25787: An exercise that dampened expectations of a quick finish

I thought I was on for a fast time and another Thursday easy, but while the perimeter clues went in smoothly enough, the internal ones, particularly the four longest ones, proved highly resistant. Add two or three of those really cheeky, short word definitions, blink and you miss them, and my time dragged out over 23 minutes. Perhaps it was just me having a slow evening!. Not much obscurity to complain about, though the boxer may be more familiar to those of us for whom yesterday’s 1976 puzzle was an exercise in nostalgia (you know, those who, if asked to name two pandas, would say Chi-Chi and An-An without a moment’s thought), At the other end of the scale is a form of exercise that looks too damp for me and is much too recent a coinage for my copy of Chambers. I’m sure its lovely.
Here are the results:

Across
1     PASO DOBLE The classic Latin dance in which the partners attempt to reproduce the passion and excitement of the
      bullring, perhaps most memorably demonstrated by John Sargeant stomping around the dance-floor dragging his
      long-suffering partner behind him. The “dance” firmly established JS as favourite to win that series of Strictly Come
      Dancing until he decided that was unfair on the rest of the competitors and withdrew. PASO DOBLE just means “double
      step” in Spanish, which is rather dull, and is formed for our purposes by an anagram of  A BOLD POSE.
6     STROP Not the whisper of razor on fine leather, but the fit of anger sPORTSmen have within them when forced to go
      backwards
9     PERUSAL Examination. Enter SURE backwards (“about”) in PAL
10   ADAMANT Definition “unshakeable in purpose”, formed by the concatenation of A DAM (staunch, sort of) and ANT the
      crossword’s perennial worker
11   PIECE An unexciting soundalike for PEACE, be still for a generic bit of music.
12   AT ONE TIME “In former days”. The building blocks are A TOME (book) NE (Tyneside) and IT recalled as TI. Nest the latter
      two inside the former.
14   LOT   Double definition, a French department in the middle south-west, named after its river. Looks pretty enough in
      parts. And, of course, fate. Hands up if you got this one from the department.
15   AQUAFITNESS  Damp exercise regime, like it says, a straight build up of A QUAF(f), short drink, IT and NESS, a head(land).
      One of my late entries.
17   APPROPRIATE  Definition just “Take”.. A P(enny) PRO (for) PRI(v)ATE, a soldier missing V(ery)
19   CON  Two bits of slang for prisoner, LAG being disguised as insulation. Sides of CisterN with 0 in (empty)
20   DISCARDED  D(etective) I(nspector)’S plus CAR and DE(a)D – “one left” – for “abandoned”
22   EXALT  Promote feels like a slightly lacklustre synonym, but it will have to do. EX L(ieutenan)T hiding head of A(rmy)
24   DRAWING Surround W(ife) IN (as ever, in crosswordland “at home”) with DRAG for pain (think boring person at party) for a
      picture of sorts
26   DROPLET  A rare concession by a doctor before an operation. DR plus OP(eration) plus LET for “permitted”.  Smooth
      cluing.
27   OBESE Another easier peripheral clue: O(ld) B(oy) fEaStEd (even letters) aiming for Billy Bunterdom.
28   LAY PERSON  Chambers has it as one word, more familiar as layman before that was regarded as sexist. Anagram of
      PLAYER’S NO.

Down
1     POP UP Pop is what we old fogies used to call fizzy drinks (sodas across the pond, I believe). UP is high. Almost always
      unwelcome “appearance” on the interweb.
2     SURFEIT And while on the subject of the interweb, you would “surf it” to become more familiar. Sounds a lot like “too
      much” for our answer.
3     DESPERADO  Traveller’s is REP’S and it’s reversed inside DEAD (very as in “dead interesting”) O(ld) for a non-Robin-Hood
      outlaw.
4     BELEAGUERED  This took a while. BE RED means (i suppose) to support left wing views. LEAGUE is a coalition. Nest one
      inside the other for “being in trouble”
5     ETA  the Greek letter η (the long E) formed by E(nglish) T(erritorial) A(rmy)
6     SHAKE  Swimmer is the fishy HAKE placed under S(mall). Wave and shake are about the same when done with the fist.
7     REALISE  “See”  created by an anagram of SERIAL plus the last letter of (cabl)E
8     PATTERSON  Floyd of that ilk was one of the perennial heavyweight contenders of my youth, who annoyed loud-mouth
      upstart Mohammed Ali by insisting on calling him Cassius Clay. The latter was more likely to fit the “won’t stop talking”
      description, but anyway, such a person “patters on”. Tee-hee.
13   OFFHANDEDLY  “Without preparation” is our definition. Remove the head from (p)OLY(technic) and wrap it round
      F(emale) HANDED (“passed on”)
14   LLANDUDNO  Features in a rude college rag week joke about ludo, but is definitely in Wales. Final part of (vacation) plus
      DUD (failure) inside LLANO, which is to South America what steppes are to Russia.
16   THEREFORE  “So” is our cut-price definition. Old fashioned “you” is THEE, strangling REFOR(m) with its M(oderation)
      rejected
18   PASSAGE Double definition, “a narrow channel or route” or, um, “a crossing”
19   CHABLIS  A dry white wine. CHA is your drink, as in tea, and BLIS(s) is your “almost” heavenly something.
21   AGILE  Oddly enough, this one caused me most delay because I failed to spot the lift and separate definition, just
      “athletic”. E(vent’s) beginning after A GIL(l)
23   TITAN  Atlas, holding up the sky near Gibraltar, was one of the Titans. TIT(us) is a book of the New Testament and the A
      and N come from A(ssisting) N(avigators)
25   GEL An upper class female, mimicked pronunciation, which is, of course, a LEG up or boost.

43 comments on “25787: An exercise that dampened expectations of a quick finish”

  1. As Isaiah might have put it, “I will promote thee, o Lord”. Oh, well. AGILE and STROP were my LOIs, becoming clear to me almost simultaneously. DNK AQUAFITNESS, and was also put off by the two-wordedness of 28ac. Some nice clues, e.g. 2d and 9ac, but my COD is 21d, in part because of the trouble it caused me.
  2. Would have been better if I’d heard of AQUAFITNESS and didn’t have to wrangle it out of the cryptic bit. LOI was STROP. How many times is it the obvious hidden answer that does that to me? Looked like a synonym for “sportsmen” reversed.

    Liked 28ac best of all.

  3. A nice puzzle characterised by deceptively simple definitions. Thanks for the parsing of TITAN. I wonder when we may expect Titus’s contemporary letter-recipient Philemon?

    In a photo-finish, I reckon I got LOT through the department, having holidayed twice in the area. THEREFORE last in, as pesky grammatical words often are – when hiddens aren’t.

  4. Z8:
    Is it possible that the end of this is D{i}ED rather than DE{a}D? “One” for A is a bit of a no-no in the Times.
    1. Yes, it’s possible, probably more than possible. At the time of solving, I was content with “dead”, with A=1, maybe because it was also more of a subconscious sound alike. I was also wondering for a while where losing one L(eft) came into the picture before realising “abandoned” was the definition rather than the exclusion indicator.
  5. It was all going very well, or so I had thought, but it fell apart at the end because I somehow managed to write BELABOURED (10) as the answer at 4dn (11), having decided that LABOUR might be considered ‘left wing’ now that they have dropped the word ‘New’ from their title. Anyway that made 15ac impossible to solve until it was corrected and my solving time went over the hour by 8 minutes.

    I really liked the homophone at 2dn as it made me smile. Why can I never remember to consider all those wretched abbreviations for sections of the OT when ‘book’ is clued? Having spotted the answer at 23dn I wasted ages thinking about TIT.

    1. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. — Wittgenstein.
      1. Goodness me, I’m so innocent I’m not sure I should be allowed out unaccompanied in this wicked world!
  6. 20:03 .. definitely not a soft-centred puzzle, and as it got harder, it got better and better.

    Some beautiful clues, but APPROPRIATE and DRAWING pip it for me.

    Thank you, setter. And thanks, McT (and Wittgenstein) for making me laugh. Not often anyone says that about Wittgenstein, I imagine.

    1. Not long ago I had a poem published in our national rag about LW. They published it because of its humour! (And paid me … eventually.) I’ll mail it to you if you like.
        1. Higgledy piggledy,
          Ludwig J. Wittgenstein
          Cautioned the Junge with
          Whom he had erred,
          “Don’t spill the beans to that
          Psychohistorian
          W.W.
          Bartley III.”
    2. “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” LW
      It’s been suggested that the Tractatus is intended as one big philosophical joke, with McT’s quote as the punchline. (ROFL)
      1. Lord, I didnae ken, I didnae ken! I’m going to have to rethink existence, assuming I have one.

        McT – Received and mostly understood (I had to Google a couple of things). The Bertrand Russell line got the second snicker of the day out of me, and I really liked the mice. Bless you. It’s a treat.

        1. My absolute pleasure.
          Might lead to having a look at the incredible Gwen Harwood, a much bypassed Tasmanian poet.

          Alec

          Edited at 2014-05-15 11:41 am (UTC)

  7. Exactly half an hour for this puzzle, and a very witty and amusing puzzle it was.

    Another one of those crossword coincidences that afflict me every now and then: I was discussing with family the origin of the term BELEAGUERED just yesterday evening.

    I have been transcribing the almost illegible pocket diary of an uncle who fought in the Tunisian Campaign of 1943. One word kept occurring and I deciphered it only yesterday: LEAGUER, as in “broke leaguer at 6 a.m.” and “leaguered up for the night”.

    Chambers informs me that it is an archaic term to do with encampments, particularly those of a besieging army; though it was clearly everyday parlance for the British Army of seventy years ago. Are there any soldiers out there who can tell me if it is still in use?

  8. 15 mins, but I entered OFFHANDEDLY and TITAN from the definitions so thanks for parsing them Z8. You can count me as another for whom the most well-known pandas will always be Chi-Chi and An-An. As far as your comment about Floyd Patterson refusing to call Ali anything other than Cassius Clay is concerned, that’s true, but from my recollection of those times he wasn’t the only one of Ali’s opponents to take that stance. Another one who springs to mind is Ernie Terrell who was badly beaten by Ali in 1967 in a WBC/WBA unification bout. Ali reputedly could have stopped Terrell but chose to let the fight go the full 15 rounds so that he could inflict as much punishment as possible on Terrell, and whenever he had Terrell on the ropes, which was frequently, he was heard by those at ringside to be repeating “what’s my name?” as he threw each punch. After all the Wittgenstein comments above this is proof that this blog can do lowbrow just as well as highbrow.

    Anyway, back to the puzzle, I also struggled in the centre, and my last four in were OFFHANDEDLY, BELEAGUERED, AQUAFITNESS and THEREFORE.

    Edited at 2014-05-15 09:52 am (UTC)

  9. About 14.45 today helped considerably by happening on a solving sequence that gave checkers enabling several answers to be entered on definition/word shape. Otherwise I might well have struggled with some of the excellent clues.
  10. As others have said, a deceptively straightforward start followed by some increasingly knotty bits; best characterised by my struggle with SHARK…no, must be SKATE…ah, SHAKE, is it.
  11. 29min: had doubts about 15ac, as not in Chambers yet, though wordplay is clear. Thanks for parsing TITAN, where after rejecting the apparently irrelevant TIT, was wondering about a dodgy homophone (TIED ON?)
  12. Like others, a quick start but a slow finish. Took me an intitial 40 minute stint then a few glances throughout the morning so about an hour all told. I thought this a good crossword, all fair clues with nothing obscure.

    I never thought passive watching of Strictly Come Dancing would prove useful, but 1A proved me wrong today.

  13. Smooth sailing for the most part with FOI Adamant and LOI Beleaguered. My last three though (Shake, At One Time and Beleaguered) were very stubborn. As one who gets most of his exercise running ~20 miles weekly, Aquafitness was a complete unknown. Liked Obese and Con.
    1. I enjoyed this very much, though like others wondered about TIT for ages. I also had SPERM for 6 dn for a while (swimmer being the definition, perm the wave). But no major holdups once I’d sorted that out.
          1. What with that, tits and ‘dampened expectations of a quick finish’ it’s a bit like Carry on Crossword here today.
  14. 11:42. I was clearly on the right wavelength for this. Nice puzzle.
    If you had asked me to name one panda before yesterday I’d have been unable to do so.
  15. An alternative solution to 25Dn is GAL, also a term for an upper-class female, and a unit of acceleration in physics (boost) named after GALileo. Hmmm.
    1. Oh good- someone else thought the same as me, but I have to admit boos as leg-up is more satisfying…. 55 minutes for me and really enjoyable.
  16. Not thinking clearly after good golf in the LOT et Garonne heat, wanted to put BELABOURED, couldn’t parse TIT (the AN was clear) and put GAL for GEL. Bit of a mess, but finished off yesterday’s qualifier as some consolation. 40 minutes of failure.
  17. It’s all been said above, really. I spent about 20 minutes on the first 31 clues, then another 20 minutes getting to AGILE, my LOI, and trying – and failing – to parse TITAN, both of which seem absurdly simple in retrospect.

    Much to enjoy today, especially the “getting harder as it went on”. My COD honours shared between THEREFORE and the oh so simple AGILE which caused so much trouble.

  18. About 30 minutes with a lot of distractions, which prevented me from appreciating the quality of the puzzle, which is indeed high, in retrospect. LOI was STROP, which doesn’t carry that meaning over here, but which I finally saw hidden in type. Not like the penny-drop, more like, “Oh. I’m a bonehead.” Didn’t see the wordplay for TITAN or OFFHANDEDLY, so thanks for those. Regards.
  19. I’m thinking that ‘Tit.’ is the common 3-letter abbreviation for the full name of the book, like Gen. or Rev.
  20. I know I shall regret asking but whatever happened to the US of TITUS?
  21. A sluggish 12:15 for me, still feeling desperately tired. (Must try and have an early night one day soon!)

    I was held up at the end by PATTERSON (at the time I could only think of Ottilie, who I suspect didn’t do too much boxing – or at any rate wasn’t well known for it – and Sir Les, though Floyd was familiar enough once I’d looked him up afterwards) and STROP (wondering what kind of sportsman a “port” could be – Doh!).

    Nice puzzle.

  22. Hi all relative newcomer to all this, I’m afraid I still can’t parse LLANDUDNO from the above. As a Welshmsn it was a write in but still a bit confused

    All help appreciated

    1. My apologies for an explanation that failed the clarity test.
      There’s three bits to the wordplay: “End of vacation” just gives you the N, “a failure” (in this case ignore the A) gives you DUD.
      There are many words for plain (as in Salisbury) but in this case you need the South American LLANO – perhaps another of today’s relatively odd bits of vocabulary.
      Place NDUD inside LLANO, and the fine Welsh seaside resort emerges.

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