Times 28207 – The kind of politician we could use…

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 31 minutes
Music: Shostakovich, Symphony 15, Ormandy/PhilSO

I did not find this such an easy Monday – there are quite a few things here that various solvers might not know.   Since a cryptic usually gives you two ways to solve each clue, you might finish anyway, but it’s not going to be easy.   In particular, the absent bovine, the hipster’s grape, and the magic horse may give some of you a bit of trouble.

Across
1 Toe-curling jewellery item found in church: value unknown (12)
CRINGEWORTHY – C(RING)E + WORTH + Y.
9 Student’s notes on boy king (5)
TUTEE –  TUT + E + E – not the key of tonight’s symphony, unfortunately. 
10 Flattering article penned by a mostly uninspiring politician (9)
ADULATORY –  A DUL[l] (A) TORY.
11 Remains of cake grew mouldy (8)
WRECKAGE – Anagram of CAKE GREW.
12 It’s a girl’s sort of paper (6)
TISSUE – ‘TIS SUE.
13 A bill plugging public vehicles: you can count on them (8)
ABACUSES – A + B(A/C)USES, my FOI.
15 Sailors reportedly spot bishops, say, on board (6)
SEAMEN – Sounds like SEE MEN, that is to say chessmen.
17 Person of high birth stealing Italian poet’s heart (6)
ARISTO – ARI[o]STO, a poet we read in translation in the Spenser seminar.  You may not be so lucky.
18 Traitor in Paris who attracts support (8)
QUISLING – QUI + SLING.
20 Medieval horse, black, with three feet? (6)
BAYARD – B + A YARD.   This legendary horse does appear in Orlando Furioso, so we have a bit of a theme going.
21 Disney film buff cheers one in South Africa (8)
FANTASIA – FAN + TA + S(I)A, 
24 Lover shortly meeting a sailor from the East (9)
INAMORATA –  IN A MO + A TAR backwards (from the East).
25 Like wizened old men in the fourth row (5)
LINED – LINE D, a device that has been used frequently of late.
26 He rates sport wrongly — it’s way above us! (12)
STRATOSPHERE – Anagram of HE RATES SPORT.
Down
1 Grape originally acclaimed by jazz fan with degree (7)
CATAWBA – CAT + A[cclaimed] W/B.A, which would definitely be tricky if you didn’t know the grape.
2 Expecting win, they may fail badly (2,3,6,3)
IN THE FAMILY WAY – Anagram of WIN, THEY MAY FAIL – nice surface.
3 European king wearing anorak (5)
GREEK – G(R)EEK.   Does an actual anorak ever appear in these crosswords?
4 Argumentative type runs into manipulator (8)
WRANGLER –  W(R)ANGLER.
5 Not quite the way to put to flight! (4)
ROUT – ROUT[e].
6 Bulk of ambassador’s son protecting a provider of 1 down (9)
HEAVINESS – HE(A + VINE)’S S.
7 Complaint jointly suffered by scrubbers, perhaps? (10,4)
HOUSEMAIDS KNEE – Cryptic definition, and not very cryptic, either.
8 Stated reason French writer briefly creates heraldic beast (6)
WYVERN – Sounds like WHY + VERN[e], easily guessed by habitues of the Quickie blogs.
14 Say more than anyone else— to the greatest degree (9)
UTTERMOST – UTTER MOST, a chestnut.
16 Bovine creature reportedly off, ultimately to Zimbabwean city (8)
BULAWAYO – Sound like BULL + AWAY + [t]O.
17 Even though I put in wager, a learner comes first (6)
ALBEIT – A L + BE(I)T.
19 Eminent man’s cry of surprise about foreign currency (7)
GRANDEE – G(RAND)EE.
22 Bloomer made by union leader initially entering dump (5)
TULIP – T(U[nion] L[eader])IP.
23 Festivity a habitual convict upset (4)
GALA – A LAG upside down, an easy clue I didn’t look at until I was nearly finished.

76 comments on “Times 28207 – The kind of politician we could use…”

  1. Didn’t know the grape or the medieval nag, but parsed my way to both, considering BAYARD better than BWYARD (as both worked). Thanks to our blogger for the parsing of 25a LINED, using a device I must have missed if it’s been used frequently of late, and for the nho Italian poet, though ARISTO had to be the answer.
    17:04
  2. I was slowed down by the abstruse words vinyl singles out for attention, and I sneaked through knowing the same one or two — just, for example, I knew Aristo from other puzzles not from graduate study. Somehow the wordplay part of the cluing for the tough ones seemed less clear than for the others.

    Edited at 2022-02-08 02:05 am (UTC)

  3. Well, the SNITCH currently ranks this as ‘very easy’. I didn’t know BAYARD the horse, only “le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche”. I also didn’t know the grape, or so I thought, and had MA as the degree at first, but BA looked better once I had the beginning letters; but I confess that I checked in ODE before submitting. Biffed 2d, parsed post-submission. We seem to be getting a lot of INAMORATAs lately.
      1. Always brings Flanders and Swann straight to mind. Altogether now… Mud, mud, glorious mud,,,
        1. A reference to inamorata, for those poor benighted souls that cannot sing along with the whole of Flanders & Swann’s output
  4. Indeed, two things I didn’t know. Guessed the grape was CATAWBA not CATAWMA. Got the horse wrong, considering also BLYARD and BWYARD, and guessing the first of those. Seems it’s a lower-case horse in general as well as a particular horse’s name, according to Chambers. Ariosto remembered from past puzzles, and the rest was fairly Mondayish.
    COD cringeworthy ahead of in the family way – great surface and anagram.

    Edited at 2022-02-07 03:28 am (UTC)

  5. 21 minutes. Would have been less than 20 except for my LOI ARISTO which had to go in from the def as the ‘Italian poet’ was NHO. I thought the ‘Zimbabwean’ at 16d was very generous.

    Not too hard, but a few uncommon words like CATAWBA and BAYARD and trying to work out the parsing of our high born friend kept things interesting.

  6. Very unproblematic for a puzzle that contained the unknown BULAWAYO (my LOI) and BAYARD (didn’t even suspect that it is the proper name of a single legendary horse… though how one kind of horse would be particularly “medieval” was, admittedly, beyond my powers to explain). CATAWBA is also a county in North Carolina, y’all! I biffed WASHWOMANS KNEE so had to clean up that mess. CRINGEWORTHY is a term quite au courant.

    Edited at 2022-02-07 08:13 pm (UTC)

  7. …so on the very easy side for me.
    Didn’t know either CATAWBA or BAYARD but both were gettable. ARISTO was straightforward but I had heard of Ariosto.
    As for LINED, one of the first clues that I liked sufficiently to make a note of in my little black book was from #26019 on 11Feb15:
    25ac: Where to expect fourth queue for “Spellbound” (9)
    ENTRANCED
  8. 31’, not knowing the grape but enjoying the symmetry between Ariosto (of Orlando Furioso fame) and inamorata (his predecessor Boiardo wrote Orlando Innamorato).

    Housemaid’s knee famous for being the only affliction one of the chaps in 3 Men in a Boat didn’t diagnose himself with. Of course, in the internet age, he would have had that as well…

  9. If one travels from Sleaford to Cranwell, and goes straight on past the RAF College, one arrives at ‘Byard’s Leap’. Legend states that a knighted horseman from Temple Bruer was attacked by a hag. (Lincolnshire has hags aplenty) and the black witch viciously dug her long, and filthy fingernails into the horse’s buttocks! Bayard leaped a Herculean distance, which is marked in the grass at the roadside, by four horseshoes! What happened after that has never been related. When we were seven our parents drove us out to see ‘Byard’s Leap’ after we first moved to Sleaford from Huntington. It was quite terrifying! There is another Lincs. Village Hagworthingham which has plenty of ‘crone and broomstick’ tales designed to frighten the living daylights of bumptious small boys! I gather Bayard’s Leap is now a designated picnic area, which is nice.

    Nothing to frighten the horses here though, just 28 minutes for Meldrew.

    FOI 26ac STRATOSPHERE

    LOI 9ac TUTEE

    COD 20ac BAYARD

    WOD 1ac CRINGEWORTY

    21ac Disney’s FANTASIA I last saw at art college film club in the autumn of ‘68. The week before we viewed Polanski’s ‘Cul-De-sac’ and the week after it was ‘Repulsion’!! It was what was known then as a rounded educashion!

    I need a stiff drink.

    After a mid-afternoon G & T I had a look at Byard’s Leap on Wikipedia — the horse was indeed blind. His prodigious Leap was some 60 feet. The brave Knight Templar managed to hang on and returned to drive his sword through the witch’s black heart. She staggered to a nearby pond where she drowned, witch I suppose is a happy ending. Goodknight!

    Edited at 2022-02-07 06:59 am (UTC)

  10. Similar experience to isla3. I luckily guessed CATAWBA rather than CATAWMA but went for BIYARD instead of BAYARD. I hadn’t considered BAYARD and with hindsight it sounds more likely but I still think those two clues are too ambiguous for such unusual words.
  11. Had lots of fun with this – after a rather sluggish start, I found the bottom half easier to tackle than the top – but kept up a reasonable pace as I worked my way through. However:
    – Another CATAWMA guess
    – Chose to go for (LOI) BOYARD as I convinced myself that it was a word I’d come across in the past. In retrospect, I realised it didn’t parse properly – should have reconsidered.
  12. 29 minutes, but I never got as far a writing in the unknown CATAWBA. Although I had correctly deciphered every element of the wordplay (with an option on BA or MA) the resulting word looked so unlikely I assumed it had to be wrong and used aids to look for an alternative.

    NHO ARIOSTO or BAYARD either but that didn’t prevent me solving those clues.

  13. Gave up after about five minutes trying to find the unknown Zimbabwean city, not helped by having thought that “off” was “bad” and trying to fill in _U_ABADO. I threw in the towel quite quickly because I already knew I only had about a 50:50 chance of my CATAWBA being right.
  14. Of that colossal Wreck, …

    Ok, so I had not heard of Catawba or Bayard, and I needed to have heard of Wyvern and Ariosto, but I found this a breeze. Less than 10 mins while the espresso machine warmed up.
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  15. 27 mins so pretty easy. All has really been said but I would add that, despite five years of studying world winemaking, I have never come across CATAWBA, nor the light white wine it supposedly makes. Got it from the cryptic though, and looked it up afterwards. Phew.

    I got the two long ones early which helped, and a number of others went straight in. LOI ROUT.

    Thanks v and setter.

  16. 21 minutes with LOI the unheard of CATAWBA or CATAWMA. As an Oxford man, I didn’t bother choosing between the two, expecting the B to turn to an M four years later for a modest outlay. I’m not aware of having drunk any wine from there. BAYARD was also constructed, but at least had a unique solution. COD to CRINGEWORTHY, WOD to ALBEIT. I knew BULAWAYO both from cricket and the vaguely remembered politics of the early sixties. I did know WYVERN, but I remember it for being the name of a Vauxhall car. Pleasant puzzle spoilt a little for me by the unknowns. Thank you V and setter.

    Edited at 2022-02-07 08:25 am (UTC)

      1. Hmm, maybe in some Unis up there and probably in some other countries too. It would have helped me though.
  18. My first one in was TUTEE
    I finished the grid with GRANDEE
    Lots of vowels did I spy
    At word ends. (And if Y
    Is one, add another three)
  19. Very quick this, though CATAWBA nho, and it is not often I have to say that about a grape variety. Apparently a lot of it is sparkling wine, which I dislike.
    1. I love sparkling wines – can I please have yours? – Edwina

      Edited at 2022-02-07 03:31 pm (UTC)

  20. We drink ample wine in this house but I have never heard of CATAWBA, POI with crossed fingers. ARISTO LOI, the poet also unknown. Knew BULAWAYO from the history/geography at school, with hindsight it was very colonial-based. Liked WYVERN.

    11′ 56″, thanks vinyl and setter.

  21. DNF
    Biyard 🙁
    Catawma/catawba [guessed this one right].
    Two substandard clues, so not impressed with this puzzle, I’m afraid.
    Thanks, v.

    Edited at 2022-02-07 09:17 am (UTC)

  22. 11:33 Held up by the unusual words, but guessed both CATAWBA and BAYARD correctly and ARISTO without remembering the poet. I liked the deceptive surface of IN THE FAMILY WAY best.
  23. Now that you come to mention it, I’ve seen Ariosto here before, but that didn’t help while I was looking unsuccessfully for a poet that ARISTO was the heart of. Entered with appendages crossed.
    Likewise, of course, CATAWBA, which still looks unlikely.
    However, 13.27, which means the rest was gentle. Even BAYARD rang enough of a bell to be a quick entry, though I thought it a lower case generic horse.
    Thanks to Vinyl and others for eruditely filling in the details.
  24. WOD Cringeworthy. COD In the Family Way – such a well disguised anagram – the condition is quaint these days. Up the duff sounds standard. My time 14:43.

  25. CATAWBA sounded slightly more likely that ‘catawma’, but I’m still relieved to come here and find out I got it right. Didn’t parse ARISTO, and didn’t help myself there by originally putting in ‘uppermost’ at 14d until I saw what the ‘say’ was doing in the clue. Agree that BULAWAYO was generously clued.

    FOI Tissue
    LOI Catawba
    COD Wreckage

  26. I was off to a quick start with CRINGEWORTHY, TUTEE and IN THE FAMILY WAY. Answers kept coming but one or two slowed me down. Knew WYVERN, but not the poet, although ARISTOS didn’t give me pause for long. BAYARD took a bit more thought, and with the unknown grape being plausibly either CATAWBA or CATAWMA, I made no bones about checking it. I knew BULAWAYO, but it was LOI, simply because it was the last one I looked at. 12:40. Thanks ambiguous setter and Vinyl.
  27. The water was just about the right temperature for me today. Chuffed to have somehow known all the tricky ones, but brought down to earth by initially having a CROAT instead of a GREEK (an anorak is, after all, a coat.)

    I once knew someone who had managed a pickling plant in BULAWAYO. Sadly, I’ve found this to be less than successful as a conversational opener at parties.
    Thanks to vinyl and the setter

    1. I was on for a fast time, but was held up for several minutes by having CROAT. The obvious anagram for WRECKAGE was therefore impossible, and that would have opened up the NW corner.

      Okay, it’s a very mundane clue, read that way, but it is correct.

  28. 28:07. Guessed right for CATAWBA and BAYARD, but with the crossers they looked the best options. Before getting the W in 1dn I was toying with MBA, distracted by Katoomba, then further distracted by thinking that’s where the splendid treetop walkway is. But it’s called the Illawarra walkway, so almost certainly not there at all. I liked the very tricky anagram at 11ac WRECKAGE
  29. 7:21. On the wavelength today, in spite of all the funny words. I must have come across CATAWBA before because it somehow felt right although I had no conscious memory of it. I considered BIYARD but BAYARD seemed more likely. Still, it seems to me that a little less ambiguity for such obscure words would have been preferable.
  30. 28 minutes, so I suppose it was easy enough for me, but, like several others, I put in CATAWBA without any confidence. The setter should have been kinder with such a rare word.
  31. 17 minutes. I found this pretty easy. The only unknown was the grape. I guessed the graduate was more likely to be BA, but either degree sounded plausible. I solved nine of the across clues on first reading, which gave a good framework for solving the downs, most of the answers to which came very quickly.
    I liked some of the anagrams – WRECKAGE and IN THE FAMILY WAY, especially.
  32. The grapes are very common in the wine-producing region of NY State, although it all seems rather unlikely in the midst of a bitterly cold winter. They’re often used for kosher wines and grape juices. I had a remote recollection of BAYARD cropping up in Chaucer but it mostly reminded me of Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti and meatballs (now discontinued) if you want something toe-curling. So this was straightforward. 11.27

    Edited at 2022-02-07 11:09 am (UTC)

  33. What a mess. I had BLYARD, thinking that bl might be an alternative for black (BWYARD would have been my second guess). I also biffed INAMORATO, which meant I had BULAWOLO for my Zimbabwean city.

    And I was feeling so good about having correctly guessed CATAWBA over CATAWMA.

    ARISTO was my LOI, biffed having never heard of the poet.

  34. Afriad I don’t like massively uneven puzzles, where 90% is very clear and straightforward, but you get words like CATAWBA and BAYARD, which belong in a different (and somewhat harder) puzzle; I’m happy with recondite vocabulary if you are clearly signposted to a single outcome. However, as various others discovered, if you don’t already know these words to begin with, there are quite convincing alternative wrong answers which are equally well supported by the wordplay. Not for me, Clive.
    1. Someone got me the legend “Not for me, Clive” on a t-shirt a few years ago. I think it must have been after a world cup when Andy Townsend and Clive Tyldesley’s double act on commentary had caused just too much hilarity.
  35. FOI – CRINGEWORTHY
    LOI – ARISTO

    NHO of the poet and the grape, so it was fingers crossed at the end.

    Thank you to vinyl1 and the setter.

  36. as Tim’s comments above, the Monday puzzles seem to have this pattern of being very easy, with 2 or 3 unknowns chucked in. I was wondering about BOYARD
  38. I tried this on paper for a change to see if that might improve my time. Finished in just over 15 mins but I had Bufalato for Bulawayo and I omitted to choose a graduate so 1 down was CATAW-A.

    COD: WRECKAGE.

  39. I was heading for a quick time, as most of this was pretty straightforward, until I was held up in the ways most people have already noted. Didn’t help that I started spelling the Zimbabwean city ‘Bulaweyo’.
    FOI ‘Cringeworthy’
    LOI ‘Ariosto’ – had heard of the poet but couldn’t bring to mind, so biffed from the definition.
    COD ‘In the family way’, I suppose, for the surface reading.
    NHO ‘Bayard’, but the parsing seemed fairly obvious.

    NHO ‘Catawba’, either, and was relieved that my feeling that the b sounded more likely than the m was right. This, despite the fact that I’m a Wine Merchant! My excuse is that, having looked it up, Catawba is not a ‘Vitis Vinifera’ variety, but an indigenous US vine variety (Vitis Labrusca, possibly?) that was popular in the C19. Even though the grafting of US vine rootstocks, impervious to the Phylloxera mite, was the saviour of many European vineyards in the late C19, US vine varieties have a reputation for making ‘foxy’ wine, although I can’t recall trying any personally. Learn a new thing every day…

    Many thanks, Setter, and Vinyl.

    Have a good week, everyone.

    Mark

  40. 11.06 mostly straightforward but NHO catawba so a bit of a punt getting that right. Apparently the grape has a foxy smell, not something likely to make me rush to Majestic to seek it out.

    Visited Bulawayo just before the millenium. Notable for wide boulevards designed to accommodate the rather large ox carts of colonial times apparently. Matopos hills near the city well worth a visit, an ancient place of worship for the original inhabitants and my wife and I both felt a frisson walking round- and it wasn’t down to catawba or any other grape variety.

  41. Having worked years ago in overseas development, BULAWAYO was a write-in. Lots of easier stuff didn’t need too much thinking about:

    IN THE FAMILY WAY (FOI)
    WYVERN (with one checker)
    CRINGEWORTHY (with just I and G checkers)
    FANTASIA
    STRATOSPHERE
    ALBEIT
    TULIP
    LINED
    GRANDEE
    etc

    A couple of others I didn’t think too much about the parsing:

    ARISTO (with all the checkers, though in retrospect ARIOSTO has appeared here before)
    INAMORATA (again with all checkers)

    Only tricksy ones were BAYARD and CATAWBA, both built from cryptic and fingers crossed.

  42. All correct although some things were guesses since the wordplay was a bit ambiguous (the grape, the horse etc) So similar experience to a lot of others.
  43. Until ARISTO/ARIOSTO held me up for a good 2 mins. Eventually I just biffed ARISTO. I’ve fallen foul of that poet before in reverse, where you had to had the O to the ARISTO to get his name. Surely next time I’ll remember…

    Pure luck on CATWABA rather than CATAWMA, and BAYARD seemed most likely, especially as BAY is a common colour for a horse, and “A” YARD seemed more likely than “I” YARD for 3 feet.

    11:40

    Edited at 2022-02-07 04:01 pm (UTC)

  44. 9.10. A zippy time for me with very little thought required to get through this one albeit the spectre of having to choose between catawba and catawma hung grimly over the second half of the solve. I plumped for catawba and was prepared to be very cross if it turned out to be incorrect. Bayard rang a faint bell once entered and I knew of Ariosto (and also Tasso) from studying the Faerie Queen many years ago.
  45. Luckily chose the right word for one down, because I’d never heard if it. The rest came easily enough, though wyvern and bayard needed a bit of work.
  47. Got delayed for a while because the first answer I put in was CROAT for 3 Down.
  48. Can I nominate the grape CATAWBA as the worst clue of the millenium?

    Those who knew it: 2
    – michelinpoitier
    – oliviarhinebeck
    Those who biffed it, knowing it as a geographical place: 1
    – guy-du-sable
    Those who didn’t mention it: 3
    – horryd
    – astro_nowt
    – eniametrauq

    Those who didn’t know it and had a random guess or left it empty or looked it up: 39 (i.e. everyone else) including 3 confessed oenephiles, a winemaker and a wine trader:
    corymbia
    paul_in_london
    kevingregg
    isla3
    bletchleyreject
    martinp1
    ulaca
    pootle73
    harmonic_row
    denisetremble
    jackkt
    gothick_matt
    myrtilus000
    rosedeprovence
    boltonwanderer
    mrkgrnao
    sawbill
    jerrywh
    robrolfe
    johninterred
    z8b8d8k
    pedwardine
    chrislutton
    john_dun
    kapietro
    keriothe 0.5
    wilransome
    dyste
    mauefw
    topicaltim
    wordpsmith
    astonvilla1
    mch1
    brenk1
    84801442
    paulmcl
    hopkinb
    special_bitter
    leskoffer

      2. …another QAnon with altitude. Do you enjoy sex and travel?

        Edited at 2022-02-07 03:59 pm (UTC)

    3. A technical detail, but…
      I put CATAWBA in from the wordplay plus my recognition of it as the proper name of a county and thus not unlikely for a wine as well.
  49. I had heard of it, perhaps from when I visited photographer Steve Horn in Poughkeepsie in the late seventies. I don’t think I imbibed. I didn’t mention it ‘cos I was too busy banging-on and on about Bayard and his bloody leap. That clue was far more obscure – as I was the only one who (finger) nailed it! Can I be pencil monitor tomorrow, please?

    Edited at 2022-02-07 03:50 pm (UTC)

  50. Didn’t know the grape, and MA was as likely a degree as the correct BA. Didn’t know the Italian poet either, so a DNF to start the week. Remainder untimed, but fast: nothing there to cause much concern other than the two unknowns.

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