Times 25441

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I struggled a bit with this missing some gifts along the way but got there in the end in a couple of minutes over the hour. I didn’t know the family tree and the French writer eluded me until the very end but otherwise it all seems quite straightforward in retrospect so I’ll put my difficulties down to blogger’s nerves (again).

Across
1 TRUMPERY – TRUMPEt,ReallY
5 SCALES – dd
10 ASTIR – ASTI,cellaR
11 PROXIMATE – OX (beef) inside PRIMATE (man)
12 WARHORSES – Hearts,OR,Spades (choice of suits), inside WARES (merchandise)
13 EGHAM – EatinG,HAM
14 REALISE – RE, vALISE
16 DOO-WOP – PrOm, WOOD all reversed. Sir Henry Wood founded the Proms in 1895. No doo-wop in his day of course but I dare say it has probably turned up there in recent years.
18 ADRIFT – A,Daughter,RIFT(fault)
20 DISSENT – Djibouti,IS,SENT
22 OMEGA – O, M, AGE reversed
23 YELLOWFIN – LOW (down) in FINELY*
25 SPIRITUAL – Southern, Plantation, Involving, RITUAL (religious activity)
26 PUTTO – PUT (posed),TiepolO
27 THE END – THE E (you), caN, reaD
28 CHEYENNE – Sounds like “shy Anne”. The native American tribe.

Down
1 TEAMWORK – WORM* inside TEAK (wood)
2 UTTER – pUTTER
3 PERSONIFICATION – (CAPONE IS IN FOR IT)*
4 RIPOSTE – OST (East in German) inside RIPE (ready)
6 CRIME DOES NOT PAY – (ECONOMIST PRAYED)* – Edit: Thanks to Andy B for pointing out that I abbreviated the negative in error.
7 LOATHSOME – LO, then Snowman inside AT HOME (comfortable)
8 STEMMA – STEM (stop), MA (old lady). A new word on me.
9 DOUSED – DO (note), USED (not new)
15 ANDRÉ GIDE – AND (as well as), REG1cIDE.
17 STANHOPE – (ONES PATH)*
19 THYMUS – Hidden
20 DELILAH – L (lake) inside HAILED (called) reversed
21 COSSET – CO (care of), TESS (girl) reversed
24 FUTON – P/FUT ON

30 comments on “Times 25441”

  1. 58 minutes, with the unknown STEMMA last to fall. THYMUS unfamiliar and TRUMPERY only previously known as a noun.

    A couple where I was barking up the wrong tree were 14, where I thought the literal was case and was working round ablative, dative etc., and 13, where I first put Esher, and then corrected to EGHAM on the basis that it was EG[g]+HAM, two items to be found in a delicatessen, with a ‘vacation’ in the middle somewhere. Of course, Jack is right.

    Fortunately for me, it was all rather academic, as we lived for many years in proximate Virginia Water, which meant that Egham could go in primarily from the literal. I imagine the STEMMA/EGHAM cross may prove difficult to those who knew neither.

  2. Right again Ulaca! Didn’t know STEMMA and also tried ESHER. Even with EGHAM in, I didn’t understand “on vacation, eating” until reading Jack’s blog — for which much thanks.

    Wasn’t there a song (re 28ac) with “We have our reservations” and regarded even then as derogatory in the context of Indigenous Americans?

    May I suggest this as an antidote?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKKX-H3NMNI

    1. Not sure if I’m right again, but it always strikes me as so much nonsense when you first more or less eradicate a group of peoples and then get all worked up about semantics.
  3. 40′ and failed to get either EGHAM or STEMMA; I also put in ‘Esher’, which I somehow had heard of (could have been in Yorkshire or Devon for all I knew), even though its relation to the clue was, ah, tenuous, and just gave up on 8d.’On vacation, eating’ is quite good, though. We’ve had CHEYENNE before, with probably a similar clue. The Cheyenne, by the way, are Indians. They’re native Americans, of course, but then, so am I; you’re not likely to hear an Indian refer to himself as a ‘Native American’.
  4. On the one hand I suppose the clue written as “King’s killing …” might be a bit obvious.

    On the other the use of “King’s killer” (in reference to the ‘process’/’act’ that caused the demise of the regent) seems a bit clumsy.

    Comments???

    1. ‘Regicide’ refers to the perpetrator as well as the action. Same with ‘suicide’, etc.
      1. If you were a G & S fan, Ulaca, you could have quoted Ko-ko on the tomtit: “And an echo arose from the suicide’s grave”.
        1. I’m more of fan of them separately than as a pair, especially Sullivan, although I’m no great expert on his work. Something to add to my YouTube ‘To listen to’ list.
      2. help me out here …

        King chokes to death on chicken bone. Newspaper headline is “King’s killer was chicken” ?

        King is choked to death by an assassin. Newspaper headline is “King’s killer was regicide” ?

        1. The first is okay but the second is tautologous. The headline ‘Chicken’s meat is chicken’ would fall into much the same category. Which headline writer would use either?

          Of course, The Sun might write, ‘Chicken was regicide’, but only, I would suggest, if she (the chook) were alive at the time of the event and, say, plucked his eyes out and sent him into cardiac arrest.

          Edited at 2013-04-05 07:30 am (UTC)

  5. Straightforward except for the French author de jour, my loi. 24 minutes. Also took a minute or two to sort out Epsom/Esher/Egham
  6. 25 minutes, not so dense as yesterday’s but somehow more fun.
    No issue with king’s killer as definition for regicide, but this was very much for me a “lucky guess before you see the wordplay” clue. I knew AND had to be in there somewhere, but didn’t detach the “leading” before solving. Much memory racking on people who had killed kings in the process.
    I thought SPIRITUAL had a rather generous &lit-ish sort of clue – the wordplay could be entirely ignored, though it was actually rather neat.
    STEMMA needed the (thankfully easy) wordplay, to create a word which looked as if it might belong to the phylum-genus collection. Only then did EGHAM go in – liked the “on vacation” device. CRIME… only went in writing out all the available crossing letters horizontally – I wasn’t looking for specific maxim.
    Beef=OX has cropped up a few times recently, and I have missed it every time. Non-kicking leg is getting quite sore.
  7. Enjoyable 20 minute puzzle with no quibbles

    Got STEMMA from wordplay and a vague recollection of seeing before. Thought immediately of EGHAM because my daughter went to uni there and associated “ham” with “deli” without working out the rest of it. Didn’t know the author but again wordplay very straightforward.

    25A SPIRITUAL is an interesting clue. It’s very clever in its wordplay but all of that is wasted because a reading of it leads immediately to the answer given the checkers already in place. Much the same is true of 27A THE END

    1. Indeed, and I had considered it both as &lit and as a double definition before I came to write the blog and spotted the actual wordplay.
  8. 6 of course ‘crime does not pay’. Gave up on Andre Gide though well aware of him, always having liked the title ‘Et Nunc Manet in Te’. Not that I’ve read it. Otherwise slow and deliberate but on the way. Held up for ever by the invisible thymus. There was a boy at school nicknamed Egham because he lived there. A trumpery recollection but at least it gives me the pleasure of using that adjective. Another day on which I seemed to be running on a quarter of a cylinder. Or maybe you’re all getting better en masse and I’m staying the same.
  9. Thought this was quite tough. Didn’t know STEMMA or ANDRE GIDE and spent a couple of minutes on ASTIR for my LOI.
  11. 28 minutes for me over two sessions – I did use a little bit of Tippex but not on the words Penfold mentions. I did one of Andre Gide’s works for French A level so didn’t have a problem with him.
  12. I found this a lot tougher than yesterday’s (a same wavelength 11 mins) and it took me 30 mins. Despite getting PROXIMATE fairly quickly I found the NE difficult to unlock. I didn’t see 6 down for ages because I know the expression as “crime doesn’t pay”, and Jack has even put that version of it in his blog. 6 down only fell into place once I solved 5 across after I finally remembered the Richter scale. This is one of those crosswords that on post-solve reflection looks easier than it felt during the solve.

    Andy B.

  13. 19:08 with the top half harder than the bottom.

    I had to rely on wordplay to get stemma, thymus and Andre Gide. I was thrown on the latter as I’d just spotted a bit on the BBC website about new film of M.L. King’s killer having been released so feeling pretty pleased with myself I was trying to make the clue fit around one or more elements of James Earl Ray.

    If I had any tippex it would have got an outing today on ripeste/riposte and sheyanne/cheyanne/cheyenne.

    I enjoyed the clue for spiritual but yellowfin gets my COD vote. Very neat.


  14. All but the unknown STEMMA (and EGHAM), today, as I too put in esher without understanding the wordplay. And I didn’t understand the on vacation bit until mcchoc queried it just above. Was beginning to think I was the only one who hadn’t got it.

    Ah well, glad to see the end of this week’s puzzles… have found them trickier than many recently…

  15. Found this took me well over the hour, not getting an entry until 26.
    Many clues were no harder than normal so I don’t why I had so much trouble. 23 took me an age because the only tuna I knew was the bluefin; only when I got the Y from THYMUS did I realise what it must be.
  16. I found this tough. As most other solvers seem to have found it pretty straightforward, I can only conclude that I was simply not on this setter’s wavelength, or that the brain cells were sparking more slowly than usual this morning. 15 dn (ANDRE GIDE) was a case in point. I spotted almost at once that the wordplay required the removal of “ci” from “regi[ci]de”, but then took an unaccountable age to come up with the writer’s name, despite having read French at university and knowing his works well. Infuriating.

    I agree with Jimbo that 12 ac (SPIRITUAL) is an interesting clue, but in my case the definition seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe it could be right. So I delayed entering it for some time, and never spotted the clever wordplay (thanks for explaining it, Jack), assuming instead that the clue was a feeble &lit or double def of some kind. The NE corner caused serious problems, as I’d never heard of STEMMA and initially went for ESHER rather than EGHAM. In the end, I only completed with resort to aids.

  17. About 25 minutes, actually getting the wordplay to find EGHAM, and having to check afterwards that it and STEMMA existed. New to me. But my LOI was actually ADRIFT, since I was totally flummoxed by the reference to the Mary Celeste. I hadn’t known the first thing about that before looking that up to discover the story of the abandoned ship.It helped to get the two long ones early. Regards.
    1. Hi Kevin,

      Interesting that you don’t know the Mary Celeste. Whilst I couldn’t tell you where or when the incident occurred or which country she belonged to the idiomatic use is very common over here, although more in a sense of deserted than adrift. For instance we might comment that a sparsely populated office or pub is “like the bleedin’ Mary Celeste”.

  18. 23m. I found this tricky, and there were a few I didn’t understand. I thought SPIRITUAL was a DD, and thought the wine in ASTIR was IT (“wine back”), so understandably struggled to interpret the rest of the clue! I also failed to see the “on vacation” device. So thanks to Jack for the explanations.
  19. Three missing today: Loathsome, Doo-Wop and Andre Gide. NE corner was the most difficult part for me.
  20. 12:39 for me. This was very much my sort of puzzle and there was a time when I’d have sizzled through it. But sadly those days are long gone and I made heavy weather of several clues which I ought to have solved on sight. (Sigh!) Still, not a total disaster, and really I found it all most enjoyable.

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