Times Cryptic 26626 – January 19, 2017 Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
There were early signs that our setter was about to demonstrate his grasp of the entire alphabet, though I don’t think the assumption made any difference to my speed of solving, which produced a par score of 16.48. There’s also, very nearly, a pretty well complete compendium of clue types for our entertainment, only the &lit being AWOL. As is often the case when it’s my turn to comment, I found little to cause any controversy, though that usually means it’s riddled with stuff no-one knows.
As ever, I have identified clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS in my reporting on this rather enjoyable number

Across
1 Presume the setter’s improving  (8)
POSITIVE A baby’s heavy burp What Lady Macbeth drugged  Take as a given POSIT plus “the setter’s”: I’ve
5 One bowl, gold-rimmed, sent from East in perfect state (6)
UTOPIA  Take 1 (one) POT (bowl) and surround it with AU (gold), and reverse the entire assembly
10 Contestant at late stage put up hand, nursing broken nail (15)
QUARTERFINALIST  Put up: QUARTER, hand: FIST, surrounding an anagram (broken) of NAIL. Perhaps the first hint we could be letter counting here
11 Lament in verse is tragedienne’s last on English stage (7)
ELEGISE  IS plus the last of tragedienne tagged onto E(nglish) stage: LEG
12 Author‘s daughter revolts, first son having left  (7)
DICKENS D for daughter, then what’s left when you take the first S(on) from sICKENS. Ah, there’s the K, then.
13 Temporarily stop working for crook  (8)
PROROGUE Usually used of Parliament, so the for: PRO, crook: ROGUE may be particularly apposite wordplay.
15 From time to time Ernie swears he’s stopped lying (5)
RISER  Taking alternate letters of eRnIe SwEaRs gives you someone who has stopped lying (down)
18 Muscle man in debt, but only just?  (5)
POWER Someone in debt is an OWER, but this one owes just a single P(enny)
20 Pointing out one effect of cold on turning 100  (8)
NOTICING As we in the Southern counties are experiencing at the moment, the cold engenders ICING. Tag it on to NOT, which is a hundred backwards. I had to work quite hard to make “pointing out” mean “noticing”
23 All but one of team fit and sound  (7)
TENABLE  So you have a team of eleven, of which one has his perennial sicknote. You therefore have ….
25 Sweet that can cause greater exposure of teeth?  (7)
GUMDROP  as illustrated in the somewhat gruesome TV ads of what happens when you don’t brush your teeth with the right electric toothbrush and the right brand of paste. Leave it long enough and someone rips out what’s left of your teeth, whacks in some stainless steel bolts and screws on plastic replacements…..
……
……
Right, I’ve recovered now. Back to the crossword.
26 High church court set German’s eyeballs rolling  (7,8)
GENERAL ASSEMBLY The Church in this case is either the Presbyterian or the United Reformed (other brands are available). A “rolling” version of GERMAN’S EYEBALLS. Presbyterian is famously and endearingly an anagram both of best in prayer and Britney Spears.
27 Hit man finds bandage  (6)
SWATHE To swathe is to wrap in cloths or bandages “all meanly wrapped in swathing bands”,  earworm of the day, from “While Shepherds Watched”. Hit provides the SWAT, man the HE.
28 Suit has hole in it? Times editor gobsmacked  (8)
POLEAXED I rather wanted this to be banjaxed, but the wordplay frowns on it. Suit is PLEA, “a hole in it” persuades you (if you feeling compliant) to stick in an O, Times (ignore the capital) gives you X and our esteemed EDitor the rest. Oh, and there’s the X
Down

1 Two characters talked about card game  (6)
PIQUET  let’s just say P K.
2 Bizarre soccer war alarming one in field (9)
SCARECROW  Bizarre suggests an anagram which it is, of SOCCER WAR. Chose your own example.
3 Increasingly seedy gallery, not quite on the level  (7)
TATTIER  “Gallery” nearly always means TATE (Prado and Hermitage are harder to use in wordplay). Lose the end, and add TIER for level
4 Limit such as priest set up  (5)
VERGE  Such as: EG, priest: REV. Conjoin and reverse.
6 Vehicle turned up in motor club trading centre  (7)
TRAMCAR  And another conjoin and reverse, RAC for the motor club and MART for the trading centre.
7 Reward what eavesdropper does on phone  (5)
PRIZE  An eavesdropper pries. On the phone, it sounds like our solution. And there’s the Z
8 Finesse is lacked by satirist that’s bungled lines  (8)
ARTISTRY  Take the IS out of SATIRIST, “bungle” the remaining letters and add R(ailwa)Y for lines.
9 Dramatist defending women’s case for settlement in lawless US  (4,4)
WILD WEST  The dramatist is the somdomite Oscar, holding a W(oman) (he did that too) and adding the “case” of S(ettlemen)T
14 Going early, seconds having withdrawn on tiptoe?  (8)
GINGERLY. Just do as it says, and withdraw the second letters of GoING EaRLY. Rather nice, this one, sort of hidden in plain sight.
16 Small number of challengers fight where serviceman might retreat (6,3)
SENTRY BOX  S(mall), competitors: ENTRY, fight: BOX. For once, serviceman doesn’t  mean vicar.
17 Eclipses elated pundits claiming last of credit (8)
UPSTAGES Elated: UP, pundits: SAGES, last of credit gives the T you need to insert.
19 BBC chief gets heads of broadcasting in readiness for current revival  (7)
REBIRTH  A little bit of history here: Lord REITH was the first Director General and arguably created its iconic principles. You need to replace his I (current) with the first letters of Broadcasting In Readiness.
21 Take part, fixing favourite in advance  (7)
COMPETE  COME for advance, and PET for favourite, to be assembled.
22 Doctored tax system embraced by Southern Democrat (6)
SPAYED The tax system is Pay As You Earn, as embraced by a right thinking S(outhern) D(emocrat)
24 Fighter contributing to disruption in jail (5)
NINJA Your hidden for today, in disruptioN IN JAil. And the J.
25 Device supplied by medic to US army? (5)
GISMO  The US army might well be made up of GI’S, attended by their Medical Officer.

46 comments on “Times Cryptic 26626 – January 19, 2017 Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs”

  1. Thought I’d never finish this one, mainly because of the NE, 6d and 15ac being my LOsI. Having biffed QUARTERFINALIST purely from definition (parsing it a few seconds later, though), I thought ‘pangram!’ and proceeded to forget the thought; I doubt that it would have helped me, anyway. I wasted time on 12ac because I stuck on ‘rises’ for ‘revolts’ and thought that somehow Dreiser could be worked in. Nothing controversial that I can see, Z.
  2. Just two seconds outside a “double Verlaine”, so no complaints from these parts either.

    Enjoyed 14dn, thinking, hmmm, let’s start by removing the second letters of these words, then….wait, that’s a word!

    Also enjoyed the definitions for SCARECROW and RISER, and the cleverly-concealed homophone indicator for PRIZE.

    The cryptic for POWER was excellent as well.

    Great fun all round, and another excellent blog. Thanks setter and Z.

    Oh, another highlight was the blogger’s anagramming of PRESBYTERIAN. If I was being picky I’d point out that Britney requires the plural, but it’s brilliant anyway.

  3. … just after the 8:00 news and finished just before the 9:00 bulletin. So hard going. But I was one solver helped by the suspected pangram. As I remember, the X in POLEAXED started me on the track. (Or was it the J in NINJA?)

    After a near-shocker at Plymouth, hoping LFC will be 10acs.

  4. Z, what’s that about Lady Macbeth and burping babies at 1ac?

    After bowl/pan the other day we now have bowl/pot at 5ac. I’d still argue a case re kitchenware but I suppose we can go down lavatorial route again if needs be.

    Are noticing and pointing out the same thing?

    41 minutes.

    1. That’s the trouble with long-term exposure to crosswords – the brain makes connections it shouldn’t, in this case from posit to posset, which covers both references.
      The best I can do with noticing is that it notice can mean “to write or publish a notice of” (Chambers) which I think just about works with a bit of a struggle. More whimsically, I wondered if noticing could mean “giving notice to”, firing, which I though might be pointing (the way) out. Hm.
    2. The Google dictionary gives “mention or remark on” as an archaic definition of “notice”.

      The example it cites is “she looked so much better that Sir Charles noticed it to Lady Harriet”.

  5. I really didn’t get going – today, whilst others struggled (neither z or galspray), I thought this far easier and landed safely in 36 minutes along with kevin.
    Getting 10ac QUARTERFINALIST in early helped and the outrageous anagram at 26ac GENERAL ASSEMBLY (from GERMAN’S EYEBALLS!)

    FOI 9dn WILD WEST LOI 25dn GISMO

    COD 1dn PIQUET

    WOD VEGEMITE – it is back under Australian mangement – Auntie BBC informs. Is this however ‘fake-news’ as my mate Marmite is the real thing! In NZ so-called ‘Marmite’ is actually Vegemite disguised in a red labelled jar! Antipodean unpleasantness indeed.

    Edited at 2017-01-19 08:16 am (UTC)

  6. 35 minutes. Saw the pangram but didn’t seem to need it. Liked NINJA, GINGERLY and “alarming one in field”.
  7. Only 9 seconds behind Magoo, and that after 3 glasses of wine and a hard evening getting paid to trial a new online card game? I’ll take it!
    1. Not online piquet, by any chance? It looks like fun, with apparently a plethora of ways of cheating which would be hard to replicate on line.
      1. I’m NDA’d to the eyeballs so I can’t tell you. That’s NDA’d not MDMA’d by the way. (An online piquet revival craze sounds like a great idea!)
  8. 18:14 … I found all of this tricky — perhaps a wavelength thing — but satisfying in the end.

    GINGERLY is very nice.

  9. 24:06 and assisted by the pangram in getting DICKENS, the NE corner being the last to fall. It is only now that I see the required meaning of REVOLTS to parse this. RISER was a guess from crossers, after a while trying to shoehorn Little Ern into the answer. Thanks setter and Z
  10. 35mins, but now realise I had a blank at TRAMCAR. Oops. Oh, and I had ‘tenebre’ at 23ac (some musical sound…?)
    COD: GINGERLY
    Thanks for parsing: POSITIVE, POWER (biffed).
    PROROGUE one of those words that I know exists, but don’t really know what it means. Will try to remember it for next time.
  11. Really found this a struggle after I biffed Tractor without really knowing why, it fit some of the crossers I had.
    Eventually got the author and realised my error. The bottom half I found a breeze but the NW held me up too as I just could not get 10a and it ended up being my LOI.
    COD Gingerly for me
    1. I had tractor to start with: the RAC was in there but what a ttor might be is mysterious. It never looked right.
    2. Me too. That RAC remained tempting even after I’d wasted a minute or two failing to fit it into the wordplay.
    3. Needless to say I too had TRACTOR in for ages until it became clear it really wasn’t going to work…
        1. Are you familiar with the 1990s (onwards) band Magoo by any chance, sir? I just noticed that my company released a record by them in ’97, rather bafflingly entitled “The Soateramic Sounds of Magoo”, and of course I had to go listen to it at once. VERY amused to see that their big single appears to have been called “A To Z And Back Again” (though they manage to make that journey last a very unMagooish 4’13″…)
  13. Many clues today gave me a warm glow as I solved, suggesting this is the right level for me. Not sure about NOTICING for pointing out though. Fortunately ton up boys was a synonym for a biker in my youth. Took a while to see a revolt as sickening too but it had to be DICKENS. Sorting out GENERAL ASSEMBLY was a challenge as well, as I was looking for something at the incense burning end of the scale.I must remember that a PRESBYTERIAN is a messed-up Britney. No wonder she’s been reduced to doing that awful advert with Kevin Bacon. Talk about hamming it up. Finished in 35 minutes, LOI SWATHE. COD GINGERLY.

    Edited at 2017-01-19 10:16 am (UTC)

  14. …with 23.06 on the ipad timer. I expected to log on to see lots of very fast times.
    I thought I was going to do my usual trick of hitting a wall with five to go – it’s always five for reasons unknown – but spotted I needed a Q for the pangram. This gave me the 1/10 combo and the rest tumbled. Loved GINGERLY.
  15. 37 minutes, with tramcar last to arrive after tractor had been parked by the slurry pit. Gingerly raised a smile, broadened when Djokovic fell to the Uzbeki.
  16. 14:06. I enjoyed this, but had a strong feeling that I was making heavy weather of a relatively easy puzzle. A time inside 2 Magoos indicates that is was trickier than I thought. Edit: that doesn’t really make sense, does it? What I mean is the fact that Magoo took 8 minutes indicates the puzzle was quite tricky, so I was actually doing better than I thought.
    I’m glad someone else has picked the ‘pointing out’ nit. I can have a day off.

    Edited at 2017-01-19 02:58 pm (UTC)

  17. COD DICKENS, which delayed TRAMCAR, NE last in. Didn’t realise PROROGUE was temporary, Parliament is always having it done. 27′, thanks z and setter.
  18. 25 min – with SW last to fall – Id been trying to use DG in 19dn somehow, but then realised that I still needed an H for the pangram. 14dn LOI, after I wasn’t going to have to find something to take S from.
  19. Took a while to get going, with QUARTERFINALIST the FOI after I’d looked at six or so other clues. I then got held up at the end by 13a / 14d / 20a / 16d, but they snowballed with GINGERLY my LOI. Hidden in plain sight, as our blogger points out (notices?). 11m 25s all told.
  20. Zipped through the top half, with a quick spot of 10a helping enormously, then slowed down as usual, writing in my LOI, PROROGUE at the 35 minute mark. FOI was UTOPIA. For the first time ever(albeit after 30 minutes), I realised this was probably going to be a pangram, and used this probability to my advantage at 14d when I was left with that and 13a. Having decided I might need a J, totally overlooking the fact I already had one at 24d, I tried inserting it at various points in 14 down, at which juncture the lights went on and the use of a soft G in two empty slots gave me the careful treading I needed. PROROGUE then dropped straight in. A fun puzzle(thanks setter) and the usual excellent blog from Z, to whom thanks also.
  21. If K’s 14:06 = making heavy weather then I must have been making a squall inside a tempest inside a hurricane with my 25:52. Not once did I feel like I was anywhere near wavelength, although the pangram did have me hunting for somewhere to stick a k, thereby giving me Dickens.

    GINGERLY was very good but I didn’t get a lot of enjoyment from the rest of the puzzle.

    1. I have attempted (probably in vain) to clarify my slightly nonsensical comment above. What I was trying to say was that it felt like I was making heavy weather of an easy puzzle, whereas in fact I was doing pretty well on a tricky puzzle.
  22. I rather liked this one, and it was on the trickier side for me at 15:33. I didn’t check the wordplay for QUARTERFINALIST on the way through
  23. I’ve always pronounced this as if spelled “piquette” so that held me up for a while. And I played it at boarding school on wet weekends when it passed the time between meals, such as they were. And I see from Vinyl’s quotation (To Stella by Jonathan Swift) above that the pronunciation has a provenance because there it rhymes with “debt”. 17.38
  24. 21:13 with SW corner my last pieces to fill in. Lots of great clues and I never spotted the pangram, nor the parsing of my LOI, POWER – nice one. Thanks for the explanation z. GINGERLY my favourite.
  25. 17 mins. I thought this was quite a tricky puzzle, but in an enjoyable way, so I was happy with my time. The POWER/REBIRTH crossers were my last ones in. To be honest I didn’t have a problem with the definition for NOTICING at the time, but now it has been pointed out I can see why some people aren’t happy with it.
  26. About 25 minutes, for a fun and clever puzzle. Thanks to the setter. My problem was not with NOTICING, but my LOI, SENTRY BOX. I don’t think ‘entry’ equates very well to ‘number of challengers’. At least it doesn’t over here. That held me up a long time. GISMO was good, though, as was ARTISTRY, nice surface. Regards.
    1. Collins agrees with you: it has ‘the competitors entering a contest considered collectively’ under English English, but not under American English.

  27. Multi-location solve today – coffee shop, sofa without dog, sofa with dog ( no help at all, as usual ), armchair.

    Time: all correct but time unrecorded for above reasons.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  28. A slightly depressing experience in that I seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength and solved more than two-thirds of the clues on a first reading – but soooo slowly (with senior moments taking their toll) that I finished in 11:49.

    No complaints about the puzzle though.

  29. MY copy’s only 3’48”. Wait, I’m only joking – I am entirely unfamiliar with their oeuvre.

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