Times 23739 – Ian Eddy

Author   ilancPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
My last two clues were 16D/21A — and I still wonder about the latter. Had to guess that ORATORIAN was yet another priest (after yesterday’s flamen somewhere). Not sure about PERON’s wordplay yet either. Peter is sure though… see below…

Across

1 V,A,MOOSE – two Americanisms (VAMOOSE and MOOSE). Ref. V. = vide.
5 IMP[er]IOUS – “without hesitation” removes “er”.
9 OVER AND OVER – ref. ANDOVER, Hampshire
10 FIB – hidden in “naaFI Bars”, 20D is UNTRUE.
11 EDISON – rev(no side) where side, as cryptics have taught me, is pretentiousness.
17 PARENTHETICAL – (treat in chapel)*
21 TUT[t](OR)ING – not happy about this: I suppose that OR (for ordinary ranks=men) replaces the centre of TUT[t]ING but I don’t like defining TUTORING as “instruction here”.
23 PLUG-I,N – wow… what I thought a quite technical parochial term has become mainstream.
25 EON=”Ian” – I don’t quibble about homophones as I don’t quibble about using e.g. definition #19 from Chambers in other cases. I’m sure somewhere in the English-speaking world this rhyme works.
26 W[oman],ITCH-DOCTOR – rather strained surface.
27 SH,ANN,ON – it’s an Irish river
28 AUST(ER)E[n]

Down

3 O(RAT)O,R(I)AN – OO looks like glasses and ORATORIAN is a kind of priest (of the Oratory!).
4 EDDY=”heady”
6 PER[s]ON – he was a dictator but I don’t see the wordplay: “Being without scruples at first he became a dictator”. Probably an &lit. Peter notes that “being”=PERSON from which you remove the first letter of scruples. And an &lit in my opinion!
7 OFF(I,C)ER
8 SUBT[it]LE,T,Y – This is actually a bit subtle indeed — you have to know that Castle Adamant is the SUBTITLE of G&S’s “Princess Ida”. I didn’t. But wikipedia did. (Y’s our “variable” here).
13 WASHING,TON – where Seattle is. TON is in Chambers as “people of fashion” (def #2).
15 E,S(CALL)OPS – I think that SOPS is short for sopranos (“singers briefly”).
16 S(POTTER)S – POTTER means to dawdle.
18 ROT,UNDA=”wrote under” – meaning literally “subscribed”.
19 LE(GATE)E – ref. the Confederate General LEE.
20 UNTRUE
24 R(HE)A – rather dense clue since both parts are abbreviations: Burlington House is where the Royal Academy is on Piccadilly and HE is His Excellency the Governor.

23 comments on “Times 23739 – Ian Eddy”

  1. ..at least not in the actual solving as all the answers came to mind from the wordplay and/or definitions. But I didn’t get the Castle Adamant reference until I looked it up afterwards and I still can’t explain “people of fashion used” in 13D.
  3. Ton means ‘people of fashion’.

    I found this very tough, particularly the bottom half. Floored by RHEA (not knowing Burlington House), also held up by ESCALLOPS and WITCH-DOCTOR. I hadn’t heard of ORATORIAN either.

    1. Thanks. I was going to reply “never ‘eard of it” but I now remember hearing the expression “high ton” somewhere.

      I don’t have my Chambers and Collins to hand, but dictionary.com doesn’t mention anything about “people” being involved just that it means “stylisheness” or “the current fashion”.

  4. A welcome relief after yesterday’s abject failure. Think I scraped under 10 minutes for this one although I too didn’t get the “people of fashion” = TON element.
  5. I was so outraged at Eon pronounced as Ian that I looked it up in Chambers, which confirms that it isn’t pronounced that way .

    And I don’t understand how Eddy 4D sounds exciting – unless it’s not Eddy at all 🙂

  6. A very straightforward and fair puzzle that I cantered through in about 25 minutes. Where words were unusual the word play made solving straightforward. I wonder if 25a works in all parts of the country? Jimbo.
  7. My fairly old copies of Collins and Concise Oxford have eon with a schwa as second vowel and therefore like “Ian” – Collins as one of two options, COD as the only option (under aeon). I suspect the sound doesn’t depend on where you come from, but how novel a word it is to you – I’d say “ee-on”, but I can imagine that those who talk of eons a lot might not.

    Eddy is the H-less version of “heady” – hence the “East End” in the clue, which makes a change from Cockney

  8. In the East End they might pronounce ‘heady’ as ‘eddy’, hence ‘sounds exciting’.
    Conrad
  9. I agree with the objections to this. The Times allows too much latitude with respect to homophones for my liking; SACK SON=SAXON is a similar case from a couple of months ago.
  10. 17 minutes here, but spent an agonisingly long time over 5a, 6d and 12a. Even after getting IMPIOUS and then PERON, it took around 5 minutes to find ?L?N?C?L, even after deciding it must end in ICAL. Sometimes I think my brain just closes down after about 12 minutes activity!

    I started looking at the championship final crosswords today. My first thoughts are that I’ll probably need a calendar rather than a stopwatch.

    1. This clue was one I had to read a couple of times to fully understand the wordplay. First reading suggested the def for PERSON was the less-than-convincing “he”, described as being without the initial S. It led me to suspect a slightly forced &lit but, looking at it again, I spotted the correct construction; thus, a good clue. Mind you – and this is strictly a matter of personal preference – I’ve always found the “at first” indicator one that sets the teeth on edge a little. In terms of grammatical construction it seems to be “close, but no cigar”.
  12. 14:00 exactly here. I also had trouble with 5ac and 8dn, only getting them from definitions and crossing letters, then figuring out the wordplay later. I had no idea what Castle Adamant was a subtitle of until reading the blog though.
  13. Solved in three sittings, probably 15 minutes or so. I like crosswords like these, where I can use the wordplay to learn some new words, or the clues to learn some new wordplay. I need to stop entering in guesses, putting “nobility” for 8D kept me from getting “impious” and finishing the NE corner awhile. 24d was the last entry though, then found out about Burlington House. If the aim of the puzzle is to stretch the mind and do some subtle teaching, this did the job.
  14. A don’t see there is a problem with this as suggested in the main blog. I read “instruction” as the definition of “tutoring”. “Here” just adds to the surface reading and means nothing more than “in this clue/solution”.
  15. 14:26 for me. I made the mistake of tackling this one when I was tired (rarely a good idea for a Tuesday puzzle, I suspect) and made absurdly heavy weather of the NE corner despite knowing all about Castle Adamant. (I didn’t go as far as putting in NOBILITY for 8D, but I found it hard to shake out of my mind.) Some nice clues, and overall a very good puzzle IMO.
  16. Solved this one very quickly, but then my brain had already warmed up from solving Times 23428.

    My computer’s date was accidentally set at 2006 yesterday and surprisingly THAT is the date the Times Crossword Club page picked up when I loaded ‘yesterday’s solution’. (Because of the time difference to Australia, the most recent puzzle does not appear for me until after 10am so I am always close to a day behind in solving. The ‘yesterday’s solution’ link brings up the puzzle much easier than the archives.) I thought things seemed a tad repetitive until I spotted the date at the top of the page!

    Anyway, I was hoping to find some scoffing about ian/eon!

  17. Some interesting words & places with ‘eady goings on in the East End and dodgy homophones – something for everyone.

    A conservative VI in the “easy” volleyball team today:

    12a Dispassionate description of a form of medicine (8)
    CLINICAL

    14a Be stoical. like the Cheshire Cat carrying a message? (4,3,4,2)
    GRIN AND BEAR IT

    1d Bloomer made by old soldier containing oil spill (6)
    V IOL ET

    2d Satisfying assembly (7)
    MEETING

    5d End effectiveness of (a devil in TA)* manoeuvres (10)
    INVALIDATE

    22d Dispute over a new source of berries (5)
    ROW A N

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