TIMES JUMBO 1226

Author   PenfoldPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic

I solved this in the garden with nothing to use as a timer other than the passage of the sun but I’d say it took me comfortably less than an hour so falls into the average difficulty bracket.  An enjoyable puzzle for all that.

First in was IT’S A FAIR COP and last was EUTERPE which I have to confess I needed aids to get.  I really should learn my muses (not to mention fates and graces).


Across

1
INJURIOUS  – U for superior + RIO inside (bottled by) IN JUS (thin sauce favoured by Masterchef contestants)

6
FITNESS CENTRE – (firstsentence)*

13
SEBUM – BUM for no good on (generally (always?) after in an across clue) S(outh) E(ast).  Sebum is an oily secretion of the sebaceous glands

14
FORTNIGHTLY – soundee-likee for fought knightly, but probably not in all accents

15
SEX UP – EX in SUP

16
FELIX THE CAT – deciding whether the anagram fodder was kiss l Cathie or X left Cathie might have held up some solvers.  Felix first came to a multiplex near you in 1919

17
AIR CORRIDOR  – AIR (feeling) + COR ((goodness) gracious) + RID + O(rdinary) R(anks)

18
ICE SHOW – ICES (think 1940s gangster movies) + HOW (think 1950s westerns or Fred Dineage

20
DIOXIDE – D(etected) + I(n) + OX + IDE, the crossword setter’s favourite fish

21
KIDSKIN – KIDS + KIN

27
TWI – ToWnIs an obscure word (a collection of dialects of the Akan language, spoken in Ghana) helpfully clued.  I thought it was more likely to be a person than a tongue

29
RECOIL  – OIL after (on in an across clue again) REC, Brit shorthand for a playing field / recreation ground

31
SUN HELMET – SUM + HELM + E.T.  I don’t think the syntax of the definition (one would put on in tropics) quite works here.  It would need a “something”, a “be” or a “this” in there somewhere to make sense to me.

35
BUTT IN – BUT TIN

36
BIONIC – B(orn) + IONIC for “having feet” (nowt to do with ions and there’s no such thing as an ionic pentameter in poetry – Ionic columns in classical Greek architecture have bases or feet).  Bionic eh?  Do do do do do do… ba ba ba ba ba ba…  der der derr der, dah dah dah dah daaah.  Six million dollars doesn’t seem a lot these days does it?

39
MAE – last letter of film Columbia produce with Eastenders as the imaginative last letter indicator

40
NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM – a sort of CD I guess

42
OX-FENCE – OFFENCE with X replacing one of the Fs

43
GERBERA – hidden plant.  I nearly went for a jumble of manager

45
JOHNSON – JOHNS (US toilets) + ON for working to give you LBJ or the other one

47
TO BEGIN WITH – I in (bettinghow)*

49
COCONUT PALM – CO CO (firms) + NUT (crazy) + PALM (conceal)

51
ORGAN – DD, neither of which has anything to do with punctuation as suggested by the surface reading

52
OUT OF KILTER – DD, one of which is, um, quirky shall we say?  Straight out of the Uxbridge

54
DEMILITARISED – shot of soldiers is the def, constructed from DEMI LIT (half in the dark) with an incorrect past participle of arise

55
CAMCORDER – MC (as in Hammer) inside CA ORDER


Down

3
REMIX – the ancient number is IX off of the Romans, and the band is R.E.M. off of Losing My Religion

5
SPRUCED – did tart as in tarted up made by tacking D for diamonds onto SPRUCE.  I neither know nor care if a spruce is a pine or vice versa

6
FINE-TOOTH COMB – anagram of C for cold plus bitofthemoon.  Why do so many people insist on enunciating the phrase as if it refers to a tooth-comb that is fine rather than a comb that is fine-toothed?  What exactly do they think a tooth-comb is? 

7
TOG RATING – TO as in closed (of a door) plus GRATING to give the mysterious number that tells you how cost your duvet is supposed to be.  I don’t think we’ll ever get consensus on whether “to” is not quite closed or not quite open

8
EUTERPE – E(nglish) PRE TUE all reversed.  As mentioned I had to “cheat” to arrive at the flute-wielding muse of music, song, lyric poetry and tooth-combs

9
SKYROCKETING – ROCKET IN in SKY G.  I considered ballooning and mushrooming long before skyrocketing occurred to me, probably because I associate the latter more with going up than expanding

10
EASY RIDER – picture as in fillum, a straightforward charade

11
TAXED – {ou}T plus AXED

12
ESPERANTIST – (saintpeters)* I think the definition (no natural language expert) relies on the fact that Esperanto is an artificial language

19
HAHNIUM – (himahun)* No wonder I hadn’t heard of this element.  It’s an alternative name for Dubnium, which I hadn’t heard of either.  It’s the secret ingredient that makes some tooth-combs finer than others 

22
KATHMANDU – AND in MU after KATH.  At first I wondered why the letters either side of AND should be M and U but of course it’s the Greek letter MU

24
MAPLE LEAF – MAP + LEA in LEF{t}

25
OPEN AIR – O for ball the AIR for bearing under PEN

26
WISPIER – IS PIER after W(ife)

30
LATCHKEY CHILD – anagram of CLICK HEALTHY + D(aughter) Is this just a Britishism?  I think I’ve always heard it as latchkey kid

32
EPITAPH – &Lit made by putting PI TAP in EH?

33
SOUTHERNMOST – THE in SOUR {rundown}N MO ST.  The definition puzzled me briefly but of course it’s nearest [to the South] pole, not the pole that’s nearest

34
COMFORT FOOD – Decent cryptic definition with a surface reading that suggest plastic surgery

37
CEMENT MIXER – another straightforward charade where the division between the two elements is in the same place as the answer.  If this another peculiarly British term for that particular piece of plant?

38
PANJANDRUM – charade of PAN, JAN & DRUM FOR “a person who has or claims to have a great deal of authority or influence”.  Rather than being derived from Punjabi, Sanskrit, Arabic it whatever it’s an invented phrase in a nonsense verse (1755) by S. Foote.  In researching an appropriate description I chanced upon “The Great Panjandrum”, a massive, rocket-propelled, explosive-laden cart designed by the British military during World War II.  That would make a good ride at Alton Towers

40
NONAGONAL – reversal of LAN for network, O.G. (own goal / error) and ANON

41
AIR SHAFTS – (farasthis)* with a neat way of indicating the anagram (“potentially to be built as”)

43
GLITTER – GRITTER with L substituting the first (as is clearly indicated) R

44
ASCETIC – AS C + CITE reversed

46
SWATTED – homophone of swotted as in mugged as in crammed / revised

48
BY GUM – yet another simple two-part charade for a supposed Northern expression  meaning brother as in oh boy / oo ‘eck etc.  I’ve lived in Yorkshire for 16 years and in Lancashire for the 10 years before that and I’ve never heard anyone say “by gum”.

50
TABOO – TA BOO{n}

 

8 comments on “TIMES JUMBO 1226”

  1. For some reason, I cannot think why, I put in ‘Northernmost’. A couple of DNKs: 4d (I gather ‘Off the Wall’ was a PF album? I wouldn’t know) and 7d. LOI 46d–took me forever to remember ‘mug’=’swot’, neither word being in my dialect. It was nice to have a muse other than Erato for a change (although I think we had Melpomene once).
    1. The Wall is a Pink Floyd album: ‘from’ gives OFF. Off The Wall is a Michael Jackson album, so the setter could have used that.

      Edited at 2016-09-25 12:59 pm (UTC)

      1. in which case I would have said, “(I gather ‘Off the Wall’ is a Michael Jackson album?)”.
  2. BIONIC gettable from watching ‘The six million dollar man’ circa 1980-81,quite tough but completed it,LOI EURTERPE.ONG’ARA,KENYA.(EUTERPE,rather).
  3. 36m, which counts as easy-to-middling for me. I agree with you on the definition of SUN HELMET, tooth-combs and LATCHKEY kids.
  4. I reckon we have had almost all the nine Muses at one time or another .. from memory I can recite erato, euterpe, atropos, calliope, clio, terpsichore and thalia .. but have had to look up Wiki just now to find polyhymnia, melpomene and urania – and find myself reminded that Atropos is actually a Fate, along with Clotho and Lachesis.
    Confusingly, one of the three Graces is also called Thalia – but the other two (Aglaea and Euphrosyne) don’t have very suitable names for crosswords, so not necessary to remember them!

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