Times 26593 – Not one for the Morninke?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A dodgy dog, a strange fish, a couple of sea-captains and one of the most epochal sea-battles of all time. What more can a solver ask for on the penultimate Monday before Christmas?

ACROSS

1. AHAB – A + H + AB for the skipper in the book which many people adore.
3. SCHIPPERKE – not ‘schipperer’, though it just as easily could have been, checkers allowing; S[o] + CHIPPER + K + E. Mmm…not keen on bizarre dogs meself.
7. STETSON – STEPSON with the P becoming a T.
11. GREASED – G[overnor]R + EASED.
12. STOW-ON-THE-WOLD– a village in the Cotswolds not a million miles from Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.
14. ANENT – the olde word for concerning or touching; E + N in A NT.
15. IMMEDIATE – M in I MEDIATE; not I’M A something, as I thought.
17. CASEMATES – if you were on the same side of an action, you could be said to be ‘case mates’, if the person so describing you was a tad deficient in the sense of humour department. The word, which means a room with little windows from which you can hurl things at the enemy, is often rendered ‘casement’, which no doubt irks the kind of people who get upset about castle being used for rook.
19. REVUE – R + EVE around U.
21. LONG TIME NO SEE – mmm, I think this is the kind of joke that might be made by those who go for 17. But we shall have to wait and episcopacy.
24. CAMPHOR – CAM (eccentric in crosswordland) + ‘sounds like’ FOR.
25. LIE-ABED – LIED round [honest] ABE.
26. DISAPPOINT – DI’S + POINT around PA reversed.
27. HERM – HER + M; a little Channel Island, which is home to just 60 souls; Wikipedia doesn’t mention whether they’ve been sold to the nether one or not, but I imagine you could write most of them off against tax.

DOWN

1. ASSISTANCE – A + SIS in STANCE.
2. ANEMONE + A + NEMO (pops up in some of Jules Verne’s works) + NE.
4. CONSTRICT – CON + STRICT.
5. INGLE – ISLE (of which Mull – without its Kintyre – is an exemplar) with the S replaced by NG.
6. PREPONDERANCE – ‘greater power’ is the literal, and – wait for it – the parsing is PRE-PONDER (what a 17 might do when s/he turns their mind to important aspects of the case, like, how much to charge their client) + N in ACE.
7. RESIDUA – now, if Stephen Fry likes the way he can roll ‘preponderance’ around in his mouth, I have a feeling he would love the word ‘residua’ for its vaguely scatological associations; RE (Royal Engineers) + anagram* of SAUDI.
8. EDDY – ‘revolutionary movement’ is the literal with just a hint of scatology; [t]EDDY [Roosevelt] and not a red in sight after HUAC has done its stuff.
10. SPORTSMANSHIP – SS around PORT + MAN + SHIP (another vessel).
13. REFERENDUM – REFER (as in to advert/refer to something) + D in E NUM (National Union of Mineworkers).
16. MUSK MELON – L[eft] + O (over) in KENS MUM (‘cooked’ is the anagrind).
18. SALAMIS – double definition; one adverting to the island east of Athens off which the Persians were tonked by the Greeks under Themistocles in 480 BC.
20. VISIBLE – the world and his dog will be trying to find a word meaning ‘shameful’, while in fact the literal is ‘in evidence’; SIB in VILE. Nice one, setter!
22. TORSO – ROT reversed + SO.
23. SCAD – our unlikely sounding fish du jour; [olympi]C in SAD. Nice wordplay.

51 comments on “Times 26593 – Not one for the Morninke?”

  1. There’s a typo at 12ac, Ulaca, STOW-ON-THE-WOLD to fit with ANEMONE. I wrote IN at first when solving. There was too much reliance on wordplay for me to be comfortable with this one. It worked successfully for the unknowns or fogottens: SCHIPPERKE, RESIDUA, ANENT, SCAD and MUSK MELON, but I came unstuck eventually at 17ac. Advert / refer also unsettled me, but it had to be correct. 46 minutes with one error.

    Edited at 2016-12-12 01:21 am (UTC)

    1. I was never much cop at chess. Changed before the Assyrians come down like the wolf on the fold. Cheers, McT.
  3. … that defeat biffing in several places, esp. those listed by Jack above. Liked PRE PONDER for “think ahead” at 6dn.
  4. Went in smoothly except two wrong. I went for SCHIPPERRE rather than the right answer since it looked more likely. And I didn’t know ANENT and went for AWENT as an old word for getting about (which is plausible but wrong). Had a minor hold up putting CONSTRAIN which fits both the literal and the cryptic (but not the crossers as I eventually discovered).
    1. 30 mins with same two wrong as Paul. Except I went for ARENT (RE in A NT). I did consider his AWENT, but rejected it. No, it couldn’t possibly be that…!
  5. Like Paul, I started with ‘constrain’ until forced to revise. Finally gave up on ‘residue’, which had seemed fine, when I twigged to 15ac. Unfortunately, I flung in ‘lay-a-bed’ –quickly saying to self, ‘lay=song, abe, fine’ without noticing the D problem–and compounded that error by making 6d ‘preponderancy’. So 2 unforced errors. Isn’t ANENT still used by Scots?
  6. As per Kevin I fell for 25ac LAY ABED so my 30 minutes was in vain.

    17ac I originally had a CASEMENTS but 4dn CONSTRICT soerted that mess out.

    COD 3ac SCHIPPERKE WOD TONKED (ulaca)

    A careless Monday all round.

    1. Surely your Grammar School education will have taught you that “to lie” is intransitive while “to lay” is transitive. Those who would “lay down” are about to drop a bunch of feathers out of their backsides.
  7. 18:53, but with two errors. I also had SCHIPPERRE, and I think a word as, ahem, uncommon as this merits unambiguous wordplay. I can’t blame anyone but myself for my other error though: an inability to spell met with failure to pay proper attention to the wordplay to give me PREPONDERENCE.
    I had most trouble elsewhere though, particularly the unknowns CASEMATES and MUSK MELON crossing one another. And the appearance of SALAMIS and VISIBLE (which I thought for a while might be RISIBLE) brought back unwelcome memories of the championship.
  8. I was depending on Keriothe to rip into 3ac, but he’s showing admirable restraint, so I’ll say it for him. It’s a terrible clue.

    To me it read “There’s an obscure breed of dog known as either SCHIPPERRE or SCHIPPERKE. Guess which one it is?” I guessed wrongly, as you probably guessed.

    Also followed paulmcl’s lead on AWENT. To be fair on this one, I think we’ve had it before, so I’ll take my lumps.

    Oh well, 10 over par on a Monday sets up a nice challenge for the week. Thanks setter and U.

    2. Thanks G. I agree of course, but was feeling a bit too sheepish to lay into this one properly after making such a daft mistake on 6dn.
  9. 30 minutes but went for COSYMATES (chambers improbably not in Chambers) Also DNK ANENT and couldn’t be bothered to arrange S,W, E or N in either A-NT or A-OT.
  10. Same issues with this as most, although knew my dogs. DK anent and had constrain for a while. Have been to Stow and Salamis. 40 minutes with the nice one EDDY my LOI.
  11. My ancient border collie, who helps me every morning, strongly resents SCHIPPERKES coming from the EU to take the place of British sheepdogs in the Times crossword. ANENT vaguely remembered. Biffed CASEMATES, mainly and wrongly because MATES was an anagram of TEAMs. ANEMONE LOI after a long attempt to justify Captain ANEROSE as a lost hero of the Victorian novel. I can recall a beautiful roast beef lunch on a glorious day in HERM when my eldest was a toddler. I used to love seeing how quickly I could get from Burford to Stow in my sports car days. I took a lot longer than that today, the best part of 40 minutes. Worst disguised pun of the day LONG TIME NO SEE.
  12. With so many unknown words, I was feeling rather pleased with myself for finishing, but Oh Calamity! Yes 14a did for me as well, thinking a-went, as in a-going, was far more plausible than anent. I still do.
  13. Luckily had met the dodgy dog before but have to agree its a rather ambiguous wordplay for an obscure word. Made life hard for myself by writing in MUSK LEMON before grasping the joke at 21A which corrected things. No trouble with the rest of it.

    Yesterday’s Mephisto was on the easy side for anybody wanting to test the murky waters

  14. That’ll learn me to chuck in PREPONDERENCE without checking the wordplay, but only if my increasingly disordered brain cells remember. Probably the long term effects of drinking Farmer’s Glory in the Talbot, Stow on the Wold more years ago than I care to (or indeed can) remember.
    Otherwise a quickish solve with the dog and the melon invented from word play. With the dog, I spent too long wondering how to fit in a truly original J for jaunty.
  15. 21′ but invented AWENT. If 3ac and 14ac were both even chances, I had a 25% probability of correct completion. Not a good start to the week. Thanks ulaca and setter.
  16. I thought this was going to be fairly quick but I did indeed get caught in the brilliant trap at 20dn and as such toiling in the SE corner dragged my time out to 9 minutes o so. No issues with SCHIPPERKE, I’m very much a dog person. Nice to see SALAMIS again so soon after Champs where it made a much-discussed appearance.
  17. One of those where I can see how you could easily end up not saying “Well, that was interesting, and I learned something new”, but “Well, that was slightly obscure and possibly unfair”. I would tend to the former, but as I unravelled the wordplay correctly, obviously I would say that.
  18. An early solve today thanks to a day off and I finished in 13 mins. I was glad that the clear wordplay for RESIDUA stopped me biffing “residue”, although the potential error would have been rectified once I’d solved 15ac. SCAD and ANENT were both known so didn’t cause me a problem. At 20dn I was trying to justify “risible” for a while and it was only when I got the first checker from REVUE that the penny dropped. My LOI was SCHIPPERKE after EDDY, and thankfully it was vaguely familiar. However, even if it hadn’t been familiar I think I’d have plumped for it over “schipperre” because the latter doesn’t have the feel of a word from the Low Countries/Germany, which is where I assumed the breed originated from.
      1. ‘vaguely familar’ to ‘never heard of’!! – it is a Dutch barge dog in fact – good guess.
        1. Hi Anon. I was responding to Andy’s comment “However, even if it hadn’t been familiar….”.
        2. I wasn’t aware of where the breed originated from, and I was looking at the SCHIPP element of the answer which looked Dutch/Flemish/Germanic (as has been pointed out further down the German equivalent of schipp is schiff, but I wasn’t aware it was a barge dog so the ship/schipp translation passed me by), and I didn’t think that a word ending in ERRE looked suitably Dutch/Flemish/Germanic. Similarly, an ERRE ending looks French, but SCHIPP doesn’t. Having said that, going with what looks right from a linguistic perspective doesn’t always work as those who went for Tuberosa over Tuberose found to their cost recently. Like I said at the time, I’m pleased that I fortuitously didn’t consider the incorrect answer.
      2. Plattdeutsch has Schipp ( like English ship ) whereas German has Schiff. Thus the 2 ps indicate the origin of the breed. It’s all to do with sound shifts – or schippts.
        1. It was all Dutch to me, and I have a few Linguistic degrees in my back pocket. I didn’t give a time in my write-up because I never got EDDY – being waylaid by ‘red’ – and then couldn’t see any weird dog breed beyond ‘schipperer’.

          If you know the mutt, it’s a write-in; if not, it’s a toss-up – if you get EDDY, of course…

  19. After 60 mins plus (including the usual time outs for customers) I was left staring at C-S-M-T-S and came up totally blank. What with that and AWENT this was a tough Monday. The rest of the vaguely knowns came out of the cryptics. For a change FOI EDDY.
  20. 32 minutes but with one wrong as I plumped for ARENT for the unknown ANENT. Got the unknown dog, as K for king came foremost to mind and seemed reasonably likely. Had CONSTRAIN and CASEMENTS until IMMEDIATE corrected both. Had __SIBLE for a while until REVUE lit the overhead bulb and turned the clue around. Clever misdirection. Have seen CAMPHOR somewhere else quite recently! No problem with RESIDUA as I followed the wordplay. Nice crossword apart from the annoying ANENT, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? Thanks setter and U.
  21. Some very tough stuff in there. I stopped the clock on 11-something, then almost immediately corrected 17a (I’d previously had a stab at castmates). Unfortunately I went for SCHIPPERRE and AWENT, both justified by the cryptic I think, but failing somewhat in not being real words. The kind of thing where you just need to know it, or get lucky.
  22. I blew this one, with “Schippere” and (for reasons which I cannot now reconstruct) “arent”. HERM and CASEMATES were almost NHOs, but both words were lurking somewhere in a dusty corner of my memory. I would like to blame jet-lag for my blunders, but I don’t think it’ll wash.
  23. The indispensable little volume, the Collins Gem Crossword Puzzle Solver, has the dog under Animals and if it rings a faint bell the clue gives you the road map until the end where I can quite see why “schipperre” looked plausible. We’ve had ANENT before and it always seems to cause trouble. Vinyl probably picked it up, as I did, from the NY Times puzzles where it used to crop up every other week. I was another with “casements”, with a mental asterisk, and had to go back and correct. 17.33
  24. I had to navigate those well-know 7-letter sausage islands Merguez, Kabanos and Chorizo before arriving at the correct one from checkers.

    I think I had heard of the dog at 3 across but had to check the spelling before putting it in. According to Wiki, there is some debate as to whether it is a Spitz or a sheepdog. My Jack Russell says that “medium-sized angry-looking black mutt” should just about cover it.

    About an hour, give or take.

  25. 11:38 but you can add my entry to the SCHIPPERRE pile with a COSYMITES thrown in for bad measure.
  26. I agree, I think. I knew it, but don’t remember from where. A long history of NYT puzzles makes it a likely candidate, though, so that’s probably it.
  27. About 15 minutes, and no real problems, my only absolute unknowns were the easier to solve/guess SCAD and HERM. The dog was somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but why I cannot say. Perhaps watching the dog show on the television. Regards.
  28. 48 minutes, and despite the few unknowns no real problems. HERM (which for all I know about it needn’t have any souls at all) and SCAD were easy from wordplay. STOW-IN-THE-WOLD took a few minutes of careful sorting out of the anagram to make sure I had the right letters, but the right places were easy to find. And although like others I had SCHIPPERRE at first, SCHIPPERKE had to be the right version because SCHIPPER is Dutch and KE a suitable diminutive ending. And it had to be some kind of a ship’s dog — but I’ve never been sailing with a dog so I have never met one. VISIBLE would also be my COD.

    Edited at 2016-12-12 06:37 pm (UTC)

  29. Another SHIPPERRE here, having tossed up between the R and K and got it wrong *sigh*. Otherwise, despite one or too obscure words a very decent, for me, 15:29.

    Edited at 2016-12-12 09:49 pm (UTC)

  30. After another ridiculously slow start in which I spent far too long trying to come up with dogs, hats, relatives and words meaning “moved freely”, I eventually got going and bumbled home in 8:21.

    The dog appeared as recently as 14 January 2013, when the blogger of the day (a certain ulaca) suggested adding SCHIPPERKE to the list of famous Belgians – sound advice, if only because tradition has it that it would increase the list’s size by at least 10%.

    1. Thank goodness it wasn’t 14 Nov 2016, or I would begin to take my wife’s diagnosis of Selective Amnesia more seriously.

Comments are closed.