Times 26967 – nearly as fast as Elise Christie yesterday

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Sad to see our world champion Elise crashing out of the speed skating yet again. There again, £32 million of taxpayers money in four years to chase a few medals in elite winter sports does seem a questionable use of the dosh.
Once I had my skates on I whizzed through this in quick time for a Wednesday, the smoothest run I’ve had for ages. Nevertheless, an enjoyable puzzle with neat wordplay and no especially silly words (like MANA from last week). Lots of insertion clues and only two and a half anagrams.

.

Across
1 Smoked sausage the Spanish served in cabbage (7)
SAVELOY – Insert EL into SAVOY cabbage.
5 Extravagantly publicise place in military band? (6)
SPLASH – Insert PL(ACE) into SASH = military band.
8 Church worker priests in centre employ as singer (9)
CHANTEUSE – CH(URCH), ANT = worker, (PRI)E(STS), USE = employ.
9 Cry about reviewer’s initial description of book (5)
BLURB – Insert R(eviewer) into BLUB.
11 Provide for Parisian who has broken old record (5)
EQUIP – Insert QUI = French for ‘who’, into EP = old record.
12 Eg Miss Prism’s turn for home in Scottish city (9)
GOVERNESS – INVERNESS is the Scottish city, swap IN = home for GO = turn. Miss Prism is Cecily’s governess in The Importance of Being Earnest.
13 Vocally opposed to tweet maybe describing form of betting? (4-4)
ANTE-POST – ANTE Sounds like ANTI and POST for tweet.
15 Strip joint finally established by rich man (6)
DIVEST – Add T (joint finally) to DIVES, Latin for rich or a rich man.
17 Yankee priest with right to rabbit on (6)
YABBER – Y for Yankee, ABBE = priest, R = right.
19 Genuine doctor almost stops providing a cure (8)
REMEDIAL – Insert MEDI(C)
22 Injected journalist next to where whisky is made (9)
INSTILLED – Whisky being made IN STILL, add ED.
23 Cloud enveloping English female in spongy ground (5)
BEFOG – Insert E F into BOG. Cloud as a verb.
24 Lived in part of Oxford, perhaps, with daughter (5)
DWELT – Daughter = D, WELT part of shoe.
25 Notes male attorney’s written about return of capital (9)
MEMORANDA – Insert ROME reversed into MAN, DA.
26 Actors in Greek drama about Egyptian god (6)
CHORUS – C = circa, about, HORUS = Egyptian god.
27 Bear last of gifts to Austrian physicist (7)
STOMACH – (GIFT)S, TO, MACH, Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach d. 1916, Austrian chap who studied shock waves; in his honour is named the Mach number, the ratio of actual speed to the speed of sound in the medium e.g. air.
Down
1 PS, offer to secure run for African predator? (9,4)
SECRETARY BIRD – PS I think here is abbr. for Private Secretary or Parliamentary Secretary; then insert R into BID. On my best holiday ever (and there have been a lot) I was reluctantly persuaded to ‘do’ the Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa and found myself enjoying it greatly; seeing one of these large, eccentric looking birds perched on top of a dead tree was a memorable highlight.
2 By way of tube, reaching bridgelike structure (7)
VIADUCT – VIA = by way of, DUCT = tube. More incidental drivel. Pottering around Rutland last week checking out the best pubs and villages while house hunting, we stumbled across the WELLAND VIADUCT, the longest masonry viaduct across a valley in England, very impressive, 30 million bricks of Victorian engineering.
3 Break allowed on way to London, perhaps (3-2)
LET-UP – LET = allowed, UP often used as in ‘go UP to London’.
4 The solver gets sent out with note, being most junior (8)
YOUNGEST – YOU = the solver, then (SENT G)* where G = a note.
5 Change direction suddenly: work with forces protecting West (6)
SWERVE – Insert W into SERVE = work with forces.
6 Row about French composer showing rakish tendencies (9)
LIBERTINE – Insert IBERT into LINE = row. Jacques François Antoine Marie Ibert (15 August 1890 – 5 February 1962) was a French classical composer.
7 Hug cat mostly unknown in Kent area? (7)
SQUEEZE – SE = South-east, Kent area; insert QUEE(N) = cat mostly and Z = unknown.
10 The phrase Glubb endlessly misused in such communication (4,9)
BUSH TELEGRAPH – (THE PHRASE GLUB), deleting a B from GLUBB. The surface works, there was such a chap as Glubb, the setter hasn’t made him up; Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, was a British soldier, scholar and author, In his picture on Wikipedia he looks rather like Jonesy from Dad’s Army.
14 One foresees image-promoting men accepting ruling (9)
PREDICTOR – PR = image promoting, OR = men, insert EDICT = ruli.g.
16 Seems mad changing form of address in Lyon? (8)
MESDAMES – (SEEMS MAD)*.
18 Beg directions to cut into tree (7)
BESEECH – Insert S, E into BEECH.
20 Trendy supporter cheers European royal (7)
INFANTA – IN = trendy, FAN = supporter, TA = cheers.
21 Scottish castle is very attractive to begin with (6)
GLAMIS – GLAM = very attractive, IS. Childhood home of QE the late Queen Mother.
23 Pack animal’s underground home, with leaves (5)
BURRO – W = with leaves BURROW. Spanish / Mexican and Portuguese word for donkey.

68 comments on “Times 26967 – nearly as fast as Elise Christie yesterday”

  1. Surprised to find that my last two guesses were right as I thought I was basically throwing in the towel when I wrote in 15a DIVEST (NHO “dives”) and the unknown 21d GLAMIS, in what was a 50/50 call against PLUMIS for me.

    My 55 minutes all felt rather laborious, and I built a lot of castles in the air on my unknowns, semi-guesses and wordplay I couldn’t play much with. My first bit in was the BIRD of 1d (but I needed all the crossers to get to the SECRETARY bit), after which I guessed that a welt was part of a shoe and pencilled in 24a, which finally led to my real FOI PREDICTOR. It was that kind of puzzle…

    So. Unwavelengthy, but I got there, with a combination of good luck and judgement. Thanks to setter and Pip.

  2. 25 mins with half a Fat Rascal (hoorah!).
    Took a few mins convincing myself my LOI was Divest. The Dives only rang vague bells.
    Saveloy is a funny word and reminds me of something we used to say at school – see subject line. It was sort of blasphemous.
    I thought the composer might be Berti. Ha.
    Otherwise a gentle trot.
    Mostly I liked: Military band, Blurb, Burro and StoMach (COD).
    Thanks setter and Pip.
  3. At least 5 clues I didn’t parse properly during my speed run (under 5 minutes, anyway) so the blogs are even more important for me when it’s been an easy puzzle, I get to see all the things I missed. Thanks Pip.

    The word CORROBOREE was an answer in the third (Commonwealth-themed) Quiz League London quiz last night – I was kicking myself because I knew I’d come across it in crosswords, but if only I’d actually bothered to investigate what it meant!

  4. Nothing too taxing, ending in my target time with BURRO and STOMACH (dnk Herr Mach). Nor dik IBERT, and, like Mytilus above, assumed the composer was M Berti. BEFOG is an odd-looking word! ANTE-POST went in with fingers crossed.

  5. Finished this in about 25 minutes, with a disproportionate amount of time being taken up with 1a (couldn’t move from ‘salami’) and 1d (thrown by the ‘PS’). Some parsing went over my head, eg for DIVEST and had to get a few unfamiliar terms such as ANTE-POST from the word play.

    Favourite was YABBER, which reminded me of Yabba, the famous heckler at the Sydney Cricket Ground who by coincidence or not was a rabittoh (rabbit seller) in the (in those days at least) tough inner Sydney suburb of Balmain – “Balmain boys don’t cry”.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  6. A 15-minute solve such as today is virtually unknown for me but I have probably achieved it once or twice before. I looked twice at YABBER, which I’m not sure I knew although I am familiar with both ‘yatter’ and ‘jabber’ meaning the same thing. Also not totally sure of PS for ‘secretary’ but just trusted it was okay. Didn’t know ‘dives’ was Latin but I am familiar with the biblical story of Dives (a rich man) and Lazarus.
  7. Continued my run of decent times with a sub-20 here. My mother learned what ante-post meant on a June day in 1974, when she answered a phone call from me at school asking her to put a tenner on Morston in the Derby. Her correct call at the bookies meant I pocketed 330 quid rather than 250.

    Not so lucky the bookie in the village in Norfolk after which the 3-year-old was named. Pretty much wiped out, so I believe.

    Edited at 2018-02-21 08:31 am (UTC)

  8. I think this a PB or at least very close to it. The whole left hand side was completed in 4 minutes. Obviously not using my brain on holiday for 10 days has paid off (although I have learnt the names of a few more reef fish) COD to SECRETARY BIRD which, as Pip says, are fascinating to watch.
  9. I spent several minutes unable to parse my LOI DIVEST and eventually threw it in unparsed. I thought that the established bit might be the EST at the end but had no idea how ‘div’ was a rich man. Thanks to Pip for clearing that one up for me.
  10. 15:18 … for a very solid puzzle with some interesting vocab., especially the two long downs.

    Thanks, Pip, for the link to the Wiki page on Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM. Fascinating stuff, one of those countless upper-class Brits who was apparently more at home in undeveloped, far-off places. I see that his son, Godfrey, went even more native, converting to Islam and being active with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman. Seems to be a short hop from the playing fields of those public schools to the desert

  12. 21 minutes with COD to GOVERNESS by a nose from SECRETARY BIRD. I wonder what the odds on that were in the ANTE-POST betting. LOI SQUEEZE, which only just fitted. After Tim’s exploits on Only Connect, (C)HORUS was a write-in. I’ve just read up a bit about (STO)MACH who didn’t figure much in my Physics studies but whose phenomenalist philosophy seems to have been a great influence on Einstein. He didn’t really believe that matter in the form of atoms existed which I guess is on the same lines as gravity being a distortion of space-time. Pleasant puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2018-02-21 09:29 am (UTC)

  13. Thirteen minutes for me, which means it was an easy one. DIVEST was my last one in, having only the vaguest recollection of “dives”.

    Nice to see Mach making an appearance. He is responsible for a conundrum in physics which is still not understood, and which goes like this. Suppose you take a bucket of water and set it spinning on a turntable; the surface of the water will form a bowl-shape as centrifugal force comes into play. Now take away the rest of the universe – what happens? The bucket can no longer be said to be rotating, since there’s nothing for it to be rotating relative to. So, says Mach, the centrifugal force will vanish and the water surface will become flat again. Now put a speck of dust a hundred light years away – the bucket is now rotating again, relative to that speck of dust, and the water surface will once again curve. The general idea is that things like inertia depend on the entire universe, which is odd.

    But I digress. Enjoyable puzzle, even though it was over too soon.

    1. You’re blowing my mind. I say this as someone who got all the questions about Archimedes’ Six Simple Machines wrong in the London Quiz League last night – though at least I did think of a real simple machine (pulley) to the question whose answer was “screw”. What kind of a “machine” is a bloody “inclined plane”, though, I ask you?
    2. Just like that. A form of words appears to make sense. Still, my time might look a bit better than it was, 20’10. As for Glubb, he may have existed but it seems a lazy anagram.
    3. The teensy snag with the spinning bucket idea is that it’s incapable of proof, since any observer would be a hell of a lot bigger than a grain of dust a hundred light years away. No doubt Douglas Adams would have factored it in to the infinite improbability drive if he was short of a really hot cup of tea, especially since the Masters of Krikkit were well on the way to taking the rest of the universe away.
      1. Yes, that’s sort of true, yet at the same time not.

        Instead of the bucket, build a circular platform – put the bucket in the middle and stand next to it on the platform. You can now tell if the platform is spinning or not, by seeing if the water surface is curved, even though you are rotating with the bucket. You can now take away the rest of the universe, so that neither you nor the bucket are rotating (there’s nothing to rotate relative to). So, the problem remains.

        Hopefully we’ll get EU funding to do the experiment before we Brexit.

        1. I would have thought you could tell whether the platform was spinning or not by whether or not you got giddy and fell over, though I suppose if the universe had been eliminated, you might not notice.
          And I fear the EU might get a bit miffed with the excessive use of landfill sites to dispose of the universe, even if it was only temporary. So a grant application would have to skate round that issue to stand any chance of success.
    4. …and drove me to Wikipedia, and I’m trying to get a grip on what it says here is an “imprecise hypothesis.”
  14. Re our winter Olympians … regulars will want to be reminded that the eldest son of one of our TfTT bloggers (ChrisW) again acquitted himself with great distinction in the terrifying ski slopestyle, getting 4th place. Be amazed: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/43102557

    Most of us can only imagine what it’s like to be upside-down, 20 metres up, with skis on. Only way it’ll ever happen to me is if I fall out of a chair lift

    1. I watched that without remembering that was ChrisW’s son. It looked truly terrifying! James was unlucky to miss out so narrowly on a medal.
  16. It’s not just “the Latin for a rich man”, of course, it’s famously the rich man in the Biblical parable of Lazarus and Dives. Apologies if I’m stating the obvious! Anyway I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it pays to know your Bible (a little bit)…
  17. A shout-out to mohn, who did this in 4:35.

    He is assuredly a spinning bucket compared to my speck of dust.

    1. I’m just happy to play in the same division as Mohn. (Relegation is surely imminent of course…)
        1. That reference is way over my head, but Googling him I do see that we have the same (glossy and fashionable) hair!
          1. Frank played for Bolton after Leicester, scoring some wonderful goals. He admitted that he’d spent all his money on women and booze. “It could have been worse, I could have wasted it,” he’d say.
            1. Great goal, remember it like yesterday. He got an even better one, again at Burnden, Bolton against Leeds, receiving the ball above his head at 100 mph on the left touchline by the halfway line and scoring in three touches. Unfortunately it’s not on You Tube. He had a great tale about his Leicester days, playing against Liverpool. Tommy Smith launched into a tackle. Frank put the ball through his legs, jumped over Tommy and crossed for Keith Weller to score. As he walked back to the centre, Tommy tapped him on the shoulder to say, “If you do that again, I’ll break your bloody legs.” “Did you hear that, ref?” Frank said to Neil Midgley. “I think he were talking to you,” Neil replied.

              Edited at 2018-02-21 03:29 pm (UTC)

  18. Yes, kudos to Mohn indeed! I managed to come in just under 20 minutes at 19:58, so obviously not a difficult puzzle. I was however delayed for a minute or 2 by DIVEST which I eventually gave up trying to parse, and just submitted with crossed fingers, toes and eyes. I could see DIVE for strip joint, EST for established and T for joint finally, but didn’t know the rich man. I was also impressed by secretary birds on a visit to Tsavo East; the ones I saw just stood impassively on the ground and watched us drive by. Knew Jaques Ibert from listening to Classic FM. 13a reminded me of Fred Flintstone. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip.
  19. Took my normal time of 20 minutes due to dithering over DIVEST. Finally just biffed it in and hoped. A few other vaguely known things clued more transparently so they went in right away. Regards.
  20. As has been noted, one of those puzzles where there were things one might not know, but which it turned out one didn’t actually need to (I didn’t know the Glubber, as he would doubtless be known today, and I also assumed the unknown composer was BERTI, which turned out to be equally immaterial). Finally, I don’t think I’d heard the word YABBER before, but given the similarity to various other expressions (not least Mr T’s injunction to “quit yo jibber-jabber”), it seemed pretty convincing.
    1. I might well have been another BERTI, having only ever gotten as far as “some kind of French name inside LINE”.
  21. About 25m I think. I was flying along for once in a way when interrupted by a sudden and persistent nose bleed. It may have been the thought of an unexpected sub 20m that did it, of course. But thankfully as I returned to the usual standard, there was no recurrence of the bleeding. That’ll teach me! I really enjoyed this one, probably because I knew all of the GK and the presence of only a few question marks. Much lifting of cap to our many colleagues here who have raced through this in almost miraculous times. I say this particularly as I completed Saturday’s on tree ware and then entered it on the club site. It still took me over 4m to enter the answers and I already knew them! Thank you to setter and blogger today; much appreciated.
  22. 8m. Nice gentle one, solved semi-Verlaine style, late in the evening after dinner and a few glasses of wine. I wasn’t properly sloshed though.
    I think this is the first time I have remembered Dives (familiar from past puzzles) in time for him to be helpful. Progress.

    Edited at 2018-02-21 12:53 pm (UTC)

  23. 19′, post T20. Unfortunately, the recording was too short. Solve delayed by parsing 1d, where I thought the PS was the ‘secret’ bit, as in pssst, and also by DIVEST, convinced that DIVE was the strip joint. Also ‘instilled’ is different from injected, the four I s from first aid training being the means for a poison to enter the body. Thanks pip and setter.
  24. This came as a relief after yesterday’s had me wondering what had happened to my brain. Knew of the bird but not that it was a predator, and the betting term was unfamiliar but I liked the “vocally opposed to tweet” which could describe my husband when reading of one of you-know who’s latest effusions. 9.33
  25. A shade under 13 mins so a quickie for me. Not sure I’m happy about PS in 1 dn., though. Perhaps the setter meant PA (after all S and A are next to each other on the keyboard).Happy to see a physicist/philosopher in 27 ac. As mentioned by boltonwanderer, Mach did indeed influence Einstein, but not for his doubting the atomic theory of matter; rather for Mach’s Principle, which is (a usually vaguely formulated) idea that motion can only be conceived of as relative to the universe as a whole.
    1. I’ve only looked in two sources, but both Collins and SOED have PS as ‘Private Secretary’. However, it’s the first time I recall seeing it.
    2. I got my first private secretary in 1974. In the internal phone directory, the manager ‘s name was printed first and then beneath, slightly inset, it read P/S followed by the secretary’s name. I think this was fairly standard in those days. PA meant someting rather more vulgar. Apologies for the Mach comment. I started out with the Mach principle but then found little additional information so falsely conflated it with Mach’s phenomenology. Einstein accepted, indeed detected to his own satisfaction, the physical existence of atoms.
      1. I thought of Bernard from Yes Minister to justify the PS, although I think he may have been a Principal Private Secretary and presumably a PPS rather than just a PS.
        1. As Sir Humphrey explains it:

          “Well briefly, Sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary, I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are 10 Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretary are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing 2 Parliamentary Under Secretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.”

          “Do they all type?”

          “None of us can type, Minister. Mrs. McKay types. She’s the secretary.”

  26. 9:51 for me, but I confess I couldn’t parse 1d. As for 15a I knew DIVES from the bible story rather than the Latin. A nice gentle digestif after my ham and cheese baguette. Thanks for the entertaining side-notes, Pip. Pasha Glubb sounds interesting, and I too was in Rutland last week, but only passing through. I like the message on their county boundary signs… “Multum in Parvo”.
  27. 13.24, as inexplicably quick as yesterday’s was inexplicably slow.
    Are SAVELOYs smoked? The ones in my local chippy don’t taste of anything much, but certainly not smoke. Just askin’.
    Thanks Pip, especially for the digressions over and above the call of duty. I looked up the Welland viaduct for amazement, and was delighted to see the laconic comment: …”and the bricks were made by R. Holmes”. Busy man: I hope he had help.
  28. I had a quick look at this before lunch. I got 1a straightaway (not for lunch) and continued at speed until held up in the SE. I remembered Dives from a previous puzzle without the few glasses of wine. Was familiar with Miss Prism but not the Austrian. He was LOI after Burro (another NHO but clear from the clue).
    All this practice is paying off; under an hour. David
  29. FOI 1ac SAVELOY
    LOI 7dn SQUEEZE sas this a pangram?
    COD 27ac STOMACH
    WOD 23ac BEFOG
    Time 28 mins
    Knackered!
  30. Shout out for the East Midlands today! Rutland and Leicester in the blog 🙂 The Harringworth Viaduct (aka Welland) is a fabulous sight, and just as good to cross over by rail as to drive or walk under.

    I must admit I thought it was George Best who said he’d spent his money on women, booze and cars – and squandered the rest. No matter – it’s still quite wry.

    Fun crossword; dnf because burro was being very stubborn! So obvious too 🙁 PSB (lurking in Leicestershire)

    1. I’m sure Georgie will have said it earlier, but I was at Wembley in corporate hospitality on 2 April 1995 when Frank was guest speaker at the Liverpool v Bolton League Cup Final. He definitely said it, along with the Tommy Smith anecdote. He was good value as a public speaker.
  31. Nice one. No problems with GK, though I didn’t like PS for SECRETARY. Our choir once did a cantata called “Dives and Lazarus” by Alan Hoddinot. These things tend to stick. 28 minutes. Ann
  32. 12 minutes – most of it very quick, but some head-scratching at the end over DIVEST and GLAMIS and if there were other plausible answers.
  34. 32 minutes, so super for me, despite there being an awful lot I didn’t know: SAVELOY, ANTE-POST, DIVESt, YABBER, dWELT, GLAMIS. But biffing and wordplay saved the day.

    BLUB seems to be cropping up a lot recently. Is there one setter for the week who tries to get a good run out of his presumably not really very limited vocabulary?

  35. I did most of this in 20 mins on the morning commute but had to start work before getting the last four: 5ac, 5dn, 12ac and 7dn, which occupied me for another 3.5 mins at lunchtime. Knew the rich man. Knew Glamis from Macbeth as one of the ambitious Scotsman’s Thaneships. Dnk ante-post but was reasonably confident from wp and checkers. I also knew of the Italian Berti but not the French Ibert, it mattered little though. A gentle puzzle but very entertaining.
  36. Super fast for me at 23:21 but sadly with an unchecked befug. In contrast I attempted last Thursday’s at lunchtime and abandoned it with half a dozen completed after half an hour. My brother told me that puzzle was hard and today’s was easy and I can’t help but think that knowledge subconsciously influenced my solving time.
  37. I polished this one off fairly quickly, but the blog wasn’t up yet when I hit the hay, and now I have a lot of interesting comments to catch up on. All I had to say, really, is that my LOI was SAVELOY, a word absolutely new to me, but discovered through the wordplay, one of the cryptic game’s most gratifying experiences.

    Edited at 2018-02-21 10:33 pm (UTC)

Comments are closed.