Times 25256

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 43:35

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this one. A lot of the clues seemed very straightforward, but I was slowed down by a handful at the end, and a couple that didn’t seem to quite work for me – 3d & 24d. Not many leapt out at me as being particularly clever. Although 2d had a good lift & separate required on ‘swan song’, and 22a raised a smile (or at least a groan).

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 SHORT + HAND
6 RE(C)AP
9 B(R)EAKER
10 STEAMER = StEeRs about TEAM
11 ERA = alternate letters of both hEaRsAy and rEtRiAl
12 THE GOLD RUSH – dd – An easy one for me having recently watched this as one of several Chaplin films as part of my ongoing imdb Top 250 challenge.
14 SCRUM + Prepared – to steal apples, hence scrumpy as a home brewed cider made from them
15 CE + RULE + AN – a deep blue colour, similar to that of a clear sky. Not a word I knew, but could (eventually) deduce from the wordplay.
17 NOTIONAL = NO + (INTO A)* + reaL – Nice surface to appeal to us mathematicians!
19 F(L)OR + IN
22 OUT OF BOUNDS – dd – groan!
23 MACe – A mace can be a decorated stick as well as a weapon, such as the one carried ceremoniously in the House of Commons.
25 NAMIBIA = N + AMPHIBIA without the PoucH
27 G(RAN)ITE
28 R + ACER
29 ANTIPASTO = (STATION PA)*
Down
1 StABLE
2 O + PEN + AIR – very neat use of ‘swan song’
3 TAKE TIME OFF – I assume the idea here is to remove the T (time) from ‘it’ to leave I (one), but I can’t quite get it to work in my head. ‘How it leaves one’ would work, and ‘how t leaves it’ would work cryptically, but I’m not convinced about the wording as it stands.
4 A + G + REED – I wasn’t sure that ‘reed’ on its own could be used to describe a reed instrument, such as an oboe, but it was in my dictionary so it’s fine.
5 DISC + OVER
6 RYE = “WRY”
7 COM(PUT)E
8 PART + H + E + NON
13 DOUBLES HARP
14 SUNDOWNER = (ROUND + N/S/E/W)* – although I entered this from the definition alone, and only parsed it post-solve.
16 PAN(OR)AMA – Darien is the old name for the isthmus of Panama, so I’m not sure that perhaps is the ideal qualifier to use here, but maybe I’m just being picky. I didn’t know this until I looked it up post solve, but the answer was clear from the rest of the clue.
18 TOTEMIC = (I + MET) in COT all rev – I nearly went for TITANIC, but couldn’t make it fit the wordplay.
20 RE + MAINS
21 KNIGHT = K + (THING) – &lit, although did knights actually do much jumping? I suppose you could argue that the chesspiece jumps, so that’s presumably what the setter had in mind.
24 CREaky + DOor – another cryptic instruction I wasn’t overly happy with was ‘ruined’ to indicate removal. It says ‘anagram’ to me, but nothing else.
26 BARe – it took me an age to get beyond PUB and INN for three letter drinking establishments.

33 comments on “Times 25256”

  1. A bit too hard for me this morning. But an interesting solve in the end.

    16dn: Darien was a bit obscure I felt.
    12ac: Didn’t parse this as a dd: rather as def + charade: THE GOLD (Olympic winner), RUSH (race).
    21dn: Jumping thing? Well … the German is Der Springer and it’s the only piece that can jump over others during its legal move.

    Edited at 2012-08-31 01:17 am (UTC)

  2. 37 minutes for a puzzle I enjoyed a lot. I thought the KNIGHT clue was brilliant, and yes, I’m sure the setter had in mind that the chess piece can jump others although of course “jump” is the anagrind here

    I didn’t know CERULEAN,RACER as a snake or “Darien” but I wrote the answers in with confidence.

    Re 3dn I read it as: To leave “IT” as “I”, TAKE TIME OFF. “One” in the clue not being a reference to the “I” in “IT”.

    Edited at 2012-08-31 01:14 am (UTC)

      1. Can’t edit following your response, but I meant “jumping” is the anagrind at 21dn.

        Edited at 2012-08-31 01:19 am (UTC)

        1. It is indeed. But the def is &lit, so “jumping” also has to describe the answer. (See below … in response to Dave’s doubts.)

          Edited at 2012-08-31 01:33 am (UTC)

          1. Yes, that as well, or rather principally. It’s a multi-faceted clue – that’s why it’s such a beauty!
  3. Wohoo! As someone whose average effort is 90% complete after an hour, it was lovely to beach on the luxurious shores of sub-30 for a holiday.

    I really enjoyed this one – enough easy clues to get you started and it was a steady solve to attack each corner in turn thereafter. 21D was a great clue.

    My LOI, CERULEAN, I seem to recall from a few weeks back but I can’t find the ref.

  4. Welcome, David. Glad you enjoyed it, though I was more along the line of Dave Perry, who liked it less. About 15 minutes or so, LOI being REMAINS. I tossed many in from either the wordplay or def., without full understanding, but from the correct entry being apparent. Didn’t know of SCRUMP, or why ‘gite’ is ‘holiday home’. But overall, not so wonderful, with COD to NAMIBIA. Regards.
    1. Hi Kevin. GITE is directly from the French and means a cottage (or even farmhouse). Very popular form of cheapish holiday – I used to take my brood to one most years
      1. Thanks Jimbo, I appreciate the instruction, and clearly my French is, well, typical of an American, i.e., almost non-existent.
  5. 18m, but with a very careless PARTHANON at 8dn.
    I thought this a perfectly enjoyable puzzle. 21dn in particular is excellent.
    Darien is familiar to me from Keats:

     Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
     He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
     Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
     Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

    Oh all right, actually it’s familiar to me from Bertie Wooster quoting (or misquoting) this bit of Keats.

  6. DNF. Messed up at 23ac where I had MAN (staff, MANe short coat, although I suppose a mane isn’t really a coat). Since I’ve never heard of CREDO meaning music in church I ground to a halt on N-E-O, convinced the checkers must be right and unable to understand the wordplay either.
    1. I only knew CREDO from the long-running religious TV series that ITV used to have on Sunday early evenings in the 80s.
  7. I too was wondering about mane for coat for a while. Finally saw it for a 20-minute solve. Enjoyed 3 and being reminded of 12; otherwise found it a trifle mechanical. I think ‘ruined’ in 24 can suggest a falling-away of panel(s) and works. I had a flutter of doubt as to stable for solid though.
  8. 15 minutes, and I liked both 3 and 27, the latter as a neat &littish sort of clue,and the former as something we might need to think of a name for. Howja, perhaps as in howja get A from B?
    Perhaps the limitation on such clues is that other answers can be quite believable: I had TAKE TIME OUT until the deceased marsupial, which was itself a chucklesome Uxbridge sort of clue, ruled it out.
    CREDO is at the centre of the Latin Mass, perhaps these days better know from its choral settings.

    Thanks to Keriothe for the Keats quote – it saved me time looking it up, but perfectly encapsulates that first sight experience. These days we have to visit far moons and planets for the same hit – the latest from Mars comes close even if it’s not the first such view. Of course, it can have unpredictable effects: Compare stout Cortez and his men with the Masters of Krikkit: “it’ll have to go”.

    Edited at 2012-08-31 09:24 am (UTC)

  9. Enjoyable and relatively straightforward puzzle for a Friday. About 40 mins for me. Helped at 16 dn by knowing the Darien/Panama reference from the Keats poem. Agree with Jack that KNIGHT was top-class, and thanks also to Jack for his succinct explanation of TAKE TIME OFF – a very neat clue now I fully understand it. I’d initially entered TAKE TIME OUT until I realised that 22 ac had to be OUT OF BOUNDS and changed the OUT to OFF. Thought BAR at 26 dn was a bit feeble.
  10. Not my best Friday effort with two missing (Panorama and Credo) and one wrong (Man not Mac at 23). Hadn’t heard of Darien. Thought Open Air and Knight were excellent.
    As a golfer, Out Of Bounds raised a smile. I’ll be hoping to avoid that when I play next week.
  11. 15 minutes for all but 15a but then I got interrupted so I don’t know how much longer that took, except that it was several minutes. Part of the delay was reading “receiving” as an inserticator (not unreasonably IMHO) which meant that the article could only be “A” leaving ?E?U?EN for the church/rule (or indeed “church rule”) element. I feel somehow cheated given that it’s a pretty obscure word.
  12. 16:00 but another day, another typo giving another 2 errors.

    I’m wrestling over the etiquette of claiming a time in such circumstances. On the one hand, I know I would never have written OUT OF BAUNDS by hand. On the other, as Pete Biddlecombe always reminds Championship entrants, a little time checking your answers is time well spent (I’m too sloppy to bother).

    KNIGHT is neat.

    1. Personally I don’t consider this sort of typo an error: if you wouldn’t do it under competition conditions it doesn’t count. Accordingly if I had misspelled PARTHENON for this reason I would have given it to myself. Unfortunately on this occasion it was because I can’t spell and didn’t pay attention to the wordplay.
    2. First inference is: you can’t claim this one.

      Logic: you correctly assert you can’t spell BOUNDS as BAUNDS by mistake.
      You can’t hit an A in error for an O, separated as they are by several parsecs on the keyboard.

      Therefore, you must have mispelled PANARAMA, either dyslexically putting one on PANAMA’s As in the wrong place, or else just as a blonde moment (note: both these errror mechanisms are common in my solving, though I’m no longer blonde).

      So, a true error, can’t claim the time.

      Isla

  13. As most others have said an easy puzzle that is a bit artisan apart from 21D which I think is a real cracker. This will amaze some but I knew Darien from the poem, having had to learn it by heart at school!

    Not sure that scrumping is stealing from a farmer. I used to go scrumping as a boy and I grew up in the centre of London! I think of it as taking particularly windfalls from fruit trees – which could be in a back garden or an orchard.

    1. Coincidentally I learned elsewhere in the Times today that this is still stealing: the fruit belongs to the owner of the tree (not necessarily a farmer I grant you) even after it falls, including if it falls on a neighbour’s land.
    2. Sorry, Jim, but I’ve checked several dictionaries and they all list it as stealing, so I shall expect you to hand yourself in at your local police station immediately!
  14. Slowly getting the hang of the language of the crossword (home = in that sort of thing) which helped me with 20d and for once understood all the clues although about 25% was done with dictionary.

    However I still can get it totally wrong – I read 27a as GRAN being an elderly relative looked after (managed) in accommodation (home) as a break (holiday) for family with and being a suffix meaning “made of”.

    And the kangaroo took ages.

  15. Just managed to break 20 minutes which is good for me!LOI was cerulean which rang some distant bells but mainly got from the word play. Put in SUNDOWNER and NAMIBIA without bothering to parse so thanks to Dave for the explanations. Don’t comment very often but visit the blog every day (post solve) so thanks to all for your comments which have brought my solving on immeasurably.
  16. Managed this one in 45 minutes but with RACAR instead of RACER as I just didn’t know it and my 50-50 guess was the wrong one. Started with a flying NE but then slowed down a bit. Still a good time for me, and I even managed to find time to do today’s puzzle today! I struggled to parse TAKE TIME OFF and like zabadak I had TAKE TIME OUT at first until the kangaroo clicked into place. I liked the jumping KNIGHT. CREDO went in as soon as I had GRANITE and ANTIPASTO as I used to hear it sung every Sunday at Mass as a kid when Latin ruled the roost. John

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