Times 25,325 Argot In ‘Ammersmith

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

I’m returning the compliment to Tim today, paying him back for standing in for me.

There’s a lot of slang in this puzzle and some parochial London references but I suspect the real unknown will be 25D which is a West Country term not in everyday use

Across
1 CAPE,TOWN – C(A-PET)OWN; COWN from clown (boorish type) losing L=left;
5 BARNES – B-ARNE’S; B=British; there is a bridge across the Thames at Barnes to the west of London that is well known for absolutely nothing;
10 CHINAWARE – CH-IN-AWARE; check=CH (chess notation); Chelsea no doubt;
11 OSTIA – OS-(AIT reversed); OS=Out Sized; AIT=island (Chiswick of course); “to the west”=reversal indicator;
12 CAMP – CAM-P; we leave the Thames to visit Cambridge;
13 ENDOSCOPE – END(O)S-COPE; doctor’s means of looking where the sun doesn’t shine;
15 LOTUS-EATER – LOT-(austere)*; jobsworths;
17 FAIR – FAIR(y);
19 MORE – two references 1=Dickens Oliver Twist 2=Thomas More the martyr;
20 STERILISED – (by idle sister)*; the endoscopes probably;
22 EXPOUNDED – EX-POUNDED; by Miss Whiplash?;
24 WARD – WAR-D; children in care are often wards of court;
26 ISSEI – ISS(u)E-I; first generation Japanese immigrants to OZ and US – Yoko Ono Lennon for example;
27 TANGERINE – TANG-ER(IN)E; a song from The Fleet’s In recorded by the Dorsey band;
28 GASPER – GAS-PER(son); more commonly used on Barnes Bridge as a slang term for a ciggy;
29 CRASSEST – CR(ASS)EST;
 
Down
1 COCK – COCK(neys); slang on Barnes Bridge for a china (my old cock sparrow in full);
2 PHILANTHROPISTS – (nhs hospital trip)*; givers from Getty to Gates;
3 TRAPPIST – TRAP-PI-ST; mouth=TRAP on Barnes Bridge; holy=PI; saint=ST; order of silent monks;
4 WEAVE – WEAVE(r); today’s Waggle-dagger;
6 AROUSE – A-RO(w)-USE;
7 NATIONAL,SERVICE – cryptic definition; NS was compulsory military service post-war for boys – ended in 1950s; St Paul’s Cathedral in London of course is sometimes used to hold church services that have a national interest (Charles and Di wedding for example);
8 SLAVE,TRADE – (dealer’s VAT)*;
9 HEADWEAR or HEADGEAR – HEAD-WEAR/GEAR; principal=HEAD; duds=more slang, this time for clothes; GEAR is the “correct” answer but both will do; I doubt many headmasters wear mortarboards today;
14 SLUMBERING – S(LUMBER)ING; confess=SING on George Washington Bridge this time;
16 ANTIDOTE – (date on it)*;
18 FLAWLESS – F-LAWLESS; Bonnie Parker;
21 FUTILE – F(UT)ILE; note = UT (more usually doh);
23 DINAR – DIN-A-R(acket);
25 LEAT – L(unch)-EAT; a LEAT is a water course (particularly on Dartmoor) that brings water to a mill wheel – well it makes a change from the Thames;

42 comments on “Times 25,325 Argot In ‘Ammersmith”

  1. You seem to have picked up all the Boat Race references, Jim, without actually mentioning it. It’s probably Barnes Bridge’s only claim to fame!
    1. And 9dn is almost definitely HEADGEAR although as I have posted elsewhere HEADWEAR ought to be an acceptable alternative. The W word is not in any of the usual sources but can be found at dictionary.com.

      Edited at 2012-11-20 08:59 am (UTC)

      1. Very strange. I’ve written HEADGEAR in the grid when solving but HEADWEAR in the blog. I think both will do but agree that GEAR is most likely to appear as the answer tomorrow
      2. Headwear and headgear are both in ODO with almost identical definitions. Both acceptable, I’d say.

        Edited at 2012-11-20 09:05 am (UTC)

        1. Yes, I now find it’s also in the Oxford Dictionary of English I keep downstairs for reference during Countdown and in SOED.
  3. 20a. Think you’ll find it’s sterilised, i not a.
    I apologise if this has already been pointed out but I can’t see any comments for some reason.
  4. 80 minutes again, calling wrong when I tossed the coin and plumping for ‘headgear’ rather than HEADWEAR. [on edit: or did I? It fits just as well, and those who did this online confirm that HEADGEAR is the ‘correct’ answer.] Quite a bit for which I’m indebted to our own cheeky chappie, including – besides the duds – the UT and the chess notation. Would you Adam and Eve it, I even managed to miss the clown?

    Barnes Bridge – immortalised by the boat race, along with Hammersmith Bridge and Chiswick Eyot.

    Edited at 2012-11-20 09:05 am (UTC)

  5. I never felt stuck on this one so I was surprised that it took me 53 minutes to complete, with some problems resolving ISSEI (met before but forgotten) and coming up with BARNES. Not sure I have ever met LEAT before despite spending time in my youth on holiday around Dartmoor.

    I’m not convinced the clue to TRAPPIST works although the answer was obvious at a glance and “attic” is only an example of where lumber might be stored, it’s not part of its definition.

  6. 15 minutes steady solve.
    HEADGEAR without a second thought, especially with the slangy indicator. Is it marked wrong? HEADWEAR isn’t even in my edition of Chambers, though I concede it’s in the online OED.
    ISSEI is one of those words that sticks from Mephisto, and I suspect has no other current use than to fill in the gaps in the crossword entries. LEAT from similar provenance, but the cryptic is generous. By the by, Jim. we used to spell it Dartmoor. Has that changed? Otherwise, thanks for another fine themed blog.
    Hesitated over BARNES as a British composer, even though (or because) British composers are almost always Arne. LOTUS EATER last in, as I got stuck on “set” for group and wondered where to put the ie form “that’s”
  7. A couple of personal connections in today’s. Recently had an endoscopic ultrasound (not pleasant). The (slightly controversial) HEADGEAR is well known to me because that’s what M$-Word’s spell-checker turns up as its only alternative to “Heidegger”. 6dn reminds me of the occasion when arriving, jet-lagged, at a residential college at U. of Calgary, I asked the rather nubile young desk clerk to arouse me at 7:30 for my 9:00 presentation. (Slightly redolent of yesterday … 10ac … I might have had a rouser in my trouser). No such luck.

    Most problems with not knowing BARNES Bridge or OSTIA and assuming 6dn (AROUSE!) meant including (stopping) the W{omen}.

    And for anyone who ever had to do NATIONAL SERVICE, this is highly recommended.

  8. 18m, but with HEADWEAR. It works but “gear” for “duds” is definitely better than “wear”.
    Generally a little bit of a musty feel to this, what with the literary references and obscurities. In the case of “ut” and LEAT the clue is helpful, but OSTIA is a double whammy and ISSEI is the kind of word that merits clearer wordplay than this IMO. As it happens I knew the necessary words but still.
    Is the clue for 3dn trying to say that you need to remove the mouth (“trap”) from TRAPPIST to get “holy saint”? “Sealed off” seems a bit of a stretch for a removal indicator.
    I wondered about “boorish type” for “clown”, but I see it is in the fourth definition in Chambers, which is rather in keeping with the rest of the puzzle.
  9. Very grateful that this was the puzzle I traded (cheers, Jim) as I found myself working through nearly the whole puzzle without any problems, until I was left with I_S_I and _E_T and not a clue.

    For the latter, I toyed unconvincingly with WEST, MEAT, NEAT and NEST (thinking in passing that LEAT would fit the wordplay best, if only it was a word). For the former, I was left utterly adrift. It turns out that for some reason I know NISEI, which is a generation removed, but have never knowingly come across ISSEI.

    Ah well, we live and learn.

    1. Exactly the same experience, then found LEAT from all words fitting _e_t, but crosswordsolver dot org didn’t know issei and nor did I so DNF.
      Otherwise, a fun puzzle but probably difficult for those not familiar with London bridges or cockney.
      It’s got to be HEADGEAR methinks, because DUDS and GEAR are both slang words for clothes and WEAR is not.
  10. Don’t like the “by” in this clue as it’s not part of the anagrind: wouldn’t “Like theatre equipment idle sister wrecked” have been better ?

    Jim, near the Cam

    1. I read this as a reverse anagram, where you have to scramble the answer to get the indication in the clue. So by writing “idle sister” you are scrambling (or wrecking) STERILISED.
  11. Barnes Bridge is no where near the East End and they certainly don’t speak like cockneys.
    1. Ah! A touch of reality. They don’t talk like crossword world cockney’s in most of the East End anymore!
  12. Didn’t post a ranking time today since I Googled ISSEI, not really believing it would be right. I’m therefore very sympathetic to keriothe’s view that this one merited clearer wordplay! Around 15 minnutes, anyway.

    I deduced LEAT (rightly or wrongly) from Longleat, which had been in my mind recently.

    And I’m fully signed-up to the -GEAR camp. It’s hard to imagine ‘wear’ being interchangeable with ‘duds’ anywhere but in a dictionary.

    1. But on the other hand I find it hard to imagine headgear when thinking of mortar boards as the clue invites us to do. Headwear seems so much more appropriate.

      I thought the wordplay at 26 was perfectly clear as that was how I got to the answer eventually. My problem was simply not recognising the answer as a word once I had worked it out.

      Edited at 2012-11-20 02:14 pm (UTC)

  13. DNF today with Futile, Issei (unknown) and Gasper missing in the SW corner. Thought the Gasper and Ward clues were particularly good. I was in the Headwear not Headgear camp.

    Learnt a couple of things today: the meanings of “ut” and “duds” – thanks Jim.

  14. 18:13 relying on wordplay to get Ostia, Issei and leat. I was expecting at least one of them to be wrong. I wonder what yesterday’s late lurker who complained about the inclusion of words not in common usage will make of that little trio.
  15. 8:43, ending with GASPER (28ac).  Unknowns: BARNES Bridge (5ac), duds meaning GEAR (9dn HEADGEAR).  LEAT (25dn) has probably sunk in from crosswords, and ISSEI (26ac) was familiar from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.

    Keriothe: I am indeed getting some sleep, thanks, though I didn’t do myself any favours by going to bed at 3 this morning after a college philosophy dinner.  (In for a penny…?)

    1. Glad to hear it.
      One might argue that late nights don’t make much difference, what with not sleeping anyway. In my experience booze is the fatal flaw in this logic.
  16. Enjoyable puzzle. Like (almost) everyone else I’d never knowingly encountered LEAT before, but cryptically it appeared to be the only possible answer, so I cheated by looking it up in a dictionary to check that the word existed. I went for HEADGEAR as GEAR seemed closer as a slangy synonym for “duds” than WEAR, but under competition conditions, both would in fairness have to be accepted, I would have thought. Does the setter agree? It would be interesting to know. Didn’t know that UT was an alternative for “do/h” in the musical sense. Thanks for enlightening me, Jimbo.
  17. 23 minutes. Unfamiliar with ut as note though just about clicked Issei. COD Trappist now I see the wordcraft. All in all a neat little number.
  18. Not much trouble until the end, where I was confronted by ?E?T at 25d. The wordplay said the answer was LEAT, which was a complete unknown, so I looked it up. There it was, what we would probably call a millrace. So I either got through in about 15 minutes, or I give myself a DNF. Either way is OK with me. ISSEI was somewhere in the back of my mind, BARNES from wordplay only, and my choice was HEADGEAR. Regards.
  19. DNF – several left blank today but shouldn’t 13AC read WITH Oxygen rather than ‘without’? Or am I missing something that as a relative newbie is quite easy to do?
    1. Think without as in outside as in “hark, someone lurks without”. It’s not everyone’s favourite device but you’ll encounter it often enough.
      1. Thanks for the parsing Penfold and Anon. I’m sure I will still struggle to get my head around it though!
  20. 23 minutes and it seems like I’m echoing the masses… Barnes and leat from wordplay alone and went for headgear – here headgear usually refers to dental work or braces
  22. There is an amusing children’s poem by Charles Caustey called ‘Quack!’ Said the Billy Goat which refers to a leat so I imagine that most Infant teachers will have come across it.
  24. I was feeling desperately tired after a busy day and got off to a horribly slow start (including a good half-minute’s brainstorm trying to fit BUDA PEST into 1ac!!!), but I eventually got going and finished in a reasonable 7:50. Should have been significantly faster though, as this was right up my street.

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