Times 26383 – Off to the races!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 18 minutes

Music: Dvorak, Cello Concerto, Starker/Dorati

Well, it looks like we’re back to easy Monday again. All you QC graduates, now should be your opportunity to finish your first regular puzzle. The literals just hand you many of the answers without the need to bother with the cryptics, so there should be plenty of biffing for the quick solvers.

After finishing the blog, I don’t see anything to stop anyone. Full speed ahead!

Across
1 CHEESEBURGER, CHE + ESE + RE GRUB backwards. Not a snack if you order one in the US!
8 IMAMATE, I + MA(M.A.)TE.
9 NOSTRUM, SON backwards + [poten]T RUM.
11 DOSSIER, D + OS(S)IER.
12 OUTSOLD, OUT([book]S)OLD.
13 VICHY, V I[t]CHY.
14 MAUSOLEUM, M(A)US(OL[d])EUM. A rather awkward cryptic, but a very obvious answer.
16 RING FENCE, RING + FENCE in various senses.
19 RABBI, R(A B B)I, where R.I = ‘Religious Instruction’.
21 IN GROUP, IN GR. O.U.P, i.e. Oxford University Press. I nearly wrote ‘in crowd’ before checking the cryptic.
23 RAT RACE, R.A. + TRACE, where R.A. is our old friend the Royal Artillery, as an example of a regiment, close enough!
24 YORKIST, anagram of STORY around K,I.
25 HANDSEL, HAND(S)EL. If you hadn’t heard of it, the cryptic gives it to you.
26 CALAMITY JANE, C A L(AMITY J)ANE.
 
Down
1 CLASSIC, C.(LASS)I.C, i.e. Commander in Chief.
2 EDACITY, ED + A CITY.
3 STEERSMAN, double definition, one jocular.
4 BANJO, BAN + JO.
5 RISOTTO, RI(SOT + [i]T)O. I was looking for ‘ret’ when I saw ‘soak’, but not so.
6 EAR LOBE, EARL + O.B.E.
7 BIODIVERSITY, anagram of ONE BOY’S DRIVE I BOY’S DRIVE IT.
10 MADEMOISELLE, MADE MO(I)SELLE.
15 UNEARTHLY, anagram of LUNAR YEAR THE LUNAR Y. Curiously, ‘unearthly’ was also the answer for 15 down in the puzzle I blogged two weeks ago, 26371.
17 NIGERIA, GIN upside-down + AIRE upside-down.
18 FLORIDA, FLO RID + A.
19 ROTUNDA, R(O TUN + D)A.
20 BRASSIE, BRASS[er]IE. A 2-wood, which nobody uses any more.
22 PUTTI, PUT T[h]I[s].

75 comments on “Times 26383 – Off to the races!”

  1. It’s an anagram of THE LUNAR Y.

    Yep … back to the easier side. If you get 7dn right off (as I did), the rest pretty much clicks into place. So under the 20m, even though I did this while listening to the recent current affairs on radio. I challenge anyone to do any crossword while listening to Anthony Albanese sounding like a dalek and talking drivel.

  2. 11.49 for me, which is close to my fastest ever. I was #1 on the leaderboard for a time since I was the first and only person on the leaderboard.

    DNK HANDSEL (except in the Gretel sense) nor EDACITY but they had to be right.

    Verlaine is apparently 7.51 so I’m less that twice that which makes me feel good.

    1. I might have been a little bit faster but for somehow towards the end my CLASSIC had transmuted into CLASSIN. Turns out 13ac is quite hard to solve when the letters you have are V_N_Y!
  3. Oh I forgot. 7dn my FOI, is not an anagram of ONE BOYS DRIVE (not enough Is, no T), it is an anagram of I BOYS DRIVE IT
  4. Not much to say, a few half-knowns and one unknown (HANDSEL), but a typically cruisy start to the week.

    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  5. Agreed! A 24 minute shoe in. Verlaine shouold be close to 5!

    1 ac CHEESEBURGER FOI made it a flying start. Of the descenders from that only 3 dn EDACITY didn’t go in immediately.

    LOI 22 dn PUTTI which I should have had far earlier.

    COD 7dn BIODIVERSITY. DNK HANDSEL but no worries.

    horryd Shanghai

  6. thanks, Vinyl. I learned to play golf with a 3-wood which had a brass plate, out of deference to the old usage. The driver and the 4 wood (spoon?) in the set had stainless steel plates, so it was a clearly intentional reference. I’m pretty sure that the newer but still ancient persimmon woods down in the cellar do the same thing.
  7. Mostly straightforward and I completed in 28 minutes, so within my target time. Didn’t know HANDSEL any more than I did when it came up in August 2009.
      1. In Greek, the steersman is (roughly) kybernetes. Wiener used it to refer to any self-steering (self-governing) being or machine. It’s also, then, the root of “governor” via the antique “gubernator”.
        1. Thank you! I was aware of Wiener, another for whom genius is too small a word, but not of whence he derived “cybernetics”. My (koine) Greek is limited, though I see now I could have just looked it up in Chambers!

              1. Yup. The greek version of steersman turns up in Acts (Paul getting shipwrecked) and Revelation, (bystanders to the fall of Babylon)

        2. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sometimes referred to as the “Governator” of California. And he’s definitely a cyborg.
          1. Arnie’s bio:
            Terminator -> Gropenator -> Governator -> Inseminator.

            All except RAT RACE in 9 and a half minutes, but choked under pressure and stopped the clock at 10:08
            Only ever once broken 10 minutes once, so huge frustration. Spent too long figuring all the parsings while filling, even when the answer was obvious.
            Rob

  9. As Vinyl notes, there were lots of clues –too many– where one could BIFD. I believe that MADEMOISELLE has been dropped by the authorities, and that ‘Madame’ is now to be applied to all females. What we should have done with ‘Miss’ instead of inventing ‘Ms.’.
        1. For me, it would depend on whether she’s a physician or a professor. At Berkeley one never addressed or referred to a prof as Professor X or Doctor X, always Mr. (or in the extremely rare cases back then when it was a female instructor, Miss/Mrs. [this was before Ms. came around]). I’ve never had the nerve to call a doctor Mr. (and I call my doctor Sensei, a term I never use with colleagues), but in an ideal world, … maybe something like ‘comrade’, say?
          1. Neither physician nor professor. Happens to have a PhD (in anthropology). And it depends on whether one is addressing, say, an envelope, or the good woman herself face-to-face.

            As an ex-Quaker, I find all titles repugnant. Though, in future, you may use “Dr” or “Prof.” as you see fit.

            If any woman chooses “Ms”, let her so choose … and don’t argue.

          2. In the UK surgeons retain ‘Mr’ as a sort of defiant vestige of the days when they weren’t considered proper doctors.
  11. 8:59 … definitely a Monday puzzle but that’s fine. I can remember a time when I probably wouldn’t have finished this.

    I just wanted to say that the clue for RISOTTO is a cracker — pretty much a recipe in itself. Best of a number of pithy, witty clues. Much appreciated.

    1. I’m heartened to hear you say that, as I came in at just over an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s good to know there’s at least some chance I’ll speed up if I keep at it…
  12. 9.35, yay! So not that difficult, then, and I freely admit that the many went in without much checking of the wordplay. Which is a pity, since there were some witty clues in this. RING FENCE and RISOTTO made me smile. For MLLE I was grateful for the spellcheck offered, since I got it wrong last time, and the dim memories that were EDACITY and HANDSEL were generously clued so there could be little doubt.
  13. 9m here. I didn’t actually biff that much, strictly speaking (the term ‘biff’ does of course have a strict meaning), but there was quite a lot of semi-biffing, as it were. I knew that 14ac was constructed around a MUSEUM, for instance, or that there was AMITY in 26ac, without pausing to parse the clues fully.
    HANDSEL unknown, EDACITY vaguely familiar, which presumably means it’s come up before.
  14. 13 minutes, but with madAmoiselle – again!

    I would like to blame it on getting up at 2am to watch the remarkable goings-on at Augusta, but I’d have probably taken that big divot anyway…

    1. Indeed, remarkable. But watching Spieth’s collapse was almost as painful as watching Manchester United’s at the Lane. No, wait…
      1. Oi! I resemble that remark. Finishing ahead of Arsenal and behind Leicester – that should satisfy success-starved Spurs’ fans.

        Spieth doing a Stokes was a sight indeed.

        Edited at 2016-04-11 09:51 am (UTC)

  15. Yes, nice quick (too quick?) one to start the week, which took me well under my 30mins. Held up a little at the end with SE quad: HANDSEL (u/k), BRASSIE (semi/k). Also dnk EDACITY.
  16. Golly, that was easy! So easy I was able to solve it in strict order: first the four outside ones, then the four that interlock in the middle, then the short ones opposite them, etc. Handsel not remembered but it didn’t seem to matter
  17. I suppose in these obese times a CHEESEBURGER is a snack rather than a meal. FOI BIODIVERSITY. 14′ including the gas board at the door, good start to the week.

    Edited at 2016-04-11 08:28 am (UTC)

  18. Yes, very easy with memories of Doris Day and Howard Keel to finish with – decided I’m going to include Secret Love in my next tea-dance programme.
    1. A fine sentence that Jim, not one you meet every day .. conjured up all sorts of pictures. Doris Day is a very talented and much underrated lady.. nice to know she’s still alive, at the age, according to Wikipedia, of either 92 0r 94 🙂
  19. Words written in fear by a Lancastrian! They’ll never accept their defeat at Bosworth. Now we’ve got Danny Willett as well as Joe Root to contend with. 38 comments already and it’s not 11 am? I know it was an easy puzzle, 15 minutes with no biffs, but don’t you lot have dogs to walk, dishwashers to empty, bins to put out and the paper to read before you do the crossword? Also I stopped up past my bedtime to see Willett’s triumph.
    1. The dog has to wait until the paper is read and the crossword finished. In the bad old days, he would probably have never got a walk! Oh, 10:14.

      Edited at 2016-04-11 10:54 am (UTC)

      1. If your dog is the border collie of the photograph, all I can say is that he’s a lot more patient than my 14 year old of the same species. They’re probably both brighter than us. I loved the bit in Wallis and Gromit when Wallis was reading Ayup! magazine and Gromit Electronics for Dogs.
        1. Yup, that is the dog. He is not particularly patient. It is not easy trying to type in answers on a keyboard attached to an iPad on my lap with the dog sticking his head round and licking my hand. Agree about the intelligence. I do check some answers with him but although he knows, he doesn’t say.
          1. I’m afraid that my plodding solving times mean that the dog walking has to take priority. I used to have a wise golden cocker who sat on the kitchen bench beside me and was a whizz at the sudoku, but the Times cryptic is beyond the Welshie, although he was pleased to see HWYL recently! IMAMATE, EDACITY, HANDSEL and even the R Aire were new to me, but were eventually wrestled down
    1. A 12 minute blitz, Monday fare, in spite of a sleepless night coughing and seeing my ‘lads sweep’ cash disappear as McIlroy and Speith imploded. Nevertheless, good to see an English winner and 4 more in the top 10. Morale booster for the Ryder Cup too.
      Nothing much to say about the crossword except; it was easy apart from guessing PUTTI from wordplay.
      1. I do love watching them forced to graciously put a green jacket on a European. The moment when Faldo won two years running and got to put a jacket on himself while the assembled officials tried to look happy will stay with me forever..
  21. How come “get on track” = trace?

    This QCer blitzed through the main puzzle in a few minutes, so it must be fairly easy! (Although did cheat with the aforementioned clue.)

    1. The definition is ‘scramble to get on’
      If you track someone, you should eventually be able to trace them.
  22. This was incredibly easy. Most of the time I wasn’t solving the clues but just writing in the answers from the definitions. Only 2d and 25a gave me pause for thought since I didn’t know either. 14 minutes. I’m not sure I’ve completed a Times puzzle as quickly before. I might have been a tad quicker if I hadn’t stupidly entered PUTTY for PUTTI.
  23. 8:03 so definitely the easiest of the week so far. I wasn’t sure what a nostrum was (a stringless guitar?) or the precise (or indeed any) meaning of edacity but neither of those held me up.

    On the WP front I didn’t immediately see how RABBI worked (thinking class = A1) nor make the leap from “part of” to “in” at 21.

    Edited at 2016-04-11 12:54 pm (UTC)

    1. Every single time one of these religious leaders with “two bishops” or whatever pops up, either RABBI springs to mind and the answer’s ABBOT, or vice versa. Sigh. I really must try to remember both for the next time.
  24. Just noting that Magoo clocked in at 3.43 today which is almost exactly the same time it takes me to type one of these things. He also turns up as a prize-winner this week. In New York, lawyers are accorded the title “esquire” – I’ve no idea why and have never bothered to find out. And as someone who did not take her husband’s name I often get mail addressed to Ms. O.R. Esq. Oh dear. 8.4.
    1. When I first qualified as a Chartered Accountant, I acquired the letters ACA (Associate of the Institute etc). I then started getting letters addressed to Mr Watsonaca. I replied of course to try and keep this splendid name going and it was interesting to see how even all those (nearly 40) years ago, names were shared. Sadly it died out , especially when I became an FCA.
      2. I had a friend whose name is ASHE. One day he got mail addressed to Mr Ash-Withaney. It took us some time to work out that he must have told them that “my name is ashe, with an ‘e'”
  25. What was already said, a pretty quick zoom through the clues though for some reason I have a question mark next to OUTSOLD.
  26. About 15 minutes, not requiring a lot of thinking, except, as George says, maybe OUTSOLD. That hanging ‘binding’ was confusing for a time before I ignored it. As some know, and maybe a coincidence, the US amateur golfer Bobby Jones, attorney and one of the founders of both the Augusta National Club, and the Masters, named his putter CALMITY JANE. Nice timing, setter, and congrats to Mr. Willett, who I confess I wouldn’t have been able to identify before yesterday. Regards.
  27. The QC blog said this was an easier than normal puzzle so I had a go.
    I got about half fairly quickly but then gave up through lack of time.
    Looking at the answers there were several unknowns to me Edacity, Handsel ( I was looking for the name of a composer) and Putti. I did manage to derive Imamate so was pleased about that. In summary pretty difficult for this experienced QCer.
    Readers of the paper will notice that a prizewinner for the last Saturday puzzle 26,376 (very difficult I thought) was a Mr M Goodliffe -beginner’s luck? David
  28. As someone who has started doing these about a year ago- it is very rare to complete one- so although it was “easier” I wouldn’t say easy! Nice to complete one
    Notreve
  29. 15m today so as quick as it gets for me. I enjoyed RISOTTO particularly. Some good clues – thanks setter and blogger today.
  30. Twenty-five minutes here, of which a good ten (or a bad ten, I suppose) were spent on CHEESEBURGER. I spent a long time convincing myself that a “cheesebarrel” was (a) a thing and (b) a single word, neither of which is apparently the case. Fortunately, I resorted to desperate measures by actually parsing this one, which sorted it out for me. Not helped by my never having heard of EDACITY – it couldn’t really have been anything else, but it still kept me worried. Also slightly thrown by the definition of a BANJO as an instrument.

    COD for me was RISOTTO which, as others here have pointed out, was a very neat clue.

  31. Indeed an easy and enjoyable puzzle (for me that means 32 minutes). I agree that the clue for RISOTTO was excellent. Didn’t know what a HANDSEL was, but it couldn’t be anything else, and I am fascinated by EDACITY, because while I am sure I have never seen this word before, at the same time it seems so natural and has the perfect right flavour (I can’t think of a better way to describe it) of an erudite English word for greed. Somehow one can really intuit what might actually be English vocabulary.
  32. A knock-free solve and I raced through it in 7 mins, so I was very much on the wavelength. I finished with BRASSIE after HANDSEL, but it wasn’t quite a top to bottom solve and I had to trust the wordplay for EDACITY.
  33. 7:23 for me after another horribly slow start (plus a couple of hiccups along the way).

    A pleasant, straightforward solve.

  34. 22 minutes for me, so definitely on the easy side. Didn’t know EDACITY but the WP was generous. Enjoyable puzzle. FOI CLASSIC. LOI PUTTI.

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