Times 26319

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Easier and hopefully less controversial than the usual Wednesday jobbie, I thought. It took me half an hour while watching the tennis over tea and toast. It could have been faster if I wasn’t multi-tasking. Had to check 2d afterwards as it was an unknown definition. Oh, and there’s a couple of cricket clues, de rigeur.

Across
1 DEMOTIC – DEMO = protest, TIC sounds like TICK = approval; D popular.
5 WIRETAP – All reversed (retiring): PATER, I, W = old man, one, with; D bug.
9 PERSIMMON – Insert I MM into PERSON = individual; D fruit.
10 COROT – (S)CO(T) inside ROT: D he painted. He was good, too.
11 CLIVE – C = constant, EVIL = bad, back = reversed = LIVE; D fellow.
12 LACED INTO – (CITADEL ON)*, anagrist ‘rocks’; D attacked.
14 HEADMISTRESSES – HE STRESSES, insert ADMI(N) = endless paperwork; D teachers.
17 THE GREAT GATSBY – Insert EG (say) into THREAT (danger), then GATS (guns) BY (reserve, as in ‘put by’ presumably); D novel.
21 CHARACTER – Odd sort of clue, this; I think it’s a DD, one &lit, one literal.
23 MURAL – MUL(L) = partly think, about RA: D painting.
24 IMPEL – LE = empty limousine, P = parking, MI= motorway, all reversed (turning); D drive.
25 BACKBITER – (BRICKBAT E)* anagrind ‘nasty’; D spiteful person.
26 ROEDEAN – ROE sounds like ROW = line, DEAN = administrator; D independent school. Up school, Up school, Up school!
27 LEEWARD – (LEADER W)*, anagrist ‘debauched’; D islands, in the Caribbean.

Down
1 DEPICT – Insert EPIC into D(ORSE)T; D show.
2 MARLINE – MARLIN = large fish, E end of ‘the’, D rope. Apparently a light rope made of two strands, used for binding larger ropes. If you knew that, have an extra cup of coffee.
3 TAIL-ENDER – Insert AIL = trouble into TENDER = small boat; D last man. Today’s first cricketing clue.
4 COMPLAISANT – COMPLAINANT is your plaintiff, change the N for S: D willing to please.
5 WON – W = wicket, ON = cricket side: D secured victory. Cricket again.
6 RACED – AC inserted in RED: D dashed.
7 TYRANTS – TY sounds like THAI, RANTS = tirades; D cruel people.
8 POT-HOUSE – THOU = you, inside POSE = sit; D old pub.
13 CATEGORICAL – CATEGOR(Y) = class, with last letter to leave; I, CAL (state); D unqualified.
15 ESTIMABLE – E, STABLE = firm, insert I’M; D highly valued.
16 STOCKIER – COTS (beds) turned over = STOC; KI(PP)ER = penniless sleeper; D squatter, more squat.
18 EXAMPLE – EXAM = test, L in PE; D lesson.
19 BIRETTA – Hidden reversed in H(ATTER I B)ELIEVE; D headgear, of a religious nature.
20 BLARED – B, then R inside (DEAL)*; D trumped.
22 ALLEE – Alternate letters of w A t E r E d = AEE, insert L L for litres; D path with trees.
25 BAN – BAN(D) = players, D(ay) off: D stop.

41 comments on “Times 26319”

  1. 14 and a half but with a very silly CATAGORICAL — the curse of the down clue misspelling (well, it’s a curse for me). Another straightforward one, though. Last in MARLINE.
  2. I made hard work of this one and didn’t quite make the hour, though I was pleased to finish without resorting to aids which was beginning to seem inevitable at one point. ALLEE was unknown and MARLINE bordering on it, though I see it has come up a couple of times previously, and LACED INTO is not an expression I’m familiar with, only ‘laid into’.

  3. Gave up after half an hour and resorted to aids to get ROEDEAN. Obviously never heard of it, but in hindsight it was probably gettable from the wordplay, so chalk one up for the setter I guess.

    COD to WIRETAP. Thanks setter and Pip.

    1. I did wonder if ROEDEAN might be difficult for non-natives as I biffed it and don’t think I’d have got it from parsing alone.
  4. 15:36. Quite a lot of biffing and half biffing today but none of it retrospectively regretted as I feared it might be.

    I’m also not familiar with LACED INTO and I’m curious as to where it is used or was used as I can’t imagine anyone saying it.

    1. a google search is revealing, especially if you accidentally click on “images” 😉
      1. I say. Clicking on that made me realise I need an avatar like therotter‘s for special occasions.

        Edited at 2016-01-27 11:32 am (UTC)

  5. 25 minutes but biffed POT ROAST. Liked RACED (Account in the red)and WIRETAP.

    Pip, is this a new sport? Tennis over tea and toast? Must be messy.

  6. I thought similar to yesterday’s, straightforward but nonetheless enjoyable. Liked 20dn and am ashamed for thinking it might be something to do with farting…
    I’ll go and have my extra cup of coffee now Pip 🙂
  7. Just under 40 minutes with plenty of interruptions. For some reason, the answers in the iPad edition are the answers to today’s crosswords, rather than yesterday’s but I resisted temptation. Have not come across LACE INTO before, nor its Wikipedia synonym LIGHT INTO. I must have led a sheltered life.
  8. Yes, a sort of Angela Brazil flavour here. The British gulag where one is sent by the pater and mater to do gym and take exams so as to build character and set an example. All presided over by the HM. Very nearly had the wrong vowel in 5d. 14.07
  9. 32 minutes, with STOCKIER, which gets my COD, and ROEDEAN last in. I hesitated before submitting because, although I could see the online admin man (E-DEAN), I couldn’t see how RO fitted. Finally twigged.

    I counted half a dozen words and phrases I wasn’t familiar with, so this was a good exercise in making me feel ignorant – something I normally leave to the wife.

  10. One of those which was much more chewy than it first appeared. I didn’t know MARLINE, though I’d heard of a marlin-spike – I suppose I must have assumed it was named after the fish, though that doesn’t really make any sense, it’s not as if it’s used for catching them or, indeed, any other sort of fish.

    I’d also never come across LACED INTO in the required sense, nor ALLEE. Oh, and I committed the blunder of putting COMPLAINANT as the answer, which I suspect caught out several people on the Club leaderboard. No complaints, or even compliants, though, it’s perfectly clear which is required when you think for a second.

    So, all in all, I feel “well schooled”, as the young people say.

    1. Ditto on this. Any nautical terms I know come from Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands and this is no exception. MARLINE didn’t seem too much of a stretch from there.
    2. Marlin-spike originally known as marline-spike or marling-spike, for picking out the marling/marline off larger ropes. Nothing to do with large pointy fish. Even knowing the word it took a few minutes as my last in, in a quick-for-me 19 mins. Corot & pot-house the only unknowns but clued generously; Roedean rang a faint bell in this Aussie, don’t know why. Can picture the broad tree-lined Karl Marx Allee in the east part of Berlin.
      Rob
  12. Well spotted, that man.

    Seriously, I am prepared to offer my brain to science, if someone wants to work out why people find it so easy to forget words which…er, what was I saying?

  13. I got 1a immediately, thereby thinking it was going to be all like that. Unfortunately it was another 42 minutes before I finished. Lots of trouble in the NE with WIRETAP and the unfamiliar POT-HOUSE, and I was fairly slow to get ROEDEAN, even though it was only a few miles from where I lived as a student. I’ve never come across the phrase ‘lace into’. I notice it’s not in my 2005 Chambers but is in my 2011 edition, so perhaps a relatively recent coinage.
    Some neatly deceptive clues. The oddities were all derivable from wordplay, so credit to the setter for that.
  14. All a bit jolly hockey sticks but not difficult. Knew MARLINE and ALLEE from crossword land rather than real life

    Watching from the battlements at the moment as local rivers flood and rain teems down in very strong winds. One US export we could have done without!

    1. Sorry about that Jim! In NYC we’ve just got thick disgusting grey soup on every street corner. Hope you dry out soon.
  15. About 45mins here, but another fail, as I had complainant. You’d have thought that after yesterday’s not-going-back-to-parse error I might have learnt. Some hope!
  16. Got there in the end but it is San Francisco beer week and I was multi-tasking tasting beer and talking about it to people around me.

    I delayed myself by putting in CRICK for 11ac as one of my first ones (C+RICK giving “bad back” as the literal). I didn’t know MARLINE but it looked reasonable (and it fitted CRICK as a crosser). Eventually I got TAIL-ENDER and realized my error. Somehow putting one in wrong when it is not even tentative causes a lot of delay. There was one a couple of days ago (TANNED I think) which also fitted the clue but was both wrong, and not how the clue worked anyway.

    1. Anything you can recommend that us limeys are likely to be able to get hold of? I know Anchor Steam from San Francisco and there are a number of good American beers appearing here recently like Goose Island and Dogfish Head.
      1. I was at Zeitgeist, the bar nearest my house, on Monday. They had 12 beers from Anchor not even counting Anchor Steam that they always have. I doubt you can get them far from San Francisco, certainly not out of the country (except perhaps if they bottle some).

        Last night was all Belgian beers, real ones from Belgium, so I should think that you should be able to get them (Duvel, Delirium Tremens, Dupont Saison, raspberry lambic, that kind of thing).

        Goose Island and Dogfish Head are good. Some of the Dogfish ones are ridiculously strong though (the more “minutes” in the names of the IPA, the stronger the alcohol).

        I would put a link in to San Francisco beer week but then I go into the naughty box for spamming. But you can google it.

        Edited at 2016-01-27 02:27 pm (UTC)

        1. Thanks Paul. I actually work for a Belgian company so am all too familiar with their beers! I like the fact that Belgian bars typically have a specific glass for each beer. Kwak is a particularly good one – the glass has a spherical base so every glass has it’s own wooden stand!
  17. 19.04 in a post prandial doze (or it would have been if my lack of appetite had allowed me a prandial to begin with). My last ROEDEAN, trying hard to remember the school functionary who was a Bursar or a Purser but spelt to fit. Our’s was a ruddy faced ex RSM who was also a whiz at deeply shaming bullies.
    I thought I knew MARLINE from the spike version in Treasure Island, though apparently it’s spelt there without the E.
    I liked POT HOUSE, but it took a while to find out why.
  18. 16m. Quite a lot of biffing today, but also a few that required a fair bit of head-scratching, particularly in the NE corner. LACED INTO was new to me too.
  19. A speedy (for me) 26m with also unusually everything parsed; some after the event, mind. I spent some time trying to see how STOCKIER was a squatter! Doh! I hadn’t heard of HOT-HOUSE nor did I remember ALLEE from last time but otherwise it was all straightforward enough. My favourite today was the neatly clued RACED. Thanks to setter and blogger today!
  20. 40 minutes, after which I became convinced 8D had to be POT-ROAST. Which does have to sit for quite awhile in the oven, right?

    Lots of wild (correct) guesses today. Thanks blogger!

  21. About 30 minutes before I resorted to aids for ROEDEAN. Yup, I’m one of the foreigners who don’t know of it, and even with the crossers it never entered my mind. Biffed STOCKIER (kipper not springing to mind, and it probably won’t in the near future) and HEADMISTRESSES (too many letters). So well done setter. Regards.
  22. A wide-awake 11 mins, and I always felt like I was on the setter’s wavelength. I finished back in the NE with POT-HOUSE after WIRETAP. It certainly helped that I had all the required GK and vocabulary.
  23. I must have been on the setter’s wavelength as I zoomed through this late last night with only question marks next to the two that went in from wordplay alone – COROT and MARLINE.
  24. This was on my wavelength, too. For example, I knew ‘marline spike’ from my sailing days. As for ‘lace into’, in football commentary they sometimes talk about getting ones laces behind the ball meaning to really give it a hefty wack with the top of the boot instead of side footing it. I was convinced that the clue for 20d contained a misprint and that it should have said trumpETed. I didn’t know that one can trump as well as trumpet. 16d was a lovely clue as many have said over on the club forum. I’m pleased I ‘saw’ 6d. I seem to be getting better at spotting that sort of clue. I know The Great Gatsby is meant to be a great American novel but neither my wife nor I liked it because there were no likeable characters in it. 32m 28s
  25. Good time for me, despite listening to the footie on the radio. Thanks setter and blogger.
  26. Yes, Roedean is hard for US solvers (as are many other things — why can’t you just speak English?). I vaguely recall having once encountered it in a Monty Python Book (or Bok, as it was spelt), but perhaps I am just imagining that. I couldn’t for the life of me parse HEADMISTRESSES, but that simply because to me “stress” is not an intransitive verb (so I would say if he gets worked up, he is being stressed but not stressing. Maybe I have just been in Germany too long).
    Oh yes, I did complete the puzzle (correctly for the first time this week) in just over an hour despite all the unknowns.

    Edited at 2016-01-27 11:48 pm (UTC)

    1. I think intransitive stresses is most common in the phrase stressing out. I don’t use it, as it smacks too much of “yoof-speak”. But then, I’ve lived outside the UK for half of my life and am rather stuck in the past!
  27. 10:08 here for this pleasant, straightforward puzzle. (I didn’t recall coming across LACED INTO with that meaning before, but the clue was sraightforward enough.
    1. This took me two days – at least, I started it yesterday and only went back to it today, for a total time of 53 minutes. And even then, I submitted without noticing that I’d left 26ac incomplete. Woe is me, and vice versa.

      DEMOTIC held me up – I didn’t know it, and tentatively wrote it in from the wordplay. Likewise LACED INTO – I’d only ever heard “laid into”, and “laced” didn’t sound very probable. POT-HOUSE was vaguely known, as was BIRETTA (though, without the wordplay, I’d have spelled it “beretta”). MARLINE was a NHO; I’d heard of a “marline spike”, but (a) didn’t know it was a rope and (b) would have spelled it as “marlin” given the choice. Also NHO COROT, but no doubt he’s never heard of me either.

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