Times 25,031 A Bit Corny In Parts

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 15 minutes

Very straightforward puzzle with some corny cryptic definitions and a couple of slightly questionable definitions but overall no problem I would think.

Across
1 FATHOMED – F(AT-HOME)D; an AT-HOME is a type of party; not what David Cameron did of Sarkozy’s motives;
5 SAMPAN – S-AM-PAN; junk that isn’t Greek Government bonds;
8 RUN – what Nick Clegg did before PM’s question time yesterday;
9 TRESPASSER – a reference to the Christian Lord’s prayer; the UK in the Euro Zone from now on;
10 WAGGONER – WAG(GO)NER;
11 PURSUE – PURS(U)E; how Sarkozy relates to Merkel;
12 MARS – reference to the Planet Suite by Holst;
14 STEEL,BANDS – (end bat less)*; what Merkel would like to put on Berlisconi;
17 NATURALISE – (a neutral is)*;
20 THUG – T(H)UG; Berlisconi’s best friend perhaps;
23 BRETON – BR-ETON; French equivalent of Scots;
24 SWIMSUIT – crawl is a swimming stroke and swimmers race in lanes;
25 VERSIFYING – VER(S)IFYING; job for poet is definition;
26 EYE – (th)E (rugb)Y (sid)E; best place to read about politics;
27 GLADYS – G-LADY’S; name for grandmother more like;
28 TENDERER – to champ is to chew and if meat is TENDERER it’s easier to chew; what Nick Clegg should become with his resignation;
 
Down
1 FOREWOMEN – FORE-W-OMEN; FORE is what golfer’s shout as their ball hits somebody else; Gillard, McAleese, Merkel again;
2 TANAGER – (argentina – in)*; a bird and hence “singer”;
3 OUTBOX – outgoing post goes in the out tray; to OUTBOX is to better in the ring; what David Cameron confused with outfox;
4 ELEMENTAL – EL(E-MEN-T)AL; an ELEMENTAL is a type of spirit (not whisky unfortunately);
5 SCALPEL – a surgeon wears a mask;
6 MISCREANT – (crimes)*-AN-(indictmen)T; one of those bankers that started all the trouble;
7 AGROUND – A-GROUND; where the Euro is headed in 2012;
13 SHUTTERED – SH(UTTER)ED; what Markozy jointly did to David Cameron;
15 ERSTWHILE – (where list)*;
16 SIGHTSEER – sounds like “cite sear”; UK’s future role in Europe;
18 ARRIVAL – A-R(R)IVAL;
19 AUNTIES – A-UNTIES;
21 HAUTEUR – H(itchcock)-AUTER; Sarkozy’s attitude – but there’s an election looming!;
22 IMAGED – I’M-AGED; far more likely to be said by a child;

32 comments on “Times 25,031 A Bit Corny In Parts”

  1. Ha ha ha! Thanks for cheering up what I thought was a pretty pedestrian puzzle!

    No unknowns, no quibbles, no cod.

  2. 28 minutes, no problems.

    A typo at 12ac, Jim, Holst, unless it was an intentional topical reference that I’m missing. I wondered if there might be some complaints about this clue as the second bit is unfathomable unless one already has the answer from the straight definition. I agree GLADYS would be an unlikely name for a daughter these days.

  3. 48 minutes, with the bottom half going in quickly and the top putting up more resistance. I didn’t help myself by putting in the 6-letter answer to 8ac at 3dn, but even so FATHOMED and FOREWOMEN both required a little thinking, even when you knew how the clue was constructed.

    I suppose OUTBOX is okay by analogy with ‘inbox’, but I’m more familiar with a Sent folder. My COD goes to SHUTTERED for the use of the string ‘H-U-T’ in both clue and answer. The Caribbean anagram held me up far longer than it ought to have done.

  4. Took me about 20m which felt longer than it should have been, struggled with 5dn thinking it had to be more than just a cryptic def., and 11 ac..

    Sometimes Jimbo is a little unfair to the hard-working setter I think.. but perhaps not today 🙂

  5. I thought this was rather good, and it got the better of me in the end. Made a disastrous start by putting sheltered instead of SHUTTERED, and after sorting that out I couldn’t think of the first warning at 1dn. I eventually put in carewomen, with cottoned at 1ac. Knew it was wrong, but it was so nearly right…

    I notice we had organize among the clues (8dn) and NATURALISE among the answers. Rather odd – or is there a reason for it?

  6. My only complaint was about the obscure South American bird hidden behind an anagram. Those As and Es could go just about anywhere.
    1. I only knew TANAGER straight away because it came up as recently as last week in some puzzle I was doing. I can’t find it later than May in this forum so it must have been somewhere else.
      1. I remember it coming up very recently too, and I only ever do Times or Sunday Times. Maybe it wasn’t the whole answer, but part of the answer? Not sure how easy that would be to search.
        1. It was in the Saturday December 3 puzzle, well remembered. Janie, there’s a search function at the top right of the page.
  7. 23 minutes, held up by Jim’s corner of this blessed plot. OUTBOX also had me stumped, until I realised that Michael Wanner, resident composer for the Pendragon Theatre Company in Saranac Lake, New York, was probably too obscure even for the Times and I had WAGGONER spelt wrong.
    I don’t know why ARRIVAL didn’t immediately click: perhaps I was beguiled by the alternative meaning and accenting of “entrance”. Research shows that Gladys was also a boy’s name right up until 1914: I bet he had fun at school.
    Cryptic definitions can annoy: SWIMWEAR was my first attempt at 24, maybe a marginally better fit with “gear”, and no way to verify until cross-checkers come in. SCALPEL was a better exemplar.
    STEEL BANDS, very nearly a fine surface, for CoD.
  8. Good spot richnorth on organize and naturalise. I must say I’d hate organize as an answer. A tad surprised at arrival for entrance; I suppose on stage (of some sort) is implied. Not many hold-ups here and those not for long. 16 minutes. Enjoyed the beady-eyed blog.
  9. Agreed on the degree of diff. And another to mis-spell WAGGONER to start with. The double-G does seem strange. And there was also WAGONEER lurking (somehow?) there. So: three different spellings on the side, all crossed out.

    And there’s the bloody “list” again at 15dn!

    The GLADYS-as-daughter problem still remains in what remains of my mind, despite helpful suggestions above.

    Another Finals puzzle tomorrow eh? (Needs stiff drink before bed.)

  11. 12:15, finishing with the unknown TANAGER (2dn).  Other unknowns were PURSE as a sports prize (11ac PURSUE) and the archaic adverbial use of ERSTWHILE (15dn); disappointingly, SAMPAN (5ac) was still unfamiliar.  I mostly found this a quick solve, despite being another victim of SWIMWEAR (24ac SWIMSUIT), but ended up getting bogged down in the NW corner (OUTBOX, WAGGONER, FATHOMED, TANAGER).

    There’s nothing wrong with the spelling ‘organize’ (8ac RUN).  As the OED says s.v. ‘-ize’: “the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Greek -ιζειν, Latin –izāre; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic.”

    1. That’s true, but this is from The Times Style Guide:
      -ise, -isation avoid the z construction in almost all cases, eg, apologise, organise, emphasise, televise. But note capsize, synthesizer
      So although organize might be permissible as an answer (to the annoyance of joe, above) it really has no right to turn up in a clue.
  12. 16 minutes for this. Straightforward, but held up like z8b8d8k by putting in SWIMWEAR and then a few minutes at the end on OUTBOX.
    Great blog, Jimbo. As the dust begins to settle though I wonder if the whole thing wasn’t cooked up by CAMEROZY. Dave gets fêted for standing up to the frogs, SARKO gets kudos for sticking it to the rosbif. All very convenient.
    1. Funny you should say that. This afternoon in conversation with an ex-colleague we were trying to analyse winners and losers in this. One has to add Clegg and Milliband to the losers. Merkel also has an election coming up but I can’t find any evidence that she has gained from this yet. Also learned that the Danish public want out of the Euro in a big way – some of these politicians appear to be completely divorced from public opinion in their own back yards.
      1. Hardly surprising: if you don’t do as you’re told you just get replaced, regardless of public opinion. Just ask George and Silvio.
        Sadly I fear there will be no winners in all this. Best to focus on golf and crosswords!
  13. No problems with this, except I had cavewoman at 1 down, which works in a way, trouble was I had no doubts about it being wrong and consequently struggled with the north west corner.

    chris

  15. Took about a half hour for this, held up by trying WAGONEER and thereby screwing up 3D. Eventually got that corrected, in order to get OUTBOX, my nominee for COD. FATHOMED took extra time also, due to not being really familiar with ‘at home’ as a party. Beyond that, I think TANAGERS are not limited to South America at all, since we have some over here in the US, and I had to read the clue to 11A a few times to make sure the answer was PURSUE instead of PURDUE as the other university. That latter would, I think, be obscure in the UK, but I’ve been surprised before. Regards to all.
    1. I’d have had no problem with PURDUE (luckily I thought of PURSUE first), but I can’t remember why it’s so familiar.
  16. As has recently been pointed out I think here, that’s one of the troubles with cryptic definitions: it could perfectly well be either and there’s no way you can know until you have the checkers. Very unsatisfactory.
    1. But surely that’s all part of the crossword experience? If the answers weren’t interdependent there would be no need for a grid and all the clues could be just tackled in isolation.
    2. I must say I agree with Jack. I fell into the same trap, but if clues where “there’s no way you can know until you have the checkers” were a problem for me I’d have given this whole lark up years ago!
  17. 11:12 for me – but it would have been faster if I hadn’t been feeling so damnably tired, making heavy weather of old chestnuts like 7dn (AGROUND), and wasting time trying (with –T— in place) to make sense of INTRAY for 3dn (OUTBOX).
  18. 33.20 for me after taking 4 or so to get going and then for my aged braincells galloping through most of it in another 18 and spending the last 10 staring blankly at the NE corner. Oddly once I worked out SAMPAN the rest fell into place. Thanks for excellent and amusing blog.
  19. I never knew the proper names for it – just that they were different. Nice to know. Thanks. My welsh-speaking friends call the 2 branches by 2 different letters – something like Celtic p and Celtic q. From my point of view the difference is that Welsh and Breton are easy to pronounce and Irish is a nightmare!

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