Times 25210 – The return of Mr. Rubble

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 65 Minutes

Music: Mozart Notturno, Serenata Notturna, Overtures & Interludes, Maag, LSO

My time includes a possible wrong answer in 25 down. I see all the words that it might be, but I just can’t get my mind around the cryptic. So I finished in the sense that I penciled in an answer for every slot, but I am not convinced I actually completed the puzzle successfully.

I thought that this was a little tricky for a Monday, with several instances of rather oblique literals paired with obscure cryptics. I did not get anywhere for quite a while, until some idiot market survey called on the phone, disrupting my solving efforts. When I returned to my chair, I filled in nearly the whole NE quarter, grasping instantly clues that had totally baffled me for the previous twenty minutes. However, I then lost my momentum and had to struggle home, more or less.

Across
1 SHAKER, double definition. A tambourine can be struck as well as shaken, but close enough.
4 THWARTED, TH(WART)E + [orchar]D. A fine cryptic, but solved from the literal.
10 SUBLIME, SU(BLIM[p]E). I wasted a lot of time looking for a title of nobility that fit, even after realizing the woman was probably ‘Sue’.
11 ACTRESS A(C)TRESS.
12 LUTE, sounds like ‘loot’. Well, it does to me.
13 SKYSCRAPER, SKY(SCRAP)E + R[uns]. A nicely hidden literal, although the stairs in skyscrapers are not often used. I blogged the previous puzzle where this slang meaning of ‘Barney’ occurred.
15 CLOSE-KNIT, C + LOSE K(N)IT. I don’t quite follow the ‘strip’ = ‘kit’ aspect of the clue, but the answer i obvious enough.
16 CLIMB, C + LI(M)B. A real lift and separate, or maybe not, as two opposing parties are allied, so to speak.
18 LISZT, Z-LIST with the ‘z’ moved forward.
19 FROSTBITE, BIT inside anagram of REST OF. .
21 MEANDERING, MEAN + D[rizzl]E + RING. The order of the words in the clue gave me difficulty, as I wasted a lot of time trying to use the outskirts of ‘low’, and thought ‘drizzle’ was the literal.
23 Omitted. So?
26 AQUIVER, A(QUI[z])VER.
27 TROTTER, [s]T[ir] [f]R[y] + ‘OTTER.
28 DRESSING, D(anagram of SIRENS)G.
29 DOO-WOP, PO(WOO)D backwards. Anyone who put ‘hip-hop’ is banished!
 
Down
1 Omitted.
2 ALBATROSS, double definition, an allusion to the Coleridge poem, and what we in the US would refer to as an old $20 gold piece.
3 EXIT, TI(X)E upside down.
5 HEADSET, HE(ADS + E)T, where the enclosing letters are an anagram of THE.
6 ANTHRACITE< AN + THRAC(I[nteres]T)E I think we have had this word in a fairly recent puzzle, so it was fresh in my mind.
7 TWERP, anagram of P[e]WTER. Not exactly a ‘mug’ in the classic slang sense, but close.
8 DESIRABLE, anagram of SIDE + RAB[b]LE. A fine clue, in my opinion.
9 JERKIN, i.e. JERK IN, where ‘in’ takes the sense of ‘wearing’. If you were trying to put ‘o’ inside a word meaning ‘twerp’ to get a jacket, you were in for a long solve……like me.
14 BETTE DAVIS, BETTED + VIS[age]. Rather easy just using the literal.
15 COLOMBARD, COL + DRAB M.O. upside down. I put this in from the definition, supposing that the ‘rd’ at the end was ‘Dr.’ upside down. It doesn’t matter how you get the answer!
17 IRISH STEW, IRIS + H = WETS upside-down. How ‘weeds’ = ‘wets’ is a bit obscure, but the answer to the clue is right enough.
19 FORTRAN, FORT + RAN. Of course, you would not normally run Fortran on a PC, although Fortran compilers are available. You’d be more likely to see it on the antiques that Jimbo and the other old hands were chatting about last week
20 ORNATE, hidden backwards in [fak]E TAN RO[gue].
22 AMUSE, SUM backwards inside A&E, a hospital department found mainly in the UK.
24 SYRUP, S(YR)UP. As in cough syrup, no doubt.
25 GOGO, GO x GO. This is my placeholder answer, but I don’t think it can be correct. The clue is very clever in some way I can’t see. I have considered all the possible meanings of ‘square’ – a number, someone who is not hip, an open place in big city (Soho?), a verb meaning to bribe….but I just can’t see it. I’m sure someone will have the correct interpretation. Of course, it is possible my explanation is correct, but that doesn’t seem likely in this well-clued and crafty puzzle.Well, DODO it is, DO + DO. Thanks to Sotira.

50 comments on “Times 25210 – The return of Mr. Rubble”

  2. My guess is: dodo, which satisfies ‘square’, and by some stretch, I suppose a dance can be termed a ‘do’.
    17. If ‘weeds’ is a typo for ‘wees’ then the clue works for me. Barbara
  3. This is a reference to centrist Conservative politicians with a tendency to sit on the fence attended by a whiff of the socialist. If Thatcher was the best known ‘Dry’, the best known wets of the 70s and 80s would include Francis Pym, Jim Prior and of course Ted Heath.
  4. Re DODO, Oxford Online has ‘an old-fashioned and ineffective person’, so it must be that…

    …however, I went with a tentative ‘gogo’, finishing in 55 minutes. Wasn’t sure about sublime as noble, but it’s close enough (and bound to be in some dictionary or other). Considered Bliss and Bizet at 18 before LISZT materialised, and like Sotira nearly put Betty Davis as I have never come across ‘betted’ but it looked wrong.

    Last in was the unknown grape variety, where I needed the cryptic to stop me entering ‘columbard’. COD to AQUIVER, ‘though ANTHRACITE was clever and SKYSCRAPER a mix of the amusing and the scary, as memories of the dreadful dinosaur came flooding back.

  5. 69 minutes with most of the time over the hour spent on considering alternatives at 25 including POGO which I learnt recently as a dance (not that it would have fitted the plural). COLOMBARD was my last-but-one in.

    Didn’t know the religious meaning of SHAKER and couldn’t think of the computer language until the key checker ‘F’ was in place, and unfortunately this was rather late in the somewhat prolonged proceedings.

    Too hard for a Monday, but if it means we shall have an easy Friday when I’m on blog duty I shan’t complain.

    Edited at 2012-07-09 10:34 am (UTC)

  6. 34 minutes with the last 6 on Colombard, not knowing the wine and rejecting col as it means a mountain pass…until I finally saw it would need to be a depression to be that. Fooled around the wrong way with meandering for too long also. Nice touch of the far away and long ago here with old Bette, doo-wop, wets, a jerkin (haven’t seen the word for a time), maybe a Shaker in one…
  7. This is a difficult puzzle spoiled for me by 25D which is an awful clue straight out of the 1950s. Close run by 1A which is another real DODO of a clue. I also doubt one would run FORTRAN on a PC. It was a specialist language for mathematicians when COBOL was used by data churners. Far better tools around these days I think. What with the golf course,like half of Dorset, being under water not a good start to the day.
    1. Totally agree with these comments, I got all but DODO, was much tempted by Soho square. Sorry to hear about the golf course, even ours is a little damp in places but you’re welcome to visit, Jimbo,(Ryanair to Bergerac) if you have serious withdrawal symptoms.
    2. I learnt to program using Fortran on an ICL mainframe, many years ago. I never realised it was mathematically oriented – that would explain why I never saw a commercial program that used it!

      Edited at 2012-07-10 11:34 am (UTC)

  8. One wrong, and that was BETTE (where, like Sotira, I went with ‘bet’ and chucked in the rest, so had ‘betty’).

    As others, I pondered over 25dn, and put in DODO with not much conviction. As far as I was concerned, pogo or gogo could equally have been correct.

    COLOMBARD and ANTHRACITE worked out from cryptics. Quite liked LISZT.

  9. 15m. I seem to have found this more straightforward than some, helped a lot by knowing almost all the words, even though there were quite a few words of the type I often don’t know.
    I knew the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (USBCSA – I can see why they went with SHAKER) more for their furniture aesthetic than anything else, but had picked up along the way that there was a religious aspect to it. As I understand it they made very simple furniture to leave more time for ecstatic dancing.
    My last in, with a great deal of hesitation, was DODO. I didn’t know the “square” meaning, and I thought “dance” for “do” was a bit oblique. In the end it seemed the best option but I wasn’t very happy with it.
  10. Not carefully timed as I was getting ready for a 90km return journey to the Perth Apple Store to get my iPod fixed — said device being my stopwatch.

    And indeed, hard by Monday standards; but then last Friday was easy. What’s up with the day mythology?

    Spent a while pondering DODO, as did those above. But there was only one way out of it.

    My LOI was 11ac (ACTRESS) because I’d too hastily written in HANDset at 5dn.

    Are there no yodders compaling about L[y]OOT at 12ac?

    For future reference; five-letter composers ending in T — Bizet, Liszt, Holst. Any others?

    1. Not to mention the great Ebenezer Prout of Oundle, famous for his erudite witticisms as much as anything else:

      “Have you ever considered,” Prout asked the Chronicle, “that grazing animals with lowered heads may not be grazing at all?”


    2. Ibert.

      Back to the DODO, I can’t find any direct correlation ‘dance’ -> ‘do’ but if one has go to via another word I think the best fit is ‘social’ rather than ‘party’.

      Edited at 2012-07-09 09:27 am (UTC)

  11. 46 minutes for all bar 25d and who knows how long to get that one. I’m glad others also found it difficult. As one who has used FORTRAN on a PC I was even contemplating KORO as a possible answer. In my defence I can only say the implementation I used allowed recursive subroutines, but probably not dynamic arrays. As for the rest of the puzzle, certainly tricky, especially for a Monday, but largely enjoyable. COD to THWARTED over DESIRABLE, as in it’s desirable not to have wine clues in crosswords.
    1. But even the Collins gives us a mention:
      “a white grape grown in France, California, and Australia, used for making wine” — hence the wine as such.
  12. Must have spent an hour on this, with most done in the first fifteen minutes. Like almost everyone else, it took me ages to justify 25. Was it SOHO? (Soho square, but where’s the dance, unless of the Seven Veils?) GOGO? (A dance and something BY itself to justify square? NO NO!) POGO?

    Eventually put in DODO without much conviction, thinking just of the old-fashioned person. It was only after a while that a DO as dance came to mind.

    Perhaps I’m a DODO, but I quite enjoy a variety of puzzle types, and hope that the editor will continue to give us ones like this from time to time. (I draw the line at bringing back the direct quotation!)

  13. Bleh. Not one to inflict on me when I’m well below par. ?O?O left uncompleted as a protest against clues that don’t work very well. I was also ignorant of the wine, assumed the state in 26 was Arkansas and the exam was one I’d never heard of, threw in HANDSET (the cryptic worked well enough to be convincing) until no combination of either Judy or lei worked in ACTRESS, and tried for too long to produce an anagram of growth in 4ac. Was looking forward to someone who knows confirming that FORTRAN wouldn’t be seen dead on a PC (thanks Jim) and that loot and LUTE are at best distant phonic cousins (cheers, McT). All in all, a dispiriting experience.
  14. Entered GO-GO as couldn’t think of anything better: didn’t think of DODO, considered SOHO (Square), also KOLO to provide K for the pangram, but that was in 1ac.
  15. 19:56 for a puzzle which was both testing and entertaining, with one glaring exception. I shan’t labour the point, as I see I’m not alone in my point of contention. I weighed up DODO along with POGO and GOGO, not to mention the even less likely looking NONO and SOHO and BOHO, but wasn’t convinced by any of them even though I chose correctly (and then spoiled my entry by mistyping elsewhere so I ended up with that Eastern European sea-bird the ALBATROSZ).
  17. 7:46 for me, but like many others 20% of the time was spent considering 25d. Eventually ‘square’ (adj) led me to ‘square’ (n) in the right sense. I know that ‘dance’ = DO is a little bit loose, but I actually think it’s a nice clue.
    1. I too like the clue. The q.mark makes it OK in my book; and square as in one from the dark ages, and do as a social that isn’t exactly disqualified from being a dance, click in a neat brevity. So often clues are tiresomely long.

      1. Was there ever a dance craze called The Do? Here’s Howlin’ Wolf:

        Do the Do

        (although with these Mississippi bluesmen you always wonder if they’re singing about what they’re singing about, or singing about something else entirely, if you know what I mean).

        I’m also a fan of one and two-word clues and am prepared to forgive much in the pursuit of them.

        1. Is there such a thing as a one-word clue in the Times? How do you get anything cryptic in?

          Perhaps:
          Clue = EXPLAIN?
          Answer = ELABORATE

          1st way: as a verb ELABORATE = EXPLAIN = provide more details
          2nd way: cryptically, something no longer plain, so EX-PLAIN, is now complex and adjectivally ELABORATE.

          Almost works for me.

  18. 43.27 here with 5 of those puzzling over 25a before wrongly inserting GOGO, having eliminated DODO as dances and dos didn’t seem to work and GOGO was sure to be a square somewhere in the old Communist bloc. I was pleased to get so close as lately this type of puzzle has defeated me completely! My COD goes to 11a for its sublime surface.
  19. Had never heard of this as a wine, but the wordplay led quite easily to it and there’s a reference to it in Flanders and Swann’s All Gall (something like ‘Three French generals, call me if you please/Colombard Les Deux Eglises’). I think it’s where De Gaulle lived after the war before he was summoned back to run France, so I was confident it was a place in France and so probably related to wine.
    1. Nitpick here. It’s COLOMBEY les Deux Eglises where de Gaulle lived, but thanks for the nice F&S reference. Didn’t know the grape but got the answer and managed to goof anyway by spelling it “colUmbard” – probably thinking of Columbus or Columbia or something. 32 minutes heavy lifting.

      Bette Davis reminds me to watch All About Eve again.

      1. I should have taken more trouble: All Gall is there on YouTube. And it’s ‘Gimcrack governments, call me if you please/Colombey les Deux Eglises’.

        Forgiveable perhaps because I last heard it about forty years ago, although in my youth I listened to it dozens of times.

        Edited at 2012-07-09 08:49 pm (UTC)

  20. Not sure I dare quibble with Jimbo but Fortran was a lot more than a specialist language for mathematicians. In the early days of computing it was used by all scientists and engineers and most certainly ran on PCs. It only fell out of fashion with the advent of object-oriented languages such as C++ but I still know people who swear by it (and use it for serious work).

    Chris (a regular lurker)

    1. Whilst it’s true that microprocessers date back to the 1960s I think the first real PC that bears any resemblance to today’s machines were the IBM and Apple versions of the early 1980s and I’m not sure if they could have coped with FORTRAN. The machines we were chatting about the other day were based in the 1960s and 70s. Anyway, good to hear its still being used – it was very effective
      1. fortran compilers for PCs were (and still are) widely available!

        Chris

  21. Could this be a reference to ‘do si do’ which is a call in a square dance ?
  22. Didn’t get to this until lunch, but looks like I had a similar experience to most – DODO was the last in, and I got COLUMBARD from the wordplay and IRISH STEW from the definition. SHAKER went in courtesy of Aaron Copland’s variations on “Simple Gifts” – a rare moment of culture for me.

    FORTRAN has undergone recent (in computer timeframe) ANSI revisions, and is still the language of choice for a lot of large-scale number crunching applications. I wrote some code about two weeks ago to calculate densities of vibrational levels.

  23. I’ve been gone for a week on the US Maine coast with no access to a computer. So I returned to this last night, and thought I had forgotten how to do these cryptics. Ouch, about an hour, ending with SUBLIME. I found the NW corner most difficult. The DODO, though, went right in when I was faced with ?O?O, from ‘do’=’party’=’dance’. My COD to SHAKER, but I’d believe the religion could be far more obscure in the UK than here. And it eluded me for the longest time. Hope to round back into form tomorrow. Regards.
    1. Same here – we were in Rhinebeck for the week sans internet and I had a rude awakening back in the City this morning with this one. You had good timing being in Maine, although it wasn’t nearly as hot in your and our neck of Dutchess County as it was just South of us.

      1. Thanks Olivia, but it was plenty hot enough in Maine for me. Today’s Dutchess Co. temp.’s in the 80’s seem positively cool. Best regards.
  24. Bit too hard overall, with few accessible anagrams to help the struggler along.

    I hate the use of BLIMP in 10 Across. Not only is he not a real Colonel, he’s only an example of a Colonel surely?

    1. Colonel Blimp was originally a newspaper cartoon character whose name made it into the language to describe a certain type of military officer, reactionary and with a closed mind. It’s perfectly valid to use his name for that reason alone, but in any case fictional characters and references to them appear in Times crosswords almost daily.

      On your second point using ‘colonel’ to clue ‘Blimp’ is fine but the reverse might raise some eyebrows.

      Edited at 2012-07-09 10:49 pm (UTC)

  25. 9:45 for me.

    Actually that’s a guess. I’d forgotten that you really need to open a new window for each puzzle solved with the Times Crossword Club’s ****-awful software, and made the mistake of using the one I’d just used to solve the T2 quickie. I’d started my stopwatch at the same time as I clicked on Play, so when I’d waited a good five seconds after clicking on Submit and realised that things were looking bad, I was able to stop my stopwatch at 9:51. Eventually I received some crummy error response, and had to input my solution again, eventually clocking in at 12:58. Grrr!

    Hadn’t heard of COLOMBARD, but was fairly confident of it from the wordplay. No objection whatsover to DODO, even though it cost me some time at the end.

    Edited at 2012-07-09 10:59 pm (UTC)

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