Times 26368 – is there a political statement in 27 across?

45 comments on “Times 26368 – is there a political statement in 27 across?”

1. An hour mainly ‘cos of trouble in the Nort West area.
   9ac HORSE SENSE held me up somewhat although FOI 4dn RASCAL.

   Noises in the country! Baaaa!

   COD 5dn BUNKER MENTALITY LOI 2dn EPODE

   horryd Shanghai

2. George, about 27ac and America’s sudden dose of the DTs. Note that it comes just after PROFIT and FEAR in the SW and that the BACKLASH is a fair way away.

   Found this middling difficult but with much to smile at. SHORTCAKE wins today’s bake-off; though given the above, fruitcake might have been tastier.

   Edited at 2016-03-24 05:22 am (UTC)

3. A very comfortable flowing solve came to an abrupt end after about 25 minutes with all of the NW corner missing other than MASCULINE and from then on it was a slog at snail’s pace.

   I didn’t know (or perhaps I’d just forgotten) HOPI, but it looked plausible so in it went after due consideration. I managed eventually to work out HORSE SENSE (put off for ages by thinking of ‘wit’ as humour rather than wisdom), RASCAL and WEIMAR (Bremen looked good for a while), but at various stages along the way I used aids to get BUNKER to go with MENTALITY, PECULATE and finally EPODE. This last one has come up before and I even blogged it in a puzzle back in 2008 but then it was part of the wordplay leading to the answer ‘episode’ which was easily biffable (even before the term had been invented) so the obscure word evidently didn’t stick in my brain. I had no idea of the sacred qualities involved in ABLUTION.

   TWEEDY was a gift having given me (and others) so much grief in the Quick Cryptic I blogged last Monday.

   Edited at 2016-03-24 05:21 am (UTC)

4. 26 minutes with a nod to TWEEDY because it’s so evocative of a certain countryside type: booming voice, unscary nuttiness, questionable (if any) sexuality.

   Never knowingly known HORSE SENSE and BUNKER MENTALITY comes a distant second to SIEGE in my mental repository. As for PECULATE, I’m not sure why, but I had its shadowy meaning in a field a lot worse than steal. Something vaguely Biblical, where the perpetrator usually ends up lifeless.

   Edited at 2016-03-24 05:21 am (UTC)

5. After 13 minutes, I just needed PECULATE, which took about ten minutes and EPODE, which never quite arrived.
   Plumped for “erode” in the end, meaning cut (sort of) and no idea how the wordplay would have worked.

   Have still never managed a full week of all-correct under thirty minutes each. Ah well, will try again next week.

   Thanks setter and George.

6. No problems here and a straight top to bottom solve. Agree about the Mephisto flavour George at both PECULATE and EPODE. I would also add 26A with reference to Lindi St Clair who featured in my last Mephisto blog.
   1. Lindi St Clair, aka Miss Whiplash. That takes me back. As well as a fight against the Taxman who argued that prostitution was a trade, she also incorporated herself as Lindi St Clair (Personal Services) Ltd, a company that was eventually closed down by the Attorney General. My interest in this is purely from the tax angle of course.

      Edited at 2016-03-24 11:52 am (UTC)

7. … as my father used to say during the prison visits. Usual 30 minutes but diverted like jackkt via Bremen then seduced by ducats in 11a and EVODE in 2d.
8. 
   All bar two after 30mins, then WEIMAR, then I gave up after 45mins with a blank at the u/k (or forgotten) EPODE.

   Wanted 15ac to be ‘lead shot’ for a little while, which made 5dn tricky. Parsed TWEEDY incorrectly, using the last letter of scrawny rather than robust. Doh!

9. One of those puzzles where, unlike Jimbo, I rather drifted around the grid for 16 minutes, putting in answers when I spotted them and ending up in the NW.
   I’ve no idea how we stand with the Hopi these days. Do they mind being defined as Indian?
   I thought horror was a bit strong for distaste, but my Thesaurus disagrees.
   1. Not at all, it would appear: http://www.indians.org/articles/hopi-indians.html

      I can’t say that my best friend is a Native American – or gay – but a chap I knew when living in Jakarta was a pal-a-mino.

   2. I thought so too, when the same definition appeared in one of the (as yet unblogged) weekend puzzles. Surely not a coincidence?
10. This and the quick cryptic both very easy today, hardly over 10mins the pair.
    I always laugh at the word Hopi, in recognition of their feat in persuading gullible people to poke candles in their ears and claim it is good for them. How they must be laughing…

    Interested to see your comments re 5dn George; bunkum/buncombe are unusual words, in having such a clear and unquestioned etymology. Are you as hard on your Congressmen nowadays, I wonder?

    1. Interestingly, Buncombe County is currently divided between the 10th and 11th congressional districts. So George is (virtually) represented by either Mark Meadows or Patrick McHenry, depending on where exactly he lives.

       Edited at 2016-03-24 02:07 pm (UTC)

       1. I bit the bullet and got citizenship almost two years ago, so I am allegedly represented by Patrick McHenry. Buncombe county, which is pretty liberal, was gerrymandered a few years ago so that half the county gets lumped in with the very rednecky surroundings. For the record, I wouldn’t piss on either of them if they were on fire (unless I could piss gasoline).
11. 15m, starting quickly but then slowing to a crawl by the last few in the NW, especially EPODE. A somewhat obscure verse form, but at least it’s English. Of which more in a few days.
    We had BUNKER MENTALITY quite recently, but it still took me a long time to see it.
    1. Yes, looking forward to your thoughts on that one!
       1. I’m with you eight times over.
12. A lot of people know him because as children they learned music using Orff instruments.

    Zabadak’s “state-of-the-ark” earlier this week reminds me that, in the US at least, those who should know better often use FLAUNT when they mean “flout”. Flaunt it baby, flaunt it! (as Max Bialystock would say). Which also reminds me, apropos of TRUMPERY, of the painfully funny clip of a take-off of The Producers which Z posted for my benefit recently. Ouch.

    I was probably the only nincompoop who kept wanting to put Oscar Wilde instead of HORSE SENSE. 18.36

    Edited at 2016-03-24 11:07 am (UTC)

13. Next time Libya crops up in a puzzle I may just toss a coin. I’m pretty sure my success rate would go up. And this time my ‘Lybia’ was despite the helpful wordplay, which has only ensured that from now on I’m going to have trouble spelling Lybra, too.

    Oh, and I typed ORFE. By analogy with an earworm, I now have a brainfish.

    I enjoyed the puzzle (14 mins) just fine until I clicked submit.

14. Could have done with the horse sense stimulator this morning. Forty minutes and had to check epode. Needed a biscuit afterwards, which left me pondering the difference between shortbread and shortcake.
15. Gave up on Peculate – my feverish search for an answer not assisted by having (albeit squeamishly) put in Raster at 4d – did not occur to me that “termed” was leading us to a synonym rather than being the 50% word itself… Ah well, live and learn.

    Thought 7d and 24d were both rather neat, and 15a triggered a cackle. Thanks to George and setter.

16. I wonder if I was the only one who confidently wrote in CREE at 13ac. Makes perfectly good sense: cree{d}.

    Never got the parsing of EPODE, which was really perfectly simple.

    1. Yup I had Cree too.
       1. Yep, I started hot out of the gates with CREE too, but then quickly biffed in the correct answer when I realised the last letter needed to be an I instead. Just under 7 minutes on the clock in the end.
    2. Me too, but corrected fairly quickly, just like Verlaine (only much slower).
       1. Me too for Cree. Also for Erode. Cree fixed itself; Erode did not.
17. Did anyone else fall for TRASHERY over TRUMPERY? I though the rasher was quite clever, but did wonder at the seemingly redundant ‘prime bit of expensive’ which led me to the right answer eventually, despite my mis-parsing fitting the clue in all other respects.

    A bit of a struggle for me with unknowns like EPODE and ORFF, but otherwise a nice puzzle to end (the working) week.

18. I made rather heavy weather of this, mainly because I was very sleepy and kept nodding off, having had a disturbed night last night. Like others the NW was the main problem, where I was tempted by BREMEN, but I also couldn’t get 26 for some time until I saw I’d entered DISTASTE as DISTTASE. Around 45 minutes in the end.
19. A straight ahead exercise, across and down and fill in the gaps, the last of which was WEIMAR because of the sport bit. AT 13ac, surely India doesn’t need to include the HOPI in its population count, and another nincompoop with Oscar Wilde a candidate at 9ac.
20. As for Jimbo, a straightforward job, 15 minutes, with WEIMAR my LOI once I’d seen it was I’M and not ME inserted. Guessed PECULATE from the Latin root as had never seen the word used before, and did remember HOPI from some visit to Arizona years ago.
21. 12:30 with no biffs, queries or quibbles. Epode added about a minute at the end.
22. ….Cree[d] for 13 – it does fit the literal and wordplay beautifully. But eventually I saw ‘outerwear’ and reconsidered.

    Like most, I had considerable trouble with the ‘Weimar’/’epode’ crossing, stretching my time out to 40 minutes.

    1. Cree(d) is one of those totally credible wrong answers. In the same vein (but not as good), you could have tried (te)ACHI(ng), or more obtusely (d)RAMA or (dh)ARMA or even (whi)TEWA(sh).

       There is an incredibly long list of native American tribal names, many of which are four letters long, but obviously, there is only one right answer.

23. Not too taxing and like others my LOI was EPODE. ORFF was new to me. I liked BUNKER MENTALITY, pretty clever. Regards.
24. Pleasant 42 mins with biffing aplenty. ‘Noises in the country’ made me laugh.
25. 26 mins from start to finish but once again I took the knock in the middle of it. Like others the PECULATE/EPODE crossers were my last ones in. Without the first E checker for 11ac I found it hard to get away from the idea that the old coin was a dUcAt. Thanks to the setter for TRUMPERY.
26. This week is not turning out well. This time, I was beaten by EPODE – the closest I could get to a plausible answer was “erode”. I relied on Wikipedia to tell me that the EPODE is the third part of an ode, so no doubt there are a couple of other x-odes out there waiting to trip me up in future puzzles. I also wonder what the first two parts of an ic are called.
27. Like Thud and Galspray, I was beaten by the NHO EPODE, with ERODE the closest I could get, and like Vinyl I had CREE until I saw OUTERWEAR. FOI BACKLASH, the rest flowing steadily until the NW, which exercised the grey matter for longer than the rest of the puzzle. About 50 minutes with 1 wrong. Liked MOON SHOT and TRUMPERY. Had a long think about the unknown PECULATE when I was struggling with EPODE, but stuck with it.
28. Well, this looked as if it was going to be easy, until I ended up with everything solved but the NW corner. WEIMAR came after scanning my mental map of Germany, but I had to make up EPODE and PECULATE just on the wordplay and to my great surprise this time my imaginative creations were real words. 50 minutes in all.

    Edited at 2016-03-24 07:54 pm (UTC)

29. I would love to say that I knew exactly what an epode is, but, sadly, it was just a rather vague recollection from my student days. All o.k. though, and my time doesn’t look too dusty compared with others who are usually crossing the finishing line while I am struggling at Beecher’s.
30. 18m 38s. Like others, the NW corner held me up and EPODE was my last in. It also took me a while to parse CREATION. Anyone else get fooled into trying to find an anagram of “Wit’s sneer’s so” at 9ac, before seeing the light?
    1. Not for a 10 letter answer !
31. 10:55 for me. There was a time when I’d have rattled through a puzzle like this, so I’m left feeling old and slow. Again. (Sigh!)

    I don’t think “sacred washing” in 23ac can have brought enough of the sacred to my mind, as the word that surfaced was OBLATION, which I gradually tweaked (via ABLATION – or was it OBLUTION?) until I came up with the right answer.

    I can trace my first encounter with TRUMPERY (though as an adjective rather than a noun) to Mr Wilkins in the Jennings books who used to describe schoolboy antics as “trumpery moonshine”.

32. I managed to finish this this morning, apparently all correct.
    I’d guessed Hopi and this morning was left with parsing Horse Sense and then working out 2d. I almost went with Erode (meaning Cut). But that did not deal with the Event in the clue. Once Episode occurred to me I had the unknown, but probably correct, Epode. David

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