25901: It’s not Cupid, stupid

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A slightly dispiriting one, this. A whizzo start suggested a fast run around the little black squares, then everything started to fall apart around halfway down and my final time, rendered mostly irrelevant by a mistaken spelling, was 27′ 19″. I freely acknowledge that that won’t scare anyone planning to take part in the Championship. There are no obscurities here that can’t be overcome by paying close attention to the generous cluing, though you do need to know a little bit of opera, your schoolboy’s guide to Shakespeare, and teeny tiny bits of Science, both Chemistry and Botany. This setter seems to like longer definitions.
Here’s how I eventually worked out what goes where.

Across

1 IMPLICIT present but not heard
Naughty child is nearly always an IMP (though not in any household I know). LICIT is legal or allowed.
6 BICEPS  a bit of beef or brawn
Shouted proclaims a sound clue, and the “order” would be BUY CEPS! Two definitions for the price of one.
9 SOUNDPROOFING  that can make sound report less impressive
Read as two words, our answer suggests the skill of perfect (sound) proofreading, As most of you know, I lack this skill, and rely on capabilities and forgiveness of this company to play spot the typo. Soundproofing, of course, would make the report of a gun less obtrusive on the night air. Oscar Pistorius please take note. What? Too soon?
10 KISSER  trap
Two well enough known slang terms, one created by the letters of RISKS springing to new places and catching the (mous)E(‘s) tail. MY LOI, fooled by the tidy clue leading me well away from any suggestion of “mouth”.
11 ARMORIAL  of charges
Armorial is to do with heraldic arms, and charges in this context are the “devices borne on a shield”, so a kind of associative definition. The word is constructed by “taking nearly everything” of ARt MOb RIg ALl.
13 AFTERSHOCK Small shake
Which perceived scale might depend on where you’re standing. HOCK (meat) follows AFTERS (pudding)
15 PITY cause for regret
PIT(h)Y, “short” suffers form the walkout of H(usband)
16 AMOK  out of control.
An endless donkey is A MOK(e)
18 REPARATION  means of fixing
RATION (share) encases a reversed crop, in this case (oilseed) RAPE
21 AMARETTO  drink
I made a mental note to look up why A MORE meant a horse, Then I made a mental note to smite myself on the forehead for blundering into the wee Cupid rather than the almond flavoured liqueur, where A MARE is a more obvious horse. It’s followed by a reversed “excessive” OTT. I got that bit right.
22 ANTHER  (this) part of a plant
Hidden in cleAN THE Rubbish. rather well, I thought, as I lost time trying to make I.E. for that’s fit somewhere.
23 CITRONELLA OIL  Clear lotion
A partial &lit, as “clear lotion” does double duty as the definition and the anagram fodder when addesd to the heads of I(nsect) L(ife). it almost makes sense, though the oil is a yellow perfume made from lemongrass which I would imagine insects would have little use for.
25 HYBRID  mixture
Nearly serious gives DIR(e), through gives BY Hydrogen H. Assemble and reverse.
26 BULLSEYE  mint
Of the large peppermint sweet variety. Anagram of SELL and BUY plus the closing letter of (exchang)E

Down

2 MASTIFF  dog
Which is STIFF for dead body and MA for mother placed above.
3 LOUDSPEAKER  what could broadcast
An anagram of DUO, SPARKLE and E(nergy) another &littish clue where broadcast is also the indicator
4 CEDAR wood
Load your CAR with the end bits of (rubbl)E and (splintere)D
5 TORNADO storm
That the word includes ADO for fuss is a red herring. It’s TO DO (fuss) around RNA, ribonucleic acid, which you all know is part of every living cell.
6 BOOKMAKER one who should certainly know better
BOOK for arrest, and MAKER for builder. A bookie wouldn’t be much cop if he didn’t know his victims clients.
7 CHI foreign character
Looks like this Χ in the Greek alphabet. CHI(na), an eastern country without N(orth) A(merica)
8 PAGEANT outdoor show
PAGE (put out a call for) plus ANT, our favourite worker.
12 REPETITIOUS  Going on and on
Made up in sequence from RE (about) PETIT (trivial) IOUS (debts)
14 STRATFORD  the Bard’s source
I.e. where Will himself came from. You might guess that Doll Tearsheet was a lady of easy virtue and costly favours, so a TART (with the apostrophe S). She turns up. FORD is another character from that knockabout farce the Merry Wives of Windsor, which you might also guess. Don’t waste time trying to work out who Shakespeare’s source was.
17 MIMICRY  copying
Rodolfo is a character in La Bohème, friends with the consumptive MIMI. I don’t know whether the opera has him CRYing at Mimi’s death, but it should. The man’s not made of marble. Mind you “what Rodolfo did at last under his lover” conjured rather racier images than Puccini had in mind.
19 PROVERB saw
Saw is a wise saying in this context. A rough terrain vehicle is a (Land? Range?) ROVER (other 4X4s are available, but not much good). ROVER is surrounded by PB, lead (pronounced led)
20 OVERLAY covering
Too much gives OVERLY, and is set around A(rea).
22 ALLYL  radical
As in “an atom, molecule, or ion that has unpaired valence electrons or an open electron shell, and therefore may be seen as having one or more “dangling” covalent bonds”. ALLYL is a molecule one of those. But you only need to know that vaguely, because the wordplay is easy: Team up with gives ALLY, L(iberal) the last letter.
24 TOR rise
Reduced time give T, as an alternative OR.

57 comments on “25901: It’s not Cupid, stupid”

  1. Slowed down at several points, such as not knowing who the hell Rodolfo was–I thought of MIMICRY once I had AMOK, but was too dense to see how it worked–not twigging to how 11ac worked (my LOI), not seeing the hidden at 22ac (I’ve become quite adept at not spotting hiddens), etc. DNK ALLYL, nor did I know of BULLSEYE mint, but the anagrind and anagrist were clear. Is booking the same as arresting? I wouldn’t have thought so.
      1. My point exactly, I think. I never saw the program alluded to, but wasn’t the line uttered in the police station? I.e. after the perp had been arrested? (I do note, however, he added parenthetically, that the SOED gives ‘apprehend, catch’ as a ‘slang’ meaning.)
        1. Haven’t seen the show since the late 70s, but YouTube has clips of the line being delivered in various places including the beach. But yes, the not-based-on-a-TV-show justification is in the dictionaries (Chambers gives “to take the name of for an alleged offence” and then explicitly “Hence, to arrest”).
    2. Kevin, it can be when someone is formally booked into a police station w/o an arrest having already taken place. E.G after having gone voluntarily to the PS.

      Edited at 2014-09-25 06:02 am (UTC)

      1. Well, there you are again; booking and arresting are different.(In Japan, they can be different by 3 weeks, which is how long they can lock you up without a charge.)
  2. My first “success” for the week, ie all correct inside 30 minutes, although fingers were crossed for ALLYL as I hit the submit button.

    Just enough well-clued unknowns and half-knowns to make it fun. Rodolfo sounded sort of familiar, but I may have been thinking of Brazilian soccer players.

    It’s been an interesting week so far. Thanks setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2014-09-25 03:59 am (UTC)

    1. Nowadays Brazilian soccer players sport names such as Fred, Alan, and so forth.

      Beaten by armorial, the rest in 28 mins. Don’t enjoy lengthy clues; and finally lost the will to live on this which was just a jumble of words with no plausible surface reading.
      Rob

  3. Almost my Arnhem, as I staggered home in 84 minutes, finally sorting out a mess in the NW to finish with CEDAR. Quite a bit of unknown/forgotten stuff, but that’s not much of an excuse.

    A little, um, typo, in the typo clue, where the literal should be ‘that can make report less impressive’. (I managed to have ‘spellproofing’ there for ages, which is more embarrassing.)

  4. Back from a crossword-free break in the bush and struggled a bit with this. For some reason, I’d assumed it was a Monday and should have been easy! Too many days in the hands of nature will do that to you.

    Last in were the 22s of which I knew neither.

  5. Yes, this one went off the rails for me too after a very promising start. At the 30 minute stage I had all but 4 answers and another 10 provided 2 more but I was left with 22dn and 11ac and no staying power for further battle so I looked them up.

    I never heard of ALLYL and was also unable to explain 5dn having fallen into the ADO trap – to my shame didn’t know RNA either.

    I felt 14dn was something of a car-crash of a clue though the answer was obvious from the last three words plus a couple of checkers in place. I needed to look up the references to understand how it worked.

    Edited at 2014-09-25 06:12 am (UTC)

  6. Another excellent puzzle that balanced arts and science – thank you setter. As it happens I studied Henry IV at school so knew Doll T and Ford although the definition was a complete giveaway. My daughter is an operatic soprano so Mimi-Rodolfo also not new to me

    I think 23A is brilliant because I believe that both Citronella Grass and the oil made from it are used as insect repellants. It goes with a whole collection of first class clues that I really enjoyed wrestling with

    1. Thanks Jim: my limited research into citronella (looking it up post solve in Chambers) didn’t reveal the insect repellent use, so the last part of the clue looked rather weird to me – why would insects be interested in perfume? I see it also (allegedly) calms barking dogs. Clever stuff!
      You might be pleased to know that I got ALLYL straight off from the definition and the initial A.
      1. Well done indeed. Didn’t know about the dogs and thanks for suggesting in the blog that folk really should know what RNA is!
      2. It’s funny how GK can be so selective. I doubt that there’s a living soul in Australia who doesn’t know citronella as an insect repellent. Comes down to necessity I guess.
  7. Whereas I would question it, assuming of course the setter means the writer and not the virtually illiterate Stratford gentleman. Got stuck at the end on allyl/anther, the latter my last in, the easiest the hardest to see. 43′. Another tricky number, very ingenious in places; but 11’s surface is unfortunate.
    1. We will have to agree to disagree. I can’t put my own view better than Stephen Marche: ‘among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts’.
      1. I may have mentioned it before, but if you’re interested in a calm look at the possibility of a genuine authorship problem, you might try Diana Price’s ‘Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography’.

        Edited at 2014-09-25 02:55 pm (UTC)

          1. Have you read that book? It doesn’t posit Oxford or any other “candidate” in particular; but it does make a very sound case I’d have thought for doubting the Stratford man’s “claim”. Many other books mix good arguments with somewhat outlandish ones; this in its quiet way is fairly devastating.
            1. I haven’t, but neither am I aware of a single serious Shakespeare scholar who has been converted to the cause. I’m afraid that for me the sheer unfeasibility of the requisite conspiracy is enough to render the whole idea preposterous before you get into arguments about whether it’s possible to write about Italy without going there and so on.
                1. She is not someone I know to be a serious scholar. The people I do know to be serious Shakespearean scholars are unanimous on this question. Such people are conspicuous by their absence on Mark Rylance’s petition.
  8. 40m+. I had most of this sussed in about 40 minutes but I was held up at the end by ANTHER, STRATFORD and ALLYL. Dragging up GCSE biology gave me stamens and sepals but I couldn’t think of anther and it seemed to be well hidden from my view. With hindsight I don’t know how I didn’t get Stratford quicker from S_R_T_O_D, and I wanted a word for team reversed in allyl.

    Still, I was pleased to get there in the end.

  9. Thought this would be a struggle after a relatively unproductive trawl through the across clues but managed to finish in 21 minutes. Enjoyed several well-disguised definitions. Like Joe, I am not a fan of 11ac, which I put it from definition. The device just seems a bit clunky amid so many excellent clues.
  10. 39m. I struggled mightily with this, for some reason. Looking back it doesn’t seem that hard. My last in was ALLYL: a fairly easy clue that took me forever. I hope either that I’m just being very slow today, or that this setter isn’t allowed anywhere near the championship. Either way I have to acknowledge that it’s an excellent puzzle.
    I know enough about Shakespeare for ‘the Bard’s source’ to immediately trigger ‘Holinshead’, but not enough to have a clue about FORD. I am most emphatically not among those who would question the definition.

    Edited at 2014-09-25 08:44 am (UTC)

  11. Quite a relief after yesterday’s nightmare, but still an excellent and challenging puzzle. The best clues have been commented on above. Like quite a few others, I started off at a fastish clip and then ran into problems in the bottom half. Managed to complete with all correct but had to look ALLYL up in a dictionary to check that such a word existed. (But I did know RNA, Jimbo, you will be glad to hear!).
  12. Another “amoretto” here so I’m glad I’m distinguished company. Ruined a perfectly respectable 22.37.

    Edited at 2014-09-25 11:50 am (UTC)

  13. 23 mins but with a stupid “citronelle oil” at 23ac. It isn’t like I haven’t heard of the correct answer, and I could always have looked at the anagram fodder more closely than I did. The last two of my correct answers were the ALLYL/ANTHER crossers.
  14. It seems to be a good day for silly mistakes. Mine was REPITITIVE. Long answers to down clues are my nemesis, I’ve realised. I can’t even see the mistakes in them when checking my grid.

    OK puzzle, but I liked ulaca’s coinage of the “Elizabethan cart-crash” much more than the clue!

  15. 23 is a full &lit, as citronella oil is an effective insect repellant, so insect life heads off. For me, the best clue in the Times that I can rememeber
  16. Started quite well with most of the bottom half going in fairly easily except for 14d. The top half took longer, but eventually succumbed, leaving me with the recalcitrant 14. So I had S-R-T-O-D, and couldn’t see the answer – unbelievable! I knew that Doll T was a woman of easy virtue, and using the vernacular abbreviation, reversed, for that class of lady, couldn’t get a word starting with SORP out of my mind, and all I could think of was SORPTION(S), so spent ages trying to read in some poetic homophone to make man of Windsor fit. I hadn’t parsed HYBRID fully, so wasn’t entirely confident about that which made things worse.

    What a moke am I?

  17. Made rather slow progress, taking 45 minutes in all. After getting 6a immediately nothing else in the acrosses jumped out at me so I switched to the downs, which I found easier. I should have sorted out the anagram at 23 more quickly, having just smeared myself with citronella oil – I can confirm that it is a mosquito repellant. Re the blog above,’Clear lotion’ is not really doing double duty since ‘that’ serves to replicate the letters for the anagram. 9a took ages, and I didn’t fully understand 5d, having been lulled into seeing fuss as ADO not TO-DO.
  18. 27:18, whooping Z’s ass by all of one second, so he certainly doesn’t scare me.

    Whatever it is that sits between arts and science is where I appear to be, as I didn’t know allyl (and like others was looking for a team reversed) and had never heard of the Shakespearean characters or Rodolfo. I did know anther though and decided, correctly, that RNA was DNA without the dioxy.

    STLOI was the very well hidden anther but COD to soundproofing. The insecty &Lit was very good too.

    Thanks to Z for the entertaining blog.

  19. an enjoyable challenge, but a DNF for me, because I did not know the definition of armorial and was too unobservant to spot the cryptic. I have a quibble with 23a- shouldnt it be ‘heads OF insect life’ rather than heads off, or am I missing something?
        1. It’s nothing to do with the insects’ heads, it’s to do with making them head off.

          Or maybe you head them off at the pass, like cowboys and that.

  20. Struggled yet again but managed everything except Armorial. Thanks to the blog I can now see that I was working with the wrong letters. I thought Citronella oil was a superb clue.
  21. Back to normal after some more devilish puzzles, and I got through in 20 minutes but screwed up ARMORIAL. I misread it as an anagram of ‘mob rig’ plus ‘almost al(l)’. So I created one and threw it in. I know nothing whatsoever of heraldry, so equating ARMORIAL with ‘charges’ was beyond me, and probably will continue to be. Other than that, nice puzzle, with the unknowns achievable via the wordplay. Regards.
    1. I confidently put in “abmortal”, which is a word, but couldn’t parse it – unsurprisingly.
      1. So did I. It’s an anagram of art mob and almost all, the definition fits rigging charges, the parsing is less clumsy than the “correct” answer and it fits the grid. Perfectly acceptable, I would have thought.
  22. Thought this was a good puzzle, though something of a checkers/definition-fest and a couple of orders of magnitude easier than Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s. I’m a mosquito magnet and have explored the full range of options from DEET to smouldering elephant dung – CITRONELLA OIL fared no better than either but at least smelled OK.
    1. The most effective repellent I’ve ever found is cigar smoke. It does have certain downsides though…
  23. CITRONELLA OIL a very good clue, one of many. My last in was the exceptionally well-hidden ANTHER, if you can sneak a hidden word past me for that long you have done well, setter.

    On the other hand STRATFORD completely from definition so thanks for parsing it Z. Very fun puzzle.

  24. Another enjoyable one, with unknowns such as ANTHER and ALLYL gettable from the clue. Thank you setter and z8
  25. In the surface, yes, but in the wordplay you need the heads of (or off, or indeed off of) ‘insects’ and ‘life’.
  26. My compliments to the setter, particularly for ALLYL which appealed to the nerd* in me. Sort of the scientific equivalent of an obscure cricketing term. Also the RNA in TORNADO was nice. Is it just me, or has the long-standing imbalance between science and the arts/history/cricket/names for various stages of salmon been somewhat redressed recently? Bravo!

    COD for me (ALLYL aside) was CITRONELLA OIL, which I thought was cleverly and elegantly clued.

    Today’s medical highlight was my first penectomy. This is an unusual procedure in A&E, but in this case it was actually the surgical removal of a pen. I am happy to report that both patient and biro are expected to make full recoveries.

    (*I wanted to be a boffin, but failed the entrance exam.)

  27. It’s a good point, that the recognised academics in the field of Shakespearian studies are solidly orthodox on the matter. Their tone towards the anti-Stratfordians however tends to be scornfully dismissive of the evidence they bring, which at least often merits closer examination. The scornful tone itself, generally accusing the other side of the merest snobbishness, is odd. Whatever the result, if there ever is one, of the controversy, it aint over.

    Edited at 2014-09-26 08:59 am (UTC)

  28. Apologoes for the lateness of the hour – well, month. Just wanted to thank you for 22ac –
    Anther and 25ac Hybrid. I got the latter but wasn’t sure how, but the former fooled me for a couple of days. These were days on the road mind. You may (or not) be interested to know that I started this one sailing single handed across Loch Fyne to put the boat to bed for the winter and finished it this evening in Colorado Springs having nearly completed the road trip from Chicago to Breckenridge CO. FYI, as someone, as I remember, who appreciates beer, the Americans seem to have done a real ale campaign in my absence of a decade or so. So many micro breweries and always something to enjoy which isn’t Budweiser or
    Miller. Blue Moon and Boulevarde stand out to me but my favourite was a honey blonde at the Big Texan Steak House in Amarillo, TX. And, no, that wasn’t the barmaid!
    1. I think I envy you the wandering life! It has always been a matter of wonder for me why the sturdy British ale has never really translated to other countries. I don’t count Pelforth! I don’t mind some lagers, especially the locally and properly brewed ones, but I have no idea why Budweiser is even called beer since it compares unfavourably to Tesco’s own brand lo-cost chemical lager. So I’m delighted to hear of proper local brews springing up in the States: perhaps I’ll visit again sooner.
      Safe travelling!

Comments are closed.