Times 25174 – Shakespeare on the Internet

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 39 minutes

Music: Mozart Piano Concertos, Kempff/Leitner

I was quite slow getting started, reading a fair number of clues before lighting on 21 down and wrestling with it for a bit. I’d be surprised if any other solver started with that one, but it broke the ice.

With this grid, it is very helpful if you can get the long ones quickly. I was far from doing so, having only the meal and the second half of the resort for a long time. I needed the top long across to get anywhere with the top half, having completed the bottom in about 10 minutes. Believe it or not, the long one at 2 down was my last in, although I did pause another moment to amend an answer I had marked as possibly incorrect.

Across
1 REPELLENT, REP + ELLEN + T[rip], one of the last ones I entered.
6 VICAR. VI + CAR. I was wrongly thinking of the actual names of the smaller numbers in classical languages, hen, duo, treis, unus, duo, tres.
9 UNINTENTIONALLY, UN(IN TENT)ION ALLY. Got this one from the ‘cool wine’ part, a cryptic cliche that is very useful to setters and solvers alike.
10 ETHANE, E + THANE.
11 SPECTRAL, [in]SPECT[o]R + AL. I just put this in from the literal, which was probably a wise move. A rather devious cryptic here.
13 SHOP SOILED. SHOPS + OIL + ED.
14 Omitted – look for it!
16 AVER, [r]AVER. This word is often an element in the wordplay, so should come readily to mind.
17 VIDEO NASTY, anagram of DIES ON TV, SAY. Never heard this expression, must be UK-centric, but easy enough to work out.
19 ASTEROID, anagram of RAISED TO, with a giveaway literal.
20 HAIRDO, HAIR + DO, with a properly deceptive literal.
23 PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH, P + LOUGH + MANS + L[a]UNCH. I saw the ‘lunch’ part first, but not really difficult.
24 EPHOD, EP(H[usband])OD. How ‘dope’ = ‘train’, I don’t quite see, but this must be the answer. Our honorable Australian correspondent has kindly explained this point in the very first comment.
25 NERVOUSLY, anagam of SURELY NO + V[aliant].
 
Down
1 Omitted.
2 PLIGHT ONE’S TROTH, PLIGHT + anagram of TO SHORTEN. For a long time, I couldn’t think of any final word that fit except for ‘tooth’.
3 LUTENIST, L + U + TE(NI)ST. I needed to cryptic to get the correct spelling.
4 ERNE, sounds like EARN.
5 TAILPIECES, TAIL + PIECES. Not knowing much about violin construction, I first put ‘trimpieces’ and then corrected from the cryptic.
6 VENICE, V(E[uropea]N)ICE.
7 COLORADO SPRINGS, COLOR(ADO SPRING)S. The ‘in US’ goes with ‘greens, say’, to indicate the US spelling of ‘colours’, and ‘resort’ alone is the definition. But Colorado Springs is in fact in the US, so the clue fails to mislead.
8 ROYAL NAVY, re-expansion of R[ecorded] N[ow].
12 MILITIAMEN, anagram of TIME IN LIMA, where the first thing a skilled solver would do is grab the ‘milit-‘ root and try that.
13 STAR-APPLE, ST(AR P)PLE. I was wondering how ‘stale’ = ‘basic’, then I saw it. Demerits to anyone who carelessly put in ‘pineapple’ without thinking.
15 INTAGLIO, IN + TAG + OIL backwards. Easy enough if you’ve heard of the word.
18 FRIGID, F + RIG + I + D, with a euphemised literal.
21 OCHRY, O + CH(Companion of Honour) + RY. Some hoary cryptic cliches will give you this uncommon word, if you just trust them.
22 KNAR, RANK upside down.

39 comments on “Times 25174 – Shakespeare on the Internet”

  2. Enjoyed this very much and glad to see the long answers weren’t all giveaways. Much easier on the right-hand side; with the left a bit harder, especially the top left.

    The use of “painting” = OIL in two clues (13ac, 15dn) was a bit strange for the Times I thought. (As did Jack I see.) Had to think pretty hard about STAR-APPLE of which I knew nought. Very tempted by SOAP- for some reason. COD to ASTEROID where I didn’t see the anagram for a fair while.

    2dn brought to mind the outrageous pun from Gravity’s Rainbow (p576) where Slothrop is dressed as the pig-hero Plechazunga and runs off with a rather prepossessing lady pig.

    Now I’m off to intaglio the twelve stones of my ephod.

  3. Technically a DNF for me as I ran out of steam at 45 minutes with 4dn, 15dn and 24ac missing so I decided to get a little assistance from a dictionary.

    I’m not sure I would ever have thought of ERNE/earn = net and I didn’t know EPHOD anyway. INTAGLIO I have met before but the missing T and G failed to come to mind.

    Thanks for explaining DO PE, McT, which I had also failed to spot – bad after all the PE/PT discussions here of late!

    OIL for ‘painting’ twice in the same puzzle was a bit lazy.

    Edited at 2012-05-28 05:47 am (UTC)

    1. DNF, all but 24 ac in 20 minutes, but never heard of EPHOD and it didn’t show in crosswordsolver.org for E_H_D. Never heard of OCHRY as an adjective either but it was obvious. Otherwise an easy enough Monday puzzle.
  4. 50 minutes with two wrong, both unknown, KNAR (‘oner’ – only word I could come up with, ‘though I considered ‘kn–‘) and INTAGLIO (went for ‘inramlio’, ‘though it didn’t sound very Italian).

    Don’t much care for 6 ac, with VI for an indefinite small number. COD to EPHOD, despite being unfamiliar with the word, for the clever ‘do PE’ device.

    I don’t suppose anyone else parsed ETHANE as ETHAN + E with much head-shaking? No. Good. I’ll pretend I didn’t too.

  5. 30 minutes, including the 5 it took wondering how dope could be train, except in a cycling context. Thanks mct for the dope on that one. I’m still wondering why plight = case, though, or is it “case presented”?. Can anyone enlighten me? RANK and SPECTRAL were good but COD to ROYAL NAVY
    1. I think it’s one of those two step thesaurus clues where both case and plight can be referenced as situation or condition.
      1. Chambers, Collins & the ODE build dangerous, difficult or otherwise unfortunate into the condition or situation, which is how I’d envisage a plight. dictionary.com admits these things are usually associated with the situation, which I suppose allows they sometimes aren’t.
    2. “in a sorry case” slightly obsolescent equivalent to “in a sorry plight”
      1. My point was that all the major sources think the “sorry” is redundant in the latter case…er, plight…er, example.
  6. 17’37” on the clock, with all the usual mistypings and a last scan to make sure everything was right. Hate it when my one wrong is just a typo.
    Really enjoyed this one – very few clues yielding to instant interpretation.
    If I was being really picky, I’d observe that “propose” in 2d is the precursor to plighting ones troth, in that after the first you can back out (these days without a breach of promise suit) but after the latter it’s too late. Propose is a suspended, plighting a life sentence.
    Twice troubled by the A or E conundrum – LUTA/ENIST and REPELLA/ENT. Reason 1 in “Why I Prefer Cryptics”.
    CoD would have gone to EPHOD if I’d worked out the do PE thing; instead it goes to the complex INSPECTOR. ASTEROID and VIDEO NASTY were very pleasing semi &lits, the first with a particularly well concealed anagram.

    Edited at 2012-05-28 06:34 am (UTC)

    1. I’m intrigued – what is the ‘complex INSPECTOR’? Things must have got to a pretty pass when I’m baffled by COD nominations!
      1. Terribly sorry, one short-cut too many – SPECTRAL, with the treatment of the letters of inspector, was the clue in had in mind. I still think it was pretty good!
        1. Not at all. Didn’t read the blog entry for that one. Now I know how I got it. Thanks to you and apologies to vinyl.
      2. Glad I’m not the only one baffled by this. I was going to say so, but then it slipped my mind.

        Edited at 2012-05-28 07:03 am (UTC)

  7. Not such a good start to the week with three wrong, but I don’t think I’d have done any better if I’d spent all day.

    ‘inramlio’ (like Ulaca), ‘ethad’ as it sounded like it could be, and ‘knur’ thinking it was a rh word.

    However, I enjoyed this one. Probably for me just about the right difficulty. Wouldn’t have said that 6 months ago!

  8. Would have been OK, but I became fixated on the idea that 22d was really KNUR and did double duty as a Scandinavian christian name, probably a villain in a Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell novel. LOI and COD to plighting one’s troth.
  9. 22 minutes with two mistakes, a) making the troops singular and b) going for KNUR (not familiar with KNAR, so didn’t even look any further).
    1. I too wanted knur because it comes from trunk backwards (giving rise) and means the same as knar. So far so good but unfortunately I could not relate it to row which rather rules it out as a good answer!
      1. As I was saying the other day, these annoying less-common alternative spellings …
  10. I did most of this in about 15 minutes, but ground to a complete halt on 24ac. I considered every possible combination of letters trying to find a word meaning “train” to fit D__E, but it never occurred to me to look for two words. I’m very impressed by anyone who managed to get this without knowing the word.
    I thought I’d have two wrong. 15dn was one of those clues where you have to choose between the most likely-looking word (INTAGLIO) and the most conventional interpretation of the wordplay (INRAMLIO). Generally in these situations whichever one I pick is the wrong one, but not today. It has appeared before so perhaps I remembered it subconsciously.
    1. Indeed it has – almost to the day (27 May) three years ago, and I wrote at the time that it was new to me then. It’s depressing that my brain didn’t retain it.

      I note that EPHOD also turned up almost to the day (26 May) three years ago and once again knowledge gained then I subsequently lost.

      1. INTAGLIO has actually turned up more recently than that: 22 April 2011. It also appeared in a Jumbo in December.
        1. You know how to ruin my day! At least for the puzzle I found I only commented on the word but for the one you found I wrote the flippin’ blog! And it was more recent.
          1. Sorry!
            I really don’t think you should beat yourself up over it though. These obscure words appear all the time and it would take a superhuman to remember all of them. I typically encounter two or three unknowns in every puzzle and if I remember a quarter of them I think I’m doing well.
  12. I meant to say that, as so often happens with our American friend, the hidden was my last in! This time ROUTE (1 dn).
  13. 11 minutes – the long ones went in fairly quickly and the shorter ones involved more head-scratching. EPHOD from definition, and PLIGHT because it was the only thing that looked like it fit in there. I rather liked the clue for SPECTRAL
  14. Another of the KNUR bunch. Whilst it is clearly KNAR that is wanted, the fact that the two words mean the same, allows for a plausible word play (even if it is inelegant). I bunged it in at speed, with a slight tut at the clumsiness and never thought to go back and over-analyse.

    So in a competitive environment, surely this submission must be given credence : “something sticking out”=def, “of”=link word, as in arising from, “trunk giving rise to row”=wordplay, ie the word trunk with an unspecified row of letters rising. This would only work in a down clue, as is often the case.

  16. Absolutely exhausted after 18 holes in tropical heat I fell asleep whilst solving this – no reflection on the setter just my advancing years.

    Good solid puzzle with much to enjoy, particularly the spooky policeman

  17. 27 minutes with a further ten trying unsuccessfully to justify the half guessed half very dimly remembered ephod or find an alternative to it. COD to that simply for the neatness of do/pe. Not too keen on union ally for brother worker; or on ochry, a hairball of a word. Nice touches elsewhere.
  18. 55 minutes for me with FOI ETHANE closely followed by the Countrymans Midday feast which jumped off the page as I read the clue. After 30 minutes I was left with the most of the NW and 24ac. After 40 minutes I was left with E_H_D and it took another 15 minutes staring at scribbled 4 letter words beginning with D and ending in E before I saw the clever split. I resisted the temptation to shove Pineapple in, and managed to parse the answer correctly but didn’t see how 6dn or 11ac worked fully until coming here. Thanks Vinyl. I had no trouble with INTAGLIO seeing the In and OIL straight away and then TAG as in what Graffiti artists do shoved its way to the front of my mind. KNAR went in quickly from knowing that a gnarled tree trunk has bits sticking out and extrapolating that gnars could easily be spelled with a K. Quite an enjoyable puzzle, and even done before midnight.
  19. 10:28 for me, with the last minute or two spent pondering “train” = DOPE (or alternatively whether there was another spelling of EPHOD that would fit) before light finally dawned. On the other hand I didn’t waste too much time pondering 2dn, despite not being entirely convinced of “case (presented)” = PLIGHT.

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