Times 24076 – you winsome, you losesome

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 17 minutes, so far my longest struggle for the week, but it was complicated by inventing the new fruit FIGRAIN at 20, eventually saw the light when working through the possibilities for 19. A few where I needed the wordplay to get, and some post-solve checking and sighs of relief.

I’m not sure of the schedule in the UK, but last night I got around to watching the newest episode of “The Simpsons”, entitled “Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross-Words” (sorry if I paraphrased), in which Lisa discovered she was a whiz at the New York Times crossword. I do them occasionally, and while there are some thematic (and often cryptic) elements, one thing that I do like about the NYT is the occasional very clever cryptic definition. One of them was in this episode with “Intentionally losing” as DIETING. Worth a peek if you get a chance.

Across
1 SAWN-OFF: (OWNS,A)*,FF, which reminded me of the old joke “how do you know we’re Irish?”, “you’ve sawn off your shotguns at the wrong ends”
5 BUSH,PIG: US,HP in BIG – is this the computer timing use of “tick”. See comments: “tick” is slang for delayed payment or hire purchase
9 HANDBILLS: B in HAND,ILLS
13 EX,(t)EMPLAR: I liked this clue
15 WALT,ON: William Walton who I hadn’t heard of but was obvious from the wordplay
17 AU,B,URN: nice tight charade
19 SUNDRIES: Double definition
22 ALBERT HERRING: (BRIGHT,LEARNER)* – I got this from ALBERT and H—— from the wordplay, hadn’t heard of the Britten opera
25 P(re-wa)R,IVY: har-de-ha-ha (maybe sitting over the ha-ha?)
26 WHALEBACK: (BEACH,WALK)* – from the anagram and the checking letters, refers to a structure or formation with an arched shape
27 LEG SLIP: EG,S in PILL<=, and let’s not talk about Australia’s performance so far against New Zealand…
29 HO,MINI,D: Nice charade and use of definition
 
Down
1 S,OH(i)O: I’ve seen this a few times lately, and this is my favorite wordplay to date
2 WINSOME: I(=single) in (WOMENS)*
3 ORBIT: BRO<=, I(nformation),T(echnology)
5 BESANT: S(ex)A(ppeal) in BENT. Considering she stumped me in an earlier puzzle, Annie Besant must have been a useful leg break/googly bowler
6 SEA(=blue) I’S,LAND: a type of cotton – Gossypium barbadense
8 GREEDINESS: DINES in GREE(n)ES, nice wordplay
12 METACARPAL: A,CARP in METAL, more nice wordplay, actually I only saw this from the wordplay
14 PORT,RA,YAL(=LAY<=): we have a trio
16 OUTRE,A,CH: OK, setter, did you know how much I love long charades?
18 BOB(Hope),BING(Crosby): cue the Guinness ad – Brilliant!
20 IN,G,RAIN: I liked the use of RAIN as “water, naturally”

36 comments on “Times 24076 – you winsome, you losesome”

  1. I thought this was easier than yesterday’s. 22 mins for me which means fairly easy. Nice puzzle with some entertaining touches.

    I think HP at 5A is probably “hire purchase” (“buying on tick”).

      1. No, you’re right, I didn’t have chambers on hand and hadn’t heard of tick meaning “hire purchase”. Processing speed is defined in ticks, so I thought maybe it was referring to hardware processing.
  2. About 30 mins, some of it walking, and interrupted by doing some chores. I liked Hope and Crosby but I suspect it is probably a chestnut used many times before.
  3. About 30 minutes here, held up by a slew of terms I didn’t know: BUSH PIG, LEG SLIP, ALBERT HERRING. Hadn’t known of SEA ISLAND COTTON either despite it’s being from over here. Mea culpa, I’m not very well versed on the natural fibers. I liked HOMINID with ‘old man’ as the definition instead of meaning ‘pa’, ‘dad’, etc. Remembered Annie Besant from a recent puzzle; otherwise wouldn’t have known of her either. Still a nice puzzle altogether, well done setter. Regards all.
  4. Very stuttery performance with interruptions so didn’t get a time, but probably pushing 40 min. I too was looking forward to tasting a figrain fruit, and am happy to talk about 27 ac (for the moment at least)
  5. Got to all bar 2 within about 25 minutes…could see that 5 across would be Bush Pig but then struggled to see HP = tick which of course it is. Nice clue-brain must be warming up.
    Didnt like the Besant clue as i cant see that i have ever seen sex appeal referred to as SA and i cant see what guide you to take the two initial letters. anyway had a vague feeling that Besant was a feminist and it couldnt really be anything else
    Does anyone else feel that Monday to Thursday have been incredibly easy this week?
    I really liked the 1 down and 2 down in this puzzle and agree that 29 across is clever…as was 16 down
    1. {SA = sex appeal} is old-fashioned I think, but survives in the dictionaries, along with ‘it’. Didn’t find this puzzle “incredibly easy” myself.
      1. Having just done the week’s puzzles in a batch, I think I’m inclined towards maestrotempus’s view that they were “incredibly easy” – though having shot through almost all of this one reasonably fast (for me these days, that is), I took a couple of minutes to get SUNDRIES (doh!) and finished in a slightly disappointing 9:44.
  6. About 45 minutes for most of it much interrupted by distractions on my commute, but I wasn’t able to finish the SE corner until I arrived at work and had access to on-line assistance. 6, 16, 19, 23 and 28 were the ones that beat me. I’ve never heard of SEA-ISLAND cotton, nor I-BEAM, nor BESANT for that matter, though I was able to guess that one. I’m a bit surprised that everyone so far seems to have found it rather easy.
  8. Can’t claim a time as I got bogged down and resorted to reference material for SEA-ISLAND. Hadn’t heard of Ms Besant, I’m afraid, but got it from the wordplay.
  9. After a fairly quick start I got held up by several longish interruptions and slowness to see ALBERT HERRING (not helped by my initial entry of A-BEAM for 23), BESANT (unfamiliar), BUSH PIG and SEA-ISLAND (also unfamiliar). About 45 minutes excluding the interruptions. I liked the clue to EXEMPLAR, which is my choice for COD.
  10. 12:17, gaining from knowledge of Albert Herring, but suffering in the NE corner – partly from ‘PLAYING’ as initial entry for 7D, resolved by the need for WALT on 15. Have been known to buy my own shirts but didn’t remember the cotton.
  11. 27:04, not too easy, not too hard.

    Bush pig, Besant, sea-island, i-beam, hominid and old Albert were unknown to me but all guessable in the end.

    I had a query over sawn-off as a “sort” of shotgun – that to me would suggest 12-bore or pump-action. Saying a sawn-off is a sort of shotgun is like saying a sun-dried is a sort of tomato. Which leads me on to my next quibble, which is that I thought “in a way” was unnecessary and misleading in 19.

    Q-1, E-7, D-7, COD 10

    1. I didn’t mind “sawn-off” because I’ve heard the phrase in itself to refer to a shotgun (T, Ice, “Cop Killa”, 1992). Agree to an extent on 19, though maybe the setter does their own sun-drying in the street?
      1. Happy with ‘sawn-off’ as a ‘type of shotgun’ for the same reason as gl.

        Although it threw me off track as well, I finally read “In a way, prepares tomatoes” as “A particular way to prepare tomatoes” – and was happy enough with sundries; although I think it’d work much better in the past tense.

  12. 18 mins, stuck for a long time on the SE corner until I got INGRAIN. I knew SEA ISLAND, though shirts made from this cotton cost about 3x what I’d pay. Liked 29A, ‘old man’ had me fooled for a while.

    Tom B.

  13. 42 minutes; so considerably harder than yesterday for me.

    New to me: HP for tick; templar = barrister (how many aliens know of that?); Albert Fish; whaleback.

    Why does university (or in this case “Cambridge?”) always seem to be UP? I thought U.P. was a specific university…

    Like Peter I had 7D ‘playing’ until I was forced to change it to P_A_I_T. And thence pianist. Since I was sure the ‘is taking part’ meant ‘put is inside’ I spent way too long trying to figure how Thespian = PIANT, and who Piant was. Has to be my COD.

    1. It’s “at Cambridge” that gives you UP, from the Concise Oxford def: “at or to a university, especially Oxford or Cambridge”. Hence “send (someone) down” = expel from a university.
    2. You are said to go UP to university and when you leave you are said to go DOWN.

      If you get kicked out then you are ‘sent down’ – this latter encapsulated in the famous spoonerism: ‘Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad; you will leave by the next town drain’

      1. Thanks Anon and Peter. The light finally dawns, and it makes so much more sense now. Thanks for the refs and the Spoonerism.
        1. To extend the argument, however, a train to London is normally the “up” train and from London the “down” train.

          According to the OED, “up” or “down” depends on the relative importance of the places concerned, which would account for going “up” to university and “down” from it, on the basis that from an intellectual standpoint, the university ranks above any other place in the country.

          Similarly as applied to trains, London would be superior for political and commercial reasons.

          Speculatively, it may be that for the ordinary traveller a train from Oxford or Cambridge to London would be the “up” train, but it wouldn’t surprise me if members of the universities saw fit to reverse that terminology.

          1. I don’t think the varsity folk changed railway jargon. In the context of the Spoonerism* it would make no sense, as a “down train” would be any train you like leaving Oxford Station.

            *Or rather the alleged Spoonerism – most of the famous ones seem to have been invented by students – there are very few verified ones from Spooner himself.

            More on up/down in the inevitable Wiki article.

            1. No, it is a spoonerism (none of the dictionaries I have consulted, including the SOD, capitalize the word) irrespective of who actually said it or wrote it.

              To take the definition in Chambers online:

              ‘spoonerism noun an accidental slip of the tongue where the positions of the first sounds in a pair of words are reversed, such as par cark for car park or shoving leopard for loving shepherd, and which often results in an unintentionally comic or ambiguous expression. See also metathesis.
              ETYMOLOGY: Late 19c: named after Rev. W A Spooner (1844-1930), an English clergyman, educationalist, and dean of New College, Oxford, whose rather nervous disposition led him to make such slips frequently and who became renowned at Oxford for doing so.’

              The point is that the word spoonerism is used to describe that partcular construction and not necessarily something that W A Spooner himself said. It was named after W A Spooner because he was noted for such slips of the tongue but it is clearly not intended to be restricted to sentences that he himself uttered.

              1. I didn’t mean to imply an incorrect meaning or spelling) of the term, just that many of the famous spoonerisms, including this one, are presented as if uttered by the man himself. (And the probability of anyone producing a sequence one this amusing as a result of accidental slips of the tongue seems minimal.)
                1. My question was just tongue-in-cheek, as to whether a person going down from Cambridge and travelling to London by train was going up or down (and indeed vice versa).
  14. 9.36. Thought this was an enjoyable puzzle, with most of the more obscure answers sounding vaguely familiar once solved, and always gettable from the wordplay.

    I’ve seen the Bob-Bing thing very recently but not in a crossword – I think it was one of the questions in Two Brains (which is in the Saturday Times in the same general area as the Listener) – the second question was similar but the protagonists were Ant and Dec.

  15. Quite difficult, I thought. After an hour I was left with 5ac / 6d / 19ac blank, and came here for enlightenment.
  17. Much in the same vein as the rest of the week for me. They’re fun to do but not very difficult. About 25 minutes again. I thought 8D a good clue but the rest are very ordinary fare.

    I’m mildly surprise at the ignorance of Annie B, my fiesty daughters (age range 38 to 41) have used her against me on more than one occassion! Are the younger sisters not keeping up with the history of their movement?

  18. outrememongkay, also sea island.

    Some nice stuff.

    For those who haven’t, please take a look at a splendid offering from Brendan on the Guardian website – for me the doyen of the cryptic.

  19. Excuse my lateness today. Just finished it in 20 minutes. The socialists gave me no problems at all but the tories really held me up. “Blue” at 6d led me to SKY ISLAND at first, then realised that Y?A?E wasn’t right for 10a so changed it to SAD ISLAND. Finally “cottoned” on when I realised that 10a was much easier than it seemed.
    I found this the trickiest of the week so far and easily the best. Can’t see a problem with 19a, in fact I’ll COD nom it.
  20. Also a latecomer, just back from a few days away and feeling a bit rusty but finished it in 14:38. Very slow start but once I had a few answers in it went smoothly enough.
  21. A couple of unknown things today but I was still able to complete the crossword because it was fairly clued.

    I do know of William Walton and Benjamin Britten’s opera Albert Herring but I am not likely to see/hear it as I don’t much care for Britten’s music.

    The unknowns were Sea Island (cotton) despite buying my own shirts and I-Beam – was that Star Trekker Scottie’s nickname?

    There are 7 “easies”:

    10a Knowing engagement will follow a romance ultimately (5)
    A WAR E

    11a Not being thought of as crazy (3,2,4,4)
    OUT OF ONES MIND

    4d Accommodation at foot of mountain failed to impress (4,4)
    FELL FLAT. A Lakeland timeshare?

    7d Thespian is taking part as key performer (7)
    PIANIST. Hidden in first 3 words.

    21d Appear in revue at Cambridge? (4,2)
    SHOW UP
    23d Support makes one look happy (1-4)
    1 BEAM

    24d After tricky bend, see youngster lose control momentarily (4)
    S KID. Sharp left and then sharp right. If it is the opposite is it a ZKID?

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