Times 25315 – double ell double ell!

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 21:51 – and most of that was spent in the bottom right corner. My laptop at home died, so I’ve sneaked in to work late to bang this out. Took two completely wrong turns getting started on this, and I suspect I’ve made a real meal of what some of us will race through (my barely-in-the-top-10 time on the club timer would back this up).

Lack of home computer means I am unlikely to be able to answer questions you may have, but I’m sure the regulars and commenters can pick up my slack (they usually do), so just scroll down and see if a question is answered.

Away we go…

Across
1 BARRA(somewhere in the Hebrides),CUD,A: I got this from the definition
9 NOMINAL: (ON,MAIN)*,L – I thought there were some well concealed anagrindicators in this one
10 IMPIOUS: IMPI then the middle of hOUSe
11 AS,PEN: didn’t know PEN as a dock for servicing submarines. Colorado voted in the recent elections to decriminalize marijuana, so Aspen may not see as much skiing as usual next year
12 GOOSE-STEP: anagram of STOKE POGES without the K(king). So who else can’t write that in without thinking of Basil Fawlty?
13 OUT OF IT: O in OUTFIT
15 LUCID: UC(upper case – caps) in LID
17 BUT,Y,L: that’s one of the smelly ones (butyric acid is in rotting paper)
18 BRAW,N: my last in, and from definition – didn’t know BRAW meant fine clothes
19 LOSER: hidden reversed
20 our across omission
23 ASSISTANT: ASS followed by (d)ISTANT
25 ISLAM: S in MALI reversed
27 O,PINION
28 TAVERNA: TA(cheers), then N(end of ParthenoN) in VERA
29 NOSTALGIA: (GAIN,LOST)* then A(bridge)
 
Down
1 BRIDGE: G in BRIDE
2 REPRO,BATES: Norman BATES being the character in “Psycho” – hey, shouldn’t this clue come with a spoiler alert?
3 ABOVE ALL: (A,LOVEABLE) and another well hidden indicator
4 UP,SET
5 ANTIPODES: (POINTED)* in AS
6 IMP,ACT
7 SNIP(e)
8 PLANKTON: PLANK and then NOT reversed
14 FLAT RACING: FLA(Florida) then TRACING(running down). My brother is into this – racing without obstacles
16 CALLAGHAN: CALL and then GHANA with the A moved to the top
17 BUMP INTO: or BUM PINTO
18 BRASSICA: BRASS(money) then the first letters of In Current Account
21 CAMERA: CAME(arrived), R(Republican), A(from Alaska) – the Box Brownie being one of the first commercially available cameras
22 STANZA: S(atiris)T, then ANZA(c)
24 SHOWS: double definition
26 our down 0mission

41 comments on “Times 25315 – double ell double ell!”

  1. Right-hand side not a problem. But came to grief in the SW (Delta Quadrant).

    Loved the Bates clue. In Psycho 3, Bates is a reformed character and a social worker to boot. He’s in charge of a suicidal young lady and, when he goes out briefly to the shop, she tries to slit her wrists in the shower. When he gets back, she apologises for the bloody mess. “Don’t worry”, says Bates, “I’ve seen worse”.

    Pedants will query “verse” as STANZA (22dn), whatever the dictionaries say. Good to see the ANZACs getting a mention but. I shall bake biscuits in celebration.

    Edited at 2012-11-08 07:06 am (UTC)

  2. 24 minutes, so sub-30 for the second time this week.

    I really enjoyed this one and thought there were some delightful clues, particularly the omitted 20ac.

    I didn’t know BUTYL or that ASPEN is a ski resort but had no problem coming up with those answers.

    I don’t know enough to argue whether a verse and a stanza are the same thing, but surely there’s no denying that a stanza consists of lines of verse and that satisfies the clue and solution here?

    You have a stray T in 14dn, George.

    Edited at 2012-11-08 01:53 am (UTC)

  3. 43 with one wrong (‘brain’ for BRAWN). My hold-up was in the NW, precipitated by a careless ‘benign’ at 1dn leading to ‘noxious’ at 10ac. Also had ‘baryl’ at 17 until I got REPROBATES. I managed to get FLAT RACING almost at once but via FL and the (invented?) poetical ‘atracing’. Must be in a verse somewhere. Stanza reason…
  4. Had to go offline midway to answer a phone call, but it took probably over a half-hour, and I didn’t get 14d; I’m happy at least that I’d never heard of FLAT RACING (I put in ‘flag waving’–well, it’s a sport in the US). George, I don’t know where you got the ‘clothes’ part for BRAW; so far as I know, it just means ‘fine’. I was misled by the clue–as the setter no doubt planned–to think of Johnson’s (in)famous definition of oats (Johnson’s Dictionary, sv ‘oats’:’a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’), so I tried for a while to justify ‘oaten’. Didn’t understand 12ac until I typed it in; nice clue. There’s a ‘Psycho 3’? Didn’t even know there was a 2.

    Edited at 2012-11-08 07:01 am (UTC)

  5. I think it must be an age thing, during WWII the U-boat pens (mostly on the French coast) were often the subject of bombing raids by the RAF.
    1. Not just an age thing. It would also be familiar to those brought up on WWII films and those who’ve read histories of the period.
  6. 19 minutes, with a curious diversion trying to solve 25ac to fit 23ac – I got as far as ANIMALISM (for “faith”) and would like to invite you all to appreciate the fine beaches and exotic culture of Milamina.
    Other than that, a puzzle that looked to my eyes harder than it was. Neither of the 1’s solved themselves without crossers, and indeed each (distinct in this grid) quarter had a slow start.
    Only arriving here did the penny drop associating “running down” with “tracing”, and I also tried getting something oaten in 18, which must make it one of the most insistent of quotations. For Ulaca’s sake, it’s worth mentioning that brawn, properly made, at least contains brain.
    CoD to NOSTALGIA. Proust will be pleased.
    1. Yes, I looked it up at ODO – it made me feel much less offal. (Sorry…for McT – I’ll be over it by next week, I’m sure.)
  7. Nothing wrong with stanza as verse (and I’m as pedantic as anyone on matters poetical). 18 minutes after stuttering at the last on Aspen, not knowing the resort (though as so often it rings a bell once you know it’s right). I like the wrong horse.
  8. After yesterday’s DNF I was slightly disappointed to come in at 30.11 but also pleased to finish. I enjoyed this with lots of amusing fare today – particularly for me 17d and 2d which gets my COD. No problem here with verse and stanza either. Liked reference to jim callaghan who when challenged during a visit to the USA by the statement that ‘over here we don’t understand why you don’t arm your police’ answered ‘We in the UK don’t understand why you arm your criminals!’ How times have changed! Thanks for blog.
  9. I enjoyed this puzzle, which I found far more on my wavelength than yesterday’s. Like others above, I loved REPROBATES. There are many other fine examples of anagrams and wordplay – among the former I particularly liked GOOSE-STEP and NOSTALGIA. I got FLAT RACING right but needed George’s blog to explain the wordplay. Thanks for that.

    For quite a while I could not rid myself of the notion that 18 ac must be a reference to Dr Johnson’s famous – infamous? – definition of “oats” in his pioneering dictionary: “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”. But, alas, there was no way that “oats” could be turned into a five-letter word.

  10. More than 15 minutes but less than 20. Enjoyed this witty puzzle with its short clues. Perhaps, as anonymous commented above, there is an age thing in play: BRAWN for tea, holiday snaps with a Kodak Brownie and “braw” from playing Lord Rockingham’s XI on the jukebox.
    1. Good to see you back, John.

      Note to co-bloggers: I just rescued John’s posting which had been sent into abeyance as a “suspicious comment” so this can serve as a reminder that we need to check carefully when clearing these out and “unspam” them if necessary.

      Most messages that get sent there are anonymous, but I saw one the other day from Penfold_61 that also needed rescuing. Both these genuine contributions had links inserted in the text and I suspect it was the link rather than the user-name (or other content) that did for them.

      Edited at 2012-11-08 10:58 am (UTC)

      1. Jack,

        The last couple of times I’ve posted messages with links I got a warning that they would be marked as spam. The most recent survived (thank you) but the other one, an image of Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen for the benfit of Hydrochoos, got binned.

        1. Interestingly I got an email of your reply to me, with link, of the Banana Boat Song, but it never showed up on the site.
        2. We’re currently finding our feet with spam control so it’s possible that the odd genuine message may go by accident, particularly if it’s a day with a heavy influx of adverts for Ugg boots! I’m sure things will settle down.
      2. I would urge co-bloggers to arrange to be advised of posts, so that spam can be deleted and their blog not end up looking like a train wreck, as some of our old blogs do. I saw one with 270 spam messages!
  11. One mistake today (a tentative Stops for Shows). FOI Plankton.

    The grid struck me as unusual (eg the Lucid, Butyl, Brawn, Loser middle section). There are umpteen grids aren’t there and I’m guessing this is one of the less frequently used ones.

    Good to see some science at 17 across.

    Re ulaca’s Stanza reason… Heard a good pun on the radio last night: Holmes sees a yellow door and says “it’s a lemon entry my dear Watson.”

  12. I liked this one. It reminded me of (I think) Uncle Yap’s joke about Hessie the unpopular sherpa last Christmas which I added to my holiday cracker repertoire. 19 minutes – still a bit sluggish after “irrational exuberance” over election results.
  13. 17m, including a delay while my iPad froze inexplicably and then wouldn’t let me remove my initial guess of FLOTSAM from 8dn. Good old fashioned paper and pen have their advantages. In this case their main disadvantage is that if I take the paper with me when I go to work it annoys my wife.
    I really like this: concise and witty clues. Unlike a couple of others I knew the ski resort but not the submarine location. I had CUTYL for a while on the expectation that 17dn was going to start with COME, and I was puzzled by 14dn because I thought Florida was FL. Oh, and I didn’t know a swede was a brassica. Or should that be brassicum? Anyway, all sorted out in the end and a lot of fun.
      1. Just looked up the lyrics. I’d never realised there WERE any words before. Thought Lou Reed just bumbled along till he came to the chorus.
  14. Bang on the setter’s wavelength at 10:37.

    Thanks to George for explaining Aspen (didn’t know that meaning of pen) and lucid (couldn’t see how caps satisfied UC). Thanks also for the Psycho quip which raised a grin.

    COD to the pants pony.

  15. 9 minutes for me. I did enjoy myself but did get the passing impression while solving that there were quite a lot of (good) anagrams and those take a word and add a letter from another on the end type clues.
  16. As an ex-speaker of Irish Gaelic, I can confirm that braw means fine ( spelt brea in the Gaelic and the Irish pronounce it the same as the classic three letter supporter!). In Sir Harry Lauder’s Deoch an Doraish ( “drink of the door” or “one for the road”), it’s part of the fitness test to have the last one:

    If ye ken say “it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicth”,
    Ye’re awright, ye ken.

    jfr

    1. So that’s where Tony Hancock got it from in his well known “Blood Donor” sketch!

      I thought the doctor’s response was brilliant – in a very posh English accent – “We’re not all Rob Roys.”

    1. Strange because as far as I could see it appeared as soon as I posted it. Something odd is going on!
  18. Sorry about messing up on BRAW – that was me doing a terrible paraphrase of Chambers which has BRAWS as fine clothes.

    Re Florida and it’s abbreviations. Most states have two abbreviations, the two-letter US Postal Service abbreviation and the Government Printing Standard. AP and Reuters use the latter, so in a news article you might see “Miami, Fla. A hurricane today caused 2 million dollars worth of renovations”.

    In crosswords, it’s pretty common to see California using either CA or Cal.

    1. That is a very handy tip. I would automatically expect “CA” of “Cal” for California but until now I had no idea why and wasn’t looking for a three-letter abbreviation for Florida. Thanks!
  19. About 20 minutes, but had to look up the unknown BRAWN food at the end. Didn’t know of ‘braw’ as fine either. Otherwise, like others I liked REPROBATES (my first entry), so thanks to the setter for that. No other real problems except ‘swede’ as brassica. Regards.
  20. On the wavelength today, 21 minutes. Some excellent clues. BTW Mr Blogger, butyl is not the same as butyric, butyl (C4H9-) compounds often occur in fruit e.g butyl acetate smells of bananas and apples; butyric (C3H7COO-) is a different ball game and butyric acid smells of goats. I like goats’ cheese.
  21. I did this early today but have only just got round to reading the blog. I enjoyed this one very much and clocked off at 27 minutes. The only thing I didn’t get was the UC in LUCID – though the answer was obvious. I’ll hopefully remember it next time it comes up. (I always associate BRAWN with the rugby shirts worn by Wales when they played France some years ago. Their sponsors were BRAINS, the beer people, but French law meant they were not allowed to advertise on the shirts. So they played with BRAWN across their chests – and everyone got the message.) Ann
  22. A disappointing 10:40 her for a puzzle which was really right up my street. However, I managed to read the enumeration of 3dn as (3,5). And although I thought of FLAT RACING straight away, I got bogged down with the assumption that “Florida” = FL and assumed that some other answer was needed – which was duly confirmed when I managed to mistype ASSISTANT to give me a T where the second A should have been. (Doh!)
  23. Very rare that I beat Tony’s time, but this was right up my street too, and I finished it in 8:43. I think solving Araucaria’s Guardian puzzle just before I did this one put my brain into the right gear, as compared to that, this one was a doddle (even though I knew all the queens)!
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