Thursday, 04 January 2018 Times Cryptic No 26926 ‘Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas and…

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
No great difficulty with this one, run off in 14 and one third minutes. It’s perhaps worth commentating in the light of recent comment that the only As in this puzzle are necessary ones, apart possibly from the one in 17. One vaguely obscure term, the poetic metrical device, led me briefly to consider writing the whole blog in the that rhythm before wiser counsel (don’t lets be stupid) prevailed.  On the other hand, I felt compelled to tot up the languages represented, and have the rather eclectic set of German, French, Greek, Aussie, Hindi, Spanish and Inuit.
As ever, I have indicated clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS

Across

1 Authentic chapter in article recalled (4)
ECHT Like its near opposite, ersatz, cheerfully purloined from the German. Article is THE, reversed and with C(hapter) stuck in.
3 Muddled divine tucking into beer and spread with daughter (5-5)
ADDLE-PATED Divine is DD (doctor of Divinity) beer is ALE, spread is PATÉ and D(aughter), to be assembled as advised.
10 Allure your and my old county displayed first (7)
GLAMOUR The old county is Glamorgan (now three counties, West, Mid and South Glamorgan) and surviving as the Welsh County Cricket team. Abbreviate to GLAM, as is customary.  Your and my provides the OUR to be tagged on.
11 Gift of fine drink recalled by island people at last (7)
FREEBIE F(ine) plus BEER backwards plus I(sland)  plus (people)E “at last”.
12 New PA met lieutenant, with two more to follow (15)
ANTEPENULTIMATE or the last but two, like it says. An anagram (new) of PA MET LIEUTENANT
13 Expensive year king held to be tiresome (6)
DREARY R (king, as in Rex) held by expensive DEAR and Y(ear)
14 Foot a father caught in a trap son installed (8)
ANAPAEST a (poetic) foot of two short and one long syllables. A PA (father) held in A NET (trap), then stick in S(on) where it does most good.
17 Robs a chap, initially pinching paintings (8)
DESPOILS You random chap is DES, add P from Pinching (initial) and OILS (paintings
18 Canny way to break into a truck down under (6)
ASTUTE Way is ST, and A UTE an Australian pick up truck.
21 Have no influence? It’s what volunteer tellers do after a poll (5,3,7)
COUNT FOR NOTHING Which I have done
23 In Parisian company, seek to return expressions of praise (7)
ENCOMIA EN is “Parisian” for IN, CO from company, AIM reversed from seek
24 Fixed state of eastern weapon brought back by Aussie native (7)
ROOTAGE E(astern) GAT for gun, reversed and tagged on to (kanga)ROO for the Aussie native. Rootage is in the sources, but nobody will miss it if it goes.
25 Stand-offs involving introduction of rebel hairstyle (10)
DREADLOCKS DEADLOCKS are stand-offs and R the introduction of Rebel.
26 Obscene wife, escorted outside (4)
LEWD W(ife) with LED for escorted outside.

Down

1 Antelope crossing borders of neighbouring country (7)
ENGLAND A small, coal bearing island off the mouth of the Rhine, formed from ELAND (which is a useful antelope in a crossword) and N(eighbourin)G inserted.
2 Unfeeling governor lacking cultural pretensions? (9)
HEARTLESS A governor in certain circumstances is “H(is) E(xcellency)ARTLESS being covered by the rest of the clue.
4 Bold sound made by bell across a river (6)
DARING Sound of bell DING, and A R(iver) included
5 Means of rescue originally liberating one like Garfield? (8)
LIFELINE L(ibrating) plus I (one) and FELINE, Garfield being a cartoon cat.
6 For example, about to accommodate girl’s inclination (14)
PREDISPOSITION About is an example of a PREPOSITION, and DI is an example of a random girl.
7 Bill the French presented for a pair of drums (5)
TABLA I’ve always wished there was a fusion musical style called Tabla Motown. Bill provides TAB, and the in French (female version) LA
8 Most obscure bug at bottom of river (7)
DEEPEST Today’s random river is DEE, and bug is PEST.
9 Reliable law enforcer spoke resoundingly about Times! (6-8)
COPPER BOTTOMED Our law enforcer is COPPER, BOOMED is spoke resoundingly and Times produces the two Ts you need to complete.
15 Clarify complicated clue one day, perhaps (9)
ELUCIDATE An anagram (complicated) of CLUE plus I (one) DATE for  day.
16 Organised dole, set to abandon current place of riches? (2,6)
EL DORADO Anagram (organised) of DOLE plus RADIO, set, without I (electric) current.
17 Ordered most of team to get into action (7)
DECREED most of team would be CRE(w) and action DEED. Assemble.
19 Intellectual English boss taking delivery of goods (7)
EGGHEAD E(nglish) HEAD (boss) and two inserted G(ood)s
20 Woman in middle of lake, a derided fanatic (6)
ANORAK as worn by trainspotters, the sort that faithfully recorded the numbers of engines and even coaches. Our random woman is NORA, placed in the middle two letters of lAKe
22 Dirty article cut out for one taking pledge (5)
UNCLE In this context, a pawnbroker. UNCLEAN with the article AN removed.

56 comments on “Thursday, 04 January 2018 Times Cryptic No 26926 ‘Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas and…”

  1. I would have been faster if I’d known how to spell ANAPAEST; ‘anaepest’ didn’t look quite right even at the time, but I let it be until 6d forced me to re-think. I also thought for a while that the setter was being different and that ‘Parisian company’ was CIE; he wasn’t and it wasn’t. Does ‘artless’ mean ‘lacking cultural pretensions’? I just noticed that we have the same device (goods, Times) at 9d and 19d.
    1. The way I read it, if you have cultural pretensions you are ‘arty’, hence in a tichy way (as our old friend uncle yap might put it) if you don’t you might be artless. The question mark is there to indicate the whimsy.

      Edited at 2018-01-04 08:58 am (UTC)

  3. I didn’t time this one but almost wish I had, since it would surely have been my fastest time ever. I was only held up for a moment in the SW corner (a lot of question marks by the clues — thanks for the great blog to help all the pieces fall into place).

    Unfortunately, I know if I can finish a puzzle, it must not be that hard.

    Happy new year!

  4. I enjoyed this as a measure of my progress. A couple of years ago this would have baffled me from FOI 1a ECHT to LOI 14a ANAPAEST. As it was, today I mostly took the crosswordy vocab in my stride, and even figured out that while I didn’t know 14a, it must just be another of those metrical measures and conjured something likely from the wordplay.

    Top half went in pretty quickly, the bottom less so, but I never felt stuck and came in at 34 minutes, shrugging at 22d UNCLE but with nothing else unparsed, I think.

    Pleasant way to start a day…

  5. Well, there had to be one ANTIPENULTIMATE and I was the bad speller for the job (but I really am dead against anything that’s second to last).

    I didn’t find this quite as breezy as some did, with ADDLE-PATED, ROOTAGE, ANAPAEST all holding me up.

    Some lovely clues, though, like the migrant antelope in the ENGLAND clue, the obscene wife in LEWD and the rebel hairstyle of DREADLOCKS

    Edited at 2018-01-04 08:12 am (UTC)

      1. .. I was defining my own ‘antipenultimate’, which is surely being against anything second to last. Isn’t it? I do get confused by this stuff, though))
  6. 35 mins with porridge and banana (which I now will think of as ‘fruit bats’ – until I forget).
    Firstly on the ‘a’s. I am relaxed about these, but you brought it up. I would apply the ‘is’ test; i.e. can you put ‘is’ in between?
    Des is ‘a chap’ works ok. Des is ‘chap’ wouldn’t.
    But ‘an’ anorak is ‘a’ derided fanatic.
    ‘A’ pair of drums is really The Tabla. Is there such a thing as ‘a’ tabla? Enough already.

    Lots of not very secure vocab for me today: UTE, ECHT, ROOTAGE.
    Mostly I liked: Addle-pated, copper-bottomed.
    Thanks wordy setter and Z.

  7. Very easy this but as is often the way, very enjoyable too. I knew anapaest, in the same way I know all the metrical feet, ie not at all, except for the actual word.
    Z, you are missing an i in 12ac.
    Is England an island? Discuss ..
    2. Thanks, that and an extra e in the same clue corrected. I really must try doing this thing while I’m awake.
  8. Rather to my surpise I completed this in 23 minutes, exactly the same time as needed for my tecnical DNF on the QC today. Wasn’t sure of TABLA or ADDLE-PATED and didn’t know ANAPAEST at all, but the wordplay was helpful in all three cases.
  9. Bunged in RARING originally which made ARALE-PATED an unlikely possibility. COD to 1d for the use of an antelope in a country. What next? Nyalaland (1)? Kudustan (1)? Gnu Zealand (2)?
  10. Having returned to work today, it feels like Monday and this crossword added to this, having a very ‘Monday crossword’ feeling. It helped that the long ones were straightforward giving plenty of crossing letters. My LOI was ANAPAEST which looked rather unlikely but my trust in the parsing proved well placed.
  11. Raced through this except doing other things in parallel. Whereas the quickie held me up what seemed like longer.

    By the way, you have ANTEPENULTIMATE with a missing “I”. Not that anyone is going to be confused, but some day someone might wonder if that word has ever come up before and search for it.

  12. 8:57. I spent a minute or two at the end checking wordplay very carefully, for the unknown (and slightly wrong-looking) ANAPAEST and for words like ANTEPENULTIMATE and DESPOILS, which I am very good at misspelling.
  13. Opposite end of the scale to yesterday, that’s for sure. Straight top to bottom solve

    I automatically think “poetry” when I see “foot” in a puzzle and ANAPAEST is one of those words I know from solving without having a clue what it really means!

    1. It more or less defines itself, Jim. Two short syllables followed by a long one – da da dum or an a paest.
          1. One long, 2 short. The philosophy journal ‘Mind’ once had a contest for 8-line double dactyl verses where the 1st line is a nonsense word, the 2d is a name, the 6th is one word, etc. as in
            Higgledy Piggledy
            Herr Rektor Heidegger
            Cautioned his students “To
            Being be true,
            Lest you should fall into
            Inauthenticity.
            This I believe–and
            The Führer does too”
              1. I can’t resist; one more:
                Higgledy Piggledy
                Ludwig J. Wittgenstein
                Cautioned the Junge with
                Whom he had erred,
                “Don’t spill the beans to that
                Psychohistorian
                W.W.
                Bartley III.”
                (It may help to know that Wittgenstein was gay.)
        2. Interesting, Kevin, though for me the ‘paest’ is the long syllable in that word, not the ‘an’. Of course where to place the stress might be a different thing.
          1. Well, in English the stress is placed, by definition, on the longer/est syllable; so if you say [aenePEST] it’s an anapaest (where I come from, anapest). I say [AEnepest], which is a dactyl.
  14. Did this after watching Joe yet again fail to take root. Annoying to say the least. 28 minutes with ANAPAEST looking unlikely. Never heard of ADDLE-PATED either despite suffering from the condition all my life. A divine in beer gave a good lead, though I don’t usually bother to spread my paté. COD PREDISPOSITION. Thank you Z and setter.
  15. I know little of poetry and I seem to have solved lots of crosswords without ever coming across ANAPAEST before, so a large part of my 18.11 was spent returning to it every time I added another checker. I eventually followed the instructions, looked at the result, thought ‘that can’t be a real word’ but submitted more in hope than expectation. Lo and behold…
    Other than that, a breeze. Haven’t seen ADDLE-PATED in years. It was the sort of insult crusty old latin masters hurled at spotty third formers.
    1. This appears to be its first outing in a 15×15 since TftT started but it showed up once in a Mephisto (2009) and once in a TLS (2010), on that occasion with the U.S. spelling (missing the third A).

      Edited at 2018-01-04 10:23 am (UTC)

  16. Raced through all but the NE corner in 18m but the last 3 or 4 took another 18m so eventually limped home in a disappointing 36m. Never come across ADDLE PATED before – and unless it reappears here doubt I ever will again. TABLA another unknown or at least ‘not remembered’. I also struggled to spell the foot, unforgivable really, and that held me up with finding the right inclination. But I at last bent over backwards to complete the puzzle, if in a less than exciting time. Thanks for the blog, Z, entertaining as ever.
  17. 27 mins. Must be at the easy end of the SNITCH scale (and I find, after checking, that indeed it is). As an Eng Lit student, the poetic foot was a write-in. FOI was the undeniably German 1a — has there not been some harrumphing by commenters about the use of bare-faced foreign words (as distinct from loan-words) as solutions? OK, my German was up to ‘echt’ (and the Eng Lit helped with “Stamm’ aus Litauen — echt Deutsch” as a line from The Waste Land) but what if setters start bunging in random Finnish or Chichewa words to fill up a grid? I took minutes to see the plural ‘encomia’ after noting immediately that the EN-CO- must be something to do with an encomium. LOI 4d after speculation that the rivers DARONG and its tributary the DORANG must surely run through SE Asia somewhere.
  18. As has been said, a bit of a palate-cleanser after yesterday’s hefty main course. Lots of words which might verge on the obscure for everyday use, but are pretty standard in this environment, although I don’t recall seeing the clearly made-up ROOTAGE before. Pretty sure that Jennings used to refer to his cohorts as addle-pated clodpolls, which is language you probably don’t hear among many schoolboys today. Wondering who could do Tabla Motown, I found myself remembering The Imagined Village, who I saw at Cambridge Folk Festival; given that they pull off a version of Slade’s Cum On Feel the Noize, I reckon they’d give it a good go.
    1. I don’t remember Jennings saying addle-pated, but Google confirms that he did, and pretty often. Didn’t he once get his own addle-pate stuck in the park railings? And confuse the schools inspector with the gas man? Buckeridge tried Rex Miilligan books for those of us in the state sector, which were pretty good, but they never caught on.
  19. Just about to put the last one in (ANORAK) when the wife came in for an IMPORTANT CONVERSATION. Banged the word in and submitted so as not to lose time, and found that I had typed ANARAK.
    Other than that, couple of easy unknowns, and as above confused where to put the extra A in ANAPAEST. Just listening to Stephen Fry’s Sherlock Holmes compendium, and I love Dr Watson’s description of the moors as dreary, whereas these days we find them uplifting. However I would never describe a moor as tiresome….
  20. Among my best times, under 15 min, having over half the acrosses before looking at the downs, though the name of the foot didn’t come to mind immediately.
    I am frequently annoyed by people trying to write limericks who think that adhering to the rhyme scheme is sufficient and produce verses which fail to scan – a generic form is:
    Anapaest anapaest anapaest(-y)
    anapaest anapaest anapaest(-y)
    anapaest anapest
    anapaest anapest
    anapaest anapaest anapaest(-y)!
    – the final syllable in lines 1 2 & 5 optionally all or none, with them all rhyming and also 3 & 4 rhyme.
  21. I’ve always liked this word since first hearing “Have some madeira m’dear” (which I didn’t really understand at the time). Apparently Harrison was the shortest-serving US president but I’d thought it was Garfield. The present incumbent is still there but for how long? 12.33
    1. We had a Duo called Quicksilver at the Folk Club in November, and they sang “Have Some Madeira M’Dear.” Very droll 🙂
  23. I was quite pleased to get through this in a (for me) fast time of 24 minutes; my pleasure is only slightly diminished by the consensus opinion that this was an easy one. As they say, any landing you walk away from is a good one.

    I really shouldn’t have known ECHT, but somehow did – no doubt it’s come up here before. ENCOMIA and TABLA were also vaguely known but could easily have not been (though the wordplay for both was reasonably clear). ANAPAEST was, again, half-known though I’d have spelled it without that third “A” given the choice.

    All in all, I make that four lucky escapes. If I’d DNFd then of course I would be grumbling about unfairly obscure answers but, as it is, I congratulate the setter on a nicely crafted puzzle.

  24. A fast solve today, all the way in 14 minutes until left with 14a and 24a. I put in ROOTAGE as the answer from wordplay thinking if it is a word, it shouldn’t be. Then thought FOOT in 14a must be something to do with poetry again, of which subject I am ‘ignorant by choice’; so I had to resort to crosswordsolver dot org to confirm the only word which fitted the checking letters; yea, a poetic thing. Da da dum indeed.
  25. I was fortunate that ECHT has come up in a recent puzzle, so after following the wordplay, a bell rang in my head. ADDLE PATED also rang a vague bell. ROOTAGE went in from wordplay, as did ENCOMIA which also went ding dong. DARING was my FOI and ANAPAEST was my last, built solely from wordplay and crossers, although I was quite sure it had something to do with poetic feet as opposed to the appendages on the end of legs. I’d have liked to report that 12a was my 12a, but that honour went to DREADLOCKS. My post 12a was PREDISPOSITION which I didn’t bother to parse. An enjoyable puzzle which took me 26:33. Thanks setter and Z.
  26. 9:38 and it felt like about 9 minutes of that was spent wondering if ANAPAEST was a word. I made sure nobody around me could see the completed grid lest they accused me of making up words to fit.

    According to the Uxbridge a FREEBIE is an unattached insect and DREADLOCKS is fear of canals.

  28. I thought this was a tour de force of wordplay – there’s a lot of words that are not the first that come to mind to me, but all clued with impeccable wordplay! That helped me to race through to one of my best times of 7:22, and for once I didn’t have any daft typos in the or in the quick (which was also one of my fastest, coming in just over 3 minutes).
  30. ANTEPENULTIMATE was my second-to-first one in, which maybe proves that I don’t properly understand the word… I finished this in 5 and a half minutes, but it didn’t seen overwhelmingly easy while I was doing it! Maybe it was just that I was in a hurry…

  31. My ding at 4dn was also initially a ring, giving me the same ancient Egyptian sun god steeped in ale at 3ac until I stood back to admire my handiwork and decided there was definitely something amiss…
  32. I had the grid filled in 28 and a half minutes then stepped back to quickly look over the answers. On seeing “arale-pated” at 3ac I realised something wasn’t quite right. 30 secs later I had changed my “raring” at 4dn to “daring” and 3ac to “addle-pated”. A very enjoyable puzzle and some light relief after yesterday’s.
  33. There were an awful lot of hares today and I was the tortoise.
    38 minutes seemed fast-ish to me but it was a crawl!

    FOI 2dn HEARTLESS

    LOI 24ac ROOTAGE dear me!

    COD 12ac ANTEPENULTIMATE

    WOD 23ac ENCOMIA

  34. “Well, that’s a word I’ll only ever come across in crosswords,” I thought to myself as I wrote in ANAPAEST.

    Bizarrely, here I am less than a week later to report that I was just watching an episode of the rather cheesy supernatural romp that is the telly version of Sleepy Hollow, when our hero Ichabod Crane mutters in a casual aside, “Anapaests. I cannot abide anapaests…” during a discussion of The Star Spangled Banner!

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