Times Jumbo 1047

34:36 on the Club timer, which which is pretty much bang on my average time for the Jumbo (or at least my usual time for an average Jumbo, if you see what I mean). There again, it appears I finished unusually high up the non-neutrino leaderboard, so perhaps I was just on the right wavelength. As for the puzzle, I know not everyone bothers noticing surfaces, but I thought this one read particularly well in that regard; and there were some good definitions, too (as well as a couple of things which I’m not sure I understood at time of solving, or even at time of writing…)

With Jumbos, which attract a far smaller audience than daily puzzles, I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think are a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. In other words, unless it’s an exceptionally interesting puzzle, the coverage is unlikely to be 100%; however, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.

Across
14 WHARTON – HART(beast) in WON(was first). Harry Wharton was one of the protagonists of the Greyfriars School stories, best known for those concerning Billy Bunter; I can easily imagine younger and / or overseas solvers being baffled by the reference.
15 CLEAVER – A(=indefinite article) in CLEVER &lit. It took me an age to work out post-solve how this was in any way cryptic, so either the clue was too clever or I wasn’t clever enough.
20 LIGAMENT – GAME(e.g. football) in LINT(=dressing) with a surface which makes a fine clue.
24 INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET – cryptic def.: this system for teaching literacy was new to me, so presumably was never in favour at a relevant time or place in my education.
26 OVERTURE – OVERT(=clear) + PURE.
27 TAKE-UP =”TAY CUP”. I started by thinking the homophone might involve some sort of Scots dialect word, which would have been bound to open a can of worms, but we were spared that.
31 CROSSMAN – CROSS(angry) MAN(fellow); another reference which I suspect may fly straight over the heads of solvers who aren’t of a certain age and / or politically well-informed. Richard Crossman was the first cabinet minister to publish the sort of candid political diaries which are commonplace these days.
34 STRIP OUT – RIP in STOUT. “You young rip” is exactly the sort of thing which might have been said around Greyfriars School.
36 HAMPSTEAD HEATH – (ATHAMESPATHHE’D)*; lovely incorporation of the anagram fodder into the surface, though in real life the Thames flows nowhere near the Heath.
39 BISHOP – BISH(a very Greyfriars word for a mistake), OPus; “see man at top” is an excellent disguised definition.
41 SYMPOSIA – MP,OS in SYRIA. A surface which suggests passing reference to current events.
43 WORKSHY – (HOWSKY,Rain)*. Another noteworthy good surface, I thought.
46 GILBERT AND ELLICE ISLANDS – (GIRL,ILLNESS,BALANCED,DIET)*. Phew. That’s some anagram.
48 TURKEY – TURNKEY minus n.
53 AMERIND – E.R. in [A MIND].
57 HALF-TIMBERED – ERE(before)DIED i.e. ERED is half of TIMBERED. Another clue where I couldn’t parse the obviously correct answer for ages, so once more I don’t know if that’s the clue’s fault or mine.
58 GENEROUSLY – (ENERGY,SOUL)*. Nice economical clueing.
 
Down
3 OATS – A TIME IN O.S.
4 FUNERAL PARLOUR – darkly humorous cryptic def. In a pub where I once worked, the quiet back bar popular with older patrons was known to all as The Departure Lounge.
5 ROC – ROCK, presumably, though I can’t say I was terribly convinced by “crack”=”rock”. Now I come to look at it again, is the intended meaning that both refer to crack cocaine? If so, it seems a bit “street” for the Times, and particularly so in a puzzle which also uses Billy Bunter and post-war Labour MPs as cultural reference points….
8 DERRINGERS – (RED)rev. + RINGERS.
9 LETHALLY – LE (French “the”), HALBERD in TALLY(=count), lovely &lit.
11 IRRITABLE – IR/RI (IRISH reflected) + TABLE. Deft use of chippy as nounal source of fried food, and adjective.
12 NODE – NO. + DUE minus the U-turn.
19 MNEMONIC – (MANCOMEIN)* gives the (memory) jogger, another well-disguised definition.
21 MID-AIR – IDA (mountain in Greece) in MIRE.
22 GIFT WRAP – where “present paper”= paper in which one might wrap presents; a “wrap party” is where one celebrates the completion of a film or other endeavour. The more I try to analyse this forensically, the less clear I am about how it works…perhaps it’s just one of those where the question mark means “you know what this is getting at”?
28 GREAT WHITE HOPE – (EAGERTOWHIPTHE)*; phrase originating from the search for a white heavyweight to challenge controversial (black) champion Jack Johnson in the USA of the segregation era. Used more generally these days without, as far as I’m aware, any overtly racist connotation.
29 NOSEBAGS – cryptic def. which won’t have detained any experienced solver for whom “Arab” instantly suggests “horse”.
32 MEALS ON WHEELS – another economical cryptic def. A quick Google suggests that the term is widespread across the English-speaking world at large, and not specific to the UK.
33 STEAM-CAR – TEAM in SCAR. If you’re me, you don’t initially think of road vehicles powered the same way as rail locomotives, but obviously the technology pre-dates the internal combustion engine by decades.
42 SPLIT TIN – a third and final clue which required much more effort to parse than it did to solve, though I eventually realised that on the periodic table, tin is “Sn”, so “S[hopwoma]n” is an example of tin being split.
51 ANNE – A NINE minus 1.
52 CLIO – CLASS + IO, the moon of Jupiter, gives the Muse of History.
55 GEE – GLEE minus eviL gives “Gee!”, which = “My!”.

5 comments on “Times Jumbo 1047”

  1. Unfortunately, never heard of split tin bread; although I got as far as the S____N, it didn’t occur to me to connect the letters with Sn. And I was totally clueless with 51d.
    I doubt very much that ‘great white hope’ would get past an American editor (well, maybe the National Review). ‘Present paper’ I interpreted as intended to mislead as ‘present a paper’.
  2. Any crossword able to present “Gilbert & Ellice Islands” as an anagram gets my vote.
    I had trouble parsing several clues, and still don’t follow 5dn
  3. 37:29 for me. I was going pretty well at one point, but tiredness overcame me and I struggled desperately with the NW corner – not helped by having stupidly bunged in INITIAL LEARNING ALPHABET. (Should have thought of the initials ITA. Doh!)

    I didn’t know ROCK = “crack” until I looked it up in Chambers afterwards. Like you, I’m not convinced about 22dn (GIFT WRAP) – perhaps we’re missing something subtle.

    I should have added: (with the possible exception of 22dn) nice puzzle; and thanks for an entertaining blog entry.

    Edited at 2013-08-19 12:31 am (UTC)

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