Times 26,309: Clue Rush Fever At The O.K. Tea Rooms

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Better make this snappy, as due to being out at the Lumiere Light Festival till late last night and dealing with lugubrious juvenile nosebleeds this morning, I find myself writing this at work, where it is at least rumoured that there are other things I ought to be doing.

This was probably not the genre of crossword I am most predisposed to enjoy, it being full of cricket references, which go straight over my head like a yorker, or do I mean a googly, bowled by a silly mid-on somewhere between third and fourth base. An unusual preponderance of double definitions and quite straightforward anagrams too, plus I got lost in musings about whether LADDETTE mightn’t be more correctly LADETTE (though of course both are completely reasonable). I was probably a little bit annoyed about having to do this on the wife’s unfamiliar Chromebook due to guests turfing me out of the guest bedroom/computer room, which combined with my native dull-wittedness kept my time down to a sluggish 12 minutes or so.

Objectively though by morning light it looks like a very nice crossword, thanks to the setter! COD to 28ac for the preposterous scenario described in the surface. Turn down a single drink, shame on you, turn down a double, shame on me, as the Verlaine family motto goes…

Across
1 BUNFIGHT – function, ironically: Spoonerism of FUN BITE [convivial | snack “for Spooner”]
5 FALL TO – start: FALL [transatlantic season] + homophone of TWO [“on air”]
10 CONTEMPT OF COURT – double def of: (something) racket abuse at Wimbledon could be / custodial offence
11 REFRACTORY – wilful: FRA [brother coming from Italy] in RECTORY [priest’s place]
13 EDGE – double def of: boundary / (something) no cricketer wants to get
15 MILKING – double def of: taking advantage of / regular parlour work
17 TENDRIL – climber’s part: TEN [five couples] + homophone of DRILL [“in audition” rehearse]
18 ENHANCE – make better: {p}ENANCE [atonement “heading off”] astride H [horse]
19 PLECTRA – essentials for plucky players: P [power] + (CARTEL*) [“arranged”]
21 PILE – double def of: feature of Axminster / edifice
22 INDUCEMENT – encouragement: IN DU CEMENT [fashionable | of the “French” | to stick together]
25 AT CLOSE QUARTERS – tightly packed: AT CLOSE [when stumps are drawn] + QUARTER’S [billet’s]
27 NEEDED – called for: ED ED [two pressment] after }{o}NE [one “has kicked over”, i.e. gotten rid of an O]
28 BLUDGEON – club: (DOUBLE G{i}N*) [“free” … “I refused”, i.e. minus an I]

Down
1 BUCKRAM – stiffener: BUCK RAM [a couple of males] meeting
2 NAN – family member: admitted to {preg}NAN{cy}
3 ITERATIONS – repeats: IT E RATIONS [Italian | {syndicat}E “finally” | restricts]
4 HOP IT – leave: OP [work] during HIT [strike]
6 ARCH – leading: ARCH{ive} [chronicle “I’ve overlooked”]
7 LAUNDERETTE – service outlet: LA{DD->UNDER}ETTE [tomboy “has down for days”, i.e. UNDER instead of a DD]
8 OATMEAL – basic food: (MAO ET AL*) [“cooked”]
9 DOORSTEP – threshold: reverse of PETS ROOD [“lifting” spoils | cross]
12 FILTHY LUCRE – income: FILTHY LURE [pornographic | attraction], C [clubs] introduced
14 UNDETERRED – stalwart: ERRED [slipped] after ({s}TUDEN{t}*) [“peeled” “bananas”]
16 GUERNSEY – island: (RYE GENUS*) [“flourishing”]
18 EXPLAIN – demonstrate: EX (is) PLAIN could be a disparaging comment on a former lover
20 ARTISAN – operative: reverse of R.A. [gunners “served up”] + TISAN{e} [“endless” brew]
23 USUAL – standard: USA L [American | liberal] adopting U [universal]
24 ROVE – wander: OVE(<—R) [“moving right (i.e. the R) to the front]
26 EWE – farm animal: {f}EWE{r} [not so many “out of bounds”]

71 comments on “Times 26,309: Clue Rush Fever At The O.K. Tea Rooms”

  1. 45 minutes and I have no idea why it took me so long. COD to 28a (as Verlaine). I am never knowingly under drunk.
  2. A nice middle-of-the-road puzzle for the end of the week in my view, all the more pleasing for actually being able to completing it a reasonable time (probably around 40 minutes, but with constant interruptions).
    Thanks Verlaine for parsing 27a – the “NE” bit defeated my modest brainpower – and 20d where to my shame I didn’t know TISANE. I must say I’m not wildly keen on Spoonerisms in clues though.
  3. 13:53. Another enjoyable puzzle to end a week of enjoyable puzzles. No absolute unknowns today, although I didn’t really know what BUCKRAM was, and now that I think about it I’ve no idea how I even knew the word. But know it I did.
    When do the puzzles normally go on the club site? I was hoping to do this before getting on my plane back to Blighty last night, but it still hadn’t appeared by about 1am London time, so I had to do it on arrival, bleary-eyed and uncaffeinated. I thought they normally went up around midnight, but then I’m usually asleep by then so I don’t really know.
    I am intrigued by your use of ‘gotten’ in 27ac, v. It’s a usage I rather like but you don’t see in English English – or at least I don’t.
    1. This puzzle was up on the stroke of midnight as far as I could tell. BUCKRAM is another of those words that you never come across in real life but turns up in crosswords all the time, usually with some variant on the irresistible “two males” wordplay.
      1. Odd. Some sort of iPad quirk perhaps (it sometimes does funny things when I try to refresh pages) or more likely user error.
        I normally know when I only know words from crosswords, and I don’t think BUCKRAM is one of those. A bit of googling suggests I probably remember it from Henry IV: Falstaff and the men in BUCKRAM suits.
      2. In real-ish life, one does come across Buck Ram, the memorably named songwriter and producer. Those of a certain age will know his work, if not the name, as he was the one responsible for the Platters’ hits like Only You and The Great Pretender.

        Edited at 2016-01-15 04:56 pm (UTC)

      3. Maybe it’s only men who think BUCKRAM only appears in crosswords. It’s familiar to anyone who’s had to suffer sewing lessons in school!
    2. …without fail in my experience. You can set your watch by it. 8am here in Perth, 7am in the winter.
  4. Thanks for sorting out NEEDED Verlaine (P.S. I gave you a shout-out on the Club Forum today – What Do The Times Mean thread). One of the dreaded cricket references – I’d completely forgotten about O as in over. On edit – I see Deezzaa was the same. I also had doubts about “plain” as a disparaging comment but it wasn’t too far-fetched. Once upon a time in the very upmarket Bloomingdales dept. store here in NYC I saw a large table with a price tag of several thousand $$ – it was labelled as a REFRACTORY table. I did like that. I forgot – 15.54

    Edited at 2016-01-15 11:39 am (UTC)

    1. My mother ( Malapropian Welsh!) once said ” she’d love a set of those reproductive tables” ! I had visions of that scene from Fantasia where Mickey Mouse is trying to stop the brushes and pails multiplying.

      Edited at 2016-01-15 11:52 am (UTC)

    2. Aw, thanks! I don’t think anyone would mistake me for anything other than a lumbering bradyon though.
  5. 23 minutes, with NEEDED my LOI not really parsed so thanks V for that. Several clues had easier answers than I was seeking at first (2d, 18d, 26d).
    Good to see the Channel Island clued 16d without reference to bovines.

    I was amused by Bloomingdales Malaprop table, Olivia. Perhaps they meant it had a high melting point.
    A fine week of 5 puzzles of similar middle difficulty and entertaining constructions. Long may it continue.

  6. Same as Olivia for the NE bit of NEEDED, and the PLAIN bit of EXPLAIN. Too clever by half.

    My wrong’un was at 9d, where I had ‘doorstop’, thinking that ‘pots’ could somehow be the ‘spoils (of war)’. Oops.

    Re ‘gotten’… my teen sons use it all the time, but it always sounds somehow wrong.

    1. But no one has a problem with “forgotten” or “misbegotten” (do they)? I am infuriatingly consistent in all things.

      I initially plumped for “doorstop” and then checked myself as I couldn’t see how it could *really* be a threshold.

      1. I was tricked by the common use of the term “doorstop interview”, which occurs as the target enters or leaves a building. But a quick google suggests this may be primarily an Australian usage.

      2. Or “ill-gotten gains”. I rather like it. I might try and adopt it, if only to make it look like I’m trying to be down with the kids and thereby embarrass mine.
    2. Janie, I think “gotten” may be an Americanism that’s gotten re-introduced to the younger set in the mother country.
      1. I’m actually the holder of an American passport (and Canadian permanent residency!), not that you’d guess it from talking to me. Gotta be true to your identity documents.
      2. This seems to be the case. People often complain about alleged Americanisms creeping into modern British English without realising how many of them began as British English at the time the Founding Fathers set sail, but fell out of favour over here while remaining commonplace the other side of the Atlantic. Shakespeare regularly uses “gotten”, and refers to the season between summer and autumn as “the fall”.

        (Though I doubt the teens who say “gotten” would explain that they are on a mission to re-introduce the proper English language of the 16th century).

        Edited at 2016-01-15 12:58 pm (UTC)

        1. Far be it from me not to side with Shakespeare!

          Plus, as Leonard Cohen so rightly almost sang ‘everybody knows the deal is rotten / Old Verlaine’s still picking “gotten” / To curl your toes’.

          Edited at 2016-01-15 12:59 pm (UTC)

          1. Funny how the pond divides and separates those of us that supposedly use the same language. I once used the (for me) common, innocent and innocuous conjunction ‘whilst’ in a piece of fiction published on-line, and received a surprising number of comments from our American cousins about how charming and unusual a word it was.
  7. 25 minutes for an unexpectedly easy puzzle. Like Verlaine cricketing references mean little to me, so I didn’t understand 13, and though I got the cricketing reference in 25, the definition seemed a bit odd.
  8. Went for DOORSTOP, as POTS for “spoils” seemed a better bet than PETS. Oh well, at least I’m in good company with Janie, Mohn and Magoo (assuming that was their error).

    Another excellent crossword, though of course it could have used more cricketing references.

    Thanks setter and Verlaine.

  9. 19:21 … I need to find a new way to say “very much enjoyed”. I liked the “kicked over” when the penny dropped. Last in GUERNSEY, a very deceptive anagram, I thought.

    Like galspray, I feel the puzzle lacked only sufficient cricket references. It’s an endlessly interesting game …. only a couple of hours ago South Africa broke one of the more pleasing records — lowest score (313) in a test innings in which every batsman reached double figures. How interesting is that?

    4. As Olivia intimates, GOTTEN is a perfectly legitimate Anglo-Saxon word with a long pedigree. Philip Sydney, Alexander Pope and Gladstone are all cited in the Shorter Oxford as having used it. The fact that it has rather fallen out of fashion this side of the pond and not the other does not make it less acceptable (cf Fall/Autumn). Anyway, we do still widely use it in the phrase “ill-gotten gains”.
  11. And almost the highest innings score without a fifty! Nice to see I’m not alone Sotira.
    1. I was willing them on to the high/low double! I don’t know why everyone doesn’t find this fascinating.
  12. A pleasant 13 minute solve to end a consistently good week of puzzles. Re: cricket, as one who did this while watching the action from Johannesburg, the more the merrier in my book. Elsewhere, at a gig I attended before Christmas, someone on stage used the word “plectra”, which made us wonder which was the correct plural, so it came to mind immediately (apparently plectrums is equally good, but I prefer this version. See also: stadia.) And I was prepared to be annoyed by the use of a manufactured Spoonerism until I spotted it, at which point I was amused instead.
    1. Talking of Leonard Cohen and his lugubrious guitar-picking style, I’ve always thought that mourning becomes plectra.

      I should probably stop here before someone tracks me down and punches me.

      Edited at 2016-01-15 01:21 pm (UTC)

      2. A recent survey of the top 50 most gloomy songs of all time failed to mention Cohen’s SUZANNE. Why?
        1. The actual content of Suzanne is not that gloomy, by L. Cohen’s standards! I mean, obviously it sounds like someone on the verge of slitting their wrists, obviously, but lyrically it’s quite positive and romantic.
        3. Does seem like something of an omission. What was number 1? I reckon Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt has got to be up there.
              1. Oof! I’ve disappeared down a lightless rabbit hole of Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades” and Manic Street Preachers’ “4st 7lb” now. Happy Friday everybody!

                Edited at 2016-01-15 03:08 pm (UTC)

    2. The only way you could be incorrect about this would be to insist that one or the other is correct or incorrect. See also ‘referendum’.
        1. I think that’s probably still classifiable as a solecism. ‘Criteria’ as a singular noun, on the other hand, seems to have followed ‘data’ into standard usage.
          1. I was thinking about those very two words a little earlier, and while I’m perfectly at ease with “data” turning into some kind of collective noun, singular “criteria” is QUITE BEYOND THE PALE.
            1. Well since you feel so strongly about it I’ve no doubt the English-speaking populace will take care not to adopt this usage.
  13. 14:32. That makes makes it a week of 5 all correct each in less than 15 minutes which must be a first.

    I’m still puzzled by 5 as I can’t think of a context where fall to means the same as start.

    I was convinced that 1d had to be something ROD, JACKROD perhaps. So convinced was I that I wrote in the ROD bit which had me thinking of the wrong sort of parlour at 15. Beauty? The sort of parlour inhabited by maids? Anyway, I gotten there in the end.

    1. “For lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted.”
      “In the meantime the other dog fell to eating his mutton.”

      Edited at 2016-01-15 02:28 pm (UTC)

      1. Thanks.

        If I had a pound for all the times I’ve fallen to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted…

    2. I’m still puzzled about the “parlour work” (milking). Am I misunderstanding the word milking, or misunderstanding the word parlour? Or do UK people milk cows inside?
      Otherwise a slowish solve, off the wavelength.
      Rob
      1. Google for “milking parlour” and you will see that (for some reason) it really is the technical term for a place where cows get milked!
  14. Very enjoyable. All done in 30 minutes except for 11ac and 14dn which I could have biffed correctly but needed the parsing to be sure of them. I also spent time thinking about 18dn where I settled for my first thought eventually (again correctly) but rated it as feeble by comparison with the other clues.
  15. 26:50. A nice steady solve to finish the week and I think I just might be getting my solving mojo back after the festive torpor.

    Thanks for the typically entertaining blog verlaine, even though it does tire me with just the thought of late night festivals and early morning children!

    1. We can do you kids and exhaustion without the festivals, and we can do you festivals and exhaustion without the kids, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you kids and festivals without the exhaustion. Exhaustion is compulsory. They’re all exhaustion, you see.
  16. Like many others, I really enjoyed this week’s offerings, and today’s was no exception. I would like to have done this whilst watching events in Jo’burg, but work commitments had gotten in the way. About 35 minutes for me, a little better than my average. I had no problem with FALL TO, and the two long ones were quickly spotted, in the case of 10 without the benefit of crossers.

    Thanks setter, blogger and editor for a fine week.

  18. Wow there’s a ton of comments here – I rather liked this one and was well on the wavelength of the setter though I didn’t see the wordplay for NEEDED and didn’t put REFRACTORY in until the bitter end because I thought it meant the opposite of wilful.
  19. I was tired when I started it, I began drifting, and I then nodded off for a while with the puzzle less than half complete, but after I woke up and downed my by then cool cup of coffee I made short work of the rest of the puzzle, so I’d like to think that I’d have halved my 27 mins had I been alert from the beginning. I seem to have this problem on a Friday more than any other day and I’m guessing it is because I’m tired at the end of the working week. Anyway, ARCH was eventually my LOI after FALL TO.

    As far as the use of “gotten” is concerned I’ve been using it more frequently of late, especially when I’m emailing American friends. I’m well aware of the history of its usage, and I’d be more than happy to see it making a comeback on this side of the pond.

  20. By the way, if Paul_in_London drops in I’ve answered your late question of yesterday on the appropriate thread.
  21. Nice finish to the week (and I don’t remember ever seeing so many comments).

    I think this was a week the crossword editor decided to prove that Mondays are not easier than other days and Fridays are not more difficult. But a great week of crosswords.

    I live in California and my experience of when the crossword is available is that a split second after my computer rolls over from 3:59 to 4pm (that’s midnight in London) it is available. Except during the annoying 3 weeks when US is on summer time and UK is not, when it is 5pm.

    I totally missed the way LAUNDERETTE worked. Funnily enough I thought of it the first time I read the clue (I think I already had the L) but it was only later when it couldn’t be anything else that I put it in.

    As regards Americanisms like “gotten” or “guess” meaning think, they often turn out to be words where English has moved on and American English has not. I still like to use “whilst” but I’ve learned not to do so. And I’m always confused by the past tense of “lie” since I say “lay” and Microsoft Word, that reliable arbiter (not!), always insists it should be “layed”.

  22. Well, I seem to have gotten more value for money out of this puzzle than most of you, since it kept me occupied for a full 53 minutes. I was definitely not on wavelength, although I did enjoy this one.

    1d was “macadam” for quite a while (working on the reasoning that macadam is the stone component of tarmacadam, making it stiff), until a few of the acrosses made it completely untenable.

    I’m with our esteemed blogger in being opposed to excessive* cricketing references, but I only spotted one (EDGE) here – where were the others?

    My only real grumble was with 1ac, but only because Spoonerisms annoy me, along with cockneyisms – they both seem a bit ‘ackneyed. Other than that, a grand Friday puzzle.

  23. For some reason, I managed to post the above comment as anonymous user.

    Oh, and in case you were wondering:

    (*>0)

    1. Thud, the other cricketing references were “When stumps are drawn” and the use of “over” to clue “o” at 27ac.

      I’m with you on Spoonerisms, although as Tim suggests above they’re much more fun after you’ve cracked them.

  24. I had a slightly better day today, with no particular hold-ups, and so managed to break 10 minutes (9:29 to be precise) for the first time this week.

    Another most enjoyable puzzle. Like Sotira, I was particularly taken with “one’s kicked over”.

    Although no expert on cricket, I had no real problem with either 13ac (EDGE) or with “Indian cricketer(5,3)” in today’s T2 Concise. However, I’d me grateful if a real expert could tell me if “edge” can ever apply to a successful shot, e.g. one in which the batsman accidentally deflects the ball between 1st and 2nd slip and it goes for a four? Or is a successful edge called something else (a “glance” perhaps)?

    1. I would say the clue stands up because an edge is never a batsman’s intended method, though as you say the outcome may still please him.

      A deliberate shot steered through the slips would be either a guide or a late cut.

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