Times 25232

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 49:58

I probably could have done this quicker had I done it during the day, rather than the middle of the night. As it was I had to abandon the actual writing of the blog in favour of sleep. So I got up a little earlier to write the blog before work.

Several quite neat clues here, but nothing overly taxing. 7d might have stumped me for a little longer, had I not seen the exact same technique just a handful of blogs ago. One or two words I didn’t know, but nothing I couldn’t deduce. That said, I still don’t fully understand 19a. I think 25a was my COD for its natural surface.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 HADRIAN’S WALL = (DARWIN HAS)* + ALL
8 OP + AL(IN)E
9 nASSAU + LT
11 HOSANNA = H (hot) + N/N (news) in OS (old style) + AA (boozers)
12 H(O)ARDER
13 NO + TED – No for a Japanese drama, and Ted for a delinquent youth are both fairly chestnutty. And yes, Jimbo, we know that not all Teddy Boys were delinquents.
14 DI(ABLER + I)E – Not a word I knew, but similar enough to diabolic to take a guess at
16 DESERT RAT = (RESTARTED)* – Neat anagram
19 NEHRU – I got this one from the definition ‘popular Indian’ and the checkers, but I still don’t understand the ‘original chicken counter’ reference. I’m not particularly familiar with early twentieth century Indian politics, so there may be some incident when Nehru famously ‘counted his chickens’ as it were. Or I may be missing something more fundamental. There’s a reversed HEN in there but I don’t think that’s relevant. Ah, but it is – see mctext’s comment immediately following
21 IMP + ENDS
23 SCOURER = SCR (Senior Common Room) about (OU + RE) – I had to look up SCR post-solve, but the rest was clear enough.
24 GEHENNA = God + HE rev + ANNE rev – I was vaguely aware of the word, but couldn’t have given a detailed definition
25 REALISE = (ISRAELi)* + palestinE – I liked this. The wordplay makes for a very natural surface.
26 ECHO + CHAMBERS
Down
1 HEAD + SET
2 DEsIGNED
3 ICELANDER = (CINDERELlA)*
4 NEAT + Huddersfield – Town in South Wales
5 W + ASSAIL – I knew this was an old-fashioned verb for drinking and making merry, so it was a small leap to the actual drink being consumed.
6 LA + UNDER – ‘to address the filth in lucre’ is the definition, as in money-laundering
7 NOTHING DOING – This NIX/ON idea cropped up only a few Fridays ago, in 25196 (22nd June), which I also blogged, so I remembered it from there.
10 THREE-QUARTER = RE (soldiers) in THE + QUARTER (area of town) – It took me a while to work out the definition ‘Back’. A three-quarter is one of the backs in a rugby team.
15 ANTISERUM = (U + MAN TRIES)* – I’m not convinced about ‘bloody stuff’ as a definition. An antiserum is a serum containing antibodies. I’m no biologist, but does that make it necessarily ‘bloody’?
17 SA + P/P + HIC
18 RAN INTO = IN (at work) after RAN (managed) then TO
19 NEONATE – hidden
20 HARRI(E)S – A reference to the notorious Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris

41 comments on “Times 25232”

  1. Dave, you’re on to it. It’s a reversal of UR (original) +HEN (chicken) with “counter” as the reversal indicator.
    1. OK. I’ve not come across UR- as a prefix meaning ‘primitive; original’ before. Nor did I think of counter as a reversal indicator, as in ‘counter-clockwise’. But both seem to work fine. Thanks for clearing that up, Alec.
  2. One of the best puzzles in quite a while with nothing to fault anywhere and lots of cunning wordplay to decipher.
    11ac: OS for “old style” was new to me and seems to have to do with the Julian Calendar.
    14ac: also a new term. But the wordplay gets it. Spent a while trying to work out whether DIABOLISE was a word and whether it could be made to work.
    26ac: COD for humour.
    1. I can fault 3 of the obscure (i.e. previously unknown to me) words:
      24a guessed GEHANNA, ANNA and ANNE both women so 50/50 chance
      14a ABLER means more competent for me, not more powerful; so unable to synthesise the unknown DIABLERIE (which while unknown is easily recognisable and potentially guessable given an accurate clue, which we weren’t).
      19a NEHRU a guess from the definition, UR- unknown prefix.

      I’m just ratty as a DNF, a gap at 14a and a mistake at 24a.

      Rob

  4. 18 odd minutes on the clock, with the obligatory solitary typo. Those of us that don’t touch type maybe shouldn’t attempt the online version.
    Two biblicals and two WW2 references today – that should cheer a few people up!
    I didn’t fully get HOSANNA as I didn’t break down the O(ld) S(tyle) boozers, expecting dated term for a hostelry, perhaps. To call AA boozers is perhaps ungracious, as they are at least trying to stop.
    Given that we now have a national memorial to Bomber Command, perhaps we can also be more gracious to Arthur Harris than “notorious”, though I suppose it still depends on whether you were a resident of Dresden at the time.
    DIABLERIE worked out from cryptic: there are probably lots more variations on this theme out there.
    CoD to the politically dangerous REALISE, for its wonderfully smooth and misleading surface. NEHRU was good too – I keep trying to get UR accepted by online word games, but they’ll have none of it. Does anyone know if this German prefix is linked to our favourite ancient city?
      1. Well quite. I think I’m more than pleased there isn’t (as far as I know) a memorial to the Luftwaffe bomber boys, nor to Reichsmarschall Göring. I think the opprobrium so often heaped on Harris is absolutely inappropriate, as for a long time his force was the only means we had for fighting back while otherwise alone. The omission of a proper national memorial was for many years a grievous error.
  5. 75 minutes with a couple of look-ups along the way at 14 and 24. Yet another Friday when I was grateful not to be on blogging duty.

    Yes, mct, DIABOLISE does exist (also with Z) and that was the nearest I could get without resort to aids. I remember meeting GEHENNA previously but had no idea what it meant so I wasn’t going to get that either.

    At 11ac, I thought the whole idea of AA was that its members are reformed and therefore NOT boozers.

    The Oxfords recognise Jim’s point, which I support, about the yobbo definition of teddy boys, but unfortunately Collins does not, so it’s valid for Times crossword purposes and we are stuck with it turning up from time to time.

    Edited at 2012-08-03 07:52 am (UTC)

  6. Neat is how I’d describe this puzzle too, but also some cracking wordplay – I was led a merry dance by one or two, including the marvellous 18D – and I agree that this is one of the best we’ve seen for quite a while. Well done setter, and many thanks for the blog.
  7. Slow start with the lesbian first to fall but after that a steady solve finishing with the diabolical one. The hidden word at 19 held me up as usual. Interesting cluing, with 13’s TED bound to raise an eyebrow in Dorset and 6dn being identical (even down to the punctuation) to a clue in Indie 6246 of October 2006. Setters can’t get away with anything in these internet days!

    COD to REALISE for raising a smile from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, not to mention a smashing surface. 45 minutes.

  8. Excellent puzzle that is tough but fair. 30 very enjoyable minutes. The use of “counter” as a reversal indicator is very good.

    Yes, we are stuck with the incorrect “delinquent” and “ted” but not mentioning it is to fulfill Bagehot’s prophesy in a minor way.

    Thank you setter and nice one Dave

    1. Okay, you sent me scurrying to Google “Bagehot quotes” and I’m still not sure. Is it the one about “Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself…” ?
      1. Yes, something like that – I didn’t recall it exactly

        Mind you, he’s such a rich source you can often just drop his name and get people nodding wisely who don’t have a clue what you’re on about. I guess the one about good men standing aside and doing nothing might also fit?

        1. Thanks for the steer towards him, jimbo. After Googling him, I read three pages of quotes from him and there’s some great stuff in there. A name I shall be shamelessly dropping in future, as you advise.

          Talking of Google, can anyone confirm (I do hope so) the story that’s going around that during the Olympic opening ceremony, one of America’s NBC presenting team said, at the moment Tim Berners-Lee was revealed typing away at a computer: “Don’t know who this Berners-Lee guy is. Maybe one of the team can Google him.” And he wasn’t joking. Please say it’s true.

  9. Tough, high quality 24 minute solve, where there was little or no chance at spotting answers purely from definition or word length or checkers. So much so that I revised several tentative answers (LOURDES and ARTESNIUM really weren’t convincing me from the start) before submitting, and missed that my original stab at IMAGINE for 25 across was another one that needed revisiting. Setter wins this one by ippon, I fear.
  10. 22m. I thought this an excellent puzzle, with a lot of original stuff that required real thought rather than recourse to the standards.
    Several I couldn’t parse even after solving, so thanks for all the explanations. I don’t remember seeing “ur” before, for instance.
    25ac is a very good clue, and thankfully controversial only to those who would deny the existence of such a thing as “Israeli ground” or “Palestine”. Such people do exist of course but I don’t think we need worry about them here.
    Unfortunately I messed it up for myself by putting in GEHANNA. I could complain that this is ambiguous wordplay for an obscure word, but the instruction to reverse the woman’s name is clear and ANNA doesn’t need reversing. This even occurred to me at the time: I should have thought about it more.

    Edited at 2012-08-03 10:08 am (UTC)

  11. Just over three-quarters of an hour. Found it hard work but quite rewarding. Some very clever word play, and any reservations have been discussed above.

    GEHENNA. I’ve been rummaging about unsuccessfully trying to find a little book written in the late 60s or early 70s by a scientist whose name I forget. (I’m not being very helpful am I? But bear with me.) He was arguing that scientific advances in Britain, unlike those in many other countries, are rooted in the inspired work of solitary geniuses rather than teams. The theme for his text was the quotation from Kipling:

    Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
    He travels the fastest who travels alone.

    1. German literary types talk about the Urfaust, Goethe’s first version of what became his two-part dramatic poem Faust. There seems to be no doubt that the UR prefix is of German origin, though its etymology is mysterious. I like the idea (suggested above) that it might have something to do with the ancient city of Ur, but I fear that would be too good to be true.
    2. My copy of Mozart’s piano sonatas says “urtext”, which is where I knew the term from. In that context I think it means “Ur dreaming if you think you can play this lot, sonny Jim”.
  13. Pecked my way through this with the Olympics on. A lazy 80 minutes or thereabouts, a deft amusing puzzle and a perfect counterpart to the sport. 26 might have been ‘What you do for your words to get sound sources?’

    Edited at 2012-08-03 02:48 pm (UTC)

  14. Absolutely. If you haven’t read it Bomber Boys by Patrick Bishop (available on Kindle)is worth devoting some time to.
    1. I agree with much of that, though it’s difficult now to see the destruction of Dresden, and some of the other cities subjected to carpet/incendiary bombing near the end of the war as much more than naked acts of vengeance (more understandable perhaps in the circumstances of the time than when viewed in hindsight). There is scant evidence that the bombing ended the war in Europe sooner than would otherwise have been the case (unlike the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, though hideous and ghastly in itself, undoubtedly brought the war in the Pacific to an abrupt end and thereby probably saved more lives than it destroyed). This is in no way to belittle the huge courage of the “bomber boys”, who suffered a horrendous casualty rate. It is just sad that such brave lives were sacrificed for a cause which on occasion was prosecuted in ways that are difficult to justify morally even by the standards of wartime.
  15. Finely-wrought stuff indeed, as one could not insert a fag-paper between elements in most of these clues. Mind you, I’m no fan of the wordy-smiths you get in some of the papers these days. Clue of the many good ones? Probably the brilliant Israel/ Palestine/ REALISE.
  16. After spending at least 10 of 50′ trying to figure out 14ac and 15d, I came back after a break and twigged in 3 more minutes, for a long 53′. The AA line is, Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic–at meetings, one always begins one’s breast-baring by saying, “Hi, I’m Fred, and I’m an alcoholic”–, so in that sense I suppose ‘boozers’ is justified, if, as z8b8d8k says, ungracious. I think it was yesterday that an anonymous poster complained about foreignisms [like ‘cassava’, forsooth!], which struck me as fairly silly; but I can’t say I’m happy with DIABLERIE. Thanks, Dave for explaining HOSANNA. Was the plural ‘sonS’ necessary in 2d?

    Edited at 2012-08-03 04:55 pm (UTC)

  17. Excellent puzzle with some testing wordplay. I thought NEHRU extremely good (provided, of course, you happened to be familiar the UR prefix) with its clever use of “counter” as a reversal indicator. Thanks to Dave for explaining HOSANNA – I’d never before come across OS for “old style”. No idea how long this took me (done in bursts while watching the Olympics) but it wasn’t quick. I do know that after my first run through all the across and down clues my only entry was SCOURER at 23 ac.
  18. I got through most of this pretty quickly, probably 15 minutes, even with interrruptions, but got stuck on DIABLERIE, NEATH, THREE-QUARTER and NEHRU. The first three I pondered for a while and entered via the wordplay only, then NEHRU on definition alone after the ‘U’ appeared. GEHENNA wasn’t exactly on the tip of my tongue, either, but with all the checking letters it made itself apparent. I admit to not knowing of the town of NEATH or rugby backs, but I do know of “Bomber” Harris, and my recollection is that he was notorious among his contemporaries for advocating a ‘bombing-centric’ policy that could win the war by itself, and that others felt was unwise, the others being most probably accurate. I believe his notoriety for the carpet bombing techniques and its indiscriminate destruction came retrospectively.
  19. Am I the only person unhappy with 2 down, or have I missed something? ‘Saw fit’ is ‘deigned’, but ‘plan’ is not ‘designed’ – surely that’s ‘planned’ – and why ‘sons’ when only one son is being eliminated?
    JBC
    1. But ‘with plan’ is ‘designed’. I’m glad to see someone else (see above) wonders about the plural.
    2. According to Chambers, “s” can mean son or sons. I only found that out today when asking myself the same question that you did.
  20. A nice effort today, harder than the last few and as such welcome. Jimbo is not alone in disliking teds = delinquents. They were as delinquent as say, mods.
    So far as poor old Arthur Harris is concerned, I think it is very difficult for those of us who were not there at the time to understand. My father, who was there, said the entire country was behind him at the time, and his efforts on our behalf, and all in bomber command. We were under threat of invasion and death. He thought it was a lasting shame on Britain that his efforts weren’t properly recognised.
    Looking back, we may take a different view. But we haven’t been in a world war or fought for our lives as my father had to.
    1. All very true, plus he wasn’t the instigator of the policy but the one charged with carrying it out. If he was guilty then so were Churchill and others.
  21. I found this the most difficult puzzle for quite some time. Picked at it all day but gave up a few minutes ago with four left (Wassail, Assault, Diablerie and T-Q). Every clue required careful thought. COD to the superb Realise.

    Got Hosanna from checkers and definition and Gehenna from checkers and wordplay.

    Thank you setter and well blogged Dave.

  22. Very good I thought, but spoiled by a few things that to me seemed inaccuracies in the definitions: as mentioned several times, boozers when they’re really the opposite of boozers seems wrong; teds were not necessarily delinquent; and echo chambers are not sound sources, surely: the sound comes from what is sent into the echo chambers.
  23. 8:14 for me. I felt this was very slow (as usual these days I made heavy weather of some easy clues), but it seems to have been one of the faster times, and I’m still not quite sure why.
  24. An echo chamber is ‘a source of reverberant sound’ according to Collins. People in AA are recovering boozers (they never actually recover, apparently, it’s an ongoing process) so you can excuse that too, if you like.
  25. Just read this in Scott’s Guy Mannering: ‘This tragedy…was larded with many legends of superstition and diablerie…so that most of the peasants of the neighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen to make a considerable circuit, than pass these haunted walls.’

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