Times 26,117: Vicisti, Crucigramma

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Tackled: 5th June 2015, 12.30am (?)
Handicaps: 1 x dodgy fast food burrito from near Clapham Junction station, 1 x margarita, 3 x small tins Tiger beer, 1 x small tin Hobo beer, 3 x eardrum-throbbing experimental electronica bands, 1 x plastic cup afterparty Moet & Chandon
Solving Time: 19m15

Now *this* is my idea of a Friday puzzle, a real challenge to round out the week! I may have set myself up for failure by the circumstances in which I chose to tackle it, and barely reaching the finish line inside of 20 minutes has certainly completely killed my average time for this week, but I’m not going to complain about being served such a sophisticated dish of deviousness and misdirection at every turn.

FOI 20A – what a relief to see a familiar enumeration, and to be sufficiently Londoncentric that the answer could go straight in. The right side of the puzzle proved more amenable than the left, but wow, were there some great concealed definitions on the side of the puzzle I spend so many minute scratching my head over. “See”, “did long”, “local pain”, “taking one”, “what starts with”, “soap person”, “abroad, mere”… so much crypticky goodness in one grid!

The top left was where in ended up, taking an unforgivable amount of time to think of DROP-LEAF (having American blood in me I became obsessed with one of the halves being FALL), and SIZE didn’t come for a while even though I think I remember it making an appearance at some point earlier this year. 1A was my LOI: “Lewis really” may be borderline unfair as surely no one refers to Lewis Carroll by his first name? But conversely who could argue with such a brilliant surface.

I haven’t felt much urge to nominate a COD in many of the puzzles over the past few months, but this one had such an embarrassment of riches that it was hard to narrow it down to just one. I really like a clue with a smooth, completely deceptive surface: honourable mention therefore to 14D, but I think my personal award goes to 4D, which tells such a coherent story about the sad decline of modern television but which cryptically is something entirely different.

If next week’s puzzle is of this calibre maybe I’ll see the wisdom of tackling them sober… after my evening’s hijinks 5A hit a little close to home! Much applause to the setter.

Across
1 DODGSON – “Lewis really” (Lewis Carroll’s real name being (Charles Lutwidge) Dodgson): E ({mors}E “finally”) “departing” from DODGES ON [keeps missing]
5 BOOZY – bibulous: BOY [youth] “gains” OZ [a little weight]
9 TRURO – see (as in cathedral city): “what’s finally” {righ}T {fo}R {yo}U (and) {partne}R {to}O
10 INFANTILE – for the kids: IN FAN TILE [home | lover | to do the bathroom up]
11 GALILEE – “abroad, mere” (i.e. a foreign sea): GAL I LEE [lass | I | sheltered from blows (as in wind)]
12 YEARNED – did long, i.e. longed: YEAR [period of time] + reverse of DEN [“set back” study]
13 SAUSAGE DOG – a “best friend” (as in, man’s best friend): SAD O.G. [tragic | error defending] “nursing” USAGE [practice]
15 AS IF – I don’t believe that: A SIF{t} [a | riddle “should be shortened”]
18 TOWN – Reading for one: T [T{eacher} “at first”] + OWN [for oneself]
20 ISLE OF DOGS – London location: (OLD FOGIES*) [“excited”] + S [South]
23 PUB BORE – local pain, i.e. a pain found in one’s local: PURE [total] “restricting” (BOB*) [“moving around”]
24 RE-ENDOW – leave again: (WE’RE ON D{ay}*) [“after working”]
25 WIN THE DAY – cryptic def
26 THIEF – taking one: T [time “no longer”] + HIE [rush] + F [F{orward} “at first”]
27 DURUM – a grass: RU [“briefly” RU{n}] in reverse of MUD [“turning over” scandalous info]
28 RELAXED – chilled: RE L AXED [note | “start of” L{obster} | chopped]

Down
1 DOUBLE-U – what starts “with”: DO [cook] + U [posh] + BLEU [“French” navy]
2 DROP-LEAF – cryptic def
3 SEIZE – collar: E [drug] “employed in” SIZE [solution for stiffening]
4 NO FLY ZONE – sky forbidden: homophone of NOH FLIES OWN [drama | races | have] (“to be broadcast”)
5 BANZAI – cry from Japanese: homophone of BANS EYE [stops | viewer] (“to be heard”)
6 ORIENTS – tailors: (IN STORE*) [“trouble”]
7 YIELD – double def: proceeds / to bow
8 STAGE SET – scene: STAGE [coach] + SET [prepared]
14 EASTENDER – Soap person: E [“close to” {fac}E] + AS TENDER [equally soft]
16 FISHWIFE – cryptic def, being both presumably a female angler, and proverbially a coarse individual
17 AFTER-TAX – net: AFT [rear of boat] + (EXTRA*) [“unwound”]
19 WEBINAR – internet conference: (WINE BAR*) [“organised”]
21 ODD BIRD – eccentric: ODD [occasional] + BIRD [thing prisoners do]
22 GOTHAM – place of the Three Wise Men (in the nursery rhyme): GOT HAM [landed | bad actor]
23 PAWED – touched: P [quietly] + AWED [hugely impressed]
23 ROYAL – princess: ROY + AL [two small boys “meeting”]

51 comments on “Times 26,117: Vicisti, Crucigramma”

  1. Yep, a real cracker today – I felt for you having to untangle that lot! 16:06 here, which seemed like a pretty good time to me (and is at time of writing still 2nd on the leaderboard, discounting a couple of neutrinos).

    My FOI was 4D, and after the first three minutes I only had 3 solutions in place! Luckily I then saw a few of the trickier definitions you mention above and picked up speed, but I was starting to get worried. I think 13A was my favourite.

    1. Yep, I really liked “nursing practice” in 13A. So many really good clues that I forgot to mention them all!

      On the continuing subject of being out of one’s box in the presence of aggressively loud music, I should give advance notice that I’ll be at Glastonbury on Friday 26th June… perhaps someone could cover for my blog on that date?

  2. The puzzle, not me. A typo on a crossing letter, a slightly dopey BANSAI and a six-hour interruption didn’t help matters, but I doubt that I would have completed this within the hour anyway.

    Oh, and some random part of my brain decided that the enumeration for 20a was 5,5, which meant GILES FOODS got a much longer run than it deserved. Incredibly it actually exists, and it’s UK-based, though possibly not an iconic London location. Not the day to be creating extra solving hazards, but what can you do.

    Well done setter, well done blogger. Well done Adam Voges.

    1. I think bansai is forgivable. The way the clue is structured means it’s ambiguous as to whether both stops and viewer need to be soundee-likees, and who’s to say that bansai isn’t a valid alternative anglicisation of the Japanese “spelling”?

      Giles foods made me laugh. Good work.

  3. Very enjoyable but tough so that I required 59 minutes to complete the grid, however I never felt stuck or that I was running out of ideas to explore.

    Edited at 2015-06-05 08:11 am (UTC)

  4. 21 mins. I agree that this was a cracker with some very devious cluing. All the gems have been listed above so I won’t repeat them. I finished in the SE with DURUM after PAWED and WIN THE DAY. Although it was a biff-free solve GOTHAM went in from wordplay alone and I only discovered its “three wise men” relevance post-solve thanks to Wiki. I was pleased to discover it wasn’t a reference to The Penguin, The Joker and The Riddler that I had previously been unaware of.
  5. 35 minutes with (like galspray) a dopey ‘BANSAI’ (self-kicking time — BANZAI came up elsewhere recently).

    I can’t honestly say I had much fun solving this. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood but I was left with the same feeling I get after a particularly taxing Ikea self-assembly. 25a I’m not buying at all. The surface of 23a is excruciating crosswordese. Sorry!

    verlaine: I have no idea how you do it. Almost any one of your listed impediments would have rendered me incapable of starting this, let alone finishing it (and I’m including the dodgy burrito).

    1. I didn’t much like 25a I have to say. It didn’t help that (perhaps due to being under the aforementioned influence) I had REGAL at 24d for a long time. And what could WIN THE DOG possibly *mean*?
  6. About 30 minutes in two tranches, one awaiting the dentist and one afterwards in a darkened room (it’s up to 35 outside today). Certainly a chewy and highly enjoyable offering with brilliant deceptive definitions, as the Hon. Member for Self-destruction by Obscure Beers and Deafening Pseudo-music has elegantly described above.
    Biffed 1a (I’m a big LC fan) so thanks for explaining it. For some reason my LOI was 6d, took me ages to see it was an anagram, I’m still not convinced about the synonym.
    1. Mm, I raised an eyebrow at 6d at the time, but bunging it into Google I immediately see:

      tailor or adapt (something) to specified circumstances.
      “magazines oriented to the business community”

      So I guess it’s legit.

      1. Yikes. I just assumed it was a specific set or genre of tailors (as in suitmakers) I didn’t know from Shakespeare or Dickens or a slang term for Chinese tailors.

        “New whistle Arthur?”
        “Yes Terence, ‘er indoors had a mild coronary the last time I had one made up Savile Row so I got this one made for eighty sovs by Mr. Wu, one of the orients in Shoreditch.”
        “Good, maybe you can pay me my wages then.”
        “Good gawd, is that the time? Sorry Terence, must dash.”

  7. 51:50. Well that’s blown my weekly average too, and I was relieved to be able to finish without aids. But I couldn’t agree more about the great collection of clues. LOI 3d – I never knew that meaning of size. I couldn’t quite parse 13a, missing the “error defending”. 4d had me baffled for ages, but it made me giggle when I finally got it. So many to choose from, but my COD is 10a.
  8. 42min. As I couldn’t think of anything else at 24d, eventually decided that WIN THE DOG was a reference to a competition in a place I’d never look.
  9. Fine stuff, with clues just this side of the border with unfair. PUB BORE was my last in (I quite liked it once I got it), one of many where a few letters went in with some blanks while the deep subroutines of the mind ground away on the uncertainties. I had PUB (what else) easily, but the rest had to wait. My 38.54 includes stretches of time devoted to the neighbour’s assorted problems, but it was the sort of “lost” time that delivers some of the subroutines’ results to interface with the known world.
    I tried to make NO WAY JOSE work at 4 (it didn’t), and followed the S?U rule (must be Q) zealously and for way too long.
    WEBINAR is obviously a fake. Or it should be. Please.
    1. I get spam emails in my inbox inviting me to webinars all the time. O tempora, o mores…
      1. You piqued my curiosity there, and I see I have 295 invitations to webinars in my junk mail. Which is where they firmly belong.
        1. “What a tangled webinar, when first we practice spam filt-ar” – Sir Walter Scott
  10. 21m. I thought this was absolutely brilliant. So many clues where the definition is cunningly concealed, so little that could be biffed. And even I noticed some of these lovely surfaces. My last in was 1ac: I constructed it from wordplay without understanding the Lewis Carroll reference, so I think the clue is fair even if you don’t know (or have forgotten) his real name.
    Thanks setter, and well done blogger. As sotira says I have no idea how you solve a puzzle like this in such a – ahem – tired state.
    1. How on earth could you construct 1ac from the cryptic? I BIFD it from Lewis, then guessed perhaps DODGES ON or DODGES ONE (two morse’s finally) for the parsing. Looking both up online and in paper dictionaries neither is a phrase, and neither has ever been heard by man or beast used in real life.
      Over the hour, some great hidden defs, very enjoyable.
      Rob
      1. I guess it was the fact that I remembered seeing the construction ‘keeps [X]ing = [synonym for X]es on’ before, so I just needed a word for ‘misses’ that would fit D_D_S if I removed an E.
        1. Thanks. Though I don’t think I’ve seen that synonym, and it doesn’t really work for me: dodges on.
          Rob
          1. It’s not really a synonym, more a cryptic construction. So the phrase ‘closes on’ doesn’t really exist, but cryptically ‘keeps shutting’ could indicate it. Now that I think about it it’s not the most satisfactory of constructions, but as I said I’d seen it before!
  11. Agreed that this was a good puzzle with lots to enjoy. Took me about an hour, but I was another who had BANSAI, which might be a cry from a small Japanese tree.

    I finally finished with 1A, which despite having parsed I put in DODESON. Though I hadn’t got the Lewis bit of the clue it sounded familiar with hindsight.

    Hard to pick a COD but I’ll plump for PUB BORE as I was amused by the definition as ‘local pain’.

      1. I’ve tried to log in and post three times so I’m going to see if ‘replying’ makes the difference.

        Guessing at 20 mins ish (the stop watch didn’t start) – the NW corner took the longest and required two lots of Tippex.

  12. Eek… not at all good for me today, but I did think it a great challenge…

    bansai for me too, and also trulo at 9ac (which I got from (righ)T(fo)R(yo)U+(see)LO, thinking it to be some term for partner, a portmanteau of ‘true love’, obvs). No, it doesn’t really work, does it???

    To finish with (or not to finish with) I had blanks at SEIZE and DODGSON, the first I should have got, but as for DODGSON, well, I think I could’ve been looking at that grid all day and not seen that one…

    Oh, and I also toyed with WIN THE DOG and REGAL for a little while…

    Have fun at Glasto, Verlaine… you not Latituding this year?

    1. I have a strong suspicion that Latitude is exactly my speed of festival and Glasto will prove comparatively terrifying and exhausting. But since I’ve never been to the latter I’ve decided to steel myself and go: you’ve got to try everything once, after all. Latitude again next year though, probably; it’s so lovely and literary.
      1. Yes, OH keeps getting me to agree to Glasto, but ‘terrifying and exhausting’ are exactly what I suspect. Think I’ll stick to the gentle pace of Latitude…!
      2. Not everything verlaine. The classic quote excludes incest and morris-dancing.

        Mrs and Miss BT failed to get Glasto tickets, despite shoehorning the whole famility into applying for returns. Gloom abounds chez BT

        Edited at 2015-06-05 02:51 pm (UTC)

      3. Search out Carnival Collective, from Brighton. They play on several of the lesser stages. A 35 strong outfit playing ‘live drum and bass’ all with a Brazilian influence. No 1 son is the keyboard player.

        Chris

        Oh yes, the crossword. Needed aids to get last couple but agree with the comments about the high quality of the clues.

    2. That’s brilliant. I think creativity like this should score more points than correct answers.
  13. I also had REGAL at 24 on the basis that “small boy” required a short form of a name.

    Never heard of WEBINAR but it sounds horrible.

    Dereklam

  14. Thank you blogger firstly explaining 1ac. I got the Lewis Carroll bit but couldn’t work out the cryptic and for correcting my baffling win the dog
  15. Brilliant, yes. Lovely altogether. About 25 minutes ending with DODGSON, from wordplay mostly. I thought I needed the real name of CS Lewis, who may not be English anyway. Regards.
    1. About as English as they come, and Clive Staples. If you haven’t, try his Science Fiction trilogy. Not much science, perhaps (though it involves a great deal of flying around in space) but worth a look.
      1. I used to have philosophy tutorials in CS Lewis’s old rooms, so he was uppermost in my mind while trying to solve 1a. Lewis Carroll was at Christ Church wasn’t he? Practically on the other side of town from me, out of sight and out of mind.
        1. The Rev. Dodgson was indeed at The House, tutor in Mathematics and decidedly friendly with Dean Liddell’s daughters, especially one Alice. I learned some stuff in the rooms of CSL’s big friend, Mr Tolkein, but not by JRR himself. I wouldn’t call Magdalen ‘across town’ from Ch Ch though? But it was a long time ago.
          1. Distance-wise Ch Ch was no Lady Margaret Hall or St Hugh’s, but don’t underestimate how lazy I am!
            1. Laziness was regarded as something to strive towards, in my day. And many of us succeeded!
            2. I was red brick myself – Keble in the late 60’s! If there had been a degree in idleness I would definitely have taken a first.
            3. I was at Merton and I remember thinking it was a horribly long way to my Old English tutorials at Worcester. So lazy!
    2. Trying to think of famous Lewises could only bring to mind a North-UKish island and a vague idea of an American who went north and discovered grizzly bears or Canada or something. Didn’t think of CS.
      Rob
  16. Criminy. More lift-and-separate than an explosion in a bra factory.

    Brilliant puzzle (apart from “win the day”) 19 minutes for all but seize then another four-and-a-bit minutes for that.

    I didn’t know the Gotham reference either (I had in mind Batman, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon but definitely not Robin and Chief O’Hara.

    Well blogged V.

    Too many good clues to pick a favourite.

  17. 25:08 of seriously enjoyable work on a crunchy puzzle. Agree with all the comments on highlighted clues above.
  18. I will add my voice to the general chorus of approval for the most enjoyable puzzle for a long time. Took most of an hour, with the right side going in first and then the left bottom to top ending with DODGSON – I couldn’t see ‘dodges on’ so thanks for the explanation.
  19. No time but definitely over the hour for this cracker. I finished the bottom half after about 25 mins with the top half completely vacant. Slowly the pennies dropped one by one with 1ac being my LOI.
  20. Hard going but rewarding. I called time-out at 28 minutes with a worrying number of white squares on the LHS because I was due to play at a funeral. The ceremony clearly had a similar effect to Z’s neighbour because I looked at it again during the eulogy and rattled the rest off once webinar went in so probably the right side of 35 minutes in all. Yet another daily average gone to pot. As Cordelia said (though I don’t think she was taking about crosswords) “Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides”.
  21. 19:42 here for a hugely enjoyable puzzle with almost every clue a gem – though I agree that 25ac appears to be an exception (unless there’s an extra layer of subtlety that we’re all missing). Anyway I raise my hat to the setter, and if he (or she) taps me on the shoulder at the next S&B get-together I’ll be delighted to buy them a drink.

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