Times 25530 – a different kind of setter

Solving time : 16:52 – there’s some very very well hidden definitions in here (and one where I can’t get the wordplay just yet) so I think there might be some who struggle with this. It may also be a wavelength thing, who knows.

I got very stuck on the top right (Yankee corner) pondering many different options for 6 across, until realizing it’s a word we’ve seen a couple of times lately – maybe a trademark of a certain setter? A couple of unusual words and a castle that I definitely needed the wordplay to get rounded things out.

While England bakes, and North Carolina drowns (and GO AUSSIES TOMORROW!!!) away we go…

Across
1 TEST PILOT: L(learner) in an anagram of (TOP,SET,IT)
6 NATCH: SNATCH(hold up) without the S(succeeded) – you had me here setter, I was sure we were looking for a food course or a racecourse, not an “of course”
9 STATELY: TATE (ancient or modern, take your pick) in SLY(arch)
10 BELL,IN,1: Needed wordplay here – I should have known him, since he wrote one of crossworddoms favorite operas, Norma
11 AIT: A on the left of IT
12 TOURNAMENTS: anagram of (ENTRUST,MAN,O) – the O being for ball
14 ERNEST: or ER NEST
15 RECKONER: anagram of (A,C,KRONER). Edit: I was in a rush to get this done before heading out to a gig so I boneheaded this – it’s RE, C (KRONE)* – thanks mctext
17 EXPLICIT: L(ewd) in EX,PIC,IT
19 LAZILY: AZ in LILY
22 CURL ONE’S LIP: or CUR LONE SLIP
23 T(e)AM
25 STICKER: last letter of loseS then TICKER(heart) – exceptionally devious wordplay
27 AGAINST: GAINS in A(rtis)T
28 RERUN: (g)RE(at),RUN
29 PUR(e),CHASER: I like “chaser” for whisky after beer, though in the US it’s usually the other way round
 
Down
1 TOSCA: TOSCANINI without the two NI’s(Northern Ireland)
2 SMARTEN: NE TRAMS reversed
3 PRESTISSIMO: PI(good),MISS(teacher) reversed around REST(break), then O(over)
4 LAY OUT: double def
5 TU,BINGE,N: I don’t think I’d know this if it wasn’t also the name of a beer strangely popular in Canada
6 NIL: reverse the last letter of falL and IN
7 TRIANON: IT reversed containing R then ANON(soon). Needed the wordplay for this, relieved to find it wasn’t TQIANON
8 HAIRSPRAY: IR in HASP(metal fastener), RAY
13 MAKE A SPLASH: splash being a prominent feature on the front page
14 EXERCISER: EXCISE(tax) without(outside of)R, then ER. Edit: and another silly – it’s ER in EXCISE,R
16 FIRETRAP: FIR(wood) then PARE(cut) reversed around (pa)T(io)
18 PERK,IE,R
20 INTONES: (TENSION)*
21 ALT(computer key),AIR
24 MATER: hidden
26 KIN: take the start off of SKIN

27 comments on “Times 25530 – a different kind of setter”

  1. Great puzzle with slight musical theme that suited me. Devil of a job parsing HAIRSPRAY which could easily be COD if not for all the other top-notch clues.

    15ac: George — here I think we need RE (about), C (100), anagram of KRONE{r} — “mostly”.

    Also at 14dn: guess the parsing here is EX(ER)CISE + R{eturn}.

    Edited at 2013-07-18 12:38 am (UTC)

  2. Slow, steady but mostly a tidy solve held up in the NE by the castle, the German town, HAIRSPRAY and by having L(AZ)ING for a while at 19ac.

    Edited at 2013-07-18 05:53 am (UTC)

  3. I think the last 5′ were required for 16d, until I finally thought of fir; parsed it afterwards. 18d took time, too, and a lot of running through the alphabet until I got EXPLICIT. As George points out, where I come from beer’s the chaser, which slowed me down. Hard to choose one COD; 27ac and 8d are my top candidates. A lot of fun, this.
  4. 22:53 … some serious creasing of the forehead needed to finish this one, with several unknowns or vaguely remembereds, but I have to admit the wordplay was always helpful.

    I’m sure Penfold of this parish has used NATCH at least once here (he used it recently and I was driven to look up the meaning as I really wasn’t sure). Secret setter?

    1. I last used it the day after a recent appearance in the puzzle (somewhat mischievously as it was widely heralded by the TFTT community as a nasty word with no place in polite society).
      1. Having just looked it up again, this time bothering to read the etymology, I can see where those of a more decorous disposition would have a problem. Good to know that TFTT is considered part of polite society. I’ll try to keep that in mind.
  5. 44 minutes – enjoyable stuff. Last in TRIANON; FIREPROOF gets my nod today. Strange how Puccini (composer of Tosca) and Rossini also fitted, if you had, as I did, the last two of the four checkers in place.

  6. All done and dusted in 35 mins or so, so a quickie for me … but I had to look
    here for fu of wordplay for HAIRSPRAY (not heard of ‘hasp’), STICKER (didn’t get ‘ticker’ for heart), TOSCA (didn’t get the NI + NI bit). Unknowns today worked out from the wp: ALTAIR, PRESTISSIMO, TUBINGEN, so thanks for sorting those ones out.

  7. 24’32”, with the NE proving most time consuming. Another day when fellow doesn’t give you F: what’s happened to convention?
    I wonder if the cutest feature of this crossword is the misleading doubling of ideas? There are two royal palaces involved: Balmoral maybe sets the mind for British ones, which TRIANON isn’t. Work out (14) and calculate (15) mean the same but don’t. There 2 pockets (19, 27), which this time have the same function. Two musical -INI conclusions, one with, one without. Almost as if the setter were trying for a cross-referenced Grauniad style without actually making it explicit.
    I also had LAZING for a time, the flower girl being Heather, of course. Ling=heather is one of the first cryptic constants I learned.
    CoD to AGAINST for the effortless confusion of “con artist”.
    1. Talking of the Graunie, there’s a fine specimen of Pauline bawdy in today’s offering. I did it in a little over half an hour, so it’s at the easier end of his spectrum.
  8. A good selection of surfaces in this one. Didn’t know TUBINGEN or TRIANON, and the name BELLINI is stuck in my head as a painter (and cocktail) rather than the similarly named composer.
  9. 42 tough minutes and glad to complete. Unaware of Trianon. This was okkard but I enjoyed it. – joekobi
  10. After yesterday’s disappointment, I took my time today and parsed everything as I went along. So, 40m 33s for completion. Mitigating circumstances for slowness: stinking hay fever and a Border Terrier stretched on my lap making clue reading and solution entry difficult.
    George Clements
  11. 23 mins. I found this to be the sort of puzzle where one had to pay very close attention to the wordplay, with FIRETRAP, TRIANON and TUBINGEN being good examples of this. LOI was HAIRSPRAY after I finally saw LAZILY, having spent way too long trying to justify “lazing”.
  12. 16m. Bit of a mixed bag this: I bunged quite a few in from the definition and worked out the wordplay later (e.g. PURCHASER, HAIRSPRAY, RECKONER), but there were also several that had to be constructed carefully from wordplay (TUBINGEN, FIRETRAP).
    I spent the latter part of my youth living near Versailles (my parents still do) so TRIANON went straight in.
  13. One missing today (Trianon – hadn’t heard of it and couldn’t tease out the wordplay). For a while I thought I’d have four missing (Bellini, Nil, Natch, Trianon) but ‘bell’ popped into my head straightaway when I came back to the puzzle and from that I got Nil and Natch immediately.
    George – thanks for explaining Tosca and Sticker – both entered from definitions.
    I liked Con = Against at 27ac and the whisky chaser below it.
  14. 14.25 minutes of, in places, some extreme headscratching but several where I don’t now really see why.
  15. Although an avid Burns fan, with Tam O’Shanter commited to memory, I’d never heard the cap referred to as a ‘tam’. In my youth we knew it as a ‘tammy’.
    One day I’ll become less anonymous. I have a feeling that’s a bit like ‘fairly unique’. Sorry.
  16. About 25 minutes, with a good bit at the end trying to figure out why you folks in the UK would refer to HAIRSPRAY as a ‘metal fastener’, and what all the rest of the wordplay meant there. The truth finally dawned, and obviously it was my LOI, and I’ll also give it my COD nod for leading me around by the nose. I admit, though, that AGAINST is very good too. Thanks to the setter, very entertaining. Regards to all.
  17. 11:43 for me – slower again, but some of the clues took quite a lot of working out, and I was held up a bit at the end by FIRETRAP.

    A very fine puzzle with some excellent surfaces, “Pay and display (3,3)” being a model of brevity (not as short as one of my favourites – “Sick pay (3)” – but that really belongs in a Listener puzzle).

    1. I remember you teasing us with this one a while back. Can we have the first letter please? 🙂
      1. Rather than give you the first letter, I’m going to offer you a useful hint for tackling Listener clues which are proving intractable – particularly valuable with Sabre’s puzzles in my experience, though the “Sick pay” clue is actually Machiavelli’s – and that is to try looking up the words in the clue in Chambers to see if there are any unexpected definitions. (If that still leaves you struggling, let me know.)
        1. I looked up ‘sick’ before and have just done the same with ‘pay’. The only thing I cna think of is ‘tar’ or ‘def’ (‘fed’ up), but they don’t seem a propos…
          1. You’re nearly there. Now try looking up your two possibilities in Chambers.

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