Times 25,037

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18:59 on the Club timer, following a festive night out in the West End with old friends, and a long journey home. In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree wasn’t the only thing which was lit up, which may have affected my solving time adversely.

Across
1 MINIBUS – MINI(=car) + SUB(rev).
5 POETESS – Edgar Allan POE (that face looks familiar from the comments section…) + TESS Durbeyfield. Emily Dickinson wrote a lot of poems.
9 MOUSEHOLE – Mickey being the best known mouse, and the whole being a Spoonerised version of HOUSE MOLE.
10 ULTRA – LieutenanT in [U + R.A.].
11 LAIRD – spaghettI in LARD.
12 EASTERNER – Ecstasy + A STERNER.
14 CHARACTERISTIC – CHARACTER (=role) + 1 + STICk.
17 REPRESENTATION – RESENT in [REP + (INTOA)*].
21 LABYRINTH – (TINYBAR)* in L.H.; a classical labyrinth differs from a maze in having only one way in and out of the centre, trivia fans.
23 REVUE – REVerend + University + Enchanted.
24 ISLET – i.e IS LET = is rented.
25 GRUB SCREW – [RUB + Special Constable] in GREW. Rub as in Hamlet’s “Ay, there’s the rub”. Apparently referred to as a “set screw” elsewhere in the world.
26 GAMBOGE – BOG in GAME. A yellow colour, and one of those words which crops up far more often in crosswords than real life, lately here and in the 2009 Championship.
27 DESCENT =”DISSENT”.
 
Down
1 MUMBLE – Mutter + ‘UMBLE, ‘umbleness being the defining characteristic of the Dickens character.
2 NOURISH – [Old UR] in North IS Hard .
3 BREAD TREE – (A RED BERET)*.
4 SMOKESCREEN – [MOKES + CouncilloR] in SEEN. The donkey nickname will be familiar to anyone who remembers another car linked to 1 across, of course.
5 PIE – double def.; a (printer’s) pie is a confused mass of type.
6 ELUDE – prELUDE.
7 EXTINCT – EX + [C in TINT].
8 SHAMROCK – [AMerican Republican] in SHOCK.
13 SLEUTH HOUND – (THEUNSHOULD)*.
15 INTERESTS – (INSTREETS)*.
16 GRILLING – double def.
18 PABULUM – hArBoUr in PLUM.
19 OBVERSE – Old Boy + VERSE.
20 PEEWIT – (WEE)rev. in PIT, aka the Northern lapwing.
22 RATIO – hoRATIO minus the HOuse. The friend who is addressed in such speeches as “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio etc. etc.”
25 GEE – GrEtEl.

Season’s greetings to all who frequent these parts, and see you in 2012.

24 comments on “Times 25,037”

  1. 33 minutes, with ISLET last in in a relatively tricky SW corner. Both of the long acrosses proved resistant, while PIE in the printers sense was new to me. As was GRUB SCREW (I was working around ‘glue’ for a while), GAMBOGE and PABULUM, although the latter rings a faint bell.
  2. An enjoyable, essentially straightforward, 30 minutes, slowed by carelessly entering ‘evade’ for ELUDE (memo to me: read whole clue and don’t assume reference to ‘first couple’ means EVE must be part of answer). PABULUM and GAMBOGE unknown but very gettable from very fair wordplay. Thanks, tim, for the blog.
  3. Ah…like a fool went for pye, mistaking the ‘say’ in the clue. A slow 29 minutes though most went in fast. I like the flak. I seem to detect a le Carre atmosphere in some clues and answers today. Maybe just because I’m re-reading ‘Absolute Friends’ – better than remembered.
  4. My heart leapt with gladness as I saw Grid #4 run off the printer. My favourite … with all the long clues a key to a quick solve. Only thing I couldn’t work out was RE(pre)SENT,ATION until I realised I had the wrong parsing. PABULUM, as with others, an unknown but the cyptic hands it to us on a plate.

    Oh … and also wondered if there might be a BEARD TREE (3dn). Too much Tolkien?

    COD to MOUSEHOLE. Any mention of the good doctor always sucks me in.

  5. 21 minutes, but with frequent interruptions – must remember to find a quieter corner.
    For some reason (probably the steady trickle of exiting marbles) I stared at BREAD followed by an anagram of TEER for much to long, and the crossing 14 looked so much like a cutesy cryptic definition that I needed almost all its checkers before entry. 25’s “fixer” with G_U_ in place practically insisted on GLUE something. I’d like to think I’d have been quicker with the adrenalin running.
    CoD to MOUSEHOLE – I’m another who can’t resist the good reverend’s whimsy, especially when it’s a decent one.
  6. 14 minutes, so on the easier side for me in spite of a fairly aggressive hangover and several unknowns: the screw, the pigment, the tree, the confused type, the food, the fabric.
    OBVERSE was clued in a very similar manner in the last Mephisto but one.
  7. Another 20 minute amble through a number of old literary chestnuts (Hardy girl, American writer, Emily Dickinson, Uriah Heep, Horatio – all knee jerk stuff). No stand out clues.

    There used to be a rather good restaurant in Fleet Street called The Printer’s Pie – which is how I remember the spelling! Off to see Sotira now.

  8. Same experience (though longer time) than others: GAMBOGE, PABULUM and (printer’s) PIE all unknown. I too tried to work out why PRE was material, till I sussed the parsing. However, unlike McT, I’m not a fan of the long worded grids, I always seem to be held up by multisyllabic words (simple soul, me!). As it was, I took an age to get SMOKESCREEN, my LOI, as I’d forgotten that word for donkey.

    Cod: MOUSEHOLE for raising a smile.

  9. Made it in 17 minutes and managed to avoid the 2 traps for the unwary in 5d and 27a. Thanks for the nostalgic reminder of the Printer’s Pie in Fleet Street Jimbo. Takes me back to Lincoln’s Inn days in another life.
  10. It’s all been said above. Straightforward and would have been more so if I hadn’t inexplicably entered BEARD TREE, instead of BREAD TREE, at 3dn, which complicated the search for a solution to 9ac. Once that error rectified, MOUSEHOLE (to which I add my vote for COD) was soon spotted. Certainly one of the better Spoonerisms. Despite 34 years in the newspaper business I’d never heard of a printer’s pie, so thanks for the explanations. The Times was never physically located in Fleet Street, so I also never knew the restaurant of that name. The things one learns on this blog!
  11. Fell for the PIE trap thinking it must be a homophone clue and putting in PYE, not knowing the term. There’s always next year
  12. A nice easy one today – 2o minutes. Are the puzzles less challenging in the week before Christmas because more non-regular solvers might be tackling them? What might this mean for the week after Christmas?

    Darryl

  13. 28.46 here with most answers flying in until the propeller fell off in the SW corner. GAMBOGE and PABULUM both took some working out but had spoonerism more or less straight off. My COD to POETESS for getting three literary allusions into one clue!
  14. 11:35 with a silly typo – SNOKESCREEN. The POETESS was the only significant hold-up.

    I usually wince when I see a mention of Spooner but MOUSEHOLE’s a good one (as long as you’re not from Cornwall where it wouldn’t work at all).

  15. 15:12 here. POETESS first in, SMOKESCREEN last as I couldn’t think of anything to fit S?O?E?C?E?N at first. Had to work out PABULUM from wordplay but everything else was familiar.
  16. I can’t think of anything to say about the crossword, at least that Jimbo hasn’t said already. So instead, I wish to have a moan about dictionaries. I ordered one of the new Chambers Dictionaries, 12th Ed., but I would not recommend it to anyone who can manage without it. The layout and format have changed in several important ways. First, it has grey and black bits dotted throughout for no reason that I can find. They distract, and draw the eye but if they serve any useful purpose it is a mystery to me what it may be.. there is a section “Using the dictionary” but it contains no example, even though this is a new feature.
    Second, a 64 page section in the middle of the dictionary is called “the word lover’s miscellany” and contains such bizarre items as “52 words that don’t impress” or “30 words to cherish” .. apparently “zarf” is one we should cherish, but “task” and “offer” don’t impress.. and seven close-column pages, no less, of “anagram indicators” such as do, fit, ill.. – I ask you! This used to be a serious work of reference.
    Third, the christian names section has completely disappeared, presumably to make room for all this guff. Mephisto compilers, please note. Apparently wine bottle sizes and wedding anniversaries are more indispensable than christian names.
    It is only two years since the previous edition and I suggest that if you want a new dictionary you buy the 11th ed., or better still perhaps the COD. Chambers seem to be just cashing in.

  17. Flew through in 15 minutes, but I also was fooled into trying PYE instead of PIE, based on the ‘say’. However, a post solve lookup led me to believe that PIE and PYE are somewhat interchangable for the printer’s pile of type, so maybe it’s a toss up. Got to all the unfamiliar words via the wordplay which was quite clear. Regards.
  18. As I was about to say…

    …but actually it was so long ago I have almost forgotten. I was on TftT this morning before the blog was up and then every internet line going through my local BT exchange went down and remained so for 14 hours.

    I needed 37 minutes to solve this. I didn’t know GAMBOGE or PABULUM nor understand PIE. From the wordplay, how is 23 REV+U+E and not REV+E+U?

    I was thinking of buying a new Chambers but am now off the idea after reading Jerry’s comments, though actually I hate the layout of my existing ancient copy when compared with the clean lines of Collins and COED.

  19. 23 is REVUE because it’s rev + e{nchanted} by u, and ‘by’ doesn’t tell you which one comes first.

    Am also put off the new Chambers. Unfortunately Azed will be using it come January so I’ll have to bite the bullet I suppose.

  20. Well, I’m glad everyone seems to have found it easy, because I needed an hour and forty minutes and was surprised I had everything right. GRUB SCREW was my last in, based only on the wordplay and nearly missing that (GNUT SCREW? with a hard NUT to crack? But Shakespeare seemed more likely in the end). I also didn’t know GAMBOGE (although I must have seen it here before), MOKES for the donkey, and I couldn’t quite parse REPRESENTATION and CHARACTERISTIC. ELUDE started off as ENTRÉ (for overture?), changing to EVADE (with EVE around AD[AM]) and finally settling down to ELUDE, fortunately. But as I said, I’m glad you all thought it was easy!
  21. 8:00 for me. Like others I wasted time trying to make EVADE out of Adam and Eve for 6dn. Some nice clues.
  22. 22′. Not tempted by ‘pye’, since I’d barely remembered ‘pie’ as a type face. I had to look hard at the clue for 27ac before finally convincing myself I had made the right choice. I found this more enjoyable than, say, Jimbo did, but mainly because I was able to do it so fast.

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