Times Cryptic 26240

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 26240”

1. … Jack. The easy ones were just that. In between, the helpful anagrams. Then a few much harder ones. So I guess, all in all, something like a perfectly balanced puzzle.

   For the first (?) time in history I’m giving my COD to a homophone clue: 16dn because it reminded me of the joke about the Scot who went “dating” in his kilt. Not quite fit for a family-friendly site like this.

   Jack: slight typo in 3dn. EG –> E.

   1. Ta!
   2. Mct, I probably haven’t thought of that joke for 50 years so thanks for setting me off on my day with a smile.
2. 23 minutes. Knew COPT but not COTTA – what Anglicans would call a surplice, it would appear. At 17a I wanted something starting or ending with ‘water’ – fortunately the DIY stuff and the chemistry were quite gettable today.

   Edited at 2015-10-27 02:59 am (UTC)

   1. Rock Choppers as well, I believe. Seem to recall having one during my altar boy phase.
      1. I wondered what kind of garment a Rock Chopper was before finding the slang term in Collins!
         1. Ah, sorry. Common parlance where I came from, especially amongst Rock Choppers.
3. 14:58, but what a mess. Confidently bunged in FORT WILLIAMS, obviously without looking at the screen (or counting the letters), which left _L_S at 25ac. Had no idea, so opted for a hidden (surprised at there being two hiddens) and mombled OLIS. Wrong on so many levels.

   One of those days I guess. Thanks setter and Jack.

4. A bit of panic as I tried to finish off 19d and 22ac, the latter being my LOI. GLAM took a while (not in my idiolect); I actually entertained the possibility that ‘plod’ was britspeak I hadn’t come across yet. (Well, if ‘pants’, why not ‘plod’?) Somehow knew COTTA and CHADOR, and for once spotted a hidden, maybe because I didn’t know the word.
5. 13:40 and no passes …

   I knew all the required GK, though heaven knows why I knew OLEFIN.

   I appreciated the wordplay in CHANCELLORS, which I tend to misspell, but most enjoyed the groans at GRUESOME and TOKEN (which sounds like a particularly shameless firm of shysters).

6. Similar to Kevin G, but slower… all but LAWFUL (think that took so long as I wanted 22ac to be ‘onside’ or ‘inside’) and OFFICE in 20 mins, and then quite a few more to get those two. COTTA and CHADOR dredged up from distant memory (past crossies, maybe?), OLEFIN unknown.
7. 13.55. It helped that all the required vocab was in my ditty bag, though I raised a quizzical eyebrow at that meaning of WATER TABLE, which I knew as how far down you have to dig to get a well to work*, and today’s meaning of COD, wondering briefly whether I could use CAD and make CASHED mean hit. OFFICE and LAWFUL my last in.
   *I’m not saying, O geographers and civil engineers, that that’s what it actually means. So far in my life it’s been a good enough definition, which I’ll change if necessary when experience requires more precision.
   1. That’s how we use the term around here Z. Just last weekend, having drained my pool to repair a crack in the bottom, I was attempting to clear the water that had accumulated under the fibreglass shell as a result of the leak.

      Or so I thought. Spent way too long siphoning and bucketing without making progress before the penny dropped that I had hit the water table.

      (Ok, that’s not quite how it happened. The penny didn’t actually drop until the father-in-law said “you’ve hit the water table you @&$*^* idiot”. Sadly he was right on both counts).

      1. You are clearly not an idiot. You have invented the eco-jacuzzi (powered by artesian pressure rather than electricity).
      2. I hope your bottom crack is now OK.
         1. I can send pictures if you want.
8. 25 mins but failed to get OLEFIN which was well hidden.Also mis-parsed WATER TABLE which I took to mean groundwater as a solution (chemical) of rain.
9. All in 30 minutes except GLAM which was unknown and so left blank, too many possibilities unless you knew the gam word. Cod for me was OFF ICE. And some welcome chemistry.
10. No problems with this one except the obscure meaning of WATER TABLE but the cryptic was clear. COPT and CHADOR from bar crosswords.

    OLEFINS are hydrocarbons, a byproduct of cracking to produce petrol – if they occur naturally there aren’t many of them. Also known as Alkenes which might be worth remembering

11. Excellent puzzle with nice mix of fairly easy and chewy clueing, moderately (but not impossibly) obscure GK, and much ingenious wordplay. I too had not come across the required meaning of WATER TABLE, and I read the clue in much the same way as Sawbill. OFFICE was first-class, I thought.

    GRUESOME (16D) must indeed surely be one of the most quibble-proof homophones for some time – but, then again, perhaps not, given that one of our fellow xword addicts recently tried to persuade us that “one” and “won” don’t sound the same. We shall see.

12. ….as I failed to notice all the difficulties. I bunged in ‘water table’, ‘copt’, ‘chador’, and ‘glam’ without too much thinking, and that was that.

    Since I had time left, I went on the this weeks Grauniad prize, which was equally easy except for one embarrassing hang-up, which I eventually saw.

13. About 45 minutes for me, but I do have a quibble with the parsing of 21 given by jackkt. My Chambers app dictionary gives COD as (dialect), a fellow, chap, a codger (i.e. a guy) which I think fits the wordplay better. I didn’t know that definition when I biffed the answer, but wondered if there was an alternative spelling of cad or similar, without even thinking of the guy = jest or hoax = cod connection. I only looked it up afterwards. I guess that, being something of a cad myself, this set me on this path.

    Nice puzzle, but a couple too many unknowns for my liking, although I did finish.

    1. I’d say both explanations are perfectly valid.
14. And I thought I was so clever getting O (hole) le fin (finally – the end)… never noticed the hidden word.
15. 11:04 with, unsurprisingly, olefin and chador unknown.

    I remembered Copt from a recent-ish concise puzzle (it stumped me at the time) and would have said a cotta was an Italian priest’s hat if pressed. So what are they called?

    Gam for school is now almost instinctive after the infamous ophod/ogham/madro/mambo incident of 2013 to which Keriothe will testify I’m sure.

    1. they are called birettas ….. or flat caps if pressed?
       1. Of course! Thanks, at least I had the -tta ending right.

          …and ho ho.

16. 11 minutes and change. I did myself no favours by seeing Magoo’s time in advance of doing the puzzle – under 4 minutes? Massive performance anxiety ensued. All good fun though, this grid.
    1. Oops, I just checked and it was 11 minutes and LOTS of change. Not much change from 12 minutes, in fact.
       1. By analogy with money, that’s really 10 plus change.
          1. This is true. I didn’t want people to falsely assume that by change I meant “a few paltry coppers”, rather than “a heavy stack of large silver coins”, though.
17. As a Chartered Surveyor since 1953 I have never heard or seen Water Table as defined. Gutters and even Gargoyles were used to dispose of rainwater without saturating the walls.
    A water table in common usage is the level of water in the ground which varies with rainfall
    1. Image via http://www.christchurch1735.org/arc…
       Water table (architecture)

       A water table is a masonry architectural feature that consists of a projecting course that deflects water running down the face of a building away from lower courses or the foundation. A water table may be found near the base of a wall or at a transition between materials, such as from stone to brick.

       A water table is a projection of lower masonry on the outside of the wall slightly above the ground. Often a damp course is placed at the level of the water table to prevent upward penetration of ground water.

       1. Sorry to be pedantic = but the definition given is a mistake – See Wikipaedia the origin of the error

          Note the water table around the base of the Arthur Heurtley House (illustration provided in that article) designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1902.

          and the contributor’s note

          I created this because of mention of water table in Debtors’ Prison (Accomac, Virginia) that was wiki-linked to water table, which was not the meaning intended.

          1. Mystified by this (anon posted at 03:55)and don’t understand who’s saying what. The definition required for the clue is in Collins quite independently of anything in Wikipedia. As is the link I posted above.

             Edited at 2015-10-28 07:10 pm (UTC)

             1. Its still wrong. To anyone with a knowledge of building construction the definition given makes no sense whatever. Rain will hit the building walls and evaporates . The only collected water is from the roof collected by gutters and disposed of by pipes or projecting spouts since time immemorial .
                Where did Collins get the info same place as Wiki – and erroneous
                1. Well you’d better write to the lexicographers then, including the Oxford English Dictionary with their citations going back to 1428! But for crossword purposes dictionary definitions (even if erroneous) are sufficient.

                   OED:
                   water table, n.
                   1. Archit. A horizontal projecting ledge or moulding with a sloping top, set along the side of a wall to throw off rain. Also: the sloping top of a plinth.fig. in quot. 1650.

                   1428 in J. B. Heath Some Acct. Worshipful Company of Grocers (1869) 5 The walle atte seid west gabilende was maad x fote in heyghte above the watir table.
                   1459 in R. Willis & J. W. Clark Archit. Hist. Univ. Cambr. (1886) I. 309, iij fotes..from the gronde leuell to the water tabil… And the said water tabell..alle of freeston.
                   1541 in Proc. Soc. Antiquaries Scotl. (1860) 3 161 Fra the sollis of the said queir duris to the vuer pairt of the walter tabill vnder the thak thairof.
                   1545–6 in J. R. Boyle Early Hist. Town & Port of Hedon (1895) App. p. cxxxiii, Item, for layinge the watter tabyll above the counsell chamr.
                   1548 Hall’s Vnion: Henry VIII f. lxxiij, From the firste water table to the raysyng or resun pieces.
                   1650 J. Bulwer Anthropometamorphosis 68 Robbing the Eyes of their natural Pent-house or Water-table, they expose them bare to imbrications.
                   1663 B. Gerbier Counsel to Builders 89 For cleansing and setting again old work, as window stuff, grostable, watertable, cornish, quines.
                   1707 J. Mortimer Whole Art Husbandry 297 The Walls of such Edifices ought to be from the Foundation to the first Water-table, three heading course of Brick,..and at every Story a Water-table, or taking in on the inside for the Summers, Girders or Joysts to rest upon.
                   1753 W. Franklin Let. 12 July (1962) V. 5 It made a small crack in the Wall down to a Ledge (or single Row of Bricks projecting about 3 Inches from the Wall, which the Bricklayers term a Water Table or Water Fall).
                   1833 J. C. Loudon Encycl. Cottage Archit. §1882 The massive buttress, with its deep weatherings, or water-tables between each graduation or stage of the height.
                   1878 R. B. MacVittie Details Restoration Christ Church Cathedral Dublin 66 Weathered in the depth of the buttresses by nine courses of Water-tables.
                   1948 J. R. Dalzell & G. Townsend Masonry Simplified I. vii. 268 Soldier courses are used mainly as a water table around a building at the level of the first floor.
                   1987 S. Adams Arts & Crafts Movement v. 88/2 The use of low overhanging roofs and water tables that extend well beyond the walls of the house.
                   2004 R. Weinstein in Beach Homes 114/2 Using screws enabled us to dry-fit the myriad pieces of cornice, columns, water tables and scotia.

                   Edited at 2015-10-29 12:02 am (UTC)

                   1. Thank you – I stand corrected – the archaic ( 15 c ) and American terminology would unknown to any one in the construction industry today or yesterday. The setter had a perfectly good current definition – ie Level of ground water. he could of used why go for the extremely obscure.

18. Found this one easier than yesterday (in that I finished it!). Held up a bit by having councillors instead of chancellors, so this and chador last in. DNK olefin and cotta but clear from wordplay. Thought lashed at 21a a viable answer for a while.
19. 11m, with rather a lot of biffing. I knew OLEFIN and CHADOR but not COTTA or this definition of WATER TABLE. COPT has come up before, I’m sure.
    As penfold suggests, GAM is one I will never forget after the great OPHOD/MADRO fiasco of whatever year it was.
20. Francesco, Giovanni, something like that.
21. About 20 minutes, inching through the unfamiliar vocabulary: OLEFIN, CHADOR, COTTA, and the vaguely remembered COPT. LOI, though, was COSHED. I also have no idea what kind of device a WATER TABLE is, defining the term the same way as everyone else here. Regards.
22. 10 mins. It probably helped that I saw OLEFIN immediately, the F checker led me to FORT WILLIAM, and then the W checker led me to WEATHERBOARD. Those three answers gave me plenty of checkers to work with and I didn’t have too many problems, although like a few of you CHADOR was teased out from the wordplay. Having said that, I do vaguely recall having come across it before. OFFICE was my LOI after LAWFUL.
    1. Same LOI and similar experiences all round, except I took *forever* over WEATHERBOARD because I couldn’t get past seeing “WATER” among the anagrist, and got fixated!
23. No time recorded as I was solving in an environment where interruptions and distractions were inevitable. Having said that, my impression is that it took me longer than I would have expected.
    Embarrassingly, my last ones in were ‘office’ and ‘lawful’. Neither very difficult clues, but proving yet again that, sometimes, one can fail to see the fairly obvious. Part of the unfailing joy of crosswords.
24. All going reasonably smoothly (albeit with a bit of guesswork around the obscurities) until I hit the south west. For some reason, both OFFICE and LAWFUL put up stout resistance, although in both cases I could not work out why after the light had dawned.

    GLAM went in with a shrug from definition and the cross checkers, but did not know the GAM for school. One for the memory bank.

    4d was my COD, closely followed by 16d. Enjoyable outing.

25. Agreeable puzzle, and, I thought, easier than some we have had of late. Fell asleep while solving it, but only briefly.
26. 6m 45s for this one. A few unknown words – COTTA, CHADOR, WEATHERBOARD – but the wordplay wasn’t too tricky for those ones.
27. 13:34 for me, still feeling desperately tired, but hoping for a better night tonight now that Janet and I have finally decided to abandon any thought of moving.

    Like you and others I’d never heard of the required meaning of WATER TABLE and spent some time after I’d finished trying (and failing) to work out what on earth 1ac had to do with the more usual geological meaning. Many thanks for your explanation.

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