Times 25479

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
25 minutes for a gentle offering with one clue that has me flummoxed.

Across

1 PLAYWRIGHT – wary* in PLIGHT to give the luvvies’ luvvie.
6 IDEA – the even letters in mIdDlEmAn.
10 UNHINGE – [f]UN + [t]HING + [w]E.
11 SOPHIST – HIS in post* for Greek smart alecks Socrates made mincemeat of.
12 BARRICADE – CAD in BARRIE, and nothing to do with bard…
13 LOYAL – LAY + O + L all reversed.
14 BASIS – B + AS IS; the ‘lopped off’ version cropped up – again – in Moorey’s 12 May ‘Meg Ryan’ puzzle.
15 DEN+I+GRATE
17 DESCRIBED – nothing to do with scribes; it’s S (second) + CRIB (copy) in DEED (what was done).
20 TIPS+Y
21 ID+IOM (the island, that is).
23 UNSECURED – UNCURED (still having complaint) around S[id]E (wings in side). Nice, but the checkers rather gave it.
25 T+RAINED
26 ALLYING – it appears to be TALLYING without the ‘t’, but I don’t quite get it. Thanks to mct, who spotted that it’s a hidden answer.
27 ROOK – double definition (the rook or castle in chess starts off at the extremity of the board).
28 GRANNY KNOT – never having been a scout or a sailor, my knot-making skill set is likely to remain forever inchoate. Be that as it may, a granny knot, with a delightful whiff of the old sexism about it, refers to ‘a reef knot with the ends crossed the wrong way and therefore liable to slip’, AKA a ‘poor connection’.

Down

1 PLUMB – double definition.
2 APHORISMS – ship+oars* + M.
3 WIND INSTRUMENT – the wordplay is a tad superflous, but for the record it’s IN + DIN + STRUM in WENT.
4 I+RELAND – someone, somewhere will have put Iceland…
5 HAS-BEEN – double definition, ‘bean’ being a small amount of money, unless it’s being counted by an accountant, in which case it’s a large amount which is made to look like a small amount.
7 DAIL+Y
8 ARTILLERY – ILL in ARTERY.
9 APOLOGETICALLY – another where most will work out the wordplay after completion: A + POLO then (GET CALL around I) + Y .
14 BEDSITTER – D + (IS reversed) in BETTER.
16 ASPERSION – AS + PERS(I)ON.
18 B+L+UNDER
19 DISDAIN – did+as* + IN.
22 I(M)AGO – imago is the real McCoy, lepidopteristically speaking.
24 DIGIT – is the definition of a pedant someone who would insist on saying ‘piece of datum’?

43 comments on “Times 25479”

  1. I think 26ac is “rallying” without the first letter, leaving “allying” which pretty much means the same thing (getting together in a group).

      1. that’s funny. sometimes i just miss those. I remember once missing CARDIFF ARMS PARK as a hidden answer. Talk about in your face
        1. You’re not alone, Paul. I got it the same way you did, and didn’t see the hidden til reading it here. Thanks mct.
  2. Classic Monday puzzle with a few giveaways and some others that needed more pondering, esp. in the SW.

    I very much liked the clue for ARTILLERY. Reminded me of the days when ILL = “badly” was common. E.g., in the song “Tam Lin” where “ill” is used in two of its possible ways:

    “Woe betide her ill-fart face, an ill death may she die”.

  3. I also missed the hidden at 26ac, but it seemed to make sense at the time. I actually threw in ‘mimp’ at 27ac (Man In Marginalised Position, initially)–well, who knows what the Brits will come up with?–but that didn’t last long, thankfully. 5d took a few extra seconds, since for me (and most Murcans) it’s not a homophone, being pronounced [bIn] not [bin]. A nice Mondayish puzzle.
      1. Looking at the tiny print, I can’t distinguish the two pronunciations. Chez moi, ‘bean’ is pronounced ‘been’, rhyming with ‘teen’, ‘sheen’, etc. ‘been’ (as in ‘has-been’) is pronounced ‘bin’, rhyming with ‘tin’, ‘spin’, etc. At least this difference has nothing to do with (non-)rhotic dialects.
  4. 9:35 .. yippee! Only real hold-up was self-inflicted thanks to a typo, eventually resolved.

    Nowt else to say. T’was bright and breezy. COD … TRAINED – very neat.


  5. Nice easy start to the week too for me, just over 30 mins.

    LOI: the hidden ALLYING

  6. A rare excursion under 20 minutes for me, although I didn’t have it all correct until I checked the wordplay afterwards and found I had ‘Iceland’ for IRELAND at 4dn.

    I felt things would go well today when I immediately thought of Sir Noël on reading 1ac and called the correct answer to mind.

    BASIS was an absolute gift following the discussion here at the weekend on 13ac in ST puzzle 4537.

    Mention of castles and rooks in the same breath would in the past have been enough to guarantee a visit and a tirade from the angry Colonel so I thought I’d give his pic an outing today.

  7. The Oxford Companion to Chess intones (in best Cyril Fletcher voice), ‘In English-speaking countries non-players sometimes call it a castle’. Makes you glad there is (as yet) no Oxford Companion to Scuba Diving (‘Some plebs call a fin a flipper’).

    The Romans (Cicero prominent among them, as I recall) used to have a construction specifically designed for such sneering at the outsider: ‘Sunt qui…’. ‘There are those who – believe it or not, Tsk! – …’

    Edited at 2013-05-20 07:12 am (UTC)

  8. Dipped under the quarter-hour with no hold-ups…just no real sprint capacity either. Congratulations keriothe. Good to be reminded of Coward’s plays, wild and woolly things of the moment for the most part, but they made a heck of an impression at the time. ‘Vortex’ is a bit of a scream. For this chess-player incidentally rooks and castles have always co-existed word-wise.
    1. I am with the colonel on this one. Using the word “castle” to refer to a rook, would mark you out instantly as a patzer..
      1. Patzer eh? Well, when I get out of the playroom and start going to tournaments, and playing for a club, like a grown-up player, I’m sure I’ll find you’re right.
  9. 6:41. I think that’s my second fastest time ever, so yes this was easy. At least half the answers went in from definition without full parsing, which always make for a quick solve. I could have done twelve of these in the time it took me to do last Thursday’s.
    I solved this online because my iPad app has reproduced Saturday’s puzzle, so I had to read the actual paper on the train. This after the club chose to take my £24.99 subscription, even though I’m now supposed to get it for free as part of my newspaper subscription. Not very impressed with the Times this morning.

    Edited at 2013-05-20 08:13 am (UTC)

  10. 7 minutes, which is certainly a PB in the recent past, though I doubt I could have matched the time online. Perhaps working at speed (though not without enjoyment) was the main reason why the “hidden” stayed hidden, though maybe it’s also because it’s split over the line.
    CoD to DIGIT. Pedantry might equally suggest that “data” in the clue might just as well be correctly a plural, though my 10 year old Chambers already identifies data as n sing.
  11. 9:28 for this a gentle intro to the week. Really only paused over DIGIT, suspecting it might be some sort of -BIT; and, until I’d twigged that, ALLYING. I think it’s been a long-standing convention round here that if a hidden-word clue is the last in, or near enough, it’s a big tick for the setter, and a big “d’oh” for the solver. Glad to see I wasn’t alone!
  12. For me, 9:30 approx, easier than usual Monday fare and I did spot the hidden clue ALLYING for once. CoD APOLOGETICALLY for the use of POLO instead of the usual RU for a game.
  13. 10 mins. I could have been faster, but when I came to the majority of those clues where the answer seemed obvious because of either an overt or barely disguised definition I stopped to check the wordplay properly. However, my last in was 26ac and I confess that I also didn’t see the hidden answer until after I had written it in.
  14. The answer to clue #24 ‘digit’, was the only one
    not explained in the blog. My guess is the central character in both M15 and Ml6 is supposed to be the numeral 1 (one), while the central character in CIA is supposed to be a capital letter i(I), not the nuneral 1.
    Hence the answer ‘digit is simply
    ‘one’ (the numeral)
    Barbara
    1. I think 5 and 6 are the digits. The “I” in “MI” (and “CIA” for that matter) stands for “intelligence”.
  15. I found this the easiest Times cryptic for a long while. About fifteen minutes all told allowing for a couple of interruptions – as fast as I get.
    Most of the answers went straight in but a few – Sophist, Loyal, Bedsitter, Described, Digit, Unsecured, Disdain and Allying – took a few looks.
    FOI Playwright, LOI Allying (from definition – didn’t see it was hidden!!)
  16. Am i the only person who thought that has-been was a reference to using a penny to go to the loo and hence has been.
  17. Another victim of the hidden for ALLYING in that I missed it, but knew from the def that I was right. A nice Monday stroll, and I too like the unfortunate ILL in the ARTERY. I’m on statins myself, so ought to know.

    24 minutes.

    Cheers
    Chris G.

  18. Clearly Keriothe’s explanation of the wordplay for this clue is correct, as opposed to my convoluted and mistaken attempt to explain the answer. wordplay. My face is now quite red.
    Barbara
    1. We’ve all been there, Barbara – proudly announcing one has seen the light, only to discover it’s that of an oncoming train.
      1. Apologies for taking your name in vain on the Forum today Sotira but I noticed yesterday in your comments on the previous week’s Sunday cryptic that your Club renewal (through Worldpay I assume) went through automatically, apparently without a care in the world.

        I hope this isn’t an anomaly because as you know there has been a whole uproar about non-renewals coupled with some pretty strong-arm stuff getting regular club members to sign up for expensive add-ons or drop out altogether, which sadly several have already done. Apparently the minions at NI have been instructed not to tell those inquiring of the least costly L2 per week package option (as opposed to the L17 per month one) – I know this from Puzzleplease who posts elsewhere on LJ and is a regular on the Club concise Forum.

        There has been a claim that the matter was still under review, but for subscribers the silence and lack of info has been deafening. Based on your recent experience I would like to believe that the entire fiasco has caused complete reconsideration by the powers-that-be but I’m not holding my breath.

        Does anyone KNOW anything further?

        Edited at 2013-05-20 05:42 pm (UTC)

        1. Hello Olivia. I can’t say I KNOW anything further, but my renewal sailed through without incident within the past month, the same way you describe Sotira’s. I hadn’t known it was due for renewal, since I don’t (can’t)keep track of such things. Fingers crossed for you …
          1. Thanks Kevin – good news. Warm weather at last in the Hudson Valley!
        2. Hi Olivia, I’m afraid, as usual, I know nothing. On the plus side, that rarely stops me.

          My existing Worldpay subscription for the crossword-only package simply renewed itself on the appropriate day – and only once (there was a time when every year it was so pleased with itself for successfully renewing that it did it a second time, just to prove it could). I would certainly advise all members to go to their “My Subscriptions’ page at The Times site and check their renewal dates and make sure that their registered credit card is a still valid one. So I have nothing to complain about. Drat. Or do I ….?

          There obviously is a lot of confusion right now, and needlessly so. I wouldn’t blame anyone at the coalface of The Times subscriptions department, or indeed on the crosswords side. This whole thing smacks of memos descending from on high after meetings involving involving a lot of Power Point and flowcharts and talk of “rationalizing our revenue streams” with no one really stopping to think about it.

          And it is nuts. When newspapers started waking up to the web there was widespread agreement – and there still is – that the one big plus would be consumer choice, allowing customers to build their own newspapers. That’s so obviously the future that NI should be concentrating on building a much better payment gateway, one that is easily customizable and easy to understand. The paywall which currently greets potential new customers seems to offer a choice of Everything or Everything Plus, which isn’t really a choice at all and must be losing them huge numbers of customers. I would really like to subscribe to Puzzles and Opinion, and maybe Arts. Would it be so hard to allow me to check those boxes and pay accordingly? And I might like to subscribe to the Sports section for a month, or a quarter. There are web services I subscribe to that give me just that kind of flexibility.

          I also personally resent having to use a credit card to subscribe. That’s not the future either, but clearly that message isn’t getting through to the powers that be.

          Edited at 2013-05-20 08:52 pm (UTC)

          1. Sotira, in corporate-speak we are on the same page. It did cross my mind that you and Kevin may have been allowed over the threshold because you are both overseas subscribers and so can’t exactly go down to the corner shop and pick up the print copy on the same day, and you have other more immediate local sources of news. Same for me in NYC. As you say, the whole thing reeks of corporate crapola. And no need to yell at the poor peons trying to hold down a job on the other end of the phones at NI either.

            My thing runs out in September by which time I hope normal service will have been resumed. I wouldn’t actually mind a modest increase, but I hate being blackmailed and I really really hate losing some good people in the club.

            1. I wondered if there was a bit of differential pricing going on, too, but I can’t say. I’m selfishly happy for now!

              I would love to see The Times being genuinely innovative in this area. They were the first in the UK to jump into the pay-only model and you would expect them to be leading the way, but…. we live in hope.

  19. A personal best of 15 minutes, but that’s not really saying much since this was one of the easiest puzzles we’ve had in ages. The only unforced error was to enter SOUND for 1dn just on the definition, but quickly corrected when I got 1ac.
  21. My best of the year at 17.27 and 3rd best ever. So definitely on the easy side of average. Annoyingly it took me a minute or so to spot the hidden and open up the SE but a much better feeling after the horrors of my efforts last week.
  22. Can anyone provide a link to to-day’s crossword? My online edition has a repeat of Saturday’s 25478.
  23. Well this must have been an easy puzzle, because even I finished it! Time was just over the hour, which is probably my PB. A most enjoyable solve. Thanks to all, as ever, for the blog and comments.
    Adrian
  24. My best time ever at 25 minutes and a refreshing exception to dashing through all of the puzzle except for two or three crossing entries in collusion to defeat me. And there were some unknown (or scarcely known) words like IMAGO and scarcely understood clues like the one for IDIOM (I was thinking, if IAN is a name, perhaps so is IOM — the island, is it?). And I did catch the hidden answer.

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