Times 26109 – make a short story out of this!

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Fearing another vintage torture session alongside a Championship Qualifier, I was relieved – or even a little disappointed – to receive this relatively straightforward but enjoyable puzzle, solved in 20 minutes over the tea and toast.
There’s quite a wild collection of nouns in these answers; I started to speculate about the short story you could come up with, if instructed to use as many of these words as possible in it; drugs, toilets, dodgy trousers, a vertically challenged artist, seductive women… best entry wins a turn head-first down 27a? [enough – Ed.]

Across
1 SUPPORTER – SUP = drink, PORTER = a drink, def. one behind another, a backer.
6 TURIN – TURN = go, around the I of Italy; Turin or Torino was the first capital city of Italy from its proclamation in 1861 and in my experience has the best restaurants in the country.
9 GANJA – NAG = horse, reversed GAN, JA = yes in German etc., def. drug; marijuana, pot, weed, cannabis, especially so-called in the Caribbean.
10 BRAINLESS – B = ultimately dumb; RAINLESS = clear; &lit.
11 TOULOUSE-LAUTREC – TOULOUSE = European city, (CLARET U)*; I can recommend a visit to the T-L Museum in Albi, just up the road from Toulouse.
13 LANDLORD – LAND = to catch, ‘supposedly drunk’ = drunk as a LORD; def. innkeeper.
14 TENDON – TENON = part of a joint, insert D for died, def. tissue.
15 OEUVRE – The LOUVRE = museum, not initialled = remove the L, insert E = heading for exhibition; def. work of art. Old French word for work.
18 LAVATORY – LAVA = hot flower, TORY = blue, def. for the Ladies, perhaps. I spent a minute or two thinking H – river – loo before the penny (to spend) dropped.
21 PITHECANTHROPUS – (NAP THE COURTSHIP)*, anagrind ‘sadly’. Java Man, homo erectus, hence ‘old man’.
23 NEW JERSEY – Double definition; US State, and a possible new ‘top’. From Top Shop, perhaps.
25 BAKER – BANKER = financier loses N = unspecified amount; def. one making a bloomer? A bloomer being a type of loaf.
26 SEWER – Double definition, different pronunciations.
27 CRESTA RUN – (AS CURRENT)*, anagrind ‘swirls’. I suspect ‘thrilling’ descent is an understatement.

Down
1 SIGHT – Sounds like ‘site’; or even ‘cite’ (see below); a faculty or sense.
2 PENGUIN SUIT – Cryptic definition, nickname for a dinner jacket.
3 ON A ROLL – Double definition.
4 TO BE SURE – (TRUE SO HE)*, anagrind curious; def. certainly. Bit of a weak anagram. In 14 years living in Ireland I can’t once remember a local saying ‘to be sure’ once, never mind twice (as in the yellow lines joke).
5 REALLY – Cryptic double definition, of a sort.
6 TONSURE – TON = heavy weight, SURE = certain, def. severe haircut.
7 RUE – ROUE = philanderer, remove O = love; def. cry over.
8 NOSE CANDY – NO, SEC = little time, AND = with, Y = end of February, def. snow, cocaine, blow.
12 RED-HOT POKER – RED-HOT = passionate, POKER = game, def. one bedded. Kniphofia, a flower often found in beds and crosswords.
13 LOON PANTS – LOTS = many, ‘clothes’ ON PAN = on youthful boy, LO(ON PAN)TS; def. seventies fashion; ridiculous looking trousers, now you see the photos, although at the time we thought they were pretty cool.
15 CAT THYME – (AM TETCHY)*; def. plant. Teucrium Marum, for those who like to know these things; not a true thyme, a relative of germander, supposed to deter cats.
17 ROE DEER – Sounds like ‘row, dear’; def. Bambi. Worth a groan.
19 ACROBAT – A CROAT, insert B = bishop; def. one taking a tumble?
20 PARSEC – PARSE = dissect, C = speed of light; def. a measure of astronomy. A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object that has a parallax angle of one arcsecond; about 31 trillion kilometres. Our nearest star Proxima Centauri is about 1.3 parsecs away.
22 SIREN – SIRE = father, N = Brown’s ultimate; def. charmer.
24 WOW – Palindrome, def. incredible!

32 comments on “Times 26109 – make a short story out of this!”

  1. 21.28. Had problems with ordering the ithec of Pithecanthropus. (Sounds like a Tom Lehrer song.) Some of these clues giggly rather than witty; I hope a passing phase. Didn’t know nose candy, loon pants, cat thyme but all guessable and gettable.
  2. Hmmm… PARSEC took me over the 30mins mark, and then, knowing that I didn’t know the old man, I left it blank, so technically a dnf for me today. Didn’t see the ‘bedded’ bit of the R-H POKER, assumed it was something a little louche in keeping with the rest of today’s puzzle (GANJA, SNOW CANDY), so didn’t spend too long thinking about it…
  3. My insistence on spelling it PITHRECANTHOPUS held me back a bit, but not by much in the 32 minutes it took to complete.
    I was of course shocked and outraged by some of the answers which ought not to grace a newspaper of quality as I’m sure others will agree. Another sign of moral decline.
    Still, I was interested to learn that GANJA is not urban slang but originates in ganjika, the Sandskrit for the cannabis plant.
  4. . . . with a long think about the man. Off the cuff, I would have put LOON PANTS into the 60s as I remember being at school and lovingly sewing triangles of garish velvet into the slits in the legs of my jeans but I guess that they took a while to die out. Nothing jumped out to me as a COD.
  5. 15 mins. If my GK had been up to snuff and I hadn’t suffered brain freeze for TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (a clear winner of my Dean Martin of the day) I would have knocked about 5 mins off this time. I knew 21ac was going to end in “anthropus” but it was only when I finally saw PENGUIN SUIT that I was able to work out the first part of the answer (I always try and unravel anagrams mentally). The penny then finally dropped on T-L, which in turn led me to NOSE CANDY, BRAINLESS and REALLY, my LOI. I thought this puzzle was fun. As far as LOON PANTS are concerned I owned a few pairs and I would place them in the very early 70s, but only because that’s when I bought them. They may have been out earlier, but because of my age in the late 60s I wouldn’t have been allowed to buy such symbols of the impending end of the world.
  6. 25 minutes here. The old man at 21 is a word I’m vaguely aware of but needed a close examination of the unchecked anagrist and a bit of guesswork to arrive at the correct answer.

    Didn’t know CAT THYME, which as a keeper of cats for many decades (but no longer) rather surprised me, particularly as I gather it’s a deterrent rather than an attractor (like cat mint), and the only substance I know which fulfils that purpose is lion dung.

    Thought I didn’t know NOSE CANDY, but having looked it up and found the drug connection, I remember meeting it at least once before. Didn’t know TURIN as the original capital of Italy.

    Nice puzzle though.

  7. 17:51 here, but I spent half of that on 21ac. I didn’t know the man and it took me forever to figure out where to put the anagram fodder. Surprisingly for such a long word I was fully confident of the answer once I had. A number of other unknowns today but all fair and gettable.
  8. I put a random arrangement of letters in 21A, the app came back telling me I had errors, but to my surprise PITHECANTHROPUS was all correct. Sadly at 17D I had ROE DEAR. D’oh!
  9. 25 minutes, but wrote ‘roe dear’ and had to cheat to get PARSEC, which I couldn’t, well…you know. Blooming science! Give me Dickens any day. Used to own a pair of two of flares as a teenager, but have never heard of LOON PANTS.

    I rather enjoyed deezzaa’s “Sandskrit” (sorry, deezzaa!) for the vision it conjured up of Jesus writing on the ground when dealing with the woman caught in adultery and those he invited to cast the first stone.

    Not to mention the vision (and other senses) set off by Jack’s lion dung. You have a stray cat problem in your garden, but the local garden centre might just be your answer.

    2. Ah, but who is to say that my spelling of Sandskrit/Sanskrit is wrong as I was of course using my own phonetic transliteration of the original संस्कृतम् ?
      Moreover, after my views yesterday youll be able to tell which side of the fence I come down on with the Dickens v science preference!
      BTW thanks for all the suggestions re Dickens yesterday – I might give him another chance to impress me.
  10. Nice to have a funny one to break up the seriousness – I chortled inwardly through most of this one, and despite a bit of blanking over PITHECANTHROPUS even with most of the crossers in front of me, still managed to scrape in under the 10 minute mark. Most enjoyable, ta setter.
  11. 30:12. Was sure 21ac had to start anthro and never heard of loon pants. Definitely useful to have a 26ac for them, the penguin suit and the jersey. 14ac my LOI… with horse, ganja and nose candy I was thinking of the wrong sort of joint. All that was missing was an ‘e’ for ecstasy somewhere.
  12. 17.41, in a quick-quick-slooooow sort of solve. PITman took a while playing with the letters to get them in the right order – easier to do with a pencil. I got THYME quickly, but careless (no pencil) identification of the remaining letters led me to try a disbelieving TEA in front. Just as likely in my personal encyclopaedia of botany. I did replace it with CAT when I recovered.
    Has anyone else noticed that New Jersey Baker is, of course, Marilyn Monroe?
    And is our setter trying to make a point linking ganja and nose candy with brainless?
  13. Slightly slower than a Verlaine but I’m happy to equal a Penfold for this enjoyable puzzle.

    The old man took some muttering/scribbling of anagram letters and, having led a very sheltered life, it did take a while for me to work out 8d too.

    1. There’s depreciation for you. You used to be able to get at least two or three Cryptic Sues to a Penfold.

      Anyway, I think that’s my first ever benchmarking. Groovy.

  14. 10:18. I was pleasantly surprised to find I’m not the only one who found the old man a bit tricky and had to piece him together from his scattered bones. I though everyone else, including the Dickens lot, would have been able to biff him.

    I can’t quite equate site with reference mindst.

      1. Hmmm. I could see myself citing a reference but I’m not sure they’re interchangeable. Pip’s blog seems to indicate that site, rather than cite is what we’re after. I’m just confused now.
        1. If I’d thought of cite, I’d have preferred it to site. For site I was thinking of (map) reference = location = site but not 100% convinced, so maybe C-Sue is correct.
        2. ‘Reference’ can be a verb meaning to ‘make a reference to’ (Chambers).
          1. Yes, that occurred to me in the meantime, something along the lines of “Carney referenced his earlier remarks on negative inflation in this afternoon’s Select Committee hearing”.
  15. …quite a bit of which was spent sorting out the old man. But as Keriothe noted, when it was done, it felt right.

    Lots of half-knowns clearly and cleverly clued. Thanks setter and blogger.

  16. Light hearted for nice change. Thought the “old man” clue was a bit unfair. Enjoyed “nose candy”—–might have a few of the old school choking on their toast and gentlemen’s relish at the breakfast table.
  17. Patum Peperium at breakfast? Not a good plan if you wish to impress later in the day.
  19. I didn’t have an easy time with this at all. Probablly around 40 minutes tucked around watching sporting events. LOON PANTS must have been called something else over here, because the term wasn’t familiar. I finally ended with that one and its crossing OEUVRE, which I can never spell correctly. CRESTA RUN wasn’t familiar either, but at least it was a fairly uncomplicated anagram after the checkers were in. Regards.
  20. Kevin’s comment reminded me that I forgot to mention that when I was buying and wearing LOON PANTS me and my contemporaries called them LOONS, but I assume that they weren’t called that in the US either because he would have made the connection.
  21. True Andy, no LOONS here either. Bell bottoms, yes, but no loons.
  22. 28m steady solve with quite a few chuckles along the way so thanks to setter and blogger today. Knew the old man so that helped but took a while to work out the candy which I didn’t know.
  23. 10:52 for me, spending the last couple of minutes dithering over CAT THYME, which seemed the obvious answer from the wordplay but which I felt I would surely have heard of if it actually existed.

    I’m surprised at how many people had problems with PITHECANTHROPUS, but I suppose that, as with LOON PANTS, it helps if you’re over a certain age. Like Andy B, I knew the latter as “loons”, though I never actually wore them. Having said that, I have to admit that the trousers of the suit I wore for my wedding in 1976 weren’t all that far off the requirements of the ODO definition (“close-fitting casual trousers widely flared from the knees downwards”) apart from the “casual” bit.

    A most enjoyable puzzle.

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