Times 26,030

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well this was exactly what a man doesn’t want when he gets home late and thinks he’ll try to knock off both puzzle and blog before going to bed. There was a lot of head-scratching and a lot of staring, especially in the NE corner; my main problem was not being able to see any way to make the anagram fodder work for 5 down (only very late did I realise this was because the words weren’t even English, which is obviously very unsporting). At long last, 8dn sprang to mind, and all the rest came together in a late surge: total solving time 38 minutes.

Anyway, I suspect this is a good puzzle if you’re in the mood for a proper challenge. If you’re not, I can offer the correct answers, though in some cases I’m not yet 100% certain how I reached them. As ever, all will doubtless become clear one way or another.

Across
1 MAGNUM – MAG(=publication), NUM(National Union of Mineworkers). A nice big bottle equivalent to two ordinary wine bottles.
4 ADAM BEDE – A DAM(=a barrier), “BEAD”. If you don’t happen to know the book, and that the eponymous hero is a carpenter, well, you’ll probably take as long to get this one as I did.
10 SIGNATURE – [1 GNAT] in SURE.
11 VAGUE – V(neck) + AGUE(=”fit”).
12 PATRIOT – [A TRIO] in P{or}T.
13 ERELONG – E.R. is the monarch, {b}ELONG = “have ties of loyalty”, executed by being beheaded. An archaic/poetic way of saying “soon”.
14 LARCH – L{arge} ARCH.
15 TAMARISK – [MAR 1] in TASK. Who or what is MARI, I asked myself repeatedly, and is it the same as an eisteddfod? The answer becomes clear if you look at the calendar and see “St David’s Day” inscribed against this Sunday, March 1st.
18 LAID DOWN – [I’D DO(=I’d make)] in LAWN, which is a fine cotton fabric.
20 PANIC – PAN 1, C{at}.
23 EXCLAIM – 1 in EX CLAM, as in “This is an ex-clam, it has ceased to be”.
25 RECLINE – CL(centilitre) in REINE, the French Queen.
26 SNOUT – SN(=chemical symbol for tin) OUT. Fans of the 70s sitcom Porridge know all about genial Harry Grout, the snout baron of D Wing.
27 RUINATION – (OUTINRAIN)*.
28 MAYORESS – YORE(=old) in MASS(=service).
29 SEAGOD – A in [DOGE’S]rev. I can’t find this as a single word anywhere, not even Chambers, but perhaps I’m not looking properly.
 
Down
1 MISSPELT – MISS(=girl), PELT(=fur), because the word should be spelt “ecstasy”. Cleverly done, as it’s a mistake which doesn’t leap off the page.
2 GAGSTER – GAG(=silence) STER{n}.
3 UPANISHAD – U PAN IS HAD.
5 DIEU ET MON DROIT – (O{ld}EDITOR,MINUTED)*. Motto of the English monarch, dating back to the French-speaking Richard Coeur-de-Lion; all my efforts based around words like “to”, “in” and “one” were thus wasted.
6 MOVIE – MO(=short version of Maureen), VIE(=struggle).
7 ENGROSS – E{nergy} N{ot} GROSS.
8 EMERGE – [E.G. R.E.M.E.]rev., indicating that the soldiers might be the corps of Engineers, for example.
9 QUOTATION MARKS – QUOTATION(=formal estimate) “MARX”.
16 REPECHAGE – (CHEAPER,G{as},E{lectricity})*. The sort of heat found in sporting contests, e.g. first-round losers in a rowing regatta go into the repechage for a second chance.
17 SCREENED – N,E in SCREED. By screening something, you can obviously hide it from view or put it on show, depending on the choice of definition.
19 ANCHOVY – ANCHO{r}, V{irtuall}Y.
21 NAILING – [I (NIL)rev.] in NAG, where nil=love in tennis.
22 JETSAM – JET(=plane), SAM(=surface-to-air missile).
24 ALTAR – reverse hidden in dineR AT LAst.

40 comments on “Times 26,030”

  1. 72 minutes, but with ‘tamarask’. I’m not entirely enamoured of the clue given that Mar[ch] 1 is the day on which St David’s Day (festival?) is celebrated and not the festival itself. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the tree were well known (like ‘larch’), but this one is pretty obscure.

    With a few unknowns elsewhere, overall this one was a bit of a slog. Who would ever have thought the day would come when ALTAR/table would be a fully-fledged chestnut?

  2. or and: 2 errors, both caused by not thinking, something that I’m rather a dab hand at. 1d in the present tense (my past tense is ‘spelled’, which probably helped me miss this one), and ‘after’ instead of ALTAR. Why? you may ask; except that I gave the reason above, so don’t ask. I knew TAMARISK, fortunately, but spent some time wondering about the Mari festival (glad to see I’m in good company). I don’t think I’ve ever read ‘Adam Bede’, but somehow the D and final E triggered it. DNK REPECHAGE. Rather liked SEAGOD, one word though it be.

    Edited at 2015-02-24 03:01 am (UTC)

  3. Needed help with TAMARISK and DIEU ET MON DROIT, had a guess at UPANISHAD, and couldn’t get ADAM BEDE (even after cheating) because I didn’t know the book. I’m fascinated as to how you would solve it without knowing the book.

    So while I enjoyed the challenge, I thought one or two clues were bordering on unfair. Presumably most people will disagree, but that’s life.

    Why does the British monarch have a French motto?

    2. Similar view from downunder – too many unknowns: obscure english books, monarch’s mottos (I was guessing it would be Latin when english looked unlikely), welsh festivals – who even knew they had one? – and random tress (which seem to be shrubs), not to mention foreign words in languages I don’t speak like reine, and nonwords like seagod.
      To get all Rumsfeld, there were known unknowns, and I was not enjoying it, so went for aids a long way before the end. Ho hum there’s always tomorrow.
      Rob
  4. I also needed a little over an hour for this one. Didn’t know REPECHAGE though I managed to work it out but was less fortunate with my other unknown at 3dn where I got as far as U?A?ISHAD from wordplay but couldn’t think of a god that fitted and ended up resorting to aids.

    I was very pleased to read the MAR 1 explanation above as when I came here I was fully prepared to rant on about the unfairness of referring to an obscure Welsh celebration and then only giving half its name:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Lwyd

    And TAMARISK seems to be more usually described as a shrub, hence the use of “small” when elevating its status to tree.

    SEAGOD is not listed by Onelook though it’s in 15 dictionaries as two words and another 7 with a hyphen.

    After last week and this, can we take it that Tuesday is the new Friday?

    Edited at 2015-02-24 06:44 am (UTC)

  5. 46m and all correct but after 30m I had only 13a, 15a, 29a and 8d left.These took each 4 minutes, I was going to say to solve, but in fact MARI was beyond my wit to see and so the answer simply BIFD. I had a little reservation about SEAGOD but otherwise found this to my liking, helped by knowing the carpenter and getting the two long down clues very quickly. I must be getting used to the heat of WA at last!
  6. 19m. I found this a thoroughly enjoyable challenge, but I was fortunate enough to possess most of the required knowledge, and to have bunged in TAMARISK as a pure guess, not knowing the plant and wondering who or what MARI was.
  7. When 26a is your first sniff of an answer, you feel it isn’t going to be your day. However sheer doggedness got me through this one. MARI had me stumped too, and as the only Sanskrit text I could come up with was Gilgamesh, UPANISHAD was a bit of a guess.
    So I’m very happy to finish in just over the hour mark.
  8. 28:29 … phew! If yesterday was not far off the nursery slopes, this was more like a black run. The light took a very long time to dawn on TAMARISK, REPECHAGE and my last in, RECLINE. I keep telling myself to be ready for a toughie any day of the week with The Times, but still routinely get caught out. Some very ingenious clues, which I would probably have appreciated more on a Saturday or Sunday.

    1. Adapting a well-known paradox, RR might say that there will be a toughie one day this week (Mon-Fri) but it will come as a surprise. Sotira might deduce that it therefore cannot be Friday, as if the toughie has not yet happened by Thursday, it wont be a surprise on Friday. Similar logic says that it cannot be Thursday either, because Friday has been eliminated and if no toughie by Wednesday, it has to be Thursday so no surprise. Working back one day at a time logically reveals that there cannot be a toughie this week that comes as a surprise. And then the twist. A toughie appears on Tuesday and we are all surprised. RR’s conditions have been met.

      Edited at 2015-02-24 09:33 am (UTC)

      1. Brilliant! Though you might want to insert the words “A cleverer person than …” before “Sotira”.

        I shall go into next week forearmed with the knowledge that … what was it again?

  9. 22 minutes, and a bit surprised to find it was all correct; 3d being a stab from checkers and wordplay, SEAGOD being ‘not one word but nothing else fits’. I knew the tamarisk tree but didn’t unravel the brilliant MAR I reference. Getting the two long down clues and 1d early on made it easier, with the SE corner last to finish.
  10. Same problems as others. MARI not understood and Sanskrit text a shortfall in my GK – I derived the word Mephisto style and looked it up to confirm. Not so bothered by the (6) after 29A because again hyphens are not signalled in Mephisto land. Knew BEDE from doing these crosswords – have never read the book. Not the easiest of puzzles
  11. 36:52, much of which was spent on the right hand side. I was fortunate to know UPANISHAD from studying TS Eliot’s The Wasteland at A Level – a poem containing several obscure references. It seemed a bit pointless to me if you had to study a poem to understand it. Give me Pam Ayres any day.
  12. 25 mins. I got the MAGNUM/UPANISHAD crossers as soon as I read their clues and thought it was going to be another straightforward one. I was wrong. I finished the LHS in reasonably good time, although MISSPELT and MAYORESS held me up longer than they should have done. I found the RHS much more problematical and DIEU ET MON DROIT was my LOI. Like others I had no idea that ADAM BEDE was a carpenter but at least I’d heard of the book and made an educated guess based on the wordplay. TAMARISK took a while to see but at least I parsed it, and the same goes for RECLINE, SEAGOD and REPECHAGE.
  13. Fortunately I had read the book, knew how to spell the heat, but will admit to a lot of scribbling out/tippex in the NW corner. 19:55
  15. Yes, as referred to above. If that had been a factor in the wordplay I’d have been very unhappy about it.

    Edited at 2015-02-24 02:02 pm (UTC)

  16. So I was walking past a packed church in a city in southern Europe somewhere and asked a lady what service was taking place. “Mayoriso”, she replied.

    So that’s how I got to “public official (mayor) is old (IS O)” in service. In my head, at least.

    Shame, as I got “dieu et mon D” quite quickly and spotted the St. David’s day trick (I think the date played a part in another recent puzzle).

    That said, I might have got the tree quicker (was toying with tamarind) had Monty Python ever got past “Number 1, The Larch” and taught us how to recognise obscure small trees. MP is certainly a richer source of philosophers than trees.

    I still think repecharge looks wrong without another R in there somewhere, wasn’t overly familiar with the carpenter (the only one I know are Joseph, Gepetto and Handy Andy) and had to guess the Sanskrit text. I’m not sure what “hit” is doing in the jetsam clue.

    COD to the cat flap clue, 26:10 with one error.

    1. If I remember correctly there was a puzzle by Paul in the Guardian about a month back that used M to give St David’s Day (or something more or less to that effect).
    2. Don’t feel too bad about it. I was toying with it for what seemed like ages until the penny dropped. As an addendum to what I wrote earlier, the main reason I struggled for a while to get MISSPELT is that I found it difficult to get away from the notion that the P?L? part of the answer was going to be “pile”, which just about works as a type of fur.
  17. I really liked this one, a good meaty challenge with some nice clues: “ecstasy/ecstacy” being very much my favourite. Probably took us (5 of us!) somewhere around 25 minutes to finish, needing to check a few things: TAMARISK, ADAM BEDE along the way.
  18. 19.30, Which looks comparatively good even if comparisons is oderous. Puzzled over the great Welsh Festival of Mari like (almost) everyone else, but assumed it was either too clever by half (correct), or a small, far away festival of which we know nothing (also correct, though it turns out also again to be a music hall heroine).
    Tried TAMARIND for ages (much the same justification as above), assuming ENGROSS was wrong, and with intrusive memories of Julie Andrews getting it on with Omar Sherif.
    After so many struggled to get ECSTASY right in 26019, when the S was unchecked, 1d was both brilliant and sadistic. I simply don’t believe there’s no connection. It’s an easy CoD.
    1. Comparisons may well be oderous – I won’t refute that – but does it get any more obstruse than a Welshman wassailing in a horse outfit? Now that’s what I call really wierd.
  19. Drat and double drat! (to quote Dick Dastardly). A shade under 18 minutes but a rare sub-Sue ruined by carelessness at 1dn where I entered MISSPELL. UPANISHAD, MAYORESS and TAMARISK went in from a few checkers (H-D, the Y and the K respectively)and I thought at the time it was just as well I knew them. Unfortunately I also knew PELL and never thought of the more obvious alternative that better fitted the grammar of the clue.
  20. Pretty sure that MAR1 has popped up very recently somewhere with the same Welsh connection so this was not a problem here. Enjoyable puzzle though so thanks to s + b.
  21. About an hour, but I had to look up the royal motto, and I also ‘pulled a penfold’ with MAYORISO. SO 1 wrong and a DNF to boot. Penfold, glad to be in such erudite company! Regards.
    1. Kevin, it’s good of you to join me.

      Edit to say I’m not sure I qualify as particularly erudite when measured against the classicists and Oxbridge graduates who pace the corridors of TftT but thanks for the compliment. I always thought erudite was a type of glue.

      Edited at 2015-02-24 05:33 pm (UTC)

  22. After 40 minutes I gave up with 4ac still remaining entirely due (or lue) to having inexplicably entered LIEU in place of DIEU. I am living proof for Penfold that being a classicist and an Oxbridge alumnus is no guarantee of erudition.
    1. I was more thrown by the concept of the alumni pacing the corridors. This one just sits in a chair when not walking the dog.
      1. Good point bt! I must admit that I cannot recall ever pacing a corridor in my life. I also have a self-walking cat.
  23. 12:59 for me. I made another horribly slow start, but eventually found the setter’s wavelength – apart from TAMARISK, where I assumed that MARI must be a shortened version of “Mari Lwyd” (encountered many years ago in a talk given by a very ancient and distinguished-looking Welsh lady at a dance weekend in Newport, Mon).

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  24. Well, I may be a day late but, having battled through this, I felt I should drop in. Seventy minutes, alas.

    UPANISHAD was a close call (I vaguely remembered its coming up before, and the wordplay made it seem OK). Never heard of ADAM BEDE. TAMARISK was touch and go (tamarind – yes; but tamarisk was only half in my memory). As for ERELONG, I would have written it as two words. Never heard of a SEAGOD before, either (and nor, it seems, has anyone else). REPECHAGE was another unknown.

    So, all in all I consider myself lucky to have got through this one with no erorrs. And now on to today’s…

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