Times 24246 – Eyes down for a full, um… house

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: About 45 mins

Mostly quite easy clues with a few that held me up inordinately for no reason that I can attribute to anything other than my own slowness of mind; particularly 23ac, which I thought must be a golf or horse racing allusion which I was never going to get. This puzzle is remarkable for its profusion of favourite crossword devices and US state abbreviations; an object lesson for beginners.

The copy I printed out just after midnight UK time had double enumeration for every clue bar 1ac; the second number looking like part of the clue. At least each number was simply repeated and wasn’t the number of the preceding clue; a circumstance which would have been even more off-putting.

Across
1 CHIC(k) + ORY(x) for CHICORY, a green leafy plant whose roots are also used as a coffee substitute with limited success. If you’re into memorising lists of things which may be of some use in your subsequent solving career, don’t neglect antelopes.
5 HUM[D(aughter)]RUM for HUMDRUM or commonplace (see Times 24241). “Daughter’s” is read “daughter has” on the surface and “daughter is” in the cryptic. To hum, meaning to have an unpleasant smell, is another standard crossword device.
9 (h)EEL – another standard crossword ploy of a dropped initial “h” indicated by a Cockney reference, rightly or wrongly. This is territory that has been covered previously.
10 BO(u)LT + UPRIGHT for standing stiffly. The composer conductor “listened to” is Sir Adrian Boult. If “piano” was going to be “p” then it probably would have been clued as “softly” or “quietly”, he tells himself after the event.
11 INFE[RIO]R for substandard. “Rio” is usually my first thought for “port” when it is used as part of the construction, but “infer” for “make deduction” was close to my last thought. I was on the subtract, diminish, … track.
12 L + O + G(eorgi)[GI]A for LOGGIA or arcade. Cue Hoagy Carmichael.
16 OBL[(RITE)*]ATE for OBLITERATE or destroy. Here was I thinking the earth was an oblate spheroid, but it turns out that Friar Tuck is one too.
18 NUT + CRACKER for a ballet. N.U.T is the National Union of Teachers in the UK; another crossword device which appears from time to time.
19 FELL – double definition. Think fellmonger for the second. Or… as mctext has pointed out (private communication)

Then I remembered my Beowulf:
Line 2088: “deofles craeftum ond dracan fellum” — devilishly crafted on dragon skins.

Kurihan has also alluded to the possibility of a third definition down = fell as in high fell.

22 T[E + DI]UM for TEDIUM or dullness (Is there a theme emerging?). Having had HUM and RUM here’s TUM for an almost complete set of crossword favourites. Tum as corporation or adipose tissue was in my last blog two weeks ago. And Di is the setters’ favourite gal.
23 A + P.P.E. + “tight” for APPETITE, a desire for some but my loathing. The “university course” ended up being Philosophy, Politics and Economics and not “u” and the definition. This device occurred not long ago, which eventually re-occurred to me. I believe not everybody approved of it at the time, which together with “say” as a homophone indicator might make this clue today’s pariah.
25 ALL VERY WELL – a double definition, the first on the cryptic side of straight.
27 (BAG)< for GAB as in gift of the. Bag = shopper doesn’t quite work for me, but maybe it’s a UK expression. Or is the bag being rejected by the shopper on environmental grounds? Total bans on plastic bags are new to Australia, although last time I was in Europe you had to pay extra if you wanted them, which seemed to cause great consternation at the checkout when people asked for the fee to be added to the bill after it had been rung up. Since all this happened in a foreign language, I wondered what mortal sin was capable of being committed in a checkout queue, but it did put me very much on my best behaviour.
28 (sleep it)* for EPISTLE, a biblical reference.
29 DE[SIR]ED for wanted. This time the teacher, singular, is SIR. I can’t recall a MISS, but there probably has been one. There’s an echo of 23ac here, which I missed at the time, having solved this one first.

Down
1 C[REV. + I(n)C(harge)]E for CREVICE or a split. I did try to put ELI in there but he wouldn’t fit. IC is standard crossword fare.
2 ILL. + AFFECTED for not well disposed. Ill is an abbreviation for Illinois, but not for postal purposes. The various US state abbreviations have been dealt with in these pages before, but vinyl or kevin can jump in here if they feel a refresher course is required. For a while I toyed with camp = intented, but I was pretty sure this would be inadmissable, even if there was such a word.
3 OX + BI[R]D for an African starling, apparently. Ox = neat as in neat’s foot oil, is another classic. How many more favourite devices can be crammed into one puzzle? I struggled with “bid” for far too long. I knew the bird’s head was ox, but thought it’s tail should be far more exotic. Western Australia is free of the introduced European starling, which is a pest out East; they are shot at the border if they attempt to cross. Why do coconuts spring to mind?
4 YELLOW + BACK for a cheap edition of a publication, usually of the light reading variety. I didn’t know this, but it was easy to get from the wordplay.
5 “hall” for HAUL, to draw with effort, as opposed to roughly yanking. “So to speak” is a more straight forward homophone indicator than “say”.
6 M[ORE]OVER for also. The tiny archipelago of Ore is located just north of California and south of Washington. Another US state abbreviation which isn’t part of the zip code. Mover as in mover and shaker.
(On edit: perhaps I should make it absolutely clear that Ore is short for Oregon, a US state on the Pacific coast and not the tiny islands I first thought it might be.)
8 (the name)* for METHANE, the hydrocarbon with one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. The simple molecule which could be the death of us all, and don’t blame the cows. There’s tons of the stuff locked in the Siberian permafrost and it’s coming soon to an atmosphere near you.
13 GRAVE + DIGGER for Hamlet’s buffoon. The very last Australian WWI digger (serving and non-serving) died very recently aged 110.
14 WIDE[S(cant) P(ayment)]READ for WIDESPREAD or sweeping. A wide is an extra or sundry in cricket, which is a run (or runs) awarded to the batting side if the umpire judges the ball has been bowled so far out of the batsman’s reach as to be unhittable. Study is a noun on the surface and a verb in the cryptic.
17 A + R(ight)+ G[UM]ENT for ARGUMENT or reasoning. Hesitation is usually “er” or “um”. In this case it’s UM to complete our RUM, TUM, HUM collection.
18 (TIN)< + RATE for NITRATE, a fertiliser. There appears to be no connection between this and the previous clue; this device is more usually seen in another place.
20 LI[ABE]ED for LIE ABED, a late riser. President can be “p” but if it’s not it’s likely to be Abe (Lincoln).
21 HELL + AS for Hellas or Greece, although there appears to be some dispute over what exactly Hellas encompassed; just as there was in my last blog two weeks ago, where vinyl pointed out Hellenistic was more properly of a period “of Greece”.
24 BY[R(uined)]E for a farm building housing animals. Bye is our second extra of the day; run or runs awarded to the batting side when a bowled ball eludes fieldsmen (although most commonly the wicketkeeper) but no contact with the bat or batsman has been made. As a batsman, it was my best scoring shot.
26 LEI(sure) for garland popular in Hawaii.

41 comments on “Times 24246 – Eyes down for a full, um… house”

  1. Time taken: one bowl of cereal, two fags and a coffee (including rolling time and time waiting for the stove espresso to do its thing.)
    Liked the double extras at 14 and 24 and also the possibility of overlap between 23 and 29. If this were the Grauniad, they would no doubt have been explicitly linked. (“Endless 29”, perhaps, instead of “Desire” at 23?) So the relevant music here might be His Bobness’s best ever album?
    Wonder if there’ll be any grumbles about the homophone at 4dn? If so, I have an inkling as to from whence it might stem.
  2. 27 mins today for a pretty standard sort of puzzle, nice enough Monday fare and as koro says, full of cliches.

    I wondered if 19ac might actually be a triple definition – fells and downs both being uplands.

    1. I’m not sure about fell meaning simply cut. Collins has it as to “cut or knock down”. One fells trees but cuts grass. What if it’s Elephant Grass? Or a palm (which is more a grass than a tree)? I’ll leave it to the lexicologists.
      1. I’m not sure and it really doesn’t matter – just a passing thought….
      2. Or indeed bamboo which is grass through and through. I once had to have some professionally dynamited!
  3. Yes kororareka, about 90 mins for this beginner (inc ablutions etc). Finished without understanding TUM as constitution or PPE as university course even though both have recently appeared. (Chambers has PPE but for TUM simply refers to tummy where you get what you would expect).
    Can’t leave blog without mentioning Saturday’s cryptic. I managed to complete the jumbo, the ST cryptic and Mephisto (courtesy of Chambers and the agreeable Mike Laws) all together faster than the Saturday cryptic. Reference to Jimbo’s comments last week (which I tended to agree with), my ‘ol Mum used to say “be careful what you wish for”.
    1. You should be able to find pot belly, paunch or similar if you look up corporation (not constitution).
  4. 9:10, with 6 and 19 last in. At 10, Boult was clued as a conductor rather than composer.
    1. Fixed that. He’s not renowned for his compositions as far as I’m aware.
  5. 35 minutes but I ground to a halt several times in the process so it wasn’t all that easy. OX-BIRD is not in Collins or COED but Chambers has it. I didn’t know ORE to explain 6dn.

    I also had the misprinted clue numbers.

  6. A pleasant Monday waft (didn’t time but inside 25 minutes) from left to right, last in moreover (can’t think why other than I was solving steadily and got there last!). Splendidly full blog, but nothing I couldn’t fathom today. I have some vintage yellow-back paperbacks by Edgar Wallace.
  7. Did this one fairly quickly for me (20 mins) and then fell into the age old trap of having “lightly inserted” one of the answers with little confidence (PEEL at 19A) and forgetting to revisit. A good tip I think is to carry a red pen for these “guesses” so that it is fairly clear at the end where to go back to. Both pen and pencil enterred gently seem to have a habit of hardening over time!!

    One other aside – I happily entered BOLT UPRIGHT thinking of the BOLT as an electrical conductor, being a metal stake effectively (and the extrapolation into lightning bolts), and whilst this ’empaddingated’ the word listened, this somehow became “leaned into” to suggest sitting alongside the piano. Much like reading Nostradamus, it is amazing how you can force things to mean something when you put your mind to it.

    1. ..perhaps also, in order to listen to an upright piano you need to be standing next to it -> hence conductor next to piano !
  8. Thanks to kororareka for a very thorough and well-presented blog – helped me on a couple I solved withjout really understanding the cryptic element. Relatively straightforward overall (12 mins) slowed by jumping in too soon with 2D with a guess of ILL-MANNERED. ILL-AFFECTED isn’t an expression which I’ve come across much.
  9. about 45 mins with no need for aids. well pleased til i discovered that i had written ill-effected by mistake. first came across fell (skin) during my a-levels in the wonderful but harrowing gerard manley hopkins poem “i wake and feel the fell of dark not day.”
  10. 11:16, with the last half minute spent deciding between PEEL and FELL at 19ac.  Given the large number of crossword clichés (well spotted by kororareka), and given that the only things I didn’t know were FELL meaning hide, OX-BIRD (3dn) and YELLOWBACK (4dn), I found this surprisingly hard.

    On the subject of dodgy definitions, “sweeping” (14dn) means wide-ranging (covering many areas) rather than WIDESPREAD (found in many areas).  Thus a sweeping opinion is one that is wide in scope (even if held by just one person), whereas a widespread opinion is one that is found all over the place (held by different people).

    Clue of the Day: 28ac (EPISTLE), despite the punctuation.

    1. My impeccable source (actually mctext again -same personal communication) went on to say The OE gets it from German “Fell” and Chambers gives this as based on Latin “pellis” and Greek “pella”.
      So there’s a direct connection with “pelt”.       and no doubt with “peel” as well. So it’s virtually the same word, as far as skins are concerned. Somehow the animals wound up with “fell” and the fruit with “peel”. What would the skin of a fruit bat be called, I wonder…
      1. Thanks for this.  According to the Shorter, PEEL is from pilus (hair), while PELT is from pellis (skin).  Whether or not the two Latin words are related, I don’t know.
      2. Subject to these words really having a common origin, it looks as if you just rediscovered Grimm’s Law – or the effect of Grimm’s Law combined with English borrowing from different languages. With the same letters, this explains other links like fish/pisces, fire/pyromania and five/pentagon. There are other pairings which explain (e.g.) why most if not all of our “wh…” question words are “qu…” words in French.

        Edited at 2009-06-08 11:33 am (UTC)

      3. >What would the skin of a fruit bat be called, I wonder…

        At our last WWF fundraising barbecue we called it “crackling”.

  11. 17:16 .. which is around my average solving time, and this strikes me as a puzzle that’s as close to ‘standard’ difficulty as any.

    Some delay at the last with APPETITE and WIDESPREAD (I’d echo Mark’s questioning of the def. for the latter – something which really was a barrier to solving on this occasion).

    1a naturally had me desperately hoping to see TIP in one of the 3-letter lights so that I could bring back One Across Rock with a heavy twist of 70s Moog, but no luck …

    I love kororareka’s throwaway “don’t neglect antelopes”. Absolutely. I didn’t get where I am today by neglecting antelopes.

    1. Chicory tip played live at the dance following our village fete in about 1972. The DJ was local resident Noel Edmonds.
      1. Blimey! That’s my whole childhood right there. Frankly, Penfold, after a night like that, everything else must seem like a sea of endless grey. I think Son of My Father was the first ‘proper’ pop song I ever learnt the lyrics to (it wasn’t hard). I was browsing Chicory Tip’s Wiki earlier and discovered that song was written and first recorded by Georgio (Electric Dreams) Moroder, in Italian, as Tu sei mio padre. Who knew?
        1. The evening was just the icing on the cake. At the fete itself Tony Blackburn, Stuart Henry (Hendrie?) and one Elton John were signing autographs.

          I’ve never learned the lyrics to Son of my Father. Some are pretty indistinct to be honest. I usually* sing something like “Son of my father, fooling I was fooling I was free from dry, son of my father, a mastic in the plastic of sadistic vibe…”.

          Is that pretty close?

          *approximately every ten years when it comes on the radio.

          1. Good grief, your village fete was a sort of poptastic Woodstock, then.

            I always liked Stuart Henry, and didn’t realise he had MS till near the end of his career.

            When I say I “learnt the lyrics” to Son of my Father, I meant that I learnt what my big sister told me were the words, which, having just Googled the original, turn out to be a lot closer to your version than Georgio Moroder’s. I prefer yours.

  12. 21 min, with no need to go to on-line assistance. An enjoyable start to the week, with just enough uh-oh.
  14. 16:50 but with an error at 19. I could make cut down = fell but didn’t know the animal skin meaning so I went with peel for skin in the vain hope that cut down animal was an instruction to insert a part-word. Surely there’s an antelope called an epeel or a peelu?

    COD inferior

    1. At the last census there was indeed an antelope called Peelu “Dik-Dik” Elphinstone, but he was listed as “living in a tent” and his present whereabouts are unknown.
    1. Thank you for that. I haven’t seen the expression used here in OZ but I have to admit an aversion to shopping (having witnessed the great Florentine checkout massacre of ’07).
  16. I thought the blog more original and entertaining than the puzzle which certainly had its fair share of clichés. Can’t be bothered to moan about the homophone. No other real queries. 20 minutes to solve.

    If you haven’t done last Saturday’s puzzle do have a go. It is real tricky little beast.

  17. Pretty standard fare for a Monday, which I did in about 20-25 minutes. And that in spite of having the 2 cricket references fly right past me without notice. In fact, there’s a whole lot here I didn’t know, e.g. Boult, oryx, rag=prank, bag=shopper, yellowback. I also don’t think I have heard ‘all very well’ used that way. Is this the same expression as ‘very well’ or ‘very well, then’?
    I echo Jimbo’s comment about the Saturday cryptic, except to say that to me it wasn’t a little beast, but a great big nasty bear I had to carry around all day to finish, and my last two entries were guesses and may be wrong, all very well.
    1. Usually followed by …but. Means “What you say may be true, but you have missed the main point.”
      1. Thank you rosselliot. It’s now clear that I haven’t heard that before. Appreciate the help.
  18. About 12 hours start to finish including 2 hours for the jumbo (despite promising myself not to), chores, meals, feeding cat etc. As it was a prize puzzle I decided to submit as I figured never would there be a better chance to win something, only to find out that Peter completed in “over 20 minutes”. Me too, 11 hours 40 minutes over 20 minutes.
  19. Still probably a good choice for sending in – the odds may be reduced from 5 in 5000 (the reputed rough average entry last time I heard a number given) to 5 in 1000 or so …
  20. @ Kevin from Gotham: “All very well” is not exclusively UK. See this Updike quote.
    Since we’re showing off about FELL, I’ll mention that it’s easy for German-speakers! As for the GM Hopkins sonnet, I’ve never understood “fell” in that context to mean skin — I’d just taken it as a noun from the adjective meaning “dire, ominous, etc”.
    I, too, decided to send in Saturday’s puzzle (oops: that 5/1,001 now … & falling). We’ll be discussing it soon, I suppose, but there’s a rather nice link between one of today’s clues & one of Saturday’s. More when the embargo is lifted.

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