Times 26032 – in which there is room for improment

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 25:16. You know how sometimes we talk about being on the wavelength of a setter? Well if this setter was broadcasting on FM, I was somewhere between UHF and two tin cans with a piece of string. I made a massive meal of this one, and although the club timer is saying I’m correct there’s still a little head-scratching that hopefully will be cleared up as I compile this.

Definitely the most difficult of the week, with some craftily-hidden definitions, and that rarest of rare clues, the hidden word that trips me up until nearly the end. Well-played, setter, well-played indeed.

Away we go…

Across
1 VIN DE PAYS: VIE(jockey) surrounding ND, then PAYS(settles)
9 PRITHEE: PRIE(s) containing THE – there’s a definition (please) and a hint to the most prominent usage (Othello – “Prithee, no more”)
10 LUTYENS: (UN-STYLE)*
12 FAIRYLAND: F,AID containing RY,LAN
13 BAND(company),SAW(understood)
15 ANJOU: exceptionally well-hidden in americAN JOUrnal – with Maine being the French province
17 BOB(change, shilling),BY(times)
18 SYNOD: last letters of partS mainlY dowN tO farmhanD
19 MOP UP: or MO PUP
20 CAT FLAP: (FACT)* then LAP
23 ARISTOTLE: TOT,L in ARISE
25 LIT(works),HE
27 PLIANCY: PLY containing 1,ANC
28 FOXHOLE: tricky wordplay here for an all-in-one clue – XL(40) containing HO(call for attention) in FOE(enemy)
29 DO,OR,KNOCK
 
Down
1 VILIFY: VI(half a dozen),Y(variable) containing LIF(t)
2 NOTHING BUT: NO THIN GUT containing B(read)
3 EVERYDAY: EVE and RAY crossing YD
4 AT SEA: A SEAT with the T moved up
5 SPEED BUMP: anagram of P,P,BEMUSED
6 LIB,RAN: astrological house
7 CHIP: triple definition
8 BELLOWED: sounds like BELLE ODE
14 SAN ANTONIO: (NATIONS,ON,A) – the most famous mission in San Antonio was the Alamo
16 JAM PACKED: got this from the definition (heaving), but now I think I see it, it’s JAM(clog),PACK(forwards in rugby),(th)E,(mu)D
17 BACKLIFT: (BAT,FLICK)* – today’s cricket reference, as Scotland and Afghanistan are playing a close one
18 SPOT(note),KICK(high): we’ve had rugby and cricket, so here’s soccer to complete the sportsball trilogy
21 LIE(invention),LOW(something from ox)
22 DERYCK: YR reversed in DECK
24 IMPRO: or I’M PRO – hmmm, this was an obvious one from the wordplay, and I’ve used the term IMPROV a lot, but IMPRO doesn’t appear to be in Collins or Chambers
26 TEXT: TT holding EX

39 comments on “Times 26032 – in which there is room for improment”

  1. 73 minutes, with half of that spent on the pesky last few: LIBRAN (the adjectival forms heralded by a preposition like ‘in’ are pesky indeed), DERYCK (not the most common spelling, even if Please Sir! actor Deryck Guyler comes to mind) and the unknown Antipodean domestic telesales equivalent.

    IMPRO has come up in the past and is in Oxford, still arguably the best of the reference works.

  2. Made a mess in the SE. I had SPOT FINE (penalty) which made 29 impossible and I never saw 22D. So DNF. Never heard of IMPRO, always IMPROV although it couldn’t really be anything else.
  3. Being ignorant in matters of the grape, I opted for VIN DE LAYS.

    Aside from that, I thought this was an absolutely brilliant puzzle. So many clues which seemed impenetrable, eventually revealing themselves without resorting to obscurity.

    No idea why DOORKNOCK is an “Aussie” fundraiser, but it was pretty obvious that CHOOK RAFFLE wouldn’t fit.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    2. Chambers has DOORKNOCK as a noun as an Australian word. Not a Brit one, I would have thought.
      1. Yes, strange to find that such a familiar word (to me) has such a restricted usage.

        A bit like discovering that the word “fortnight” is rarely used in the USA.

  5. 58 minutes, so yes, another very chewy puzzle, but most enjoyable and satisfying to get through without resorting to aids. And I think I understood everything, the last to give way being LIT at 25 which I took to be the abbreviation Lit. for Literature, hence ‘works’.

    Didn’t know the Australian thing or BACKLIFT with reference to cricket, if indeed that’s what’s going on.

    On dictionaries, when I started here in 2007 I gathered from PB and the established pros that Collins and COED were the official source dictionaries and since then I’ve noticed the occasional word or meaning that’s in neither but is in Chambers. I don’t know whether the policy changed under the previous Editor and I’ve not heard of anything from RR on the subject since he took over, but it seems to me that for the most part the general policy appears to be continuing as before.


  6. … but I too had ‘spot fine’ so couldn’t get DOORKNOCK. I also failed to get DERYCK (don’t think I’ve ever seen that spelling).

    Thought CHIP was a quadruple definition, and can I be the one to get the deliberate mistake today? I think you meant BELLOWED sounds like BELLE ODE.

    Many thanks for unravelling several others I got right, but couldn’t parse.

  7. 46m with a few simply BIFD because they fitted. However I had 2 wrong with DERYCK turning into BEDECK (ED backwards in that well known synonym for younger: BECK. This led to PLIANCE for 27a where I managed to consider PLIE as worked steadily and ignored the ‘one’ in the cryptic. Hey ho! It has been hot and sticky here in Perth so maybe next week I’ll manage something under 45 minutes! Thanks for the blog – there were others that were right but I had not much idea as to why: FOXHOLE for example my last one in.
  9. 17:26 … definitely on the wavelength and purring throughout. I thought this was a thing of beauty. Thank you, setter (and editor).
  10. An excellent puzzle, which filled 28.48 for me. I’ll never get those minutes and seconds back, but I don’t care!
    Perhaps the genius of this setter was to have checking letters for the most tricky clues looking really unlikely, without giving the game away. I had V???F?, I???O, L?B?A? as examples, and looking for the inevitable Z and Q after a plethora of J’s, K’s and Y’s didn’t help.
    Not previously knowns were DOORKNOCK as Strine, Maine as part of France (which I think is what hid the hidden so effectively) and perhaps VILIFY as being a relatively gentle kind of put down. I am improved.
  11. 22 mins. I agree that this was a superb puzzle, although I confess that ANJOU went in unparsed because I was also thrown by not knowing that there was a Maine in France. However, I parsed all the other clues and I wouldn’t have come close to finishing a puzzle like this, let alone parsing it, several years ago. I finished with the TEXT/FOXHOLE crossers. I was going to quibble that a bat flick doesn’t always need BACKLIFT, or at least not very much of one, but the question mark at the end of the clue makes it fine, IMHO. Count me as another who knew “improv” put not IMPRO.
  12. Excellent and difficult puzzle that required real hard work to solve it. Thank you setter and well done George.

    I’m a little surprised that folk don’t know of Maine. It was the area around Le Mans and was occupied by the English for many years. The name lives on in today’s Maine-et-Loire a beautiful region with some excellent white and rose wines

  13. Another SPOT FINE candidate, so DNF, never heard of DOORKNOCK and had no K there anyway… never seen the DERYCK spelling, or IMPRO, so the SE corner was a disaster area. 1 wrong and 3 unfinished. Otherwise Mrs Lincoln, I enjoyed the play, it was all going so well for 20 minutes. At least I knew my French wine and provinces.
  14. Another with SPOT FINE. After a few minutes puzzling over 29ac I went back and double checked all the crossing answers, but saw no reason to question that one. Unfortunate really because otherwise this was a first class puzzle.
  15. 34:47 for the best puzzle in a while. As far as I remember this week’s have all been on the tougher side, yet I’ve had all complete so far, which is quite unusual. I think it shows that I’m better when I’m forced to slow down and think whereas I tend to put slapdash errors in the quickies.
  16. 27.48 and with all the sports references i had to show all my workings. i knew maine because the eldest son of louis xiv and athenais de montespan was named the duke of it and was also louis’s favourite child.
  17. This was of a degree of difficulty that, six months ago, I’d have thrown away into the too hard basket after spending 10 minutes and just coming up with SPOTKICK (yes, found that the easiest of the lot!)

    However, thanks to the education I have received on this site I persevered and ended up with a fully parsed correct solve bar LIBRAN (which I should have got as it is my birth sign!). Progress indeed, and a sincere thanks to you all. (Took me 2 and a half hours mind you, but who cares?)

    Many clues were terrific – favourite was 21d closely followed by 8d. Fantastic experience: thanks to setter and our illustrious blogger.

  18. Tough but cleverly deceptive and enjoyable puzzle. I particularly liked CAT FLAP (21A) and LIE LOW (21D). ARISTOTLE went in as the obvious answer at 23A once the cross-checkers were in place, but I couldn’t work out the parsing, having decided that the “count” bit of the clue was accounted for by ARISTO, which meant that TLE had somehow to be construed as indicating “lake in spring”. Thanks to George for the correct explanation.
  19. 1 hour for a very tricky puzzle, but I’m another who had SPOT FINE, so couldn’t get 29a. Some excellent clues. I particularly liked 20.
  20. 18:13 and thoroughly enjoyable, even though I biffed a few and parsed them post-solve (vin de pays, fairyland, vilify, nothing but, jam-packed and, funnily enough, spot kick). For the latter I only had sports penalties in mind so thankfully the fine alternative didn’t occur to me.

    Some lovely clues of which I think my favourites were foxhole, nothing but and text.

    George, at 9 I think “no more” is just telling us that the word prithee is no longer in general use, rather than nudging us towards Othello.

  21. As others have said, the most enjoyable of the week. It took me the best part of an hour, the only gap in my knowledge being the architect, which had to be either Lutyens or Lytneus. Chose the right one, and on checking see that I haven’t heard of his composer daughter either.
  22. Oh dear – 3 DNF’s in a row. Eventually saw DOORKNOCK which corrected my “spot fine” but could not see DERYCK which remained vacant after about 45 mins.
    1. In the same boat with spot fine, but finally worked out the unknown doorknock, to finish all correct (not all parsed) around the hour mark, so quite pleased, given the times posted by some of the stars. Hats off to setter and blogger.
  23. AS said, a very fine puzzle, and difficult, especially for us Americans, excepting of course the giveaway SAN ANTONIO. I’d not known of DOORKNOCK, CAT FLAP (to us I think it’s commonly ‘pet door’), BACKLIFT, and had never seen this form of DERYCK or IMPRO. And I didn’t help myself by rendering the architect as LUYTENS at first, so stuck up in the NW for some time. LOI was DERYCK, after about 45 minutes. Thanks setter, and George also, and regards.
  24. Had to tackle this in several bites through the afternoon and evening, but found it an absolute delight, and had a feeling of satisfaction when I managed to complete unaided. Thanks, as always, for the blog George: may I suggest that at 17a the ‘bob’ – defined as ‘change’ – may refer to a change in bellringing rather than coinage? I well remember a classic Araucaria puzzle that was based on bellringing changes.
  25. Utterly beaten by this one, with “spot fine”. Gave up, missing TEXT, FOXHOLE, DOORKNOCK and DERYCK. I’m pretty sure I’d have rejected DERYCK even if I’d thought of it. As far as I can ascertain, there has only ever been one person called Deryck and, since his surname is (or was) Whibley I don’t see how one is meant to take him seriously.

    I suppose I could grumble over the unnecessarily large number of cricketing references in this puzzle (i.e., 1), but since I got “BACKLIFT” anyway without knowing its meaning, I won’t.

  26. No easy ride for me, getting really bogged down in the SE (yep, another SPOT FINE here) before I finally toiled my way to seeing DOORKNOCK and DERYCK in well over the half hour. I much prefer a tough puzzle over some of the ~10 minute in-and-out jobs I’ve been blogging on Friday recently though, and this was a doozy!

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  29. Very enjoyable tough puzzle, but…
    Don’t like especially obscure people (Lutyens – showing my ignorance?) clued as anagrams. Might have guessed Lutneys.
    Intensely dislike random spellings of random names clued as boy/girl/man/woman.
    Don’t like obscure phrases in foreign languages I don’t speak: vin de pays.
    Nevertheless, enjoyed it and finishsed all correct and all parsed in 35 minutes, with a 5-min gap in the middle to regroup for LOsI TEXT/FOXHOLE.
    ANJOU got on first read with only the U in place, assuming that greater Quebec once included USA’s Maine. Who knew there was an Anjou or a Maine in France? But an acceptable way to clue something obscure.
    Rob

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