Times 25,468

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
14:32 is good enough to put me in the current top 10 of the Club leaderboard, so suggests this is trickier than the normal challenge. Sorry for the slight delay to the blog; as so often happens, I woke up still thinking it’s Monday. Oh dear, it’s already as if that sunny bank holiday never happened….

Anyway, back to business: I thought this was on the whole a very good, and very precise puzzle; albeit with one totally unknown word (which the wordplay pointed to in perfectly fair fashion); and one clue where I suspect I will be foreshadowing cries of protest from the Dorset area (with which I have to agree on this occasion).

Across
1 SECOND DEGREE – Murders in the US legal system are categorised as 1st or 2nd degree according to premeditation, before going down to manslaughter. A second university degree, i.e. post-graduate study would generally involve some sort of academic research.
9 AVOID – O(=egg) in AVID(=keen).
10 STREAMERS – Right in STEAMERS.
11 TESSERAE – TESS + ERA + Energy. The small pieces which make up a mosaic, easy for anyone with a smattering of classical learning.
12 WAFFLE – i.e. “something which means meaningless verbiage and is also a foodstuff”.
13 PENSTOCK – If a “PENSTOCK” is read as being “a stock of pens”, it would obviously keep a writer going; it turns out to be a part of the construction of a dam or mill, but not one which I’d heard of as an individual term before. However, as I suggested above, with the checkers and wordplay, I was fairly confident in my stab.
15 PIG OUT – PI + GOUT(=disease). “PI” often occurs in crossword land, as a shortened version of pious; it’s a (rather dated) way of describing someone who presents an extremely dutiful face to the world. I assumed that the stricter than usual definition “not really good” suggested that it’s a word usually applied to people who wish appear pious without necessarily being so, though I guess it might just mean that PIOUS is literally cut short, i.e. not really all there.
17 SATURN – A performance by salvationists could be a S.A. TURN, i.e. one performed by the Salvation Army. Slightly trickier than usual in clueing Saturn as the eponymous Roman god rather than the more obvious planet.
18 ELEGISTS – E.G. in bookstorE LISTS.
20 LIE LOW – LIE(untruth), LO! Wife.
21 TRAVESTY – A VEST in TRY.
24 COALITION – [A Liberal IT I 0] in CON. Nice modern political surface.
25 NAIVE – hidden backwards in dEVIANt.
26 AMPHETAMINES – (EMPATHISEMAN)*.
 
Down
1 START UP – STAR(prize-winning) TUP(ram).
2 CROSSING THE BAR – I worked this out by assessing the words which would a) fit both checkers and context and b) also work as the potential title of a “famous” poem, and got it right. So…as I usually say on these occasions, it’s only human to think to yourself that “general” knowledge is everything that you know, and all the rest is not “general knowledge”, but “ridiculously specific knowledge”; but one of the benefits of having a community like this one is that you can find out very publicly whether you’re admitting to being woefully under-educated when you advertise the fact that you only learned something from that day’s crossword after decades of ignorance.

The question is, then, am I alone in never having come across even the title of this poem, never mind the poem itself? Am I advertising just my own lack of culture, or echoing a more general feeling? To save you the trouble of Googling or following the link, it’s by Tennyson, and (at his own request) traditionally stands as the last piece in any collected edition of his poetry. I await the answer with trepidation.
3 NUDGE – Ground in NUDE.
4 DISTANCE – [IS hosT] in DANCE.
5 GERM – GERMAN without A New; germ as in “the germ of an idea”.
6 EMANATING – MAN-EATING with the MAN moved down inside the word.
7 SELF POSSESSION – the hidden word is inside damSEL Fearlessly, thus the phrase exhibits self-possession.
8 ASCENT – AS(=when) CENT(=a bit of dosh).
14 TERRORISM – [ERROR IS] in THEM(=”them” minus the High Explosive). Not quite an &lit., I guess, but a very appropriate surface reading.
16 CLARINET – IN in CLARET; as always with these clues, the first step is to work out if the music-maker is a person, an instrument or a songbird..
17 SOLACE – SOUL + A C.E.
19 SHYNESS – SHY(=toss) + NESS(=head).
22 VENOM – V(=very, little) + (MONEY)rev. without the Yen
23 WISH – W.I. SH(=quiet). In case anyone missed it last week, this is the best news story involving the W.I. and pirates, for…well, ever.

33 comments on “Times 25,468”

  1. Yes, Tim moans from the south. No, I’ve never heard of the wretched poem and what is more I think the clue “like a staggering drunk maybe” is ludicrous. I cross the bar of my golf club every time I visit without ever being remotely tipsy let alone staggering drunk.

    Also didn’t understand the “not” in 15A and not really convinced by your brave attempt to explain it.

    All of which is a pity because there are some good clues in this. 20 pleasurable minutes including using Google to find the poem

    1. Perhaps crossing as in annoying, which a staggering drunk might well do. That’s the best I can do to put some sense into something otherwise incomprehensible.
      1. I got the wrong poet entirely! CROSSING THE TAY is a Scottish reel (reeling, stumbling) and renders the subject of McGonagall’s “Tay Bridge Disaster”.

        I don’t suggest that it stands up to scrutiny, but I find it entertaining, and McGonagall is definitely more entertaining than Tennyson!

    2. The first of Tim’s two explanations for the “not” in 15 ac seems to me to make sense, Jimbo. Pi – admittedly an old-fashioned bit of slang not much heard nowadays – is used to describe people who put on a sanctimonious show of being good/pious etc without truly being so, hence “not really good”.

      Crossing the Bar is a poem that will be very familiar to anyone at all well acquainted with Tennyson (though, that said, it still took me a long time to think of it). The wordplay seems to me perfectly fair. The clue does not suggest that anyone walking across a bar would necessarily be “staggering drunk”, but simply that crossing a bar is what a drunk might do (“maybe”) as he reeled out of the pub. (A point I now see Sotira also makes below).

      Some wags have amended the first of the last two lines of the first verse of the poem – “And may there be no moaning of the bar/When I put out to sea” – to read “and let there be no moaning at the bar”, which the setter is perhaps alluding to here. The “bar” Tennyson had in mind is apparently the sandspit sometimes found at the mouth of a river which emits a moaning or howling sound when the tide is ebbing over it at speed, generally taken as a sign that the water would then be too shallow for safe sailing.

      1. During childhood holidays at Salcombe I was told it was this harbour’s bar that moaned.
        1. Interesting. I see that Sotira (see further down) seems to have heard that too.
      2. Thanks for that, I never “got” this reference before, from Tom Lehrer’s cheery song of Armageddon “We’ll All Go Together When We Go”:

        We will all char together when we char.
        And let there be no moaning of the bar.
        Just sing out a Te Deum
        When you see that I.C.B.M.
        And the party will be “come-as-you-are”.

  2. 16 minutes
    Crossing the Bar is one of those bits of poetry that turns up occasionally at funeral services, probably less often than it used to. So I suppose it may depend on how many such events one attends – in my case many more than most in a professional/technical capacity.
    PENSTOCK was a real oddity – I wait with bated breath to see if anyone comes out with a similar claim to mine above (“as a hydro-engineer I used one on a daily basis”). Can’t otherwise see why it shouldn’t have been -stack or -stick from the clue.
    Today’s favourites the tongue in cheek politics of 24, and the clever device at 7.
  3. Never heard of the poem only the poet. he might have had a mention at school but that finished 40 years ago. Struggle now to remember something that happened last week :)!Personally I thought the clue was awful.Guessed PENSTOCK
  4. 19m.
    I studied English literature for three years, including a spell when I had to suffer Tennyson, and if I ever come across this poem I have since forgotten it. What with that and the crossing obscurity PENSTOCK I was very surprised to find I was all correct. But I was, therefore this was a scrupulously fair puzzle.
  5. 27 minutes bar 2dn which took me a further 7 minutes to work out the most likely answer to fit the checkers. No, I never heard of it either. I’d have no problem with that if the cryptic definition made any sense which it doesn’t to me. Does one need to be staggering drunk in order to cross a bar? It seems to me one would be less likely to achieve it in that condition than would a sober person!

    Also didn’t know PENSTOCK but the answer simply had to be that.

    I see Jim made a similar point about “staggering drunk” whilst I was writing this.

    Edited at 2013-05-07 10:05 am (UTC)

  6. Got off to a fast start today by getting 1ac and 1dn straightaway. Steady solve for the most part but ended with two missing – Crossing The Bar (I hadn’t heard of the poem either) and Penstock (also unknown). Rather liked the prize-winning ram, Germ, Self-Possession and Coalition.
    Saturn and Travesty are two answers that I didn’t get in recentish puzzles and I was pleased to get them today when they appeared again.
  7. Enjoyed the WI story! Apparently the Devon chapter is an adventurous lot – next story in the sequence was “WI group in pole dancing session”.

    Unfortunately I was obliged to read that poem at a funeral not too long ago. I liked “pig-out” although I was very slow to get it having also stalled on “ascent”. 19.41 minutes.

    Edited at 2013-05-07 10:27 am (UTC)

  8. 22:08 … sorry, Tim, another who knew the starter for ten here. I first encountered the poem at school, where it made quite an impression, and often enough since. Probably helps that I’ve sailed the Salcombe estuary a good deal.

    I don’t have a problem with the definition. The drunk needs to be staggering to indicate the motion of ‘crossing’ and the ‘maybe’ indicates an example. There’s no implication that anyone crossing a bar need be drunk, is there?

    I would have paid good money to be there when that chap turned up at the WI meeting. Priceless!

    COD .. SELF-POSSESSION

  9. 9 minutes – I too ‘guestimated’ 13a and 2d but luckily correctly.
  10. All but 2 and 13 done in 22 minutes, then a couple more minutes to come up with guesses that turned out to be right. I, too, have never heard of the poem. Judging by the comments on this board it hardly qualifies as famous, and I agree with dorsetjimbo’s comment on the wordplay.
  11. 22 mins. I didn’t know the poem and it was my last in after considering the likely options. I briefly flirted with ‘Crossing The Tay’ as a possible McGonagall poem before common sense prevailed. I guessed PENSTOCK as being a more likely answer than penstack. 1ac and 5dn took me far longer to solve than they should have done.

    I agree with those of you who don’t like ‘not’ in 15ac, but I thought the clue for 24ac was very elegant.

  12. Yep, I too guesstimated correctly at 2 and 13, having never heard of the poem or the dam-bit.

    COD: EMANATING

  13. Just over half an hour. Knew PENSTOCK for a convoluted reason: Lonnie Donegan’s 78 rpm recording of The Grand Coulee Dam gave me an absorbing interest in the project: I was fascinated by photographs of the construction, which included a shot of four men installing a section of a penstock. This would give Health & Safety consultants nightmares today; I notice that it is included in Wikipedia’s article on the dam.
    2. John – good call on the picture of the penstock section being put in place in the Wiki entry.

      Jimbo – thanks for the comment. I found the site a few years ago when I came across it via a Google search as I was trying to find the answer for a clue I couldn’t parse, and I’ve been a regular visitor ever since. I was content to be a lurker for a long time, mostly because I didn’t feel that I had anything valuable to add. I definitely think that the comments from the regular contributors have helped me become a more competent solver. I have been making more comments over the last couple of months, and I usually signed myself off as Andy B. but I forgot when I made a post yesterday and that prompted me to access the site via my Facebook login. It is a very useful way to do it.

  14. 15:35 and was mildly surprised to find that my two guesstimates, 2 & 13, were both correct.

    So no, I’ve never herad of the pome and I have the same reservations as others about the drunk’s trajectory.

  15. Funny this thing about general knowledge. Before reading these comments I would have put this poem down as one of the most famous in the English language – not quite up there with ‘If’ but not far behind. I could even recite some of it and I haven’t studied poetry since I was at school some 45 years ago!

    Chris

    1. I think what’s “general” knowledge for poetry comes and goes in cycles, depending on who is popular with The Powers That Be and who they put on the English syllabus. In my case it’s a mere 30 years since I did English A-level, but I never knowingly read any Tennyson as part of my studies at any point, as proved today. Meanwhile I was at a memorial service recently for my old university tutor (born 1925), which included some Housman, his favourite (English) poet, and he struck me as an example of an author who has gone from massive popularity to relative obscurity in only a generation or two.

      I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find the setter is of your generation, has a similar view of this poem’s prominence, and is equally surprised at our ignorance of it!

  16. I think I’d vaguely heard of it, but the problem, as others have said, was trying to fathom why one has to be a staggering drunk to cross the bar.

    With “pi” I’d have thought it was “not really REALLY good”, rather than just “not really good” 🙂

    Kudos to the COALITION clue!

  17. I’d have concurred with Chris above about its fame, having been taught about it some thirty years before him: it’s interesting that it’s forgotten now. (Though ‘staggeringly drunk’ was unhelpful.)
    BTW, PENSTOCK I had heard of before, and knew it was related to hydroelectricity, so thanks to john for the link.
  18. 30 minutes for all bar penstock, which I had to throw the towel in on. Thought crossing the bar was a poor clue, even though I got the answer. My knowledge of Tennyson begins and ends with Maud (the first line), The Lady of Shalott and The Charge of the Light Brigade, though I see from Wikipedia that he also wrote about Simeon Stylites, who came up recently. Well, he would do, wouldn’t he?
  19. I put CROSSING THE BAR in straight away from the enumeration. I’ve not only heard of it but can quote chunks from it. So for me, at least, it qualifies as “famous”. Otoh, I’ve never heard of PENSTOCK. I wasted far too much time on 10a trying to justify STARBOARD – I was unwilling to relinquish it until 7d made it obvious that I was on the wrong tack. Overall though, a very enjoyable puzzle. 35 minutes. Ann
  20. I thought the answer might be PENSTICK (A pen’s tick might keep it going) and would have put that had I not cheated and looked it up 🙂
  21. 11:21 for me, in a rather similiar solve to falooker’s. I had the O in place when I reached 2dn, and that and the enumeration were enough to give me CROSSING THE BAR, which I too can quote chunks from. (Definitely a famous poem, though there are plenty of Tennyson’s poems I like better.) However, if I hadn’t known it, I’d have been very worried about the last word, since when I cross a bar, I’m normally neither drunk nor staggering.

    I too wasted time trying to justify STARBOARD. And although I knew that the word PENSTOCK existed, I couldn’t remember what it meant and was unconvinced that it fitted the given definition so wasted time looking for an alternative.

  22. Perhaps it’s as well I only came to this the next day, though managed the puzzle on the right day in a reasonable enough time for me. It’s desperately sad to see so many dismissive comments on ‘Crossing the Bar’ and its author: wretched poem, I had to suffer Tennyson, unfortunately I had to read it at a funeral, one’s an over-educated twit for knowing about it etc. I was interested to learn of Platonic solids the next day.

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