Times 24888: Wot no Hold Kent Road?

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 54 minutes.

After the half hour, with two of the 15s still not in, I was contemplating a DNF on a blogging day. And, apart from a recurrent one involving Woody Allen’s creature with the body of a crab and the head of a social worker, this is the nearest to a nightmare I have these days. Still … on completion, there’s not a gripe to be had. So, worth the time and effort. NB: the slight but distinct Suvvern redolence.

 

Across
 1 BAB(Y GRAN)D. Anagram of ‘angry’, after B (key); all inside BAD (poor-quality).
 6 SAD,HU. This is HUT (shed) minus its last letter.
 9 WHITECHAPEL ROAD. Anagram of ‘dirt cheap, a whole’. It’s on the Monopoly board and goes for £60. The congratulatory exclamation mark, in this case, is well deserved.
10 RAH-RAH. First letters of the Royal Albert Hall, repeated. “Great or uncritical enthusiasm and excitement”; though not an expression I’ve ever used.
11 CLANGOUR. C (Cape); LANGUR (monkey) including O (duck). Ditto for the personal non-use.
13 FLAGELLATE. Complete reversal: ET AL, LEGAL (allowed) & F (fine).
14 MEGA. Reversal of A GEM.
16 Omitted. (Chap from here fell down a sewer and died.)
17 UP FOR GRABS. Anagram: ‘a frog burps’.
19 S(A,RD)ON,YX. SON (boy) containing A RD (road); then the two axes. “Onyx in which white layers alternate with sard”.
20 PI,STOL. PI (good); reversal of LOTS.
23 ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. Humorous cryptic def. (Did anyone else count the letters looking for an anagram?)
24 MAYO,R. The last is from ‘DuRham’.
25 SURPASSED. Anagram of ‘prudes’ inc. ASS.
Down
 1 BOW,ER. I expect the usual reminder about the actual birthplace of Cockneys. I’m with Alexei Sayle on this one: it’s anyone who supports Arsenal, Chelsea, West Ham, etc., etc.
 2 BRIGHT AND BREEZY. Two defs; one stretching things a bit if you know about English weather and your T.S. Eliot.
 3 GREY AREA. Reversal of ERG (work unit); anagram of ‘a year’.
 4 ASHE. AS+HE. Arthur. Won Wimbledon in 1975. My first Wimbledon watched in Australia.
 5 D(EP)ILATION. E and P from ‘Eyebrows’ and ‘Papa’. Strictly DBE as shaving is only one means of hair removal.
 6 SI,LENT. Reversal of 1s; the period of fasting.
 7 DROP ONES AITCHES. Anagram of ‘posh second-rate I’. Maybe it’s fear of this (appearing common) that leads some to add them where they’re not needed. Sir Half Ramsey and Parker (Lady P’s butler) being famous cases in point.
 8 U(N,DER,PAS)S. A complex construction. You need SAP (jerk) and RED (flushed), reversed, after N (indefinite amount), all inside US (American), to get a tunnel. (Can I get a coffee now?)
12 SLOPPY JOES. Two referential meanings: hamburgers and sweaters (tops).
13 F(I,RE-ST)ORM. Very tidy and deceptive surface.
15 A,GR,I,COLA. “Gnaeus Julius (ad 40–93), Roman general and governor of Britain 78–84. As governor he completed the subjugation of Wales and defeated the Scottish Highland tribes”. Not bad for a farmer!
18 Omitted. As blown by devices commonly known as ‘Professors’.
21 L(UR)ID. That’s CUR with no lead (letter).
22 PAIR. Two defs. Will leave it to the forum to decide on the grammaticality of the second.

 

34 comments on “Times 24888: Wot no Hold Kent Road?”

  1. 19:22 online, but I got a few text messages in the middle. What an odd set of words, I thought with all the Js, X’s, Ys and W’s we were heading for a pangram, but it’s not. SARDONYX from wordplay, UNDERPASS and CLANGOUR from definition, and BRIGHT AND well before BREEZY.
  2. 23’59” online (there’s precise for you), with the bottom left, including SLOPPY JOES the last in. Nothing too difficult, but I was toying with something French for the burping Frog.
    I thought the clue for B&B was a bit loose: I looked up the Eliot connection but got referred straight back here – how does Google do that?
    RAH RAH I thought was a skirt but Chambers says that’s hyphenated and does what 7d does. Didn’t know the gung-ho version, but the cryptic couldn’t be clearer.
    CoD to the brown property with a hotel on it. Do US solvers have to enter “Baltic Avenue”?
  3. Once again, made heavy weather of this one, finishing – or not as the case may be – in 90 minutes. I can forgive myself my ‘floppy dogs’ – as I’d never heard of either definition – but should really have got CLANGOUR – even though the monkey was unfamiliar – as it’s rather more credible than ‘plangour’. I did consider the correct answer, but got lost traversing a windy path that took me back to those television creatures that used to make funny noises and then on to those faux pas’s you drop.

    Whitechapel Road made harder by the fact that it’s equivalent in the Monopoly I’ve played for the last 20-odd years is called Mui Wo. COD to SILENT.

  4. 43 minutes, so not too bad considering that as my printer is out of ink and the spare cartridge is a dud I had to solve on-line. I cannot think properly doing this.

    Fortunately after a while with MEGA as my only completed clue it started to come together. I got SARDONYX from the cryptic and only thought of SLOPPY JOES because TESCO sell a brand of pizza by that name and the checking letters brought it to mind. Whilst we’re doing sloppy, I think 22dn is decidedly so. I don’t really get 2dn either.

    GREY AREA turned up in a Concise I was doing yesterday (from 2-3 days ago) so that was a bit of a gift and I enjoyed the topical Wimbledon reference which made a change from the customary cricket day after day.

    1. Jack, I recommend getting a laser printer. When the toner is getting low, pages start to come out with a feinter stripe down the page. I then open up, extract the toner cartridge, shake it, replace it and I have a week or more to get a new cartridge.
      Mike O.
      1. Thanks, Mike. In my experience ink-jets give a warning too and I thought I was prepared for the moment it finally ran out of ink but unfortunately the spare cartridge I had in readiness doesn’t work – says it’s incompatible – so I’ve had to order another one. With any luck it should arrive today or tomorrow.
  5. I managed to do a hefty chunk of this in 39 minutes, then nodded off in the sun without resuming the timing, but I think I may have made it in under an hour; or maybe not. LOI was UNDERPASS, as I couldn’t get ‘uncertain’ out of my mind, even though ???C was a clear non-starter for 9ac. (Had no idea of the Monopoly connection.) I’m almost as gripless as Mctext, but I think we’ve seen AGRICOLA a half-dozen times lately, always clued by ‘Roman general’. And it’s news to me that braces come pair.
  6. That’s ‘gripeless’, not gripless; I may need to get a grip, but I’m sure Mctext is OK.
    1. Yeh, I’m fine. Why do you ask? Maybe you knew about the remainder of the birthday Jameson’s from last night?
  7. … managed it all ok, except for PISTOL, even after considering PI (but for the number, not for the ‘good’ bit), things being fired, eg shot etc, and alphabet-running for several minutes.

    Anyway, most of the rest quite straightforward: had only heard of burger def for SJs, not the sweaters, but it had to be this.

  8. A Millwall fan in my youth but the only aitches dropped where when TH became F. Average difficulty for me ie most well under the hour, the balance (today 12 and 19) taking me over the hour. SARDONYX (once axes reversed) and AGRICOLA from cryptic, CLANGOUR from definition. SLOPPY JOES dredged up from somewhere (jellied eels being my fast food of choice)having being convinced for an age that it was DOGS. Fick but furrer.
  9. I found this a bit of a curate’s egg. A number of the clues are train wrecks as far as surface reading is concerned. That doesn’t bother me but its quite unusual in the Times daily

    Didn’t understand 2D but guessed it was some wretched literary reference. Don’t understand 22D. 25 minutes at the end of which I felt somehow less than satisfied with the whole thing.

  10. 26 minutes, the last ten or so on CLANGOUR. I’m not aware of ever having seen the word before, and I didn’t know the monkey, so the answer went in as a pure guess as the thing that looked least wrong and sounded a bit like “clamour”. Quite surprised to find it was right.
    SARDONYX was the only other complete unknown today, gettable from wordplay in a very pleasing way. I’ve heard the term SLOPPY JOES but didn’t know what it meant in either sense. I derived it from the pizza called Sloppy Giuseppe sold by Pizza Express!
    AGRICOLA went straight in; pure crossword knowledge.
    All in all I thought this a very good puzzle with some original stuff.
  11. No literary reference in 2; the Eliot has nothing to do with the clue. Braces come in a pair do they not? I thought this was O.K. though I was a little slow – 33 minutes. Sloppy Joes a guess at the end after veering off something dogs. COD 9: used to snap up that and Old Kent whenever I could.
  12. Struggled with unknowns CLANGOUR and SARDONYX: surprised, on checking, to find that both were right (it’s amazing what results can be produced by dutifully plodding through the wordplay). On the other hand, never fully cracked the wordplay for FLAGELLATE. I got enough to know that answer was ‘correct’ but decided to rely upon the always dependable blogger (thank you, mctext) to finish off the hard work: it looks so obvious when put so clearly!

    An enjoyable 45 minutes or so. COD to DROP ONES AITCHES.

  13. I’m sure the subsidiary part of the clue refers to “a pair of braces” which is what the alternative to a trouser belt was referred to when I was growing up in Liverpool.
  14. No time today after dozing off mid-solve, but comfortably under the hour (ie about 55 minutes). Annoyed with myself for having to look up the last letter of 19 in the dictionary, having failed to spot the alternative meaning of axes. Doh!

    RAH-RAH is also the gently mocking term used by a rugby league supporter to describe his union counterpart – it’s fairly common in both the North of England and Australia. I’ve always assumed it derived from the noise of a union crowd in congratulatory mode with a dash of Baa-Baa thrown in. And before anybody picks up the gauntlet, I’ve heard most of the stuff coming in the other direction, and it’s much less genteel.

  15. I found this mostly pretty easy, finishing all but 11 in 22 minutes. After a few minutes staring at the confirmed letters of 11 and seeing nothing I recognized wherever I put the C, I wasted no more time and resorted to an aid.

    I agree with dorsetjimbo about the poor surfaces (eg 6,13,17), and 22 doesn’t work grammatically at all as far as I can see.

  16. Very enoyable puzzle today. No dodgy clues. Managed to finish in under 30 mins.
  17. 42 minutes. SADHU, CLANDOUR, AGRICOLA, SARDONYX and BREEZY were entered without full confidence, so reasonably happy to only have one wrong.
    Agree with richnorth about the RAH-RAH term, having been both a RAH-RAH and a MUNGO in my time.
  18. I’m another who didn’t like the surfaces here. Some of them were very clunky. I took ages to get the 15 letter clues but once I twigged the Monopoly reference things began to move a bit. I can’t see any Eliot reference in spite of April being the cruellest month but I remember that:

    All the nice girls love a sailor,
    All the nice girls love a tar;
    For there’s something about a sailor —
    Well, you know what sailors are!

    BRIGHT AND BREEZY, free and easy,
    He’s the ladies’ pride and joy.
    Falls in love with Kate and Jane,
    Then he’s off to sea again —
    Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!

    It was nice to see a reference to the late, great Arthur Ashe on Wimbledon quarter-final day.(There are not many black players in the men’s game so it was interesting to watch Tsonga beat Federer a few minutes ago) I sort of staggered home in 41 minutes.

  19. I looked at this last night, but left it to finish rather quickly this morning, so no real time, but probably about 30 minutes. I’m lucky the Monopoly clue was an anagram, or I wouldn’t have gotten it, having never seen the UK version of the board. I also didn’t know of the Sloppy Joe sweater, or 2D, or CLANGOUR, which I was relieved to find US dictionaries seem to feel is ‘chiefly British’. Also, like I’m sure some others, I’d never heard of a SARDU. COD to SARDONYX, thanks to mctext, and regards to everyone.
  20. As someone born in Luton, brought up in Mile End and supporting Chelsea, what am I?

    The only football ground that might possibly be within the sound of Bow Bells is Milwall’s, and then it would have to be a very quiet day.

    Also, is Jimbo originally from the East End? Or did Tubby Isaacs’s fame spread further than the corner of Petticoat Lane?

    1. Strictly a Cockney is anybody born within the sound of Bow Bells. I was born in The Angel so qualify, except that in 1942 Bow Bells had been silenced by the bombs – so make of that what you will. Bow Bells have quite a ring to them and some places south of the river can hear them – not sure about either Millwall or Chelsea.

      Tubby Isaacs was well known to me because I come from a long line of London mushers (self employed black cab drivers) as did my first wife and Tubby’s was a favourite haunt after a pint or four.

  21. 15:36 for me, the second puzzle I’ve made heavy weather of this week. I spent the last couple of minutes agonising over SLOPPY JOES: I was fairly certain about the sweater, but the foodie element was new to me.
  22. while studying in Canada I witnessed a student ask the British college receptionist for advice on how to make sloppy joes – only to be unexpectedly brought a knitting pattern the next day! And no, in spite of that Pereonal advantage I didn’t get the clue!
  23. I got it almost all over a day and an eve of intermittent plodding in stifling NYC heat. I don’t know England, so am proud to solve Whitechapel Road! Easy once I had the letters. Don’t think I’d heard of a “sadhu” but got it anyway by the clues and other words.

    I was a little annoyed after I got 13d, “fire-storm.” The clue seems to deliberately subvert the usual rules by seeming to say that “shape” is nested in “I don’t exercise” when it’s the opposite! But I got it anyway so I shouldn’t complain.

    Used a little help to get “Agricola” and “pistol.” Hey, Brits, I think maybe I am getting better at this!

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