Times 25318 – Back to the grindstone

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 89 minutes

Music: Beethoven, Piano Concerto #5, Bishop/Davis/LSO

Although some of my colleagues were a bit concerned if this blog would appear, I have made it back to my post in NYC following Hurricane
Sandy. Since I had not picked up a puzzle since that dreadful storm struck, I may have been a little rusty on this one, although it may be too that some of the clues are quite tricky. Many of the literals were very well-hidden, and even when I suspected the correct literal I wasted a lot of time on a wrong interpretation.

My main problem was a few stubborn ones at the bottom of the puzzle, including the obscure ‘tayberry’ that had to be laboriously pieced together from the cryptic. The novel use of ‘reserve’ for our old friend, the Territorial Army, nearly got me, but I saw it in the end. Then I triumphantly entered ‘piquant’ without having any idea what the fabric might be, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out by the time I blog that clue.

I have quite a backlog of puzzles to solve, about two weeks worth, and may pop up on some of the blogs if I note anything interesting that hasn’t already been discussed.

Across
1 NARCOSIS, anagram of CAR, SON IS. I suspected the drug interpretation of ‘excess speed’ fairly early on. James Dean for a day, indeed.
9 COIFFEUR, CO(IF + F,E)UR[t]. I saw the meaning of ‘locks’ at once, but wanted a word starting with ‘hair’ when I had only the crossing ‘i’. Not so.
10 L-PLATE, LP LATE. For non-UK solvers, of which I am one, this is where the “learner” = L comes from. If you misinterpret ‘starter platter’ to mean the first letter of the word “platter”, you are very likely to get stuck.
11 TORTELLINI, TORTE + [-b +L]LINI. I’m not very sure what the ‘or’ is doing here.
12 Omitted.
13 RHINESTONE, RHINE’S TONE. Probably not what Wagner had in mind.
16 SHOTGUN, SH(anagram of GOT)UN, where ‘SHUN is an army command that is often rendered ‘tenshun!’.
17 HEBREWS, H[is]E[xcellency] BREWS. Like most people nowadays, I am a little vague on the exact order of the Epistles, but the cryptic hands you the answer.
20 BRANCH LINE, B[oss] RAN CHL[or]INE. A very clever cryptic, but most solvers will just put in the answer from the literal.
22 AVER, AVER[age]. ‘General’ is a bit of a stretch for ‘average’, but this was still my first in.
23 LOUNGE SUIT, LOUNGE + S(U)IT. What would they do without ‘posh’ = ‘U’?
25 ARABLE, [p]ARABLE, where ‘finishing with’ means getting rid of rather than placing at the end, as I finally figured out.
26 THESPIAN, THE + SP([d]I[amonds])AN. A very well-hidden literal in ‘player’. I was convinced for a long time it referred to an instrumentalist, but there is no instrument beginning with ‘t’ that fits.
27 TAYBERRY, TA + [capacit]Y + B(ERR)Y. A fruit that was not even invented until I had completed my formal education, no wonder I hadn’t heard of it. But it’s all there in the cryptic.
 
Down
2 APPROACH, AP(PRO)ACH[e].
3 CHARLESTON, CHAR(LEST)ON. I realized early that the ferryman was Charon, and still couldn’t get it for a long time.
4 SEE-THROUGH, anagram of THESE + ROUGH.
5 SCORPIO, SCOR[e] + P[r]I[s]O[n].
6 Omitted.
7 MEXICO, M + E(XI)CO. I suspected at once that this was a country name, but there seemed to be too much cryptic for six letters. Only when I tried the simple XI did it become obvious.
8 DRUIDESS, D[rie]R U(IDES)S. A nice clue, where you need the cryptic to guide you.
14 ELEMENTARY, ELEMENT + [w]ARY, easy once you see it.
15 THREADBARE, THRE(AD BAR)E.
16 SUBTLETY, ST(anagram of BUTLE[r])Y
18 WRESTLER, W[ith] + REST + L[eft](E)R[ight].
19 PIQUANT, PIQU[é] + ANT. The cloth only vaguely rings a bell, probably from clothing catalogs.
21 AMULET, A(MULE)T, rather confused syntax in the surface, but the idea is clear enough.
24 ERIK, hidden backwards in [brea]K I RE[ckon].

27 comments on “Times 25318 – Back to the grindstone”

  1. Much aided by the pangram today. The missing J,Z,K & V sorted all the four-letter answers. A fiendish puzzle with some hard-to-parse surfaces — so agreed with our esteemed blogger. Welcome back, safe and sound, to you Vinyl.

    21dn really is a mouthful; while 26ac is smooth as silk.

    Also wanted an instrumentalist at 26ac. Given that such can often be referred to simply via their instruments, I’d thought of “trombone” and “triangle”. No dice but!

    Edited at 2012-11-12 04:36 am (UTC)

  2. Pleased Vinyl is back with us after a scare or two. I was pleased my ‘standby’ status wasn’t upgraded this morning as this is certainly not your ‘general’ Monday puzzle.

    Fell into some of the traps mentioned, as well as being able to think of nothing better than ‘riverstone’ until the Glen Campbell number came to mind. PIQUANT from wordplay, as was the next, and last, in TAYBERRY, which got the decision over ‘thyberry’, the wordplay for the first two letters proving resistant. ‘Platter’ as a slang term for a record unknown. COD to ARABLE.

  3. After more or less writing in the answers in the top half I had real problems with virtually every clue in the lower part and was amazed to find I had taken an hour to complete the grid. I’m glad it’s not just me who struggled a bit.

    I may have met TAYBERRY before but it wouldn’t come to mind and solving this clue was not helped by problems with 19ac not giving me the initial checked letter. I don’t think I knew PIQUE as a fabric.

    Was it Alan Freeman who was always going on about “platters”?

    Not the best of starts to the week.

    Edited at 2012-11-12 06:57 am (UTC)

  4. I note that, in ODO at any rate, the Russian word rendered ‘blini’ is plural, so perhaps pancakes would be expected. In a clue where the setter may have already been facing the difficulty Vinyl mentions (the purpose of ‘or’), the ‘asymmetry’ of ‘cake or pancakes’ may have played its part in the final choice of words.
    1. As ODO also allows “blinis”, there is some evidence that the Russian plural has become an English singular.
  5. Also my first back but after a holiday rather than having to endure the horrors of Sandy. Good to see all is well Vinyl and I’ll be trawling the backlog with you.

    I enjoyed this one because it isn’t a gift and makes one work, which I needed to burnish the rust. It all seemed fair and above board to me although my time of 30 minutes reflects a need to get in some serious practice me thinks.

  6. 24 minutes working anticlockwise with reasonable ease until crashing into the last three across clues. After laboriously constructing ??YBERRY from the cryptic and blanking THESPIAN and wondering how to get a P at the end of 25ac, I effectively restarted at the NE and worked back down. So pretty much the same experience as everyone else so far.
    The Pangram Possibiity (surely a gimme for a title should anyone care to take up Robert Ludlum’s mantle) looked well on when the Viking turned up (with a K) at 24d, which helped me with PIQUANT, along with the rule “if there’s an unlikely U, there’s probably a Q”.
    TAYBERRies are apparently not suitable for commercial growing, which is why I’ve never seen them in Tesco’s.
    Not sure about CoD today: lots of very clever and inventive cluing, including the novel (to me) pairing of two old stalwarts in reserve and TA. Perhaps BRANCH LINE, though the surface reading is unlikely to turn up anywhere outside Crosswordland.
  7. 30m for this. Tough, but rewarding, with very little going in on definition.
    A few minor quibbles (“or” in 11ac for instance), but the one that really puzzled me was 21dn. For the cryptic grammar to work shouldn’t it read “one who delivers for dealer”? Obviously that ruins the surface but “one delivers for dealer” is not a nounal phrase. Is it just me?
    1. “One delivers for dealer” is fine as a clue to the word MULE which is what goes inside AT to create the answer. I don’t see the problem.
      1. I agree it’s fine as a clue, but it’s not a nounal phrase, and I think a nounal phrase is required for the cryptic grammar to work.
        As I said, perhaps it’s just me!
        1. Me too. I even went as far as to annotate the clue with the missing “who”. I agree that “one delivers…” would work on its own but not following “housing”.
  8. Nor me, but this I found to be an extremely difficult one, with the one or two cryptic esotericisms as mentioned above.

    I’m very glad to see Vinyl is okay, and up and running. All the best with that.

    Many thanks,
    Chris Gregory.

  9. 30 minute slog for me but I see I wasn’t the only one. Glad to hear all’s well Vinyl. Our lot got off very lightly in the storm except for one daughter’s in-laws on LI who are STILL without power. For them it’s been a horror story.
  10. Welcome back vinyl and also jimbo, trust you gave the clubs an airing somewhere warm and dry on your hols.
    A nice tough puzzle for a Monday, finished all except SE quadrant in 15 mins then had to look up to check Hebrews as the book before James, after which another 10 minutes finished it off. Thanks vinyl for explaining DRUIDESS, I must remember Ides in future.
  11. 24:44 with thespian, piquant and arable putting up most resistance. The pangram certainly helped with the Q.

    I thought some of this was right on the edge of fair but without crossing the line, e.g. “the two of diamonds” for i and “finishing with” as a deleticator.

    Anyone up for a cruciverbal Korean dance parody on youtube by way of PANGRAM STYLE?

  12. About 45 minutes, many of them at the end trying to figure out TAYBERRY. Not an easy puzzle, but a pretty good one I thought. I never notice pangrams, but I think I better start looking, it would have certainly helped today. Regards.
  13. Intrigued by mention of pangram- is this something one looks for, or knows how to spot? How was it featured in today’s – which I eventually completed though didn’t know tayberry and was looking for the ‘or’ in what in the end was tortellini.

    1. Good question. The way it was “featured” today is simply that the completed grid contains at least one instance of each letter of the alphabet. I’ve only just started to get the hang of looking out for them but older hands spot them without thinking.

      If you’ve already got, say, a Z and a Q but no J then the J might be the key to unlocking an answer you haven’t got yet (assuming there is a pangram of course).

  14. Thought I may get a nice learners puzzle on a Monday – not to be!

    Only managed half of it so thanks to the bloggers for explaining the rest for me. Loved Tayberry for the absolute cryptic working out.

    May do better tomorrow perhaps???

  15. 16:11 for me. Not really my sort of puzzle, particularly as I’m no great fan of pangrams. The “or” in 11ac seems unsatisfactory; and, like keriothe and penfold_61, I’m not keen on the wordplay in 21dn.

    Footnote
    I was wondering whether that was just me being in a grumpy mood – but, if so, I’ve just been ungrumped by Jumbo 1,006 which was wholly delightful.

    Edited at 2012-11-12 11:25 pm (UTC)

  16. I was busy today and could only give the puzzle 30 minutes. When I had to give up I had 21d, 24d and 15d still left unsolved. They came to me later on but by then I wasn’t counting. I think THREADBARE was the only word that fitted the checkers, and was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it straight away. I spotted the pangram which helped with ERIK. (I really don’t like proper names in crosswordland) I thought of AMULET early on but couldn’t see where the MULE fitted in. Which just goes to show what a sheltered life I lead. Like others I was puzzled by the superfluous “or” in 11a but the answer was fairly obvious anyway. Have just realised it’s tomorrow. Have been quizzing in my local. (Lost on tie break – birth date of Richard Gere. As if anyone would know that. But the other guy did!) Ann

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