Times 26,174

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
13:23, on a leaderboard where so far nobody among the other early birds is under ten minutes, which is normally the sign of a stiffish test ( breakfast time edit: the only people breaking that barrier are the ones who are likely to be competing at the business end of Finals Day in October, so “stiffish” might need to be upgraded to “actually quite tough”). For my part, a steady solve with a certain amount of biffing, though I had everything confidently reverse-engineered by the time I submitted. Overall, concise and enjoyable.

Across
1 BARKING MAD – BARKING (borough of East London, so far East, in fact, that it was in Essex for most of its history), (DAM)rev. If you want to suggest someone has really lost it, of course, you can describe them as “Dagenham”, which is a few stops beyond Barking.
6 STEW – (WETS)rev. The most famous “wets” are perhaps the political ones, i.e. the old-fashioned one-nation Tories who tempered the radicalism of early Thatcher cabinets, which she certainly thought was a bit feeble. Or the likes of Fotherington-Thomas, who is a wet and a weed chiz chiz.
8 CAUGHT ON – CAUGHT(=”heard”) O{ld} N{ame}. I was suitably deceived by the setter into looking for a homophone which never appeared.
9 NOUGAT – [(TAG ON) around U]all rev.
10 SHOT – H{ospital} in SOT(=a drunk); still and shot as in a photographic image.
11 FLY THE FLAG – FLY(=shrewd), TH{I}EF, LAG(the two crims) with 1 removed.
12 INSIDE JOB – IN(=elected), [J{ail} in (BODIES)*].
14 BIZET – (1 Z) in BET. Composer of Carmen.
17 SCOPE – S{econd}, COPE(=carry on).
19 NOSHERIES – (ON)rev + SHER{R}IES with half of the middle removed, where ON=about. While I’ve certainly talked about “having some nosh”, I’ve never knowingly gone to a noshery, but the construction was pretty obvious (eventually, anyway).
22 BLACK WIDOW – BLACK(=angry, as in a black mood) then [D{readed} in W{ith}, IOW(=Isle of Wight)]. I think I took a while to parse this because my instinctive sense of the traditional counties was formed before the reorganisation of 1974, so never seems to have entertained the Isle of Wight as an entity in its own right. Sorry, South Islanders.
23 EMMA – Jane Austen’s work reverse hidden in progrAMMEs.
24 INSIST – SIS{ter} within IN T{ime}.
25 ORATORIO – {w}OR{k}, [0 (a poor score, especially if you’re taking part in the Ashes) in A TRIO].
26 PLUG – double def.; I think Chicago gangsters might well have “plugged” each other back in the day, while giving your book a plug on a chat-show is a much more modern usage.
27 ELEVEN-PLUS – ELEVEN(=team), PLUS(=advantage). For the young, or non-UKian: in the days before comprehensive education, the Eleven Plus was the exam which decided (edit: still does in some parts of the country, see below) whether you went to a grammar school (academically rigorous, often prestigious) or a secondary modern (not so much). The debate over whether this selection process was a good or bad thing continues to this day.
 
Down
1 BUCKSKINS – BUCK(=money) SKINS(=bovver boys i.e. skinheads with a reputation for violent behaviour, a term I remember from my 70s youth – not that I actually was one, I should stress).
2 RAUCOUS – bReAkUp, CO., U.S..
3 NOTIFIED – F{olio} in (EDITION)*.
4 MONEY FOR OLD ROPE – (FOREMENDOPOORLY)*.
5 DINGHY – H{eroin} in DINGY(=run down).
6 SQUIFFIER – QUIFF inside (IS)rev., {troubl}E {fa}R
7 EMANATE – (E.T., A NAME)all rev. It’s always E.T., isn’t it?
13 IMPACTING – M.P. in [I(=notation for electrical current), ACTING].
15 TESTATORS – TEST(=check), A{nswer}, (SORT)*. “Willing” as in “leaving in one’s will”.
16 SHOWCASE – [C{ollege} in WAS] inside SHOE, which is the required sort of Oxford. Nice surface.
18 COLONEL – COLL{IE} minus the I.E.(=that is), with ONE(=a certain) inside.
20 IMMORAL – [M,M] in 1 ORAL.
21 SWATHE – S,W(=points of the compass) on A, THE(=articles, indefinite and definite).

45 comments on “Times 26,174”

  1. I took at least twice that time, with STEW/EMANATE last in. Was expecting a pangram so was looking for the missing X. Much biffing today given the many telegraphed defs.

    NOSHERIES was a surprise to me too. I’m reliably informed that the Yiddish word “noshing” means snacking. So you can nosh on the Shabbat even if you can’t prepare a meal as such. Perhaps this makes the def in the clue slightly off beam? No doubt, though, the meaning has migrated with frequent slang use.

    4dn reminded me of the dubious clue “Monet for old rope? (7)”.

  2. Did my share of biffing, too, e.g. 12ac & 25ac. And 22ac: My UK geography not being up to snuff, I had no idea that they’d moved IOW out of Hants, let alone that it had ever been in. (Hell, I can’t keep IOW and IOM distinct in mind.) And I knew Barking only because I once wrote a paper about a medieval life of Edward the Confessor written by a nun there; and people pooh-pooh the value of a liberal education.
  3. Quite a bit of biffing here too, with much reverse-engineering done by proxy via Tim’s blog. Particularly enjoyed SQUIFFIER and NOSHERIES. 31 minutes.

    Re the IOW not being in Hants any longer, when my sister moved to Weston-super-Mare, it was in Somerset; a little later it became Avon; I, refusing to call it anything other than Somerset on the envelopes (well, it’s the postcode that gets the things there), was pleased when the people who mess these things up decided to revert to Somerset, albeit with an additional ‘North’ – to save face, I suppose.

  4. No wonder. The word “wight” means “man”! Cf Tolkien’s “barrow wights”.
    1. Or “what can ail thee, wretched wight/Alone and palely loitering?” But it’s a relief to be able to blame etymology rather than Gregg’s Binary Amnesia.
      1. I wasn’t familiar with Leigh Hunt’s alteration, only the original ‘knight-at-arms’.
  5. 43 minutes with the last 3 spent on NOSHERIES which I eventually dragged up from memory and reverse-engineered the wordplay. In its singular form it has come up at least twice before in puzzles 24554 (3/6/10) and 24969 (1/10/11).

    Count me as another who never thinks if IOW as a county though on refection I’m pretty sure that has come up here before too.

    I know BUCKSKINS with reference to clothing in cowboy films and I realised it’s leather of sorts but that it can also refer to shoes was news to me.

    1. It didn’t register with me either, but I definitely do remember (white) bucks.
    2. Glad to see that on neither occasion did I comment “Never seen this word before”, so I have plausible deniability on this one, at least.
      1. I didn’t revisit the blogs to see if Id said anything, but anyway my memory for certain things is undeniably fading so I’m not embarrassed when faced with my own denials any more. What I find more concerning is that those appearances of NOSHERY were 5-6 years ago yet I’d have placed them in 2014 at the latest.
        1. I recently read an article which explained from a neurological/psychological POV why time appears to run faster as you get older. Appropriately enough, now I think about it, by “recently”, I may in fact mean “five years ago”…

  6. Just under 40mins, with many of those spent on the last few in the SW. Didn’t see the still=photo, so thanks for that (I didn’t think it worked very as still=hit with bullet). Otherwise, only biffed ORATORIO. Couldn’t think of a word ORA- for ‘work’.
    PS Lots of areas still use 11+ exams. We do in Lincs
  7. A very enjoyable puzzle that made me work to establish correct parsings. I like 16D as a clue, not the hardest but an excellent surface as Tim says.

    Two trips down memory lane. PLUG meaning to shoot is straight out of Edward G and Jimmy C gangster films along with “Gs” for “thousands (of dollars)”

    Passing the ELEVEN-PLUS was a life defining moment for me because it opened the door to higher education and thus to the type of job no member of my family had ever before dreamed of

    1. Meant to say, I thought of plant plugs for the ‘shoot’ bit of 26ac. Gardening more my thing than gangster movies.
    3. Yeh, I’m old enough to have done it too.
      So I went to Grammar School where I was advised (as a pupil in the lowest form) to become a laboratory assistant.
      So not a great pathway to success for everyone at the time.
      But things can pick up after that:
      http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/mchoul/

      Edited at 2015-08-11 08:34 am (UTC)

      1. My school, Battersea Grammar, didn’t give career advice at any age. It concentrated upon enabling the youngster to discover his own talents and to begin to develop them along with self reliance and confidence in one’s own ability.

        As such it built an excellent platform for adult life except it largely forgot to tell us that half the world is made up of women!

        1. I found the same, jimbo. At Colchester RGS we got an excellent education but no career or even subject guidance in those days. As a result I took quite the wrong road and spent 30 years before I found what I should have done in the first place.
    4. The 11+ got five of us from one year into the (then) most prestigious school in the County, St Albans (founded 948, honest). The promoting school was a council estate, working class school (“Margaret Wix”), and there were only 25 places available on Direct Grant. What teachers we must have had!
  8. 25.02. Last in nosheries, one of those words from a parallel language of banalese, like washeteria. Not sure about the hyphen in 1.ac.
  9. I hadn’t noticed that hyphen till now. I’m fairly sure you’re right to be dubious, and it must have been meant to be a comma.
  10. Early solve today and all done in 35m. It was the SW thy held me up until I cracked SCOPE and the rest followed steadily. No outstanding clues today. Thanks for the blog.
  11. 14:12 … quite a bit of concentration needed throughout. Good daily test type of puzzle.

    Last in .. PLUG, which makes me, like Jimbo, think of Edward G packing heat

  12. 11 mins so I must have been on the setter’s wavelength, especially as my only biff was ORATORIO where I was making the same parsing error as Janie. I thought the “endless work” might have been (CH)ORA(LE). EMANATE was my LOI after the SHOT/RAUCOUS crossers. The “skins” element of BUCKSKINS brought back memories from the early 70s, mainly of the “trying to avoid gangs of them” sort.
  13. 37:38. I found this on the hard side with plenty of answers not parsed. I struggled with SW corner the most – I never knew IOW was a county and messed up by putting ASKING in for 24a.. and knew immediately it was wrong. I didn’t know buckskins were shoes as well as jackets and nosheries took a while to come. An enjoyable challenge. Thansk for explaining the 4 I didn’t understand…. yes I was looking for a homophone at 8a too.
    1. Suddenly I don’t feel so disheartened with my 16.50, with ORATORIO the only one buffed
  14. 10:24 for everything except NOSHERIES and I decided to come here to find out what that was as we are off out in a minute.
  15. Ethical dilemma. If I resort to aids I report it as a DNF. Today I used a crossword solver for 19ac, nothing came up, but it led to a moment of clarity in which I spotted NOSHERIES.

    So I’m claiming an all-correct. As if anyone cares.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. There are plenty of occasions when I have, in exasperation, entered the available letters into Electric Chambers, but aborted the search because the answer becomes obvious – especially the case with down clues. I think it has to do with not using pencil and paper, and being able at a moment’s notice to scribble out the known (or mixed) letters. Naturally, if you don’t press enter, it’s legitimately all your own work.
  16. 17.30, 3 of which would leave me with 7 1/2 minutes spare on finals day. I didn’t get all of BLACK WIDOW or ORATORIO (pity, both inventive clues). I thought NOSHERY was a bit of Zabadak and Associates private language, not sure if I’m pleased to find is isn’t.
    Loved “Dagenham”, especially being a zone further out even than that.
  17. Reminds me of the ferrets, the more than useless tail-ender batsmen who go in after the rabbits. No current reference intended (particularly).
  18. 15:14.
    You know that phenomenon whereby if you write text with all the letters other than the first and last of each word scrambled, you can still read it? My brain did something similar today with my entry of BALCK WIDOW. I spent at least some of the time before spotting the error trying to figure out what on earth was going on with NOSHERIES.
    I had no idea whether the Isle of Wight is/isn’t/was/wasn’t a county, but with ‘venemous creature’ and a few checkers it didn’t really matter.
    Thanks for explaining 25ac, where I was making the same parsing error as Janie and only put it in once I had all the checkers.
    1. My problem with 22ac was that with ‘venomous creature’ and only the ‘D’ checker in place to account for ‘origin of dreaded’ the answer just had to be (something) ADDER.

      Edited at 2015-08-11 04:03 pm (UTC)

      1. Me too – in fact I actually put ADDER in the grid at first. But I couldn’t see any justification for it, so I took it out again and then got the answer from the W in SHOWCASE.
  19. 34 minutes with 2 interruptions for people on the phone, but in the end put in LOTHARIOS instead of NOSHERIES – the former not parsed but I was, like CS, on the way out of the door again. If I had known noshery was a word, I’d have thought it too infra dig for the TC.
    After my 2 weeks rain and fog blighted holiday in the IOW, I certainly knew it was now a County; I was born in Bournemouth which was then in Hampshire like the IOW but it’s now in Jimbo land.
    1. Yes, some years ago the connerbation from Christchurch to Poole was moved into Dorset to boost its tax revenue at the expense of Hants (Dorset had a small population compared to its land area)

      As soon as they could Bournemouth and Poole converted to Borough Councils putting Dorset back in the mire and leaving Christchurch citizens moaning (something they still do)

      Today economic pressure from Central Govt is forcing them all to work together and one can forsee some sort of amalgamation eventually

    1. From SOED:

      out to lunch N. Amer. slang insane; stupid, unaware; disorganized, incompetent; socially unacceptable

  22. 18:40 on a puzzle that seemed to have a plethora of pre-biffs, ie ones where you hardly had to read the clue before knowing the answer from the crossers.. Anyway, thanks to setter and blogger.
  23. 11:08 for me – with an alarming amount of biffing as I was feeling tired and just couldn’t seem to get my addled brain to cope with anything other than the simplest parsing. Worst was 25ac where I managed to convince myself that the “endless work with small score” was going to be ORI and that the small group setting must therefore be ORATO, a baffling misconception which was only resolved when I came to read your blog (for which many thanks).

    Like joekobi, I was unsure about the hyphen in the enumeration of 1ac, but I expect you’re right that it’s a simple typo.

    I’d probably have enjoyed this one more if I hadn’t been feeling so darned tired.

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