Times 25551 – Not Your Average Monday

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

A challenging puzzle with many elegant surfaces and misleading devices. 72 minutes of hard, pleasurable but not unblemished, graft for me.

Across

1 VISCOUNT – tougher to parse than to get: it’s V (as in versus) + [d]ISCOUNT with the literal ‘peer’.
9 HEADGEAR – two random As (‘articles here and there’) in HEDGER; the clue appears to be a reference to the folk song with the first line ‘My father’s a hedger and ditcher’, a plaint sung by a young lass who’s concerned about being left on the shelf. With good cause, if she lives in Norfolk… (Um, I put ‘headwear’ – ’nuff said)
10 CAMPUS – P in CAMUS.
11 PRE[CO]CIOUS – simple but very fine.
12 ZINC – Z (‘unknown’) + IN (‘in’) C[uba]; rather nice too, especially as it was an element I’ve heard of.
13 REDECORATE – ‘perhaps replace paper’ is the simple, but devious, literal, ETC + O + READER the anagrist.
16 DEFICIT – ICI in DEFT; if zinc is one of the few elements I know, then ICI is about the only chemical co. I’m savvy with.
17 BARONET – with ONE, it’s BARONET, and without one it’s BART, the abbreviated form; top clue and cue for Simpsons jokes.
20 STRONGROOM – ST + GROOM around our friend RON[nnie Reagan].
22 GRUB – triple definition.
23 NEAPOLITAN – NEAP (‘tide’) + OLI (oil*) + TAN[ker]. Bravo!
25 GODWIT- WIT (‘wag’) after GOD (‘dog’ = ‘tail’ reversed).
26 E[VERY]MAN – the tricky bit here is that it’s a synonym of ‘extremely’ we’re after, not the outer letters of VisiblE.
27 DOYENNES – the literal is ‘prominent women’, the wordplay is DONE (‘deceived’) + S[ociety] around YEN.

Down

2 INACTIVE – IN ACT IV (AKA ‘4’) + [sh]E; made me chuckle.
3 CAPPUCCINO – PUCCIN[i] in CAP (‘better’ as verb) + O.
4 UNSPORTING – the literal is ‘not fair’, the wordplay U[niform] + N[apoleon] + SPORTING (‘dressed in’); this setter excels at the deceptively simple.
5 THREADY – TH[em] + READ (‘digested’) + Y[outh].
6. FARO; anagram (‘free’) of ‘for a’.
7. FEDORA – one day I’ll ignore all surfaces, but until then this sort of clue will be my last in and my COD; FE + DORA, just in case…
8 PROSPECT – PROSPE[r[ + CT for that stage in a transaction when the customer is treated well.
14 CHARMINGLY – HARMING in CL[ass] + Y[ear].
15 ROOF GARDEN – blooming high, indeed, guv! It’s a (rather good) cryptic definition.
16 DISINTER – D + SIN in rite*; better known as ‘exhume’ in its literal sense – this is its figurative one, which is possibly even less known.
18 EQUALISE – QUA in ELIS + [gam]E; one of few to go in on the literal.
19 PORTEND – charade of PORT and END.
21 REAPER – hidden.
24 LIMA – I + M in LA.

36 comments on “Times 25551 – Not Your Average Monday”

  1. Hmmm … yes … by no means a typical Monday. Absolutely stuck in the NE until I got REDECORATE. And not knowing about ditchers and hedgers at 9ac slowed things down again. Of course ‘cap’ is DBE and the dreaded intersecting cross-reference (FEDORA) ain’t a cap at all. So I was in the semantic gloom for a very long time. With a lot of others, I suspect, I was looking for a double def at 6dn.

    On a technical note: I have had to swap browsers and use Firefox. With the tracker blocking add-on (Ghostery) working, I got no fewer than 10 trackers on this site. (Can enumerate them if asked.) What’s going on there?

      1. Got all those. Just explaining why I was trying to get 7dn before I could see the answer to (for me) the most difficult clue of the day: 9ac. And I don’t think a ?-mark is enough excuse for a DBE unless it’s right up against the offending word. So this would be OK: Ditcher’s mate carries articles here and there to get cap?

        Edited at 2013-08-12 03:35 am (UTC)

  2. I often have a similar solving time to today’s blogger so maybe I got lucky or blogger’s nerves played a part (or both), because I found this one quite straightforward and only missed my 30-minute target by 1 minute. 18, 25 and 17 were my last ones in.

    “Hedger” at 9ac came to mind immediately when I saw “ditcher” in the clue because in my experience, as Sammy Cahn wrote rather optimistically of “Love and Marriage”, you can’t have one without the other.

    I used to comment on DBEs at every opportunity but I don’t think I ever considered the actual position of a question mark in the clue when considering mitigation.

    I don’t recall that Reagan was ever widely referred to as “Ron” and can’t make up my mind whether that matters for crossword purposes. We’re used to Abe for Lincoln which I have no evidence for, but Ike for Eisenhower I DO remember.

    1. I think you’re onto something with the presidential clue. It appears that Ron is what his son was/is known as but not his father.

      Re times, I was actually quite pleased to finish in the time I managed, which goes to show a) the value of knowing ‘hedger’ and b) the value of deeper and broader crossword roots.

      Typically, blogging probably makes me go faster, though there was a time this morning when I was wondering whether I’d have to resign my post having failed to get even as far as having enough to cheat the rest. 🙂

      1. I’d forgotten about his son and, now you have reminded me, that’s the point I should have made. If the President was known as anything other than Ronald it was Ronnie, like Mrs Thatcher was Maggie rather than any other diminutive of Margaret.

        Edited at 2013-08-12 06:59 am (UTC)

  3. Surprised to stop the digital stopwatch at 10.58 this morning, as it felt longer and harder, not least because I started in the NE (with HEADGEAR!) and worked round from there, which is usually the more scenic route.
    Yes, I did see the DBE in HEADGEAR, but I didn’t care.
    I think I recall hedgers and ditchers, apart from as the rural artisans, as being the opposing Tory approaches to Lords reform in 1910/11 (there’s esoteric for you!).
    Both INACTIVE and PORTEND tickled my fancy. “Ron” for the president resurrected the splendid clue for one of Waggledagger’s creations, which I think was as succinct as “Play about two presidents? (5,10)”
  4. 15 minutes dead; seemed to fall steadily and easily, with what seemed like a high number of comparatively long answers allaying the need for thorough parsing in all cases as pretty well bound to be right. I agree about the wobbly Ron, as Maggie besought him not to be over the Falklands. (A little surprised at uniform as u.)
  5. as per admonishment, have set up live journal account, I’ll have to find a more recent photo.
    1. Welcome. With reference to your comment about 18dn made elsewhere can I assume you are now happy that it has to be S rather than Z?
  6. … and the one wrong was 25ac, where I had gadwin (tops and tails of wading, to mean a bird…), and the blank was FARO, where the cryptic was too darn clever and I’d not heard of the game.

    Other than those, I didn’t know BART as an abbreviation for baronet, so that went in with a ?, and I didn’t really stop to think about the third definition for GRUB (ferret). NEAPOLITAN also went in without full parsing.

    My time was lousy, so I’m very definitely in the ‘not on my wavelength today’ camp.

  7. Happy morning for me. Completed in 18m 47s, so I’m set up well for the day. Think I’ll try thr Grauniad now.
    George Clements
  8. No problems with HEADGEAR, having done a bit of hedging and ditching in my time (yes, I was a rural artisan!). Only knew FARO from here (a blog by our esteemed founder quite a long time ago) and guessed GODWIT. Otherwise an enjoyable and challenging puzzle (thanks, setter).
  9. 22 mins. I didn’t know “hedger and ditcher” so the NE took the longest to unpick, with HEADGEAR, FARO and PRECOCIOUS my last three in, in that order. The lack of crossing letters in that corner didn’t help either. The clue for FARO reminded me very much of the well-disguised anagrams that Roger Squires can be so good at.

    I agree with those of you who have said that using “Ron” for Reagan is a bit of a stretch.

  10. Three-quarters of an hour. Quite a satisfying puzzle, if a bit solemn for my taste.

    Presidents. Agree with Jack about “Ron”: I always associate Ron with Eth, not with President Reagan. Wasn’t Lincoln known as “Honest Abe” to his admirers during his lifetime?

    I certainly remember I like Ike and often think that (Silent) Cal ought make an appearance, perhaps in “laconically”.

    Cricketers might also appreciate “ofFDRive”.

  11. Re UNIFORM does not equal U in The Times, well quite. We certainly can’t have that.

    I thought this one a very nice puzzle, lots of misdirection, though as some others have already observed, finishing it quite so quickly (17 minutes ish for me) was a surprise.

    Thanks setter and the wonderful Ulaca.

    Edited at 2013-08-12 11:50 am (UTC)

  12. I found this fairly straightforward until the end, when I was stuck on 25 (totally unfamiliar word) and 6 (like someone else I was looking for a double definition). 38 minutes in all.
    Like others I thought ‘Ron’ for president was pushing it. Otherwise a very nice set of clues.
  14. 16m. I enjoyed this a lot. Last in FARO, which I think I’ve ome across before. Like mctext I was looking for a DD.
    There’s a slight inaccuracy in 16ac but I suppose “former chemical company” would have been a bit of a giveaway.

    Edited at 2013-08-12 01:41 pm (UTC)

    1. No doubt I have picked up on similar points of accuracy in the past but now I whether it’s right to do so. Surely by the same token, whenever somebody deceased is referred to it would be necessary to indicate that they have ceased to be (this is an ex-parrot!) notwithstanding Times conventions about living people?

      Edited at 2013-08-12 04:10 pm (UTC)

      1. Yes, fair enough. I wasn’t really objecting. Perhaps I’m still smarting from Saturday’s formerly important playwright.
        1. Ancient Greek playwrights I’m quite happy with – but that clue was quite beyond the pale and should never have been allowed out of the TLS.

          (Yes, I got it wrong too.)

          1. Quite. Wrong is better than me: I didn’t put anything in. I’m still puzzled by the clue, even post-Google. Either it’s completely rubbish, or it’s brilliant in a way I don’t understand because I’m thick. No doubt the latter. To be discussed more fully on Saturday.
            1. Seemed okay to me but I needed all the checkers, even as a fan of the man. The non-literal is very clever and I needed to reverse-engineer to spot it.
              1. Thanks, Jack. Certainly closer to brilliant than rubbish now that I get the wordplay. My reservation would be that the wordplay play is the best known of the three, which doesn’t help much in terms of getting the literal.
              2. OK I’ve spotted it now: thanks for prompting me to look closer. I do feel a bit daft but unlike ulaca I’m definitely putting this clue in the rubbish category. The reason you have to reverse-engineer it is that it doesn’t work, even if you are intimately acquainted with the works of a playwright no-one (rightly or wrongly) seemed to consider worth bothering with by the time I was educated.
  15. Two missing today: Charmingly (really should have got that from C?A?M?NG?? but couldn’t get away from thinking it began CLAYM…) and Doyennes. Thought Baronet was a terrific clue. Thanks ulaca for explaining Headgear (which luckily I guessed over Headwear).
  16. I was expecting my fellow members of the Georgette Heyer Appreciation Club to have something to say about FARO. I am rather ashamed to say that, in spite of “Faro’s Daughter” being one of my favourite books, it took me a relatively long time to think of a game that fitted the checkers. I thought this was an easyish puzzle and came in at 21 minutes – which is a good time for me. Ann
  17. TRIPE*

    Found this quite tough, with 3 or 4 minutes going by before I put in my first answer – which unfortunately was SOLO instead of FARO, though I later realised the mistake. Finished off by going to West Africa for the capital (LOME) despite being unable to justify it. Gah.

    * Togo? Rubbish – it’s Peru, Einstein.

  18. 8:58 for me. All pretty straightforward, but (as so often these days) I made heavy weather of a few clues that I should have solved instantly. (Sigh!)

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