Times 25,307

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Morning, all. As you may have noticed, I am not your normally scheduled Jimbo (he’s off on holiday, so we have done some shuffling of Tuesday duties). Thus far I appear to have got the best of the bargain, having stopped the clock at a touch over 10 minutes for this one, albeit without everything parsed 100%…hopefully all will become clear as I go through it.

Across
1 EACH – servE A CHop.
3 CODSWALLOP – Daughter in [C.O.’s WALLOP]. I haven’t heard beer described as wallop for many a year; presumably the derivation comes from the effect it has on your head. I’m also sure I’m not the only person who was looking for the missing “L”, as Colonel is here abbreviated to Commanding Officer instead of Col. Not sure about that…
9 SUBEDIT – BED in SUIT, “work for daily” referring to a newspaper rather than a cleaner for a change.
11 ROSEBUD – ROSE(=got up) + (DUB)rev. I will rely on people with greener fingers than me to accurately describe what makes a rose “rambling”.
12 OVERSPENT – Penny in [Old VERSE N.T.]
13 USUAL – Up in [U.S. AL (Capone)]; I’m sorry to have to say that this particular Al is my irrational bugbear among crossword chestnuts. Possibly second only to that actor fellow Tree.
14 CABBAGE WHITE – (WATCHABIGBEE)*. Nice anagram. I think this species of butterfly is now indigenous to most of the territories where this blog’s solvers originate.
18 BACTERIOLOGY – (CRATE)* in BIOLOGY.
21 PRUDE – Piano RUDE(=”simple”). It struck me that a literal old maid (not that anyone uses that expression any longer – do they?) needn’t be a prude, so this must be the metaphorical old maid, who is exactly that.
22 MOONRAKER – [O ON River] in MAKER. This sail appears regularly in crosswords, though I guess the name’s become better known as one of the predecessors of this week’s big Bond release.
24 INSPECT – Pitch in INSECT.
25 BREATHY – (BARTHEY)*. Apparently these qualities are the opposites of one another in vocal technique.
26 GLITTERATI – [LITTER] in GeorgiA + (IT)rev.
27 NOTE – O.T. in N.E. Me as in “do, re…”
 
Down
1 ENSCONCE – EN(=French “in”), Cafe in SCONE.
2 COBWEBBY – Cryptic def., the spinning being done by a spider, of course.
4 OUTRE – ROUTE(=course) with the winchesteR moved down the word.
5 STRETCHER – double def. I’ve not heard an exaggeration described as a “stretcher”, but it’s easy enough to see where it comes from.
6 ASSAULT COURSE =”A SALT COURSE”. Fine if you take “salt” as an adjective describing its use in the preparation, as in salt cod, or salt beef.
7 LABOUR – another double / slightly cryptic def.
8 PADDLE – Parking + ADDLE.
10 DISPARAGEMENT – DI’S, [A GEM in PARENT].
15 ESTIMATOR – (TEAMORITS)*.
16 COCKATOO “COCKER“, TOO(=over) .
17 EYE RHYME – I had to have the odd-looking “Y”s in place before cracking this; as regularly used by poets, “eye rhymes” look as if they should be pronounced the same, but aren’t e.g. “mature” and “nature”. See also “bough” and “through”.
19 SPRING – triple definition (resilient device, bound, to become warped).
20 MUESLI – English in MUSLIN.
23 ORBIT – OR(=gold), BIT(=coin).

21 comments on “Times 25,307”

  1. 21:44, but with 27ac wrong: In desperation, I put in ‘mote’ (old form of ‘might’=it could be; I did say ‘desperation’). I’m not an AL fan, either, although when I am king SA/IT will be the first to go. Couldn’t parse COCKATOO, and indeed deleted it until I was sure of MOONRAKER; TR (terminal rhoticism) strikes again.
  2. (Unlike my vision this morning!)

    A good job Jimbo’s on leave. He’d no doubt have pointed out the five definitions by example:
    3ac: “colonel” for CO.
    9ac: “clubs” for SUIT.
    11ac: “rambler” for ROSE.
    24ac: “cricket” for INSECT.
    10dn: “old man” for PARENT.

    And a possible sixth:
    17dn: just one of the many possible examples of eye rhyme.

    But I did like 17dn for all that. LOI was the cryptic def (2dn) — not my favourite by a long chalk.

    There will be some (6dn) who do not pronounce “assault” and “a salt” identically. As ever, near enough appears to be good enough.

    Edited at 2012-10-30 03:24 am (UTC)

  3. I thought this was going to be another easy one but 2dn, 17dn and most of the SW segment were still incomplete after 20 minutes. I needed as long again to chip away at these slowly one by one.

    17 was my LOI after I had been on the verge of abandoning trying to solve it and searching for a list of obscure poets. I was glad I persevered as EYE RHYME has caught me out in the past.

    I didn’t know the ‘warp’ definition of ‘spring’.

    I hadn’t noticed all the DBEs but CO for Colonel grated. I sort of assumed that one of the dictionaries might have it as a legitimate abbreviation but it’s certainly not in any of the usual sources so DBE must be the explanation for that one. Four of the others sport a ‘?’ in mitigation but that excuse wears a bit thin amongst such an abundance of examples.

    Edited at 2012-10-30 05:47 am (UTC)

  4. With some trepidation (I served 25 years in the RAF not the army) may I say that not all colonels are c o’s and not all c o’s are colonels but when the two do coincide a col. is indeed a c o.
    1. Ergo, it’s DBE, because they don’t always!

      And now I notice it, I suspect “work for daily” (also 9ac) may be another, given that subediting clearly applies to many other publications.

      That’s seven “say”s we’re owed. Eight, if you think there are prudes that are not old maids (21ac), as Tim suspects.

      Edited at 2012-10-30 08:21 am (UTC)

  5. 20m here, so about average difficulty. A rather loose feel, from the DsBE and cryptic definitions I suppose.
    I didn’t know the “warp” meaning of SPRING, so thanks for that.
    “Cocker” for “gun dog” sprang immediately to mind, because that is exactly what my dog is.
  6. 22 minutes for me, with the SW and COBWEBBY taking most of them.
    If I could have worked out why simple was RUNE, the old maid would have been an unkindly PRUNE. SPRING took a while before I realised it was a triple.
    Was there ever a weirder fill-in-the-gaps than C_B_E_B_? Looking in vain for some sort of wordplay (given its spin, _B_E_B_C looks even less possible), I eventually thought it was a reasonable enough CD, though I’m no big fan.
    All those DBEs? Can’t personally get too worked up over them, though I was looking for the L at the end of CO. Old maid defines pretty well as PRUDE, and EYE RHYME gets my CoD not least for its fine surface.
  7. …sigh… I found this a delightful crossword, and am beginning to find all this guff about dbes quite tiresome. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them and there is no reason to treat them as some sort of error. Several of the clues listed above were excellent; I should be quite proud to have produced 24ac, for example.
    Evidently The Times crossword editor agrees with me, if no-one else!
  8. Put in EYE RHYME simply because there didn’t seem to be any likelier alternatives, but it looks like it’s familiar to everyone else.
    1. It has certainly come up here before and probably more than once. Those who also do the Observer Everyman puzzle on Sundays would have seen it only 2-3 weeks ago.
      1. Looks like it was in a Saturday puzzle at the end of April – unfortunately I only started doing the Times again at the beginning of May 🙁
  9. I agree with jerrywh; they’re in the nature of the game. I like cobwebby, both word and clue, the latter refreshingly slightly-off-the-wall. Another rather too easy offering though; I’m a little on the masochistic side of the solver’s pleasure spectrum. 20 minutes.

    Edited at 2012-10-30 09:35 am (UTC)

  10. DNF today with Cobwebby and Eye Rhyme missing. Couldn’t think of a single word to fit the C?B?E?B? checkers and couldn’t think beyond PR for “spin”. Stayed overnight near Betws-y-Coed this weekend and the rooms had lots of cobwebs in the rafters, so Cobwebby is a topical word for me!

    Didn’t know Eye Rhyme: love / move was the example given when I looked it up.

  11. Obviously inspired by tony-server’s 4:56 yesterday this was a record breaking 33 minutes for me.

    Edited at 2012-10-30 12:09 pm (UTC)

  12. A mostly straightforward 14:13. At 10, probably because of the unindicated DBE (!!!), I took old man to be pa which left me puzzling over the mysterious ragement so I’m grateful to Tim for the correct explanation.

    The cabbage white is certainly indigenous to the bottom corner of our garden where Mrs Penfold grows cabbages and cauliflowers for the little buggers’ offspring to chomp their way through.

    An OK puzzle but apart from “work for daily” and “it could be me” there were none of the well-disguised definitions that so often define the Times style and make the crozzer such a pleasure to solve.

  13. 13 minutes and I agree with earlier commenters that it definitely wasn’t much fun to solve as some.
  14. As others say, this was loose on several occasions, and do I not like loose. That’s the province of Guardian compilers, unless they happen to be one of ours moonlighting, and even then you can be on a wing and a prayer. And was it just a tince dull?

    Bring on Wednesday.

    Chris Gregory.

  15. I was slow on the uptake here, with COCKATOO, NOTE and EYE RHYME not coming until I took a break, did the New York Times puzzle and came back.
  16. A steady if uninspiring puzzle, finished all but EYE RHYME then looked it up to check it, as couldn’t think of any other possibles, was tempted by MOTE (a place in Northumberland?) but no such place then twigged it was NOTE. Half an hour with some interruptions.
  17. 9:33 for me, making rather heavy weather of a reasonably straightforward crossword. I don’t recall coming across STRETCHER = “exaggeration” either, but, as you say, it’s not too much of a leap. Is there any special reason for “cadets” (rather than just “soldiers”) in the clue to 6dn?

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