Times 25,498

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Morning, all, I am standing in for Jim while he’s on holiday. Timed at 13:24, and based on the leaderboard so far*, this might be a bit of a tester for the less experienced. Some good stuff here, anyway, and a proper mixture of straightforward and teasing.

*My time is 3rd fastest at time of writing and nobody has beaten 10 minutes yet (with the obvious caveat that neither Jason nor Magoo have had a crack yet). Not a single neutrino, where can they be? Possibly waiting for this blog, who knows…

Across
1 AD NAUSEAM – Latin for “continuing to the point where it makes one sick”.
6 CHAFF – double def.
9 PESETAS – SET(=laid) in PEAS. There is a superfluous [‘s] or a superfluous [may be] in the online clue (or [may be] should be [maybe] as Ulaca points out below).
10 LURCHER – CHURCH in LURER. The mythological Sirens, who attempted to lure sailors such as Odysseus to their doom, rather than the air raid sort.
11 EAR – BEAR. With vague thoughts of “ullage”, I wondered whether BULL might be the speculator, until I realised the cryptic reference was to “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears” from Julius Caesar. I feel confident even Jimbo would be happy with that level of poetic knowledge being expected of solvers.
12 SHOW OF HANDS – SHOW OFF, HAND’S.
14 HOMBRE – BETTER in HOME (as in “an Englishman’s home is his castle”, and the definition is just “guy”.
15 BELAYING – LAY(=song) in BEING(=essence). “Sailor’s stopping” as in “belay that order”. A beautiful bit of misdirection had me convinced this would involve a sailor being inserted into a song to give a synonym for “essence”, which led to doomed efforts to fit TAR, AB and even JACK into the checkers.
17 MARATHON – MARAT(French revolutionary famously murdered in his bath), HO(call), SIGN.
19 AT REST – LETTER in A TEST. Pilot as in episode rather than person in charge of a plane.
22 IRISH COFFEE – 1(OFFRESHICE)*.
23 HAN – sHANghai &lit. The Han are the major ethnic group of Chinese people, and crop up fairly regularly in puzzles.
25 TRANCHE – Horse in TRANCE.
27 ARSENIC – (RACINE’S)*. Element no. 33, and notoriously poisonous.
28 DREAD – RIGHT in DEAD(=”without feeling”). Nice surface requiring a lift-and-separate.
29 KERRY BLUE – SKERRY, BLUE(=”dirty”).
 
Down
1 AMPLE – AMPLIFIER(=”booster”) + LEG minus the GOOD. I took ages to work out how AMP fitted in, being unable to see past the electrical unit, and I had a nagging doubt that APPLE, which was the only other word I could make fit, might somehow be a “booster”. Now that I’ve seen the right answer, that seems very far-fetched, and I can’t see why I had so much trouble here – always the way, isn’t it…
2 NOSTRUM – Sulphur in NOT RUM(i.e. normal). A nostrum is a quack medicine rather than a genuine remedy.
3 UP TO SCRATCH – UP TO(=”doing”) SCRATCH(=”withdraw”).
4 EUSTON – U.S. in ETON (College); main London terminus for the West Coast main line railway, hence “trains here”.
5 MULL OVER – MULL(=”island”), OVER(“ancient history”).
6 COR – CORE. Cheeky.
7 ASHANTI =”A SHANTY”, which I’d say is an unexceptionable homophone.
8 FORESIGHT – (HERO’SGIFT)*.
13 HEARTLESSLY – ARTLESS(=plain”) in Hospital, ELY(=”see”).
14 HAM-FISTED – (THIEF’SMAD)*.
16 POLO NECK – LONE in SPOCK. Dr Benjamin Spock, noted expert on childcare, and not to be confused with Leonard Nimoy’s most famous alter ego. The simple definition “top” is another nicely concealed one.
18 REIGATE – I(current in scientific notation) in (ETAGERe)rev. I half-remember étagère coming up as an answer some time ago, and causing me some problems, partly because it looks like an unlikely combination of letters, partly because it’s not a word I use casually around the house; even so I must admit that putting the right answer in was much easier than working out exactly why it was right…
20 ETHANOL – (IOLANTHE)*.
21 AFFAIR – A FINE FAIR.
24 NICHE – MONTH in NICE.
26 CAD – Cologne And Deodorant. I’m picturing Terry-Thomas.

27 comments on “Times 25,498”

  1. Eventually gave up on this after an eternity staring at 15A, and was not surprised to find it was a word I’d never heard of (at least not with this meaning). Having said that, the misdirection in the clue completely fooled me.
  2. I was quite pleased with 25 minutes,the last 5 on BELAYING. Really hard to get past “stopping” as crosswordese for “inserted into”, and Chambers tells me there are 49 possible fillings for the letters on display.
    An abundance of misdirections as already noted – I’ll add “part from horse” as another because there are so many vaguely remembered possibilities.
    Quite a few needed adroit reverse engineering: EAR, REIGATE and MARATHON for three. 6a’s “worthless material” and “twit” I think could not possibly be confidently resolved without checkers.
    Good workout, CoD to POLO NECK for narrative. Or EAR, for spreading three letters over the longest clue in the set.
  3. Some really ‘polo-neck’ stuff here, with ‘up to’ for ‘doing’ being a fine example. My last in was BELAYING, which I didn’t know in the required sense and dropped when I finally cottoned onto ‘essence’ as ‘being’. Other prime misdirection included a clue including the words ‘sign’ and ‘revolutionary’, which started M_R but was not ‘ram’ reversed. ASHANTI being vaguely remembered and KERRY BLUE being unknown were other causes of delay; of which there was quite a bit, my time of 110 minutes threatening to put me at five Keriothes or worse.

    Many ticks but COD to POLO-NECK for the short story that could have come straight out of one of those women’s (or, ugh! modern men’s) magazines.

    Another possibility at 9ac is that ‘maybe’ should be one word.

    Edited at 2013-06-11 09:17 am (UTC)

  4. You never know when a vestigial memory of “Swallows and Amazons” will come in handy. I was another one trying to do something with “ull”, and “polo neck” had me addled completely until it couldn’t be anything else. 19.5. Good puzzle.
  5. Got through quickly until —E—A—I—G at 15ac. Then gave up. The sailor had to be RATING, no?

    To Z8: I can find 51 words that fit the given letters at 15ac. And believe me, I tried them all in desperation. KO to the setter.

    The “Iolanthe” clue at 20dn was fabulous.

    (Taking a mo during half time in the Aust./Jordan game to post. So must fly now.)

    1. I had almost given upon solving the thing, and was just entering the letters into Electric Chambers when the penny dropped. There’s probably been some additions since my 2003 edition, but it helpfully listed 49. The sometimes useful crosswordsolver(dot)org lists about 95, though two of those are Melanie B. Oddly, belaying has a capital letter, which it usually reserves for proper names.
      I was trying to get beyond the conventional sailors tar and AB, also unhelpful.
  6. I took 30 minutes over this, which wasn’t too bad for me, considering the trickiness of some clues. I took a while to see through the definition in 11, and the last in was 15. I realized in the end that BEING must be the ‘essence’, but even then the answer did not spring immediately to mind. I didn’t understand the wordplay for 1dn until coming here, nor the definition for 10, though the answers to both were not in doubt.
  7. 14 mins post-lunch, so definitely on the setter’s wavelength having read some of your comments.

    BELAYING was my last in, and I went through the same thought processes as some of you before the penny dropped. Memories of using words like belay, avast and landlubber when I played at pirates as a child certainly came in handy, and I should add shanty to that list for the help it gave me with 7dn.

    I did the same as Tim and only parsed REIGATE after I had entered it once all the checkers were in place.

  8. I didn’t press the start button on my phone stopwatch properly but would estimate about 15 minutes, being held up the longest by the belaying hombre. Some fun stuff in amongst the headscratchers.
  9. I struggled through in about 28 minutes but tripped up on 2 of my frequently misspelt words: ‘pesAtas’ and ‘ad nauseUm’.

    A mix of the very easy and the very tricky, which is always somehow harder than an out and out stinker.

    Thank you, Tim, for parsing AMPLE and REIGATE so that I didn’t have to!

  10. All but three of these in about half an hour, then about another fifteen minutes to get BELAYING.
    The last two clues were so precisely targeted at my ignorance that I didn’t stand a chance: if you don’t know Dr Spock, “skerry” or the KERRY BLUE, this is a difficult crossword to finish.
    1. Yep, I totally agree with your sentiments, Keriothe. Too much unknown vocab / GK left me with those three blanks.
    2. I am fortunate that one result of having friends living on a remote Orcadian island is that one is surrounded by skerries, on which grey seals bask. The clue is certainly of the double-obscurity type least beloved by your good self. But to have 4 bairns and never to have heard of Dr Spock! What can one say? It was the only childcare book my wife and I bought – even then, we never read more than a few pages. Thought we knew it all – how wrong we were……..
      1. Times change I guess, and childcare fads move on. It was all Gina Ford by the time we started.
  11. 42 minutes. My first three in all had Roman/Latin connections and linked on to PESETAS and HOMBRE so that I wondered for a moment what on earth was going on. Things settled into a steady solve with delays over MARATHON, ASHANTI and BELAYING at the end. I’ve an idea that the nautical meaning has come up quite recently, if not in the times then maybe in the Telegraph or Everyman. Didn’t know ‘chaff and ‘twit’ as synonyms. The French item of furniture was also unknown so I bunged in REIGATE and didn’t worry about it.

    Edited at 2013-06-11 12:00 pm (UTC)

  12. 29:35 but for Don Manley’s benefit I should mention that I solved while eating a pasta salad which probably added 53 seconds to my time.

    No problems with Kerry Blue but the the setter almost did for me with the very crafty misdirection employed in my last two, polo neck and, of course, belayed.

    Tim, for completeness I think you need to signal the removal of the final E of etagere in 18.

    1. Thanks – the HTML has it marked as struck through, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that in some configurations of browser or screen, the strikethrough appears over the central arm of the E and is rendered invisible. I shall change it to a lower case, which should make it clear.
      1. Thanks Tim. It may well have been as you described but it’s very clear now.
  13. A slowish 41 minute solve but plodding through it got me there in the end – and without resorting to aids. The penny, or maybe the pin, dropped finally for 15a which, in common with many others, was my LOI. I was never into “Swallows and Amazons” but I find that C.S.Forester and Patrick O’Brian together with memories of “Treasure Island” are a rich repository of nautical terms. I also have vague memories of Captain Kirk saying “belay that order, Mr Sulu” or something like that. (Btw I used to read books about the making of “Star Trek” and I remember that Mr Spock was actually named after the Benjamin Spock of 16d) Ann
  14. I agree with Sotira that this puzzle mixed the relatively easy with the seriously tricky, including some devilish misdirection. In the latter category, I particularly admired POLO-NECK, HOMBRE, EAR and BELAYING (as for quite a few others my LOI).
  15. Wow, I found this tricky, and also a very well put together puzzle. Thanks to the setter. Like many others, LOI was BELAYING, as I floundered around in misdirection land trying to put a sailor in a song. I didn’t understand REIGATE until afterwards when I saw the etagere. I also confess I don’t know what a LURCHER is, though the wordplay was distinctly clear. It took me around 45 minutes or so. Regards.
  16. DNF after 45 minutes with the usual suspects apparently my undoing at 15a and 16d, neither of which I was remotely near getting, though I did invent solo beak as a kind of patience! Also failed on REIGATE – only a vaguely familiar name and even for a million 9a I could not have told you which county it was in beyond a somewhere down south. Thought that was a stinker of a clue – a minor town clued by a rare foreign word reversed and shortened around a esoteric definition of current! God help any new solver without TfT trying to understand that one!
    1. Sorry, but though I agree about reversal of a rarish(?) foreign word, i for current is hardly esoteric, and is used often enough in crosswords for even those who never did any general science at school to recognise.
      1. Were today’s usual blogger around, I suspect he would point out forcefully that standard scientific notation shouldn’t be regarded as any more esoteric than well-known quotes from W. Shakespeare Esq., so in the interests of balance, I feel duty bound to mention it.
  17. 9:55 for me, held up at the end (like everyone else) by BELAYING. Exactly the sort of puzzle I like: short elegant clues, with nothing too convoluted. Thank you, setter.
  18. Very satisfied to finish correctly today without assistance. As usual, I did not check my time, but it was certainly respectable. Altogether very enjoyable, as contributors comments have been. Thank you.
    George Clements

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