Times 27,581: Persuasion Equation

Author   verlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A Friday puzzle with a pleasantly old-fashioned feel about it, including the most literary clue we’ve had in ages at 8dn and a number of places where it was necessary to get on the setter’s quirky wavelength to achieve success – lots of “double” definitions where one half is somewhat more whimsical than the other, for instance. I’m ashamed to say I failed at the final hurdle: having been doing this on the sly at work, and finding the time ticking by somewhat too long, especially as I am a non-cyclist and unacquainted it seems with derailleurs, I submitted with TOP DOG at 19ac… for which I can probably blame a Concise puzzle earlier in the week. I really have gone to the dogs etc etc.

Thanks to the woofless setter for a fun puzzle!

ACROSS
1 At war camp, little child that grows up (10)
STALAGMITE – a STALAG MITE would be a little child at war camp. Stalagmites famously grow up, in the same way that stalactites grow down.

6 Small dog’s large slice of cake (4)
SLAB – S LAB [small | dog]

9 British tolerated corrupt game (10)
BATTLEDORE – (B TOLERATED*). FOI

10 One spouted, always inhibiting wife (4)
EWER – E’ER [always] “inhibiting” W. A ewer is a vessel with a spout.

12 Morning rush hour perhaps not a matter for debate (5,3,6)
EARLY DAY MOTION – parliamentary double def

14 Fine writing, if short; some makes the long list (6)
LITANY – LIT. ANY [fine writing, if short | some]

15 Poor country deserted by last fellow (8)
INDIGENT – INDI{a} GENT

17 Still sound irritated by attempt (8)
SNAPSHOT – SNAP [sound irritated] by SHOT. A “still” as in a pic.

19 Maybe wolf this popular, a pet (3,3)
HOT DOG – HOT [popular] + DOG [a pet], to make something you might wolf

22 Open to fraud, ruin some textual analysis (14)
DECONSTRUCTION – DESTRUCTION [ruin], “open to” CON

24 One visiting woman’s eldest son perhaps (4)
HEIR – I “visiting” HER

25 Throw off course, breaking rule that’s applied to cycles (10)
DERAILLEUR – DERAIL + (RULE*)

26 A speculative kick? (4)
PUNT – double def, ish

27 Drink fuddled old boy, joining wrong army (6,4)
BLOODY MARY – (OLD BOY*) joining (ARMY*)

DOWN
1 Tears boldly at first into emergency! (4)
SOBS – B{oldly} “into” S.O.S.

2 Pull a vehicle back in races against time (7)
ATTRACT – A + reversed CAR in TT T [races (against) time]

3 Analysed lung, damaged many years ago (4,4,4)
AULD LANG SYNE – (ANALYSED LUNG*)

4 Managed to get into party, but accepted second-best (4,2)
MADE DO – double def

5 Frustrating crossing a river? In no hurry (8)
TARRYING – TRYING “crossing” A R

7 Criminal foe will, when going wild (3-4)
LOW-LIFE – (FOE WILL*)

8 A single trite quotation, under plain cover, all Jane’s Sir Walter would read? (10)
BARONETAGE – ONE TAG, “under cover of” BARE. In Jane Austen’s (best) novel Persuasion, “Sir Walter [Elliot] obsessively reads books relating only to the baronetage”. Impressively literary!

11 As far as one can see, account is on the level (12)
HORIZONTALLY – HORIZON TALLY [as far as one can see | account]

13 Employment system brought an end to trading (6,4)
CLOSED SHOP – double def

16 Gentle persuasion something that’s comfortable for prisoner in hearing? (4,4)
SOFT SELL – homophone of SOFT CELL. Which my fingers kept on itching to type anyway. Altogether now – “Sometimes I feel I’ve got to, dun dun, run away…”

18 Warning to bring gold forward: there will be lots here (7)
AUCTION – take CAUTION and move AU [gold] upwards, to find a place where lots go under the hammer.

20 Sundew and red rose rat’s eaten away (7)
DROSERA – hidden in {re}D ROSE RA{t}, which needs to be “eaten away” from the outside.

21 Massage a digit, mostly in irregular rhythm (6)
RUBATO – RUB A TO{e}

23 Cook welcomes a brawl (4)
FRAY – FRY “welcomes” A

74 comments on “Times 27,581: Persuasion Equation”

  1. 40 minutes with only the definition at 8dn not fully understood although I correctly guessed who Jane was and that Sir Walter would turn out to be one of her characters. DK the plant.
  2. Logged off at 31ish, went off to the gym with 14ac and 17ac remaining, and brought them to their knees in a couple of minutes after a long time staring at them. Lots of DNKs: DROSERA, RUBATO (knew the word, not the meaning), DERAILLEUR, EARLY DAY MOTION. I knew who Sir Walter was, but wasted time trying to recall what in fact wasn’t the answer, viz. Burke’s Peerage (also recalled the even less relevant Almanach de Gotha).

    Edited at 2020-02-07 03:17 am (UTC)

    1. I haven’t read Persuasion lately but I suspect that Burke’s Peerage is in fact what sir Walter was reading.. since its full title in those days was “Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom”
      Doesn’t help much with the crossword though!
      1. Except that Burke’s Peerage was first published in 1826, and ‘Persuasion’ was published (posthumously) in 1818.
        1. Oh, OK .. I wonder what he would have been reading, then? I must look at the book, I suppose!
  3. I found this hard. It took a long time to get AULD LANG SYNE since I was looking for English words like AGES or DAYS. And it took far too long to see DECONSTRUCTION even with most of the checkers. LITANY was my LOI, after I’d considered and rejected LATENT, LUTINE, LATINO, LATINA, LATINX (probably too woke for The Times) before I found it on an alphabet trawl. I had no idea who Jane’s Sir Walter was but nothing else fitted.
  4. In the annals of “I knew it would come in handy one day”, I give you DERAILLEUR. Older rock fans may remember a Cream album called “Disraeli Gears” which I always took to be a corruption of DERAILLEUR. I wanted a bike with those but what I got was one with a 3-speed Sturmey-Archer gear hub.

    Only got 8d with all the checkers in place. By that stage it had to be BARONETAGE.

    Thank you, Verlaine, for DECONSTRUCTION.

    COD to HOT DOG.

    1. You are correct apparently the band were discussing bikes and I think it was Jack Bruce who said you’ve gotta get one of those with Disraeli gears…
      1. Ginger Baker said: “You know how the title came about – Disraeli Gears – yeah? We had this Austin Westminster, and Mick Turner was one of the roadies who’d been with me a long time, and he was driving along and Eric [Clapton] was talking about getting a racing bicycle. Mick, driving, went ‘Oh yeah – Disraeli gears!’ meaning derailleur gears…We all just fell over…We said that’s got to be the album title.”
    2. I wanted Derailleur gears too and got a 5 speed Sturmey Archer for passing my 11 plus. 1st gear was often particularly painful when it slipped back to 2nd, as it often did(eyes watering still!)
      2. It was the 11 Plus that got me my 3-speed Sturmey-Archer, too. 5-speed?! Luxury!
    3. My parents wanted to fob me off with the Sturmey Archer on my 11th birthday but I managed to construct a plausible argument for needing at least 5 gears so got the derailleur.
  5. An enjoyable test and another sub-30m solve. Either there has been a run of easy puzzles or I am at last getting better at this, which would be largely thanks to the wit and wisdom of this wonderful community. One MER only in this nice puzzle: Chambers has 24 definitions of tag and none of them is a trite quotation. Didn’t stop me getting the clue: I ‘did’ Persuasion for A level English so was appropriately armed for this hi-lit clue.

    Thanks setter and V – and for the ear worm!

    1. I can’t get to ‘trite’ directly but Oxford online offers for TAG:

      A frequently repeated quotation or stock phrase.

      ‘his writing is full of tags from the Bible and Shakespeare’

      ‘I have never doubted what he was referring to whenever he barked out his slithery tag phrase.’

      Collins adds re stock phrase / answer:

      An expression, or way of doing something is one that is very commonly used, especially because people cannot be bothered to think of something new.

        1. To be fair to your MER, though, it’s very unusual for there not to be a direct reference in one of the usual sources to a straight definition in a clue.
    2. 13th ed. of Chambers does include “a trite(esp Latin) quotation” among its definitions.
      1. They’re saying that Latin quotations are trite now? O tempora! O mores!

        Edited at 2020-02-07 07:04 pm (UTC)

  6. 18:02. A couple bunged in unparsed – DECONSTRUCTION and BARONETAGE (where I didn’t know the literary reference either). LOI LITANY. “Tites come down but mites grow up” helped with 1A. I liked HOT DOG and BLOODY MARY, although I’m not sure the combination constitutes a healthy meal.
  7. 34 minutes. A bit of your actual Derrida there, his take on Wittgenstein I assume. I had a couple of biffs, BATTLEDORE and BARONETAGE, with the game unknown and Persuasion only dimly remembered. I’d never heard of DROSERA either, but remembered to look for the hidden. I was trying to fit the lump into 13d until the LITANY revealed a CLOSED SHOP. EARLY DAY MOTION was a cracker of a clue, but COD has to go to DERAILLEUR, for the memory of the bike my parents bought me for passing the eleven plus. Happy days! A meaty puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
  8. Like yesterday I’m not too bothered with my DNF as I didn’t know BATTLEDORE so went with BOTTLEDARE which I thought might be another name for “spin the bottle”, even if it does sound somewhat implausible.

    Also like yesterday I managed a second one wrong, having put in SOFT CELL. I wonder if I was subconsciously influenced by there having been a review of Marc Almond’s new album in the Times today.

  9. Again Pootle and I seem to be on a wavelength, albeit the wrong one. I also considered the unknown BATTLEDORE and went for BOTTLEDARE on the grounds that it might be some unknown name for “spin the bottle”.

    Shame, as it took me 52 minutes to struggle across the finish line, having had to work out BARONETAGE from the wordplay, among other struggles. But when you don’t know the answer and there’s more than one plausible arrangement of letters, what can you do?

    Edited at 2020-02-07 09:42 am (UTC)

  10. I am full of cold today, so pleased to finish at all, in 35′. Some excellent clues: EARLY DAY MOTION, DERAILLEUR, CLOSED SHOP.

    DNK RUBATO, DROSERA, and worked out BARONETAGE without knowing the book.

    Thanks Verlaine and setter.

  11. Donald Rumsfeld would enjoy this one: several known unknowns, such as the reading habits of Sir Walter, the musical notation, and the plant, but wordplay was sufficiently clear to provide obvious candidates in all cases. Not sure I would have known how to spell DERAILLEUR without checking letters, I suspect I would have added a superfluous ‘I’ otherwise. Fortunately no unknown unknowns, which is all we hope for.

    Held up at the end by the tricky 14ac, not helped by my brain pronouncing it in a pirate voice. “Some makes the long list, Jim lad”.

  13. Never heard of the plant, though that is not unusual for me. Cream were my favourite band. At the time it was all about Clapton, but listening now you appreciate that in reality the genius of the group was Jack Bruce.

    I can think of an alternative cryptic for early day motion, but I don’t imagine it would pass an editor.

  14. To continue from Johninterred – I was taught that stalagtites hold tight to the ceiling while stalagmites push up with all their might from the floor. We had EARLY DAY MOTION in one of Anax’s Christmas specials a while back with a reference to the scatalogical mmeaning (which surprised me at the time). DERAILLEUR cropped up in a puzzle once before and defeated me then so I remembered it. 20.29
    1. It’s stalaCtites so I’ve always tried to remember via C for ceiling and G for ground. The trouble with that method is that you have to know which is spelled with a C and which with a G.
      1. Yes of course you’re right Penfold. I’ve been having that sort of morning – it’s not the first silly mistake I’ve made today….
    2. I was taught “Up go the mites, down come the tights” .. which is at least memorable
  15. I found this one tough, but managed a successful conclusion eventually. SOBS was my FOI, but I couldn’t build on it and moved to the NE which yielded SLAB, EWER and LOW LIFE. The rest of that corner took much longer. I realised that Jane Austen was being referenced, but haven’t read the book, so the wordplay got me to the answer. It took me ages to scrap AGES for AULD LANG SYNE. DECONSTRUCTION took forever too. My LOI was SNAPSHOT. Didn’t know the plant and trusted that the hidden was it. An excellent puzzle. 51:11. Thanks setter and V.

    Edited at 2020-02-07 12:29 pm (UTC)

  16. So 20dn wasn’t DUODENA then!Nothing to do with that sort of eating then! DROSERA is new to me and an unlikely extraction, as this sort of clue used to be called.

    So DNF in 38 minutes

    FOI 1dn SOBS

    LOI 20dn DUODENA!

    COD 25ac DERAILLEUR GEARS

    WOD 12ac EARLY DAY MOTION

  17. 12m 50s with BARONETAGE the last to fall. I have to disagree with our illustrious blogger, though, and rank Persuasion fifth (above only Mansfield Park, which I couldn’t finish), far below the delights of Pride & Prejudice and the wonderful Northanger Abbey.
    1. “Mansfield Park is melting in the dark, someone left the cake out in the rain…”
  18. Woah. I was WAY out of my solving comfort zone here and thought I might have to give up with barely more than half the grid filled. I plodded on and eventually joined Verlaine in the top dog house after nigh on 30 minutes.

    Things that had me floundering:
    – I had no idea what the Sir Walter clue was about
    – I didn’t know the game
    – I didn’t know exactly in what way an early day motion isn’t a matter for debate
    – I wouldn’t know a sundew from a sundial
    – I couldn’t bring the right sort of “still” to mind for the longest time (17 was my LOI)
    – I had no idea if rubato was a word, never mind if it referred to heart, musical, or some other category of rhythm.

    Edited at 2020-02-07 01:20 pm (UTC)

      1. ・Never thought to do it, but it works in Japanese. At least it does now; let’s see if it shows up.
        ・Not that this will do you any good, of course.

        Edited at 2020-02-07 02:04 pm (UTC)

      2. Nothing clever at all Jack, just a “-” and a space, followed by my text, then RETURN and repeat. I’d be found out if one of my bullet points went onto a second line as the alignment wouldn’t work like a proper bullet point.

        I suppose I could be more creative by diving into the murky world of Character Map and using something like these: ► ● ◊

        1. You’ve got me wondering if some html would work. And it seems to for an ordered list like this…

          1. first bullet
          2. second bullet

          Edited at 2020-02-07 03:05 pm (UTC)

      3. – They ain’t bullet points
        – Methink it’s very easy
        – And a bullet point does not have a hull point at the end
        – sorry
          1. That’s what Hull got none of when it tried to enter the Eurovision Song Contest.
  19. 25 min, with 17ac LOI – so really a DNF, as I had to resort to aid as I couldn’t think of anything but SCANSION to fit checkers for several minutes,
    1. I too initially thought of SCANSION thinking it was clued by the prior clue – a weird type of Ninja-Turtling.
  20. Incredible! One up on the great Verlaine for once! Enjoyed this. Like most people I am sure, I was slowed down in the top-right and the baronetage-slab junction. I was sure it had to be plug! Plug of cake, anyone? Why not? Us Frenchies were familiar with the cycle gear.
  21. Happy with that given that I only had an 18-minute slot to have a go at this. Quite a lot of biffing as a result, albeit balanced by some that I had to work out without knowing the word and/or def (BATTLEDORE, RUBATO, BARONETAGE). Good Friday stuff.
  22. Not sure of the time, as my I pad has decided that I am not allowed to use it for the Times site any more (anyone else having problems?) so completed it on the Times app, and having transferred it, I am now waiting for a reasonable time to elapse before hitting the complete button.
    Main difficulties were DERAILLEUR, where I got the LEUR bit but the rest was a mystery and BARONETAGE where my lack of having read any of Jane Austen was very obvious. However both had no other obvious solutions so were bunged in.
    1. I had a similar sounding problem. I couldn’t enter anything and puzzles wouldn’t download. As suggested by Times helpline, I cleared the cache of cookies (settings, Safari, Clear history and website data) which did the trick. But it will mean you lose any saved sites.
    2. I had a similar sounding problem. I couldn’t enter anything and puzzles wouldn’t download. As suggested by Times helpline, I cleared the cache of cookies (settings, Safari, Clear history and website data) which did the trick. But it will mean you lose any saved sites.
  23. 15:13. Quite tricky.
    I have read all of Jane Austen’s books, some of them more than once, and I studied her at university. I still didn’t have much of a clue about 8dn. What a memory.
  24. I usually only get to do the quick cryptic, as my wife polishes off this one superfast. But today for some reason we have two copies of the paper so I get to try it all myself. And – for only I think the second time ever – a finish! In, ahem, over an hour, and with a lot of biffing if not outright guesses.

    At which point one says They All Count. Much enjoyed – and learnt from – Verlaine’s blog; many thanks.

    Cedric

    1. Well done Cedric. This was not an easy puzzle. Rated at 113 on the SNITCH and it took me 51:11.
    2. Having completed today’s you’d be able to complete plenty. As John said, this was towards the harder end of the scale.
  25. Damn! 25.05 but went for top dog rather than hot dog at 19 across. Never got the cluing of baronetage but couldn’t see any other answer; one lives and learns- hopefully. Favourites were stalagmite and rubato from today’s offering.
  26. This seemed easy at first, as I got the two long down answers right away, but in the end I struggled with (in this order) EARLY DAY MOTION (“really?!”), SNAPSHOT, CLOSED SHOP (hear, hear!), BARONETAGE (the only Austen I’ve read is Emma—the most humorous, I’m told—though I have them all in one volume and was psyched to read them at one point, just haven’t… yet. Needed all the checkers for that) and DERAILLEUR (wasn’t expecting a French word!).

    I’m glad I didn’t think of BOTTLEDARE, as it seems quite plausible.

    I’d like to get DECONSTRUCTION on one of my blogging Sundays, so I could make a Derrida joke in the headline (not that I’ve thought of one yet).

    Edited at 2020-02-07 04:43 pm (UTC)

    1. Actually I went to an event where we did readthroughs of all the novels (adapted as plays) and Emma was by far the most fun. So maybe that’s my favourite JA really.

      Edited at 2020-02-07 07:07 pm (UTC)

        1. Even my (Folio) copy of Persuasion says it is confused and repetitive. The introduction is a real off-putter. Perhaps I will stick to familiar territory of Emma and P&P?
          1. Not too many laughs in Persuasion but I understand JA was sad when she wrote it. When we did Emma for Alevel I was assigned the ghastly Mrs. Elton – I loved her!
            1. I see it claims that most Austen scholars would say either Persuasion or Emma is the best. VINDICATED!
            2. Thank you, V, that is an interesting article. I feel some Austen coming on ..
    2. I am neither French nor smart enough to be an intellectual so my views don’t carry water, but it has occurred to me that constructing and solving crossword clues are the only useful applications of deconstructionism. (Other than that thing 7 year old children do to annoy their parents).

      Edited at 2020-02-07 09:05 pm (UTC)

  27. I’m happy that one of my pastimes (cycling) helped me with another (crossword puzzles) – despite being slow paced at both.
  28. Good grief. This took a real long time. Probably an hour, as I never heard of the game, no idea what was going on with the BARONETAGE clue, and didn’t know what a DERAILEUR or RUBATO might be. LITANY and DECONSTRUCTION took a while to appear also, and the real winner is DROSERA which I finally – LOI – saw as the hidden and certainly didn’t know. Heavens. Too much to learn all in one puzzle. Regards.
  30. I found this puzzle quite straightforward, though the last in,14 and 17 across needed some careful thought. In my view TOP DOG is the best answer to 19 across, as Hot Dogs in my experience cannot be “wolfed down” but require a good number of bites.

    From Jeepyjay

    1. Hmm, according to my dictionary app “wolf down” means to “devour ravenously”, not necessarily requiring only a single bite I guess. However I now wonder why a hot dog is any more “wolfable” than any other edible item?
      1. Probably because you don’t want anyone to see you eating one for fear that they’ll come and tell you what’s in it.
  31. We have a large proportion of the Drosera species here in SW Australia. The soils here are so poor that these plants supplement their needs by trapping and digesting insects. Many here on our property. It’s a pity we can’t attach a photo to this comment.
    8d BARONETAGE was ninja turtled. Janes publishes lists of things , for example “ All the World’s Aircraft 1945” and “ All the World’s Ships” ……so there was surely a volume “ All the World’s Peers” or similar. So this was mombled in.
    35mins.

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