Times 25027 – Union Auxiliary

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After yesterday’s toughie, I looked to today’s puzzle with a bit of trepidation. Fortunately, my foreboding did not materialise and it was a reasonable solve within the half-hour or so. Quite enjoyable.

ACROSS
1 MAHARAJA Rev of A JAR (drink) A HAM (poor actor) for an Indian prince
5 MIFFED Ins of IF in M (male) FED (Federal or FBI agent)
10 WATERFALL Not a totally evident dd
11 CALUM Ins of U (university) in CALM (still) for a common Scottish name
12 CHEF CHE (Ernesto “Che” Guevara 1928–1967, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary) F (first letter of formula)
13 SWEETCORN Ins of WEE (little) in ST (street, way) CO, RN (Commanding Officer of the Royal Navy)
15 FAHRENHEIT *(IN THE RAF HE) for German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736)
17 STYE S (small) *(YET)
19 PLAY P (first letter of Pooh-Bah) LAY (song)
20 BRIDESMAID What a lovely cd. My COD
22 TOLERABLE Ins of *(ROLE) in TABLE (board)
24 LEEK Rev of KEEL (vessel) for the Welsh emblem. Now, why should this remind me of Eddie Waring and “up and under”?
26 IONIC IRONIC (mocking) minus R (Rex, king)
27 CHISELLER dd Chisel used in the second sense as cheat (or do)
28 GASKET To blow a gasket is to become extremely angry.
29 LAWYERLY LAW (canon) YEARLY (regularly) minus A (answer) like the courtroom maestro created by Erle Stanley Gardner and played by Raymond Burr in the popular TV drama series in days gone by

DOWN
1 MOWN Sounds like MOAN (grouse)
2 HIT THE HEADLINES I suppose this can be classified as a cd since streamers and banners are also words meaning newspaper headlines
3 RAREFIED Ins of A REF (referee, judge) in *(DIRE)
4 JEANS dd Sir James Hopwood Jeans 1877–1946 was an English physicist, astronomer and mathematician. I paused here as I went looking for an astronomer named JEAN but that only fit part of forenames, not surnames. Perhaps, the setter should not have used the apostrophe S.
Hard-wearing trousers for astronomer (5) would have done the trick.
6 INCITE Sounds like IN SIGHT (visible)
7 FELLOW-TRAVELLER dd a person who travels in the same railway carriage, bus, etc, or along the same route as oneself or another; a person who, though not a party member, holds the same political (esp communist) views.
8 DIMINUENDO DIM (vague) INUENDO (sounds like INNUENDO, slur) for a passage of decreasing loudness
9 BLUEBIRD BLUE (dismal) + ins of R (resistance) in BID (attempt)
14 OFF-PUTTING Allusion to the field event, the shot put. I am also persuaded that Anonymous@1 has an equally elegant construction based on the game of golf. Both arrived at the same destination 🙂
16 HARDBACK HARD (difficult) BACK (person defending)
18 PSALTERY *(RaThEr PLAYS) for an ancient and medieval stringed instrument like the zither, played by plucking
21 ha deliberately omitted
23 EVITA Rev of NATIVE (citizen) minus N (name) for that musical made famous by Madonna
25 FRAY dd

Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

38 comments on “Times 25027 – Union Auxiliary”

  1. 14D’s sporting allusion is to the world of Jack Nicklaus rather than Geoff Capes. It’s PUTT [ golf “shot”] in OFFING [with “soon” = in the offing].
    1. I think Uncle Yap is right, as there’s no insertion marker, which is what your parsing would require.

      However, as I see it, the second, cryptic part of the clue is rather unsatisfactory, as if someone, say, Geoff Capes, were ‘off putting’, then a put (throw of the shot) is likely to occur soon, rather than the shot (spherical object) itself.

      Or am I missing something? Has been known to happen.

      1. I assume the question mark is the (cheeky) insertion indicator. A new variation on that old ploy of “overdrawn” = in the red = r***ed?
  3. 27 minutes for this, held up by my less than stellar scientific knowledge at 4dn and, in particular, 15 ac. As something of a fan of cryptic clues, I appreciated the ‘Pippa Middleton’ clue and the GASKET one, which took me back to our caravan holiday in the south of France when the Austin Maxi’s joint de culasse blew.

    I would generally spell 3 dn ‘rarified’, but note from Google that the version with an ‘e’ is perhaps more common. Last in LAWYERLY (I thought Perry Mason was a private dick rather than a lawyer – I’m of the generation for whom Raymond Burr was always Ironside) and FRAY.

    PSALTERY went straight in, as our concert last night included Peter Philips’ ‘O Beatum et Sacrosanctum Diem’, which features one (in Latin – at around 1’03”, if you listen carefully).

  4. Too many double and cryptic defs for my liking. I have no idea what’s going on with WATERFALL. Can anyone explain?

    I have sampled a PSALTERY and composed a piece with drums: “A Psaltery and a Battery”. Honest.

    1. Salmon leap, as in obstacle to be leaped over; force as in waterfall in northern England.
  5. I’m with anon on 14dn which I didn’t understand at the time, nor after reading the blog, but his (her?) explanation makes sense to me.

    Ulaca, Perry Mason was definitely a lawyer but you may be forgiven for thinking he was a detective by being misclued as such in a previous Times puzzle. I can’t find the original spat but it was referred to and the old coals were raked over again here http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/455417.html

    I still don’t understand ‘force in the north’ at 10ac and I had to guess ‘salmon leap’ was a WATERFALL which was the first of the clues that prevented me achieving a very rare excursion under the 15 minute barrier. The exact species of bird and the name of the vegetable also contributed to this and I ended up finishing on 20 minutes.

  6. Enjoyed the bridesmaid…well, not literally! I also enjoyed the ? in 14d. I guess it’s there because most golfers get the yips (sorry, Mr Yap) from time to time. 46m 50s, a fast time for me. Thanks for the explanations for 29ac and 27ac, Mr Yap. I do like a crossword where the clues that give you the most starting letters (in this case 1ac, 5ac, 14d) fall into place immediately and where the long clues due the same.
  7. Very quick for most of it, but came to a halt in the SE, where I too thought PM was a detective. Plus, I didn’t know LAW=canon. Or CHISELLER=cheat.

    WATERFALL=force came up not long ago, but I too didn’t get the salmon bit.

    Much easier than last two days, but, sadly, another DNF (without aids) for me.

  8. DNF.
    I had no idea what Perry Mason was like, other than a vague notion that he might be a private detective. Or possibly a doctor. I considered YERLY as an ending but I was too fixated on a clergyman to think of “law”.
    I got very close with PSALTERY, having correctly interpreted the wordplay. I dismissed it on the basis that RATHER and PAS (“oddly plays”) gave me too many letters. Muppet.
    Pretty steady solve up to that point. Nice to see some scientists for a change.
  9. Swift for me except for the last three, lawyerly, fray and bluebird; 17 minutes in all. A putt (golf)in (the) offing seems straightforward enough. In 4 the apostrophe+s most directly = is: Jeans is jeans. A far, far easier environment to breathe in than yesterday’s – that someone can do that twice as fast as I did this is, well, puzzling.
    1. You’re absolutely right, of course. The ‘s couldn’t stand for the main verb ‘has’, only for ‘has’ as in the operator in ‘has got’. As I said, very dim today!
  10. Still puzzled by reference to ‘a force in the north’ in WATERFALL. In today’s winds, maybe jimbo isn’t OFF PUTTING (or maybe, in a different sense, he is): his game of golf so often seems to precede settling down to the crossword. A welcome gentle exercise after yesterday.
      1. Thank you. Once I bothered to check my online OED, same definition was there. How dumb!
  11. 14 dn is clearly a reference to the golf shot, likely to occur soon because it is “In the offing.” A perfect clue, concise, accurate and witty…

    nice puzzle this one, and pleased to see mr Fahrenheit in evidence

  12. I tackled this after the office party and it took around an hour, including what the sports commentators would call a well-earned rest in the middle. The second definition of CHISELLER was new to me, and I’m not enamoured of the clue to 14, although I’m sure it’s a golf reference.

    Uncle Yap, you’ve got your rugby codes all mixed up in the notes to LEEK. Eddie Waring was a rugby league commentator and probably wouldn’t have known a leek if you’d hit him over the head with one. The game played in the land of the leeks is rugby union.

  13. 18 minutes, miffed by missing some of the word play in what I thought were dodgy definition clues: CHISELLER (no cheat), WATERFALL (missing bit of Northern vocab) and GASKET (didn’t really see the “angry” bit). Bad start too, as first in 1d went in as BEEF (cut, grouse, but sound-alike?). All that didn’t endear me to the cutesy BRIDESMAID, or TOLERABLE=mediocre, which didn’t seem a direct match (but is in CT). Tolerable has an up curve, mediocre down in my book. Try them in “we dined on a …. pheasant.” I know which I’d prefer.
    Liked the (otherwise egregious) Marple reference at 7, though I thought the whole point of the story was that Elspeth McGillicuddy travelled alone!
    Not really as grumpy as this looks, I hope. But at risk of offending other grumpees, my CoD goes to OFFPUTTING.
  14. 14 down – the insertion direction is subtle – ‘likely to occur soon’ = in the “offing”
  15. Managed 9 holes this morning before the wind increased to three club strength and you had to allow for it when on the greens. I suppose you could say it was off putting!

    Easy 15 minute puzzle and good to see dear old Fahrenheit and the probably less well known Jeans – two scientists in one puzzle – wow! Didn’t understand all that 4.50 from Paddington stuff but knew the left wing reference. Remember Perry as the lawyer of course and the lovely Della his PA

  16. A relatively easy ride after recent toughies. I thought BRIDESMAID (nice cryptic def plus &lit) and OFF-PUTTING were very good, though the latter was perhaps too easy to get from the def alone, which meant the clever wordplay rather went to waste. Thanks to all for the explanation of WATERFALL – this unusual meaning of “force” was completely unknown to me.
  17. 23:52 … made very heavy weather of this in a late night solve. It seems my stock of midnight oil is dwindling.

    I knew jimbo would be pleased – two scientists in one puzzle and nary a seventeenth century poet in sight. Or INCITE, even.

    I’m sure the juxtaposing of LAWYERLY and CHISELLER was an accident.

    Loved OFF-PUTTING and the surface of BRIDESMAID.

    4:50 From Paddington was the title of an Agatha Christie book which hinges around a kind of ‘strangers on a train’ scenario. Not entirely on point here but a diverting bit of nostalgia.

  18. 22:22, with the last 8 minutes (!) spent on the unfamiliar 8dn (DIMINUENDO).  I blame my cold.  Unknowns: CORN (13ac SWEETCORN), the eponymous FAHRENHEIT (15ac), and CHISELLER as a swindler (27ac).

    10ac is a pretty weak double definition, as both definitions lead to a WATERFALL in the same sense, and I don’t see how the second half of 28ac (“Blow that!” → GASKET) is supposed to work.

    Clue of the Day: the cheeky 14dn (OFF-PUTTING).

    1. ‘Blow that’ = one of the multitude of phrases (‘blow a gasket’, ‘blow a fuse’, ‘blow one’s top’, ‘blow one’s lid’, etc) indicating loss of temper, impatience or irritation with something.
      1. Well, yes, so it is, and I can see that e.g. “blow this in a huff” would work; but there’s no indication of irritation in the clue, and that’s what makes it problematic.  (I wouldn’t expect to find “Do that” indicating one of the multitude of things that one can do, either.)
  19. A 20 minute jaunt, not tough compared to yesterday’s. Nothing new to say, and I thought 14D was good and certainly derived from golf. As vinyl and Olivia have already said, sweet corn is 2 words over here. The greater puzzlement to me was how -CORN comes from a naval commander. My mind decided it must derive from ‘commanding officer, Royal Navy’, or some such, but I admit I made that up to convince myself I’d solved this. LOI was LAWYERLY, no problem with Perry, just that I really went top to bottom, left to right through this and he was last. COD to the BRIDESMAID. Regards to all.
  20. Somehow didn’t get LAWYERLY. That clue bugged me from the start; I was trying to justify ATTORNEY before I had any letters.
  21. 6:00 for me, but I’d have been faster if I hadn’t been trying for a clean sweep, which failed when I became stuck on the easy CHISELLER – though even if I’d got that, I’d probably have been sunk by LAWYERLY, which took me several seconds as my LOI.

    A nice puzzle (made all the better by noting that young Thakkar made heavy weather of it ;-).

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