Times 26157

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Firstly, thanks to my moustachioed verbose blogger friend Verlaine, for covering for me last week. I’m still on holiday, but managed to wake early enough to grab half an hour of P & Q before the little darlings started their morning routine, and am hoping to run through this blog before I’m off to shiver on the beach.
This went along well enough, one or two obscurities gettable from wordplay, and one silly little clue, 27a, my LONI (Last One Not In) for which the penny may drop as I go along. Ah, the penny has dropped, although I’m still a bit wobbly about the definition.

Across
1 WOBBLY – Double definition, one colloquial and amusing.
4 BESMEARS – BEARS = speculators, around E SM; def. slanders.
10 TREASON – R = Republican, inside TEAS ON = meals available, def. treachery.
11 TIMPANI – IMP = little rascal, inside TAN = brown, I = one; def. they produce rolls, drum rolls. Boom boom.
12 HIKE – H = hours, IKE = a president once, def. increase.
13 HOMECOMING – H, (MOG NO MICE)*, def. return to base.
15 ADVANTAGE – V (very) ANT (small insect) inside ADAGE = proverb; def. benefit.
16 URIAH – U = upper class, RIAH = HAIR reversed = musical about,
18 SONIC – SO NIC(E) = particularly attractive, when cut; def. like certain waves.
19 CELEBRANT – CE = church, LE = the French, B = bishop, RANT = diatribe; def. priest.
21 DARJEELING – Insert JE = I in Paris, E = final letter of indulge, into DARLING = sweet; def. tea/
23 FINN – F = following, I = current (electronics), N N = news; def. native of Turku, Finland’s second city, a pleasant place in summertime with an excellent museum devoted to Jean Sibelius (who else!).
26 INTENSE – IN = NI leaders returning, TENSE = present, perhaps; def. forceful.
27 EWE LAMB – I struggled with this while I had EYE (sounds like I, me, the solver), instead of EWE which sounds like you, the solver. I was thinking, an EYE THING, a doctor’s instrument of some sort. Then I saw L = left and A MB = a doctor. apparently a ewe lamb is a most treasured possession, although I haven’t found the literary support for this. Y’all probably had it straight away.
28 YIELDING – (NIGEL DIY)*, def. compliant.
29 SUPERB – UP = on horseback, inside SERB = Balkan national; def. grand.

Down
1 WITCH – C = a hundred, inside WITH = in the company of; def. enchanting woman.
2 BREAK EVEN – BREAK = destroy, EVEN = flat; def. neither gain or lose.
3 LIST – Def. record; sounds like Liszt, who was Hungarian. A clue escaped from the quickie?
5 EXTREME – EX REME = former army corps, insert T = fort in the end; def. uncompromising.
6 MUMBO-JUMBO – MUM = mother, BO = bo(y), child briefly, JUMBO a type of crossword; def. nonsense.
7 AGAMI – AGA = Turkish commander, M.1 = busy road; an AGAMI is a variety of heron found in South America. Got from wordplay.
8 SLINGSHOT – SOT = drunkard; insert LING = heather, SH = quiet; def. catapult.
9 ANGOLA – AN, GOAL = ambition, ‘bring down’ the A (leader of African) of GOAL; def. state.
14 UNSCREENED – Double definition, one whimsical.
15 ASSIDUITY – Anagram of U Y ITS SAID, the U and Y beming ‘extremely’ UntimelY; def. diligence.
17 INANIMATE – I = single, NAN = woman, I MATE = one colleague; def. lacking in spirit.
19 COLLEEN – COL = senior officer, LEEN sounds like LEAN; def. Irish girl.
20 LINNET – Today’s hidden word clue, in recitaL IN NETherlands; def. singer.
22 RATHE – THE = article, following RA = painter; RATHE is a poetic word for blooming.
24 NABOB – N = originlly needing, A BOB = a little cash before 1971; def. rich man.
25 BEAU – Cupid used a BOW which sounds like BEAU, a girl’s sweetheart.

41 comments on “Times 26157”

  1. It seems to me that ‘solver’=you and ‘setter’=me/I etc. generally; but that didn’t stop me from going for EYE X myself at first. I just know we had a EWE LAMB recently here, or I wouldn’t have known the term. Similarly, I learned WOBBLY recently enough here that memory traces survived. DNK bears=speculators; these the same bears that we prefer bulls to? Also DNK AGAMI, of course; I’ll be curious to see how many knew it. And I didn’t know the ‘blooming’ sense of RATHE, just the ‘quick’ one (whence, of course, ‘rather’). Got URIAH from def, then reverse engineered; for those of us who know our Bible, and for me as well, it was an easy biff. I got ASSIDUITY all right, but I was looking for some sort of UK-only homophone (‘it’s said’). Duh.
    1. Yes, bulls (gamble prices will rise) and bears (gamble prices will fall)
  2. Pretty easy except for the hard bits. I struggled for ages with 27ac, having a similar experience to the blogger. Other unknowns such as AGAMI, RATHE and LINNET were much easier.

    All very clever though, thanks setter and blogger.

    BTW Pip, this site was generously providing an Ashes scoreline service last week. Any updates?

    1. Very amusing, unless you’re a pom. Oz won by 4 hundred and a few. England were back to normal. But you knew that!
      1. Heh. Just getting my gloating in now as I suspect there may still be some twists in this plot.
        1. Based on the Lord’s performance I have a terrible feeling we may have seen the twist already.

          Edited at 2015-07-22 11:35 am (UTC)

  3. I knew Ewe Lamb because one of my fellow bloggers on BD’s site refers to her daughters as this – apparently a person’s most cherished possession; originally with biblical allusion to 2 Samuel 12, ‘But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb’

    6:15 for me – assisted by the fact that the things I didn’t know ‘ AGAMI and RATHE were helpfully clued.

  4. Oh dear. So an EYE LAMB isn’t a thing, then? I was thinking, inasmuch as I was thinking at all, of the apple of one’s eye, and somewhere in my undercaffeinated mind it was but a short hop — nay, barely a lamb’s leap — from flora to fauna and on to the next clue.

    Rattled through in about 12 minutes. Clearly, an extra minute or two might have been well spent.

    1. There’s gotta be an acronym in there somewhere: “somewhere in my undercaffeinated mind it was but a short hop.”
      15:56 – very quick – with a minute or two at the end to work out EWE LAMB (vaguely known, but not from the bible) and BESMEARS.
      Rob
  5. Straightforward and 20 minutes of good fun. My late mother often referred to my sister as her “little ewe lamb”, true to the biblical reference. In 1ac, a person throwing a WOBBLY is by definition lacking stability, so the clue doesn’t really work as a double definition.
  6. Count me as another EYE LAMB. Like sotira I was thinking about apple of one’s eye and also giving your eye tooth for something. I was rushing towards the end as I had hopes of a sub-10 and would like to think that if I hadn’t done so I might have seen that EWE LAMB looks right. The truth is that I probably would still have put EYE LAMB!
  7. A bit surprised by problems with EWE LAMB, it has cropped up from time to time over the years. The other biblical references didn’t really click with me whilst solving but I’m sure Ulaca has a point.

    Found this a gentle stroll in the park with a number of chestnuts making life easy. Minor point: what is function of “demanded” in 12A?

  8. Rattled through this on the rattler in about 35 mins which is good for me, and answered my plea of yesterday for something more manageable for those of us that have been struggling.

    Thanks to Pip for the blog – I didn’t quite fully parse FINN and MUMBO JUMBO (it’s all about the boy!)

  9. 21:37, but I’m another EYE LAMB culprit. I failed to see 15d was an anagram, but biffed correctly. 18a, 15d and 14d held me up and were my last 3 in. I didn’t know AGAMI or RATHE, although I do recall the line ‘…and the mome raths outgrabe’. 11a my favourite – Boom boom indeed, Pip! Incidentally, 20d is also a river flowing into my home town where it meets the river Lark… which cropped up in the quickie on Monday.
  10. 29:35, so 2 seconds off my target. Here’s hoping the rest of the Ashes Tests will be as close!

    There are interestingly three references to the two books of Samuel in the puzzle (EWE LAMB, SLINGSHOT (David v Goliath), and URIAH the Hittite). The Biblical flavour, not to mention the vocab lesson, made me wonder if this was the Don in particularly generous mode.

  11. 13:03 here, delayed slightly at the end trying to parse 15D and its deceptive anagram fodder (duh). EWE LAMB went straight in, as did AGAMI (probably remembered as a type of bird from other crosswords, although I wouldn’t have been able to describe it).

  12. Lost track of solving time last night by nodding off more than once, not through boredom but sheer tiredness. Returned to it this morning and completed without problem other than needing to check wordplay carefully to get the unknown AGAMI and similarly to work out RATHE, though I did actually know that word.

    Today’s Quickie is rather special if you haven’t already read the blog and learned its secrets.

      1. The setter, Noel, has now added a comment to the Quickie blog and turns out there’s even more to today’s puzzle than any of us spotted. Amazing, and well worth reading!
  13. In The Small House at Allington Trollope uses the term to describe how Lily Dale’s mother feels when Lily is jilted by Adolphus Crosbie. Rather a Times Lit. Supp-ish puzzle (no problem with that). My only hold-up was trying for some sort of sushi in 11a. 10.15
    1. I originally tried Tsunami for 11a (something to do with tan+1 producing rolls)
      I am a well-travelled birdwatcher (hence my name) and was thrilled by Linnet but biffed Agami. Has anyone ever heard of it?
  14. Oh, what a week I’m having… I did indeed manage to submit “EYE LAMB”, by some kind of tortuous analogy with “apple of one’s eye”. 6:20 would’ve been a reasonable time I expect but instead this week shall go down in the annals of infamy (as in “they’ve all got it…”).
  15. 15:16. The speed of banging in the top half suggested a possible PB but it was not to be. Knew EWE LAMB and while I have never knowingly seen a LINNET, I knew it from the good old Eastender song, My Old Man said follow the van etc. Right, off to the Quickie.

    Edited at 2015-07-22 11:05 am (UTC)

  16. 13.26 but an error unlike any other so far (it’s not EYE LAMB, which I knew – I was the kid who knew all the answers in Scripture exams). Fat finger and squinty eye combined to produce the weird Hungarian composer who sounds like LISY, which is an arcane record.
    Knew LINNET – indeed My Old Man – and knew AGAMI but not what it was. Turkish commander – that’s BEY or AGA isn’t it? Busy road? M25 doesn’t fit, nor does B1393, or Peripherique, so it’s either A1 or M1. Generous enough from the setter.
  17. 40:34 for me. DNK AGAMI or RATHE, but they went in on wordplay. A steady solve from top left to bottom right.
  18. Thanks blogger. I parsed Finn as f for following, then in for current, then n for news. Or is nn short for news?

    Thanks.

    1. One New then another, NN? I can see though that IN can be current, as with ‘the in-thing’
      1. I parsed it the same way as anon, but I see now that it doesn’t work. ‘New’ can give N, but ‘news’ requires two of them.
  19. 12m, which I’m going to classify as not too bad on the basis of solving at 5.30am without caffeine assistance. I vaguely recognised RATHE, and I see that it came up a little over a year ago. I didn’t know AGAMI though, and had to solve URIAH from wordplay, not having the faintest idea who Bathsheba might or might not have been married to.
    I considered EYE-something or other but fortunately I remembered that the convention that the solver is always ‘you’ is firmly established. Whether it actually is or not is not relevant for these purposes.
  20. Pleased to see I’m not alone in not getting Ewe Lamb. Agami and Rathe from wordplay.
    Thanks Pip for explaining Uriah – got that from GK.
    Finn was a write in but it took me a moment to figure out the wordplay. Some of the world’s biggest cruise ships were built at the shipyard in Turku.
    I don’t often do the Quick Cryptic but I’ll give it a go tonight.
  21. P. G. Wodehouse frequently uses the term EWE LAMB. Bertie Wooster would undoubtedly know it, having won a prize for scriptural knowledge at school (his sole academic achievement).
  22. 12:37 with the blooming bird unknown. My first thought for the unfamiliar Uriah was Ustac.

    Like others I didn’t spot the anagram for assiduity. I was a bit worried about inanimate as the woman/nan link didn’t seem totally watertight so I feared there might be an unknown word like ivalimate or ijanimate relating to chemical or supernatural spirits.

  23. 9 mins. I was late to this one but the delay obviously did me no harm. A biffed ASSIDUITY was my LOI although I saw the anagram fodder post-solve, while AGAMI and URIAH went in from wordplay. I had no problem with the Nan/woman element of 17dn, the most famous one (for me at least) being Nan Britton who allegedly had an affair with US president Warren G Harding.
  24. Hello all. About 15 minutes to ramble through this. Like others, AGAMI and RETHE from wordplay only, as was URIAH which looked like a likely candidate. I don’t know how I remembered EWE LAMB, but it went in correctly. DARJEELING was pretty clever. Regards to all.
  25. 8:21 for me in a desperately slow clean sweep. I’d certainly have been faster solving it without the clean sweep attempt, but I’m not sure by how much.

    Like others I suspect this may have been the work of Don Manley; anyway I found it a pleasant, straightforward solve. I’ve known EWE LAMB from childhood, having been told of how someone reading the lesson in the church in darkest East Yorkshire where my great-grandfather was vicar had pronounced it EE WEE LAMB.

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