Times 25922 – Pole Dancing with the Inland Revenue

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A nice warm-down for those competing at the championships on Saturday, with no need for arcane knowledge or familiarity with Gerry Anderson characters. 26 minutes.

ACROSS

1. SUPERB – UP (‘on horseback’ – if it’s a little difficult to think of a context where one uses this to mean that, but maybe that’s because I’m not one of the horsey set) in SERB. One of the sadnesses for me of the demise of Yugoslavia was that it put an end to my tactic of stopping Hong Kong people replying to my Cantonese in their English by saying “I’m a Yugoslav” in their tongue.
4. HECTARES – HE + CARES around T (first letter of ‘team’).
10. HOLLYWOOD – HOLLY (as in the chap who died with the Big Bopper) + WOOD (as in the homophone of ‘would’, as in ‘I would go to the wood with Amy every day that glorious summer’).
11. SOBER – SOBBER minus one of its Bs (‘when a book has been withdrawn’).
12. ORE – ORE[gon].
13. EXCORIATION – a word I have unaccountably never liked; an anagram* of E[nglish] COX IN A RIOT.
14. WARREN – RE (‘about’) goes inside/enters WARN (‘caution’).
16. TERMITE – TERM + IT + [whit]E.
19. STEWPOT – ‘vessel’ (not Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart – one of the few 1960-70s DJs who have escaped Operation Yewtree); if ‘Tory moderates’ are always WETS (think Francis Pym), then leading ones must be TOP WETS – until they repent, or are ‘brought back’.
20. TAXMAN – not the George Harrison song off Revolver; T[his] + AXMAN (American, because a British lumberjack would be an ‘axeman’).
22. ADRIATIC SEA – ‘expanse of water’; ASIA A DIRECT*.
25. INN – IN (‘trendy’) + N (‘new’); a clue that failed to pay its bill at the Quickie, created a diversion while the Main Puzzle landlord’s back was turned, and took up residence in the allegedly haunted room in the garret that no housemaid ever visits.
26. BAMBI – BA + B[agged] in MI.
27. TRANSLATE – TRA[i]NS + LATE.
28. LAND GIRL – the name by which a member of the Women’s Land Army – formed in 1939 to make sure food production did not suffer when the menfolk were off doing their war service – was known; L[eft] + AND (‘with’) + RIG reversed + L[ake].
29. STAYER – YE in STAR.

DOWN

1. SCHOOL – S + C(H)OOL.
2. PILFERAGE – not only is the word a little obscure (‘pilfering’ is more common) but f as the symbol for ‘force’ in physics is not universally known; so perhaps today’s tricky one (notwithstanding it can’t be much else with all the checkers in place). It’s PILE + RAGE around F.
3. RHYME – sounds like ‘rime’ (a poetic word for frost).
5. ELDER STATESMAN – TATE + S MAN (‘chap with spades’) below ELDERS.
6. TESTATRIX – sounds like ‘test a tricks’ – the offering of a solecistic conjurer, perhaps?
7. RABBI – BAR reversed + B (‘bishop’) + I[ntroduced].
8. STRANDED – double definition.
9. BOA CONSTRICTOR – ‘reptile’; BOA (‘stole’) + STRICTOR (‘stricter’) concealing CON (‘scam’).
15. REPEATING – REP + EATING.
17. IMAGINARY – I + MARY around GINA.
18. ISTANBUL – AS BUILT* around [mansion]N.
21. ENDEAR – ‘make beloved’; EAR (‘hear’ in Cockney) after END (‘close’).
23. ROMAN – an ‘upright’ (ie not italic) type (or font); Mr Lena is a minor character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
24. ASSET – ‘valuable quality’; nothing to do with lap girls and their ‘assets’ – this isn’t Paul! We’re talking of that peculiarly ‘leaves-a-nasty-taste-in-the-mouth’ – but, on the other hand, ‘nice-job-if-you-can-get-it’ – practice of ‘asset-stripping’.

80 comments on “Times 25922 – Pole Dancing with the Inland Revenue”

  1. I wonder if the younger solvers were as quick to think of Buddy Holly; as it was, I, a certified Old Fart, spent some time thinking of ‘pal’ and ‘mate’. (And also lost on that plane flight was Richie Valens, rather a greater loss to rock ‘n’ roll than the BB.) I had the UP in 1ac right off, but could only think of ‘Slav’ at first. F for force not universally known? F=ma is about all I can remember from high school physics. Couldn’t parse 24d, so thanks for enlightening me. DNK LAND-GIRL. Perhaps too bland a puzzle for a COD, but I did like HOLLYWOOD.
  2. Quite easy today. No scribbling in the margins except for writing BRES for 1ac — which was wrong. “About” has so many possibilities.
  4. 31 minutes. Mostly straightforward stuff. Time lost on PILFERING at 2dn and parsing everything along the way.
  5. . . . but the day has started badly with once again the use of the ST keyboard on the iPad. I wonder why they do that?
    1. Fortunately I noticed before leaving the house this morning took the paper copy. It’s quite baffling.
        1. Likewise! Yes, I’m feeling better now thank you, and now I’m back in the office so I can take it a bit easier 😉
    2. And with an error on my ipad showing 12 across as having 5 letters and then with a white, not black square, between ORE and EXCORIATION. I hate that format
  7. 9:26 … well, that was fun. I’m sure I’ve seen it before but STRANDED really appeals to me.

    First in TESTATRIX, last in SCHOOL.

    Thank you to everyone, organisers and competitors, who made Saturday such a lovely day. Sorry I couldn’t return to the pub for Round 2 but I ran out of energy.

    If anyone’s interested in how a first-timer got on, I did okay. I hit my main target of completing 3 puzzles in the hour, ending up 43rd out of 74 in the first heat. Two errors cost me some places. I know one was a truly daft spelling mistake and I’m pretty sure the other was the same, only dafter.

    The Champs really are a special event — scary and very exciting to do. It’s many years since I did anything directly competitive like that and I had forgotten how much fun it can be. Now I just want to do it again!

    1. Yes, I meant to say we had this in # 25885 on 6th September:

      How a rope must be held on the shore (8) STRANDED

      Coincidentally it was also at 8dn!

      Edited at 2014-10-20 08:23 am (UTC)

    2. Lovely to meet you on Saturday.

      Sorry if I wore you out walking to the pub, but I hope you agree the detour to see the poppies was worth it.

  8. Write-in with no hiccups, starting with Mr Holly and ending with 1dn. Like others, I messed with BRES for a while before un-reversing the chap from Belgrade.
  9. 12.57, thought it was faster. My mother was a cook in a hostel for land girls and she with me aged about one and they all got under a big table when bombs started going off nearby. Some of the girls were hysterical and my mother had the brilliant idea of passing me around: each held me in turn and they calmed down, as did I. Nearest thing I have to a WWII memory.
    2. My mother, still with us at 89, spent 2 1/2 years in the WLA, having gone from surburbia (Teddington) at 18 all alone to just outside Fakenham in Norfolk. What she remembers is the cold; swede bashing in the frost and washing the udders of her 10 cows twice a day in freezing water before milking. The well water was only for drinking; washing was with rain water. Having said that, we went back there this year and there did seem to be happy recollections too.
  10. Forgot to say – well done, Sotira. I and I’m sure many others for whom the Championships are well out of reach would be interested to know how other virtual friends got on.
    1. Thank you. I was pretty pleased, all things considered. I had a horrible, panicky freeze for about 20 minutes in the middle of the session and briefly considered running out of the hall and not stopping till I reached Cornwall, but got my mojo back towards the end and did some of the fastest solving I’ve ever done to get the puzzles finished. It’s just fascinating how the occasion affects the brain, and how different competitors handle it. Post-match conversations with others were intriguing. If I were a psychologist, I’d be there with my video camera and notebook every year!
      1. Lovely chatting to you 🙂 You’ve inspired me to begin striving to emulate you – first step is to take the stabilisers off the bike when I’m doing the quickie i.e. no ref to Z8 at all!
      2. Nice work Sotira! It really is very interesting isn’t it and I was very sorry to miss out. You did better than I did – once I froze I never really thawed. I sat directly behind Tony Sever which was rather unnerving – and I don’t envy anyone in the vicinity of Magoo. Even if you practise tunnel vision it’s hard not to notice when your neighbours hold their papers up. When my turn came I was so relieved I forgot myself and said a very loud thank you to the person who collected them.
        1. Exactly, Olivia. I thought I had avoided the super-quicks but it turned out one of them was sitting beside me, unrecognised by me (Chris W, 11th in the final). I saw him finish very early and I didn’t solve anything at all for at least the next 5 minutes.
    2. I was sitting directly behind Sotira and my number went up fractions of a second before hers. I managed two silly errors as well (more of which on the appropriate Wednesday) so that placed me 42nd out of 74.

      Terrific performance from Keriothe who represented this site as well as anyone.

      1. Having seen the results sheet, I am even more grumpy about my nemesis – the dreaded 27a – than I was on Saturday 🙁

        I have promised Penfold that I will try harder next year. He can be very ‘scary dad’ when he wants to be 😉

        1. As soon as I wrote my answer in I thought it must be wrong, but by the time I’d done the other 2 puzzles I’d completely forgotten I needed to go back to it …
  11. 7 mins. Could have been another PB because my timer didn’t go to 8 mins for quite a while (same last Friday) but because I can never be bothered to set a stopwatch I can’t be certain. SOBER was my FOI, the helpful B checker meant I was able to flesh out the NE straight away, and I built the rest of the puzzle from there with WARREN my LOI.
  12. This type of clue construction often confuses me. I think it should be, say, “who weeps when a book has been added”. How should the clue as written be interpreted so as to give sober?
    many thanks,
    Adrian Cobb
    1. |I see what you mean, though I think the construction that would make it work that way is trickier – you’d have to show that it WOULD be a person who weeps IF a book is added. The definition (Sedate) has to stand on its own in the current version, “person who weeps” then provides the SOBBER bit of the wordplay, and “when a B(ook) is taken away” the instruction to remove one of the Bs. It’s a very smooth “story” kind of clue which defies you to slice it up in the necessary way.
      On edit – Ol’ Lighting Fingers Ulaca got there first!

      Edited at 2014-10-20 09:41 am (UTC)

    2. Both your wording and the setter’s work!

      For his to work, we identify the literal at ‘sedate’ and work from there; ‘person who weeps when a book has been withdrawn’ gives us a ‘sobber’ with a B missing.

  13. A pleasant enough jaunt, though I couldn’t initially get a start on the left hand side. Couldn’t think of a word made up of G(rand) and BRES and nothing else.
    A day of wild delight at the Championship for me (that’s me in the Times photo of the day sitting behind the man in focus, and occupying my traditional no 13 desk). I came 22nd in the second heat, which meant that, for the first time ever, I was in the pink! That’s the section of the results sheet which highlights those who don’t have to qualify or pay next year. I doubt very much if the great Magoo, or indeed anyone else, was happier than me.
    Great to meet so many others, thanks to the inimitable Munkipuzl who made sure she was going to meet everyone even if I just wanted to focus on the game in hand.
    And compliments to Ulaca on a fine and amusing blog – especially on INN, making a dull clue the most exciting of the day.
    1. Thanks, Zed! By looking upon the blogging of these ‘easy-peasy’ ones as a challenge (not a Times Championship-type challenge but one of its own kind), I am able to raise my otherwise slightly flagging energy levels. Being a Monday blogger, I get much practice!
    2. What a great pic (has it been published?). And what an excellent result you got. I came nowhere near that last year. I hope we are going to get the full tally here soon. I gather from Tony’s blog that this year’s puzzles were thought to be easier than last year’s – did you find it so?
      1. The pic’s from today’s Times, accompanying their report on the day. I managed that rare thing of being able to recognise a picture of myself, when usually (as when catching my reflection in a shop window) I’m more likely to day “who the hell’s that?!”
        I’m not sure about the relative simplicity of the puzzles. Last year I only just completed in time, but then I was 31st, so I think they’re pretty much normal for the Championship. 17 minutes per puzzle suggests (on my scale, where 10 indicates a walk in the park) moderate difficulty, but then again, I find competitive adrenalin knocks a few minutes off my time.
        In today’s times, Magoo cites only one clue that he paused over, in his last grid, but I don’t think his times for last years “monstrously hard” puzzles were that much slower.
        On edit: Magoo clocked 33 minutes last year, and 22 minutes this in the finals. Does that make last year’s 50% harder than this?

        Edited at 2014-10-20 10:40 am (UTC)

        1. For some reason the Times online that I get in NY doesn’t have the report or the photo and it doesn’t emerge from a search (either that or I’m being very feeble). If you are able to post it here that would be great – many thanks if so.
    4. I think that you may have been the gentleman standing next to me when the results came out. My family had come to meet me, and my two-year-old daughter asked, “Why is the big man jumping?” It was easy to explain because two-year-olds understand about jumping for joy. Congratulations on your personal milestone.

      1. I’m delighted both to acknowledge it’s a fair cop, and that your daughter has learned a great truth, that you’re never too old to be 2

        Edited at 2014-10-20 10:41 pm (UTC)

  14. 12m. Straightforward stuff.
    ASSET-stripping is term usually applied to activities that are nothing of the kind these days. I’ve never seen a single example of the real thing, so if was actually your job you’d want to be doing a bit of window cleaning on the side.
  15. As others have already said, a nice gentle start to the week. 20.24 for me with one small interruption from the girlfriend! Also held up briefly by carelessly bunging in pilfering.18d went in quickly as I have just come back from there. A superb place to visit if you haven’t already. I was fortunate enough to be in the First Qualifier at this years competition but as a relative beginner to that sort of thing, I am fully aware that I was just making up the numbers. As we were meeting friends that day, I was unable to hang around but does anyone know if the full results will be available anywhere so I can see if I managed to avoid last place?! Many thanks
    1. If you email David Levy, the organiser, he will send you the full spreadsheet. I don’t have his email address to hand but it should be on one of the letters you got from the Times.
    2. I’ve already had the full list from David this morning. If you’re Dan Wroe you were comfortably above the bottom.
      1. I thought I’d just observe a link on the right to the 2013 results…hint hint 😉
  16. Relatively easy, and completed for the first time on my new I-pad mini, which is nice. The help desk really don’t have a clue – see my comments last week.

    I think we had the male equivalent of 6 in yesterday’s puzzle (or was it Saturday? the weekend was a bit of a blur).

    In addition to the ST keyboard on the ipad app version (I agree, I prefer the other type), there was a wrong word length at 12a, which both puzzled and prevented the congratulations message and timer, so not sure what my time really was, probably about 35m.

    1. How is the ipad app? Is the ST keyboard that bad? I’ve currently got an Android tablet on which the keyboard for the crossword lags terribly and I was thinking of changing to an ipad.
  17. Thank you keriothe. Unfortunately I have thrown away the letters already. Does anyone else have an e mail address for David Levy? Thanks
  18. Ulaca, I think you got mixed up on your blog for 28. Isn’t the second word RIG (rejected) and L{ake} to give GIRL?
  19. Congratulations to [anonymous] on his (or her) first solve. I can remember when I felt very happy if I could get a quarter of the answers.

    Not wishing to detract from this achievement, today’s was fairly gentle. I finished in 21 minutes, which is good for me. TESTATRIX might have caused problems had “testator” (and, I think, “aviatrix”) not been up recently.

      1. Indeed we do. A sharp blow in that region can leave the victim unable to speak coherently, forcing them to communicate with hand gestures or, as we call them, testiculations.
  20. Just to say that, whilst veterans welcome today’s cryptic as a nice and easy start, this was the first time that I have ever completed the Times crossword !!! It took me a full hour and a half – but I finally got there.

    Many many many thanks to the crossword setter – you really made my day!

    Everyone else will have forgotten this crossword within two minutes of finishing – but it will be on my office wall as encouragement for months if not years to come !!!

    1. Congratulations, Anon. It really does get easier over time (unless you are magoo in which case it was easy when he was 2).
      Do consider giving yourself a name. There are no knock-on implications and it just makes conversations more friendly. Details at the very top of the page.
      1. Yes, well done Anon. To second what bigtone says, I found that giving myself a name on here has helped with my solving in that it makes me more determined to be able to announce on here that I’ve finished on any particular day.
  21. 20 minutes with one interruption for a phone call and another as I was solving on paper today and my pen ran out. It’s straight on the web to order a refill now as I rely on the Fisher Space Pen for horizontal solving!
  23. 11:06. I failed to see how 1a worked on first pass so didn’t have a very organised solve. I had to piece excoriation together very carefully.
  24. A gentle 8 minute Monday solve. It feels much easier when it’s not under exam conditions, as well.

    For a nice appraisal of Magoo’s performance, I can recommend a piece in today’s Guardian by Alan Connor, who I think is an occasional poster here as well.

    http://gu.com/p/42t4j/tw

    Edited at 2014-10-20 01:31 pm (UTC)

    1. In the last few years, the competition offerings have been recycled as regular daily puzzles, so if you look at Wednesday’s puzzle, you may well find it’s the first of a series of nine. (Disclaimer: this practice may have changed under a new editor, and I haven’t heard anything to say it will definitely continue or will definitely cease).
  26. If Yugoslavia no longer qualifies as a country (ie it’s a former or old country), then how long must it be before the Tory Wets (Jim Prior et al) get the same privelege? From memory, they were politically dead by about 1985, and I’d have thought most of them would now qualify to be mentioned by name in the Crossword!
  27. I thought I whipped through this one and then checked the watch and it only took 7 minutes. Rare the Times was the fastest of the three dailies. Only one that went in from wordplay alone was LAND GIRL.
  28. Nice airplane fodder, with two problems across the bottom: never heard of a Land Girl and had a hard time un-parsing it, then the (incorrect, I think) use of THE OLD instead of YOU or THOU or THEE to sign YE gave me a bit of a think.

    Well done to all the competitors, and thanks for posting the summary articles.

    Edited at 2014-10-20 08:49 pm (UTC)

    1. ‘Ye’ can also be ‘the’, as in ‘ye olde worlde gifte shoppe’. In these cases the Y is (or rather was) a ‘thorn’, þ.
  29. Not too taxing, but an enjoyable puzzle.
    Congratulations to all contestants in the annual Championship.
  30. 10:00 for me, failing to find the setter’s wavelength, possibly because I still haven’t fully recovered from Saturday’s exertions.

    I was very pleased to meet several bloggers/commenters, especially those I hadn’t met before, but sorry to have missed others. I’m particularly sorry to have missed Verlaine, who is to be congratulated for reaching the final for the first time (the only new finalist) and completing the puzzles correctly. Commiserations to those who missed the cut, particularly keriothe, who came desperately close.

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