Times 24832 – You don’t have to say you love me…

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 28 minutes

A methodical solve after a slow start. Only two false steps along the way, which were non-fatal errors. Otherwise nothing to scare the horses here.

Across
1 WRAPPED UP, double definition. I essayed “covered up”, fortunately without much conviction, to begin with.
6 PEEL’S reversed = SLEEP
9 NONPLUS, another double definition, the first facetious. My last in and my favourite across clue today.
10 MAR FLOW reversed = WOLFRAM or tungsten, number 74 on the periodic table. Yes, there will be an exam at the end of this discussion. There’s at least 117 more clues where that one came from.
11 SLASH = S.A.S + H for “hard” storing L for “pounds”
13 (CITY’S DARK)* = YARDSTICK
14 REARRANGE = REAR for “raise” + RANGE for “area”. Not an anagram in sight.
16 Deliberately omitted. I see no pressing need (or perhaps I do, he said cryptically)
18 Sighed for “exhaled”, sounds like SIDE
19 (SCOUT LAID)* = CUSTODIAL
22 PEN + INSULt + A for “note” = PENINSULA
24 EDGES = EG reversed in EDS
25 (COLONEL HE – LO for “look”)* = ECHELON
26 A + VOCAl + DO for “party” = AVOCADO
28 TAPER, a double definition
29 (AND LINGER)* = LENINGRAD

Down
1 WIN + D.S.O for “award” + R for Regina = WINDSOR, chez Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Today’s reference to royalty, 4d aside.
2 AWN = At Wounding Name-calling
3 CLIP for “cut” reversed + HARD for “tough” = PILCHARD
4 DUSTY = S for “shilling” inside DUTY for “tax”
5 Puppy + OWnERLESS = POWERLESS
6 SPLASH = PL for “place” in SASH for “window”. To announce in a prominent place, often on the front page of a newspaper. Another reference to royalty?
7 (PRICE RANGE I)* = EAR-PIERCING
8 PUMP for “question” + KIN = PUMPKIN. I’ll spare you my fruit and vegetable routine this time.
12 A BAND ON SHIP would be “nautical musicians”. Hee hee.
15 Inside NO CALifornia for “no state” put TURN for “to change” = NOCTURNAL
17 OWN for “have” following COMEDy = COMEDOWN and not lovelorn, which I saw from a distance fitted all the checkers and none of the clue elements.
18 SAPIENT = SENT for “given mission” around A PI for “a foreign character”. Think of the well known misnomer Homo sapiens.
20 LASSOED = LASS + O.E.D for “Oxford English Dictionary”
21 ANGLER = ANGER around L for “line”
23 Deliberately omitted. Headline when Khan, for example, was elected?
27 AIR = A1 for “road” over R for “river”.

26 comments on “Times 24832 – You don’t have to say you love me…”

  1. 30 minutes with a hold-up at the end working out the missing letters from ?O?EDOWN at 17. It just wouldn’t come. Solving the puzzle flowed quite nicely after a shaky start.

    I don’t have a problem with 25, taking ‘lo’ out of ‘Colonel he’ and mixing the letters up.

  2. A steady 19 minutes, which felt quicker than that. Just a pleasant set of clues with no alarums and excursions. I remember when “old city” was always Ur, but it seems St Petersburg and its heteronyms has now become the new reflex answer.
    I liked “No. 74” to clue Wolfram, and rejected trying to work LXXVI into an answer after the very briefest contemplation.
    CoD to the economical NONPLUS.
  3. 9:08 here, hardly any hold-ups on the way to completing what seemed to be a very easy puzzle. COD to 14 REARRANGE – I very briefly considered “raise area” as anagram fodder before realizing how it worked. Also liked 9 NONPLUS and 10 WOLFRAM. Must memorise the Periodic Table!
  4. A gentle sub 30-minute solve. Joint CODs to NONPLUS and WOLFRAM.

    Thanks kororareka for an enjoyable blog, particularly the full explanation of the wordplay for NOCTURNAL (the answer was so ‘obvious’, I gave up on the wordplay).

  5. There are some strange things going on here at the moment. The blog says 5 comments made but when I open up I get only 1 – the other 4(?) are missing

    A very easy puzzle. 20 casual minutes to solve. I can’t believe I’m saying this having asked for so long for greater scientific content but I thought 10A WOLFRAM a bit unfair. It’s better known as tungsten and you can’t be expected to know the place in the table of every element, particularly as there is no reference to the elements.

    I liked 12D ABANDON SHIP

    1. Welcome to the club. That’s been going on for several weeks at my end. Everything seems to be OK when I’m logged in, but if I view anonymously, almost anything is possible. Today, the whole blog was completely invisible until I logged back in. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.
    2. I’m no scientist, Jim, but I was quite happy with WOLFRAM. It has come up here several times before, and once even quite recently. So has the idea of elements having numbers in the periodic table. Given a couple of checkers and fairly straightforward wordplay I didn’t take long to crack it.

      On the subject of disappearing messages I can’t say I noticed anything amiss today though I have not been around quite as much as usual. I am more concerned at the moment with the apparently random censorship of postings on the Crossword Club site without any form of appeal against or explanation of what the moderators object to.

      1. Peter has now kindly explained the boundaries we are expected to observe in discussion of ST prize puzzles and I thank him for that even though I have doubts that it’s the wisest course to follow.
    3. As a complete non-scientist, I must say that I too found the WOLFRAM clue entirely fair. I didn’t even know it was the same as tungsten but that didn’t stop me!
  6. Damn. Put Stash (Stasi the special troops), wasn’t happy with it, forgot to go back. 23 minutes with the error. Not sure about ‘working’ in 15; otherwise a deft enough set of clues on the sub-contortionist level. COD would be 9: a good two-worder.
  7. I too am unsure about “echelon”. The LO and the HE, yes, but the rest is unclear to me, kororareka
  8. I agree with dorsetjimbo. I, too, got the “5 comments made” message but, then only 1 showed up. Either way, the penny has just dropped with the Colonel. As Coleridge must have said when the man from Porlock called: “D’oh!”.
  9. 13 minutes, may have been lightning quick but I confidently stuck in M,ACE at 16, and fearing a cryptic definition, LEGLESS at 9. LEGLESS didn’t last long, but the other took a while to figure out. I did like the teasing of an anagram at 14 right next to the unusual-looking anagram at 13.
  10. 23:39, one of my best, after being nonplussed by NONPLUS for quite a while. COD for mine.
  11. 14:05 .. but somehow managing to type ARR at 27d. And it wasn’t even a pirate clue.

    Definitely an easy Monday after Friday’s tester.

    1. Where do pirate’s shop?
      ARRgos.
      Why are pirates great?
      Because they ARR.

      Easter weekend. Lots of kids around. Sorry.

      1. Children shouldn’t be allowed to keep all the best jokes to themselves. Thank you.
  12. A standard puzzle, I thought, about 20 minutes ending with ABANDON SHIP and COMEDOWN. Live Journal may be having a bad day, as it won’t let me read other comments, and of which it is telling me there are only five. Thanks for the blog, koro. Your PUMPKIN comment could also apply to AVOCADO, which may technically be a fruit, but is certainly not ‘fruity’. Regards to anyone who gets to read this, setter included.
  13. A quick solve but with two wrong! I had no idea what 10 across was so put in Wardrum which is probably not a word and I had Stress for 6 down. Looking now I have no idea why!!
    Louise
  14. Yes definitely an easier one than last Friday’s horror! Didn’t know AWN = bristle, the DSO, or the ECHELON formation (shame on me!), , but all gettable from wordplay. Some very easy clues here (ANGLER, eg) to counter the (relatively) more difficult (WOLFRAM, eg), but on the whole a fairly straightforward puzzle.

    Quite like the simplicity of ABANDON SHIP, so it gets my COD.

  15. I must be making progress: only about an hour and complete! WOLFRAM was the last one in after getting SPLASH. Very clever – but we’ll all be on the lookout for these in future.
  16. 7:17 here for another straightforward, enjoyable Monday puzzle which I expect the fast brigade would have made short work of.
  17. Nothing to add here except that when I tried to read the comments at lunchtime Monday they were invisible. It’s now Tuesday and they’re all here. Don’t know what’s going on. Completed this lazily in bed with my morning cuppa. Not a very interesting puzzle. 30 minutes.
  18. 29’15”; I could have sliced a minute or two off that if I had been quicker in realizing that LXXIV probably can’t be fit into four squares, and wouldn’t be too likely as anagrist if it could. 9ac was my LOI, and my COD.
    I was having the same problem with comments last week; but when I re-signed in, things seemed to settle down.

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