Times 26785 – blue, coal, crested, long-tailed or great: they’re all here

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This was a pleasant Mondayish sort of offering, where the main hurdle to overcome for those not possessing the needed history, spelling, memory or Cockney Rhyming Slang skills was the spelling of the old Egyptian queen.

I’m a little short for time this week, so this will be a kind of skeletal blog. Feel free – of course, as if you need any invitation – to fill in the gaps below. 20 minutes for me, so my average on the computational thingy must have gone down a shade – if, that is, I feature at all. Must visit it some time, if only to see how much I understand of the mathematical arcanery.

ACROSS

1. CALLS OFF – CALLS + OFF (as in ‘noises off’ – a darn good play, and pretty decent film).
5. CANDID – AND + I in CD.
9. EGG ROLLS – GG in E + ROLLS.
10. PULL UP – PUL LUP is palindromic.
12. CHEFS-D’OEUVRE – CHEFS + anagram* of OVERDUE.
15. TROPE – PORT reversed + [pag]E.
16. SINECURES – IN in SECURES (‘parcels’ is the containicator).
18. NEFERTITI – TITFER (CRS for hat, as in ‘tit for tat’, where ‘tit for’ becomes ‘titfer’) in NE + I.
19. CREDO – RED in CO.
20. BREATHALYSER – a nice all-in-one, made up of A BEER RASHLY* around [nigh]T.
24. MOHAIR – A in MO + H + IR.
25. WATERLOO – LATER* in WOO.
26. SUPPER – S + UPPER.
27. ODYSSEUS – Y + SS in O + DEUS.

DOWN

1. CLEF – CLEF[t].
2. LUGE – [p]LUG + E.
3. SLOTH BEAR – S + LOTH + BEAR.
4. FILM FESTIVAL – TV FAMILIES* in FL.
6. AZURE – Z in A URE.
7. DELIVERIES – E + LIVER in DIES (an over in cricket consists of six deliveries, though the Aussies tried 8-ball overs, until they found their umpires couldn’t count that high).
8. DEPRESSION – half of ‘hollow’ is LOW, as in the state of being down; a depression is also a hole in the ground, or elsewhere.
11. IDENTITY CARD – I + DEN + TIT + [C in YARD]. I was brought up on a diet of Saturday afternoon B movies in which the Gestapo asked to see your ‘papers’. I was always disappointed when the tunneler chappie in mufti with the moustache merely pulled out a small card forged by the brilliant blind boffin back in Oflag Whatnot.
13. STINK BOMBS – STINK + BOMBS. I’m sure some of our chemical chaps of a certain vintage have made plenty of these in their time…
14. COFFEE SHOP – [t]OFFEES in CHOP. Took a bit of sorting, did this one.
17. COCKERELS – CO + E in CLERKS*. I liked this one, not least because cockerel has a ring to it that frankly cock and the dreadful rooster don’t.
21. TRIPE – TRIP + [cornice]E.
22. GLEE – reversed hidden. I’d actually forgotten that glee meant an old song, but then I do have the excuse that my daughter watched a TV show of this name ad infinitum a few years ago. She moved on; I’m still in therapy…
23. DOES – Yes, I suppose ‘Doe a rabbit, a female rabbit’ doesn’t have quite the same ring.

47 comments on “Times 26785 – blue, coal, crested, long-tailed or great: they’re all here”

  1. Should have been quicker but I took ages over GLEE at the end. I have a neighbour with Down syndrome who has spent most of the last decade standing in the middle of our cul-de-sac with his headphones on belting out tunes from Glee, so I don’t know how I missed that one.

    Pretty straightforward otherwise (the puzzle, not the neighbour). Thanks setter and U.

  2. I wasted heaps of time fixating on S for ‘second’ at 24ac, ‘theme’ for ‘motif’, and trying to parse COFFEESHOP (while somehow keeping ‘theme’). Finally, almost simultaneous satori, about 10 minutes late.
  3. You have accidentally pluralised 12ac.

    Took me some 50 minutes leld up by 14dn COFFEE SHOP and 15ac TROPE my LOI.

    FOI 1ac CALLS OFF

    COD 18ac NEFERTITI

    WOD 20ac BREATHALYSER

    22ac GLEE was well-known(USA) GLEE-CLUBS were originally just for singing.

    Edited at 2017-07-24 01:53 am (UTC)

      1. 1 What’s this about accidental pluralisation – it is plural, isn’t it. Chefs not Chef’s.
        2 Doesn’t Low refer to a weather system rather than a “state of being down”?
        1. “Accidental”, because I carelessly typed in “chefs d’oeuvres” as the answer. It is indeed “chefs” not “chef’s”. I took it that horryd wrote that in jest, gently teasing me for my “error”.

          Indeed, “low” could refer to an area of relatively low atmospheric pressure, but dictionaries also have “low” as a state of depression. Thanks for the addendum!

  4. 14:01 … would have been comfortably sub-10 had it not been for GLEE and WATERLOO, which was nearly mine. I got it into my head that the latter was an anagram of later/in/c, despite already having the O of DOES at the end. Took about 5 minutes to wake up and see the bloomin’ obvious.
  5. Again, my need to get out to work is clearly pushing my times up, as I romped home in 33 minutes. FOI 1a, LOI 15a TROPE, but only because I hadn’t realised it was still blank until I’d convinced myself the CHEFS-D’OEUVRE must be right for 12a. Had a couple unparsed, including COFFEE SHOP and DEPRESSION, which I think is my COD now I’ve had it explained to me…

    Thanks to setter and blogger; now I’m off for another thrilling day at a multinational!

      1. Good point! Yes, they are in fact coming down. This is what happens when you dash off a reply before the coffee’s fully soaked into your brain, a clear disadvantage of me closing in on half-hour times…
  6. 30 mins with porridge – and nothing too exciting – but couldn’t parse Depression and Trope went in without flipping the ‘port’. Nice to see Nefertiti with her hat back to front.
    Thanks setter and Ulaca.
  7. Under ten minutes for this easypeasy offering, but having been away walking for over a fortnight, I did four yesterday to start catching up so am feeling sharp. Though I then stared at yesterday’s for a minute without solving a single clue
  8. My Grannie’s sideboard, titled as above, could well have had a mummified NEFERTITI hidden somewhere. Spent a while on this clue, at first dredging up names from the IPL but fortunately none fitted. We got back from holiday in sunny Lancashire at midnight and so I’m sluggish this morning in this miserably damp south.Took ages to parse COFFEE SHOP, which had to be the answer even if there is no way I’d describe Starbucks or Costa as cafés. They don’t have sausage rolls or vanilla slices. Took a long time also to parse DEPRESSION. Biffed BLUE for a time at 22d but knew it was wrong and eventually saw the right answer as LOI, and not gleefully. It feels like the summer is over, and that there won’t be many more. Perhaps I’ll start on the tax returns today. Took 45 minutes. I said the good time last Friday was a fluke. Whatever, thank you U and setter for jobs well done.
  9. Far too long to solve this one over three sessions, the first two of which had me nodding off. No deprespect to the puzzle intended; I was just very tired I suppose. DK CHEFS D’OEUVRE but worked it out from wordplay and checkers.

    Edited at 2017-07-24 07:54 am (UTC)

  10. An embarrassing two mistyped letters creating three wrong entries to nullify a respectably 13.06. Not all wasted, though, as getting the letters in the right order in the chefs doover reminded me happily of Peter Stiven, inspirational history teacher and hockey god, whose penalty I once saved, much to his annoyance because I was useless as a goalkeeper and had a wonky stick. He once had four goes at correcting my spelling of manoeuvres before conceding I was right all along. Joyous days.
    1. This elicited a chuckle of recognition: I have referred to “horse’s doovers” since childhood.
  11. Secured 20 minutes of peace amid holiday chaos to polish this off. Much to admire here inc. the BREATHALYSER anagram and the ‘not layer’ definition. Took too long at the end to see CLEF my LOI, was one of those obvious but not obvious ones.
  12. Done and dusted in 25 mins, or so I thought till I discovered a biffed CREW at 1d. CHEFS DOEUVRE was unknown but couldnt be anything else.

  13. 18mins or so for this one. Would’ve been longer if I’d spent time parsing COFFEE SHOP, NEFERTITI and DEPRESSION. Thanks for elucidation on those ones.

  14. I was very much on the setter’s wavelength this morning and came in at about 6:30, so I was surprised by a few of the comments. Though I did biff NEFERTITI and DEPRESSION
  15. Under 12 min – possibly my best ever.
    11dn made me recall that my card number was EQBF114/5, as this used to be your reference number for the NHS to start with.

    Edited at 2017-07-24 11:53 am (UTC)

    1. No this was mot my NHS reference number!I think you mean ‘one’s’ reference number – as opposed to ‘your reference number’!
      horryd Shanghai
      2. The world and his dog knows what he means, horryd. One doesn’t need to be an ass.
  16. Found this a tester, 45 min., quite unMondaylike. Will hope to hit under 20m. sometime in week to show what is nigh isn’t yet night. Amused by origin of titfer – never realised. – joekobi
  17. Forgot that flower often = river, so initially tried using Rose for 6d. Being a Lancastrian, started to get irritated that this was a Yorkshire flower rather than the infinitely more appealing red variety. Setter was finally forgiven when I twigged and mental note not to jump to conclusions. Otherwise a steady solve in about 40 mins. Well done Spieth, Froome and the England women’s cricket team for a spectacular day of sport.
  18. As I was on a roll I threw in GLEE from the cryptic and just hoped that there was a definition I didn’t know which proved to be the case. Actually the musical TV show, which thankfully I’ve not seen but am aware of, came to mind so I guess I could call it a partly educated guess.
  19. The mother-in-law has come over from Canada for her annual three week stay, so I’m reduced to laptop in bed, a state of affair is considerably more typo-prone. I reckon I could have gotten a fair bit closer to 5 minutes in ideal solving circumstances, but it’s all grist to the mill. Would also (and probably more pertinently) have done better if I hadn’t biffed IMPRESSION and then spent a while alphabet-trawling for __D_I, a bit of a lost cause…
  20. No problems today, done in about 10 minutes ending with COCKERELS, from the wordplay. I’d never been entirely sure what a COCKEREL was, but now I know. Regards.
  21. 27 minutes, much enjoyed. COD must be BREATHALYSER, very nicely done, but the concise CANDID was a close second.

    CHEFS D’OEUVRE held me up for a while as I sorted out the triple-vowel. There seems to be a vowel missing from the French alphabet, since they resort to this ghastly OEU mish-mash in many words. You wouldn’t find English trying a linguistic manoeuvre like that.

    1. Being a bit slow on the uptake about certain things, I always assumed that was you in your avatar pic, Thud. Perhaps on a Pirate-themed bonding weekend, or something.

      But I was watching From Russia with Love the other night, and out of curiosity Googled Robert Shaw who played Bond’s nemesis, Grant. And that took me to Shaw’s later work, including playing the old salt Quint in Jaws … and I saw of picture of ‘our Thud’, machete and all!

      I’m kind of disappointed, unless of course you look even scarier in real life …

      1. Damn – I’ve been rumbled! However, I maintain that my avatar is a fair likeness of myself, particularly when confronted with admin or with an unexpected Monday.
  22. I can’t understand this. Why is ‘trip’ = ‘is high’ or ‘high’? I should have thought that ‘tripping’ = ‘high’ and ‘trip’ = ‘what you’re on when you’re high’. Missing something I suspect.
    1. I think they’re interchangeable in “he was on a high”/”he was on a trip”, perhaps?
  23. I love it when the setter slips one in that I can work through without overly taxing the old brain, allowing me to finish in about a third of my usual time.

    Thank you to setter and blogger ( thank you, thank you….)

    Time: 20 mins.

    Dave.

  24. 30 mins for me just avoiding a DNF by the skin of my teeth – I had biffed “crew” at 1dn on the basis of “staff” but was never really happy with it, went back at the last minute and parsed properly to get “clef”. Other than that I hadn’t parsed “trope” or “depression” good clues which both certain!y deserved parsing now I see the blog. I was another who had a ? at “trip” for “high” or “is high” but bunged it in with a shrug assuming there was some sense in which they were synonymous that I just wasn’t seeing. FOI 12ac. LOI my corrected 1dn. COD the very good &littish anagram, hiding in plain sight at 20ac.
  25. 8:25. Greetings from Canada. Today is the second day of our holiday and my determination not to drink too much on the first night this year ended as it always does, so I solved this with a hangover. Fortunately it was a gentle one (the puzzle, that is. The hangover is very much not gentle).

    Edited at 2017-07-24 06:25 pm (UTC)

  26. 8:14 for me, starting reasonably well but slowing badly towards the finishing line.

    A pleasant, straightforward start to the week.

  27. the setter may have been alluding to the fact that these are synonyms in the meteorological sense as well as psychological

    DennyG

  28. Have only just got round to this due to a day golfing followed by a dash to the folk club. I was pleased to find it wasn’t too taxing, taking me 26:04 to solve. Started with CANDID as I couldn’t parse LUGE on the first pass. Finished in the NW, which was mainly blank until the final moments, with SLOTH BEAR. Didn’t know the chefs doovers, but it was nicely clued. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and U. I think I’ll have a nice sleep before I attempt any more puzzles.
  29. I always preferred Canada Dry to American Dry Ginger with my whiskey; before I discovered single malts of course….
  30. A nice kind of puzzle to take to jury duty. The nice lady next to me was even better than on-line Chambers for getting all the oeuvre vowels in the proper order (she gave herself away as a source by having with her a carry bag printed with quite a lot of French words I don’t know). I didn’t know loth could be spelled without an ‘a’,and not knowing the animal took a while to sort the bear out. Thanks ulaca, and setter
  31. The setter gives 12 ac as (5-7). Chefs d’oeuvre is not a hyphenated word.
    1. Interesting view, anon, but not one that is shared by ODO, Collins or Larousse.

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