Times 26989 – One of the fifty ways?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 27 minutes
Music: Mingus at Antibes

Greetings, all.   I am acting tonight as a last-minute substitute for Ulaca, who is otherwise engaged.  Usually, when you get a puzzle you are not normally scheduled to blog, it turns out to be a toughie, but this was not the case this time.  I did feel a little like I was gliding through with knowledge rather than solving skill, as many of the clues lend themselves to that approach.   If you see ‘where elopers once wed’, and instantly think of Gretna Green, you will do well too.

Tonight’s music was recommended by a poster on the VinylAsylum.   It is the type of jazz that can only be described as ‘out there’, but if you like Ornette Coleman or the later Coltrane, it may be to your taste.   How do I solve while listening to such a dreadful cacophony?   It loosens up your brain, I say, and causes you to make unexpected connections.

Across
1 Like GBS, brought up to keep a lot of drink in quarters? (11)
BEWHISKERED – B(E(WHISK[y])E)RED, a rather convoluted cryptic most solvers will just biff – that is, if they recognized Shaw’s initials and know what he looked like!
7 Old crone’s coarse tobacco lacking substance at first (3)
HAG – [s]HAG, made famous by Sherlock Holmes.
9 Irregular rule a girl violated (9)
GUERRILLA – anagram of RULE A GIRL
10 Pulpy food rejected always at university (5)
PUREE – EER UP backwards.
11 Composer run into in hospital area (7)
SMETANA – S(MET)AN + A.   There aren’t many 7-letter composers famous enough to use in a crossword – the only other two I can think of are Strauss and Stamitz.
12 Governor’s girl displaying coarse fabric (7)
HESSIAN – H.E’S + SIAN, that is, His Excellency’s.   Evidently HE has chosen a Welsh lassie.
13 Board engaging medic in Eastern States (5)
EMBUS – E(MB)US.   I constructed this from the cryptic, but did not recognize it until after I finished the puzzle. 
15 Knocking back most of the drink, pine throughout dark hours (9)
NIGHTLONG – TH[e] GIN backwards + LONG. 
17 Model chap, one sent out to produce copy (9)
ARCHETYPE – ARCH[i]E + TYPE, not an anagram as the opening ”model’ might lead you to suppose.
19 Stratagem old magistrate employed to trap duke (5)
DODGE – DO(D)GE.   Here in crosswordland, the doge and the reeve are old friends.
20 One covers crumbling ruins with hesitation (7)
INSURER – anagram of RUINS + ER.   Not an &lit, but an apt description of most insurance compaies!
22 I enthuse endlessly about tucking into granny’s casserole (7)
NAVARIN – NA(I RAV[e] backwards)N, a word I only vaguely knew, but an easy cryptic.
24 Conflict interrupting commercial settlement (5)
AWARD – A(WAR)D, a settlement in the sense of what the court awards the plaintiff.
25 Rascal caught accomplice dipping into booty (9)
SCALLYWAG – S(C + ALLY)WAG.
27 Consider senior cleric’s responsibility (3)
SEE – double definition, obvious because we see a lot of sees around here, mostly Ely.
28 Hotchpotch of salmon pie in port? (11)
MINNEAPOLIS – anagram of SALMON PIE IN.  UK solvers may be surprised that Minneapolis is a port, but it is.  It’s certainly a long way down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

Down
1 Agent involved in spying? It makes you sick! (3)
BUG – Double definition.
2 At which place heroin used to be around (5)
WHERE – W(H)ERE.
3 Way to stop nearly half of 20’s hostile attacks (7)
INROADS – IN(ROAD)S[urer], a simple but rather uneeded cross-reference.
4 Dispatch English composer unknown in Irish town (9)
KILLARNEY – KILL ARNE + Y.  Sorry, he’s immortal, and so is Beerbohm Tree!
5 Contact a companion about being on top (5)
REACH – RE  + A CH, where CH = Companion of Honour.
6 Carefully place silicon in store (7)
DEPOSIT – DEPO(SI)T. 
7 English novelist pronounced on poet’s boldness (9)
HARDIHOOD – Sounds like HARDY + HOOD, a poet who is not much read nowadays.   You could look him up.
8 Woman politician covering northern village where elopers once wed (6,5)
GRETNA GREEN – GRET(N)A + GREEN, i.e. a random female name and a politician from the Green Party.   Few will bother with the cryptic, unless Gretna Green is unknown, in which case they will probably struggle.
11 Female child-minder reportedly profits, ignoring one’s roguishness (11)
SHENANIGANS – SHE + sounds like NANNY + GA[i]NS.
14 Support for men only available ultimately behind the scenes (9)
BACKSTAGE – BACK + STAG + [availabl]E.
16 Good to get involved carrying about fruit (9)
GREENGAGE – G (RE) ENGAGE, a fruit found mainly in crosswords.
18 Listener originally lambasting sixties youth over title (7)
EARLDOM – EAR + L[ambastig] + MOD upside-down.   I suppose that  by now, the crosswords editor is receiving angry letters from dukes, marquesses, viscounts, and barons – “What about us!!”
19 Cultivate head of dogwood the first lady cut off (7)
DEVELOP – D[ogwood] + EVE + LOP.
21 Adhesive substance son squeezed into part of tack (5)
RESIN – RE(S)IN, the ‘tack’ used in stables, that is.
23 Break top off hand tool making spiked wheel (5)
ROWEL – [t]ROWEL.
26 Atlantic state’s supplier of heat and light (3)
GAS – GA’S, where knowledge of the standard two-letter abbreviations for the states of the USA is most  helpful.

69 comments on “Times 26989 – One of the fifty ways?”

  1. Under 38 minutes fully parsed for me, so it can’t have been too hard. ROWEL went in with fingers crossed, as I had forgotten that this was part of a spur.

    And, indeed, I was surprised that MINNEAPOLIS was a port. I was there for half a day some years ago but didn’t see the port. Instead I was taken to Mall of America, the largest shopping mall in the US.

    Thanks, Vinyl, for the blog, and especially the picture of all the non-earl peers rising up in protest. Thanks also to the setter for a gentle start to the week.

  2. I had a tough time with this. Didn’t know Gretna Green or Hessian, and while I recognised GBS I didn’t quickly see we were talking appearances.

    I lived in Minneapolis St Paul for two formidable winters – the natives had buttons which read “43 Below Keeps Out The Riff-Raff”, and the average speed on the highways increased by about 15mph as soon as it started snowing. Go figure. In summer the mosquitos sometimes carried small dogs off. Minneapolis is as far north as the Mississippi River is navigable, and the falls which stop boats and barges going further once provided power to process northern Great Plains wheat before it was shipped downriver.

    Edited at 2018-03-19 03:17 am (UTC)

  3. I must say GRETNA GREEN surprised me by its gimme-ness, but the wordplay was immediately discernible once I typed it in. I needed the whiskey before getting GBS, but indeed biffed then without ever working out the wordplay. DNK NAVARIN (although I did know ‘savarin’, which lost me a couple of seconds). LOI EMBUS, when I finally twigged to ‘board’. I don’t know about the English nobility, but I’m ready to send a letter demanding a moratorium on earldoms (and Beerbohm Tree while I’m at it).
  4. As a fan of clues read together that provide a sensible phrase, I give you bewhiskered hag, award scallywag and a line from the Minnesota Tourist Office, see Minneapolis! At a push there is also where backstage(?)

    22ac has me craving navarin of lamb!

    Haven’t we had earldom and earl elsewhere recently?
    30m 0s

    1. Yes, and also almost identical clue to 22dn last Saturday, in a crossword yet-to-be-blogged..

      Edited at 2018-03-19 09:11 am (UTC)

      1. I think it was the previous Saturday, as blogged (before he starts feeling ignored) by brnchn not far below this one. And twice in the following week.
        1. Well it was only when I was half way through the comment that I realised I was thinking of RESIN while he was referring to EARLDOM .. let us just say there seems to be some repetition of late!
          1. I sometimes wonder if the setters occasionally put a word to each other, then all try it on, for their amusement. Not that Earldom would be the word of choice, I wouldn’t think. Other times I think a setter has a word, and comes up with a half dozen interesting ways to clue it, so for the next couple weeks every time he or she has the right crossing letters, we get Finzi
  5. 36 mintes but I struggled with two or three in the NW corner (1dn, would you believe?) and needed all the checkers in place before finally solving 1ac, my LOI. Trusted to wordplay to arrive at the unknown or forgotten, HARDIHOOD and ROWEL.

    I’m having a problem with ‘run’ = MET at 11ac. In my book, ‘run’ = ‘meet’ and ‘ran’ = ‘met’, but perhaps there’s a usage I’ve not thought of that justifies what we’ve been given.

    Edited at 2018-03-19 05:35 am (UTC)

    1. I didn’t notice when I was solving, but when I read the blog, I almost told Vinyl that he had a typo; fortunately, I checked the puzzle itself. I assume that both verbs are in the past participle form, as in ‘having met/run into Max in the hospital, …’.
      1. Thanks. Yes, I can see that works in your example but still not 100% convinced about the clue.
        1. Nor am I. They could be reduced passives — having been met/run into in the hospital — but I, at least, don’t allow ‘run into’ in the ‘meet’ sense to passivize. (‘run into by a gurney’, OK, but.)
    2. I needed to see the BRED part of 1a before I got 1d, quite late in the solve. As a bonus that led to GUERRILLA.
    3. I had the same problem with met/run – but it works if you consider “run into” as an adjective rather than as a past participle – i.e. a person run into (a person met).
  6. A 22-minute slog ending in a fail for me, with a careless ‘scalliwag’.

    I briefly thought about Shaw at 1a but as I had no idea what he looked like the clue never made much sense to me (I eventually decided GBS must be some character in Beatrix Potter). Wasn’t too keen on the two long-dead writers to clue an archaism at 7d, either.

    And I feel SMETANA needs a rest. So, not my favourite Monday puzzle, but each to each’s own

    Thanks to Paul for the MINNEAPOLIS insights (all I knew of it came through reading John Sandford books) and to vinyl for listening to the music no one else will

    1. A chap in my local pub gave me a stack of John Sandfords which I haven’t yet started. He knows I like Robert Parker and Robert Crais so thought I might like these. Are they any good? I know from your past comments that we usually like the same authors. Ann
      1. They’re literary crack cocaine, Ann, and definitely on the superior side — he’s a seriously skilled writer with a feel for the genre. He writes bad guys especially well. I’m guessing it’s a stack of the ‘Prey’ series you’ve been given, with the Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport; they’re really good, though my favourite Sandfords were a shorter early series featuring a ‘good bad guy’ called Kidd.

        As you like Robert Crais (as I do, a lot), I’m certain you’ll enjoy Sandford. In fact I envy you having them all waiting for you!

  7. Came up with a few of my unknowns—NAVARIN, EMBUS, ROWEL—but failed on a few others, like GBS’s look, HARDIHOOD, KILLARNEY. All told five and a half (I had the HARDI… bit) left over at the end of my hour.

    I should’ve got BUG and GUERRILLA, I think, but without remembering the doge, Arne or Hood, I think I still would’ve struggled to finish no matter how long I took. Not a great start to the week…

    1. Almost identical solving experience to Gothick Matt with five and a half left after 70 mins. Spent 40 mins failing to add to the answers I had entered after 30 mins but unwilling to give up. Bewhiskered Killarney Embus Hardihood Archetype and backstage unsolved. Probably should have got a couple of those but just too hard for me today
  8. 35 mins with yoghurt, granola, compote, banana.
    Back from hols.
    So not Guillain-Barré syndrome then?
    On the open top bus tour of Dublin a few years back, the commentator told the story of GBS who was a frequent visitor to the Irish national Gallery. When asked: ‘If the Gallery was on fire, which painting would you save?’, he replied, ‘The one nearest the exit.’
    MER at ‘Model chap’.
    Mostly I liked Scallywag.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl
  9. 21 minutes with LOI and COD EMBUS, which was nicely hidden. It’s made a change to be humming a Bing song. What with KILLARNEY and SHENANIGANS, was this a late Paddy’s day offering? There were no snakes to be seen and he did get rid of them. GRETNA GREEN a gimme for those of us more mature in years. Pleasant start to the week. Thank you V and setter.
  10. Interesting link between 9ac GUERRILLA and 25ac SCALLYWAG –
    had ‘GUBBINS’ been included as an answer then the original ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ would have had their leader.

    FOI 7ac HAG
    LOI 13ac EMBUS
    COD 17ac ARCHETYPE
    WOD 25ac SCALLYWAG there were other contenders such as 11dn SHENANIGANS,22ac NAVARIN and 1ac BEWHISKERED.

    32 mins for a rather neat Monday offering.

    I did ponder KILLKENNY at 4dn – a very nice pint of the black-stuff.

    Edited at 2018-03-19 09:10 am (UTC)

  11. Not as easy for me as a usual Monday, 32 minutes with HARDIHOOD a hopeful guess. Also had an issue with RUN for ran in 11a but I see above there are ways it could work i.e. run into. Read a couple of William Kent Krueger novels recently set in the wilds north of Minneapolis, (Iron Lake was one) felt cold just turning the pages. Brrr!.
  12. 35m all correct but the last 15 spent on the SW corner. I also shared the run/met misgivings discussed above. Odd coincidence as I’m in Broadway near Evesham where this weekend we have enjoyed my niece’s 50th birthday ‘party of many shenanigans’, a word I’d forgotten I knew until the invite arrived. Appropriate Irish theme to this crossword given the Grand Slam achievement on Saturday. Good puzzle and blog today; thanks to both providers.

    Edited at 2018-03-19 09:33 am (UTC)

  13. Got BEWHISKERED while considering how ‘bearded’ could fit. Must be a clue somewhere involving needing a shave? LOI EMBUS. I have been to GRETNA GREEN, which is a stop for Anglo-Scottish coaches, and lacks any subtlety or joy whatsoever. 18′ thanks vinyl and setter.
  14. 15.49, taking until almost LOI to see the required salient feature of GBS. Didn’t he write plays or something?
    SHENANIGANS I have never knowingly seen written down, and certainly never in the singular until today when I checked it (post solve, honest) in Chambers. I see no-one owns up to knowing the origin, but it surely must be Irish because, like she-lay-lea, it’s not spelled as pronounced (at least by me). That plus, apparently, hip hop group House of Pain titled their best-of album “Shamrocks & Shenanigans”. Nailed it.
    I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who wondered what the fnaarr an EMBUS was. Something medical?
    Must I also confess to thinking Southpark when entering KILLKENNY? On edit: that might have been amusing had it not been KILLARNEY. Red Dwarf? Terminator?
    Thanks V for being patient enough to parse GRETNA GREEN and ARCHETYPE properly.

    Edited at 2018-03-19 09:46 am (UTC)

    1. So SHENANIGANS means ‘roguishness’, does it? Collins dictionary may think so,
      but I’ve never met any normal English-speaker who does. An act of roguishness, perhaps, but the quality no.
  15. A nice gentle jog with a good deal of biffing

    Killarney is well worth a visit. It’s on the Ring of Kerry and a grand place for a couple of days stop over. Excellent golf, much local history, good drinking!

    1. Agreed, Jimbo, I used to be a regular visitor when we live in ROI, but the superb golf courses especially Mahoney’s Point tended to be loaded with groups of Japanese taking videos of each shot and 6 hours a round. A bit like St Andrews can be. I see there is now a third course at Killarney, although don’t know anyone who has played it.
  16. 24 min 35 secs with one wrong. I’ve not run into Smetana before and went with Shemana.

    To explain my absence last week for those of you who have been fretting. I wasn’t able to focus both on doing the crossword each day and consistently identifying and backing losers at Cheltenham races. Fortunately that distraction has now gone so I’m back in the zone. Although somewhat bruised and battered – with no respite to my current fortunes when Bolton Wanderer’s lot beat us on Saturday.

    Onwards ……

    Edited at 2018-03-19 09:47 am (UTC)

    1. I made a slightly unusual killing on Friday. Picked an each way selection in every race, £5 each way on two of them and £2 each way on the other five. Then each way doubles through each level at decreasing stakes, total outlay of £41.

      None of them won, but four made the frame at decent odds, and I made a profit of £125 !

      I lived in Sutton Coldfield in the early 70’s and spent three happy seasons on the Holte End, and enjoyed an outing to Wembley where Villa so nearly turned Spurs over.

    2. We needed the points. And some more! You’ll probably have to do it via the play-offs now and Fulham are looking good. David’s PNE are my dark horses.
  17. Very pleasant Monday-ish fare, meaning I have little to add to what has already been said. I think the last time we had a surprising port it was Ipswich, though it must be said that Minneapolis really puts it in its place when it comes to being inland.

    (Idly wondering whether it might, in fact, be the most inland port in the world, I found that someone had already tried to answer this question, and thus learned that the answer is – spoiler alert – probably possibly yes).

    Edited at 2018-03-19 10:02 am (UTC)

  18. Since when was a “navarin” a casserole? My lovely rum baba would be insulted!
    1. Isn’t that a savarin? Sounds a good meal though, Navarin of Lamb followed by Rum Baba. I’ll be round.
  19. I thought this meant something else and I had “prototype” for a while, otherwise no hold-ups. 14.19
  21. 9.09 for this friendly Monday stroll.

    FOI was HAG, and that took me straight to GRETNA GREEN for the first time in ten years. There was actually a wedding taking place, a beautiful bride in a horse-drawn carriage, but I was more interested in the memorial to the victims of the 1915 Quintinshill rail disaster. About 230 perished when gas lighting set fire to the wooden carriages of a troop train after a collision. Still the worst tragedy in British railway history. They never reached the Somme….

    I biffed SMETANA ( no young man, the bride was not battered), and share the misgivings of Vinyl and others.

    COD SHENANIGANS
    WOD EMBUS
    LOI BUG (ridiculous !)

    Thanks Vinyl and setter, off to PUREE my NAVARIN (I don’t think I can get locked up for it).

  22. Barely upright with the lergy, so was pleased to have this done in 30 mins, when on submission i discovered SCALLIWAG. HARDIHOOD was LOI as I had never heard of Hood.
  23. Slower than I should have been, I think, taking 12m 24s despite the fact there was nothing too devious here. In 11a I took a while to notice that both “into” and “in” were present, but I can’t honestly say that was a huge time-killer.

    I also had KILLKENNY briefly, before remembering it only had a single L, and happily it didn’t take long for KILLARNEY to spring to mind.

    In 9a I was momentarily taken aback by an anagram that could almost exactly make the definition…

    1. After HAG this was my second one in. I immediately thought that IRREGULAR was the answer and was preparing to write in as Disgusted of Havanna when the peso dropped. I then started looking for other answers like CARTHORSE and ORCHESTRA to no avail.

      Edited at 2018-03-19 01:38 pm (UTC)

  24. I made very heavy weather of this, stretching it out to around 25 minutes so not a Monday archetype for me.
  25. Some unusual(for me) words kept me cogitating for 39:46 before this puzzle yielded. HARDIHOOD was my LOI and required an alphabet trawl to get HOOD from _O_D. I was still suspicious of the resultant word, but was pleasantly surprised to find it exists. I didn’t see what was going on at 1a until I got the K from KILLARNEY once KENNY had been dispatched. NAVARIN was laboriously constructed from wordplay at which point I mentally slapped my forehead. Still didn’t get the meaning of EMBUS until I came here, assuming like Z that it had something to do with clots. Ah no, that would be me! MINNEAPOLIS took a while to come to view, and I’m grateful to Paul for the Geography lesson, as it’s a place I’d heard of but had no idea where it actually was(is). Thanks setter and V.
    1. I always remember how far north it is as his Bobship is from Minnesota, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline. I think we’ve had it clued as a port once before, as I wasn’t surprised this time.
      1. My knowledge has been increased dramatically by the occurrence of this clue, as my interest has been piqued and I’ve done some Googling as well. Interesting stuff!
  26. 10:33. A gentle return to solving for me after a few days off: I flew back from America on Friday and didn’t get any solving at all done over the weekend, thanks to numerous cooking, taxi-driving and other family commitments. It was very nice to meet some of the US contingent in New York on Thursday.
    I’ve been to MINNEAPOLIS and I was very surprised to discover that it’s a port.
    KILLARNEY is the name of a provincial park in Ontario where one of my kids is going for a camping trip this summer, so it was familiar even if I don’t remember coming across the town before. Whatever gets you there.
    1. Glad you got back in one piece Keriothe and hope you were able to doze on the plane. It was very nice indeed to meet you. I have an outstanding promise to host a crossword get-together on the roof garden of our apt. building which has been rudely interrupted by unscheduled medical stuff in the last couple of years. I haven’t forgotten though and hope you might be up for a decorous garden-party next time (if there is a next time)…..
      1. Thank you Olivia it was likewise a pleasure to meet you. A decorous garden-party sounds wonderful, perhaps I’ll make the trip specially!
  27. Three-fourths of an hour for this, and it felt longer. Much chewiness, and several NHOs (ROWEL, HARDIHOOD). NAVARIN was half-known. EMBUS completely fazed me, and I eventually shrugged and decided that an EMBUS was either a group of people (a “board”) or some sort of plank or platter. If I were going to get on a bus, I’d’ve spelled it “enbus” to go with “enplane” – but then again, Google tells me that I’d be wrong on both counts. Strangely, though, if I were going by rail I would “entrain”. Live and learn. Simpler, I think, to just get on the relevant mode of conveyance.
  28. 1ac not the easiest starter for ten so 7ac my FOI. I also thought an embus must be something with a chairman or a plank before coming here and slapping palm against forehead. I had a misspelt Killkenny at 4dn for a time, wondering if Mr Kenn had composed some well known piece until the composer at 11ac suggested the real composer. Navarin half known and entered from wp. Minneapolis not the first port to spring to mind so I was glad of helpful checkers and clear anagram fodder. Dnk rowel so that was another from wp and checkers. Needed an alphabet trawl to get the hood bit of 7dn, not the first name to appear in my mental list of poets. A chewier than normal start to the week.
  29. Nothing to add. I’m another who imagined an EMBUS was a piece of wood. Knew GBS was Shaw but thought the answer would have something to do with playwriting. I didn’t know Minneapolis was a port but the anagram was very useful. And I always thought 11d ended in ….KINS – which is how I pronounce it. Fun though. 28 minutes. Ann
  30. Ah – that does make sense. I’m enbarrassed not to have figured it out myself.
  31. Are “inroads” hostile attacks? Pleased to say that I did not know that heroin is “h”. Arne is certainly a composer unknown – so the answer should be “Killarne”. “Shenanigans” was a nice clue. Got “embus” without realising why. Wasn’t in the mood tonight – too cold with the boiler off – this crossword did not warm me up!

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