Times 25171 – tension mounting

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 23 minutes, though at the end of that I was still feeling a little unsure about a few of the answers, so I got back on to the Crossword Club and entered them in – it came back as a correct entry, so a trip back to the dictionaries was in order, to find how it was I managed to successfully complete it.

This was one of the more difficult ones for me in recent memory, and I was a long way from the setter’s wavelength. There’s also one very strange bit of enumeration and a few wordplay elements that I don’t recall seeing in the daily puzzle.

Away we go!

Across
1 CASINO: A, SIN in CO
4 RANSOMED: SOME in RAND – interesting that RANSOMED can mean both the person doing the ransoming and the one paying for it
10 MOORAGE: or MOO RAGE
11 FILINGS: FILLINGS(work on teeth) with one of the L’s missing
12 LI PO: Never heard of him, but obtainable from wordplay – LIP(kiss) before 0(love)
13 JUMBLE SALE: you can get SEAL by jumbling SALE
15 PREDICATE: I put this in as the only word that seemed to fit – the definition is a part of a sentence, and the wordplay is I,C(caught) in PREDATE(batten, prey on)
16 STROP: double definition
18 LASSO: ASS in LO, &lit
19 COTE D’AZUR: surprised no apostrophe in the enumeration – COSTED without S, AZ(map, as in street directory), UR(old city)
21 GO GO DANCER: double definition, though I don’t think that was what Father Christmas had in mind when he named a reindeer Dancer…
23 PROP: double definition
26 AQUARIA: AQUA REGIA without EG
27 AMORIST: agonized over this one, but once I looked it up afterwards – AORIST is a tense, so we put M in it
28 ENTRY FEE: cryptic definition
29 our across omission
 
Down
1 CAMEL: CARAMEL without RA
2 STOP PRESS: ST, OPPRESS
3 NOAH: cryptic definition – he had every creature twice over
5 AFFABLE: F(ire) in A,FABLE
6 SILVER,SIDE
7 out down omission
8 DISTEMPER: TEMP in (DRIES)*
9 MED(sea),USA(land)
14 DISORDERLY: (DRY,SOLDIER)*
15 P,ALS(o),GRAVE: new word to me, got it from wordplay
17 RAZORBILL: double definition
19 CONCAVE: C(chapter), then AV(authorized version) in ONCE
20 TREPAN: REP in TAN(as in “tan one’s hide”)
22 GAUNT: referring to John of Gaunt
24 POTTY: double def
25 COSH: anagram of SHOCK without the K at the end

41 comments on “Times 25171 – tension mounting”

  1. Left high and dry in the SE corner. After ages I saw PROP and POTTY. But stalled at COSH and CHILLY.

    10ac (MOO,RAGE) is a diabolical liberty but will raise some smiles. It did in my house earlier at least.

    George: 12ac, LIP = “one used to kiss” I suspect??

    Edited at 2012-05-24 05:00 am (UTC)

  2. Another very chewy offering, comprising no fewer than three unknowns (9, 12 and 20 – the last probably more of an unfamiliar), or four, if you count AQUA REGIA, which I was pleased to complete, even if it took an hour and three quarters.

    In a particularly bestial, if not beastly, puzzle, the COD must go to MOO-RAGE.

    To be precise, according to the account in Genesis, Noah had 14 (seven pairs) of every bird and clean animal, and one pair of each unclean animal.

  3. 73 minutes, but I think I nodded in and out of consciousness a couple of times towards the end when I got completely stuck.

    My DKs (or forgottens) were AORIST, PREDATE, AQUA REGIA and PALSGRAVE. And LI PO which when looked up in Wikipedia redirects to LI BAI.

    I thought the definition at 4ac was a bit weak and Noah didn’t have EVERYTHING twice over.

    I was convinced we were in for a pangram but I think we are three letters short.

    Edited at 2012-05-24 06:10 am (UTC)

  4. 36:20. I think at least 6 minutes were devoted to staring at the NW. Read some Li Po in high school (back when it was still Peking), not that that helped much in solving. My heart sank when I saw 9d (“Jesus, they expect me to know the names of bleeding jellyfish?”), but in fact it turns out I know the names of 2 jellyfish, knowledge that I’m sure will stand me in good stead some day. DK:silverside, fortunately easy to get nonetheless. COD to 1d, with 10ac a close second.
    Hardly worth mentioning, George, but you’ve got a typo at 7d.

    Edited at 2012-05-24 07:22 am (UTC)

    1. MEDUSA
      No problem remembering that one, it’s the name of an excellent pizza restaurant on the waterfront here in Skiathos.
  5. 25 minutes, but with a desperate and unjustified PALLGRAVE – it just looked marginally more likely. Couldn’t parse CAraMEL for toffee: I was looking for gunmen I could deprive of their sweets.
    Some very clever stuff in here. JUMBLE SALE was my last in and turned out to be one of those tricks I like; GO GO DANCER and MOO-RAGE today’s chuckles, POTTY almost rivalling the BIDET clue of a couple of days ago. LI PO from cryptic, MEDUSA took a long time to recall, though I should have essayed sea=MED earlier.
    NOAH had three sons, three daughters-in-law, only one wife, unusually for the patriarchs, and several small herds, not to mention a colony of Woodworm
    CoD to RAZORBILL, though several others could easily be stand-ins.
  7. Didn’t go much on this one. Never heard of LI PO; didn’t know the obscure predate=batten; agree 19A isn’t 4,5 (if you’re going to indicate word length at least get it right); didn’t know aorist; the mythical NOAH (no such real peson folks) certainly didn’t have everything; had met PALSGRAVE before but solved from wordplay alone

    All of that not balanced by real quality elsewhere, so 30 somewhat unsatisfactory minutes

      1. What is really interesting is that the story of the great flood occurs in most civilisations around the world and is of course often accompanied by a Noah figure. The flood is I think presumed to be associated with the melting of the ice at the end of the last ice age. In easy to read stuff Underworld by Graham Hancock makes for diverting holiday reading.
        1. Looks a bit Von Däniken-ish to me, but maybe worth a look. My preference in maverick ancient historians is for David Rohl (cf in this context “Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation” – “A Test of Time” is pretty good fun too). I see no particular reason why the Judaic legends should be treated with any less respect than others of the period, and certainly the almost universal examples of flood myths suggest some foundations in fact(s). Any proposals will almost certainly remain conjectural.
        2. I had always guessed – for no particular reason except that it used to pique my interest as a child – that people invented the flood to explain the presence of traces of marine life on mountain tops.

          Essex man

        3. The last ice age “ended” many thousands of years ago – too long I suspect for folk memory. Also I rather suspect it didn’t “end” in such a way as to produce great and sudden floods: rather more gradual than that. So I’ve always been highly suspicious of this explanation for flood myths.
          I freely admit this view is based on no actual knowledge.
        4. I read somewhere the theory that the Flood Myths are folk memory of the time the Med broke through to form the Black Sea. That must have been the granddaddy of all floods.
    3. (4,5) is the standard enumeration for COTE D’AZUR in Times crosswords. Apostrophes are simply ignored.
  8. A struggling 28 minutes (didn’t know Li Po or the Count, though he was clearly related to margraves and landgraves, so they came from wordplay with reasonable certainty). I never really felt on the right wavelength either, which meant it was one of those puzzles you’re happier to have done than be doing, if you see what I mean.
  9. Didn’t get stuck here because I remembered that The Times always ignores apostrophes in the enumeration (we had O’Neill as 6 not too long ago).
  10. 1h09m. I found this by far the most difficult puzzle for a very long time.
    There was some enjoyable stuff in here: I liked GO-GO DANCER and MOORAGE, for instance. And there were a number of clues that took me ages to see but were obvious in retrospect. JUMBLE SALE, for instance. I like clues like that.
    However there’s also some real obscurity in here. PREDICATE, PALSGRAVE, AQUARIA and AMORIST are all Mephisto clues. All in all too much of a grind for a daily puzzle for my money.
    1. >However there’s also some real obscurity in here. PREDICATE, PALSGRAVE, AQUARIA and AMORIST are all Mephisto clues

      There’s nothing there that someone who has been doing the Times crossword regularly for the last five years or so won’t have come across before – with the possible exception of “predate”, and I’m going to make the assumption that the sort of person who reads The Times will be capable of relating this to “predatory” and “predation”.

      1. It’s the use of “batten” that I dislike in the clue for PREDICATE. It’s really a rather obscure word. If it made for an elegant surface that would be one thing but it doesn’t.
        As it happens I remembered AQUA REGIA from crosswords past so that went straight in but I still think it’s a bit arcane to be used in this way.
        No complaints about LI PO incidentally: I didn’t know him but the wordplay is entirely clear.
        When a daily crossword is difficult just because the setter is using words like “batten”, “aorist” and “palsgrave” I don’t enjoy it very much. I’m saying no more than that and I’m afraid there’s no way you are going to persuade me that I enjoyed this one!
        Time to tackle today’s…
  11. Most was fairly straightforward, but LI PO rang no bells, distant or otherwise, and I was inordinately slow to see NOAH (my favourite clue when the penny dropped).

    I managed a double-typo, and a misreading of a clue gave me PALLGRAVE. So not a roaring success.

  12. Hard work with lots of obscurity which needed lots of staring at the wordplay. About 25 minutes. Not my favourite crossword today.
  13. Absolutely not up my alley. I thought quite a few of the clues were unsatisfactory and the Chinese poet just absurd. All in all a rather unrewarding grind – I was never on the setter’s wavelength, and I’m not sure that I would want to be.

    essex man

    1. In what sense is the clue to LI PO “just absurd”? Even those who hadn’t heard of him should have been able to guess the answer pretty readily from the wordplay and the checked letters.
    2. Li Po is hardly absurd; he’s one of the pantheon of classic Chinese writers. I found it refreshing to have a reference to a non-Western literature (although it took me forever to get it).
      1. So presumably we can look forward to the appearance of Ono no Komachi ( one of the six geniuses of Japanese poetry), or Uhwudong (variously Awoodong or Uheuldong) the leading gisaeng of the Joseon dynasty. I shall have to dig out my old high school books.
  14. I’m rather impatient with the amount of alternative spellings as answers nowadays. Li Po, as shown in Wikipedia, is no better than third preference spelling.
  15. 55 minutes not counting the extra time wondering why AMORIST was so. No problem with LI PO, though, who was my FOI. Not too many gimmes in this one and my feelings about it echo Tim’s; from the vantage point of hindsight it was actually quite enjoyable (batten notwithstanding). MOORAGE was outrageous, but COD to GO-GO DANCER.
  16. Struggled through in 45 minutes, ending with STROP, finally trusting that there must be a UK-ism for the ‘fit of rage’ meaning. All the words or pieces of wordplay that others have mentioned, I didn’t know either. I’ll add PROP=forward (rugby?), and DISTEMPER=paint(really, or am I missing something?). So it was pretty tough. But, you can’t help but smile at the GO-GO DANCER, MOORAGE, snd JUMBLE SALE. The latter, by the way, was another unknown to me which I forgot to mention above. Happy to have gotten through this correctly. Regards.
    1. Hi Kevin

      Yes, PROP is from rugby

      DISTEMPER in this sense is rather old hat, a sort of watery paint

      JUMBLE SALE does exactly what it says on the tin along with “garage sale” to store away for future use

  17. This whole week of the Times puzzles has been depressing for me – the word of the week in the blogs this week seems to be “chewy”. If indeed chewy, it rendered me toothless! Anyway, I manfully slogged my way atleast an hour each day and got some rather measly returns. Gratified to find that some of the clues attracted flak, giving me some solace. Getting ready for a weekend wine binge I must say.
  18. 10:14 for me – slower than it should have been, since this was very much my sort of puzzle, but at least better than the last couple of days.

    Most enjoyable.

  19. Well done. But 29 across – Cold+CHILLY. Cold + C Flat? No – because that means HILLY.
    1. It’s an awkward clue, but it seemed like the most obvious to leave out of the across clues.

      In cold = def = CHILLY (you might be able to think of the “in” as a link work between the wordplay that is to come after “cold”)

      cold = C
      flat? no = HILLY

  20. I also finished this one thinking ‘most enjoyable’, so I’m surprised there are so many complaints!
  22. Add me to the list of the disgruntled. If a definition is going to be cryptic, it should at least be accurate.

    (I’m interested, for those of the Noah myth school, how it is possible to be so confident of his non-existence. There is documentary evidence for his existence, and as far as I can tell no evidence to prove his non-existence. The strongest case would seem to be the other flood myths, in which case they probably aren’t all correct, but how would you pick which was an original and which a copy, with that kind of certainty?)

    I’m also disappointed that there isn’t a sweet creature called a COW(b)O(y)S, because it sounds tasty.

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