Times 25641 – Finishing, but not really finishing

Solving time: 48 minutes

Music: Brahms, Double Concerto, Ferras/Tortelier/Kletzki

This was a rather frustrating puzzle. Although I was, after a little thought, able to write in the correct answers, many of them came from either the cryptic or the literal, but not both. In some cases, I still don’t follow how the clue is constructed, so we may require a little audience participation tonight.

There is plenty that I find just obscure here, although they are undoubtedly quite familiar to some of the regulars. Words like ‘panga’ and ‘shell-like’ are seldom heard in today’s casual conversation, although I’m willing to take in on faith they may be found in the relevant dictionaries.

And away we go!

Across
1 RAINBOW, R(A + IN + B)OW, where I tried to work in ‘rely’, but this bank is just a tier.
5 BLISTER, B + LISTER, a particular surgeon, so lift-and-place is a must.
9 UNSIGHTLY, U + N(S[tudents’])IGHTLY.
10 COURT, C(O)URT, and not a shortened word as I first thought.
11 EDICT, PR, proportional representation, removed from PREDICT. A very hard cryptic to see, although the answer is obvious once you get the crossers.
12 HAIR SHIRT, HAIR + R[eligious] in anagram of THIS. Mentioning a ‘religious leader’ bring this sort of garment to mind, so not a good clue, IMHO.
14 FEEL-GOOD FACTOR, double definition, one contrived. I struggled with this, having difficulty come up with the correct synonym for ‘land-agent’, although the construction was perfectly obvious.
17 APPRENTICESHIP, where IN DENTURES sounds like INDENTURES and the result is a cryptic definition.
21 POTPOURRI, anagram of UP PRIOR TO.
23 MACHO, MA(CH)O, our old friend the Companion of Honour. I got it into my head this must end in ‘y’, but saw it at once as soon as I gave up that notion.
24 PANGA, PANG + A, a bit of a guess for me. The term for a fishing boat is derived from this African knife.
25 SHELL-LIKE, SHE’LL LIKE. A very obscure expression for ‘ear’ that I just put in from the cryptic. Maybe not obscure to you?
26 REALIST, RE + A + LI(S)E, where it is essential to separate ‘a’ from ‘shilling’.
27 ENDLESS, double definition, one jocular – after all, The Ring fits on only 19 LPs!
 
Down
1 ROUTED, R + OUTED, my first in, and probably yours too.
2 INSPIRE, IN S(P)IRE, where the literal is a bit loose but passable.
3 BAGATELLE, B(A GAT)ELLE. A 17th-century table game as well as a general term for frivolity and fun.
4 WITCH DOCTOR, W + ITCH + DOCTOR, such as Dr. Who. DOCTOR ‘understands women’s yen’ in the sense of ‘stands under women’s yen’. A hopelessly convoluted cryptic for an answer 99.9% of solvers will write in from the literal.
5 BAY, B[-o+A]Y. A very simple letter-substitution clue that still detained me a bit.
6 INCAS, IN CAS[e]. Another one where the literal renders the cryptic nugatory.
7 TOURIST, TO(UR IS)T.
8 ROTATORY, A TOR upside down + T + [h]O[u]R[l]Y.
13 INDO-CHINESE, anagram of DON + HIS NIECE. A rather dubious ethnicity, but undoubtedly justified by reference works.
15 ASSEMBLED A + MESS upside down + B(L)ED.
16 BAGPIPER, B[-i+A]G P[-a+I]PER. A rather clever letter-swapping clue, I thought.
18 PETUNIA, P + anagram of AUNTIE.
19 INCLINE, IN (C) LINE, where ‘dressed’ is the military term for ‘arranged masses of men’.
20 BOREUS, the evident answer, obvious from the literal. I believe the cryptic has something to do with taking a scientific term for ‘acacia’ and re-arranging or removing the first letters, but I have come up blank. The ‘arboreus’ is a different tree.BOREAS, BORE(A[cacia])S – I suspected Alec would have the answer to my conundrum.
22 OMANI, [w]OMAN + I[sland]. Another cryptic I just cracked for the blog, since the literal is sufficient while solving.
25 SUE, double definition.

49 comments on “Times 25641 – Finishing, but not really finishing”

  1. BOREAS is the North Wind, named after the god thereof. BORES are waves. ODO: “a steep-fronted wave caused by the meeting of two tides or by the constriction of a tide rushing up a narrow estuary”. Back later …

    Edited at 2013-11-25 02:58 am (UTC)

  2. Can’t account for the fast time … except the fact of doing a lot of cryptics lately. Even the weekend puzzles didn’t seem too difficult. (But then I called three 1300 numbers last week, didn’t get any muzac and spoke to three human beings — so it’s probably just luck.)

    Liked the “at regular intervals” in 9ac which didn’t signal odd or even letters for a change. 17ac seems a bit odd with all those plurals in the clue and a singular in the answer.

    Don’t think I’d class 14ac as a double def. There’s a cryptic (three rough synonyms) and a literal.

    10ac: Foolishly??

    Last of all: I must query the literal in 16dn. Din-maker?

    1. Collins has: Court, to invite, usually foolishly, by taking risks e.g. to court disaster. The Oxfords have something similar.
    2. I can recall being quite moved on three occassions by bagpipes. Once on a Burns Night at the Standard Life office in St Andrews Square, once at the Edinburgh Tatoo and most of all on the banks of Loch Lomond at about 10.00pm in the half light as a lone piper played a lament.
      1. Not quite the same, but I went to Basel one fine Saturday to see the galleries. For a reason I never understood there were four or five dozen bagpipe groups marching through the streets. Every corner turned resulted in hearing yet another rendition of Proud Scotland. A little surreal, but remarkably pleasant in its own way. I think I’d better check out the Edinburgh Tatoo, hadn’t I?

        Meantime,mwhat started with four or five easy-in easy-parse, I soon found many obvious answers I couldn’t parse. That led to sloppiness, eg, Hoop Skirts, and grinding to a halt.

  3. LOI EDICT, which I simply could not parse; I took ‘rejected’ as a reversal indicator, which effectively stymied me. Are bores waves? I thought they were tides, which is why I was so slow to parse 20d although I was sure it was BOREAS. And damn it, I like bagpipes. There, I said it.
  4. Technically DNF as after 30 minutes plus another 5 staring at 20dn on its own I cut my losses and used aids. Having then found that BOREAS was the god of the north wind I thought it sounded vaguely familiar and I may have come across it here quite recently, but its only appearance in TftT that I can find is in a Jumbo and I never do those.

    No problems with SHELL-LIKE but PANGA was unknown.

  5. Finished all correct (even 5dn – I always hesitate on this type of clue, and usually opt for the wrong one) in 30 mins or so, but realise I failed to parse a couple. This time it worked out ok. Often doesn’t. Thanks, then, for explaining: FEEL GOOD FACTOR, WITCH DOCTOR and APPRENTICESHIP.

    Had ‘eternal’ for ENDLESS for a little while which held up the SE.

    Surprised you feel SHELL-LIKE is obscure… have often heard the expression ‘a word in your shell-like…’ said in a slightly menacing cockney accent, from a film maybe?

    PANGA unknown, but easily gettable.

    Also, you have a typo at 26ac *just saying*

  6. Held up by 17ac (like mctext, looking for a plural) and the unknown BOREAS.

    I’m no cockney, but SHELL-LIKE was familiar to me from Minder. In fact I used it just recently in a conversation with ‘er indoors.

  7. Just nicked under 13 minutes, no hang-ups. Nice to sense Arthur Daley (of Minder) buried in the Times, however incongruously. Is bagpaper a word, as the clue implies? The answer recalls a line in the Merchant of Venice, when Antonio is accused by a friend of being one of those strange fellows ‘that will evermore peep through their eyes, and laugh like parrots at a bagpiper’. The Bard’s sense of humour was wackier than a crossword setter’s.
    1. No, but big paper is an adequate two words: there’s a double letter swap for the A and I.
  8. Thought this was very much on the straightforward side except for EDICT, which seemed to have come from a different puzzle entirely and held me up at the end for several minutes.
  9. 11 minutes, so some sort of kindness to relieve a weekend of awfulness for a supporter of English cricket and Spurs football.
    I agree with vinyl’s comment: there was some pretty clever wordplay on display here, undermined by some pretty obvious definitions. UNSIGHTLY, WITCH DOCTOR, ASSEMBLE to name but three. The only way that slows you down is that it prompts over-hasty entry: I essayed MANLY for MACHO and, like Janie, ETERNAL for ENDLESS – in the latter case, it would stand well enough as an answer in another puzzle.
    Indentures is (are) usually plural for apprenticeships, but yes, I was slightly discomforted to run out of space for the final S
    I can never see POTPOURRI without thinking of Rev Ian Paisley, who apparently didn’t want any. Sorry.
    1. Can’t agree about the cricket Z, I thought it was fantastic!
      Have to limit the gloating though, in light of the news about Trott. Even we nasty Aussies wish him a full and speedy recovery.
  10. A vaguely unsatisfactory start to the week. I have no issue with SHELL-LIKE but as we are all saying, it is hyphenated. Isn’t it usual to mention the hyphen in the clue, eg 5-4, rather than 5,4 ? Perhaps this is just a glitch in the iPad version.

    Agree with z8 about the cricket, especially as Trott is on his way home.

  11. As another lurker who comes here for enlightenment can I express thanks for those who contribute and explain.This was a puzzle I finished but was none the wiser as to why many such as incline and bore as worked.Bagpiper was personal favourite and I never thought I’d ever say that
  12. No problems with SHELL-LIKE (occasionally used in our fsmily) or BOREAS or PANGA, but held up for a minute or two with my LOI BAGPIPER until I had wondered about PAN PIPER and so on. A clever double letter exchange and my LOI.
    Bagpipes are OK outdoors. Memories of playing the 18th at Turnberry on a balmy summer evening with a piper on the terrace, magnificent.
    Agree on the cricket front with bigtone and z8, and IMO M Clarke should be fined 100% not 20%, but liked the Spurs result, being an Arsenalite.
    1. Bit tough on old Clarkey Pip. Whether we like it or not, his comment is the sort of stuff that’s uttered on a cricket field two hundred times a day. And your Jimmy is one of the chief offenders.
      Probably should consider fining the stump mike operator though!
  13. No problems today, only 12 mins & one cup. A word in your shell-like, Vinyl.. saying a word is obscure or unknown is a sure-fire way to get folks forming a queue to say how they use it daily. In this case, plausibly..
  14. Went through this a bit too fast – EDICT went in unparsed, then finished off with PANPIPER similarly in 15min.
    (I had the idea that a ‘pan-paper’ would be bulky, being all-inclusive: dunno why the right solution didn’t come to mind – perhaps the INCAS were to blame.)
  15. 9 mins and I thought I was going to be slightly quicker but I was held up at the end by the ENDLESS/BOREAS crossers. Anyone who has seen the Severn bore will know that it is a wave even though it is tidal in origin.

    I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength because I found this to be the proverbial top-to-bottom solve, although I do admit that I only saw the wordplay for EDICT post-solve.

  16. 13m, so no problems here.
    I didn’t like the definition at 10ac. Courting (like flirting) is only foolish when it’s with disaster: the foolishness is in the combination. But it’s in Collins so my disagreement is with them, rather than the setter.
    I didn’t understand 4dn at all, so thanks for the explanation. I convinced myself that the construction involved a homophone for “which”, so I was never going to see it.
    I couldn’t help noticing a somewhat ruder alternative for the wordplay in 12ac.

    Edited at 2013-11-25 11:03 am (UTC)

    1. Same thing in last week’s ST. Don’t think I’ve seen a similar one for months though.

      Edited at 2013-11-25 11:13 am (UTC)

  17. I found this pretty straightforward, though I faffed around for a little while at 5d trying to work in ‘cub’ and ‘cob’, but that wouldn’t work of course. Correct answer was very obvious once a crosser was in.
  18. 33 mins. I found this fairly straightforward to complete, but I must admit that I entered several answers on definition alone, without working out the wordplay (eg 3, 11), so missed some of the subtleties.
    I wasn’t keen on 16 since there are two articles, each to be replaced by one, which is not indicated by the clue. I spent some time wondering why bag paper was bulky.
    1. Don’t follow. In BIG PAPER the article, A, is swapped with the one, I. One swap, one article.
  19. 15 minutes with BOREAS last in fromwordplay. Thought it was a little tricky for a Monday and didn’t see the wordplay for INCLINE
  20. Just over 9 minutes, and another who put in EDICT on definition and checkers before coming here for enlightenment. I am also in the club of those who fondly remember Minder, so I found myself hearing 25ac in the voice of Arfur Daley.

    Mind you, as a third and final “also”, I’m another who was feeling lucky as they went about today’s puzzle: having initially tried and failed to buy Monty Python tickets, which apparently sold out in 45 seconds, I thought that was it, until the 02 website offered me an alternative date, and revealed four extra shows, so it seems I have got in after all.

    Edited at 2013-11-25 12:48 pm (UTC)

  21. Maybe a bit inconsistent, but I couldn’t see much wrong with the entries per se. I was held up by PANGA and BOREAS, neither of which were at that point withing my admittedly slender vocab, but not too bad.

    Result on MPFC tix Tim!

    Cheers
    CG

  22. 13:05 .. a fairly flat wicket with just enough in it to catch the unwary. I’ll confess to being another who submitted EDICT unparsed – it’s a good thing we don’t have to show our workings in the margin. I always hated that at school as it ruled out the inspired guess, my preferred tactic for maths problems.

    Some very nice surfaces. HAIR SHIRT my favourite (I liked it for the same reason vinyl1 didn’t!).

  23. Seven minutes, [crypticsue]???!!! I couldn’t even write the answers out that fast! And here was I feeling fairly pleased with 28 minutes. Still, any landing you can walk away from…

    BOREAS was my LOI, as I didn’t know the word; “Borealis” (as in the famed aurora) convinced my linguistically bereft brain that “Boreas” was a plausible name for something northern. PANGA was also a bit of a stab in the proverbial – one of those words I thought I knew, but wasn’t sure how I knew. In contrast, many of the others just wrote themselves in, with the parsing coming later.

    16d held me up for a while, due to the use of the word “musician”, which clearly has a meaning other than that to which I am used.

    And for once (I think) I find myself not the last to post here. This is by virtue of my being in Malaya (or “Malaysia”, as they will insist on being called now), which has had the good sense to adopt a timezone eight hours ahead of my usual one. As a national policy, it’s a stunningly smart move – you only have to look at the advantage we Brits enjoy by being constantly five or six hours ahead of the US to appreciate why. By the same token, the accumulation of 4 minutes per day, over the millennia, explains why Cambridge got so very far ahead of Cardiff before the imposition of country-wide GMT.

    My only quibble is “APPRENTICESHIP” being clued as “In dentures”. Surely “indentures” would correspond to the plural (apprenticeships), as would the “They are…”? Or am I missing somethings?

    1. I don’t think this is the definition. Chambers defines “indenture” as “a written agreement between two or more parties, esp (in pl) between an apprentice and an employer”. So I took “indentures” to be a contract required for an APPRENTICESHIP to be served. I’d never heard of indentures in this sense so the answer just went in from the checkers.
      1. Yes, I too took “indenture” as a noun, but “in dentures” (plural) surely clues “indentures” (plural), for which the answer would be “apprenticeships” (plural), no?
        1. Yes, but “indentures” is not acting as a synonym for APPRENTICESHIP in this clue. “Indentures” (plural) constitute a contract which is a requirement for an APPRENTICESHIP.
  24. A PB since I have been checking my time in just under 15 minutes. My classical education helped with “boreas” while “edict” went in last on the basis that I could not think of anything else.
  25. Like others put several in from definition without bothering with the cryptic – EDICT and WITCH DOCTOR for example. Can’t believe anybody bothered to parse 4D or OMANI. Thought 17A was ludicrous.
  26. I am trying to think back. As a trainee Chartered Accountant, I think that I was indentured as an Articled Clerk, certainly with a named Principal although without the drama of the written contracts being snipped in half zig-zag style (hence the ‘dentures’).
  27. Under 15 minutes on the first leg of my commute. Irritated by a crossword that didn’t really challenge. Irritated by in-dentures as a stupidly simple clue (initially thought I must be wrong). Irritated that I had nothing to do on my return commute. Irritated that the setter shares Rossini’s opinion of Wagner. Really irritated all round today.
    1. If it’s any consolation it took me 60 minutes on MY commute with an additional spell at lunch time – I definitely found it challenging enough. My LOI was 17A which took me over 10 minutes struggle so I certainly didn’t find it “a stupidly simple clue”, just felt stupid myself when I cracked it. Rather than feel irritated, just feel smug that you managed to do what a lot of us can only dream about.

      By the way, why don’t you try the 3 Sodukos on the way home like I do?

  28. About 20 minutes, ending with EDICT on the apparently widespread ground that it fit. Didn’t know of PANGA or SHELL-LIKE, and got BOREAS via remembering that the northern aurora is ‘borealis’. A bit tricky for a Monday, I thought. Regards.

    Edited at 2013-11-25 08:31 pm (UTC)

  29. I’m so annoyed not to have seen this unaided. As a fan of the great? William Topaz McGonagall, I should have remembered “Boreas blew a terrific gale, which made their hearts for to quail.”
  30. 6:19 here of a nice easy start to the week. I was slowed a little by trying for a clean sweep but failing on BAGPIPER – I had the A and P in place, found it difficult to get HARP out of my mind, and eventually gave up the attempt. (Sigh!)

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