Times 25310 – Off with his head…and tail!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
The 15-letter anagrams went in almost at once and I thought I was in for another easy ride on my blogging day but I came to a standstill several times with a couple of unknowns and the NE quarter putting up a lot of resistance. Some of it was dead easy though so I can’t really explain why it took me a couple of minutes short of an hour. No hidden answer today but plenty of chopping off ends of words.

* = anagram


Across
1 ABERRANT – BE inside ARRANT (out-and-out)
5 GAFFER – GAFFE (mistake),Ringleader
10 SEPTUAGENARIANS – (SPAIN GUARANTEES)* – I wonder if we shall hear from Jimbo about this one from his holiday! I’m not too keen on it myself as I notch up another year next month.
11 NANNIES – N,ANNIE’S –  A reference to Orphan Annie of strip cartoon, radio and musical fame. There’s a rather good anecdote about Noel Coward’s reaction on attending the musical version starring a young Bonnie Langford but it’s somewhat rude.
12 IGNORED – N (knight) inside IGOR (prince) + EdwarD (Edward’s cloak) ED. An excellent clue that I only understood by reverse engineering. On edit: Thanks to Mct for suggesting an alternative parsing which I now see is the only correct one and was what I intended in the first place, but overcomplicated the issue when I came to write the blog. Unfortunately the clue doesn’t seem quite so excellent now. I had rather fancied the idea of ‘Edward’s cloak’ signifying his first and last letters.
13 LIKE HELL
15 EAT IN – Escoffier, A,T IN
18 ONE UP
20 ENDOCARP – END (object),0,CARP (complain). Can’t say that I recognised this word for a part of a fruit, but I have probably met and forgotten it.
23 MITHRAS – c(HRISTMA*)s
25 GRUYERE – Rennet inside GUY (man), ERE (before)
26 LEAGUE OF NATIONS – (A FELONIOUS AGENT)*. I liked the misdirection in the definition “Pacific group”.
27 NAPERY – PicturE (picture frame) inside NARY (not).
28 DEERSKIN – Dukes,Earls, ER’S KIN (royal family). Another excellent clue.
Down
1 ARSINE – (IS NEAR)* – not sure I knew this poisonous gas, but it didn’t take much working out.
2 EXPENSIVE – EX (partner that was), PENSIVE (thoughtful).
3 ROUTINE – IN (batting) inside ROUTE (run).
4 NEGUS – N,EG,US
6 ARRANGE – ARRAN (island), GravE (empty grave)
7 FLAIR – Sounds like “flare”
8 RESIDENT – TRENDIES*
9 UNTILLED – UNTIL (before), Light Emitting Diode
14 EVERSION – E,VERSION
16 TURKEY OAK – TURKEY (bird) + A inside OK (up to scratch). Didn’t know this tree. On edit: Thanks to anon for pointing out my slip-up.
17 FORMALIN – FORM A LINe (queue endlessly)
19 PURSUER – SUE (petition) inside PURR (sound pleased)
21 CHUNTER – C (about), HUNTER (Nimrod)
22 SEASON – Double definition. I’d wager I wasn’t the only one to put “lesson” here and there’s possibly a case to be made for it. There’s no doubt about the intended answer though, once spotted.
24 TRAMP – Double definition.
25 GENRE – GEN,RarE

42 comments on “Times 25310 – Off with his head…and tail!”

  1. You would win your wager, jackkt. I walked right into the LESSON trap, assuming it to have some equivalence to ‘recipe’ that I hadn’t met before. But you’re clearly right with SEASON. I did hesitate before clicking ‘submit’ but went ahead and clicked it anyway – a triumph of hope over experience.

    Edited at 2012-11-02 02:45 am (UTC)

  2. 12ac? Outstanding clue! Totally mis-parsed 3dn with R for “run”, then OUT and IN (what?). No accounting for the E. Then saw how it really worked. The anagram at 8dn I’ve seen before somewhere. After the fact, I find all of the following in my collection: DISENTER, DNIESTER, INDESERT, INSERTED, NERDIEST, RESIDENT, SENTRIED, SINTERED and TRENDIES.

    2dn straight in via the great philosopher K. Richards and his cohort, The X-Pensive Winos.

    1. Meant to mention: had a slightly different parsing for this; where “Edward” is just ED and “cloak” indicates the inclusion of the N (for “knight”). “Prince Edward” gives IGOR,ED; that being the “cloak” for N. Does this work?
      1. Not only does it work but it’s the correct parsing (otherwise there’d be no enclosure indicator) and it’s what I had in mind before writing the blog when I got carried away with all the topping and tailing that was going on. I have amended accordingly. Thanks.
  3. I thought this was a very fine puzzle, in spite of some unfamiliar vocab, as the wordplay was clear, even where it was tricky, with some very deft lift and separates and an excellent cricketing misdirection. Ticks against too many to list but my favourite is 1ac even though I spent ages trying to make an anagram of ‘and’ and ‘rogue’. In the end (after 82 minutes!), I came up one short, with ‘napart’ my best guess for NAPERY (27ac). It was the sort of puzzle where resort to aids seemed inapt somehow. The artistry of the ‘picture frame’ in that clue might stand for the crossword in microcosm.

    On coming here, I see I fell into the ‘lesson’ trap too – another top clue.

    Edited at 2012-11-02 03:45 am (UTC)

  4. I also thought this a very fine puzzle, aboout 30 minutes. Sorry to have been absent for a few days, but events here have made it necessary to be elsewhere. Sorry. LOI was CHUNTER, forgetting who Nimrod was. I hope we hear soon fron vinyl and victoria rhinebeck, since it hasn’t been easy in NY these past few days. I’ve had it easier in the Hudson Valley than in NYC which was hit hard by the US Atlantic storm, but it’s been a tough go everywhere over here. Regards to all.
    1. Hi Kevin. Actually it’s my sister who’s Victoria, how did you know? Glad to hear you’re ok. Yesterday Vinyl said he had a bad 36 hours and then got away. We (in Manhattan) and the offspring (in Brooklyn)got off lightly but my niece in midtown had to sleep in her hallway because of the dangling crane. We offered her a bed but by then it was too wild to venture out.

      Speaking of weather, I made heavy of this at 29 minutes for some reason. Just could not seem to get the 5a and 7d combo.

  5. In these days of health warnings, especially the tendency to overuse salt, might a recipe say “put less on”?
  6. Thanks for the contribution but I’m afraid that simply doesn’t work for crossword purposes.
  8. 26m. I found the top half very easy, and the bottom half very tricky.
    I really enjoy working out unknowns from wordplay, and boy was there a lot to enjoy here: ENDOCARP, NAPERY, ARSINE, FORMALIN, EVERSION, TURKEY OAK.
    I wrote in LESSON but fortunately wasn’t happy with it and gave it another couple of minutes’ thought at the end.
  9. Made heavy weather of this (or, more charitably, ably tackled a fine crossword) in 29 minutes, but failed to learn my LESSON. In a crossword of this quality, when an answer looks OK but signals a poor clue, it’s probably wrong – a theme I’ll return to when we get to Prelim 2 grid 1. If I’d hit SEASON first, I think it would have stuck, but I didn’t.
    At 1d, I wondered if there was a variant spelling for SARIN, which messed up that corner for starters, especially since 10a didn’t instantly unravel for me – not least because “parents” is part of the anagram.
    Several dredged from distant shores of memory: NAPERY, MITHRAS, ENDOCARP. TURKEY OAK invented in order to solve the puzzle. Googling it leads to Waitrose’ Christmas offerings as well as the apparently common enough tree.
    My CoD goes to the relatively benign but amusing FORMALIN, though like others I admired the “Pacific group” misdirection.
  10. Another lesson to be learnt, or unlearnt, here. Also couldn’t get away from pursuit, though it seemed wrong, and so gave up on naphth or similar. Annoying as going quite well otherwise. But an excellent puzzle. My fault was going for speed and then being unable to get out of a skid. As one soon to join the ranks of 10 I shall have to stop trying to go 13. Easily said.
  11. 20 minutes with, yes, the obvious error. Memo to self: as already expressed upthread, if you come up with an answer which “sort of works” in a crossword like this, you ought to realise it’s clearly not the right one. Once I saw the right answer, I was wondering how I could have been so dense, which, taken with several other excellent clues, makes this a straight sets win for the setter today. Nice work.
  12. I found this tough going whilst solving so was pleasantly surprised to see it only took 23 minutes. Plenty of un- or barely knowns in here: aberrant, endocarp, Mithras, arsine (I shudder to think how Anax would have clued that one), eversion and Turkey Oak.

    Napery was last in based on checkers and a vague recollection of the word so thanks for the explanation of how that worked, ditto re routine where I, too, saw R + OUT/IN with the E unexplained.

    Lots of terrific clues, the pick of which for me was DEERSKIN. thanks to Jack for the blog and the setter for the puzzle.

    Glad to hear you’re OK Kevin, have we now heard from the full set?

  13. Some great clues in this puzzle, especially for a once-chemist… FORMALIN, ARSINE, nice work. Romped through in 25 minutes but also fell into the LESSON trap, not enough thought given to it, so not Orl Korrect today.

    BTW does anyone have trouble printing off the puzzle in grey (to save toner) from the club site? I have discovered that if it comes up black on print preview, cancel that and select it again and it comes up grey. Maybe it’s just my system?

    1. I used to have the same problem, ie selecting ‘print grey’ then ‘print’ and it always came out black. But I discovered that if you wait for the little whirly circle to stop whirling after you select ‘print grey’ and before you press ‘print’ then it does the job. Do try this – I hope it works for you.
    2. I had that self same problem for some two years, it rectified itself some six months ago, with no intervention from me. So I assumed a software glitch was rectified. This on two differently configured machines. I currently have the “Having to Log In every time” glitch back.

      B. Spain

    3. The printing grey problem on the Club site was sorted a month or so back but not as long as 6 months as stated above. If you find it is recurring I suggest you raise the matter in the Club “General” forum and someone will confirm the current position.

      Grey printing still doesn’t work if you print from the newspaper though unless you cancel the print and re-order it.

      Edited at 2012-11-02 11:44 am (UTC)

          1. I think UY accidentally disabled comments on it. There’s a drop-down menu, Journal Default allows comments, Disabled blocks all comments (including legitimate ones) and Locked prevents new ones from being added. For anyone else reading this, if you want to stop the spam even though we now have it filtered, use Locked rather than Disabled (and leave it a few weeks first, as we occasionally get comments from syndicated versions which appear a few weeks behind).
  15. I rarely complete this setter’s puzzles without at least a couple of mistakes, so today’s effort was par for the course. There’s an enjoyable tension in never knowing whether a tricky clue is going to come down to an ingenious bit of wordplay or simply an answer that I’ve never heard of before (or both). As always, some great misdirection.
  16. I didn’t fall into the LESSON trap, was held up a bit in the NE corner and finished this very nice crossword in 11 minutes.
  17. DNF today. Made the Lesson mistake and had Flair, Ignored, Formalin, One Up and Napery missing in the NE and SW corners.

    Re Ignored: does Igor refer to Borodin’s Prince?

  18. 38 min and 14 secs with 1 wrong. Lesson for Season.

    Did half of this very quickly then I ground to a halt. Agree with others, some very good clues here.

    Edited at 2012-11-02 03:06 pm (UTC)

  19. Excellent puzzle, with many first-class clues (all already mentioned above). Crypticsue’s 11 mins is a brilliant time for this puzzle IMHO. Just under the hour for me – only to discover, like quite a few others, that I’d fallen into the LESSON trap at 22 dn.
  20. 17:44 for me – with minutes wasted trying to fit the answer to 26ac into (7,2,6). (Doh!)

    Fortunately I couldn’t convince myself that LESSON = “recipe”, so spent nearly as long searching for an alternative – and eventually finding the required answer, though I was still a little nervous about it as I am with anything to do with food.

    An interesting puzzle.

    1. Yes, I’ve just been and checked the printed copy which differs from the on-line solution. How extraordinary! I shall be posting something in the Club forum unless someone’s beaten me to it.
      1. This user_pic is taken from the published newspaper; the one on my earlier message shows the answer given in the Crossword Club .

        For those who don’t have access to the Club, here’s what I have posted there:

        Re:22dn

        “It has just been brought to my attention that the solution to this clue published in the newspaper (and the electronic version thereof) differs from that given on-line in the Crossword Club, as it has LESSON instead of SEASON.

        “Would the editor please explain what is going on, and if LESSON is being accepted either as “the” correct solution or as an alternative answer, on what basis the decision has been made? I have been monitoring the discussions both here and at TfTT yesterday so I have seen all the attempts to justify LESSON but I’m not convinced by any of them. The answer simply doesn’t stand up despite its undoubted appeal at first glance.”

        Edited at 2012-11-03 11:07 am (UTC)

      2. Well, that’s a turn-up for the books. It has to be SEASON. If it isn’t, it should be.

        I suspect some devilment, or perhaps a large lunchtime G&T, in the data entry department. And who could blame them for either?


          1. Monday 5th November

            For those still interested in the LESSON/SEASON controversy, there is a correction in today’s newspaper stating that the answer was SEASON.

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