Times Cryptic 26638 – February 2, 2017 Economy Class

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
19.11 with proper pre-submission checking, so for me the stiffest of the week so far but not oppressively so. What strikes clearly with this is the brevity of the clues, averaging around five words each. And a certain frugality in the number of different word used, tin and giant putting in two appearances each in the clues, and STICK twice in the grid. One new word on me, at 5d, but not inaccessible even if it is ecclesiastical. I’m open to the floor on a couple of definitions I found a bit hmm, not that they obscured the answers particularly but they didn’t feel much better than nodding acquaintances.
Clues, definitions, SOLUTIONS

Across

1. Put on suit, slender thing (10)
MATCHSTICK STICK is accounted for by “put” (stick some paint on that wall) and MATCH by suit. One goes on t’other as instructed
6. Wanting backing, music scene that’s flat (4)
DISC  A party scene might be a DISCO. If you lose the backing (that’ll be the O) it’s our answer, one of its chief characteristics being that it’s flat.
9. Tin brownish-grey, look inside for fruit (10)
CANTALOUPE  A species of melon, not responsible in any way for the haunting Chants d’Auvergne.   One of the few occasions you need to know that TAUPE is “brownish grey”. Attach that to your tin CAN, and insert LO for look.
10. Post box (4)
SPAR  A double definition, though I’m not all that convinced by post (vertical) = SPAR (horizontal). So just for fun, here’s a SPAR that is also a POST office. With a post BOX.
12. Foreign article behind the toilets melting — might it ruin the carpet? (8,4)
STILETTO HEEL For once, the foreign article is the Spanish one, EL. The rest is an anagram (melting) of THE TOILETS. Again, a teeny query. Wooden floors, yes, 1500psi can do quite a bit of damage. Carpets? Really?
15. Dribbling while awake? (2,3,4)
ON THE BALL  Another double definition, one drawn from various ball games.
17. Filling empty pan, uncooked seafood (5)
PRAWN Empty PAN by taking out the A, fill it instead with RAW for uncooked. Savour.
18. Avidity does good? The reverse! (5)
GREED Ah, so it’s does as in does, some DEER, some female DEER, with G(ood) added and all reversed.
19. Standard criticism applied to enclosed space (9)
YARDSTICK The second STICK of the day is clued by criticism (as in the Spurs team took some stick for their lacklustre  performance at Sunderland) . The enclosed space is a YARD, which I think works pretty well in Trumpton too.
20. Put out nightie, used around about ten (12)
EXTINGUISHED  The bits you need are NIGHTIE and USED and X, Latin for ten. Toss them around, place them about.
24. Hide Asian currency, turning back (4)
LAIR  The RIAL is the currency of Iran (among others). Turn it back for the solution.
25. Leave me not without love in office (10)
DEPARTMENT  My favourite for the day, translating leave me not directly into DEPART ME NOT and then removing 0, love in tennisspeak.
26. Little break’s ending in a few days (4)
WEEK WEE little at the end of your breaK and you might wish you’d been more effusive, a few minutes into your next spell.
27. Very old man me, so fit to go back (10)
METHUSELAH  One reading of Genesis suggests that Methuselah was alive both before and after the flood, for those of you that like to spot divine continuity errors. Here, he’s ME, THUS for “so” and HALE: healthy backwards.

Down

1. Staff a cause of irritation (4)
MACE  Yet another variation on stick. The second definition is a variation on that spray Trumps thugs/gallant security forces use to assault innocent protesters/disperse rioting delinquents. The truth is out there. The truth is out, there.
2. Very little money on display, ultimately (4)
TINY  TIN for money, Y form the last of display.
3. Try being popular on social media? That’s sad (5-7)
HEART RENDING  HEAR for try, TRENDING for popular on social media
4. Giant ring worn by king (5)
TROLL  When I went to see the movie with my grandchildren, the trolls were tiny things with clever hair and a song in their heart. But Chambers says “an evil-tempered ugly dwarf (or, earlier, giant), so that’s OK, then. Ring is TOLL (as in the people told the sexton, and the sexton tolled the bell) and king contributes the R.
5. Altar cup I spilt, as cathedral official (9)
CAPITULAR  Derived from the cathedral Chapter in Latin, but I had it from the wordplay, an anagram (spilt) of ALTAR CUP I (appropriate enough) and shrewd guesswork. I know three of them, and they wouldn’t use that term. Not in my hearing, anyway.
7. Artistic director breaking a promise to adopt case of Rossini (10)
IMPRESARIO An anagram (breaking) of A PROMISE plus the case of R(ossin)I.
8. Test tin in gateau that’s poisoning animal (5,5)
CORAL SNAKE  Gateau has to be CAKE, don’t it. The filling is ORAL for test and SN (strictly, I suppose, Sn) for tin, second of the day.
11. Gossip is written about model, not quite all there (6,6)
COMPOS MENTIS  Gossip becomes COMMENT, is stays as it, um, IS, and POS is provided by model, or POSE, “not quite”.
13. A giant among poets? (10)
LONGFELLOW. Ooh look, another giant. This one a LONG FELLOW (tee hee).
14. Canny way letters read out (10)
STREETWISE The way is a STREET, and (remembering the old YY UR YY UB IC UR YY 4ME) two (or more) letter Y’s read out give the sound of WISE.
16. Order in bad way, euros heading for extinction (2,3,4)
AS YOU WERE  A standard military drill order. Reading the wordplay strictly, E, the head of Extinction, is placed into a “bad” version of WAY EUROS.
21. Keep mum drinking mother’s ruin! (5)
SMASH  SH, the instruction for “keep mum” “imbibes” MA’S, mother’s
22. Nick’s head taken off — duck! (4)
TEAL  Nick is STEAL. Off with its head.
23. Other similar things additionally beginning to hurt, dig deep? (4)
ETCH  Other similar things, ETC, plus the beginning of Hurt. A simple enough clue suggesting our setter was ready for his tea, and that’ll do.

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 26638 – February 2, 2017 Economy Class”

  1. Nothing to scare the horses here, although I took longer over YARDSTICK than necessary by persisting in trying to work PAR (standard) into it. I had no idea what color taupe is, but knew it’s a color; and with CAN, dot dot dot. DNK CAPITULAR, but it pretty much had to be. I liked ‘not all there’ being ‘all there’, but DEPARTMENT gets my COD.
  2. With you there Z – the clue (12ac) could have been improved thus :- -might it ruin the parquet (which visually rhymes with carpet)!

    This was soooo average that (I finished bang on my par time of 30 minutes.

    FOI 2dn TINY – which I wanted yesterday.

    LOI 1ac MATCHSTICK (poor clue IMO) – ‘light thing’ would have been more cryptic!?

    COD 14dn STREETWISE WOD METHULULAH

    The usual fine blog, Sir!

  3. I must have been on the setter’s wavelength, coming in at 9:07, and that was with a fair bit of time agonizing DISC and getting CAPITULAR from wordplay. I did like the clue for STILETTO HEEL.
  4. Enjoyable fare, completed in 18 minutes, with Department last in after Etch. Compose Mentis is a nice phrase, which somehow sounds better in the negative. But, then again, in this world, most things tend to…

    Edited at 2017-02-02 06:09 am (UTC)

  5. It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world, and now the puzzles are getting easier as the week goes on. Or are they?

    Anyway, my best time for the week, just squeezing in ahead of the HKM. No doubt he was held up for three minutes by some visiting dignitary.

    Entertaining puzzle, COD to STILETTO HEEL. Thanks setter and Z.

  6. I was taken a couple of minutes over my target half-hour by concerns about the unknown 5dn and an inability to parse 6ac which surely had to be DISC. The definition “that’s flat” is very loose and I completely missed the “disco” reference so I was somewhat at sea on both accounts.

    I only know TAUPE as it’s a colour that’s popular for towels and the like. Or possibly was, by now; it could have become as unfashionable as avocado for all I know.

    Edited at 2017-02-02 06:59 am (UTC)

  7. 37 minutes today, with LOI DISC surprisingly. Must be an aversion to discos, inherited by my sons. As the youngest told me last week when dragged to a night club by his girlfriend: “We passed loads of nice pubs in the taxi, where we could have got served and heard ourselves think.” FOI CANTALOUPE. DNK CORAL SNAKE but became clear with crossers and cryptic. COD LONGFELLOW. Longest solve IMPRESARIO. You can be ON THE BALL but not dribbling, pretending you’re looking for a pass, but actually having a rest. Sadly that seems to be my crossword solving technique too.
  8. Mentioning to Mrs Deezzaa that I often find Thursday’s puzzles the most difficult, I was pleasantly surprised to come in well under the half-hour. However it provoked a lively debate about how to pronounce TAUPE – I say TAO-PER, she on the other hand insists is TORP. In the interest of domestic harmony, I’ll let her have the last word.
    Judging by the amount of white space below the clues, this is a delightfully concise puzzle – and all the better for it.
      1. In the spiritual sense I trust.
        Yes, she’s usually right, as she’s constantly telling me.
      2. I beg to differ, Mrs D is not correct, all the sources I can find say ‘TOPE’ rhyming with soap, and in French (it means a mole, or mole coloured) it’s similar, never torp.
        1. Those who enjoy spaghetti westerns will get a kick out of ‘El Topo’ (‘The Mole’), a marvellous 70s throwback of a film.

          Edited at 2017-02-02 11:25 am (UTC)

        1. Since people probably often encounter this word in writing (in cushion catalogues and the like) and ‘torp’ is a more natural English pronunciation, I suspect it’s probably quite common. And of course there’s no such thing as right and wrong: there’s only what people say, and what they don’t.
          In any event if it’s any sort of activity involving the word ‘taupe’ then calling it off is just fine by me.
  9. … to know there’s a setter who expects carpet in the toilets!
    Now, if this had been Anax, we’d have seen an “in” after “Put out” at 20ac.
  10. A leisurely 40 minutes, struggled a bit with parsing MATCHSTICK and STREETWISE, but fair enough once you saw it. Had to check 5d afterwards as unknown guessed. Liked the long poet and the not obvious does = deer thing.
  11. 20:33. I struggled with this, clearly well off the wavelength, and not helped by dismissing the possibility of a poet at 13dn and trying to think of something else for a good five minutes.
    Very good puzzle though, with the difficulty (admittedly a difficulty others seem not to have encountered) all in tricky wordplay and lots of nice little ‘aha’ moments.
  12. In the days when I wore spiky heels the damage done if walking on a carpet would most likely be to myself (catching said heel in it). I learned to drive on a Morris Minor Traveller in the tasteful shade of taupe (which was our nickname for it) and we pronounced it “torp”. 17.03
    1. You just reminded me of this: A friend of my mother’s back in the 60s, visiting New York, was in a subway and wearing spike heels, and accidentally stepped on another woman’s foot. She of course immediately turned around and said, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” The woman just looked at her angrily and said, “If you’re so polite, why don’t you take a taxi?”
      1. I like that one Kevin! Actually the real danger in spike heels came when you accidentally caught one in a grating. I did it in an escalator once coming up out of the subway into Grand Central and had to leave my shoe behind (either that or my foot probably). I learned my lesson….
  13. …30 minutes, with too much time spent mopping up the scattered four letter words. LOI DISC and I’m with those who found the definition a bit of a stretch.
  14. Mm, DISC was my LOI by some way too; partially because I had EVEN{t} in there for most of my solving time.
    1. V as much as I use you as a YARDSTICK, I was rather hoping to match you in victory not defeat.
  15. Dnk CAPITULAR, and spent time on the four letter words, particularly DISC. 24′. Thanks z and setter.
  16. An enjoyable 45 minutes, held up by a few “simple” 4 letter clues at the end. Everything parsed OK, though stuck for a while on 11 which I always spell wrongly as ‘compus…’. I liked STILETTO HEEL, STREETWISE and GREED.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  17. Not on the wavelength at all, the few I got I spelled wrong – canteloupe anyone? Back to the drawing board.
    Are short answers more difficult for beginners, I certainly find them so?
    Roin
    1. Roin – short answers, especially those with many possibilities, are the most difficult for everyone and bedevil the most experienced solvers.
  18. 9m 10s with the NW corner the last to go. Nothing too scary here, although I didn’t appreciate the definitions by example in 18a (not all deer are does) and, if you were feeling ungenerous, 15a (a player on the ball isn’t necessarily dribbling).
    1. I’m not convinced does/deer is a definition by example. Sure enough, not all deer are does (no bambis if they were) but all does are deer, and both are generic terms. I think stag/s would comfortably give deer, but you might argue that muntjak or roe might not. Vixen would surely (and properly) give fox.

    2. That is why 18ac has its question mark .. might have been does, might not. Even without it I can’t see a problem. Most folks know does can be deer and solve the clue successfully.
      DBE is not a fault at all, imo…
  19. A satisfying 34 minutes for me. FOI was TINY and LOI DEPARTMENT. MACE, DISC and ETCH all held me up at various points, but fell eventually. When I was a teenager my Dad, who had a shop selling furniture, carpets, white goods and TVs, used to take me with him fitting carpets. Some of the cheaper ones had a backing which was easily pierced by stiletto heels, so I’m with the setter there. Liked STREETWISE and HEART RENDING. An enjoyable offering. Thanks setter and Z.
  20. 15:10, finishing at the top with matchstick, troll (I have no idea what my brain was up to but I was trying to figure out why TOLL = KING), CAPITULAR and the seemingly obligatory DISC.

  21. I enjoyed this! No major hold-ups, nothing too obscure and, happily, no plants.

    I can contribute nothing sensible to the debate about cross-dressing, so I’ll shut up.

    Time: 35 mins. or thereabouts.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  22. 9 mins, so I was clearly on the setter’s wavelength. It was only after I decided to go for the unknown/forgotten CAPITULAR that the MATCHSTICK/MACE crossers were my last ones in. I’d seen the possibility of mace a lot earlier but wanted the checker from 1ac before I inked it in. I wasted a little time trying to think of an alternative to matchstick because “stick” had already appeared in another answer.
  23. I think this took around 15 minutes, the only real problems being CAPITULAR and the MACE/MATCHSTICK crossing. One of those was my LOI, but they really all came around together. I liked ‘not quite all there’ in 11D. Regards.

    Edited at 2017-02-02 06:53 pm (UTC)

  24. This took nearly an hour, but then I was distracted by the moving train I am sitting in (nice train, though, Swiss, going to Hamburg). It took me a while to believe some of the answers I had put in, for example COMPOS MENTIS, which sounded quite reasonable for a state of mind, but I’m not sure that gossip is really the same as comment. And I agree about stilettos and carpets, as well (unless you have a very thin carpet, maybe a bedsheet?). Apart from feeling a bit strange in places, there was nothing really difficult about this, though. COD to GREED.
  25. I spent so long on 25ac and 23d that I have no choice but to redact my actual solving time. Otherwise, it was all fairly smooth going, apart from the NHO CAPITULAR, for which I fortunately picked the correct order of non-checkers from the 12 available options.

    Sorry to hear, hydrochoos, that you’re feeling a bit strange in places. My advice is not to go to those places.

  26. Did nobody besides me baulk at the def of 8d as “poisoning animal”? … when a snake is definitely a reptile and not an animal!
      1. Well, yes… OK: if the universe is divided into 3 categories then a snake is not mineral or vegetable. But I still find it hard to get my head round. A locust is an animal? A herring is an animal? Doing cryptic crosswords is as much an exercise in lexicography as it is in puzzling.

Comments are closed.