Times 26811 –

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Not too much trouble with this one, 20 minutes, easiest Wednesday for a while, although 7d was new to me. I’m a bit hazy about 9a too. [Edit: z8 to the rescue]. Half the clues would be good in the Quickie. Excuse lack of entertaining or informative waffle, got visitors and a load of post-funeral paperwork to do.

Across
1 Perhaps affected by pickle I consumed, having mostly foul content (2,1,5)
IN A STATE – NAST(Y) = foul mostly, inside I ATE.
6 Without source of water, horse got very hot (6)
STEWED – W(ater) inside STEED.
9 Get on with English recruit (6)
ENGAGE – Is this just a double definition? ‘Get on with’ and ‘recruit’? Why English? There is a word GAGE but I can’t see how it fits the clue. [Edit; Doh! ENG followed by AGE = get on, get old. Thanks to z8 below.]
10 Laughed, finding light at back of dump (8)
CHUCKLED – CHUCK = dump, LED = light emitting diode.
11 Removing centre from corn on the cob is a puzzle (4)
MAZE – Remove middle I from MAIZE.
12 Copy Nancy’s dad tucking into Mexican food before drive back (4-6)
TAPE RECORD – We’re not talking Nancy Sinatra or Nancy Reagan here, it’s the French city. So her father is PERE. Insert him into TACO and follow with RD = DR drive reversed.
14 One’s beaten fish almost senseless? That’s about right (4,4)
BASS DRUM – BASS = the fish, DUM(B) = almost senseless, insert R.
16 French department’s items for sale (4)
LOTS – Department 46, le Lot, possessive = LOT’S.
18 Opponent meantime ousts this person twice (4)
ANTI – Remove ME twice from ME ANTI ME.
19 Trojan woman I’d caress excitedly (8)
CRESSIDA – (I’D CARESS)*.
21 Suggest place where fighting’s appropriate, close to battlefield (3,7)
PUT FORWARD – PUT = place, FOR WAR = where fighting’s appropriate, D = close to battlefield.
22 Wild party’s bloody good towards the end (4)
ORGY – GORY = bloody, move the G along.
24 Sources of vitamin administered orally for tropical disease (8)
BERIBERI – Sounds like BERRY, BERRY, being a source of vitamin. Disease caused by lack of thiamine (vit B1). Etymology; probably Sinhalese for weak, weak.
26 Church can fill emptiness, it’s said (6)
VOICED – CE = church, inside VOID.
27 Effect of one parliamentary bill introduced by member (6)
IMPACT – I = one, MP, ACT. Seen this before.
28 Writer developed endlessly dire theme (8)
MEREDITH – (DIR THEME)*, the E of DIRE being dropped. I’d vaguely heard of the chap, another pesky poet.

Down
2 Fighter — German of course — holding aloft ensign regularly (5)
NINJA – JA being German for ‘yes’, of course, below NIN = even letters of eNsIgN, reversed or not as you prefer.
3 Terrified about cardinal getting involved in extremely serious argument (6,5)
SCARED STIFF – CA = about, RED = cardinal, inside S S being extremes of SeriouS; TIFF = argument.
4 A Liberal ahead of each rival? That’s dicey (8)
ALEATORY – A, L(iberal), EA(ch), TORY = rival of Liberal. A word I’d learnt from crosswords.
5 Jumpy chap sees cinema matinee initially as way of avoiding reality (6,9)
ESCAPE MECHANISM – (CHAP SEES CINEMA M)*.
6 Not in shape (6)
SQUARE – Double def; although square isn’t a very ‘in’ way of saying ‘not in’.
7 Airman about to climb over a kilometre (3)
ERK – RE = about, ‘to climb’ = ER, K(ilometre). I’d never heard of this 1920s word for the lowest rank of airman in the RAF, but it had to be.
8 Damned old car stuck in River Dee (9)
EXECRATED – CRATE is an old car, inside EXE (Devon river), D(ee). From Latin word for to put a curse on.
13 Remembers what baby sitter does when visiting? (5,2,4)
CALLS TO MIND – Double definition, one literal.
15 Amanda and Sue skipping till sickness strikes (2,7)
AD NAUSEAM – (AMANDA SUE)*. I groan silently or otherwise when I hear or see ‘Ad nauseum’ from people who should know better.
17 Prepare for punishment … and relax: finished (4,4)
BEND OVER – BEND = relax as in relax the rules; OVER = finished.
20 Most loyal employee originally recruited by hospital group (6)
TRUEST – Initial letter of Employee, inside TRUST which is an NHS thing that runs hospitals in Britain (but thankfully not in France).
23 Bird boarding snazzy car in European city (5)
GHENT – HEN is a bird, inside GT a snazzy car.
25 Gershwin, say, heading out of Italian capital once (3)
IRA – One of the Mr Gershwin’s first names; LIRA was Italian money, loses its heading.

64 comments on “Times 26811 –”

  1. Yeah, I had this as my last in as I wanted to be sure it wasn’t something else. It’s recruit for definition, and AGE for get on, with ENG for English provides the wordplay.
  2. Came in at 19.02 for this, with several biffable but rather demanding proper resolution before entry. It had to be BERIBERI, for example, even though I would have had it hyphenated, but I couldn’t see it as a homophone clue to begin with. STEWED was nearly SWEATY, though fortunately I was rightly sceptical about SEATY being a horse.

    I’d heard of George MEREDITH, without being able to name a single one of his works. Given his Wiki entry, I’m not much the wiser: his first is The Shaving of Shagpat (sic) and the rest are similarly veiled by the passing of time. But he did write the poem “The Lark Ascending” which inspired RVW to be perennially top of the Classic FM Hall of Fame. And he was Nobel-nominated 7 times without ever winning, which must have been both encouraging and galling in equal measure.

  3. I wish I’d spotted this one was a pangram before I’d finished it, as the crossers of NINJA and MAZE were my last two in, taking me five minutes over the hour. I found this quite tough.

    Glad I remembered ERK from May’s outing. Also glad that I’ve heard “alea iacta est” a few times—first of all in the Asterix books!—otherwise I might not have been so confident about the unknown 4. My mum’s textbook was Caesar’s Gallic Wars, but by the time I was studying it was more about life among everyday Romans rather than the VIPs…

    Anyway. Glad I stuck this one out, because I thought it was rather fun.

    Edited at 2017-08-23 07:03 am (UTC)

  4. Incidentally, if anyone’s having problems posting comments today, it looks like there’s currently an issue with posting from Safari. Works for me from Chrome.
    1. I started having problems with the Crossword Club on Safari some time ago and after getting not very far with the Club’s Customer Service, I switched to Firefox (where I am now) for all crossword related sites. No problems now
      1. Ah—the crossword club site is absolutely fine for me in Safari and always has been; it’s this very LiveJournal I was having problems with…
  5. Old phone will have to do. 45 mins with overnight oats. DNFd due to a few things, mostly not getting TRUST. And not seeing TORY for RIVAL. The ALEA was clearly dicey, but so was the TORY.
    Mostly I liked caressing Cressida and Nancy’s dad.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  6. ERK as ‘airman’ came up at the end of May and I didn’t know it then, but as it was part of wordplay leading to the very obvious MEERKAT it didn’t present sufficient problems for it to stick in my memory. So it remained unkown today and I originally put in ACK instead, based on wordplay and a different interpretation of ‘about’. This landed me in some difficulty solving 6ac.

    Another, more careless mistake, was writing IRA at 25dn whilst indicating the wordplay in the grid (as is my wont as a blogger) in such a way that I later read the I as a T and spent forever looking for a disease that fitted ?E?T?E?I at 24ac. [Note to Times management if they are visiting: This wouldn’t have happened if I’d had a grey grid, as I used to be able to indicate wordplay in the grey squares if necessary].

    My final disaster was not being able to think of the answer at 9ac because I was fixated on ‘English’ cluing just the E.

    I eventually completed in 1 minute under an hour having been on target earlier for a sub-30 minute solve.

    Edited at 2017-08-23 06:44 am (UTC)

    1. Yep, I also managed to start with ACK, things such as “ack-ack battery” coming to mind, which made SEARED a strong but mystifying possibility for 6ac. ERK is also well-known from doing lots of crosswords though so eventually I managed to sort things out.
  7. I got the long anagram ESCAPE MECHANISM early which opened this up nicely. My main hold up was putting in COMES TO MIND which seems to work as well as CALLS TO MIND but doesn’t fit with LOTS. Often I’d stitch myself up by never questioning my answers but I saw this one relatively early. LOI TRUEST which also held me up a while as faced with _R_E_T I was convinced it was going to start in a vowel.
  9. Fancy beaten today by ERK, never heard of this and probably never again. Nevertheless, an enjoyable outing. Thank you, setter and pipkirby
  10. 22 minutes, with a lot of biffs and hold-ups at 7d, where I also dabbled with ‘ack’, and 25d, where I failed to get the required meaning of ‘capital’ and couldn’t quite believe that Bari (the capital of its province) was really part of the clue, as well as 13d, where I wrote ‘comes to mind’ .

    ENGAGE went in with a Hail Mary – thanks to Zed for sorting that out. Caesar’s ‘Alea iacta est’ helped with the unknown 4, while I can recommend Meredith’s ‘Egoist’ (amusing stuff), if not his ‘Ordeal of Richard Peverel’ (a book I still have open on my iPad after three or four months).

  11. Not a bad effort, only three and a half minutes behind the HKM.

    I think Pootle’s right that getting ESCAPE MECHANISM early was the key to solving this one. Unfortunately I have a habit of fumbling for keys.

    Also took ages to construct SCARED STIFF and TAPE-RECORD, but greatly enjoyed the challenge.

    Thanks setter and Pip.

  12. Perfectly enjoyable, even though my progress was something of a trudge. Took a while working out which Nancy it was – nothing to do with Oliver Twist or Swallows and Amazons after all – and that the “German of course” wasn’t Bernhard Langer. Already knew the ERK, but MEREDITH had passed me by, though it couldn’t be much else.
    1. Just to defuse accusations of always victimising keriothe by continually changing my avatar to minor Biblical prophets… I have become Meredith for a while, for the benefit of those who didn’t know him from Adam.
          2. I didn’t know that. He was quite a dish. Looks like your stereotypical poet. I believe the word is “languid”…
      4. Please don’t stop the victimisation on my account. I don’t mind a bit of teasing, and even if I did I would take comfort from the fact that you are entirely wrong. 😉
        I was going to say surely that picture’s Thomas Chatterton but fortunately I googled it first so have saved myself looking silly. [And have now read subsequent comments: I really would have looked silly!]
        13:23 for the puzzle, coming to it late after a very long and tiring day in the US. I enjoyed it, although there was quite a lot of biffing involved.
        When ERK came up last time I think I remembered it from a previous puzzle. I can’t think how else I’d have known it.

        Edited at 2017-08-23 10:04 pm (UTC)

  13. Trouble logging onto the site today

    Easy puzzle overall but with some nice touches – I liked “River Dee” for example

    Anybody who served in RAF will know what a ERK is. No idea if still in use by the Brylcreem Boys

  14. Car in for service so a late start. Found this quite tough, taking 40 minutes. Remembered ERK from before when I’d persevered with ack. Saw Nancy’s laughing face for too long before TAPE-RECORD appeared from crossers. Apparently not written originally for Frank’s wife or daughter but for a Bessie. It was the Elvis rather than Buddy Holly version of You’re so SQUARE I heard first as I solved 6d. That’s my COD. I also had COMES TO MIND, before LOTS saved me. Thought not of George but ‘We’re in, MEREDITH’ something my Mum would say. So of course I still do too. I think it irritates my wife more than the children. Thank you setter and Pip.
    1. That might be because children are able to mount an invisible noise-cancelling device when pa gets pontificatory or repetitious. Spoken from bitter experience…
      1. Mine are all in their twenties now but they certainly did as you say in earlier years. They’ve reached that point when then they think that the old bugger won’t be around much longer so we’d better humour him.
        1. Oh, good, something to look forward to. Worryingly, she’s 21, but I’ll keep looking on the bright side.
          1. Tell it not in Gath, but my experience is of the ‘sympathetic humouring’ gene being carried in the Y chromosome.
  15. 17 min, with ENGAGE LOI as I was also thinking ‘English=E’. As lowest RAF rank is a/c2, thought of ACK at first, but that immediately suggested ERK which has come up elsewhere. Otherwise no significant holdups, though at one point the checkers made 5dn look like some sort of SOCIALISM – so had to recheck anagram fodder.
    Seeing pangram did help with 6dn as then I already had J X & Z.
  16. 30′ but with COMES TO MIND, passive rather than active, and METZ, which doesn’t fit anyway. Oh well. Enjoyed ENGAGE. Thanks pip and setter.
    1. 18:03… but ditto on 13d/16a, so DNF too. TAPE RECORD was good, but I enjoyed SCARED STIFF the most.
  17. I too had 13dn as COMES TO MIND and METZ which doesnt fit anyway! I thought it was homophonic enough for something or other in a sale!!

    51 mins but some other alternative answers gave me a multiple DNF.

    6ac source of water = W without horse = BREED – got very hot = BREWED!

    6dn Not in shape = BLURRY! Bit like the Times print out!

    I could hardly make out 12ac and for a split second the fourth word of the clue had me worried! It turned out to be ‘tucking’. I thought it was a terrible clue to boot!
    TAPE RECORD with Nancy’s dad, who I thought was Frank – ole Blue Eyes. PERE! Whatever next! TACO DRIVE (IKEA Phoenix?)

    COD 24ac BERIBERI

    WOD ALEATORY

    Thus mood Meldrew.

    Lord Scallywag?

    Edited at 2017-08-23 11:39 am (UTC)

  18. I started off on this one thinking I wouldn’t finish, as I only had a scanty grid with some unlinked words after my first pass. Second pass joined up some more and then I accelerated to just over 18 minutes. Just threw Ira in because I knew the Gershwin, but couldn’t think of an Italian city ending in ira. Ho Hum.

    Stuart

  19. I had the CALLS/COMES error before the Garonne’s sidekick put me straight, otherwise not much to note. 21:18
  20. I gave up trying to fit a Mexican snack around APE FRANK, and eventually twigged the French connection. Started with NINJA and finished with the unknown ALEATORY, having finally realised that Tories are rivals to Liberals. I had ACK at 7d until 6a was sorted and gave me the half remembered ERK. Struggled with 9a until I equated get on with get old. As with others, ESCAPE MECHANISM gave a useful boost to the solving process. 27:28, so not too shabby for me. Thanks setter and Pip
  21. 11:31 and I enjoyed the original touches here and there.

    I only know ERK from these puzzles but I’ve known it a while so it must have come up several times. I have vague memories of Jimbo explaining it many moons back. Finished with the ENGAGE/ALEATORY intersection, the latter unknown along with the “pesky poet”.

    Got on here OK with Chrome but had real problems last night via Safari on my phone.

  22. 37:56

    I’m doing the puzzle more these days, now that I can do them on the phone. And because I can practice with the Quickie, I’m even managing to finish them more, too.

  23. I had 5 minutes problem with 9a because I expected “English” to be a single “E”, but apart from that a fairly straightforward solve. I even remembered ALEATORY and ERK. 26 minutes. Ann
  24. I would have said this was moderate rather than easy, but who am I to contradict SNITCH?
    Didn’t notice the pangram, as per usual.
    Very surprised to see all the problems with ERK, an RAF groundcrew but also a general term for anyone who has to do what you tell them to no matter how menial it may be .. not that I have anyone answering that description any more, now I’m retired.
    Whereas ALEATORY was apparently no problem to anyone, except me?!

    Edited at 2017-08-23 04:10 pm (UTC)

    1. No Jerry, I was there with you sharing the torment… Having cheerfully sailed through the Erk, the ENG, Nancy’s dad and the rest of the bear traps I was just left with 4dn and – even with all the cross checkers – I still had to throw in the towel.

      I thought briefly about Tory as a rival but rapidly dismissed this based on the Cameron / Clegg partnership. So I then decided I was looking at the clue completely from the wrong end and that I should be hunting for an old time Liberal politician beginning with A etc. Other than that, all most enjoyable.

    2. I didn’t have a problem with ALEATORY, but I do count it as from an obscure corner of my vocabulary… Aleatoric is a favourite word of mine, but leads to blank looks when used in conversation. I prefer it over ‘random’ as it conjures up in my mind some mythical being (Fortuna, perhaps) throwing a die to determine the answer. As Ulaca mentioned, “Alea iacta est” (the die is cast) is a related classical allusion. And now you’ve got me thinking of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.
    3. I didn’t think twice about this but I think I was helped by the fact that the equivalent ‘aléatoire’ is quite common in French. Now that you mention it I don’t remember seeing it in English before.

      Edited at 2017-08-23 10:09 pm (UTC)

      1. Also “aléa,” commonly seen in the plural, for “imprévu, danger, risque.”
        1. Indeed. French can be quite handy at times: CADASTRAL, which came up the other day, is another word that exists in both languages but is much more commonly used in French.
  25. No Jerry, not just you. Me too. ALEATORY was my LOI and needed 5 minutes on its own, and I confess it was a guess from the wordplay and the checkers. I didn’t know the word. My memory being what it is, or isn’t, I didn’t remember ERK either, but the wordplay was pretty clear. Regards.
  26. Just new to this – in aleatory why does ‘ahead of each’ mean only ‘ea’. I get a l for a liberal & Tory for a rival but why not just e for ahead of each. Please explain.
    1. Hi Anon, the way the clue parses is: AL (a liberal) ahead of (ie above or in front of) EA (each) then TORY (a rival to a Liberal)
  27. DNF. Bah! Very disappointing. I sailed through all apart from 9ac in a comfortable 20mins. I spent another 20, less comfortable, mins staring at -N-A-E having become fixated on English cluing E not thinking ENG and thus discounting engage far too early. Did not see “get on” in the sense required either, annoying because it is not uncommon to see it used like that in crosswords. Gave up in the end.
  28. I didn’t remember that one from May (if it was early May, I may not have worked that puzzle), but the wordplay was unequivocal. And that was the most obscure part of this easy one.

    Edited at 2017-08-23 06:27 pm (UTC)

      1. That would be the one blogged on the 27th (as the 20th was a Saturday), and I don’t see it there. But I do remember a puzzle with MEERKAT and think I must have seen “ERK” then…
        1. Yes, sorry about that. It was in puzzle #26735 published and blogged on Friday 26th May this year.
          1. That was a rather special puzzle, such a tough Friday that Verlaine’s time was well over 20 minutes!
  29. I am somewhat puzzled by Myrtilus’s comment “45 mins with overnight oats”. Is this too much information? But, in any event, congratulations Myrtilus.

    That aside, 32 minutes for me. I could not for the life of me see STEWED, which made me wonder if I’d mis-remembered ERK, but the alternative “ack” seemed most unlikely and didn’t help in any case. VOICED also eluded me for some time.

  30. Well I suppose Ira was one of Mr Gershwin’s first names. But not one of George Gershwin’s. Ira was his older brother, less well-known but a collaborator with George.

    Apologies if someone has already said this: I couldn’t see anything about what seems to be a minor slip by pipkirby.

    1. No slip; I said ‘one of THE Mr Gershwins; implying there had been more than one Mr Gershwin, and I knew Ira was the other one. Pip

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