Times 25238 – What the Dickens?

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Firstly apologies to those who are used to me posting the blog in the early hours but I decided to get a couple of hours kip before the puzzle became available and slept right through so I must have needed it. Unfortunately this change of routine didn’t seem to do my brain much good because I had a real problem getting started and took nearly 10 minutes to write in my first answer! Things improved steadily after that but I still needed most of an hour to complete the grid. For all that, I don’t think it’s a particularly difficult puzzle with only one word completely unknown (at 24ac) and one (to me) very obscure literary reference (at 1dn) but I had already solved the clue from the literal.

* = anagram

Across
1 LOVE ME DO – MED (sea) inside LOVE, 0 (ducks). The Beatles’ first single which rather surprisingly reached only No.17 in 1962 although it was their first No. 1 in the US a couple of years later.
5 HOLMES – Sherlock of course. The whole clue works as a cryptic (& lit or whatever) but one might perhaps also read it as M (foremost of minds) inside HOLES (cracks) with ‘cases’ as the enclosure indicator.
8 CALL TO MIND – CALL (drop in), TOM (cat), IN (home), D (key)
9 TIED – Sounds like “tide”
10 FUNDAMENTALIST – FUN DAME (pleasure-giving lady), NTA (Nat*), LIST (bend)
11 RAIMENT – AIM (train) inside RENT (split)
13 UGANDAN – refUGees, AND (also), frANce
15 THE MANY – TallY (count) with ‘all’ changed to HE MAN (red-blooded male)
18 Deliberately omitted – Hidden
21 PEASANTS REVOLT – PEAS (vegetables), ANTS (insects), REVOLT (are disgusting)
22 PROP – PRO (hooker), P (pressure). Props and hookers are rugby football terms.
23 EAST BERLIN – (lent Serbia)*
24 SHTETL – SH (say nothing), ThEn TeLl. I’ve never heard of this word for a small Jewish town.
25 REHEARSE – EARS (corn) inside HERE*
Down
1 LUCIFER – This is a literary term for Venus when it rises in the morning. It’s also an archaism for a match that I’m familiar with from the WWI song “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag” (while you’ve a lucifer to light your fag). Apparently Dickens refers to “the wife of Lucifer” in “A Tale of Two Cities” but even Brewers doesn’t list this so I don’t know why we should be expected to know it. But maybe there’s something else I’ve missed. On edit: And there was! Thanks to Mike O for pointing out that Dickens can substitute for devil (i.e. Lucifer) as in my blog title which I managed to think up but still missed the point!
2 VALENTINE – LENT (temporarily given) inside VAIN (empty), precedencE
3 METHANE – ME, THANE (of Glamis and Cawdor). Ho ho!
4 DAMPEST – DAM (MAD – seeing red – reversed), PEST (bug)
5 HYDRANGEA – Sounds like “Hyde ranger” (London park keeper)
6 LATVIAN – LA (city that includes Hollywood), TV (set), A inside IN
7 ELECTRA – ELECT (returned to office), RA (Royal Artillery – powerful shooters). In Greek mythology she plotted against her mother and stepfather to avenge the murder of her father, Agamemnon.
12 NONPAREIL – (Iron panel)*. I learnt this many years ago as the title of a rag by Scott Joplin.
14 Deliberately omitted
16 HAPORTH – A, PORT (sailor’s left) inside H, H (hours). Derived from ‘halfpennyworth”. Perhaps best known in “spoil the ship for a haporth of tar”.
17 MEAT-PIE – (time apex)*  I can’t find support for the hyphen in any of the usual sources
18 MUSETTE – SET (became hard) inside MUTE (making no sound). It’s a type of bagpipe.
19 NYERERE – NormallY, ERE (before), RE (ER- monarch – reversed). Former president of Tanzania.
20 DETENTE – ET (being far from home) inside DENTEd

29 comments on “Times 25238 – What the Dickens?”

  1. I believe this clue is a triple.
    “Rising star” Venus
    “once a match” Fag lighter
    (for)
    “Dickens” The devil.

    Mike O
    Skiathos

  2. Found this tough this morning, but managed all bar one in the end.

    Couple of unknowns worked out from cryptic: SHTETL, NYERERE (Jack, you have an extra ‘r’ in the answer). Didn’t get the Dickens ref in 1dn, assumed it just meant that it was a dickensian word for a match.

    The one I got wrong was my LOI, written in with a ?. I put in ‘helmet’, working along the lines of ‘helm’ being foremost, and it ‘encases’. Tenuous. And wrong.

    Many thanks for the blog, Jack, and best wishes for the weekend, everyone!

  3. Pleased to complete this in 20 minutes, both because I thought it was rather chewy, and because the clues were, without exception, very fine. Even the potential unknowns, MUSETTE, SHTETL (what, never seen Fiddler on the Roof?), NYERERE and perhaps ELECTRA as defined were generously helped by the wordplay. Only LUCIFER required otherwise unsupported knowledge, but it’s not too much to expect solvers to know at least one of the three.
    I took HOLMES to be a smooth &lit.
    I wondered if MEAT-PIE, in its quintessential Aussie incarnation, carries the hyphen?
    CoD to either of the long ones, both of which had a proper smile-inducing quality.
    1. Nope, no hyphen here (crossword published in Rupert’s Oz organ a few weeks after its Times’ publication).

      However, in checking that my Australian dictionary matched common usage I discovered the previously unknown, and hyphenated, “meat-pie western,” a cowboy film made in Australia.

      Rob

  4. Rather chewy offering, which took me 98 minutes over several sessions, with HOLMES last in after the two tricky fellows in the SW had fallen…and one wrong (a nincompoopish ‘shteel’ for SHTETL, as I knew the word – or thought I did – from a recent trip to Israel and had only to copy the letters correctly from the clue). The only one I couldn’t parse fully was REHEARSE, which had me pondering some very nasty stuff at Urbandictionary.com after assuming the first four letters were an anagram of ‘here’, so thanks to Jack for that one. With a nod to all the clever stuff, my joint CODS nonetheless go to the nifty geographical pair, UGANDAN and LATVIAN.
  5. Best puzzle for some time with great wordplays, hidden definitions and humour. Do I detect a touch of Anax in the superb 10A and 22A with 5A another great offering? 25 really pleasurable minutes. Thank you setter and well done Jack – your sleep patterns never cease to amaze me.
  6. Minor catastrophe here with what felt like a slow 32 minutes…with two mistakes. Threw in helmet for Holmes and couldn’t think of shtetl though I kind of knew it and misreading wrote shteel. Didn’t even see the hidden Managed though I put it in. Too much Olympics. Strict appears loose for fundamentalist. Otherwise an ingenious and canny puzzle.
  7. 18 minutes for a very nice puzzle. Particularly after watching rather a lot of the recent Tour de France, I only knew MUSETTE as the bag of food and drink which cyclists grab from their support team as they speed past (presumably the derivation comes from the similar shape of the two when they’re slung over the shoulder).
  8. One of the easier recent Friday offerings, I thought, so I must have been on the right wavelength, but most enjoyable, the best clues already cited by Jimbo above. A fastish 30 or so mins for me – albeit that Joekebi rather takes the gloss off that performance by telling us that he regards 32 mins as slow!
    .
    1. Don’t worry, Mike, Tony will be along later to say he completed in about 6 minutes and regards that as slow. Some of us just have to settle for what we can do. If you managed 30-ish today that was about half my solving time so on this occasion I’m way below your league.

      Edited at 2012-08-10 12:16 pm (UTC)

      1. Kind of you to say so, Jack. It is a very rare occurrence that I am, as you so flatteringly put it, “out of your league”. If “completing” the puzzle is defined as not merely entering all the correct solutions but also fully understanding all the wordplay, then my performance today would have been rather more than 30-ish. I certainly would not want to take on the responsibility of your weekly blog, which is always a good read and for which many thanks
  9. A real battle for me which ended in defeat (LOTHIAN, my logic for which I’m not going to dwell on), but still much enjoyed. Heck, it’s not the winning; it’s the taking part.

    HOLMES – one of my favourite clues in a good while.

  10. Feel ‘principles’ should be substituted for ‘pleasure’ in 10 across? Isn’t fundamentalism a rigid adherence to theological doctrines? My admiration goes out to all the sub 30-minute solvers and today’s blogger.

    Enigma

    1. I don’t think so. ‘Pleasure’ is part of the wordplay giving us FUN so has nothing to do with the definition of the answer.

      Thanks for your appreciation of the blog.

  11. 31.04 for me with yet another SHTEEL here though I’d never come across the word. Lots to enjoy and my COD to HOLMES. Thanks for blog especially as I was stumped to explain REHEARSE; a real ‘doh!’ moment. Run through!
  12. Fantastic puzzle. Picked away at it all day and very nearly solved the lot but was beaten by Holmes. That clue was too devious! FOI Meat-Pie then solved more or less clockwise from the SE corner. Not sure I’d have got Raiment from ?????NT without us having train = aim only a couple of days ago.

    COD candidates everywhere. I thought the ET (being far from home) part of Détente was wonderful. Bravo setter and well blogged Jackkt.

  13. A challenging one today, about 35 minutes for me, ending with PROP. My rugby knowledge is rudimentary at best, but after much pondering I thought it was ‘one putting’ = PRO, as in golf, then ‘P’, and hoping there is some rugby equivalence between a PROP and a hooker. Bravo to the setter for giving us both the pleasure-giving lady and the red-blooded male, not to mention the hooker. COD’s to HOLMES and UGANDAN. Regards to all.
  14. I made the mistake of starting this online after stumbling home from a long lunch in the wine country, stared hopelessly at the grid for 6 minutes and logged off, then forgot to note the time I started with pen and paper. It was pleasant to indulge in the luxury of an untimed puzzle (well, the wine helped). LOI HOLMES, I think; I was sure there had to be something involving an M, but couldn’t think of anything but ‘helmet’ for the longest time. Nice to see NYERERE (who was one of the few African leaders to leave office quietly at the end of his term of office, and who translated Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” into Swahili). Good puzzle all around.
  15. That was fun – 15 minutes (made one very sloppy typo on the online version with CLLL TO MIND). Needed the wordplay for HAPORTH and NYERERE, who may have been named specifically for wordplay purposes. Major hat-tip to THE MANY as a terrific clue.
  16. Managed most of this before people coming to lunch disturbed the peace. Dribbled the rest in later so maybe an hour altogether. DNF because SHTETL unknown, not sure a Yiddish word should be allowed but no doubt it’s in Chambers now. Liked 1 ac and Peasants revolt.
  18. Very enjoyable Friday puzzle: quite taxing but fun.

    Took me nearly three-quarters of an hour, mainly because I carelessly wrote COME TO MIND, and also spent too long trying to justify CATALAN for the European.

    Given this setter’s penchant for slightly risqué clues, I’m surprised he didn’t do more with UGANDAN. A topic for discussion?

  19. 11:14 for me. I found this quite tricky in parts, and finished with several clues which I hadn’t fully parsed. I very nearly came to grief by bunging in GRIP at 22ac, but fortunately it didn’t seem quite right, so I worked through the alphabet and found PROP. (Phew!)
  20. A bit more than an hour, one mistake (HYDRANGIA? oh dear) and otherwise a very nice puzzle with some sticky clues. PROP couldn’t be anything but, but I didn’t know the rugby terms (or any rugby terms, for that matter). I rather enjoyed 10 ac and the FUN DAME, LOVE ME DO gotten mainly by the letter count, PEASANTS REVOLT and THE MANY, which is incredible.
  21. Didn’t get round to this yesterday. I found it extremely tough for some reason – 54 minutes. All fair though and highly enjoyable.

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