Times 25176: I guess that’s why they call it the blues

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 25:38

Bit of housekeeping: (1) filling in for Jerry today as he’s elsewhere; (2) apologies to Jim for missing yesterday’s blog. Busy yesterday with a tense euchre tournament.

Not a difficult puzzle on the whole with many going straight in, especially on the left-hand side. Held up by the two 15s at the end with the unknown STONECROP and, not being too sure about 13dn, trying to fit COURTIERS into 15ac.

I think there’s a problem at 20ac; though maybe I’m reading it wrongly. Ignore my stupidity on this one!

Across
 1 LIMBURGER. {mea}L,IM; URGE inside BR (for British).
 6 Omitted.
 9 WINDBAG. Anagram of ‘band’ inside WIG.
10 PA(TIE)NT. Ligature = tie, slur (music).
11 REVELATION. Party = REVEL; {n}ATION.
12 MAYO{r}. Source of another Pynchonian Feghoot pun: “The check’s in the mayo” (Vineland, p32).
14 BEN,IN. As with 1ac, a couple of answer-letters are in the clue.
15 SQUANDERS. The def is ‘blues’ (verb; fritters away, etc.). We take the N{umber} and insert it in SQUAD; then ER’S. Liked the surface of this a great deal.
16 CHA,PER,ONE.
18 NICHE. EH? is a request for a repeat; C for ‘Conservative’; IN (during). All reversed.
20 PARE. Take your PEAR, move the second half (AR) back a bit. If so, then why ‘later’? Or maybe the reading should go: Cut (PARE) would become PEAR if its second portion (in this case, the second two letters) went later?
On edit: third try (thanks to mmagus): Take your PEAR, move its second letter (portion) to the end. Boy did I make a meal of this or what?
21 METROPOLIS. MET (experienced); OR (soldiers) reversed; POLIS{h}.
25 C(ANNIE)R. As in Little Orphan Annie; which is now being discussed on the radio. Apparently the original was Little Orphan Otto.
26 CHE(MI)ST. Sol-fa strikes again. (Let’s not go through this again!)
27 STEAL. Hidden in the first three words. ‘Nicking’ is the indicator; ‘bag’ is the def. A love-or-hate type of clue. Either way, it’s cute.
28 P(RESENT)LY.
Down
 1 LOWER. An old stand-by; that which lows (and wakes famous babies in stables).
 2 M,IN,IVAN. Again, two letters are supplied in the clue itself. (Wasn’t Latin conjugation fun when you got to ‘aminibus’?)
 3 UNBALANCED. Two defs. (Not one for the nutters at NAMI, etc. who have been known to try to stop crosswords from making supposedly derogatory references to the mentally ill.)
 4 GIGOT. G{ood}; GO (try) inside IT.
 5 RE(PRO)DUCE. Public Relations Officer (the bosses’ police).
 6 Omitted. Our homophone for the day.
 7 PR(E,L)ATE.
 8 RETROUSSE. RE (on); T (time); RO(US)SE.
13 IN ONE PIECE. 1 NIECE includes O (old) and PEN (swan) reversed.
14 BACK(PACK)S. Never been to Cambridge but read much about Wittgenstein and Russell walking along the Backs. Wik: “The Backs is an area to the east of Queen’s Road in the city of Cambridge, England, where several colleges of the University of Cambridge back on to the River Cam”.
15 STONECROP. Anagram of ‘pots’ containing ONE C{ontaine}R
17 A,R,RANGE.
19 CELL,1ST.
22 REC,CE.
23 S(A)TAY. Guy as in camping equipment, etc.
24 {g}RILL.

30 comments on “Times 25176: I guess that’s why they call it the blues”

  1. 31 minutes. Everything straightforward other than not knowing STONECROP and being unable to justify PARE until I had both checkers in place so that I was forced to think a bit harder about it.

    The plant doesn’t appear to have come up here before, but it was in a Mephisto about a year ago.

  2. All but 17 minutes, lots to like. STEAL/RILL my last in, only solved when I got to the end without a “hidden”. Aha! A particularly neat clue: could equally have been a 3 way definition, plus a fourth unindicated soundalike in sees (seize).
    PARE turned up a few weeks ago in 25159 where it provided the homophone for the fruit as “Fruit skins spat out”. I seem to remember we had collective fun with that one, too. There’s no reason why it should, I suppose, but “portion” initially suggested more than one letter to me too.
    STONECROP dragged from memory with a hint of “I thought it was a bird”: plants and birds can both be dodgy territory for me.
    CoD to the tidy SQUANDERS, helped by the theory that a U early on means a Q may not be far away.
    1. Exactly the source of my lapse of parse-ability. When mmagus enlightened me, I thought: “Ah, that portion”.
  3. I take it 6A is Coper (being Copper (coin) with one P not two)?

    Enjoyed this puzzle, partly because it’s my first all complete for three weeks. On holiday I didn’t manage to finish any of the ones in the Times 13 collection without a little cheating!

    Mostly straightforward but held up by the last three – Stonecrop, Squanders and LOI Retrousse. The two foodie unknowns (Limburger and Gigot) were easily gettable from the wordplay.

    Enjoyed the clue for Rill – very apt given the BBQ weather we’ve experienced here in UK for the past week (although it’s cooler and cloudier here in Cheshire this morning).

  4. Apology accepted and I hope the tournament went well. Would you have known NYE as a matter of interest? He was very well known here when I was a lad but one hears little of him these days

    The sinister side of this was very easy with the right side needing a little more application. NICHE took a bit of working out but PARE went straight in (I already had the leading P and it was clearly some juggling with pear to produce the answer)

    A good steady puzzle solved in 20 minutes

    1. Yeh, I saw this right off. As a beneficiary of his reforms perhaps. And I’m still two sets to nil down with the rest of the match to go on Friday. Bloody Joker gets me down to one point all the time! Will report.

      Edited at 2012-05-30 10:09 am (UTC)


  5. All correct, but couldn’t parse COPER or NICHE, and didn’t know STONECROP or SQUANDERS (last ones in), but worked them out from cryptics.

  6. About 25 minutes. Almost put in the much maligned Lymeswold for 1 across before pausing to check the word play.

    I thought today’s omitted across answer had rather a good clue.

      1. Not complaining at the omission; just saying the clue was one I enjoyed.
  7. 22 minutes at a steady jog. No Welsh politicians to frighten the horses today. SQUANDERS was good but COPER was better, IMNSHO.
      1. I also thought of Neil Kinnock as I wrote in that answer. The poor chap never had a chance after Phil Cool did the Cadbury’s “Finger of Fudge” advertisement in the style of Kinnock addressing his party conference.

        Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be available on YouTube; but I’m told it might have helped get Joe Biden where he is today!

  8. 12m. I found this very straightforward, helped by knowing everything except STONECROP.
    I got a little bit stuck at the end on SQUANDERS/RETROUSSE. “Blue” in this sense has come up quite recently, and it was new to me last time. It took a while but I remembered it eventually.
  9. 13 and a half pleasant minutes. I half knew the word STONECROP, but if pressed, suspect I would have guessed it was a bird. As always, cheeses come more readily to mind than plants.
  10. 7:10 for me, solving early before heading off for Wapping (via the Whitechapel Gallery) this afternoon.

    This was one of those puzzles where I really felt my age. I think in the past I’d have posted quite a decent time, but I could feel the cogs grinding as I tried to get head round the clues. And I wasted time at the end parsing 6ac (COPER) – should have just bunged it in as it couldn’t really have been anything else (like NYE yesterday)!

    I expect young Thakkar will have polished this one off in under 5 minutes.

  11. Sorry to be so dense. How does ‘blues’ equate to ‘squanders’. ‘Blows’ I would understand. Many thanks!
    1. It’s a direct meaning to blue=to squander (see in dictionary. In Chambers see blue-2 which says its derived from “blow”)
  12. 8:40, which felt a bit slow (though not as slow as old Sever would have you believe!).  Only two unknowns – STONECROP (15dn) and ‘cute’ as aphetic for ‘acute’ (25ac CANNIER) – but a few unhelpful unfamiliars: LIMBURGER (1ac), despite the cheese shop sketch; the neglected BENIN (14ac); ‘blues’ meaning SQUANDERS (15ac); little orphan ANNIE (25ac); and GIGOT (4dn).

    Clue of the Day: yes, indeed, 15ac (SQUANDERS).

  13. No major prolems with this although a couple went in from definition alone. 25 enjoyable minutes.
  14. Strange little beastie this one, I put a lot of answers in from definition and worked out the wordplay later – PEAR, METROPOLIS, NICHE, RETROUSSE.

    Loved the clue for MINIVAN.

  15. My sympathies to the ageing Severian solving factory – 7.10 must feel criminally close to the tap on the shoulder – time to make way for the new wave. Well it aint me babe. 40 minutes with over 30 of them in the northern hemisphere. Good to stand on top of the hill and see nothing – didn’t think I’d get there at all.
  16. I found this on the harder side, perhaps due to the need to fight my way through some unknowns: GIGOT, RETROUSSE, this definition of SQUANDERS, whether Backs are part of Cambridge, and whether a burn is really scottish for a RILL. So it took me 40 minutes, with RILL being last, but not long after RETROUSSE and NICHE, where I struggled to see the wordplay. I fanally did, so NICHE gets my COD for the reversed Eh?, which is very cute. Or canny, you might say. Regards.
  18. Hey all! Long time no see. I got stuck back on the 23rd and just finally managed to catch up with last week’s puzzles.

    I started strong today and felt certain I would finish. And then the NE happened. I had S_U_N_ERS and felt sure that ‘blues’ had to be the wordplay, and couldn’t possibly be. Same with RETROUSSE, where I was getting ROUSSE from the wordplay, but figured ‘turned (up)’ couldn’t possibly be the definition.

    As for PATIENT, I had only P___E__ and felt sure of ‘long’ = ‘pine’, but couldn’t make it work. Couldn’t figure out the homophone or COPER, which, now that I see it, is an excellent clue.

    I also had REVOLUTION instead of REVELATION, with no idea of how it could work.

    I did get the wordplay for RILL, but I don’t understand the definition. Can someone please explain?

    Many thanks to the blogger and all your help.

Comments are closed.