Times 25,962: Ave Maria

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Oh, what a morning. Christmas party season is finally upon us, so last night my ears found themselves in a basement of a pub in Haggerston being assaulted by the confrontational electronic stylings of Royal Strays, Koreless and East India Youth – I must say that it’s nice that Beggars Music seems to be only signing bands whose names would fit right into a cryptic crossword clue. Anyway I left there a shade after midnight and got home a shade before 3am (ouch) to be woken by the kids a shade before 7 (double ouch). I got the elder daughter dressed and to school with military precision and almost no audible groaning nonetheless… only to be rung up 30 minutes later asking me to come back and collect her on the grounds of “an itchy face”.

Anyway I wasn’t feeling too ambitious with all these handicaps, but this morning’s puzzle was both clever and enjoyable and I took it at a leisurely pace to bring it home inside hopefully acceptable 25 minutes. Initially I thought it was going to be a really quick, as everything north of 13A went in really quickly starting from 9D (rather obvious solely from the enumeration) and the simple anagram at 11A (factually incorrect surface though in this classicist’s opinion – I’ve never found a translation of my beloved Iliad that really does it for me!), but the bottom half of the grid proved a steeper climb, and some most enjoyable mental exercise. Not 100% sure what my LOI was, 21A quite possibly.

Style-wise I found this quite congenial, with some excellent cleverness on display starting right from the first two across clues (1A is my COTD I reckon), and some textbook &lits at 13A and 6D. Still not quite sure about “decap” for “behead” and being a sporting ignoramus airshots and leg byes were all Greek to me in exactly the way Greek isn’t, but essentially this was another fine puzzle that I was well into. My thanks to the setter!

Across
1 MOONQUAKE – Donkey [MOKE] carrying on as [ON QUA] mare’s trembling
6 VOWEL – Promise [VOW] the Spanish [EL] a say
9 V AND A – Russian uncle [VANYA] swapping tips on {D}ostoievsk{y} for museum
10 RABBITING – Sound bell [TING] with teacher [RABBI] speaking
11 MOREISH – In translation, (Homer is*) hard to put down!
12 IMAGERY – Shots one girl’s [I MARY] injected with brin{g} respit{e} at last
13 NOT FOR THE WORLD – Reply of man [HE] in (front row told*) to move?
17 RECORDING ANGEL – Rope in team [CORD IN GANG] to open cylinder [REEL] for logger above
21 ECTOPIC – Civil Engineer sent back [CE] text [TOPIC] in the wrong place
23 VIETNAM – Old German rocket [V-1] turned miles before [M ANTE] finding land
25 ZOOKEEPER – Lions manager perhaps, reflecting, about to look over Australia [RE PEEK O OZ]
26 ALAMO – Unhappily cut short [ALA{s}] second [MO] mission
27 REEDY – Shrill, grasping Head has departed [{g}REEDY]
28 DIESEL OIL – Fuel processing ({o}peration initially lies idle*)

Down
1 MOVEMENT – Doctor [MO] emphatic that he’s abandoned [VEHEMENT – HE] campaign group?
2 OWNER – One who has child{ren wo}uld upset nurses
3 QUASIMODO – Simple fellow briefly [SIMO{n}] seen in yard [QUAD] with old [O] bell-ringer
4 AIR SHOT – Embarrassing sporting blunder: fans [AIRS] furious [HOT]
5 EBB-TIDE – Live life the wrong way [BE]: one [I] gets in awful (debt*) going out
6 VOILA – Exclamation from one [I] opening book [VOL], getting answer [A]?
7 WHITE FLAG – Chess player [WHITE], following [F] delay [LAG], giving in token
8 LEG BYE – Extra stage [LEG] so long [BYE]
14 TWENTY-ONE – Pontoon repaired [WENT], (yet no*) supply crossing it
15 ON AVERAGE – Typically at border [ON VERGE] area [A] intervening on separate occasions
16 PLIMSOLL – Quiet [P] Cypriot resort, not as [LIMASSOL – AS] large [L]: one goes on foot
18 DECAPOD – Crab for one to behead? [DECAP] Dangerous thing to take [OD]
19 NAVARRE – Welshman going north [EVAN] has arrived [ARR] in Pamplona area
20 GEEZER – My [GEE] love, unending [ZER{o}], for bloke
22 PIETY – Devotion is irrational [PI], still putting head down [YET]
24 NGAIO – Every so often, y{o}g{i} h{a}s {g}o{n}e up tree

42 comments on “Times 25,962: Ave Maria”

  1. Bit of a sod, this one, had to have several goes at it. Took me ages to see NOT FOR THE WORLD: was looking for some reference to the front row of a scrum.
    In retrospect, it was worth the effort and a real mental work out. (I get a similar feeling after a day walking in the hills in foul weather.)
  2. Tough one that started quickly then slowed to a crawl. Never heard of a RECORDING ANGEL and the “logger above” bit made me initially put in AEROPLANE for the first word, which unfortunately/fortunately gave me 3 of the 4 checkers but then caused no end of trouble with the crab. 13A seems unlikely to emerge from the lips of someone in that situation. Some really nice surfaces – MOONQUAKE, VOWEL, MOREISH.
    1. I was at least partially on the proverbial wavelength this morning and was looking for heavenly personnel as soon as I read “logger above”. I stalled on St Peter sadly, who’s more of a bouncer above than a logger!

      Edited at 2014-12-05 11:08 am (UTC)

    2. Oops – didn’t mean to include MOONQUAKE in my surfaces comment, but it was a good clue nonetheless.
  3. Thoroughly enjoyable, and even more so because I thought I would need aids to complete the grid but in the end I managed without. But I simply don’t understand what 13ac is about. Okay, it’s a saying of sorts that can be constructed from the anagrist and presumably the definition is &lit, but I can’t see how the answer relates to the surface reading of the clue in any meaningful sense.

    I thought we were in for a pangram but we’re missing X and J.

    Ngaio Marsh is due my thanks yet again for helping me remember the name of that obscure tree, and I feel guilty that I have never read, let alone purchased, any of her many detective novels.

    1. Mm, I would agree that it is a *tad* tenuous, on the other hand, if you have scored an excellent front row seat and someone is trying to take it off you, a robust declaration of unwillingness to move seems reasonably appropriate…
    2. I forgot to mention DECAP at 18 which is completely without support in the usual sources, and possibly anywhere else for all I know. If it was referring to the change from Upper to Lower case it would have more credibility in my book.
  4. Like Jack I found this a pleasant enough if tough puzzle but am completely lost as to what 13A is all about. The checkers enabled me to suspect an anagram so I derived “world” from ?O?L? and the remaining W,R and D. Got 9A from 1,3,1 and “museum”. Some good surface readings and quirky definitions.
  5. A tough but steady 46 minutes, while watching the Nedbank golf on TV. Last one in was 13a with the same resigned baffelement as noted above; faced with ‘not for the ?’ and an anagram, but hardly a tip of the tongue phrase. I think I parsed them all except 1a as didn’t know MOKE was a donkey, but liked the ‘mare’s trembling’ def. A really good puzzle (apart from 13a) scores 8 on my Moh scale.
  6. 24:18 with many interruptions but an enjoyable canter nonetheless. Wrote in WHITE KING for no reason which slowed things down but like verlaine, I knew Ngaio Marsh (and indeed have all her books).
  7. Ditto bigtone on Ngaio. I got in trouble because of spelling plimsoll with an E on the end. On the first read-through I didn’t spot a single answer which does lead to a sinking feeling. Jack, there’s a Perry Mason howler in today’s TLS. I seem to remember we’ve had that before on the cryptic. Thanks for parsing “decapod” Verlaine – I couldn’t. And for a great blog under adverse conditions. A 25.7 slugfest for me.
  8. 18m, but with DECAPED. I couldn’t make head or tail of the clue, and as both Latin and Greek are all Greek to me this was the best I could do. I’ve never come across DECAP for ‘behead’, and as far as I can tell neither have any of the dictionaries.
    Still, I liked this one a lot. A nice challenge with some well-hidden definitions.

    Edited at 2014-12-05 01:39 pm (UTC)

  9. In the theatre you might be quite grateful: at the very front you’re in danger of being spat on. Perhaps the setter had some sort of sport in mind.
  10. 46 minutes, with, like my esteemed co-blogger, many going in unparsed, so on that basis this puzzle would fail the K Test. Unlike today’s esteemed and much put upon blogger with the questionable taste in music I finished the bottom half first, finishing in the north with MOVEMENT – unparsed of course.
    1. Today’s Guardian has a bit of a Genesis subtheme going on… and of course they have a setter on their books named for the mighty Supertramp… questionable taste in music is practically a requirement these days!
      1. The recent BBC 2 documentary about Genesis was rather good and featured an array of people “coming out” as Genesis fans, which makes me feel slightly better about admitting that a couple of their albums were, and are, much loved. But to be honest, Supertramp were always more my cup of tea! I was introduced to them by a German girl who came to stay with us one summer — for some reason they were always much more popular outside Britain than in it.
  11. ….and needed help with NAVARRE.

    An AIR SHOT is called an air swing down here, but a quick google search seems to suggest that we’re the exception. And the clue was straightforward anyway.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  12. 20:00 .. less than 2 Magoos so a good day here. I would say your 25 minutes, verlaine, is an outstanding achievement in circumstances which would drive a lesser man back under the duvet.

    Some interesting vocab. in another lively puzzle. Been good lately, haven’t they?

  13. Chewy but clever and enjoyable Friday puzzle. I particularly liked “logger above” as def for RECORDING ANGEL. Lots of tricky wordplay and neat surface readings elsewhere.

    13A was a cunningly disguised anagram, but I agree with Jack and Jimbo that the relevance of the answer to the clue’s surface reading was tenuous to say the least. NOT FOR THE WORLD could serve as a negative reply to any imaginable request with which the speaker did not wish to comply. There is nothing in it to suggest, even cryptically or obliquely, a particular reluctance to leave the front row. Unless of course I’m missing something.

    Edited at 2014-12-05 03:50 pm (UTC)

    1. Yes it is a stretch and rather TLS-style too. So much so that I had a mental pic of a performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream onstage while the enormous man in the front row blocking everyone’s sightline says “Not for thy fairy kingdom” will I move. Certain unlovable aspects of modern air travel came to mind too.

      Edited at 2014-12-05 04:26 pm (UTC)

  14. Probably just having a senior moment – but what has ON QUA to do with mare’s trembling?
    1. Nothing at all. “Mare’s trembling” is just the definition for MOONQUAKE. Mare as in one of the lunar maria.
      1. Thank you. I see it now hopefully it is the “on as”. I could not get the idea of a horse out of my mind!
  15. Tricky one this, put just a few in on a first look through, but then it was a rush of solving, didn’t catch the time, but somewhere between 12-15 minutes I suspect. Also started looking for J’s and X’s to complete the pangram. MOREISH needed wordplay.
  16. Good grief. Wavelength? No way here. Three separate attempts, overall well more than an hour for something I found very hard and very devious. I didn’t know the resort on Cyprus, naturally, or moke, or MOREISH, and I needed aids to get the unknown PLIMSOLL. Ouch altogether. I did like VOWEL and WHITE FLAG, though. Regards.
  17. I struggled mightily with this one, probably because I did it late after a busy day and I was falling asleep as I was attempting to get to grips with some of the meatier clues. I had all but 13ac done in about 30 mins but then took another 14 to realise that it was an &lit rather than a CD. Once I’d seen the anagram fodder the answer fell into place.
  18. Finally able to read all the comments after some weird bug caused them to disappear after about 5 seconds. Got through the top half fairly quickly, then took for ever on the bottom half. I do have a quibble with 23a. The V1 was not a rocket. It was a cruise missile with an air-breathing pulse-jet engine, unlike the V2.
  19. How is ‘going out’ a definition of ‘ebb tide’? I can’t see how it is. An ebb tide goes out, but so far as I can see that’s about it. Far looser it seems than 13ac, which at least had a question mark after it.
    1. I assumed it was meant as a noun, i.e. a going out. 13A was so loose to me that this seemed sound by comparison.
  20. 14:15 for me. I’d have been two or three minutes faster if I hadn’t stupidly bunged in BYE BYE for 8dn!

    I wasn’t too worried about NOT FOR THE WORLD (which went straight in), though I did raise an eyebrow at DECAP for “behead” (even with its following question mark). Fortunately my ignorance of the V-1 meant I wasn’t put out by 23ac, and so overall I found this an enjoyable puzzle.

        1. Yep, I considered it too, but twigged the right answer just before I started writing! Made hard work of this one, couldn’t get onto the setter’s wavelength at all, well over 30 minutes.
  21. For your enlightenment (as a professed classicist):
    It would not surprise me if I am not the first to point this out, but on 22D of 25,962, mathematically the number PI (π) is not strictly an ‘irrational’ but a ‘transcendental’ number. Furthermore, IMHO using this word in the clue would not only have been more accurate usage, but would perhaps also have improved it. After all, isn’t the ultimate aim of PIETY some kind of transcendental experience?
    Yours,
    The Belsize Pedant.
  22. Hadnt realised I ought to have registerd with my last comment.
    Now I’m in the club.
    1. Welcome!

      I was never much of a mathematician at school (it having been sold to me at the time more as accountancy than philosophy – if only I could go back and do it all again, knowing what I do now!) but this link, at least, suggests that it is both transcendent *and* irrational/…?

      1. That is indeed true – all transcendentals ARE also irrationals – and not vice versa. But isn’t it a bit like describing, say, Sophocles, as “a dramatist” (which he certainly is)?
        But fair enough. I shall press the point no further.
        Thanks for noticing enough to check up on my assertion!
  23. It was alright to do in the dim of the night, the take away lesson I see ‘maybe I could put a little extra effort’ considering the decipher very much worth moments of mental agony! 😁
    Mary
  24. It was alright to do in the dim of the night, the take away lesson I see ‘maybe I could put a little extra effort’ considering the decipher very much worth moments of mental agony! 😁
    Mary

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