Times 25,380 – Brilliant TNT Crack

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
The setter today is a person of few words, all carefully chosen with precision and deliberation. Succinct clue after concise clue revealed a very tidy mind at work. A most enjoyable and challenging puzzle.

ACROSS

1 MORALITY PLAY Ins of OR (Other Ranks, soldiers) in MALI (country) + TYPE (kind) minus E + LAY (set)
8 NUREYEV Rev of V (versus, against) + EYE (study) + RUN (course)
9 RHUBARB R (Rex, king) + ins of BAR (court as in the legal profession) in HUB (focus)
11 PATELLA Ins of T (last letter of that) in PAELLA (stew containing saffron, chicken, rice, vegetables, seafood, etc.) for the kneecap
12 TIMPANI Ins of PAN (knock as in criticise) in TIMID (retiring) minus D for the plural of TIMPANO, an orchestral kettledrum.
13 CADDY dd for the guy who carries your bag while you play a round of golf and a container (usually of tea)
14 HERETICAL Ins of ETIC (rev of CITE, quote) in HERALD (messenger) minus D
16 OFFICINAL Ins of I (one) C (cold) IN (at home) in OFFAL (waste or rejected part of a carcase or rubbish)
19 ha deliberately omitted. Chambers2 defines gnome as a pithy and sententious saying, generally in verse, embodying some moral sentiment or precept
21 APROPOS Ins of OP (opus, work) + O (nothing) in APR (April, month) & S (succeeded)
23 MINARET M (motorway) + *(RETAIN)
24 EMANATE EMAN (rev of NAME, term) ATE (worried)
25 DUDGEON DRUDGE (menial, dogsbody) minus R (resistance) + ON (working)
26 HORN OF PLENTY *(PROF THEN ONLY) horn of the goat that suckled Jupiter, placed among the stars as an emblem of abundance
DOWN
1 MERITED Ins of ERIT (rev of TIRE, weary) in MED (the Mediterranean Sea)
2 ROYALLY Ins of OY (rev of Y, unknown + O, ring) in RALLY (meeting)
3 LEVIATHAN Ins of VIA (through) T (time) H (hard) in LEAN (efficient)
4 TAROT TA (Territorial Army, volunteers) ROT (go off)
5 PLUMMET PLUM (prize) MET (paid)
6 ARAMAIC A (indefinite article) RA (Royal Academician, artist) *(AIM) C (circa, about) for the language used by Jesus Christ
7 INSPECTORATE *(PRIEST AT ONCE) I like the leg-up when an obvious annie gives you the starting letter of 6 answers
10 BRILLIANTINE B (black) RILL (stream) + ins of AN TIN (element) in IE (id est, that is) What a brilliant clue for a product which I used in my schooldays. Does Yardley still exist? My COD for the nostalgia.
15 ROLE MODEL Ins of EM (space in printing) + ODE (poem) in ROLL (list)
17 FARRAGO Cha of FAR (much) RAG (ridicule) O (over) Not a single word wasted to clue the disordered mixture aka hotchpotch
18 CAPTAIN CAP (better) STAIN (spot) minus S
19 DUNEDIN Ins of N (new) in DUE (expected) + DIN (row) for a city in New Zealand
20 CARVERY CAR (saloon) VERY (jolly)
22 SHELF Ins of H (husband) in SELF (identity)
++++++++++++++
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(FODDER) = anagram
TNT Crack = tough nut to crack

34 comments on “Times 25,380 – Brilliant TNT Crack”

  1. I must confess to finding this a tad unsatisfactory despite finishing in 22 minutes. Too many answers went in on literals and checkers (among them, the first 4 acrosses). Not that I’m really complaining. I needed a pick-me-up after recent bruising encounters, including a ‘ridiculously easy’ Mephisto in which I managed two correct answers in half an hour, and I learned that a horn of plenty is a scary looking mushroom and that ‘officinal’ is an ugly word that means exactly what it sounds like it ought to mean.
    1. I subsequently regretted somewhat my comment about that Mephisto because whilst it was easy for me with 50 years experience behind me it did occur to me that I might have put off some new solvers.

      Hopefully the blog was of some assistance and do please try again.

      1. I’m just not cut out for barred grid puzzles, Jimbo! While they test my technical parsing skills to the limit and find out all my weaknesses,there’s something about being required to memorise a list of arcane abbreviations often leading to even more arcane words that doesn’t really inspire me. And there was I before I sat down to do a Mephisto thinking my vocab was half decent!
  2. Feeling a bit slow this morning and did this in two sessions. Suspect it was the economical clueing that got to me; or possibly last night’s overdose of Italian sausage and mash with onion gravy. Anyhow, ground to a halt in the SW despite having INSPECTORATE in first.

    19ac (today’s light-inclusive) is pretty clever given that Icelandic tales are exactly where one does find gnomic sayings.

  3. 13:13 .. I caught the wave with this one. I liked the puzzle and like yfyap’s description of it.

    The ‘Turbulent priest’ is nice.

  4. 35 minutes or so for me, sitting in a coffee shop with a printout.

    Some great clueing. I especially liked CADDY which took me far longer than it should have done to see where the split was.

    I’m not sure I’d describe a PAELLA as a stew though, but Chambers does so it’s perfectly fair. To me a stew has to at least have a mixture of stuff sloshing around in some sort of liquid.

    1. I agree that describing paella as a stew is pushing it a bit too far. It may (if badly prepared) have some liquid but it is described in the Dictionary of the Spanish Real Academy as a dish of dry rice with meat, fish, seafood, vegetables, etc typical of Valencia (my translation).
      Nearer home the SOED describes it as being cooked in a large shallow pan, not exactly descriptive of a stewpot!
  5. No time for this one as I got stuck with only a quarter finished (NW) and fell asleep. When I returned to it this morning I needed another 35 minutes to complete the grid. The difficulty I had is indicated by my taking 10 minutes to find my first answer, INSPECTORATE at 7dn.

    Didn’t know OFFICINAL or that HORN OF PLENTY is a type of mushroom.

    I can’t fault anything but this is not the sort of puzzle I want to be faced with on blogging duty as I struggled to find the setter’s wavelength.

    Paul, I’m not an expert but I think the idea of paella is that it does slosh around in liquid but this evaporates and/or gets absorbed into the rice during the cooking process.

    Edited at 2013-01-24 05:07 am (UTC)

    1. Yes I’ve made it many times and eaten it even more. But if I said I was going to serve fish stew you’d be surprised if I produced a paella. Or at least I would.
        1. There once was an old Spanish fella
          Who’d spent his whole life in a cellar.
          From drinking much brew,
          He died in a stew-
          -p or … maybe in a paella.

          Edited at 2013-01-24 08:57 am (UTC)

  6. Grrr. Held up for ages at the very end staring at T_R_P_S for 21 across and, unsurprisingly, getting nowhere. Then I realised this was because I’d written in INSPECTORTAE, and once I’d corrected that, APROPOS dropped straight in. Unfortunately in correcting my typos, I changed 7dn to INSPECTORATR, meaning I now had two errors on the scoreboard. Curse these clumsy great sausage fingers of mine.

    Typing woes apart, this was a very precise puzzle, and quite a challenge on a cold morning, with hold-ups which were not unique to me. Had never heard of OFFICINAL but the wordplay gives it quite fairly; and without disputing the validity of stew=paella from a dictionary POV, I have to say that as a cook, I’d no more call a paella a stew than I would a biryani.

  7. 12m. I seem to have been on the right wavelength for this one.
    OFFICINAL was the only unknown today: according to Chambers it can also mean “belonging to or used in a shop”.
    I agree with others on paella. On this occasion I think Chambers is wrong.
  8. 20 minutes on a puzzle that left me feeling (right or wrong)that I’d had a proper workout.While quite a few went in definition first,there was enough intelligence in the cluing to make me want to workout what the wordplay was doing – NUREYEV and LEVIATHAN for two examples. OFFICINAL was the direct opposite – worked from the cryptic and wondering what on earth the literal meant.
    I wondered about bank for SHELF, but I suppose there’s the continental variety. Like others, I wondered about stew for PAELLA, since it lacks gravy, but Chambers dissents. I suppose you could argue that it’s the result of a stewing process (it is when I make it, anyway).
    Very much liked the Gnomes of Reykjavik.

    Edited at 2013-01-24 09:32 am (UTC)

  9. I agree with the comments so far. It’s neat and economical and fair without being inspired. I had no problem with it, getting 1A straight from definition which always helps in this grid.

    I also struggled with paella as stew and wonder if somebody with more knowledge than I could comment upon PATELLA as “bone”. I have a memory of it being softer and more flexible than bone.

  10. 20 minutes for me with two corners NE and SW holding me up far longer than the other two. I too I am in the ‘paella is not a stew’ camp.
  11. A bit like yesterday, taking 45 minutes, but at least I finished without the need to resort to any aids this time. Didn’t know ‘officinal’ or the mushroom, but everything else was clear. Is Brilliantine still sold? I remember two of my classmates plastering it on so thickly that it ran down their faces in hot weather.

    CODs for 7 and 15 for the deceptively concealed definitions. Always good to see the light after one’s been cleverly led down a blind alley.

  12. I like economical clueing, and liked BRILLIANTINE very much indeed, but there were rather too many literals for my taste. Though to be honest, I’d rather see a series of cryptic definitions backed by ludicrously complex wordplay, such is my level of insanity.

    I’m also happy to be making my first post as someone other than Anonymous, though unfortunately my ‘organization’ will not allow me to upload a ‘userpic’. I will try at another portal.

    Many thanks to setter and blogsmith.

    Chris.

  13. I stared blankly for 11 minutes and entered DICTA. Another blank 5 minutes and then INSPECTORATE fell and I came in in 39.43. LOI the dancer since spelling is not my forte (and him wot was an English teacher too!). My COD to 10d for the waste free clouding and memories of my dad it evoked.
  14. Is there something wrong with the site today. I could not get today’s crossword until I pressed archive and then it said there were 20 comments, but when I pressed comments there were only two.
  15. I found this hard, about an hour, ending with DICTA from the hidden, and without any conviction. Gnomes, you say? I hadn’t heard of OFFICINAL before either, but it wasn’t all that difficult to parse, and I got DUNEDIN easily enough though I thought it was in Scotland (is there more than one?). Beyond that, I have no problem with paella as a stew, it being a sort of mishmash of a whole lot of ingredients, many of which are somewhat variable, in my experience. That’s a stew in my book. Regards to all.
    1. It is, sort of, in Scotland, as Dùn Èideann, of which it is a ‘corruption’, is the Scottish Gaelic wording of Edinburgh.
  16. Came to this late in the day after 18 holes of wading through la boue, really enjoyed it, all but SW in 15 minutes then another 10 to twig those, no grouses here except the paella /stew issue, but something more clearly pointing to paella would have made it even easier.
  17. Three-quarters of an hour: I was beginning to suspect mental decay, so I’m reassured that the puzzle presented a challenge to other regulars.

    I remember brilliantine being inflicted on me: unless you protested loudly, the barber would slap a dollop of the stuff on your one-and-thruppenny short-back-and-sides, then spray the entire creation with an atomiser. I used to emerge from the salon smelling “like an Arabian brothel”, as my father disdainfully remarked.

    1. Love it John, my father expressed similar sentiments about brilliantine (and Brylcream) but never in front of my mother. It took me a while for the penny to drop that she might ask him how he knew!!
  18. 10:44 for me. Not my kind of puzzle, I’m afraid, with too many convoluted clues made up of small pieces – for example 10dn (BRILLIANTINE). I admit the surface reading was very good, but B + RILL + I (AN + TIN) E doesn’t appeal to me at all. 13ac (CADDY) is the sort of clue I like, even though it was my LOI, but they were in short supply.
    1. Well said, Tony. I had been puzzling over the idea expressed above that the clues were succinct and concise when I found them largely to be exactly the opposite. Glad to know I wasn’t alone.

      Edited at 2013-01-25 01:15 am (UTC)

  19. FOI was DICTA, which remained the only one in for a hell of a long time. Fortunately, just as despair and thoughts of Alzheimer’s were setting in, I managed to pull my socks up and grind through the whole thing. But I tend to agree with Tony; I had nothing to object to in the clues (even the paella one), but didn’t really enjoy the solving of them that much.

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