Times 24,115 – Pieces of Eight…and Bacon

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Some nicely misleading definitions in this puzzle such as “pieces”, “sporting” and “scholarship”, and a couple of unusual ones – “apostle spoon”, “corner bacon” – made this a slightly more testing proposition than it first appeared. About 25 minutes. Q0-E7-D6

Across
1 SEARCH ME – (MARCHESE)*.
5 DUCATS – DU(o)+ “CATS”, as in pieces of eight.
9 RECOMMENCE – RECCE around O(rder) of M(erit) + MEN.
11 ISOPOD – IS + 0 + POD (school as in a group, in this case whales). Isopods look like this.
14 DISC HARROW – DISC = record, HARROW is the school.
17 PLANTATION – PLAN + (s)TATION.
23 BANYAN – BANAN(a) around Jul(Y).
24 COMEDOWN – students traditionally go “up” to Oxford and Cambridge, and eventually go “down” when they leave (or are sent down if they don’t want to go but their college insists…).
25 EXHIBITION – another term most widely used in Oxbridge circles, I think, meaning an award or bursary which is slightly less valuable than a full scholarship.
28 WEARIEST – WEAR (as in, say, ‘sporting’ a flower in the buttonhole) + (s)IEST(a).
 
Down
1 SHORTSTOP – a sporting one for the Americans, which makes a change from the cricket references; SHORTS + TOP is this fielder though I have to confess the description makes as much sense to me as the LBW law probably makes to most baseball fans.
3 CORNER – in a corner = in a pickle, and this handy diagram shows where to find the corner of a pig…
4 MACHINIST – MIST around A CHIN
5 DAMPISH – DISH round A M(ember) of P(arliament).
7 TIEPOLO – (POLITEO)* gives the Venetian painter.
13 FANCY THAT – the annual Royal Ascot meeting is big in racing terms, but also very much about the fancy hats.
15 CROCODILE – CRO(p)+(DOCILE)* – dictionaries seem to suggest it’s a largely British term.
16 WEEKNIGHT – WEE + KNIGHT.
18 LLANERO – I started looking for GAUCHO, but it’s their neighbours on the plains. L(eft)+LANE+R(iver)+O(regon)
19 ANNABEL – A N(ew) + [LEBAN(on)]rev.
22 TENNER – so, who wants to be first to say that the TENNER in question doesn’t sound like this TENOR? Always worth asking.

Happy New Year, all.

46 comments on “Times 24,115 – Pieces of Eight…and Bacon”

  1. Found this one a bit tricky in parts. About 25 min. Didn’t fully understand “corner” and “exhibition” when I put them in. COD for me: 16 dn, because it raised a smile.
  2. 19:50 … You’re right, topicaltim – not as easy as it seemed to begin with. The SW certainly made me think. Like rosselliot, I enjoyed 16d. Quite Pythonesque.
  3. Late night entry from me, took about 45 minutes. I didn’t think I’d see a reference to American baseball, so doubted it for a while at 1D. I eventually became convinced that it was meant for me and other North Americans, so my gracious thanks to the setter. ISOPOD was new to me, as was Mr. Pears, which I was convinced was a reference to ‘apples and pears’, now that I know the rudiments to your rhyming slang. I had to drop that at the end and look up Mr. Pears, the tenor, apparently, so ‘puzzle completed’, but not without that aid at the end. Regards all.
  4. This one bit back. About 35 mins all up in two sessions over coffee and lunch. I thought it was going to be quite quick, then finished by spending at least 10 mins on 5,6,11 and 20 for some peculiar reason.

    16dn has long been a joke in the family – Australian TV stations advertise their news as “6.00 on weeknights” prompting a comment about “little men on horses”. (Yes we really are that sad!)

  5. 17 mins, last in by far was CORNER. Lots of nice clues, I’d give the COD to 5A.

    Tom B.

  6. Wholeheartedly agree. Cheekier than yesterday’s textbook presentation. Also detained by CORNER. I should have spotted it sooner; the diagram indicates it could be Les Patterson’s favourite cut. Thought it might be CURRED for some time, which is slang for being drunk in South England (according to the dubious Urbandictionary.com) and Google reveals it to be a common mispelling of CURED. If it wasn’t for the wrong tense, it could be an equally valid answer.
    1. More than wrong tense – a piece of bacon might be cured, but that doesn’t mean you can use ‘piece of bacon’ to define CURED, mainly because ‘piece of bacon’ is a noun phrase and cured is an adjective or past tense verb. A reasonable double def clue for CURED might be something like ‘Bacon can be pickled’. Most of all, of course, there’s no verb to CURR (except as ‘make a purring sound’ in Chambers).

      Sorry to seem to pick on you, but most of the “alternative answers” suggested in comments turn out to be duds when considered carefully.

      1. It is I who should be apologising to you Peter. I was speaking in jest. Obviously not apparently so and obviously not very funnily, either. In future I shall either employ a better gag writer or stop trying to be funny altogether. (Loud huzzahs all round). Sorry to have wasted your time.

        I do enjoy your apt and pertinent comments, as I’m sure all who read this blog do, and I especially appreciate your links to the outside world, such as the one to Peter Pears below.

  7. 11:34, with a minute or so at the end looking for anything else that might fit C?R?E?, not knowing about corner bacon. This was last in, following 4D where film=MIST hardly ever comes quickly for me.

    There’s a plausible explanation of the origin of “shortstop” here, and a sample of the distinctive sound of Peter Pears here. Collins has ‘tenor’ and ‘tenner’ sounding identical, and that’s my experience, which includes singing in choirs and therefore hearing plenty of uses of ‘tenor’.

    Edited at 2009-01-06 09:21 am (UTC)

  8. I thought this quite difficult – about 40 minutes in all after guessing SHORTSTOP,CORNER,and LLANERO and then looking them up. Luckily knew Peter Pears as a tenor. I never quite got on the setter’s wavelength, which always leaves me feeling a little unsatisfactory.
  9. About 9 mins, but I was very dubious about CORNER and only put it in because I couldn’t see an alternative. I still have no idea what corner bacon is and Chambers doesn’t seem to help?
    1. The link in the explanations above does a pretty good job. The Concise Oxford confirms it with, for ‘corner’: Brit. a triangular cut from the hind end of a side of bacon.
  10. Agree with Jimbo – I found this tricky (or rather a mixture of easy and tricky) but my reaction to finally solving the trickier ones (corner, disc harrow, llanero) was one of mild annoyance rather than satisfaction, possibly because I felt the setter had resorted too much to arcana and not enough to clever clueing to provide a challenge. Britten is one of my half-dozen favourite composers and I’ve read a couple of biographies so Peter Pears wasn’t a problem.
  11. Agree with Jimbo – I found this tricky (or rather a mixture of easy and tricky) but my reaction to finally solving the trickier ones (corner, disc harrow, llanero) was one of mild annoyance rather than satisfaction, possibly because I felt the setter had resorted too much to arcana and not enough to clever clueing to provide a challenge. Britten is one of my half-dozen favourite composers and I’ve read a couple of biographies so Peter Pears wasn’t a problem.bc
  12. I put SPORTSTOP here. What’s a SHORTSTOP? I thought the Times dealt wholly in CRICKETING positions?
    1. Baseball has been on UK TV for over ten years now, though in the small hours of the morning on 5. And there are bits of baseball terminology in common language, even back over here. So why not shortstop? Be thankful that compared to the vast range of possible cricket fielding positions, the set of named positions in baseball is just one for each team member.
    2. It’s fascinating how many Brits, most of whom have never watched a game of baseball, let alone played one, now ‘step up to the plate’ or get ‘thrown a curveball’, just as we’ve taken ‘making an end run’ from American Football, despite having little idea what one might be. Cricket itself has co-opted the ‘pinch hitter’. Not sure how many cricketing terms have caught on in the USA. My guess would be fewer than one.
    1. alternate letters in nEwSpApEr, reversed. Indicated by “written about in newspaper quite regularly”. Including “quite” is a bit sneaky, though justifiable via quite=exactly.
  14. Managed only 10 minutes on this on the way to work so completed only about a third of it. Over lunch I got most of the rest but was stumped by 1d,7 and 11. Never heard of SHORTSTOP before nor CORNER bacon, but I was quite pleased I guessed it correctly. I also worked out DISC HARROW from the wordplay and dredged up LLANERO from the back of my mind. I agree with others who have said they didn’t find some of this very satisfying.
  15. I quite enjoyed this one despite having to guess at a few (Tiepolo, isopod, llanero and PP’s status as a tenor).

    There was plenty in the way of subtraction to prompt a moment’s thought (e.g. (s)iest(a), Leban(on), banan(a) and Les(o)tho.

    24:30, Q-0, E-8, D-6

    The usual enjoyable blog from TT too with interesting links.

  16. I really enjoyed this. I really should start timing myself again. Couldn’t work out sIESTa so thanks to Tim for that. Last two in were Llanero and ISOPOD.
    I’ll plump for 13d as my favourite but I enjoyed most of them today.
  17. A not too bad 40 minutes, with a good bit of that sat staring at 3d C.R.E. How many possibilities could there possibly be? I found this a bit stop and start over all – kept getting stuck, then stuttered on for a bit more… COD for me 5d.
    1. There are 74 possibilities in Chambers Word Wizard. I guessed CORNER but checked the whole list for something better before finally settling for it.
  19. Like some others, I thought at first this was going to be a breeze (by my standards), most of the LH side falling very quickly, but then got bogged down. LLANERO and ISOPOD, eventually guessed via the wordplay, held me up at the end. Perhaps 35 mins. In defence of the arcana, they were all reasonably gettable through wordplay even if the words were not known. On the whole an enjoyable puzzle, with nothing really unfair.

    Michael H

    1. I don’t think ‘strike out’ is used in cricket. If a batsman is on strike, he is facing the bowling. That’s the only cricket reference I know.
      1. A ‘strike bowler’ is one who’s meant to take wickets (ie get opposing batsmen out, perhaps at the cost of a few runs). Often it seems that other countries have more of these than England…

        Tom B.

  21. With C-N I thought 6 down had to start CAN (prison). I also thought that sport was PE in 28 across so didn’t get anywhere for ages.
    But I was pretty chuffed to get TIEPOLO spelt correctly on the fordt attempt – never heard of it.

    I thought both yesterday’s and today’s most enjoyable. Maybe it will be the best year yet.

  22. Found some of this very difficult and was almost unable to enter SHORTSTOP – some kind of American wicketkeeper I assume. I would be grateful of explanation to 6d, surely con is a prisoner not a prison.
    Best wishes, Mike and Fay
    2. It’s “prison education” = CON COURSE, rather than prison = CON, education = COURSE.
      1. Mike’s comment was that he assumed that the shortstop (in baseball) was like the wicketkeeper (in cricket) i.e standing behind the batter. My answer was that the baseball equivalent of the wicketkeeper is the catcher, and that shortstop occupies (on a baseball pitch) a position more or less similar to mid-on on a cricket pitch. (The final words in brackets were a bit of gratuitous cricket jargon for the amusement of the Cousins.)
  23. Thanks to dorsetjimbo I can now get crosswords via Firefox.
    Did anyone else have hotels for 27A? Held SW corner up for ages!
    Corner bacon is a tasty dish. Recipe available if anyone is interested. Cheap and nourishing!
  24. Did anyone else think there were rather a lot of clues with an educational theme?

Comments are closed.