Times Cryptic 25437 – Prizeless!*

51 minutes. Those of you who did the Saturday puzzle 25430 will recognise this, as it has been cunningly reclued. (Andy’s write-up is still on the TfTT front page.) For those who come here in the future, note carefully today’s date!

Lots of easy stuff but some trickier clues in the SE and NW held me up. Since I need to go out, this will be a minimalistic blog, as well as an old-fashioned one, with no recourse to Google, so expect a few errors and displays of gratuitous ignorance. * A tip of the hat to the commenter on the forum for the title.

Across

1 BI[ST]RO
4 O+P[ENED*]UP = shoot as in inject
10 DROPS IN – dd, one tongue in cheek; my last in
11 SKIPPER – slightly non-PC dd
12 [g]RATE
13 TOOK CHARGE – literal is ‘ was appointed CO’, wordplay is ‘to approve (= OK) military attack’
15 ANCHORMAN
16 OFF[I]E[r]
18 TO+RUS[h]
19 MO[T]OR+CADE not entourage
21 PARTICULAR – ARTICULA[te] in PR, literal respect
23 D+RIB drab’s mate
26 SEAGULL* – my COD for a wonderful sea picture
27 COR[O]NET
28 IN T[HE] END
29 SCR[EW]Y – partners as in bridge (east-west) in scry as in descry, I imagine

Down

1 BAD+ER – Douglas of Kenneth More fame
2 SPORT+S CAR
3 hidden
5 PU[SH]KIN[g]
6 NEIGH+BOURS*
7 DO[P]ER – a semi &lit, I think
8 PERSEVERE
9 [c]ON FORM; I put ‘in form’
14 CON+STI*+TUTE[e]
15 ANTIPAS+TI (‘it’ reversed) – Herod Antipas features in the Bible along with various cousins
17 FRAGRANCE – anagram of F[ace] + car and anger
19 MAUDLIN – ‘Come into the garden Maud’ (Tennyson?) + nil reversed
20 THAT+CH
22 ROAST
24 BU[TT]Y
25 CROC – a snappy way to finish; crock means lame in various dialects lame = feeble and useless, as in grandpa’s an old crock

37 comments on “Times Cryptic 25437 – Prizeless!*”

  1. 13 minutes no major hold-ups. Didn’t see the wordplay for ANTIPASTI and got BASED from wordplay
  2. All new to me as I don’t always do the weekenders. Wasn’t sure why a BISTRO is a family concern. None I know are. Or why the OFFIE (off-licence, bottle shop, for non-Poms) should be on the corner. Many I remember (and indeed I do!) from the UK weren’t. (No jokes about why Italy score so few goals … please!)

    For the record, SCRY is indeed from “descry” and means “foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface” (NOAD). (No jokes about why gypsies have glass babies … please!)

    Main hold ups were at 25dn/29ac. Once got, I assumed 25dn was a ref to the expression “crock of shit”, often abbreviated to “crock”. But I see it’s also an obscure verb meaning “to injure”; as well as a useless old git like me!

    Edited at 2013-04-01 04:36 am (UTC)

    1. To be fair, the bistro is perhaps a family concern. I think ‘corner shop’ has come to mean a local shop selling groceries, newspapers, alcohol etc., the ‘corner’ being almost affectionate rather than literal in use.
      1. I thought definitions were supposed to be authenticated in reputable dictionaries somewhere before appearing here. They certainly used to be but perhaps Times are a-changing!
        1. I like to think that to a minuscule but real extent we and the odd similar forum may be a guide to the dictionaries.

  3. Same as Jack, and I guess probably a few others, in that while I recognised most of these answers as coming up recently, I didn’t realise that the whole puzzle was an entire copy! Words such as TORUS, DRIB and OFFIE all rang bells.

    Yeah, somehow I too feel a little cheated, but not at all sure why!

  4. I noted whilst solving the occurrence of most of these answers in recent puzzles without actually twigging that the grid was identical to the penultimate prize competition. Seeing TORUS again so soon after my recent ordeals with the word should have alerted me that something more was going on. I assume APE at the start of the first unchecked row is a coincidence.

    I also wondered about “family concern”, “corner shop” and “girl with rope” and had in mind to complain about sloppy cluing.

    Edited at 2013-04-01 05:58 am (UTC)

  5. Recognised “sports car” but thought it just a coincidence then struggled even though I did finish 25430.
    Feel cheated in odd way but don’t suppose they will refund my subscription.
  6. 18.39 but also with ‘in form’. So careless. I did the Sat. one but remembered only being annoyed by the singular ‘drib’. Yes, it’ll be in the dictionary – but I’d like to know that it’s used. I know ‘scry’ from T.S.Eliot’s beautiful passage, which I copy out for the pleasure of it, with apologies to those who find it a burden having to skip it.

    ‘To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
    To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
    Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
    Observe disease in signatures, evoke
    Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
    And tragedy from fingers; release omens
    By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
    With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
    Or barbituric acids, or dissect
    The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors –
    To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
    Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
    And always will be, some of them especially
    When there is distress of nations and perplexity
    Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.’

    Edited at 2013-04-01 08:56 am (UTC)

  7. 20 minutes (25430 took me 29’12” on the club site, the prize puzzles being generally the only ones I do online) I was going to comment on the remarkable number of recent answers cropping up, which perhaps goes to show the power and the weakness of this fule’s memory. All in the same grid, eh? Who’d have thought it?
    THATCH tickled my fancy most,so I’ll make it my CoD.
    I’m now off to buy a BMW pram for my grandchildren, a copy of the enticing Speedicut papers, bag me an asteroid and celebrate Murray being no. 2 in the world listings.
  8. A hell of a lot faster than last time around (wouldn’t it have been embarrassing if not!). OFFIE, which I first saw in the previous puzzle, rang a bell, but like Jack and Janie, nothing reall registered until I went to the club forum. DNK ‘scry’, of course, and it was only afterwards that I remembered Maud. 19 my LOI, because I could only think of Wat Tyler and not Cade.
  9. Much the same experience as Ulaca’s – mostly straightforward, but got bogged down in NW and SE corners. Although I noted en passant quite a few solutions that seemed to have come up very recently – OFFIE, BADER, BISTRO, ANTIPASTI etc – I completely failed to spot that it was an identical grid to that of March 23. Is it just me, or is short-term memory loss a common condition of cryptic xword addicts? Good joke, setter.
  10. The experience of déjà vu came early, and made me very suspicious: I realized that a recent puzzle was re-emerging and began to check each clue to make sure there wasn’t a different possible but less obvious answer. I recall being told of April 1st puzzle many years ago in which all but one clue led to two possible answers, the joke only becoming apparent when the solver attempted to complete the grid.
    1. Happy Easter John. That was Ximenes and it was the NW corner of the puzzle. If the solver took the “easy answers” path they were left with a word that didn’t exist at one of the down clues.

      X vowed never to repeat the ruse. Most of the small number of people who submitted an answer (it was a prize puzzle) didn’t even mention the problem and so (I was one) had simply not even been aware. Others spent hours trying to work it out and complained quite bitterly.

      1. Happy Easter, Jim, and many thanks for that; it had to be an out-of-the-ordinary setter to attempt such a puzzle, hadn’t it? I suppose I was misguided to look for such trickery in the daily Times puzzle, though I do remember a desperately difficult (for me) Saturday puzzle from, I think, 1st April 2000, which had as its theme April Fools’ Day. The key answer was POISSON D’AVRIL.
        1. You may be thinking of last year’s Mephisto which I blogged on 8th April 2012 and can be found via the calender search
  11. Not sure I don’t prefer this version to the other one.. needless to say I had the apparently general sense of deja vue, without ever realising the whole kit & caboodle was a repeat. Clever!
  12. If you do the puzzle on an IPad with The Times app, the solution to 25430 is two pages on from today’s puzzle. TonyW
  13. I’m totally in awe of the setter’s ability to come up with two completely different and, in my view excellent, sets of clues for the same solution. Fantastic.
  14. Got BADER and thought odd, only just had him a week ago. Got NEIGHBOURS and knew something was up. Had a quick look for TORUS which caused some comment and DRIB and realised it was a repeat puzzle so didn’t bother to solve it. Assumed it was a mistake of some kind.

    Reading the comments and looking at the clues some of the definitions look a bit loose.

  15. At what point does one do so many crosswords that the answers, if not the actual clues, of previously completed ones disappear from the memory? I wouldn’t have said a little more than a week but the proof is here. I also complete the Guardian and Independent crosswords online, so I do three times as many as those of you who only complete the Times, but even so ……………. Very clever. 20 mins.

    Andy B.

  16. 23:50 .. not only did I fail to spot the recycling but I took almost 8 minutes longer than last time to complete the wretched thing!

    I don’t feel at all cheated – ‘umbled would be more like it. So thanks for that, setter (teeth firmly gritted).

  17. I felt even more foolish when having completed the puzzle in hard copy and not realising until I came here that it was a repeat I looked again at the Grid and saw that the entire answer was printed next to the clues (being the printed answer to the prize puzzle of a couple of weeks ago) !
    Barry J
  18. I always do the weekend puzzles a week late – on the day the solution appears here. So I did the original of this only the day before yesterday. I should have been phenomenally quick, but wasn’t. The top half of the grid defeated me so I finally decided to start at the bottom. My first answers were the BUTTY/DRIB crossing, easily memorable from last Saturday. Then I remembered the date and realised what was going on but it still took me 34 minutes. I’m impressed with the skill and ingenuity of this puzzle but, like others, feel a bit short-changed. The point is that, once I realised the trick, I found myself trying to remember answers rather than working them out from the cryptic. My slow time is a good indication of failing memory… Ann
  19. Very funny! I chuckled when the penny dropped. Had solved a few on the left-hand side without thinking anything fishy was going on but once I’d got Neighbours, Offie and Motorcade in the right-hand side I recalled the Saturday 23 March puzzle. Straightaway looked for other answers I remembered in that one in this one and soon finished. Twenty minutes all told, even so.
    Hats off to the setter who skillfully composed an entirely different set of clues to the ones from nine days ago.
  20. Once I’d seen two or three answers repeated, I realised there was something odd going on. Then the penny dropped – same answers, different clues – so the answers got filled in swiftly(ish).

    Darryl F

  21. I was really looking forward to doing the bank holiday croossword so was bitterly disappointed to find after five minutes that there was no point in doing it as I could complete it in about three minutes from memory.I don’t see the point of such an April Fool gag as nobody actually gets fooled and the real losers are those like me who see early on what is happening
  22. Realised early on that it was the same answers as a recent puzzle, and put in some from memory. But,like Barry, didn’t spot that the answers were actually printed on the same page!
  23. Well, I didn’t get the joke either until coming here. I only do the Club version, so the very funny aspect of having the answers printed on the same page in the paper version was not available to me, and is hilarious. Well done to the editor and setter. By the way, doing (or redoing) the puzzle took me 25 minutes. Regards.
    1. Rather unusually I solved this in the physical paper, and didn’t even notice until you pointed it out that the answers were there on the same page.
      I’m awarding myself the newly-created April Muppet Prize.
  24. 12m. I completely failed to spot the joke until coming here. Sometimes having a memory like a poisson d’avril can be an advantage.
  25. I got the joke after about three or four answers had gone in (well, I only blogged it a couple of days ago so it was still fairly fresh in my mind), so I solved most of it from memory, checking the wordplay just in case there might be a double-bluff of a single different answer. Wish I’d solved it in the paper now, would’ve been a PB for sure!
  26. 8:35 for me. I recognised that OFFIE had appeared recently (that was the first time I’d come across the word and this was the second), also DRIB, but it was only when I looked at the TCC Forum that I realised that all the answers had been repeated, and only when I came here that I realised the full extent of the April foolery. Great stuff!

    Nice puzzle as well – I’ve absolutely no objection to any of the clues.

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