Times 24,564 Nowt Gnarly

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

A largely straightforward puzzle with a mixture of good, mostly average and a couple of rather weak offerings. All offers on the parsing of 10A gratefully received, no doubt I’ll see it 5 minutes after I post this. Some real old stuff like She as novel and another obscure poet; a definition by example at 9D;I thought 18A AUDIT very good.

Across
1 PAUNCH – P(A)UNCH – Punch was a weekly satirical magazine born 1841 died 1992;
4 SUBCLASS – (cubs)*-LASS; a group as in the Dewey Decimal System perhaps;
10 STICK-UP – stand=STICK? not quite sure how this works; UP=appearing in court;
11 CENTIME – CENT-IM-(r)E; centre=moderate political party; r=Republican; 100th of a Swiss Franc;
12 AMOS – (s)AMOS;
13 BREAKING-UP – two meanings 1=the end of school term 2=losing clear sound;
15 SIMPLETON – (PM IS reversed)-L(eave)-ETON;
16 TASSO – (SAT reversed=”sat back”=relaxed as it were)-SO=thus; who? Torquato Tasso 1544-1595;
18 AUDIT – AUD-IT; AUD from A(f)U(n)D; nice clue;
19 BAT,AROUND – club=BAT; a few drinks=ROUND; let’s bat around a few ideas;
21 TERMINATES – (main street)*;
23 SCAB – BACS reversed; Bankers Automated Clearing System; union jargon for workers who cross picket lines;
26 REDHEAD – RED-HEAD; left wing=RED; leader=HEAD; opportunity missed to make a literary reference;
27 SQUEEZE – two meanings 1=slang for partner=darling 2=credit crunch;
28 DERISORY – D(SIRE reversed)ORY; a John Dory is a delicious sea fish;
29 MARMOT – (TOM-RAM all reversed); the woodchuck;
 
Down
1 PASTA – (ASAP reversed around T=time);
2 UNIFORMED – UN-I-FORMED; a French=UN; individual=I;
3 COKE – C-OK-E; CE from C(ottag)E;
5 UNCHAIN – (l)UNCH-(f)AIN; free Le Canard perhaps;
6 CONSISTORY – CON-SIS-TORY; SIS=little sister; both CON and TORY mean the Conservative Party (UK politics) whose branding colour is blue; an ecclesiastical court;
7 APING – A-PING;
8 SHEEPFOLD – SHE-E(flop)*D; novel=SHE; pen=definition;
9 SPIRIT – two meanings 1=brandy (for example!); 2=slang for guts;
14 FLATLINERS – FLAT-LINERS;
15 SHATTERED – two meanings 1=very tired 2=after breaking up; weak clue;
17 SOUR,CREAM – SOURC(R)E-AM; shopkeeper finally=R; AM=American;
19 BOARDER – a residential pupil who sounds like “border”=(flower) bed; weak clue;
20 THEIST – THE-IS-T; a reference to the supposed habit of Yorkshire folk of saying T’ rather than THE – makes a change from imaginary Cockney;
22 RIDER – two meanings 1=legal jargon 2=somebody on a bus, train, etc;
24 BLEAT – hidden (formida)BLE AT(torney); slang for complain;
25 today’s deliberate omission – try smoking a cigar if stumped;

33 comments on “Times 24,564 Nowt Gnarly”

  1. Stand out = stick out — as in protruding things, such as, erm, teeth? So stand = stick? And there’s “stick” in Pontoon; where the cards stand as is.
  2. I think STAND might be meant in its sense of “put up with”, “endure” or “stick”
  3. Nothing too difficult today. Unlike yesterday, the longer answers came largely by definition with the wordplay only required for confirmation. I liked the clues for paunch, theist and consistory amongst others. Last in was Tasso, although he should have come to mind more quickly.
  4. Progress was generally slow after the NW corner had been rapidly filled and I decided I needed a break with CONSISTORY & TASSO undone. Having got the former, thereby eliminating BASHO and his eye cues, TASSO was all that would fit. Five minutes later I saw the joke. COD to AUDIT, although I must admit a certain illicit fondness for TASSO.

    As for stand=stick, I’m inclined to go with ulaca’s idea, although both seem to have the meaning “remain in a stationary position” and “place in a specified position” (as in “stick it over there”) according to the ODE, which incidentally has “I can’t stand brandy” as the example of stand meaning tolerate. Speaking of which, does the question mark at 9d not ameliorate the d by e?

  5. Stick as in tolerate, put up with > stand.

    68 minutes for this, a real stop-start affair after getting the n/w corner quickly. Some effectively misleading clueing, including DERISORY and BAT AROUND – my last in. Got this from the wordplay – the idiom rang only the faintest bell and the use of ‘club’, when ‘a round’ was part of the answer, was clearly designed to have hackers like me faffing around on the ‘nineteenth’. COD to CONSISTORY for getting both words in. Also liked THEIST.

    1. Your explanation of stick = stand seems perfectly OK to me. But I guess it’s not the only possibility. “Stick” could also be a synonym for “stand” in such contexts as “you should always stick/stand by your principles”.
  6. Apologies – just seen Ulaca’s explanation which I managed to miss on a bleary-eyed first reading .
  7. I must be getting good at this as my last in was the hidden BLEAT, often a problem for the experts I have noticed. Struggled to a finish unaided 2 minutes before cut-off time. Wordplay for CONSISTORY, didn’t understand the AIN bit in UNCHAIN and didn’t get the TASSO joke. Wasted much time wondering what was clever about BOARDERS before deciding there wasn’t anything. At least I had no problem parsing STICK-UP which is definitely to bear. COD to the delectable SQUEEZE.
  8. Another very good start but at the end of my first 25 minute session I was still missing 19dn and the first word of 19ac and all of the NE apart from BREAKING UP and UNCHAIN.

    Later I needed another 20 minutes to fill those gaps, the last in being CENTIME and then I noticed an error at 7dn where I had hoped an obscure word AZING meaning reproducing might have escaped my notice all these years. APING was obviously a better option.

    One word that does seem to have passed me by is CONSISTORY so I had to rely on cracking the wordplay to come up with the correct answer. Also I’m not sure I have met FLATLINER before.

    My favourite clue today was 16ac TASSO – hardly an obscure poet to veteran crossword solvers I would have thought – and I enjoyed the topical mischievous suggestion at 27ac.

  9. 7:37 – 10, 11, 15, 20 written without full wordplay understanding.

    ulaca’s explanation for stand=stick seems the clearest one, though there are other close meanings – when solving, I was happy with “remain in a particular state”.

    I was going to agree with Koro about 9D but have decided I don’t need to. BOTTLE (=nerve) and SPIRIT are synonyms, so there is no need to indicate definition by example.

    I also don’t understand the grumble about ‘t as part of Yorkshire speech. Except for the requirement to understand the sound represented by {‘t}, and this speech habit also being used in other parts of the north, it’s perfectly accurate. Witness this young lass about 20 seconds in – “he laid down on ‘t bed”.

    Perfectly happy with 19 – are the editors supposed to ban all puns like “border”/”boarder”? (bed = “flower bed” is in the Concise Oxford if that’s supposed to be the problem)

    1. > there is no need to indicate definition by example.
      But brandy is an example of a spirit.
      1. I agree. Nor do I think that sticking a question mark on the end of it somehow excuses it.
      2. Sorry – my mistake from the suggestion about the question mark. I don’t think the question mark in “Brandy bottle?” can be interpreted as applying to the brandy but not the bottle.

  10. 34 minutes.
    10 across: could it be a stand for type, a printer’s stick?
  11. Ha – made it in 17 minutes. Liked Theist – very nice. Re 10, I think if you stick something up you can be said to stand it. But then ‘appearing’ is extra. So of course it’s stand = tolerate.
  12. Time around 20 minutes, complicated by not finishing before Stratford and the change to London Overground. Unaccountably, I struggled over BREAKING UP and therefore 15d as well, eventually getting the latter first. BLEAT was my last one in: does that make me an expert? Fave of the day THEIST, though I also appreciated the double cliche of CONSISTORY, and would have considered TASSO had I sat back and thought about it. Are there any other poets ending in -so?
    1. A quick perusal of Wikipedia reveals Damaso Alonso (Spanish – no relation to Xavi, so far as I’m aware) and Gregory Corso, the latter being the “youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs)”, and the only one I’d never heard of.

      Turning to stuff I don’t have to Google, there’s a close match in Tasso’s predecessor, Ludovico Ariosto. His best known poem, Orlando Furioso, hits the jackpot, but it would be quite a feat for a setter to work that into the grid.

  13. This felt like a struggle but somehow I finished it in 23 minutes, which is encouraging. This was in spite of trying to fit 13ac into 15ac for a very long time.
    The Darling reference made me chuckle, AUDIT was very neat and I liked THEIST. 19dn was also neat but I suspect this must be a crossword staple.
  14. 15 enjoyable mins, lots of nice clues. TASSO worried me for a while, as although I’d heard of him I thought he was too obscure to be the answer. Last in was 6D CONSISTORY. 18A AUDIT is my COD. 27A’s a bit cheeky for the Times, and I don’t understand why ‘initially’ in 23A.

    Tom B.

  15. Another relatively easy one, taking 25 minutes. I thought of TASSO as soon as I saw ‘thus’ in the clue, but didn’t enter it for some time since I didn’t see ‘relaxed’ indicated SAT reversed for some time.
    The only major hold-up was caused by 6, but the wordplay and checked letters steered me there in the end.

    I thought bullets ‘zinged’ rather than ‘pinged’, but I see Chambers refers to the sound of a bullet in its definition.

  16. I thought that this was a very enjoyable puzzle: amusing, cheeky (in places) but not too challenging.

    For 10a I thought of Pontoon, knew that stand = stick and stuck it in without a second thought. Shades of a misspent…? (mctext had the same idea!).

    COD to AUDIT.

  17. 24:31 .. found this quite tough but I also very much enjoyed it (blissfully ignorant of any quibbles while solving). Much delayed in the northeast, especially after deciding that the novel had to be Scoop.

    Last in THEIST, which tickled me. TASSO also raised a smile.

    But COD has to be SQUEEZE.

  18. I’ve now taken to extreme anoraky, the crossword appears at 7pm on the East coastish-area of the US, and there’s a trivia night that starts at 9 at a bar close to my place, but you really have to get there at 8 to get a table (and get in a suitable mood). So I had printed this, the killer sudoku, and Puck’s puzzle in the Guardnia so I would not be bored during the intervening hour. Then it turns out my two fellow team-members were already plastered, and if they were to join me I was going to have to pick them up. Glutton for punishment I am, I drive out to collect the two, drive almost all the way back to my place to go to the bar, and the three of us file in just in time to get the last table. I try to ignore them (and the rest of the bar) in doing the crossword. No time, but less than a pint, and a question mark next to TASSO and CONSISTORY to be looked up if I ever make it home.

    We came fifth and won a bottle opener. As I’m now the driver when I should have been the walker, I remain quite sober. NEVER AGAIN!

    Oh, liked the puzzle – also needed wordplay for SHEEPFOLD (which sounds like something that would titillate a Kiwi), and the thought that someone thinks a salad could use some sour cream. A burrito maybe.

  19. A pretty quick one, about 15 minutes, ending with the BOARDER/REDHEAD pair. Much went in at first read, except notably THEIST, which was from the def. alone since I’m unfamiliar with Yorkshire speech patterns, and CONSISTORY, from wordplay alone as I’d never heard of it. I liked AUDIT, PAUNCH, SQUEEZE and BAT AROUND, all pretty clever and fun. Nice puzzle overall, I think, if a bit on the easier side. Regards to all.
  20. 7:49 for my first timed solve in months, as a warm-up for the third qualifier – finally submitted “the sodding thesis” on 23rd April and have been up to my ears in teaching since.  Hope to be back here every day in a week or so.

    I found this pretty straightforward, though CONSISTORY (6dn) was unfamiliar, and I only knew of TASSO (16ac) thanks to the Warburg Institute.

    I spent too long thinking of DUTCH COURAGE at 9dn (SPIRIT), where I’m inclined to agree with kororareka that the question mark does something to ameliorate the definition by example.  I do share Peter’s preference for question marks that apply to something immediately preceding them, but I’m no longer sure that this is more than a preference – consider e.g. “Is that the red one?”, where in most contexts the question mark could be thought of as applying to either “that” or “red”.  Which suggests a Third Way for setters, incidentally: they could italicize the part to which the question mark applies, as in “Brandy bottle?”.  (Just a thought.)

    Just to add to Jimbo’s chronology for PUNCH (1ac), it was resurrected in execrable form by the Phoney Pharaoh in 1996 and limped its way through to 2002 before throwing in the towel.

    Clue of the Day: 27ac (SQUEEZE).

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