Times 25093 – Pitting One’s Wit

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This has got to be the most devious set of clues that I have encountered in a daily puzzle (ie not a prize puzzle) in a long long time. No quarter given, even for short 4-lettered words. What a fantastic challenge employing six or seven letter X’s, many misleading and indirect definitions. Took me over the hour and what glorious entertainment I enjoyed. This setter is indeed more than a worthy opponent to pit one’s wit against. Having said that, I expect  this is going to be a very quiet day.

ACROSS
1 ANTICLIMAX ANTICS (stunts) LIME (tree) AXE (feller) minus the last letters
6 PITT Rev of T (first letter of take) TIP (advice)
8 LOOSENER *(ONE’S ROLE)
9 VORTEX Ins of R (first letter of romance) in VOTE (proposal) X (kiss)
10 NABS NA (symbol for sodium) BS (Bachelor of Surgery)
11 OLIVE-SHELL Ins of LIVES (everyone’s existence) in O HELL (no hell, therefore heavenly)
12 TAXIDERMY T (time) + *(MIX READY)
14 KNITS Sounds like NITS (fools) with picked up as homophone indicator Thanks to diogenes44
17 NAXOS SAXON (old German) with N and S interchanged for a Greek island
19 HEXAMETER Ins of X (times) A (article) in HE (fellow) MET (had audience) with ER (Elizabeth Regina at Buckingham Palace)
22 IN GOOD NICK *(DOING + O, nothing) NICK (prison)
23 ATOP AT OP (operation) or performing surgery
24 TYPIST cd for a stenographer typing out a dictated piece; depressing keys, indeed 🙂
25 IDOMENEO Ins of OMEN (indication) + E (European) in I DO (one act) Idomeneo is an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
26 EDGE LEDGE (shelf) minus L (length) as in He edges/inches painfully to the telephone to call for help.
27 MEMORY BANK Ins of YB (rev of BY) in MEMO (message) RANK (class)

DOWN
1 ARLINGTON DARLINGTON (quaint little town in the North-East of England, clued as first railway destination as it was the Stockton-Darlington stretch that Stephenson’s locomotive first ran on) minus first letter, D (departs) for Arlington National Cemetery, in Virginia, directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Thanks to ulaca & mctext for pointing out the railway history
2 TOOLBOX Cha of TO O (circle) L (lake) BOX (boxwood, anyone?)
3 LONDONER Ins of DON (fellow) in LONER (someone not happy with company)
4 Anagram of (RAN SIX MILES IN) placed within M-M deliberately omitted
5 XAVIER X (cross) A VIER (German for 4 which is a square of 2) St Francis Xavier, (1506–1552) was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary
6 PERCHANCE PERCH (rod) + ins of N (north, point on the compass) in ACE (cracking)
7 THE FLAT Ins of EFL (English as a foreign language) in THAT (which)
13 IRON OXIDE Ins of ON OX (farm animal) in I RIDE (travel)
15 Anagram of BACK POOR Son deliberately omitted
16 BACKDOOR BACK (stern of a ship) + ins of OO (spectacles) in DR (doctor or GP, general practitioner)
18 ANNOYED Ins of NO (rev of ON) + YE (middle letters of layers) in AND (with)
20 TITANIA TITANIC (mammoth) with last letter C replaced by A for Titania, the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
21 ADYTUM ha for the most sacred part of a temple; the chancel of a
church.

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
*(fodder) = anagram

31 comments on “Times 25093 – Pitting One’s Wit”

  1. Tremendous puzzle which I was mighty pleased to finish without aids, even if I spent more than two hours doing so. What can one say? The only answer that went in without having to fully or partially resolve the wordplay was MEMORY BANK. So many good clues, but my COD goes ro ATOP, with an honourable mention to my last in, the unknown but beautifully clued OLIVE-SHELL.

    The Stockton-Darlington Railway was one of the first lines to open in England, if not the first. I believe (too tired to Google) that Stevenson’s Rocket ran on this line.

    Many thanks to the setter and to Yap Suk for sorting out 27 for me.

    1. The Wik tells us:
      “The first locomotive to run on the S&DR was Locomotion No 1, built at the Stephenson works though, in the absence of Robert …”.
  2. So, fiendish as a very fiendish thing (Baldrick). Found the two Xs in the top right and went looking for them where they weren’t; and missed them where they were. (BTW, my final count is seven of them.)

    A good work out, but not for the faint hearted.

    Uncle Yap: Darlington is the place in 1dn because it was the destination of the Stockton-to-Darlington railway; the first route in England.

    On edit: ulaca mentioned this while I was writing. But this also changes the parsing such that the D is from “departs” (not from “first”).

    Edited at 2012-02-23 04:46 am (UTC)

    1. Yap Suk writes: ‘DARLINGTON … minus first letter, D’, which seems to fit the bill exactly, if slightly elliptically. (But we’re well used to that round here.)
      1. Point taken. Apologies from me in case that was what was meant all along.

        Thank you Darling!

  3. 68 minutes and panic stations set in early despite getting ARLINGTON at 1dn immediately on first reading. ‘Darlington’ was a gift to anyone who knows anything about the history of railway as was ‘Arlington’ to anyone around at the time of JFK’s assassination. Other than that it was a struggle most of the way.

    I quite liked 0 LIVES HELL for ‘everyone’s existence heavenly’ but there was lots of other very good stuff too.

    Well done on your blog, Uncle Y. I’m hoping you’ve taken the only bullet this week and there’s not another one up the spout with my name on it ready for delivery tomorrow!

  4. 30 minutes today, but it felt a lot harder than that. I started very slowly and thought it was going to take forever but eventually I seem to have found the setter’s devilish wavelength.
    Lots of unknowns today, but the difficulty was all in the cunning wordplay and oblique definitions. Super puzzle, thanks very much setter. Now I need a very strong coffee.
  5. After 60 minutes plus a DNF here beaten by the TYPIST and IDOMENEO but an enjoyable defeat. Thanks for the helpful blog as ever but especially when my own resources are exhausted.
  6. Brilliant puzzle. One of those which you think will be too difficult, but with many pleasurable moments of realisation along the way, you finish with great satisfaction.

    Paul S.

  7. 31 minutes, feeling like a real challenge: club monthly standard but without CM’s habit of dredging for words no-one’s ever heard of. CM style too in having unlikely letters, all those X’s in this case, which occasionally makes things easier. Every now and then, I found myself wondering if there was another X lurking, and then seeing “Times” or “farm animal” in the clue.
    But this was fiendish stuff, and the (?)simple KNITS eventually went in without understanding the cryptic. “Picked up” made it STINK backwards, which made no sense, but at least KNITS meant purse (not that one).
    I thought this was definitely one for taking time unravelling the cryptics: OLIVE-SHELL (my only unknown as a combination) HEXAMETER and IDOMENEO especially, but several others.
    One mischievous suggestion: Trevethick’s “Pen-y-Darren” and its train made it from Penydarren to Abercynon in 1804, more than 20 years before the Stockton-Darlington run, but then you couldn’t get a ticket.
    It seems churlish to pick a CoD from a host of smooth-surfaced contenders, but perhaps SCRAPBOOK edges it.
    Thanks to Uncle Yap for a most excellent blog.

    Edited at 2012-02-23 10:27 am (UTC)

  8. Done in a number of sittings over a three hour stretch. I knew I was in trouble having solved two in the first twenty minutes, so I kept putting it down. Compliments to the setter. Every one a gem.

    I got TYPIST relatively quickly from an experience I once had as a tutor in an Excel lab, where the instruction “Depress the return key” had one student completely mystified.

  9. Extremely entertaining puzzle which was a bit taxing and designed to flumox. 35 minutes after round of golf that was exhausting to some extent. Why all the “x” that is the crux of the matter?

    On a happy note for those in the UK, my flowering cherry has come into blossom!


  10. Managed about three quarters. Am glad I came here to discover the rest, as I don’t think there’s any way I’d have finished it. Too much unknown vocab and GK.

  11. Why does the setter say ‘point, maybe’ to clue N when ‘point’ would do just as well? It’s as if he/she is making a big effort to avoid definition by example, and that’s not necessary here. Is it?
  12. What they used to call a bit of a stinker; quite a challenge. I thought I was on the setter’s wavelength and put two-thirds of it in quite quickly, but then stopped and had to go back later to finish off. Should have got IDOMENEO sooner (my last in); I recall struggling with it last time it made an appearance but cannot recall which crossword it was in.

    Don’t know what all the Xs are about. Was it supposed to have been published on Valentine’s Day?

    1. This was one of my last in too: I’m all for Mozart but opera doesn’t really float my boat. Anyway it doesn’t seem to have been in the times for quite a while.
      1. Thanks for the link, that’s certainly the puzzle I have in mind. It doesn’t seem that long ago, though!
  13. And there was I wondering if the Times was dumbing down. Stunning puzzle that defeated me after a day’s teaching; I just wish I’d come to it fresh. Congratulations to setter and many thanks to Uncle Yap.
  14. What a superb puzzle, with clues full of delightful false trails which parsed precisely when the pennies finally dropped. 24 across made me laugh out loud. Many thanks setter and Uncle Yap.
  15. I spent ages this morning wrestling with this – in 2 sessions with a nice cup of tea in between to refresh the brain. I didn’t have time to comment earlier. Have come to this blog now after choir practice to see whether other people had problems with this puzzle or whether I’m just getting more stupid with age. Some of the slower times are a great relief. So it’s not only me who found this more “challenging” than usual. All completed though in 59 minutes – just made it under the wire, so to speak. Re IDOMENEO, I was wandering the alleys of Munich way back in the 70s and came across a wall plaque that said the German equivalent of “In this house Mozart composed IDOMENEO”. Have since discovered it had its premier in Munich as well as being composed there. Another nice thing about this blog is that it enables us to pass on useless snippets of info like that!

  16. Why wasn’t this one kept back for the 2012 Championship?

    A tour de force by the setter and much too tough for me. 14 out of 29 and only a few more with aids. I did at least spot the hidden word … which I’d never heard of.

    Well done Uncle Yap and anyone else who finished this with or without aids. Loved the construction of Annoyed.

  17. 11:38 here for an absolutely first-rate puzzle. The last couple of minutes were spent on NABS (perhaps not helped by the fact that my brother had a ChB rather than a BS) and IDOMENEO (where I had a sudden panic over whether I was spelling it correctly and took ages to work out the wordplay).
  18. 1st time in a long, long while that I have only managed to get one answer correct! (ATOP) Totally flummoxed by it but the guy whom I worked with today probably fried my brains withhis constact chattering!!
  19. 1st time in a long, long time that I have only managed one correct answer. Was totally over-awed by the challenge. Great puzzle setter – just not for me!! Try to be kind in future!

    Roger C

  20. I struggled with this over three different spells, putting it down and hoping for a brainwave. I eventually finished, but with two wrong. OLIVE WHALE and IPOLENTO anyone? Several of the clues made me laugh out loud when the penny finally dropped. Thanks to Uncle Y for the explanations. I live fairly close to Darlington, so that one dropped in quite easily.
  21. That’s two ball-bursters within about a week, fantastic.

    This one even harder, took 3 sittings for over an hour. LOI knits, a guess – was looking at STINK picked up rather than the homophone. Everything else understood.

    Isla

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