Times Cryptic 26942

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 51 minutes held up by miswriting MAIOW at 11ac whilst knowing perfectly well how it should be spelt. Another very enjoyable offering with quite a lot of  chewy stuff and tricky wordplay to be teased out.

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

Across
1 Fad passing across to British province (8)
MANITOBA – MANIA (fad) containing [passing across] TO + B (British)
5 Stylish Henry with a pipe (6)
CHICHA – CHIC (stylish), H (Henry), A. I didn’t know this word but the wordplay was helpful. In another meaning it can be a South American drink made from fermented maize and fruit.
9 Fielder‘s items of clothing (9)
SHORTSTOP – SHORTS + TOP (items of clothing). I took a long time to come up with the first part of this answer. I knew the fielding position ‘longstop’ from cricket in my schooldays, a handy place to put useless and inept members of the team such as myself where we couldn’t do too much damage, but ‘shortstop’ is a fielding position in baseball and therefore completely beyond my experience.
11 Catty remark? Object returning it’s painful (5)
MIAOW – AIM (object) reversed [returning], OW (it’s painful). As noted in my intro, a careless spelling mistake here cost me dearly in terms of solving time.
12 Criminal’s abandoned scruples and discipline (7)
SCIENCE – {con}SCIENCE (scruples) [criminal’s – con – abandoned]
13 Dish, lightly cooked portion (7)
RAREBIT – RARE (lightly cooked), BIT (portion). Cheese on toast.
14 Days in school to develop commercial area (7,6)
TRADING ESTATE – D (days) in TRAIN (school), GESTATE (develop). As noted in my QC blog yesterday, ‘d’ can stand for ‘day’ or ‘days’.
16 Made out one wearing suit, shedding pants (13)
DISTINGUISHED – I (one) contained by [wearing] anagram [pants] of SUIT SHEDDING
20 Monster that man put in care reformed (7)
CHIMERA – HIM (that man) contained by [put in] anagram [reformed] of CARE. Perhaps more commonly encountered these days in the figurative sense of an unrealistic idea or concept, in Greek mythology a CHIMERA is a creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake.
21 Commonly, isn’t starter excluded from complimentary course? (7)
AINTREE – AIN’T (commonly, isn’t), {f}REE (complimentary) [starter excluded]. Home of the Grand National.
23 Swimmer, for all to see, clad in red (5)
TROUT – U (for all to see) contained by [clad in] TROT (red)
24 Idler’s muffled din working plunger? (4,5)
SKIN DIVER – SKIVER (idler) contains [‘s muffled] anagram [working] of DIN
25 Broadcaster cautious, wanting right path for pilot (6)
SKYWAY – SKY (broadcaster), WA{r}Y (cautious) [wanting right]
26 The good and kind could perhaps be honoured (8)
KNIGHTED – Anagram of [could perhaps be] THE G (good) KIND
Down
1 Exploit inspiring individual saving lives (6)
MISUSE – MUSE (inspiring individual) containing [saving] IS (lives)
2 Girl raised grouse on island (5)
NAOMI – MOAN (grouse) reversed [raised], I (island)
3 Fantastic queen reduced massive area (7)
TITANIA – TITANI{c} (massive) [reduced], A (area). Queen of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
4 Beams as cook’s mixture gets measured metrically (9,4)
BATTERING RAMS – BATTER (cook’s mixture) IN GRAMS (measured metrically). Although it’s clear that a beam is a long shaft originally made of timber with various applications, and that description conforms with the conventional design of a battering ram, I can’t find specific support in any of the usual sources for the definition here.
6 Bit of body odour of course repelled (7)
HUMERUS – HUM (odour) , SURE (of course) reversed [repelled]. The bone in the upper arm.
7 Approve of execs presenting a façade? (9)
CLAPBOARD – CLAP (approve of), BOARD (execs). Often used as a building material.
8 Nervously excited cheers about rabbit (8)
ATWITTER – TA (cheers) reversed [about], WITTER (rabbit). ‘Rabbit’ is CRS for ‘talk’, more fully ‘rabbit-and-pork’.
10 Pioneering art nouveau showing travel (13)
PEREGRINATION – Anagram [nouveau] of PIONEERING ART
14 One day covered by short account of events (9)
TESTIMONY –  I (one) + MON (day) contained [covered] by TESTY (short – bad temepered)
15 Gives instruction to put old coin in northward spot (8)
EDUCATES – DUCAT (old coin) in SEE (spot) reversed [northward, in a Down clue]
17 Reluctance to move home, note, during extended period (7)
INERTIA – IN (home), TI (note) contained by [during] ERA (extended period)
18 Sheepish face of goalie, intercepting pass with defensive blunder (7)
HANGDOG – G{oalie} [face of] contained by [intercepting] HAND (pass), OG (defensive blunder- own goal)
19 Visionary leader on paper to become mad (3,3)
SEE RED – SEER (visionary), ED (leader on paper). ‘Mad’ in the sense of bad tempered.
22 Entrance has pollarded hedge (5)
RIVET – {p}RIVET (hedge) [pollarded]. ‘Pollard’ can mean to cut the top off a tree, so once again the deletion indicator relies on its placement in a Down clue.

66 comments on “Times Cryptic 26942”

  1. Not too many obscurities here, with CHICHA being my only new word, and finished in 42 minutes. BATTERING RAMS didn’t immediately come to mind for ‘Beams’ for me either, though I see Chambers does use ‘beam’ in its definition. Held up a bit by SHORTSTOP for which I had the last letter and which I was sure had to have something to do with ‘slip’.

    I liked PEREGRINATION, but HANGDOG was my highlight for its surface and the use of one animal to describe the characteristics of another. Hardly the expression though you’d normally associate with a border collie or kelpie.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    1. Yes, SOED also mentions ‘beam’ when defining ‘battering ram’ but in my view it needs to be the other way round for the clue to work.

      Edited at 2018-01-23 08:05 am (UTC)

      1. Surely defining ‘beam’ as BATTERING RAM would be a definition by example? This way round it’s a straight definition.
        1. Sorry not clear. I meant for the clue definition to be valid I would expect one of the dictionaries to give ‘battering ram’ as a definition of ‘beam’, but as it would only be an example that’s probably why they don’t. The fact one of them mentions ‘beam’ when describing a battering ram is not enough in my opinion.
          1. Oh I see, sorry.
            I’m not entirely happy with this definition either, but I can’t quite figure out why: as mentioned below it’s undeniable that a BATTERING RAM is (generally) a beam.
            1. I think it has to come down to usage. If there’s a sense in which enough people (historians of ancient battle strategies?) might talk about ‘a beam’ when referring to ‘a battering ram’ then maybe there’s a case for it, but if it’s not in common usage and hasn’t made it to a reputable dictionary, I’d say it’s not valid.

              Edited at 2018-01-23 02:15 pm (UTC)

              1. But it’s not common usage to call one’s cat a mammal, but that would be fine as a definition. So if a BATTERING RAM is a beam, then it should be fine, whether it’s a recognised usage or not.
                I think the problem is partly that there are generally other components to a BATTERING RAM, so in a way perhaps this is a definition by example: it’s defining a broad category by reference to one specific (the most basic) example of that category.
  2. Says here “chicha” is the “Infamous Saliva-Fermented Beer From Peru”! I had to look a little longer to find that it is also a somewhat alternate spelling of “shisha,” a hookah. I put that one in on faith, and also guessed that WITTER must be another word for “rabbit” in the “chatter” sense. I must have seen “skiver” here before. Like Vinyl, I was relieved that 9 had nothing to do with cricket.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 04:49 am (UTC)

    1. Where is shisha spelt chichi? Not in Chambers or OED. I think the complier blundered here
      1. If you Google “chicha shisha,” you’ll see that the alternative spelling does exist. As for dictionaries, the second definition (“British”) in Collins online for “chicha” is the hookah pipe. But I don’t find it at Oxford or Merriam-Webster.
  3. … at 46 minutes. For me, too, CHICHA was the only unknown, but wordplay was helpful. I kept trying to rearrange PORTION into an Italian dish, but abandoned that when CLAPBOARD went in. I’m going on to tackle the Quick Cryptic now, but that solve should be speeded up by being already given one of the longer answers…
      1. Yes, we try to avoid giving away answers in the other puzzle, at least this early in the day. I hope you won’t mind that I have deleted the original comment and re-posted it below minus the spoiler. Thanks.

        Edited at 2018-01-23 06:02 am (UTC)


  4. Re-posting for kevingregg

    Jan. 23rd, 2018 03:29 am (local)

    24:54
    I wondered about BATTERING RAMS, and in fact was assuming something-RAYS until the checkers told me otherwise. Biffed 24ac–SKIVER is not familiar to me, although not strictly a DNK–solved after; ditto 26ac and 18d. Ditto 12ac, and like Vinyl never parsed it. I was ready (while thinking, Not again!) to biff ‘risotto’ at 13ac, but thought better of it. DNK CHICHA, but as Vinyl says.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 06:03 am (UTC)

  5. No TOBIT, no ESDRAS, no BARUCH, no IDOL BEL AND THE DRAGON, but instead what do we get? With absolutely no break at all, another word for a dodgy pipe of the kind they put in bars because their beer is so rank. Do Keriothe’s tentacles know no bounds? I think we should be told, but know we won’t.

    COD to BATTERING RAMS coz it gave me something to smile about again. 34 minutes.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 07:19 am (UTC)

    1. I didn’t even start my lobbying campaign: hinting at the possibility seems to have been enough. Clearly I don’t know my own power. I just wish I could achieve the same effect with my children.

      Edited at 2018-01-23 08:30 am (UTC)

  6. I came here with no great confidence as I put in my last two, 12a SCIENCE and 23a TROUT without being able to parse them. I never seem to see that “U”… Still, got everything else, though it seemed like I was never really fully flowing from FOI 2d NAOMI all the way through…

    Quite a few where I thought of the answer immediately but it took me a while to justify it enough to pop in.

    Still, as it turns out I got everything right, and in 41 minutes, so not as slowly as it felt. It probably helped that I got the two long anagrams almost on sight!

    Thanks to setter and Jack.

  7. 9:18. Another enjoyable puzzle, although I thought ‘beam’ was a bit imprecise as a definition. It’s hard to fault technically though: a BATTERING RAM is undoubtedly a beam. Good to see more obscure smoking paraphernalia of course.
  8. …Me? How?
    40 mins with yoghurt etc.
    I put in Miaou – which cost me 5 mins at the end twittering about to fix it. Maybe the cats I know have French accents.
    MER at Beams=battering rams… but I did like the ‘in grams’.
    Mostly I liked: Manitoba, ‘for all to see’, Titania, short=testy, gestate and Rivet(COD for simplicity).
    Thanks setter and Jack.
  9. I seemed to do a lot of biffing today with wordplay then being reverse engineered. If some of those literals were a bit harder this would be quite a tough puzzle

    As it was, no real problems with CHICHA remembered from somewhere and no other potential unknowns

  10. 19:20 and I always seem to solve more slowly than normal when hurtling towards London on the train.

    Problems in the NE caused by a flaky BACKBOARD at 7 and whilst I’ve heard of the pipe I had no idea you could spell it like that and not having 7 nailed down I was distracted for a while by the possibility of an anagram of Henry A. Rhynea could easily have been a pipe in your nasal area.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 09:04 am (UTC)

  11. 15.43, so quicker than yesterday. Like others, CHICHA was not known, but assumed to be a variation on some Middle Eastern word for a hookah or narghile – shisha perhaps? My Chambers knows CHICHA as a spit ‘n’ sweetcorn drink from Peru (lovely!) or red dye, and doesn’t back me up on shisha by not including it at all.
    Otherwise, I found this a pretty smooth anticlockwise solve, with PEREGRINATION the pick of the bunch for that pioneering art nouveau wordplay.
    Thanks Jack, especially for INERTIA, where I find I hadn’t used the wordplay.
  12. 52 minutes on this with NW last to fall. I found it pretty tough. LOI SCIENCE. DNK SHORT STOP, deriving it from the cricket long stop, which was better sold to the fielding duffer as a deep fine leg or even finer third man. DNK CHICHA either and, guilty or not, I’m blaming Keriothe. For a company of any size, a board consists of execs and non-execs, so I wasn’t too keen on CLAPBOARD. But let me first cast the beam out out of my own eye before complaining about that mote. COD BATTERING RAMS, my antepenultimate, was late in as I was fixated on finding some rays. Penultimate was MISUSE. Thank you Jack and setter.
  13. Put in SIGNBOARD on first pass which then went through iterations of BACK, HEAD, CLAP and some others. Enjoyed HANGDOG, BATTER-IN-GRAMS,PEREGRINATION and HUMERUS. Thanks to all, as usual.
  14. The same experience as others – looking for a fielder somewhere in the slips, getting CHICHA solely from wordplay, and taking a long time to see that it must be SCIENCE, but even longer to see why. 8dn was a nice one if, like me, you regularly listen to the 5 Live film show on a Friday afternoon.
  15. Delayed by running through all possible fielding positions and imagining a different slip. Then twigged that it was the US form of rounders, as first described by Jane Austen….

    Just kidding, one of many excellent clues today, particularly liked AINTREE and BATTERING RAMS. Puzzle seemed to fall in distinct quarters, each of which was difficult – 28’, thanks jack and setter.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 10:35 am (UTC)

  16. Very happy here. 100% in less than an hour. Will someone please explain why “for all to see” is U?
    1. “U” is the film classification meaning that the film can be seen by everyone, including children.
    2. U is the code letter in the UK indicating a movie that has nothing that would bring a blush to the cheek of the young person; hence ‘for all to see’. In the US, it’s G.
    3. U is the film category in the UK that means my children will refuse to watch it on the grounds that it’s booooring.
  17. I liked the tight definitions and clever wordplay today, but I am definitely going on a keriothe-inspired strike and will refuse to learn any more names for unusual smoking apparatus. Meerschaum and bong are as far as I’m willing to go, and I don’t expect to see bong in the Times. Interesting, viz Vinyl’s comment above that once you get off the sandlots the right fielder will often be the best throwing arm on the team, and possibly the best judge of sharply-hit balls.
    thx setter, and thx jackkt

    Edited at 2018-01-23 11:47 am (UTC)

  19. Just a whisker under the half hour, which is about my average. Held up slightly by having “airway” at 25ac for a while, and CHICHA was unknown in any context.
  20. I think CHICHA was my FOI because straightforward wordplay, even if I would’ve assumed it would be spelled SHISHA or similar. LOI BATTERING RAMS because, c’mon, surely beams are going to be RAYS until there is absolutely no other option. One has to get up pretty early in the morning to beat Aphis99’s time twice in a row, so I didn’t, but I was happy enough with my 6m40ish. Cheers all!
    1. Aphis99’s times are definitely on the downward trend. You know that we’re adopting him as an honorary Aussie, don’t you 🙂
      1. I would be very happy to be recruited by the Antipodean team, for a small consideration…?
        1. Sorry for the late response, but I’m sure we’ll double what the Pommes are offering you. You could move the whole family over here to enjoy the Aussie lifestyle. You should be fine with alcohol supply (some good craft beers or Australian wines are my choice, but my friends seem to have no trouble finding good spirits of most sorts). I’m not sure about Indie rock bands – you’ll have to research that yourself.

          Actually there’s an Aussie wordsmith, David Astle, who lives in Melbourne and sets the local cryptic crossword on Fridays. He reckons he completes the Times Cryptic in around 6 minutes (and he’s smart enough that this would be true). I’ve been trying to work out if he is doing them online (and have my suspicions about “Lettuceleaf”). If we can get him into the Australian squad we might give the top UK solvers a challenge.

          Thanks for your blogs and contributions in comments. I hope the new job is going well.

          1. Lettuceleaf, eh? The plot thickens…

            I’ve been wondering about the identity of Eamon Ryan for years!

  21. 52m but it felt longer with an uneasy feeling early on it was going to be a DNF. But in the end I knew all but the pipe and as mentioned that was kindly clued. More or less parsed them all today but I was glad of the reassurance from our blogger. Thanks, Jack and thank you, setter, for a good tussle today.
  22. MISUSE and SCIENCE my LOI’s – was thinking of an exploit rather than to exploit – very confusing for this bear of little brain. COD 4d – I tend to do my cooking in Imperial measures….
    Apparently cheese on toast was originally Welsh Rabbit (Welsh in the sense that it was a poor man’s rabbit, which I take objection to as I live in Wales) which got poshed up to be RAREBIT.
  24. 23’50. With jackkt on the beams’ weak spot. Chicha eh? Good to be reminded of the nervously excited word. Liked 18’s surface.
  25. I wasted some time at 1d considering whether a MUSEAN could be a lifesaver until I decided 12a had to be SCIENCE.(I managed to parse that just after submitting). HUMERUS raised a smile, with that and CLAPBOARD confirming the unknown smoking apparatus. My first thought at 2d was FEEBI, but I admonished myself for feeble thinking and came back later with a moan. Took me ages to see the parsing of TRADING ESTATE. Very neat. Liked TESTIMONY. I also wasted time trying to find some RAYS at 4d. Nice puzzle, thanks setter and Jack. 27:40.

    Edited at 2018-01-23 01:46 pm (UTC)

  27. Defeated by this after over an hour – I was so sure of SHORTSLIP at 9ac (in spite of fact that the wordplay doesn’t quite work) that the only thing that seemed to fit 4dn was BALANCING BARS – possibly some sort of gymnastic beam. I did think of SCIENCE at 12ac, but couldn’t parse it, and the final E wouldn’t go.
    1. I feel better now that I know that I wasn’t the only one trying to get ‘balancing bars’ to fit. Eventually sorted it iut once I had all the crossers in.
  28. Gave up after an hour with 12ac SCIENCE missing mainly ‘cos I had 3dn as TATIANA – was she not a queen!?

    FOI 20ac CHIMERA
    COD 1ac MANITOBA
    WOD 5ac CHICHA

    Today I felt a bit Fridayish

    Edited at 2018-01-23 04:22 pm (UTC)

  29. Not been on here for a while but found this oddly biffable in just over 40 mins. Held up by a mispelt (i.e careless of me) catty remark. A belated RIP to Jimmy Armfield who was manager of my beloved Notlob during some of their classic games at Burnden. I met him once with the famous Banks twins and they were all generous and humble. I hope he’s put to use in heaven stopping wingers getting in. Thanks for the explanations blogger
    1. Jimmy Armfield – great right back, great manager, great commentator, great bloke. RIP. I think Tommy Banks is still with us. He was the best slide tackler I’ve ever seen. Ralph wasn’t quite as good.

      Edited at 2018-01-23 04:59 pm (UTC)

  30. Around 25 minutes, with LOI SCIENCE which looked correct, but I failed to parse. I didn’t know of the CHICHA or ‘witter’ but they appeared as though they had to be right. And I agree the ‘beams’ definition is a tad off the beaten track, but thanks regardless to the setter and Jack.
  31. The most difficult (for me) puzzle that I have completed, albeit with 3 unparsed. 91 minutes, I think, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to solve it until the NW corner finally began to fall into place.
  32. I had the same problems as other contributors. Surely, it had to be ‘rays’, or then, perhaps, ‘bars’.
    Sorted things out in the end, but never parsed ‘science’ – my last one in, and I stopped the watch with fingers crossed in order to get within my 30 minute target. Thanks Jack for the explanation – I’m not sure I would have seen it for a long time, if at all.
  33. 21:17 and pretty quick for me. It feels like my general solving pattern for the week is to be a bit quicker on a Tuesday. I think this reflects the fact that I’m fully awake by then. It’s all downhill for the rest of the week. I knew of the drink chicha and took it on trust that it was also some sort of variation of a shisha pipe. Other than that everything went straight in without a fight. FOI 14ac, LOI 12ac and lots of stuff enjoyed in between.
  34. I solved this one in about 30 minutes, despite several times just putting in words because they felt right, without always managing to see how they were derived from the clues. These included: 1d MISUSE, although looking at it now I have no excuse for not parsing it!; 22d RIVET, because I never for a moment read “entrance” as anything other than the noun that means “way in”; 25a SKYWAY – I was happy with ‘Sky’ as the broadcaster, but I didn’t spot ‘wa(r)y’ for “cautious, wanting right path – obvious once pointed out, but it didn’t cross my mind.

    I was hesitant about 5a CHICHA, because I’ve only ever encountered the spelling ‘shisha’, at least in English. However, it couldn’t have been anything else from the clue.

    Quite a fun one I thought. And, as a relative novice, I’m beginning to solve more clues than I used to by parsing, and less by pulling synonyms out of the air 🙂

    1. I would guess that many of the faster solvers do exactly this and then reverse engineer the parsing, especially when there are several answers already in the grid providing checking letters, so this is definitely a worthwhile skill to have! Spotting the parsings will come with experience so do keep going – the blogs are an invaluable resource in that regard.
  35. 15:11 … posting late and it’s all been said. The battering ram a bit weird. I too was stuck while solving by the extent of keriothe’s influence. Scary.
  36. I completed this one which I was very pleased to do – even at quite a late stage I didn’t think I would solve all the clues. Can someone explain how RIVET = Entrance? Thanks blogger otherwise for the very clear explanations. Regards to all, Richard
  37. Oh I see en-trahnce, with the accent on the second syllable! How clever! Well, if I don’t ask, I don’t learn. Thanks v m for replying j. Richard
  38. About 60 mins, many excellent clues with sharp wordplay, thanks all! CHICHA & CLAPBOARD the only unfamiliar words. And no old actor at the race course – sublime! 😀 Thanks to setter, blogger and commenters.

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