Times 26152 – when one George struggles with another

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 16:49 on the club timer, and since there’s already a sub-10, I suspect this is going to be a challenge of general knowledge. I know it’s not a written rule, but I grumble when a proper name (in this case, a novel) is clued as an anagram. Unless it’s in the common parlance (and I am already anticipating a bunch of comments calling me a philistine) an anagram doesn’t give you a fighting chance until all the checking letters are in place.

OK, I’ll get off the cross now, apparently someone needs the wood.

Away we go….

Across
1 TEMP,LET: alternative spelling of TEMPLATE that I wasn’t familiar with, but the wordplay was clear
5 SILAGE: IS reversed then LAGER missing the R
8 MAGDALENE: a double container! A,L in DEN in MAGE
9 ROUND: GROUND missing the G
11 C(ounsel),HIDE(disguise): nice clue, and unusual use of the word wig, where I live it’s usually followed by “out”
12 RIN TIN TIN: two TIN’s (can, repeatedly) after R,IN
13 NOSINESS: NESS containing O,SIN
15 P,INN,A(greeabl)E: got this one from wordplay
17 (f)ULL,AGE
19 RANSOME: RAND containing SOME
22 IMPATIENT: anagram of PAINT and TIME
23 DURER: UR in DER
24 GENII: the start of “The Bible” would be Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1
25 EPILATION: PI in ELATION
26 FOMENT: OMEN in every crossworder’s favorite newspaper, the FT
27 GALA,TEA: another one I needed wordplay for
 
Down
1 TIME CONSUMING: because whaT I’M Experiencing has TIME inside
2 MUGGINS: GIN in MUGS
3 LEAVE: double def
4 THEORIST: OR in THEIST
5 SIENNA: change the first letter in VIENNA
6 LARRIKINS: IR reversed in LARKIN’S
7 GLUTTON: (ful)L in GUT, then TON
10 DANIEL DERONDA: (A,LEARNED,DON,I’D)* – my last in, novel by George Eliot
14 NIGHTLIFE: NIGHT LIE containing F
16 CAST(launch),LING(fish): move in chess
18 LEPANTO: pope LEO (pick a number), with PANT inside
20 MARXIST: SIX reversed in MART
21 RESENT: RENT surrounding SE
23 DRAWL: DRAW then LOVER missing OVER(a maiden, many of which may be bowled at Lord’s in a few hours)

37 comments on “Times 26152 – when one George struggles with another”

  1. I flung in ‘genes’ at 24ac, which rendered 14d unsolveable for a long time. Like Vinyl, I biffed in ULLAGE & EPILATION. DNK ‘wig’ in the relevant sense, but. I don’t much care for alternate (rare) forms like TEMPLET, although I must admit it didn’t slow me down much. The one thing I know about Daniel Deronda is that it takes him until he’s an adult to realize that he’s a Jew; perhaps English lit’s most unobservant hero.
  2. Mostly solved within 30 minutes but needed 42 to complete the job with a last-minute hold-up in the NW where not knowing the alternative spelling at 1ac threw me for a while, and I didn’t like 1dn which I feel is a bit weak, especially relying as it does, on a cross-reference to another answer. DK GALATEA as material or PINNAE, but the wordplay was clear. GENII was pretty smart.
  3. For me epilation was a shoe-in, as I knew that horripilation was a hair-raising experience – my surname being Horry.

    Has horripilation ever been an answer?

    Agree – 1 down was crass – I believe that all clues should be solvable on their own merit.

    Horryd – Shanghai

  4. Toss of the coin between DERONDA and DORENDA for 10dn. Fortunately I guessed correctly (after looking it up).

    Didn’t matter much as I came to grief at the hitherto little-known battle of LEPINEO.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  5. A bit of an old-fashioned feel to this one. DANIEL DERONDA may be an Eliot too far for the daily, but at least it was more palatable than last night’s quiz at the Foreign Correspondents’ Cub, where the Literature round consisted of the novels of Wodehouse. More like Mastermind.

    I trudged through quite successfully until CASTLING proved a bridge too far. I was onto a chess move, then panicked because I only really know one (no prizes for guessing which), and didn’t know how to fit it with (inside?) a word meaning launch to get a fish. 53 minutes before looking up the answer.

    At least I learned what RIN TIN TIN was, having remained blissfully ignorant these last 50-odd years.

    Edited at 2015-07-16 06:49 am (UTC)

    1. Meant to say that this was my COD, just for the childhood memories it evoked.

      Good ol’ Corporal Rusty and his faithful companion. And none of that awful whiny theme music you got with Lassie.

      1. I was weaned on Skippy and Flipper, and you can’t get a lot tweer than that.
        1. Rinny was a far better actor than those two. At least he sounded like a dog.
          1. No animal could disarm a gun-toting baddie as well as Rebel the wonder dog, Champion the wonder horse’s “friend”.
  6. I’m due to blog today’s Quickie but have just been summoned for a hospital appointment. Can anyone help, please?

  7. 18:45. I enjoyed this one, largely because I biffed very little. The only out-and-out unknown for me was TEMPLET, but words like ULLAGE don’t spring instantly to mind, for me at least.
    I started but didn’t finish DANIEL DERONDA many years ago, which helped. Nice to see Larkin again.

    Edited at 2015-07-16 07:15 am (UTC)

  8. Like others the book was something of a mystery but guessed from fodder + checkers – then a vague memory of meeting it before somewhere.

    Which also goes for ULLAGE – I came across that when involved with the financial side of running a pub where the landlord could back then claim recompense for ULLAGE. I guess they still can.

    Nice steady solve today with no fireworks

  9. If you’re in the mood to be irritated, there’s a lot for you in this one: VIENNA with a pick-any-letter swap at the front, that odd spelling at 1ac, 1d for any number of reasons, wig meaning something odd, D’Israeli’s (or so I thought) novel Daniel Wossname, Latin feathers, some other strange material that happens to be My Fair Lady for lovers of obscure classical references, and if your childhood isn’t that long ago, RTT. Quite surprised to complete in 15.38, but then that’s what crosswording does to your brain, hot-wiring weird connections and creating a massive searchable file called oddstuffthatyoullneveruseanywhereelse.txt
  10. A little easier than yesterday’s and almost as entertaining. Unlike some, I thought both 1dn and 10dn were well-clued, and I have no issue with proper names being clued as anagrams, especially the title of a novel, TV series and a couple of films. But that’s from a George Eliot fan.
  11. It’s nice (and educational) to put in unknown GK answers from wordplay alone, then find they are correct; in this case, all correct in 25 minutes. LARRIKINS and the book were dredged from some deep spot in the grey cells once all the checkers were in, and even Mrs K didn’t know GALATEA was a cloth. A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle with several PDMs, my COD is 13a as I was on the Dorothy wavelength for a while before thinking of less famous Parkers.
    Fogbound in the Isle of Wight, grand-kids promised the beach… they’re stir crazy… what larks!

    Edited at 2015-07-16 09:09 am (UTC)

    1. Forcast is for the sun to emerge about lunch time and for a hot afternoon. Plenty of sailing boats for you to see I should think.
      1. Sadly Ventnor seems to have its own microclimate Jim, now the fog has thinned we have breezy, cool and grey… yachts on the other side of island. As usual, tomorrow is allegedly better. Serve us right for not coming to Dorset.
  12. I have say I enjoyed this. GALATEA (as a material) and TEMPLET (with that spelling) were new, but the clueing was clear.

    10dn was first in. I wrote out the anagrist and started to think about titles of novels. For no good reason, the first that sprang to mind was Middlemarch, from which it was a very small step to DD.

    It took a while to get the spelling of MAGDELENE worked out – I’m more familiar with the Oxford spelling with no final E.

    Dereklam

  13. 23 mins, so at least I avoided a repetition of yesterday’s disaster. I found the RHS easier than the LHS, and LEPANTO was my LOI after ULLAGE. If I had been shown the word GALATEA before I did this puzzle I would have confidently said that it was a type of plant.
  14. Just scraped home inside the 15 minute mark – how my hubristic claim that I can generally do the Times cryptic in 10-12 is being punished this week! I did enjoy this one though, I like a bit of vocabulary expansion and TEMPLET and ULLAGE certainly fit that bill today…

    Boo hiss to 8a with its entirely superfluous (in my very partisan opinion) E at the end 😉

  15. 34:28, so a little over average for me – I was held up by the NW corner. I missed the hidden TIME in 1d, which makes it a good clue. I was sure Harry Potter would be a misdirection for 8a, but it didn’t stop me trying to find something to study with Potter in it. I’d never seen that spelling at 1a, and DNK 15a, 27a and 10d, but got from wordplay. Nice to see LEPANTO at 18d, a battle I first learned of when failing to solve a Sunday Times crossword in the ’70s – but my Dad knew it. 22a my favourite – I don’t like watching paint dry either.
  16. Neat puzzle with even the unknown “ullage” and “galatea” obvious from the clues. Always good to have no plant references. Can’t stand ’em.
    1. Just as well 27a wasn’t clued to refer to the variety of snowdrop (‘Galanthus galatea’), galatea fuschia or leopard lily dieffenbachia (aka galatea) then.
  17. 35 minutes here with too long on 1d – obvious once I twigged it but then they always are. I liked that the more obscure words were helpfully clued so that I could confidently put in GALATEA and PINNAE. 10d my FOI but Eliot is a favourite so I can see the slight doubt about the necessary GK here as with the battle.
  18. 2 mistakes today. One entirely of my own doing (like our Australian friend I plumped for the battle of Lepineo) the other due to a poor clue where I didn’t get the letters of Deronda in the correct order.
  19. I confess I looked up the author rather than guessing the order of letters in DERONDA. That was after about 35 minutes of struggling with unknowns ULLAGE, LARRIKINS, GALATEA the material and PINNAE which came from wordplay only and also needed confirmation afterwards. So to me this one required a bunch of obscure vocabulary. Regards to all.
  20. 13:58 … I liked it (well, I would).

    I was going to say that I couldn’t see much justification for the cross-clue device in 1d, then I remembered that I spent quite a bit of time trying to think of an “age of majority” type expression to explain ’22’. I was maybe recalling that excellent CONSENTING ADULT clue in a recent Sunday (?). Either way, it proved an effective red herring in my case, and the rest of the clue works nicely.

  21. As my word for the day, I can’t help adding, in the light of the recent stunning pictures of Pluto, that Galatea is also the name of a (rather small – about 180km in diameter) moon of Neptune. The best picture I can find seems to be a blurred smear and I was interested to see it orbits in about 10 hours at about 38 km/h and the escape velocity is a mere 271 km/h. That is some sea-nymph.
  22. All these clever people who can do the crossword in two minutes yet have never heard of Daniel Deronda. Agree with sidcuppa that it is quite well known.

    George you have a literal at 19ac: you missed the final d. Even with my name I couldn’t get it and had to use aids.

    Was one of the minority (I think) who thought that 1dn was very good. If you don’t like cross-references you won’t enjoy the Independent. Often lots there.

  23. 12:40 here for an interesting and enjoyable puzzle (with DANIEL DERONDA an easy win :-).
  24. So this was only my third or fourth time doing a cryptic crossword …. and I couldn’t finish it (hence googling and finding this!!). Failed on lepanto larrikins pinnae Galatea castling and epilation (which I almost got as emulation) and ullage —- who has ever heard of ullage!!!

    Very glad to have found this site – as hadn’t bought the next day’s paper and would never, ever have worked those out!

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