Times 28207 – The kind of politician we could use…

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 31 minutes
Music: Shostakovich, Symphony 15, Ormandy/PhilSO

I did not find this such an easy Monday – there are quite a few things here that various solvers might not know.   Since a cryptic usually gives you two ways to solve each clue, you might finish anyway, but it’s not going to be easy.   In particular, the absent bovine, the hipster’s grape, and the magic horse may give some of you a bit of trouble.

Across
1 Toe-curling jewellery item found in church: value unknown (12)
CRINGEWORTHY – C(RING)E + WORTH + Y.
9 Student’s notes on boy king (5)
TUTEE –  TUT + E + E – not the key of tonight’s symphony, unfortunately. 
10 Flattering article penned by a mostly uninspiring politician (9)
ADULATORY –  A DUL[l] (A) TORY.
11 Remains of cake grew mouldy (8)
WRECKAGE – Anagram of CAKE GREW.
12 It’s a girl’s sort of paper (6)
TISSUE – ‘TIS SUE.
13 A bill plugging public vehicles: you can count on them (8)
ABACUSES – A + B(A/C)USES, my FOI.
15 Sailors reportedly spot bishops, say, on board (6)
SEAMEN – Sounds like SEE MEN, that is to say chessmen.
17 Person of high birth stealing Italian poet’s heart (6)
ARISTO – ARI[o]STO, a poet we read in translation in the Spenser seminar.  You may not be so lucky.
18 Traitor in Paris who attracts support (8)
QUISLING – QUI + SLING.
20 Medieval horse, black, with three feet? (6)
BAYARD – B + A YARD.   This legendary horse does appear in Orlando Furioso, so we have a bit of a theme going.
21 Disney film buff cheers one in South Africa (8)
FANTASIA – FAN + TA + S(I)A, 
24 Lover shortly meeting a sailor from the East (9)
INAMORATA –  IN A MO + A TAR backwards (from the East).
25 Like wizened old men in the fourth row (5)
LINED – LINE D, a device that has been used frequently of late.
26 He rates sport wrongly — it’s way above us! (12)
STRATOSPHERE – Anagram of HE RATES SPORT.
Down
1 Grape originally acclaimed by jazz fan with degree (7)
CATAWBA – CAT + A[cclaimed] W/B.A, which would definitely be tricky if you didn’t know the grape.
2 Expecting win, they may fail badly (2,3,6,3)
IN THE FAMILY WAY – Anagram of WIN, THEY MAY FAIL – nice surface.
3 European king wearing anorak (5)
GREEK – G(R)EEK.   Does an actual anorak ever appear in these crosswords?
4 Argumentative type runs into manipulator (8)
WRANGLER –  W(R)ANGLER.
5 Not quite the way to put to flight! (4)
ROUT – ROUT[e].
6 Bulk of ambassador’s son protecting a provider of 1 down (9)
HEAVINESS – HE(A + VINE)’S S.
7 Complaint jointly suffered by scrubbers, perhaps? (10,4)
HOUSEMAIDS KNEE – Cryptic definition, and not very cryptic, either.
8 Stated reason French writer briefly creates heraldic beast (6)
WYVERN – Sounds like WHY + VERN[e], easily guessed by habitues of the Quickie blogs.
14 Say more than anyone else— to the greatest degree (9)
UTTERMOST – UTTER MOST, a chestnut.
16 Bovine creature reportedly off, ultimately to Zimbabwean city (8)
BULAWAYO – Sound like BULL + AWAY + [t]O.
17 Even though I put in wager, a learner comes first (6)
ALBEIT – A L + BE(I)T.
19 Eminent man’s cry of surprise about foreign currency (7)
GRANDEE – G(RAND)EE.
22 Bloomer made by union leader initially entering dump (5)
TULIP – T(U[nion] L[eader])IP.
23 Festivity a habitual convict upset (4)
GALA – A LAG upside down, an easy clue I didn’t look at until I was nearly finished.

76 comments on “Times 28207 – The kind of politician we could use…”

  1. 17 minutes. I found this pretty easy. The only unknown was the grape. I guessed the graduate was more likely to be BA, but either degree sounded plausible. I solved nine of the across clues on first reading, which gave a good framework for solving the downs, most of the answers to which came very quickly.
    I liked some of the anagrams – WRECKAGE and IN THE FAMILY WAY, especially.
  2. The grapes are very common in the wine-producing region of NY State, although it all seems rather unlikely in the midst of a bitterly cold winter. They’re often used for kosher wines and grape juices. I had a remote recollection of BAYARD cropping up in Chaucer but it mostly reminded me of Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti and meatballs (now discontinued) if you want something toe-curling. So this was straightforward. 11.27

    Edited at 2022-02-07 11:09 am (UTC)

  3. What a mess. I had BLYARD, thinking that bl might be an alternative for black (BWYARD would have been my second guess). I also biffed INAMORATO, which meant I had BULAWOLO for my Zimbabwean city.

    And I was feeling so good about having correctly guessed CATAWBA over CATAWMA.

    ARISTO was my LOI, biffed having never heard of the poet.

  4. Afriad I don’t like massively uneven puzzles, where 90% is very clear and straightforward, but you get words like CATAWBA and BAYARD, which belong in a different (and somewhat harder) puzzle; I’m happy with recondite vocabulary if you are clearly signposted to a single outcome. However, as various others discovered, if you don’t already know these words to begin with, there are quite convincing alternative wrong answers which are equally well supported by the wordplay. Not for me, Clive.
    1. Someone got me the legend “Not for me, Clive” on a t-shirt a few years ago. I think it must have been after a world cup when Andy Townsend and Clive Tyldesley’s double act on commentary had caused just too much hilarity.
  5. FOI – CRINGEWORTHY
    LOI – ARISTO

    NHO of the poet and the grape, so it was fingers crossed at the end.

    Thank you to vinyl1 and the setter.

  6. as Tim’s comments above, the Monday puzzles seem to have this pattern of being very easy, with 2 or 3 unknowns chucked in. I was wondering about BOYARD
  8. I tried this on paper for a change to see if that might improve my time. Finished in just over 15 mins but I had Bufalato for Bulawayo and I omitted to choose a graduate so 1 down was CATAW-A.

    COD: WRECKAGE.

  9. I was heading for a quick time, as most of this was pretty straightforward, until I was held up in the ways most people have already noted. Didn’t help that I started spelling the Zimbabwean city ‘Bulaweyo’.
    FOI ‘Cringeworthy’
    LOI ‘Ariosto’ – had heard of the poet but couldn’t bring to mind, so biffed from the definition.
    COD ‘In the family way’, I suppose, for the surface reading.
    NHO ‘Bayard’, but the parsing seemed fairly obvious.

    NHO ‘Catawba’, either, and was relieved that my feeling that the b sounded more likely than the m was right. This, despite the fact that I’m a Wine Merchant! My excuse is that, having looked it up, Catawba is not a ‘Vitis Vinifera’ variety, but an indigenous US vine variety (Vitis Labrusca, possibly?) that was popular in the C19. Even though the grafting of US vine rootstocks, impervious to the Phylloxera mite, was the saviour of many European vineyards in the late C19, US vine varieties have a reputation for making ‘foxy’ wine, although I can’t recall trying any personally. Learn a new thing every day…

    Many thanks, Setter, and Vinyl.

    Have a good week, everyone.

    Mark

  10. 11.06 mostly straightforward but NHO catawba so a bit of a punt getting that right. Apparently the grape has a foxy smell, not something likely to make me rush to Majestic to seek it out.

    Visited Bulawayo just before the millenium. Notable for wide boulevards designed to accommodate the rather large ox carts of colonial times apparently. Matopos hills near the city well worth a visit, an ancient place of worship for the original inhabitants and my wife and I both felt a frisson walking round- and it wasn’t down to catawba or any other grape variety.

  11. Having worked years ago in overseas development, BULAWAYO was a write-in. Lots of easier stuff didn’t need too much thinking about:

    IN THE FAMILY WAY (FOI)
    WYVERN (with one checker)
    CRINGEWORTHY (with just I and G checkers)
    FANTASIA
    STRATOSPHERE
    ALBEIT
    TULIP
    LINED
    GRANDEE
    etc

    A couple of others I didn’t think too much about the parsing:

    ARISTO (with all the checkers, though in retrospect ARIOSTO has appeared here before)
    INAMORATA (again with all checkers)

    Only tricksy ones were BAYARD and CATAWBA, both built from cryptic and fingers crossed.

  12. All correct although some things were guesses since the wordplay was a bit ambiguous (the grape, the horse etc) So similar experience to a lot of others.
  13. Until ARISTO/ARIOSTO held me up for a good 2 mins. Eventually I just biffed ARISTO. I’ve fallen foul of that poet before in reverse, where you had to had the O to the ARISTO to get his name. Surely next time I’ll remember…

    Pure luck on CATWABA rather than CATAWMA, and BAYARD seemed most likely, especially as BAY is a common colour for a horse, and “A” YARD seemed more likely than “I” YARD for 3 feet.

    11:40

    Edited at 2022-02-07 04:01 pm (UTC)

  14. 9.10. A zippy time for me with very little thought required to get through this one albeit the spectre of having to choose between catawba and catawma hung grimly over the second half of the solve. I plumped for catawba and was prepared to be very cross if it turned out to be incorrect. Bayard rang a faint bell once entered and I knew of Ariosto (and also Tasso) from studying the Faerie Queen many years ago.
  15. Luckily chose the right word for one down, because I’d never heard if it. The rest came easily enough, though wyvern and bayard needed a bit of work.
  18. Can I nominate the grape CATAWBA as the worst clue of the millenium?

    Those who knew it: 2
    – michelinpoitier
    – oliviarhinebeck
    Those who biffed it, knowing it as a geographical place: 1
    – guy-du-sable
    Those who didn’t mention it: 3
    – horryd
    – astro_nowt
    – eniametrauq

    Those who didn’t know it and had a random guess or left it empty or looked it up: 39 (i.e. everyone else) including 3 confessed oenephiles, a winemaker and a wine trader:
    corymbia
    paul_in_london
    kevingregg
    isla3
    bletchleyreject
    martinp1
    ulaca
    pootle73
    harmonic_row
    denisetremble
    jackkt
    gothick_matt
    myrtilus000
    rosedeprovence
    boltonwanderer
    mrkgrnao
    sawbill
    jerrywh
    robrolfe
    johninterred
    z8b8d8k
    pedwardine
    chrislutton
    john_dun
    kapietro
    keriothe 0.5
    wilransome
    dyste
    mauefw
    topicaltim
    wordpsmith
    astonvilla1
    mch1
    brenk1
    84801442
    paulmcl
    hopkinb
    special_bitter
    leskoffer

      2. …another QAnon with altitude. Do you enjoy sex and travel?

        Edited at 2022-02-07 03:59 pm (UTC)

    3. A technical detail, but…
      I put CATAWBA in from the wordplay plus my recognition of it as the proper name of a county and thus not unlikely for a wine as well.
  19. I had heard of it, perhaps from when I visited photographer Steve Horn in Poughkeepsie in the late seventies. I don’t think I imbibed. I didn’t mention it ‘cos I was too busy banging-on and on about Bayard and his bloody leap. That clue was far more obscure – as I was the only one who (finger) nailed it! Can I be pencil monitor tomorrow, please?

    Edited at 2022-02-07 03:50 pm (UTC)

  20. Didn’t know the grape, and MA was as likely a degree as the correct BA. Didn’t know the Italian poet either, so a DNF to start the week. Remainder untimed, but fast: nothing there to cause much concern other than the two unknowns.
  21. At 20 minutes this is certainly my PB, despite the several unknowns or barely knowns in it. CATAWBA rang a very faint bell from the distant past shortly after the big bang, perhaps, as Olivia suggested, because I grew up in New York State. BULAWAYO went in from wordplay, but it also did seem slightly familiar. BAYARD involved a sensible choice of how to interpret the wordplay, but I can’t say I knew it. WYVERN was a word our high school English teacher taught us at a time when she was in the mood for choosing obscure entries in dictionaries. The only thing that gave me any trouble at all was TUTEE, for which I needed to realise that the boy king was part of the wordplay and not the literal definition. But all in all, an easy puzzle (something about wavelength, I guess).
  22. Rattled through this almost as fast as I could write, helped by seeing “Cringeworthy” straight away.
    Sadly, just guessed incorrectly with “Catawma” — please add my name to Isla’s list!
  23. Catawba was the name of the fictional hometown of George
    F.Babbittt in the Sinclair Lewis novel.
  24. Late entry

    Loved Isla’s entry. Won’t be forgetting this grape variety in a hurry. For the record I plumped correctly thinking the b more likely.

    No real hold ups elsewhere though CRINGEWORTHY was actually one of my last ones

    Ninja Turtled BULAWAYO from a childhood love of Wilbur Smith rather than History lessons at school. His early ones are rather good, if I’m allowed to confess such a thing

    Thanks Vinyl and setter

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