Times 26053 – Not particularly Harrowing…..

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 30 minutes

Music: Mozart, Piano Sonatas, Andre Tchaikowsky

This one seemed to be very easy at first, as I rapidly filled in the top half without even bothering to parse the clues. It looked like I might have a really good time, but unfortunately the bottom half proved a little slower. Looking back, I don’t think it was really that much more difficult except for two entries, which had to be dredged up by going through the alphabet, and even then needed some ex post facto research to confirm their correctness.

In my last blog, on March 1, I reported cold and snowy conditions in New York City. This week spring began, but it snowed anyway. Oh, well….

Across
1 MEDOC, ME DOC. Did anyone bung in ‘medic’ without reading the clue carefully?
4 HUMOROUS, HUM(OR O)US, where ‘humus’ and ‘mull’ both refer to a type of soil.
8 SOLOMON ISLANDS, anagram of LONDON LASS IS containing MO. A major area of operations during WWII.
10 PRIVATEER, P RIV(AT [lin]E)ER. Don’t forget your Letter of Marque!
11 HIRER, [s]HIRE + R[eceived], where ‘hiring’ refers to leasing equipment.
12 TURNIP, TURN 1P.
14 JAPONICA, JA(P[ilot] O[fficer]N + I.C. + A. Amazingly, the first month I tried worked! This is some sort of ornamental plant, but if you Google it, you will get the sushi restaurant on University Place.
17 MAINTAIN, MAIN + T(A)IN.
18 SINGLE, S + INGLE, a chestnut.
20 APSES, SEA backwards around P.S.
22 STIRABOUT, STIR + ABOUT. Never heard of it, but the cryptic hands it to you.
24 BOARDING SCHOOL, BOARDING’S C(H[arrow])OOL.
25 SMUGGLER, SMUGG(L)ER.
26 SEEDY, SEE + [accredite]D [agenc]Y.
 
Down
1 MESOPOTAMIAN, anagram of SON, A POET, IMAM.
2 DELHI, DEL(H)I, a chestnut.
3 CYMBALIST, sounds like Symbolist….right, Verlaine?
4 HANDEL, sounds like ‘handle’.
5 MISTRIAL, MISTR(I)AL, where ‘northerly’ does NOT indicate upside-down, as I had at first supposed. These wind names would be hopeless obscure if they had not been raided by car manufacturers.
6 ROACH, RO(A)C + H.
7 UNDERLING, UNDERLIN[e] + [collapsin]G. Just bunged in while solving, but I had to parse it for the blog.
9 ORNAMENTALLY, OR(NAME + NT)ALLY, slow to come due to over-elaborate theories of how the clue works.
13 RAINSTORM, [b]RAINSTORM, a simple letter-removal clue.
15 OLIGARCH, anagram of LAGOS, RICH.
16 PIGSWILL, anagram of I[land] GP’S + WILL, an unexpectedly complex clue in this otherwise undemanding puzzle.
19 JIGGER, double definition, and a guess on my part, since this is a rather obscure old golf club indeed, as opposed to the well-know mashie and niblick.
21 SPRIG, S[porting] P[eople] + RIG.
23 OZONE, OZ ONE.

54 comments on “Times 26053 – Not particularly Harrowing…..”

  1. Wrongly guessed ‘zinger’ for JIGGER, after an age becalmed in the Nice area, waiting for the mistral, I guess. I wish the cryptic had handed me STIRABOUT but it was not so accommodating, while I was looking for an upside down EG at 23d, and only one final letter (Y) at 26a. 54 minutes for all these travails.

    At least United won…

  2. … held me up. DK much about the game generally, but when it’s obscure, things get near impossible. Except that the dancer rather makes for easy guessing. Otherwise a fairly simple puzzle.

    Slight beef re 9dn: as I’m sure many on this forum will know, “orally” and “verbally” have quite different meanings.

    1. I don’t think I ever hear ‘verbally’ used to mean anything other than ‘orally’ these days. I confess to being slightly irritated by this in spite of myself: I know that my irritation has no linguistic justification.
      1. Well, yes it does. The writing I’m doing now is verbal — it’s made of words (from Latin “verbum”). It is not oral however. And there are all sorts of oral enunciations that are not composed of words.
        1. If people use ‘verbally’ to mean ‘orally’, then that’s what it means. There is no requirement for usage to follow etymology.

          Edited at 2015-03-23 08:37 am (UTC)

          1. So I guess you’d be happy for someone to coin the term “crucioralist” to describe us?
            2. I’m with keriothe on this. The accepted meaning of some words change over time and that is the way that it is. The example that sticks in my mind is ‘The manager prevented the arrival of his staff at the office”, which a while back would simply mean that the manager got there first.
              1. The nub of the matter is Keriothe’s phrase “If people”. It needs qualifying. Some of the people becomes a lot of the people becomes most of the people becomes all of the people. Everyone knows words change their meaning. The only argument is when, by common consent it has happened.
                1. Indeed, anon, and navigating those impossible waters is the job of dictionaries. I would though take issue with your use of the phrase ‘common consent’. The meaning of words is not a matter of consent: it is a matter of usage. We can complain until we’re blue in the face about verbal/oral, infer/imply or uninterested/disinterested, but the language will just ignore us and move on, as it always has.
  3. A couple of DNKs (JIGGER?, PO in 14ac), but otherwise not a lot of trouble. I did actually entertain ‘majolica’ for a bit, until I finally remembered what it is (a bit of advice to newcomers: it can be a real help to know what a word means). Also, although it didn’t seem to bother my fellow-murcan Vinyl, where I come from a brainstorm is a brilliant idea, not a mental aberration. Although on the other hand, where I come from a brilliant idea IS a mental aberration. (Brainstorming, by the way, one of those dumb ideas management, or their consultants, come up with, is a certified, empirically tested, bad idea.) DNK mull. Nice way to start the week.
  4. like 99% of us didn’t know the golf club. didn’t know the porridge either and got well confused since i thought stir and porridge were both names for gaol time. also distracted trying to put monica in for handel. about 30 mins
  5. 46 minutes having waited up to blog the Quickie. My unknowns were the same as others so far and I didn’t know what Verlaine was an example of (apart from a TftT blogger). I thought I’d identified the musician as CEMBALIST until the penny finally dropped.
    1. Throw in a bit of dodgy French pronunciation and it might just as well be. We have to accept the schwa version for the A/O smudge in the “right” answer anyway. Glad I didn’t think of it.
      1. Is there any other? I’m trying to imagine someone pronouncing either word with something other than schwa in the middle and in my imagination they’re sounding a bit silly.
        1. I think I could just about imagine an arty type talking about the symbOlist movement. But what do I know of such things? I had to look up cembalo…
  7. 14m. Like our blogger I started quickly on this but then encountered some resistance. My last in were the unknown JIGGER and STIRABOUT, with fingers crossed. Nice puzzle.
  9. Don’t feel bad about monica for handel, Paul It could have been much worse (see below)
  10. 19:49 … a rather nice puzzle, I thought, but a real Monday morning effort from me.

    Somewhere in my dozy brain I saw ‘name’ and thought ‘tag’, saw ‘sound’ and thought ‘son [et lumiere]’, confused Stephen Sondheim with Susan Sontag, dismissed the suspicion that Stephen S was still with us, and went with SONTAG, which stayed there for nearly 20 minutes until an impossible 4a demanded a rethink.

    COD … UNDERLING

  11. I trickled past 10 minutes with five left in the SE, and finished on 17.38.
    There are annoying moments in some puzzles where you think you might have the right answer, in this case JIGGER (only from dancing), but not so confidently that you trust the crossing letter it supplies. SO STIRABOUT (jamais couché avec) went S-smudge-A—-, with a similar smudge in 9d once I’d guessed the porridge.
    Does anyone know whether there’s any linguistic connection between porridge and stir(about) for prison? Chambers goes via some unlikely looking Romany words for stir. You do the research so I don’t have to.
    Also did not know this (4th of 8 in Chambers!) meaning of mull. Must remember it when I next want something with my tahini.
  12. Just a note that the crossword is numbered 26053 (not 2) on the online paper.
  13. 26.45 after staring at s-e-y for ever. Is a letter a hirer, rather than a hirer-out?
        1. Yes, all those, and was beginning to feel skewy or stewy about it all, till there it was.
    2. “Is a letter a hirer, rather than a hirer-out?”

      I suspect hire/rent are undergoing the same semantic blurring as infer/imply. Collins has “often followed by out” for the hire=let definition. [my italics]

      1. I think the infer/imply distinction is in more need of being kept than letting/hiring/renting. Sed post verbi novem definitionem omne vetus animal triste est.
  15. Half an hour, no issues, knew jigger as a golf club (for chipping, one of my higher handicap friends insists on using one), didn’t know STIRABOUT was a word but got from wordplay, once 1d anagram was sorted the rest flew in. FOI Handel, LOI SEEDY.
  16. 12:19 with, like others, an attempt to put SO in 26a and then working through the alphabet while reading the clue over and over again.
  17. The page hasn’t “rendered” properly so I can’t change my userpic to the muppet one (on edit, it popped up when I edited).

    Had a brainstorm (meaning 2) when a brainstorm (meaning 1) didn’t arise at 11. I failed to think of county generically which left me trying to make something from Hants or Herts so I ended up with the unlikely-looking HERTR, the 38th letter of the Hebrew / Russian / Golgafrinchan / Narnian / Klingon alphabet.

    Edited at 2015-03-23 01:21 pm (UTC)

  18. 17 mins. Maybe it was because it is Monday, but I didn’t find this as straightforward as some of you seem to have done. Count me as another who finished with the STIRABOUT/JIGGER crossers. Like Penfold I was thinking of “Herts” for way too long at 11ac until the “shire” penny dropped.
  19. All o.k., but, like others, I entered ‘stirabout’ without previously knowing the word.
  20. 30m but like others started quickly and came to a grinding halt in the bottom bit. Porridge and seedy held me up far longer than they should have done. Hey ho always tomorrow!
  21. DNF. Couldn’t see CYMBALIST for some reason, but invented CAMPANIST with some vague idea about bell-ringing in mind. Oh well, never mind; still enjoyed the puzzle.
  22. 17 mins but would have been quicker had I not been (i) stupid enough to write DHELI at 2dn without realising what I had done and (ii) too clever by half in putting HUMMEL at 4dn which meant I took a while to see SOLOMON ISLANDS.
  23. 37 mins with the SE holding me up for far too long. I was subject to the same knowledge gaps mentioned by many above.
  24. About 30 minutes, ending with STIRABOUT/JIGGER, like many others here. I was also held up thinking I was looking for some homophonic means to quote books going inside ‘ornately’ at 9D, and it took a while before I read the clue in the required way. Lucky guess too, on the plant. Regards to all.
  25. I didn’t even realise that it was an old golf club — such things still exist and Peter Alliss calls them gentleman’s persuaders, which in my opinion is about the only amusing thing he’s ever said. I’ve seen jiggers on sale in the pro’s shop together with the putters.
  26. 11:59 for me, feeling tired after a busy day and not really on the ball.

    I don’t recall coming across “mull” = HUMUS before, but JIGGER seemed familiar for some reason.

  27. 47 minutes here. Technically, JIGGER was my LOI as I wasn’t confident about it and therefore sat on it for a while; apart from that, ORNAMENTALLY was my LOI.

    Otherwise, nothing exciting to report.

  28. I’ve only been catching up with the week’s puzzles just now but had to come here to voice my appreciation of the guest appearance by Verlaine! Personally I have more of the unsubtlety of cymbals than the nuance of symbols about me…

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