Times Cryptic 26348

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This one took me 28 minutes including parsing everything along the way (or so I thought) so I expect the speed merchants have had a field day. I say ‘or so I thought’ because on closer inspection when I came to write the blog I discovered my answer at 19ac didn’t fit the wordplay, nor was the definition correct – one of the perils of solving what appeared to be a rather easy puzzle when I thought I was within reach of a sub-30 finish. I think we have more than our usual quota of lengthy definitions today.

Deletions are in curley brackets and indicators in square ones

Across
1 ANARCHIC – A, then ARCH (cunning) inside NIC{k} (prison [largely])
5 FRISKY – F{irework} [initially], RISKY (dangerous)
9 OBSOLETE – SOLE (only) + T (time) inside [to cut] OBE (Empire medal)
10 BARROW – BAR (pub), ROW (argument)
12 REFRIGERATION – REF (match official), RIG (fix), E (English), RATION (allocation)
15 PLEAT – LEA (grassy area) in PT (part). No quibbles or doubts about the spelling of the meadow today!
16 INCOGNITO – Anagram [mixed] of NOTICING, O (blood group)
17 ANTENATAL – ANTEN{n}A (aerial [not New]), TAL{l} (having height [cut down])
19 SKINK – S (small), KINK (behavioural quirk). My initial answer here was STICK for reasons that looked ok to me at first glance but now seem quite beyond logic so I won’t embarrass myself by going into them.
20 INTERNAL RHYME – I suppose this is &lit with definition by way of an illustration of the answer, however it fails according to my understanding of how internal rhymes are supposed to work, not that I’m an expert so it could still be technically correct.
But here’s a rather better illustration from a song as performed by Kit & the Widow about “People Who Like Sondheim”:
“Religiously they learn all those eternal and infernal internal rhymes
Though they’re quite mechanical, chanting them litanically hundreds of times…”
22 RAKE IN – {hi}KE [not H (hard) I (one)] inside RAIN (wet weather). Definition: make much
23 FIREDAMP – FIRED (dismissed), AMP (some current). Explosive stuff!
25 SHRIKE – SHRIEK (harsh cry) with E (note) moving right to the end. A bird that has a frightening number of alternative names and varieties, any of which might turn up in crosswords. Actually the harsh cry can also be spelt SHRIKE.
26 KNITWEAR – Anagram [spilt] of INK WATER

Down
1 APOCRYPHAL – Anagram [rendering] of HAPPY CAROL. Definition: fabulous, in the sense of ‘mythical’.
2 ASS – {l}ASS (girl [going topless])
3 CULTIST – L (left) + SIT (lie) reversed [arising] inside CUT (split). My last one in.
4 IN THE PICTURE – A straight definition and a cryptic one
6 ROARING – R (character seen in both Oxford and Cambridge), OARING (rowing). Definition: emphatic, as in ‘a roaring success’.
7 SERENDIPITY – Anagram [unconventional] of YET INSPIRED. One of my favourite words. Here’s the definition and origin from the entry in SOED: (A supposed talent for) the making of happy and unexpected discoveries by accident or when looking for something else; such a discovery. From Serendip, -dib, said to be a former name of Sri Lanka + -ity; formed by Horace Walpole after the title of a fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, the heroes of which ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’.
8 YAWL – Y (unknown), AWL (tool for making holes). A type of two-masted boat.
11 CANCELLATION – Anagram [arrangement] of ANCIENT LOCAL
13 FREETHINKER – FREE (not occupied), THIN (rarefied), {ma}KER [trinity completing maker]. Definition: rationalist.
14 BOOKKEEPER – BOOK (reserve), KEEPER (animal attendant). Definition: who works to maintain balance.
18 NITPICK – NIT (fool), PICK (choose). None of this ever going on at TftT of course.
19 SURFEIT – SURF (browse online), TIE (link) reversed [up]. Definition: stuff, which requires the answer to be a verb, now rare, hence ‘once’ being used to qualify it. Henry I is supposed to have died after consuming a surfeit of lampreys, and King John from a surfeit of peaches and cider which sounds a more attractive proposition than Henry’s fish supper.
21 IRIS – IRIS{h} (of Ireland [most of it])
24 ACE – {f}ACE (countenance [losing opening])

63 comments on “Times Cryptic 26348”

  1. … as Jack predicts. Much helped by the biffable long answers. Strangely, the only post-solve parse was CULTIST. Fans of “Christie Malry” will have liked SHRIKE, the nickname of Christie’s gal who worked as a butcher.

    Won’t say what my first thought was when getting ?O?K?E???R at 14dn.

    2. I was talking about Christie Malry’s accountancy practices to friends only a week or two ago. Really need to get hold of a copy of that book…
  2. Another of I expect of many non-herpetologists (and, it has to be said, non-spellers) who plumped for ‘stick’ in lieu of anything better. 24 minutes otherwise, ending with the tricky SURFEIT.
  3. LOI ANTENATAL; couldn’t make anything of the clue, and the word itself is not in my idiolect (we say ‘prenatal’), so a couple of minutes wasted staring at it. Ta, Jack. Like Vinyl, I put in SKINK immediately (Dining in an Edinburgh hotel once, I had something called ‘cullen skink’, which turned out to be a soup; the waitress couldn’t tell me anything more than that.)
    1. Cullen skink is smoked haddock soup. Skink means soup, and Cullen is east of Inverness.
        1. Indeed. I almost put in a link to a recipe but then I get put in the penalty box until someone with superpowers releases me. Cream or milk too. I think we have all the ingredients. Maybe a bayleaf.
            1. I wonder if anyone’s died of surfeit of Cullen skink. It sounds only marginally better than those lampreys. I’d still go for the peaches and cider.
              1. It was years ago, but I wouldn’t have minded surfeiting on that cullen skink; and the George Hotel would be a lovely place to surfeit.
  4. I put in STICK since I’d not heard of SKINK. Otherwise I was pretty quick, just didn’t get it all correct.

    BTW BOOKKEEPER is on of the few (only?) words in English with 3 lots of double letters in a row.

    1. I know it’s a proper noun and therefore doesn’t really count, but another word with 3 lots of consecutive double letters is WOOLLOOMOOLOO, a harbourside area near the Sydney CBD.
    3. If you’re prepared to allow hyphens, or even spaces, TEA provides SWEET-TOOTHED, GENTEEL-LOOKING and (surely the shortest at 4,4 – unless you allow 222 or 2022 in Roman numerals) GOOD DEED.
  5. I liked INTERNAL RHYME – can’t recall having come across an answer relating to a ‘rhyming’ clue before. I was completely at a loss for the parsing of FREETHINKER even though of course it’s perfectly understandable when explained. Yes, SERENDIPITY is a favourite of mine too and it was good to see it make an appearance. FIREDAMP is one of those words which I’ve rarely seen outside the realm of cryptic crosswords.

    Er…, thanks very much for the recipe paulmcl, but I might pass up on the Cullen skink, this time anyway!

    Thank you to setter and blogger

    1. I had interval rhyme because there’s a gap! It seems it doesn’t exist.
      1. Glad to hear I wasn’t the only one! Not having heard of INTERNAL RHYME it was a toss up between internal and interval and as usual in such circumstances I went the wrong way.
    2. Remember a non-rhyming clue: EYE RHYME. 3 times, google tells me… 24515, 25307 & 25826. I’d remembered it by the third time. Never seen INTERNAL RHYME, but guessed it correctly.
      FIREDAMP appears in one of my favourite novels: an overly-violent period love story, written by an American, based on suffragettecity (vale Bowie), African slavery, and, of course, coal-mining. Set in Wigan in Victorian times, maybe 1870s. Rose.
      Easy puzzle otherwise, very quick 15 minutes – no hold-ups.
      Rob
  6. Well I didn’t know the fascinating origin of SERENDIPITY, so I guess that’s serendipity in action.Thanks for that Jack.
    Pretty straightforward for me today: 20 minutes
  7. This one seems to have shown up a day late. Didn’t have too much trouble today except for the unknown FIREDAMP and the unparsed FREETHINKER.

    Skinks are very common around here. It’s always interesting to learn that a word you take for granted is an obscurity for others. Usually works the other way for me.

    Thanks setter and Jack.

  8. Must be one of the most straightforward ever. ANTENATAL made me think otherwise it was more or less non stop solving.
  9. Coincidentally had Cullen Skink on Saturday for lunch in Creggan’s Inn just up the road. Thought this puzzle pretty thin gruel though.11m.
  10. 9m. I don’t think I can go much faster than that iPad-solving while standing up on a crowded train, so yes this was easy.
    SKINK and YAWL are arguably a bit harsh given the knowledge you need to solve them, but fortunately I possessed it for a change.
    I had Cullen skink a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious.

    Edited at 2016-03-01 08:51 am (UTC)

    1. Nice try, but I’m not sure I buy lock = reserve. Maintaining balance in the canal system, though: that’s a special kind of genius deserving this discrete round of applause.

      Edited at 2016-03-01 12:17 pm (UTC)

      1. I’d buy lock = reserve from an IT perspective. To lock a file or a database row would be to reserve it. Maybe unlikely in a crossword clue though.
  12. Yep, easy one for me too. Same as Gal re FIREDAMP and FREETHINKER. All others ok. Liked “character seen in both O and C”, if a bit wordy.

    Janie (on phone, too lazy to log in)

  14. 18 minutes, LOI ROARING, COD SERENDIPITY; FREETHINKER not parsed. Had LOCKKEEPER on same basis as anon above, but wasn’t happy with it then a PDM.
  15. Agreed, very easy. Liked the SERENDIPITY clue.

    How times change that folks don’t know of FIREDAMP. The DAMP part means “gas” from the German “dampf” so “stinkdamp” is hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs).

    FIREDAMP is mainly methane and is found in coal mines, especially those around Tyneside where before the advent of the safety lamp it caused a lot of fatalities.

  16. As a regular follower of this blog for the past year, this is my first post. The Times provides me with a welcome distration on the train to work running an electrical contracting company.

    I can almost always complete the QC in around 15 to 30 mins but this represents something of a breakthrough for me.

    I completed all except firedamp in 30 mins. Given the aforementioned profession (I’ve had to unfortunately do the first part a few times and clearly there is no excuse for not getting the second part!) I’m slightly annoyed but couldn’t see past “dismissed some” as being a reversal of part to give trap and was looking for a kind of mine that ended in “trap”. I had the p from bookkeeper but was sure ace was correct so I folded!

    Anyway, I regularly read (especially on the QC section) that there are not enough comments from “newbies” so here I am letting you know that it is possible to get there with regular practice and learning the tricks of the trade! I almost gave up at one point but glad I persevered!

    The relative personal succcess that this represents could be down to the lack of alcohol intake recently!

    Dan

    newbie

    nearly departed – back – 25% less german lager perhaps?
    (WEN{T} (departed) reversed (back) BIE{R})
    Haha

    2. Welcome to the blog Dan, and well done. Look forward to your additions to the blog and perhaps a witty avatar?
  17. As a north easterner I was familiar with FIREDAMP. I found this quite easy and completed in 32 minutes (fast for me). FOI immediate write in ANARCHIC, with ASS, OBSOLETE and IN THE PICTURE hot on its heels. Didn’t know YAWL but worked it out once I’d realised I wasn’t looking for a type of firework with D at the end. Puzzled over the unusual form of SURFEIT but shoved it in thus eliminating GEKKO as a possibility for 19ac, which gave me the familiar SKINK as soon as I got BOOKKEEPER. Hadn’t heard of INTERNAL RHYME but guessed it from the crossers. All the rest were parsed as I went. LOI CULTIST. Liked the construction of FREETHINKER even though I biffed it and then worked out the parsing. John
  18. Near record time (12:37) – held up by 3dn, making 1ac LOI.
    Does anyone know the actual story that Walpole referred to ? The only reference I’ve found is about an incident when, having described a missing camel by Sherlock-style reasoning, they were accused of stealing it, which doesn’t seem very relevant.
  19. That’s my way of celebrating a sub half-hour solution. Had to check yawl to be sure.
  20. A straightforward 15 mins. Biffed “cultist” as my LOI. Was hoping for something more chewy as I am laid up with a cold and having completed 15×15, concise and QC in 25 mins I’m now wondering how to spend the rest of the day. I was supposed to be picking up a new 16 plate motor today but it has been recalled before pickup – not a good omen!
    1. I was wondering what on earth a 16 plate motor might be, imagining an obscure electrical device with an even more obscure purpose possibly involving rather large diner parties. So I googled it. D’oh!)
      1. A 2 plate motor is ample for most of my home dining activities these days I’m afraid!
        1. I had to google it too, as a non UK resident, am still unsure, is it something to do with a newly registered car?
          Try the new Club Monthly, if you have an afternoon (or a week) free. I’m struggling through.

          Edited at 2016-03-01 01:07 pm (UTC)

          1. Correct, Pip. UK car number plates are currently formatted as XXnnXXX where nn indicates the half year. They are issued on March 1st and September 1st each year. Today nn becomes 16, in September it will be 66, next March it then becomes 17. This means that almost nobody picks up a new car in Feb or Aug and there is chaos at the dealers on Mar/Sep 1st. Thanks for pointing me to the club monthly – I’ll give it a go.
            1. Bizarre. Like a UK tax year starting on April 6th. Most countries settle for Jan 1. No doubt there is a logical reason why you can’t have a 2016 car until March…
  21. 14.49, so well down the list of solvers. IN THE PICTURE made me smile, as a statement of the dam’d obvious. And I’m very fond of Serendipity, especially as she appears as a Muse (anachronism alert) in Dogma. Surely one of the finest words created by accident.
    My favourite BOOKKEEPERs are those that say “and what number would you like it to be?”
  22. 22 minutes. Unusually easy for Tuesday, with the easily-solved long entries helping a lot. However I made the same mistake as Jack and others with 19a, BIFWING, rather than BIFFING, STICK.
  23. It’s serendipity, but had the same time as our blogger with exactly the same mistake – I wondered how a stick insect could be a type of lizard. I wasn’t happy, but forgot to go back and check the parsing. The I-pad indicated errors when I put in my LOI (ROARING) and forced me to rethink, whereupon the correct answer resurfaced in my alcohol degraded brain.

    A pleasing, if not necessarily challenging puzzle, with a surprising abundance of Ks.

    1. 7 Ks. And 6 Hs. Many years ago I’m sure I saw a Times crossword with checked/unchecked squares down each side; one side all Ks, the other all Hs.
      Rob
  24. Inside of 6 minutes… I kind of wished I hadn’t done this straight after coming in from the school run, when my hands were still bloody cold, as who knows, it might have shaved a few more seconds off. That or encouraged one of my usual speed-generated typos, of course…

    Several of these were biffed in, to the point where I’ve (a) only just now discovered that SERENDIPITY was an anagram, and (b) that “rarefied trinity” is not somehow H, inside of TINKER (=, again somehow, “maker”)!

  25. 9:06, biffing antenatal, serendipity and freethinker along the way. 11 caused me to pause is I misread repeal as repeat.

    Repeal after me: “Read the clue properly”.

    I’d heard of firedamp but wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it was and had to sort of half-guess internal rhyme, at the time.

  27. 13 mins, the last two of which were spent of ROARING where I must have had brain-freeze because nobody else has said they had trouble with it. I confess that INTERNAL RHYME went in with a shrug. I had a feeling our US-based contributors wouldn’t have much trouble with SKINK, but I didn’t know it is used Down Under as well.
  28. Well, I had trouble with SKINK, enough in fact that I entered STICK. Oh well. I should have got it since one of my friends told me on Saturday her son had just acquired a blue skink. Whatever that is. Otherwise, about 20 minutes ending with FIREDAMP. Regards.
  29. Well, good lords and bless my beans – sub twenty minutes for me (just) which is unusually nifty by my standards.

    No major holdups (I know my reptiles), although INTERNAL RHYME was an NHO for me.

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