Times 25369 – Yet another sting in the tail

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: 30 minutes for all but 16dn which I never heard of and took some working out. I also spent extra time considering an alternative at 26ac but plumped eventually for my first thought. Other than that, this was one of the easiest puzzles I have ever had to solve and blog. I laughed at 1ac despite generally not liking Spoonerism clues. There is no underwear today but we have a loose woman and a loose garment.

Across
1 FLAT CAP – Spooner’s version would be “cat flap”. Love it!
5 MOBSTER – MO (second), BuSTER (fellow, minus U)
9 EPHEMERAL – ME (this person) inside anagram of A HELPER.
10 OMANI – MAN (isle) inside OIl
11 ANTIHISTAMINE – Anagram of IN THE MAIN IT’S A
13 PITILESS – Anagram of LIES inside PITS (ditches)
15 BUDGET – BUDGE (shift),Time
17 REVIVE – IV (four) inside EVER (always – reversed)
19 MAGELLAN – LL (lakes) inside anagram of MANAGE. Ferdinand, the Portuguese explorer.
22 TELL ME ANOTHER – Two meanings.
25 REACT – tRuE pAuCiTy
26 COST PRICE – On edit: After originally posting that I didn’t understand this one fully the penny suddenly dropped and I deleted that remark before anyone had commented on anything. At that stage it seemed so clear to me how the clue worked that I didn’t feel an explanation was necessary, but after a request from Ulaca I added one under Comments below which has given rise to further queries so it’s possible there is something else going on here that I haven’t spotted. I don’t really think so though!
27 SMOTHER – S,MOTHER
28 ENRAGED – mEN,RAG,ED
Down
1 FLEW – Sounds like “flu”
2 AT HEART – HE (the man) inside A TART (a loose woman)
3 COMET – CO (commander), MET (satisfied)
4 PURCHASE – CHA (tea) inside PURSE (bag)
5 MOLEST – MOLES (spies), T (road junction)
6 BLOW A FUSE – With, A, Female inside BLOUSE (loose garment)
7 TEASING – TEA (meal), SING (carol)
8 RHINESTONE – The clue defines it. I wondered if it was also split RHINES, TONE (quality), but I can’t see that RHINES means anything on its own. On edit it’s an anagram of SHINER + TONE (quality). Thanks to vinyl1 for putting me right on the first bit. I should have looked a bit harder!
12 SPARE TYRES – Anagram of SET PRAYERS
14 LOVE MATCH – LOVE (nothing – tennis), MAT (dull), CH (Companion of Honour).
16 JALOUSIE – J (judge) followed by I inside A LOUSE (a mean type). It’s some sort of slatted blind which I have lived 65 years without meeting before.
18 VOLCANO – ‘Ante’ reversed gives ‘Etna’, so “one such”.
20 LARKING – ARK (rescue vessel) inside LING (fish)
21 LASCAR – Land, A, SCARe. A S.E. Asian sailor.
23 HYPER – HYPE (drug addict), Rant. This word for drug addict has also managed to escape my notice until now.
24 MEAD – MADE (manufactured) with its E moved up.

38 comments on “Times 25369 – Yet another sting in the tail”

  1. I didn’t find this easy and was feeling pretty darned pleased with myself for finishing it in 67 minutes (given the unknowns LASCAR and JALOUSIE – not to mention HYPE) when I came here to realise I’d misspelt the fire mountain as ‘vulcano’. Oh, the perils of a classical education!

    I don’t get the wordplay for COST PRICE (literal ‘cheap for customer’, I believe).

    Edited at 2013-01-11 03:32 am (UTC)

    1. This foxed me until I had a “d’oh” moment after posting that I couldn’t understand it. It makes sense if you read it as something like “The bread (money) that a shop lays out, but not this cheap for a customer”. Fortunately I was able to retract it before anybody commented.

      Edited at 2013-01-11 03:41 am (UTC)

      1. I still don’t see it – the (double – as in, in each part of the clue) indirectness and the fact that for me it should be ‘this cheap for customer’ rather than ‘not this cheap for customer’ has me thinking if there isn’t another (simpler) explanation. I was wondering post-solve if it had anything to do with ‘rice’ not being bread. But then I also tried taking both ‘this’ and ‘not’ away from something, but nothing seemed to work.
        1. Well we shall see but it seems clear to me after taking ages for the penny to drop. Can I have another go?

          1) COST PRICE: The bread/money that a shop lays out when buying goods from a wholesaler.

          2)The shop then add their profit margin and sell the goods on at retail i.e. COST PRICE + x%, so their customer is NOT buying the goods as cheap(ly) as the shop did i.e. at COST PRICE.

          1. Thanks, Jack. Sorry to put you to so much trouble, but, who knows, it may help others too.
  2. I cannot fathom it .. I am trying cash price (‘cheap(est)for customer’)
    bread accounts for the cash … but the rest continues to elude me
  3. 16m. I liked this: not too hard but elegant and inventive in places. I didn’t know JALOUSIE or this meaning of “hype” but the rest of the clue was clear enough In each case.
  4. Wonder if this was a new setter, as the style seemed unfamiliar.

    This definition isn’t in Chambers (2002), but a JALOUSIE is also a kind of pastry dish, named (presumably) after its resemblance to the blind. Though usually with a sweet filling, I remember making one containing corned beef in a Home Economics class in ~1985.

  5. 22 minutes, with a lot of them spent on COST PRICE/JALOUSIE, and (less accountably) MOLEST/MOBSTER. In the end, JALOUSIE went in assuming it was French for jealousy and possibly a Shakespearian variation on “love is blind – that sort of thing. COST PRICE, being a CD, went in with a shrug and some puzzlement – the explanations (for which many thanks) don’t make me like the clue any better. Like others, HYPE in this sense was not familiar – it presumably has something to do with needles.
    Particular liking for the Spooner, though a FLAT CAP is, I think, far more egalitarian headgear than suggested, and for VOLCANO for the economical “up the ante”.
  6. I fiddled about with “list price” for a while which made the sailor a “sailor” – oh wait. Sherlock Holmes disguises himself as a lascar and fools Watson, I forget which story. “Jalousie” I associate with Louisiana or the French W.I., didn’t know the tart Mohn. Farci with corned beef, hmmm. Very well-composed puzzle. 18 minutes.
  7. Another 20 minute steady solve of a puzzle that seems quite similar to others published this week.

    It’s a while since I plugged the virtue of doing Mephisto to (a) gain experience of solving unknown words from clue constituent parts and (b) meeting lots of words like JALOUSIE and HYPE

    I think of JALOUSIE as an external slatted shutter that is common in hot countries. HYPE is slang derived from hyperdermic to mean both a needle and by extension the addict using it.

    Thought COST PRICE a bit weak. Loved Andie’s FLAT CAP

  8. The reason supplied must be right – a customer doesn’t get cost price unless it’s in a sale as the customer price includes the mark up or profit margin.

    Jalousie is the kind of slatted shutter you see in the South of France where they open outwards and frame either side of the window.

  9. 10:43 here, seems I was right on the setter’s wavelength this morning. I’m pretty sure JALOUSIE has come up a couple of times recently, so no problem there. Took a few moments for the penny to drop re COST PRICE, but I thought it was quite clever when I saw it.
  10. 35 minutes, with much of that time trying to work out why 16 should be COST PRICE. Finally put it in without understanding why, so thanks for the explanation, Jack. I half expected the correct answer to be CASH PRICE.

    Strange how some words stick in the mind: I remember first meeting JALOUSIE in a novel nearly half a century ago, and having to look up the word in a dictionary. I think the novel was “A High Wind in Jamaica”.

    1. Yes, if CASH PRICE hadn’t also been available I suspect I would have spotted the reasoning much sooner but my efforts were divided between the two options. For what it’s worth (probably not much) CASH PRICE isn’t listed in any of the usual sources whereas COST PRICE is, so that was always going to be favourite once I had resorted to dictionaries in search of an explanation.

      Edited at 2013-01-11 11:48 am (UTC)

  11. My LOI – took a long time trying to find wordplay as “this cheap for” has all letters needed but for a second C, with CASH PRICE available as an alternative.
  12. DNF today with four missing: Jalousie, Volcano, React and Budget. Now that Volcano has been explained I think it’s a clever clue. Didn’t understand Cost Price until coming here. Luckily plumped for that over Cash Price based on definition. Deduced the unknown Lascar from wordplay and Hyper from definition and checkers.

    Comet reminded me of last night’s Stargazing Live programme on the BBC. It’s worth watching on iPlayer/catch-up if only to see the culmination of a fascinating project to build a working replica of William Herschel’s 20-inch reflecting telescope. Pity it was cloudy in Derby at the time of the show and we couldn’t see a live image from it. I think they said that Herschel’s mirror had a reflectivity of about 66% whereas the mirror they fitted had 99%!

    1. Well said Daniel.

      Sadly, a lot of people reading this won’t have a clue who Herschel and his sister were! He’s well worth looking up on Wiki – he was the man who first realised that the whole universe is moving. He was working on all this in the period 1780-1820 (approx, from memory) so that 50% improvement in reflectivity was achieved over a period of 200 years. At least one of his discoveries must be coming up a 200 year anniversary – what chance anybody will notice?

  13. 10:03, so certainly my fastest of the week, but still entertaining (and I think it is possibly the ultimate test of a setter, to produce a moderately easy puzzle which isn’t also boring for experienced solvers). JALOUSIE was last in, having to be dredged from half-remembered crossword knowledge, and felt as if it belonged to a tougher puzzle. Thought VOLCANO was very nicely done and produced a satifying penny-drop moment.
  14. 30 minutes today. At least I finished without having to resort to any aids, unlike previous puzzles this week. Most was straightforward but I failed to understand three clues: I wasn’t familiar with ‘hype’ as a drug addict and wordplay in 18 and 26 completely eluded me. 18 is clever, though I can’t help feeling the cryptic part is spoiled by ‘the’. I suppose if ‘the ante’ is taken to mean “the word ‘ante'” it just about works. Any better offers?

    My entry for 26 was initially CASH PRIZE on the strength of ‘bread’ (ie cash), but this seemed an unlikely collocation so I bunged in COST PRICE without understanding why and hoped for the best. Jackkt’s explanation makes complete sense. I’m not keen on the clue (a bit too indirect) but I don’t actually see anything wrong with it. The &lit for RHINESTONE is very good, as is the anagram in 11.

  15. 17:12 .. with about 7 of those minutes spent hacking away at the wordplay for 16d at the end. JALOUSIE was an unknown for me, though when it finally emerged it looked vaguely familiar.

    ‘Hype’ crops up a good deal in American hard-boiled crime fiction, of which I read more than is good for a person.

    I thought there were some terrific, witty clues in here, and some nice surfaces. VOLCANO, RHINESTONE, MEAD and PURCHASE all stand-outs for me. Nice work.

  16. 14:21

    Today I knew the medical term so didn’t have to invent a non-existent chemical and my two “guesses” (lascar and jalousie) were both correct.

    1a went straight in as I can remember somewhere in the past being amused by the claim that in order to blend in with the “natives” on a visit to the North the good reverend wore a cat flap on his head.

    Nice puzzle, but I’m getting as weary of Omani as others are of pants.

  17. Another cracking puzzle. with jalousie and cost price last in, took me a while to see why it was cost price not cash, but once I did I think it’s very clever and fair. Was interrupted by madame but estimate 35 minutes.
  18. DNF – Jalousie and Lascar eluding me today. Thanks for the explanations. I was with Vinyl on ‘volcano’ until it was explained – also the same with ‘cost price’ so thanks to Jakkt for parsing that one. Once understood it makes a really nice clue I think.
  19. Just a late question which has been niggling much of the day. If a JALOUSIE is an outside shutter, is it actually a blind?
    1. I also had that as a query but with so many not even knowing the word I didn’t bother to follow it up. I think it’s a bit of a stretch.
  20. DNF in 30 mins. 3 I couldn’t get. Volcano, Jalousie and Lascar. Plus I had Cost Price as Cash Price.
  21. 30 minutes after work and a hold-up on jalousie. Hope no Omanis are feeling appreciated for the wrong reason. Quite a neat little number, volcano my favourite for its oddness I think. Good memories of the Andy Capp cartoons with ‘er indoors.
  22. Re Vinyll there is another ‘English’word that fits: Viliaco (alt Viliago)which means coward, I suppose that in a poker game one could raise the ante to flush out the yellow bellies.I’ll get my coat
  23. 37.40 today after a quick start grinding to a halt in the NE until MOBSTER fell and then a 5 minute head scratch before RHINESTONE fell (and I only realised the anagram part when I came here), my LOI . Really liked 1a, which gets my COD vote. Extra thanks to Jack as though I had put in COST-PRICE on the strength of the last part of the clue I really hadn’t the foggiest about the rest. Finally I was leaning on the Andy Capp statue only a couple of weeks ago!

    Edited at 2013-01-11 06:29 pm (UTC)

  24. About 20 minutes, but I didn’t get the reasoning for 26A so I threw in CASH PRICE based on ‘bread’=’cash’. I just looked and note that Collins refers to the COST PRICE term as a British business usage. That makes me feel better, since I never heard of it. The US equivalent to this is just plain ‘cost’, as in, “You can have it at cost”. So, oops for me. Regards to all.
  25. 8:23 here for another most enjoyable puzzle. I was slowed by carelessly bunging in SPARE PARTS for 12dn, and then dithering over COST PRICE, unable to resolve the wordplay and worried that CASH PRICE might just be a possibility. (I’m relieved to see I wasn’t the only one.) Eventually I plumped for COST PRICE in desperation and only twigged what the clue was all about after I’d finished.

    JALOUSIE is familiar enough. I’m not sure that it’s come up in the Times crossword all that recently, but it’s certainly appeared at least once in the last six years.

Comments are closed.