Times 26204

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I started quite well  but hit some snags along the way and needed to jump around the grid quite a lot to try and maintain momentum. There were a couple of unknowns that added to my difficulties and I biffed a wrong answer which I didn’t spot until I came to write the blog after the main event. My solving time was in the region of 50 minutes.

As usual deletions are in {curly brackets} and indicators, where noted, are in [square ones]

Across
1 ORIEL – OR (men), {f}IEL{d}. Now recognised as the oldest royal foundation at Oxford.
4 DISHONEST – DISH (recipe), ONE’S (one has), {righ}T
9 PALANQUIN – PAL (china), A, N (new), QUIN (one born with four others). Not a word I knew. I gather it’s a sort of Asian version of the sedan chair. The definition is “litter” which is another variation on the labour-intensive mode of transport.
10 EXPEL – EX (former), PEL{t} (fur coat)
11 ORCHESTRATION – Anagram [arrangement] of AIRS HORN OCTET
14 RAIN – RA{sput}IN [shot in the heart]. I’m afraid I biffed “ruin” here and if I hadn’t been on blogging duty I may not have gone back and spotted my error. I’m not entirely convinced that “fall” on its own can stand for “rain”, either as a noun or as a verb, but that’s probably being a bit too picky. On edit: Dereklam suggests a figurative usage in his comment below which I think fits the bill.
15 MERCANTILE – ER (Queen)) + CAN’T (is unable) inside MILE (fair number of chains). This could count as today’s cricket reference as a chain (22 yards) is the distance between wickets on a cricket pitch. 10 chains = 1 furlong and 8 furlongs = 1 mile, so 80 is our “fair number”. Considering all the time I spent learning this stuff in my childhood, it’s good to put it to some use as the opportunity doesn’t occur very often these days.
18 UNFOCUSSED – UNFUSSED (very relaxed) encloses OC (officer in command)
19 DUNE – DUE (expected) encloses N (new). I’ve never heard of this science fiction work or its spin-offs.
21 ADVERTISEMENT – MEN (soldiers) inside anagram [novel] of TRAVESTIED
24 ORGAN – Two overlapping definitions
25 GRAVEYARD – GRAVE (solemn), DRAY (cart) reversed
27 FORCEMEAT – Anagram [cooked up] of METRO CAFÉ
28 ENTRY – {s}ENTRY (lookout)

Down
1 OPPROBRIUM – OPPO (friend) encloses R (run) then I (one) inside BRUM (Birmingham)
2 ILL – {w}ILL [strike the West]
3 LINNET – L (left), IN (inside), NET (snare)
4 DAUNTLESS – D{itching}, A{larm} then T (time) inside UNLESS (if not)
5 SANTA – S (small), ANT (insect), A
6 OBEDIENT – O (over) then DIE (what may be cast) inside BENT (crooked)
7 EXPENDITURE – EXP (exponential) then IT inside ENDURE (tolerate). I didn’t know the abbreviation.
8 TALE – {s}TALE (no longer new)
12 CLIFFHANGER – CLANGER (error) encloses I (one) + FF (fortissimo) + {clas}H
13 DEJECTEDLY – D (daughter), EJECTED (thrown out), L{and lad}Y [and the boy’s thrown out]. Definition: sadly
16 CREPITANT – Anagram [minced bits of] TRIPE CANT. This word turned up in October 2012 and I said I didn’t know it then, and it was still unfamiliar today.
17 SCAVENGE – Anagram [straying] of VEGAN inside S{e}C{r}E}t
20 REVERE – REVER{I}E (dream). Paul of the celebrated ride during the American revolution.
22 ROGUE – {d}ROGUE (small parachute). Another word I said I didn’t know – this time in 2009. Sotira mentioned it here only last week in a quotation with reference to “drift sail”, but it still didn’t leap out at me.
23 GOLF – FLOG (hawk – meaning “sell”) reversed. I’m not sure whether FLOG as slang for “sell” is known outside the UK.
26 ART – cr{A}t expe{R}tise mas{T}ery

54 comments on “Times 26204”

  1. I too biffed ‘ruin’, while wondering about ‘shot in the heart’, and once again telling myself to go back and check, and once again not listening to myself. I knew PALANQUIN, didn’t know ‘quin’–they’re quints where I come from. ‘Dune’ has, among its many other problems, what have to be the worst attempts at verse (song lyrics, I think they were) of any novel in the English language.
  2. Sanskrit palyanka – a couch (not rooted in Chinese) – Portuguese

    palanquim – rose to popularity 1850 during the Great Exhibition, London.

    COD Opprobrium

    45 minutes

    horryd Shanghai

  3. Pretty similar experience to that described by Jack, with the same unknowns. However, I also did not know of Paul Revere, albeit (fortunately for me) the answer was pretty clear from the wordplay and three Es as crosscheckers!

    Thought 23dn was cunning, although obvious once the crosscheckers were available – which was not until the end, as it took me an age to see FORCEMEAT despite the well signalled anagram.

    Nice mid week puzzle – thanks to setter and to Jack.

  4. Quite tricky in places and I enjoyed the vocab but nothing unknown here.

    I went to see the film of DUNE many years ago and only remember being bored stiff – I don’t think I’ll bother to read the book.

    No problem with RAIN = fall (in large quantities) eg “bombs rained on London”

    Dereklam

  5. …far too much of which was spent on the DISHONEST / OBEDIENT crosser.

    DNK FORCEMEAT or CREPITANT, only half knew ORIEL and PALANQUIN, but still felt that this one was almost as easy as yesterday’s.

    Agree with our blogger about the time spent learning about chains, etc. By the end of primary school I was an expert on rods, poles and perches, none of which I have ever encountered in real life.

    Thanks setter and Jack.

    1. 16:34. I noticed that every answer was a single word – and there are lots of long words in this grid. Luckily I knew all the obscure vocabulary. I too liked the reference to old measures. I remember from my time in the gas industry two that I thought were quite quaint – concentration in ‘grains pre hundred cubic feet’ and flow rate in ‘acre feet per year’.
      1. Sure, with rods, poles, perches, gills, troy ounces, grains etc. This would be the 50s in my case.

        Edited at 2015-09-15 05:18 pm (UTC)

      2. I once had to learn bushels, pecks, hugs around necks, barrels and heaps, but I’m not sure you’re referring to the same thing.
  6. All finished and understood in 25mins, until I realised that I’d not filled in 20dn. Had to used aids (Mr B) who immediately came up with REVERE as the US hero (unknown to me). But I could understand where it came from…
  7. Well, that brought me back down to earth. I was never on the wavelength at all and took 28 minutes, made more disappointing by discovering I had typed ‘iil’ at 2d.

    1d and the two 4s were among my last in, which was definitely not the way to solve this puzzle. CREPITANT and FORCEMEAT unknowns.

    Looking at this one again, is this the sort of puzzle where not noticing surfaces is an advantage? I wasted a lot of time wondering what 4d and 7d ‘meant’. I’m still not sure.

    Edited at 2015-09-15 07:40 am (UTC)

  8. Excellent puzzle. As Sotira says, a puzzle where it pays to ignore surface readings – one of my stronger attributes – and work from strong wordplay.

    Loved the chains – those old measurements had such wonderful names even if they were a mathematical nightmare.

    1. As I was writing that, I thought “I bet Jimbo likes this one”!

      In light of your comment, and keriothe’s below, I maybe put it the wrong way round: it’s probably more accurate to say that sometimes being fussy about surface readings is unhelpful. My brain couldn’t process 4d at all, kept getting hung up in a “does not compute” loop. In the end I had to guess it once all the checkers were in place then reverse engineer it.

      1. The fact that you guessed using “determined” as a definition means you had started to create a hypothesis for the clue construction. So you weren’t looking to remove “a” from a synonym of “determined”

        Try listing the cryptic in a vertical column so that you split up the component parts and add some trial synonyms:

        ditching = ?
        alarm = ?
        at the outset = leading letters = DA?
        if not = UNLESS?
        keeping = containing?
        time = T

        The answer emerges from the mists!

        1. Yeah, like I’m going to do that! You remind me of my more dedicated maths teachers, Jim. But don’t worry, I wore them down in the end!
      2. I had a similar experience with 4dn: I thought of DAUNTLESS quite quickly but struggled a bit with the reverse-engineering, failing on my first attempt in fact. I also thought that ‘not keeping time’ might be the definition so wasted a bit of time in that little cul de sac. The surface reading never came into it!
  9. Struggled today and didn’t enjoy this much perhaps because it was a DNF as I had biffed DOUBTLESS at 4d which seemed at the time ok for determined, the rest of the clue being impenetrable. I had completed the grid otherwise in about 55m. I was dubious about ROGUE as a ‘nasty piece of work’ but now I’ve checked, if applied to elephants, it seems to make a sort of sense. Also I think of OPPO as a counterpart or colleague and not necessarily a ‘friend’. Thanks for blog, Jack.

    Edited at 2015-09-15 08:26 am (UTC)

  10. Bit of a change from yesterday, coming in at 45:47. DISHONEST and DAUNTLESS took a good 10 minutes of that to finish, with me erring too much towards an unparsed COUNTLESS until the penny finally dropped.

    As sotira and jimbo mention ignoring surfaces was a help here, but is not a strong point of mine, hence the time.

  11. 30 minutes and held up by putting COUNTLESS in 4d which meant that 4a appeared to be a rare spelling of a bean stew.COD to 13d
  12. 11m. I found this straightforward, but I was slowed down by the unknowns (PALANQUIN, progue) and things I did vaguely know, largely from crosswords, but took a while to come to mind and/or needed constructing from wordplay: chain (I was never taught any of this stuff!), DUNE, oppo, CREPITANT, REVERE.
    I generally don’t even notice surfaces at all, and that was certainly the case today. I can’t say if it was an advantage but I don’t think it ever does any harm where solving efficiency is concerned. Enjoyment may be another matter of course.

    Edited at 2015-09-15 08:26 am (UTC)

  13. My 19.43 felt a bit slow (probably because it was) as I dawdled over DISHONEST and DEJECTEDLY – the latter because I was captivated by convention. Trying to lose a daughter from “landlady” and essaying an anagram of “the boys out” just two of the ways in which I gave way to bamboozlement.
    Paul REVERE (as we have discussed in these pages before, I think) is an excellent example of myth riding roughshod over facts: the Wrongfellow in the poem. From Bernard Cornwell’s annotation on the Penobscot expedition of 1779: “the only time Revere ever fought the British was at Majabigwaduce, and there, in general Artemis Ward’s words, he showed ‘unsoldierlike behaviour bordering on cowardice'”. Still, never mind, eh?
  14. 22.11. Dejectedly took some time at the end. Bound to say such surfaces as 4 dn. bother me a little: a surface should read well. Enjoyed Dune (the novel) immensely when it came out, some 50 years ago. (Might not so much now.)
    1. I came to know Dune in a roundabout way: firstly the computer game (which was enjoyable), then the book (which was long but enjoyable) and finally the film (which was weird and somewhat enjoyable).
      Nice to have two easy ones in a row.
      (apologies for the multiple deletions – don’t know what happened there)

      Edited at 2015-09-15 12:13 pm (UTC)

  15. Oh dear, now that awful poem is thumping in my head. He was a busy fellow. In addition to myth-making he was a silversmith and a dentist in his spare time (wince). No hold-ups today. 15.11
  16. Some very easy clues with obvious wordplay gave me a quick start and I thought I’d finish in under twenty minutes, but then hit the tricky numbers, which included 4a, 4d and 13d, all rather good clues, I thought, though I don’t really see ‘dishonest’ and ‘designing’ as synonyms. I also failed to sort out the anagram at 16 until I had the initial C. 28 minutes in the end.
    1. Is this Shakespearian?
      Otherwise, I completely agree – I didn’t like that much (I didn’t get that one, or dauntless, which was just me being a bit dim today.
      1. ODO defines DESIGNING as ‘acting in a calculating, deceitful way’, which seems reasonably close to ‘dishonest’.
  17. Back yesterday after various absences, and finished Monday’s puzzle in record time, but not so good today – although I did finish after about 60 minutes. I thought ART was very clever and give that my COD.

    Like Joe, above, I also enjoyed DUNE when I read it immediately after wolfing down Tolkien, and was looking for another similar fantasy saga to satisfy my whetted appetite. DUNE was a write-in today and one of my FOIs.

  18. 35 minutes today, with one wrong, RUIN, bunged in and not properly explained; 9a from wordplay only; the rest were fair enough. UNFOCUSSED or focussed with two S’s always looks wrong to me but some times words do just look wrong when they’re not. I remember the computer game of DUNE was tedious so never saw the film. CoD 1d.
  19. I’m another one who was ruined by 14ac, which serves me right for not trying to parse it. Also failed to parse DAUNTLESS – I thought it was somehow derived by mutilating “countless” (not keeping time, in a sense).
  20. It would have been 12 mins but for some reason I didn’t look at 23dn properly and put in “wolf”. Muppet. Of the correct answers DISHONEST was my LOI after DAUNTLESS and OBEDIENT. Tomorrow is another day ……..
  21. Elected not to drink last night and it seems to have paid off, with a sub-7 minute time. (I still have no idea how some people do it in under 5, I feel like it’s only common decency to look at a clue and stroke one’s chin at least twice before filling it in.) There was a high level of biffability here I think – certainly the parsings of some of the above look largely unfamiliar in the cold light of day, as if I’d skipped that part of the transaction entirely.
  22. I’m with Penny here as a fellow beginner. Started on the bus at 730am. Just finished. Ok I did one or two other things in between. Dishonest and obedient took far too long – the latter weirdly harder vertically. Spent a while on an anagram of daughter with ly before inspiration followed 15ac.
    Disagree re Dune. Great if weird film with the splendidly blue eyed Kyle Mclachlan (sic). I needed a palanquin to get me homeafter this.
    1. If I’m really struggling with a down clue I’ll often write out the available letters and gaps horizontally which usually does the trick.
  23. Like others a quick start followed by a bit of a disorganised plod, finishing in 17:48 and delighted and surprised to find that both non-words (palanquin and crepitant) were words after all.
  24. Reading through these reminds me that DAUNTLESS RUBBERLINE was not a US Marvel Superhero but a type of toilet system.
  26. 7:21 for me, perhaps not too bad considering that I’m running more or less on empty at the moment. I think I could have posted quite a decent time if I’d been feeling less tired as there was nothing unfamiliar and I never strayed too far from the setter’s wavelength, though I had to stop myself bunging in DOUBTLESS because it fitted.

    I quite liked the film Dune, and also quite liked the book when I read it subsequently (indeed it’s still on my bookshelf as Oxfam hasn’t yet claimed it).


  27. 226204 unfocused is the correct spelling. (Other mispellings are also creeping in such as Himalays. Himalaya is already a plural.)
    1. Other Ranks (military term). It comes up a lot so keep it in mind.

      Edited at 2015-09-16 07:26 am (UTC)

  29. Unless I missed a comment in the above, in the print edition 17d is noted as being 9 letters rather than 8, not that it caused much of a hold-up.
    Also my understanding is that the double ‘SS’ in ‘unfocussed’ is British usage, one ‘S’ is US and Scientific usage.
    Or the other way round.
    1. Yes, all the usual sources list both -s- and ss- but without comment as to usage, UK/US, scientific or otherwise, so there’s nothing wrong with the clue as alleged by our anon friend.

      Edited at 2015-09-16 09:40 am (UTC)

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