Times 25497 – From 5 to 85

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 32 minutes

Music: Shostakovich, Symphony #10, Karajan/BPO

No easy Monday today. While the long clues in the middle may not be very difficult, there’s a lot to chew on around the edge of the grid. You’ll need a good vocabulary and some general knowledge to finish this one. I got stuck several times, only to be bailed out in the end by a careful analysis of the cryptics.

I did make a good start, and was hoping to finish before the end of the second movement. However, I got hung up in the NE for about 10 minutes as I laboriously worked out what could have been obvious. I had a few doubts about some of my answers, but it seems like I came through OK in the end.

Across
1 VISIGOTHS, VISI(GO)T + H. When I had only the ‘v’, I was tempted to put in ‘vacation’ but couldn’t justify it.
5 ARABLE, ARAB + LE. The answer is obvious enough, but is ‘arable’ a type of farmland or a definition of farmland?
9 CANONISED, anagram of IN A SECOND.
11 POLKA, POLK + A. My last in, and I was kicking myself. The only four-letter president I could think of for the longest time was Ford.
12 TRACERY, TR(ACER)Y. I tried to put in ‘tapestry’, which didn’t fit, and then I remembered ‘acer’ from my years solving US puzzles. Also a brand of computer, which the Times would not use, but the Guardian might.
13 FUSSPOT, F[e]U[d]S + SPOT. ‘Old woman’ is used metaphorically.
14 WEATHER-BEATEN, sounds like WHETHER BEATEN. I saw ‘tanned’ and jumped to the conclusion that the first element must be ‘leather’, only to have to back down.
16 MISCELLANEOUS, anagram of UNCLE’S SOLE AIM.
20 CROATIA, CRO[w] + sounds like ASIA. Not to me, it doesn’t.
21 ITEMISE, ITEM + I[s]S[u]E[d]. Being ‘an item’ does not necessarily imply cohabitation, so a rather sloppy clue.
23 IBSEN, I(B[ritish]S[outh]E[ast]N.
24 TALKATIVE, TAL[l] + KATI(V)E. ‘Tall’ as in a ‘tall order’, a demanding task.
25 GANDER, double definition.
26 HYDROGEN, HYDRO + GEN. Obvious from the literal, but the cryptic remains obscure to me. There are a number of hotels called the ‘Hydro Hotel’, in various places, but it doesn’t seem to be a chain or anything like that. Comments invited.
 
Down
1 VACATE, VA(CA)T + E[nglish]. A CA is a Chartered Accountant in the UK, as opposed to a CPA over here.
2 SENNA, SE(N + N)A. I had to get this from the cryptic.
3 GUNNERA, GUNNER + A. I was thinking RA = Royal Academy, and was looking for the name of a painter. Then it hit me: this is the plant I can never remember, although I have blogged several puzzles containing it, including the witty ‘first to fire’ clue.
4 TO SAY THE LEAST, double definition, and a very easy clue.
6 RIPOSTE, I + POSTER with [edito]R moved to the top. This one gave a little trouble.
7 BALDPATES, BA(L)D + PATES. I had never heard of the expression ‘slapheads’, so I was stuck working out the cryptic.
8 EXACTING, EX + ACTING. I had a very vague idea of what is meant by ‘brevet’, which turned out to be wrong anyway. The crossers and the literal saved me.
10 DEFERENTIALLY, anagram of FREE IN TELLY AD, another easy clue.
14 WISCONSIN, W + IS + CON + IN. The very smooth literal took me in, and I had a hard time believing the answer was actually ‘a Northern state’.
15 SMOCKING, S + MOCKING, a word I would associate with 17th and 18th century women’s
clothing.
17 ENTENTE. I had no idea of the cryptic when I entered this, but now I see it must be ENT[r]E(NT)E, where NT = ‘National Trust’.
18 OPEN AIR, OPEN + AIR in various senses. The Open Championship is coming up next month, it’s Muirfield this year.
19 HEREIN, HER[-o+E]IN.
22 ICING, cryptic definition. They’re still not using the hockey meaning, but watch for that. Actually, a hidden in [pan]IC IN G[atwick], as Alec has kindly pointed out. With the checkers, it was just a straight write-in, so I didn’t look too carefully

37 comments on “Times 25497 – From 5 to 85”

  1. Good puzzle with some interesting cryptics. E.g., pondering RACE from “maple” (12ac) and ENTE(r) as “course” (17dn) when other interpretations are intended.

    Agree that cohabitees may or may not be an ITEM; and, indeed, that an ITEM may or may not be cohabitees (21ac).

    As for HYDRO (26ac), NOAD has:
    “Brit. a hotel or clinic originally providing hydropathic treatment”.

  2. 22dn, ICING. I think we have to count this as &lit because it’s also a hidden answer. {pan}IC IN G{atwick}.
  3. …including the 1-2′ it took when my almost-finished grid disappeared and I had to get it back and fill it in again. LOI GUNNERA, which I finally remembered; I was stuck on ‘member of RA’ as ‘artist’, and wasted bags of time trying to come up with an artist beginning G_N. The NY Times helped here at 12ac, with ACER yet one more of its chestnuts.DNK ‘slapheads’. Had no idea how to parse ENTENTE, and I see now that I never would have parsed it. Also DNK SMOCKING. I’m sure we’ve had ‘hydro’ as (part of?) a solution, since otherwise I wouldn’t have known the word.

    Edited at 2013-06-10 02:08 am (UTC)

  4. 33 minutes, at least 10 of them pondering 1ac, 12ac, 2dn & 3dn in the NW, and my last one in 19dn in the SE. I agree on the “item/cohabitees” point for which I can find no justification. The term “brevet rank” was also unfamiliar although I have probably met and forgotten it.
  5. 50 minutes and a few wobbles along the way. While ‘hydrogen’ as the commonest element may have been obvious to my learned cohabitee of the Monday slot (no, we are not an item), I thought it was nitrogen (airy thinking?), so that rather messed up the easy 10dn anagram, where I was looking for something exotic and Italian. I also got GUNNERA from ‘a supporter of Royal Arsenal Football Club’ = Gunner. Talk about putting the carriage before the horse! Oh, and at 11ac (also my last in), I was working around the initial checking ‘p’ as representing the ‘president to the front’ part of the wordplay. Just bunged the right answer in from the literal when I had all the checkers; even though I knew the President, it went right over my head.

    That kind of day – must be all the discussion about the demise of this site. Incidentally, on that, I don’t really wish to say what I am likely to do (because the powers-that-be may well dip into this site from time to time and sense ‘weakness’), but suffice to say I’ll be loath to just chuck it in after all I’ve gained from it over the last 3.5 years. For the record, I’m another who doesn’t need to make a snappy decision, as I’m renewed up to 30 June 2014.

    The Newspeak of the NI email message I find amusing more than anything else. I would be hard put to condemn it for its arrant disingenuousness as I work in the PR industry (punishment for past sins) and confront – and even have to write – this kind of hogwash on a daily basis.

    Right – off to see my priest…

    Edited at 2013-06-10 02:26 am (UTC)

  6. 10:45, so a pretty snappy sort of start to the week. I think all these early starts with the ongoing building work are turning me into an energetic lark despite my normal preference for being an owl. I even managed to remember GUNNERA, possibly from getting it wrong last time it appeared.

    Like others I had a vague idea that “brevet” was a sort of rank, but only worked out what sort of rank because there’s no such word as EXCAPTAIN or EXCOLONEL. And I’m also of the opinion that my wife and I were an item before we moved in together (that was certainly the impression she gave me, anyway).


  7. … and that one was GUNNERA (hmm, even spell check doesn’t seem to recognise it!), where I had gonnera. I had mis-remembered the flower, and assumed gonner to be an artist.

    Otherwise, fairly swift, but without full understanding of: ITEMISE (still don’t really ‘get’ it…), TALKATIVE (tall order), ENTENTE.

    Unknowns today: POLK the president and ANSELM the canon, brevet, BALDPATES

      1. Aargh… should have know that. My friend’s son is at St Anselm’s School. D’oh!
  8. I caught a glimpse of the Vinyl’s opening comment, “no easy Monday” last night before starting as a result in Tricky Solve Mode this morning. So a surprise to finish in 13 minutes, despite similarly looking for an Artist and leather something.
    The NW proved the trickiest area, perhaps as a result of TSM, and I toyed with DECANT for 1d (leave empty, quite clever, I thought) and some sort of pensioner for VISIGOTH (why the past tense…) until I got the initial V.
    Item=cohabitees has the feel of one of those category errors you’re warned against in Basic Philosophy – all dogs have four legs; my cat has four legs; therefore my cat is a dog. But I think it gets away with it.
    CoD to EXACTING for the educational use of “brevet”.
  9. 9m, so a very gentle Monday as far as I was concerned.
    I didn’t know that an acer was a maple, but I knew the plant from crosswords. I actually have one in my garden, but I only know what it is because someone mentioned it at some point and it stuck because of crossword familiarity. It’s about the only plant in my garden I can name, other than “grass” and “apple tree”.
    GUNNERA is in the same category, and I think it defeated me the last time it came up. Having googled it I’m pretty sure I’d know if I had one of those in my garden.
    ARABLE is indeed a type of farmland, vinyl1, as distinct from the kind of farmland you might put sheep on, for instance.

    Edited at 2013-06-10 08:41 am (UTC)

  10. Easy one today, not even the first cup finished..
    I had 1dn parsed a bit differently to you vinyl:
    accountant = ACA in empty vessel = V(A)T + E(nglish), the def. being just “leave.” I think my version is rather more likely, since “leave empty” is perhaps a weentsy bit of a stretch as a def. for vacate. Though I’ve certainly seen worse. Most (but not all) UK accountants are ACAs.
    Cod to the “homophone” at 20ac, cheeky, or what?

      2. It’s in the “official” dictionaries too. More to the point, I don’t think that “leave” is sufficient definition for “vacate” anyway. The sense of void/emptiness has to be implicit, surely? Sorry,Jerry, but I think you’ve got this one wrong.

        Edited at 2013-06-10 12:30 pm (UTC)

  11. 8.36 the last bit of which was trying to work out why the obvious plant was what it was – d’oh.
  12. 12:01 .. this seems to have been a real wavelength puzzle. I must have been more or less on it.

    Only real problems came from the same airy thinking as our self-confessed PR guru ulaca – being briefly ‘sure’ that nitrogen was the commonest element despite knowing otherwise – and from always having the devil’s own job spelling MISCELLANEOUS (I like to think I spell it with arch postmodern irony – in a variety of ways).

    POLK flew in as I happen to be reading a book set in one of the USA’s 12 Polk Counties. COD .. HEREIN.

  13. 10:06 so put me down as finding this a gentle Monday offering.

    Gunnera and Polk only known from their previous crossword appearances. Acer known as the Japanese maple just because.

  14. 12 mins post-lunch.

    After my first read through of the acrosses I only had ARABLE and HYDROGEN, but the latter opened up the SE corner and from then on the rest followed reasonably quickly. Last in was GUNNERA and I’m another who got it wrong last time it was clued, and I was also trying to think of an artist for the first six letters of the answer until I remembered the other RA.

  15. Just over 22m today so an easier one by my standards. Would also have been sub-20 if I’d paused a little on 19d and thus not written heroin which made 24a very difficult and so my LOI after pausing to check eventually. Nothing remarkable here but I liked the smoothness of 20a and S others have noted the rather neat homophone.
  16. What a rubbish 7 down. I’m English and I’m 70 and I have never come across anyone using the word baldpates.
    1. The word is truly a carbuncle, fit only for ducks and mountains. Once we’ve got this crossword club business out of the way, let’s hound it out of the dictionaries.

      Now, ‘slaphead’, on the other hand, though rejected by my bleedin’ iPad, has the unbeatable associations of Benny Hill whacking that little fellow on his bonce.

      1. ‘slaphead’ is clearly an incitement to violence and thus quite unacceptable – your iPad is simply protecting you from a potential prison sentence. Surely, ‘chrome dome’ is the correct term.
    2. That can be said of so many words that crop up in the Times crossword so it’s hardly a fair reason to call a clue rubbish.

      If baldpates is the only such word you’ve encountered I’d be fascinated to hear about the times you’ve heard people saying recrudesce and heterodox (both culled from one of last week’s puzzles).

  17. I thought this was rather fun and didn’t time it – BALDPATES and RIPOSTE from wordplay, CROATIA from definition.
  18. Thought this was the simplest one we’ve had for a couple of months, though perhaps that was down to the ~200g of Dairy Milk I consumed pre-solve. Hadn’t heard of BALDPATES, though slaphead was commonly used in my schooldays. GUNNERA tripped me up last time so it was nice to have a chance at redemption.
  19. 23 across looks a bit odd to me. Not really an &lit, so what is the role of “plays” in the cryptic? I must be missing something.
    R. Saunders
  20. Ibsen is the playwright, and the wordplay is BSE as abbreviations for British South East (i.e. British Home Counties) inserted in IN as popular. It’s obvious when you see it, of course, but we all have ‘senior moments’ regardless of age.
    George Clements
    1. Thanks. I did see that, but my point, no doubt not expressed very clearly, was that his NAME is BSE inserted in IN, not his PLAYS as the clue implies. It’s water under the bridge now, though.
      RS
  21. A steady solve. 23 minutes which is a good time for me so I think I was on the wavelength. I’ve never heard BALDPATES which was my LOI though obvious from the cryptic. I didn’t know what a “brevet” is but now I do. One of the benefits of these puzzles is a steady dribble of new words into my vocab. Btw, SMOCKING is still often used on babies’ clothes and little girls’ dresses. And it’s historically associated with the traditional “smock” of rural workers (shepherds etc) from the 18th century onward which had SMOCKING decoration down the front. Ann
  22. No time to report since I did this while my wife was in conversation with me; I thought it best not to seem I was concentrating very closely. The fact that I finished it while still in conversation makes me feel it wasn’t that tough. Never heard of BALDPATES, or slapheads either, for that matter. No problem with brevet. COD to GANDER, my LOI. Regards.
  23. 7:25 for me – quite brisk in parts, but I made heavy weather of several easy clues.

    I’m familiar with the word BALDPATE, but somehow imagined that a “slaphead” was another synonym for “stupid person” – like “airhead”, “blockhead”, “chowderhead”, “dunderhead”, … I see from citations in the OED that it’s a comparatively recent coinage, so I’m not too surprised at my ignorance.

    1. I assumed it meant both before checking in ODO. Maybe in time it will come to mean blockhead too.
  24. I am surprised that “baldpate” should have caused consternation – rather than the ugly “slaphead”. A most memorable bit of the Bible, in one of the books of Kings, recounts the mocking of Elisha – “he was mocked by some young boys from the city; Up with thee, bald-pate, they cried, up with thee, bald-pate!” (from the excellent Knox translation).
    1. Thanks for that intersting tidbit. I think cotext and context have much to do with it; in Knox’s translation, it fits beautifully.

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