Times 26961 – flummoxed again by Poets and Polynesian Powers

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Another challenging Wednesday, with some fine clueing and smart wordplay, enhanced, or spoilt (depending on your knowledge, or lack of it) by a couple of “general knowledge required” answers which were otherwise hard to guess from the wordplay. It took me 21 minutes and I had to check 18a and 25a afterwards to be sure I was right.
CoD awards to 26a and to 5d for the fine anagram and relevant surface.

Across
1 Officer’s plan again to retreat (6)
WARDER – to REDRAW is to plan again, reverse it.
5 Tribe has bewildered language expert (8)
HEBRAIST – (TRIBE HAS)*.
9 Looked at team getting embarrassed after trick (10)
CONSIDERED – CON = trick, SIDE = team, RED = embarrassed.
10 Island for the nobs featured in back issue of periodical (4)
GUAM – U = upper class, for the nobs, inserted into MAG reversed. US run island in the Pacific which Rocket Man has his beady eyes on.
11 Reduce something bloody, having got back in time (8)
DEROGATE – GORE something bloody, reversed inside DATE = time. At first I was trying to parse it with RED and AGO but not so. I thought derogate meant detract from, or deviate, but I can see reduce is a ‘more or less’ synonym.
12 Endless chatter around a fellow’s clubs (6)
LATHIS – TAL(K) reversed then HIS = a fellow’s; a lathi is a heavy stick used by angry policemen in Asian countries, and often found in crosswords.
13 Sheep runs that may hold water (4)
EWER – EWE, R.
15 This person is probing your old-fashioned food content (8)
THIAMINE – I AM (this person is) inside THINE (your, old-fashioned). Vitamin B1, otherwise properly named 2-[3-[(4-amino-2-methylpyrimidin-5-yl)methyl]-4-methyl-1,3-thiazol-3-ium-5-yl]ethanol.
18 Poet’s line, one on compassion (8)
LOVELACE – LOVE = compassion, L(ine), ACE = one. I looked at *O*E*A*E for a while with so many options and no poet springing to mind (you will recall I cultivate my ignorance of poetry). Apparently Richard Lovelace was a Cavalier poet and socialite who, when in jail for a year, penned that well known bit about ‘stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’. In your dreams, chum, they were quite effective else you’d have escaped.
19 Bed or mattress? It may be found in here (4)
DORM – Slightly hidden word in BE(D OR M)ATTRESS.
21 Affected by bugs, get cold after first day of month (6)
SEPTIC – SEPT 1 followed by C.
23 Melting tarmac starts to restrict some vehicles (8)
TRAMCARS – (TARMAC)* then R S = initial letters of Restrict Some.
25 Magical power of weaver in story spoken of (4)
MANA – This wins my Obscure Double Definition Homophone of the Year Award. MANA can mean a few things, one of which is supernatural power in Pacific cultures; Pronounced MAR-NA, it sounds the hero of ‘SILAS MARNER: the Weaver of Raveloe’, the full name of the book by Geogre Eliot. I had never heard of the magical power and I didn’t know Mr Marner was a weaver; apart from that… and *A*A would tempt you to bung in SAGA on the basis of ‘story spoken of’.
26 Priest and French actor performing? It’s uplifting (10)
LEVITATION – LEVI the priest, Jacques TATI the French actor, ON = performing. A refreshing change from the usual priest abbreviations and ET for French ‘and’.
27 Base established — cycle around it? (8)
PEDESTAL – PEDAL around EST.
28 Perversion is admitted by unfortunate male (6)
SADISM – Insert IS into SAD M(ale).

Down
2 Pole’s few lines of poetry (5)
ANODE – AN ODE even I can see would be a few lines of poetry. ANODE being one pole of a battery, the other being the cathode.
3 Sure to be upset following party conversation (9)
DISCOURSE – DISCO = party, (SURE)*.
4 Spoke favouring reform — not Conservative (6)
RADIAL – RADICAL = favouring reform, drop the C.
5 Several faiths TV represented in a religious celebration (7,8)
HARVEST FESTIVAL – (SEVERAL FAITHS TV)*. Nice one.
6 Short chum sits on meadow, squashing one plant (8)
BUDDLEIA – I knew today’s plant, having one, a butterfly bush, in the garden. BUDD(Y) = short chum, LEA = meadow, insert I.
7 Strong tastes, first to last, creating uncomfortable feeling (5)
ANGST – TANGS would be strong tastes, drop the T from front to end.
8 Trader giving one artist supply (9)
STATIONER – (ONE ARTIST)*. Not the first time we’ve had a stationer recently.
14 With something large in the environment, lose out completely (9)
WHOLESALE – I see this as an anagram of LOSE inside WHALE = something large in the environment.
16 Resolved to restrict cold with health-giving ingredients (9)
MEDICATED – Insert C for cold into MEDIATED = resolved.
17 Inscribed within church window maybe see knight (8)
LANCELOT – If you BIFD this and didn’t parse it, go down a snake. A LANCET (apart from being a top medical journal) is a slim, pointed church window or arch. Insert LO for ‘see’.
20 Love appearing in underwear in funny shows (6)
PANTOS – Put O into your PANTS.
22 Traffic needs to speed up heading for Edinburgh (5)
TRADE – DART = speed, up = reversed, E(dinburgh).
24 Cheats and criminals caught out (5)
ROOKS – CROOKS have their C removed.

83 comments on “Times 26961 – flummoxed again by Poets and Polynesian Powers”

  1. Well I did enjoy this crossword, but I liked the comments far more. I would like to nominate “Mana” for Worst Clue of the Year, and this blog and its comments, for “Best Supporting Blog.”
  2. I have to agree with the comments on 25a. After 35 minutes or so I was left with _A_A and knew it wasn’t going to be SAGA. Not having read or watched Silas Marner, I had no idea of his profession, and having no ideas on magic other than Juju or Voodoo I resorted to Google. I had no trouble with LOVELACE, but failed to parse Guinevere’s bit on the side. LATHIS actually rang a bell, and HEBRAIST seemed very likely. I second Jerry’s nominations. Great blog. Thanks Pip.
  3. I knew “mana” from Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, which I loved, but I accept that, despite winning the Booker Prize, it’s not on everyone’s reading list. I seem to remember a lot of people saying they didn’t know Silas Marner was a weaver last time he came up. I trust they are not the same people…
  4. 25ac MANA!! I went for SAGA with little faith, A DNfF!
    2dn ANODE wasn’t much cop either. An odd ode.

    Setter to the naughty chair for upsetting the congregation.
    FOI 13ac EWER
    COD 15ac THIAMINE
    WOD 12ac LATHIS

    Edited at 2018-02-14 04:34 pm (UTC)

  6. I’m with the majority here: no chance on MANA. I looked it up, found the Pacific magical power, and it still seemed too obscure to me. Beyond the pale, that. No idea what Silas did either, had I made the oddball homophonic leap from Marner to MANA. Which I did not. Regards to all.
  7. The weavers that came immediately to mind were Bottom, Silas Marner, Penelope and Arachne. A fairly limited choice. Once I had -A-A the answer was fairly obvious, in spite of my not knowing MANA. I think people are protesting far too much about this clue. One person’s obscurity is another’s general knowledge. Ann
    1. For precisely that reason I regard it as good form for setters to give the setter who doesn’t know something at the edge of what might be considered general knowledge another way into the clue. A certain level of knowledge is expected but these things aren’t supposed to be quizzes.
  8. Mana is fairly ubiquitous to anyone who’s played a couple of computer games (or who lives in Not Zimbabwe)
  9. DNF. Bah! Like others I was stumped by 25ac. Too fixated on trying to crowbar crosswordland’s number one weaver, Bottom, in there. Read Silas Marner yonks ago and vaguely recollected his miserliness but not his weaverliness. Dnk the Polynesian magic. I didn’t even get far enough to consider the long vowel sound and potential homophones. Well and truly snookered by that one. 17dn was biffed with the window unknown or unremembered.
  10. Thanks for WHOLESALE, Pip and especially for the decryption of MANA. I put MAYA, because although I didn’t understand the clue, I knew that Maya is a supernatural power in Hinduism, partially from George Harrison’s song, “Beware of Darkness’ wherein there is a line that goes “Beware of Maya”.
    Guam is an interesting place. I used to go there on a few occasions per year as part of my work for a US cargo airline which flew on contract for the US military. If one’s B747 Freighter happened to sit on the tarmac at Andersen AFB for more than a couple of hours, prior to departure, the snake dog had to be brought out to inspect the plane. It’s handler would put it up into the wheel wells, for example, to sniff out brown tree snakes which have populated the island and depopulated it of birds. Guam is also popular with Japanese honeymoon couples.
    Oh, love your new user pic, Pip!
  11. That he could escape in his dreams, in both the real and figurative sense, was of course exactly the poet’s point.

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