Times 25126 – (Insert witty title)

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 158 Minutes

Music: Parry, Symphony #3, Luxembourg Radio Symphony/Hager

Of course I’m going to say this was a hard puzzle. However, unlike many of the hard puzzles I’ve done, I did not find it very enjoyable. In a good hard puzzle, you may struggle for ages over a clue, but once you see it, you kick yourself for overlooking the obvious. However, in this puzzle, some of the clues were just plain obscure, and you end up wanting to kick the setter instead.

Others, of course, may have a different view. But I suspect there will be many aggrieved solvers tonight – feel free to chime in.

Across
1 SHOWER, S(H)OWER. I worked on the theory that ‘broadcaster’ was ‘Sky’ for a long time, but finally came around to this answer. The literal, therefore, must be ‘second-rate crew’, which seems likely enough.
4 GOURMET, GOU([c]R[u]M[p]E[t])T. Fairly obvious, but for a long time I wanted a different set of alternate letters because of the crossing ‘u’.
9 UNITE, UNI + T[h]E.
10 PLASTERER, PLASTER + E[ach] R[oom]. The theory that this must start with ‘per’ is tempting, but no possible room at the end works out. The cryptic refers to a sticking plaster applied to an abrasion.
11 RURITANIA, R([p]URITAN)IA, i.e. ‘air’ backwards. I tried to work in a specific Mayflower passenger, John Alden, for a long time without getting very far. Ruritania, of course, is a romantic country in the sense of being found only in romans.
12 HOOCH, HO + O(C)H, a brilliant clue that I struggled with for a bit before seeing it in a flash.
13 LONG, LO(N)G. A simple clue, although I worked for a bit on the theory that ‘nation’s number one’ was a new way of cluing E.R.
14 PLATE RAILS, P(LATER)AILS. So straightforward I couldn’t see it, believing that ‘buckets’ in the sense of pouring rain was the literal, and that therefore the second word was ‘rains’.
18 GOLDFINGER. I don’t see anything more than a cryptic definition, but I suspect something else is going on.
20 PLEA, P(L)EA.
23 COYPU, CO(Y[ear])P + U[nderground]. Our old friend, who hasn’t turned up for a while, one of my first in.
24 PEA-SOUPER, PE + A SOU(PE)R. A well-constructed clue.
26 MONZA, MO(NZ)A, another brilliant clue, the moa of course being a New Zealand bird.
27 ANDORRA, anagram of R[om]AN ROAD.
28 ALCOVE, [s]AL(CO)VE.
 
Down
1 SQUARE LEG, S + QUAR[r]EL + EG. I don’t know that much about cricket, so had to get this from the cryptic – and it is gettable.
2 OMICRON, OM + I(C)RON. Omicron, of course, is the first letter of Ὄλυμπος, as well as the penultimate. But is it fair to call it a character in ‘Olympic’?
3 EJECTA, E(J[unki]E)CTA, where the outer portion is AT CE backwards.
4 GUAVA, AV AUG upside down. I have never seen ‘av’ used as an abbreviation for ‘average’, and was expecting ‘par’.
5 UP TO HERE, U(PTOHE)RE, where the contents are an anagram of THE PO.
6 MARCONI, MA(R)CON + [Tivol]I. I don’t think ‘Italian’ is a sufficient literal for a specific individual, and the wine is rather obscure. I marked this clue as annoying.
7 TORCH. TO(RC)H, which is H(CR)OT upside down. The abbreviation for councillor is obscure, and ‘hot’ is not necessarily synonymous with ‘new’.
8 OPEN PLAN, O(PE(N)PLA)N, an anagram of ‘apple’ is found in the middle of this three-layered answer.
15 THESAURI, TH(ESAU)RI[ce]. One of the more successful clues.
16 STAIRCASE, ST(AIR C[onditioning])ASE, where the outer part is an anagram of SEATS. We advised beginners last week to always think of stairs if you see ‘flight’, I hope they remembered that hint.
18 AFLUTTER, ‘A(FLU)TTER.
19 LAYERED, LAY + E RED.
21 LEPANTO, -n+LEPA-l+N + TO. I thought at first that you had to substitute L for R or something, but it simple the reversal of the ending letters.
22 POMMEL, PO(MME)L, where the exterior is ‘lop’ upside down.
23 COCOA, COCO + A. .
23 PUKKA. I’m afraid someone else is going to have to explain the cryptic, which seems overly elaborate for such an obvious answer.

47 comments on “Times 25126 – (Insert witty title)”

  1. 24d is chukka with p for pressure replacing the first two letters. Agree, certainly not the most satisfyaing puzzle. COD probably 15d
  2. … someone will have posted these; but for what it’s worth:
    GOLD,FINGER. “Or” (gold) and “finger” (play, as in “play (a passage) with the fingers”, musical)??
    PUKKA. P replaces the CH in CHUKKA, a passage of play in polo.
  3. Totally agree with Vinyl: hard but without the frisson of enjoyment.

    2dn: I assumed “Olympic” was just a sub for “Greek”. Don’t like this at all.

    6dn: “Italian” as def? How many are there? 58 million in Italy alone and about the same in certain Melbourne suburbs.

    14ac: never heard of PLATE RAILS and at first assumed that “buckets” = “packs” (lots of), so thought it must be PLATE RACKS — places where old railway track (as well as dishes) are kept?
    No way!

    25ac: CARETAKER? But why?

    19dn: Can LAYERED by a type of cake? Doubt it.

    22dn: Not fond of the laboured def.

    Edited at 2012-04-02 03:04 am (UTC)

    1. 25ac CA(RETAKE)R

      19dn There is such a thing as a LAYER cake but not ‘layered’ to my knowledge. I forgot to query this in my comments below.

      1. However a quick Google brings up lots of images of ‘layered’ cakes so I withdraw my comment.
        1. Ta for the CARETAKER. Wouldn’t have seen “test after failure” = RETAKE in a day.
  4. I don’t feel quite so bad now about my 56 minutes but I have to own up to a little assistance filling in the missing letters at 21dn as I never heard of this battle.

    I agree there was a lot to like but also a few I was not too happy with.

    SHOWER in the sense required here turned up recently in a puzzle I blogged and I remember mentioning Terry-Thomas who had a distinctive way of pronouncing it.

    There doesn’t seem to be a definition, cryptic or otherwise, of PLASTERER at 10ac.

    Never heard of PLATE RAILS or EJECTA.

    Didn’t understand ‘or play’ at 18ac but Mct’s explanation sorted that out. A very good clue now that I can appreciate it.

    ‘Haze’ cannot by any stretch of the imagination define PEA-SOUPER.

    I agree with your comment about MARCONI being defined simply as ‘Italian’.

    I worked out PUKKA/CHUKKA but I see whilst I have been writing this someone got in first.

    Edited at 2012-04-02 03:32 am (UTC)

      1. Yes, you and ulaca below are right. I sometimes forget to look for those.

        Vinyl1, you have a typo at 24 at the second PE.

        Edited at 2012-04-02 09:26 am (UTC)

  5. 10 ac is I reckon an &lit, where the person applying for the job of scraping the room’s walls is a PLASTERER. As for LAYERED, I took that to be a description of, say, a wedding cake, which is layered without being a layer cake.

    58 minutes for this, finishing with ALCOVE, made harder for me than it ought to be by my failure to lift and separate the niche business. I note the gripes – especially re the Ionian clues at 2 and 6dn – but I thought this was good fare overall, with ticks against 1, 5 and 15 and COD to AFLUTTER.

    Edited at 2012-04-02 03:23 am (UTC)

  6. Tough stuff, not so much chewy as gristly. 27 minutes with MARCONI entered without much conviction, not helped by childhood memories of Marconi Ltd in St Albans, and the completely unfounded assumption that he was somehow British.
    PLATE RAILS unknown as such, though both halves known as track-related.
    LEPANTO? Got it, but it’s a down clue: we didn’t change sides, we changed top and bottom. Or am I being picky?
    GOLDFINGER? Don’t much like finger=play, and assumed there was a play as well as a film.
    Does a PLASTERER scrape walls?
    On the other hand, liked PUKKA, remembering what is perhaps the silliest timing for a sports event just in time. MONZA was excellent – actually, quite a lot of the clues were – but almost lost in a heavy pea-souper of befuddlement rather than a cheerful haze of misdirection.
  7. 35m.
    I was feeling particularly bleary-eyed this morning so I was hoping for a gentle one. It was not to be. I struggled almightily to get onto the wavelength with this one and didn’t much enjoy the fight.
    At the end I had two left. I pondered 21dn for ages. Was “changes sides” an instruction to switch the first and last letters or to turn the whole thing around? The former seemed the more likely wordplay interpretation, but LAPENTO looked more likely than LEPANTO as the name of a battle I hadn’t heard of. The last time I went with wordplay over what looked right I came unstuck, so I did the opposite. And came unstuck.
    So I was left with 6dn, and bunged in MERDOCI. I hadn’t heard of him but there are thousands of Italians I haven’t heard of. He could have been the victorious general in the battle of Lapento.
  8. Glad to finish this with only one wrong, and that was that I, like Kerio, opted for ‘lapento’ as the battle. Careless, really, as I had worked out the cryptic, and had not heard of the battle (spelt either way!) so should have stuck with it.

    MARCONI, PLASTERER and GOLDFINGER needed parsing, so thanks Vinyl et al for working those out.

    POMMEL, PLATE RAILS and EJECTA unknown. Wasn’t too happy with EMM being defined as ‘Frenchwoman shortly’. Wouldn’t that be FEMM ?

    At 26ac I desperately tried to fit in ‘Imola’ for the longest time…

    I actually enjoyed this puzzle on the whole, and thought it a good work out.

    COD: AFLUTTER

      2. Thanks, Koro. I had justified this to myself as being EMMa(Bovary) all reversed.
  10. Almost got there after an hour or two. I put LAPENTO, having given up the will to live at that point. Too many clues I just didn’t get, like PLASTERER and GOLDFINGER (my fault, not the setter’s) and things I didn’t know, like POMMEL, PLATE RAILS & LEPANTO (ditto). Then there were the very fine if not brilliant clues like GOLDFINGER, that must be my COD then, GOURMET & AFLUTTER. A strange sleep interrupted solve. As for that sodding rodent..
  11. Well, I thought this was an excellent puzzle. Something over the hour as I slowly chuntered along. Finger can be a kind of gesticulatory play for small children, though it’s probably meant as ‘finger through’ = (musically) play. Hot is OK for new: it works sometimes, which is all that’s asked. Of course a pea-souper can be a haze, a thick one. The Greek O for Olympic seems the type of liberty setters often take, and without which a decent crossword tradition wouldn’t exist. Lighten up everyone. Congratulations setter!
    1. I’m open to ideas that may support this but there’s no “of course” about it.
      1. My dictionary has: haze – obscuration of the atmosphere by fine particles of water, smoke or dust; fog – a thick cloud of water droplets or smoke suspended in the atmosphere. Unless one is in a haze – mental obscurity or confusion, I would have thought the one can stand for the other in the crossword world. It’s not as if they’re on either side of a divide. Or is that how you see them?
        1. You can get there with haze=fog (at a stretch) and fog=peasouper, a sort of dictionary two-step. But in a proper London peasouper you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and while fabulous British understatement might describe it as “a bit misty” I think there really is a difference of more than degree.
          Haze has strong overtones of heat rather than cold. Chambers has “vapour, mist or shimmer due to heat, often obscuring vision” Beijing had a (sometimes dense) haze hanging over it that threatened the Olympics. A peasouper was a cold, winter affair, exacerbated by the increased use of coal fires to keep warm. I’ll stick in the “not the same thing at all” camp.
        2. Anyone who lived (as I did)through the fogs and smogs of London in the 1950s would be in no doubt about the difference between a pea-soup fog and haze.

          I just checked the usual sources as follows:

          CHAMBERS
          Haze – vapour, mist or shimmer due to heat often obscuring vision; mistiness;lack of definition or precision.

          Pea-souper – a thick, yellow, heavy-smelling fog.

          COD
          Haze – a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere.

          Pea-souper – a very thick, yellow fog.

          COLLINS
          Haze – reduced visbility in the air.

          Pea-souper – a British dense, dirty, yellow fog.

          To me ‘pea-souper’ is a very specific word to define a very particular phenomenon that I have experienced which in no sense that I can imagine could possibly be described as ‘haze’.

          Edited at 2012-04-02 02:26 pm (UTC)

          1. Well, I’m someone who was in the London smog of the ‘fifties every now and then, and not seeing one’s hand in front of one’s face would have made it a more alarming experience than I recall. The problem here is an insistence on taking haze in its admittedly more usual sense of a comparatively light or shimmering obscuration. Can it be thick enough to overlap with the thin edge of a peasouper? I’d say yes, it can be. Broadly speaking it’s part and parcel of the same phenomenon. Martians reading this must think we’re mad.
            1. H’m. Try putting “cold” and “hot” in front of either. Two of the possible pairings don’t work.
              On Mars, it’s (oddly enough) a very cold but dry and dusty haze, so I guess they would be confused.
              2. I’ve been resisting putting that one up all day!

                Edited at 2012-04-02 05:07 pm (UTC)

                1. Nevertheless the haze a peasouper creates, though not warm, is very much a part of its definition. And a haze that is tempered badly, to allow the adjective a touch of double duty (a legitimate convention), may well be a peasouper.
  12. Just on the half-hour for me. I found this really tough going, and I’m glad everyone else did too, as I often struggle to solve when half-asleep on the morning commute but felt fairly well awake today. I didn’t parse PLASTERER, GOLDFINGER or LEPANTO correctly, but got them anyway. Never heard of PLATE RAILS but the wordplay rescued me. All in all a pretty good puzzle.
  13. Well, I can think of better ways to spend an hour on a Monday morning. I know, I know ….. sour grapes because it took me so long, but it just wasn’t my sort of puzzle. I was stony-faced all through the ordeal, finding nothing to brighten this cold and overcast day.
  14. An grump-inducing half hour for me too. Ranged from the straightforwardly obvious like HOOCH and COCOA to the ‘what the heck is he/she on about’. The most challenging cryptic today but not the most enjoyable by a long way.
  15. 26:39 .. I’m more in joekobi’s camp on this one. I enjoyed the ingenuity of quite a number of clues.

    But … that MARCONI clue is a stinker. Next week, EDISON clued as ‘American’. I wonder if something was left out at the start of the clue? Something like: “Innovative Italian wine…” would work.

    1. The only thing is, Marconi is not only a famous Italian but an indisputably Italian name. That edges it for me.
  16. Of course, I’m aware that surfaces have to be prepared and all that, but doesn’t a plasterer principally apply the stuff rather than scrape it? The clue’s in the word itself, isn’t it?
  19. I knew LEPANTO from having been forced to study this poem by G. K. Chesterton fifty years ago. It just goes to show that education is never wasted, even if it takes some time to be useful.
  20. Tough puzzle, about an hour. I couldn’t see the parsing of GOLDFINGER, and never heard of PLATE RAILS or EJECTA. Didn’t know why SHOWER could be a ‘second-rate crew’, and certainly couldn’t have identified the duration of a chukka, but I’d heard of it, though I figured it was a cricket term. I knew of the battle, so that wasn’t bad. MONZA was very good, but qualifies as obscure from this side of the ocean, I think. I have no knowledge of European auto racing, and try to have as little knowledge as I can of the US variety to boot. LOI was THESAURI, which was quite good too. Overall, a bit of a struggle, but maybe because I liked the last clue, I don’t think it was as barren as others (though I agree Marconi=Italian should have been avoided). Regards to all.
  21. 26/30 today with all my gaps in the NE corner. Bedtime reading tonight will be the list of fruits in Bradford’s. I really should have got Guava…
  22. 17:28 here for a rather tough start to the week. PLATE RAILS were new to me too, but I’d no problem with LEPANTO, having been introduced to Chesterton’s poem (see keithdoyle’s comment above) at school. However, I’m alarmed to say we did practically no European history until our O-level year when we covered 18-something-or-other to 1914 and so missed the battle of 1571 – but at least I’m old enough to have had plenty of time to fill that particular gap in my knowledge by now.

    Over all I found this an odd mixture, with some very neat clues (I actually quite liked 6dn (MARCONI) – my LOI, as I’d been fooled into trying to think of an Italian wine), but some slightly iffy ones like 18ac (GOLDFINGER) where “play” = FINGER clearly makes for a good surface reading but doesn’t seem quite right.

  24. Hi vinyl1, this is karmartin@hotmail.com….

    We in Australia only get to do the Times crossword weeks later in The Australian. So this was in the paper of May 4.
    Anyway, with regard to the cryptic for 23 Down, I’m wondering….a chukka in polo is roughly seven-an-a-half minutes….so if the two leaders (ch) are replaced with (p) we arrive at pukka (genuine). Possibly what the setter had in mind?

    Regards

    Kevin

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