Times 25507

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 33:09

I rattled through the top half in about 10 minutes, but slowed down a bit towards the bottom.

A pretty enjoyable romp today. It’s rather nice to get one that doesn’t involve me staying up to all hours trying to complete it. I finished in the south west corner with ASCOT & NUTMEG, although I don’t know why those two took me so long to get. I suspect we’ll see some quick times today.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 F + ETCHING
5 WA(RM)T + H – A wat being a Thai Buddhist temple, the Angkor Wat being the most famous example.
10 THE SCOTTISH PLAY = H in TESCO + (THIS APTLY)*
11 stokE + DUCAT + carlislE
12 CHIME + RA – I didn’t need to read past ‘lion-headed monster’ with the checkers I had in place.
13 SHEEP-DIP = EastbridgE + PD (paid) in SHIP – A Suffolk being a breed of sheep
15 T(EP)EE
18 AN(T)ON
20 T(HEIDI)OT – Dostoyevsky’s novel upon which Truman Capote loosely based his book Breakfast at Tiffany’s
23 C(RAMP)ON – Not a meaning of RAMP that I have come across before.
25 MA + C + BETH
26 PICK UP THE PIECES – dd
27 NUT + M + EG
28 REVEILLE = RE + “VALLEY”
Down
1 FAT + HERo
2 TREBUCHET = (E + B) in (UTRECHT)*
3 H(ECT)ARE
4 NITRE – hidden
6 ATHEIST = IS in (HATTEr)*
7 MIL(N)E – Creator of Winnie the Pooh
8 HAYMAKER = HOLIDAYMAKER (one on vacation) without O (over) + LID (the top) – I do like the ‘lift and separate’ elements of ‘over the top’. My COD
9 MIN(CE + PI)E
14 DETONATE = ETA + NOTED all rev
16 PROVEN + C + A + L
17 SAUCE + PAiN
19 NEPTUNE = PEN rev + TUNE – The final part of Holst’s Planets Suite
21 DECLINE – dd
22 CHAS(pheasanT)E
24 mASCOT
25 M + scholarlY + EYE

49 comments on “Times 25507”

  1. Thought this was a great puzzle and particularly liked the Shakespearean cross-over and the novel (fabulous surface). Agree with Dave on the excellence of HAYMAKER and also found the SW the hardest bit.
  2. Goodness me, you don’t hang about, Dave, all solved and blogged in barely an hour! I spent the first five minutes of the day being thankful that it was your Friday and not mine as I read clue after clue without having the faintest idea what was going on in any of them.

    Eventually I looked at 20ac and spotted HEIDI as the Alpine heroine (I owe a lot of knowledge to children’s TV in the 1950s)and from then on I worked my way slowly but steadily around the grid completing it in 50 minutes. I didn’t know the Buddhist temple but otherwise it was all fairly familiar territory. Some quite tricky wordplay though.

    Edited at 2013-06-21 12:48 am (UTC)

    1. I believed you when you said that in April (25445) but you’re not fooling me this time.
      1. Did I ever say I was learning anything from this experience?:>).

        Anyway it was backwards last time!

    1. Hi Sotira,
      I’m quite new to the site and am just getting used to some of the terminology…when you talk of the ‘Surface’, what does it mean?
      Just over the hour for me and my COD was 20a, since I never heard of the book so I was left with the cryptic; the only other such heroine was Mrs Tell, so it wasn’t too difficult to come up with Heidi.
      Thanks, Cozzie
      1. Hi,and welcome. Surface means the way the clue reads as a piece of prose,without worrying how wordplay works. So in MINCE PIE, cited by Sotira, the clue tells a little story in its own completely unrelated to the answer, though all the bits giving the definition and wordplay are also there.
      2. One other phrase you may see is “a train crash of a clue”. This means that the surface reading is a complete nonsense and the clue is just a collection of unrelated words – like the scene of a train crash
      3. Sotira can chip in to add/amend etc., but since, given time-zones, she may not herself be surfacing for a while, let me chip in to say that the surface refers to the surface reading of the clue. A smooth surface will tell a story and do it without any strain. Typically, the surface is misleading, as it is here, where the definition isn’t ‘sanctimonious tart’ (this isn’t Private Eye, you know!). The setter manages to paint a plausible word picture whereby an angry hooker (who sadly retains only the trappings of religion) takes extreme action to take vengeance on the church for perceived wrongdoing!

        Successful cryptic crossword solving revolves on the ability of the solver to ignore the surface. One of the keys to this is to ‘lift and separate’, so that, when you are faced with a common phrase, or with a collocation such as ‘sanctimonious tart’, you take it and break it into two parts. That way, in the case of this clue, it’s a short step with the enumeration (5,3) to thinking ‘Ah, something PIE’.

        Great to have you on board and keep the comments coming. However simple or silly they may seem, they’ll be up against some pretty stiff competition in respect of some of my early ones! And when you ask the ‘obvious’, you will sometimes be able to hear a chorus of ‘I wanted to ask that’ wafting across the ether. Most satisfying…

        1. Hi Cozzie. What they said!

          As ulaca correctly surmised, I was ‘sawing logs’, as they appropriately say in these parts. I’m not a lumberjack, but I am on the east coast of Canada so I tend to solve tomorrow’s puzzle and post a comment (if the blog is already up) in the evening, then come back to the discussion the following morning, which is many people’s afternoon. Confused? I am.

          Fortunately, jimbo, ulaca and zaabadak have explained it far better than I would have done.

  4. 29 minutes, with all I have to say about the puzzle already said, so time to digress and say I appreciated the timing of 24d, with Royal Ascot in full swing and HM taking out the Gold Cup yesterday (well, her filly).

    I was on duty as a 13-year-old at my prep school opposite the course (the entrepreneurial headmaster had turned the First XV rugby pitch into a car park for the meeting), when I asked a returning punter how he’d done. ‘My horse in the Gold Cup got disqualified. Backed him last year too, and he got disqualified then as well.’

    I still remember the name of the horse after all these years – well, with the help of Google I do. I had it down for years as ‘Rob Roy’ , but it was in fact Rock Roi.

    1. Like millions of others, I used to have an annual £1 bet on the Grand National, but when, three years running, my horse ended up in the great paddock in the sky I decided I had better stop. Haven’t even been able to watch horse racing since, even on the flat. Some people are just bad luck for horses.
      1. Just this Wednesday in Hong Kong, 12 horses started the race (a flat race) but only seven finished it. My pick, leading at the time, caused the melee when it broke down.
  5. A relatively easy end to a relatively easy week. Like others I wrote in quite a few on definition alone (such as CHIMERA and HAYMAKER as a punch starting with H-Y). All good fun though.
  6. 18 minutes, so standard time, but above-standard cluing, I thought, with ticks for SAUCEPAN and THE IDIOT in particular for their misdirections,and HAYMAKER for its neat contraction.
    I queried “simple” for CHASTE, and NEPTUNE defined as “part of musical work” – for one thing, I’d forgotten my Holst. I assumed it was a part in an opera and left it with a shrug.
  7. Was so pleased to have finished all puzzles this week in good (for me!) time, with this one coming in at 40mins. Until I discovered I had one wrong! I had invented the Greek character ‘detonste’, which fits the cryptic perfectly!

    Other than that, all ok. Hadn’t worked out the Tesco bit of 10ac, and didn’t know THE IDIOT. I’m not particularly well versed in classical music, but The Planets is one I have heard of, so enjoyed the NEPTUNE clue.

  8. Straightforward solve. No problems with Tesco. Just in case I didn’t know it was a supermarket, it’s adverts are appearing all over this LJ page! (I normally access the site using Firefox + Adblocker). My clumsy fingers using an iPad have also managed to open some of them.p
  9. I was just about to add a comment on Jack Cohen’s successful interpolation of his grocery shop into a Times Crossword (haven’t seen Sainsbury’s or M&S yet – other empires are available) when he slipped in an “every little helps” in the ad slot at the bottom of the page. Spooky, or just juggernaut marketing?
    1. The determination of which adverts appear is partly based on the text on the page. I think this site uses Google AdSense (via DoubleClick) to serve up adverts – the Wikipedia entry for AdSense gives a brief overview of the factors that are considered.
  10. 11m. A straightforward puzzle to end a mostly straightforward week.
    One small point: isn’t the glen in 28 across a vale, rather than a valley? I’m not sure because I’d pronounce the word “revay”.
    I was a bit puzzled by “sceptic” for “atheist”. I get irritated when people say that atheism is a faith but if you’re an atheist you’ve made up your mind.
    1. Chambers Thesaurus gives sceptic in the list for atheist, along with unbeliever, non-believer, humanist, rationalist, disbeliever, infidel, heretic, pagan, heathen, freethinker. One takes one’s insults and compliments where one finds them, I suppose.
    2. ODO comes to the setter’s aid in each case you mention (and I was with you on the morning call). Here’s the definition of ‘atheist’:

      ‘a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions. •a person who doubts the truth of Christianity and other religions; an atheist.’

      I think, historically – though the dictionary may have gone a bit PC – Christianity is considered something accepted by the faculty of Reason on rational grounds (something you make your mind up on) and therefore there is no real dissonance.

      1. Thanks both. Ulaca I assume that is the definition of “sceptic”!
        I must confess I’ve absolutely no idea what “something accepted by the faculty of Reason on rational grounds” means, so I’ll just take your word for it!
        1. I’ve been reading too much CS Lewis! Not that he was ever (well, hardly ever) confused or confusing after his debut novel The Pilgrim’s Regress.

          Indeed, Oxford Dictionaries hasn’t descended to defining a word by use of the same word yet (z8b8b8k would make a better lexicographer than me on that score), and now I will never be able to change it, since you pressed the ‘reply’ button!

          1. Sorry!
            I haven’t read a word of C.S. Lewis since getting bored of the Narnia books at about the Silver Chair mark over thirty years ago.
            1. That was more than I read as a kid. You did well to get past Prince Caspian. You studied Eng Lit, I think. The best of all his 30 odd books is his ‘English Literature in The Sixteenth Century’ in the Oxford History of English Lit series. Worth checking out if you like Spenser, Shakespeare’s sonnets or the early 16th century Scottish poets, of which he was a great fan.

              Ulaca

              1. I did, and I very much liked Spenser (I read the whole Faerie Queene, for goodness’ sake!) and all things Shakespeare, so I just might check that out… when my kids have left home perhaps…

                Edited at 2013-06-21 10:48 am (UTC)

  11. Excellent puzzle, if easyish for a Friday. About 45 mins for me. The Shakespearean double-act at 10 and 25 ac came quickly, but then I got bogged down for a while before it all started to fall into place. Many clues were a nice mix of economy and good surface – e.g. FETCHING at 1ac. Some very ingenious wordplay – HAYMAKER (thanks for the full explanation, Dave) and SHEEP-DIP. And a good example of misdirection at 20 ac – THE IDIOT, my LOI. I wasted much time trying to think of the title of a children’s book (reminder to self: always try “lift and separate”) and remember that ‘s can also be an abbreviation for is.
  12. 12 minutes enjoyably spent, and another one grateful for the blog after trying to work out what on earth a HOTTAYMAKER might be. Delayed in the SW corner, partly by having a blind spot about NUTMEG being a tree, rather than a spice I don’t much like; and partly by thinking a black cat must come into the “lucky animal” clue somehow.
  13. 19 mins mid-morning.

    I had the same experience as a few of you, putting in answers like HAYMAKER and THE SCOTTISH PLAY without bothering to untangle the wordplay.

    I was held up for a few minutes in the SE, and my last four to fall were SAUCEPAN, CRAMPON, NUTMEG and finally ASCOT, where I hadn’t been thinking of a race meeting.

  15. I agree that it was the easiest puzzle of the week. It took me 32 minutes with several distractions on the way. I didn’t know the definition for HAYMAKER, nor did I see the wordplay, so taht was a tentative entry that turned out to be right.

    I’m not sure that I want to see too many examples of 1ac, where an adjective appears to have been defined by the indefinite article + noun. I know “That dress is fetching” is roughly equivalent to “That dress is a delight”, but if that approach were to be generally adopted it could make some clue-solving very tough.

  16. Not a difficult puzzle but some enjoyable cluing. COD to 2D for bringing back memories of all-night sessions of Age of Empires.
  17. Some absolutely top clueing here, in a relatively easy puzzle. There have been a few like this in recent memory, where unravelling the clues, even if you’ve already got the answer, makes for very good entertainment. Perhaps the best sort of puzzle for a daily, though like others I can always appreciate a good old-fashioned fist-fight with someone nasty, and my fave of the week.

    Stand-outs for me were CHIMERA, SHEEP-DIP, MINCE-PIE and the trip to Tesco via Macbeth.

    Cheers indeed to the blogger and compiler.

  18. 12:27 – also with NUTMEG and ASCOT the last in – didn’t see the wordplay for SHEEP DIP or THE SCOTTISH PLAY when I put them in. Fun puzzle, by far my favorite clue was the wonderfully deceptive one for THE IDIOT
  19. A tad over 15 minutes with about 6 of them at the end on saucepan, crampon (couldn’t get pin out of my mind) and Ascot.

    Thanks for pointing out the fine surface at 9 Sotira. A few years ago I remember being surprised when Sabine commented that she didn’t “see” surface readings, but now I seem to be in that camp myself.

    1. I’m sure seeing surfaces is nothing but an obstacle to solving (Sabine was, and presumably still is, a seriously quick solver).

      I try not to notice surfaces until after solving but I’m not very good at it, especially when phrases like ‘sanctimonious tart’ pop up!

    2. I also don’t “see” surface readings normally. I usually only consider them when I’m completely stuck on a clue.
  20. 9:00 for me. There was a time when I’d have rattled through this puzzle as it was right up my street, but I made another ridiculously slow start and generally felt old and tired. (Sigh!) However, despite that I actually found it most enjoyable, with some fine clues – though I wasn’t too keen on the inclusion of the supermarket in question, having boycotted them ever since they stopped using ICL’s computers.
    1. I boycott Waitrose (and John Lewis) because they didn’t ask me back for a second-round interview when I was looking for a job after university. Two decades later, I’m wondering if I should let it go.

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