Times 25429

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
36 minutes for this with 5dn and 13ac taking me over the 30 minute mark. A nice set of clues with only half a niggle and one clue perhaps not entirely understood.

Across
1 FAWN – W (wicket) inside FAN (cooler)
3 ADAMS APPLE – PP (very quietly in music) inside ADAM’S ALE (water)
10 GROUNDSEL – ROUNDS (periods of fighting) inside GEL (set)
11 CONGA – CONGo (major river almost), A
12 RAFFISH – RAF (part of armed forces), -ISH (like). To my mind that leaves an F unaccounted for but I expect there are precedents for doubling up the last letter of a word when adding a suffix.
13 ABSEIL – AB (rating in navy), SEIL (LIES, is prone reversed)
15 HALL OF RESIDENCE – Anagram of CELL REFASHIONED
18 A FAREWELL TO ARMS – The 1929 novel by Ernest Hemingway and a reference to the famous statue by Alexandros of Antioch (qv 7dn yesterday)
21 WINGED – WhINGED
23 TOCCATA – TO, “CARTER”. A virtuoso piece of music. Bach wrote possibly the most famous one with a fugue attached for organ. Edit: Thanks to ulaca for mentioning Vidor’s Toccata which I suspect is more widely known these days than the Bach because of its popularity as a wedding voluntary e.g. at Will’s & Kate’s (nearly) two years ago.
26 ICIER – ICI (here on foreign trip), ER (monarch)
27 GANGPLANK – GANG (company), PLAN (scheme), K (Joseph K is the main character in Kafka’s ‘The Trial’)
28 KHYBER PASS – Anagram of PESKY RASH + Broke
29 PELT – Triple definition: run, fall hard (like rain), trophy (as in hunting).

Down
1 FIGUREHEAD
2 WOOLF – WOOL (something spun), F(fine). Virginia Woolf 1882-1941.
4 DISCHARGE – Anagram of Duke HIS GRACE
5 MALTA – M (minute), ALTAr (table a bit short)
6 ACCUSED – ACCUrSED
7 PENSIONER – PENS (writes), 1 – ONE (one all), Report. An inmate of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.
8 EGAD – D (daughter), AGE (long time) all reversed. Definition ‘My!’
9 INDIGO – INDIa (sort of rubber almost), GO (success)
14 MESS JACKET – MESS (sloppy food, as in Eton mess) , JACKET (sort of potato, in its skin)
16 LIABILITY – LIe (not finishing pork pie – crs), ABILITY (capacity)
17 SPLIT ENDS – SPLIT being the town and ENDS its boundaries.
19 EN GARDE – GAR (cloth reversed), inside ENDEd (almost completed)
20 OCCUPY – OC (officer), CUP (vessel), Y (unknown)
22 DIG UP – GI (soldier) inside PUD (Yorkshire, say) all reversed.
24 APACE – PA (old man) inside ACE (serve in tennis)
25 PINK – In snooker the pink ball is worth 6 points and the green is worth 3. I’m not quite sure about the grazing reference. It may be something to do with ancient grazing rights which I’ve a vague idea has  come up before, but I could be confusing it with something else. If not that, then* PINK and ‘graze’ are both terms for a superficial wound. *Edit: I’ll scrap that idea as I can’t find any support for it and no-one has volunteered anything.

40 comments on “Times 25429”

  1. Agree, to pink as in to wound. Without the double ‘f’, we would have ‘rafish’, as in ‘like Ralph Fiennes’, so no problem there.

    GROUNDSEL because it had to be, but held up by MALTA and CONGA. 28 minutes, though, so a rare sub-30.

    Vidor’s Toccata from his Organ Symphony is particularly fine and often used as a voluntary after a church service.

    Two books that mean something to me in – or nearly in – this puzzle: Hemingway’s was the first book I read at one sitting (in Windsor Great Park) and Kafka’s Castle, which features another ‘K’ (without the ‘Josef’), is to me his finest work. It could have been written about Hong Kong, and, I suppose, a few other countries besides.

    Edited at 2013-03-22 03:39 am (UTC)

  2. Also assumed PINK and “graze” (when not galahs!) were related to scraped skin. But wouldn’t have put the house on it. My problem came right at the end with PELT; if only because BELT = “run” & “trophy” (in boxing). Could there be some obscure meaning where it could also be “fall hard”?

    No, thought not!

    1. …and the more, um, creative part of my brain managed to make it fit a triple definition.
    2. Yes – according to ODO “belt” = to fall hard like rain. I think we could have an alternative answer here.
      1. I went for BEAT. To get to the trophy means to beat others and the rain does beat down?
  3. Much easier than some of late, but sadly I was snookered at 25dn, where I had pick. Didn’t understand the cryptic for TOCCATA, so thanks for that. Liked SPLIT ENDS.
  4. Got Raffish at once having served 26 years. In those days we were told never, ever to call it the Raf, it had to be spelt out r, a, f, or referred to in full, Royal Air Force.
    1. It’s an interesting one, given that a women’s branch of the RAF, the Women’s Royal Air Force, known as WRAF, pronounced ‘raff’, existed in two separate incarnations.

      Notwithstanding that, the strongest evidence for the fact that in popular usage, the R.A.F. was called ‘raff’ by hoi polloi is the fact that servicemen were told they must never adopt that usage.

  5. 20.13, last in pelt. Raffish as foppish etc. I’ll take ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ any day over AFTA or anything else Hemingway wrote. With just the old man and the young boy the macho element’s contained. ‘Engage’ for ‘occupy’?
    1. The 7th definition of “engage” in Chambers is “to hold or occupy”. I thought of the locks on loos.
  6. 11m. Might have been under 10 if my brain hadn’t shown me Botticelli’s painting instead of the sculpture. Strange.
    I didn’t fully understand PINK but I remembered that the word has many meanings and had played enough snooker to be sure.
    Straightforward but still nice.
  7. Couldn’t get going initially and had mind set on “tricky” when the two long ones went in without resistance and the walls came tumblin’ down.
    Apart from TOCCATA, that is, where I was determined to understand the cryptic and couldn’t, forgetting pick up could be the homophone indicator. Still put it in, and finished in around 17 minutes.
    I would have PINK making a hole with such as a rapier, and graze as more of a surface scrape, but, hey, who’s counting?
    CoD to FIGUREHEAD, even if it is, as it may well be, a venerable chestnut.
  8. 28/30. Quick progress today all the way down to the SE corner where I foundered on Pelt and Mess Jacket. Jacket for potato just wouldn’t come to mind. Pelt’s easy once explained but four-letter words without the starting letter can be tricky. Groundsel and Toccata from wordplay. Enjoyed Figurehead. Thanks Jack for deciphering Gangplank.

    Snowy up here this morning in Alderley Edge. Am playing my first round of golf of the year tomorrow and I was hoping I’d not have to wear a bobblehat and mittens!

  9. did this one quite quickly and put in malta for 5 down without understanding it completely- get the m and the short altar but why dwelling place? do we assume that anywhere with people is a dwelling place? is that simply it?
    1. I suppose anywhere where people dwell can be so described, though the mind more naturally goes to house or some such. Mine did.
  10. 20 minutes for a fun puzzle with some interesting words like CONGA and EGAD. Enjoyed “detached dwelling place” for an island

    Had the same queries as others. There’s no homophone indicator at 12A and there should be whilst the homophone at 23A doesn’t work for me. I got PINK from the snooker and still don’t see the “graze” reference.

    I thought the setter missed an interesting opportunity to involve rhyming slang at 28A

    2. I didn’t read 12ac as a homophone. If you’re like the RAF you’re RAFFISH. As joekobi says above, it’s like foppish. Also yobbish, caddish, cattish…
        1. I just don’t see (or hear!) how this is a homophone. A theoretical answer to the second part of your clue would be AREAYEFFISH!

          Edited at 2013-03-22 11:21 am (UTC)

  11. Perhaps the easiest one of the last 2 weeks, though I spent a bit of time mulling over MALTA as my LOI, as the definition seemed rather vague.
  12. Totally foxed by the PINK clue. I went for ‘nick’. Snooker never entered my mind at all.
  14. Totally foxed by my own stupidity.

    Whilst I can forgive myself for going with belt I panicked and went for Cinna at 11, totally put off the scent by “major”. Whilst I can locate a praetor, a consul, a poet and a priest of that name it seems none were majors. Finding a river/wiggly line combo that gets me to Cinna has been an equally fruitless search.

    16:05 but for that.

  15. Easy one this, 14 mins & no problems. Not worried about the homophone or the raffish raciness – thanks Keriothe for the proof, with the list of similar words. I put in pelt happily enough, but I have a sympathy with anyone who put belt, which I think is an adequate alternative. Indeed rain belts down as well as pelts, and a boxing trophy is a belt..
    I wasn’t terribly keen on Malta however; unlike Jimbo I thought the definition rather loose, just me I suppose
  16. 12 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed, despite getting one wrong, much to my surprise – turns out I am in the BELT camp. Does it work as well as PELT? Probably not (i.e. if I had spotted pelt first, I’d have put that in without even thinking there might be possible alternatives). Is it just as valid? I’d certainly say so, but I guess we would need a judgement from the Crossword Editor to discover whether I’m right to think that…
    1. Tim, I’ve already posted a comment in the TCC Cryptics Forum saying that I’m prepared to accept BELT for my weekly TCC leaderboard. Can you let me know your exact time (mm:ss) and score (I assume BELT was your only mistake) either here or in the Cryptics Forum?
      1. Cheers, Tony. I was 12:25, to be precise on time, and the dubious BELT was my only error.
  17. Once again held up by the final 2 or 3 LOIs, but this time got 2 of them wrong. Put in ‘nick’ for PINK–a comfort to see that Sotira did the same–I know nothing of snooker. Finally remembered ABSEIL, but could only come up with ‘melba’–Elba seems like a better candidate for ‘detached dwelling place’ than an overpopulated nation, and it contains the letters of ‘table’ less one, but. Got TOCCATA from the checkers, totally clueless as to how the clue worked; well, I would be, wouldn’t I, and am not particularly disturbed at not having got it.
  18. Around 40m for a DNF with LIABILITY my drag today though I am also in the belt camp. Enjoyable and thanks for blog – couldn’t see how ABSEIL worked.
  19. Oops. I got PINK, but I’m in the BELT brigade. I’ll confess that I didn’t know the ‘run’ sense of either BELT or PELT. I don’t know much rhyming slang, but based on Jimbo’s comment, and what rhymes with KHYBER PASS, I can form some idea of what would have tempted the setter at 28. EGAD. Regards to all.
  20. A generally excellent puzzle. But like many others, I was mystified by “pink = “graze” at 25 dn. I note that some claim to know this meaning, but I can’t find any sanction for it in any of my dictionaries – the nearest being “to stab or pierce” or “cut a serrated edge on”, neither of which is the same as “graze”.
    1. The best I could find was in the Oxford Dictionary of English:

      To wound or nick (someone) slightly with a weapon or missile.

      1. I can cite an authority – my mother!

        She sometimes uses ‘pink’ for ‘graze’ (which makes my getting the clue wrong a bit embarrassing). It was only reading the later comments that the association sprang to mind. She’s of West Country farming stock, and I recall her parents and siblings using it, too, as in:

        “Little Billy’s pinked his knee, poor chap.”

  21. 26 minutes today. But I was another in the BELT brigade. I saw it as a triple definition but thought BELT could also mean to “fall heavily”. PELT is much better – but I just didn’t think of it. I put in TOCCATA from the definition and the checkers but the homophone didn’t work for me and I couldn’t see the cryptic. (I pronounce it TOCATTA not TOCARTER) LOI was MALTA. I was put of by “dwelling” as part of the definition. I hadn’t thought of ALTAr as the short table so was reliant on the definition. I don’t think of islands primarily as dwelling places. Most islands are probably uninhabited. Ann
    1. “Once upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee….”. (Kipling)
  22. Oh dear! My bad patch continued with a vengeance today. I started off slowly, but then picked up a little speed with the two long across answers. However, I became stuck for what must have been six or seven minutes on EN GARDE (having parsed the clue wrongly) and WINGED. I then dithered for another minute or so over PINK, not sure about the score for potting green, and worried that NICK seemed to match the definition better. A miserable 20:19.
  23. (cross-posted from the TCC Cryptics Forum)

    For my weekly leaderboard I’m prepared to accept BELT as an alternative to PELT, since all three meanings (run, trophy and fall hard) are supported by Oxford Dictionaries Online for both words.

    Please will anyone who stands to be eliminated because they put BELT let me know their time and points score either on this thread [i.e. the TCC Cryptics Forum thread] or on the TftT blog entry for the day [i.e this one].

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