Times 26,090

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Clock stopped at 11:28, which included, as behooves all responsible bloggers, a certain amount of time spent parsing a few of those “well I know what it has to be, but should probably make sure I know why first” type clues (in other words, I’m expecting to see some even faster than usual times at the top of the leaderboard). A very serviceable, if not especially flashy puzzle, which required mostly “crossword” knowledge of the sort which will be familiar to experienced solvers – an old golf club here, a fishing boat there, that sort of thing. The bottom half went in before I’d done very much at all of the top, for no good reason that I can see now.

Across
1 SANDWICH – double def. which fooled me to begin with, by being far more obvious than my brain was expecting.
5 AUGUST – GUS(who is today’s random fellow) in [A U{niversity} T{own}].
8 ALB – hidden in cathedrAL Bigwig &lit.
9 EMANCIPATE – [PIC]rev. in EMANATE
10 RAILROAD – being both “the permanent way” which is the literal network of railway lines in the US, and the metaphorical usage meaning to coerce (edited to put the first of the two defs on the right side of the Atlantic).
11 OLDISH – (LO)rev. + DISH(=”course”).
12 HAKE – SHAKE minus the S{econd}.
14 WASSAILING – i.e. WAS SAILING.
17 NANOSECOND – NAN, O, SECOND(=”back”).
20 MESS – double def. I wouldn’t have exactly equated being “in a mess” and being “in hot water”, but I guess it’s close enough to pass muster. If I were in the army, I’d probably have been cashiered by now for being unable to resist saying “Well, this is another fine mess” at literally every meal time.
23 STRONG – (R{igh}T)rev in SONG. Lied as in the German song, of course, rather than the verb.
24 CAVALIER – double def. Once more, I wouldn’t have exactly equated being “cavalier” and “condescending”, but close enough for a crossword, even if it involves one of those three-point turns in the thesaurus. The supporters of the King, meanwhile, were “wrong but romantic”, as opposed to the Roundheads who were “right but repulsive”.
25 SPIRITLESS – (PRIESTS,S{t}I{l}L)*.
26 ASP – ASAP is “without delay”, taking out the second “A” gives the snake.
27 SNITCH – NIT(=fool) in SCH.
28 MEMSAHIB – (SHAMEIM,B{ritish})*. The woman in question being white and upper-class in the days of the Raj.
 
Down
1 SEA URCHIN – U{ist} in SEARCHIN{g}.
2 NIBLICK – (1LB)rev. in NICK(=pinch). The equivalent of a 9 iron in a golfer’s bag in the days of brassies and mashies, before the more pedestrian numbering system became standard.
3 WHERRY – W{est} HER, R{ailwa}Y. Being more of a drinker than a sailor, I recognise the boat from the label of the eponymous beer, which is brewed in Norwich by Woodforde’s, and is very good, rather than the other way round.
4 CHARABANC – ARAB(horse) in CHANC{e}. Not the most obscure coach in Crosswordland – not when you can hail a barouche, or phaeton, or tanga – probably because they persisted in motorised versions long after most people had stopped getting around in horse-drawn carriages.
5 ARIZONA – (AIR)*, Z(=an unknown), ON A. I’d say Arizona is in the West, myself, but you can’t deny the next thing southward is Mexico.
6 GRAND SLAM – RANDS, as in the South African currency, in GLAM. A sporting triumph in rugby, or tennis, or, indeed, plenty of other sports.
7 STEPSON – The STETSON is the wide-brimmed hat, change the middle letter to a P to produce the family member. Not a very precise instruction, but as I worked it out without too much trouble, that hardly matters. All I ask of such clues is that they’re clear about which version is the one required in the grid.
13 ECOLOGIST – [COL(=pass), O{ld} GIS] in E.T.
15 SINHALESE – [HALE(=healthy) S{on}] in SINE(=function). The Sinhalese are the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka.
16 GASTROPUB – (ASTOPGRUB)*.
18 ARTISAN – {p}ARTISAN.
19 ENGLISH – NG in [ELI’S H{ole}].
21 EPITAPH – cryptic def., darkly droll.
22 CASSIS – CA’S SIS, CA being Chartered Accountant.

45 comments on “Times 26,090”

  1. One of those mornings when solving online at work backfires, as people had the gall to continually call me about ephemeral matters such as the maturity of electric bus technology. Still that was no excuse for shoving in ‘mensahib’, which felt odd at the time – as odd as my original ‘Singalese’.
  2. Raced through this in 20 mins and then ground to a halt on EMANCIPATE where the only word I could fit was ELASTICATE. free=ELASTIC, “film making a comeback” seemed like ATE (I was even suspicious that ET was film twice that the editor would never let pass). spring=ELASTICATE. Doesn’t seem quite right but I thought it was just a lousy clue.
      1. … and me!

        Would’ve made 30mins if I hadn’t spent so long on my LOI (wish I hadn’t…). I had ‘making a comeback in spring’ as the def, and put in ‘elasticate’ with a shrug.

    2. I too got stuck on this. I have to agree—–some clues are hard to get because they’re not very good.
  3. No major hold-ups today. A lot of half-known words very fairly clued.

    Can’t see the problem with EMANCIPATE, seems a well-constructed clue to me.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  4. 35 minutes, but with one wrong at 9ac where I suffered exactly the same fate as Paul above thinking along exactly the same lines. I agree it was a poor clue. I had intended to revisit it this morning before coming here, but forgot.
    1. Exactly the same as Paul and Jack. 14′, of which almost 8, count ’em, 8, were spent on this clue, running up and down the alphabet and somehow missing M. I’d say ‘faugh!’, but I don’t know how to pronounce it.
      1. I got stuck here as well and had to resort to a word finder. It did seem obvious once I knew the answer.
    2. Why is it a poor clue? PIC< in EMANATE seems very fairly indicated, and the definition seems unambiguous.
      1. I’m pretty sure ‘poor’ refers to the clue if the answer were ‘elasticate’?
        1. Oh, sorry. That’s not how I read it. Jackkt wrote, “I agree it was a poor clue,” not, “it would have been a poor clue if ‘elasticate’ had been the answer,” which is what is implied in paulmci’s comment.
  5. 9:15 … this really did feel like a quick revision exercise for anyone about to take their crossword exams (is anyone offering a degree course yet?), but it’s always nice to run into (or over) old friends.

    Q. Is it possible to say WASSAILING and not sound like one of The Wurzels?

    COD .. SEA URCHIN

      1. Thank you, jimbo. Yes, it is the London Eye, as viewed from Westminster Bridge. I was on a visit a couple of years ago (before moving back over here) when that was taken. I was eventually coaxed onto the Eye itself, against my better judgement, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
        1. From my office window, I could watch the Eye being constructed. The wheel was assembled flat on the river and then hauled up to vertical. I greatly enjoyed my trip on it, not least because alcohol was served on our pod.
  6. Solved early today as we have the deep joy that is an “Office Away Day” to interrupt my crossword solving. About 9 mins – interrupted by phone calls about said away day – a lot of ‘old friends of the crossword solver’ in this one.

  7. 7:23, helped along by a bit of crossword knowledge as Tim says.
    Tim in 10ac I think you have the literal and the metaphorical on the wrong sides of the pond.
    Like galspray I can’t see anything wrong with 9ac misunderstood what Jack and Paul were saying at first. Sorry!

    Edited at 2015-05-05 06:58 am (UTC)

    1. Ah yes, I see now that Paul was saying his parsing would have made it a lousy clue. Can’t argue with that!
  8. HAKE was the only one to hold me up at all. A straightforward but entertaining crossword, done in about 20 minutes. The short lights ALB and ASP were very well clued.
  9. Enjoyed this but quick, over in the blink of an eye…

    Tim, I think 10ac is a simple dd: railroad = force, and railroad = permanent way across the atlantic

    No problem with 9ac, so it’s obviously a perfectly good clue 🙂

  10. Some old chestnuts in this one. Can’t see a problem with 9A where film=PIC is a pavlovian response. Had more problem with GUS as the “fellow”. I think 18D rather sums up the whole offering
    1. The trouble with the word “film” and an entry that already has an E at both ends is that ET is at least as Pavlovian a response as PIC. But I wholly agree on GUS as a fellow, especially in a University town where DON is surely the Pavlov response. I had ADONIS for a while, without being able to make sense of the rest of the clue.
  11. … a good warm-up exercise. (Much needed on a very cold day here.) At least it got me ready for the most recent Groan prize puzzle — at which I failed miserably.

    24ac was a nice reminder of a Scots football coach at ANU in the mid-70s. (We called him Jock, but I think his actual name was Ian.) Used to accuse me of playing out of position or, as he put it, “running around with gay cavalier abandon”. Now that was condescending!

  12. 6:32 including time spent helping 2-year-old-daughter to chow her way through three Weetabixes (and counting). I’m having a pretty good solving week so far!
    1. At that rate of consumption of Weetabices your daughter’s picture should be on the box. I clocked in at 9.54, but a look at your time is making me re-think my breakfast menu in favour of the same.
  13. First time I’ve been under 10 minutes on the ipad, finishing in 9:26. I nearly snookered myself at the end, putting in PIKE instead of HAKE, thinking tenuously that a spike on a graph could be a wave. However I saw 1D had to be SEA URCHIN quickly enough that my time was only marginally affected. I was helped by having no unknowns today, though I didn’t know the meaning of SINHALESE.
  14. 14 minutes, with all understood except 9a, where I biffed it correctly. As Jimbo says, chestnut-heavy. Back to gazing at a half completed Club Monthly.
  15. 14,44, suffering from the ill effects of biffing the wrong answers. Well, yes, of course ELASTICATE, and an excess G in the Sri Lankan, but also an ADONIS, much admired and with a Uni fellow in the midst, but with less attachment to the rest of the clue. All corrected before submission, but not before time passed vigorously.
  16. Perhaps on good form for a change and finished this comfortably in 18 minutes, last two entries being WHERRY and EMANCIPATE in that order. I resisted the traps for the clock-watchers, though I did almost enter SINGALESE.
  17. Around 30m with some BIFD including EMANCIPATE which I didn’t get near parsing so thanks for the blog. Good job ALB was clued so helpfully as I hadn’t come across this before.
  18. 27 min – would have been less than 20 if I’d not thought of ELASTICATE, like so many others, Being unconvinced by clue, and failing to think of anything else that fit, eventually resorted to ‘Crossword completer’, which immediately showed me what was needed. So really a DNF.
  19. 12 mins. I started this about 3 hrs later than I usually do but I’m not sure if I would have been any faster had I been solving it at my normal time because I wasn’t nodding off. Having said that, NIBLICK and WASSAILING both took me longer than they should have done. EMANCIPATE was my LOI after ARIZONA once I saw the “emanate” part of the wordplay.
  20. 8:09. I didn’t parse STRONG so thanks Tim for explaining that and for the entertaining blog. Like you I knew the excellent beer before the boat.

    I didn’t know what “permanent” was doing so I learned something there and if you asked me for a list of liturgical vestments alb would come a long, long way after cassock, probably in a wordy peleton with fanon
    and subcinctorium.

    1. One can never be absolutely certain what will be surplice to requirements.

      Edited at 2015-05-05 12:52 pm (UTC)

    2. I was going to mention the Woodforde Wherry as well having discovered it one year at the Great British Beer festival. Off to Euston now to see what fine tipples its pubs have to offer…
  21. 15 mins with no problem with EMANCIPATE. LOI was AUGUST where I too had toyed with Adonis.
  22. Pranced through this in 15 minutes, with my only problem being unraveling the wordplay to reach SINHALESE. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the term, although I did remember that Colombo was in Sri Lanka. But that left me thinking it had to be Ceylonese which had little relation to the wordplay. So I waited for all the checking letters and then followed instructions. Regards.
  23. 6:48 for me, feeling horribly tired again, but experienced enough and close enough to the setter’s wavelength not to have had too much of a problem.
  24. 16:29 for me, which is probably my personal best (though still well over 2 severs).

    EMANCIPATE was my LOI, as it was for many others. I think I was lucky to assume that “free” was the definition – lords know what a hash I’d have made if I’d thought it was “spring”.

    Today was also a medical first for me – my first jousting injury (treating, not receiving). Bicycle jousting, to be precise. Advice to would-be bicycle jousters: (a) ensure that your stick is longer than the other chap’s stick and (b) discourage your opponent from using a particularly pointy stick. So much for the Flynn effect.

    1. Traditional punt jousting on the Cam involves 2 teams of three. On each punt, a punter, a jouster with a boxing glove on a punt pole and a sitter, whose job it is to save the losing jouster from falling back into the punt dangerously.
      1. It seems that either foresight or experience has informed the art of punt jousting more than it has that of bicycle jousting.
        1. bigtone didn’t say it worked. I imagine they lose a few rugby players land economy undergrads each year.
      2. Sounds a bit barbaric to me. I’m glad to say that things were gentler on the Cherwell, at least in my day.

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