Times 25,249 – Failed Login

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
My woes with Times Crossword Club remain unresolved. Apparently they  have been unable to locate any active subscriptions attached to either of the email addresses that I have provided … and to think that I have been a subscriber since they started charging for the crosswords. I have now enlisted the help of our indefatigable PeterB and hopefully I will regain access soon. Thanks to Jon Delfin for sending me a copy so I can do my duty today.
This is a very challenging puzzle using many tricks of the trade but mostly delightful.
ACROSS
1 SAGAMORE Cha of SAGA (long narrative) MORE (again) chief of a North American tribe or confederation (especially an Algonquian chief)
5 PROPER PRO (for) PERSON (individual) minus SON
10 MISERABLE MI (note, me a name I call myself) + ins of ER (Elizabeth Regina, monarch) in SABLE (black fur)
11 PINTS POINTS (marks) minus O (zero not given)
12 JUNO JUNK (boat) with O (love) substituted for K (king) In Roman mythology, the wife of Jupiter, identified with the Greek Hera, special protectress of marriage and guardian of women 
13 ha deliberately omitted
15 PREHENSILE Ins of RE (about) HENS (egg producers) in PILE (large building) meaning capable of grasping
17 USER MUSER (one who thinks) minus M (head will float off)
19 EDOM Rev of MODE (way) land of  Esau (son of Isaac and twin-brother of Jacob) and the nation descending from him , 
20 Anagram of DECORATION deliberately omitted
22 RAINWATER Lovely quasi-&lit anagram of TERRAIN WAs
24 HOPE Ins of OP (opus, work) in HE (fellow) 
Have faith, hope and charity
That’s the way to live successfully
How do I know, the Bible tells me so
(from a song by Don Cornell in 1955)
26 NOISY Ins of I (one) in NOSY (of facial feature, having a nose)
27 GOLDFINCH GOLDFINGER (James Bond film) minus GER (German) + CH (Companion of Honour)
28 ENSURE Ins of R (right) in ENSUE (result) 
29 DRILL RIG Ins of RILL (stream) + R (river) in DIG (excavate)
DOWN
1 SEMI TIMES (us, the paper in which this puzzle appears) minus T and reversed
2 GESTURE POLITICS *(COSTLIEST PURGE I) political activity aimed primarily at satisfying public opinion.
3 MIRRORED Boss in red-top is the editor of a tabloid, in this case, the MIRROR + ED (editor, the boss) Thanks to mctext who prompted me 
4 ROBES R (run in cricket language) OBESE (carrying weight) minus E
6 REPLAY REP (representative, salesman) LAY (amateur)
7 PENCIL SHARPENER *(PERENNIALS PERCH)
8 ROSE GARDEN *(ORANG REDS)
9 RETAILER Here was where I got my knickers in a twist and wasted many precious minutes. Was it RETAINER or RETAILER (N = any number & L = sterling pound). I opted for the former and ended up with PREDNISONE for 15A (an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat arthritis and which would have made a clutch possible)
14 APPEARANCE Ins of PEAR (fruit) in PAN (God in Greek mythology) -> PPEARAN inserted in ACE (magnificent)
16 SHORTAGE Ins of TAG (label) in SHORE (bank)
18 RIGHTFUL FRIGHTFUL (horrible) minus F
21 SWAYER Tom SAWYER (of Huckleberry Finn fame by Mark Twain) with A & W switched
23 RULER cd
25 SHAG Ins of H (last letter of branch) in SAG (sink down)
++++++++++++++
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

22 comments on “Times 25,249 – Failed Login”

  1. I hesitate to state the obvious, but is your Caps Lock on when you log in? As a veteran typist, I have been caught more than once this way.

    Edited at 2012-08-23 02:13 am (UTC)

  2. 19:40, a relief to get under 20 minutes after several supersluggish days. Sorry to hear, Uncle Y, that you’re still being Murdoched; I’m sure they’ve had no trouble locating the money you’ve sent them. This was a lot of fun, with a number of excellent clues (6d, 9d, 15ac, 28ac, 29ac, for instance) , but I think I’d give my COD to12ac: nice surface, and that ‘for’ thing that usually tricks me, as it almost did with 9d. DK 2d or 25d, and indeed had to check the latter once I’d run out of alternatives. It was pleasant (19ac) to see ‘way’ ≠ST. I wonder if anyone besides me put in NOISE at first at 26ac.

    Edited at 2012-08-23 03:30 am (UTC)

  3. 27:32 .. same story every day this week for me – fast out of the blocks but struggling to finish. Today’s high hurdles – SAGAMORE, SEMI, EDOM and RIGHTFUL.

    Hats off (Oddjob’s hat?) to GOLDFINCH, where the surface even strikes the right note for a Bond reference (I’ve just been reading Casino Royale – none of your namby-pamby, new man stuff for Fleming’s Bond).

  4. Same as Sotira pretty much. The two big anagrams meant lots of squares filled quickly; then all sort of problems with the 4-letter answers. Why I couldn’t see HOPE and SHAG right off I have no idea. Liked the “colours” anagram at 8dn — except all my roses are in the front yard — and the newspaper refs at 1dn and 3dn.

    Edited at 2012-08-23 03:09 am (UTC)

  5. This one took me exactly an hour but I never felt that I was stuck and might not finish; it was just a rather slow but very enjoyable solve.

    The ones that caused me a few problems were were 1dn (my LOI),1a, 21dn (because I had NOISE for a while at 26ac) and 19ac (never ‘eard of it). I also toyed with CHAFFINCH for a time at 27ac.

    There seemed to be a lot of removing and/or replacing of letters going on, possibly more so than on an average day.

    Edited at 2012-08-23 05:20 am (UTC)

  7. You’re welcome to make a comment, anonymously or otherwise. Mine is explosive, at myself – I could see only marooned and marmoset and finally made up marrowed for inwardly reflected. I found this generally tough but prefer this type of challenge to the 8 we get occasionally. 13’s neat.
  8. 23 minutes, concious of time trickling away while tackling my last three, REPLAY, PINTS and SWAYER. Like others, I had NOISE for 26, which seemed to fit fine but blocked 21. SWAYER was very close to “find a word and then make an anagram of it”, but I guess the (only) slight confusion lets it off the hook. I’ve no idea why the other two didn’t drop like ripe fruit.
    I also had ROBED at 4 for a while, with vague thoughts of a obe-something that used to be a weight and a belief that it wasn’t a very good clue.
    Neither long clues, though obvious anagrams, fell early enough to be much help. Maybe it’s just a dozy day.
    I too picked out GOLDFINCH as a goody.
  9. Bang on 20 minutes with guesses for sagamore and Edom and semi not fully understood.

    I can’t see what “Not really” is doing in 26.

    Today I tried eating my lunch whilst solving to see if it made the experience more fun but it didn’t.

    I thought 14 was rather clever.

    1. Finished in only 25 minutes, not so brain dead today, it’s a little cooler. I think ‘Not really’ in 26 ac may be because ‘NOSY’ doesn’t usually mean ‘of facial feature’ more really means curious or interfering. Not sure this explains it very well but I know what I mean. Anybody agree?
      CoD Goldfinch for me.
  10. 32m. I found this tough but made very heavy weather of some of the clues. It took me ages to think beyond the Sun in 3dn, for instance. EDOM was new to me and entered with some trepidation. SAGAMORE also unknown.
    I can’t see how 9dn works. Obviously we’re supposed to replace the N in RETAINER with an L but I can’t make the words in the clue mean that. Is it just me?
    1. This seems to have been a new one to many, but it’s yet another NY Times chestnut.
    2. I think the only way the clue works is to read N as ‘any number of’, not just ‘any number’, so N becomes L, though I don’t particularly like ‘makes’. To my mind ‘making’ would be better.

      I made a real mess of this with 6, 9,13 unsolved at the end of an hour. I also had NOISE and INSURE for a while, holding me up in the SW corner. EDOM and SAGAMORE were unknowns, but I guessed them then confirmed them on the internet before proceeding.

  11. Incidentally Uncle Yap I have had exactly the same problem as you with the club site. In my case I found they had unilaterally changed the email address in my account to a non-existent “@timesplus” address. I can’t access it at the moment so I suspect they may have done it again. As kevingregg points out they’re better with the money: they managed to take mine twice.
  12. Re failed log-in. I have found that some functions don’t work on internet explorer and for those I have been using Google Chrome successfully.

    Bill H

    1. There are some parts of the club site where browsers behave differently, but so far I not heard of anyone who can log in on one browser but not another. Uncle Yap’s login problem is now resolved, by the way.

      Peter Biddlecombe
      Sunday Times Crossword Editor

  13. I found this harder than usual, about 40 minutes ending with SEMI. I was happy to come here and find it correct, since I had thought the ‘picking us up’ meant SU??, which became SUM?, and yes, John, above, I thought of SUMO, but I wasn’t clever enough to have thought of ‘domus’ or I might have gone with it. Eventually I twigged the wordplay as explained by Uncle Yap, but I was still hesitant as to why SEMI meant ‘home, perhaps’. I assume in the UK a semi-detatched house is shortened to just SEMI. I hadn’t understood the cryptic for MIRRORED entirely before coming here either, so thanks for that. Regards to all.
  14. Did anyone else have “sumo” for 1 down? I thought of “domus” as the beheaded (and reversed) home, and picking up the oppponent as a sumo move, and missed the Times reference. Far-fetched, perhaps,but today I thought several clues were. John
  15. I was too tired to tackle this on the day, but enjoyed it when I got round to it on Friday. Very much my sort of puzzle. 1ac (SAGAMORE) and the long down answers went straight in, which is always encouraging.

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