Times Cryptic 26420

41 comments on “Times Cryptic 26420”

1. A sluggish solve this morning. Mainly held up by EQUIVOCATION and INEXACTITUDE, but then I could say that about most of my solves.

   Thanks setter and Jack.

2. 26 minutes, holding myself up in the otherwise straightforward west by trying to shoehorn ‘equiposition’ into 3 down. ZULU went in with shrug as I have never really cottoned onto LULU as meaning anything other than a pint-sized Scottish singer from the era of Cilla Black and Sandy Shaw.

   Can EGGHEAD be added to the retirement home list?

   1. LULU in this sense has come up several times before, most recently last November. Also in the Quickie. On one occasion it was clued as “belter”!
      1. Oh, indeed, but it refuses to stick, coz I wanna SHOUT!
         1. Never mind. I’m sure it’ll be a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ll r-i-i-i-i-i-ght eventually.
   2. I’m glad it wasn’t just me who banged in “equiposition”. I’d started to wonder about it, but still had a few left to put in when my hour’s bell went off. Ah well. Did a better job than on the last few Tuesdays, from what I remember. And the hangover probably wasn’t helping.
3. Not much to write about. DNK GIG the boat, and I wasn’t aware of a famous film called ZULU, but I did feel pretty sure that it would have been more famous than Xulu or Yulu. I have the vague feeling that we’ve had ‘describe’ as a containment indicator before, but then I have lots of vague feelings.
   1. Zulu is particularly famous as the film in which Michael Caine should have had the line “don’t throw those bloody spears at me”, but instead waited for “The Man Who Would Be King”.

      Edited at 2016-05-24 07:08 am (UTC)

      1. The Man Who Would Be King s one of my favourite films 🙂
4. Held up by the NW corner for no good reason, especially MAJESTIC. I put in ZULU from the def (also helped by the pangram), not really thinking of a ‘lulu’ as ‘someone outstanding’ (my instant word association is the same as yours ulaca) but I now see the point of the wordplay.

   I always fall for the ‘per’ for ‘a’ trick, but I still like it, so PERU was my favourite.

   Thank you to setter and blogger

5. I just hit this one and bounced, coming down to earth eventually in 34.05, by which time I was prepared to pronounce TIRESOME, almost my last in, as tee-ress-oh-me, one of those tiresome collections of tunnelling worms that occasionally grace these grids. Only got MAJESTIC because I was chasing the pangram and managed to shake off “pun” and “gag”. I can’t even blame the setter’s inexactitude, because everything was admirably precise. I think my mental Thesaurus must be missing a few dozen synapses today.
   1. Any more of this type of performance and I’ll have to sub for you at the champs.

      1. Ok, I’ll send in the June qualifier, lie about my time and lend you the ponytail.

         1. Perfick
6. Easy stroll in the park solved left to right top to bottom with no hold ups. Smiled at ZULU which is my wife’s most detested film of all time.
7. OK can’t see it, so somebody please explain. 16’46” today, held up by biffing CARDOON, presumably inventing a Scots ancestry. MAJESTIC fell in straight away, not sure I know any other synonym for sublime. Thanks to setter and blogger.
   1. In this context it refers to the crossword itself, where every letter of the alphabet is required in the solution.
      1. Thank you. Not a sentence then?
8. But I wonder how many people know that?
   1. Not a lot of people know that.
9. LOI MAJESTIC after a relatively good 25 minute solve. Having first come across the word as In a SUBLIME cover drive, the next encounter involved a change of state in Chemistry, so it’s always been a more subtle word than MAJESTIC to me. The dictionary tells me I was wrong.
   1. Almost my last was also MAJESTIC. I think if I twigged it on first reading, my experience of the whole crossword would have been different. My excuse is that I’m currently rehearsing Gerontius, “Praise to the holiest….and essence all sublime” You can’t substitute “majestic” in there – it won’t scan. I think for me sublime has meant “jolly good” tending towards awesome, amazing – “that tiramisu was sublime”, that sort of thing, and “majestic” dawdled on of the fringes of the party trying to look inconspicuous.
      1. I agree. A monarch is majestic, but is part of the same realm as us. The essence of the holiest isn’t. I hope your rehearsals produce a sublime performance on the day.
10. Despite an early solve on a day off I struggled with some of this and limped home in 23 mins. Count me as another who was held up by putting in “equiposition” for 3dn, and when I saw that 15ac had to be SNEAKER I briefly changed 3dn to a muppetesque “equilocation” before the “vocation” penny dropped and I saw what “shifting” really referred to. GIGOLO was my LOI after AVERSION, and both took much longer than they should have done.
11. 9m. No problems, no unknowns, although I wasn’t 100% sure of GIG for boat. Fortunately I was 100% sure of GIGOLO. This meaning of LULU has come up before, as Jack says. It’s one of those words I have never come across in the real world.
    1. I think slang usage of lulu has gone out of fashion k. I recall it from 1960s but don’t recall hearing it in quite some time – replaced by “mega” possibly
       1. I think it came to me from “Watch that first step: it’s a lulu!” which I’ve heard as an alternative for the more usual “doozy” in AmE. But only after I’d figured out ZULU, of course. GIG was no problem because they have pilot gig races here in Bristol.
       2. I know it from Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) when one character, noticing that another has a cold, exclaims ‘Say, you’ve got a lulu!’ So for years I thought a lulu was a cold.
    2. You must have come across Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie though, surely?

       GIGOLO was my FOI despite not knowing the boat – what else could it be? – and ZULU my LOI because I got LULU a long time before I thought of the film. The old verlaine would have slammed LULU straight in and hang the consequences… scraped in under 7m anyway. ETA: Ooh, only 17 seconds slower than Magoo this time! But a long way behind Jason today.

       Edited at 2016-05-24 09:28 am (UTC)

       1. Of course: I’ve seen Ab Fab like everyone else.
12. FOI GIGOLO, LOI MAJESTIC, but all done and dusted in about 45 minutes, although I never did parse the ZULU / LULU thing – I see it now though, thanks Jack.
13. I proceeded at a steady pace but ended up struggling to complete the NW, with MAJESTIC my last entry, 35 minutes after starting. I couldn’t think of the boat in 13, thought 3d involved a jumble of PARISIAN, was thinking of three-letter jokes such as PUN and GAG for 1, etc, etc.
    1. Yes, I found MAJESTIC very frustrating, knowing how the clue worked but thinking of pretty much everything except “mace” and “jest” over and over again 🙁
14. A straightforward top to bottom 18 mins today with nothing obscure. In the interests of time, I do a lot of partial-biffing where I see some of the cryptic but can’t be bothered to fully parse e.g. bunged in 4dn as soon as I thought of TOME. LOI was DONATION.
15. I struggled to get a start with this puzzle. The 4 letter clues left me baffled, until I had some checkers, and my FOI was 16ac. After that I filled in the SE, then worked my way up through the NE, then back to the SW and NW with LOI, INHERE which I dithered over for some time as I’d never come across it before. Didn’t know the boat at 13a but it didn’t hold me up. Nice puzzle and blog, thanks Jack and setter. 40 minutes in all.

    Edited at 2016-05-24 05:56 pm (UTC)

16. Over an hour, so off bottom of board even though no error. NE quarter particularly recalcitrant – the pangram gave me the final breakthrough as I was sure that QUI had to be somewhere in 2dn, so the J needed to be in 1ac.
    I did accept ‘describe’ as a containment indicator by thinking of it as the opposite of ‘inscribe’ in the geometrical sense, but that turns out to be ‘escribe’ which is of no use for cluing.
17. Didn’t breeze through this one as easily as yesterday, but no huge hold-ups, just a bunch of question marks and some initial flubs (GHANIAN, SCALDING). Don’t think I’ve ever used INHERE as a single word and not an instruction.
18. About 20 minutes, ending with PERU and INHERE. PERU taking so long is my fault, as I failed to quickly think of ‘per’ as ‘a’. Dumbbell, me. INHERE was one of those words that looks like it exists but that you never see or hear. I inferred its presence from ‘inherent’. Everything else was pretty OK, with the NW being the hardest. Regards.
19. Thirty-five minutes here, but that included 10 minutes spent feeding two fox-cubs that have adopted me. They have an insatiable appetite for chicken bones. Given that my garden is teeming with quail, I am hoping that the chicken is an investment and that they’ll bring me something tasty when they’re older and filled with gratitude. But I very much digress.

    This was all fairly plain sailing although, since I don’t sail, it was not completely straightforward. INHERE held me up for quite a while: contrary to kevin_from_ny, I think it looks like one of those words that doesn’t exist. I didn’t think to back-construct from ‘inherent’, and in the end I only put it in when I was sure nothing else more plausible would fit.

20. Didn’t get to look at this ’til late so a DNF with plenty left but I feel this is one I could possibly have eventually chiseled out.
21. 10:50 for me, not really on the ball today.

    I couldn’t convince myself of EQUIPOSITION so restricted myself to typing in a slightly nervous EQUI first time through.

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