Times 26173 – A Puzzle of Two Halves

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I began this as if I were an Australian batsman playing Test cricket in Nottingham but ended as if I were Slaven Bilić protecting a 2-0 lead against a hapless group of overpaid superstars in North London. And I got one wrong, as well as throwing my Classical education out of the window. Like Michael Clarke, perhaps it is time to call it a day while I’m behind. 48 minutes…

ACROSS

1. REMARK – double definition (with ‘remark’ = ‘notice’ as in ‘Mourinho’s comments were not worthy of remark’).
4. BULLFROG – BULL (‘bullseye’) + R in FOG. Not hard, but one of my last in.
10. BARISTA – SIR (‘teacher’) in A TAB, all reversed. Ten years ago I’d never heard of this fancy word for a person who works at Starbucks. Not sure why it’s Italian, as all the ones I meet at Heathrow are Polish or Slovakian with excellent English and degrees in computer science.
11. COMPARE – COME around PAR. I actually wanted this to be ‘Campari’, which is a bit sad, but then I hadn’t got 8 down yet. Honest.
12. LEAN – [g[LEAN (‘glean’ as in pick up the bits in a field for free, and ‘list’ as in what Titanic did briefly).
13. MENNONITES – MEN (‘people’) + an anagram* of TENSION. The Mennonites are sort of Amish-lite, since they use electricity, cars and smartphones. I’ve never seen one of either sect that looks as good as Kelly McGillis in Witness, though.
15. HUSBANDRY – ‘farm work’; HUS[h] + BAN (‘put a stop to’) + DRY (‘boring’). Clever.
16. TABLE – [s]TABLE.
18. VIRTU – ‘love of art’; VIRTU[al], where the gangster is our friend Sig. Capone. Virtu has three meanings (none of which I knew): i) love of or expertise in the fine arts; ii) objets d’art collectively and iii) the good qualities inherent in a person or thing.
19. GEOLOGIST – GOOGLES IT*.
21. WIDE-BODIED – WIDE (an illegal delivery in cricket which counts as one extra run or more depending on whether the wicketkeeper is eight feet tall) + BOD (‘chap’) + IE + [squeeze]D. I wanted this to be or include many things, including Douglas BADER at one point. It was that kind of solve…
23. WHIG – first letters of the last four words.
26. RIVULET – ‘burn’; I + V [‘vide’ = ‘see’; NB not ‘note’-:)] in RULE + [wi]T[ch]. Wins the award for cunningest clue of the day.
27. GRANITE – ‘rock-hard’ (was I the only one who giggled at the definition?); GRANIT[a] + [knif]E.
28. SENNIGHT – old word for ‘week’, or, ‘once, a week’; I put ‘sunlight’ because I was under enormous pressure and thinking of you lot waiting for your blog. Not really – I spent ages on it and still got it wrong, or didn’t ‘execute’, as every sportsperson is taught to say at Handling the Media class.
29. DRAGON – ‘source of fire’; DRAG ON (‘inhale smoke’ – or not, if you’re the next POTUS’s husband). Nice stuff, setter.

DOWNS

1. REBEL – ‘dissident’; hidden. As usual, this held me up for an embarrassing amount of time.
2. MERGANSER – N + GRASMERE*; a write-in for twitchers.
3. RUSH – double definition; Moses was found among these, and the next POTUS’s husband sadly was never to experience one of these.
5. UNCANNY – ‘weird’; if you are not so smart (and hasn’t Ricky Ponting been a revelation as a TV pundit?), you might be described as un-canny. Cunning, indeed.
6. LAMINATION – ‘protective cover’; take EXAMINATION (‘test’) and replace the EX (‘without’, as in ‘ex VAT’) with [wal]L. Nice one.
7. ROAST – ‘heavily criticise’; R[otary] + OAST.
8. GREASIEST – ‘most fat’ (as in ‘the chips were the greasiest I’ve ever tasted’); take the last letters (‘backs’) off GREA[t] and SIEST[a]. In the running for Cunningest Clue of the Day.
9. FAG END – ‘the last part’; F (‘following’) + AGEND[a]. Top stuff.
14. CASUS BELLI – ‘an act or event that provokes or is used to justify war’; not ‘causa belli’, as I wanted it to be.
15. HAVE WORDS – ‘quarrel’; H + O + DWARVES* (the anagram indicator is ‘can resolve’). Top notch again.
17. BLIGHTING – ‘spoiling’; B[lackpool] + LIGHTING.
19. GO DUTCH – ‘share’; GO + DUTCH (short for ‘Duchess’ and a slang term for wife).
20. ON EDGE – a not particularly challenging tongue in cheek clue.
22. DEVON – final letter of [booke]D + half of NOVE[mber] reversed (‘fortnight or so, as suggested, over’) gives us an extended definition of sorts, which would be difficult for people who’ve never heard of the place (English county) or didn’t know it was a holiday destination.
24. GREEN – another tongue in cheek clue, relying on the solver’s knowledge that a village typically has a green and that in golf one aims for the green, which has a hole in it.
25. FAIR – ‘pretty’; FAIR[y].

42 comments on “Times 26173 – A Puzzle of Two Halves”

  1. As expected, a good long gloat from our much-esteemed blogger. Just hope our women can get a point back tomorrow in the other Ashes.

    Now to the puzzle…. A fair work out I felt, but nothing too difficult. Not quite the game of two innings that Ulaca suggests, though the top right was a bit harder, with LAMINATION last in. Fooled by “without” = EX even if it’s been used before. (One day I shall make a list of all things that subvert the rule of The Who: Won’t Get Fooled Again.)

  2. I found this very hard, ending just as an hour slipped away with two unknowns worked out from wordplay, MENNONITES and VIRTU. I’m inclined to describe 22dn as outrageous but I suppose it falls into the ‘quirky’ and ‘just for fun’ category as recently described here by one of the ST setters, and I’m a boring old whatsit for not appreciating it. I wish I could remember CASUS BELLI once and for all instead of having to think it out every time it appears.

    Edited at 2015-08-10 04:06 am (UTC)

  3. 22d my LOI; I would be feeling more like Jack if the checkers hadn’t narrowed the possibilities down so. I was thinking, for some reason, of 21ac as being X- …ER (seater?); then got BODIED, then couldn’t think of anything. On the other hand SENNIGHT and VIRTU weren’t problems.
  4. Won’t complain about CASUS BELLI, I’ll just store it in the memory banks for next time. I prefer obscure terms to be solvable via the wordplay, but then I might be the only one for whom this term is obscure.

    Nice puzzle apart from that, thanks setter and blogger.

    Speaking of the blogger, doesn’t he realise it’s the middle of winter and we’re all watching rugby?

    2. I have to say I enjoyed watching the Wallabies beating the Blacks, even if I’m not convinced they can avoid defeat in Auckland.

      I’ve heard a rumour that the Rugby Championship is reverting to a Tri-Nations format next season. A bit tough on South Africa, but there you go.

    3. “I might be the only one for whom this term is obscure.”

      No you’re not, the more intelligent didn’t bother with obscure, obsolete, foreign languages!

  5. 21 minutes on a sun-soaked balcony, making the screen hard to see. How we suffer. Last pair resisting bravely (since the ones at the top were, Broadly, dismissed easily (can your correspondent be forgiven if he Stokes the fire?) were SENNIGHT and DEVON (9 for 57, though that was SA). I initially essayed STRAIGHT and therefore DOVER, but didn’t like either, and was delighted to see they were much better than that.
    GREASIEST went in as one of those nearly, but not quite parsed clues: my way (bi)G (after)R EASIEST (nap, sort of) was clearly unsatisfactory, and the real way (many thanks) a much better clue.

    Edited at 2015-08-10 06:01 am (UTC)

    1. 21 minutes is rather over par for you. On Ballance, can you identify the Root of the problem. Cook not performing as she ought to? Buttler too supercilious?

      1. Indeed. I thought I Wood Finnish quicker, but clearly the setter was in no mood to Anderson easy one, and Bells that should have rung didn’t.  I just didn’t execute, as the current jargon has it

        1. Sad to hear that ‘execution’ has metastasized across the pond from American football. A few years ago, I forget which team had managed to lose every game of the season to date, and the coach was asked in the post-game press conference what he thought of his team’s execution. He said,”I’m all in favor of it.”
          1. A fine word, and one whose relation ‘metastasis’ caused a comment on I think Fifteensquared the other day, with someone complaining of its non-clinical use, apparently unaware of its use in rhetoric.
  6. 11.24 plus 80 seconds paused to cater to the demands of a just-woken up 5 year old for cornflakes and Weetabix in the same bowl. I don’t know why we bother to give them a choice of cereals at all really, just mix everything up in a big trough and let them have at it!
  7. Around 30 minutes but I eschewed the leader board after checking SENNIGHT. Now I see it, I think it might have popped up before, but it looked awfully unlikely at the time. All round, quite a struggle here. LAMINATION was biffed. I was insufficiently caffeinated to work that one out.

    Talking of which, thanks for the entertaining blog, ulaca. Your barista experience matches mine. I’ve got to know a Polish biochemist who works in a Costa near Piccadilly.

  8. I got stuck trying to remember whether it was BELLI or BELLO until the mantra came back to me: “bellum, bellum, bellum, belli, bello, bello…”. Then I had to divine whether it was genitive, dative or ablative. Fortunately I guessed right
    The other problem I had was in my conviction that the contraction was se’enight, not se’nnight.
    Well at least we had the obligatory cricket and golf references.
  9. Nove = a fortnight! Sennight (sevennight) no problem.

    Febr,Ju,Aug and Dece we’ll have to look out for those too!

    9d might have been TAG END last parT AG END a (following)).

    Not impressed.

    Horryd Shanghai

  10. SENNIGHT was my FYI, being a word that I used to use with those US colleagues (a few) who knew what a fortnight was. Congratulations to those Down Under on the Rugby.
  11. (in reply to horryd Shanghai above – didn’t see how to insert this in appropriate place)
    Yes, that’s what I bunged in, without thinking that ‘last part’ was doing double duty – so couldn’t see why I had one error till I came here.

    Edited at 2015-08-10 09:17 am (UTC)

  12. 42:49. Held up by SW corner, not knowing VIRTU was a word, taking ages to remember CASUS BELLI and struggling to understand DEVON and RIVULET. I should remember ‘see’ can be V by now.
  13. A bit of a struggle done in three stages between long phone calls. Held up in the SW by putting seenight at 28ac but once corrected DEVON and RIVULET followed quickly, and they’re my joint COD. The former is quirky maybe but isn’t the whole thing ‘just for fun’? Good to see Arsenal get their one loss of the season out of the way.
  14. 15 minutes and good to get back into the usual routine after a week on a cruise ship with totally inadequate wifi. I’m not usually given to criticising clues but SENNIGHT and CASUS BELLI were barely cryptic and seemed to be escapees from a general knowledge puzzle (though I smiled at ‘once a fortnight’). Not a time to gloat – I did all mine over a couple of days with a Kiwi I met Thursday lunchtime – but great news about the rugby, even if I now have to watch the recording knowing the result. Just goes to show how irrational sporting allegiances can be.
  15. About 45mins, all correct, but tbh CASUS BELLI was chucked in at the end with crossed fingers.

    LEAN unparsed. Thanks for that, was assuming it was a dodgy homophone (‘to pick up’)

  16. Sadly Arsenal had one of their ‘didn’t turn up’ days. Hopefully in a sennight or so and for the next 37 games they’ll be on the ball.

    Found this a pleasure for 15 minutes until ground to a halt in the SW, with 22d, 26a and 28a to do. Had to resort to a solver to see RIVULET and then put in the other 2 without fully understanding why, so a DNF I guess. Had never heard of a SENNIGHT.

    Bought my son-in-law a stand ticket for the Oval test on the Sunday, so I hope Clarke’s crew don’t disintegrate again (but still get walloped in 4 days). Nice blogging U, you’re mentally Lyth, and I find nothing there to Moeen about…

    Edited at 2015-08-10 10:49 am (UTC)

  17. 18 mins. I finished back in the NE with LAMINATION after MENNONITES, but I agree that the SW was tricky. The RIVULET/DEVON crossers were devious but I managed to parse them, and it was fortunate that I had the GK to be able to solve the SENNIGHT/CASUS BELLI crossers because, as malcj has already pointed out, they were barely cryptic. I confess to having biffed LEAN, and while I could be wrong about this I thought it had the feel of one of Roger Squires’ puzzles.
  18. 14:22, with a few minutes at the end staring blankly at the DEVON/RIVULET crossing.
    CASUS BELLI isn’t horribly obscure, but it also isn’t English, so it should be solvable from wordplay IMO. I’m not too keen on the clue for SENNIGHT for similar reasons.
    But otherwise I enjoyed this a lot.
    Slight technical error in your blog, ulaca: a BARISTA makes coffee. I’m not sure what I’d call the stuff Starbucks sell but it certainly isn’t coffee.
  19. I’ve braved the hotel wi-fi today to see if others had the same reservations as me about CASUS BELLI and SENNIGHT. My crossword GK is obviously improving as I had SENNIGHT and came close with CASUE BULLI but I’d still prefer to have seen a cryptic way into these two clues. Oh well, I’ll console myself with a beer in the sun.
  20. Well I had a decent time at 17.24 but I had “tag end” with a rather cursory parsing (as per Horryd Shanghai supra), probably because FAG isn’t a very polite word in NYC. No trouble with SENNIGHT, thanks to Georgette as usual.
  21. I just cannot see the OVEN explanation. Please can someone elucidate. Thanks to all you regular bloggers which I read daily and enjoy.
    Barry J
    1. An oast is an oven for drying hops and oasthouses are /were a common sight in Kent. p.s. 22n D + EVON ( nove–ember) I think I’ve got the wrong end of your stick!

      Edited at 2015-08-10 02:49 pm (UTC)

  22. DNF after 40m with blanks at LAMINATION (didn’t get near it) and RIVULET (should have got it) + TAGEND which I thought worked fine – the last part = T then following task list not the last = AGEND and the whole = part. Given the looseness of eg DEVON it made sense to me! Enjoyable nonetheless but the blog was even better!
  24. A long solve. I had to put it aside and return later for DRAGON, SENNIGHT, RIVULET and DEVON. I didn’t know that meaning of RIVULET (or VIRTU, for that matter) and DEVON was pretty devious. Regards.
  25. A very enjoyable puzzle. A little tougher than the usual fare for Monday I thought.
  26. A sluggish 13:37 for me: my current run of poor form seems never-ending. An interesting and enjoyable puzzle though.
  27. Tricky for a Monday. I didn’t know the layout of the blog was changing. Thanks to setter and blogger.
    1. I have one layout on the PC at work (via Google Chrome) and another on the iPad at home.

      Edited at 2015-08-11 01:11 am (UTC)

  28. I think the def for ‘drag on’ is ‘inhale smoke from’ (i.e. including ‘from’). To drag on a cigarette is to inhale smoke from it.

    ‘Fortnight or so, as suggested’ for NOVE is weaker than weak. What’s ‘suggested’ about it anyway? What’s wrong with ‘half a month’?

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