Times 24913 – gruff stuff

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 11:41 on the Crossword Club timer, but it’s telling me I have two incorrect. I can see one silly typo but I can’t see the other which means there’s a chance I have one actually wrong here (and I suspect it may be 25 down where I can think of about four words that fit one half of the clue or the other, I just can’t see what crosses over.

LiveJournal has been having all sorts of problems lately, and I think it may be due to some recent performances of “A Brief History of Social Networking” where I played the part of LiveJournal. Sorry about that, hope you’ll be able to read this.

Away we go!

Across
1 COURT-MARTIALLED: cryptic definition
9 TITHE BARN: THE BAR in TIN
10 MEDIA: M then AIDE returned – in this case meaning a substance through which an effect is conveyed
11 DREAMY: (READ)* then MY
12 DISTASTE: I’D reversed, then STATE about S(son)
13 LATEST: double def with an L.A. TEST
15 F,LIP,PANT
18 PARISIAN: I liked this clue – take the last letters off PAy RISe If ANy
19 HOWDAH: (WHO,HAD)*
21 let’s leave this off the acrosses
23 MISSAL: MISS, L(learner driver) about A
26 T,HIGH
27 HOUSE-SITS: another breaking up of a defnition
28 PRESS CONFERENCE: something is nagging me a little about this clue, you get juice from a fruit with a PRESS, but isn’t meeting doing double duty here? Anyway, the enumeration is a bit of a giveaway
 
Down
1 CITADEL: anagram of 6 down (DIALECT) – though I got it from checking letters before I had DIALECT
2 (a)UNTIE
3 THE,R,MOSES: Thermos flasks are making a sort of a comeback here, I think there’s a lot of tea drinkers
4 AFAR: A then RAF reversed
5 let’s leave this off the downs
6 ADMIT: double definition, ADMIT a student to a school and ADMIT to doing something
7 LADY’S MAID: (SAID,MADLY)*
8 DIALECT: ALE in DICT(ionary). Reference is to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
14 TURNS,TILE
16 PROFITEER: fun clue – IT in PRO then (FREE)*
17 BALLYHOO: ALLY,H in BOO
18 PIT STOP: Hmmm… POTS TIP reversed? I can’t seem to justify POT = summarize?
20 HOLY SEE: sounds like WHOLLY SEE
22 ASHES: a definition and two wordplays – SHE in AS and AS,HE’S
24 SCION: CI(Channel Islands) in SON
25 HUFF: of course – I was torn between BUFF, CUFF, PUFF and HUFF and rather densely entered CUFF

26 comments on “Times 24913 – gruff stuff”

  1. 28 minutes with several things to enjoy; including the diabolical liberties at 13ac, 27ac, 28ac and the double-wordplay at 22dn. But COD to TURNS TILE. (Now someone’s going to tell me it’s been done before!)

    And yeh, LJ’s in and out like a fiddler’s elbow again.

    Edited at 2011-07-28 03:25 am (UTC)

  2. 22 minutes, not that much longer than it took to sign on. I thought a number of the clues were rather blah; and although I didn’t know of conference pears, I’d still include 28ac in that category. But I do like 18ac, which I had neglected to parse (it was my LOI), and 14d, which I had first tried to parse as T—-ILE.
  3. ‘Conference’ is a type of pear, so this is a double definition I think, with the first being cryptic.
  4. 18 minutes.
    I’m on holiday at the moment, and this is the first time I’ve been able to get anywhere near LJ accessing from the family iPad. The crossword club doesn’t work on these gizmos either. Fortunately I can use the Times App for the puzzles, because they don’t seem to sell the Times much in Canada.
    I found this a relief after the agonies of yesterday’s, which I also solved today. HOWDAH was a bit of a wild guess. I liked the cheeky PRESS CONFERENCE.
  5. 38 minutes, with the last ten spent on the elephant seat (easy once I finally saw it was an anagram) the negative feeling and, last in, the Moses cylinders. A lot went in straight from the definition. I’ll give my COD to MISSAL, if only for the fact that on Tuesday I missed ‘miss’ and invented a new item of ladieswear called a lanidress.

    The difficulty of getting a comment published here has now been increased by the requirement to decipher blurred, nigh-on illegible ‘advanced’ word verification gizmos.

      1. That’s because modern computers have a built-in detector that alerts them at the moment when the user has reached such a state of frustration that he is ready to hurl his monitor to the floor and put the boot through his hard drive.
  6. I knew I should have started at Z and worked backwards, but could I have made it past PUFF? We’ll never know. I liked PARISIAN & ASHES but COD to THERMOSES.
  7. 40 minutes with one cheat at the end as I couldn’t decide on 25dn so I called up all the possibilities to make sure I hadn’t missed any. Opted finally for HUFF.

    I think the past tense would have been more suitable at 9ac.

  8. Felt the setter missed a trick by not capitalising the who, or is that against the rules?

    Also had allot instead of admit at 6 d. A learner at a lot as in parking, meaning grant. But I suppose missing a in the clue.

    1. As discussed in Linxit’s blog for Saturday Times 24897 (can’t link owing to site misbehaviour, but it’s the 16 July 2011 entry), L for student or pupil (rather than learner) is considered de trop for the Ximenean setter. Didn’t stop me considering ‘allot’ too, though!
  9. 13 minutes, which is definitely quicker than getting on here, but although that makes it “easy”, I rather enjoyed this one. I’am a fan of whole word anagrams, of which this had four, and HOWDAH was as close as maybe.
    CoD to the talking pears, one of those private jokes that couples share brought to the general public. I also liked the canned lawyers, reminiscent of all those ads offering instant justice. What do you have with 1,000 lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand.
    z8b8d8k (not logged in and not wanting to risk going round the houses again)
  10. Thought I’d managed it all correctly, but had PUFF in at 25dn – shame! Most went in OK, but took an age to finish bottom right, as I’d had the enumeration incorrect at 20dn and couldn’t for the life of me think of a word H-L! Didn’t get around to parsing PROFITEER, but it had to be that.

    CoD to PARISIAN, a clever clue, and a device not hugely over-used.

    ps Didn’t realise how much I enjoyed this site before not being able to get on today…

  11. It’s taken me about 12 hours to see the comments added after I managed to get mine in last night; I don’t have anything to add, but I thought I’d see if this gets through. As Sotira said the other day, perhaps it’s time to think of moving the site?
  12. About 20 minutes for the puzzle, but I didn’t know about conference pears either so I didn’t get the joke. Tried to comment both last night and earlier today, but LJ was in a cranky phase on those occesions, so sorry to be late. Puzzle felt well on the easier side. I also didn’t know of the pot summary, but PIT STOP it had to be. Otherwise, pretty much went through top to bottom, left to right, ending with HOLY SEE, which I got a kick out of, so I’ll call it a COD, at the risk of catching homophone abuse. Regards.
  13. Why is Live Journal subject to attacks like this? Do they host blogs that we wouldn’t wish to be associated with? If so, maybe moving away is appropriate as suggested elsewhere. Can anybody give more information ???
    1. If anything, perhaps the contrary. The general view is that blogs critical of the Russian government are the main target. So you could say that LJ is being principled in not bowing to threats and pressure. But the problems look set to continue. LJ is Russian-owned and based these days and things are hardly straightforward over there.

      It would be a shame to think (if what I’ve been reading is correct) that anti-libertarian forces might win the day by driving blogs like this away from LJ. I’m wondering now, rather than moving away, if we should consider setting up a back-up blog on WordPress (for example) and use it as and when LJ is unavailable. It wouldn’t involve a lot of effort and could sit idle most of the time. It could serve other purposes, too – jottings not specific to particular puzzles, say. Any thoughts, anyone?

      1. This is a very interesting and informed comment. I’ll try to leave this reply – again – but have been thwarted to date.
      2. Thanks for the explanation Sotira. If the attacks are aimed at silencing free comment as you suggest, then I agree with you that moving away is not the answer.

        John

  14. 8:38 for me, with rather more dithering than I’d have liked over PIT STOP (I hadn’t come across it meaning “a brief stop during a journey” before) and HUFF.

    If I manage to post this comment successfully, it will be the first time since Sunday.

    1. This is quite common in some families for a loo break on long journeys, as in ‘Anyone need a pit-stop?’
  15. I managed to finish again but took hours, one reason being a thunderstorm and ensuing flood submerging the basement. Among other casualties was the power unit for my printer, so I will have to solve online until the replacement comes.

    I took longest on the clues at the top (COURT MARTIALLED, for example, after considering COURT CONTROLLED for a while), THERMOSES, DISTASTE and whatever. The clue for 1dn, which I got from crossing letters, was a big help in solving 8dn. HUFF, by the way, is what you go off in when you have a fit of anger, so I was more satisfied with that than with CUFF. And I also didn’t know there were conference pears, but nothing else would fit.
    COD to PARISIAN, although I also liked FLIPPANT.

  16. Can someone explain this to me please? Obviously being dense, but although i got it from the definition I can’t work out why.

    Be gentle with me…

    Bob

    1. TURNS TILE where tile = hat (yes really, look it up!), making a turnstile that spectators pass through to get in..

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