Times 24135 – you say “Capstan”, I say “wot”.

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 23 minutes – after about 15 minutes I was left with 13, 14, 3 and 23, and it was a painful couple of minutes to get the last few (with a head-kick moment when I saw 3). More fine wordplay and tricky definitions, I suspect this is one I would have given up on before finding the blog.

Across
1 INHERITS: hidden (rather well) with a nicely concealed definition (“without effort, gets”)
5 WHAT IF: a felt HAT in WIF(e)
11 SPECIAL: CIA in (go)SPEL
12 SWALLOW: WALL in SOW – this is an easy clue but I loved the surface
13 BLUEBIRD: My last one in, a double definition. The Blue Bird was the name of the series of car that Malcolm Campbell and Donald Campbell used to set land speed records. And there’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover. Not the easiest clue for Australians born in the 70s!
15 DECAF: C in DEAF. My quibble here is over calling it a drink!
18 (p)LAY UP: wasn’t used to this definition, but it’s in Chambers
20 LORIKEET: IKE in LORE, T
23 CAPSTAN: In cricket and rugby, when someone is selected to play for their country, they are capped. Stan is Stanley Matthews who rang a bell once I saw the CAP part
25 PIROGUE: (GROUPIE)* – a dugout canoe
27 YANKEE: double definition that cracked a smile
28 JOHN KNOX: Guessed at this from wordplay. Scottish theologian and twelve-time winner of Beard of Awesomeness at the St. Andrews muttonchops appreciation society.
 
Down
1 INGEST: TINGES with the T moved to the bottom
3 ROUTINE: OUT,IN in RE – this took me a long time to spot
6 HOLLA,N,D: hmmm, something isn’t sitting quite right with this one. Can hounds mean sailors?
8 FISHWIFE: double definition, according to Chambers a fishwife swears and curses
9 MESS,I,DOR(=ROD rev): French Revolutionary calendar month which completely stumped me in a Listener crossword last year
14 (cor)IOLAN,THE: Eventually figured the G&S had to be IOLANTHE, for preparing the blog had to look up the Beethoven CORIOLAN overture
17 BLACKFLY: L in BACK, FLY – a real pain in Canadian summers
21 KERATIN: E,RAT in KIN – a compound found in horns and nails
22 W,ESSEX: Guessed from wordplay, helped to have that X at the end already
24 P,YLON(=ONLY*): nice clue!
25 PORNO: POOR,N with one of the O’s moved to the end, nice definition “Books that are dirt”.

33 comments on “Times 24135 – you say “Capstan”, I say “wot”.”

  1. 29 min. On an initial looksee, I thought we may be in for a repeat of yesterday’s cold shower. But when the two long ones popped out I relaxed and got on with it. Had to check “pirogue”, and needed help with “messidor”. Over all, a good work-out, with a number of answers needing revisiting to appreciate their construction. I am sure our American friends will be choughed with 13, 22, & 23. Still, they get a look in with 11 & 27.
  2. I thought I knew Beethoven’s oeuvre pretty well, but the Coriolan overture had escaped me. On a first hearing it seems to me it could be something of a pot boiler, done to order. Not a patch on the Egmont. Then again this wouldn’t be the first time that I have totally mis-appreciated Mr B, and have had to eat humble pie!
  3. 32:29 .. Lumme. I found this harder than yesterday’s, though it didn’t grab my imagination the same way. I got three clues straight off then spent ten minutes staring at blank spaces before I finally found the wavelength with 1d. Just pleased to finish it in the end with MESSIDOR, assumed from wordplay.

    Love the blog title, George!

    COD .. .. those HARD TIMES at 26a.

    1. Thanks – there’s a place I go for karaoke occasionally that has this on the list. Captain Sensible is right in my monotone vocal range.
  4. Wow. I found this twice as bad as yesterday’s, went for an hour and still needed about a dozen. What’s a LORIKEET? Didn’t know a lot here, such as KERATIN, the G&S reference, the Bluebird car or the song, or the French revolutionary month (I only know Thermidor). Ouch! WESSEX was a breeze compared to others. Didn’t help that I misspelled PIROGUE at first, either. Yikes. Needed aids to finish, so an hour and a quarter more or less. Nevertheless, regards all, see you tomorrow. Dear Setter: thanks for YANKEE, but we Americans don’t hang on John Knox’ every word, whoever he may be. You flummoxed me today, but we’ll keep trying. I did enjoy POTHOLE, and INGEST. Best to everyone.
  5. “Away, thou hound, so basely born,
    Or dread the scourge’s echoing blow!”
    Then loudly ring his bugle-horn,
    “Hark forward, forward, holla ho!”

    The Wild Huntsman (Walter Scott trans.)

    According to assorted online glossaries, “holla” is a shout given to inform the huntsmen and hounds that the quarry has been sighted.

  6. Another two-parter for me. Today it was the LH that went in quite easily after a very slow start but I struggled with the RH and unlike yesterday I needed to use a solver to polish off the final one, MESSIDOR, despite having all the checking letters in place. I may have met it before but it rang no bells. I was pleased to guess PIROGUE and KERATIN correctly from the wordplay as I didn’t know them. Is that three or four consecutive hard puzzles? I’m hoping for something easier tomorrow.
  7. My experience paralleled almost exactly Sotira’s above, with the exception that my COD was 2D. Was also in ignorance of Coriolan, but not Iolanthe (what an admission!).

    As a slightly older Australian I well remember Donald Campbell’s ill fated attempts to set a land speed record on Lake Eyre, Australia’s largest inland sea. This latter fact alone may have suggested there could be trouble ahead, although to be fair, it is more often dry than wet.

  8. 8:15 here. 13 and 9 were last in, Messidor not being one of my best French revolutionary calendar months, but remembered -idor as one of the four season-related endings. Remembered the Beethoven overture – maybe not as good as Egmont, but that’s a heck of a high standard. Happy with ‘Holla!’ by way of the fairly close “view halloo” in “D’ye ken John Peel”.

    Here’s the Lorikeet and his friend the lory.

  9. Thought this was quite tough – emerged with 12 mins by virtue of putting in several answers without really understanding the wordplay, which comments above have elucidated, thanks George et al.
  10. This took me 30 minutes, which is fairly typical for me, but a lot of the time I was entering answers without fully understanding the wordplay, and had to review several to see how they worked. I don’t see how “to” is justified in 20. It doesn’t seem a satisfactory link between wordplay and definition. Have I missed something? I liked some of the other clues, though “felt something” for ‘hat’ was a stretching things a bit, I felt.
    1. TO in 20: I can’t see anything to justify it either. Well spotted.

      The hat: Didn’t you laugh when you understood “felt something”? This is the sort of silly stuff that helps make a good puzzle for me.

      Edited at 2009-01-29 12:42 pm (UTC)

  12. 33 minutes so quite tough. Hard for me to compare with the previous two which I did on train journeys between Doncaster and London (and back) in between doing all the other stuff one does on the East Coast Mainline like opening bottles of sparkling water very, very slowly, looking out of the window at the fog and picking up fallen pram wheels.

    I had to use a solver for messidor and guessed at old beardie. Like koro I got 14 on the basis of the G&S bit alone.

    Apropos 25d in a recent discussion on a football forum on “things you don’t see any more” porno mags in hedgerows was the second thing mentioned after white dog doo-doo.

    Q-0, E-7, D-8.5, COD 16 for spotting the CL + Germany anagram.

    1. Yes, the world wide web is a wonderful thing and brought changes to many lives. All those dogs can now google “doggie loos” and have them installed in a single paw stroke.
  14. 3 left at 30 minutes – two in the NE corner and BLUEBIRD.

    Definitely a puzzled that I solved in three bits – a good start; a ten minutes pause when nothing clicked and then a final ten minute surge.

    Like others I had come across MESSIDOR in The Listener. Coming from Edinburgh originally JOHN KNOX was a gimme. Not as enjoyable as yesterday but very fair.

  15. I seem to have found this rather more straightforward than some others. About 25 minutes with no particular problems along the way. I knew BLUEBIRD of course (brought up on Vera Lynn), guessed PIROGUE (do you row a canoe or paddle it?), didn’t remember Coriolan but guessed IOLANTHE from the G&S reference. I thought 5A was funny.
  16. After yesterday’s magnificent creation this one seemed rather ordinary, but perhaps it was just the comparison: there are several very good clues.

    In 14dn I wasn’t happy with Iolanthe being called an overture, although no doubt there is one. The definition of ‘pothole’ as ‘one may descend into it’ in 19dn seemed a bit odd. And what’s wrong with the ‘to’ in 20dn? I am reluctant to disagree with eminent people, but can’t it just be read as an elliptical form of ‘leading to’?

    2. I guess “to” can mean “leading to” as in the tube sign “To the trains”, but this isn’t (AFAIK) used in an “A to B” structure. If you can give an example where “A to B” means that you can get B from A, dyste and I are complaining unnecessarily.
      1. Rather belatedly, (since I’m asleep when much of the action happens around here) as the clue stands, “comes” appears to be performing double function, which I know is strictly verboten, but if it were “in time comes” there would be no problem (Traditional wisdom, president (there)in, time, comes to parrot). I think the echo of the comes can be heard in the “to” as it stands, which might just get it across the line. (I think that’s how I justified it at the time and moved quickly on.)

        As for an example of “A to B”, I thought “After 3 hours in the oven, the potatoes turn to ash, the gravy to dust and the meat to cinders”. Not entirely convincing on either count.

        1. I just can’t see what people are on about: 20ac (not, as I said, 20dn) seems quite straightforward: [Traditional … time], i.e a whole lot of wordplay, leading to ‘lorikeet’.
  17. Most of us may start with the penultimate page of The Times and then read the rest, if at all, as an afterthought. For anyone who reads the paper in the conventional direction, from front to back, there is an important clue today on page 49, a photograph of Donald Campbell sitting in his father’s Bluebird
    LEC
  18. After a few minutes, PORNO was the only thing coming to mind, so I rather sheepishly convinced myself that the wordplay wasn’t clear enough and waited for a more appropriate first answer to come along!

    26ac went in fairly early on, though I couldn’t quite work out why ‘devour’ = FALL ON. Come to think of it, a couple of days ago I was similarly mystified by ‘fall out’ = CHANCE. Am I missing something obvious?

  19. Sorry to be so late. I do these before dinner and it’s 6:25 in The States.
    I perhaps am one of the few who actually remember the immensely popular song “White Cliffs of Dover”.
    Vera Lynn wasn’t it?
    Sometimes its an advantage to be 82 years old.
  20. Hello. Clue missing in the solution : 10 across “Prepare for effort delousing prison that’s foul (4,2,4,5)” : GIRD UP ONE’S LOINS. Anagram of “delousing prison”. Sidelight of “The labours of Hercules” in the (foul) Augean stables, and the Bible. These wide cultural referents illustrate other clues in this puzzle.

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