Times 26979 – stuff I didn’t know I knew but did …

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this a serious work-out, more on the way to Club Monthly stlye than a standard weekday romp, with quite a few answers being obscure words known only to cryptic crossword regulars and pub quizzers. It took me 38 minutes to complete it to my satisfaction. Fortunately the wordplay is mainly straightforward and once you’ve avoided the anagram boob at 16a (I didn’t at first) and dredged the muddy bottom of the mind to find the words you dimly knew but seldom used, it all falls into place with a satisfying ‘done that’.

Across
1 Jolt in lifestyle, taking sect’s wine across river (7,5)
CULTURE SHOCK – CULT’S HOCK = sect’s wine, insert the River URE, which flows through the Yorkshire Dales.
8 Opening for Irishman initially involved with diamonds (7)
ORIFICE – (FOR I)*, ICE = diamonds.
9 Formal warning demanding prudence (7)
CAUTION – double definition.
11 Wife wearing top hat, oddly, for walk by river (7)
TOWPATH – Insert W into (TOP HAT)*.
12 Renowned English medic primarily concerned with otolaryngology (7)
EMINENT – E(nglish) M(edic) IN ENT (ear, nose and throat).
13 Bore raring to be heard (5)
EAGRE – Sounds like EAGER = raring. A tidal wave caused by cross currents.
14 Hubbub exposed in daily, one modified when editor’s absent (9)
CHARIVARI – A word I learnt from crosswords, meaning a loud banging of pots and pans to acclaim a wedding or similar celebration; if you don’t know it the wordplay is clear, CHAR = daily, I, VARI(ED).
16 Misusing a mug, slurp something sweet (9)
SUGARPLUM – I had SUGARLUMP written in before realising 3d ending in a U was going to be too strange. The I rearranged (A MUG SLURP)* again.
19 Changing sides, fetch flashy jewellery (5)
BLING – BRING = fetch, change the R for an L.
21 Takes risks with popular exponents (7)
INDICES – IN = popular, DICES = takes risks.
23 Fellow backing judge leaving large aircraft plant (7)
NELUMBO – Today’s plant rang a faint bell as having something to do with water lilies, which the French call nénuphars. LEN is our fellow, reversed, add (J)UMBO. I had the jumbo bit quickly and then the chap followed.
24 Classically simple part of City toured by old lady (7)
GRECIAN – E.C.1 is part of the City of London, insert into GRAN. What’s a Grecian urn, you ask? Not many euros, these days.
25 Monkey, yellow-brown, seen around first day of month (7)
TAMARIN – Today’s primate emerged from another very dusty corner of the grey cells. MAR 1 inserted into TAN.
26 Fuming, one arrests any number for excessive drinking (12)
INTEMPERANCE – IN TEMPER = fuming, then insert N into ACE = one.

Down
1 Gossip’s outstanding feature — wit (7)
CHINWAG – CHIN = outstanding feature, WAG = wit.
2 For example, a currency set up for animal accommodation (7)
LAIRAGE – All reversed; E.G. A RIAL, a rial being the currency of Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Not a word I’d seen before but it seemed plausible from LAIR.
3 Improper distribution of lace in hut (9)
UNETHICAL – (LACE IN HUT)*. I didn’t spend too long looking for nine letter words ending in U, just revisited 16a as noted above.
4 Host’s medal for gallantry mentioned in speech (5)
EMCEE – Sounds like.M.C. Military Cross. A chestnut of a clue.
5 He escaped maybe 45 minutes before policeman turned up at home (7)
HOUDINI – HOU(R) = 45 minutes, 3/4 of hour; DI = policeman, IN reversed.
6 Church artist capturing a chap’s fantasy? (7)
CHIMERA – CE = church, insert HIM, then RA. Corrected, thanks,
7 Keep man in role of monarch without charge (3,3,6)
FOR THE ASKING – FORT (keep) HE (man) AS KING (in role of monarch).
10 Cipher the setter possibly drinks in ? Forget it! (7,5)
NOTHING DOING – NOTHING = cipher, zero; DOG could be a setter, insert IN.
15 Reportedly throw out church carpet (9)
AXMINSTER – Sounds like AXE MINSTER, carpet named after the town in Devon where it is made.
17 Old-fashioned resentment when leader goes for good fish (7)
GUDGEON – DUDGEON is an old fashioned word for resentment, usually heard with ‘HIGH’ in front; amend the D to a G to get a small river fish.
18 Rest in park next to bar (7)
RECLINE – REC = park, recreation ground, LINE = bar.
19 Town crier’s ringer going over island (7)
BELLMAN – BELL = ringer, Isle of MAN.
20 Engross tail end of form in this writer’s language (7)
IMMERSE – Insert M (tail end of form) into I’M (this writer’s) ERSE (poetic name for the Irish language).
22 Dawn’s lad on telephone at university (3-2)
SUN-UP – SUN sounds like SON, UP = at university.

64 comments on “Times 26979 – stuff I didn’t know I knew but did …”

  1. LAIRAGE was new to me too. I knew about the MINSTER carpet from working these things, but it took a few moments to surface. And I felt stupid after not seeing that my having hastily written in FOR THE TAKING was the only reason the anagram for SUGARPLUM seemed to spell something much more exotic (that is, utterly imaginary), the ARGUSPLUM. But it’s been a very long day. This was a fairly steady solve… until the last four or five. Got there in the end though.

    Edited at 2018-03-07 07:11 am (UTC)

  2. It was the crossers of the unknown 17d GUDGEON (I didn’t know “dudgeon” as “resentment”, either) and the maybe-if-I’d-stared-blankly-for-a-further-twenty-minutes-I’d-have-got-there 21a INDICES that got me, but I’d already had my confidence shaken by the unknown LAIRAGE/EAGRE crossers, too. On the grounds that the latter it could just as well have been EEGRE, for all I knew, I didn’t really want to struggle any more what was a 50/50 chance anyway…

    Odd one, this. Had the rest done in about half an hour. Oh well.

    Edited at 2018-03-07 07:16 am (UTC)

    1. I was surprised to finish this in 32 minutes as it was quite tricky and contained at least two unknowns (NELUMBO and LAIRAGE). Thought of ORIFICE early on but only wrote in ICE as I couldn’t parse the first bit for ages. DUDGEON, for those who didn’t know it, is usually preceded by “high”.
      1. I knew “high dudgeon” but never thought of it, and I think I’ve only considered it as the second meaning in Chambers, indignation, rather than resentment, which comes first there… A very fine line often separates my knowns from my unknowns!
    2. DUDGEON into INDICES was where I faltered at the end, not for quite so long, but I thought it was a difficult one-two too, if it’s any consolation!
      1. That is some consolation, yes, thanks 🙂

        I’m still gradually getting faster at these, and getting stymied less often; hopefully there’s still some room for improvement…

        (Though I failed on two 15x15s today, having run aground yet again on a Brummie in the Guardian—I don’t think I’ve ever finished one of his puzzles! I’m almost scared to try the QC now!)

        Edited at 2018-03-07 08:00 pm (UTC)

  3. At 16ac I too had SUGARLUMP which quickly changed thanks to the SUGARPLUM fairy!
    A nifty 24 mins hereabouts it was all fairly straightforward, bar 23ac NELUMBO which was a new to me which might have been a village in Sri Lanka.
    FOI 3dn UNETHICAL
    LOI 8ac CAUTION
    COD 2dn LAIRAGE
    WOD 14ac CHARIVARI – the cat’s chorus

    5dn HOUDINI and 19dn BELLMAN weren’t up to much. Ballast. And at 24 ac how much does a GRECIAN URN?

  4. Biffed a few, including ORIFICE, which I wasted a lot of time on trying to parse; can’t believe I didn’t get it. NELUMBO was lurking in memory refusing to show itself for a while, until I finally thought of LEN. Like Guy, I started with TAKING instead of ASKING. I knew TAMARIN from research on their grammar-learning (in-)abilities, by among others the wonderfully-named W. Tecumseh Fitch. Is ERSE a poetic name? LOI LAIRAGE, of course (lairage, forsooth! the animal equivalent to housage?). COD to HOUDINI.
  5. Another easyish one in a row it seemed to me, though I clearly get tireder as the week goes on as I paused discernibly on a few of the clues here, pushing my time over the 6 minute mark today. I got ___UMBO quickly and remembered that we’d had a plant ending ___UMBO not so long ago but in my befuddled state I couldn’t recall it immediately, which was annoying, and then I had a similar experience with BELL___. Most of the long clues were entirely biffable. LOI INDICES due to my lack of mathematical credentials.

    When we we going to get that long-promised stink, eh, horryd? If it doesn’t arrive by Friday I’m holding you personally responsible.

    1. M’Lord V., I accept the challenge and the responsibilty – and would assume Friday will be your (our) Waterloo!

      Meanwhile why not have a bash at the Oldie ‘Genius’ puzzle? Or wait for the next Club Monthly (The Logohorryea)!

      1. The Oldie Genius is not what it was and I tend to finish it too easily these days as once the theme is identified (always hinted at very heavily in the intro) it usually falls readily into place. I don’t put my quicker finishing times down to an improvement on my part.
      2. I did. I seem to remember it taking under 10 minutes? But having gotten it all correct is never guaranteed…
        1. It will be interesting to see how many others were in the same camp. I clearly wasn’t alone in finding it hard.
          1. Just checked, 8:43 was my time on that clock. I feel like Dean’s puzzles were completely impenetrable to me at first but I’ve got a lot better at them, especially when his name’s at the top so you can see his unique style coming…
            1. Dean’s puzzles were completely impenetrable to me at first but based on Sunday’s experience I feel I’m getting worse at them!
              1. I didn’t fare too badly with the Sunday offering apart from being expected to know a foreign expression which according to my dictionary is not even native to its home country but dialect of a former colony.
                1. I don’t know about its origin but the expression is certainly in reasonably common use. It’s perfectly familiar to me but it just didn’t occur to me that we would see it in an English crossword!
  6. 17:26 … finishing with SUGARPLUM, where I’d also been trying to work with ASKING biffed in 7d

    A lot of nice penny-drop moments here. Vocab-wise, nothing, I think, that hasn’t cropped up before in The Times and it’s useful to get a reminder of a few ‘regular obscurities’, like CHARIVARI and NELUMBO, before they fade entirely from memory

  7. An inexcusable spelling mistake rather nullified my 18 minutes: my version of 26ac didn’t follow the setter’s generous directions.
    I’d like to suggest you’ve been doing these things too long when you see hubbub and think CHARIVARI, like LAIRAGE and NELUMBO never seen outside crosswords.
    On the other hand, I spent an extended time on LOI INDICES because I got wordplay and definition the wrong way round. At least I now know there’s no word for “takes risks” that fits I_D_C_S.
    1. “Inexcusable” – well put. If I can’t spell at least I should be able to parse 🙁

      I was running at 23 minutes otherwise, which is close to my best time. Oh well, at least I’m in good company (and with keriothe too).

      Thanks to the setter and to Pip for the blog.

  8. 27 min 18 secs.

    I did this on my iPhone 5S. I’ve not attempted the xword at speed before on a small iPhone. Not to be recommended and I’m now regretting the decision as the solving bit went quite well and could have been a much better time.

    I went for Sugarlump initially too. I didn’t know Charivari but went for it from word play.

    Oh – and another win for The Villa last night. 😀

    1. It’s quite a strange interface on the iPhone, albeit I guess there’s not much that can be done when you can’t fit the grid on the screen. I try to avoid it as much as I can.

      Terrible pun by the way 😉

  9. Quite easy, considering .. Nelumbo either was, or anyway felt new to me. Charivari I did know because the late lamented Punch magazine had a column by that name. In 6dn I don’t understand quite how “I, me” = “a chap’s”
    2. ‘Punch’ magazine I believe was once called the ‘London Charivari’ back in the 19thC.

      Edited at 2018-03-07 03:38 pm (UTC)

  10. I was interested to see Pip mention there being several obscurities because I didn’t actually notice whilst solving, but looking at them now there are quite a few – EAGRE, NELUMBO, CHARIVARI, LAIRAGE. I think that when I’m “on the wavelength” I’ll often parse the answer and not really notice the word.

    I’m with others who think we’re due a stinker. Perhaps we could push verlaine over the 10 minute mark on Friday?

  12. 19m today. Found this fairly straightforward but with concern about 6d where the answer was clear but I couldn’t really accept ‘ime’ as a substitute for a chap’s. Unless anybody has mentioned this already I think ‘Charivari’ was the original name of ‘Punch’ magazine.
  13. 32 minutes with LOI IMMERSE. DNK LAIRAGE and needed all crossers for that. Liked INDICES for the Maths connotations of notations, but COD to EMINENT by a short head from FOI HOUDINI. I dredged up CHARIVARI from somewhere. NELUMBO also unknown but could be nothing else once crossers in place. This setter’s made a happy man feel very old – I’d still say dudgeon. I’ve taken umbrage and I feel better already. Thank you Pip, and also setter for an enjoyable start to the day.
  14. DNK NELUMBO but got it finally once BELLMAN was in place. COD to FOR THE ASKING. Drove by Axminster on Monday morning from Dartmoor. Over the weekend we were discussing lairage, silage, haylage etc. I used to drive a Chimera; wonderful car.
  15. Whipped through this in 8.50 and with no real problems other than not knowing LAIRAGE, but the surface was friendly.

    FOI 8A

    LOI 24A

    COD 16A, where I COULD have fallen into the trap, but already had 3D.

    Now then folks….11A. Surely a towpath is specifically to be found by a canal, not a river ?

    Otherwise this was right up my street, rather reminding me of a regional final puzzle back in the good old days.

    Thanks Pip and setter.

    1. I thought the same about towpath, but a quick google throws up some examples next to rivers.
      1. Yur; my nearest towpath runs along the Avon under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and I recall the Three Men towing their boat along the Thames…
    2. As Mr C says. Some canals (eg the Grand Union) flow into rivers and the need for a tow didn’t stop at the junction.
  16. Very well constructed crossword with all the obscure words well parsed so that they couldn’t be anything else. My vow yesterday to parse every word was completely forgotten, though in today’s case there wasn’t many to check on afterwards, although I wasn’t aware of cipher meaning nothing.
    1. I’d have to disagree with you there, following the recent Inez/Ines debacle and remembering back to another woman’s name I’ve forgotten, whose crossers were I_E_A and who I think I wrongly guessed as IVETA or IRENA.
      What’s wrong with LON (Chaney) or LIN (Oeding/Carter/Houston/Dawson/Davies/McCarthy not to mention 84,000,000 Chinese blokes c.f. Ines/Inez as foreigners) when you’re looking for a man’s name? It’s a lottery – not unlike “Scottish” words made up by the editors of Chambers – where any random combination of letters “becomes” a word or name.
      Yours in high dudgeon,
      Intemperate from Tunbridge Wells
  18. 24 minutes, which I was pleased with, anyway. Couldn’t remember NELUMBO but did remember – close enough anyway – CHARIVARI, so it’s a win on points against the fading of the light for me today.
  19. 20:43. My hot summer of 1976 was spent auditing slaughterhouses around Cambridge so I came across LAIRAGEs there. Luckily, I had already heard the tale of the young audit clerk who was given an inkpad and a Vouched stamp and told to stamp each pig in the lairage to confirm that the animal had been taken into account.

    Edited at 2018-03-07 11:40 am (UTC)

  20. A pleasantly old-fashioned feel to today’s offering (at least with the exception of da BLING). As others have already found, the “obscure” words, like EAGRE and CHARIVARI, and LAIRAGE were a) not all that that obscure if you’ve been crosswording for a long time (and can manage to remember new words when they crop up – rather worryingly, the one which seemed most unfamiliar to me was NELUMBO, which apparently came up in a puzzle as recently as last December), and b) were very fairly clued for those who had forgotten or never known them.

    Today’s near-blunder involved creating my own incorrect version of 16ac which didn’t even have the virtue of using the right letters for the anagram i.e. SUGARPALM, which I vaguely imagined would be where we get palm sugar from, if it existed, which it doesn’t.

  21. A careless INDUCES at 16a negated my 20:15, causing wailing and gnashing of teeth. Got hold of the wrong definition, wasn’t happy with it, but forgot to go back in the rush to submit. Was happy to have successfully constructed the unknown EAGRE, NELUMBO, CHARIVARI and LAIRAGE though. 1a went in as I read the clue and thought CULT, with the river and wine parsed as I surveyed what I’d just typed. NOTHING DOING was my final entry with cypher for zero remembered from a fairly recent puzzle. Thanks setter and Pip.
  22. 9:21. I started really quickly on this, and thought I might be on for a sub-5 minuter. But the bottom half proved trickier than the top. Still, judging by other comments I seem to have been on the wavelength: I even remembered NELUMBO. All of which makes it all the more irritating to have put INTEMPERENCE. Thinking you know how to spell something when you don’t is especially dangerous for an inveterate biffer like me.

    Edited at 2018-03-07 01:45 pm (UTC)

  23. 23’41 after a final stutter on Indices. Two or three half-biffed, iffed? I associate charivari with old Punch issues – maybe there was a column of the name. Lovely word, let it live say I.
  24. Well I did wonder about INDUCES in the context of giving birth, but fortunately thought better of it.
  25. 25m but I had EIGRE so the dreaded red letter on submission. In all honesty I wouldn’t have been able to choose between the i and the a so clearly an unfair obscurity which if I’d known how to spell the word would have been fine! I enjoyed the puzzle which I found straightforward with oddly no unknowns (other than spelling) so this setter becomes my favourite. Thank you to setter and blogger today. My COD to GUDGEON for its pleasant surface and use of a favourite word of mine in DUDGEON.
  26. I walked past Andy “Linxit” at London Bridge Station this morning! I failed to seize the moment and accost him but he seemed quite distracted anyway, perhaps still contemplating nelumbos or lairages after his morning solve.
  27. I briefly registered “99% complete” before my finger twitched on the submit button. More annoying than a typo. However I’m counting it as a win in 11.30 because I doubt N-LUMBO would have delayed me long, the UMBO having been written in earlier on. Unless Lon Chaney had occurred to me of course.

    Edited at 2018-03-07 01:28 pm (UTC)

  28. Plenty of unknowns for me – NELUMBO, LAIRAGE, CHARIVARI – but all gettable from wordplay, even if my fingers were crossed for the last of those. I spent just shy of 14 minutes on this one, with the last 3 or so on the INDICES / GUDGEON (another unknown) crossover.
  29. Found this very enjoyable, on the whole, although I didn’t end up with a superfast time, by my standards (17.20). Maybe because, as one who relies on the papyrus version, I’ve been deprived of the crossword for a week or so. Nelumbo was new to me, but I fortunately didn’t think of Lon Chaney, either. COD 26ac.
  30. 48 but another with induces. Happy enough with my effort given that I didn’t know nelumbo charivari eagre lairage nor indeed was “for the asking” a phrase that was familiar to me. The “asking” part was on its own for almost the whole of my solving time. An enjoyable challenge nonetheless. Thanks setter and Pip.
  31. This was pretty easy and 38:31 is only 40 seconds over my PB for a weekday cryptic. Unusually I knew all the obscure words and the only clue I couldn’t parse was 10d.

    COD 5d as I liked 45 mins = HOU, although I think I’ve seen it before.

    Thanks for the blog.

  32. The best part of 45 minutes for this one – inexcusably, since I had all but RECLINE and INDICES in about half an hour. I spend ages parsing 21ac farce about ace, and didn’t think of “line” for “bar” in 18d.

    Oddly, LAIRAGE and EAGRE didn’t give me too much grief, even though they were both NHOs for me. NELUMBO (wife, presumably, of the dishevelled Italian-American ex-army detective, Col. Umbo) held me up for a while; I was pretty sure it was right, but could think of no plausible way to explain myself if it turned out to be wrong.

  33. 26:22. I found this mostly straightforward although I hesitated over LOI eagre – only vaguely remembered from crosswords past – and took a while to put the “popular” ahead of the “takes risks” which precedes it in 21ac. Spent too long thinking the wp was “popular exponents” and the Def “takes risks”.
  34. I found this quite a stinker, despite the fact that I only took 30 minutes to solve it (that’s close to my best time), but it was full of obscure words, really stuff I didn’t know I knew but did (did I get that right?). It helped a bit that I didn’t see the other anagram of SUGARPLUM, and CHARIVARI was no problem because Punch, a venerable publication some of you may remember, had a regular column called the London Charivari — I don’t recall seeing it in crosswords before. But I was sure LAIRAGE was made up by the setter, and DUDGEON and GUDGEON were just educated guesses based on a general feeling of what might be a proper (and suitably archaic) word for the concepts involved in the clue. I was simply too lazy to think more about them. And for NELUMBO, LEN seemed a more likely fellow than LON.

    I didn’t really like the clue for EMCEE, because the word itself derives from the pronunciation of the letters MC=Master of Ceremonies, so the cryptic clue here is really just a literal definition.

  35. Came to this very late in the day, probably too late to be overly worried about thorough parsing. Hence a number went in with a shrug, including NELUMBO, INDICES, EAGRE & LAIRAGE. I was very surprised to see I’d finished in a tad under 10 minutes and even more surprised to come here and find all correct. On another day I could easily have had half a dozen wrong.

Comments are closed.