Times 25,313

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
28:45 on the Club timer, which I think is indicative of me making heavy weather of this puzzle after a long day, rather than it being absurdly difficult (this, of course, is what happens when you go for the midnight solve rather than waiting for the following morning). I shall now wait and see who else, if anyone, got held up in the same places as me.

Across
1 ANTISOCIAL – (ACTIONIS)*, ALL &lit.
6 AMIN – A Military IN; former ruler of Uganda.
9 SIMPLICITY – [IL(“the” in Italian), PM, IS]all rev. + CITY
10 VEST – Venezuela, Ecuador, South, Temperature. I was out in the perishing cold this evening and could have done with a vest to warm me.
12 ELECTRIC HEATER – ELECT,RICH,EATER
14 EIGHTY – WEIGHTY minus the Wife
15 HEAD GIRL – (HIDLAGER)*. Supply meaning “in a supple way” as the anagram indicator is worth noting if you’ve not seen it before.
17 CAMEROON – (O.R.)rev. in CAME ON
19 KNOCKS – (CONK)rev. + KerbstoneS.
22 BANANA BOAT SONG – it took me forever to work this out, which I did piece by piece; “number” indicates it’s a song we’re looking for, of course, and the deck gives the boat connection; but what I persistently failed to see was the “hands” of bananas. A bunch of bananas is called a hand because of the perceived resemblence to fingers (though if your hands really look like that, you probably won’t be winning awards for your piano playing).
24 GAIN – GAL IN. Not sure where the ‘s fits in.
25 COGITATION – C.O., G.I.,STATION.
26 YOGA – nYlOnGeAr
27 INTERSTATE – TAT in [IN TERSE] gives the American motorway.
 
Down
1 ALSO – A LSO, also hidden in royAL SOciety, too.
2 TIME LAG – (EMIT)rev. + (old) LAG
3 SELF CATERING – (FLATSINGREECE)*. Nice &lit.
4 CICERO – Chapter1 + (CORE)*
5 ATTACKED=”A TACT”.
7 MAESTRI – (SEAM)rev. + TRIP
8 NATURALISM – (ANTIMURALS)*
11 MEND ONES WAYS – MEN(chessmen, as bishops are), DONE(=agreed), SWAYS(=powers). I hesitate to reveal precisely how long I spent attempting to manufacture an anagram of (AGREEDPOWERS).
13 BEACH BUGGY =”BEECH”, BUGGY(=full of insects)
16 TOM BROWN – OMBRE in TOWN; the town being the correct one for the schoolboy. Personally I prefer the continuing adventures of his nemesis, Flashman.
18 MINDING – DIN in MING. In similar vein to 11 down, I am reluctant to reveal that I had M___ING, and spent a very long time failing to fit anything into the incorrect gap.
20 CANTINA – CAN,TIN,A
21 SALINE – A in [Solver, LINE]. Grammatically, SALINE is obviously an adjective but “saline solution” has become such a staple in medicine that the short version has effectively become a noun.
23 ANNE – TANNER

48 comments on “Times 25,313”

  1. 26:42; I was despairing of getting 11d, finishing 22ac, and justifying 16d, and ready to go offline and wait for my printer to arrive (it just did!) to finish this, but somehow finished. ‘number’ finally clicked for BANANA BOAT ?, I thought of MEND ONES WAYS without parsing it, and threw in TOM BROWN and parsed it afterwards. Fortunately ‘hand’ had been used, and explained here, recently.
  2. 48 minutes with my main hold-ups coming at the song – I got ‘hand’ early but was stymied by the facts that I’d not heard of this air, only the Eton version, and was thinking of ‘number’ as amount or thing-that-numbs but not song – and at the last across, like yesterday.

    Only unfamiliars were ‘cantina’ for bar – it must be more common in Latin America/US than in Spain, where it’s called…’bar’ – and ‘ombre’, so I reckon it was a tricksy little number. Also queried the apostrophe at 24.

  3. 12:41 .. with a brief interruption, so right on the wavelength for once.

    Thought ‘men done sways’ was rather nifty, and I apologize to all friends south of the 49th parallel for having snickered at the surface for INTERSTATE.

      1. Thanks, mctext. I’ve bookmarked that one. A bit of pedantry (heaven forbid it ever creeps into this site) is forgivable. As the author points out, in most online resources Canadian English tends to be tagged on as an afterthought or subsumed into the tectonic mass of ‘north American’.

        He seems to confirm that ENTHRAL(L) is one of those words where the Canadians doff their toques to Noah Webster.

  4. In 11dn is everyone OK with powers=SWAYS? I would have thought that as a noun SWAY is uncountable, and as a verb it doesn’t work.

  5. Snuck in under the wire with 29 minutes today so my joy is unbounded!

    An excellent puzzle with lots of points of interest. I don’t recall meeting a hidden word with alternative wordplay to the answer before, as at 1dn, or the starting letters of words in the clue being indicated by “west” as at 10ac.

    I was very familiar with the boat song but needed all the checkers of BANANA before I worked out what was going on at 22.

    I’m surprised that already two contributors have commented on the apostrophe at 24ac particularly after yesterday’s discussions on ‘apostrophe s’ standing in for ‘has’. It surely comes up at least once a week.

    Like topicaltim I was also working on ‘agreed powers’ as anagrist at 11dn but fortunately the ‘N’ checker provided by 19ac soon put paid to that idea.

    Those, like me, familiar with the song “El Paso” (a big hit on both sides of the Atlantic for Marty Robbins in 1960) will have no problem with CANTINA. It begins:
    “Out in the west Texas town of El Paso I fell in love with a Mexican girl,
    Night-time would find me in Rosa’s Cantina music would play and Feleena would whirl…”

    And who could forget the immortal line from Pat Boone’s “Speedy Gonzales”: “He, Rosita, come quick! Down at the cantina, they’re giving green stamps with Tequila!”

    Edited at 2012-11-06 06:27 am (UTC)

    1. The problem for me with ‘s standing for has at 24ac is that the cryptic grammar doesn’t seem to allow it. If the second part of the clue were ‘girl’s profited’, I’d have no problem, disregarding for the moment that the clue wouldn’t work.

      Was the discussion you refer to on the Club Website, Jack? Don’t recall it on my watch yesterday…

        1. Just seen this after posting a response to the above. It’s good to know it isn’t just me!

          Edited at 2012-11-06 06:40 am (UTC)

      2. I read 24 as ‘losing pound girl’, GA(l), has IN to give us GAIN (profit). This seems to be what Tim indicated in the blog so I’m not sure why he expressed misgivings about the clue. But perhaps it’s me – it wouldn’t be the first time!

        The discussion was here quite late in the day. Joekobi raised an issue and I responded to it.

        1. My misgivings (and possibly joekobi’s WRT yesterday’s clue?) has to do with the fact that when the verb ‘have’ is used as a main verb rather than as an operator (or modal verb) it cannot be contracted. Thus, for me, today’s example, ‘Though losing pound, girl’s in profit’, can’t be read as ‘Though losing pound, girl has in’.

          Going back to yesterday’s clue (1dn), ‘Pin originally securing clothing that’s let out’, the most likely parsing in my book is ‘Pin originally securing clothing that is let out’. Although that makes parsing awkward, it seems better to me than the alternative with ‘has’, where the sense would require ‘…that’s been let out’, anyway, I believe.

          But, it is quite likely that I am missing something!

          1. Just lift and separate “in” from “profit”. As ever, the parsing of a clue does not have to follow the parsing of correct English.
              1. On re-examination, the honest answer is that I’m not entirely sure, other than “it felt wrong”. Presumably the setter tried other ways of phrasing the idea, and these turned out to be even wronger or clumsier for other reasons. I am prepared to accept that there’s nothing actually wrong here, the main reason being, of course, that crossword English syntax =/= syntax; see also punctuation.
            2. Just wondering re the discussion on powers/sways (above) might one lift and separate “power” from “s” to give “sway” + “s” thus doing away with the arguments about points of grammar? I ought to know this by now but I seem to be having a senior moment!

              Edited at 2012-11-06 08:55 am (UTC)

              1. The final s has to be doing something. I agree with anon above on powers not really standing for sways. Personally I think 24 is OK today (even if the surface is a trifle awkward)as per mctext’s point; but that in yesterday’s ‘that’s let out’, however it’s taken, it’s an obstreperous apostrophe, which should be watched in case it takes over like ash dieback or something. 30 minutes today, the last few on interstate, the surface for which is splendid on today of all days. Let’s hope the good guy has changed things.
                1. Well the “s” in “powers” would be representing the “s” in “sways”. There’s no dispute (I think) that “power” and “sway” can be interchangeable but an argument starts when the “s” is added.

                  Edited at 2012-11-06 09:33 am (UTC)

                  1. The necessary equivalence between the surface and the “true” reading I’d have thought needs more than an echo. I thinks powers=sways may have been due to a slight laziness on the part of the setter. On the other hand, the sways of successive crossword editors have permitted much that is at first sight doubtful. Maybe it sneaks by.
    2. Who indeed could forget? Well, me, for one, but now it’s stuck in my mind and won’t go away. That must have been the longest song ever played on rock ‘n’ roll stations, at least until the Doors came up with ‘Light My Fire’, which I’m happy not to forget.
    3. “El Paso” was also a standard performance song for (surprise!) The Grateful Dead.
  6. Too much chewing for me this morning. But some very fine stuff here. If cryptic defs were always as good as 22ac, I might even stop complaining about them.

    Didn’t see the inclusive in 1dn until coming here and simply wondered about the RS. (Royal Philharmonic Society? No!)

    Put me down for the impossible anagram at 11dn too.

    1. You may have a point. Sadly my temperament dictates that if I have a choice of a) going to bed at once and getting up early to do something, or b) staying up into the small hours to do it, before sleeping the sleep of the just without fear of the alarm clock, I’ll almost always choose the latter.

      (My wife is the complete opposite, so it’s a wonder our paths ever cross at all…)

      1. My temperament is very similar, but I try to avoid the wee small hours these days. Sleeping the sleep of the just without fear of the early-rising three-year-old doesn’t really work…
        1. My decision is certainy made easier by not having that problem joy. When the clocks went back last weekend, I heard somebody describe it as not so much an extra hour in bed, more an extra hour entertaining small children who don’t understand the concept of GMT…
          1. I have found that the joy of the clocks going back can be regained if you feed them sugar and let them watch TV until 10pm the night before. Of course this makes them revolting when they do wake up but you can’t have everything.
  9. 18 minutes, mostly in the bottom half, and hampered by a hasty CONSIDERED at 25a – no justification except the initial CO and the assumed past tense, which COGITATION doesn’t share but doesn’t need to.
    Once the BOAT SONG bit was in, I could only think of Skye, which didn’t help much. Fine clue.
    GAIN was my last in – I’d thought of it earlier, dismissed it because it didn’t fit the wordplay. I wondered for a while if Galina was the girl, but couldn’t get rid of the A. These days, S’s seem to be pretty much disposable on whatever thin reason.
  11. 17:41. Cap duly doffed to Sotira and Keriothe for impressive times.

    LOI was 11 which I didn’t understand until coming here so I think the powers/sways thingy must have put me off the scent. 27 went in without understanding as well.

    COD to 22. I thought we were looking for something to do with card games but when faced with B?N?N? all I could think of was banana (baning and boning also fit that pattern, it seems) and the penny dropped. Great clue.

    No problem with the ‘s either yesterday or today.

  12. 17 mins for me, the ‘bishops’ holding me up the longest. It is a long time since I heard 22a but I agree with Penfold that it is a great clue.
      1. Loved the Weird Al Yankovic version, also:
        “Come Mr. Taliban, hand over Bin Laden”

        Today 7 dn. MAESTRI with every checker in place went in before reading the clue.
        1 dn. A_S_ with RS = Royal Society in the clue didn’t quite go straight in, though we had ARSE 2 weeks in a row in the Sunday Times awhile back.
        Rob

  13. 17 minutes, though a good five of them were on the last three for me – ANNE, INTERSTATE and MEND ONES WAYS, each of which ended up going in by definition alone. Surprised CANTINA isn’t more common, no “Star Wars” fans maybe?
    1. George! Ssssh! Mention the cantina and before you know it, we’re into “Han shot first” territory, and that sort of thing can tear a virtual community apart…
      1. Thanks for this. That’s what I immediately thought of as well. But the film not the game. (Btw, I was at the first British press screening of that film) Ann
  14. I’m surprised no one has commented on the extraneous comma after “brief” in the INTERSTATE clue, which renders the cryptic reading highly dubious. Other that that, a couple of great charades in MEND ONE SWAYS (I reckon the plural is just about acceptable tho’ could be easily dealt with by another apostrophe) and ELECT RICH EATER
    1. I was advised years ago to ignore punctuation in clues as it saves one a lot of hassle. As far as I’m aware there are no hard and fast rules on the subject anyway. The only punctuation mark I regularly take notice of is the ? possibly indicating a definition by example.

      Edited at 2012-11-06 06:55 pm (UTC)

      1. Ignoring punctuation in clues is a highly dubious piece of advice. One shouldn’t just be bunging commas in because they help the surface reading of the clue, if at the same time they alter the way the clue reads cryptically.
    2. Neither has anyone, including the blogger, mentioned “in brief, is” referring, presumably, to the road sign indication “IS” for interstate.
      1. It’s an interesting idea, and one which simply hadn’t occurred to me. I would, however, not be entirely certain that it’s anything more than coincidence for two reasons:

        i) I don’t know if IS is an abbreviation which would be considered acceptable in a Times puzzle; despite the internet now allowing a more cosmopolitan readership than can ever have been imagined in 1930, it remains the Times of London, and the puzzle still uses only British English spelling / knowledge / cultural references etc., while IS=interstate is clearly wholly American. Unfortunately, I just can’t say if it’s admissible or not. (Sadly I suspect this puzzle’s time has passed, and it is unlikely anyone will be able to give a more expert opinion on this).

        ii) as I understand it, the rule in Times puzzles is that words can’t do double duty i.e. be part of the wordplay and the definition (unless it’s what has become known as an “&lit.”, where the entire clue is the definition). This seems to be a more compelling argument for this being a coincidence, though I’m not prepared to bet my house on it…

  15. 41.22 here and pleased to finish – bet I don’t tomorrow with championship puzzle! I was held up in SW for sometime until CAMEROON fell. I liked 11d and 13d but my COD to the boat song for the clever use of hands. LOI was 24a and I was delayed by the ‘s for the reasons others have pointed out. Thanks for blog especially for VEST explanation and the LSO reference in 1d which I couldn’t see for looking.

    Edited at 2012-11-06 03:04 pm (UTC)

  16. Just finished, 21 minutes, ending with KNOCKS, don’t see what all the above fuss is about. SWAYS / POWERS are plural nouns. GAIN parses fine for me. I liked BEACH BUGGY and INTERSTATE is suitably topical. Watch out for the hanging chads in Florida…
  17. A very pleasant 31 minutes. No problem with the song except that I’ve now got an earworm that’s been with me all day!
  18. About 40 minutes, ending (finally) with KNOCKS and MEND ONES WAYS. I wandered too intently down the (agreedpowers) route, and thus was lost down there a long while. Liked the BANANA BOAT SONG, and, magnanimously, INTERSTATE, very clever. Regards.
  19. 14:12 for me. I think my slow time was because today’s setter was one of the ones I find particularly difficult. Lots of clever stuff, but not on my wavelength.

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