Times 25006 – Namby-pamby? Lickity-split!

Solving time:38 minutes

Music: Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade, Kondrashin/Concertgebouw

This puzzle might have been quite easy for some, but for me it involved deducing a complicated compound word I had never heard of before from the cryptic. That, and not seeing another cryptic properly, slowed me down at the end.

Other than that, no particularly obscure vocabulary or recondite knowledge is required here, but some of the clues do a good job of hiding the definitions, so you might have to think a bit. On the other hand, there are a couple of chestnuts that should enable you to get some crossing letters almost immediately.

Today was quite possibly my final round of golf of the season. I am still amazed it is possible to play year-round in the UK.

Across
1 BACKCOMB. BACK + CO MB. I solved this from the cryptic, and only then realized in what sense ‘tease’ was meant. Hasty solvers might guess at ‘backbite’ or ‘backchat’, neither of which fit the cryptic.
5 OBOIST, OB(O[ld])I(S[entence])T. A player who certainly has plenty to do in tonight’s music, particularly at the beginning of the second movement.
9 OBITUARY, cryptic definition, but I wasn’t fooled for long.
10 PLACID, PLA(C[eilidh])ID, also a lake in upstate New York.
12 METAPHYSICIAN, MET A PHYSICIAN, where detailed knowledge of Edward Jenner’s life and accomplishments is only a hindrance.
15 TRACT, sounds like TRACKED. My last in, one that gave me great difficulty because I did not take the cryptic to indicate the whole phrase ‘found after search, say’. A ‘tract’ is probably a part of some sort of body in some sense in some dictionary somewhere.
16 ORIGINATE, anagram of GRIN I inside anagram of A TOE.
17 COSMOLOGY, CO’S + anagram of GLOOMY.
19 CHIMP, CHI from 2 across + MP, a clue in which an ape and a politician are closely joined.
20 UNCONDITIONAL, UN + CONDITION + AL, which is Alabama (Alaska is AK).
22 LEEWAY, WEE backwards in LAY. The literal is well-hidden in ‘play’, and the song is not ‘lied’, and ‘yaw’ backwards has nothing to do with it.
23 FINALIST, F IN A LIST.
25 BETIDE, B([ex]ET[er])IDE. A easily clued word with an easily hidden literal.
26 TYROLEAN, TYRO, LEAN. A clever clue that I found amusing.
 
Down
1 BROOMSTICK, cryptic definition. I thought of Hank Williams’ song ‘Nobody’s Lonesome for Me’.
2 Omitted!
3 CRUMPET, CRU(MP)ET, where MP is ‘mezzo piano’, presumably. You don’t often see a cruet nowadays, but they used to be common in cheap restaurants.
4 MERRY-GO-ROUND, MERRY + anagram of GOOD RUN. Most solvers will just put in the answer from the enumeration.
6 BELLINI, triple cryptic definition. Vincenzo Bellini was the composer, Giovanni, Jacopo, Gentile or Filippo Bellini was the painter.I can’t trace the inventor, but I’m willing to take it on faith. As mctext has kindly pointed out, the inventor is actually [Alexander Graham] Bell in 1.
7 INCANTATION, INCAN + TATI + O[verblow]N. I would like to thank my internet buddy ‘guiller’ in audiokarma.org, for being such a Tati fan that he uses pics from Tati’s films for his avatar – otherwise, I never would have heard of him.
8 TIDY, double definition, as in a tidy sum of money.
11 NIMINY-PIMINY. 1 MIN backwards + NY, PI MI + NY. This is the one that I had never heard of, and had to build up from the cryptic. I got the ‘piminy’ part first, and realized this was probably a rhyming expression, ruling out ‘mitiny-piminy’. It did take me quite a while to get it.
13 TRANSLUCENT, anagram of CUT LANTERNS, a starter clue for most solvers.
14 NEAPOLITAN, anagram of TO AN ALPINE. The trick is seeing that it is an anagram, which did take me a while.
18 Omitted, another hoary chestnut.
19 CHICAGO, C(HIC)A + GO, where ‘about’ = ‘ca’, since ‘turn’ must indicate ‘go’, and not ‘a go’.
21 CLUB, double definition. Mine is a 12-degree Ping Rapture 2, which actually worked fairly well today.
24 IRE, [e]IRE. Just about the easiest possible letter removal clue.

49 comments on “Times 25006 – Namby-pamby? Lickity-split!”

  1. And much the same experience; with the CRUMPET, TRACT pair in last. Took me a while to find HIC (this classical) in 19dn: but there was no other possible answer. And the MP n CRUMPET (rather than the one in CHIMP) was a new abbrev. for me.

    The inventor in 6dn is BELL (… in 1); though I did write BERN (…in 1) at first!

  2. 46 minutes, but with ‘nimimy-giminy’ put in as a stab for the unknown silly word, possibly in subconscious honour of the cartoon cricket. Good to see old ‘hic’ get a run out. Fully expect ‘haec’ and ‘hoc’ to make appearances now lest the crossword be accused of sexism. Not to mention counterparts ‘ille, illa, illud’ …
  3. My experience paralleled vinyl’s, not knowing NIMINY-PIMINY before, and ending with the CRUMPET/TRACT crossers. I think of a cruet as a liquid dispenser, so I didn’t cotton on right away. I’ll suggest ‘digestive tract’ as one possible path to the TRACT clue. Otherwise, not remarkable but mostly enjoyable. About 30 minutes. Regards.
  4. Was doing this while waiting to pick up a friend at the airport – breezed through then slowed to a crawl to get NIMINY PIMINIY and TRACT
  5. 19 minutes for all but 15ac where I wasted another 11 going through the alphabet before realising that TRACT, which I had considered much earlier, must be the answer after all. Until then I simply failed to recognise its “sounds like” or that “tract” is valid as a part of the body. I was pleased to get 12ac despite not knowing what either person referenced actually did.

    I thought I knew most of Hank Williams’ output (I even know his Luke the Drifter stuff) but either the one mentioned in the blog has passed me by or I’m one step closer to senility than I had realised.

    1. “All I need is a bride who wants a big-hearted groom,
      I wouldn’t care if she came riding in on a broom” ….
      …so sang Hank Williams.

      Darryl

  6. I found this a lot harder than anybody else so far – must be the 37C heat today. 68 minutes, with LEEWAY last in. NIMINY PIMINY came up in a fiendishly difficult Saturday puzzle about a year ago (November 6, 2010) when a lot of us complained that we’d never heard the word before – and obviously it hasn’t stuck!
  7. I’m surprised at the short memory of some: surely it hasn’t been that long since we had NIMINY-PIMINY? I distinctly remember quoting Gilbert’s Bunthorne, who commits himself to being a
    Francesca da Rimini
    Niminy-piminy
    Je ne sais quoi young man.
    And Byron evidently summed up Leigh Hunt’s ‘Story of Rimini’ thus:
    O crimini!
    What a nimini-pimini
    Story of Rimini!
    28 minutes; like Jackkt, I could have saved time by giving TRACT a chance when I first thought of it; ditto for CHICAGO, which I abandoned for a hopeless spell with Cartago.
    1. Long may you enjoy the pleasure of being surprised by the short memory of some! Sadly some of us are beset with memories which are both getting shorter and diminishing. And it’s not helped when previous instances appear in Saturday crosswords (thanks for the link, keriothe): I rarely check the blog for these (apologies again to bloggers) because by the time they appear, I’ve forgotten (and probably discarded) the details of the crossword.
      1. Yeah, I’ve got a terrific memory, but only for things not worth remembering. After a year’s leave of absence, I came back to work to find that I couldn’t remember half my colleagues’ names (that is, all the names, of half the colleagues; my memory isn’t THAT bad). My knowledge of American literature seems to have reduced down to the fact that most poems of Emily Dickinson can be sung to the tune of “Wabash Cannonball”.
  8. 11 minutes today.
    NIMINY-PIMINY went straight in: I remembered the struggle the last time.
    I had METAPHYSICIST for a while, having never heard of Jenner. “Tyro” was new to me. I was also convinced 19dn was going to be a “classical city” until I had all the checkers.
    1. Tyro appeared just a few days ago, albeit with a never-before-seen and therefore must-be-wrong spelling of tiro. 24999 3dn, clued identically as “novice.”
  9. 11 minutes something; another who didn’t know / remember NIMINY-PIMINY and relied on wordplay. (When someone points out that we’ve had an obscure word before, I always click on the link with some trepidation in case it turns out to be in a puzzle I’ve previously blogged but immediately forgotten. That will presumably be the point where I know that my brain has decided it has learned enough and I’ll just have to get by with what I already know.)

  10. No real problems today, except for the ridiculous-sounding NIMINY-PIMINY, which seemed to take an age at the end.

    I’d not heard of TYRO before, but it had to be that.

    Cod: LEEWAY, for the well disguised definition.

      1. Interesting that a couple of people weren’t familiar with “TYRO”. The alternative spelling is “TIRO” which cropped up in the wordplay to 3D only last Saturday (24999).

        Stuart

  11. 29 minutes with the final ten on crumpet and tract. (For some reason cruet deserted me.) A little surprised that to tease can be to backcomb: one is to cover the balding scalp, the other to tease out into separate locks or strands I’d have thought. Maybe a (horse-)grooming term?
      1. Fascinating. I love the fixed unsmiling endurance of the teasee. All extraterrestrial as far as my pate’s concerned.
  12. Quite enjoyed this but defeated by NIMINY PIMINY (just did not believe the various permutations which arose from the wordplay).
  13. an enjoyable under 15 mins for me today. I did know 11d as an aunt used to use the expression.
  14. 15 minutes before I had to exit with only T_A_T missing. On the car journey (the reason for the exit) I went over every conceivable combination even though TRACT was the obvious filler. Tract=part of body is surely questionable: I can see (sort of) where it’s coming from, but I rather thought any of the bodily tracts are made up of several parts. And without its qualifying adjective (digestive, urinary etc) it’s very woolly. Would “system” be a body part? Am I just being niminy-piminy?
    I also wondered what, apart from giving a semblance of surface to a rather contrived footie clue, “from” was doing in 16. Kick off clearly means originate, but unless it’s developed an adjectival form recently, “from kick off” doesn’t: that would be original, I think.
    Otherwise a cut above an “Easy Monday”, with CoD to CHICAGO and a mention (just to show I can appreciate the odd CD) to OBITUARY – wry smile time.
    1. I thought exactly the same about 16 but eventually decided it was OK by reading it as “from kick off [you get] with grin…”. The comma can be read in this way I think. The grammar isn’t very elegant but I think it works.
      I also wondered at first how “on” became “in” in 23ac, but that was just me being dense.
    2. Chambers: A region of the body occupied by a particular system.

      COED: A major passage in the body…

      Collins: a) A system of organs, glands or other tissues that has a particular function. b) A bundle of nerve fibres…

      1. As I say, I see where it’s coming from, I’m just not convinced that it’s far enough away from “system” to merit the “body part” definition. I have a digestive system, and a digestive tract, made up of several parts. If the answer were “system” would that be fairly defined by “part of body”?
        OK, the T_A_T doesn’t give anything else that matches the wordplay, but part of body? Heart, arm, hair, anything like that. Digestive tract, glandular system, okay. Tract on its own?
        COED Tract: A major passage in the body… Yep, OK, but suppose we took the key word “passage”. Is that a “part of body”? Again, not unless it’s qualified with an adjective, though I’m not sure I want to do that!
        1. How about “canal”? Or even “area”?
          I think you’re right but on the other hand the clue didn’t give me much trouble once I had T_A_T, so if we’re being pragmatic (why on earth would we do that?) it seems OK to me.
  15. Thought this was the easiest puzzle in along while – finished in about 15 mins. Only hiccup on the way was entering METAPHYSICIST until I recalled Edward Jenner wasn’t a physicist but an early pioneer of vaccination, so quickly switched to METAPHYSICIAN.

    Darryl

  16. Being ignorant of vaccination’s high achievers, my original occupation for Jenner was physicist since I have never come across Kant being called a metaphycician. How many other solvers made the same mistake before incantation?
    Enigma
  17. An easy 20 minutes after a very pleasant round of golf. In the past I’ve paid on Boxing Day Vinyl – normally very mild down here.

    Like others struggled with TRACT but recalled the silly long one from previous exposure.

    Goodness me. After folk not knowing the father of modern physics today we have people not knowing the father of immunology. The guy invented vaccination by studying small pox – just give a moments thought to how many lives he has saved – including your own.

    1. You’re quite right of course. At least we arty-farty types have this crossword to fill the gaps in our knowledge!
    2. Sometimes I wonder if people say they haven’t heard of famous scientists just to wind you up, Jim. I think in the case of Planck that was probably true, but sadly not so for Jenner. Depressing!
  18. One of those coincidences – I was listening to bellini’s La Straniera when I came to 6dn!
  19. 50 minutes for me with 20 spent on tract and leeway where I couldn’t get lied out of my head for ages! Hats off to setter again. An enjoyable puzzle with a few twists but fair for this novice at least. Thanks for the helpful blog as ever.
  20. Albeit a one stop between Gravesend and Stratford International. I certainly remembered NIMINY-PIMINY and COD for me was CHICAGO followed by LEEWAY. At least I had a chance to look at the Times today – recent driving at work has precluded the pleasure.
  21. I don’t really understand the wordplay for 5a, OBOIST. Also where does the HIC come from in 19d?
    1. THe answer to 9a is OBITUARY which is known shortly (briefly) as an OBIT into this place the starting letter in S(entence) and this (OBIST) includes (entertains) O for O(ld)
    2. LAtin: hic : (masc. nom. sing.) THIS so the indication “this classical” gives the word.
  22. 8:16 for me – which felt horribly slow but wasn’t helped by reading 5ac as “Part of sentence …” and 21dn as “Diver possibly …”.
  23. Particularly picky here perhaps, but is a finalist (23ac) a so far unbeaten competitor? You could lose in the final and are you unbeaten then?

    I thought the CDs at 9ac and 1dn were a bit weak, and to put an exclam at the end (as in 1dn) doesn’t make it a better one. If we must have these wretched things — and The Times is increasingly having them it seems — then at least please can we have good ones.

    Very uncomfortable with ‘From kick off’ = ‘originate’ in 16ac, but as said above it’s just about OK if you read it as ‘From a word meaning ‘kick off’, you get …’

    1. I think technically you’re right a finalist is still a finalist at the end of the match, and might by then be beaten. But beyond that, I’m sure there have been many World Cups in most sports where teams have lost the odd match in the league stages but gone on the the final. Any time there’s a “qualifying round” teams/players can be beaten and still go through. So that’s a big up to us niminy-piminy hole pickers.
      I still thought the wordplay made it a close contestant for CoD, but it lost out in the semis.
  24. Got all but the last few in around an hour and then struggled over the unknown NIMINY PIMINY, which I got to _IMINY PIMINY from the wordplay before using aids to confirm, then slowly dredged up BACKCOMB and CRUMPET before agonising over TRACT which was my LOI. An enjoyable puzzle in which, for once, I understood most of the parsing.

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