Times 25,462 – Let’s Open The Kimono

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 25 minutes

An interesting puzzle of mid-range difficulty with a smattering of slightly unusual vocab and a couple of less than obvious definitions. An enjoyable solve.

Across
1 SCHEDULED – SCH-(DELUDE reversed);
6 TIMES – T(IM)ES; TES=Times Educational Supplement;
9 DEN,HAAG – (hid)DEN-H(A)AG; local name for The Hague – next week Köln perhaps;
10 OCEANID – (comedian minus m=maiden)*;
11 STEAL – S-TEAL; TEAL is greenish-blue as seen on the duck;
12 TOP-FLIGHT – two defiitions 1-best 2=stairway to the attic;
13 ELATEDLY – E-LATE(D)LY;
14 AMMO – (c)OMMA reversed; magazine as in rifle;
17 RIDE – RID-(lin)E;
18 SEA,PINKS – (pansies + k=1,000)*;
21 HARROGATE – HARRO(w)-GATE; one of a number of towns that thrive on undrinkable water;
22 LASSI – hidden (medica)L-ASSI(stant); Indian yogurt drink;
24 TITULAR – TITU(s)-LAR(d=duke);
25 SEGMENT – SE-(G-MEN)T; pieces=MEN as in chess;
26 RILED – RILE(y)-D; reference “living a life of Riley” US-Irish phrase for la vie en rose;
27 OIL,TANKER – (like tar on)*;
 
Down
1 SIDES – S-IDES;
2 HANSEL,AND,GRETEL – (the real England’s)*;
3 DEADLIER – DEA(DL-IE)R; DL from D(evi)L; Kipling’s theory that the female is deadlier than the male;
4 LIGHT,ALE – sounds like “lie” + TALE;
5 DROOPY – Y(POOR)D all reversed; bring on the viagra;
6 TREBLE – two definitions 1=singer 2=bookies nightmarte;
7 MANAGEMENT,SPEAK – MANAGEMENT-S-PEAK; think outside the box and push the envelope across the piece;
8 SEDITIOUS – TIDES reversed – I-O-US;
13 EARTHSTAR – (hatter’s +r)* surrounds “a”;
15 REVERSAL – RE(VERS(e))AL;
16 APOLOGIA – A-POLO-GI-A(ttack); a written defence;
19 COILED – DEL-IOC all reversed; IOC=International Olympic Committee;
20 BARRIO – BAR-RIO; poor Spanish area found in Manhatten and Chicago for example;
23 INTER – (h)INTER; famous Milan based football team;

42 comments on “Times 25,462 – Let’s Open The Kimono”

  1. My downfall was COILED (19dn) where I could see “wound” in that sense but not the parsing. I even dredged up SOUK (Sports Officials UK) at one point. So settled in the end for ROLLED. Thanks to Jim for settling the matter with his usual mastery of what-turns-out-to-be simplicity.

    No idea about SEA PINKS or EARTHSTAR, but the cryptics were obvious enough. And COD to MANAGEMENT SPEAK for the ponderable definition.

    I’d have clued 23dn as “Top season for Italian team”. (Of course, they’re twinned with Bury.)

  2. An enjoyable puzzle that for me was a mix of the hard and the easy. I finished correctly in about 45mins, but had to come here to fully decode the wordplay for COILED and INTER (thanks, Jimbo). I too liked the well-disguised literal for MANAGEMENT SPEAK. The (at least for me) unfamiliar things – EARTHSTAR, SEA PINKS – were get-able via the cryptic hints.
  3. Many thanks, jimbo. I was defeated by the unfamiliar (SEA PINKS), unknown (BARRIO) and unresolvable (TITULAR, RILED, COILED).
  4. 22+ minutes, with the left side going in breezily and the right side feeling like a different setter, much chewier.
    Thanks to Jim for untangling DROOPY – I was toying with at least the two Os being clued by “on one’s uppers” and the Y for yard but couldn’t find the rest.
    “Bull” needed all the checkers, but a delicious clue. Top marks to TOP FLIGHT, APOLOGIA and AMMO,the last not least for the magazine articles definition.
    After the fun we had with AT ANCHOR a while back, I fancied something like “Told to grease hook in Yorkshire ship” for 27 (needs more work, I think!).
    1. It would’ve been nice. I’m telling you as a Yorkshireman, grease the hook in this ship! (Could be a murderous vein of dialect clues lurking.)
  5. All correct, and mostly all understood, even AMMO, my last one in, as I vaguely remembered the butterfly (probably from another crossword). Took ages to put in TOP FLIGHT (wanted to put in ‘top drawer’ for a while). BARRIO, EARTHSTAR and SEA PINKS all from wordplay. Didn’t know that that expression came from Kipling, nor the second def of TREBLE, so thanks, Jim, for the enlightenment.

    Lots of good clues today, COD: COILED.

  6. Baffled here and there but 33.58 eventually. CoD 7. Good to be reminded of Kipling’s immortal line, not that one needs reminding of the truth therein. At a loss with 19 – is del a key?
  9. Dang Jimbo, you won by a hairsbreadth..
    Fine crossword this one. Some real wit and enjoyably concise and precise clueing. Not too hard but held up by needing to parse 5dn, and by 19dn which I seem to have solved despite not spotting the IOC.
    Good stuff
  10. Several unknowns for me today but all gettable from wordplay (Den Haag, Deadlier, Oceanid, Barrio, Earthstar). FOI Sides, LOI Management-Speak.
    Top Drawer (Top Flight) and Spinnet (Segment) were both initial wrong guesses and my grid’s not had as many crossings out and corrections for weeks.
    Management-Speak: horrible phrases heard all too often in my workplace include ‘touch base’, ‘circle back’ and worst of all ‘reaching out’.
    Jim, thanks for explaining Scheduled and Inter – I didn’t understand those two. Your blog title’s too deep for me. What does it mean?!
    1. Hi Daniel. It’s one of those truely awful Management Speak phrases: “opening the kimono” means revealing the inner workings of a project to an outside party. It comes, I think, from the Japenese habit of undoing their kimono when they relax. One of my pet hates!!
  11. An enjoyable solve that took 19 mins with all fully parsed. I was held up in the NW corner despite getting OCEANID and SEDITIOUS fairly quickly. I saw the wordplay for COILED once all the checkers were in place.

    Andy B.

  12. Oh lord does that open a can of worms. It’s even worse than skill set (one of my pet hates). Took a while for me to get my ducks in a row with this puzzle. And I had to think outside the box and really drill down to parse several of them. The kimono thing means revealing info. It is what it is. 25 minutes for me.
    1. With you on skill set. When I hear someone say that they have one I always want to ask if they got it for Christmas.
    2. “Drill down” is old hat. These days when they mean “discuss in a little more detail” your best management consultants say “do a deep dive”.
  13. Jim had bowled me a doosra too with his title – but I wasn’t too bothered; I can go a whole week without getting a title.

    Me, I can’t abide ‘head up’ rather than ‘head’ – the related ‘heads-up’ for ‘lowdown’ puts me in meltdown mode.

  14. 18:05 .. no particular problems but plenty of thought needed. Nice stuff.

    Last in DROOPY (why is that word funny?).

    COD .. SCHEDULED or APOLOGIA

  15. 42 minutes. A steady and tidy solve that flowed nicely despite several unknowns, LASSI, BARRIO, EARTH STAR. Only knew INTER as a soccer team as it came up recently either here or in the DT which I now do every day and average around 10 minutes, so my years of practice here have not been wasted!

    As a footnote on yesterday’s CLAMP, it came up here about two years ago defined as a pile of turf (24784).

    Edited at 2013-04-30 10:33 am (UTC)

      1. Hi Jimbo. It’s AC as in account=bill in 16a, “brought over” CR as in creditor, followed by a(ppeased) at first. No definition, rather like a puzzle from my dad’s vintage. At least that’s how I saw it. P.S. Apologies, I see Vinyl already had it.

        Edited at 2013-04-30 11:06 am (UTC)

      2. Hi, Jim.

        As above.

        There’s no correction or apology in today’s paper (as far as I can see) so perhaps we are to assume the omission of a definition was intentional, in which case I fear for the future!

  16. 40 minutes. Mostly straightforward, but I was held up by 3, 7, 14 and 19 for a while. EARTHSTAR was a guess, but it couldn’t be much else.
    I thought it was a very enjoyable puzzle with scrupulous clueing.
  18. is one of my pet hates, along with those above. 28 minutes of good stuff, CoD Top Flight.
  19. I seem to have been signing from the same hymn sheet as others, picking the low-hanging fruit and keepng some skin in the game before using the wordplay to get the unknown or unfamiliar ocenid, sea pinks, earthstar and barrio.

    21:28, COD to the oil tanker anagram

  20. Three-quarters of an hour for this fine puzzle, though I had a senior moment and, despite having solved the word play for 9 across, wrote in the exotic Eastern city of DEN HANG.

    Cross with myself for not getting OCEANID quicker: the Sibelius tone poem “The Oceanides” is a favourite of mine.

    Excellent clue at 7. I cannot abide managers “bringing me up to speed”: they should be told that anyone brought up to speed is not a gentleman.

    The picture of Eccles that mctext has used today does remind me someone; could it be Ed Balls?

  21. Did anybody else enter Hansel UND Gretel for 2 down. Spent an age trying to fathom E?U?E?L?Y for high spirits!!

    Enigma

  22. I leveraged my core competencies to action the deliverables in this puzzle in 15 minutes. And most enjoyable it was too.
  23. ACCRA is also an obscure acronym, so I thought ac was doing double duty as a clue and definition? I’m probably wrong though.
    1. I was wondering whether the answer might be an acronym (which is why I took so long over the clue), but the only entry for ACCRA in Acronym Finder is “American Chamber of Commerce Research Association”, which is a) far too obscure, and b) doesn’t match “creditor” (or any other part of the clue) as far as I can see.

      What’s your version?

  24. I zoomed through the left hand side of this before hitting the buffers in the SE corner. It turned out I had FIGMENT instead of SEGMENT. Very careless. It led me to assume that 15d ended with FUL. I also failed to spot the anagram at 27a. But once 27a had been sorted the rest became clear and I staggered home in 43 minutes. Never heard of EARTHSTAR but it had to be. A very enjoyable puzzle. Ann
  25. A chewy one this, which I got through in 35 minutes, ending with the clever MANAGEMENT SPEAK. The examples already cited have made me groan enough; I won’t add to the collective misery with any more. COD to APOLOGIA. Regards.
  26. 10:27 for me – tired (as so often at the end of a busy Tuesday) and slower than I should have been. I enjoyed it very much though: a very fine puzzle.

    Being happily retired, I’ve avoided all that ghastly management-speak in recent years, and even had to look up some of it (like “circle back”).

    1. Tony,
      I have already forgotten the clue for ACCRA (it’s the tablets I’m on) but I think I thought it was ac from bill, cr for creditor and the a from the sentence. All a bit vague I’m afraid, and, as you say, the acronym is very obscure.

Comments are closed.