Times 24,253 Salvage Frogman in Camouflage

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 25 minutes

A standard Times cryptic with a levening of slang, cricket, religion, obscure poet and so on. There are no less than five long anagrams.

Across
1 CARESS – CARES-S; pet=canoodle rather than canary;
10 NOM,DE,GUERRE – (genre+mud+gore without “g”=good)*; broadcast is the anagrind; 007 James St John Smith perhaps;
12 CHICKEN – CHIC-KEN; deliberately running in front of trains – misnamed a game;
14 SATISFY – SAT-IS-F(airl)Y;
15 SHOPPING,CENTRE – (go pinch present)*; close to my idea of hell;
17 BUMPER-TO-BUMPER – bumper=glass filled to the brim; M25 most days;
21 PEA,SOUP – two meanings; 1=dish found near front of menu; 2=old description of yellow London smog in which without a word of a lie one could not see one’s hand held up in front of one’s face;
22 DISTEND – DI’S-TEND;
23 LEI – (flora)L-(tribut)E-(hawai)I; Hawaian garland of flowers – nice clue;
24 PAINSTAKING – PA-IN-STAKING;
26 TANTRIST – hidden word (metropoli)TAN-TRIS(tan); a follower of Vajrayana Buddhism as a route to enlightenment;
27 REPEAL – RE(P-E)AL;
 
Down
1 CYNICISM – (C-IN-YC all reversed)-IS-M; C=speed of light=constant; IN=among; M=male; not just a male view of politicians;
3 SPEAK,UP – PUK(K)A-EPS; PUKKA=genuine then remove one “k”=a thousand; EPS=old “extended play” records; then reverse it all;
5 HARPSICHORDIST – (choir its D sharp)*; Chritopher Hogwood perhaps;
6 SKELTON – SKEL(E)TON; reference John Skelton 1460-1529;
7 CATASTROPHE – (attach ropes)*;
8 LEG,BYE – LE(GB-(februar)Y)E; “extra” is the definition; a cricketing term for a run not scored after bat hitting ball but rather ball hitting batsman’s leg; extras also include “wides”, “no balls” and ordinary “byes”;
9 RUNNING,REPAIRS – RUNNING-REP-AIRS;
13 INOCULATION – (caution lion)*; when being chased by a lion rabies would appear to be fairly low on one’s list of concerns;
16 PRODIGAL – P-R(DO reversed)IG-AL; friend=PAL; RIG=costume; DO=party;
18 PROSPER – prospect=outlook then change ct=court into r=right;
19 UPSTAGE – UP-STAGE; the “up line” is the one going to London in railway jargon;
20 APPLET – A-PP-LET; a component of a larger overall piece of software that performs a narrow, limited, function;

53 comments on “Times 24,253 Salvage Frogman in Camouflage”

  1. 37 squares from anagrams yesterday; 61 today — making for a quickish (for me) solve: 15 mins interrupted by arrival and offloading of 8 tonnes of sheep manure. Three definite double defs and a possible fourth depending on whether the London-bound coach was ever actually called the “up stage” — a matter outwith my ken. The other Skelton is Robin who qualifies by having been dead for nearly 10 years.
  2. For fellow Australians, Wordplay, a documentary on the NYT (?) crossword is on SBS tonight at 10:00. At least that’s what I’m told it is; and I have no idea whether it’s any good. So don’t blame me if it resembles my morning delivery!
    1. It’s partly about the NYT puzzle and partly about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. You can find a trailer and a few other clips on Youtube. I’ve never seen it but it went down well with American solvers. The scenes of hundreds of solvers in a hotel ballroom separated by bits of cardboard are very similar to old-style regional finals of the Times Championships. If you don’t know the result of the 2005 ACPT, don’t look it up today – you’ll spoil the end of the film.

      There is a companion book which has a good sample of the puzzles involved.

        1. I remember watching this some months ago – possibly liked from the Crossword Centre, can’t remember now.

          I thought the funniest bit about it was the comment thread underneath. You have to search back a bit for the real gems – I think everybody’s got the joke now.

          “If this weren’t nicely animated, I’d have fallen asleep. I hope this is a joke, can’t believe that they would not do these on a computer now. But I can almost see some dusty newspaper office in some backwater town still having some old guy ink these by hand.”

          “Seems very real but I think eventually he will be replaced with a computer (realistically speaking) most of the crossword demographic don’t care as much as who inked the puzzle than actually solving the puzzle. And when you have a choice between a human and a computer you’re going to chose (sic) the cheaper of the two.”

  3. 7:10 which felt good but was anagram-fuelled – 5 and 7 certainly went in on first look. Also helped by meeting the “full glass” meaning of BUMPER recently in a puzzle elsewhere, and seeing the CT=>R idea in 18D straight off, though not the word involved. I couldn’t find anything to quibble about, and think the setter deserves some credit for that. Wordplay not understood until after stopping the clock: 10, 1D, 3.

    27D is very nearly about fine detail in Wagner (and the original legend unless he made up this bit): In Act 1, Isolde sings about a mysterious “Tantris” who turns out to be a sore-thumb anagram of Tristan. So “Mysterious character evident in Metropolitan Tristan” (7) would be something like a “semi-&lit”. Whether Wagner’s “Tantris” deliberately resembles the Buddhist Tantrist by way of Schopenhauer‘s influence on the opera, I don’t know.

    Edited at 2009-06-16 07:53 am (UTC)

        1. Well I was nervous having looked at the wrong grid yesterday! Blame eco-mindedness: I print one puzzle on each side of the same sheet. Given the discussion of trendy quotatives, I should have written: ‘So he’s like … “My bad!”‘.
    2. Thanks for that Peter. If you’re correct and that’s what the setter had in mind then I think that could be counted as extremely obscure!!
      1. I’m sure the explanation you gave is the intended one – if the closeness to the Wagner reference is deliberate, it’s a just a bit of free fun for Wagnerites. There are certainly Times setters who would know about Wagner’s easy anag., and in relation to Barry’s suggestion, those setters would probably be as delighted to sit through an entire Ring cycle as I would.
  4. Early start today and for some reason everything clicked. Dont recall the last time I never had to re-read any clue, and I guess there is an element of good fortune when answers just pop into your mind just on sight of the clue, and subsequent analysis provides the word play. Whilst not yet an accurate timer, I suspect that may be in the sub 10 category.
  5. Anagram heaven, the first Times clue type I learned to do at Mum’s knee which I could do faster than she; 17m of which last few confirming tantrist.
  6. 29 minutes with the last 6 spent on solving 3dn and 12ac. I thought this was going to be harder than it turned out to be because although the anagram at 5dn leapt out at me I took a while to get properly going.

    I didn’t know SKELTON or TANTRIST but solved them from the checking letters and wordplay

  7. If Peter is right re the Wagner then I think the setter should be forced to sit through (awake) an uninterrupted performance of The Ring.
    Completing straightforward enough in my pedestrian way but needed checks on TANTRIST (satisfied sans Wagner), SKELTON and BUMPER.
    Until coming here,gormlessly found wordplay impenetrable for CYNICISM (among indicator), SPEAK UP (just 1 K in PUKKA) and the ingenious R replacing CT in PROSPER.
    PHYSICAL for examination of concrete structure seems to me a bit of a leap, so no doubt I am missing something obvious, made more probable by the answer not being blogged.
    1. It’s a double definition: a PHYSICAL (n.) is a medical examination to check that you’re fit for purpose, and one way of defining the PHYSICAL (adj.) is as restricted to the concrete, i.e. material.  (Structure seems irrelevant to the second definition.)
  8. Forgot.
    Given P’s Wagner stuff I think bloggers are making too much of UP in UPSTAGE. My recollection from commuting days is that UP is the train to town and DOWN is the train away from town. But of course I am wrong as usual.
      1. Sorry – London-bound. Whether this is applied elsewhere I’ve no idea but probably not an expression familiar to people who take deliveries of manure.
        1. You obviously need more manure than you currently purvey. I recommend it. It comes from UP in the big smoke we call Byford. It’s UP from here because it’s 8kms north.
          If you travel south to London, is that still UP? I couldn’t get the hang of that.
          The strange pommy argot that has UP for “at universty” and DOWN for “not at university” I can understand. Spooner: “You have tasted a whole worm; you must leave by the town drain”. See, I told you manure would be relevant!
          1. In UK railway jargon “the up line” is the line to the big city irrespective of which direction that may be so the line from Reading to London, which runs west to east, is still “the up line”. I’ve mentioned London because the setter does so (and should really have added “for example” but that would ruin the surface reading) but it would apply equally to say the line from Dunfermline to Edinburgh.
          2. Alleged Spooner, as all the best ones are, I’m afraid. “Down train” didn’t mean “the train going away from Oxford (University)” – any train at Oxford station would fit that bill when it started moving! It meant “the train travelling away from London”. More to back up Jimbo here.
            1. In my amittedly limited experience of a rush hour railed conveyances departing London, “town drain” is much more in touch with the ambience and reality of the situation than “down train”.
  9. 7:23.  Finished in the NW corner again, with the last in being 3dn (SPEAK UP) – one of the few clues with complex wordplay.  The only things I didn’t know were BUMPER (17ac) and SKELTON (6dn).

    PEA SOUP (21ac) isn’t in Collins or the Concise Oxford, both of which only give “pea(-)souper“; but Chambers and the Shorter oblige.  LEI (23ac) is a nice stab at an &Lit., but since a lei isn’t a funeral wreath, it’s hard to see how “ultimately” contributes to the definition; perhaps the reference is to the word’s etymology, but LEI seems to be a direct loan word.  13dn (INOCULATION), with its bizarre surface reading, is a brilliant parody of the cryptic crossword genre.

    Thanks to bc for the interesting comment on UPSTAGE (19dn).

    Clues of the Day: 22ac (DISTEND) and 7dn (CATASTROPHE).

    1. Further to your comments about LEI can I suppose that a perfect &lit must have all the surface words contributing to the definition without a hint of padding? Otherwise that is quite a harsh complaint and I wonder whether it would apply to other words such as “perhaps” “maybe” or even a question mark, which dont really change an overall definition but can happily sit within one without seeming excessive.
      1. Thanks for picking me up on this.  I don’t mind padding, but I think “ultimately” has too specific and irrelevant a meaning to count as padding.  To stick my head above the parapet, here’s a lame clue from a recent puzzle of mine:

        Snoop rather nosily, fundamentally? (3) = PRY

        I would justify this on the grounds that the phrase before the comma gives a fundamental (basic) characterization of prying; this is implicit in many definitions, but it does no harm to draw attention to it.  By contrast, I don’t see a similar justification for “Floral tribute – Hawaii gives it, ultimately”.  However, I’m not as sure of this as I am of a lot of things I say on this blog, and I’d certainly be interested to hear what others think about it.

        1. Depends what you think of as “ultimately”. I think leis are traditionally given to visitors on leaving, so it could (at a pinch) be interpreted as e.g. at the end of a holiday.
        2. I think the “basic or fundamental” (COED) meaning of “ultimate” lets it scrape through as a permissible padding word in almost any def. Mark is both “a solver” and “ultimately a solver” for example. He’s also “inherently a solver” if the setter needs middle letters of words, and maybe “primarily a solver” for the first letters. I’ve been to Hawa’ii as a tourist but can’t recall whether we were given leis on our departure – we certainly were on arrival.

          &lits have been seen as an “ultimate” (in the more usual sense) clue type ever since Ximenes devoted a whole chapter to them in his book back in 1966, and contestants in comps like Azed sometimes seem to strive hard to find one. I think words like ultimately and inherently are just as hackneyed in &lits as see=>ELY or race=>NATION in a “construction kit” clue, though less common as &lits are still difficult to produce. An &lit without such words seems much better. This clue also uses “gives” which I think is another &lit cliché.

          &lits using clichés can be very easy to solve (this one was for me, given ??I). When this happens, I wonder whether we’ve got a truly cryptic clue, or a case of the setter saying “I can do that trick too”?

          As we approach Wimbledon, here’s one of my favourite &lits, from Don Manley (in a Guardian puzzle before 2001, when events made it less accurate). He smashes aces in vain, vigorously – not half! (5,10). Despite using some cryptic clue clichés, the definition reads well and I don’t think it uses any &lit clichés.

          1. whilst the goran clue strikes me as great, it still suffers from the same problem as the lei one in as much as “not half” on the surface must go down as padding if you require all the words to make the definition and do no more above that. Clearly any assertion or definition can be followed by “not half” so in itself it does not add anything.
            1. You’re right, but in this case, “not half” seemed to be used appropriately – and your objection applies when it appears in non-&lit clues.

              If you require all the words to “make the definition and do no more”, you make good surface meanings really tough to achieve. I prefer to allow some words which aren’t strictly necessary, and trust the setters to use ones like this when they’re appropriate.

  10. Reasonably straightforward but not quite as easy as yesterday – held up a bit by physical/skelton. My initial response to 19 down was to think that “try” was inappropriate, since in contemporary usage an actor seems either to upstage another or not: he may upstage without trying, and if he tries and fails he has not upstaged. But looking at the dictionary I see the original meaning was a deliberate attempt to get more attention by physically moving upstage. Presumably in theatrical circles this meaning is still current, but for most users I think the word now means something else. bc
  11. 13 minutes, and SPEAK UP went in last without understanding the wordplay. Tougher than yesterday, but a nice mix of knowledge.
    Oli
  12. I found that the long anagrams at 5, 7, 13, and 15 (all of which were solvable in an instant) made this an easy puzzle to complete, though the wordplay to some took a bit of thinking out post-solve. 20 minutes, not counting pondering wordplay to 3 and 16.
    I enjoyed the comments, dorsetjimbo. What an apt example of a harpsichordist in Christopher Hogwood, since CHRISTOPHER has most of the letters of HARPSICHORDIST. There’s the basis of a clue there.
  13. 10:02 here, no real problems with either wordplay or vocabulary today. I think I’ve come across SKELTON before in crosswords (probably clued the same way too).
    I was surprised by the number of long anagrams today, but took full advantage – the only one I had to write out was for SHOPPING CENTRE, which was slow to come even so. Certainly cost me a sub 10-minute time. Last one in was CYNICISM, mainly because I parsed the clue wrong at first.
  14. This came like a breath of fresh air, after a week’s holiday in which I had nothing to solve but quirky Guardian crosswords. Everything seemed fair, and, as usual, the only obscurity the rude rayling rimer SKELTON was easily solved from the wordplay. I have to admit that I only knew it was a surname because of Red Skelton, the American comedian, who was popular at the Saturday morning matinees of my childhood.

    Thanks to Jimbo for explaining SPEAK UP, Peter for the Wagner &Lit and Mark for the Garson Hampfield reference

  15. 11:40 – first to go in 1D, last to go in 4A/6D.

    Inoculate is apparently one of the most difficult words to spell (people tending to use a double N). LEI clue nice, but did anyone hesitate when seeing ‘floral’ and ‘Hawaii’ in the same clue?

    Just noticed I wrote in LEGBYY for 8D – will have to be more careful at Cheltenham!

  16. Did this in snatches during a show last night, so didn’t get a time. SKELTON from wordplay, SPEAK UP and PHYSICAL from definition.
  17. 5.32 which is super quick for me – just about a PB. Getting all the long anagrams straight off was a big help.INOCULATION is a word I might also be tempted to spell INN– but the –O crossing letter pre-empted any problem. Last to go in was 3 for which I didn’t really get the wordplay until later.
  18. Makes my 35mins look a bit shabby. Held up trying to think of a PARES?A?ING word at 24ac. Last in SKELTON, bless him. Thanks to Mark for his G.H. link. COD’s SPEAK UP & PROSPER.
  19. 11:40 – first to go in 1D, last to go in 4A/6D.

    Inoculate is apparently one of the most difficult words to spell (people tending to use a double N). LEI clue nice, but did anyone hesitate when seeing ‘floral’ and ‘Hawaii’ in the same clue?

    Just noticed I wrote in LEGBYY for 8D – will have to be more careful at Cheltenham!

  20. I just can’t get 25 down. Can anyone please help me out of my misery.
    Isabel
    1. It’s (v)-ICE; activity of criminals=vice; “stealing five” = remove “v”; ice=slang for diamonds
      1. Thanks! And I should have known that, yesterday had the ice-diamonds connection as well.
        Isabel
  21. Defeated by 1a, 3d & 6d but generally thought much easier than yesterdays. Well done anyone who got the word play for 3d out quickly.
  22. This is only about the third puzzle I’ve ever completed without aids, so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself, even if it was a fairly easy one.

    As an avid cricket fan, I can’t quite believe how long it took me to get LEG BYE, particularly as England seem to have adopted it as their main source of runs lately!

  23. Sorry, Jimbo. It’s only taken me a day and a half to realise the significance of your title. An anagram of five long anagrams.
    1. Quite amusing really K. You must have been thinking I’d gone quietly round the bend!
      1. Not for a minute. I knew it must mean something, but like those emails you get from administration telling you something about exciting new corporate restructuralisations going forward, I couldn’t work out exactly what. Luckily the subtext here was benign and didn’t involve job cuts.
  24. I didn’t see the hidden word and got TANTRISM as an anagram of M=Metropolitan and TRISTAN.
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