Times 25,145

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
14:31 on the Club timer, another perfectly enjoyable but not especially arcane puzzle. (I say “not especially arcane”, though as I blog, it occurs to me there are things here which might not be regarded as obvious general knowledge, even though they’d probably be known to experienced crossword solvers…so I won’t be dogmatic about it).

Across
1 CROSSPATCH – CROSS(negotiate) PATCH(plot).
6 AJAR – RAJA rev.
9 NOISOME – [Old Master] in New OISE. If you didn’t know the French department, I imagine it would be reasonably easy to deduce. Twenty years ago, I spent most of a night trying to find a remote farmhouse somewhere east of Compiegne, and got to know the area more intimately than was in my plans.
10 SEATING – Students + EATING.
12 EVENT – EVE + N.T.; see discussion previously about whether the New Testament is a single book or a collection of books (it depends what you want it to be, I think).
13 GRANTABLE – GRAN + TABLE.
14 SEE ONE’S WAY CLEAR – double def.
17 SECURITY BLANKET – double/cryptic def.
20 JUVENILIA – [VENerable 1] in JULIA.
21 URBAN – DURBAN minus the landlorD.
23 CATTERY – cryptic def., boarding as in holidaying, whether the general male (tom) or specific breed (Bengal).
24 SWAHILI – HI in [I LAWS]rev.; I had trouble getting away from my original assumption that “rules from the East” was the definition, which had me looking vainly for something like “bushido”.
25 BARK – as in a) BARQUE, and b) a noise likely to be unwelcome to cats.
26 TOPSY TURVY – (SPYTROUTVarietY)*.
 
Down
1 CONSENSUS – [ON cutS] in CENSUS.
2 OPINE – O + [chickeN in PIE]; I hesitated a bit over patty as “PIE”, being more familiar with the meaning favoured by Ronald McDonald, and thus assuming a patty was a burger style piece of meat. However, the OED (my concise, at least) only gives the meaning as a “pasty or small pie”.
3 SHOOTING RANGE – i.e. SHOOT IN GRANGE.
4 AVENGES – (E.G.) rev. in AVENS. You’d have thought that after 30 years of acknowledging botany as my weak spot I might have worked my way through all the plants I don’t know, but no, not yet. Again, with the checkers and the wordplay, a pretty safe bet if one was guessing like me.
5 CASCARA – JessiCAS CARAvan. If you’re a regular solver, you’ll have seen it before, and have no need of its medicinal properties. (This, and other jokes about being regular and cascara are brought to you courtesy of The Two Ronnies).
7 JAILBREAK – Juiciary + AIL + BREAK. I am now earwormed by the classic Thin Lizzy song (famous for the poorly-thought through opening lyrics: “Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in the town”…somewhere, you say? Well, all things considered, my money would be on the jail being the venue. I digress.)
8 ROGUE – bROGUE without the Bachelor.
11 ANTICOAGULANT – (CLOTAUNTAGAIN)*.
15 EXCAVATOR – A.V. in [EX CATO Right]. The Authorised Version today, following yesterday’s Revised; the censorious Cato was famous for urging the utter destruction of Carthage in every speech he made in the Senate, regardless of the topic under discussion, which makes him not dissimilar to plenty of modern politicians with an agenda.
16 ROTUNDITY – (TINYTUDOR)* &lit.
18 TALLY HO – [ALLY Husband] in TO.
19 BRASSES – BRASSiES without the I. I wonder if it will come to pass in an age of computer-designed titanium drivers that “brassies” and “mashie niblicks” will survive only in cryptic crosswords.
20 JACOB – Jack on A COB; “twin brother” isn’t much of a definition, but given the checkers and the frequency with which Jacob (not to mention Esau) appear, not hard to get past.
22 BRIER – River in BIER.

36 comments on “Times 25,145”

  1. Isn’t a ria an inlet, not a river? 18:10; the days I get under 20′ are rare indeed. I went for TALLY HO mainly on the strength of the enumeration; thanks, Tim, for explaining. I’d never heard of avens either, but as Tim says, one really needn’t have. ROTUNDITY relates to shape, no? not size, so I would have thought one could have a tiny, rotund Tudor, composer or otherwise.
  2. Wonder if I will be alone in having the alternative spelling of 22down, RIA being river, and BR as in British Rail being a former carrier…
  3. And I found this a bit hard. LOI was SEATING. So many possibilities there. Really liked the tiny Tudor composers for some odd reason.
  4. 34 minutes, being denied a rare sub-30 by hold-ups in the NE – ROGUE was annoyingly elusive – and then by the unknown CROSSPATCH. Dallied with the more familiar spelling of the pipe wood, before a little thought gave me that one.

    I still managed to get one wrong, positing ‘sharing’ at 10 across (literal ‘it may accommodate’; wordplay S + ‘haring’ as in hare coursing). As mistakes go, I’m quite proud of that one.

    1. I also toyed with “sharing” as well as with “spacing”; both seemed almost possible but after yesterday’s “rink” and “board” I decided to look a bit further and got it right in the end.
  5. 20 minutes with only the French department and the plant unknown but both easily gettable. Time was lost getting started and working upwards from the bottom to top of the grid.

    Edited at 2012-04-24 05:48 am (UTC)

  6. 20 minutes for me too. No real problems but a couple of queries

    At 12A is “is written” just padding to assist surface reading? Is 23A really cryptic? Does 16D make any sense – where is the definition of ROTUNDITY. As Kevin says why cant one have a small rotund Tudor composer?

  7. All ok today, but took some time to finish the bottom left.

    Lots of unknowns for me today, but the cryptics were all quite clear: OISE, AVENS, CATO (that he was censorious), BRASSIES, that BRIER was used for pipe making, JUVENILIA (guessable) …

    Lots to learn (lots to forget? I’m sure we’ve had BRASSIES before not so long ago!).

  8. Google only recognises ‘briar’ (22 dwn) for what it’s worth, so I go with Anonymous No.1 on this. I did favour this spelling before searching.
    1. I really don’t think Google is an acceptable yardstick. Chambers gives “brier” as the prime entry with “or briar” as an alternative spelling. Of the two BRIER fits the wordplay rather better than “briar”
      1. Google’s by no means scientific but, as Robin Day, used to say, ‘though not necessarily of pipes, ‘That’s not definitive, but it’s interesting’, or some such.

        A Google search shows 217,000 hits for briar+pipe and 13,000 for brier+pipe, which at least corresponds with my memory of the labelling of the various pipes I bought for my father during his long pipe-smoking career.

        1. I think we can agree it’s indicative of the current trend of modern thinking, if nothing else; and they’re both perfectly valid in normal usage, of course. (However, I’m equally certain that as long as “brier” precedes “briar” in the OED, which it does in the concise edition I have most easily to hand, you won’t find the Crossword Editor yielding ground on which is the primary one).
          1. The ODE (2nd ed, rev) sends the reader looking up ‘brier’ to ‘briar’. Under ‘briar 2’, the entry reads: ‘(also brier) noun 1 (also briar pipe) a tobacco pipe made from… large woody plant …’
  9. Another highly enjoyable and not too difficult effort today.
    cod to the lovely 16dn. Jimbo, you can be a short rotund tudor composer, but you cannot be a tiny rotund one.
    Old club names will never die. My favourite is the Rutting Iron
  10. 28/28 today but made a meal of the NW corner, especially 1A. Thought for a while that it might end –ACRE.

    FOI anticoagulant, LOI Seating. Liked Ajar and Tally Ho – for the words more than anything.

    There are some splendid golf club names from the days of yore – brassie, baffy, spoon, niblick, mashie, mashie niblick, cleek, jigger… No doubt they’ve all graced the Times puzzle at some point.

  12. I was so sure that 10ac was READING (University & studying) that I couldn’t make anything of 5dn, where the only ‘BARQUE’ I could fit was CARRACK – which gave SKY for WAY in 14ac – which didn’t really make sense. (And I had no idea who Jessica was)
  13. If I was bang on the wavelength yesterday, today it was mostly interference with brief snatches of Hilversum and “this is Radio Moscow”.

    Finally struggled through to discover that I can’t spell JUVENILIA (juvenalia) or CONSENSUS (concensus).

  14. 9 minutes for me SWAHILI being the last one in. A nice mix of the straightforward and the what? My grandfather couldn’t see why anyone would want to drink Dubonnet which he described as 5d and so the word always makes me think of him. Note to any setters reading this – we appear to have had EVENT in every available cryptic over the last week or so, can we have a different word now please?
  15. Enjoyable sometimes testing puzzle—rogue and cascara. Have always believed ‘bier’ is a stand on which a corpse, or a coffin containing a corpse, is placed to lie in state. Perhaps a well-travelled solver can supply the coordinates for the River Bier?

    Enigma

    1. Again, if you consult the dictionary it specifically mentions a device used to carry the corpse to the grave.
  18. Looked at this in despair for several minutes before following the old advice to begin in the bottom right. Everything then fell into place and I finished in just under the half-hour.

    I never stop learning from crosswords: allow me to inflict on you what I’ve discovered. My Shorter Oxford gives two similar meanings of brier, both with the alternative spelling briar but each having evolved from a different rootstock, so to speak. The first is a prickly bush, especially a wild rose, the second is the White Heath Erica arborea. Now, it is the latter from which a brier (or briar) pipe is made; and I always thought pipes were carved from rose wood.

    Perhaps I was encouraged in my ignorance by advertisements such as this; Sweet Briar being a wild rose.

    I also wondered about the spelling in Shakespeare’s line Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier and predictably found both spellings.

    I think I’d better go outside now.

    1. “I think I’d better go outside now.”

      Good advice to many of the readers here I suspect, including today’s “anons.”

  19. 18 minutes till the final pair of brasses and Swahili at which seized up and took a further 10. To me briar has a brambly and brier a more pipey feeling. I too like 16, simply for the picture it brings to mind. I think its left-field quality (if I’ve got that right) is OK.
  20. Well, I’m going downhill. About 25 minutes, but I had SPACING, and BRIAR. On the former, I just didn’t think very hard. On the latter, I took the ‘late carrier’ too literally, thinking there was some long gone UK railroad or some such needed. I got the rest, though I’m not acquainted with avens, and hadn’t seen JUVENILIA or CASCARA before. Nor a CATTERY, for that matter. Oh, and on checking, I see I had CONCENSUS. Better luck tomorrow. Best to all.
  21. Aha! The site has come back online at last.

    9:50 for me. No particular problems, though I too wanted 24ac to be … (Oh dear! What on earth is that word meaning “Japanese chivalry”? Another senior moment. Sigh! As yes, BUSHIDO. Which won’t fit. Damn!)

    1. A pedantic, not to mention irrelevant, note: the people who presumably practiced bushido didn’t know the word, which is a 19th-century, politically-motivated invention.

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