Times 26089 – Meaty Mayday

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A little more Labour than normal needed on this Bank Holiday puzzle. I negotiated it safely if unspectacularly in 50 minutes, rather as I imagine Cook, AN Other, Balance, Root and the other boys will deal with the Southeys and Starcs of this world later in the summer. Australia in particular will be keen to improve on their record of just two wins in the last 15 Ashes Tests away from home.

ACROSS

1. SIDEBOARD – ‘whiskers’; BOAR (‘swine’) + D ([settle]D) on SIDE (‘camp’, as in ‘Some are still in Pietersen’s camp’). A chewy one to get off the mark with, unless you’re Ian Bell.
6. LOBES – ‘round danglers’; L[eft] + OBES (‘gongs’). Are they always round? Not ellipsoidal, ovoid, etc. Well, they’re not oblong, I suppose.
9. REFRESHER COURSE – ‘series of updates’; anagram* of RESCUERS HERE FOR. What England need in running between the wickets and bowling slowly without letting it bounce twice.
10. PENCIL – [on edit] an &lit, or all-in-one clue, is where the definition and the wordplay are the same; this may be classified as a semi &lit: PEN (‘writer’) + initial letters of C[hew] I[t] L[anguidly].
11. SMOOTHIE – ‘suave fellow’; SHIE[d] around MOOT (‘subject to debate’, being an adjectival phrase).
13. INTERFAITH – ‘relating to diversity of thought’; INTER (‘bury’) + FAITH (‘conviction’). The penultimate for me, which may have something to do with the fact that I don’t much care for the word, as well as the fact that conviction is typically used countably in this sense and faith uncountably.
14. SAGO – ‘sweet’; GAS (‘waffle’) reversed (‘about’) + O[ld]. The fact that tapioca, semolina and sago probably have nothing in common apart from ending with a vowel will never stop me from collapsing them into one vat with an enormous skin on it. People ask how exactly boarding school scarred kids in the 60s and 70s – I’m telling them.
16. SHAM – ‘bogus’; S[on] + HAM (‘acting without subtlety’). ODO confirms that the word can be used to refer to Luvvyism as well as to Luvvies themselves.
17. FOR EXAMPLE – ‘say’; FORE X (‘ten in front of ship’ – ‘ten in back of ship’ would of course be AFT X if a compiler could find any use for it) + AMPLE (‘adequate enough’).
19. LITERATE – ‘who’s knowledgeable’; [e]LITE (‘the best’) + RATE (‘judge’). I don’t want to get pummeled again for perceived Aussie bashing, so I will say – without exception or equivocation – that all members of this site, regardless of provenance, fall into this category.
20. SCREAM – ‘joker’; S[ingular] + CREAM (‘the very best’). I got a bit confused the first time I went to New Zealand when everyone was talking about these jokers. I kept expecting to meet someone funny but was sorely disappointed during my long stay.
23. BACKSEAT DRIVERS – ‘possibly irresponsible advisors’; BACK (‘support’) + ADVERTISER’S*. In a surprisingly biff-free solve, I had no proper clue how this worked (working in a field as disreputable as that of advertising – indeed, called the new advertising by some – I thought the puff bit was supplied by that annoying word ‘drivers’) until I came to write the blog. It’s one of the benefits of an otherwise thankless undertaking, I reckon.
24. EVENT – ‘do’; EVEN (‘calm’) before T[ime].
25. NOMINATED – ‘gets put up’; MAIDEN TON*.

DOWN

1. SCRAP – ‘axe’; SC (abbreviation of scilicet – which translates as ‘you may know it’ – which means ‘that is to say; namely [introducing a word to be supplied or an explanation of an ambiguity]’) + RAP (‘strike’).
2. DEFINITE ARTICLE – is this another &lit or does the ‘perhaps’ scupper that? I played all around a straight one here, it would seem. Thanks to McT for pointing out that the literal is ‘the’, the wordplay being DEFINITE (‘real’) + ARTICLE (‘thing’). I still reckon it could be improved by replacing the ‘perhaps’ with a question mark. My first attempts had to do with trying to squeeze Coca Cola in there somewhere.
3. BREVIARY – ‘priest’s book’; AI (‘very good’) and VERB (‘part of speech’) all reversed + RY (‘line’). I’m not sure the priests have any since the setters nicked them all.
4. ACHE – ‘pine’; [c]ACHE (‘store’).
5. DARK MATTER – ‘substance’, I reckon, with a whiff of extended definition and a question mark to cover all bases; DARK (‘mysterious’ – ODO has ‘hidden from knowledge; mysterious’) + MATTER (‘more murky’, if you were being a bit silly). ODO describes this stuff, which I’d never heard of, as ‘non-luminous material which is postulated to exist in space and which could take either of two forms’. Hot or cold, in case you were wondering – like taps.
6. LOOK ON – ‘watch’; LOON (‘chump’) around OK (‘fine’).
7. BIRTHDAY PRESENT – ‘gift’; HARD BY IT* + P (‘quietly’) + RESENT (‘take exception to’). Am I the only one to get a frisson of pleasure from DO used as an anagrind?
Moving swiftly along…
8. STEVEDORE – ‘one in the dock’; ERODE + VETS all reversed. My last in.
12. WAGON TRAIN – ‘convoy’; WARNING TO A*. Sadly, I was working on an anagram of OUT WARNING. There is no known cure…
13. INSOLUBLE – ‘not able to be cleared up’; generous definition for IN (‘in’) SOL (‘Spanish sun’) LUBE with the L slipping (‘oil’s left to sink’).
15. SANCTION – ‘permission’; CONTAINS*. Difficult to mess this one up.
18. PROSIT – ‘cheers’; PRO (‘for’) + SIT (‘place’, as in ‘They always sit me at the head of the table’). Sotira’s Bane.
21. MUSED – ‘pondered on’ (the ‘on’ seems strictly unnecessary); US (‘American’) in MED (‘sea’). I can never hear the word ‘mused’ without thinking of David Brent scripting his own interview with the trade magazine.
22. ADAM – ‘the first of us, some would say’; A + DAM. Timely, as I prepare for two performances of The Creation.

33 comments on “Times 26089 – Meaty Mayday”

  1. The def. is “The”. Then a charade: DEFINITE (real), ARTICLE (thing).
  2. At least you were trying to work out an anagram for 12d; I have no idea what I was about, futzing with the alphabet to get X TRAIN before it hit me. DNK SAGO as other than the flower, but I do have grim memories of tapioca, so I can sympathize. SIDEBOARD took a while, partly because of the ugly surface, but mainly because for us it’s sideburns. Re 5d, there’s Spenser’s (the private eye) line, “The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant.”
    1. I honestly don’t think we ever got anything that wasn’t called tapioca or semolina, but as soon as I heard of sago it entered the same lexico-gastronomic receptacle.
  3. Can feel the blogger’s pain this morning. Wish I could be there to give him a hug.

    Pretty straightforward solve. Didn’t know SIDEBOARD for whiskers. INTERFAITH and STEVEDORE also took a while.

    Thanks setter and blogger. Sorry about your boarding school experience, but my grandmother’s sago and tapioca puddings hold nothing but good memories for me.

    1. Thanks – I felt a little pain being eased even as I wrote the blog as some stats and recent memories came flooding back.
  4. Once again I thought I was heading for sub-30 but at 30 minutes I’d ground to a halt with four clues outstanding (second word at 5dn, 8dn, 11ac and 13ac). And there I remained for an unproductive 15 minutes until MATTER sprang to mind and the extra checkers it provided allowed me to polish off the grid in short order. Only DARK MATTER and BREVIARY were unknown and the latter had obvious wordplay going for it.
  5. 20 mins maybe plus another 10 for 1ac since I was (a) convinced it must end in beard and probably a kind of pig like a berkshire) and (b) I only knew of a sideboard as a place to put the buffet. Plus I was starting to wonder about scrap since I’d forgotten the sc abbreviation.
  7. 6:42, which I was obviously quite happy with. Makes up for having submitted the Concise Jumbo with one (really easy) solution unfilled-in, turning what would have been a near-the-top placing into yet another entry in my alarming catalogue of embarrassments…
  8. About 10 minutes for all but INTERFAITH, which took another few. But I had a silly PROSET, possibly not the first time I’ve misspelt that word.

    Talking of which, there’s a SNAFU in the down clues of the blog, Ulaca,with no sign of the one I got wrong.

    1. SNAFU sorted. I was either feeling your pain or I didn’t want to draw attention to your howler or I thought it was too easy. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.
  9. One of those times when the blog is more entertaining than the puzzle. Good clues for DARK MATTER and PENCIL but the rest is rather easy with some strange surface readings, starting with 1A

    Not just boarding schools that served SAGO. We were regularly given a plate of the goo plus a biscuit that was so hard it was uneatable – never did find out why the biscuit

  10. 16.38, with INTERFAITH my LOASI (And Slowest?). Fine blog. Should we inter faith in the England team now or wait ’til Ireland steamroller them?
    Sago’s not too bad with honey/jam and a decent skin. It’s also how to start a pudding race.
    My unaccountable favourite today was the neat SANCTION, not least because it could just as well have been “Reform contains prohibition”. Isn’t English fabulous?
    1. The advantage of an Ireland win is that the ECB will sign all the best Irish players, who will soon be failing for England instead of southern Africans.
  11. 18:53, with the unnerving start of not writing a single answer in the top half before wrapping up the lower. No problem with Pietersen’s camp but in my mind, I associated camp and side with ‘ OTT affected,’ which worked for me at the time if not now.

    In my 60s boarding school we had a colourless pudding with what seemed to be small bubbles in it, universally called Frogspawn. It came with a dollop of jam. Perhaps it was sago or tapioca but I have never seen it since.

    1. Yes bigtone, in researching the blog for puzzle 26052 (which also featured SAGO) I established that “frogspawn” was indeed tapioca. The only “sweet” part was the dollop of jam in the middle which was never remotely big enough. It was the only part I could ever eat and great care had to be taken so it only just barely touched the white stuff. 16.14 P.S. Sorry Andy, mine crossed with yours.

      Edited at 2015-05-04 09:28 am (UTC)

  12. 10 mins and all parsed. Sometimes I’m off the wavelength on a Monday but that wasn’t the case today. SAGO was my LOI after the DARK MATTER/INTERFAITH crossers.

    As far as the frogspawn referred to by bigtone53 is concerned, we used the same term for what was sometimes served at my Grammar School, and I’m pretty sure ours was tapioca.

  13. 15 minutes for a pleasant, steady solve, then another 5 to sort out 1a (not BEARD but BOARD) and biff 1d, so thanks Ulaca for parsing that and the amusing cricket-ful blog. How can A. Cook remain in post, when he gives interviews like that? ‘It’s more / too difficult to win away from home?’
  14. Had no idea why “scrap” worked—-thanks for that. Other than that I found this one straightforward—-apart from “interfaith” which took a toast and coca cola break before I finally nailed it.

    Edited at 2015-05-04 09:44 am (UTC)

  15. 10:26. I enjoyed this, largely because like ulaca’s my solve was remarkably biff-free. I don’t notice surfaces when solving so if they’re a bit strange it tends to pass me by.
  16. Enjoyed the puzzle, loved the blog – thanks ulaca.

    LOI STEVEDORE, which took an age notwithstanding having more than half the checkers, as I was fixated on the courtroom. Thought 2dn and 10ac were both rather good.

  17. Once I realised that there were quite a few anagrams this proved fairly straightforward, though not without hold-ups getting 8, 13 and 19. 36 minutes in the end.
    I agree with dorsetjimbo that there were some odd surfaces in places, and to break down INTERFAITH into INTER and FAITH is not the most inspired clueing technique.
    Re the blog, 10 across is not &lit because the whole of the clue is not a definition, which it has to be to qualify for &lit status. Semi-&lit perhaps.
  19. 46m of which an 8m blank at the start until I found SHAM. From thereon a steady solve with no major hold ups. And to prove our entertaining blogger wrong for once : thanks for the blog; much appreciated.
  20. About 12 minutes for all but interfaith, then about three minutes’ head-scratching then I had to give up as I was “needed” in the garden so a DNF. Not a great clue. Even if I’d thought of faith for the second half I don’t think I’d have put it in with much conviction.
  21. 10:58 for me, finding some clues – particularly 13ac (INTERFAITH) and 12dn (WAGON TRAIN) – a bit of a struggle.

    DARK MATTER went straight in from the definition, but I was left feeling worried about MATT = “murky”. No-one else seems to have had problems with it though, so I expect I’m missing something obvious.

  22. Beaten by INTERFAITH. I could get no further than “interparty”, with no justification for the “party” part.

    I spent a long time agonising over SIDEBOARD. I knew that sideburns were sometimes jocularly referred to as “sideboards”, but was pretty sure that this wasn’t a legitimate meaning. Wondered if there was such a thing as a “sidebeard”, but eventually settled on SIDEBOARD on the grounds that it contained a boar, even though I failed to parse the rest of it.

    Regarding SAGO and the equally vile tapioca – I too (like some others here) encountered these only at school lunches in the 1960s. I presume that England had struck some sort of deal with the former colonies that produce these execrable sludges, and was obliged to accept vast quantities of them. Whoever thought of using them as food and giving them to children should really have been taken out and shot, preferably twice.

    Edited at 2015-05-04 10:36 pm (UTC)

  23. In an otherwise excellent cricket blog surprised you didn’t mention the “stirring maiden ton” that was put up, an obvious cricket surface. I’m old enough to remember Greg Chappell’s century on debut, and very happy to call him Chappello (cf big brother Chappelli) after his string of ducks against ?India?
    I disagree with dyste, re: 10 ac – a definite &lit.
    And in the spirit of Tony Sever I would guess it’s a Don Manley crossword on account of all the religion in it, including the absolutely crap clue at 13 ac in an otherwise enjoyable (for me) puzzle.

    Interesting point from downunder: the crossword has suffered an edit in the month between being published in Rupert’s The Times and being published in Rupert’s The Oz: 5 dn 2nd word MATTER was clued here as DULLER, not MURKIER as in UK. 19 ac definition was “WHO’S KNOWLEDGEABLE” for you, “(being) KNOWLEDGEABLE” for us.

    Seemed quite easy at 4AM for the early flight, no time but maybe 20 min. INTERFAITH 2LOI, SIDEBOARD LOI – not a word I knew.
    Rob

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