Times 24739 – Fried or Boiled?

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This puzzle got me off on an excellent start when Milton Friedman (one of the important gurus during my Economics course) cropped up in what I thought was a rollicking clue. That set the mood and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the puzzle, stopping briefly to savour and relish the 15-year-old malt.

ACROSS
1 FRIEDMAN You want your man fried or boiled? What a hilarious way to start off this puzzle. Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006) was an American economist, statistician, a professor at the University of Chicago, and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics
5 PLUSES P L (first letters of Party Leader) USES (exploits)
9 RIDICULE Ins of I (one) DIC (DICK detective minus K) in RULE (law)
10 IMPALA IMPALE (spear) minus E + A ; an African antelope with horns curved in the shape of a lyre and capable of prodigious leaps.
12 GREEN The Green Label that I would enjoy is blended by Johnnie Walker and at least 15 year old 🙂
13 FLEETWOOD FLEET (ships) WOOD (deal) English port in Lancashire
14 PREDILECTION Ins of LE (LIFE minus IF) in PREDICTION (fortune-telling)
18 NEOPLATONISM *(ample notions)
21 BLACK BELT BLACK (jet) BELT (fly)
23 OILER (T) oiler
24 TALKIE Ins of K I (King and I) in TALE (story)
25 UNMARRED *(underarm)
26 DODDLE Ins of DD (Doctor of Divinity, theologian) in DOLE (benefit)
27 BABY FACE BA (rev of AB, Able-Bodied seaman) BY (next to) FACE (confront)

DOWN
1 FOREGO F (fine) OREGANO (herb) minus AN (article)
2 Anagram answer deliberately omitted
3 DECONTROL DEACON (church official) minus A + TROLL (fish) minus L (without tail)
4 ALL OF A DITHER ‘ALLO (Cockney greeting) + ins of DI (Detective Inspector, police officer) in FATHER (old man)
6 LIMIT LIME (Green, answer to 12) minus E + IT (the thing)
7 SLAVONIC *(vocal sin)
8 STANDING STAND-IN (locum tenens) + G (grand)
11 WELLINGTONIA WELLINGTON (Vickers Wellington, British medium bomber PLANE used in World War II) IA (rev of AI, a major road in UK)
15 CUSTOMARY *(SCOUT) MARY (girl) What a lovely anagrind BE PREPARED, the motto of the Boy Scout movement. My COD
16 UNABATED Ins of BAT (go in) in UNA (girl) & ED (boy)
17 SO-CALLED SOCIAL (get-together) minus I (first person) LED (was
19 GLORIA G (good) LO (look) RIA (rev of AIR, in which a bird like a lark would fly in)
20 BRIDGE dd
22 KRILL Ins of R (right) in KILL (bag)

Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

34 comments on “Times 24739 – Fried or Boiled?”

  1. Anything but a doddle, even though a limited of knowledge of economics proved useful for once. I’d struggle to name more than two economists, and if it isn’t Keynes, it has to be…

    Good clues and clever wordplay all over the place. I was revisiting GREEN for the third or fourth time before I saw the golf joke. Doh! That’s why it took me 55 minutes…

  2. 23 minutes, held up by inserting ALL OF A POTHER, with PO for “police officer”. Still the F at 13ac got me FLEETWOOD straight off. (I lived briefly across the way in Pilling and, later, toyed with forming a band called Pilling Winbox.) Got LIMIT (last in) at 6dn with absolutely no idea why at the time.
    The COD has to go to G.L.O.R.I.A.
  3. I went one, in fact two, further than Richnorth by failing to see two of the triple definitions in 12ac. At 4dn toyed with ‘bother’ and ‘lather’ before plumping for ‘pother’ (it’s got the Police Officer). Corrected that once I got PREDILECTION, my penulitimate in – the honour going to WELLINGTONIA, which I thought good. As indeed was the whole shebang. 95 minutes.

    John Eliot Gardiner leads the Monteverdi Choir in a somewhat histrionic, if very fine, rendition of the Gloria from Mozart’s Mass in C minor. My COD.

    1. Thanks for the Mozart clip, ulaca. I’ve been avoiding the Wall-to-wall Mozart on Radio 3, but this just came along at the right moment and made my morning. The Laudamus Te soprano solo is superb.

      Nick M

  4. 35 minutes for all but WELLINGTONIA which I thought about, went away and then revisited several times over half an hour or so before spotting the ‘plane’ reference which led me to the correct answer.

    I got started in the bottom half today which I found a lot easier than the top half apart from the intersecting long words.

  5. Held up by the last across (though the first put me in a good mood; must be the seven-year-old in me). 31 minutes. Had to get out of a no-balled conviction for 17 – too much cricket (but worth every minute). COD 12 for the smooth surface.
  6. I think this must come close to being the average Times cryptic. It’s solid, elegant in parts, always interesting and even has “possibly deal” at 13A – excellent.

    25 minutes with no hold ups, just steady and rewarding progress. Thank you setter.

  7. ‘Correctly’ completed in about 40 minutes but with no understanding of wordplay for 12ac, 6dn (thank you, both yfyap and richnorth) and needed to check that WELLINGTONIA was a tree (I’d initally thought I was looking for a Latin name for a ‘plane tree’). Overall a pleasing challenge with FRIEDMAN my COD: first in but raised a smile!
  8. I’m at home this morning so thought I’d have a go at solving online. I found it very difficult, and finished in 40 minutes but with one annoying typo.
    I didn’t know WELLINGTONIA and I don’t think I’ve seen DECONTROL before either, but those were the only unknowns. I also slowed myself down a bit with ALL OF A POTHER but generally speaking the difficulty was down to good clues rather than any obscurity.
    Very good puzzle.
  9. re GLORIA (The)Lark Ascending refers to the top of the pops piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams
  10. A long solve on a slow Central Line, not helped by forgetting my economists and (probably) too much cricket. Didn’t get anything in the top half, at first, and each quarter had its blanks. Didn’t get the golf joke. Last in were UNMARRED (failed to see anagram) and GLORIA, as I was looking for something like Oklahoma as a setting for a musical.
    Cod (though not with much enthusiasm) to TALKIE – a nice surface.
  11. 28:52 for this – slow for me but somehow I just couldn’t get into this one. It was very fair – Wellingtonia perhaps the only one requiring particular knowledge. That wasn’t one of my problems. Last one in was UNABATED – not difficult, just slow.
  12. There was a young man of Peoria,
    who, to heighten his sense of euphoria,
    would don a tuxedo, and murmur the Credo
    along with the Sanctus and GLORIA

    Peoria’s in Illinois, by the bye

  13. Found this one much, much harder than the last couple, and as a result resorted to aids after about three quarters. Thought I’d get some satisfaction from understanding the cryptic for all clues, but alas, no, had to get to blog for full comprehension of 19d and 27a! Ho hum, knew the easy streak was too good to last… Thanks for blog, very educational: I’d never heard of FRIEDMAN, WELLINGTON (plane), GREEN (label).

  14. I found this an absolutely delightful puzzle, with many things to chuckle at, though it did take me the usual one hour plus (with a long break to recuperate before the plus, needed for the NW corner). Many things went in only on the basis of the wordplay, in particular DODDLE, ALL OF A DITHER (which in my original version was MAD AS A HATTER and of course didn’t seem to fit at all), and I suppose a few others. WELLINGTONIA was just an intelligent guess, but fortunately intelligent enough. COD to GREEN (for the golf putting) GLORIA for the lark’s medium, and especially BABY FACE for the smoothie.
  15. 28:05 with one wrong. PredEliction. I even “corrected” it from the right answer.

    12 across very clever.

  16. I took ages getting into this, possibly because I couldn’t think of the economist straight off. I really like to get the NW corner in first. I spent about 25 minutes on half a dozen answers and then gave up. Went back later in the day and finished it. Didn’t understand cryptic for 9a until coming here. I’m not very tuned in to sport but it should have been obvious. I just think my brain was on strike today. I finally got FRIEDMAN when I remembered that wonderful joke in “Yes Minister” when one of the characters, referring to economists Friedman and Keynes, asks “Why are they all called Milton?”
  17. Is not knowing that “guy” is also a verb meaning “to ridicule” an unacceptable lack of knowledge of the English language or an indication of insufficient time spent on crosswords?
  18. Nice puzzle, but I was caught out by not knowing that fly=belt, somehow. My very inadequate guess was BLACK PEST, which means nothing to me either, but was the only ‘fly’ I could think of that fit. Also, like astonvilla, I learned today that I have been mispelling PREDILECTION my entire life, so I’m grateful for the education. Other than that, about 35 minutes, and COD’s to any of GREEN, FRIEDMAN or BABY FACE. To anonymous above: the latter, clearly. Regards to all.
    1. Kevin, is ‘belt’ as a verb meaning to go fast, as in “I was belting along the M1 at 100 mph”, not an American English usage? Google suggests it might be limited to the Commonwealth in the main.
      1. No, ulaca, we don’t belt along at high speed over here. The verb ‘belt’ is synonomous with the verb ‘wallop’ in US usage. But thanks for explaining. Best.
  19. I’m new here (although lurking for a long time) so I’m sorry to start with a whinge, but forego means to go before. To do without is to forgo. I used to work for The Times. In my day the setter would have been handed his service revolver and asked to reitre to his study and do the decent thing. Having said which, I thought this an almost perfect Times puzzle: I took 45 minutes. A fair challenge, nothing obscure, cleverly misleading surfaces, several chuckles and one laugh out loud (Friedman).
    1. Good point. Here’s the ODE entry:

      Forgo (meaning ‘ go without something you want ’) can also be spelled forego, but it is best to use the spelling forgo so as to avoid confusion with forego, which is an old-fashioned word meaning ‘ come before ’.

      I think there’s just enough of a grey area there to earn the setter a reprieve.

    2. Welcome, khalidiya. If you spot a typo in your post, so long as no one has replied to it, you can always delete it and repost.
  20. 10:43 for me. I wasn’t exactly ALL OF A DITHER, but I found myself dithering far more than I should have done. Nice puzzle though.

    My thanks to ulaca for the Gloria clip. However, with non-stop Mozart on Radio 3 I’m beginning to feel a bit “Mozart, toujours Mozart”, so how about the most glorious Gloria of them all, which you can sing along with here.

    1. Thanks, Tony. It’s a great piece, which I had the pleasure of trying to sing ten or so years ago. Why so much Mozart in the UK? No anniversary I can think of.

      falooker – I’m not sure it isn’t any more than some YouTube posters preferring this style of presentation, such as bartje11 in this instance. Perhaps once you’ve searched for the piece of your choice, you can look at the picture icon and choose the one which has the score.

  21. Have just spent a happy time after the pub in singing along to this. Thanks for posting it. It’s been over 30 years since I did this and haven’t got the music. What site do you use that gives the score as you sing-along? Was in choir practice earlier tonight Vaughan Williams and Kodaly. Not as thrilling as the Beethoven.
    1. I’m not sure it isn’t any more than some YouTube posters preferring this style of presentation, such as bartje11 in this instance. Perhaps once you’ve searched for the piece of your choice, you can look at the picture icon and choose the one which has the score.
  22. Seems there is a thrid definition of green in 12ac which has gone right over my head. Any Aussies out there who can explain how GREEN = LABEL? (If that’s the 3rd def)

    Cheers, Rob

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