Times 24635 – Taking it literally

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 21 minutes

Music: Grateful Dead, American Beauty

As the title indicates, the literals can be made to do most of the work here. I put in three out of the four long ones almost instantly, which made for a quick solve. I really only needed the cryptics for ‘madrepore’ and ‘yard’, which were
my last two in. This makes it a little difficult to judge the quality of the clues, but the level of the puzzle was very easy, at least for me.

Beginners are reminded that obvious clues are not blogged. If you are stuck on one, please try to solve it on your own using the crossing letters supplied by these answers first.

Across
1 HERETOFORE. HERE(TO)FOR[d] + E.
6 LEAD, double definition, boxer on a lead and a leading role. I thought this was a cryptic definition referring to a dog show for a bit, which made me hesitate.
10 SET-TO, SET (receiver) + TO (TOO on the radio). Lift and separate!
11 OBSEQUIES, O.B. + SE(QUI)ES. ‘Old boy’ with ‘funeral rites’ hands this one to you on a platter.
12 DOUBLE BREASTED, DOUBLE + BREA(anagram of SET)D. Another one where the cryptic is not needed.
14 ACADEMY, A + CADE + MY. If a rebel is not Cade, he’s Watt.
15 Omitted, use the crossing letters.
17 BEECHAM, BEECH + AM. Some day they’ll throw in Argenta or Markevitch, but not tonight.
19 Another obvious one, more crossing letters.
20 PHOTOSYNTHESIS, anagram of THIS POSY’S ON THE. The literal hands it to you on a platter, what else could it be?
23 MADREPORE, MAD(R[eef]E PORE. For this one, you may well need the cryptic
24 DOGMA, anagram of GO MAD. It took me a surprisingly long time to see this.
25 YARD, DA(R)Y backwards. The temptation to automatically substitute ‘ER’ for ‘Queen’ is strong, but must be resisted here. The thought that some sort of abbreviation for ‘year’ is used is also a red herring.
26 PENNYROYAL, PENNY + ROYAL. The main deception here is that not everyone will know that ‘pennyroyal’ is a sort of mint.
 
Down
1 HOST, [g]HOST.
2 RATIONALE, anagram of LEAR INTO A. Not a very precise literal, but some relief from the usual beer shortage.
3 TROUBLESHOOTER, T + ROUBLES + HOOTER. Written in instantly, without bothering with the cryptic. Now that I look at it, the ‘T’ is hard to account for. Are T-roubles something? Well, at least the answer must be correct. As McText points out, this conundrum can be solved if horn is ‘tooter’ and not ‘hooter’.
4 FLOWERY, sounds like FLOURY.
5 ROSTRUM, RO(S)T + RUM. A compendium of cryptic cliches.
7 ELIOT, TOILE backwards, T.S. and George. I was surprisingly dull on this one.
8 DESIDERATA, D(E(SIDE)R)ATA. This time the Queen is ER.
9 SQUADRON LEADER, double cryptic definition, since ‘S’ is the ‘leader’ of SQUADRON.
13 NAMBY-PAMBY, MAN backwards + BY + PA(MB)Y. The clue seems defective, because there is no way that ‘pay’ can mean ‘foot’, although ‘paw’ does. Or am I off base here? Anyway, the literal is our old friend Mr. Philips. It seems like I have made the beginner’s mistake of not considering ‘foot’ as a verb. Answers right, explanation wrong!
16 HALTINGLY, HALT + [s]INGLY.
18 MAYPOLE, MAY + POLE, obvious from the literal.
19 RATTEEN, TAR backwards + TEEN.
21 ORDER, [b]ORDER
22 BALL, BALL[y]. I put this in without really thinking, but it seems a bit rude for a Times puzzle. However, it doesn’t look like it can be anything else.

43 comments on “Times 24635 – Taking it literally”

  2. 13 minutes, not much of a hold up, though I needed the wordplay to get BEECHAM, MADREPORE, YARD and PENNYROYAL. Wrote in ELIOT, TROUBLESHOOTER, SQUADRON LEADER and NAMBY PAMBY without the wordplay. I think you’re being a little hard on 5 down, that was about my favorite clue.
  3. I figured “set-to”, but what does “spat” have to do with it?

    It might have been a very fast time for me had I not spent a while on 15A having “balkingly” for 16D. 🙁

      1. > “Spat” (noun) is colloquial for a bit of a fight …

        Of course! I still had “to begin with” and “get-go” in my head.

        Way off topic … looking forward to my 1:00 A.M. Monday ritual of a couple beers and “Masterpiece Mystery” (US/PBS). It’s been re-runs of Miss Marple, Poirot, and Inspector Lewis for quite a while. Are they making any new hour-and-a-half crime dramas over there these days?

        1. Well, we (in Australia) got the first of a new series of Midsomer Murders last night if that’s anything to go by. Not off topic if you remember how Lewis got his name. And the hen-pecked husband in last night’s MM took refuge in his crossword!
          1. I know nothing of Midsomer Murders; perhaps I will this fall. Tonight’s Inspector Lewis was one I hadn’t seen, with Nathaniel Parker appearing (I liked Lynley). Tonight’s victim was into crosswords, so I guess I’m still on-topic. 🙂
            1. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I believe it’s the first episode of Morse where in the opening scene he’s just finishing a Times cryptic and saying “twelve minutes” then closing a dictionary. It’s the episode in which a woman who sings in the choir with him is murdered.
              Had CARD for a while at 6a. Had to verify MADREPORE even though I’ve done a fair bit of diving and had to ask my wife about RATTEEN. We both area great fans of Morse, Lewis, Midsomer etc. She’s taken a shine to since even before the World Cup and has
              ordered Setanta Sports on the cable. ANDY CAPP eat your heart out. 😀

  4. I don’t think there’s anything rude about this – “ruddy” and “bally” (short a) are both minced versions of “bloody”, used as intensifiers.
  5. 14 minutes, but might have broken the 10 if I’d known the coral & the fabric (the one at 19dn that is). Re the former, watch out for MADREPERL and MADREPORA, now on my Suspects Alert List.
    Vinyl is right about spotting answers from defs/literals — but you (or rather he!) have/has to have the talent to spot them in the first place and there’s a fair bit of hiding here: like the “life [sic*] and separate” in 10ac (Spat | excessively). And the mis-direction is 18dn “centre of dancing” ≠ C.
    * By no means a criticism … I like it that way!
  6. 52 minutes for me with one wrong, the Stephen Fryesque ‘madrehole’ for MADREPORE. COD to HALTINGLY (which has already caused some trouble and which I expect to cause more) – I had ‘pausingly’ and ‘pulsingly’ before getting it right … being a bit slow on the uptake at 15ac.
  7. Every time a bloody coconut! Whenever ELIOT appears, I have to get stuck on it. Eventually got there in 17 min. All of the big ones went in without any real analysis, as they just had to be what they were. I’m sure I have seen PENNY ROYAL identically clued before, but maybe not in the Times. Regards to all from the rather lucky Shaky Isles!
  8. I got held up by the coral and the fabric as well, despite having the RAT and the MADRE in place. Not a very impressive time – 63 minutes in all, although 14 were spent on a phone call. Helped towards PENNYROYAL=mint by the Nirvana song, Pennyroyal Tea.
  9. Nice work-out before work. 18 minutes though looked faster for a time. COD 24 but only for the surface reading as term starts.
  10. How strange it is. Having flown through Friday’s which generally the experts here deemed a little above average difficulty I really struggled with this (although nothing compared to Saturday) and like ulaca had MADREHOLE for the coral. TROUBLESHOOTER and SQUADRON LEADER (the latter remaining a mystery) in without full understanding; RATTEEN and PENNYROYAL from wordplay.
    1. Oh, Saturday gave me a chance to develop my Googling skills to hitherto (heretofore?) unknown levels.
    2. Oh joy that I am not alone! I found this really difficult and although I made reasonable steady progress through about 2/3 of it I ground to a halt after 40 minutes with unfinished business in every quarter and eventually resorted to aids. Even then I ended up with one wrong at 25 where I had been distracted by cat references and not having found anything that fitted I bunged in YORE without much confidence though it vaguely went with the first bit of the clue.

      Never heard of MADREPORE, PENNYROYAL (as ‘mint’) or RATTEEN (with that spelling).

      The reference in 22dn is perfectly acceptable language and it reminds me of the old Music Hall song.

      I can’t do my bally bottom button up
      Can’t do my bally bottom button up
      It’s so tight
      Serves me right
      I must have eaten too much grub last night..

      I can’t do my bally bottom button up
      And though you think it’s fun
      What’s the use of buttoning
      The other bally buttons
      When the bally bottom button’s undone?

      1. Curious – as a child I learned it as “bottom belly button” and got a maternal smack for using the rude word belly. How times change.
  11. Breezed through this in 10 minutes, so my fastest for a long time. Last in (and almost forgotten) LEAD at 6, left initially because I didn’t do boxer=dog. Changed from madrehole seconds before that as it didn’t look right, and MADREPORE looked at least like somewhere in India (famous for its coral reefs?).
    CoD to ROSTRUM, even if it is vieux chapeau.
  12. 16:08 here, although it seemed quicker at the time, and I was surprised when I stopped the clock that more than 12 minutes had gone by. I got three of the four 14-letter entries straight away, so must have just dozed off somehow in the middle. RATTEEN was the only new word for me.
  13. Quite tricky I thought – 22 minutes feels like quite a good time even with one mistake. I considered MADREHOLE for 23ac but then plumped for MADREBORE, which is better but still wrong. PENNYROYAL and RATTEEN also unknown.
    Definitely not as difficult as Saturday’s!
  14. having rejected madrehole felt quite pleased with the above only to find i was one letter out. would argue that if the word is unknown it really is just a guess. spent a bit of time trying to anagramatise money lookalike (monkey ?)! live acoustic version of pennyroyal tea on nirvana unplugged well worth a listen. pendrov
  15. I found this pretty easy, though I did spend several minutes at the end getting 4, 7, 14 and 26, pushing my time to 24 minutes. None of them had difficult clues, so it was just me slowing down.
    As has been observed, several of the long answers could be got from the definition alone. 12 and 20 went straight in with no crossing letters in the grid, and 3 and 9 went in as soon as I had a few letters in place.
    Pennyroyal was unfamiliar but I’ve encountered madrepore before.
  16. I would have said this was a straightforward enough 45 minutes or so, but I got 23ac wrong (guessed at MADREHOLE, until I consulted a dictionary), and couldn’t get 4d for too long having misinterpreted 14ac where I went for ACADEME. COD 1ac, with 8d a close second.
  17. Oh dear. Another MADREHOLE, which on review hardly looks like a word at all except, as Ulaca suggests, the sort of thing Stephen Fry might come up with.

    For those who kindly expressed concern as Earl neared my front door over the weekend, here are the classified results:

    Earl 1 Fence 0
    Earl 0 House 1
    Earl v. Mains Electricity .. score draw (knocked out for fifteen hours but back much sooner than the originally predicted two days)

    Province of Nova Scotia v. Earl .. We’ll have to call it an ‘away win’ as one poor soul died unwisely trying to secure a loosed boat. It was nearly a rout as four candidates for the Darwin Awards were washed into the sea while watching the storm from a sea wall (a hundred or so invariably line up near our house at the ocean’s edge like hopeful eschatologists raising their arms skywards and saying “Take me. Take me”). The four somehow made it back to shore. Good attempt, though.

    1. Good news Sotira – and what’s a fence between friends. The last big blow we had here took two trees out of my back garden and deposited my driveway gates in my neighbours property.

      Nearly every year we get lunatics swept away by big seas – heaven alone knows what goes on between their ears.

      1. As you say, Jimbo, heaven knows. I suspect they only comprehend the power of the sea with their last breath.

        Apropos of your garden gates, the builders working on a nearby construction site optimistically left their Portaloo tied to a telegraph pole on Friday. It’s no longer there. We’re earnestly hoping they emptied it before the storm.

    2. You can add my name to the growing list of membership applications for the MADREHOLE club, Sotira. Despite fitting the cryptic bits of the clue well enough, it always looked highly improbable, but I couldn’t be bothered to consult a dictionary. Otherwise a pretty straightforward solve. HERETOFORE was good, I thought.

      Glad to hear you emerged from Earl not seriously scathed.

  18. At the beginning I thought this was fairly easy, but after an hour I had 6, 7, 21 and 23 left to do. 21 had to be ORDER, but it took me a while to understand the wordplay, since I kept looking for BA or BSc as the bachelor. I also filled in MADREHOLE, but it looked so unlikely that after some thought I changed it to MADREPORE and so got it right.
    A bit more thought then filled in the NE, after realising that “material” in 7 could not be THING (GNIHT being even more unlikely than MADREHOLE). It was clear that the boxer would be a dog, but before finding ELIOT I was tending to SLED for 6 (forgetting that those are usually pulled by huskies). Anyway, about half an hour for the final four.
  19. 14:42 I considered FOOLERY for 4 and might have chosen it but even I could see it didn’t work. Needed the first B to get NAMBY PAMBY and didn’t bother about wordplay at the time. Last few minutes on the MADREPORE/RATTEEN pair, the former rang a faint bell but I might easily have chosen a wrong option here
    1. That’s interesting – Flowery was my last in, though once done it seems the easiest of clues. Damn near put foolery but fortunately thought on.
  20. Much the same story here – a quick puzzle solved at least 50% on the definitions and 9D by seeing “rank” with second letter “Q”. Actually some of the cryptics are rather good but a lot more deviousness was required in the definition department.
  21. Am I wrong to feel a little unhappy about “by” being the clue for “by” in this? As a novice, I had believed that this wasn’t the done thing in setting. Or am I off beam with my understanding of the rule or indeed the clue?

    I too got pennyroyal from familiarity with early nineties grunge.

    Would like an amnesty from obscure (which to me is most of them) fabrics, though, as I never have a chance with them. Bob

    1. By for “by” is fine. Indeed using the letters themselves rather than a synonym can increase the difficulty because ones first reaction is to try to substitute.
  22. 15 mins, and after a couple of minutes’ thought I plumped for MADREHOLE. I was a bit surprised that HALT was indicated by ‘stop’ in 16D HALTINGLY.

    Tom B.

  23. Bit of a slog for me. About 50 minutes. Pretty well the same problems as just about everyone else: live a little, learn a little!

    COD to YARD: very simple and completely baffling!

  24. 8:18 for this – can’t see anything else new to say (except that the blog for Jumbo 855 is now completed).
  26. 8:23, with one mistake: MADREHOLE for the unknown MADREPORE (23ac), which incidentally isn’t in the Concise.  Other unknowns were PENNYROYAL (26ac) and RATTEEN (19dn), of which the latter isn’t in the Concise either.  BEECHAM (17ac) was unfamiliar.

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