Times 24348 – Live from the Kemble, it’s the Sardonic Rumpus!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 28 minutes

Music: Wagner Orchestral Excerpts, Furtwangler

This one should have been easy, but I had two wrong entries for a while and mis-wrote a correct entry, causing considerable difficulties in getting the last six clues. At least I was off to a fast start, getting most of it in ten minutes. We should see good times from the usual crew.

The quality of the puzzle was good for an easy one. The clues are not chestnuts, but they can be quickly solved, and the vocaulary is far from esoteric.

Across
1 SARDONIC, S(A RD)ONIC. My first in, saw it right away. I like to do 1 across first, sometimes wasting a lot of time on it.
5 RUMPUS, RUM PUS[S]. Straightforward, but necessary.
10 IN THIS DAY AND AGE, anagram of A DEATH DYING IS AN. Wrong letters going down kept me from seeing this.
12 AEROSOL. LO + SORE + A backwards, literal somewhat concealed.
13 ESPRESSO, ES + PRESS + O. Newly constructed from standard components, I believe.
15 ESSEN, ESSEN[CE]. Those who expect ‘church’ = CH may be held up here.
20 EVENTUAL, EVENT + U[nder] + A[rc] + L[lights]. Moderately deceptive, good enough to stump me for a while.
23 ALGERIA, anagram of REGALIA. I carelessly put in ‘Nigeria’ without bothering to count out the letters, then got ‘retailer’ and saw my error.
26 LIVING DAYLIGHTS, LIVING(DAYLIGHT)S. Rather laboured, but not very difficult for me.
 
Down
1 SKIMPY, SK(IMP)Y. For a long while I thought blue = ‘sad’, then I saw it and put it in, but not correctly. When letters are already present, I tend to write them anyway, leaving me with ‘skiimy’. Eventually caught and fixed.
2 RETROUSSE, anagram of E TROUSERS, the only slightly recherche element of vocabulary in this one.
3 OLIVIER, OLIV(I)ER. Difficult for me because not my topic, I suppose there must be a theatre named after the famous actor.
6 UNNERVE, [g]UNNE[r] + [o]VE[r]. Nice construction, but the literal gives it away. A tougher setter would have hidden that somehow.
7 PRAYS, homonym of PRAISE. I had PLEAS, homonym of PLEASE, for a long time before I realized 10 across was an anagram and there was only one ‘E’ in it.
9 SYCAMORE, sounds like SICKER on MOOR. Not hard because we just had almost the same thing, which the editor should have caught.
14 STEWARDS, S(DRAW)ETS upside down. My last in, got from the literal. I had to figure out the cryptic for this blog.
21 TESTIER, TEST(I)ER. ‘Tester’ is also 18th-century slang for a sixpence, which might stump more solvers.
22 EDISON, NO SIDE upside down. Might have been hard if Edison were not the first inventor almost everyone would think of.

30 comments on “Times 24348 – Live from the Kemble, it’s the Sardonic Rumpus!”

  1. I was completely messed up by reckoning “The french art crowd love a drink” to obviously be lemonade (the french art crowd, le monde; love “a” meaning insert “a”; definition = drink).

    But I got there in the end in about 30 mins.

  2. Almost exactly the same time: 29 mins. Had to check the ecclesiastical meaning of “living” at 26ac. Got a bit miffed by the “its” in 28ac and “his” in 22dn, as the habitat and the humility aren’t confined to the reptile or the inventor respectively. Similar feelings about “such a” in 1ac. COD to ESPRESSO — a well-deserved exclamation mark.
  3. 22:07 .. Nice start to the week. I’m also impressed with Paulmcl’s wrong answer – genius.

    Favourite clues: the peeled gunners of 6d and the SPACESHIP at 16d, which detained me far longer than it should have done.

  4. About 30 minutes today. Most was completed in 20 but I had a slight delay getting going in the SE corner where for a while I only had DAYLIGHTS. UNNERVE at 6dn was the only one I didn’t fully understand whilst solving but it soon became clear when revisited.

    Vinyl1,the main auditorium at the (Royal) National Theatre is the Olivier.

  5. 8:47 – slow start, with 15 the first to fall. Pondered LEMONADE briefly at 13, but couldn’t see “love” as a container indicator. Same last answer as vinyl1, seen as a possibility before but not put in until wordplay understood.

    Don’t know whether its significant that the three central columns contain two DAYs and one EVE.

  6. Bottom half quite quick though took a while to figure RINGER for double. Pleased to get IN THIS DAY AND AGE with just the R from RETROUSSE (my first in perhaps due to a certain partiality). Horribly slow in top half, inexcusably not seeing RUMPUS for an age, being convinced that 4d finished DIN and, like vinyl1, of SAD for blue. Needed vinyl1 for explanation of STEWARDS and regrettably an aid to get AEROSOL.

    ES for French art is a trick I must remember.

    PB will be pleased with choice of music and pleased that I have this morning booked for a concert of Wagner lollipops at the South Bank (see Olivier) with Charles Mackerras and Christine Brewer.

  8. I thought for a moment I had picked up today’s Guardian and was doing the Rufus. Lots of DDs, easy charades and anagrams. In fact last Monday’s Rufus had the reverse of today’s 23 with Algeria being the fodder and Regalia being the answer. I was amused to see the setters’ favourite German town (sorry, city) here again today. Perhaps we should have a themed sloggers and betters event in Essen with everyone dressed as Omanis and drinking Asti.

    It took me a while to get the French art at 13, even though I have seen it before. Last in, in common with several other solvers, was Stewards. I parsed this correctly but it took me a while to get draw=form.

    No pressure today as I made a mistake on a 4-letter word on Saturday, so my all-correct count is reset to 1.

  9. About 20 mins, 14D STEWARDS was last in for me as well. I can’t see why ESSEN is described as a ‘town’ in 15A – it’s a very large city.

    Tom B.

  10. Another lemonade – early in till retrousse put it out and like others es took a long time to click; worked all round the edges, last in sycamore, aerosol (nice classic clue) espresso, stewards, olivier all in a rush of understanding.20 mins.
  11. Could somebody please explain why ‘French art’ = ‘es’?

    Am at a complete loss!!

        1. my goodness! I was going to ask the same thing.
          far too clever for me today, even tho I got it right, I didn’t understand it 🙁
  12. And the usual bad time from me; just under the hour. I put it down to listening to the radio and eating breakfast at the same time, so I was already multi-tasking. I was slow and then got stuck in the middle, which is unusual, since most puzzles don’t necessarily have a discernable middle. Is this one of the new patterns? Also not helped by not getting either 15 letter clue for ages. So, I’d chalk this one up as a victory to the setter and hope better times are just around the corner. COD to the SYCAMORE/ESPRESSO pair. Is it OK to nominate a homophone as COD?
  14. 10 minutes, and my last in was PRAYS of all things. Nothing too much of a hold up, pretty easy clues for the two long entries opened things right up. Also a lot of clues that could be gotten from definitions alone. Good one for beginners.
  15. 30 minutes, which seems about average on this site so far (discounting the speed merchants). I felt it should have been less because I made fairly quick progress initially but got stuck in the SE corner, partly because I rejected my early guess of TESTIER, not recognizing TESTER for “bed’s canopy”. ES for “French art” is becoming quite common, so ESPRESSO was the second clue I solved after RUMPUS. I wish I’d entered ESSEN immediately; it’s almost always the answer to a 5-letter German town. Initially I thought “feature: no church” indicated (CH)IN.

    Two clues struck me as neat enough to merit a tick on my sheet – 6 and 16, though there were plenty of good ones elsewhere.

  16. 15:15, nice gentle but entertaining start to the week.

    Like Vinyl1 I spotted French art = es straight away so no hold-ups with espresso and like others stewards was last in and I had no idea how it worked until coming here.

    I didn’t know that style was an alternative to stylus so that was a bit of a guess and although we’ve probably had tester before it didn’t come to mind so I didn’t know if what was needed was something like hissier or fussier until I eventually (ho ho) got eventual.

    COD to unnerve

  17. 5ac was a cinch for me. My strange looking cat was sitting next to me making her usual odd noises when I read the clue.So for me, 5ac has to be COD.
    My new word of the day is tester. Still got the answer even without knowing that this is a bed’s canopy.
    Time – ages but I completed it. Am definitely improving.
  18. 12.36. Took a long time to get 10 but steady progress until the crossing TESTIER and EVENTUAL. I didn’t know Tester so spent sometime looking at alternatives. Didn’t plump for it until I finally got 20 and the starting T.
    Nothing really difficult but enough ‘testers’ to prevent a quick time
  19. finished in about 30mins without aids, so about as good as it gets for me. first in retrousse last in eventual, cod 27 as it took a while to twig even with all the checking letters. french art was new and not understood.
  20. Well, 30 minutes for me also. First in INDIE, and IN THIS DAY AND AGE, together, and last entry was ESPRESSO; even though we’ve seen ‘es’ this way often before, it took me the whole time before it clicked. I’d been convinced the answer was to be a wine/cocktail type of alcoholic drink. I’ll also make ESPRESSO my COD. Didn’t know RETROUSSE. Other than that, mostly smooth sailing. Regards to everyone.
  21. Did 50% in about 15 minutes then sruggled i guess becasue i didnt get Rumpus for ages
    anyway around 50 minutes
    i liked it as a ahrd easy one if you know what i mean.
    also took a long time to see the long upper half across clue… got Skimpy while the x word was printing off so definitely a crossword of two halves
  22. Right up my ally, so finished in 13 min which must be my quickest in ages. Liked 28 ac TERRAPIN. Is this a novel construction? I don’t recall seeing it before. COD: 6 dn UNNERVE.
  23. Thanks very much for providing most of the answers, however I wonder why there were a few blanks e.g 4 and 8 Down and 27 and 28 Across, but thanks anyway !!

    PS: I am a friend of the compiler Roy Dean, and have clearly failed to impress him !!

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