Times 24889 – I can’t dance, don’t make me

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 28:05 on the Crossword Club Timer, but I was distracted most of the way by texts and phone calls, so who knows what it would have been if I was focusing in on it. I found this a tricky one to get started on, and a first read-through of the acrosses only yielded three clues, and not much better on a first read of the downs. I kind of filled the grid from the bottom up. There is one I’m still not sure of, though I checked I had a correct solution before starting the blog, but maybe writing in all these wordplays will shake something loose.

Away we go!

Across
1 ST,AM,PAL,BUM: odd order of these four components in the clue but they do fit together the right way
6 S,KID: S is the last letter in kickS
9 UPLINKS: PLINK in U.S.
10 A(area),NGO,LAN: NGO is non-government organization, an abbreviation I was not familar with (though it is in Chambers) and a LAN is a network of computers
12 AZTEC: A and Z are the extreme characters, and ‘TEC can be a detective (another answer I got from definition)
13 ORIENTEER: another one I got from definition and was trying to figure out the wordplay for the blog – it’s a doozy – OR(men), then I,SENT without the S(sons), and E’ER(for good)
14 IVAN THE TERRIBLE: (IRRELEVANT,BIT)* about HE
17 HAVE TWO LEFT FEET: HAVE TO(must), LEFT(quit), FEET(bases) with a W(first letter of Will) in the middle
20 AIR(show),WORTHY(VIP)
21 OTAGO: (n)OT before AGO – it’s in the south island of New Zealand
23 how about we keep this one out of the discussion for today
24 1,(ca)N,GRATE
25 RAYS: double definition
26 BEAN SPROUT: (TO,BAN,US,REP)* – though just one bean sprout would not make much of a dish. Maybe the setter is on a diet.
 
Down
1 SQUEAMISH: Q(question) in SUE(petition) on AMISH
2 ALLOT: sounds like A LOT
3 PANIC(funk),STATIONS
4 LISSOME: S,SO in LIME
5 UNA,LIKE: though I thought opposites attracted?
7 KILLER,BEE: a KILLER is a great joke, like “what’s brown and sticky?” (answer at the end of the blog)
8 DONOR: N in DOOR – I like ROUNDS as a containment indicator
11 GENERATION GAP: GEN, E, RATION then A in G.P.
15 ADVERSITY: AD, then SIT(model) in VERY(a VERY LIGHT is a type of flare)
16 EX,TROVE,RT
18 let’s omit this multi-faceted down one
19 ELYSIAN: every other letter reversed in NeAr In SkY bLuE
20 ADDER: cunningly concealed in reverse in dismembeRED DAte
22 ALAMO: A LA MODE with the last two chopped off

Oh the punchline – a stick

39 comments on “Times 24889 – I can’t dance, don’t make me”

  1. Untimed … because both distracted and stupid. But I had as much fun as yesterday. I.e., little! Thanks George for parsing 13ac. Be interested to see any discussion of 23ac that may eventuate. Well well! I wonder if Jimbo is 9ac?
  2. Couldn’t get AIRWORTHY for the life of me, sticking ‘airportly’ in to complete the grid. Despite this, I thought this a very good puzzle. Read about Ivan the Terrible only yesterday in Hakluyt’s Principall (sic) Navigations, where he was called Euan Vasiliuich.
  3. Damn. There we go again. The one I can’t figure has been left out so I must be missing something obvious (23 where I put DRIES UP).
    Queries:
    Does “opening” in 1d indicate to put Q inside?
    Does the “couple” in 22 just direct to lose the last 2 letters?

    Had rather to grind out some of these answers.

      1. Thanks Jack.
        On 18 I just assumed it means to times by 8, ie significantly.
      3. I deleted it because I realised you hadn’t asked it and before you responded but I still got your response by email. I told you my brain was addled!
  4. 49:20, and I’m surprised I finished: my first in was 24ac, and I don’t think I got a down clue on the first pass.Like Jackkt, I got a lot of them on definition alone — or in my case, dumb luck — and when I did go back to work out the wordplay, I had a lot of work to do (in vain in some cases, like 1d & 8d; ta, George). I didn’t care for 23ac, but I’ll give a COD to 11d.
  5. I made very heavy weather of this one and can’t say I enjoyed it much. Many of the answers went in on definition alone and I didn’t bother to go back for the wordplay as I had spent over an hour solving the thing. Tomorrow I am obliged to worry about every last detail so I settled for the minimum today.
  6. Yes (‘question opening petition’ = Q inside SUE) and yes (the ‘last couple’ need to abandon A LA MODE).
  7. …two of my queries today are omitted answers! Like Barry, I had DRIES UP at 23ac. He later says the penny has dropped for him (is this cryptic?), but does not give away whether he was correct or not! Aargh…I’m still none the wiser. The other, 18dn, I’m more confident about.

    Another one where I was unsure was 9ac, where I put in ‘uclangs’, which, with hindsight, is far less likely than the correct answer (which was unfamiliar, but guessable).

    Lots went in without full understanding, so thanks for great blog.

    AIRWORTHY was my LOI.

      2. Thanks, I see now that’s how it works, but I don’t have to like it. Is running dry a characteristic of wells as a subset? Surely there are some that are famous for not doing that?
          1. I suppose that’s right in the way that all seas eventually gang dry. I’m at least in part influenced by childhood memories of the well at Carisbrooke Castle, with its donkeys patiently drawing from a well that has apparently never failed.
            I’m quite happy to acknowledge that my reservations are due in part to pique at not spotting well as, well, well.
  8. DNF: defeated by UPLINKS – I was convinced that the ‘us’ came at the end and that I was looking for some esoteric moon (‘satellite’) of some distant planet or star. Held up for a long time by carelessly entering SCRAP ALBUM at 1ac and being too confident that it was correct to check against full wordplay. Otherwise a good and enjoyable puzzle. COD to AIRWORTHY.
  9. The penny has not dropped for me on 23a either, so entered on definition (?) alone as DRIES UP. 27 minutes if that’s right, but it was hard work without too many laughs along the way.
    I thought there were several, such as 2LF and ORIENTEER where the cryptic didn’t help at all, and took time to prise out, more or less successfully. I might have got SQUEAMISH quicker had I remembered Lincoln County’s finest earlier, but it was my last in. I thought RAYS was a bit dodgy, though I do understand “catch some…”. Once I got it, I quite liked “treasurers collection” for TROVE, but I was using TR for treasurer until the ducat dropped.
    KILLER BEE was the best of the bunch for me, even if it was another requiring exceptional agility in parsing.
  10. Slow start, then ground my way through from the bottom up. Stuck in the NE corner for ages before I saw SKID, then the remainder fell.
    All correct in an hour. COD to DRIES UP.
  11. If ever there was an argument for stopping the strange practice of bloggers deliberately leaving out answers to clues this puzzle is it. As I was solving it I was pondering which ones might be omitted because I thought every one of them might cause trouble.

    Yes, 23A is DRIES UP. At the end of its life (finally) a well DRIES UP. Not the best clue in the puzzle. The answer to 18D is OCTUPLE being an anagram of “couplet”. It means multipy (=times) by 8 (=significantly – why?).

    This is a tough puzzle that needs a good deal of concentrated effort. Most of it is very good and overdue as an offering after a rather easy spell.

  12. this was a fairly quick one, as a lot came from definition alone, but unfortunately I also shoved in AIRPORTLY rather foolishly. I dont know why VIPs equate to PORTLY, but they more than likely are!

    I will probably kick myself here, but why is BEE=sewers in a group

    1. In the US you have a ‘spelling bee’ and a ‘sewing bee’.
      I rather liked that one!
      1. My wife’s quilting expertise is showcased in her blog along with our new Maine Coon kitten Baxter and our older boy Smudge….the kitten being part of the reason for DNFs as we acquired the 10-week-old on Wednesday. I think you’ll really enjoy her blog.

        http://quiltobsession.wordpress.com/

        Happy Canada Day

  13. Jimbo is right, there are very few obvious answers and on reflection I should probably have left off ALLOT rather than OCTUPLE. When I’m looking for ones to omit (and check back a few years – we were recommended to only mention 75%-80% of the answers to leave something for the “dial-an-answer” service, now we leave off one or two if any), I usually omit obvious anagrams (OCTUPLE) or double definitions where the checking letters and enumeration only leave one possibility (DRIES UP).
  14. On the road today, so solved online. 34:36 on the club timer, minus the time taken for my computer to decide without asking me to restart and install various updates I didn’t want, and then for me to retype the answers. So about half an hour I guess.
    Like others I found this very tough, and had very few answers in on the firs pass. It is a type of puzzle that could be called a grind, but for me there was enough originality and cunning in there for it to be very enjoyable. A test of technique and stamina against a formidable opponent, not to be attempted in a weakened state.
    As Jimbo says, we were due one like this.
  15. I’m in the Jimbo camp of liking this puzzle as, like the man said, every clue more or less required some thought.

    29:53, started well after getting stamp album straight off. Last in were the crossing Alamo and Otago.

  16. Took a long time to get in this groove, but glad to finish, and no complaints afterwards. Last in “Dries up”, a real “doh” moment which only served to make me smile.
  17. I enjoyed this one although, like others, I took a fair while to get properly started. First in SKID, followed by KILLER BEE and the rest of the NE corner apart from 10a which was my last in because I didn’t know NGO as “Non Goverment Organisation”. I guessed the answer early on and had the LAN ending but couldn’t get the cryptic and spent ages trying to chop bits off “Quango” which is a government organisation I have actually heard of. My cod was 20a – the definition was a lovely eureka moment. I originally had DRUMS UP at 23a but it turned out I was thinking about the wrong kind of kitchen. My cod was 20a – the definition was a lovely eureka moment. 36 minutes.
    1. QANGO from the acronym, surely, so you’d only need chop a singular bit off?
  18. … it definitely gets easier! It’s probably about 6 months or so since I found this blog and started doing the crossie regularly, and, although I still find the days I finish it correctly without aids are fewer than those I don’t, the balance is definitely shifting in the right direction. It’s certainly a learning process, and through the explanations on this site I have learnt so much.

    Big thanks, and respect of course, to all the regular bloggers and contributors!

  19. As someone who takes all day and only does it then with the help of machines can I say thank you. The explanations are so useful, even if I feel denser afterwards!
  20. 14:46 for me – this is turning out to be a bad week as I started briskly but then seemed to lose the setter’s wavelength. Some nice clues.
  21. Nobody has mentioned 20dn (Reptile climbing dismembered date palms, reverse hidden, adder) so presumably I’m missing something obvious. But I can’t see what is meant by ‘palms’. Presumably it’s some sort of hidden indicator, but I can’t see it. Help, please.

  22. 7 KILLER,BEE: a KILLER is a great joke

    In terms like “killer application”, “killer response”, etc the word “killer” is used to mean “extremely good”. So “killer” can be used to mean “an extremely good example of the thing that we are talking about”. But using “killer” to mean “a great joke”, rather than a “a great {something else}” is not something that I understand. I would appreciate an explanation.

    18 – OCTUPLE – I still do not understand the significance of the word “significantly” in the clue.

    Clive Tooth

Comments are closed.