Times 27355 – “…to know which way the wind blows”

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time:14 minutes
Music: Wagner: Tannhauser Overture and Venusberg Music, Reiner/Chicago

We’re certainly back to an easy Monday here, with nearly a record time for me.   The puzzle was eminently biffable, and I certainly biffed away.   I will have to figure out quite a few of the cryptics as I write up the blog, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.   However, the puzzle may not prove as easy for those who live exclusively in the modern world, where antiphons and commonplace books are not longer required.     

Across
1 One of Mitford’s aristos accepting idea for psalm? (8)
ANTIPHON – AN(TIP)HON, where an Hon is presumably an aristo too minor to have a courtesy title.
5 Evangelise quietly about a place of worship (6)
PREACH – P + RE + A CH, a compendium of stock elements.
10 Cowboy hero’s logic had pony prancing round donkey (8,7)
HOPALONG CASSIDY – anagram of LOGIC HAD PONY around ASS.   The original character who first appeared in  1904 was very different from the bowdlerized film versions.
11 Arrangement of feet, having to stagger round vehicle (10)
TETRAMETER – TE(TRAM)ETER.
13 Hairstyle rejected in Waldorf Astoria (4)
AFRO – backwards hidden in [Wald]ORF A[storia] – not a cryptic definition!
15 Doubter’s stomach briefly filled with edible fungus (7)
SCEPTIC – S(CEP)TIC[k].   We stick at nothing here in crosswordland.
17 My one-time mark of noble rank? (7)
CORONET – COR + ONE + T, more stock cryptic elements.
18 Verbally criticise act — it may be part of the service (7)
NOCTURN – sounds like KNOCK TURN.   A Chopin piece would have an ‘E’ on the end.
19 Silent husband leaves to tour African party’s retreat (7)
SANCTUM – S[h](ANC)TUM.   Apparently, ‘shtum’ is not actually Yiddish, although it sounds like it should be. 
21 Struggle with belief (4)
VIEW – VIE + W.
22 He provides forecasts if picked up by crew (10)
WEATHERMAN – sounds like WHETHER + MAN.
25 Standard psychological medicine given thumbs up in cuttings collection (11,4)
COMMONPLACE BOOK – COMMON PLACEBO + OK, originally a notebook in which 17th-century gents recorded bon mots.
27 Watch dispatched by public transport (6)
SENTRY – SENT + RY.
28 Actor, one engaged in resort in the north (8)
THESPIAN – THE(SP(I)A)N. 
Down
1 Loyal friend’s talk stopping main uprising (7)
ACHATES – A(CHAT)ES, where the enclosing letters are SEA inverted.
2 Ram back of cart going to the city (3)
TUP – [car]T + UP, more crosswordese.
3 Old college worker beginning to head American plant (10)
POLYANTHUS – POLY + ANT + H[ead] + US.
4 Big cat in the past seen around university (5)
OUNCE – O(U)NCE, that popular lightweight crossword cat.
6 Head off skirmish — hurry! (4)
RUSH – [b]RUSH.
7 Mufti Indian’s sporting endlessly (2,9)
AD INFINITUM – anagram of MUFTI, INDIAN.
8 Ring paper about Yankee in room above stable? (7)
HAYLOFT – HA(Y)LO + F.T, a popular paper among crossword setters.
9 Branches of learning C-in-C sees developed (8)
SCIENCES – anagram of C-IN-C SEES.
12 Ditch European, not initially a hearty eater (11)
TRENCHERMAN – TRENCH + [g]ERMAN.   In my haste, I had imagined this had something to do with removing the first letter from ‘Frenchman’. 
14 Without trimmings, unlike the Edinburgh Festival? (10)
FRINGELESS – Double definition, referring to the most famous feature of the Edinburgh Festival, at least among crossword setters.
16 Firm conservationists inspiring casual worker’s disdain (8)
CONTEMPT – CO + N(TEMP)T, i.e. the National Trust.
18 Religious probationers, and what they ideally should have? (7)
NOVICES – NO VICES, of course. 
20 Little fellow leading around revolting family (7)
MANIKIN – MA(NIK)IN, where the ‘kin’ at the end might fool you for a bit, but it’s actually upside-down and in the middle.
23 Tutor originally active in college (5)
TEACH – TE(A[ctive])CH
24 Visit ancient city? It’s grim (4)
DOUR – DO UR.   Probably not advisable nowadays.
26 Broad sash — old one worn by bishop (3)
OBI – O(B)I, from a kimono or a Japanese LP. 

65 comments on “Times 27355 – “…to know which way the wind blows””

  1. Close to a pb for me, and the first time in a long time to get below 10 minutes. I did some biffing myself–HOPALONG CASSIDY from the H P, WEATHERMAN, MANIKIN. I never did get the KIN right, so ended with a ? by the clue. Jessica Mitford’s autobiography is “Hons and Rebels”.
  2. NB The American release of Decca’s hilarious autobiography was entitled ‘Daughters and Rebels’ which may explain Lord Vinyl’s omission.

    It now transpires, from a recent trip to Munich, that the bullet in Unity’s little gun was after all a blank!

    FOI 4dn OUNCE
    LOI & COD 1ac ANTIPHON
    WOD 10ac HOPALONG CASSIDY – Bolton Wanderer, do tell!?

    Time 31 mins

    Edited at 2019-05-20 03:27 am (UTC)

    1. William Boyd didn’t become Hopalong until 1935, Before then, I think he was only in books. The character was cleaned up for the films and only drank sarsaparilla. And not even in a dirty glass! His horse’s name was Topper. I remember him once shooting the baddie in the back though. That wasn’t in the cowboy code.
  3. The easiest of starts for me as an early, tricky clue appeared in Saturday’s Jumbo with only one word changed and it had been my LOI so was extremely fresh in my mind. Much of the rest of this was a doddle but I struggled a bit with the metric feet and the unfamiliar spellings of MANIKIN and NOCTURN. Apparently the latter is not an alternative spelling as the musical composition in English always takes the French spelling with an ‘E’ even though the composer credited with inventing the form, John Field, was Irish.

    Edited at 2019-05-20 04:28 am (UTC)

    1. I assumed, from ‘service’, that this was part of the Christian (Catholic?) liturgy, not a musical piece.
      1. Oh yes, that’s what I found, but I know virtually nothing of RC services so it was news to me. I didn’t mean to suggest that the answer was wrong in any way, but vinyl1 had mentioned Chopin so I was just continuing on that train of thought.

        Edited at 2019-05-20 05:07 am (UTC)

  4. I was hopping along quite nicely but tripped by antiphon, where I still don’t understand the relevance to Mitford and achates.

    1. I’d assumed “an Hon.” was a direct reference to Nancy Mitford’s essay The English Aristocracy, but having just had a flip through it nothing obvious sprang out. I wasn’t alive at the time the whole “U and Non-U” thing kicked off, though, so I may be missing something…

      Edited at 2019-05-20 06:21 am (UTC)

        1. Ah! Thanks, Kevin. Not sure how I missed that this morning, but I did struggle out of bed at 5:30am, so that may have something to do with it. Jessica is the Mitford sister I know least about. Is Hons and Rebels worth a read?
          1. If it’s the Mitford autobio I read, it was quite enjoyable, although I remember nothing from it, aside from her governess telling her as they were about to step into the drawing room before dinner, “You are the least important person in this room, and don’t you forget it!” It comes to mind whenever I read about young people’s need for self-esteem.
    2. Achates was Aeneas’s faithful friend in the Aeneid. *Fidus Achates* has become a (rather worn) term for ‘faithful friend”.
        1. A write-in for an Oxford classicist, I’m ashamed to say!

          Edited at 2019-05-20 10:06 pm (UTC)

  5. 33 minutes, slowed down by the unknowns of ANTIPHON, NOCTURN, ACHATES, POLYANTHUS and TRENCHERMAN. On the whole, though, a fairly smooth progression from top to bottom, with FOI 2d TUP and LOI 24d DOUR.

    I don’t know anything about HOPALONG CASSIDY other than his name, but the trivia-loving side of me is pleased to note from Wikipedia that “In 1950, Hopalong Cassidy was featured on the first lunchbox to bear an image, causing sales of Aladdin Industries lunch boxes to jump from 50,000 units to 600,000 units per year.”

    Helpfully I keep a COMMONPLACE BOOK!

  6. Would have been a good time, but was unwilling to put in the unknown MANIKIN unparsed. ANTIPHONs are great fun to sing.

    Another of Jessica’s great works was A Fine Old Conflict, a mondegreen for the final conflict.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  7. Indeed, Sir! I note ‘The White Fringeless Orchid’ -platanthera integrilabia

    Also fringeless moccasins from M&S.

    However, cricket has a definitive boundary, so cannot entertain the word ‘fringeless’.

  8. Pleasant Monday fare, with a brief pause to decide that there might easily be a NOCTURN as well as a nocturne. POLYANTHUS was a plant which I knew, unusually, though I couldn’t guarantee to pick one out of a line-up.
    1. If you put a pale-yellow polyanthus, primula and a primrose in the police line-up, It would be difficult to spot the difference. But you’re not meant to move wild primroses from their native habitat, so say it’s one of the other two if challenged in your garden.
  9. 17:31 … as keriothe says, not too hard once you reset your mental lexicon to public school chorister circa 1948.

    FRINGELESS does get a specific mention in Chambers, so I guess it IS cricket, but maybe more Twenty20 than test.

    Took me ages to understand the double-nested wordplay of THESPIAN, but now that I do it gets my COD vote. Very neat.

    1. As you might expect Chambers lists about twenty basquillion words ending -LESS. Noseless, zealless, fogless? If it’s cricket they’re definitely wearing pyjamas.
  10. 35 mins with half a Fat Rascal (hoorah) – a post holiday treat.
    After negotiating Achates and Antiphon, I got befuddled by the Kin ending and struggled with the devious Manikin.
    Mostly I liked the Edinburgh Fringe and No vices.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl
      1. Manikin be cauld, but few are frozen, as my late father-in-law would have it.
  11. I have to admit to two typos today, which both should have been Us. One was in the innocuous 2d, where I immediately got the UP to town bit, added the T, and wondered if TAP was strong enough for ram. The other was at the end of INFINITUM.

    If anybody spots a couple of marbles rolling around loose, could they return them to me?

    My time of 15 minutes doesn’t seem to be otherwise exceptional today, with PBs cascading down the page.

    But I did like the PLACEBO effect NO VICES, and the deceitful little MANIKIN, my LOI, where I indeed tried to understand how MANI could be anything.

    1. MANI’s just silly; ‘revolting’ tells us it’s INAM. I mean, duh.
  12. 12m. I didn’t find this particularly easy, full as it was of funny old-timey words: ANTIPHON, NOCTURN, COMMONPLACE BOOK, ACHATES, POLYANTHUS, MANIKIN. You can’t biff away merrily if you don’t know the words, and the ANTIPHON/POLYANTHUS crossing pair (my last two in) struck me as particularly tricky. Even so, in the end it wasn’t that hard.
    Like GM I knew absolutely nothing about HOPALONG CASSIDY other than the name.
    Is FRINGELESS a word? I mean you can make a word by adding LESS to pretty much anything but it seems somehow not quite cricket.
  13. No exact time but nodded off on train with half a dozen left. TETRAMETER eventually came to me followed quickly by TRENCHERMAN, VIEW, NOVICES and NOCTURN im that order. Wasn’ sure how MANIKIN was parsed.

    Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford is quite amusing – not often I read something twice.

  14. Anyone noticed that 1 Across is identical to 32 Across in Saturday’s Jumbo Cryptic
    1. Yup, Jackkt, though he didn’t break embargo by identifying it precisely and notes that it’s not quite identical.
  15. Today’s earworm for people of a certain age, who can remember Hopalong. Mind you, it was still in use a couple of years ago by colleague dog walkers to describe my old fellow in his last days. I found this a strange mix of very easy and really hard, taking 24 minutes when I thought initially I was on for a sub-ten. LOI was TETRAMETER. I did know ANTIPHON but it took an age to dawn on me. I then constructed ACHATES, who I think figured in the Aeneid Book 2, last encountered in 1961 O level. Fortunately, I have several POLYANTHUS in one patch of the garden, although I normally call them primulas. I’ve never heard of a COMMONPLACE BOOK. I didn’t parse or know that definition of MANIKIN, but I could think of nothing else. COD to WEATHERMAN. God knows which way the wind blows. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2019-05-20 09:10 am (UTC)

  16. I was chugging along with few problems until I came to the SE corner, where I was held up by an inability to see WEATHERMAN and FRINGELESS for the best part of 5 minutes. Eventually the pennies dropped and I scraped in under the half hour at 28:08. Despite having studied the Aeneid for Latin O Level, I didn’t remember ACHATES and had to construct him from wordplay. Ditto TETRAMETER. ANTIPHON wasn’t a problem as the RC Mass tends to have its fair share of them. I remembered NOCTURN as a church service from a previous puzzle. Hadn’t heard of COMMONPLACE BOOK, but the assembly instructions were clear. The parsing of MANIKIN became clear during my proof reading. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
  17. Didn’t like ANTIPHON. The Mitford autobiography is obscure an “tip” doesn’t mean “idea”.

    Did like DOUR and NOVICES.

    1. It can, if you think of it as giving someone a tip on how to solve a problem. you are giving them an idea as to how to do it.
      1. Not really the same thing. A tip is a direct clue towards a solution. I would say an idea is more about process. Mr Grumpy
  18. Tricky enough I thought. I didn’t know Antiphon, Achates or Manikin. But all correct with no typos so a good start to the week.

    Edited at 2019-05-20 08:51 am (UTC)

  19. I nearly didn’t bother to do this crossword because I thought it must be a misprint. The first clue was as fresh in my mind from Saturday as in Jackkt’s.
  20. 32 mins. No huge problems, but just took a long time to see and process each clue. Didn’t know about Achates, and tried to shoehorn Achilles in 🙂 Thanks v.
  21. Reasonably easy .. a rather antique feel about it, this crossword. Quite surprised to have 1ac both on Saturday and then on Monday .. as Jack says, only one word changed, and not for the better.
  22. ….a WEATHERMAN to know which way the wind blows”

    I made relatively short work of this, despite failing to parse ANTIPHON and THESPIAN. ACHATES was in the back of my mind somewhere, but I knew nothing about him.

    FOI HOPALONG CASSIDY
    LOI TETRAMETER
    COD FRINGELESS
    TIME 8:18

    I’ve already asked in the QC blog, but does anyone do the puzzle on an Android phone via the Times app ? If so, have they encountered problems this morning ? As soon as I access the app the screen clears and says “something went wrong”.

    .

  23. 13’55, no more than a hopalong. Always loved that as a name from the age of about 7. ‘The Loved One’ is Waugh, a beaut. Liked the twist in the manikin set-up.
    1. Jessica Mitford wrote ‘The American Way of Death’. I suspect Evelyn Waugh based ‘The Loved One’ on it. They’re very similar and both great fun, the Waugh in particular much recommended. The wee kirk o’the heather.
    2. You’re both right Joe and Will! Apologies (memo to self check before you post).
  24. 1a a write-in after the Jumbo – indeed I thought I must have been losing my marbles as I was sure I hadn’t already seen this crossword, until I looked at the other clues. Either the same setter being lazy or a nice coincidence?
    All done in 33 mins so not as quick as some, mainly due to thinking that the W in 21a came at the beginning and 18d was NEWsomethings. Finally twigged the DNK COMMONPLACE BOOK and everything fell into place.
    Finally home from Mull, where you could have picked as many primroses and bluebells as you liked.
  25. 25 min, with no DNKs, but biffed MINIKIN and forgot to go back to parse it.
  26. Nancy’s semi-autobiographical Pursuit Of Love and Love In A Cold Climate also featured the Hons, as the children of the house called themselves. They met in the airing cupboard which was the only warm room in the place. Very much like our freezing old London house. Jessica is best known in the US for The Loved One which was an epic take-down of the funeral industry. 11.27 which included a prolonged sneezing fit so it was well in my range.
    1. Thanks for that – I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and it’s fine now. Bloody technology….
  28. Some tricky vocab meant that I didn’t zip along with this one as much as some others seem to have done. ANTIPHON, HOPALONG CASSIDY, COMMONPLACE BOOK, ACHATES, POLYANTHUS and MANIKIN all rang a bell at best. 11m 19s in total.

    I thought ‘Struggle with belief’ was the best clue today: concisely and beautifully constructed.

  29. I thought I’d give this a go following vinyl’s comment on the QC blog. I did not find this easy and the list of DNKs is as follows ANTIPHON, TETRAMETER, NOCTURN, COMMONPLACE BOOK, ACHATES, TRENCHERMAN and MANIKIN. Of the seven DNKs I guessed four correctly and had to resort to aids with the other three. About 2 hrs including numerous tea breaks for inspiration which was not forthcoming.

    Edited at 2019-05-20 03:22 pm (UTC)

  31. 1ac is (almost) exactly the same clue as 32ac in Saturday’s jumbo cryptic. Coincidence?
    1. If one lives in Brighton one goes UP to London.
      If one lives in Grantham one goes DOWN to London.
      If one lives in Frinton one never goes to to London.

      Your second comment has already been dealt with more than once in this blog. Coincidence?

      1. I’m sure every POV is catered for in one reference source or another, but I found this in SOED which happens to coincide with my own view. I’m sure it has been debated here on a number of occasions and there was a consensus in favour of it:

        Up

        2 (Of a train or coach) travelling towards the capital or principal terminus; (of a line or platform) used by such a train. L18.

        Edited at 2019-05-20 04:15 pm (UTC)

        1. The clue doesn’t mention London though. If the setter meant The City as in EC1, then city should be capitalised. Without the capital, the clue is a bit vague. When I loved oop North, we used to go down to Manchester. Mr Grumpy
  32. Bit naughty to make 1ac and 1d the most difficult (and obscure) clues in a Monday offering. Apart from those two, reasonably straightforward.
    I keep a Commonplace Book – but didn’t know that it is called such.
  33. I liked Novice; I spent far too long trying to stuff “unch” into the three squares in Mxxxkin. Knew Achtes well, Nocturn pretty well, dragged Antiphon up, and then had my usual plant-related brain freeze.
  34. Well, yes, 98% of it was very easy, but ANTIPHON got the best of me — there were too many Mitfords, too politically unsavoury, for me to want to know too much about them. So I had ANTIPTON instead of ANTIPHON, assuming ANTON would make a good name for a (perhaps German?) aristocrat.

    I never thought of HON for an aristo. However, there is a very good American square dance caller named Ett McAttee who, when asked what her full name was, would always reply, “Just Ett, hon!”. So now her dancers call her Ettila the Hon.

    I did, fortunately, at the last minute, correct COMMONPLACE BANK, which didn’t seem to make much sense in terms of the wordplay, to COMMOMPLACE BOOK. So the mauled HON was really my only mistake.

    Edited at 2019-05-20 06:41 pm (UTC)

  35. Another inconsistent offering. I’m clearly showing my ignorance, but if four of the answers are antiphon, tetrameter, achates, and nocturn, then for me it’s an unsolvable puzzle because not only am I unfamiliar with those words, they don’t relate in the slightest to rest of the (pretty straightforward) clues. Maybe the setter had some spare unused clues left over from an ‘O Tempora!’ that needed to be shoehorned in here? Antiphon is even clued obscurely. It’s better if these type of clues are included in crosswords that are difficult in the main, not as curve-balls in otherwise easy crosswords such as this. Mr Grumpy
  37. Thanks setter and vinyl
    Don’t race the clock and so try to parse as I go … except that I wasn’t able to parse 20d before coming here and the old adage “if you can’t parse it, it’s probably wrong” kicked in. Having said that, I did mis-parse ANTIPHON (thinking that IP was the ‘idea’ and that ANTHONY was one of ‘Ms Milton’s aristos’).
    Did need to check out a number of the answers along the way to see if the constructed word was in fact right – these included ACHATES, COMMONPLACE BOOK, the ill-fated MINIKIN, POLYANTHUS and TRENCHERMAN.
    Finished just under the hour in the NW corner with those tough 1a / 1d clues.

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