Times 24,672 Meet Edinburgh’s Old Barlinnie

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

An interesting puzzle covering a whole variety of topics from a Virgil poem to a US President. I suspect the old Edinburgh prison will cause some confusion with many solving from checkers and the first definition. I also have no idea how many will know about Pearly Kings and Queens or indeed the cattle-rearing folk from The Cape. At least Thomas Telford should be familiar!

Across
1 TEXAN – TEX(t)-A-N(ational); LBJ was the President from the Lone Star State;
4 BOMBASTIC – BOMB-A-ST(o)IC; device planted=BOMB; inflated is the definition;
9 ROOMINESS – ROO(MINES)S; ROO=kangaroo;
10 HEART – two meanings 1=body part (it beats) 2=Tolbooth Prison, Edinburgh known as “The Heart of Midlothian”;
11 ISABEL – IS-ABEL; Biblical reference to setter’s favourite victim;
12 JETTISON – JETTI-SON; sounds like “jetty”;
14 ODDFELLOW – ODD-FEL(t)-LOW; Society of Oddfellows founded 1810;
16 STOIC – S(OT reversed)IC; OT=Old Testament; the founder of Stoicism was our old friend Zeno;
17 ELAND – E(lectric)-LAND; light=alight=LAND;
19 AIRSTREAM – AIRS-T(R)EAM; side=AIRS (and graces); current is the definition;
21 GENITIVE – G(EN-IT)IVE; in crosswordland IT=Italian Vermouth;
22 PLASMA – P-(hospita)L-AS-MA; PA’S MA=paternal grandmother;
25 deliberately omitted – ask if it lights no flame in your mind;
26 SIGNORINA – (origins an)*;
27 EAST,ENDER – (merchandis)E-AS-TENDER;see Pearlies to learn about Pearly Kings and Queens (who need not be from the East End of London so a “perhaps” is needed in the clue);
28 DOYEN – DO-YEN;
 
Down
1 TURN,IN,ONES,GRAVE – cryptic (no pun intended) definition;
2 XHOSA – (has ox)*; a Bantu speaking people from South Africa;
3 NAIVETE – N(AI-VET)E; Northumberland is in NE England;
4 deliberately omitted – have a glass of ale whilst you cogitate;
5 MASTERWORK – MASTER-(ROW reversed)-(barto)K;
6 ACHATES – AC-HATES; your mythological fix for today;
7 TRANSPOSE – TRA(i)NS-POSE;
8 CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN – reduced=CUT; what?=COME AGAIN; type of restaurant where one eats as much as one manage;
13 ILL-ADVISED – (ladies lived without e=east)*;
15 DIAGNOSIS – (“doing as” with “i”=one)*;
18 DETENTE – DE(TENT)E;
20 TELFORD – (LET reversed)-FORD; brilliant Scots engineer Thomas Telford 1757-1834;
23 SPIKY – SP-(l)IK(e)-Y; mole=SPY; skinned “like”=IK; spikes are ears of corn;
24 AGAR – A-GAR(fish); a jelly used in cooking;

31 comments on “Times 24,672 Meet Edinburgh’s Old Barlinnie”

  1. Thank goodness for an amusing blog at least. Didn’t find this particularly “interesting” but a bit like yesterday’s – although not so hard – ie a grind with little satisfaction. STOIC (after guessing BOMBASTIC), CUT AND…, AGAR, ELAND (ouch!), ACHATES, all from wordplay, and HEART only from recalling the first item on Sports Report. I reckon the next puzzle with any pretence to humour will achieve classic status.
    Isn’t CUT AND COME AGAIN something to do with gardening?
  2. Yes, about 25mins for me too, a little more than average but mainly because I put “turn up ones heels” for 1dn, fo no obvious reason.. having sorted that out, no other problems. Always nice to see Thomas Telford, who built a (small) viaduct just a mile or so from where I live here in Kent.
    1. Hello jerrywh. I was brought (dug?) up in Kent, in South Darenth. I remember the viaduct there but would not have called it small. So I guess you must be referring to another viaduct. Where’s yours?
      Mike O.
      Skiathos
      1. Hi Mike
        It carries the A229 over Salts Lane, Loose, south of Maidstone. It is only a single span but has coped well with the 47 ton lorries etc that the A229 carries, which Mr T surely cannot have envisaged. You can see it on Google’s street view easily enough, including the plaque underneath that attributes it to Telford..
  3. 29 minutes, with a ridiculous amount of time spent trying to choose from SPIKY, spiny, or even shiny. Was going well to that point: knew Heart of Midlothian from the Walter Scott novel and (as Barry suggests above) CUT AND COME AGAIN from the type of lettuce. Slight delay when I put in Anabel instead of ISABEL; mainly because the Isabel I know is an Isobel! Feel much better than I did after yesterday’s puzzle, and shall go out to meet the day invigorated.
  4. 16 minutes, with a lot of them spent on SPIKY at the end going through the alphabet for anything that may mean any bit of the clue. CUT from definition, HEART from football (assuming the team was originally a prison team, probably wasn’t!) STOIC once I’d got BOMBASTIC – the clue was intimidating! CoD for the chuckle to PLASMA.
    1. There’s a limit to what one can put in a blog so forgive me for not giving chapter and verse. The football team came originally from the same area that contained the prison and the club’s official website says there is a link to it and a dance hall of the same name.
  5. Isabel was not too hard for me, although to be associated with a murder victim didn’t raise my spirits.
    I couldn’t work out SPIKY, when I read the blog I kicked myself.
    Nice blog, thanks.
  6. 30 minutes for all but ELAND. This took me a further 10 minutes during which I realised my mistake having carelessly put ENTENTE at 18dn.

    XHOSA was a guess from the anagrist, ACHATES was dredged up from school days and the HEART connection with Midlothian, most unusually for me, was through the soccer team of that name. I knew this from sitting through seemingly endless football results on Saturday afternoons in my childhood whilst waiting for Garry Halliday (or whatever) to start.

    1. CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN in our family was always a particularly large fruit cake that my aunt used to bake, but according to Brewer’s it originally referred to a joint of meat.
  7. I’m blaming a long weekend in Saigon for my appalling effort. Jim ended his prologue with ‘At least Thomas Telford should be familiar’, but not to me, who had to resort to aids for perhaps the easiest clue in the grid. ISABEL was also beyond me, while I whittled 23 dn to spiky and spiny, and went for the wrong one.
  9. An odd one in that, while I finished in a quick for me 40 minutes, it felt pretty tough going along the way. Quite a few where I didn’t follow the wordplay, but got from checking letters / definitions (11ac, 16ac, for example – the latter where I got hung up on thus = so).

    One horrible error – guessed at spiny for 23d.

    COD 1d.

  10. Well pleased to see I guessed correctly at 2d. Apart from that I had no idea about Midlothian prisons, and scarcely more than that about SPIKY, which took me all day to figure out. TELFORD was only vaguely familiar, I’m ashamed to say. I liked PLASMA but COD to CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN for its what?
  11. 18 minutes, lots of guesses, had question marks next to HEART, GENITIVE, MASTERWORK (from definition) and CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN, though now I come here I remember it from the Magic Pudding.
  12. 20 minutes, also held up by ENTENTE not DETENTE! I think the post Cheltenham hangover continues…

    Oli

  13. Incomplete today. All but SPIKY done in 7 minutes but I could not unravel the clue and decide between the correct answer and SHINY.

  14. 16:49 .. worth solving this one for Pa’s Ma alone – if it’s original it’s a belter. Great pun, great surface.

    I might have been a lot faster if I’d seen the long 1d straight away. But I went through:

    skin of ones teeth
    fall on ones knees
    turn on ones heels

    and maybe a few others before moving on and waiting for helpful checking letters.

    I suppose the fame of “The Colossus of Roads”, Thomas Telford, is largely confined to the UK. At least he has a town named after him to keep his name alive. Maybe we should name one after Barnes Wallis, who was a complete unknown for a team from Merton College, Oxford, on University Challenge the other night, causing me to have a mild attack of grumpyoldsoditis.

    1. Today’s Mertonians seem to spend most of their time bugging alumni with telephone campaigns.

      How could anyone forget the Dambusters? Wallis, Guy Gibson … Nigger.

  15. I found this quite tough, and took 45 minutes to get through it. After getting nothing from the first half-dozen Across clues I switched to the Downs, where 6 got me going. I have never forgotten “the faithful Achates” since my Latin lessons at school over 50 years ago.
    Like some above I was torn between various alternatives for 23, but settled on SPIKY in the end.

  16. A bit under 30 min I think. Was trying to do it online (despite the diagonal down clues on my screen, which add a distinct extra layer of puzzlement!) and lost all my answers when I tried to submit. Felt pleased with myself both for finishing this one without aids, and for battling through to the right answer for SPIKY for the right reasons.
  17. Regards to all. About 45 minutes while watching baseball here, so no real time but should have been something less than that. From wordplay only: CUT AND COME AGAIN, TELFORD, HEART, and STOIC only after solving BOMBASTIC. The last 10 minutes, like others, trying to figure out SPIKY, which finally went in, similarly to miselda, correctly, but only after the burning of too many brain cells. I thought ODDFELLOWS were purely a US anomaly, but evidently not. COD to PLASMA. Best to all, thanks to Jimbo and a nod to the setter.
    1. Hello Kevin. The Oddfellows have a long English history stretching back into the trade Guilds. For a long time they were viewed as subversive and banned. In 1834 just down the road from me the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported for being members of “an illegal friendly society”. The English changed their constitution after that and the US order broke away to become completely independent.
      1. Thanks for that Jimbo, fascinating. The history of fraternal societies is something I’ve never looked into, but over here we still have a mix of active ones (Lions, Elks, etc.) and also a mix of abandoned or converted former halls of these groups, such as the Oddfellows’ Lodges.
  18. 22m for me, which is something of a miracle because I didn’t know that LBJ was Texan, the prison, Zeno of Citium, Achates, CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN, Telford or Agar.
    I too thought “browser” for ELAND was a little weak.
  19. Isn’t Cut and Come Again a type of plant, renowned for its ability to reproduce after cutting?
    1. Yes it is. Also a large cake that family members can dip into. But I chose the modern usage which is used in restaurants where one pays a fixed price and then returns to the food bar as often as one wishes.
  20. Solved (correctly) mostly on hopes and prayers, but at the end without any doubts, despite never (or in some cases scarcely) having heard of: the prison in Midlothian, Zeno of Citium, AIRS (for side), IT for wine, pearly kings and queens, ACHATES, CUT-AND-COME-AGAIN, TENT for wine, TELFORD (though the Menai bridge rang a bell) — sorry, am I using up too much room? Solving time an hour for the first third and odd minutes later for the rest. CODs to PA’S MA and COME-AGAIN clued by “what?”.

    As usual, I don’t know why I finished, but maybe I am just slowly learning Crosswordese — that would be nice.

  21. 8:34 on return from holds, with SPIKY last in after considering various S?I?Y words.

Comments are closed.