Times 26101 – All Hands on Deck?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’m going through a bit of a British propaganda war movie phase at the moment, including a brace of films released a year apart which both feature ‘way’ in the title, one starring John Mills (rather good, actually), the other David Niven (not quite so good, old chaps). Which has nothing very much to do with today’s puzzle, except that it was very British and also rather good. Except where it became a bit too British and clued an unknown word by a little known (outside Blighty) edifice.

Anyway, at this point I am on the first page of the leader board with my 62 minutes – a situation which I cannot see lasting much longer than Gerry’s attempt to knock the stuffing out of chaps like Stanley Holloway, William Hartnell and James Donald. And doesn’t he look like Geoffrey Palmer! A little more in the jowl department would have made him a true doppelganger, umlaut or no umlaut.

ACROSS

1. DUMP – DU (‘from the [in] French’) + MP. A nice one to get off the mark with, if you start at 1a.
3. BRASS TACKS – it wouldn’t be British if it didn’t have some seaside humour: BRAS + STACKS.
9. MANSARD – the literal is ‘roof’; ODO describes this as ‘a roof which has four sloping sides, each of which becomes steeper halfway down’. If this doesn’t mean much to you, here’s a few pictures of one. Not very British at all, I’m afraid, which may be deduced not just from their appearance on so many chateaus but also from the fact it’s also called a French roof. I was looking for an aitchless ‘hand’, as well as an ‘man’ with all his bits, but was snookered until I decided to try a masse, having learnt it here just the other week, spun the cue ball round the black and hit the object ball. It took me nearly as long as Shaun Murphy, mind. Oh yes, it’s MAN + an aitchless (‘short of height’) SHARD (funny shaped building in London).
11. READ+OPT
12. GHOST TOWN – I think it took me all the crossing letters before I gave up on ‘gown’; the literal is ‘place everyone’s left’, which is derived from HOST + T[ime] in GOWN. If a HOST is wearing a ‘gown’ (and, no, settle down, it could be a university gown!), then he could also be said to be in it.
13. SHELF – ‘possible support’; H[ospital] in SELF (‘identity’).
14. DISREPUTABLE – ‘untrustworthy’; DIS + RE (‘re’) + PUT (‘positioned’) + ABLE.
18. POOR RELATION – I reckon this is a double definition, but I could be wrong. A less respected version of something or someone is its POOR RELATION.
21. SP+ILL
22. FOSSILISE – at first I was looking for something ending in ‘-less’. So, I think we would all agree a fairly cunning clue, with a pretty well concealed anagram (‘shepherd’ is sorting out OF ISLES IS) to give the literal ‘to become old and inflexible’. I haven’t consulted my wife yet, but I don’t think that is how she would describe me. I think she would still have me at the middle-aged and inflexible stage. At least, I hope so.
24. EYEBALL – this was one of my three favourites; it’s BE YE (‘if you are’ in Olde Worlde speake) reversed + ALL.
25. VINTAGE – I believe (from an example in ODO) that crushed grapes are placed in a vat for a short time before being put into barrels, so this is quite clever, and I think a semi &lit; the literal is therefore the whole show, while the wordplay is a ‘developed’ IN VAT to give VINTA + GE (cued by ‘possibly [i.e., “e.g.”] turned’).
26. DUSSELDORF – the only German airport I have ever used, but this didn’t help me much when I was being suckered into Leipzig, Dresden and Magdeburg; it’s F[isherman] + RODLESS (boom, boom!) + UD (U[nequippe]D) all reversed. This would probably have been one of my favourites if I’d understood it while solving.
27. CYST – ‘cavity’ from C[runch]Y S[orbe]T.

DOWNS

1. DEMIGODS – if I was Sue, I’d have used a bottle of Tippex on this, but I was solving online, so only the CIA and the Chinese will be able to tell you how many times I shoved the right answer in and then took it out. I was looking for an ‘ague’, when I should have been looking for a DOG, which reverses itself and slots neatly into DEMIS[e].
2. MONGOOSE – according to the 1987 documentary on them I watched on YouTube last week, a meerkat is only the size of a lion’s tail (I think Attenborough meant ‘length’), so ‘small predator’ is pretty difficult to challenge. Anyway [sotto voce], here we see the North American deer (MOOSE) curling itself around a N[ew] GO.
4. RODEO – RODE O[ff].
5. SHRINKAGE – a real seaside-postcard of a clue; Private Eye would have clued it with ‘sexologist’.
6. TRANSYLVANIAN – anagram of NASTY RAINS around L[arge] + VAN. (Edited – thanks to Amon)
7. C(LOSE)T
8. SET OFF – ‘begin’; S[u]E (‘to prosecute heartless’) + TOFF (‘nob’).
10. AT THE COALFACE – ‘not deskbound’; ‘like worker of mine’, indeed!
15. UNRUFFLED – double definition, one of which might get the titterers going. Another of my three.
16. MILITARY – ‘service’; I + LIT[any] in MARY. The third of my three.
17. INDECENT – ‘crude’; EC (City of London, more or less) in IN + DENT.
19. ASCEND – ‘mount’; C[ook] in A SEND (‘dispatch’). Thanks to KG for pointing out the nonsense in my original effort.
20. BICEPS – ‘strong-arm displays’; I think this would have made it to my top three if it hadn’t frustrated me for so long. It’s very elegant, after all: BI[g] + CEPS.
23. SEVER – fame at last for our own Tony! V in SEER.

42 comments on “Times 26101 – All Hands on Deck?”

    1. Thanks, Kevin. I think an amateur pyschologist might be able to deduce that 19d was another clue where I was barking up the wrong tree. While I bit on the right answer in the end, an echo of my bark may still be found in my dud solution and false explanation.
      1. Whereas a professional psychologist would attribute the slip to unresolved conflict with your father.
  2. Went up several garden paths on this one, but this time managed to get out of them. With the checkers all in on 17d, I couldn’t get ‘interest’ out of my head; until I finally remembered the hoary EC. 13ac, I thought of IXXXD (‘protected by identity’), and finally stopped thinking of it. At 12ac I thought of X GOWN, etc. Was clueless at 9ac, coming up only with MANS=worker’s and (h)ARD, but what could ‘hard’ be? Needless to say, DNK Shard.
  3. A very enjoyable 35 minute solve with a little time lost playing around with ‘decadent’ at 17dn and dredging up from memory MANSARD as a type of roof, constructing it from wordplay.

    I rather liked ‘Shard’ clued as ‘Tower of London’ and I think it reasonable to include it in a British newspaper’s crossword puzzle, after all it is the tallest building in the EU. Its original name (or one of them) was ‘London Bridge Tower’ which, if one happens to know it, ties in rather nicely with the clue.

    Edited at 2015-05-18 06:36 am (UTC)

  4. steady solve for me. half early this morning and the rest in a motorwY services. no problem with the shard since i pointed it out on the skyline to a friend just yesterday afternoon, i loved dusseldorf and loke many lf us i am sure was trying to force dresden in somehow
  5. What an excellent Monday puzzle – not too easy, not too hard and both inventive and witty

    I loved “Shepherd” as an anagrind. One or two strange surface readings such as 3A.

    Intrigued as to how U has only ever visited Germany via Dusseldorf when there are so many other German hubs like Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich…..

    1. It was 1969, I was ten, and my uncle served in the British forces based nearby. We camped, and steamed down (up?) the Mosel, as I recall.
      1. More likely the Rhine U or possibly the Dussel. The Moselle joins the Rhine at Koblenz which is a very different city – far prettier than the financial/industrial Dusseldorf
  6. MANSARD was known from previous crosswords, which just goes to show the educational value of crosswords. I mean, imagine going through life not knowing what a mansard was?

    Joint COD to EYEBALL and DUSSELDORF. GHOST TOWN was my Dean Martin.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2015-05-18 08:20 am (UTC)

  7. No Tippex for me today (not least because I’ve a day off and Tippex isn’t on hand at home!)

    Solved 10:05 – might have been a smidge quicker but Mr CS decided to ask me a question just as I was on my last couple of clues.

  8. I initially put a tentative LAMP at 1A, which I forgot to review when DEMIGODS went in so another technical DNF to go with at least two from last week. Must try harder.

    MANSARD was known to me from the song Mansard Roof by the excellent Vampire Weekend.

  9. Nice easy start at 1A with LAMP, assuming that “Discharge” was just a short form of “Discharge lamp”. Then misbiffed UNREFINED for 15D. This made 1D and 24A challenging. COD to GHOST TOWN, as I never once considered that the definition was at that end of the clue.
  10. A challenging (18 minutes) and enjoyable start to the week. I would have done better with the roof if I’d been able to get my original thought of G(h)ERKIN out of my mind.
  11. 22 minutes, including a pause while I unjammed the printer Mrs K had jammed while printing her Sudoku. My CoD is Dusseldorf although I am not keen on the city or the airport, or indeed any German airports come to think of it. Only Zurich is even more boring.
    And the SHARD is an eyesore IMO.
    Salute the setter for getting Transylvaian and Dusseldorf into the same puzzle.
  12. 24 mins. I bought just about every one of the setter’s dummies. TRANSYLVANIAN should have been a write-in but I initially thought “nasty” was the anagrind and I could have kicked myself when I realised it was “storms”. I biffed SET OFF because I only realised after I had completed the puzzle that the clue said “nob” and not “mob” – that’s what I get for speed-reading clues. It took me too long to see the FOSSILISE/MILITARY crossers, although I hesitate to say they were Dean Martins, especially as I was also fooled into thinking 22ac was sure to finish …..LESS. I had the most trouble in the NW where I finally sussed plague=dog and got DEMIGODS. GHOST TOWN then followed as I eventually realised the second word wasn’t “gown”, and I finished with the DUMP/MONGOOSE crossers, and you can count me as another who had been considering “lamp”. A tip of the hat to the setter.
      1. It’s what I told you on Friday, invented by Penfold on Thursday.

        Deceptively Easy Answer Needing More Actual Reflection Than Is Necessary

        2. The short-term memory loss took a dip over the weekend. Can’t think why….
  14. The only thing I know about Dusseldorf is a line from Springtime for Hitler (“I was born in Dusseldorf and that is why they call me Rolf” – oh dear). Thanks for unpicking it Ulaca – I didn’t. I knew the roof because they are popular in NYC for some reason. There’s one just up the block from us, grafted onto an ordinary townhouse and looking rather silly. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/06/realestate/06scap.xlarge1.jpg It’s the pic on the right – middle house. 17.26
    1. The aforementioned Vampire Weekend are from NYC, so possibly all those roofs inspired their song.
    1. Well spotted! I’ll amend the blog anon, anon.

      Edited at 2015-05-18 09:42 am (UTC)

  16. Ran out of steam on this one with a handful still to go – tackled after a long hard day at the factory here in Sydney and a few consoling glasses of red…

    My major predicament was deciding that 7dn had to be COVERT (for obvious reasons, I couldn’t parse it…) which put the mockers on 11ac as well. And I have to admit I was not familiar with CEPS, which deprived me of 20dn.

    But, a most enjoyable workout and thanks to ulaca for the entertaining blog.

  17. I found this a pretty straightforward 25-minute solve. I got many on definition alone or letters in grid. I didn’t waste time bothering to work out the wordplay to 26, but now I’ve read the blog it strikes me as a clue where the setter has made a bit of a mess of getting RODLESS into the clue, which has a very clumsy surface.
    I don’t see that EG is well indicated by ‘possibly’ in 25, but ‘Shepherd’ in 22 was a very neat anagrind that had me fooled for a while, and I rather liked 4 and 15.
  18. Had a lot of fun with this, and count me another who had “lamp” for the discharge at 1a, covert at 7 down and I even started with “shrinking” at 5d. For my twopenneth, “Detectives’re” seems ungainly although no-one else has mentioned it – I can only assume the setter was trying to sell another dummy with “detectives’re” being the same letter count as the answer and “positioned” trying to send us down the incorrect anagram fodder path?

    Mansard only known from crosswords, LOI biceps, COD to Ghost Town

  19. It must just be my mood because I soon got bored and couldn’t be bothered to try and finish.
  20. Dusseldorf is one of my all time favourites, despite it being the last clue I solved. Rodless, backwords – a classic.
    I think your explanation for 6 down is slightly off – it is actually an anagram of NASTY RAIN around LVAN (large vehicle)

    From Chris Cox

  21. Solved on the patio of a rented bijou residence in the Ariege with no time recorded since I had to abandon at one point when SWMBO noticed water dripping through the ceiling after a shower. I must admit to biffing more than usual today.
  22. 7:36, putting me directly under Magoo on the scoreboard today. Magno sed proximus intervallo? I’ll take it.

    There’s a whole song about a Mansard Roof by one of the bands my employers manage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3PW9r7tIVA. One of those rare days when it pays to be down with the kids, clearly! (Aha, but I see that the estimable Pootle has already mentioned this…)

    Edited at 2015-05-18 06:18 pm (UTC)

  23. About 20 minutes for this pretty clever puzzle. LOI was AT THE COALFACE, something new to me. The DUSSELDORF and FOSSILISE clues were favorites. Regards.
  24. I must have been on the wavelength today: 9m, in spite of misbiffing LAMP, SET OUT, ASCENT and COVERT. Fortunately at least one of the crossing clues was sufficiently clear to make me reconsider in each case.

    Edited at 2015-05-18 07:34 pm (UTC)

  26. I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would have done if I’d been a lot less tired (the business of moving house is proving even more exhausting than I remember from when I last did it nearly 37 years ago) and I struggled to a miserable 14:41. With hindsight it looks a pleasant, straightforward puzzle.

    I considered LAMP for 1ac but couldn’t quite bring myself to bung it in. At least 23dn was an easy win.

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