Times 25312 Bowling for Coalmine

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

42 minutes, eight or nine of which were on 25 ac at the end. I found the bottom easier than the top, where I gave myself problems in the NE by chucking in ‘fall’ at 9ac and being unable until the initial checker fell to see past ‘harmonica’ at 5dn. A typical, but not unenjoyable, Monday offering, with a fair few entered from literals and checkers, and anagrams aplenty.    

Across

1 S[CH]OONER – I’d sooner get an accessible one at 1 across than a stinker. 
5 BEHAVE – BE+H[ancock}+AVE; not ‘hi’ this time.
8 IRRATIONAL – RATION in rail*.
9 SINK – two definitions, one rather more metaphorical than the other. 
10 THE NETHERLANDS – for those of you who didn’t bother with the wordplay, it’s THE ETHER (‘supposed broadcastng medium once’) around N (describing = drawing a circle round = surrounding) + LANDS (lights as variant of alights).
11 ENTHRAL – N[ew] + halter*. 
13 PITAPAT – not well camouflaged but not well known either so may hold up some. 
15 ST[R]INGY; not really a triple definition because the first three words all make up a single definition.  
18 PAT[I]ENT
21 ACHILLES TENDON – ‘fibrous chord’, the enumeration and the checking letters will suffice for most but for the record it’s ACHES around ILL then TEND ON. Mmmm, moving quickly on.
22 omitted – if baffled, try using your leetle grey ones.
23 RAWALPINDI – RAW+ALP+INDI[e]; the inverted commas and capital letters will put off solvers like me for a while, but the gnarled and grizzled veterans will write the answer straight in. 
24 omitted – probably not a genuine candidate for omission but I couldn’t resist the chance to say ‘I’m afraid you’re on your own here’. 
25 WELSHMAN – Die = Dai, Dai bach, No Good Boyo, geddit? My nemesis – and I sing with the buggers every Tuesday! 

Down

1 SKITTLE – S[ecuring]+KIT+let*; my second last in – I was trying to find something meaning ‘[that’s] let out’. Nice clue.
2 HAR[VEST]ER
3 OUT+WEAR – when they play at home, Sunderland want their match against Newcastle to be called the Wear-Tyne derby, but rhythm as much as tradition will foil their attempts, I fear.   
4 EPOCHAL – O+chapel*.
5 BALALAIKA – A+LAB[our] reversed + LAIK (sounds like ‘like’) + A. 
6 HOSANNA – HOS[t]+ANNA; the host refers to the consecrated bread (or bread substitute) at Communion.
7 VANESSA – VAN’S+SA around E; apostrophes were long since banished from crosswordland answer-wise. 
12 ANGULARLY – AN+GUL[A+R(iver)]LY; nifty use of parentheses, what?
14 PSEUDONYM – dumpynose*
16 TEA-LEAF – [originally a non-deliberate omission] Cockney rhyming slang for thief; pretty ordinary clue, me old china.
17 omitted – if you get panicky, just take a deep breath.
18 PASSAGE – double definition; is ‘literary’ necessary. Is the setter referring to its literal meaning of ‘relating to the letters of the alphabet’, which by extension might mean just ‘written’? The second definition, from dressage, refers to a horse pretending to dance and is pronounced appropriately enough in an affected Frenchified manner. 
19 THES[P]IS
20 TENSION – Tennyson with NY struck out and I (electric current) added.   

45 comments on “Times 25312 Bowling for Coalmine”

  1. 37 minutes with the 1ac, 1dn, 10ac and 2dn in the NW quarter holding out to the very end. An enjoyable start to the week.

    Edited at 2012-11-05 02:14 am (UTC)

  2. My problems were all in the SE, especially the THESPIS / RAWALPINDI crossers. Not helped along by assuming 25ac was the FERRYMAN.

    And to note: the spam filter seems to be working. Just saw the new “Read one suspicious comment”; which I did and deleted it.

  3. 21:23, the first one I’ve completed online for days, which is to say the first one I’ve completed for days, since my printer has been rejected by my new computer and the new printer hasn’t arrived yet. I’m suffering real withdrawal pains, and today’s fix was a true relief. But I didn’t take the time I normally do to look at the puzzle post hoc to see what I hadn’t understood, so I’m all the more grateful for today’s blog. Had a bad feeling about 23ac until I got enough checkers in.ENTHRAL was surprisingly hard for me, even though I knew it was an anagram. COD (and DOH!) to 25ac.
    1. As I was writing the blog, I thought the British English spelling of ‘enthral’ might cause a delay or two stateside on the basis that it must be easier to learn something (eg cricket) than to relearn something.
      1. Actually, it hadn’t occurred to me that that was UK spelling. Ditto with ‘appal/appall’? ‘traveler/traveller’, etc., where I’m not sure what my spelling is, and whether it’s consonant with my countrymen’s. And I can’t think of anything harder to learn than cricket, although motivation may play a part there.
        1. I actually meant to write unlearn, not that it affects your point. Not dissimilarly, I have to remind myself that the ‘rule’ for traveller etc. is the ‘opposite’ of the ‘rule’ for enthral, fulfil, etc. And…I grew up saying ‘skedule’, it being years before I learnt that ‘shedule’ was the approved British pronunciation. Yesterday, Skyping with my daughter in England, there she was talking about ‘skedules’.
          1. My daughter says “skedule”, but pronounces her maths books “SHOWfield and Simms”. I would say “Skofield”, largely perhaps because of the presence of Philip Schofield on the telly when I was a kid. So this American/English thing seems to have become rather confused, and I was curious to know how the teachers pronounce it. “S and S”, apparently.
  4. 12 minutes… Slow start but brisk finish with most down answers going in on a first reading. Last in was welshman
  5. Just did my monthly accounts and found the club have taken my annual subscription on 20th October 2012 for the period 19th Jun 2013 – 18th Jun 2014. Who the hell do they think they are? Anyone else have this sort of premature payment problem?
    1. Yes, that happens to me every year, certainly for the past two or three, maybe more. The reason given is that this ensures “uninterrupted access to the club”. It certainly seems a bit strange but having satisfied myself that I’m paying only once a year and each year in the same month it doesn’t bother me unduly. I’m not sure where one stands if one wants to cancel and get one’s money back but since I have no intention of doing so the matter doesn’t arise.

      For those interested in Friday’s LESSON/SEASON controversy, there is a correction in today’s newspaper stating that the answer was SEASON.

      1. Your situation would be fine. Except they also took my $$ in mid June this year, when it was due!
        1. I just checked and found I had the same dual payment problem in 2010 which they said was due to the migration from the old Club site to the new one and they had taken payments under both. I had to ring up and get them to cancel and refund one of them. I wonder if your dual payment is for the same reason. If I were you I’d check to make sure you didn’t pay them twice in 2011!

          Edited at 2012-11-05 08:59 am (UTC)

  6. 21 minutes or so, with Dai turning up late in the day after running through the alphabet twice. THESPIS was THEPSIS for a while, a Greek I assumed I’d never heard of, until the penny dropped.
  7. Having fallen at the last hurdle (25 ac)I just cannot BELIEVE that I didn’t get ‘WELSHMAN’ – It’s just so obvious when you see the answer! DAIabolical!!
  8. 21 minutes, liked Dai. Not sure about “that’s” in 1 down. What’s it doing? Is it “that has (on the end of it)”? Okkard if so. I find 10 a touch wearisome but fair enough. A literary extract is more a passage than a mere extract is I’d say, ulaca, though there’s scarcely a great deal in it. Do people really say Showfield for Schofield? What’s the world coming to?
        1. Thinking about it this sk/sh confusion is just a consequence of my wife being Canadian. In a similar vein my kids will occasionally talk about Silly Puddy or cows’ utters.
          1. I remember driving to Vancouver from Berkeley as a young man, and thinking, as I got near enough to listen to Canadian radio stations, how totally similar the accent was to mine; until the news reporter said something about something being on shedule.

            Edited at 2012-11-06 02:39 am (UTC)

            1. So the word “schedule” came up before the word “about”, eh?
              My wife says skedule, but then so do most English people in my experience. Shedule may be on the way out.
  9. 38.42 today so about average overall for me. I expected to struggle but in fact it was a steady if slow solve throughout. LOI was 10a which was via the checkers only. Thanks for excellent blog which explained it as well as a few others I was unsure of. As has been noted already I was puzzled by ‘that ‘s ” in 1d though answer was obvious and had no idea about 16a other than the answer fitted the grid and Darjeeling. Did you mean to miss it out, ulaca? Or is it just me missing it?

    Edited at 2012-11-05 11:48 am (UTC)

    1. I think you mean 16d grestyman and I took it to be rhyming slang for thief. 18 minutes for me with a groan for the Welshman.

  10. 13:15 .. All went in fairly swiftly apart from that pesky Welshman.

    I may have been living in north America too long – I started typing ENTHRAL at 11a then deleted it, confused about the spelling. I’m not even sure what the ‘correct’ spelling here in Canada is. We have an older Canadian dictionary on the shelf which gives ‘enthral’, but online sources seem to indicate ‘enthrall’ now. Any Canucks want to shed light?

  11. A sluggish 20:27 but a noisy git on the phone didn’t help my concentration.

    I’m glad to see I wasn’t alone in putting in an initial wrong answer for 9 but whereas Ulaca plumped for FALL I was tempted by the no less likely DIVE.

    LOI was 10 which I couldn’t see for yonks.

  12. Yes I did and of course I can see it now, self misdirection again not seeing Londoner as Cockney. Thanks for explaining.
  13. 25a is actually a terrible homophone. Nobody here in Wales pronounces it that way. It’s what we call Diana not David. We say something like “daaaee”, usually followed by “bach”. Nevertheless I got the answer straight away but then got held up for ages by the NW corner because I didn’t see 1a first time round and I overlooked the other meaning of “pin” in 1d. But a satisfyingly enjoyable 41 minutes. Ann
    1. Far be it from me to claim a higher authority than someone who actually lives there… no, actually nonsense that’s exactly what I’m doing. Watch this first ever episode of Ivor the Engine, and you’ll distinctly hear Jones the Steam greeting Dai Station by name. See if you can seriously distinguish it from “die”. Even if you can, it doesn’t matter too much: the Ivor series was one of the finest ever made. Enjoy.
      1. I completely agree re the sheer wonderfulness of “Ivor the Engine”. The only explanation I can think of is regional variation. Maybe in Merioneth and Llantisilly they say it like that. But not here in Swansea.
  14. Where’s John of Lancashire these days? I miss his witty comments, though the rest of you more than make up for them.
  15. About 40 minutes, held up in the NW by the SKITTLE, the country, and the spelling of ENTHRAL. I guessed at the WELSHMAN from the checking letters, without really knowing why. I note that the spell-check function my computer or LiveJournal is displeased with ENTHRAL. Regards to all.
    1. It’s the one on your computer. Mine marks ENTHRAL correct and ENTHRALL wrong. Went to Eton, you know.
  16. 7:17 for me, held up for a short while by rashly bunging in DIVE at 9ac, and then for a much longer time (one or two minutes) by WELSHMAN. A nice start to the week though.

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