Times 26,231: Moriturus Te Bloggo

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A post-midnight solve for me again as I did this one after coming home from an evening of very clubbable bangers at the Brixton Academy courtesy of Jamie xx – or Already That Is Twenty, as we Latinists cannot help but auto-translate him. Unusually, I was not by this point sloshed, I’d kept my intake to a single pint, but two hours of Jamie’s take-no-prisoners approach to strobe lighting effects had left me a little unsteady on my feet resulting in what’s probably a quite ordinary time of 17:38. Still, three in an hour is the charm, right? Eek, only one more day now!

I had a lot of fun with this puzzle, enjoying e.g. the hunky politicians and the 8dn you can notoriously now fit their entire parliamentary party into (probably). I did struggle a little without any Homeric allusions or obscure Roman historians to work with today – 26ac was unfamiliar to me, and 12ac rang only the faintest of bells – I think I may have been conflating it with Sizewell, which is a horse of an entirely different colour – the vegetable had to be worked out entirely from wordplay, and I mostly think of WACK as lame rather than friendly. But everything seemed clued entirely fairly, and elegantly too: I’ll give special mention to 6dn and 8dn as ones that raised a smile and my thumbs. A fine puzzle to end an excellent week for them. Thanks setter!

Time to wrestle some children schoolwards. See many of you tomorrow?

Across
1 LIBERAL STUDIES – course: I.E. [that is] “consumed by” LIBERAL STUDS [hunky politicians]
9 STIMULATE – fan: (TEAM LIST*) [“revised”] “enthrals” U [U{nited’s} “No 1”]
10 CLOTH – stuff: {chi}C LOT H{as} “to pack”
11 NOTED – seen: {i}N {s}O{u}T{h}E{n}D [“every so often”]
12 BRIDEWELL – prison: RID [free], BE WELL [to enjoy good health] “outside”
13 PILSENER – pale beer: reverse of RENE’S LIP [Frenchman’s rudeness “about”]
15 NESSIE – monster: (IS SEEN*) [“swimming”]
17 THWACK – hit hard: T{oug}H [“extremely”] + WACK [northern (i.e. in Liverpool and the Midlands) friend]
19 PHOTOFIT – picture: P [“leader of” P{irates}] + HIT [wounded] “nursing” (FOOT*) [“injured”]
22 EGRESSION – leaving: E G.R. {s}ESSION [English | king | sitting “without crown”]
23 PARKA – weatherproof coat: PARK [explorer (Mungo Park) in Africa] “needs” A
24 CHARM – entrance: ARM [weapon] “found near” CH [church]
25 INTENDANT – administrator: INTEND A [Plan | A] “backed by” N.T. [National Trust]
26 DEAN AND CHAPTER – ecclesiastical body: (N{ote} A PADRE CHANTED*) [“put out”]

Down
1 LOSING PATIENCE – becoming irritable: reverse of I’S [one’s “standing up”] during LONG PATIENCE [lengthy | comic opera]
2 BRISTOL – port: BR I [brother and I] + reverse of LOTS [“lifted” loads]
3 ROUND – double def: sandwiches / drinks for everyone
4 LEAF BEET – vegetable: LEA [field] + BEE [worker] “wrapped in” F.T. [newspaper]
5 THESIS – paper: IS “chasing” THE’S [articles]
6 DECREMENT – reduction: DEC RENT [year’s final payment to landlord?], ME [yours truly] “secured”
7 ELOPERS – people taking flight: SOLE [alone] “holding” REP [traveller] reversed [“up”]
8 CHELSEA TRACTOR – vehicle (+ semi-&lit): (THE ACC{e}LERATOR’S*) [“energy-saving” (i.e. subtracting one E), “specially developed”]
14 EXCISEMAN – revenue employee: EX [former] + reverse of NAME SIC [celebrity | so “upset”]
16 PHONETIC – as you say: HONE T [smooth | T{alker}’s “first”] “to be put in” PIC [picture]
18 WARFARE – fighting: reverse of R.A.F. [force “retreating”] through WARE [Herts town]
20 FAR EAST – Asian lands: FARE [food] + AST{i} [wine “I snubbed”]
21 PINION – tie: PIN I ON [small badge | one | on]
23 PINTA – portion of milk: reverse of {c}ATNIP [what attracts feline “climbing”, “not cold” (i.e. minus a C)]

50 comments on “Times 26,231: Moriturus Te Bloggo”

  1. Hard work at 28.25, with none of the long ones providing easy ways in – three of them falling only one word at a time. I had LIBERAL, CHAPTER and TRACTOR without being able to fathom the rest in the same breath. LEAF BEET invented from wordplay, and a tick in the box for PILSENER.
    Anyone else thing EGRESSION came about because our setter couldn’t spell either PATIANCE or AGRESSION properly?
  2. Early smugness biffing cabinet pudding at first glance
    then bristol… on a roll guys.Probably dropping in to the George tomorrow, as a new bug do I carry a copy of the Thunderer ..pink buttonhole?
    2. We shall know each other by our towering toppers. (Unless by some hideous mischance we both leave them at home…)
  3. I found this a fairly tough workout and was waiting for the ipad to offer to show me my errors when I biffed LOI PILSENER. I couldn’t parse it and I thought it was PILSNER (I’m guessing it’s either). Now I see the parsing I like it.

    COD to CHARM for a great surface which had me well off track until I had all the crossers (Will I never learn? entrance = bewitch; flower = river; flight = stairs, etc).

    Good luck to all tomorrow.

  4. 40 mins held up by LIBERAL STUDIES at the beginning (especially as BRISTOL and DECREMENT still fitted the pudding).
    Good luck to everyone tomorrow – remember it’s not the winning, it is the taking apart.

  5. Exactly the same as Sawbill!

    FOI BRISTOL

    Next DECREMENT

    Then gleefully CABINET PUDDING! Then… nothing.

    Took about ten minutes to get LIBERAL (PORTION – HELPING?!!)

    And finally STUDIES 45 minutes in all.

    horryd Shanghai

  6. Really, really enjoyed this one, sitting comfortably in the drawing room (that’s what my wife calls it, anyway) with the fire going, several cups of tea and the canary (currently in our care) singing its heart out by the window overlooking The Holy Loch.
    Much to be savoured, with the last couple in being Egression and Phonetic.
    Good luck to all tomorrow; I didn’t make the cut this year, even with one submission at 8m 10s; I’ll try to do better next year.
    1. Do you have powerful binoculars or have they renamed Tring Reservoir? Where I remember watching the thousands of starlings roost at dusk and being covered head to toe in what I shall call guano.
  7. 41 minutes with the three ugly Latinate words EGRESSION, DECREMENT an INTENDANT never knowingly seen and certainly never used. I’m fond of neither the vehicles represented by the Chelsea tractor not the phrase itself. Locally, the ugliest 7-seater award goes to the Alphard narrowly ahead of the ELGRAND.

    Enjoyed LIBERAL STUDIES, but pound for pound preferred yesterday’s. Talking of which, the very best to all those putting themselves through the wringer tomorrow.

    1. No juxtaposing of the words “ugly” and “Latinate” please! Or I’ll have the Classicists’ Union down on you like a ton of bricks.
  8. After 5 minutes or so I thought this was going to be a doddle but it turned out to be a puzzle of two halves divided by a diagonal running from top left to bottom right. Everything to the right of it was easy but I struggled with much of it to the left.

    I was delayed and misled by ‘backed’ in 25ac thinking this indicated a reversal. At 22ac I had EGRESSING for far too long, and the wordplay at 13ac gave me PILLAGER with ‘Frenchman’ as the definition which might have worked rather well over a long period of history but seemed a bit xenophobic for the modern day. Fortunately the arrival of checkers that didn’t fit forced me to reconsider this one.

    DECREMENT is not a word I have come across much (if ever) but the wordplay was clear and its opposite ‘increment’ is very familiar and seemed to confirm that it had to be right.

    47 minutes.

    Edited at 2015-10-16 08:44 am (UTC)

    1. I’m always decrementing things in my day job as a computer programmer… a sad state of affairs for the holder of a Literae Humaniores degree, but what can you do?
      1. Of course in The Frost Report, The ‘I lookup to him/I look down on him’ running gag with Cleese/Barker/Corbett did have one involving increments. The Corbett character says something like ‘I don’t deal with increments; quite the opposite’. Perhaps he meant decrements after all?
      2. When I started in computing in the early ’70s I was told that the best programmers were classics graduates because of the logic of their thought.
        Does the cap fit?
        1. I like to think so. (Secretly, I don’t even consider myself as a “programmer”, but rather as a “computer linguist”…)
      3. I was a classicist who moved into computer programming in the early 1970’s working on the mighty ICL 1904 if I remember correctly. Like me these days, it had very little calculating power or memory and, unlike the machines from across the pond, required one to work in octal. All the company’s intake of 8 for that year were arts graduates. Computer programmers these days are clearly smarter since today’s puzzle took me twice as long as Verlaine.
        1. Ah, the dear old 1900 Series. I was introduced to it briefly in 1965, but didn’t start coding for it (in PLAN) until a year later. A few years after that I moved over to System 4 and the wonderful world of hexadecimal. (I was initially assigned to the Classical Sixth, but managed to escape when Dotheboys started a Maths Sixth.)
  9. 26:37. Nothing particularly difficult but I’d not heard of WACK for ‘friend’ (I come from the wrong part of the North), LEAF BEET (my LOI) nor INTENDANT without a ‘super’ on the front. I struggled to believe 1a was LIBERAL anything, thinking of the wrong sort of course. I enjoyed 12a, 13a 1d and 8d. But I did frown slightly at 14d. The Department Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs was formed by merging the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise in 2005…. an Exciseman was an employee of the latter, not the former.

    Have fun tomorrow, all of you who are going.

    1. I think this a historic usage.A la Jamaica Inn.. the excise and the revenue are interchangeable.An exciseman would have been employed by the revenue
    2. But it’s a superintendENT, not a superintendAnt, isn’t it? Bloody English, what a language…
  10. Enjoyed this one, biffed pilsener unparsed and unsure about the INTENDANT / PINION crossing, but it was correct. I remembered WACK from my early days in Brum learning how to spend Mr Cadbury’s money on bizarre but effective advertising. LOI PINTA.

    Good luck to all lambs to the slaughter tomorrow, it will be dperessing to see those speedy times posted.

  11. 23:17, with no real holdups. Smiled at the Frenchman’s rudeness. The old advertising line used to be ‘Drinka Pinta Milka Day’, memorably quoted by Tony Hancock in The Blood Donor.

    Unfortunately, the dog says I cannot be with you all tomorrow.

    1. Along with “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases” sung to the tune of Deutschland Uber Alles.

      Edited at 2015-10-16 10:50 am (UTC)

  12. 20m. I didn’t enjoy the first five or so minutes of this solve at all: I thought we were in for yet another stinker and that the setters and editor were being unneccesarily sadistic in the run-up to Saturday. But then I managed to get over myself and realised that this was actually a very fine puzzle, if not exactly straightforward.
    I’ve no idea why but I find clues like 17ac and 23ac (everyday words where part of the wordplay is an obscurity) a bit irritating but clues like 26ac and 4dn (obscurities where the wordplay is made up of everyday words) very enjoyable. But that’s just me, and not a criticism of this excellent puzzle.
    Thanks setter, and see some of you tomorrow!
  13. Untroubled slow solve while watching cricket on a flat pitch. Unimpressed by decrement, egression and intendant, as Ulaca, and I speak as a Classicist if (or moreover) of ancient vintage. On the other hand I rather liked the northern friend. Good luck to the intrepids at the finals – Sue, you should be there.
  14. Tough but excellent puzzle. PILSENER was particularly good, I tbought. So was LIBERAL STUDIES, when I finally twigged. Like one or two others I confidently biffed in CABINET PUDDING at first, and congratulated myself for having got off to a flying start. Oh well!

    Best of luck to tomorrow’s competitors.

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

  15. Not timed, but sub-15 minutes on paper for this one, so I’ve either peaked a fraction too early or it was just on my wavelength! Maybe I was lucky that LIBERAL STUDIES popped into my head at first look – I didn’t even think of food, and I got most of the downs hanging off it fairly quickly too. I’d never heard of LEAF BEET but it was clearly right from wordplay. Last couple in were INTENDANT and PINION, but not sure why as they seem straightforward now.

    See you at the Championships tomorrow (if I can get there – looks like they’re shutting half the Tube down over the weekend!)

    1. Actually, having looked at the planned closures, you’re only scuppered if you’re coming into London via Liverpool Street. Northern Line from Euston/Kings Cross and Jubilee Line from Waterloo are both unaffected, as is Bakerloo Line from Paddington/Marylebone.
  16. Pretty tough week all round. Thanks setter and V.

    COD to PILSENER.

    Good luck to all the competitors tomorrow. Probably won’t get there myself, despite almost nudging Ulaca out of 56th place on the club leaderboard today.

  17. Initially very smug for a Friday, after getting 1d and 1ac early thought I’d cracked it, then hit a brick wall. As a Wiltshire lad, 17ac was trouble; so had to biff it. 4dn LOI (and me growing up on a farm!), 8dn COD. Didn’t like 9ac, as though there was a tautology in he clueing, and so desperately trying to thing of def for ‘no 1 fan,’ as in stalker!

    Looking forward to meeting faces tomorrow, tube chaos permitting!

    1. I was held up for a while thinking ‘No 1 fan’ would mean something like ‘egomaniac’. Sometimes the clues are less cryptic than you think!
  18. 20:51 .. and much enjoyed.

    Good luck to all those heading into the stalls for the great cavalry charge tomorrow. Sorry I can’t be there to join in the fun this time but look forward to hearing all about it.

  19. 14:12 which didn’t feel particularly fast but seeing the other times here I think I might put a bet on myself tomorrow.

    As a music “fan” V I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Leeds indie beat combo the Bridewell Taxis, whose name comes from the slang for a prison van.

    I thought the clue for leaf beet was interesting, one of those clues where you don’t know whether to put “field + worker” in newspaper or, as in this case, field then worker in newspaper. As I wasn’t fooled into an early cabinet pudding I did wonder if there was a FLEA BEET.

    See some of you tomorrow, either in the mingling area, the pub or both.

    1. The Bridewell Taxis look interesting – seems like they were splitting up at almost exactly the same time I was first arriving, a fresh faced neophyte, on the music scene! C’est la vie…
  20. So pleased to note that I wasn’t the only one tempted by a portion of CABINET PUDDING.

    Finished in 11:30, with Tippex used on the aforementioned pudding.

    See some of you tomorrow.

  21. I’ve not been on form for most of the week, but seemed to hit the right wavelength today, right until the end where for some reason it took me two minutes to get PINION. 14m 50s in total.
  22. 18 minutes from CABINET PUDDING to PILSENER. Thoroughly enjoyable and I didn’t mind the vocab. Good luck to all tomorrow and you may be relieved to know I won’t be stalking you this year.
  23. 29 mins from start to finish, but the middle of the solve was spent dozing after a hard day at work so I haven’t got a clue what my time would have been had I been solving it wide awake. Being from Merseyside THWACK was one of my first in, and PILSENER was my LOI after I finally realised I wasn’t looking for an impossible anagram of “pale beer”. Eejit.
  24. Totally messed up with “cabinet pudding” and 2d and 6d seemingly confirming my sloppy assumption. Finally got myself out of the ensuing mess and thoroughly enjoyed this excellent puzzle—-witty and elegant.
  25. No time due to watching baseball, but I didn’t have a very easy time with this, perhaps distracted. But I finally got there with the LOI’s being EGRESSION and PHONETIC. Best of luck to those competing. Regards.
  26. A late solve and all the better for that, for this was one to savour, like a couple of others this week. All the long lights were very good but COD to NESSIE, just for its neat surface. Never heard of “wack” and not good on towns so the THWACK/WARFARE cross was last in.

  28. 11:49 for me, so not a total disaster (only 19 seconds behind crypticsue 🙂 despite making heavy weather of some easy clues as usual.

    Are you really not familiar with BRIDEWELL and DEAN AND CHAPTER? (I was going to point you at Sydney Smith’s response to a proposal to surround St Paul’s with a wooden pavement, but I now find he actually said (according to Hesketh Pearson): “Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.” Same difference though.)

    A nice warm-up puzzle for the 40th Championship tomorrow. See you there.

  29. A shade over 9.5 hours for me. However, I did leave the clock running for most of the day. Even so, I’m sure I was near an hour.

    It was just all a bit chewy, and not helped by my being sure that PILSENER had no E in the middle. (A quick Google tells me that it sometimes doesn’t; clearly I’ve been drinking the wrong kind.) Apart from that, I can’t now see why I found it such tough going, since everything seems quite fair and reasonable.

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