Times 24216 – Do not disturb the mole station!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 50 mins

Music: Vaughn Williams, Sinfonia Antartica, Boult/LSO

While I finished, I am not too certain of two of the answers. In fact, one seems quite unlikely, but there is nothing else that fits. Since this was mostly a rather straightforward puzzle, I am a bit annoyed at this.

Across
1 DISTURB, B(RUTS)ID all reversed. I like to put in 1 across first, but this was actually my second, after 3 down.
10 MOLESTATION, MOLE + STATION, with the literal clue somewhat euphemised.
12 BEDSIT, BEDS + IT, where sex appeal meets the county of sleep. A UK-centric answer, well-known to readers of Muriel Spark.
15 TOFF, [LE]T OFF. Another one that is slightly UK-centric. When I was 9 years old, I played a character called The Toff in a school play – fortunately, I only had one line.
16 KINGFISHER, KING + FISH + ER.
18 CHINABERRY, CH (I NAB) ERRY. The first of the two doubful ones. The cryptic works perfectly, but while the chinaberry tree bears fruits, they are poisonous to humans. Either the clue is weak, or my answer is wrong.
22 AGHAST, HAS inside A GT. Here ‘has’ is defined as ‘experiences’ which is stretching it, but still allowable.
23 ESOTERIC, anagram of COTERIES. It’s nice to have a chestnut you can scribble in without thinking.
25 KRAFTT-EBING. F F[I]T[T]E[D] inside an anagram of BARKING. A brilliant clue. I would have solved it more quickly if I had not at first been unable to believe that the first element ends in FFT.
28 ROYALTY, cryptic defintion. This shouldn’t be hard, but the Ys made me think of payroll, payday, words like that.
 
Down
1 DOUBLET, DOUBLE T, as in cotton. Nothing to do with the golfer this time.
2 STAND-OFFISH, STAND OF FISH, a well-disguised and witty clue.
4 BALKANISED, BALK + ANISE + D. A poor surface. Dragging in licorice like that almost guarantees a word ending in ‘anised’, and gives the whole thing away.
7 OBI, OBI[TUARY]. In reference to African sorcery, more usually spelt OBEAH. An OBI is actually what a picky collector expects to find on a Japanese pressing.
13 SCHOLARSHIP, anagram of POLISH CASH + R. Even though I knew this was an anagram, this one took quite a while.
14 AGGRESSIVE, anagram of E GRASS I.E. VG. The anagram indicator is a little too obvious here.
17 PARSIFAL, PAR + SI + FAL[L]. I should have got this much sooner, since I was considering playing Wagner before settling on Vaughn Williams, but I wanted PAR, not IS, to be upside down.
18 CRACKER, I put this in most reluctantly. If 18 across is chinaberry, there aren’t too many choices here, and none of them are good. True, ‘cracking’ is slang for something great, but a ‘cracker’ is a person who makes a joke, not one who takes one.
20 SECRETE, SE + CRETE. Another chestnut, but I wanted to put the compass points in the middle of an island for a while.
24 BEVY, BEV[V]Y. Obvious, but erased at least once.

32 comments on “Times 24216 – Do not disturb the mole station!”

  1. 35mins (though with one error) – I thought it should have been quicker but got bogged down in the SW corner, especially with the 18’s, where I have the reservations as vinyl, and came to the same conclusions, although I just put in CHINABERRY from the wordplay, not knowing about the fruit being inedible.

    I was working without a dictionary, so I wasn’t sure about 7dn. I didn’t think an obituary was a “memorial service”, and all I could think of that might fit the description was “orison” (thanks, Wilfred Owen) so I settled for ORI. Wrong. I suppose that when a word is cut short it is generally only by one letter so here it is OBI(t), which should have put me right.

    1. The inedibility of the CHINABERRY (18ac) doesn’t invalidate the clue – it’s defined as a fruit (well, “One fruit”), not as an edible fruit.  Ignore the surface reading!
  2. About 40 mins plus another 10 staring blankly at MOLESTATION (no trains on a bank holiday, obviously) and BALKANISED (even though I knew it ended in ANISED). As for CRACKER I originally thought it was a triple definition with an inexplicable “a” i.e. “It’s (a) great”, “person that can take” (as in safe cracker), and “a joke”, but I think it’s more likely to be “a great person” and “that can take a joke” (as in Christmas cracker). Otherwise not a terribly onerous solve with COD STAND OFFISH.

    I thought chinaberry was another name for a Chinese gooseberry (totally without foundation in all probability) and was vaguely familiar with KRAFFT-EBING, which means he must have been in a crossword in the distant past.

    1. Having Googled the chinaberry, I find it is synonomous with the dreaded Cape Lilac (weedus giganticus) ubiquitous in the Perth region. If I looked out my window I could probably see at least three. Can’t claim it was an obscure Britishism then.
  3. Much the same tale here. Most of it was solved within 30 minutes but then I took another 20 to sort out 4d (I had everything but the ALK but the solultion wouldn’t come to mind until I had the final checking letter), 10a (for far too long I thought M alone was enough for “spy”), 18d, 25a and, for some unknown reason, 29.

    Is 5d JOSH(ua)? If so, isn’t this an exception to kurihan’s remark about 7d? Or perhaps JOSH is an official abbreviation so it wouldn’t count anyway. A quick Google suggests the official one is JOS though I seem to remember researching books of the Bible on a previous occasion and finding there are alternative ways to shorten some of them.

    Am I missing something at 18a? In assessing the quality of the clue what is the relevance of the chinaberry being poisonous to humans?

    1. Yes missed that. Good point. I’m probably completely off beam there (although in mitigation I did say “generally”, m’lud).
    2. Also I can’t see any problem with CRACKER at 18d having eventually solved it. Collins has “A thing or person of notable qualities or abilities” which I think equates with “a great person” and I agree with the Christmas cracker reference already pointed out by kororareka.
  4. No great problems here but used a reference to verify KRAFFFT-EBING who I don’t recall meeting before. Should I have done – psychiatry is all a bit of a mystery to me?

    HIE at 27A is also a rather obscure word, which I had met previously. I also don’t understand CRACKER but can’t see anything else. 25 minutes to solve.

  5. Didn’t record a time. Started off happily, but got more and more disgruntled as things went on. It felt like the setter had lost interest and banged in any old thing that might fit.
    1. On second thoughts, I retract and apologise. Put it down to gerontological grumpiness.
  6. New Boy
    About 90 mins which was a bit disappointing after yesterday’s S Times which even I did in 20 minutes and which I expect got a lot of PBs.
    1 wrong however, too confidently putting JEST instead of JOSH (which I now get). COED says there is something called a jest-book which I guess is like the thing unaccountably stolen from Bob Monkhouse some years ago.
    1. Yes, yesterday afforded me a terrific PB [“Peter Biddlecombe”, though some have suggested the more fanciful “personal best”].  If I could manage such a time on the Times itself, I’d be very happy indeed!
  7. i feel rather happy with this one. several difficult cluse and one clinician who i had not heard of but that didnt stop me working out the answer. all in all a fair if unremarkable puzzle. COD for me (joke too) was Stand Of Fish
    xx
  8. 11:11 for this. 4, 10 and 18 were last in – didn’t see ANISE quickly. Vaguely knew about Krafft-Ebing but not the spelling, so glad of the enumeration which made my version impossible, and the full wordplay. Happy with the chinaberry as fruit, but not really with the def. for “cracker”. Also struggled with the anag at 13, probably by looking for work=a publication. Finally(!) obit=’memorial service’ is in Collins but not COED.
    1. One mistake (ori) & like others not altogether happy with cracker. Like Peter knew Krafft Ebing but not how to spell his name, which I remembered as having a second B. bc
      1. Now that I remember the Christmas cracker, no issue with 18D after all.

        Edited at 2009-05-04 10:48 am (UTC)

  9. I’m having a bit of a bad run at the moment, failing by one answer for the third time in a week. Today, having got the difficult Krafft-Ebing and Chinaberry. I settled for my own neologism instead of Balkanisation. I shall not trouble you with what it was.

    A few weeks ago, the one word I failed on was Ezekiel so, afterwards, I learned all names of the books of the bible. Today, I had the luxury of mentally browsing through Judges, Job, Jeremiah, Joel, Jonah John, James and Jude before settling for Joshua.

    Any non-operatic solvers would do well to memorise a list of Wagner’s operas. Today we had Parsifal, to join the Dutchman and Lohengrin in recent weeks. Next week Tannhauser.

    It’s surprising to get a psychiatrist other than Freud, Adler or Jung in a crossword. I racked my brains to remember what he is famous for. On checking, it seems he is more famous for his services to lexicology than psychiatry being the originator of the words Sadism and Masochism.

  10. I struggled through this one last night, 30 minutes in all, but a few breaks along the way where the TV caught my eye.

    Had to get KRAFFT-EBING from the wordplay, and was waiting for it to be KNAFFT-EBIRG this morning but the guess was good. Needed all the checking letters to get BALKANISED. I rather liked 18 and 2.

    Well done to the crossword club for putting a link to the Bank Holiday Jumbo!!! I completely missed the Easter one (should have been following the numbers, I guess).

  11. 28:28 .. Very much liked DOUBLET, which is a cracker; not so keen on CRACKER, which isn’t.

    Krafft-Ebing wasn’t even vaguely familiar (E_I_G had me thinking about the Ewing family, JR et al, which tells you something about my cultural leanings). Reading his wikipedia entry, I’m struck that he deliberately chose a Latinate academic title for his major work in the hope of “discouraging lay readers”. It didn’t work. Mind you, if you’re looking to stop the oiks getting their grubby little fingers on your thesis, “Psychopathia Sexualis” might not be the best choice. Sounds like a Val McDermid novel.

  12. About 35 minutes for me, and I’m quite proud of myself for parsing the totally obscure (to me) KRAFFT-EBING from the wordplay alone. I share reservations about CRACKER, and I still don’t understand how the Christmas cracker helps equate ‘cracker’ to ‘can take a joke’. My last entry, BEDSIT, had me puzzled. Is ‘beds’ a common shortening of Bedfordshire? Further, I was unaware of BEDSIT as a noun. I also didn’t know Billingsgate was a fish market. Assuming it is, that’s a very clever clue, but, over here in the US, STANDOFFISH is not hyphenated, so I hesitated until the checkers appeared. Regards to all, and, seeing the offering of bank holiday Jumbo, I wish the UKers a happy holiday!
    1. Yes, Kevin, Beds is short for Bedfordshire. Most English counties can be shortened in this way (Notts, Wilts, etc).

      Also Billingsgate was a very famous London fish market where the pubs were open all night!!

    2. Thanks for the bank holiday wishes!  The intention in 18ac is that a CRACKER is something that can take a joke.  Grammatically speaking, the clue doesn’t quite support this interpretation, which I think accounts for about half of the moans in the comments so far.  (If you don’t know about the kinds of jokes that turn up in Christmas crackers, consider yourself lucky.)
      1. Thank you both very much. Mark, do I take it that there are jokes inside the Christmas cracker? I thought they just made the popping noise. If there are jokes inside the popping cracker, as bad as they may be, then the clue does seem to work, I suppose.

        As for the pubs staying open all night in Billingsgate, well, it must have been a very popular late night place! That would make the atmosphere less standoffish.

        1. Yep, that’s right – you tend to get a paper hat, an awful joke, and a toy (for kids) or a gadget (for adults).  Here’s an example.
        2. Apart from being very noisy the smell was simply unbelievable. Years after the market closed on a stroll around the appropriate streets you could still smell the fish so impregnated were the buildings so not so popular, particularly for the girls with their acute sense of smell. The sort of place one visited for a lark on a lads night out just to say you’d done it.
  13. 22:11.  Knowing KRAFFT-EBING (25ac) would have helped enormously, and knowing CHINABERRY (18ac) and Billingsgate (2dn STAND-OFFISH) would have helped a bit, but mostly I was slow on this for no good reason – perhaps because I hadn’t yet had breakfast.

    I didn’t much like 18dn (CRACKER) either, but it’s clear how it’s supposed to split up.  I’ve not seen “by” used as a link word before (22ac, AGHAST), and I don’t think it really works.

    Clues of the Day: 10ac (MOLESTATION), 1dn (DOUBLET), 2dn (STAND-OFFISH).

    1. If ‘by’ is seen as ‘by means of’ I think it works as a link word. No worse than the very common ‘of’.
  14. I found this a reasonably easy solve (30 mins – I feel I should have been quicker)but I was held up slightly because I rejected KRAFFT-EBING since I thought the spelling was KRAFT-EBBING. 18a was my last solve – I’ve never heard of it. The rest was very straightforward. I liked the clue to AGHAST.
  15. Just under 40 mins for me. Generally straightforward puzzle, I thought. No quibbles over CHINABERRY. A fruit is a fruit is a fruit, whether edible or not, in my book. Had never heard of this particular fruit, but was pleased to get there via the wordplay. Like many others was unhappy with CRACKER until coming here and getting the Christmas cracker reference, which had eluded me. Also did not get the wordplay for DOUBLET until reading vinyl1’s blog. Excellent clue – now I fully understand it!
  16. I thought that was what happened in a harbour at low tide. Had to use ONELOOK to get the Psychiatrist at 25a – otherwise OK. Great research on the fella by Sotira!

    Quite a few left out here:

    5a Judge each scoundrel endlessly resentful (7)
    J EA LOUS(e)

    9a University’s not applicable for this girl (3)
    U NA. Not Educating Una?

    11a Guide unexpectedly rode last (8)
    LODESTAR. Anagram of last 2 words.

    19a Rich husband’s left an asset (4)
    PLUS(H)

    27a Ambassador touring island has to make haste (3)
    H I E

    29a Test appeal without a precedent (7)
    EXAM PLE(A)

    3d Reveal international body’s beginning to make demand (6)
    UN M ASK

    5d Make fun of short book (4)
    JOSH(UA)

    6d Accountant intended going up in the world of learning (8)
    ACADEMIA. A CA DEMIA where intended going up is AIMED backwards. Should that be An accountant?

    8d Politician’s chosen – a Tory, almost in the centre (7)
    SEN A TOR. Hidden in words 2,3,4.

    21d About time letter from Greece came to Mark(6)
    S T IGMA

    26d Girl’s run away from host (3)
    A (R) MY

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