Times 25489 – Not a lot of people know that, so play it again, Sam, you dirty rat!

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
36 minutes for this one. After a flying start I hit a wall quite early on and took a few moments to pull myself together. The Sudoku clue and 2dn resisted until the very end and then I wondered why I hadn’t written the answers straight in. There’s one clue I can’t quite make sense of but otherwise I’ve no complaints or queries about this enjoyable puzzle.

* = anagram

Across

1 PASTRAMI – PAST (old),RAM (sheep),1
5 PURDAH – PURe (perfect), HAD (was obliged) – reversed
9 FIENDISH – FINISHED*. The Times publishes Sudoku puzzles at five levels of difficulty: Easy, Mild, Difficult, Fiendish and Super Fiendish.
10 SLIVER – LIVE (be) inside SR (sister)
12 ACQUAINTANCE – A, then QUAINT (unusual) inside CANCEl (scrub)
15 RANCH – RAN,CH (church).  I rephrased this as “What the Pope did in this American house” to explain it to myself but I still don’t quite get the clue as it stands . On edit: I see it now, thanks to mct!
16 TWENTY-TWO – Two teams of eleven and a line on a rugby pitch 22 metres from the goal line. I was caught out by this once before so I was ready for it today.
18 TIT FOR TAT – The CRS for ‘hat’ derived from this is ‘titfer’
19 CLOVE – Leaf inside COVE (bay)
20 NAME-DROPPING – dd
24 INCITE – Sounds like “in sight”
25 HENCHARDbENCH (magistrates) inside HARD (tricky). Michael Henchard was the Mayor of Casterbridge in Hardy’s novel, who sold his wife and child. I trust Jim will get the literary reference local to his part of the world.
26 NELSON – NE (born), L (length), SON (male child)
27 CHILDREN – CHILl (calm down), NERD (one obsessed) reversed

Down

1 PUFF – dd
2 SLEW – dd
3 RADICCHIO – C (Conservative), CHI (character) all inside RADIO (set). Inedible leaves as far as I’m concerned.
4 MISQUOTATION – Cryptic definition. Conan Doyle never had Holmes say his most famous line.
6 UNLIT – L (line) inside UNIT (one)
7 DIVINATION – DIVI (share – more usually spelt ‘divvy’), NATION (people)
8 HORSEPOWER – (ROWERS HOPE)*
11 DIRECT SPEECH – DIRECT (blunt), SPEECH (address)
13 PRETENSION – TIN-OPENERS*
14 ANATOMICAL – ATOMIC (sort of bomb) inside cANAL (waterway)
17 TECHNICAL – I stared at this for several minutes before deciding it’s a quadruple definition. ‘Sort of’ covers the first three and the remainder of the clue makes up the fourth.
21 DITTO – O (old), TT (times), ID (papers) all reversed
22 FAIR – F (feminine), AIR (appearance)
23 ODIN rODIN

32 comments on “Times 25489 – Not a lot of people know that, so play it again, Sam, you dirty rat!”

  1. But much not understood. Tempted by MERCHAND at 25ac (one who sold?) and loads of agonising about TECHNICAL (sort of drawing, sort of fault, sort of college … ??).

    I suppose if one was the Pope (15ac), then one RAN the CH. Not impressed though.

    Good job 9ac was an anagram, otherwise I had no idea at all.

  2. HENCHARD and RADICCHIO were today’s unknowns. Around 50 minutes too, though I shall never know as my watch stopped. Rather liked SLEW.

    ‘Technical fault’ reminds me of the Michael Flanders line – almost certainly a 4dn – when he’s doing his brilliant monologue on travelling by air.

    ‘So then you get this announcement, “Due to a technical fault, the plane will be delayed for 30 minutes” – which means the pilot hasn’t turned up.’

  3. Totally messed up putting PLUG in at 1D (instead of PUFF) and ICON at 23D instead of ODIN (I had no idea what sculptor was xICON but it I don’t know many sculptors, although I knew Rodin of course). When I then decided they must be wrong still couldn’t get HENCHARD since I’d never heard of him and was still trying to get an an anagram of CASE around ENCH. So DNF.
  4. Straightforward, ie far from 9ac, except that I run a mile from Thos. Hardy so had to work out 25ac from the cryptic, and spent a short time early on wondering if RODI was a god.. an unpleasant form of execution, but preferable no doubt to the more usual kind.

    I used to much enjoy technical drawing at school, little knowing that before long it would be replaced by a computer

    Edited at 2013-05-31 08:30 am (UTC)

  5. Plodded through this in 25 minutes, never quite getting onto setter’s wavelength. Still don’t understand TIT FOR TAT. Thought 15A a bit weak.

    I have tried to read Thomas Hardy but never managed to finish one. Found them boring and impenetrable, warts and all. Had a vague memory of the wife selling gambit so googled a derived HENCHARD to check. Beam me up Scotty.

    1. I never read Hardy either, but some of his books were made for screen and my knowledge comes only from watching those adaptations. The Mayor of Casterbridge was done as a 7-parter for TV in 1978 starring Alan Bates as Henchard.

      I can’t see any problems with 18, a straight definition plus TIT FOR TAT is the Cockney for hat that gets abbreviated to “titfer”.

  6. 13:50 on the club timer, so no real hold-ups. I read The Mayor of Casterbridge at about the same age as vinyl1 and have forgotten almost everything about it, so needed the cryptic for that one, my last in. Otherwise pretty plain sailing for me.
  7. Of course, Michael Caine rather mucked things up for himself when he finally did say this line in Educating Rita.
  8. I read Hardy, or most of it, and can’t say I was too impressed. His poetry too a real slog for me, but take me back to the Romantics and I’m yours.

    Slogged through this too, which has its moments (and I really liked RANCH for some reason), whereof I eventually clocked around 45 minutes.

    Here’s to a great weekend for all,
    Chris G.

    1. I’m with you on the Romantics, but there are some lovely Hardy poems as well. Unfortunately I can’t find Dylan Thomas reading Lizbie Browne on YouTube, but you mind not find it too much of a slog to read it yourself here.
  9. 15 minutes, with HENCHARD dragged from memory and wordplay (is there another wife-seller out there?).
    I thought it quite a pleasant change to have the full CRS phrase in, though obviously it has confused some.
    CoD (acknowledging, however that it’s rather in-house) to FIENDISH – such a neat piece of work. I stopped counting the number of references in TECHNICAL after the first one,and rather assumed the rest was going to be wordplay. Four! Well I never!
  10. I’ve never read any of his works (or seen the screen versions) as they don;t appeal to me: however, they appear often enough in crosswords for me to get the reference, so only needed a quick Google to confirm.
    As I am occasionally forced to buy a copy of the Times when I’m away from a computer for a weekend, I was aware of the Sudoku reference.
  11. 29 mins mid-morning. I thought this one was on the tricky side, and although there were some clever misdirections I didn’t overly enjoy it.

    I was held up by having carelessly entered ‘plug’ at 1dn before I eventually realised that 9ac was an anagram, and then I remembered the ‘fiendish’ sudoku level in The Times (I stopped doing them a long time ago because they were so repetitive).

    I haven’t read any Hardy so HENCHARD went in from the wordplay with my fingers crossed.

  12. 11 minutes – for the second day running I seem to be having problems with anagrams as FIENDISH was the last to fall. 15a is a bit of a chestnut, well I have seen it several times before.
  13. 8:37. When 1ac goes in at first sight, you always wonder if it means the rest of the puzzle is going to click, and this one did. Helped by being familiar enough with Hardy that the wife-seller was the first name which came to mind even without checkers, and from regularly hearing other people talk about the fiendishness of their sudoku, without being much interested in them myself. Otherwise a perfectly nice puzzle without being taxing.
  14. 29:12 .. NE easy, then a real struggle for me. PRETENSION was one of my last in, which certainly made life more difficult. And putting in ‘powerhouse’ at 8d didn’t help, either. Good thing there’s always another puzzle tomorrow.
  15. Like the blogger I got off to a flying start with 3 clues solved in about 15 seconds, then it all slowed down and it was 45 minutes before I worked out the last entry, RADICCHIO, from the wordplay. No problem with HENCHARD, however.
    I liked the clues on the whole; the anagram in 9 was neat, and although initially I didn’t like “This Sudoku” as a definition (instead of eg, “Sort of Sudoku”) in the end I decided it was fine. I agree with those who felt 15 to be a bit weak.
    1. I’d intended to raise a slight quibble about radicchio. How does the definition work? Whether it’s bitter taste with leaves as a link word or leaves bitter taste my iPod Chambers only lists the plant as a definition and not its characteristics. Should the def be leaves with bitter taste or similar or am I just being thick (not for the first time this week)?
      1. I think you have a point. I didn’t examine the clue too closely but sort of assumed that ‘leaves with bitter taste’ was what was meant. None of the usual sources mentions the bitter taste although I know it is a feature of this particularly unpleasant ingredient.
      2. I was also a bit puzzled. Perhaps it works if a comma is mentally inserted after leaves, so “bitter taste” becomes a qualifying clause.
  16. A bit of a breeze at 12:14 with purdah (or at least the pur bit) taking a wee while on its own at the end.

    I “did” the Mayor of Casterbridge for English lit A-level but my E grade is reflective of the fact that I probably didn’t read the book. Whatever, neither the name nor the plot device were familiar so I had to rely on wordplay.

    I got 9 from the sudoku reference alone but somehow missed the anagram. I had no idea how technical worked so thanks, Jack, for the enlightenment. At my (grammar) school only boys who were crap at French got to do technical drawing instead of Latin or German.

    Nice puzzle and I rather like the “ran CH” trick, chestnutty or not, so that gets my COD nod.

    1. In foreign language dictionaries, f for feminine is common, along with m for masculine and f fir neutral.
  17. Two missing today – Direct Speech and Henchard. Thought the clue for Ditto was the pick of the bunch. I’ve seen Fiendish Su Doku puzzles in The Times so that one was easy.
    Don’t recall seeing “sr” for Sister before.
  18. Well, I finished in about 45 minutes but I was uncertain about a lot of these. The CRS hat, HENCHARD, the seclusion and the Sodoku were all outside my field of knowledge. I got FIENDISH from the anagram, TIT FOR TAT from the definition, and had to look up the others. So technically a DNF except by use of aids. Oh, and ‘divi’ as a substitute for ‘divvy’ is something I’ve never seen before either, but I just shrugged and put it in. Regards.
  19. …I seem to be one of the few who like Thomas Hardy. I also enjoyed “The Claim” which was “The Mayor of Casterbridge” made into a movie set in the Californian gold rush.
  20. 10:56 for me. I must have read The Mayor of Casterbridge in my mid-teens, and I’m pretty sure HENCHARD has appeared in the Times crossword several times over the years.

    I’m very fond of Hardy’s poetry, which I first came across in a recording of Dylan Thomas reading Lizbie Browne. As well as a setting of that poem by Finzi, there’s Britten’s Winter Words: his setting of The Choirmaster’s Burial is a particular favourite of mine.

    Edited at 2013-05-31 10:00 pm (UTC)

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