Times 24842 – A Lion Called Wallace

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After a good start I made rather heavy weather of this and took the best part of an hour to complete it. The RH side and most of the NW (excepting the elusive 9dn) went in fairly easily but I came a cropper in the SW where I encountered a number of difficulties, the main one being that without checkers in place I couldn’t get an angle on 14dn and I really needed that answer to open up the SW quarter. Realising immediately that I wouldn’t know the word at 19dn didn’t help matters. For all that, I think it was a perfectly fair puzzle and I enjoyed it a lot until I got stuck. Having been a bit down in the dumps over that I cheered up again when I completed the grid with a “doh” moment at 9dn and recalled the events of long ago in Blackpool as recounted by Stanley Holloway.


Across
1 DO(PIN)G
4 A,S(BEST)OS
10 FURy,BALL – Keepers of long-haired cats will know all about furballs. Queen/Cat came easily after yesterday.
11 Deliberately omitted.
12 heavY,O(M)P – This military word for trekking at speed over difficult terrain came into common usage during the retaking of the Falklands Islands after UK assault helicopters had been sent to the bottom of the Atlantic and the troops had to travel on foot.
13 BEN,EFAC,TOR – CAFÉ reversed between mountain and hill.
15 HINDUSTAN – Anagram of IN THe SUDAN
16 MO(A)NS – Mons in Belgium was the site of the first battle fought by the British in the Great War.
18 antiGUAN,O – Bird droppings or similar used as a fertiliser.
19 FE(MINIS)E,D
21 FLAT,SCREENplay – I’m not entirely sure about “endless dramatic episode” but this is my take on it. Edit: Thanks to galspray for this better alternative which I’m sure is what the setter had in mind  “endless dramatic episode” = SCEN(e), “on” = RE.
23 FAST – Two meanings. This was nearly my last in because I hadn’t thought of fast colours in the wash, for example. For most of the solve I was considering HALT here.
26 VINE,GAR – I’m not sure I knew this meaning of the word. RAG reversed seems to be is clued as an anagram just to add to my confusion.
27 LE(A)RNER – Alan Jay Lerner was the lyricist on “My Fair Lady” and many other songs and shows.
28 SALUTING – SAL replaces the O in Outing
29 BAR,ROW

Down
1 DA(F,F)Y
2 PartY,ROMANIA
3 barN,EAT – NEAT meaning cattle is archaic and probably only survives in poetry and crossword puzzles.
5 S(URGE)ON
6 EX,CLAIMING
7 T(A)INT
8 SURPRISED – Sounds like “Sir prized”. I can’t hear any rumblings in the SW yet so maybe this homophone is acceptable.
9 ALBERT – The A from attack is followed by TREBLe reversed. A very late entry for me after trying for ages to remember who in literature or legend fell victim to a lion. And after all that it turned out to be none other than young Albert Ramsbottom with his stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle, the finest that Woolworth’s could sell. Anyone bemused by all this can read the whole saga by clicking the link to my own LJ pages. The poem The Lion and Albert by Marriott Edgar was made famous by Stanley Holloway in the 1930s. Albert and the Lion now have a JD Wetherspoons pub named after them in Blackpool with Albert promoted to first billing.
14 OUT OF SIGHT – A horrible expression meaning astonishingly excellent as can ‘ace’. I’d have thought it was from the 1960s but according to Chambers there are examples of its usage way back in the 19th century.
15 HIGH FIVES – Sounds like “Hi, fives” and is also a greeting originating in the US.
17 ABSTAINER – Anagram of TEA IN BARS
19 FOR,TRAiN – A computer language I have managed to avoid hearing of until today.
20 MUESLI – Anagram of USE MILk. The anagrind is ‘supply’ as in ‘flexibly’.
22 ANNAL –  cAnNoNbAlL
24 Deliberately omitted. Seek and ye shall find.
25 MAY,A – A language of Central America.

41 comments on “Times 24842 – A Lion Called Wallace”

  1. Thanks, jackkt, I now understand where the GUAN in GUANO comes from. I smiled broadly when I saw 9d as that monologue is something of a party piece for me. I have both a book and a cassette of those monologues and I also used to be able to recite “The Runcorn Ferry”, wherein Albert has some watery misadventures.
    Like you, I’m not sure of SCREEN but PLAY works as well as anything else as a definition of “dramatic episode”. As for VINEGAR, I got it from wordplay then checked dictionary.com which gives one definition as : “sour or irritable speech, manner or countenance.
    Lastly, in 25d, if it’s a language that’s being referred to, shouldn’t it be MAYAN?
    1. According to Chambers, ‘Maya’ is used for the language, with ‘Maya’ also acceptable for the person and for the adjective ‘of or relating to the Mayas’.
    2. Collins has ‘Maya’ as the language with ‘Mayan’ as an alternative.
  2. Well blogged Jack. I parsed 24 as “endless dramatic episode” = SCEN(e), “on” = RE.
    Hmmm, suspiciously only four comments here that I can see. Strange feeling that I may be posting something that’s already been pointed out several times. Oh well.
    1. Many thanks on 24. I’m sure you are right so I have added it above. I have been monitoring since I opened the blog this morning and I don’t think we have lost any comments. UK-based bloggers’ days tend to be a bit slow getting going.
  3. 46 minutes, but messed up by inventing a new language, JANA.
    Speaking of languages, not too many computer experts are using FORTRAN these days.
    Good fun puzzle, particularly the mention of young Albert. Only ever heard it once, on some radio show down here many years ago, but have never quite got it out of my head. Great stuff. Can’t remember if they ever got their money back?
    1. In a bit of a rush so don’t have a link to the relevant monologue, but in the follow-up, the insurance man has called round to pay out the few shillings that Albert was insured for when the little lad’s face pops up at the window after the lion has regrets and regurgitates him. To make up for that, his father encourages Albert to go back and “see what tigers can do”.
  4. At 42′, this was seemingly a lot easier than yesterday’s for me, but I (finally!) got yesterday’s done correctly, while today I couldn’t come up with 25d; I never can find the patience to run through the alphabet, which is all I could think of. I’m especially grateful to today’s blog, as I couldn’t figure out GUANO (an early solve otherwise), or the substitution in SALUTING. Never heard of YOMP or that Albert.
  5. Thanks for an enjoyable blog, Jack. A slow start for me but about 40 minutes overall, with at least 10 taken up by resolving OUT OF SIGHT and FLATSCREEN which I parsed in the same way as galspray. Is “on” = RE a standard crossword ploy? I can’t recall meeting it before and cannot see the rationale.

    I particularly enjoyed ALBERT (I half-remembered the Stanley Holloway song) but my COD goes to ABSTAINERS.

  6. A 20 minute stroll down memory lane with OUT OF SIGHT my hold up. With checkers it had to be the answer but had forgotten the “ace” meaning so thanks Jack

    Well remember Albert and of course FORTRAN which after writing complicated actuarial formulae in machine code came as a great relief. Rather like COBOL I suspect it’s a personal skill that no longer has any market value.

    1. Still a surprising number of COBOL programmers around, Jim. It’s dying a slower death than Peter Sellars in that early scene of The Party, mainly because there are many, many COBOL-based “legacy” systems still in use in businesses around the world.
      Actuarial formulae in machine code eh? No wonder you find these crosswords such a doddle!
  7. 67 minutes, last in FURBALL (Queen = cat remembered only after a long delay) and ALBERT. Held myself up by putting ‘dosing’ at 1ac originally.

    VINEGAR (‘ill-temper’) is climber (VINE) + rag*.

    1. Isn’t that what I wrote? Maybe it wasn’t clear that when parsing it I was looking for a reverse indicator but instead I found an anagrind.
        1. I understand what you meant now. Thanks. I have changed it to “is” to avoid confusion.
  8. Nice easy one to start the weekend! LOI: FURBALL, which took some time, otherwise not too bad. ALBERT from wordplay. Queries alongside VINEGAR and FLATSCREEN. Thanks for explanations! See y’all next week!
  9. Head-desk moment today, having initially spent ages thinking the PRISED in SURPRISED was meant to be a homophone of “PRAISED”, which really would have tested the bounds of what’s acceptable!
  10. Great crossword today. COD to 13 across. Particularly liked the reference to Albert. Last in: Hindustan – As featured in Nelly the Elephant!
  11. 23:46 .. nothing disssthpicable, but a few bits quite difficult.

    Last in: that pesky FURBALL

  12. All but 10ac and 9dn done in 20 minutes. Another 25 minutes for those two! I did know Albert and the Lion, but only very vaguely so it didn’t come to mind until I’d (eventually) solved the clue from wordplay. Both good and fair clues in a good and fair crossword.
    VINEGAR in this sense was unfamiliar to me, and I couldn’t parse the wordplay for SALUTING, so thanks to Jack for that.
  13. 19:30, so I found it tricky, count me in as the last pair being FURBALL and ALBERT (which I only got through wordplay). GUANO from definition
  14. Yet another day of starting well and then finding it difficult to finish. Last in the FURBALL/ALBERT crossing after 45 minutes. No surprises there. I didn’t have a clue who Albert was but must have heard the ballad at some point because the “feed ruddy lions” line is there in my memory. The rest of the poem must have been expunged from the hard drive to make room for PINs and the like. And the nearest thing to the original FORTRAN still in daily use is Visual Basic, the macro language of Excel, which still allows GO TO statements and DO loops. Ah, fond memories. COD to ALBERT.
    1. Do coders today still get their knickers in a twist over nested IF statements? Used to be a regular cause of angst as I recall
      1. I’m pretty sure nested IF’s are still considered bad form. I think the argument is that code should not be overwrought and that there’s usually a more straightforward way to do it if you think about it for a bit longer; neither of which concern dilettantes such as I.
  15. I think I made hard work of this as I was quite slow to get some that afterwards seemed obvious. Struggled in the top left and can’t believe I didn’t get Albert until the very end, having once been able to recite the whole tale.
    Louise
  16. Was pleased with my sub 30 minutes, except for 25 down I had WAWA instead of MAYA.

    I knew WAWA was language (see Collins English Dictionary, “speech, language, to speak”), and convinced myself that the clue’s “several weeks to acquire a …” was W+A twice (several times?).

    WAWA not in Chambers, though.

    Duh!

  17. Is FURBALL a word? It’s not in Chambers or Collins – not even as a two-word term FUR BALL.
  18. I have no idea why LJ chose to label my previous comment as “suspicious” when all I was saying was that furball is listed in Oxford Dictionaries Online, both as an alternative to hairball and as a euphemism for a rather furry pet.
    1. It’s because one of the changes made by LiveJournal to prevent the recent DDoS attacks was to block comments containing links to non-whitelisted domains. I’ve just found the setting and removed it, so it shouldn’t happen again.
  19. Started at a gallop and then came to a shuddering halt in the SW corner. I had HIGH FIVES quite early on but although that gave me 5 initial letters for the across clues, I found those clues so tricky that I began to doubt my answer. I also had FORTRAN early on, which should have helped. I think my brain was having a day off. I spent well over 10 minutes on those 5 answers. I liked the anagram at 17d and admired the BEN and the TOR at 12a. Knew ALBERT straight away – I love those verses. I seem to remember another similar poem about Noah building his ark where Noah asks for help with the promise “I’ll give you a ride in my ark” Am I imagining things or is this part of the same oevre?
    1. I tried posting a link to the Ark monologue but it got labelled as suspicious. You can read it on my own LJ pages (click on my name) if you wish.
  20. Here’s a long-retired actuary who now programs in Visual Basic.
  21. About 25 minutes to solve this, with the last in being BARROW. I was held up by ALBERT; got it through wordplay only, as over here we’re not familiar with the story (at least I’m not). COD to BENEFACTOR, for the pair of peaks. Come to think of it, I’m not familiar with BARROW as a burial ground, either. Otherwise, no real hold ups except for not seeing the parsing of SC(RE)EN until enlighted here, so thanks for that. Regards to all.
  22. This is a great rhyme that I had forgotten completely. Think it is my Marriot Edgar
  23. Two days late, but I did finish correctly, though I don’t know how. When I started, I just raced along, thinking it was a very easy puzzle, but that only applied to the right-hand side. It took me ages to fill in the SW, and eons for the last three entries, ALBERT (just a guess from wordplay — being American, I had never heard of the poem), FURBALL (after trying to find words starting with FORC.A.. which ER might not stomach) and YOMP (clear from wordplay, but I needed Chambers to corroborate that it is a word). So all in all a rather amazing puzzle.

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