Times 25, 908: Cruciverbaliferous Trade

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Not going to complain about a nice easy puzzle this week – I have two daughters to get dressed, and one to get to school before 9am! I didn’t explicitly time this one, but I walked onto the platform of Wandsworth Town just as the “6 minutes” till the next train to Waterloo ticked down to “5 minutes”, sat down and started, and was done before said train pulled into Clapham Junction, which is one stop and about 3 minutes away. So I’m going to claim under 10 minutes. Just what I needed to convince myself that 3 puzzles in an hour is going to be in any way achievable on the 18th of this month…

FOI was 1A, and there were plenty of other clues of a “start filling it in even before you’ve finished reading it” variety (10D springs to mind, and indeed 26A, though I suppose I can imagine there are people out there who might be baffled). Unusually heavy on the puns, this one, ten question marks in the space of twenty-eight clues, and while I won’t deny a few wry smiles were raised, in general I prefer my puzzles a bit chewier. Crossword bloggers! Never completely happy!

Most tortuous clue was 14A, that I confess I hadn’t completely parsed before I finished. On the favourites front, I liked 7D because a bit of nudge-nudge, wink-wink in a crossword never hurt anybody. My COTD though was 11A. “One over the eight” is clever and I do like it when a compelling and misleading surface arises from the cryptic play.

Across
1 DIVA – singer: AVID [keen] “to be written about”
3 TONIC SOL-FA – “noted system”: F [fine] “investment” in (LOCATIONS*) [“different”]
9 LEGATEE – “person succeeding”: GATE [door] “installed” in LEE [shelter]
11 COXCOMB – dandy: COX [“one over the eight”, i.e. in charge of a rowing crew] + COMB [groom]
12 GO BANANAS – lose it: GOB [chunk] + ANANAS [pineapple]
13 HEAVE – lug: HAVE [eat] “nibbling” E [“front of” ear]
14 CONQUISTADOR – subjugator: CONDOR [“South American native”] “about” QUIT [to go] “around” S [Spain “initially”] + A
18 STORM TROOPER – assault force member: (REPORTS TO ROM{mel}*) [“drunk”]
21 HANOI – capital city: IONA [island] + H [hopping “initially”] “recalled”
22 TRILOBITE – old fossil: T [little time] + RILE [upset] “about” OBIT [“passing notice”]
24 MEGATON – great force: NOT A GEM [“something evidently without sparkle”] “knocked over”
25 SLEIGHT – stratagem: homophone of SLIGHT [insubstantial]
26 DEAD RINGER – double: punnily, “result of fall from campanile?”
27 ARMY – host: {b}ARMY [out to lunch, “starter abandoned”]

Down
1 DELEGACY – representative body: AGE [time] “up” in (CLYDE*) [“redevelopment of”]
2 VAGABOND – itinerant: GABON D [country + road’s “ending”] “south of” VA [Virginia]
4 ODEON – theatre: (ONE*) [“rebuilt”] “after” O{l}D [“gutting of” old]
5 INCESSANT – never dying: S{l}A{i}N [“oddly” slain] in INCEST [crime]
6 SEX CHROMOSOME – “a little of his make-up?”: (HOMECOMER’S SO X)* [“after ruining”]
7 LOOFAH – scrubber: “welcomed by” {bordel}LO OF A H{arlot}
8 AMBLER – double def, pedestrian / author Eric. Hopefully not &lit
10 TONGUE-TWISTER – “it’s hard to say”: “she sells seashells on the sea shore” being a classic example
15 SEROTONIN – “bringer of joy”: (IN STORE ON*) [“exercising”], &lit
16 SPRINGER – double def, canine / trampolinist
17 PRIESTLY – clerical: homophone of author John Boynton “J B” PRIESTLEY
19 THEMED – “like Disneyworld”: THE MED [holiday destination]
20 ENIGMA – puzzle: A MINE [source of wealth] “turning up” and “penning” G [good]
23 ISSUE – double def: little ones, matter

32 comments on “Times 25, 908: Cruciverbaliferous Trade”

  1. The SW gave me enough trouble that I thought I wouldn’t make it under the half-hour, but then I finally figured out ENIGMA, which had floated into consciousness earlier but left no impression. That gave me HANOI and finally THEMED. GO BANANAS & CONQUISTADOR were rather nice, although I got them both on a couple of checkers and only parsed after. Ambler is certainly not pedestrian;he’s one of the very few writers of his genre I can read with pleasure.
  2. 20:50 … I thought this was a lot of fun despite requiring some close attention to detail. I led myself astray with a couple of misspellings and picked up a couple of errors on a lengthy final check-through.

    The TONGUE-TWISTER clue made me laugh out loud, but then I still have really fond memories of Leonard Sachs on The Good Old Days (just been watching a couple of clips and it still looks good to me).

    My thanks to the setter for some good Friday morning entertainment.

    1. The City Varieties in Leeds was refurbished in the last few years and they have resurrected the Good Old Days.
      1. Wow. I had no idea. I just looked at their website and the hall is a thing of splendour. Do you know if the audience still raids the dressing-up box?
        1. I think dressing up is encouraged but not compulsory.

          It is a lovely theatre (although the seats aren’t as comfy as they look). We usually end up going three of four times a year for various things. Most of the front of house staff are unpaid volunteers.

  3. Unlike our esteemed blogger, I noted not the presence of all those question marks but the absence of one at 15d, which I reckon might benefit from one. 36′, but all to no avail, as I couldn’t look past ‘rib’ for ‘upset’, didn’t have the required palaeontological knowledge (or the patience to parse the clue properly) and shoved in ‘tribolite’, which on reflection seems more like something you might find going on in that bordello…
  4. I can’t claim anything like Verlaine’s time, but this was certainly on the easier side for a Friday offering, but still enjoyably challenging in parts. There was some tortuous parsing – e.g. CONQUISTADOR and TRILOBITE, both of which went in on definitions alone, the cryptic pennies dropping much later after I’d finished the puzzle. LOOFAH raised a smile, and COXCOMB was clever..

    For the first time, I had the unsettling experience this morning of taking longer to complete the Quickie than the main paper Cryptic. Has this happened to anyone else?

  5. 16 mins. I enjoyed this puzzle, and the clue I was most amused by was the one for DEAD RINGER. I finished in the SE with the ARMY/PRIESTLY crossers, although I confess that I only bothered to parse CONQUISTADOR, HANOI, TRILOBITE and MEGATON post-solve. Regarding melrosemike’s comment above, I beat my time for today’s Quickie but it wasn’t by much.
    1. I forgot to cast a COD vote for DEAD RINGER, which certainly tickled my funny bone (though it’s yet another “death clue” — there are an awful lot or them, as noted in yesterday’s blog).
      1. I second your vote for DEAD RINGER, which I meant to single out for praise earlier. A nice touch of macabre humour.
  6. Stuck at the end on Ambler and themed, and then when I had them found too late I’d written serotonin in wrong. 28 minutes with the error. I too liked the scrubber.
  7. Much of this went in without even finishing reading the clue and I was surely heading for a 20-30 minute solve until I hit a wall in the lower half.

    19dn 21ac and 24ac were problematic but I was unable to solve 22ac and 15dn without resorting to aids though on reflection I should have got 15dn. Perhaps I gave in too soon, but if I’ve solved all but a couple of clues in what’s a short time for me I am reluctant to risk spending another 40 minutes just on them. Life’s too short.

    Edited at 2014-10-03 08:55 am (UTC)

  8. Enjoyable Friday puzzle, though I overshot my half-hour target by a minute or so: just couldn’t parse TRILOBITE and thought there might be another similarly named fossil, an anagram of “little” with “T” and “OB”. Once I’d spotted it was OBIT rather than OB everything fell into place.
  9. Twenty-seven minutes which, for me, is good going. THEMED and HANOI my LOsI, preceded shortly by MEGATON, which I saw but couldn’t parse to begin with. I couldn’t parse CONQUISTADOR at all (apart from the obvious “condor”), so thanks to our blogger for clearing that up.

    Appreciated TRILOBITE, SEROTONIN and SEX CHROMOSOME. As for TONGUE TWISTER, didn’t we have that answer recently?

    All in all, a lot easier than the puzzles earlier in the week, I thought, but enjoyable nevertheless. The only problem now is what to do with the rest of the day.

    Edited at 2014-10-03 11:05 am (UTC)

  10. 20m. Mostly straightforward, with lots of bung-ins, as already noted, but I got pretty thoroughly stuck in the SW corner. I can’t really see why now.
    The awful Sunday Times format reappeared on the iPad today, and probably slowed me down a bit. It’s very strange that they keep doing this. If they ever switch permanently I will have to go back to treeware.
  11. Like some others I found this mostly straightforward, but slowed up by 6, 13 and bits of the SW. 42 minutes in the end. Some nice clues, but COD to 26 without a doubt. I had -OBITE written for some time, then racked my brains for the first four letters of a word that is not at all unfamiliar to me.
  12. Bang on 30 minutes: a nice tonic going into the weekend. Thanks for parsing 14 which had me stumped.
    LOI 6d: I knew it was “sex” something, but it took a while for me to twig it.
    I knew Eric Ambler but I’m blessed if I know why as I’ve never read any of his works.
    It’s a shame JB Priestly’s somewhat out of fashion now – I’ve enjoyed a number of his plays over the years.
  13. Liked this! Some highly enjoyable clues. Thought I was in for a really good time until hitting the wall in the SW corner. Took ages to sort out the MEGATON/THEMED crossers. 28 mins in the end.
  14. 20:26 although I felt I was going faster than that.

    I made a bit of a mess of things by missing the U out of tongue and running out of letters to fill the squares (where is Sue with her tippex these days?)

    I had a bit of a panic at 14 where I couldn’t parse conquistador and the only thing vaguely South American I could see was part of Quito around S so I was worried there might be a conquistadon with Quitan accounted for. Yes, really.

    COD to coxcomb for one over the eight which was partticularly misleading with the x but not the c in place as IX for nine looked tempting.

  15. Just over half an hour. Spent ages on 27a as I always think ‘out to lunch’ = ‘balmy’. Was this problem unique to me?
  16. I thoroughly enjoyed this: I can’t think of one I have enjoyed more. It took me just over the hour but I enjoyed every minute and so many clues made me smile. The favourites were DEAD RINGER, THEMED and COXCOMB which I thought both witty and clever. Also liked SEROTONIN – it brought me joy when I unravelled it. Thank you setter.
  17. It seems I have mispronounced sleight for 40 odd years and never been corrected.Ah well!
    1. Careful, Z, homophones are a minefield round here!

      You may not actually be wrong…I think the editor/setters go on the principle that homophones must be broadly justifiable (though their definition of what’s reasonable doesn’t always chime with every solver), but that doesn’t mean they are suggesting there is one true way of pronouncing things. Particularly in this community, where you get people from not just all parts of the UK but the wider world, you regularly hear the cry “No way do you pronounce word like that”. This seems to apply especially when you pronounce things in the Scottish vernacular, which I’m guessing applies to you…

        1. This is the big question. I presumed to rhyme with “eight”, but – now you mention it – for all we know it might be to rhyme with “wardrobe”, in which case I might have to have a re-think.
  18. 19.19 in a late afternoon solve after a morning wrestling with mounting a mirror on the wall. Tiny brackets needed millimetric precision, so I ended up hitting the mounting screws with a hammer until they grudgingly engaged. Does that make me a true engineer?
    A smashing puzzle this one, benefiting from all the clever but not malicious cluing mention above, larded with mischief and humour. The homecoming queen with his dodgy make-up, and the identical twin of Quasimodo were special joys. Perhaps the setter has discover how to release SEROTONIN by remote control: s/he’s certainly provided a kind spell-check for those of us who spell it with an A.
  19. …and just for fun, I filled in the now available TLS 1043 today, and finished with a deeply impressive 7d 6m 49s. Sadly, funnybunny passed my time with an additional hour and a half, so it’s no kind of record.
  20. That was rather fun – though I didn’t go through parsing CONQUISTADOR once most of the checking letters were in – 8 minutes, but plenty of chuckles, notably TONGUE-TWISTER, MEGATON and THEMED.
  21. About 30 minutes, due to my stubbornly refusing to enter the by then obvious CONQUISTADOR until I could parse it. It took, well, 30 minutes for me to see the ‘condor’ and remember where it was from. I echo the praise for COXCOMB and DEAD RINGER. Very impressive time, Verlaine, thanks to the setter, and regards.
  22. 9:16 for me after another depressingly slow start. I was almost certain that 1ac (DIVA) was an old chestnut and spent ages trying (and failing) to think of the answer – and then kicking myself when the checked letters confirmed that it was indeed an old chestnut. Fortunately I got going eventually, only to be held up at the end by THEMED.

    Like you, I didn’t bother to check the wordplay of CONQUISTADOR until after I’d finished.

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

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