Times 25024 – Hello, possums!

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: DNF

Not a good day for me in a long line of ungood days. I gave up after an hour with one I couldn’t get and another I have no idea about (or is that a no eyed moose about?). That leaves plenty for you to discuss. I’m off now for a few weeks and will see you all in the new year. Let the festivities commence!

Across
1 PERCUSSION* = SUPERSONIC. The first in a series of nice anagrams.
6 Deliberately omitted. Tea anyone?
8 VISCOUNT = V for very + N for new in I-SCOUT, with an exclamation mark to excuse the liberty. Who could forget the Vickers Viscount. If it weren’t for the Super Constellation (see 1 ac) it might still be flying today.
9 GUNMAN = MA reversed in GUNN. Ben featured in Treasure Island.
10 NIL reversed around O = LOIN
11 TURING TEST = STUTTERING*. Can machines think? Or at least be programmed to fool you to think they’re thinking? Or to fool you to think that you’re thinking they’re thinking? Mine’s inhabited by an evil djinn at the moment, who thinks I don’t know.
12 RIGHT AWAY sounds like “write away”. An easy one for someone who once used the word processing package Write Now solely for its comedic potential.
14 SMIRK. I’ve absolutely no idea why. I was going to say “not a clue”, but somebody’s bound to tell me precisely why it is. Stop the presses! It’s SELKIRK with an M for ELK. Phew! That was close.
17 ROW reversed + MS for manuscript = WORMS
19 (ANGEL + HARP)* = PHALANGER. Most true phalangers only fly with the assistance of an onager (see 18) but the flying (not really a phalanger) phalanger glides with the assistance of skin folds.
22 HEALTH for “one drunk” + CARE for worry = HEALTH CARE
23 CROC sounds like “crock”
24 MA ALAS reversed = SALAAM
25 OVERHAUL = OVER + HAUL
26 C for clubs + ONE = CONE, a geometrical solid
27 BAD HAIR DAY, a cryptic definition. Speaking of which…

Down
1 S for son + A VILE ROW = SAVILE (sic) ROW, a London street famous for its suitors.
2 PASTING = NITS inside GAP all reversed. Up for? As in “up with which I will not put”?
3 STUNT for stop + MAN = STUNTMAN
4 NOT BREATHE A WORD = (WARDROBE – HAT, NOTE)*
5 COGENT = GO reversed in CENT
6 MINUTE + MAN = MINUTEMAN
7 SPARS + EldeR = SPARSER
13 HUME for cardinal containing I and TAIL reversed = HUMILIATE, today’s theme. Hume took the name Basil to fit in with our subsidiary theme.
15 KIRKCALDY = KIRK + C for cold + LADY*, a town in Fife.
16 A LOVER containing E + a final A = ALOE VERA
18 OREGANO = O for old + ONAGER reversed. This one defeated me. I couldn’t get beyond octavo. An onager is variously a wild Middle Eastern/Sub-continental Asian ass with a powerful kick or a Roman siege engine.
20 Deliberately omitted. Weigh a pie!
21 THEM for those + OB for old boys = THE MOB

24 comments on “Times 25024 – Hello, possums!”

  1. 47 minutes with last in PASTING, holding myself up unnecessarily by not seeing the anagram at 1ac until the post-solve check. The two beasties ending in –er were unknown, while MINUTEMAN was unfamiliar. A somewhat misremembered scrap from a recent puzzle helped confirm SMIRK, but the surface seems rather forced for all that.
  2. 34 minutes with PASTING and STUNTMAN taking me over the 30-minute threshold. Other than those and remembering PHALANGER I found this quite easy and I was pleased to think of Ben Gunn, Alexander Selkirk and Alan Turing on first reading of their respective clues. Turing’s life and achievements have been featured on TV recently so he was fresh in my mind.

    My only slight misgiving at the moment is VILE = ‘cheap’ as a) I didn’t think of it whilst solving the clue, and b) I can’t find a direct link in any of the usual books, one has to go via another word such as ‘base’ to arrive there.

    1. Oxford Dictionaries (online), so presumably ODE, has archaic ‘of little worth or value: ‘all the feasts that thou hast shared erewhile, to mine shall be but vile’.

      In St Paul’s ‘vile bodies’ – literally ‘body of humiliation’ – whence Waugh derived his book title, ‘vile’ is arguably closer in meaning to ‘of little worth/cheap’ than to either its ‘unpleasant’ or ‘wicked’ meaning.

      1. Yes, thanks. Now that I look again this meaning is clearly in my edition of SOED and I withdraw my objection.
  3. Many thanks, koro (and have a good break): you cracked the wordplay which eluded me (PASTING, SMIRK) and explained PHALANGER (it couldn’t be anything else). Otherwise a reasonably straightforward solve in about 30 minutes.
  4. 36 minutes for this old croc., last in 16 that’s done me before. I like the idea of a way that suits.
  5. 32 minutes for this. I found it really hard, and ended with a desparate POSTING (“sticking up”) for 2dn. I completely failed to spot the reversal indicator: “X up for Y” would almost always indicate that Y is the answer, arrived at by reversing X. Not this time.
    Several unknowns to slow me down today: VISCOUNT, TURING TEST, PHALANGER, “crock” meaning a lame animal, Ben Gunn (I read Treasure Island but a long time ago), ALOE VERA as a “juice”. ONAGER had to be dredged up from the depths of memory. Fortunately Alexander Selkirk has appeared a couple of times recently.
    All a bit much for a Monday morning!
  6. 23 minutes’ hard work for a Monday morning,and that replaced elk didn’t register until coming here. I’v heard of Phalangists, but not the Ozzie version, and like others, VILE=cheap was not obvious enough.
    CoD to the excellent anagram at 1ac.
      1. Chambers notes that as a 16C use, with the more familiar ‘person, thing, vehicle’ application dating from the 19C.
  8. I just and so squeezed under the hour, failing en route to understand the reasoning behind SMIRK and OREGANO. The latter was my last in, entered with great confidence one I’d convinced myself that an old ass must be an O NAGERO.
  9. OREGANO was also my last in even though I guessed correctly straightaway that the “leaves” of the clue were of the vegetative sort – my search for “le mot juste” not being helped by initially having CUBE for CONE at 26ac. Once that error corrected the SW corner fell into place quickly enough. Still not sure why E = “tablet” at 16dn, but no doubt someone will enlighten me. An enjoyable puzzle for me – not doubt partly because I happened to be on the setter’s wavelength when it came to GK, literary and scientific allusions.
      1. Yes, of course. Thanks Keriothe. E = ecstasy must be one of the nuttiest old chestnuts in the cryptic xword solver’s codebook. How could I not have seen it! I think it may have been the use of the word “tablet” rather than “drug” or some similar term that may have confused me. Doh!
  10. A not particularly speedy solve this morning. I was pleased to know all the GK required. A wonderful and unlikely anagram at 1a and some great cryptic definitions at 1d and 27a made this a most enjoyable solve. 40 minutes.
  11. Bought the paper (Irish printed edition) this morning only to discover that they have failed to publish the crossword! Very annoying. I have to go eight miles to get the Times. Would have bought something else if I’d known.
  12. Made heavy weather of the golf and then maintained the lack of momentum with this. Struggled a bit nearly all the time without quite grinding to a halt. Another member of the CUBE club at 26A. Old enough to remember the VISCOUNT though. 30 minutes to solve.
  13. …and that one was OREGANO (I convinced myself that ‘leaves’ referred to the paper variety, so was looking for some sort of book!).

    Lots of unknown/unfamiliar GK, but managed to work most of it out in the end.

    Thanks for all the explanations, koro, and have a great break!

  14. Slogged through in 45 minutes, held up by not knowing KIRKCALDY, the PHALANGER, or the Bishop. Tough for a Monday. My last was PASTING. ALOE VERA as ‘juice’ seems a bit of a stretch, but COD to the nice and unexpected anagram SUPERSONIC. Regards to all.
  15. 11:16 here for an interesting puzzle – perhaps slightly more difficult than usual for a Monday.

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