25614 – maybe cancel that flight

Solving time : 24:54 on the club timer – I was so far from the setter’s wavelength that it was mocking me from the other side of the space-time continuum. After completing it, I think I was having a bad brain day (I’m trying to cut down on pain medication so I’ll blame withdrawl).

I thought we were heading for a pangram, so near the end I was looking for words with a Q or a Z in it, but there were none to be found. So much for trying to be smart.

I am unlikely to be able to comment much, so feel free to ask in comments and I’m sure the hive mind will oblige. I’m typing with one hand so sorry for any ghastly typos.

Away we go…

Across
1 SWALLOW(stomach),TAILED(followed)
9 ISLAM: hidden reversed
10 LIGHTEN UP: (THE,PLUG,IN)*
11 STAR-SHAPED: R in STASH, then APED – did not know this adjective use of ASTEROID but the wordplay is clear
12 FAST: triple definition – bound(held fast), rash and on a fast (fare-dodging) – my last in but a very fun clue. A few commenters point out this works better as two longish definitions
14 A FAR CRY: ARC in A,FRY
16 SHORTEN: SH(gagging order) then RTE(Radio Telefis Eireann) in ON
17 PIPLESS: (championshi)P in PILES,S
19 FIGURES: double definition, one being 1’s
20 NARK: double definition
21 PLAYFELLOW: P,L, then (FEW,LOYAL)*
24 EXTRA(wide),D(diameter),ITE(m)
25 ADIEU: DIE in AU
26 STATE OF THE ART: or STATE OFT HEART
 
Down
1 S(small),HIPS(joints),CARP(fish),ENTER(log)
2 ALLOA: ALLO(w) then A
3 LUMP,SUCKER(one had easily)
4 WALLABY: BALL reversed in WAY – two cricket references in the one puzzle
5 ALGIERS: (IS,LARGE)*
6 LUTE: sounds like LOOT
7 DONCASTER: or DON CASTER
8 SPIT(beach area),AND(with),SAWDUST(fine stuff). I think my favorite one I’ve been to is the Duck and Drake in Leeds.See comments – I’ve given this one short shrift – PIT in SANDS,A,W,DUST
13 TONGUE-LASH: (HUGE,TALONS)*
15 AS,PI,RATES: so used to seeing PI meaning religious I was taken aback by seeing the 3.141etc PI here
18 SA,LT,IRE
19 FLYLEAF: FLY then FLEA with the F moved to the bottom
22 LEI,L,A
23 JAVA: opening letters of Just As Vessel Approaches

51 comments on “25614 – maybe cancel that flight”

  1. 18:15 .. so I found this easier than yesterday’s and managed not to mess it up.

    Nice, different feel to this one. Last in were PIPLESS and FAST (canny def.).

    COD (with a groan) to LUTE.

  2. This was another puzzle that went very smoothly for the first 10 minutes or so, during which I completed about a third of it, but then I ground to a halt and struggled to complete even after resorting to aids a couple of times as the hour approached.

    The only unknowns were LUMPSUCKER (knew lumpfish, but that was no help) and ‘asteroid’ meaning STAR-SHAPED so I put my difficulties down to quite a lot of tricky wordplay and carefully concealed definitions. I had RECORDS for ages at 19ac which convinced me that, having failed to crack the anagram at 13dn it wasn’t one after all.

  3. I took this as a double definition: ‘maybe bound to spot’ (as in anchored) and ‘fare-dodging’ (as in Lent).
  4. Inventive and fun puzzle, with FAST, LUMPSUCKER (‘one had easily’ is superb) and LUTE the pick of a fine crop for me.
  5. … a good 30 minutes in the morning plus unknown time waiting at the dentist’s for a filling. But I’m with Vinyl: this ain’t for the faint hearted. And like a few others, FAST was the LOI. What a clue!

    To add to the misery, none of the four long bordering answers were obvious … to me at least. Then there were the part-of-speech switches: “asteroid” and “irrational” being notable cases.

    All in all, one of those puzzles where you feel more a sense of relief than a sense of accomplishment on completion. (Now for the anaesthetic to wear off.)

  6. I enjoyed the hour or so it took for this medium/difficult puzzle IMO 11ac was poor (Asteroid, star shaped???) but more than compensated for by several people’s, and my LOI i.e. 12ac, which as a clue I would rate up there with GG’s recent appearance in the dress circle.
    1. It’s given in the usual sources, but I agree it’s almost overwhelmed by the common usage.
    2. Chambers gives ‘resembling a star, star-shaped’ as one of the definitions of asteroid. LOI FAST.
  7. 24 minutes, with the time evenly distributed, so pretty tricky stuff. Among wordplays I missed: LUTE, SPIT AND SAWDUST (just relieved to get an answer that fitted) and the middle dimension of FAST (if it’s there), left until last because it was not a write in and probably needed the alphabet soup strainer.
    With only the S at the end to prompt, I so wanted 15d to be HARRUMPHS (it’s got the speeds at the end, at least).
    I thought the &littish definition in 1d was a bit of a strange job description for Mr Chips, but I can’t see anything else. Any offers?
    STATE OF THE ART pleased me most while solving, in a decent collection of quirky clues.
    1. I apologise if I have misunderstood, but I think that you are asking about the parsing of ‘ship’s carpenter’. I have it as ‘s’ for small, ‘hips’ for joints, ‘carp’ for fish, and ‘enter’ for log. This does mean that ‘small joints’ has to do double duty as a definition for a carpenter (ship’s or otherwise).
      1. Sorry z8 my brain has obviously closed down for the night (if not longer). I could not believe that you had not parsed this solution, and George had done so in the blog anyway. I can’t see how ‘One who uses small joints’ works very well as an &Lit definition, but think that must be what is intended.
        Please excuse my other comments.
        George Clements
  8. good solid enjoyable crossword.. some very neat surfaces
    Not the setter’s fault of course but “star-shaped” needs a complete overhaul in the light of modern scientific knowledge. Neither asteroids nor stars are star-shaped in the sense that the dictionaries have it. They merely appear so seen from Earth, because of atmospheric distortion..
    1. What sense do we think the dictionaries mean? Surely “shaped like a star” means just that – however we imagine a star to be shaped 🙂
      1. so.. you see star-shaped and spherical as synonyms, mr anonymous?

        Edited at 2013-10-24 01:23 pm (UTC)

        1. Starfish are star shaped and of the genus Asteroidea, to which the adjective also refers. Will that do?
        2. Well leaving aside the fact that stars are not necessarily spherical either, I agree that we all know what we normally mean by “star-shaped” and it isn’t “shaped like an actual star”. We think of the star on top of a Christmas tree. However, I think it’s reasonable to infer from the dictionary definition of “asteroid” namely “shaped like a star”, any shape assumed by any star. Though you are probably right to say that that is unhelpfully vague

          In summary, “star-shaped” is synonymous with “shaped like a star” – whatever shape that may be 🙂

  9. 26 mins, and I also struggled to get on the setter’s wavelength.

    Having said that, there were some that should have been bunged in from the definitions alone that I didn’t see as quickly as I should have done, such as EXTRADITE and PLAYFELLOW, but I let the wordplay confuse me. I got SWALLOW-TAILED quickly but the other three long ones took a while to unravel. My time would probably have been a lot slower if I hadn’t seen “one had easily” for SUCKER in 3dn as quickly as I did. The excellent FAST was my LOI.

  10. My first puzzle all-complete-without-aids for a couple of weeks!
    FOI Adieu, LOI Extradite.
    Needed the wordplay to get quite a few, viz flyleaf, extradite, lumpsucker, playfellow and star-shaped.
    Liked Doncaster and Saltire and the amusing definition of Fast as fare-dodging.
  11. FAST was LOI by a long way – about 15min thinking about possible choices – eventually went in from ‘bound’ – never did see the diet.
    For ‘asteroid’ think typography, not astronomy!
    RH side was recalcitrant – having seen SWISS at 1d, could only think ‘army-knife’ which doesn’t work for many reasons.
  12. Such a comfort to find that others thought this was a beast. I did get it done in 18.15 but for a while thought I would be a DNF.

    Thanks for blogging George – hope you feel better soon.

  13. 40m. This was tough, and as Sotira says it had a different feel. Good stuff.
    I didn’t understand what “spot” was doing in 12ac, so thanks to ulaca for enlightening me there. I’m still not sure what “harder” is doing in 15dn.
    STAR-SHAPED, LUMPSUCKER and FLYLEAF were all unknown to me and had to be constructed carefully from the wordplay. I find this the most satisfying sort of clue to solve.
    1. Interestingly, this puzzle also seems to be Neutrino-kryptonite. Currently not a single one of them on the leader board while Magoo, Jason and mistigris have the only sub-10 times. More puzzles like this, please!
      1. Very sorry to hear that. When I did my wrist they gave me oxycontin (what Rush Limbaugh was into) – never again. Six weeks and then physio I expect. Hope the pain subsides soon. The frustration takes longer.
  14. It took me an hour, with almost 10 minutes going through possibilities for 12. I entered FAST without any confidence; I could see ‘bound’ and ‘fare-dodging’, but not ‘spot’. If the explanation is a triple definition as given in the blog, I don’t see it. The thinking appears to be that if X=Y and Y=Z, then X must equal Z. But this is a conjuring trick that depends on two different meanings of Y. It’s a clue to a clue, because ‘fast’ does not mean ‘spot’, unless there’s something I’ve missed in the dictionary.
    1. As ulaca says above the first definition is “maybe bound to spot”. I missed this too.
  15. Tricky for sure but I managed to stay on wavelength and completed it in 18:38. A very good puzzle indeed.

    Fast LOI for me too (I agree with the double-def interpretation) and I think asteroid is a perfectly good and fair clue.

    George, I know the Duck and Drake and it is indeed a very good example of a S&S pub.

  16. I failed on FAST. I missed the fare-dodging cleverness completely and entered DART, then changed it to HALT. Very well put together by the setter; not by me. Overall this lack of success took about 25 minutes, and STAR-SHAPED surprised me too. Regards.
  17. “… one’s say”. I’m surprised that no pedants like me have picked up the greengrocer’s apostrophe. Surely it should be “… ones say”, although that doesn’t fit with the surface. Or am I missing something?
    1. My interpretation was that the wordplay led to FIGURE’S (= “one’s say), from which the apostrophe was then omitted according to the usual crossword convention.
    2. Weeks later in the Aussie puzzle it was “Register’s ones say (7)”
      The apostrophe in register’s and the lack of it in ones completely destroy the surface; otherwise I thought the surfaces today were uniformly excellent. A fine puzzle, and difficult: 47 min.
      Rob
  18. 15:58 for me. I never really found the setter’s wavelength, and was generally less happy than other solvers with this puzzle.

    I still haven’t worked out how FIGURES = “registers”. Surely if the answer to 26ac is supposed to be an adjective (meaning “modern”), then it should be hyphenated, so the unhyphenated enumeration is wrong. Is 1dn supposed to be an &lit? If so, I don’t think much of it. And I personally don’t pronounce LUTE in the same way as “loot”. There was some good stuff in there, but too many minor irritations.

    1. Apart from it being a rather nasty cliche(!), I think state of the art may be styled differently on reasonably principled grounds according to whether it occurs in the attributive position (before the noun group) or in the predicative position after the verb. Thus, an editor may choose ‘a state-of-the-art facility’ and ‘it was all very state of the art’. (Something similar is seen with ‘environment-friendly measures’ and ‘the plant is environmentally friendly’.)

      I agree with you about 1d and 19a.

      1. I’ve often wondered about that when writing things like ‘environmentally friendly’. Thank you, ulaca, for a very helpful grammar lesson which I have just clipped to Evernote for future reference.
  19. 12ac (“fast”) held me up, and I had to resort to running through all possible _A_T options before I finally twigged to “fare-dodging”. Oh the shame.

    11ac (“star-shaped”) was also a problem. I didn’t decode the wordplay, and was left guessing at “star” (based on the rocket and the asteroid). I spent a long time trying to convince myself that “star shaker/scarer/skater” were perfectly common expressions which I had mysteriously failed to encounter before. Got there in the end.

    I have to say I’m not impressed by “star-shaped” as an answer – it seems a somewhat arbitrary connection of two words, rather than a common phrase. Why not “leaf-coloured” or “walrus-like”?

    Also failed to parse “lute”. Finished the puzzle in a grumpy mood, but fortunately there are always patients to take it out on. (“Does it hurt when I do this? Yes, thought it might.”)

    Am I the only one who has tried to convince himself of the most improbable words or phrases in the course of crosswording? My personal nadir, based on an incorrect intersecting word, was “palmish”, which I eventually convinced myself of meaning “handy”.

    1. Quote> I have to say I’m not impressed by “star-shaped” as an answer – it seems a somewhat arbitrary connection of two words, rather than a common phrase. Why not “leaf-coloured” or “walrus-like”? Unquote.

      I think we’ll forgive it on the basis that it’s a dictionary definition of asteroid. Much as I like the idea of living in a world where there are words for “leaf-coloured” and “walrus-like” no such words exist, AFAIK.

      As regards making up words, stay tuned for next week’s Championship prelim puzzle.

  20. A very enjoyable puzzle, and much more challenging than it at first appeared.
    I’m sorry, I forgot to identify myself in responding to z8 about ‘ship’s carpenter’, and my comment was not very lucid: I meant to say that ‘small joints’ had to do double duty as part of ‘One using small joints’, serving as the definition for the solution.
    As ever, I could well have missed something.
    George Clements
  21. Ah the perils of homophones (can we coin the word “homophonobia” for this?).
    “LOOT” as a pronounciation for LUTE is justified in the dictionaries so I’m glad I’ve not been pronouncing it wrong all these years!

    Interesting about STAR-SHAPED: I think it’s one of those common compounds that doesn’t make the dictionary perhaps for the reason that if they included it they’d have to include lots of others.

    I think “registers” = “figures” is a bit tenuous perhaps, but Tony Sever is right about the apostrophe. All in all, though perhaps not entirely convoncing so sorry about that.

    “harder” is in the ASPIRATES clue on the principle that (in a linguistic sense) there is always some sort of breathing going on when pronouncing words.

  22. I had lots of 5 minute gos throughout the day at the wretched thing, so never got into my stride, with the result that by bed-time I was still three off: LUMPSUCKER (what ???), STAR SHAPED (really ???) and A FAR CRY (which was fair and easy once seen, so I should have got it). PIPLESS was dire, a real (pipless) lemon.

    Didn’t really like this one, but it could just have been me.

  23. Good point, ulaca – I hadn’t thought of that. However, I think hyphens in the enumeration would have been preferable.
  24. Mjcavn Great, thanks for sharing this blog.Really looking forward to read more. Really Great.

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