Times 25132 – Arose, red, seedy…

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 57 minutes

I knew I shouldn’t have stayed up to watch Paris-Roubaix last night. I began slowly and things went downhill from there, if you’ll pardon the reference to 27d. I never found the setter’s wavelength and ended at 19ac, about as impressed with myself as I was with the clue. So, deftly skirting the crash in the Trouée d’Arenberg…

Across
1 STRATAGEM = MEGA TARTS reversed
6 HATCH, double definition
9 L for large + OWL + IF + nosE = LOWLIFE
10 MARG + AID reversed = DIAGRAM
11 Deliberately omitted. Found in tins, um…?
13 TURNSTILE = TURN for act + ‘S for is + TILE as in a music-hall hat. Tile is an old enough not to be in the ODE, but it’s still in Chambers.
14 SPAGHETTI = (TIGHT + PEAS)*. Ummm, spaghetti coi pisello. You can’t beat a good spaghetti coi salsicce e purè di patate, though.
16 WOLF, double definition. See recipe for spaghetti coi salsicce e purè di patate.
18 AVER = AVERt
19 TOMBOYISH. I invite comments from the floor, which is where I was after the 10 minutes it took me to get this. Does the question mark excuse it?
22 SWORDPLAY = SPLAY around WORD
24 LILAC = noisulLI LACitpo
25 MADONNA = IslAnds with MAD ON Name in front
26 CRIMSON = CRIMS + ON
28 STRAD reversed = DARTS
29 EXTREMITY, double definition
Down
1 SILLIES sounds like Scillies
2 Deliberately omitted. I got this one easily, but I’m not about to 3 endlessly.
3 (IMP HURTS)* = TRIUMPHS
4 GUEST = GUESS + T for temperature
5 SIN + REDO reversed in MM = MODERNISM
6 HOARSE = HOAR + SET
7 TRIAL with RIOTER* inserted = TERRITORIAL
8 FLESH reversed around I M = HIMSELF
12 STAKEHOLDER, double definition, the second facetious
15 I TILL inside the TATE gallery = TITILLATE, as in “How do you titillate an ocelot?”?
17 POOLSIDE, double definition, the first facetious
18 MEDUSA’S* = ASSUMED
20 HACKNEY, double definition, although ODE says the term originally denoted an ordinary riding horse (as opposed to a war horse or draught horse) but now refers to a horse or pony of a light breed with a high-stepping trot. Audience?
21 AD + ON for “being televised” + IS = ADONIS
23 YACHT = GermanY + ACHT being German for eight
27 SKI. No explanation forthcoming, but clearly not a cryptic definition.

32 comments on “Times 25132 – Arose, red, seedy…”

  1. All done quick-ish apart from 18ac.
    AVER for the first part and AXED for the second.
    Still don’t understand the answer.

    Edit: OK now I see it: one has to cut “head off” (avert). Stupid, stupid, stupid!

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

  2. Hold-ups in the NE took this from a 30 minute solve to 45 minutes, not helped by being unfamiliar with MARG rather than MARGE as the rancid spread and time lost imagining that TURNSPITH might fit the bill at 13ac.

    I’m fully familiar with TILE as a hat and am surprised that one has to turn to the two-volume SOED to find it listed in an Oxford dictionary. It’s in Collins and is also mentioned in the first line of each chorus in this old music hall song, but I don’t think the hat worn by Stanley Holloway in the picture is the correct design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Kuu-FnB20 (And the lyric on the poster is wrong too as they have ‘tie’ for ’tile’ which is clearly sung in the recording).

    I’m afraid I liked 19ac and 27dn

    Edited at 2012-04-09 06:38 am (UTC)

    1. The tile obviously causes a lot of people trouble. I wonder what was written on her piece of paper?

      Now that I’ve woken up, I’m warming to the “mastery” clue, so I retract all previous excoriation (to continue the Roubaix theme).

      I still don’t get SKI, though. What am I missing?

      1. Sorry mate, but it has to be a (bad) CD. Cf my music collection.

        Edited at 2012-04-09 07:23 am (UTC)

        1. I thought “deliberate” was like “detail”, so I had to take a word for liberate off a word for embark to get ski. I’m still thinking.
            1. So I should stop looking, huh? I’m up to ski????????????????????????? in my crossword “aid”.
        1. Oh! It’s “nobby”! I’d always thought it was “nobbly”, which didn’t make an awful lot of sense to me, but then neither did tile.

          The transcript of the original seems to have been done by computer recognition software. The pearson? Some me? Can he had? It’s obviously a very confusing lyric to all and sundry.

          1. Yes, there’s not much point in transcribing something and then not proof reading it, nor if you’re then going to put it up alongside a facsimile of an original song-sheet that was perfectly legible in the first place!
        2. What an interesting site! I shall waste hours browsing that.

          Another music hall song mentioning “tile” is Any Old Iron? also with the theme of the singer inheriting something, in this case not a hat but a pocket watch.

          Dressed in style, with a brand new tile
          And your father’s old green tie on.

  3. Solved while watching Oosthuizen so very nearly win the Masters.. I know little about golf but even I can see what a beautiful swing he has

    Not much to say about the crossword.. 18ac took ages to work out. No problem with 19ac and familiar with TILE = hat – I am also quite surprised it isn’t in the ODO

  4. Missed out on wolf – just couldn’t see it, even after a final 3 or 4 of 32 minutes on that alone. What with himself, tomboyish, wolf, madonna (better not upper-case it) and Adonis, it’s all a little gender-conscious. I only hope ‘pastries’ isn’t slang for something else.
  5. 27 minutes, more or less whizzing down the left (apart from AVER – wing and prayer time) and staggering up the right, apart from SKI, which has obviously strayed in from Times 2.
    I still don’t quite get AVER. Is that meant to be the (unusually large) head from cut=avert? are cut and avert really equivalents? All that is within me was looking for ?aver to be executed, but there’s nothing appropriate. Happy to plead ignorance and/or density.

    (on edit) To quote Mctext (should have read more carefully) Edit: OK now I see it: one has to cut “head off” (avert). Stupid, stupid, stupid!

    I had ?? against WOLF, but Chambers gives “a man who insatiably pursues and seduces women” which looks close to perfect.
    Not trusting my Italian, I looked up spaghetti coi salsicce e purè di patate. It gave me this page.
    I rather liked TOMBOYISH, though I don’t think I’d have got it without the crossers. STAKEHOLDER’s slightly grim humour for CoD.

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

    1. You read it here first. I’m thinking of releasing a range of tinned spaghetti.
  6. No trouble with this, just a few predictable groans along the way. Cryptic definitions aren’t my favourite type of clue and none of these has persuaded me to change my mind.

    I think HACKNEY=draught (drey) horse is highly questionable. Draft or shire horses are large and muscular. A HACKNEY is a lighter, high stepping puller of small carriages. I solved from “wear out” and the leading H

  7. Another enjoyable 35 minutes.

    After a search in the attic, managed to find my old Observer’s Book of Horses & Ponies, which describes the Hackney Horse as a harness-horse with a high stepping, long, round striding trotting action, which is truly brilliant whose immediate ancestor was the Norfolk Roadster a powerful, heavily built animal bred for utility, used by farmers ….. though I don’t think that helps the discussion very much.

    Whilst rummaging I also came across The Times Crossword Book 4, which I’ve been looking for all week so that I could join in yesterday’s discussion on themed puzzles. It contains (number 39) a puzzle that I found quite a challenge when I first solved it in the newspaper on Saturday April 1st 2000.

    I shared others’ difficulties with 18 across, particularly as I had the idea fixed in my head that “cut” was “canal”!

  8. Finished in half an hour, LOI Hackney, don’t really get it and don’t see why it is SKI except for as a definition that’s not very cryptic.My CoD is HIMSELF which made me smile. My money was on Oosthuizen each way so I am sleepless but slightly richer.
  9. 31/32 today with Tomboyish missing. Couldn’t make head or tail of that clue nor think of anything to fit the checkers (Tomboyish appears to be the only fit).

    The golf from Augusta last night demanded 100% attention and I had no thoughts of printing the puzzle off when the clock struck midnight! Well played Bubba.

  10. 74 minutes – done while watching the Masters play-off, having got just three hours of sleep after gleefully watching Manchester City implode. Had to cheat to get HOARSE, even though I was thinking around ‘frost’ and had got the SE at the end. Good puzzle – no problem with the CDs for me: the art needs to balance the science …
  11. 10 minutes for first three quarters, 20 minutes for the NE corner alone. GIven that it is too damp here to do anything else today, it was nice to have something to mutter and cogitate over.
  12. Another day, another typo, but otherwise 22:10 to round off my annual day of being an expert on golf (why don’t they listen to me?).

    Last in AVER – a nice little hazard to gobble up a careless shot.

    1. Like the picture. I’ve seen that too, though in a different road (sarf London). Agreeably subversive for any educationalist.
  13. About 40 minutes, which means very quick for most of it, then a struggle for the last few. Those last were the NE corner, the HACKNEY/TOMBOYISH pair, and AVER. I knew it must be AVER, but it took quite a while to figure out why, and I misled myself through a search for ?AVER that meant ‘cut’ for a while, then through more silliness before seeing the intended reading. As for TOMBOYISH, well, as someone said above, no way would I have gotten it without all the checkers. My COD to HIMSELF, and I also liked EXTREMITY. Regards.
  15. did this and Rufus last night and had nightmares of cryptic definitions the night long. Thanks for explaining SILLIES which I figured was the only word that fit. Exceptional wordplay for MODERNISM.
  16. 30:00 for this one – about 12 minutes for all except 18ac, and the remaining time spent agonising over anything that would fit A-E- (ruddy vowels!), but particularly AVER and AXED. The explanation still hadn’t dawned by the time I came here, so I’m grateful to you for putting me out of my misery.

    No problem with either TOMBOYISH or SKI though, both of which went straight in. Although this sort of thing is a bit unusual nowadays, they’re typical clues from the 1940s and 1950s.

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