Times Cryptic 26324

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I needed 43 minutes to solve this rather tricky puzzle and extra time to understand some of the clues. My last one in was 14ac where there were only a couple of possibilities for the first part of the word but dozens for the remainder, so it took some working through to come up with something that made at least a degree of sense. I imagine if one knew the term it was probably a write-in but I have never met it before, said with some confidence as a google search of TftT returns no hits on it. There’s only one hit on 16dn, as recently as the Jumbo blogged on 16th January and unfortunately I didn’t tackle that one, but the answer was easy enough to work out from a combination of anagram fodder and the knowledge that -bane is common in the names of various poisons.

As usual deletions are in {curly brackets} and indicators, where given, are in [square ones]

Across
1 HET UP – PUT (park), EH (what!) all reversed. I think ‘park’ for ‘put’ came up on a previous occasion and led to some debate. If in doubt it may help to think in terms of putting something aside until required.
4 MAHOGANY – HOG (corner – as in control or dominate something e.g. one might corner the market for a particular product) + A (area) inside MANY (piles of)
8 GENERALISATION – LISA (girl) inside GENERATION (making)
10 EYES RIGHT – {conferenc}E, YES (of course), RIGHT (Tory). A parade ground command.
11 TROOP – POOR (lacking) + T (time) all reversed
12 MALADY – A + LAD (son) inside [impressed by] MY (brother!)
14 ITCH-MITE – ITCH (long), MITE (item – article, with its last letter moved to the front). New to me.
17 GUNMETAL – GUN (heater – US slang) + METAL sounds like “mettle” (bottle – courage) [say]. ‘Heater’ for a firearm is something I learned quite recently through crosswords.
18 DAMMIT – TIM (small boy), MAD (raving) all reversed
20 ELBOW – E{vi}L, BOW (weapon). Definition: ‘army’ crook – ho-ho!
22 SWEATSHOP – Anagram [broadcast] of TAPE SHOWS
24 ORDINARY SEAMEN – Anagram [doctor] of ANNOYS MARRIED E (English)
25 SHAGREEN – SH (not a word!), A, GREEN (coloured). I think I knew this leather product through crosswords but it has only come up once before in TftT and that was in a Jumbo that I wouldn’t have done, so maybe I met it elsewhere.
26 TARRY – A + R{ecidivist} inside TRY (judge)

Down
1 HUGGER-MUGGER – HUGGER (person who embraces), MUGGER (assailant). I wasn’t sure what this meant but the definition here is ‘confused’.
2 TENSE – Two definitions: charged / present
3 PARTRIDGE – {c}ARTRIDGE (shell) with its first letter changed to an unspecified ‘P’
4 MALIGN – MA (old lady), LIGN sounds like “line” (row) [on radio]
5 HESITATE – HE (explosive), then I (one) inside STATE (situation)
6 GET IT – Hidden in {messa}GE TIT{le}
7 NEOLOGISM – Anagram [engineer] of LOSING ME enclosing O{ne}
9 A PRETTY PENNY – A{sian} [capital], PRETTY (sort of), PEN (writer), NY (city). ‘Pretty’ for ‘sort of’ gave me pause for thought but they can just about pass the substitution test in a phrase such as ‘he was pretty/sort of strong for his size’. The definition here is ‘millions’ which is possibly a little OTT for a phrase that usually just means a large sum of money, so perhaps a question mark would have been in order.
13 LINDBERGH – Anagram [sadly] of G{i}RL BEHIND [I must leave]
15 HEARTBEAT – HE (this man), ART (skill), BEAT (strike)
16 RATSBANE – BAN (outlaw) inside anagram [wasted] of TEARS. My dictionary says it was specifically arsenic but can now be other poisons.
19 KENYAN – KEY (explanation) encloses N (name abbreviated), A, N (north)
21 WRING – R (Republican) inside WING (party branch)
23 HOMER – HOME (in), R {esidence} [originally]

37 comments on “Times Cryptic 26324”

  1. … solving means the timer’s back. So 29:03 for this including a couple of short breaks. Found it hard to get going and then biffed all sorts of answers, checking them afterwards. Strange how that not-ticking clock forces all sorts of attempts that may be wrong. Liked all the anagrams, but still needed a bit of paper to work them out. Old habits eh?
    LOI was HESITATE — over which I did.
    Back to pen and paper tomorrow assuming the printer shop is on the ball.

    On edit: meant to say thanks Jack for looking up previous appearances. Much appreciated. Keep up the good work eh?

    Edited at 2016-02-02 01:48 am (UTC)

  2. Had to resort to aids for PARTRIDGE, not sure why. Up until then, it was a straightforward solve, despite the unknown ITCH-MITE, SHAGREEN and HUGGER-MUGGER.

    Liked the army crook.

    Thanks setter and Jack.

  3. I remembered – eventually and with a checker or two – HUGGER-MUGGER from a previous puzzle, but otherwise had the same unknowns as Gallers. Thanks to Jack for the full parsing of the ‘millions’ clue. 47 minutes.

    Was I the only one who was brought up a bit short by coloured for GREEN? I’m not sure I’ve seen a specific colour clued in this way before, but one of those dreaded Google searches might prove otherwise.

    1. I think I remember seeing “red” as “colour” from time to time. When it’s not revolutionary.

      Edited at 2016-02-02 11:54 pm (UTC)

      1. ‘Colour’ seems more intuitive to clue red, green, etc.; ‘coloured’ rather less so, but it’s more by way of an observation – and a personal preference – than a quibble.
  4. Threw in the towel at 33:41, after spending several minutes trying to fill in the unches at 13d; I managed to ignore the possibility that ‘high flyer’ might be a person who flew. I managed to parse the others, even the unknown ITCH-MITE, except for PARTRIDGE, which I biffed; thanks to Jack for the explanation, which I would never have come up with.
    1. From comments above I appear to have got off lightly with PARTRIDGE. 1ac was a write-in and so was 2dn so my next attempt was at 3dn, to come up with a 9-letter bird starting with P of which there didn’t appear to be many choices. Having naturally dismissed ‘ptarmigan’ I spotted the head-swapping possibilities of PARTRIDGE.

      Edited at 2016-02-02 05:41 am (UTC)

      1. I couldn’t get past peregrine for some time particularly as it had a lot of the letters from emerging in it.
      2. I tried Peregrine and the somewhat unusually spelt two-r Parrakeet. I did not benefit any at all from being able to think of those before I got to Partridge (which i couldn’t parse, anyway)
  5. Looking again, I realize I should have said that, while I parsed ELBOW correctly, I didn’t get it, until just now. Having got it, I’m not that sure I want it.
    1. Agree – some clues are groan-worthy, and then again some are groan-unworthy. All subjective, of course.

  6. Struggled for just under an hour with this one (despite getting 1ac and 1dn straight off), but got there in the end, with A PRETTY PENNY left unparsed. Couldn’t figure if PEN was the writer in question, or TYPE was the sort in question. LINDBERGH and RATSBANE u/k. A plausible ‘damned’ held me up for some time at 18ac
  7. Misspelled LINDBURGH. To me, if two people are HUGGER-MUGGER, they are working closely together, as in IN CAHOOTS. DNK the ‘confused’ definition. Thanks jackkt for explaining some of the others.
  8. A bit tough in places especially some of the parsing so well done Jack for sorting it all out

    Have to agree that A PRETTY PENNY doesn’t really equate to “millions”. Not a phrase one hears much these days but surely means “expensive when compared with other similar articles”.

  9. Too tough for me. Even the ones I guessed correctly I couldn’t parse so I gave up and looked for the answers in your blog. Even then some of your explanations are a bit tenuous so no wonder I got stuck.
  10. Similar experience to jackkt, 45 minutes, with some not fully understood. Didn’t get the army pun until now. Was all correct but somehow felt dissatisfied. Glad not my blog!
  11. Must admit I agree with Galspray on this – I quite like terrible jokes if they’re bad enough. Thanks for confirming ITCH-MITE Jack. I’d put in “bite” thinking meh and just remembered to go back to it for an alphabet run. I’d thought of SHAGREEN (if I’d thought at all) as some sort of Irish bar. 20.5 P.S. I see Jack made a similar “army” comment on the Club Forum.

    Edited at 2016-02-02 10:33 am (UTC)

  12. Would have been a reasonable 18.40 had I not also failed to spell Lindburgh even when presented with all the letters. I think I was so relieved to twig that it wasn’t, for once, a bird I forgot myself. I had started solving it with L????BIRD, which looked plausible.
    A PRETTY PENNY from crossers only. With both definition and wordplay on nodding acquaintance terms with their intended counterparts it barely seemed worthwhile, so a medal of honour to Jack for throwing all the bits into the ballpark.
    ITCH-MITE looks like one of those wonderfully prosaic creations – it’s a mite, it causes an itch, now what shall we call it? – but I’d not come across it before.
  13. 17m. Quite tricky this. I didn’t know ITCH-MITE or SHAGREEN, and I thought HUGGER-MUGGER meant something else, but the difficulty came from some quite hard-to-spot definitions. Once spotted they were quite biffable though, which made for a slightly odd feel.
  14. 61m struggle but I see my problems were typical of other solvers so not just me (or the fact I solved this in the Malt Whisky Society rooms in Leith!). HUGGER MUGGER well known from Laertes complaint to Claudius in Hamlet but guessed the poison and the skin bug. I had biffed a few so glad of the parsing. Thanks to blogger and setter today.

    Edited at 2016-02-02 01:21 pm (UTC)

  15. I did this during breaks in pub quiz last night, and the rest of my tablemates kept asking if I was writing in real words and phrases, so I guess there was a bit of obscurity in here. I had question marks next to A PRETTY PENNY and HET UP but I did like ELBOW
  16. 30:26. Whenever 1A goes straight in as it did here I think I could be on for a quick one but that thought quickly dissipated when it took me some time to get anything else. I thought 1D was going to be HOODIE HUGGER for some time, after David Cameron’s famous speech though I was doubtful that it had made the dictionary.

    Struggled for some time with MALADY particularly because I wanted S for son and was thinking of siblings or monks for brother thus coming up with MASONK or MONASK. When I finally twigged PARTRIDGE fell as my LOI.

  17. As chewy as a rubber chicken with a mouth full of bubblegum. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Rubbery.
  18. Put simply, too tough for me. I did know SHAGREEN as the covering on the handle on a RN Officer’s sword, knew GUNMETAL but didn’t get it, DNK the bug or the poison, and never managed to work out the parsing for HESITATE. I got A-P-P quite quickly, and I don’t see much of a problem with the definition. These days, one wouldn’t say ‘he’s worth a pretty penny’ unless it was millions, would one?

    I hope tomorrow’s is easier.

  19. A tough number for me, about 40 minutes but all correct in the end, the end being HESITATE/ITCH-MITE. SHAGREEN was new to me, and I didn’t bother to parse the PRETTY PENNY. I didn’t get the ‘army’ crook until now, thought it was British for some actual army thief. Big groan for that. Regards.
  20. 17:30 with most trouble in the Geordie corner with itch-mite, neologism and mahogany bringing up the rear.

    A pretty penny was biffed big-time so thanks to Jack for clearing the mists on that one. The wordplay for unusual words like the itchy thing, shagreen and ratsbane was pretty clear which I’d say was the sign of a solid Times puzzle.

  21. No proper time because of continuing lurgi and extreme tiredness – it might have taken me something like 40 mins from start to finish but I haven’t got a clue how much of that time was lost. Anyway, I think this is a very good puzzle, and considering how many helpful checkers there are some of the clues proved harder to crack than they might have done, so for that a tip of the hat to the setter is definitely in order. MALIGN was my LOI after MAHOGANY.
  22. Decidedly a long time, but I was much distracted by football, as ever.
    Being Tottenham born and bred before migration to Northumberland, I still find it hard to ignore radio commentaries like tonight’s Norwich/Spurs match.
    I thought that the clues were tough, but generally fair, though I have reservations about ‘A Pretty Penny’ and ‘Hugger Mugger’.
    1. DNF. In fact, DENF (didn’t even nearly finish). After some 37 minutes, the entire western half was still as unsullied as new-fallen snow, apart from HUGGER MUGGER. I’m still trying to work out whether more or fewer G&Ts would have helped.

      Edited at 2016-02-02 11:56 pm (UTC)

  24. The top half went in relatively quickly. The bottom half did not go in at all, and I was a DNF. I did think the clues I did solve were very tightly written.
  25. It occurred to me, in the watches of the night, that Lindbergh probably didn’t fly very high; certainly not during his historic flight.
    1. Not by modern standards of course. He did report flying over a storm during the flight so must have made say 10,000 feet

      You can see Spirit of St Louis preserved at the Smithsonian in Washington – well worth doing

  26. Took 7 hours before the penny dropped, but at least I got it before coming here.
    Hated the ‘Elbow’ clue. Not in the least amusing.

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