Times Cryptic – 26132

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

There were a lot of very easy clues here so it was quite late in the proceedings that I realised I would have difficulty finishing off because I simply didn’t know the term at 6dn which seems out of place in such benign surroundings. Only one biff today, at 10ac where the answer was obvious but I was unable to parse the first part of the clue until later.

{deletions} [indicators]

Across
1 OWNS UP – OW (that hurts), NS (poles), UP (in court)
8 MUSCATEL – Anagram [drastically] of CUT MEALS
9 TRIMMING – TRIM (adjust), MING (one type of pottery)
10 QUORUM – QUO{d} (stir – prison), RUM (drink). Didn’t know (or had forgotten) this slang word for prison.
11 PEDESTAL – PAL (comrade) encloses anagram [wayward] of STEED
12 WILIER – Billy Wilder (US director) has D (died) substituted by I (one)
13 EMBLAZON – Anagram [criminal] of BLAME, Z (last character), ON
15 BOLD – BOD (fellow) encloses {gir}L
17 DESK – Hidden in {ma}DE SK{etch}
19 REKINDLE – RE (religious teaching), KINDLE (reader)
20 LATEST – TE (note) inside LAST (wear)
21 CLAVIERS – Anagram [playing] of C{los}E RIVALS
22 ROOKIE – ROOK (man on board – chess), IE (that is)
23 ON THE RUN – N (knight – chess again) inside OTHER (unrelated), UN (one abroad – French). Definition: fugitive
24 SUFFERED – F (female) + REF (judge) reversed inside SUED (prosecuted)
25 RESIST – IS inside REST (balance)
Down
2 WARMED TO – Anagram [scuffles] of TWO ARMED. Time lost here thinking I was looking for WAR plus a second type of conflict or the name of a battle.
3 SIMPERED – S{k}IM (cream), PER (for each), ED (journalist)
4 PRINTABLE – P{o}R{t}I{o}N, TABLE (put forward)
5 MAGELLANIC CLOUD – ALLEG{e} (claim) reversed inside MAN (chap), IC (in command), anagram [upset] of COULD. Definition: stars. Didn’t know this one.
6 CAUTION – AU{c}TION (sale) with C {ustomers} moved to the front
7 TERRIBLE – T (time) replaces the first B in BIBLE (sacred books). ERR (blunder) goes inside.
8 LIMERICK – LIME (tree), RICK (pile – as in hay rick)
14 OLD MASTER – Double definition of sorts, the first with reference to Mr Chips, the retiring schoolmaster in the novel by James Hilton; the second to popular paintings.
15 BOLLARDS – B (black), {l}OLLARDS (reformers)
16 LIFTS OFF – Oh dear! The astronaut Neil Armstrong would have lifted off on his space adventures and a lift (elevator) being out of order might be a reason for using the stairs. I find both of these cryptic clues a bit odd as the tense seems wrong in the first one, and I don’t believe anyone would ever say the second. But this is Crosswordland where allowances for whimsy are often made so perhaps I’m being picky.
17 DELIVERS – DELVERS (diggers) enclose I (island)
18 SOURPUSS – S (son), OUR PUSS (the family cat)
19 RESTIVE – REST Others), I’VE (the setter’s)

27 comments on “Times Cryptic – 26132”

  1. … more than Jack on this one, especially in the SW where the Lollards just wouldn’t come to mind, making LATEST (appropriately?) my last in. Even then, I went for “note” = LA and fretted over “wear at the edges” = TEST.

    No trouble with the tense in the Armstrong clue (16dn), however. It’s OK if you take “Like Armstrong, say, sets out” as the first def. But I agree that we’d more likely report the lift to be out rather than off.

    Put me down as another who didn’t know QUO{d}. Had to look it up, obvious as the answer was. Very much liked the Mr Chips clue.

    Edited at 2015-06-23 03:34 am (UTC)

    1. I was thinking more along the lines that since the person I assume being referred to is dead, he doesn’t do anything in the present tense any more. But quite apart from that, as far as I’m aware he last lifted off in 1969 so once again the present tense would seem inappropriate.
      1. Ah! Now I see what you were getting at. (Bit slow on the uptake in the cold snap we’re getting just now.) Still, I guess any old astronaut might lift off (present tense) like Armstrong.

        Edited at 2015-06-23 05:10 am (UTC)

        1. Hm, maybe.

          I was going to edit but you’d already replied:

          Collins has OFF as ‘no longer operative’ which fits well enough if one thinks of the lift as being switched off rather than out of order, I suppose, but the whole clue still strikes me as odd and it might have benefited from a complete rethink.

  2. I flung in ‘latish’, I don’t know why, and never returned to think about it. I made a very slow start, getting nothing on the first pass of acrosses (well, ‘on the lam’), but things finally picked up; except for the NE, where I got hold of the wrong end of every stick I could find. I actually knew ‘in quod’, and actually thought immediately of ‘stir=prison’, but never connected the two and in fact just bunged in QUORUM once the U suggested a Q. Didn’t see a problem with Armstrong, but did wonder about the elevators; ‘the baked beans are off’ I can see, but the lifts?

    Edited at 2015-06-23 06:57 am (UTC)


  3. Very similar to Jack today, with 1ac going straight in (doncha just love it when that happens?), but then stymied at the end by the unknown MAGELLANIC CLOUD, which I looked up an hour. QUORUM, clearly the right answer, the only biffed one too.
  4. Pretty standard. Didn’t know QUOD or CLAVIERS, but that didn’t matter much. Can’t really claim to have known MAGELLANIC CLOUD, but the words emerged from some dim recess of my brain (as opposed to the equally dim forefront of my brain).

    Liked the nicely concealed definition for EMBLAZON.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  5. Very easy one today and I’m with Jack on 16D – a below standard clue

    All our mates in Oz should know the M-CLOUDS because you can see them – like splashes of milk across the sky. They were used by sailors for literally hundreds of years to aid navigation and are interesting because they appear to interact with our galaxy

    1. Indeed many of us do know and can spot them in the sky — maybe not our Gal though, it seems. Plenty of Portugese in Fremantle still.
  6. 15 mins. I found this a bit of an unsatisfactory solve because of three biffs, although I did manage to parse LATEST (my LOI) and MAGELLANIC CLOUD post-solve. The one I didn’t parse was QUORUM but only because I didn’t bother to search for QUO* in my Chambers. If I ever knew that word for a prison I had certainly forgotten it.

    LATEST only became the obvious answer for the “current” definition once I had got BOLLARDS, and it must have taken me about 5 post-solve minutes to realise that the note was TE and not LA, and therefore how the rest of the clue worked.

    On the plus side, the clue for SOURPUSS made me smile.

  7. 29:42 after a bit of a slow start. 17a my FOI. SW corner held me up as I didn’t know (L)OLLARDS. Count me as another who didn’t know the meaning of QUO(D) too. I was OK with LIFTS OFF as clued and it made me smile. COD for me, though, was 5d. I worried about spelling MAGELLANIC until I parsed it. Being prompted to look it up now, I see there are two of them, but visible only in the southern hemisphere, so no point in getting my telescope out to look for them tonight.
  8. I knew magellanic cloud once I thought, but until I got the first word I had CROSS in for cloud (using upset=cross). So that made the SW corner hard until I fixed it.
  9. I needed the wordplay for the CLOUD’s spelling, and have therefore only today sussed that the galaxies are named for Magellan. In the past, it’s been one of those blur words which you pronounce (if at all) with a vague mega-something. Shameful really, as I would otherwise consider myself a big fan of space exploration, especially living in this incredible age of discovery.
    25 interrupted minutes for this, and fretting like others on LATEST, heightened by the lamentable fact that my online word games refuse to recognise TE.
  10. Was feeling rather proud of myself for having successfully parsed and written out the unknown Magellanic Cloud on a notepad. I then typed it in as Meg …. , so one error here.

    I do like “the family cat” for “our puss”.

  11. 11 minutes. But any grid that I manage to submit without having incomprehensibly left big gaps in feels like a victory these days.

    14D was my COD I think – quite fond of Mr Chips, and I thought the alternative types of “oil” business rather clever.

  12. I was so far away from the setter’s wavelength as to be down the road and round the corner. A good 20 mins plus two lots of the white stuff.
    1. Ah, you mean tippex, not the nose candy, for a moment I was wondering if it helped.
  13. A slow 24:21 with most trouble in the SW with Lollards unknown and 24 being made difficult by my having CROSS as the last word for 5, like anon above. I just figured it was summat like the Southern Cross.

    I also had auction briefly at 6 as the wording makes it sound like you start with beware and move C but it obviously couldn’t go back to the front.

    Edited at 2015-06-23 04:16 pm (UTC)

  14. Ripped through this until I hit the LATEST/BOLLARD crossing – eventually saw LATEST but BOLLARD went in with a shrug and crossed fingers.
  15. Another half hour or so spent to finish this, feeling dim after golf in the heat, although was only 3 over gross today. Knew them all except quod which was biffed. And WILIER which I biffed but didn’t quite parse, knowing zip about US film directors.There are two M Clouds, imaginatively named Large and Small.
    Interesting to see the trade name KINDLE has made it into the TC.
    1. Indeed, rekindle took for ever to get because it’s well known that The Times doesn’t include brand names (except Murdoch’s own Times and Sky).
      Otherwise same unkowns: LOLLARDS and QUOD, and unlike all of you Mr. Chips unknown, so those 3 BIFFED with a shrug. Magellanic Cloud known.
      In dribs and drabs so no time, but slowish.
      Rob
  16. Got through in 20 minutes, ending with LATEST, never seeing that the note was TE. DNK quod or CLAVIERS. I smiled at the Armstrong clue, and the Lollards came surprisingly quickly to mind. I don’y know how a bod is a fellow, so while the answer appeared obvious, I waited to enter that one. Otherwise, good fun. Regards.
  17. Nothing easy here for me but a verse from an old Stanley Holloway recital sits in the mind

    But up came the brave Bow Street Runners,
    and he had to let many a pie burn
    as they dragged him to quod
    and next day Sweeney Todd
    was sentenced to be switched off at Tyburn.

    Another useless ability that I have is to be able to recite all four of the Albert Ramsbottom (he of the Lion) stories.

    Edited at 2015-06-23 08:40 pm (UTC)

  18. 11:41 for me (according to my stopwatch, though it was 12:03 by the time the server returned a response), eventually getting going after another slow start.

    No problem with MAGELLANIC CLOUD, which I semi-biffed from the M and first L (I read enough of the wordplay to see where CLOUD came from).

    I reckon you are being a bit picky about 16dn (LIFTS OFF), which I thought was an excellent clue. All in all an interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  19. Just me with BOULDERS then? Reformer = moulder? Ah well.

    Edited at 2015-06-24 09:13 pm (UTC)

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