Times 25012 – Cats and Birds

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 30 minutes

A canter for the most part, apart from a bit of hard going around Cheeseburn Grange. I’ve been sleep deprived for several weeks due to work commitments so I’m afraid I can’t offer much in the way of intelligent comment. Let’s just get on with it.

Across
1 DECAMP = D(e)E + CAMP. And I’m on my way. My first in.
4 WHIPLASH = WHIP and LASH. And I’m finished. My last in.
10 MARINER = RAIN* in MER. Altogether…
11 BENISON = I for one SON for disciple, placed after or on BEN. ODE says a man regarded as the product of a particle person, influence or environment, for son, not Ben.
12 RASH = cRASH
13 PAST MASTER = PAST for old, MA for academic + STERn. I sat staring at this for some time, thinking the academic was the master and wondering what to do with the severe. A triple definition?
15 HORSESHOE = HORSE for Arab, say, + SHOE for Oxford?. My first attempt was horsefoot, a favourite talisman of the mob.
16 DRAIN = Dry + RAIN.
18 Deliberately omitted. One for exponents of double definitions.
19 (PLEASE CUT)* = SPECULATE
21 CHARITABLE = CHAR + ALBEIT*
23 HYMN sounds like “him”
26 TRODDEN = hoT ROD DENted
27 CALLS reversed around HE = SHELLAC. Oh, for the days when you could drop a record and it would shatter. Now you can’t even pick them up.
28 HOOK containing D for diamonds and WIN = HOODWINK
29 PURSUE = soU in PURSE.

Down
1 DEMUR(e) = DEMUR, from which the shipping term demurrage
2 CORKSCREW = CORK’S CREW
3 MIX as in hybrid around N for new = MINX
5 HABITUE = A BIT in HUE
6 PAN + J for judge and AND for as well as RUM = PANJANDRUM, a word invented by Samuel Foote.
7 ASSET = AS + SET, why did this give me such grief?
8 (DANCER IN HOT)* = HINDRANCE
9 BROACH = B for black + ROACH, a cunning diversion.
14 RARE* + WINDOW = REAR WINDOW, a film about a voyeur
15 HOP for bound + SCOTCH for to put an end to = HOPSCOTCH
17 AMARYLLIS = A MARY + SILL reversed
19 N for indefinite number and N for note aboard NOAH’S reversed = SHANNON
20 SILENT* = ENLIST
22 Ascend + GO, GO = A GOGO. We had this recently. Do setters get together in pubs and dare each other?
24 Hermes in NICE = NICHE
25 Deliberately omitted. I’ll bow out with this one.

32 comments on “Times 25012 – Cats and Birds”

  1. 33 minutes, finishing in the NE corner, where BROACH gets my COD for the misdirection of ‘about black’. Toyed with ‘benifan’ for the blessing for a while. BENISON sounds like a very average full-back who used to play for Sunderland before he was snapped up by Liverpool. The seasonal whiff of chestnut about this one was not unwelcome after my Saturday marathon. Even Andy may have taken 20 minutes over that one!
  2. 11:35 .. I’m expecting to see some whizz-bang times on this.

    Some nice clues, though. I especially liked HINDRANCE and my last in: BROACH (hands up everyone who was looking for ‘B’ inside something).

  3. … in two sessions, pre- and post- visit to motor mechanics (again). So rather pleased with myself. Apart from the PANJANDRUM and — possibly — the BENISON, might even go in the nursery folder.

    Surely CORK’S CREW is getting whiffy too?

    Baulked a bit at SHELLAC for “record” but took a post-solve look at Robert C’s Big Book of Words where it rather mysteriously reads: “an old gramophone record whether or not made of shellac”. Might be Vinyl’s dad?

    And as for HOPSCOTCH, I didn’t parse this one at all, seeing instead a cryptic def: the game consists of (small) leaps/bounds and so ends with one!

    Edited at 2011-11-21 04:31 am (UTC)

  4. About 45 minutes, including some time spent trying to explain how it all worked to a Chinese colleague. An interesting exercise in cross-cultural confusion sowing. I was planing to tackle the Saturday puzzle tonight, but after reading ulaca’s comment I might leave it until I’m feeling a bit sharper.
    1. I thought Saturday’s was about as tough as a Club Monthly, but without the Monthly’s helpful Z’s and J’s. But I did it in the wee small hours of a sleepless night, so maybe it’s not that bad.
  5. 21 minutes, so sadly I missed a rare opportunity to beat the 20 minute barrier. MINX and DECAMP went in straight away but I spent too long trying to tack words onto their checkers instead of looking for easier pickings elsewhere. Everything flowed beautifully when I started anew in the SE corner and worked upwards from there. I might have lost time over A GOGO but for its recent outing.
  6. 12:30 so no real hold-ups except for 19D which at first seemed too much clue for too little space; then Noah came to mind and saved the day.
  7. 10mins so about as fast a time as I get. Magoo for a day (almost)!

    You can always tell a shellac record, because when you bend it, it snaps in two..

  8. 12 minutes, but SHANNON’s parsing escaped me, as I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to all the cod definitions for Noah. I got as far as No. N(ote)and diddly-dee backwards, but since it could only really be Shannon, in it went.
    SHELLAC will perhaps puzzle some of our younger viewers: those of us familiar with HMV wind up gramophones have no trouble, of course (I bought mine as a kid for 7/6).
    CoD to BROACH for trying hard to get us to put the B inside, but WHIPLASH was good too – I was also looking for toms, and jazz aficionados. Nice.
  9. 19 minutes for this, but half of that struggling over 25dn. Boy did I kick myself when the penny dislodged itself and dropped.
  10. Managed to duck under 15 minutes for the first time in a while. I like the idea (richnorth) of explaining a crossword to a Chinese colleague while solving it – a definition of punishment gluttony as good as any. An unremarkable but neat puzzle – a conundrum not even a panjandrum will find fault with. Saturday’s was a work of art.
  11. Having solved the puzzle and made my contribution here this morning I then settled down to read a few more chapters of my current library book (The Mistress of Alderley by Robert Barnard, since you ask) whereupon I shortly came across the word BENISON followed not much later by PANJANDRUM. I’d not thought of either word for yonks until this morning so this, and the fact that they intersect in today’s grid, is decidedly a bit spooky!
  12. 11 minutes, though it felt like I was struggling more with it. BENISON and PANJANDRUM from wordplay, SHANNON from definition.
    1. Congratulations, Sue. From some of your other (very respectable) times, I’d guess that 8 minutes won’t remain a PB for too long. Good luck.

  14. 13:50. Broach held me up in a way, that way being that I entered it as BRAOCH. I’ve recently developed this unconscious habit of transposing letters as I type, which most often manifests itself where double letters occur, so pillock would most likely come out as piilock or piloock.

    Anyway, that made past master tricky until I spotted the gaffe (or gaafe) and that then gave be asset and benison (a cousin of the aforementioned Barry Venison was on my course at Poly).

  15. 8:22, despite getting carried away when about two-thirds of the acrosses went in at first read-through, and thus writing in PERUSE without really reading the clue.

    As has already been alluded to, anyone who spent their weekend unpicking Saturday’s puzzle will feel we deserved this to balance the scales!

  16. 9:36, ending with a minute spent on 25dn (BEAU).  Unknowns: BENISON (11ac), SHELLAC as a record (27ac), and the SHANNON (!) (19dn).  AMARYLLIS (17dn) is becoming familiar.

    Nice puzzle – and well done to Sue for her PB!

  17. Not too tricky (agreed on Saturday’s, I gave up with several blank spaces…), and I, too, found much of the wordplay pretty straightforward. Several anagrams that I seemed to take an age to spot (SPECULATE and ENLIST, for example, two of my last in!). Otherwise, as glheard: “BENISON and PANJANDRUM from wordplay, SHANNON from definition”.
  18. What a relief after Saturday (it’s still sitting on my desk, staring at me, full of blanks). I found the bottom half much easier than the top half, with BENISON a well-founded guess based on the wordplay. COD to the enjoyably misleading BROACH.
  19. Easy and unremarkable puzzle – good way to relax after slogging round a muddy golf course

    I must go and do this Saturday one that’s causing all the comment

  20. About 25 minutes, not much remarkable. My last was BENISON, from wordplay and checkers, and the only unfamiliar thing today. COD to BROACH, clever. My comment on Saturday’s: Wow. The 17A clue (3,5,5) was a doozy, and even though I saw how it worked much earlier, it was a real slap-on-the-back-of-the-head moment when the answer became clear. Best regards.
    1. My Saturday COD too, Kevin (‘doozy’ is a term of approbation, isn’ it?), and not many multiword answers get that.
  21. 23 minutes (maybe I am getting better, this is my best time ever). But it was an easy and unremarkable puzzle, except of course for BENISON (which sounded quite plausible) and PANJANDRUM (easily from wordplay) and of course SHANNON (and some others) from definition. I rather liked CORKSCREW and HORSESHOE.

    And yes, Saturday’s was a real devil — I still haven’t finished but there are only two answers left to fill in.

  22. 6:25 for me. As so often happens, I took ages to get going and then finished in a rush, so I expect the fast brigade will have posted decent times. Or at least some of them, as I see that markthakkar has taken at least twice as long as I’d have expected!
  23. 27.30 for me. Probably too pleased to get PANJANDRUM and BENISON so struggled with the more straight foward BROACH and SHANNON! And another one here with an incomplete Saturday grid – after 65 minutes of mental sumo and sewage in about equal measure!

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