Times 25443 – A perambulation through an urban amenity

Solving time: 27 minutes

Music: Sibelius, Symphony #2, Schippers/NYP

I found this puzzle a bit on the dull side. The clues, while technically correct, lacked the outrageous wordplay and devious literals that can make solving fun. However, since I have a touch of the flu and just wanted to get on with it and go to bed, I was not too disappointed.

My time did not include analyzing all of the cryptics, so I may have to do some more solving while writing up the blog. However, I am pretty sure my answers are correct – when you have eight crossing letters out of fifteen, it really can’t be anything else.

Across
1 CLAM, C(L)AM. The literal seems a bit off, since ‘a clam’ is usually thought of as reticent but not shy.
3 PASSES OVER, P(ASSES)OVER. Since ‘power’ has an odd number of letters, you have to turn a ‘w’ to a ‘v’ to make it ‘half-hearted’….very clever, or maybe not.
10 LAPTOPS, STOP PAL backwards. I wasted a lot of time trying to make ‘pet’ work.
11 WILLING, W(ILL)ING, where there are two wings on every stage.
12 WEATHER FORECAST, cryptic definition. May be difficult for those living where ‘The Met’ is used to refer to the opera house or the art museum.
13 ROSARY, anagram of A SORRY.
14 TEA PARTY, hidden in [dispu]TE A PART Y[ou]. I wasted some time going over 19th and early 20th century US history before seeing the obvious.
17 REDOUBLE, R(ED)OUBLE.
18 RETURN, double definition, where the second one is a bit loose.
21 APPRENTICESHIPS, anagram of PERHAPS I INSPECT.
23 MARTIAL, double definition for you classicists out there.
24 ROOKING, ROO{K}ING, two chess men sharing a letter.
25 TIE BREAKER, TIE B(R)EAKER, often called a ‘tie break’ in some English-speaking countries.
26 Omitted – a compendium of chestnuts!
 
Down
1 COLD WAR, CO(L)D WAR. A cod clue, or perhaps a COD?
2 APPRAISED, anagram of DISAPPEAR. Very smooth surface, but I was not fooled for long.
4 ASSERT, sounds like A CERT.
5 SAWBONES, WAS upside-down + B[y] + ONES.
6 SELF-EXPRESSION, X PRESS inside anagram of ONE’S LIFE. I didn’t bother with the cryptic while solving.
7 VOILA, cryptic definition.
8 RIGHTLY, RIGHT + [a]L[l]Y. A rather feeble clue.
9 MOTHER SUPERIOR, M + anagram of THE PIOUS ERROR. Another one where the cryptic was not needed.
15 ROUTINISE, ROU(TIN IS)E. Now this one, I couldn’t see at all until I worked the cryptic.
16 FLOTILLA, anagam of ALL OF IT + L[itres].
17 READMIT, READ + MIT, in a different Cambridge than you might expect, and only loosely a college.
19 NOSEGAY, NOS(EGA)Y, i.e. AGE upside down.
20 SCARCE, SCAR(C)E. Surely the correct answer, but I must admit I don’t see exactly why ‘diamonds, say’ are ‘c’. If this is a phonetic clue for ‘ice’, many solvers are not going to like it. Jack has kindly supplied the correct interpretation of ‘diamonds’ in the first comment.
22 PURSE, double definition, where ‘orally’ does not mean ‘sounds like’, it means ‘pertaining to the mouth’, as in ‘purse your lips’.

54 comments on “Times 25443 – A perambulation through an urban amenity”

  1. Couldn’t see the C for “diamonds say” (thanks Jack), so held up with that and ROOKING at the end. Also slightly fooled by where the def could be in WILLING: a good clue. As was (with Ulaca) the one for VOILA. Perhaps a bit of French going on in that corner where the French for W is “double-V”, making “power half-heartedly” (3ac) more sensible in that language?? Liked this a fair bit and will even pass over the cryptic def at 12ac which is about as good as a bad thing gets.

    Edited at 2013-04-08 01:59 am (UTC)

    1. I assumed the def’ for ‘willing’ was ‘prepared’.

      p.s. Not the above Anonymous.

  2. 20dn: Diamonds are an example of Carbon.

    I took a while getting started and then it seemed ages before the answers started to flow from the odd words scattered around the grid, but I completed in 28 minutes which is not bad for me.

    I rather enjoyed some ideas in the clues, such as the overlapping chess pieces and the half-hearted power. All the long answers went in on definition and a couple of checkers without the need to work out all the wordplay.

    Edited at 2013-04-08 01:10 am (UTC)

  3. One wrong. I put ASSURE instead of ASSERT (sounds like “a sure”). I can see now it is wrong but fits all the checkers and I didn’t even think twice about it.

    I came here to find out how diamonds were C and where the YAG in NOSEGAY came from, since “nose” was obviously the important aspect of wine.

    Around 30 mins I guess, but with one wrong.

  4. ‘Hit back’ would be referring to the return of serve in tennis.

    Edited at 2013-04-08 01:26 am (UTC)

  5. Didn’t sleep too good last night and my time and overall effort rather reflected that. Never saw the anagram for APPRAISED, the closest I got to parsing the cheating chessmen was rook+in+g, and had ‘nose’ for important part of wine so was left wondering what gay (or yag) could be doing. Also, couldn’t look past ‘impression’ at 6dn, being slow to cotton on to the ‘Met expectations’ clue.

    RELY – and to a lesser extetn RIGHTLY – may have been weak, but altogether I liked the puzzle, in particular, VOILA and my last in, WILLING.

    1. I think you mean you did not sleep too WELL. Well is an adverb, Good iscan adjective.
      1. Chambers gives “good” as an adverb, qualified by informal US or dialect. Like so much English in use, it’s not wrong, it’s just a variation.
        And another illustrative curiosity. “How did you sleep last night?” “Not bad”.
        1. In Australian English (which is probably where Ulaca got it), you can’t say, in reply to “How are you?”, “Well”. You have to say “Good”. But then I sincerely hope that Ulaca is both good and well.

          Edited at 2013-04-08 08:50 am (UTC)

          1. Hemingway (I think) was apt to say to anyone who suggested he wrote very well with “I don’t write well, I write good.”

            And you know darn well what he meant.

  6. I may have got a PB for the number of obvious solutions that I overlooked while either pursuing various will-o’-the-wisps or just staring at the screen. I also overlooked the fact that 9d was two words. And I forgot about the other Met. Thanks to Jack for explaining SCARCE and to Vinyl for NOSEGAY.
  7. 3ac might work better in French where W is double-V rather than double-U.
  8. SORRY – just saw Mctext’s comment! (Note to self – read ALL the comments next time).
  9. 20.12 for a pleasant outing, a little more testing towards the end, last in scarce. Can’t say I care much for the word routinise though the clue’s OK. Would have liked to have seen less of a gimme for 26. I agree with vinyl1 – the whole could have done with a bit more “snap”. That said, as always, thankyou setter, plain fare but it ministers to the starving.
  10. 14.16, with the slowest corner being the SE, where hit back could have been RE-anything and I was struggling with the wrong meanings of “rake”. There has to be a mechanism for terminating words like routinise with extreme prejudice.
    Don’t think we’ve seen diamonds=C before,and Jack is to be congratulated on unscrewing that one.
    I can’t decide whether “Met expectations” is brilliant and pithy or barely cryptic. Mind you, with different numbering, it might well clue “wrongful arrests” round here.
    CoD to VOILA.
  11. 11m. Not much to say really. Perfectly pleasant amble. Thanks for explaining “orally”, which had me thinking I didn’t know how to spell PURSE. Or possibly PURSE.

  12. Fairly quick one for me today, but with one wrong: I threw in walking for WILLING at the end, without really thinking it through.

    Liked ROOKING, and would have liked PASSES OVER had I been able to see how it worked. Also, thanks for sorting out the cryptic for SELF EXPRESSION.

    Am I missing something with VOILA (I take it that it ‘s just the French – as indicated by ‘mot juste’ – exclamation following something dramatic, which has now become a familiar term to us in the UK)?

    I did, however, get the c=carbon reference at 20dn!

    1. I think the setter’s taking us to something like a magician’s show, where a rabbit may be pulled (produced) from the hat.

      Edited at 2013-04-08 09:29 am (UTC)

      1. Ah, ok, I hadn’t really appreciated the production of something (rabbit) as opposed to production of play. Cheers
        1. Rabbits and doves OK but I think more generally it’s a word to produce for a dramatic effect.
  13. Reasonably straightforward puzzle. Some of the definitions do seem a tad loose – a CLAM suggests to me someone who is being secretive or withholding information rather than someone who is shy, and a BEAKER (25 ac) can just as well, indeed is more likely to, be a plastic cup as a piece of glassware. I liked PASSES OVER, not having met the V = half of W device before, but I guess it cannot be the first time it’s been used. Like VINYL, I entered SELF-EXPRESSION without bothering to work out the wordplay – thanks to him for explaining it.
  14. 14 minutes, with just the right amount of thinking for a Monday morning. I didn’t like the word ROUTINISE, but that’s not the setters’ fault (given my dislike of neologisms, I should be glad I wasn’t a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, with all his made-up words and that).
    1. So you wouldn’t be too pleased that the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) recently reported that it had confidentialised part of a report and hence couldn’t report on it.
      1. I have an old friend with whom I compare observations on the day’s puzzle, over a pint where possible, over the internet when not; he ha similar views on words like that. I warned him that he probably wouldn’t like 15 down, but he replied that he hadn’t done the crossword yet, as he was still recovering from being asked by a colleague to parameterize a request…
        1. Oddly enough, parameterize and hence parameterization and possibly reparameterization if you aren’t happy with the existing formulation, are terms used frequently in statistics, usually in the context of statistical models rather than requests. I suppose you could start “Why equals..” and finish with some combination of Greek letters and Roman letters.
  15. 27.08 today so a better effort at last! I didn’t follow some of the cryptics so thanks to Vinyl for the explanations. My COD to 12a for the smile and its brevity.
  16. 9 minutes – An easy start to the week although I too had to come here to find out why C was diamonds.
  17. I found this a straightforward solve, finishing in 25 minutes. Unlke some others I found nothing to really quibble over and plenty to admire since there were some original bits of wordplay.
    10 was my last entry since I was sure that “familiar turning” would be TAC.
    Thanks, jackkt for the explanation of diamonds in 20.
  18. 14:03 .. with the almost obligatory period of frowning at SCARCE and wondering where the C came from. I ended up assuming it C(arat) and thus loosely clued. So hats off to those few who figured it out. [I gather now that the abbreviation for carat is K or Kt, so I was wrong every which way]

    COD .. WEATHER FORECAST

  19. I think “diamonds” would lead to D while “diamonds, say” might lead to C or S.
  20. Not scintillating perhaps, but a Monday puzzle can sometimes be sedate. I don’t know if the ‘progression of difficulty’ rule still applies to The Times, or indeed to any other organ of crosswording pleasure, but I’m finding it hard to chime in here with the naysayers.

    Time today 32 minutes.

    Thanks to all concerned,
    Chris G

  21. 25 minutes. Enjoyed the puzzle, particularly “half-hearted power”, “met expectations” and “diamonds, say”. As the blogger predicted, the Met Office was not the first “met” that came to mind: I too thought of the opera and the police.

    Just looked down at the solution for 25,436 that’s printed at the bottom of the page. I remarked at the time to my son’s Kiwi girlfriend that SOD NZ appeared in the second row of unchecked letters. Something to do with the cricket, perhaps?

    Astonished by the anonymous comment at 6:18. I was told years ago that a gentleman never attempts to correct another fellow’s English: “like tellin’ him his wife’s ugly or his suit don’t fit, ain’t it?”

    1. John – delightful. When we finally open the doors of the “Gegs” Club on Pall Mall I think we should make it one of the very few rules.
  22. Does this mean that a compiler can now clue “diamonds” with: “C or D”?
  23. 23 minutes steady job no need for crosswordsolver. Nothing very odd today (it is Monday).
      1. I’m not convinced. Surely bridge already has two other possible uses for S: South and Spades.
  24. Nice easy canter after first full round of 18 holes in competition this year! I done good in both.
  25. I agree with vinyl’s blog title today. Not much brain damage from this, except the ‘diamonds’ as ‘C’, which I didn’t understand either. About 15 minutes or so, ending with LOI NOSEGAY. The half-hearted power and the WEATHER REPORT were entertaining. Thanks setter, and blogger too. Regards to all.
  26. 50 minutes, and of course I too didn’t understand the diamonds (especially as I am in the process of trying to teach bridge to some friends and writing a little book for them, so I am concentrated on the cards). I didn’t find the puzzle too interesting but I am commenting because of one clue I particularly liked: READMIT with the “college in Cambridge”. I liked it because I am an alumnus and I doubt I would know it’s in Cambridge if I weren’t. Of course there you wouldn’t say “read” for “study”, as if it mattered.
  27. 6:49 for me. I thought this was anything but dull, with all sorts of interesting ideas that kept sending me down the wrong track. Mostly I retraced my steps quickly enough, but I wasted ages trying to fit RESULT into 18ac and (like others) taking NOSE to be the “important aspect of wine” in 19dn.

    No problem with C for “diamonds, say”. I’m slightly surprised that dorsetjimbo didn’t have something to say about those who had difficulty with this, but perhaps he was too flushed with success to mind :-).

    1. Hi Tony. I was surprised on two fronts.

      First that our education system appears to leave so many people ignorant of basic facts such as “diamond, say” being a reference to carbon – much like coal or graphite. Carbon is surely one of the most amazing elements on this earth and yet many seem to know little of it

      Second that solvers hadn’t come across it before – it’s hardly new to me or I suspect to you

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