Times 25482 – Are you a sight for tires eyes?

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 26:06 on the club timer with my typical typo (in this case a Y that strayed to the end of 27 across). I made pretty heavy weather of this one, and there’s a few pretty obscure bits of knowledge, so I might not be the only one struggling. On the other hand, once I’ve finished, everything does seem to make sense, so maybe I was just not quite on the wavelength.

Congrats to mctext on 100 postings (see next post where he gives the solution to the championship qualifier), and far far fewer errors than mine.

Away we go…

Across
1 TABBY CAT: anagram of BABY then C in TAT
9 RETAILER: one giving the bathroom a makeover is a RETILER, put an A inside that
10 VINDALOO: DAL(pulse) in VINOS(wine) with the S changed to a 0
11 LAB(o)UR,NUM
12 CUMBERSOME: take the first two letters from CUCUMBER, then SOME(a bit)
14 MALI: Sounds like Jacob MARLEY
15 C,HIDING
17 MACBETH: MAC(since 23 is RAINCOAT),BETH(girl) – great definition
21 SNUG: GUNS reversed
22 HEISENBERG: (HERE,BEGINS)*
23 RAINCOAT: A1(road) by NCO(officer) in RAT
25 IMPLICIT: take the edges off of SIMPLICITY
26 TWO-EDGED: TWO is some runs, and if they’re not off the middle they are EDGED
27 EULOGIST: EU is the union, then GIS in LOT
 
Down
2 A BIT(slightly),MUCH(considerably)
3 BEDAUBED: A U(turn) in BED,BED(a twin room would have two beds)
4 COL(pass),T
5 TROLLOP: ROLL(bread) in TOP(best)
6 STABLEMATE: B(bachelor) in STALEMATE
7 ELONGATE: something like this came up a few weeks ago – the scandal could be MELON-GATE (think Watergate, Monicagate…)
8 FRUMPISH: RUMP in FISH
13 RUN-THROUGH: or RUNT, H, ROUGH
15 CASTRATO: anagram of ART, A, COST
16 IN UNISON: or “IN UNI, SON”
18 BOB(boy),BLING(conspicuous wealth)
19 TIRES,1,AS: now there’s a word I haven’t seen a while – a blind prophet of Thebes
20 RIP TIDE: (TIP)* in RIDE
24 OPAL: that enemy would be 0 PAL

33 comments on “Times 25482 – Are you a sight for tires eyes?”

  1. So just a bit longer than George, which makes me feel pretty good. Must be in practice after all the recent blogging eh?

    Interesting solve today, going SW – NW – NE, then stuck a bit in the SE with IMPLICIT (thanks for the parsing) and TIRESIAS (known from T.S. Eliot only).

    CASTRATO: talk about suffering for your art!

    10ac: George, I think this is just DAL in VINO, then O (second letter of ‘nOne’).

    Edited at 2013-05-23 02:52 am (UTC)

  2. 24:02, if I recall, but I misspelled Tiresias; it felt odd when I typed in Teresias, but once again was in too much of a hurry to think. Feh. That’s 3 days in a row now. Thanks, George, for the explanations of VINDALOO, SIMPLICITY, BEDAUBED, & TIRESIAS, all of which I flung in without analyzing. CASTRATO was a lovely anagram, and I liked the deceptive ‘desert’ in RAINCOAT. Marley/Mali; hmm.
  3. 35 minutes, but plumped wrongly for ‘Heinesberg’. Maybe I had lager on the brain. BOBBLING brought back memories of Trevor Brooking, who, as a football pundit, used to excuse every hapless shot that flew wide of the goal on the grounds that it had got a little bobble. Knew the prophet better as Teiresias, but at least I knew him…
  4. 45 minutes with one wrong letter having invented the soothsayer TIREDIAS. I never heard of this character and when working out the wordplay I somehow chose to ignore ‘is’ in front of ‘bored’ and took the wrong tense from it. Didn’t know the quantum mechanics bloke either but guessed correctly.

    Laughed at 15dn where it occurred to me that it was high art that came with a cost.

    Edited at 2013-05-23 05:09 am (UTC)

    1. I think that for those who have to get the prophet from the wordplay the clue is rather devilish and perhaps unfair. It is ‘tire of‘ that means ‘be bored by’ in a sentence such as ‘He soon tired of her’. As far as I can see, ‘tires’ cannot stand for simply ‘is bored’ in an interpretation of the clue which parsed ‘by’ as an adjacency indicator.
  5. I enjoyed this one as you do when you get tuned in. Like mctext I only know Tiresias from Eliot (“I Tiresias..” etc). How long before we get “dugs” in a puzzle?

    Had a bit of a hold-up at 15ac with CHIDDEN on the basis that “From lecture…” pointed to a past participle.

  6. What looks like a good 21 minutes wrecked by unaccountably losing sight of vindaloo and guessing vindillo. Talk about the uncertainty principle. I can’t see anything doubtful about tires standing for is bored. One tires… A context can be taken for granted. I like the sleep murderer – ‘Macbeth doth murder sleep!’
  7. 18 mins and an earlier solve today.

    I first came across Tiresias in the Genesis song The Cinema Show which is on the Selling England By The Pound album. My last in was COLT because I was trying to think of an alternative to ‘shooting the breeze’ before the penny dropped.

    Even though it was a write-in IN UNISON made me smile, and I thought the clue for CASTRATO was excellent.

    1. I’ve had that verse of The Cinema Show going through my head since solving this last night. I wore out a cassette of Selling England By the Pound during my deep and meaningful prog rock phase.
  8. What fun! 21 minutes with lots of giggles along the way, especially with the high-pitched star of the show at 15. This was so bright and breezy (HEISENBERG and TIRESIAS notwithstanding) that I considered 4d might be CRAP, as in shooting the… until it didn’t fit with VINDALOO. TIRESIAS dragged unwillingly from memory as a classical name, one of those you can’t necessarily put an attribute to. Might as well be soothsaying, then.
    In our household, any mention of Mali, usually in a quiz programme, gets an immediate “…was dead”, so that was easy. And two plants I have heard of (11, 12) must be some kind of record.
    Most amusing set of clues for a long, long time.
  9. 40 minutes; a most amusing Christmas cracker of a puzzle

    Held up by a couple of things: couldn’t decide between BOBBLING (which I’ve never heard of) and BUBBLING (“bub” is certainly “boy”, and a bouncy person might be bubbling) and couldn’t parse IMPLICIT; I was convinced that the “being extremely short” was an imp.

    There is a recording somewhere on You Tube of Alessandro Moreschi, “the last castrato”, singing Ave Maria. I don’t recommend it; brings tears to the eyes for all the wrong reasons.

  10. 13:57. To revisit a comment I made last week, a setter (whose name still escapes me) once described their role as being to engage in a battle of wits with the solver and – eventually – to lose gracefully. I’d add that with the best puzzles, you both also have a smile on your face, and this one certainly cheered me up. The general knowledge required seemed perfectly fair (translation: I happened to know it), and there was some excellent wordplay, especially the unfortunate 15dn.

    Edited at 2013-05-23 07:43 pm (UTC)

    1. Hi Tim. It was Araucaria who said that I think, in a newspaper article not so very long ago..
  12. I was reminded of the Constant Lambert/Frederick Ashton ballet: I still remember Michael Somes being transformed into Margot Fonteyn, though it must have been 60+ years ago.
    1. Are you familiar with Michael Powell’s enchanting version of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann? Frederick Ashton almost steals the show in the Olympia part of the film.
  13. 14m. Nice puzzle, as other have said. Quite a few unknowns today: all gettable but I have sympathy with ulaca because HEINESBERG is perfectly plausible.
    Thanks to dereklam for reminding me where I knew TIRESIAS from.
  14. 32 minutes. I found this a fairly straightforward puzzle with a nicely deceptive definition for 22 (“Man of principle”). 17 was an absolute giveaway to someone who has taught Macbeth as often as I have. Tiresias is very familiar from Oedipus Rex.
    I notice we have the formulation, “wordplay from definition” again in 15 (in inverted form), which gave rise to some adverse comment a few weeks ago.
  15. I know Poulenc’s opera, Les Mamelles De Tirésias, which helped. I thought castrato was brilliant, laughed out loud in the cafe.
  16. I don’t think two=some runs, and ‘not off the middle’ for ‘edged’ is a bit weird, so I didn’t like this clue, although the answer was obvious. Never heard of ‘bobbling’ or the soothsayer. Otherwise enjoyable puzzle.
    1. I think the intention is to take the elements together as a phrase in which case two, edged would certainly mean some runs, not off the middle (of the bat).
      1. Ah. Thanks. That makes more sense. I’m no sportsman. (two was the most runs I ever made playing cricket at school!)
  17. 20:03 with guesswork required for the crossing Heisenberg and Tiresias. Sounds like a play what Shakespeare might have wrote.

    COD to 15d, natch.

    I hesitated at 10 as I thought dal had an H in it somewhere (but that must be Roald).

    Thanks G for explaining implicit.

    1. According to Chambers it can be spelled dal, daal, dahl, dhal or dholl. Or cajanus indicus if you like.
  18. Meandered through this in 25 minutes after being blown in every direction by the wind on the golf course. Nearly June and we had a hail shower today to put me off my putting.

    Straightforward puzzle really. Didn’t know the soothsayer but easy to guess. Good to see HEISENBERG. Had a laugh at 15D.

    1. You’ll have to invest in one if those broom handles before they ban them, Jim…
  19. This took me a while, about 40 minutes, because I didn’t know of TIRESIAS (wordplay), and couldn’t parse TWO-EDGED, EULOGIST or VINDALOO even though they all appeared to be the only possible answers. I also thought 15 was very good. Jimbo, a hailstorm would put me off the golf course altogether, so I admire your perseverance. Regards to all.
  20. A great puzzle. It certainly cheered up my morning and gave me a couple of laugh-out-loud moments. Not particularly fast – but I was savouring it too much to hurry. 36 minutes. Ann

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