Puzzle number 25596: A first time for everything

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
In this case, my first attempt at blogging the solution, and I think the first time I’ve tried solving at midnight. Since it took 17’14” on the timer, it might show that’s a propitious time, but it might just indicate that this is a bit of a doddle and quicker times will follow. I headed the leaderboard in splendid isolation for all of 2 minutes. It’s a pangram, though with the tricky letters safely tucked out of the way of crossing places, and it may also have some sort of claim to fame in having two short answers which use only two letters at 1ac and 21. There’s also a surfeit of enclosure clues, with just about every indicator pressed into service. Anyway, here goes:

Across
1   FAFF in musical notation, f indicates loud, so fff indicates very loud indeed. this “without” (ie outside) the A.
4   ENDOSCOPIC Chambers coyly describes an endoscope as “an instrument for viewing the cavities of internal organs”.
     Anagram of “second cop I”, indicated by “suspect”.
9   BLUBBER A double definition, break down as in “cry like a baby”, perhaps now a bit Enid Blyton-ish.
11 DITTANY  A plant I’ve heard of (!), AN (indefinite article) in DITTY (air, as in song).
12 ABSORBENT BRO(ther)S reversed and taken in by A BENT, a natural ability or talent.
13 HAUNT Easy one, this. HUNT takes in A for that out-of-the-way pub you can escape to from time to time.
14 COMPUTER GAME Anagram “to PC mum eager” curiously defied as a child’s addiction. Both Eton Dave and I enjoy Angry
     Birds, possibly too much, but I guess the surface reading works better that way.
18 JANUARY SALES  Defined as “madness after Christmas”. J(udge) has A N(ational) U(nion of) S(tudents) capturing an anagram
     of “early as”.
21 UH HUH looks really weird written down, the even numbers of rUsH tHoUgH giving something that might be interpreted as
     a grunt of approval.
22 EMPHASISE Definition “mark” is PHASE (period) clothing IS with ME reversed at the beginning.
24 EMPORIA You have P(arking) in AI (perfect) ROME all reading from right to left to give posh shops. Not sure I’ve seen
     “turning left” as a reversal indicator before.
25 PODCAST Here we place CAST (project as in shadow).after POD (a school of whales) for a downloadable broadcast.
     Never yet listened to one.
26 BONESETTER I took this to be a colloquialism for a doctor, as abbreviated for Star Trek’s McCoy, and it’s the word “one’s”
     unchanged let into BETTER for “healed”. Dictionaries suggest it’s a (usually) unqualified person who specialises in putting
     broken bones back into shape.
27 ZEUS All you need to know here is that Zeus is a god (by Jupiter!) and Suez a port, then decide which one’s entered in
    the grid.

Down
1   FOB WATCH Once you work out that the definition is “pocketed item”, it’s F(oreign) O(ffice) for the Govt, Dept., then
     W(ife) enfolded by BATCH for “group”.
2   FOURSOME John’ Paul’ George’ and Ringo as the archetypal quartet, FOR SOME (ie not for everyone) taking in U(pper
     class). I wondered briefly whether “claimed” might indicate sounds like, but that leaves the upper class out in the cold,
     which would never do.
4   NERVE  Possibly a triple definition, face and cheek being both synonyms for effrontery and/or bravery. A bundle of nerves
     is appropriate for me working my way through this lot.
5   OLD STAGER  An obvious enough anagram, “ogled star”, and an equally obvious definition.
6   CUT THE MUSTARD Definition “do well” wordplay, such as it is, “avoid hot food”
7   PLAQUE Both the yellow stuff on teeth, and a decorative ceramic plate such as the blue ones that let you know which
     famous person lived here.
8   COYOTE COY for modest, OTE from a decisive vote with the leader missing, the whole defined as a howler, in this case not
     a mistake but a dog baying at the moon or somesuch
10  BERMUDA SHORTS “mother’s absurd” looking very silly, or shall we say anagrammed, to give the hideous apparel. One of
     those anagrams where you have to look twice to make sure everything’s there.
15 EXUBERANT I think this is EX (old) UBER for “very” (Urban Dictionary gives a example from webchat of that was uber-lame)
     and the ANT in its usual role as the small insect.
16 ULTIMATE If you take the extremists out of “full” you get UL, then. TIME “is my greatest enemy” (Evita Peron, but the
     identification goes back much further) imprisons AT. A careful “lift and separate” needed to isolate the definition as “last”.
17 ASBESTOS A call to the emergency services is A(n) SOS, wrap that round BEST for “optimum” and you get that stuff we now
     dread to find in our structures.
19 SUPERB My CoD, at least while solving. SUB (under) wraps PER (by) to mean choice, the pick of the bunch. Neat, economic
     clue.
20 CHOPIN One of the better known composers, his “prominent feature” or CHIN surrounds OP(us), a musical work.
23 PUPAE A really surreal surface, but “butterflies developing” is the definition, A(roplan)E’s wings support the wee doggie.

45 comments on “Puzzle number 25596: A first time for everything”

  1. Welcome Z! I knew you were invited to take the Thursday spot, but I hadn’t heard whether you were going to do it or not, so last thing I had heard was “hold up the Thursday fort for now” so I jumped in early.
  2. And thanks for taking on the job. I thought I might be overtime, but BONESETTER and then SUPERB (LOI) finally came to me, at 25:11. DNK FAFF or DITTANY, but I was positive about the latter, a bit less so with the former. Liked 25ac and 16d, but definitely the COD goes to SUPERB.

    Edited at 2013-10-03 02:22 am (UTC)

  3. George and Zabadak – perhaps you could decide between you which blog to retain. It may get awful confusing otherwise when the bulk of the commenters come on line.
        1. No worries – blame Fearless Leader for not telling me you were coming on board… besides, your version is far better (though I think it’s missing a K for the pangram)
  4. After a couple of weeks of nil returns, it was perhaps inevitable that we would get a double whammy.

    40 minutes, with ticks against SUPERB and BONESETTER. Enjoyed NAFF too – good word that. I suppose other countries apart from the UK have a govt. office called the FO, but if it’s referring to Britain, I would expect ‘old’ or ‘former’.

      1. Oh, Jimbo, how could I forget you – and I didn’t. Perhaps I should have said ‘initial nil returns transmuted into pure Dorsetshire gold’?
  5. Similarly perplexed by FFF as per George earlier, until I looked up “fortississimo”! (Shades of my old dad saying “stop faffing about …”.)

    The setter missed a chance with “picosecond” at 3ac.

    EXUBERANT may have amused George, but it just annoyed me.

    Is 14ac and &lit? If not there’s no strict literal.

  6. Your reference to ‘bonesetters’ reminded my of my years in Hong Kong during which time I had, from time to time, to examine claims for damages in personal injuries cases. More often than not among the claims by locals would be charges incurred for ‘Bonesetter’s Fees’.

  8. Well done for stepping in Z8, I for one certainly appreciate al the effort you bloggers put in…

    Anyway, this was slow going, but was one of those that I knew I’d finish, I guess as the vocab seemed pretty straightforward, and the cryptics clear if somewhat tricksy.

    LOI was ULTIMATE, after spending some time on the BONESETTER / SUPERB pair. I agree ‘child’ at 14ac seems wrong… It’s taken me months to persuade my dear OH to delete sodding Candy Crush (the new Angry Birds?)

  9. As if it wasn’t humiliating enough the first time to admit I took well over an hour for a puzzle considered a stroll in the park by the blogger it seems I have to own up a second time now that the earlier discussion has been deleted. But heigh-ho, what the hell!

    I simply couldn’t get on with this one and struggled virtually from start to finish despite the only unknown being DITTANY. Still don’t know what “child” is doing at 14ac.

    None of this bodes well for tomorrow, and I had a tough one last time out.

    Welcome to the bloggers’ circle Z8 and congrats on your first effort which appears to have been written by a seasoned hand. I’m still using the original html template which I complete initially in Excel using a macro with input boxes for clue numbers and answers and then I fill in the comments freehand, so to speak.

    Can I suggest we make more use of the Google diary to keep track of who’s blogging when?

    Edited at 2013-10-03 06:11 am (UTC)

  10. Googling “Cut the Mustard” gives a range of increasingly unlikely explanations of why this expression means to be of the required standard, Brewer’s does not mention it. Anyone know better? Always makes me think of Terry-Thomas.

    Edited at 2013-10-03 08:36 am (UTC)

  11. I parsed this as volume (f) is turned up (to ff).
    fff is normally read in the superlative and should require “highest”.
    1. I’ve sung in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, which ranges from ppp to fff in the choral finale, but I believe Ligetti holds the record with fffffff, compared to which a mere fff is not even halfway to the superlative.
    2. I’ve encountered FFFF. I don’t know if anyone’s ever gone further than that. Edit: I do now!

      Edited at 2013-10-03 10:40 am (UTC)

  12. 22 mins. I never felt that I was completely on the setter’s wavelength.

    I was held up at the end by ZEUS (inexplicably), the SUPERB/BONESETTER crossers, and FAFF, my LOI. Even though I was as sure as I could be of the faff=fuss definition I was reluctant to enter it because “fff” for “volume turned up high” just didn’t occur to me, and “turned up high” suggested “ffo” as a reversal of “off” so I was wondering if there really might be such a word as “fafo”, even though that didn’t account for “volume” at the start of the clue. Not my most lucid piece of reasoning.

    1. “High” and “off” aren’t really synonymous, in any case: it’s all a matter of taste. Where I might say “this pheasant is pleasantly gamey, almost tending towards high”, my wife would say “that is revolting, throw it away”.
      1. In light of your comment I checked my Roget’s and it gives both high and off as synonyms of pungent.
  13. 28:31 .. I found this very tricky, especially after I had thrown ‘get the message’ into 6d for no good reason.

    Last in: EXUBERANT

    On edit.. P.S. Well done, Z8. And thank you.

    Edited at 2013-10-03 09:36 am (UTC)

  14. Another of these homogenised offerings that are good to solve but don’t offer any real high spots. It’s all very straightforward and forgettable.

    Not sure what “bowling” is doing in 22A or that A1 is “perfect”.

    Well done z8… and welcome to the team

  16. Thanks to Z8 for the excellent explanations.

    I thought I was going to be on for a really good time with this one – sub 10 mins – but stared and muttered and so on with my last two – the SUPERB BONESETTER combination – long enough to make a finishing time of 14.31.

  17. Thanks for the blog, z8b8d8k, and congratulations on an assured first effort.
    18m for this. Average sort of difficulty, but my sort of puzzle: no obscurity (I even knew the plant!), and definitions sufficiently well-hidden in most cases to require some engagement with the wordplay.
  18. Very clear explanations, thank you!

    I visited because I couldn’t parse 16 down (my last in, even though I’d put in and confirmed all the checked letters).

    Stupidly, time is the enemy crossed my mind when I first saw the clue, but disappeared again once I had the answer!

    So thanks, and welcome.

    Mark

  19. Commendable first blog, Z8, and a very similar time to me. Like a lot of people I was left grasping at the SW corner for a while, trying vainly to find a word with IS at the centre, and it was only once I got the “B” ending that I saw through the excellent deception involved in SUPERB.
  20. Thank You, z8b8d8k, a fine debut!

    Had a bit of a Jumbo feel to it, with all the long, obvious, and tedious anagrams. Some nice whimsy with Faff and January Sales, and Superb was nice, otherwise almost cuts the mustard, but not quite …

  21. First off congrats to Z8 on a fine debut blog.

    13:42 for me. I completely failed George’s 1 across test with FAFF being my LOI, probably because it took me too long to L&S without a fuss.

    Good solid puzzle (other than the lack of an oldicator for Foreign Office) with nice touches along the way, particularly the crossing superb/bonesetter.

  22. Well, I don’t understand this. 11 minutes something, my best for a good long time, and I was expecting that to be halved by the gtg (sorry sue) and others. For once my hunches sort of hunched up together. Liked the tipsy king of the gods.
  23. Thanks to all bloggers old and new who continue to do sterling work in the education of us sloggers. I got all but 19d so turned to your blog for enlightenment. I always read the intro first and so picked up on the pangra(m). I realised I didn’t have a K so started to research all forms of hajib thinking it was a cryptic def and would turn out to be something like nukeeb that I’d never heard of. Gave me a good chuckle to finally give in and see the real answer!
  24. The NW corner defeated me — somehow I didn’t know FAFF, so after actually putting in FOB WATCH I decided there was a Home Office as well as a Foreign Office and I opted for HUFF (and of course HOB WATCH — I thought my aging memory was failing me on what these somewhat obsolete timekeepers are called). Everything else was right, though, including DITTANY, which I have also never heard of.
  25. Thanks for sticking your neck out and joining the esteemed blogging team, Z8.
    About 25 minutes, ending with a correct guess at FAFF, from the wordplay. That’s new to me, but everything else was OK, even, the plant(!), as someone said. SUPERB is superb. Regards to all.
  26. Another enjoyable crossword…

    Welcome aboard, Z8! Get Andy to add your biog. to the “About this blog” page..

  27. 9:51 for me. I made a desperately slow start, but then suddenly found the setter’s wavelength – to the extent that SUPERB, for example, went in first time through without any checked letters in place. Nice puzzle.
  28. A late solving session after a superb concert at the Sage, Gateshead.
    Satisfied with my time and enjoyed the puzzle.
    I am happy to join the chorus of praise and thanks to z8, and also to all the other bloggers and contributors. Please keep going.
    George Clements

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