Times 25198 – Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 28 Minutes

Music: Moravec Plays Chopin

This puzzle is indeed very easy, and I had finished all but one clue in about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I had a mental block on the final answer that prevented me from seeing the obvious, as I frantically worked through the alphabet. It was only with great effort that I came up with the final bit, which was probably not any harder than the rest of the puzzle.

There is nothing particularly obscure here, although I had never heard of the featured vegetable. There is one obscure allusion that sent me to the chapter on tramps in The Anti-Society in vain, so I had to Google it.

Across
1 DEROGATORY, GO RED backwards + A TORY.
6 Omitted, alas!
10 EPITOME, E[arly] PI TOME.
11 GALLANT, GALL + ANT, where ‘gall’ and ‘face’ both have the sense of ‘effrontery’.
12 SNARE DRUM, SNARED RUM, a chestnut.
13 NADIR, anagram of DRAIN. ‘Floor’ is used in the sense of the lowest possible point.
14 OSIER, OS + I + [lim]ER[ick].
15 MANIFESTO, anagram of AIMS OFTEN, an &lit, but an obvious one.
17 CANDIDATE, CANDID + A + TE.
20 LENTO, LENT + O[lympics].
21 EARTH, [d]EARTH.
23 IRON CROSS, IRON + CROSS in different senses.
25 THICKET, T(H[illy])ICKET.
26 ETERNAL, E[x]TERNAL, a subtraction clue where the cryptic is scarcely needed.
27 Omitted, see 13.
28 TRUTH SERUM, anagram of TRUST, RHEUM. A fictitious drug, but in the dictionaries.
 
Down
1 Omitted.
2 RUINATION, anagram of OUT IN IRAN.
3 GLOBE ARTICHOKE, anagram of TO CHARGE BLOKE + I. ‘Stealing’ is a rather odd inclusion indicator, but the answer should be evident enough.
4 THEOREM, THE + anagram of MORE. Fermat’s Last Theorem went unproven for several hundred years.
5 REGIMEN, REGIMEN[t], in the sense of a regiment of lies, etc.
7 HOARD, H(O)ARD.
8 WATER POLO, WATER(PO)LO]o]. The ‘po’ is apparently an obscure word for ‘chamber pot’.
9 BLINDFOLD CHESS, a not-so-cryptic definition.
14 Omitted, a chestnut.
16 SUNDOWNER, double definition. The tramps were apparently found in Australia and New Zealand.
18 AVIATOR, A V(I)AT + OR. The one I found very difficult. On the other hand, I might have seen it at once early in the solve and not thought twice about it.
19 ERODENT, [lim]E + RODENT. No jokes about a computer mouse?
22 RAISE, sounds like RAYS.
24 SALEM, SALE + M[any]. The capital of Oregon, not Massachusetts.

43 comments on “Times 25198 – Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane?”

  1. Ran through this with no hold ups and just beat the 10. Couple of notes to Vinyl:
    12ac: you have a legacy in there from another puzzle perhaps?
    16dn: “indigenous” has a particular meaning down here. And I suspect all sundowners (as per the film) were “of European extraction” — even if said film includes Robert Mitchum etc. The AND has: “An itinerant, ostensibly seeking work, who arrives at a place at the end of the day”. So “Victorian” is of that state of Australia (in the clue).
  3. Not so easy for me, held up largely by the chess clue (which I flunked, putting in ‘blankfill chess’, which I thought was rather ingenious) and by the tricky CANDIDATE (LOI)/AVIATOR (COD) cross in the SW.

    42 minutes after a blistering start. A bit like England against Italy.

  4. My solving time was very similar to vinyl1’s, 15 minutes for all but AVIATOR and, in my case, CANDIDATE, making 24 minutes total. There was also a minor delay along the way on the first word of the CHESS answer.

    Post completion I took a while to work out why ‘Victorian’ at 16ac and I needed to look up the ‘tramp’ reference which I didn’t know at all. SUNDOWNER itself came up in the 9th June prize puzzle.

    At 3ac I justified ‘stealing’ in the sense of making off or away with something.

    Edited at 2012-06-25 04:18 am (UTC)

    1. Read this as “appropriating”; a perfectly good inclusion indicator for my 2¢.
  5. Yes, all done in 10 bar two or three, that took a fair bit longer to mop up, including 17ac and 18dn. I had no idea of the Antipodean meaning of sundowner but put it in anyway..
    Also unsure of clean = dress in 1dn. Don’t you clean and dress a wound?
    2. I use the terms “clean” and “dress” interchangeably when preparing freshly-killed poultry for the oven.
  6. Thanks for the blog, vinyl, which filled in the missing elements in my understanding of the wordplay (‘regiment’ = ‘large number’ and SUNDOWNER = ‘Victorian tramp’). Overall a gentle, enjoyable, sub 20-minute Monday morning solve.
  7. 18 minutes, of which CANDIDATE, AVIATOR, ERODENT, TRUTH SERUM and SUNDOWNER accounted for a lot more than half. Maybe, in my current physical condition, I just did a Rooney, running out of steam, ideas and the ability to connect with anything meaningful after about 10 minutes.
    Knew the drink, not the tramp. BLINDFOLD CHASE was my whimsical Regency parlour game (“Oh, Mr Darcy!”) for a long time, which didn’t help. Also for the duration, I couldn’t understand how GORED could mean blush. Think my brain needs a reboot.
    I don’t think I’ve seen SNARED RUM before, but it certainly looks like an instant chestnut.
    CoD to ORCHESTRA for not being an an anagram of carthorse.

  8. Enjoyable straightforward Monday morning solve. As for some others, AVIATOR and CANDIDATE were my LOIs. Not sure on what basis setter claims that “candid” = “informal” at 17 ac. But perhaps I’m missing something.
      1. Of course. Thanks. This meaning not in my Chambers. Moral of story: always check in Collins before lodging a quibble!
          1. Curiouser and curiouser. My Chambers has only; “white (obs.); shining, clear; frank, ingenuous; free from prejudice; fair, impartial.”

            Once upon a time there was a TV programme called Candid Camera was there not?

            BTW, my COD goes to AVIATOR. Lovely clue.

  9. All ok, with the same queries as others (informal=CANDID, tramp meaning of SUNDOWNER, GALL=face).

    Didn’t parse WATER POLO, and have never heard of BLINDFOLD CHESS.

    Many thanks for blog, Vinyl.

  10. A shade over 10 minutes, denied a sub-10 by a careless GLOBE ARTCCHOKE.
    I think I’ve seen “po” in a recent Mephisto or Azed, but the Victorian tramp was a complete mystery. I also wondered about “informal” for “candid”, but it’s in Collins.
    Like john_from_lancs I’d use DRESS and “clean” interchangeably for fish or birds, and so would Collins, which has “to clean (fish or fowl) for cooking or sale”.
    1. Po was used for Teletubby in a recent Guardian or Times 2 crossword. At least I think it was. I couldn’t face checking up.
      1. I think I can safely say that wasn’t it: I don’t think I’d have forgotten it. My kids are all too old for Teletubbies these days but the scars remain. The Chambers definition seemed very familiar.
        1. Saturday. Since they’re inhuman, they don’t break the living rule. Or has someone killed them off?

          Scars? You obviously avoided Barney the Dinosaur. I’m stiil in therapy and my girl’s 16.

          1. The trauma must have been worse than I thought: my mind managed to blank out that reference after only two days.
            Mercifully I was spared Barney the Dinosaur, and things have improved since the Teletubby days. These days my younger kids watch Octonauts, which I will confess to rather enjoying. The older ones are heavily into Horrible Histories, so they can recite the names of all the kings and queens of England in order (something I’ve never managed), and they don’t even realise they’re learning!
  11. If I had realised it was going to be that straightforward I would have looked at the seconds too. About 5 mins for me. And Vinyl if you want to try a 3d pop down to Kent, we have lots in our veg patch almost ready for picking.
    1. I’m envious, Sue. Globe artichokes make an ideal starter if you enjoy, as I do, taking your time over dinner; and they look so attractive on the plate. I also find them a useful corrective for teenagers who are apt to bolt their food. Children also have to follow instructions carefully when it comes to dealing with the choke; so, all in all, these vegetables provide an educational, calming and mouth-watering experience.
  12. It’s not fictitious exactly, because sodium pentothal was (and may still be, I don’t know) used to induce a suspect to talk, although the results may well have been fictitious.

    John Knox’s monstrous regiment of women came to mind in 5d. 15 minutes.

  13. 11 minutes. Perfectly pleasant and straightforward solve, hence not much to say. A typical Monday puzzle (ignoring the atypical ones, of course).
  14. well done.. I have almost nothing in our Kent veg. patch ready for picking.. beans, straws, and er, that’s about it. Bad year..
  16. Just over the 20 minute mark at 21.10 so on the straightforward side for me. Probably 5 + of those on the AVIATOR/CANDIDATE bit that I’m relieved to see troubled others. Many thanks for blog which cleared up cloudy bits especially SUNDOWNER.
  17. About 15 minutes here, like others ending with CANDIDATE and AVIATOR. My problem with AVIATOR stemmed from the fact that my handwritten THICKET looked like THICKED, holding me up for a while. I had no problem with candid as informal, but it was a good misleading clue on its own as I (and some of you too, I reckon) was looking for a runner to put inside a note. SUNDOWNER from definition only, as you might expect, but now that I’m informed of the wordplay, very good also. Regards to all.
  18. 24 minutes which seems slowish from comments above. 4 or 5 of them on the chess clue which is annoying for a chess player (though I can’t get far blindfold). Raise for breed is a little edgy.
  19. Nice to finish one unaided (not that often for me).
    REGIMEN last one in.
    BW Andrew K
  20. 44 minutes, super for me, despite one or two clues I didn’t really know but got right anyway (SUNDOWNER, for one, and CANDIDATE, the “informal” meaning of CANDID being also new to me). No outstanding clues, but of this lot I liked AVIATOR best. I knew about PO = chamber pot, because I used it myself once in the clue competition (in a clue which took second prize).

    The puzzles seem to be getting generally easier; at least I’m managing to complete them again.

  21. 11 minutes, no particular hangups though I didn’t know BLINDFOLD CHESS or GLOBE ARTICHOKE until today.
  22. Easy going today and the first puzzle I’ve solved without aids for about a week. Held up at the end by Aviator and LOI Candidate. Thought Manifesto was a terrific clue – a word in the news today re Cameron’s ideas on reforming the welfare state.
  23. A sluggish 6:48, with the chestnuts SNARE DRUM and ORCHESTRA giving me the most trouble – ridiculous considering how often I must have met them (or variants of them) before! Nice puzzle, though.

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