Times 25042

linxit26th December 2011 at 11:40 PM10 September 2025Daily Cryptic

Posting on behalf of mctext, who pulled out all the stops to send me this before going away for a few days. Unfortunately I’m only now able to post it, but better late than never!

Solving time: 38:59.

Across
1 C(ONT,R)APTION. CAPTION (legend), containing an anagram of NOT + R.
7 HU{s}H.
9 O(CC)UP,AN,CY. OUP — Oxford University Press — are the publishers.
10 G,RUMP. ‘Behind’ looks like a placement instruction; but it’s not.
11 OP,OS,SUM.
12 LARCENY. Anagram of ‘nearly’ & C (caught). The indicator is ‘criminal’.
13 FUDGE. Two defs.
15 HACK,AMORE. Didn’t know this word and certainly not that it may be a corruption of the Spanish jaquima, ‘halter’.
17 CHARACTER. Two defs.
19 TUT,T,I. King Tut is the reference. Makes a change from K (unlikely) and R (possible)?
20 HEAR OUT = HE,A,ROUT.
22 UNI,FORM.
24 U,NIT,Y. U{nwind}; TIN (can) reversed; middle of ‘honeYmoon’.
25 E,N(CHIL)ADA. E (English); CHIL{e} inside NADA (nothing, zero, nix).
27 Omitted. It’s not Ely.
28 EUP(HEM)ISTIC. HEM (margin) inside an anagram of ‘cup tie is’.

Down
1 Omitted. Carbon dioxide?
2 NACHO. Initial letters of ‘Neat Almost Catching Hole Others’. One to go with the whole 25ac?
3 RI(POST)E. The wrapper is RIE{sling}.
4 PANAMA HAT.PAN (criticise) A MAHAT{ma}.
5 IDY,LL. {t}IDY (considerable; as in ‘tidy sum’) & two Lengths.
6 NIGERIA. Reverse of A1 REGIN{a}.
7 HO(USE)BO,AT. Hobo in the sense of an itinerant worker (Chambers: esp. unskilled).
8 HAPPY MEDIUM. Ref to The Seven Dwarfs. Also: ‘I see a tall, dark, handsome man. Ho ho ho’.
11 OFFICE HOURS. Anagram of ‘for us chief’ after 0. Though I got there by wrongly thinking ‘for us’ = OURS.
14 DRAMATISE. Anagram: smart idea.
16 CAR,B,UNCLE.
18 A,COL,YTE. COL (pass) and anagram of ‘yet’.
19 TBILISI. This is IS IT containing LIB{eral Party). Capital of Georgia.
21 TW,ERP. Reversal of PRE and WT for ‘weight’.
23 OP ART = O PART.
26 ARC. Middlemarch.

11 comments on “Times 25042”

tony_sever says:

26 December 2011 at 11:52 PM

12:40 for me. I made rather heavy weather of this one, having difficulty finding the setter’s wavelength. Some nice clues though.

I think 24ac should be “(TIN (can) + U{nwind}) reversed; …” – assuming you have the same clue as I do.
1. mctext says:
  
  27 December 2011 at 4:16 AM
  
  Tony, indeed you’re right. Rushing a bit, I looked at the clue above by mistake. Will ask linxit to fix it.
  
  On edit: Thanks to linxit for the change.
  
  Edited at 2011-12-27 06:59 pm (UTC)
  1. tony_sever says:
    
    28 December 2011 at 12:03 AM
    
    It’s still not quite right, but I’m past caring!
jackkt says:

27 December 2011 at 12:26 AM

This was a disaster for me as I just couldn’t get onto the setter’s wavelength. I certainly didn’t know HACKAMORE and am reluctant to admit that I don’t remember meeting NADA previously – I thought of ENCHILADA on first reading the clue at 25ac but couldn’t make sense of the wordplay so it was amongst the last I entered in the grid.

I wasted ages in the SE having written in HEM at 26dn and then rejecting the idea of HEM for ‘margin’ at 28ac because a setter would be unlikely to use the same word twice in the same quarter of the same puzzle.

I’m hoping for better things today.
falooker says:

27 December 2011 at 12:34 AM

Looking back at this I can’t see why it took so long. Maybe all the eating and drinking on Christmas day. I wasn’t stuck on any particular clue, and knew all the vocabulary. Lurched home in 47 minutes. Quite enjoyable, though.
ulaca says:

27 December 2011 at 3:22 AM

85 minutes, but done online as the office was occupied with seasonal visitors so unable to get to the printer! Poor excuse, but a good puzzle. Last in EUPHEMISTIC, after being held up in the SE by the panic that set in with an F&B item. This one I actually knew, but the damage had been done!

Held up early doors by considering ‘cor’ for ‘well I never’ at 1dn, unconvinced I’d ever heard of COO in this particular usage.
joekobi says:

27 December 2011 at 8:04 AM

Coo maybe dates from old Beano/Dandy usage and times; anyway a little before cor perhaps, but certainly part of my surprise vocabulary though I won’t have used it for a goodly age. 28 minutes with the last five desperately extricating myself from Tripoli and a doubtful-looking encholada, which I remembered to go back to. Quite a tough little number to sink one’s teeth into after the carnival.
vinyl1 says:

27 December 2011 at 6:45 PM

…and am catching up on puzzles. As an interested party, I thought I’d tackle this one first.

Most of it was not that difficult, but the SE was tough. I put in ‘enchilada’ with no understanding, thinking it had something to do with ‘nil’. I didn’t understand ‘unity’ at all, because there is no reversal or insertion indicator for the backwards ‘tin’, and I am still not much the wiser.

Thanks for the blog, McT. I think you’ll be relieved to become a fortnightly blogger, it’s much less stressful.
1. JerryW says:
  
  27 December 2011 at 11:38 PM
  
  Take it in order.. “One” is the def. “can start to unwind about” = TIN + U about ie reversed. Then “halfway through honeymoon” = Y. It does work! Tight construction..
  
  I like the edit facility we have now.. typo fixed!
  
  Edited at 2011-12-27 11:39 pm (UTC)
  1. vinyl1 says:
    
    27 December 2011 at 11:42 PM
    
    Ah, I now realize that ‘y’ is exactly in the middle of ‘honeymoon’, that was my blind spot.
daveperry says:

3 January 2012 at 1:22 PM

1:18:38 according to the timer. I started it over Christmas but it was late and I may have over-imbibed. When I came back to it today in a more usual environment, I rattled off the last dozen or so clues in about 10 minutes. Better late than never!

Comments are closed.