Times 25345 – frenetic fortunate facility

Solving time : 9 minutes 11 seconds on the club timer, good for top spot for now, but I suspect not for long – my last in being an anagram that I think most of the regulars will see the first time. There’s a little bit of sneakiness here but everything appears to be clearly signposted with some nice surfaces so I’d recommend this one as a good one to get new solvers involed.

There was a little bated breath as I hit the submit button as 19 down went in entirely from wordplay, and I wasn’t 100% on the ending of 14, which fit the definition fine, but now I have to think about wordplay as I write this up.

Away we go…

Across
1 COPING(holding one’s own),SAW(understood): one of those saws with a thin blade and a big hoop behind it
6 0,AS,IS
9 LEVER: EVE is in the middle of left and right
10 URSA MINOR: Paddington is a little bear
11 MANKIND: KIN in M,AND(also)
12 ATHWART: H in AT WAR, then T (the end of West)
13 REVISED VERSION: (OR,DIVINE,VERSES) – you know I’ve even done a Listener crossword about this before, but I didn’t see the anagram until all the checking letters were in place
17 PRESENT PERFECT: double definition, one cryptic
21 ALIGHTS: A SLIGHT with the S moved
23 SNOWCAP: NOW,C in SAP(fatigue)
25 TAILPIECE: sounds like TALE PEACE and in this case I really do pronounce those words the same way
26 our omission of a market we’ve seen before most likely
27 SADLY: (LADY’S)*
28 TENNESSEE: T and then anagram of (SEEN,SEEN)* – I live less than half an hour’s drive from there
 
Down
1 our down omission, you can find it wriggling in there somewhere
2 P,A,VAN: a dance
3 NARCISSUS: C in (RUSSIANS)*
4 SOUND,ED: I thought this may have been a US term – “I sounded that idea out with the boss and he thought it was baloney”
5 WASTAGE: W on A,STAGE
6 OOMPH: OOMPAH without the A
7 SINGAPORE: SING then (OPERA)*
8 STRUTS: double def
14 VERSIFIED: S(start of SPEECH) in VERIFIED(checked over)
15 SURROGATE: R in (OUR,STAGE)*
16 S,TOP,PAGE: rather liked this clue
18 N,ASCENT
19 PASTERN: ASTERN under P – nearly put in POSTERN (yes, I know now it’s a gate, just remembered it being a word), but realized there was no justifying the O, so opted for PASTERN – the part of the horse’s foot from the fetlock to the hoof. Rare that I decide to not do something silly!
20 CACTUS: C,ACTS(legislation) around U(start of UNION)
22 HOPPY: HAPPY with the A changed to an O – now ales are HOPPY, but most American “beers” are not at all. Still liked the clue!
24 CROSS: double def

25 comments on “Times 25345 – frenetic fortunate facility”

  1. 30 minutes by skin of teeth. I had been racing through it but the 6s, 7, 8 & 12 put up some resistance towards the end. I’m more used to the dance at 2dn with an E on its end than without it.
  2. Good tight puzzle I thought, with only minor jitters in the top right. For some reason, I wanted BANGALORE which stuffed everything up there. Strange how differently we solve. My first in was REVISED VERSION. Maybe just ‘cos I like anagrams.

    George, I’m continually mystified as to how you manage to get, e.g., today’s blog dated as yesterday, 12th December. What’s the trick?*

    Great solving time for you but. George on autopilot?

    *On edit: LJ now seems to have corrected the dating. I’m still mystified but.

    Edited at 2012-12-13 02:44 am (UTC)

    1. No its something I do. I post when I solve (about 8pm on Wednesday night) then wait a while and manually change the date to the day of the puzzle.
  3. 13:53, and it could have been a good deal faster if I’d been somewhat less dim. Like putting in Major instead of MINOR, and, like Mctext, Bangalore instead of SINGAPORE–I’m embarrassed to think of the time I spent trying to think of a word O_B_S. Quite a few of these went in unthinkingly but confidently, like NARCISSUS. I liked ‘centrist first lady’.
    1. Mea culpa! I was thwarted by the same error though obviously wrong on reflection, compounded by the fact that I served in Singapore 1956/58! I shall not be strutting my stuff today.
  4. Much easier today, about 14 minutes and could have been quicker but ATHWART and WASTAGE took me a little time to find.
    Not sure I don’t prefer yesterdays, though 🙂
  5. 14 minutes, curiously delayed by indecision in the NE over whether Paddington was a greater or lesser bear – depends on how you define greatness. With that sector being by far the trickiest, I left the resolution ’til last.
    Several kindnesses to those of us who get mental blocks over spelling: CAL(A/I)MARI, P(A/O)STERN, the letter count in TENNESSEE and whether PAVAN should have an E on the end.
    No great stand-out clues, but I also liked LEVER, even if “first lady” is a gimme.
  6. My first all correct of the week (am still battling with yesterday’s). Top half went in quite quickly, then SE corner but slow to complete SW corner. FOI Revised Version and LOI Tailpiece.
    Needed checkers to confirm it was Present Perfect not Perfect Present – in a way a topical answer with Christmas just round the corner!
    Three unknowns (Pavan, Athwart and Pastern) all easily gettable from the wordplay and checkers.
  7. Oh dear, ran through in 25 minutes only to find in haste I had mis-anagrammed 28 to TENSENESS (as being in a state, but too many s’s and an e short for that). So also had trouble with 16 dn and 24 dn. Otherwise good clean fun today. I agree, z8b8d8k, I thought PAVANE (as in Ravel) was spelt sic. but I see an alternative is allowed. And Wiki says Sarah Pavan is a 6 ft 5 ins Canadian volleyball player of some note, so I’ve learnt 2 new things today.

  8. We seem to be on a see-saw going from easy to hard and back to easy. I thought this the easiest of the week so far with no hold ups and much going in from the generous and obvious definitions. 15 minutes to solve.

    Did wonder if “reviewed” is surface padding at 15A with “production” acting as anagrind.

  9. My fastest time for a long time, well under 20 minutes and helped by glorious sunshine streaming in through the window. A very well crafted puzzle, I thought, with quite a few smiles and the odd chuckle.

    HOPPY. In my native Black Country, in the days when you could have a skinful for ten bob, many pubs served only mild ale. It came as quite a shock to the palate when I moved north and sampled the very bitter Manchester beers. Soon acquired the taste, though.

  10. I found this harder than most others, finishing in around an hour including a break to Skype the wife. Each corner apart perhaps from the SW put up a resistance of its own (including those items mentioned by others). I thought MANKIND was good, after which I was able finally to finish, like some others too, with WASTAGE.

    Re Jimbo’s comment on 15, I took ‘reviewed…production’ to be a kind of conjoined anagram indication.

  11. I agree with dorsetjimbo about the see-saw effect. After two days of head scratching, I did enjoy the ten minutes this one took to solve.
  12. A rare sub 20 at 18.10 today with nearly 6 of them spent on the NE which only fell when I unexpectedly got OOMPH! Much more to my taste ( and ability level) than yesterday’s offering. I liked MANKIND for its elegant neatness.
  13. Was rather pleased with myself when I spanned top-to-bottom and right-to-left with the first four in. Less so when I realised that the whole thing was rather easy today.
  14. Made slightly heavy weather of this I felt in my 25 minutes. 19 reminds of Dr Johnson’s being upbraided by a lady for wrongly defining it in his Dictionary as a horse’s knee, and taking the wind out of her sails by coolly admitting “Ignorance, dear lady, pure ignorance.”

    Edited at 2012-12-13 01:50 pm (UTC)

  15. Just on the hour mark. Most was fine except for the NE – thought the O in 4ac had to be inside prevailing state. Lesson learnt. Enjoyed 23ac snowcap – ‘the dew tour’ at Breckenridge Co is a big freestyle skiing comp this weekend.
  16. I was in a great rush this morning and only had 20 minutes to devote to the crossword. I hit a personal best (that is since finding this site and timing myself) and finished in 15 minutes, so was greatly pleased. That’s a good time for me because it takes me quite a while simply to read the clues. I needed all the checkers for COPING at 1a but otherwise no problems. I had heard of a COPING SAW but had forgotten it. I went through the gamut of saws from “band” to “tenon” but this one escaped me. Ann
  17. This wasn’t a struggle at all, about 15 minutes, ending with ATHWART. The NE area presented the only minor hold up, no, not URSA MINOR, but OASIS, OOMPH, STRUTS. They all came together, though. I thought the ‘probing’ in SOUNDED referred to dropping the plumb line overboard to check water depth. Not much else to say today. Regards.
  18. Oh dear! It’s the demon drink what did it.

    It was good to meet ulaca, TopicalTim, PeterBiddlecombe, linxit and John Henderson at the Doric Arch earlier this evening, but I’m afraid even the small glass of red wine I had was enough to addle my brain. It took me a third read-through, checking every answer even more carefully than before, to spot that I’d typed SHOWCAP instead of SNOWCAP – thus bringing to an end a decent run of all-corrects for the daily cryptic following my last foul-up on 23 April when I accidentally typed in LINEN instead of LENIN.

    Edited at 2012-12-13 10:46 pm (UTC)

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