Times 25609 – Reverse Gear

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I thought this was going to be easy as I started strongly but I soon ran into problems and slowed to a crawl. I was parsing as I went but had to miss out a couple along the way which took ages to resolve once the grid was complete. 1ac and 3dn gave most trouble in this respect, and also 4dn but that was because I didn’t know, or had forgotten, the word for ‘trellis’. Early indications on the leader board suggest this was not a particularly easy solve with positions 5 and downwards all slower than my 1 hour, and two of those with errors that I managed to avoid. Lots of reversing today but no hidden answer.

* = anagram “

Across
1 EPIC – dEPICt I thought I was looking for a triple definition here but ‘strip’ is an instruction to top-and-tail ‘depict’ to get to the answer
4 REFERENDUM – REFEREe (judge), N (new) then MUD (slander) reversed
9 UNEMPLOYED – MENU (tariff) reversed, PLOY (scheme), ED (editor)
10 JAIL – A (area) inside JILt (desert)
11 CLAM UP – LAM ( batter) inside CUP (bowl). I’m not totally convinced that cup and bowl are interchangeable though they can both serve the same purpose.
12 FRIGHTEN – RIGHT (just) inside FEN (bog)
14 HERE – EH (what) reversed, RE (about). Can we have a break from eh/what please?
15 EXTIRPATED – EXIT*, DEPART*
17 STATIONERY – (TREATY IS ON)*
20 TRAM – TRAMp (long walk)
21 GREEN TEA – GREEN (flourishing), TEAm (side)
23 ROUNDS – Double definition
24 LEAN – LEArN – The R for removal is clued by ‘writing’, one of “the three Rs” as discussed here many times.
25 OLD-MAIDISH – M (Frenchman) + AID (help) inside OLDISH (getting on)
26 GREAT-NIECE – GREAT then Entertainment inside NICE. I wasted ages having written ‘grand-niece’ here. I should have spotted that it doesn’t take a hyphen and looked immediately for an alternative.
27 DREW – WEiRD (bizarre) reversed

Down
2 PANEL BEATER – I wonder if this will cause problems for those who don’t remember ‘What’s My Line?’, one of the original TV game shows in which a celebrity panel had to guess the occupations of contestants by asking them a series of closed questions. The regular panellists on the UK version were Lady Isobel Barnet, Barbara Kelly and, most memorably, Gilbert Harding who was often the worse for drink and very rude to contestants. The fourth panellist varied but I remember David Nixon, Cyril Fletcher and Bob Monkhouse often made up the numbers. The uneasy host was Eamonn Andrews.
3 CAMEMBERT – reMEMBER (summon up) inside CAT (boat, short for catamaran)
4 RELAPSE – ESPALiER (garden trellis) reversed
5 FLY OFF THE HANDLE
6 RUDDIER – RUDD (fish), In, Ethnic, Recipes
7 DRAFT – DR, AFT (rear)
8 MILAN – 1 + LA (city) inside NM (New Mexico) reversed
13 EMERALD ISLE
16 ASTOUNDED – (NOT USED)* inside AD (commercial)
18 OUTWORN – (OUR TOWN)*
19 YARDAGE – EG, A, DRAY (carrier) all reversed
21 GULAG – vodkA inside GLUG (drink) reversed. The definition is ‘Russian can’, today’s second prison.
22 EVADE – AD (flyer) inside EVEr (always). Today’s second advertisement.

35 comments on “Times 25609 – Reverse Gear”

  1. 27:41 .. happy just to get them all right and under the half hour.

    Last in DREW then EVADE.

    COD .. STATIONERY

  2. Well blogged, Jackkt. I found this quite tough and there were a few that I didn’t fully parse. I don’t like 13dn which I find unconvincing.

    I saw the possible alternative at 26ac and waited until I had EVADE before inking it in.

    Spent an age on 21dn (trying variants of GROG and IGOR) until 24ac gave it away. Good clue I thought.

    Edited at 2013-10-18 02:22 am (UTC)

  3. Yep … tough going. And all the trouble (like Jack) in the NW. Almost fell into a TRAP at 20ac and also thought 26ac might be GRAND rather than GREAT.

    Edited at 2013-10-18 03:11 am (UTC)

  4. My time and my experience as so often mirrored Jack’s. Clear COD to PANEL BEATER, which I got after I finally started thinking of alternatives to ‘final’ for the first word and ‘setter’ for the second. Just old enough to remember the show, which we would watch each week along with Face the Music and Call my Bluff, although these two may be of a slightly later vintage.

    May I wish the very best to all competitors at the Championship. I notice there seems to have been quite a bit of tactical stuff going on this week, straight out of The Art of War, in fact. My advice is, do a Hodgson (apart from the monkey stuff), be bold and reap the rewards.

    Edited at 2013-10-18 02:12 am (UTC)

  5. LOI DREW, no doubt in part because I can never spell ‘weird’ right; or is it ‘wierd’? Put in CAMEMBERT on definition and the M M T checkers; didn’t get it until Jack enlightened me, although I did have a vague idea that ‘cat’=catamaran. COD to DREW.
    A year or so ago I saw a rerun (kinescope, I imagine) of a ‘What’s My Line?’ show (US version), which we watched regularly when I was a child. What struck me most was that John Daly, the urbane and courtly host, always asked female contestants if she was Miss or Mrs. X, and took them by the hand to present them to the panel.
  6. Thanks for the blog Jackkt.
    Gilbert Harding was an OB of my school and you won’t be surprised to learn that his reputation was much as you have described it above! Who can forget the sad disgrace of Lady Isobel Barnet, convicted of shoplifting, when what she required was psychiatric help.
    I got the obvious literal at 13dn (EMERALD ISLE) but stll can’t parse it. Can anyone please help out?
    Also, doesn’t EXTIRPATION involve some element of physical destruction as opposed to mere abolition?
    1. The thing that amazes me about Gilbert is that he was only 53 when he died. He looked about 70 for many years before that.

      Edited at 2013-10-18 08:18 am (UTC)

      1. You’re absolutely right Jackkt. But even in old photos when he was in his late teens he looked almost middle-aged.
  7. 26 minutes, same as yesterday, but this one was definitely tougher. Congratulations to Jack on parsing CAMEMBERT. Mine went in because nothing else would fit the checkers and it might at least occasionally be seen on my cheeseboard.
    Of a vintage to remember What’s My Line?, but how I’d solve it otherwise I’ve no idea.
    EMERALD ISLE I took to be just a cryptic definition with a nudge in the false direction of Blake’s Jerusalem. I guess it’s sort of poetic.
    CoD to STATIONERY, a very nice &lit.
    1. I expect you ae right Z, perhaps I was looking too hard for some parsing device. Having said that a clue so obvious at first sight with only a ‘nudge’ towards being cryptic lets down an otherwise excellent crossword (IMHO).
      1. I took poet’s green to equate to emerald and land to be the def leaving pleasant and isle to sort which doesn’t seem to work so it must be a CD “of sorts”.
  8. Ouch. If you think that Friday’s puzzle should be a good bit harder than the rest of the week, you wouldn’t have been disappointed today. 28 minutes, and like others, glad just to have got everything, eventually.

    I also did my best to sabotage myself with several first efforts: another GRAND NIECE, not to mention a tentative BLOW IN and FRIESIAN (presumably exactly as intended by the setter), and the not-even-a-word OLD MAIDAGE.

    Decent puzzle, anyway, and a nice reality check for anyone who might be getting over-confident ahead of the competition tomorrow. I shall look forward to saying hello to people from these parts if they can be identified (I will be the man with a beard carrying a copy of the Times, so easily spotted).

  9. 26m. A toughie, but no errors, which probably means I’m due one tomorrow.
    Not my kind of puzzle: oblique/obscure definitions (cup = bowl, round = series, “r” for writing), weak CDs and a lot of answers bunged in on the basis of definition and checkers.
    I’m too young for What’s My Line but I did at least know it was a panel game. I was convinced that the second word was going to be “setter” (which would have been rather neat) but got there in the end.
  10. Interupted three times during this unfortunately. Easily the toughest of the week but like keriothe not really my cup of tea and for the same reasons. I felt at times the setter was trying just a bit too hard to make things difficult, as if under instruction.

    13D is very weak. GULAG is good.

    I well remember Whats My Line. It was one of the things that convinced me that popular TV is by and large not worth watching – an opinion I have had no real cause to change ever since.

  11. 20 mins, and I didn’t have as much trouble as some of you seem to have had, which is the reverse of a couple from earlier in the week. One man’s meat etc.

    I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, and much like yesterday close attention to the wordplay paid dividends, even if that wasn’t the case for all of the clues. EPIC was my LOI after CAMEMBERT. I also waited to solve 22dn before entering 26ac because “grand” and “great” both seemed to work.

    I hope that all of you who are attending the finals tomorrow have a great/grand day.

    1. Yes, I’ll join the chorus of good wishes for all those hurling themselves into the bear pit tomorrow. May your grids be full and your guesses few.
  12. 20:09 Having one of those days when my cryptic brain seems to have frozen – just hope I can de-ice it before the morning.

  13. Nice puzzle, but definitely tough with all those indirect references (such as the definition for CAMEMBERT, my last in). Five minutes over the hour to complete this, and for the first 15 minutes I had very little to show.
    Strictly speaking, the clue for CAMEMBERT doesn’t work, because there is still an engineer remaining in (re)MEMBER, in the form of ME, a common abbreviation for Mechanical Engineer.
  14. 19:03 for me and I rather enjoyed it – tough enough to require real thought but clever along the way.

    I had grand-niece too which left me in a bit of a panic about 22 – is there a shrub e_ada? I nearly went for old maidism too.

    Thanks for the parsing of 1 Jack. I just thought is was a CD based on films coming in strips.

    I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow.

  16. …not helped by being one of the Grand-Niece brigade.

    Good luck to all going along tomorrow. I will not be there as a) I am pretty useless and b) I prefer the format of some 20 years ago under the late M C C Rich. At least you had the chance of a Regional Final before being booted out. I recall with pleasure a London Regional Final which involved both a famous actress and a Chess Grandmaster, especially as I beat them both.

  17. An irritating one today. Nearly everything seemed to go in awkwardly, and then when it was in, it looked wrong. Even the anagrams took spadework. CAMEMBERT and EPIC went in, but couldn’t parse them, which for me means I didn’t finish. Thanks jackkt, and well done!

    EMERALD ISLE. Why? Poet’s green = emerald, ok, but where does pleasant go? And where does ISLE come from? As far as I know no poet has referred to Ireland as a green and pleasant land, although it probably deserves the description every bit as much as England, so no Massachusetts/Lincolnshire type misdirection here. An unsatisfactory, untidy clue …

    And shouldn’t 5dn have had a ? at the end. Grumble, grumble grumble …

    Edited at 2013-10-18 03:04 pm (UTC)

  18. A toughie. Not my cup of green tea, for the same reasons as those given by Jimbo and Keriothe.

    Well blogged Jackkt, and thanks for explaining all the clues I failed to parse fully.

    Best of luck to all those in tomorrow’s finals.

  19. Time out of mind as went soundly to sleep en solve, zonked after a 7-week half term of teaching, with ‘Jerusalem’ ringing in my ears from the end-of-school service. Regarding which I think 13 is OK, even without knowing (which I didn’t) that a poet William Drennan coined the answer-phrase. The overwhelming majority of clues slot home quite precisely but there are some with a whimsical precision about them, for the sake of setting variety maybe, that ask to be cut a little slack. At any rate they shouldn’t be judged quite in the way of the others I feel. Finished the thing but with an unrevisited ‘spec’ for 1, knowing the stripped grand from ‘speck’ was all wrong but forgetting about it. Rather a fine number all told.
  20. About 25 minutes, ending with EPIC/PANEL BEATER. I hadn’t known there was a UK version of What’s My Line?, and I couldn’t parse CAMAMBERT either, and, as roundly agreed, the EMERALD ISLE clue merits an unhappy shrug at best. To those bravely entering the competition,: “Break a leg!”, or whatever might be a more appropriate wish. Regards to all.
  21. An hour and ten. Well, technically an hour and fifteen, but I’m not counting the five minutes in the middle it took to convince a worried mother that her son neither needed nor deserved an X-ray for a gashed shin. The fact that he walked in with her was prejudicial to her case. We really should stop members of the public from just turning up uninvited – it’s no way to run a department.

    “Old maidish” took a while, mainly because I was looking for an “il” (there being no room for a Pierre, Jacques or homme) and also because I doubted the existence of the phrase. Interestingly, the spell-chequer on this blog doesn’t believe in “maidish” either.

    The French were also responsible for my LOI, camembert. So unable was I to think of a word with necessary pair of m’s that I then kicked myself for falling into the trap of a naval meaning for “on board”. D’eau!, as the French navy presumably say.

  22. I might have cracked the half hour had my border terrier not intervened yet again (still won’t settle on shiny pate), but I enjoyed it more than some others seemed to have done.
    Back to normal being well beaten by the quicks, as cricketers say.
    I also wish I could be at the finals as a spectator, but it’s logistically impractical for me from the far North East. I hope everyone enjoys it, and I hope to get to Sheffield the following weekend.
    Like bigtone, I also took part in a regional event attended by a famous actress and cake-maker, but she was entered in the pairs competition with her elderly mother. While they did not trouble the leaders, I thought it was great that they participated and seemed to enjoy it. As far as I noticed, everyone just accepted the celebrity as another crossword enthusiast.
    Many thanks to Jack for the parsing: I had exactly the same problems as others. I liked the clue for ‘referendum’, which doesn’t seem to have impressed anyone else.
    George Clements
    1. Hang on a second – there’s a final where spectators go to watch people solving crosswords? Don’t misunderstand me – I love crosswords – but… Ah well, chacun a son podagra.
      1. Hello Thud,
        First went about 40 years’ ago, to a theatre in London, when the competition was sponsored by Cutty Sark whisky. Spectators got copies of the puzzles at the same time as the competitors, so you could humiliate yourself privately seeing how much quicker they were. In fact, I only got about 20% of the solutions then, but there was also alcoholic hospitality. Don’t know whether current arrangements are similar, but I’m sure there will be a good buzz around the place and excellent company.
        Regards,
        George Clements
        1. Ah, now that’s a different matter entirely. A whisky party with free crosswords sounds a far more enticing prospect. Speaking of which, some of the front-runners in the local Cirrhosis Cup are already being helped across the finish line here by the ever-cheerful race marshals (or “paramedics”, as they insist on being called). A good three hours ahead of the peloton – makes you proud to be English.
  23. 14:16 for me, after an even slower than usual start, in which I ended up with JAIL from the first six acrosses followed by DRAFT from the first seven downs. Like others I carelessly bunged in GRAND-NIECE, but fortunately it didn’t hold me up too long.

    A nice puzzle. It’s just that I seem to find it increasingly hard to get my brain into crossword-solving gear these days. (Deep sigh!)

  24. Completely stuck on NW corner for a while till I saw that BLOW IN doesn’t work for 11: once I’d deleted that, could finish, but without parsing 1 and 3 – so thanks for explanations.

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