Times 26227 – Last call for ‘E’

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 41 minutes

Music: Shostakovich, Symphony #5, Freccia/

I was afraid I was losing my touch, not solving much for the past three weeks, and this puzzle seemed to confirm my fears. All the clues I saw quickly were very easy, but they were also very few, not enough to give me the crossing letters I needed to make things easy. So I really struggled in the middle part of my solve, not being able to make much progress for quite a while.

Unfortunately, I still have difficulty with easy clues. In 1 across, for instance, I went through all sorts of obscure terms for military units, and needed the crossing letters to see the obvious. A similar elaborate analysis was wasted on ‘grouse’, which turned out to actually be an edible bird.

So, overall, this puzzle should not be that difficult. All the words and usages are perfectly common, and if you can parse the clues you should make a decent time.

Across
1 BARMIEST, B(ARMIES)T, where the outer letters are from B[eiru]T.
5 NIMBUS, SUB MIN backwards.
9 COS, double definition, one the shortened form of ‘cosine’.
10 POLICE FORCE, POL(ICE FOR C[onvicts])E.
12 PORTENDING, PORT + ENDING.
13 SNAP, double definition.
15 REPAIR, REP AIR, a jocular double definition.
16 LINCTUS, sounds like LINKED US, a chestnut and my FOI.
18 AFFAIRS, A(F + FAIR)S[mall].
20 GROUSE, double definition.
23 ALAS, A[t]LAS.
24 DISAPPOINT, DIS-APPOINT, a tongue-in-cheek double definition.
26 CLOSING TIME, &lit anagram of CLIENTS GO around I’M. The surface is not very smooth, and it feels like a word is missing..
27 EEL, [h]EEL.
28 NORMAN, NORMA + [seaso]N.
29 UNDERDOG. UNDERDO + G[ruel].
 
Down
1 BICEPS, S(PEC)IB, all upside-down. The ‘pec’ is bodybuilder slang for the pectoralis major.
2 RESERVE, RE-SERVE, another cod double definition.
3 IMPRESARIO, I’M + anagram of OPERA IS, a semi-&lit.
4 SALAD DRESSING, SAL[t] + ADDRESSING.
6 IFFY, [j]IFFY.
7 BARONET, backwards hidden in [forgot]TEN OR AB[out]. A money-raising scheme dreamed up by the Duke of Bucks.
8 SHEEPISH, SHE + [failur]E + PISH. I believe the last person to say ‘pish’ passed on quite a while ago.
11 CONFLAGRATION, CON + FLAG + RATION, much simpler than I expected.
14 INCOMPLETE, anagram of ELECTION PM. I saw it was an anagram right away, and still took a long time to figure it out.
17 JAMAICAN, JAM + A (I) CAN. I had written in ‘Ramaican’, and was about to look it up to see if it existed when the correct answer popped into my head. My LOI.
19 FLAVOUR, F(L)AVOUR. I wrote this in from the cryptic, but I wasn’t too sure about the literal. “It smacks of…”??
21 STIPEND, S(TIP)END. ‘Tip’ = ‘cap’ in the sense that they are both the top of something, I believe.
22 STALAG, [merciles]S [jackboo}T + A LAG.
25 PISA, a cryptic definition where ‘listed’ has an unexpected sense.

48 comments on “Times 26227 – Last call for ‘E’”

  1. I too wasted a lot of time trying to think of an island that started with RAM or else to justify MAJORCAN (I didn’t have ALAS at that point).

    Surely smack can mean flavour as in “the smack of salt in the air”. Chambers has it as “to taste or have the flavour of”

    I rather liked 26a although now you point it out the surface is a bit weird.

    Somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes for me.

  2. 9:09, the first time in ages that I’ve gone under 10′. I wonder if 26ac was intended to be “It’s when…”; I thought “I’m” was odd at the time. I didn’t even notice the anagram, and just thought that it wasn’t a very cryptic clue. No problem with 17d; once I had -CAN, I wasn’t tempted by RAM-. BIFD 7d, only later–as so often–spotting the hidden.
  3. Was cruising towards a comfortable sub-15 before running into trouble on the last few.

    Spent ages trying to get the islander. Eventually tried a slightly-desperate run through the alphabet, until a bucketload of pennies dropped on my head when I got to J.

    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    1. A few minutes more than my Antipodean friend, finishing in the same corner. It’s getting scary…
  4. 29 minutes very straightforward solving but with plenty of good clues for all that My only grouse is “edible bird” at 20ac; are there any (or many) that aren’t so that one needs to specify this? Would one clue “lamb” as “edible animal”?
  5. A lovely straightforward almost Read and Write start to the Times week, finishing in 4:48.
    1. Cor, that makes my ~7 look positively sluggish. You’d better make the top 24 this Saturday Sue!
      2. And I thought I’d done well in 18. Confirms that in absolutely no way should I ever waste money trying to enter the championships.
        1. If you make the top 30 they let you come the following year for free (and hopefully you can spin this out for quite a few years, if you’re good at crosswords) which mitigates the pouring-money-down-the-drain factor for those of us whose name does not rhyme with a Jungle Book bear. Of course then we go over to the pub and just waste the money in a different way.
          1. If only. It’s top 25. Best I’ve managed is 28th. I think Z8 has had a couple of agonising 26ths.
  6. NORMAN pushed me over my 30min target by a couple of mins, otherwise straightforward. LIke Kevin G, I didn’t spot the anagram at 26ac, and just thought it a dodgy cryptic.
  7. 11m. No problems this morning, but I found myself needing the cryptics in nearly all cases, so I liked this.
  8. A perfect start to the week, 23 minutes and no grouses (or is that grice?).

    PLEASE may someone volunteer to sub for me this Wednesday? Verlaine, perhaps; if so, I could do Friday instead? I have to leave early doors for an all day event.

    Pip

    1. I checked GRICE and they are young pigs. Mind you, I think that’s how people who shoot pronounce GROUSE. Perhaps we could settle on LEK – another crossword favourite.
    3. Happy to swap Wednesday for Friday if you like, or very pleased to give mctext another day in the sun if that suits everyone better!
      1. Decide between you! Either is good for me. Thanks. If I see V has done it. I’ll do Friday.
        1. mctext is up on Wednesday, if anything goes wrong with that plan I can be called in at fairly short notice, but currently I’m expecting just to do my Friday blog as normal. Cheers!
  9. 20 minutes. I had RECAST for a while which made the sauce difficult. Great to see SMACK not meaning hit or boat.
  10. Fairly straightforward puzzle with quite a bit of biffing. That includes POLICE FORCE which I still couldn’t parse afterwards so thanks to vinyl for explaining an awkward cryptic.
    1. Funny that you found this quite biffable whereas I (incorrigible biffer that I am) biffed very little today. I constructed POLICE FORCE starting from ICE in POLE, for instance. I had to leave the house uncaffeinated this morning which might explain it.

  11. Initially I thought SALSA was the first part of 4dn

    South west corner held me up

    until COD JAMAICAN went in

    NORMAN LOI

    Half an hour

    horryd Shanghai

  12. … a fairly straightforward solve though with a bit of biffing. E.g., saw ICE FOR in 10ac and filled in the blanks from there.

    Liked the Pip/Sawbill speculations (above) on GRICE. Very pleased to get the porcine connection. For me, it’s redolent of H. Paul Grice whose famous conversational maxims don’t work for just about any recorded and transcribed actual conversation: a pig of a theory.

    There’s also GRICER qv. (which is how HM says “grocer”?). Has it ever turned up in a puzzle?

    1. By HM do you mean Lady Thatcher? She was a Gricer’s daughter ….. or wanted to be. Obviously I do not mean a Trainspotter’s daughter.
  13. About 15 minutes of what I thought were fairly straightforward clues; nothing too difficult, nor too easy (apart from ‘Pisa’ which I though gave itself away rather too much by offering ‘Italian’). Enjoyable. Thanks, setter.
  14. I found it a mainly straightforward, twenty-five-minute solve.I held back on entering IFFY, since I didn’t see the wordplay at first, but the F of 19 confirmed it. I twigged ‘jiffy’ just before coming here. I also pencilled in CIAN for the ending of 17, which made 26 hard to see initially.
    1. Certainly the easiest clue I can recall. I actually hesitated thinking it was some sort of trap.
      1. Me too—–left it for a while suspecting a fiendish trick. Could have been lifted from the Beano.
  16. Pretty breezy Monday offering, finished it before the coffee brewed so a bit under 10 minutes. For once I didn’t biff anything, probably a good puzzle for beginners.
  18. So Keriothe was uncaffeinated and Glheard was precaffeinated. I was pericaffeinated (or is that percolated?). It is 45 years since Latin O Level.
  19. Fairly gentle start to the week for me, solving once again in the uncongenial environment of the supermarket cafeteria, but, to be honest, I don’t think that I would have been much quicker in ideal surroundings.
    Respect to the fast lady for a really slick time: I sincerely hope that your ‘peaked too soon’ prediction proves to be too pessimistic. Sorry that vinyl sounds so downbeat: I hope that it’s just a temporary loss of form, or giving too much concentration to the music for quick solving.
    A fair amount of biffing for me too, but the checkers were helpful, and post-solve parsing showed that the clues were all sound.
  20. A slightly dozy 15 minute afternoon solve. I assume 24d is a double bluff: Listed building. In an Italian city. Now what could that be? Surely the setter could have removed all that ambiguity by saying its a sip backwards? Or a good South African?
  21. 18:17 and pretty straightforward. I never spotted the hidden word for BARONET – I wondered where that came from! IMPRESARIO my favourite.

    Edited at 2015-10-12 02:37 pm (UTC)

  22. Held up a bit by SW corner. I fell into the trap of looking for a French opera! Otherwise a steady, though slowish, solve. 31 mins. Ann
  23. Hi all. About 25 minutes, ending with the BARONET/SNAP crossers. I thought BARONET was very well hidden, at least from me, and it took quite a while to realize that, but did leave the ‘exalted’ part as hard to explain. Thereafter armed with the missing ‘N’ I threw in SNAP to finish although I doubt I have heard of this game before. Regards.
  24. 15 mins, which felt a little sluggish. BARONET was my LOI after NIMBUS, and I thought it was quite well hidden.
  25. 29 minutes, so not blindingly fast (in fact, in the modern idiom, *so* not blindingly fast).

    I thought there were a few very feeble clues – PISA, CLOSING TIME, and GROUSE among them. And why are BICEPS the only muscles in crossword land? There are 639 other ones to choose from (or 645 if you’re from Norfolk), although ones like the rectus capitis posterior minor are too long for a standard grid. What of the sartorius, the anconeus and the euphonious omohyoid? And what of the flexor pollicis longus and the extensor digitorum, both essential to modern communications?

    Otherwise, though all was fine.

  26. After a comparatively good week last week, I’ve started this week disastrously with a miserable 17:49. I made ridiculously heavy weather of PORTENDING, but it was the islander that really dished me as I wanted the answer to end in CIAN (or perhaps PIAN) – for no good reason that I can think of in retrospect.

    Things can only get better. (I hope!)

  28. 32m so average for me but I was slower than I ought to have been, failing to see some fairly obvious clues – AFFAIRS for one – for far too long. I was probably put off by the veritable rash of question marks!

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