Times Jumbo 967

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
A solving time of 32 minutes, and a puzzle requiring some thought. Lots of playfulness in both definitions and wordplay, which I find to be something which tends to divide the solving community; most of the time I liked it, even if I raised an occasional metaphorical eyebrow.

With Jumbos I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think might be a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. However, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.

Across
6 FINE LEG – (FEELING)*; the obligatory cricket reference to weed out the non-Commonwealth / non-sporting solvers early on.
13 BUSINESS CLASS – cryptic double def.; anecdotally, turning left on boarding an aircraft means you’re going into first or business class; I turned left the last time I boarded an aircraft, but it was because I was boarding at the back of a Ryan Air plane, and I would be exaggerating to describe the experience as first class.
14 TRANSLATE – TRAIN’S LATE without the I; I’m not sure it’s possible to parse this with any elegance, but the meaning is clear enough.
16 BOSWELL – (SOB)rev. + “WELL!”; Doctor Johnson’s companion and scribe.
17 DULLEST – DULLES + Time.
18 ANTICLERICAL – cANTICLE + R.I. + CAL., Rhode island and California being about as far apart as any two of the contiguous states of the USA can be.
24 SIEGFRIED – (IS)rev. + E.G. + FRIED; a hero of Scandinavian mythology and 20 across.
26 POTTING SHED – POTTING (as in snooker balls) + SHED (=dropped).
30 RUBBER STAMP – i.e. a single item of deskware, which could also be broken down into a rubber (Americans will note the potential for hilarity arising from the British term for an eraser) and a stamp.
34 WALLOON – Wife + ALLOw + ON; the French-speaking population of the part of the Low Countries which became Belgium.
36 RECTANGLE – REC. (i.e. Recreation Ground) + TANGLE.
38 ARLES – CHARLES; famous Roman city which was much painted by van Gogh.
41 TOP OF THE POPS – TV pop music programme which, though now defunct, will presumably be familiar to all British solvers, less so to non-Brits.
45 DIGESTS =”DI JESTS”.
47 BREATHE – (B-HEATER)*; I wasn’t convinced that “breathing” something necessarily indicates intensity (indeed, my instinct was that it suggests softness) but it can, so the definition is fair, I guess.
49 FALL ABOUT – FALLA + Book OUT; I’d say that Manuel de Falla is not the first composer who springs to mind, but even if you’ve never heard of him, I think he can be deduced from the checkers and definition simply enough.
50 CLOSED CIRCUIT – CLOSED (=not working) + CIRCUIT (=lap). Obviously this is right, but I hesitated with the idea of “closed” equating to “not working”; still not totally convinced…
52 DUPLE – sliceD UP LEft.
53 KIDNEYS – (YEN)rev. in KIDS; nice cryptic def. in “they strain their bodies”.
54 ADOPTABLE – ADO + P + TABLE (=dummy); parsing will take longer than solving if you aren’t familiar with games such as contract bridge, where a player uses cards from a dummy hand which is laid out by his partner – playing from these can be referred to as playing from the table.
 
Down
2 MOSQUITO NET – [OS + QUIT] in MONET.
3 LINDA – (A.D. NIL) all rev.
5 TIC – TICker.
6 FLAGSTAFF – [LAGS Time] in FAFF. Faffing is a good word to describe the way I usually spend my weekends not getting much done (crossword-related tasks excepted), and apparently a peculiarly British expression.
7 NESTED – [TSE-tse in DEN]all rev. It took me a while to work out what the half a fly was…
11 TRADE SECRET – TRADE(=deal with) SECRET(=hidden); I have vague memories of something called Tips and Wrinkles, a newspaper column perhaps?
12 OVERT – 0 + VERT (green in heraldry).
16 BRIDESHEAD REVISITED – cryptic def. picturing a bride having a new veil applied; to be picky, I’d say that the book is very much Charles’ story, not Sebastian’s. However, I suppose the idea was to give a broader hint to people who might be less familiar with the characters, and might have more of a penny-drop from Sebastian.
21 ASPARAGUS – A Second PARA + GUSTO without TO; “spears” for asparagus is reasonably common. The fact that spring seems to be close at hand means I can at least start to think about the prospect of English asparagus again. Mmmm…asparagus.
23 TOP DRAWER – (WARDEPORT)*.
25 DE MILLE – (MEDiterranean)rev. + ILL + voyagE; the most famous producer of early Hollywood.
27 DEPICT – “the way to empty early Scotland once” would be to de-Pict it. To remember who the Picts were, I always refer to Sellar and Yeatman, viz. “The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).” I hope this makes it clear.
29 MANDATE – i.e. a date with a man; Bridget Jones is a fictional character, m’lud, famous for her comic diaries in which she describes her atempts to lose weight and find a marriageable man. I suspect that if you are the sort of solver who doesn’t like playful whimsy, this is the clue you’ll find most annoying.
31 BULLDOG CLIP – (British) BULLDOG + CLIP(=speed).
35 ON MESSAGE – (MENSO)* + SAGE; what all modern politicians are expected to be.
37 ANOMALOUS – A NORMAL Old U.S. without the Republican.
42 TOBACCO – (CABOT)rev. + COmpany. Virgina’s excellent tobacco means it’s become a metonym, so one might, say, ask for an ounce of Golden Virginia.
44 FESCUE – Small CU in FEE; fescue is a sort of grass – if you ever listen to The Archers, it’s the sort of word which enters your vocabulary by osmosis over the years.
45 DYFED – Fine in DYED (newly-green); nice deception in choosing green as the colour, as I was searching for an Irish county for some time.
48 EGRET – E.G. RET (one of those very crosswordy words, meaning to soak a crop).
51 ETA =”EATER”.

One comment on “Times Jumbo 967”

  1. 21:47 here, for a reasonably straightforward, enjoyable solve – though I was left with a few quibbles.

    Like you, I’m not convinced by CLOSED = “not working” in 50ac. And, as you say, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is definitely Charles’s story rather than Sebastian’s – I’d have thought that would have been obvious to the setter even if s/he’d only watched the TV series!

    I clearly haven’t travelled on the right sort of planes (or perhaps I’m just naturally unobservant), as I could have sworn that, on pretty well every plane I’ve ever boarded, turning left at the top of the stairs would have landed me in the cockpit.

    I was reasonably happy with parsing 14ac – taking “stop” = “to withhold” (or something similar) – but not with 24ac, which seems to have FRIED = “(to) be electrocuted” – that is, unless there’s some other way of using “be”. If not, then the wordplay seems to lead to SIEGFRY.

    And (pace Sellar and Yeatman), I’m not convinced that “de-Picting” Scotland wouldn’t have left a whole bunch of Scots there.

    Edited at 2012-03-13 11:28 pm (UTC)

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