Times 25,223 – Meet The Action Men

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

A middle of the road puzzle embracing quite a wide field of activity including Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Hannay plus Kaiser Bill and Steve Redgrave. Add one slightly obscure word, a flower, a theatre and an ancient port, then mix well with a cake.

However nothing too difficult overall.

Across
1 RASCAL – (misbehaviou)R-AS-C(A)L; member of old US soul group of my younger days;
4 SCABIOUS – SCAB-(r)IO(t)-US; Egyptian Rose for example;
10 CRITERION – (cornier)* surrounds IT=sex; theatre on Picadilly Circus currently showing The Thirty Nine Steps;
11 DATED – two meanings; why the “?”?;
12 SAG – GAS reversed;
13 TOTAL,RECALL – TOT-(real)*-C-ALL; about=circa=C; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone film;
14 KAISER – (f)REAK surrounds IS; Kaiser Bill is generally blamed for causing first world war;
16 MALISON – MA-LI(ft)-SON; old word for a curse, antonym of benison, a blessing;
19 ESTONIA – E(uro)-sounds like “stonier” from “stony broke”; very topical as the slow motion train crash continues;
20 ROWING – two meanings 1=consequence of not doing what wife wants 2=Steve Redgrave et al; why “can be”?;
22 PURPLE,PATCH – reference to purple broccoli that some people eat;
25 GOO – GOO(d); will be much in evidence as Olympics gets under way;
26 RAMBO – O-B(MA)R all reversed; Sylvester Stallone film;
27 NEON,LIGHT – N(EON-L)IGHT; I well remember them replacing the old gas lights;
28 HEARTIES – HEAR-TIES; another olympics reference;
29 MERELY – ME-RELY; bank (on)=RELY (on);
 
Down
1 RECESS – RE-CESS; a overly long parliamentary break is a RECESS;
2 SKIN,GRAFT – S(upervised)-KING-RAFT; man on (chess) board=KING;
3 ADEPT – hidden reversed (tn)ADEP-T(niop);
5 CONGLOMERATION – CONG(L)O-ME-RATION; strange corporate structure popular in 1960s;
6 BEDFELLOW – BED-FELLOW; academic=FELLOW; qualification in education=BED; there were some odd ones in 5D;
7 OSTIA – OS-AIT reversed; ancient port of Rome;
8 SIDELINE – SI(DELI)NE; function=SINE (trigonometry);
9 VICTORIA,SPONGE – (icing over top)* includes A and S=small; sponge cake with raspberry jam and cream that amused Queen Victoria;
15 SINGLE,OUT – old vinyl record containing one song + flip side=SINGLE;
17 SYNAGOGUE – (a guys gone)*;
18 SEA,PERCH – SEA(PE)RCH; PE from P(i)E(r); the overfished red roughy;
21 PORTLY – P(OR-T)LY; a different type of corporation;
23 RUMBA – RUM-BA; with the foxtrot, my favourite dance; When They Begin The Beguine….;
24 HALLE – HA(L)LE; L from L(eague); The Hallé orchestra was founded in Manchester by Sir Charles Hallé in 1858;

16 comments on “Times 25,223 – Meet The Action Men”


  1. I agree, nothing too taxing here… but I wouldn’t have written that a short while ago, which shows the progress I’ve made!

    I didn’t know MALISON, but it had to be; HEARTIES again, unfamiliar, but the cryptic was clear. OSTIA went in last as I’ve not heard of the port, and OS is not the first thing that comes to mind for ‘sailor’ (but probably should be one of the first…).

    1. Well done Janie. Along with AB=Able Bodied (seaman), OS=Ordinary Seaman and TAR should be your first three ports of call.
  2. Managed at the death to avoid Caesar, for 29 minutes. Plants, films, a sponge cake, a bedfellow; all very homely.
  3. Bit of heavy weather today. Not spotting the anagram at 9dn was the main braking cause.

    Last one in was DATED. (An indication of my decrepitude.) Jim: I suspect the question mark is to get the effect of speech; as in when one has heard or read something and then doubts it. Classic example is Bloodnok on reading Lady Chatterley: “Forget-me-nots?, forget-me-nots? She’ll catch her death of cold!”

  4. 70 minutes online at home as I waited for the typhoon to blow itself out. Besides being held up by the wife enquiring why I wasn’t at work, I managed to hold myself up by using almost all my stupidity on one puzzle (thinking ‘purple sprouting’ and then trying to fit ‘sprout’ as the first word, mis-enumerating the fish as 5-3, being unabke to see past the sun for the energy source, getting ‘-ties’ and then thinking ‘heed’ for the first bit, etc. etc.). Plus, I was working around ‘is’ for the emperor clue before I suddenly ‘saw’ that it must be ‘Caesar’.
  5. Just under 35 minutes for this enjoyable puzzle. Shared ulaca’s experience of looking for a sprout in the broccoli patch and trying to make an anagram of (w)ierd + is for the name of some late Roman emperor I’d never heard of.

    Pleased the HALLE got a mention: they really have blossomed under Sir Mark Elder.

    I remember Jeremy Paxman interviewing the Hip-Hop artist Dizzee RASCAL and respectfully calling him “Mr Rascal”. There’s British politeness for you.

  6. 14m. Straightforward but most enjoyable. Lots of variety as noted by others, a smattering of unknowns very fairly clued, and almost nothing bunged in from definition. Perfect Times Crossword.
  7. 34 minutes for all but MERELY and PORTLY but needed another 14 to nail those.

    Didn’t know MALISON or SCABIOUS but the wordplay was helpful in both cases. Elsewhere the majority went in from definition and checkers.

    I took the question mark at 11ac to refer to ‘courting’ itself being a rather old-fashioned expression now.

  8. Nothing too difficult, as others have said, the odd obscure word (e.g. MALISON) being eminently getable from the cryptic indications. All correct except for a lazily-entered CAESAR at 14 ac which I knew could not be made to work cryptically. Should have worried at it a bit longer.
  9. 29/30 today with my error being Caesar for Kaiser. I knew it didn’t look right but couldn’t think of anything else!

    New words were Scabious, Criterion, Malison, Ostia and Sea Perch – all very gettable from checkers and definitions.

    The Halle orchestra plays at The Bridgewater Hall, a few miles from where I live, and one of my work colleagues sings in their choir.


  10. I would say “Will I never learn?” but I already know the answer.

    Threw in RED PERCH with half the wordplay parsed and never went back to check it, even though I knew there was something fishy about my answer.

    20 minutes-ish otherwise.

  11. 26 minutes and I’d have been a bit faster but the early morning sirens stopped 16 floors down in the street outside our NYC apt building so of course I had to look.

    I do wish I could find the gem from former NY Times columnist Russell Baker on the Rambo/Rimbaud dichotomy. I’ve looked but no luck yet.

  12. About 25 minutes, LOI was SKIN GRAFT beause I misread the enumeration and was racking my brain re S?I?G ?A?T, for which I didn’t come up with anything close. Otherwise, needed wordplay for the unknown MALISON, HALLE and VICTORIA SPONGE, but everything else, as others say, not too taxing. Regards.
  13. 9:21 here for pleasant, reasonably straightforward puzzle. Held up a little at the end by KAISER, nervous that the answer might turn out to be CAESAR.

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