Times 25,854 – Here Come The Warm Jets

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Good morning! Nowhere halfway across the country/world for me to be this afternoon, so I thought I’d get up at 5.30 to have a relaxing go at the print version of the crossword over a nice mug of hot tea. Of course I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old, and no matter how discreetly I try to go about my business, they know: I had to alternate solving clues of this grid with fielding requests for more Weetabix, picking up screaming infants who have a promising career in football diving ahead of them, fending off attempts to “colour in” the remaining sections of my grid. Does anyone else here have to juggle puzzles with progeny, and if so do you have any tips?

Fortunately this was another nice easy solve, and even given my considerable handicaps the last clue went in long before the half-hour mark. No difficult vocab to contend with today – CLOISONNE being probably the trickiest word, and nothing particularly thorny in the construction. 10A was a bit of a puzzler for a while until I worked out what (I think) the definition was getting it, but the crossing letters made it obvious what it had to be, even if I did waver a bit about the possibilities of LINEN as a (pocket) square…

Overall, I did like this puzzle, it was easy but uniformly genial and witty. I enjoyed the “Welsh Frenchman” Gaston Evans, even though I’m always a bit worried as a lad who grew up west of Offa’s Dyke that “welshing” on bets may be a slightly racist term? This is not the first occasion I’ve seen it in the Times in recent months though, so I assume the editor does not share my concern, and he’s a wiser man than I. I also felt a diver for pearls might not be strictly speaking “looking for seafood”, but what a tiny quibble that is. Clue of the day probably 1A for me: what can I say? I cut my teeth on Paul in the Guardian from the early age and anything with a hint of smut to it does it for me…

Across
1 BIDET – BIDE [wait] + {je}T, &lit
4 UNPOPULAR – out: (ON RUN LAP UP – {competitio}N)* [“round the bend”]
9 ORCHESTRA – band: OR [gold] + CHEST [box] + RA [drawer, i.e. artist]
10 LENIN – “kept man” (his body is preserved in a mausoleum in Moscow): NINE [square] + {mea}L “brought over”
11 PARLAY – a bet: PAR [expected score] + LAY [place] (Corrected from previous reading, thank you eagle-eyed solvers!)
12 CLOTHING – kit: THIN [light] in CLOG [footwear]
14 POTTY-TRAINED – “going properly”: “potty trained” leads cryptically to “trade, in”
17 TAG WRESTLING – punny cryptic def, wrestling for tags suggesting “struggling to be labelled”
20 MALDIVES – Indian Ocean nation: MAD [wild] about L [Liberal] + IVES [composer]
21 MERINO – wool: (MORE IN)* [“knit”]
23 TITCH – little ‘un: {pregnan}T + ITCH [desire]
24 TERRORIST – ERROR [wrongdoing] IS inside T{hrea}T
25 CLOISONNE – decorative enamelwork: IS ON [working] inside CLONE [exact replica]
26 ETHIC – body of morals: {Lamb}ETH I C{ommend}

Down
1 BLOWPIPE – cryptic def
2 DECORATE – spruce up: DEC [Christmas time] + ORATE [what to do on soapbox]
3 THE LADY VANISHES – double def (description of the three-card trick aka find the lady, and Hitchcock thriller)
4 UNTO – as far as: {yo}U {ca}N {ge}T {s}O
5 PEARL DIVER – one looking for seafood: PEAR [fruit] + LIVER [meat] “eating” D{odgy}
6 PULL THE OTHER ONE – “don’t make me laugh”: (OTHELLO PUN THERE)*
7 LENTIL – seed: LENT [nearly six weeks, i.e. 40 days] + I L [left]
8 RENEGE: welsh: RENE [Frenchman] + G{aston} E{vans}
13 BROWBEATEN – bullied: BROWN [a shade] “punched” by BEE [worker] “carrying” A T [temperature]
15 DIMINISH – drop: DISH [lovely] “dresses” I’M IN [wearing]
16 AGNOSTIC – “one doubts”: ITS “essential to” CONGA [dance] reversed [“with a backflip”]
18 EMETIC – drug: CITE ME [“say what I said”] reversed [“about”]
19 BLOTTO – wasted: LOTTO [game of chance] after B{ad}
22 FREE – “not a penny?”: FEE [money] “about” R [right]

40 comments on “Times 25,854 – Here Come The Warm Jets”

  1. 16 something but with a pseudo-dyslexic ‘Linen’, which may be what he’s swathed in. All this pressure Penfold’s been putting me under made me rush the checking process.

    CLOISONNE (which I see my Mac thinks is not a word without an acute on the final ‘e’) had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the basement of memory, and PARLAY went in with a mental question mark.

    I tried not to smile at BIDET but failed.

    1. I kept searching in vain for the word (punctuation?!) in the clue indicating the pow-wow meaning.
    2. Don’t grumble at your Mac – without the accent cloisonné isn’t a proper word, and drops a syllable. I know we ignore accents for the sake of crosswords, and treat two words as one (e.g d’Annunzio, as I can’t think of another at the moment) but that doesn’t mean that these original forms are wrong
      1. I wasn’t grumbling. It was an incidental observation (hence the parentheses). I don’t recall suggesting there was anything wrong with “original forms”, cloisonné or any other, but thanks for the lecture anyway.
        1. I’m sorry if it sounded like a lecture, so no doubt I deserve the reproof. I’ve got a Mac too, and if I try to reply to your mail, as opposed to on the blog, every time I hit the space bar I lose contact. I’m getting too old for this…
          1. I was a bit snarky so we’ll call it quits! I get a little touchy when people critique comments in the blog some days or weeks after the fact. Quite a lot of contributors don’t have their accounts set to notify them of replies and are none the wiser when responses are made other than on the day the blog is posted, so they never know a comment has been made in response to theirs. Fine if it’s a neutral remark but if there’s a criticism, actual or implied, they have no opportunity for rebuttal. It’s just a personal hobby horse (I have a sizeable stable of them). Not to worry.

            I don’t think you can reply directly to an email from LiveJournal notifying you of a reply in the blog (if that makes sense). You have to com back to the thread and reply online, or send the person a private message by clicking on their name and … oh, stuff.

            Regards

            1. Two problems – firstly we found this crossword tough, hence the delay (spouse and I pass crosswords back and forth, make comments, help each other; by no means the normal profile) and also my previous blog ID had died on me, probably because I don’t use it that often. But thanks for your comments
  2. As a founding member of the anti-PC brigade I find nothing wrong with “welsh”. It would be a pity if a perfectly good word went the way of ‘niggardly’ in the States. (Good, on that note, to see ‘niggardliness’ in the Guardian yesterday.)

    As for the rest, ‘easy’ this puzzle was not, even if I made it harder than necessary by bunging in ‘arm wrestling’ at 17a. What a waste of all those Saturdays switching channels from rugby league to Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks!

    Took a while to work out which end of the clue provided the literal for LENIN, given there is a Lenin Square in Petersburg. COD to BIDET, which wins the bout of the toilet clues by two falls to one.

    Edited at 2014-08-01 07:20 am (UTC)

    1. Ha, yes, I mentally pencilled in “mud wrestling” for a while before I found something that actually made sense.

      Niggardly is etymologically unrelated to… anything bad, isn’t it? Though I’ve just looked up the origins of “welshing” and apparently it may have meant “fleeing to Wales to evade your debts” rather than “not paying your debts because you’re Welsh”. In which case it’s not a racial slur at all (though, in fairness to me, plenty of people on the internet seem to suspect that it is).

      1. I think it’s as much as anything that we think you Cambrians can take it on the chin.
      2. I quite like the sound of that origin but all my dictionaries have it as origin unknown. Where did you get this one?
  3. Are you sure it’s “unto” at 4dn? I suspect it’s my 1 mistake – my thinking was the same as your’s but “upto” might be the one I missed.

    Tom Stubbs

    1. I looked it over again and it doesn’t seem particularly doubtful to me? But I’ve been wrong before.
    2. As indicated in the blog it’s made up of last letters of given words so there’s no room for doubt I’m afraid.
    3. Mine, Tom was,(as a typo) to put TAB instead instead of TAG in 17a. I’d feel better if I wasn’t the only one to do so.
  4. I was in 50 minute territory too, give or take, held up by the forgotten CLOISONNE and PARLAY unknown with reference to betting. The definition at 10 is a bit of a stretch but I didn’t mind it as the wordplay is crystal clear.
  5. 25 minutes, with L-N-N for 10 ac, couldn’t see a reason for LINEN and now have to go out for the day so resorted to the blog; well parsed by Verlaine.
    Having just had 2 weeks with 2 and 4 y-o grandchildren in small cottage in Welsh Wales, with 3 blogs on the schedule, I sympathise; I found the Sennheiser noise cancelling headphones were frequently required even at 6 a.m.
    Loved BIDET and POTTY TRAINED, especially after said holiday.
    Was confused about PARLAY – obviously the answer but tried to parse it with LAY = place a bet?
    1. Another idea I had was “know the score” = “know the lay of the land”, but it seemed even more tenuous than score = song = lay. Can’t say I’m 100% sure about my parsing though.
    2. As ulaca has now pointed out there is a much less laborious parsing than the one I came up with, sorry to have led you up the garden path there…
  6. Enjoyable puzzle with certainly something of a Paul-y flavour (I think he sets for the Times?) Was pleased to read on the forum that someone had gone for JAM WRESTLING.
  7. Possibly the most gigglesome crossword for ages, took 17’52. Add the ecdysiast at 15 to the Naughty Corner? TERRORIST was as good an &lit as you’ll see. Lenin a kept man? well, he is, though he must be almost entirely wax by now.
    DKK this meaning of PARLEY (doesn’t seem anyone did), but easy enough on wordplay and assumption.
    All in all, more than enough delight to excuse any minor quibbles. Nice one setter.
    In my experience as a grandfather, there is no cure for the infestation of rugrats (even the passing of years doesn’t help much). Print another few copies, and let them colour those in. Won’t work, but makes you feel as though at least you’re trying.
  8. 13 mins so I must have been on the setter’s wavelength, and what a fun wavelength it was. I thought there was some very amusing cluing, such as “a kept man” for LENIN, “going properly” for POTTY-TRAINED, and the whole Welsh Frenchman clue. I finished in the NW with PARLAY my LOI after 1ac, 1dn and 2dn.

    I considered “arm wrestling” for 17ac but didn’t enter it because I couldn’t parse it, and the correct answer finally surfaced.

    2. Ulaca, that’s what I had too. I missed that the reading in the blog didn’t match it.

      Edited at 2014-08-01 08:59 am (UTC)


  10. Almost all done in about an hour, but then I needed to change arm to TAG before getting THE LADY VANISHES, and finally PARLAY.

    Almost had c+r+0p for another slang term for ‘money’ at one point, before getting the unknown CLOISONNE.

  11. Another arm wrestler here until I realized that the lady didn’t varnish. That makes 3 this week that I had to read almost all the way through before getting started. 27 or so.
  12. 15:03 but with a careless upto at 4 – even my Mac tried to correct it to unto when I typed it just now. Twice. If you can’t parse it satisfactorily…

    Of course I should be using my muppet avatar today but Magritte wins on account of 8d.

    Agree that bidet was the pick of a jolly bunch.

    Posting earlier than normal as we’re off in a bit to “enjoy” Carfest North in the rain.

  13. Just snuck in under the 10 min mark with this very enjoyable crossword which certainly has all the signs of being a Halpern production.
  14. I’m glad some found this easy; it took me an hour and five minutes. I might have been quicker if I hadn’t entered ARM WRESTLING for 17, which meant that I couldn’t get 3, and one or two that crossed it until I eventually realised my entry for 17 was wrong. Once corrected, everything fell into place.

    Excellent clues. I do agree with jackkt that ‘kept man’ is pushing it, certainly rather obscure. Off topic, another kept man is Ho Chi Minh, much revered by the Vietnamese (and rightly so). If you want to see him you may have to queue for two hours.

  15. Very very fun crossword, and the clue at 1 across is a thing of beauty – it seems there isn’t a dry seat in the house!
  16. 15m. A very enjoyable crossword, for all the reasons mentioned. I particularly enjoyed BIDET, LENIN and Gaston Evans.
    A PEARL DIVER looking for seafood would be spectacularly unsuccessful, because the oyster species that produce pearls are not the same as the ones we eat, but that’s a minor quibble. Another very good clue.
    As a fellow rugrat-wrestler I can thoroughly recommend the goggle-box. While I have been solving and posting this my progeny have been glued to it. Now we’re all going to jump in the lake.
  17. Not at all easy for me. But clever and fun puzzle – BIDET and POTTY-TRAINED were a delight. “Kept man” was a bit ridiculous as the definition for LENIN but the wordplay was clear enough.
  18. Started with 1A and laughed out load, so I enjoyed this. About 25 minutes ending with changing ARM to TAG like others, so I could fit in THE LADY VANISHES. Thanks setter, and thanks also to Verlaine. Regards.
  19. Another who was hampered by premature ARM WRESTLING, and who was immoderately amused by 1ac.
  20. 13:04 for me, held up at the end by agonising over PARLAY: I was familiar with the verb – though not the noun – and hadn’t realised it had anything to do with betting.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  21. Just under the hour, enjoyed some of the fun elements, disliked the ten question marks as a proliferation of them means a slow, grinding solve for me, waiting for the light bulbs to come on. Great blog and comments though!
  22. Not as keen on this as some seem to be, and didn’t find it particularly easy, either.. did quite like 1ac though.

    Surely an oyster fisher is looking for seafood, but a pearl diver is not? You can’t eat pearls

  23. Lent is not “nearly six weeks”. In the western church it runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday inclusive: 46 days, 40 fast days and six Sundays. In the Eastern church it is somewhat longer.

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