Times 26911 – And to all a good night!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 45 minutes
Music: Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Backhaus.

Well, owing to various problems, my blog will be a little terse tonight.   The puzzle itself was not that difficult but circumstances definitely conspired against the blog.   However, I have managed to post it, and I can assure you that the answers and explanations are most correct.

I see our new blogger, astartedon, has also successfully arrived, and I would like to thank him for volunteering, and urge all our regular readers to visit and comment in his Quickie blog.

Across

1 Promotion of friendly relations in House Of Cards? (6-8)
BRIDGE-BUILDING – BRIDGE BUILDING, that mythical monument to friendly card-players everywhere.
9 Wrongdoers finish up hiding among unopened boxes (9)
OFFENDERS – [c]OFF(END)ERS.
10 Casserole reduced by a pound: a bargain (5)
STEAL – STE[w] + A L.
11 Old knave maybe knocked back, seeing stars (5)
DRACO – O CARD backwards, a very obscure constellation indeed.
12 Tatty trousers ’e turned up (9)
RETROUSSE – anagram of TROUSERS ‘E.
13 No bank will accept a single franc, teller revealed (8)
NOTIFIER – NO T(1 F)IER.
15 Book published that is about part of Borneo (6)
BRUNEI – B RUN + I.E. backwards, home of the famous sultan.
17 Man finishes off home brew (6)
HOMBRE – HOM[e] BRE[w].
19 Wader got nervous, seeing canine swimming? (5,3)
WATER DOG –  Anagram of WADER GOT.
22 Theatre promoter briefly keeps male away from the spotlight (9)
BACKSTAGE – BACK(STAG)E[r].
23 College girl turned in several compositions (5)
CLARE – A college, a girl, and a backwards concealed word in [sev]ERAL C[ompositions].
24 Behind a park there’s a nut tree (5)
ARECA – A REC A, easy cryptic in case you haven’t heard of it.
25 Person paid by examination board? I object (9)
PROTESTER – PRO TESTER – they can’t very well use amateurs.
26 They risked all, wickedly pinching large picture (3,11)
THE LADYKILLERS -Anagram of THEY RISKED ALL + L, a film from 1955.

Down
1 Wide minor thoroughfare picked out by car’s spotlight? (5,2,3,4)
BROAD IN THE BEAM – B-ROAD IN THE BEAM of your car.
2 Break actually is around end of summer (7)
INFRACT – IN F(R)ACT.
3 Crazy journey touring round New Zealand (5)
GONZO – GO(O NZ)O.
4 Comparatively tired old king transported to grave thus? (8)
BLEARIER – B(LEAR)IER, that is, Lear in a bier.
5 Pictures how pupils are grouped by ability? (6)
INSETS –  IN SETS.
6 Almost get rid of crude-sounding speech (9)
DISCOURSE – DIS[H] + sounds like COARSE.
7 Composer set up a German school in London, note (7)
NIELSEN – EIN backwards + LSE (London School of Economics) + N
8 Do-gooders distributed the grain in British city (8,6)
BLEEDING HEARTS – B LEED(anagram of THE GRAIN)S.
14 Stop Nottingham team getting ahead of the entire field? (9)
FORESTALL – FOREST + ALL.
16 Hold hair to give protection from the sun (8)
HAVELOCK –  HAVE + LOCK in entirely different senses.   This could be difficult if you don’t know the word.
18 Be involved in cunning match play (7)
MACBETH – BE in anagram of MATCH
20 Rookie in river, grabbing floating platform (7)
DRAFTEE – D(RAFT)EE, our favorite river besides the Ure and the Ouse.
21 Drunk became panicky, losing head (6)
LAPPED – [f]LAPPED, I believe.   Hard if you don’t know the word.
23 Empty container — fish basket (5)
CREEL –  C[ontaine]R + EEL.   Since a ‘creel’ actually is a fish basket, the misdirection here is poor.

50 comments on “Times 26911 – And to all a good night!”

  1. A steady solve and I thought I was on target to complete in around 40 minutes but got stuck at the end with two answers not fully completed until I eventually gave in and resorted to aids.

    {f}LAPPED should have come easily to mind but did not do so despite a couple of alphabet trawls.

    HAVELOCK was unkown as “protection from the sun”and would never have occurred to me, and I was also thrown by being convinced that the answer was going to end in BLOCK (as in sunblock) until the E from BACKSTAGE put the kibosh on that idea. The fact that I knew of HAVELOCK but not its meaning can be blamed on a shameful lack of curiosity on my part in my early drinking career. There was a pub called The Havelock in the centre of Harrow I used to frequent quite regularly in the late 1960s, but I never thought to find out the origin of its name. I lazily assumed for some reason that it was some sort of plant.

    Edited at 2017-12-18 05:45 am (UTC)

      1. I’ve no idea, Guy, and my ignorance on the subject knows no bounds. The pub has long since been closed and knocked down or redeveloped so there’s no on-going history of the place to refer to.
  2. New one to me. I had to look at all the words that fit the crossers and guessed that must be it.
    LAPPED was my LOI because the verb “become panicked” is particularly British, although we Yanks use the noun “flap” to mean a state of agitation.
    I wondered what was going on with the first part of DISCOURSE, as “dish” doesn’t mean “get rid of” over here, though it means to pass a basketball to a teammate. And does it really mean that somewhere in the UK? Collins has the meaning “to ruin,” but that’s not the same thing.
    26 is a helluva anagram.

    Edited at 2017-12-18 06:08 am (UTC)

    1. I biffed DISCOURSE but now I’ve read your post I’m similarly bemused about dish (and I’m in the UK).
  3. 21:04 … got in a bit of a tangle with this, pencilling in a bunch of wide-of-the-mark guesses. But then a few things were outside my frame of reference. No clue about the HAVELOCK but it couldn’t be much else.

    Can a person be in a BIER? I would have thought they would have to be on it.

  4. 47 minutes here, with all the unknowns—HAVELOCK, ARECA, CREEL, NIELSEN—appearing with surprising speed. FOI 3d GONZO, which had me wondering about a pangram for a while, LOI 17a HOMBRE, where I was completely misdirected until I saw the answer and worked backwards.

    WOD DRACO; luckily one of SF author Larry Niven’s settings was The Draco Tavern so the word wasn’t unknown and at least vaguely associated with the stars in my mind…

  5. So that’s what that bit of cloth is called! Well, I never.
    I’d heard of Havelock Ellis, but not Henry of that ilk. Actually it was 17a that proved my undoing, not 16d.
    I needed the checkers to find out how to spell NIELSEN properly though.
  6. 30 mins with croissant (hoorah) and a new find – Mackays blackcurrant preserve. Very fruity.

    From LSE to Nottingham, via Leeds to the Scottish Play – I’m exhausted.

    Good examples today of why ‘a’s are important: ‘a’ behind ‘a’ park; ‘a’ pound on ste(a)l. Also ‘a’ single franc which is fine for IF.

    Mostly I liked the long ones and Macbeth.

    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    1. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the original point, but whilst solving I thought I had noticed a redundant ‘a’ as discussed here last week. STE{w} (casserole) [reduced], A, L (pound) is clear enough but the definition is ‘a bargain’ whereas the answer is STEAL. Doesn’t ‘a bargain’ correspond with ‘a steal’? Just to clarify, I was arguing that such things don’t normally matter but I thought your point was that they did. As I say, I may well have misunderstood, in which case I’m happy to apologise in advance.

      Edited at 2017-12-18 09:55 am (UTC)

      1. Hi
        You make a very wise point. Whereas the ‘a’ in the wordplay is needed and if it wasn’t would be extraneous – the one before ‘bargain’ is certainly extraneous. I missed that.
        I think we are aligned on what the issue is.
        And, it sounds like generally people are ok with these extra ‘a’s if used sparingly and if they don’t interfere.

        On a very pedantic note – I sometimes worry about things like ‘Play’ = Macbeth. Surely Macbeth is ‘a’ Play I think to myself. I know. I need to ‘chill’ – pass me the marmalade.

        Edited at 2017-12-18 12:44 pm (UTC)

  7. With 1A and 1D very straightforward this was a steady top to bottom solve. I share sotira’s reservations about the bier but otherwise no problems. I liked 17A
  8. I got through most of this quickly then got stuck on a few towards the end. It didn’t help that I thought Brunei was somewhere around the UAE. LOI was HAVELOCK which sounded like a word I’d heard before though I had no idea it was a type of hat.
  9. 13:01. I started very quickly on this but then slowed down considerably. I found the harder ones took me longer to solve than the easier ones.
    There was (and I think still is) a pub called The Havelock in Brook Green when we lived there some years ago, so I knew the word if not what it meant. We used to go there quite regularly so I’m surprised it never occurred to me to find out: I always assumed it must be some sort of agricultural implement. Presumably the pubs are named after the general.

    Edited at 2017-12-18 09:28 am (UTC)

  10. DNF in just over 18 minutes because I missed an open goal on HAVELOCK. Not only had I twigged the -LOCK ending but one of the houses at my 1950s grammar school was named after Sir Henry.
  11. Not a Monday Easy, requiring 21 minutes with HAVELOCK the last in on a wing and a prayer. My mind automatically linked Havelock with Ellis, though I had to look him up to find out the extraordinary pioneering work he did on “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex and Some Stuff You’d Prefer Not To”. No protection from the sun there. But Googling pictures of Havelock with hat revealed that I used to wear one as a boy, precisely to stop the sun burning my vulnerable neck. I think I knew it as a legionnaire’s hat. There’s a rather fetching picture of “inventor” Sir Henry’s statue (it’s on one of the Trafalgar Square plinths), covered in pigeon poo. I would venture it’s a bit like inventing the sandwich: loads of other people did it before but history attaches a particular name to it.
    NIELSEN in with fond memories of Rattle conducting the 5th and 6th, the latter so intensely played that it produced a rare laugh out loud moment as the trombones yawned loudly at Shostakovitch, and the GONZO side drummer in the 5th very nearly succeeding in stopping the progress of the music.
    All in all, and interesting and evocative puzzle.
  12. Dnf in 35′, dnk HAVELOCK, and perhaps underestimated the Monday puzzle. The film 26ac is fine Sunday afternoon watching. Thanks vinyl and setter.
  13. I got round concerns about ‘in’ or ‘inside’ by substituting a different enclosure indicator, so if the old king (LEAR) is being ‘transported’ by it he could be said to be ‘aboard’ or ‘carried’ by it’.
  14. I’m glad others found this tricky because I felt like I was making a real 19’s breakfast of this while I was solving. One of those where you think ‘ if I do this, this and this the answer will appear’ – and then it doesn’t. A few unknowns/barely knowns that needed to be teased out from the wordplay didn’t help. Time about 30 minutes with distractions.
  15. Took an hour on this after a hard day’s night yesterday with a 300 mile drive, a party and a rock concert. I should be sleeping like a log, but neither the cricket nor this puzzle has made me feel alright. DNK ARECA and stuck with a P for too long before going down to the Rec. Never heard of HAVELOCK,and, for better, for worse did not see ‘have’ and ‘hold’ as synonymous. From this day forward I will. There was a Havelock Ellis who I have heard of, but his Wiki entry doesn’t mention sun hat fetishes. Talking of which, COD and FOI BROAD IN THE BEAM. Thank you V and setter.
      1. Nice one. It could bear repetition. It was a charity gig, The Legendary Old Brown Growlers, in a packed barn just up the hill from Hadley Wood, playing mainly seventies and eighties rock, ie a bit after me! John Lennon’s Come Together from Abbey Road was the only Beatles song on the play list. Opening song was the Wilburys’ (mainly sung by George Harrison back then) Handle with care. The Growlers did play a couple of Tom Petty songs. It was a great evening, even if they gave me no Dylan or the big O. I even got my Michael Bublé listening wife to come along. They’re are a group of session musicians who’ve played with all the top bands. Chris Redburn, once of Kenny fame, does the vocals. We used to walk our dogs together until my old lad died.
  16. Hard for a Monday, took me bones of an hour in two goes either side of usual Monday market and cafe meeting-up, in the seasonal freezing rain. Ended with no idea on HAVELOCK although had thought BLOCK and LOCK were involved. And took an age to see HOMBRE too. Should have been quicker as the 4 long clues round the edges went in quickly.
  17. I’ll have to check my answers more carefully. NOTIFIED bunged in without checking the clue.. Several DNK’s including RETROUSSEE where I thought the def was tatty, ARECA GONZO and HAVELOCK, all of which however couldn’t be anything else. LOI LAPPED where I was looking for one of the many words that signify tipsification (which isn’t one)
  18. 24 mins, the last 12 of which were spent on HAVELOCK. Although I was fairly sure that “hair” would be LOCK at the end of the answer I didn’t completely discount it being MANE or WAVE at the start of the answer. I also went down the wrong path of considering “hold” as the definition with the answer being of the same ilk as “headlock”. Not my finest bit of solving because I didn’t have a problem with have/hold once I finally saw it.
  19. A new definition of flapping should include England’s batsmen (ignoring the fact most cannot bat and are hardly ‘men’ in the sporting sense). Found this oddly easy and finished in just under 30 mins. The long clues were very gettable which helped me greatly. I didn’t stop to ponder the finer points of Bier and just bunged it in. Having lost the Ashes I suggest the old guard have to go and we should ask the women’s team to substitute – at least they show skill and pride. Thanks all
  20. Just under the hour, apart from HAVELOCK, which I guessed but had to look up to verify. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels is Lord Havelock Vetinari, so that rang a bell.
    26a was easy, since my wife recently appeared as Mrs. Wilberforce in a stage production of it.
  21. DNF in 30 mins. Backstair for backstage plus did not get Havelock or Lapped.

    Mitigating circumstances. I spent last night celebrating Mo Farah’s surprising victory in BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Had a few quid on him at 33/1. Happy days!

  22. A few unknowns here held me up but the wordplay allowed solving, at HAVELOCK, ARECA, and RETROUSSE. LAPPED I biffed, not really bothering a lot about what word meant ‘getting panicky’, and now I see it’s FLAPPED I confess that’s new on me as well. Not familiar with the movie either but it certainly looks like a title that probably was a movie at some point. Regards to all.

    Edited at 2017-12-18 05:23 pm (UTC)

  23. I eventually managed an all-correct solve but was thrown off course for too long by biffing BRIDGEPARTNERS at 1a after getting BRIDGE_ and also biffing FIREBREAK at 14d on seeing only the F_R_ crossers. I then spent a lot of time trying to solve 4d,5d,6d &7d with incorrect first letters in place, which was extremely distracting until I recognised that PARTNERS was wrong. Recognition that FIREBREAK was wrong came more quickly after I solved the 26a anagram fairly easily and immediately saw that the ‘K’ belonged to 16d not 14d.
  24. No unknowns here except WATER DOG which wasn’t a problem because it was an easy anagram. Is this a type of dog or any old mutt that likes to paddle? 25 minutes. Ann
    1. Portuguese Water Dogs are a specific breed, the most famous one being the White House-dwelling Obama mutt. Just as famous is the aircraft carrier USS Forestall which regularly docked here in Perth, named after some US admiral or someone. Having guessed Havelock correctly, I wondered what sort of a stop (noun) Admiral Forestall had invented. Idiot. Apart from those reasonably straightforward, under 20 mins, ruined by carelessly writing in Neilson even knowing the spelling and having parsed the clue.

      Edited at 2017-12-19 12:16 am (UTC)

      1. I think that was USS Forrestal .. named after the first US defence Secretary, James Forrestal. Scrapped now, both man and ship
        1. Indeed it was – I should have put in a sic. or a smiley face to show I was joking about my ignorance. Looking up the correct spelling of the ship I noticed many forums saying John McCain caused a large fire onboard: skylarking around, did a “wet start” shooting flames out the back of his plane, the plane behind loosed a rocket inadvertently into McCain’s plane splitting the external fuel tank and dislodging two bombs from its wings. McCain was choppered off to save him from lynching. Not sure if accurate, or slander from pro-Trump anti-McCain fanboys.
          1. Yes.. too late now though 🙂

            All that about McCain would not surprise me if true, it is a very American thing to do. I used to live next door to a big American airbase in Huntingdonshire .. they lost two or three people *every year* through gun-related accidents (or not, I suppose)

  25. After a successful 5/5 last week down to earth with a bump. I thought this was hard and threw in the towel after an hour with Clare and Draftee remaining. Knew of the college but didn’t see the hidden. Considered debutee but I don’t think that’s an English word and bute for platform made no sense. To begin with I wasted a lot of time as a result of confidently writing in fringe benefits (I had the I and the G crossers) then when I realised that was wrong bridge foursome. I used to play bridge regularly so it was slightly annoying to waste so much time on this clue. C’est la vie. Roll on tomorrow.
  26. Did not know ‘havelock’ in this sense, though we do have a ‘Havelock Arms’ or, maybe, ‘General Havelock’ pub in this part of the world. Like others, I came to a juddering halt with 16d and 21d to complete, but found that pausing to pour out a second mug of tea stimulated the grey cells and they went in poste haste.
  27. The long ones took a long time to drop for me so this ended up being a slow solve in three sessions. Water dog was unfamiliar. Couldn’t remember the first word in 1dn for ages. I associate the word gonzo specifically with the style of journalism pioneered by Hunter S Thompson which I think really meant the writer becoming protagonist in the story they are reporting, describing experiences and emotions rather than facts, quite often in a very energetic, completely crazy way, usually with Thompson involving large quantities of hallucinogenic drugs and possibly firearms. My dictionary refers to the style of journalism at def 1 but then has as a second def bizarre or crazy which I did not know but covers it. Dnk what the headgear in 16dn was called but I do now. “Play” v “A Play” aside I thought 18dn was a super clue and my COD.
  28. Beaten by ARECA (I gave up and put in “abeda”), and by NIELSEN (for which I had “Neilson”, thanks to careless parsing). I was delayed, en route to failure, by biffing “infarct” for 2d. Fortunately, this abject failure increases my chances of tomorrow’s puzzle being my best of the week from 20% to 25%.
  29. 24:14. Mostly a steady solve but held up by a few in the end – 4d, 21d and 16d. I took some time to spot the hidden college despite being a member of their chapel choir for a couple of years. And, finally, after staring at 16d for ages (my LOI)I eventually remembered that HAVELOCK was a word, although I hadn’t a clue what it meant. I see I was not alone!
  30. Didn’t get this started until Tuesday as v. busy. So for the record:-

    FOI 1dn BROAD IN THE BEAM

    LOI 11ac DRACO obscure or what!?

    COD 18dn MACBETH

    WOD RETROUSSE

  32. Sorry, latecomer, again. Rec/ park, could someone possibly explain. Also, lapped, is it referring to drunk as in sipped? But then wouldn’t that be drank?
    1. The “rec” is British slang for a “recreation area”. Typically a small park with a few swings, perhaps a marked-out football ground, etc.; usually council-owned. “I’m off down the rec!” was a common call from kids leaving the house during my 1970s childhood.

      Edited at 2017-12-20 04:20 pm (UTC)

      1. Aha! That’s what the ‘red rec’ is in Coronation Street. Never having heard the term, I’d assumed it was some local council art installation for kids, based around pirates of the Caribbean or similar. 🙂 That explains how one plays football on the red rec though. Our local version was ‘the curlie’ , a remnant of the time when it would regularly be cold enough to become a curling pond. ‘course it has been changed to a rec now. Many thanks for the explanation
    2. “the water dog has lapped ein bier” =
      “the water dog has drunk ein bier”
  33. It took me several goes, but got there. Total time maybe 40 minutes. HAVELOCK, ARECA, WATER DOG & NIELSEN were all new to me, but very doable.
    I have a few grumbles as usual, that’s half the fun: shouldn’t “car’s spotlight” be “headlight”. People are *on* biers not *in* them, which would have given us LEARBIER, which really ought to be a word, although the internet conspires to deny that it is. Is a “backer” a particular term for a “theatre promoter” or isn’t it just generally “promoter”, so “theatre” really doesn’t belong there except for the surface (what chess problem composers would call a “weasel”).
    On which subject, I like the critical attention you guys all pay to something as trivial as the use of “a”. I am clearly among kindred folk. I agree that it ought to mean something mostly, but the occasional bluff is ok too.

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