Times 25214 – Busy busy bee

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: 43 minutes. This was a very lively solve, not too easy, but with no time to be stuck or bored even for a second as there was so much material to think about and to work out what was going on. Just up my street. No unknowns and nothing obscure apart from perhaps a somewhat archaic word at 27ac and the rather tricky 25dn which gets my vote as an outstanding 3-letter clue.

Across
1 WELL-NIGH – WELL (spring) + NIGHt (implication day is lengthening i.e. nearly night is short). Edited to clarify, thanks to Mct. 
6 COME TO – As in ‘add up to’. ET (stranger – makes a change from alien) inside the lake COMO.
9 BAITED – double definition.
10 NICKLEBY – LiE (lie empty) inside NICK (put in police station) + BY (neighbouring).
11 Deliberately omitted
12 ANEMOMETER – A + NEMO (submariner – in Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’) + MET (encountered) + ER (royal). It measures and displays wind-speed.
14 BOTSWANA – Anagram of WANTS inside BOA (stole).
16 RAID – DIARy reversed.
18 CEDE – Sounds like ‘seed’.
19 DEATHBED – Cryptic definition. ‘Had one’s chips’ = ‘dead’.
21 HERMIT CRAB – HERMIT (one dodging company) + CR (creditor) + AB (type in circulation – blood type). The definition refers to crabs walking sideways.
22 NAVY – VAN (front) reversed  + Y (unknown quantity). A shade of blue.
24 STEP ON IT – STEP (stage) + O(ld) + NIT (fool).
26 IN A ROW – I + NARrOW (thin half-heartedly). ‘Running’ as in ‘consecutively’.
27 ASHINE – AS (when) + HI (greeting) + NE (French for ‘in’) reversed. This is in Chambers as archaic or poetic, but not in COED or Collins.
28 LIEGEMAN – Anagram of N(ew) MILEAGE.
Down
2 Hidden and reversed. Deliberately omitted.
3 LET OFF STEAM – LET-OFFS (reprieves) + TEAM (side).
4 INDIANAN – DIANA (goddess of hunting) inside INN (pub).
5 HANSEL AND GRETEL – Anagram of LEGEND ENTHRALS A.
6 COCOON – COCO (clown) + ON (about). Nicolai Poliakov 1900-1974 aka ‘Coco’ was probably the most famous clown ever in the UK.
7 MIL – MILk
8 TABLE WINE – TA (volunteers) + BLEW IN (arrived unannounced) + E(nergy).
13 EARTHENWARE – Anagram of W(estern) ARENA THREE.
15 OMELETTES – OME (Cockney ‘ome – in) + LETTEr (character’s not got right).
17 WAR BRIDE – Cryptic definition.
20 AT ONCE – A + TON, C (two different centuries) + E(uropean).
23 VIOLA – LO (observe) reversed inside VIA (through).
25 PHI – pH values denote acidity with pH1 as very strong. PHI is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet usually denoting the letter ‘F’ i.e. the ‘lead found in Faliraki’ a resort on the Greek island of Rhodes.

36 comments on “Times 25214 – Busy busy bee”

  1. One of those puzzles I couldn’t solve in any sequence. Rather, a few answers all over the grid at first, including the rather obvious fairy tale at 5dn. Then taking potshots at what’s left.

    Jack: at 1c, I took “implication day is lengthening” to indicate NIGHt is short; as in seasonal change — which makes the surface a bit tidier perhaps?

    1. Thanks for that. It’s really what I had in mind but didn’t express as intended. I have edited to clarify.
  2. 37:53 .. I found this a really tough workout, but a consistently rewarding one.

    Clever stuff all over the place

    COD the ANEMOMETER

    Pedants’ corner: do HERMIT CRABS walk sideways? I thought they went more or less forwards.

      1. Above and beyond, John.

        I note that Hermit Crab No.3 is “part of an art installation”. Do you think it knows? Are we all part of someone else’s art installation? Who knows? I don’t.

        Edited at 2012-07-13 11:57 am (UTC)

  3. Don’t know but it might depend whether they have a shell on board at the time.
  4. 49 minutes and an excellent puzzle with no whiff of the Mephisto about it 🙂

    My COD goes to BAITED which had me, well, hook line and sinker. (MIL was my unknown.)

  5. I struggled with this, particularly the southern hemisphere. Had a complete mental block over WAR BRIDE and OMELETTES. 30 minutes to solve. But no quibbles, all good stuff. Thank you setter. Well done Jack.
  6. Tough going at 35 minutes, with a lot of them spent on the two crossing cryptic definitions trying to turn them into “proper” clues. OMELETTES also held me up, and I didn’t expect to get close to 18ac until I had both crossing letters.
    Even when I’d solved it, EARTHENWARE still had me looking for A, AN and THE in the mix.
    I seem to remember that hermit crabs on the Seychelles walked pretty much forwards, with the weight of the shell making sideways impossible. Good clue though; only “creditor” gives you a conventional cryptic jigsaw piece to work with. But my CoD goes to the heavily disguised ANEMOMETER.
  7. Strewth. I found this hard, taking an hour and then finding I’d assumed a rather strange vegetable for a deliberately omitted answer and forgotten to reverse. The whole thing a bit of a car-crash but enjoyable at the odd high-speed moment.
  8. What a cracking puzzle! Jack has already said almost everything that occurred to me, and we shared exactly the same solving time of 43 minutes. So thanks to him for the blog and regards to everyone; here’s hoping against the odds for a fine weekend.
  9. Tricky one today. 25/29 with Deathbed, War Bride, Omelettes and Cede all missing. I’m weak on CDs and had no chance with the Deathbed/War Bride crossing pair.

    Re Cede: didn’t recognise at all that “you might pick up” was a homophone indicator! One to remember for next time.

  10. 34m.
    I found this mostly quite straightforward but got completely stuck in the NE, where it took me forever to think of some fairly obvious things, including Coco the clown and Lake Como. Unbelievably my last in was NICKLEBY, even though I spotted early on that it had to begin with NICK. I have a sort of mental block about Dickens: I haven’t read much of it so I panic, assuming I must be looking for something I don’t know. I haven’t read Nicholas Nickleby so didn’t know there was a family involved but still.
    Anyway the struggle was all in vain because I put in ASMILE fairly early on. I didn’t think it was right at the time but I forgot to go back and have another look.
  12. I thought the hermit crab clue particularly brilliant. Not sure I understand war bride fully, but had it in.
        1. ‘Served for the match’ brings the war in as a game, as a side meaning.

          Edited at 2012-07-13 02:29 pm (UTC)

  13. 25:00, eventually giving up and writing DAY BRIDE at 17d instead of the unknown (and even in retrospect unhelpfully clued) WAR BRIDE.  Only other unknown LIEGEMAN (25d).

    Clue of the Day: 12a (ANEMOMETER).

    1. WAR BRIDE was one of my favourite clues in this, and a familiar enough expression. Shame it wasn’t published during Wimbledon fortnight when the ‘served for the match’ pun would have been especially topical. Once the penny dropped about the military sense of ‘served’, it seemed clear enough.
    2. My first thought on reading 17dn was GI BRIDE, which I think is perhaps more familiar. Obviously it didn’t fit but it put me immediately into the right ballpark.
      2. I thought it was ‘day bride’ – as in one half a sham wedding presided over by the Rev Brian Shipsides.
  14. another fine crossword, of the best kind.. tricky, inventive, and not relying on obscurities to make it difficult. Lots of good clues but 12ac stood out for me. Although I had no trouble with 17dn the clue does seem rather strange.. it seems to make sense but really it doesn’t.
  15. In my experience, MIL is widespread in the U.S.A., but rare in the U.K., where “thou” is preferred for 0.001″, possibly to avoid confusion with “millimetres”.
    1. In my experience MIL is very common indeed in the UK, for “millimetre”. It’s ubiquitous among builders and other tradespeople, who never use centimetres (or, for that matter, imperial units). 50cm is always “500 mil”.
      1. Yes, it’s used a lot in speech, but isn’t it always written as “mm”?
        1. Well I don’t have much experience of builders writing but “mil” in this sense is in Chambers!
  16. An interesting offering, which took me about 40 minutes, but I had ASMILE. That’s unfamiliar enough, and while trusting Jack that the real intention was ASHINE, that’s pretty out there as well, although had I paid more attention to the wordplay, it’s quite gettable. So a DNF for me, officially. Overall, though, a highly inventive and clever puzzle. I enjoyed it, so thanks to the setter. COD must go to my LOI, which was PHI. Highly acidic, indeed. Regards to all.
  17. 21:19 for me. This is the sort of puzzle I really ought to have romped through, but I’m going through a bad patch at the moment. First-class stuff. My compliments to the setter.
  18. Why is this ‘The state’? I could understand it if it was ‘State’ or ‘A state’.

    1. I wonder if you’d query if it said ‘This state…’ ? I think one would probably take it that ‘this’ referred specifically to the answer to the clue, the state in question, BOTSWANA. For me ‘The state…’ works in the same way. Alternatively one might take ‘the’ as padding that helps the surface reading of the clue.

      Edited at 2012-07-14 05:45 am (UTC)

  19. First time viewer, and wondering why some answers are “deliberately omitted” — these aren’t prize puzzles, are they?

    I did check “About this blog?” and “A new beginning” from Oct 2006, but didn’t find any mention, and in the end decided to leave the comment in the place the question first arose…

    1. The second para refers:

      This community is mainly for information about each day’s Times (or Sunday Times) crossword. A solver will state their solving time and explain interesting or difficult clues. Other solvers give their views in comments (possibly disagreeing with or correcting the original report). Sometimes, ‘placeholder’ posts are used to allow early comments on puzzles that will be blogged later. This allows people to leave quick comments about the puzzle or to get help from other commenters on particularly tough clues. The purpose of stating solving times is not to make you depressed because you took much longer (or chuffed because you were quicker), but to give you an idea of the difficulty of the puzzle. Information about typical solving times for each contributor is included in the biographies below.

      We don’t give solutions to all the clues in each puzzle, for three reasons. One: lack of time – writing this stuff takes longer than you might think! Two: so that we’re not seen as completely ruining the paper’s chance to make money with their “Phone for today’s answers” service. Three: to encourage you to try solving just a few clues yourself, with help from the checking letters provided by the rest. But if we miss out the one clue that stumps you, ask about it in a comment. If you do so on the day of publication, the answer will usually come quickly.

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