Times 25,133

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
11:22 on the club timer. Mostly straightforward stuff, with a tendency towards some more teasing cryptic def. / charade type clueing, which I liked.

Across
1 RICK – (PAT)RICK. Patrick is one of the standard crossword Irishmen, but often reverts to the diminutive Pat, so the RICK removed from his name on such occasions is what is required here.
3 OBJETS D’ART – (STARTEDJOB)*.
9 GENESIS – GENES + IS.
11 GOLDING – GOLD + IN + G(old), Nobel Laureate most famous for Lord of the Flies.
12 COFFERDAM – [OFFER + Dryness] in CAM, &lit.; in so far as I ever thought about the concept at all, I suspect I thought of it as two words.
13 KNAVE – King + NAVE; “honour” in the sense of a major card in bridge etc.
14 DIRECT ACTION – (REACT)* in DICTION.
18 PRESS RELEASE – cryptic def.; if you wanted to get out of a seat belt, you’d press (the) release (button).
21 FLORA – indicated twice in wordplay by the girl’s name and [Left in FORA]. So why the unnecessary “girl”? No idea.
22 HEADDRESS – H.E. + ADDRESS.
24 INITIAL – if you initial a document, it would generally involve the writing of two or three letters, unless you happen to be as nominally well-endowed as England cricket captain JWHT Douglas or someone similar.
25 PREVIEW – [REV. I] in PEW; more charades, i.e. sitting in church involves being in a pew.
26 MADAGASCAR – MAD + [GAS in A CAR].
27 GLAD – GLAD(ioli), GLAD(ys), and GLAD (“willing and eager”). This time the extra “girl” is there to make sense of the surface, so not superfluous. Retirement-bound Dame Edna Everage regularly appears with a “bunch of glads”.
 
Down
1 REGICIDE – C.I.D. in (EIGER)rev.
2 CONIFERS – 1 in CONFERS.
4 BASED – BASE + Daughter.
5 ERGOMETER – ERGO + MET + E.R.
6 SELF KNOWLEDGE – “Know thyself” is a central part of Socrates’ philosophy, according to the picture of him given by Plato, and by defintion nobody else can have that sort of knowledge.
7 APICAL – [1, Cold] in A PAL; not a common word, but assuming you know “apex”, not beyond working out.
8 TIGGER – in the works of AA Milne, Tigger was famous for bouncing; remove one of the Gs to get the proper spelling.
10 SPEECH READING – half new to me, as I’d only ever heard it referred to as “lip-reading”; is this an English / American thing, or just ignorance on my part? I did, however, know the other half of the reference, which may be the more obscure part: MPs in the House of Commons are traditionally supposed to make their speeches on the hoof rather than reading a prepared text (the HoC website declares this practice “alien to the custom of the House and injurious to the traditional conduct of its debates”). Still, I left it till last, when the checkers made it clear it couldn’t really be anything else.
15 AESCHYLUS – Hard in (CLUESSAY)* gives the Father of Tragedy.
16 MATERIAL – evidencE in [MA. TRIAL].
17 SEESAWED – SEE + SAWED.
19 AFFIRM – A Female + FIRM.
20 COPIED – 1 in COPED, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, of course.
23 ALPHA – finAL PHAse.

46 comments on “Times 25,133”

  1. 53 minutes, with one wrong (‘honied’ for COPIED). Like Tim, I had to trust to a notional American English rendering of ‘lip-reading’ at 10dn. This clue was made doubly difficult on account of the fact that one Titan of the Commons, Churchill. read his speeches verbatim (from cue-cards which had stage directions such as ‘PAUSE’ and ‘COUGH’). COFFERDAM from the wordplay and RICK by taking ‘-ie’ off that well known Irishman Rickie.
  2. 15:17, with 1ac wrong. The desire to beat the clock once again led me to submit once I’d filled all the squares, even though I was doubtful about BASED–I only parsed it after. I put in ‘rack’ instead of RICK, not understanding the clue (rack=strain?); then I thought of ‘race’ (strain). Never heard of SPEECH-READING (I’m American), but my memories of Commons debates don’t include anyone holding notes, so …

    Edited at 2012-04-10 02:45 am (UTC)

  3. And I really rather liked this puzzle as a light-medium example of the art. 12ac (COFFERDAM), of which I knew nought, is pretty darn good with its &lit flavour. So my COD: the kind of clue I’d love to dream up.

    Edited at 2012-04-10 07:49 am (UTC)

  4. 13:44 .. definitely the sort of crossword that’s easier to solve the more crosswords you’ve solved, if that makes sense.

    Never heard of SPEECH-READING, either.

    I thought TIGGER was wonderful (‘cos Tigger’s are wonderful things).

  5. Douglas, who was nicknamed ‘Johnny Won’t Hit Today’ for his obdurate batting style, had a photo prominently displayed at Felsted School. ‘Though a little young to have played against him, I was in the field when a certain Derek Pringle tonked our attack about for 150 odd.
  6. I must have been very tired because I actually fell asleep whilst solving this so I have no accurate record of time taken. I do know that I struggled to make progress after an initial burst of energy and I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength most of the time.

    Last in was TIGGER because I suffered a deprived childhood and am unaware of many finer details of things Pooh. I was looking for a kangaroo anyway not a tiger.

    Other DKs were COFFERDAM and APICAL and despite my interest in UK politics and constitutional matters since my teenage years I have managed to remain ignorant of the political custom referred to in 10ac. Don’t Chancellors read their Budget speeches then? It’s the only H of C event I watch with any regularity and they certainly have always appeared to be doing so.

    Progress in the vicinity of 6dn wasn’t helped by writing SELF-AWARENESS. I would have known the saying referred to but was unaware it was from Socrates so that part of the clue was of no help putting me on the right track.

    My run of difficulties with weekday puzzles continues but I enjoyed a respite over the weekend.

    Edited at 2012-04-10 05:48 am (UTC)

  7. COFFERDAM unknown (and, for me, ungettable from the wordplay – despite seeing both CAM and the D). Does anyone ever use SPEECH READING rather than lip reading? Thanks for the blog, tim: I share your thoughts entirely.
    1. From what I can gather from the web, “speech-reading” (hyphenated or alloneword) appears to be the new “correct” term. I suppose because more than the reading of lips is involved.
      1. I know it’s stuffy but can we keep the site clear of a certain kind of name-calling nastiness? We’re not just chatting to our mates.
      2. I didn’t take “speech reading” to be a substitute for “lip reading” here. I thought it just meant reading a printed version of a speech, thus “enabling one to see what someone is saying”.
    2. “Does anyone ever use SPEECH READING rather than lip reading?”

      No. I never heard of that half of the clue either.

  8. …I thought coffer dam was two words. But the “dam” is for putting in honied. At least I was in good company (ulaca’s). And another thing, is it the convention to omit the apostrophe in a clue -in this case “d’art”- and present it as one word ? 1ac was my LOI as I toyed with rack and race as Kevin did. 1d was wonderful in that it reminded me of Stephen Fry’s Uxbridge Dictionary of English definition of “Countryside”: The murder of Piers Morgan.But COD for me was 18ac as it made me laugh out loud. 1hr 41mins.
  9. 29 minutes, the second half all in NW quarter. As some others had to guess at cofferdam but it had to be. Not sure about the reality behind Tigger, who seems pretty real to me, whatever the misspelling genesis. And mad for angry is scarcely an Americanism now, even if it was once. Haven’t met the saying – or is it a quotation? – about imitation and flattery. What with speech-reading as well, all in all a little edgy about this one.
      1. The fuel that runs my heating is Gas. And I would never say someone was ‘mad’ meaning ‘angry’ which I consider an Americanism. So with respect, I disagree!
  10. Well, I was just popping in to say how easy it all was today, but it seems not everyone has found it so. If you want a really interesting crossword, try Anax’s effort in today’s Independent (warning: may contain theme!)
  11. Convinced myself that this was harder than it really was, so it took me 50 minutes. I even rejected RICK and COFFERDAM on first reading.

    Nonetheless thought it a clever puzzle, though I do share other’s reservations about SPEECH READING. I always thought that the only time MPs were not supposed to read from notes was during Prime Minister’s Questions. Anyone so doing is met with a cacophony of zoo-like noises. I can remember Aneurin Bevan speaking for hours without notes …… but that’s the Welsh for you! I can’t imagine Enoch Powell’s finely crafted sentences or Michael Foot’s erudition being so delivered.

  12. Wierd puzzle.

    Is 6D cryptic? Where is 10D coming from – most important Commons speeches are read from copious notes and it’s lip reading as far as I’m concerned and will stay that way – and is it cryptic? Had to check spelling of the author at 15D. I assume 21A is 2 definitions + a cryptic? A lot of very easy stuff too – 18A for example

    20 slightly bemused minutes to solve

    1. Nice to find someone else who can’t spell weird – it looks wierd either way to me. 22 minutes, a good 5 of which were spent looking stupidly at 1a.
  13. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” old adage.

    Massachusetts is Mass not Ma, isn’t it?

    PS

  14. DNF. I put the well known novelist Goldini at 11, thinking Goldsmith didn’t fit, forgetting all about William, one of my favourite writers. Oh, well. That messed up TIGGER and I went to sleep in the process of trying to sort him out. Too many late nights and comfortable chairs. Otherwise, pretty easy, if a bit wing and prayerish. COD to COFFERDAM over OBJETS D’ART
  15. Quite a nice little poser I thought…..are you being a frosty poppet this morning Jimbo? Any puzzle that has Aeschylus and Tigger can’t be that bad. No problems with “speech reading”, perhaps one for the younger solvers (those in their fifties).
  16. 11 minutes for me too – I think Sotira is right about the more crosswords you do…. I hadn’t heard of speech reading either. Always enjoy a mention of young Tigger in a crossword.
  17. Had second reading at first, eventually amending it to speech when I had the ‘c’ of direct action. Even if speech is now accepted will, like previous observer, continue to use lip. None the wiser why ‘G’ of Golding means ‘origin’. Or is this a reference to ‘G’ of gold? Knave is a new definition of ‘honour’ although the clue was a simple solve. 49 minutes solving and guessing.

    Enigma

  18. On form today, 18 minutes and correct, worked smoothly from the bottom up. My CoD is TIGGER because our very bouncy large poodle is so and aptly called. Thought there were some great and amusing clues, and agree with the comment about “d’art” being clued as a 4 letter word, am uncomfortable with that idea. 3 ac was my LOI. What’s wrong with ‘angry’ for ‘mad’?
    1. I don’t think I have ever seen an apostrophised word indicated separately in a Times puzzle. The advice I received here long ago was to ignore such details, and hyphens etc and just deal with whatever the setter throws at us..

      Edited at 2012-04-10 01:41 pm (UTC)

    2. Your photo doesn’t look much like a poodle to us! 🙂
      A big woof from Alice & George
        1. What a gorgeous dog! Thank you so much for the photo! Our two (Alice the Standard and George the Miniature) have much the same cut.They, particularly Alice, attract admiring remarks wherever they go and I’m sure Tigger does, too.
          1. Tigger is always running out of bouncy playmates (mainly because he doesn’t know when to stop) so feel free to pass by this way (near Bordeaux) with Alice and George … sadly he is not ‘intact’ so no hanky panky option.
  19. A bit less than 20 minutes, ending with the unfamiliar RICK. Never heard of SPEECH READING either. Beyond that, no particular trouble, save that APICAL is certainly a very uncommon word. Regards.
  20. All complete today but with a wrong guess of Race not Rick for 1A. I didn’t understand that clue so thanks for the explanation Tim.

    LOI Cofferdam – deduced from the wordplay and surprised but pleased that it turned out to be a real word.

    I’m with Jimbo in interpreting 21A as two definitions plus a cryptic. Flora = plants = a girl’s name = L in Fora.

    Speech-Reading was new to me too.

  21. Completed in 8 (!) minutes today, with “dodgy clue” question marks all over the place and the feeling that I’d slipped into another paper’s puzzle somehow.
    I looked up speech-reading because I just didn’t believe it, and did find, on an American site, “Speechreading [sic, no hyphen] is a fascinating subject. Lip-reading is the old term for what we now more accurately call speechreading.”
    So I checked with my friends in the RAD, who still stoically use “lip-reading” and were mildly dismissive of the innovation. I did briefly wonder if we were looking a some sort of speech recognition software.
    I’m with Jim on this one: weird, however spelt.
  22. Abou 40 minutes with 25 of them over breakfast and the last 15 at the eye doctor’s trying to sort out RICK which I finally did. Always the four-letter words it seems. TIGGER brought a smile.
  23. 8:39 for me – so, as last week, I found Tuesday’s puzzle significantly easier than Monday’s. Like others, I’d always thought of COFFERDAM as two words and I don’t recall coming across SPEECH-READING before.
  24. Definitely not an Americanism, “mad” for “angry” is very common in the north of England. I often heard as a child, “Your dad will be mad when he finds out what you’ve done!” (And he usually was!)

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