Times 25,474

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Standard fare with nothing too difficult or controversial – shouldn’t present too many problems

Across
1 FACETIOUS – FAC(E)TIOUS; E from (delegat)E;
6 PACED – P(ACE)D; Pd=Palladium which is one of the platinum group of metals;
9 OUTCAST – OUT-CAST; reference “sent to Coventry” meaning shunned (derived from a punishment for misbehaving monks who were sent to the strict, silent monastry at Coventry – nothing to do with nude women on horseback;
10 NEONATE – N-(one)*-ATE(s); behind=backside=nates;
11 SQUAD – SQUA(LI)D; one left = I-L then back=reverse=LI;
13 PRURIENCE – (epic re-run)*; why the monk went to Coventry, perhaps;
14 MEDICINAL – (male)* surrounds DICIN(g);
16 OMIT – TIMO(n) (of Athens) reversed;
18 CORN – two meanings 1=swelling on foot 2=plant in field;
19 SKYJACKER – SKY(JACK)E-R; resistance=R (electrics); JACK=Union Flag;
22 THEME,PARK – THEM-(uncl)E-PARK; leave=PARK; Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, et al;
24 HERON – hidden (anot)HER-ON(e); we have a large heronry on my golf course – beautiful birds;
25 ARGUING – A-R(GU)ING;
26 OVERALL – OVE(n)-RALL; RALL=rallentando=slow the music down;
28 LATHE – LATHE(r);
29 CONCEITED – CON-sounds like “seated”;
 
Down
1 FLOTSAM – F-LOTS-A(drift)-M; FM from F(oa)M; good clue;
2 CUT – two meanings;
3 TEAR,DUCT – TEAR=rush=fly; DUCT sounds luck “ducked”;
4 ON.TAP – (panto)*;
5 SENSUALLY – SEN-(u)SUALLY; SEN=State Enrolled Nurse;
6 PROLIX – PRO-LIX; LIX=59 in Roman numerals;
7 CHAIN,SMOKER – restrain=CHAIN; to cure is to smoke; not sure “with consuming passion” is needed;
8 DEEPEST – loath=detest then change t=time to EP=old extended play record;
12 UNDERWEIGHT – UNDER(W)EIGHT; with=W; OK if you only count in whole numbers;
15 NOSTALGIC – (losing cat)*;
17 CASHMERE – CAS(HM-ER)E; HM=Her Majesty; does this clue really work?; yes, I’d made a typo in the blog!!;
18 CATCALL – CAT-CALL; queen=female cat;
20 RANKLED – R(ANKLE)D;
21 BELIZE – BELI(Z)E(f);
23 KNOWN – N-WON-K all reversed; NK from N(ic)K; out=in public=KNOWN;
27 APT – (c)A(r)P(e)T;

35 comments on “Times 25,474”

  1. Thanks Jimbo.. I found it a little harder than average myself, 28 mins or thereabouts.
    17dn works for me.. the queen is in a case, twice.
    1. Thanks Jerry – I’d made a typo in the blog and then couldn’t parse my own wrong blog answer! Now amended.
  2. 18 minutes – a mix of the straightforward and the troublesome – NATES being one of the troublesome ones.
  3. with at least 5 minutes spent staring at 22ac, when I finally realized that the first word could only be THEME, which meant the 2d was PARK, which meant I had to change 23d. DNK SEN, so that went in from definition and checkers. Come to think of it, a couple of others did, too.Isn’t this a pangram, by the way?
      1. For the first time I can remember the pangram came to my rescue, enabling me to get my LOI, prolix.
  4. 4 Dorset Jimbos, so no stroll round Alton Towers for me. In fact, quite a lot of time spent queuing up at various of the attractions, notably 10, where I obviously don’t know my nates from my elbow, 11, where I could do no better than ‘sound’, and, naturally, 22.

    Compliments to setter and solver…

  5. 16m, so I seem to have been on the wavelength for this one too. No real hold-ups. “Nates” is perhaps a bit Mephistoish but the answer couldn’t really be anything else.
  6. I suppose if the cast is acting outside it’s a public appearance. 26 minutes here, nates added to knowledge, quite liked duct/ducked but overall it felt like a perfect example of competence sans brio. But for all that a good tester.
    On edit: of course cast = shade/outward appearance is the right way to look at it.

    Edited at 2013-05-14 11:12 am (UTC)

  7. 14:44 but I couldn’t fully parse 19ac and went with SKYLARKER, unable to conceive a better alternative for the checkers (until I came here, of course). After a run of successful stabs in the dark, a salutary reminder that guesswork is not a guaranteed path to success!
  8. 18 mins. As Jimbo says 1dn is a good clue, and I also liked 7dn and 12dn. NEONATE had to be the answer for 10ac so I put it in, but I couldn’t parse it. I have come across nates before in crosswordland, but I had forgotten it.

    THEME PARK and OUTCAST were my last two in.


  9. Another DNF for me today… had ‘pro-il’ at 6dn, certain that the roman numerals had to come before the L (dk PROLIX. Or NATES). Also I didn’t get BELIZE. Maybe had I realised it was a pangram I could have sorted both of those out!
  10. After doing all but SW corner, I could see I only needed the Z, which helped me with 21dn.
    Thanks for explanation of 22ac – I’d got stuck on that Mephisto favourite: ‘uncle’ = EME.
    I wasn’t happy with the clue to 3dn, where the second part is a homophone, but the first isn’t.
    1. Uncle=EME? Indeed it does, according to chambers.
      But that’s not what happened here, the EM is from THEM, the E is from unclE.
      Rob
  11. Just back in time for “Eggheads” where Chris’s grump over being asked yet again about contemporary girl groups put me in mind of Jimbo for some reason. Also prompted me to check the blog but.

    Noted the possible pangram early which helped with BELIZE towards the end. Had a few underlinings for CAST (appearance), NATE{s} (behind), PARK (leave) but they all turned out to be good. So “Park your nates here before your cast of countenance goes red”.

    The clue to 20dn brought back introducing folk songs in the 60s and 70s: “Here’s a little number I learned at my mother’s knee and various other low joints”.

  12. Yes, I had some problems too and this took me 50 minutes. 11 and 9 were the sticking points. It took me a while to see past ‘sound’ at 11 and I still don’t understand how ‘appearance’ = CAST at 9ac (if it does). I hope we’re not going to rerun the ‘leave’ <> ‘park’ debate that raged here last Saturday.

    Edited at 2013-05-14 09:04 am (UTC)

      1. NOAD’s example is instructive:
        “she had a somewhat masculine cast of countenance”.
        1. And Hamlet’s native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. I see Jimbo and others found this a walk in the park but at 29 minutes I had a struggle. Nates new to me too.
      2. Thanks, Jim, Should have looked in my thesaurus before rushing to print. I just wasn’t thinking in the right direction.
  13. 28 minutes, too long spent hanging around in the THEME PARK (not my favourite – can’t stand being spun, thrown, dropped and ripped off these days). NW was my only quick quarter.
    Was prepared to come complaining about HERON dropping a random two letters to become hen…
    Ran through the Greek alphabet repeatedly trying to get OMIT…
    Didn’t remember from not long ago that leave=PARK, probably because I am old enough to remember when THE children’s favourite was Uncle Mac (“hello children, everywhere”)
    Tried all the possible symbols for Palladium except the proper one…
    Was prepared to complain that suit=case in 17 was a DBE…
    You can get too practised at the dark solving arts. Too much knowledge gets in the way.
  14. One wrong today (a tentative Skywalker for Skyjacker). Couldn’t parse Neonate or Overall and I guessed Deepest and Omit so thanks Jim for explaining/confirming all those.
    Lots of clues to like today (for example Outcast, Nostalgic, Chain-Smoker, Cashmere) but COD to the excellent Flotsam.
  15. Got in PROLIX and BELIZE in a timely fashion, as they say, so thoughts of pangramming drifted into the generally vacant chambers of my mind early on. That helped quite a lot as it turned out, and I finished in about 22 minutes, which is not a bad one for me.

    Thanks to all,
    Chris G.

  16. 14 minutes late last night – no real hangups, though I don’t think I really knew the definition of PROLIX.
  17. 17:05 but several just bunged in on a wing and a prayer to which the smattering of QMs I have down the clues bears testament.

    These included, unsurprisingly, cast, nate and rall. Perhaps more surprisingly I didn’t understand heron, always miss the legal link between suit and case and had doubts about cut for ignore.

    Agree that flotsam is a fine clue.

    Yesterday’s contribution disappeared into the ether so fingers crossed as I hit Post Comment.

  18. On several occasion I came up with the right answer quickly but didn’t enter it because I was unsure or didn’t get the wordplay, notably CORN, OMIT and BELIZE. In the end I saw the TIMON connection for OMIT and realized that BELIZE was not spelled BELIZES. I t also didn’t help that I carelessly entered the answer to 8 in 18d’s slot. Even after correcting that, I struggled in the SW corner and failed to reconsider 11, where I’d tentatively entered SOUND.

    It took me almost an hour. All in all a bit of a disaster (that’s my solving, not the puzzle). I liked several clues, 1 and 23 in particular. Pd/palladium was completely new to me.

  19. 22:51 .. with a quarter of that spent scratching my head over THEME PARK.

    I loved both FLOTSAM and UNDERWEIGHT.

    For Ann (falooker): did you see Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity video? He is now officially the coolest astronaut ever (and they’re all pretty cool).

  20. I’m quite late, sorry. About 30 minutes, with similar hold-ups as everyone else has mentioned, particularly nate and rall. Otherwise, actually quite good especially the numerical clues to PROLIX and UNDERWEIGHT. Regards.
  21. 14:55 for me, feeling very tired after another busy Tuesday (and tomorrow looks like being busy as well). I seemed to tune in and out of the setter’s wavelength, and made particularly heavy weather of parsing THEME PARK, even wondering for a moment whether EME = “uncle” could be making an appearance.

    A very sound puzzle though, which left me in no doubt that I had it right by the time I finished.

  22. We found this a facetious skyjacker of a puzzle and felt outcast by the conceited overall underweight flotsam. We paced ourselves but were rankled by the deepest arguing in a known nostalgic sound. Not being a chain smoker we turned the lathe but failed to omit the prolix, causing a cut to the tear duct. Luckily it was apt in a medicinal sense to visit Belize … which being chilly, we needed our cashmere and corn
  23. Well, I tried to give everyone a link to today’s qualifying puzzle. But since including a link automatically marks my comment as spam, i guess that didn’t work. Maybe one of the powers that be could unspam it. Actually it would be more useful to put up a top level entry since i’m just commenting on the wrong puzzle here
  24. Really enjoyed that, slightly arcane and eccentric cluing, but all fair. Parsed it all during solve eventually, often resort to 2 or 3 guesses – knew NATES from JP Donleavy novels from the 1950s.

    28 minutes – slow and steady, many tricky wordplays took a while to work out, and without the usual 10 minutes at the end for the last one or two answers.

    Have to disagree with Jimbo’s summation, I thought it was a cut above the standard Times fare. Wavelength, no doubt.
    Rob

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