Times Crossword 25,858 – a stairway to heaven

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 16 minutes, so a little on the easier side of average for me. Though having said that, there are one or two I couldn’t parse so let us see if they become clear or help is needed. I see the Editor has lost no time in disabusing Jim of his belief that this blog has had any effect on the crosswords – this one has both a Dickens reference, a hoary word for money and that even hoarier old actor Beerbohm Tree.. still and all, I really enjoyed it, and thought it had some tricky, excellent clues

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 pesky – this took me a while to parse. It is PARTY, with the ART (= craft) replaced by the (river) ESK.
4 executant – still around = EXTANT containing EC (city, ie of London which has ECx postcodes) + U
9 eucalypti – EU + *(TYPICAL)
10 drove – this is DOVER, with the R(apid) advance to make a drove, mobs come in droves..
11 in ones element – a dd, one jocular.
14 tutu – sounds like “Too too” (The fashion show was just too too awful, daahling..)
15 dissembler – LE(A) (meadow) in *(BIRD MESS). Nothing to do with guano, this time..
18 – RHINO (money) + C(irca) (about) + SORE rev. A neat clue.
19 bang – BANG ON without the on.. from Collins: “(slang) an injection of heroin or other narcotic.” I rather object to being expected to know drug cant; I prefer Sam Weller and Beerbohm Tree
21 talk of the town – I wrote this in happily enough, quite early on but I had no clue about Hamlet. I supposed it was a reference to the play, but now I think it just means hamlet ie village, ie not a town. Incidentally this is a good example of the correct and fair misleading use of a capital H, since as the first word it should have one anyway. Had it appeared later in the clue with an unwarranted capital I would have found it annoying.
24 Hanoi – A NO in HI, the usual abbreviation for Hawaii.
25 troweller – TO WELLER containing R(un). Sam Weller is in Pickwick Papers, and (it transpires) Tony is his father.. I don’t believe the word “troweller” has ever been uttered. google results are exclusively dictionary entries and similar. I concede it may occasionally have been uttered by dictionary editors
27 overgrown – sounds like “overgroan.” Groan.
28 ridge – G (a musical key) in RIDE

Down
1 prehistory – *(TROY + PERISH) My first in and a useful start
2 sac – hidden in it’S A Convenient
3 yeller – dd
4 expletive – L(eft) in EX PET I’VE. A curious word, seldom mentioned unless it has been deleted..
5 elite – this is CARMELITE (friar) without the CAR and the M
6 undreamt – *(T(eam) + MADE RUN. Not absolutely sure what the “new” is doing, since the somehow is presumably the anagrind. The clue seems to work well without it..
7 amontillado – A MON(day) TILL A DO. At last, a subject on which I am expert, though I’m more of a Manzanilla man these days
8 trek – RE (Soldiers, royal engineers specifically) in T(OBRU)K
12 outdistance – OUT (not in) + DISTANCE (aloofness)
13 dragon-tree – DRAG ON TREE, the aforementioned Beerbohm Tree (1852 – 1917)
16 shorthorn – I couldn’t parse this at the time.. it is H(orse) in TOR (peak), all in SHORN (cut). Another neat clue
17 low-lying – pLaY in LOWING, what Hereford cattle do. Herefords are one of the world’s most successful and widespread cattle breeds
20 veneer – VEN (what archdeacons are referrred to as) + EER, poetical “ever.” I think of veneer as a solid covering rather than a polish but it is used in the figurative sense in that way, I suppose
22 outdo – a tricky little clue, one of my last in. OUT (available) + DO (tonic, in the musical sense, ie DO RE ME etc etc). To best (and to worst) both mean to outdo in this odd language we use
23 shoo – SHOO(T), a sporting expedition, hopefully these days of the photographic kind. Shooting living things for fun I have no truck with, though I confess to shooting the odd pheasant in days long past. At least then I ate them..
26 led – ha ha, a fine reference to Led Zeppelin that I very much enjoyed. Follow the link, and marvel at the viewing count for that song..

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

46 comments on “Times Crossword 25,858 – a stairway to heaven”

  1. Went whizzing along at a great pace until 16d and 19ac, which took me about a third of my total time. Finally parsed 16d, and although I’d never heard of SHORTHORNs, I figured that if there are longhorns, … BANG was the real problem, since a) I didn’t know the phrase ‘bang on’, and b) I spell the drug ‘bhang’. But a run through the alphabet (with -rg and -ng) finally convinced me. ‘thick-skinned’ and ‘money’ was enough to get 18ac, which was a pity, since it is a nice clue. I parsed 21ac as Jerry suggests. My understanding is that a capital letter is OK, but a lower-case letter where a capital is the norm is out; n’est-ce pas?
    1. You are right about Ximenes “rule” but I would say that deliberately using a capital where none is due is unfair. I am pretty sure some setters at least agree with me, since it is common to find examples like 21ac where a word is deliberately placed at the beginning of the clue in order to achieve legitimacy for the capital letter in question..

      Edited at 2014-08-06 07:19 am (UTC)

      1. I don’t know about setters, but I agree with you, and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure why, if it’s always wrong to say Hamlet if you mean hamlet, it can be OK to say hamlet when you mean Hamlet. I’m sure this has been discussed here, but I’m not going to try to find out.
        1. ‘…if it’s always wrong to say Hamlet if you mean hamlet, it can be OK to say hamlet when you mean Hamlet’

          I think you mean that the other say round!

  2. I was another BRASON TREE, BRAKEN TREE, BRALEN tree. I was also convinced that BANG was actually something to do with JABBER ON since JAB an injection seemed too neat. So I went for BRABEN tree (doesn’t exist) and JABB (which also doesn’t exist).
  3. Went down a few blind alleys, not the least of which was getting fixated about a ‘brason- tree’. Last in BANG with a cruciverbal shrug.

    I’m now blaming the ‘new’ at 6d for making me parse it as TEAM* + RUN* with a leftover ‘d’!

    1. You’ll be pleased to know that you beat me by nine and three-quarter hours today.

      In the AFL we call that a percentage-booster.

  4. I mistakenly parsed 13D as RAG (clothing) in DON (male) +TREE (actor) and came here keen to find out why DRAGON-TREE was “plant producing female”.
  5. I thought I was in for a sub-30 on this one but came unstuck in the SE corner with 13, 16, 19 and 25 between them adding considerably to my solving time.

    But actually I had sowed the seeds of my downfall when writing the answer at 18ac as I momentarily had doubts about the spelling of the animal in question, and thinking it ended in -OUS but with insufficient lights to fill, I unaccountably plumped for U instead of O as the penultimate letter. I surely knew this was incorrect so it must have simply been a slip of the pen, or at least I prefer to think that rather than admit that senility is gaining ground faster than I had realised.

    SHORTHORN was known to me so it went in fairly promptly once I had amended the incorrect checker. I knew BANG (on) but not the drug reference and I agree with Jerry’s point on that. DRAGON TREE was unknown though I spotted the actor reference having thought we’d seen the last of that particular old chestnut some time ago.

    Whilst there’s no doubt of course that a trowel is used in gardening, as far as I can tell the derivatives “trowelling” and “troweller” (an occupation – also spelt ‘trowler’ – that appeared on many an ancient census form apparently) are used with reference to mortar and plasterwork rather than gardening.

    Edited at 2014-08-06 06:22 am (UTC)

  6. Very much a mixed bag – some really easy (1d, 14 and – dare I say it – 18) some pretty tricky.
    50 minutes with the last 10 (yes, 10) inexplicably on 4a & 4d. When the light dawned there was a lot of 4 downs.
    Like others I guessed at 19a – is it me or are there too many drug references in these crosswords nowadays for comfort? Not that I’m casting any aspersions on the setters, of course.
    COD 21a – a delightful misdirection.
  7. 31’24”, way off the wavelength. I thought I might be on for a sub-10 (!) initially, with the NW sliding in on autocue, but shuddered to a complete halt, following every blind alley available and creating my own when the setter didn’t offer one.
    “Tony” threw me completely in 25: if it had been just Sam I flatter myself I would have got the Weller, and the “gardener” definition is surely a bit iffy.
    Likewise the dreaded “plant” at 13. Being not much of a troweller myself, a plant is anything up to and (if I’m generous) maybe including a shrub. Shrubs merge into bushes, and at some point having to do with mature height and timber production, become trees. A tree is not a plant, or at least shouldn’t be described as such.
    I doubt any druggy, even in the most befuddled state has ever described an injection as a BANG at least in the last 50 years. Put in only from bang on, and even then (confession alert) checked before submission.
    I doubt anyone’s ever used EXECUTANT outside of a dictionary. Even a lawyer would be ashamed.
    OVERGROWN is a horrible pun. LED Zep more of a delight than anything else in this one.
    SHOO my last one in, trying to get rid of the G from the end of sporting. Told you I made up my own blind alleys.
  8. Jerry, at 3D YELLER I think the idea is that it is a homophone for “yellow” as pronounced in esturine english.

    I also thought a TROWELLER was a brick layer and was a tad confused by “new” in 6D. Groaned at finding the wretched Tree included. If I had set that clue I would never publically admit it!

    15 minutes to solve a rather easy pedestrian puzzle

  9. This was definitely on the easy side because most of it felt like a quick cryptic to me. I completed almost all of it but didn’t have the GK for ELITE, TROWELLER and DRAGON TREE. I also had never heard of RHINO for money.

    Thanks very much for explaining these Jerry.

    Edited at 2014-08-06 09:22 am (UTC)

  10. 20 mins. I was also held up towards the end in the SE quadrant, and BANG was my LOI after DRAGON-TREE. I have a dragon-tree in a pot in my living room and I would most definitely define it as a plant. I got BANG from the wordplay, never having heard of the drug injection definition. I agree that EXECUTANT and TROWELLER were a little unusual, and for me UNDREAMT fell into the same category.

    For some reason I enjoyed the clue for OVERGROWN a lot more than most of you seem to have done.

    1. Oh, THAT dragon tree. The only one I was aware of (widely travelled as I am) is the big one on Tenerife, which definitely looks like a tree even if apparently, it isn’t really. It’s asparagus, or at least of that ilk. Apart from bonsai, I still wouldn’t expect to have a “tree” on my windowsill.
  11. Echoing our esteemed blogger, there are so many other serviceable meanings for BANG do we really have to have one from the argot of heroin users? Give me obscure poets and painters any time.
  12. 20 min, with 19ac as plausible guess.
    Held up a bit in SW by trying to make 23dn RODE(O), which seemed to give EVERGREEN at 26ac, which didn’t really make sense.
  13. Pretty slow going for me again – somewhere around the 45 minute mark, held up in particular by the DRAGON TREE and BANG crossers.

    I’ve never heard of Sam or Tony Weller – only Paul. If we’d had him as well as Led Zeppelin I’d have been convinced that we were moving towards some real music instead of the usual classical nonsense!

    1. You might get him in the Guardian but not here – yet – with the Times’s quaint rules.

      (I had to Google him by the way :))

  14. Successfully completed in 42 minutes but with 4 or 5 un-parsed so it all felt on a wing and a paryer. Carmelite, Tree, Sam causing the most trouble. Thanks for the explanations. Quite enjoyed 17dn after having played around with mooing for too long.
  15. Bang went in on a ‘it must be’ and I was nearly outdone by OUTDO but finished in 7.30 mins as I knew the tree etc.
  16. Mixture of easy and nasty little clues today, finished in 24 minutes over lunch with 2 or 3 unparsed (OUTDO, BANG a guess) and not happy with VENEER as polish. Thought the Hamlet misdirection was brilliant.
  17. Of which the last 10h 17m 37s were spent on BANG and DRAGON-TREE.

    EXPLETIVE was my favourite, simply because it reminded me of an extended-family holiday when my dear old mum was sitting in the corner enjoying a quick crossword.

    “9-letter word for ‘swear word’?” she mused aloud. Her grandchildren took great delight in shouting out their suggestions, each trying to outdo the other with the sophistication of their offerings.

    Eventually my brother offered “expletive?”. Mum raised her eyebrows, pushed out her bottom lip and wrote it in, muttering “I wouldn’t call that a swear word”.

    God love her.

  19. A bit of a struggle at 24:05. Like Z I spickled up every blind alley going and created my own obstacles as well.

    At 11 I mis-enumerated as 2,3,8 and wrote in IN THE pending enlightenment for the last word* and at 4a decided that I needed to put something inside an anagram of still so wrote in the final 1ST. Sam Weller only just known (put me down for Paul and also Keith).

    Last ones in were troweller, veneer and outdo.

    *That made 12 look interesting: T-T-I-T-N-E

  20. It’s already been said on here much more eloquenty by others, but I too strongly object to the use of druggie slang creeping into the crossword.
  21. Just under an hour for me today so I knew it must be at the easier end before I came here. I really enjoyed 11 across but put in ‘ THE TALK OF THE TOWN’ without getting that Hamlet was a hamlet although I live in one. Oh dear!
  24. Two missing again today (Dragon Tree and Bang) and one error (Pushy not Pesky at 1ac).
  25. I sometimes dabble with the Guardian. I quite like it except for when there are several clues referencing other clues.
  26. Struggled near the end having to slog through the alphabet soup to get possibilities for DRAGON TREE, BANG and TROWELLER, though I did see “Actor” and figured TREE was going to be there. I like to think that 19th century playgoers were there to see a real tree rustling on the stage with the rest of the cast pretending it was speaking and exeunting.
  27. About 20 minutes, like others, ending with the DRAGON TREE/BANG crossing. The wordplay for the tree was amusing when I got it, but BANG just produced a shrug when went in as a sort of guess after convincing myself that ‘bang on’ must mean ‘speak at length’. It’s probably appeared here before but it’s not something I’d easily remember. The drug reference was an unknown which I can do without, as others have said. Thanks for the blog and regards to all.
  28. 16m, so pretty straightforward in spite of the gratuitous obscurities. I have no objection to drug terminology – all part of life’s rich tapestry – but BANG seems terribly obscure for no good reason. Of course if we were restricting drug terminology by reference to the overall damage done by the drugs in question AMONTILLADO would be right out…
  29. i had much the same experience as others, and didn’t bother to parse ‘shorthorn’ once the answer was apparent. Enjoyed the puzzle though.
  30. 14:32 for me, with far too much of it spent agonising over BANG. Apart from that, I found this a pleasant, straightforward puzzle.

    I can’t remember what Ximenes had to say about capital letters (why on earth didn’t he provide an index to his book?), but as far as the Times crossword is concerned, I expect Edmund Akenhead’s oft-stated rule still applies: the small village can be spelled with either “h” or “H”, but the prince of Denmark is always spelled with “H”.

    1. I think spelling a perfectly ordinary noun like hamlet as “Hamlet” when in ordinary English you would not, just to create confusion with the play, would be grossly unfair. Plain wrong in fact.
      1. Interesting. I wouldn’t have expected you to take such a tough line, Jerry. Perhaps I heard Edmund say his piece so often that I became inured to it, though somehow I doubt I ever objected to it in the first place. Perhaps it’s something that will change in the future.
        1. But it is cheating, isn’t it? Misdirection is one thing, a downright lie is another. So hiding a wrong capital at the beginning of a sentence where a capital would be anyway is clever misdirection. But using a capital where it should not be used is just a lie. Like being given a definition of a word, and then finding out the definition was a deliberately wrong one.

          To be honest, that seems as clear as day to me; but perhaps it isn’t!

          1. I can see where you’re coming from, Jerry, but it simply doesn’t bother me all that much. I’m learning Gray’s Elegy at the moment, and the version in Q’s Oxford Book of English Verse, which I assume corresponds more or less to Gray’s original, sprinkles capital letters around like a German!

            I thought I better see what Ximenes had to say. Here’s the relevant chunk from the chapter on “Cluemanship” in X on the Art of the Crossword (p. 45 in my paperback 1st edition):

            May one use a capital, where it isn’t necessary, in order to deceive? … My answer … is: Yes, at a pinch; but try, if you can, to put the word first in the clue or after a full stop in the course of it.

            (Which leaves you somewhere to the right of the Genghis Khan ;-).

            1. I’m rereading the Art of the Crossword at the moment too.

              I think what he says actually supports my point of view, since he is clearly embarrassed about using the idea – “at a pinch” seems to mean “I know it’s wrong but I’ll do it anyway” – and agrees with me that it is much better to hide the capital somewhere it should properly be used

              I rest my case, m’lud, and wish to deprecate m’learned friend’s misuse of the Genghis Khan, whose attitude towards capital letters is hard to determine at this distance. Though he is recorded as having reduced a few actual capitals to lower case

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