Times 25,097

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A reasonably straightforward 19 minutes. Some pleasing wordplay (“action in court”, “charming female”) and several sporting allusions, including 25 across, which might suggest this puzzle was compiled during England’s most recent Test series.

Across
1 CUT GLASS – Good in CUTLASS.
9 ENORMITY – O.R. (Other Ranks, i.e. lowly soldiers) in ENMITY. As a certified pedant, I fight a constant battle in helping people to differentiate between enormity and enormousness. Whether they want to or not.
10 REDACT – RED(left wing) + ACT(decree).
11 AGRONOMIST – 0 in (MOSTGRAIN)*.
12 STOP – Second TOP(=best), and a double def. in “close” and “finish”.
13 PACE BOWLER – (POWERCABLE)*. The delivery being a cricketing one, of course.
16 ASSAYED – michaelmAS SAY EDucationally. Nicely misleading, as I tried to see how Michaelmas Term featured in the answer.
17 BOLIVIA – Brazilian + OLIVIA.
20 BEFOREHAND – BE(=live) + FOREHAND (action in court, if one is Andy Murray, say, rather than a litigant).
22 HAFT – SHAFT, both meaning the same thing.
23 TIME SWITCH – i.e. TIMES WITCH.
25 EYELID – (EnglishYIELD)*, and one of those roundabout definitions in “one’s not batted without trepidation”.
26 OPULENCE – [U(=”you”)+Left] in Old PENCE.
27 ROTATORY – ROTA(=list) + TORY(=politician).
 
Down
2 UNEARTHS – (ASHUNTER)*; the burrow of a fox or other animal is an earth, so one is unearthed when driven out of it.
3 GRAND PIANO – Page + I in (ORGANAND)*.
4 ALTARPIECE – =”ALTER” + PIECE (as in chess).
5 SECRECY – Small European + CRECY.
6 GOWN – GO + W + New, the American advice being “Go West, young man”…
7 FINIAL – I in FINAL gives the architectural device.
8 HYSTERIA – SHYSTER + 1 Answer; an old-fashioned way to insult one’s legal representative, possibly not widely used these days, though fans of the Marx Brothers will still be familiar with their fictional law firm.
14 BROADSHEET – double / cryptic def. Back before British homes discovered duvets, every bed had sheets and was covered with a blanket; and the difference between the tabloid and broadsheet papers was more clearly defined (meaning for one thing that the crossword wasn’t inconveniently situated on the inside back cover).
15 WEIGHTIEST – EIGHTIES in Western thoughT. I suspect the surface of this clue may not be literally true.
16 AMBITION – [BIT(=part) + 1] in A M(1000) ON(=happening).
18 INFERIOR – RIO in INFER.
19 PARTNER – [Run + ENTRAP]all rev.
21 FAMOUS – University in [Fine + AMOS]. When it comes to books of the Old Testament, I think Amos gets an airing in crosswords more often than its Biblical significance demands.
24 WING – WIN + G.

37 comments on “Times 25,097”

  1. 37 minutes, last in HAFT and COD to GOWN. My wife asked me once if everyone at that crossword blog was as pedantic as me, and I said “Oh, no – far worse!” Which is a roundabout way of saying thanks for educating me on the original meaning of ‘enormity’ (checked in Oxford Online).

    While I’m distributing the bouquets, special thanks to Kevin from NY for being the only other person (declaring) besides me to go for ‘boat tub’ yesterday via the ‘dip’ indicator. Can’t see how you could choose anything else if you didn’t know the word. More like this could make me change my mind about crpytic definitions, which I still regard as being the spiritual soul of a cryptic puzzle. Can’t have everything packaged up neatly for the codebreakers and systems analysts!

    Edited at 2012-02-28 02:35 am (UTC)

  2. 19:54; in retrospect I suppose I should have done it online and knocked off 3 minutes. Liked 9ac and 1ac. I’d never heard of PACE BOWLER (or cape bowler, as I started to put in). I had, though, somehow heard of a bran tub, without having the faintest idea of what it is–is that what’s used for a lucky dip (which I’d also somehow heard of without etc.)? Keep up the good work, Tim, with ‘enormity’. You’re doomed to failure, of course; just look at ‘comprised’. And I just came across, in the –wait for it– London Review of Books, an example of ‘homogenous’.
  3. A steady solve, starting with 2dn and 3dn which opened up 1ac — though that is, I agree, a non-obvious clue sans checkers. (Still, there are obvious clues aplenty here.) Fair smattering of anagrams really helped the cause.

    My COD goes to 20ac, BE-FOREHAND for the lift-and-separate required between “live” and “action”. Fooled me anyhow!

  4. A 29 minute solve which flowed along very nicely with a short delay at the end caused by HAFT, PARTNER and FINIAL.

    On ‘enormity’ = ‘enormousness’ I’m afraid the Oxfords find against pedantry with OED and SOED allowing them as synonyms and citing usage back to late 18th century. COED is a but sniffy but says the usage is ‘now broadly accepted in standard English’. Rather surprisingly, given their somewhat liberal track-record, Collins says it’s incorrect.

  5. Slightly better day at 46.07 with no major holdups and many pleasing solves. My COD to ASSAYED which had me thinking aster and trying to justify some part of assess for about 5 minutes before the obvious became obvious. I also liked the neatness of 20 ac. So an enjoyable effort today!

  6. Again today I got all but one pesky letter! I had an ‘e’ for the A in HAFT, thinking: heft, lift, remove… Wasn’t surprised it was wrong.

    Otherwise this went in quickly. PARTNER held me up for a little while.

  7. 14 minutes, so a Tuesday easy-ish.
    I liked GOWN enough to make it CoD, wondering if the British version would result in WHO.
    On ENORMITY (my last in, as it happens), perhaps the resolution is to think in terms of Chelsea Tractors, which manage to combine both meanings, especially when careening round narrow streets.
    1. “Careen” is a good word. But according to Chambers it means to “tilt or cause to tilt to one side”, which isn’t the way I use it. I wonder if it’s another of these words that don’t mean what they seem to mean.
      1. I blame Carl Sagan, who I think was the first to use it in the “careering” sense when talking about whizzing round the canyons of Mars. It did indeed mean tilting a ship to clean its bottom, but, like enormity, has taken on a whole new life.
          1. We may not have a choice: it’s already made it into some of the online dictionaries. It does rather sound like its newer meaning, and ships bottoms are cleaned rather more rarely in the old style.
            1. In this somewhat pedantic discussion (of which I heartily approve), what’s happened to the apostrophe S?
              1. As far as I can tell, they’re all there except in ships’ bottoms, when in any case it’s S apostrophe.
  8. 16 minutes. Quite straightforward. FINIAL and HAFT unknown but perfectly gettable.
    One could argue that words like ENORMITY, which look like they mean one thing but actually mean another, are a recipe for misunderstanding and should be avoided. It would be a bit dangerous to argue that here though.
      1. Let’s not get started on “disinterested” eh?

        NOAD’s advice on “enormity” seems right to me and puts the matter to rest:

        USAGE This word is imprecisely used to mean ‘great size’, as in: it is difficult to comprehend the enormity of the continent, but the original and preferred meaning is ‘extreme wickedness’, as in: the enormity of the mass murders. To indicate enormous size, the words enormousness, immensity, vastness, hugeness, etc., are preferable.

        Note: “imprecisely used”; not “wrong”.

  9. Confined to barracks today with a streaming cold but managed to struggle through this in 25 minutes – lucky it’s enormously easy for this code breaker and systems analyst. Don’t mind cryptic definitions if they’re any good. Unfortunately most are an enormity.
  10. Careering is a perfectly good word: I believe the use of ‘careening’ in that sense is a misprint which nobody bothered to correct, and was then copied by people with no idea about what it really means.
  11. Given the comments about yesterday being difficult and today being ‘easy’ I am not sure what it says about me that I solved today’s in exactly the same time – 13 minutes. I particularly liked 4d.
  12. The main difference to me is that one’s a nice word with rhythm while the other is what the PoW would call a carbuncle on the face of humanity. Before today, I’m not sure I’d even heard of it. Enormity on the other hand I have been blissfully misusing for years and will continue to do so. Decimate away at my position!
  13. 11 minutes, no great holdups, last in PARTNER. Got HYSTERIA and GRAND PIANO from definitions without thinking about wordplay.
  14. 38 minutes for me, so not exactly a walk in the park. Last in ENORMITY, being a lifetime blissfully ignorant misuser of the word. I’d offer to join the struggle with the zeal of the recently converted, but fear the battle is well lost. COD to BEFOREHAND
  15. I’m a bit bemused at the discussions re ENORMITY. I’d never thought of it as meaning anything other than the definition here. I can’t remember ever having seen it written to mean simply “very big”. I agree though that “enormousness” is a monstrosity best avoided. Last in HAFT – strange how short answers can prove so difficult. I saw the cryptic to it only after putting in the answer from definition alone. Nice clue. A simple puzzle compared to some we’ve had recently but nevertheless I still had a few hold-ups. 26 minutes
    1. It would appear that the “wrong” meaning is now predominant, at least in North America, and has a long history: see here.
      Interestingly it seems something similar is happening to “bemused” too. I’ll confess to being nonplussed by that one!
      1. I think George HW Bush got the Oscar for Best Misuse of Enormity when, after being elected president, he said he “Couldn’t believe the enormity of the situation.” He probably wasn’t alone
        1. I’d forgotten that one but perhaps it better describes the election of Bush Jr. Hanging chads anyone?

  16. I’m another one who made the Heft error – my LOI. Plain sailing apart from that slip up.

    Eighties = Decade came to mind from another puzzle I’ve done recently.

    I put in Gown from the ?o?n checkers and definition but didn’t understand the wordplay – thanks for explaining that Tim. Ditto for introducing me to the word “enormousness” – which I’d never heard of!

    Am more familiar with agronomists’ advisory work at golf clubs than their broader land cultivation expertise.

  18. Pretty easy, about 25 minutes but without any real hold-ups, except a couple of re-reads needed for PARTNER. LOI was HAFT. COD to the cute definition of the EYELID. Regards to all.
  19. 9:49 for me – so I’m with crypticsue in finding today’s puzzle roughly the same difficulty as yesterday’s.

    Some nice clues – I particularly liked 20ac (BEFOREHAND) and 3dn (GRAND PIANO) – making for a most enjoyable puzzle.

    1. I wouldn’t go so far as to condemn it as utterly inadequate, there just isn’t a lot of depth to it. Assuming your reading is: a) “something that gets covered by a blanket” is one way of decribing a sheet b) a big version of that could be described as broad c) one sort of newspaper is traditionally known as “broadsheet”, then no, you aren’t missing anything.
  21. Managed this one in around an hour, so fairly easy from my point of view. Only unknown word was FINIAL, but it was fairly obvious from the clue. I liked TIMES WITCH and had a chuckle when I twigged GOWN which was towards the end. I spotted ASSAYED immediately. Enjoyed this one, as I didn’t get realy stuck on any one clue as I usually do.

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