Times 24876: Radix malorum est

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 27 minutes.

The Pardoner dogs me yet again on my blogging day.
A straightforward solve apart from the complications of 17dn. Yet another A-Level text.

 

Across
 1 NO SPRING + CHICKEN.
 9 GL(AS,SW)ARE. When = AS; S{hop-windo}W; inside GLARE.
10 Omitted.
11 ALL,{p}URE.
12 S,TAMPED,E.
13 D(E.T.A)IN. Estimated time of arrival.
15 CUPIDITY. Delete ST from stUPIDITY. Replace with C.
18 OVERTURE. OVERTUR{n} + E (intro of Earnestness).
19 COD(G)ER.
21 F(ORE)LOCK.
23 AGEING. Anagram.
26 OMEGA. Reversal of ‘a gem’ after O (love).
27 BRA,IN,WAVE. Ho ho!
28 DISCOVERED CHECK. ‘Found’ = DISCOVERED. ‘Vet’ = CHECK (verb). The def. is ‘Threat caused by removing obstruction’.
Down
 1 NIGGARD. Reversal of ‘draggin{g}’.
 2 S,H,AWL.
 3 RES(ERV)IST. Anagram of REV inside RESIST.
 4 Omitted.
 5 CH,EST,NUT. Enough said.
 6 I(DI)OM.
 7 K,ETTERING. K instead of B in ‘bettering’.
 8 N,URSERY. Anagram of ‘Surrey’.
14 THE CREEPS. EC (city) inside THREE (cardinal number) + PS.
16 INORGANIC. Anagram of ‘origin can’.
17 CRUCIBLE. CRIB = lift (nick, steal); L{adl}E; containing CU (copper) reversed.
18 OFFLOAD. OFFROAD with L (lake) replacing R (river).
20 RAG WEEK. Anagram of ‘We’re a kg’.
22 LLANO. Reversal of ON (concerning) and ALL.
24 I(RAT)E.
25 {s}HARE.

 

38 comments on “Times 24876: Radix malorum est”

  1. 13 minutes and 5 seconds online with HARE last in, and CRUCIBLE from the definition and only part of the wordplay.

    There’s a lot to like here – NO SPRING in 1 across, the surfer worrying about losing the bra, excellent surfaces throughout (14d, 2d, 21a as a few instances) and everything about 19 across including the hat tip to the first clue.

    Thanks, setter, this is what keeps me solving!

  2. Been trying to edit my blog entry to include this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovered_check

    However, when I try to do so, I get this error message:

    The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
    Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem    .

    Any ideas out there?

    mct

  3. Just crept in under the hour mark, with the chess term last in as a bit of a (needless) guess, since I thought the definition must be ‘threat’. TAMP (Dad never called it that when he was packing his St Bruno Flake into his pipe with the butt of his penknife) and LLANO unknown; COD to THE CREEPS. Always good to see ‘niggard’ – I was reading Hugh McIlvaney and the Observer team’s account of the 1970 Mexico World Cup last night and the crowd in Puebla was described as ‘gay’. Ah, happy days.

    Not a lot of people know this, but the original Greek meaning of the Biblical verse McText uses in his heading is ‘The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”.

  4. 45 minutes with no aids so I didn’t find it quite as easy as most others so far, but it was a steady solve which flowed quite nicely and I never felt I was stuck.

    LLANO from wordplay with the definition dredged from somewhere at the back of my mind. CUPIDITY also from wordplay but I didn’t recognise the word itself which must be just my memory at fault.

    I hesitate to ask this question, but strictly speaking is a bikini top a bra?

    1. This is a most interesting question. So don’t hesitate to ask. I shall have to look into it.

      … The difference is: how far can you get from the beach in each case without being considered indecent?

      Edited at 2011-06-15 04:32 am (UTC)

        1. Ah, happy and carefree days when Cap D’Agde was young and (relatively) innocent – summer holidays in the very early eighties, when Heliopolis was not quite finished and the Oltras were still in personal charge. Thanks for the memory – and you’re absolutely right, 27 across would never have worked as a clue there!
      2. Good one! I too have been looking into it and the usual sources are unanimous that a bra is an undergarment, so they are not the same thing.
  5. A bit of a tester, glad to get round in 25 minutes. Rather like 1 ac. and 27. A slightly deathly pallor to the answers as a whole? Good to see a chess term in.
  6. 27 minutes. I found this tricky, but it was enjoyable and I never got completely stuck. DISCOVERED CHECK was last in, a complete guess because I’ve never heard the term and didn’t see how the wordplay worked. Phew!
    I remembered LLANO somehow. It’s appeared here before.
  7. Very enjoyable, even though I got completely stuck in Barry’s SW corner and needed a small cheat (on OFFLOAD) to get me going again. If Hugh Hefner is a Times crossword solver, he’ll read that clue with a tear in his eye today.
      1. If Hugh does happen to read this, I’m sure he’ll be able to fill us in on the difference between a bikini top and a bra.
  8. Managed it all ok, albeit fairly slowly, but took an age before filling in the last two (the chess move and the treeless plain), both unknowns.

    Enjoyable puzzle, if somewhat challenging at times, with some great clues.

    COD to FORELOCK (or maybe CUPIDITY).

  9. Another interesting puzzle and again just over 20 minutes to solve.

    Like others developed a pavlovian response to letter substitution and nearly wrote “latrine” in at 18D as a result. Luckily my crossword nose steered me away from that trap. Had to laugh at 27A even if it is strictly speaking inaccurate.

  10. 15:51 .. very entertaining stuff.

    A teeny part of me feels I shouldn’t laugh at BRAINWAVE. But of course I did, causing my partner to ask what I was sniggering at. Apparently, I snigger.

    Glad to see so many of the chaps diligently looking into ladies’ undergarments this morning. It’s this spirit of earnest inquiry that sets this blog apart. For what it’s worth, the correct answer is “It depends.”

    1. I don’t think you snigger, Sotira. I think you laugh lightly and wisely, as if the setter laughed with you.
      1. … and each time I laugh, it is as the tinkling of an fairie bell ..

        Oh, puhleeeze.

  11. I agree an ingenious and entertaining puzzle. I particularly liked THE CREEPS and BRAINWAVE, which had me sniggering along with Sotira. The excellence of the joke more than justified the bikini top = BRA device to which some have rather pedantically objected. Both items of clothing support the bosom, which is good enough for me. Thanks setter.

    My last in was DISCOVERED CHECK. I’m obviously being extremely dim, but I’d be grateful if someone would put me out of my misery by explaining why this can be defined as a “threat caused by removing obstruction”.

    1. I’m not super great at chess, but I’ll take a stab at it.

      If you move a piece so that it is now in position to take the king, that is a check, but if you have a piece that would be able to take the king (say the row looks like ROOK…PAWN…KING, you can move the pawn to be in a discovered check.

      1. Thanks for taking the trouble, George. Not quite such a doh! moment as it might have been, given that I am not a chess player, but the word “check” should have still have alerted me to a possible chess reference. Must brush up on chess terminology (along with the names of the Norse fates!)

    2. Erm … read the blog?
      No idea why I bother really.

      Edited at 2011-06-15 03:52 pm (UTC)

      1. Your irritation is entirely justified. An excellent blog as usual. I’m afraid that in reading through it quickly I managed unaccountably to overlook your helpful link to the Wikipedia explanation of the chess reference. Please keep bothering!
  12. 46:38 – with the last 15 minutes or so spent staring at the last 4 – 3/18a/14/28, before the pennies all dropped in fairly quick succession.

    I seemed to work generally clockwise from the NE today. I enjoyed all the substitutions, but COD to the partially denuded watersporter for making me laugh out loud.

    I’ve been trying to teach my kids chess over the last few days, but 28 was still my last in.

  13. 16:17 so pretty straightforward with the top half much quicker than the bottom. Getting 1ac from the off helped no end as I was able to get all but one of the danglers (reservist) on first pass.

    LOI the chess thing, that and cupidity going in on wordplay only.

    COD to the surfer – such a fun clue that I can forgive the liberty taken.

  14. Seemed to take ages, and three or four attempts, to get on the setter’s wavelength. But once things started to click, everything went in quite quickly (probably only 15 minutes). Frustration turned to enjoyment and satisfaction. COD: BRAINWAVE (yet another laugh out loud response).
  15. Really enjoyed this one, even though forced to solve online. Compliments to the setter.
  16. Was heading for a record time, but completely stumped (mated?) by DISCOVERED CHECK. Not familiar with the term, but the wordplay should have been enough. So in hindsight it’s my COD.
  17. I agree with most here, very entertaining. About 25 minutes for me, ending with the DISCOVERED CHECK, after I sussed out the CRUCIBLE wordplay. Yes, I too laughed at the BRAINWAVE, I admit it. Very well done setter, thanks to mctext, and best to everyone.
  18. No time today because of interruptions, but it felt like a 15-20 minute puzzle.
    CoD to BRAINWAVE – nothing else could top off my enjoyment of this one!
  19. A very enjoyable 48 minutes (even though my entry on the leaderboard says 52 minutes — my first submission didn’t make it, but wiped the slate clean, so I had to retype everything). There were (almost) no real problems, though I wasted a few minutes unsuccessfully trying to justify OVERTURE, which I mistakenly thought would be the “Introduction” and not the “approach”. I was very amused by NO SPRING CHICKEN (and even more by being able to enter it right away), THE CREEPS (after erasing RED for Cardinal) and BRAINWAVE, where I got the joke right away but first tried BRAINSTORM before noticing it wouldn’t fit. Thank you to the setter for a fun session.
  20. 8:54 for me – not too bad given that I wasted time looking for an anagram of TERLAIN (didn’t spot LATRINE!) and hoping that the “cardinal” in 14dn was going to be TWO or TEN. Another most enjoyable puzzle.

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