Cryptic 25828 – nearly a Greek tragedy

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I tackled this, waiting with unusually disgusting instant coffee, while M. Grimaud put my car through 104 tests for the Controle Technique; At first I thought this was going to be ‘setter’s revenge’ and my first DNF-blog but things soon improved. I finished in an extravagant 35 minutes, just as he completed his tests. Parsing a couple didn’t fall into place until I returned to write the blog; apologies for the slightly late appearance.

Across
1 TENSE – I assume this is a double definition (d.d.), ‘tensed up’ being one sense; please enlighten me if there’s more to it.
4 AGAMEMNON – ANON = soon, around GAME, M, for the Greek chap who came after Paris’s Dad.
9 IN THE SOUP – (HE IS PUT ON)*.
10 LOWER – Cows and oxen ‘low’ so an ox is a lower, which also has much the same meaning as glower, to look menacing.
11 LOLITA – LA (smoggy city) around (TOIL)*. I looked up Lolita Haze on Wiki and discovered Dolores Haze was the full name of 12-year-old Lolita in Nabokov’s novel; Lolita Haze is also the name of an ‘adult’ actress. I haven’t read the book, or seen her movies, yet.
12 ANTIGONE – Remove L from LANE, put around TIGON (cat), AN(TIGON)E, name of Greek Tragedy plays by Sophocles and Euripides.
14 GRAND TOTAL – Cryptic def. My easy starting point.
16 SKUA – AUKS backwards. Species of seabirds.
19 TITO – TRITON (sea god) has R and N removed. Josip Broz Tito ran Yugoslavia for 27 years or so.
20 STREET ARAB – S (TREE) TAR AB, south, two sailors, round a bay tree, def. ‘stray’. Intricate, and great misdirection.
22 SERENADE – SEREN(A D)E, def. ‘piece’.
23 CARPET – CARP (find faults with) ET (the film, again), def. ‘lecture’.
26 NAOMI – I MOAN reversed.
27 INCOGNITO – (NOTICING)* plus O (surprised cry). The setters for these puzzles are indeed incognito. Nice clue, I thought.
28 ANNULMENT – ANN (girl) followed by U (posh) LT (officer) insert MEN (soldiers). I thought countermand was a verb and annulment a noun, but someone with a big dictionary will doubltless prove me wrong.
29 TAMES – THAMES, with H (husband) removed, def. ‘calms’.
Down
1 TAIL LIGHT – TAIL = dog, follow; LIGHT = happy, sort of, def. ‘something on vehicle’. Mine have just been checked.
2 NATAL – FATAL (deadly), replace the F with N, old bit of South Africa.
3 EVENTIDE – EVEN (matching), TIDE (trend), def. ‘later period’.
4 ATOM – A (alpha) TOM (male cat), def. ‘scrap’. Personally defining an atom as a scrap offends my scientific mindset, but it’s doubtless fine with the literary crowd.
5 APPENDAGES – A PP (very quiet) END (death) AGES (a long time), def. ‘things going on’.
6 ECLAIR – EC (city, as in ‘of London’), LAIR (den), def. ‘something sweet’.
7 NEW YORKER – NEW (fresh) YORKER (kind of delivery in cricket), resident of Brooklyn.
8 NERVE – Cryptic d.d. Nerves convey senses, nerve as in courage, bottle.
13 DOTTED LINE – It was obvious and amusing once I saw it, but I had to go through the many alphabetic possibilities of *O*T** *I*E for quite a while first.
15 AFTERNOON – AFTER (seeking) N N (news) around O O (old love). Once you’ve stopped thinking about Attlee and other old PMs, you realise it’s the other sort of PM.
17 ALBATROSS – ALBA (Gaelic for Scotland), followed by S SORT (family) reversed, def. ‘baggage’, as a handicap. Reference to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
18 STRAIGHT – (RIG THAT’S)*, def. ‘reliable’.
21 ONEILL – ONE ILL. Eugene O’Neill, American dramatist who was, ironically, ill for much of his life.
22 SENNA – ANNE’S reversed. Ayrton Senna, F1 champion tragically killed in 1994 aged only 34.
24 PRIAM – PRAM (transport used by mum), insert I, for the chap who was Paris’s Dad.
25 SCUT – S, CUT (division), def. ‘game’s end’, as in a rabbit’s tail.

47 comments on “Cryptic 25828 – nearly a Greek tragedy”

  1. Tough in a very, very good way. Needless to say I’m not in the camp that says zero GK is okay. It never was for Times puzzles, either.

    Cheers
    Chris

  2. Probably no-one will read this as it is a day late, but Street Arab is an unpleasant antique usage that should surely not be used nowadays. It is at least as offensive as Nigger, which would never appear today. This puzzle could have been compiled 50 years ago – when Lolita was being made into a film, Los Angeles was stricken by smog, and the English Football League still had a Second Division. Can anyone point to a clue that could not have been written in 1964?
    1. >Can anyone point to a clue that could not have been written in 1964?

      Stylistically there are several clues you’d have been very unlikely to find in a 1964 Times crossword (17dn, for example). You definitely wouldn’t have found either 22ac (“an old” wouldn’t have made any sense) or 22dn (he was only born in 1960).

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