Times 26,261: Revenge of the Shrinking Violet

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I see everyone’s already going strong in the comments, and you’ve been waiting long enough, so no preamble, I’ll just postamble below! Thanks setter for an enjoyable Friday puzzle.

Across
1 PICK OFF – identify and eliminate: PICK [tool] + OFF [substandard]
5 CREAM – triple def: take top off / the best / unguent
9 HORDE – crowd: homophone of HOARD [stock up, “according to reports”]
10 LIONHEART – 21 (i.e. Angevin) LION [cat] + HEART{h} [fireside, “tailless”]
11 STIPEND – cleric’s income: TIP END [(two separate) limits] set on S [second]
12 PARQUET – hard flooring: PAR [standard] + QU{i}ET [soft “one having been removed”]
13 LUMINOSITY – lustre: IT “stops” ({o}MINOUSLY*) [“bats”, “losing old”]
15 BEAK – double def: magistrate / bill
18 ROAD – course: reverse of O.R. [men “backing”] + AD [promotion]
20 PERSIFLAGE – banter: PER SE [essentially], IF LAG [if | jailbird] confined
23 BLOOMER – a flower: and some might toast a (bready) bloomer
24 CRINGED – drew back: C{a}RING [“having no answer”, sensitive] + ED [pressman]
25 STILL LIFE – a work of art: STILL [even so] + LIFE [biography]
26 COVEN – in which spelling (i.e. casting spells) is normal: COVEN{ant} [agreement “to exclude a set of a books (i.e. A NT)”]
27 EXERT – make good use of: EX{p}ERT [maestro “when piano’s unavailable”]
28 TOPSPIN – way to vary flight: TOP [better] + reverse of NIPS [darts “reflecting”]

Down
1 PER DIEM – daily: PERM [forecast] about DIE [to end]
2 CHEYENNE – tribe: CHE [revolutionary] + reverse of NEY [marshal “raised”] + N{ativ}E [“case of”]
3 OILED – drunken: “contingent from” 9, 10 i.e. {hor}DE LIO{heart} “repelled”
4 FOOTPATHS – trails: (OF TOP HATS*) [“wearing”]
5 COHERE – to appear consistent: H.E. [ambassador] admitted to CORE [centre]
6 ERASURE – cancellation: SURE [inevitable] after ERA [long time]
7 MOTET – vocal work: MOTE [a wee bit] + T{edious} [“at first”]
8 WHISTLER – artist: reverse of REL [relative “turning up”] at end of WHIST [game]
14 SPEARMINT – plant: SPEAR [run through] + MINT [unused]
16 KNEADING – treatment from physio, perhaps: homophone of NEEDING [“announcer’s” calling for]
17 A FAIR COP – admission on being arrested: (A PAIR OF C{riminals’} [“first”]*) [“botched”]
19 ACONITE – source of poison: A CITE [a | call] to admit ON [possible]
21 ANGEVIN – from old French province: A{irme}N [“evacuated”] + (GIVEN*) [“bubbly”]
22 AMULET – talisman: reverse of T.A. [“mounted” volunteers] clutching MULE [cross]
23 BASTE – to grease joint: T [time] in BASE [depot]
24 CHEAP – shoddy: CAP [headgear] HE [that man] is wearing

54 comments on “Times 26,261: Revenge of the Shrinking Violet”

  2. Even now you’ve confirmed it’s ACONITE, I still can’t figure out how…. Come on, Verlaine!

  3. Presently I would not entertain a jet-lagged Canadian in my spare

    room!

    Please attempt the Nort West corner first!

    horryd Shanghai

    1. Not only did our Canadian houseguest stop me from posting up the blog at the usual time this morning, she and the wife were also in the room catching up at the top of their voices while I was trying to solve at midnight last night! Under such conditions of mass distraction I felt quite glad to submit inside of the quarter hour, though I felt this puzzle was probably a bit easier than yesterday’s…
  4. 19 A call to restrict possible source of poison (7)

    It’s A + CITE with ON (‘possible’) inside.

  5. A CITE=call containing ON=possible. At least that’s how I read it. Unlike some on the club forum I really didn’t mind the self-references as long as they’re amusing, as these were, and as long as they don’t turn up as relentlessly as in the Guardian. 16.17 On edit – sorry guys. You beat me to it.

    Edited at 2015-11-20 10:38 am (UTC)

  6. 45 minutes but with ‘kneeding’. And I stopped and pondered the spelling, so it was no typo. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.
  7. Another really tricky puzzle like yesterday’s though I managed to finish this one completely unaided and was grateful for that. 74 minutes. My only unknown was the person from Anjou.

    Edited at 2015-11-20 10:41 am (UTC)

      1. I didn’t manage to get ACONITE. However, ON as possible is familiar to me from watching snooker, where “Is that shot on?” is common parlance for asking whether a shot is possible.
        1. ACONITE was very much my last one in. I got a bit mentally fixated on ATROPINE despite it being a complete non-starter…
  9. 18:54 … Malheureusement, j’ai fait un Verlaine.

    I assumed my une booby must have been with the man from Anjou, where I wasn’t at all sure what to do with the vowels (much the way I parle le français, as it happens). Mais non, il se trouve que je also NEAD to engage brain before ‘solving’ the easy ones.

    Une énigme très agréable, tout de même. Merci, le setter.

    1. Loved the Franglais Sotira – made me laugh, thank you. No I don’t actually look like this but it seemed apropriate. When the blogger’s away we mice will play.
  10. Just an hour elapsed, but was interrupted by arrival of nurse to attend to my eczema (or perhaps psoriasis – my skin seems to have found some of the remoter parts of the dictionary, so hopefully won’t get to zymotic !)
    So actual solving time about half that, with NW corner hardest – at 1ac couldn’t think of a decent answer for a while, as there’s no such tool as a TICK. Also spent some time wondering whether was a composer CHESSxxx. However LOI was ACONITE, when I eventually saw how to parse it, as others have explained above.
  11. 33:36. Quite tricky, I thought. It took me a while to see ACONITE, my LOI. I found several clues somewhat convoluted, but I think I parsed all the answers eventually. DNK PERSIFLAGE or ANGEVIN. Does PERM for forecast in 1d refers to football pools?

    Edited at 2015-11-20 12:05 pm (UTC)

  12. Hurry up Verlaine – we’re eager for your usual entertaining persiflage!
    Doesn’t your guest know that the best way to overcome jetlag is to live in the new timezone as soon as possible? Just clatter around a bit and sing loudly so he/she can take the hint.
    1. we’re eager for your usual entertaining persiflage

      I think there’s been some autocorrect applied to the words “excruciating piffle” there…

    2. One of the huge advantages of being retired is that I no longer have to get involved in International travel but I always found that on West-to-East jetlag, forcing myself out of bed and walking around the new location for a couple of hours worked wonders. East-to-West jetlag was effectively a long lie-in.
  13. I thought this was mostly straightforward, with the odd tricky one, and the odd wrong entry causing disproportionate problems.
    My first entry of PICK AXE for 1a made 3 and 4 impossible to get. Admittedly I didn’t see why a pickaxe might be regarded as a substandard tool. It took me ages to sort that mess out, and even getting OILED I changed AXE to OUT before finally entering OFF to make sense of 4d. I also delayed entering CREAM for 5 as I didn’t realise it was a triple definition. PERSIFLAGE was vaguely familiar, and I needed that E to see what 14 must be.

    41 minutes in the end after a fairly rapid start. Certainly easier and far more enjoyable than yesterday’s

  14. Strangely, I found this relatively straightforward, and certainly much easier than yesterday’s horror, which one commentator wittily likened to trying to decipher Linear B. Quite. The old wave-length thing, I guess. No problems with ON=possible in ACONITE. PERSIFLAGE came tripping off the tongue, for no good reason I can think of, and the ANGEVIN stuff fell within my GK range. The one solution that eluded me for quite a while was EXERT at 27A where the def “to make good use of” seemed more than a bit loose.
    1. “exert one’s influence” == “make good use of one’s influence”? I did raise an eyebrow at that, but it didn’t seem too far off base.
      1. Fair point. In the example you cite, I guess “exert” has the sense of “to apply, or bring to bear” influence (on), the tacit implication being that this was done to good effect, i.e.produced the desired result. So, yes, on that basis the def passes muster.
  15. PERM for “forecast” was the main source of confusion for me in this one actually, something to do with sports I imagine? I just decided it was what you end up with if you procure the services of a psychic hairdresser and pressed on.
    1. PERM is indeed pretty obscure and I never got round to parsing it. My Chambers says it is short for “permutation” and is used as a transitive verb meaning “to permute: to arrange a forecast according to some defined system of combination or permutation”. Make of that what you will.
      1. The claim of obscurity for PERM does surprise me somewhat – but then perhaps it’s my age as I remember when football pools were sometimes known as “perms”.
        Also I thought the expression “perm any two from five” (for example) was pretty common.
        Then again maybe it’s the circles I frequent.
    2. You are far too young for this – but in the olden days people used to ‘perm’ a selection of results that might come up in the football pools. I still remember my dad’s great pleasure back in the 60s when he won the magnificent sum of 17/6!

      Edited at 2015-11-20 01:01 pm (UTC)

  16. I found this a lot easier than yesterday. I blame 3 hours of taking notes in shorthand at a meeting for destroying any brain cells I might have needed for crosswords.

    Lots to enjoy, I do like a bit of PERSIFLAGE. Finished in 16:35 with two lots of Tippex.

    1. I came back home last night to discover my wife had control of the TV, upon which I was forced to watch large sections of both High School Musical and High School Musical 2. Pretty sure that that sort of ordeal can severely blunt the little grey cells in the runup to midnight…
      1. Surely you can’t really say that you were ‘forced’ when more attractive options were presumably available. You could for instance have found a cupboard to shut yourself in and spent the time poking yourself in the eyes with matchsticks.
        1. If only it were so easy. Zac Efron’s sinuous movements have a hypnotic effect not unlike those of a mongoose moving in to kill a snake.
    2. An old Civil Service hand once told me that the purpose of minutes was not to record what was said. They were not even to record what was decided. They were to record what would have been decided had the participants been properly informed.
      1. In my experience the purpose of minutes is to record as little as possible. To the extent anything substantive has to be recorded, it reflects what the chairman remembers. In this context memory is a creative process.
  17. Decent enough, straightforward puzzle. Some typos in the blog V – both STIPEND and PARQUET

    1. Much obliged to you! The perils of typing in the parsings at high speed in the office when I’m meant to be getting down to some actual work…

  18. PICK OFF was slow in due to the incorrect possibility of PICK AXE
    tool being the in-operative word.NW corner thus last in.

    PERM football pools forecast.

    FOI CHEYENNE LOI MOTET!

    PERSIFLAGE COD

    (Percy Flage is young a poet I believe)

    All very Friday and certainly kinder than yesterdays PIG!

    Verlaine’s longest solve!

    horryd Shanghai

  19. 36m here and an all correct after a trying week, solving wise at least. I started slowly but as with such good puzzles once I got a few letters in then the answers came quickly. LOI was EXERT as I spent a long time removing a P from the start of a Maestro word! Grrr!

    Edited at 2015-11-20 02:13 pm (UTC)

  20. 17m. Definitely easier than yesterday’s for me, but another interesting puzzle I thought. Fortunately the wordplay for both unknowns – ACONITE and ANGEVIN – was reasonably friendly, and I was helped by seeing the snooker equivalence for ‘on’ mentioned by pootle. I didn’t understand PERM but I biffed PER DIEM on the basis of the definition and checkers so the not understanding only happened post-solve. My last in was WHISTLER, once I let go of the idea that chess was involved somehow.

    Edited at 2015-11-20 02:28 pm (UTC)

  21. A double first for me!
    First time I’ve ever managed to complete a Friday puzzle (they seem much harder to me than the Monday ones). Also managed to do it in 45 minutes – which is super-quick by my humble standards.
    First time that I’ve solved a clue (like 10a) containing a reference to the answer of another clue (like 21d) – before solving that other clue (21d) first.

    My only gripe was 1a – which I initially answered as ‘pick out’ rather than ‘pick off’ – until solving 4d showed me the error of my ways. I had paid too much attention to “identify” rather than to “substandard” 🙁

  22. About 30 minutes, ending with ACONITE. Everything else went in without great trouble, although not particularly quickly. I knew of the Angevins from their dynasty (Didn’t I? Is that correct?). I’m impressed by all your native UK knowledge of the Amerindian tribes. I’d have thought CHEYENNE would be difficult for some. Regards.
    1. For oldie Brits of a certain vintage and inclination this was well within our GK as it was the title of a long-running US TV Western series (starring Clint Walker) that ran from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Also the tribe featured in the titles of various feature films. I recall it took a while for those here who had not encountered the name before to stop pronouncing it Chay-enn though.
      1. Thanks Jack. In fact, we Americans get our knowledge of the identity of native tribes from TV and old westerns too.
  23. Those who think cross-referencing in clues is a bit tricksy had better avoid puzzles in the Sydney Morning Herald set by “D.A.” – David Astle.

    Like Sotira, I KNEAD to lern how to spel.
    Thanks for the blog, Verlaine. I kneaded an explanation of PER DIEM, in particular.
    Something of a French thread today with Ney, Angevin, Parquet and Lionheart.
    TST of 1hr 8m 24s.

    Edited at 2015-11-20 04:57 pm (UTC)

  24. 20 mins. It was a typical Friday solve for me, inasmuch as I started to drift off towards the end and probably spent at least three minutes on my last two, which were the PICK OFF and PER DIEM crossers. I didn’t have anywhere near as much trouble with ACONITE as some of you seem to have had.
  25. Agree with Melrose Mike and Cryptic Sue, easier than yesterday’s and most enjoyable. Once again tackled late in the day after a most memorable lunch and sleepy grey cells, but this time managed to tune in to the wavelength. ACONITE was an early entry, as was PERSIFLAGE, but took me an age to get the right painter and both homophones. 30 minutes or so.
    More of the usual entertaining persiflage please, Verlaine, house guests or no.
  26. Enjoyable challenge; not much to add other than my initial stab at the painter was the well-known Russian modernist CHESSNIK, and once I got on the right track, I thought the ref’s WHISTLE marked the end of the game, so I wasn’t entirely sure about R=relative. All safely explained in the end, then.
  27. A few answers went in unparsed, but at least I managed all correct for a change.
    Thanks to Verlaine for the explanations.
  28. 10:00 for me, finding this one a lot easier than yesterday’s.

    I’m not a great fan of cross-references in puzzles, and made particularly heavy weather of “9, 10 repelled” in 3dn, assuming that “10 repelled” yielded OI, but then wasting ages trying to work out where the LED came from. In the end I biffed OILED (but still just missed breaking 10 minutes, dammit!) and only twigged what was going on some time later.

    Apart from that, I seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength.

  29. Well, here I am in what I still consider to be Friday evening. No idea of the time, but in this case a calendar would have been more useful than the timer. Got there in the end, but only just.

    PERSIFLAGE was my first NHO, or perhaps it was lying in a boarded-up corner of my memory because it sounded right before I’d figured out that “perse” was “per se”. My other NHO was ANGEVIN.

    I failed to parse a few, but I always feel that it’s a better clue if the parsing jumps out at me and makes me slap my forehead in realization. Better yet, of course, are those rare clues where the parsing actually points me in the direction of the answer, rather than vice versa.

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