Times 25475 — 1st Championship Qualifier: R U game?

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 21:16

It’s another pangram, which helped only a bit. Held up by trying too hard to parse as I went: a habit that would surely detract from the championship conditions which I hope never to experience. And, for the record, this is my 100th blog posting to TƒT.


Across
1 SWEET SPOT. SWEETS (perhaps fudges), POT (kitty as in e.g., poker and other gambling games).
6 FIVES. A peculiar game played at some public schools. Made up of FIVE & S (for shillings/soldi). The old crown coin was worth five bob.
9 LOUDEST. D{u}E{l}S inside LOUT.
10 APOSTLE. POST inside ALE (’ale, hale, healthy).
11 PANDA. The P&A from ‘pizza’.
12 OBSESSION. BSE (‘mad cow disease’) in an anagram of ‘is soon’.
14 TAX. TA (Territorial Army), X (“is the kiss, the unknown, the fissure / In mystery stretching far back to the ape”).
15 BLOGOSPHERE. B (Bishop) and P (quietly) including LOGOS (emblems); HERE (present).
17 ADRIATIC SEA. {h}ADRIA{n}, TICS (shakes), EA (each). ‘Arm’ is part of the literal.
19 USK. A river made of ‘musk’ minus M (for Marks).
20 CANALETTO. {s}ET-TO (fight) after CANAL (cut = channel = canal).
22 BAN,JO. JO (sounds like ‘Joe’). The setter and I are among the minority who consider the banjo to be a musical instrument.
24 ICE PACK. Reversal of CAPE (headland) inside {s}ICK. If you don’t have one, frozen peas will do.
26 PRE-EMPT. PREP (homework) around ’EM (them) & the T from ‘midnight’.
27 GA(U)ZE.
28 PARTRIDGE. PAGE (attendant) including RT and RID. That kind of game this time.

Down
1 SALOP. AS reversed & LOP. Short for Shropshire where Telford happens to be.
2 EQUINOX. EQUIN{e} & OX.
3 THE GAMBIA. Anagram of ‘heat’ around GAMBI{t}.
4 PETROLOGIST. Cryptic def.
5 TEA. {s}TEA{m}.
6 FLOSS. FLO{g}, S{weet}S.
7 VITRINE. VITE (French for ‘quickly’) inc R{osé} & IN. A glass case.
8 STEINBECK. Anagram: E Nesbit and C{hildren’s} K{nowledge}.
13 SHOW-STOPPER. SHOPPER (customer) inc WS (west, south) & TO.
14 THATCHING. THAT (the usual), {a}CHING.
16 PLAY BY EAR. PEAR (conference, say) inc LAY (rest) & BY (times, as in multiplication).
18 RONDEAU. Reverse OR (soldiers) & anagram of ‘Auden’.
19 UNNAMED. U, then MAN inside DEN all reversed.
21 LEAVE. Drop the N from ‘leaven’: agent (such as yeast) fomenting uprising.
23 OUTRÉ. Drop the R from ‘route’.
25 {s}KIP.

12 comments on “Times 25475 — 1st Championship Qualifier: R U game?”

  1. 24′; if memory serves, the first one of these is always easy enough to give me a false sense of confidence. 1ac struck me as rather a giveaway. But I liked 1d, 6d (my COD), and 21d.
  2. As easy as qualifiers always seem to be.. sadly I wasn’t familiar with petrology, though the answer (to 4dn) seemed clear enough with the checkers in place.
    Your comment about banjos reminded me of an old Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon.. in the upper picture is God, showing a queue of people into heaven and saying “Welcome to heaven, here’s your harp.. welcome to heaven, here’s your harp” to everyone in turn.
    In the lower picture is the devil doing the same thing, saying “Welcome to hell, here’s your accordion.. welcome to hell, here’s your accordion…”
  3. This was a disaster for me and I lost track of my solving time. I wasn’t helped by having a smaller grid than usual with the clues all squashed up so as to fit the rules and entry slip to the page.DK VITRINE.

    Edited at 2013-05-23 07:01 am (UTC)

  4. 35 minutes but with ‘vitrite’ for VITRINE. I thought this was harder than your average Q puzzle; it took me 6 or 7 minutes to get off the mark with BANJO.
  5. All correct except for the unknown Vitrine and a wild guess at Fools for Floss where I hadn’t read the second part of the clue “… destroyed filling – advice of dentist? (5)” because it broke to the top of the next column of text on my print out. Duh!
    Couldn’t parse Canaletto or Leave so thanks mctext for explaining those two.
  6. I haven’t come across PETROLOGIST before which made that clue impossible for me. The only word I could think of that fitted the checkers was PATHOLOGIST. I hate clues like that. No doubt this an incredibly common word and it’s just me, but it made me grumpy. Two more chances to qualify…

    Edited at 2013-05-23 10:53 am (UTC)

  7. I’m one who opted for PATHOLOGIST as A/I had never heard of petrologist, despite the impeccable logic behind it and B/Aren’t bodies kept on ice (rocks)? 71mins 07secs completion time thus making it, in my view, harder than the average qualifier, but I’m unlikely ever to be good enough for the finals. No problem with VITRINE.
  8. Difficult but surely not impossible; after all, the stem is found in common words across a number of fields, eg petrochemical, petrified and Peter ( ‘You are a rock and on this rock I will build my church’). That said, I was surprised to see it in a Q.
    1. That’s fine if you know that’s what the stem means, which is not obvious to those of us who were not born either sufficiently long ago or to sufficiently affluent parents to have been taught Latin and Greek at school. *sulky face*
      Actually though I did kind of know this. You may be interested to know (although probably not) that the private equity firm Blackstone was founded by two chaps called Stephen Shwarzman and Pete Peterson. Geddit?
      1. It was the grandparents with the affluence – trust fund and all that. And that was when public schools were affordable. Now, we’re shelling out 30 grand p.a. for the nipper’s A-level years. Can’t knock the education, though – she’s come on leaps and bounds after years drifting in HK’s local school system.

        My German’s virtually non-existent, but fortunately those chaps that make herbs and spices came to my rescue.

        1. Tell me about it – and I’ve got four of the little blighters.
          I learned German for a total of nine years and managed to retain almost nothing. But where was it needed here?
  9. 19 mins but a failure because I also went for PATHOLOGIST at 4dn. Glad I didn’t enter.

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