Times 25385: Homage to illogical negativism

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 19:33

Not a difficult puzzle — three in a row then this week. So maybe expect a stinker tomorrow? I’m off in search of a decent set of baritone ukulele strings, so may not be around to fix up any errors for a while. I’m sure no one will 28 on that account. 29s!

Across
 1 FAMED. 10ac=F{r}AMED.
 4 DIPSTICKS. D{aughter} {l}IPSTICKS.
 9 CONCERN,ED.
10 SET UP. Two defs. Tennis hangover from Monday?
11 LAHORE. Anagram of {c}HOLERA.
12 SIGNALLY. N (new), GI (recruit), all reversed in SALLY (attack).
14 FOR A CHANGE. Charlie CHAN inside FORAGE (search).
16 Omitted. As camera swings back to get picture.
19 SIC,K.
20 ACT ONES AGE. Here’s yesterday’s (1dn) ‘behind bars’ to mean (in) A CAGE. Then insert TONES (characters).
22 PROSPERO. PRO (top player) ’S, reverse REP (theatre), O (round).
23 BALBOA. Reverse LAB{rador} + BOA (killer snake). He discovered Panama and is now the eponymous currency.
26 PRADO. P{icasso}, RA (artist), DO (event).
27 OBJET D’ART. O{ld} B{ritish} JET (plane) DART (weapon).
28 SHED A TEAR. DATE inside SHEAR.
29 CHE{st}ER.
Down
 1 FACELIFTS. Reverse FILE inside FACTS.
 2 MU(N)CH. N for ‘noon’.
 3 DIET,RICH.
 4 DEN,T.
 5 PADDING,TO,N. The def is ‘London terminus’.
 6 TISANE. &lit made up of letters from TEA, S{age} IN.
 7 CATALONIA. Change the middle letter of ‘CataTonia’.
 8 SEPOY. Reversal of YES (certainly), inc PO (Petty Officer, Pilot Officer … take your pick).
13 MASCARPONE. M{eal}, anagram of ‘canapés or’.
15 RECT,ORATE. Sounds like ‘wrecked’.
17 POETASTER. Reverse OP (work), insert the T from ‘satirisT’ into EASTER.
18 Omitted. The apostrophe here denotes the possessive.
21 APNOEA. Anagram of NAP; OnE,hAs. &lit.
22 PEP,YS. PEP (energy) + Y{e}S where the E{nergy} is deleted.
24 B,RAVE.
24 A,JAR. ‘Grate’ as a verb (as in ‘on one’s nerves’).

26 comments on “Times 25385: Homage to illogical negativism”

  1. The spammers are out and about early today. I already deleted two suspicious comments.

    I’m with vinyl1 on this one as I didn’t find it particularly easy and took around 50 minutes with one cheat at the end to look up the explorer as I knew I’d never heard of him and the wordplay route to the answer was eluding me. I had problems with an answer or two in every quarter but managed to work all the others out eventually including the unknown APNOEA.

    Not quite sure why GI = recruit at 12 across.

    Edited at 2013-01-30 02:28 am (UTC)

    1. Indeed. Had a q-mark against that but thought better of putting it in the blog. (Another spam deleted early on.)
      1. I thought it might have been ‘recruit’ = N(ew)GI, which to me makes more sense, but then ‘new’ in the clue puts paid to that idea.
  2. Slowed down in the SE, specifically 17d, 23ac, & 29ac. Should have got 23 sooner; anyone from San Francisco would know BALBOA, although I’d forgotten just what he explored. Hesitated over APNOEA, as it’s ‘apnea’ in the US. Liked MUNCH.
  3. Came up two short after the hour, the unfamiliar/unknown pair of BALBOA (might have got it if it was clued as boxer rather than explorer) and TISANE. Lots to like here – regards to setter and McBlogger.
  4. 16m. I found this straightforward, but got held up for a few minutes at the end on BALBOA. I didn’t know the explorer and the wordplay isn’t exactly obvious. It’s fortunate that the O wasn’t a checking letter or I’d never have got past the idea that the canine was a dog.
    1. BALBOA was also my last one in – I thought that “killer” rather short-changed the boa, as it can last several months on one meal so it clearly gets up to a whole bunch of other stuff apart from killing.
  5. A bit harder than yesterday but still not taxing. 20 minutes to solve.

    I also query GI=recruit. Vasco BALBOA has appeared before but he’s not amongst the most well known of explorers. However other than “lap” I can’t think of another dog -A- besides “lab” so very gettable from wordplay.

    I liked 6D

    1. Maybe it was a 3-letter dog, maybe it was a 6-letter dog-killing-disease, maybe it was going forwards, maybe it was going backwards. It’s always obvious after you’ve seen the answer, but it isn’t always obvious when you’re trying to figure it out.
      Subtext: Didn’t know Balboa, couldn’t work it out from the wordplay. The rest a bit tricky but all solved.
      Rob
  6. 14:48, so a little tougher than yesterday, especially in terms of vocabulary, though nothing which I think would be new to solvers of more than a few years experience.

    I first encountered tisanes as a young reader because Hercule Poirot habitually drank them as an alternative to a nice cup of English Breakfast, thus demonstrating to Captain Hastings what an odd man he was.

  7. Apart from the explorer and the cheese (which I’ve never heard of, let alone tasted), this was pretty easy again. I had to look up the cheese in the end because there were several plausible possibilities from the anagram fodder. The top half flowed very smoothly but with the delay in the bottom half caused by the two above I finally conceded after 35 minutes that I wasn’t going to get the cheese without consulting a dictionary.
      1. What cheese would you use to disguise a small horse?

        Mascarpone

        What cheese would you use to coax a reluctant bear out of a tree?

        Camembert!

  8. Found this much easier than yesterday’s, despite getting one wrong (sopey for the unknown SEPOY). BALBOA from wp, POETASTER from crossword-land.

    SIGNALLY was LOI, and held me up for far too long.

    Janie_l_b (can’t log in for some reason…!)

  9. No problems here at 14:23 and a lot to admire I thought.

    Catalonia was fresh in my mind as I had to telephone the wretched place yesterday to pay a speeding fine.

    What’s with all the cosmetics after yesterday?

    Thanks to the setter.

    Edited at 2013-01-30 12:48 pm (UTC)

  10. 11 minutes for me and I enjoyed it. Trouble with the cheese, which appears in crosswords more than in tiramisu, or so it seems to me, is that I always want to put an R as the third letter. Gets me every time.

    The DT has started putting apostrophes in enumeration -one would have been nice in 27a.

  11. I too liked this puzzle a lot. Just under the hour for me. Though I spotted the anagram fodder – {c}HOLERA – at 11 ac at once, it then took me an unaccountably long time to come up with LAHORE. Can’t think why.

    Those unfamiliar with BALBOA the explorer are at least in excellent company. Keats, in his poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, commits a famous schoolboy howler by crediting another conquistador with the discovery of Panama (then called Darien) and being the first European to set eyes on the Pacific:

    “Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
    He stared at the Pacific – and all his men
    Looked at each other with a wild surmise –
    Silent, upon a peak in Darien”.

  12. 15 minutes – a very elegant and tidy set of clues,and while not a toughie,it might well make my list for this month. BALBOA my last, as I thought it might be a variant of “caries” for “canine killer”. It wasn’t, but it could have been for all I know.
  13. 41 minutes, happy to cross the line. Unknown cheese, hazy on brew, more familiar with Rocky than Vasco Nunez de Balboa…shed a tear for a 17.
  14. About 20 minutes, not too tough at all. My only issues were a chronic inability to spell the cheese correctly, and that we call it APNEA, as the other Kevin said above. LOI was PEPYS. I wasn’t convinced by the GI as a recruit, or by padding as steady progress, or characters as tones, for that matter, but clearly these didn’t cause any undue delay. Regards to all.
  15. 11:11 for me, held up for a minute or so by rashly bunging in POWYS for 22dn on the assumption that POW would do for “energy” – in a Roy Lichtenstein sort of way! (I came to it without any checked letters, so confirmation of the P and S made it look pretty solid.)

    I’ve no objection to “new recruit” = NGI since a new soldier is a new recruit.

  16. Rare that I comment after Tony! Had to do this in sneaks and peeks during break at work (I hope tomorrow’s isn’t a stumper because I’ve got a pretty small window of opportunity to write up the blog) but for once I knew the obscure one, mostly from knowing that Balboa Park is the big commons in the middle of San Diego. Only question mark was next to SIGNALLY, though I put myself in trouble early on by putting in COLLAGENS with a ? for 1 down.
    1. I’m not surprised you’re blog isn’t up yet, since it’s a beast. A brilliant puzzle though. I came here early to say so, but it’s quite understandable that extra time is needed today. Good luck, it took me about 90 minutes to solve. If I can help, let me know.

      Edited at 2013-01-31 04:13 am (UTC)

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