Times 25467 – Birds in the Lock-up

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
39 minutes for this, ending with the cryptic clue at 21, which I thought was rather good. A few Britishisms to keep our Septic solvers honest, plus a bit of an operatic feel, with both elixir and seraglio taking a bow, to keep our opera buffs happy. In all, typical Monday Times fare.

ACROSS

1. ICE CAP – pace (Latin for in peace = with respect to) + C[limate] I[instability] all reversed.
5. IM+PALING – not as badly as the joke, perhaps…
9. ESOTERIC – [recip]E + SOT + rice*
10. BEDSIT – ED + [fall]S in BIT
11. DEFRIEND – half of RIsk in DEFEND; the defnition is ‘on social networks, drop’. (Senior solvers should consult their grandchildren.)
12. ALUM+NI
13. CLEANSER – CLEAR around N[o]SE; a semi &lit.
15. HOP+E
17. GAFF – GAFF[e]; a word used by TV script-writers in the 70s and 80s to generate Cockney atmosphere. Awight?
19. SERAGLIO – I in gaolers*; Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio is one of the sources of the too many notes story as featured in the film Amadeus.
20. FORMER
21. MISDEALT – wrong hands, geddit? This setter’s a card…
22. ELIXIR – Our favourite OT priest + XI + R[each]; a potion guaranteeing love or gold, depending on which quack you’re wasting your money on. Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore still sits at No. 12 in the Opera Hit Parade.
23. SK[INN]IER
24. MAG[NET]IC – not ‘mesmeric’, then.
25. GURGLE – G + URG(L[ength])E.

DOWN

2. COSTELLO – CO + S(TELL)O. Lou Costello was one half of the Abbott and Costello double-act.
3. CUT-PRICE – C[aught] + picture*.
4. PERSEVERE – PE+R+SEVERE; we had something like this recently and I struggled with it. I struggled again today.
5. INCIDENTAL MUSIC – INCIDENT + US in claim*. Cue the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
6. AREOLAR – reverse hidden; easily confused with ‘aureole’, especially as they can mean the same thing.
7. INSOMNIA – our downly cryptic clue.
8. GET RID OF – FO DIRT and EG all reversed.
14. ENLISTING – [m]EN + LISTING.
15. HALF-TERM – felt* in HARM.
16. PIERCING – sounds like ‘peer sing’.
17. GOVERNOR – OVER (unwanted) + NO in GR[eek]; the definition is ’employer’, as in the pock-marked chief inspector in numerous 70s and 80s gritty British cop shows.
18. FUEL CELL – EL + CE in FULL; ‘directly’ as in ‘He looked his gov full in the face when they got back to his gaff’. I know, I should be writing fan-fiction.
19. STERILE – set* + RILE (annoy/cheese off).

24 comments on “Times 25467 – Birds in the Lock-up”

  1. The NINA is at rows 6 and 10.

    Interesting puzzle where the left-hand side was much easier than the right. So much depended on the parsing today, with most of the blank paper filled with possibles. Happy to pass all of the clues with some doubts about the two cryptic defs. (Note to Ulaca: they’re all cryptic clues! At least in theory. And perhaps the type called the “cryptic defintion” is, ironically, the least cryptic of all??)

    Oh … and … 2dn is an obvious reference to the former Howard government and its leading comedians. Half of the team (and a joke in his own right) now threatens to be our next leader. Gawd elp us all.

    Edited at 2013-05-06 08:12 am (UTC)

  2. 58 minutes with one wrong letter as DEFRIEND does not exist in my world so the nearest I could get was “befriend” which I had suspected was too elegant a word and concept to be commonplace in the realms of social networking. The D-word is not yet recognized by either of the “official” source dictionaries (unless it’s lurking somewhere in the small-print) but Chambers has it, as does the Oxford Dictionary of English, so presumably it’s only a matter of time. Apparently we need also to be aware of its alternative “unfriend” which I would have had less problem with since I am used to “un-” being adopted for this sort of thing as in “unspam” which I see here every day as I delete advertisements in Russian for Ugg boots etc.

    Other than all that, I enjoyed this and misssed the NINA so thanks to mct for pointing it out.

    Ulaca, your need an “R” on the end of 6dn. Well blogged on a tricky day.

    PS on edit: Also just noticed you are missing 5dn (perhaps intentionally?) which if anyone needs to know is INCIDENT (skirmish) + AL, MUSIC from US (America) inside CLAIM*.

    Edited at 2013-05-06 04:28 am (UTC)

  3. Thanks, Jack – corrected…and added.

    Edited at 2013-05-06 04:55 am (UTC)

  4. Enjoyable effort, complete with its rare (for a cryptic) nina. No problem with defriend, though I would say unfriend, in the unlikely event of wanting to say either.
    Not v keen on 21ac, a lot of words for just a cd I thought, but I’m sure its just me, nothing wrong with the clue I suppose
    But I’m still in shock over the paucity of crosswords today. Where did the concise go? Or the bank holiday jumbos?? What a miserable showing The Times is making at the moment… incorrect clues, accidentally repeated crosswords, competition entries mishandled, crossword club memberships screwed up…

  5. A tough and slow 42 minutes, and as jackkt a befriend, though should have cottoned on. CoD impaling in an otherwise dour bunch.
  6. A long 30 minutes for me. Agree with mctext – the RH side, particularly the NE corner is much tougher than the left. I didn’t know Times cryptics had Ninas but then I never spot them anyway!
  7. 28 minutes, still struggling through the murk but getting better. I thought this was up there with the more challenging variety, certainly with some deft lifting and separating essential. Best two examples for me “on social networks, drop” and “Soldier on”. I spent ages trying to do that with 21 and 7, which is two reasons why I don’t like CD’s.
    Otherwise, lots to like, with SERAGLIO my stand out. I got 16d only once I guessed 5ac late on.

    Salutary warning: I found myself locked out of this place on Saturday, with every one of my entries as far back as I could see with my name crossed through and with content inaccessible. Strange and disconcerting feeling, like the gate of paradise being suddenly slammed shut. Apparently there’s some new anti-spam protocols in place, which I probably tripped by mentioning the name of a certain drug. It’ll be interesting to see if Jack gets similar treatment for mentioning -um- boots.

  8. GET RID OF was a lovely construction and “flat” a well-hidden definition. Totally missed the nina despite the grid pattern.
  9. 35 minutes, a bit harder than usual Monday fare, and had BEFRIEND (my def. ‘on social networks’) instead of DEFRIEND which I think is normally UNFRIEND or at best a hyphenated word.
    Mrs K is unimpressed by the absence today of the CONCISE, we need more entertainment on a bank holiday, not less. Although, here it is not a holiday – we had May 1st and then we’ll have May 8th Wednesday, when the French celebrate the WWII victory of their brave soldiers and flash their medals at a five hour lunch. Then we have 9 May for Ascension and 20 May for Pentecost… not so much work gets done in May.
  10. 16:42 and much enjoyed. I would also have said UNFRIEND was more natural but it’s still a well-worked modern clue. (I say modern, but who knows? I remember when unfriend was OUP’s “word of the year” in 1999 and there was lots of harrumphing from traditionalists, until it was pointed out that the adjectival form “unfriended” first appears as a shocking neologism in King Lear. So I shan’t be dogmatic about it.)
  11. I definitely don’t think this was a typical Monday puzzle, although I didn’t help myself because I initially entered MESMERIC at 24ac without bothering to parse the clue. I took far too long to see INCIDENTAL MUSIC because for reasons best known to my subconscious I was fixated on wondering if there was such a thing as ACCIDENTAL MUSIC. Once I realised what the correct answer was I then got 5ac from the wordplay, but it still took me what seemed like an age to get the 16dn/20ac crossers, which were my last two in. 39 mins in all.
    2. Just for the record, that was my comment above. I thought it was about time I created an account.
      1. Welcome, Andy, as a fully-fledged deanonymised (unanonymised?) community member!
  12. Re 2d: The copy I printed out last night has “Abbot” with one T. Same in the newspaper? Granted, the surface sense and misdirection are dependent on the misspelling, but isn’t this just … wrong?
    1. The facsimile epaper also has the single T. The definition has to Abbott’s partner or it is nothing so I’d say this is yet another error to add to jerrywh’s list as started above. Can’t say I’d noticed before you mentioned it though.
  13. 15:45 for me. I thought this was on the tricky side for a Monday puzzle, but all very enjoyable.

    When I used to work for ICT (International Computers and Tabulators) in my long vacs, I lived in a bedsit as I couldn’t afford a flat. There was a definite distinction then, which I would have thought still applied.

  14. I think a bedsit’s “cooking and washing facilities”, if it had them, would typically be a gas-ring and a hand basin. The ones I stayed in (in Fulham) had the latter but not the former. I shared a kitchen and bathroom with the other bedsit tenants.
  15. I wondered about this. ODO has ‘unit of accommodation’. Much depends on whether the bedsit has a ‘bathroom’ (in either sense of the word), I reckon: a scenario which Collins – sort of – allows for, though ‘washing facilities’ could merely be a basin. Likewise, ‘cooking facilities’ could be merely a gas-ring rather than a kitchen(ette). If you have either or both, you’re very much into ‘studio flat’ territory.
  16. Not far from the Six Bells (?) then by Putney Bridge – which I recall was ICT’s home from home
    1. It’s the Eight Bells, Jim – very well placed for a quick drink if you worked in either Putney Bridge House, later Bridge House North (which is where I started out) or Willowbank House, later Bridge House South (where I moved to, before being shunted off to Upper Richmond Road, and then – heaven help me! – to Reading, and finally – heaven help us all! – to Bracknell).

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