBLE RAGE) but still needing all the checkers to have any chance of gettinh the answer. Even then, you’re still not sure you have the right answer. It seems that the Bersaglieri are the Italian equivalent of our RA but probably don’t appear nearly as much in Italian crosswords 
8  IN CREASE  
9  GLAD,STONE 
10  BE,HEAD 
11  CLEAN S,HAVEN – four similar treatments in a row! 
12  NOTCH – first letters of “nine over the closing holes” 
13  JACK IN,OFFICE – I wasn’t familiar with this term but it wasn’t that difficult to guess 
20  COLD CALL – OLD in CC + ALL 
22  WARHEAD – RHEA in DAW rev 
23  CON,TRITE 
25  DEC,REP,IT 
28  THALLIUM – not one of the most famous chemical elements. It’s symbolised by TL which is the middle of buTLer. I’d think this clue was brilliant if it used a common element, eg “central effect” for Iron, but I don’t think many non-chemists would know that TL was thallium. A clue more suited to the unbarred crosswords methinks 
29  MUGS,HOT 
31  RUB SHOULDERS – ha ha 
33  BULLY FOR YOU – As well as “well done!” I can only find BRAVO as meaning a murderer. That’s not really a bully is it? 
34  NOM DE GUERRE – (REME GO UNDER)* 
35  GORMANDISED – (GRAN DID SOME)* I thought this was an alternate spelling but Chambers online has this as meaning to eat greedily as opposed to GOURMANDISE which means to eat and drink good food and wine. I’d only heard of the latter 
36  K,ER,B (C)RAWL,ER – five wordplay elements all working in harmony – another one to reverse engineer 
38  CHARABANC – ARAB in CHANC[-e] 
41  EVERYBODY – Y + DOVE around BYRE all reversed.  
42  ODE TO JOY – “owed to joy”. More Beethoven . This time not only have I heard of it, I can whistle it as well!  
45  TWELFTH – FLEW rev in T T + H. One of the words I have real difficulty in typing  
46  FINISH – “Finnish” 
47  EMPTY – (MY PET)* 
49  REPEL – LEPER rev 

5 comments on “Jumbo 804 – 14 March 2009”

  1. Enjoyed this puzzle, which I thought was reasonably easy by Times Jumbo standards and everything stacked up. I know much less about classical music than Peter and many others, but, re Beethoven’s Symphonies, thought all you needed to know were the numbers 1 to 9 and Eroica is 3 as you say.
  2. 33D: COED has “thug or hired assassin” for bravo.
    47/42: It’s a funny thing that the Beethoven Symphonies with well-established names are the multiples of 3 – Eroica, Pastoral, Choral.
    35D: I don’t know about Chambers Online, as my freebie 6-month sub just expired, but the first print version to hand has “gourmandise” as the first meaning of “gormandise”, so “eat greedily” is an extra meaning for the “non-U” version. What’s really weird is that the U version is defined as a noun – “indulgence in good eating”.
  3. I quite enjoyed this too, a steady jog. I had a lot of trouble with thallium, not so much finding it as working out why. Took me just ages to spot the TL.

    Bersaglieri I found easy – the only Italian forces I could name – they are the ones who run everywhere. So infantry, nothing to do with artillery…

    1. I may have seen some in action then. When visiting Genoa a couple of years ago, we stumbled on a festival of bands. Most were ‘Philharmonie’ outfits sounding like the music for the BBC’s Clochemerle series – that dates me! Each band processed through the town after an introduction from the MC. The last to do so were Italian military, in uniforms with splendid greeny-black feathered caps, and their intro went on and on (and on). We didn’t understand why until they started to play. They are literally a “band on the run”! So aside from the perilous achievement of playing a brass instrument while running at a respectable pace, they needed a huge gap to avoid colliding with the previous outfit.

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