Times 26,375: Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
An excellent and chewy puzzle to ring in a new month with, I thought. My aged mum is staying with us for the Easter hols to perform important kid-wrangling duties, so the Blogging Room was out of bounds this morning, meaning I had to do the puzzle recumbent in bed this morning on an unfamiliar laptop; in such circumstances I was okay with coming in inside the quarter-hour. It seems from the Club forum that there may be an alternative plausible answer to 27ac that laid a number of solvers low, so I’m surprised and delighted that I didn’t fall into that trap, as it seems like the kind of thing I’d normally do unerringly, and I have no idea what a SEAMARK is when it’s at home.

Doubleplusgood economy of cluing on display here (though that may result in a couple of the anagrams being just too simple for some tastes, I don’t know) and some truly great surfaces: 5dn’s splendidness was a little muddied by the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time since mulling over in which senses the Holy See is a court, though I expect it is totally legit. No such qualms with 1D, my LOI (I thought of the right answer and most of the right lines early, but I was looking for a DEPPA or such!) and COD. 18ac gave me some pause but it’s just one of those lovely English words that means both itself and the opposite of itself, isn’t it? I did find 28ac slightly on the laborious side, unless I’ve parsed it incorrectly of course, and some of the clues were a little stomach-turning for a mostly-vegan like myself, but these are minor eggs and cream for a crossword that on the whole was thoroughly top-notch. All glory, laud and honour to the setter!

Across
1 PLANCK – physicist: LAN{e} [“short” course] in PC K [computer | K{nowledge} “just beginning”]
4 CHEMISTS – drug dealers: CHE MISTS [guerilla leader | films]
10 NOURISH – supply with food: {s->N}OURISH [like grapefruit, “with different starter”]
11 LAYETTE – first gear: L [learner] + YET [still], ATE [worried] about that
12 ANTI – opponent: {c}A{n}N{o}T {w}I{n} “being regularly eliminated”
13 DISSONANCE – lack of harmony: IS SON [is | issue] in DANCE [part of ballet]
15 TAIWANESE – Chinese: T.A. [army] + WANES [loses dominance] in {or}IE{nt} [“central parts of”…]
16 AT SEA – lost: about S [“start of” S{eason}], A-TEA{m} [top side “almost”]
18 LIEGE – subject: {coll}EGE IL{logically} [“suffering cuts” … “put back”]
19 BRASSERIE – restaurant: ASSER{t} [say, “cut”] (that) BRIE [cheese] sandwiches
21 GRANT-IN-AID – financial assistance: (A GRAND I*) [“collected”] must include TIN [money]
23 SNAP – break: reverse of PANS [“placed the wrong way”, slates]
26 NITPICK – carp: NIT [egg] served with PICK [cream]
27 SEAMARK – something observable in the water: SEAM ARK [join | sailing vessel]
28 CAR PARKS – lots there (i.e. in the US): ARK [US state] going into CARP S [fish | {busines}S “ultimately”]
29 STOREY – floor: Y [year] on STORE [shop]
Down
1 PANDA – creature: reverse of {h}AD NAP [slept “upside down”, “head tucked away”]
2 AQUITAINE – French region: A QUIT A IN E [a | desert | area | in | eastern]
3 CAIN – murderer: homophone of CANE [“mentioned” form of punishment]
5 HOLY SEE – court: L{ad}Y [“case of”…] entering HOSE [tube] + E{arl’s} [“heading for”…]
6 MAYONNAISE – sauce: YO{u} [“briefly”] tucked into MANNA [heavenly food] + I’S [one’s] served with {chees}E [“last of”…]
7 SET ON – attack: (STONE*) [“thrown”]
8 STEVENAGE – Hertfordshire town: reverse of VETS [checks “up”] on {m}ENAGE [household, “miles away”]
9 SHRIKE – songbird: (HIKERS*) [“disturbed”]
14 PALESTRINA – composer: PALEST [most unimpressive] + RIN{g} [opera cycle “left incomplete”] by A
15 TELEGENIC – worth watching: E.G. [for example] during (ELECTI{o}N*) [“broadcast”, “nothing standing out”]
17 STRANRAER – Scottish port: reverse of REAR N ARTS [back | new | cultural activities “set up”]
19 BANGKOK – city: BANK OK [financial institution | agreed] to accept G [grand]
20 AMIDST – in the middle of: A.M. [the morning] + ID {e}ST [i.e. “when energy is fading”]
22 ASTIR – not still: ASTI R [sparkling wine | right]
24 POKEY – having little room for manoeuvre: KEY [chief], (with) P.O. [petty officer] initially
25 PAST – bygone days: PA’S T [old man has | “little” time]

46 comments on “Times 26,375: Blessed Are The Cheesemakers”

  1. I was also going to say, I was kind of hoping that 19ac would turn out to be a word for “say” inside a synonym for “cut the cheese” in the vulgar slang sense of the phrase, but apparently the Times still isn’t stopping to such levels…
  2. Also fell for sealarks but never mind. Not quite as keen as verlaine on this one although it was pretty good. Liked the positioning of Physicist’s and CHEMISTS (Curie, Pasteur, Faraday and Thatcher perhaps), at 1ac and 4ac. HOLY SEE for COD with an honourable mention to NITPICK.
  3. 17:45 … no quibbles in this quarter, but then I rarely know enough to quibble.

    Happily I’d never heard of a sea lark (heard of a navy lark, but that’s different) so SEAMARK it was. I winced at the appearance of STRANRAER, which I misspelt at the champs in 2014; not that it still smarts or anything …

    Another vote for the drug dealers. Great surface.

    1. I think if you’d asked me how to spell it out of the blue yesterday, I’d probably have gone with STANRAER, so thank goodness for a clue that left no real room for confusion…
  4. 42′, so I’m quite pleased especially as there’s lots of misdirection. I’m glad I didn’t even think of SEALARK.
    My parsing for 1a was different: PLAN (short course) and C+K (initials of Computer Knowledge), but naturally V’s explanation is far superior.
    5a LOI after just stopping myself from entering HALF SEE (a quick look or case? Hmm…)
  5. 13m, but with SEALARK, which I didn’t really question. It fits perfectly well apart from the fact that it should be two words according to Chambers. In much the same way 14dn could be LAMESTRINA. Once may be regarded as a misfortune…?
    I didn’t get a chance to solve or comment yesterday but reading the blog there are a number of references to the club site being for the chop. What’s that all about?

    Edited at 2016-04-01 08:33 am (UTC)

    1. That’s sad news indeed! Maybe the future will look less bleak tomorrow.

      (You totally made me go check, you rotter…)

      1. Ooh, that would have been a good one. But as usual I had completely forgotten about April 1 and there really were such references, honest!
    2. Usually, there are 20/30 comments on a crossword at the Club site. Yesterday, there were only 4, including one from me wondering where everyone else was. One of the others was from the enigmatic Eric Erudite (this being the latest manifestation) who commented that it was all over now. Seems to be back in good shape today.
      1. I didn’t look at the forum, but jackkt said something about it and then there was your comment. So perhaps it was a bit misleading of me to say ‘a number of references’ when that number was actually only two! Perhaps there’s nothing to it, and I should have just taken the credit for the April fool…
  6. 43′ for this, with CAR PARKS following TAIWANESE to finish up. I had no idea how either 1a or 1d worked (besides the NAP), so thank to the V for unravelling those.

    I feel a bit cheated that I read Riddle of the Sands recently and SEAMARK didn’t come up once, even though I had my virtual thumb in a nautical dictionary for most of the read.

    As a scientophobe, I rather liked 4a.

  7. 35′. Sad to see Taiwanese so comfortably equated with Chinese. 27 reminds of Othello’s journey’s end ‘and very seamark of my utmost sail’. Liked pokey.
      1. Another cherishable quote:

        “According to the official maps and the official borders of the Republic of China, Taiwan is part of China. But then again, so is Mongolia, and parts of India, Burma, Vietnam, Bhutan, Japan, Afghanistan, Russia, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.”

      2. 15 ac. can be read as a not-so-subtle fifth-columnist jab while continuing to woo the Chinese on Hinkley Point etc. But on the face of it it fawns. Unlovely.
        1. Or you could take the point of view that the mainland is the part of the country, usually called China, run from the real China’s proper capital on Taiwan.
  9. LAMESTRINA and SEALARK, a double whammy.

    Surely if the answers are obscure words there should be no alternative definitions for the components? Harrumph!

    Oofy Prosser


  10. 27ac SEAMARK was fine for me but GRANT-IN-AID was a long time coming.

    COD 20dn AMIDST FOI 7dn SET ON LOI 28ac CAR PARKS

    A wretched hour on this after a scorching start with the top half to bed in ten minutes.

    ‘I am a proper fool.’

    horryd Shanghai

    1. I had GRANT-xx-AID mentally pencilled in almost immediately, but for some reason the (very obvious with hindsight!) middle word was a lot slower to arrive…
  11. Quite hard work but a very rewarding 60 minutes of solving for me. I also thought of SEALARK but rejected it because the clue said “in the water”, not on it or over it, and it’d be too vague anyway. The unknown SEAMARK seemed obviously correct once I’d thought of it. If you can have a landmark then why not a seamark? And it fits the definition perfectly.
  12. I’ll console myself with anything thinner having no meaning. Couldn’t get going today. An hour before I finally biffed loi ‘layette’. Had three children and never heard of it. Did we leave them naked? I think they were in babygros or am I confusing them with tomatoes and growbags?
    1. A U.S. marketing trick to get suckers to buy loads of stuff you don’t need. Preparation for the bridal shower and the dreaded wedding list.
      1. “The Motherhood Book” which was my mother’s child rearing bible was published sometime in the 1930s. I remember coming across the word LAYETTE there, plus a list of items to be acquired for said LAYETTE. (During the war there was a shortage of paper and we kids read anything we could get our hands on!) So not just an American invention. Though I believe they are responsible for the ghastly Baby Shower!
    2. I have four kids, and I know of LAYETTE through crosswords. We had grobags (a sleeping bag with armholes) as well as babygros.
  13. Limped home eventually with a couple unparsed after a lengthy wrangle with this beast.

    To my chagrin, 20d alerted me to the fact that I’d reached the age of free transport in London without ever having known what i.e. actually stands for – I’m appalled! This is significantly more embarrassing than my experience a couple of Saturdays ago when I had not realised Frank Sinatra was dead (and has been for 17 years).

    Thanks for the usual splendid blog V.

    Edited at 2016-04-01 12:05 pm (UTC)

  14. Always a bit worried when I post a favourable writeup of a crossword and everyone else says “huh, I didn’t enjoy it much personally”… will I finally be outed as a bought corporate shill for Big Crosswords this week, I wonder?
  15. I parsed 1a as Deezzaa. Put in SEAMARK without much confidence. Didn’t get very excited about this crossword. Unlike V. I found the clues to be uneconomical which is self evident in the paper copy.
    1. Hmm, I guess 6dn is a bit of a mouthful, in all senses of the word. I can’t see many clues that are wordier than they need to be (but I’m perfectly willing to concede that my personal definition of “wordier than necessary” may be way off the normal person’s scale)…
  16. 27:19 so a gentle stroll. No problem with SEAMARK (cf LANDMARK) and the potential difficulty with STRANRAER was resolved by reading the clue. Not so keen on HOLY SEE being a court but they all went in. Thank you setter and blogger.
  17. …not many of you will be familiar with the NUTMILK carp, found only in the murky depths of the befuddled antipodean solver’s brain.

    Still, I got away with the unknown LAYETTE, SEAMARK, GRANT-IN-AID and PALESTRINA, so something was bound to give.

    COD to PLANCK. Thanks setter and V.

  18. Didn’t really enjoy this. Nothing I didn’t know but I biffed a lot where the wordplay was too complex for me. I never thought of “seamark” so confidently entered “sealark” for a DNF. Lost track of time but well over 30 mins – didn’t get a single answer on my initial perusal of the acrosses.
  19. An hour. Dislike Taiwanese, as it’s not part of China. I had Tonkinese for some time as the only thing that would fit despite no idea how one would get there, which obviously slowed things down. Aquitaine isn’t a region, either, not since March, although it was obvious enough. Panda was laboured, I thought, and Holy See neither economic nor inarguable. Sourish? Not a way I’ve ever described a grapefruit (a lemon, perhaps), and nourish for supply is whatever the crossword equivalent of a half-rhyme might be. Not a great effort by me or the setter, in my opinion.
    1. If memory serves, the ‘natives’ in South Pacific were Tonkinese, though they had been considerably dislocated by French plantation owners, their homeland being west of Java and up a bit. Roughly speaking.
    2. Most of the inhabitants of Taiwan are Chinese by ethnicity – having ventured to the island from the Mainland at different periods – so it seems fine to me.
  20. Held up by my imperfect knowledge of UK geography, struggling with STRANRAER, and STEVENAGE. Both from wordplay, but I did eventually get them that way. The composer wasn’t on the tip of my tongue either. Sotira, recall that the US headlong plunge into Vietnam was made possible by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by Congress, authorizing Johnson to commit US troops into combat. The gulf is off the east coast of (then) North Vietnam, so I’d assume the Tonkinese are from somewhere near there. I guess my knowledge of world geography isn’t that great either, because I can’t immediately say how that relates to ‘west of Java, and up a bit’. Anyway, regards to all.
  21. I was tired again and finished in 28 mins. I haven’t got a clue how much time I lost through nodding off and I’m probably not going to log a time in future for those puzzles during which I have taken the knock. I found the bottom half of this one a bit chewy after the top half was completed fairly quickly, but I’m not sure how much of that was because of the tiredness. The fact that several of you also found it on the hardish side makes me think that I wouldn’t have found it much easier had I been on peak solving form. Anyway, enough about my state of mind. POKEY was my LOI after the SEAMARK/AMIDST crossers.
  23. Phew. Finally got through one without a nerror, after a string of failures, though this took me the better (nay, best) part of an hour.

    PALESTRINA was a near thing, and I agree with Anonymous (surely one of our most prolific commenters here) that an obscure word should be gettable from the wordplay. Of course, PALESTRINA will only be obscure to those people to whom it is obscure but, given that “Lamestrina” was an equally alluring alternative, I think it was a poor clue. Much the same could be said for SEAMARK/sealark, especially given that there is an HMS Sealark, suggesting that someone, somewhere spells the bird with neither space nor hyphen.

  24. Late in the day, plodded along without much enthusiasm, half an hour or so before I got fed up without seeing the SEAMARK. And was surprised to see Taiwan is OK for Chinese. Not my favourite puzzle, but maybe I was not in the mood. I really must stick to solving early doors.
  25. An idiotic KANE — damn you, Jeffrey Archer! — made the NW waters a bit choppy and took me past the hour line. I also kept having to stop at intervals, roll up the newspaper, and use it to whack the ceiling to silence an irritating mouse. All in all, I’m just glad to have finished, though I’m another SEALARK so technically I didn’t. Fun puzzle, though.

    Edited at 2016-04-01 10:01 pm (UTC)

  26. 11:02 here. I found this a most interesting and enjoyable puzzle, and I join you in raising my hat to the setter.

    For the second time this week I came horribly close to failure as I bunged in SEALARK at a first read-through of 27ac. But (like sotira) I wasn’t entirely convinced that such a creature existed (with or without a space or a hyphen), and fortunately when I came to review the clue on my final checkthrough, the familiar SEAMARK sprang to mind almost immediately. (Phew again!)

    After rejecting DEPPA for 1dn, I thought of PANDA (made promising by the presence of NAP) but still had to write the damned word down before I could fathom the wordplay. And in the end I biffed PLANCK and only twigged the wordplay properly when going over the clues again afterwards. There was a time …

  27. Unlike Andy, the bottom went in quickly for me, and the top struggled. I thought it was a nice touch that liege -which is one of those words which can mean its exact opposite – was clued as the overlord last time but as the subject this time. I think pokey appeared in that same puzzle, which is the only reason I know that definition. Regarding the mysterious East, until 1979 the U.S. recognized the island of Taiwan as the seat of the Chinese government. Ditto for Chiang Kai-Shek until his death in 1975. Sealark here, having never heard of either. Whoops.

    Edited at 2016-04-01 10:46 pm (UTC)

  28. 47 minutes, of which at least 15 were spent on failing to finsh with TAIWANESE. Is this Chinese? Depends on one’s world outlook.

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