Times 26,153: A Stern Talking-To

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Bonjour, mes confrères, it is I, verlaine, turned up yet again like the proverbial mauvais centime. After a full week of very chewy puzzles I had some hopes that Friday’s might go easy on us, but it was not to be. Once again the first pass through the clues yielded only two or three obvious answers (e.g. 23a, my FOI), and I sighed and girded up for yet another struggle. Solving (and perhaps blogging!) exhaustion had set in, I think, because I didn’t even stop the clock inside the 20 minute mark today. Sacré bleu!

My overriding impression of this puzzle is that it would suit a member of the glamorous international jet set: q.v. 5a, 10a, 21a, 3d, 16d, 18d… but which of *us* has time to fly around the world visiting exotic sites and staying in luxurious hotels? Too busy sitting at home slaving over tortuous crosswords, pal. The SW corner didn’t give me too much trouble to be fair as 18d fell right into my classical lap, but I struggled in the top half of the grid – was that really the name of a hotel? Could 10a be ARABA? I thought of the answer to 2d very early on from wordplay but didn’t dare put it in until I had many crossers, and 3d was my last one in by a mile as all the other exotic locales in the puzzle had me convinced that the full answer was going to be a place in Brazil!

So yes, a full week’s run of hard ones. Despite the bruising to my ego, I must say I prefer it to lots of easy ones. Got to get in shape for October, right? Many thanks setters and editor… you absolute rotters!

Across
1 ECTOPIC – in an unusual position: reverse of CE [Church “backed”] + TOPIC [textual matter]
5 RAFFLES – double def: draws / Eastern hotel (e.g. in Singapore)
9 COLCANNON – a dish (of Irish provenance): COL C ON [officer | caught | close to] “embracing” ANN [girl]
10 AQABA – Jordanian city: Q A [Queen | A{lia} “originally”] “embraced by” AB [sailor] west of (i.e. to the left of) A
11 RHINO – brass, i.e. slang term for money: and a rhino is a beast “with two horns upfront”
12 INSURGENT – rising: URGE [press] replacing T.A. [volunteers] in INSTANT [immediate[
14 TEARS A STRIP OFF – lectures: if you are “upset when cruise cancelled”, there may be TEARS (different pronunciation) AS TRIP OFF…
17 SLAP ON THE WRIST – not a big stick, i.e. a light punishment: (ROSE WITH PLANTS*) [“damaged”]
21 ANTIPASTI – starters: A N [a | knight] + TIP [upset] + ASTI [white wine]
23 AWASH – packed: WAS [used to be] in A H [a | hospital]
24 LOOFA – sponge: reverse of A FOOL [“put around” a dipstick]
25 HANDIWORK – knitting: ROW I’D backwards [line of stitches I’d “reversed”] in HANK [piece of wool]
26 SCHLEPS – arduous trips: L [“head of” L{atin}] “breaks” SCH EPS [school | records]
27 ROYALLY – like a Rex: ROY [Rob, as Rob Roy the Scottish folk hero] + ALLY [partner]

Down
1 ESCORT – lead: C [C{rystal’s} “first”] in E SORT [English | category]
2 TILLITE – hard clay: TILLE{d} [“nearly” ploughed] “across” IT
3 PIANO TRIO – work: PIA NOT RIO [state airline (i.e. Pakistan International Airlines) | not | Brazilian state]
4 CONFIDANTES – close friends: CONFI{t} [“chopped” duck dish] + DANTE’S [poet’s]
5 RUN – double def: career / ladder
6 FLAIR – appealing style: reverse of RI [one US state “turning up”] “to support” FLA [another US state]
7 LEAVE GO – drop: LEGO [bricks] going around {r}AVE{s} [parties “endlessly”]
8 START OFF – set out on a journey: STAR [top entertainer] + TOFF [posh guy]
13 SET DESIGNER – person behind (i.e. responsible for making!) the scenes: SET [determined] “to overlook” DESIGNER [trendy sort of label]
15 IN REALITY – actually: (AIRLINE Y{e}T*) [“foreign”, “not European” i.e. minus an E]
16 ISMAILIS – certain Muslims: ISM IS [doctrine is] about AIL [trouble]
18 ANTIOCH – Turkish city: (NO AITCH*) [“wrongly”]
19 SEAFOWL – flyer: homophone of SEE FOUL [“mentioned”, what officials should do on the field]
20 CHOKEY – cooler (i.e. prison): CO [Colorado] “houses” H [hot] + KEY [A flat (as in G sharp) perhaps]
22 PRATE – rabbit: R [“top of” R{osemary}] in PATE [terrine]
25 HIS – man’s: telescopic inside {nort}H IS{land}

41 comments on “Times 26,153: A Stern Talking-To”

  1. Well, I stopped the clock at 37.39, partly because enough’s enough, with LEAVE GO in but not parsed. Thanks V for disclosing that we have another piece of product placement: my grandsons (and, come to that, my son-in-law) need no such urging to splash out on the hugely overpriced plastic.
    Nothing went in easy apart from the two three letter words and SET DESIGNER. for example, I knew 17a had to be an anagram, but of what, and to what end? Lots of things are not a big stick. Indeed every thing that isn’t a big stick…
    I did chuckle once, solving CHOKEY and twigging what A flat might be – the setter even managed the capital A but it didn’t overstate its purpose.
    Hard stuff – not a puzzle for the October, I trust
  2. Too hard for me today, although it all looks quite reasonable in retrospect. Will try again next week.
  3. There are few things more frustrating than spending 40-odd minutes on a first-rate, very chewy puzzle, solving it all, then discovering too late that you’ve mistyped one of the easy ones (START OFT, in my case).

    The biggest struggle for me was the NW corner, ECTOPIC and ESCORT being almost the last to fall.

    Enjoyed CHOKEY the most among many fine clues.

  4. That’s nothing to what I called myself when I spotted that I had biffed 16d with an E and totally ignored the wordplay. Spoiled an otherwise respectable 22 minutes. Tried a few Portuguese mombles at 3d – the two Os seemed to invite them – before the penny dropped. Any news of the cricket?
  5. Your ego is bruised? Spare a thought for mere mortals! I got there eventually with some resort to aids, but unlike the chewy ones earlier in the week I didn’t enjoy this at all. Pakistan International Airways or possibly Pacific Island Aviation – give us a break!

    Now that I look again I see that even with use of aids I failed at 16dn as Word Wizard has never heard of ISMAILIS. It offered ISRAELIS and OSMANLIS, the first obviously wrong but the second, being Turks, might have fitted the definition. I never got anywhere near any part of the wordplay.

  6. Not easy today. Needed Onelook.com to solve the last quite a few and even then couldn’t get Ismailis.
    Thanks Verlaine for another very entertaining blog and pointing out the wordplay for Handiwork, Insurgent, Ismailis, Leave Go, Colcannon and Piano Trio.
    Back to St Andrews…
    1. Unspammed, inclusion of the Onelook url did for it.

      Edited at 2015-07-17 09:58 am (UTC)

  7. I found this more like boot leather rather than just chewy, so not at all appetising. No wit to reward an hour of hard work, only the relief of having slogged through it. CHOKEY the best of an uninspiring lot.
  8. I was about as much use as an English pie-thrower on a flat track against the world’s best batsman and the world’s best old batsman, grinding to a halt in Pakistan International Airways corner with four unsolved, including COLCANNON, which we had not long ago, TILLITE, where I could get no closer than ‘turnite’, and PIANO TRIO, which featured brilliant misdirection, I thought.

    If I have any misgivings about this puzzle, it is that each of potentially the two best clues (okay, three, given the excellence of SLAP ON THE WRIST) relied on a certain reconditeness, 3d in the clue, 20d in the solution.

    Like malcj, I was working around Abraham’s bastard son at 16d. A nod to the setter and our erudite blogger.

    1. Reasons to be cheerful:

      Something nice to study
      phoning up a buddy
      Being in my nuddy.
      Saying ‘okey-dokey’
      singalonga Smokey
      Coming out of chokey

      1. A couple of times recently something has made me fancy a bit of Ian Dury. Thanks for this further reminder – now downloaded.
  9. 30 mins. It felt like I was drifting off midway through the puzzle so based on the comments of others my time doesn’t seem too bad. It was a chewy challenge indeed, and you can count me as another who finished in the NW with PIANO TRIO after TILLITE and ECTOPIC.
  10. 38:50 I was pleased to be able to finish this as it felt quite tricky today. My FOI was 17a and I got hardly any on first pass through. I didn’t know the back-formation ISM, or whose airline PIA was. NE corner held me up most until I realised they were plastic bricks in 7d. 9a and 10a had to be dredged from silted-up memory banks. I wondered about CARDIGAN for 35a until I saw it started with H. 3d, 20d and 14a my favourites of the day.
  11. DNF, as bunging in INSISTENT without parsing killed any chance of getting 6d. I liked 5a though, as it was pleasant a couple of years ago knocking back a Singapore Sling in the bar where it was invented.
  12. I got on quite well with this one – didn’t know the clay but the wordplay was very user-friendly – and I finished in 10:31
    1. A positively Magoovian (and indeed Jasonian) result! I’ve been falling outside of 2xMagoo a lot recently :-/
      1. I’ve had a really bad solving week so today’s performance is somewhat miraculous.
  13. Good job I was only blogging the quickie today – my compliments to the vigilant and moustachoied Mr V for unravelling this one, I ran out of ‘time-alone’ after half an hour with 3d, 16d and 19d unfnished. Can’t say I care for SEAFOWL as a species of flyer although the homophone was fair enough. Nor do I care for finding Pakistan’s national alrline among several hundred possiblilities for acronyms.
    Otherwise I thought some fine clues, RAFFLES my favourite.
  14. Failed on 3d as PLANO BRIO is not a Brazilian State – I think it used to be!

    I thought 7d was pretty sneaky.

    And surely the clue for 1a was a bit light as the meaning is an egg in the place?

    20d COD

    horryd – Shanghai

    1. Yep, PLANO BRIO was my frontrunner for a while too…

      I don’t think “ectopic” is intrinsically anything to do with eggs – en-topic, in place, ek-topic, out of place.

  15. Too hard for me today. Only got about 50%. Not sure about hard work means drudgery. I suspect many of us have jobs that require hard work but no drudgery. Still thanks for the blog.
    1. I prefer them when they’re hard! (As long as they’re fair, of course.) Sorry if I gave the opposite impression.
  16. I gave up with the NE unfinished after about an hour. Having seen the ones I missed – AQABA, LEAVE GO, FLAIR and RAFFLES I felt all were gettable (although not knowing AQABA it could equally have been ARABA).

    I particularly liked INSURGENT – nice surface. SEAFOWL took a long time in arriving because I couldn’t get SEAGULL out of my head reasoning it sounded like SEE GOAL.

    After that run of toughies I’m off to the Dorset coast to recover…

  17. I was close to giving up with the expected holes in the NW corner but got there in the end in 33:13. I was half surprised that tillite, Aqaba and Ismailis were all correct.

    3d had me in a right panic as it looked like it was going to be some kind of choral work I didn’t know (Bravo Orio, Imago Brio or summat) and the wordplay didn’t help.

    There was some deadly misdirection going on – at 21 I though the def was A knight and at 25 I though I was looking for a word for a line of stitches. “Person behind the scenes” was clever too. I got the set bit but was then trying to think of the name of the stage hand who changes the set between scenes.

  18. I do this in between customers in my shop, so can’t time the completion. Fairly straightforward today till I got stuck in NE corner. DNK tillite and Ismailis but obvious from clue. The last time COLCANNON came up, being a vegetarian, I made some and very nice it was too. Anyone else make use of the answers to crosswords?

    Have been a long time reader of this blog, but thought it’s about time I contributed. Isn’t there a word for a blog reader who doesn’t take part?

    1. A “lurker” perhaps? Though that makes you sound more ominous than I’m sure you are! Welcome to the world of the de-lurked, in any case. I quite fancy some colcannon now…
    2. Welcome aboard. I don’t think I’ve made use of the answers before but now I going to hire an ESCORT. Ahem.
      1. No need for shame – I hear it’s a very nippy and reliable small family car.
  19. About 35 minutes to get through this. I started very slowly, but as the checking letters appeared the intransigent ones began to fall into place, and I ended with ISMAILIS from the wordplay, the actual Ismailis being outside my scope. PIANO TRIO was brilliantly hidden via the surface, although I join the chorus of those feeling PIA as ‘airline’ falls outside the rules. I assumed it had something to do with Poland, but that would also be willfully obscure, if true. I didn’t know what a CHOKEY was either, but the A flat for ‘key’ was deftly done. Regards to all, setter and M. Verlaine included.
  20. 18.30. I didn’t find this too bad, helped by happening to have all the requisite knowledge, including the followers of the Aga Khan. I even thought of PIA almost immediately. Just lucky I guess.
  21. 18:23 here for this very fine puzzle.

    Like you and others, I made heavy weather of the NW corner, held up in my case by not knowing TILLITE or PIA. Fortunately ECTOPIC (as in “~ pregnancy”, a term familiar from having been married to a health visitor for getting on for 40 years) provided a way in, but still left me looking for the “PLANO something-or-other” state in Brazil. Fortunately light dawned just as I was contemplating bunging in PLANO TRIO in desperation!

    This has indeed been an interesting week so far. I started off not too disastrously, keeping under 10 minutes on Monday and Tuesday, but these last three days have been pretty tough. With October approaching all too rapidly, I’m slightly relieved to read that crypticsue’s week hasn’t all been all roses, as her time today was certainly formidable.

  23. An exotic offering, with TILLITE the only unknown. I stayed in a room in the Palm Court of the Raffles many years ago before it was renovated – unfortunately I have to use cheaper accommodation in Singapore these days.

    Like Sotira I remembered AQABA from Laurence of Arabia, and COLCANNON from crosswords.

    PIA was notable for an advertisement which showed the pitfalls of the English language for non- native speakers. They ran a campaign featuring smiling cabin crew and the inside of a plane with the slogan “This is our world and you are welcome to it”.

    Dereklam

    1. The (probably apocaphal) one that I have always liked is the notice in a cafe
      “Customers who think that the staff are rude should see the Manageress”

      Equally, in my final international employment I always had to think twice when emailed by my non-UK colleagues “Thanks a lot!”

  24. Doggedly ground this out in around an hour: pleased to get through it with everything parsed satisfactorily.
  25. The Times crossword is going to the dogs under the current editor.
    Living people not so long ago, and now a plethora of brand names.
    Soon it will Mirror the Guardian – and another of life’s little joys will be gone forever, dumbed down for the masses.
    35 mins, slowish, but never seemed stuck.

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