Times 24804, Scribes and Pharisees beware!

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 28 minutes.

Saw 1dn (RAIDER) right off and was hoping for a fast solve. So much for hope! The rest (apart from the omissions, below, perhaps) was a bit harder. Still, there were some OK straight charades (SHELDUCK, FISHERMAN, LINGERIE) in what is, overall, a medium-light gauge puzzle with workpersonly virtues (and no doubt too much theology for YKW).
 

 

Across
 1 RIFLEMAN. FIR in reverse; truncation of LE MANS.
 5 TACTIC. Swap the two parts of TICTAC, as used for communication by bookies at race tracks. That’s how they make a mint.
10 IN,SUB,ORDINATION.
11 EYEBROW. E (European); then B (bishop) insde YE ROW.
12 GR,IF,F,IN. The condition is an IF; plus F(lown) inside GRIN (beam).
13 SMOOTHER. S (southern); then O (ring) inside MOTHER (dam).
15 TUSKS. Cryptic def referring to the proverbial mnemonic capacities of the Elephantidae.
18 Omitted. (Susanna loves to hide the answer.)
20 SHE,L,DUCK. Seems this quacker actually does prefer a coastal habitat.
23 DEF(ICI)T.
25 COWHIDE. CO (business); W & E (directions) including HID (concealed).
26 CIRCUMNAVIGATOR. Anagram of ‘I’m craving a tour’ and C (cape). A good anagram clue I thought with &lit overtones.
27 EATERY. E (drug that’s illegal), AT, E (English), RY (railway, transport).
28 CLARINET. Anagram of ‘recital’ and N (noon).
Down
 1 R(A)IDER.
 2 FISHERMAN. First letters of ‘flung’ and ‘in’; then the SHERMAN tank. The def (presumably the one who gets the mentioned catch) may not be the best or fairest. But it doesn’t hurt the solve.
 3 EMBARGO. Reversal of ME; BAR (pub); GO (function).
 4 ARROW. Dropped (H)aitch.
 6 ARABIST. Anagram of ‘abattoirs’ minus TO. Shades of the live sheep trade protests beloved of superannuated Fremantle hippies and their ilk (who are actually more concerned about bucolic smells entering their expensive lounge rooms)?
 7 THIEF. As elephants remember, so thieves are thick.
 8 CANONISE. Here we have an unknown saint (ANON S) inside CE (church) with an I (one) ‘accepted’ in the lot. Those more versed in RC (rather than CE) rituals can tell us whether canonisation and beatification are the same thing. I suspect they’re not given that those on their way to possible sainthood are merely ‘Blessed’ — vide Oliver Plunkett (beatified 1920; canonised 1975). Still, he kept his composure while waiting!
 9 LING,ERIE. Much easier if you know the official Scouse pronunciation. (The neg-leggie is an example.)
14 HESITANT. H (husband); anagram of ‘in state’. Def = ‘Like one who’s lost’.
16 SACRISTAN. Anagram of ‘car is’ inside STAN (our chap of the day).
17 SADDUCEE. Sounds like ‘sad, you see?’
19 LACQUER. Sounds like ‘lacker’. Been a while since we had two homophones in a row.
21 DOWAGER. Even letters of ‘hEaRd’ after DO and WAG.
22 FERRET. Two Rs inside FEET (as in poetic foot).
24 FIRST. The duke (aka ‘dook’) is the FIST, clenching R (king).
25 Omitted (at the risk of mockery from the Latin scholars).

 

37 comments on “Times 24804, Scribes and Pharisees beware!”

  1. 56 minutes. Became becalmed mid-solve before kicking on again with LINGERIE. Wanted to go the cricketing route with ‘fieldsman’ for the catch at 2dn and couldn’t see the anagram at 14dn for the longest time. Also chucked in ‘alias’, instead of ANNAL, at 18ac. But got there in the end. It may be a bit contrived, but I rather liked LACQUER.
  2. 25 minutes to get most of it — 5ac and 27ac being recalcitrant– then 2′ for TACTIC and a whole 6′ for EATERY, for a total of 33′. I’d never heard of shelducks, but I figured if sheldrake, why not? 8d delayed me for a while because I persisted beyond reason in thinking that ‘unknown’ must mean X,Y, or the other one. There were a number of quickies — 1d, 4d, 17d, 24d, 25d, 28ac — so I deluded myself into thinking I might actually do this quickly; self-delusion being one of my strong suits.
  3. 46:28, after resorting to aids for my last in, LACQUER. Was parsing it the wrong way. If I’d remembered the golden rule about a space before a ‘U’, I imagine it would’ve fallen quickly.
    Enriched today by the previously unheard of SADDUCEE and SHELDUCK (sounds like something my daughter would watch on pay TV).
  4. 20 min on-line, but with one error. Checked everything for ages, without being able to spot the problem. So very grumbly grumpy. OK, so the RR griffon engine was named after a dog, not a mythical beast. Apart from that, almost too easy except for COWHIDE which was an Arrrrrgh! followed by a grudging deference to what has to be the COD.

    Grumbly grumpy and grudging. Gruesome!

  5. BTW, many thanks to the blogger, as usual. But I’d argue that it’s not just “superannuated Fremantle hippies” that protest the live sheep trade. I’m not superannuated, I’m 10 minutes away from Freo, I don’t think I’ve ever been a hippy and I think the practice is a disgrace.
  6. 28 minutes here, last in cowhide (which I liked) and ferret,a bit of a tester especially (again) in the lower half. Didn’t help that I had dowager in lacquer’s place for some time. Also quite liked 15.
    1. …as I should have realised (and probably did). Just couldn’t help getting on my high horse!
  8. Liked the two 15 letter words and thought the anagram giving circumnavigator was wonderful! 45 minutes
  9. 27 minutes. A straightforward solve that flowed along nicely so that I was reading the clues to the last ones in for the first time when their turn came.

    My only query was “condemns” as the anagrind at 6ac but my thesaurus give “knocks” as a synonym so I suppose that might justify it. It still seems a bit of a stretch to me though.

    1. dictionary.com gives liberates as an antonym of condemns, which sounds more anagrindy to me. I was also quibbical about the s on the end of it; seems grammatically incorrect to me.
      1. Forgot to say it also gives the definition “condemn: to compel or force into a particular state”, which might also be a justification. Still don’t know about the “s”.
  10. Evenly paced solve until left with S_E_D_C_. Suddenly DUCK for avoid came and gleefully slammed home SUE for my woman.
    Enjoyed this Church Times reject.
  11. 13m 50s for this very enjoyable puzzle. BTW can anyone remember when the next Qualifier comes out?
  12. I’m travelling today so did this online. My 15 minutes put me on the first page of the leaderboard at the time of submission. Not for long of course, but still – woo hoo!
    SADDUCEE and SHELDUCK were new to me and I was relieved to find that the former was right.
  13. All present and correct, despite a couple of unknowns, so a relatively straightforward puzzle, I’d hazard. Took me the longest time to unravel the instrument, despite having spent many formative years attempting (and failing) to master it! Fairly quick time till I got stuck in the bottom right.

    Thanks, mct, for explaining several tricky-ish (for me) wordplays.

    COD (and LOI) to COWHIDE.

  14. About 35 satisfying minutes in two sessions. However, overall, it seemed just a little pedestrian, rather mechanically working through the wordplays. Or is it that, courtesy of this site, I’m now much more familiar with some of the cruciverbalist’s devices: e.g. 22ac (‘here in Paris’ = ‘ici’, which led easily to DEFICIT); 4dn (‘East End school’ = ‘Harrow’); 24dn (‘duke’ = ‘fist’)?

    Thanks for the blog, mctext. Your ‘superannuated Fremantle hippies’ seem to be re-running arguments seen here in the UK many years ago about live animal exports to those nasty foreigners across the Channel. And well-founded arguments they were, too.

  15. 13 giggly minutes for this veritable avenue of chestnuts. I particularly liked the style of clue that invited to think aphoristically – thick as thieves, an elephant never forgets. I remember using the venerable SADDUCEE pun from the pulpit once (you could only get away with it once) for a truly successful groan. A grand, grand anagram at 26 for Magellan et al, and the delightful (but surely well seasoned, if that’s the mot just) neat wrapper.
    Even EMBARGO is a Christmas cracker joke – it used to be the name of a bra before someone read it backwards, I recall.
    “Sir Otto of Wensleydale, who consumed his arrow with butter and jam in 30 seconds precisely, is named this years winner of the Eton and Harrow match” (I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again c 1967) How we laughed!
    Lots of fun – gigglesome grid of the year.
      1. Indeed: clearly the setter is of a particular vintage. That, and some of the other crackers, feel like refugees from that wonderfully innocent era. I once translated the ferret song into cod Latin: “Rodens in nostrum meo habeo…”
  16. Nicely blogged mctext – thank you. A much happier morning for me today: 28/30 without aids with only TUSKS and SADDUCEE missing and a wrong punt at ARABIAN for ARABIST. Liked the definitions for COWHIDE and EYEBROW.

    COD to CIRCUMNAVIGATOR. Cyril Aydon’s “Brief History of Mankind” that I’ve just read has a few paragraphs about Magellan’s expedition in 1519-22 that first circumnavigated the world. Of the 237 men in five ships who set out only 18 returned to Spain three years later. Magellan wasn’t one of them – he was killed in a battle in the Philippines.

  17. 25 minutes . Light hearted, witty and with a variety of clues: my sort of puzzle. I also recalled the Eton and Harrow joke, though the version I heard on the wireless wasn’t as cleverly constructed as that given by z8b8d8k above.

    A recent discussion of the perennial topic of class differences in Britain centred on what we call our grandmothers. A working class child calls her Nan, the middle classes Grandma, and the upper classes The DOWAGER Duchess of ……….

    COD to COWHIDE, or maybe EATERY …….. or possibly SADDUCEE.

    1. The sketch was on the ISIRTA record, which I wore to a spiral, so most of it is embedded in memory. The transcript can be found here and a download of the original radio broadcast here. Happy days indeed
      1. Thanks for those links; they certainly bring back memories. The arrow joke has been around a while; I heard it in the 1950s in a Robin Hood sketch, though I can’t think what radio show it was; maybe Take It From Here.
  18. Very nice crossword today, witty and about average hardness.. 5 or 6 on the Mohs Scale perhaps.
    I have definitely seen ARROW = East End Harrow before quite recently, not certain where
  19. Had to laugh at SADDUCEE & SACRISTAN, and also at the FERRET link which led me to footage of the lovely Amy McDonald, now but a distant memory of my youth. COD to COWHIDE over CIRCUMNAVIGATOR.
  20. 17 minutes for me today in what was I found to be a highly amusing puzzle. Being a good lapsed Catholic SADDUCEE was known but still to a while. SHELDUCK was unknown but clear enough from the wordplay. FERRET and COWHIDE were last in, the latter being my COD for the definition alone.
  21. Standard to easy level of difficulty with some good stuff (26A CIRC… is an excellent anagram) mixed in with quite a few chestnuts, a slightly irritating sense of humour and a bit too much religion for this died in the wool heathen. No real problems when solving.
  22. I believe you are correct, mctext. You become canonised when you become a saint. First, you are beatified and become “Blessed” as happened to Mary Mackillop here in Australia. She has only recently been elevated to saintly status.
  23. 15:36, while making dinner, so pretty breezy. I rather liked this one, smiled a lot at 9.
  24. About 35 minutes, but I didn’t know the bookie’s slang either, so I resorted to aids to figure that out. So a DNF, really. I wouldn’t have equated the simple word ‘move’ as TACTIC without some wordplay confirmation, which wasn’t going to come to me. COD to COWHIDE. Some very witty stuff here today, so thanks to the setter. Regards.
  25. 8:04 for me, which felt very slow. I suspect the real speed merchants would have made very short work of this one as there were a lot of old chestnuts – but some interesting clues as well.

    I was a bit worried about the SHELDUCK being described as a “seaside swimmer”, but my rather ancient COD describes it as “coastal”, so I guess that (as you say) it’s OK.

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