Times 25542 – Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 19:40 on the club timer, which with the puzzle out for about two and a half hours, puts me at fourth. I got very bogged down in the last few – it seemed to me that there were a few more Americanizms than you would normally see in a Times crossword, which should have been in my favor (look, I’m typing American!).

What struck me about this puzzle coming back to blog it is the elegance of the anagrams. There’s some excellent anagrams incorporated into the surfaces, to the point that I solved a few from definition, then thought “now what’s going on with the wordplay here?” only to find it’s mostly an anagram. 3 across stands out that way, even though there’s an anagram indicator obviously in the clue, finding the anagram is tricky.

My verdict – good puzzle! I’ll leave you to discuss…

Away we go!

Across
1 T,APE
3 JACK THE LAD: anagram of (TACKLED,A,J) with H(heroin) inside
10 INSPECTOR: sounds like INN SPECTRE
11 P(ounced),U(pon),MPS
12 DAY TRIP: (PARTY,ID)* – crafty definition here
13 ATTEST: TT(teetotaller), in SEA reversed, then T(ea)
15 LET ONE’S HAIR DOWN: (OLD,RHONE,WINES,AT)*
18 SECOND AMENDMENT: SEND MEN surrounding CON,DAME, then T(heir). Clever wordplay, referring to the US Consitution
21 SAVANT: VAN in SAT(a test taken by US High School students)
23 SHINGLE: H in SINGLE – did a double take at the plural definition, but Chambers confirms SHINGLE refers to a bank of stones
26 LOO,S,E: LOO being the ladies, and S and E being directions
27 AMORPHOUS: PRO,MA reversed then HOUS(e)
28 MIGHTINESS: anagram of (SOMETHING IS) less the first letter of Oligarch
29 READ(y): con meaning study in this case, my last in
 
Down
1 THIRD CLASS: THIC(k),LASS containing RD. I managed to somehow avoid this bare pass of a degree, getting upper second class at Melbourne University in 1990
2 PU(ny),SHY
4 AUTOPISTA: a Spanish motorway, which I needed to get from wordplay – A, UTOPIA containing ST
5 KORMA: sounds like COR(my), then alternating letters in MeAl
6 HIPSTER: HIP(joint) then STERN without N(on-members)
7 LIMESTONE: ONE(single) folloing ME in LIST(hit parade)
8 DASH: double definition, RATS being the mild oath
9 HEBRON: BRO in HEN
14 UNSTRESSED: (b)UNS, then DESSERT reversed
16 TICK(mark),A,L,ON(showing),G
17 AVERSIONS: AVER(state) then (pens)IONS after the first letter of Squeeze
19 NE,A,REST
20 DRIPPY: R in DIP(swim) then P(rett)Y
22 TRAIN: ART reversed, then IN
24 GNOME: hidden, reversed
25 G,LAM: I love me some 70s atrocities!!! – for those of you who hate the song, just forward to 2:00 when he falls over in the platforms

23 comments on “Times 25542 – Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again”

  1. 18:37 .. I was pretty much done in about 12 minutes but the rest went on READ, which I considered and rejected a few times before the light dawned.

    Some very nice stuff – SHINGLE and, especially, UNSTRESSED did it for me.

    Re George’s Glam Rock reference, I think it might now be illegal to mention Gary Glitter in the UK, which is unfortunate for me because he’s the only pop star I have ever met (in a pub, in Brixham, Devon – he had a drink with me and ‘my gang’ and was extremely affable) but dropping that particular name doesn’t have quite the effect it once did.

  2. Well … let’s say it’s coming up to 11:00 and the puzzle arrived at 7:00. Enough?

    Sailed through the top half then hit the rocks, as it were. Had no idea about SAVANT and my last was READ.

    Totally done in by 28ac where “something” + O = THEOGONISM. Is that a word?

  3. Thought I was on for my second consecutive sub-30 (not that I care about times…) but came unstuck in the Brixham corner. I wasn’t helped by code-switching at 4d (‘autopiste’ – and I’ve seen enough autopistas in Spain; they always seem to be building them parallel to perfectly serviceable dual carriageways), which held me up on the amendment-in-need-of-amendment. Things eventually fell into place three minutes short of the hour, catalysed by MIGHTINESS, which gets my COD for that type of cunningly concealed anagram indicator (um, ‘wrong’) which George is talking about.

    Edited at 2013-08-01 02:41 am (UTC)

  4. I agree this was a good puzzle – I found that I solved a lot of clues from the word-play which in my book makes for an entertaining puzzle.

    I started off very fast but got bogged down in the S-E corner. At 29ac I spent some time wondering if STUD might be one of the many slang words for money (it isn’t).

  5. Mostly a slow but steady solve but then I ground to a halt with most of the SE segment missing and took forever to get going again. Not helped by a very long delay spotting the hidden answer at 24dn despite realising I hadn’t found one up to that point and having looked for it there several times.

    Elsewhere SAVANT took some working out and crossing with it at 19dn I was distracted from seeing the right answer by having ‘near’ already in the clue. I was caught out by this device a few days ago when I thought the clue was weak but on reflection realise, as here, it was probably a deliberate ruse to mislead the solver.

    We have SATs here too, so it’s not necessarily an Americanism.

    Edited at 2013-08-01 05:29 am (UTC)

  6. 26 minutes, last in read as with so many others, not too fond of the list (hit parade perhaps), otherwise neat with no scimitar. Rather odd cor etc. should end up gasping for existence as a museum-piece in a black-and-white grid. I take it from the clue and comments glam’s a kind of rock music. (I know, I know – museum-piece myself.)
  7. Agreed, a very clever puzzle, with, as George says, some brilliant surface-disguised anagrams -e.g. MIGHTINESS and LET ONE”S HAIR DOWN. Also liked SHINGLE, UNSTRESSED, KORMA and SAVANT.
  8. 15 minutes; as people have said, not much that could be written in from definition / checkers without any thinking about the wordplay, which is a good thing. Reduced to doing the “working through the alphabet” thing with _A_A_T to get SAVANT at the end – as one who is too old to have sat SATS, and has no kids to force me to sit them vicariously, that was never going to leap to mind.
  9. 25 mins. I mostly got bogged down in the SE where it took me much longer than it should have done to get the SHINGLE/GNOME crossers, I wasn’t happy with roly-poly as a reversal indicator for dessert in UNSTRESSED but the answer seemed clear enough from the definition, and AMORPHOUS and READ both took a while. However, my LOI was AUTOPISTA after I decided to trust the wordplay, and I was pleased when my post-solve check of Chambers told me I had been right to do so.
  10. The stopwatch on my phone didn’t start (grrr) but solved in the time it took a fast eater to eat cherry pie and cream (Mr CS not me!!) Definitely under 10 minutes, probably would have been quicker if I hadn’t had to work so hard to get 29a.
  11. Just over 30m today so average for me but like others had most of it done quickly but stuck on AMORPHOUS and SAVANT. My COD to UNSTRESSED and thanks for explaining 28a – got the answer only by guessing and never saw the anagram!
  12. 19:02 and I agree that this was a very well put together puzzle, so thanks to the setter. I usually overlook surface readings but I’ve just had a re-read of the clues and some of the surfaces are very good.

    Thanks, George, for parsing savant. Even though my youngest took her SATs only this time last year I missed the reference and van as well. I took “leading position in school” to signal the S leaving avant as the exam. I never bothered with Swiss finishing school myself but it didn’t seem too improbable that at one of those (or the Sorbonne say) you’d have to pass your avant before going on to sit the apres (apologies for lack of grave accent).

    I also lost time on gnome having figured early doors that it might be a reverse hidden but not considering the g as the jump-off point.

    I’m not sure that I’ve come across tick along before.

    There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on COD today so I’ll muddy the waters further by nominating amorphous, a nice woody word.

    1. Well wouldn’t you just know it. On the radio on the way home from work: “…Australia have ticked along to 269 for 3…”
  13. This reminds me – do all these US gun nuts belong to “a well regulated militia”?
    1. I thought about going into that in detail on the blog but decided I was going to get on thin enough ice by putting a link to a Gary Glitter clip in there. My adopted state just passed a law that guns can be brought on to campuses and bars, so umm, yee-ha (and if I miss a blogging spot, suspect the worst).
  14. A quickish solve, though SAVANT without understanding. That was until I had ?E?D at the end, which blew my time into next week.
    There are too many ways to split up even a six word clue. Con and money have heaps of synonyms. Youth leader probably just Y, but I was trying to think of Akelas and failing. Plus you can get READ from “leader out of bread” which looked plausible but left the definition (two of them, perhaps) as “con youth”. Con=READ did not spring to mind. A perfectly fair clue but about as frustrating as a 4-letter word can get.
    CoD to AMORPHOUS.
  15. Struggled with this after exhausting round of golf in the heat. I was never completely stuck but never raced along either and like others got very little from definition alone (the big exception being 18A where “right to be armed” rang an immediate bell)

    I also struggled with READ because I think of money as “readies” rather than “ready”. Agree about the surface readings – very good many of them.

  16. I came here intrigued to see how Antipasta could possibly be the answer to 4dn… and I see now it’s not even a word. Dash! Thanks George for correcting my stupidity. Note to self – spend a moment thinking about the wordplay before bunging in the first/only word you can think of that fits the checkers. The wordplay for Autopista wasn’t difficult, after all.
    No problems with the remainder. Read = con raised a frown but Ready = money seemed okay and the wordplay was clear.
    Fun to see the Gentleman’s Degree at 1dn (known by some in UK as a (Carol) Voderman).

    Edited at 2013-08-01 03:31 pm (UTC)

  17. 17m.
    I seem to have solved a different puzzle from everyone else. A lot bunged in from definition and no problem at all with READ. Funny old world.
  18. I’m tempted to blame it in the diabolical heat! I went off like a train, and had almost all the top half done in very short order. However, the bottom half was a disaster, and I was relieved when I eventually struggled home in a miserable 24:23. In contrast to Tuesday’s puzzle, this was definitely not my thing.

    At least I had no problem with READ (once I had the checked letters in place, that is).

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