Times 24,917

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Timed at 10:35; just as a long struggle doesn’t necessarily equate with a sense of satisfaction, a quick solve need not mean the puzzle lacks wit and invention. Plenty of both in this, along with a wide-ranging mixture of science, the arts, Bible studies, food and drink (and just the single, minor, chestnut-flavoured bugbear).

Across
1 ALLOTROPIC – (LOCALPITOR)*; allotropes are elements which appear in more than one form, the most famous probably being carbon, whose forms encompass both diamonds and pencil lead.
7 URGE – tURGEnev.
9 EMIRATES – (TIMESARE)*.
10 STABLE – Bishop in STALE.
11 INSTIL =”IN STILL”.
13 AGAR AGAR – A GAR x2. This brought back memories of cultivating things in Petri dishes on my way to a very distinguished ‘B’ in my Biology O-level.
14 CHLORINATION – C & H (as written on old-fashioned taps) + LORIs + NATION.
17 BRILLIANTINE – ILL in BRIGANTINE. From the days when no self-respecting chap would go out without applying something smoothing to his coiffure.
20 CHIN CHIN – this double chin refers to the toast (as in “down the hatch”, “cheers” etc.) and comes, it seems, from China via Italy.
21 SATIRE – SAlTIRE without Left. Out of the door. Line on the left. One cross each.
22 COSSET – COS SET.
23 TRADE GAP – DEGAs in TRAP (as in “caught in the toils”).
25 HESS – cHESS; and an &lit. if one imagines oneself in 1942.
26 WISHY WASHY – WISH(=yen) + (SAYWHY)*.
 
Down
2 LA MANCHA – LAMA + N (chess notation) + CHA gives the home of Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha.
3 OAR – sOARs.
4 RATEL – RATE + Large; also known as the honey badger.
5 PASSATA – S.A. (i.e. It) in PASTA; I know I’m not alone in thinking the SA / IT convention is well past its use-by date…
6 COSTA RICA – CO-STAR + (ACId)rev.
7 UP AGAINST IT – UP AGAIN (resurrected) + Small TIT.
8 GILEAD – GrIt + LEAD, as referenced in the Old Testament.
12 TROMBONISTS – (MOSTBRITONS)*; I was delayed by thinking it was going to be some sort of currency rather than musical terminology.
15 IRISH STEW – [ST in HEW] after IRIS.
16 ENCROACH – (CORN)* in EACH.
18 LINCTUS – Line + IN ConnecticuT + US.
19 CHROME – CzecH + ROME, obviously willing the solver to look for some version of Prague that isn’t there.
21 SHADY – Duke in SHAY; last one in, as I didn’t know the carriage, and waited till I had S_A_Y to put it beyond reasonable doubt.
24 EVA – (AVE)rev. to give EVA, where “noted president’s wife” turns out to mean “President’s wife who was the subject of a musical“.

22 comments on “Times 24,917”

  1. …as I put in TRADE WAR, without taking time to figure out the wordplay.

    Otherwise, relatively straightforward. Unknowns today: the ship, the carriage. Took me forever to get STABLE, though I’m not sure why, without which I couldn’t get GILEAD, my LOI.

  2. No problems today, a 15 minute canter though I also hadn’t heard of SHAY before. Chaise, yes, shay no.
    No problem either with brilliantine, the clue is technically correct – ILL in BRI(G)ANTINE – and reminded me of the strange preparations hairdressers had on their shelves in my youth..
  3. Thought this was a really good crossword. 19:30. Much pleasure from dredging one’s memory for answers such as Gilead, agar-agar, ratel and passata. I tend to agree with topicaltim about SA = it though maybe ‘it’ has a few more years left to run.
    1. It certainly doesn’t work if you read it as a straight substitution (which I did when writing it in, before realising that didn’t work when I looked more carefully while writing the blog). However if you parse it as Hairdresser (definition), bad (ILL) in [ship without good] i.e. BRI ANTINE, which means the ILL can go in after the BR rather than after the BRI, then that seems fine to me…
  5. Slowed at the end by NE and, in particular, need to eliminate variety of alternative fish (‘ray’, ‘dab’) before settling on ‘gar’ as my best guess. Enjoyable sub 30-minute solve. Thanks for the blog, tim, and I fully agree with your intro.
  6. I think I made this harder than it needed to be. I had to check quite a few answers post solve – Ratel and Hess I vaguely had heard of but wasn’t too sure. Also fell into the Trade War trap.
    Louise
  7. Used to have Vitalis and Brylcreem on the shelf above my basin as a teenager, but had the good sense to hardly ever use them.

    Back to the puzzle, 45 minutes for me but two wrong. Couldn’t agree more with TT about the SA, as I shoved in ‘it’ to give me ‘pastita’ and a real headache with the fishy growth medium. Even though I flirted with double ‘agar’, I didn’t know the term and ended up with ‘Ivan Alan’ in (slightly misspelt) honour of a recently deceased Hong Kong racehorse trainer. So much for my brace of “1s” in O-level Combined Science!

  8. As for others an easy but pleasant solve plus a couple of trips down memory lane. At a push I reckon I could name more than 30 carriages and there will be more than that, so nearly as rich a seam for setters as terms scientific.

    AGAR-AGAR in Petri dishes reminded me of biology lessons circa 1957 and growing all sorts of wierd and wonderful things.

    I recall Trugel, Brilliantine and of course Brylcreem, an essential accessory to male hair fashion in the 1950s as advertised by Dennis Compton. Is it any wonder I lost most of it?

  9. 33 minutes, but inexplicably entered ALCOTROPIC at 1ac. Damn, I never mess up an anagram (well apparently you do now, son).
    COD to 7d.
  10. I found this mostly straightforward, but then a couple stretched the memory cells (1,8)and one was totally unfamiliar (PASSATA). 35 minutes with one wrong; like someone else I put TRADE WAR for 23 without understanding the wordplay, but I wouldn’t have understood the wordplay if I’d put the correct answer. I was slow to get 6 because I was toying with CAUSTIC as the synonym for ‘sarcastic’.

    As has been said, there was lots to enjoy. My favourite was the clue to WISHY-WASHY.

  11. I lost track of time as I tried solving this before my night’s sleep and drifted off a couple of times before abandoning it until this morning with four or five unsolved.

    Most of it was straightforward but it found some gaps in my GK with ALLOTROPIC, AGAR-AGAR (met it before but had no idea what it was), SHAY = carriage (however many more of these wretched things are there to come?), TOIL = trap and GILEAD.

    I fell into a trap at 23 thinking the artist was RA

    I have always thought BRILLIANTINE was a brand name. Does anyone remember Trugel?

    1. I’d always vaguely assumed that Brylcreem was a brand name for brilliantine, but today’s research tells me that it’s a pomade, which is slightly different. Having never used anything more adventurous than a splash of water to tame my flyaway locks, this is all terra incognita to me…
      1. I seem to remember that Silvikrin was a brand name for brilliantine (latter appears in Chambers without cap or ® symbol).
  12. Too much requiring post-solve look-ups for this to be much fun ie. SHAY,TRAP,GILEAD,ALLOTROPIC,RATEL,BRIGANTINE and LORIS. Also came within a whisker of being content with ARAY-ARAY.
  13. 17:28.. so around par for me. Definitely a fair number of words I woudn’t know if I hadn’t been solving the Times crossword for donkey’s years. I should learn the names of all the carriages, but, to be honest, I can’t be bothered. What is it with carriages and crosswords? I’m not sure a Victorian solver would have known half the ones that pop up here.

    Some good clues, though. COD to SATIRE for a neat surface, and for sparking Tim’s reminder of that grimly brilliant moment of comedy.

  14. 15 minutes, a bit interrupted but none the worse for that.
    Balm in Gilead is one of those not-quite-Bible quotations that makes its mark as a Spiritual – catch the great Mahalia Jackson or Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle in duet on YouTube for the full impact.
    I believe my youthful hair was regularly anointed with Silvikrin. No lasting damage.
    CoD to the resurrection clue.
  15. Because I got through, all correct, and all understood, in about 40 minutes. Not a great time compared to other posts. It was a breeze at first, but I ground to a halt and had to wrack the brain for TRADE GAP, WISHY-WASHY, LINCTUS, and my last, CHROME, where yes, I was sure it had to be Prague or some derivation thereof. Thanks, setter, and TT also. COD to the ‘noted president’s wife’, and regards to all.
  16. 13:27 for me – my bad run continues. I don’t recall coming across PASSATA before, despite a couple of holidays in Italy – but Janet and I were there for the art rather than the food.
  17. About 20 min plus 15 min for PASSATA which was new to me. Saw it as a possibility in passing, but then thought – No, I’m getting confused with cassata – mental images of tomatoes and icecream may have been something of a turn-off. Great crossword though COD to WISHY WASHY. The chemist in me thought immediately of sulphur (sulfur?) when ALLOTROPIC popped up. I think it has the most forms.

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