Times 25521 – That doctor I never liked….what was his name again?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 21 minutes

Music: Brahms, Symphony #1, Furtwangler/VPO.

Watching the golf on TV, I nearly forgot to do the puzzle. Fortunately, it proved to be a no-brainer, at least for experienced solvers. I only had to think a little at the very end, when some of the clues didn’t work quite the way I expected.

This would probably be a good puzzle for beginners, except for one or two clues that are obvious to the experienced solver. If you haven’t seen a reverse cryptic, or a definition by literal example, you might get stuck. There is also a barred-grid word that doesn’t pop up every day, and one obscure author for our Dorset correspondent.

Across
1 BUNGLE, BU(N)GLE. I had never heard of the plant, but the answer is obvious enough with the crossing letters in place.
4 THESAURI, anagram of A SURE HIT. Don’t put the ‘s’ at the end!
10 REVERIE, REV + ERIE, where ‘at head of’ is just a positional indictor and does not mean ‘l’ as you might expect.
11 GRAZING, G(R)AZING.
12 HOLY, sounds like WHOLLY.
13 RESISTANCE, RE + SIST(ANC)E[r], the African National Congress, of course, a very useful party to setters.
15 AFTERMATH, A + F + TERM + AT [amplefort]H. Somehow I had heard of and was able to identify Ampleforth, although such knowledge is not relevant to the answer.
16 TABOO, O[ld] BAT backwards + O, a compendium of cryptic cliches.
18 THERM, THE(R)M.
19 SHIPWRECK, cryptic definition plus reverse anagram clue.
21 PALINDROME, PAL IN (D) ROME, where the literal is a definition by literal example, properly indicated.
23 FELL, double definition, which everyone should finally be wise to. Those who have just arrived may be puzzled; for you neophytes, I will reveal that ‘fell’ is an obscure word for animal hide that is only found in crosswords.
26 DRAGOON, D(RAG)O ON. Do tell!
27 TRUMPET, sounds like TRUMP IT.
28 SEALYHAM, S(E(A)LY)HAM. A highly contrived surface, which gives away how the clue works
29 THORAX, THORA + [hatbo]X. Now there’s a girl’s name that I can safely predict will never come back into fashion, along with Griselda and Mathilda.
 
Down
1 BERTH, sounds like ‘BIRTH’. One of the three possible meanings of ‘moor’ I considered. Never be fooled by an initial capital…..unless, of course, it really is a Moor.
2 NOVELETTE, NO(V(-a+E)LET)TE.
3 LARK, double definition.
5 HOGGISH, like James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. I had to beat my brains to remember who he was, even though I actually read ‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ in grad school. Throw in Beddoes and Mary Shelley, and you’ve got a seminar.
6 SHANTY TOWN, SHAN’T Y[ach]T OWN.
7 UNION, UNI + ON, where ‘supported by’ indicates ‘on’.
8 INGLENOOK, IN GLEN O(O)K. I wrote in the answer after reading the first two words of the clue, having the initial ‘i’.
9 GENERA, GEN + ERA, more cryptic cliches.
14 PROMONTORY, PRO(MO)NTO + RY, where MO indicates ‘Medical Officer’ and ‘RY’ stands for ‘Railway’.
15 ANTIPODES, anagram of PAINTED SO. The antipodes are always far away no matter where you are located.
17 BEE KEEPER, cryptic definition, not very cryptic.
19 SYRINGA, S(Y RING)A. Fortunately, I had heard of this and was able to put it in from the literal, otherwise it might have given trouble.
20 INMATE, IN + MATE. If you think an inmate is always a prisoner or a lunatic, you will not be able to understand a verse like “But his sagacious eye an inmate owns”, which is probably just as well.
22 LIANA, A NAIL upside down.
24 LATEX, sounds like LATE EX, another dubious surface.
25 LUSH, double definition, the first a bit strained.

28 comments on “Times 25521 – That doctor I never liked….what was his name again?”

  1. Lots of answers from the literals. 8dn being a case in point. And the cryptic def at 17dn was quite obvious. Fluked SEALYHAM — another dog Ulaca has ducked? All the troubles came in the NW until HOLY occurred to me. (Strange as I was just thinking about how to clue just that word).

    Still, that left remembering BUGLE as a plant and REVERIE as “brown study”. This helps with the latter:
    http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/34277/why-are-reveries-sometimes-called-brown-studies

    Edited at 2013-07-08 02:09 am (UTC)

  2. I actually read Hogg, too, for all the good it did me, now or then: I got 5d from checkers & definition. It took me a long time to read ‘Brown study’ as ‘brown study’; I was futzing around with ‘tan’ and ‘con’ and L until I finally saw the light. ‘lush’=’attractive’ also struck me as pushing things a bit too far. COD to SHIPWRECK.
  3. 45 minutes, with BROWN STUDY, BUGLE, SYRINGA and SEALYHAM unknown, the last named, as McT so rightly predicts, leaving me completely flummoxed. Unable to see ‘carrying’ as a containicator – not sure it would have helped anyway – I shoved in ‘shanycam’. Add LIANA and HOGG as ‘vaguely familiars’, and we have a challenging puzzle.

    LUSH is in ODO as ‘sexually attractive’ – but is more widely used in the UK these days, if my sister and her family are any guide, as a generic ‘purr’ word meaning ‘great’. I hate it…

    I liked BERTH AND PALINDROME best.

    Edited at 2013-07-08 03:43 am (UTC)

  4. 48 minutes with both the 1s, 12ac, 3dn and 5dn accounting for the last 10 minutes.

    Didn’t know Ettrick Shepherd and couldn’t think of the plant although I believe I have met it before. Not sure I knew LUSH as (sexually) attractive but the other definition saved the day. Was pleased not to be caught out by ‘hide’ = FELL this time. Having 3 homophones in one puzzle and no hidden answer is unusual.

    Edited at 2013-07-08 05:30 am (UTC)

  5. Would have classified this as more on the hard side if anything, due to some (for me) unfamiliar vocab – brown study, SEALYHAM, BUGLE, the Ettrick Shepherd, humble bee.
  6. Yep, I too found this on the hard side, with a fair amount of unknown GK and vocab (all mentioned) combined with some tricky cryptics.

    Blanks at SEALYHAM and FELL (which I’m sure I should have known from a recentish puzzle), and PROMONTORY without fully understanding the wp.

    1. PS My friend’s 11 year old (English) daughter is called Mathilda… Tilly for short, and I don’t think she’s the only one in her class at school!
  7. 18 minutes, and definitely not a walkover. From entries here, it seems appropriate to confess I’ve never heard of the Ettrick chap (sorry to all fans of Scots poetry) and the NW corner nearly defeated me, almost settling for LOI HALE until the near-cousin homophone occurred.
    Things I have learned today: “brown study” is not the same as “a bit depressed”; LUSH can mean “attractive” (might unlearn that one); we’re going to be able to put FELL in as an answer for almost any four letter space.
    CoD to yet another wordplay-as-answer SHIPWRECK. Given the absence of a “hidden” today, are we witnessing the rise of the W-A-A as the new must-have ingredient in its place?
  8. Just for a change, I timed myself. Completed in almost exactly half an hour, but that included a couple of minutes reflection because I initially opted for ‘hale’ at 12a, with which I wasn’t confident, then the penny finally dropped and I corrected myself.
    Well done to all those who managed a quicker completion.
    George Clements
  9. 18 mins mid-morning.

    I started off slowly, and for a while I was expecting a pangram so I probably lost some time looking for likely homes for a “j” and a “q”. I needed all the checkers for SHIPWRECK, which I thought was an excellent clue. The INMATE/TRUMPET and BUNGLE/BERTH crossers took me longer than they should have done, and HOGGISH was my LOI after I decided there was no viable alternative. The Ettrick Shepherd? Not in my house.

  10. 29:38 certainly not a no-brainer for me, either, turning into a mad scramble to get it done inside the 30 min mark.

    I didn’t know the ‘brown study’ or who or what the Ettrick Shepherd was. And my final few minutes were spent resolving my dissatisfaction with HALE for 12a, which then became HOLE and finally, with seconds to spare, HOLY. Almost as exciting as Murray’s final game yesterday (it says something about the condition of the British tennis fan that when he was serving for the title and 40-0 up I was thinking “Nah, he’s going to lose”. But well done, that man).

  11. 13.18 the latter part of which being taken up trying to remember the animal’s hide while working through the alphabet.

    Are there more sealyhams in Crosswordland than real life? I also didn’t realise lush was still in use as attractive, my sons used the expression a lot in their teens (they are now in their late 20s).

  12. In fact it was nearly a TITT (threw in the towel) until at 28 I considered things other than SPY for imposter and at 23 stopped looking for a deadly animal.

    Throw in the several unknowns from the worlds of literature and botany and you have a recipe for a struggle. 29:51 of a struggle in fact.

    What’s “put in” doing in 29? Is it just that the X is put in the grid or is it an instruction to the solver to put in a word that’s part of a trunk or is it “finally put” plus “in” as a link word or is it summat else?

  13. I was wondering if any clues/answers today would reference Andy Murray’s superb triumph at Wimbledon yesterday, but can’t see any. I thought the crossword editor might have had a puzzle like that ready just in case.
    One wrong (Hale not Holy) and one missing (the never-before-heard-of Sealyham). Didn’t know James Hogg/Ettrick Shepherd and grateful that Fell has appeared before or else I doubt I’d have got it.
  14. Well I found this very hard: 26:34 on the club timer but with a hasty HOLE. A stupid mistake, but my brain was frazzled from trying to get all those unknowns. It’s hard for me to enjoy a puzzle with this many plants in it.
    I’m currently on a mandatory training course, so I’m getting plenty of exposure to the kind of management guff so beloved of us crossword solvers. It’s hard enough to take in such concentrated doses at the best of times, but when it’s sunny outside it really saps the will to live.
    1. Just remember to leverage all your opportunities and give us a heads-up soonest.
      1. I’ll keep you in the loop, going forward. If I don’t blow my brains out.
  15. Rev + erie pretty straightforward unless you don’t understand why a reverie is a brown study though I may be being thick.

  16. About 25 minutes, but that in spite of not knowing the brown study, Mr. Hogg, the bugle, or the Sealyham. LOI was FELL, hopefully entered through vague recollection of its former appearances here. So no, not a walkover for me either, and any other comments I might make have already been covered. Congratulations to Andy Murray, and regards.
  17. Did this over lunch, so didn’t time it – HOGGISH from definition, REVERIE from wordplay. Seemed to recall SEALYHAM from somewhere else, probably another crossword.
  18. 8:06 for me, making heavy weather of a few clues, but able to offset them with easy wins with others.

    No problems with the Ettrick Shepherd, who used to crop up pretty regularly in the old days (and so should be familiar to our Dorset correspondent).

    (Tsk, tsk! Since he isn’t the answer to a crossword clue, you really ought to spell Furtwängler with his umlaut.)

  19. I was of the opinion that latex was natural, not synthetic, rubber, or am I missing some clever cryptic?
    1. Well, no.
      1. P is not an abbreviation for poison in any dictionary. Poise, yes, as a physical unit of viscosity.
      2. Abbreviations always include the word being abbreviated in the clue. There is never a double operation: first, find a synonym for a word; then second, find its abbreviation (or anagram, etc).
      Cheers,
      Rob

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