Times Jumbo 827 – Get Weaving!

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
The usual Jumbo rubric: as the solution is available alongside (or indeed before) the blog, comment is confined only to references that might remain obscure to overseas / inexperienced solvers even with the answer visible, or anything I thought notably good or deserving a question mark; other clues happily discussed by request, please comment if required.

A slightly harder than average puzzle this week, I thought, with a couple of things which were new to me.

Across
7 EARL MARSHAL – EAR + L(ength) + “MARTIAL”; the Earl Marshal is responsible for state funerals and Coronations, so the office may be unfamiliar, as these things don’t happen very often.
14 TO WIT – =”Tow it!”. I like a nice charade style clue.
19 TESTATORS – TEST A TOR S(inger); good concealed definition i.e. “those willing = those who make wills” and the “lift and separate” of rock / singer.
21 ESTIMATE – ESTATE round 1M(illion) is elegantly placed next to the will-writers.
30 DEHISCED – HIS C(oat) in DEED; I knew the Latin word from which this is derived but not the actual word…clearly DEHISCERE was a much more common word in classical times than DEHISCE is today.
31 UNACCOMPLISHED – double def; The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Charles Dickens’ last, and famously unfinished, novel.
34 FINGER ALPHABET – cryptic def: I had never heard the expression, and started with the hypothesis of FINGER LANGUAGE though this synonym was easily enough deduced with the right checking letters.
45 COAL MINER – or as it might be heard, (Old King) COLE MINOR.
49 CLANGERS – CL(ass) + ANGERS; I started by thinking it was C + something and spent a while trying to justify LANGERS to myself. Suffice it to say, that’s an Irish slang term which isn’t totally suitable for a family puzzle, and didn’t work…
53 INKLE – pINKLEotards; more new knowledge to me, as my knowledge of weaving didn’t extend this far.
55 GET TOGETHER – GET TO + G(ood) + ETHER; always worth remembering that “number” can be parsed as “that which numbs” i.e ether, just as “flower” can mean river.
 
Down
3 ORGANZA – ORGAN (=newspaper=rag)+ baZAar; amazingly, my knowledge of textiles did stretch this far.
4 OCHE – 0 + CHE; anyone who’s ever played darts will have stepped up to this mark…without necessarily knowing how it’s spelled.
7 EXECRATE – =EXEC(utive) RATE; nice timing as bank bonuses are back in the news.
11 HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN – to which “fathoms deep” might be the answer; where song titles crop up, you tend to find them described as “standards”. This one was written in 1932 but it seems you might still easily hear it sung today if jazz is your thing.
37 BARCAROLLE – BAR CAROLLE(r): when written down it’s impossible to tell what sort of “row” this is; it is, as it turns out, the sort of rowing done with an oar by a gondolier, whose song this is.
39 GEORGETTE – (ROGEr)* + GET + T(hes)E: another fabric!.
46 MINIKIN – another new word to me, meaning anything small or delicate: it’s 1 inside MINK that’s IN.
47 PINERO – I liked this “lift and separate”, i.e PI (“holy”) + NERO (“Roman emperor”). Arthur Wing Pinero was as popular as Oscar Wilde in their time, though almost forgotten now, I think.
51 POOCH – (COOP)rev + H(ot) = dog; I was puzzled because I thought a coop would be a container for birds rather than fish, but it turns out that it’s also a wicker basket used by Chinese fishermen, which is worth remembering.

5 comments on “Times Jumbo 827 – Get Weaving!”

  1. 23:18 for me. I suppose you’re right that Pinero is almost forgotten now, but Trelawny of the “Wells” still used to get the occasional airing when I was younger – I must have seen it a couple of times – and almost everyone had heard of The Second Mrs Tanqueray (even if they didn’t know it was by Pinero) because of its mention in Hilaire Belloc’s Matilda. But perhaps Belloc is almost forgotten now as well. (Oh dear! Suddenly I’m feeling old.)

  2. I know Pinero, and indeed many other authors and playwrights, purely from having seen them previously in crosswords, sadly.. It so happens I know of Mrs Tanqueray from Hilaire Belloc:

    It happened that a few weeks later
    Her aunt went off to the theatre
    To see that interesting play
    The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
    She had refused to take her niece
    to hear this entertaining piece:
    A deprivation just and wise
    To punish her for telling lies

    .. from “Matilda.” The rhyming of lines 1 and 2 is absolutely exquisite, isn’t it?

    I regard Belloc as a literary giant, far superior to the worthy Pinero, and should hate to think of him being forgotten.

    1. …damn, just noticed you mentioned Matilda above, Tony.. oh well at least I added a bit of context 🙂
  3. 56A appears to be SHEET ANCHOR. I know that’s an emergency anchor, which fits the straightforward sense of “It may prevent ship hitting side of harbour or rock”, but is this just a pedestrian clue, or is there a second, cryptic indication of the answer? I see HOR as the start letters, maybe “sides”, of the final words, but that’s all.

    John in USA

    1. John

      I interpreted it as being a double def. with “rock” (in the sense in which the late Princess Diana described Paul Burrell as her “rock”) being the secondary one, and “It may prevent ship hitting side of harbour” being the first. Afraid I’d have to agree with the word “pedestrian” when it’s so close to not being cryptic at all…

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