Times 25004

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 28:42 – Nothing much to say about this one. Pretty straightforward stuff.

Anyway, the hour is late. I was about to go to bed when I remembered it was my turn to blog. Luckily, it didn’t take too long. So on with the brerakdown.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 MORTALS + IN
6 BASH + Osaka
9 SIDECAR – dd, it’s a classic cocktail of orange liqueur, lemon juice & brandy
10 WHITTLE – Sir Frank is generally regarded as the father of jet propulsion
11 LEADING MAN = (IN MAGDALEN)*
12 RUDDy – flipping as a mild swear word
14 ME(T)RE
15 tHATCH + BACK
16 PER SE + CUTE
18 READY – dd
20 Estate + SPY
24 RECTORSHIP = (CHORISTER)* + P
25 EMPerOR + I + Antique
26 LAUNDER = (ARUNDEL)*
27 F + ARES – Greek God of war
28 DE(PRESS)ED
Down
1 MOSEL – rev hidden
2 RA(DIANa)T
3 ARCHIMEDES = (MERCHAnDISE)*
4 S + P(R)IG
5 NEWCASTLE = NEW + CASE about LT rev
6 B + AIT
7 SATSUMA = A + MUST + AS all rev
8 OKEY-DOKEY = (O + KEY) x2 about D
13 CHARTREUSE = RE in (CHART USE)*
14 MAPLE LEAF = (FEMALE)* about (A + P + L)
15 HOUSEMAID = HM about OUSE + AID
17 RE(P)APER
19 APHIDES = PA rev + HIDES
22 TULIP = UsefuL in TIP
23 PARED = PADRE with the D moved
24 In ReImS

29 comments on “Times 25004”

  1. 20:35 .. more my cup of tea than yesterday’s. Some nice touches that brought a smile – PER SE CUTE, for instance.

    For a while there I was a little worried that we might have to go through an entire puzzle without a clergyman to officiate, but then along came a rector, so all is well.

    COD .. REPAPER, for the image of the grim reaper up a ladder, doing a spot of DIY.

  2. This flowed along quite nicely until I came to a standstill after 30 minutes, still with 8 gaps across every quarter. I eventually finished the grid in 55 minutes. There was nothing difficult here so I blame tiredness.

    The only answer approaching an unknown was APHIDES which I must have met before but I found it hard to think past APHIS and APHIDS to get to the less familiar word.

    I also wasted time on a fish to fit ?U?? when all I could think of was TUNA, and on NURSEMAID at 15dn which obviously wasn’t going to be correct. And once I had come up with HOUSEMAID I became fixated on HOT-something for the car at 15ac.

  3. But lots of trouble in the SE corner. That’s most things in the area bordered by HATCHBACK and HOUSEMAID. And I still don’t understand how (LOI) 23dn works.
    1. I read it as:

      Chaplain = PADRE
      ‘s daughter finally = has D at the end
      stripped off = PARED(as in ‘pared to the bone’)

      But I think this is what Dave has already said in his blog so perhaps you’ve another query that I have not picked up on.

    2. Agreed; I just think it’s not a very good clue, as ‘Chaplain has daughter finally’ doesn’t to me convince about the d being movedfrom the middle to the end. Oh well.
  4. 12:30 so pretty good for me; HM for king was something I hadn’t met before but otherwise all fairly straightforward. Basho rang a vague bell but the cryptic did the rest.

  5. My third completed correctly alone and unaided in as many days (although I must admit to coming to this page with trepidation on two counts: BASHO and (F)ARES were both unfamiliar, worked out from cryptic)!

    Hadn’t heard of WHITTLE (Mr), nor HM for king, but other than that a speedy and straightforward solve. Didn’t really have too much of a problem with the clue for PARED, but then again, I didn’t look too much further once I knew that it had to be the answer somehow.

    CoD: PERSECUTE

    Good start to the weekend for me…see you all next week!

    1. Janie, I’m surprised that Jimbo hasn’t torn you off a strip for not having heard of Frank Whittle, the Englishman who invented the jet engine.

      He crops up in pub quizzes from time to time.

      1. Not really Janie’s fault, I guess. The pity of it is that we value our immense contribution to science so little that we are content to have folk erudite in the arts but ignorant of people like Whittle who changed the very world we live in.
        1. Sad to say, but the science gene seems to have skipped a generation in my family: my dear old Dad was an eminent mathematician, and my sons are all turning out to be more inclined towards careers involving the sciences/engineering. Hey ho, I guess it all balances out in the end… I do agree, though, that our culture seems to value our contribution to science very little, and, still in schools, those kids who enjoy maths and science are often marginalised for being the ‘geeky’ ones.
  6. 11 minutes. Very straightforward.
    I must have come across BASHO before if only because it didn’t seem ridiculously wrong as it went in. I thought PARED didn’t quite work.
  7. 21 minutes, pleasant knock-up, but wish I could cut down on length of rallies. Didn’t know aphides with an e but had to be. 25 neat.
  8. Good straightforward Times fare with some very economic clueing and well crafted surface readings. I particularly liked 3D ARCHIMEDES. 20 minutes to solve.

    I’m also not sure 23D really works. My last in and entered from checkers + definition really. Glad to see Frank W getting a mention and no poets!

  9. 36 minutes, easy enough, although I needed Dave’s help to understand the SIDECAR and the HATCHBACK. We had a motorbike and sidecar when I was a kid, and I can just about remember riding in it. Seems highly dangerous, in retrospect.
  10. 20 minute, though not on sparkling form.
    I was quite easy with 23d – I read the cryptic as “the D of a word for chaplain in last place” which seemed a perfectly respectable construction.
    Otherwise a pleasant outing, I thought, with some smiles and head-scratching on the way. My hold up was in the NE, where I could only think of Wright and Wallis as aeronautical engineers, and considered cutting either of them with an A to produce a knife – wraight or wallais perhaps being knives I’d never heard of. RUDD went in because it was a fish, the mischievous “tail” so close to the aero-engineer suggesting rudder with a bit missing – unparseable, that. The OK clue took ages – couldn’t get out of cardinal=red.
    CoD to PERSECUTE, mention in dispatches to SATSUMA.
  12. I’m with Sotira on this one (as well as finishing in an almost identical time of 20:27) in finding it great fun. It was refreshing to see cardinal and king meaning something other than the same old same old.

    COD to 21ac for the brilliant “chorister playing piano”.

  13. 11:55, with the last three minutes spent on the unknown but suspected RUDD (12ac) and the impossible A_T_U_A (7dn SATSUMA), having guessed (like vinyl1) at BEANO for the unknown BASHO (6ac).  Oops.  I didn’t do myself any favours by writing in MAPLE TREE at 14dn (MAPLE LEAF), either.  Other unknowns were the cocktail SIDECAR (9ac) and Frank WHITTLE (10ac); MOSEL (1dn) and APHIDES (19dn) were unfamiliar.

    Clue of the Day: 21ac (RECTORSHIP).

  14. Archimdes gets my vote for COD. Deceptive as well as elegant. Could only be Rudd with ?U?D, but is okey-dokey accepted English? Until I had slotted that one in I, too, was thinking of tuna and hesitating because it didn’t chime with the clue.

    Enigma

    2. OKEY-DOKEY is okay in both Chambers and Collins. And probably most other reasonable dictionaries.

      Darryl

  15. 13 minutes late last night, rather liked this one, though I had to get WHITTLE (sorry Jim), RUDD and APHIDES from wordplay. Had to shake the head a few times with PARED (to the point I wrote it in the wrong entry), but it all came together.
  16. About 35 minutes, due to trouble in the NE area. Didn’t know the BASHO, but it was guessable, WHITTLE from wordplay only (sorry, Jimbo), then SATSUMA from the checkers/wordplay and a final LOI wordplay only stab with RUDD. Post solve checks amazingly confirmed all these. The rest went in without much trouble, and like others I liked PERSECUTE and the Chorister playing piano. Regards to all.
  17. 11:02 for me. I took ages to find the setter’s wavelength, but plodded through fairly steadily once I’d found it, though RUDD held me up a little finally.

    At least more people have heard of WHITTLE than had heard of TZARA and ARAGON, but still an alarming number seem not to have come across him before. (I failed to get him first time through because I parsed the clue in the same way as z8b8d8k and tried to fit A into a 6-letter aeronautical engineer to make a 7-letter knife.)

    A very nice puzzle. My COD is 3dn (ARCHIMEDES) – very neat.

  18. 22 minutes here so by my standards a good day. Enjoyable straightforward puzzle thought as humanities specialist I was still surprised that Whittle was not better known. COD like others to persecute. Thanks to blogger as ever.
  19. Apologies to the anonymous poster whose post I just deleted. You’re more than welcome to make comments, but please make sure you are posting them against the correct puzzle. If someone who reads the blog for this puzzle hasn’t completed the one you’re talking about, they may not want to be given the answers for it!

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