Times 25413 – ‘Allo ‘allo, what’s this ear?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

20 minutes for all bar 17 and 24 then another 11 on these. Mostly very easy, mais il y a une mauvaise surprise, non?

Across

1 S+CAMP
4 BIG DIPPER – switchback is another term for a roller coaster.
9 OBSTACLES – classtobe*
10 P[ARK]A – among other things, the Ark of the Covenant, before Harrison Ford and the Nazis got their hands on it, contained the Ten Commandments and Aaron’s Rod (the one that blossoms – sometimes in crossword puzzles).
11 JUST SO [S]TORIES  
14 MIEN – sounds like ‘mean’, although I’m not sure that that’s how I’ve ever perceived the word, giving it a faux frenchified internalised pronunciation, internalised as I’m not sure I’ve ever essayed the word in public. Fortunately.
15 ARISTOCRAT – isactor* in ART.
18 EXPOSITION – très facile, non?
19 M+ILL – encore, bien sur.
21 DRILL SERGEANT – as well as being a baboon with a short tail, drill also passes muster as a coarse twilled cotton or linen fabric.  
24 EVITA – ETA containing V (against) and I (one); nice clue, which requires ordinary folk to lift and separate ‘pressing against’, while speedsters will chuck EVITA straight in from the initial e.
25 CHEONGSAM – mochanges*   
27 omitted – don’t wish to boar you with this one. On edit: since it’s causing a bit of confusion, it’s PIG-HEADED, where the setter draws on a usage common in horse-racing parlance, ‘Lucky Dragon was headed in the shadow of the post’.
28 A[BY]SS – I never actually looked at 2 when solving.

Down

1 SHOWJUMPER – show as in “show/lead them in, please”; jumper as in thing you wear as a top, or maybe on top.
2 AS=S[tate]
3 PRAISE – P[ressure] + RAISE; but I can’t see how cause = raise.    On edit: Jack’s found it in Collins and the example clinches it: ‘to give rise to; cause or provoke ⇒ to raise a smile’.
4 BEL ESPRIT – B[orn] + reptiles*; more French: not an expression I was familiar with, it means a person full of wit/ingenium, hence a genius.
5 omitted
6 IMPRISON – MP in IRIS + O[ver] (our [French?] cricketing mot du jour) + N[arcotics].
7 PERESTROIKA – peers* + TROIKA; my only concern was whether it/they was/were spelt with a k or a c.
8 omitted – even easier than the two others omitted thus far, which is no mean feat.
12 SUET PUDDING – undisputed* + G; I’ll leave our senior members, from Yorkshire and Barsetshire-via-Battersea, to comment on the taste of these things made from the white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep, as I’m much too young ever to have tasted, or even seen, one.   
13 AT ALL TIMES – ‘a tall Times’, where remarkable means ‘fanciful and difficult to believe’, which seems spot on to me.
16 STONE DEAD – ONE  (a person) + D[eparts] inside STEAD (place).
17 ASPIRATE – AS (like) + PIRATE (to copy illegally); the literal is ‘a Parisian doesn’t’. Ma dernière entrée. Many an acoustic phonetician will tell you that the difference between ‘dock’ and ‘tock’, for instance, is as much to do with aspiration as with voicing.
20 AG[END]A
22 LUCID – it is.
23 R[E]AP – ‘voluble talk’ for rap is good. If I had been setting the puzzle (be thankful for small mercies), the clue might need to have been transferred to Private Eye.
26 omitted

33 comments on “Times 25413 – ‘Allo ‘allo, what’s this ear?”

  1. No real troubles, though equally confused about “cause”=RAISE at 3dn. NOAD has:
    • cause to occur, appear, or be felt: recent sightings have raised hopes that otters are making a return.
    But I’m still not 100% convinced.

    Equally confused about “lost the lead” for HEADED at 27ac. Surely it’s “took the lead”? Or am I missing something here too? (Most likely.)

    |mēn| seems to be the most popular pronunciation for “mien” around the usual traps.

    Re 17dn: of course there is H-aspiré in French; but it’s not really aspirated! What about the other consonants that are aspirated though?

    Thanks to our setter for two good full anagrams; two minus a letter; and two further part-anagrams. Helped a great deal today.

    Edited at 2013-03-04 02:01 am (UTC)

      1. Not a usage I know. Bested/worsted again!

        Edited at 2013-03-04 03:13 am (UTC)

  2. Just on 30 mins with a delay at 25ac, my LOI.

    I’m also confused by ‘raise’ at 3dn and ‘lost the lead’ at 27ac. I can see ’cause’ = ‘give rise to’ but am not convinced that’s the same as ‘raise’.

    On edit: I’ve found ’cause/raise’ in Collins now. Thanks to Ulaca for explaining ‘headed’, and like mct, it’s not a usage I’ve met before. Having learnt last year that there is a verb ‘to medal’ meaning ‘to win a medal’, nothing much surprises me about the awfulness of some sporting jargon.

    Edited at 2013-03-04 06:13 am (UTC)

  3. Had the same questions as everyone else so far: headed, aspirate, raise, although that last somehow didn’t bother me much at the time. What did bother me was my doltishness in overlooking the enumerations of 21ac and 4d, costing me a few minutes in looking for one-word solutions. I also hadn’t thought of 1d as a single word. If memory serves, Poe’s raven sashays into the room ‘with mien of lord or lady’, (‘not the least obeisance made he’–sounds a bit like Gilbert, actually). So far as I know, Parisians–French folk generally–don’t aspirate any consonants, but nor do the Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, …. And as McText notes, the Parisians do ‘aspirate’ some H’s. Nice to have this one after the weekend.
    1. Saturday was tough but Sunday’s a bit of a doddle, I thought. Maybe you are a Mephisto man? 🙂
    2. I was thinking of, as NOAD puts it:

      Phonetics, pronounce (a sound) with an exhalation of breath: [as adj.] (aspirated) the aspirated allophone of p occurs in “pie”.

      Some French words (pur?) would seem to count.

      1. We’re thinking of the same aspiration, but I had assumed that in French non-aspiration was the rule. But then, what I don’t know about French would fill a book.

        Edited at 2013-03-04 05:39 pm (UTC)

        1. The French often make fun of the Belgians for their lack of aspiration. E.g., the Belgian driver who slows down every time he sees a car with GB on the back. Why? “C’est un Gommissionaire de Bolice!”
  4. All but the frankly weird looking CHEONGSAM today. And ?s at the same places others have had them, where i wrote in the literals without getting the wp.

    Many thanks, Ulaca and others, for clarifications.

  5. 23m, with nearly half of that mulling over ASPIRATE and then a break of about 20 minutes at the end with 25ac blank. I was solving on my iPad, standing up on the train, and realised I was never going to get it without a piece of paper. Once I got all the letters written out it was easy to figure out which went in which gaps, even if the resulting word looks odd.
    Like others I wondered about “raise” but as Jack says it’s in Collins with the example “raise a smile”. And I didn’t understand “headed”.
    The fact that DRILL came up a couple of weeks ago helped. And BEL ESPRIT has appeared even more recently than that.
  6. 17 minutes, with right side (I started with 4) going in much quicker than the left. Perhaps the CHEONG SAM is one of those once seen, never forgotten crossword entries, which becomes a gimme – those of you puzzled this time can confirm that next time it appears.
    Wondering about PRAISE was compounded by S? in the middle of 11 until the dawn came up like thunder.
    My grandmother always topped her stews (she would never have called them casseroles) with a soft SUET PUDDING crust. Marvellous. Never have been able to replicate it.
    BEL ESPRIT was last in, and even then I had to wait for dawning light to realise that “classified” means “anagrammed” Couldn’t find any lizards.
    CoD to SUET PUDDING (it really is a decent anagram) not least for reviving taste memories and evoking a whole other world.
  7. Easy one today, 16 minutes, though I spent a bit too long wondering what a bel priest was..
  8. A comfortable ‘solve’ in about 30 minutes. CHEONGSAM was best guess, filled in after all checkers were present. ‘A Parisian doesn’t’ was much too clever a definition for me: I had no idea why ‘AS’ + ‘PIRATE’ was the correct answer until coming here. So, thank you, ulaca and others, for enlightening me.
  9. 10 minutes fairly easy canter this morning aided by bel Esprit and cheongsam appearing other places recently.
  10. I still don’t get this and can’t really follow Ulaca’s explanation! Please help this lost soul.
        1. I think in an ideal world, there would be a “was” or an “is” in there somewhere. “Pig was headed” in racecourse speak means the pig lost the lead – another beast went ahead. If the headline writer, pressed for space, puts “Pig headed at post” it just about means the pig lost the lead at as it crossed the finishing line. Just.
  11. 12:36. I was ready to come on here complaining about 25 as I get a bee in my bonnet when obscure/foreign words are clued by anagrams. So I was a bit taken aback to find that CHEONGSAM was right. I still don’t like it when they do that mindst.

    COD to 15 for the misdirection of making me look for an anagram of noble actor to make a painting or style thereof (which I was building up to complaining about as well had the answer been foreign/obscure).

    1. Bet you a years free subscription to TFTT that when CHEONGSAM next comes up, it’ll be practically your first in and you’ll feel slightly smug!
  12. 12d always brings to mind the episode of ‘The Glums’ in which Ron has the words ‘I Love Sue’ tattooed on his arm, to the horror of his fiancee Eth. It eventually transpires that he fainted halfway through ‘I Love Suet Pudding’.
  13. 8 minutes for me – like Penfold I did look for an anagram of noble actor to make some art !
  14. 15 minute stroll in the park with usual question marks, particularly over ASPIRATE which is too loose a definition for my taste

    Today the old currant made a rare appearance over the golf course and the 19th was the better for it.

  15. Like Jimbo, at a fast trot today, 18 minutes with sandwich, and I see I must be weird because I knew CHEONGSAM. Polished off yesterday’s too then went back to wrestle some more with Saturday’s and the toughie Club Monthly.

    The old CB is drying out the golf course here too Jimbo, as is the most unusual warm, strong east wind. And Lot-et-Garonne is supposed to have the ‘lowest wind density’ in Europe?

  16. Three missing today caused by a wrong Dress Sergeant at 21ac. Thus missed Lucid, Aspirate and the unknown and unlikely-looking Cheongsam.

    Re Big Dipper: I spent Friday night running round the moors of the Peak District in the annual High Peak Marathon. The weather was perfect and at 04:30 on Saturday morning there were a thousand stars overhead and a bright three-quarter moon. Had we needed to we could have navigated across the Outer Edges by following Polaris (North Star), found by drawing an imaginary line upwards through the two stars of the Big Dipper opposite its handle.

  17. Many interruptions today so only a guess at about 50 minutes. Had all the quibbles and holdups mentioned above plus writing EMPRISON and not realising unt 5a became desperate. Very helpful blog – thanks.
  18. 18.29 with no serious hold-ups or gaps in knowledge though bel esprit seemed new. Good smattering of foreign words. COD 13 for the chutzpah.
  19. 8:18 for me, but I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, having to spend too much effort trying to tease out the wordplay – e.g. in 27ac, where I agree with z8b8d8k that we’re in the world of headlines. Since I’d only come across DIP rather than DIPPER for “pickpocket”, I also wasted time trying to justify PER = “pointing to”. And, as someone who’s fond of spotted dick, I’d have liked a question mark at the end of 12dn.
  20. Mon cher Bel Espirits,

    Just completed said cryptic – 13 hours 45 minutes without food,water or internet. Phew! You guys are in a different league!

    🙂

    1. Brilliant! I’m definitely like one of those teams that yoyo between the premier league and the championship. I feel privileged to share a pitch (patch?) with the cruciverbal equivalents of Real Madrid and Manchester United.

      Edited at 2013-03-06 04:02 am (UTC)

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