Times 25,761 – Of Roods and Furlongs

75% of this is quite straightforward but the NE corner has a Mephostoish tang to it that may slow some down.

There’s an old fashioned flavour to this puzzle which may also prove troublesome. 20 minutes to solve.

Across
1 PAPER-CHASE – P(A-PERCH-AS)E; pole=rod=PERCH=Imperial land measurement=a quarter of a chain (about 5 metres);
6 PATH – short for pathology – one for Thud;
9 PICTORIALS – (social trip)*; the old Picture Post perhaps;
10 SAGO – S(anti)AGO; “frogspawn” – memories of 1940-50s school dinners;
12 MEETING,HOUSE – “heating mouse”;
15 NEWMARKET – NEW-MA-(trek)*; the centre of horse racing;
17 SENNA – S(i)ENNA; a Gregory;
18 USAGE – U-SAGE;
19 TACTICIAN – sounds like “tack-Titian”; Hannibal perhaps;
20 SUPERCHARGER – SUPER-CHARGER; the stripe down the side of a petrol head’s car?;
24 IONA – A-NO-1 reversed; Hebridean island;
25 SNICKERING – S(NICKER)ING; NICKER=quid; grass=SING; a whole collection of old slang;
26 GIST – G(r)IST;
27 PROPITIATE – (irate pop)* surrounds IT; appeasing a god to curry favour;
 
Down
1 PIPE – two meanings; a churchwarden is a type of pipe for smoking tobacco;
2 PACT – P-ACT;
3 RIO,DE,JANEIRO – R(I)ODE-JANE-IRO(n); Brazilian tourist trap;
4 HOIST – HO(I)ST;
5 SPLENETIC – (pose client – o)*; Victor Meldrew;
7 AMANUENSIS – A-MAN-(uses in)*; Eric Fenby no doubt;
8 HOOTENANNY – HOOT-E-NANNY; he’s a HOOT=he’s amusing; Hogmanay, Burns Night, etc;
11 CHASTISEMENT – C(HAS-SIT reversed)EMENT; spare the rod and spoil the child – a saying the older generation will recognise;
13 ANGUISHING – (L)ANGUISHING;
14 SWEAT,PANTS – S(WE)AT-P-ANTS; tracky daks;
16 KITCHENER – more eager=KEENER then replace (warfar)E by ITCH; WW1 poster pin-up;
21 RECAP – R(EC)AP;
22 DIVA – DIVA(n);
23 AGUE – (pl)AGUE;

43 comments on “Times 25,761 – Of Roods and Furlongs”

  1. A challenging puzzle. E.g., working through the clue for CHASTISEMENT. On the other hand, several well-made (but obvious) clues: SENNA, SUPERCHARGER and TACTICIAN being cases in point.

    Talking of the last, I think we need to include “tack” as part of the homophone.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 08:01 am (UTC)


  2. All complete, but in poorish time… most done in about 40 minutes, but needed quite a bit longer for my last two: USAGE, and finally ANGUISHING. After much.

    I too needed wordplay for RdJ, and put in PIPE with a shrug, since the churchwarden def was unknown/unfamiliar. Couldn’t work out IONA either. Looks so simple now! AMANUENSIS has come up here before (maybe even a couple of times maybe for it to have stuck), and HOOTENANNY from wp.

  3. the last 3 minutes taken up with 13d. Otherwise, this went quite quickly, but often for reasons not involving wordplay: I typed in RIO DE J simply on the basis of enumeration, saw JANE and left it at that, for instance. 10ac disturbed me at first, but then I thought, Who knows any city besides Santiago? and it came to me.DNK ‘nicker’. I always associate Kitchener with the Sudan; didn’t even realize he was in WWI. Liked SAGO and NEWMARKET.
    On edit: I just looked at today’s Guardian and realized that I also knew Valparaiso; glad I’d forgotten while solving.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 07:58 am (UTC)

    1. …and not with the pointy finger bloke in the most iconic of WW1 posters? Those fuzzywuzzies must have left a seriously lasting impression!
  4. 23:24 .. quite tough but scrupulously fair. I came within an ace of submitting ‘tactitian’ — I’d better up the caffeine dose by a few grounds tomorrow.

    Last in … ANGUISHING, which would also be my Clue Of the Day.

    1. Does that mean you’re shooting for the champs this year now you’re only 8 hours away from London by car rather than plane?
      1. I am indeed planning an audacious bid to be eliminated in the qualifying round this year.

        is it really 8 hours? I must remind Carruthers to stash a hamper in the Bentley.

        1. Crikey, I hope not. I’m in Cornwall at the moment on holiday and if it takes us that long to get back my plans for Friday are scuppered. And we’re right down the end.
          1. I asked an estate agent in Penzance recently how long it took to get from there to a certain spot and he said “20 minutes to an hour .. depending”. Having spent much of this morning staring at the backs of several Cornish tractors, I have sense of what he meant by that.
            1. We were in Penzance on Sunday: my kids were on the lookout for pirates. St Ives today: first time for all of us. It was a pretty good day to be there, as you can see.
  5. 34 minutes but I struggled to get 13dn and to parse a couple of others e.g.10 & 11. I’d probably have seen them on a blogging day but life’s too short. Needed wordplay to spell RdJ correctly.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 07:14 am (UTC)

  6. Found this easy, c12 mins – but put Rio de J in with a shrug & didn’t try to parse it

    My allotment (now relinquished) was stated to be 5 1/2 rods, rods here being a square measure of something like 16 1/2 sq. ft. Nobody going to work *that* out in sq. m, in a hurry..

    1. A square rod is about 25 square meters so your allotment was about 140 square meters
  7. About 30 minutes for all but the Chilean city, which I insisted was an obscure one, unfair etc. and simply left it blank: how easy is it then. Liked clues for anguishing (me) and snickering (setter); and especially the reminder of the word for a party.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 09:02 am (UTC)

  8. 16 minutes, and a whole extra crossword’s worth staring at the blanks in 13d. One feeble excuse is that I didn’t think “to anguish” was a verb, but then I suppose I anguished over this clue for too long.
    Count me in (to my surprise, I have never questioned it) with those who can’t spell RdJ without help. Do we all pronounce it wrong? Or is it just me?
    You know you’re in an old-fashioned crossword (say about 1935) when the only concession to the later 20th century is SWEATPANTS, though even that is given in the etymologies as 1946, and SENNA is clued without reference to F1.
    1. Thought I might catch you here Z. Yes I’m one of the “tactitian” nincompoops (why I don’t like the quickies on the club site, they lead me into error).

      If you’ve time, could you glance at my entry on the General forum re TLS 1016. I wouldn’t mind reinforcement. I’m a bit reluctant to stick my head further above the parapet there at the moment – we’ve got a troll who’s been making free with my name. Another one…

      1. Done and done. Like you, I thought the DaedElus mistake was mine and was kicking myself for being an idiot, before realising that the E was the correction to my entry. Let’s see if we can elicit a response. Oh, and “death to trolls!”
  9. Didn’t know sago, so went for taro (also a good starchy food), assuming there would be a city to go with it. Fell for the trick at senna (dutifully removing the plucked brow from brown, to absolutely no avail and a lot of time wasted). For me the SE went in easily, but the SW 13d and 26a took a lot of (anguished) staring.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 10:05 am (UTC)

  10. 18 mins, with probably the last six of them spent on ANGUISHING and the PATH/HOOTENANNY crossers. For the last two I’d convinced myself that the definition for 8dn was going to be “someone minding the kids”, and I didn’t get the write-in for Thud at 6ac until after I’d finally seen the more obvious wordplay and definition for 8dn. Fortunately I never have a problem spelling RdJ and I already had the R?O checkers for the first word when I read the clue so it went in unparsed.
  11. 14 minutes and slightly stretched by some of the parsing, if not the actual solving, and happy with the general knowledge, though I can easily see people falling foul of some of it. 26ac reminded me of touring the brewery where a friend worked; as well as the grist, the process turned out to involve many poetic words, though wort, sparging and trub haven’t appeared in the crossword yet. I suspect hootenanny would have been considered obscure until Jools Holland got hold of it; a good word, and my LOI as well.
  12. 12:21. Like Kevin I bunged a lot of these in from the definition, including RIO DE JANEIRO. I should actually have paid attention to the wordplay there, because it’s exactly the sort of thing I think I can spell but can’t. Fortunately I got away with it this time.
    I agree there was a bit of an old-fashioned feel to this, but very little that I didn’t know. The stand-out exception being ‘churchwarden’, which must have escaped from a Mephisto.
    Last in HOOTENANNY, once I’d got PATH and started looking for something other than a word for a childminder starting DO.
    1. I think I may have first come across that meaning of “churchwarden” in a Times crossword many years ago. It still crops up pretty regularly, appearing less than three years ago (in No. 24,900, 13 July 2011) in the clue “Expected churchwardens to queue here? (2,3,8)” and less than two years ago (in Jumbo 999, 22 September 2012) in “Churchwardens here are pleased initially about dividing harvest (4,4)”.
      1. Fair enough. No complaints anyway, because the answer is perfectly gettable even if you don’t know it.
        I should have said that the perch/pole/rod measurement thing also went completely over my head, but perch for rod seemed close enough even without the specialist knowledge!
  13. In my pretentious student smoking days, I had a CHURCHWARDEN as well as other pipes. Only for my room though as not for carrying about. As Tim suggests, I only knew HOOTENANNY courtesy of Jools.
  14. All done in 50 minutes except the NE. The more I looked the less I saw so gave up and came to the blog. Should have but couldn’t get path so had no hope with amanuensis and hootenanny. Thanks for putting me out of my misery!
  15. Clue for 15 didn’t make sense to me:

    15. Woman who’s has just had baby with awful trek to reach town (9)

    Shome mishtake shorely?

    1. It looks fine to me John:
      Woman who’s has just had baby = NEW MA
      with = juxtaposicator
      awful = anagrind
      trek = grist
      to reach = link between WP and def
      town = def
      1. Woman who’s just had ……..or
        Woman who has just had …..but
        Woman who’s has just had?

        Sounds strange to my ears.

  16. It’s the

    …who’s has…

    which is causing conternation.

    Has to be a boo-boo.

  17. Can’t be bad when I completed in less than twice the time it took the Fast Lady. What’s the betting I foul up horribly tomorrow?
  18. Much the same experience here, starting off at a good lick in the NW and fortunately spotting the potentially tricky ones from checkers. 15 minutes.
  19. After endless staring at the checkers for 13d I eventually threw in the towel, propoerly anguished, after 30 minutes.

    Edit to add that I recently bought a pipe, not a churchwarden but one almost identical to the Magritte one that isn’t a pipe. I don’t smoke it but it’s great for giving directions, pointing to things on menus and prodding people in the chest to emphasise a point. It also helps me effect a rather fetching contemplative look that wouldn’t look amiss in a 1970s knitwear catalogue.

    Edited at 2014-04-15 12:21 pm (UTC)

  20. Fairly straight-forward and quite pleasant 50 minutes. Never heard of Jools Holland or Hootenanny, but word play was clear. Rio went in once I had R and O.

    Does anyone ever use a word like splenetic outside of Crosswordland I wonder?

    Nairobi Wallah

  21. 24 minutes, with 13d and GIST taking the last six minutes. Agree, the syntax in 15ac is dodgy ‘who’s has just had..’ but otherwise a pleasant moderate level offering.
  22. Can’t say I much care for the clue to RIO DE JANEIRO

    What would be wrong with: “I travelled about with woman to nameless club in city”

    The “ ’ll have” and “descending on” appear to be included only to muddy the waters, rather than actively mislead.

  23. Not so easy here, about 45 minutes, ending with KITCHENER/SNICKERING, because I hadn’t a clue about where the pound was fitting in. On the Lord K. clue I was simply misled by the setter and was looking for some kind of soldier, not a proper name. Most of the other hold ups for me have already been mentioned, ANGUISHING being one example. Regards.
  24. About 30 minutes, spread over two commutes. Anguished much too long over ANGUISHING, my LOI, as the present participle just seemed wrong. Which of course it isn’t.

    Otherwise an enjoyable solve; nice to have a few write-ins in the NW (PIPE, PACT, RIO DE JANEIRO, HOIST) just to get things going.

    Before Ken Russell went completely crass and tawdry, he made an excellent BBC Omnibus film “Song of Summer” about Frederick Delius and his AMANUENSIS, Eric Fenby. Russell was, then, touched by genius. Well worth looking out for.

    COD HOOTENANNY, for its sheer exuberance!

    1. I agree it was excellent. It has been shown on TV quite recently, possibly shortly after Russell’s death as was his Monitor film on Elgar, another masterpiece.
    2. For once we can agree on something: Song of Summer is a beautiful and moving film.
  25. 9:28 for me. As an old-fashioned type, I thought this was a nice straightforward puzzle – or rather should have been, but extreme tiredness meant I made heavy weather of some easy clues. (Sigh!) For instance (L)ANGUISHING is a old chestnut, but it was still my second-to-LOI.

    Actual LOI was IONA, which I’d initially wanted to be TAIT. (Doh!)

Comments are closed.