Times 26,351: You And Whose Army?

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I personally didn’t find this particularly operose for a Friday, clocking out on a nice tidy 399 seconds. Quick FOIs 11ac and 19ac, and finally coming to a rest in the SW with 21n and the potentially catastrophic (to the speed merchant) 25ac. None of the vocab was too problematic, 2dn springing to mind immediately given a couple of crossers (though from goodness knows where) and the odd-looking 19n being easily spotted from the initial letter and the wordplay. Is it just me or has the horse at 8dn turned up again and again over the last couple of years, “like a bad pony” if you will? And I’ve also become hypersensitive to “it” being a well-concealed definition part, or at least an indicator for SA, as last week, so 9dn didn’t confuse me as much as it might have when I was just starting out on this blog. Dearie me, I’m turning into a jaded old hand at these things…

20ac sent me off to Wikipedia for some happy research into “the eighth wonder of the ancient world” and shares COD honours for me with 18n, where I was quite tickled by the surface and enjoyed the use of “eyes” to clue “OO”. Mmm, googly. Thanks to the setter! And now let us repair to the comments and the inevitable argument about whether anyone really pronounces 16dn like that!

Across
1 ARTIFICIAL – affected: ART IF {off}ICIAL [contents of gallery | supposing | functionary’s “kicked off”]
6 CROC – fierce beast: CROC{k} [one disabled “without its tail”]
10 LOTUS – a (yoga) position: double def with “the indolent took for eating”, in e.g. Homer’s Odyssey
11 RUINOUSLY – with disastrous consequences: (SO UNRULY I [one]*) [“misbehaves”]
12 RECONNAISSANCE – survey: RENAISSANCE [artistic period] covering up CON [deception]
14 ADAPTOR – AD [plug] “connecting to” A + (PORT*) [“different”], clever &lit. Thanks to those who set my woeful Latin-based parsing straight on this one in the comments!
15 TROOPED – went as a body: O in DEPORT reversed [to move abroad “receiving nothing” “in return”]
17 CONIFER – tree: “preserving” I [one] is CONFER [deliberate]
19 PURCELL – composer: PUR{e} CELL [“endlessly” clean | spartan accommodation]
20 TERRACOTTA ARMY – force long underground: initially this is T.A., which could be “confused with reserve” (i.e. the Territorial Army)
23 WORCESTER – city: ORC [killer] in WESTER{n} [film “avoiding northern”]
24 HINDI – tongue: HIND [deer] has I [one]
25 ROLE – part: homophone of ROLL [“speaker’s” to wallow]
26 PROPER NAME – that should be spelled with a capital: and cryptically contracted with an “improper name” such as a pseudonym constitute
Down
1 AULD – ancient Scottish: {c}AULD{ron’s} “contents”
2 TITHE BARN – that held tax receipts: (BIT HE*) [“chucked”] into TARN [pool]
3 FISH OUT OF WATER – one in unfamiliar element: and if you rescued someone from drowning, you might fish them out of the water
4 CORONER – he sits on cases: COR [my!] + {powe}R [“ultimately”] to close ONE
5 ANIMIST – believer in spirits: reverse of IN A [“taken up”] + MIST [cloud of steam]
7 RESIN – polymer: (INSER{t}*) [“after temperature’s dropped” .. “synthetic”]
8 CLYDESDALE – horse: (SADDLE*) [“messy”] put into C LYE [cold | washing solution]
9 HOW’S YOUR FATHER – it: and, on the surface at least, a question about pop/papa/dear old dad
13 WATCHTOWER – WATCH TO [one giving time| to] + W{a}R{n} [“at intervals”] about E{nemy} [“leading element of…”], &lit
16 PNEUMONIA – infection: homophone of NEW MOANIER [“sounding” more complaining (after) new]
18 ROOSTER – cock: R{obin’s} [“head”] + O O [eyes] + STER{n} [“most of” back]
19 PITPROP – roof support: PIT PRO P [stone | for | power]
21 RURAL – country: and R. URAL, i.e. the River Ural, “is kept in its place by Russian (river)banks”
22 LINE – double def: policy / to cover on the inside

44 comments on “Times 26,351: You And Whose Army?”

    1. If it makes you feel better I also had ADAPTER but I trumped you by having PUTPROP (I don’t know why).

      I’m also looking forward to first thing Monday morning at which point I won’t yet have cocked up any of the week’s crosswords!

      1. It does make me feel better, yes. Thank you.

        Well done on PUTPROP, which certainly gives my EXCENTRIC of Wednesday some stiff competition for this week’s What Was I Thinking? award.

  2. I took the definition at 14 to be &lit with wordplay AD (plug), A, PORT*, that’s thinking of ‘port’ as on IT equipment where adaptors may be needed.

    Edited at 2016-03-04 08:24 am (UTC)

    2. I was going to add but can’t now edit:

      I finished off all but 13dn 23ac and 25ac in 25 minutes but needed another 20 to crack those and I never did parse 23ac where unless Terracotta Army is ever abbreviated to TA I don’t see how it’s going to be ‘confused’ with Territorial Army (which has changed its name to TAVR now anyway).

      1. Sorry!
        (That was me too. I didn’t notice I was logged out: it almost never happens on my iPhone, but almost always on other devices).
    3. Aha, yes! That makes much more sense. Will amend the parsing.

      “A little Latin is a dangerous thing…”

      Edited at 2016-03-04 11:00 am (UTC)

  3. Although I came in at a shade over 45 minutes, I really didn’t enjoy this one at all. Maybe I’m missing some of the subtlety and nuances, but I felt too many of the clues were iffy (8d, 20a), too contrived (13d) and just stretching a point (1a, 15a – surely this should be “sent” not “move”?).
    Or is that just me in a grouchy mood?
    1. Well since you mention it, I was mildly engrumped by some of this: I thought 20ac was a bit weak, for instance, 26ac hardly cryptic and, like you, 13dn a bit contrived. However I think these are very minor quibbles in an otherwise high-quality puzzle and the fact that we can even consider complaining about them is if anything testament to the level of quality we are used to.
      I also huffed and puffed a bit about the Lord of the Rings silliness in 23ac, but then I remembered that ORC is another word for ORCA and felt a bit silly myself.
      1. I’ve no problems with any of the clues other than use of ‘confused’ in 20ac as mentioned above. In my dictionaries ‘contrive’ is defined as “Plan or design with ingenuity or skill” and I don’t understand why we would expect anything other than that of our setters. Perhaps there’s a more suitable word to express whatever’s being complained about here, but for the life of me I can’t see anything wrong with 8dn. The construction is crystal clear and the surface reading is excellent and with relevance to the answer.
        1. I don’t think there’s any complaining involved here. Deezza expressed a negative (perhaps grumpy) opinion, some of which chimed with my solving experience, so I thought I’d say so. That’s sort of what this site is for, isn’t it?
          I agree with you about 8dn, though.
          1. Fair point, and my comment was not helped by my tacking it on to your posting when what sparked it was a remark made by another poster which in any case was an opinion which they were perfectly entitled to express. In my mind I was associating it with past comments about “contrived” clues which has always struck as a somewhat odd criticism.
    2. It wouldn’t have said it was one of my favourites either. But having grumped a bit (probably unfairly) just a fortnight ago, I didn’t want to be overtly negative two weeks out of three!
  4. 27 minutes and no problems. Thanks V for parsing WORCESTER. I also searched HOW’S YOUR FATHER as I didn’t know where it came from. COD to ROOSTER.
  5. 12m. Very straightforward apart from the SW, which slowed me down a little bit.
  7. Guessed WORCESTER and CORONER. Thanks for the explanations. I keep forgetting that my=cor. I probably missed ORC as it’s an anagram of cor.
  8. 38 minutes, enjoying the quirkiness, even if the ‘how’s yer father’ clue went over my head.
  9. I see I was 12 seconds slower than Magoo today… so close but clearly I will NEVER get to smoke that cigar!
    1. It seems equally clear to me that you will.

      Edited at 2016-03-04 05:22 pm (UTC)

  10. 21:46 of unmemorable grinding.
    What struck me about the Terracotta Army when I visited the site a few years ago was how fortuitous the find was. An underground site the size of a small football pitch and the guy who dug a hole and stumbled across it did it at an extreme corner. 2 foot further out and he would have missed it. The finder was apparently wheeled out every day and when I saw him, he sat holding up a big bit of paper in front of his face in case anyone took unauthorised (ie unpaid) photos of him.
  11. Straightforward except for the lower west side where RURAL eventually gave up the rest. An assortment of some shaky clues like 20ac and 26ac mixed in with rather good ones like CLYDESDALE and HOW’S YOUR FATHER.
  12. I started by thinking this was no harder than the rest of the week’s puzzles, but I took some time getting the last few, 19a, 19d, and 20 being the main stumbling blocks. It took forty minutes in the end, so middling difficulty for me.
  13. TERRACOTTA ARMY and PITPROP were my last two in. My biggest hold-up was my new notebook computer printing a strange grid with all the white squares in strange positions. I seem to have better printing karma with firefox, I’ll download it tonight to see if I can get a jumbo that looks readable.
  14. 13:54. I thought I was heading for a slow time and the wordiness of the clues didn’t give me much comfort but the last few all went in pretty quickly. There was plenty of biffing along the way and like V I thought “not that bloody horse again” when I got to 8d.

    I don’t recall seeing eyes for OO before.

    If you’d asked me to spell adaptor, reconnaissance and pneumonia straight off I very much doubt I’d be 3 for 3, as Dan Quayle would say.

    1. I think that’s new on me too but ‘spectacles’ or pair thereof has definitely come up more than once before for double O.
  15. I managed 2 of Penfold’s 3, failing at the RECONNAISS(E)NCE hurdle, otherwise clocking 22.38. I’d probably spell renaissance wrong as well, so there’s no reliable check in the clue.
    I knew the URAL is not only mountainous, but couldn’t for the life of me work out where the R came from, so that and the crossing WORCESTER remained unjustified. Thanks to V for explaining, and to everyone else for explaining that ADAPTOR was more than just a feeble non-cryptic. I did, however, work out where the definition was in the thingy. clue, shortly after working up a grump about the absence of definition.
    OO for eyes should not be allowed to remain in the setters’ armoury. It’s silly.

    Edited at 2016-03-04 02:36 pm (UTC)

  16. After a good week, I had problems and took nearly an hour wallowing in less than glorious mud before finishing.
  17. I found this a struggle. Went well over the hour with several stretches where I couldn’t make any progress, until I finally spotted HOWS YOUR FATHER and the rest flowed in. I still managed to get 1 wrong by correctly working out the parsing for 15ac as DEPORT reversed with an 0 in it, but wrote in TROUPED anyway. Doh! FOI was AULD but didn’t know the second meaning of LOTUS, so left it until it couldn’t be anything else. LOI WORCESTER. I was just glad to finish this one and didn’t really feel any sense of achievement, just relief it was over! John
  18. Chewy for me too. No idea of the time, but probably over 40min spread over two sessions.

    Spent a while considering “stagi” (which is actually a regional dialect of Sanskrit*) “bucki” and other implausibles at 24ac before “hind” came to mind. WATCHTOWER held me up for a time, as did TERRACOTTA ARMY, and I parsed them only in a sort of general vague way. RURAL also went in unparsed.

    (*no it isn’t, but you have to admit it’s somewhat plausible)

  19. A 35 min struggle today (despite a good start) ending with some wing-and-a-prayer biffing in the SW so I was happy to complete without errors. Took ages to see “terracotta” despite having visited the site a few years ago.
  20. 38 mins from start to finish but I took yet another knock as well as a family phone call. I’m with those who didn’t enjoy the puzzle that much even though I know it is a little churlish to feel that way. TERRACOTTA ARMY was my LOI after WATCHTOWER.
  21. Eek… over an hour in a couple of sessions, with the ridiculous ‘does YOUR FATHER’. Can’t ever seem to get my head around words with apostrophes in them…

    WATCHTOWER, TA and RURAL all only part-parsed, so thanks for those.

  22. 40 plus rather gruelling minutes today. Some very good clues – I thought -8d for example. But others not so well crafted – 20a for example where the cryptic only helped if you knew the definition. Also 13d gets my clumsiest clue award as it managed to be dull, long winded and a bit vague. Very helpful blog, V. I appreciate your erudition and clarity very much. And much impressed with your time too!

    Edited at 2016-03-04 06:26 pm (UTC)

    1. If I was asked to write a clue for watchtower I think I’d be rather chuffed if I managed this!
      1. The many times you have amused me with your witty and sharp comments suggests to me you would find something much more fun than this effort!
  23. I never figured out the TERRACOTTA ARMY and had to look it up. Arrgh. Everything else OK, even the HOW’S YOUR FATHER clue, which may have come up before because I have a very vague recollection of it. I wouldn’t have run across that anywhere else but here, I assure you. Regards to all.
  24. 10:52 for me, slowed by carelessly bunging in PROPER NOUN for 26ac

    I thought this was a lovely puzzle, perhaps because it had a slightly old-fashioned flavour to it. Indeed if I had to chose a typical Times crossword to show why I keep solving them after all these years, this one would be on my shortlist.

    Like you I interpreted the AD in ADAPTOR as Latinised “to”, thinking at the same time that it was perhaps the one unsatisfactory thing about this puzzle. Now that it’s been explained, I’m pleased to say that I’m entirely satisfied.

    Partidge’s entry for “how’s your father” reads

    A military c[atch]p[hrase]of 1915-17 ‘turned to all sorts of ribald, ridiculous and heroic uses’ (Brophy & Partridge, Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, 1914-1918 (3rd ed. 1931)). Ex a music-hall song.

    Of course according to Sellar and Yeatman, the phrase had an earlier provenance:

    Nothing sickened the people of the rule of the Serjeant-Majors so much as their cruel habit of examining little boys viva-voce. For this purpose the unfortunate children were dressed in their most uncomfortable satins and placed on a stool. The Serjeant-Major would then ask such difficult questions as “How’s your Father?” or “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?” and those who could not answer were given a cruel medicine called Pride’s Purge. All this was called the Commonwealth and was right but repulsive.

  25. All correct, but not all parsed, so many thanks for the explanations.
    I agree with Tony, this is my sort of puzzle, even if I’m slower than Mr Magoo when he’s lost his glasses.

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