Times 26695 – Look out below!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 26 minutes

Music: Dvorak, Cello Concerto, Starker/Dorati/LSO

A rather easy solve for me, as the central long answer was a write-in from the definition. On the other hand, I did struggle a little with the ‘Bombay duck’/ ‘festal’ crossing, which should not have been that difficult. So in general, this was quite a straightforward Monday puzzle.

If you’re a golf fan, I do hope you watched today’s final round in Augusta. It turned into a ratherr exciting duel between two of Europe’s best, and it was really a shame one of them had to lose. Justin’s drive on the first playoff hole was very unlucky, although there was a good chance Sergio’s birdie would have won the tournament regardless.

OK, back to the puzzle. Away we go….

Across
1 CHERUBIC, C(HER)UBIC. I was looking for a candy or desert, but I’ll take it.
5 FLASHY, F + LA(SH)Y, a rather busy surface..
9 GNOMON, hidden in [passin]G NO MON[arch]. The part of a sundial that casts the shadow.
10 NOSOLOGY, NOS(O LOG)Y. If you know that ‘νόσος’ is the classical Greek word for disease, this will be an easy one.
11 CYAN, C(Y)AN, the NATO alphabet again.
12 BOMBAY DUCK, BOMB + AY + DUCK.
14 HELIPORT, HE(LIP,OR)T, where the enclosure is an anagram of THE.
16 LOAD, L(O)AD.
18 MINI, MINI[mum].
19 GIANTESS, anagram of EATING + S,S. Great surface!
21 CONTRABAND, CONTRA + BAND in different senses.
22 RIOT, RIO + T[albot], where the definition refers to an amusing individual.
24 MISHMASH, MI S(H)MASH.
26 UTOPIA, U[r](TO P)I[n]A[l]. A clue from the Private Eye puzzle, perhaps.
27 BLIMEY, B(LIME)Y.
28 REFUSING, REF + USING.
 
Down
2 HANDY, H AND Y, the ‘borders’ of HUNGARY.
3 ROMANTICIST, ROMAN([e]TIC)IST, i.e. CITE upside down.
4 BANKBOOK, BANK + BOOK The meaning wanted here is probably “to write down in an official book the name of a player who has broken the rules of the game.”
5 CINEMATOGRAPHER, anagram of TEAM REPROACHING. I always think of the Paul Simon song.
6 FESTAL, anagram of E FLAT’S.
7 AWL, sounds like ALL. The order of the words in the clue is important, as the ‘w’ is unchecked.
8 HIGH CLASS, HIGH + CLASS in different senses.
13 DELETERIOUS, DELETE (R) I.O.U.S.
15 EDITORIAL, anagram of REAL IDIOT. I have a feeling the senior newspapermen are not going to like this clue.
17 DANDRUFF, D(AND [suga]R)UFF.
20 PAPACY, PA(P.A.)CY.
23 ORION, O + NOIR backwards, as in film noir.
25 HUM, HUM[ans].

37 comments on “Times 26695 – Look out below!”

  1. I now try very hard not to, after reading Carlin’s recentish biography.

    Yes … an easier-side puzzle with no odd GK, except perhaps GNOMON. Caused me to look up the etymology along with the two different meanings of GNOME. Always good to be able to tell your Latin from your Greek.

    Edited at 2017-04-10 02:38 am (UTC)

  2. Typical Monday fare, though I note that I’m only 9 seconds behind Verlaine. Look forward to his explanation for that anomaly, perhaps he was sober.

    Agree the golf was brilliant Vinyl. Don’t agree that Rose’s playoff drive was unlucky. He blocked it into the trees, and was fortunate that it spat back out for a look. And that was after a lucky bounce on the 72nd. Terrific contest though, with superb sportsmanship displayed by all parties, one of the great things about golf.

    NOSOLOGY and GNOMON unknown, but clearly clued. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    1. It will be on TV here in a couple of hours, but having inadvertently (Guardian headline) learned the result, I’m not sure I’ll watch. I’ve had no use for Garcia since the time he spat into a cup after missing a putt; totally unapologetic about it afterward.
      1. Yew, most unedifying. But not having previous knowledge of that incident, I’ve always found him to be tremendously charismatic.

        I think the bigger story is the 19 years of unfulfilled promise being wiped away in the most dramatic fashion on the day of his late hero’s 60th birthday.

  3. 40 minutes steady solve with most time lost over the unknown NOSOLOGY which I eventually got from wordplay. LOI GNOMON, as so often for me with hidden words, and it was only when I looked it up to find out what it meant that I remembered I knew it perfectly well so it must have slipped temporarily out of my head.
  4. 12:36 … I thought this was great fun. A couple of nice penny-drops (GNOMON and DANDRUFF), and a few unknown or vaguely known words well-clued. I liked “the Baroque” to give the HE-T” container.

    And BLIMEY! yes, vinyl, I did watch the golf. Great entertainment, and the right man won. I think I heard a global sigh of relief when Garcia won.

  5. 5d was a write-in for me too, only I wrote in CAMERATOGRAPHER, which a) isn’t a thing, b) does’t match the anagram and c) mightily slowed down the otherwise easy Bombay Duck and the sort-of-known NOSOLOGY. That and a phone call pushed my time up to 18.47.
    Garcia once spat in the cup? How is he still allowed to play golf? And if I get round to checking out Paul Simon’s biog, I’ll probably never listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water again. “The evil that men do…”
  6. A steady 50 minutes for me, never flowing too freely, yet never feeling like I was stuck anywhere.

    FOI HANDY. I’m ashamed to say that despite having worked for medical insurance companies for 15 years NOSOLOGY was my second-to-LOI, with CONTRABAND my last.

    BANKBOOK came quite late; I’ve only ever heard “passbook”, and only used them with building societies rather than banks. COD 26, WOD MISHMASH.

  7. 13m. Nothing too difficult in here, although I didn’t know GNOMON or NOSOLOGY. Now I’m off to look up their etymology.
  8. Or did Elvis sing ‘classed’? Either way, I ain’t never caught a rabbit. This crossword wasn’t a great friend of mine today either, taking 35 minutes on a nice Monday puzzle. It might be because my wife’s dragging me to Pilates for the first time this morning and I’m in fear of the inevitable humiliation. She’s been going for years. I just didn’t crack CINEMATOGRAPHER until I had most crossers, being too much of a football man to think laterally, despite remembering well Peter Scott saying that birds should be shot with a camera. I’m old enough to have had a BANKBOOK, but that didn’t help either. By then I wasn’t sure that the Pope was a Catholic. But I do always have the BOMBAY DUCK so that I can enjoy everything else, and that was a write-in. COD HELIPORT. LOI BLIMEY.

    Edited at 2017-04-10 08:18 am (UTC)

      1. Only one cockatoo seems to be into Elvis.The other only wants to go to a movie show, and sit there holding claws.
  9. Well finished my second puzzle although it took a couple of hours.

    Dnk festal but it was the only thing that sounded plausible from the letters.
    Also guessed gnomon from the hidden, and nosology from the wordplay.

    For the last one, 13d I had D_L_TERIOUS and it still took a long time to get wipe out = delete!

    COD mini or utopia.

  10. I thought this was a super puzzle, especially for a Monday, with Bombay Duck, Gnomon, Dandruff, 3 of many good ones. 31 minutes with the SE a bit slow to see.
    Fell asleep before the end of the golf, and am pleased for Garcia; I had Charley Hoffman in our sweep, he went rapidly from 1st to 22nd as could have been predicted. On Seve’s 60th as well, very timely.
  11. Enjoyed this, not hard, but not a gimme by any means.
    I did watch the golf and found it gripping, also thought the right man won … sorry though to read the revelations above about Sergio and Paul Simon. Now I will have to avoid reading the biography..

  12. Nearly panicked when nothing came from the first ten clues I looked at, then CINEMATOGRAPHER came to my rescue. Steady progress from then on. Pleasingly non-Mondayish.

  13. Was going well, but then got stuck in the NE which pushed my time to about 40mins… Same u/ks as others (GNOMON and NOSOLOGY), all else ok.

  14. Quite a bit easier than I made it out to be, esp after a rather nonsensical BANKNOTE held me up for quite a while. FOI HANDY and last in GNOMON – as stated above, these hidden words always throw me, I think the indicators that there is a hidden are often, well, hidden. Is there a word for that – hiddengrind maybe??
  15. First finish for a while, I think flashman and I are fellow strugglers! Didn’t know gnomon or nosology but at least worked them out from the clues which is great progress..
    Roin
  16. I spent all weekend doing Listeners, Mephistos and Inquisitors – I’m going to keep sending them in until I finally get a damn dictionary – so I fear it may have broken my brain for this enjoyably-vocabbed puzzle. (The real problem I think is that I usually warm up with the Concise but accidentally clicked straight on the main event this time – really threw me for a loop!)

    Just a couple of days until the option of meeting up at the pub! I will aim to be there for 6 – will bring plenty of crosswordic entertainments.

    1. I find I can’t be there on Wednesday, another engagement .. but, did you mention another opportunity quite soon, following the setters’ lunch?
      1. Yes! My understanding is that that should be for the afternoon and evening of 16th May.
    2. You’ll probably find that once you’ve won one, you’ll win another almost immediately, as I did recently (to the benefit of my (step-)great-grandson).

      PS: I’m afraid I won’t make it on Wednesday, but I’m hoping to be there after the setters’ lunch.

  17. 26 steady minutes. Knew GNOMON, DNK NOSOLOGY – which indicates that I have remembered only some of my “A” level Greek.
      1. I imagine that there was plenty of “nosos” in Herodotus and Xenophon too but unfortunately the multiple defrags of my brain in the intervening 52 years have removed all memory of it.
  18. I started this with a hangover, and popped in the first few answers(HANDY and that well known hidden colour, DYAN) while the granddaughter’s birthday balloons were popping off around me, then stopped for breakfast(smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and muffins, for some reason the planned Bucks Fizz didn’t materialise), and resumed briefly before ferrying the family to Struan Beach. An hour or two later I settled down to finish off in relative peace(due to the absence of relatives), and having successfully completed the rest of the puzzle, forgot to go back and have another think about DYAN, thus finishing in a combined 48:13 with one wrong. Knew GNOMON but not NOSOLOGY. FLASHY took a while to materialise. CHERUBIC took a while too as I was hunting for a solid figure. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    Edited at 2017-04-10 02:44 pm (UTC)

  19. I thought I was in for a tough time with this until I got a foothold on the RHS and then the long anagram helped from there. I thought I detected some Mayerisms here (toilets, flakes on top). If you read any biographies of my hero John Martyn then you will find a pretty unpleasant man. Perhaps great artistes have different characters?
  20. Polished this one off nicely despite it being on the “interesting” side of Mondayishness. There were a few clues which I got back-to-front, so kudos to the setter for that.

    Bankbook=passbook – I had one in my teens for my TSB account.

    Just totting up the setters for the collaborative Easter crossword – still a few words available so email me at dadge@hotmail.com

    Edited at 2017-04-10 04:22 pm (UTC)

  21. 13 mins. GNOMON was my FOI but I needed the WP for NOSOLOGY. My LOI was MINI and I was prepared to write that it was a biff that held me up at the end, but almost as soon as I wrote it in the “mini(mum)” penny dropped. I enjoyed this puzzle.
  22. Not very tough, this one, despite not knowing of NOSOLOGY or GNOMON. The cluing was quite well done, so I was led to those right off. My LOI was HIGH CLASS. Due to a printing problem so I had to solve that one with only the first words of the clue. The checking letters left little room for doubt, though. Regards.
  23. A late start for me as I had to do a coding test as part of an ongoing interview process. A record time for me of 27 minutes. I can only assume the setter and I were on the same wavelength. Perfect Monday fare for me.
  24. Couldn’t seem to get going on this one. Did about half in 34 mins during my commute and the rest in 20 mins at lunchtime. FOI 16ac. LOI 8dn. 9ac and 10ac were unknowns or at least unremembered from previous crosswords. Lots of fun here at 19ac, 15dn, 17dn and 26ac (escapee from the ST). COD to 27ac.
  25. To buck the trend, GNOMON and NOSOLOGY were my first two in – but then I have done a heck of a lot of crosswords over the years!

    On the other hand, I simply couldn’t see FESTAL, despite being almost certain I was looking for an anagram of “E flat’s”, making it and BOMBAY DUCK (which I had feared was going to be some unknown Indian dish) my L2I, and so finished in a rather disappointing 11:25.

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