Jumbo 814 – 9th May 2009

Author   7dpenguinPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
I really didn’t enjoy this at all. In fact if I hadn’t known I was blogging it I would probably have screwed it up after about 15 minutes. It seemed to be hard just for the sake of it – not deviously difficult but with far too many obscure words and definitions buried so deep in the dictionaries, you needed a torch to find them. Others will undoubtedly disagree. It has to be said though that there were also some gems scattered about the place. Total time: 1 hour to start then a few passing glances to squeeze a few more out. In the end I had to word match OESTRUS and ALCESTIS

Across
1 SOFT TOUCH – double def. A nice easy one to start with. It certainly didn’t last!
6 FIRST NIGHT – another double def
12 OESTRUS – OpEnS + TRUS[s] , “heat” in this case being what female animals are sometimes “on”.  Apparently a truss is a cluster of flowers if you dig in your dictionaries deeply enough. So that’s two obscurities for the price of one.
13 W(A,PENT)AKE – a wapentake is a hundred, not a number but a mostly obsolete administrative division of a county. No, I have no idea either. An ARE is a unit of area, 100 square metres, abbreviated to A
14 THUMB – back to normality with another double def
16 MOLL, FLANDERS – I can only find a MOLL being a gangster’s girlfriend, not necessarily a prostitute. Someone will no doubt point out that Chambers has it as its 32nd meaning
17 CAVALRYMAN – L + (ARMY)* in CAVAN
19 COCKTAIL LOUNGE – terrible cryptic def unless I’m missing something. Refreshment room that employs Shakers?
22 AS[k],SIGNED
24 CUR,VET – a light leap by a horse
25 SPHERICITY – (PERISH)* + CITY
26 TAB,LA – it took a bit of googling but a staff officer apparently has tabs on his/her collar
29 PRO,M
30 HONEYBEE – BYE+NOH rev + wEEk. NOH is Japanese drama. You’ll get to know this as you do more Times crosswords
32 DI,ABOLIS[h],T
34 CHEQUERED – CHEERED around QU. I can’t find any evidence of QU being an abbreviation for QUEEN, but it often is here
35 DISARRAY – ARRAS rev in DIY
36 ID ES[t]
39 AR(L)ES – Ares is the Greek counterpart of Mars. Arles is in France
40 TINKER,BELL
42 POTATO – I really like this. Article to add to casserole? POT,A,TO &lit
44 S,TR[i]ANGLE
46 CAPITAL LETTERS – (LAST CARPET TILE)*
48 P,I,LED,RIVER – excellent clue
49 CABINET MAKER – more excellence He joins ministers before God
53 T(R)ILL – a trill is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes
54 GAME CHIPS – two definitions, one very cleverly spotted (two things a casino provides)
55 T(RIC[h])ORN
56 CHESTER,TON – TON being NOT rev
57 RAINSWEPT –  (NEWTS PAIR)*
 
Down
1 S(IS)AL – an easy starter for the downs
2 FOREFATHER – In “Elegy In A Country Churchyard” Grey wrote “Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of hamlet sleep”. Mr Micawber also wrote it in David Copperfield so you really have no excuse for not getting the answer immediately from the clue “Hamlet’s rude man”
3 TASMANIA – T[our] + MAN in ASIA
4 UNWED –  some time between Thursday and Tuesday Un-Wed[nesday)
5 HYPERCUBE – (CHEERY PUB)*
6 FINE – Double def. I’ve only seen “fin” before but it can also be a feminine end “Fine”
7 RE(A)GAN
8 THE CATS PYJAMAS – the cats what? Never heard of it but it seems to be the feline equivalent of the dog’s testes
9 INTERDICTION – (INCIDENT+RIOT)*
10 HOUSMAN – HUMAN with O and S[ex] in it
11 NOT MUCH COP – “lack of policing” – brilliant
15 BANK,DRAFT
18 UGLINESS – U[npleasin]G + LINES + S[howing]
20 CORPOREAL – (POOR CLARE)*
21 L(1,PR)EADING
23 CINDERALL –  ‘INDER in CELLA[r]
27 BLIND DATE – cryptic def that raised a smile but doesn’t quite work Meeting an unknown Venetian?
28 YOU’RE TELLING ME – two defs
31 BOD,LE(I)AN – I always struggle knowing where the I goes in LEAN
33 GUYS AND DOLLS – (SADLY OLD SUNG)*
34 CHASSEPOT – C[riminal] HAS SEP(O)T, a bolt action military breechloading rifle
37 SHOESTRING – [v]EST in SHORING
38 BOTTOM LINE – the literati must have been wetting themselves! Bottom said “Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: Sweet hay hath no fellow” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All this fuss about Shakespeare and it turns out he thinks hay comes in bottles. What an idiot
41 BR(1,GAD)IER
43 ALCESTIS – (CASTLE IS)*. Don’t you just hate it when you know it’s an anagram and there are several possible combinations, none of which make a proper word
45 R(ALE)IGH[t]
47 PER(M1)T – the M1, the best thing to ever come out of London
50 IMSHI – included in PILGRIM SHIP. It means “go away” in Arabic
51 KNOUT – sounds like nowt, northern English for nothing
52 I CON

5 comments on “Jumbo 814 – 9th May 2009”

  1. I am very sympathetic to your plight. I struggled over a number of days with this one, in the belief that it must surely stand me in good stead, if not in this world then in the next. As you point out, there were some excellent clues here, mixed with, well, wapentakes (the precise definition of which I’ve already forgotten, although it sounds a bit like the Jersey vingtaine, literally twenty hearths, or households). I think OESTRUS was close to my last in also.
  2. Can’t quote a time for this but do remember WAPENTAKE emerging from checking letters. Moll is a prostitute as well as a gangster’s female friend in my old Collins, which also has qu. = queen.
  3. I rarely do Jumbos these days as life’s too short, but I made an effort on this one only to be almost totally defeated in the very SE corner. I expect I would have got there eventually but after looking at it on three consecutive days I had lost interest.
  4. I did this on the train one evening last week, and it took the whole journey (i.e. about an hour). I really enjoyed the challenge though, and was pleased to complete it without any reference books. Last couple in were BODLEIAN and HONEYBEE, which had me stumped for about 10 minutes at the end. Luckily for me, last week’s (which I’m due to blog) was much easier and only took about half an hour 🙂

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