Times 25054 – Vodka!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 40 minutes

Music: None, golf is back on TV

If I wasn’t today’s blogger, I would have probably have just watched the golf and done the puzzle tomorrow. As it was, I entered an answer,
watched a shot, entered another answer…..and with three to go after 25 minutes, got most thoroughly stuck. I just could not remember that @($^)# agouti, and I was firmly convinced that 15 must end in ‘-ed’.

This is really quite an easy puzzle for the most part, but there are just a few crossword words like ‘taiga’, ‘secco’, and the elusive rodent that might trip up the unwary beginner. My time probably should have been much better, but I get into trouble by reading too much into the clues.

Across
1 WARSAW, WAR + SAW, my first in, I thought this was going to be really easy.
4 ALCOHOL, AL(COHO)L.
9 SECCO, S[mall] + sounds like ECHO. The cryptic indicates the correct spelling for those unfamliar with the word – it’s not ‘secho’, and there’s no ‘k’ in Italian.
10 UNIVERSAL, anagram of VALUERS IN. A good anagram, hard to get a grip on.
11 COUNTDOWN, COUNT[y] DOWN. I did not realize Down was in Ulster. Most crossword references to this county do not require that you know where it is actually located.
12 ISAAC, ISA + AC, where an ISA is the UK equivalent of an IRA.
13 Omitted!
14 MIND READER, MIN(DREAD)ER.
18 KENTE CLOTH, KENT + EC + LOTH. If you’ve never heard of it, the cryptic should give it to you.
20 CHIC, CHIC[k]. Hard to lift and separate; I had trouble thinking of an elegant young woman as a ‘chick’ even when I realized ‘elegant’ is just the literal.
23 LAGER, REGAL backwards. I think we should wait a month or two before re-using a clue.
24 MINOR SUIT, double definition.
25 TO THE HILT, TO (T[rust] HE) HILT. A trickier cryptic than it looks at first, if you expect the first letter of ‘trust’ to represent the first letter of the answer.
26 TAIGA, hidden word in [Mal]TA I GA[ther]. Easy enough if you have a solver’s vocabulary.
27 OVERSEE, OVER + SEE. Nearly omitted.
28 Omitted.
 
Down
1 WISECRACK, WISE + CRACK. This gave me an amazing amount of trouble for such an easy clue.
2 RECLUSE, RE + anagam of CLUES.
3 AGOUTI, A + GOUT + I[ncapacitate]
4 ALIEN, A(LIE)N. Again, strangely difficult for me.
5 CLERIHEW, CLERI[c] + HEW. Another repeat of a recently-used clue.
6 HUSBAND, H[uge] US BAND, where ‘make careful use of’ is the semi-deceptive literal. In these puzzles, we make careful use of everything.
7 LILAC, CAL(I)L upside down.
8 TUTORIAL, TUT + OR(I)AL.
15 DETONATE, D(ETON)ATE. A rather easy clue that had me baffled for a long time.
16 RACETRACK, RACE + TRACK. My brother would have gotten this right away, he is a big Formula 1 fan and knows where the racetracks are…..but I don’t.
17 TERRIERS, T(ERR)IERS, another well-known clue, but not used recently.
19 NIGHTIE, anagram of THING + I.E., a highly non-deceptive &lit.
21 HOUDINI, sounds like WHO + D[ied] IN I.
22 WRETCH, W[ith] + RETCH.
23 LOTTO, L + OTTO. I suspect that both ‘house’ and ‘lotto’ are related gambling games, but I have come up blank in my research. I may need a UK dictionary I don’t have a copy of.
24 MAIZE, MA(I)ZE, what those strange people in remote countries call corn.

26 comments on “Times 25054 – Vodka!”

  1. According to Oxford online, house is a ‘British old-fashioned term for bingo’. It’s better known to anyone who’s stayed at Butlin’s as what a player needs to shout when (s)he has a full card to be sure of winning that goldfish in a clear plastic bag.

    According to wikipedia, ‘Bingo originates from the Italian lottery, Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia’ and I imagine some dictionaries have ‘lotto’ as an alternative for ‘bingo’.

  2. 23 minutes for this gentle start to the week, especially welcome after yesterday’s Mayer Monster – still unfinished despite multiple cheats – with a ritardando towards the end, as the three unknowns, KENTE CLOTH, SECCO, and AGOUTI fell in that order. Vaguely recalled the salmon, but only after the answer had gone in on the literal. The ‘to handle’ bit, where part of the wordplay is also part of the answer, was the only other trouble spot, but this was resolved when LOTTO fell.
  3. Most answers from the literals. But COD has to go to NIGHTIE for sheer cheek!

    24ac: a double def? Or a charade (little=MINOR) (action=SUIT) + def?

    Edited at 2012-01-09 05:17 am (UTC)

  4. 23 minutes; for me, the easiest puzzle for some time, despite not knowing KENTE CLOTH, SECCO, the significance to the racing fraternity of Spa and, of course, failing yet again to bring that rodent immediately to mind, except knowing that it begins with an A and ends in I and has a OO sound in the middle – I find that sufficient for most purposes. COD to RECLUSE – story of my life.
  5. 34 minutes which was disappointing considering I solved 1ac whilst still printing the puzzle. I took a while to get properly going after entering odd words here and there around the grid for a while.

    I didn’t understand the Spa reference and KENTE CLOTH was new to me. The SW was the last to fall with LOTTO and TO THE HILT causing me a few problems. None of the usual sources supports house/LOTTO (they have housey-housey, which I knew) but it’s in SOED so that’s good enough for me. It also has house/tombola, for future reference.

    I doubt that 11ac is intentional but retired word-lovers such as myself will be looking forward to the return of COUNTDOWN this afternoon with a new presenter (Nick Hewer) who hopefully will not bring up soccer and other sports at every turn and constantly suck air through his teeth as his predecessor used to. Thankfully Suzie and the lovely Rachel survive unscathed in the relaunch. I am awaiting delivery of the Oxford Dictionary of English as used in Dictionary Corner so that in future I can verify the words I come up with that aren’t mentioned on the programme. Over the years I have gained the impression that it excludes rather a lot of commonplace words and derivatives that are in Collins and/or Chambers.

    Edited at 2012-01-09 07:07 am (UTC)

  6. Remarkably straightforward sub-20 minute solve! Fortunately KENTE CLOTH was clearly signposted by the wordplay; TAIGA would have been unknown except that, within the last week, I had been browsing through a book of Times 2004-05 crosswords where it cropped up. HOUSE (tombola, housey-housey, lotto, bingo) was so well-known from younger days that it never occurred to me that it might need to be checked.
  7. …and that one was CLERIHEW, where I guessed at ‘credited’, having convinced myself that it had to end in ‘-edited’. I’m sure that word’s come up before since I’ve been doing the crossword, but it seems not to have lodged itself as well as some others…

    No problem with AGOUTI (thanks to a recent holiday in Tobago), but COHO, SECCO and KENTE CLOTH, were all unknowns.

    Couldn’t parse TO THE HILT, nor ALIEN, so thanks for those explanations.

    PS Yes, I too found yesterday’s ultra difficult, and managed to fill in only a handful before turning to solvers…

  8. 9 minutes here, so very straightforward in spite of quite a few quite obscure terms. KENTE CLOTH and Spa were the only complete unknowns, but SECCO, COHO, AGOUTI, and CLERIHEW were bits of crossword vocabulary that did not spring easily to mind without checkers.
    TAIGA is now very familiar after a couple of recent outings, one of which generated quite a lot of discussion. This forum is very good for lodging this sort of thing in the memory.
  9. 15 and a bit minutes after a night wrestling with the explosive effects of a bug. KENTE CLOTH was unfamiliar and last in – I thought I might as well have all the checkers once I had K?N?E to play with.
    Oddly enough, OVERSEE caused me most grief, as the extra=over in cricketing terms didn’t make sense and I though the editor might have let a howler through. I told you I was ill.
    Count me amongst those looking forward to the return of 11ac, usually watched from recording to skip the adverts. No doubt Nick Hewer will have his own set of irritations, but hopefully he’ll allow Rachel to escape from the Essex Girl persona now she’s been on Mastermind.
    CLERIHEW brought several of the genre to mind:
    E. C. Bentley
    Mused while he ought to have studied intently;
    It was this muse
    That inspired clerihews
    But CoD goes to the cute NIGHTIE and the consequent pleasant fantasy of Rachel Riley turning up in one.
  10. Spent a daft three minutes at the end before clocking kente cloth for 21 min. Can’t resist adding my favourite clerihew (possibly for the second time), by the incomparable Bentley. ‘Susaddah!’ exclaimed Ibsen, / ‘By dose is turdig cribson! / I’d better dot kiss you, / Atishoo! Atishoo!’
  11. Incredibly relieved and glad, now I’m logged in again after a day’s inexplicable suspension, to find I still have my edit button, still mine alone, at the cutting edge…
  12. zipped through this one – 9 minutes, though needed the wordplay for KENTE CLOTH, SECCO and RACETRACK. As for Clerihew, I have to lean towards the classic

    Humphry Davy
    Abominated gravy
    He lived in the odium
    Of having discovered sodium

  14. 37 minutes here of which 8 spent looking at 25 across with all the checkers in before the penny dropped. COD to RECLUSE – rather apt for these retired days. Thanks for blog which explained the obscurities as ever.
  15. Whistled through this without difficulty.
    Kente *means* cloth, so kente cloth is really a tautology.
  16. 7:15, ending with the unknown KENTE CLOTH (18ac).  Other unknowns were SECCO (9ac), TAIGA (26ac), AGOUTI (3dn), Spa (16dn RACETRACK), and house (23dn LOTTO, which I was surprised to see as an answer).  COHO (4ac ALCOHOL) and MINOR SUIT (24ac) were unfamiliar.

    A straightforward puzzle that nicely shows how cryptic crosswords can increase your vocabulary rather than just being a test thereof.  I’m with mctext on 24ac (MINOR SUIT) being a charade rather than a double definition.  Shame that HILT (“handle”) was clued as a constituent part of TO THE HILT (25ac).

    Clue of the Day: 2dn (RECLUSE), you little tease.

  17. About 14 minutes but when I clicked ‘submit’ the Club site decided I didn’t exist and I couldn’t be bothered to do it again.

    KENTE CLOTH was new to me. AGOUTI wasn’t, but felt that way at the time.

    RECLUSE is terrific.

  18. I like an easy puzzle after a morning on the golf course and this one is just that. A little over 10 minutes for what contains quite a collection of the very easy and a selection of crossword cliches. I’m with the NIGHTIE club for the best of the bunch. I bet it’s harder tomorrow – I wonder who is blogging?
  19. I had no problems with this, in spite of some unfamiliar vocabulary. But KENTE CLOTH and SECCO were easily gettable from the cryptics. 18 minutes, which is a very good time for me.
  20. 21:51 – Like many others, I found this a gentle start to the week. Several unknown words – SECCO, TAIGA & COHO, although ALCOHOL was my last in, so with A-C-H-L, I didn’t even bother looking at the wordplay for it. I’m a bridge player, so no problem with MINOR SUIT.
  21. I agree with the consensus, that this wasn’t one of the tougher puzzles we’ve had. About 20 minutes, ending with the new KENTE CLOTH, right after SECCO. I’d vote for RECLUSE, although NIGHTIE was quite clever as well. Didn’t know about LOTTO=’house’, but like our blogger, that didn’t hold me up; I just assumed it to be another Britishism that I hadn’t heard before, so in it went. Regards to all.
  22. 5:27 here, making a nice straightforward start to the week (and I’m always pleased to finish ahead of young Thakkar :-). I didn’t know that Spa was a RACETRACK.
  23. Over an hour, but all but the last four in felt quite easy. Last in was CLERIHEW (a word almost entirely unknown to me) after I convinced myself that CREVICES just didn’t fit. KENTE CLOTH only from the wordplay and many others were based more on blind faith than anything intelligent. COD to NIGHTIES. (I’m glad Tony beat 6 minutes and didn’t need an interminable 10 or so — but I can hardly get the puzzle to open online in under 6 minutes.)

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