Times 26,144: The Mediocrity Principle

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Subbing for jackkt today – I’ll try to keep it short as no one needs me gabbing on grandiloquently all the time!

Was very happy to return to my par 10-12 minute solving time bracket after yesterday’s huge disaster. Short answers are either write-ins or really hard, but in this case 9a, 22a and 28a went straight in and we were away. The whole bottom half of the puzzle fell really easily, though I did find the top half a little chewier.

Overall I enjoyed this puzzle with its broad general knowledge requirements – a bit of science, some US history, my beloved David Copperfield (I like that book even if nobody else does!) and the obscure indeed but very interesting language at 6a. LOI was 18a and COD probably 17d as it’s above averagely complex while maintaining a good surface.

One thing that struck me about it was that despite the large number of clues (31 is above average, isn’t it?) there were unusually few anagrams here – about 0.6 (four letters of 19d) by my count. Is this a record?

Many thanks to the setter – whom assuredly the 11a principle of my title does not apply to, but was the centre of all our universes for ~15 minutes today…

Across
1 APOSTATE – “one has lost faith”: P.O. [naval officer, i.e. Petty Officer] in A STATE [a frenzy]
6 LIBIDO – desire: IDO [obscure language] by LIB [politician]
9 STAB – sudden pain: BATS [mammals] “rolling over”
10 RELAXATION – “lying in bed?”: RELATION [“maybe wife”] grabs A X [a kiss]
11 COPERNICAN – “of astronomer”: COPER I CAN [competent manager, I am able] “to get hold of” N [name]
13 HEEP – obsequious type (from David Copperfield): {s}HEEP [willing follower “in want of leader”]
14 PORTABLE – easy to move: P [“minimal” power] + OR TABLE [men | bit of furniture]
16 THRUST – offensive: TRUST [responsibility] “accepts” H [husband]
18 CYPHER – nothing: CYP{rus} [“one half of” an island] + HER [the woman]
20 VINEGARY – sour: VARY [change] in which I + NEG [one “gets” negative]
22 MOJO – spell: after MO [a while], JO [little woman]
24 MARBLE ARCH – landmark in capital: B + LEAR [Bishop and king] “open” MARCH [spring month]
26 COLLATERAL – a form of security: COL LATERAL [officer | at the side]
28 MOUE – pouting expression: MOU{s}E [shy person “son being put out”, i.e. minus S]
29 ISOMER – compound: I [“leader of” I{nfamous}] + SOMER{set} [county “set’s abandoned”]
30 ESCORTED – accompanied: ED [little fellow] about SCORE [twenty] keeping T [“close to” {paren}T]

Down
2 PETROLOGY – “hard things being studied?”: PET ROY [favourite | boy] keeps LOG [diary]
3 SUBJECT – double def: e.g. French / national
4 AARON – a leader’s brother (i.e. Moses’): A {b}ARON [a | lord, “no leader”]
5 EEL – fish: {r}EEL [angler’s equipment “has missed river”, i.e. minus R]
6 LEXINGTON – beginning of struggle for independence: LING [heather] + NOT “upset”, about EX [old lover]
7 BUTCHER – cruel type: BUT CHER [however | beloved of Parisians]
8 DROVE – crowd: D ROVE [daughter + to travel about]
12 CLEAVER – chopper: C.R. [King Charles] about LEAVE [to depart]
15 BAROMETER – “instrument for the front porch?”: O.M. [order] + E [{on}E “finally”] in BARTER [deal]
17 STRUCTURE – organise: ST [street] + RU{P -> C}TURE [rift, “when about to replace parking”, i.e. with a C replacing P]
19 HOODLUM – thug: (LOUD*) [“terribly”] “invading” HOM{e} [domicile “cut short”]
21 GRAMMAR – school: G [good] + RAM [memory] + RAM reversed [memory “built up”]
23 OBOES – music makers: {h}OBOES [nomads “in the East End?”, i.e. with a dropped aitch]
25 LILAC – colour: “not entirely” {wel}L I LAC{k}
27 RYE – crop: YE [you] after R [“end of” {summe}R]

28 comments on “Times 26,144: The Mediocrity Principle”

  1. Spread over two sessions. Seemed like I made it harder than it should have been. That may have been down to the lack of anagrams, which I hadn’t noticed until Verlaine pointed it out.

    On balance I think I’m stronger (less weak?) at solving anagrams. Less good at, you know, other stuff.

    Will keep an anagram count from now on. Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. Mm, I think anagrams are definitely a way into puzzles that would otherwise be baffling: they’re quite easy to spot, generally, and if all else fails in your solving you can always write out a bunch of letters in a circle and rearrange them frantically until you find an answer…
      1. That’s the one downside of electronic solving – not being able to write letters in a circle.
      2. Going back a while (perhaps quite a long one) wasn’t there a stated limit on the number of anagrams in a Times puzzle (equivalent to the no living people rule). My recollection is 3 but no problem if life has moved on. It did used to help me though that once I had racked up 3? anagrams, I did not have to look for any more. Writing letters in a circle has been my MO since the start.
  2. I never quite found this setter’s wavelength and so struggled with this one – my problem because the puzzle is well constructed and completely fair. Guessed AARON from checkers and cryptic – had forgotten the Moses connection. Good to see dear old Copernicus given a day out in the sun.
  3. 17m. I found this quite tricky: the top half in particular, so after reading through the first few clues I thought we were in for a real stinker. I thought it was a super puzzle, and I too enjoyed the range of references. I wouldn’t really call them ‘general knowledge requirements’, though, unless you can call a vague sense that LEXINGTON was something to do with the American Civil War War of Independence (see?), or that PETROLOGY is the study of something or other, ‘knowledge’.

    Edited at 2015-07-07 08:39 am (UTC)

      1. I did actually work that out from the wordplay, and I vaguely remembered having been caught out by it before. A bit of googling confirms that it was this puzzle.
  4. No time because of an extended interruption, but not a quick solve. I got myself in a real tangle in the NE where I had thrown in RELAXATIVE just as I was interrupted. Surprisingly, it does turn out to be a word. Just not the right one.

    That made DROVE impossible, especially as I couldn’t remember the name HEEP (I could see him — Nicholas Lyndhurst, I think — but for ages I couldn’t remember his blessed name).

    Verlaine, I think calculating the anagram/clue ratio to one decimal point is a splendid idea and establishes a fine precedent. Well done.

    1. Indeed and I think Verlaine should give us details of the calculation used. There are just over 200 letters in the grid so 4 letters represents around 2%. There are 31 clues so 1 clue represents just over 3% whilst a half a clue represents about 1.5%. What am I missing?
      1. I haven’t a clue, but I now realise that one decimal point is hopelessly inadequate. More work needed. And pie charts.
      2. I’m ashamed to say my calculation wasn’t anywhere near as clever as supposed – I was thinking 4/7 of one word = about 60% of a single clue! (Closer to 57% as it turns out.)
  5. A DNF under competition conditions because after 18 mins my LOI was a stupid “heel” at 13ac, where I had convinced myself that the obsequious type was somehow akin to a disreputable person, and that the wordplay was (w)heel which I thought might have been an expression for a willing follower I hadn’t come across before. However, I wasn’t 100% convinced by either so I looked at the Chambers definitions of “heel” and realised it almost certainly wasn’t right. I then had a lightbulb moment for HEEP and I saw the (s)heep wordplay. Muppet. That’ll teach me not to rush my answers. Except it won’t. I’m with those who found the top half much trickier than the bottom half, and I agree it was a fine puzzle.
  6. I found this a medium level 25 minute puzzle and had to BIFF one unparsed – the IDO bit. However I had one wrong – MOMO not MOJO – thinking MO for ‘a while’ and MO as in Little Mo the tennis player of yore. A momo is of course a spell, or a momble.
    Good to see a spot of chemistry too with ISOMER.
    Now you mention it, my scribbling area is anagram-free, which is certainly unusual.
  7. 18:56. Nothing too difficult, but some nice clues. Pondered RUFFIAN for a while for 19d, but ISOMER pointed the way. I didn’t know what happened at LEXINGTON and hadn’t heard of IDO, but they were clear enough. 18a my LOI, but should have got it more easily – we had CIPHER in the quicky only last week. 10a my COD.
  8. Tippex, writing over the top of other letters, and a time of 19:51 would definitely confirm that I was miles away from this setter’s wavelength.
  9. I found this fairly tough finishing with HEEP in 27:44. I was very tempted to go with HEEL like Andy so was pleased with myself for being unusually disciplined.

    LEXINGTON came to me courtesy of the Velvet Underground when I had the L and the X and “Up to Lexington 125” popped into my head leaving I’m Waiting For The Man as an earworm.

  10. 12.26 today including checking time (essential these days) and a break while a charming young lady offered me 16 solar panels for 100 quid. I’m sure that’s a wonderful bargain, but I do wish they’d check with the telephone preference service first. It doesn’t seem to be enough just to say “no thank you”, and one does so hate to appear (or be) rude.
    Nice puzzle, good range of GK, plenty of help with spelling uncertainties, otherwise I’d have had PETRALOGY (Ray is still a boy’s name) and VINEGARY might have been otherspelt.
    Interestingly, just under 11% of today’s letters are E’s, and if you draw appropriate lines through them, you get a rather fetching portrait of Paul Revere in a tricorn hat. Aren’t statistics wonderful?
  11. 20:38 with cypher last to fall. I can’t say I enjoyed the puzzle as much as I did the debate above on anagram maths. I found it a bit, you know, vinegary.
  12. About 40 minutes for me, with a couple of (eventually corrected) errors in the NE slowing me down. I also went with RELAXATIVE instead of the correct -TION, which did seem to fit the clue nicely, and which pointed out my other near fatal error, where I had biffed ARLINGTON instead of LEXINGTON. The Jason Russell House in Arlington was the site of the bloodiest fighting on the first day of the American Civil War. Obviously, the Heather not upset still works, so it was only the AR parsing from old lover that I was biffing. Once I saw RELAXAT-IVE / -ION, I realised my error. Recognising that -ION worked as well as -IVE also gave me my LOI – DROVE.

    Good puzzle. Thanks Verlaine for the blog.

  13. Hi everyone. I haven’t posted on here for weeks, mainly because nowadays I usually don’t get round to doing the puzzle until late in the day or the next day.
    Two missing today: Heep and Thrust.
    Didn’t know Aaron, Lexington or Moue but all gettable from the wordplay once I had a few checkers in place.
    Didn’t notice the lack of anagrams.
  14. Ripped through this one and was then left sitting thinking “the only word I can think of that fits here is CYPHER but there’s no O in it”… that distracted me for a couple of minutes before the penny dropped. Weird.
  15. About 25 minutes for this wide ranging and enjoyable puzzle. Thank you setter, and Verlaine. No problem with LEXINGTON, as you might expect, and thanks to z8 for unearthing the Paul Revere portrait. Splendid, if true. My LOI was SUBJECT, right after working out the wordplay for AARON. I well recall his puzzlement during the Ten Commandments movie when Charlton Heston was up Mt. Sinai, and Aaron was bamboozled by the Edward G. Robinson character into presiding over an outburst of licentiousness. It included Edward G.’s inspired line delivered in gangster-like style: “So what do you think of your Moses now, eh?” We still use that around the house every so often. Regards.
  17. I made another depressingly slow start – including spending ages trying to justify RECUSANT (or some other word starting with R and ending in ANT) for 1ac – and thought I was heading for another disaster. However, I eventually found the setter’s wavelength and bumbled my way home in 10:28.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle, even though, with hindsight, it looks very easy.

  18. I see that the V&A currently has an exhibition of photographs taken by Linnaeus Tripe. Now there’s someone whose appearance in a Times cryptic is surely long overdue!
  19. Offensive husband accepts responsibility? The reverse (6)
    The answer is…
    THRUST – offensive: TRUST [responsibility] “accepts” H [husband]

    However, I wrote in THREAT.
    An offensive is a threat.
    And I managed to convince myself that TREAT could mean responsibility. As in “this is my treat” meaning “I will take responsibility for paying for this”.
    Oh well.
    This did slow me down a little.

    Edited at 2016-09-29 06:59 pm (UTC)

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