Times Cryptic No 26962, 15 February 2018 I know my transgressions.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
There’s a fair bit of religion is this one, which made it easier for me if annoyinger to others. Perhaps the most likely bone of contention is the Bible story at 14d, beloved of both schoolboys who (used to?) know where all the naughty bits are to be found and of artists who know a good excuse for soft core porn when they see it.
In the course of 20 minutes, I managed to create one pink square through a careless not-properly-parsed entry, but otherwise found few hold ups, the most hold uppy being in the South East corner. A pleasant enough solve, then, with the pretty 24a earning my nomination for CoD, with a side order of 22d just for mentioning the mighty Spurs and the team from whom they nicked their manager.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot:. Clues, definitions, SOLUTIONS

Across

1 Pass on music, performing key records (3,4,5)
POP ONE’S CLOGS A cheerful one to start with, one of the many euphemisms for die. The music is POP, performing is ON, the key is ESC (top left) and records LOGS.
9 Shell that is fired from an unlikely source! (5)
CONCH There is a slight, but not critical blurriness about this one. The (sea) SHELL is derived from “firing”  the IE (that is) from CONCHIE, short for conscientious objector, who would be an unlikely source of the sort of shell you’d fire from a 5.5 inch gun howitzer, which I think I could still successfully do.
10 Mason not having drink with jazz singer (3-6)
DRY WALLER Not the secretive sort, just the sort that actually builds things. Not having a drink: DRY. Jazz singer: Fats WALLER
11 Old plaque languishing years in obscurity (8)
OPAQUELY O(ld) anagram (languishing) of PLAQUE and Y(ears).
12 “Grateful” recipient, because helped initially by God (3-3)
ASH-PAN The tray under the grate (ho-ho). Because: AS, H(elped) initially, God: PAN.
13 Trifle to bolt when there’s some to be eaten (8)
FLEABITE My error, with too many Es. Only now do I see how it works, as I had assumed Some to be eaten was BITE and I can’t spell FLEA. So really it’s some: A BIT “eaten” by bolt: FLEE. Careless, sorry.
15  Religious book it’s essential to plan my holiday around (6)
HYMNAL Some of you will be glad not to root around in your list of obscure OT prophets. Instead it’s hidden (essential to) in pLAN MY Holiday backwards (around)
17 Judge way of addressing relative smart (6)
JAUNTY Just J(udge) plus one of the variations on what one calls one’s parent’s sister, AUNTY.
18 Staff officer’s underwear: button it with a twist, finally (5,3)
BRASS HAT Underwear: yup, its BRAS, followed by a setter’s temptation to scatology neatly resisted in this season of Lent by cluing it as button it: SH plus A plus (twis)T. Well done!
20 As foremost of Magi, perhaps, lives far from the others? (6)
WISEST If you remember your nativity plays (an indecently short time ago this year’s day-after-Ash-Wednesday) the Magi, or wise men, came from the East, so our far away candidate IS in the WEST.
21 Creep from floor, point, and rise (8)
KOWTOWER an anglicised version of the Chinese for bow to the floor given an agent –ER. Floor: KO (what boxers do even if not Chinese) point W(est) (making a second appearance in two clues) and rise: TOWER.
24 Are Godot’s cast waiting here? (5,4)
STAGE DOOR: I like this one: an anagram (cast) of ARE GODOT’S with a pleasingly self referential feel to it.
25 Type of work that is providing current (3-2)
SCI-FI That is: SC (short for scilicet, “namely”) plus that is: IE (again, see 9) providing: IF and (electrical) current: I.
26 Rows of plain stone, on order, can hardly wait (6,6)
GARTER STITCH, hyphenated in my Chambers, but not here. The word “stitching) after “plain” is to be understood, as that’s what our answer is, in knitting. The Order is the most noble one of the GARTER (honi soit, and all that) stone is ST, and can hardly wait gives ITCH

Down

1 Methodically shoot film: fine turned up very loud (4,3)
PICK OFF  Or “to cause to 1ac”. Film: PIC, fine: OK (reversed) and very loud: FF
2 Kept a sauce and last of brandy specially: time to bake? (7,7)
PANCAKE TUESDAY Arriving two days late, but an anagram (specially) of KEPT A SAUCE AND plus (brand)Y. In my house, it was time to fry, but I suppose you could bake if you didn’t mind missing out on the tossing bit..
3 Vessel turned up carrying pardon for statesman (5)
NEHRU First Prime Minister of India. EH (pardon) in an upturned URN
4 Group from earth settled on Mercury finally (8)
SODALITY Earth: SOD (stop sniggering at the back) plus settled ALIT plus (Mercur)Y
5 Places where you can pick up loaf? (4)
LAYS Can be either noun or verb, sounds like LAZE (loaf).
6 Artificial body parts useless as legs, certainly (5,4)
GLASS EYES An anagram (useless) of AS LEGS plus certainly: YES
7 It’s hardly dressing down, having make-up near to hand? (4,2,3,5)
SLAP ON THE WRIST A low level telling off. Make-up: SLAP, “near to hand” for the rest.
8 Engineer’s brief alarm about career (6)
BRUNEL If alive today would be undoubtedly giving Elon Musk a run for his money. Brief alarm BEL(l) surrounding career: RUN.
14 Woman with university degree about to become David’s wife (9)
BATHSHEBA A favourite, it’s-alright-it’s-in-the-Bible-honest subject for artists down the ages, since David first talent-spotted her while she was bathing. I’ve only just realised I didn’t parse this one (too distracted, perhaps) but it’s BATH (university) BA (degree) surrounding SHE, the eternal woman.
16 Mail worker set our letters on postbox (8)
ARMOURER Sneaky definition. Set gives you ARM (I suppose as in arm/set a bomb), our gives – um – OUR, and the letters on a UK postbox are (since 1952?) ER.
17 Worshipping a particular way, I pray in different languages (6)
JEWISH The two languages are French and English.
19 Small lake sort of makes for dull film (7)
TARNISH I think we’re meant to think of a sort of small lake being tarn-ish.
22 Heads for Tottenham versus Southampton — easily the one to watch (2,3)
TV SET Derived from the first letters of words 3 to 7 of the clue. Who am I to disagree?
23 Hint that litre will go in jar (4)
JOLT Hint gives JOT via the tiny Hebrew letter yod (and the Greek iota) to mean something very small. Include L(itre).

55 comments on “Times Cryptic No 26962, 15 February 2018 I know my transgressions.”

  1. I wondered about JEWISH (rather than, say, Judaic) for worship-related activity, but since I have always felt that a non-believing Jew was something of a contradiction, it didn’t trouble me overmuch.

    A chewy puzzle, with ARMOURER and GARTER STITCH putting up most resistance. 54 minutes, which may or may not be enough to qualify for today’s SNITCHometer.

  2. Thought I’d never finish this; went offline at around 35′, finished over lunch. I must have come across POP ONE’S CLOGS somewhere, since I finally came up with it, but a DNK as near as dammit. Also DNK the stitch, but since I had STITCH, I finally twigged. 14d would have been a gimme, if I had a memory that worked. 20ac 2d to LOI, 17d LOI. The def struck me as odd; for one thing, what particular way? There are a number. (Contra U, every Jew I know, including me, is a non-believer, and none of us sees any contradiction.) This was painfully slow for me to solve, but I’m glad I stuck it out. Of the many clues I liked, I suppose I’d single out 4d, 7d, and 20ac (can one single out 3 clues?).
  3. There’s a lot to enjoy here but once again we seem to have an excess of religious references, at least for my taste. Anyway, this was a technical DNF as I needed aids to come up with SODALITY and the GARTER part of 26ac, neither of which I’ve heard of before (okay, so SODALITY has come up once, in December 2016, and I didn’t know it then either).

    I looked several times at CONCH for parsing before arriving at the same explanation as our blogger, which seems a bit convoluted but I guess it’s what the setter must have had in mind.

    BATH has been clued as “university” on at least one previous occasion. It’s a beautiful city and I know there’s a university there, but I’m struck by the thought that almost any city (and a good many large towns) in the UK might qualify for the same definition, so it seems a) somewhat loose, and b) somewhat lazy.

    Thanks, z8, for the link to the Cheerful Little Earful, which I enjoyed once it got going. Fats was never seen at his best when making eyes at a film camera. Just look at the dog-ends in his ash-tray! Bet there was a gallon of hooch out of sight under the piano too. Little wonder he didn’t make it to 40. He was a great and innovative musican, and he’s still, sadly, very underrated.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 07:12 am (UTC)

    1. I think university can clue “almost any city” if it’s done as it is here with the “degree” immediately following on. On its own, university does not mean Bath (well, not really), but university degree legitimately clues BATH BA. Small difference, maybe, but fair enough from the setter.
  4. 50 minutes, with a few of them wasted at the end trying to work out if this was a pangram (we lack an X and a Z) to try to figure out the first word of 26a before I remembered the order of the GARTER.

    FOI 1d PICK OFF. As Z, enjoyed 24a. Took me far too long to get 6d BRUNEL given that I live nearly in sight of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Happy with the “conchie” explanation, as that’s how I got it, too. Thought it was rather neat. Got 18a BRASS HAT purely from a codename in excellent cold war geek film WarGames.

    WOD COWTOWER. I thought this was a lovely puzzle, and unusually the religious references didn’t annoy me, partly because I at least vaguely knew most of them.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 08:19 am (UTC)

  5. POP ONE’S CLOGS, eh? PANCAKE TUESDAY? As these mysterious phrases emerged before my eyes, I said, Bring it on! I’m ready for anything! My steady if leisurely progress came to a halt at the crossing of KOWTOWER, ARMOURER and GARTER STITCH. I did not finish unaided, and getting KOWTOWER revealed that there was another answer that needed amending. SLAP ON THE WRIST, that’s pretty darn clever. And I deserve one.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 07:46 am (UTC)

  6. 39 mins (inc. 9 on the Garter and puzzling over the Flea) – with yoghurt, granola, compote, etc.
    I really liked this.
    A couple of MERs: Rise=Tower, Set=Arm
    Mostly I liked: Pop Clogs, “Grateful”, Hymnal, Wisest, Slap on Wrist and Stage Door (COD).
    Thanks clever setter and Z.

    PS: before you tell me why Rise=Tower, I know – but I always think of something towering having already risen. i.e. to tower over is to be there, to rise over is to get there.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 08:35 am (UTC)

    1. I know you said not to, but if you say a bird or aeroplane ‘towers’ it does refer to the getting there, rather than the being there.
      1. I’ve never heard of a bird or plane ‘towering’ into the air; only ‘towering’ over something smaller – by being already there (like a tower is).
          1. Thank you. We live and learn.
            I had satisfied my MER with the famous lyric: “As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” meaning ‘towers like Olympus above…etc’.
            1. You’re welcome, and apologies if my previous response seemed a little curt. It looks it to me now, but wasn’t intended that way at the time. I was in the gym!
  7. Reasonably straightforward, though the first part of 26 ac took a while to emerge.
    I hadn’t realised Fats Waller didn’t make 40. he certainly *looked* as if he had
  8. … what, at my age? Finished in 41 minutes with everything just about parsed, despite seeing none of the across clues on the first run-through. COD the brilliant CONCH, LOI the unknown GARTER-STITCH. We watched the RSC ‘Twelfth Night’ live broadcast at the St Anne’s fleapit last night. Is it something Malvolio would have used? I had a colleague who claimed to live in Riddlesdown, which I think could only be found using a knitting pattern as it was plainly Purley. JAUNTY came courtesy of those years two or three decades ago watching Fireman Sam. I remember Trevor Evans wearing his cap at a jaunty angle, successfully impressing Dilys Price. As I’ve mentioned, I’m re-reading some Erle Stanley Gardner at the moment for light relief, so I was looking for a Perry drink in 10 across before I saw Fats. I’m actually reading The Case of the Counterfeit Eye right now, so I was given GLASS EYES on a plate. Thank you Z and setter for a challenging start to the day.
  9. Defeated by SE today, so a dnf. COD to KOWTOWER, which I didn’t get. Thanks z and setter.
  11. Very quirky puzzle with interesting vocab and tricky clues – enjoyable

    My father was a massive Fats Waller fan and collected his records. When he joined the RAF in 1939 he gave them to his sister to take care of. During the war, whilst he was overseas, she turned them into flower pots to grow tomato plants in. He never forgave her.

    1. I’m definitely on your father’s side, but your aunt was evidently a woman of some talent: how did she turn those brittle 78s into plant pots?
      1. Well, I was too young to know. I did see the offending pots complete with plants and I remember the frosty exchanges which went on for years

        Presumably she put an earthenware flower pot in the oven with the record on top of it and heated it until the vinyl became pliable – but that’s just a guess

  12. DNF. I gave up on this after 20 minutes on the train with three unsolved:
    – WISEST: didn’t have a clue, I’m not sure why. I think I got sidetracked by ‘foremost of Magi’ being M, as the setter no doubt intended.
    – JEWISH: never considered the possibility that one of the languages could be English. Doh!
    – GARTER STITCH: not sure I’d ever have got this.
    No complaints: these are all perfectly gettable, if not necessarily easy. I’m obviously just a bit brain-dead this morning. If anyone offers me any heavy machinery to operate I’ll pass.
  13. A very chewy start to the day, with plenty that was devious, without being obscure*, which is what makes a tough puzzle enjoyable for me. The logic required in sorting out the wordplay for CONCH and WISEST was especially clever.

    *on the plus side, even with my regular tendency to have “never come across a word before” several times before accepting that I have actually come across it, at least I reckon I won’t be saying it if MANA ever puts in a second appearance.

  14. Enjoyable 20 minutes, with ARMOURER my LOI and only partly cottoned onto. I thought of the CONCHIE idea for parsing 9a, but then decided it was too far fetched, although the answer was clear enough. Mrs K to the rescue with her knitting vocab.
  15. I may be a bit thick- DNF today without help- but is there a way of stopping the clock if I need to leave the puzzle and come back later? If you turn off the timer, when you return and switch it back on, it has carried on.
    1. Go to the cog at top right, select ‘pause’ (the two bars) and you’ll be given to save till later.
  16. … but I did manage to complete this without error or aids. My time was well off the scale (85+ minutes), hampered by being done at the end of a busy two-day business trip. But I had a few good “aha” moments as the final clues, SODALITY, ARMOURER, KOWTOWER and GARTER STITCH eventually fell into place. Devious but gettable.

    BTW, I’m not sure if people have noticed aphis99 is turning in some cracking times recently – 9:39 today, 8 seconds ahead of verlaine’s not-too-shabby time. We’re proud to have him as an honorary Australian.

    Thanks to the setter for a great puzzle and to Z for the excellent blog.

    1. It was that rascally GARTER STITCH what held me up at the end! Obviously I am better at matters of the sword than the distaff.
    2. Thanks, just a fluke I think. Monday saw probably my best ever time, for a rather straightforward puzzle. This one was more testing and GARTER needed some teasing out even with STITCH in place.
  17. Resorted to helpers for this one – and they didn’t help. Eventually had to come here for DRY WALLER and LAYS (which i should have got). Very enjoyable crossword today – thanks to setter and blogger.
  18. DNF in 40 mins. Couldn’t get Kowtower, Garter Stitch (I had the stitch in time) and Armourer.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 11:47 am (UTC)

  19. I must have been drinking whatever keriothe was having; I had similar problems. I finally got there in about 26 minutes, with CONCH and JEWISH unparsed.

    Biggest delay was with GARTER STITCH, where I agonised for ages over the first bit, wondering if GARTER made any sense at all. Clearly, a lot of the fellers here are much more familiar with knitting than I am, which is admirable and as it should be in the metrosexual age. Well done.

    1. Other than a planned mulligan on 10 January I haven’t had a drop of booze in 2018, so whatever it was that made me so slow on the uptake this morning it wasn’t that.

      Edited at 2018-02-15 12:19 pm (UTC)

      1. I only know mulligan as a free shot duffers get in golf. I’m sure that its’t what you meant. Can you enlighten me?
        1. That is what I meant, albeit in a figurative way. I set myself a target for staying off the booze and getting stinko on 10 January is a sort of shank into the rough that I’m not counting.
  20. 32 min, with 8dn/15ac occupying last five – even after seeing the engineer isn’t RE this time, I couldn’t think of any obscure prophet that could possibly fit the checkers. (I did think of the possibility of it being hidden, but it was an excessively long time before I saw it.)
  21. 37′ after finally landing garter stich, which brought back a memory of wearing elastic garters to keep long socks up circa 1951 – hated them. And some say the world isn’t improving. An entertaining verbarium nicely concealed, esp. 24. I was privileged to be the first schoolboy Lucky in the play of the century. (A decade post-garter, I hasten to add.) Arm as set took time to settle, as did the gaps in -O-T-W-R to fill.
  23. DNF, but very much liked the puzzle – nice vocabulary, and very nice clues. With a puzzle this clever I often get the wrong word – e.g. Ears definitely pick things up, and you could pick your loaf (head) up by the ears. It doesn’t parse perfectly, but then when I’m completely missing other parsings, such as Conch or Jewish, it’s hard to tell where I’m being thick. An old girlfriend once observed, while looking over my shoulder at an attempted solve, that the surest way to perdition in a cryptic is to enter the wrong word and get all the wrong helpers. I think that what she really meant was the surest way to perdition was to pay attention to the puzzle instead of to her, but that’s a different clue. Nice blog Z8, very well done setter.
  24. Another DNF with the mail worker and wisemen defeating me after an hour. I doubt if another hour would have got me any nearer to the prize. Some enjoyable clues and some fiendish ones, so thank you, setter and especially our blogger for the enlightenment. Unlike Keriothe, I could blame last night’s indulgences for my dimness, but I’d rather blame Mr Branson and his crowded train on which I am hurtling south with apparently most of the parents and children from the North East for company. Surely I’m in one of Dante’s circles somewhere in hell!
  26. Kow-Tow – one of the few Mandarin words that has gone directly into the English language, without being damaged!

    Didn’t start this puzzle until just before lunch -a CNY hot pot HO MAI! – Shanghai is deserted.
    Finished said puzzle off in the late afternoon. Took me over one hour on what I thought was a real toughie.But I did finish! Hoorayed!

    FOI 4dn HUMANITY later changed to the highly unreasonable LOI SODALITY! SOD IT! The first shall be last.
    FOI therefore 9ac CONCH (simples)
    COD 10ac DRY WALLER
    WOD 26ac GARTERSTITCH – the Austrian Ski Resort.

    I did not like 5dn LAYS (not simples)

  27. Good puzzle, Bathsheba unbeknown to me as well as kowtower and a very obscure clue for wisest. Great clue for 22d
  28. Ouch. Took me out to 45 minutes, with the most trouble on POP ONES… and the GARTER STITCH, although I had the stitch part early on. The UK idiom wasn’t on the tip of my tongue for 1A, and my knowledge of knitting doesn’t really exist. JEWISH was nice, though, and the KOWTOWER had to be stitched together. Regards.
  29. This is the first week that I have tried the 15×15 puzzle and needless to say that Times 26959 is the first time I have solved more than one or two clues from a crossword in this paper.

    In my opinion, as a young solver the no living persons rule should be dropped.

    I am extremely grateful to all the bloggers here.

    May I also ask, what are the differences between the 15×15 cryptic and the quick cryptic?

    I am new to high level cryptics.

    Today I only solved 22 down.

    Thank you in advance.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 05:25 pm (UTC)

    1. The quick cryptic was introduced to be a sort of bridge to the regular daily puzzle, so the toughest quickie will be at about the same level of difficulty as the main puzzle on one of its easiest days (which certainly wasn’t today, so don’t worry about finding that one a bit tough). However, the devices used in the two puzzles will be broadly the same, so it’s not as if they are different species. Practising on the quickie will improve you on tougher puzzles as well.

      (I can still remember only solving one or two clues a day when I started on the Times, even though that was some time in the last century, so it does get easier…)

    2. Welcome aboard drglds. There is a great site where one of our solvers (starstruck) pulls in solving times from the Times Crossword website and by comparing times of regular solvers calculates a difficulty rating for each crossword – http://xwdsnitch.herokuapp.com. Today’s was hard going on very hard. Monday’s was very easy, so as topicaltim mentions it would be comparable to a harder quick cryptic.
  30. Having tottered down the stairs around noon, having been up until 5am knocking back G&Ts with the elder daughter, celebrating her 40th birthday (and mine incidentally, although obviously not my 40th), and with some woolly substance masquerading as my brain, I screwed up the Concise, the QC and then started on this puzzle. After 10 minutes with only a couple of clues solved, I saved it for later. Much later I started again and then got interrupted and forgot to pause it, thus adding around 15 minutes to my solving time, which finally turned out at 59:40. Surprisingly enough I had all green squares. NEHRU and BRUNEL were my F2I and JEWISH my last, after WISEST magi-ically appeared. I deciphered CONCH in the same was as Z. As a bairn, I was introduced to the knit one purl one world by my mother who was a prodigious knitter, although it was a while before GARTER surfaced, while Stocking Stitch danced before my eyes mockingly. 1a raised a smile, as did GLASS EYE which appeared in yesterday’s Indy in a slightly different guise. Liked ARMOURER and KOWTOWER. Missed the anagram at 24a and just biffed it. Nice puzzle once I’d recovered enough to appreciate it. Thanks setter and Z.
  31. After 50 mins at lunchtime I had all but 21ac, 26ac and 16dn. Those three were tidied up in another 10 mins after work. 21ac falling first (an uncommon noun but gettable from wp), then focusing on chain mail and “our” got me to 16dn, before finally deciding that with those checkers the second word at 26ac had to be “st itch” which accounted for the “stone” and the “can hardly wait”. I deduced that the first word had to be an order and went for garter. Vaguely recognised the whole as something to do with knitting but the Def “rows of plain” didn’t really mean much to me, so it was very hard to sort wp from Def with that one (I was looking for tiers, arguments, prairies and savannahs for longer than was good for me). Tough but enjoyable.
  32. Took me over an hour, with a couple of breaks. Tough but some very enjoyable clues. New to me were: SODALITY & GARTER STITCH. COD: STAGE DOOR, a smidgeon away from being an “& lit”. My “nit of the day” is “useless”. Trying to see how that indicates an anagram. How about “unsteady”? Thanks setter, blogger et al.

Comments are closed.