Times 26035 – Here’s to the fine lady from 4 down!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 48 minutes

Music: Schubert, Symphony #9, Munch/BSO

I found this one surprisingly tough. Maybe I was just not on the wavelength, but even after I had a considerable number of crossing letters I still struggled to complete the the stragglers. Part of it was clever clueing, part of it was my mistaken entry of the momble ‘iribi’ in 25 across. However, when they last bars of the Schubert sounded, I jumped up to lift the stylus from the record, and when I returned I instantly saw ‘horseshoe bats’, ‘buttonhole’, corrected ‘iribi’ to ‘oribi’, and realized that the lady in question must be ‘Dawn’ – all in less than 2 minutes. It’s strange how little it takes to reset my line of thought nowadays.

Here in New York City, we had what I hope is the last snow of the season. The forecast for the next 10 days looks reasonable, so maybe we’ll just limp into spring. Any hope of playing golf, however, seems to be about a month in the future.

Across
1 LITTLE BOY BLUE, cryptic definition. The first thing that came to my mind is the Fat Boy from Dickens, so I needed checkers to see the obvious.
9 REMUS, SUM[m]ER backwards, the Joel Chandler Harris stories, now taboo.
10 LADY’S MAID, anagram of SADLY + sounds like MADE.
11 SAND MARTIN, S(AND)MARTIN[g]. A very deceptive clue, with a well-hidden literal and clever wordplay.
12 DAWN, double definition, easy enough if you happen to think of it, otherwise not. Heroine of a Four Seasons song, and also a US dishwashing detergent.
14 PATENTS, PA(TEN)TS.
16 HOUDINI, HOU[n]D + IN + I, easily gotten from the literal.
17 RELATED, R + ELATED.
19 ROTUNDA, O + TUNDRA with the ‘R’ moved to the front.
20 TUBA, A BUT backwards, a moderately well-disguised chestnut.
21 COMMANDANT, COMM[a] + ANDANT[e]. I had supposed the answer was going to mean ‘camp’ in the sense of affected, and that it would end in lent[o]….both ideas wrong!
24 ATONEMENT, [l]A(TONE)MENT, where ‘tone’ meaning ‘accent’ was quite unexpected to me.
25 ORIBI, O(RIB)I, where a bit can be either zero or one.
26 HORSESHOE BATS, reverse cryptic for HE OR SHE SO. Naturally, I wanted to put in horseshoe crab, but since I already had two solid checkers for the second word, that was obviously not it.
 
Down
1 LORDS SPIRITUAL, LORDS (the cricket venue) + SPIRITUAL (as, for example, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot). ‘The bench’ is a rather vague clue for the bishops sitting in the House or Lords. The Wikipedia states: “Although the Lords Spiritual have no party affiliation, they do not sit on the crossbenches, their seats being on the Government side of the Lords Chamber. As such, their seats are on the right-hand side of the throne, representing the fact that they, of all the members of the House of Lords, are the most loyal to the Crown.”
2 TIMON, TI(MO)N, best known from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, of course.
3 LAST MINUTE, LAST + MINUTE, difficult for me because I expected something more complex.
4 BELARUS, anagram of A + RUBLES.
5 YIDDISH, D.I.Y backwards + DISH, which I simply plopped in from the literal.
6 LOST, LO(S)T, very simple when you see it.
7 EMANATION, EM(-o,+AN,+A)TION, a rather complex substitution clue, where ‘proceeding’ means ‘issuing from’, a rather archaic sense.
8 IDENTICAL TWINS, IDENTICAL + T + WINS. Used in A Comedy of Errors, with the plot prigged from Plautus.
13 BUTTONHOLE, double definition, easy enough if you have the right checking letters!
15 TOLLBOOTH, T(O LLB)OOTH.
18 DIOCESE, anagram of CODE IS + E[nglish].
19 REMATCH, RE(M[alari]A)TCH.
22 ANIMA, A N.I. MA, perhaps referring to the concept in Jungian psychology.
23 WEIR, WEIR[d]. I wasted a lot of time with Lake Erie before seeing the obvious; not eerie enough, I suppose…

27 comments on “Times 26035 – Here’s to the fine lady from 4 down!”

  1. Yes, I struggled a bit too with this one although most of it went in slowly and steadily after taking an age to get going at all. And in the end I decided I didn’t know the word at 25ac and looked it up only to find that I did know it after all – and its wordplay shouldn’t have been difficult to spot.

    I had fun at 11ac trying to explain ARTIN having decided the first bit was S&M!

    Edited at 2015-03-02 02:40 am (UTC)

  2. Had never thought of a patent as being a monopoly, didn’t know LBB was a byword for drowsiness and confidently bunged in ‘Negro spiritual’ at 1dn. Took five minutes at the end before I tumbled to DAWN. 51 minutes.

    Your heading is ultra cryptic today, J!

    Edited at 2015-03-02 03:17 am (UTC)

  3. Sidetracked for a bit by putting in LAST SECOND (which matches the clue just fine) and EMANATING (which matches the clue too). Luckily both ROTUNDA and RELATED couldn’t be anything else. I also considered S&M for ‘being painful’ but basically just put it in once I realised the literal was ‘swallow’ without bothering with the wordplay.

    I’m embarrassed at how long it took to get DAWN at the end, my LOI. _A_N are not very useful checkers.

  4. DAWN took its sweet time to break for me, too, although my LOI was ANIMA. And that took so long because the only O___I animal I could think of was okapi–it grazes, doesn’t it? Unlike Vinyl, I tend to follow a cruciverbal version of Gresham’s Law: bad solutions drive out good ones.
  5. LOI was BUTTONHOLE, a great word which sprung to prominence in Australia last year when our PM meant (we think) to use it to describe what he would do to Vladimir Putin at the G20. Instead he came out with SHIRTFRONT, an Australian Football term that means to flatten someone out with an aggressive shoulder charge.

    In the end they just got photographed with koalas, much to everyone’s disappointment.

    Excellent puzzle to start the week, thanks setter and blogger.

  6. 15m, with a few at the end puzzling over 25ac. The wordplay suggests OSITI or OTISI, but as there was no indication of which I kept thinking. ORIBI looked more likely, and rang a bell, so I bunged it in eventually, but I couldn’t account for ‘broken’ in the clue. I still can’t. What am I missing?
    My brain isn’t on top form this morning. I spent too long thinking that LITTLE BOW PEEP didn’t look quite right.
    1. I think the idea is that ‘[ha]s broken into’ means that the RIB has inserted itself (like a thief) between O and 1.
      1. Thanks, but also hmm. I see it, but it still seems a strange way of describing an insertion, and misleading in a rather underhand sort of way. Ah well, I solved the clue.
  7. 19:20 … well that was a bit different. Glad to remember the ‘bits’ device, which seems to have cropped up a few times of late.

    Generally, my experience too similar to others’ to be worth recounting, except that I did not consider S&M … whatever that is.

  9. . . . and definitely a game of two halves. The north of the NE-SW diagonal went straight in; the south, er, didn’t.
  10. 12 mins. From the comments above it looks like I was on the setter’s wavelength, although I confess than I only bothered to parse the biffed HOUDINI post-solve. Having said that, it had an excellent surface reading. SAND MARTIN was my LOI when I finally broke down the wordplay and saw what the definition was.

    As far as 7dn is concerned I think that “emotion” rather than “emoting” fits the wordplay much better and I discounted the latter very quickly.

  11. 24 minutes, ending with O-I-I for 25a, I thought I had a fair memory for crossword antelopes but had to seach for this one so tech a DNF. Otherwise a trickier than usual puzzle for a Monday with some excellent clues and misdirection e.g. the swallow. 1a being so easy spoilt it though.

  12. at 15.28 i must have been in the zone and i thought this a very well-put-together puzzle. like vinyl i spent some time on lake erie and WEIRD is a word i always have trouble spelling – i know i’m not alone in this. loved galspray’s reference to shirtfronting the putin.

    vinyl is right about uncle remus – that stuff really is a tarbaby now. oh vinyl, will this awful winter ever end.

  13. An undistinguished 22.32, bogged down in the SE having chosen (just) to put in EMANATING – the definition is, after all, “proceeding”. Just misleading, I’ll allow.
    I suppose it’s inevitable that Uncle Remus is now taboo, otherwise I would have been able to quote the wiki entry on film adaptations: “The Adventures of Brer Rabbit is a 2006 direct-to video production which has hip-hop influences”. Would it have made any difference if Joel Chandler Harris had been black?
    And does this mean I can no longer sing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, or compliment it with Bill Oddie’s delicious “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was undone”?
    I’m currently watching Reginald D Hunters magnificent “Songs of the South” on BBC – don’t know if it’s more widely available. Possibly one of the most intelligent pieces on TV, it tackles the issues of what we do with such embarrassments from the past head on and without flinching. Required watching.
    1. I immediately thought about RDH’s programme too when I saw the taboo comment, particularly the bit on Stephen Foster and minstrel music in the first episode.
  14. I was held up for a bit by thinking that 7d would end in ING. 12:52 so probably on the setter’s wavelength.
  15. 14:45 having also considered a bone-grazer like ositi before vaguely recalling the antelope.

    At least I didn’t need to know any Browning poems to get the non-cryptic 1a.

  16. 48 minutes, held up for a long time through bunging in LORDS TAVERNERS at 1d, and wondering whether there was such a thing as a HORSHOE CAT or RAT at 26.

    Is 1a just a cryptic definition, or an &lit with BLUE as a homophone for BLEW (did sound that horn)?

    1. I wouldn’t have said it was just a cryptic definition but I’m not sure how I would classify it, Keith. Unless, as suggested by ulaca above, LBB can be a byword for drowsiness (and I can find no evidence for that) I think the definition has to be at least “sleepy youngster” but then “youngster” is also required to clue LITTLE BOY to be followed by the homophone “blew” (did sound that horn) = BLUE. Double duty is not generally acceptable unless we’re in the realms of &lit or semi-&lit so I think that must be what’s going on here.

      Edited at 2015-03-02 10:22 pm (UTC)

      1. Sorry I didn’t make it clear that in the nursery rhyme Little Boy Blue is said to be fast asleep under a haystack instead of tending his sheep, so “sleepy youngster” would appear to be the definition here.

        [Thanks, keriothe, for your input, though I see you have since deleted your comment]

        Edited at 2015-03-02 11:18 pm (UTC)

  17. The blog is dated March 1st whereas this crossword was in The Times for Mon. March 2nd – had a job to find the blog from the calendar!
  18. Happy to complete this one successfully, though I don’t really understand the ‘bits’ in 25a – I presume it’s something to do with binary notation or some other mathematical concept that I know not of.
    1. it’s computerese.. eight bits make one byte. A bit is a simple on/off instruction that can therefore be either 0 or 1 only. All computer programs are built up from this 0 & 1 concept
  19. This took most of a pint, drunk very slowly, so didn’t get a time, but it was a struggle with WEIR being the last in. HORSESHOE BATS and LORD’S SPIRITUAL from wordplay.
  20. One wrong here. Thought I had a bone eating animal I’d never heard of- welcome to the OSITI- O(ITS)*I. Never mind, back to the drawing board. Thought I was heading for a rare victory over the setter.
    Regards
    Andrew K

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