Times 25,414 From A Riot To An Irreversible Process

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Very straightforward puzzle that shouldn’t cause any problems.

Across
1 MERTHYR,TYDFIL – (thirty fled army without “a”)*; M-T is a Welsh town famous for the 1831 uprising of iron workers that was brutally put down by soldiers. This incident encouraged the formation of Trades Unions and led to the Reform Act of 1832;
9 RAVER – two meanings;
10 GERMINATE – (buildin)G-ERMIN(AT)E; “shoot” as in “green” is the definition;
11 IN,THE,CLEAR – IN(THE)CLEAR; “in clear” is cryptographer code for uncoded;
12 STOP – POTS reversed;
14 GUNNERA – G-(n)UNNER(y)-A; ornamental plant;
16 MARTIAN – MARTI(A)N; reference St Martin and the Beggar as painted by El Greco 1598;
17 BROWSER – two meanings – ideally “deer perhaps”;
19 CYGNETS – young swans – sounds like “signets” which are small seals (insignia);
20 REIN – reference “free rein” meaning with minimal supervision;
21 TERRACOTTA – (react to rat)*; Qin Shi Huang and so on;
24 ABHORRENT – A-B(H-OR)RENT; the London Borough of Brent includes Wembly but not Brent Cross which is in Barnet;
25 MOTOR – RO(T)OM reversed; T from T(raction);
26 CHAIN,REACTION – CHA(IN)R-E-ACTION; daily=CHAR; E from E(xpress); can’t be reversed under the laws of thermo-dynamics;
 
Down
1 MARRIAGE,BUREAU – cryptic definition;
2 RIVET – R(I’VE)T;
3 HARTEBEEST – (threat)* surrounds BEES;
4 REGALIA – AI-LAGER reversed;
5 YARD-ARM – reference New Scotland Yard where the Met are based;
6 FLIP – three meanings avoiding the most current – questionable practice by MP involving property manipulation;
7 LEASTWISE – L(E)AST-WISE; most unsuitable=LAST; old way=WISE; energy=E;
8 KEEP,ONES,HAIR,ON – two definitions – the second whimsical;
13 TRAGICOMIC – T-RAG-I-COMIC;
15 NEOLITHIC – (one)*-LIT-HIC (Latin for here);
18 ROEDEAN – R(OED-E)AN; expensive school for gals near Brighton;
19 CURETTE – minister=curate then replace “a” by (s)E(n)T; surgical scraper;
22 TUTTI – TUT-(IT reversed); musical term for “all the players”;
23 PROA – PRO-A;

49 comments on “Times 25,414 From A Riot To An Irreversible Process”

  1. 22m.
    Note to setter: I am a happy subscriber to the Times crossword club. I do not subscribe to welshspellingtest.com. There is a reason for this.
      1. Didn’t know where the vowels went so had to look it up.
        While fooling around with this I was reminded of a panel cartoon
        wherein an ophthalmologist reads from a report saying to his
        patient ” Congratulations Mr. Davies, you’re not dyslexic, you’re
        Welsh.”
    1. So you’re happy with cheongsam, Chinese; perestroika, Russian; ynambus, Portuguese; hejab, Arabic; coquelicot, French; dolce vita, Italian; aitu, Polynesian; jinjili, Hindi; verkrampte, Africans and, and mon ami, with every le, la, les, bon, ein, il, el and a myriad of ‘foreign’ words that regularly crop up in this crossword, but object a British town with a population of 55,000 and a history going back to at least the fifth century that was of major importance in the industrialisation of Britain?

      Please, please do tell us why.

      1. Good point. Merthyr was once the largest town in Wales. Surely it, and its spelling, should be GK for Times crossword solvers.
      2. Crikey. I have no political agenda, I just wasn’t sure how to spell the word, so from the elements of the clue I was unable to solve it with certainty. Of course I’ve heard of Mirther Tydfyl. You think I’m an idiot, is it?
      3. Because some of us aren’t Welsh, or even British, and if you want obscurities, anagrams are a pretty unkind way of doing it.

        Also, 30000 and 55000 are different numbers. That, I think, actually would be general knowledge.

        At least Nowra, similar population, critical in the foundation of the entire Australian dairy industry, could be guessed as an anagram.

      4. Merthyr Tydfil was my first one in, possibly because of an indelible schoolboy memory of the geography master booming at the class wag: “Wilcox, your ignorance of Hobart as the capital of Tasmania is no justification for labelling that point on the map Merthyr Tydfil”.
      5. If you are so keen to fight you should at least have given a name.
        It might be worth mentioning that a good proportion of the exotica you listed came from the Club Monthly crossword, an altogether different kettle of fish, and not from a Times Cryptic.
        Having said that, I agree with the point being made..
  2. So under the ten. Hey! Most answers from several of the defs which stuck out mile.

    I’d forgotten about “tack” as part of the horse equipment/tackle (21ac) but then the rest of the clue gives it away. No?

    7dn: shades of Cilla Black talking to Brian Epstein — “I say ‘last’, you say ‘most unsuitable’ … [insult]”.

    COD to 26ac — the surface reads so well.

  3. 12 mins so rocket speed for me. The long ones went straight in and the rest followed.. I did write “your” instead of the obligatory “ones” in 8dn but I kept an eye on it so it didn’t hold me up for long. I am familiar with the Times convention of course but I couldn’t imagine anyone ever using the expression as written, as a google search seems to confirm.
    1. I thought it completely daft – the saying is “keep your hair on” and that’s what should be in the grid
  4. My one wrong today was the unknown PROA, which I could have worked out. Oh, and of course I got the spelling wrong for the Welsh town – those vowels/ys seem pretty interchangeable.
  5. 22 minutes (I was interrupted, your honour) held up in the SW, without much excuse, by BROWSER, REIN and the bottom bit of MARRIAGE.
    BROWSER: didn’t trust it. I’m with Jim on this one. The clue pushes you towards a kind of deer (we’ve already had the beest) rather than something generic that deer and lots of other animals do. I don’t usually mind DBE’s but this one jarred.
    REIN: we hadn’t had a “hidden” so I was toying with drid, that less well known component in the stable compendium.
    BUREAU: just couldn’t get to the word, and playing with the possible (or not) crossing letters didn’t help. Plus the clue made absurd assumptions: in my experience, the unattached go down the pub after a wedding.
    St Martin (16) I took from Oranges and Lemons: for some reason, El Greco didn’t spring immediately to mind. Shows my cultural level, I guess.
    Why is FLIP also “demanding?”
    CoD to the spelling test at 1ac for the historical accuracy. The town has been part of my landscape since primary school, where Mr Evans (we had men teaching us in those days) was a proud denizen.
    1. It’s not after the wedding. They go to the bureau because they are may be after (i.e. looking for) a match.
    1. I entered some paragraphs I’ve just written for our Residents Association Newsletter and it rated them 85% Shakesperean – they can’t be serious!
    2. Ha ha, a paragraph from my letter to local residents asking for money for the local church is rated 91% Shakespearean! The mind boggles…
  6. Timewise, I thought this was the most straightforward puzzle for several months, despite having to laboriously write out the anagram for 1A to make sure I had the right spelling. Unfortunately I was so excited at the prospect of a fast finish that I decided to whack GONVENA into 14A, as that also fitted the wordplay. I added GUNNERA to the list of words I don’t know last time it came up (6 weeks ago?) – seems as though I need to underline it.
  7. I’d prefer “annoying”! Flip has the connotation of being clever for the sake of it, rather than (say) erudite, highbrow or profound. mind you, I did have a query as to what “demanding” was doing in the clue, and assumed it was just padding.
  8. 25 minutes and easier for me to solve than to explain all the clues as unfortunately it exposed the depths of my ignorance in certain matters.

    Straight DKs were PROA, CURETTE and GUNNERA. I confused E/I when spelling 1ac but rescued it just in time. Didn’t understand the cypher business at 11ac, the saint and beggar thing at 16ac or know TERRACOTTA could be used as a word meaning ‘sculpture’.

    I agree ‘browser’ as a DBE is a bit of a liberty but I was more surprised by the only specific reference to deer I found, in the SOED, which has ‘browser’ as ‘a person who feeds deer in winter time’. Why would there be a special word for someone who does this? And what a strange term for it anyway.

    Edited at 2013-03-05 10:43 am (UTC)

    1. When writing the blog I discovered there’s some debate about “do deer browse or graze?” – all a bit esoteric. As before the setter ignores the most common modern usage of the word
  9. Managed to sail through most of this in 20 minutes, but took a few more minutes to play around with alternative spellings of 1ac. CURETTE was a guess, but decided it must be right as it gave me the C to get CYGNETS.
    I liked the clues to 16 and 1 dn (for the misleading use of ‘after’).
    PROA makes a regular appearance in barred cryptics, so was very familiar.
  10. Delighted to join McT in the sub-10m club today at 9:55.

    Proa and curette were both unknown but eminently gettable and not knowing “in clear” or the Martin/beggar connection didn’t hole me up either.

    1ac was my first in but with a gap either side of DF until I got yard-arm.

  11. 29.05 and happy to be back in the sub 30 club after an absence. Generally straightforward but spent too long getting to CURETTE and PROA. I also liked 26a so that gets my COD. Thanks for blog as I struggled to explain eg BROWSER
  12. 11 minutes for me – although I could spell Merthyr Tydfil, I was delayed by REIN (sorry!)
  13. After completing an old puzzle( August 7th,2007 ) looking at the comments section,there were lots of entries by ‘anonymous’ of a dubious nature I.e. sexual content. I thought I should bring this to your attention.
  14. 15 minutes, but decided GONVENA was a plant, so got one wrong. Should have looked it up, but it’s nice to avoid that if you can… if you’re right.
  15. Very straightforward. 20 minutes. Would have been a rare 15 minute solve but I spent 5 minutes on the 2 four-letter clues, FLIP and PROA. I often have more difficulty with the short answers. Ann
  16. Under 20 minutes but like mohn2 and pipkirby went for gonvena; the more annoying as I knew gunnera at some level and also knew gonvena to be almost certainly wrong. It’s now somewhere between plant and swearword.
  17. 24 ac How does h-or in “abhorrent” equate to “hard men” Am I missing something obvious?
  18. 6:24 here for a nice Mondayish sort of puzzle, which I enjoyed a lot more than yesterday’s real thing.
  19. Why is this a dbe? Where in the clue is ‘browser’ used as a definition of ‘deer’, which is what I have always thought a dbe is? Surely it’s simply using ‘deer’ as a generic term to lead you to browser, just as ‘a Welsh town’ leads you to MT.
    1. Surely it’s the other way round and ‘browser’ is defined in the clue by an example of one such i.e. ‘deer’?
  20. this puzzle takes me a week to finish so I only do it once a week. It gives me absolutely days of fun, and i suspect more entertainent than those of you who are pressured to finish in a fast timespan. After a week I can say proudly that I got them all except a malay boat – how would I know that!
    My comment is related to reading about the ones that tripped some people. Apart from keeping one’s hair on, REIN was the second one I solved. Makes me happy to have beaten the experts in this regard.

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