Times 25,979: Like A Twisty Turny Thing

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Happy Wren’s Day to one and all! I hope your stockings and/or stomachs were adequately stuffed during any celebrations that may have taken place yesterday.

I have a small child continually tugging at my sleeve to play the Lego Movie videogame with her so I’ll make this quick. I found this puzzle moderately difficult (just under 25 minutes on my clock) with a fair few devious passages, though with hindsight nothing that seems like it should have been too much of a stumbling block. I started centrally with 16D and 6D and finished with 17D and 20A – being a naturalised soft Southerner I had to look up the meaning of being bah’t ‘at on a moor before the penny dropped.

Not quite as many laughs as I ideally like from a puzzle (I’m such a frivolous soul), but there were a few: 23A had a very jolly surface and I liked “with crooks” in 15A. Oh, and I personally ended 26A with an X without a second thought, but with hindsight it seems potentially quite controversial?

Right, that’s that, see you all in MMXV!

Across
1 WEIGHT – power: homophone of WAIT [“broadcaster’s” hold]
5 VITALITY – life: V [see] + IT in ITALY [country]
9 UPSTAGES – diverts attention from: UP [London-bound] + STAGES [coaches]
10 INFEST – run through: FINEST [with great distinction, “dragging female (i.e. F) back from front”]
11 CONVOLUTED – involved: CON VOTED [Tory | took part in election] admitting LU [“two bits of luck”]
13 ONYX – stone: O [circle] + {o}N{l}Y [only “short of the odd”] + X [cross]
14 PIER – seaside venue: PI{p}ER [“disheartened” instrumentalist]
15 SERPENTINE – with crooks: ER PENT [queen | shut up] during SINE [function]
18 DETERMINES – rules: DETERS [puts off] “getting to grips with” MINE [the setter’s]
20 GAME – double def, handicapped / creatures going to pot
21 SODA – drink: ADOS [fusses “over”]
23 JOURNALESE – reporter’s words: JOURNE{y} [travel “endlessly”] with input of ALES [booze]
25 CHEOPS – old Egyptian ruler: HE [fellow] in COPS [“with police guard”]
26 TABLEAUX – scenes: TA [cheers] + BEAUX [lovers] “crossing” L [line]
28 BETRAYAL – sell-out: BE [live] + LAY ART [amateur | pictures “return”]
29 TANGLE – confusion: (AGENT*) [“flustered”] grabs L [pound]

Down
2 EXPLOSIVE – liable to go off: ([“out of bounds”], {s}EXPO{t} LIVES*) [“riotously”]
3 GET OVER – clear: GOVER{n} [rule “briefly”] restricting TE [note “in circulation”]
4 TUG – draw with some effort: T.U. [workers organised] + G [grand]
5 VISIT – call on: VI [half of jury, i.e. 6, “in Rome”] + SIT [be in session]
6 THIRD PERSON – he or she: also the first murderer, Cain, was the presumable third person (after Adam and Eve)
7 LEFT OUT – overlooked: result of Tory landslide is the right getting in and the left out
8 TASTY – savoury: PASTY [snack, “originally two”, i.e. T, for “penny”, i.e. P]
12 LESE MAJESTY – JAMES [Stuart monarch “overthrown”] in LEES [grounds] + T{erritor}Y [“borders of”], &lit
16 RUN – scarper: I “fleeing from” RUIN [disaster]
17 NUMBSKULL – coot: experience on Ilkley Moor bah’t ‘at, i.e. dying of exposure in the wilds of Yorkshire due to lack of appropriate headgear
19 ENAMOUR – appeal a lot: OMAN [state] blocking RUE [Paris street] “in revolution”
20 GALLEON – vessel: (GONE*) [“out of control”] containing ALL [i.e. “fully laden”]
22 OCHRE – pigment: R [runs] into OCHE [line that shouldn’t be crossed (in darts)]
24 UNTIL – before: {reco}UNT I L{ift} “boxes”
27 BIT – double def, snaffle / chip

24 comments on “Times 25,979: Like A Twisty Turny Thing”

  1. This took me a bit longer than usual but below the 35m mark. How many slimline Cokes did I have last night? More a grind than a series of doh moments but fair enough.

    Thanks for the blog verlaine.

    1. I’d go easy on those cokes: the sweetener is aspartame, which as everyone should know, breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid. No wonder you feel rough.
  2. Made the mistake of starting this around 2AM which proved a little too ambitious and I nodded off with only a dozen answers in. On resumption this morning I needed another 26 minutes to complete the grid. Nothing too difficult here though CHEOPS was either new to me or forgotten. Those who didn’t know OCHE in the Christmas Turkey have an opportunity to make use of their new knowledge today.
  3. Nothing too difficult here so about right for the occassion.

    I don’t recall seeing 17D before as a clue and wonder how many people actually know that baht ‘at means without a hat? Makes a welcome change from London argot

  4. 23:23, again with a wifi problem mid-solve forcing me to retype all the answers. Unfortunately retyping wasn’t enough for me to see that the definition in in 23ac wasn’t ‘reporter’ and so the answer wasn’t JOURNALIST. I suspect I won’t be alone in having fallen into that little trap.
    I did know what “bah’t ‘at” meant. I guess you either know the song or you don’t, and if you don’t you might spend a lot of time trying to think of the name of a bird.
    1. Solved early this morning in a similar time and with the identical mistake. Some self-inflicted grogginess was definitely involved.
  5. 20 minutes, plus 3 seconds, which staggeringly puts me (currently) in 8th place on the leaderboard. Much musing on mt LOI GET OVER: couldn’t see the GOVER and I’m hopelessly conditioned by the wordgames that don’t allow TE as a note (or indeed anything).
    Much sympathy (tee hee!) for those who put an S at the end of TABLEAU. I’m off to sample some Bordeaus (possibly from one of the Margaus Chateaus) with some eaus the vie chasers, maybe with some morceaus of selected gateaus to go with. Mes Adieus et meilleurs voeus pour la nouvelle année!
  6. Even if you know the song, hearing ‘bartat’ may not necessarily lead you to the answer but as jimbo says, a nice change from CRS.
  7. 28 mins. I was held up badly in the SE and it didn’t open up until I finally saw that 27dn was BIT (I’d been thinking “bag” but couldn’t justify the chip meaning). After that my last four answers were TANGLE, GALLEON, GAME and NUMBSKULL.

    However, I confidently entered TABLEAUS at 26ac, and without any indication in the clue as to whether it ends in an X or an S I think it is a perfectly valid answer.

  8. This went straight in. In my salad days I appeared briefly in the Farquar play The Beaux Stratagem. Until I finally got around to looking it up I thought “bah’t ‘at” meant that he was on Ilkley Moor about 8. The homophone in 1a had me completely fooled (I put it down to the terrible cold making the rounds) so I was thinking of all kinds of terms having to do with air waves, and in the end just threw in the most likely one. 17.46 and rather startled to be on P1 of the Club board – apparently a lot of people had trouble with the X/S thing and the last 3 letters of JOURNALESE.
  10. I made very heavy weather of this one – about 30 mins in total – I blame post Elgar Double Christmas Toughie solving disorder.

    I do hope the pestering child is the one who had the Japanese lurgy as it would be good to know she is back to full dad annoying strength.

  11. Over an hour with the perfectly acceptable TABLEAUS. Oxford has “plural tableaux /-ləʊz/ or tableaus”‘ which rather settles things, no(n)?
  12. While we’re on the question of foreign usage, I was flummoxed for a while by “LESE MAJESTY” which I always understood was spelt “MAJESTE”, but I see that this is an alternative according to the usual sources.
    Ah well!
  13. Thanks for the blog, Verlaine. I never got numbskull, even after looking up the song, partly because I thought the handicapped creatures had to be the GGs in some form, partly because I think of a coot as being ineffectual due, probably, to age rather than being dense or stupid.
  14. 17:44 for me, flagging badly towards the end as a result of Christmas – i.e. too much booze and not enough sleep.

    I took simply ages over my L2I: 17dn (NUMBSKULL) and 20ac (GAME). The former was particularly galling as I once lived at the bottom of Ilkley Moor, and plan to have On Ilkley Moor bah’t ‘at sung at my funeral because 1) it’s a damned good sing, and 2) everybody knows the tune (the words will be provided). The last funeral I went to had three incredibly dreary hymns, and hardly anyone seemed to know the tune chosen for two of them. The deceased had specifically requested a humanist ceremony, but her daughter, a C of E member, had gone against her wishes. Deeply depressing!

      1. At our local carol service this week the choir sang ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’ to the tune of Ilkley Moor bah’t’at . It goes very well and livened up the service; the choir got a round of applause at the end.
      2. Yes I did. It’s one of many hymn tunes still used for While Shepherds Watched in pubs in the Sheffield area in the run-up to Christmas. The words of On Ilkley Moor are much more suitable for a funeral though :-).
    2. Tony, much as I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself re. dying, I do admire the foresight. My favourite newspaper column this year was Jeremy Clarkson’s “My mum’s final act of love was to throw all her stuff into a skip”. For those who don’t have online Times access, the full text of it can be found in the fifth comment on this page: http://forums.finalgear.com/top-gear/the-weekly-times-comment-column-by-jeremy-thread-36243/page-29/ – Given the circumstances, I hope no one will object to the slight copyright infringement involved.
  15. Being a resident of The Great South Land (Australia) I would appreciate any help in the translation of the Ilkey Moor clue at 17d.
    Thanks
    1. The line translates to standard English as “On Ilkley Moor without a hat”. The idea in the clue is that this would likely lead to one having a numb skull due to the cold and windy weather often experienced on the exposed moorland. “Coot” can mean a silly person, as does the word “numbskull”.

      Edited at 2014-12-27 06:23 am (UTC)

Comments are closed.