Times 26133 – posh French ladies

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
At last a regular Wednesday with a medium difficulty modern puzzle, no relics from 1963 or 1981 to burn out my little grey cells or expose my lack of literary knowledge. Around 80% was done in 15 minutes, with a few gaps scattered around the grid taking me another 15 or so to decipher. I’m not sure yet that I can parse the penultimate down clue.

Across
1 FIGURE – FIG = tree, found by URE = river (found in N. Yorkshire and in crosswords); def. reckon (in) American (speak).
4 CAUCUSED – Insert CU for copper into CAUSED = led to, def. met to promote candidate. Not often seen as a verb. The word always reminds me of the caucus race in Alice, which would be (in the annotated form by Martin Gardner) my book of choice for the desert island.
10 SCOFFED – Double definition; jeered, and ate the food.
11 SO-AND-SO – SO-SO = not too bad, insert AND = joiner, def. difficult person.
12 DONE – Def. accomplished; sounds like (John) Donne the poet.
13 GRANDE DAME – (DEAD GERMAN)*, anagrind ‘recollected’, def. fine woman.
15 DISMISSAL – Def. final words, perhaps; DI’S MISSAL would be Diana’s prayer book.
16 ALPHA – ALP = mountain, H = height, A, def. character at the top?
18 UNLIT – UNIT = one, insert L, def. dark. A chestnut.
19 ETERNALLY – E = ultimately thE, TERN = flighty one, ALLY = friend; def. for good, for ever.
21 BAKING SODA – (A SINK GO BAD)*, anagrind ‘that could make’, def. kitchen chemical.
23 KNOB – KNOB = stud, sounds like NOB = important person.
26 ALAMEDA – ADA = girl, around LAME = hobbling; def. walk. Only a write-in because we had it in 26,129.
27 SPONSOR – Insert P into SON, then SOR(T) = type, briefly; def. advocate.
28 SPINSTER – Insert PINS = legs into STER(N) = frowning, endlessly; def. Miss.
29 SEWAGE – SE = south east, wage, could be money earned in London; def. it goes down the drain.

Down
1 FUSED – CONFUSED would be muddled, and CON = swindle; and FUSED means combined.
2 GROUNDSEL – Insert ROUNDS = circular pieces, into GEL = set; def. plant. A weed something like a dandelion with prickles.
3 RAFT – R = river, AFT = behind, def. something floating on it?
5 ARSENAL – LANES = ways, RA = one part of the army, all ‘set up’ = reversed; def. its required collection? And London’s premier team.
6 CHATELAINE – CHAT = to speak, E = English, LA(I)NE = one blocking narrow street; def. French mistress, the lady of the château.
7 SUDRA – SU = American upset, DR, A; the lowest caste of Hindu except for the Dalits or ‘untouchables’, more usually spelt SHUDRA.
8 DROMEDARY – (ROAMED)* inside DRY = arid; def. &lit.
9 ADORNS – Insert RN = sailors into A DO’S = a party’s; def. decks, as in ‘deck the halls…’
14 OIL TANKERS – (INTO LAKE)*, then alternate letters of RiSk; def. big vessels.
15 DRUMBEATS – RUM = odd, inside DB = decibels, level of sound, then EATS = finishes off; def. pulsating sounds.
17 POLYNESIA – (ESPY A LION)*; def. Pacific region; today’s easiest clue.
19 ENSLAVE – (LEAVES N)*, the N from end of AutumN; def. oppress.
20 ELDEST – Hidden in DAMS(EL DEST)INED, def. the one who will succeed?
22 KHAKI – Def. colour, sounds like CAR KEY = driver’s accessory. Today’s groan-worthy homophone.
24 BARGE – I biffed this from B*R*E and the only fitting word being a boat; from the word play there should be a sort of pole called a BARGET but I can’t find one. Someone parse this please? EDIT Thanks kevingregg first to parse for me, BAR = pole, GE(T). I don’t think of bars as poles but it’s happened before.
25 HOLE – WHOLE = healthy, remove W = wife; def. flaw.

43 comments on “Times 26133 – posh French ladies”

  1. My take on it–having B R and being unable to think of any other boat–was that it’s BAR=’pole’ + GET, with T deleted (‘punt finally moving off’).

    Edited at 2015-06-24 08:16 am (UTC)

  2. This had a sort of meh feeling as I did it, with nothing posing serious difficulties and nothing striking me as memorable. DNK SUDRA. Also didn’t know that FIGURE in this sense was an Americanism; go figure. Like Pip, I was helped by the recent appearance of ALAMEDA. Put in KHAKI because of checkers; I finally twigged post hoc, my pronunciation being [kaeki]. LOI 29ac; London=SE threw me, and sewage going down the drain didn’t feel right; what goes down the drain becomes sewage, but.

  3. All but CAUCUSED and HOLE, but even so, it took nearly an hour. CAUCUSED was always going to be nigh on impossible, as I wasn’t sure whether 7dn was SUDRA or madra. Wide variety in level of clues today, I thought, with ARSENAL and those mentioned above being particularly tricky, tempered by the write-ins BAKING SODA, ELDEST and ETERNALLY. Couldn’t parse DRUMBEATS or DROMEDARY, so thanks for those.

    Same parsing for BARGE as Kevin.

  4. 35:14 for what I thought was a fairly tough puzzle.

    When I was left with two to go I sorely wanted the big vessels to be TEN TONNERS and was wondering why 15A was DISPERSAL. This time I managed to resist my dodgy biffing instincts.

    Pip – I have to question the description of Arsenal as ‘London’s premier team’ when they are not even North London’s premier team 😉

    1. I wondered who would dare to question… my memory is not elephantine but when did the other major N London Club last win a trophy or two, or finish second in the Premiership? Or are we talking Barnet FC? 🙂
  5. Didn’t like this (1dn) at all. “This combined” is a terrible def. More like a retro relic than Pip assumes in his intro.

    And if a car key (22dn) is a mere accessory, none of us will be going very far.

    1. The device is pretty common in barred puzzles, particularly in the case of composite anagrams. I don’t see anything wrong with it, nor does it strike me as a relic from the past. The surface isn’t all that great, but that’s a separate issue.
  6. I seem to be the only one that read 12a the other way round and opted for Dunn. Normally it is clear which is the answer in this sort of clue. But the score board shows that no one else had doubts. So I was the only one and the problem is obviously all me! Any tips?
    1. I think the poet is assumed to be Donne, which sounds like done but wouldn’t fit the grid. Could well be a poet called Dunn though, I’m not up on my poetry.
    2. Moreover I don’t think the construction would quite work that way round, as the soundalike part would have to be “said to be accomplished” which isn’t the same as “sounds like accomplished”.
    3. You weren’t alone! I started with Dunn (and I think the wordplay still works – if you’d just finished mowing the lawn and said the poet’s name, you’d be saying (phonetically) I am done!). Incidentally, there are more than one – Stephen, Antony and Douglas to name a few, although I think they all fail the Times test of the Dead Poets Society.

      Something made me change my mind before completing the puzzle and I changed Dunn to Done before putting my last answer – FUSED, although it wasn’t the clue that made me think again as I was satisfied with the first answer initially. maybe I just thought the Dunns were a bit obscure (not that I knew there were at least three of them before looking it up).

  7. 26 min – some misgivings about BARGE, but eventually came to same conclusion as Kevin.
    Napasai – in this case, the poet had to be John Donne, as Douglas and Stephen Dunn are excluded by the ‘no live people’ convention.
  8. Not too hard although I struggled with SPINSTER and had never seen caucus used as a verb.
  9. Technical DNF as I had to cheat to get CAUCUSED. Had similar doubts as Janie re SUDRA vs ‘madra’ at 7dn and never did quite finish parsing 15dn.

    Edited at 2015-06-24 08:26 am (UTC)

  11. 27:22, with last 5 minutes taken getting CAUCUSED. Thinking of CAPTURED as “taken on (chess) board” didn’t help, but I knew 6d had to be CHATELAINE. I also couldn’t parse 24d – thanks Kevin for the explanation. Like mctext I wasn’t comfortable with 1d not including the definition and I thought the “etc.” in 9d was superfluous. I also nearly put in DUNN like napasai. Apart from that I enjoyed the puzzle. 15d my COD for “finishes off” being EATS rather than missing letters.
    1. 1dn does include a definition: ‘combined’. So the wordplay structure is ‘this [word meaning] combined [put together] with [a word meaning] swindle would become [a word meaning] muddled’.
      I think (assume) mctext is objecting to the construction ‘this combined’ to mean ‘this word meaning combined’. It’s a little inelegant perhaps but it doesn’t bother me.

      Edited at 2015-06-24 10:13 am (UTC)

      1. OK. I get it now. Thanks. It was the “this combined” that threw me. I should have read Pip’s explanation more carefully.
  12. Seven seconds quicker than yesterday at 10:53. I’ve been pretty consistent this week… didn’t know SUDRA, biffed in BARGE before working it out after submission.

    Talking of consistency, does anyone want to cover for me in blogging the puzzle this Friday? You would have to wear a top hat and, ideally, a monocle while solving, and then never use one word where twenty will do in the write-up…

    1. Verlaine, I’ll do it, if you do one of my Wednesdays either 15 or 22 July? I promise to be excessively verbose if not as entertaining. Pip
      1. Sounds like a fair trade. Either of those Wednesdays would be fine for me I think!
        1. OK let me know which suits, nearer the time, I’ll be in the sunny Isle of Wight making sand castles.
  13. 32 mins. I really struggled with a few clues and I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. It took me a while to see BARGE and how it was parsed, I had the same SUDRA/madra uncertainty as others until I finally saw CAUCUSED, the SCOFFED/RAFT crossers were a pair of Dean Martins, and it seemed to take an age before I got my last two, FIGURE and FUSED. Maybe I’m just having a bad morning because it took me a while to crack the Guardian puzzle too.
    1. Not just you on the Guardian. I very rarely see Private Eye so the “discussions” defeated me.
      1. It was a new one on me too, but it eventually succumbed to some painstaking parsing.
        1. As I said on fifteensquared, I’ve been a subscriber to Private Eye for years and I still needed all the checkers for the penny to drop. I’m really glad I didn’t have to work it out from the clue.
  14. 12m. Nice to return to some semblance of form after yesterday’s disaster.
    Funny to see ALAMEDA pop up again.

    Edited at 2015-06-24 10:16 am (UTC)

  15. A bit over 40 minutes, most of the struggle focused on the NE corner, particularly 4,6 and 7.
    I couldn’t see the wordplay to 15, so had to wait for checkers before entering the answer. I thought of decibel but forgot the abbreviation.
    On the whole I liked the puzzle. There was a fair smattering of anagrams, some deceptively disguised, plus some clues that need a bit of teasing out but in the end solvable from wordplay (eg 4)
  16. A slight improvement on yesterday at 16:04 but I’m not having a good crossword week generally.

    I presume the Nina has significance but not sure what.

  18. Probably 13 minutes or so. Not sure of my time as I had trouble opening the puzzle. When I finally did, I found the timer had started without me. I’m all for Magoo and a few others starting at 3 minutes, but me?

    I enjoyed this one, which seems to put me in a minority. It was a bit different, even a bit quirky. I smiled as the penny dropped on FUSED, which makes it a pretty good clue in my book.

    I can think of a few interpretations of the Donald nina, but after putting my foot in it with the last one I’m saying nothing except thank you, setter and blogger.

  19. 18:52. I do seem to struggle with the Don (I assume it’s one of his given the Nina and the prayer book).

    Having been undone by the momble madro at the champs I didn’t even consider madra for 7.

  20. Ripped through this one again until I was left with two crossing entries… had to be BARGE and KNOB but didn’t feel totally confident about either. Completely missed the Nina but it doesn’t strike me as a DM puzzle, could be another setter honoring his recent birthday?
    1. Thanks, Don. Nothing wrong with signing your work. I’m glad I kept my more fanciful ideas to myself (especially the one involving the Polynesian chatelaine!).
  22. Happy Birthday, Mr. Manley. As with all Ninas I missed it while solving and only realized it was there after reading the discussion here. Anyway, I got through your birthday puzzle in about 15 minutes, ending with CAUCUSED after having to correct the apparently common MADRA to SUDRA. And I didn’t parse BARGE at all, just biffed it in. Regards to Don and everyone else.
    1. It’s not his birthday, Kevin. That was a few weeks ago, on 2nd June (age 70), when he had puzzles in all the papers to celebrate the occasion (with Ninas announcing the fact), i.e. Times, Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and FT. I thought “possibly vain signatures” were banned in the Times, but maybe Richard Rogan isn’t as strict as previous editors. I’m all for it myself, why shouldn’t they have a bit of fun occasionally!
      1. The Times Crossword isn’t keen on themes or the sort of intrusive and arguably pointless NINAs that can “take over” a puzzle sometimes.
        But given that I didn’t spot DONALD MANLEY when solving it, or notice anything particularly unusual about the puzzle when solving, it probably doesn’t fall into that category.
        Besides, it might always be a roguish red herring (though it isn’t in this instance 🙂 )

        RR

  23. 8:32 for me, getting going slightly more quickly than usual nowadays, though I did miss the first couple of clues first time through. Like others I don’t recall coming across CAUCUS as a verb before, and I dithered over BARGE until light finally dawned.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle. If this really is Don’s birthday, then I wish him many happy returns – with the hope of plenty more of his crosswords for us to solve.

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