Times 24,648 Shurely Shimple

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Most of this is very straightforward but with a couple of real obscurities. The biblical reference to the pronunciation of “sh” is not something I recall meeting before (a bit like asking a German to pronounce “w” I guess). As for The Colorado Department of Agriculture and Bent, well one lives and learns but without Wiki I’m not quite sure how I might have found that out atop the proverbial omnibus. On edit – forget all that stuff about Bent – it’s much simpler than that!!

Across
1 THRIPS – T(H)RIPS;
5 CUTGLASS – “gut class” given the Spooner treatment;
9 DETERMINER – DETER-MINER; “perhaps that” is the grammar based definition;
10 VICE – “voice” without “o”=zero=love(tennis);
11 CARRIAGE – two meanings;
12 INLAID – IN-LA(I)D;
13 SETA – SET-A; common Mephisto word for a bristle;
15 VALIDATE – VAL-I-DATE;
18 FACELIFT – FACE-LIFT;
19 deliberately omitted – the answer is staring you in the face;
21 FIANCE – “finance” without “n”=note;
23 OVERTONE – OVERT-ONE;
25 MARS – MARS(h);
26 SHIBBOLETH – (bible sh tho)*; from Chambers “Gileadite test-word to distinguish an Ephraimite who could not pronounce “sh” (Judges 12) – you knew that surely?;
27 HELLBENT – HE’LL-BE-NT; On edit – it’s NT=National Trust – I must stop seeing complication where none exists!! (The Colorado Department of Agriculture runs an organisation dedicated to conservation called Bent – thank you Wiki – anybody not previously aware of that?);
28 DINGHY – DING-H(app)Y;
 
Down
2 HYENA – sounds like “high Ena”; reference the “laughing hyena”;
3 INEBRIATE – (beer I aint)*;
4 SAMOAN – SAM(p)-O-AN;
5 CONSERVATIONIST – (Victorian stones)*;
6 TORTILLA – ALL-I-TROT all reversed;
7 LEVEL – reads the same backwards as well as forwards;
8 SACRISTAN – SA(CR-IS)TAN;
14 ERADICATE – ERA-DIC(t)ATE;
16 DECATHLON – DEC-ATHLON(e); Athlone is a commercial centre on the Shannon;
17 CINEASTE – C(IN-EAST)E; CE=Church of England; a cinema buff;
20 SEABED – SE(AB)ED; AB=Able Bodied Seaman;
22 NASAL – NASA-L;
24 NOTCH – TON reversed – CH(a); a hundred=a TON; tea=cha;

59 comments on “Times 24,648 Shurely Shimple”

  1. Isnt 27 across just He”ll be in front of the National Trust who would emply a conservationist or am i missing somehting more erudite Jimbo?
    Didnt know Seta which made the south west corner tricky…otherwise i agree with you…
    1. Absolutely correct and thanks. National Trust it is but Bent is shurely less boring? I’ve corrected the blog.
  2. As I can’t deny any longer that I am a crossword addict, I have finally signed up.

    Couldn’t finish today, Spoonerisms beat me. Even with the answer explained, I don’t really get it.
    I had BE and NT as well for 27a, but reading Jimbo immediately start doubting myself.
    Will follow with interest what the others say.

    1. Welcome. I don’t like these “Spoonerism” clues unless they’re really good. The idea is that instead of saying “gut(=natural) class(=group)” – you have to suspend your critical faculties a bit for these – the Rev would have said “cut glass”
      1. Thank you.
        To me it is a bit of a ‘cheat’, gut class is not something anyone would want to say; your advice is the best help, just look at it simply, I am making too much of it.
          1. yes indeed Peter, in the meaning of refined. I knew the expression cut-glass voice, but I never linked it with refined funnily enough. So, yeah I have learnt that today (and a lot of other new words, too many to mention.)
            1. Having typed this, I thought, let me go back and see how many new words there are for me.
              Thrips, seta, shibboleth were completely unknown.
              Sacristan was somewhere floating on my hard disk. Same for notch in the meaning of score.
              Probably a good way of fixing those words in my memory, is giving them this little extra attention.
    2. I thought “gut instinct” was the classic usage here, though ODE has “I had a gut feeling that something was wrong” as its example.
      1. You don’t like it, but Google, that rule-of-thumb, if flawed, corpus, has ‘gut feeling’ well clear of ‘gut instinct’ and ‘gut reaction’ in terms of frequency.
          1. I know that! Brevity may be the soul of wit but not of clarity. I should have written, ‘I know you don’t like deriving frequency information, usage patterns from Google searches, but …’
    3. Also missed CUTGLASS (wrote ‘caatlyst’, for what it’s worth). But teh wrordplay is simple enough: natural = gut (as in reaction) + group = class, all given the Spooner treatment.
  3. 6:29 for this one …

    27A: Nothing to do with the people in Colorado – “The fellow will be” gives you HE’LL BE, leaving the much more familiar N.T. as the conservationist’s employer.

    “Shibboleth”: vaguely aware of it, and “shibboleth” is still used with this meaning – see this WWII story which is strikingly close to the original. None of this went through my head when solving though, as the anagram fodder was obvious and there were already about 3 checking letters.

  4. 26 minutes. And thought this was a nice puzzle with a mix of obvious (1ac) and harder (most of the SW). 26ac is actually very clever since the Ephraimites pronounced “sh” as “s”; as Jimbo implies but doesn’t quite state. I knew the word because Harold Garfinkel famously said that “ethnomethodology” had become a shibboleth. He was right.
  5. 5ac: defeated by Spooner (as almost always). Closest I came was ‘catalyst’; and (echoes of yesterday’s enumeration issues) I would always have thought of ‘cutglass’ as ‘cut glass’ (i.e. 3,5) – Chambers/Oxford online dictionaries would seem to agree.
    1. “cut glass” as a noun is two words. But as an adjective (the version in this clue), relating most often to an accent, it’s usually hyphenated. The full version of Chambers has the adjective as a single word, so there is a bit of dictionary support for (8) rather than (3-5).
      1. Slightly puzzled by all the comments on this, as the paper version of the crossword has (3-5) after the clue. Does everyone on this site use the electronic version (apart from those who live overseas, who obviously do)?
      2. I got this, faute de mieux, but couldn’t see the ‘natural group’ reading. It didn’t help that at some US universities a ‘gut’ class is an easy one, where one can get an A without work. (At Berkeley it was a mick (from mickeymouse).)
  6. Enjoyable puzzle, which I solved hell-bent. (The setter clearly belongs to the Biddlecombe school of minimal enumeration as well as being cunning with his word classes!) Still on parts of speech, I didn’t know ‘inebriate’ as an adjective, but that could be assumed. COD naturally enough, for someone with a background in linguistics, to DETERMINER

    Unsurprisingly, the SW proved the most resistant, with 20-25 minutes of the total 75 required for 12, 16, 17, 25 and 27 at the end. Opted for ’weta’ rather than SETA at 13, but it didn’t make many odds. The rationale of course was (one third of) the Scottish pop group Wet Wet Wet, who brought us ‘Love is all around’, as featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral. (Wetas, from New Zealand, where my mother’s family hail from, are actually distinctly unhairy – for some reason, I imagined them tarantula-like.)

      1. … but subsequently it turns out that the newspaper went with Oxford, and now so does the online version.
  7. Exactly 30 min but with the same 2 wrong guesses as others – CATALYST and TESA. Otherwise a fair workout. I did know SHIBBOLETH and liked the &lit, even if it was very contrived.
  8. Found the word CUTGLASS via a solver and yet was still pleased with myself for seeing the Spoonerism, so that was one tough clue.
    SETA, THRIPS, DETERMINER from wordplay.
    As per yesterday was cantering home only to do a Devon Loch.
    1. You must look on the bright side. Now you can dust yourself off, tip your hat to the royal family and go off and become a millionaire writing trashy thrillers.
  9. I did most of this in record time, with all but 7 clues done in 7 minutes, but then got bogged down in the SW. It took me another 15 minutes to fill that in, including a guess for SETA. This left 1ac, which may have been obvious to some but is far from obvious if you don’t know it. I couldn’t decide between THRIPS and SHAILS but if pushed I’d probably have opted for the latter.
    1. Thrips are well known to gardeners because they infest flowers. Agreed, a bit harder if you’re not aware of that. For the sake of others, “shails” is not a real word.
      1. I’m no gardener!
        Rather than being a little harder this was actually impossible for me – at least it was impossible to be confident. There’s no such thing as a shail but in the absence of the required knowledge it actually looked more plausible than thrip.
  10. 8:30.  Thought I was heading for a blinder here, with all but 5ac (CUT-GLASS) and 13ac (SETA) done in 5 minutes.  The unknown SETA didn’t take too long, but for CUT-GLASS I ended up having to write down CAT_L_S_, CET_L_S_, etc. before spotting the answer (which I would hyphenate).  Also unknown was Athlone (16dn DECATHLON); THRIPS (1ac) and sampan (4dn SAMOAN) were unfamiliar.

    Jack, the origin of the English word SHIBBOLETH (26ac) may not be common knowledge, but you don’t need to know it to solve the clue, and the word itself is fair game.  You’re not expected to know it any more than you’re expected to know any of the other rather esoteric words that crop up in cryptic crosswords – how else could this wonderful pastime increase your vocabulary?

    Clue of the Day: 26ac (SHIBBOLETH).

    1. I must confess I’m slightly surprised at the number of people here who have presumably read and perhaps even used a word like “shibboleth” and NOT been compelled to find out where it comes from.
      1. I think that’s a bit tough. One knows it as a catch phrase or a slogan without knowing all the underlying stuff. There must be countless words of the same ilk which have an interesting but somewhat obscure derivation.
        1. Jimbo, your mention of SHIBBOLETH “as a catch phrase or a slogan” has reminded me that it’s now a proprietary name for a single sign-on authentication system, as used e.g. to get access from outside a university network to online journals that the university has paid for.  (The Wikipedia article explains the technology in painful detail.)
        2. Sorry, that wasn’t meant as a criticism: I’m too conscious of my glass house residential status for that.
          There are of course lots of words we all use without knowing their origins but shibboleth strikes me as a particularly curious one.
  11. 28 minutes. Knew SHIBBOLETH, probably because English usage is full of them, and that aspect of the language interests me. All those place names that give away an outsider when incorrectly pronounced (Euxton pronounced Exton, Masham pronounced Mazz’m, Belvoir pronounced Beever, etc; you’ll know many from your own parts of the country.)Then there are surnames, the most outrageous being Featherstonehaugh pronounced Fanshaw; (sorry if I’ve offended any Featherstonehaugh crossword addicts out there) and, of course, that nonsense about U and Non-U usage (often pronounced orphan by the aristocracy, and which gave rise to rather a good Times clue a while back.

    Oddly enough, it was TORTILLA that held me up today. I’d always thought of it as a type of unleavened bread that was much in the news when the Mexicans rioted over the rising price of maize a few years ago; I wasn’t aware that it could also be a Spanish omelette.

    1. Whoops, forgot to mention – that was news to me too.  (Cue link from Peter showing where we’ve said that before.)
      1. I think my own experience of Tortilla confusion was in a Spanish-speaking eatery – I found no previous mentions in my prodigous memory Google search for [“Times for the Times” tortilla]
        1. I keep learning! Didn’t know the Google technique Peter has used here but I did know that 5dn came instantly and easily because very similar to a recent clue. Now I know where is was (as it turns out, used elsewhere). Try Google search for [“FifteenSquared” Victorian].
          1. There’s no point in putting quotes round “FifteenSquared” – the point of the quotes is to restrict hits to pages containing the exact phrase “Times for the Times” rather than those that contain the individual words “Times”, “for” and “the”. Because “Times for the Times” is part of each of our page titles, this kind of search will usually rank our mentions of a word ahead of mentions on other blogs that have a link to us.
    2. Then there’s George St. John (pronounced ‘sinjin’) Quimby a character on the
      CBC radio program Basic Black here in Canada. Totally lost on the spoonerism although I knew it was one.

      p.s. Liked your clerihew of the other day.

  12. 32 minutes with six unsolved in the SW corner. In the next 20 minutes I solved four of these FIANCE, HELLBENT, CINEASTE and FACELIFT but was unable to complete the last two without resorting to aids on arrival at work. Never heard of SETA and without its first checker in place I couldn’t bring ERADICATE to mind. THRIPS was new to me too but guessable.

    I note there were no multi-word answers today although I would have expected 27 across to be 4,4 or 4-4. I don’t have Collins or COED to check at the moment.

    The SHIBBOLETH thing completely passed me by and I don’t know why anyone should be expected to know it.

  13. 16 adorable minutes this morning – much more fun than yesterday’s. CoD for me is the Spooner one: surely the point isn’t that the Spoonerised phrase comes out with something sensible: the classic examples of “tasted two whole worms” and “town drain” suggest that the fun is in the incongruity of the modified phrase. Gut class is two proper words, could be construed as something like an abs work out, quite a decent one.
    I also thought CINEASTE was a really good clue
    Cheers, everyone
  14. 30:40 .. The only “shimple” thing about this was me. Maybe I’m just having a slow week. Mind you, I did spend five minutes or so trying to think of a better candidate than SETA for the hairy thing (even wondering if it was an anagram of the hairy Esau) before deciding there wasn’t.

    Liked CONSERVATIONIST, not so keen on the rather strained spoonerism.

  15. A sharpish 45 minutes, the last ten of those staring at 14d / 21ac, and 23ac / 24d. Never did get the full wordplay, or indeed sometimes definitions, for 9ac / 26ac/ 2d / 16d / 24d, so thanks for the blog. COD here 8d.
  16. 16 minutes, last in SETA – needed wordplay to get that and SHIBBOLETH (I wondered if it was a reference to “Dude, Where’s My Car?”, but I guess it predates that). CINEASTE went in from definition.
  17. I really enjoyed this puzzle. I certainly didn’t think of it as a walk…..!

    There were several outstanding clues not least CUT-GLASS, SAMOAN and ERADICATE. My COD is FACELIFT.
    32 minutes to finish.

  18. Completely failed today. Had 8 missing after an hour and resorted to aids. Still couldn’t get CUTGLASS as none of the online dictionaries list it as one (unhyphenated) word.

    All progress was slow and tortured. I guess my brain just wasn’t working today. Just pleased I wasn’t blogging it!

  19. 18 minutes with seta guessed at. Last two in were cutglass and, for no good reason, carriage. Darn those double definitions with unhelpful checking letters.

    Question for Mark – who is that in your avatar and how come his parting is on the other side in Dupin1’s avatar picture (see yesterday’s blog)?

    1. It’s Edgar Allan Poe, an early adopter of the daguerrotype.  I’m afraid I don’t know about the parting.  If you haven’t come across TinEye, by the way, now’s your chance.  I have it installed as a Firefox plugin, so I can just right-click on an image and select “Search Image on TinEye”.  Magic!
  20. Regards. Failed on the Spoonerism, entering ‘catalyst’ because it fit the checking letters. I’ve never heard of CUTGLASS as an adjective, whether hyphenated or not. I did know all the other (relatively) obscure words, but certainly not their origin. Better luck to me tomorrow, best to all of you. About 30 minutes, by the way.
  21. Flew down the left in 10 minutes and only slightly longer up the right, until I hit CUTGLASS. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of the expression beyond, well, cut glass. Mind you, I didn’t have a clue where the BENT came from or CANE(!) for that matter, so speed is no measure of intelligence in my case. SETA is one of those words I remember only in a crossword context and which I always confuse with Red Dwarf’s smegma.

    My example of a shibboleth is the Greek letter chi (as in Pearson’s chi-squared), which can be used to detect students who never came to lectures, since they invariably pronounced it chee as in cheese. Who knows how the Greeks pronounced it.

  22. I e-mailed my contacts at the Times about 5A’s enumeration. There’s apparently some software problem which is (a) causing this issue and (b) under investigation. The two incorrect ones in today’s puzzle have now been amended.
  23. Done in for a time by NE and finally by myself by not seeing cutglass at all and bemusedly going for catalyst. Steinbeck’s ‘Tortilla Flats’ rescued me on 6. The whole thing seemed a bit tough. Maybe I’ve suddenly aged.
  24. 27 rather fraught minute, but nothing entered in 5 ac. Have never encountered the adjectival CUTGLASS, and thought the faux Spoonerinsm execrable. For me the worst clue of the year. Pity because the rest were really good.
  25. Sorry setter, I recant and retract. The clue is fine (if a little tough) with the correct enumeration!
  26. After a slow start, somewhat over an hour for me, but at least without mistakes. CUTGLASS and SETA went in last and entirely from the wordplay, though it took a while for GUT CLASS to sink in as the correct unSpoonerized version.

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