Times 25322 – My run of luck continues…

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
28 minutes for this pleasant offering that’s somewhat on the easy side. I can’t imagine it will delay any of the regulars for long.

* = anagram


Across
1 INGRATE – IN GRATE – Dogs aka firedogs are metal supports for wood burning in a fireplace.
5 POODLES – Pressure, OODLES (a lot).
9 PEA-SOUPER – Anagram of Panic AS EUROPE. Pea-soupers were thick fogs experienced in industrial cities before the Clean Air Act (1956).
10 FIVER – A portrait of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780 – 1845) can found on the current Bank of England £5 note.
11 SLING – Second,LING (fish).
12 RIDICULED – RID (clear), then CLUE* inside I’D.
13 LATIN AMERICAN – (I Left A CERTAIN MAN)*
17 INSUPPORTABLE – IN (at home), SUP (drink), PORT (wine), then B (key) inside ALE (beer).
21 HISTORIAN – (THIS ON AIR)*
24 ROUGH – Double definition, one cryptic with a golfing connotation.
25 ROMEO – Double definition, one with reference to the radio alphabet.
26 ELECTORAL – 0 in ELECTRA (play – by Sophocles), Left.
27 WHATNOT – NOT WHAT re-ordered. It’s a stand for knick-knacks.
28 SLANDER – S,LANDER (parts of Germany). Is anyone going to argue that the German word requires an umlaut or another E?
Down
1 IMPOST – I (current), M (agent’s boss – James Bond’s), POST (job).
2 GLADIOLUS – The flower can be shortened to “glad” colloquially, or “gladdie” if’ you’re Dame Edna.
3 AMONGST – MO (doctor) inside ANGST (dreadful feeling).
4 ESPERANTO – E,S (points), then ER (leading lady) inside PANTO (show).
5 PARED – PA ( per annum, every year), RED (cherry for example).
6 OFFICER – IC (in charge) inside OFFER (volunteer).
7 LEVEL – EVE (woman, originally) inside LL (50s).
8 STRIDENT – S,TRIDENT (missile).
14 MUTINEERS – Anagram of Mass REUNITES with reference to Mutiny on the Bounty (1789) led by Fletcher Christian.
15 CHEQUERED – QUeen inside CHEERED (comforted). One may have a chequered career, for example.
16 WITHDRAW – WITH (not lacking), DRAW (appeal).
18 PRONOUN – “It” can be a drink, as in “gin and It”, short for Italian vermouth. Also it is a pronoun.
19 BIRETTA – Bishop + ATTIRE*
20 CHOLER – Sounds like “collar” meaning to arrest.
22 SAMOA – South, A,MOA (bird no longer seen).
23 ID EST – Hidden with the break moved to the left.

32 comments on “Times 25322 – My run of luck continues…”

  1. Just squeezed in under 30′, with FIVER, LEVEL, and finally POODLES taking heaps of time. I had to look Fry up, and then guessed that she’s on the note, never having seen one to my knowledge. I thought of GLADIOLUS right away, but then wasted time trying to justify the -olus part. I liked LEVEL, did not like WHATNOT.
      1. Sorry if the blog doesn’t make this clear. You justify leaving it out rather than putting it in, so to speak:

        “Cheerful” = GLAD which “colloquially speaking” = GLADIOLUS (flower)

        Edited at 2012-11-16 11:51 pm (UTC)

  2. Agree with Kevin that WHATNOT was pretty average. Otherwise lots of nice stuff, with the SW proving toughest for me, WITHDRAW going in last. Need to thank Jack for parsing of ESPERANTO and PRONOUN. For a moment with the former I thought I might have spent the last 40 years misspelling the word, as I couldn’t see past Peron for leading lady. Thought biretta was a gun but now see that’s beretta. 32 mins.

    Edited at 2012-11-16 07:06 am (UTC)

  3. 10 minutes, though I admit without parsing clues like ESPERANTO and CHEQUERED. For one thing they were obvious enough with checkers in place, and for another the cluing was nowhere near the delicious deviousness of (say) yesterday.
    My hold up was PRONOUN, with its unlikely sequence of P_O_O_N, and its offbeat clue standing rather proud of its surroundings.
  4. Easiest of the week for me with only one real gem of a clue – PRONOUN – and a few really weak offerings – FIVER, WHATNOT, GLADIOLUS – plus one query: is “breaking earlier” really needed in 23D?

    9A is quite topical if one takes fog to relate to poor thinking rather than the weather

    1. I thought “breaking earlier” was quite clever, though I only twigged it when going through the clues again after I’d finished. It’s not strictly necessary, but it contributes nicely to both the wordplay and the surface reading.

      I completely disagree with you about FIVER, and although I can see what you (and others) are getting at with WHATNOT, I find it entirely acceptable.

      1. I didn’t have time to mention this earlier, but I was – and still am – baffled by “breaking earlier”. Obviously I’ve missed something: how does it contribute to the wordplay?
        I’m with you on FIVER. I solved it from”note” (like many others I suspect) and was convinced “Elizabeth” meant ER. There is something very neat about being utterly fooled by a non-cryptic reference to something we see every day. I shall be on the lookout for Adam Smith and Matthew Boulton.
        1. The clue has “insIDE[break]STory” and the solution is ID[break]EST, thus “breaking earlier”.
  5. I seem to have enjoyed this more than some – I thought there were some excellent clues. Look at 21 AC for example, very elegant.

  6. Back on form today, 20 minutes, LOI was FIVER I had to look her up to check she’s on the note as we are in euroland. Nice puzzle with a few gems and a few weak clues. Didn’t we have POODLES quite recently? Maybe it was in the ST.
  7. 16 minutes, quite a few of them trying to justify whatnot and pronoun. Esperanto from definition, didn’t see the secondary part of fiver
  8. 30/30 today with my only major sticking point being in the SE corner where Rough and LOI Choler took a long time to get. Rough in particular – and me a golfer too!
    Didn’t understand the cryptics for Gladiolus or Pronoun – so thanks Jack for explaining those.
    Biretta from wordplay – hadn’t heard of that word before.
    Had to stifle a yawn when Mr Christian appeared. We’ve seen him a couple of times lately.
  9. 13:30 with pronoun last in. Thanks to Jack for explaining chequered. I’m sure I’m not alone in having decided that queen must be ER leaving the mysterious chequed to cover the comforted part.

    Choler was a new one on me, was tempted to spell it with an a.

  10. I was quite happy with my 8 minute solving time for this one, not least because I have been having one of those weeks where I thought I was losing my ability to solve cryptic crosswords. I was all right with chequered as I had already worked out the cheered bit.
  11. A rare sub 30 at 29.18 with 6 of them on 10a and 8d, the latter rather unnecessarily really. This meant it had to be FIVER but I had no idea why so thanks to Jack for explaining. My COD to 18d though like others I appreciated 21a and 9a. Btw though Juliet is only a child at two weeks short of 14 I’m not convinced Romeo is in fact a youth. From memory William leaves this unclear and after all if Hamlet is 30 so could Romeo be.
  12. Like Grestyman I was incredibly fast today, around 12 minutes! Don’t worry, I’m still in shock. Yesterday it was a much different story, I’m embarrassed to say, with a DNF.

    Btw, does anyone know what’s up with sister site 15/2? I’ve been having a hell of a lot of trouble getting in over the last few weeks, and today I can’t get in at all.

    Cheers, thanks to setter and blogger.
    Chris Gregory.

    1. You may have got through since posting this, but just in case, the site currently carries the following message:

      “You will have noticed recently that the site has become slow to load or is unavailable (FTTP500). When this occurred back in January the problem was due to a couple of other websites, hosted on the same server, which caused the server to slow down or stop. The hosting company has informed me that this time it is down to 15² using too much cpu time (something which I would question) so it is being throttled.”

      1. An extract from a post on BD’s blog re 15 squared – If you are having difficulties in accessing this site it is because the site’s hosting company, Bluehost, has deactivated their account. The reason given was that the site has been causing performance problems. A resolution of the problem is actively being sought, and we wish them every success in finding a new host.
  13. 20 minutes after dithering in disbelief over “whatnot” and my brain stupidly insisting on “to wit” in 23d.

    My first, and bitterly detested, boarding school named its dorms after famous women and I spent many miserable weeks in Liz Fry along with 9 other waifs. There’s a rather good statue of her at the Old Bailey, but as with other non-UK solvers the note was a guess.

  14. 8:12, nothing to say that hasn’t been said already. Agree that PRONOUN felt like a clue which had been left over from yesterday’s puzzle…
  15. Surely the setter could have thought of a better clue than this. It’s a general rule that words in the clue aren’t replicated in the answer. Just putting two of the words in a different order doesn’t pass muster.
    1. The definition is “experience an evening out” where evening refers to the situation of being made even, rather than the time of the day before night. It’s a nice bit of misdirection.
  16. Less than 15 minutes for this fairly easy offering. That despite forgetting about It=vermouth and not knowing Ms. Fry. I figured the Queen was on the note and that ‘fry’ had some slang connotation unknown to me, so I put it in from the definition. I didn’t stop to parse ESPERANTO either, but if I had it would have taken a while since ‘panto’ as ‘show’ doesn’t stick in my head, even though it appears here somewhat regularly. PRONOUN is the clear COD, now that I’m reminded of the ‘gin and it’ bit. Regards to all.
  17. 15m, the last three or four on PRONOUN – a superb clue. Generally I thought a bit more of this than others. I didn’t even mind WHATNOT, although it’s a bit of a liberty.
    Didn’t understand FIVER, BIRETTA unknown.
  18. 6:47 here for a pleasant, straightforward solve. I’d have been significantly faster if I hadn’t (like Kevin) wasted an embarrassing amount of time trying to justify IOLUS in 2dn. (Doh!)
  19. Very late coming to this. And everything seems to have already been said. I see Tony tried to justify IOLUS. My time waster was trying to justify PHLEGM in 20d! (It’s just struck me what a wonderful word that is – can’t remember it cropping up but I expect it has)
    22 minutes. Ann
  20. Thought several of today’s clues could have been tighter (didn’t put WHATNOT or GLADIOLUS in straight away as I thought if that were the answer, the clue would surely be better)
    Perhaps unfair to judge this one so severely following yesterday’s offering, which was just in a different league

    JB

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