Times Cryptic 26530 – September 29, 2016. A Navel Encounter.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
25 minutes on the dot, distracted perhaps by the incessant roar of a butterfly flapping its wings in the far, far distance. I don’t think there’s anything too tricky here, though there are a couple of pretty convoluted clues which require a bit of work. Perhaps the musical instrument will delay some, but I would have thought the geography at 25 was well enough known, even in the far flung corners of the Empire.
I am grateful to George for stepping in during my exile from reliable internet access a fortnight ago: we are now back to our regular pattern.
Here’s my reasoning, with the usual Clues definitions SOLUTIONS.

Across
1 Armour, black and silver, generating a measure of response?  (4-3)
MAIL-BAG  How many of them would be a measure of success in generating responses. MAIL armour, B(lack), AG (or if you insist, even if it doesn’t work for highlighting purposes, Ag) silver
5 Drink with prostitute in company?  (5-2)
START-UP  Which would be one sort of company. It’s SUP, drink, with TART (prostitute) in. That “in” has a role to play in the wordplay
9 Opening perhaps when fully ready? Not quite  (3)
RIP  Not quite ready is RIP(e)
10 Cautious about sailor boy’s explanation for random behaviour  (5,6)
CHAOS THEORY  My last in, though it should have been quicker. Cautious gives you CHARY, into which you place O(rdinary) S(eaman), THEO. “Boy” usually indicates a short form of a name. Can’t someone stop that dam’ butterfly flapping around in the Amazonian jungle? Perhaps then we’d all get some peace.
11 House initially missing members, unable to have impact  (8)
HARMLESS  The H initial of House plus “not having arms”, members here indicating limbs.
12 Historic city — parking hard — food store must accept that  (6)
DELPHI  P(arking) and H(ard) – think pencils – within DELI, food store. Delphi famous for oracles, games and being the world’s belly button (sic)
15 Boorish fellow‘s influence in ousting leader (4)
LOUT  Influence, CLOUT, with its leader dismissed
16 Large American house containing nothing very bad  (10)
VILLAINOUS  Your large American house is a VILLA IN US. Chuck in a 0, nothing
18 RADA tutor in classic film  (10)
STAGECOACH  RADA being the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Stagecoach the movie (John Ford, 1939) famous for introducing John Wayne and just about every Western cliché before they became clichés.
19 Wealthy East German abandoning exotic bird  (4)
RICH  Remove OST (German for East) from the ostrich, helpfully described as “exotic”
22 Page nine capturing official opener (6)
PREFIX  P(age) IX (9 in Latin) and an inserted REF, your match official.
23 Instrument with strings partly cut? Yes, badly damaged  (8)
PSALTERY  To a cut PARTLy, add YES, and mutilate the letters until they agree to take the shape of this modern version of the Psalmist’s instrument.
25 Area’s thrust up, forming Scottish hill  (7,4)
ARTHURS SEAT  An anagram, and quite an apposite one, of AREAS THRUST, up being the indicator. Overlooks Edinburgh, and yet another probably not Camelot.
27 United over missing out on first place  (3)
ONE  DONE, over, missing its first
28 Do better than penny in expenditure (7)
OUTPLAY  P(enny) in OUTLAY, expenditure
29 No point here in leading ambassador into flat (7)
PINHEAD The traditional Angels’ dance floor at the not sharp end of a pin. IN before H(is) E(xcellency) accommodated within PAD for flat.

Down
1 Organise most of hemisphere of planet?  (7)
MARSHAL  The planet is Mars, and the hemisphere is HALF. Almost.
2 Demanding millions in restoration of reputation (11)
IMPORTUNATE  An unlikely looking anagram (restoration) of M(illions) and REPUTATION
3 Clip and fold  (6)
BUCKLE  I spent far too long trying to think of a sheep fold. It’s still just a straight double definition.
4 Inform wife repeatedly about marriage vow? One becoming disillusioned?  (5,5)
GRASS WIDOW  A member of a twosome much neglected for a foursome. GRASS inform, then repeated W(idows) placed around I DO, your wedding vow.
5 Average nameless boys  (2-2)
SO-SO   Two SONs without their N(ames)
6 Like sportsperson allowed in a friendly, finally dropping out  (8)
ATHLETIC   Allowed, LET, in A THICk, as in thick as thieves for “friendly”.
7 Couple now and then meeting, getting upset to some extent  (3)
TWO  An awful lot of clue for a short answer. If you join NOW to THEN , and reverse them, you’ll see our solution lurking in the middle.
8 Photos capturing reconstruction of shy scientist’s study  (7)
PHYSICS  PICS, photos, containing an anagram of SHY.
13 Sweet opening for Ekberg, coming in for attractive part  (11)
PROFITEROLE The opening of Ekberg is, of course, E. Place that in a translation of “for attractive part”, PRO FIT ROLE, the  Times getting down and dirty with the “fit” bit. Anita Ekberg was a well fit Swedish-Italian actress in the sort of movies that required her mainly to be, well, fit.
14 Disgraced member to want silence amid sound of alarm?  (5,5)
BLACK SHEEP  As in “of the family”. The sound of alarm is the rather unstrident BEEP, into which you are to place LACK SH for “need silence”
17 Sure I’d misplaced almost all the rest  (8)
RESIDUAL  Anagram of SURE I’D plus almost ALl
18 Singer, very much embracing musical work, was progressing quickly  (7)
SOPRANO  Very much SO, taking in OP for musical work and RAN for “was progressing quickly”
20 Countryman deceived about conclusion to explanatory notice (7)
HAYSEED  Another place to lose time looking for a nationality. Deceived HAD around (explanator)Y conclusion and SEE for notice.
21 Excess emotion (in extreme instances) is a source of intolerance  (6)
GLUTEN  Excess GLUT, plus the extremes of E(motio)N
24 Notice pressure to oust it from piece of prose  (4)
ESPY  An ESSAY is a piece of prose, evict the S(ex) A(ppeal) – see above under Ekberg – and insert the P(ressure)
26 Spot on to decline a drink  (3)
TOT  Spot on is TO A T. Throw away the A

62 comments on “Times Cryptic 26530 – September 29, 2016. A Navel Encounter.”

  1. Liked the instrument at 23ac, having once written a piece for it and drums: “A Psaltery and a Battery”. Available on request … but you won’t like it!

    Not sure that chaotic and random behaviour are quite the same (10ac); or that a PINHEAD is not a point (29ac). But great to see STAGECOACH, famous if only for being the first use of the 360.

  2. I put in PSALTERY and then took it out and then put it back later; I just knew it was right when I had the Y, but it took me a while to see why. (We’ve had it a couple of times recently.) Ekberg had me looking for ‘pranita…’ or something for longer than I’d care to admit. CHAOS THEORY was one of those rare, alas, times when an answer just jumps out from a few checkers; parsed it after, and that gave me my LOI, BUCKLE. This felt harder than in retrospect it seems.
  3. No problem with 29ac PINHEAD except it was my LOI as 21dn GLUTEN really held me up for around five minutes: so I missed par with a round of 36′.

    18ac STAGECOACH was my COD. 19ac RICH was neat.

    WOD 10ac CHAOS THEORY

    horryd Shanghai

  4. 41 minutes. Ekberg best known for La Dolce Vita, of course. Last in TWO after BUCKLE (nice one) an CHAOS THEORY.

    After 30 years in HK, I don’t think of a VILLA as large, as they are boxes in “villages”, rather than the normal boxes in towns.

    Thanks to Zed for the parsing of TWO and for his lovely layout, which perhaps could do with a splash of Chelsea blue, but I know how much that would hurt a Tottenham fan.

    1. No real problem with blue: it’s red we don’t do, though on Tuesday night in Moscow it looked briefly as if we might as the teamed warmed up in red. Perhaps I’ll try highlighting the clues in lilywhite.
  5. No problems here. But did it during a conference while at least paying some attention. Then finished it when I got home. Having gone to university in Edinburgh, 25 was a write-in. Did wonder at 5a how TARTS UP worked before I saw it.

    Minor typos: there’s only one PROFITEROLE (not much of a dessert if you ask me). And at 19a you have “easy” instead of “east”.

    Edited at 2016-09-29 05:35 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks for the corrections (and to Jack for east/y) now corrected. One profiterole is never enough: surely the whole point is to have a ludicrously high stack of them…

      Edited at 2016-09-29 06:59 am (UTC)

  6. Back to normal for me today having found yesterday’s puzzle easier than many others did, I found this one harder. In fact I became stuck for so long at one stage with only about a third of the grid completed that I cheated to find the word to go with THEORY at 10ac just to get things moving again. So technically this was a DNF which I put down to a wavelength thing, also as discussed yesterday. After the kick-start it all gradually came together but it was a long process.

    I failed to parse ONE, so thanks for that, z, but I still don’t understand “one becoming disillusioned” at 4dn unless there’s a meaning of grass widow other than the one I have always known and just checked is correct. Btw, z, you have typed “easy” for “east” at 19ac.

    The reverse hidden word involving an obstruction (TWO) is an unusual device that I think I have seen only once before, but quite recently. Also seen recently was ESPY, which really helped me at 24dn.

    Whilst it’s true to say that STAGECOACH made John Wayne a household name in some households, he had actually made more than 80 films, starting in 1926, before this was released in 1939. Many of them were sub-Bs, one reelers, in which he had leading roles and others were uncredited bit-parts. Some of these are quite amusing, ranging from “Tall boy”, through “Student greeting Phil”, several somebody “posing as” someone else, and my favourite, “Richard Thorpe as corpse”.

    Edited at 2016-09-29 05:03 am (UTC)

    1. Collins has ‘1. a woman divorced, separated, or living away from her spouse’.

      Never heard of the expression myself – cf. golf widow – which helped.

      Edited at 2016-09-29 05:09 am (UTC)

      1. The term grass widow felt so familiar to me as a reference to golf that I didn’t check it – the idea of disillusionment springing from the wife’s perception that the golf course was distracting her husband from keeping him only unto her. I’m not convinced that the dictionary definitions account properly for the “grass”, unless it’s by analogy to “out to grass”.
  7. 21:13 … definitely not on this wavelength. Hard work, I thought. I gave up trying to parse TOT, so thanks Z8.
  8. then I discovered that by clumsily typing SSHEP where it should have been SHEEP I’d turned ARTHUR’S SEAT into something unfortunate and incurred two errors. So a happy end to the week ruined, and a sub-V to boot. The former is bound to recur, unlike the latter.
  9. About 40mins, but with two blanks: CHAOS THEORY and VILLAINOUS. Also, thanks for parsing ESPY and RICH.
    1. There may be a fundamental division between those solvers who bunged in ‘chaos theory’ with barely a thought and those of us who spent quite some time staring blankly at C_A_S / _H_O_Y (5,6). I wonder if this correlates with arts degrees.

      Edited at 2016-09-29 08:25 am (UTC)

      1. Nah, I’ve an engineering degree and it was still one of my LOI, even though I’d got the Chary and OS bits already. My excuse is idiocy.
        I think the only reason I finished this one was some form of divine intervention or possibly the morphic resonances in the ether.
        1. Well maybe. I did Applied Physics and as soon as I saw _H_O_Y it fell into place. BTW our Bar Steward at Mildert did Engineering. Jim Bumby. I guess he may have been in the year above us though.
      2. Well I did read Physics as my first degree, so on a statistical sample of one, the correlation holds. Deezzaa’s an engineer so he doesn’t count. Or maybe you should both pay more attention to Sheldon Cooper, the source of my historian son’ s scientific knowledge.

        Edited at 2016-09-29 09:04 am (UTC)

      3. I read English and I got it pretty quickly, but mostly from wordplay: I think I got a bit lucky and spotted the CHARY and THEO elements pretty much immediately.
        For me the concept is mostly associated with the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park and his awful pseudo-science supporting the film’s unpleasant anti-science message. Good special effects though.
          1. Now that you mention it, I think ‘read’ is the appropriate verb in my case, since I did make a point of reading all the books during the holidays, but I didn’t really ‘do’ any of the other things generally associated with getting a degree.
            1. Makes two of us. That may be the definition of an English degree.

              Edited at 2016-09-29 01:00 pm (UTC)

              1. Many of my contemporaries didn’t even read the books. I’m glad I made the effort: the sheer scale of what I read made the subsequent process of forgetting it all the more fulfilling.

                Edited at 2016-09-29 04:25 pm (UTC)

              1. Unfortunately regular drinking didn’t count towards my degree, otherwise I would undoubtedly have got a first.
  11. 35 minutes and not my type of crossword. When I see the two sets of clues reaching the bottom of the grid in the paper copy, I know that it will be heavy going and pretty humourless. Only 4 clues out of 32 fit on one line.
  12. Solid today, some heavy going but got there. Realised that for my whole life I’d assumed the philosophical debate about angels on the head of a pin meant the point, but it means the other end. I think this makes it rather less interesting. Agree with mctext that CHAOS is not random – it may appear so but is determined non-linearly. James Gleick wrote a very readable book on this. Was stuck with 1ac, easy as it should have been, because I have a post bag not a MAIL BAG. A mail bag is used by postal workers to carry the letters. Short answers difficult today, did not parse 26d, thanks z. GRASS WIDOW was an unusual definition, originally meant an unmarried mother. 36′, thanks z and setter.
  13. After a storming start with PHYSICS and CHAOS THEORY as write-ins, got horribly stuck in the South-East looking for Anita before a Proustian memory of the first time I had PROFITEROLES rescued me, la dolce vita arriving in Lancashire. Mind you, I’d still pick the apple pie if offered the choice. I’ve heard of the derogatory HAYSEED, but I’d prefer to be a BUMPKIN. COD PINHEAD, LOI PSALTERY. 40 enjoyable minutes.
    Apologies if you read this twice. I posted it Anonymously by mistake after somehow signing myself out.

    Edited at 2016-09-29 08:42 am (UTC)

  14. After a storming start with PHYSICS and CHAOS THEORY as write-ins, got horribly stuck in south east looking for Anita before a Proustian memory of the first time I had PROFITEROLES rescued me, the dolce vita arriving in Lancashire. Mind you, I’d still go for the apple pie if offered a choice. I’ve heard of the derogatory HAYSEED but I’d prefer to be a BUMPKIN. COD PINHEAD. LOI PSALTERY. 40 enjoyable minutes.
  16. Definite wavelength job for me as under 10 mins; thoroughly enjoyable and some very nice clues.
  17. 31.33 with several min. on the last two, 13 and 16, whose checking letters left me cold. This arts degree had no trouble with chaos theory (sotira supra) but did start off trying to put in psychic for physics. Good puzzle, rounded and pointed too. A pinhead-pintail.
  18. An enjoyable 41 minutes for me today. FOI, LOUT, LOI GLUTEN. No trouble with ARTHUR’S SEAT once I realised that UP was an anagram indicator, and PSALTERY went in fairly quickly, being fresh in the mind from recent puzzles. Got WIDOW quickly but grass took a bit longer to displace golf from my mind. Liked BLACK SHEEP, but then I’m biased having a predeliction for the product from Masham Brewery. I also found the clues a bit verbose, especially 7d which I sort of put together. Thanks to Z for the usual excellent blog, and to the setter.
  19. Why ‘badly damaged’ as opposed to merely ‘damaged’? It makes you look for an anagram of ‘yes, badly’ instead of ‘partl yes’.
  20. The Toff’s 5ac SEVEN-UP is priceless!
    I’ll change my WOD appropriately.

    z8’s presentation is sublime.

    horryd Shanghai

  21. 16:45. Quite tough, but very enjoyable. I know these slightly wordy puzzles aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I enjoy grappling with convoluted wordplay.
    Only ARTHUR’S SEAT was completely unknown to me today, but I wasn’t quite sure what either a GRASS WIDOW or a PSALTERY was. Given the definition I guess my ignorance might actually have been helpful with the former. PSALTERY has come up many times before so I really ought to know what one is by now.
    Thanks for explaining RICH. I was trying to take an exotic bird (Emu? Moa?) from an East German (Ossie? Merkel?). Unsurprisingly this didn’t get me very far so I just bunged it in.
    I wondered for a while what a BLACK SHELL might be. Sometimes following the wordplay can lead you to funny places.

    Edited at 2016-09-29 11:31 am (UTC)

  22. Very tired when I attempted this late in the day, in fact I might have dozed off for four minutes and thirty three seconds or so.

    Having BLACK WIDOW and something SHELL didn’t help, and I was happy to finally finish it, fully parsed.

    Nice puzzle though. Thanks setter and Z.

    12 over par today.

  23. I’m sure the setter ha dedicated this puzzle to the demise of Big Sam. I can spot the following related clues: 9a, 16a, 19a, 29a, 2d, 14d, 21d (assume the clue is a mis-spelling!). I could even stretch 13d at a push.
    Very happy as a QCer to complete this puzzle in around 40 minutes. Thanks blogger for the butterfly effect without which I would probably have been stumped.
    Alan
  24. My 14 minutes is looking pretty good today – bit of trickery here though CHAOS THEORY and PSALTERY went in without completely understanding the wordplay so thanks for that, Z.
  25. 18 mins. I got home a couple of hours earlier than yesterday and I managed not to doze off in the middle of it. I thought the clues for the three-letter answers were excellent because a lot of the time short answers can be write-ins. I finished in the SE with GLUTEN after PSALTERY.
  26. Thank you for explaining TOT, and RICH, which I just biffed. The rest was not too bad, if a bit tricky in parts. I was sure cautious was going to be WARY in 10ac, but as a mathematician I would surely have heard of WAABS THEORY if there was any such thing, so I eventually did see the CHAOS in it. I rather liked the GRASS WIDOW and her marriage vows. Just over an hour to finish, though.
  27. 18:33 for me, completely failing to find the setter’s wavelength. At this rate, I won’t even make the first 25 in my preliminary next month, let along the first 12. (Sigh!)

    I’d have been happier if the clue for 1oac had read “… explanation for apparently random behaviour”.

  28. Forty-seven minutes for me, meaning that I found this one chewy but digestible. I can thank the Times crossword for teaching me the word PSALTERY, though I can’t say I have ever had occasion to use it in real life.
    2. Don’t tell anyone, but I think you are getting better at this game, Thud 😉
      47 minutes for this grid is quite respectable imo
      1. Thank you! If I extrapolate my average solving time, using a running yearly average, it turns out that I’ll have a decent shot at the championship about 55-60 years after my death.
        1. Hey, you’re in the medical profession .. don’t moan about it, just keep on extending our life expectancy .. we may get there yet!

          And good work with the running yearly average… though of course I have no proof you actually got the sum right

    1. Personally I’m inclined to agree, I think it pushes the boundaries somewhat, although it’s not uncommon. Amongst the many meanings of UP, Chambers has “in an excited state; in revolt” which covers the ground, and I also think in terms of “the road is (dug) up”, so in a state of disorder.
      Just one of those things you tuck away in your list of setters’ options ready for next time.
      1. Thanks. I don’t think we could use that in an American puzzle. I’m not sure “dug up” is relevant, but the Chambers definition settles the matter for the Times puzzle.

        Edited at 2016-09-30 10:03 pm (UTC)

      1. 25a, ARTHURS SEAT. There is also the word “forming”, but I think “up” is the intended anagram indicator.

Comments are closed.