Times 24874: E. P. Ode pour I’Election de son Sepulchre

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 33 minutes

Music: Finzi, Cello Concerto, Ma/Handley/RPO

I was a little slow on this one, and may not have understood all the clues as well as I would like. Some of them may be a bit loose, or perhaps allude to something I just don’t know.

There is a bit of American material in this one, but nothing that would be impossible for the UK solver. In fact, two 19th-century US presidents appear, but only one is so clued.

Across
1 DOWNPOUR, OWN in anagram of PROUD, where it’s raining cats and dogs. My first in, so I thought the puzzle was going to be easier than it turned out to be.
5 CARPET, CAR(P)ET. A caret is a ‘^’, which is used as an insertion indicator in proofreading.
9 Omitted.
10 PIERCE, PIE(R)CE.
12 CATCH, double definition, where the second definition refers to the acquisition of a disease.
13 GOODNIGHT, GOOD + anagram of THING.
14 POET LAUREATE, anagram of A TRUE TALE inside following POE, continuing the 19th-century American theme.
18 INTELLIGENCE. Well, that’s the answer, the only English word that fits the crossers, but I cannot say how the clue works. Comments? McText has it, it’s ‘I queue’ sounding like ‘I.Q.’ which is a measured amount of INTELLIGENCE.
21 SEMIFINAL, SEM(IF)INAL. I think we’ve seen this one before.
23 POLKA, POLK + A. James Polk was president for a single term, 1845-49.
24 UNSOLD, sounds like UNSOLED, a rather acceptable homonym in most dialects.
25 UPRISING, U[nrest] + PRISING.
26 IODINE, I + O + DINE, where the chemical symbol ‘I’ is the clue, but the ‘I’ in the word is clued by ‘one’.
27 TEENAGER, TEE + REGAN backwards.
 
Down
1 DETACH, D + E(T[erm])ACH, where ‘a head’ has to be taken as a phrase.
2 WEALTH, WEAL + TH[e], where ‘capital’ is the well-hidden definition. Careless solvers will see W and put Warsaw, which I nearly did.
3 PUNCHBOWL, double definition. There are quite a few geographical punchbowls, such as the Devil’s Punchbowl in California.
4 UPRIGHT PIANO, UP + anagram of I GOT HARP IN, where ‘up’ = ‘informed’. When I had only the ‘U’, I put in ‘uillean pipes’, but then erased it.
6 ASIAN, hidden word in [Madr]AS I AN[nnounced]. The literal is not very accurate; given ‘for example, Tamil’, I would expect ‘Dravidian’ or something of the sort.
7 PARAGUAY, PARA + GU(A)Y.
8 TWENTIES, T(WENT)IES. Since ‘left’ is so often either ‘l’ or ‘port’, this stumped me for a bit.
11 TOTAL ECLIPSE, TO + anagram of P[redict] and CELESTIAL
15 RECEPTION, double definition, referring to the ‘snow’ that appeared on TV screens in the old days.
16 MISSOURI, MISS + OUR + I. The Missouri compromise was passed in 1820, before either of our presidents took office.
17 ITEMISED, anagram of I.E + M[a]T[i]S[s]E + I’D. A rather elaborate clue, but I did need the cryptic to solve it.
19 FLYING, FL([pla]Y)ING. I didn’t understand the literal for a bit, but then I saw it – a ‘flying visit’ is a short one.
20 BADGER, double definition, where ‘hound’ is a verb.
22 FELON, FEL[l] ON.

37 comments on “Times 24874: E. P. Ode pour I’Election de son Sepulchre”

  1. The curse of the sloppy anagram while working online strikes again, as I had SOLAR ECLIPSE at 11.
  2. Another one with SOLAR I’m afraid. Otherwise a slow slove for me: 52m. But there’s much to enjoy here I felt.
    INTELLIGENCE: this is a pun on IQ (I queue).
    COD to IODINE — that “I” always sucks me in!
    1. … I took it that POE was merely “by” the anagram fodder in 14ac; rather than the latter being included.
  4. My IQ wasn’t up to parsing 18ac, but apart from that I found this pretty accessible, with PIERCE (the other US President (14th), in case, like me, you didn’t know) last in. COD to WEALTH for the misdirection, although I admired the smoothness of the young adult pair. Both CARPET and Finzi (today’s composer) were in the Concise today. 35 minutes.
    1. Thanks for that. I’d been wondering about the apparent looseness of the clueing.
  5. I was so pleased with myself for getting this all in a swiftish 28 minutes, but I, too, went for SOLAR instead of TOTAL; damn. Wotthehell, there were a number of lovely clues: 1ac, 21ac, 26ac,27ac, 17d.
    16d: since the Missouri is a river, ‘in this state’ could have been dropped.
    2d: capital=wealth? I wish!
    25ac: DBE? applying force includes pushing, kicking, throttling, ….
    1. … Yes. So the example is in the answer not in the (part) definition in the clue. Ergo: legit.

      Edited at 2011-06-13 08:25 am (UTC)

  6. Intrigued by the Ezra Pound ref. in your title, vinyl1. Is it merely the suggestion of an American theme? Sailed away on this, ducking under quarter of an hour, which was becoming a distant memory.
  7. 50 minutes- 20 of them spent on five remaining clues 7,5,3,18 and 17, the last of which I eventually solved from the definition and then worked out where the anagrist came from. I was pleased to remember President Polk this time. Nearly gave up on 18 and was about to cheat when the answer suddenly came to me so at least I managed to finish it all without resort to aids.
  8. Weird puzzle. Fast finish but only because I couldn’t think of alternatives to CARPET, BADGER and FLYING. Actually looked-up CATCH in the dictionary post-solve before the penny dropped. Still, pleased to see IQ quickly. Loved the elegance of the easy DOWNPOUR but the equally easy ITEMISED is just plain ugly.
  9. Found this easy-ish, and was pleased to amend my SOLAR to TOTAL before coming here. INTELLIGENCE was one of my first in. Unknowns for me today: POLK, CARET (which led to CARPET being my LOI).

  10. All correct in less than 30 minutes, so a good day for me. Thanks for the blog vinyl, I didn’t realise that I had parsed DETACH incorrectly until coming here.
  11. 9:21, delayed by trying to justify SLYING. Sometimes, of course, you get a notion in your head and instead of thinking “Well, it can’t be SLING, because SLYING isn’t actually a word, it must be something else with a Y in it”, you start thinking “Perhaps SLYING is a word, it’s just that I’ve never heard it before…”

    Also only realised after coming here that I’d written in RECEPTION without actually being able to figure out what it had to do with snow, and never gone back to check, so thank you for for providing today’s D’oh! moment.

    1. I went through a very simiilar process, but I did think “well, it can’t be CARPET, because CARET isn’t actually a word, it must be something else”. It was only after trying for some time and failing to come up with an alternative that I finally thought “perhaps CARET is a word, it’s just that I’ve never heard it before…”
      1. One of the problems / joys of cryptic crosswords. Sometimes you can be right without being sure why. Then again, you can also be wrong for very good reasons…
        1. Indeed. Writing the answer in confidently when you’ve never heard of either the answer or one of the elements of the clue is something I find very satisfying. Fortunately I am blessed with a very poor memory and mediocre vocabulary so it is a pleasure I experience a lot.
  12. First time under 10 minutes (9 and a bit) in however many years, helped by putting the first half dozen across clues in more or less on reading. But there were some odd clues here – TRAINERS was (were?) barely cryptic, FLYING I though rather loose until coming here and being reminded of its pairing with visit, and I’m still wondering about RECEPTION. “Snow” in the sense of white dots all over the screen was the result, not the cause of disruption. On the other hand, if heavy rain or snow lands on my satellite dish, I get the 21st century equivalent in pixellation or the blue screen of death.
    Just lucky, I guess, not to think SOLAR, which would definitely have stayed if I had, in the same way that POET LAUREATE did from its partial anagram (didn’t work out the Poe bit, as the answer was already obvious).
    I’ve given up online filling, as on Saturday, a single typo (starting clue entry one square in) cost me two errors and, being (apparently) screen blind, a complete omission cost me another.
    Cod today to IQ.
  13. 24 minutes, but another SOLAR ECLIPSE here. I could blame solving online but I don’t think I’d have written the letters out even if I’d been solving on paper. I’d have just bunged it in. From the leaderboard this appears to be a common mistake today.
    Otherwise quite a tricky one for a Monday, but the difficulty coming from cunning wordplay rather than vocabulary. The sort of puzzle where in retrospect you can’t understand why you found it difficult, which in my book is a good sign.
    “Caret” was the only thing I didn’t know today, and I was held up for a few minutes trying to come up with an alternative. I didn’t understand the second meaning of CATCH so thanks to vinyl1 for that.
    I liked the IQ device.
  14. Having done quite a lot of proofreading in my time, CAR[P]ET presented no problems. So, I shouldn’t have gone for the careless SOLAR ECLIPSE … and it took some time for the IQ penny to drop.

    Thanks, vinyl, for a good blog and for fully explaining the wordplay for CATCH, TEENAGER and PUNCHBOWL in particular. (It’s strange: REGAN meant nothing to me until seeing it in the blog, when all became clear!)

  15. I’ve returned to the poem with delight but still can’t fathom which line it was.
  16. I also thought I was in for a quick solve, with the first half dozen I looked at going in at first sight, and then I slowed to my usual pace. I didn’t know the geological puchbowl and no matter how badly I mangled INTELLIGENCE I couldn’t make it sound like IN LINE I STAND. Fortunately I had heard of Polk (but not Pierce), knew about carets and <a href=”http://www.leunig.com.au/cartoons/>Michael Leunig’s</a> total eclipse of the feet (a.k.a. beer belly) so at least I remained relatively unpitfallen. COD to INTELLIGENCE, now I geddit.
  17. Straightforward 25 minutes. Baffled by people putting in solar rather than TOTAL – it’s an anagram for goodness sake! Liked IQ and I for Iodine, although a little overused, is still tricky to spot.
  18. An easy solve. Resisted the temptation to put in Solar eclipse without checking the letters! Was very slow to get reception and poet laureate even though I had all the crossing letters in!
  19. On the easier side for me, but no time to post since it was done in bits and pieces. I hadn’t understood INTELLIGENCE until coming here, so thanks to vinyl and mctext for that. Very clever. So, COD to that for fooling me, and runner-up to PARAGUAY, for the ‘soldier dropped’ phrase. Regards to all, and regards to the setter also, nice puzzle.
    1. I got INTELLIGENCE and FLYING but to sure why until coming here. Also trapped by
      the incorrect SOLAR eclipse…just not being careful enough. Also on the easier side for me.
  20. The Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey is more likely to be known to UK solvers than the one in California.
  21. 8:51 for me. I was heading for a respectable time, but got bogged down in the SE corner trying to justify FLYING (which I managed to do eventually) and BADGER (which was a nervous guess as I don’t recall coming across “badger-dog”, with or without a hyphen, before).
  22. Forty-four minutes for me, and everything correct, so this was one of the rare occasions when I can actually find myself on the visible part of the leaderboard (and ahead of some people who are far better than I am but who had one mistake, presumably SOLAR …)
    INTELLIGENCE and FLYING just had to be right, but I didn’t see why until coming to the blog. And although I understood the wordplay for IODINE, I didn’t recognize the definition! On 11dn I vacillated between SOLAR and LUNAR eclipse for a while (not having filled in GOOD NIGHT yet), which did help me to realize that neither one would do. COD to INTELLIGENCE for audacity, but there were many other enjoyable clues.
  24. drsHe4 I really liked your blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Cool.

Comments are closed.