Times 25,177 – John Wayne Lives

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Got back late last night from ten days in Indonesia, attending the Borobudur Interhash 2012 plus seeing much of central Java (the locals spell it as Jawa) including Merapi the volcano which last erupted with deadly fury killing 353 people in 2010.

As they say, no rest for the wicked; so here goes.

A well-rounded puzzle to greet my return and as I blogged two five-lettered words, a childhood hero lives once more.
 
ACROSS
1 COUP CO (company, firm) UP (mounted)
3 SCRATCH PAD SCRATCH (delete or someone withdrawing from an event) + P (page) + AnD (and becomes disheartened)
9 INCISED INC (incorporated) I’S (one’s) ED (editor) the theatre here being an operation room in a hospital
11 PERHAPS *(PHRASE + Piano) def nicely inconspicuous
12 WOMANISER *(SWAIN MORE) I like this quasi &lit for the lovely and appropriate surface
13 AWING When I googled to find the origin of the familiar phrase on a wing and a prayer, I was quite surprised to find that it originated from the film Flying Tigers in which John Wayne playing Captain Jim Gordon said “She’s coming in on one wing and a prayer” about another fighter seen to have been shot by enemy gunfire.
14 GROWING PAINS Ins of OWING Penny (having minimal debt) in GRAINS (small amounts)
18 SECOND NATURE SECOND (to be supportive) NATURE (kind)
21 AVERT AVER (to make claim) T (time)
22 THAT’S THAT THAT = THAT is pretty obvious
24 GALILEO Ins of I (one) in GALLEON (old ship) minus N (docked) Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution
25 AIRPORT AIR (number, song) PORT (left side in a plane or ship); another smoothie
26 RUGBY UNION cd Thanks to mctext, the game owed its origin to a schoolboy (from RUGBY, the famous public school) breaking the law of football when he picked up the ball during the game and ran with it. The rest, as they say, is history.
27 dd deliberately omitted

DOWN
1 CHINWAGS Ins of W (west) in CHINA (part of East) + first letters of Get & Stalled
2 UNCOMMON dd if UN is treated as a universal indicator of the opposite. While reading the history of colonial Malaya, I was surprised to learn that the early legislative body was made up of Official members (appointed from British civil servants) and Unofficial members (elected from local population)  
4 CODAS Codas are final pieces of music and the wordplay (thanks to vinyl1) Ins of O (band) in CD (compact disc, record) + AS (for example)
5 AMPERSAND A + *(MAD PERSON minus O, none) the joining symbol & above the number 7
6 CURTAIN-RAISER *(TRAIN A CRUISER)
7 PLACID Ins of C (first letter of clan) in PLAID (cloth forming part of traditional Highland dress) My COD for the imagery of a Scottish bagpiper playing Mull of Kintyre on a lonely cliff on an island famous for producing single malt
8 DESIGN Ins of S (son) in DEIGN (be condescending)
10 SENTIMENTALLY SENT (elated) I (one, again as in 24Across) MENTALLY (as one thinks)
15 GHOST TOWN G (good) HOST (entertainer) + *(WONT)
16 RUSHMORE To rush more is a tichy way of saying to display greater urgency. The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States featuring sculptures of the heads of former United States presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
17 RESTATED Ins of STATE (country) in RED (in debt)
19 BADGER A very clever dd
20 JET-LAG JET (black) LAG (convict)
23 ALAMO ALA (Alabama) MO (Missouri) This was the mission where John Wayne, oops Davy Crockett was killed. The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal battle fought during the Texas Revolution

Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

42 comments on “Times 25,177 – John Wayne Lives”

  1. … was begun by a chap who picked up a real (round) football and ran with it under his arm. Hence breaking the rules.
  2. So just about a sub-10 and my first in ages. The answers just flew in. As I wrote in CODAS I could see our esteemed American correspondent wincing. The only matter of note is the clever def at 17dn: “In other words put”.

    And the only remaining question will be: how quickly can T. Sever write?

    1. Unequivocally a sub-10 I’d say, so good show!

      I type faster than I write, so solving online at least goes some way to offsetting the gradual slowing down that’s taken place over the last 25-30 years. I did manage to finish slightly faster than you, but you must remember that I’ve had years and years of practice.

  3. 48 minutes for all bar 26 – or so I thought, but I also had 19dn wrong (‘target’ – sort of works), which made 26 impossible.

    The literal for 26 – ‘hooligans’ game’ – is a reference to the old saying that ‘football is a gentlemen’s game played by hooligans, while rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen’. The bloke who came up with this obviously hadn’t been on tour with England.

    To consolidate the John Wayne reference at 13, one of his best known contributions to filmic history was his show-stealing appearance as the centurion by the cross in ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’. Asked by director George Stevens to say his line with awe, Wayne responded, ‘Aw, surely this man was the son of God’.

    Edited at 2012-05-31 03:01 am (UTC)

    2. Maybe he was thinking about the Welsh. While the English were raising hell our lot were like choirboys!
      1. Absolutely. I suppose Gavin Henson would be the exception that proves the rule to any of these theories.
  4. 17.05, so back under 20 though they don’t come this easy that often. I wondered if there might be an RU team called or nicknamed Hooligans. Foxed by the number in air (not now) but it had to be. A day for the sub-fives?
  5. 17’32”, so clearly not quite such breeze for me – I stalled after working swiftly down from the NE as far as SECOND NATURE. COUP in the NW didn’t dawn – I was looking for “firm” reversed – and that area remained blank for a while as a result.
    RUGBY UNION held me up: I was convinced it was a term for “knock down ginger” or some such boyish prank, which introduced the irritating idea that it might be a phrase that I’ve never heard of. Once that’s ticking away in the solving bit of the brain, the obvious struggles to surface. The same applied to GALILEO, not least because there are many scientists I should (but don’t) know, and I assumed it was one of them..
    I’m most aware of the Rugby quote as being a “game for thugs”.
    Left with a faint feeling of shoulda been quicker, but CoD to AWING.
    1. The quote with ‘hooligans’ appeared in the Clint Eastwood flick about the Springboks winning the ’95 World Cup on drop-goals after poisoning the All Blacks. Or did the ref do them that time?
      1. Seen the movie, don’t recall the quote, but thanks all the same! I got the impression Matt Damon won that match all on his own.
        I have found the rather winning “Gaelic football is a game for hooligans played by hooligans” which sits well with the Irish origins of the word, and this let’s-push-this-one-step-further quote from the States: “Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen. Soccer is a gentleman’s game played by beasts. Football is a beastly game played by beasts.”
        2. I always thought American football was a one-hour game spread across three.
  6. 20 minutes for all but three, then 6 minutes on 17dn and 18ac but another 10 minutes going through the alphabet to come up with LEAD at 27ac to complete the grid.

    I’m interested that the ‘wing and a prayer’ expression was in ‘Flying Tigers’ in 1942 as confirmed by imdb and other movie sources. Apparently it was actually “coming in on ONE wing and a prayer” and was said by a Rangoon hotel clerk speaking TO the John Wayne character.

    More traditional sources (including Brewers and OED) have its earliest reference in a patriotic song from 1943 “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer” with lyric by Harold Adamson and music by Jimmy McHugh. “Adamson and McHugh were awarded the Presidential Certificate of Merit by President Harry Truman for the song. The story is told that the idea for the song was inspired by a young Duke University football player, Sonny Bragg whom McHugh met in Los Angeles before the 1938 Rose Bowl. In l943 Bragg wrote McHugh out of the blue and told him that he had been preoccupied flying bomber missions over Europe: “On my last trip, half a wing was shot away, but we managed to return on one wing and a prayer.” McHugh called Adamson for some lyrics and the result is the song and the inspiration for the l944 Don Ameche movie, Wing and a Prayer”.

    Finally here’s the great Eddie Cantor singing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Ye-XKZ-Yo

    Edited at 2012-05-31 06:00 am (UTC)

  7. 15m, including several at the end trying to justify LEAD for 27ac. I couldn’t. Is that the right answer? Why? [prepares to kick self]
    1. It’s Bridge, or some such card game, where the lead card put down might well be a spade. In my experience, any lead I make is from the wrong suit.
      1. I figured as much. The only card game I’ve ever played more than a couple of times is a French game called Madame Pipi. It’s every bit as sophisticated as it sounds.
    2. Just figured it out – self duly kicked. I thought of cards but still didn’t see it. I should have gambled more in my youth.

      Edited at 2012-05-31 06:52 am (UTC)

  8. Yes, certainly one of the easier recent puzzles. About 30 mins for me. Lots of enjoyable stuff – I particularly liked CHINWAGS and AMPERSAND. Fascinating to learn that the phrase “on a wing and a prayer” may have originated with the Wayne character in Flying Tigers. On hooligans and soccer/rugby, it’s interesting that no one seems to be sure of the etymology of “hooligan”, which started to be used in the last couple of decades of the 19th century. The best guess seems to be that it is a corruption of the Irish surname Houlihan, then a common term for an Irishman in (presumably English) music-halls, pubs etc.
  9. I should have added thanks to Uncle Yap for explaining the reference to “theatre” in INCISED at 9 ac.
  10. No difficulties today – my only hold up was at the end with the Restated / Lead pair. Lead was an educated guess – thanks for the explanations above.

    It’s a rare day that I solve 1A the moment the puzzle comes off the printer, but today was that day.

    Liked the clues for Womaniser and Placid in particular.

  11. 21 minutes in fits and starts, which makes it the easiest since yesterday for me. PLACID & AWING were good but COD to WOMANISER.

    Is anybody else getting Fake App Attack alerts when visiting this site?


  12. All but the bottom right in very quick time. Left with blanks at RESTATED, and LEAD (another answer omitted not only from my finished attempt, but also from the blog!).

  13. Two sessions to deal with this one, a total of 17 mins. I liked placid, awing and womaniser too. Being a paper solver, I am not quite sure what a Fake App Attack is, but it does sound very nasty!
  14. 14:00, ending with a wrong guess at FANGOR after spending 4 minutes staring uselessly at 19dn (BADGER).  Still, at least I’ve learnt that ‘dachs-hund’ means ‘badger-dog’.  It took a surprisingly long time to coax RUGBY UNION (26ac) from my sporting terminology ghetto – I’ve been off crosswords for a while – but my only unknown was ALAMO as a historic building (23dn).

    The wordplay in 3ac (“one has to delete page and becomes disheartened” = SCRATCH PAD) is ungrammatical, but otherwise this seemed a fair puzzle.

    Clue of the Day: 18ac (SECOND NATURE).

      1. I think correctly speaking the “to” serves purpose only in the surface, but not the word play. It depends how generous you are in allowing these things for the sake of a good surface, or whether you insist on pinpoint accuracy
      2. We should be able to agree that the cryptic grammar of the wordplay in 3ac – i.e. the structure it has on the required cryptic reading – is:

        one has [to delete + page + and becomes disheartened].

        The way I see it, though,

        to delete = SCRATCH [I appreciate fathippy’s quibble, but that makes me weird, and it’s not my main point]
        page = P
        and becomes disheartened ≠ AD

        Theoretically speaking, I think the trouble with the third part is that the left-hand side is a complete subject-plus-predicate clause and so can’t be parallel to the right-hand side (a problem avoided by e.g. ‘and disheartened’).  I needn’t rely on the theory to win you over, though, because if the above three-parter is OK, so is the following one-parter (ignoring the surface reading):

        one has and becomes disheartened.

        And that, surely, constitutes a reductio ad absurdum.  Any competent speaker of English can immediately see that there’s something wrong with phrases like ‘one has I like Chinese’, or ‘Fred eats cats drink milk’, or ‘anxiety overcomes man bites dog’, and I don’t see why this kind of gibberish should find a home in crossword clues.


  15. (11.21) nullified by an unthinking THAT’S WHAT at 22a. Not the first time this week I’ve undone a decent time with a casual error – and as usual a case of putting up the roof before building the walls (or the foundations).
  16. As for others an easy canter even after 18 holes in the best golfing conditions for some weeks. 20 unhurried minutes just steadily solving top to bottom right to left

    I knew John Wayne was “on a wing and a prayer” but always thought the rugby hooligan quote was Wilde – not really a cryptic clue. Now, o wise ones, how did Rugby League evolve from Union?

  17. I thought I was racing towards victory, but alas, I never got LEAD. To my credit I at least considered MELD. 🙂 I loved AWING today.

    Are you sure there isn’t any wordplay going on in 26, with ‘game initiated’ and ‘by’?

    Thanks all!

    1. That would give you the –GBY, but you’d still need to account for the RU (which is also a game – rugby union – but game would then be doing double duty, as well as having the answer in the clue!) and the UNION.

      The most overtly cryptic, as in wordplay, bit in this cryptic clue may be said to be the contrast between ‘initiated’ and ‘old’, as William Webb Ellis picked the ball up in 1823 and the school was founded in 1567.

      That’s how I see it, anyway, but others may differ.

  18. Yes, I couldn’t see any further than the GBY, but I wondered if others could see further than me!
  19. Not so quick as everyone else, about 35 minutes, ending with DESIGN/AWING, just after RUGBY UNION/BADGER. The RUGBY answer went in as a game only, not knowing anything about either the origin of rugby, or the sayings about gentlemen, hooligans and thugs. COD to AWING, which clearly took a while to dawn on me, but when it did it raiased a smile. Thanks to the setter though, for the RUSHMORE and ALAMO clues as softballs for the Americans. Regards to all.
  20. Nice steady solve. Got RUGBY UNION from the definition. Just read comment above and spotted the GBY in the middle. Always thought quote was “thugs” and Oscar Wilde. 27 minutes
  21. Zoomed through the top half in about 20 minutes then got bogged down, especially in the SE. Thought of RUGBY UNION straight away but didn’t put it in as I was trying to build the rest of the clue around GBY. I got INCISED without spotting the surgical reference, and took ages to spot the obvious THAT’S THAT after which ALAMO fell and RU finally went in. Thanks to Uncle Y for the explanations of those, and to Vinyl1 for CODAS which I also failed to parse despite seeing the answer from the definition at first glance.Took about an hour in all, but was pleased to complete the top half quickly and found the whole thing enjoyable.
  23. Where is the definition in 5 down? “That is seen at the keyboard” seems inadequate.
    1. We’ve recently had ESC and ALT defined simply as key, so AMPERSAND as (something) seen at the keyboard doesn’t seem very different to me.
      1. To me it’s the missing “something” that makes all the difference. Perhaps I’m just being picky.

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