Times 25387 – An excellent end to the week.

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 47:53 – Held up a bit by having a wrong answer at 23.

I don’t know who the compiler is here, but I find it very reminiscent of the sort of puzzle that Sunday solvers are used to expecting from Dean Mayer. Regular readers of my Sunday blog will appreciate the compliment implicit in that.

There was a lot of beautifully crafted wordplay here and I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, I completely forgot it was my turn to blog today, until I was about to go to bed after watching a late night movie. So I had to solve this when I was quite tired which was a shame as I would have much preferred to give a puzzle of this quality my full attention.

It’s very difficult to pick out a COD as there are so many contenders. I think I’ll give to 1a for setting the scene so nicely for what was to follow. But 7, 15, 20 & 22 were all good, as indeed were pretty much all the others. My congratulations to the setter.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 LITTLE SLAM = mesSiah in LITTLE LAMb – I thought ‘Mary’s possession’ for LITTLE LAMB was brilliant. Little Slam (or Small Slam) is a bridge term whereby the declarer has to get 12 of the 13 available tricks. A Grand Slam requires all 13.
6 Sickly + WIG – A bit of Cockney Rhyming Slang.
9 CHAIN STORE = AIN’T about S all in CHORE
10 LEAN – dd – Sir David Lean was the film director
12 T(AIL)END + CHARLIE
14 GO + E + THE
15 GLIBNESS = (BLESSING)* – a beautifully disguised anagram
17 REP + EATER
19 ENIGMA = GIN (trap) in ME (this person) all rev + A
22 VLAD THE IMPALER = (PRIVATE HELL + MAD)* – another excellently constructed anagram
24 TOKE – hidden
25 FLEA-BITTEN – dd
26 DATA = A TAD rev
27 PENTAGONAL = (PANTs + ON A LEG)*
Down
1 LOCO – dd
2 TEA CAKE = CAd in TEAK + swEet
3 LONELY HEARTS – dd
4 S + A + TINY
5 Anaesthetic Greatly Regretted Inebriates + COLA – I liked the separation required in ‘General anaesthetic’ – Agricola was a famous Roman General, of course
7 WHEELIE = WEE (short) + LIE (story) about Houdini
8 GINGER SNAP = (GREASING + PaN)*
11 CAR(BOND + AT)ING
13 AGGRAVATED = AGATE about GRAVe + D
16 REVEILLE = EVER rev + ILL + E
18 P(LACK)ET – Not a word I knew, but it was quite gettable just from the wordplay
20 GREATEN = hAT dressed in GREEN
21 UMLAUT – cd
23 A + NIL – I had TEAL for ages, and it took me a long time to convince myself that it had to be wrong. Anil is a word I’m only vaguely familiar with.

29 comments on “Times 25387 – An excellent end to the week.”

  1. Excellent with some wonderful clues as you point out. Under an hour but I was doing other things at the same time. LOI was UMLAUT which took way longer than it should have for the penny to drop. I was too busy trying to assemble D and MS and a couple of NSEWs without success.
  2. 69 minutes, with a lot of time spent on GREATEN at the end, not very profitably, it must be said, as I stuck in ‘greeten’, being unable to see exactly it was that GREEN was surounding. D’oh! Learned today that Vlad was a Dracula, and got LITTLE SLAM without appreciating the beautiful clueing. Thanks to the seter and “Dave the Blogger” (maybe someone will clue that one day).
  3. A truly cromulent puzzle (I missed yesterday’s apparent swine), where in the end I had to steel myself to put in GREATEN – it just looks like a solecism, and groan over my stupidity in failing to spot the separation needed for General AGRICOLA. Somehow, I had every bit of the thing, including the cola and the first letter charade, but it refused to make sense.
    LOCO takes me back to a shaming moment in Spanish class where I completely failed to understand como un loco as “like a madman”, unable to get a steam engine out of my mind. Some wounds never fade completely.
    UMLAUT gets my CoD despite it being a CD, but there’s a lot of other very good and chewy stuff here. Thank goodness for the relatively kind (if you have the GK) long ones.
  4. Time ran away from me on this one and having completed all but about four clues in 32 minutes the remainder stretched my solving time close to an hour.

    Of the clues giving me trouble, all but UMLAUT were in the NW where I didn’t really know LITTLE SLAM and the Roman General I learned about at school had long faded from my memory. But the real killer here was 1dn where I knew exactly that I was looking for a double definition but completely failed to see the oh so obvious LOCO as the solution to my problems.

    Elsewhere I didn’t know PLACKET or TOKE but wrote both answers in without a moment’s delay. I think my confidence is still dented from Thursday’s adventure and once again I was glad it wasn’t my blogging Friday.

    Edited at 2013-02-01 10:43 am (UTC)

  5. 20:07 for another pretty tough challenge. A lot of the top eluded me for ages, until the penny dropped and I a) got LITTLE SLAM and b) realised what an excellent clue it was. Downright devious, some of these clues (this is, of course, a compliment).
  6. Top class stuff today, hard but not so hard. As yesterday’s, for example. The Wiki entry for Vlad the Impaler makes fascinating reading and is a treasure trove of unusual words.. for example, he was thrice Voivode of Wallachia.. and Prince Charles claims to be directly descended from him, which I find hard to believe
  7. Funny way to run a crossword – three full tosses followed by a doosra and then today’s googly.

    Excellent puzzle, not quite as difficult as yesterday because the long clues are quite easy.

    No quibbles and no unknowns (although I know PLACKET as a piece of armour and just assumed the term had been absorbed into a more general usage)

    LITTLE SLAM is a real cracker – thanks to setter and nice one Dave

  8. 39m in two sessions.
    Well I found this a real stinker, and much harder than yesterday’s. But a very enjoyable challenge with pennies dropping all over the place.
    Quite a lot I didn’t know today: LITTLE SLAM (I almost bunged in LITTLE STAR in desperation but persisted) “syrup of fig”, PLACKET, ANIL, and of course GREATEN. I still can’t quite believe it’s a real word.
  9. Clearly on the right wavelength with the setter of this one, as it came out considerably faster than yesterday’s, albeit with a typo.

    I remember being flummoxed by TAIL-END CHARLIE while in the audience for the championship final in 2009 and it has stuck in my brain ever since. Loved the Dracula clue, which reminded me of a favourite cryptic definition from the Telegraph (?) many years ago: “Alarming blood count?” (7)

  10. 22:49 .. much quicker than yesterday for me but no less enjoyable.

    Many good clues, but I just loved GLIBNESS.

    1. I forgot to say, UMLAUT was my last in and took me 4 or 5 minutes. I only got it when I noticed the question mark, which had previously escaped my notice.

      I’m trying to improve my solving times by being a bit more Dave Brailsford (“aggregation of marginal gains”) about it. Training oneself to notice those question marks and react accordingly might be a good start!

  11. Pretty good stuff today. Couple of slightly obscure ones, for my taste at least, but can’t really complain about this well-written puzzle. 43 minutes.

    Cheers
    Chris.

  12. 34.20 for me and very enjoyable. My COD to 1a but once again lots to enjoy. I haven’t tried yesterday’s yet but am bracing myself for the doosra so thanks to setter and blogger today.
  13. Two days in a row I had trouble getting on the wavelength – bottom half went in pretty much immediately, but the top half had to wait until a coffee break – fortunately the break in that break was LITTLE SLAM and the top half came together – didn’t quite follow SWIG but it was the only logical fit, PLACKET from wordplay.
  14. Really enjoyed this one, despite finding it tough. So much more satisfying when the penny drops after a bit of a struggle. Ended up with blanks at LITTLE SLAM and UMLAUT, and a couple wrong: there must be a gun called a ‘replacer’, surely (I was soooo convinced that one was right!)? And I had ‘greetan’, thinking that ‘at had to be raised and greetan was some sort of hood. Oh well, it made perfect sense to me at the time… ANIL and T-EC from word play. Many thanks for all the explanations! Oh, and I also put in ‘carbon rating’ without really working out the sticky bit.

    Edited at 2013-02-01 04:59 pm (UTC)

  15. 35 minutes, with UMLAUT eventually and GREATEN left blank G-E-T-N because it just didn’t seem like a word. Best puzzle of the week for me, not too easy, not too hard. I remembered Agricola from O level Latin – he always sounded like a Roman farmer not a general to me.
  16. 47 tired minutes. Enjoyed this more than yesterday’s. 1 ac. would be one of my favourite clues ever if only the two parts of the surface had clicked more. Glad to be more or less unaware of Vlad. Again a really good puzzle has a flaw at least to my mind: ‘greaten’ might have been better used as ‘be pregnant’, if it had to be used at all.
  17. I thought this another very fine puzzle, suffering only from having to follow yesterday’s. About 35 minutes, ending with a guess at LEAN because I didn’t know of the director. I also didn’t get the CRS, and I don’t really get TAIL-END… either, although I got them from the definition for SWIG and because CHARLIE fit the crossing letters. COD’s to UMLAUT, LITTLE SLAM and GLIBNESS, the latter being a wonderful anagram clue. Regards, and thanks to Dave and the setter.
    1. Kevin: Tail-end Charlie… originally slang for the rear gunner in a WWII bomber, then a more generic usage. Not a nice place to sit, in a perspex bubble with a machine gun and the Luftwaffe up your A.
      Charlie is slang for cocaine … hence drug. Not in NYC?
      1. I’d never heard of charlie for coke either, but then again in today’s concise last in was a guess at slewed (for drunk), which I’d never heard of either. Must have had a very sheltered upbringing!
  18. Edgar in King Lear:

    Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of
    silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot
    out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen
    from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend.

    I remembered this from my A levels 45 years ago: I couldn’t recall the precise wording but ‘plackets’ has stuck in my mind ever since. I wondered when it would come in useful.

  19. 11:36 for me. I made another slowish start, but was feeling a lot less tired than yesterday, so got going rather more quickly (on an easier puzzle). COD to 22ac (VLAD …), which will take some beating if it’s not to get my vote for clue of the month. Another first-class puzzle.
    1. I forgot to mention that I loved this clue. Apart from anything else you could easily put the word “vampire” in at the end with some certainty and slow yourself down considerably. At least you could if you were really daft, which of course I’m not. Oh no.

      1. I spotted that too, but luckily I already had the V from AGGRAVATED in place and VLAD jumped out almost as quickly. 26:22 here, so a bit slower than the previous day, although I can blame tiredness for that. 22ac definitely a contender for February’s COTM.
  20. This took me almost an hour in fits and starts. I gave up on the top half and worked from the bottom up. My biggest hold-up was LITTLE SLAM. I’m not a bridge player and had only vaguely heard the term. However, I knew PLACKET from my dressmaking efforts when I was younger. (These days it doesn’t pay to make your own clothes – you can’t compete with Asian sweatshops.) An enjoyable struggle. Ann
  21. Over an hour for me I’m afraid. Only after putting in LOCO did I remember the old clue “Potty train” (inaccurate, of course – a train and a locomotive are not the same thing) so felt I should have got that straight away. Struggled for a while trying to justify HEPTAGONAL at 27 across before kicking myself (again), then wondering just how you wear a pair of pants on a single leg.

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