Times 26353 – Ton Up

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Today is my hundredth blog. To mark the occasion, I invited my fellow bloggers (including a couple of lapsed ones) to help write up the Across clues. I also approached one confrère specifically to see if he would be able to provide the preamble. Happily, he was…

Bob Geldof once asked his audience rather wistfully to help him understand just what it was about the first day of the working week that made him ill disposed towards it, and I think I can help him out of this particular quandary. If he had ever tried solving a cryptic crossword at one in the morning after an evening spent in West Norwood listening to Ecstatic Treetops, he would know. Not, however, that the occasion was a total disaster. Far from it, or pauci laeta arva tenemus, as the Swan of Mantua once put it. For, it chanced that there was an award for Most Originally Decorated T-shirt. I was later told that many people had spent hours – even days – designing and perfecting their raiment, whilst I not only knew nothing of the matter but had not – knowingly – entered the competition at all. The complete story of why it happened that I arrived at the subterranean venue clad in a tattered once-white T-shirt with vivid discolourations is too long to relate, but suffice to say that shortly before I set out from home I was engaged in what became a protracted struggle to convince my three-year-old to consume her pumpkin granola. The upshot (quite literally, one might say) was that the contents of said cereal, liberally laced with the nut roast that had made up her midday repast, were jettisoned all over the shirt I had donned earlier on this eventful Sunday in a futile attempt to stem the flow of water from a leaky cistern. Having no time to change may have meant I got an odd look from the cab-driver, but it also meant I carried home with me in some triumph a CD of Ecstatic Treetops’ latest hit, ‘Stuck with the Seraphim’.

But I have already gone on too long, and others are waiting impatiently to contribute on this auspicious occasion. I wonder if you will be able to identify the guest bloggers out of their natural habitat, as it were.

(Tuesday 8 March) It would appear that Ulaca’s happy idea of inviting his estimable fellow bloggers to contribute to his centesimus editio has elicited requests for the identity of the contributors to be revealed. He has accordingly forwarded to me the relevant email correspondence, based on which I am able to satisfy the burgeoning curiosity, the identities being now appended to the blog, infra.

ACROSS

1. BRIOCHE – I had one of these during a break in rehearsals, meaning this was something of a write-in: BRI(OCH)E.
5. RECIPE – I had “recept” for the longest time before seeing the obvious, thinking the city was Königsberg, hometown of Immanuel Kant, famous for his percepts and recepts. R[EC]IPE.
8. BILLIARDS – I’m hopeless at sports, but I knew this one from Georgette Heyer, where many a romance is consummated on the baize. It’s BILL=fellow. IS around ARD= a road.
9. AMISS – My French is as much use as a glass door on a dunny, but fortunately AMIS + S doesn’t require a Higher School Certificate in the language.
11. YUCCA – my uncle in Birkenhead Wallasey (see comment below) kept a yucca plant, which he named Derrida, since it grew phenomenologically fast until it was deconstructed one day by a Tranmere Rovers fan. Y+U+CC+A.
12 Mostly courteous hanger-on with old Communist committee
POLITBURO – POLIT(e) (courteous, cut) next to BUR (hanger-on) next to O (old). When I was running a pub, I had a regular who thought he was Nikolayevich Kosygin. When he left, he would always say, ‘Must be Russian!’
13. UNTHREAD – Forget Dickens and co., Trollope is the only 19th century novelist worth reading. This word, clued almost identically, came up in a recent Club Monthly: *(HER AUNT D).
15. ERRATA – The Royal Regiment of Artillery, to give it its official name, actually consists of a number of regiments, as a fellow who worked with me in the factory used to let me know at every available opportunity. E (standard abbrev. English) + RA (Royal Artillery) ‘locking up’ RAT (deserter).
17. UPDATE – another write-in in a vanilla offering: UP + DATE (we used to court in my day – I have no idea what they get up to now).
19. GARRISON – G{eorge} [head], {H}arrison (Rex [executed]). I was worried when I was allotted the musical clue, as, despite my degree in music, these ones often trip me up. Not a singer in the usual sense of the word, Harrison perfected the talking-on-pitch style and performed ‘Talk to the Animals’, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1967.
22. CAIRNGORM – I didn’t get round to this until after I’d had to deal with a dispute involving the local inspecteur des drains, which in turn meant I could only get 9 holes in today. (RING)*, OR (men) inside CAM (rivulet running through Fenland Poly); D stone.
23. HELOT – This is one of those Greek words that hasn’t found its way to West Yorkshire yet, unlike ‘kebab’ and ‘moussaka’. I had to piece it together from wordplay and generous checkers: HE then LOT (item knocked down).
24. ELEMI – I was heading for quite a good time before the dreaded vocalophobia gripped me when confronted by E*E*I. I finally saw the light after 15 seconds, which pushed my time out to 8:47 minutes. ELM + I around E, of course.
25 What act as channels for processing sago, I hope
OESOPHAGI – Are two clues ending in ‘I’ really necessary? This is not a major complaint, but I just wonder if Dean could have taken another route. Pretty alimentary, I’d have thought. (SAGO I HOPE)*, &lit.
26. ANNEXE – OK, I think this is our unspecified woman du jour ANNE tucking into her voluminous aprons EX, which sounds like X (but not if you are singing in the Italianate style – in which case it sounds like EK). The surname ‘X’ was chosen among others by Malcolm Little, who considered his birth name a slave name and chose ‘X’ to signify his lost tribal name. We do the Googling™ so you can sit there and marvel.
27. TOOTING – Many are the times I’ve listened to Febrile Footmassage in the leafy district of Tooting. One particular occasion involved quite a bit of honking from passing vehicles as I tottered towards Colliers Wood tube station in the early hours, but that story must await another day.

DOWNS

1. BOBS YOUR UNCLE – Bob Cratchit worked for Ebenezer Scrooge and had six kids, including Tiny Tim. No brother or sister of Bob or Mrs Cratchit is mentioned by Dickens, to the best of my knowledge, so this is a purely hypothetical clue, although I have a feeling it might receive a few different epithets from regulars here. The phrase has rather gone out of fashion in England, which is probably no bad thing, since it has something of the Dick Van Dyke about it.
2. ILLICIT – ILL + IC + IT. The more we rail against IT = SA, the more the setters rejoice in letting us have it.
3. CHINA – CH(IN)A.
4. EUROPEAN – ROPE (of which painter is a type found in crosswords and also on a boat if you don’t want it wandering away from the quayside) in EUAN.
5. RUSTLE – sounds like [Bertrand] Russell.
6. CHATTERER – C + [Mad] HATTER + RE reversed.
7. PRIMULA – PRIM + U[nion] + LA .
10. STOP AT NOTHING – TO PAST* + NOTHING. The 3-word clues are proving quite accessible.
14. RETENTIVE – TENT (a wine to sip while you’re painter is slipping off its mooring?) in REIVE[r]. I cannot hear this word without thinking of its anatomical concomitant. Oh for more innocent days in the billiards room!
16. MARMOSET – SOME* in MART.
18. DRIVE-IN – RD reversed + I’VE (‘this setter’s come’ can be rendered as ‘I’ve come’ in Crosswordland) + IN.
20. SYLLABI – the literal is ‘course programmes’, which is derived from S[chool] followed by a reversal of I (electrical current) and BALLY (ruddy).
21. COYOTE – [p]O[n]Y in COTE (shelter).
23. HIPPO – HIP (‘with it’) on PO.

20 minutes and change.

List of Contributors

1. BRIOCHE – glheard
5. RECIPE – vinyl1
8. BILLIARDS – oliviarhinebeck
9. AMISS – galspray
11. YUCCA – mctext
12. POLITBURO – linxit
13. UNTHREAD – jerrywh
15. ERRATA – nick_the_novice
17. UPDATE – dorsetjimbo
19. GARRISON – jackkt
22. CAIRNGORM – pipkirby
23. HELOT – penfold_61
24. ELEMI – tony_sever
25. OESOPHAGI – keriothe
26. ANNEXE – z8b8d8k
27. TOOTING – verlaine

66 comments on “Times 26353 – Ton Up”

    1. Brioches common in Europe (if not in Shanghai).

      Guessed 6 of the bloggers correctly. Quite chuffed.
      vinyl – always overthinking and writing in way-too-erudite words that don’t parse, before correcting them
      olivia – mentioned heyer, no doubt on purpose
      mctext – a guess: a scouser having an uncle in Birkenhead; plus general style
      jimbo – oftens calls puzzles vanilla, a word rarely used by others
      zabadak – unmistakable style, surreal stream of conscious tangents written in the answers.

      Quite enjoyed the puzzle, too.
      Rob

      1. And linxit from the Saturday-style blog – blue whole clue, then answer on the next line.
      2. Hmm… having gotten a little further it seems it was all an April’s fool. A quite brilliant one, superbly done. Superb satire of your fellow-bloggers’ styles.
  2. Having solved the long Down at 10 before the puzzle was out of the printer I thought this was going to be a breeze but it turned out not to be so, and although I had all but two answers in 28 minutes I needed 40 to complete the grid. The recalcitrant ones being 5dn and 20dn, neither of which, on reflection, should have given me problems if my brain had been working a little faster.

    I was pleased to remember the previously unknown ELEMI this time round but REIVER (which came up in 2012 and 2014)was beyond my powers of recall – not that it delayed me today as I just biffed 14dn.

  3. And that one error was at 24ac, where I had put in ELEMI, but failing to parse it, ‘corrected’ it to ebeni (something to do with having a ‘neb’=to notice???)

    The preamble confrere must surely be xxx, and as for the others… can hazard a few guesses, but then again… Great collaborative idea!

    Edited at 2016-03-07 07:38 am (UTC)

  4. …with the last three minutes or more spent on ELEMI for some reason.

    A gentle start to the week as usual, and a nice surprise with the blog.

    Congrats to Ulaca, and thanks to (definitely) Verlaine, Olivia, Z8, Tony S., Jimbo, George and Jackkt, as well as (I think) Pip, McText, Tim and others who contributed to the across clues.

    Great fun, thanks setter and bloggers.

      1. Nor I but how nice to get a mention! I think I know why – vide infra.
  5. Well, of course, I had to look up Ecstatic Treetops, and what do you know, in quotes it’s a googlewhack, obviously only until Google reads this blog.
    I find myself leading the second tier today, after the 10 and under fliers (stellar time, V!), a gentle coast through a gentle puzzle, in which I happened to know the plants, the monkey and the words ending in vowels-not-e.
    With so many IT’s recently, including two for the same three word answer, it (aaaaugh, you said it again!) might be time to give it (aaaaugh!) a rest.
    Thanks to our band of brothers* today for some high amusement, and congrats to Ulaca on a fine achievement.
    Oh, 12.19.

    *on edit: for years after the majority were women, my college had a fraternal, and it’s (aaaaugh!) hard to break old habits. Sorry. No, really, sorry.

    Edited at 2016-03-07 07:50 am (UTC)

  6. Pretty happy to sneak under the 5 minute mark on this one, even during a bleary morning solve when I just couldn’t seem to get my fingers to hit the right letters on the keyboard all. I stared at S_L_A_I for what seemed like an appallingly long time; well, of course it wasn’t really, but it did seem like a lot when your clock’s on ~4 minutes with just a couple of clues to go! LOI after that was 21ac though.
  7. Many congrats to you Ulaca – for entertainment, erudition and sheer staying power! Also thanks to all the other contributors today for a cheery start to the week.

    As to the puzzle itself, I fell at the last by not remembering ELEMI. I had ETEMI instead: I MET (observed) reversed + E. Still, I’m sure it’ll crop up again ere long. I just have to remember it for next time.

  8. 10:51 … perfectly fine Monday offering.

    Well done, ulaca – and thanks for all the hard work and entertainment so far.

    Thank you, too, for some giggles of recognition at your, um ‘guest bloggers’. I especially enjoyed the ELEMI entry! (though I suspect he would be mortified at 8:47 for this one).

    Edited at 2016-03-07 08:47 am (UTC)

    1. I believe he was quite happy with his time, especially given various distractions of late.
        1. Heh.

          Much spluttering at breakfast tables around the world as pennies drop, I suspect. Ulaca is going to be in awful trouble.

          1. I think I’ve narrowed which of the army of vainglorious pseuds and ne’er-do-wells might be me down to several possibilities…
              1. Preposterous! Febrile Footmassage is a jazz outfit and it should be obvious that I only listen to indie rock. Plus I’d only had a couple of light ales. Wasn’t even tipsy. I think.
  9. I’ll admit to (19ac) G. ‘ARRISON. Well, at least they were both scousers and couldn’t sing. And (26ac) AN EX for my regular howlers. COD to CHATTERER for “upset about”.

    On edit: oh and … all my uncles lived in Wallasey, except for the one in Winsford.

    Edited at 2016-03-07 09:03 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t know what happened there. Transmission error? HTML coding problems? Noted and amended.
  10. 10m. Nothing wrong with the puzzle, but the blog was more fun. Congratulations and thanks ulaca… although aren’t you about three and a half weeks early with this…?
    1. Good spot, K, but I did one on the iPad one day (not a Monday) when the regular blogger went AWOL.
        1. Hence the “fooling” in my heading. A bit disappointed I don’t merit a graph, though.
  11. Congratulations on reaching a hundred (and to your posse). The blog was great fun.
    Stuck on HELOT and SYLLABI but otherwise a gentle solve.
    1. Thank you, sawbill. Yes, the ‘posse’, as you call them, really came up trumps.
  12. That’s twice I’ve been reminded of the great Ian Wallace. Ten minutes to the south-west corner and ten minutes more on cairngorm and elemi.
    1. Three for the price of one, as we can also be reminded of the great Michael Flanders and Donald Swann who wrote and also recorded the song!
      1. Yes, should have said them but I loved My Music. I’ll never forget my youngest, aged 3, singing it word-perfect on his own at a pre-school concert. Maybe there’ll be a reference to a gnu tomorrow, or the gasman.
  13. That certainly took the sting out of Monday morning. Thanks to all – what larks! Oops, sorry – I mixed my expectations with my carols. Until now I would have said I was much more au fait with the Heyer oeuvre but I see now I’ve been reading the expurgated American versions all these years. Consummation on the baize might well be “banned in Boston”. 10.25 P.S. As with the Christmas Turkeys of yesteryear, could we have an unmasking of the guest bloggers tomorrow. I couldn’t guess all the guests.

    Edited at 2016-03-07 10:44 am (UTC)

    1. Gallers was on fire – there are just five outstanding, I reckon (5, 12, 13, 15 and 23). Think Saturday, Sunday, Quickie, Jumbo and Club Monthly, as well as Regular Cryptic.
      1. Penfold is the only one of those I spotted right off. Linxit and Nick the Novice, too, perhaps?
  14. The easiest puzzle for some time. I must write slowly because although I was solving most clues as soon as I read them, when I checked the time at the end I found 16 minutes had elapsed. The NW corner was the easiest area, the SW taking me the longest, with 22 LOI.
    I prefer something a bit tougher than this.
  15. I did not attempt the puzzle but the blog is stupendous!

    Z8 was most honoured!

    Happy ton, Ulaca!

    1. I should have responded earlier, but very nice to hear from you, hope you are able to return to crosswording and commenting soon, and thank you for the kind comment.

      Edited at 2016-03-18 12:28 pm (UTC)

  16. 10:28 with syllabi taking me into double figures. Congratulations on the landmark U and bravo on the pastiche. Brilliantly done.
  17. A tour de force Ulaca. Most entertaining. Congratulations on reaching the Ton. I also found this one quite easy, but was lulled into a false sense of security and carelessly wrote in RUSELL instead of RUSTLE. otherwise an easy 30 minutes peering over the porridge bowl to work out the first half dozen answers before getting down to business with the pen. FoI BRIOCHE immediately followed by BOB’S YOUR UNCLE and YUCCA. ELEMI was dredged from the depths of my memory from a previous puzzle and most of the rest were a write-in apart from my LOI SYLLABI which required a higher concentration of brain cells to be allocated. A pleasant start to the week. Off to the dentist shortly to see if he can extract the remains of my upper left wisdom tooth, the roots of which were left behind by last week’s locum. That should make up for this morning’s levity! John
  18. 18:57. Particularly enjoyed ANNEXE and TOOTING.

    From memory I don’t think there were any cricket references today, so I’ll get one in by congratulating ulaca on the ton up.

    1. Nor I, only just come to this late in the day; well done ulaca. Vanilla it was, 20 leisurely minutes.
  20. One of the easiest puzzles in a while, though I managed a typo so I’m not on the board, but under 7 minutes which is rare.

    I don’t keep records but a quick thumb-count suggests I get to 300 sometime this year. Congrats on 100, ulaca, from whom I believe I stole bolding the entries (look back at some of our simpler fare)

  21. I was intending to do the QC first as usual before a quick look at the 15×15. But after a quick glance at the football headlines, my eye was drawn to this puzzle. 1a went in quickly and then there was a perfect combination of understanding the clue (where I often struggle) and knowing the GK. Rex Harrison I remembered quickly; Tooting no problem and I vaguely remembered Elemi from a previous crossword (and the clueing was very clear).
    My last in was a guess at 14d which turned out to be right. So thanks for the parsing on that and all the excellent blogs on this site and the QC. David
  22. Congratulations on the ton Ulaca and thanks to your confrères for their exegeses on the across clues. Under 13 minutes (so today is definitely Monday) with no significant hold ups apart from the minute or so spent on my LOI “syllabi”.
  24. I do like Mondays! 30 minutes for me, but not finished on the rattler because I was distracted by the footie reports for the first 10 minutes. What a season for a Foxes fan!!!

    Great blog guys, thanks to all.

    P.S. Did anyone else struggle with yesterday’s puzzle as much as I did – or I should say we did, as Mrs Rotter and I worked on it for far too long. And for some reason, it wasn’t available on ipad, don’t know why, so I had to work out how to print it first. A real shocker!

    1. Yesterday’s crossword took me 2 hours (with one answer to go) as I put on the blog on Sunday. Tough.
  25. Well i’ve never heard of tent wine so thanks for explaining. All finished and correct in an hour so i am extremely pleased with myself even i couldn’t parse everthing. Thanks bloggers .. i couldnt have got this far without your help. This is my favourite website! Annie
  26. 28m which is better than usual for me but still disappointing as I only had 5 left after 12m! The recalcitrants were 20d and 27a (lesser known bits of the south not being my strong suit) and 5a and 5d with 7a. The flower fell first and so it should as I bought 3 of the blighters this morning. But lots of fun and then came the blog! I wished I’d read it earlier as it quite cheered my day, trying to guess which was which. And many thanks, U, for sticking at it for so long. It is much appreciated!
  27. Don’t worry, grestyman, all the best people take 28 minutes. Me, for instance.

    NHO either tent (the wine – I’m horrified to discover there’s a drink I haven’t drunk; or perhaps I have, and that’s the problem) or reive, which made 14d gettable only by the crossers and the definition. NHO ELEMI either, but I have seen some unguent advertised under the name of Elemis, which made it plausible.

    Other than those, there was nothing too taxing in this one, and I should probably have done better than I did. However, the clocks change soon, which ought to help lift the spirits (if it doesn’t, I shall have to lift some myself) and lubricate the old brain cell.

  28. Well done ulaca, and many thanks.
    Today’s puzzle, positively warp speed by my standards, but fun.
  29. Great blog, ulaca, and congratulations. Reminds me why I come here in the first place. Regards to you on the milestone, and to all the others who ‘contributed’ to the blog.
  30. It never ceases to amaze me how this Google thing works. Yes I know it’s all frightfully clever alcaholisms but “Ecstatic Treetops” is no longer a Googlewhack. Three entries now clutter up the interthing.
    I feel bound to congratulate Ulaca on a sustained feat of affectionate creativity, I was almost taken in by my “own” entry at 26, right down to the tiny™.
  31. Congratulations, ulaca, on both your ton up and on today’s tour de farce. (I particularly liked the Georgette Heyer entry 🙂

    As for me, I solved the first two clues straight off and decided to go for what turned out to be very nearly my slowest ever clean sweep (in 9:05), held up for several seconds at various points but never quite long enough for me to abandon the attempt.

    As for ELEMI, I think I must have first come across it in a Ximenes puzzle back in the 1960s, and since it appears in the daily Times cryptic roughly once a year (most recently in September 2014), even all those nasty vowels didn’t prevent me bunging it in with only a fleeting glance at the clue.

  32. Solved after getting home at midnight, so I was glad of a quick solve, as anything more taxing might have ended with me falling asleep over the keyboard. Also glad I looked in here to be so highly entertained.

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