Times 26239 – A day at the races? Just the opposite!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 33 minutes

Music: Wagner, Die Walküre Act III, Furtwängler/VPO

It took a few minutes to get started, as I ended up having to begin operations in the bottom half, but I soon got rolling. My solve involved a lot of biffing, not all of it entirely successful, so I had to keep my eraser ready. I still have to parse a few of the more obvious answers, but that shouldn’t be hard.

I really have no idea whether this puzzle was that difficult or not. Some of the clues were a bit convoluted, but there were many where the literal was all too obvious.

Across
1 GASBAG, GAB SAG all backwards, a bit of a semi &lit, and my LOI.
4 CHIMERIC, CHIMER + I + C[ampanologists].
10 GRILLROOM, GR(ILL, R)OOM. This might be two words or hyphenated in some usages.
11 TUDOR, T.U. + ROD backwards. This style of building was popular in U.S. suburbs in the 20s, but the houses have turned out to be difficult to maintain properly. A stucco exterior is no match for New England winters.
12 LAG, double definition. Don’t get it? Let me quote OED definition #4: “To cover (a boiler) with ‘lags’, strips of felt, etc”. So now you know!
13 SONG SPARROW, SON + G(SPAR)ROW. That must be the answer, but how ‘mate’ = ‘spar’ I cannot say. I suspect an obscure bit of nautical slang, but research has turned up nothing.
14 WEAPON, NO PA(E)W backwads. I had biffed ‘tenpin’ and had to erase.
16 EVOLVER, [r]EVOLVER.
19 ANTIOCH, ANTI + O + CH.
20 DRENCH, [chil]DREN + CH.
22 WILLIAM TELL, WILL I (AM) TELL? Rossini crosses with Debussy.
25 VIE, VIE[nna], as in tonight’s orchestra.
26 SOMME, S[quadron] + O.M. + ME.
27 UNTUTORED, anagram of NUT OUT + [f]R[i]E[n]D. When coming up with an acronym, it is probably a good idea to avoid unfortunate implications.
28 SCRATCHY, SC(RAT, C)H + [pla]Y.
29 INSANE, IN(S.A.)N + [her]E. I nearly biffed ‘nearby’, but thought better of it.
 
Down
1 GIGGLE, GIG + anagram of LEG. A ‘caution’ is, in this case, an amusing person.
2 SWINGBEAT, S(WING, BE)AT. I’m sticking to Wagner, thank you very much.
3 ATLAS, A + SALT upside-down. the mountain range in North Africa.
5 HAMPSTEAD HEATH, HA(M.P.)STE + AD + HEATH. When you see ‘politician’ and ‘London’ with this enumeration, this is a fairly safe biff.
6 METHADONE, MET + HAD ONE.
7 RIDER, [st]RIDER.
8 CAREWORN, CA(ROWER upside-down)N.
9 DOWN IN THE MOUTH, double definition, one jocular.
15 PROMINENT, PROM IN [arg]ENT[ina].
17 VICE VERSA, VI(C, EVER)SA. I thought for a long time that I was looking for an obscure type of military pass.
18 MAE WESTS, anagram of MATES SEW.
21 VENDEE, double definition. I had originally put in ‘Condee’, but then saw that ‘Vendee’ was the answer.
23 LA MER, hidden in [centra]L AMER[ica].
24 LATIN, N ITAL[y] upside-down.

37 comments on “Times 26239 – A day at the races? Just the opposite!”

  1. Also had no idea how “mate” gives SPAR, but ODO has:
    Informal, a close friend. “Buster was his spar and he didn’t want to let him down”.
    All new to me. Ditto for “caution” and GIGGLE. Otherwise, not too difficult but certainly more so than your average Monday puzzle. May just have been tired after staying up until 2:00 watching a famous victory.

    On edit: a very minor quibble, but I think the parsing of 10ac is GR(ILL,R)OOM.

    Edited at 2015-10-26 03:55 am (UTC)

    1. Consider yourself lucky. I’m on t’other side at the moment, which meant 2am and 3am kickoffs respectively, along with a niece’s wedding which was celebrated according to family tradition.

      But yes, a famous victory. Great weekend all round actually.

  2. I had most of this done in just under the half-hour but hit a wall and needed 50 minutes in all to complete the grid. The problems were all in the NE where I found it hard to find a foothold to the right of HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

    Put me down as another who didn’t know the required meaning of SPAR and found nothing in the usual sources to confirm the obvious spar/mate possibility. After this and last Thursday’s stat/trivia in the Quickie I am starting wonder why setters can’t find sufficient meanings for their needs in those mighty works without dragging in obscurities that a whole army of lexicographers have not deemed worthy of inclusion – assuming the meanings actually exist in the first place.

    At 23ac LA MER is also a very famous song written by Charles Trenet in 1945 which has been recorded by many all-time greats including the late Bobby Darin in 1959, though in English it’s usually called “Beyond the Sea”.

    Edited at 2015-10-26 04:52 am (UTC)

    1. I could try to save face and delete some of the above but have decided to let it stand despite expressing an almost completely opposite POV little more than a month ago when the same meaning came up in a Quickie – “Setters need to be free to stretch our vocabulary a bit otherwise it’d soon become boring” – though to be fair to myself I don’t think I realised at the time that none of the usual sources listed the required meaning.

      So egg-on-face time for me, but frankly I’m more concerned that this morning I failed to remember something discussed here in such detail and so recently. Not long until the men in white coats come a-calling I fear!

  3. Thanks for the second def. of “LAG.” Returning the favor: From Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, By Jonathon Green, courtesy of GoogleBooks: “spar (also sparring partner) [1970s+] (orig. W.I.) a friend”

    Edited at 2015-10-26 06:12 am (UTC)

  4. 11m, uncaffeinated, so for me this was fairly straightforward. I didn’t know this meaning of ‘spar’ either, but I didn’t even notice it as I bunged in the answer. My last in was WEAPON, where I thought for too long that ‘player at bridge club perhaps’ was going to be a compass bearing. Lift and separate!
    1. Exactly 11m here too, also ending on WEAPON for the same reason, but I’d had some caffeine so it is possible to tell us apart. Thought this was a very very nice puzzle to start the week, not *too* hard but definitely plenty to think about along the way.
  5. 20 mins of gentle stuff. Quite liked 9d – if rather easy. Thanks to vinyl1 for parsing WEAPON.Is this crossword to soften us up for others later this week?
  6. 31:12. Did anyone else have WARsaw as the capital in 25a? That held me up for some time until I realised I had the wrong city. NW corner held me up too – I had never heard that definition of ‘caution’ nor SWINGBEAT. MAE WEST as a type of jacket was new to me too, although I can see the rhyming slang now. A bit tricky for a Monday, I thought. Favourites 14a and 20a.
      1. Yes. Of course, but also Mae West… Vest and Breast. “During World War II, Allied aircrew called their yellow inflatable, vest-like life preserver jackets “Mae Wests” partly from rhyming slang for “breasts”[137] and “life vest” and partly because of the resemblance to her torso.”
      1. I think that 1a in the Quick Cryptic may have had a subliminal effect on you (and johninterred)?
  7. Interesting for a Monday, I thought, and after 20 minutes, I submitted with GASMAN at 1ac read as a fairly desperate cryptic definition. Well, this is a Monday morning, so he’s due anyway.
    Innocent me thought that a Mae West was so called because of the resemblance it imparted to the wearer, when inflated, to the gifted lady. I think, on this occasion, innocence wins the day.
    SONG SPARROW? makes sense, but I thought like others that the SPAR bit didn’t work well.
    I’m also of the opinion that cautions, as in “he’s a caution he is” elicited a lot more than a GIGGLE, but hey ho.
  8. I agree with mctext and z8 on the derivation of Mae West. Given that CRS is London-based, ‘vest’ is never going to mean ‘jacket’.

    Somewhat more crunchy than a usual Monday I thought.

  9. 14:33. Like vinyl, it took me a while to get going but once I did the answers flowed freely.

    Checked myself slightly at the end with no idea why 1D was GIGGLE but the cryptic was unambiguous. So thanks to vinyl for explaining this one.

  10. 18:00 .. tricky. Like an English batsman facing leg spin in Dubai I was never entirely confident of what I was doing, but it all worked out in the end (probably unlike Dubai).

    Like Jackkt, La Mer makes me think Bobby Darin first, Debussy second (sorry, Claude).

    Last in GIGGLE.

  11. 30 min. but with sand sparrow after rejecting spar=mate and quite illogically hoping that s could be son, and, sow an impossible mature round an old mate of Henry VIII. The perversion of the normal uses of logic that makes a crossword is the least likely characteristic, one assumes, of the life about to be discovered in the oceans of Mars or wherever, and the one that may yet keep us ahead of the game.
  12. A sleep-deprived solve, happy to finish after a very slow start.

    Really well clued I thought, but no obvious standout for me.

    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  13. 15:13 with a bit of time lost on Vendee as a result of my having spelled UNTUTORED UNTUTORCH. No, I have no idea either.

    I liked the spitting feathers clue and vaguely recalled spar from some past puzzle, ditto caution.

    1. I think you do the Quickie on occasion, penfold, so you probably met this one there at the start of September. So did I, but I’m afraid I hadn’t remembered it.
  14. I suspect it is the Royal House of Tudor – rather than a mock Tudor house – that the setter is referencing in 11ac. Sue S.
  16. 8:36 for me – having not heard of Antioch for a very long time, I think it must be setters’ word of the month, because I think this is its 3rd or 4th appearance in crosswords generally in the last few weeks.
  17. A bit of head-scratching but this didn’t take very long, 10 or so minutes in a break at work. I thought of SPARRING PARTNER and got to SPAR from there, and completely biffed in HAMPSTEAD HEATH from the checking letters.
  18. Somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes so not very taxing at all, but with no understanding of spar as mate, GIGGLE as caution, and looking askance at CHIMERIC which I always render as ‘chimerical’. Other than that, though, a smooth sail, ending with GIGGLE from the wordplay after figuring that 12 had to be LAG. Regards.
  19. Thanks for explaining SA for ‘it’ – got the answer, but didn’t know why it was right; tenpin also my best guess for 14a. Never heard of caution used in that way, but might start doing so now! 9d made me smile.
    1. I think “he/she’s a caution” was a catch phrase used by a comedian many decades ago. Possibly Hilda Baker. In my mind’s ear I can hear it being said in a north country accent.
  20. 15 mins. Count me as another who didn’t know spar/mate but the answer was obvious enough. MAE WESTS was my LOI and it took an embarrassingly long time for me to see it.
  21. It’s all been said.
    Same ‘spar’ ignorance as others.
    Agree, harder than a usual Monday, so not disappointed with my time.
  22. 12:05 for me, perhaps not too bad considering how tired I was feeling.

    Given that no-one seems to have come across SPAR = “mate” other than in other crosswords, and that the only known dictionaries including it seem to be ODO and Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (for the record, it’s not in Partridge), I’m not sure that it’s really suitable for a daily Times cryptic (let alone the Quickie). I’m not really all that keen on 17dn (VICE VERSA) either. But perhaps I’m just feeling despondent because all out attempts at moving house look as if they’re coming to nothing.

    I think I’ll seek solace in some Debussy or Charles Trenet (but definitely NOT Bobby Darin or anyone else singing some rubbishy English Translation).

    Edited at 2015-10-26 11:58 pm (UTC)

  23. Beaten. Utterly beaten by the NW, where I was short to the tune of four answers.

    My excuse is that I had never heard of, nor could imagine, that meaning of “caution”. I think that, even if I’d thought of GIG for the carriage, I’d still have spent a long time trying to come up with something better. Nor have I heard of SWINGBEAT. On the other hand, I have no reasonably reasonable reason for failing to get WEAPON or GASBAG.

    Ah well. At least it was now yesterday.

  24. Unfair ! Like most of you I didn’t know spar = mate, and also the bird is an American one, rare, if at all, in UK. The correct answer was inserted with a shrug.

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