26086 For those of you who don’t like sport…

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
17.16, so about as close as can be to an average puzzle for me. At the moment, though, I seem to be starting fast, slowing down about  a third of the way through, and speeding up again at the end, with no obvious correlation with the perceived difficulty of the clues, so this may be seen by some as on the easy side, and I’m just dawdling. Some rather nifty and creative parsing is needed on the way, but there’s very little call on one’s store of general knowledge, and it’s virtually a sport free zone. The surfaces are mostly smooth and convincing, though I’m not convinced you’d come across 1 down outside of a crossword. I have made myself a hostage to fortune by making an (un)wise crack about Guardian spelling. Given that for some of the explanations, I was dozing off as I typed, there are bound to be errors all my own.
Here’s my reasoning (for the whole crossword, not just 1 down.)

Across

1 TRUSSED   ready for the oven
A gentle start requires you to take STRUDELS, remove the L, and stir by way of preparation.
5 PEDICAB  taxi
Looks like a tough way to make a living, but an easy bit of DIY sorts the clue out. Cutting gves ACID. which you reverse and add to P(hysical) E(ducation) at the front, and B(lack) at the back.
9 RADIAL-PLY  Type of tyre
The unlikely-looking anagram fodder is RAPIDLY. Mould it around AL, symbol for Aluminium. If that’s the hub, wheel balancing looks a bit tricky.
10 BONUS Top up to wages
B(ritish) completes with ONUS, Latin for (among other things) burden and responsibility
11 SERGE  Tough stuff
There are several ways to spell the composer’s name, this is the one that satisfies our definition.
12 INSTIGATE  Bring about
The US soldier is the general issue GI, reversed and dropped into IN (home) and STATE for country.
14 COVERING LETTER  Explanatory note.
A landlord’s insurance company would cover him against all manner of ills on the surface at least, but my experience is that the policy works as long as you don’t make a claim, when the unnoticed exclusion clauses invalidate it.
17 TRANSPORTATION  removal…
…perhaps in one of its older meanings. An anagram of ARTIST and NO PATRON
21 TAKE ISSUE  Disagree
Kidnappers might whimsically be described as taking issue. It’s a job, it’s what they do.
23 ODEUM  classical theatre
The “reported” soundalike here is ODIUM, for “widespead hatred”
24 HOARD  Store
Firm provides HARD, and it’s opened up by O, which you have to imagine is a symbol for roundabout. Well, it’s round.
25 RIDGEBACK dog breed
The top of a (mountain) range is (or might well be) a RIDGE, and to champion is to BACK. Assemble.
26 PODCAST audio download
O(ld), then CD spun around inside PAST for “former”. This word is sufficiently recent for my aging 2003 Chambers to know nothing of it. How times change! It was invented by the Guardian in 2004, so it’s quite possible it’s spelt wrong.
27 RATTLER  snake
Which it quite definitely is. But the RATTER, (which contains L(arge) to create the word) I would have said was classically a dog such as a Jack Russell rather than a cat, no matter how much it hunts. Sure, lovely, innocent, fluffy, cutesy cats will cheerfully slaughter anything that won’t or can’t fight back, but I’m not sure a cat would properly be described as a ratter, a beast bred specifically for the purpose. A mouser, maybe. And isn’t “hunting cat” a tautology?

Down

1 THRUSH  songbird
Not the smoothest of reads, this. Tons give you the T, of course. Pipe down gives the command HUSH. And river provides the R. Looks like a crossword clue, though.
2 UNDERGO  Stand
Lift and separate (wasn’t that Playtex?) here, ignoring the golf flavour. Directly below gives you UNDER, green for drivers (traffic lights, natch) gives you the GO.
3 STATELESS  Being such (as settles in random places)
A pretty good &lit, in which “AS SETTLES”, when randomised, is the fodder for the anagram.
4 DUPLICITOUS  double-dealing
The surface says noun, the answer says adjective. I parsed this fully post-solve: Mostly put out provides DOUS(e), risen is UP, and not forbidden LICIT. Assemble in suitable order.
5 PAY  to be profitable
PRAY without the R(right)
6 DUBAI Gulf state
I could name dozens!, But this is DUB plus A, and (electrical) current I.
7 CONTACT  Meeting
An unusual one, in that most take minutes and waste hours. Simple enough: the abbreviation CONT. plus ACT, to do something. The very idea.
8 BASKETRY  hamper construction.
The ? covers the DBE well enough, and this is a well-concealed definition. Risk is BET, Demand ASK, and railway the conventional RY. Only ASK is “limited” by BET
13 SIGHT READER  gifted musician
I can just about do this in choral music, but those who can do it reading and playing as many as 10 lines of music simultaneously are a special breed, and justify the “gifted” tag. An anagram of HEAD REGISTER, with one of the repeated notes (there’s setter generosity!) in this case an E, missing.
15 EXTROVERT  (someone who is all) for socialising
Go out provides EXIT, from which the 1 is surgically removed. It’s then placed with ROVER for wanderer, and T(ime)
16 STITCH UP  Darn situation
The more whimsical of two definitions, the rest of the clue being the other one.
18 AWKWARD  difficult to deal with
Allways thought this a strange looking word. A W(ee)K is placed on WARD, an NHS location (corridor doesn’t fit).
19 OVERALL  umbrella
Adjectival again here, as in organisation. Completely finished is ALL OVER. Swap the parts, like it says
20 SMOKER  One who cures (bacon, etc)
Rather tidily produced by the outside letters of S(ickroo)M O(utbrea)K and E(lixi)R
22 INDIA area of dense population
Obviously some of it is, otherwise the number wouldn’t be 1.252 billion. But I bet there’s some pretty sparse bits too. INDIA is the NATO alphabet successor to Hotel.
25 RUT  routine one finds boring
Right at the end, our “hidden” of the day, tRUTh

35 comments on “26086 For those of you who don’t like sport…”

  1. … more than the ¾ hour today. But gave a sigh of relief on a couple of the anagrams which got me started. Got SMOKER, but couldn’t see the first two “externals” and wondered how to get the SMOK bit. A doh! moment.

    Is INDIA behind HOTEL or in front of it, assuming, as we do, we look from left to tight?

      1. Yes … it’s behind the “text” bit.
        Whereas India comes after Hotel.
        “Golf” is behind it.
  2. Good puzzle, excellent blog as always Z.

    COD to SMOKER because I took a while to spot it.

    17ac was pretty popular a couple of hundred years ago, for which I’m eternally grateful!

  4. A pleasant 40 minutes with nothing too taxing. I just realised I biffed PODCAST and forgot to go back to work out why.

    Interesting paradox raised by Mct re 22dn!

  5. 17:48 .. my experience so like that of our blogger (including mid-solve slow downs) that I’ll just say “See above”.

  6. 40mins, so probably about average for me. All parsed as I went along, except for SMOKER, where, like McT, I was puzzled at where the SMOK bit came from.

    The bit that held me up most at the end was COVERING, think I had a bit of a block there.

  7. 19:31 which I think is about average now. I reckon average was about 30 minutes a year ago so I would seem to be improving.

    The SE and NW corners took me the most time, with the SE cracking when I made the leap from curing to food preparation. LOI was SERGE with a little hesitance as I thought the say might be a ‘sounds like’ indicator which made me think it could be SURGE. I didn’t think that looked right for the material though and thankfully my instinct was correct.

  8. 13 mins with EXTROVERT my LOI after RIDGEBACK. I confess that I was glad to find that ODEUM wasn’t spelled “odeom” (I didn’t consider “odeam” or “odeim”). I was fairly sure I’d seen ODEUM as a variation of “odeon” before but I’m no classicist by any means and I was worried that the homophone might have been dodgier than it was. One of the reasons I’ll never be anywhere near as fast as Magoo or Jason is it sometimes takes me too long to get what should be straightforward answers. In this puzzle two of those, for me at least, were COVERING LETTER and RADIAL PLY.
    1. You must see some very heavy thrushes! OK, I know, “tons” just means “a lot of”. But I still think that, with so many decent surface readings in this crossword, this one doesn’t look too likely. Two very ordinary single letter indications, and – erm, let me see, something that means “be quiet”. That’ll do.
      1. I see tons of them ; well maybe a few every day.

        Edited at 2015-04-30 03:51 pm (UTC)

  10. Trundling along quite smoothly and then spent far too long staring blankly at this trying to remember some of his stuff because I think of him as Sergei and (perhaps a bit affectedly) pronounced SAIRGAY. 16.46
    1. I too find it hard to bring myself to pronounce Prokofiev’s first name in the same way as the twilled fabric, Olivia, but then I remember Beachcomber’s character Serge Trouserin (whom I’ve been trying to find – unsuccessfully – in Richard Ingrams’s book! Why doesn’t the damn thing have an index?)
      1. My late father introduced me to Beachcomber when I was in my teens but I’m sorry to say I’d forgotten about Serge Trouserin. My goodness it used to annoy my mother who didn’t find any of it in the least bit funny.
  11. Surely “duplicitous” is simply wrong being an adjective. Similar objection to “extrovert” which doesn’t mean socialising.
    1. ‘He was a double-dealing MP’ or ‘he was a duplicitous MP’ – substitution works for me.
    2. I would agree with you, but it’s not “socialising” on its own in the clue. As I tried to point out, with a little extra for clarity, it’s “for socialising”, either “in favour of” or “given to”. Since extrovert is described (noun and adjective) in Chambers as
      n…(loosely) a sociable, outgoing, lively person
      adj of or characteristic of an extrovert –
      I think it will do. Indeed, I think it rather a good clue, with its push in the opposite direction to the true solution. “One lost wanderer with little time for socialising” is just about the antithesis of “extrovert”, yet once you detach the definition properly from the wordplay, it works just fine

      Edited at 2015-04-30 01:00 pm (UTC)

  13. A rare “beat the blogger” day coming in a shade over 14 mins, could have saved at least a couple of those on 3d, wasting time looking for a 3-letter word for “such as” that would fit into an anagram of places, where “space” was just too tempting. 17a finally put paid to that though.
    1. My congratulations and thanks to you – it is rare enough to find oneself held up as a parody* of crosswording capability.

      *I think I meant paradigm. Or possibly paragon.

      1. This rang a huge bell, as I have just finished playing Peter Quince in an amateur production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – ‘[Bottom] is the very paramour for a sweet voice’.
      2. You are welcome sir, sadly Ihave a feeling that your entry on the “bloggers I was quicker than” list ,may be the only one for a while, I’m normally found in the 40 minutes bracket.
  14. 26m steady solve with 1a FOI and the unlikely PEDICAB LOI. The latter was BIFD without much confidence. Z’s crossword solving structure of fast slow faster mirrors the approach I had to the 100 yards dash at school.
  15. I also started off quickly, slowed down,picked up pace again, then got stuck on 20 and 23. 23 should have been obvious but I had entered EXTROVERT wrongly with an A. I finally got the required sense of ‘cure’ for 20 and checked EXTRAVERT. About 45 minutes in the end, at least 10 minutes longer than it should have taken me.
  16. 12:36 and all understood. My Andy Borrowsesque “should have solved that straightforward clue a lot more quickly” moment came with RUT of all things.
  17. Nicely blogged Sir! A gentle stroll for 40 minutes, this one. Like others, TRUSSED and THRUSH went straight in as did a couple of the other anagrams (wonderful things those), and I thought it would be even easier, but there were a couple of little snags to be dealt with. I liked SMOKER.
  18. 20 mins which these days is about average for me as I too, like Pootle and a fine wine, appear to be improving with age.
  19. Untimed but about 40min for me, with the SE corner going in last. I’d never heard of ODEUM, and it was so close to “Odeon” that I was suspicious of it. Failed to parse SMOKER.
  20. About 20 minutes, pretty smooth sailing, ending with STATELESS where I actually missed the anagram entirely, and threw it in as a cd. Z’s parsing makes me sorry I didn’t see it while solving, it’s very nice. “Hamper construction” also raised a smile. Regards to all, esp. to Z for the usual entertaining blog.
  21. 13m, which counts as somewhat easier than average for me. My unknowns today were ODEUM and RADIAL PLY, but the wordplay was helpful.
  23. 14:36 for me after another exhausting day.

    I spend a ridiculous amoung of time at the end trying to justify SHAPELESS for 3dn but eventually came to the conclusion that such an otherwise excellent puzzle wouldn’t contain such a half-baked cryptic definition clue, at which point light finally dawned.

Comments are closed.