Times 25459

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: About 80 minutes, but I was way too tired to give this a proper go. If I hadn’t been blogging, there’s no way I would have even attempted it. It was as much as I could do just to stay awake, let alone solve the clues! I was too tired to even write the blog afterwards, so I had to go to bed and write it in the morning.

It seemed like there were some good clues in here. 4d & 5d were both quite clever, but 9a made me smile so I’ll give that my COD. I wasn’t keen on 14a but that’s probably just me.

I didn’t know PANTOCRATOR, and was only dimly aware of CAERLEON, but otherwise the vocab seemed quite reasonable. ANENT may not be familiar to everyone.

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

Across
1 STRICTURE = STRUCTURE (building) with U (leading university) swapped for I (one)
6 F + ETCH
9 TABLEAU = “TAB LOW” – It took me a while to cotton on to this one, but it made to smile when I did.
10 PIN + B + ALL
11 NE + PAL
13 P + ERM + ANENT – Anent is one of those words that I’ve only come across through crosswords.
14 CONSONANT – I think this is just a dd – ‘Something like G’, i.e. not a vowel, and ‘B and D sounding well together’ as in harmonious
16 W(E)AR
18 B(L)OW
19 D(I + SHONe)OUR
22 TORCHeS + ON + G
24 COYPU – cd – because it’s half COYote and half PUma
25 OUTSIZE = OUT + “SIGHS”
26 SNUBBED = SUBBED (assisted with editing) about guardiaN
28 SUR(G)E
29 A + FOREHAND
Down
1 SATANIC = (AS I CAN’T)* – a fairly obvious reference to the line in William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, and a nice easy starter.
2 cRIB – ‘pirate’ and ‘crib’ both mean ‘to copy’, but they have quite different senses. I’m not sure I could come up with a sentence where either could be used.
3 CAERLEON = (EARL ONCE)* – A town in South Wales which is believed to have been the locations of King Arthur’s castle, and probably his round table.
4 USURP = (RUmPUS)* = (PURSUe)* – i.e. an anagram of the common letters of the two words. An interesting and unusual clue.
5 EU + PH + RATES – ‘One running’ is the well-disguised definition
6 FUN + GAL
7 TEA CEREMONY = (CREATE)* + (MONEY)*
8 HOLSTER = (THOSE + R/L)*
12 PANTO CReATOR – Not a word I knew, butonce I had all the checkers in place, it seemed the only option.
15 AND + ROME + DA
17 CONCLUDE = CON + “CLUED”
18 BUTTONS – dd – The traditional name of the kindly butler in the pantomime Cinderella
20 gROUNDED
21 THRIVE = (VI + R) rev in THE
23 GUSTO – hidden
27 BOAt – A smack being a fishing boat

34 comments on “Times 25459”

  1. My kind of puzzle this one. A bit of challenging vocab that you can get from the cryptics. Some straightforward; some requiring serious construing. Just the job!

    At 14ac, Dave, I just read G, B and D as all being consonants; so anything like one of those. As an aside from the main meaning though, the clue’s neatly constructed as GBD form a standard G major triad (root, 3rd, 5th) — about as harmonious as you can get if you have Western ears. And, of course, the names of all three letters rhyme.

    Liked the “commons” device in 4dn and the mixed anagram at 8dn

    1. Yes, thoughts of the common chord of G major gave rise to serious problems here for a while, convinced that the answer had to involve CHORD or possibly CORD (sounding like chord). All my money was on CONCORDANT which takes care of the literal, notwithstanding the fact that it wouldn’t fit the grid!

      Edited at 2013-04-26 06:34 pm (UTC)

  2. I solved all but two clues in about 30 minutes but then came unstuck on two unknowns, 3 & 12, which despite having all the checkers in place and PANTO for the Christmas play, I got bored with and looked up. How does PIN = “chess move” (if indeed it does)? I know it as a term for a chess piece, but not as a move.
      1. Many thanks. Whilst never claiming to be anything of a chess player I learned the basics early on and played it very badly for many years, so I am surprised to find that I have reached my current advanced age without having come across what would appear to be such a rudimentary term used in the game.
        1. In the clue I think pin is actually “chess move that restricts” otherwise the rest doesn’t work.
  3. 14 minutes, reflecting an easing of the strain from yesterday but nonetheless interesting. I confess I didn’t fully untangle USURP – my loss,that was a very clever device – and tried to find it backwards, hidden or alternately in the clue. In the end,the literal is perhaps a shade too easy to force a proper appreciation of what’s going on.
    I wondered about pirate=crib, but Chambers Thesaurus gives them as direct equivalents.
    14 is a fine clue, given its multiple resonances and the extra frisson it gives to musical cognoscenti. My favourite while solving, though, was the “one running” EUPHRATES.
  4. Pleasant puzzle finished in 44 minutes. As others have said, a neat device at 4dn.

    Since Christ (anointed one) is itself already a title – some use the formulation ‘the Christ’, which brings this out – ‘Ecstasy missed by writer of Christmas play showing a title of Jesus’ would be better in my book, dictionaries notwithstanding.

    1. I think aesthetically and technically you may right. I’ve been pondering an equivalent, the Regina Imperatrix/Queen Empress title bestowed on dearest Vicky. Is Empress a title of “the Queen” or of Victoria?
  5. A steady 32.42. Much to like, yet the sizzle of yesterday, with the weather, has gone.
  6. As others have said an interesting puzzle with a few testers thrown in for good measure

    I had to derive 12D from wordplay but surely not difficult and standard bar crossword technique. I saw 14A as two definitions – the musical connotations went right over my head. In a good bunch of clues I rather liked 5D

    1. You’re right, it’s not really difficult but I had an uneasy feeling that there might be words other than “creator” that would fit the wordplay. I can’t actually think of any though!
      1. The ‘crator’ bit of Pantocrator is from the same Greek word (meaning sway, power, rule) that brings us aristocrat, democrat, etc.
        1. Interesting, thanks. And the “pant” bit (stop that sniggering at the back) from “pantos” meaning “all”, I see from Chambers.
          1. Caerleon has an interesting etymology too, meaning fort of the legion in Welsh, with the leon part being derived from the Latin (legio). Other forms of the fort part survive in Carlisle (Luel’s Castle) and CS Lewis’s Cair Paravel.
  7. 17m. I was surprised to be all correct today, because I was very unsure about both 3dn and 12dn. I didn’t know either, and CAERLEON could easily have been CREALEON. I was a little bit surer about PANTOCRATOR, but it didn’t look like a proper word.
    Other unknowns today: TORCH SONG and smack.
  8. Two missing today (Pantocrator and Outsize) and a wrong guess at Crealeon for Caerleon. No problems with the rest. FOI Rib. I liked Tableau, Buttons, Euphrates and Outsize in particular.
    I read up on the Andromeda galaxy and now know it’s the most distant object in the sky visible with the naked eye and (a big problem for our distant descendants) on collision course with the Milky Way!
  9. PANTOCRATOR indeed! And I a fan of Four Quartets. But it is Friday, I suppose.

    Not as much fun as yesterday’s but still much to like.

    Thank you to all concerned, have a good w/e.

    Chris.

  10. Three-quarters of an hour, with a sizeable proportion of the time messing about with 1 across. Was it an anagram of (censure of)? The letters were there. I kept seeing STRICTURE but couldn’t fathom why; so thanks to Dave for explaining that.

    27 was particularly neat, I thought..

  11. 18:37 .. very nice stuff, especially the perfectly formed EUPHRATES.

    I must have spent 5 minutes at the end pondering C_E_L_O_ and the anagram fodder before the likelihood of the ‘caer-‘ prefix dawned on me. I’ve just been reading up on Caerleon and King Arthur and know less than I did before. On the plus side I now have Richard Burton singing ‘Camelot’ running through my head – proof that all Welshmen can sing, even when they can’t.

    1. I had the advantage of having been born and brought up near CAERLEON. Nice place. Good pubs, church, mini-museum and Roman amphitheatre and barracks. Someone once told me that before the amphitheatre was excavated by the archaeologists local legend had it that the ancient stones marked the site of Camelot. When I was a child I used to imagine the Lady of Shallot floating down the river Usk. She’d have to do the trip at high tide though because the tide drop there is the largest in the UK and the second-largest in the world. “Too much reality” (T.S. Eliot again) Btw, on tidal matters we concede the crown to you! Ann
      1. Thanks, Ann. I’m far more enlightened now and even find myself possessed of a slight urge to visit the place. I like the image of the Lady of Shallot stuck in the mud like a disappointed child at Weston-Super-Mare.

        Yes, on tidal matters, I’m clearly drawn by the moon (explains a lot, huh?). I grew up on the banks of the Severn but it wasn’t quite enough so I had to come here to the Bay of Fundy!

  13. There was some nice cluing here, although I confess I entered USURP from the definition alone. Now that I’ve seen how the clue works I’ll try to remember to look out for a similar device in the future. I knew CAERLEON and I trawled PANTOCRATOR from deep within the memory banks, so was I able to finish in 14 mins.

    Andy B.

  14. About 25 minutes (while eating fish and chips cooked in beef dripping) but with two wrong, Crealeon and Pantocretor where I unaccountably removed the wrong vowel.

    Very nice puzzle though. I enjoyed the tab low homophone.

    Speaking of vowels and consonants, for anyone who likes all or any of words, ribald humour and Rachel Riley’s bottom I can heartily recommend Channel 4’s 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown.

  15. 26 minutes for all except OUTSIZE. So easy but refused to come! I had to leave it unfinished because I had no time to ponder. (I have a choral concert tomorrow and am throwing the after-concert party so my priorities are buying booze and tidying house. The Poulenc “Gloria” and “Carmina Burana”. A fun programme – God, sex and drinking. I really wish some of you were here!) Enjoyable puzzle. Ann
    1. God, sex and drinking? I can’t tell you how much that makes me think of my Catholic school sixth form.
    2. Two great sings and a party afterwards. Sounds like a recipe for a perfect evening.
  16. 8:16 for me. I was still feeling a bit tired, but I found this much easier (though no less enjoyable) than yesterday’s and managed to pick up a bit of speed after a horribly slow start. PANTOCRATOR is familiar from Art History, though I had a ghastly senior moment before the word surfaced.
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