Times 25000 – Just another number

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 1 hr 33 minutes

It’s an auspicious occasion and a less than impressive response to it on my part. I couldn’t make a start or a finish on it and wasn’t too flash in the middle either. I’ve been dreading this one ever since I noticed it would fall on my watch and perhaps psyched myself out, or perhaps it was difficult. I report, you decide. No, on reflection, it wasn’t that difficult, so it must have been me.

There are two references to the big 25K that I can spot across the top and bottom. It’s your job to find the complete set. Let the festivities commence.

On Edit: For those who haven’t spotted it yet, and thanks to all those who posted hints, if you look closely at the clues, something is spelt out in more detail. I have to say that’s pretty extraordinary.

Across
1 CHANGED = DEC reversed around HANG. I shan’t enter the hung/hanged debate but here’s David Mitchell to explain.
5 DIG IT = DIGIT. Take it away, John
9 ALL + TO reversed = ALLOT. I’m not leaving any out today, but this one would have been it.
10 DIRECTION = (I NOTICED + R for run)*.
11 DOUBLET = DOUBLE T. Insert Frankie Howerd sketch involving codpieces.
12 DIARIST = DI + ARtIST. John Evelyn, a contemporary of naughty Samuel Pepys, but we’ve had enough Benny Hill for this lifetime.
13 DISAPPROVE = DISPROVE around odd letters of cAmP.
15 OGRE = sO GREeedy
18 Yesterday Evening Three Idoits = YETI
20 AMALGAMATE AMALGAM and ATE =
23 I inside HOBBES = HOBBIES. Hobbes was a follower of Calvin.
24 SHORTLY = SH + jeT in ORLY, an airport located in Orly, like Croydon, to avoid changing the name.
25 RETIRE* in PT + E for energy = PRETERITE, some kind of past tense.
26 ARENA = AN ERA reversed
27 gROUND = ROUND
28 UMBER for earth contained by N for new and shootS = NUMBERS

Down
1 LOURS positioned under C.O. for Commanding Officer = COLOURS, as in trooping thereof.
2 ANTELOPE = ANT + ELOPE. What milestone Times crossword would be complete without one?
3 GODOT = GO for turn + DOT. Beckett’s character. Here’s something else I don’t understand.
4 DAREDEVIL = REDE for the archaic counsel + V for very in DAIL, which is an Irish assembly.
5 DE-CLAN = DECLAN, declared a saint after introducing rye to Ireland.
6 GRIPpING = GRIPING. There’ll be none of that today.
7 ThE NET = TENET. I can only deconstruct the “out of” as make the wordplay out of the answer.
8 LID* inside CANDY = CANDIDLY
14 REMISSION = RE for corps + MISSION
16 EVERYMAN = VERY making an impression on NAME reversed. Actually it’s impressed in the commandeer sense, I think.
17 SABOTAGE = (AT SEA GO Back)* with anagrind “work”.
19 TABLEAU = ELBA reversed in TAU, the Greek letter. Desist telling joke involving landlords. That’s the third time I’ve got Elba backwards!
21 heARTLESS = ARTLESS
22 BIN END = North & East in a BIND. My last in. I’d never heard of the expression, but it’s the cellar door equivalent of “out they go”.
23 HYPER = cheetaH in (PREY)*
24 STEAM = STrEAM, out of which I have run.

45 comments on “Times 25000 – Just another number”

  1. … just you. I took even longer: 1hr and 42m. The blogger’s nightmare and a distinct mojolessness on my part. In retro, all the clues are good and fair; even 17dn which I couldn’t parse. Thanks for that. And despite my, no doubt, greater familiarity with the wine trade, I didn’t know BIN END either. COD to 3dn for its fab def. Anyone do the bonus puzzles?

    Edited at 2011-11-07 05:25 am (UTC)

    1. I did the 1978 one, with a view to blogging it. If there is enough interest I can still do that, unless somebody else wants to do it. I had to “resort to aids” for some, but it was eminently doable. I refuse, on principle as well as doctor’s orders, to do any crossword written before my birth.
    2. I would have spent time on the bonus puzzles if I had gone to the Crossword Club, where they are, rather than the paper version where they’re not (as far as I can see). May be just as well: I’d have probably done 1978 thinking it was today’s, such is the order of posting.
  2. No time for the 1978 puzzle after I spent most of the afternoon on today’s offering. I’d happily have settled for your 1hr 33min, koro. The top half was challenging to say the least, and I only started to make progress when I stopped trying to find an Italian name for 10ac.

    Iac in particular gave me a lot of trouble. I wasted a lot of time on two hooks containing reversed part-months, CRAMPON and CEDILLA, before I got it. And I agree with mctext’s COD choice, GODOT was very cunning.

  3. I gave up last night after 40 minutes with less than half of it solved and needed another 30 this morning to polish it off. I wonder if I would have found it so hard going if I had not been made aware in advance that it was a milestone puzzle and was predisposed to feeling a bit wary.

    On reflection I think I did make heavy weather of it as most of the clues were straightforward in their construction apart from leaving room for doubt in several cases as to where the definition was hiding, but that’s really part of the daily rough and tumble anyway. In the end only PRETERITE at 25ac and REDE within 4dn were unknown to me.

  4. Technically 40 minutes today, but found myself dozing off while trying to solve SABOTAGE with a U as the second letter: never could spell AMALGAM properly. Must be my chronic odontophobia allied to gums being what teeth are attached to.
    I share the perception that this one was made more difficult by expectation of occasion-induced severity – it was actually fairly straightforward.
    CoD between DOUBLET and DECLAN, antiCoD (there is now such a thing) between TENET(I thought the “avoiding” was the wrong way round) and DIARIST, where for once I agree with those who complain about DBE’s.
  5. Well, I found this tame and something of a disappointment given the occasion. 26 minutes which I felt might have been faster, and I’m no speed merchant. The Times has a nice clue in a commemorative leader today, however, that foxed me (answer later in paper): Some job at hand? We’ll soon see (4,3,5). Shall be interested to see if any references in the answers beyond top and bottom lines; can’t see any myself.
    1. Some jo(b at h and well s)oon see. Apparently “see” is an abbreviation of diocese, Bath and Wells is a diocese of church of england.
  6. 48 minutes here. Like others I found this very difficult, but there is nothing obscure in it (although admittedly I hadn’t heard of the diarist and didn’t know what PRETERITE meant), and all the clues seem simple and obvious… once you’ve got the answer. A mark of excellence in my book.
    Very busy weekend so I still haven’t even looked at the weekend puzzles.
  7. DNF. Tough going, particularly the bottom half, for me. In the end I abandoned ship with PRETERITE missing: even with all the checkers, and some idea that an anagram of ‘retire’ was part of the answer, I couldn’t come up with anything which seemed plausible. Thanks, koro, for the blog. I’ll return later to see if others have identified further 25k references.
  8. I enjoyed this one and found it a bit harder than average but not too much. I tend to agree that is a little tame for such a round number, but I suspect we did that to ourselves, by creating such a vast outcry when the ST tried to do something just a little bit different.

    Nice to see both a diarist who is not Sam Pepys, and an Evelyn which is not Waugh..
    Incidentally Koro, Samuel Pepys is a great man, and perhaps the most influential single individual in the long history of the Royal Navy. No criticism of any kind is permitted!

  9. 24:20 here – challenging but nothing too esoteric. Having spotted the Nina at the top, I was looking for it at the bottom otherwise NUMBERS might have taken longer to get.

    Nice joke in the blog at 23ac, put a smile on my face anyway. 🙂

    I’ve emailed around the regulars to see if anyone wants to blog the two extra puzzles, no takers yet. However, Tony Sever did a mini-blog of no. 5000 on his RTC3 site a while back.

  10. 19:35, waiting expectantly for a theme or especially tricky anniversary surprises that never really turned up, but there you go. They aren’t compulsory, of course; I mean, this isn’t The Guardian, for goodness’ sake…
  11. I don’t normally post but I can’t bear you to think there is no theme in today’s puzzle. Come on, folks, why could this only be puzzle number 25,000? It wasn’t meant to be hard to spot, indeed it is staring you in the face!
    2. Ah. Thankyou ed. Wish I’d seen it before. With that icing the cake’s suddenly a delight, even in retrospect.
    3. Hi Mr. Crossword Editor,

      Does this trigger a reply to your inbox?

      Are you responsible for the “Sunday Times” crossword that appears in the Weekend Australian? (Not the one in the Sunday Times.)

      If so could you please:
      – Improve the quality.
      – Cut out obscure Australian places and people that are presumably included to make it seem Australian (they don’t, they make it look like an English person patroness Australians).
      – Include Australian cultural references and slang rather than British.
      – Ideally, commission an Australian setter who will do all of the above automatically with no further intervention.

      Thanks in advance,
      Disgruntled from Perth (the real one, in Western Australia)

  12. Took me ages too – definitely on the difficult side, but now the ed mentions it, I think I have spotted the theme!!
  13. Funny one this – I printed it off and was getting nowhere, left it aside for an hour or so and came back and polished off the rest steadily. Not sure why I was making such a meal of SABOTAGE, BIN END (which I had heard of often in Australia), and AMALGAMATE.

    In the end the only one that didn’t make perfect sense was DAREDEVIL which went in from the definition. Nice puzzle!

  14. 37:00 .. fell into the same “Where’s the theme?” mindset as others above. Jerry and Tim both make good points about that.

    There is a Nina, of course, which hints at circularity. And I thought the vowels of GODOT and a surfeit of ‘O’s in the top-left might be pointing us that way, too. But if there’s an allusion intended, it is apparently a somewhat more explicit GODOT reference to something that never turns up. Which, on reflection, is rather clever. Well done.

    Unless, of course, we’re all missing something…

    Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?

    2. At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.
  15. Yes, clues… I agree with making us work to find it, too.. woe to he that blurts out the details 🙂
    1. jerrywh, I owe you, and perhaps others, an apology, for blurting it out far too soon.

      Dafydd.

    2. But isn’t the whole raison d’etre of this blog to give away answers – usually to the everyday clues, but I don’t see that the 25000 aspect is any different …..
  16. I didnt know it was the 25000th, so no excuses, but suffered along with most others…very slow but not too hard on reflection….agree the mark of a really good crossy.

    But what is a Nina and a DBE?

    Thanksa.

    1. A nina is a hidden message or theme. Try reading just the first letters of the clues starting at 1A and ending with 24D

      DBE is “definition by example” so Evelyn is an example of a diarist. Purists prefer DBE to be signalled in some way so say “Evelyn perhaps”, which the setter should have used here

  17. DBE is definition By Example: (John) Evelyn is a diarist but no more than an example of one. Generally, while it’s acceptable to clue apple by fruit, it’s a bit iffy to clue fruit by apple.
  18. I would have preferred to come fresh to this rather than after a somewhat gruelling round of golf. 35 minutes which I feel is too long. Decent enough puzzle, pity about Evelyn.
  19. Well, it took me an hour and 16 minutes, but I completed 5000 and was astonished to discover it all correct. I have to admit to looking up a lot of stuff, but I did it!
  20. I slogged through in 45-50 minutes, entering PRETERITE as my LOI as a guess from what I took to be the anagrist. Whew. I didn’t see the hidden theme either, so thanks to the editor and others for dropping the needed (for me) hints. My hat is quite off to the editor and setter for getting that to work, extremely well done, congratulations, and thank you. Thanks to koro also for the blog. Regards to all, and especially to the Times crossword team on their milestone.
  21. aha sem nasel tole [url=http://www.sivanje-po-meri.si/svecane-obleke/za-poroke]Porocne obleke po meri[/url]
    1. A spam promoting a Slovenian wedding dress shop! Credit must be given for the most obscure one I’ve seen so far.

      Anyway, why do spammers always use [url=…][/url] ?

  24. A rather exhausting 17:44 for me, probably not helped by having tackled a couple of jumbos I’d missed together with Saturday’s 15×15 this morning.

    I found it hard to get on the setter’s wavelength, and found some of the clues, particularly 17dn (SABOTAGE), too tortuous. I enjoyed No. 15,000, which I’ve just done (or rather redone 33 years after I first solved it), much more.

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