Times Cryptic Jumbo 1491 – a bank holiday culture lesson

Author   PenfoldPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
Well, this was a right bank holiday challenge.  I have to confess to requiring aids to finish, as some of the (cultural, foreign) “general” knowledge was beyond my Ken.  Kudos if you finished all correct without aids. Over an hour again for me.  In writing up the blog I noticed that there were a lot of “extra” words linking wordplay and definition, no all of them seemingly logical.  Maybe that slowed me down.  In fact, just for “fun” this week, I’m going to make these link words red.

First in was SWING and last was FIELDED.

If any of my explanations don’t make sense then feel free to ask for further elucidation.

Clues are in blue with the definition undelined.  Anagram indicators are in bold italics.

Notation:

DD: Double definition

CD: Cryptic definition

DDCDH: DD/CD hybrid where a straight definition is combined with a cryptic hint.

&Lit: “all in one” where the entire clue is both definition and wordplay.

(fodder)* denotes an anagram of the letters in the brackets.

Rounded brackets are also used to add further clarity

Squiggly brackets {} indicate parts of a word not used

Deletions are struck out

Square brackets [] expand an abbreviation or shortening like S[iste]R


Across

1
Sister holding rug with no time to beat it (7)

SCARPER – S[iste]R around CARPEt.  In case scarper is a Britishism it means the same as leg it!

5
Stretch of river covering basins of salt (7)

EXPANSE – EXE around PANS.  It must be challenging for overseas solvers to keep a mental list of all the UK rivers.

9
Appear cheated in hearing, so stopped and returned (7)

FIELDED – Sounds like FEEL DID.  The definition is crickety.  I won’t go through all the in, out, on, off stuff, but the batsman hits the ball, the fielder (possibly extra cover, deep mid-wicket or backward square leg) stops it and throws it back (returns it) to the bowler or wicket keeper, depending on which end he’s throwing to.  Well fielded.

13
Poem the Italian writes with nothing on love (2,9)

IL PENSEROSO – IL, PENS, then O on (after) EROS.  Had to use aids to get this.  Never heard of it. It’s by Milton rather than some Italian or Roman poet.

14
Writhing excites love — stop! (4,7)

VOIX CELESTE – (excites love)*.  Tricky.  Once I’d figured out we were looking for an organ stop VOIX suggested itself and the remaining letters unscrambled themselves into the name of musical instrument I recognised.

15
Small limb child plays on (5)

SWING – S[mall] WING.  The definition doesn’t really work for me. Looks like there’s a word missing.

16
Calm, not yet sacked by The Times? (7)

STILLED – STILL ED[itor]

17
When one’s ahead of everybody, almost? (9)

AFTERNOON – AFTER NO ON{e}.  The “one’s” is sort of part of the definition but also sort of isn’t.

18
Thought train often featured in modernist novels (6,2,13)

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS – Maybe I’m missing something here but this looks like a fairly weak barely cryptic DD of sorts (FWBCDDOS for short).

23
Trouble-maker pretended to have had an effect (8)

IMPACTED – IMP ACTED

25
Designated as nasty, knocking off sodium light (6)

STYLED – naSTY, L.E.D.  As someone asked why SN = TIN in the comments for a daily cryptic blog the other day I’d better explain that Na is the chemical symbol for the element sodium.

27
Lightly fried sesame, for example, which faculty regularly may tuck into (7)

SAUTEED – SEED around {f}A{c}U{l}T{y}

30
Northerner once holding old twist of thread (5)

PICOT – PICT arond O[ld]

32
Structure of an alliance that surprises me (7)

ANATOMY – A, NATO, MY!

33
Mechanic is erratic, if given confusing order (9)

ARTIFICER – (erratic if)*

35
Flirtatious girl with very little money — gambler making right move (9)

SOUBRETTE – SOU, BETTER with the R shuffled a few places forward.

36
Happening to enter, shortly departed (5,2)

GOING ON – GO IN, GON{e}

37
Linger as blue is reflected by lake (5)

DWELL – LEWD reversed by L[ake]

38
Periodically, three fired up are busily active around one (7)

LITHIUM – LIT, HUM around I.  A very clever definition as 3 is the atomic number for Lithium.  As someone asked why SN = TIN in the comments for a daily cryptic blog the other day I’d better explain that…

40
For the audience, it might be on a high card (6)

HONOUR – Sounds like ON A (to some)

41
Men following female python, say, replacing end of skin that’s cast off (8)

FORSAKEN – O[ther] R[anks] (men) after F[emale], SNAKE with the N ({ski}N) re-placed.

44
Livelihood dull person finds sweet (5-3-6,7)

BREAD-AND-BUTTER PUDDING – two-part charade

48
I’m a vocalist, love — something fishy here (9)

ISINGLASS – I SING, LASS.  A northerner might call a girl “lass” or “love”.  At least I think that’s the intention here.  I know isinglass from the student placement I had at Shepherd Neame brewery where one of my duties was conducting brewery tours.  It’s a sort of gelatin obtained from e.g. the swim bladder of the sturgeon, and you put it in real ale as a “fining”, making the sediment collect at the bottom of the cask.

50
Care worker shows a lot of cash in both hands (7)

ALMONER – A, MONE{y} in L[eft], R[ight]

53
Flirt with the lassies on and off (5)

TEASE – T{h}E {l}A{s}S{i}E{s}

54
Get don back somehow in headcount reduction? Fanciful (4-3-4)

COCK-AND-BULL – (don back)* in CULL

55
Feature of phone to be delayed, interrupting profession (4,7)

CALL WAITING – WAIT in CALLING

56
Catch some veterans newly returned (7)

ENSNARE – reverse hidden

57
Argument fills feeble football feature (5-2)

THROW-IN – ROW in THIN

58
Some err, generating this? (7)

REMORSE – (some err)*, semi &Lit


Down

1
Most devious way to conceal concoctions (6)

SLIEST – ST[reet] around LIES

2
Taking fruit round one makes a request (7)

APPLIES – APPLES around I

3
In terror, grey with worry making public oration (9)

PANEGYRIC – PANIC around (grey)*

4
Judges restricting European banks (5)

REEFS – REF[eree]S around E[uropean]

5
Expressive face, having picked up book I pore over (8)

EMOTICON -TOME reversed, CON (study)

6
Patrol runs into would-be escapee? Back to cell (5)

PROWL – R[uns] in P[risoner] O[f] W[ar], {cel}L

7
Statesman, one that runs through St Petersburg, and collapses (7)

NEVADAN – (river) NEVA, (and)*

8
Poussin’s work I decorate again, stupidly (2,2,7,3)

ET IN ARCADIA EGO – (I decorate again)*.  Another one I needed aids for.  The short story is that it’s an old painting in the Louvre. Never heard of it and couldn’t shuffle the letters into something I was happy with.  I’m firmly in the “please don’t clue obscure foreign words and phrases as anagrams” club.

9
Turbulent, consuming energy without serious purpose (9)

FACETIOUS – FACTIOUS around E[nergy]

10
Oriental potentate dismissing head mathematician (5)

EULER – E[astern] (oriental) rULER.  Times Crossword.  Mathematician.  Five letters.  Your knee-jerk reaction should be EULER.

11
Board manoeuvre brought to light audit (10,5)

DISCOVERED CHECK – Two-part charade.  Not being a chess player I didn’t know this.  For ages I thought it was going to be a manoeuvre in surfing or snowboarding.  I figured it out but looked it up to confirm.

12
Chaperones expected small girl to stand up (7)

DUENNAS – DUE, S[mall] ANN reversed

19
One never cracking up with a long period to survive (7)

AGELAST – AGE, LAST.  Someone who doesn’t laugh.

20
Machine removing seeds from bed: nothing wrong displacing horse (6,3)

COTTON GIN – COT, (nothing)* without the H[orse]

21
Filled with second bunch of grass, we hear (7)

STUFFED – S[econd], homophone of TUFT.

22
Face accepting concessions in return for sale (8)

DISPOSAL – DIAL around SOPS reversed

24
Acquire certain guns to restore equilibrium (4,2,3,6)

PICK UP THE PIECES – DDCDH

26
Substitute for model terribly ugly, I fear (3,6)

LAY FIGURE – (ugly I fear)*.  A joined model used by painters.

28
In the night, king embraced by beloved (8)

DARKLING -K[ing] in DARLING.

29
Surpass everything by eating a rich tea? (4,3,7)

TAKE THE BISCUIT – DDCDH

31
Waited, having had a go at crossing a river (7)

TARRIED – TRIED around A R[iver]

34
Brown went for a small child, possibly, and danced (7)

TANGOED – TAN, GOED (what a child might say instead of went)

39
Violently grab principal knob, dropping one (9)

MANHANDLE – MAiN HANDLE

42
In religion, suggestion to follow saint is in order (9)

SHINTOISM – HINT after S[aint], IS in O[rder of] M[erit]

43
Start to design type of work area (4-4)

OPEN-PLAN – two-part charade

44
With enthusiasm shortly get teeth into roll (7)

BRIOCHE – BRIO, CHE{w}

45
One that’s behind advertisement (7)

TRAILER – DD

46
Frozen creeper finally dying, more delicate (7)

GLACIER – {dyin}G, LACIER.  Nice definition.

47
Bond to some extent while a guest (6)

LEAGUE – hidden

49
Gather for hearing in the country (5)

GHANA – Sounds like GARNER (to some)

51
Bird about to disappear into gullet (5)

MACAW – C[irc]A in MAW

52
Quarrelsome sportsman? (5)

ROWER – CD of a sort

10 comments on “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1491 – a bank holiday culture lesson”

  1. It took me forever to get the last two, STILLED & AGELAST. I thought of STILLED early on, but couldn’t justify it. With AGELAST I didn’t know the word, and played with the alphabet for a long time for something else until I finally looked in ODE, and didn’t find it. FOI STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS; a weak clue. IL PENSEROSO is actually a pretty well-known poem of Milton’s, often paired with L’Allegro as assigned readings in a Milton class. And I’m afraid ET IN ARCADIA EGO is well-known too; ‘ego’ being Death. (I once co-authored a paper entitled “Et In Amygdala Ego?”. But I digress.) DNK the chess move, DNK ISINGLASS in that sense (it’s since appeared again, if I recall); I only knew it as an old name for mica.
  2. Very hard work. I also used aids, but according to my notes on the printout only for three clues which I now think may not be entirely accurate.

    I don’t recall seeing SLIEST before, nor DARKLING and I never did work out what was going on in the wordplay of FIELDED which I solved only from definition.

    1. I thought this was dead, but ODE marks it as ‘literary’. I only remembered it from ‘Lear’: ‘Out went the candle, and we were left darkling’. I should have remembered it from Matthew Arnold (‘Dover Beach’):
      And we are here as on a darkling plain
      Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
      Where ignorant armies clash by night
  3. I seem to have mislaid my paper copy but I see it came up all-correct. More lovely obscurities, hurrah! I do the TLS crossword each week but even so, my arts and literary knowledge is pretty dodgy and I would not recognise either Poussin or Milton if I bumped into them in the street. However the Arcadia thing and the penseroso did ring some sort of vague bell. I think they have both been used elsewhere as titles etc, in the sort of way Kevin describes above

    This is 1491, has anyone seen the blog for 1490? Though it is only due about now I think

    Edited at 2021-04-17 07:50 am (UTC)

    1. I knew ET IN ARCADIA EGO only as the title of the first tranche of chapters in Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’. I hope that doesn’t count as ‘Ninja Turtling’!
  4. I’m not quite sure how, but I whizzed through this in 33.41: Jumbos don’t get quicker than that for me (until today’s anyway). I guess it helps that the obscurities weren’t that obscure: Et in Acadia Ego has a place in Grail conspiracy stuff, popularised by Dan Brown (that’s true Ninja Turtling!). IL PENSEROSO was not particularly difficult to work out from the wordplay and rang a faint bell. The obviously made up words AGELAST and DARKLING were kindly clued.
    I did like the clever cluing for LITHIUM. My chemistry teacher believed that you could recite the entire periodic table as a continuous word. I never got beyond H’HELI and never understood how a metal could be only slightly more complicated than two gases.
  5. It turns out that the phrase originates from Virgil’s Eclogues; and has been used by literally hundreds of authors and other writers over the years. A search for the phrase on Amazon Books produces lots of hits. Now feeling a bit humbled 🙂
  6. A splendid blog. Thank you. I finished it all in 11 minutes. It’s a different story for the puzzle. I abandoned it after 58 minutes with 51 per cent done. I don’t think I ran out of time; it was more the will to live. My DEOD (dead-end of the day) was thinking that the final word of 8dn must be EGG, led there by the poussin you usually find spatchcocked. I haven’t yet looked at today’s….
  7. My FOI was STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, so that helped. Like most Jumbos, most of it seemed fairly easy, but some rough patches eventually emerged.
    I couldn’t quite believe SLIEST.
    AGELAST is new to me. Of course, HONOUR was slow to dawn and the simple hidden LEAGUE may have been my LOI.
  8. 1d scuppered me for a good while, as I had SLYEST in the grid initially rather than SLIEST, since both LIES and LYES are “concoctions” (a lye is a chemical solution).

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