Times 24312 “Not worth a pitcher of warm…er…seepage…..

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 44 minutes

Music: Schubert Piano Pieces, Wilhelm Kempff

Well, I’d clamped the record to the turntable, poured myself an iced tea, selected a sharp pencil, and settled down….arrrrgh! This is a toughie! No answers at all for about eight minutes. Blogger’s nerves, perhaps? Then my brain started to work, but slowly at first.

Even after I finished, I had to check a couple of points, since I had never heard of David Lean or Baloo the bear. However, I was at least reasonably confident that I had not made any serious blunders, except for one answer which I am still wondering about.

I thought this was a very high-quality puzzle, one of the best I have blogged in my brief tenure on this site.

Across
5 POTASH, POT + ASH. An old chestnut, but well disguised by secondary definitions for both ‘pot’ and ‘ash’..
8 HULLABALOO, HULL + A BALOO. This would have been much easier if I had heard of Baloo, but Kipling was never my strong suit.
10 MOUNTAIN SORREL, anagram of ‘RUE IS NOT NORMAL’. I was expecting a much more obscure plant..
13 SIX PACK, S (IX P) ACK. Not hard if you know the wine, but requires a bit of separation.
15 SEEPAGE, V = VIDE = SEE, P = PAGE. I admit, I kept thinking of Garner’s mot while contemplating this one.
18 EVESHAM, EVE + SHAM. Not hard, but if you take ‘in garden simulated’ as going together you will get into difficulties.
21 HOLDING THE FORT, HOLDING THEF(OR)T. OK, I finally found the cryptic of this just now. Nor a particularly strong one, I think, ‘holding’ appears in both the literal and the cryptic.
22 INKY, IN + KY. This should have been very obvious to me, I was chagrinned when I got it after 20 minutes. I had tried to put something inside KY, which is not it at all.
23 HAVE IN MIND, HAVE(I)N + MIND. Not terribly deceptive, solved early on. TEND = MIND gives it away.
24 HEAR HEAR. HE(A)R = ‘impressed by HER, A’. What the bird is doing I am not sure, but somehow two instances of ‘hear’ are produced. I cannot think of any bird that sounds like ‘hear’, but you never know what dreadful homonym they might offer up. Or maybe I’m completely wrong, and the answer is something else entirely. My bewilderment comes to an end, it’s HE(A RHEA)R. Thanks, rosselliot!
 
Down
1 SCHEMES, S(CHE)MES. I wasted a lot of time with ‘red’ and ‘get’ backwards before discovering our old friend Che in a messed-up mess.
2 TOLPUDDLE, T[ried]O[rganizing]L[abourers] + PUDDLE. A masterly clue, that requires a bit of historical knowledge. Curiously, I thought of the Tolpuddle Martyrs right away before seeing how the cryptic worked. Having read E.P Thompson’s ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ would help here.
3 PLASTIC, PL(ASTI)C. A witty clue, but nothing to do with ‘tick’ in the sense of credit as I had theorized early on.
4 READIER, READ(I)ER. Not hard once you grasp that ‘reader’ = ‘book’. I was looking for one of books of the Bible, so got held up.
5 PROKOFIEV, PRO + K([s]OF[t])IEV. My first in, obvious to me, but maybe hard for others. The cryptic provided guidance as to which spelling to use.
6 TIDE RIP, T(IDE)RIP. Difficult because ‘disturbed’ is almost always an anagram indicator, so you want ‘sea’ to be the anagrind. But no, that’s the literal.
7 SHELLAC, SHELL + A[cryli]C. A good variation on a chestnut, clueing ‘shell’ as a boat.
12 ANGUISHED, ANGU(I)S + HE’D. I did not know the geographical meaning of Angus, but this was obvious enough once I had the ‘g’ from ‘seepage’ – which didn’t happen for quite a while.
14 APHRODITE, anagram of ‘PIE, HARD TO’. A classic lift and separate. I wasted some time looking for an anagram of ‘apple pie, h’, before considering the Judgement of Paris as a possible factor.
16 ENHANCE, [m]EN + [c]HANCE. A witty clue that I understood immediately, but still could not get the answer for quite a while.
17 PALMYRA, PAL + anagram of ARMY. My last in, because I had supposed ‘army base’ = ‘y’, i.e. the last letter of ‘army’ Not so!
18 EXTREME, EX + [pennan]T + REME, these being the Royal Electical and Mechanical Engineers. It’s a good thing we’ve had them before.
19 ELEANOR, E + LEAN + OR. I had never heard of David Lean, but I had heard of Eleanor of Aquitaine, so in she went
20 MATADOR. M(A TAD)OR, where ‘mor’ is ‘Rom’ backwards.

41 comments on “Times 24312 “Not worth a pitcher of warm…er…seepage…..”

  1. 22 minutes here, also a slog, and my last in was TOLPUDDLE, after scratching my head through the anagram to get MOUNTAIN SORREL. Some regular cryptic tricks that I missed on a first read through (SACK and CHE for example). I did enjoy 13, 15, and 14. EVESHAM from wordplay, MATADOR from definition without getting the full wordplay.
  2. 16 min. After a slow start, there seemed to be an ah-ha! moment when I synchronised with the setters way of thinking, and things just flew along with many going in without fully understanding the word play. Stalled at the last word (INKY), and was about to go to the aids in despair when I remembered that the bluegrass state was Kentucky, not Kansas (idiot!). A hugely enjoyable start to the week. Thank you setter. COD, a toss-up between ELEANOR and SIX PACK.
  4. I found it a reasonably straightforward 30 min solve, in a befuddled state. I also was puzzled by HEAR HEAR, until I eventually wrote it in (my last in) and then saw it immediately. Let that be a lesson. Also held up by getting 1d straight of the bat and writing it in at 7d. (I must have been befuddled.) That error did enable me to get POTASH quickly, and to see that 10ac was an anagram (ending in M), but I couldn’t think of any animal ??H?. My favourites were the three across clues in a row 13, 15 & 18 (the latter for it’s “woman in garden”). I was a bit disappointed that PALMYRA wasn’t defined as “Perth suburb”, but that may have been a bit obscure for our UK solvers.

    And congratulations to the England cricket team for a well deserved win. If the win leads to a stronger pound then Australia’s loss won’t have been in vain.

  5. Yep, a bit of a slog here too this morning. Just about got it done in 26 mins. (Something I’ve noticed is that I tend to slow up on puzzles that have lots of 7-letter answers; though I have no idea why!) Liked some of the well-hidden bits: “body” for HULL and “boat” for SHELL; plus the neatness of TOLPUDDLE and PROKOFIEV. As to 21, could it not be parsed as follows: “stopping” => HOLDING; hence HOLDING THEFT with OR inserted (indicated by “engaged in”)?
  6. 17 mins, struggled to remember PALMYRA at the end. Very entertaining start to the week, I choose 15A SEEPAGE as COD for the very neat ‘reverse’ use of the abbreviations.

    Tom B.

  7. I thought I was going to achieve my 30 minute target today but it was not to be due to a hold up in the SW corner and I missed it by 2 minutes.

    I might have solved 15a sooner if I had not been distracted by thoughts of VEEPEE which I had never met before it came up here last week. I know it’s a letter short but that didn’t prevent it getting into my brain and sitting there. And that “leak” could have been cluing its second syllable didn’t help matters.

    If 17dn is explained as blogged, what’s the anagram indicator? I had assumed that MYRA must be a famous army base. There seems to have been a lot of military activity there in olden times but I haven’t been able to make a direct connection.

    2. I meant also to query 20dn which I think is TAD inside ROAM (rev), “gypsy” being used as a verb in this instance.
      1. I’m taking it the blog is right. Carmen, for one is always chatting on about her “Rom” — Romany husband. At least that’s how I remember from reading it. (Read-Only Memory)?
  8. Just pipped my 9am deadline but 2 hours of hard labour. Depressed by all the above times.
    Some easy clues here but finding them among the toughies was something else.
    Last in was PLASTIC which would have been COD but for the delightful SEEPAGE (I confess, not being much for Latin, that my thinking was Vatican for V, as in Holy See).
    Much sweat but much appreciation for a marvellous puzzle.
    PS Vinyl1
    David Lean was born in my home town and my much frequented local cinema is called after him.
  9. 9:35 – saw mountain sorrel as a possibility, but being botanically weak, waited for checkers just in case there was something else. Minor delay from hasty entry of PALERMO for 17.

    Thought Baloo would be known from Disney if not Kilpling.

  10. 13:31 here. I looked at about half the clues before finding one I could solve – SHELLAC was the first one in – but then The grid filled itself steadily as more crossing letters went in. COD PLASTIC, as I don’t think I’ve seen PLC=company before, and was trying to work TIC(k) into the clue for a while.
  11. I found this entertaining and of moderate difficulty. Fortunately, there was a lot of cricket on the back pages today. I needed most of those white shirts to work out the anagram of Mountain Sorrel. There were a lot of old friends to help out with the trickier wordplay: Che, asti, rhea and Lean. I’m disappointed that Che is downgraded today from revolutionary to insurgent. Last in was Eleanor. I knew the director almost certainly had to be Lean but, on the crosschecking market town, I clung stubbornly to Downham for too long.

    I did not know that Rom was the singular of Roma. Also I have never heard of a Tide Rip but it seems to be similar to the more familiar riptide.

    1. It came up some time in the past year in the Times,ST or Jumbo and caught me out, so I didn’t have to worry about it today.
  12. Whenever everyone else thinks it’s hard, I find it easy – and vice versa.

    Lennyco, it’s good to hear there are some advantages to all this cricket we have to endure every summer.

  13. About 30 mins for me today. As linxit above, I don’t recall seeing PLC = company before today.
  14. I made good headway until the end, when I got stuck on 17 and 22. Then I thought of inky as I walked to my car, and took a stab at PALMYRA since it sounded familar (it’s also a tree). 25 minutes altogether.
    ROM/gypsy is very familar to Listener solvers; it’s always coming up.
  15. 44:30 before resorting to aids to get PALMYRA, which rings a vague bell, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have got it no matter how long I looked. I hadn’t twigged that TV system was going to be PAL (although I have seen that before) or that base could be an anagram indicator.

    Started with POTASH, and the RHS followed from there quite quickly, but then much slower down the left.

    COD SEEPAGE.

    1. Despite mctest’s suggestion further up the page I still don’t get this. Can somebody please explain it to me in very simple terms?
      1. One of the definitions given for base in dictionary.com is: ‘debased or counterfeit’.

        I don’t think anyone would be complaining about counterfeit being used as an anagram indicator, so I guess that makes base OK too.

        1. Thanks, Dave, I guess that’s so but I have no recollection of ever having met “base” before, nor “counterfeit” for that matter.
  16. 21:47 for a very inventive puzzle. The Times has been on good form lately. Top marks to SEEPAGE, APHRODITE, HULLABALOO, INKY.

    First in DEER, last in ANGUISHED.

    Personally, I was hugely grateful to the cricketers and the TMS team who kept my mind off Hurricane Bill as it came to visit yesterday. We live yards from the Atlantic ocean, which was joining in the cricketing spirit by hurling rocks, Flintoff-like, at our house. Quite a lot of late swing, I noticed. The downside of oceanfront living on the eastern seaboard.

    COD 15a SEEPAGE

  17. 18:12, nice puzzle. I’m not sure if I like Kipling as I’ve never kippled, but I do like Dickens, having been to several.

    COD six-pack.

    1. Ronnie Scott, being interrupted during an intro by a waitress dropping a tray:-
      “That’s Susie – I asked her the other day if she liked Dickens and she said she didn’t know ‘cos she’d never been to any”.
      That was in the 60s tho’but.
  18. Just over 8 minutes but one mistake. HULLABALLO anyone?
    I could say it was just a typo but I just got carried away by the LL’s.
    Apart from that PAL= TV system was unfamiliar (what is it??) and I guess I would have struggled with PROKOFIEV without the V , which of course made it a giveaway.I just had to hazard SEEPAGE from the wordplay. All in all a good solve only spoiled by making a balos of 8.
    1. PAL is the colour TV system used in Europe – stands for phase alternation line.
      1. Thanks Jimbo , still means nothing to me. I got left behind about when there was a knob you swithched to go from 405 lines to that new-fangled 625 lines or whatever number it was
        1. Actuallyl PAL is not used everywhere in Europe. In France (and French speaking countries generally) they use a system called SECAM (and in the US it’s NTSC which would be a challenge to work into any wordplay).
  19. SEEPAGE – of course I meant I had to hazard at this form the definition as the wordplay escaped me. That’s two mistakes today.
  20. 20 minutes today for what I found reasonably straightforward.

    TOLPUDDLE is excellent as the Loveless brothers and their mates were transported to Australia. The village is worth a visit if you’re ever in Dorset.

    For overseas solvers EVESHAM is a market town in Worcestershire famous for the battle that saw the demise of Simon de Montefort around 1260 I think.

  21. Don’t have a time as I started this last night but had to set it aside, and finished this morning. As an estimate, around 40 minutes all told, but that’s very rough. Harder than average, I’d say. First in SHELLAC, last MATADOR. Didn’t know PAL system, EVESHAM, the bear, Lean, had to work around those. I had somewhere heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, but can’t say where. COD: PLASTIC, unexpected. Regards all.
  22. Have begun to indoctrinate 11-yr old granddaughter into joys of cryptic, proud to say I solved and explained it all much as the amended blog, and inside 30 mins. Her COD was six-pack because she solved it with a bit of coaching about Roman numbers and the finding of the P, her first. Lovely classic puzzle.

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