Times Jumbo 972

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
A solving time of 34 minutes, occasionally feeling a bit dozy, particularly when I was left with a lot of white space in the centre; but the Crossword Club scoreboard tells me that Magoo took 17 minutes, and I normally regard any time which is less than twice his as probably quite respectable by normal standards.

There were some very nice clues, as well as a couple I didn’t completely understand while I was solving, so I’ll see if it all becomes clear as I blog; it also struck me as a puzzle which wouldn’t change the opinion of those who think the Times favours arts over sciences in the knowledge it expects of solvers…

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
1 REFUGEE – UnmaskinG in [R.E. + FEE].
5 DECIBEL – DECIDE + Large, with Book replacing one of the Daughters.
13 SCREENSAVER – SCREENS, AVER; “appearance of idle display” is a great definition.
14 REFORMATION – REF + [Mass in ORATION]; not an &lit., but nice self-referential definition, this time the Mass being the Catholic one.
15 GHANA =”GARNER”.
16 DAB HAND – cryptic def.; in British slang at least, “dabs” are fingerprints.
17 HIT WICKET – HIT(success) + WICKET(gate); the obligatory cricket reference.
18 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – a little unpicking required for the cryptic references: Midsummer Day (in the UK at least), despite the name, actually marks the point at which the hottest part of the year begins; so at that point, one who comes to, i.e. wakes up from a dream, would be doing so in the warm weather. All somewhat fanciful, of course, but this is a cryptic crossword, not a meteorolgical exam.
30 LEEDS – BLEEDS.
33 DOWNFORCE – i.e. a putative division of the PSNI which might be described as the (County) Down force. More questionably, is gravity really a downforce? I’m no physicist, but I’m sure someone will claim it’s a lot more complicated than that…
35 WHITE MEAT – ITEM (i.e. couple) in WHEAT.
38 DE-ICING – icE in DICING; if I’m being picky, using “ice” to clue DE-ICING is a little inelegant.
40 CLIP ON – [SLIP without the Small] in CONservative blue.
41 TWO BY TWO – it may be different elsewhere in the world, but in the UK, a “crocodile” can be a line of schoolchildren paired up to help prevent one of them getting lost as they walk.
44 THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES – now this I simply don’t get. Caliban has a speech in The Tempest which goes:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

I know this, in fact I saw it a couple of years ago; but I can’t for the life of me see how this works as a crossword clue…

50 MYCROFT – MY(not yours) CROFT(farm); Mycroft was Sherlock’s even cleverer older brother.
56 GWYNEDD – (Nell) GWYN + ED. + Died. I’d always thought it was Nell Gwynn, but it seems that as is well-attested with Shakespeare, the spelling of names back then was a slightly random affair. I couldn’t tell you anything about the old kingdom, but as it still exists as a modern county, it’s not obscure as a name.
 
Down
1 RESIGN – Son in REIGN; being picky again, I struggled to make “reign” work as “top job” if it’s a noun, or as “take top job” if it’s a verb.
2 FERMATA – FERMAT + A.
3 GRENADINE – Name in GRENADIER.
6 CIRCA – rev. in AustraliA CRICket.
7 BORODIN – BORODIN is just a letter short of being BORODINO.
19 STARTLE – I like these sort of clues, which turn out to be telling a literal truth, i.e. that LEsson and LEcture both START L,E.
20 EUCALYPTI – E.U. + (TYPICAL)*.
21 DOLEFUL – i.e an invented possible meaning of DOLEFUL that involves collecting a FULL DOLE.
24 THE DIVINE COMEDY – THE DIVINE (“absolutely great”, as in, say, footballer Roberto Baggio being known as The Divine Ponytail) + COMEDY(=humour). Purgatory, along with Heaven and Hell, forms one of the parts of Dante’s work.
26 LITTLE OWL – (LETIT)* in [LOW + Lake], owls being proverbially wise.
34 WHO’S WHO – I’m slightly confused again here. I know that Who’s Who is a book of notable people (thus “only important ones here”). And I know that Robert Burns wrote a poem about all men being equal in worth, whatever their social status, but I can’t see how:

A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that

translates into “who’s who”…am I just being dense?

42 BASELINES – A in (SENSIBLE)*; the court being a tennis court.
44 TENT PEG – shoP in (GET NET)rev.
45 UNMANLY – RUN + MAINLY.
47 BEATEN – the fly-half in rugby union plays in the 10 shirt, hence to play there, you need to BE A TEN; and if you were unsuccessful, you’d obviously be BEATEN.
49 HEINE – LOI, as it took me an age to think of a poet to fit H_I_E, and even longer afterwards to parse as [I, Note] in HEEd.
52 THETA – not just “A” TA, but “THE” TA.

10 comments on “Times Jumbo 972”

  1. I timed at 41:31 on this: not a bad time for me on Jumbos, where I seem to run out of steam. There’s a topical gag about the Grand National in there somewhere but I had a flutter on Synchronised today and don’t really feel like it.
    I was equally baffled by 44ac. I think it’s just a very old-fashioned sort of Times quotation clue. I don’t mind it in the context (long answer, lots of checking letters, clear wordplay, English degree, saw Ralph Fiennes do it last year) but I’m glad our esteemed friend in Dorset doesn’t do the Jumbo…
    34dn seems a clue in the same vein, with “a man’s a man” a supposed answer to the question “who’s who?”. Hmm.
    Overall I rather enjoyed this, and I can’t talk anyway, because I put HOT TICKET for 17ac. I had no idea HIT WICKET was a phrase, so just put in the only thing I could make fit the checkers, thinking “success at gate” sort of justified it. Hey ho.
  2. DNF, 47d getting the better of me. Not knowing what a fly-half is helped, of course. And I’m much relieved to see that I am in such good company with my HOT TICKET. I assumed, with 44ac, that ‘our [well, your] detached home’ was a reference to the isle of Great Britain; didn’t care much for the clue, but it seemed to work. Ditto for 34d.
    1. That makes two of us!
      I don’t really know what a fly-half is either, but I have the advantage of a lifetime listening to other people talking about these things so I knew that it was something to do with either the one with the funny-shaped ball or the other one. In this case that was enough.
  3. re 44ac, I also took it to mean that “the isle” = “our detached home” = GB.
    re34dn, to me it makes no sense at all.. I picture a septuagenarian setter, sitting in an armchair, puffing his pipe, reflecting on the good old days as an oxbridge classicist.. all wrong no doubt, but this crossword felt like that to me
    1. Indeed, I can see that “our detached home creaks all the time” is a way of rephrasing “The isle is full of noises”, as the home of the crossword, if not all its solvers, is this isle on which I’m sitting; so is that the definition then? If so, what role does the other bit (which is a rephrased bit of the quotation which doesn’t appear in the solution) perform in the clue? If it’s not the definition, then what is?

      Put it this way, by the same logic, we could have a clue reading “Should one go on living or not? There’s the subject for debate” and the solution would be “THAT IS THE QUESTION”. A quotation surely doesn’t become a cryptic clue just because you rework the original words (and the preceding clause) in modern language, does it? I think my problem is that we can all see how this vaguely-sort-of-works, but as I see it, the reason the Times is the best of the daily cryptics – certainly the most rigorous – is that clues don’t just vaguely-sort-of-work, they’re impeccably constructed and make perfect sense (even if one needs someone to point out the missing link occasionally, as I clearly do here!)

      1. And there, Tim, I think you have put in a nutshell the ximenean vs the rest debate. If you think “rigorous” is a compliment, and equates with “best,” then you are a Ximenean. If on the other hand you like hints, fancies and guesses, creative stuff generally, and don’t much care if some supposed rule or other is being flouted so long as the clue works, then you are presumably just an old fuddy-duddy like me.
        In my defence, we did all solve it, didn’t we?
        What I do complain about is how it’s always Shakespeare and never Newton.
        1. I suspect it may be context, Jerry (I like an Araucaria Bank Holiday special in the Guardian as much as anyone). Somehow it just seems to jar when I find anything in the Times which is that little bit more fast and loose…
          1. I’m with you on this. If you sit down to an Araucaria puzzle you know what to expect. Similarly, if you sit down to a Mephisto or an Azed you know what to expect. But clues that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow there jar when they appear in the Times. It occurs to me that it’s really rather silly to make this distinction, but I do.
            1. In its heyday, before Ximenes laid down his rules for cluemanship, the Times crossword was far more loose in its clueing than it is today, and I have to say that I find the lightness of some of the puzzles from the early years hugely enjoyable. I’m not saying that Times puzzles should revert to the standards of those days, but I’m entirely happy to have a sprinkling of non-Ximenean clues, and would be saddened if they vanished altogether. Rather than jar, they serve as a pleasant reminder of the past.
  4. 27:05 here for a most enjoyable puzzle.

    As another old fuddy-duddy, I’m with Jerry in having no objection to clues that aren’t strictly Ximenean.

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