Times 24906 … There once was a fellow from Dorset

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 72 minutes.

Much gen. knowledge required today, most of which I failed on the first pass. But once the awful 12dn clicked, so did the rest. Lots of question-marks in the clues … but not enough? Shocking time eh?

 

Across
 1 PRE(C)LUDE. First letter of ‘Claims’ inside PRELUDE (intro).
 6 OILCAN. Clio is the muse of history (reversed), AN.
 9 BIRDS NEST SOUP. Cryptic def.
10 CORSET. Homophone: Course, It. (See blog title.)  There could be complaints here: (1) ET sounds like IT? — in some dialects but not all. (2) We all know corset wearers who were by no means controlling their fat. The question-mark might be a way out of both problems. All I can think of is Ringo.
11 TEETOTAL. Anagram of ‘Attlee’, including starting letters of ‘The Opposition’.
13 INTE(R)STATE. ‘Lacking will’ = INTESTATE.
15 POTS. Reversal of STOP (kick).
16 Omitted. He was good with a rhyme or two.
18 RUBY MURRAY. Rhyming slang for CURRY. This held me up for a long time. I was looking for a bird.
21 C(RIMIN)AL. Rimin{i} is the city, inside CAL.
22 HO | URIS. Leon Uris, purveyor of bloated Zionism thinly disguised as fiction.
23 LITTLE RUSSIAN. Tidy anagram (Stalinist rule).
25 SCOTER. Anagram of CORSET.
26 CAD,DYING. I’ll leave the ‘course work’ pun to the golfers.
Down
 2 RUB DOWN. Here’s RUB{y} again = RED. A well-known Melbourne jazz club.
 3 CHRISTENDOM. Anagram (Ditch sermon).
 4 UP,SET.
 5 ELECT,RA.
 6 ON THE BEAM. Two defs.
 7 Omitted. A sign of the Times?
 8 A,S(P)(H)ALT. A compound = A SALT. Bit of sci-type GK for balance?
12 OPPORTUNITY. Two defs inc. a play on ‘opportunity knocks’. Now we’re taking the BANKER, FLOWER, BUTTER … conceit to a new limit.
14 STRANG(L)ER.
17 A(CRY)LIC. Alic{e} is our girl.
19 BALD,RIC{h}. “A belt for a sword or other piece of equipment, worn over one shoulder and reaching down to the opposite hip”. Now hosts the Time Team program.
20 AV(IGN)ON. The bracketed bit is our {s}IGN from 7dn. Perhaps appropriate as the former home of various Popes?
22 HOSE,D.
24 OK, I’ll leave this one out too.

 

22 comments on “Times 24906 … There once was a fellow from Dorset”

  1. I struggled to get started on this but generally found it quite easy and I would have broken the 30 minute barrier but for taking ages to see 22ac where I had misread the clue and thought the whole answer was American novelist. Then I remembered the word HOURIS and the author of Exodus. As it was, I finished in 33 minutes.

    I wonder if anyone under the age of 60 and not Irish would have heard of Ruby Murray but for her name becoming CRS for curry.

  2. First in, as you might expect, RUBY MURRAY (partaken in my teens after 8 pints of Watney’s Red Barrel); last in HOURIS from the definition (know Uris but still couldn’t see it). Pleased with myself for solving the delicious AVIGNON but COD to CADDYING.
  3. Ouch. Threw in Ruby Morgan just when a little more thought would have got me through, though over 60 and never heard of said singer. Held up a long long time by 12 – COD – and 26, which I didn’t see even after I got it. I’m with those who are against the false homophone of 10. 55 min. and a dnf – not good.
  4. My heart sinks every time I see ‘Cockney’ in a clue, and today’s offering caught me out again. Hadn’t heard of the singer or the CRS expression, and like joe I went for Ms Morgan before finding the right Ruby in an online dictionary. I also took an awful long time to get 1ac, which is never a good sign. COD to CADDYING, and unlike mctext I quite enjoyed OPPORTUNITY knocks. 59 minutes.

    And now back to yesterday’s puzzle, which utterly defeated me last night…I hope others found it equally taxing.

  5. Much too hard for me to finish without aids… Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this crossword thing… However, thanks for the informative blog, I’ll make sure I learn all those unknkowns, in the hope they’ll crop up again…
  6. Thoroughly enjoyable 40 minute solve: quick progress in NW and SW but then slowed up. Last in AVIGNON (my COD): it was the reference to ‘Pope’ in 7dn which finally allowed the penny to drop – and then I could work out the wordplay. Liked RUBY MURRAY (my father’s favourite singer) too: sent me in all sorts of frustrating wrong directions (I share richnorth’s response to appearance of ‘Cockney’ in a clue but once I’d worked this out it seemed perfectly fair). CADDYING and OPPORTUNITY also high on my approval list.

    Thanks, mctext, for the blog: I hadn’t managed to make full sense of HOURIS.

  7. 28:20 for this excellent puzzle. Not sure about ‘ho’ = call in 22ac though; held up on 18 ac looking for an Indian that would usually begin with h. Didn’t know asphalt was a by-product of oil distillation.
  8. This Dorset fellow found the puzzle relatively straightforward with one or two niggles.

    Solved 9A from definition “chinese delicacy”. Not totally convinced about the rest of the clue. Solved 10A by getting 25A from “bird” and ?C?T?R plus ?O?S?T already in at 10. Think the clue complete rubbish. Shouldn’t 5D be “choose artist”?

    Remember dear old RUBY M. At the time she was burbling away Chelsea had a winger called Murray who was inevitably dubbed Ruby

    1. For those subscribing to doctrines of predestination, the ‘elect’ are the ‘chosen’. Seems OK to me.
    2. Elect can be utilised as an adjective, one of those curious ones that seems to go after the noun (the prime minister elect). I really liked the clue at 9ac, though I admit that you don’t really need the word play as it’s obvious from the number of letters. Totally agree about 25ac.
  9. After a dismal performance, I fell at the last hurdle, going for BAND at 16, thinking David Gerald might be considered a poet. And I was looking forward to a good solve, having spent two days in a state of paranoia unable to log into the crossword club. Then I found they’d changed their URL and not told me; a vindication of sorts. COD to CADDYING. Not keen on BIRDS NEST SOUP.
  10. 38 minutes. I found this a bit of a stinker.
    HOURIS is one of those vocabulary test clues where you need one of two pieces of not-entirely-common knowledge, and I’d never heard of the novelist. I knew “houri” though and it’s common enough I’d say.
    If (like me) you haven’t heard of the SCOTER you have to rely on OCSTER, SCETOR and ECSTOR looking a bit less likely. After SJAMBOK the other day I was far from certain!
    Never heard of the singer, although I knew the rhyming slang. ON THE BEAM and LITTLE RUSSIAN were also new to me.
    I liked 12dn OPPORTUNITY.
  11. 18:56 .. and much enjoyed.

    When I solved this last night, the Times site was again under attack and unavailable, but the Club site was fine as long as you went straight to its own URL. Does this mean LulzSec read our blog? We’d best keep quiet about taking money from News International (I’m talking about the Saturday crossword prize, obviously).

    I winced on behalf of the non-UK solvers at Ruby Murray. Easy for those of us of a certain British generation – ‘Ruby’ became almost ubiquitous slang for a curry around the time Spandau Ballet were top of the pops.

    Brief double-take at HOURIS, since I didn’t know the author was no longer with us. In defence of Leon Uris, I came across one of his books – Mila 18 – in a crummy hotel room in backpacking days and found it a) compelling, and b) incredibly moving – I still recall sections of it more than two decades after reading it. Not many books achieve that. I tried a couple of his other books later and wasn’t so impressed, but Mila 18 is really worth seeking out.

    Definite COD to CADDYING.

  12. Held up in the SE area, and finished in about 50 minutes. But I confess to having needed aids for RUBY MURRAY, and ditto to vinyl’s comment. For non-UK and related participants, this was completely opaque. But, that’s life. Again as per vinyl, other than the CRS, much to like, and COD to AVIGNON, for the irony of bringing the popes and astrology into one place. On the Uris front, I read several books of his, but its been so long ago I can’t remember my opinion. Since I read more than one, the first must have been enjoyable enough to get me to dig into another, and I do remember they were all very long. I think I read Trinity and QB VII, and can’t remember Mila 18. Best to all.
  14. As I was doing this I was thinking how Anglo-centric some of it was, especially RUBY MURRAY. I can see from the above comments that some of our colonial friends had trouble with this one. As the possessor of boxed sets of “Minder” I consider myself well up in Arthur Daleyisms and old Ruby went in without hesitation. Do they show “Minder” outside the UK? It’s an encyclopaedia of rhyming slang. I thought there were a few weak clues but the glorious CADDYING made up for them! A smooth solve. 23 minutes.
  15. Up betimes, and solved. That is, 20 minutes after breakfast to get 19d, 26ac, and in a lucky break, 18ac, for a total of 63 minutes. I’d never heard of Ruby Murray, the singer or the food, but fortunately didn’t think of ‘Morgan’, so guessed at the name correctly. Definitely a COD to CADDYING.
  16. 8:49 for me. I made a quick start but a slow finish, with RUBY MURRAY my LOI (I’m old enough to remember her as a singer, but – typically – wasn’t familiar with her foodie incarnation). And, coming to 21ac with -R-M—- in place, I wasted time wanting the Italian city to be ROME.
  17. The snide remark in 22 was uncalled for. I doubt that anyone is interested in your politics (or is it something more sinister?)
  19. 18a we thought would be a bird, and with a few checkers put in ‘ roof marten ‘ being the cockney version of the little known jazz singer Ruth Martin . Unfortunately it didn’t last once the B in Ruby went in, and even more unfortunately we’d never heard of Ruby Murray, so in went Morgan, for one wrong. Too anglocentric for SW Oz, but that’s often the enjoyable challenge. 38mins with one error.

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