Times 25790 – On your bike, son!

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This was a chewy little number for a Monday, with generally nice clueing mixed with some slightly odd literals and tricky but gettable vocab. 74 minutes for me.

Next week, since Vinyl and I are both otherwise engaged, a mystery blogger will be in the Monday slot.

Across

1 MUFF – a very evocative cryptic definition to get us going. I cannot hear the word now without thinking of the scene from The Office Christmas Special in which the bloke from the warehouse counters the annoying pregnant woman’s suggestion that he put out his cigarette with the mother and father of graphic retorts (also involving ‘beans’). Right up Richard Scudamore’s alley, as Stephen Fry might say. My penultimate in.
3 APARTMENTS – ‘housing’; the trick here is to separate ‘soldiers on leave’: A + TS (‘back street’) surrounding PART + MEN.
10 STATIONED – ‘set’; ION (‘a bit electrified’) inside (‘to have got’) STATED (‘said’). I liked this.
11 DEWAR – ‘flask’; W[hisky] in DEAR. unknown but eminently gettable on account of its Scottishness.
12 RECLAIM – ‘get back’; ECLAI[r] in RM; Chambers’s definition for eclair is topped only by the one for ‘boy band’.
13 RACIAL – ‘of particular people’; A + CIA in (R[ight] + L[eft]).
15 SPANISH OMELETTE – ‘food’; anagram* of ITEMS ON PLATE SHE. I was working with ‘spinach’ for a while.
18 OPPOSITE NUMBERS – ‘rivals doing the same job’ (Arsene Wenger and the wonderful Steve Bruce); in many English streets, house numbering ascends from 1 on one side and 2 on the other, hence the crypticky bit.
21 MARVEL – ‘wonderful thing’ (think Bryan Robson); MAR + V[a]EL.
23 CONSENT – ‘authorisation’; CO + N + SENT.
26 BASIN – ‘a requirement for cleansing’; reverse (turn) A Bishop to give BA + SIN (giving Arsenal a corner when Sanogo’s backheeled it out of play for a goal kick?).
27 PRIESTESS – ‘holy woman’; PRIES + TESS (as of the d’Urbervilles). After reading Far from the Madding Crowd as a kid, I decided that life was too short and already too unhappy to bother with any more Hardy qua novelist.
28 DOLLAR SIGN – ‘character in American bank’ (well I suppose so, tho’ the literal seesm a bit stretched to me); I was working around ‘Dallas’ for a long time, trying to tease out the wordplay – even going back in time to 1963. It was an interesting journey, if ultimately a fruitless one, as the anagram was hidden in plain sight behind the grassy knoll of my imagination: AN OLD GIRLS*.
29 BYRD – ‘composer’; BY RD (‘at the roadside’). Needed the Y from ELEGY to Sheppard me away from CAGE and ARNE.

Down

1 MISPRISION – ‘crime’; M (‘monsieur’) + IS followed by I in PRISON (‘one evidently jailed’). The offence sounding like an Oscar Wilde character is actually ‘the deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony, where felony is used in the English law sense of those offences (murder, wounding, arson, rape, and robbery) for which the penalty included forfeiture of land and goods’ (edited from ODO). My last in.
2 FRANC – ‘money’; RAN (‘managed’) in alternate letters of FaCt.
4 PANAMA HAT – ‘outdoor headgear’ (I don’t quite get the role of ‘outdoor’ – not the best surface, this); PAN (‘criticise’) + AMAH (‘Indian maid’ – though they occur in other parts of Asia too, including Hong Kong, where they even have a rock named after them) + AT (Territorial Army reversed).
5 RIDER – ‘jockey’; but what about the wordplay? After extensive research, the best I have come up with is a two-wheeled bicycle for toddlers called a Strider, which would parse as ST (‘stone’ = ‘weight’) + RIDER. Do I get to hold the cup aloft? Tho’ no one will prise the trophy out of my hands, this is in fact a double definition reliant on an obscure meaning of ‘rider’ – nod to McT
6 MEDICAL – ‘examination’; C in MEDIAL. Took me ages to see…
7 NEWCASTLE – ‘city’; WC (‘small room’) over (‘north of’) A inside NESTLE (‘settle’). This is the most innovative clueing I’ve yet seen for the north-eastern city which Steve Bruce was born just down the road from.
8 SURD – ‘irrational’; DR +US reversed. This weird word can be an unvoiced consonant as well as an irrational number. But enough of the wife – as Scudamore might say. (According to Oxford, from Latin surdus ‘deaf, mute’; as a mathematical term, translating Greek (Euclid) alogos ‘irrational, speechless’, apparently via Arabic ji?r a?amm, literally ‘deaf root’. I think they’re making it up.)
9 DIWALI – ‘festival’; IW (Women’s Institute reversed) in DALI.
14 SENSITISED – ‘maybe like painful teeth’ ie made abnormally sensitive (I don’t care for such words myself – give me ‘orientate’ over ‘orient’ any day); SET INSIDES*.
16 APPRAISAL – ‘boss’s evaluation’; RAIS[e] in APPAL.
17 MANACLING – ‘restraining’; a charade (AKA concatenation) of MAN + A + CLING. Watch out for different part of speech in clue and literal as here with stick/cling.
19 SAVANNA – ‘plain’; SAV[e] + ANNA. Similar device to 16d.
20 MONIST – ‘philosopher’; MON[arch]IST. I’ve never knowingly met one of these.
22 LAPPS – ‘northerners’; sound like ‘lapse’ (‘get worse’) – unless you’re a Lapp, I guess.
24 ELEGY – ‘work of poet’; EY (YE reversed) around LEG (‘part of the journey’).Both YE and THEE occur (together with their cognates, ‘thy’ etc.) – sometimes without indication of their archaism.
25 OBED – ‘son of Ruth’; OBE + D[aughter]; the paternal grandfather of David and grandson of Salmon. Didn’t leap out at me…

36 comments on “Times 25790 – On your bike, son!”

  1. Similar experience to Jack above. Never heard of DIWALI or DEWAR. And I was sure that 13ac had to be P—-R from “particular”. Just one of many fine deceptions.

    As so often, thankful for the few big anagrams that allowed a start with useful checkers.

    Edited at 2014-05-19 02:46 am (UTC)

    1. I thought you might recall Donald Dewar – a Scots MP with a very appropriate name I used to think
  2. Completed without aids in 43 minutes but struggled a bit with an unknown in every quarter: MISPRISION, SURD, OBED and MONIST.
  3. 25 mins. No complete unknowns except OBED – fortunately the wordplay was clear). I say “complete unknowns” because if you asked me to explain a SURD or a MONIST I’d be hard put…

    Edited at 2014-05-19 03:51 am (UTC)

  4. DEWAR was my only DNK, but the wordplay was fortunately easy enough. Getting 15ac and 18ac early on helped.I’m sure we’ve had DIWALI before; otherwise I wouldn’t have known it. (Although as it was I had to revise ‘dawili’.) RIDER was my LOI, going in because of ‘Jockey’ and for no other reason; I still haven’t parsed it, and am looking forward to Ulaca’s explanation. It was nice to see ‘philosopher’ not involving Ayer for a change. There’s a journal of philosophy called ‘The Monist’; I don’t know what their shtick is.
    I tend not to like it when reality intervenes; I hope nothing is seriously wrong, Ulaca.

    Edited at 2014-05-19 05:50 am (UTC)

  5. ODO has:

    A small weight positioned on the beam of a balance for fine adjustment.

    1. I believe the clock mechanism in Big Ben has riders made from old one penny pieces positioned at strategic points

  6. Same unknowns as those above, but I had two blanks at 45 mins: STATIONED (thought of it, but couldn’t see why) and MISPRISION (thought of it, but couldn’t imagine it was a word). Didn’t help that they crossed.
  7. Forgot to ask how exactly “save” = “avoid” (19dn)? I can’t think of a context at the moment.

    Also, at 11ac, the brand of whisky (Dewar’s) made the answer easier than it should have been for me as one who never heard of the flask nor of its inventor.

    1. One example in ODO is:

      “Book early to avoid disappointment”.

      “Save” could just about go in there as a sub?

      1. Ooh, that’s a bit of a stretch. I thought I was missing something obvious. Thanks.
    2. For SAVE, Chambers has inter alia
      “To prevent or avoid the loss, expenditure, or performance of, or the gain of by an opponent”

      Bit of a mouthful but it does include the magic word.

  8. 26:36 … well, I’m very glad MISPRISION turned out to be a word. It’s that “evidently” that was throwing me — I spent nearly 10 minutes trying to think what I was missing. Wouldn’t the clue work just fine without it?

    Otherwise, the several unknowns-to-me were easy enough to figure out from wordplay.

    I do think, as McT suggests, that RIDER is just a double def.

    COD .. NEWCASTLE, like.

  9. 21.53. I do get tired of the ho-ho-ho comments on words such as 1.ac. from the odd blogger. Still, thanks to same for the general effort. All straightforward though had to take Obed on trust. The clues seemed a little one-two-clunk somehow – workmanlike, no wit, just its imitation.
  10. My comment’s been spammed which is annoying. Are the criteria for doing so easily available? On edit – unspammed now.

    Edited at 2014-05-19 07:21 am (UTC)

  11. From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87:
    Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
    Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
    So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
    Comes home again, on better judgment making.

    I imagine that this or elsewhere in Shakespeare is where I came across the word; which meant ‘misunderstanding’, though.

    1. I think there it means undervaluation. One of my favourite sonnets. The ambivalent ‘dear’ in the first line, the wonderful feminine rhyme tugging at one, the echo in the last line, the simple humility behind it all. Surely despite the lack of outside information the author is the most knowable of poets.
  13. My first daily puzzle for 2 weeks and a slightly strange offering it is

    Each of the first 3 down clues contains what could be considered misleading padding: “evidently” in 1; “must be” in 2; “outdoor” in 3. Also not convinced by “character in American bank” as a definition at 28.

    25 minutes for a vaguely unsatisfactory experience

    1. Welcome back, Jim. Evidently you must be rested by your time “outdoors”.
    2. Welcome back, jimbo. I kept thinking it was quiet round here. Too damned quiet …
  14. 14 minutes on this one – just wavelength, I think. The vacuum flask inventor was further back in memory than the Whisky, leading to brief thoughts on product placement in the TC.
    I’m feeling smugly polymathic this morning, as all the unknowns mentioned seemed t be in place, including the little gizmo on the balance beam. I knew MONIST enough to know I aren’t one: Philosophical joke: I’ll be a monist till I die, and then I’ll reconsider my options.
    Thanks Ulaca for those Chambers definitions.
    I too wondered what “outdoor” was doing in 4, but I suppose the setter was trying to find something a nurse might be criticise for, turning up in headgear doesn’t quite make it.
    Last in $, CoD to APPRAISAL, for being (I think) slightly rude about the practice.
  15. My first 15×15 comment for a while – having done the Quickie it’s taking longer to get round to these – several finished off over the weekend. I’m surprised that my 48 minutes is ‘up there’ with the regulars especially as I was learning as i went – surd, dewar, obed, misprision and now polymath from Z8! I also joined Ulaca on the journey to Dallas so it’s been fun all the way.
  16. 22 mins but with plenty of potential mombles that turned out to be the right answers. They were same ones that had others keeping their fingers crossed, i.e. MISPRISION (my LOI), SURD, DEWAR, OBED and MONIST. I also only knew one of the definitions for RIDER, but with the checkers it couldn’t have been anything else.
  17. Overshot my half-hour target by about thirty seconds but I enjoyed the puzzle, as usual.

    Thought it had a slightly scientific leaning (DEWAR flask, “bit electrified”, SURD, RIDER …… that last one brought back memories of fiddling about with analytical balances; isn’t modern technology wonderful?)

    Couple of “dummies” fooled me for a while: I thought that the “old girl” in 28 was DOLL (had an uncle who always affectionately addressed his wife as Doll) and it took me a while to see where the “about” fitted into 27.

    I always think of an increase in pay as a rise rather than a raise, but that didn’t delay me too long.

    Convinced myself, however, that the answer to 17 was the wholly improbable MANTOVANI and “Charmaine” will be going round my head for the rest of the day.

  18. Identical experience to Andy’s, in that it took me 22 minutes and I was very surprised to find that none of my mombles were mombles.
  19. Just over an hour, and the same experience as other with the several unknown but gettables. I had the most trouble with misprison – all the letters and crosses were there, but I just couldn’t unjumble it. Kind of liked Byrd.
  20. A few seconds over 16 mins and so close to a sub-Sue. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow. No unknowns part from DEWAR although I would have struggled to name the son of Ruth had I been asked. When a word seems redundant I look to see whether it is justified by improving the surface. I agree with Z8 that the ‘outdoor’ in 3dn passes this test because nurses do (did?) wear headgear and the ‘must be’ in 2dn makes it read more smoothly (IMO). Can’t bring myself to say the same about ‘evidently’.
  21. 32m with plenty of unknowns – MISPRISION, SURD, OBED, DEWAR, MONIST. Also not familiar with BYRD unless he was a member of The Byrds (who I recently discovered named themselves as misspelt animals after The Beatles).
  22. Around 25 minutes, and my GK did not hitherto include all these weird words that went in from wordplay only. SURD, eh? A very abstract feel to this puzzle, more of an exercise in trusting the wordplay rather than my own memory. Like others have already said, I half expected to come here and find a few of my entries were wrong, but no, all these unusual jumbles of letters are actually words, and correct. Odd to see that many in one puzzle, and on a Monday no less. Regards.
  23. 70 minutes, but never heard of MISPRISION, and only knew SURD as a mathematical entity, but wrote them in and so pleasantly surprised like others to see they were correct. I’m still unconvinced by save = avoid…..
  24. Aargh! My current bad form continues. 11:32, but with a ridiculous error: MANICLING. I suppose I must have been thinking of “manicure”, and failed to spot that the wordplay should have made the spelling (which I really knew anyway) obvious.

    I hadn’t heard of (or more likely had forgotten) OBED, and I wasn’t familiar with the required meaning of RIDER (and I had to check “save” in ODO afterwards to see how it equated to “avoid”), but I was familiar with everything else. In fact I’d have really enjoyed this puzzle if I hadn’t screwed it up. (Deep sigh!)

  25. 25 min.: DNK OBED – I don’t see why the setter put him in, as ABED was available, or plenty of other options if the rather weak BASIN hadn’t been used.
    Though I had heard of MISPRISION, it took me a while to get it as I’d started with CUFF at 1a. (so 10a was LOI)
  26. Did this one quickly on my morning commute, including 10 minutes on the platform, under 30 minutes in all. DEWAR unknown to me. RIDER went in on principal definition alone. FOI MISPRISION (a word which I’d only ever come in across in Twelfth Night, the delicious passage where the Fool is proving Olivia a fool), LOI PRIESTESS.

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