Times 25082

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: Exactly an hour. A rather slow solve but I was never actually stuck. I don’t think there’s anything contentious here and not much in the way of obscure knowledge is required, I would have thought, although some references may be more familiar to someone of my age than to a youngster. Several clues are more wordy than they need to be which caused me some difficulty but I’m not complaining as it’s the setter’s job to baffle whilst remaining scrupulously fair to the solver. Off we go…

Across
1 FRETSAWS – This was so extremely well hidden and reversed inside ‘hopeless waster finally’ that it was my last in!
6 MAP OUT – MA (Massachusetts) +  PUT (place) around 0 (nothing). Using four words to clue the first two letters so specifically was unnecessary and very distracting, so a rather good ploy.
9 INFO – IN FO(rm) (performing well) –  ‘dope’ is slang for ‘information’.
10 OH CALCUTTA – (act a touch)* around L (London’s West End). This was a norty revue devised by Ken Tynan that played on both sides of the Atlantic from 1969 onwards.
11 FIFTY-FIFTY – The central letters of ‘DaLLas’ are this when taken as Roman numerals.
13 SUET – Alternate letters of StUdEnTs.
14 STURGEON – ST (stone) + URGE (prod) + ON (leg, in cricket). The fish that produces caviare.
16 LOATHE – LO (see that) + A + THE (articles). A five-word definition when one would have sufficed, so another cunning distraction.
18 ENGELS – EN (case of EuropeaN) + GELS (become hard). Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was co-author (with Karl Marx) of The Communist Manifesto.
20 ADMITTED – A + D(e)ED (exploit half-heartedly) around MITT (hand).
22 Deliberately omitted.
24 TIDDLYWINK – TIDDLY (very minor) + WIN (victory) + K (setbacK ultimately).
26 TALK TURKEY – (s)TALK (heading off to track) + TURKEY (bird). It means to talk frankly or mean business. ‘Rabbit’ here is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘talk’ as in ‘rabbit and pork’.
28 RACY – RAY (light) around C(ape)
29 STITCH – ST (street, this time round = urban thoroughfare) + ITCH (burning). This refers to the saying ‘A stitch in time saves nine’.
30 WORKDAYS – (skyward)* around 0 (duck, this time round).
Down
2 RIN TIN TIN – RIN(g) (unclosed halo) + TINTIN(g) (briefly adding colour). Star of the silver screen in the1920s and 30s. The dog’s name is sometimes hyphenated.
3 TROTTER – TOTTER ( adder) around R(ight). This is a pig’s foot which looks extremely unappetising to me.
4 Deliberately omitted.
5 SEC – Double definition. The first is short for a second of time or ‘the twinkling of an eye’ as referred to in the clue. The second is a wine which needs to be a medium-sweet Champagne on this occasion to account for ‘sparkling’. This is taken from a dictionary; I’m no wine expert.
6 MALAYALAM – MA (lover of pop, this time round) + LAY (song) + A LAM (a hit).
7 PRUSSIA – P(ressure) + RUSSIA (sounds like ‘rusher’ – one hurrying so to speak).
8 UNTIE – UNITE (marry) with IT (sex-appeal) reversed.
12 FINLAND – FIND (run across) around LAN (Local Area Network) with ‘lines’ indicating enclosure.
15 EASY TOUCH – (house cat)* around Y(en). The definition is ‘doormat’, another expression like EASY TOUCH meaning a submissive person.
17 HUE AND CRY – HUE (shade) + ‘ANDY (convenient in East London) around CR (councillor). This was also the title of a rather good Ealing comedy made in 1947.
19 E-TICKET – (kite etc)*. Another very long definition. The anagram indicator is ‘in different places’.
21 TOWERED – TOW (drag) + ER (queen) + ED (bloke).
23 OP ART – OPT (plump = choose) around RA (Royal Academy) reversed. Burlington House on Piccadilly is the home of the Royal Academy amongst other venerable institutions. OP ART is short for ‘Optical Art’.
25 LAYER – Double definition.
27 KEW – Sounds like ‘cue’. Not my last in, but my last understood. A ‘plant’ is a snooker shot in which the cue-ball is hit into another in order to pot a third. ‘Might be picked up’ is the homophone indicator. On edit: I probably should have mentioned that Kew in West London is the home of the Royal Botanical Gardens commonly known as Kew Gardens.

30 comments on “Times 25082”

  1. Much more my cup of tea today even if I was suffering from Reversehiddenitis again and failed to get 1ac without aids. I also failed miserably at 26ac, where I knew it had to involve a turkey, but was done by the ‘heading off to track’ device, which would have given me the rest, the idiom being unknown.

    TIDDLYWINK was fun but COD to my nemesis. Thanks to the setter and also to Jack for a couple of clatifications, most notably the plant, which I should have got, even if I seldom got them in my playing days.

  2. A depressing DNF after 50 minutes; totally unable to figure out 1ac, which makes it all the more depressing: failing to get a cricket term or Cockney slang is one thing, failing to get a hidden, even one as brilliant as this one, is another. Thanks to Jack for elucidating 12d, 17d, and 27d, none of which I was able to parse.
  3. What made this such an exceptional clue was the fact that, for me and – I won’t say ‘many’ after yesterday – perhaps one or two others, you still can’t work it out despite working around an anagram of ‘waster’. 75% of the way there, but as if you were absolutely nowhere.
    1. Yes, I was going to mention in the blog that until the very last minute of my solving time I was working on the answer being in part an anagram of ‘waster’. Also I was never in any doubt that the definition was going to be some form of cutting device yet I failed even to notice SAW in the ‘anagrist’. It really IS depressing and even humbling.

      BTW, thanks for your earlier note. That was my second choice as I was originally going to put up the French expression that inspired Tynan’s review title but I had decided that might be a give-away too … or possibly lead to some confusion amongst the casual visitor as to what might be going on around here.

      Edited at 2012-02-10 06:43 am (UTC)

      1. For those as mystified as me, Wikipedia records, ‘the title is taken from a painting by Clovis Trouille, itself a pun on “O quel cul t’as!” French for “What an arse you have!”.’
      2. What made this hard for me was that, very unusually, the definition is neither at the beginning nor at the end of the clue.
  4. Crikey! 4s under 40m online, so either it’s too early for me or this one’s a tad tricky. Add me to the FRETSAW crew – also my last in, by which time I was so bamboozled I couldn’t work out why “Hopeless” was in the clue until I filled it in and needed the S.
    Definitely one for a certain vintage of solver. How you’d get Oh Calcutta otherwise is beyond me, and you kind of needed to have been watching 50’s TV or Saturday morning cinema to know Rin-tin-tin. SUET, OP ART and RACY also sit easier in that vintage, so E-TICKET sticks out like it came from outer space.
    KEW I didn’t understand, so for me it’s just a bit too clever. UNTIE I entered uneasily as TIE (marry) after a Yiddish nu? reversed (an appeal for common sense?). I’m sort of pleased it isn’t that.
    Lots of very clever (-clever?) cluing. CoD to 50/50 for the invitation to respond with “it sure is!”. Special mention to STURGEON – an unsmooth literal to be sure but it made me smile. Lots of others (like KEW) made me just a bit tetchy.
    Brilliant blog, Jack!
  5. 55 minutes and a very similar experience to you, Jack; just hard graft all the way around mingled with delighted squeals when I got an answer (well maybe more grunts than squeals). I really enjoyed the experience. So, thanks to the setter. FRETSAWS was my second last in. Well hidden indeed. COD to FIFTY-FIFTY.

    Oh, and thanks for the KEW explanation, Jack. I had question marks beside both 3-letter clues, but knew SEC had to be wine related.

  6. I found this a very fair and entertaining puzzle in which I was helped by knowing the dog and the revue straight from the definitions. The wordy definitions became a sort of hallmark and I started looking for them rather than being caught out. 25 minutes to solve.

    At the time Oh Calcutta was something of a revolution and epitomised what was happening in society (rather like the trial and then publication of Lady Chatterly). Interesting to see that for younger folk it is a new discovery (and would probably seem rather boring judged against today’s standards)

    1. I was 10 when it came out and remember the kerfuffle it caused well. The derriervation of the title was new to me, though.

      Edited at 2012-02-10 01:23 pm (UTC)

  7. 20 minutes for everything except 1ac, and another 20 minutes before giving up. I too was convinced it had to contain an anagram of “waster”, but I did briefly consider a hidden. Just not a reversed hidden. Drat.
    Generally I thought this a brilliant puzzle. Tons of very clever stuff. Hats off setter.
    I didn’t notice it when solving but isn’t there something a bit naughty about the capital S in 11ac? “Fair way to Split” (as opposed to “fair way to split”) can only refer to the place, so strictly speaking the wordplay doesn’t work. I’m not that strict personally.
    2. As joe says by and large you should ignore things like capital letters. With this clue you could quibble that 50/50 isn’t necessarily “a fair split”; equal yes but “fair” depends upon all sorts of other factors. But that would be to detract from an excellent surface reading.
      1. And a similar deceptive device is used at 21dn where “Rose” is the def (I presume) for TOWERED. Here we have not only the misleading capital letter but the added confusion of the inverted commas, all of which seems to me to qualify as legitimate misdirection.
        1. So it is. This must happen all the time so I’ve no idea why I suddenly noticed it in this clue this morning.
  8. Brain seized up with fretsaws and sec to go and inelegantly threw in pratfall and lac and could only just persuade myself to log in and see what they were. Glad I did: fretsaws is the best hidden I’ve seen. Plodded along steadily enough till there – should really have simply put it down, gone off, come back and may well have seen it at once. A fine crossword – and thanks jackkt for the painstaking blog.
  9. Clever stuff. Add me to the FRETSAWS club for last one in – a devilishly well-disguised reversed “hidden” solution. My only quibble is that, strictly, the definition doesn’t come at either the beginning or or end of the clue (the normal convention?) but in the middle. I wasted much time trying to find a synonym for “hopeless” or “to cut back” that would work. Perhaps the clue might have read more fairly as: “Hopeless waster finally takes back means to cut”, or something along those lines.

    Some of the definitions were wordy but most ingeniously disguised – e.g. TALK TURKEY, TIDDLYWINK, STURGEON, RIN TIN TIN, FIFTY FIFTY. I didn’t know LAN was a network at 12dn, but FINLAND had to be the answer anyway. Similarly, “gardens” gave the game away for KEW at 27dn, certainly once you had the W in place, making ignorance of the obscure snooker reference of no great consequence. Thanks for the explanations, Jack.

  10. PS: I should have added TOWERED at 21dn to the list of misleading definitions. Very sneaky!
  12. 18 minutes, rather fun this one, by the end the only thing that hadn’t twigged was the first MA of MALAYALAM. Add me to those in awe of the FRETSAWS clue.
  14. It’s pretty impressive that this far into the day nobody here or on the Club site has posted that they solved 1ac without difficulty. It ought to go into the archive somewhere.
  15. Add me to the list of those who didn’t see it for ages, although it was actually my next to last in because I didn’t twig Sec until both checkers were in place. I can’t remember the last time a 3-letter word was my last in. With the use of devices like “lines” and “guards” together with some longer definitions I suspect this one may have been set by John Henderson. 29 mins.
    Andy B
  16. Found this v hard going. Like others 1across was my last in. Thought 6across was v complicated clue….liked fifty fifty…spent much of the day travelling so useful distraction
    A classic puzzle in my view
  17. Great puzzle. About an hour, and my last was RACY, which I had thought had to be a double definition. I entered FRETSAWS without seeing the hidden at all, thinking of the ‘waster’ anagram and admitting I didn’t understand the rest. I was all correct, but I also didn’t understand the MA as pop lover (great!!), how UNTIE really worked, and why KEW had anything to do with potting plants. But from those that I did understand, this was a very top notch puzzle. Thanks to Jack, and the setter. Regards to all.
  18. Another caught by 1a. But I did get it in the end. I had to leave this puzzle after 40 minutes to play for my regular U3A singalong. The NW corner had refused to fall. Maybe I was refreshed by choruses of “Kiss me Goodnight Sergeant Major” and “Bless ’em All” but, whatever, when I came back to it I saw RIN TIN TIN and the hidden word straight away. One of the best concealed hidden words ever in my opinion.
  19. Late getting here today.. been busy and this one took time to solve. I loved it, (but I’m glad I wasn’t blogging it, Jack!) and echo all that was said about 1ac and others.. at least two clues I didn’t properly understand til reading the blog.

    One of the best for quite a while imo. Well done, Setter!

  20. 17:14 for me, with a lot of time devoted to making sure that I really did have the right answers (not wanting to make another mistake so soon).

    1ac was my LOI too. Clever stuff, in a puzzle full of clever stuff.

    I knew the derivation of Oh! Calcutta! – at least I knew the French phrase, but hadn’t come across Clovis Trouille before. Fascinating!

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