Times 24503 – Where are Muckram Wakes when you need them?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 53 minutes

Music: Elgar, Enigma Variations, Previn/LSO

Some solvers may find this a bit tricky. Very specific general knowledge, and a good vocabulary, will come in most handy.

I was slowed down at the end by one that was almost too obvious to blog, extending my time by about eight minutes. That is, unfortunately, an established solving pattern with me, and explains why my times will never approach the better solvers. However, I am confident my solution is complete and correct, although I have a few questions about the interpretation of some of the clues.

Newcomers are reminded that obvious answers are not blogged, so don’t be afraid to ask. There are not many obvious ones in this puzzle.

Across
1 MISSTEP, MISS[issippi] + T[ougher] E[conomic] P[olicy]. ‘MISS’ is from the older set of state abbreviations, which were used before the two-letter ones were introduced in the sixties.
5 VINEGAR, anagram of GIVEN + AR[gon]. The hard part here is to understand the literal, which I am unable to explain. If you get the crossing letters, you shouldn’t need either one, it’s the only English word that fits.
9 SOBRIQUET, SO + BRIQUET, not hard if you spot ‘handle’ = ‘name’. Everyone should have learned this word from its appearance a few months ago, so no excuses taken.
10 MANON, MAN(0[ffenbach])N. An opera by Massenet, the only one of his that is still regularly performed. I don’t think too many solvers can cite many operas by Offenbach, although there are 99 of them! Let’s not give the setters any ideas.
12 SECOND ROW, S[port] + anagram of ONCE + WORD backwards.
13 CIRCUMSPECTLY, anagram of CRYPTIC CLUES + M, traditionally the leader of MI5.
17 CONSIDERATION, double definition, and not a very hard one.
21 ONSLAUGHT, anagram of LOUTS HANG.
24 NUBIA, A1 BUN backwards.
25 YAHOO, HAY backwards + OO. A nice surface, hard to get a handle on for a bit.
26 BRIMSTONE, anagram of MOST inside BRINE. The problem here is that the experienced solver automatically substitutes ‘S’ for ‘sulphur’, and there is an ‘S’ in the crossing letters.
27 SOLIDUS, double definition. A Roman coin, and a vaguely-remembered term for a particular mark of punctuation, a forward stroke.
28 GLOSSOP, GLOSS + OP. Not hard if you recognize the place.
 
Down
1 MISERY, MISERLY – L (= pound). I struggled with this as my last in, before grasping that ‘like Scrooge’ != ‘miser’, but = ‘miserly’. I would suppose that ‘a misery’ is some sort of slang term for a gloomy Gus.
2 SUBDEACON, anagram of ABUSED + CON.
3 TRIMMER, a witty triple definition. A ‘trimmer’ is a kind of capacitor, ‘trimmer’ is ‘in better order’, and the Vicar of Bray was a ‘trimmer’ in the 17th/18th century political sense, probably from a nautical metaphor.
4 PLUM SAUCE, sounds like ‘PLUMB’ (= ‘sound’, as in measure the depth of a channel), + SAUCE = brass = effrontery. Much easier to put it in from the literal!
5 VATIC, VATIC[an]. This inkhorn term for ‘prophetic’ is from the Latin; the corresponding Greek word yields ‘mantic’.
6 NOMINEE, NO MINE + E[uropean].
7 GONER, G + RENO backwards.
8 RUNAWAYS, RUN (= ‘ladder’ in a stocking) + A[l]WAYS.
14 STARTLING, STAR(T)LING. I understood the cryptic, but I did not think there was any bird ending in ‘ing’. Then I saw it.
16 ACRONYMS, anagram of MAY SCORN, where ‘engineer’ tell you what to do with the anagrind.
22 SAHEL, S(A)HE + L. This may well pass for a bit of native attire, but is actually a geographic belt, not one worn by Nigerians or such.
23 GIBUS, GI + BUS. A folding top hat, just what every gent needs nowadays. Most solvers will have to get it from the cryptic.

33 comments on “Times 24503 – Where are Muckram Wakes when you need them?”

  1. Yeh, hard on the GK and vocab. Had to fluke TRIMMER and VATIC, making the top pretty hard. 36 minutes.
    The literal on VINEGAR: It’s Jack and Jill (the nursery rhyme). “He went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper”. Not recommended.
    1. I didn’t know the Jack and Jill reference–never got past the first verse–but I did finally recall the scene in Dickens’s ‘Our Mutual Friend’ where Jenny Wren applies vinegar and brown paper to Fledgeby’s back, which has been beaten black and blue by Alfred Lammle. Squeers, too, makes use of it in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’.
  2. Now I look it up, there’s an alternative:
    “To Old Dame Dob who patched his nob
    With vinegar and brown paper”.
    Definitely not recommended.
  3. 14:55 for this, so not easy! Top half, esp NE corner, was the hardest. Entered without full wordplay understanding: 5, 12, 3, 4, 7, 8. New or forgotten words: VATIC, TRIMMER as capacitor, TENEBROUS at 15 (though I remembered Tenebrae as an evening service. Knew GIBUS, SAHEL, GLOSSOP, SOLIDUS, and (19) IONESCO.

    I don’t think you could really object to Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld being used – it includes the best-known can-can music. I can also remember La Belle Helene for some reason without looking him up. I should also have remembered The Tales of Hoffman and La Vie Parisienne, now that I have.

    Never quite sure whether solidus = stroke is related to solidus = the old British shilling (as in Librae, solidi, denarii = LSD), associated with a stroke in notation like 10/6 = 10 shillings and six pence.

    Minor correction: ACRONYMS is 16 rather than 18.

    1. According to the derivation of the word in Chambers, the stroke is derived from the lengthened letter “s” used as an abbreviation for solidus, or shilling. So 10/6d = 10s 6d

      Harry Shipley

  4. Yes a tricky start to the week. 58 minutes. Interestingly your last in was my first in… discovered new words today at GIBUS and TENEBROUS both got from cryptic..Solidus was a word i had forgotten and shoved it in before seeing here that it was a forward stroke… Quite liked Nubia and Sobriquet…we had consideration in a jumbo quite recently…

    well thats the hardest part of the day over!

  5. I’m glad it wasn’t just me that found this on the tricky side.

    MISERY and RHEUM went in straight away, both something of a gift I thought, but I was unable to build on them and had to look elsewhere. TAKE UP and ONSLAUGHT went in next, again quite easily, but by then it had begun to dawn on me that there were a lot of references or words that I just didn’t know and after that it was a slow struggle to get through it.

    Eventually I completed the puzzle in 65 minutes having stopped along the way to check a few of the answers I had worked out but didn’t know or failed to recognise. These were: MANON, GIBUS, NUBIA, SOLIDUS, SAHEL, VATIC, TRIMMER (as capacitor) and TENEBROUS.

    Not a confidence builder.

    1. But I did know MANON and TRIMMER Most puzzles I get fairly readily albeit with aids for two or three and sometimes they just throw me. It’s refreshing to realize how little I actually know and not beat myself up for it. I’m glad I’ve joined the club
      and found this blog. RHEUM and MISERY were quite fun. When I hear or see RHEUM
      I invariably think of Peter Sellers as Clouseau. SECOMBE came readily the other day
      as I’ve always been a Goons fan.
  6. 20 minutes, give or take a few seconds, so quite pleased. Quite how anyone could arrive at RHEUM without thinking immediately of Peter Sellers, who would always have a berm in his, I don’t know: perhaps thinking of such things is a luxury I must forgeau to get quicker.
    Didn’t know GIBUS (I see spell checker doesn’t know it either) and slowed down considerably by unforced errors in top and bottom right, transposing vowels for no good reason in GONER and NUBIA. Spent ages trying to make ?i?e/UP mean anything to do with the clue at 20d. Like others, I only knew SOLIDUS from the coin, and expected SOBRIQUET to need another U. Favourite today, back to the beloved Inspector.
  7. An irritating puzzle as far I’m concerned. Difficulty through cleverness I admire. Difficulty through obscurity I dislike – and there is far too much obscurity in this.

    Just look at the list of entries already entered in the blog of words or meanings of words that solvers don’t know. 27A is a typical example. SOLIDUS is hardly in everyday conversation. If you know its a / do you also know its an obscure Roman coin? And no wordplay to help the solver – a very poor clue in my opinion. Add in very little imagination demonstrated in the rest of it and overall its a weak offering.

    1. We were taught this in primary school when learning £sd, the meanings of the symbols and those that separated them. But that was on Merseyside in the 1950s: a bastion of culture! I have now started a campaign to get Australian broadcasters to say “solidus” in place of the extremely ugly “forward slash”. That’s my 2/- worth.

      1. Interesting. My primary school was in Brixton, South London and we also learned such things (the / not the coin). But then kids were given an all round education in those days. My grandchildren have been processed to pass dumbed down examinations with little effort to broaden their horizons. Try as I might I can’t get any of them interested in crosswords – too difficult and not interactive!

        Good luck with the campaign. I’d settle for ours speaking proper English.

        1. > I’d settle for ours speaking proper English.
          Well said!

          Now you have to teach them the difference between “its” and “it’s”.
          Enough grammar lessons. -Ed.

          1. I’d be happy if they just called it slash; the “forward” seems to have entered the vocabulary to distinguish it from the backward slash (aka slosh), which already has the “backward” to do that. Actually, I’d be happier if they didn’t read out URL’s at all.
  8. Ouch. I agree a touch over-obscure. Took me about as long as the Good Friday one (a little over an hour)with nothing like the satisfaction that one gave. No crucifying jokes.
  9. Agreed. Almost as hard as Friday’s without the panache and with too many obscure words. I finished in the NW with sobriquet, which I usually spell as soubriquet and the never heard of plum sauce.

    Trimmer, always reminds me of the dodgy character in Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy who’s sobriquet reflected the fact that he was a former barber.

    I can add one more Offenbach opera to the above list. I saw La Périchole at Sydney Opera House. There were me and 1000 or so Japanese ladies in the audience. I think their husbands were on an alternative tour of Sydney nightlife.

  10. 10:35 here, which didn’t feel too bad given that it seemed quite tricky. I was stupidly misled by WORKSOP at 28ac, even though I was sure it was in Nottinghamshire, which wasted a little time. Wrote in 5ac understanding the wordplay but not the rest of it, like vinyl1
  11. I also found myself challenged by the vocabulary, but hey, that’s part of the fun of crosswords. I shall no longer struggle when pointing out one of those collapsible top hat thingys; I can just say, “Oo, look, a gibus”, secure in the knowledge that nobody in earshot will understand what I’m talking about. COD to SECOND ROW, with RUNAWAYS a close second.
    1. P.S. I meant to say that I only knew the Vicar of Bray as a tune I use to belt (not sahel) out on the recorder until today. Talk about a potted history of 17th century Britain. You could write a thesis on it.
  12. I, too, found this tricky. Though I made a fairly quick start, getting VATIC, MANON, RHEUM and MISERY straight away, I was far slower in the lower half and ran to 50 minutes, making guesses at GIBUS and SAHEL (which I couldn’t even confirm later in Chambers, though ‘Sahelian’ is there). I’ve never come across plum sauce, so that too was an oddity for me, and GLOSSOP came only when I had the G from 14.
    I suppose some people pronounce ROOM and RHEUM similarly, but not I. That’s an observation, not a criticism, since Chambers allows for the similarity.
  13. Thanks for the detailed blog vinyl1 that filled in the gaps in my understanding of VINEGAR and SECOND ROW. I fell six short today, but was pleased to get that far after a ponderous start. First in was CONSIDERATION – which reminded me of Saturday’s fantastic “Showing consideration” clue – followed by ONSLAUGHT and ACRONYMS. Got GIBUS from wordplay and SOLIDUS from S???D?S. New words were NUBIA, MANON (got from wordplay) and TENEBROUS. Couldn’t for the life of me get CIRCUMSPECTLY. At one point I doubted I had the correct anagram letters because a 13-letter word with only four vowels seemed unlikely. NOMINEE raised a smile
  14. I enjoyed it, a puzzle that needed broad knowledge rather than convoluted word play. Only VATIC and SAHEL were really new. Having served my time editing manuscripts for the printer I knew SOLIDUS (and its stablemate OBELUS which crops up from time to time as well). Along those lines, what do we call “@”? I think we ought to adopt the French AROBASE! That would sort some out!

    Harry Shipley

    1. I call it an “at” sign – I think it is at like & is and. Back in business today. Did not time as constant interruptions, felt medium paced. Started well with 13 and 17, last in vatic, vaguely recall meeting it before but dic-checked before writing it in. Rheum/room a dodgy homo for me, rheumy/roomy match better. Other gk not a prob, remember grandfather demonstrating his gibus.
  15. Regards all. About an hour, but gave up on the crossing SOLIDUS/GIBUS pair and used the computer to finish. Didn’t know either word, and to exhibit my poor (although I didn’t previously think so) vocabulary, both those were absolutely new to me, as were VATIC, TENEBROUS, GLOSSOP, SAHEL, MANON. But I did know IONESCO! The whole VINEGAR business went right over my head, and I solved it as vinyl suggested: it’s the only word that fit. I agree there’s a tad more obscurity here than necessary, but I did like ACRONYMS. Best to all.
  16. This seems to have struck a number of people. I remember Ricard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman on Countdown, discussing email addresses in their early days, and Richard asking Carol “Have you got a forward slash in yours?”.
  17. Hello. Two items please. First, this crossword is mis-numbered in the Archive and its number is 24503 and not 22503. Second, with regard to the literal facet of 9 across: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Up Jack got, and home did trot as fast as he could caper; he went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.” U.K. nursery rhyme. Vinegar and brown paper was a former remedy for bruises.

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