Times 25476 – A Perfect Ten, but not Bo

Author   yfyapPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
What a home-coming this has been! Got in from a week-long tour in China at 4am and feeling groggy from lack of sleep and having to solve and blog this stinker. Very many indirect definitions which made for a slog plus some slips here and there and I can only say PHEW! when I finally uploaded this. But then, we are all, in a way, masochists, aren’t we? Soon, we will be begging for more ….
ACROSS
1 WALLOW W (weight) ALLOW (don’t stop) I wasted some precious minutes trying to justify WANTON with TON for weight until 2Down later saved me from further agony
4 SCREW CAP Ins of E (English) WC (water-closet, loo, toilet, ladies or in China, wash hand room) in SCRAP (piece)
9 EAT CROW Ins of A in ETC (et cetera, others) + ROW (dispute) for the American expression meaning to be forced to do something very disagreeable or humiliate oneself.
11 ASPHALT ASP (the snake that killed Queen Cleopatra) HALT (stop) for a road surfacing material
12 FORUM FO (Foreign Office) RUM (strange, odd, not conventional)
13 IN GENERAL *(LEARNING English)
14 CHAIN STORE CHA (tea) IN STORE (on the way)
16 rha deliberately omitted
19 DIOR Ins of I (one) & O (over) in DR (Doctor Kildare, of TV fame) for Christian Dior, French fashion designer
20 REINSTATED *(RAT-INFESTED minus Fine)
22 BAGATELLE Ins of A TELL (peach, betray, grass) in BAGEL (roll) minus L. Another few minutes lost here trying to fit BAGUETTE into the answer
23 NADIA Rev of AI (excellent) DAN (level of proficiency in Japanese martial arts such as judo, karate, etc) and of course few will forget Nadia Elena Comăneci, the Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the first female gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event.
25 RAINBOW RA (Royal Artillery, gunners) IN (at home) BOW (stick for playing, a violin perhaps)
26 SUFFOLK Ins of FF (fortissimo, very loud in muisc) + O (duck) in SULK (to be petulant or pet) for an English breed of large, well-muscled, blackfaced sheep without horns
27 TREASURY *(ARE RUSTY) Would have been &littish if rusting metals were valued highly as a store of wealth
28 URGENT Ur is considered by many to be the city of Ur Kasdim mentioned in the Book of Genesis as the birthplace of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham sometime in the 2nd millennium BC; thus a gentleman from Ur or UR GENT
DOWN
1 WHEY-FACED WHEY (ins of Ecstasy tablet in WHY, the reason) + FACED (rev of DECAF, decaffeinated coffee)
2 LATER Rev of RETAIL (sell) minus I (no one)
3 ON REMAND ON DEMAND (when required) with R substituted for D (as indicated by swap wings in DartmooR)
5 CHANGE RINGERS Ins of RINGER (double) in CHANGE’S (money’s) This term is new to me. The Free Dictionary defines change-ringing
as the art of bell-ringing in which a set of bells is rung in an established order which is then changed and Chambers has BOB in bellringing, eg bob minor is rung on six bells, bob major on eight, bob royal on ten, bob maximus on twelve.
6 EXPAND EX (converted) PANDA (police car from the black and white colours) minus A
7 CHAIRLIFT C (cold) HAIR (fur) LIFT (crib, steal)
8 PETAL Ins of ET (and, conjunction in French) in PAL (horse chestnut of Cockney rhyming slang for pal, friend or MATE, China plate)
10 WHISTLE-BLOWER “Not a peep (sound) from you!” and you will get this excellent clue, my COD
15 ALONGSIDE Ins of LONGS (trousers) in AIDE (personal assistant)
17 BEDJACKET Ins of DJ (disc jockey, record player) A in Saint Thomas BECKET, (1115–1170), martyred Archbishop of Canterbury
18 Simple annie deliberately omitted. BTW, annie stands for anagram
21 STUBBS Ins of B (bishop) in STUBS (the remains of say a ticket partly torn on gaining admission) for George Stubbs (1724–1806) an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.
22 BURNT Ins of RN (Royal Navy, sailors) in BUT (bar)
24 DOONE Tichy way to say Do One as primary function for Lorna Doone, eponymous heroine in a novel by Richard Doddridge Blackmore
++++++++++++++
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(FODDER) = anagram
yfyap88 at gmail.com = in case anyone wants to contact me in private about some typo

25 comments on “Times 25476 – A Perfect Ten, but not Bo”

  1. Slogged through this as well – 28:36 on the club timer, though while showing my sister-in-law how cryptics work (not sure this is going to be one to hook someone in). I rather enjoyed it though – STUBBS has visited these pages before (and I didn’t get him the first time), BEDJACKET from definition and WHEY-FACED from wordplay. Some very nice clues in here – I’ll go the opposite of Uncle Y and say I didn’t care much for 10 down, but really liked the crafty clues for ALONGSIDE, BAGATELLE and SCREW-CAP
  2. 1D is also “the reason for” = WHY swallowing tablet E (ecstasy).

    I’m not sure if you are joking about STUBBS or not, but he is a painter famous for painting horses.

  4. A puzzle that annoyed me because I just couldn’t get into the left-hand side for ages. But once done, I recognised what a piece of art it was. So many clever devices — esp. on the LH side! My LOI was DIOR of all things … with a big brain clunk once I saw it. Agree with Jack that the clue for CHAIRLIFT is great. And (22dn) “singers” indeed!

    mctext

    (For some reason the current problems with LJ won’t let me log in. It’s been like that all morning. Anyone else with similar?)

    1. Hey! My post actually got through the LJ down. Course, I meant Ulaca, not Jack. Sorry.

      mct

  5. Can’t see other comments because of error 500, so am probably duplicating some remarks from others.
    Got really stuck, with nothing in NE corner for over half an hour, so eventually had to resort to aid for list of possibles to fit checkers.
    Thanks for explaining 22ac, where I was trying to do something with BAP or BAGUETTE, and 3dn where I a near-anagram of ‘Dartmoor’ couldn’t be made to work.
    I know about change-ringing because a friend at uni was a campanologist: if you’d like to know more, I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Tailors
    I expect lots of others will have told you about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stubbs – perhaps the best ever painter of horses.
  6. Tough stuff, 47 minutes, CoD 11 for the hopeful command. In 10D a peep’s an often-used word for a whistle’s sound; don’t know whether you took this on board glh. There’s a whey-faced fool in ‘Macbeth’; maybe the first one.
  7. 29:33 .. a fairly rapid start but that didn’t last long! Lots of really crafty stuff and fiendishly disguised definitions. SCREW CAP caused me major problems. Personally, I love WHISTLE BLOWER.

    Well done, yfyap, for blogging above and beyond while jet-lagged.

  8. There’s been a maintenance issue with LJ but it seems to be cleared now.

    This would have been my worst nightmare on a blogging day with barely a quarter complete after the first hour. I did a couple of cheats to get me going again and eventually completed in 94 minutes with one wrong at 28.

    Edited at 2013-05-16 10:55 am (UTC)

  9. 41 minutes, but the sort of grid you feel great to have finished. Fine clues throughout, no gimmes, the whole thing solved piecemeal. I’m sure I’ve met URGENT in a Christmas cracker back in the day when people knew who Abraham was, but it was still my last in. CoD to almost anything, but DIOR tickled my fancy for the very smooth and utterly misleading Christian burial. And the reminder of the good Doctor whose theme tune has now taken up residence. Appreciative chuckles for DOONE and ASPHALT, and a lot of small change all over the floor.
  10. Lovely piece of blogging Uncle Y. 35 minutes for me and I thought it was going to be much worse than that. On a first read-through I only had “limb”. Thanks for the 9 Tailors reminder, I must re-read.
  11. Smashing puzzle requiring careful thought throughout. The whirring of cogs in my brain must have been audible to anyone passing.

    27:52 for the record. Many fine clues but I’ll give my COD to Doone for the primary function device.

    Thanks for explaining forum. I read NO! as an instruction to reverse the order and have convention following FO but rum didn’t seem to fit the bill.

    Thanks to the setter for a finely crafted puzzle.

  12. 26 mins. This one felt tough, although I did it after I had finished the difficult Anax in today’s Indie and I wasn’t sure how many brain cells I had left. A lot of you seem to have found it difficult so I’m happy with my time. I’m certainly glad I wasn’t trying to explain how cryptics work to somebody else while trying to solve it.

    Last in was ALONGSIDE after I finally realised what the clue was telling me. I’m in the camp that thought that 10dn wasn’t up to the standard of some of the other clues.

  13. I think 1d is ‘e’ – the (drug) tablet, in ‘why’, the reason for.
    Quite a struggle for me, but I got there in the end
  14. What a superb puzzle! Took me an hour, but I then sat back and admired the brilliance of the clues for a further ten minutes.

    EAT CROW. This expression puzzles me. Some years ago I was rummaging about in the attic and found an old book entitled Miss Tuxford’s Cookery for the Middle Classes. On page 67 is a recipe for Rook Pie: Take 6 rooks, 3 hard-boiled eggs, 1 pint of warm water …….. Apparently, this member of the crow family was considered edible by the middle classes in 1930.

    By the way, is there a nina here? One of Stubbs’s most famous pictures is of the racehorse WHISTLEJACKET.

  15. Not as appreciative as others after a 60m DNF with too many unsolved to list. Often seems to be an extra hard puzzle after a qualifier, I guess as a cold shower for those getting too hot in anticipation after completing said qualifier. As a relative novice not a puzzle I enjoyed – a slog as others have said – with a number of clues relying on obscurity rather than clever wordplay or construction. I’m sure though the better solvers will have enjoyed the challenge nonetheless. I think it will be many years before I join that august band on today’s performance.
  17. A bit of a struggle after 18 holes in glorious sunshine – the golf was better than the solving. A somewhat laboured 35 minutes for this with SCREW CAP and ASPHALT both proving difficult. Kicked myself for both as the lights finally went on.

    Thank you setter for an excellent puzzle and well blogged UY

  18. Four missing toay (Wallow, Whey-Faced, Eat Crow, Urgent). Most of the rest required a lot of thought and I pencilled in Forum and Bagatelle without full understanding. Thanks UY for parsing that pair. Loved “singers” and the ex panda car.
  19. Great painter indeed,although nearly all his galloping horses have two front legs extended and two rear legs sticking out the back. Watch a race on TV. Horses simply do not do this. An enjoyable and challenging puzzle though. TonyW
  20. Holy Toledo, that was an effort. About 55 minutes, ending with URGENT. There’s a lot of wordplay I could not unravel, so thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog. An extremely tricky and clever puzzle, Mr. Setter, so thanks kindly. Regards to all.
  21. The leaderboard revealed this to be one of those rare puzzles which had already detained even the fastest of solvers for more than 10 minutes, so my 20 minute effort felt pretty good. When you come across a tough puzzle like this, you have to feel for the novice solver, as you are reminded of how it feels to stare blankly at clue after clue before getting a start. Luckily, these days, that level of difficulty seems to kickstart some sort of different way of looking at things in my brain, and once I’d got that start, it was a great challenge.

    I can’t remember which setter described their role as (I paraphrase) being to have a battle of wits with the solver and – eventually – to lose gracefully. Top class puzzles like this always remind me of that description.

  22. … interesting remark about the possible NINA with Stubbs, Whistle and Jacket.
    I can reveal that that is merely one of those odd coincidences.

    Topical Tim’s quote is very apt: if the setter “wins” (with unsolved clues) he really loses, all things being equal. So if some found today’s struggle unequal I apologise!

  23. A puzzle I thoroughly enjoyed. In common with other contributors, I get a real feeling of satisfaction when I have eventually managed to complete a puzzle that I thought might defeat me, and also parsed all the solutions satisfactorily. I rarely time myself, and tackle the puzzles in the printed paper when time permits. For reasons I don’t understand, I do not enjoy on-screen crosswording. Again, thank you to all contributors to the blog – I do enjoy the comments.

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