Times 26,393: Snowdonder

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I thought this was going to be very easy indeed by Friday standards, as a bunch of answers flew straight in on the first pass, but I ended up getting bogged down in the SW and clocked out at the 8 minute mark.

Easy it may have been but it was a lot of fun, the sort of crossword you do with a wry (awry?) smile on your face throughout. As a boy whose formative years where spent in North Wales, I was very appreciative of 19ac and 8dn (someone not that long ago informed me there are in fact multiple Rivers Dee, but as far as I’m concerned one stands mouth and delta above the best). COD to 19ac, for purely patriotic reasons, then.

As I say, the SW corner caused me the most problems, though they quickly evaporated when 27ac’s penny dropped and the Z made 23dn obvious, which dominoed into 24ac and then allowed the slightly tricky wordplay in 17dn to fall.

I, er, haven’t quite worked out the optimum mark-up for showing the full clues as well as the parsing yet? I have to go get the girls to school now but I plan to fix it later. If any HTML whizzes have any suggestions before I get back, they couldn’t hurt…

Across
1 Again order extremely reliable cutting guide (5)
REJIG – R{eliabl}E [“extremely”] + JIG [cutting guide]
4 Cut up about small dalliance, almost moved (9)
DISPLACED – DICED [cut up] about S PLA{y} [small | dalliance, “almost”]
9 Fail to rise in corporation? On the contrary (2,5,2)
GO BELLY UP – If your business GOES BELLY UP it’s done for. At the same time, a BELLY is a corporation so in some sense it might rise when it GOES UP? No, much less tortuous than that: the contrary of GO UP [rise] in BELLY [corporation], i.e. BELLY in GO UP. Thanks, anonymous benefactor!
10 Colour caused by radiation in West? (5)
MAUVE – UV [radiation] in MAE [West]
11 Duo promised an unusual way of working (5,8)
MODUS OPERANDI – (DUO PROMISED AN*) [“unusual”]
14 Fine, sort of, perhaps brill? (4)
FISH – F ISH [fine | sort of]
15 Pantomime character transgressed in speech before everyone turned (10)
CINDERELLA – homophone of SINNED [transgressed “in speech”] + ERE [before] + reverse of ALL [everyone “turned”]
18 Incorrigible cold bishop dismissed for organising this? (10)
IRRELIGION – (IN{c}ORRIGI{b}LE*) [“cold bishop dismissed”, “for organising”] and some semi-&littery going on
19 Viewed from the east, Yr Wyddfa — extremely twisted (4)
AWRY – reverse [“viewed from the east”] of YR + W{yddf}A [“extremely”]
21 Quietly and mutually agree over key piece of work? (5,8)
PIANO CONCERTO – PIANO [quiet] + CONCERT O [mutually agree | over]
24 State of hanky panky in short ground-breaking musical (5)
HAITI – IT [hanky panky] in HAI{r} [“short” ground-breaking musical]
25 Missing a hint: time to slow down (9)
TRACELESS – T [time] + RACE LESS [slow down]
27 King in area to perform, extremely unkempt and tired (6,3)
ZONKED OUT – K [king] in ZONE DO [area | to perform] + U{nkemp}T [“extremely”]
28 Value of claim ultimately getting exhaust put back (5)
MERIT – {clai}M [“ultimately”] + reverse of TIRE [exhaust “put back”]

Down
1 Waif finally wearing a warmer in bad weather (10)
RAGAMUFFIN – G A MUFF [“finally” {wearin}G | a | warmer] in RAIN [bad weather]
2 Post book (3)
JOB – double definition
3 Hail regularly getting inside my shoe (6)
GALOSH – {h}A{i}L [“regularly”] getting inside GOSH [my!]
4 Dawn said prying should be punished after one is sacked (9)
DAYSPRING – (SA{i}D PRYING*) [“punished”, “after one is sacked”]
5 Top cop, one petitioning for retention of power (5)
SUPER – SUER [one petitioning] for retention of P [power]
6 Not initially miserable, one not locally a celebrity (8)
LUMINARY – {g}LUM [“not initially” miserable] + I NARY [one | not “locally”]
7 Vegetable reported as a dog-rose? (11)
CAULIFLOWER – homophone of COLLIE FLOWER, which must be something like a dog-rose…
8 Mysterious river ending in swamp (4)
DEEP – DEE [river] + {swam}P [“ending in”]
12 European style of writing I found in academic account (11)
DESCRIPTION – E SCRIPT I [European | style of writing | I] found in DON [academic]
13 Not strict new diet, so take your time (4,4,2)
EASY DOES IT – EASY [not strict] + (DIET SO*) [“new”]
16 Old woman entering depression that comes from mister? (9)
DEODORANT – O DORA [old | woman] entering DENT. A mister as in a sprayer, of course…
17 Idle talk’s left one scrambling around to check opinion (3,1,4)
FLY A KITE – YAK [idle talk], (LEFT I*) [“scrambling”] around
20 Singular flower, one causing much joy? (6)
SCREAM – S CREAM [singular | flower]
22 Best public act (5)
OUTDO – OUT DO [public | act]
22 Face former illustrator (4)
PHIZ – double definition. Hablot Knight Browne, better known as Phiz, Dickens’s illustrator.
26 To nearest and dearest it’s common sense (3)
EAR – to {n}EAR{est} and {d}EAR{est}, it’s common!

73 comments on “Times 26,393: Snowdonder”

  1. I have never been so surprised at getting an all-correct. PHIZ was entered in complete desperation after ten minutes of staring blankly at _H_Z, not being familiar with the illustrator or the face. Not even sure why I guessed the way I did.

    Having now googled the bearded one, I’m disappointed that the Tale of Two Cities by my bedside (I’m just embarking on my Dickens phase) is decorated only by a photograph of a guillotine. Will definitely get the Phizzed-up version of whichever one I read next (suggestions?).

    So an educational end to an enjoyable crossword. Thanks setter and V.

    1. I can strongly recommend both Dombey&Son and David Copperfield. Tale of Two Cities is also one of my favourites though. I try to read one every few years (!) and always wonder why I don’t read more, as they can be so gripping.
      1. Thanks Tring. Certainly enjoying it so far, surprised at the number of laugh out loud moments.
    2. Great Expectations is his best book, and Bleak House arguably his greatest. I would put Pickwick third – but I like picaresque stuff – with Martin Chuzzlewit the sleeper hit.
  2. V, more and more bloggers are incorporating the clues in their blogs (good thing too IMHO), so you have plenty of samples to cut-and-paste from. Sotira’s TLS blog posted earlier today would be a good place to start.

    Or I could send you the Rexx script I wrote which automates the process a little. It’s written in Object Rexx, so you’d need to install that, but that’s only a minor hassle (and it’s free).

    1. I just use LJ’s native visual editor: can’t be doing with all that http stuff. It worked fine until I hit on the idea of pasting in a Word-edited script, which as one or two others have found, produces unpredictable (and more or less untameable) results, particularly in font size. For my next trick, I’ll try pasting in my completed script as plain text, courtesy (probably) Google and format (bolds etc) in Visual. Jolly good for inserting links, too, just point and shoot.
      On the other hand, I have no idea how V created columns.
      1. Yes, I agree with just using the visual editor. my script doesn’t require the user to do any html editing.

        Anyway, the blog seems to have been brought to heel now, well done V.

    2. As a web developer by trade, I should know how to do this really. I’ve just banged in some <tr><tr>s for now and it should serve. Quite intrigued to find out more about Object Rexx, which I must admit I’ve never heard of, anyway…

      Edited at 2016-04-22 08:47 am (UTC)

      1. I’m a mainframe developer, so REXX is an extremely useful tool of my trade. Object Rexx is the PC equivalent, which is why I chose to use it for this task, but there are probably thousands of better ways to do it.

        I’ll send something through to you privately to avoid boring the pants off everyone else here.

        1. Please could you send me the REXX script, I’d like to tinker with it and bore the pants off myself; I presume it runs OK on Windows 10 but not Android? I’m a bit fed up with editing the usual HTML template.
          1. Template!!! No-one said anything to me about a template. If there is one, I’d like it. Writing the blog for even my amateur efforts on the QC takes considerably longer than solving the crossword in the first place. Any template is bound to be an improvement.
            1. I’d be more than happy to send you the one I use for my Sunday Times blogs. It’s one that Andy (linxit) sent me, and I shared it with sotira recently for a TLS blog. Send me a message though LiveJournal with your email address.
  3. 12m. No real problems today and another smooth and enjoyable solve.
    I can see 22 causing some difficulties: the ‘face’ meaning is a bit old-fashioned and the illustrator is arguably rather specialist knowledge. I knew the required things but it was still my last in: I needed the Z.

    Edited at 2016-04-22 07:29 am (UTC)

  4. Nearly all done within 40 minutes but I also became bogged down in the SW and as the hour approached I used aids to check 23 (a name I knew from previous puzzles but thought it was spelt “Fizz” so it didn’t get me anywhere) and 12dn which I simply couldn’t solve even with all the checkers in place. A good workout though.
  5. An enjoyable 38′ today. Failure to get FISH until later on meant much agonsiing over DE……ION, played with DEPOSITION, DECLARATION etc, none of which have the right number of letters. IRRELIGION new word to me. COD 25ac for making me think a lot.
  6. 20:18, so a good end to another bad week. I’m not sure why but I seem to be making a pig’s ear of recent offerings and this is the first one I’ve finished this week. Hopefully the start of an improved run!

  7. I do find Friday’s more intimidating whether they are harder or not. I was at 14 minutes yesterday and 60 today.

    I was further intimidated by 7dn CAULIFLOWER. I loathe this vegetable – quite the most disgusting food on this planet – I’d rather eat durian! I just know that cold cauliflower cheese is on the menu for every meal in Hell! So I promise to be good.

    1ac REJIG FOI and so in went 2dn JOB

    LOI 10ac MAUVE which I absolutely failed to parse, probably because it contained a smidgin of cauliflower!

    COD 23dn PHIZ Phisiogmany – what a word!

    Verlaine, 8 minutes in my book indicates rather easy!
    Your blog is by far the best part of the weekly Friday torment.

    horryd Shanghai

    1. Is Phisiogmany the acceptable face of Scottish New Year celebrations?

      Physiognomy is a pretty impossible word to spell confidently (and I’ve studied Greek) – you can see why people wanted to abbreviate it to fizzog or phiz..

  8. First authentic DNF for me in a good while. I was convinced the illustrator was spelt Fizz, which shows how much attention I pay to illustrators, and this isn’t the first time that HAITI has defeated me.

    But most of all I was never, not in a million years, going to get FLY A KITE. I’ve probably used it jokingly but I can’t think of it in any but a mocking context. If the clue had been ” … check opinion at Perfect Curve” I’d have got it straight off!

  9. I can’t do it. I didn’t have enough wind today so didn’t get FLY A KITE, even after seeing ZONKED OUT and then remembering PHIZZ, who I always confuse with the great man himself as Boz. So 40 minutes with the one missing.Missed my chance for Milton, Stilton and the tufted Wilton.
      2. Thankyou. When Terry-Thomas was playing Blackpool, a charity match was arranged at Fylde Cricket Club. for them to play the show stars. My Dad had him plumb LBW, only for the umpire to tell him the crowd had come to see the stars not him. The rotter got away with it!
  10. Pushed for time this morning but I did want to mention that today’s Guardian features a puzzle by Enigmatist – the same setter who tied us in knots last December with his special puzzle for the 10th anniversary of TFTT. I’ve only just glanced at it but it appears to be true to form.
    1. Oh no! Enigmatist puzzles have always tended to take me 3-4 times as long as anything else the Guardian can throw at me. So I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing I bought a copy of the paper this morning; I don’t always any more. (Who am I kidding, it’s a very good thing!)
  11. 35 minutes with one wrong: having never heard of PHIZ and having forgotten fizzog, I biffed CHAZ for no other reason that it fitted and there may well have been a cartoonist of that name!Otherwise an enjoyable workout with FOI SUPER, and the NW flying in followed by the NE, after which I slowed down a bit. LOI my wrong guess at 23d. Dallied with HAWAII before spotting IT as hanky panky and realising I had too many letters. Liked DEODORANT and TRACELESS. FLY A KITE took a moment or two to wrangle into submission.Dabbled with Dissertation before realising I had too many letters again and spotting the ESCRIPT. Nice puzzle and blog.
  12. SW defeated me with blanks, after an hour, at HAITI (wanted it to be Evita), FLY A KITE and PHIZ. Ho hum.
    1. Good spot, prompting memories of 25691, when every down clue was paired, so cleverly and smoothly that most people missed it.
  14. 4 x Verlaine today which is at the slow end of my spectrum (2 is fast, 3 average). No DNK’s and the definitions were relatively easy to spot so I can only blame 2 lunchtime Stella’s.
  16. Didn’t really get on the wavelength with this one, struggled home eventually in the SW corner, puzzled by HAITI parsing and the kite thing. Maybe the early dentist visit was a factor. Or the residual high from watching Arsenal turn up at last.

    I need a volunteer please to sub for me on Wednesday May 4th, I’m driving a long way from early doors so can’t solve and blog. I can swap for any day next week (except Wed which I am already doing), or just be grateful for a sub. jerrywh? Verlaine? Sotira? mctext?

    1. Sorry. I shall, all being well, be in sunny Spain and trying not to volunteer for anything.

      Edited at 2016-04-22 11:58 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks V, I can do Friday April 29th, (well try to) if you do May 4th. I can’t do May 6th. We’ll take that as a plan unless someone else turns up who wants a one-off for pleasure or practice, and no swap. Pip
        1. Roger! (If I may call you that.) Maybe remind me that it’s going ahead later in the week, so I don’t absent-mindedly blog next week anyway by force of habit…
  17. Found it easy at first but then got bogged down in more than just the SW. Finished in 35 minutes but only by throwing in answers without spending too much time on the wordplay and hoping for the best. I’ve never come across DAYSPRING before, or Yr Wyddfa. Does ‘cream’ = flower because it’s liquid? Not all cream flows. Or is there a River Cream.
    Some of it seemed a bit idiosyncratic, though enjoyable enough.
    1. I interpreted it as cream/flower both meaning best as in that awful dirge Flower of Scotland.
      1. Ah yes, that makes sense. Thanks. Brain’s bit sleepy tonight, the effect of 38 degrees of heat.
      2. I can’t help but remember the best (?) joke in 1980s Doctor Who, where a Victorian policeman gets reduced by nefarious SF means to primordial soup, at which point someone refers to him as “the cream of Scotland Yard”.

        Edited at 2016-04-22 01:05 pm (UTC)

        1. Couldn’t disagree more. Flower of Scotland is the best of the rugby anthems by a mile.

          Scotland the Brave (to the tune of my school song) is just a jingle by comparison.

          1. Land of My Fathers, though I hate to say it, wipes the floor with the lot of them. A mention in dispatches to Advance Australia Fair, of course, if just for the joy of watching the South Sea Islanders trying to get the words right.

            Edited at 2016-04-23 07:15 am (UTC)

          2. A minor rewording would render the anthem both perfect and, in the rugby sense, accurate. May I suggest ‘they won again’?
            GeoffH
  18. last comment was from me about cream. Have just signed on to the journal but it didnt put my name on

    Tyro Tim

  19. Put me down as another who couldn’t fly a kite in a stiff breeze. I did get Phiz and Haiti but couldn’t get beyond 17 beginning all, old or ill so came up blank. Even if I’d trawled the alphabet I doubt I’d have got the answer.

    My down clues had more questions marks than the Riddler’s suit either because I’d biffed them and didn’t immediately spot the wordplay, didn’t know the word or had some other query (e.g. why is ear equivalent to sense?)

    Overall an enjoyable puzzle though with particularly clever misdirection at 1d. Was anybody else looking to put (wai)F inside a warmer to get some kind of bad weather?

    2. I was thinking of the expression ‘has a good ear’ where it definitely relates to the sense, rather than any sort of comment on the aesthetic beauty of the shell-like itself.
  20. No finish today. As a recent graduate from the QC which I generally finish in 20 mins or so I feel I am guilty of over complicating the 15×15 “ooooh it’s the big one this will be tricky”. Also I find that I have got the answer but can’t see how it works so don’t put it in. DESCRIPTION (beautifully explained on the blog) being a case in point.
    I do have a problem today with CREAM for FLOWER. I don’t know of a river cream or a botanical one so it must be because it is a liquid, if so I think that is a bit fuzzy and any liquid, toluene, cola, mercury will do. I stand to be put in my place, but before you do, he says whiningly, the live journal has been a tremendous help in getting as far as I have, I thank you. Whoops just seen the earlier comments about this. Be nice to me Jack after you comments in the QC.

    1. I do like the idea of “the flower of chivalry” being some kind of unguent an errant knight would daily apply to his person, I have to say…
  21. How I pity these people who only get ten minutes’ worth of enjoyment out of a crossword. Today I managed to make the pleasure last for a full hour. LOIs were Fly A Kite, which I’d only heard in the Mary Poppins sense, and Cream, which I didn’t like. Is there anything ‘flower’ cannot mean?
    1. it’s a kind thought but you should take comfort in the knowledge that such afflicted souls can take refuge in Mephisto, Azed, the Club Monthly and so on. 😉
  22. No proper time today because the working week finally caught up with me and I nodded off in the middle of the puzzle. Including my nap time it was 37 mins, but at least I finished it correctly after a mistake-ridden week. FLY A KITE was my LOI after the EAR/TRACELESS crossers. I’m a fan of Dickens so PHIZ wasn’t a problem once I had the Z checker. You can count me as another who doesn’t recall coming across DAYSPRING before, but the anagram fodder made it gettable enough after the checkers were in place.
  23. Time unknown but certainly less than the time of the fast train from Twyford to Paddington as I did a very rare treeware solve. Nostalgia!
    Did not notice the answer connections but it was a pleasant solve.
  24. Aargh. DNF here due to the unknown PHIZ. Everything else OK, I even got FLY A KITE as a guess. I’m phizzed off to some extent, but that will fade shortly. Regards to all.
      1. Sorry, perhaps I have been a Snowdunderhead…

        Definition from the Free Dictionary: “2. to make a suggestion in order to see what other people think about your idea. I’m just flying a kite, really, but do you think there would be any demand for a course on European art?“

        Wordplay: YAK is idle talk (“Yak, yak, yak. Is that all you do is talk?” “She’s yaking on the phone.” “He’s yaking only to hear himself talk.” “Quit yaking and get back to work.”) and then an anagram of LEFT I “scrambles” around that.

  25. Well, bless my word, I think I’ve managed a completely DNF-free week. Quite a long time for this one (around 40min, I think), for no good reason, since everything was fairly straightforward. I did count myself lucky to have a vague recollection of “fizz” or similar for “face”, and a half-memory of the illustrator. I went for “fizz” first before stumbling on 24ac, and deciding that it had to be PHIZ. I was also held up by having “fly a flag” at 17d for quite a while.

    Failed to parse HAITI and LUMINARY – how does “nary” equate to “not locally”? Ah – hang on, penny just dropped.

  26. I think you haven’t quite parsed this correctly.

    Fail is the definition. The cryptic bit is: to rise (GO,UP) in corporation (BELLY). But importantly: on the contrary – which means you actually put BELLY in GO,UP.

    A small point, but it makes more sense that way.

  27. 12:15 for me, held up badly at the end by FLY A KITE (the disposition of the vowels bringing on an attack of vocalophobia as usual).

    Nice puzzle.

  28. Times 26,393. 4 across: PLAY is a fair clue for “DALLIANCE” ? Really? My elderly SOED dates PLAY’s last appearance (as a noun) in that sense to the 17th century.
    1. Perhaps you should buy a later edition: the online OED includes a 1990 citation from Rolling Stone where I suspect the intended meaning of “dalliance” is “wanton toying” :-).
  29. Thanks (from setter) to Verlaine for (another) excellent blog, and to all commenters. Maybe I saw him somewhere on Yr Wyddfa in the early 1980s?! 😉
  30. Question from a newcomer to the main puzzle…..please explain IT as in hanky panky, also nary as in not locally. Thank you.
    Simon
    1. “It” is informal for both sexual intercourse and sex appeal in the world of crosswords (so quite often “it” in the wordplay will lead to the letters S.A. in the answer).

      “Nary” apparently is a dialect form of “not” in some parts of Britain, though I couldn’t tell you which ones exactly… not the ones I’ve spent much time in! Anyway “locally” is signifying “in certain parts” in this particular case.

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