Times 13428 – You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting

Solving Time: I wouldn’t call it solving, actually

Well, another blast from the past, literally. I volunteered to help mcctext out again, as Jerry is out trudging his way through the Pyrenean snows* and dodging Tour de France camper vans. I find to my horror that I must break my cardinal rule of never attempting a crossword compiled before I was born. OK, so that’s stretching things a bit (see 21d). Actually on July 10, 1973 I was probably sitting in a lecture theatre copying stuff off blackboards, which we in Australia at that time liked to call an education. On a good day, you might find yourself copying from the same one the lecturer was actually writing on at the time. There were nine to choose from. Sadly, that education was not the one required to complete The Times crossword.

I knew at the outset that I’d be “resorting to aids” at some point, but after an hour of googling I thought I’d just look at the solution, which I found in The Canberra Times of June 18, 1979. On that day, it was announced FM radio was coming to Australia and that 500 Vietnamese refugees had been put on a boat in Malaysia and told to go somewhere else, with the incentive of being “shot on sight” if they returned. The first of these tidings circuitously led to my being banned from the airwaves for playing a Jeannie Lewis song and the second no doubt inspired a young Tony Abbott to greatness. Ironically both of those personages possibly had sat or were to sit in the very same lecture theatre I occupied in 1973. It’s a small and rather convoluted world. So, to the business at hand…

Oh, and if you’re looking for the Qualifier, it’s here, I am reliably informed.

Across
1 PILTDOWN. Cryptic definition? I got this from Neddy Seagoon’s description of Eccles. “There, before me, stood living proof that the Piltdown skull was not a hoax”.
5 TINKER. Double definition? My first one in. Peter Pan meets the reddleman?
10 OSCULATES. Visual gag. X for a kiss at the bottom of 1973 correspondence. Never found out what the ! stood for.
11 SCREW. Cryptic or double definition? Screw is slang for remuneraton, but not in Australia. Archimedes’s legendary screw can be googled.
12 OASES = O + SEAS*. A construction at last!
13 EMOTIONAL = MOTION in ALE*. And another actual clue.
14 UNITIES. There’s that ! again. From Archimedes to Aristotle. “The classical unities, Aristotelian unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle’s Poetics.” If only I’d got a proper education.
16 TRUISM = (IT’S RUM)*. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, …” and so forth.
19 THANET = NE in THAT. Thanet is in Kent or possibly vice versa. According to St Isidore of Seville, “Thanet is an island in the Ocean in the Gallic channel (English channel), separated from Britannia by a narrow estuary, with fruitful fields and rich soil. It is name Thanet (tanatos) from the death of serpents. Although the island itself is unacquainted with serpents, if soil from it is carried away and brought to any other nation, it kills snakes there.” Why haven’t the authorities in Australia been alerted?. More info here.
21 ANEMONE = NEMO found in ANE, as in “As I was walking all alane, I heard twa corbies makin’ a mane.”
23 WATERGATE. Cryptic definition topical in 1973.
25 TEKEL. Cryptic definition. From the ancient Babylonian tagline “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.” meaning “No fat chicks allowed” or some such.
26 GAMIN = GAM + IN. Some quaint 70’s racism.
27 LOATHSOME = (HOT MEAL SO)*.
28 TURNER. A cryptic definition for the original Impressionist.
29 PEDESTAL. Straight definition disguised as a cryptic one.
Down
1 PROROGUE = PRO + ROGUE. My second one in.
2 LOCKSMITH. I’ve got no idea why. Anyone in the audience?
3 DULLS. A quote by Polonius from Hamlet. It’s from his advice to Laertes on leaving for Paris: “neither a borrower nor a lender be … to thine own self be true” etc, and nothing to do with pints of lager.
4 WITHERS. A cryptic definition.
6 INSTITUTE. Double definition, the second a reference to G & S’s HMAS Pinafore “I wore clean collars and a brand-new suit, For the pass examination at the Institute”. Ahhhh!
7 KORAN. A straight definition masquerading as a cryptic one.
8 ROWELS = SLOWER*. They’re spurs.
9 ESCORT = E SORT around C. At least the constructions are straightforward when you don’t mistake them for another cryptic definition.
15 IGNORANCE. Cluelessness indeed. And it’s got bloody Nora inside it as well. I’m guessing some biblical quote. Perhaps Job 11:12 “But a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man!”. I’m still waiting. There’s that ! again.
17 STOCKPORT = STOCK PORT. Another one I got.
18 PELL-MELL = ELL inside PM + another ELL
20 TEAZLE. Double definition. Sir Peter Teazle from Sheridan’s School for Scandal and a device for teaseling cloth, an activity popular in the 70’s.
21 AVERAGE = AVER as in state AGE. A facetious double definition.
22 DWIGHT = D for denarius + the Isle of WIGHT for Ike.
24 TIMOR = TIM as in Tiny + OR
25 TEHEE = His or Her Excellencies in TEE. A golfing reference to end our travails.

* Late breaking news – Jerry is actually at home in his warm cosy bed, nursing frost and the odd Pyrenean bear bite. He shall return to a screen in front of you in the very near future.

23 comments on “Times 13428 – You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting”

  1. Well, I did Google the Hamlet quote, but ‘edge’ should have given it to me. This had a TLSish flavor to it: the dramatic unities, Capt. Nemo, ‘School for Scandal’, the quote of course.And I wouldn’t be surprised if LOCKSMITH is one more, although I’m clueless, too. I knew SCREW by chance, from an English friend of my mother’s, who once inadvertently stunned her colleagues by suggesting that another colleague had moved to Canada for a better screw. I imagine that Ignorance is a character in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, and that Christian, our hero, outstripped him somehow. This was more fun than I’d expected, as I don’t generally care for the older cryptics.
    On edit: Indeed, Christian and Ignorance have an argument–probably about salvation or something–and Ignorance finally says, “You go so fast, I cannot keep pace with you. Do you go on before; I must stay awhile behind.”

    Edited at 2013-07-10 05:31 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks for the Bunyan reference, kevin. I had just this minute thought maybe it was something to do with Fletcher Christian or Christian Dior, but you’ve saved me from more fruitless searching.

      The capital C should have been the give away, of course.

      Edited at 2013-07-10 06:28 am (UTC)

  2. Tempted to do a look-up on the Times archive site but managed to refrain in a rare fit of honesty where retros are concerned. Equally at a loss re LOCKSMITH but. And IGNORANCE of the Pilgrim also among my confession of sins.

    Didn’t we have something to do with Belshazzar recently re the ‘Writing on the Wall’? I think it was Ulaca who didn’t like it. (Belle-Shazza is, of course, a largeish bogan chick in these parts, so Koro’s translation of the Hebrew may be to the point.)

    Lastly, it was very strange moving on to the 3rd Qual after doing this. A complete switch of logics. Of which: I’ll post the blog on Thursday 18th inst.

    1. I believe it was my Monday confrere objecting to a DBE – the clue segment not the woman…
      1. Apologies. Must have got my Mondays mixed up. Never could get the hang of Mondays!
  3. Well blogged, koro. Above and beyond the call of duty, and all that. I got there in the end with surprisingly few look-ups but I still had one wrong at 25ac where I reluctantly bunged in the only solution offered by Chambers Wizard, namely TIKAL, without having a clue as to why. I also looked up the quotation at 3dn as a means to making progress in the NW where all I had at that stage was OASES, my first one in some 60+ minutes previously. I too have no explanation for 2dn though I assume it’s something to do with Eros or (it would be more accurately) Anteros. Going for a lie down now.

    Edited at 2013-07-10 05:52 am (UTC)

    1. Just found a proverb “Love laughs at locksmiths”.

      It’s a reference to Shakespeare’s poem Venus and Adonis:

      “Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,
      Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.”

      Edited at 2013-07-10 06:00 am (UTC)

        1. I found it via a link to imdb, rather surprisingly. There were four short films of that title made in 1904, 1908, 1910 and 1913. Previously there had been an operatic farce of the same name.

          Edited at 2013-07-10 06:34 am (UTC)

  4. 54:09 .. I know it’s small consolation for having to wrestle your way through this thing, koro, but if that isn’t the Blog Of The Year I’m a banana.

    I was determined to finish unaided but in the end I just knew that I didn’t know the T-K-L (I’m afraid I spent most of those hours in school chapel staring out of the window, though doubtless contemplating the wonders of creation) and had to enlist some help from above below (wherein Google, now officially evil, doth dwell).

    There was plenty that went in without any understanding whatsoever but I am now much the wiser. Thanks to all above for the education.

    Edited at 2013-07-10 10:37 am (UTC)

  5. Thirty minutes but with ARCADIA and one error, an S for the Z in TEAZLE (it could have been!)
    This definitely from my earlier regular solving days, when I used to knock ’em off during coffee break at college. Didn’t remember it, though, and the Castlemaine clue was one I think might have stuck over the years.
    Since the College I was at was Theological, Tekel, Koran and Ignorance were virtual gimmes, and perhaps Unities should have been. I also remembered the Hamlet, but missed the reasoning behind the locksmith, a way too clever clue that would have gone in on checkers alone, once I’d got rid of the idea that Thanet was in fact Kennet.
    Good fun, this one and even a CoD, given to AVERAGE.
  6. 40+ min, with 2 errors because I forgot to check for typos. 🙁
    Held up in NW at least 10 min by putting OBSOLETES at 10a and thinking 19 might be KEN(NE)T – eventually resorted to aid for alternative word to fit checkers, when all came clear suddenly, the proverb being sufficiently well-known to give 2dn as soon as I had the C. No problem with TEKEL, from Walton’s work, though it’s not in Chambers. The Hamlet & Pilgrim’s Progress references went in without checking, as nothing else would fit.
  7. This vintage is slightly before my time as a solver (though not by that much) and apparently from a time when the daily cryptic definitely favoured those with a traditional education – plenty of classical and Biblical allusions, a bit of Shakespeare, some fairly specialised musical and literary references. As it happens, this fits pretty snugly with exactly the education I had (at least to the extent required to bluff one’s way through life), so I found this a very diverting 15 minutes, while appreciating that one’s mileage can vary tremendously from day to day under these conditions…
  8. Thank you for the wonderful blog koro. A very entertaining read during my lunch hour.
    Too hard by far today. Only managed 16 without aids and turned to the blog for the missing half. Most of my successes came in the right-hand side. Pleased that my hunches of Screw, Watergate, Pedestal and Ignorance were correct.

    17dn Stockport
    This clue interested me and dates the crossword. I live in Heaton Moor, one of Stockport’s suburbs, and have never thought of Stockport as being in Cheshire. If I’m understanding wikipedia correctly, Stockport was in Cheshire (with a small part in the north in Lancashire) until 1974 (ie a year after this puzzle) when under the Local Government Act 1972 it and neighbouring districts were amalgamated to form the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.

    1. Agreed, far too hard but I too found STOCKPORT as I hail from Bramhall myself (now resident in Melbourne Oz though)
  9. Quotation from Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis,” “Love laughs at locksmiths.” Eros being the god of love in Piccadilly Circus.
    1. Er, have you read the above comments? It’s not a quotation from Shakespeare anyway but a phrase coined with reference to his “Venus & Adonis” and the concept of “Love conquers all”.

      It’s also worth pointing out (yet again) that the statue in Piccadilly Circus is not of Eros despite popular belief, but his brother Anteros. The clue still works though as he was the God more specifically of requited love.

      Edited at 2013-07-10 12:33 pm (UTC)

  10. I am back, as stated above, and ready once again for active duty.. I must admit I didn’t find this hard, although I didn’t think it was nearly as well constructed an effort as the last one a couple of weeks ago. Not a patch on it. I would have solved this when it came out but I have trouble remembering a clue from one day to the next, never mind over 40 years. Still I think some of our older solvers will find this as easy, or even easier than, a current crossword. The general knowledge is upped a bit, but technically its a doddle.

  11. I got about a quarter of this done before realising it was an oldie (they don’t tell you on the iPad app) when I got to the Hamlet quote, at which point I gave up. Having read the blog I’m glad I did.
  12. No chance for me, with the NW area remaining blank, save OASES. Gave up with 9 missing. (TEAZLE? TEKEL? Good grief.) Although, if the man on the bus was expected to finish this in the UK back 40 years ago, you all must have been an outstandingly erudite crowd. Regards, and I nominate Koro for the Distinguished Crossword Cross.

    Edited at 2013-07-10 06:30 pm (UTC)

  13. Well well. I keep having the value of a Classical education explained to me, but until this morning I didn’t completely grasp either the idea or the nettle. Mine was a DNF, even with aids, so especial respect to Koro. I will say that I rather enjoyed some of the ones I did get,1ac for example, and am willing to put up with a one-day withdrawal every once in a while for amusement. But now, set the DeLorean for July 2013 please, Doc Brown!

    Edited at 2013-07-10 07:42 pm (UTC)

  14. Found this baffling, so much so that I gave up before my allotted 30 minutes with barely 2/3 done, and went to buy a carpet instead. So many unknowns with no wordplay to assist (e.g. 2D, 25A). It probably didn’t help that I initially put in SOMETIMES for 10A. Much appreciate the educational value of the blog and comments.
  15. 5:48 for me, including a few seconds dithering over the spelling of TEAZLE. Very much my sort of puzzle.

Comments are closed.