Times 25306 – Better late than never…

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 18 Minutes

Music: Rachmaninoff, The Bells, Slatkin/St Louis Symphony

Although I was annoyed that the puzzle was late due to the change from BST to GMT, I caught up quickly. This is the easiest Monday puzzle I’ve ever had, and quite a relief from the 3rd Final Championship Puzzle I’d been struggling with all day.

I thought I might finish in under 15 minutes, a first for me, but I got stuck for about 2 minutes in the NW corner. It was only when I got ‘plum’, purely from the definition, that I triumphantly put in the last three answers. I will omit more answers than usual because so many of the clues are very simple.

Here in New York, we are hunkering down for Hurricane Sandy, but so far there has been no rain or wind. Usually anything they predict is liable to prove disappointing. I always watch out for ‘mostly cloudy with a chance of showers’ – that often produces a deluge.

Across
1 BABEL, BABE + L. Babe Ruth, that is, a refreshing change from the ‘pity’ meaning that Ruth usually has when the first word of a clue.
4 DUCHESSES, DU(CHESS)ES. ‘Ladies’ is rather vague for duchesses, but easy enough.
9 TOP BANANA, double definition, one non-jocular.
10 CLOSE, triple definition in three words.
11 ENDING, END IN ‘G’. A clever clue with good misdirection that I was relatively slow to see.
12 ATYPICAL, anagram of CAPITAL around Y.
14 CHAIN STORE, anagram of CASHIER NOT.
16 Omitted – a chestnut if there ever was one.
19 PLUM, PLUM[p]
20 PILOT LIGHT, P(I LOT)LIGHT.
22 Omitted – ridiculously easy.
23 STUCCO, CUTS backwards + CO.
26 MINOR, MINOR[ca], where ‘ca’ is one of the two abbreviations for ‘circa’.
27 ON THE BOIL, anagram of HOTLINE around B[ox] O[ffice]
28 TREACHERY, T(REACH E)RY. Another chestnut.
29 Omitted, look for it!
 
Down
1 BUTTERCUP, B[otanist] + UTTER + CUP.
2 BIPED, BI(PE)D. A compendium of cliches.
3 Omitted!
4 Omitted!
5 CHATTERBOX, C + HATTER + BOX, where we get the other abbreviation for ‘circa’.
6 ESCAPE, the E-SCAPE, which is looking rather bleak nowadays.
7 SCOTCH EGG, SCOTCH + E.G. + G[ood].
8 SPELL, double definition.
13 STRIKE HOME, double definition, the second one requiring lift and separate.
15 ABUNDANCE, double definition, the only bit of obscure knowledge in this puzzle. Yes, ‘abundance’ is a bid in whist, along with ‘prop’, ‘cop’ and ‘solo’….er, let’s not give them any ideas.
17 POTBOILER, POT + B OILER.
18 Omitted.
21 FABRIC, FAB + RIC[h]. I was looking for a specific cloth, got held up a bit.
22 REMIT, TIME + R inverted.
24 CLOUT, C + LOUT.
25 Omitted!

24 comments on “Times 25306 – Better late than never…”

  1. 17 minutes with ENDING appropriately last in. ABUNDANCE of course unknown as a whist call, and TOP BANANA must occupy a place in someone’s lexicon taken by ‘big potato’ in mine. MINOR not parsed, so thanks Vinyl for that.

    I will approach the third Grand Final puzzle with trepidation after stuttering on the second.

    BTW, is 13 a DD? I had ‘deal an effective blow’ as the literal and the rest as the wordplay.

    1. Loved your 0 seconds for the ST yesterday, especially since it took me a very steady 2,518 of them. Surely, at last, a time even Tamthewhatsit will never beat.
  2. End of Brit Summer Time means the puzzle arrives at 08:00 instead of 07:00. And just when I’m starting to get up earlier with the onset of summer in WA. So it goes.

    Still, I’m more awake by the time the puzzle arrives. And this didn’t need much concentration at all. Strangely held up on my last: MINOR (26ac). Nice use of several xword variables in the clue.

    15dn was horrible! Nine or more tricks at whist is so named because of the ordinary meaning of the word. Maybe a faint tick for the two meanings of “deal”. But that’s about all.

  3. 17 minutes which may be a PB – not sure if I have ever broken the 15 minute barrier on the Times.

    A swift and steady solve with no hold-ups except a brief blip trying to work out how 19 worked.

    No problems with ABUNDANCE which strictly speaking is a call in solo whist rather than the standard game. Incidentally it can also be spelt ‘abondance’ so it’s as well the variable letter was checked.

    9ac was timely as I have only recently watched Mike Sarne’s film “Joanna” (1968) and the final line of its title song is “Joanna…you’re the top banana to me”.

    The on-line newspaper is again offering Grand Final Puzzle 3 instead of the correct one.

    Edited at 2012-10-29 01:44 am (UTC)

  4. Oh blast. I expected the puzzle to help me get my mind off the hurricane approaching, but I blew through it in less than 10 minutes, the only guess due to knowing nothing about whist. Best wishes go out to those closer to harm’s way than I am in the NE US. Vinyl, I hope you’re right about being disappointed by weather forecasts, but I fear this one will cause some difficulty for many people. Good luck to everyone in the way of this storm. A good beginner’s puzzle today, so I hope the beginners enjoyed it. If I can basically write in the answers as I read the clues, as I did today, the speedsters will have a field day. Regards to all.
  5. Easiest one for quite a while, c8 mins which is as fast as I ever get.
    Richard Browne looked me straight in the eye and said he never selected easy ones for Mondays in particular – in fact, he made no selections based on difficulty at all – but experience would seem to indicate otherwise!
  6. A straightforward quarter of an hour. Panicked a bit over abundance – all I could think of was misere ouverte, and feel too for a moment as it threatened to hold up a good time. I liked Ending – I thought maybe Ing was an opponent of the giants. A lesson there – get simple. Holding my breath from over the pond for New Yorkers and New York.
  7. Crikey. 5:46 on the club timer, an emphatic PB. I pretty much just wrote them all in, in spite of not knowing about whist.
  8. Fast solve this morning with my only hold ups Fabric, Minor (took a while to see Minorca) and Weep (had first pencilled in Yelp). Liked End-in-g.
  9. 13 minutes for me after dithering over the whist call. Didn’t know you were in NY Vinyl – in the city? I’m about to fill up the bathtubs and then go out to get the papers, assuming the elevators haven’t been shut off. We’re on the top floor (16) of a pre-war and had quite a bit of damage from Irene last year. The roof is supposedly fixed – we shall see.
  10. A Monday romp, 16 minutes, fast for me and not surprised to see the experts were faster. I could have been faster was I not munching a bun and drinking coffee instead of non-stop typing. Back to contemplating #2 of the final’s puzzles, which seems tougher than #1 to me.
  11. A leisurely 10 minutes today, with only 17d, where I initially essayed PETROLLER (troll-work of little merit inside peer, a vessel in another universe, and British because it hauls petrol, not gas) putting on the brakes.
    Memo to self: in a crossword of this character, no answer is going to be so weird it needs inventing.
    Best wishes to those in harm’s way today, hoping it turns out to be a reverse Michael Fish.
  12. 9:19 after what felt like a slow start.

    I knew abundance as a call in solo (I used to play it on Christmas night with Dad, uncle and cousin) but I didn’t know that solo was a dimunutive term for solo whist.

  14. 9 minutes, didn’t know the whist definition of ABUNDANCE. I’m not sure what’s going on, but i can’t seem to leave a comment. I deleted some spam comments, did that freeze me out?
  15. Yes, one of the easiest puzzles, even by Monday standards, in a long while. About 25 mins for me. Some of the clues – those omitted by Vinyl – were, indeed, ridiculously easy. I liked the clue for ENDING at 11 ac, and not only because i once olayed an enjoyable round of golf at the Gog Magog Club near Cambridge.
  16. Extremely easy, so I managed my best time ever (under half an hour, if only by thirty seconds). ABUNDANCE (also without knowing the whist call), CHATTERBOX and PLUM my last three in. Best wishes and a safe passing of the storm to all on the Eastern seabord (the New York Times has unlimited access to storm news online so I was able to watch some videos and enjoy a wonderfully familiar accent I seldom get to hear; I was born in New York and grew up on Long Island, so I can imagine what things are looking like now).
  17. 4:56 for me – which is about as fast as I can hope for these days. A nice easy start to the week.
    1. Well – I enjoyed this – right up until seeing your solving time. They also serve who stand and wait – and, with grim determination, try to beat the hour mark!
  18. A few seconds over 19′, but seeing everyone’s scores shows I have no reason to be particularly chuffed. Mazel tov to Jackkt and keriothe on their pb’s. My LOI, oddly enough was ON THE BOIL, even though I had everything but the B,I. ABUNDANCE went in on the checkers and a willing suspension of disbelief.
  19. Don’t know if anyone will read this a week and a half late — I get my puzzle in the NY Post, which publishes it late because the Saturday puzzle, like all the others, appears the next day completed and they don’t want to spoil the prize.

    “Top banana” is an old vaudeville term for the leading comedian in a sketch. The vaudevillean Harry Steppe coined it, from a sketch in which three comics try to share two bananas.

    Much sympathy to all who bore the worst of Sandy — we got off easily in northern Connecticut.

    Valentine in CT

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