Times 25022 – Eng. Lit.

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
45 minutes. A lot of this was easy and I should have finished sooner but for delays in the SE corner where 14dn was my last in. There’s lots of arty-farty stuff today (the first three letters at 1ac and 1dn may give warning), more than one cricket reference and glass or two of wine but sadly no science to appease our Dorsetshire correspondent.Off we go…


Across
1 LITE,RACY
5 MAQUIS – Double definition. A French freedom fighter and scrubby vegetation.
10 Thomas Hardy, E (TRUMPET) MAJOR – Hardy wrote the book too, in addition to lending his initials to the wordplay.
11 TROLLEYBUS – Anagram ROBUSTLY LimousinE
13 Deliberately omitted
15 S(H)ERIF,F – H for heroin is enclosed by Female FIRES reversed.
17 AM(sEeN)ITY
18 RAW DEAL – WAR reversed followed by DEAL (pine).
19 H,lEAVING
21 PROMpt
22 R(OS)E GARD,EN – SO reversed in REGARD then EN, a small space in printing that measures half an ’em’.
25 LEG BEFORE WICKET – LEG (stage) BEFORE (sooner) WICKET (door) – it’s more usually clued as ‘gate’ in my experience but ‘door’ is valid and makes a change.
27 E,X,TENT – TENT for ‘result of canvassing’ raised an eyebrow for a moment but I don’t see why not.
28 HY,PN,OT,IC – HeadY PotioN Out-and-ouT InsomniaC.
Down
1 LI(TOT)ES – A figure of speech, an ironical understatement such as “I shan’t be sorry when I’ve finished writing this blog”.
2 Deliberately omitted
3 RURAL RIDES – Anagram of SURREAL encloses RID (free). This is a book by William Cobbett 1763-1835. I didn’t know the author but I vaguely knew the title.
4 CO,MF,Yell – MF is used in music. Mezzo Forte, moderately loud. I’m reminded of the Comfy Chair, the Spanish Inquisition and Eddie Izzard’s C of E version where the victim is offered cake or death.
6 A(R)MY
7 UNJUST,IF,1,ED – I think we are back to printing here for the definition where unjustified lines have different lengths and therefore look ‘ragged’ at the RH side.
8 SURGERY – Double definition. Those abroad may not know that MPs hold surgeries for their constituents to come and consult them.
9 BEAU Ne,ASH – Cote du Beaune is the wine in question. Beau (Richard) Nash (1674-1761) was a leader of fashion.
12 OVER(W,ROUGH)T
14 REPA,RATION – PAPER (daily) loses its first P and is reversed.
16 FOLLy 0,W ON – Another cricketing clue. This is when a batting side is required to play their second innings immediately after their first. There are rules that apply to this and I once knew them but I can’t be bothered to look them up and I’m sure you all know them anyway.
18 REd,PULSE –
20 GEN,EThIC
23 ENE,MY – ENE = East Northeast (direction) then MY (of the speaker).
24 BEgAN
26 KIT – Yet another literary reference. This is to dramatist Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). It’s an
abbreviation of his first name.

36 comments on “Times 25022 – Eng. Lit.”

  1. With all sorts of problems, not knowing RURAL RIDES, BEAU NASH (and his included wine) and contemplating the several alternatives fo REPARATION (esp. “defamation”). Liked the E-major ploy in 10ac.

    Good to note two things: Jack’s amazingly consistent posting times and the fact that the TfT calendar has righted itself. (Always my choice of ways in.)

    Edited at 2011-12-02 02:59 am (UTC)

  2. 36 minutes with MAQUIS last in, the scrub not being known. Nice cricketing flavour – one sport where ‘our country’ is actually top of the tree. That plus Cobbett’s Rural Rides, prom and rose garden – it’s enough to make an expat weep.

    COD to REPARATION – nice to have a paper which isn’t the Sun, FT, etc.

  3. 34 minutes with one wrong, a desperate beau sash. Can’t say I care for the definition of heaving. Didn’t enjoy this one in general for some reason, found it heaving with a kind of forced heavy humour. More likely it’s just me.
  4. 11 minutes, which I guess makes me an irretrievably arty-farty cricket lover. Hardy’s book, SHERIFF and ENEMY waited ’til afterwards for parsing: SHERIFF already had her and she taking care of the H to confuse matters, but “officer of county” left very few options once the S was in, and none at all once the F was confirmed.
    LITOTES was a neat clue, and a decent way of remembering what LITOTES actually is, and I liked the device for HYPNOTIC. But CoD to OVERWROUGHT, a very convincing surface requiring careful handling.
  5. 20 minutes for this. I liked it, although I’m sure the literary flavour will not be universally praised.
    RURAL RIDES was the only unknown for me, but I must say omitting 13ac with “inch” for ISLE may be a sign of spending too much time in Crosswordland!
    You don’t need “Côte de” before “Beaune” for the wine. Beaune is not necessarily red: perhaps the most famous of all is Drouhin’s white Clos des Mouches.
    5ac is one of those clues where you need one of two pieces of knowledge or you can’t solve it. It didn’t cause me a problem and the resistance meaning is probably something one ought to know, but I’m still not keen on pure GK clues like this.
    1. Agree with you on Beaune – the “red” is redundant and the whites are heavenly. Wish I could still afford to drink them!
  6. Far too much literature in this for my liking. Solved 3D from the cryptic + checkers – which book? written by who? when!! Didn’t know the vegetation meaning of MAQUIS either.

    Liked 13A ISLE and enjoyed a trip down memory lane over TROLLEY BUS. Amazingly because of a loophole they weren’t covered by the speed limit laws and used to bomb down the long straight stretch of road from Clapham to Clapham South at highly hazardous speed

      1. Thanks for the links. Interesting man and what at first glance appears to be an interesting commentary on his times
  8. Another arty-farty cricket fan who enjoyed this. 22 minutes, lots of which was spent puzzling over MAQUIS until I realised just how much of the clue was definition. To use 1dn, not bad at all.
  9. An enjoyable sub-30 minutesolve, bringing back memories of good old-fashioned English grammar lessons (LITOTES – remembered the word but not the definition) and journeys down the byways of History (Cobbett’s RURAL RIDES – somewhat misleadingly alluded to as a ‘travel book’).
  10. 53 minutes, my usual Friday night crawl. The top half went in quickly, but I was held up for ages by LBW and never even noticed that FOLLOW ON was a cricket clue. Pretty galling for a sports nut. But the GK wasn’t a problem for once and overall I enjoyed it a lot.
  11. Being short of time I was pleased to solve this in 20 minutes (albeit with a stupid error at 5ac). I entered the answers to most clues as soon as I’d read them, because either the definition or the wordplay was transparent. I didn’t know RURAL RIDES but the partial anagram was enough.
    For 5 I inexplicably entered JAQUES as a guess, even though MAQUIS had occurred to me when I read “resistance fighters” in 6 down earlier on.
  12. I started this at a gallop with LITERACY, LITOTES,Hardy and Cobbett going in straight away. At that point I seriously thought that maybe I had printed out the TLS crossword by mistake! I was happy with the literary references (though less happy with the cricket!) but I can imagine that some regulars here would have justifiably irritated. 25 minutes
      1. I really admire the people who have the nerve to blog here. Your efforts are so appreciated. The very thought of the pressure and deadlines! And what if you get a real stinker…? Yikes!
  13. 23 minutes fairly smooth going but didn’t much like the queasy overtones of heaving which was my LOI. The Hardy was well-constructed.
  14. A flying start that turned into a DNF after 46 minutes, defeated by the doubly unknown MAQUIS (5ac) – and even that was after typing THE TRUMPET M into Google to cheat on 10ac (THE TRUMPET MAJOR, also unknown), which finally nudged me into solving 7dn (UNJUSTIFIED).  I’d also had to check the unknown BEAU NASH (9dn), which relied on the unknown BEAUNE.  Other unknowns were TROLLEYBUS (11ac), “inch” meaning an ISLE (13ac), WICKET as a door (25ac LEG BEFORE WICKET), and RURAL RIDES (3dn).

    Ignorance is my own stupid fault, of course, but I can’t help feeling that this puzzle was rather de trop as throwbacks go.

    1. My guess (speaking as a throwback myself 😉 is that if this puzzle had appeared in a Championship Regional Final 30 years ago, most solvers would have polished it off in 30 minutes, the leading dozen would have finished in under 10 minutes, and the fastest solver would have finished in around 6 minutes (or 5 minutes if it was John Sykes).
  15. …as, like dyste, I desperately stuffed JAQUES in for the doubly unfamiliar MAQUIS (and that despite knowing that Jacques should have a C in it!). Didn’t know RURAL RIDES, BEAU NASH or the cricketing term FOLLOW ON, but all were quite clear from wordplay.

    Found this tricky, but, for the most part, gettable.

    Have had problems accessing live journal today, let’s hope any glitches are sorted next week. Bon weekend a tous!

  16. Needed aid for the unknown LEG BEFORE WICKET. Lots of other unknowns elsehwere, but I won’t bother listing them – they’re all the cricket terms, plus a few more. LOI: MAQUIS, didn’t know the scrub brush meaning. No real time to post since I went on and off, but I’ll allow that if I’d gone straight through it would have been close to an hour. Regards.
  17. Enjoyed the crossword; I don’t dislike the literary references, but it is the absence of balance that is annoying. As if literature is all there is, when in fact they are all using science to set and transmit and publish the dam things… the world runs on it

    But the big challenge today has been accessing Livejournal.. have others had problems too? It has happened several times to me lately and I am becoming a little bit concerned.

    1. My reply disappeared into the ether so this is 2nd attempt. It’s not just you. Site’s been buggy since last Saturday including message warning of hacking and screen with goat chewing something…. This clearly affects our revered bloggers too so it would be nice to know what’s up. I’m in NYC but I don’t think that makes any diff.
  18. 8:15 for me. An easy one for the arty-farty brigade, which I guess includes me as a sometime blogger of the TLS puzzle. I’m with jerrywh in wanting more science to balance the literature.
  19. Got through in 51 minutes, watching NFL football slowing me down some. MAQUIS struck me as weak, since the fighters were named after the vegetation. Had no idea why LEG BEFORE WICKET was right, but a couple of checkers convinced me. The most frustrating part was trying to remember Beau WHO? Finally reduced to running through the alphabet. But, or maybe therefore, I’d give 9d a COD.
    I haven’t had any trouble getting on to TFTT, although I keep having to sign in; my problem is the Club site, where I haven’t been able to submit a solution in weeks. The techies seem to have given up, since I haven’t heard from them for some time either.
      1. Thanks, Jerry! This seems (knock on wood) to have done the trick. I’d still like to know, though, why it’s only this site that puts me through these elaborate paces; or, for that matter, why the club’s techies didn’t give me the same advice. Indeed, why they haven’t responded at all to my latest inquiry.
        1. The reason why it is only this site that causes the problems is that they are using a very demanding java implementation that – it turns out – many computers and especially laptops have trouble coping with. To make the online solving work it might (perhaps) be unavoidable. As IT techies invariably use state of the art desktops they wouldn’t spot it at the design stage. However The Times could have handled the situation far better. I don’t think they are really up to pc technical support, at all..
          I’d be interested to know if it ever happens again, but if it does, clearing cache/cookies & logging in again should clear it
  20. Somewhat over an hour to solve this, with REPARATION, PROM, REPULSE and EXTENT being my last in. Unfortunately didn’t know the Hardy novel, so I had it wrong after changing TRUMPET MAJOR to DRUMMER MAJOR because I decided a TRUMPET couldn’t be “one who” but a DRUMMER could.
    1. It’s trumpet player as in ‘He’s first trumpet for the Phil’, in case you still haven’t worked it out!

Comments are closed.