Times 26048

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Much of this was a write-in as answer after answer went in immediately on first reading of its clue, but I slowed down a bit in the lower half when I realised how well it was going, and that dashed my hopes of a achieving a personal best – not that I know exactly what that would be, but somewhere under 15 minutes. In the end I completed the grid with everything parsed in 29 minutes which felt like something of a relief after the horrors of last week.

I’ve not got much to say about individual clues other than how they are parsed, but I’ve included a little more detail by way of explanation as I expect we shall have visitors from Quickie Corner today and I shall certainly be recommending they have a go at it.

{deletions} [indicators]

Across
1 CHANNEL-HOP – Double definition, the first with reference to TV stations
6 HEAR – {bac}H [final piece], EAR (organ)
9 SATURNALIA – Anagram [wild] of AUSTRALIAN
10 ARIA – {r}AR{e}, {p}IA{f} [hearts held captive]
12 BOTTLE-WASHER – BOTTLE (courage), SHE (woman) inside WAR (major conflict). Added at 7:00 GMT, just to clarify that the defintion of this word can be literal, i.e. a person who washes bottles, but it is more usually used informally or figuratively to mean a person who carries out menial tasks. There’s a common expression “chief cook/head chef and bottle-washer” meaning a person whose job requires them to  carry out a whole range of tasks, both being in charge and dealing with the nitty-gritty menial stuff.
15 NON-MEMBER – N (new) + M{itring} replacing the V (third one) in NO{v}EMBER
17 ATOLL – A, TOLL (charge for crossing)
18 IONIC – First letters of I{n} O{ne} N{ewspaper} I{s} C{razy}
19 ON BALANCE – Double definition
20 SLEEPING PILL – Anagram [broken] of LIP SEEN, GP (doctor), ILL (wrongly)
24 BEEF – BEE (buzzer), F (frequency)
25 LEAVE ALONE – LEAVE (time off), ALONE (away from company)
26 EATS – {m}EATS (beef lamb and pork?). ‘Made initially’ indicates the M for removal.
27 PROTESTANT – Anagram [moving] of TO TRANSEPT

Down
1 CASK – C (constant), ASK (demand)
2 ACTS – AS (when) outside CT (court)
3 NARROW ESCAPE – ARROW (dart) + E+S (points – of the compass) + C (caught) all inside NAPE (back of the neck)
4 LEAST – L (large), {b}EAST (animal beheaded)
5 OLIVE DRAB – Anagram [displayed strangely] of A LOVEBIRD. I’d not heard of this until it came up quite recently.
7 EARTHBOUND – Anagram [unfortunately] of ANOTHER BUD
8 ROADROLLER – OR reversed (gold lifted), A, DROLLER (comparatively strange)
11 PARALLEL BARS – Double definition, the second a rather weak cryptic one
13 UNMISSABLE – UNABLE (powerless) encloses [captures] MISS (girl)
14 IN ANY EVENT – IN A NY EVENT. Double definition, the second requiring an additional space
16 BROWN BEAR – BROW (forehead), NB (note well – Nota Bene), EAR (sensory organ, again!)
21 PIVOT – TO (towards), VIP (top person) all reversed [on the way up]
22 ROTA – OR (men – Other Ranks) reversed [to pitch up], TA (volunteers – Territorial Army)
23 LEFT – F (key – music) inside LET (rental period)

42 comments on “Times 26048”

  1. … as well as our blogger in terms of time. But fell at the last trying to justify WENT at 23dn. Ah well …
    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    Edited at 2015-03-17 03:39 am (UTC)

  2. Definitions first, parsing following along after the biff-in for me, too. Couldn’t agree more with Jack regarding the difference between last week and this week.
  3. …with a very poorly-parsed WENT instead of LEFT. Relieved to see I was in esteemed company.

    Will make a point of celebrating SATURNALIA in the future, as any wild Australian should.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. It is from 17 to 23 December, so you may be celebrating it already, more or less. .
      1. Well it’s often said here that we shut down from Melbourne Cup Day* to Australia Day**, so you’re probably right.

        * First Tuesday in November
        ** January 26

  4. A pleasant ramble in about 12 minutes or so. I spent a couple of minutes trying to justify satyriasis for 9ac (eg: “It fits! What more do you want? “) .. before the right answer surfaced.

    On edit: I’m not insomniac, I’m currently in Doha which is three hours ahead of the UK.

    Edited at 2015-03-17 06:11 am (UTC)

      1. Just for the record I’m not an insomniac. I just choose to sleep different hours. Now that I’m retired my life doesn’t have to be ruled by the clock.
        1. I was once involved on the fringes of an experiment to remove people from their normal environment and allow them to eat and sleep when they wanted to. It’s amazing how quickly folk depart from the rigid pattern of their normal daily life and start sleeping in 4 hour blocks interspersed with various activity
          1. Only the other day I read an article that suggested that a “Good night’s sleep” was in fact an unnatural night’s sleep;, that we are naturally designed to wake up in the night and do things, and to have a sleep during the day as well. Which all sounds pretty close to your four-hour blocks, Jim.

            For me the biggest single gift of retirement was to be able to bin the alarm clock and live to my own rhythm instead. To be able to go to sleep when you feel tired and sleep until you don’t is something I really appreciate..

            1. How wonderful that must be. I have never got used to the daily routine of trying and failing to go to sleep when I’m not tired and getting up when I am. Working hours appear to be dictated by ‘morning people’: how I long to throw off their cruel tyranny!
  5. The trouble with solving using definition only is that you get answers such as NARROW SQUEAK for 3d, (what a good expression for a pangram).
    In my ‘umble opinion this was an entertaining puzzle, albeit brief: nice surfaces and a lot of clues to give me a wry smile.

    Edited at 2015-03-17 08:15 am (UTC)

  6. What felt like a slightly sluggish 14.47, so definitely concurring this was on the easy side. There is such a thing as having too much knowledge: I spent quite a while fixated on retrieving my list of Piaf songs; Milord, Mon Légionnaire… “rare” made me think of Vie en Rose (pun alert). It cost me time, but no, no regrets.
    I was a nearly WENT. Then I read the rest of the clue. W- with E- key NT- rental period? No Trumps maybe? Bridge has so many weird terms.
  7. 10:52 .. only real delay was at the end with ROADROLLER. Not sure I’ve heard it called that (I still call them steamrollers, steam or no), and had never really thought much about the meaning of ‘droll’, which I had assumed to be dry or witty, rather than strange.

    Those easily discouraged, avert your gaze. This puzzle took Magoo less than 4 minutes. Well done, that man.

  8. A mere 9 Magoos for me. I struggled throughout, not least with those identified by Sotira.

    I’m blaming it on the fact that I’m still scarred by Big Tone’s alternative anagram from yesterday.

  9. 12:32 here, with few minutes at the end trying to convince myself that DROLL could mean ‘strange’ and that ROADROLLER was a thing. I never quite did, but couldn’t think of anything else.
    OLIVE DRAB appeared twice in quick succession last year, the first time just over a year ago. I didn’t know it at all then, but it was a write-in today. So I do occasionally remember something after all.
  10. Real nursery slopes stuff today and no real talking points – 4 Magoos and never out of second gear
  11. Easiest for a while for me, Mrs K was on Skype to the grandchildren before I started and still there after I’d finished in 16 minutes. A steady write-in with ARIA the only BIF unparsed. Hope tomorrow’s is not the setter’s revenge…
  12. 4 Magoos and would have probably been 2 Magoos if the bottom half had gone in as quickly as the top half. Tempted by WENT but for once parsed it rather than bunging it in.
  13. Was about to submit in under 15 min, but on read-through for typos to avoid carelessly spoiling a good time, saw that WENT doesn’t really work. Then spent about 5 min going through -E-T words before getting the right one.
  14. 11 mins. I may have been a tad quicker if I hadn’t entered “at any event” in 14dn, and it was only when I realised what was going on at 15ac that I corrected it to IN ANY EVENT, which ties in with the wordplay much better. In 8dn you can count me as another who wasn’t sure about “droller” meaning “comparatively strange”.

    Edited at 2015-03-17 01:48 pm (UTC)

  15. 14:20 with much going in on a combination of definition and partial parsing.

    Not much to say about a relatively straightforward puzzle, but I did like NON MEMBER so that can have my COD award.

  16. 28m so on my easy side though might have shed a couple of Magoos but for staring at 25a and 21d without inspiration. I enjoyed the puzzle and smiled at the mad Aussie, which yes my COD.
    1. Yes, the mad Aussie evoked several vivid images…

      Edited at 2015-03-17 12:44 pm (UTC)

      1. They (the mad Aussies) somehow managed to vote for Freddie Flintoff as the winner of their version of I’m a Celebrity….
  17. A bit under 3 Magoos (with Tippex applied) as I took a while to work out what went with NARROW in 3d. Memo to self – read clue properly in the first place.
  18. Found this very easy. Mildly irritated by the use of the same device in 6ac and 16dn,
  19. 10:10 with Left last in and Non-member and Sleeping pill only parsed post-solve.
  20. A lot of biffing kept me well within 2 Magoos, with only momentary hesitation over “droll” providing any sort of meaningful pause, and revealing that my understanding of the word as simply meaning “funny” has been deficient for some decades; so, every day’s a school day for a Times solver, which is as it should be. Perfectly good fare, even if consumed rather more quickly than usual.
  21. 4.5 Magoos which means a relatively straightforward solve. I liked SATURNALIA and biffed EATS which was LOI.
  22. About 10 minutes, top to bottom, left to right ending with PROTESTANT. I think the only ones not going straight in were CHANNEL HOP and ROADROLLER. Not much to say as a result. Regards.
  23. Isn’t SLEEPING PILL abit indirect? GP and ILL both synonyms for the anagram fodder? Just a thought from an amateur at this game.
    1. I think you have misunderstood the parsing. The only anagramatical element of the answer is LIP SEEN. GP and ILL form the end of the answer in the order they are clued.
  24. 7:53 for me – so scraping home in just under 2 Magoos.

    Like sotira, I still refer to roadrollers as steamrollers, if only because I don’t think I’ve heard of the former before.

  25. Five Severs for me*, with CASK and CHANNEL HOP my LOsI. There were too many nicely crafted clues here for me to pick a COD – or perhaps there was no one clue that wowed me.

    This one was wonderfully free of all my most hated clue-types: obscure cricketing positions; tropical trees; developmental stages of the salmon; ‘n’ apostrophised cockneyisms. I was a bit concerned that 1ac would turn out to be French, but all was well in the end.

    (*I note with some alarm that Tony Sever quantifies his own time in Magoos. Is there a further level of subdivision? The millimagoo?)

    1. Don’t know about millimagoos but I recall that a milliHelen is the standard of beauty required to launch one ship.
    1. Agreed unless it’s intended as a double bluff like it’s sort of in the wording of the clue so it can’t be the answer. The surface connection between taking action and ‘court’ is quite nice though.

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