Times 25,890: Revenge of the Monkey Hangers

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I don’t mind admitting that I found this a bit of a tricky one, even though I’d possibly seen some of it months before – the perils of being occasionally called upon to test puzzles for friends! Fortunately I have the opposite of a photographic memory, let’s call it a Photoshoppic memory (highly prone to filters and deceit), and much of the hair that I’d only just grown back got torn right out again.

That’s not to say there weren’t some easy ins, mostly of the reasonably straightforward anagram variety, but for every one of these there’s also a deeply recalcitrant stinker. So while I could fill in, say 1A and 3D, almost right away, I had to ponder 21A and my LOI, 19D, for many, many minutes at the end before light finally dawned, to the accompaniment of some truly alarming groaning noises.

That some of the vocab was a little thorny didn’t necessarily help. I didn’t know the aforementioned haircut, or synonym for a judge, or the goods sold directly. 26A seemed quite neologistic, and possibly hindered by a typo (?), but at least the cryptic part was straightforward enough. But anyway, we are here to learn. Wrestling with this puzzle definitely made me a better person.

The clues that I liked I did really, really like. 14D was very fine and a beautiful word, at least to this classicist’s sensibilities, but I think top honours may have to go to 23A, a gorgeously evocative clue-narrative where every single part of the yarn being spun has a double meaning, leading with equational purity to a surprising solution.

Remember how SLOTH was following me around for the first few puzzles I did for this blog? (It even resurfaced in a Paul crossword in the Graun this week. Stalked by a sloth!) In the Times, it’s 6A’s turn to be repeated from the last puzzle I blogged. Are there any words you can’t seem to shake when doing crossword puzzles?

Across
1 HARTLEPOOL – town: (HALL REP TO + O [ring])* [“specially”]
6 STEM – arrest: “force in London’s”, i.e. MET’S, “returned”
10 DECORUM – “what’s becoming”: DECO [style of art] + RUM [unconventional]
11 TALLISH – “not all that short”: LLI [trouble, i.e. ILL, “returns”] “stopping” TASH [facial hair]
12 SACRED COW – “that mustn’t be touched”: RED [brightly coloured] that SAC COW [bag bully] “guards”
13 GO FAR – be successful: GOFER [messenger] with A [article] swapped in for E [English]
14 JANET – girl: AN{d} [“short and”] “wearing” JET [black]
15 SUMPTUOUS – rich: “turning” OUT PM U’S [out + in the afternoon + university’s] + US [American]
17 NAY-SAYERS -“they don’t accept”: (ANY*) [“novel”] + SAYERS [detective writer]
20 ELEMI – ingredient for varnish: hidden backwards in {t}IME LE{ss} [“reflective”]
21 EXCEL – “are the tops”: “end removed from” EX CEL{l} [old jail]
23 UNIFORMED – “got up [i.e. dressed] as prisoners”: UNINFORMED [“in the dark”] – the second N [“later indefinite number escaping”]
25 QUAFFED – drunk: FF [very loud] + E [“close to” {hous}E] “disturbing” QUAD [yard]
26 GODSLOT -“opportunity for minister to broadcast”: GODS + LOT [luck]
27 EXPO – great display: EX [“(of goods) sold directly”] + PO [Post Office]
28 FREE FRENCH – “resistance once”: (REFERENC{e}*) [“abridged” reference “adapted”] inside F H [“first half, initially”]

Down
1 HADES – underworld: SHADE [obscurity] with S [society] “sinking” to the bottom
2 ROCK CANDY – American’s sweet: CAN D [tin daughter] “opens” ROCKY [“readily shaken”]
3 LARGER THAN LIFE – exaggerated: LA [note] + (FAR LENGTHIER*) [“novel”]
4 PUMICES – rubs: PU [up “the wrong way”] + MS [writing] “about” ICE [unfriendliness]
5 OUTSWIM – “defeat at gala perhaps”: OUTS WIM{p} [exposes weakling “largely”]
7 THIEF – “one taking”: T [time] + HIE [hurry “no longer”, i.e. archaic] + F [fine[
8 MAHARISHI – guru: MA [parent] + HARSH I [strict one] “protecting” I [one]
9 FLIGHT RECORDER – “key to cause of accident”: FLIGHT [series of step] + RECORDER [judge]
14 JUNOESQUE – “with figure rounded”: UE [up, EU] “supports” JOE’S Q [ordinary chap’s question] “about” UN
16 OGEN MELON – “something fruity”: O GEN [zero info] “on” MEN [people] “keeping” LO [watch]
18 ECUADOR – land: (RACE DUO*) “resolved”
19 SHINGLE – passé haircut: H [hours] “cutting” SINGLE [“not spoken for”]
22 CLAMP – vice: “ring” L [left] with CAMP [party]
24 DITCH – channel: CH [check] with DIT [“a bit of Morse”] on

50 comments on “Times 25,890: Revenge of the Monkey Hangers”

  1. Whew what a struggle – I ground my way painfully from NW to NE to SW finally waving the white flag at 19d (never heard of it) and 26a (a clever clue if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate typo).

    In case anyone is wondering about Verlaine’s heading, I suggest you Google Hartlepool and monkeyhangers. Although the good folk of Hartlepool are very proud of their legend, (even electing their football mascot Hangus the Monkey – geddit? – as their mayor three times!) alas there is no evidence that it is true.

    Edited at 2014-09-12 08:20 am (UTC)

  2. I don’t think there are any ‘goods sold directly’ to learn about. I read it as EX (‘sold directly’, as in ‘ex warehouse’) + PO giving the literal ‘Great display (of goods)’.
    1. Hmm, but is an expo solely a display “of goods”? My Chambers gives “ex” as “direct from”, so my thinking was that “ex x goods” (as it were) would be “goods sold directly from x”. I’m usually wrong about at least one thing a week, though…
      1. ODO defines EX as “(of goods) sold direct from”.
        I think the word ‘by’ is part of the definition of EX, rather than the wordplay.
      2. Not solely, but that is part of the definition of ‘exposition’ in ODO: ‘large public exhibition of art or trade goods’.
  3. Not really my sort of puzzle. Some good stuff but a lot of tortuous twisting as well – 23A for example – and some train crash clues such as 14D. Pity about the typo at 26A, solved from the straightforward cryptic whilst 19D was solved from the definition.
  4. It’s rare that I get like Mr Angry from Purley but today, hmmph, the careless typo at 26a meant I couldn’t get that and stymied me at 19d – the hardest clue in the grid.

    A pity, as this was a very worthy Friday puzzle. As well as JUNOESQUE, I particularly liked NAY-SAYERS, where I tried hard to make ‘non-takers’ fit.

  5. 33:11 … really enjoyed a lot of this but felt it was a bit spoilt by the SHINGLE clue. What’s that ‘when’ doing there? The surface would be okay without it and it makes a real hash of the wordplay. On the brighter side, THIEF is excellent.

    HARTLEPOOL is another place I haven’t been to.

    2. I don’t understand your objection to “when” in the wordplay of 19dn. It seems fine to me, and it makes the surface reading slightly better.
  6. Another excellent “chewy” puzzle, both lively and interesting. I also didn’t know the haircut and for that reason it was my last one in. EX = “sold directly” was also unfamiliar though I have heard of goods being sold “ex-factory” which I assume is an example of it in daily usage.

    I parsed 7dn as: T [time] + HIE [hurry no longer – i.e. archaic] + F (fine – abbreviation)

    2. Ah yes, I was a bit puzzled over my parsing of that one. I knew someone would sort it out for me in the likely event that it wasn’t quite right… thanks, and amending!
  7. I gave up on this after half an hour. I’ve never heard of either GODSLOT or SHINGLE and the wordplay proved impenetrable to me.
    The fact that 26ac said ‘minster’ didn’t help, but looking for the wrong sort of gallery probably hindered me more.
    At 19dn I contemplated the possibility that ‘you’ve not spoken for hours when cutting it’ might be a definition. ‘Hermione had been giving him the silent treatment ever since the unfortunate pumpkin incident, but much to Pongo’s surprise she cut the shingle over breakfast’.
    Ah well, you can’t win them all. I enjoyed the bits of it that I did solve.
    1. Ha ha, yes, I wondered the very same thing about “cut the shingle”. A tough tough clue, but I did have a splendid “epiphany moment” as I suddenly spotted the “not spoken for” = “single” correlation. A bit tortuous but really quite clever too.
  8. Found this a slog, with a number of unknowns (ROCK CANDY, GODSLOT, SHINGLE, PUMICE as a verb) though I was pleased to remember OGEN from the last time it cropped up, even if I also misremembered that it was a lemon. Not a fan of these wordy clues, even if their (presumed) purpose is to better disguise the definition.
      1. I know that song from the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? The soundtrack features a recording from 1928 by Harry McLintock. I think I’ve also heard versions of it (without references to cigarette trees and the like) on compilations of children’s songs.

        Edited at 2014-09-12 10:08 am (UTC)

        1. I’ve heard of that recording since, but the Burl Ives version was the one famous to generations of kids in the 50s and 60s.

          Ives recorded it in 1949, cleaned up for kiddies with references to whisky lakes etc expunged but it’s interesting from a modern POV that “cigarette trees” were not thought worthy of the attentions of the proverbial blue pencil.

          1. Hardly surprising with doctors extolling their health-giving properties! I think it was peppermint trees in the kids’ version I had, but perhaps that will be considered unacceptable before long too.
  9. Thanks Sotira, I didn’t like the wordplay in 19d either and you have found the remedy. Imperfections apart (and solvers may differ as to where these lie) I thought this a proper Times challenge, i.e. one which I am relieved to finish under the half hour all the while thinking I might not. Spotted the likelihood of ‘minister’ at 26ac but thought that Songs of Praise from York or Southwell might satisfy the clue as printed.
    1. Yes – I wasn’t *sure* this was a typo, in the sense that *I* think it reads better with “minister”, but it’s not rendered completely nonsensical by being “minster”, so it could just be, as it so often turns out to be, a matter of taste…
  10. 28 mins with the last several of them spent on the SHINGLE/GODSLOT crossers. I had the same “Songs of Praise” thought as malcj on the minster in 26ac. I echo the sentiment that this was mostly an excellent puzzle with a couple of clues that weren’t at the same level as the others.
  11. Somewhere around 40 minutes today, though not entirely sure as it was a bit of a piecemeal effort.

    OGEN MELON seemed somewhat familiar and having checked, it appeared in the clue for DIOGENES in 25803.

    I was greatly helped by reading 26A as minister despite the typo! Even so, GODSLOT and SHINGLE were my last in. For several minutes I sat convinced that SHINGLE was the only word which fit the letters but it took some time to fit the cryptic and I’ve never head of the haircut. From my Googling it looks reasonable – not as passe as the mullet I regrettably sported in my youth.

  12. Found a lot of this fairly straightforward, but then ground to a halt in the SE corner, finally filling everything except 19, for which I resorted to the dictionary. The meaning was totally unfamiliar. The one thing that didn’t bother me was the typo, because I didn’t notice it.
    I agree with DJ and Sotira about the inelegance of some of the clues – tortuous cryptics and ungainly surfaces. I would add 2 and 12 to their examples – what on earth is 12 supposed to mean?
  13. Didn’t much appreciate seeing PUMICES and GO FAR which seemed weak answer-words, or GODSLOT which is probably too obscure even for me, but this was probably okay. Bit of a slog for scant reward in terms of cryptic delights maybe, but it’s Friday. So I don’t care TOO much.

    So HAD you seen it before, Verlaine?

    41 minutes.

    1. Yep, I just found a “first draft” of the puzzle in my inbox in early May. Plenty of time for me to have forgotten most of the hard bits…
  14. 45m but needed help on SHINGLE and the fruit. I did enjoy a lot of this including the top billing for my wife’s hometown. I found said SHINGLE impenetrable as a result of not knowing the necessary meaning and an inability to decipher the rather tortuous wordplay; a clue I would never have got however long I stared at it. Thanks for entertaining blog.
  15. Apart from anything else, I was severely hampered by trying to make DITCH mean check, on the basis that CH comes from channel.
    Is the SHINGLE so demode? Any more than, say, the bob or DA? By the time I’d got down that far, such solving cells as I have left were overheating badly, as reflected in my 45 minute solving time.
    Not easy, apparently.
    1. The bob is still around. My daughter had her hair cut in a bob a while back, and even I knew more or less what that meant. I’ve never heard SHINGLE in my life.
      The DA is the Beerbohm Tree of hairstyles.
      1. I can’t distinguish many variations of the barber’s art, and currently hold mine in an elegant ponytail in evidence of not having been to a barber at all recently. But I have heard of a shingle somewhere in my past, and while it first appeared in the 1920s it’s still pretty current. Should you wish to try it, here’s all you need to know about creating a shingle bob.
        I suppose because I’d heard of it, and didn’t think of it as archaic, the passé was no help at all.
  16. Like K I gave up with 19 and 26 missing. I’m not sure whether giving up 5 miuntes sooner than him is good or bad.

    Likewise I enjoyed much of what I did get, although there was some pretty convoluted stuff (e.g. Junoesque).

    I had a moment of panic at 3 thinking “exaggerated note” aws going to be one of the myriad foreign music notations I don’t know.

  17. I must have been properly ‘on the wavelength today’ as I took 12 mins to solve this nicely tricky crossword. Is there a sort of mini theme with JUNOESQUE, LARGER THAN LIFE and TALLISH? Thanks to setter and blogger.
  18. FREE FRENCH, GODSLOT and OGEN MELON all unknown, but got there in the end.

    Good challenge but I agree that the surfaces weren’t as elegant as some recent offerings.

    Nice blog Verlaine. Watch out for that stalking sloth.

  19. I can see that much of this puzzle was very clever, but didn’t enjoy it much because of the excessively tortuous and convoluted wordplay, plus the irritating misprint at 26A. Are prisoners UNIFORMED these days?
    1. Depends whether you think green jogging bottoms and a grey shirt (Pentonville, last time I was there, if memory serves) constitute a uniform. I would associated “uniform” more with what the warders wore.
  20. For me not as hard as yesterday’s; 35 minutes after golf (2nd and last round today, and in only 30 degrees; result, we avoided relegation again); shower and beer. Would have taken me less time in a normal morning!
    Mrs K helped with confirming SHINGLE was something to do with haircut, otherwise no aids. Some jolly clues today, including Godslot, Junoesque, quaffed (my son-in-law’s favourite word); outswim my only ‘is it a word?’ moment. Nice blog Verlaine; so there is hair under that hat as well as on the visage?
  21. Tough, about 45 minutes, but interesting vocabulary among the answers. LOI was SHINGLE, because it fit and sounded vaguely like it could be a haircut. Regards.
  22. Agonized for a long time over the UNIFORMED/GODSLOT/SHINGLE corner but eventually plumped for the right ones, can’t exactly say how. Very tricky.
  23. 16:44 for me, with the last two or three minutes spent trying to parse SHINGLE. (I eventually gave up on the grounds that the answer couldn’t possibly be anything else, and only managed to parse it properly after I’d finished.)

    I initially read “minister” in 26ac, but then realised it was “minster” and (as someone who once lived in York) was entirely happy with it. It could be a misprint, but “broadcast from gallery” makes for a good surface reading with it as it stands.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

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