Times 25063 – I blog 22!

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 19:40 but I was distracted at the start and then did this while explaining the answers to a friend along the way so it was an educational 19:40 (or a very boring one for him). Didn’t make a good fist of the across answers, but the right hand side of the downs all came quickly, and this was completed right side first then sneaking over to the left, rather ludicrously ending with 2 down, which I should have seen straight away as it’s only a few hours drive from here. In the end a rather fun puzzle, and possibly a debut at 17 with a great clue to boot.

Still scratching for some of the wordplay on 22, but it’ll come while I write it up, I hope.

Away we go!

Across
1 STAGE(leg),HAND(paw): we start off with a great deceptive charade – a stagehand would have to deal with a set
6 CIDER: Hidden, reversed, and loved by the Wurzels!
9 RALEIGH: RIGH(t) surrounding ALE (indicated from the previous clue by the ellipsis) to give a favored Elizabethan (and capital of North Carolina)
10 SIBERIA: BE in AIR,IS reversed
11 WIN(e)
12 ABNORMALITY: we don’t see this type of clue often – it’s ANOMALY with the letters from BRIT entered at various spots, in order – no anagram required
14 SEABED: AB in SEED. I thought this might have been hyphenated, but it isn’t hyphenated in Chambers
15 NEGLIGEE: anagram of (SEEING,LEG) without the S(society)
17 FLASH MOB: SH,MO in FLAB. When you get a bunch of your friends to do something together in a public place for unsuspecting people.
19 REFILL: L, LIFER all reversed
22 FORTNIGHTLY: got this from the definition but the wordplay is a ripper – FLY(float) around T(end of planet),HG(mercury),INTRO all reversed
23 our across omission
25 CHAPPED: double definition, one cryptic
27 ELEGIST: LEG(member),IS in ET
28 STEED: STEWED without the W
29 S,IMP,LETON
 
Down
1 S,(t)HREW
2 ATLANTA: AT(close to),N,ALTA(r) all reversed. Host of the 1996 Olympics
3 ELIZABETHAN: (HEAT IN BLAZE)*
4 ACHING: CHIN in A(area),G(start of goes)
5 DISORDER: (OR,SIDE)* in DR
6 all hail the down omission
7 DORKING: OR in D,KING. I’d wikipedia it to find out something about it, but wikipedia go bye bye today
8 READY MEAL: (MADE EARLY)*
13 ALL VERY WELL: double definition
14 SOFT(non-alcoholic),FOCUS
16 LONG ODDS: ODD(unmatched, as in socks) in LONGS
18 AIRFARE: AIRE(d) around FAR
20 IMPRINT: P(ape)R in I, MINT
21 ST,REAM
24 WOTAN: O.T. in WAN – German God often rocking a beard
26 (s)PUD: Funny how things happen. I got into a discussion about accents today (these things happen when you’re an Australian living in the south-east US) and heard about a guy from Alabama who went to live in South Africa for a while, and used many South African terms but with a drawly Alabaman accent. Apparently he could stretch out PUD for three to four seconds and make it sound like it had four syllables

46 comments on “Times 25063 – I blog 22!”

  1. 17:59 … flew through the right side, struggled on the left.

    Last in .. CHAPPED

    COD .. SOFT FOCUS

    1. We appear to be like matter and anti-matter Sotira. I just couldn’t get on the same wavelength as this setter
      1. Does this mean that if we ever meet there will be a cosmic explosion? I was hoping for a gin and tonic.
  2. 78 minutes for this excellent puzzle, with the last 6 of those on SEABED, since I was unfamilar with the expression Davy Jones’ locker. Before that, both NEGLIGEE and REFILL held me up for quite a while – I finally chucked them in from the definition.

    FLASH MOB had to go in from the wordplay, as I’m unfamiliar with this phrase if not with the rather tiresome activity it stands for. My COD in a fine bunch, in which the only weak link was CHAPPED, goes to SIMPLETON: “revealed’ = ‘let on’; nice.

  3. Spent most of the morning talking to a fellow professor in the UK who had just had most of his frontal lobes cut out. Cancer. And he’s still in his 40s. It made crosswords seem unimportant somehow.

    Still, I just about managed to get the new stuff: READY MEAL and FLASH MOB. But failed in the top left. “Who’s set to deal” as the literal (1ac) seems awkward. But maybe that’s because I didn’t get it.

    And the clue for 9ac (minus the ellipsis on line) could well go into “trash clues of all time”.

    1. But if the definition for 1ac were ‘Who’s {= has] set to deal with‘, then it makes a lot more sense!
  4. Over an hour, yet again. This seems to be becoming the norm for me with quicker solves the exception.

    I came here with two unparsed, FORNIGHTLY, which I’d never have worked out as HG for mercury seems to have slipped my mind completely since O-level physics, and AIRFARE where I misread the clue consistently throughout as ‘made unknown’.

    I wasted forever trying to fit CAN or its reverse into 2dn, thinking of CAN(a) as ‘wedding place shortly’.

    Is PE sport (22ac)? Have I understood correctly that 17ac needs to be used as a verb to fit the clue? If so, I can’t find it as such in any of the usual sources. Can ‘AT’ mean ‘close to’ (2dn)? Again the usual dictionaries are of no help. Queries, not quibbles for the moment at least. My brain has seized up so I’m probably not seeing straight.

    Off to watch the Wonder Boy play tennis now.

    Edited at 2012-01-19 06:32 am (UTC)

    1. The Telegraph’s been using ‘flash mob’ as a verb since 2003, so I guess it’s a matter of time for the dictionaries.

      I shared your query re sport = PE (23ac, actually), and your point about ‘at’ not meaning ‘close to’ seems on the money too.

      1. Thanks. At least now it’s not just me!

        On ‘flash mob’ as a verb, I’ve now found it in several on-line sources including dictionary.com.
        It’s interesting that Collins and COED have ‘flash mobbing'(n)which to me suggests the verbal form must exist, but neither lists it as such.

        1. At is used in many a clue to indicate beside, as in “the umbrella stood at the front door”.
  5. Quelle catastrophe. Gave up on the hour with 1 ac. still hiddenly sneering at me. The old conk conked out. In two minds about chapped=manned; I like it, but it seems perilously close to lassed or ladded for instance which would lie beyond the pale. Which just shows the delicacy of the pale’s placing and the silent agreement thereunto. It seems sacrilegious even to draw attention to it.

    Edited at 2012-01-19 09:27 am (UTC)

  6. I came up short in the SE corner, caught out by my failings in the Germanic gods department. In my haste for a (relatively) quick time I went for Titan and pit. Oh well, 47 minutes but a DNF. And sorry ulaca, but I thought CHAPPED was quite witty.
  7. DNF. Defeated by SW but especially SOFT FOCUS (I’d pencilled in correct answers elsewhere but because I couldn’t resolve, for instance, the wordplay for FORTNIGHTLY and didn’t know FLASH MOB, I did not trust my best guesses). So many thanks George for the blog.
  8. No idea of solving time as I lost consciousness mid-solve, through no fault of the crossword I might add. It’s that damn chair again. But I did struggle around the grid. Some tough and original clues. SOFT FOCUS was good but COD to STAGEHAND.
  9. After a couple of days of easy solving this came hard. I just couldn’t jive with this setter and had to fight for nearly every entry over a 35 minute period.

    Didn’t know FLASH MOB and looked it up in Chambers to check it really existed. Also tried to put Cana into 2D and looked at STAGEHAND for ages before the penny weakly dropped. My only success was knowing Hg for mercury and so getting FORTNIGHTLY straight off.

    1. And did you find ‘flash mob’ in Chambers, Jim? It’s not in my 2003 edition. If so, does it give it as a verb as well as a noun?

      I was wondering about upgrading my Chambers but Peter B was uncomplimentary about the latest version and I can’t bring myself to lay out a lot of money on an earlier one that would still not bring me up to date.

      1. I have to use the latest Chambers Jack to enable me to blog the Mephisto puzzles

        FLASH MOB is in the 12th edition as a noun but not as a verb.

        Can’t think why PB would be uncomplimentary other than it has a slightly strange section stuck in the middle rather than at the end. I got mine on Amazon and it wasn’t expensive as these things go.

          1. I find Jerry’s comments a trifle harsh. The middle section is certainly odd but does tell you where the “m” section is to assist navigation. I use the Oxford Names Companion (the Chambers section was somewhat curtailed and only covered first names). It’s very easy to read and the highlighted words are quite interesting to read.
            1. Thanks. I’m sure I shall get round to buying it eventually as I see it’s down to £21.20 on Amazon now. But I recently bought the latest Oxford Dictionary of English and I would feel guilty getting another new dictionary so soon.
  10. Tricky one esp as I don’t think ‘float’ and ‘fly’are in any way synomous. If a bird or a plane were floating they’d be hovering. Things that fly don’t float, surely
    1. T took it to be …as in fishing, where they perform a similar function.
      A ran out of time dnf today, trammeled by grandfatherly duties. CoD to the cleverly riffled ABNORMALITY, but there were lots of very clever offerings here
  11. it only took a short time to realise that this was going to be a bit of a struggle, but having recognised that I made steady progress and rather enjoyed it.

    For an brilliant example of a FLASH MOB search for “Frozen Grand Central” on YouTube.

    Edited at 2012-01-19 11:06 am (UTC)


  12. … and that one was WOTAN, where I’d not heard of the God, and, irritatingly, didn’t think of OT for first part of Bible.

    I enjoyed this one, and found it easier than some of late, but, having said that, I put several answers in on definition alone without working out all or part of the mechanics (FORTNIGHTLY, NEGLIGEE, ATLANTA, ABNORMALITY, RALEIGH).

    I hadn’t realised READY MEAL was an anagram. In fact with so much passing me by, I feel a bit of a fraud for completing as much as I did as quickly as I did!

    Many thanks to George for sorting it all out.

    PS I too quite like CHAPPED. Made me smile.

  13. My main problem with this one was someone wanting me to do some work in the middle. I would guess at an enjoyable 20 mins ish. I too am a fan of CHAPPED.
  14. 23:48. Thanks for the explanations for Atlanta and fortnightly George, I bunged them both in without full (or, in fact, any) understanding.

    I enjoyed the def at 1a and, like ulaca, the “let on” part of 29.

    3 held me up for a while. I was expecting a close cousin of Byzantine architecture, like, um, Belzanthine. Made nice arches did the Belzanths.

  15. 18 minutes here. Enjoyable puzzle at just the right level of chewiness for me. I’m in the pro-CHAPPED camp and I like seeing new-fangled terms like FLASH MOB to balance the rather more frequent old-fangled ones.
  16. About 20 minutes, with the only problem trying to parse the FORTNIGHTLY wordplay. I couldn’t, so thanks George. COD to the clever ABNORMALITY, very nice. Regards.
  17. Liked this puzzle but just stumped for ‘flash mob’ so DNF, glad to see Wikipedia had it and is back online, long may it evade the US legislators, CoD is ‘soft focus’ for me.
  18. DNF which is my first for a while. Scuppered by FLASH MOB and FORTNIGHTLY which meant I never got near SOFTFOCUS. So well done setter if indeed defeating such as I is a thing to praise at all. 2012 puzzles have seemed to me so far to be harder than last years. Mid January and already nostalgic for last year!
  20. Like yesterday, I’m late coming to this. I’ve been at choir warbling about Abraham and his seed (Quam olim Abrahae etc), memory of which helped greatly with SEABED. There were lots of nice things in this. I had a “doh” moment with FLASHMOB. (A friend of mine sang the tenor lead in a performance of FLASHMOB – THE OPERA which took place on Paddington station where the flashmobbers sang along to Nessun Dorma while the bemused travellers went about their normal business. Broadcast by the BBC. It had Donna e Mobile sung on the tube, the Humming Chorus in a sushi bar and a bunch of football hooligans singing the Anvil Chorus. New lyrics, of course) I thought this was going to be a DNF but finally staggered home in 48 minutes.
  21. 17:05 for me. I found this a hard slog, with the comparatively large number of convoluted clues making it much less of a pleasurable experience than yesterday’s.

    I reckon that 17ac is a species of &lit, with “Loose mass seizing quiet moment” being part of the definition as well as providing the wordplay. That way the answer is a noun (as allowed by my nice new Chambers (2011) which arrived yesterday as a Listener crossword prize 🙂 rather than a verb.

  22. This took me for ever. But I felt that two of the clues were bordering on the unfair: by writing ‘in the past’ in 28ac the setter is suggesting that there is something special about the way that was done. The three words could perfectly well have been omitted. And ‘simply’ in 8 dn also misleads gratuitously; what does it add?

    Am in the camp that rather liked ‘chapped’.

    1. Re 8dn, a ready meal is just shoved in the [microwave] oven, so in that sense it’s ‘simply’ cooked.
  23. Without these three words cook is not put in the past tense and cook is vital for the wordplay?
    1. What’s the difference between ‘did that’ and ‘did that in the past’? Both are in the same tense, but one is tautological.
      1. Good point, hadn’t noticed that but had far more problems with AIRFARE(d’oh!) and FLASH MOB (meh), making this a rare DNF (never thought I’d be saying that a year ago)
        CHAPPED went in first but only very faintly, as I couldn’t believe the setter’s temerity

        JB

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