Times Cryptic 26432

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I missed my half-hour target by two minutes but this was mostly quite straightforward. There were a few definitions or bits of wordplay that raised an eyebrow whilst solving but when I came to write the blog I managed to resolve all but a couple of tiny points in favour of the setter and I have mentioned these along the way. Off we go…

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are in curly brackets} and [indicators in square ones]

Across
1 Bird doesn’t have white on body initially (5,4)
BLACK SWAN – B{ody} [initially], LACKS (doesn’t have), WAN (white). I think of “wan” as being grey rather than white, but the dictionaries have “pale” which I suppose covers it.
6 Hard to fake passport, perhaps? (5)
RIGID – RIG (fake), ID (passport, perhaps)
9 Sweet area in high ground in Israel (7)
CARAMEL – A (area) in CARMEL (high ground in Israel)
10 Hand / off your head (7)
BANANAS – two definitions. A bunch of bananas may be called a “hand”.
11 Indian leader once close to Australian? Sorry sport! (5)
NEHRU – {Australia}N [close to], EH (sorry?), RU (sport – Rugby Union). NEHRU was the first Prime Minister of India (1947-1964) and the father of Indira Gandhi who held that office twice in later years.
12 Covering land, more sensible to find rake (9)
WOMANISER – WISER (more sensible) contains [covering] OMAN (land)
14 Head for East End district (3)
BOW – Two definitions – I think the first definition gives us the bow of a ship, though in a nautical context I tend to think of “head” as something rather different!  Bow in London has church bells which by tradition one is supposed to be born within the sound of in order to be a genuine Cockerney.
15 Owner of scissors locks cupboard (11)
HAIRDRESSER – HAIR (locks), DRESSER (cupboard)
17 Lawless dunce, rather foolish (11)
UNCHARTERED – Anagram [foolish] of DUNCE RATHER
19 First back gets the trophy (3)
POT – TOP (first) reversed [back]
20 Get down good clue: often nothing lost after editing? (9)
GENUFLECT – G (good) anagram [after editing] of CLUE {0}FTEN [nothing lost]
22 Stroke head and tail of cougar with tool (5)
CRAWL – C{ouga}R [head and tail], AWL (tool). Stroke in swimming.
24 Something going too far in film? Cut! (7)
ABRIDGE – A BRIDGE (something going too far in film). This refers to the bridge at Arnhem in the title of the 1977 film directed by Richard Attenborough. If one wishes to be pedantic one might note that the bridge wasn’t going anywhere.
26 Across the Channel, yours truly sent swimming, wet (7)
MOISTEN – MOI (across the Channel, yours truly  – “me” in French), anagram [swimming] of SENT.
27 Sneakily move line, splitting team (5)
SIDLE – L (line) is contained by [splitting] SIDE (team)
28 Poem recalled US Civil War commander, one standing on bank? (9)
FISHERMAN – IF (poem – by Kipling) reversed [recalled], SHERMAN (US Civil War commander)
Down
1 A crust brought home, / something for breakfast? (5)
BACON – Two sort of cryptic definitions, the first with reference to the expressions “bring home the bacon” and “earn a crust” both meaning to earn money.
2 Sky entertainment broadcast twice? (7)
AIRSHOW – AIR (broadcast #1), SHOW (broadcast #2). In case anyone was wondering, Collins and Chambers both have it as one word, although Chambers Word Wizard doesn’t list it or allow it for Scrabble.
3 Old country dancing champ with a uke (9)
KAMPUCHEA – Anagram [dancing] of CHAMP A UKE. Now Cambodia.
4 Hurriedly get down street in time for call from an admirer (4-7)
WOLF-WHISTLE – WOLF (hurriedly get down – of food), ST (street) in WHILE (time)
5 Head, as once compared with bonce? (3)
NOB – “once” compared with “bonce” has NO “B”
6 Collapse, having covered new dispute (3-2)
RUN-IN – RUIN (collapse) contains [having covered] N (new)
7 Start doing the Mexican wave as Mardi Gras ends (7)
GENESIS –  Last letters [ends] of {doin}G {th}E {mexica}N {wav}E {a}S {mard}I {gra}S
8 Old soldier wrongly arrested, trial’s beginning (6,3)
DESERT RAT – Anagram [wrongly] of ARRESTED, T{rial} [beginning]
13 Old film this new? (6,5)
MODERN TIMES – Straight definition with reference to the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film, and a cryptic hint. More fuel for those who complain that Times crosswords expect knowledge of popular culture from a bygone era whilst eschewing more modern stuff.
14 Country music to sing, get down on it! (9)
BLUEGRASS – BLUE (down), GRASS (sing – inform on). Probably the most traditional and authentic form of American country music.
16 Timeless principle underlining conclusions of article on gland (9)
ENDOCRINE – {articl}E + {o}N [conclusions], DOC{t}RINE (principle) [timeless]. “Underlining” serves only to place one element of the wordplay beneath the other in a Down answer.
18 Focused money on roulette choice (7)
CENTRED – CENT (money), RED (roulette choice)
19 Fictitious horse in seasonal performance, male (7)
PHANTOM – H (horse) in PANTO (seasonal performance), M (male)
21 Humbug, / some confectionery (5)
FUDGE – Two definitions – the first being figurative nonsense.
23 Number fifty in uprising, communist (5)
LENIN – NINE (number) + L (fifty) reversed [uprising]
25 Spirit in character needing no introduction (3)
ELF – {s}ELF (character) [needing no introduction].

45 comments on “Times Cryptic 26432”

  1. A bit under an hour so not too difficult by my standards. Missed the parsing of ENDOCRINE and didn’t know about (Mt.) CARMEL in Israel. GENUFLECT was my favourite.

    Some of the clues spanning a row have a connection eg 9a and 10a, 14a and 15a, 20a and 22a and er…?? 11a and 12a (I looked him up in Wikipedia and it mentions a bit of (not much) related material). Probably just serendipitous.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    1. What an interesting spot! Nehru and Lady Mountbatten, eh? About as likely as John Major and Edwina Curry, I’d say.
      Just for serendipity’s sake I Googled UNCHARTERED POT and got this nearly-but-not-quite:
      “The Silver Offering Pot is the seventy-seventh treasure encountered in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.”
      Perhaps we are onto something!

      Edited at 2016-06-07 06:51 am (UTC)

  2. 40 minutes – including a reboot – getting stuck in the SW and also at BANANAS, my last in.

    ‘Wan’ is best known to me from my O-level text – HIV Pt I – (I read at least as far as the first line: ‘So shaken as we are, so wan with care’). Having visited Israel and its highest part, I was trying to fit A into HERMON somehow, which resulted in a number of confections, none of them very tasty.

    Edited at 2016-06-07 11:08 am (UTC)

  3. In answer to joekobi’s question from yesterday:- the working title of the book in question is ‘Ian Fleming’s Labyrinth’ Hopefully out in the spring next year.

    42 minutes today – I was initially very unsure of 1dn BACON it just seemed so naff! 27ac might have been SLIDE but 18dn CENTRED put paid to that error!

    FOI 14ac BOW LOI BANANAS (Would – Hands off your head! – have been a smidge better?) COD 7dn GENESIS

    horryd Shanghai

  4. … one. Starting with our state emblem at 1ac; ending with the great music genre at 14dn. The crossing WOLF-WHISTLE and WOMANISER half raised an eyebrow. I have my own definition for the latter … but it’s not fit for publication.

    Like the entry for FUDGE in the ODO:

    “ORIGIN: early 17th cent.: probably an alteration of obsolete fadge ‘to fit’. Early usage was as a verb in the sense ‘turn out as expected’, also ‘merge together’: this probably gave rise to its use in confectionery. In the late 17th cent. the verb came to mean ‘fit together in a clumsy or underhand manner’, which included facts or figures being cobbled together in a superficially convincing way: this led to the exclamation ‘fudge!’ and to noun sense 3 of the noun”.

    Jack: you might like to mark the def. for 25dn, obvious though it may be.

    1. 25dn corrected now. Thanks for that. I had a formatting disaster over that clue during an edit that disrupted the table structure and I had to make a rare excursion into the html coding to retrieve the situation. In the process I forgot to put the definition indication back.
  5. Really enjoyed this one, and especially happy to see my fellow sandgroper in a better mood!

    COD to GENUFLECT. My very devout mother recalls how embarrassed she was as a teenager when she absent-mindedly genuflected on her first visit to a cinema.

    Thanks setter and Jack.

  6. 21.08, with something of a slowdown in the SW sector, and with a careful pre-submission check which for once worked. I now know to spell KAMPUCHEA without an I, should I ever have the need.
    SLIDE for 27, a perfectly sound answer, and twice being enjoined to “get down” without a hint of feathers contributed to that slowdown, but this whole thing was both fair and fun. I like those cute clues such as NO B, and A BRIDGE tickled my fancy.
    1. Same experience as you with SLIDE and, after BLACK SWAN, was also looking for feathers from the three “get down” clues.
  7. 30mins, so about average for me. No unknowns today, and the only one that went in unparsed (LOI) was GENESIS. Doh!
  8. FOI 1ac, and things went fairly well from there: The unknown Carmel and MODERN TIMES didn’t slow me down much.

    Everything fell apart in the SW, though. I worked out the clueing for 20ac, but not confidently enough to produce GENUFLECT. I completely missed A Bridge Too Far, both at the cinema (I was 4!) and in 24ac. I had even got as far as __SHERMAN but not confidently enough to consider that we were looking for a specific poem in two letters or get to FISHERMAN, sadly. (I have at least both heard of and read If–.)

    On the down side, I didn’t come up with FUDGE, and would probably only have got “self” for “character” if I’d got both crossers, and just couldn’t see BLUEGRASS.

    I’d like to think that I’d have got a couple of the easier answers and unlocked the rest from there if I’d carried on, but my hour is my hour, and if I persist I can lose half the morning; not good when you’re studying for an exam…

    Thanks, as always, for the enlightenment!

    Edited at 2016-06-07 07:52 am (UTC)

  9. For some reason, all I could see was BOURGEOIS which, clearly, is not country music! Lovely puzzle though.
  10. The literal meaning of GENUFLECT, something I do several times a week, a nicely disguised clue. Bow Bells, long since gone, were at St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, and also allegedly recalled Dick Whittington. Typo in blog should read ‘Cockney’. LOI FISHERMAN, spent ages trying to think of a nine letter poem. Smiled at ABRIDGE. Barry Norman said at the time it was at least an hour too long, could have done with …… 20’30” today.
      1. OIC well the normal pronunciation is cock-knee. BOW is in East London but the original bells were in the City of London. The word Cockney variously means ‘Londoner’, ‘working-class Londoner’, or someone from the East End, variously boundaried. I’m from South London (Sarf Lunnon), think Michael Caine, and was born in Guy’s Hospital, definitely one of the nearest maternity units to Mary-le-Bow. Hence, a Cockney. 🙂
  11. 12m. No real problems in spite of putting in SLIDE initially (quickly corrected when I realised 18dn must end RED) and not having a clue about NOB: thanks for explaining that one.
    I don’t mind popular culture from any era as long as it’s fairly indicated (as this was) but I do get a bit annoyed by the assumption that it must be better and more worthy of inclusion just because it’s older. I occasionally see comments on the club forum for instance that suggest that the cultural references for the Times crossword should have been frozen in about 1945! None of that’s really relevant in this case though: Charlie Chaplin, for goodness’ sake.
    Average White Band yesterday, Kool & The Gang today… it’s earworm week!
    1. As I solved 20ac my brain somehow contrived Kanye chanting “Genuflect girl, go ‘head, genuflect”.
      1. The song that instantly came to my mind was the ‘Vatican Rag’ by Tom Lehrer:

        …
        Bow your head with great respect,
        And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
        …

        Great stuff.

        2. That song is pretty much my entire experience of genuflecting. I think I had to ask my Dad what the word meant when I first heard the song, back in the eighties. I’ve never seen anyone do it in real life…
    2. I hadn’t thought of Kool and the Gang until you mentioned it. Thank you (I think). However when I wrote in GENESIS I did think of “Mum to mud to mad to dad. Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office.” I make go back to Pick up the pieces.
      1. I’ve just revived my Peter Gabriel era Genesis listening after hearing some on the radio the other day. Mum diddley shopping!
    3. I believe it is incumbent on us to cherish the love we have, we should cherish the life we live.
  12. 26:09. A nice mix of biffing and parsing today. I initially thought ‘Sorry sport!’ was an apology for the groanworthiness of the NEHRU homophone before realising it was the homophone indicator.
    1. No homophone involved Pootle. EH is clued by “sorry” as in “I beg your pardon?”.
      1. Thanks – I guess I should have read the blog. I’d parsed it as sounds like NEAR ROO, with ‘Sorry sport’ indicating pardon or ‘come again?’. Admittedly this would have needed a question mark.
  13. It’s worth noting that, in addition to the references to A Bridge Too Far and Modern Times, Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky) and Bananas (Woody Allen) are movie titles.

    Midas

  15. A nice puzzle which kept me steadily occupied for 36 minutes. FOI NEHRU, LOI POT. Didn’t see how NOB worked so thanks for explaining that one Jack. Liked ABRIDGE.
  16. The NE corner held me up fo several minutes as I was off my head feeling bonkers and not bananas. I’d just eaten one too. Then LOI GENESIS was obvious. The last shall be first. If I’d had a Revelation to begin with, the first would be last. 40 pleasant minutes under the gazebo in the garden. I’m not admitting how long that took to put up.
  17. 6 minutes on the nose appears to have been a good time for this one. It was post-pub so it must be considered a good advert for the half of Fruhli strawberry beer I had as “dessert” for the more savoury liquid courses preceding.
  18. 14:48 and with all the “get downs” I was looking for a Gilbert O’Sullivan theme.

    Good puzzle.

  19. This reminded me of the groanworthy solecism committed by US politicians trying to sound erudite. They are all too often to be heard saying – my friends and fellow Americans, we are in UNCHARTERED waters here. Ow. We of the female persuasion can do without the so-called admiration in 4d. It was a relief to get beyond the age for it. “Nice hat” or “cool boots” are just fine. 15.50
    1. It’s a persuasion? Well, maybe it is, considering the current debate in the US about who gets to use which sanitary facilities.
    2. There was a time when I was an unchartered accountant but that changed 38 years ago. I only learned how to 4d properly when I got the dog 5 years ago but now I am good, at least for the dog!

      Edited at 2016-06-07 08:08 pm (UTC)

  21. 16 mins. Like a few others I struggled in the SW. UNCHARTERED took a while, and I hadn’t felt confident enough about FUDGE to enter it, but seeing the possibility of it certainly helped me crack GENUFLECT. After that I got the CENTRED/ABRIDGE crossers, followed by my LOI BLUEGRASS. For some reason I’d convinced myself “country music” was a red herring for the definition and I had been fruitlessly trying to find a different definition and its wordplay. When the penny dropped I could have kicked myself, and if I’d seen it as quickly as I should have done I’d probably have taken at least a couple of minutes off my time.

    I thought the clue for GENESIS was one of the better examples of that kind of clue, so a tip of my hat goes to the setter for it.

  22. This was nice and easy and straightforward, after a week of unfinished puzzles (and a weekend travelling with no time for solving). Thirty-six minutes, close to my best times. I enjoyed the timeless principle in 16 dn and NOB, once the penny dropped. I too had SLIDE at first for 27 ac, until it became clear that wouldn’t fit in.
  23. Still not signed in I’m afraid, but another enjoyable puzzle, solved in a good time by my standards: just over three Verlaines, but I plead in mitigation that I tackled it stone cold sober.
    George Clements
  24. 14:49 for me, not really on the ball at all today.

    After an iffy start (I’m not keen on WAN = “white”), there were some nice clues, with GENESIS particularly well hidden in 7dn.

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