Times 25,390 – A Potpourri

Solving time 25 minutes

On a day that sees a Government publish a radical bill for which it has absolutely no mandate after a leading MP admits trying to pevert the course of justice,a very enjoyable puzzle that ranges over several fields of general knowledge. A steady solve for most I would think with some interesting twists and turns along the way.

Across
1 PARACETAMOL – PARA-(came to)*-L; Roman numeral L=50; what replaced religion as the opiate of the people;
7 SOB – BOS(s) reversed; ghostly sound in corridors of House of Commons as Government flouts democratic process;
9 GUILLEMOT – G(U)ILL-(TOME reversed); large seabird of the auk family;
10 ADULT – AD-(c)ULT; euphamism for porn;
11 BLERIOT – (a)BLE-RIOT; Louis who in 1909 was the first to fly the channel in a machine (ie not a baloon);
12 TENDRIL – TEN (all your digits)-(sounds like “drill”); what supports a climbing plant such as honeysuckle;
13 DECOR – RO(CE)D all reversed;
15 ARTHROPOD – A-(maste)R-THRO-POD; spineless creature with hard exterior sometimes found in Westminster; ;
17 EXTROVERT – TEXT-ROVER then move the first T;
19 ROGUE – (euro)* contains G=grand (£1,000); MP who seeks to pervert the course of justice, perhaps;
20 PROJECT – PRO-JE(C)T; Airbus A380;
22 ERASMUS – SURE reversed surrounds AS-M; Desiderus 1466-1536, humanist who eschewed Luther;
24 RABBI – RABBI(e) Burns; the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, Mr Huhne;
25 BRAZIL,NUT – BRAZIL (exporter of coffee)-NUT (fruitcake); cause of much frustration at Christmas;
27 DUD – DU (some for Bleriot)-D (diamonds); Pete’s mate;
28 GRETNA,GREEN – NE-ERG-ANT-ERG all reversed; Tyneside=NE; unit of work=ERG; Scottish border town where young couples used to flee to get married when under age in England. Today they just live together on taxpayer funded benefits;
 
Down
1 PUG – G(r)U(m)P(y) reversed;
2 RAISE – R-AIS(L)E; what the Tyneside worker hasn’t had recently;
3 COLLIER – CO-L(LIE)R; CO=Company=business; LR from L(eathe)R; Jarrow marcher perhaps;
4 TEMPT,FATE – TEM(PT-FAT)E; the Teme rises in Wales and enters the Severn at Worcester – the whole river is an SSSI;
5 MOTET – M-O(c)TET; music familiar to ERASMUS;
6 LEARNER – L(EAR)NER; LNER from L(i)NER;
7 SQUARE,PEG – SQUA(d)-REP-EG; from saying “a square peg in a round hole”;
8 BATTLE,DRESS – B-(rattled)*-ESS; good queen Bess; as worn by Bader;
11 BAD,TEMPERED – BAD(TEMP)ER-ED; another flyer, Sir Douglas Bader CBE, DSO, DFC, legless fighter pilot; me when considering current bunch of politicians we’re lumbered with;
14 COTTON,BUD – C(OTTO)H-BUD; OTTO=attar=oil produced from the damask rose; used to clean the inner ear;
16 TITHE,BARN – TI(THE-BAR)N; old barn used to store the one-tenth (tithe) levy on grain collected by the church;
18 OPENING – O-PEN(n)ING;
19 READING – (gear)* surronds D-IN; famous for its prison, Mr Huhne;
21 TABLE – TABLE(t); what the dumped Mrs Huhne turned;
23 MANSE – MAN(S)E; home to a methodist priest;
26 TUN – NUT reversed; large beer barrel;

48 comments on “Times 25,390 – A Potpourri”

  1. 18 minutes, with most deceleration on the left where I couldn’t detach “cross” properly from the rest of 11d’s clue. Perhaps I should have eaten the same cornflakes as Jim this morning for that grumpy feeling – I’d have got it straight away!
    I wonder if the old Blacksmith’s Forge (28) will shortly be offering same-sex weddings to reckless couples?
    Nice to see Erasmus cropping up – after discussion on this forum I’ve taken up reading Charles Reade (free on Kindle) and started with his biography of Erasmus’ father, “The Cloister and the Hearth”.
    Pick of the day the “organ cleaner” just for that sideways definition in a clue that was an evocative little story in its own right.
    On edit – I see I’m way behind the times on Gretna Green.

    Edited at 2013-02-05 09:45 am (UTC)

  2. Enjoyed this one, it seemed to have a touch of originality about it. Not too difficult, c15 pleasant minutes.
    Re the government: we have what we deserve, sadly.
    1. Sorry, that was me, JerryW, on my smartphone (and also on my back in bed, with back trouble)
  3. 34 minutes with BLERIOT last to drop – must have run out of gas…

    If Jimbo is referring to the bill to legalise same-sex marriage, Huhne’s mistress must be hot favourite to become the first person to get married to a person of either gender.

  4. 32 minutes, so fairly straightforward for me. Loads of answers went in on definition alone or with the wordplay only partially understood so there was still work to be done after I had completed the grid.

    I had niggles on a number of points but on further consideration I don’t think they are worth pursuing other than to wonder why ‘cult’ has ‘extremist’ in its definition.

    Didn’t know the River TEME.

    Edited at 2013-02-05 11:00 am (UTC)

  5. 12:04, pleasant without being massively taxing. Had a weird blind spot where I nearly convinced myself there was some sort of furnishing style called DOCER – possibly a bit like Shaker? – until I realised there was a simpler solution…
    1. I actually put in DOCER, but fortunately I was sufficiently unhappy with it to go back and reconsider.
      Unfortunately I can’t say the same about BAD REMPERED.
  6. A stead solve today with FOI Pug and LOI Tempt Fate. That last one remained blank for quite a while – had to mentally work through the alphabet to find anything to fit T?M?T.

    Motet, otto and the River Teme were all unknowns. Bleriot came to mind straightaway after his appearance in Mr Selfridge a few weeks ago.

  7. All but two today, and they were ADULT and the unknown BLERIOT (which I should have worked out).

    Didn’t know the river TEME, or that OTTO was an oil, so thanks for that. More knowledge to be stored for Crosswordland.

    Sorry for being a bit thick, but I still don’t really get the ‘sounds like drill’ = ‘thumbs’ bit of TENDRIL.

    1. janie, it’s ‘ we hear training’ = “DRIL(l)”. Fingers and thumbs make up the TEN.

      Edited at 2013-02-05 11:45 am (UTC)

  8. Pretty straightforward today, taking 30 minutes.BLERIOT, GUILLEMOT and PROJECT were late solves. Unaccountably, for the last I was toying with PROCESS before I got 21.

    Nice clues for COLLIER and ARTHROPOD.

    13 is grammatically faulty unless there’s another way of reading it that I’ve missed. ‘Retired staff’ (ROD) is one item, so needs to be followed by ‘maintains’ or ‘to maintain’. Quite possibly it’s just a misprint because ‘maintains’ wouldn’t spoil the surface.

    1. Still wondering if I would have found guillemot so easy if they had not had their 15 minutes of fame this week in the south coast sticky substance story-
    2. Not really: the conventions of crosswordland allow either the surface or what is hidden to control the grammar as long as it likes.
      1. The surface and wordplay can have different grammar, but surely they both have to work internally? “Maintaining” would have been the best option here I think.
        (No more politics, I promise!)
        1. I’m not sure they have to, absolutely. Here there’s a delayed switch-over for the sake of the misdirection. Once one’s on the right track it’s quickly enough clear what’s going on. It seems to me allowable in the fuzzy way things sometimes work in these things, like an accepted sense of a word, say. (Having said which I expect the setter will say it was a mistake!)
          1. Not sure, but for me the switch-over and grammatical fuzziness feel wrong. Or at, least not in the Times style. If it were an Araucaria puzzle I wouldn’t think twice about it, and I enjoy Araucaria puzzles enormously, so why this bothers me at all I can’t explain. But it does.
            1. Don’t know anything about Araucaria puzzles but am getting a great deal out of ’75 Years of The Times Crossword’ (Times Books natch.) with one puzzle a year from the very first in 1930 till 2005. Currently (and intermittently) labouring over 1939. The fuzziness factor is a delight, if unnaturally hard-won; as will be, I hope, its shift and slide towards the clearer focus. There’s a thesis in there for somebody.

              Edited at 2013-02-05 10:01 pm (UTC)

              1. I’m going to get that book.
                If you like a fuzzier, more allusive style, you should certainly try some Araucaria puzzles. They’re available on the Guardian website, and the FT for that matter under the pseudonym CINEPHILE. He wrote my favourite ever clue: it’s in his wiki entry. Sadly the Reverend won’t be with us for very much longer, a fact he revealed cryptically (how else?) in a recent crossword.
      2. With great respect I cannot agree with you. The example in the puzzle is trivial, but the implications of your statement are far from trivial. It could be used to justify such atrocities as “I am put in gaol” as wordplay for CAIN. Insofar as there are generally accepted ‘rules’ (as opposed to rules that an individual editor might impose) the cryptic grammar takes precedence over that of the surface. Some setters may choose to bend the ‘rules’, or ignore cryptic logic altogether but that is beside the point.
        A subject-verb mismatch in the cryptic grammar is easily committed or overlooked if one focuses too closely on the surface. I know, having on the odd occasion done so myself in the seven years I’ve been setting puzzles for The Listener, The independent and The Telegraph’s EV series. Fortunately one of the alert editors or vetters has spotted my error and drawn it to my attention for correction.

        There is another ‘crosswordland’ outside the world of The Guardian, where cryptic grammar can be somewhat loose. The vast majority of Times clues are pretty rigorous, which is why I supposed the example in question might have been a simple misprint.

  9. A straightforward but enjoyable 10 minutes. Enjoyed Jimbo’s words (of wisdom?) very much too.
  10. Extra 15min or so on timer because Chrome fell over and when it came back, grid was empty, but clock still running 🙁
  11. Did this in sneaks and peeks during meeting, enjoyed it, but had a lot of wordplay troubles, with TEMPT FATE, ARTHROPOD, and BAD-TEMPERED going in from definition alone, and BLERIOT (also my last in) from wordplay.
  12. I forgot to stop the clock so didn’t get an exact time for this: about 20 minutes.
    OTTO and TEME unknown.
    Personally I’m all in favour of gay marriage but I don’t really understand the politics of it. The idea seems to be to demonstrate that the Conservative party is progressive and modern, but if anything the brouhaha has demonstrated the opposite.
    1. One thing we may be certain of is that the ‘gay’ lawyers will have been busy marshalling their arguments to challenge the Anglican Church’s right to choose not to perform the service.
      1. If you say so – my understanding of the legalities is even worse than my understanding of the politics!
  13. 16:08 .. on a day when a government has the courage to show some leadership and do what it believes is the right thing, in the great tradition of representative democracy, a nice puzzle which I made more difficult by hazarding some (ill-) educated guesses (like ‘paralytical’).

    COD … BRAZIL NUT

    1. Dear me, so we now have government by opinion poll? Perhaps legalise polygamy as part of the same Act?

      Nothing in any manifesto; no green paper; no white paper – that’s not democracy as I understand it. The subject is almost immaterial (I personally have no strong views on it) – but in my book no government should launch into something so basic that it has never consulted on and has no mandate to enact.

      Edited at 2013-02-05 03:37 pm (UTC)

      1. The Tories did actually announce that they would “consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage” before the last election.
      2. I think I’m with you on this one, Jim. Legislation to change the meaning of words should surely only be attempted when it’s really thought through. The Government responses on what adultery, consummation and so on now mean (basically “we don’t know, we’ll let Common Law sort it out) show that lawyers are going to have a field day. Might give us in this discipline some lexicographal fun,too!
        1. Isn’t “we’ll let Common Law sort it out” the universal principle for filling in the inevitable gaps in any legislation?
  14. 37.23 for me and therefore about average on normal performance. Enjoyed the blog, Jimbo, thanks and especially for explaining the blind spots – GUILLEMOT and BLERIOT. I enjoyed COTTON BUD but the NUT gets my vote for raising a smile.
  15. Personally I come here to get away from all that stuff. Is this really the best forum to hold a political discussion?

    Edited at 2013-02-05 06:01 pm (UTC)

  16. I agree with you Jack. 26 minutes. This was easier than it made itself seem somehow. Otto as attar’s a slight surprise.
  17. 22 minutes with a pause to consider the adult thing which I wasn’t at all sure about. Speaking of adult material, I’d no idea what Jimbo was talking about (US politics being rather parochial) so did a bit of googling over my BLT. Rather more fun than the debt ceiling and sequestration this side of the pond but I’d rather not be thinking about any of it. Adult stuff, ok. Gretna Green no prob for the Georgette Heyer club.
  18. Late start on this but a steady solve in 20 minutes, thanks Jimbo for the lively blog and sensible comments on today’s issue. I wouldn’t want this forum to descend into a political discussion but I think apposite brief comments on the absurdities of politicians doings are a welcome relief to the usual ‘steady solve today for me too’.
  19. I had a hard time with this and had to go to the aids to finish. I’ve heard of GRETNA GREEN but didn’t know the significance. Didn’t know of the river TEME or ‘otto’ as oil, and we call them ‘cotton swabs’ and we call the drug ‘acetominophen’. I also thought Burns was Robbie. BLERIOT came back to me only with a prompt from Onelook, after which ‘riot’ as dazzling display became more clear. So, a tough go over here. Our same sex marriage debates happen on a state by state basis, by the way, so multiply your present debate accordingly to get an idea. Best to all.
  20. 40 minutes.

    Quite a few clues to struggle with and several journeys to the dictionary to look things up. I managed to get stuck in the NW corner for too long.

    Aside form that, I can do without the puerile attempts to tie clues in with important political and social issues. Such petty activity is beneath this forum.

  21. I was wondering what Jimbo was animadverting on; so many possibilities. But I agree that this isn’t the place to get into political discussion, so you’ve all been spared my leftist opinions. In the meantime, I’m quite chuffed that I actually remembered BLERIOT. On the other hand, I wasn’t happy about how many (6) clues I only parsed post hoc. Liked 15ac and 20ac.
  22. I don’t really mind the politics but I was a bit taken aback by “Scottish border town where young couples used to flee to get married when under age in England. Today they just live together on taxpayer funded benefits”. If I wanted to read nonsense like this, I’d pick up a copy of the Daily Mail.
  23. Not only Methodist ministers live in a manse. So do all Scottish (non Anglican) ministers. Also, I don’t like the prejudice displayed in some of these comments.

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