Times 25558 – in case it’s needed

I came here to check in on the puzzle and found there was no blog. I know Jim is on his vacation, so it may have been that no sub was found or days got mixed up somehow. So I’ll throw together a quickie and if I cross with someone who is writing it up, I’ll delte this.

I found this to be a real beast of a puzzle, and it took me about 35 minutes early in the morning. I put a lot in from definition, so I was hoping to find out what I was missing from here.

Away we go…

Across
1 ENROL: R(back of door) in LONE reversed
4 MALL,ARME(d) – a French poet I got from wordplay
8 CABINET PUDDING: Since a PUDDING(slow person) wouldn’t contribute much to the Cabinet
10 AN,DROMEDA(ry)
11 SLIGO: O, GI(r)LS reversed
12 GERUND: hidden
14 PURCHASE: CH,A in PURSE
17 RESERVED: SERVE in RED
18 SOFTLY: OFT in SLY
20 TE(note),LEX(law)
22 FOOLS MATE: a checkmate in four moves
24 HERO-WORSHIPPER: This is a tricky bit of wordplay – HE(man) then SH in ROW,O,RIPPER
25 ST,(h)EALTHY
26 DREGS: EG in DRS
 
Down
1 EXCHANGE RATE: cryptic(ish) def
2 RABID: AB(blood group) in RID
3 LANDOWNER: or LAN DOWNER
4 MITTEN: TT(always sober) in MIEN(appearance)
5 LAUDANUM: DUAL reversed, then A, NUM(ber)
6 ANDES: DANES with the D moved to the middle
7 MENDICANT: or MEND I CAN’T
9 LONELY HEARTS: (REALLY,HONEST)*
13 RESILIENT: RE, then I in SILENT
15 CROSS(angry),WIND(snake)
16 SEAFRONT: inside SEAT, FRO(not to), N
19 WOLSEY: YES,LOW(small) reversed, ref Thomas Wolsey
21 XHOSA: (HAS,OX)*
23 APPLE: A, then PIMPLE without I’M – the pupil of my eye…

31 comments on “Times 25558 – in case it’s needed”

  1. Many thanks glh. Found this relatively straightforward and clocked 25.24. Didn’t know Lan, didn’t click the Arabian, but they went in OK, interested to see ‘not’ = ‘opposite of’ in 16. I actually won by Fool’s Mate once and my opponent had no idea of what he was playing into. My favourite today the cabinet pudding.
  2. It’s a comfort to know that I wasn’t alone in being stumped by 23d; I spent 5 minutes dithering between APPLE & AMPLE, the only words I could come up with, and couldn’t make sense of either, even though I did think of ‘pimple’-IM. Seeing the half-hour mark come up, I panicked and put in the wrong word. Wotthehell, it was a good puzzle. Took me a long time to dredge CABINET PUDDING (not coconut) from memory, and longer to make sense of ANDROMEDA. Never did figure out the FRON in SEAFRONT, so thanks George for that, and indeed for the whole blog; a work of supererogation, I believe they’d call it in the RC.
  3. 25.22 – definitely a beast with some strange, slightly somethingy ? old-fashioned ? – bits of wordplay. Luckily I plumped for the APPLE – I expect the whole country heard the clang when the penny dropped about ‘why’.
  4. Definitely a tough one for me. Took me 7 minutes to solve the first clue; after 20 minutes I had just three and a half entries (the half was a successfully guessed PUDDING). Then I got RABID and LAUDANUM, enabling me to complete the pudding and pick up speed, eventually finishing in just under 50 minutes. There were several I didn’t understand (3, 10, 23) so thanks to the blog for explanations. Bit of a corny pun for 3 but there were some very good clues overall. Could someone explain ‘Clicking’ in 21.
    1. My children loved the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy when they were small. One of the principal characters spoke Xhosa which is evidently expressed in clicks rather than noises from the voice box, so that would explain the clicking language.

      Edited at 2013-08-20 05:28 pm (UTC)

      1. This is probably too pedantic even for me, but the clicks of languages such as Xhosa are in addition to, rather than rather than, the consonants we’re familiar with, which require air from the lungs.
  5. I took the range (of mountains) as Andes but I’m sure now it was just a typing error?
    1. That’s a typo – it’s ANDES – I’ll fix. I didn’t do a spellcheck so I could get the blog up
  6. I just could not see this clue at all, and I wasn’t alone apparently, so after waffling for several minutes I entered a guess. Very good puzzle and I really liked the misdirection in 18a. Clocked in at around twice my normal at 40 minutes. One advantage to note re the late posting of your blog – virtually no neutrinos on the club board. Gives one to think, n’est ce pas. Daresay we’ll have the whole meteor shower now. Thanks George.
    1. maybe the first two neutrinos did themselves in by emulating my typo and putting in ADNES
  7. 24 mins. I never felt that I was completely on the setter’s wavelength, and it seems that I wasn’t alone.

    I only saw the wordplay for LAUDANUM, ANDROMEDA and APPLE (my LOI) post-solve. There was some good humour in this puzzle, and I smiled at LANDOWNER, MENDICANT and CABINET PUDDING. There have been plenty of candidates for the latter over the last several years.

  8. 3rd on the leader board (the 1 error leader board) with about 38 minutes.

    Thank you, George, for stepping into the breach. But I still can’t see my error. Must be one of those so-obvious-you-don’t-see-it typos.

    Anyway… great (Saturday!) puzzle. I loved LANDOWNER, LONELY HEARTS,
    SLIGO, MENDICANT… well, all of it, really.

  9. This took about 45 minutes, and was hard, yes. I hadn’t heard of a CABINET PUDDING before, which made the top half a bit difficult. The cabinet part came first, but the pudding was my LOI, after finally seeing what the tinker’s admission was. I didn’t understand the ‘fro’ wordplay in SEAFRONT, so thanks to George for that, and for the whole blog altogether. Regards.
  10. 35:23 on the club timer. Very tricky, with particular difficulty over the unknown pudding and meaning of APPLE.
  11. An hour’s hard slog for me with several not fully understood after all that. I am sure I have NEVER heard the expression “pupil of my eye” but I spotted “pimple” so knew I was right. Still don’t understand “contract” = “purse” (if it does).
      1. Oh that sort of purse! I was thinking purse as in a prize or reward, perhaps for fulfilling a contract but couldn’t nail it exactly. Thanks.
    1. Chambers defines “apple of the eye” as the pupil, which I assumed was the relevant reference. I only knew the phrase in the figurative sense.
  12. I first encountered the phrase ” apple of my(or his or her) eye” meaning a favorite person in the song, ” hello, Patsy Fagin, you’re the apple of my eye” though I now know it was also used in this sense in the King James Bible. Its original English meaning was the pupil.

    Like some others, I found today’s crossword a bit of a challenge.

    Regards

    JFR

  13. Tough one for me, especially as MALLARME and CABINET PUDDING were unknowns, which made the NE quadrant hard to open up. Also confused the issue further by sticking in COCONUT for a while instead of CABINET. I did like the LAN DOWNER.
  14. Dregs was a brilliant clue I didn’t get – because i didn’t get apple maybe. I don’t see how apple is a pupil unless it is a pet pupil, unless it is an implicit wordplay on the pupil in the eye? Surely not?

    1. As per Chambers, “apple of the eye” can refer to either the pupil (i.e. the round opening in the eye) or the figurative meaning of something/someone that is dear.
  15. George, you are a star, well done indeed. I noticed it was Jim’s turn to blog but I’ve been out all day and not able to step into the breach..

    I found this not too hard, but a steady solve, never able to get any speed up. I’m still not convinced that apple = pupil… dictionaries, what do they know?

  16. Hard yakka this one, such that after 35 minutes I entered the checkers for 25 into electric Chambers. That’s when I twigged I’d entered RESILIENT with a final D, so mashed were my circuits. APPLE confirmed in Chambers, but I too tried everything else, including glowering suspiciously at the surrounding clues. I did wonder whether mark was significant in a William Tell sort of way.
    Our network saboteur the best in a good set, with EXCHANGE RATE right at the other end of the scale. Was that really the clue, or had it just drifted in from T2?
    1. This word, unknown to me, came up in “Eggheads” TV Quiz programme last night (Tues). An egghead guessed correctly from a choice of three answers. Why is it you hear a previously unknown word or phrase twice in twenty four hours? Last time for me it was manuca which my daughter had bought as a present and, before that, it was a phrase in Tony Sever’s blog; both came up a little later in a Times crossword.

      Edited at 2013-08-20 11:24 pm (UTC)

  17. 15:22 for me, making heavy weather of some easy clues as usual, though APPLE went straight in without any checked letters. Tough but fair.
  18. George this is two moves (for each side — a ‘move’ is a pair of moves, one by each player), not four, which is Scholar’s Mate. 1 f3 e6 2 g4 Qh4#.
  19. Completed successfully in 28m 13s, but I had not parsed ‘Andromeda’, entering it on definition and checked letters. I feel really satisfied to be a little closer to the fast solvers today – I expect a reality check tomorrow.
    Was anyone else totally miffed with the clue for ‘drains’ in yesterday’s Grauniad?
    GeorgebClements
  20. A big thanks to George for stepping in. 85 minutes for me, hampered by knowing neither the dessert nor the chess move – or the poet for that matter. Also took ages to dredge up mendicant. Ticks against enrol and mitten.

    George, ‘runaway affairs’ for drains was one of those where one ‘needs the checkers’, no? Rather liked it eventually.

  21. Well done George. Not clear why Andy didn’t arrange a sub but thanks for stepping in.
  22. Thanks, George. I knew APPLE – probably first met as clarification of the Biblical reference.
    Found CABINET PUDDING fairly quickly, but was very doubtful till I had all checkers: it looked as if wordplay was anagram of DEBATE + something, but couldn’t make anything work, so probably you have the explanation.
    (A couple of other problems with parsing were cleared up by comments on the Times CC site.)

    Edited at 2013-08-21 10:32 am (UTC)

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