Times 25,911

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18:37 for an interesting puzzle: while I was doing it, I thought it was elegantly clued and on the distinctly tricky side of average. Then I came to write the blog, and thought perhaps I’d just been a bit slow on the uptake, as the wordplay all seemed quite precise, and – Dickens aside – there wasn’t too much obscure knowledge required. But then, as happens on blogging days, you gradually get to see how everyone else has got on, if only indirectly from the times on the leaderboard, and now I start to think perhaps I wasn’t being so dim after all.

Anyway, plenty to enjoy here, I thought, but I shall await other opinions.

Across
1 CHELTENHAM – (Clubs,MEN,HEALTH)*. Cheltenham Spa, former home of the solving competition.
6 SECT – the traditional cricket/insect wordplay crossover; a cricket is an insect, take away IN (=batting) to leave SECT(=order).
8 YUGOSLAV – [VAL’S 0 GUY]all rev. gives a native of a country which no longer exists, hence “old”.
9 USED UP – USE(=benefit), DUP. The Democratic Unionist Party was the creation of the now late Ian Paisley and forms a large part of the current NI administration.
10 UPON – last letters of yoU stoP tO leaN, another very short definition in “over”.
11 PITCH BLACK – PITCH(=shy), Bachelor, LACK(=miss).
12 FILIPINOS – 1 inside FLIP(=”to go mad”), IN O’S.
14 QUILP – Large in QUIP. Daniel Quilp is the dwarfish villain of The Old Curiosity Shop; I say this confidently, but I must admit to checking on wikipedia, as I knew the name and not much else, having picked that up somehow without ever having read the book (I don’t get on with Dickens). Apparently, crowds wept when the final, tragic, instalment was published; Oscar Wilde said “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing”. You choose a side.
17 ROWER – double def., depending on how you pronounce ROW; one way it’s an argument, the other way it’s propelling a boat (“blade” is another word for “oar”).
19 PERMUTING – “excursion” is OUTING, change the 0 for a PERM to get a word for “changing”.
22 FRESHWATER – FR., (WASTHERE)*, with “engineer” an unusual anagram instruction.
23 PSST – bottled, i.e. concealed in stoPS STealing. “Quiet attention seeker” was a cunning definition.
24 SATNAV – SATurday, (VAN)rev. This seemed rather familiar, having appeared in Sunday’s puzzle with a not too dissimilar clue (and enumerated [3-3] rather than [6]).
25 EMPLOYER – [Mass PLOY] in E’ER, a contracted version of EVER=”still”.
26 BYTE =”BIGHT”. I spent some time trying to work out how BITE could justifiably be a gulf before realising it didn’t need to be.
27 LITERATURE – LITER (i.e. volume measure in American spelling), (A TRUE)* &lit.
 
Down
1 CRY OUT FOR – C(=100), (FOUR,TORY)*.
2 EGG ROLL – E.G. (=”for one”), runninG, ROLL(=”pitch”).
3 ELLIPSIS – immigrants to the USA entering via New York were processed at ELLIS IS.land; insert Prisoner to get the “missing part of sentence”…
4 HAVE TWO LEFT FEET – if you have the proverbial two left feet, you won’t be able to get your right (foot) kicking or indeed, doing anything.
5 MOUTHY – MOUTH(=”chops”), Y, today’s unknown number.
6 SHELLSUIT – SHE’LL; SUIT, as in playing cards. I don’t know much about fashion, but I’m pretty certain these garments are no longer considered to be the must-have look. Possibly superseded by the onesie.
7 COUNCIL – lUNCh in COIL.
13 IN ESSENCE – IN(popular) ESSENCE(perfume).
15 PAGE THREE – PAGE(“call for”), [RE in THE]. Non-UK natives may be unfamiliar with the tabloid phenomenon.
16 IMPROPER – the musical note (MI)rev., PRO(“for”), (REP)rev.
18 OUR LADY – AD(“commercial”) in ‘OURLY(the way a Crossword Cockney would indicate once an hour). “On” is just a connecting word, but I can’t help thinking “in” would read better. I don’t want to nit-pick, though, it’s a very original clue.
20 I ASK YOU – [A SKY] in IOU.
21 SWIVEL – (VIEWS)*, Left.

43 comments on “Times 25,911”

  1. Stopping for a post-solve re-check (and to parse a few I didn’t see earlier), I too was surprised it took so long. But perhaps that’s a sign of a good puzzle. Always easy to be wise in retrospect.

    Thought Sunday’s was a better clue for 24ac and that 4dn was indeed “a bit gauche” (as per Ulaca), though I might have put it a bit more strongly — good pun but. Being distinctly left-sided, I wouldn’t mind having two of them!

    And to Jack: the userpic problem persists.

    Edited at 2014-10-07 02:58 am (UTC)

  2. 44 minutes for this, which I thought non-Brits might struggle with a bit, given Cheltenham (probably not, on second thoughts, given GCHQ, Jump Racing HQ, Times Crossword Competition and all) and page-three.

    The clue for two-left-feet was, well, a bit gauche, but PSST and MOUTHY made up for that.

    Re 14a, whichever side the ‘Green Carnation’ is on, I’m usually on the other.

  3. The 6s went in at a glance but then I struggled to find a third answer. It was what I’d term an untidy solve as I spent most of the time hopping round the grid placing odd answers wherever I found them and there was little flow to it. Still I got there in the end without resorting to aids in exactly 55 minutes. Many individual clues were extremely satisfying to crack but the whole experience was a little uncomfortable for me.

    Edited at 2014-10-07 04:32 am (UTC)

  4. Delighted to finish this one. I had expected a complete failure today after an over-enthusiastic celebration of the Miracle of the Rabbitohs.

    (I understand that this is meaningless to almost everyone here, just take it as a good thing. A very, very good thing).

    Thanks setter and blogger. As a famous but over-rated Aussie boxer used to say, “I love youse all”.

    1. So the Sandgroper strips off to reveal a brash Sydneysider. Makes sense. A lot of sense.
        1. I note it took an Englishman – broken cheekbone, eye socket and all – to end the 43 years of hurt.
            1. I have almost no idea what you’re talking about, yet I can’t help feeling good about it. Congratulations!
              1. Thanks S. I’m sure you’ve read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, as any sports fan must.

                Hornby’s relationship with Arsenal mirrors my relationship with South Sydney almost exactly. Except that he only had to wait 18 years for redemption, I’ve had to wait 43. And it hasn’t been easy!

                1. By a strange coincidence Nick Hornby is front page news today (well, in some papers) for a speech in gave at the CHELTENHAM literary festival. Tad controversial.

                  I’ve listened to the audiobook of Fever Pitch, and enjoyed it greatly since it finally explained to me a lot of people I know. I do love watching good sport but have never contracted fan-itis, evidently saving me a great deal of emotional agony!

                  1. Are you saying you didn’t get a KP hairdo and do the sprinkler dance in Trafalgar Square in 2005?

                    Another mental image destroyed!

            2. Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t James Graham — who caused all the damage to said Englishman — also an Englishman? Sounds like collateral damage.
              1. Very true McT, very true. But it was just collateral damage, no deliberate malice.

                And now that Ulaca’s not listening I can mention that the three best players on the field were Englishmen. They were quite magnificent in a sometimes brutal encounter.

  5. 20:12 (Perfect Curve, anyone?) … for a really enjoyable puzzle.

    The clue for PITCH BLACK is one of my favourites for a long while — sweet and funny.

  6. 33 minutes for me today, somewhere around average. I was tentative about BYTE not knowing bight, but didn’t think it could be anything else. SATNAV definitely went in quicker for having been seen only two days ago.
  7. Snuck in under 30, with a slow, disconnected start, a rush in the middle then almost a full stop with the crossing pair of IMPROPER and PERMUTING. I’d have expected an extra AT in the latter, which may not be any kind of excuse, but the short form didn’t come readily to mind. Leaving aside the per-, muting and mutating are very different words. More prosaically, I was looking for changing (say) DA within a word for excursion, which rather put me off the scent.
    On OUR LADY, I don’t ever pronounce the H either: are we all Cockneys now?
    Can’t help feeling I’m working with the cruciverbal version of two left feet at the moment, but if were to administer myself a kicking, it would still either be with my right left foot or my left left foot. Odd clue.
    That said, appreciation to both Tim and setter for respectively unravelling and creating a tricky one. I find, like Tim, that the blogging experience tends to make you feel as if everything was straightforward really, and you should have been quicker on the uptake. Then the scores on the doors come in.
      1. … as Sir Half Ramsey might have said, proving that Hs can be added as easily as dropped via ’ypercorrection?

        Edited at 2014-10-07 09:51 am (UTC)

  8. Astonished to see that almost 40 minutes had passed between starting and finishing this excellent puzzle; I must have been totally absorbed.
  9. 23m. I really enjoyed this: I like it when you can’t bung the answers in from the definition, which was almost always the case here.
    I didn’t know QUILP (I don’t really get on with Dickens either) but the wordplay was clear.
    My last in was 17ac. I was a bit baffled by the clue, so I went through the alphabet. When I got to ROVER I thought ‘that could be right… a blade is a dashing chap, perhaps also unreliable… the rest of the clue doesn’t make sense but I’m at V already and surely it can’t be… doh!’
  10. 13 mins. I can only assume I was very much on the setter’s wavelength. Even though I saw the 6’s straight away and QUILP was a write-in as I quite like Dickens I didn’t find the rest of the NE easy, and COUNCIL was my LOI after MOUTHY and USED UP. Having said that, PERMUTING went in from wordplay alone. As others have said, an enjoyable puzzle.
  11. Feeling very drowsy when I tackled this, so a very slow solve taking over an hour. The hold-ups for me were 2, 4, 12, 17, 26 and 27 (where I wasted time trying to knock VOLUME A TRUE into shape). I thought of ELLIPSIS early on from the definition and an opening E in the grid, but I couldn’t see the wordplay so held back until I had some more confirmation. The wordplay and the definition of 27 do not coincide precisely since “which includes” is no part of the wordplay, so I don’t agree with the blogger that it can be regarded as &lit; more like semi &lit.

    I agree with others that the clues were an interesting set.

  12. 14:42 finishing in the NE corner but ellipsis was a tricky bugger I thought.

    I don’t normally “see” surface readings but the one for pitch black leapt out as a good ‘un.

    I’m not sure I’ve heard of Quilp but with the U in place and the clear wordplay I just threw it in on the basis that it was the sort of name that Dickens would invent.

    Filipinos looks odd with no Ph and no double letters but hey ho.

    1. An enjoyable puzzle, slightly marred for me by the reference to the trade name Sky. I remember complaining the last time this device was used, and put it down to an aberration on the part of the then editor. Now that we had the kitchen aid in Saturday’s Jumbo, yesterday’s living person reference and Sky again today, I think the Editor should advise us whether or not these rules are still in force. I don’t really mind the occasional well known trade name or eminent living person (like Eco) as long as the crossword doesn’t follow the Independent into the realms of celebrity, fashion and sport.
  13. Really dim about this one. That is to say, fully alert, sparkling, possibly brilliant, but not on the setter’s wavelength. About 65 minutes. Desperately sad Philip Howard of the Times is no more.
  14. Like others, over an hour for a very enjoyable puzzle. I had one unparsed at the end (19) and also fell for I OWE YOU until I couldn’t get 22 and had to revisit it. Technical DNF as I went for the unparsable ECLIPSIS instead of the now obvious ELLIPSIS.

    Thanks Setter and Blogger.

  15. A rare treeware solve as I was on the train to visit Miss bigtone in Bristol. It took about as long as it takes to get from Reading to the station before Bath.

    Ellis Island does corporate hospitality where you can dine in the huge arrivals hall. Interactive displays let one see the details of every immigrant who passed through which was of great interest to the huge number of Americans present when I ate there.

    (PS jack + mctext – no userpic issue on iPad)

  16. Bang on my one hour target, with EGG ROLL put in with doubts to meet the time.
    I am very sceptical about “pitch”=ROLL. When a ship or aircraft pitches, the front goes up as the back goes down, or vice versa. When they roll, the left side goes up as the right side goes down, or vice versa. Rotation about the third axis is YAW. From an engineering standpoint these are important distinctions.
    1. Collins has a less technical sense of ‘pitch’ which fits the bill: ‘to move vigorously or irregularly to and fro or up and down’.
      1. Being a very pedantic engineer, I would argue that ‘to and fro or up and down’ are linear, and not rotational movements.
        ROLL definitely implies rotation, except, perhaps, for Chesterton’s “Rolling English drunkard” who made “The rolling English road”.
        I must admit, though, that this gets closer than anything in Chambers.

        Edited at 2014-10-07 04:40 pm (UTC)

        1. Keith, rightly or wrongly, the convention here is that if one of the usual suspect dictionaries gives a suitable definition, then it is acceptable, even though experts might disagree with the dictionary entry. I have to button my lip over accountancy ‘errors’ in the sources.
        2. They’re hedging their bets are the dictionaries, but ODO has irregular movements backwards and forwards or from side to side for ‘to and fro’, which appears close to your right side up, left side down scenario.
      1. I’m with Keith, in that roll/pitch stuck for a second – I once worked on inertial nav systems – but about the only real improvement I’ve made my solving in the past year is getting to the point that I can let the ‘crosswords is crosswords’ inaccuracies roll (or pitch) off my back. Unless they keep me from a good time, of course.
  17. Whatever point on the frequency is furthest from the wavelength is where I was at. Not the setter’s fault – I fear it was just lousy form. 29.20. We have “page three” or its more subdued equivalent in the NYC tabloids so no trouble there. Where I was inexcusably stuck was in trying to fit the Tombs (notorious Manhattan house of detention for pre-trial prisoners) into 3d. Yes I was that far out to lunch.
    1. What is it about fixing on a bad idea and not being able to get past it? Fortunately I had enough crossers to obviate Rikers
  18. Rather fun this one – everything made perfect sense though I had to get QUILP from wordplay. Agree with previous comments on the wonderful clues for PITCH BLACK, LITERATURE and FRESHWATER. Thanks setter!
  19. DNF after confidently putting in CHEEKY as my first one in at 5d (cheeks=chops, as in a slap in the chops, with the y as variable) and was so sure it was right I then failed miserably. Oh well, better luck tomorrow…..

    Edited at 2014-10-07 08:02 pm (UTC)

  20. 21:17 for me, proceeding slowly but surely at first, then completely losing the plot, but eventually finding it again and so avoiding a complete disaster. Unfortunately tiredness meant that I didn’t enjoy this puzzle as much as I might have done, but I agree that there were some nice clues, particularly 11ac (PITCH-BLACK). No problem with QUILP.
  21. A day late, this, and 2 words short in about an hour. Like others, I didn’t realise it had gone on so long. Not mesmerizing, but definitely filled my attention.

Comments are closed.