Times 25383 – Some sort of Djoke?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
As the tennis clues rained down on me as thick and fast as a Djokovic off-forehand, I began to unravel like a Scottish tennis player. A tired 60 minutes, including a challenge on the pre-Renaissance artist, which went against me. (A quick plug here for the weekend offerings, which are very good.)

Across

1 HALF-LIFE – a nice one to start us off, LI and FE being the chemical symbols of lithium and iron; if you stretch things a bit, and add a question mark, ‘half life’ can just about be interpreted as ‘lithium or iron’. Unless I’m missing something more obvious. I was. Step up McT – either LI or FE can be half of LIFE
5 FLASHY – FL[ASH]Y – had a fly in Martin Chuzzlewit yesterday; Dickens’s largely non-locomotive fiction is full of useful carts.
8 RAG[a] – raga is a ‘melodic mode used in Indian classical music’…and crosswords. I wondered whether ragtime was jazz, but jazz is a very broad church, I suspect.
9 VERS[AIL+L]ES – an extra line, as it were.
10 TIE-BREAK – losing the second set tie-breaker (held at six games all) was the beginning of the end for Scotland’s churliest.
11 IN[T]UIT
12 MISS – double definition, bringing back memories of David Jacobs, Pete Murray et al on Juke Box Jury, not to mention those Murray first serves.
14 MATCH+POINT
17 STA[B]LEMATE – nice clue, requiring separation of British & person, mirroring my thoughts about the Scotsman yesterday.
20 [f]ED[h]AM
23 G[I]OTTO – lovely clue and very gettable even if you don’t know Giotto di Bondone, who flourished around the same time as another famous Florentine native, Dante, who Giotto is attributed with painting. Better than my ‘Riatto’, anyway. ‘Irritated’ is here a verb (‘got to’) rather than an adjective. My COD-piece.
24 WHODUNIT – brilliant stuff: ‘whohasdoneit’ or ‘whodidit’ doesn’t have the same ring. This would be, as Blackadder once put it, my second COD-piece.
25 PIGEONHOLE – double definition; I was miles away, first in the Aegean, then Springfield.
26 I[C]E- the ‘id est’ clue I got relatively quickly (cf 22dn).
27 FRIDAY – took me ages to see this: a reference to the expression ‘Thank God It’s Friday’, often abbreviated to TGIF, as well as Robinson Crusoe’s Baldrick.
28 STA[TU]TES – I don’t suspect I was the only one to smile when I translated ‘working group’ into TU (trade union). One Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch took the form of a Just A Minute spoof, in which trade union leaders were challenged to speak for a minute without using ‘aspirations’, and failed miserably, of course.

Down

1 HARD[y] TIMES
2 LEGLESS – super stuff, with ‘as a newt’ doing a kind of double shift, so definitely not a unionised amphibian.
3 L+I+VERY
4 omitted
5 F+[A]+IRISH
6 ALLOT+ROPE – an expert shows you the ropes and an allotrope is one of the different physical forms in which an element, such as that found at 26, can exist.
7 HESSIAN – inashes*.
13 SABOT+AGED – a sabot is a French clog.
15 CUT-THROAT – that court*
16 TEMP[TRES]S – I meet more of these in crosswords than in real life nowadays, sadly.
18 TRIPPER – a cryptic definition with a footballing theme, as tripping an opponent is a bookable (i.e. cautionable or yellow-card) offence.
19 ECONOMY – money* around CO; a semi &lit, where the entire clue is the definition but only a part of the clue is the wordplay, if I’ve read it right.
21 omitted
22 ID[L]EST – nice one to finish with.

27 comments on “Times 25383 – Some sort of Djoke?”

  1. My new Mac mouse evidently has an additional function of deleting a text if you touch it in the wrong way. Anyway, I went fairly steadily through this, slowing at ALLOTROPE (which I didn’t understand until coming here; ta, Ulaca), and grinding to a halt at 25ac, where I had to do an alphabet run, having lost faith in TRIPPER (carding=booking? hmm). PIGEONHOLE just came to me, and then I twigged to ‘homer’. COD to GIOTTO.
  2. Yes, quite topical after spending yesterday eve watching the Australian Open Final.

    My take on 1ac was that either LI or FE can be half of LIFE — or maybe that’s what you meant, Ulaca?

  3. Only 22 minutes for this one with 24ac and 2dn holding me up for longest. After completing the grid it took me a while to work out the soccer reference at 18dn.

    It was a desperately boring final in my books, mostly a base-line slugfest with very little finesse.

    Did Djokovic really take the white feather home as a second trophy, or was the commentator joking? I was listening on radio by that stage.

    1. I left to have dinner with my mother-in-law when it was 1-1 and 3-3. All downhill from there. The feather sounds like the makings of a good urban myth.
  4. A 16-minute finish ruined by pigeoncote. Not sure about the single rope in 6. I rather like 10, last in. Overall fairish not flashy.
  5. 14 minutes (on paper) for this, with the picture of Andy and the feather prompting at least two answers. Goodness knows what penalty would be handed out to a tennis player for tripping an opponent. And perhaps, with the match being a baseline slugfest, are these the thugs on court needing reform?
    I was doing well enough until I essayed TOURIST for TRIPPER -I just thought it was a poor CD. I went down the other side instead,and eventually recognised the error.
    WHODUNIT was my last in – I take it the WHO and IT parts are not clued. I would have expected NN, but apparently this spelling will do.
    CoD to HALF LIFE – a nice bit of cod science with a pleasing device. The other bit of science, ALLOTROPE, was also good: “something known to expert” provided a frisson of penny drop recognition.
  6. 10 minutes for all except the allotrope and a further 5 minutes (not sure why as the wordplay was obvious-ish – I thought experts knew ropes plural) for that one to fall. Lots to smile at though, unlike yesterday’s tennis. Was our setter hoping that this would follow a Murray victory?
    1. I agree. While ‘rope’ itself can suggest lots of bits of same, what experts know and show you has the ‘s’ and it feels like a setter’s error – though wd prefer it to be mine.
      1. If I remember correctly, Wittgenstein once remarked that if there are two lions in the garden, it implies there is one lion in the garden. If an expert knows the ropes, she or he knows each of the ropes, no?
        1. No. Because ‘ropes’ meaning ‘ins and outs’ no more has a singular ‘rope’ than if an expert were to show you the ‘in and out’. Whereas Wittgenstein would no doubt happily label his lions 1.0001 and 1.0002.
  7. Squeezed 9 holes in this morning before the torrents return later today. Massive erosion on the hills at the back of me.

    Easy start to the week – 15 minute stroll in the park. No quibbles. I find tennis very boring so didn’t waste my time watching the dour laddie.

  8. All but one done in 18 minutes, then couldn’t 27 for ages until I realized I’d entered ECONOME for 19. Once that was corrected FRIDAY jumped at me.

    I didn’t know the second definition for 18, but then I’m hopeless on sporting references. I wasn’t keen on “something known by expert” for ROPE for reasons given by some above.
    Clever as the clue is, I found the wording of 25 slightly awkward since “assignment” seems to duplicate the idea of “put”. The clue would read better to my mind without “put”.

  9. Ah, yes, the tennis-court oath at Versailles, very good.

    I’ll plump for LI (half of Li Na too, of course) and FE as the best of this above-average crop.

    Chris G.

  11. As the post I thought I left earlier remains invisible, experience tells me I should post again, whereupon the original posting will miraculously reappear. This is how technology usually works.

    Not that I remember having much to say in the first place, of course; 12.42 for a nice sporting puzzle to open the week.

  12. Not keen on “rope” in 6d, for reasons given by others, nor on “part-timers” giving “temps” in 16d. A temp is just what the name implies: a worker who is taken on for a limited period, but who may work full-time. A part-timer may be a permanent employee who works for limited hours. Not the same thing at all, so there could be, and probably are, temp(orary)part-timers.
  13. I wrote this in and I note that it is a COD for someone but it goes completely over my head. Could someone explain?
    1. WHO-DUN-IT is a type of book. And the name has both grammatical and spelling errors in its central part. Who-done-it would resolve one error; who-did-it, both.
  14. I agree, finished in 29 minutes but couldn’t see the reason for WHODUNIT apart from the def. Otherwise no issues here. CoD GIOTTO – I remembered from the spacecraft named after him.
  15. 22.35 for me so on the easy side but some went in half understood so thanks for the blog.
  16. This wasn’t easy for me. About an hour, held up by TRIPPER, PIGEONHOLE and WHODUNIT. Eventually got them, but I didn’t see the soccer reference at all. I spent a lot of time trying to think of where pigeons live, and starting 25 with them, like ‘coop’, so I was wandering the wilderness for quite a while. Regards to all.
  17. 11 minutes, though I didn’t really get WHODUNIT (my last in, and really just from going through the alphabet for that first letter to think of something that would fit), TRIPPER (I thought maybe drug trip) and GIOTTO from wordplay alone.
  18. A rather sluggish 9:19 here, as I once again had difficulty finding the setter’s wavelength. I’ve absolutely no complaints about any of the clues though, including 6dn (ALLOTROPE) where ROPE = “something known by expert” is just fine by me.

    27ac was my LOI. I’m rather more familiar with “POETS day”, even though I only rarely did so. As an OAP, I’m pleased to say all that’s behind me :-).

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