Times 26949 – oh God it’s Scottish but not a God

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
To say I struggled with this would be an understatement. As usual, ninety per cent of it went in pleasantly in fifteen minutes or so. I was left with a few blanks scattered around the grid, notably at 9a, 13a, 23a and 4d. I suddenly saw how 23a worked, having been trying wrongly to reverse the whole word. Then 4d was sorted with uxorial aid. I had never heard the expression (now obselete I guess) used in 9a, but what else could it be? But 13a, totally evaded me. I am ashamed to say I had to resort to crosswordsolver.org to check my guess from wordplay. In my opinion obscure Scottish dialect words with no current usage should not be answers in the world’s best daily crossword, but maybe that’s because I’m not Scottish. We did try haggis, neeps and tatties last week, but we shan’t be making that an annual event either. I like a drop of a good malt though and the golf courses are pretty good.

Across
1 Councillor keeps coins out of circulation (6)
CROWNS – CR = councillor, OWNS = keeps.
5 Search and take from island for armed soldier (8)
RIFLEMAN – RIFLE = search and take from, MAN as in the Isle of.
9 Gay arrest traditionally undertaken by women (4-6)
PINK-COLLAR – As mentioned in the blurb above, I didn’t know this variation of blue-collar and white-collar, but eventually decided it must have been once used as an acceptable term, if not nowadays. COLLAR colloquially means arrest, and PINK pride is Gay pride so pink must mean gay.
10 Dodge Oscar in Strand (4)
PLOY – O for Oscar, inserted into PLY for strand, as in wool.
11 Virtually useless, I’ve dropped out (2,6)
IN EFFECT – INEFFECTIVE = useless, drop the IVE.
12 Edison with eccentric characters working for same goal (6)
ONSIDE – (EDISON)*.
13 In Scotland, divine drop of essence added to bath (4)
SPAE – Add E from Essence to SPA = bath. I was looking for a Scottish God or a dialect word meaning holy. But apparently it means to tell the future, divine in that sense. See above for this week’s rant.
15 Wary learner gets stuck into jumbo after six (8)
VIGILANT – VI = six, GIANT = jumbo, insert L.
18 Commiserated as Tory Party came first (8)
CONDOLED – Go down a snake if you first thought CONSOLED. CON = Tory, DO = party, LED = came first. Ive never seen it as a verb, it’s usually ‘give condolcences’, but no reason why not.
19 Come across notes, second turned over (4)
MEET – ME and TE are tonic notes, reverse the TE.
21 Sportsperson who might make pounds? (6)
FENCER – Cryptic DD, a fencer could build a pound to keep sheep in for example.
23 Coins with wrong edging recalled — disorder results (8)
NEUROSIS – Wrong = SIN, reverse it and insert EUROS = coins. Took me too long as I was thinking disorder in the sense of entropy or chaos, and trying to insert some coins which were also reversed. Overthinking.
25 Tool for trimming notices picked up (4)
ADZE – homophone, sounds like ADS = notices.
26 Cross Yellow River to the west to make complaint (7,3)
CHICKEN POX – CHICKEN = yellow, cowardly; PO = river in Lombardy, X = cross.
27 Save to join forces, pocketing rupees ruthlessly (8)
BRUTALLY – BUT = save, except; ALLY = join forces; insert an R for rupees.
28 Good man killed after reversing railway vehicle (6)
MARTYR – RY = railway, TRAM = vehicle, reverse all. Nice definition and easy to think the def. was a vehicle and good meant G.

Down
2 Step down, freeing son to take command (5)
REIGN – RESIGN = step down, lose the S.
3 All those running after train in northern city (9)
WAKEFIELD – I put in FIELD for all those running, and went through my limited repertoire of cities oop north; Shef, Hudders, Chester, then wondered if Wakefield was indeed a city not a town. As WAKE could just about mean ‘TRAIN’. Apparently Wakefield has been a city since 1888, so up till now I have been underestimating its glory.
4 Hot fruit loaf, only one left (6)
STOLEN – I thought Stollen was a sticky pastry thing, but Mrs K assures me it could be called a fruit loaf. Delete one of the L’s.
5 Weight ratio needs revision in Einstein’s theory (8,7)
RELATIVE DENSITY – Insert (NEEDS)* into RELATIVITY, a fascnating subject on which Albert Einstein had two theories, Specific and General, dealing with different topics. RD is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a standard, usually water for a liquid or solid, and air for a gas.
6 Leave hard-water deposit beside provincial lake (8)
FURLOUGH – FUR deposits in your electirc kettle, and a LOUGH is a lake in Northern Ireland, as opposed to a loch in Scotland.
7 Narthex possibly housing public displays (5)
EXPOS – You don’t need to know that a Narthex is a church porch, this isn’t the Mephisto; the answer is a hidden word NARTH(EX POS)SIBLY.
8 Skipping gap between two articles on church (9)
AVOIDANCE – VOID being a gap goes between A and AN then CE for church.
14 Food bound to be consumed by traveller under pressure (9)
PROVENDER – P for pressure, ROVER = traveller consumes END = bound. End as in limit.
16 One taking off criminal on parole grabbing maiden (9)
LAMPOONER – (ON PAROLE M)*.
17 Caller troubled guards in charge of minister (8)
CLERICAL – Insert IC (in charge) into (CALLER)*.
20 Union men originally supporting place to drop off rubbish (6)
BUNKUM – U M initial letters of union men, after BUNK a place to drop off i.e. sleep.
22 Contrasting temperatures worry trickster (5)
CHEAT – C for cold and H for hot, EAT for worry.
24 Once a key constituent in vote opposed radical youth at first (5)
IVORY – Initial letters of In Vote Opposed Radical Youth.

49 comments on “Times 26949 – oh God it’s Scottish but not a God”

  1. Don’t remember too much of this now, but as a fan of the turf I kicked myself in the fetlock for not being onto FIELD quicker, while SPAE seemed pretty reasonable by analogy with BRAE. I’ve read a lot of Scots dialect stuff (notably Walter Scott and George Macdonald) – with the online Dictionary of Scots Language to hand – but this word seems to have eluded me. The sciency down clue nearly did for me, even though about the only word I associate with the man, apart from Marilyn Monroe, is RELATIVITY. 48 minutes, so my NITCH inches up again…
  2. I was also stumped by the Scottish word, and felt hard done by. The rest of the puzzle went in fairly straightforwardly, but like our esteemed blogger I had never heard of PINK COLLAR before. Thanks to both setter and blogger.
  3. I found this a very enjoyable excursion, rather chewy but with SPAE the only obscurity, which was quite gettable from the wordplay, which is one of the rewards of this kind of puzzle. I did, thoughtlessly, put in CONSOLED, which made it hard to find WAKEFIELD, which I, as a Yank, might have counted as another obscurity if I weren’t in a good mood. My last one in was CROWNS, which took forever because I didn’t get that “Cr” could mean “councillor”… which would be a third obscurity, if etc. Oh, and ONSIDE, that’s soccer or rugby, isn’t it? Cheerio, mates!

    Edited at 2018-01-31 07:39 am (UTC)

  4. This isn’t the Mephisto, you say; just what I was thinking at 13ac. Fortunately the cluing was straightforward. I, too, was thinking of a wrong divine, i.e. a clergyman. DNK 9ac, either, my LOI. I knew of WAKEFIELD from Goldsmith’s vicar of same, not that I’ve ever read it, mind you. I BIFD 24d, noticed the odd distribution of letters as I was typing it in. It was refreshing to see ‘good’ not meaning G or PI, and ‘good man’ not meaning ST. Liked AVOIDANCE and IN EFFECT.
  5. I am one eighth of Scottish descent – never heard of 13ac SPAE but what elso might it have been!?
    LOI – I do so love haggis! Also started with 18ac CONSOLED but gave way to CONDOLED when the Wakefield train finally pulled in.

    FOI 15ac VIGILANT

    COD 24 dn IVORY also enjoyed 4dn STOLEN

    WOD 8ac PINK COLLAR goes with BLUE STOCKING no doubt.

  6. 40 mins on IPad pre brecker.
    Then cereal, coco pops, egg. No stollen, surprisingly.
    Sun and snow set fair again today.
    Like others, 9 and 13ac were the killers.
    Mostly I liked ‘Once a key constituent’. Nice to see Wakefield (my birthplace) get a mention. Some might argue it isn’t actually all that far north.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. Some might. If you come from Wakefield, it’s not, but if you come from Dorset, up North begins at Watford.
      1. You going to be the the one that tells St Albans and Hemel Hempstead where they lie, Pip?
      2. When I lived in Harrow (Stanmore actually) The North began at Watford, but since I moved to Leighton Buzzard it now starts at Milton Keynes.
  7. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who found this tough. I particularly struggled in the NW corner, not helped by also having a tentative CONSOLED. When I finally realised it was CONDOLED the field part of WAKEFIELD went in and the other bits fell into place.

    My COD to MARTYR – neat clue.

  8. Stollen is, indeed, a fruit loaf, Pip, and yummy it is. Of German/Austrian descent. Never heard the term pink collar before. You learn something new every day!
  9. Knew spae, fortunately, but was another careless consoler for a while. Words you don’t know will always crop up from time to time, happens to us all so just get used to it, I say …
    I saw that exact adze clue 25ac only a few days ago, presumably on a crossword yet to be blogged. In fact several clues (eg 4dn, 12ac) looked vaguely familiar
  10. DNF, but on a couple of the more obvious ones, given others’ comments. I gave up at 55 minutes, having stared at 1a and 21a for about ten of them. I’d thought of FENCER but couldn’t see the pounds connection, so was holding on for something better, and I just couldn’t see how 1a worked or narrow down the many words that could fit to anything that would give my brain a jog…

    No problems with taking SPAE on faith, though it took me a long time to come up with the beginnings of both 3d WAKEFIELD and 9a PINK COLLAR, which might have been why I lost confidence in the NW.

    Sometimes one’s brain just stops working!

  11. Was please to finish all correct without aids, although I needed 50 minutes as I was delayed by having CONSOLED at 18ac and I guessed the exisetence of SPAE. Knowing “pink pound” in relation to spending power gave me confidence to go with PINK COLLAR. J & Q were needed for a pangram.

    Edited at 2018-01-31 09:30 am (UTC)

  13. This was a bit of a stinker and it took 51 minutes. DNK SPAE which was constructed more in hope than expectation. City of WAKEFIELD never got a Stanier Coronation class locomotive named after it, but I thought it was a city as I knew it had a cathedral. It was a good job it had a K in it or I would never have got PINK-COLLAR, a term I have never heard of. Not only that but in that Jason King era we discussed last week, those kipper ties and polyester suits designed to melt at body temperature had to be accompanied by a high-collared pink shirt when worn by male MARTYRs to fashion, which young businessmen had to be. I only occasionally now suffer from the NEUROSIS. COD RELATIVE DENSITY, which as a physicist I felt I had to solve before continuing with the rest of the puzzle. I hope VAR shows 12ac to be the right decision. Thank you Pip and setter.
  14. Unlike others I knew SPAE so it was a write in – as was RELATIVE DENSITY and PINK COLLAR. Not sure that a MARTYR has to be either good or a man.

    Pip, you should only eats tatties, neeps and haggis to the accompaniment of the pipes, a reading of Burns and of course several drams. You must have all the ingredients or the effect is lost!

  15. For a lot of us, I imagine enjoyment of this puzzle will be in direct proportion to our success at making one or two educated guesses. As it turned out, SPAE was all I could get logically from the wordplay, and close enough to BRAE to look convincing, so I suppose I can’t complain about learning a new word. I didn’t know PINK-COLLAR either, but again, given that it seemed the only likely option once I had the K, I can hardly say it was at all unfair. The NW corner took a while, but a lot of that involved going through, and discarding, Sheffield, Mansfield, and Driffield; and spotting the stollen took far too long, considering I made one only a few weeks ago.
  16. Absolute cracker of a crossword today I thought, even though it took 40 mins. Some lovely clues, too many good ones to mention.
  17. Aye, I would feel a hypocrite wearing a kilt and listening to Rabbie, although the dram and the pipes would be tolerable. I have a best friend who is a practising Scot and we only did the haggis as Sassenachs to wind him up. But much to my delight he didn’t know what SPAE meant.
    1. In my case the dram would definitely be tolerable, but the Highland Pipes, at close indoor quarters, is a deafening never-to-be-forgotten experience. In my opinion, they are strictly an outdoor instrument, preferably somewhere in the (far) distance. Northumbrian pipes, completely different matter ..

  18. Went down the snake at CONDOLED, and was so convinced that ‘consoled’ was correct, I didn’t revisit my original hunch at ‘somethingFIELD’ for 3dn. Probably wouldn’t have got it anyway, as I had ‘highCOLLAR’ in for the unknown expression at 9ac. Tough but enjoyable. Would’ve been more enjoyable had I finished it, though! Bifced (from cryptic, did we ever get a word for that?) SPAE.

  19. 30 min – knew SPAE (probably from barred puzzle) but CONSOLED then seemed to make the Northern city INVERNESS, which made 9ac impossible – first thought to fit checkers there was HIGH-ROLLER which didn’t make sense either. Another think about that clue gave me PINK which although unknown seemed reasonable in view of ‘blue’ and ‘white’ so could finish off with NW corner.

    Edited at 2018-01-31 12:11 pm (UTC)

  21. DNF as I didn’t get Neurosis or Spae. A chewy crossword but the long down clue gave me a handhold. If you like Scots dialect try Iain M Banks’s (RIP) Feersum Endjinn – a great read with much in phonetic Scottish. Thanks blogger and setter
  22. Like Kevin I knew this from Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar. One of the characters is Olivia Primrose, who been dun wrong. I heard it adapted for radio eons ago but gave up trying to read it in spite of excellent illustrations by Frith or Rackham (I forget).

    Yet another DNK for SPAE but it looked plausible. I thought BUNKUM was very neatly done. 25.04

  23. I had the same difficulties as everyone else, made worse by three almosts. Like Bolton W (I, too, studied physics), SPECIFIC GRAVITY seemed clever, went in first, and I think it does parse. Almost, just the crossing letters won’t agree. Then, like Olivia, I thought 20d was clever, only I didn’t think of Bunk and so assumed an alternate fact spelling for HOCKUM – you do drop things off when you hock them. That made more sense last night than it does now, but it made nonsense of 23a. And the SPEY is clearly in Scotland, is pleasingly associated with good whisky, fit the P crosser whilst E is part of Essence, and, well, that was as far as I got. Consequently, no Wakefield for me. Nice puzzle, nice blog, thanks all around.

    Edited at 2018-01-31 01:19 pm (UTC)

  24. In the good old days, the city of Wakefield was the county town of the West Riding (abolished in 1974 regretfully). Wakefield Trinity are a well-known Rugby League club with supporters of the northern game and they will be looking forward to the new Super League season which starts tomorrow.
  25. I enjoyed this puzzle with SPAE going in as the only alternative I could think of to TUBE. I spent at least 3 minutes on my LOI, CROWNS, before the 5 bob dropped. Otherwise PINK and WAKEFIELD were my longest holdups. I initially put CONSOLED at 18a, but I reread the clue as I was typing and noticed the SO wasn’t accounted for, so put it right and saw FIELD for 3d. The WAKE didn’t come until I postulated PINK, and I’m still struggling to see WAKE=TRAIN, unless it’s to do with a ship’s wake, or following in someone’s wake? I liked RELATIVE DENSITY, MARTYR and IVORY. 33:15. Thanks setter and Pip.
    PS this is the second time I’ve typed all this in as my VM broadband went down just as I transmitted last time and lost the lot. A load of testing and phone calls established there is an external fault in the area, so I’m now connected through my phone’s wifi hotspot.

    Edited at 2018-01-31 01:40 pm (UTC)

  26. Late today, but done in 22’ minutes after lunch. FENCER LOI, and of course crossed fingers for SPAE, which I will add to my Scrabble list. Agree that a MARTYR doesn’t have to be good, male or indeed killed…. Thanks pip and setter.
  27. A smidge over 20 minutes for what I thought was a top class puzzle. One of those that induces panic when you spot things in the clues that you think you know nothing about, like obsolete coins, Scottish divination, Narthex, voting systems etc.

    In the end the Scots thing was the only real unknown and that was “guessed” with a degree of confidence.

    With the field in place I should have got Wakefield quicker as I was there less than a week ago to see my daughter sworn in as a police officer but having rejected Sheffield I couldn’t come up with the right location until I had the K.

    COD to IVORY.

  28. Arrgh SPAE and CONDOLED in an otherwise fine puzzle, at least that’s how I graded it. Both clued uncontroversially, but even so! Setter, you’re a rotter.

    Edited at 2018-01-31 02:07 pm (UTC)

    1. You’ll have to take up scrabble! Can be used (to great advantage) without the e.

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