Times 25506 – The Final Countdown

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 10:34 on that endangered species, the Club Timer, good for second spot right now. I suspect I could have been considerably quicker if the two long anagrams came quickly to mind.

Like many of you, I just got the welcome letter for my new digi-web-kapow-pak-pak for access, and have wasted far more of my day than I should on reminding myself how fun (and sometimes bloody tricky) those killer sudokus can be. They’re really worth trying out.

I found this one on the easier side of the Times cryptics – everything is clear (particularly the wordplay, which I needed to get the unknown term at 22 down). This would be a good crossword for beginners, some very nice surfaces (23 stands out) and answers that can be guessed at from both directions.

Away we go….

Across
1 BEMUSED: US in ME in BED (which sounds a lot more salacious when I write it this way)
5 APRICOT: RIC(e) in A POT. A friend made me apricot-oatmeal biscuits yesterday, yum
9 CAN(tin),OODLES(lots): nice deceptive use of “pets” as the definition
10 CRISP: double definition (though they’re chips where I grew up, and where I live now)
11 MIGHT: another double definition
12 PIMPERNEL: IMP,ERNE(flighty type) in PL. Anyone else think of “Carry On, Don’t Lose Your Head” when they see Pimpernel?
14 GROUD-BREAKING: OR DUNG is an anagram of GROUND, so it could be GROUND BREAKING
17 RESPECTABILITY: (CELEBRITY,IS,APT)*
21 PHI,LANDER
23 TOR(hill),CH
24 SHIRE: slurred version of SIRE
25 HOUSEWIFE: anagram of (HOW,I,USE), then FE for iron
26 LIGATED: GATE in LID – maybe an unfamiliar term, but clear wordplay
27 HOTHEAD: tricky wordplay it’s TO reversed and HE(high explosive) in HAD
 
Down
1 BECAME: definition is “got” – EC(city) in B(l)AME (censure losing L)
2 MANAGER: MAN then RAGE with the R moved to the end
3 SHORT FUSE: (SUE,FROTHS)*
4 DILAPIDATED: PAL,I’D reversed then 1,DATED
5 AS,S: I thought I recalled that there was a talking donkey in there somewhere, and it spoke to Balaam in Numbers 22:28
6 RE(engineers),C(around),CE(church)
7 CHIANTI: 1 in CHANT, and another 1
8 TOPOLOGY: POLO(sport),G(good) in TOY(game) – by far and away my favorite clue in the puzzle, great stuff
13 MARLBOROUGH: (RURAL,MOB,GO),H
15 ALLOTMENT: sounds like “A LOT MEANT”
16 PROPOSAL: double definition, rather well joined together
18 S,AILING: the first S coming from the end of travellerS
19 TERM,IT,E(arth)
20 TH(is),READ
22 ANENT: hidden in IndiAN ENTtertainment
25 HOD: empty out HOLD but put an O(nothing) back in

25 comments on “Times 25506 – The Final Countdown”

  1. Very slow and steady for me taking 50 minutes, though I think I may have dozed off at one point and lost some time there. CRISP and TOPOLOGY were my last ones in. Was pleased to remember ANENT this time round as I have learnt and forgotten it so often in the past.

    Yes, I’m a huge fan of the Times Killer Sudoku puzzles and losing access to them when free access to the paper was withdrawn was a major factor in my deciding to subscribe to the Web Pack last July.

  2. 17:17 .. George has summed it up perfectly. Nothing to add except that CANOODLES is a great word.
  3. I started off slow, TORCH being my FOI, but the downs came in pretty fast. Pretty much straightforward as George says, but 8d took some time, as I was looking for a word ending in -age (like Ulaca, I toyed with ‘tutelage’ for a moment). 22d had me for a while, too, until I finally realized it was a hidden; and a very nice one, too. COD to TOPOLOGY.
  4. 32 minutes for me, pushed beyond the 30-minute barrier by ANENT, like Jack, remembered – eventually – from past puzzles. Dabbled with ‘tutelage’ at 8d, but otherwise no major hold-ups. Thanks to the blogger for the parsing of the odorous (ordurous?) part of 14a, which had me scratching my head.
  5. Very slow, probably because rusty after my several days off. (Of which: thanks to Koro for filling for me yesterday — wish I could write blogs with such humour.)

    Main hold-ups were: ANENT (and it’s in-clue-ded!), TOPOLOGY, and … if I might say so … “Talking donkey, my ASS!”.

    COD to the reverse anagram at 14ac.

  6. Another fully finished for me, but at about 50 mins or so, so a little slower that the last few days.

    ANENT from a long-ago puzzle, I think. Didn’t see the cleverness of GROUND BREAKING, just put it in on def and a vague idea that it must be an anagram. Didn’t really see the second def of PROPOSAL. In fact was held up by most of the ‘Devon’ corner, with SHIRE and SAILING my last in.

    PS I’m another great fan of the killer sudokus…

  7. 16 minutes, with the main hold-up caused by an initial LIAISED at 26a. Don’t know why,as I don’t think it should be a proper word and aise is not a crowd.
    I also read PROPOSAL as a single cryptic definition, and I can’t really see where the second part comes in. But then I also missed the full glory of GROUNDBREAKING – good clue, that.
    TOPOLOGY nearly went in with 2 Ys, also a way things are arranged but missing the sport.
    CoD to the simple but nicely allusive TORCH.
  8. Your comment prompted me to say something I wanted to bring up before. I read 16d as a cryptic definition; if the first definition is ‘suggestion’, then one is left with ‘[that] a match might be arranged’ for the second one, which doesn’t seem to work.
  9. 14 mins mid-morning.

    I didn’t know LIGATED but it seemed clear enough from the wordplay, and like keriothe I knew ‘ligature’ so it passed the sense check. ANENT was my LOI after I finally saw the hidden.

    25ac made me chuckle, in a very non-PC way of course. If that clue had appeared in the Grauniad I’m sure there would have been howls of protest in the blogosphere.

    1. Oh heavens, in Hong Kong too. The Filipinas and Indonesians do all the ironing.
  10. As I know what this is, I was held up briefly : TYPOLOGY seemed more likely, but was excluded by the wordplay.
    ANENT is a word which seems to have dropped of use with writing becoming more informal – I remember when it was the usual way of introducing a digression to a related subject.
  11. Why am I seeing “7 comments w/Screened” at the foot of the blog and my first contribution is now contained within in a frame of broken lines with an “Unscreen to Reply” option beneath it?

    Edited at 2013-06-20 09:06 am (UTC)

    1. Your first contribution is now completely invisible to me. I could see it earlier.
      1. Thanks. In view of this I’ve made an executive decision to unscreen it and trust it has reappeared. I imagine George or one of the bloggers with admin rights must have clicked Screen under my message in error (or deliberately sank it!)
  12. 8m. Clearly on the wavelength for this one.
    I had no idea what ANENT meant, but I somehow knew it was a word, which helped. I didn’t know about the talking ASS, but that didn’t matter. And I got LIGATED via “ligature”, which is the only form of the word I knew.
    The “homophone” in 15dn is nowhere near a homophone the way I say it, but I still don’t mind it.
    Thanks for explaining 27ac: I thought it involved an anagram of “had to” so I didn’t think it worked.
    I don’t know why but I have absolutely no interest in sudokus. It’s one of those things I feel I ought to be interested in: like chess, or gardening.
    1. With you on sudokus. And chess. And gardening. We can feel mildly guilty together.

      Edited at 2013-06-20 11:51 am (UTC)

  13. Fairly straightforward, though my time of 36 minutes was a touch slow, especially as I got the long anagrams at 4 13 and 17 very quickly.

    Whilst I agree with the blogger that some of the clues had nice surfaces, I thought the surface of 19 was quite weak. The clue for 25dn is particularly poor for a different reason: all the letters of the answer are given in HOLD; I hardly read beyond the first 3 words of the clue.

  15. Two good rounds of golf on the trot – must make the most of it before the game takes its revenge. Standard puzzle in which I guessed ASS and LIGATED from wordplay. Loved 25A partly because it is so delightfully un-pc
  16. 30m just over though had to guess 8d in the end and had vague memories of ANENT. Enjoyable puzzle and I am learning – I twigged the drunken homophone right away this time!
  17. About 20 minutes, from top left to bottom right without any holdups, except the CRISP/TOPOLOGY crossing. I’d momentarily forgotten what you all call potato chips, and it took the wordplay for me to get TOPOLOGY over typology. Wordplay only for the Ass and LIGATED as well. Nice puzzle. Regards.
  18. Was Balaam a saint? Did an ass talk to Peter? I vaguely seem to think so. Thanks for the parsing of 8 which for some reason I couldn’t see apart from polo. I’m sending this from Portugal, where not only does the paper cost 4 euros but they also only print the easiest sodoku and killer each day so only Friday and Saturday are worth bothering with. The blog has been very informative about the online packs so I reckon I might join. Like many others I suspect, I prefer to take my time on the printed version of the puzzle but often check the blog to clarify the parsing and find it useful and entertaining. I hope many of you bloggers do stay but if you don’t, thanks for the help and erudition and occasional dry wit. Tony D
    1. I think ‘when meeting saint’ is merely the wordplay. Balaam sadly fails to make it onto the official RC roster of OT saints, while Simon Peter mentions Balaam’s story in his second Biblical letter.
  19. A sluggish 9:51 for me – rather disappointing as I thought I’d been faster. But, looking back, I made a slow start and was held up at the end by ANENT (a word I’ve long known from crosswords, but failed to spot as it was well hidden – from me, at any rate).

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