Times 26,381: There’s No Crying In Baseball

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
What I’m sure should have been a pleasant, not too difficult (for a Friday) solve was slightly marred by some bad enumerations in the SW. Fortunately I wasn’t stymied for too long by ORNA-MENT, but looking for a single seven letter word in C_R_E_P, in 100% confidence of all my crossers, did have me doubting my sanity for a while. Even with these speed bumps I still came home just inside the 10 minute mark, which is apparently how long it takes me to do all crosswords now.

As suggested by the blog title, this puzzle had a strongly transatlantic flavour, q.v. 12ac, 26ac, 5dn, 22n… perhaps an attempt by the management to atone to our American friends for the raft of London boroughs we saw yesterday. On the other hand, there did seem to be a lot of cricket going on on the first pass, though most of this was just a tease. Is the MCC actually a team or did I just miss the point of 25ac entirely? Wiser heads than mine will know. Anyway the surface of 18dn nicely summed up my opinion on these matters. A cricket clue does I think get my COD award today, round of applause to 20dn; though honourable mention to 9ac and its clever sleights of wordplay. Overall a nice crossword despite the enume-frustrations; many thanks to the setter!

Across
1 POTABLE – describing drinks: POLE [staff] retaining TAB [bill]
5 PERUSAL – reading: U [university] beset by PERS{on}AL [individual – “not on”]
9 STAGE-STRUCK – dying to act: AGES [is getting on] on TRUCK [lorry] at end of ST [street]
10 MOA – extinct bird: M{aldives} O{r} A{ndamans} “originally”
11 APHIDS – bugs: AP{p->HID}S [“third (letter) of” computer programs “taken out by” concealed (== HID)]
12 GRIDIRON – American football: G RID IRON [good | free | smooth]
14 ANIMADVERSION – criticising: MAD VERSION [absurd | interpretation] produced by AN I{diot} [“initially”]
17 COFFEE MORNING – cryptic def: *coffee* grounds will feature in this meeting which by definition happens before the afternoon
21 ORNAMENT – decoration: reverse of TO [“turned” to] welcoming RN MEN [navy personnel] receiving A
23 TWISTY – tortuous: TWI{n} [“endless” corresponding] with STY [pen]
25 TEA – what was taken at interval: TEA{m} [MCC, perhaps “curtailed”] – I’m assuming that the Marylebone Cricket Club is a team of some kind, but it could be a bicycle for all I really know, so perhaps the aficionados could confirm or deny this parsing
26 OREGON TRAIL – Western trek: O REG{i}ON [old | region “I abandoned] + R [right] in TAIL [the end]
27 CARVE UP – partition: UP [raised] after CARE [concern] about V [volume]
28 STROKED – rowed: across R [river], STOKED [fuelled]
Down
1 POSTAL – to do with correspondence: A L [a | Liberal] supports POST [appointment]
2 TRACHEA – chest area: reverse of ART [“revolutionary” skill] limiting ACHE [pain]
3 BREADLINE – where the poor live: BREAD [ready] with LINE [policy]
4 EATS – food: {r}E{g}A{t}T{a}S “regularly”
5 PAUL REVERE – iconic American: PAUL [apostolic figure] leading REVERE [worship]
6 RAKED – on slope: RA{c}KED [in pain “though not catching cold”]
7 SAMURAI – exotic warrior: reverse in toto [“up”] of IS holding A RUM A [a curious article]
8 LEARNING – education: LEANING [bent], on securing R [one of (education’s) basic components (i.e. the three R’s)]
13 SALMON LEAP – passage of fish: AL{l} [“most of” all] to be included in (SOME PLAN*) [“at sea”]
15 RAINWATER – material for irrigation: (I WANT RARE*) [“exotic”]
16 ACROSTIC – puzzle: ROS{e} [girl “short”] in ACT I [opening of play] + C{ordelia} [“introduction of…”]
18 FUNFAIR – entertainment: F{ootball} [“start on…”] + UNFAIR [not cricket]
19 GOSHAWK – bird: GOSH AW [contrasting exclamations] over {blac}K [“tail of..”]
20 EYELID – batter: reverse of DIE [to bow out, “uplifted”] about YE L [the historic | 50]
22 MOOSE – deer: MO{r}OSE [“runs from” bad-tempered]
24 BOSS – double def: control / knob

57 comments on “Times 26,381: There’s No Crying In Baseball”

  1. Nice blog , as usual , Verlaine. The MCC have various teams but to refer to the club as a team is not correct , in my opinion., but not as bad as yesterday’s definition of crepitation.
  2. Clear-ly those strange hy-phens were not as much of a holdup for you as for me – 26.03. I really did try to come up with something to fit O?N?-??N?, and only got MOOSE once I gave up and threw in what the answer clearly was. EYELID was my last in: once I solved it (resorting to writing stuff down on paper rather than staring at a screen) I knew we’d seen that cutesy definition before.
    Learned something new about ANIMADVERSION today. Thought it was something like “taking notice of” – it is, it is – but didn’t animadvert to the crit bit.
    MCC is indeed a cricket team as well as a club with a funny tie and a penchant for believing it runs world cricket.
  3. I can’t believe how long it took me to get ORNAMENT due to the 4,4 enumeration. I realized how the clue worked and tried various combinations. I might have even thought of ORNA MENT and decided it wasn’t a phrase I’d ever heard. But ORNT MEAN didn’t look any better.

    Wasn’t sure if MOOSE was technically a deer but didn’t delay me.

    About 30 mins on paper.

    1. In the dim and distant past I worked as a library assistant and one of my favourite days ever involved a scruffy, wild-eyed member of the public coming to the counter and bellowing the question at me “is a moose… an elk origin”? I spent a few happy hours helping him pore over volumes in the zoology section, trying on to let on that I couldn’t even work out what his question meant…
    2. On my ipad edition (much later in the day) the enumeration is given as (8), so no problems for me on 21 across
  4. Well, I was stymied for too long by ORNA-MENT, my LOI. I didn’t mind RAIN-WATER or even CARVEUP, but the line must be drawn etc. DNK COFFEE MORNING, and (perhaps special pleading) didn’t think of SAMURAI as exotic warriors. Does GOSH contrast with AW?
    1. Mm, I would have thought that GOSH and AW were “different” exclamations, as opposed to strongly contrastive ones…
      2. ‘Gosh’ expresses amazement, whereas ‘aw’ expresses disappointment or disgust, according to Chambers, so ‘contrasting’ seems fair.
  5. The apparent generous hyphenation did not appear on the iPad edition so no confusion here. 15:02 with thanks to V for explaining the biffed ones.
  6. Yes, when I was young the visiting England team was always the MCC. They played all their tour games as the MCC (even wearing the “blood and mustard” colours) except for the Tests when they magically became England.

    As for the crossword, I was carved up by the missing hyphen and I don’t really want to talk about it.

    Have a good weekend folks. Thanks setter and V.

  7. Fortunately the paper version (at least mine) enumerated correctly. Some nice moments in this. After dismissing e-yel-id as not a word suddenly I saw it and was reminded of one of my favourite student howlers: ‘Without battering an eyelid…’
      1. Club printed (I still use the traditional treeware approach) was 4-4 and 7. Didn’t hold anything up for me anyway, as spotted the mistake soon enough at 21, and didn’t see 27 at all even with the right enumeration. So a pathetic 25 minute DNF for me.
        1. And now I’m logged in. Although not sure why I’d been logge out in the first place. LJ and iPads don’t play nicely together
  8. 20:40 … I can’t honestly say the SNAFUs held me up much — I pencilled in ORNAMENT quite early. It was everything else I struggled with.

    I was nicely misled with EYELID, POTABLE and STAGE-STRUCK, among others. My last in was TWISTY, which I think is excellent.

    Shame about the mix-up but they do seem pretty rare at the moment.

  9. I failed to achieve 30 minutes solely as a result of the two errors of enumeration. I wonder if they re-used a grid template so that stuff got carried over from a previous puzzle.

    Edited at 2016-04-08 08:41 am (UTC)

  10. 27 minutes, but how much faster, I wonder, if it weren’t for those cock-ups on the numbering front. 25? 26? In a bit of trepidation over RAKED before I consulted ODO post-solve. Less so with ANIMADVERSION, since I’d forgotten what it meant, and humans are always evaluating and usually negatively.

    I take pride in wearing the bacon and egg tie. Thanks, Dad, for putting me down for membership at birth (mine not his).

    1. That reminds me of the great Sir Richie’s comment at a Lord’s Test when the cameras panned over the members enclosure in a quiet period of play : ” viewers , do not adjust your sets”.
      1. I thought demand for my Richie based after-cricket-dinner speaking would collapse after his death, but not a bit of it. Truly the doyen.
        1. U, I’ve sent you a private message with something you might enjoy on the topic of Richie. Too long and too crickety for this forum.
          1. Thanks – just read it. Very interesting and quite moving. My Dad, who played against the West Indies and I think Pakistan for the Minor Counties, used to talk very highly of Richie as both player and captain. Of course, he made the transition to journalism and broadcasting without much difficulty.
  11. That’s the youngest still home from University. A coffee morning wouldn’t have been a good idea. After half an hour pushing clues around and solving about half, this all suddenly fell into place. The next 10 minutes finished the job with no biffs. Not sure if the MCC would have taken the fixture with Lord Rockingham’s XI.

    Edited at 2016-04-08 12:18 pm (UTC)

  12. MCC is a club that provides sides or elevens; team did jar somewhat.

    Kevin how did you not know 17ac COFFEE MORNING? – you probably have no idea who Victor Meldrew is!

    In my day the Crossword Editor would have been horsewhipped!
    21ac ORNA-MENT indeed! I simply assumed (wrongly) that CARVEUP had become one word!

    FOI 4dn EATS LOI 20dn EYELID which I thought was most unfriendly and why was ‘historic’ necessary?

    COD 22dn MOOSE which is an elk which is indeed a deer.

    Most enjoyable blog from Verlaine – as per usual but his ten minutes is not a patch on my hour! What did you do in spare 50 mins?

    horryd Shanghai

    2. If Manchester United and the South Sydney Rabbitohs are teams, then the MCC certainly is, or at least was, a team. Can’t see any room for complaint on this one.

      Edited at 2016-04-08 12:26 pm (UTC)

  13. I’d have come in about the 8 min mark if only I hadn’t had to stare at the enumeration errors for longer than should have been necessary. Still 9.19 isn’t bad considering.

  14. I was another one held up by the weird enumeration in the SW corner. I felt I was progressing nicely, expecting to finish in 25 minutes, but those enumerations and the tricky definition at 20d pushed me to 33 minutes.
  15. Oh dear. I went for the made-up bird GODLARK at 19d, and gave up on a _W_D_Y crossing it.
  16. Somehow I managed to put in “salmon lane”. Had the right answer worked out, and in went lane. I had considered lane as a type of passage out of the letters, and it must have stuck in the subconscious. That left an unparsable (if vaguely plausible) Orange Trail, and C?R?E?E (7). Chances of me deciphering a clue with incorrect enumeration and checkers: zero.
    Otherwise quite good fun – thanks setter and Verlaine.
    1. Salmon Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
      There beneath the blue (yellow?) submarine skies…
  17. Did this at leisure in Taqui-pneu waiting for the nice monsieur to fit expensive tyres and find spurious reasons to charge me extra for correcting ‘la parallelisme’. So it took over half an hour, I presumed the 4-4 and 7 enumerations were a booboo or CARVEUP was possibly one word. When the 1p dropped for EYELID I remembered it had appeared before with similar effect, but it’s a good one. I thought moose for deer and trachea for chest area were stretching it a bit far, but it seems to happen all the time these days, I’m just grumpy.
    EDIT I now see several sites are telling me ‘moose is the largest member of the deer family’ so I’ll apologise to the setter for that one.

    Edited at 2016-04-08 12:45 pm (UTC)

  18. Managed to complete in 23′ while being a front-sear car passenger. EYELID & APHIDS CsOD with LOI TWISTY.
  19. This was very straightforward but I was held up at the end by CARVEUP. The problem wasn’t the enumeration but the fact that I had written ‘funfare’ (a McHappy meal?) at 18dn, leaving the very difficult C?E?E?P. Took ages to see the batter/EYELID connection.
  20. There are advantages and disadvantages of using the paperware version: on the one hand the misprints in the enumeration weren’t there. On the other, it relies on me being able to read my own writing: mistaking the “S” in 23a as an “E” made 19d ungettable.
  21. Got through most of this one at an unaccustomed gallop, then took an age to get Twisty, Eyelid (very cute)and to build Animadversion from the wordplay (a word I was vaguely familiar with but had no idea of its meaning).

    All most enjoyable – thanks to setter and V.

  22. Technical DNF as I needed aids to get the unknown or forgotten ACROSTIC. Everything else done in about 40 minutes, so average for me, despite getting hung up on G___A__ at 19 down and presuming that contrasting exclamations indicated Goddamn, if you’ll excuse the expression.
  23. Done as always on the iPad so no probs with enumeration. My time of 2 Verlaine’s indicates an excellent solve for me. Finished in the SE with LOI “boss”.
  24. This took a while, about 45 minutes or so. The enumeration had me befuddled for a period before I decided to ignore it. While Verlaine sees American touches here, I was also stumped by the identity of the MCC, whatever a COFFEE MORNING is, and I believe a SALMON LEAP must be what we call a fish ladder, so I didn’t get any west of the Atlantic boost from this. But I managed to finish after an extended solve. Regards.
    1. There’s a Salmon Ladder at Pitlochry in Scotland which is an artificial construct to allow the fish past a diffcult stretch of the river, but I think Leap refers to a natural waterfall which they can spend ages trying to negotiate.
  25. About 40m but some 20m of that with only TWISTY and EYELID left, with the latter defeating me, for no better reason than I couldn’t really parse it to see what I was looking for. Oh well! (As Peter Green might have said). Enjoyable puzzle nonetheless and an entertaining blog from V as ever, though a curiously unalcoholic one today!
    1. I was wondering if anyone would remark on my recent spate of sober blogs – to come clean I’ve been doing the crossword in the mornings lately, so much less opportunity to get well oiled in advance. I might blame this recent run of consistent/boring 10-minute performances on having been divorced from my intoxicating Muse!
  26. Completed in 45 minutes, with the last 15 spent on BOSS, STROKED and LOI EYELID with a penny drop moment. Done on treeware as usual, so can’t use the enumeration issue as an excuse. FOI POSTAL. Managed to parse everything as I went. Enjoyed V’s blog as usual. Didn’t know what ANIMADVERSION meant, but knew the word and built it from the wordplay. Liked GOSHAWK.
  27. A knock-free 20 mins, and as I solved it on treeware I didn’t have the enumeration problems. Thankfully. I’m old enough to remember when England’s overseas tours were under the name of the MCC rather than England so I don’t have a problem with calling the MCC a team. For some reason it took me ages to see STAGE-STRUCK and it was my NTLOI before RAKED. I also struggled with SALMON LEAP even after all the checkers were in place because I hadn’t looked at the anagram element of the clue properly, I’d convinced myself that “passage” on its own was the definition, and I was trying to think of “Tasman” something. Fool.
  28. Unusually fast time for me – no distraction from football matches due to solving early. Like others, solving on the purchased paper meant that I avoided the enumeration problem, which I knew nothing of till I came here, so some compensation for the agony of putting cash in Murdoch’s coffers. Fortunately, his new wife has a few quid of her own money, so he won’t need too much of mine.
    Gentle fare for a Friday, but none the worse.
  29. Pleasant 39-minuter for me. Luckily I do the paper version, since those fiendish misdirections would surely have done for me altogether. Enjoyable puzzle, I thought.

  30. Well that explains what happened after I said “aw” when that lady showed me her baby.
  31. 23:49 with the bottom much tougher than the top, only partly because of the misen-umerations.
  32. Apologies to those who solved this on the crossword club pages, where the corrected enumerations seem not to have filtered through.
    There are so many different platforms for the puzzle these days it is hard even for the editor to keep up!

    RR

  33. 10:45 for me, fortunately not unduly fazed by the duff enumerations.

    A pleasant, reasonably straightforward solve (I’d come across variations of EYELID = “batter” before, so no great problem there).

  34. 9:31. I spent today driving back to London from Cornwall in awful traffic, so I didn’t get a chance to solve this until tomorrow, by which time the enumeration errors had been corrected on the club site. I had more trouble with 13dn, where I convinced myself that the word SALMON came from the anagram fodder, leaving me with the right letters for the second word but a bit of a construction problem.
  35. I recall being told that hyphenation is a transitory thing: Two words become hyphenated through dalliance before becoming United, viz. wave length, wave-length, wavelength. I suspect the German language is littered with combined words.

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