Jumbo 919 – 9th April 2011

Author   7dpenguinPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
I really enjoyed this one. I took a while to get going and couldn’t get a toe-hold for a while but then I got into my stride and eventually finished it in 41:17. It was definitely a game of two halves. At one point I had the whole of the left hand side in but just a few answers scattered here and there in the right hand side. Lots and lots of really good clues, one that I thought was awful (31d) and one (18a) that used a definition from a corner of the dictionary so dark you’d need one of those million candle power torches just to see it. Enough nit-picking though, overall I thought this was a belter and give my thanks to the setter.

Across
1 MISCONDUCT – ON[e] DU[e] + CT (court) after MISC(ellaneous). It seems quite odd to see two words to shorten with only one shortening indicator
6 TROPOSPHERIC – (SHORT CO[mpany] PIPER)* I needed  all the checkers before this one fell. Funny really as it’s the layer of the atmosphere that we are in.
14 INPATIENT – IMPATIENT with N[ame] for M[ale]. Huge bear trap here. I wonder how many entered IMPATIENT? I know I nearly did.
15 LUCRE – C in LURE. An easy one. Don’t hold your breath till the next one!
16 ILL TURN – or I’LL TURN as Dick Whittington would say. I don’t think I’ve ever come across ill turn before. My turns are usually good, bad or funny.
17 THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC –(MAD + A TIGHT BALLCOCK)* An old tune seemingly recorded by almost everybody
18 AGAPE – two definitions, “wide open” and “love a Christian shows”. The second was completely unknown to me – it’s love of a spiritual and selfless nature. I thought of AGAPE quite early but couldn’t justify it and didn’t have that much confidence it was right.
19 ROW,LAND – a rare spelling as a first name methinks.
21 POKING – OK in PING
22 GOODY BAG – BAG is GAB rev
24 SULPHUR = (HURLS UP)* devil here is a verbal anagram indicator
26 PAIGNTON – (POIGNANT)*. I suppose the next easy one wasn’t that far away after all. It’s a coastal town in Devon, next door to Torquay.
27 TENPIN – NIP NET reversed. I always thought it was two words but it isn’t.
30 RATTLESNAKE – RATTLES, NAKE[d]
32 VINAIGRETTE – V[iceroy] , IN, AIGRETTE – a plume of (usually egret) feathers in a hat
33 COME TO GRIEF –  COME TO (to wake up) then GRIEG with his final note (G) lowered (to F). I have a musical dog – all he does is Pee Agin’t Suite
35 WHISKEY SOUR – WHISK (beat) + [flatulenc]E then S[ulphur] in YOUR
37 RED EYE – two defs
38 MUSCATEL – MUST + EL around CA. Thjis threw me for a while because the word MUST was in the clue and remained untreated.
39 PROGRAM – PRO (for) G (good) RAM (memory)
42 NOBLEMAN – NOB + L then NAME rev. &lits always impress me.
44 ITALIC – IT,ALIC[e]. Clever use of two lesser used meanings. ITALIC  and ROMANCE both referring to groups of languages. Romance developed from latin, latin is a dead language, ergo romance is dead. 
46 RUFFIAN – RUN (managed) around (FIFA)*
48 G,RASP –  G being reGistry’s third
49 GET DOWN TO BUSINESS – two meanings, one whimsical (deliver feathers for trading company)
51 A,MATE,UR – UR being half of yoUR and not the ancient city for once.
52 AISLE – A ISLE is the ungrammatical description of a key
53 PRIMITIVE – PRIM  I.T.  I’VE
54 HELLO GOODBYE – referring to HELLO Dolly and GOOBYE Mr Chips
55 C,RANKS,HAFT 
 
Down
1 MOISTURISER – RISE in (TOURISM)*
2 SEPIA – first letters of Pigmented Ink “in” SEA. Another &lit and very,very clever clue, “Pigmented ink, primarily, where creatures swim”.
3 OSTEOPATH – OATH around (SPOT)* + [medicin]E
4 DREADED – DR + half of  hard-hEADED. The last bit of word play took a while for me to work out when solving and, when I came to write this, I’d forgotten how it worked and took another age to work it out all over again. I hate the ageing process!
5 CAT FLAP – Spooner’s FLAT CAP. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I reckon CAT FLAP’s Spoonerism is FAT CLAP. 
7 RACHMANINOV – (A N[ew] HARMONIC V)*
8 PLEDGE – EDGE under P[ower] L[ine]
9 SWITCH ON – WITCH in SON – ref the gingerbread witch in Hansel and Gretel
10 HALE AND HEARTY – HAD (kept) around LEAN (fat free), HE,ARTY (affected)
11 RHUBARB – slightly cryptic definition
12 CONVERGENCE – CON (prisoner) + VERGE + N[i]CE
13 FLICK KNIFE – FLICK (picture) then [boo]K  after (FINE)*. You don’t hear the cinema being referred to as “flicks” very much these days. Come to think of it, you don’t hear the cinema being called “the pictures” much either.
20 WELL TIMED – WELL (bore) then two little boys, TIM and ED
23 DOWNHILL –  DOWN (like this sort of clue) H,ILL
25 RESIGN – REIGN around S[on]
26 PLATINUM – this one took a while to work out but “part” reduced is Pt and Pt expanded as a chemical element is PLATINUM. The definition is “metal that a chemist may see”. The last 5 words of this phrase are a little surplus to requirements and made me think that PT was an abbreviation for chemist. (PharmacisT maybe)
28 POTPOURRI – POT,POUR,RI[ch]. This clue was packed with things that could have been wordp[lay but weren’t. “Cup to serve tea, perhaps with semi-rich assortment”
29 PICK UP – three definitions – Collect, van, when the economy is improving
31 LET MY PEOPLE GO – easily gettable with a few checkers but what a shocker of a clue! I hope I’m wrong  but I don’t even think it’s a cryptic clue. “Spiritual appeal of Moses to the Egyptian”. It refers to Exodus 8:1, “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”
33 CHRONOGRAPH – RON O[ld] in CH[urch] GRAPH (plot)
34 FACETIOUSLY – (LOFTY CAUSE I)* A word with all the vowels once in the right order.
35 WET BLANKET – two defs one humorous “covering for a water bed?”
36 RE,MINI,SCENT
40 OFF LIMITS – OMITS (misses out) around puFFin + L[arge] I[sland]
41 KANGAROO – (ANGORA OK)* If Carlsberg wrote easy clues ……..
43 BRADAWL – B[ritish] RADA then WILL without 1 L[earner]
45 CHOPPER – H in COPPER
46 REUNION – (IN N[ew] EURO)*. Reunion is a French island in the Indian Ocean to the east of Madagascar
47 STRAND – STAND around R
50 EVITA – E[nglish] + VITA[l]

5 comments on “Jumbo 919 – 9th April 2011”

  1. I think there is a second definition here “spiritual” which refers to this being a spiritual song. Happy to be corrected of course.

    Could not understand Platinum, tho I got it right, but think what you have there might be it. Pt is the symbol for platinum in the periodic table.

    1. Thanks Niall, you’re right with the “spiritual” definition so apologies are due. I still don’t think much of it as a clue though, but let’s not dwell on the negatives, this was a very good puzzle.
  2. 80′, rather quick for me. Ironically, AGAPE was one of 5 or 6 that I thought were giveaways, along with the wretched 31d, 41d (‘jumper’ again; give me a cricket term any day), 37ac, 45d. But then I used to study the Puritans and such; sermons about how the foul is fettled in a finful fecurity, that sort of thing. 43d was my LOI, and I suppose COD, although there were, as you say, a lot of good ones. Thanks for the explanation of PLATINUM, too; I was totally stumped.
  3. 32:45 for me for an enjoyable puzzle, which I found quite tough.

    AGAPE (as Christian love or a love feast) has come up pretty regularly in the Times puzzle over the years. And the Musical Mafia would have been happy with “spiritual” for LET MY PEOPLE GO as it’s one of the spirituals that Michael Tippett included in A Child of Our Time.

    I had to think hard about 14ac as I’d normally spell INPATIENT with a hyphen – which the online OED does despite giving two citations (out of four) without.

  4. I wonder what the OED does for ‘outpatient’–my (Japanese) dictionary gives the hyphen as optional for in-, but no hyphen for out-, which squares with my intuitions: There’s no particular need for a hyphen with ‘outpatient’, while the hyphen helps the reader avoid the very problem the setter wanted to create, confounding ‘inpatient’ and ‘impatient’. And, aside from the different stress patterns, the words are pronounced the same, viz. ‘impatient’.

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