Times 25,480

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18:05, but the state of the leaderboard so far (not a single genuine, all-correct, time under 10 minutes even after Magoo and Jason have done their worst) confirms what I was feeling as I solved, that this was quite a tricky puzzle.

Across
1 APPARATUS – [PARA in PORT] in AUS. As was presumably intended, until I had some checkers, I couldn’t stop my brain trying to fit in FREMANTLE or similar.
6 ASSAI – ASSAIL. The musical term appears regularly enough for even a non-musician like me to remember it.
9 TAGLINE – Lamb in TAGINE.
10 BALFOUR – FOUR(gang of Communists) following (LAB)rev. to give the former Prime Minister. These days, I think the old political certainties are gone in crosswords – REDS are still of the left, CHE is still a revolutionary, of course, but if I was a new solver, and hence not aware of the long-standing convention, I’d be saying “Labour equals socialist? Really?” In fairness, I guess the setter can claim not to mean the current Labour party, or indeed the British Labour party.
11 CRASS – CRedit + ASS.
12 EPIDERMIS – English, (I’M)rev. in (SPIDER)*.
13 CHINA – CHIN-CHIN + A.
14 NO TRUMPER – NOT RUM(=quite normal, presumably) + PER(=for a). A well-balanced hand which would suit a bid in No Trumps.
17 SINGLETON – (North IS)rev., Good, LET ON. Having just one card of a particular suit in a bridge hand.
18 CRONE – CaRtOoNyEs.
19 BAGATELLE – GATE in BALLET.
22 NICKS =”NIX”.
24 OSMANLI – Ordnance Survey, legioN in MALI. Derived entirely from wordplay, though it always looked right, mostly from knowing Osman as a common Turkish name (and looking it up, I find it is the origin of the word Ottoman, so perhaps this reveals Turkey as one of those areas where my historical knowledge is more than a little patchy).
25 AMERICA – (CRIME)* in A,A.
26 STONY – Second TONY(i.e. the American theatre award).
27 GREEN BELT – Book in GREENE, LefT.
 
Down
1 ATTIC – LATTICE.
2 PYGMALION – (GYP)rev. + (OILMAN)*. Shaw’s non-musical basis for My Fair Lady.
3 REINSTALL – REIN(check) STALL(seat).
4 THERES NO TELLING – I spotted the TELLING/counting element at once, but couldn’t call to mind the appropriate phrase, so I started with a tentative and wrong “NOBODY IS TELLING” before working it out. In my defence, I wasn’t helped by the presence of an apostrophe, unindicated as ever, which I know many people really don’t like.
5 SUBSISTENCE WAGE – (BIGNEWSTUCEASES)*. A long anagram down the middle is always a good way into this grid.
6 ALLEE – medievAL LEEds. I don’t think I knew this word, but the derivation is very obvious.
7 STORM – Shipwreck TO R.M. &lit.
8 IN RESERVE – 1New, RESERVE(=book).
13 CASH BOOKS – a Spoonerism by any other name, from BASH(party) COOKS(chefs).
15 UNCONCERN – UN(French “a”), CONCERT, Noon.
16 PROSCRIBE – CRIB(text to help student) in PROSE.
20 GUMBO – GUM(something to chew), (O.B.)rev. Despite regarding myself as fairly well-informed on matters in the kitchen, my first thought was that this should be fish rather than chicken – however, checking wiki, it turns out I don’t know the difference between Cajun gumbo (containing chicken or fish, though never both together) and Creole gumbo (which is fish-based).
21 TUNNY – TUN(barrel) + NeatlY.
23 SMART – Sergeant Major, ART(knack). All the Sergeant-Majors I have come across have indeed been phenomenally smartly turned-out.

34 comments on “Times 25,480”

  1. 25 minutes for a puzzle that I always struggled with a little before seeing what then appeared obvious – sign of a good set of clues.

    It’s all good standard but with no major stand out works of art and no limp also rans either. High level of consitency.

    I suspect 10A is going to cause younger solvers some problems because all the references are set firmly in the past.

    Thank you setter and on balance I’m glad you got this one Tim!

    1. I’m sure even the youngest of solvers will know that the Labour Party were once socialists. Combined with some knowledge of the history of Britain, Israel or China (and one out three is enough) you have enough to solve the clue.

      Edited at 2013-05-21 09:37 am (UTC)

  2. 32 minutes and somewhat relieved to find others found it comparatively slow going. I like the party chefs switching starters.
  3. As out of the groove today (25′) as in it yesterday (7′). Couldn’t make sense of BAGATELLE, diverted irretrievably by “Piano” – why not, for example, “flute”?
    NO-TRUMPER? Jamais couché avec. I suppose it can be imagined.
    Just remembered in time to put the Y in PYGMALION.
  4. OSMANLI: surely a Sydney bather with his 17ac? And if the LAB (10ac) applied to the Australian Labor [sic] Party, it’s equally inappropriate. Loved the NOT-RUM-PER but.

    Only times I ever had gumbo (in that New Orleans), it was always seafood (20dn). And the critical ingredient is okra surely?

    Two not-too-bads in a row. Stinker tomorrow?

  5. 13m: I seem to have been on the wavelength for this, particularly as the wonderful IT team at the Times have updated the iPad app and made the crossword much more fiddly to solve. At least the punctuation is right now.
    Two unknowns for me today: NO TRUMPER and OSMANLI, for which I initially put in AZMANLI! Edit: three actually. See below
    I was initially puzzled by 10ac, thinking “Roy Jenkins wasn’t a communist, was he?” before coming to my senses.

    Edited at 2013-05-21 09:36 am (UTC)

  6. Why is ‘prose’ a translation exercise? Got the answer easily enough without understanding the clue entirely.

    I play bridge and have never heard of no-trumper as a phrase – has this been made up by the setter?

    1. From Oxford Dictionaries Online:

      noun
      [mass noun]

      1. written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure:a short story in prose [as modifier]:a prose passage
      [count noun] a passage of prose for translation into a foreign language.
      plain or dull writing, discourse, or expression:closely typed in best office prose

      noun
      Bridge
      a hand on which a no-trump bid can suitably be made or has been made.

      1. To enlarge on that a little. It’s a description of a hand as dealt. For ACOL players an even suit distribution (Typically 3-3-3-4) with exactly 12 to 14 high card points. In the US they used to play a strong no trump so more like 16 high card points (out of it these days so things may have changed since my day)
    2. I didn’t know this either but Chambers has: “a passage of prose for translation from or, usu into a foreign language, as an exercise”
    3. When I studied Latin and Greek a “prose” was a translation exercise from English into one or the other; similarly an “unseen” was from one of them, a passage not studied before, into English. I find the use here a little arcane.
  7. My time (about 22 mins) ruined by a mistake which I needed Tim’s blog to locate. It turns out that solving anagrams ‘at a glance’ isn’t always a good thing, especially when you have one or two areas of spelling blindness. So it’s not subsistAnce, then. And I checked my answers. Twice. There goes my career in QA.

    Edited at 2013-05-21 03:56 pm (UTC)

  8. 27 minutes, so two under 30 so far this week!

    DK OSMANLI but the wordplay was clear. Didn’t get the “Gang of Communists” reference but fortunately my early C20th UK history is better than my knowledge of Chinese affairs so Arthur Balfour sprang immediately to mind, given a couple of checkers.

    Knew Gumbo courtesy Hank Williams:

    Jambalaya, a-crawfish pie and-a fillet gumbo
    ‘Cause tonight I’m gonna see my ma cher amio
    Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
    Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

  9. I had one of those ‘the Times won’t take you long today’ emails from a friend first thing this morning, so it is quite a relief to find that others found this on the tricky side as it took me 19 minutes, quite a lot spent sorting out the NE corner.
    1. That was my estimation when i had 7 left. turns out it token a bit longer!. About 27 for me which i am quite happy with.
  10. Fairly straightforward, taking me just over 30 minutes. The unknowns were no-trumper and tagine, and I couldn’t work out how ‘chin’ equalled half of ‘toast’, but none of this caused any significant hold-ups.
  11. 33 minutes, with not a clue how to parse no-trumper, though the phrase itself was no problem owing to my early education in bridge. Prose brought back memories of the Greek Prose Prize I won many moons ago – I believe I was the only competitor. If only crosswords were like that, I’d be top of the leader-board every day.

    Gumbo courtesy of the Carpenters…in the Karaoke version, a wacky dude in a check jacket with a bow-tie does his thing on the flute as Karen does her thing on vocals.

  12. Got caught out by (deliberate?) possibility of “Valle” (grassy valley) at 6d, combined with opening “Very” at 6a. Looked like a good time till then but ended up a self-kicking DNF
  13. 14 mins. I must have been on the same wavelength as the setter, especially as I didn’t solve it until after lunch.

    I had the O checker at the start of 24ac and confidently wrote in OTTOMAN when I saw Turkish at the start of the clue. I then read the clue properly, realised how hasty I had been, and amended it to the correct OSMANLI, which I had actually heard of.

    It was good to see a spoonerism at 13dn without the word spooner in the clue. Well done, setter.

    I smiled when Sotira admitted to the mistake she made at 5dn when she didn’t bother to account for the anagram fodder. That is something I have a habit of doing from time to time.

  14. Steady solve today. FOI Subsistence Wage, LOI No-Trumper. Unknowns Osmanli and Allee from wordplay. Made an educated guess at No-Trumper from the checkers and context – not a phrase I knew. I couldn’t parse Bagatelle so thanks Tim for explaining that one.
    Thought the Bash Cooks were delightful.
  15. The references to Communists & socialists were sufficient to prove to me that this could not possibly be Arthur Balfour – a staunch Conservative. (In any case, as a long-time Liberal there was ever only one “Gang of Four” – I don’t remember hearing of the Communist one before today.)
    I spent a while wondering whether Simon Bolivar could be made to fit the wordplay, till I saw s.v.m was impossible for 7dn, where I eventually decided that the commandos were the S-Team, to be sen rising from the wreck.
  16. Back to a more normal 45.37 today after yesterday’s excitements. Like others had to guess 14a and 19a and took ages to get the two long down clues. I also tried to fit Oman into 24a before the penny dropped!. After that the rest fell into place! My COD to 13 d.
  17. A steady solve today. Clocked out in 28 minutes with no major problems. Just as well because I only had 30 minutes to spare this am. Ann
  19. First time in a long time I haven’t been able to come up with a plausible answer, and 10 was left completely empty. Better luck tomorrow…
  20. I thought this was pretty hard, and it took about 45 minutes, ending with STORM, which I couldn’t parse at all. That was right after I finally unravelled Mr. BALFOUR. Overall, a very challenging and well constructed puzzle, so thanks to the setter. Regards to everyone.
  21. “Smart” was my LOI as I had trouble convincing myself that a Sergeant Major is an officer. I’m thinking (hoping?) that, Michael Clark, apart, the rest of the Australian batting line up is 14ac.
    2. Well, I don’t think any of them will be scoring a century before lunch at Lord’s – and not just because of the abysmal over rates.

Comments are closed.