Times 25958 – Strictly for the Nobs

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After perhaps the easiest Sunday puzzle of the Biddlecombe era (especially for those based in the UK), we’re back to normality today with a puzzle that had me a bit flummoxed as I couldn’t get the 1s for ages – not helped by having a senior moment and putting in the ‘transitional’ answer at 5d, it must be added.

Actually, looking at it, none of the four 14-letter solutions that girded the grid went straight in. If you were one of those for whom they did, then I would expect some seriously fast times. I managed 34 minutes, which is pretty much par for the Monday course for me.

ACROSS

1. FEEL THE DRAUGHT – I didn’t know the idiomatic meaning of this (to be short of dosh), so it was slow to fall.
9. FORGATHER – I rather liked this for some reason, probably not unconnected with the fact that when we had FORGE the other day I checked my hunch that FORGE could also mean a smith, and found it couldn’t. FORGER can’t really either, except in Crosswordland, where it manages it according to the same principle that gives FLOWER for ‘river’; literal ‘meet’ – parsing AT + H[ospital] in FORGER.
10. PHASE – quite a tricky little homophone this, since FAY hasn’t been the first girl’s name you think of since FAY WRAY wept for the ape 80 years ago.
11. HOOEY – I was working around ‘phoey’, which shows I was on the right lines – and also that I hadn’t got 1d yet; it’s a homophonic Doctor WHO with YE (how the word ‘the’ has come to be represented in olde English) reversed.
12. MUSKETEER – the river USK in MET + EER (poetical ‘ever’).
13. OVENBIRD – basically a South American sparrow that builds an oven-shaped nest. Off the bat, I’d have thought most nests were sort of oven-shaped, but maybe this one has a timer, a door at the front and always burns your peanut butter cookies unless you only put them in one tray at a time on the bottom shelf. And it’s O [Orwell’s opening – yes, I was trying to think how 1984 and Animal Farm started and failing too] + BIRD (custodial sentence) around VEN (archdeacons are given the title ‘venerable’).
15. ONE-OFF – ‘gone off’ (departed) minus its first letter.
17. UNBOLT – literal ‘free’; wordplay U (Nancy Mitford and crossword setters are the only people who use this rather twee abbreviation) N (a knight in chess – one of those Russian grandmasters must have learned English via phonics) and BOLT (shot from a crossbow).
18. POOH-POOH – ‘hoop’ reversed twice.
22. NIGHTMARE – an anagram* of MEN AT RIG about H[usband].
23. BLUER – to ‘blue’ is a word found in the dictionaries and in crosswords meaning to spend extravagantly; so on the ‘Flower Principle’ a person so doing can become a BLUER. A Tory is also blue, of course, unless he’s a wet.
24. SOBER – RE (about) and BOS[ses] reversed.
25. SHANGRI-LA – not just a hotel chain owned by Malaysia’s richest man, but also a place featured in a book no one reads called Lost Horizon, which was published in the same year King Kong came out. Have I discovered the ‘Nina’? Will they employ me at Bletchley Park? Answers in invisible ink on the back of a copy of the scorecard on the day Plum Warner scored 132* in Joburg. Oh, yes – it’s SH (‘Quiet!’) and LA (‘city’) around ANGRI (sounds like ‘angry’).
26. COLLECTORS ITEM – COLLECTS (‘prayer’) and ITEM (‘couple’) around OR (‘gold’).

DOWN

1. FIFTH COLUMNIST – I’ve got so good at these things over the past 5 years that I can now read the setter’s mind and instantly identify the part of the clue that will be the definition. Here, ordinary people would have thought it must be ‘spy’; I on the other hand knew it must be ‘by no means’. The moral? Sometime setters can be pretty ordinary too. It’s FIFTH (‘by no means the first’) and COLUMNIST (‘writer’ – or probably these days ‘ghost writer’).
2. EAR LOBE – our first earl, the one who was inbred and a little simple; EARL (‘noble’) and OBE (‘award’).
3. TOADY – I’ve no idea why a subservient type should be named after a slimy thing apart from the fact that he (or she) is pretty slimy him- (or her-) self. I remember having to listen to the Today programme at prep school – it drowned out the noise of 160 boys drilling through the skin on the top of the porridge made by the Portuguese kitchen staff. The setter has shown him- (or her-) self as cunning as any John Tusa or the woman whose name I have forgotten by taking this institution and turning the DA into AD.
4. EPHEMERA – a word I like a lot and use a lot when the news is on, much to my newspaper-reading wife and daughter’s annoyance. Literal ‘they’re short lived’; parsing HEM (‘border’) in EP (‘record’) and ERA (‘time’).
5. RAREST – ARREST (‘stop’) with one of the R[epublicans] hopping up a space in a Downly clue, as they are entitled to do.
6. UMPTEENTH – another word I like, but I think it’s getting a bit over-exposed. PUT THE MEN* gives you the ‘such a unspecified time’.
7. HEAVE TO – one of those nautical terms, I believe, like ‘Ready about Leo’, which I know from experience is nautical slang for getting a bang on the head. It’s HAVE TO (‘be obliged to’) with E[nergy] inside.
8. PEER OF THE REALM – this is a genuine &lit, I believe – quite a rare bird, the crossword equivalent of a goal from Roberto Soldado in open play. The wordplay first: PEER (‘equal’) OF (‘of’) and EARL (REAL*) in THEM (‘those folk’). The all-in-oneness gets its mojo from the fact that although a life peer is created by the sovereign by Letters Patent under the Great Seal on the advice of the Prime Minister (thanks Wiki), he (or she) is ‘admitted’ by the others in the room, unless they don’t want him or her to take their seat.
14. BILATERAL – you know, I think there are hundreds of ways to clue this word if you wanted to muck about with LIB or LIBERAL. The setter has settled on this one (which I’ve just noticed): reverse LIB to give BIL and insert LATER and A.
16. MODERATO – churches that span off from the spin-off tend to have a MODERATOR for the person who needs to chair the big forgatherings. A very cunning way indeed of getting round the problem of whether to call them Chairs, Chairpersons or Chairladies, although there was a particularly nasty schism in the Presbyterian Church of Gairsay in Orkney when a motion was tabled that moderatrices should be adopted. Ah, yes, the literal is ‘not too quickly’ and it is derived from MODERATOR without his or her second and final R[ight].
18. BUGABOO – our unfamiliar du jour: an imaginary source of fear, or ‘bugbear’ (what I put in first) or ‘bogey’; BUG + A + BOO.
20. OCULIST – first letters of On Cranbrook’s Usual followed by LIST.
21. PARSEC – our unknown du jour unless you are Jimbo: PARSE + C[onstant]. You know a place is a hell of a long way off when scientists call it a light year away. Well, this is more 3,000 thousand light years away, so not a place Richard Branson will be taking anyone any time soon.
23. BOGUS – BOGS around U.

38 comments on “Times 25958 – Strictly for the Nobs”

  1. Reading Ulaca’s lovely blog, I realize how many of these I just put in on checkers and d, as Bertie might say; or just checkers. The only Welsh river I could think of, for instance, was the Usk, and Bob’s etc. 25ac from def and enumeration. I slowed down at 9ac trying to find room for ‘farrier’, as well as never remembering which words take ‘for-‘ and which take ‘fore-‘. 17ac was my LOI, as I had to do one of my alphabet runs (unbale? unbalf?), and was tempted by ‘unbelt’–well, a shot of whiskey could be a belt, no? On edit: and I’m pleased to see I wasn’t alone.

    Edited at 2014-12-01 03:21 am (UTC)

  2. Indeed, a gentle start to the week but lots of unusual answers to keep one’s interest.

    No real unknowns, but I have to admit that when OVENBIRD emerged from the wordplay I forgot about the ingenious little nest builder and assumed it must be a chicken meant for roasting (ie not a “boiler”). Still, as they say in golf, it’s not “how” it’s “how many”.

  3. 39:56, one wrong.

    OVERBIRD doesn’t exist, but should. It would be the opposite of an underdog. Then if we had a veritable archdeacon rather than a venerable one, I’d have been all correct, but still well behind our blogger du jour.

  4. 29 minutes for this one, so beating my 30 minute target which doesn’t seem to happen too often these days. Even rarer is for me to beat a duty-blogger’s time, but I managed that too on this occasion.

    My only unknown was OVENBIRD and it was my LOI once I had all the checkers and got away from the idea that ‘archdeacon’ stood for RR.

    Perhaps ‘more to the right’ ought to be ‘purple’ now?

    1. I’d bet big bucks that we’ve had OVENBIRD in the last year, or maybe so, since I don’t know how I’d know the word otherwise.
  5. I enjoyed your summary of the answers almost as much as the crossword itself. Keep that wit coming!
  6. I thought:
    PEER (equal) OF THEM (of those folk)with REAL (ie new EARL) between THE and E. Or is that overcomplicating things?

    John
    Sheffield.

  7. 15:26 .. not a bad time considering I solved it, à la mode du jour, inside out. PEER OF THE REALM was the only write-in of the long ones.

    A very entertaining blog, ulaca. Thank you.

    Speaking of OVENBIRDs, the Christmas Turkey flies today (lunchtime, I think — jerrywh is in charge of throwing it from the roof of Murdoch Towers with a cry of “Be free, little bird, be free!”). Check this site’s home page for an announcement around 1pm.

    Edited at 2014-12-01 09:14 am (UTC)

  8. 7:29. I seem to have been on the wavelength for this one.
    I didn’t know OVENBIRD, and I think the clue’s a bit unfair. If you’re a crossword obsessive VEN for ‘archdeacon’ will be automatic, but otherwise the clue’s impenetrable.
    I thought for years that PARSEC was a measure of time, partly because it looks like one and partly because George Lucas appears to have thought the same: Han Solo claims the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel run in less than twelve of them.
    My unknown today was BUGABOO. I used to push children around in one but I had not idea it was an actual word.

    Edited at 2014-12-01 09:26 am (UTC)

    1. The great thing about this site is that it makes me feel less of a pedant weirdo than I really am. It’s such good therapy in that way. I’ve watched the first two films in the Star Wars trilogy goodness knows how many times and I think I must just have a sensor that filters out all the techno talk. On the other hand, my daughter is in awe of my ability to get even the simplest song lyric wrong, so maybe I just have a memory which is mainly filters.

      On the avian clue point, I think you are doing galspray a massive (as David Beckham would say) disservice. I’d be hard pressed to name a South Sydney rugby league fan who was more of a crossword obsessive than he.

      1. Your kind suggestion that I am more of a pedant weirdo than you makes me feel all the more guilty at having inadvertently implied that galspray is not a crossword obsessive.
        1. Not offended by the “crossword obsessive” label, or indeed the “not a crossword obsessive” label. To me it’s just my dirty little secret!

          And my original post was a little tongue-in-cheek, I have definitely encountered “ven” often enough to have recognised it instantly. My excuse is that I was solving the morning after my son’s 21st.

  9. Flew along today like an ovenbird on the wing, until grounded by the SW corner, fancied SOBER and put in UNBOLT but never heard of a BUGABOO. Fortunately the four long ones went in quickly with a chuckle at 1d. Half an hour except for the aforementioned 18d which had to be checked out.
    I did know a parsec is a distance measure; it’s only about 13 trillion kilometers, about two thirds of the way to our nearest star (Proxima Centauri).
  11. All bar one done in about 30 minutes, but then took about 15 minutes to think of MODERATO. For some reason I was thinking that ‘presiding minister’ was leading me to two words, the second of which was to be curtailed. Somehow, just as I was entering this I also thought to change OVERBIRD to OVENBIRD. Like others I thought this was like an ‘oven ready turkey’.

    I knew BUGABOO as the Lamborghini of the pushchair world.

  12. 14.28, with one typo that took four painstaking post solve sweeps of the grid to spot, at which point it became glaringly obvious. A word for that?
    I was going to comment that an OVENBIRD would, by definition, be unable to fly, being already trussed up like a…. chicken. I’m glad to have this (stellar, cheers Ulaca) blog to prevent me making a fool of myself.
    I also knew that a PARSEC was a measure of distance, though until having been prompted today to look it up, I’d thought it was
    1) EE Doc Smith’s way of saying “a very long way” in words intellectual
    2) a multiple of light years, probably a hundred
    3) quite a bit further than a walk down to the shops
    4) the distance (about 3.26 light years) at which half the major axis of the earth’s orbit subtends an angle of one second.
    I lied about knowing 4).
    I suppose, since Han Solo lived in a galaxy long ago and far, far away, it may be that he’s got it right about the Kessel run. and we’ve just messed up the meaning. Besides, we don’t yet know what happens to time and space when you’re on hyperdrive. Maybe language at light speed just achieves infinite mess.
  13. Didn’t know OVENBIRD or the first meaning of FEEL THE DRAUGHT. LOI by some distance was PHASE, where I’d convinced myself that the girl’s name must also begin with P.

    I stayed once at the Island Shangri-La on business and was surprised to be greeted in my room by a free bottle of wine and a “Welcome back” sign. This wasn’t the last time I was to be entertained by the fact that I had the same name as a big cheese in my company, who was a significantly more frequent visitor to 5-star hotels than I was.

    Looking forward to the turkey.

  14. The UK side of my brain failed to engage this morning so Vinyl’s comment about red state/blue state is apt. “Today” is the NBC morning tv show my husband puts on and I try to ignore, so I was pondering “Tracy”, as in Dick Tracy for the radio show. And like others I wasn’t thinking of an actual bird but the Butterball turkey thing which is pumped full of chemicals before being frozen and shipped this time of year. It’s oven-ready in the sense that you don’t have to brine it or butter it or baste it but you do have to remember to defrost it a couple of days before Thanksgiving, or else. 15.23
    1. Actually what you have to remember to do is to bin it and replace it with a real turkey, Olivia 😉 ..if you want to live to see more
      Like these, where we are collecting ours from

      Edited at 2014-12-01 12:44 pm (UTC)

      1. Well exactly Jerry – I’m happy to say I’ve never knowingly experienced a Butterball.
        1. Of course you haven’t Olivia, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.. I quite like vinyl’s option below – I’ve never had a problem with shooting something, if (a) I’m prepared to eat it later, and (b) there’s plenty of them left. I should also add (c) if my wife is prepared to do the mucky bit that involves bowels. Though I can pluck, if called upon..
  15. 20 min – but had to resort to aids with all but 26 done in 10 minutes. I’d forgotten BUGABOO, so was sure BUGBEAR had to be right 🙁
  16. This felt like a standard Monday puzzle. Once I had some answers in place I was getting many of the rest from the checked letters, with scarcely a glance at the clues, except to confirm the definition.
    24 minutes.
  17. A pleasant treeware solve while waiting for son to see the dentist after driving him there. (Is there a time when parents do not cart children about? This child is 23 with a full driving licence)

    COD would have to be 1dn.

    1. No; but there’s a time when you’re always carting one or the other, or the other, to or from Heathrow or Gatwick at the dead of night, and look back longingly to when it was the dentist’s just a few streets away. It’s only just starting…
      1. Joe, your comment strikes home. Only a fortnight ago, I was up at 0230 to take son to Stanstead for an 0630 flight to Berlin. There must come a time when the kids drive me about! Note as I say that this son is 23.

        Edited at 2014-12-01 06:28 pm (UTC)

  18. 55 minutes for me. 1a came quite quickly, but 1d took longer. Like the blogger, I also considered the first line of 1984. It’s quite well-known: ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ For those who are interested, the first line of Animal Farm is ‘Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.’ although I had to look that one up.
    Overall, an enjoyable challenge for a Monday lunchtime.
  19. 43 minutes, so must have been pretty easy.
    I new the OVENBIRD from a book by Gerald Durrell about an animal-collecting expedition to South America. Apparently they build their roughly spherical nests out of dried mud on the top of fenceposts. They have a partition about halfway through, so that a predator cannot get its paw through the entrance and far enough round to get at the chicks.
  20. A rare early attempt at the main puzzle and happy to complete it during an on and off late afternoon session with only one error, at 17ac. A number went in without full parsing, i.e. 1ac, 10ac, 13ac, 23ac, 26ac. So a few new words learnt, not heard of collect=prayer and blue=blow out?. Enjoyed UMPTEENTH and BOGUS. With respect to the latter it might be possible to write a thesis on, i.e. when is a University not a University?
  21. About 30 minutes, with TOADY as LOI, from definition only. Both 1’s went in right away, but I wasn’t too quick to finish. BLUER was also new to me in the squandering sense. Regards.
  22. I think the OVENBIRD clue (‘Flyer identified by archdeacon in Orwell’s opening sentence’) may have deliberately referred to a couple of his lesser-known works (Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and A Clergyman’s Daughter)
  23. I found this very approachable, having seen 1a and 1d straight away. Like others, I also found the checking letters most helpful, and worked from the solutions to the clues much of the time.
    Close to a PB, but I confess to ex post facto parsing on some cases.
    Highly entertaining blog ulaca, for which much thanks.
  24. 6:51 here for a pleasant, straightforward start to the week. I’d have been a little quicker if I hadn’t: a) tried for a clean sweep, which came to an abrupt end about halfway through with just the initial U in place for 17ac (UNBOLT); and b) wasted time trying to fit GYTRASH into 18dn, convinced that RASH must be the “hostile reaction” to the “disease” referred to (I blame that Jane Eyre).

    I actually read Lost Horizon many years ago. I think it must have been among the books belonging to the aunt and uncle I used to stay with on summer holidays in Filey (along with The Prisoner of Zenda and the like, several of which have served me well in solving Times crosswords over the years).

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