Times 25,001

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Timed at 16:31, and much enjoyed. I didn’t quite have all the background knowledge required, but as I pointed out last week in discussions of another puzzle, a) I don’t necessarily expect to, and b) if the associated wordplay is unambiguous enough that I can make a pretty confident (educated) guess, it’s just another part of the game.

Across
1 POLYGLOT – POLYtechnic + Good LOT.
5 TSWANA – SWAN (pen in its meaning of “female swan” is a crossword commonplace) in Territorial Army. Had never knowingly come across this language, but given the wordplay, and the obvious linguistic similarity to the country BO-TSWANA, it seemed pretty likely.
9 MODERATE – MOD ERA + TE. Took a long time to work out what the mid-1960s might refer to, but it was a nice penny-drop moment. Anyone who wants to learn more about the mod era might do worse than watch the film Quadrophenia.
10 CELTIC – C.E. LT. I/C. The southwestern tip of England is part of what is often called the Celtic Fringe.
12 ACERB – Republican in ACE Book. I was held up by putting in ACRID without thinking; a perfectly good alternative, apart from not being in any way correct.
13 ABANDONED – double def.
14 ALL OF A SUDDEN – (ALASFOUNDLED)*.
18 LILLIPUTIANS – [(IT + UP + ILL) in SNAIL]all rev.
21 SCHOLARLY – C.H. in [SOLAR + LeerY].
23 TRUCE – TeRmUnClE; and as schoolchildren (North American ones at any rate) “cry uncle” in the way we used to say “Pax” at my school, it’s a brilliant surface.
24 ALBION – British in A LION. Not the most obvious celebrity, possibly more common in the verbal form “to lionise”.
25 FAIRNESS – double / cryptic def.
26 YATTER – traY AT TERrace’; “rabbit” in the Chas and Dave sense, of course.
27 BELL BUOY – Universal in BELLBOY.
 
Down
1 PAMPAS – [SAP + MAP] rev.
2 LADDER =run, as a pair of tights might; have to say it seems a bit weak to define a ladder as “something you might use to rescue a cat from a tree”, but I guess it fitted the surface.
3 GARIBALDI – [A RIBALD] in G.I.
4 OUTMANOEUVRE – (EUOVERAMOUNT)*; I guess that might be an accidentally (or, indeed, deliberately) topical reference to Messrs Papandreou or Berlusconi.
6 SHERD – SHE + RoaD. I’m of the school of thought which thinks that novel SHE ought to be retired along with gangster AL and actor TREE.
7 ACTINIDE – (INDICATE)*.
8 ACCIDENT – oCCIDENT with the O replaced by A.
11 CALAMITY JANE – C + [AMITY + Judge] in A LANE.
15 UNNATURAL – UN (=French “a”) + NATURAL. I’m no great musician but as I remember it, broadly speaking, the white piano keys are “naturals”, the black notes are sharps and flats?
16 GLOSSARY – ARe in GLOSSY &lit. Of course, that suggests that for the clue to work 100%, (glossy) magazines actually have glossaries, which I don’t believe is true. Though I suppose a glossary of Shakespeare would include words, some (most? is that stretching a point?) of which would also be used in Cosmopolitan. Or are we to imagine a very technical magazine which does have a glossary of terms, but is also very high-end in terms of production? I’m over-analysing this, aren’t I?
17 ALPHABET =”ALF” + ABET.
19 BUREAU – BUR + Enter + A University. Nice lift-and-separate had me searching vainly for deans, bursars, principals etc.
20 MEASLY – double def.
22 LOOSE – Spades in LOOE.

32 comments on “Times 25,001”

  1. 25mins so yet another harder-than-average-but-not-too-much-so one for me. Last in were Tswana and sherd, the NW corner generally seeming tough.
    Agree about retirement being due for the novel, gangster and actor and also priest ELI
  2. 24 minutes, nearly 10 of which to get TSWANA and ACTINIDE: I needed the former to eliminate CATINIDE for the latter.
    I wasn’t too keen on TSWANA. “Pen” is I suppose technically a DBE, but I don’t mind that. However “writing in” just seems to be there for the surface. I found this very distracting when trying to solve it, particularly with two options for the fourth letter. Have I missed something?
    What else would you use to get a cat down from a tree?
  3. Tim, at 25A I think it’s just=FAIR, feature=NESS (headland) rather than two definitions

    Agree with all the comments in the blog. I thought MOD ERA was rather good. 25 minutes to solve.

    1. Do you think? My complete working was “It’s just” = straight definition of what fairness is, and “a feature of the Girl with Flaxen Hair” = cryptic definition of the same…

      Still not sure I can make your way work, but I may just have been staring at the same page too long to see it!

      1. Tim, I agree with you on 25ac. Surely it has to be a double def – “fairness” is a feature of someone with flaxen hair and of something that is just. I don’t quite see how the “a” before “feature” is accounted for in Jimbo’s version.
  4. 17 minutes, with a couple of interruptions, so about average. I started this one (the first clue that caught my eye that was also solvable with TRUCE in the SE sector, so really doing things the hard way.
    Last in TSWANA: African languages can be a bit of an alphabet soup , so I wanted all the checkers in place. Tim is quite right: Bo-tswana simply means the country or place of the Tswana people/language – I had an excellent African traditional religions lecturer once who had the uncanny knack of immersing us in the world view of other people, including how language both defines and is defined by world view
    CoD to GARIBALDI for the nicely misleading coarse biscuit.
    1. > language defines… world view
      A profoundly controversial statement!
      Have you read Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher? He sets out to demonstrate that language influences thought. I’m no expert in this field (although I dabbled a bit at university) but by the time I’d finished it he seemed to me to have largely demonstrated the opposite. Either way, it’s a fascinating read.
      1. Must try it. For me, it was the aforementioned Lecturer plus the unlikely-sounding Anthropology of the Old Testament by Hans Walter Wolff (now apparently a classic, but pretty new when I read it) that got me thinking in that direction. Hebrew (the old stuff, less so the modern version) being a language rooted in verbs is a kick up the bum for any kind of dualistic notion: “spirit” is that which breathes, “soul” that which thirsts and so on. Very hard for Europeans to get their head round because our languages are structured in a very different way.
        But which came first, the way of looking at the world or the language? Dunno.
        1. The answer is, the way of looking at the world comes first, with very few exceptions. As I say, a really interesting read.
  5. I must have been on the setter’s wavelength today – 12:25 with no real hold-ups at all. Having said that, I put in both GARIBALDI and MODERATE without full understanding of the cryptic.
  6. 30 minutes for all but TSWANA, SHERD and ACTINIDE which added another 15 minutes to my solving time.

    Raised an eyebrow at LADDER and thought ‘out’ in the clue weakened 4dn (why not ‘worked around’ for instance?). Jim’s interpretation of 25ac never occurred to me and I can’t see it as valid because it would leave ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’ unaccounted for.

  7. 39 minutes after a long delay at Tswana and actinide, both new to me; but was blind to the probabilities. I’m for the straight double def. in 25. But who’s the girl?
    1. She’s a Prelude by Claude Debussy. There’s a sound clip of the opening underneath the score on the RH here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_with_the_Flaxen_Hair. I think most people would know the tune as it has been used extensively in many contexts, but without necessarily knowing the title.

      Meant to say re 15 that although black keys can never be naturals white keys can be sharps or flats so ‘perhaps’ was definitely needed in the clue to stop pedants like me complaining.

  8. Would have been around 10 minutes but I had a complete mental block with a couple in the SE corner. D’ohs all round when the pennies dropped. Very enjoyable puzzle today.
  9. 24:06 so just on the tricky side of sverage I’d say.

    Like others I finished in the Geordie corner being put off by the unindicated DBE of pen and the almost-padding of “to identify” in 6. Actinide was unfamiliar too which didn’t help.

    I also wondered fleetingly if a magazine could have a glossary but unlike Tim I decided not to over-analyse.

    1. 1)Yes, but what’s the definition?
      2) From Chambers online: bur or burr noun 1 any seed or fruit with numerous hooks or prickles which are caught in the fur or feathers of passing mammals and birds, and so dispersed over considerable distances (hence hanger-on).
        1. Sorry, il maestro, I may have obscured things by my jokey attempt at over-analysis…

          Just to clarify, my reading above is “are mostly” = AR; “magazine” = GLOSSY. When AR is “used in” GLOSSY, we get GLOSSARY. On this I think we agree: where we may part company is on the definition, which I don’t think can be just “its words”, surely? (“It’s words” with the apostrophe might be more of a definiton, though I doubt it would win many plaudits). To show what I mean: it wouldn’t necessarily be straightforward to solve, but one could remove all the definition parts of the clues in today’s puzzle, and turn it into a non-cryptic puzzle. And if you did that, “Its words” couldn’t possibly stand alone as a clue. It has to refer to something else, so the definintion must be the whole clue, i.e. it’s an &lit.

          If this is the case, the logic inherent in the clue is based around a typical glossy magazine having a glossary – and as far as I know, it doesn’t. (Though I must admit I’ve never read an issue of Vogue, and for all I know, there really is a list at the back explaining all the technical terms for the hard of fashion, like me; in which case I take it all back.)

          In conclusion, it doesn’t really matter that glossy magazines don’t actually have glossaries, and that the internal logic of the clue thus collapses. This is crossword land, after all, where all sorts of things are possible, and not everything has to make literal sense. When not over-analysed (possibly by now to the point of death – my apologies to all who have read this far) by me, it’s a very nice clue.

    2. Presume you’re unable to access the link I added to the answer? No matter, it leads to:

      1.a. A rough prickly husk or covering surrounding the seeds or fruits of plants such as the chestnut or the burdock.
      b. A plant producing such husks or coverings.
      2. A persistently clinging or nettlesome person or thing.
      3. A rough protuberance, especially a burl on a tree.
      4. Any of various rotary cutting tools designed to be attached to a drill.

  11. But not all wordplay understood. (GARIBALDI, GLOSSARY, ALPHABET). So thanks for the working out. Four faves here because of resonances with stuff I like. 1. TSWANA (No. 1 Ladies). 2.ALBION (Blake’s drawing). 3. LILLIPUTIANS (Swift). 4. CALAMITY JANE (Deadwood).
  12. 55 minutes. Started of famously in the NW, proceeded down the diagonal well enough, then drifted into the realm of the great unknowingness to finish in Botswana. Enjoyable journey. COD to BUREAU over MODERATE.
  13. About 30 minutes, ending with MEASLY. DNK: TSWANA, ACTINIDE, YATTER, Looe, and had trouble remembering how to spell buoy, and guessing how you folks spell OUTMANOEUVRE. It helped to get all the 4 longish ones right off, where the LILLIPUTIANS showed me the spelling of 4D. COD to BUREAU for the hanger-on, with Mod Era a close sescond. Regards.
  14. I didn’t quite finish. I was certain I didn’t know the African language, and I didn’t, and couldn’t bring myself to write in LADDER for some reason.
  15. About 45 minutes, with the last 10 being spent on mustering up courage to insert TSWANA, you learn something new every day (and I do love the ability of cryptic crosswords to actually teach you something). GARIBALDI was clear even if I have never heard of the biscuit.

    Nearly wasn’t able to reach the blog today, after installing the 2012 version of F-Secure Internet Security. I shall have to find out how to adjust the settings, but it thinks the intermediate page which opens when you try to access http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com is unsafe!

  16. 9:48 for me, so this felt rather more like a nice straightforward Monday puzzle than yesterday’s did. (I’d have been faster if I hadn’t made such heavy weather of the easy 1ac (POLYGLOT) by parsing it wrongly.)

    For what it’s worth, Tim, I agree with your reading of 25ac (FAIRNESS).

  17. Could only get round to this late in the day and then defeated by ferocious combination in NE (TSWANA, SHERD, ACTINIDE), of all of which I was ignorant. Thank you, Tim, for an entertaining and informative blog – and to all subsequent contributors for more of the same.
    1. From theFreeDictionary.com:

      SAP
      4. Slang A gullible person; a dupe.

      MUG
      3. Chiefly British Slang A victim or dupe.

  19. 34 minutes, so on my wavelength, which is more long wave than short wave, but never mind. My brother used to play Girld with the Flaxen hair, so that gets my COD.

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