Times 25026: Get me a crocodile sandwich!

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 1:07:26.

And even then, a couple of parsings I’m not sure of: 6dn and 24dn. A miserable morning all round. But it’s a darned clever piece of work for all that.

Across
 1 S,NAPPY.
 4 AGITPROP. A GI (An American serving), T (time), PRO (for), P{eddle}.
10 DI(SA)P,PEAR. AS (like) reversed in DIP (sauce) and PEAR (fruit).
11 AMIGO. Second letters (reversed) in ‘lOnG fIlM hAs’.
12 KEY GRIP. KEY (one turned to open) + GRIP (bag).
13 YAKKING. The def is ‘going on’. Anagram: kinky, a, g{uide}.
14 CORAL. COR (gracious!), reversal of LA{dy}.
15 TEA TRAYS. TEAT + RAYS.
18 WHIP HAND. WHIP (pinch), HAND (collection from dealer).
20 {or}BITER.
23 ROB,OTIC.
25 RAILMAN. Anagram: in alarm.
26 FIT IN. F{emale}, I, TIN (can).
27 EINDHOVEN. Anagram: H{ospital} in E Devon.
28 BE(E,FC)AKE. The container is ‘beake{r}’.
29 AD,HERE. AD (promotion), HERE (present).
Down
 1 SIDE,KICK.
 2 AS,SAY,ER. As are the top grades. Middle of tERm.
 3 PAPER CLIP. P{hoto}, APER (copier), CLIP (extract). A trombone if you’re French.
 5 GERRYMANDERING. Anagram: RRR, engaged in my.
 6 TRACK? Last letter of ‘stretcheR’? Don’t understand the container. See [info]rosselliot‘s comment. It’s the last letter of ‘casT’ + RACK (stretcher). My thanks to him.
 7 RA(IS)INY. Def = ‘filled with dried fruit’.
 8 P,L,OUGH{t}.
 9 PERPETUAL CHECK. Anagram: peer up, chalk etc.
16 RU(BB,I)SHED. The def is ‘did discount’.
17 OR,D(N)ANCE. O{live}R; DANCE (by example, twist).
19 H(A,BIT)UÉ.
21 TV MOVIE. Cryptic def.
22 PRE,FAB.
24 TUNIC. TUC (an organisation that includes women?) See [info]rosselliot‘s comment. It’s TU (for the union) + NIC{k} (run in … short). Thanks again Ross.

36 comments on “Times 25026: Get me a crocodile sandwich!”

  1. 6 dn = (jus)T RACK.
    24 dn = TU NIC(k).

    Made a miserable mess of this with my mandatory thumbling of a couple of clues. Inevitably mangle the entry of a down clue, taking out a perfectly good across one at the same time.

  2. Top puzzle, with AMIGO, RUBBISHED, ORDNANCE, HABITUE, ROBOTIC (COD) and RAILMAN (excellent anagrind) all getting ticks. This took me 75 minutes with BEEFCAKE/PREFAB last in. (They were good too.) Thanks to Ross for explaining TUNIC and to MCT for GERRYMANDERING. Like virtually everything chess-related, PERPETUAL CHECK was unknown but eminently gettable once a few checkers were in.

    My compliments to the setter.

  3. At 50 minutes I seem to be towards the front of the field at the moment! I only mention this because it’s such a rare occurrence and will no doubt not last for long anyway.

    Starting in the NE progress throughout was on the slow side but just for once things flowed steadily and I was able to complete each quarter before moving onto the next.

    An excellent puzzle that contained enough tricky stuff so that I felt really satisfied when I finished it without aids and fully understood nearly all the clues as I wrote the answers in.

    I knew EINDHOVEN because I went through it once on a train and remember it as the home of Philips.

    Last in was BEEFCAKE which I left until I had all the checkers because I thought it would involve a foreign soccer team that I never heard of.

  4. 45 minutes but with two wrong: guessed biker and KO movie. Very annoying since had thought carefully up to that point and then a rush of blood. But the pleasure of the puzzle itself unallayed.
  6. An all-correct finish, but I turned the clock off after an hour to preserve my dignity. Even then there were a couple I didn’t understand until now, including PAPER CLIP and TUNIC. I’ve found the championship puzzles a bit of a grind this year – technically good, of course, but rather lacking in wit. Tough luck, mctext, you drew the short straw this year!
  7. 29 minutes. What a great puzzle. Difficult in just the right way, with no obscurity (in fact PERPETUAL CHECK was the only thing I didn’t know) but plenty of cunning wordplay. I made heavy weather of some of the anagrams (YAKKING, RAILMAN, EINDHOVEN) which shows either that they were very well disguised or that I am being a bit thick this morning. No prizes for guessing which interpretation I favour.
    My last in was TRACK, and I failed to parse it, so thanks to rosselliot for that. And thanks to the setter for a real treat.
  8. Now I know why I didn’t make the final! 45 minutes on this one, with last in TV MOVIE (is TV technically “2”?) going through my alphabet soup strainer twice before yielding.
    I had a complete 15 minute hiatus about halfway through all because I had RAISINS. Once spotted (it HAS to be TEA TRAYS, doesn’t it?) there was a sudden rush until the 17 20 21 trio in the bottom right.
    Virtually every clue (discounting TV MOVIE which was kind of annoying) would have a chance of CoD in any normal crossword, but I’ll give it to AGITPROP for a mini novel of a surface and as an early indicator of the cluing standards and challenges. Bravo setter, and any finalist who got this in any kind of time!
  9. 23:30. Definitely the sort of puzzle you’d expect in a final, not demanding really esoteric knowledge or obscure vocabulary, but with very few clues where the answer leaps out before you’ve properly read the clue, or without any sort of thought required. I must also admit to staring at T_ MOVIE for a long long time before that was LOI.
  10. Finally managed to access the blog for the first time in 2 days.

    Great puzzle. 45 minutes of real enjoyment. Once again lost in admiration for those who solve these in far less time. Well done setter – absolutely first class. And well done McText – great effort.

  11. Great puzzle but DNF. Never spotted alternative to RAISINS so consistently rejected TEA TRAYS; nowhere near getting BITER (brilliant clue). But irritated that I didn’t work out TV MOVIE. Many thanks for great blog and comments.
  12. 25:08 .. can’t have been too hard a decision to allocate this one to the final. Great stuff.

    Luckily, TEA TRAYS was one of my first in which took the raisins off the table. EINDHOVEN was familiar enough from the PSV football club.

    Last in: PLOUGH

  13. 41:05 which felt like a pretty good time. I got on the setter’s wavelength early on, for a change. I had RAISINS for a while until I got 15, and I also threw REFEREE in for 25, thinking it was just a cryptic def, but quickly realised it had to be wrong.
    Lots of clever wordplay. I particularly like ORDNANCE, BITER & ROBOTIC.
  14. Didn’t get TV MOVIE (it surely should be 1,1,5) so assumed that BITER was wrong, so DNF. Otherwise agree with everyone else that this was a great puzzle.
    1. I’d be interested to hear the views of others with better knowledge and memory than mine, but I’m under the impression that in Times puzzles abbreviations are always lumped together. I don’t know whether it’s a rule or convention but I can’t recall seeing single letters designated separately in the enumeration even when the abbreviations apply to quite separate words.

      In the case of TV it’s an abbreviation for a single word and I wouldn’t expect it to be shown as 1,1 any more than I would for ST if the answer were to be ST GEORGE, for example.

      .

      1. That is a fair point, ST is always (2) as far as I know. But if the answer was, say, HMS Victory, would it be (3,7) or (1,1,1,7)?
        1. Well I would expect to see 3,7 but the fact that so many (including old hand Magoo – see Next Entry) have commented on TV (2) makes me wonder whether I’ve got this all wrong. On the other hand the setter and the editor must have thought it was the way to go.
  15. really pleased to have finished in under 90 minutes
    great puzzle and super blog thank you!
    2. I agree. My working day only allows me to do puzzle intermittently so solve on I pad from paper and then post. I haven’t found a way to pause the crossword club clock…is there one?
  16. I thought this was a good example of a puzzle where it pays to read clues and then read them again to see where the definition is lurking. 22d, 23ac and 17d were very good examples of that I thought. I’m encouraged that our esteemed blogger, mctext, had as much trouble parsing 6d and 24d as I did. Thanks to rosselliot for enlightenment. To think Magoo did 3 of these in 24 minutes!! 85mins of furrowed brow fun.
  17. I am used to feeling dense when I visit here, but today I feel it even more so because although I finished the puzzle I still don’t understand ROBOTIC while everyone else is praising its wit.

    I got as far as rob=deprive of but can’t see where otic comes from. Can somebody put me out of my misery and I’ll just go back to lurking again. Thanks AS

  18. Haven’t been able to get on recently… didn’t time this but it was about 20 minutes – I think if i was doing this in a final I would have put it aside for some back-of-brain work while trying other puzzles. ROBOTIC, WHIP HAND and TRACK from definition, also surprised TV was in as 2 and not 1,1, though that might have given away the answer from enumeration.
  19. 65 minutes hard slog. I was relieved to finish at all. But enjoyable nevertheless. I’ve never heard of a PERPETUAL CHECK so the anagram took an age to work out. I hate the word RAISINY but, strangely enough, it was one of my first in – having already got TEA TRAYS was a help. I didn’t understand TUNIC until coming here but, now I do, I think it’s brilliant – like so many of the clues here.
    1. I knew this one because it has come up before and I remember it catching me out last time, however the on-line blog search finds it only in today’s Times and the Independent (which I have never done) in 2006 so this is now a mystery. I would have said it was within the past year, or two at maximum, and it led to some discussion here.
  20. About 35 minutes, ending with CORAL. Very nice puzzle, and blog, so thanks to the setter and mctext. I’d say this is certainly a championship caliber puzzle. Regards.
  21. I found this much the toughest of the three puzzles in the Final, and actually left it only partly done and moved on to the easier third puzzle (I’d made comparatively short work of the first puzzle). I finished without understanding TRACK and (rather more alarmingly) had forgotten the reasoning when I came to solve it again today. An excellent puzzle, worthy of a Championship Final.

    As I understand it, the rationale for enumerating TV MOVIE as (2,5) is that’s exactly how you write it. For it to be (1,1,5), it would have to be written T V MOVIE. Similarly HMS VICTORY would be enumerated as (3,7).

  22. Some well disguised clues. I remembered RAISINY from the article in the paper after Mr Goodliffe’s win, so it felt like cheating…
  23. Television was doomed to divide and befuddle us ever since its conception from mixed Greco-Roman parentage.

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