Times 25399 – Simply a nightmare

Solving time: 69:45 – With two wrong apparently, although I can’t for the life of me see where one of them is.

That was a real struggle from start to finish. There were a couple of words I didn’t know – HERSTORY & PIPE ROLL, plus several others that I only knew vaguely – HELIOSTAT, A FORTIORI & TE DEUM.

There was quite a bit of devious wordplay in here, and it’s late so I’ll move right along. Although, as I mentioned above, I still have one wrong somewhere, so I’d be grateful if someone can point it out. I spotted the other mistake while writing the blog (see 25a). I have it now, see 5d.

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

Across
1 ALICE SPRINGS = LICE (insects) + SPRING (bound) all in A + S
9 RAT ON = NO (number) + TAR (pitch) all rev
10 PHOTOCALL = HOT (burning) + O/C (gaseous elements) all in PALL (cloud) – not sure about gaseous elements – Oxygen, of course, but Carbon? I suppose it is in the form of CO or CO₂, but on its own it’s a solid at room temperature.
11 HERSTORY = RY (track) after (OTHERS)* – a feminist history
12 TE DEUM = TEDIUM (something to send you to sleep) with an extra E (pill) instead of the I (one)
13 WORMHOLE = OR (golden) + M (mile) all in WHOLE (complete)
15 SKUNKS = SUNK (ruined) + S (singular) all about parK – although, this could just as easily be SKANKS, but this isn’t the mistake it turns out.
17 UNTOLD – dd
18 TOP-NOTCH = (PONCHO + T/T)*
20 AUTHOR = THO (all the same) in AURa
21 FITFULLY – dd – the perfect matches would FIT FULLY
24 A FORTIORI = FORT (castle) in AI (excellent) + OR + I
25 GUANO = ON + AUG (a bit of summer) all rev – ‘business to aid growth’ is the rather excellent definition. This was one of my mistakes – I had GUACO thinking it was AUG rev + CO (business) with ‘aid growth’ being the definition as it’s a plant used in first aid (to cure snakebites), but when I came to blog it I realised it didn’t quite work.
26 STOKE-ON-TRENT = (STREET TOOK + N/N)* – I loved ‘Chinatown’ as a definition, Stoke being famous as the source of much pottery and china.
Down
1 AIR SHOW = AIRS (Wind’s) + HOW (the way) – Wellingtons being WWII bombers
2 INTERPRETATION = INTER (put into final plot) + PRE (before) + TATI (French director) + NO (objection) rev
3 ERNST – I can’t see where the ERN comes from, but ST is presumably street, and Max Ernst was the artist. It is STERN with the the ST moved down – thanks to rosselliot who got there first.
4 PIPE ROLL = POLL (vote) about I (one) + PER (for each)
5 ICON – dd – ‘online engine providing tips’ / ‘display’. OK, ignore that, it’s IVOR – rev hidden in pROVIding, ‘tips’ being the reversal indicator. ‘Online engine’ is the definition. It was a kids TV program which I certainly used to watch in the 70s (so I’ve no excuse).
6 GOOSE-SKIN = GO (try) + (ONE KISS)* – I’ve not come across this particular variation before, but I know goose-bumps and goose-flesh, so it’s not much of a leap.
7 PATERNITY LEAVE – cd
8 GLAM (variety of rock, think T Rex or Sweet) + I’S (one’s) – wasn’t Shakespeare’s Macbeth the Thane of Glamis?
14 HELIOSTAT = (TOILET HAS)*
16 POLITIC + O
17 UTAHAN = U (university) + TA (Cheers) + HAN (Dynasty)
19 HAYLOFT = “HAIL OFT” (to keep greeting)
22 FIGHT = FT (paper) about ‘IGH (i.e. High as in High School, with the initial H dropped in a Cockney manner)
23 Doctor coming from county fair (4)CO + OK – as in ‘cook the books’

51 comments on “Times 25399 – Simply a nightmare”

  1. (ST)ERN = demanding. Then send down the ST! I think ICON must be my wrong one as it is the only one I cannot make sense of.
  2. Well done, Dave, and once again you’ve taken a bullet I dodged! Surely my Friday luck cannot last.

    I needed 7 minutes to find my first answer but having got started things began to flow and I filled in the whole of the top half steadily if somewhat slowly including PIPE ROLL which I’ve never heard of.

    But I came unstuck in the lower half and as the hour approached I used aids to dispose of HELIOSTAT (also unheard of) and, to my shame, COOK. [Later in mitigation: Who’d have thought there could be so many possibilities for -O-K? 66 according to Chambers! It was to be my last one in and I was nearly brain-dead by that point, losing the will to live].

    As our anon friend has indicated 5dn is hidden but also reversed. IVOR the engine was not part of my childhood but I had heard of him.

    Edited at 2013-02-15 06:57 am (UTC)

  3. A bastard indeed where, as with Jack, the problem was getting a toehold. An awful lot of the time was spent staring at ??T?L? & ??A?A? for the two 17s.

    And Ivor the bloody Engine! (Online, indeed!) What next? Muffin the Mule? If so … can I write the clue … please.

    Well done Dave … I’m surprised you have hair left after that one.

    Edited at 2013-02-15 04:40 am (UTC)

  4. Well blogged Dave. I din’t enjoy this much.
    I share the same problem with C as a gas in 10ac but couldn’t see any alternative. I had SKANKS at 15ac which works for me – don’t know which is right.
    1. Couldn’t agree more. ODO has ‘a sleazy or unpleasant person / a promiscuous woman’ for skank and ‘a contemptible person’ for skunk. Both pretty despicable…and certainly too close to call.
  5. Quite a puzle, but I had ICON like Dave. I’m not from the UK so I’d never heard of IVOR. An excellent puzzle, though very demanding and difficult. Took me 90 minutes. One for puzzle of the month, I would think. Regards to all, especially Dave for having drawn this one to blog, and hats off to the setter. Devious in the extreme.
  6. I was well and truly out of my depth today, getting the ones that Jack didn’t get, but failing to get a 17 number of others, including both 17s. GUANO and STOKE-ON-TRENT both qualify as clues of the month, but I can hardly nominate this as my puzzle of the month as I would have needed more than a month to come close to finishing it.

    Appreciation to setter and thanks to Dave for shortening my misery.

  7. I put in TOPNOTCH then ALICE SPRINGS quickly, finished the NW corner, then went off the boil, couldn’t get on the wavelength, lost interest after 45 minutes half completed, so DNF. Quite a few I didn’t like (C a gas? GOOSE-SKIN? FIGHT? IVOR is a engine? A UTAHAN is from UTAH?) but also some great clues too clever for me (GUANO, AUTHOR…) Well done to anyone who finished this correctly in less than a day!
  8. Dave – well done mate. This is difficult and the more so if also blogging. Great effort.

    Let’s go for it – 10A is surely just wrong? Carbon is not a gaseous element. The clue works better if “gaseous” is removed from it.And isn’t it 2 words?

    Never heard of HERSTORY – a history based in Womanchester presumably. Nor IVOR the engine – had to Google him after just guessing it was reversed within “providing” from wordplay.

    Thought GUANO and STOKE very good clues indeed.

    1. I think I’m with you on this, Jim: even I, who wimped out of memorising the periodic table by about lithium, blinked at carbon as a gas. I gather it boils at 4098 K. But I also wondered if our setter was being disingenuous, particularly towards the scientifically literate, in using the words gaseous and element? Carbon and oxygen are the component parts of a gas (two gases? more?), so maybe the clue works in that way.
      1. I see what you’re saying – after a reaction, together they form carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide but I feel that’s a step too far. When joined they form a compound and are no longer separate elements.

        I suppose another possibility is that the setter is expecting us to know that CO is carbon monoxide and the word “elements” is being used to mean “parts” so the clue reads “gaseous parts”. I don’t like that either.

        I think the best result is obtained by just leaving out the word “gaseous”

  9. A whole hour, bar two minutes, and I missed IVOR despite introducing him to the blog three months ago! See “Daiabolical” in 25312, complete with link to episode 1. I just couldn’t make is fit the rest of the clues, even though shortly before, I’d been thinking “we haven’t had a hidden in this grid”. Oh well – glad it wasn’t a prize one -all that effort and a fail.
    On the same lines (Merioneth to Llantisilly as I recall) great sympathy to the half of the fraternity which preferred SKANKS to SKUNKS (or the other way round, I haven’t checked) – surely either is correct?
    Very, very tough. A masterpiece? Maybe, though perhaps too much like hard work for some tastes: my feeling at the end was more relief than triumph. So much deviousness, with the shortest ones providing perhaps the hardest tests of lateral thinking. Let’s give CoD to the whole dam’ thing. Or STOKE ON TRENT, which was my first admired clue.
    Well done Dave!
  10. This I thought really much too hard for the result, if you see what I mean. No? Okay, for all the effort, I felt a bit short-changed on the wordplay elements and thrill-factor. Better? Anyway, tough stuff, albeit in a good style. 77 minutes.

    Thanks for a decent blog,
    Chris G.

    1. Ouch. I am limping away from this puzzle, so well done on blogging it, Dave. Hit the hour mark for the first time since I can’t remember when (the leader board when I started told me that Magoo was the only correct solver under 35 minutes, so at least I was forewarned if not necessarily forearmed).

      I was another with SKANKS for SKUNKS; however, for once I would feel pretty confident of challenging that one with the Crossword Editor.

  11. Congratulations and very many thanks, Dave. I was quite pleased to finish about 1/3 of this beast …
  12. 24:12 for me (solving early as I’m going to be out until fairly late this evening, and even the small amount of wine I’ll be drinking would almost certainly have done for my chances if I’d tried to solve it then).

    There were so many absolutely first-rate clues in this puzzle that it’s a pity it was let down by 10ac – I can’t see any reasonable justification for “gaseous” – and 15ac, where SKANKS could be regarded as the likely answer in such a right-on puzzle (I’m just glad I didn’t think of it).

    1. An enforced break to drop my wife at the hairdressers after twenty minutes helped to clear the mind and I was relieved to finish under the hour. I too thought this was first-rate stuff and I would like to offer what seems to me to be a reasonable case for ‘gaseous’. On the basis of the first definition in Chambers ‘gaseous elements’ is equivalent to ‘elements in the form of a gas’ which seems an accurate description of, for example, carbon monoxide. And I think it makes for a better surface.
      malcj
      1. I very much doubt that’s what the Chambers people had in mind. I wouldn’t find your argument remotely convincing even if the word clued had been PHOTCOALL.

        It could be that I and others are missing something subtle, but if so I’m looking for a much better explanation than that.

        1. Just came back to confess my error as regards OC and CO only to find you had beaten me to it! But I still think that describing the constituent parts of a gas in this way is fair.
  13. All hail the heroic blogger! After 50 minutes I went to see if a bath would help me narrow down the choices for 5d. Nope. After coming here I see I’d never have got it.
    Must admit I never thought of skank, equating it with slut which seems a bit too specific for the clue. I got off track with the shooting stars too, trying to fit some sort of basketball dream team idea into too few spaces. DNF
    P.S. One of those interesting coincidences in crossword-land – that we get the shooting stars on the same morning as the Russian meteorite.

    Edited at 2013-02-15 12:41 pm (UTC)

    1. And we have a close encounter with an asteroid at 7 pm GMT tonight. Haven’t dared take my hat off all day.
  14. 50m, but with SKANKS. I had no idea that skunk could mean “despised person”. This is a rather loose definition for “skank” admittedly but then “gaseous element” is a rather, er, loose definition for carbon.
    It was too difficult for me to say that I enjoyed it but I think a puzzle like this is good from time to time.
  15. Resorted to aids after about an hour and a quarter for the 10 across/ 5 down pairing. I should have seen PHOTOCALL from the definition, and I incorrectly plumped for ICON at 5 down as a sort of CD. I’m old enough to remember IVOR and in retrospect I should have seen what “tips to display” was telling me. I was also another with SKANKS. Considering I only took just over 12 mins for yesterday’s puzzle this was a very chastening experience so congrats to the setter, although jumbling O and C as elements of Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide was probably a stretch.

    Andy B.

  16. Gave up on 17dn, as research failed to find a dynasty ending -arah, or an American ending -ahan (should have tried Onelook!). As I was sure that 17ac had to be plural, couldn’t find anything better than TOTALS, from ‘lots’, though the ‘relations’ didn’t seem to fit. Then put TRAJAN at 17dn, as he might have founded a dynasty: I have never watched any episode of Cheers, so there could have been a reference as clear to Americans as Ivor the Engine was to me.
  17. Too difficult for me today. Six missing, all on the right-hand side. Manfully blogged Dave – excellent – and thanks for explaining all my missing ones.

    Enjoyed this puzzle despite the difficulty and the quibble as noted re Photocall. Loved seeing Wormhole in the grid. “Shooting stars” brought to mind the asteroid that will be whizzing overhead today at around 7:30pm UK time – watch out for it everyone.

    Thought describing Stoke-on-Trent as Chinatown was outrageous! Guano was a fine clue too but my favourite was Fight – loved that one. Thank you setter!

    Am on holiday for a week from tomorrow and offline until 25 February. Good luck to everybody with next week’s puzzles!

  18. A fiend of a puzzle. Struggled to the end with resort to aids, but had ICON instead of IVOR at 5 dn – a pardonable error, I felt, having in my case no childhood memory of Ivor the Engine. I agree with the objections above to “gaseous” in 10 ac, but 13 ac, 17 ac and 25 ac were all 18 ac clues. Defining STOKE-ON-TRENT as “Chinatown” was a touch of genius.
  19. Like so many others a DNF after an hour; in fact not even half finished. Not my kind of puzzle at all as so often relying on obscurity for its difficulty rather than any particular setting skill. I even have reservations about the ‘lauded’ clue at 26 across as Stoke has been a city for a long time so not really a Chinatown at all. However congratulations and thanks to the blogger. Well done indeed.
  20. A bit desperate for a Friday, I thought, but there were some very ingenious clues and clever dummies that I fell for; took about an hour, on and off.

    SKANKS is a hideous word, isn’t it? And HERSTORY would be comical were not the people who coined it such a po-faced lot.

    Well done, setter, you *******!

  21. i found this one fiendish too. I had nothing else to occupy me in my hospital bed though and finally finished up with 2 wrong without aids in about 3 hours. I just didn’t get AUTHOR and at the last minute changed IVOR to ICON as I didn’t see the reversal. I must be improving thanks to to this blog. A year or 18 months ago I wouldn’t have got started on this puzzle. I did find it hard going rather than an enjoyable challenge though. Congrats on the Blog Dave. Definitely a bad one to catch!

    PS Severe Gastro Enteritis necessitating IV saline. I had 2 litres for my birthday yesterday instead of a nice shiraz:-(

  22. Well I had an interesting time with this, someone wanted a website name so I tore off the bottom of it and took with it most of the down clues after 19.

    On top of that, I guessed IF,ON for 5 and ALUM,IS for 8. So much for that.

  23. Came to this too late to have my comment read, as like as not, but I feel there’s been a simple blunder in 10, the gaseous element the setter may have had in mind being chlorine and the abbreviation momentarily confused with that for carbon. If so a great shame as this was an absolutely marvellous puzzle. Skunks is far better than skanks for the despised – the latter’s used by a mere handful comparatively and is still very new on the scene. I got the two four-letter-words wrong going exhaustedly for icon and souk (!) but felt good about getting the rest in about 90 minutes. What a rip-roarer. I would hope we might hear the setter’s thoughts on 10 – ?
    1. I couldn’t disagree more. Although I am vaguely aware of the usage, I don’t think I have ever heard “skunk” actually used of a person. But as a parent of teenage girls in Australia, I have heard “skank” in common use for years

      And you can hardly discriminate against a word for being recent in a puzzle which includes the appalling “herstory”.

      1. It’s not the recentness per se, it’s the amount the other word has been and is in use up till now, comparatively. We disagree on this of course. I’d add that ‘skank’ tends to be used more amusedly and less seriously – as a secondary school teacher I’ve met it a certain amount, including by younger staff abiout each other! – while ‘despicable’ can easily be felt to carry the more serious weighting. Not necessarliy of course. I dare say a Times adjudicator might admit either.

        Edited at 2013-02-16 08:04 am (UTC)

        1. I agree with anon. “Skank” is commonplace in my experience, and I’ve never come across this meaning of “skunk” in my life. But in any event the fact that one word may or may not be more common is no reason to exclude the other.
          1. It’s not a question of exclusion by right. Two words can’t be the intended answer. Regarding the use of skunk, I think maybe I get my sense of it originally from cowboy films, “you lowdown skunk”; maybe it’s more American than English. I’ve no doubt I used it a fair bit as a kid; I hope less since. But for me it’s certainly in the air.
            1. There’s no doubt that SKUNK is the intended answer: SKANK showed as an error on my iPad. But it’s a perfectly valid answer in my view. I think if the setter and/or editor had realised this they’d have changed the clue.
    2. I read it!

      I went for SKUNKS and it is now confirmed as the intended answer. As a matter of interest OED has this meaning of SKUNK dating from 1841 and of SKANK from 1964.

  24. I didn’t get IVOR either, and I think that ‘online’ is abut cheeky if it is meant to relate to a television programme. But, perhaps, I’m missing something – it wouldn’t be the first time. I solved the rest of the puzzle correctly but, thankfully, I was not timing myself on this one.
  25. Yes, plainly SKANKS is an equally valid answer: unfortunately it can be very hard to spot ambiguity like that unless a test solver picks it up. Added to which I was unaware of “SKANK” in that meaning, and in fact of the 3 dictionaries in the frame, only COED has it in that meaning (as a North Americanism).

    Also, apologies for the CARBON = C = gaseous element error. Nothing to do with confusion with Chlorine, nor with the semi-plausible but far-fetched idea that C and O are the constituents of carbon monoxide. It’s simply an unexplained blind spot I have about carbon being a gas (!)

    Rather surprised a lot of people have not heard of HERSTORY perhaps.

    1. …in fact, the COED entry only seems to be in the online version, and is “sleazy or unpleasant person” – as well as the “promiscuous woman” meaning. So I’m less convinced it IS a valid alternative now, although I’ve not checked the OED.
      I;m glad I didn’t have to adjucate on that one!
      1. From down under… it’s all relative, but I would have never gotten 1 ac, Alice Springs is a large desert town. Might even be a city. No, according to Wikipedia, 25000 people, 178 square km, the third largest town in the state, and the largest by far for 1000 km in any direction.

        A small desert town like Tokyo is a small Japanese city

        That and the carbon annoyed me, and also being on entirely the wrong wavelength, plus having huge gaps in knowledge, like Ivor. Or what the second meaning of untold is… missing relatives? Eh? What?

        A beast, but not enjoyable for me.
        Rob

  26. The next morning, not tired, thinking straight again: sorry for that rant, based purely on stupidity. With even thinking about it, it came to me there is a lift and separate between small and desert town. Oops ;-(
    Rob

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