Times 25398 – happy VD!

Solving time : 20:12 on the club timer with a silly typo and a few minutes break in the middle. Nothing too too difficult, though I needed to look up the wordplay on 25 across in order to get the blog written.

With a J, a Z and a V appearing early on I thought we might have been in pangram territory but I believe this crossword is missing a Q and an X.

Quite a few tricky ones in here, it’ll be tough figuring out what to omit for the blog.

Away we go…

Across
1 DE,PENDANT
6 F,ETC,H: F(following), ETC(with the rest), H(husband)
9 ALOOF: A then FOOL reversed
10 ROUNDSMAN: S in ROUND,MAN
11 BELLY UP: or BELL YUP
12 AMPULLA: P in A MULLA(h)
13 A SHROPSHIRE LAD: anagram of L, HARSH, PARODIES (L coming from pound)
17 JUDE(book), THE(article), OBSCURE(make unclear) Edit: didn’t know Jude was an epistle, so got my letter and book mixed up
21 LEGATES: ATE in LEGS
23 EN CLAIR: N in ECLAIR
25 BLACKMAIL: got this from the definition, but Edward III’s son was the Black Prince, so presumably he’d wear the BLACK MAIL
26 A, NIT, A
27 TA,ST(a)Y
28 our across omission
 
Down
1 DEAD BEAT: E in DEAD BAT(in cricket, play with a loose-hand defensive stroke)
2 PROW,L
3 NO-FLY ZONE: double def, one cryptic
4 A,PROPOS(e)
5 TSUNAMI: AN in I MUST, all reversed
6 FED UP: PUD(yorkshire) and alternating letters in bEeF all reversed. Cue the DBE anger
7 TAMIL NADU: anagram of 1,MAN,ADULT, and a place I mostly know from cricket commentary
8 HANGAR: NG in HAAR
14 our down omission
15 EASY CHAIR: EA(each) then (p)SYCH(o) (heart of Hitchcock film), AIR
16 NEAR GALE: (A,GENERAL)*
18 H,US,BAND
19 (d)OVER,LAP
20 ALL BUT: L,L (liberals) in ABUT
22 T,OKAY
24 ADIEU: DI(girl), E(first letter in Evesham) in AU(gold)

32 comments on “Times 25398 – happy VD!”

  1. Had to drag up Jude (as epistle) from memory and also HAAR which, I believe, is Scots dialect. My fave was ALL BUT: which is said with much merriment (and all sorts of nasty allusions to the size of his or her bottom) when a euchre player reaches 10 of the 11 points required for game.
  2. 33 minutes with a fairly major hold-up finishing off in, yet again, the NE. Unfortunately I didn’t know HAAR as frost so I was unable to parse 8dn which would have reminded me of its correct spelling and prevented me from wasting time looking for a word at 12ac to fit the checkers A?P?L?E. To add to my misfortunes in that quarter I didn’t know AMPULLA either.

    As Mct has so nearly pointed out, ‘book’ is the definition of the whole answer at 17ac and JUDE is clued by ‘letter’ with reference to the book of the New Testament. How fitting that some of the apostles wrote epistles!

    Edited at 2013-02-14 06:18 am (UTC)

  3. This was fun, despite my not knowing ’roundsman’, ‘dead bat’, or ‘haar’–although that last one seemed to ring the tiniest of bells when I put it in. 1ac slowed me down, as I wouldn’t think of a client as a dependant. I was also slow in parsing 23ac and in thinking of something other than ‘no-go zone’. Liked 11ac, 25ac, and 27ac, but COD to the beautifully misleading 24d.
    1. This surprised me too. Chambers has: “a vassal, dependant or hanger-on”. Maybe the psy- and med-professions etc., should remember this when they use the euphemism “client” for “patient”?
  4. All in vain I’m afraid. They never got any replies it would seem.

    Dear Paul,
    Nice weather today. Wish you were here.
    The Ephesians

    1. Is that one of Eddie Izzard’s? I remember he did a superb set on the subject but I haven’t listened to it for ages. Must dig it out!
  5. George, I have to say that the title of today’s blog took me aback a bit! I assume you’re referring to Valentine’s Day but…..

    Derek

    1. “Meanwire in a ghasly lit street in Chelthea, a darkly clocked man with a fearful weapon, creeped about serging for revenge on the women of the streets for giving him the dreadfoot V.D”
      J. Lennon, A Spaniard in the Works.

      He (Lennon) later explained that he meant Valentine Dyall. George H (ours!), of course, with his vast comic repertoire, would know this.


  6. Enjoyed this one a lot, and managed all but one in pretty good time, despite not knowing the Jude, Edward III, or cricketing (!) refs.

    Ended up with two in the NE, and put in HANGAR from def (haven’t come across HAAR), but couldn’t get AMPULLA.

    FOI 13ac (the letter count kind of gives it away…)

  7. 28 minutes, with a brief interruption of the kind that allows some of the more opaque answers suddenly to become translucent.
    I solved this from almost the bottom up, getting to EN CLAIR on second whizz through as first in. Spent most of the rest of the time tut-tutting my way through clues that looked perfectly innocent once solved, particularly the two long ones.
    DEAD BEAT would have fallen much quicker if I had bothered to write it down, when the wordplay became instantly clear. Must try that more.
    CoD to the Black Prince’s knitted vest
  8. 18 for all bar 7dn and 12ac, then another 13 on these, having plumped for ‘amphora’, of which AMPULLA is, I note, a diminutive. COD to PROWL for the fine non lift-and-separate device; I was looking somewhere in the garden (well, more accurately, down the garden path) for a word meaning ‘stalk’ rather than ‘stalk about’.

  9. And a happy VD to you George – brings a whole new perspective to solving without aids

    No real problems here. The two long ones are virtual cliches that go in on word length and a scan of the clue. Solved 6D from definition so the DBE didn’t worry me – and Yorkshire for PUD is really no problem

    A rather unbalanced offering in terms of literature; history; religeon as against more rewarding fields of endeavour but a pleasant enough 20 minutes for all that

  10. 31m, but I convinced myself I was looking for the name of a theologian I hadn’t heard of (a category that includes virtually all theologians) in 12ac and put in AMPILLA.
    I solved this in two sessions: in the first I struggled mightily and only managed about a third in 20 minutes. In the second I had recovered a bit from my hangover and drunk a large, strong coffee and finished it in just over 10 minutes.
  11. Another day another blunder. This time Blackball at 25ac not Blackmail. Hadn’t heard of the Black Prince and guessed Blackball from the checkers thinking “to blackball” could possibly be construed as committing a crime.

    Didn’t get any of the downs until FOI Near Gale. LOI Ampulla – that took a while to crack. Thought No-Fly Zone was a fun clue.

    Re 8dn Hangar: as a postgrad I spent a couple of years living in Edinburgh and remember haar fogs rolling in off the Firth of Forth.

  12. I was expecting the usual mid-week stinker today, so was astonished to complete this in 25 minutes; so much so that I had to inspect the mantelshelf clock to make sure it hadn’t stopped. That also shows how absorbing I found the puzzle.

    Odd coincidences can sometimes get me off to a flying start: earlier today, I was reading Amity Shlaes’s history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man”. In the introduction, she describes a tragic incident from the autumn of 1937 when a young boy, regarding himself as a burden on his family, hanged himself. This immediately brought to mind the suicide of “Little Father Time” in Jude the Obscure: “Done because we are too menny.”

  13. A pleasant 9 minuter – helps I suppose that I knew the obscure words. Son No 1 asked me why I was smiling so I read him 3d and the solution and he smiled too.

    I imagine we are due a Friday stinker as it has been a fairly gentle week.

  14. 41 minutes for me, so still well on the easy side.
    Here’s a useful tip for less experienced solvers. Since the indefinite article is generally omitted in a definition, the word “A” at the beginning of a clue is almost certainly part of the wordplay, and it’s odds-on that the answer begins with A. This works for APROPOS, ALOOF and ANITA, and helps with the parsing of NEAR GALE.
  15. Just sub 20 minutes, nothing too tricky. AMPULLA my LoI. I like Hardy’s novels, but don’t read Jude the Obscure if you’re feeling a bit depressed.
      1. I’ll keep an eye out for it. I read Sybil recently, after it came up in a crossword, and much enjoyed it..
  16. Along haul flight for me at 73.12 with a lot of that in the NE where for reasons unclear to me I was convinced 7d was MILAN BATU which scuppered me on 6, 10 and 12. So a quick Google to unveil my misplaced confidence and eventually I wrestled them to the ground. A few unknowns – HAAR for example – didn’t help. I did like 6d for the neatness and 13a for the reference to my homeland though I don’t think Houseman went there much. Thanks for blog to clear up the Judities.
  17. Not so easy here, about 40 minutes, most of that in the NE. I didn’t know of haar, and it looks weird. LOI was AMPULLA, also not particularly familiar, but less weird-looking. COD to ADIEU. Vale, indeed, though I usually think of it as a greeting rather than a farewell. So vale to the setter, in the former sense, and to George. Regards to all.
    1. Ave atque vale are the final words of a well known Catullus poem on the death of his brother – hail and farewell.

      (Supply suitable valediction)

      Ulaca

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