Times 25192 – Call of the Wild

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 60 minutes

I don’t know about you, but I found this difficult. I couldn’t find a way in or out and floundered around in the middle. And the clues were almost no help at all. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them. Most were way too short. It must be Monday morning…

Across
1 GEt next to STATION = GESTATION
6 SLAB reversed next to A = BALSA
9 METERED = ThERE in the MED, the definition “as water may be”
10 Non placed after S for singular and MIDGE = SMIDGEN, a bit
11 RESIN = Ruin Eexpat’s + S for second + IN
13 SEVEn + RALLY = SEVERALLY
14 PHOTO for still + CELL for room = PHOTOCELL
16 SEED = SEE for get + olD
18 Deliberately omitted. If you look hard enough, you might find true happiness.
19 ALEXANDER, he of the Technique and the ragtime band
22 SQUARE LEG = on the level + stage, our obligatory cricket reference
24 SKID reversed over R for river = DIRKS, smaller than a claymore and pointier than a sporran
25 HOLD OUT, a double definition
26 (GLOBE IN)* = IGNOBLE
28 LOW + RY for railway = LOWRY, a painter of Salford
29 EYEBRIGHT = EYE + BRIGHT, simple as in herb, simple as in herb, simple as in herb,…
Down
1 MUG reversed + DROP = GUMDROP, no description available
2 SET, a double definition. Set has the distinction of having the most dictionary column inches dedicated to it, so almost any two words could form a clue for it. I took “plant” to mean “set in position”, but there may well be a plant called set for all I know. I did google set plant and got “Japan set to restart nuclear plants” for my trouble.
3 (MR TOAD AN)* = AT RANDOM, not a Latin phrase
4 hINDUS = INDUS, the river
5 NEVILLE with the E replaced by ASH = NASHVILLE, yee-hah! Richard Neville (not that Richard Neville) was a key player in the Wars of the Roses, a period summarised succinctly in Willie, willie, harry, etc as “then who?”
6 BRIAR + banD = BRIARD, a duelling dog of French origin unfamiliar to me
7 LEGAL TENDER = EG ALT in LENDER
8 AN NOD holding YE = ANNOYED
12 (WREN’S CLUE TO)* = STONE CURLEW, bird of cryptic plumage and unsettling cry
15 E for European + PAULETTE = EPAULETTE
17 PARDON for what + RE reversed = PARDONER, of Chaucerian pilgrimage
18 GASOHOL = SOHO in GALlon
20 REST with PEC in = RESPECT
21 PRIORitY = PRIORY
23 GUISE sounds like “guys”
27 Deliberately omitted. 2,4,6,8, put this in, don’t wait

34 comments on “Times 25192 – Call of the Wild”

  1. Doodled on this while attending an open-air performance of “As You Like It”, and it kept me going during many scene changes! Needed the wordplay for LOWRY, BRIARD and STONE CURLEW, glad to find there is such a bird and there wasn’t a SCORE NUTLEW skulking out there somewhere.
  2. Well, I found that a pleasant start to the week but I would have completed the puzzle in a faster time had I not had a fixation with daggers = obeli and London area = SE. So, sorry kororareka, but I didn’t find it that difficult but thank you for eyebright. That went in on wordplay and checkers. Thank you, also, for ALT = key. It had to be legal tender, however that device has come up so often recently that the penny should have dropped well before I came here. Tell me, though, is it 2 tads = 1 smidgen or the other way round? Joint COD to the Robert Altman movie and the Ragtime Band.
  3. No idea why I ran through this so quickly. No idea at all. Our setter of the economical clues normally leaves me perplexed. But not this morning. Probably a case of fortuitous grid filling. With the CURLEW and the TENDER in, plus GESTATION and EYEBRIGHT, so many things fell into place. Natch: no problem with 19ac. Only dictionary look-up was BRIARD.

    A certain party will no doubt complain about 28ac; but he should be thankful it was “painter” and not “novelist”. As the latter wrote Ultramarine and went to sea in the Merchant Navy, there was a way in there for much greater obscurities.

    Edited at 2012-06-18 04:54 am (UTC)

      2. Do you suppose he knows Lowry the novelist though? (Under the Volcano is one of the comparatively few books I’ve started but failed to finish.)
        2. Your fault, or the book’s?  I’ve had it sitting on my shelves for 10 years and still haven’t got round to opening it, so I’d be interested to hear what went wrong.
          1. Probably my fault. It’s a long time ago, and maybe it was something to do with my state of mind at the time, but I found the whole thing simply too depressing, and had little sympathy for the main character.

            Perhaps I should try it again now that I’m older and know a little more about Mexican culture (though still not very much – I’ve never been there). (If I do, maybe I’ll take mctext’s advice and try it with a bottle (or two) of mescal 😉

  4. 54 minutes, with that famous old English word for children ‘kend’ at 16. Liked SMIDGEN best – nice clue, nice word. I wonder how many will have ‘brierd’ for the dog, as it looks only marginally weirder than BRIARD.
  5. 30m, but with DARTS. I couldn’t justify it, but I couldn’t think of anything else either. In my defence I did get up at 4.30 this morning.
    Otherwise a tough nut to crack, as others have said. Several clues where I was scratching my head trying to work out a way in. Good stuff.
  6. More difficult than many of the old Times crosswords that I solve from an Indian paper.
    The first entries for me here were the ‘downs’ in the lower half of the grid, apart from 4a INDUS.
    Re 4ac, it’s nice we are in a Holiday mood there, with INDUStry forgotten.
    1. Hi Rishi. Good to hear from you. I see you’re slowly filling that grid of yours. Could 1ac be RAMBO?
  7. 45 minutes for all but 10ac although I had SMIDGEN/SMIDGIN in mind at that point as the only words I could think of that fitted and it took me a further 10 minutes to rule out all other possibilities by going through the alphabet and, at last, to spot the wordplay and choose between my original two answers.

    Panic set in early when I tried to start with the two 3-letter answers and couldn’t solve either clue however once I got going progress was steady if somewhat on the slow side. I’m not sure I would ever have come up with STONE CURLEW if I was asked to compile a list of birds, but sorting through the anagrist I dredged it from somewhere at the back of my mind. BRIARD however was completely unknown and looked very unlikely when deduced from wordplay.

    I’m surprised that L S Lowry appears to have caused problems, surely one of the most accessible artists of the last century? And he was celebrated in at least two popular songs.

    Edited at 2012-06-18 05:22 am (UTC)

    1. “Pictures of Matchstick Men” was one. What was the other?

      I agree: in Brit art, not knowing Lowry is like not knowing Verdi in opera. Accessible, of the people, but undyingly beautiful. Our first essay in A-level Art was a defence of Lowry’s naive style.

  8. Chiming in early to report on a serendipitous event (I’d like to see some setter fit that into a puzzle!) I bought a book Saturday by a young Cambridge fellow about the reign of Henry VII. It included a helpful family tree of the Lancastrians, Yorkists and Woodvilles, including the label of ‘daughter of Richard the Kingmaker’ on some of the sisters of Edward IV. They were ‘Neville’s’. Without that, there was no way I’d have solved NASHVILLE in a million years. COD to SMIDGEN, clever. LOI was the dog, which I have as BRIERD, right or wrong. Regards to all.

    Edited at 2012-06-18 06:30 am (UTC)

  9. Have to report a really slow time for me at 41 minutes, so massive respect for McT’s 12 and a bit. Just didn’t get going, and in the NE got so stranded that for much of the time I as wondering whether the obvious BALSA was just too obvious.
    Deja vu for NASHVILLE, though I think the cluing was different but just as devious (I have it! 25094 where I spookily commented “a lot of time spent in the NE, especially with NASHVILLE”).
    SMIDGEN very clever.
    I think the difference between a fast and slow time on this may be how you deal with the heffalump traps all over the place. I hit every one in the NW for starters: 1d was going to involve a cow of some sort, 2d a plant I’d not heard of, 3d was going to be Latin (AD aliquid). Avoid those and it’s a doddle. Sort of. Hit them, and you get so befuddled that the obvious anagram clue at 26 ceases to be obvious.
    CoD to NASHVILLE if you happen to know the family name (I only “remembered” it by reverse engineering), SMIDGEN otherwise.
  10. Yet more reason to doubt the Wik:

    “Briards come in a variety from [sic] different colors and the ones with lighter colors are often mistaken for haystacks”.

    !!

  11. The top half was an absolute beast but the bottom was more userfriendly and then I gradually crept my way back to the top, finishing in just over 20 minutes. Seeing as we crossword solvers either ‘get’ or ‘see’ a solution, I can’t think why it took me so long to solve 16a.
  12. 20:35, ending with SEED (16ac).  Like most people – mctext being an honourable exception – I found this slow going.  Unknowns: PHOTOCELL (14ac), ALEXANDER’s Ragtime Band (19ac), EYEBRIGHT (29ac), Holi (4dn INDUS), Richard Neville (5dn NASHVILLE), BRIARD (6dn), STONE CURLEW (12dn), the PARDONER’s Tale (17dn).  Unfamiliar: briar (6dn), GASOHOL (18dn).

  13. Got stuck in the NW, and left some gaps.

    Had the M to start 9ac, but was trying to fit a horse (mare? name of a horse?) into MED. With that M, I convinced myself that 1dn started POM…. (pomfret?) and couldn’t get away from that thought. Didn’t know NEVILLE, so there was a gap at 5dn too. Should have got GESTATION, that would have helped sort out that whole corner.

    DIRKS, BRIARD, ‘simple’ all unknowns, but gettable.

    Thanks to Koro for blog and helpful links.

    COD: SMIDGEN

  14. A steady slog but I got there in the end. Loi BRIARD, a dog I’d vaguely heard of but forgotten. I liked the misdirection of “English country home”. I spent a while thinking of Cliveden and Chequers et al before I remembered the family name of the Kingmaker. A very satisfying puzzle. 36 minutes.
  15. Didn’t know the dog but I did remember getting clobbered sometime in the spring for spelling the pipe with an A when an E was called for. Having no idea which to go for this time I googled it. 27 minutes.

    Changing the subject. Over the w/e I got an email via Livejournal from someone named Russialover (sobriquet not known to me) saying they had friended me. I don’t actually “do friends”, but my feeling is – thanks but no thanks. Just thought I’d mention in case there’s something to be noted.

    1. I’m always suspicious when someone I don’t know wants to friend you. Makes you wonder how they got your email. (On the other hand, I find Facebook a useful way of keeping in touch with “real” friends.)
  16. I found this of average difficulty. Relieved to find briard was OK. Thanks koro for the musical clips especially A.’s Ragtime Band. 27 minutes.
  17. Haven’t been here for a while (must have been busy. Well actually, I haven’t been able to complete puzzles so easily recently — everything’s fine at the beginning, but there are always one or two clues that elude me at the end). Surprisingly, I did complete this one, with a number of clues I was able to get only from the wordplay: BRIARD, EYEBRIGHT, PARDONER, SQUARE LEG. And SMIDGEN is rather nice, but SMIDGEON is the spelling I know and love. Just over an hour, by the way, but that’s par for me.
  18. 14:23 for me, with the bottom half going in quickly, the NW corner rather more slowly, and the NE corner taking ages. It’s quite possible that I’ve come across BRIARD before, but if so, I’d forgotten it. BRIARD looked better than BRIERD, so at least I plumped for the right one.
  19. 47′, the first 6 online, after which I decided this was not one to do online–I think I had GLEE at that point. 5d was a wonderful clue.
  20. My understanding is that it is not a request, but a statement.. we (I had this too) cannot stop someone from adding you to their list of “friends.” But all it seems to do really is tell them when you post something.

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