Times 25278: Swallows and Amazons

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 24:46

Would have been quicker if not for the two fours at 13ac and 25ac — especially the former where MANE looked to be on the cards for a while. The key for many solvers will, I suspect, be 14dn which gives a lot of help with an otherwise difficult corner.

Across
 1 AFFAIR. A (alpha); F,F (females); AIR (give public expression to).
 5 EIGH(TEE)N. TEE (support) bracketed by an anagram of ‘Hinge’. Surface reference to George Logan and Patrick Fyffe, female impersonators; and potential alpha females.
 9 ANDROMACHE. AND; MA inside an anagram of ‘chore’. Hector’s wife. Also the name of an Amazon who fought Heracles. Alpha female again?
10 Omitted. The answer’s in that general direction.
11 H(I,B)ERNIA. In this case, the hernia is assumed to be to the stomach (corporation), though it could be to any organ.
12 N(A,D)INE. NINE is our cardinal (number). Not one for those who like any old boys’/girls’ names as answers; but easily solvable.
13 HARE. Homophone for ‘hair’ (shock). The form is said animal’s lair. Spent, as noted, far too long trying to justify MANE.
15 ASSASSIN. AS (when); SAS (elite troops); SIN (stray from path). The ‘mark’ is the assassin’s target. One of those defs.
18 CAST,RATI{on}.
19 C,ALL. C (about) — as in ‘it’s your call’ (decision).
21 BODEGA. Reverse of AGED, OB (alumnus). ‘Concern [business] for alcohol’ is the def. Cropped up only just the other day. A grocery store; or a wine shop. Always brings to mind the line from Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes. (Love that early key change from Eb to E … and all the bass bits.)
23 NERVE G,AS. ‘Bottle’: slang for mettle, grit, guts, nerve.
25 AIDE. Move the A from ‘idea’ (thought) to first position: ‘thought to have A first’.
26 OPALESCENT. ALE,SC inside OPEN,T. ‘Shot’ as in shot through with several colours.
27 LEFT BANK.
28 TO(WAR)D. TOD is our legendary fox. Toward: (‘once’=archaic), “going on; in progress: Is something new toward?”. Mac Oxford.
Down
 2 FUNGI. F1 containing an anagram of ‘gun’; a biological kingdom.
 3 AGREEMENT. Triple def. BETROTHAL was an early temptation.
 4 RE(MIN)D.
 5 EXCLAMATION MARK. Anagram: a romantic meal, inc X; K{issing}. Def=‘this!’.
 6 GREENE,ST. Talking of whom and 28ac, the Wik tells us this:
Graham Greene thought Potter was suffering some sort of emotional disturbance when the tale [of Mr Tod] was composed, but Potter denied the allegation and observed only that she was suffering the after-effects of the ’flu. She deprecated Greene’s ‘Freudian school of criticism’.
Potter 1, Greene 0.
 7 T,READ.
On edit: could equally (nay, better) be: T, RE (on), AD (notice). Thanks to joekobi.
 8 ESSENTIAL. Anagram: sees,latin. Two indicators, one for each element: ‘new’ and ‘translation’.
14 AN(ATOM)ISE. Anise is our plant.
16 SACRED COW. Two defs, one using ‘lower’=COW.
17 S(AR)AT,OG,A. SAT including RA (reversed); OG (own goal); A.
20 Omitted. Chap from Mesopotamia is desperate. (So am I!)
22 EJECT. Reverse JE (in Calais, I); ECT.
24 ABNER. Hidden reversed. Saul’s cousin.

40 comments on “Times 25278: Swallows and Amazons”

  1. Another weird and unsatisfying puzzle for me with much the same time-frame for solving as yesterday. Could it be the same setter? Too depressed to catalogue my areas of ignorance
    1. Thank you jackkt. I was looking for words to describe this, but can’t improve on “weird and unsatisfying”.

      Derek

  2. What a difference a day makes! I thought this was a cracker, well worth each of the 89 minutes it took me.

    HIBERNIA, ASSASSIN, CASTRATI, our old friend BODEGA and ANATOMISE (where I was obsessed with ‘NE’ for ‘source of nuclear energy’) were all excellent, but my COD goes to SARATOGA for the clear wordplay which enables solvers like me who are unfamiliar with the battle to get it nonetheless. The ‘blunder in field’ for own goal is top notch.

    I wasn’t sure Mr ‘Tod’ was entirely fair, but the book is by Beatrix Potter and it celebrates its 100th birthday this year, so no probelm there. Just my ignorance. I managed to invent authors called ‘Grosse’ and ‘Gauche’ at 6dn before the penny finally dropped.

    Thanks to McT for helping with the only clue I couldn’t fully parse (‘form’ = lair at 13), after I had worked out that ‘shot’ must have to do with variety of colours.

    1. I don’t think it’s just BP in question here. And neither did BP herself:

      “Tod” is surely a very common name for a fox? It is probably Saxon, it was the word in ordinary use in Scotland a few years ago, probably is still amongst the country people. In the same way “brock” or “gray” is the country name for a badger. I should call them “brocks” – both names are used in Westmoreland. “Brockholes”, “Graythwaite” are examples of place names; also Broxbourne and Brockhampton […] “Hey quoth the Tod/its a braw bright night!/The wind’s in the west/and the moon shines bright” — Mean to say you never heard that?

      Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Mr._Tod

      Edited at 2012-09-26 04:21 am (UTC)

      1. And there was I, schooled just a stone’s throw from Broxbourne, thinking it translated as “Chavs’ Stream”.
      2. Indeed. Collins has “a Scot or northern English dialect word for fox. Etymology C12 of unknown origin”.
  3. 41 min 39 secs with two wrong.

    Copeta for bodega and Nadina for Nadine.

    Being picky, is the “of” in the opalescent clue justified? Is opalescent “shot of” or just “shot”? Also I’m not very familiar with sc. Can it stand for “that is”? The list of abbreviations I have just found defines it as “one may know” or “to wit”.

    On a more general point, do definitions like “Mark my target” have a common descriptor in crossword parlance? First person narrative, or something like that?

    1. = silicet, that is to say.

      Not sure what the “mark my target” types of def should be called. But there’s another one of them at 18ac: “high scores for them”. “Elaborated pronominals” might work as a descriptor since it’s essentially the pronoun that’s the def.

      Edited at 2012-09-26 08:49 am (UTC)

    2. If you take ‘of’ to mean ‘made up of’ it’s fine. The added element of misdirection leading us to think the literal might be ‘shot of’ adds to the clue, I think.
  4. I can’t see much wrong with this. In sharp contrast to yesterday this is difficult by being devious with clever wordplays without any obscurity. TOD is standard fare for fox and has been for years!

    A very satisfying 25 minutes that required close application. The clue to SARATOGA is very good although I solved it from definition – surely one of the best known British defeats in all of history?

  5. Perhaps 7 parses as T/RE/AD. 27 minutes here; had to check Saratoga not seeing the own goal. I liked this! (5 dn.) and some of the surfaces. 20 weak. CoD 18.
    1. Good call. I’d assumed “notice” = READ (verb). Like yours better though and will alter. Thanks.
  6. OF equals FROM I think. Used well, as here, it can go towards smoothing clues or rendering definitions less easy to spot.

    Speaking of which, I was led up a very long garden path by the HARE, among other satisfying and clever definitions. 5 ac I thought particularly brilliant, but there were many nice things here as posters have already opined.

    Not convinced that bizarre, unsupported remarks above should relate to this neat effort, but each to his own.

    2. Anonymous. Sorry you found my remarks bizarre. No offence was intended to the setter. I was simply seeking to improve my understanding and the responses have been helpful. Thanks.

      Edited at 2012-09-26 11:24 am (UTC)

  7. Spent too long on this and didn’t finish. Convinced myself that 6 down was STERNEST and took ages trying to justify the definition of OPALESCENT.

    I believe that the last of the CASTRATI was Alessandro Moreschi, whose recordings, though enjoyed by many, give me an experience akin to trying to solve this puzzle.

  8. 44 minutes. Total contrast to yesterday for me. This was very hard, but the difficulty is all in clever wordplay and well-disguised definitions. There are some unfamiliar words, but all very fairly signalled by the rest of the clue. I didn’t know “tod”, or for instance, or the battle of SARATOGA, but it didn’t matter. A very enjoyable challenge.
      1. Oh dear, so I’d just forgotten it! I try to remember new words when they come up in the daily puzzle but in the Mephisto there are just too many.
  10. I thought that was excellent, particularly 26ac. That was equal COD with 5d. Solving time spread over morning cuppa and breakfast so not accurate.
  11. Very challenging, but, I think, entirely fair puzzle. Some hyper-ingenious wordplay: EIGHTEEN, ASSASSIN, CASTRATI, BODEGA and, yes, OPALASCENT all brilliant. The last went in without any understanding of how “shot” could mean “opalescent”, so thanks to Mctext for the explanation. All the dictionaries give one of the meanings of “shot” as an adjective as “woven with different colours” when applied to cloth, textiles etc (as in”shot silk”). Game, set and match to setter. No problem with “tod” but I’d never heard of “form” in the sense used at 13 ac. However, “shock”=”hair” is by now an old chestnut and the reference to “commentators” plainly indicated a homophone, leaving little doubt that HARE had to be the answer. I did think that “Hectored wife” was slightly absurd as the def for ANDROMACHE, but all’s fair in love and cryptics, I guess.
  12. I’m with Ulaca, Jimbo, Keriothe and others in finding this far, far superior to yesterday’s puzzle. Still very hard but for all the right reasons this time.

    Took 34:30 to solve. I put a big star next to 5a, an absolute corker of a clue.

    Cap doffed to the setter.

  13. In response to AV, fair enough.

    I probably didn’t expect to see such remarks after having solved a puzzle that seems to have gone down rather well in the end, but I probably jumped at you when I should have remained in my box. Yesterday’s puzzle, which I too found enormously tough, may have paved the way for what was said early on.

    I’m Chris Gregory by the way, and I’ll get round to providing myself with an ID here in due course. Many thanks for the wisdom as we moved through the thread, and here’s to you all.

    Chris G.

  14. I didn’t like opalescent for the worst reason….I didn’t get it. I am struggling with “free” equating to “open”. It should work, but I cant think of a sentence where eirther word would work easily. Help.
    1. They’re not perfect synonyms (not many of those around) but I thought of Popper’s ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’; there’s also the ‘free market’, which is akin, at any rate, to the open market. Both words share the sense of ‘unrestricted’.
  15. 36:28 .. blimey, Charlie, they’re not getting any easier, are they?

    All been said. I’ll just add another endorsement to the absurdly clever EIGHTEEN.

  16. About 35 minutes, and I didn’t know the tod, the form=lair, Hector’s wife or the shot=opalescent, so it took a while to claw through this. No problem with SARATOGA, as you might expect. I like the 5A definition, and the cryptic is clear, but until opening the helpful link above, I had no idea who or what Hinge and Bracket were. A very fine clue thus, but more appreciated by the home folks than us foreigners, I believe. I also thought the surface for LEFT BANK very good, although perhaps too easy a clue. Regards.
  17. Another DNF I couldn’t get into NW corner at all but finished the rest in 35 minutes! But this I thought was all very clever and having seen the excellent blog and comments i now understand my failings. So thanks for that and hat well off to setter.
  18. There’s a clear difference between something like this, clever within its cryptic framework, and yesterday’s which just seemed to be a tough slog. This wasn’t easy either, but it was like mining for gems – tough work rewarded.
  19. I found this very difficult. “Division in corporation” was brilliant, so was “concern for alcohol”, but I thought “blunder in field” for OG in 17dn was unfair: you would talk of players “in the field” in, say, cricket, but in football you’d say “on the field”. Maybe there’s another field sport where you could score an own goal “in the field”, but I can’t think of one.
    1. Hello there, Neil. I sort of take your point about “blunder in field”, but I certainly wouldn’t call it unfair. Admittedly I came to it as the final element of the clue (having already sussed SARATOGA, AR in SAT, and the final A), so simply had to match it to OG. But I think if I was starting from the other end, I’d have been prepared to consider “field” = “field of play” as a possibility, which could apply to many sports, including soccer. (Couldn’t it? I obviously don’t have your expertise, so I stand to be corrected.)
      1. Hi Tony. I agree “field” = “field of play” is fine – but in football, things happen “on the field” and never “in the field”. But it’s only a small gripe, I enjoyed the puzzle.
  20. Well over an hour, but worth it, although there were a number of clues I didn’t understand until coming here: CASTRATI, say, or OPALESCENT. 12ac, though, combines two of my pet peeves: girls'(boys’) names and ‘cardinal’. But I liked many, too: EIGHTEEN gets my COD, but BODEGA and HIBERNIA were in competition. Coincidentally enough re 18ac, I’d just read a news item from ‘Science’ that Korean researchers have dug up evidence that eunuchs live longer. If that’s a consolation to any. Nice to see a former blogger showing up.
    1. Thanks Jimbo. At the moment I struggle to find time to solve the crossword, let alone comment on it, but I’ll try to pop in a bit more often.
  23. 13:14 for me. Unlike others, I found this much tougher than yesterday’s, but no less enjoyable (despite my continuing tiredness). Lots of brilliant clues here. My compliments to the setter.

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