Times 25,420

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
13:03 on the Club timer, so nothing too demanding here by that measure. Solid, nicely put together puzzle, though; where clues needed more careful analysis, the wordplay seemed perfectly clear in leading the solver down the required path (rather than up the garden one).

Across
1 WALLCHART – With ALL C.H. ART.
6 ALBUM – A Large BUM(=useless).
9 TORNADO – TO R.N. ADO(=trouble).
10 ORDERER – O.R.(=soldiers) + [RE(=on)RED(=ruddy)]rev.
11 HAMMY – WHAMMY.
12 TIGHTNESS – (THISGENTS)*.
14 CUE =”QUEUE”.
15 DELIVERANCE – LIVER in [DEAN C.E.].
17 AMBASSADORS – AMerican + BASS + ADORES without English.
19 CUT – (TUC)rev.
20 FOURSCORE – (OURFORCES)*.
22 AHEAD – A HE + AD.
24 NOSIEST – in other words, these are Spaniards who have NO SIESTA.
26 ASPIRIN – [I suffeR] in ASP, IN.
27 HEROD – (EH)rev. + ROD.
28 BELTED OUT – BELTED(=hit) + OUT(=no longer trendy).
 
Down
1 WATCH – (WHATCould)*.
2 LARAMIE – A RAM in LIE. More senior solvers will remember James Stewart as the man from there.
3 CHARYBDIS – CHARY(=guarded) + Black DIS(=underworld).
4 AMONTILLADO – A MONday TILL(=work) A DO(=a celebration).
5 TWO – reverse hidden in lOW Turnover; and two’s company, of course.
6 AUDIT – A University DON minus the ON(=available), + ITalian.
7 BARGE IN – BAR(=pub) + [loungE in GIN].
8 MARES NEST – [SENSE in TRAM]all rev.
13 GIVE ONES ALL – double def.
14 CHAFFINCH – Hearts in CAFF(=tea room), INCH(=island); another of those sort of singers. Nothing to do with cha, as I eventually worked out.
16 ROSE APPLE – [SEA(=deep),Pink, Purple] in ROLE.
18 BRUISER – 1 in B.R. USER, as we used to be when we were still “passengers” and not “customers”.
19 CHEERIO – CHEER(=food and drink, as in Christmas cheer), I, 0.
21 SPEED – Pressure in SEED.
23 DONUT – Unappetising in DON’T. Mmmm…donuts…
25 TUB – These Undiscovered Backwaters.

42 comments on “Times 25,420”

  1. Not so easy for me this morning. (Good time, Tim!) But I liked this a great deal for its solidity and nice bits of economy. “What about stick as ruler?” (27ac) is typical of both — even if I was tempted by HEGEL!

    Not much else to say except my usual nitpick: “refrain from” is not quite DON’T (23dn), but let’s let this pass eh?

    On edit … oh, and, CHARYBDIS wasn’t a monster. It was a whirlpool. Scylla was the monster. See Ulaca’s correction below.

    Edited at 2013-03-12 08:47 am (UTC)

  2. 9:54 .. my first sub-10 in ages, so I guess this was up my street. I agree with you, Tim, about the helpful wordplay, especially when it came to spelling CHARYBDIS.

    I searched the web to see if Laramie was known for anything other than the movie. It isn’t. But I did stumble upon some interesting ‘facts’ about Wyoming. This one caught my eye for some reason: “An ordinance in Newcastle, Wyoming, specifically bans couples from having sex while standing inside a store’s walk-in meat freezer.”

    1. That reminds me of the slightly risqué old joke which ends “They didn’t like it much in Sainsbury’s either”.
  3. 30 minutes dead. I liked 24 a lot and 27. I didn’t know enough to pick up the monster error (if there is one) but I was simply pleased to remember the wretched word from the last time it caught me out.

    I know it’s still a Western connection but Laramie is also known from the long-running TV series which was quite separate from the movie.

    Edited at 2013-03-12 02:14 am (UTC)

  4. Bang on 30 minutes, like Jack. Just happy to net the bird today. As a bonus, I even got the wordplay post-solve.

    Charybdis underwent a few makeovers, but can indeed lay claim to monstershood between her nymph and whirlpool phases.

    1. My apologies to the setter … and indeed to Charybdis. In future, I shall seek the guidance of Thetis.
  5. A straightforward solve in one sitting (a bit unusual for me recently) but I had no idea how to parse CHAFFINCH so particular thanks Tim for sorting this out.
  6. 15m. I’ve never heard of LARAMIE in any context and I wasn’t familiar with this meaning of DELIVERANCE, but neither caused any real problems. In this instance my sketchy knowledge of classical mythology seems to have been helpful in getting CHARYBDIS.
  7. All ok, but with a little look up at 2dn to unlock the NW (LARAMIE or latupie, or even laeweie, but that seemed unlikely…).

    As others I got the CHA and INCH bit of the singer, and was left wondering about how the FFs fitted the clue. Also CHARYBDIS, although it seems to have come up more than once in recent times, always causes problems. The unknown CHARY didn’t help here, either, and I was keen for too long to have hades as the Underworld.

  8. Before he became Maggie’s favourite interviewer, and before he was a DJ in the 60s and 70s with an invisible chipmunk friend called Raymondo and catchlines such as ‘What’s the recipe today, Jim?’ and ‘This is JY saying TTFN’, Jimmy Young, who I see is still going strong at the age of 91, had his biggest hit with the theme song from The Man from Laramie.

  9. 20 minutes, so for me harder than yesterday, with the sticky bits being CHAFFINCH (yeah, CHA- something, perhaps charivari, which has got tea, room and island at least and is something to do with singing) and BRUISER, where I was particularly uneasy about the “yobbo” definition. Still looks a bit loose.
    Thanks for the parsing of ROSE APPLE: I couldn’t get beyond rose=pink and then some device for extracting the PPLE from purple. Another candidate for the “only met in crosswords” category. Has anyone got one?
    CHEERIO from exactly the same place in a very recent Other Crossword. Spooky.
    1. You get rose apples out east, often as complimentary fruit in a hotel, especially in Thailand. Not the sort of thing I’d buy, but agreeable once in a while for a somewhat bland crunch!
  10. Just under 28 so some modicum of self-respect restored after yesterday’s slowby. Enjoyed the conversation with the setter so to speak without being dazzled or floored by the wit on hand. ‘Two’ was quite neat.
  11. No problems today except at the very end where LOI Mare’s Nest went in from wordplay alone after a lot of head scratching. Not a phrase I’d heard of before and brought to mind the Cheltenham Festival which starts today.
    Remembered Ambassadors from the last time it came up. Didn’t know Laramie but easily gettable from wordplay and checking letters.
    Thought BR User for “old rail commuter” was great fun in Bruiser.
    In the Canaries last month most shops seemed to shut for siesta between say 2 and 4 or 5. We wondered what the staff do in that time if they can’t easily go home/come back.
  12. Enjoyed the fluid surface in “Unexpectedly enter pub, taking drink round back of lounge”.
  13. 25 minutes for this straightforward but enjoyable puzzle. Nearly caught out by the singer again: seeing tea, I began to scribble in CHALIAPIN.

    As soon as I wrote in LARAMIE, I couldn’t get the song out of my head and shall doubtless be humming it all day. (See ulaca’s link above).

  14. Straightforward and very fair puzzle but like John I now can’t get that tune out of my head. They don’t make TV series like that any more. I recall The Virginian, Wagon Train, Bonanza and Rawhide all about the same time and I’m sure there were others.
    1. The song was from the film, not the TV series which had an instrumental theme. Rather interestingly it appears that the song was not the hit in the US that it was in the UK. JY topped the charts here for 3 weeks but Al Martino’s American recording achieved little or nothing as far as I can tell. Maybe if there had been a soundtrack recording by an established artiste it would have fared better but in the film it was sung by an anonymous chorus over the closing credits. A missed opportunity perhaps.
    2. … was one.

      I once got on a bus from Birkenhead to Chester, a Crosville I think. Waiting at the terminus, a smartish chap shouted upstairs to the conductor who was having a fag (which was legal in those days): “Chester?” The scouse conductor shouted back, quick as a flash: “Yes Mister Dillon?”

      1. Bronco Layne (Ty Hardin) was in “Bronco”. “Tales of Wells Fargo” featured Jim Hardie played by Dale Robertson who died only a few days ago aged 89.

        Edited at 2013-03-12 11:34 am (UTC)

        1. Sorry to hear about Dale R. I see Kenny Ball died the other day – another vivid memory of a misspent youth and various jazz haunts
    4. You have forgotten the High Chapparal ! Mind you probably eminently forgettable!
  15. In a non-western context, Laramie was a proper cigarette advertised in my childhood, and is the cigarette of choice (I nearly wrote “fag”, but remembered in time that it might be misunderstood) in The Simpsons. I have a vague memory that its packaging was well known enough to be imitated on those sweet/candy cigarettes that we were once able to buy.
  16. A slow 44.23 today with a real struggle in the northeast where I spent an age trying to justify BREAK and then BROKE before the penny dropped. Thanks for blog, Tim. Impressed by the time as well. I liked 24a which gets my COD.
  17. 15:50 with about 4 minutes on my LOI, mare’s nest. I knew exactly what was required but for ages couldn’t find the right word for experience to go in my upside down tram. The expression isn’t one I’ve ever used either.

    Nice puzzle overall with some wit and imagination along the way.

    I was nobbut a lad when all those westerns were about so the ones I remember most fondly are the ones aimed at children, particularly Champion the Wonder Horse and Casey Jones (if indeed it qualifies).

  19. Around 20 minutes, ending with CHAFFINCH, which I actually solved from wordplay, since we don’t have that bird over here, I believe. HEROD was very good, beyond that, though, not much else to say. Regards.
  20. 28ac reminded me of the old saying about singers whose vocal power exceed their finesse: he’s less bel canto than can belto.
  21. 12 minutes over lunch, fun crossword with nice surfaces. Didn’t do myself any favors initially by putting BELLOW OUT at 28. AMONITLLADO a word I know from Monty Python, and as was mentioned before, CHEERIO and MARE’S NEST have been in similar puzzles recently. Everytime I see CHARYBDIS in a grid I wonder if it’s a nod to another setter.
  22. 12:11 for me, taking simply ages to get started, but then plodding through fairly steadily. Nice puzzle.
  23. Nice to find this blog. I’ve been doing these puzzles for a few years now, but never encountered anyone else who ever worked them. I see my solving times will have to get upgraded! My only issue is that in the US these puzzles appear in Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post – I hate to line his pockets with a dollar just in order to do the puzzle – I read the bridge column too then throw out the rest of the paper.
    2. Welcome aboard! If you stick around, you’ll find a number of US-based solvers who have come to the Times in various ways. (Also, a number of Murdoch refuseniks who like the on-line Crossword Club because that way they can do the crossword without having to buy an actual paper, even if the money ends up going in the same direction…)

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