Times 26167 – For Mum

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
On her 88th birthday, my mother gets a mention at 27 across. Actually, I reckon she could probably get this at least half finished, it having about as much bite as a Moeen Ali loosener.

Sub-14 minutes for me – the kind of time I usually manage only on the Times Competition qualifying puzzles.

ACROSS

1. MUSTANG – MUST + A + N[ew] + G[razing].
5. TEAR GAS – TEARS around GA.
9. LEATHERHEAD – LEATHER + HEAD.
10. MOB – reverse hidden (sort of) in ‘aBOMinably’.
11. BELONG – be long, and ‘belong’.
12. SMOOTHIE – S + MOTH + IE around O[ld].
14. THE NOES HAVE IT – if anybody is bothered by the anagram* fodder, it is HEATHS VOTE IN E.
17. ACCOMMODATION – there’s a running joke in the Benedict Cumberbatch version of the franchise in which Mrs Hudson’s flirtatious Una Stubbsian incarnation delights in being called ‘housekeeper’ by the cokehead only to retort that she’s his ‘landlady’. My memory of the books is that she is his housekeeper, but who am I to get in the way of formulaic ‘comedy’.
21. POPINJAY – ‘dandy’; the idea here is that if you were of a persuasion to take your relationship with the blue splashed crow-like visitor to your bird table to a deeper level, you might ask him to ‘pop in, jay’. This might result in your being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but when you consider what the bloke who’s sentencing you probably gets up to in his spare time, I say live and let live.
23. UNTRUE – [h]UNT + RUE.
25. ERA – ER (Elizabeth II, who is one year older than my mum) + A.
26. STICKLEBACK – mm, okay, if you take the last letter of [antic]S and then imagine what you might do to make Tommy Smith, say, or Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, laugh, namely TICKLE [his] BACK, then you get the fish whose taxonomy ‘is thought to be in need of revision’. Mind you, if you tickled Tommy or Chopper, your nose could be in need of revision.
27. LANOLIN – L + OIL* in ANN.
28. NUTCASE – N.U.T. + CASE.

DOWNS

1. MALIBU – a place best known to me through Don Henley’s magnificently over the top protest song, ‘The Last Resort’; ALIB[i] in MU.
2. SCARLET – CARL in SET (‘lodge’ as in fix), referencing the Holmes’ story ‘A Study in Scarlet’.
3. ATHENAEUM – E in MANTUA HE* for the educational institution.
4. GURU – G + UR (‘of the Chaldees’) + U.
5. THERMOSTAT – MOST (‘to greatest degree’ [sic]) in THE (‘the’) + RAT (‘desert’). Moving swiftly along…
6. AUDIO – ‘sound’; DI in A + U + O.
7. GUMSHOE – ‘footwear’; MUG (‘sucker’) reversed followed by O (‘over’) in SHE (‘woman’). Speeding along even more swiftly…
8. SUBJECTS – double definition of no undue finesse.
13. COLORATION – COL + ORATION.
15. ALIGNMENT – a cryptic definition of no undue complexity playing on the double meaning of dress, which can refer to troops being brought into line.
16. HARP SEAL – PHRASE on A + L.
18. CAPTAIN – the skipper in one of the world’s most over-rated books; APT in CAIN.
19. NIRVANA – I (electrical current) + RV (‘Revised Version’) in NANA.
20. HECKLE – L in CHEEK*.
22. NASAL – ‘like a hooter (AKA nose)’; LA + SAN reversed.
24. SKIN – ‘organ’ – for so the humble skin can be counted; S[top] + KIN[d].

38 comments on “Times 26167 – For Mum”

  1. Happy returns to your mom, who I trust is named Ann, not Lanolin. I was so unbothered by the anagram fodder in 14ac that I flung in ‘The ayes have it’, then realized (a bit later) that ‘those opposed win’ and changed it to ‘The nays have it’, THEN realized that I’d need a Y.
  2. U’s Mum. LANOLIN is a very strange name though!

    Agreed, a nursery puzzle. Top slopes were fast and required little thought. The lower half of the run was a bit more of a problem … but not much. Didn’t time it, but the coffee was barely cold on a freezing morning here. So possibly a sub-10??

  3. Sub 10 minutes for me, which is a PB. I think 12 or so is the best I’ve ever done before. I actually thought it was faster before noticing I’d not filled in ATHANAEUM (I was doing it on paper) which added maybe 15 seconds more. Plenty of answers biffed without even bothering to read to the end of the clue from checkers and the first word or two.
  4. 22 minutes for me. I’m not averse to a very easy one from time to time as it presents an opportunity to encourage our Quickie friends to have a go at the main puzzle and maybe do so regularly in future.

    I didn’t know (or had forgotten) the military meaning at 15dn so was not confident about my answer until I checked that nothing else would fit.

    It occurred to me that the first three letters of 7dn might be taken to spell a ‘sucker’ in either direction so the reversal is not strictly necessary.

    Edited at 2015-08-03 04:36 am (UTC)

    1. 22/30 clues for me which, I’m ashamed to say, is a PB…but I’m pretty new to this. Definitely encouraged to do the main c/w more often…maybe only on Mondays to start with…
  5. …but apparently I entered ATHANAEUM. I’ll take the computer’s word for it.

    Not a PB for me, but I reckon it’s the easiest Times cryptic I’ve ever done. As Jack said, nothing wrong with that.

    Thanks setter and blogger. And Happy Birthday to dear old Ann!

  6. Just under 8 minutes, a PB for me, I can’t write any faster; I can’t imagine how people can do it in less time unless they write with both hands. Parsed NIRVANA and the 14a anagram afterwards. Mondays are like Mondays again!
    1. More congratulations are in order – a seriously fast time. London beckons in the autumn.
  7. 14:05 Nearly a PB for me too… all but done in less than 10 minutes, but I spelt ATHENAEUM wrong sp was looking for B.L.E. for 11a for nearly 5 minutes. Doh!
  8. 25mins or so, so def on the easy side. At 88 and managing half the cryptic… good on dear old Mum!
  9. A zippy 6 minutes. Just like Mondays used to be when I was a lad. With correspondingly little to add to the blog.
  10. Not only Ulaca’s mother’s birthday, also that of my first grandchild, born 5:29 this morning.
    A PB on this one (sub 10 minutes) and a PB on the Quickie (sub 5 minutes for the first time).
    What a day!
  11. After a quick start I thought a sub-10 might be in sight but BELONG, SMOOTHIE, ALIGNMENT and UNTRUE pushed me out to 14:13. The first two were subject to erroneous crossers – a misspelt ATHAENEUM and a biffed GUMBOOT.

    Happy returns to ulaca’s mum and congratulations to deezzaa. And congratulations to anyone who managed a PB!

  12. A straightforward start to the week – 5:49 – might have been a smidge quicker if I hadn’t paused at the American spelling of 13d and making sure I had the As and Es in the right places in 3d. Also not helped by solving at home (I’m on staycation) and unlike my co-workers, Mr CS hasn’t quite grasped the ‘don’t interrupt me, I’m timing myself on the Times’

    Congratulations to birthday people, old and very new.

  13. 6 and a half minutes, somewhere near the top of the second division by the looks of things, with a few sub-5-minute results proudly displayed in the Club table…

    I slowed myself down a whisker by having MILIEU in at 1dn for quite some time… what do you mean “I LIE” isn’t a solid legal defence? 😉

  14. 26. ‘Defending player’ is ‘back’. It’s not [his] back; the part being tickled isn’t relevant / correct.
  16. 12 mins. It would have been 10 but I am another who couldn’t spell ATHENAEUM correctly at the first attempt, and that made BELONG my LOI once I had corrected it. If I’d been able to do the puzzle at my normal time I’d like to think I’d have been a little faster because, as many of you have pointed out, it was a very straightforward puzzle.
  17. Very pleased with myself.
    My second ever finish.

    I don’t understand 22 down. NASAL
    What is SAN?

    1. Hi Anon.
      SAN is short for SANATORIUM. It’s a crossword staple, so you should consider it whenever you see the word ‘hospital’, even if H is more common.

      Edited at 2015-08-03 02:25 pm (UTC)

  18. 8:53, and that includes the time it took to find the power lead and reboot my computer after the battery died in the first minute. So pretty straightforward stuff, even for someone who knows next to nothing about Sherlock Holmes.
    Congratulations to deezzaa, ulaca’s mum and all the PBers.
  19. Count me as another PB although I can’t give an exact time as I started it in the Doctor’s waiting room at the SAN and got called in for my appointment after an amazingly short 3 or 4 minute wait. Good old NHS.

    Isn’t it nice to have an easy one for a change, especially after the trials and tribulations of yesterday’s Sunday cryptic, which took me an age to finish with a good few biffed to boot.

  20. A pleasing 17.30 for me and really nothing to add to the blog except good wishes to birthday boys and girls and PBers. I Enjoyed the blog!
  21. Under 15 minutes here, held up only by not knowing the STICKLEBACK and because GUMSHOE (LOI) is usually a detective over here. Regards and congrats for the various milestones. Not much else to say.
  22. How clever you all are. This took me a lot longer than that. This is the first Times crossword I’ve attempted for some years, so I was pretty pleased with myself for finishing it at all. Is the speed thing so important? I find the most enjoyment in being able to appreciate the neatness of the clues especially if they are also quite amusing ( like 21a for instance). I won’t be trying to improve solving time for fear the enjoyment factor will be diminished, in fact I never time myself…just enjoy!!
    1. They are all pretty pleased with themselves on this blog – as indeed they are on my usual patch (the quick cryptic).
      It’s a bit like golf – the better you are the less pleasure there is to be found in it. If you’re only getting 10 minutes or less entertainment out of it, it hardly seems worth the bother.
      1. Indeed. Much more pleasure to be derived from snarking anonymously at other people’s enjoyment. Apparently.
      2. I never used to post my times when it took me all day, and even then I often couldn’t finish, but I still commented and, frequently, asked questions. For me at least, it shows just how much one can ‘improve’ (i.e. get faster), a lot of which is thanks to the support and information I gained from this site.
    2. Not sure what you expect on a site named Times for The Times. That is what the site does.
    3. When I started doing these things seriously, I would go to the TfTT blog to check on ones I was unsure about (invariably after getting help on a few), and imagine my feelings when I found the blogger had not only done it in six and a half minutes, but had also omitted entirely the ones I couldn’t ‘get’. Because they were so obvious, of course. But then I thought I’d try to get better at doing these things.

      And it is more fun when you can do it in 20 minutes rather than 2 hours. Just as golf would be me fun for me if I could get rid of the slice and go round in 80 rather than 100.

  23. 6:58 in a clean sweep for me, held up for quite a while by POPINJAY, imagining that the answer might end in CAL – even though I suspected that wouldn’t really pass muster for “pay a brief visit” in a Times puzzle.

    A pleasant, straightforward start to the week.

  24. Is it August already? I seem to have missed a month or so. I hold the sommelier responsible.

    Still, I seem to have picked a fairly gentle Monday to resume crosswording, as even my rickety old brain got through this one in 24 minutes.

    Glad to see the stalwarts are still here, and many happy returns to our blogger’s mama.

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