Times 24579 – Egg On Face

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I think it was another case of Blogger’s nerves because I raced through most of this but was then left with several gaps in all but the NW corner which took a long time to fill and eventually I completed  the puzzle in just under an hour. This is maddening and somewhat embarrassing for someone who has been practising Times cryptics for a decade or more and blogging here for a couple of years, because much of it was dead easy, real beginner’s stuff, and  I’m sure most of the regulars will have had a 12 across. If some found the puzzle a bit dull then I’m afraid I’m not about to improve their day as my spirits are low after this debacle. Sorry, but here goes anyway…

Across
1 CHAT SHOW – CH(A,ToSH)OW. TOSH for ‘tripe’ and CHOW for ‘food’.
5 PASTRY – PAST, RY – The Great Western Railway was engineered by Brunel to serve the routes London to West and South West England and Wales. It’s currently known as Great Western Main Line so I’m not quite sure that ‘past’ is quite appropriate here. This was my last one in after a massive doh! (or should that be dough!?)
8 AGA – pAGAn
9 PRETENSION – And  PRE-TENSION which doesn’t mean what’s suggested in the wordplay.
10 TYROLESE – TouristY,ROLES,East  – A reminder of many pleasant holidays spent in the Austrian Tyrol and thereabouts. The definition is ‘of Austrian region’.
11 CARBOY –  CAR for ‘estate maybe’ + BOY. I’ve met this bottle before but had no recollection of its size to justify ‘a lot of’ in the clue. The dictionaries aren’t helpful, saying only that it is large, but according to Wikipedia a carboy holds between 5 and 15 gallons.
12 ROMP – Prime Minister and Other Ranks all reversed. One can romp home to win a race easily but it’s the noun that’s required here.
14 MAIDEN AUNT – (A Man United)* with ‘clash’ as the anagram indicator apparently. The match refers to marriage rather than to sport.
17 DONER KEBAB – DONE,BAKER*,British. I’ve never eaten one but I am told they taste okay when sufficient alcohol has been taken beforehand.
20 SPAN – Double definition. The one I was unfamiliar with is a team of horses or oxen.
23 MIXERS – Another double definition. As a drink these are added to cocktails or neat spirits.
24 LAY ASIDE – LAY, A, SIDE with LAY for ‘amateur’.
25 ANTARCTICA – I had a problem parsing this one but eventually came up with ANT, AR(C)TIC,Another. A worker ant is a sterile female.
26 Deliberately omitted Please ask if baffled.
27 BARREL – BARREn,Litre
28 VEHEMENT – VE(HE-MEN)T
 
Down
1 CLATTERED – CLass,TREATED*
2 ANAGRAM – AN,AGRA,Millions – What more can one say?
3 SUPPLY – SUP,PLY – or of this?
4 OVERSTATE – OVER,STATE – or this?
5 PANACHE – Personal Assistant then ‘NACHE’ sounds like Nash. John Nash was responsible for the redesign of much of London in Regency times. I wasted time here trying to use Wren somehow which was no-doubt the setter’s cunning trap.
6 SLIP ROADS – School,L(1,PRO)ADS. I spotted the second word early but took ages to work out the first having initially become fixated on the possibility of ‘side’.
7 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
13 PRECEPTOR – Piano,RECEPTOR. Not a word for ‘teacher’ that immediately leaps to mind. According to Collins it’s a US term for a doctor who trains medical students. I didn’t know the definition of ‘receptor’ either so more time was lost here.
15 DRAMATISE – DRAM,AT,1’S,liablE
16 TENDEREST – RESENTED* + Targets
18 OKINAWA – 0,KIN,AWAy – 0 dear!
19 KESTREL – This bird of prey is found in alternate letters of KeEpS iT bRiEfLy.
21 PRIMATE – Power,R(I’M)ATE
22 PALATE – Reversed inside ‘mETAL APpliance‘ this is the roof of the mouth or ‘trap’ as it’s commonly known.

26 comments on “Times 24579 – Egg On Face”

  1. I made a right pig’s ear out of this. Two thirds fininished in about 20 min, but then was totally stymied. Went away for a walk, but was no more successful on returning. Went for the aids, but had no success there either. Another break, then suddenly PRETENSION and PASTRY opened up the barren NE. Then the rest fell grudgingly. Last in were MIXERS and (doh!) PALATE. This was the the sting in the tail of the week.
  2. I think you’re overdoing the self-deprecation! I thought this was tough too, though also thinking in retrospect that the clues were easier than they seemed in the process. I don’t think I’ll be the only one who worked through his entire repertoire of Indian place names for 2D while trying to remember a literary (?) new order, and the next two down clues come in the category of deceptively simple. We had to come up with two synonyms for exaggerate In the SE corner, all the clues had the most common possible endings, not exactly helping. DONER KEBAB and MAIDEN AUNT were both well constructed anagrams. KESTREL was an excellent every other letter clue. PALATE a good hidden reverse. I think the genius of this puzzle is the number of d’oh moments generated.

    About 35 minutes here, working on the online version. Last in PANACHE (knew the answer, wanted to know why), CoD PASTRY.

  3. Another 43 minute job for me. I knew the term PRECEPTOR from an organization called “The College of Praeceptors”, through which some of my colleagues obtained qualifications many years ago; it is now known as “The College of Teachers”.
    Praeceptor, Preceptor, Teacher: an example of the evolution of English through natural selection?
  4. Similar tale of frustration as above. All but 3 after an hour, a very enjoyable hour with not much in the way of gimmes, most requiring some thought and with the odd gem eg PRETENSION and the tasty tart (COD for me too). Had a rest and then saw the reversed hidden PALATE which gave me LAY ASIDE (LAY for amateur is for me a chestnut which refuses to drop). This left MIXERS to get, a clear DD which one either thinks of or not. Eventually came to me while running the bath, perhaps something to do with the taps.
  5. This was no romp but it had plenty of panache and I found it more interesting than Jack suggests. I was left with a single unsolved clue in three separate quadrants and only slowly managed to unravel anagram, pastry and preceptor. I thought this was an excellent puzzle made up of familiar vocabulary with only preceptor being somewhat arcane.
  6. A 45 minute ROMP (is that a rebus of moderate perplexity?) for me, so don’t be too hard on yourself Jack. I had no idea how PASTRY worked until coming here. I thought Pastry could have been a prequel to Destry; now there’s a great Western. And the team meaning of span was new to me also. I have come across CARBOY before, but that didn’t stop me penning CARSON; I was obviously still on the Western theme, thinking of Kit. COD to CHAT SHOW. Tripe… yummeee.
    1. I also considered DESTRY at 5ac. We’ll see what the others thought but I convinced myself this was mostly a very easy puzzle rather badly executed by the blogger in terms of solving time. Maybe I am being too harsh on myself.
  7. 19:05 here so I think you are being hard on yourself. Main problem for me was finding PRECEPTOR and resisting the temptation to take a punt on PRECENTOR – a leader of church singing or the person in charge of cathedral music – very easy to imagine this meaning ‘teacher’ in some ancient and posh educational establishment, but no wordplay match except the P.

    Relieved to see no-one admitting to ‘pastie’ at 6A as a variant of (Cornish) pasty, for which ‘Great Western tart’ sounds like a possible jokey def. (Grumpy old man question: why do so many people think that centered text is appropriate for the entire content of a web page?)

    25A’s wordplay might help some people to avoid the dreadful “antartic”. If it’s cold in the Artic, that’s because the driver’s got the window open!

  8. Badly tripped up by this one, which I thought was a fine puzzle nonetheless – LAY ASIDE leading the way, perhaps. Entered DESERT instead of PASTRY – expect a few others to have dallied with that – which made PANACHE impossible. Since I couldn’t think beyond Wren, I might not have got it anyway. Also failed on the reverse hidden, putting FACADE more in hope than anything else. To compound matters, I had ‘precentor’ instead of PRECEPTOR. I was looking at examples of organs rather than the superordinate term.
  9. 26 minutes here, over half of it spent on two problem areas – PRECEPTOR/MIXERS in the bottom left and PANACHE/PASTRY/SLIP ROADS in the top right.
  10. Like others the first 20 m saw most of it done, and another 10 after a break. Slow to see mixers (not a favourite drink of mine), to think of preceptors and pretension (looked at other words that fitted everything except the definition), and find 22 where it lurked. Enjoyed 14 & 17, last in 5, and then 6 because I refused to write it till I had worked it out properly I had also hoped for side which ultimately was not on.
  11. 25:52 .. my first attempt at solving ‘bottom up’ and I can honestly say it didn’t make a scrap of difference with this puzzle.

    Held up in the same spots as others. Last in MIXERS, one of those you either see straight off or spend a long time staring blankly at.

    Today’s confession: I didn’t understand why it was PASTRY until coming here.

    1. I think “bottom up” had serious issues here, not least those extremely common endings in the South East. That said, I had two blanks in each corner at one point, so maybe there just isn’t a right way up for this!
      1. These days, the Times setters are apparently discouraged from filling the bottom and right edges of grids with ‘friendly’ letters. Before this happened, the strong probabiity of a word like “vEhEmEnT” would be one logical reason why starting at the bottom could help sometimes, though it’s not the reason usually quoted.
  12. You are definitely being too hard on yourself. I found this very tough, but also enjoyable. After about 45 minutes I had 7 unsolved and they succumbed slowly, one by one over the course of the morning.
    CARBOY was a lucky guess. Last in was PRECEPTOR, where I had the answer for a while but just couldn’t see the wordplay because I couldn’t help splitting “organ acting on impulse” in various ways. In the end I decided just to bung it in anyway, at which point I immediately saw how it worked.
    I got held up in the NW by thinking 8ac would be the unheard-of (and of course nonexistent) ATH, and although I was sufficiently unsure not to put it in the invisible H in 2dn still created a mental block.
    A few good clues but PASTRY particularly so.
  13. Tha hardest of the week, but a fair challenge. Made steady progress then stalled at 30 minutes. Finished in another 10 with MIXERS (understandable) and PALATE (inexcusable)!

    Ddn’t start at the bottom, or the top but with ROMP.

  14. The SW corner did for me. PRECEPTOR, the island, and MIXER only fell when I reached for the Chambers Word Wizard.
  15. Hard, and very clever, I thought, but alas, I went with CARHOP, thinking ‘youngster’ the def., and HOP for a lot of ‘hope’. I figured if you can get courage from a bottle in the UK, why not hope as well? Quite wrong, apparently. Last in was MIXERS, after a lot of staring. I thought PANACHE and PASTRY were very good, as well as the hidden PALATE. I didn’t know SUPPLY as a teacher, whatever the lorry is in 25A, SLIP ROADS ( I think we call them ‘on ramps’), DONER KEBAB, TOSH as tripe, and, obviously, CARBOY. No time to report since I had to stop to make dinner last evening, but if forced to guess would say about an hour. Jack, this was definitely not an easy puzzle, I think it the toughest of the week, and your blog is quite fine. Regards to all, and Happy 4th of July weekend to the other Americans.
    1. The lorry is ‘artic’, an abbreviation of articulated lorry – what you would call a semi-trailer truck, among other things, I believe.
  16. Did this after much too little sleep and dozed off over the last two, panache and carboy which then fell to 41 minutes inc. nap. But curse it, put winers not seeing mixers, kidding myself they didn’t always have to be with diners to be sociable. Thought most of it was dullish but that may have been the dull palate of the tired mind. Yes, a ‘supply’ (teacher) can be a noun.
  17. It’s in Collins as a noun meaning ‘a person who acts as a temporary substitute’.
  18. There is another solution, somewhat tenuous, for 23 across, “Sociable types providing drinks”.

    Anagram of “DICERS” = “CIDERS”

    A dicer is one who plays games with dice with others, and is therefore sociable.

    Completely missed the obvious “mixers” though.

    1. Indirect anagrams are not permitted in standard Times puzzles. The current editor would not allow such a clue as you suggest.

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