Times 26935

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 47 Minutes
Music: Mahler, Symphony #9, Levine/Philadelphia Orchestra

When I started at 1 across, I thought this was going to be very easy indeed.   I did go at blazing speed for a while, only to get thoroughly stuck with 2/3 of the puzzle complete.   This was in part due to a wrong answer – I found ‘minimal’ a very convincing answer for 18 down, fitting both the cryptic and the definition perfectly, but unfortunately it was quite wrong, as I discovered when I saw ‘extractor fan’.   The other problem was the use of words that while not obscure, are not often used- ‘patchily’, ethnical’?   Most people would say ‘patchy’ and ‘ethnic’, and let it go at that.   I also have some serious doubts about my LOI, which I will get to in due couurse.

Overall, I would be  inclined to rate this as an easy-to-moderate puzzle, with just one or two possible quibbles.   If I had been the editor, I probably would have sent several clues back for revision or replacement.

Across
1 Wild, like a kangaroo? (7,3)
HOPPING MAD – Double definition, one jocular.
7 Sunscreen and singlet I put on (4)
TOPI – TOP + I, where you need to know what kind of hat a ‘topi’ is.
9 Proper to fix name of race (8)
ETHNICAL – ETH(N)ICAL.
10 For unruly lot, hard to get into subject of parable (6)
SHOWER – S(H)OWER.   This was my LOI.   The cryptic works well enough, but I don’t see how a ‘shower’ can be an ‘unreuly lot’ – a shower of invective?   A shower of missiles?   Either I am not seeing something, or the clue has gotten garbled.   Comments invited.  My ignorance of 50s UK slang got me into difficulties here, but the usage is fully explicated in the comments below.
11 Olympic sportsman who joins panels? (6)
FENCER – double definition, although fences do not necessarily involve panels, and you have to do more than join them or your fence will fall over.
13 A grass mutates like this into a weed (8)
SARGASSO – anagram of A GRASS + SO.
14 Posh accent that gets Parliament going! (6,6)
QUEENS SPEECH – douible definition – you can’t get more posh than ER herself!
17 One no longer keen on farm machinery that does away with steam (9,3)
EXTRACTOR FAN – Double definition, one, ‘EX TRACTOR FAN’, jocular.
20 Girl, cold, losing pounds in odd places (8)
PATCHILY – PAT + CHI[l]LY.   A random girl, and neither C nor ICY makes this a little difficult, especially since ‘in odd places’ suggests either an anagram or every other letter.
21 Sailor comprehending what ocean is, turning dial (6)
SPEEDO – O(DEEP)S, all backwards, with our old friend the Ordinary Seaman.   The thing next to the tacho, and not the abbreviated bathing suit.
22 Drop off tin with leak (6)
SNOOZE – SN + OOZE, perfectly simple, and I still couldn’t get it for a very long time.
23 Back in the morning, queuing at this station? (8)
MAINLINE – AM backwards + IN LINE.   Not a branch line, presumably, although this term probably has different meanings in various countries.
25 A very short book (4)
AMOS – A MOS[t], book of the Bible, of coruse.
26 Unavoidable shortly to do favour for a politician (10)
OBLIGATORY – OBLIG[e] A TORY.
Down
2 Trying to escape joining in a marathon? (2,3,3)
ON THE RUN – Double definition, and a very simple one.
3 Hurt as I dropped vessel (3)
PAN – PA[i]N
4 Improved new freezer (5)
NICER – N + ICER.
5 Effete type weaving silk into unruly hair (7)
MILKSOP – M(anagram of SILK)OP
6 Confuse with combination of noise and dirt (9)
DISORIENT – Anagram of NOISE, DIRT.
7 Hard worker on heroin a danger on computer (6,5)
TROJAN HORSE – TROJAN + HORSE in different slang senses.
8 Under pressure, let out imploring word (6)
PLEASE – P + LEASE.
12 Bright guy means to lift in a couple of hundred pieces of fuel (6,5)
CLEVER CLOGS – C(LEVER)C + LOGS, a UK-centric slang phrase that vaguely rang a bell over here.
15 Start blazing row, full of feminine emotion (3,4,2)
SET FIRE TO – SET (F IRE) TO
16 One with a tale to tell finished interrupting queen (8)
PARDONER – PARDON + E.R, although you are more likely to say ‘pardon’ when you start interrupting Correct parsing is actually PAR(DONE)R, as first pointed out by Lou Weed.
18 Very poor baby, small, uncovered (7)
ABYSMAL – hidden in [b]ABY SMAL[l].
19 Chap grabs glass that girl’s left: I’m not sure there’s much wine in it (6)
MAGNUM – MA(G[lass]N + UM, a rather busy clue that most solvers will just biff.
21 Confess about part finally in police operation (5)
STING – S([par]T)ING.
24 Random allocation of large amount (3)
LOT – double definition, and another easy one.

68 comments on “Times 26935”

  1. Rotter knows all about ‘shower’ as an unruly bunch of people. It was one of Terry-Thomas’s catch phrases.

    I found this quite easy until I got stuck in the SW corner. I had ‘welder’ for FENCER for a while, thinking there might be an athlete of that name. PATCHILY did for me in the end.

    Edited at 2018-01-15 02:07 am (UTC)

    1. Yep, same as Jack, with a lot done quickly, welder in for a bit, then a long time at the end for PATCHILY. No problem with SHOWER=unruly lot.

  2. Same as jack and vinyl – a good flying start, then stuck on a couple, and never really solved Speedo. Some very clever terse clues, I thought.
  3. I think PARDONER is DONE (finished) inside PARR (one of I am I am’s wives)

    But I don’t get why a pardoner has a tale to tell

    Edited at 2018-01-15 02:59 am (UTC)

    1. I parsed it as you did; the Pardoner’s Tale is one of the Canterbury set. (I actually thought of the Chaucer part before parsing.)
    2. Yes, totally agree your parsing Lou. I think it’s a reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – The Pardoner’s Tale.
  4. I only faintly recalled this word–didn’t know the T-T connection–and wasn’t sure if it was a collective noun or not. Anyway, H in SOWER (the parable of the lilies of the field, I assume, which sow not).
    1. SOED has it as: A worthless or contemptible person or group; a pitiful collection. M20.

      I think it’s army slang. T-T first used it in the Boulting Brothers film “Private’s Progress” (1956) set in WWII in which he played Major Hitchcock and turned up again as the same character post-war in the more famous “I’m All Right Jack”. He pronounced it “Shah”.

      1. I have no idea where I learned it, but I always seem to think of a sergeant major shouting “You ‘orrible shower!” at some cowering squaddies. Possibly Windsor Davies in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum…
  5. 10:54 here, with about 2 minutes of that trying to figure out if there was a plausible alternative to SHOWER which eventually went in with a shrug.
  6. Slowed down at 9ac and 23ac, where in each case I was thinking of a particular (ethnic group, Tube station). I agree with Vinyl: ETHNICAL is an ill phrase, a vile phrase. DNK 17ac, but no big deal. 21ac my LOI; I only knew of the swimwear. 20ac 2d to LOI.
  7. It took me a while but the Canterbury Tales connection in 16d eventually occurred to me but, initially, all I could think of was an Almoner but I don’t believe one ever told a tale. Jackkt has already mentioned Terry-Thomas’ catchphrase so I won’t go there other than to say I was fixated on (prodigal) Son for a while. I did enjoy EXTRACTOR FAN! You can buy tractor calendars in France if that is your bent.
    Like vinyl1, when HOPPING MAD went straight in, I thought this would be very easy but it proved more of a challenge and very enjoyable. With SPEEDO (not the swimwear), it took a while to figure out what an ocean is made of (water,sea?) and then decide which of many abbreviations for sailor to opt for. 54m 11s
  8. 10:09. I also started quickly, and thought this might be a very easy one. But the bottom half proved a bit harder than the top. PATCHILY was my last in and held my up for a while. The definition does look like a cryptic instruction!
    Small point vinyl but I wouldn’t call 1ac a DD, since ‘like a kangaroo’ isn’t enough of a definition to get you the answer without the word ‘wild’. I’m not sure what I’d call it, but it it isn’t very cryptic. I’ll be surprised if it wasn’t everyone’s first in.

    Edited at 2018-01-15 07:36 am (UTC)

  9. Where I come from a bunch of yobbos hanging around on a street corner is referred to as a shower (or, more likely, a right shower)
  10. 50 minutes, but it could have been 35ish if I’d come up with my LOI, 20a PATCHILY, immediately rather than stumbling about in the dark for ages. Random names are not my strong point, and I’ve a real weakness when the first letter is missing, too…

    This was an odd mix. Like our illustrious blogger I started quickly (FOI 1a HOPPING MAD et al) and then struggled. Glad I guessed correctly that the unknown 16d PARDONER was likely a Chaucer tale, and like Lou I also got it from “done” in “Parr”.

    Didn’t know that the SARGASSO sea was named after the weed, but I’m glad it was otherwise I’d probably not have heard of it! TOPI I’d definitely never heard of, but I’ll try to remember it as at least I’ve seen them in real life…

    Edited at 2018-01-15 07:56 am (UTC)

  11. 15 mins plus 10 to get the last four inc. Stoney – all while enjoying the usual quatrain: banana, yoghurt, granola, compote.
    I thought this was the quickie until I was left with the last four fully checked: 9 and 10ac, 20 and 21ac. They fell one by one, except Stoney. I’m sure there is a parable about the stoney ground being the ‘hard to get into’ subject. Maybe it’s called the Sower and maybe it’s Stony. Heigh ho. Not a great clue IMHO.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    Edited at 2018-01-15 08:06 am (UTC)

  12. I also, after much effort, parsed PARDONER as a Chaucer Tale with Henry VIII’s last wife finished in the middle, which of course she wasn’t. 28 minutes on this, most of it spent in the bottom half which I found difficult. I had constructed the unknown TOPI and barely known SARGASSO early on. LOI SPEEDO. COD PATCHILY. Are there any MAINLINE stations that don’t handle local services also? A fair start to the week. Thank you V and setter.
  13. SHOWER. It started in WWII as British services slang (AFAIK starting with the
    RAF) and was originally a ‘shower of sh-t’. Like a shower of rain but
    less pleasant to stand under. When the offensive word was dropped the
    expression gained wider currency, and when Terry Thomas took it up it
    became part of the language, used by people who had no idea of the
    original full form.
    Doreen Simmons
    1. How interesting. To me this meaning of SHOWER is just part of everyday vocabulary, and I had no idea of its origin. In fact until about five years ago I had never even heard of Terry Thomas.
  14. 18.40, which felt longish after a very fast start.
    PATCHILY crawled in, partly because PAT is not the first name that springs to mind as a girl: it’s more often an Irishman in these parts.
    PARDONER started off as NARRATOR until the Canterbury link kicked in, and it has to be PAR-DONE-R
    FENCER had me thinking it could be anything
    Loved EX TRACTOR FAN and SHOWER – shades of Carry On Sergeant though apparently it’s not in the script.

    It’s a very smooth and elegant pangram: so smooth it’s virtually no help with completing the clues and seems to have escaped notice thus far. Congratulations to setter and thanks to Vinyl.

  15. As I flew through this I was thinking it could be the easiest I’ve ever solved, though there were a few gaps I had to come back to. When these all went straight in I was dismayed to be told I had errors and to find I had SET FIRE GO rather than SET FIRE TO. Having then done the jiggery pokery required to get a time on the ipad if you’ve had errors it came up with 7:23. So I’d say this took somewhere around 7 minutes which would be a PB but I’m left mildly frustrated at not having an ‘official’ time.
  16. 12:46 … another of those to file under ‘very easy apart from the bits that weren’t’. Inevitably hold-ups here were SPEEDO, the random girl in PATCHILY, and FENCER.

    Appreciation to Doreen S for the fuller story behind SHOWER.

    Very short clip of Terry Thomas’s famous rendering of same in I’m Alright Jack: https://youtu.be/8L5LNIi5bAs

    1. My Dad told me how he once bowled Terry-Thomas in a charity cricket match at Fylde, while T-T was in Blackpool for the summer season. It was immediately called a no- ball and Dad told in no uncertain terms that the crowd had come to watch T-T and not him!

      Edited at 2018-01-15 09:42 am (UTC)

      1. Quite right, too. Can’t imagine what your Dad was thinking! (and my deferential apologies to T-T for forgetting to hyphenate his name, something we’ve discussed before on these pages, I think)
        1. Thanks for the link, Sotira; brought back memories. Although I certainly didn’t recall ‘shower’, and couldn’t comprehend it on the YouTube clips.
  17. 26’, held up by ETHNICAL and SPEEDO. Liked AMOS and SHOWER. Why an ‘Olympic’ sports’man’? Thanks vinyl and setter.
  18. PATCHILY held me up after a fast start. COD to EXTRACTOR FAN. Never did parse PARDONER so thanks for the explanation.
  20. Filled in quickly but stuck for a long time on the last 4. Couldn’t get past the obviously wrong SANCTITY at 20a, and the PARDONER & SPEEDO crossers were my LOI’s. FOI HOPPING MAD, but was very dubious about it until MILKSOP went in which confirmed it.
  21. Held up by PATCHILY like others but the rest went in at a fast clip. I agree with Martin that EXTRACTOR FAN is very nice indeed. I knew Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys as a prequel to Jane Eyre but it was only recently I discovered that it’s seaweed. Terry-Thomas made a splendidly awful Bertrand Welch in the Boulting version of Lucky Jim, but I don’t think he said SHOWER in it. 10.07
    1. Olivia – have you read (any of) Jean Rhys’ short stories? I remember some as blindingly good. Good to recall K. Amis’s first and maybe best book, by the way.
      1. Thanks for the prompt on the Rhys short stories. I’ll follow it up – it’s cold and nasty here in NY and I’m nursing a broken knee so a few additions to the library will be welcome and I can do a weed-out at the same time. Yes, Lucky Jim is so good I didn’t want it to end and it’s one of the minute number of books that make me lol.
        1. Agree entirely. I’m an Amis fan too; his writing is just so funny. I’m conflicted about my fandom, though, and justify it with the hope that the bluster of his later years was all an act. Get well soon 🙂
        2. Quite often I think the first novel’s been the best – or at least the funniest. Have you read Murdoch’s ‘Under the Net’? Hope the knee profits from the good vibes.
        3. Good luck with the knee, Olivia. An accident? Lucky Jim had me chortling when I read it as a teenager. Have you ever read any J P Donleavy? Some friends got very sniffy when I said how much I liked The Ginger Man and A Singular Man after he died last year.
        4. One of my lecturers at Swansea University was rumoured to be the model for Jim Dixon. There were however several likely candidates. Kinsley Amis was one of my tutors in 1959. Still basking in the fame of Lucky Jim. He taught me all I don’t remember about Auden and Ezra Pound. (I never told him that I was a member of the college madrigal group.) My local pub later became the setting for “The Old Devils”. It seems Amis never forgot his Swansea days.

          Edited at 2018-01-15 06:04 pm (UTC)

      2. I’ve just been dipping into some of the short stories and they are distinctive and good. But I think there may be an explanation for their relative scarcity – she makes copious use of the N word and makes other comments that would not pass an editor nowadays. That’s mostly in the stories set in the Antilles.
        1. It’s a long time since I read them and I remember being blown away by a few. Don’t recall the “word” but there was one ending with a woman who in spite of all gets her glad rags out to face the world. Anyhow I thought they were a sight better on the whole than the lucid but wearying long stretch of the Sargasso Sea. Another great but neglected U.S, short story writer is Stephen Vincent Benet.
    2. I thought of that book too, and it helped me to the answer. I never read it but I remember it on my parents’ bookshelves.

      Edited at 2018-01-15 12:23 pm (UTC)

  22. 18.03. Liked 17. Nowt wrong with patchily, a much less unusual word than ethnical, which I’m sure is perfectly acceptable itself according to the unwritten constitution of the Times. Interesting to see ‘shower’ in that use beginning to fall out of recognition. A relatively easy puzzle yet with the depth of a seemingly effortless pangram: thanks for noting, z.
  23. Clearly vilyl1 was never in the CCF (Combined Cadet Force), compulsory playing with boots and rifles. I don’t think I ever attended a parade before Sgt-Major Dibble where he didn’t describe us as “an ‘orrible shower” due to boots insufficiently black and shiny or rifle not well enough pulled-through with a piece of two by four. andyf
  24. I followed the road more travelled by a) being held up at the end by PATCHILY, and b) doing a T-T impression to myself when seeing 10ac (not for th first time, I noticed that it’s difficult to do without immediately sliding into Leslie Phillips. I say!)
  25. 12 mins with a similar experience to a lot of you. PATCHILY was my LOI after MAGNUM, and it took me a while to see ETHNICAL. Count me as another who got a chuckle out of the EX-TRACTOR FAN.
  26. 19 mins. Nice puzzle; good blog – thanks. My only slightly pedantic quibble is with SNOOZE = drop off. AFAIK, to drop off is to transition from wakefulness to sleep, whereas to snooze is simply to sleep (having previously dropped off). I haven’t trawled through any dictionaries to support this assertion, so am probably wrong, though.
  27. I hurtled through this one until after 11 minutes I was left with 20a and 21a. After another 5 or 6 minutes I nailed PATCHILY, but it was 25:26 before I was able to submit, with a weary SPEEDO as my LOI. I saw the Chaucer reference at 16d fairly quickly. I believe we’ve had him in a recent-ish puzzle. ETHNICAL went in with a grimace but no delay. I was familiar with SARGASSO as the sea where eels breed. No problem with “you ‘orrible SHOWER.” An enjoyable puzzle apart from the irritating hold up for the last 2. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2018-01-15 01:45 pm (UTC)

  28. I started this quickly -like others – but gave up quite quickly too. Got about half of it.
    I remember TT fondly and his way of saying Shower; no problem with 10a.
    And I really liked the Extractor Fan clue. David
  29. 32 mins. Yes, like most people here, thought it would be quite easy and filled in two-thirds of the grid quite swiftly (by my standards). PARDONER — and its parsing — was no problem (EngLit training). 1ac looked like a clue taken straight from our local weekly news rag The Kingsbridge and Salcombe Gazette. But then, like everyone else, spent ages on PATCHILY, didn’t like the word ETHNICAL, knew SARGASSO from Jean Rhys, liked the tractor enthusiast, familiar with “you ‘horrible shower” and didn’t spot the pangram. Good fun. Thank you Vinyl and setter.
  30. Like our esteemed blogger, I got off to a flying start (in the BA sense rather than Ryanair one), with about 80% done inside of 12 minutes. I then got bogged down in the southleft corner. I initially had “Acts” for 25ac, and can’t even begin to justify my parsing thereof. At 19d, I repeatedly read the clue as “…there’s NOT much wine in it”, which left me stumped and made MAGNUM my LOI.

    Quite where I dredged PARDONER from I don’t know – I can only assume that Canterbury Tales has been around for so long that it’s embedded in human DNA and therefore present from birth. Glad I didn’t think of “minimal” for 18d as our setter did, or it would have snagged me for a long time. Otherwise, all fairly straightforward and very enjoyable.

  31. I’m another who started this at a gallop but slowed down on the home straight. No unknowns but a few odd definitions. I thought of Chaucer immediately I saw the reference to a tale. 24 minutes. Ann
  32. Like others I found that a number of straightforward clues: 1ac, 2dn, 3dn, 4dn etc got me off to a bit of a flyer with only the odd-looking “ethnical” giving pause for thought in the top half. I like variation in difficulty in the daily puzzle but I found some of these clues a bit unsatisfying, you didn’t really have to think too hard to get them or have to fathom any intricate parsing. Things slowed down a bit in the bottom half where like others I was held up by “patchily” and “speedo”. Got 16dn from Chaucer’s tale-teller and the incorrect Pardon ER parsing. Thanks to Sotira for the “shower” clip, worth the price of admission on its own.
  33. I was relieved to scrape in within half an hour, with any amount of time gazing at 20a. I really don’t think that it’s a very good clue. I’m not keen on ‘Pat’ defined by girl, and pounds requiring the deletion of only one ‘L’ from ‘chilly’, clued by cold. I got there in the end, but was feeling rather dissatisfied. I did not set the QC today, but the setter’s pseudonym could describe me tonight.
    1. LSD has always been “pounds, shillings and pence”, so the clue for the “chily” part of PATCHILY works perfectly well IMHO.
      1. Hello Andy,
        Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that the clue was wrong, just that I didn’t like it. Yes, I’ve seen ‘L’ clued as both ‘pound’ and ‘pounds’.
      2. Hello Andy,
        Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that the clue was wrong, just that I didn’t like it. Yes, I’ve seen ‘L’ clued as both ‘pound’ and ‘pounds’.
  34. Well, I finished it (in an hour and twenty minutes), but I don’t know how I managed — too much UK slang, too many obscurities. Before checking in the OED (after solving, of course) I didn’t understand why a TROJAN is a hard worker, what a TOPI is exactly, and before coming here why the PARDONER has a tale to tell (although at least Catherine Parr rang a bell). SHOWER as an unruly lot at least seemed plausible, but that’s all.

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