Times 26440 – looks like we have been put in the corner again – hi setter!

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 9:06, but I’m showing as having two errors because I fat-fingeredly typed in PRIASE at 1 down and didn’t check. Considering I went to the premiere of a play with complimentary beer and cupcakes (loved the beer, liked the cupcakes, was lukewarm on the play) one typo is pretty good for me. Let’s see how many I can work into the blog.

Anyhoo – I found this pretty accessible, I suspect there will be a fair bit of biffing, and most of us (self included) will need the wordplay to get the answer at 2 down.

I hope everybody’s sportsball teams won.

Away we go…

Across
1 PLATOON: PLATO then ON for the army detachment. I put the ON in during the first scan, needed the other O to get PLATOON
5 BLOGGER: B(born), LOGGER(lumberjack who is OK). Look mum, I’m in the crossword!
9 ARBITRATION: BRA(supporter) reversed, then IT, RATION
10 L,AD
11 SARTRE: ART in alternating letters of ScReEn
12 HEIRLOOM: sounds like AIR, then LOOM(appear)
14 ONE IN A MILLION: since AIM is 1 in A,M(mega/million)
17 PROCRASTINATE: anagram of I,RAN,SPECTATOR. Fun clue, since the Specator puzzle usually appears on Thursdays (at least on the website). If you’ve never tried it, I recommend the one from last week
21 CHESTNUT: anagram of HUNTS,ETC
23 METIER: TIER(bank) after ME
25 OAR: the middle letters of BOARD
26 UNINITIATED: NIT, I ATE inside UNI,D
27 SANDBAG: S(succeeded), AND(with), BAG(game bag, or tally of prey sectured). Definition is HIT
28 PIGMENT: G in PIMENT(o)
 
Down
1 P,RAISE
2 ARBORIO: needed the wordplay for this – it’s the middle letters (cut down all round) of cARBs, fOr, tRIm, bOd
3 OUTERWEAR: ER in OUT(impossible), WEAR(sport) – with the definition being clothing, I thought that might be cutting it fine on there being different uses of WEAR
4 NEAT: (childre)N,EAT
5 BRIDESMAID: RIDES(goes on),MA(mother) inside BID
6 OWNER: OR surrounding the points W,N,E – definition is an allusion to the phrase “ownership is nine-tenths of the law”
7 GOLDONI: I,NOD(fall aslepp),LOG(book) all reversed. Brought back memories – it seems that I’m the go-to guy for working out the wordplay when GOLDONI is clued
8 RUDIMENT: anagram of TRUE,MIND
13 UNASSUMING: UNA’S, SUING around M
15 LEAVENING: anagram of VEGAN,LINE
16 SPACIOUS: SP(starting price), AC, IOUS
18 OVERRUN: OVER(finished),RUN(work)
19 EPISTLE: EP, then T in ISLE
20 CR,EDIT
22 THUMB: TUM(corporation) containing H, then B – hitch as in “hitch a ride”
24 WISP: W(with), ISP(internet service provider)

41 comments on “Times 26440 – looks like we have been put in the corner again – hi setter!”

  1. Last One In, never heard of it, so the wordplay was fiendish. Had to cheat!
    1. I always giggle at the two definitions of SCUMBAG in Chambers. I’ve lived in the US nearly 20 years and I’ve never heard that usage
  3. I did, indeed, do some biffing, e.g. BRIDESMAID, ARBITRATION. GOLDONI took some time, partly because I could only think of ‘doze’, partly because I barely knew of Goldoni. DNK ARBORIO, but the wordplay made it inevitable. COD to OWNER (although I’ve always heard the adage as ‘possession’ is etc).
  4. Spent the last ten minutes on HEIRLOOM, which was actually quite easy after I switched GOLPANI to GOLDONI.

    Happy to finally get one all correct for the week. Agree with Kevin re OWNER as COD, but I also liked PROCRASTINATE, which I managed to leave unsolved for as long as I could.

    Thanks setter and George.

  5. … though a bit mizzled (in a nice way) by some of the defs., starting with “detachment” and running from there. But it’s all fair and pretty good too.

    For the TLS crowd, there’s a fine puzzle in The Other Place today.

  6. fyi 2dn ARBORIO is the rice used for risotto – my LOI.

    An eneventful thirty minutes with 11ac SARTRE FOI.

    COD 5ac BLOGGER – kinda neat.

    WOD 7dn GOLDONI – Carlo Odsvaldo – a Venetian by birth who from the age of fifty mainly wrote in French and died impecuniously in Paris.

    horryd Shanghai

  7. … but with ‘specious’, thinking that ‘spec’ was something to do with betting. And overlooking that there was no definition! (How does AC=’one’? don’t think I’ve come across this before…)

    FOI: ARBORIO (we must eat it at least once a week); LOI: SANDBAG; never heard of GOLDONI.

    1. AC accounts for – um – “account”, not one, which appears to be superfluous. Mind you, I had it as accounting for the I of IOUS to begin with, which makes even less sense.

      Edited at 2016-06-16 06:54 am (UTC)

        1. Oops, I’ve just realised how that could be read. No discourtesy was intended!

  8. Missed my 30-minute target by 2, delayed by SANDBAG and OVERRUN in the SW. The definition of the first was either unknown or forgotten, and I couldn’t see that of the second as “go right through” until I had bunged in the answer as a word that fitted the checkers and then justified it from wordplay; I’m still not 100% convinced the definition works.

    GOLDONI may be unknown to many. Probably his most famous work is “The Servant of Two Masters” which was reworked as “One Man, Two Guvnors” and was hugely successful at the National, in the West End, on Broadway and now on tour, winning many awards along the way.

    1. Yep … another of those mizzling defs. Then I thought, if you go right through the enemy, you overrun them.
      1. That certainly works better than the examples I’d been working on which involved overrunning in terms of time, like missing, or going right through a deadline.
  9. 13.04, so my quickest for a while, on a morning when I was wondering if my slowing down was irreversible. I have a packet of ARBORIO in my cupboard, probably permanently, now, because herself prefers brown rice even in risotto, which I think is a contradiction. I thought it was a trade name.
    Pratchett in one of his Ankh Morpork themed fantasies, makes great play of the phrase “it’s a million to one shot, but it might just work”. His city guards go to great lengths to make an important crossbow shot as difficult as possible to get the odds of success to a million to one, on the grounds that only then might they actually make it.
  10. 11 mins but one of those days where I’ve apparently got one error but I’ve gone through the thing 3 times and still can’t see it. Quite biffable fare, which is probably the source of my mistake.

    One or two suggesting on the Club forum that ONE IN A MILLION could simply have been clued as “Aim”. I can’t decide if that would have gone down well.

    1. Can’t see how that would work personally unless there’s a definition of “aim” that would allow it to &lit itself somehow.

      I would suspect many cries of “referee!!!” If it were to be included like that.

  11. I thought that is was POSSESSION that is nine points of the law, indicating that the person actually holding the thing but not necessarily owning it or holding it legally, was in practice in goodish shape. Anyway, 18:16 of gentle solving with the risotto rice ARBORIO biffed. Like aphis, I was a SCUMBAG initially. Thanks George.
    1. …is the version I’ve always heard. It doesn’t really make sense with ‘ownership’!
  12. Hmmm, you learn something new every day, but are you saying Chambers is not true? Anyway, like galspray, was stuck on HEIRLOOM having put in GOLPANI, dnk GOLDONI. I actually bought ARBORIO yesterday, it was with the pasta rather than the rice. 31′. Thanks setter and 5ac.
  13. Out of time with eight still to get. Got ARBORIO, not just from the wordplay but because I actually have some in the cupboard labelled as such (thanks Waitrose!)

    I never think of PRAISE for magnify, didn’t figure out half the wordplay for SARTRE, DNK NEAT, or those meanings for SANDBAG (or “bag”) or METIER. I thought of EPISTLE, but I didn’t know that meaning of “key”, so I hadn’t written it in. I’d also pencilled in OVERRUN without being convinced, and thought of and dismissed THUMB because I couldn’t really see what had to do with the answer. Really must try to remember the belly/corporation thing…

    Still, not bad for a Thursday (it is Thursday, right?)

    Edited at 2016-06-16 09:20 am (UTC)

    1. It’s always Thursday somewhere (maybe).

      Nine and a half minutes for me today, so within the 10 which has become my new target (it used to be 15 a year or two ago, so, look, everyone, improvement is possible!), but not within 2 Magoos alas. It was post a night out watching a bunch of movies about the legacy of Nikolaus Pevsner at the BFI, followed by several beers, so that’s my excuse this time: it’s hard not to get quite drunk on the heady brew that is Nikolaus Pevsner’s architecture guides.

  14. A DNF missing HEIRLOOM which is annoying as we had a similar clue recently and ABRORIO which isn’t annoying as I have never heard of it as I am not a rice fan, give me a spud any day. Thought 14a superb and 3d clumsy but all in all I enjoyed it. Thanks to the blogger for ironing out a few wrinkles and the setter for a decent test.
  15. 25 minutes which was much enjoyed. 14a is excellent. Liked surfaces such as 23a.
  16. Of which a good number were spent alphabet-running (and still not seeing) LOI 1d.

    Held up by a totally-inexplicable-but-made-sense-at-the-time biffing of MAN ON A MISSION at 14, not to mention an inability to get past HANDBAG (no, me neither) at 27.

    But a finish at least, which makes a change this week.

  17. 14m, held up for quite a while in the SW. Biffed ARBORIO (although carnaroli is my storecupboard staple), had SCUMBAG for a while, didn’t know this meaning of ‘magnify’, can’t quite see how ‘go right through’ gives OVERRUN.
    The ‘one’ in 16dn looks like an error to me.

    Edited at 2016-06-16 10:39 am (UTC)

  18. Well I am now into my third week on the main crossword, I started with first 2 days drawing a complete blank, but have steadily started to improve. Yesterday, having got my PB of 9 clues, I set myself a personal target of completing half of the crossword before England get dumped out of Euro 2016. Well one day later, I managed 17!! I hope that isn’t a bad omen for this afternoon’s game.
    There were a couple of others I was close to biffing but couldn’t fully parse them, so I left them out. COD for me was 14a. Hadn’t heard of ‘tum’ or ‘neat’ in those contexts before

    Edited at 2016-06-16 11:37 am (UTC)

    1. There are certain words, places and descriptions that only seem to exist in Crosswordland. Corporation = TUM is one of them, as is the (to me) more annoying SUPPORTER = BRA. Congratulations on your progression.
    2. As you get better, Stefan, so do England. Carry on like this and the tabloids are going to pick up your story. England’s fortunes in the final in a few weeks time may rest on your shoulders.
  19. I only know this about possession. “Can we have a new ball, ref?” “What’s up with that one?” “The other side are playing with it.” But that didn’t faze Leicester. Biffed ARBORIO and took 40 minutes today after a lare start.
  20. It comes in the Canticle of Mary from Luke in the NT (my soul doth magnify the Lord). I know it from singing Bach’s Magnificat in my schooldays. I wasn’t much of a singer but was one of the very few altos so was made to. I started off with “specious” too. Off to give the Guardian a try – thanks Alec fr the prompt. 14.47
  21. I’m always a bit nervous when I solve the first clue as I’m printing the puzzle; it usually means I won’t solve another clue for ten minutes. But this was straightforward. ARBORIO and GOLDONI were unknowns but the wordplay was very straightforward and unambiguous in each case.
    I agree with those pointing out that the idiom is “Possession is nine tenths of the law”, which is not necessarily the same as ownership. I didn’t know the ‘hit’ meaning of SANDBAG. I thought that was HANDBAG (remember Mrs T).
    25 minutes.
  22. No time but probably my fastest time ever for a puzzle. I always feel guilty when I can do one fast because it probably means the puzzle is too easy for everyone else!

    Solved from the middle out, ending in the upper-right, telling myself it couldn’t be LAD, it had to be some word that meant ‘stable’.

    Thanks to everyone and hope to be seeing you more!

  23. Thought I’d have a go at this before the England v Wales game. I managed to put something into every square. Did not know Arborio (like others) nor the Italian but all correct. Liked 6d.
    Now back to the football. Vardy has just equalised. David
  24. Did this after the footie so I am a happy bunny despite the rain here in France (unfortunately I am well south of Lens). Around 25 mins with ARBORIO my second one in – perfect for my Rick Stein seafood risotto. Put me down for scumbag and handbag before the penny dropped.
  25. A slow 2 and a half hours for, was filling while distracted but glad to complete it with no error, LOI W-ISP. (ONG’ARA, NAIROBI, KENYA )
  26. DNK ARBORIO(I have some Uncle Ben’s Boil in the Bag in my cupboard 🙂 ) or GOLDONI, but got them easily from the wordplay. Made the leap from possessor to OWNER without any gnashing of teeth. Got SPACIOUS before looking at 27ac, so wasn’t distracted by Mrs T’s favourite weapon. Like Olivia, I was familiar with the Magnificat, so 1d wasn’t an issue. 34 minutes. Liked BLOGGER. FOI, LAD, LOI, OUTERWEAR. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and George.

    Edited at 2016-06-16 07:40 pm (UTC)

  27. Twenty-four minutes which, for me, is good. For some reason, OAR held me up – I kept wondering how “our” could possibly fit the definition.
  28. 8:22 for me, feeling slightly less tired than usual after a relaxing couple of days staying with friends in Kent, but still making heavy weather of some easy clues.

    A pleasant, reasonably straightforward puzzle. I don’t recall coming across ARBORIO before (no surprise there then) but got it straight away from the wordplay.

  29. Re 16d: The word ‘one’ should definitely not be there. The letter I occurs as the first letter of IOUS coming after [SP][AC]
  30. No one will ever read this so I can happily express my astonishment that so many very learned solvers have never heard of arborio rice. Then again, the mention of the word plant, metal, or flower and I start sweating…

    Nice puzzle setter and thanks for the blog George

Comments are closed.