Times 25202 – Fairy Tales and Army Slang

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I completed most of this within 25 minutes but then became bogged down in the remaining 8 clues in the lower half with 13dn, a word I’ve never heard of, as the main sticking point. I eventually finished in 50 minutes exactly.

Across
1 IMPOSTURE – 0, ST (no way) inside IMPURE (sinful). Assuming a false identity.
6 JAPED gAPED (stared open-mouthed) with J replacing the first letter.
9 ALI BABA – ALIBi (endless defence) + A + BAll (half-length delivery). The definition is ‘magic opener’. Ali Baba used the command ‘Open Sesame ” to open the door to the magic cave in the fairy tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
10 UNDERGO – dd – one vaguely humorous.
11 EDITH – EDIT (change) + H(usband)
12 ALMSHOUSE – Anagram of HAULS SOME. Not the usual meaning of hospital here but an earlier one, a charitable institution for the needy.
14 WAG – dd. WAG is an acronym from ‘Wives And Girlfriends’ relating originally to sportsmen, I believe. If when going on tour or to a function ‘WAGS are included’ then their wives and girlfriends may go too, hence ‘accompanying lovely’ as one of the definitions here.
15 PANIC BUTTON – Cryptic definition
17 TOMMY ATKINS – 0, MM (no MM – Military Medal) inside anagram of TINY TASK. TOMMY ATKINS is a slang term for the common soldier in the British army.
19 Deliberately omitted – our second cricketing reference today.
20 RIGOLETTO – RIG (set up) followed by LETT (European) inside OO (spectacles). The opera by Verdi.
22 GHOST – G (grand) + HOST (anchorman – on TV). Wasn’t there a song by Frankie Laine called Ghost-writers in the Sky? Perhaps not.
24 HIND LEG – The obvious answer when one has thought of the expression ‘ talk the hind leg off a donkey’ but unfortunately I didn’t for ages and this was my last one in.
26 AUTOCUE – Sounds like ‘auto queue’.
27 DEARY – DrEARY a somewhat condescending form of address similar to ‘love’.
28 BREADLINE – Anagram of IRELAND BE.
Down
1 IRATE – RAT (animal) inside I.E.
2 PAIRING – AIR (song) inside PING (sound as a bell). ‘Belting’ is the containment indicator.
3 SLAP HAPPY – SLAP (make-up) + HAPPY (Doc’s colleague in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).
4 UP AGAINST IT – Anagram of PUTTING ASIA.
5 EMU – The flightless bird and the Economic & Monetary Union currently in the process of crash-landing.
6 JUDAH – JUDo (self-defence system finally failed) + AH (what a shame). Biblical stuff.
7 PARQUET – Supposed to sound like “parky” only unfortunately it doesn’t – on edit, please see my reply to martinp1 in the comments below. Used for flooring.
8 DO ONE’S NUT – DONE (finished) with 0 inside it (empty) + TUNS reversed (upturned casks). This and ‘go spare’ are alternatives meaning to become 1dn.
13 MACHICOLATE – MA (mother) + CHoCOLATE (brown) with its first O replaced by I. This was unknown to me. It means to construct openings at the top of medieval fortifications.
14 WATERSHED – H (usband – again) inside TERSE (brief) all inside WAD (sandwich). This use of WAD is army slang as in the expression ‘char and wad’ meaning tea and sandwich.
16 UNSIGHTED – SIGH (exasperated noise) replaces the I in UNiTED (football team).
18 MAGENTA – AGENT (spy) inside MA (clever chap, but not necessarily so in my experience). A battle in the 2nd Italian War of Independence – 1859.
19 BRONCHI – BRONCo + H(orse, this time) + I.
21 LULLY – Jean-Baptiste LULLY 1632-1689. Another late entry in my solve.
23 Deliberately omitted
25 GOB – GO (turn) + B(lack)

37 comments on “Times 25202 – Fairy Tales and Army Slang”

  1. 80 minutes, last in MAGENTA. Liked TOMMY ATKINS (where I was convinced ‘soldier’ was part of the wordplay) and DEARY best. The obscure composer and Machiowhatnot very much from wordplay. Thanks to Jack for the parsing of the Biblico-historical JUDAH.

    Regarding the non-homophone, it’s only a matter of years until we can have ‘Chat show host sounds chilly’.

  2. Just to say that MACHICOLATE (v) is not in the on-line OED, which is what I use when I need to check a word.
    Sheela
    1. Yes, it’s odd that the verb is missing there as it’s in the Shorter Oxford. For our purposes it’s also in Collins and Chambers so there’s no query as to its validity.
    1. I’m afraid I now have to reconsider my view on this having played the relevant sound-files in my CD-ROM of the Shorter Oxford, as ‘parky’ is their preferred pronunciation. ‘Par-kay’ is there as an alternative.
      1. Maybe a straw poll is in order. Anyone who’s heard or used ‘parky’ must declare it.
        1. I wonder if it’s regional. Or maybe it’s class-based, perhaps one of those reverse U/Non-U things where it’s U to say ‘parky’ and a bit common to pronounce the French. I hasten to add I’ve always said ‘parkay’.
          1. I’m dead U – we even had U and Non U in the loo at home – and we had parquet flooring, and no one would be found dead pronouncing it like the bloke who came on before Match of the Day.

            Seriously, though, I don’t quite go for the reverse U thing. After all, it’s the ‘lower’ classes who predominantly give the anglicised pronunciations of words like ‘buffet’. A whole sitcom in the 90s was devoted to the single joke of a social climbing, wannabe U woman determined to get people to call her Bouquet rather than Bucket, no?

            Edited at 2012-06-29 09:41 am (UTC)

            1. Count me among those who’ve always said “parkay”, which I’m pretty sure is the most common pronunciation, whatever the Shorter Oxford may recommend. The fact that there are two possible pronunciations, only one of which works as a homophone in this context, renders this a dodgy clue IMHO. At the very least there should have been a ? at the end of the clue, I feel.
  3. Well disguised defs almost throughout; add to that the serious work-out for the “delete and replace” shuffle and this looks quite hard.

    No idea about the MacH-thingy (13dn); but I shall try to get it into the conversation at tonight’s sundowner (yes, a third meaning for that word).

    EMU: could you blokes stop nicking the names of our animals? There’s also the EURO, another name for the wallaroo. It’s bad enough that you don’t have a flag of your own and have to nick the little bit out of the corner of ours!

    Oh and … liked 19ac, having done the puzzle just after selling my vintage Mustang bass.

    Edited at 2012-06-29 06:15 am (UTC)

    1. Re: Working MACHICOLATE into your conversation. I actually found mysenf using the noun form of this last Tuesday in Pembroke Castle (West Wales) when I asked my friend whether she thought the machicolations were original 12th century. She said “Oh, you mean the nitchy notchy bits at the top”. It’s no good trying to educate some people! Ann
  4. Another dnf, with MACdowhatsit and (inexplicably) AUTOCUE outstanding – for the latter, couldn’t break away from ARTICLE, even though it made no sense. I even thought of queue as part of the soundalike, and still missed it. Definitely running slow at the moment.
    In my neck of the woods, PARQUET is often pronounced “laminate flooring”, but parkay is what I’d hear it as.
    Any Times Crossword that includes GOB doesn’t deserve a CoD.
    1. I just about justified article as:
      – artic is part of traffic
      – le (in article) a homophone for letter L, the back of tail.
      – articles are broadcast in broadsheets, f’rinstance.

      Rob

      But did not enjoy this crossword, and DNF.

  5. After four really well clued puzzles this week, this one rather lets the side down in places

    Some of it is good – I liked “accompanying lovely” for WAG. But if I pronounced PARQUET as “parky” my French family connections would disown me! Never heard of LULLY and 13D is a good Mephisto word which leads to a train crash of a clue. 25 minutes including looking up both the composer and the MAC-rubbish.

  6. Complete failure here. I gave up after 45 minutes with fully 6 unsolved. The fact that I didn’t have a clue about 7dn with P_R_U_T suggested I was never going to finish so I couldn’t be bothered with the rest. If I’d thought of PARQUET I’d have rejected it because I have never in my life heard anyone pronounce it “parky”.
    I even wrote down MACHICOLATE but just couldn’t for the life of me how the rest of the clue could be any kind of definition, and I was convinced the gallery was TATE.
    The rest of my unsolved clues were in the SW. I’m sure I’d have got there eventually but I lost the will to live.
    All in all a miserable experience. I’m off for a game of croky.
  7. Just under 35 minutes today. I knew the signs were favourable when the flightless bird appeared at 5 and the sun god concealed himself in 1 down; I was also encouraged by the high proportion of one-liners among the clues.

    Put me in among those who don’t think that PARQUET sounds like parky. Odd, because in the Midlands and the North, a word such as “garage”, say, is usually anglicised in pronunciation to “garridge,” and to those of us who still use the term, a “char-a-banc” is always a “sharrabang”; so I really don’t know why I should be a “par-kay” man.

    I often think that if Nigel Farage really wanted to demonstrate his UK credentials he would insist on being Nigel Farridge.

    1. I would say that all your three pronunciations are in fact U. I think it might depend on how long a foreign word has been in the lexicon. Once it’s seen as an ‘English’ word, like ‘garage’, then it’s considered pretentious to frenchify it.
      1. Recently, however, there seems to be a reversion to the French, perhaps because more people have learned a little at school. “Bouquet”, for example, is a word whose pronunciation has changed during my lifetime. In the 1950s, it was always a bo-kay that the bride carried, now every florist calls it a boo-kay. I am sure I shall think of other examples as soon as I’ve posted this comment.
  8. Reminded me of that old tv series with Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced BOOKAY.

    I had a vestigial memory of 13d having been dragged around countless stately homes and monuments as a kid. 24 minutes.

    1. Am always tempted to say “The lady of the house speaking” when I pick up the phone. Ann
  9. 26:35, with the last 10 minutes spent concocting MACHICOLATE (13dn).  Other unknowns: the battle of MAGENTA (18dn), LULLY (21dn).  I wasn’t sure about JUDAH (6dn), and TOMMY ATKINS (17ac) only rang a bell once I’d fiddled with the anagram fodder for quite a while.

    ‘Machicolate’ turns out to be a casualty of the in-progress revision of the OED.  Previous editions had an entry for the verb (to furnish with machicolations), but the supporting quotations all involved the adjective ‘machicolated’, so OED3 has rebranded the entry as ‘machicolated, adj.’ (provided with machicolations).  Ironically, however, OED3’s definition for ‘machecole’ is still ‘to machicolate’, which unwittingly provides their sole attestation of ‘machicolate’ as a verb.

    All very interesting, if you like that kind of thing, but what it’s doing in a daily cryptic is anyone’s guess.

    Edited at 2012-06-29 12:59 pm (UTC)

  10. Was pleased to finish it with just the three gaps, all in the SE: WATERSHED, WAG and HIND LEG. I was convinced that sandwich=round.

    Didn’t manage to parse RIGOLETTO or PAIRING, and hadn’t heard of MACHICOLATE or (battle of) MAGENTA.

    Tough puzzle. AUTOCUE made me smile.

  11. I think it goes:

    great unwashed: bunch of flowers
    aspirant middle classes: careful French bou-kay
    aspirant upper classes: archly casual French – b’kay
    proper toffs: bunch of flowers

    I imagine it’s much the same with parquet/parky.

    It’s how the English ruling classes kept their heads when all in Europe were losing theirs.

    1. I think the late Kingsley Amis would have enjoyed that, Sotira. In his entertaining The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage he has this to say about the pronunciation of French words by English-speakers:

      The pronunciation of a French word or words should, when the language of conversation is English, avoid any attempt at exact French pronunciation, which can hinder the flow of talk. At the same time, a speaker will not pronounce every French expression as if it were English. To do so is all right for some French words, like those in ‘tour de force’, which a sensible English-speaker will pronounce without any French sounds whatever. But many others would sound so non-English that some compromise seems called for, like ‘tant pis’ or ‘aide-de-camp’, which are unintelligible as English noises.

      Unfortunately, Kingers doesn’t include either “bouquet” or “parquet” in his list of recommended pronunciations of French words, so we are left none the wiser on that score.

      1. Thanks, Mike. The old devil was right, I think. He seems to have shared Fowler’s preference for precision without pedantry.
  12. Was doing well with only 13 down left after a far from ridiculous time – and then froze. I still can’t bleeve I didn’t see ‘chocolate’ though the substitution device was clear enough. I didn’t know the word and it seems too arcane. The setter made a similar error of judgement with the supposedly acceptable ‘parky’ pronunciation. A pity, as there were some lovely clues around. Edith my favourite.
  13. In my part of the world PARQUET is most certainly pronounced “parky” – but we’re all scions of the Welsh working class, no toffee-nosed, arty-farty Frenchiness for us! This puzzle was a fun-filled forty minutes for me. I’ve never seen the verb form of “machicolations” before but I’ve seen plenty of the real thing these last few days when I’ve been pottering around West Wales. The ones in Pembroke are particularly impressive. My travelling companion is from Windsor, though, and was difficult to impress. Ann
  14. 10:45 for me, with the last minute or two spent trying to justify ARTICLE for 26ac before finally spotting AUTOCUE. (Phew!)

    Definitely parkay in my part of Yorkshire.

    Am I surprised that people haven’t come across LULLY before? A bit, particularly given that he appeared as recently as No. 24,590 (15 July 2010) as the answer to “Composer puts brief pause before end of symphony (5)”. I’m not sure what those unfamiliar with him would make of this DVD of Atys, but if you like that sort of thing then it’s definitely the sort of thing you’d like – though sadly it currently costs £10 more from Amazon than it did when I bought it at the end of last year. Still well worth the money though!

  15. Ah, but surely the singular of Wives And Girlfriends is Wife Or Girlfriend? Unless of course she is being somewhat accommodating. There again, it does refer to tripping overseas, so whoever reckoned that “Wogs begin at Calais” may have been unusually prescient.
    1. Yes, I was going to address this in the blog but it came up in a previous one and I had my say on the matter then so I decided not to bother this time.

      However on looking it up later I found that according to Collins a WAG is the wife or girlfriend (of a famous sportsman) and its etymology is a back formation of an acronym for w(ives) a(nd) g(irlfriends). So WAG is singular and if you want the plural you put an S on the end.

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