Times 26,339: The Starlight Barking

Wow, was I ever not on the wavelength for this one, taking over 20 minutes to toil my way through out for the first time in what feels like a long time. It *had* been the wife’s birthday beforehand and I can’t pretend that gin wasn’t involved, but even so that kind of thing doesn’t normally slow me down this much!

I still don’t feel like I necessarily understand a few of the clues, so this blog might have to turn into a joint effort in the morning: 5ac and 24dn being the main victors over my tired brain. Hmm: while there were some interesting constructions that I very much enjoyed, primarily my COD 6dn for its differentness, but also 16dn (but will it be judged too Libertarian by some? I’ll be interested to see), overall there wasn’t much here for my personal taste in crosswords to latch onto. Scant literary/historical references, no real jokes, arguably no really beautiful surfaces. Plus bits of sporting terminology e.g. 14ac where I knew exactly what I was looking for but couldn’t bring the technical term to mind for ages, though I appreciate that I only have myself to blame here for misspending my youth in all the wrong ways.

Oh well, you can’t love them all! I expect others will have found this the most foursquare and commendable puzzle in ages. Thanks to the setter for giving me a proper run for my money this Friday!

Across
1 GRUB UP – double def of: time to eat / root out of the earth
5 KICKBACK – bribe: does a footballer retaliate by “kicking back”?
9 APPARENT – (it’s) clear: APP [program] comes with A RENT [a | charge]
10 REGENT – not quite king: “not much” of {mo}RE GENT{leman}
11 RAGTAG – masses: RAG TAG [paper | to follow closely]
12 HOLD GOOD – apply: GOLD HOOD [top-quality cover] for the good Reverend Spooner
14 STOPPAGE TIME – double def of: whistle expected soon now (in a sporting event) / when all will be on strike? (in a time of stoppage, i.e. workers downing tools)
17 UNDER PROTEST – complaining: (PRETENDS TOUR*) [“is a shambles”]
20 SUPPLANT – replace: UP PLAN [improve | scheme] “to widen” ST [street]
22 TREMOR – shake: reverse of ROME RT [Holy See (with) right “turn”]
23 LAPTOP – LO [look] “to install” APT [appropriate] + P{rogram} [“initially”], for this semi-&lit device
25 ABALONES – sea food: ({r}EASONABL{y}*) [“head and tail removed” … “cooked”]
26 TEMPLATE – pattern: AT (which) TEMPLE [church] “retains”
27 EUSTON – terminus: reverse of NOTE [memo “about”] “taking possession of” US [American]
Down
2 REPEAL – cancel: R{esolv}E [“heartless”] + PEAL [laughter]
3 BEAUTY SLEEP – restoration period: BEAUTY [fine example] + reverse of PEEL’S [PM’s “picked up”]
4 PEER GROUP – those of similar age: PEER [look] + GRO{w} UP [to become adult, “not with” (i.e. minus W)]
5 KETCHUP – sauce: KETCH UP [boat | finished]
6 CAROL – song: that would be a different song, i.e. a {BAR}CAROL{E}, in BARE surroundings
7 BIG – massive: reverse of GIB [rock “turns up”]
8 CONSOMMÉ – it’s clear to eat: CON [not in favour] before SOMME [battle]
13 GO TO THE DOGS – decline: or, to visit track, i.e. go to the dog racing
15 GREAT DANE – pet: (A TAD GREEN*) [“indisposed, may appear…”]
16 INCUBATE – develop: CUBA [island] in {w}INTE{r} [“mid”winter]
18 OUTRAGE – appalled reaction: R [king] “overwhelmed by” OUTAGE [loss of power]
19 FOREGO – get ahead: FOR [as] “having” EGO [self-esteem]
21 ALPHA – high mark: AHA [expression of surprise] about LP [record]
24 TIP – double def of: wrinkle (see aphis99‘s useful explanation, if you’re as confused as I was) / part of one’s nose:

67 comments on “Times 26,339: The Starlight Barking”

  1. …which I thought was a bit slow, so I’ll use the “Verlaine” as my unit of measurement. Hmmm, less than 2V, not too bad.

    Funny sort of puzzle. No real obscurities, but I was thrown by some of the definitions, eg masses = RAGTAG, and FOREGO meaning to get ahead (I only think of it as to go without).

    Still, no specific complaints. About what I’d expect on a Friday. COD to BEAUTY SLEEP for the nice definition.

    Thanks setter and Verlaine.

    1. FORGO is to go without, FOREGO to go ahead, or am I just confused?

      One thing I do know is that FORWENT is about my favourite word to choose when playing Hangman with people. No one ever sees it…

  2. A wrinkle, informally, is a ‘tip, valuable hint; a handy dodge or trick; an idea, notion, suggestion.’ (Chambers).
    As for KICKBACK, I assumed the BACK was the footballer, but still can’t quite get this one to gel.
    1. Cheers! That particular wrinkle has never knowingly troubled the surface of my vocabulary.

      BACK did seem to have potential for the footballer but I just couldn’t make it work.

        1. But hopefully not kick A back, I may not know much about the sports but I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules…
  3. It’s Friday and Verlaine delivers early!

    35 mins with little traction in the SE corner initially.

    FOI 13dn GO TO THE DOGS LOI 26AC TEMPLATE as I don’t necessarily think of a temple as a church per se, however…

    COD 16dn INCUBATE

    horryd Shanghai

  4. A sort of schadenfreudistic satisfaction in seeing that I was only half again as slow as Verlaine (‘as slow as Verlaine’; odd locution). I wasn’t puzzled by KICKBACK, as I assumed that a soccer player might do just that. I was, though, puzzled by the ‘time’ in GRUB UP; where I come from, grub is what one eats, faute de mieux, not a time for eating. DNK STOPPAGE TIME, but with enough checkers and d, I finally got it. DNK wrinkle=tip, but how many 3-letter nasal parts are there? Loved 3d.
    1. I think it’s to be taken as announcement that the food is ready. An informal equivalent of ‘Dinner is served’.

      1. Interesting. I don’t recall ever hearing “grub’s up”, but “grub up” is quite familiar. Perhaps it’s a regional thing.
  5. This would have been a fairly respectable 34 minute solve for me but for the elusive 11ac and the tiresome Spooner clue (they’re all tiresome in my view, not just this one).

    I didn’t know ‘RAGTAG’ as ‘the masses’ and actually it doesn’t appear directly as such in any of the usual sources, though I suppose ‘rabble’ and ‘common people’ cover it.

    I’m amongst those confused by thinking of FOREGO as ‘go without’ and in fact SOED at least has this as an alternative spelling of ‘forgo’. However if one thinks of the expression ‘foregone conclusion’ the required meaning should never have been in doubt.

    9dn CAROL was biffed but to go back to it later and decipher how it worked was very rewarding and for that reason it gets my vote as COD. But I’m not entirely convinced by 5ac I’m afraid, and if there’s nothing more to it than has already been suggested I think it needed a question mark to improve its secondary definition.

    I’d no problem at all with wrinkle/tip and the surface reading’s rather good reminding me of the lyric to the wonderfully romantic song ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern sung in the film ‘Swing Time’ by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers in a facepack.

    Edited at 2016-02-19 05:54 am (UTC)

      1. Ah well, now your talking early 1950s British TV, very much my era, so I learnt that expression early in life even if I didn’t then know its origin or true meaning.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag,_Tag_and_Bobtail.

        That phrase and the other words I mentioned above are all the same territory as ‘masses’ so I’m not really quibbling, but it is unusual not to have a word for word definition of an answer in one of the usual sources so I tend to mention that fact when I notice it.

        1. Actually, I had no idea there was such a TV program; but somehow I knew the phrase as indicating (a contemptuous view of) the masses.
    1. I had a (very minor) epiphany with RAGTAG overnight which is that a classicist might well translate “the masses” as “hoi polloi”. Who are definitely a ragtag bunch…
      1. Coincidentally, I played it this pm for my regular old people’s singalong group. Lovely song.
      2. In the past I’ve named this (with Astaire singing it) as my all-time favourite popular song – though it’s pushed close by Mama Cass Elliot singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (composed in 1931 – basically pop music went downhill after the 1930s :-).

        I always find it incongruous that the film (Swing Time) with the best dance sequence (to “Pick Yourself Up”) and the best song has quite one of the silliest plots.

    2. I was thinking about this exchange as I was falling asleep last night and it occurred to me that Eric Clapton has a very good runner-up in Wonderful Tonight.
  6. 12:08 .. with a couple of minutes at the end convincing myself that FOREGO was get ahead and wondering what on earth TIP had to do with a wrinkle (thanks, aphis) before deciding the answer was “undoubtedly something”. Is that one a standard for Mephisto solvers?
      1. Today I make an audacious (yet heroically doomed) bid for Stage victory … Monday I’ll be sauntering along in the middle of the peloton … Tuesday I’ll be gasping my way to the finish line as the television crews are packing up the lights …

        Le voilà! La vie de l’humble domestique, mon amie.

        Edited at 2016-02-19 06:45 pm (UTC)

  7. I have no problem with KICKBACK, RAGTAG or TIP – it’s the superfluous “indisposed” in 15d that flummoxed me for a while, and FOREGO as mentioned above.
    I don’t know whether it’s a good or bad puzzle that trips up different people with different clues.
    A very undistinguished 50 minutes.
    1. Yes, that one took me longer to see the the (really quite simple) anagram in, thanks to a certain deviousness about the indicator! None of the words are doing no duty, it’s just that there are a few more of them for the solver to pick through. I’m inclined to think that’s good cluing myself.
  8. Finished but only with the aid of the iPad. A very fair puzzle, quite hard (for me) but no silly words that only make their appearances in crosswords.
    1. I knew there’d be plenty of those who approved of this tough, fair and unsilly puzzle when I checked the blog in the morning! I think I might be overfond of silliness myself.

      My wife tells me that while the number of gins I drank last night was easily countable, they might have been… a little stronger than usual. I feel like I might have been nobbled! Sore-headed apologies to the setter for any lack of appreciativeness my alcohol-fuelled Mr Hyde may have demonstrated in the wee small hours.

  9. 40 minutes. I was stuck in the SE until I saw SUPPLANT. There were lots of plans, templates, patterns, programs, schemes etc. today? The setter obviously thinks “it’s clear ….”
  10. Why was this hard? None of the clues seemed particularly difficult (once solved, of course), and all that taunting “it’s clear” from the setter didn’t help one’s state of mind. Anyway, ploughed through this in 28.21.
    I took RAGTAG (after staring at the checkers for ages – some ungrammatical German newspaper perhaps, Das Tag?) to be one of those dictionary three point turns via rabble or some such.
    Much confusion with FOREGO, including wondering how forge for “get ahead” fitted in with the wordplay. Chambers’ entries on for(e)go seem as confused as I’ve ever seen in the BRB.
    ABALONE (without the S) is a mental shortcut for me to one of the most off-the-wall films ever made, The Seven Faces of Dr Lao
    BARCAROLE excellent

    Edited at 2016-02-19 09:08 am (UTC)

    1. As you say, nothing too horrifying-looking in the autopsy, but neither were there many easy “ins”. And I really do feel that the lack of colourful things for the brain to latch onto makes these things much more diffuclt: SUPPLANT, APPARENT, FOREGO you have to work painstakingly towards in a way you might not have to for, say, WENSLEYDALE…
  11. Not the most engrossing of crosswords but quite satisfactory just the same. CAROL was nicely done and a little unusual while BEAUTY SLEEP’s definition scored well. I thought KICKBACK was OK too.
    1. If you think KICKBACK is OK, may I ask how you think it works? Is it just that being kicked is an occupational hazard for a footballer, and so a retaliating footballer might KICK BACK?

      Edited at 2016-02-19 11:52 am (UTC)

      1. That’s how I read it Keriothe although what I don’t know about football is probably considerably more than Verlaine. And I assume that if a player did that the ref would blow his whistle.
        1. Thanks. I guess the fact that a BACK is also a footballer is irrelevant, but it did a good job of confusing me!
          1. Spot on. A footballer – before they started becoming “girlie” and “foreign” and biting and spitting at opponents, or tugging them by the arm, or pretending to fall over an outstretched leg – would simply be kicked, and them simply kick the other fellow back. Or punch him, of course. Them were t’days.
            1. It seems somehow unsatisfactory to me, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s partly the fact that anyone might kick and be kicked, and partly that it just seems unlikely that this would ever happen (any more, at least). But then kicking is undoubtedly an integral part of the game so no doubt I’m just overthinking it, just as I did with TIP.
              1. I agree, but think it might all have been overlooked if there’d been a question mark at the end of the clue to acknowledge that it was a bit tenuous.
      2. My apologies for not getting back to you but a busy day out kept me away from the computer. I see others have supplied an explanation of KICKBACK with which I agree. In particular, ulaca has a very strong grip on the matter.
  12. DNF. I considered TIP for 24dn but thought ‘part of [insert object of choice]’ so weak it couldn’t possibly the required definition. And the Mephistoesque ‘wrinkle’ was of no help whatsoever, so I just left it blank.
    About 20m up until that point, and I found it a bit of a slog. I rather lost faith in the setter after the strange 5ac and never really felt I was on the wavelength. And for the record I have not had a drink since Tuesday, so I can’t even blame that.
  13. 51:29, so glad to see it wasn’t just me making heavy weather of this. I finished with unparsed TIP and TEMPLATE and with the same misgivings about FOREGO so I was pleasantly surprised when the ipad didn’t offer to show my errors.
  14. On the clock, just over 25 mins but including listening to a complicated story from a Girls Night yesterday so probably around 18. Rag Tag and Bobtail is in Chambers but what I annoyingly cannot remember is whether they were on Tuesday or Thursday in Watch With Mother. Monday – Andy Pandy, Wednesday Flowerpot Men – Friday the somewhat disturbing Woodentops. Anyway, a pleasant enough solve with nothing to frighten the horses.
    On edit It was of course Picture Book on Monday so that makes RT&B Thursday. These things are important!

    Edited at 2016-02-19 12:18 pm (UTC)

    1. I was about to put you right, bigtone, but you redeemed yourself in the final para! Picture Book was presented by Patricia Driscoll who rather excitingly was already installed as Maid Marian when we belatedly acquired ITV in 1960.
      1. Would this be with Richard Greene as Robin Hood?
        PS do they have glens in Nottingham?

        Edited at 2016-02-19 04:06 pm (UTC)

    2. Couldn’t let this pass BigTone. I’ve never heard of the Woodentops, but if you found them disturbing after getting past Bill and Ben, they must have been something to behold!
      1. As suggested, they were topless, ie only dressed below the waist, apart from Spotty Dog, who was not dressed at all.

        Edited at 2016-02-19 04:17 pm (UTC)

  15. When I got to 16d my brain unaccountably refused to let me think of any islands other than those around Scotland so, despite Cuba being near the top of my list of places to visit, I invented INJURATE. Whilst this is a momble in English, my fellow Latin scholars (cough) will all be crying out “but of course it’s the vocative masculine singular of injūrātus”.

    Tricky all round really.

    Edited at 2016-02-19 02:11 pm (UTC)

    1. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but since its just you and me, I also had ‘injurate’ before changing it after a quick search, and then couldn’t get anything to fit at 26a before a little check. And this all took me, well, shall we say, 5 Vs.
  16. 45m today, with the North reasonably quick, the SW slow and the SE painful with TREMOR and the seafood taking ages to fall. No real problem with KICKBACK which I saw as a double hint – the player in retaliation might simply kickback or he might kick a back in order to retaliate, though that is less secure in losing the sense of returning something. 3d definitely my COD today and though a little stodgy I like puzzles which appear impossible at first pass but gradually surrender their secrets, none of which are obscure.
    I’ve also been wallowing in nostalgia with the comments on Watch with Mother. It’s radio equivalent Listen with Mother floated into my head too: ‘are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin!’
    My big brother, living in Perth WA for 40 + years still gathers his clan to the table with a stentorian ‘Grub up!’ So that was a write in for me!
    Thanks to setter and to the less-than-usually-affable-over ginned V for the blog.
  17. I must have been very lucky here to somehow find myself tuned into the right wavelength, as this one submitted somewhat more readily than most. Could not parse CAROL (because I had never heard of BARCAROLE, so I was at something of a disadvantage!) and whilst 1a went in happily from the definition, I could not equate root with GRUB (and still can’t really…) Anyway, most enjoyable and thanks to V for the blog.
      1. Thanks very much ulaca – kind of you to take the trouble. The music is magnificent – much appreciated.
  18. About 30 minutes to complete, with STOPPAGE TIME as my LOI. I expect this is somewhat related to extra time, which always confuses us Amerks watching European soccer/football. As in, “If the clock has expired, why are they still playing”? Never fails to bewilder me. This wasn’t easy to get into; started with the fairly easy GO TO THE DOGS, and just hobbled along from there outward. Regards.
    1. Sorry, Kevin, but stoppage time is what the referee adds on to normal time, so that, in football, 90 minutes may become 94 minutes. It covers injuries and time-wasting, mainly. Extra time (in football, 30 minutes) is the period added to a cup game, if there has been no result in normal time.

      Interestingly, rugby has an external time-keeper (like American football, I believe), so the game essentially ends when the game reaches its end (though the current ‘play’ must be completed). Dear old football, which is stone-age in many ways, gives the referee discretion to add time. He communicates this to his assistant on the sidelines, who theatrically holds up an LED board towards the end of each half of the match, saying how many additional minutes there will be.

      Edited at 2016-02-20 03:17 pm (UTC)

  19. A knock-affected 39 mins. I had the RHS finished reasonably quickly but I kept nodding off trying to get to grips with the LHS. It didn’t help that, with only the A checker entered for both, I entered SUPPLANT into 26ac rather than 20ac. Eejit. Anyway, I eventually got my head together and finished with TEMPLATE after INCUBATE. I really can’t see a problem with the clue for KICKBACK and it was my FOI as soon as I read the clue. Count me as another who biffed CAROL, although I should really have seen how it was parsed.
  20. Took me an enjoyable hour. I’d say bag rather than tag unless combined with bagtail.
  21. I struggled with this one and neeeded three stabs at it before finally putting in INCUBATE and TEMPLATE, though with a question mark next to GRUB UP.
  22. I almost gave up on this but finally staggered home in 47 minutes. I didn’t enjoy it much. Had problems with the definitions of TIP, RAGTAG and FOREGO all of which had to be guessed. Ann
  23. Has anyone else come across the island of Sula?
    Insulate can also mean develop an island, so once I saw that I stopped looking for another island! Dennis
    1. Yes I came up with that too. My one error! Found the rest fairly tough but got there in around 90 minutes all told. John
  24. 16:11 for me. I’d had slightly more booze than usual so dithered unduly long over FOREGO (despite being almost certain it was correct) as I didn’t want the demon drink to lull me into making a mistake so early in the year.

    I wasted time assuming that BACK was going to be the first half of 5ac: I agree with jackkt that the clue would have been better with a question mark – Ximenes would have demanded one!

    Apart from those, I had no real problems, in particular CAROL, SUPPLANT and TIP all went in more or less straight away.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  25. Well, I’ve made a clean sweep of this week, with a record five DNFs in a row. I’m particularly proud of this one, though, as I also managed to be a day late.

    I found the whole thing a bit of a slow grind (and not in a good way), and then failed utterly to get RAGTAG. Oh dear.

  26. It’s late, but hey.

    I parsed 24dn by applying the question mark to PITFALL, which is a wrinkle, and falls nicely to generate a TIP.

    I expect that’s where TIP derived its less famous meaning from, back in the day somewhen.

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