Times 26,294

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Exactly the sort of puzzle I found I wanted at this point in the holiday season. Just taxing enough to stimulate the jaded appetite, but didn’t outstay its welcome like a lot of the food which is now cluttering up my fridge. To use another analogy, it was like good flat-pack furniture; everything was there when you looked for it and the whole thing held together solidly. Better still, it didn’t end up with me swearing at the instructions and finding some vital component had ended up back to front.

Across
1 JITTERBUG – J{ack}, {L}ITTERBUG.
6 ANVIL – V{izsla} in ANIL. One of those which turns out to be easier than it first seems, as you don’t even need to know that a vizsla is a dog, or be totally familiar with Caribbean botany, as there aren’t many bones in the human body to begin with, let alone ones with a V in the middle.
9 ORBIT – (BRO)rev., IT{alian}.
10 SOUTHERLY – R{ight} and L{eft} in Robert SOUTHEY, Poet Laureate immediately before his friend Wordsworth.
11 ANEMONE – E{mploying}, NO MEN(i.e. only women) A, all reversed.
12 EARLIER – EARL, I(electrical current in scientific notation), and Her Majesty E.R. The 9th Earl Emsworth is the pig-keeping master of Blandings Castle familiar to all fans of PG Wodehouse, though again, you don’t need to know the details to solve the clue.
13 DIESEL-ELECTRIC – DI and ERIC are the girl and boy, with E{uropean} L{ake} inside SELECT nested inside them.
17 PLATINUM BLONDE – (L{etting}INOLDMENATPUB)*.
21 PIGSKIN – S{on} in PIG KIN. One that Lord Emsworth would spot instantly, though his prize sow was a Berkshire rather than a Tamworth.
23 EQUABLE – EQU{IT}ABLE minus the IT.
25 ENTRECHAT – CH{urch} in ENTREAT. A ballet jump involving crossing the feet rapidly while off the ground.
26 INTRO – R{ight} in INTO.
27 DINED – hidden in deviseD IN EDinburgh.
28 PROSELYTE – PROSE “LIGHT”.
 
Down
1 JEOPARDY – JE (“I” in Paris), OP{us} A RD. Y.
2 TABLE – {S}TABLE minus the S{mall}.
3 EXTROVERT – EX(=former), ROVER in T,T.
4 BESIEGE – B{lack}, then I{sle} in (GEESE)*.
5 GRUYERE – R{iver} in GUY ERE.
6 ABHOR – A B(=second-rate) H{ospital} OR=Other Ranks=”men” as opposed to officers.
7 VERMILION – (REV)rev. + “MILLION”
8 LAYERS – double def. The botanical one (a layer is a shoot which goes off to root itself and form a new plant) is one of those gardening terms I have learned from long exposure to crosswords.
14 ENLIGHTEN – LIGHT inside a doubled-up E{nglish} N(knight in chess notation).
15 TELLURITE – (William) TELL, then [IT in URE]. This one came entirely from wordplay, as my knowledge of salts and other compounds is limited, but this certainly looked right. “IT” (short for Italian vermouth) belongs on the very specialised Crosswordland wine list, along with tent and sack.
16 PENELOPE – PEN(=writer), ELOPE(=run off with).
18 NUNSHIP – {captai}N, UNSHIP.
19 MAESTRO – A ‘E’ in (STORM)*.
20 SPREAD – [P{ressure} R.E.] in SAD.
22 KNEAD =”need”. What would Christmas be without the traditional chestnuts?
24 BOTHY – [T{emperature}, H{appy}] in BOY.

31 comments on “Times 26,294”

  1. Mon Dieu! Je suis une idiot avec une memory comme une passoire.

    Sub-10 but with une répétition de mon erreur du 20 novembre. http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/1420552.html

    Still KNEED to engage cerveau before solving. A glance at the one-error leaderboard suggests I may not be alone. Come on, hands up ….

    p.s. forgot to say thanks, Tim, for clarifying the pig breed thing at 21a. I assumed it was another Wodehouse reference and wondered if there was a minitheme going over my head (never quite got round to Wodehouse). Fun puzzle, anyway.

    Edited at 2015-12-29 12:58 pm (UTC)

  2. More than one of us on the Club Board may have had “tellurIDe” which looked all right but didn’t parse because since when was ID a wine. I also suspect I may have been thinking of Telluride Colorado where Robert Redford hangs out and has a film festival (no I’ve never been invited). Other than that pesky mistake I took just over 15 minutes.

    Edited at 2015-12-29 12:34 pm (UTC)

  3. Very straightforward today, with nothing to stump me as yesterday. I didn’t have a lot spare time so very pleased to finish in 25 minutes. Pretty standard fare. I thought 22d was a bit unoriginal.
  4. 20 minutes, steady solve, no issues, was tempted with TELLURIDE but realised it needed IT to parse; remembered the salt potassium tellurite K2TeO3 which is used with agar to culture and detect some bacteria.
    Thanks for the botanical explanation of LAYER.
  5. I fully echo the comments about not needing a taxing puzzle today. Straightforward, no mistakes, no aids, no problems, a few wry smiles, done and dusted in 19 minutes.
    By the way, you don’t need to be a fan of PG Wodehouse to know Lord Emsworth. Personally I can’t stand the writer, although I am aware I’m in a minority.
    1. Wodehouse not my style either but he falls into that category called “Not keen personally, but by golly wasn’t he good at it?”
      Elvis Presley, Ronnie O’Sullivan ditto

      Edited at 2015-12-29 03:01 pm (UTC)

  6. 9:23 with my unknowns (equable, proselyte and tellurite) gettable from wordplay as Tim suggests.
  7. Much more gentle than yesterday though with enough uncommon words – ENTRECHAT, PROSELYTE, TELLURITE (I didn’t know ‘IT’ for Italian vermouth) and NUNSHIP to keep up the interest level. Favourites were PLATINUM BLONDE and VERMILION.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  8. 32 minutes, so within my target, even though I wasted time trying to shoehorn HEN into 11 across, and trying to invent a new piece of IKEA furniture at 2 down, the Robut.

    Poor old Robert Southey is probably best known these days not for anything he penned but for being the butt of Byron’s not inconsiderable humour, first featuring largely in the Dedication to the magnificent ‘Don Juan’ (as the ‘epic renegade’, among other things – his anti-monarchical revolutionary youth swiftly segued into Toryism) and then having a whole poem, ‘The Vision of Judgment’, written as a satire on his ‘A Vision of Judgement’.

    1. Byron took offence at what was most likely a misunderstanding on his part. Southey seems to have been quite feisty so it is not totally clear. But since Southey was Poet Laureate and author of some pretty seminal works, it seems a bit hard to sum him up that way…
  9. I thought this a top class crossword, and actually took the trouble to solve it earlier than usual just so that I can come and point out how excellent 23ac and 16dn (among others) are. Champions’ league setting, that.
  10. Likewise tellurite entirely from wordplay, having had the crosswordland use of it for wine explained previously in a blog here. Also didn’t know the botanical definition for layers, so thanks for that, though it couldn’t have been anything else. Very pleased to come in at 25 minutes.
  11. Pick a country…check it produces wine… choose your length of prefix…put it in the clue to make it work. I’m sure experts will say IT is an acceptable convention but frankly it’s this stuff that just puts you off.
    Alan
    1. I’ve come across a gin & it in the real world so I’d say your dig was totally unfounded.
      2. Me too seen and heard in the real world. Plus I drink it gleefully.

        Edited at 2015-12-29 07:41 pm (UTC)

  12. 30m today – no errors but a lucky guess for the salt which I would never have parsed though I’m sure IT has come up before. Good blog and puzzle today so thanks all round.
  13. Just back from DJ duty at our New Year Tea Dance. Solved this early this morning but had to start setting things up before blog appeared

    Enjoyed this one – not difficult but some excellent surface readings and precision cluing for the more obscure words like the salt. Good stuff.

  14. Easier to solver than to parse. DK ANIL, SOUTHEY or TELLURITE, got confused by thinking ELECT was ‘choose’ at 13ac, and NUNSHIP and PROSELYTE sat nowhere near the tip of my tongue.
  15. 10 mins. ANVIL was my FOI, its helpful checkers meant I could build out from there, and the vaguely remembered TELLURITE was my LOI after EQUABLE. I’m with those who was glad this one wasn’t a stinker.
  16. About 25 minutes, LOI was TELLURITE after realizing that ‘ID’ isn’t a wine, but that IT fit the bill. That created an unknown word to me, having very little experience with chemical salts, but it had to be. I also had no idea what a BOTHY might be, but the wordplay was unavoidable. Regards.
    1. Hi Kevin. A BOTHY is an empty building out in the wilds of the Highlands left there for people to shelter in when caught in bad weather or just weary and needing to rest

      Same idea prevails in other countries I believe

  17. Fell into the telluride trap, and didn’t parse. I assumed the town was named for local minerals. Thanks for teaching me layers, Tim. Otherwise agree with all that it was a nice neat package of a puzzle.
  18. I started slowly on the acrosses and thought this was going to be hard, but then switched to the downs which proved much easier. After that there was a lot of biffing with the odd unknown from wordplay, finishing with a couple of minutes of head scratching over 11ac. I still finished in 9 minutes so this was clearly my kind of puzzle.
  19. I thought the anvil was a small bone in the ear.

    A nice return from holidays crossword which took 35 minutes.

    TELLURITE was no problem I simply can’t believe that folk know nothing of wine (Martini) being IT short for ITALIAN. My age is showing GIN & IT was regular leg-opener when I was a lad.
    It’s what PLATINUM BLONDES drank (COD)

    horryd Shanghai

    1. There is also Gin & French (with Noilly Prat). And trivia fact of the day is that the “T” at the end of Prat is pronounced because he was an Englishman, it is not a French name
  20. I am well aware that “it” is widely described in crosswordland as a wine, but didn’t notice before submitting that I had carelessly entered -IDE.
    (I don’t normally think of vermouth as a wine, rather as a drink made from wine.)
  21. Well, I may be a day late on this one, but I’m currently in Gibraltar where it’s still 1978, so I count it as a win.

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