Times 25417 – Nothing to hide!

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
35 minutes with time lost getting started due to blogger’s nerves but once under weigh I found this very straightforward and (whisper it softly) just a little on the dull side. And I’m afraid this will be reflected in my write-up as there’s really very little to say about any of it. One point though, rather unusually there is no hidden answer.

Across

1 KARATE – A, farmeR inside KATE, the shrew in Shakespeare’s play or Cole Porter’s musical if you prefer.
4 TURF WAR – Two definitions, one of them tichy, if I may borrow the term from another blogger.
9 NACHO – A and Hot placed regularly in NCO (officer).
10 IN PASSING – IN (accepted), PASSING (getting satisfactory grade).
11 SYNTHESIS – Anagram of SHY IS SENT.
12 MOIST – 0 (nothing) in MIST (murk).
13 VAST – S (society) in VAT (Value Added Tax).
14 BUDGERIGAR – BUDGE (move reluctantly), RIG (fiddle), A, R (rook).
18 LAY HANDS ON – Two definitions.
20 THAI – Sounds like “tie” (secure).
23 BOWER – Two definitions. The anchor is less familiar but it has come up before.
24 GREAT APES – EAT (munch) inside GRAPES (fruit).
25 ELIMINATE – Anagram of A TIMELINE.
26 PRADO – AD (notice) inside PRO (for). The famous art gallery in Madrid.
27 TIGRESS – The D of DIGRESS (stray) changes to T to give us the cat.
28 FATHOM – Fine, AT HOMe.

Down
1 KING’S EVIL – KING’S (college, one of the oldest in Cambridge), LIVE (be) reversed. An old term for scrofula. (link added on edit)
2 RECANTS – EC (financial district of London – the City) inside RANTS (rails).
3 TROPHY – OP (work), H, inside TRY (bid).
4 TAPAS – TAP (listening device), A, S.
5 ROSEMARY – ME reversed inside ROSARY (beads).
6 WAILING – AIL (become weak) inside WING (limb).
7 ROGET – R,O,GET (fetch) of Thesaurus fame. At least we have some cricket references here.
8 HIT SQUAD – HITS (damages), QUAD (bike). A team of assassins.
15 GEOMETER – Anagram of TO EMERGE. Not a word I’m over familiar with.
16 RAINSTORM – Anagram of MATRON IS Reluctant.
17 HAIRLINE – H (husband), AIRLINE (business getting up). A little humour here. I rather liked this one.
19 YAWNINGgreasY,AWNING (sunscreen). What I’m doing now.
21 HIP BATH – 1, PB (lead) inside HATH (has).
22 UTOPIA – 1, POT (vessel) inside AU (gilded) all reversed.
23 BREST – The port in France sounds like “breast”.
24 GLASS – G,LASS.

35 comments on “Times 25417 – Nothing to hide!”

  1. No surprises today. So a fairly straightforward fill with holdups only in the SW: ELIMINATE and GLASS were OK but the rest not so easy. Two uses of the “sort of” device (1ac, 4dn) and one “such a” (17dn) to achieve the adjectival forms (karate chop, tapas bar, hairline fracture). I’m learning to live with it!
  2. A yawner, all right, although it still took me more time than it should have. But I’ve already forgotten what it was that slowed me down (yawn). Well, the 23s, at least; I didn’t feel comfortable with BOWER, and wasted a lot of time thinking of ports (Ghent?), and anchors, that might not start with B. Given the history of scrofula–it was called the King’s Evil, after all, because the King’s touch was supposed to cure it (Richard II at least, and maybe later kings? practiced the touch)–‘old complaint’ was a bit disappointing. One can be grateful, I suppose, for ‘mist’ meaning ‘murk’ and not ‘film’ for once. On the other hand, how many of us can think of any fractures other than compound and hairline? No CODs today, but I ‘sort of’ like 21d.
    1. When I was about 7 I fell off a climbing frame at school, someone trod on my arm and I ended up with a greenstick fracture of the elbow.

      No, I don’t know what it means but greenstick was my first instinct for 17 until annoyances like letter count and wordplay got in the way.

      One day…

      1. A child at my school had a very similar incident/accident, leading to greenstick entering my vocabulary (my mother was the school nurse).

        Further, as an occasional fan of the New York Knicks, I recently learned that forward Rasheed Wallace had been diagnosed with a Jones fracture of his left foot. That’s the fifth metatarsal. Since the Knicks medical staff originally reported it was on his right foot, I’m not convinced that they are sufficiently skilled to determine that it’s definitely a Jones. Either way, that’s one more fracture option in the mix.

  3. Making heavy weather of this may become a theme! I certainly did, like McT finding the SW most resistant, but, unlike him, I suspect, partly because I had ‘glady’ as 24 for some time. I am surprised to see budge descibed as move reluctantly – I’d say the reluctance has more to do with the common use of the word in the negative than with the sense itself. (It’s a bit of a stretch from ‘Move, however slightly’ – the Collins definiton – to this.) Also unhappy with UTOPIA being described as perfection, but that has everything to do with my ideas about Utopian change and nothing to do with the definition. I do have a COD, and the award goes to TIGRESS. The ‘lead’ had me contemplating ‘actress’. 68 minutes.

    Thanks to Jack for explaining KINGS EVIL. Now I’m off to look up ‘scrofula’.

    Edited at 2013-03-08 04:38 am (UTC)

  4. ‘Budge’ is one of a set of so-called negative polarity items in English, terms that are generally used only in negative (or interrogative) contexts;
    ?After a moment, he BUDGED.
    ? I’d pay you one RED CENT
    ? I often go there ANY MORE.
    So if I were to use ‘budge’ non-negatively, it would be something like “After considering my threat to kill him if he didn’t move, he finally budged.”
      1. I like these too – I used to describe the members of our work team as couth, ruly and scrutable; later another one joined us who didn’t need naming – she was Ruth.
        1. Many years ago I came across a very clever piece of verse which used such words (ie supposed opposites of words which misleadingly appear negative or which are most usually used in the negative). It may have been by Ogden Nash – it was certainly in that style.

          The last line was about ladies talking in “nocuous nuendoes” . I would like to find it again.

      2. Hardly did, actually; a pre-Aspects class at Berkeley, some basic stuff at San Francisco State.
        While I’m here, I might add that the last English monarch to touch for the King’s Evil was Anne.
        1. As long as he’s read in translation, Chomsky is good value too. Not perhaps on Cambodia…
  5. 20m. An average sort of puzzle, but that’s a complement really. I didn’t find it dull.
    I also wondered about “move reluctantly” for “budge”. It’s not only used in the negative, if you count “budge up”. And even when it’s used in the negative, that’s not quite the same thing as saying it means “move reluctantly”. “I tried and tried but he just wouldn’t move reluctantly”?
    I’d never heard of the old complaint or the anchor, and I wasn’t entirely sure that GEOMETER was a word.
    1. and anyway, hardly a scientist: at least, I don’t describe mathematicians as scientists
  6. A right old struggle and 4 minutes over the 30, without the sense of triumph in beating a clever foe. Not helped by settling too soon for HAILSTORM, which, combined with the assumption that the fiddle in 14 was a gu(e) made the budgie a very reluctant mover.
    The clue for GLASS had a quaint, very old-fashioned feel, don’t you think?
    I looked up BOWER post solve, hoping it was not just the front-of-a-ship-ER, but it was.
    While struggling in the NE, I toyed with the idea that it might be a bike and therefore a six- / ten- / two- speed. Glad it wasn’t.
    GEOMETER suggests mathematician rather than scientist in my book (Chambers): might have been more interestingly clued as “caterpillar”.
    PRADO was (sort of) good.
  7. Yes, if ever we had crosswords set by computer they would be like this one. All reasonably sound but somehow uninspired. 15 minute stroll in the park.

    As z8 says GEOMETER is a person skilled in geometry and thus a mathematician – Euclid to pick one everybody should be aware of.

    Don’t understand the comments about budge which seemed fine to me – a very easy clue indeed.

  8. 35 minutes today. I also wondered about GEOMETER as a scientist, but then remembered that mathematics is the Queen of Sciences.

    It occurred to me that I have no idea what a NACHO tastes like, yet I regularly fill it in as an answer, along with “enchilada”. Perhaps Mexican food has replaced types of antelope as a source of terms I only ever meet in crossword puzzles.

    1. Perhaps we could draw up a menu for the ‘Crossword Dinner Dance’ (give you a chance to try them all, John)?

      Clearly NACHOS would be in there, and dessert would be PAVLOVA or a FOOL. What else?

      1. Count me in, as long as the dances include a REEL, a RUMBA and a CHACONNE.
        1. Ok, but no gaucamole please – it always sounds to me like the way people talk with their mouths full of gloop – I used to wonder if it was onomatopeoic
          1. Okay, no guacamole, but we’d better throw in some EEL and LING for the fish course. So far it sounds appalling. We may struggle to sell tickets at the £250 a head I had in mind.
  9. As I have all week I came up a few short today. Four missing (King’s Evil, Lay Hands On, Budgerigar (not easy for me Jimbo!!) and Geometer. Geometer doesn’t equal scientist in my book.
    Guessed the unknown Hip Bath from wordplay and checkers.
    Liked Great Apes and the wordplay for Utopia.
  10. 24:15, held myself up at several junctures by failing to spot where anagram fodder and indicators lurked, such as at 11 and 15.

    I can’t recall coming across King’s evil, bower and geometer before.

  11. After an hour still DNF today – short of ROGET, FATHOM and GLASS. It was a struggle throughout I found and I was a little on the dull side. I had same query over GEOMETER as others. But no complaints; the problems were mine not the setter’s today.
  12. 18 minutes – held up most in the SW. One of those where when you read through afterwards, you can’t understand why you were held up.
  13. Since when have mathematicians been scientists? Many are both I admit (me for instance), but it’s a sloppy use of the word in my view
    1. For once I was happy in my relative ignorance and having spotted the answer from the anagram I wrote it in without further thought.

      We seem to have wandered into similar territory to the old engineer/mechanic debate that turns up here from time to time but as far as setters (and lay solvers) need to be concerned it’s what the dictionaries say that matters, not the esoteric arguments of specialists in particular fields.

      SOED has Mathematics: the abstract deductive science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, including geometry, arithmetic, algebra, etc.

      COED has Mathematics: the branch of science concerned with number, quantity and space…

      Chambers has: Mathematics: the science of magnitude and number…

      Enough already.

      Edited at 2013-03-08 05:50 pm (UTC)

      1. I look forward to the day “theologian” is clued as “scientist”, as the “Queen of Sciences” was (still is, according to some) Theology – pace John of Lancs, supra. Now that’ll kick off an interesting discussion.
  14. Hadn’t heard of KING’S EVIL (looks like it cropped up on 20th April 2011) or the BOWER anchor but otherwise an undemanding solve. I wouldn’t think twice about describing a mathematician as a scientist, but maybe that’s just down to my background in applied maths.
  15. I share the doubts as to geometer, budge and Utopia (which is a place, of a nonexistent sort, if anything). The whole thing felt a touch on the slack side. 30 minutes.
  16. About 25 minutes, held up in the SE area until I fought my way into UTOPIA, then FATHOM, and ending with PRADO and HIP BATH. I didn’t find this dull, since I had to deduce the unknown KINGS EVIL, GEOMETER, Bower anchor and HIP BATH. I don’t think we have the HIP BATH over here, and it’s certainly not a common term in my experience. Regards to all.
  17. Too late to say much, but wanted it on record that I managed the whole damn lot today (did take several bursts)! First time in ages.

  18. 11:28 for me. I thought I’d been faster, but seem to be going through a sluggish patch. I enjoyed this puzzle, and didn’t find it at all dull.

    I’m with john_of_lancs and others on the subject of mathematicians being scientists. (I share my birthday with E. T. Bell, who wrote Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science.)

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