Times 26140 – pickles on the side

36 comments on “Times 26140 – pickles on the side”

1. Lobscouse is old Times Crossword fare – cannot believe that you didn’t know it!
   Where do you think the word Scouser comes from?

   Horryd – Shanghai

   1. Must be very old crossword fare – I can only find a note of it appearing once in a crossword – a financial times from 2009. And don’t be surprised at my lack of knowledge, I’m really quite a noted philistine
2. Worrisome opening, as I went through the acrosses and came up empty, went through the downs and got TUB and ESCALATORS. But the clues were in fact not as hard as I’d made them, although a couple (LOBSCOUSE, GASH) needed a lot of effort to drag them out of memory–if indeed I had any memory of GASH. Didn’t know LLANDUDNO was a resort, but I did know how to spell it. Liked PARDON, but COD to 5d.
3. Really struggling to complete without aids at the moment (including yesterday’s Quickie) and this one continued the downward spiral, though in the end it was only LOBSCOUSE (never ‘eard of it) that defeated me. Also didn’t know the required meaning of ‘genius’. I was pleased to remember GASH from a recent puzzle. Still not convinced that ‘be forcibly expelled’ = ‘belch’, if that’s supposed to be how it goes at 22dn.
   1. I’d wondered about ‘belch’ at the time. Just now looking in SOED, there is an intransitive entry, but it reads ’emit wind noisily from the stomach’, which sounds transitive. The original ‘genius’ was either of the two spirits–one good, one bad–who hang around us and give us advice. The genius locii is the spirit of the place. Whether either of these can be said to be ‘guardians’ is for someone else to decide.
4. I wondered about this but I thought perhaps you could say that smoke ‘belched’ from a chimney. Chambers has ‘to pour forth, as the smoke from a volcano, chimney, etc’ which looks like the same idea.
5. 18m. Much the hardest of the week for me, partly because of a number of unknowns and slightly offbeat definitions (like that for BELCH). All perfectly fair though.
   I spent several minutes at the end searching for the right synonym for ‘pickle’. Thanks to Horryd in Shanghai for pointing out that this is the origin of ‘Scouser’, something I didn’t know and am pleased to learn.
   1. Trouble is, no one ever seems to explain where ‘scouse’ comes from. The conversation goes:
      Where does Scouser come from?
      From scouse, or lobscouse, a type of stew.
      Where does ‘scouse’ come from?
      It’s a type of stew.
      1. Chambers says ‘origin obscure; cf lob and loblolly‘. Which doesn’t help at all, admittedly.
6. I left my ipad at home so solved on the iphone today which I thought was surprisingly good. The iphone doesn’t give a time but I was definitely slow on this one.

   My penultimate entry was LOBSCOUSE which I spent a long time trying to drag up from memory having heard it mentioned on a cooking programme recently. Despite thinking it was something to do with Liverpool it still took a long time arriving at Scouse.

7. 21:46 .. same sort of experience as kevinregg and Keriothe. Not really a hard puzzle but somehow a tricky one, if that makes any sense.

   DOEST is positively Machiavellian. I’m assuming the def. is “Once you serve”, as in “old way of saying ‘you serve’” … ? I’m having a bit of trouble getting my head round that.

   1. Doesn’t a servant (or anyone serving) “do” for them. My old grandma was a housekeeper and was always referring to “doing” for her various masters and mistresses. Could that be it?

      On the other hand it could be “do” = “serve” as in “if this simple syllogism will serve”. Hard to think of a second-person usage though.

      Edited at 2015-07-02 09:13 am (UTC)

      1. I assumed the latter (it’ll do). It was more the syntax that was/is leaving me mildly bamboozled. But it’ll serve.
      2. I think the catchphrase of Mrs Mopp, the charlady, in the BBC’s wartime comedy show ITMA, was: “Can I do you now, sir?” – always greeted by hoots of laughter from the audience, presumably because of the possible double-entendre.
   2. I thought of it in terms of prison sentences. If thou art done for arson, thou doest two years.

      Edited at 2015-07-02 09:56 am (UTC)

8. 14.26, one of those where steady if not speedy entries suddenly gave way to a stretch of staring uncomprehending at the grid. Not, I think George, the horror you were anticipating yesterday!
   GASH recalled from something naval – wish I could remember what – and associated with leftover food or pigswill, which it how lobscouse is made (no it isn’t, ed).
   BELCH with a bit of a shrug (don’t try this at home), though I think keriothe has it spot on.
   Some nice surfaces here, particularly 1ac.
9. George mentions solving Mephisto and I think that type of disciplined thinking pays dividends with this puzzle.

   It’s tricky but if you follow the wordplay you can derive the answer – at 5D say for DOEST where the definition is certainly peculiar.

   I knew the scouse reference having a very long standing friend from Mersyside and had no trouble with BELCH. All in all an enjoyable solve.

10. DOEST was my LOI – not at all keen on definition. (Eventually I had to resort to an aid to see if there was anything that would go in and parse plausibly, so this was really a DNF)
11. 19 mins. I found this a fair bit easier than yesterday’s puzzle, but it wasn’t a straightforward one by any means. I obviously wasn’t alone with a LOI of DOEST.

    LEGAL AID was a Dean Martin, and it was only once I’d got it that I saw GENUS. Another Dean Martin, but only because of my geographical location, was LOBSCOUSE.

12. 23:30. Fairly straightforward, having seen LOBSCOUSE somewhere recently. Didn’t know that definition of genius, but the answer had to be GENUS from the checkers… I was thinking of some variant spelling of djinn or genii. DOEST for “you serve” is beyond my ken. 19a my LOI. The only one of those I had was in 1980, and I’m not sure I’ve heard the term since.
13. My apologies to the setter for finding this a bit of a slog, with little satisfaction to make up for the hard work. Technically sound but short on wit. Something like a Mephisto indeed. DOEST is good though.
14. 12:52 with Tippex. I was obviously traumatised by my inability to ‘see’ LANK in the Championship puzzle last October, as I took an age and more to see it today too. 15a made me smile.
15. Did this with one eye on an AFL match, although I think I’d have taken a long time regardless.

    Don’t tell Horryd of Shanghai, but I didn’t know where Scouser comes from (Liverpool, I’d have thought) and I must have missed the Financial Times that day in 2009. As a result LOBSCOUSE was an ultimate leap of faith in wordplay. So was LLANDUDNO for that matter. Still, got there in the end.

    Two easy ones this week followed by two harder ones. What will tomorrow bring?

16. Took over 50 minutes and needed an aid to get LOBSCOUSE. The definition at 5d doesn’t work for me. Presumably the intention is to indicate the archaic 2nd person singular, but the clue throws the focus on ‘you’ not the verb. Seems a touch clumsy. We don’t expect to see ‘does’ defined as ‘he serves.’
    I kept trying to get the wordplay in 10a to generate GENRE.
    A real mix of the straightforward and the very tricky.
    1. The parsing seems OK to me. The focus is naturally on ‘you’ and serve’ equally. Once he serves might be doeth. The oddity is the sudden intrusion of the archaism. Yet why not have one creep in? Thou doest well, setter, nor canst please all.
17. There’s a small typo in your solution for 25
    1. Ta – fixeded
18. I’ve been away for a few days. On my return I ran into this which took two sittings and about 40 minutes all told, and I had to look up LOBSCOUSE. News to me. After finally fighting through this the usual reaction occurred: I don’t know why it took so long, but it did. Regards.
19. 30 minutes, correct, with an ‘I suppose’ to some of those noted above as dubious in parsing (doest, belch, Archibald..) and a wait for the PDM for 15a my LOI and COD. Had heard of LOBSCOUSE but never eaten it, no desire to do so either. Likewise knew the Welsh resort but no desire to visit!

    There was a young lady from Nimes…

    1. Ah, one of those oddly deflationary final lines in the Lear limericks. Puzzle done in bits so no time but found it quite testing. Didn’t know gash, estate-bottled; liked the quirky flea circus.
       1. Those of a certain age will remember Michael Bentine and his TV flea circus, where invisible fleas made footprints in the sand, climbed up a ladder (rungs bending) and bounced off a springboard into a pool.with a splash. Never worked out how he did it!

          Edited at 2015-07-02 06:28 pm (UTC)

          1. Michael Bentine did finally reveal that the flea circus was operated by very fine wires connected to an area under the cover of the display, where they were pulled by a troupe of highly trained performing fleas.
             1. Smacks head! Of course.
20. Within 2 seconds of each other today Sue… people will start to think of us as rivals or something!
21. BLIND SCOUSE is a vegetarian alternative to LOBSCOUSE, except perhaps for the bone stock. It’s probably not an improvement.
22. 13:11 for me, slowing as the week goes on. I made a horribly slow start with this one, but eventually picked up a little speed, though not enough to keep up with verlaine and crypticsue. It could be that bunging in ADDED VALUE for 1dn was enough to tip the scales.

    LOBSCOUSE last came up in Times cryptic No. 23,153 (7 December 2005). The word became well-known in the early 1960s with popularity of the Mersey Sound and the word “Scouse”, so it could well have first appeared in a Times cryptic in 1965 and then reappeared regularly every 10 years thereafter.

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