Times 25453 – In decline

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found it very hard to work up any momentum on this and having struggled to get started I battled through most of it at snail pace with only occasional bursts of energy to restore my flagging spirits. In the end I completed it in 58 minutes. There’s nothing at all obscure here other than an unknown alternative spelling, so my problems must be down to mental powers failing towards the end of a long day.

* = anagram


Across
1 ACCOST – COS (function) inside ACT (law)
5 AS THOUGH – TOUGH* inside ASH (volcanic output). Definition: Like
9 BUTTERMERE – BUT (save), TERM (time), ERE (before). One of many lakes in Cumbria.
10 TWIGpatienT, WIG (simulated shock). My clue of the day!
11 DECEASED – CASE* inside DEED (action)
12 SUNSET – SUN (newspaper), SET (group). I lost time here with the thought that the newspaper group might be NI, and even possibly in decline.
13 ACRE – C (constant) inside AREa (most of what it measures)
15 FORSAKEN – OR (men), S (sons) inside FAKE (false), N (name)
18 MAGDALEN – DALE (valley) inside MAGNetic (half of attractive). This is the Oxford college pronounced Mawdlin as opposed to the Cambridge one that as an E on its end.
19 SMEW – Microwaved inside SEW (baste)
21 TEMPER – TEMPtER (baiter short of time). I didn’t know ‘bait’ as an alternative to ‘bate’ for bad temper.
23 SEAFARER – AFAR (at a distance) inside SEER (oracle)
25 JOIN – JOb (mostly work), IN (home)
26 CHICKEN OUT – CHIC (stylish), KEN (man), OUT (unfashionable)
27 DE GAULLE – AGED (reversed), sULLEn
28 TURTLE – TURn (brief spell), LET*

Down
2 CHUTE – I think ‘fall slower’ is being used as a nounal phrase  but I stand to be corrected by the grammar experts. The second part of the clue amused me because ‘para’ doesn’t need to be dropped for it still to be a ‘fall slower’.
3 ON THE MEND – O, aNTHEM (rousing song without a), END (finale)
4 THRASH – THe, RASH (headstrong)
5 AHEAD OF ONES TIME
6 TREASURY – (A RUSE)* inside TRY (bid)
7 ORTON – Hidden. Joe (actually John) the playwright (1933-1967). I wonder if ‘Ortonesque’ has ever appeared in the grid.
8 GUINEVERE – GUIdE (lead) with ‘d’ for daughters replaced by NEVER (at no time). She was King Arthur’s Queen Consort.
14 CHAPERONE – H (hard), APE (beast) all inside CRONE (old woman). ‘Woman’ is doing double duty here as part of the wordplay and in the definition. On edit, retracted following vinyl1’s comment which got me to read the clue again. Thanks, v.
16 ABSTAINER – (TEA IN BARS)*
17 CLERICAL – C (Conservative), L (left), ERICA (heath), L (Liberal). I thought old Ted was having yet another outing so I was pleased when I found I was mistaken.
20 GASKET – ASK (petition) inside GET (capture)
22 PANDA – PAN (criticise), AD (commercial, reversed). Easiest of the day, I think.
24 EQUAL – E (English), QUALm (unease shortened)

38 comments on “Times 25453 – In decline”

  1. 54 minutes, but with one wrong. I felt this was quite challenging, with cunning definitions like ‘like’ at 5ac and tricky vocab like Buttermere – tricky unless you’ve walked in the area or read Melvyn Bragg’s Maid of Buttermere, which is rather good, incidentally. Then there’s SMEW, which is more inaccessible than Crummock Water unless you know the bird or that baste has a sewy meaning. (I put ‘smee’.) Another thumbs up for TWIG. The parachute clue was also very neat: a fall-slower, indeed.

    Edited at 2013-04-19 02:34 am (UTC)

  2. Found this darned difficult. Read through the clues but couldn’t get one until the anagram in 16dn: a very good one at that. So had to start out in the SE. Was wondering why a CHICKEN was a stylish man (26ac). So thanks to Jack for putting me out of that bit of misery. Then, assuming there was vocab I wouldn’t get, went for (t)RAPPER at 21ac. Bait?

    Full marks to this one for sending me in all sorts of wrong directions.

    Edited at 2013-04-19 07:25 am (UTC)

  3. Thought it was tough, glad to see I wasn’t alone, but finished in under my allotted hour. Lots went in on definition alone (CHICKEN OUT, ON THE MEND, GUINEVERE) and a couple on wp alone (BUTTERMERE, SMEW).

    Thanks, Jack, for working it all out.

    Always think it’s funny how we find different ones tricky: TWIG was my first (and only entry) for quite a while…

  4. Fairly straightforward 24mins, quite a bit of which towards the end spent on 21ac, bait = bate being new to me too.
    Some quite witty & concise clues.
  5. 29 minutes, of which about 2 months spent on ACRE, having assumed it was one of those SI units that seem to be made up on the spur of the moment, and straining every possible solution from the alphabet soup. Made me feel really thick when the light dawned.
    The other hold-up, since I did this on paper, was recovering from hilarity at today’s announcement of the TNCC cock-up: honestly, you couldn’t make it up. And only days after that sophisticated (and now prescient) April gag.
    Liked the &lit at 16 and “simulated shock” at 10.
  6. Since it doesn’t seem to appear anywhere on the club page,here’s the TNCC announcement:
    Much to our regret, we discovered after publication that the first qualifying puzzle for this year’s Times Crossword Championship (Wednesday, April 17) was virtually identical to a puzzle published last year. Since some solvers may have recognised the puzzle, and in any case the solution has been available online, we have no alternative but to cancel this as a qualifying puzzle, with our apologies, and to ask competitors to re-apply by solving one of the further qualifying puzzles. These are scheduled for Wednesdays May 15 and June 12 and there will now be an additional qualifying puzzle on Wednesday July 10.
    Those who have already entered and sent cheques need not send money again for their next entry.

    The relevant puzzle was 25,205

    1. I find I am 3 minutes quicker (although that sounds better expressed as a percentage as I was under 30 minutes each time – but only just) 10.5 months on. And all correct while I made a bloomer last time.

      Weirdly, only one clue/answer (7ac) appears to be different from last time (3 Jul 2012).

  7. Enjoyable 25 minutes. My sort of puzzle with tight wordplay and good if sometimes hidden definitions (of which I agree “simulated shock” is the best). I have no ? or ! beside clues – always a sign of a puzzle that I found well constructed.

    Didn’t remember “bait” as TEMPER so checked it looking it up in Chambers.

    Well done Jack and thank you setter

  8. 15:28, which suggests this setter’s style suits me (not nearly as much as it suits Magoo and Jason, of course, but these things are always relative). Witty puzzle, especially the syrup.

    Re: administrative cock-ups, I have just received e-mail from my solving buddy; having recorded a pretty good time for the first qualifier, he was feeling quite bullish about his entry, but is now somewhat disgruntled.

    P.S. On checking, I now find I blogged the rogue puzzle first time around. I certainly sensed an echo from the past when I started by putting SECOND PLACE instead of SILVER MEDAL for 1 across, but no more than an echo. Of course, anyone who does all the daily puzzles, and two a day at weekends, will already have solved at least 200 others in between, so I hope that doesn’t mean I’m losing my grip…

    1. If it’s any consolation I had exactly the same experience: very nearly putting in SECOND PLACE, then correcting it to SILVER MEDAL with a vague sense of déjà vu.
      I did it in 8 minutes so I quite fancied my chances. Hey ho.
  9. All correct today but struggled mightily in the SW corner with De Gaulle, Chaperone, Temper and LOI Acre my last four in. Pencilled in Temper from the wordplay and checkers and hoped for the best. Thought ‘wig’ for ‘simulated shock’ was terrific.
    Just as yesterday I learnt a new variety of apple (Jonathan), today I learnt a new author (Orton).
    No bells rang on Wednesday when I solved the qualifier and I’m wondering if I ever did solve it first time round.
  10. 19m. I found this very hard at first, but then got into my stride.
    I didn’t know “bait” as an alternative to “bate”, but as I didn’t know “bate” I wasn’t really likely to.
    SMEW is one of those unfair double-obscurity clues. I was lucky, remembering both from previous encounters in Crosswordland. Similar story with 17dn, where I saw “Heath” and thought “ling? No. Erica? Bingo!”. Words I’ve never come across in the real world.
  11. DNF on chaperone and temper, don’t really know why. I think it was inability to see caught as anything but c, and ignorance of bate as bait. Good going up to then. Did the non-qualifier, which rang no bells, in 19-odd and was wondering… But it probably wasn’t much of a time.
  12. I thought this a very good puzzle. I found it fairly straightforward to begin with and completed most in 30 minutes, but needed another 10 minutes to finish, most of the hold-ups being in the SW corner, particularly CHAPERONE and JOIN (I provisionally had a dubious TWIN for 25).
  13. 21:32 .. another who found this tricky to finish. I hovered over the SMEE/SMEW duck trap before a vague sewing/basting connection came back to me (I think we’ve seen that here before..?).

    It’s interesting to see the differing reactions to this puzzle and yesterday’s (which I enjoyed far more). Chacun à son goût.

    Re. the Championship qualifier, what a hoot! (though not, I imagine, for the poor Ed.) Thank you, z8b, for the link to Mark One. I find I’m more than 2 minutes slower this time around, but that’s Tony Sever’s fault – his blasted Neutrino-free leader board is turning me into a … a … careful solver.

    1. I seem to have been over 2 minutes (about 25%) faster this time. (Not sure who to thank for that ;-).
  14. It took me forever to get started on this and then I finshed with a hopeful smee. Ah well. 24:06 for the record. I’ve been a bit rubbish all week apart from when it mattered (or not, with hindsight) on Wednesday.

    Sigh.

    I agree that the wig was very smart and I failed to spot the hidden.

    1. I do like the sound of a ‘hopeful smee’ – a very cheery sort of duck if ever there was one!
  15. I was also trying to justify (t)rapper but couldn’t (obviously) so I decided that the ‘t’ had to be taken out of the meat of the word somewhere, and then TEMPER fell into place. It took me way too long to see ACRE and JOIN, and it was only after I’d got both of them that CHAPERONE finally clicked. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it earlier because when I had next to no checkers in place I was trying to make duenna fit into the answer, so I was on the right track. I also, very embarrassingly, was thinking about nasket for 20 down and wondering if it was a species of seal I’d never heard of before I realised that get=capture, rather than net. I thought my time of 22 mins was a poor one until I came here and saw that quite a few of you found it tricky. As far as Wednesday’s puzzle is concerned it took me 16 mins. I didn’t remember the April 1st answers only a week after they’d appeared so there was no way I was going to remember answers from almost a year ago.

    Andy B.

  16. Jack, Thanks for the blog. Your template for measuring “failing powers” is obviously rather tougher than mine! I thought this a tough, but good puzzle, and consider my completion time of about 60 mins perfectly respectable. Like others, I was confused by the “bait” (rather than “bate”) = TEMPER at 21 ac and had to check the spelling in a dictionary. I loved the “simulated shock” def of “wig” at 10 ac (TWIG) – a brilliant short clue – and share the admiration expressed by others for the ABSTAINER anagram.
  17. 5 across impossible for any user of standard English. “like” is not an adverb, dammit!
      1. Agreed. In certain contexts – including the one you cite – “as though” is a perfectly fair synonym for “like”.
        1. In certain contexts, yes, it can equal ‘as though’…but not that one. I just felt I should mention it.
          1. Granted it’s not the best example, but there is a subtle semantic difference between saying ‘I felt like I ought to mention it’ and ‘I felt like mentioning it’, is there not?

            Syntactically, one can substitute ‘as though’ for ‘like’ in the first example. I think what is at issue here is the acceptability of the construction. Some people cavil at the use of like as a conjunction in expressions such as ‘I felt like I needed a break’, but its use, though informal, is attested in the dictionary.

            1. There is, but the second phrase is not the one I used. This whole palaver, as they say nowadays, of ‘like’ standing in for ‘as if/though’ came up not so long ago if you remember. It’s actually quite difficult (I found) to get a natural run of words where ‘like’ and ‘as though’ are interchangeable. In the dead of night I came up with, ‘As though a crowd of schoolchildren starting their holidays, the MPs gathered briefly near the great door, before rushing off.’ ‘As if/though’ properly requires a following verb while ‘like’ doesn’t, but here ‘they were’ would be otiose and clumsy. At least I was then able to get to sleep. The substitution that’s practised all the time now in speech is generally I’d say still wrong in grammar. Your ‘I felt like I ought to mention it’ is a case in point. But what’s wrong in grammar does itself change. In a pithy formulation such a ‘like’ is more or less pukka now: i.e. ‘It looks like you’re losing’ is probably on the verge of being okayed by the notional pedants, as it were. (The closeness of ‘like’ to ‘likely’ could be helping there.) The Times puzzle as well as relying on the reference books (dictionaries) for meanings will sometimes flout them (Fowler-type guides) to keep up with usage. A touch of not quite inner contradiction but dual approach, that’s necessary for such an institution, that unlike the other “serious” crosswords may be said itself to be a minor unofficial determinant in the recognised shaping of the language. I await the hoots and whistles.

              Edited at 2013-04-20 08:13 am (UTC)

    1. It’s a crossword clue. It’s not like grammar can’t take a running jump for the duration.
    2. Making one part of speech look like another is one of the setters’ weapons. Get used to it!
  18. Amusing re TEA IN BARS in this otherwise stern test, in which I’m not quite sure that I don’t feel slightly short-changed on entertainment, but not so amused re qualifying puzzle. That is bloody annoying in fact.

    Anyway, it’s Friday, I can feel less guilty about going out on the lash, and thanks to blogger and setter alike. Have a lovely week-end, all.

    Chris.

    1. Forgive my flippancy on the subject of the qualifying puzzle. I’m sure it is extremely annoying for those who entered. I hope you get on well with the next one. I do have some sympathy for the editor or whoever picked the puzzle, however, because it’s exactly the sort of thing I would do. I’m always slightly amazed (and probably a little relieved) when it’s someone else.
  19. About 30 minutes, and I thought it a good puzzle. I agree that TWIG takes it for entertainment today. LOI SMEW, which I vaguely remembered as a duck. TEMPER from wordplay only, as I don’t yet understand how either bait or bate gets one to temper, and I haven’t been curious enough to look it up (although I did look up baste). Nicely blogged Jack, and regards to everyone else.
    1. Hi, Kevin,
      From SOED: bate noun. slang. Also bait. M19. Esp. among children: a rage, a temper.

  20. 25 minutes of steady solving and no aids, starting with the long 5 dn and ending fingers crossed with TEMPER. Another excellent medium difficulty puzzle and well blogged.
  21. Probably around 11 minutes. However, just I was about to click on Submit I did something which made me lose everything I’d just typed, and in the panic I forgot to click on my stopwatch.

    I was held up at the end by CHUTE, which I’d bunged in first time through (with all the checked letters in place), but then got cold feet over, being worried that I was missing something more convoluted in “(when para drops)”.

  22. Picked the wrong duck at 19A as I didn’t know that meaning of baste. Also managed to misspell CHAPERONE, leading to an unwise punt on RAPPER for 21A. So a fairly dismal performance for what I had thought was a reasonably straightforward puzzle.
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