Times 26,633: Def Con One

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A preponderance of double defs, whimsical defs, cryptic defs and even deaf composers made this something of a wavelengthy puzzle I suspect – I was glad to slide in just under the 7 minute mark, almost exactly like a handsomely disheveled space mercenary rolling under a sealing bulkhead door in a 1980s sci-fi comedy.

I never feel like I have quite so much to say on my six-weekly days of double duty with the TLS. I entered 6ac with a shrug and a silent prayer, not being 100% sure that it shouldn’t be SCATHE or SCYTHE or something somehow; only afterwards did the penny drop that “cut maize” was a noun and not the verb I’d been looking for. 10ac wasn’t parsed till after the fact but fortunately left little room for uncertainty. My last one in, and I expect I won’t be short of company here, was the clever but oblique 17dn. Clue of the Day to 8dn for its brilliant use of “rent”; indeed it was only in the parsing that I fully appreciated it, as before I’d had the vague notion that the husband and wife might have been living apart and finally owning their home had brought them together. Oh to have a brain that could move in two directions at once, like the truly great crossword solvers of this world.

Many thanks to the setter, it was a good time. And now for the school run!

Across

1 Gradually worried on account of British infotech (3,2,3)
BIT BY BIT – BIT BY B I.T. [worried | on account of | British | infotech]
6 Cut maize, perhaps, and wrap (6)
SWATHE – double def
9 Daring arrangement for English choir (6)
HEROIC – (E CHOIR*) [“arrangement”]
10 Picture City chief executive not quite in the centre of photo (4,4)
ECCE HOMO – EC CE HOM{e} {ph}O{to} [city | chief executive | “not quite” in | “the centre of” photo]
11 State area in central Monmouthshire (4)
UTAH – A in {monmo}UTH{shire}
12 For information one has to run for parent (10)
PROGENITOR – PRO GEN I TO R [for | information | one (has) to | run]
14 Man I care about is from across the Atlantic (8)
AMERICAN – (MAN I CARE*) [“about”]
16 Very little can remove point of rising from yeast (4)
TINY – TIN [can] + Y{EAST} minus EAST [compass point of the rising sun]
18 Man missing in the wings is Titania’s lover (4)
OTTO – {b}OTTO{m} “missing in the wings”. Makes up for the lack of Bard in the TLS I blogged just now!
19 Ruler’s operation in wartime (8)
OVERLORD – double def
21 Flautist, say, improvising jazz in commercial ship (10)
WINDJAMMER – very nearly another double def: an improvising flautist would be a WIND JAMMER
22 Capital equipment beginning to appreciate (4)
RIGA – RIG [equipment] + A{ppreciate}
24 Note number among deer and game (8)
DOMINOES – MI NO [note | number] among DOES [deer]
26 Fish pub served up during harvest (6)
MINNOW – INN [pub] served up during MOW [harvest]
27 Heraldic beast with very strange name (6)
WYVERN – W (VERY*) N [with | very “strange” | name]
28 Summarise what’s new in key Danish city (8)
CONDENSE – N [new] in C ODENSE [key | Danish city]

Down

2 Immobile excavator losing motorway time (5)
INERT – {m}INER T [excavator “losing motorway” | time]
3 Extra husband in family for fellowship (11)
BROTHERHOOD – OTHER H [extra | husband] in BROOD [family]
4 Wolves supporter may do this to travel simply (8)
BACKPACK – A supporter of wolves may BACK a PACK…
5 Stage work that old Beethoven failed to hear (3,5,2,5)
THE SOUND OF MUSIC – Beethoven Was Deaf. Another TLS 101 clue.
6 Shoot a person too easily led (6)
SUCKER – double def
7 Large growth in koala’s habitat (3)
ASH – hidden in {koal}A’S H{abitat}
8 He and wife no more rent? (9)
HOMEOWNER – (HE + W NO MORE) [“rent”]. A rather spiffy &lit.
13 Tons aboard ocean liner at sea consent to only one view (11)
INTOLERANCE – T [tons] about (OCEAN LINER*) [“at sea”]
15 Lots keeping fit over marriage (9)
MATRIMONY – MANY [lots] keeping TRIM O [fit | over]
17 One taking over companies he’s floating? (8)
FERRYMAN – cryptic def. This gentleman takes companies over, over rivers and such that is, by floating them. LOI
20 Bar shortly must introduce a litre (6)
SALOON – SOON [shortly] must introduce A L
23 Paint a little county society (5)
GLOSS – GLOS S [a little county | society]
25 Father’s dismissed son in anger (3)
IRE – {S}IRE [father], losing his S [son]

51 comments on “Times 26,633: Def Con One”

  1. As per 1ac BIT BY BIT this fell in 29 minutes which was good for a Friday.

    FOI 14ac AMERICAN LOI 18ac OTTO

    COD 17dn FERRYMAN WOD WYVERN

    My brain can move in several directions at once – but to absolutely no purpose!

  3. 10:57, slowed considerably by typing the wrong letter at the end of 13dn, making the identification of the Danish city difficult. I can’t actually remember what the wrong letter was now but it wasn’t consistent with any Danish cities I could think of, and I didn’t spot the mistake for ages. And yes, the cunning 17dn was my last in.
    An enjoyable puzzle that somehow felt harder than it was.
  4. Went under the ECCE HOMO arch on the way up the Via Dolorosa. There was a souvenir shop advertising ‘T shirts printed while you wait’. The Turin shroud explained? THE SOUND OF MUSIC clue read like a sick joke at Ludwig Van’s expense, so COD. I assume FERRYMAN has something to do with carrying bodies over the Styx, but it was a bit of a biff. A WINDJAMMER was also what I wore before anoraks had been invented. Enjoyable again and done in 25 minutes.
    1. I think 17dn works with any FERRYMAN, not just the mythical underworld variety. A company of passengers, being taken, floating, over a river.

      Edited at 2017-01-27 09:40 am (UTC)

    2. I once heard about a shop that advertised ‘Passport photos while you wait’. A customer went in, had his photos taken and was told to come back the next day to collect them. ‘What about the while you wait bit?’ asked the customer. The reply was ‘Oh, we only take the photos while you wait’.
  5. 20:54 … made very heavy weather of this but did enjoy it. HOMEOWNER is as neat as a new pin
  6. Nearly made it within the target half-hour but was delayed towards the end by a couple of clues on the right, so 33 minutes all told and certainly a lot easier than the past two days.

    Not entirely sure I understand “companies” in 17dn and wondered if “bodies” might have been more appropriate if Charon was in the setter’s mind at all, and it would have fitted just as well with the surface reading.

    Edited at 2017-01-27 09:46 am (UTC)

    1. Chambers ‘people one associates with’ for companies, so I think it passes muster; and of course it works much better in the world of big business of the surface.

      Edited at 2017-01-27 09:53 am (UTC)

    2. The surface (which relates to stock market flotations) wouldn’t work with ‘bodies’. I think it’s just ‘company’ as in ‘group of people’.
      It’s actually a slightly nonsensical surface since a stock market flotation is essentially the opposite of a takeover, but I can’t say I’m outraged.

      Edited at 2017-01-27 09:56 am (UTC)

      1. Mm, I was very much in the “it obviously just means a group of people” camp, such that I moved on without a second thought and didn’t even think to blog it.

        I’m sure that if corporations are legally people they should be allowed to be introverts, extroverts or ambiverts just like the rest of us, wrt public/private status.

        1. Well I have come across companies that have ruled out going public because they don’t want anyone (particularly their customers) to know how profitable they are, which I suppose would count as a kind of introversion.
          1. It is easy and almost free to find out how profitable UK companies are via the Companies House website
            1. Not really. The published accounts of a private company do not always reflect the true profitability of the business, especially if you don’t want them to.

              Edited at 2017-01-27 02:42 pm (UTC)

              1. Understood but as a Chartered Accountant of almost 40 years standing, I think that I can read between most financial lines. Admittedly, small companies do not need an audit these days but larger ones will find it harder to pass the financial ‘smell test’. I am of course talking Uk. What BT Italy etc have been up to is a different accounting world, even though double-entry bookkeeping was invented there

                Edited at 2017-01-27 04:48 pm (UTC)

                1. As a Chartered Accountant of 20 years standing who now spends his professional life investing in private companies, I can assure you that you can’t always work out the real profitability of a company from publicly-available information, even in the UK, and even when they comply with all the rules. It is often even harder in other countries!
                  1. I am not arguing with you K as I agree that things can of course be covered up (whoops, massaged). Following the cash is a good start though. Anyway, a bit distant from crosswords.

                    Edited at 2017-01-27 08:53 pm (UTC)

  7. 24 minutes, finishing with the 6-es, not knowing the cut crop meaning of swathe. My good work rather undone by forgetting to go back and stick in OTTO.

    Edited at 2017-01-27 09:55 am (UTC)

  8. 20:20, not my vision (far from it) but my time. Funny how the brain works. I saw the picture, had the starting E and ECCE HOMO just jumped out before I even started parsing. I probably have not thought about it in years. Just as well I had the E though or MONA LISA would have got there first.

    I always well up at the story of Beethoven conducting the first performance of his Ninth Symphony. Because he was completely deaf, they had a stand-in conductor behind him who did the real work. When it came to the end and the audience were on their feet, the stand-in noticed that Beethoven was still conducting and he turned Beethoven around so
    that he could see the applause that he could not hear.

    Thanks setter and truncated V

    Edited at 2017-01-27 12:04 pm (UTC)

  9. Easy one, but with some nice touches I thought. My LOI was 16ac being quite unable at first to spot the correct meaning of can ..
    Feeling sorry for Beethoven now.. not to mention the homeowner, probably in thrall to a mortgage provider now and for the rest of his life
  10. Excellent clue, one of several today. Nonetheless, puzzle slightly more accessible than a usual Friday. Failed to parse ECCE HOMO. Name a Danish city that isn’t Copenhagen. 25′, thanks V and setter. Can I please recommend today’s QC and blog?
    1. Nope, can’t name a single Danish city not Copenhagen. Or couldn’t till I remembered The Odessa File, so Odense wasn’t a port in Ukraine and might exist in another country. Didn’t know swathe, lucky guess for the unparseable tiny – extra word “rising” a hindrance suggesting something backwards – unconvinced by Ferryman, another guess. So a slowish 28:34
      Thought homeowner excellent, quite liked dominoes too.
      1. I always remember Aarhus, but only because it inevitably makes me start singing “Aarhus, in the middle of the street…”
        1. Without my silly typo I’d have been at an advantage here, since for professional reasons I have been to most of the larger cities in Denmark, including Aarhus and Odense. What a waste of niche knowledge.
  11. QC improver here. As usual did all but one (i’d not heard of ecce homo – bring back grammar schools eh as my life feels diminished without such knowlege). Biffed ferryman without understanding after a mental alphabet scan. A teacher insisted a local chemist had “mens sana in corpore sano” in their window. Some days later a competitor countered “mens and womens …).
    Have a good weekend everyone and thanks as always to setter and V.
    Alan (still avatar-less)
  12. Mostly straightforward, but spent a long time wondering if I was missing something obvious about 6ac, when all that was missing was, of course, my knowledge of that second meaning.
  13. Nosed across the line just inside an hour. Glad to find that I hadn’t made up ECCE HOMO. I’d forgotten the painting despite the relatively recent “restoration” attempt and was working from the vaguest recollections plus my limited knowledge of Latin. It probably helped that my very first Latin textbook at school was called Ecce Romani…

    My second-from-last in, CONDENSE, took a long time to come, but I did finally work out I wasn’t looking for the whole answer to be the unknown Danish city. My LOI, OTTO, was biffed, but even my highly limited knowledge of Shakespeare should have been enough for a confirmation, in hindsight.

    Good fun all round, I thought. Thanks to setter and blogger.

  14. 20 min, with 6ac LOI – entered without parsing, as I’d forgotten the first meaning, which I should have recognised, even though it’s more familiar without the final E. (I had spent a couple of minutes trying to make it from WHEATS, using maize=corn and ‘cut’=drunk, but that wouldn’t work.)
  15. An extra heads up – there will be Big Dave’s Crossword Blog related festivities happening in London tomorrow (and even to some extent tonight) – if anyone’s at a loose end and would be interested in joining me, let me know and we can go mob-handed!
    1. Icky Thump is also an album by indified Tennessee bluesman Jack White of the White Stripes, of course. Strange man, Jack White!
  18. 41 minutes but with a silly error at 8d where I biffed HEMDOWNER for rent due to an inability to read the clue properly and check the anagram fodder. It was my LOI after 6a and 6d held me up for ages, so I was getting restless. Knew ECCE HOMO from the pub quiz and previous crosswords. Took companies in 17d to refer to groups of people. Thanks setter and V.
  19. Once upon a time my daughters were Mr. Bean fans where the opening music was the “daring English choir arrangement” (9a) of 10a “Ecce homo qui est faba”. Yeah yeah, said they, you told us 8 million times already. 17.32
  20. 10:39, with my main points of anguish being OTTO which went in on a hope (yes, I know I should brush up on my Shakespeare) and OVERLORD where I didn’t know one of the definitions.

  21. Intermittent solve today – coffee shop, car and sofa with dog. Started quickly, slowed down and then stalled completely before heaving myself over the finishing line with FERRYMAN.

    COD to SUCKER – a word which I can never meet without hearing W. C. Fields’ immortal line.

    Time: All correct in about an hour.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  22. Late in the day, after a good round at Alicante GC, was surprised to tune in on wavlength and do this in twenty minutes without a bother and with a glass of decent rioja. LOI was SWATHE, liked the whole thing; Mrs K chipped in with SUCKER which made her feel very chipper.
    Remembered Odense because HCA was born there, comes up in quizzes.
    Liked Jimbo’s blog comment, was tempted to repeat but that would be plagiarism.
    Now to the TLS.
  23. 20 mins, and I can’t blame tiredness. The LHS went in quickly enough but for some strange reason I didn’t see TSOM at 5dn for ages, and I only got it after CONDENSE had gone in. SWATHE was my LOI after SUCKER from the “wrap” definition alone, although I’m well aware of the expression “to cut a swath(e) through” and I should have made the connection. Count me as another who didn’t parse ECCE HOMO.
  24. No real problems, a bit less than 20 minutes or so, LOI OTTO. No real problems, so no real comments to make either, although I did like HOMEOWNER. Regards.
    1. 2 + 2?

      Mathematician – 4
      Engineer – between 3.96 and 4.04
      Accountant – what figure did you have in mind?
      We understand each other!

      Edited at 2017-01-27 10:39 pm (UTC)

  26. No real problems and 35 minutes, much better than my usual. But some interesting thoughts while solving. In high school I had a very good and very demanding English teacher who had us learn obscure dictionary words from time to time and write sentences with them — one of them was wyvern (nothing heraldic about it though. This was in the US). And when I moved to Europe one of my first trips was through Denmark on a single speed girl’s bike from Copenhagen to Flensburg, of course passing through Odense. And in ECCE HOMO I saw the EC and the CE(O?) right away and wanted to enter ECCE HOMO all the time I was solving, but I couldn’t parse it satisfactorily until I was nearly finished.

    Edited at 2017-01-27 10:37 pm (UTC)

  27. 11:56 for me, dithering over SWATHE for a couple of minutes at the end. Like you, I failed to spot that “cut maize” was a noun phrase until after I’d finished.

    I also made ridiculously heavy weather of 10ac (ECCE HOMO). Before I had any crossing letters in place, I wasted a bit of time trying to fit MONA LISA to the wordplay. After that, and for no good reason, I took “chief executive” to be CEO, and in the end had to come here to find how the wordplay worked. At least it was biffable with a reasonable degree of confidence.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

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