Times 24653 – Between a rock and a Harrods place

Solving Time: DNF

A difficult puzzle for me on a Monday. It all became too much after an hour; wines, parts of London, French authors, the Just So Stories… this particular blogger’s bêtes noires. Our American friends should be well pleased to see some familiar names and faces for a change and I even managed to find an Australian connection at 9ac (apart from the rhyme at 11d). There were some difficult constructions hidden in fluent surfaces and the odd laugh along the way. An excellent puzzle all around (apart from the ones I couldn’t get).

Across
1 MIDSHIPMAN = (DIM for vague)reversed + HI for greeting and PM for top politician both inside SAN for sickbay all in a slick surface.
6 CHIC = CHICo. Points awarded for including a Marx brother and stylish in the same sentence.
9 SCRUPULOUS = SCRU sounds like screw, warder or jailer + (UP for “to north”)reversed + (SOUL)* all in another convincing and smooth surface (apologies to our northern solvers).
10 FLAN = Languish inside FAN for cooler. No reference to Li-Lo whatsoever.
12 OFF-OFF-BROADWAY = OFF (bis) for twice cancelled + BROAD for coarse or indecent + WAY for passage. The term is descriptive, hence the “like”.
14 FILTHY, a double definition.
15 MUSSEL for shellfish with the second S replaced by CAT for Tom = MUSCATEL, a wine I’d actually heard of.
17 ROCK for Hudson + ROSE for rebelled = ROCK ROSE. This one defeated me. The only Hudson I thought I knew was Hudson Fish (he’s on page 5) founder of QANTAS. With a misspecified 18, I went for the rush rose Helianthemum scoparium, which is in the same family (Cistaceae) as the rock rose; a family which incidentally includes the genus Hudsonia. My confusion was understandable.
19 CAMPUS = P for page in CAMUS. A French author I had heard of, as it turns out, although the placing of the link word “in” made me think the whole was the author.
22 NOT UP TO SCRATCH, a cryptic definition, unless I’m missing something. But if you were tormented by bedbugs, wouldn’t you be up to scratch?. Ulaca has enlightened me. See his comment below. So it’s a cryptic definition, with an additional straight one alluding to the former. Why do I always miss the subtleties of the clever clues?
24 Deliberately omitted. Not a smooth one.
25 (RIGID MOTIF)* = DIGITIFORM, a word which seemed to fit.
26 YOKE sounds like yolk to me.
27 HER for female as adjective No, it’s HEN for female as noun (or possibly nounal qualifier as in hen bacchanalia) + AND for with + bOAt all inside SH for quiet = SHENANDOAH, the river with the much courted daughter or was that Clementine? And yet another complicated construction in super smooth surface.

Down
1 MUSH, a double definition. I didn’t know mush could be a verb, but it can be in America, apparently.
2 DIREFUL = Day + I + REFUeL
3 (TRY PAYPHONE)* around H for hospital = HYPNOTHERAPY.
4 PIFFle containing LA for Los Angeles = PILAFF, a spicy steamed-rice dish.
5 AQUARIUS = A + QU for question + ARIUS, who was indeed both Greek (in the broad sense) and theologian (in the all his known works burnt and his name never mentioned again sense)
7 F for fine + WIT for intelligence in the company of HAL for Prince = HALFWIT or Charlie. Any resemblance to princes living or dead is purely coincidental. My nomination for COD.
8 CaFe adjoining LOSS for cost all covering ANDY = CANDYFLOSS. I had a great deal of difficulty parsing this, even though I was pretty sure it was the correct answer. I thought “cafe regularly” was C AND F. Is any else concerned about the “covers/’s” construction?
11 Back an alien for “endorse a strange” sounds like BACCHANALIAN.
13 EFFRONTERY = FRONT for cover inside E for European FERrY
16 ASTONISH = (HIS)* underneath ASTON Villa.
18 SIT for model + PARK for place (as verb) = the wrong answer. It’s CATWALK, as in an ideal place for a cat to wander and ditto for a model, although sometimes they do it en masse.
20 PICCOLO sounds like “pick a low”. Apocryphally, playing the piccolo is just like playing the flute, only more so. The advice I was given was “Think high.”. It didn’t help.
21 ACTION = I seen in ACTON
23 Deliberately omitted. Up with this you could beat yourself, reportedly.

P.S. For those who don’t know what a sitpark is, just google it. I did.

47 comments on “Times 24653 – Between a rock and a Harrods place”

  1. Seems okay to me with “‘s” short for ‘is’ being the link between the wordplay and the definition.
    1. It’s more the verbal ending that worries me. I’d have no quibble with “covering”, say, but the “covers” with “is” doesn’t seems grammatically correct (cryptically speaking).
      1. I sense a bit of deja vu here! I take your point, but if ‘Cafe regularly meeting cost covers boy’ is taken as a headline-style “sentence”, the clue kinda works cryptogrammatically.
  2. Finished” with the help of two aids with two wrong (had ‘mask’ for MUSH – desperate to work ‘ski’ in somehow – and ‘affrontery’ for EFFRONTERY. What an ignoramus I feel!). Needed aids for PILAFF – diappointingly, as I was sniffing around both ‘piffle’ and ‘le’ but couldn’t put two and two together (or in this case take them away), and for the excellent BACCHANALIAN. Indebted to koro for fleshing out 9 and 27. Bedbug-wise, is the ‘not up’ meant to indicate that one is lying down on the infested mattress? My COD also to HALFWIT, which is pretty much what I feel.
    1. Oh, now I geddit. I was taking “up” to mean “awake”. So, it’s probably a double definition, then.
  3. A slow and steady 39 minutes. A rather fine puzzle I think. Good to be reminded of old Chico and his amazing piano – what? Playing doesn’t seem to cover it. Pianobatics?
  4. Agreed with most here so far: a lively and interesting puzzle that would perhaps be a classic if not for the amount of general knowledge required (see vinyl’s list above). Once had to clue 22 and resorted to (in part): All present at start of ram race…. These things are not easy and the clue we have here is excellent.
      1. Oops! So it is. Somehow it got muddled between looking at the answer and typing it up, complete with faux explanation.
  5. An excellent and very lively puzzle. For me it was a steady 45 minute solve and I was never actually stuck for ideas.

    Having just written in OFF-OFF-BROADWAY which gave me a strong checking letter for 7dn I turned my attention there and immediately thought of Hal Prince, the famous impresario. It was only later that I realised he is still alive (and still in business at 82!) so by convention he could not be the correct reference. But there’s still a theatrical connection with Prince Hall, of course.

    With MUSH at 1dn I wonder if I recognise the hand of the setter who included two other Hancockisms a couple of weeks ago.

    I lost time at 13dn having written GOT UP TO SCRATCH at 22ac.

  6. Oh dear. I had this as a pleasant beginners puzzle. 14 min in spite of some Guinness and shiraz induced unwellness.
    1. I knew there’d be someone who told me that, apart from vinyl, who always finds the hard ones easy. You undoubtedly won’t be the last.
  7. MUSH as a verb and YOKE as a pair new to me as was a hirsute ESAU. ROCK ROSE and DIGITIFORM from wordplay, and I can’t say I have ever heard DIREFUL uttered.
    Slow start but steady once moving, but stuck at the end with just the wine to get. Had breakfast and thereafter decided that the wine could only be MUSCATEL even though I couldn’t parse (obsessed with ABEL as my second son and somehow removing OLL from mollusc). Thus on to correct the invented HALFWEB (Web being my intelligence) and that well-known Greek scholar AQUARIES (ARIES being my sign after A QU(estion).
    Terrific puzzle much enjoyed.
  8. I agree with the blogger that this was a tricky start to the week. it took me ages to parse Effrontery but that helped unlock the south west. mush was tricky too and i took ages to get midhsipman which held up the north west also. COD to Halfwit!
  9. Exactly 30 minutes, having given up on 19 ac. because I also read it the wrong way round. I don’t normally complain about clue construction, but in this instance I can’t see a justification for including both ‘in’ and ‘through’, except for the surface reading of course.
  10. Really enjoyed this, even though I didn’t understand some of them and had 1dn wrong, another mask, knew it was probably wrong, but couldn’t be bothered to think any longer.
    Thanks for explaining everything, it is amazing how this blog has helped me along.
    Halfwit was one I didn’t understand, and I still don’t get why Prince=Hal. Can anyone help please?
  11. 21 mins, so a bit tougher than average for me. I thought it was a cracking puzzle, and I’m another to give COD to the brilliant HALFWIT.

    Tom B.

  12. 46 minutes. Going really well till the last few. Knew it had to be OFF-OFF-something-WAY but took me a long time to get the BROAD; (even though there was a tart in the previous clue!) Also had a mental block as to which Hudson was referred to: the only one I could think of was the author of the South American Romances.
    Rejected HALFWIT at first on the grounds that only Spike Milligan could describe the Prince of Wales as such; but when the word-play became apparent, thought it a very clever clue.
    Delighted that the Marx Brothers are still to be found in the rag-and-bone cart of general knowledge expected of solvers. If ever the day’s news gets too depressing, watching Harpo in action in Duck Soup soon puts matters into perspective.
  13. 9:31 so quite tricky for a Monday. 7D is a gem and there are plenty of other entertaining clues. Definite candidate for inclusion in Times Crossword Book 18 or so.
  14. 36:09 .. so I really struggled, but my worst problems were caused by misspelling both BACCHANALIAN and AQUARIUS. I didn’t mind the travails, however, because this was such an enjoyable puzzle.

    HALFWIT is just outstanding (and very funny). The setter should be taken straight to the Tower.

  15. Not the greatest start to the week. 55 minutes to get everything but the SE corner. After a quick break, swiftly got 11d / 20d / 21d in that order, and proceeded to spend another three quarters of an hour staring at 27ac. HEN and SH seemed obvious enough, and I even for a moment thought of with = AND, but was too hung up on looking for a particular type of boat to see bOAt trimmed (I toyed for a while with trimming that famous boat the SNOOP), so gave up and fired up the Chambers Word Wizard. Can honestly say I’ve never heard of the river, so don’t feel overly upset at having missed it!
  16. 12 minutes but one mistake. Careless SHENENDOAH. Enjoyed the rest of it although didn’t appreciate 9 until coming here. Don’t we have a lots of F’s today.
  17. Kororareka has evidently seen it, but for anyone unfamiliar with Kipling, it’s worth pointing out that the reference in 18 is to “The Cat that Walked by Himself” from the “Just So Stories”.
    1. You credit me with far too much perspicacity. I suspected the choice of words had some connection with the Kipling oeuvre, but knew not the precise details. I just thought cats were quintessentially lone creatures. Thanks for the enlightenment (as Diderot said to Descartes).
  18. A very enjoyable puzzle. I can’t say that I found it difficult – about 20 minutes to solve – but loved every minute of it including laughing out loud at HALFWIT.

    I’m often surprised by the different GK displayed by the different generations. If ignorance of The Act of Settlement and Quisling caused a raised eyebrow not having heard of SHENANDOAH really shocked me. It’s in an old folk song (made famous by Paul Robeson Jack?) and a film as well as just being a big river.

    1. It is curious, isn’t it? In my case this sort of thing is often down to a very poor memory but this isn’t a name you’d easily forget. I’m not particularly surprised that there are Paul Robeson songs and 60s films I’ve never heard of, but a big American river with a funny name…
  19. 23m here, followed by a cheat to get SHENANDOAH. I was never going to get it because I missed with = and so was looking for a word meaning boat that could be trimmed to fit _N_O_.
    Very good puzzle though.
  20. I am over the moon! I finished this in about 25 minutes, faster than some of my heroes for the first time ever! (Not Pete, of course.) I was expecting everyone to say how easy it was. I still don’t get ‘off-off-Broadway’ (12A), but it just had to be. I’m going to Google it right now.
  21. Lovely puzzle, with some really cracking clues: completed in 30 minutes, with full understanding of everything! Quite unusual!

    Very difficult to settle upon a COD but I think a toss-up between HALFWIT and SHENANDOAH.

    No cricket references again today!

  22. I didn’t get to this until the middle of the afternoon and needed a pick-me-up, and this crossword did the trick. Really liked it, saw all of the wordplays except SCRUPULOUS and AQUARIUS straight off. Helps that I live rather close to the national park version of SHENANDOAH. I noticed that today’s G-word puzzle is Brendan so I’m saving that for another pick-me-up I’m going to need in a few hours. Compliments to the setter!
  23. 1D “I didn’t know mush could be a verb, but it can be in America, apparently”.

    ..as well as Norway and Antarctica too, per the classic Bunthorne clue ‘Amundsen’s forwarding address?’

  24. No time, as I got off to an excruciatingly slow start but then picked up speed after several refreshing breaks. Very pleased that I had finished until I read the blog: I mistakenly had AFFRONTERY for 13 down; what an effront! My COD: BACCHANALIAN (not that I didn’t get HALFWIT, but it took a while).
  25. About 25 minutes, ending with BACCHANALIAN. Everything’s been said above, I think. regards.
  26. And there was me going all kipling about the cat that walked on his wild lone! It’s one of the few bits of literature I know!

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