Times 25,175 Dove Cottage to Ebbw Vale

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Straightforward puzzle that shouldn’t cause too many problems despite some of the slang and oldish references.

uenots

Across
1 A,BUN,IN,THE,OVEN – (nineveh about n=new)*; oldish slang term for up the duff;
8 STET – hidden (wa)STE-T(reatment);
9 AMELIORATE – AM-(OIL-E reversed)-RATE;
10 RELAXANT – R(ALE reversed – X)ANT; why Hitler rather than Alex Ferguson and the hairdrier?; what you need after discovering 1A;
11 EMIGRE – E(MIG)RE; a MIG was a Russian jet – singular?; Les Huguenots, mes amis;
13 WORDSWORTH – WORD’S-WORTH; lonely, wandering daffy sort of bloke;
16 OAST – (t)OAST; for beer rather than babies;
17 OBOE – (y)OB-OE; OE=Old English=Anglo Saxon;
18 YELLOW,SPOT – (poet slowly)*; the centre of the retina or Wordsworth’s flower patch;
20 BEDSIT – mini house-sit;
22 OVERRIDE – OV(ERR)ID-(horac)E;
24 ANNO,DOMINI – AN-NOD-O-MINI; posh phrase for getting on a bit;
26 MINE – I made it so it’s mine!;
27 ELEPHANT,GRASS – (passenger at hl)*; hl from h(ote)l; type of reed-mace found on the plains;
 
Down
1 AT,THE,DOUBLE – (lute had to be)*; you ‘orrible little man (brings back memories for some);
2 ULTRA – leader of Ottomans=sultan then remove s=son and n=name and insert r=run gives you ULTRA; ultra convoluted;
3 IN,A,BAD,WAY – IN A (DAB reversed) WAY; back to 1A, perhaps;
4 TWEETER – T(W)EETER; why capital S for Speaker?;
5 EMILE – (competitiv)E-MILE; don’t they run 1500 meters these days?; Emile et Rose presumably;
6 VERMINOUS – V(E-RM-IN)OUS; RM=Royal Marines; VOUS=you for Emile;
7 NUT – TUN reversed;
12 RESPONDENTS – (persons tend)*; Liz Taylor was the world champion;
14 DRESS,CODE – DRESS(CO)DE(n=new); what do you look like, you ‘orrible little man;
15 HOOVERING – HOOVER-I-NG; the product name becomes the action;
19 LAOTIAN – (TO-A-L=lake=loch reversed)-IAN; a Vietnamese emigre en Paris, perhaps;
21 TOOTH – TOOT-H; TOOT=snort a line; H=heroin; a gear wheel contains teeth;
23 RUMBA – shadow=umbra then move r=republican to give RUMBA; my favourite dance along with the foxtrot;
25 NYE – (e)N(d)-(cl)Y(de)-(stal)E(mate); the mean is the middle; reference Aneurin Bevan, Welsh founder of the NHS;

42 comments on “Times 25,175 Dove Cottage to Ebbw Vale”

  1. Many thanks, jimbo. I had BEDSIT pencilled in (what alternative is there?) but I admit I still don’t understand the wordplay. Similarly with TOOTH until reading your blog (‘toot’ unknown to me).
    1. If you “house sit” you look after somebody’s house whilst they are on holiday, say. So “bed sit” by extension could mean look after their couch
      1. Thank you. You must be right! I don’t think I could ever have disentangled this but I might have had a chance if the reference had been to ‘sofa’ (=’sofa bed’, commonly used in bedsits) rather than ‘couch’.
  2. 21’13”, stalling for a while in the SW, where BEDSIT TOOTH and typha elephantum remained elusive. For some reason with the last of those I was looking for a glass of some kind. Dumb.
    For quite a while after putting it in, I thought BEDSIT was just a cutesy definition kind of clue. Light (sort of) dawned after finishing the grid, with the realisation that I have house-sat and dog-sat in my time. It called to mind the very weird Ralph Richardson/Spike Milligan vehicle of the sixties, to go with the slightly surreal and (as Jim has noted) rather dated feel of this one.
    It was as well that most of the literals stood out like Jubilee beacons, because a lot of the wordplay was not really difficult but it was convoluted, taking time (if you wanted) to unravel – I cite four of the first five as examples.
    Kind of fun, kind of irritating. CoD to the elegant and relatively simple MINE.
    1. Mainwaring: “It’s a mine”
      Jones: “Oh well, if it’s yours …”

      I don’t think that bit is in the television version of the Dad’s Army episode ‘Message from the Deep’ — but it’s in the radio version.

  3. 28 minutes. Went to bed without understanding the wordplay re NYE which I had solved immediately from the literal, but saw it at first glance this morning.

    At 11ac I don’t have problem with MIG being plural as they designed and built whole range of aircraft.


  4. Was left with gaps at the BEDSIT/TOOTH intersection, but the rest of it went in quickly.

    Also, couldn’t parse NYE, or the GRASS, so thanks for that. EMIGRE had to be right, so I didn’t worry too much about the plural/singular debate.

  5. 13 minutes. Straightforward, enjoyable puzzle.
    I didn’t understand NYE so thanks for explaining it. I’m not sure about “mean” for the middle.
    I also had a question mark next to EMIGRE. Surely fighters in the plural it would always be migs? (Or possibly MiGs, or MIGs, but always with an s). Ferrari have designed lots of cars but if you had two of them you’d have two Ferraris.
    Also how is “butt” NUT?
    I’m sure Jerry will have enjoyed 21dn…
      1. One of the definitions in Collins is “equally far from two extremes” which I think works perfectly well in the context of the clue.
        1. Chambers has “a middle state or position” which also supports this sense.
          I’m not sure about it just because this is not what mean usually means, so it’s a bit mean of the setter to use it like this. And for a solver to spot it is no mean feat. By any means.
  6. Mikoyan and Gurevich were responsible for several different fighters – the MiG-21, MiG-25 and MiG-29 being the better known; MIG could refer to any or all of them.
    1. If you’re the same anon, I agree with you on this one which expands on my first comment above.
      1. I must be being thick because I can’t see what you mean here. “Fighters” refers to more than one fighter. There may be lots of different types of MIG but that doesn’t alter the fact that if you were referring to more than one of them you’d say MIGs, no?
        1. I wonder if it’s an example of the missing but to be imagined apostrophe? MiG’s bought in before… would make sense. I agree, otherwise it doesn’t.
          1. Oddly enough, my Russian speaking missus says that several MiGs would be MiGi in Russian (МиГи) or would not pluralise at all, being an acronym. Technically at least you could have a squadron of MiG (though the MiG could have the genitive -ov ending – МиГов). I’m willing to bet the setter doesn’t know this.
            1. In Russian perhaps, but in English? Would anyone say “squadron of MiG”? Perhaps they would. Perhaps some people would say “two BMW”. I dunno.
          2. I have taken it that MIG is the name of a series of fighters (so ‘Russian fighters’ as in the clue) rather than individual planes that require the plural indicated when there is more than one of them although of course they can be thought of that way too.

            Edited at 2012-05-29 01:31 pm (UTC)

  7. That was supposed to be a reply to z8b8d8k, but for some reason it has been shown as what seems to be a new topic.

    Edited at 2012-05-29 10:22 am (UTC)

  8. 12 minutes but carelessly jumping to MINT instead of MINE without following through sufficiently to realise that was clearly only ever going to be half right. Otherwise enjoyed this.
  9. 26 minutes online but failed to check before submitting and had ‘sedative’ (actually, ‘sedativt’) at 10 ac, which wrecked IN A BAD WAY. 25 dn will forever be associated with one Welshman taking off another Welshman quoting Nye Bach.
  10. 14 minutes – might have been a smide quicker had I concentrated when writing in the last letter of 23d. I quite liked the BEDSIT.
  11. 35 minutes, including 5 trying fathom NYE. I eventually put NAE, clearly having no idea what a bevan or a mean was. COD to A BUN IN THE OVEN
  12. 6:33, ending with TOOTH (21dn), which involved my only unknown (TOOT for cocaine).  I stalled in the SW corner as well, what with the unfamiliar ELEPHANT GRASS (27ac) and NYE [I know him as Aneurin] Bevan (25dn), but mostly found this an easy puzzle where many answers could go in on spec.  NUT (7dn) felt like cheating, as I’d spent the morning working on tunna and tonellus (both meaning a cask or tun).

    I’m with dorsetjimbo and keriothe on the supposedly plural ‘MiG’ (11ac EMIGRE) – as, I might add, is the OED.

    Clue of the Day: 13ac (WORDSWORTH) – not for its originality, obviously, but for being so resolutely old-school.

  13. Back in the UK after two weeks cruising in the Med. Lovely to be having the same hot weather here that we did there.

    26/28 today, misspelling Laotian as Laosian and wrongly guessing Nee for Nye.

    Put in Oboe and Yellow Spot without full understanding so thanks Jimbo for explaining those.

    Did anyone else think of John Bercow when reading “little Speaker”?!

  14. 20 minutes, with quite a few going in straight away from the definitions. Thanks to DJ for explaining NYE: I toyed with a host of ideas including Bonnie and Clyde, a side channel or snye (off the River Clyde) or some unknown Scottish expression for a stalemate.

    Agree with Z that there does seem to be a missing apostrophe in 11.

    Thanks also to Z for reminding me of The Bed Sitting Room, which I saw live just after censorship had been relaxed. Up to that time the Lord Chamberlain’s blue pencil had severely redacted the script, removing the smutty poems, irreligious references and various examples of lese majesty. It all seems so innocuous now; though I hope no disaster befalls the Jubilee, so that we have to sing:

    ‘God save Mrs Ethel Shroake, Long live Mrs Ethel Shroake, God save Mrs Ethel Shroake of 393A High Street, Leytonstone’

  15. 26 minutes. Dissatisfied with the plural Mig (I don’t think the missing apostrophe has much going for it), the mean as visible mid-point and the annulling override. All these I see as out of the spirit of words in their use, whether or not a case can be made for them as technically acceptable. A good setter goes with the grain of the language. All that said, it’s still a country mile better than the Guardian, that I happened to have a look at today, with its never-ending self-referential kiddies’ treasure-hunt and its weak approximations as to meaning. Not perfect, then, but still an oasis.
  16. Agree this was pretty straightforward, and I got through in 20 minutes, but I had NAE instead of NYE. The ‘means’ trick is pretty good, but I failed to see it, but even if I had, I would not have any way to realize that NYE was the answer. Totally unknown. In fact several in the SW were a bit thorny, but BEDSIT seemed the only thing that would fit ?E?S?T, and then that final T made me see TOOTH. I agree that the fighters in 11 would have been better in the singular. Regards.
  17. Romped through this but stuck only on 2 dn ULTRA, couldn’t parse it and found an alarming number of U***A words, so another DNF. Did everyone else see ULTRA right away? Thanks to jimbo for explaining it.
    1. Yes, I have “extremist = ULTRA” hardwired by now, so given that it was 5 letters beginning with U, I just wrote it in.  Now I come to look at it, the wordplay is indeed tortuous.
    2. Yep, me too: I just bunged this in from the definition and worked out the wordplay (eventually) post-solve.
    3. There’s quite an interesting point here. As you can see two experienced solvers wrote in ULTRA from definition alone and that speeds up the solving process in the daily cryptic (provided you guess right!)

      However I actually worked out the wordplay to arrive at the answer and that comes from years of doing the bar crosswords where the “guess the answer and reverse engineer the wordplay” technique rarely works. So I’m slower when it comes to the daily puzzle.

  18. The one that gave me the most problem was ELEPHANT GRASS, which I’ve never heard of. Fortunately, it was the only answer that fitted the checkers. Ditto TOOTH – I’d never heard of this meaning of TOOT. Must be the blameless life I lead. (Re Welsh luminaries: My father didn’t know Lloyd George (cf famous song to tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers”) but did know Nye Bevan. He was pretty much everywhere in the valleys when I was growing up.) 26 minutes
  19. A sluggish 12:22 for me, slowed at the end by wasting time trying (and failing) to justify NYE from the wordplay, which I only managed to do some time after clicking on my stopwatch.

    At the time, I wondered if 11ac should have read “Russian fighter …”, but I’m happy to accept jackkt’s explanation. (Thanks, Jack.)

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