Times 26293 – A win for the setter

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This will be up in a couple of hours – depending on my ability to solve the thing, of course.

Which turned out to be prescient words, indeed, as I failed on the tricky 5a. At least, I saw it post-submission, when I ran through all the possibilities for 6-letter words with the three letters I did have at Onelook.com.

Travails apart, I thought this was excellent fare, with a bit for everyone – archaisms, literary stuff and a bit of science. And one can never have too little of that…

I’ll be back later to tidy up the inevitable typos.

ACROSS

1. TAP-DANCE – hands up who first thought of ‘lap-dance’? Must be all those Carry Ons I’ve been watching recently. TAP + C in DANE.
5. FOSTER – not ‘bolter’. FO (‘of’ reversed – or ‘backed’; far too cunning for me) + ST[e]ER (‘ox’) without one of its e’s (delete the last letter – ‘rear’ – of ‘horse’).
10. TAKE SOME BEATING – double definition.
11. NOSTRIL – SON reversed + TRI[a]L (difficult time without – ‘unable to take’ – its ‘a’).
12. IDIOTIC – this took me an age too, somewhat self-referentially, some might say. IDIO[ma]TIC (‘of colloquial speakers’) without its MA. I won’t begin to go into the places I visited.
13. CALAMARI – MAR in CALAI[s].
15. AVOID – this also took me the longest time. DIVA reversed around O[pera].
18. REFIT – REF (‘man dressed in black often’ – even when they dress in pink or blue, they don’t look as ridiculous as Norwich City in their away strip) + IT.
20. BANISTER – IS in BANTER (beloved of this site, and soon, I fear, to be directed in my direction…)
23. MEERKAT – the French, the Russians and the Chinese all tried to bring it about – if you believe the propaganda – but only the Meerkats of the mammals have achieved the classless society and made it work for centuries. ARK ‘at sea’ – ie an anagram – thus RKA enters MEET (‘suitable’ – as in the King James Version of the Bible, ‘meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light’) and not vice-versa.
25. RUN OVER.
26. ROBIN GOODFELLOW – for years I thought this was merely the name of a bloke who gave racing tips – in the Express, was it? – but he turns out to have a longer pedigree as a sprite, demon, fairy , fey. You pays your money…It’s an anagram* of ID FOLLOW OBERON and G[race].
27. NOWISE – NOSE around WI.
28. PREMIERE – REM (‘rapid eye movement’) in PI (‘very good’) followed by ERE (‘before’).

DOWN

1. TITANS – TIT[i]ANS.
2. PIKESTAFF – ‘man’ in the verbal sense.
3. AUSTRIA – [f]AUST + AIR reversed.
4. CAMEL – CAME + L (learner driver).
6. OCARINA – this took me ages, as I was fixated with ‘pit’. CARIN[g] in the outer letters of O[rchestr]A.
7. TWIST – and another in the north-east to hold me up inordinately. Double definition, and nothing whatever to do with Brian…
8. REGICIDE – another that had me tearing out what little hair I have left. A cryptic definition, and a very good one. Well, it would have to be to trip me up in the form I’m in…
9. OBSIDIAN – yet another one I struggle with like Jacob with his angel. At least I was on the right trail – the word is just not one I use very often. It’s an anagram of BANDS + I + O + I.
14. AMBITION – the definition is ‘aim’, and the wordplay is AM (‘live’, as in ‘Cogito ergo sum’) + BIT (‘extract’) + I + ON (‘broadcast’).
16. OVERVALUE – A REVUE + LOV[e]*.
17. TRIMARAN – ‘boat’; TRIM (‘edging’) + A (‘ahead initially’) + RAN (‘raced’).
19. TAKINGS – TA + KINGS.
21. SUNBEAM – ‘ray’; I may be missing something here, as I can see the rafter – BEAM – and the ‘S[ubmerged] at the outset’ – S – (I think), but that leaves UN. There must be more to it than ‘a rafter, almost’ being UN BEAM in Franglais, so I await the correct parsing with interest and trepidation…Thanks to Jim and others: the correct parsing is BEAM preceded by (‘at the outset’) SUN[k] (‘almost submerged’).
22. DROWSE – DOWSE (to walk around with a forked stick and wait for it to tremble – you could be waiting a long time unless you’ve got the shakes) around R.
24. ELBOW – ‘jog’; WO[b]BLE reversed.
25. RADAR – RR (‘Right Reverend’) around (‘grasping’) ADA (‘high-level computer programming language used chiefly in real-time computerized control systems, e.g. for aircraft navigation’ – named after Ada Lovelace, the brilliant daughter of Lord Byron and his wife of a year, the almost equally brilliant Anne Isabella Milbanke).

35 comments on “Times 26293 – A win for the setter”

  1. Pretty hard going for me with a few guesses, including 26a. OCARINA was also in the Indy today. Does such an instrument really exist outside the confines of crossword-land I wonder? Plenty of excellent clues eg TRIMARAN and AMBITION, though COD for me was REGICIDE, with FOSTER as LOI.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    1. Got called away before I could reassure you that the OCARINA is real, one of the oldest musical instruments, a type of flute. I once owned a plastic one!
    2. Playing an ocarina is like blowing into a small hamburger, with the fingers covering holes on the top. Mine are made of clay.
    3. Thank you to dorsetjimbo and bigtone53 (I like the BC) for taking the trouble to reply. Where I come from an ‘ockerina’ (yes, different spelling, same pronunciation) is an ocker’s female counterpart, ie “a boorish or aggressive Australian female (especially as a stereotype)”. The words “crass” and “vulgar” also get an airing. Not exactly a clay or plastic flute!
      Thanks again.
              1. Question : What is 2 + 2 ?

                Mathematician : 4
                Engineer : between 3.97 and 4.03 on my slide rule
                Accountant : What figure did you have in mind?

    4. Pottery Ocarinas are offered at many a tacky ‘craft market’ in Australia, mostly made in China and decorated with inappropriate “aboriginal” dot designs.
  2. 21D is SUN(k)-BEAM

    Easy puzzle on a day when something a bit more taxing is required. Not sure that SON and “youngster” quite gel – mine is nearly 50. Good to see ADA used in a Times clue

  3. SUNBEAM is “almost submerged at the outset” SUNk

    I struggled for ages with the same trio of TWIST, FOSTER and REGICIDE. But OCARINA was one of my first in so at least I had a toehold.

  6. Came unstuck in that tricky NE corner, where TWIST took ages to see before a satisfying penny-drop moment, then FOSTER never happened at all. I got myself tied up in knots before concluding it was ZOSTER; anyone who plays Scrabble seriously enough to know the 2-letter words will see where ZO came from, but it doesn’t hang together in a way that should have convinced me for more than five seconds. It just goes to show that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or perhaps that knowing too many things can confuse a simple man.
  7. A DNF for me and I would never have got the missing 5ac/7dn combination if I had looked at it for a decade. O Twist a hero ?? Still, we have a Bank Holiday Jumbo and the two long ones are write-ins so hopefully looking good.
  8. I was nearer to the blogger’s solving time than to Jimbo’s but just scraped in under the hour. Robin Goodfellow comes up in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I believe as an alternative name for Puck. Hence the Oberon reference – he was a king of the fairies.

    Edited at 2015-12-28 11:46 am (UTC)

  9. Thirty minutes, but I gave up with 5a and left it unfilled. Thought it might be CO-STAR. I found the rest fairly straightforward.
  10. I’ve never heard of Ada in that context but R_D_R leaves little to the imagination.

    I was held up by having MUSKRAT at 23 for a while until I twigged ELBOW. My acquaintance with “meet” with that meaning is non-biblical:

    “The mountain sheep are sweeter,
    But the valley sheep are fatter;
    We therefore deemed it meeter
    To carry off the latter.”

    The Warsong of Dinas Vawr

    Dereklam

  11. 17 mins, with the last 4 of them spent on FOSTER. I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who found it a fiendish clue. I thought I was really going to struggle with this one as I didn’t get an answer until I got to RUN OVER, but I completed the SE fairly quickly once it was in and built out from there.
  12. Mostly straightforward, but held up by FOSTER and DROWSE.

    Loved REGICIDE.

    Thanks setter and U.

  13. 23.33 with the last few on foster, which went in on a wing and a prayer. Regicide nice. Otherwise like a dance routine that lacks the sparkle somehow. Or maybe it’s me and post-Christmas.
  14. ….did for me as well. After several minutes running through the alphabet I plumped for footer. Thanks for the explanation.
  15. Took me a long time to solve any of these clues (FOI Sunbeam). Steadyish solve thereafter. Didn’t understand Ambition so thanks ulaca for teasing that one apart. LOI Foster – an inspired guess. Came here to understand it after iPad confirmed correct.
  16. Defeted by 5ac too, putting in BOXTER in despair after 5 of my 32 minutes failing to work it out. I liked 8d.
  17. I put this down after 25 minutes with the NE unfinished. When I returned I saw IDIOTIC, REGICIDE and AVOID right off, TWIST (clever) took longer. FOSTER was my LOI. I confess it was a straight biff, I never saw the parsing, so thanks for that. Regards.
  18. Thanks for the explanation of ADA, ulaca. That was very informative. REGICIDE put me in mind of Stephen Fry’s Uxbridge English Dictionary definition of ‘countryside’. 52m 16s true solving time.
  19. A tough puzzle for me, too. I was pleased to see RR instead of B for His Excellency. I think of steers and oxen as different – steers get it young, oxen have to wait – but even if I’d made that connection I would not have got the answer. Thanks to both setter and blogger.
  20. 15m. By the time I got to this it was late in the day and I’d had a glass or three of wine. Normally I wouldn’t try solving under these circumstances, but I thought I’d give it a whirl this evening and for some reason alcohol didn’t have its usual effect. Perhaps the loosening of the mental machinery helped with the otherwise tricky FOSTER, REGICIDE and TWIST, each of which I saw quickly. Perhaps being mildly squiffy and listening to Beethoven piano sonatas is my ideal solving state (must try it again some time). In any event, I enjoyed the puzzle a lot, and as well as REGICIDE (for elegance) and FOSTER (for trickiness) I loved 26ac for making the English Lit. student in me feel vaguely knowledgable about something.
    Cheers!
  21. 11:29 for me after another ridiculously slow start. I eventually got going after I switched to the down clues and plodded steadily through thereafter. Although 5ac was my LOI, I twigged it reasonably quickly.

    A pleasant solve to start the week.

  22. 13:55 … clearly one of those puzzles where you either saw things straight off or hardly saw them at all. I must have been in the former camp, with FOSTER going straight in and ROBIN GOODFELLOW, I’ll admit, being biffed from the enumeration and ‘Oberon’, with barely a glance at the anagram fodder.

    I’m with Tony — a pleasant solve.

  23. 11:12 with quite a lot of biffing (premiere, calamari, Austria, ambition, RG).

    LOI foster once I saw what “back of” had to be.

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