Times 25531

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 47:30

My apologies for not getting this up earlier, but I only remembered it was my turn to blog as I was going to bed. I tried starting it then, but it was very late and I was too sleepy, so I didn’t get very far. I gave up after about 25 minutes with only about 8 done. I got up early the next morning and found it much easier when I was a bit more alert.

All the wordplay seemed fair enough, so I don’t see anything to winge about. Nothing particularly jumped oput at me as being particularly noteworthy either though. The reversed MEASURE in 17 was quite a good spot by the setter, but otherwise a sound but unremarkable puzzle.

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

Across
1 BANGLADESHI = A in (BAD ENGLISH)*
7 BAR – dd
9 BOOBY TRAP = BOOB + PARTY rev
10 O + RACY – not a word I knew, but easy enough to deduce.
11 SPE(LL)ED
12 RADICAL = RADIo (set missing nothing) + CALl (short term)
13 OH BOY = O + HOY (sailing vessel) about Bay
15 VICARIOUS = VARIOUS (different) about (I + Cast)
17 JERUSALEM = MEASURE + J all rev about L
19 CUT + IE – To ‘cut’ comeone is to refuse to acknowledge them, hence ‘pretend not to see’
20 MINI(MU)M
22 LENIENT = iNsIdE in LENT
24 INTRO = IN (batting) + TO (almost) about R (run) On edit: It’s far more likely to be TROt. I didn’t like my parsing at the time and thought there must be something better. Thanks to Jack who got there first.
25 DIACRITIC = AID rev + CRITIC
27 GUY – dd
28 SMARTY-PANTS = MS rev + ARTY + PANTS
Down
1 BOB – dd – ‘short (hair)cut’ / ‘money once’
2 NO + ONE – A cipher is someone unimportant, a nobody
3 LOYALTY = ROYALTY with the initial letter switched from R to L
4 DAREDEVIL = LIVED rev about (A + RED)
5 SU(P)ER
6 IN + ORDER
7 B(RANCH)OUT
8 ROYAL ASSENT = (ANALYSE + SORT)*
11 SHOW(JUMP)ING
14 BARONETCY = (Ariosto + BYRON)* about ETC
16 COMPLIANT = COMPLAINT (condition) with AI (Capital, A-one) rev inside
18 SUM + MONS
19 CANT + RIP
21 MEDIA = (MADE)* about I
23 EATEN = “ETON”
26 COS – dd – ‘leaves eaten’ as in lettuce / cosine

32 comments on “Times 25531”

  1. I began to wonder, after a quite difficult week: Is Friday the new Monday? So … most of this in quite quickly until hitting the SE with the 19s, 22ac and 23dn taking up almost half the time. Why didn’t I see EATEN? Probably because I had assumed COS to be a triple definition and that “answer to previous clue” was somehow related to COS as such (Greek Island … hmmm) when in fact it was just an extension of the first definition.

    Agree that the JERUSALEM spot (rev of “measure”) was very good indeed. (Now someone will write in that it’s been done before.)

    1. 17ac in No. 24,442 (23 Jan. 2010):
      Judge left to probe piece of legislation about disputed city (9)
  2. I had 24ac as IN, TRO(t).

    I found this very hard and struggled to complete it, not helped by having SPREAD (large farm) (b)OUT (short period of intense activity) for ages at 7dn resulting in a lengthy delay in completing the NE corner.

    Glad once again not to be blogging as I went well over the hour on this one.

    Edited at 2013-07-19 06:41 am (UTC)

    1. Yes, I quite agree. I even thought that at the time, but couldn’t think of a word TRO* that meant run. Seems a bit daft now! Now corrected.
  3. 27 minutes but not altogether happy: pointed to as spelled; different as various; almost as to. Liked Jerusalem but otherwise found it a bit 28.
    1. I had a similar feeling. Also “complete” as RADICAL, “no-one” for “cipher” (isn’t it always “nobody”?). Nothing that got in the way of solving but a touch of looseness.
  4. Slightly irritating puzzle for reasons spelled out by Joekobi and Keriothe. I wasn’t surprised when 28A appeared as if like a title. 25 minutes of workman like devotion rather than inspiration.

    Wasn’t OH BOY a pop song from my youth?

    1. Sure was – Buddy Holly, I believe. It’s also what Sam Beckett says at the end of every episode of Quantum Leap.
    2. Oh Boy! was also a pop-music show on ITV in the late 1950s. The resident band was Lord Rockingham’s XI (Hoots Mon!), with Cherry Wainer on the Hammond Organ. I was delighted to discover recently that Ms Wainer is still going strong, as is Marty Wilde, another regular on the show.
    3. For many years I assumed that the song OH BOY was an original creation of poptastic glam band Mud, part of the soundtrack of my adolescence.

      Edited at 2013-07-19 12:09 pm (UTC)

  5. Omitted to set any kind of timer, but this felt long both in time and in a lack of engagement. Contributory factors:
    Doing the TLS first (messes up mind set, and I got one wrong somewhere)
    A malfunctioning biro: there must be a factory somewhere where they specialise in making pens that skip.
    Clues that I simply didn’t understand for ages: COMPLIANT (looking for a reversed city, rather that AI)
    COS – apart form anything else, I don’t care for lettuce much, so uneaten would have been better
    RADICAL sort of got “complete”, forgot set=radio
    CANTRIP one of those spiky things? DNK, made it up from wordplay
    SUPER – I doubt “wicked” means that any more, perhaps pants does. See also OH BOY. I’m getting old and I can’t keep up.
    SPELLED – seemed like a very stretchy definition.
    JERUSALEM – very clever, took a while to reverse engineer, my CoD
      1. Also designated caltrap, galtrop, cheval trap, galthrap, galtrap, calthrop, crow’s foot. Can trip a horse apparently. Curiously (and I did not know this) Merriam Webster says cantrip is probably derived from caltrop, which is more that the OED knows.
  6. 22m. Moderately trickyish for me. I didn’t help myself by putting in BIT for 1dn.
    I didn’t know ORACY, and I was a bit surprised to find that CANTRIP (my last in) was a word. I think I knew that DIACRITIC was a word but I certainly didn’t know what it meant.
    Thanks for explaining COS: I thought it must be some kind of triple definition too, assuming “leaves” to be one of them.

    Edited at 2013-07-19 08:16 am (UTC)

  7. 24ac. I read this as ‘in’ + ‘tro(t)’. Almost = to seems too much of a stretch.
  8. I took ages over this, with most of the time spent puzzling over 22a, because I was determined to use alternate letters of ‘seen in’ rather than ‘inside’ – pretty stupid – and 11a, where I was looking for E as the drug rather than speed, and did not grasp ‘spelled’ as a definition equating to ‘pointed to’ for a long time. So, well misdirected by the setter, maybe better tomorrow. For the record,, 41m 20s.
    George Clements
  9. Found most of this straightforward, but got stuck on SPELLED and went over my half-hour target time. I must have been an innocent youth as I am always mystified by these drug references; so much so that Sotira might add DRIMP to her list of slow-time excuses: “Drug-Reference Induced Mental Paralysis”.
    1. I have done just that, John. I also wondered if Z8b (above) might be in need of BLINK*

      (*Biro Lacking INK, which we should probably parse as an &acronym)

    2. …leads us inevitably to PRIMP and SHRIMP, the same only with plants and shrubs.
      Incidentally, my BLINK is exacerbated by my FLACK – Fingers Lack Any Capability on Keyboards
  10. 100 minutes, so I’m hoping that Friday isn’t the new Monday, at least not the next two Mondays! The same parsing as Jack for INTRO after trying Dave’s – thanks to whom for the lowdown on 12 and 16.

    No complaints from me. Vice la difference.

  11. 32 mins. The NW corner went in immediately and I thought I was going to be in for a fast time, but after that I never felt like I was on the setter’s wavelength.

    CANTRIP went in from the wordplay, LENIENT took me a long time to untangle, and COMPLIANT was my LOI. As others have noted, the clue for JERUSALEM was very good.

  12. SPELLED took the longest time to work out – must be my sheltered lifestyle. 12.53 although it seemed longer and harder than that but I can’t argue with my phone stopwatch.
  13. 25:50 (*DULL) .. so far off the wavelength I was mostly picking up Hilversum. I was genuinely surprised when my online submission came back error-free. I had no idea why SPELLED might mean ‘Pointed to’ (still don’t, really) and couldn’t parse Jerusalem.

    In my defence, I had a different kind of drug problem to John of Lancs’. I had just taken a drug (prescription, I hasten to add – no need for WADA to get involved) which has a side effect of ‘May turn you into a zombie, but happier’.

    (*Drugged Up Like ‘ell)

  14. After a few quick solves in the top half I ground to a halt almost and wondered if I’d finish it. Then I made some tentative entries almost on intuition, without fully understanding the wordplay. Once I had COMPLIANT things flowed smoothly from there. I wasn’t helped by entering BIT for 1dn early on. Finally finished in 43 minutes.
  15. I really enjoyed this puzzle – thank you setter. Found it one of the more difficult of recent weeks and all the more enjoyable for that. Solving it required a lot of thought. Getting Showjumping in the SW corner was key because until then I was really struggling there.
    Radical = complete and Spelled = pointed raised frowns but the wordplay was clear. Liked Super = wicked, Smarty-Pants and the cross-reference between 23dn and 26dn (which I didn’t understand until coming here).
    FOI Bangladeshi, LOI Cantrip.
  16. About 30 minutes, but held up at the end with SPELLED, with my brain insisting that ‘drug’ signalled ‘E’. As a result I led myself all over the place until I saw what was required, which, like some others, I didn’t find entirely convincing but allowed me to finish. I also agree that ‘wicked’ and ‘super’ were perhaps synonymous at a time, but that time seems to have passed. Wordplay only for the unknowns: ORACY, CANTRIP and ROYAL ASSENT (I’m an American, remember.) Regards to all.
  17. Another very fine puzzle – but once more the heat (and the planes, which are at last starting to thin out a bit) got to me, leaving me with a disappointing 14:12.

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