Times 25113 (17th March)

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
38:11, but got there in the end! Some GK and obscure vocabulary required, but most of the difficulty was in the excellent clueing. A classic Times crossword.

Across
1 ALLOA – ALL (the works) + O(uting) + A.
4 CUCKOLDED – CUCKO(o) (brief deranged) + LD (lord) + ED (journalist).
9 COVER GIRL – cryptic definition.
10 TANGO – you might see your TAN GO after you come back to cold and rainy Britain!
11 ALLUDE – hidden reversed in “trite, dull, anticlimax”.
12 SMACKING – MAC (coat) inside S(mall) + KING (powerful draught – in the game of draughts, which Americans know as checkers, a piece that has reached the other player’s end and can then go in any direction).
14 MACCLESFIELD – CC (County Councillor) inside MALE’S (his) FIELD (section of study). A town in Cheshire.
17 ATOMIC CLOCKS – (com, cocktails)*
20 ALLERGEN – L(ine) inside (general)*.
21 MULLAH – MULL (warm) + AH (word in response to dentist).
23 LIPPI – PI (an irrational figure) on LIP (edge). Filippo Lippi (1406-69) or his son Filippino (1457-1504).
24 RESCINDED – C (circa, about) inside RESIN (pitch, perhaps), + DED (deed, “half-hearted”).
25 VENTRICLE – V (victory sign) + (in R elect)*, the R from Russian.
26 NODAL – A L (driver under instruction) after NOD (green light).

Down
1 ACCLAIMS – alternate letters of fArCiCaL + AIMS (goals).
2 LOVELACE – LOVE (dig deeply) + ACE (single spade perhaps) around L(ake). Richard Lovelace (1618-57), English cavalier poet.
3 AIREDALE TERRIER – AIRED (showed) + A LET (a permit) + I.E. (that is) + R(equired), around ERR (stray). I wasted ages looking for anagram fodder.
4 CHIC – CHICKEN (yellow) without KEN (range).
5 COLUMN INCH – CON (lag) around LUM (chimney) + INCH (edge). I suppose it could be used for an advert, but this is a general term for an amount of newspaper space.
6 OPTICAL ILLUSION – O(ld) + (Lilliputians, co)*
7 DENZIL – Z (unknown quantity) inside LINED (ruled) reversed.
8 DRONGO – O.G. (own goal, defensive blunder) + NO + RD (road, way), all reversed. A small African bird (or an Australian idiot).
13 ASYMMETRIC – AS YET (for now) + RIC(h) (mostly fat) round MM (maidens). As in the bars that only female gymnasts use.
15 OCCLUDED – (CD could be)*, without the B for book.
16 ASPHODEL – AS (when) + HOD (stretcher-bearer) inside PEL(t) (shower briefly). A stretcher is a type of brick.
18 PAVLOV – PAVLOV(a) (abridged course). Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist famous for his “conditioned reflex” experiments with dogs.
19 CLIP-ON – CLIP (a fair rate) + ON (possible).
22 ISLE – IS LED (follows) without D (daughter).

8 comments on “Times 25113 (17th March)”

  1. Thanks, linxit! I had 7 queries on this which you have explained most lucidly! I guess PI is generally clued as “an irrational figure”? Haven’t played draughts since childhood so “king” was a new one on me; as were resin/pitch mostly fat/ric(h) Thanks again.
  2. 62 minutes, so this was a bit of a struggle for me although I was never actually stuck or had the feeling that I would fail to complete the grid. Some wordplay took a while to work out after the main event.

    There’s a painter Lorenzo Lippi too(according to Wiki) but this wasn’t much help to me as I never heard of any of them. Fortunately the wordplay was easily deducible.

    I enjoyed TANGO and MULLAH. A little humour always helps things along when the going is tough.

  3. More than two hours on this and then mortified upon submitting online to find I’d got one wrong. I paid the price for ignoring the cryptic and having less than stellar canine knowledge, moving the dog north of the border with ‘Ayredale’.

    Much easier this week.

  4. This took me about 40 minutes. An absolute cracker.
    My last in was CUCKOLDED and it took me about five minutes after submitting to work it out!
    Fra Lippo LIPPI came up a couple of months ago (31 Jan).
  5. Oh and thanks for putting me right on ASPHODEL. I was puzzled by “hod” and didn’t figure out this meaning of “stretcher”. Good clue.
  6. Had to do this one at traffic lights and in motorway service stations, but always find puzzles easier when done in short sessions rather than one sitting.

    A witty, enjoyable puzzle with an opportunity for yet another nostalgic wallow, this time remembering COVER GIRL.

  7. 100, count ’em, one hundred, minutes, but I brought it to its knees in the end. Luckily for me, ALLOA had appeared recently in a cryptic. Didn’t know pavlova or ASYMMETRIC (they’re uneven bars, I believe, in the US), and foolishly put in Ayrshire terrier (a cross?) at 3d, slowing things down a bit. I spent a good deal of time thinking up dances at 10ac, since I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the clue–a brilliant one, and thanks, linxit, for explaining it (I don’t tan, or even try to). Lots of wonderful clues, although I didn’t like 7d.
  8. 27:05 for me. A puzzle worthy of a Championship final, particularly as over-hasty competitors might have been tempted to bung in DENNIS and SLIP-ON. (I’d have scraped a measly couple of time bonus points in old money, but nowadays I’d have to hope that I’d managed the other two puzzles in around 15 minutes each!) I raise my hat to the setter.

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