Times 25096 – Fair thee well?

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 58 minutes

I had one of those mornings where I seriously believed they had printed the wrong clues for the grid. Nothing seemed to work or fit and I couldn’t parse many of the answers that I did throw in on spec. 24 and 26 pretty much summed up my solve. Was it just me or did the setter’s obvious guile have a hand in this? I’d like to think the latter. I hope you all fared and faired better than I.

Across
1 MALAGASY = GAS for talk inside MALAY. A Malagasy comes from Madagascar, to optimize confusion
6 SUBDUE = SUB DUE
9 ODIC = Only Dons In Cambridge. Pindar wrote odes, possibly on Grecian urns.
10 LAWBREAKER a reverse engineered wotsit. But wouldn’t you be an awl breaker?
11 (REVIEW NEAT)* = INTERWEAVE. I might have got this sooner if I wasn’t trying to anagram NEAT WORK AT to get a word for threaten starting with KN
13 Deliberately omitted. Appeal to kangaroo’s companion moves time forward.
14 DITTY By Grieg around A = DITTY BAG, a jolly accoutrement unfamiliar to me, possibly from dhoti. “How could the sailor be a BA?”, I thought.
16 EMBODY = E for English + BOD inside MY for goodness! I got all the ingredients quite quickly but couldn’t get past MEBODY, so this was my LBOI.
18 MORBID = FORBID with the F replaced by M. Outlaw as verb. Why didn’t I see that coming?
20 BASEBALL = BASE before BALL
22 TABU = ABUT with the posT going to the front. Another misleading part of speech, this time adjectival.
24 EXASPERATE = EX ATE around PEARS*. Indeed.
26 APOCALYPSE = (O for old SPACE PLAY)*
28 THAW, a double definition. This had to be the answer but how did it fit with DELFTWEAR, the latest fashion from the Low Countries. Luckily I had my own version of the Delft Thunderclap.
29 HEBREW = High Explosive (see Delft Thunderclap) + BREW
30 WAYFARER = W for with + FARE inside AYR. Another made more difficult by Delft pre-Thunderclap.
Down
2 A + N for new + DAN for Daniel + TIN for can + O for O spells ANDANTINO. I didn’t have a clue why DAN was a book, but the abbreviation is in Collins, and Abraham should have been a clue.
3 ANCIENT = ANENT for about (Archaic or Scot.) around CI for Channel Islands. The two definitions are old and old man. That’s my theory anyway.
4 Deliberately omitted. What gold is when silver’s down.
5 YEW = WEY reversed. There’s a River Wey in Dorset, all of 9 km long. Is there not a minimum length requirement for rivers? But the more famous one flows into the Thames, and gave us weighbridge, way north and way south. Yews are apparently famous for being grown in churchyards. I didn’t know any of those things when solving, so you can imagine my state of perplexity.
6 SORCERESS = S for son + OR for or + CERES’S. A fine piece of misdirection. I was trying to anagram MEDEAS S OR and come up with some deity.
7 BRAN-TUB, a cryptic definition. It’s what I’d call a lucky dip and have done all my life, obviating any need to familiarise myself with this alternative. My LOI, narrowly avoiding BEAN TUB.
8 UPEND = P.E. inside UND, being and in Berlin
12 B for bishop inside ALGERiA = ALGEBRA, which some mathematicians still do.
15 ED for editor + F inside BELLOW = BEDFELLOW. Saul Bellow was a Canadian writer and Nobel prize winner. I’m not sure my solve today would sit well with his distaste for intellectual torpor.
17 FLED reversed + WATER* = DELFTWARE, op cit.
19 BOUNCER, a double definition or cryptic definition? Anyway, it wasn’t a construction involving a BAT, so I was wasting my time.
21 BIRETTA = eveileB I RETTAh. It’s an ex-officio hat. The gun is spelt with an “e”.
23 MAPLE around P for piano = APPLE. Enough with the trees already. I’ve only just worked out how that worked, having discounted alder and several species of pine.
25 PITY about curatE = PIETY
27 PEW rhymes with YEW, but not way back. Pew was the rambunctious paper boy in Treasure Island before he got pulled up.

27 comments on “Times 25096 – Fair thee well?”

  1. 54 minutes with the silly 7dn last in and wrong for good measure. Just how we were meant to get it, I don’t know. Collins online defines it as ‘(in Britain) a tub containing bran in which small wrapped gifts are hidden, used at parties, fairs, etc’. I take my hat off to the blogger and anyone else who didn’t know the expression and yet somehow homed in on the right answer without aids.

    I’d like to start a 7 down competition. Most creative answer wins a goldfish in a cellophane bag. I put ‘BOAT-tub’.

    DITTY BAG also unknown but properly and fairly clued.

    Edited at 2012-02-27 04:44 am (UTC)

  2. 50 minutes for a puzzle that felt at first somewhat easier than it turned out to be. This was an untidy solve for me with gaps still remaining in all quarters at the 30 minute mark. I had got off to the worst possible start, unaccountably writing EWE at 5dn as my first answer!

    I didn’t know Medea the sorceress and don’t feel too badly about this as her long article in Wiki never once mentions the word.

    I knew DITTY BAG from somewhere and picture it as something akin to Sid Rumpo’s ganderbag.

    Edited at 2012-02-27 05:58 am (UTC)

  3. But probably only that fast as I spent the weekend doing a few hard numbers. Will also admit to entering a lot of answers without full understanding.

    Case in point was ANCIENT (3dn). But now that I look at the parsing, I figure that the first “old” is telling us that the answer is an archaic word for “old man”. Archaic, but well know to readers of Othello I guess.

    Most trouble were the 22/23 pair which look easy in retrospect. Also THAW (28ac) where the alphabetic possibilities were legion.

    Pretty much fooled by 6dn where I too was looking for anagram, or else something to do with MEDUS. Now have to give it the COD but.

    1. Yes, 3dn was a beast to parse. CI was easy enough to spot but the remaining ANENT doesn’t even look like a word so had to be taken on trust.
      1. Absolutely! NOAD tells me that ‘anent’ is from the OE ‘on efen’ meaning ‘in line with, in company with’. Now that’s pretty obscure! Will look it up when I get home and check how many times it gets used in extant OE literature. But I’ll bet it’s not many.
        1. Fowler disapprovingly mentions ANENT under the heading “Wardour Street”.

          The name of a street in London mainly occupied by dealers in antique and imitation-antique furniture.

          I remember as a youth having my ear bent by pompous middle-aged men with side whiskers and loud jackets who would use archaic vocabulary such as anent, perchance, howbeit and erstwhile, (though I notice that last word seems to have been rehabilitated.)

    2. >…
      >Case in point was ANCIENT (3dn). But now that I look at the parsing, I figure that the first
      >”old” is telling us that the answer is an archaic word for “old man”. Archaic, but well
      >know to readers of Othello I guess.

      I believe you’re right about the first “old” indicating an archaic word for “old man”, but wrong about Othello – that is, assuming that you’re referring to Iago, who was Othello’s “ancient”, i.e. his “ensign”.

  4. Unlike you truly clever folk, ‘Bran Tub’ was one of the few I got! Solving something like this in 58 minutes will remain a dream for me.
    Still, I’ll persevere in the hope that the rest of the week’s puzzles will be a touch easier.
  5. 24 minutes here. I wasted a lot of time by putting in ALEGBRA, which made the ANCIENT/DITTY BAG crossing pair even harder than it already was.
    ANCIENT may be a first in that I bunged it in from the wrong definition! This clue seems to have escaped from Mephisto.
    It didn’t occur to me at the time because I’d heard the term but I see ulaca’s point about BRAN TUB. A bit of an archaic term for a straight cryptic definition. According to Chambers there’s the even more archaic BRAN PIE, so perhaps we should be grateful.
  6. BRAN TUB triggered one of those smell memories – ours always had pine sawdust. You had to be there, and I can’t see how you’d otherwise know it.
    20 minutes for this, thrown repeatedly off track by, for example, trying to remember who “Saul’s companion” was. Barnabas refused to come to mind, though I knew it began with B. No matter, it was wrong, but it chewed up minutes. I didn’t get DAN=book in 2d, either. The SORCERESS I knew from the Greeks was Circe, who turns out to be Medea’s mum, but with the letters being there in the crossings, more time went by down a blind alley. Couldn’t work out where “WAYR” was in Scotland either for 30, until the penny dropped for W(ith)
    ANCIENT is a stray from a more unforgiving barred grid, methinks.
    CoD to LAWBREAKER – I like that sort of clue.
    1. But does it work? If you cause damage to awl, you might get law, but whoever breaks that is either undoing the damage first done to awl, or making something completely different. Wal?
      1. I did wonder whether something like “Delinquent awl?” would have worked better, despite being nonsense.
  7. A struggling 66 minutes today – were I not on holiday the towel would have hit the ring long before. Also had an error putting TEAM for THAW on the basis it meant as a verb ‘becoming more’ and was also MATE going up with the ‘t’ shifted up. Ingenious I thought but now sadly just wrong as THAW is clearly a better fit! My final excuse is that the parsing didn’t seem to me to be any looser than LAWBREAKER as noted in the very helpful blog without which I would never have understood ANCIENT. My COD to SORCERESS for which had me looking for an anagram in Medeasson for far too long. I’m absolutely certain that without the blogs and discussion whic I’ve been following for about a year now I would have been unable to (nearly) complete this. So as ever many thanks to all who give up the time to do this.

  8. … and that letter was the L in 1ac, where I dithered and put D. I knew of MALAY the language, and realised it was GAS, but convinced myself that the inhabitants of Madagascar must surely be called Madagasys, and that there must be another language called Maday. Ho hum, shame it wasn’t a crossing letter.

    Other than that, ANCIENT went in without understanding (never heard of ANENT), and DITTY BAG was worked out, again, never heard of it.

    I too thought I’d stumbled across the unknown Scottish port of WAYR, so thanks for that explanation, too, Koro.

  9. 13 minutes for me – I remember the pleasure of dipping into a bran tub at the church fete, don’t see them now, I expect the ‘elf and safety lot have something against them. I had heard of DITTY BAG too. My d’oh of the day and last to go in was 29a.
  10. D’oh – I fell into the anagram trap hook line and sinker and wrote in SORDEMEAS with crossed fingers. Oh well….
  11. I went down every blind alley going here (trying to figure out who Saul’s companion was, trying to make an anagram of Medea’s s or etc) and eventually finished up in 28:21.

    I agree that lawbreaker doesn’t quite work.

    I knew blind Pew from the old post office adverts featuring John Cleese rather than the RLS book.
    Black spot

    Edit to add that you have a typo Koro: the fodder for Apocalypse is O + SPACE PLAY

    Edited at 2012-02-27 01:42 pm (UTC)

    1. Well spotted. I’ve fixed that up. And thanks for your link to Pirate Adverts.

      In Oz we have black spot funding to fix particularly dangerous road conditions. The money goes into putting up a sign saying this is a black spot, and then several years later it might be fixed; the sign that is, since they are vandalised. One appeared recently in the vicinity of a new Muzz Buzz (drive-through coffee outlet) that overnight turned a major highway into an angry queue for an early morning espresso. Where’s a genuine black spot when you need one?

  12. I thought this was quite easy and finished in 22 minutes, which is a good time for me. Though possibly some answers went in on a wing and a prayer. I have never heard of a river WEY (though the town Weybridge should have alerted me) and was thinking of the WYE and a possible anagram. But the answer was no problem because yew trees are always associated with churchyards. I’ve read that in the middle ages they needed yews to make longbows but because the yew is poisonous they planted them in enclosed churchyards to keep them separate from foraging livestock. I don’t know whether that’s true or apocryphal. Strangely enough, I was held up for 5 minutes with HEBREW. I had all the checkers but couldn’t think of a single word to fit them! So obvious afterwards.
    1. As a child resident of Weymouth, I know the Wey flows from Upwey wishing well to Weymouth. Also there’s a Wey in Weybridge of course. Finished in 25 minutes, had to guess ditty bag, I remember bran tubs well although they were usually sawdust not bran.
  13. 25 minutes here. Mildly surprised at 11’s randomly, as (with others) at the careless lawbreaker. Otherwise a neat enough little tester. Astonished at the apparent evaporation of the bran tub – to me it’s as solid as a coconut shy.
  14. 27/31 today with Malagasay, Andantino, Ditty Bag and Piety missing. Got Sorceress, Ancient, Morbid and Bedfellow from the checkers and Odic and Pew from the wordplay.

    Re Ancient – wondered how An Ent (from the Lord Of The Rings) could possibly define “old man” !!

  15. I’ve been away for a week, and return to a DNF due to the unknown BRAN TUB. Faced with the checkers, I guessed at BOAT TUB, thinking the dip had to refer to a pool of some sort. I also wasted much time trying to make an anagram form MEDEAS S OR, but that fell into place when I finally saw SUBDUE. Better luck tomorrow for me, regards to all of you.
  16. 9:25 for me. I was quite relieved to finish in under 10 minutes after (like others) wasting time desperately trying to think who Saul’s companion might be.

    I’m surprised that BRAN-TUB caused difficulties as it went in straight away for me without any checked letters needed. Presumably being older helped.

    Edited at 2012-02-27 11:06 pm (UTC)

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