Times 26594

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I struggled to complete this in 75 minutes but technically it was a DNF because I needed aids to find the answer to 23ac which in retrospect shouldn’t have been as difficult as  I made it. 2dn and 20dn were far harder when it came to parsing but had the advantage of being eminently biffable. Here’s my blog… 

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]

Across
1 One taking up course extremely eager after stupid delay (4,6)
DUMB WAITER – DUMB (stupid),  WAIT (delay), E{age}R [extremely]. In this sense, a DUMB WAITER is a small lift for conveying food between floors from kitchen to dining room. After a complaint in yesterday’s QC comments about the Times crossword being un-PC I imagine equating “dumb” with “stupid” may cause similar offence today.
6 Sign to approach / stream (4)
BECK – Two definitions, the first as in “beck and call”
8 To find a new supplier is expedient (8)
RESOURCE – Two meanings, the first to be read as RE-SOURCE
9 Confidence in both dry and wet (6)
SECRET – SEC (dry),  and RET (wet – steep in a liquid)
10 Shabby-sounding appearance (4)
MIEN – Sounds like “mean” (shabby)
11 Work history, a year in France in its southern region (10)
PROVENANCE – AN (year in France) in PROVENCE (its southern region). The earliest known history of e.g. a work of art or manuscript.
12 Inserts ad after confusing delay (9)
TARDINESS – Anagram [after confusing] of “Inserts ad”
14 Romantic author last to attack food (5)
KEATS –  [last to] {attac}K, EATS (food)
17 Puzzle about boat’s return (5)
REBUS – RE (about), SUB (boat) reversed [return]
19 Troublemaker takes sword to tree with energy (9)
FIREBRAND – FIR (tree), E (energy), BRAND (sword)
22 Undertake hazardous mission with ringing endorsement for success? (4,3,3)
BELL THE CAT – A figurative expression for undertaking something hazardous, and a cryptic hint at a more literal meaning
23 Do some knitting and babble (4)
PURL –  Two definitions, a stitch in knitting and a noise made by gently moving water e.g. purling stream or babbling brook, the latter with memories of Donald Peers! This was the clue that did for me as with 75 minutes solving time on the clock I ran out of steam and resorted to aids. This was very disappointing as I knew both meanings, but I’d been through the alphabet twice and had come up with nothing.
24 Model / one shouldn’t miss (6)
SITTER – One straight definition plus a reference to SITTER as a target that’s impossible to miss cf. sitting duck
25 Deeply impressed, being serious in purpose (8)
ENGRAVED – GRAVE (serious) in END (purpose)
26 Last to look back (4)
KEEP – PEEK (look) reversed [back]. Some foods may be said to keep or last.
27 Charge applied to contract with closely-arranged cover (6-4)
SHRINK-WRAP – SHRINK (contract ), W (with), RAP (charge)
Down
1 Renaissance artist engages a dull bit of brain (4,5)
DURA MATER – DURER (Renaissance artist) contains [engages] A + MAT (dull). I didn’t know this so was pleased to get it from wordplay.
2 Fail to get money supply cut (7)
MISHEAR – M1 (money supply), SHEAR (cut). I biffed this and then spotted the second part of the wordplay. Eventually  I found the following on the FT website to explain the first part:  M0, M1, M2, M3, M4 are different measures of money supply. Not all of them are widely used and the exact classifications depend on the country. M0 and M1, also called narrow money, normally include coins and notes in circulation and other money equivalents that are easily convertible into cash. M2 includes M1 plus short-term time deposits in banks and 24-hour money market funds. M3 includes M2 plus longer-term time deposits and money market funds with more than 24-hour maturity. The exact definitions of the three measures depend on the country. M4 includes M3 plus other deposits. The term broad money is used to describe M2, M3 or M4, depending on the local practice. I thought this the most obscure reference I have seen in a cryptic puzzle for a very long time but on checking I found that at least it’s in Collins whereas the more usual M1 = “motorway” isn’t.
3 Think to take on spreading rat poison (8)
ATROPINE – Anagram [spreading] of RAT, OPINE (think)
4 No risk now the sea-fret has lifted? (3,5,2,5)
THE COAST IS CLEAR – A figurative expression with a cryptic hint at a more literal meaning
5 More optimistic about leaving bishop’s staff (6)
ROSIER – {c}ROSIER (bishop’s staff) [about, leaving]
6 Pirate, thriller writer’s said, always poetic (9)
BUCCANEER – Sounds like [said] “Buchan” (thriller writer), EER [always, poetic]
7 Team made smaller in bristling style? (4,3)
CREW CUT – CREW (team),  CUT (made smaller)
13 Forty on board taking jacket before work (6,3)
DOUBLE TOP – DOUBLET (jacket), OP (work). Something to aim at on a dartboard, “top” being 20.
15 Being ready to ride is added plus to jockey (7,2)
SADDLED UP – Anagram [jockey] of “added plus”
16 Figure shut in dock suffering (8)
PENTAGON – PENT (shut in),  AGON{y} [dock]
18 One living alone before having child (7)
EREMITE – ERE (before), MITE (child)
20 Water-bearing rock, one character voiced, is shaking (7)
AQUIVER – AQUI{f}ER (water-bearing rock) with one character changed to V which my dictionary informs me is a voiced labiodental fricative consonant. Goodness me! When solving, I simply biffed it and moved on. On edit:  Please see Kevin Gregg’s comment below for further explanation.
21 Refrain from chapter on ancient deity (6)
CHORUS – C (chapter), HORUS (ancient deity). A song may have a refrain or chorus that recurs throughout between any number of  verses.  Horus came to my attention in recent years via the game show Only Connect. In this exceptionally difficult quiz game the clues were originally identified by Greek letters but apparently the makers received complaints that this was too pretentious so they announced the idea would be dropped and henceforth Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (two reeds, lion, twisted flax, horned viper, water and the eye of Horus) would be used instead.

45 comments on “Times 26594”

  1. All the trouble in the SE … and also not knowing the M1 ref. at 2dn. Had to biff PURL from the knitting as I didn’t know the “babble” meaning.

    Might have been fitting to have a time machine allusion at 12ac? Boys born in time machine causing delay?

  2. Took about an hour, with quite a few BIFD (including AQUIVER) due to laziness, ignorance or more usually a combination of both. I’d never heard of M1 for ‘money supply’ either and couldn’t see how ‘Forty on board’ fitted in, thinking of crew on a ship. As always, obvious when explained. No real stand-outs for me today, but I’ll go for 1a and 1d as my favourites.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  3. Quite pleased to get all the weird stuff in my 41 minutes, but had to check whether my ‘peel the cat’ was right or not, and sadly it wasn’t. Well, if schipperke can be a dog…

    Anyway, I mucked up all my good work with Durer et al by tripping myself up at 27a by failing to spot the blasted W[ith]. Notwithstanding, I thought my ‘shrink-crop’ sounded like just the sort of thing the Normans would charge as a tax on Saxon sharecroppers.

    I thought 20d the pick of a slightly zany but highly enjoyable, well, um, crop. Thanks to Jack for unravelling 2d – a write-in for City types, no doubt, but a source of utter bamboozlement to me.

  4. 22ac BELL THE CAT I haven’t seen for yonks. LOI and WOD.

    Cow corner was my hold-up area within 65 minutes.

    FOI 11ac PROVENANCE. COD 1ac DUMB WAITER

    Tough but enjoyable. Over to you mctext.

  5. A first pass through the acrosses turning up very little, I had a bad premonition about this, but in fact things fell into place quite quickly. Like Mctext, I didn’t know MI, but SHEAR was enough; and didn’t know the other meaning of PURL, but one was enough. Biffed 13d. Wasted time on 21d thinking of CH for ‘chapter’. Liked 1ac and 20d among an enjoyable bunch. Voicing, Jack, is vibration of the vocal cords while articulating; so [z] is [s] voiced, [v] is [f] voiced, etc.
    1. Thanks for the voicing info, Kevin, which I think suggests my original thought that this could be read as a sort of homophone-cum-substitution clue was not that wide of the mark after all. So”aquifer” (water-bearing rock) sounds like AQUIVER (shaking) when one character, i.e. “f”, is voiced.
  6. I didn’t know why “MI” (or M1) or what “DOUBLE TOP” meant, and never heard of “Buchan” (that I can recall), so if parsing everything were considered essential to “finishing,” I didn’t!
    1. The 39 Steps, surely the ultimate classic thriller, was one of his.

      Edited at 2016-12-13 05:42 am (UTC)

      1. Hey, OK, I know a film by that name! And says here (Wikipedia) that Hitchcock based his story “very loosely” on the novel by John B. Which fact I may have read at one time…
        1. As Lord Tweedsmuir, John Buchan was also Governor General of Canada 1935-1940, when he died after falling over in his bath tub.
          The Thirty Nine Steps was originally run as a serial in Blackwood’s Magazine (1915)
  7. Same unknowns plus more – but not M1. Still it mostly fell into place in 20 minutes, then 9 minutes for the last 2 DURA MATER, which I think I’ve seen before; and RESOURCE, which I can’t really see as expedient (dictionaries notwithstanding). All in all an uneasy solve.
    1. I note you say dictionaries not withstanding, Isla, but if it’s there it’s there. SOED has: expedient, noun. A means of attaining an end; a shift; a resource. LME.

      Edited at 2016-12-13 06:55 am (UTC)

  8. Under ten minutes again, BUT I didn’t notice that I’d left ___A MATER for the brain section at some point and never gone back to it, so had submitted D_RA MATER for one down. If only I hadn’t put that A in I probably would have noticed that the grid was incomplete, and put in the (completely obvious) correct answer!

    More importantly – your friend and mine paul_in_london, aka Paul in New York, will definitely be in London and not New York this Saturday – would anyone have an interest in going for a quick drink that afternoon? I am proving not very adept at organising London Sloggers & Betters meetups so far but maybe from little acorns those mighty oaks could grow…

  9. Like ulaca I went with the thoroughly unpleasant ‘peel the cat’, which seemed reasonable enough as we were obviously in the land of idiom. Oh, well.

    Very satisfying stuff, regardless, with pennies dropping all over the place. I spent a long time pondering 2d before realising my ‘recourse’ for 8a had to be wrong.

      1. But I like cats! I have to say in my defence that I have regularly belled cats (to curb hunting excesses) and have never found the process hazardous, so BELL THE CAT makes just as little sense to me.
        1. I wondered about that too. Though my local native birds do suffer from feline predation — on quite a large scale. ODO tells me:

          Bell the cat: take the danger of a shared enterprise upon oneself. [an allusion to a fable in which the mice (or rats) suggest hanging a bell around the cat’s neck to have warning of its approach.]

          Seems there’s more than one way ….

  10. DNF. Beaten by the unknown BELL THE CAT and, also, by the parsing of RET (which we have had before but clearly hasn’t permeated). Clever and concise clues. Thanks jacktt for filling in the gaps.
  11. Lots of semi-obscurities today but no out-and-out unknowns.

    BELL THE CAT is a familiar expression to me, but I’m afraid I don’t understand the second half of the clue. Can someone please put me out of my misery? Or is there less to it than meets the eye?

    Two over par (last putt just lipped out). Thanks setter and Jack.

  12. Flying today, <19’, pleasing. DUMB WAITER straight in – I would rather target nonsensical Hollywood films than the Times crossword re PC- ness, easily overcome by the insertion of ‘previously’. Liked 6ac. Hesitated over RESOURCE, but one is resourceful, although one also has recourse to things. Knew BELL THE CAT, possibly from crosswords. COD SHRINK WRAP. Thanks jack and setter.
  13. Loved this one, in 26 minutes all done except no idea whether to peel, feel or tell my cat, so another DNF. never heard of belling a cat. 1A my COD.
  14. dnf (two unknowns: BELL THE CAT, and EREMITE), and lots un- or partly-parsed (MISHEAR, PURL, AQUIVER). Thanks, Jack for working it all out…
  15. DNF in NW, not getting RESOURCE or MIEN. DNK DURA MATER either,despite having viral meningitis about twenty years ago. Should have got MIEN but without RESOURCE I still wouldn’t have thought of DURER as the painter. I was pleased to finish the rest before giving up at the hour mark. I knew someone who claimed to live in an area of Croydon called Riddlesdown. It couldn’t be found on the map but on a knitting pattern as it was plainly Purley.
  16. Kevin’s explanation is ingenious and almost certainly right. I just took it to be a homophone, dodgy variety. PURL – well you learn something from these puzzles – I’d always thought it meant the pattern (rather than the sound) made by moving water. Our 1930 apartment building used to have a DUMB WAITER, at least in some of the apts, connected to a restaurant on the ground floor. Ours is now a broom closet. I’ve sometimes wondered if it didn’t still serve as a fast escalator for mice and roaches. Some very well-composed clues here. 12.15

    P.S. I keep meaning to say, Jack, how much I like your avatar. I believe it’s Jack Benny, on being mugged (your money or your life), saying I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Apologies if I missed any discussion on this!

    Edited at 2016-12-13 11:34 am (UTC)

  17. 13:42. Educated “guesses” at DURA M and BELL THE C and whilst I am familiar with M1 and the other Ms I won’t pretend to know about them in detail.

    I’m pleased Galspray asked the question about the second bit of the act clue but I’m still none the wiser really.

    26 caused me panic as there are far too many 4-letter words beginning with P that can mean look and the last/keep connection didn’t immediately leap out at me from the bushes, bell around its neck.

  18. 11:44 – tricky one, didn’t know one definition of PURL, MISHEAR from partial wordplay, and DURA MATER completely from wordplay. Relieved to see BELL THE CAT was correct, I seem to recall it popping up before somewhere
  19. This was like pulling teeth and I was very happy to finish in any time at all.
    We used to have two gorgeous rag-doll cats – famed for their laid-backness (?). Barbarella was too refined to chase anything and Ben only ever managed a couple of mice in 17 years. Happily, therefore, no birds were harmed in the production of this story.

    Probably the wrong side of 75 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  20. About 25 minutes, held up by my inability to spell MIEN (MEIN). This led me to a hunt and peck expedition to find MISHEAR with a stray ‘I’ in it. I finally saw the M1 reference, which I knew, leading to M1/SHEAR, and corrected the MIEN. Must remember that, but haven’t had any luck doing so thus far. Everything else went in OK, although I didn’t know the other definition of PURL. I actually thought there must be some homophonic thing going on there as PURL/PEARL=BABBLE/BAUBLE. Dumb, indeed. Anyway, regards.
  21. 17 mins, the last four of which were spent on my final three clues in the NW corner. DUMB WAITER took much too long to see, but once I had it MISHEAR followed quite quickly, and then RESOURCE was my LOI (like Sotira I had been trying to justify “recourse”.

    Count me as another who only knew one of the meanings of PURL, and it was probably fortunate that I’d come across BELL THE CAT before.

  22. Came to this one late after a long lie in, and struggled to get a toe hold. After 45 minutes I had to leave it two thirds done with a lot of the LHS empty to go and watch my Grandson in his school Strictly The Nativity play(subtitle: Lights, Camel, Action!). He’s 7 years old and did a creditable tango. Caesar Augustus as Craig Revel Horwood got the most boos:-)Anyway, on my return it took another 20 minutes or so to finish off, surprisingly with all correct, as I came up with the correct options from HEAL, PEEL, BELL, PEAL, CAT CUT etc. Biffed 2d and only knew the knitting meaning of PURL although the other seemed eminently probable. Didn’t know the grey matter or artist, but managed to construct 1d correctly. Didn’t know RET but it had to be. A tough but enjoyable challenge. Thanks setter, and Jack for filling the gaps.

    Edited at 2016-12-13 07:07 pm (UTC)

  23. If “closely arranged cover” is the definition part at 23 across SHRINK-WRAP must be a noun. Is it? It is a verb surely.
    1. It’s also the material used to do the action. Here is a quote from Wiki… Shrink wrap, also shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied, it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering.
  24. 12:37. Late to this, and it was one of those where I felt like I was close to coming off all the way, so felt glad to wobble through unscathed. Loads of at least semi-obscure things in here: BECK, RET, BELL THE CAT, PURL, DURA MATER, EREMITE, AQUIVER. Somehow I had all the knowledge or half-knowledge required. I had no more than a vague sense that BELL THE CAT might be a thing, but that turned out to be enough. Being a City type M1 was at least no problem. Money is such a fascinating concept: a huge and glorious confidence trick.
  25. 48 minutes, which seems not too bad today. For a while, I had BELL THE … until I convinced myself that COW made no sense and FOX wouldn’t fit the checkers and since I didn’t even consider OWL, the CAT was the only three-letter animal I could think of. I was a bit reluctant to put it in because we did bell our cat and it wasn’t hazardous at all. Peeling the cat probably would have been.

    M1 was completely unknown, but MISHEAR and the SHEAR at the end were too convincing not to go in. PURL remembered from when I used to knit. BECK as a stream seemed reasonable because in the Swedish book I am reading, BÄCK turned out to be a brook or rivulet when I looked it up in the dictionary. Obviously the same word.

    And RET was completely unknown. I READ the New York Times, but wouldn’t go near an American puzzle (how unpatriotic of me). I do the puzzles in the London Times, but it is somewhat lacking as a source of news. My COD would be AQUIVER, quite a neat clue.

    Edited at 2016-12-13 10:55 pm (UTC)

  26. If only I’d got going faster, I’d have posted quite a decent time as this turned out to be very much my sort of crossword. As it was, I spent the first few minutes thinking that I was heading for a total disaster and the last few realising that this wasn’t so at all, eventually pootling home in 9:21.

    I’m surprised that people should be unfamiliar with BELL THE CAT, which I must have heard at my mother’s knee. Perhaps it’s regional thing? (As a Yorkshireman, I had no problem with BECK.)

  27. I think a 9:21 pootle is pretty good going. My own pootle got me there in 52 minutes.

    Lots of skin-of-my-teeth things here. DURA MATER was no trouble, and I’m glad to note what seems to be a trend of slightly deepening sciencey clues of late. BELL THE CAT was a phrase I knew, but didn’t know the meaning of; however, it seemed to make sense and so went in. BECK (as a summons), PURL (as a babble) and the “ret” of SECRET (as anything) were only half-known at best.

    That left me with EREMITE/SITTER, which took me at least half the total time. SITTER sort of made sense, though I didn’t know it as a “sitting duck”. Nor had I come across EREMITE, but eventually I excluded all other options and decided that it was an alternative spelling of “hermit”, so in it went.

  28. Hands up, honestly! Who has ever heard of “bell the cat”? Certainly not me but no doubt there will be people out there in crossword land telling me it’s an old phrase. For want of anything better I put “peel the cat” which makes much more sense even if it presents a horrifying image. We LOVE cats (and dogs) in this house.

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