Times 25824 – Bill Haley, won’t you please come home!

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
41 minutes for this delightful and lively puzzle. When I first saw the grid with no three- or four-letter words I was expecting a toughie but 1ac went in on first reading and most of it flowed very nicely from then on in. Indeed so much so that I thought I was on course for sub-30, but four somewhat unfamiliar words in the SE corner delayed me towards the end. I had a feeling there’s some sort of theme going on here but, if so, I’m unable to nail it, however the first four letters in row 2 fit rather well with 6 and 1dn.

Across

1 ALCOCK AND BROWN – COCK (raise) inside A LAND (a country), BROWN (toast). The British aviators who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919.
9 OLD BAILEY – OLD (previous), BAIL (conditional freedom), YE (you) reversed. In case anyone doesn’t know, this is the colloquial name for the Central Criminal Court, hence the reference to returning ‘here’ after being on bail in the surface reading and definition.
10 COYPU – COY (evasive), UP reversed
11 NEIGH – Sounds like “nay”, with echoes of Francis Howerd
12 GANGPLANK – GANG (group), PLAN (scheme), banK. It can take one onshore too!
13 THEODORA – ODOR (Californian fragrance – indicating US spelling) inside THE and A (articles)
15 CADDIS – DI (detective – inspector) inside CADS (no gentlemen). A moth-like fly whose name is only known to me through crosswords.
17 EVER SO – E (English) VERSO (page). ‘Recto’, the right-hand page of an open book, came up in the Quickie I blogged on 1st June and I mentioned for the benefit of newbies that its opposite number ‘verso’ is also worth knowing.
19 PUT TO BED – PUTTO (pretty boy – as depicted by Italian Renaissance painters amongst others), BED (qualified teacher – Bachelor of Education)
22 LEASEHOLD – Anagram of HOLES inside LEAD (front)
23 MOSUL – S (small) inside MOULd (evidence of decay). A very helpful clue indicating the part of the world in which the city we’re looking for is to be found. I only know of it from reports on the various conflicts in Iraq.
24 CLUBS – L (large) inside CUBS (youngsters)
25 CHASSEING – ScenE inside CHASING (engraving). An unlikely looking word when its acute accent is omitted. It brings back childhood memories of Victor Silvester (expelled from my old school)  and ‘Come Dancing’ on TV. How sedate and civilised it all was. I refuse to watch its brash modern equivalent.
26 WELLINGTON BOOT – WELLING (rising up), NOT reversed, BOOT (advantage) which according to my dictionaries survives in common usage as a verb but its noun equivalent is considered archaic and obsolete.

Down
1 AROUND THE CLOCK – AROUND (circling), THE CLOCK (grandfather)
2 CODEINE – Anagram of DIE ONCE
3 CLASH – L (large) inside CASH (funds). ‘Not go’ is the definition in the sense of colour co-ordination, for example.
4 ALLEGORY – ALLEy (passage), GORY (bloody)
5 DRYING – R (rook) inside DYING (failing) with reference to forgetting one’s lines on stage etc
6 ROCK PLANT – ROCK (music), PLANT (factory). If this were the Guardian no doubt it would have been cross-referenced to 1dn.
7 WAYLAID – Anagram [crooked] of LAWYer [without hesitation], A, ID (set of papers)
8 TURKISH DELIGHT – RUT (frenzy – as in the mating habits of deer etc) reversed, KISH (kiss – said drunkenly), DE-LIGHT (plunge into the dark)
14 DISPERSAL – Anagram of L (line) + IS SPREAD
16 QUADRANT – QUAD (court) RANT (passionate speech). ‘Suppressed’ seemed to indicate enclosure but here it means something like sitting on top of, or holding down the other element of the answer.
18 ERASURE – ERA (period), SURE (fixed)
20 BUSHIDO – SUB (boat) reversed, HID 0 (revealed all). It’s a feudal code of Samurai.
21 TOUCAN – Anagram of OUT, CAN (tin). Where’s my pint of Guinness?
23 MESON – SO (such) inside MEN (people). A particle physics thingy beyond my ken but will no doubt please Jim by its inclusion. I’d be more interested in its alternative meaning of a Mexican pub.

31 comments on “Times 25824 – Bill Haley, won’t you please come home!”

  1. Never heard of ALCOCK and BROWN, more of a Smithy man myself, but they were very gettable.

    Never heard of the dance or CHASING (in that context) either, so CHASSEING was ungettable for me.

    Totally fair though, mustn’t grumble. Agree with Jack that it was another excellent puzzle.

  2. 19.10, and a very enjoyable, somewhat nostalgic solve. The amazing and immortal heroes of the Vickers Vimy made for a great start, though even as I wrote them in I thought “I bet somebody’s going to say ‘never heard of them'”. I win – cheers galspray!
    A moment of relived ineradicable shame with EVER SO – being the class swot at 7 and putting my hand up to ask how to spell it (one word or two?) to be told firmly I should not be using such an expression. Hubris, eh? Who needs it at that age. Thanks Mr Downing.
    TOUCAN – the definition made me smile, so CoD.
    Skids under a fast time in the SE with BUSHIDO, CHASSEING and QUADRANT all resisting staunchly. MOSUL sadly very topical this very day, with the large Christian community desperately fleeing the advancing ISIS forces, their churches being destroyed. Not a MainE city, then.
    1. A little curiosity: the last time we had Alcock and Brown referenced, with similar blank looks in sundry places back in May 2012, I related my other schoolboy embarrassment. I’d like to pretend there were only two. Spooky, though.
      1. Oh, and the same crossword had VERSO’s mirror twin, RECTO, in the plural.
    2. Z, you’ll find I’m quite useful when you’re looking for someone who’s never heard of something. And no disrespect intended to Messrs A and B, I have nothing but admiration for all those ocean-crossing magnificent men back in the day.
      1. No slight intended! In the same puzzle as above, I embarrassed myself (again) by confusing my Socrates and my Sophocles. That said, Alcock and Brown’s is one of the all-time great adventure stories, achieved just 10 years after Bleriot astonished the world by crossing the channel in his monoplane. As you say, magnificent men!
  3. A nice end to the week and one where my level of GK proved invaluable in a 45 minute saunter.
    I always feel a bit sorry for Alcock & Brown as Charles Lindbergh always seems to get far more credit for his transatlantic crossing, yet A&B did it 8 years previously.
    And my knowledge of barn dancing came in useful: a chassé is where you and your partner in ballroom hold slide to the left (chassé left) or the right (yes, chassé right!), though I don’t think I’d heard the term “chasséing” as such. Fortunately, I got it through the engraving technique of “chasing”.
    Thanks for the blog, Jack, and especially for parsing 8d which was pretty fiendish. Lots of nice clues today.
    1. Agree re Alcock & Brown. If they had been American they would be much better known. (My spellchecker has just queried ALCOCK but has no problem with LINDBERGH – which rather proves the point) I remember that they came up once before in this blog. I commented then that Sir Arthur Whitten Brown and his wife lived for over 20 years in a flat about 100 yards from where I now live in Swansea. The local flying club have put a plaque on the wall but otherwise he seems to be completely unhonoured here. Very sad. Ann
  4. DNF (pressed the wrong button and shouldn’t be on the leaderboard) … CHASSEING beat me all ends up. As for the rest, wavelength what wavelength?

    There’s always tomorrow.

  5. Provided you know of pioneers A and B (and its sad how quickly such people are forgotten)this is not a difficult puzzle but in contrast to some other previous offerings it’s lively and very entertaining. A real Times cryptic. 15 minutes to solve.

    I knew CHASSE from dancing and of course MESON (thank you setter). I loved the definition of TOUCAN but my favourite clue has to be 9A with not a wasted word and a supurb surface reading.

  6. Under half an hour. Off to a flying start with 1 ac, though I always think of the famous dancer (not Victor Silvester) who described himself with that ribald epithet.

    Ah, the whisk and chasse! I could hear the tinkling pianos of “Dancing Club” on writing in 25.

    Another first rate puzzle, if I may say so, with a good variety of clues, from the succinct 17 to the clever 9 to the tortuous 8. Wonderful beginning to the day.

  7. Very clever puzzle, with lots of traps for the unwary or half awake. That unlikely-looking CHASSEING is indeed a bugger to spot from the checkers as well. (I’ve noticed that on Test Match Special, different commentators refer to batsmen “chasséing down the pitch” and “sashaying” down the pitch, and I sometimes wonder if the two factions think they’re using the same word, but the other one is mispronouncing it. Possibly the ones who’ve been on Strictly Come Dancing brought in chassé, and the two have become interchangeable.)
    1. Now you mention TMS, I realise I do know the word, damnit. But thank you. I’ll remember it now. And thank you for the image I now have of John Arlott doing the tango on Strictly … that I would have paid to see.

  8. Gave up well over the hour with a blank at CHASSEING. I always seem to come a cropper when accents are involved. Otherwise a challenging (for me)-in-a-good-way puzzle.
  9. 24:39. I thought I was going to be well under 10 minutes for this, but then it took me a while to construct BUSHIDO from the wordplay (although once I had done so I recognised it vaguely), and then fully 15 for my last pair, CHASSEING and QUADRANT.
    I was utterly convinced that 16dn was going to be something inside CT: I should have resorted to the old ‘try a Q before a U’ trick earlier.
    Both the dance and ‘chasing’ to mean ‘engraving’ were unfamiliar to me, but they both sounded kind of right. Still, I had to do a lot of alphabet work before concluding that I couldn’t find anything better.
    So I found those three clues very satisfying. The rest of it a bit less so, as quite a lot just went straight in from the definition, but it’s a nice set of clues.

    Edited at 2014-06-27 08:37 am (UTC)

  10. A very enjoyable 10 minute solve, with BUSHIDO the last one to fall, helped by a bit of working through the alphabet before the penny clanged loudly to the floor.
  11. 21 mins. I was never going to be in for a quick time because it took me much longer than it should have done to see answers like ALCOCK AND BROWN and EVER SO. Like others I struggled in the SE, and when I eventually got PUT TO BED it led me to QUADRANT (like keriothe I had been looking for something to put inside CT) and BUSHIDO, but that still left the 25ac/23dn crossers. I eventually remembered MESON (I can just imagine Jimbo shaking his head in astonishment) and then teased CHASSEING out from the wordplay, although I was pleased when I went to my Chambers post-solve and saw it wasn’t a momble. Good puzzle.
  12. Steady progression with this enjoyable puzzle. Good to see that the old trick of trying out a Q before a dangling U worked yet again at 16dn.

    As for 1ac, john_from_lancs, it was not in my world a dancer who attracted this epithet. (0n edit, well perhaps he was, as well as a singer)

    Edited at 2014-06-27 02:46 pm (UTC)

    1. Yes, Tone, he was an all-round entertainer, though I remember him most clearly as a very agile tap dancer.
  13. DNF here, due to not knowing either the engraving or dancing required for CHASSEING. I.did get A and B from wordplay, though I have to admit I couldn’t identify them otherwise. Regards.
  14. About an hour of solving while watching Tsonga and chatting to visitors, all done except the Samurai DK and the chassé thing; unlike Jimbo I am not a twinkletoes and avoid all forms of dancing at all costs. Otherwise a pleasure to potter through, with Messrs A & B my FOI followed by Around the clock. Loved the DE-LIGHT bit.
  15. Could not get CHASSEING… had C?A?SEING and went for COARSEING on the hope it was a word. Rest was fun!
  16. 40m but couldn’t get to the dancing word despite having all checkers in place. Most enjoyable tussle though and 8d the pick for me. Thank you setter and blogger.
  17. 24 minutes with a short delay over the last two which were, no surprise, CHASSEING and QUADRANT, looking for too long at something inside CT. I read The Knights of Bushido with horrified fascination as a teenager so that went in from definition and B——O.Liked the variety too.
  18. 8:03 for me, held up badly at the end by 16dn (QUADRANT) and 25ac (CHASSEING). The latter was particularly galling, as not only did I think of CHASING and SE straight away, but I’ve danced chassés in various dance forms (e.g. French baroque, English traditional, jive). I somehow simply failed to see that CHASSEING – without the accent to help me – was actually a word.
  19. I should have added that I found this a most interesting and enjoyable puzzle. My compliments to the setter.
  20. A shade over the hour for me, and I’d all but given up. The SE corner almost defeated me. I was trying to convince myself that “carseving” or “caserving” was a word. I got there in the end, but only because of a misunderhension on my part: I knew “sashaying”, and guessed that it must be a corrupt American spelling of “chasséing”.

    BUSHIDO took me a while as well. I guessed the BUS part, but I didn’t see the answer until I’d gone away and come back, whereupon it just leaped out at me unexpectedly. QUADRANT also held me up, as I thought the “court” was a CT, and took the wrong meaning for “passionate”.

    Overall, I thought it was an excellent puzzle and well worth stealing the library’s Times and the librarian’s pen for. No doubt I’d have thought different if I hadn’t finished. Glad (in a slightly unkind and gloaty way) to see one or two others stumped. Stunned to see that tony_sever (a) finished this in eight minutes and (b) was galled by this time. My only consolation is that I got 8.63 times as much diversion out of the puzzle as Tony.

    I’m missing out on the Friday night fun, being off duty tonight. However, the earlier part of the day saw two award winners. Award for Most Unnecessary Visit to A&E went to a young lady who’d been stung by a nettle in an unusual place*. Award for Most Creative Accident Using a Benign Object went to a gentleman who had put his eyeglasses on “very crossly” during an argument with his wife and stabbed himself in the eye.

    *Haverhill

    1. Love the awards, Thud. Just make sure you give the nice librarian his/her pen back, OK? They don’t earn very much, you know
      I only got about 3 times as much diversion out of this puzzle as Tony did, but it is his just punishment for being a former National Champion and all-round clever clogs

Comments are closed.