Times 26,267: {N}emesis

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A short, sweet and late blog from me again this week, as I managed to poison myself last night (dodgy 22dn may have been involved) so I’ve spent much of the morning tossing my 3dns, wishing that I could get 15dn from looking after kids, and finding everything 13ac really. Going to go 4dn straightway. Just under 9 minutes to finish this one, so could definitely have been worse for one in my tender condition on a Friday morning. So thanks to the setter for a very fine puzzle, and hope to have recovered by the 5th Dec that I can be in the pub to be berated sternly for repeated dereliction of duty, as I so richly deserve! Now if you’ll excuse me I have a sickbed to stagger back to…

Across
1 SCAFFOLDER – one who’s got to SOLDER [to join metal parts] outside CAFF [bistro], semi-&lit
6 SCAB – unpopular person with Union: A.B. [Jack] being led by S.C. [special constable]
9 NUT TREE – hazel maybe: NUTTE{r} [“tailed” lunatic] going round RE [about]
10 AGAINST – not for: GAIN [profit] in A ST [a | way]
12 SADHU – holy man: (HAD US*) [“excited”]
13 A BIT THICK – unreasonable: A [article] + BIT [pinched] + THICK [description of thieves perhaps (“thick as…”)]
14 ON SPEAKING TERMS – friendly: one mum not so, i.e. “one who is silent is not this”
17 MUCH OF A MUCHNESS – more or less equal: (CHANCE OF US MUMS*) [“somehow”] catching H [husband]
20 WELL KNOWN – familiar: WELL [gracious!] + K{i}N{d} [“regularly”] + OWN [personal]
21 NAPPE – sheet of rock: NAPPE{d} [dropped off “when cut at the end”]
23 TEA LEAF – burglar: (FATE*) [“awful”] after pinching ALE [beer]
24 REIGNED – was number one: homophone of RAINED [dropped “when heard on radio”]
25 HEED – mind: HE{al}ED [better “no longer to have A L{iberal}”]
26 TYPESETTER – ex-Times employee: TYPE [kind] + SETTER [fellow responsible for this puzzle]

Down
1 SANDSTORM – howler affecting visibility: ST [a way] in SAN DORM [hospital | bedroom]
2 ACTED – did something: {ex}ACTED [demanded “after departure of old partner”]
3 FORTUNE COOKIE – biscuit with something in it: FORTUNE [killing, perhaps (as in “make a fortune”)] + COOK [doctor] + I.E. [that is]
4 LIE BACK – rest: and to “respond to storyteller in kind” would be to lie back to him
5 EVASION – fencing: EVA’S [girl’s] over IO [the moon] + N [new]
7 CONCIERGE – caretaker: (RECCEING O{ld}*) [“ruins”]
8 BATIK – design method: B.A. [graduate] + reverse of KIT [“brought up” equipment]
11 A STITCH IN TIME – prompt repair: AS TITCH IN TIME [like | little chap | home | bird]
15 SICK LEAVE – when working well? on the contrary: SICKLE AVE [old farm tool | welcome]
16 SUSPENDER – band: US [American] appearing in SPENDER [English poet (Stephen)]
18 ALOOFLY – in a way cold: A FLY [a | wing] containing LOO [the smallest room]
19 UNNERVE – rattle: “coming from” {machine-g}UNNER VE{rifiably}
20 WITCH – hexing one: {s}WITCH [trade “bans S{ucceeded}]
22 PINOT – winemaker: reverse of TO NIP [“turning” to | a little Scotch]

39 comments on “Times 26,267: {N}emesis”

  1. Too much for me. Completely foxed by 25a and 20d. Struggled with 5d 18d. Liked 1a.
    Looked at the blog for Club Monthly 20182 and was glad I never bothered.
  2. 11m. A very steady solve for me, never getting stuck and no unknowns, even if NAPPE isn’t exactly everyday vocabulary. Very nice puzzle.
    Get well soon, Verlaine. I have always thought it outrageous that children do not respect the right to customary 15dn. Perhaps we should form a union.

    Edited at 2015-11-27 10:30 am (UTC)

    1. No more parenting in the evenings or weekends unless the recompense rate is at *least* time-and-a-half!
  3. 19:25. I really enjoyed this. Some lovely surfaces and misdirections. Getting the long across clues got me going. Didn’t we have A BIT THICK recently? NAPPE and SADHU were unknown, but clear from the checkers and wordplay. Plenty of clues that made me smile to choose from as favourites – I think I liked the crossing 15d and 23a best.
    1. SADHU is one of those words that I don’t think I’ve ever come across outside of crosswords, but which I come across in crosswords several times a year – as I think someone else implied below too!
      1. It vaguely rang a bell. So I checked – 3rd time this year, appearing also on Jan 22nd and April 2nd. It’s about time I looked up what it means. Apparently “Although the vast majority of sādhus are yogīs, not all yogīs are sādhus.” I’m guessing that Yogi Bear is one of those who aren’t.
  4. 13:30 … different, and a bit Yoda-ish in places, but fun.

    I count “in a way” three times in the clues.


  5. A decent time for a Friday 21 mins – It just filled in from the

    top down.FOI 7dn CONCIERGE

    LOI 20dn WITCH

    23 ac TEA LEAF is CRS for thief – not burglar per se.

    Thanks to setter – and the late blogger!Stagger on dude!

    horryd Shanghai

  6. 25 minutes of gentle Friday solve which I enjoyed. Much of a muchness looks strange written down. Thanks V and setter.
  7. 25 minutes, so one of the easier ones this week, but enhanced by a lot of witty clues. Much of the time I was solving from checkers and working out the wordplay afterwards. Last solves were 15 and 25, the latter taking me a while to work out the wordplay after assuming the answer must be HEED.
  8. I feel humbled by you all as I staggered to a 50 minuter with this one.
    The NW corner held me up most with 2d surprisingly the LOI. Quite a neat puzzle though, with my COD 6a for the nice concatenation of Union Jack.
  9. Only a moment or two over my 30 minute target so this counts as success considering the problems I had finding my first answer. NAPPE was my only unknown today but aided by wordplay and checkers the clue gave me no trouble when I came to it.
  10. Having failed dismerably on yesterday’s, this one was a relative breeze. NAPPE was my only unknown, but it was inevitable from the checkers and wordplay. Also, I knew “knapping” (as in the shaping of flint tools), and decided wrongly that it was spelled “napping”, thereby justifying a nappe as a layer of stone. SADHU was remembered from previous crossword encounters.

    Failed to parse HEED, but a quick zip through the alphabet suggested that there was no viable alternative.

    Edited at 2015-11-27 11:59 am (UTC)

    1. Oh yes, HEED (my LOI) was a so-and-so to parse but I was convinced my answer had to be right and I saved my concerns until after I stopped the clock.

      Edited at 2015-11-27 10:48 pm (UTC)

  11. By Friday standards, relatively straightforward. Some first-class, and unusual, wordplay, of which A BIT THICK, ON SPEAKING TERMS, SANDSTORM and FORTUNE COOKIE were the stand-out examples for me. NAPPE unknown but clear enough from the cryptic indicators. For some mysterious reason the parsing of NUT TREE eluded me. Thanks to Verlaine for the explanation.
  12. Nice way to finish the week. COD…I’ll pick the SCAB.

    Thanks setter and get well soon Verlaine. You probably will.

  13. I treated this as a Friday tricky and shambled through in just under 24.The one that puzzled me was SUSPENDER: not the wordplay (easy) but the definition. I can see the two words kind of waving at each other across a crowded room, but only as people who think they recognise each other and are probably wrong. Does one support ones socks with bands? Do Americans support their pants (sic) with bands? Why do New York firemen wear red bands? And (gulp) darling, your bands are showing. Clearly I am giving everyone the opportunity to show me how stupid I am, but I don’t mind. Not in the interests of clarity.
    Just please don’t post pictures.

    Edited at 2015-11-27 02:11 pm (UTC)

    1. I just checked on Spotify and there obviously is an artist called Suspender… not to mention Slapping Suspenders, Thee Suspenders, Suspenders, The Suspender, Suspender Defenders, Suspended and more. Pretty sure none of these were what the setter had in mind, mind you.
  15. An enjoyable Friday puzzle which would have been better if I had not animadvertently stuck in HEEL, on the basis that a Liberal was needed somewhere. Like others a bit confused by SUSPENDER. 18:26 with the mistake.

    Edited at 2015-11-27 02:30 pm (UTC)

  16. Verlaine, if you tell me that in your tired and emotional state, staring at the Armitage Shanks and looking after the kids, you managed to solve in 9 minutes, blog AND make reference to 20a in the QC, you should be entered into the pantheon ( whatever that is? I’m not a classicist).
    1. The Pantheon is an almost 2000 year-old building in Rome with a huge (deliberate) hole in the roof into which rain falls. A sad place to assign the venerated Verlaine., especially in his state. Or perhaps you meant the other thing.
    2. Ha! The QC thing was pure serendipity. Nemesis must be laughing her head off at all this unaccustomed publicity.
    3. Your mention of (Armitage) Shanks reminds me of my schooldays when a friend of mine then who was a good 440yard and 880 yard runner but he often got pipped at the post by a lad from another school by the name of Shanks. My friend used to take out his revenge on the school urinals…
  17. 12 mins, the last two of which were spent on HEED for which I was another trying to justify an L at the end of the answer, and obviously failing miserably. I may have come across NAPPE before but I didn’t remember it so I was pleased the wordplay was so helpful.
  18. I’m going crazy trying to figure out where the title of the blog comes from.

    Edited at 2015-11-27 06:33 pm (UTC)

    1. I would look up EMESIS.

      It’s a bit like if you omit the V from vomit you get ….omit. Perhaps not.

      1. Thanks. The reference that totally eludes me is “QC.” Which apparently has something to do with someone named “Nemesis.”
        Oh, well…
        1. Oh, here I guess that is the QC. As an American online Crossword Club member, I haven’t taken the trouble to figure out if I can find those. (For the main cryptic, I copy the html and image and paste them into my own template to print.) It is odd, though, that this doesn’t appear on the club page.
        2. Sorry! I misunderstood your query.
          We were referring to 20a in the Quick Cryptic. The answer was Nemesis. Hence my praise of Verlaine’s seemingly endless talents.
  20. 47m today so a bit of a struggle but an enjoyable one. Thanks, V, for the blog especially in the circumstances. LOI was NAPPE as I was fixated with NODDE – just as likely to the ignorant – which meant I spent an age trying to get a wine out of D-N-T. Grrr! 1-0 to the setter. I’m sure Jimbo has explained how to avoid a mistaken fixation but if so I didn’t remember it! I did like HEED especially.
  21. 10:32 for me, making heavy weather of some easy clues (again), leaving me feeling old and slow (again).

    Some nice clues, but some of the definitions seem a bit strained – in particular “band” for SUSPENDER, which like others I still don’t get.

    I can’t remember where I first came across SADHU with that spelling (I almost certainly first encountered SADDHU in Kim), but it could be any of a number of novels set in India. (On edit: I’ve just had a quick flick through Ruth Prawar Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust as I was almost certain I’d seen SADHU there – and I had. Worth a read if you haven’t come across the book before.)

    Edited at 2015-11-27 11:25 pm (UTC)

  22. Solved in bits and pieces, ending in early morning Saturday. Excellent puzzle. Belated sympathy to Verlaine – just look forward to the time when you can get your own back by embarrassing the kids, as I do.
  23. As someone new to the 15×15, I could do with some more help!

    1d: Why is hospital SAN?
    6a: Jack = AB?
    11d: Bird = TIME?

    1. SAN The first question I ever asked on this blog; short for SANATARIUM (sp?)
      AB: able-bodied seaman
      Bird= UK slang, evidently, for time served in prison

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