Times 25046 – In the deep of the night…

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I was so tired yesterday that I had a very early night and then came to this fresh around 1 A.M. which was probably just as well as I found it very tough-going indeed. I  managed to finish it in an hour without aids although this wasn’t entirely for want of trying (see comments under 13dn). It was disconcerting that so many answers went in unexplained despite my pausing and attempting to do so before moving on to another clue. As things turned out my only inaccurate answer in this category was at 19dn but I corrected that when 21ac came to mind. A very good puzzle that I might have enjoyed more when not on blogging duty. On edit: Oh joy, when editing out some minor errors today, to find LJ have moved the Delete Entry button right away from the Save Entry button which used to be side by side. I have always been terrified of clicking the wrong one and destroying all my hard work.

Across
1 VICTORIA FALLS – VICTOR (champion) then ILLS (problems) containing (nailing) A(ce), F(ollowing), A.
9 Deliberately omitted. Not the most I can do.
10 TOSCANINI – TO, SCAN IN I (make computer image of one). He’s been dead for 55 years so maybe not an easy answer for any youngsters around here.
11 AFTERWORLD – Anagram of L(eft) WATERFORD.
12 LENS – LEaNS like the Tower of Pisa minus the central letter.
14 FUSSPOT – F(ine), US, SPOT. I loved this one that misdirected me into the world of musical theatre and despite not finding the answer there I enjoyed the visit.
16 IN NO WAY – INN (local), OW (expression of discomfort), AY (agreement). The last part is more usually spelt AYE I believe but this is a valid alternative.
17 AJACCIO – A, JACk (knave curtailed), C (circa = in the region of), IO (satellite of Jupiter). It’s the main place on Corsica.
19 BUGABOO – U GAB (posh talk) inside (interrupting) BOOk (bound work briefly).
20 TELL – As in ‘kiss and tell’.
21 GARIBALDIS – A, RIBALD (fruity) inside (filling) GIS (Americans serving). Disgusting biscuits with currants in them. Once you have heard them called dead or squashed fly biscuits you’ll never want to eat another one!
24 OVERSHOOT – OVER (again), SHOO (drive off), T (tee). I had to go to four dictionaries before SOED confirmed tee = the letter T.
25 MUZAK –  froM, impromptU, talK containing (holding) ZA (map – A-Z – reversed). The definition is ‘lift notes, perhaps’.
26 RUDOLF NUREYEV – Anagram of UNFURLED VERY O(ld).
Down
1 VULGAR FRACTION – VULGAR (flashy), FR (priest), ACTION (suit).
2 CHART – CHAR (woman who does, as in ‘Can I do you now, sir? a catchphrase on ITMA during the war), T(ime).
3 OUTER SPACE – Anagram of AUTO CREEPS. The anagrind is ’round the bend’.
4 INTROIT – IN (popular), TROIT (Motown – Detroit minus De = ‘of’ in French).
5 FUSILLI – FI (girl) containing (fed) US, ILL (poorly). These are short spirals of pasta.
6 Deliberately omitted. Sounds like you’re on your own with this one.
7 SPIDER-WEB – DIPS reversed (hollows up), ERE (before) containing (crossing) W(ide), Bay. I’ve always said ‘spider’s web’ so I did a bit of research and was truly amazed that neither Collins nor COED has any entry for ‘spider/s web’ at all! Chambers has ‘spider web’ as two words, but once again today I had to go to SOED to find the full range both with and without a hyphen and with the apostrophe S option. The definition is ‘ It’s dangerous to a fly’.
8 RIMSKY-KORSAKOV – Anagram of M(arks) VARY KO KO (double) RISKS.
13 ANAGRAMMER – My last in. I got it legitimately eventually having failed to cheat as none of the solvers came up with any solutions. Having worked it out the hard way I found it in Collins. The maddening thing after all that hassle is that the answer should have been so bleedin’ obvious!
15 SMALL BEER – And this was the one that evaded explanation longest. ‘Sale viewed as two items’ is S, ALE.
18 ON A ROLL – Double definition.
19 BRITTEN – BaRd Is (bard is oddly) TTEN (after tax – NETT – rises). Having solved 8dn and 26ac I thought we may have a Russian theme so I wasted ages trying to make Borodin fit the clue.
22 DIZZY – DIY ( fixing – do-it-yourself) contains (drinks) ZZ (snoring).
23 USED – Very well-hidden and reversed.

44 comments on “Times 25046 – In the deep of the night…”

  1. And a cracking puzzle I thought. Thanks Jack for explaining SMALL BEER — the only one I couldn’t parse. Relieved to hear that ANAGRAMMER is in one of the usual sources; couldn’t believe it was a word; so last in also.

    I have a feeling that two composers, a conductor and a ballet dancer won’t please at least one of our mutual friends.

    1. You might like to try this site which is useful for looking up unusual words http://www.onelook.com/

      ANAGRAMMER gets only three hits – the one in Collins and two others that are solely on-line sources. This is the lowest number I’ve ever seen.

      I thought of our conversation about ‘serious matter’ (ST4465) when I found that neither Collins nor COED recognises the existence of any combination of ‘spider’ and ‘web’.

      Edited at 2011-12-30 07:36 am (UTC)

      1. Now the Oxford Dictionary Online no longer allows wildcard searches i am on the lookout for a new “source,” and this might be it, thank you Jack.. it has already informed me, without prompting, that “Nudity And Sex in Sdvertising” is an alternative meaning of the abbreviation NASA, so I think it is my kind of dictionary!
        Re the “delete entry” key, I write out the blog in something else first, a text editor or excel for example, then just copy it across.. then you have backup
        1. I’m glad link was helpful, Jerry. Yes, I write my blog in excel and also copy it into a wordpad.html document before posting here, but I do all the final editing (underlinings and crossing through letters for deletion etc) in LJ on-line so that could be lost. Also, once others have contributed I wonder if their comments might also be lost if I clicked Delete Entry. I assume there would be a message asking “Are you sure you want to delete…?” but I’m not about to test and find out the hard way if there isn’t! Regards.
      2. Many thanks for the link, Jack. I’ve just tried it with FOULARD from yesterday and scored a hit with the very first entry.
  2. DNF (13 of course) where, like Jack, all cheats failed, but thought I’d drop in just to thank the setter for a blinding puzzle. Lots of smiles and any number of potential CODs including 13.
    First class blog too.
    1. I had to read ‘like Jack, all cheats failed’ several times to be sure what you were saying!

      Welcome back, Barry. It’s a shame we don’t see more of you these days.

    2. Where you been hiding Barry – do you hibernate out of the cricket season – good to hear from you again.
  3. DNF. Brilliant puzzle; super blog (thank you, jackkt). Defeated both by SMALL BEER and ANAGRAMMER. I suspect I shall be in good company.
  4. Fine crossword accompanied by an excellent blog. 31 minutes for me, hard but enjoyable labour playing spot the definition, unscrew the cryptic and ???!
    I guess once the setter has decided to put a V in the bottom right corner, cultural Russians are the most likely entrants, and it’s a bold setter that puts RIMSKY-KORSAKOV down the right edge in the first place. That went in from the RIMSKY checkers and a cursory conformation that it had two KO’s.
    Lots of very high quality clues, though I thought TELL was a bit feeble and didn’t get it until last after SMALL BEER (almost too clever) went in. Anyone else essay FUSELLI before unwinding the cryptic?
    CoD to GARIBALDIS, though I’d be interested to know whether they turn up across the pond in Walmart to justify the &lit.
  5. Did all the hard work and gave up with garibaldis staring me in the face. I find the wording of 5 odd – fed=contained, Fi as girl? Also 13 though I finally got there. Sharp stuff but not a classic for me. (Ah – fed is passive.)

    Edited at 2011-12-30 11:01 am (UTC)

    1. FI is short for Fiona I believe. No worse than DI for Diana really. I read the clue as ‘Girl (is) fed us poorly’ so F(US,ILL)I.

      Edited at 2011-12-30 11:15 am (UTC)

        1. The classic “Fi” is in 4 weddings & a funeral, I think.. Kristin Scott-Thomas who is secretly in love with Hugh Grant, and a far better catch than the creepy American he seems so besotted with..
          1. For what it’s worth, later yesterday I got round to watching the third and final film in the Black Mirror TV series that went out shortly before Christmas, and the main female character was called Fi.
  7. No time for this because I was interrupted for a couple of hours half way through but I would guess a good 35 minutes.

    Off to a flying start solving 1D immediately from the definition followed by 1A from the “V” and “champion”. Finished the top half therefore in about 10 minutes. Then the problems arrived.

    Like most others finished up with 21A GARIBALDIS and 13D ANAGRAMMER. Eventually twigged GIS for “Americans serving” to get the biscuit but still couldn’t see 13D or indeed even think of a word to go in. Mentally working through the alphabet thought of “anagram” and so to the elusive solution.

    A very good inventive stylish puzzle and well done Jack (you seem to keep very strange hours, sir!) – even down to recalling ITMA and Jack Train, Molly Weir, Tommy Handley et al.

  8. Did anyone else get tempted to throw in UNIGRAMMER due to the wording of the clue – “characters ONE’s dealing with”. I now know the word does not exist, but it seemed obvious at the time. Ruined what I thought was a good show on a difficult puzzle.
    1. No, but I did initially go with ANAGRAMIST as being more likely. Cryptic definitions can have several outcomes that can only be checked by, um, checkers, as the clue doesn’t help with spelling with a useful anagram or other wordplay.
  10. Yikes! 34 minutes or so with one mistake.

    This morning I can appreciate a brilliant puzzle but last night it seemed awfully hard. Lots of traps for the careless solver (that would be me, then). I tried several variations on both Rudolf and Rimsky, agonised over BUGABOO and AJACCIO, then pretty much gave up hope and went with ANAGRAMMER (like fathippy2 I was tempted by ‘unigrammar’ and even ‘unagrammar’ – a sort of pedantic terrorist). Came here this morning to find out what 13d should have been, only to find that my one error was a dim-witted LEAD at 6d. After all that.

    Some great clues – I loved DIZZY. And thanks to jackkt for another fine blog and a laugh out loud moment (“having failed to cheat”).

    My compliments (through gritted teeth) to the setter.

  11. A most enjoyable puzzle. Done, as usual, in bed with my first cup of tea. I put quite a lot in without working out the cryptics. The 2 Ks (plus the 2 word answer) in the 8d anagram was a bit of a giveaway for the composer. And that final V gave NUREYEV as the obvious dancer. It all helped. I didn’t see the parsing of SMALL BEER until coming here – the answer went in from definition alone. My COD was GARIBALDI. I’d worked it out from the cryptic but had a LOL moment when I remembered that Garibaldis actually have a fruity middle. (Incidentally, I think they’re quite moreish. My mum and I used to work through a packet of the things while watching TV on a Sunday night) The only thing I didn’t like was FI as the girl’s name. I don’t think it’s as accepted as DI. (Although the heroine of “Burn Notice”, a show to which I am mildly addicted, is a Fiona who is always called Fi) I thought I had a very slow time but was reassured when I came here to find out that there were a lot of other slowish times. 36 minutes.
  13. Big DNF – with 5 unentered after a long time. But I did climb Lantau Peak (3,000+ feet) earlier in the day, so that must be my ‘Old Bailey’ for the day.
  14. Well.. same problems as everyone else, as garibaldis and anagrammer were the last ones in. I thought this a really good effort, except that I have doubts about these two clues.. am I being picky, or does neither one have a proper definition in them? “Fruity filling” and “The sort of characters” seem rather inadequate as definitions to me. Maybe because I struggled to get them 🙂
    I am always willing to cut the setter slack, but are these two taking advantage?
    1. Jerry, as someone who failed miserably on this puzzle (including these two clues), I am wary of dissenting, but both clues seems to work fine as &lits, with ‘sort’ taken as shorthand for ‘sorting’.

  15. Big DNF for me today, too, but sadly I had no reason other than it was just too damn tricky. However, I certainly appreciated the clever cluing of the ones I did get, and knew early on that it was probably going to be a challenge too far. Excellent puzzle, one of those ‘sheep and goats’ ones, I guess.
  16. Anyone else grow up in a world where vulgar fractions were improper fractions, with the numerator greater than the denominator?
  17. Well, that’s what I thought too, but supposed I must have improperly remembered. But have just found this on the net:

    ‘A vulgar fraction is said to be an improper fraction (U.S., British or Australian) or top-heavy fraction (British, occasionally North America) if the absolute value of the numerator is greater than or equal to the absolute value of the denominator.’

    So it can be either, it looks like.

    1. Vulgar fractions are simply fractions expressed with a line, not a decimal point.
      An improper fraction, as the snippet you quote says, is a special type of vulgar fraction. So an improper fraction is a vulgar fraction, but not vice versa necessarily. “One over sixty is therefore a vulgar fraction, not an improper one”. Maybe it’s similarity of the vulgar/improper connotations which confuses people.
  18. This took me about 45 minutes last night, held up by most everything in the SE corner. Finally plowed through them (liking BUGABOO, DIZZY and especially MUZAK, so COD to that) before finally seeing the GARIBALDIS wordplay. As vinyl has informed you already, they don’t exist over here, and based on some other comments, I might be thankful for that. Very fine and clever puzzle, so thanks to the setter. Regards to all.
  19. There I was, cheating furiously but unsuccessfully going through online solvers to solve 13 Dn. Then back to the search list to find that one of the available programs is … Wait for it … ANAGRAMMER. Doh !!!
  20. And as a PS. Never heard of Garibaldis, by knew those particular items as “fly’s cemeteries”. Very useful since I was rather partial to them, and that name turned my three sisters off them completely!
    And a PPS, 60 years or so ago we were taught about decimal, common, and improper fractions.
    1. >And as a PS. Never heard of Garibaldis

      You must have missed the late arrivals at the Grocers’ Ball in I’m Sorry I haven’t a clue: Mr and Mrs Baldy-Biscuit and their son Gary …

  21. A rather exhausting 13:10 for me. I’m afraid I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle all that much – most of the clues seemed just too darned tortuous.

    Edited at 2011-12-31 04:31 pm (UTC)

  22. Gave up with three uncompleted (garibaldis, bugaboo (unknown to me) and anagrammer) but glad to complete the rest within the hour and fully understanding the wordplay. Honeymooned in Corsica 18 years ago so Ajaccio was easy. Beautiful island. COD to dizzy.
  23. I thought this was going to be a dismal DNF end to the year, but breakfast brought new hope, and I actually managed to finish correctly. Lord knows how long; certainly over an hour, but what the hell. We had a FI discussion a while back; can’t remember what was said, but I suspect a number of people didn’t like it. I discovered that a song and dance is different in the UK from (or to) what it is in the US. I tend to agree with Tony about the clues. Happy New Year to all.
  24. Finished in about 36 hours (with breaks and help from my wife, who supplied the correct spelling of FUSILLI & BRITTEN, and spotted the LOI, GARIBALDIS).

    jackkt, you must have been eating some sort of electric biscuit. Garibaldis have currAnts in them, not currEnts. No wonder they tasted disgusting.

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