Times 24533 – Och, there’s a moose in the hoose

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 40 odd minutes

Mostly the answers flowed straight from eye to pen, but I was eventually inordinately delayed in the SE corner and defeated in the SW by an elk. What more can I say?

Across
1 RAMSHACKLE = RAM SHACK + LoosE, with rickety the definition rather than an anagrind.
6 malAY A Hard-working = AYAH, a nursemaid/governess/grandmother/term of endearment etc in India.
8 CON for study [V for five] ERSE for language = CONVERSE. “Small number” seems to be one of those loose terms that can mean almost anything; here it’s in Latin.
9 OGRESS being R for river inside (GOES)* + Swim
10 PORT, a triple definition, Saint John being a port in New Brunswick, Canada. I’ll add that to my list.
11 Deliberately omitted. Ask the panel if stuck, or not. Whatever.
12 PUPPYHOOD, cryptic definition; the boxers being dogs of the same name.
14 P[School]ALM = PSALM
17 RAVE + throwN = RAVEN, as in Quoth the raven, “Nevermore”. Our favourite poet returns in a cameo performance.
19 OP for work, TOME for book + TRY for test = OPTOMETRY, or should that be OP-TOME for work-book. One of the ones which held me up, for no good reason that I can see.
22 CADAVEROUS = DAVE for fellow in CAR for saloon in conjunction with or meeting O for old, US for American.
23 ISLE = dIsSoLvEd. I’m presuming that’s “being” as in “something that exists”; it seems a fairly loose definition, but the answer was obvious enough.
24 WAPITI = A PIT for a bed inside W1 for Mayfair. I was totally undone by this one. The extent of my knowledge of London is restricted to a Monopoly board (and there it is on the west side! Does that apply in general?) and native Americans to Walt Disney. I’ve never heard a bed referred to as a pit, but the ODE has it as Brit. informal. I should have realized all these things before spending 10 minutes fruitlessly wracking my brains (an expression derived from the scene in the Wizard of Oz, where the scarecrow stuffs seaweed into his head in a vain attempt to increase his IQ).
25 INDOLENT = IN for during [DO for party] LENT for period of abstinence.
26 SCAN = S for son placed in front of CAN for prison.
27 E for European in FRIGHT for alarm, AGE for decline = FREIGHTAGE. Another one I couldn’t carry off with any semblance of aplomb.

Down
1 (PREPARE + Ideal Cakes)* = RICE PAPER. I thought rice paper was for nougat rather than cakes, but I’m no chef.
2 M for motorway, ANT for worker over (as in placed above) RAP for rebuke = MANTRAP
3 AIRTIGHT = AIR for for composition (as in plaintive) + TIGHT for “that’s difficult to obtain” (as in money’s tight).
4 KEEP A LOW PROFILE = (LIKE A FLOWER POPE)*
5 EPONYM = PONY for 25 quid inside thEM. Here’s a list. Nope, Adelaide‘s not on it, but it was named (or is that renamed?) after a consort. As for pony = £25, that’s the first word in my big book of useful things to bear in mind, entered circa 1971.
6 ARRIVISTE = IVIST for VISIT (stay) with the I brought forward (or up in this instance) inside (RARE)*.
7 Deliberately omitted, as their name shall never be mentioned in this household.
13 (PAINT DORE)* = PREDATION, “required to sustain a hobby“. Doré, as luck would have it, illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”. Only connect. My nomination for COD.
15 MAY BEETLE = MAYBE for possibly + vinE + (LET)* or alternatively, (LET)* + vinE, depending on how you interpret the “on”, which always means “placed after” except in down clues, where it can mean “placed on top of” (and hence before). Another one which held me up.
16 HOUSE-DOG = HOUSED for “given space” next to O.G. for “own goal”. An own goal is an egregious football (i.e. soccer) faux pas (for a full explanation see Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People). My last in (not counting 24ac which was left blank). I thought the dog was the howler, so couldn’t make sense of the rest. Toyed with moose-dog for a bit, ironically in view of 24. Even when I finally saw the light, I thought an og was some kind of football hooligan I’d not previously encountered, which isn’t far off the mark, because it can apparently stand for original gangsta.
18 ARAMAIC = A RICh around A M.A. for a degree.
20 TESS for Hardy character (as in of the D’Ubervilles) + ERA for long time = TESSERA, a tile. “Secure” is just a link word. Tess was my nemesis in high school and recently appeared on ABC telly, via the BBC. Cue She Was Poor But She Was Honest. Listen carefully and you’ll hear a reference to 10ac.
21 BELIE for “fail to justify” + Felon = BELIEF or conviction. Another which gave me more trouble than I could credit.

32 comments on “Times 24533 – Och, there’s a moose in the hoose”

  1. Glad I’m not the only one to blow a fast start. The top two thirds took about 10 min, but then the mud started to set. Eventually floundered out of the mire in 28 min. Last in HOUSE DOG which I couldn’t justify for quite some minutes. COD? Probably 22 ac CADAVEROUS.
  2. Not too hard. But still didn’t break the dreaded 10m barrier. (11m all up.) COD to PREDATION. If anyone happens to be visiting Witchcliffe (WA), I can show you where a pair of the Australian variety routinely hunt at dawn. The one illustrated by Mr K. is called a “hobby” because it likes to play table-top football!

  3. 70 minutes for this, getting the east done first and then having to cheat at 1ac to get over the finishing line. COD also to PREDATION, which raised a smile.

    My take on 23ac is that ‘being in the sea’ means ‘located in the sea’.

    Re 24ac, there used to be an Evangelical priest at Oxford who urged lazy UGs to ‘get out of their pits’ to make the early service. I think you mean ‘on the east side’ of the Monopoly board.

    1. No, it was definitely on the west side of my Monopoly board. Maybe I had the Australian version, or was always made to sit at the far end of the board by my older brother, who invariably ended up owning hotels in Mayfair.
        1. Yep, just as I thought. It’s upside down. Go was always in the top left corner when I played it.
  4. Scuppered by 24: threw in Waliti knowing it was wrong. Couldn’t get Wachiti outof my mind. Otherwise 22 minutes. Enjoyable run, no particularly outstanding sights or lights.
  5. Foxed by PREDATION, which I got from the anagram, and WAPITI which I didn’t. Thought the reference to hobby was a misdirection too far since predation sustains all animals of prey not just one type of falcon, though I seem likely to remain in curmudgeonly isolation on that. 33 mins to moment of surrender on WAPITI.
  6. Lost a lot of time thinking WATCH-DOG at 16dn, WACOTI at 24 and AT ANY EVENT at 11ac. The last one I actually wrote in quite early and only reviewed it at the very end when I was unable to solve 3dn. But there was a lot of really easy stuff here too so it was a disappointing start to my week.
  7. I do the crossword on-line in the office, and interruptions usually mean that my time is spread out over an hour or so. No interruptions and 16 mins today. WAPITI as a N American animal rang a sufficiently loud bell, though I couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

    By the way, not all own goals in soccer are howlers:-

    http://www.snopes.com/sports/soccer/barbados.asp

  8. I’m with Jack on AT ANY EVENT, making AIRTIGHT last in. It’s one of those phrases that sound perfectly OK but don’t turn up in references. I was once undone at Championship level by S?I? WITH THE TIDE where I dashed down SAIL as obvious. It’s SWIM. 12 minutes would have been today’s time but for a similar gaffe at 23 where I put ESSE (being) assuming the letters were somewhere in the mix, and forgot to check.
    Almost refused to enter ARSENAL because the cluing included the Lane, and because they didn’t do the decent thing and lose to Fulham yesterday.
    Favourite clue RAMSHACKLE made me chuckle
  9. Rice paper goes under coconut kisses and macaroons too, sort of cakes, but I think cakes there just for its useful initial letter. Wapiti seen in London Zoo so got from W1 enclosers. First in 6a and 4, last in 21/27 and 22. 7d first thought armoury but 11 rapidly changed my mind. 19m.
  10. It all started so well – I breezed through this in about 15 minutes until I was left with 13 and 24. I’d jotted down PREDATION from the obvious anagram early on but it took a couple more minutes to guess with some confidence that a hobby must be some kind of predatory creature. However 24 defeated me entirely. I had jotted down WACOTI and WALITI but even after 13 had gone in WALITI just didn’t sound right enough to bung in. I don’t know if I’d have gone for WAPITI if I’d thought of it but I didn’t.
    So a frustrating puzzle that was 96% easy but still defeated me.

  11. 8:36 – some quick solving but some mishaps too – wanted 16 to be GUARD-DOG from the def., and then WATCH-DOG, but soon saw the need for ????ED,O.G. so waited for the right version to come from checkers. Also briefly tempted by AMHARIC at 18D, but decided while writing it that it wasn’t quite right. A close neighbour pairing to remember, maybe.

    The positions of the properties on the London-based standard UK monopoly board bear no relation to their geographical location, but the ones in each colour group are mostly fairly close together (Old Kent and Whitechapel Roads excepted). Inevitably, someone has put a map together. (The jail, waterworks and electric company are just possible examples, and “Free Parking” is as absent as the Community Chest!).

    Dug up WAPITI from somewhere – after you’ve learned your fish for crossword purposes, deer and antelopes are worth knowing.

    1. I believe the common denominator of the orange properties is that they are (or at least were) major police stations
      1. An interesting theory – possibly connected with them being the properties you’re most likely to reach when leaving the jail square?
        1. A bit of research suggests that the Vine Street police station is now closed, the (Great) Marlborough Street police station and magistrates courts have been turned into a boutique hotel and the Bow Street police station and courts are about to suffer the same fate.
          So now on leaving jail Monopoly players will be put up in boutique hotels rather than police cells. A sign of the times.
    2. After trying in vain to think of an Indian tribe ending in -i, I finally remembered that animals are natives, too, and wapiti followed (almost) as the night the day. Reading Ogden Nash as a child helped, of course:
      Hipiti, hopity,
      There goes the wapiti
      Nash also produced the immortal
      If called by a panther,
      Don’t anther
  12. 15:40 here. I was on target for 7 minutes, but backed the wrong DOG and so was stuck for an age on CADAVEROUS, before seeing the light. Ho hum. Thanks for an excellent blog
  13. 15:40 here. I was on target for 7 minutes, but backed the wrong DOG and so was stuck for an age on CADAVEROUS, before seeing the light. Ho hum. Thanks for an excellent blog
  14. Apologies for the duplication. I feel like Fred Elliott in Coronation Street
  15. 19 minutes, raced through the top half and then had a bunch of ummms and aaahs on the bottom. Last in WAPITI, based on deciding PREDATION was the correct anagram, as usual expecting to come here and find out about PTERADION being a common household word.

    Apart from that, ARRIVISTE went in from definition, couldn’t make the wordplay in FREIGHTAGE work but it had to be that and toyed with the idea of a PAPER ICER being used in preparing a cake, based on Spoonerism of enumeration. Not a good brain moring!

  16. Almost finished it between Period 1(5B, Perfect Tense) and Period 3 (6B, Prose Composition), struggling with 27ac until I noticed that my final E of 15d had morphed into an L, which had suggested a word ending -FALL. Completed it quickly on return, so around 35 mins.

    CoD was 13d, especially as it stopped my moose being a WACOTI.

  17. Mostly very easy but like most others caught up in the bottom half for a while. Can’t mention The Gunners in this household either. It’s bad enough the wife supports Man U – but my cup runneth over today following Chelsea’s 8-0 stuffing of Wigan to clinch the main prize.

    You have my sympathy with Mayfair. There will be lots of UK residents who have no idea what the postcode is and “pit” for bed is hardly in common usage. Nothing really stood out today.

    1. Grumbling about the Mayfair postcode is surely an insult to the intelligence of “UK residents”. Everyone knows Mayfair is ultra-posh from Monopoly and you’d have to be a hermit not to know that of the 8 London postcodes you can reasonably expect to meet, that eliminates all but W1 and SW1. Here they are with the names that seem most likely to be used in clues:

      EC: The City (historical – now split into EC1/2/3/4)
      W1: Mayfair, Piccadilly, Soho
      N1: Islington
      NW1: Camden Town
      SW1: Buckingham Palace, Whitehall
      SE1: Southwark, Waterloo
      E1: Mile End, Whitechapel
      WC: Covent Garden, Bloomsbury (historical like EC)

      Of the eight listed, the first three must account for at least three quarters of postcode references.
      Postcodes in modern format have to include one or more digits, so even if you don’t have the London knowledge to nail these down instantly, the difficulty is actually about the same as choosing one of A/B/C/D/E/F/G for ‘note’, or N/E/W/S for ‘compass point’.

      If someone uses Muswell Hill (N10) in a clue for a word like ‘onion’, then you can complain!

  18. Went for wacoti at 24 and didn’t pay attention when entering predation thereby ending up with predatoon. I blame the after-effects of Leeds getting promoted.

    17 minutes but for that.

  19. About 25 minutes here, last 2 entries being ISLE, and AYAH. These should be easy, but my mind stuck on ‘being’=’esse’, and I struggled how to regularly make that work, and also on the common US crossword entry of ‘amah’ as an oriental nurse. Eventually followed the cryptic directions for both. ‘Hobby’ as some kind of predatory creature is new to me, but the anagram was clear. COD to BELIEF, quite succinct. Regards.
  20. hobby is a bird of prey and predation also defines as animals who feed on other animals

    Yours is a brilliant web-site by the way

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