Times 25032: Chin-chin!

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 36:12

Another Finals puzzle (No.1, I’m told) and I hope there’ll be a further analysis from Mark G. (via linxit) to go with my bare-bones blog. I tried doing this under competition conditions: bare desk, stopwatch and pencil only; no dictionary. Nowhere near as difficult as last week’s (No. 2) but I still couldn’t turn in a decent time. Still, I thought this was a good puzzle.

Brief blog news: in the new year I’ll be alternating Wednesdays with [info]jerrywh.

Across
 1 P(HARM)ACY. Sadly, no pharmacy has a remedy for my lack of pace.
 5 K(NIGH)T. First and last letters of ‘KepT’ inc NIGH (near). The def is ‘man’, as in chess; the only context I know — barring Mardi Gras — where the queen is also a man.
10 R,E,BUS. The BUS is the one you catch; after the last letters of ‘neaR’ and ‘impossiblE’. (A neat cruciverbal self-reference on the surface.)
11 L(I,ME W)ATER. I MEW (I cry) inside LATER (subsequent). The def, by another twist of self-reference, is ‘solution’.
12 I,N E(ARNE)ST. A martin (bird) has its home in a NEST. Thomas ARNE is, as often, our composer. Rule Britannia!
13 O,SCAR. Chicago, here, is the 2002 film which won six Oscars. And we need 0 plus SCARface.
14 N,I(COS)I,A. N & A (North America); two Is (islands) wrapping another: COS, in the Aegean.
16 Y,ARROW. The Y from ‘comfreY’ and the sharp object is an ARROW.
18 MANQUÉ. That is: unfulfilled. MAN (individual) and QUitE. The deleted ‘it’ is our old friend ‘sex appeal’.
20 BAT,I(ST)E. The one bit of vocab I didn’t know. But the clue hands it to us. Out with the golf bats and cricket clubs? Though I guess the verb forms are OK.
22 ENNU,I. We get the first four letters from ‘gUNNEr’ reversed. Hence: difficult without crossing letters … at least for me.
23 TOODLE-PIP. The def is ‘I’m going’. Then: TO (from the clue); delete the O from DoLE; stick that and PI (good) inside OP (work). Whew!
25 C(RACK)LING. RACK (of lamb) inside CLING (stick). Got this from the def: unlike most in this puzzle.
26 INNIT. Common way of saying ‘isn’t it?’ And you have to be IN IT (hom) to win it.
27 MALAYA. Reverse of AY (always, poetic), A, LAM (hit). (And so ‘Malayalam’ must be a palindrome — one for Uncle Yap?)
28 GROGSHOP. Change the first letter of ‘frogs hop’. Australian for an off licence; but here, presumably, a place where you can also drink the stuff (def 1).
Down
 1 PE(R[S]IA)NS. The S from ‘Stretch’ in an anagram of AIR. PENS (cages) is the appropriate container.
 2 A(M)BLE. The easiest of the bunch perhaps?
 3 MISTRESS QUICKLY. This is ‘I stress quickly’ with an initial M from the Scottish play. The keeper of a grogshop, Will must have liked her because she appears in no fewer than four of his plays.
 4 C,ALDER,A. Only know the word from these puzzles.
 6 NOW YOURE TALKING. Anagram of first three words of the clue.
 7 GET ACROSS. Anagram of ‘gate’ & CROSS (bridge, the verb).
 8 TORERO. Reverse inclusive / hidden answer.
 9 S(MUTT)Y. The container is from ‘SmellY’ and ‘kennels’ tells us to put it there. (We’ve discussed kennelling before.)
15 CH(A)IN MAIL. Another from the def. CHIN is the feature & a homophone for ‘male’.
17 KEEP IT UP. Reversal of PUT I PEEK. (I occasionally wonder where heaven might be. Now I know. It’s TORERO.)
19 ENTAIL. Anagram of ‘tag line’ minus the G.
20 B,LOGGER. I always wanted to be a modern writer. Thanks setter!
21 WEBCAM. W for ‘wife’; MACE for the royal thingy; B from ‘Balmoral’.
24 PUNCH. Two defs.

Toodle-pip! I’m off to the grogshop to buy ingredients for punch.

33 comments on “Times 25032: Chin-chin!”

  1. I found this very difficult, and staggered over the Did Not Finish line in around two hours, having to cheat for TORERO. D’oh! Also managed to get 28ac wrong, putting ‘frogshop’. Double d’oh!

    Very good puzzle, I thought, even if it was a ‘cross’ too far for me. COD to TOODLE-PIP, which I didn’t manage to parse fully, so thanks to McT for that, and indeed for all his, and the other bloggers’, great work. It goes not unappreciated.

  2. Definitely another puzzle of two halves for me. I completed the whole of the LH + BLOGGER slowly but steadily in 26 minutes and then ground to a complete halt. In the next 28 minutes I solved only one clue,YARROW at 16ac. LIME WATER at 11ac got me started again and I took another 24 minutes to complete the grid.

    An excellent puzzle which I was pleased to finish without resort to aids although it was a near thing at one time.

    I wonder about “royal staff” = “mace” as I can’t find “royal” in the definition of “mace”in any of the usual sources. A mace is ceremonial rather than necessarily royal but when it’s royal it’s a “sceptre”.

      1. Yes, point taken, but perhaps I didn’t express my thought quite as I intended. The fact that the word ‘royal’ is added to its name suggests that ‘mace’ alone doesn’t include “royalness” and that’s why I pencilled an admittedly very faint question mark at the side of the clue. It would be the height of nit-picking and possibly wrong anyway to make a deal of this but it’s sometimes interesting to exchange views on thoughts that occur in the solving process.

        1. Agreed on all of that. As for nit-picking, I was seriously considering querying (22ac) “soldier” => GUNNER, as there are naval, air force, etc. gunners: so (part) DBE.
          1. I missed that one but you’re quite right and ‘servicemen’ could have avoided this. I have sympathy with the setters though, trying pick their way through so many minefields.
            1. Gunner is a rank in the Army; in the other Services it is only used as a job title. Similarly we often get OR to mean Men – used in the Army while in the Navy Men would be Ratings.
              1. Chambers has both “a private in the artillery” and “a branch officer in charge of naval ordnance”.
      2. I got no further than [orb and] ‘sceptre’, left the clue with a question mark and only found out the true parsing when coming here.
  3. I’d estimate I took around 20 minutes for this one on Championship day, as I finished it just a few minutes before Mark put his hand up. Definitely the easiest of the three for me.
    1. So the middle-difficulty puzzle is yet to come? 25038 next Wednesday perhaps? Will you post Mark’s analysis of today’s? I hope so.
    2. I’d love to think it took 20 minutes on the day – I’d be within shouting distance! Around 7, as in your most excellent account above is more believable, if still in current parlance incredible, innit.
  4. Very much my sort of puzzle with clear concise wordplays and clever disguised definitions. I didn’t find it difficult and worked my way steadily home in just over 20 minutes. Amongst many excellent clues I thought TOODLE-PIP stood out as really first class. As ever I suspect that doing it under test conditions would be considerably harder.
  5. I did this on the day (watching, not taking part in the Grand final!) and also thought it the easisest of the three. It didn’t take long to do it again this morning.. I couldn’t actually remember the workings of a single clue, but several of the answers (especially te longones – 3dn, 6d did look familiar..
  6. 25 minutes on a puzzle clearly designed with booby traps all over the place for speed solvers. I initially had UNIQUE at 18, since I had the Q already and saw “unfulfilled individual” = UNI(t), without wondering where the definition was. I had B something at 20, saw “club” and entered BRASSIE. My left half was otherwise smooth and uneventful, but the right very sticky, starting with a misprinted CADDERA at 4 making the otherwise easy LIME-WATER impossible. I had also convinced myself that the anagram at 6 started NEW… Last in was TORERO, the moral of the story being that if you’re staring at a clue with really weird parsing, and there hasn’t been one yet, it’s probably a hidden. Took too long to twig. YARROW had me scratching around for something that means comfrey following pin or equivalent.
    All that aside, what an odd mix of the nostalgic and determinedly modern with TOODLE PIP and INNIT in close proximity, WEBCAM and BLOGGER rubbing shoulders with LIME-WATER and SMUTTY
    CoD to the excellent anagram and surface at 6.
  7. Having grumbled about some of the previous championship puzzles, I thought this was a beauty with some brilliantly concealed definitions. Happy to finish in 72 mInutes, with everything understood on the way apart from the borderless retreating soldier. I’ll be surprised if anyone got that from the cryptic.

    Well done again, mctext, the end is in sight. It’ll be all over by Christmas.

  8. Thank you mctext, excellent blog as always for an excellent puzzle … thank you, anonymous setter.
    I slogged for nearly an hour to nail this. By a strange co-incidence, there was a clue in the Independent for MALAYSIA in addition to the earlier name of MALAYA (at 27Across) before Sabah and Sarawak joined.
    Nice to think that I completely solved this which defeated 5 out of the 24 finalists … alas my 50+ minutes is nothing to shout about. Uncle Yap is unlike to pose a threat to Mark Goodliffe and company any time soon 🙂
  9. Tough but fair puzzle, with many clues that combined cleverly disguised definitions with ingenious wordplay, of which (I agree with others above) TOODLE-PIP was the stand-out example.

  10. 25:18 .. very nice stuff.

    Main hold-ups for me were NOW YOU’RE TALKING and KNIGHT.

    Only real unknown was BATISTE, which eventually solved itself.

    Lovely mix of old and new vocab. COD’s got to be TOODLE-PIP, innit?

  11. Fun puzzle, 20 minutes to complete, laughed at GROGSHOP. Surprise to be held up by TORERO for as long as I was – that’s a really terrific hidden word clue.

    KEEP IT UP from definition, BATISTE from wordplay.

    Eerie twlight zone moment – I was doing this while listening to a morning sports talk show on the radio, and within a second of me writing in NOW YOU’RE TALKING, both hosts said it in quick succession!

  12. A bit of a struggle. Started with 1a and sort of worked round the clock, finishing with 1d. Several times I was tempted to give up but got there in the end. An enjoyable 56 minutes.
  13. 40 minutes in a cramped train…and (as ulaca) left with frogshop at the end so a dnf. A very sharp and enjoyable puzzle without being a gut-wrencher.
  14. Finished in 108 minutes, but with ONCER put in as a guess in place of OSCAR. Still, it shows that perseverance can pay off, after only having four answers in the first half hour.

    ENTAIL brings to mind the quote from “The Glums”.

    Vicar: Do you understand what your being married entails?

    Ron : No, I understood what I was being married in my brown suit.

  15. 27 minutes but another who went with ONCER out of sheer inability to think of anything else to fill the gaps (Chicago as film simply didn’t register in my thinking at all). A perfectly fair test (even if I failed it), but like a proper finals puzzle, requiring thought at every step – hardly anything that could be written in at first glance just from definition or word lengths or general instinct.

  16. Found this really tough, but was pleased to finish eventually with full understanding of all…except one, and that one was ‘frogshop’.

    Again, I hadn’t noticed it was a championship one until I came here!

  17. This took me about 40 minutes, held up in the SE area for a long time, and finally ending with KEEP IT UP, which was the only wordplay that I didn’t understand. Thanks for that, McText. Ironically, the very complex TOODLE-PIP was the one I finally solved that opened the door for the others. Pleased to be all correct, but my time proves I don’t belong in any speed competitions. My impression, though, was that this is a very clever and devious puzzle, and not at all easy to blow through in the Finals setting. Very well done to the 19 of 24 competitors, and to the setter also. Regards.
  18. Initally entered ‘rubic’ as the ‘near impossible puzzle’ and never got further than ‘frogshop’ for ‘watering hole’. Enjoyable challenge; pleased to have got as far as I did, even if ultimately a DNF (or perhaps more accurately a DNGIAR – did not get it all right). Thanks for the blog, mctext. Now off to read Mark’s notes.
  19. 15 minutes.
    Long day, so late solve and post. Clearly I found this easier than most for some reason. It helped that some of the more arcane vocabulary (CALDERA, BATISTE) was familiar from crosswords past, although I didn’t know YARROW.
    I thought this was a great puzzle. Far more was constructed from wordplay than bunged in from definition, which is a mark of quality and great enjoyment. Thanks setter.
  20. About 10:30 on the day, getting me off to a decent start with just the sort of puzzle I like. (After that things went downhill rapidly!)
  21. Wonderful puzzle, wonderful enough that I almost didn’t dare attempt the solution. But after a slow start, I continued slowly, but managed to finish in 48 minutes. Unfortunately, like Janie and martinfred, I went for ‘frogshop’; thinking maybe there’s a word ‘frogs-hop’ in britspeak. No such luck.
  22. No-one else seems to have mentioned it, I thought 8 dn was a brilliant &lit and COD: the TORERO impaled by the herbivore and rotated skywards.

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