Times 25057 – Furious Furies

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Phew! What a task to unravel quite a work this morning. Each clue, a torturous torment but what a tremendous triumph when solved and understood. Surely this will stand out as one of the best I have tackled lately.

ACROSS
1 SIKES SPIKES (points) minus P (penny) William “Bill” Sikes is a fictional character, a rough and barbaric man in the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
4 PUPPY LOVE PUPPY (item of a litter of young animals) LOVE (not a thing, nothing)
9 QUAVERING Ins of VE (empty VasE) in SQUARING (evening) minus S (shillings)
10 RABBI RABBIT (talk) minus T (time)
11 ELIJAH Ins of J (judge) in ELIAH (rev of HAILED minus D)
12 STAIRWAY Ins of T (T-cross) & AIR (wind) in SWAY (rock)
14 TRAVEL-SICK Lovely cd
16 BASH dd
19 rha deliberately omitted
20 SCREEN TEST &littish *(CENTRE’S SET)
22 PAPERBOY Ins of *(PROBE) in PAY (money)
23 ALECTO Ins of ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) in ‘ALO (saintly circle or halo as said by a Cockney) for one of the Furies, hideous snake-haired monsters who pursued unpunished criminals, The other two were Megaera and Tisiphone
26 SALVO SALVER (plate) with ER (Elizabeth Regina, queen) replaced by O (first letter of outlaw). My COD for a creative and original def – big shots going off together !
27 OPAL GLASS *(GAP ALL’S SO)
28 ON-THE-SPOT dd certain minor infringement of the law may be settled then and there when the culprit is apprehended e.g. dropping litter
29 TELEX Sounds like TELL (as in order her to shut up) EX (divorcee)

DOWN
1 SEQUESTER Ins of QUEST (expedition) in SEE (notice) & R (river)
2 KHAKI worK witH teA breaK + I (one) ; a devilish clue
3 SEE-SAWED Cha of SEES (witnesses) AWED (filled with dread)
4 PRIM PRIME (get ready for action) minus E
5 PIG-STICKER Cha of PIG (gorge or eat greedily) S (second) TICKER (watch)
6 YARDIE YAR (rev of RAY, a glimmer of hope) DIE (stop) for a member of a W Indian gang or Mafia-like syndicate involved in drug-dealing and related crime
7 OX-BOW LAKE OX (neat) *(BLOKE With A) … what an excellent def
8 EMILY EMIL (rev of LIME tree) Y (looks like a catapult)
13 PSYCHOPOMP PSYCHO (famous Alfred Hitchcock flick) POMP (impressive show) for a conductor of souls to the afterworld
15 AUTOPILOT Cha of AU (aurum, gold, shiny metal) + ins of I (one) in TOP (cap) & LOT (helping)
17 HIT FOR SIX Ins of OR (other ranks, soldiers, men) in *(FIX THIS)
18 IN-FLIGHT Bolting or running away is in flight. I like the def
21 BROOKE Ins of O (old) in BROKE (cleaned out financially) for either Arthur Brooke (died circa 1563) of The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) fame; or Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887 – 1915) known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier.
22 PESTO PRESTO (quickly) minus R (runs) for an Italian sauce made chiefly of basil and cheese, with pine nuts and olive oil
24 CRAWL Ins of A W (west quarter) in CiRcLe
25 WAIT Sounds like WEIGHT (bias)

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
rha = reversed hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram

28 comments on “Times 25057 – Furious Furies”

  1. 39:45 .. Phew! is right.

    Some things in here felt familiar from recent puzzles, like the TRAVEL-SICK clue and the use of ‘up’ in the IN-FLIGHT clue.

    Very, very tough, and made tougher if you didn’t know your Furies and went initially with ALESTO, as I did. That took ten minutes of sorting out. In the end, PSYCHOPOMP went in without, as we like to say, full understanding (ie. I gave up thinking about it and crossed my fingers).

  2. An excellent puzzle for sequestering the sheep from the goats, and you can guess which category I fell into. Congratulations to all those who finish this unaided. Out of a bountiful crop, I will choose EMILY and QUAVERING (out of those I got and understood) and SALVO (out of those I got and sort of understood).

    Edited at 2012-01-12 06:13 am (UTC)

  3. An excellent puzzle, that took me, on and off, nearly two hours. Bravo to the setter, for a tour de force. A supreme example of the setter’s art. I was amazed by some of the definitions here, including “inch”, “green”, (doubly elusive to the Americans, to whom “green” means “money”), and the “cut off section of flower”. Bravo as well to the girl in 8D. Excellent wordplay throughout. Thanks to Uncle Yap for untangling all of this, and an extra dose of thanks to the setter. Best puzzle in a while, and very well done. No COD: too many here to mention. Regards to the setter, and everyone else.
  4. A brilliant puzzle. What a shame there’s no Z to complete the pangram.

    I needed 70 minutes but it was really a DNF because I couldn’t think of anything to fit PSYCHO?O?P so I looked it up. Then I was about to cheat on 23ac too but in a last-minute flash of inspiration I spotted the wordplay to complete the grid. I had long since realised it was one of the Furies but couldn’t remember any of their names.

    My main problem was in the NW where I wrote QUIVERING at 9ac on definition alone which made 2dn impossible to crack until I realised my error.

    17dn relies on metaphors from two different sports and I’m not sure they mean exactly the same thing.

    I haven’t quoted a lyric for a while, so here’s one for 5dn by Noel Coward who had two old buffers reminiscing about the days of the Raj:

    Have you heard any word of that bloke in the “Third”,
    Was it Sotherby, Sedgwick or Sim?
    They had him thrown out of the club in Bombay
    For apart from his mess bills exceeding his pay,
    He took to pig-sticking in quite the wrong way.
    I wonder what happened to him!

    Edited at 2012-01-12 08:15 am (UTC)

    1. That’s just brilliant. Where’s it from? (It’s almost Google proof)

      re 17d – I think it’s just the one sport – cricket – and ‘floor’ meaning amaze.

        1. 2 observations after listening to that:

          1. I suspect that’s a whole lot truer to life than the Merchant-Ivory version of the days of the Raj – Brits behaving badly overseas is nothing new (I’m doing my best to maintain the tradition).

          2. I can see, or hear, why they call him the Master. Peerless.

          Thanks again.

          Edited at 2012-01-12 03:09 pm (UTC)

          1. On other musical matters, last week David Essex, this week Donny Osmond. What’s the betting David Cassidy gets a look-in next week?
  5. Glad it wasn’t just me. Gave up on the clock at approximately ALECTO. Last in, the unlikely PSYCHOPOMP, after much deliberation. KHAKI has to be a superb example of the genre, but COD to HIT FOR SIX amongst a host of crackers.

    Might have finished earlier if OXBOW LAKE had been given its proper name of BILLABONG.

  6. Gave up at 45 min. with NE incomplete. Shd’ve used aids but like to finish without. Even so got a lot of fun out of this. Thanks setter.
  7. I think I was on the setter’s wavelength for this one, because in spite of wasting ages convinced that 4ac was going to be PAPER something I stopped the clock after 19 minutes. However on checking through I found that I’d managed to put in SYKES and hadn’t solved 25dn at all. I got it all sorted out in the end.
    The SYKES thing was weird: I understood the wordplay at the time but somehow the subconscious conviction that the Dickens character is spelled with a Y took control of my hand.
    Super puzzle this, as others have noted. I particularly enjoyed the definitions for SALVO and OXBOW LAKE. PSYCHOPOMP went in on a wing and a prayer.
  8. Not up to this at all this morning – I needed to be much more awake. So no time, just a CoD because TRAVEL SICK tickled my fancy. Well sorted, Uncle Yap!
  9. Many, many thanks for a brilliant blog for a puzzle which I can now see was clearly excellent but proved much too tough for me. I left gaps (which I would never have been able to fill) all over the place …
  10. Finally laid this to rest after a couple of hours or so, only to find that I’d got 1ac wrong – like keriothe I hastily put in Sykes. That’s the price you pay for skipping Dickens at school.

    Great puzzle. I had to cheat to get the t in Alecto, but I think that’s just about allowable. And as sotira has mentioned, TRAVEL SICK is a close companion to one of the clues in another testing puzzle from a few days ago, which I finally finished this morning after a 3- day struggle.

    1. I wonder if it’s the same setter too. Devices like “clothes” and “houses” in this one are pretty much his trademark.
  11. 33 minutes. Good job I wasn’t in a hurry, this was a properly chewy puzzle, with lots of good stuff, both definitions and wordplay. I first came across PSYCHOPOMP in the unlikely setting of an article about the final episode of the BBC drama Ashes to Ashes, where [SPOILER ALERT] it is revealed that DCI Gene Hunt is a psychopomp for dead police officers on their way to the afterlife.
  12. Of all things, after slogging through this for a half an hour I came to a complete and utter blank on 25 down and put in TAUT (sounds like TORT) for, in retrospect, a rather spectacularly incorrect answer!
  13. Two very entertaining puzzles on the trot and this was an absolute corker. Just came in under 30 minutes despite an interruption.

    Had to rely on wordplay and intuition for psychopomp, Alecto, opal glass and pig-sticker.

    Hard to pick a COD from such a comely bunch but if pressed I’d go for salvo.

  14. After having spent about an hour completing Henderson’s offering in this morning’s Independent without resorting to aids I found this one easier by comparison, and my time of 17 mins looks a good one. Or at least it would have been if I had thought about 21d properly …. in my haste for a good time I guessed at Broome on the misguided assumption that the wordplay referred to an archaic spelling of broom. There was indeed a poet called William Broome, 1689-1745, but I confess that I didn’t know that when I wrote in my answer. Note to self: be more careful when the word houses is in the clue ………..

    Andy B

  15. About 20 mins. You people are much quicker than me usually, so where did this time come from? Happy days. LOI was “wait”, and didnt parse autopilot correctly, but very happy. Cheers.
  16. Caught in the rain on the 17th this morning so had to have a little extra drying out, if you know what I mean, before tackling this excellent puzzle. 35 minutes to solve in a circular fashion NW, SW, SE, NE – very strange with YARDIE last in. Took ages to get 4A and kicked myself once I saw the correct clue construction.

    At 7D Anon, the W=with. Well done setter and good stuff UY.

  17. Thanks for the reassurance on BROOKE. I thought I’d done well until I saw the blog and thought for a moment that I’d got the right answer but through a faulty logic. We certainly don’t need any more obscure scribblers!
  18. Well, I was determined not to give up too early on this excellent puzzle, as I didn’t want another ‘All bar one…’. I managed to figure most of it out before throwing the towel in and resorting to solvers.

    Anyway, my subject line today should read: ‘All bar two and a half…’, as I completed all bar BROOKE and WAIT (galling, as I had worked out the wordplay, so should’ve got those two), and had PSYCHO-O-P. Since I’ve never heard of the word, I don’t think I could ever have got that one! Oh, and I too had SYKES (doesn’t it somehow look far more Dickensian than SIKES?), having convinced myself that spykes were some form of points.

    Unknowns today for me were ALECTO and OPAL GLASS, but both well clued.

    COD: PUPPY LOVE, for the misdirection of ‘Item of litter…’

  19. After returning to read others’ comments here, I realized that I did not read UY’s blog thoroughly enough, and I didn’t have WAIT at 25D. Instead I went with WANT as ‘hold on to’, sounds like ‘wont’. So, since Sotira’s holiday survey inspires me to greater honesty to the point of full disclosure, I here throw myself on my crossword sword.
  20. 18:36 for me. I was feeling tired when I started this one, and (not surprisingly) felt tireder still by the time I’d finished it, with WAIT taking me a minute or two at the end. At least I had no unknowns, so PSYCHOPOMP was a particularly easy win.

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