Times 25381 – Planted!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I completed most of this within half an hour but lost time at the end on three tricky ones in the NW corner. I didn’t know the star or the method of painting so I had to get them from wordplay. I was also a bit confused at 12ac as explained below. My heart sank seeing the word ‘plant’ appearing in four clues and was not at all pleased to discover that in every case it was the definition or part of it. Two of the four I never heard of anyway. We also had a herb defined as ‘herb’ and a type of wood defined as ‘wood’ and to continue the horticultural theme, a “studious” gardener”. No prizes for guessing one of this setter’s hobbies!


Across
1 LETHARGIC – E for ‘energy’ inside anagram of CATH GIRL
9 HEATHER – THE inside HEAR (learn)
10 GOUACHE – GOUt (painful condition cut short), ACHE (desire). A method of painting that has escaped my notice until today.
11 AGNES – A,G for ‘good’,NESt (hiding place wasting time).
12 CONTUMELY – N for ‘new’, TU (trades union) inside COMELY (pretty). I had a few problems dredging this one up from memory as it’s an odd word that looks like an adjective but is actually a noun.
13 BOUNCER – cluB,OUNCE (little weight), R
15 UNWED – Hidden
17 CHESS – CHE (revolutionary -what would we do without him?), SS (saints). I’m not sure why the clue has two bishops rather than four, but the reference is clear.
18 BOMBE – Old Boy (reversed), MBE – Member of the Order of the British Empire, one of the gongs doled out at New Year and on HMQ’s birthday. An ice-cream dessert in the shape of a cannonball.
19 BASIL – Son inside BAIL (cricketer’s bar)
20 ANTONYM – ANTONY, Mark follows the pattern Caesar, J suggested in the clue which also refers to his famous speech in Shakespeare’s play, beginning,” Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
23 ADDICTIVE – Concealed inside ADDITIVE (food preservative)
25 LUPIN – UP inside NIL reversed
27 ALIMENT – Anagram of TIN MEAL
28 CONCEDE – CON,CEDE sounds like “seed”
29 RELEGATED – LEGATE (envoy of Pope) inside RED (cardinal)

Down
1 LEGACY – EG inside LACY (like fancy trimming)
2 TOURNAMENT – URN (trophy), AMEN (word of approval) all inside TOT (youngster). I’m having a little difficulty seeing ‘urn’ and ‘trophy’ as synonyms but perhaps in some sporting circles they may be so. On edit: Thanks to anon below for the reference to the urn in which The Ashes are kept.
3 ARCTURUS – ARC (discharge), TaURUS (group of stars not a). I didn’t know this star.
4 GREBE – Glebe (clergyman’s territory) with L changed to R.
5 CHARYBDIS – CHARY (careful), BoD or possibly BuD (heartless fellow), IS. Greek sea monster.
6 XANADU – University, DAN (another fellow), A, X (kiss) all reversed. The residence of Kublai Khan celebrated in the poem by Coleridge. Some may be reminded of Olivia Newton-John whilst others from my era may have memories of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
7 WHIN – WHINe This is gorse, apparently. Unknown to me.
8 PRESERVE – PRE,SERVE. One’s preserve may be one’s area of particular interest.
14 COMPLIMENT – Sounds like ‘complement’
16 WEBMASTER – MA (arts graduate) inside WEBSTER whose dictionary, like Bob Hope, Bing and Dorothy Lamour, was famously ‘Morocco bound’.
17 CHARLOCK – CHAR (cleaner), LOCK (secure). Yet another bloomin’ plant! Also unknown to me.
18 BLACKING – B (and another b. bishop), LACKING (not having)
21 NANTES – NAN (Grandma) SET (group) reversed
22 PENTAD – Anagram of TEN inside PAD (accommodation)
24 DRAWL – DRAW (yank), Line
26 PINE – Double definition

31 comments on “Times 25381 – Planted!”

  1. Best known from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:

    For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
    The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely,
    The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
    The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
    That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
    When he himself might his Quietus make
    With a bare Bodkin?

  2. 37 minutes but one wrong, forgetting to go back to 23 after WEBMASTER had made my dodgy ‘endocrine’ impossible.

    Much more my cup of tea than yesterday’s, with lots of witty clues and answers that needed to be derived from the wordplay (both the unknown CHARLOCK and the known and COD-worthy CONCEDE, for example). Talking of ‘for example’, it was interesting to get two clues (25ac and 1dn) where the two-letter words (‘up’ and ‘eg’, respectively) needed to be transferred wholesale into the answer. Wondered about ‘nest’ for ‘hiding place’, but I suppose it’s pretty difficult to dig out a bunch of termites.

    Unusually, I knew my birds better than my ecclesiology, so GREBE went in on a wing and a… WHIN the other unknown.

    Voyage to Arcturus – a bleak but nonetheless effectively chilling sci-fi novel by David Lindsay – was one of the inspirations for CS Lewis’s first, and best, in my view, sci-fi novel, Out of the Silent Planet.

    1. I also wondered about that but Collins and COED both mention “secluded” in their definitions (though Chambers doesn’t) which seems cover it, I think.

      Edited at 2013-01-25 07:44 am (UTC)

  3. LETHARGIC went in right off and I thought it was going to be a rare easy Friday. Then despair set in as I read the rest of the clues. Until, that is, the SW corner which proved simple enough … my saving grace today.

    Thought of TOURNAMENT then, and pencilled it in, but couldn’t parse it!

    Plants indeed: but at least they were either familiar or the cryptic was direct. Normally get in a right paella when I see “plant” at the start or finish of a clue.

    COD to Mark Antony.

    1. Aren’t the famous Ashes kept in an urn? (It wouldn’t be a Times crossword without a couple of glances at cricket. The other at 19 across of course.)
  4. 15 minutes, so five minutes “easier” than yesterday’s despite the florabundance. WHIN was the only bit of greenery I didn’t know, but there were no realistic alternative fillings.
    In the printed version, Caesar’s J looked like a slightly misprinted I to my clouded eyes, so I had no idea where the M came from. Deserves to be CoD when properly read.
    The use of “fellow” in the clue for XANADU, especially straight after a clue where “fellow” meant “bod”, made me wonder if it indicated “don” and I’d been spelling XANODU wrong all these years.
    Decent puzzle, with a slightly old-fashioned, pottering in the garden feel to it – even WEBMASTER felt like a reluctant concession to modernity, coming as it does from the primeval youth of the Interweb.
  5. 22m. I got off to a flying start with this and thought I was on for a very fast time, but then slowed down considerably. I enjoyed the difficult half much more than the easy half.
    I spent over five minutes at the end on my last two in: CONTUMELY and ADDICTIVE. I didn’t help myself on the former by carelessly putting in ACTARUS, which took me a while to see.
    I also spent a while on 7dn, WHIN. I thought of it immediately but I’d never heard of the plant and was worried it might be something else, so had to go through the alphabet to make sure there wasn’t another word for “cry” that would fit.
    My only other unknown today was, unsurprisingly, another plant: CHARLOCK.
    And I wondered about “urn”: thanks to Anon for clearing that one up.
  6. Easiest of the week for me, raced through in 15 minutes

    Agree with Jack it should be four bishops that participate in a game of chess. I also think 28A is a bit odd – what does “con seed” mean?

    Such all round breast beating over some very well known plants. So many can be found in place names so Whinfield for example. Another name for whin is furze as in Furzehill. Note also cole for cabbage as in Colehill. Charlock is a prolific yellow plant that invades corn fields.

    1. Not much breastbeating here about the proliferation of plants, but surely a plant is only well known if you know it well. Sadly, even Whinfield (Darlington?) is not a sufficiently familiar place (to me) for its etymology to be inspiring. My knowledge of plants is fairly sketchy, but (for example) my knowledge of obscure Bible characters is pretty good. I would not expect to see many of them described as “very well known”
    3. “Breast beating” is maybe a bit strong but I confess my heart does sink whenever I see the word “plant” in a clue. And I’ve never heard of Whinfield, Furzehill or Colehill either!
  7. Thanks Jimbo for reminding me of Wimborne’s environs. A witty enjoyable puzzle completed in 25 minutes watching Murray and just needed to check that CONTUMELY was (surprisingly) a noun with the right meaning.
    1. No problem – I could have dragged in Ferndown of course! I find the derivation and history of place names fascinating and would recommend The Oxford Names Companion to all. During my working life I travelled extensively throughout the UK and found such study very rewarding in bringing local history to life.
  8. Exactly half-an-hour for this enjoyable puzzle. I think we’ve had CHARLOCK before, and I probably mentioned then that I know it from a poem by Edward Thomas, As the Team’s Head-Brass:

    I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
    That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
    Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
    Of charlock.

    Took a while to get PINE as I was convinced it was CANE; though on reflection cane is a grass rather than a wood, isn’t it?

    Anyway, off into the frosty morning singing that song about Charlie Chaplin to the tune of Little Redwing:

    Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin
    His boots are cracking for want of BLACKING

    1. And of course the young Dickens did a stint in a blacking factory.

      Edited at 2013-01-25 12:16 pm (UTC)

  9. Some slightly dodgy areas in this one, as detailed above, but enough good stuff for me not to mind too much. CONTUMELY – nice to brush the dust off that one, I’d say.

    Thanks to all participants.

    CG.

  10. About 12 minutes for me – helped by the fact that all the unknown words, charlock being one, had particularly clear wordplay.
    1. We would indeed and I was doing just that (and purchasing them) before I attempted this one. About 20 minutes and COD definitely Mark Anthony – and though a gardener I didn’t know Whin either.
  12. Enjoyable and fairly straightforward puzzle, though it still took me close on 60 mins. 1 ac and the RH side went in quickly, but I found the LH side much harder to crack. ARCTURUS was my LOI – ARC=”discharge” a particularly devious def, I thought. CONTUMELY, ANTONYM and BOUNCER stood out as CoD candidates, the last combining ingenious wordplay with an excellent &lit cryptic def (at least if I’ve read the clue aright). I agree with TonyW above about “con seed” – can’t see any problem there. I also agree with those who think there should be 4 bishops at 17 ac. Thanks to blogger and setter.
  13. A straightforward solve today for me at 24.12 with no hold ups and no unknowns either. Blogger’s mention of Dave Dee et al reminds me of early teaching days in Trowbridge from whence said group came. My first guitar teacher was Brian Doe, the dozy of the group, who when Dave Dee split the group in going solo, developed into a fine classical guitarist and teacher. Must be 35 years ago now!

    Edited at 2013-01-25 02:57 pm (UTC)

  14. 9 minutes, 10 seconds, and a sigh of relief to find on the club timer that everything is in order, since WHIN, CHARLOCK and CONTUMELY all went in from wordplay alone.
  15. 25 minutes today. Knew all the plants but I didn’t think WHIN was gorse. (When I was a kid I used to go up the mountain to pick whinberries – which I always assumed were the berries of a plant called “whin”. The were at ground level among the bracken and the heather (looked rather like sheep’s droppings so you had to be careful!) In retrospect I can see that they are a form of blueberry. Made great pies and our efforts were much appreciated by our mums.) I particularly liked the ANTONYM clue. Ann
  16. About 30 minutes, ending with CONTUMELY and WHIN, neither of which I knew. On the latter I was stuck for a good while because my brain had decided it was CHAN(T), but I did the alphabetic thing before surrendering to that. COD most certainly to Antony M. Regards.
  17. 8:54 here for a puzzle that was much more to my taste than yesterday’s. My only real problem was being held up by senior moments, particularly with ARCTURUS and CHARLOCK.

    I’ve seen the ANTONYM clue before – though I can’t recall when or where – so at least that went in straight away.

  18. Presumed praiser of Caesar, J becoming the opposite (7)

    Given the tone of his “Friends, Romans, countrymen…” speech should not the clue have been…
    Presumed detractor of Caesar, J becoming the opposite (7)
    ?

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