Times 26,081: Not Very 8D 15D

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
It is a sad and reduced verlaine you see before you today – for the past week I’ve been all but confined to my bed, tossing and turning in the throes of fevers and hallucinations, due to coming down with a severe case of acute bronchitis. (Also known of course as “a chest cold”, but I think “acute bronchitis” sounds more like the horrible thing actually tastes.)

Anyway my solving efforts this week have been sporadic and my times a little sad, at least compared to my best. Finished this one in 18 minutes, which certainly could’ve been worse. The cryptic def at 1A went straight in, which helped, and then the SW corner proved the easiest quadrant to gain a foothold in, before somewhat sighingly and complainingly I mopped up the rest of the grid piecemeal.

I don’t have an awful lot to say about this solid, fair, apolitical and (for many of you I’m sure) mercifully non-classical puzzle. Except perhaps that technically speaking isn’t only *one* of the pair of drums the “tabla”? Thanks to the setter and to the rest of you I can only pledge to try to be fighting fit once more 7 days from now!

Across
1 FOOTPRINT – cryptic def, a footprint being the impression made by the foundation/sole of an Oxford shoe
6 TABLA – pair of drums: on TABL{e} [“short” list], A
9 ROAST – pan: AS [for example] with ROT [mould] “on the outside”
10 LENINGRAD – besieged city: N.G. [no good] in (IRELAND*) [“after reformation’]
11 EXITING – leaving: EXI{s}TING [living “without sons”, i.e. minus S]
12 ARTISAN – craftsman: A RAN [article | published] “about” SIT reversed [“revolutionary” model]
13 PIT BULL TERRIER – dangerous pet: PIT BULL [mine | nonsense] + ERR [blunder] “revealed in” TIER [row]
17 CORRESPONDENCE – double def: similarity / emails, perhaps
21 INHALER – item of medical kit: IN HER [stylish | woman] provides a “case for” A L [a | large]
23 ENCHANT – what a charmer may do: {p}ENCHANT [“start off” liking]
25 PROJECTED – forecast: PRO{T -> J}ECTED [defended, “after judge is seen for first time”, i.e. when J replaces the first T]
26 IDEAL – model: I DEAL [current | contract]
27 DRESS – shift: “ends in” {discor}D {fo}R {th}E {factory’}S {worker}S
28 SEDENTARY – somewhat inactive: (TENDER SAY*) [“upset”]

Down
1 FOR KEEPS – always: {w}EEP [blub, “losing head”] during FORKS [threats from knight]
2 OMANI – Arab: IN A MO reversed [very soon “mounted”]
3 POT LIQUOR – American stock: (QUILT*) [“crazy”] found in POOR [trashy]
4 ILLEGAL – banned: E [drug] “in possession of” ILL GAL [bad | girl]
5 TINWARE – kitchen utensils, for instance: (WAITER*) [“in state”] about N [new]
6 TENET – belief: “not changed after reflection”, i.e. a word that reads the same forward and back
7 BERNSTEIN – composer: E IN [English | home] “south of” BERN ST [capital | thoroughfare]
8 ARDENT – enthusiastic: D [Democrat] “blocking” A RENT [a charter]
14 TOOTHSOME – delicious: TOME [book] “describing” O + (HOST*) [nothing | host “cooked”]
15 REDUCTION – discount: RED [wine] + {a}UCTION [sale “without a”]
16 MENTALLY – in an intellectual way: TALLY [agree] “to provide support for” MEN [fellows]
18 STRATUS – cloud: R [{chambe}R “finally”] “fixed in” STATUS [position]
19 OVERDID – exaggerated: O D [{m}O{o}D{s} “regularly”] “overwhelming” VERDI [composer]
20 LIMPID – crystal-clear: IMP [rogue] “breaking” LID [cover]
22 LEEDS – city: homophone of LEADS [winning margins “being talked about”]
24 ARENA – scene: found reversed in {slo}ANE RA{nger} [“somewhat upset”]

29 comments on “Times 26,081: Not Very 8D 15D”

  1. 36:18. The good news was that like verlaine, 1ac went straight in. Unfortunately it went straight in as SHOEPRINT, which then made 1dn look like Sir someone. Unscrambled this in the end but time wasted. Great blog from a sickbed so thanks.
  2. Quicker than it felt at the time, 1d in particular seeming to take forever before I parsed it.(On edit: Like my 2 posting predecessors, I, too, started with SHOEPRINT, which helped delay solving 1d.) Didn’t know POT LIQUOR was American, and tried to find a place for US. I wondered about the pair of TABLA myself, but not for long. I liked 25ac. I trust you get better quickly, Verlaine. When I was a child, bronchitis (and a couple of pneumonias) was a frequent visitor, and I can’t say I miss it.

    Edited at 2015-04-24 07:54 am (UTC)

  3. A par 30 minutes for me. The only real hold-up was putting TABOR in for 6a (I know, I know).
    And just as I was reading 7d the presenter on Radio 3 mentioned Bernstein.
    Thanks for parsing 12a for me.
    Get well Verlaine so you can change your gruesome new avatar again.
  4. About 40 mins or so, ending with DRESS, which took far too long… Wasted time searching for a word which meant discord so that I could change its ends to mean factory workers…

    Didn’t think of RENT for charter, and have only just twigged this post-blog.

    dnk POT LIQUOR, but clearly clued.

    Thanks for posting from your sick bed, Verlaine. Hope you’re feeling better soon.

  5. FOOTPRINT first in and COD among many common-or-garden, middle-of-the-road, solid but uninspiring clues. Loved TOOTHSOME, it’s high up in my list of silly words. I had a typo at 5dn but no matter as I submitted off leaderboard. A 21ac might help with your condition.
  6. Yes get well soon Verlaine, meantime I do hope that avatar’s not a selfie
    re tabla, Wikipedia is confusing but Collins says “a musical instrument of India consisting of a pair of drums whose pitches can be varied”
    Enjoyed this crossword, some slick surfaces. But quick, only 10m or so with 3dn last in, which sounded more like whiskey than stock to me
    1. Yes, it was Wikipedia that confused me tabla-wise, claiming that the right-hand drum is the “tabla” and the left-hand one a “dagga” or “baya”. It is blatantly obvious even there though that the set-up as a whole is referred to as the tabla, so my objections must be considered largely drum-in-cheek.

      Edited at 2015-04-24 08:31 am (UTC)

  7. According to ODO, tabla refers to the pair of [Indian] drums. I originally had ‘shoeprint’ at 1a, which meant that the cunning 1d went in last. I would give this COD for the cunning definition were I not always wary of giving that accolade to a clue which depends on knowledge I don’t possess – in this instance, chess.

    Oh, heavens, I’m beginning to write like you so must desist. (There I go again.) Get better! If you look anything like your pic, I’d be a worried man.

    Edited at 2015-04-24 07:51 am (UTC)

  8. 12:35. When CORRESPONDENCE went straight in I thought this might be quick. At one point I hoped for my first sub-10 of the ipad era but I couldn’t quite manage it. If I hadn’t read both the ‘without’ clues as indicating ’round the outside’ rather than ‘drop a letter’ I would have been quicker but then reading a clue multiple ways simultaneously has proven an elusive goal to date.
  9. Failed my 30-minute target by 1 minute held up by TINWARE as my LOI. DK POT LIQUOR but it was easy enough to guess, and nearly biffed TABOR at 6ac but realised it might not fit the plural “drums”. “Fork” in chess doesn’t exclusively relate to knights so we might have had an indication that it’s an example.
  10. An enjoyable 13 mins. I decided to wait for the first checker from 1dn before I went for either “shoe” or “foot” at the start of 1ac. I was slow to see PIT BULL TERRIER and I didn’t get it until I got the U checker from POT LIQUOR. PROJECTED was my LOI because I was slow to see the replacement indicator. I hope you get better soon Verlaine.
  11. Oh so that was chess was it – no wonder I didn’t get it. I went so far as to wonder if it had something to do with “Morton’s Fork” c.f. Sellar and Yeatman. Another shoeprint here. Get better soon Verlaine – those things are hell and it feels all wrong when it’s nice outside. 15.20
  12. The top half went in very quickly, the bottom a little less so, with a long time spent on the pesky Dorset corner.

    One error with DYERS at 27ac: I took “shift” as the anagrind, the last letters of “discorD foR thE factorY’S” as the anagrist, and “workers” as the (rather vague) definition. Well, I thought it worked!

    Dereklam

  13. 12:07. There’s a bit of a theme in this: Bernstein overdid the roast pit bull terrier, and served it on tinware with a toothsome pot liquor reduction.
    Get well soon Klaus.
  14. They don’t get much easier than this. A rare sub-20 time of 18 minutes. It all flowed very nicely.
    Get well soon, Verlaine.
  15. Possibly a PB, 10 minutes, it just flowed, the top all done before the bottom tackled, then SE, ending with DRESS in the SW.

    According to the code, I think your image is called ‘klaus’, Verlaine, no doubt you’ll be saying goodbye to him when you’re feeling better.

  16. Sorry to hear you’ve got a touch of what my granny would have called “the bronichals”. Get well soon.

    As for the puzzle, if I’d have been at work and not at the kitchen table (day off before the Cambridge S&B tomorrow), Tippex would certainly have been employed, but not I’m pleased to say on 1a where FOOTPRINT just wrote itself in. About 12 mins.

  18. 10:21.

    Footprint was my FOI, and correctly as I spotted that there be wordplay (Type = print (by) foundation = foot) so it’s not just a CD.

    Nice even puzzle, with pretty much all clues requiring a little but not too much thought.

  19. Somewhat held up by putting “Clarendon” for 1ac – it’s a foundation (charity), type (clarendon is both a synonym for bold and a font), and an imprint of Oxford University Press. For some reason, I stuck with it 🙁

    Many thanks for the blog! Long term listener, first time caller, etc.

  20. Agree with penfold that 1 is FOOT+PRINT, which stopped me from writing SHOEPRINT. Nothing too tricky here, though I embarrassingly didn’t see the wordplay for DRESS and wondered if I was missing a word for factory workers that matched a word for duress spelled S?E?D. Way to go, idiot.
  21. 36 minutes, so not too hard by my standards. I suspected a pangram, but with a few left, couldn’t find a J or Z, so abandoned the idea. If there had been a Z lurking somewhere, I would have got PROJECTED (my LOI) a lot quicker.
  22. About 20 minutes, ending with DRESS, where like George I was trying to switch the ends around in something meaning ‘discord’. Nothing too exciting today, rather a workingman’s puzzle, although I did learn that the term POT LIQUOR is apparently an American creation, which I hadn’t known. Verlaine, I hope you regain the usual robust appearance of the original avatar, so we can be spared any further exposure to the evident suffering of today’s. Regards and thanks for the blog, best to everyone.
  23. 45m for a pleasant solve. Not held up by any mistakes today, only an inability to see the obvious such as DRESS. Guessed TABLA and BIFD 1d so pleased to have the blog to clarify the obscure and especially so given the blogger’s suffering. Many thanks!
  25. Oh dear. I was fairly happy to get through this one in 38 minutes, but I had “doers” for 27ac, on the vague pretext that the “doers” are the “workers”. Serves me right for not parsing it.

    I wish everyone a good weekend, particularly our afflicted blogger – may your recovery be speedy. Meanwhile, be glad at least that you don’t live in France where they would treat your condition from the other end.

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