Times 26,291: Come As You Are, As You Were, All Ye Faithful

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Being stricken with the seasonal lurgy and requiring nothing in my stocking besides Lemsip and echinacea this year, I took this congenial puzzle at a gentle pace and only just came in inside of the double Magoo. But Christmas is no time for competition, it is for carols, crackers and community spirit. Much love to all of you, the leisurely and the infuriatingly quick alike.

FOI 11ac shortly followed by 21ac; some trickier stuff in the down clues, 3dn being the last one in being not a knot I was well acquainted with, combined with some intricate wordplay. Likewise 18dn and 19dn, didn’t know the casserole or the composer, though fortunately the required answers were all very obvious.

Ho ho ho then and an extra ho for the setter, who definitely must have been on Santa’s nice list this year. Merry Christmas one and all!

Across
1 SPLITTING – leaving: SPLIT [port] before TING [sound of bell]
6 SARUM – being in Salisbury: finding S.A. RUM [it | odd]
9 MANOR – country house: MAN O R [staff | duck | R{esponsibilities} “at first”]
10 STAGEHAND – one changing flats: (HAD AGENTS*) [“running all over the place”]
11 AMNESIA – inability to remember: (A NAME IS*) [“awkward”]
12 HUMDRUM – vanilla: HUM [smell] comes with DRUM [barrel]
13 HIP REPLACEMENT – joint operation: (HELP PAIR*) [“struggling”] + CEMENT [to fix]
17 PADDINGTON BEAR – Peruvian visitor: PADDINGTON BAR [station | pub] entertains E [east]
21 HOARDER – collector: HARDER [not so easy] to take in O [old]
23 PRODUCE – cause: PRO DUCE [in favour of | Mussolini]
25 PROXIMATE – next: PRIMATE [human, perhaps] eating OX [beef]
26 NOTED – marked: NOTE{pa}D [portable computer “father’s lost”, i.e. minus PA]
27 LEGIT – right and proper: LEG IT [run away]
28 ARTILLERY – military weapons: ILL [badly] blocking ARTERY [main road]

Down
1 SYMPATHY – compassion: SHY [chary] about reverse of TAP MY [“returning” to knock | my]
2 LINEN – fabric: LINE [range of commercial goods] with N [new]
3 TURK’S HEAD – fancy tie: TURK{i}SH [from Izmir, say – “not one”, i.e. minus I] + EA [each] + D [diamonds]
4 INSTALL – place ready for use: IN [home] has STALL [delay]
5 GRAPHIC – giving explicit details: (RAG*) [“dreadful”] on PHI [character of Greek] + C [clubs]
6 STEAM – old locomotives: TEAM{<-<-<-<-S} [groups “promoting society”]
7 REARRANGE – switch: REAR RANGE [behind | cooker]
8 MADAME – an address in Paris: MADAME {bovary} [Flaubert novel’s “been half written”]
14 PLAY ALONG – cooperate: PLAY A LONG [sport | article | drawn out]
15 MONSOONAL – very wet and windy: MON SOON [day | shortly] before A L [a | {squal}L’s “ending”]
16 FRIENDLY – double def of: China (i.e. China plate, mate) must be so; and, like Tonga? (Tonga being the Friendly Islands)
18 NIRVANA – sheer bliss: reverse of NAV{<-<-<-A}RIN [lamb casserole “served up” “with heart saved till last”]
19 TIPPETT – composer: TIP PET T [predict success of | favourite | “first piece of” T{alented}]
20 CHAPEL – location of altar: APE [primate] following CH [church] + L [line]
22 DRIFT – state of indecision: D [daughter] getting over RIFT [split]
24 UNTIE – free: {a}UNTIE [BBC’s “not the answer”, i.e. minus A]

25 comments on “Times 26,291: Come As You Are, As You Were, All Ye Faithful”

        1. I wasn’t ignoring you – things just got busy yesterday. What I meant was that the answer was a gerundive, as in delenda est Carthago (or agenda). Things to be noted by an observer would be notanda.
          1. Fair enough. I never saw Barra’s comment so I was roaming the crossword looking for Cato, Censor etc
  2. 31 minutes helped by biffing the long Acrosses without even reading the whole of the clue. TURK’S HEAD was my last in as I didn’t know the definition; in my vocab this is only a pub name. I think there’s one in Bath I used to use.

    Edited at 2015-12-25 12:13 pm (UTC)

    1. Mmm, me neither. I didn’t feel I could rule out the possibility that there was a Turk’s Head Diamond somewhere out there in the world…
    2. There was a Saracen’s Head in Bath for sure. Don’t remember the Turk’s head. They pulled the Saracen’s head down to build a new street which they called Saracen Street (off Broad Street).

      Just checked on Google and it still exists (the oldest pub in Bath). I forget the details, I think there mighthave been so much outcry the rerouted Saracen Street slightly around it.

      Edited at 2015-12-25 06:49 pm (UTC)

      1. Saracen’s Head. That’s right! I’m horrified if it has been knocked down. I’d have thought it was of historic interest.
  3. I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, Verlaine. Thank you for all your regular Friday insights and chuckles
  4. Same thing happened to me last year verlaine – empathy! Ditto on the Turk’s Head. 12.08
  5. I like knots, so Turks Head was a write-in. What are not write-ins are the last 4 clues in the Christmas Jumbo, all of which intersect and each of which has multiple possibilities (24/29ac – 25/28dn). Will have to get up early tomorrow!
    [on edit – all happy now, courtesy of a glass of wine, so a short lie-in tomorrow]

    Edited at 2015-12-25 08:00 pm (UTC)

  6. Hi! Reasonably new to looking at this blog (although I’ve been doing the times crossword for a good few years now). Would someone mind explaining to me what FOI stands for – I suspect something to do with the clue that one got stuck the most on. Thanks!
    2. Hi Anon,
      There are a few acronyms used here as well as FOI, such as LOI (last one in), COD (clue of the day) etc. However our distinguished member grestyman can claim the creation of BIFD (Bunged In From Definition) which has spread virally to other sites as in biffing an answer.
      By the way, there are no downsides to giving yourself a name here. You can either just add a name at the end of your message or set up an account from the very top of the page. The major advantage of doing this (apart from the rest of us knowing that something is from you rather than another anon) is that you get to be able to edit your own comments should you later decide that you have written rubbish!
      Happy Christmas.

      Edited at 2015-12-25 08:22 pm (UTC)

  9. Greater love hath no man, than that he is willing to write and post a cryptic blog on Christmas morning. Thank you Verlaine for all this voluntary effort that you put in every week throughout the year. Good luck with the lurgy.

    While I am dispensing praise, what about The Times, eh? To have a full complement of cryptic, concise, jumbo and jumbo 2 on Christmas day is beyond rubies. I am not the only one who well remembers when things were quite different.

    Must say, I thought this was a gentle offering as may be best for a day when the drinking probably starts early. I really liked 23ac, such a neat clue. And had a lot of trouble parsing 18dn, even thought the answer was clear.

    Happy Xmas to all, and especially to our esteemed crossword editors, the talented and underpaid setters, and all our bloggers and regular commenters

    Edited at 2015-12-25 09:15 pm (UTC)

  10. Commiserations on the dreaded lurgy. I hope you get well soon.

    I suspect I’d have posted a faster time than 9:22 if I hadn’t stuck with the downs into the lower half of the puzzle. I managed to solve hardly any of them first time through, but then when I switched back to the acrosses, I made short work of them all from PADDINGTON BEAR onwards.

    Another ghastly senior moment with Madame Bovary – or in fact rather more than a moment as I had to move on without being able to remember her. (Deep sigh!)

  11. Just under ten minutes for this, which I left until today because I had 22 people to feed yesterday, which didn’t really leave much time for crosswords. Or at least by the time I got the time I was no longer in a state for solving.
    I didn’t understand TURK’S HEAD: I just bunged it in from the crossers and ‘Izmir’, thinking vaguely that it might be the name of a diamond. This obviously doesn’t work at all if you think about it, but I didn’t.
    Thanks for the blog verlaine. Definitely a short straw that one!
  12. Where is this crossword? My paper was not delivered yesterday, 25 December, and according to my newsagent it was not printed for some reason. The puzzle printed today, 26 December, is numbered 26292 and the solution printed alongside is of the 24 December puzzle, 26290. So what is Verlaine talking about?
  13. Paddington Bear is close to unique in UK tax law. There are arcane rules as to where a person is ‘domiciled’ as opposed to resident for tax purposes but regardless of any apparent previous history, a ‘foundling’ is domiciled where he/she is found, ie not darkest Peru but London.
    UK people will probably have come across the tax concept of ‘non-doms’ and the tax advantages they get. Sorry Paddington.

    Edited at 2015-12-26 07:29 pm (UTC)

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