Times 25350: Plucking game birds

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 20:26

Not quite as easy as Monday’s and not quite as hard (or enjoyable) as yesterday’s. Perhaps a couple of bits of vocab (18ac, 24dn) might be unfamiliar; but the clues pretty much give them away. Would probably have been quicker on a day when I didn’t need to think through parsings during the solve and when I wasn’t anticipating the dentist’s chair immediately post-blog.

This posting is a bit late. LJ has been down since 8:25pm GMT, yesterday. (You can always check here: http://status.livejournal.org/). Only just back up, but still with some formatting strangeness. And the Visual Editor isn’t working properly either.

Across
 1 BOATHOUSE. 0 (zero) in BATH, {River} OUSE. Semi-&lit.
 9 PEASANT. Delete the L{oathsome} from ‘pleasant’. Ref to the Peasants’ Revolt (1381). They wished to complain about the dropping of their wages and their rightful apostrophe.
10 TODDLED. {Sweeney} TODD, LED.
11 GENIE. Sounds like ‘Jeanie’ [with the light brown hair], Stephen Foster song. Covered by many a star, including the great Sam Cooke. (A similar pun was used for the title of a TV series about a woman who frequently took to the bottle.)
12 HISTOGRAM. HIS (a man’s), reverse MARGOT.
13 EWE-LAMB. EWE sounds like U (posh); LA (city); MB (medic).
15 Omitted. Not a gun in Albert Square.
17 CHARD. C{ountrywide}, HARD.
18 GOPAK. G for ‘Grand’ + PA (Old Man), both inc (the second) O for ‘old’; then K{ing}. Performed by Ukrainian men, aka HOPAK.
19 POLAR. A word-completion clue: polar bear. (Are there bipolar bears?)
20 B,RAMBLE.
23 WOMANKIND. WD including OMAN, KIN. (No one hereabouts would consider Oman to be in Asia as such. And isn’t there something fishy about the part of speech, ‘Asian’?)
25 NIGE,R. He’s NIGE{l}.
27 LAERTES. Anagram: set+Lear.
28 OFFBEAT. Two defs; one straight, the other a fanciful(ish) two words. (A spin-off from Heartbeat starring Alf Ventress.)
29 ENTERTAIN. ENT (otorhinolaryngology); TA inside ERIN.
Down
 1 B(ITCH)Y.
 2 ADDIS ABABA. A DD (Dr of Divinity), ISA (Individual Savings Account, UK), BA x 2.
 3 H,ALLOWED.
 4 UNDER. UN (‘a foreign’=French article), reverse RED.
 5 EPHEMERAL. Anagram: Her MEP, ale.
 6 BAR,GEE.
 7 MAIN. Another word-completion clue: The Spanish Main.
 8 STEENBOK. TEEN, B{orn} inside KOS reversed. Same as Cos.
14 ASPIDISTRA. ASP (snake), 1, DISTRA{it}.
16 TYPEWRITE. TYPE (character), WRITE (hear: right). There’s a biography of Conrad which mentions that he married a typewriter: Jessie George, a stenographer.
17 CABIN BOY. COY (evasive) containing AB (sailor), itself containing BIN. (Often called Roger by Seaman Staines, we hear.)
18 GRANDEUR. GRAN, anagram of ‘rude’.
21 Omitted. Not a cryptic def, but what they should be.
22 ODDS ON. ODD (not even), SO (very), N.
24 MULCT. MUL{e}, C{ar}T. It means ‘fine’ (verb or noun); as in to punish by taking money from, or the money thereby taken. (Ulaca’s beginnings assumed by yours truly? Fine!)
26 GUFF{aw}. Rhyming slang: cobblers’ awls (nonsense).

33 comments on “Times 25350: Plucking game birds”

  1. A strange puzzle. I solved all but 13,14,18ac, 6 and 21 within 30 minutes, then became completely stuck for 9 minutes, then solved 13ac and completed the grid in another 4. The hold-up RH was thinking that 13ac had to start with EYE-.

    As things turned out I got 21dn wrong because I was looking for the name of an exponent of heroic verse so I invented one called BARBER. I won’t go into how I justified the other part of the clue except to say that it involved the use of a homophone which might not have been stretching things that far, given some of the examples we have had over recent months. I don’t pretend to know what exactly constitutes heroic verse or qualifies one as a bard but I believe the two are not mutually inclusive so I suspect there’s a bit of the DBE about this one.

    I’m also not entirely convinced by 19ac, 23ac (for the reasons expressed by McT), ‘looking up (at)’ in 6dn or the apostrophe S in 27ac which can’t stand for ‘is’ so must be ‘has’ which seems both unnecessary and a strange choice of grammatical construction.

    If I’ve met MULCT or KOS with a K before I have forgotten them.

    Feeling a bit narked on the day I start to draw my state pension but at least I’m now officially a grumpy old git, a status I have been striving towards for the better part of 40 years!

    1. Especially given that about the only time the word ‘bard’ shows up is in reference to the one from Avon, who was not in the heroic verse trade. I had also intended to animadvert on the use of foreign words that have more than one English spelling, as GOPAK/HOPAK (I imagine it’s [xopak] in the original) and KOS/COS.
        1. Glad to read that. I thought I was imagining things or that LJ was playing up and not displaying some messages.
    2. Welcome to the club Jack. If you have as much fun as I’ve had since retiring you’ll find it’s one of the best times of your life.
  2. Thanks, mctext. So as I was saying, I spent 30′ online, leaving 3 or 4 in the SE undone; and then finished on the train in a minute and a half. GOPAK slowed me down because I couldn’t figure out how to parse it; I took ‘attending’ to mean ‘at’=next to, rather than as an inclusion indicator. (attending class=in class? hmm.) 7d was my LOI, partly because in the US we don’t get electricity from mains, and partly because ‘the Spanish’ was so misleading. Liked 14d & 12ac.
  3. 19 minutes, so there’s hope yet. I don’t find any clue unfair. A polar disorder can be seen as a dichotomous one I would have thought; Oman would appear to be in SW Asia; the “who’s” in 27 is a dramatic setting in the present to give the surface life and point; Gee looks up at Bar in 6 in that it’s under it; a bard while not always associated with grand writing is the word for poet most used for such. One has to let the setter stretch the envelope a little, as long as it’s not ripped. After which happy birthday jackkt and welcome to the club of Contrary Old Gits!
    1. Thanks, Joe. Maybe I shall become a bit more discerning as I have more time to develop my skills as a GOG, or COG as you put it, but at the moment I’m enjoying giving them full rein. All your justifications are valid but I think there might be some room for concern that so many are needed in a single puzzle.

      Edited at 2012-12-19 09:40 am (UTC)

      1. Enjoy your retirement Jackkt. Now you have some time on your hands perhaps you can give me some lessons on completing this bugger every day??
  4. A bit quirky this one in places with some bits of obscure vocab thrown in as well. 20 minutes to solve with 21D my last in and a bit of a guess really.

    I suspect there’s lots of room for idle quibbles here. In addition to those mentioned are “the mains” the source of electricity or simply a delivery mechanism that delivers the current from its source, the generator, to its user?

    1. 18 minutes with two errors, and one of those puzzles where I always felt like I was solving with the handbrake on (I think we all get occasional days like this, when we just aren’t in sync with the setter of the day).

      Besides, once my clumsy two-fingered typing had presented me with the unspotted ASPIDSITRA, I left myself with no chance of correctly parsing 23ac, and went with a very unconfident WOMANISED. Give that I wasn’t 100% certain of GOPAK or STEENBOK either, it was a pretty tentative solve all round.

      Well done on reaching your milestone, Jack. I have this nagging feeling that I am living in one of Zeno’s paradoxes, as the government keeps moving retirement further away from me the closer I get to it…

    2. If a ring main is not a source of electricity, does that mean a milkman (or a supermarket) can’t be a source of milk?
      1. A better analogy would be the postman. The generator is the writer of the letter. The postal system acts as a delivery mechanism.
        1. No Jim, my analogy is better because it illustrates how you can be the source of something without actually having generated it. Happy Xmas, anyway 🙂
  5. 32m. I found this hard. There was an awful lot I didn’t know: Jeanie with the hair, EWE LAMB, that CHARD is a beet, GOPAK, what a dog rose is, MULCT, BARGEE. At least I remembered STEENBOK from a past puzzle.
    I got particularly stuck in the NE corner, where I considered BARGEE but didn’t put it in for ages because 1) I didn’t know the word and 2) I wasn’t convinced by the wordplay. I think “looking up at” to indicate “under” is a bit of a liberty: misleading but not in a good way.
  7. 16:58. I had the LHS solved pretty quickly but soon became bogged down in the East. Was relieved to see that gopak and mulct were both correct.

    Thanks for the note on cobblers McT. I thought I knew most examples of CRS but that’s a real revelation.

  8. Four missing today: Typewrite, Polar, Bargee and Main. No trouble with the remainder but the NW was blank for quite a time until I got Addis Ababa, Hallowed and figured out Toddled.

    Couldn’t parse Histogram or Gopak so thanks mctext for explaining those ones. Mulct from wordplay.

    Congrats on your milestone Jack!

  9. Just over 30m today but a DNF in that I managed to guess GAPOK. Otherwise a steady solve for me though I shared the doubts expressed by Jimbo on MAIN but only in a quibble way. Best wishes to Jackkt from Darlington too – as the ‘barred’ says: this is the day we long have looked for!
  10. I am an Asian and official maps notwithstanding, the Omanis don’t consider themselves Asians whom they despise and the Asians don’t consider any Arab race Asian as they consider them uncouth; let’s hope this one doesn’t start some sort of unrest in the Middle East/Asia region!!

    SP

  11. 21 minutes of steady going, had to guess GOPAK. For me, having lived there for a while, KOS was always spelt with a K as there is no letter C in Greek. There again, Corfu is an anglicised form of KERKYRA so I’ll have to live with the lettuce spelling I suppose.
    The way the Arctic ice is melting, the poor bears will be bipolar soon enough. Can they be relocated south?
  12. Congrats to jackkt and I hope he thoroughly enjoys his well earned grumpiness! I had a touch of this condition with today’s crossword as I put in polka instead of gopak for no apparent reason and took forever to complete the right hand side.

    Edited at 2012-12-19 04:31 pm (UTC)

  13. 13 mins including having to look in the BRB to make sure that I had remembered GOPAK and hadn’t made up MULCT.
  14. I thought the “crew member” at 17d was a COX and ended up with CABIN BOX. I thought it might be some nautical store that I’d never heard of. No problem with GOPAK. Various Russian composers have written plenty of them for ballets and suchlike. I have a query by 18d. The cryptic was obvious but I have a problem with the definition. Am I missing something here? I know that people can travel/arrive “in state” but it seems inadequate as a definition of GRANDEUR. 32 minutes with 1 error. Ann
  15. About 20 minutes, ending with BRAMBLE/BARRED. I agree with the several quibbles raised on several points, including Ann’s above that ‘this state’ seems a bit inadequate to signal GRANDEUR. Nevertheless, I solved them all, so the quibbles have to shrink into the background, I’d say. GOPAK and BARGEE were new to me. Otherwise, not so bad. I even knew MULCT and EWE LAMB, even if I don’t fully understand them. The other Kevin is quite right that we don’t get electricity from the MAIN in the US, but I eventually got it from the Spanish reference. Regards.
  16. 9:20 for me, with 7dn holding me up at the end, though not for too long. BRAMBLE = “dog rose” was new to me, but everything else was familiar enough. If I was in a picky mood, I might raise the odd quibble, but none is really worth worrying about.
  17. An hour for me, but had to cheat for BARGEE and STEENSBOK. Can a handle be used in a clue while still in use? One for Ximenes… 🙂

    Managed a PB on Monday with 11 minutes.

    Edited at 2012-12-20 12:22 am (UTC)

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