25662 – I have a tale to tell, maybe

Solving time : 24:50 – and I’m only the sceond on the timer so far, so I think this is on the harder side. I certainly found it that way, piecing together a number of answers from one side or the other, though now I think I’ve got it all together.

Blatant plug – hey, are you looking for a last-minute gift that does real good and has crazy pictures and crossword clues. I bought two of my friends the 3D Crossword Calendar, and now I’m considered the most generous guy on the planet.

Away we go…

Across
1 HUT,CH
4 BABY GRAND: GRAND being the sum of money
9 GRAVADLAX: GRAV(y) (sauce a bit short),AD,LAX – umm, no thanks
10 MINCE: C(hancellor) in MINE
11 ROTTER: double def, second being one that is in the process of rotting
12 UNHORSED: (SO,HER,DUN)*
14 SMALL, HOURS: not sure I’ve seen this phrase without “wee” in front of it
16 CLIP: triple definition
19 SOBS: B in SOS
20 PENNY,ROYAL
22 FOR,SOOTH(e)
23 INCITE: sounds like IN SIGHT
26 UNITE: two homophones in a row! sounds like YOU KNIGHT
27 LJUBLJANA: capital of Slovenia which I think has appeared before – very tricky wordplay – CLUBLAND without the outer letters, insert two J’s and an A at the end
28 GREENBACK: since EVIAN reversed would be NAIVE
29 NOOSE: reverse of E,SOON
 
Down
1 HIGH-RISES: a strict union could ask for high rises (or raises?)
2 TRACT: take OR away from TRACTOR
3 HEAVENLY: H,EVENLY with A inside
4 B,ALL
5 BOXING RING: since RING is hidden in fighteR IN Gear
6 GAMMON: AMMO in G(u)N
7 AUNT SALLY: or AUNT’S ALLY
8 DREAD: R in DEAD
13 POTENTILLA: OP reversed, then TEN(mid-morning),TILL(up to),A(fternoon)
15 AUBERGINE: BERG,IN,E covered with AU
17 PILFERAGE: (FRAGILE)* in PE
18 FRANKL(y),IN: I presume this is a reference to “The Franklin’s Tale” in the “Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer
21 MOVE ON: take the I away from MOVIE ON
22 F,LUNG
24 IDAHO: O,HAD,I reversed – I think I’ve seen this wordplay before recently
25 PUCK: double definition from the hockey disc and the character in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

35 comments on “25662 – I have a tale to tell, maybe”

  1. Absolutely no pattern today. Answers all over the place and then a bunch of strange crossing letters. Really stuck on the POTENTILLA / LJUBLJANA pair. Well, who wouldn’t be? Only got the latter because there can only be one capital city with two Js. Surely? Then had to retro engineer the {c}LUBLAN{d} bit. What would I know about St James’s?

    Apparently Beecham used to go into a club in St James’s every morning to relieve himself on the way to the Phil. After some years of this, the doorman had the gall to ask if he was a member. Sir Thomas: “Good heavens! Is this a club as well?”
    Adds a new meaning to “Gents’ Club”?

    Have actually eaten GRAVADLAX. Didn’t enjoy it one bit. It even tasted as if it had been buried for a month or so.

    COD to HEAVENLY for a refreshing use of “regularly”. WOD (worst of the day) to ROTTER because it was my last in.

    Edited at 2013-12-19 08:33 am (UTC)

  2. HUTCH was easy, but then it got hard.

    Gave up halfway. I’m not sure if a lot of the clues were terribly clever or simply terrible but I’m not really in a position to judge – I’ll leave that to those who solved it.

  3. Same story more or less for 3 consecutive days now. This time it was the SE that really did for me (but including POTENTILLA and FORSOOTH, so most of the lower half in fact). Got all the wordplay and constructions with the exception of 28ac where I had assumed that Evian, apart from being a mineral water, was some sort of creature also known as a greenback. After my efforts this week I’m glad I’m not blogging tomorrow.

    Edited at 2013-12-19 03:17 am (UTC)

    1. I did get PENNYROYAL, FORSOOTH and GREEN (which I parsed) so I suppose that’s a little consolation!
  4. I really struggled with that one. I take my hat off to anyone who thought of the St James’s to LUBLAN leap before the capital with two Js gave them the answer. I must admit that I don’t think I would ever have parsed it.

    All in all I did just about finish, but would have to give that one as a victory to the setter, since a lot of his clues went over my head.

    Never heard of PENNYROYAL or POTENTILLA, GREENBACK was obvious from the definition, but I did not see what Evian had to do with it.

    If Times crosswords were all like this one I don’t think I would bother with them.

  5. Forgot to boast that I went as a guest to a function at St James’s Club once many years ago, so didn’t have too much of a problem reverse-engineering this one.
    1. I am definitely what used to be referred to as “unclubbable” !

      Edited at 2013-12-19 04:13 am (UTC)

      1. So am I now, but this was 40+ years ago so I plead the follies of youth.

        This reminds me of Groucho Marx’s famous line: I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.

  6. Well at least the contiguous homophones rhyme, but this was a beast. LJUBLJANA I had to leave until last, as totally defeated. and, ahem, used an aid to check it. Pretty tricky stuff, if this is only Thursday what will tomorrow bring, etc.

    Thanks to all, Chris.

  7. 20 minutes – horses for courses, I think, as I rather enjoyed this one. Any setter who takes on LJUBLJANA deserves some sort of credit, and while I don’t think I’d have got this the wordplay way round, it was a decent enough crack at a near-impossible word.
    POTENTILLA I DID get entirely from wordplay, though it rang a faint tinkle. A model of how to clue something half your solvers won’t have heard of. Ditto GRAVADLAX.
    On the other hand starting a clue “So, her dun” is telegraphing an anagram rather too strongly. Shall we call it a brave try at an &lit?
    I made GREENBACK my CoD – the sort of clue that makes you feel a bit clever once you spot it. UNITE was pretty cool, too.
    Today I have learned that the short version of until can have two L’s and no apostrophe. I thought it was a second appearance of “work” during solving, implied in the clue for POTENTILLA.

    Edited at 2013-12-19 09:15 am (UTC)


    1. wonder what nasties Sotira has doled out for our Turkey tomorrow?!

      Found this one tricky, and was left with several gaps…

  8. I might have had two small edges here, being a member of a St James’s club (Naval and Military, aka The In and Out) and having twice visited Ljubljana (fine city with castle on hill). The small edges were probably countered by initially writing in EARLY HOURS.

    The worry this week is that I will not be able to solve my own clue in sotira’s crossword tomorrow.

  9. 19 mins, and while I’d like to say that I was on the setter’s wavelength some of the answers went in unparsed; LJUBLJANA, AUNT SALLY and BOXING RING to be precise.

    I had heard of GRAVADLAX, POTENTILLA and PENNYROYAL, and I saw GREENBACK straight away, so they definitely helped my solving time.

    Once I was happy with the spelling of Ljubljana IDAHO was my LOI.

  10. Several minutes on the last, move on, and a few very awkward corners GK and vocabulary-wise, in an otherwise clear run. 30.35. I think rises as union demands tout court is too Timesian.
  11. I was doing really well (which for me is mostly completed in 45 minutes) when Ljubljana and Franklin knocked me out. Thanks to glheard for the explanations.
  12. 55 min. Got really stuck in SE, trying to make something of NEEDLE at 23(with 24 being DIANA {an a I’d}rev.) & LOUISIANA as the name of some district of some capital city. Eventually had to resort to Bradford to see if there was a capital which would fit at 27, so put it in without parsing – two Lord Justices and an area could be seen, but couldn’t make anything of UBAN.
  13. I found this a lot easier than the previous two puzzles. After 12 minutes I had the top half filled apart from 3 and 11. The bottom half was a lot trickier and it was 35 minutes before I finished off with 11 and 3. POTENTILLA was very familiar, PENNYROYAL was not, but the wordplay was straightforward.
    I thought “In summer one dreamt” was a fairly weak indication of a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
  14. Started this in my doctor’s waiting room this morning, waiting for a flu jab, and completed back at my desk, say 40 minutes in all.

    Another thoroughly enjoyable solve – hats off to the setter for LJUBLJANA, a HEAVENLY clue, FORSOOTH, as was GREENBACK, my COD. I rather like clues where one spend ages worrying at them, and then when the penny drops one thinks, Watson like, how absurdly simple!

    Odd mixture of the easy, e.g. HUTCH, SOBS, and the inordinately tricky, e.g. BOXING RING. A bit annoyed by BALL, so simple I couldn’t be sure it was right and kept it back until (or till) I had both checkers.

    We are being literary all of a sudden – after the glut yesterday, Shakespeare and Chaucer today. Who’s next?

    Edited at 2013-12-19 12:30 pm (UTC)

  15. 24:14 – tough in places although I may have been a little distracted by some scrumptious chocolate orange squidgy cake which refused to be ignored in favour of crossword solving.
  16. DNF .. Analogies with England batsmen now becoming painfully appropriate. After being softened up by a couple of Mitchell Johnson overs on the previous 2 days, I just didn’t have the heart for this last night.

    Once I realised that I was looking for a 10-letter plant to fit PO…….A and that I again had to try to figure out how to spell LJUBLJANA, I went to bed.

    LJUBJANA appeared in 2010 – http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/631388.html – and I did get it right that time but quite by accident, attempting to spell something else. I seem to remember having a similar experience with Izvestiya.

    COD .. GREENBACK (maybe because I saw it quickly)

  17. Didn’t know LJUBLJANA or GRAVADLAX, and struggled with a few of the others. Having a terrible week.

    No, actually I’m having a terrific week, just not in Crosswordland.

  18. 22m. Third puzzle in a row of (for me) similar difficulty (quite hard) and similar enjoyment level (high).
    I didn’t know PENNY ROYAL but I did remember POTENTILLA from puzzles past.
  19. All done except FRANKLIN and IDAHO 20 minutes, before I read the blog. I love gravadlax, am making some tomorrow for Christmas Day starters.
  20. This went quickly – all done in just under an hour (which is KILLER time here), except for needing aids at the end to confirm the POTENTILLA and the LJUBLJANA spellings, and to confirm that the unknown PENNYROYAL was the correct guess. With that said, there were quite a few I was certain of, but couldn’t parse.

    I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s Turkey, and to several ‘less than a litre’s on Saturday.

  21. 29 minutes. Hadnt heard of pennyroyal or baby grand, but now that I have, they’re both good clues. Liked Idaho as well. Would never have parsed Ljubljana so thanks to glheard. Has there been a move to make the answers more obscure in the last few months- definitely seems so to me. More challenging, but more enjoyable.
  22. About 40 minutes, ending with ROTTER, because I didn’t know if it was supposed to be ROTTEN. I remembered the Balkan capital but needed a few stabs at how to spell it, and had no chance to parse it at all (Clubland? really?), but it was clearly correct. The plant was also new to me. I’ve also only spelled the smelly fish as ‘GRAVLAX”, without the odd-looking ‘ad’ in the middle. No wonder this took me so long. I agree the COD goes to GREENBACK. Regards to all.
  23. “LJUBLJANA”?? For goodness’ sake. If we continue to indulge these foreigners in their bizarre spelling habits, it will only encourage them.

    I liked “GREENBACK” – I seem to recall Evian/naive coming up before. Not so impressed with “UNHORSED” – I agree with others that the anagram was weak and too obviously signposted.

    It looks like this week’s award for “most ingenious or entertaining accident” will be claimed by a gentleman in the building trade. Having fixed his hand to a stud-wall partition with a nailgun, he threw said nailgun down and managed to nail his foot to the floor. This, in turn, caused him to fall over backwards as he pulled his benailed hand out of the plasterboard, whereupon he concussed himself on the lip of a wheelbarrow. Full marks to him, I say – we haven’t seen enough of that kind of thing since Ealing Studios folded. Of course, there’s still Friday night to look forward to, but to be honest it seldom throws up anything interesting, so to speak.

  24. 23:10 for me, with well over 10 minutes spent on ROTTER. I’d have got it straight away if the word “this” had been omitted (or probably even if it had been “so”), but I can’t see what it’s doing there – apart from leading me to think that ROTTER simply wouldn’t do (though in the end I gave up in desperation as I couldn’t think of an alternative). I’m probably just being dim, but could someone explain it?

    Apart from that, I whizzed through all but 23ac (INCITE), 29ac (NOOSE), 18dn (FRANKLIN) and 24dn (IDAHO), and they fell quickly enough once I got INCITE (which I must have seen before). LJUBLJANA went straight in from the 1st, 3rd and last letters, though I had to pause briefly to check the wordplay.

    1. I reply in trepidation knowing your solving skills far outweigh my own. The second definition does seem to hold up – something which won’t always be this fresh is in the process of becoming less fresh so is becoming more rotten so is therefore a rotter.

      Edited at 2013-12-19 11:55 pm (UTC)

      1. Hello there, Chris. It was good to meet you at the Cruciverbalists’ Centenary Convention the other day.

        I must apologise for taking so long to reply to your comment. I’ve been mulling it over and I think you’re almost certainly right. My problem was that the word “this” is commonly used nowadays to indicate the answer, and from that point of view I think the clue would have been better without it. ROTTER was my first thought (for exactly the reasons you give), but it occurred to me that “wretch” could indicate RAT, and I was worried that I might be missing some more-or-less obvious word that would fit RAT‑E‑. Hence my dithering as I looked for alternatives.

        1. Tony,
          A real pleasure to meet you too – I’ve been dining out on it since!
          Thank you for your further insight into your thinking – really helpful as a learning exercise for me.
          I see that the clue works with and without the word ‘this’.
          The superfluous word makes it possible for ‘that won’t always be this’ to be part of the clue separate from ‘fresh’ as opposed to the more straightforward ’that won’t always be fresh’.
          I’m not experienced enough to know when a clue is bad because it deceives the solver or good because it does exactly that!
  25. I found this really difficult, and spent ages on ‘Ljubljana’ and ‘Idaho’, but eventually prevailed without aids. I knew ‘potentilla’ having had a hedge of the plant at a previous home, but ‘gravadlax’ was new to.me, and I only knew ‘pennyroyal’ vaguely.
    A tough work out, but an enjoyable one.
    I haven’t had time for the Times crossword for the past two days, so I have them stored up. From the comments of other contributors, it seems that I may also face challenges with them.

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