25154 – Shiver me timbers!

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
30 minutes for this one which came as something of a relief after the past couple of days when things started well but went downhill rapidly. I found it enjoyable if not particularly taxing and there were one or two really good clues amongst mainly solid stuff and a few that were too simple for words.

Across
1 VISITED – VI (Roman sex – 6) + SITE (position) + D (daughters)
5 COLOSSI – C (Conservative) + IS SOLO (reversed)
9 TOOK ISSUE – TOO (also) + K (a thousand) + ISSUE (children)
10 NIGHT – NIGH (near) + AugusT
11 Hidden
12 UGLY AS SIN – Large inside GUY* + ASS (animal) + IN (home)
13 REINSTATEMENT – REIN (control) + STATEMENT (communiqué)
17 HALE AND HEARTY – ALE (beer) inside HAND (sailor #1) + HEARTY (sailor #2). I really liked this one. Here’s a Noel Coward lyric:

Has anybody seen our ship?
The H.M.S. Suggestive
She sailed away across the bay
And we haven’t had a smell of her
Since New Year’s day

Heave ho, me hearties
We’re getting rather restive
We pooled our money, spent the lot
The world forgetting by the world forgot
Now, we haven’t got a penny for the you-know-what!
Has anybody seen our ship?

21 TRIUMVIRI – MUIR (Scottish moor reversed) inside TV (set) + IR (Irish) + 1. Another really good clue. It’s a sort of Roman coalition government. My last one in.
24 TUTOR – Time + University + TO + Run
25 HELEN – LE (French for ‘the’) inside HEN. The legendary Spartan. ‘Parisian’ is a bit cheeky but rather fun!
26 IMAGINARY – 1  then GINA inside MARY
27 RUTLAND – The naval battle is Jutland (1916). Its J for Jack is replaced by R for river to give the English county which has been reinstated since I last looked many years ago.
28 ALLISON – Nothing is off so ALL IS ON
Down
1 VOTARY – OT (holy works) inside VARY (change). I wasn’t familiar with this person bound by vows to a religious life but I expect it’s my memory that’s at fault.
2 SCOUNDREL – (LURES DON C)*
3 TRIPOLI – Republican inside TIP (hint) + OIL*. ‘Supply’ is the anagrind.
4 DISGUISED – U (uranium) inside GI (soldier) inside DISSED (treated with contempt)
5 CREEL – CatereR + EEL (fish)
6 LINEAGE – (EAGLE IN)*
7 Deliberately omitted
8 INTONATE – INTO (enthusiastic about) + New + ATE (goddess – of mischief, delusion and folly). Another unknown  which in this context means exactly the same as the more familiar ‘intone’.
14 AMERICANA – CRIMEA* + AN + Answer. I didn’t know the meaning that relates specifically to traditional music.
15 EGYPTIANS – (PET SAYING)*. Memphis is the ruined ancient city rather than the American one.
16 THATCHER – THAT (so) + CHER (dear, in French)
18 ARMENIA – ME (this writer) inside nARNIA (CS Lewis’s fictional realm)
19 RETRIAL – Josef K is the protagonist in Kafka’s The Trial
20 CRAYON – RAY (light) inside CON (study)
22 ISLET – 1 + the first letters of Secure Lifebelt Expecting To
23 ILIAD – And more in similar vein here: kIlL wIzArDs

36 comments on “25154 – Shiver me timbers!”

  1. Similar experience to Jack, finishing with Caesar, Pompey and Crassus and thus proving that a Classical education is about as useless as everyone says. Not helped by bunging in ‘balaclava’ at 14 and had ‘recto’ for a while at 11, where the hidden clue did for me as usual.

    I reckon 4dn, my COD, is DISCUSSED – as you parsed it Jack, but CS (colour or maybe company sergeant) for GI. Makes better sense of the literal.

    Edited at 2012-05-04 01:52 am (UTC)

    1. Interesting theory. I can’t make it work but perhaps I’m not thinking of it quite as you are. Would you care to parse the whole clue for me?
      1. U (uranium) inside CS (colour sergeant) inside DISSED (treated with contempt)
  2. Thanks. As I thought but then what’s the literal? In mine it’s ‘hidden’.
    1. You’re absolutely right! I had ‘treated’ as the literal, but that won’t work, as ‘contempt’ isn’t sufficient for DISSED.

      Right, I will now hunker down in a bunker with my hard hat on before the artillery arrives!

  3. So at least one person here found it quite difficult! Maybe just a bad morning, with much unaccustomed (but welcome) rain as a distraction. Finished the bottom half quite sharpish; then sat on my hands for an age. No excuses but: this was a very good puzzle and the cricketing clue (2dn) the best of them I felt.
  4. No real problems here, found it easy for a Friday, so a very good start to the weekend.

    Not too many unknowns for me today, and I suspect most of those I’ve come across before so more ‘unremembered’ rather than ‘unknown’.

    COD: TRIUMVIRI (once I’d worked it out, and guessed at the Scottish moor).

  5. 25 minutes. Not a lot to say except too much Roman stuff. Quite clever in places but never too taxing. Well done Jack.
  6. 16m, so straightforward here with no real hold-ups but an enjoyable solve. Welcome on a Friday.
    I had no idea what AMERICANA was so I waited for all the checkers before putting it in. After a bit of research I’m still not entirely clear on exactly what it is, but I think I like it.

    Edited at 2012-05-04 08:28 am (UTC)

    1. Collins has: All forms of traditional music indigenous to America, and their modern variants.
      1. Thanks. The Chambers definition is “a style of Americal popular music that combines elements of country, rock and folk music”, which seems quite different!

        Edited at 2012-05-04 09:07 am (UTC)

  7. You can’t have too much Roman sex in a crossword puzzle, in my opinion. AND Gina was inside Mary! Racy stuff.

    I don’t know what you lot were on about with DISGUISED, but tell me one thing: does CS really equal ‘soldier’? RE, RA, GI for sure, but CS?

    1. I took it on trust but now you come to mention it, no, I don’t think CS can equal ‘soldier’. IIRC, CSM (Company Sergeant Major) came up recently, and that may have been what U was thinking of.
  8. 16 minutes up to the triumviri which took another goodness knows how long all on its own.
  9. …is surely a tautology. “Sex” already is Roman. “Roman six/vi” would be “sex” and “VI” would be “Sex” on its own.
    Or not …
  10. Enjoyed this one, not too easy, not too hard..
    But mention of Rutland always makes me sad for the loss of Huntingdonshire, where I used to live. When the dreadful, cretinous Edward Heath swept away 900 years of British history at a stroke, both Rutland and Hunts were swept into neighbouring counties and disposed of. But whereas Hunts is just a suburb of Cambridgeshire now, Rutland never accepted its fate. It simply refused to disappear, and later legislation has triumphantly resurrected it. Unlike poor Hunts.
    And then on a lighter note, you have the wonderful Allisons
    1. Rutland, of course, has not been resurrected as a ‘county’: it’s merely a unitary authority. It’s full official title is Rutland County Council District Council (though it styles itself Rutland County Council). And, if you paid its Council Tax, you might lament its return: unquestionably one of the big losers when it comes to handouts from central government!
  11. I wasted time trying to fit the word “six” into 1a and ended up with a down clue beginning with X! At least I recognised what the sexy bit meant even if I had the wrong end of the stick. Also had problems with the 16d, 21a crossing. It would have helped if I’d known about Scottish moors. An enjoyable 35 minutes.
  12. I found this harder than average and crawled over the finish line five minutes ago – and eleven hours after printing the puzzle out at breakfast! I don’t remember a puzzle before with three words ending in “I”.

    For a long time the NW was pretty blank – couldn’t think what “Roman sex” could possibly mean – but the dominoes fell once Visited popped into my head from ??SITED. LOI the hidden Rondo.

    Off to North Wales now for a Bank Holiday weekend’s camping… Enjoy the long weekend everybody.

    1. The “roman sex” device has appeared before. The last time it took me forever to see. Next time you’ll be the wiser, as I was this time!
  13. 44.15 so on the challenging side for me. I had hoped to be inspired to cleverness by being in Cambridge. Perhaps I was and it would have taken even longer at home! I enjoyed some of the neat cluing here; my COD to EGYPTIANS for a well constructed anagram from unlikely letters. Thanks for the blog as though I had guessed 1a and 21a I was at a loss to explain them. My progress since finding this blog is measured by correctly working out and understanding 5a which I know would have stumped me a year ago so thanks to one and all and have a good long weekend for those in blighty.
  14. Done in bits and pieces so no time but would’ve been over the half-hour: rather tricky. Rondo last in. Can’t say as I like the two-elled Allison. I actually wondered if Robespierre liked thatchers and Googled it after completing so COD to 16.
  15. I had an easy time with this, though I had a few mistakes in the end.

    I originally had ‘hale and hearty’, without knowing why. I later guessed at ‘stitcher’ for 16d (without thinking about how ‘stit’ could mean ‘so’), which made me change 17a to ‘tall and hearty’. I figured this was some kind of beer British sailors drink. 🙂

    In a similarly dull-witted fashion, early on I put entered ‘d(ray)en’ instead of ‘crayon’, assuming he must be a children’s author I didn’t know!

    I didn’t know either Rutland or Jutland so the blog again came to my aid.

    Didn’t know Josef K, the goddess Ate, and never saw ‘sex’ used for ‘six’, but that didn’t seem to matter.

    Don’t quite understand how ‘supply’ indicates an anagram.

    The surface readings of 1a and 6d are why I love doing the Times puzzles. The most satisfying clue to work out for me was ‘triumviri’.

        1. Get used to it – it’s a staple!
          I also contemplated DRAYEN for a while.
          Nice to hear from a new contributor. Do keep it up!
  16. About 20 minutes with no real hold ups, and a good puzzle, I thought. I liked the Parisian woman clue very much, and fitting TRIUMVIRI in the grid is impressive, although there the surface is somewhat contrived. LOI was THATCHER in what was pretty much a clockwise solve. As an American I confess to being utterly ignorant of Americana music, so if seems obscure to everyone else, well, I’m joining in. To me it means US folk and historic artifacts. ( I expect that vinyl, our musical expert, would scold me for this witlessness. If I’m lucky, maybe he won’t check back in til tomorrow.) Thanks setter and Jack as well. Regards to all.
    1. “US Folk and american artefacts” seems like a pretty good working definition for the Grateful Dead to me.
  17. 8:46 here for a nice straightforward, enjoyable puzzle (though AMERICANA as traditional music was new to me).
  18. Good crossword I thought. Not so difficult as some recently but still good.

    I was unhappy with ‘by slips’ as an anagram indicator in 2dn and also with so = that in 16dn — it seems to be accepted amongst solvers of hard crosswords that a whole lot of little words, mostly prepositions, are interchangeable. In my opinion they must be very equivalent to be interchangeable, and so = that is not good enough. Or is it? Someone will now produce a sentence in which either works.

    1. How about: Polling in the London Mayoral election was that/so close it was impossible to be sure of the result before it was announced?

      And at 2dn it’s actually C = caught by (fielder) with ‘slips’ as the anagram indicator.

      Edited at 2012-05-04 11:23 pm (UTC)

  19. How about ‘is it THAT cher=dear’ or SO expensive’? They seem interchangable to me.

    Thanks to jackkt for seeing that ‘caught’ and ‘caught by’ both equal ‘C’. Knowing the single-letter indicators well is a boon.

  20. I thought I was going to fail to finish with the SW corner mostly empty, but then HELEN sprang to mind and the rest fell in leaving me with 1d and 11ac which finally clicked. No idea of the time as I was watching the snooker whilst also spending quite some time falling asleep. To clarify I started this one on Saturday and have still to read Saturday’s paper before attempting the Saturday puzzles

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