Times Cryptic 25804 – orchidologists and priest-ologists required

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Under pressure to blog at a reasonable hour, after an early appointment elsewhere, this took me 32 minutes and required a couple of visits to Wiki to check an unknown orchid and a simple word I’d never seen before. One or two bits of my parsing may need expert confirmation or correction! No doubt the regulars have their metaphorical pencils poised.

Across
1 FALL FLAT – ALL (everyone) in F (female) FLAT (accommodation), def. ‘flounder’.
5 SCHOOL – S (back of sidings) CHOO (half a train) L (left), def. ‘train’. I had done 6 dn first, and spelt it with a K, so had to rethink my sauce when the CHOO penny dropped.
10 COVERING LETTERS – (SERVER GOT CLIENT)*, indicated by ‘new’.
11 DWARVES – D (500) WARES (things to sell) ‘for wearing by’ V (very), i.e. the V is inside WARES. Def. ‘small folk’.
12 ISHMAEL – (ISLAM HE)* indicated by ‘recollected’. There are quite a few candidates for Ishmael, such as the first son of Abraham, or the narrator of Moby Dick, so take your pick.
13 SHORTCUT – Def. ‘alternative route’, the Spoonerism will be ‘COURT SHUT’.
15 PEDES – Hidden word, revam(PED ES)padrilles, a technical term for the human foot below the ankle, actually the Latin plural of ‘pes‘, foot, def. ‘feet’.
18 RUNIC – RUN (boss, as a verb) IC (in charge), def. ‘of old characters’.
20 THRUSHES – TH (nearly all of ‘the’) RUSHES (waterside plants), def. ‘birds’.
23 AUSTRAL – ASTRAL (like stars) round U (university), def. ‘down under’, coming from the southern hemisphere.
25 DEVISEE – DEVI (bad person = devil, without the L = pound), SEE (note), def. ‘beneficiary of will’. This gave me a little grief because I wanted to spell it ‘divisee’ and derive it from ‘DIVIL’, Irish slang for devil, but the legal term is correctly spelt with an E, for reasons only a lawyer can explain.
26 A COMEDY OF ERRORS – (FEARSOME CRY DOOR)*, indicated by ‘smashed’, amusing definition and a reference to ‘The Comedy of Errors’ I suppose.
27 KARATE – KATE (the shrew in ‘The Taming of…’) engages RA (artist), KA(RA)TE, def. ‘combat’.
28 ATALANTA – A TA-TA (a farewell message) with LAN(D) (most of the country) inserted. Atalanta was (or is?) a Greek mythological virgin, abandoned at birth by her father (who wanted a son), allegedly then nurtured by a she-bear, who became a fierce huntress as a result.

Down
1 FACADE – FADE (wither) has A C (a cold) coming in, F(AC)ADE, def. ‘front’.
2 LEVIATHAN – Levi became a general word for ‘priest’ in early Jewish writings, and a Leviathan is a monster. I am still worrying about how best to get ‘ATHAN’ from ‘nearby, tailed’. Could it be ‘AT HAN(D)?
3 FOREVER – F(OR)EVER, where OR = soldiers and FEVER = state of great nervousness, def. ‘continually’.
4 ANNAS – ANNALS (historical records) with the L ‘out’. Annas was the first high priest of Judaea.
6 CATCHUP – Sounds like ‘catch up’. An easy one which led me into trouble because I inserted KETCHUP thinking it was a homophone. The possible derivation of the word is the subject of a long article if you’re interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup
7 OPERA – O (old) PER = REP, material, reversed), put on A, def. ‘drama’.
8 LISTLESS – Humorous double def., list-less being ‘unprepared for shopping’. I like writing shopping lists and Mrs K ignores them, she’s always listless.
9 CLOISTER – CLOT (fool) ER (RE, meaning about, is ‘spinning’ i.e. reversed), confine IS, gives CLO(IS)T-ER, def. ‘put within walls’.
14 CATTLEYA – CATTLE, Y (ultimately destroy), A, for the name of a genus of orchids named after Mr Cattley.
16 DRESS DOWN – Def. ‘censure’, I need not (dare not) elaborate.
17 GREAT AUK – (TAKE A RUG)*, indicated by ‘out’, def. ‘a bird’.
19 CURRENT – CUR (scoundrel) RENT (ripped apart), def. ‘present’.
21 SEVERAL – Cryptic double def., several as in ‘joint and several’ and as in ‘more than a few’.
22 PERSIA – PER (through) SIA(M) (most of one old country), def. ‘another (old country)’.
24 SPOOR – TROOPS (soldiers) reversed, remove the T (time), def. ‘track’.
25 DEFAT – Well, ‘remove food component’ could be ‘defat’, a word which does apparently exist. My best guess is DEFEAT wth the E (English) removed, if to cream someone is to defeat them in US speak?

51 comments on “Times Cryptic 25804 – orchidologists and priest-ologists required”

  1. Not too tough, though I didn’t know CATTLEYA and it looked suspiciously like a momble, despite fitting the wordplay.

    Agree with your parsings of LEVIATHAN and DEFAT – Collins/ODO both have cream as being a North American word for beat thoroughly. From the surface, I would imagine that ISHMAEL is referring to Abraham’s son – in Islam, he is a prophet and an ancestor of Muhammad (as per Wikipedia).

  2. Well done Pip. I also had AT HAN(d) at 2D

    I too stuck in KETCHUP and had to change it to accommodate SCHOOL. I’m still reeling a little from 16D appearing in the Times.

    20 minutes for a relativelt undemanding offering

    1. I did rather feel that (courtesy of Bild) it might be a better clue for “dress up”. Everyone I know who might be affected quite properly wears a decent petticoat to preclude the eventuality. O tempora, etc.”
      1. Quite – I had the same thought with which my wife concurs. However one of my grand daughters observes that in the younger set these days it is by no means certain that any knickers will be worn at all. I feel compelled to retire from this debate at that point.
  3. 17 minutes, starting with an homage to John Cage’s 4’33” and finishing molto accelerando: either it took me time to warm up or just one of those wavelength crosswords.
    Not knowing the orchid was no problem, as the wordplay was kind. This was definitely one where the default library for your desert island came in handy: ANNAS gets a bit part in the Gospels as the high priest to whom Jesus was brought and has a prominent falsetto part in Superstar. I suspect otherwise he’d remain a great unknown.
    CATCHUP? I ended up assuming this was just one of the many variant spellings.
    Liked both the long ones for well disguised anagrams.
  4. 20 mins. I thought I was going to be in for a faster time but I ground to a halt in the SE where it took me much too long to get THRUSHES and DRESS DOWN, both of which were relatively straightforward clues. Once I’d got them I was able to enter a few more answers, and then the DEVISEE/DEFAT crossers were my last ones in, the latter of which I only parsed post-solve. ANNAS and CATTLEYA both went in from the wordplay.

    I also had a hiccup in the NW by having stupidly entered “facial” for 1dn, where I had seen “fail” for “wither” and didn’t spot that the letters weren’t in the correct order until I realised that A?A?V?? for 11ac had to be wrong.

  5. Pleasant and not too tricky. I was wary of 5dn from the start; while my shelves carry Heinz ketchup, I have come across plenty of Americans referring to the mysterious “catsup” and, as recently as last night, cooked some fried rice using ketjap manis to add an Indonesian flavour, so I didn’t jump too early. I also got the orchid entirely from wordplay – yes it looked a bit weird, but most plant names look a bit weird if, like me, you’re mostly ignorant of them.
  6. I took 10 minutes to do about 3/4 of this, then another 30 to finish the middle and the SE, not knowing ATALANTA, DEFAT, DEVISEE or CATTLEYA.

    DEFAT is possibly the ugliest word I’ve ever heard. I hope never to hear it used for real.

  7. I was also suspicious of 6dn. I knew the variations of KETCHUP so CATCHUP had to be a possible answer, but then KETCH is also a variant of CATCH which makes KETCHUP an equally possible answer.

    The reason DEVISEE is so spelled is simply because it comes from DEVISE ( to give or bequeath). When lawyers favoured obscurity and tautology in drafting the standard wording in a will was “I give, bequeath and devise….”. A good modern lawyer will draft simply “I give…”

    Another enjoyable puzzle I thought – I always like intersting words as answers.

  8. Nice blog Pip. Glad the alt. Wednesdays are in good hands.

    Main trouble was, as with others, in the SE corner where DEVISEE/PERSIA just wouldn’t work. I wanted DEVISOR/FRISIA — ask not why — perhaps under the influence of trying to plot the geography of Beowulf. (You see I do now have far too much time on my hands!)

    Vale Doc Neeson. You don’t far past this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxRIa-KySc

    1. The most remarkable thing about The Angels is that probably their best-known lyric was never written down, and indeed never actually sung by the band. But every Australian under a certain age knows that there is only one line that follows “Am I ever gonna see your face again?”, and it has to be sung loudly and in unison.

      Vale Doc indeed.

    2. Interesting McT. I’ve just finished translating it. Do you think ‘across the lakes’ is acceptable in line 2478? Seems more likel7y than sea.
  9. Enjoyable and quite testing puzzle, as most others have said. I think the parsing of DEFAT (25D) must be as Pip suggests in his excellent blog. Might there also be a sly dig at our transatlantic cousins – “not English” in addition implying that “defat” is such a horrible word that only Americans could possibly regard it as acceptable English?
  10. First Times crossword for nearly a week so I was pleased with a time of 7:59, having had the same ketch/catch holdup as others and learning a new orchid too.
  11. 15m. Interesting puzzle this: I thought it had a slightly unusual feel. Perhaps I’m imagining things.
    Quite a few unknowns today – PEDES, DEVISEE, ANNAS, CATTLEYA – and a few less-than-familiars. I was aware that KETCHUP could be spelled in other ways but that didn’t stop me from putting it in. DEFAT didn’t look like a real word, and I don’t think of ‘cream’ for ‘defeat’ as specifically American, so I paused a bit there.
    In the end though everything was clearly and unambiguously clued.
  12. Similar experience to others with KETCHUP, but inexplicably left it at CETCHUP when I got the starting C.

    Can’t afford errors like that at this level Bruce.

  13. 17.30. An uneventful solve and I agree with Derek that this was an interesting set of words.
  14. Tackled this in one go in my lunchbreak. Four missing after about half an hour, all in the SE corner (Devisee, Persia, Atalanta and Defat). Listless made me chuckle.
  15. 1ac was somewhat ironic for me as I did in deed fall flat this morning, having tripped over my badminton bag as I headed out to play!
  16. I liked it because I got most of it solved very quickly. As I get more experience I am finding that my mistakes on easier puzzles start to be similar to those of the resident pros (simple mis-parsings, mis-spellings) whereas for the more difficult puzzles I get beaten by cryptics that are too devious for me.
    And the American angle – cream is one of those words used most frequently by the 8-15 year old crowd to mean rout, paste, defeat, wipe out, or sometimes beat up (‘I’ll cream your face, you little..’).
  17. No reliable time as I did most of this in a garage waiting room, forgot to stop the watch when they gave me my keys and then polished off the last 4 (the 4 “middle” clues which had all brought on a bout of dimwittedness) in quick time when I got back to work.

    All in all I’d say about 25 minutes so I certainly struggled to get on wavelength.

  18. Something of a disaster area for me after my self-confidence had been shot to ruin by the Quickie. And from there I went downhill with too many unknowns that I needed to check after solving.
  19. I was going to dispute the plural of ‘dwarf’ which should be ‘dwarfs’ but I see the dictionaries do now have the alternative so I suppose it’s OK. Apparently Tolkein had spelt it DWARFS in his manuscripts only to have it changed (to his annoyance) to DWARVES by his publisher, and the alternative spelling then caught on. DNK Atalanta, Devisee, Cattleya, Annas, so lots of guessing going on today. Off to defat myself now with a walk in the woods with the dog.
    1. To be fair Tolkien did know – and admitted – when he used dwarfs that it was not the correct spelling, it should be dwarves. He just preferred it.
      1. All the dictionaries give dwarfs as the correct spelling with some allowing dwarves as an alternative. Chambers: pl dwarfs or (rare) dwarves. Tolkien preferred the usual spelling (dwarfs) which he considered the right spelling. At least that’s what his son told me when he was my sixth form tutor.
        1. Yes. I have only my unreliable memory of his books to rely on and having looked, I see that he says “In this book … the form dwarves is used, although the dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is dwarfs.” So you are exactly right..
          1. I was always told that the plural of roof was roofs, but it was pronounced rooves. I still pronounce it that way, but wouldn’t think of spelling it with a ve
        3. Not wanting to contradict his son (Christopher?), my memory from reading Tolkien’s letters is a little different. Tolkien used ‘dwarves’ (essentially, mistakenly, as he admitted when a son – Christopher, I think – commented on his manuscript) but decided to keep it. An original editor changed it to ‘dwarfs’ but later Tollers got his wish and ‘dwarves’ won the day. (I don’t have The Letters of Tolkien – the most reliable source – to hand, but this is obviosuly the go-to work.)

          Incidentally, the letters reveal that were it not for Christopher, the hero would have been known not as Frodo but as Bingo!

          1. You may very well be right, and it’s my memory that’s got everything back to front! I had many discussions on publishing with Michael Tolkien, who taught at Stonyhurst College in the 1970s when I first became interested in that career. I would have had a chance to meet the great man himself had he not died the year before Michael became my tutor.
  20. 50m but did manage to finish after consulting aids for what felt like half of the answers. Slightly bemused by ‘see’ as ‘note’ in 25a; I can’t immediately think of a phrase where I could substitute one for t’other. Thanks for blog, as needed explanations/confirmations for a number of answers.
    1. I see/note that you have trouble conflating these two words, and perhaps this will help?
  21. Welcome, new Wednesday oppo, and well done with the blog; this didn’t strike me as an easy one by any means, especially the SE corner which took me a while to work through.

    I have a nagging Hilaire Belloc rhyme in my head, “In seizin to devise upon” to do with inheritance, which I can’t pin down to a particular poem but which nevertheless helped me with 25ac.

    1. About John, who lost a fortune throwing stones from Cautionary Tales

      I do bequeath, devise and give
      By Execution Mandative
      The whole amount of what I’ve got
      (It comes to a tremendous lot!)
      In seizin to devolve upon
      My well-beloved nephew John.

      1. That’s the one! I did google it but it didn’t come up, clearly you are much better at it than I am.

        This poem is worth reading in full, as it has a lot of nice touches. “Like many of the upper class, he liked the sound of breaking glass.”

  22. Completed, but with an almighty question mark beside my LOI, CATTLEYA, on the Northern Line between Balham and Angel, under half an hour. Another one where I felt “on the wavelength”, indeed the NW went in one after the other, quick crossword fashion, followed smartly by the whole LHS (other then aforesaid orchid).

    Fell into the “ketchup” trap, duly changed after SCHOOL became the only possible 5ac, but found the GK – even the American slang – manageable, other than the wretched botanical reference. Annas and Ishmael surely fair game in what the Prime Minister insists is a “Christian” country? Ditto Atalanta for a “culture” derived from Romano-Greek roots, much as our professional educators would have it otherwise.

  23. What felt like a slowish 28.35. I recommend Swinburne’s ‘Atalanta in Calydon’.
  24. Didn’t do it all in one sitting but it wasn’t too tricky – wordplay needed for CATCHUP (since I’m used to seeing CATSUP and KETCHUP) and DEVISEE.

    I thought 27 was a nice clue with a fun surface.

  25. Not too bad, about 15 minutes, ending with CLOISTER. I hadn’t seen the parsing for DEFAT, which I agree is an ugly word, but now upon being enlightened by the blog (thanks Pip)it seems a very nice clue. I wouldn’t have known that in the UK ‘cream’ does not mean ‘beat the crap out of’ as it does here. Other than that, everything went in pretty easily, LISTLESS was cute, and the orchid, of course, solved from wordplay only. Regards.
  26. Beaten by ATALANTA, so DNF for me.

    CATTLEYA, DEVISEE and ANNAS were all unknown to me, and I was quite pleased at having got them. Not pleased with “boss” as a verb meaning “run” in 18ac – I have only encountered “boss” (verbishly) in the sense of “to boss someone around”, which doesn’t equate to “run” in my book. Can someone “boss” a company? Or have I missed something?

    1. I am afraid, TnB, that in today’s world one can boss a company. Were that it weren’t so.
  27. I got stuck on 28 across. Thought it was “diagonal” as in Diana (huntress) “go”- farewell message’ most of the country “land” backwards; meaning through as in diagonal.
  28. Miserable fail. Ketchup had me stuck, but the real problem was entering 1ac as FLATFISH for flounder.. DNF as stumped by the two errors………
  29. Did nobody else fall early for RUSSIA/PRUSSIA? Must be my Germanic roots.
  30. ‘Several’ and ‘a few’ have always been virtually synonymous for me – no wonder I missed out on some good deals. Atalanta best known ot me as the football club who play out of Bergamo. Liked THRUSHES.

  31. 9:20 here for an interesting and enjoyable solve.

    I agree with others that the wordplay in 16dn leads more naturally to DRESS UP, and cite Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch as evidence.

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