Times 25064

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: None recorded.

I was way too tired to attempt this puzzle before going to bed, but I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to blog it otherwise, so attempt it I did. I got about half of it done in an hour, but I was more asleep than awake. I could barely read the clues, let alone solve them! I took the dog for a half-hour walk to get some fresh air, then polished it off in another ten minutes or so.

I’m on jury service all this week and next, so I’ll probably be unable to respond to comments until the evening.

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

Across
1 PARASOL = PARAS + LO rev
5 ELBOWS – I got this from the checkers, but I didn’t understand the wordplay.
8 A + POLO + GIST
9 OGLES – rev hidden in damSEL GOod
11 HOBBY – dd
12 BETTER OFF – dd
13 RE + STRICT
15 PREtty + FAB
17 THIN + GuY
19 CONCERTI = CONCERn + IT rev
22 GALATIANS = GALA + (SAINT)*
23 POsSE
24 THREW = “THROUGH”
25 MAR(GAR)INE
26 BAR + YON
27 EVENtING
Down
1 PLAY + HARD TO GET
2 RHOMBUS = (O + M) in (SHRUB)*
3 STORY – The American spelling of STOREY.
4 LAID BACK = DIAL rev + BACK
5 E + STATE
6 BIOMETRIC = (MICROBE + IT)*
7 WALDORF = ROD in FLAW all rev
10 SOFT-BOILED EGG = (BIGGEST OLD FOE)*
14 RIGHT AWAY = RIGHT WAY about A
16 CON’S + TRUE
18 ILLYRIA = ILL + AIRY rev
20 ROSSINI = OS + SIN in aRIa
21 B + ATMAN
23 PLANE = dd

66 comments on “Times 25064”

  1. As well as being the joint, an ELBOW is the part of the coat or jacket that covers the elbow.

    On edit (and a visit to Oxford online), an elbow can be ‘a thing resembling an elbow, in particular a piece of piping bent through an angle: a cross-fitting with elbows and straight pipework‘, which might be close enough.

    Edited at 2012-01-20 06:26 am (UTC)

  2. Dave, what can I say? No one will ever volunteer to take over the mantle from our current crop of bloggers if the sacrifice required is so high!

    58 minutes for me on this one, with the unknown BARYON in last, after I’d got BATMAN from the literal, ‘atman’ being unknown to one with no pantheistic leanings.

    I thought I was on for a sub-30 minute when the left-hand side shot in, but it took ROSSINI and then PREFAB (I was working around —ACE, i.e. ‘palace’) on the right to fall before I gained a foothold there. Some sort of improvement, as I got the reverse hidden near the end rather than at the end.

  3. 16:26 .. only real problems with those GALATIANS and the BARYON, which sounded vaguely familiar from listening to the Naked Scientist on the BBC (on too late for diurnal Brits, I think).

    I read the ELBOW clue as referring to the raising of a glass while out on a bender (as in ‘binge’). I’m sure there are idioms along the lines of ‘bending your elbow’ for ‘having a drink’ but I can’t bring any to mind.

    loved PLAY HARD TO GET and CONSTRUE

    Thanks, Dave, and good luck with jury service (whatever you do don’t tell them you’re a well-known blogger or you might be discharged on the spot and that would just be rotten luck).

    Edited at 2012-01-20 02:55 am (UTC)

    1. I agree with your reading of ELBOW, Sotira. My Chambers has “lift the elbow”, which it defines as “to drink alcoholic liquor, esp. too much”.
  4. I read clue after clue of this one without coming even near to an answer and if it had been my Friday on duty I would have been way past panic setting in.

    Then I solved 2dn and before I knew it the LH side apart from 26ac was in place. RH proved a bit more difficult but I finished in 44 minutes which didn’t seem too bad after such a slow start.

    I didn’t ‘get’ ELBOWS (and still don’t really despite the suggestions above) nor POSSE exactly – POSE with the S of ‘sheriff’ included rather than deleted. Can’t see a definition so I guess it’s &lit? Is YON clued by ‘that’ in 26ac?

    Edited at 2012-01-20 05:37 am (UTC)

    1. I parsed POSSE as an &lit and YON certainly stands for ‘that’, with BAR as in the counter in a pub, etc.

      As for ELBOW, see my latest theory above.

      1. Yes, I think I parsed POSSE as a semi-&lit. I probably would have mentioned it in the blog if I hadn’t been typing on autopilot by then.
        As for ELBOWS, I’m not sure I’m any further down the road to understanding. The suggestions presented all seem pretty weak. That’s not to say they’re not correct, of course, it may well just be a weak clue. But I still feel I’m missing something clever.
        Anyway, must get on. I can’t be late for my deliberations!
  5. Held up at the end by BARYON (unknown – apologies, jimbo, for scientific ignorance: not much wiser having looked it up in OED) and BATMAN (‘atman’ unknown and ‘barman’ seemed a reasonable alternative except for the overlapping ‘bar’ with baryon). So a good challenge overall (about 40 minutes). COD: PLAY HARD TO GET – not difficult but made me smile.
  6. 23.down. What irritates bird in tree.(5)Plane. Double definition,neither of which I can see !!
    1. I don’t know what font or font size you’re reading but it’s “imitates” rather than “irritates” as in “what imitates bird” also found in “tree”.

      The difference in size and font between the first two alternatives (extra small and gigantic) of the online print version certainly irritates me.

      1. Many thanks,that explains why I can’t parse it. The words are not always the clearest on my screen even with the largest font.
  7. 17 minutes here.
    I found this puzzle mildly irritating. Religious references always irk me a little: there’s nothing wrong with them intrinsically, but like plant names they put me on the defensive. Combined with this there are some things in here that I found a bit loose, such as:
    > In 26ac BARYON the “hidden” seems superfluous. It misdirects but without contributing anything else to the clue
    > “Like a salad” for WALDORF: a “Waldorf” IS a salad. It doesn’t really describe it. “Like a tower” for EIFFEL?
    > 27ac contains a basic error. What imitates a bird, as any fule kno, is Superman. See also “what imitates plane”
    And like others I didn’t understand ELBOW. Sotira’s explanation seems the most likely to me.
  8. 32 minutes for me, without major hold-up apart from BARYON, WALDORF & PREFAB, although neither my self nor not self had a clue what atman was. I liked SOFT-BOILED EGG and BETTER OFF but COD to MARGARINE. A quick solve is an enjoyable solve.

    Sotira’s take on 5ac is the intended one, I think.

  9. 17 minutes on this one, which I quite enjoyed. GALATIANS, BARYON and ATMAN were all in my vocab – does that make me a polymath? Just as well the shrub, which has the same effect on me as on keriothe, was just anagram fodder.
    While solving, bending the elbow as an activity while on a bender seemed the most likely explanation (like “the raising of the wrist”) but the bit of plumbing suggested by sotira looks pretty good.
    POSSE has to be an &lit, but it’s not a very good one.
    Loved both long ones, 1 for the wordplay, 10 for the definition. Joint CoD’s
  10. One wrong. Having no grasp of matters spiritual I was uable to distinguish between the immortal soul and a horse’s breakfast, and went with BARMAN

    It seems perfectly clear to me that Sotira’s reading of ELBOWS is correct.

    1. For future reference, if you look carefully you will see that one of them exists. That’s the horse’s breakfast.
        1. Well that’s not quite true, but if we carry on this conversation we’ll just be talking a load of, er, rubbish.
  11. I’m sure 5ac is a reference to drinking sprees. From the dictionary of slang: “bend one’s elbow Vrb phrs. To have an alcoholic drink.”

    Nicely balanced puzzle this.. one science, one music, one biblical…

    Isn’t 25ac a beautiful clue?

    1. Brewer’s also has ‘Elbow-lifting’ = ‘drinking’ and ‘To lift the elbow’, both expressions used to indicate fondness for alcohol.
  12. A curate’s egg this one. I have sympathy with keriothe and the irksome elements but as Jerry points out clues like 25A MARGARINE are outstanding. 25 minutes of love-hate relationship.

    I’m in the booze-up club for ELBOWS but think as a clue it’s pants.

    Another trip down memory lane with PREFAB. After WW11 they were erected on Tooting Common as a “temporary measure” and were still there decades later long after the wartime allotments had gone. They were quite pleasant dwellings.

    1. we had them in Cambridge too. Everyone who lived in them loved them, though often because so much better than what they had before!
      1. I think that and the sense of community that sprang up. By definition they had all been bombed out and all shared these quaint little dwellings thrown together as a mini-community. I had left the area when they eventually came down but am told that it was an emotional farewell for most folk.
    2. I have a good friend who still lives in one in a field in Oxfordshire. It has plenty of add-ons but the basic core is still postwar prefab. They were in advance of their time. When I first knew Margaret in the 70s her house still had the original fitted kitchen and bathroom. Unheard of for most people in the 40s and 50s. It’s a bit ramshackle now and is due to be demolished. But not a bad run for “temporary” housing!
  13. Thanks for the blog. I really thought this would be my first finished Times crossword, but it was not to be. I stalled after doing well in the SE, and I really do kick myself after seeing the wordplay explained in the blog!

    Edited at 2012-01-20 10:11 am (UTC)

    1. Ha, always much easier in hindsight! Patience, you will get there, just a matter of time & keep reading the blog
    2. Keep going and don’t be tempted to give up. Never be frightened to ask if you don’t understand. You’ll be surprised how much you will improve over 12 months if you stick with this blog.
    3. .. and occasionally it might be best to forget this blog exists! Just keep the puzzle close at hand for a few days and refuse to be beaten.

  17. …always one pesky clue that defeats me! I must be jinxed. This time it was the (unknown) BARYON (technically, I guess it’s only half a clue I didn’t get, as I had the BAR bit… ). However, I must admit, it could’ve been two: BATMAN could have quite easily gone in as ‘barman’.

    Best wishes for the weekend, everyone, see you all next week.

    1. There is a definite move to include more scientific terms in these puzzles. It would pay you to read the Wiki article on particle physics which also has a link to a list of particles
  18. I always find it interesting how much of a variance there is between the various bloggers’ times from one day to the next when I compare them to my own, and it shows how different everyone’s comfort wavelength is. I couldn’t get on yesterday’s setter’s wavelength at all and struggled home in 53 mins, my worst time for ages, yet I sailed through today’s in 13 mins. A lot of you seem to have had the same kind of problems yesterday, but others (notably Sotira) didn’t. I also suspect that my times are quicker when I solve the puzzle pre-lunch (today) rather than post-lunch (yesterday), although I don’t have any evidence to support this.

    Finally, I loved Jimbo’s use of the word pants to describe 5a. I remember that it wasn’t so long ago that a spleen was vented in Dorset when pants was used as an anagram indicator.

    Andy B

  19. Easier than many Friday puzzles. Some really excellent clues/solutions – e.g. MARGARINE and PLAY HARD TO GET. It is with trepidation that one ventures to disagree with the Sage of Dorset, but I thought ELBOWS, and its clue, “Benders for benders?” rather good and certainly not pants. “To lift the elbow” is a well-known (if admittedly a trifle old-fashioned) phrase meaning “to drink too much alcohol”. I was inclined to quibble about “that”=YON in BARYON at 26ac (my last in) but the dictionaries sanction it. I did think “area” unacceptably vague as a definition of ILLYRIA at 18dn, but in compensation the solution was very gettable from the cryptic clues and checking letters.
  20. 13 minutes, no big hold-ups, though I was surprised at how long it took me to get MARGAINE and PLANE which were my last two in. Pity 7 down wasn’t WALDORFY
  21. 7 minutes as I vaguely remembered BARYON from somewhere – another crossword perhaps. Very enjoyable and like melrosemike, I liked benders for benders.
  22. Agree with contributor, Waldorf is a salad. A salad with lettuce, apples, celery and walnuts and, say, anchovies would be “like a” Waldorf. There are also items called “elbow joints” which will be familiar to all plumbers. And possibly DIY enthusiasts.

    Enigma

  23. A surprising 34.28 here but with two ‘guesses’ at BARYON and BATMAN neither of which I would have got before I started with this blog. So a big thank you to all bloggers for making what was a rather solitary and often frustrating task into a much more pleasant and communal learning event. My COD to MARGARINE but I did quite like ELBOWS as well. Special thanks to Jim for wiki article tip.
  24. DNF because I didn’t get BARYON. I knew the first part was BAR, but, like the solver above, was looking for an synonym for ‘hidden’. Annoying, because my Northern Irish mother always said ‘yon’ for ‘that.
  25. Dave, I’m thinking of you and hope you get a decent gap before you get called again during which you can think up some foolproof disqualification. Thanks for a great blog under difficult conditions. 18 minutes and a smooth ride for me. Unlike some here I rather liked POSSE.

    Some years ago I got put on the Manhattan homicide grand jury (in other words we decided whether to indict) for 4 long weeks. The saying is that the DA can get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Actually I’m pleased to say we were were quite independent. I had My Big Book of Daily Crosswords to pass the time (the setting was way too distracting for anything more taxing). The biggest daily distraction was when the inmates arrived around 11am from Rikers Island – the holding pen. We all learned some new words.

  26. About 35 minutes, but with BARMAN instead of BATMAN, being unfamiliar with ‘atman’. Utterly unfamiliar, that is. I also enjoyed POSSE and ELBOWS, of which the latter I thought certainly had nothing to do with pipes, just tippling. Thanks to Dave for the blog, and regards.
  27. 19 minutes. Liked the elbows clue. Don’t get ‘what imitates’ though I know a plane (aero) can be a bird. Held up by that, margarine and baryon. (At first for plane I had aspen which seems to work.) I too have fond memories of prefabs though I never lived in one.
    Oh, I suppose the idea is that in flying a plane imitates a bird-? Copying the dynamics? seems thin.

    Edited at 2012-01-20 05:38 pm (UTC)

  28. Sorry, but only sports teams and rock bands can be treated as plural (England were on a winning streak. The Who were playing a concert) So you can’t say ‘the posse were coming over the hill’. It has to be ‘the posse WAS coming over the hill’. Therefore the clue should read ‘It assumes a stance . . .’ Poor clue anyway, I thought.
  29. I think I need to put a lot of people out of their misery here – 47 comments so far and yet nobody’s spotted the obvious wordplay: EL + BOWS are both “benders”, creating ELBOWS which also bend. Of course it’s also an &lit with the meaning of the cryptic definition everyone’s already mentioned.

    Anyway, 9:33 here, but with the whole of the top half in after 3:24 (when I was interrupted by a long phone call), I was hoping for much quicker. The bottom half was a bit trickier for me though, but I didn’t know that until I went back to it several hours later.

    1. It’s so obvious once someone’s pointed it out.
      Thanks for this, Andy. Brilliant as usual!
    3. EL + BOWS is certainly ingenious, Andy, but strangely I find this interpretation actually detracts from the simple elegance of the “bending the elbow” explanation. I’d be interested to hear what the setter had to say.
    4. I’m afraid I’m in the doubtful camp, Andy. I can see EL and BOW as bends, but benders…?
      1. With you on this, Sotira. Andy’s explanation is marvellously ingenious, but fatally flawed by the requirement to make bends = benders. Even if it worked it would seem to me to over-complicate the clue to no great purpose. Still, it would, as Tony S suggests, be interesting to have the setter’s verdict.
      2. By analogy with river = flower in crosswords, yes! If it bends, it’s a bender. Still, we’ll just have to hope the setter drops by and lets us know his intention.

        Edited at 2012-01-21 12:01 am (UTC)

  30. 6:41 for me – relieved to post a reasonable time at the end of a disappointing week. (I wonder if I’d have bunged in GALATEANS if it hadn’t been for the wordplay. Hm! Better add GALATIANS to my list of difficult words just in case.)
  32. I’d like to admit being a genius, but the clue for ELBOWS was intended as a straightforward double definition, love it or hate it!
    1. The latter, I’m afraid. But I had STRAWS for ages (which can be bendy and used for drinking) which was cofirmed by the ungrammatical WALDORF and only rectified when I mistakenly read my badly-written R as a B to get BIOMETRIC
      Still, all is forgiven with the smile-raising 1D

      JB

    2. To balance JB above, it’s the former for me. The topics for my weekly blog are starting to build up, but I’ll be writing In praise of shorter clues some time in the next few weeks, and “Benders for benders? (6)” will get a mention.
    3. Add me to the ‘ayes’. And thanks for letting us know the intention (although that doesn’t rule out the ‘genius’ interpretation – I think accidental acts of genius still count!).

      And I’m looking forward to ‘In praise of shorter clues’, Tony. Do mention on these pages when you have that one written. I’m sure it will draw plenty of interest (and debate).

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