Times 25423

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 47:29

I started quickly enough getting 1a and then the long one down the middle straight away, but I slowed down quite a lot towards the end, getting held up for about 10 minutes at the very end on the 3d/8a pair.

On the whole it was an enjoyable puzzle, with some excellent surface readings. I think 27a was my favourite so that can be my COD. I had no problem with either KETONE or WARFARIN which several people have mentioned as being unfamiliar. The only words that were unfamiliar to me were CAROLEAN, EVERSION and BOGY. I’ve come across all of them before, just not for a while.

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

Across
1 DOUBLE CHIN – could be a clue to CHIN-CHIN (good health!)
6 DO + PE
8 CAROL + EA + N – I have come across this word before, but it refused to come to my mind for the longest time.
9 TOCSIN = “TOXIN” – I remembered this one from a previous crossword.
10 BO(G)Y – I had always assumed this was spelt with an E as in the golfing term, but this couldn’t really be anything else.
11 SERBO-CROAT = (SCARE + ROBOT)*
12 ASTEROIDS = I in (ASSORTED)*
14 STEEL – rev hidden
17 DA(DD)Y
19 HE + B(RIDE)AN
22 THI(RD + PA)RTY
23 LIAR = RAIL rev
24 KETONE = “KEY TONE”
25 WARFARIN = WARN about (FAR + I)
26 JEAN – dd
27 THREADBARE = (HATE BARRED)*
Down
1 DUCK + BOARD
2 UPRIGHT – think pianos
3 E-VERSION – dd
4 HUNDRED YEARS WAR = (WAY SURRENDER HAD)*
5 NOTION = NATION without the A, and with a O in its place
6 DE(CO-RAT)ED
7 PRIM(A + T)E
13 EIDERDOWN = (WE’D IRONED)*
15 LONG + RANGE
16 GREY-AREA – dd – the first referring to an area of grey hair.
18 ATHLETE = fATHEr about LET
20 ERITREA = (RETIRE)* + A
21 UPBEAT – dd

46 comments on “Times 25423”

  1. Around 50 minutes for all bar WARFARIN, which defeated me, as well as the other chemical compound, where I hazarded ‘metone’. Not a good couple of days for me, as I also plumped for that well known form of marriage ‘mortaganic’ yesterday.

    Eritrea is fast becoming the ‘bra’ of African nations.

  3. 32 minutes, so not a stinker despite earlier speculation, however I still got one wrong as it’s no use asking me to come up with a chemical to fit checkers ?E?O?E. Before resorting to aids I had put GENOME which I wouldn’t think qualifies as such anyway. The other problem was that in my ignorance I would have pronounced KETONE as “kett-own” rather than “key-tone” so the homophone was of no help. On reflection I was only applying logic as one doesn’t (I hope) pronounce “ketamine” as “key-tamine”.

    1ac was excellent and I enjoyed the Rat Pack reference, but I wasn’t familiar with JEAN as a material in its own right and can’t establish that PRIME at 7dn is necessarily monastic so that threw me a bit. BOGY (no E) was unfamiliar too.

    Edited at 2013-03-15 01:49 am (UTC)

  4. No problems with the left-hand side; the right a bit harder and the NE harder still. My LOI was the PRIMATE. Another Francis to go with the clue at 6dn? Also noted that the outgoing Pope is regarded as more of a theologian than the new one; 17ac. So it’s a pity there isn’t a PECORATED to go in at 6dn.

    Anyone with better ideas than I have about RAIL as “characters in the bar” (23ac)?

    Edited at 2013-03-15 03:49 am (UTC)

    1. Seems odd to me, as the bars are the ‘characters’ of/in a rail and not vice-versa.
  5. Definitely no stinker, and also not that impressive a puzzle. I thought 1ac was cute, but it struck me as awfully easy somehow, as it went right in, followed by 6ac and 9ac, giving me false hopes about solving time. I was going to comment on ERITREA, but Ulaca beat me to it. If I parsed 5d correctly, it’s ‘nation’ with ‘o’ inserted, and then ‘a’ removed; a new way to switch letters, I think. Thanks to Dave for explaining WARFARIN, which I got on the basis of checkers–Warfarin (a blood-thinning drug?) is one of those drugs that if I took it I shouldn’t take one of the drugs that I do take, which is how I know of it. (I wonder how it’s pronounced. I’ve always assumed that it’s homophonous with what the good ol’ boys at the Pentagon are so fond of.) COD, if COD there be, to 3d.
      1. Started life as a rat poison, but it’s also an anti-coagulant. It may be sold under a different name–it has several–in your neck of the woods.
  6. This puzzle perhaps suffers from its in-references to the setter’s art at 1ac, 27ac and 5dn, which together, especially, give it a slightly forced feel.
  7. 25m, with five at the end on KETONE. Not a chemical I’m familiar with, so I had to do a lot of alphabet-hopping before I realised the reference to firmness must be TONE.
    CAROLEAN, TOCSIN and WARFARIN were all vaguely familiar. I think I even half-knew the prayer.
    I rather enjoyed this: quite chewy in parts.
  8. Just over 19 minutes, so definitely not the feared stinker, but no pushover either.
    I did wonder whether there might be a valid alternative to JEAN, and at 5d almost put in NATION because it described the first word of the clue.
    Is there a rule on GREY/GRAY? Unchecked, it seems mean to those who habitually spell it one way to brand it incorrect.
    “Delved (?among)” struck me as a slightly dodgy insertion indicator in 12, and for a while, given the “among”, I was looking for a synonym to drop into something that meant “Various assorted”.
    WARFARIN is familiar enough to those of us with significant grey areas. KEYTONE was OK so long as you forgot that your litany of chemicals was limited. I’m pleased to see that I’ve been pronouncing it right all these years.
    Quite liked 1ac.
    1. I think of grey as English, gray as North American. Chambers seems to agree with me. I only hesitated long enough to think “if this is gray I’m going to be really cross”.
  9. Just under 23 minutes but with a lazy nation not thinking through to notion. Yesterday which was my 70th birthday was a 22 min., so hope I can keep to this kind of level. Recovering from tetrathlon of pitch-and-putt, table-tennis, darts and poker with my two sons who kindly took the day off work to keep the competitive fires burning. The older one some 40 years ago got up before me one day and filled in the Times grid with random letters, proudly declaring when I came downstairs, “I’ve done the crossword for you, Daddy!”
    1. Happy birthday!
      Nice story. It’s the sort of thing one of my kids might do but they’d have to download the puzzle on my iPad first.
    2. Welcome to the distinguished club of those aged 70+ I’m having the time of my life and it sounds as if you are too
    3. Nice story. My favourite is the one (a true story I believe) about the chap who commuted to London from Surrey or somewhere like that everyday on the train and couldn’t do the crossword. His wife, however, was a whizz at it so she would wake up early and fill it in lightly using a pencil. He would then turn to the crossword in the train and impress the whole carriage by filling it in! Not sure if someone asked him to explain one of the answers….

      Enjoyed today’s and always enjoy this blog, keep it up all of you.

      SP in Nairobi, Kenya.

    4. My cat does my crossword for me sometimes. I’m trying to teach him not to walk across the keyboard.

      Congratulations and welcome to the club (I’ve only been a member for a month).

      Edited at 2013-03-15 06:59 pm (UTC)

  10. My rusty chemistry helped to get me through this is 23 minutes, only had to check TOCSIN was something to do with alarms and all was tickety-boo. An enjoyable puzzle rated 6 on my Moh scale.
  11. Yet another easy 15 minute puzzle. No problem with the chemicals but wasn’t sure about “prime” and put in “grey” on the basis of using UK spelling. My blog spot is hovering on the horizon and the much forecast stinker is still awaited.
  12. Much, much easier than the expected horror, but still managed to get one LETTER wrong: I had ketose. But should have got KETONE, having come across it as a side effect of the dreaded Atkins diet (produced if not enough carbs are taken on board, I think). WARFARIN familiar as a blood thinning drug used by people prone to strokes, I believe. Put in GREY without contemplating an alternative.

    Ended up with EVERSION. Good puzzle.

    Edited at 2013-03-15 10:54 am (UTC)

  13. 11:03, so the second shoe has yet to fall. Rather more tricky than the last few in terms of vocabulary, if not wordplay, though someone I know has just finished a course of warfarin, which made that leap to mind at once. I think TOCSIN is one of those words which fits in the category of “obscure words I only know because of crosswords in the first place” so didn’t take much prompting.

    Once I’d read through 5dn several times to make sure I had the substitution the right way round, the only real delay was going alphabetically through _E_N for girls’ names, and eventually failing to reach anything more compelling than my first thought of JEAN (though I imagine I’m not the only person who had the nagging thought “Hang on, surely jeans aren’t made of “jean”, they’re made of denim, so this could be a trap”)…

    1. It’s all very French, Tim

      The original material was called serge and it was made in Nimes, hence serge de Nimes, hence denim. The French exported it to Genoa in Italy where it was made into clothes. The French for Genoa is Genes.

      1. That’s very erudite Jimbo thanks. For me, once again Georgette Heyer to the rescue. The fashionable ladies sometimes wear boots made of orange jean. Wouldn’t stand up to the grey slush puddles on the street corners of NY but of course they rode in carriages.
  14. Wrote in CAROLINE without parsing it properly at 8ac, then amended it to -IAN, without validation as soon as I saw 4dn. So had to put EMISSION at 3dn as LOI, being unable to find anything else to fit checkers. Grrr.
    Knew JEAN as a material from the uncapitalised names I remember as useful for Scrabble.
  15. I thought this was going to be tough because of the wordy clues, and I then kicked off with SPANISH CIVIL WAR for 4D, purely on the definition and enumeration (really got to stop doing that …) However it came out quite easily, starting with WARFARIN and then an anti-clockwise fill from the SE corner, fixing 4D along the way. Pondered the grey/gray ambiguity as well as not being 100% sure about JEAN.
    1. Indeed, after Print Preview I had to reset the page to 89% to get all the clues on one sheet. For years my setting was 95% with never a problem but I was forced to change it to 90% a few months ago to accommodate a series of puzzles with long clues. Now it seems not even that setting can be relied upon.
  16. 30 minutes for this. Like others, expected a stinker and found another fairly easy one.
    There seemed to be a lot of verbiage in this puzzle. “one of the fathers” for DADDY; “characters in the bar” for RAIL; I’m not sure which words contribute to the indication of LONG in 15 (“desperate to go”?), but none of them singly or jointly seems to make a satisfactory synonym.
    26 is a very dull clue for JEAN and I don’t think the question-mark after “puzzles” in 27 rescues what strikes me as a dubious anagrind.
    5, 7 and 22, with decent surfaces, were the best of a rather mediocre lot in my view. Sorry, setter, but not my favourite puzzle of the week.
    1. I meant to mention that I didn’t really understand this when solving either. The best I could come up with was that “making one desperate” was the definition, on the basis that a bad full-length performance of Hamlet might make one desperate, for instance. I can’t say I’m entirely convinced.
    2. It sounds to me as if you simply don’t appreciate a good surface reading when you see one. As for 26, I’d have thought it was a first-class clue for JEAN – that is, assuming you’ve heard of Madonna, and even an old fogey like me has come across Material Girl.
      1. I should have thought that many of my comments in the past have indicated that I do appreciate good surfaces, especially if they are linked with tightly constructed cryptics. I’ve always made clear on this and other sites that the setters I admire are those that achieve both. Incidentally, I’m not the only one who’s made some negative comments on the puzzle.

        I’m obviously older and fogier than you since ‘Material Girl’ means nothing to me, but even if it did, how relevant is it here since the g of girl is lower case? In any case, JEAN has been clued in this way so many times that I find it dull even if there’s a potential witty musical reference.

  17. With kevingregg in that this seems a little uneven, but as others have said there are some very enjoyable moments. THREADBARE tickles me the most, though I like the anagram way/surrender/had too.

    47 minutes.

    Chris.

  18. 15:44 .. well, I enjoyed it.

    One of those puzzles I know I would have found very difficult when I was first solving.

    COD .. DOUBLE CHIN, which made me smile when the penny dropped.

    Edited at 2013-03-15 01:38 pm (UTC)

  19. Enjoyed this one. The setter’s Double Chin and Grey Area both raised smiles. Thankfully the Grey/Gray ambiguity never occurred to me. One wrong though – Nation not Notion at 5dn – and one careless misspelling – Lier not Liar at 23ac!! No major problems with the rest. Thanks Dave for parsing Athlete – I couldn’t see how that worked in my haste to finish. Luckily I plumped for the unknown Jean over the less likely Fern.
  20. I was expecting a tougher challenge than this and was surprised when I finished in my fastest time for the week – 7 minutes. I too was a fan of 1a.

  21. As a type 2 diabetic I have to be wary of ketones in my blood. They make your pee smell of pear drops!
  22. Just on the 30m today so pretty straightforward steady solve, with hesitations on KETONE and JEAN. Thanks for blog asWARFARIN was a guess and also to Jimbo for explanation of DENIM etc.
  23. About 25 minutes, having to sort through the alphabet for KETONE at the end. Warfarin from checking letters, really. Thanks to Dave, and to Jimbo for the background on denim jeans, which I never knew. Fascinating. For the puzzle, I’ll throw my COD to DOUBLE CHIN. Regards.
  24. 41 minutes today, and I thought it a bit unfair not to have a crossing letter for the GREY/GRAY ambiguity. COD to NOTION (nice and involved) and UPRIGHT. There is a doctor at Karolingska Hospital in Stockholm who writes murder mysteries in her spare time and in one of them WARFARIN was the murder weapon — I would never have known it otherwise. Other strange words like TOCSIN and KETONE did ring a faint bell somewhere.
  25. 7:25 here for another most enoyable puzzle with some first-rate clues (including an old chestnut at 1ac :-).

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