Times 25569 – Not one to sort out the men from the neutrinos

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Times crosswords don’t get much more straightforward than this. Indeed, I was able to rack up my third in a week under 30 minutes (including Saturday’s), so expect PBs and possibly clean sweeps from under the Heathrow flight path. 19 minutes.

Across

1 IBIS – hidden.
4 TYPE+SETTER
9 MARGINALIA – alarming* + I + A.
10 D+RUM – kitchen as in percussion section of the orchestra.
11 UNFAIR – [f]UNFAIR.
12 COMEDOWN – COMED[y] + OWN (idio comes from the Greek word meaning ‘own’).
14 MENU – MEN + [q]U[een].
15 LACHRYMOSE – carol my she*
17 ASCENDANCY – dances can* + [traged]Y.
20 TOME – TOM (as in Tom, Dick and Harry) + E.
21 FRAGRANT – FRA (title given to Italian monk or friar; short for frate) + GRANT.
23 BE+HIND – responsible for as in ‘The woman was behind it’.
24 ANON – [europe]AN + ON (playing).
25 TABLECLOTH – TABLE (move, as in a motion) + CLOT (mug; silly fellow) + H[arm].
26 CONVERSELY – CONVERSE + L + [tor]Y.
27 YARD – RAY reversed + D[rink].

Down

2 BRAINTEASER – bar trainees*.
3 SIGNATURE – IS reversed + G + NATURE ( as in ‘She’s got a lovely make-up’).
4 TENDRIL – NET reversed + DRIL[l].
5 POLICE CONSTABLE – OP reversed – would you believe? – + LICE + CONSTABLE (of Haywain fame).
6 SPAMMER – SPAM + MER[ely].
7 TORSO – TOR + [i]S + O.
9 ROMAN – R[uns] + OMAN for the type of lettering.
15 WESTMINSTER – W[ith] + E + ST + MINSTER.
16 MATCH PLAY – MATCH (light, as in ‘Gis a light, mate’) + P + LAY.
18 D[RAFT]ER – raft as in loads of stuff.
19 YOBBERY – Y + [r]OBBERY.
21 FRANC
22 ADORN – A + DO (as in discharge one’s duties) + RN.

30 comments on “Times 25569 – Not one to sort out the men from the neutrinos”

  1. This on the Club timer. My printer’s still down and I’m only just getting used to on-line solving. Feel sure I’d have been quicker on paper. Totally stuffed the Sunday puzzle as a consequence. Caught out by mutually-crossing typos. I’d never do that on paper.

    Getting a bit better now that I’ve found out how to use the buttons at the bottom of the puzzle which sound like a Union ref trying to get a scrum going!

    But I agree, this isn’t very difficult. Have to give COD to the “oil worker”. Another Python moment: “It’s the man from The Hay Wain by Constable”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYYfrkN01ZA

    Congrats on your time Ulaca.

    Edited at 2013-09-02 06:41 am (UTC)

  2. About half an hour. But held up a bit by putting DREAMER for 18D. I guess it is reams not ream that mean a lot, but at the time it was close enough. That made 25A impossible, and the correct letters were not much more likely as a starting point. But got there in the end.
  3. I was taken a few minutes over the half hour (parsing as I went) by several clues in the lower half, with TABLECLOTH and DRAFTER as my last two in. In the latter I was distracted by “she”, expecting it to be of special significance which as far as I can see it isn’t.

    I’m not quite sure why “seaside” is mentioned at 11ac.

    1. Slightly to my surprise, FUNFAIR does not appear in my Shorter OED but it is in OED Online with no specific reference to the seaside so like jackkt, I am not sure what ‘seaside’ adds to the game.

      Edited at 2013-09-02 08:43 am (UTC)

    2. Arachne (and this may apply to other female setters) usually makes a point of using feminine forms of words where it makes no difference so I suspect a female hand is behind today’s offering.
      1. Except …. I am in receipt of this message, from a source I am not at liberty to identify: “The T4t commentator who states that Arachne and other female setters use the feminine pronoun for ungendered agent nouns and so concludes that today’s Times is by a female is wrong on at least two counts.”
        1. Well this is from a recent interview with Arachne on Crossword Unclued:

          “As a feminist I try to set traps for sexists such as using “she” for “he” where either will do (the traps usually work, I’m afraid)”

          So I reckon I’m only wrong on one count.

          1. Interesting that finding this interview also reveals that The Times ‘style handbook’ limits the number of anagrams to 5. I am sure that a previous Crossword Editor once stated that he limited the number to 3, as I have always thought that the number seems to have been creeping up over the years.
          2. I would suggest that the comparatively rare use of “she” for “he” when either would do and its occurrence being cause for comment says more about setters than it does about solvers.

  4. Yes, a quickie today… however I was held up for a short while by carelessly putting ‘ascendance’ in, making 19 down tricky!

  5. Steady solve at 15.29. Little to say, except what an odd word lachrymose is. CoD 5, the only one with a mark of individuality about it. (Though come to think of it I quite like ‘kind to yours truly’.)
  6. 13 mins, and in retrospect I should have been quicker. Having said that, it was an enjoyable enough solve.

    SPAMMER was my LOI and I also couldn’t parse the MER at the end of it, but the answer was obvious enough once I realised the definition was “he sends out junk”. I didn’t see the TOM parsing in TOME either, but the answer was even more obvious. Although 2dn went in immediately I don’t really think a dilemma and a brain-teaser are the same thing, at least not in their main usages.

  7. 14m, which qualifies as straightforward but not among the very easiest. I got particularly stuck at the end with SPAMMER, ANON and ADORN unsolved. It took me a while to see “European’s last pair”, and then “discharge” for “do”.
    Generally I thought this a pretty good puzzle but there were a couple of things I didn’t really like:
    > “Only half getting used”: I don’t like it when the clue requires the removal of a large number of letters: it just feels a bit loose somehow. We had the same phenomenon with MEDIATE last week. At least with this one you know how many letters to remove once you’ve figured out that the “food” (a rather loose definition if you ask me) is SPAM.
    > “Note” for A. Obviously not quite as loose as clueing any given letter with the word “letter”, but it’s heading in that direction.
    These aren’t really complaints: the clues are perfectly fair. Just very minor quibbles based on personal prejudice.
  8. 9:10 so certainly a straightforward puzzle.

    The MER bit of 6 was the only thing I couldn’t parse so thanks for that Ulaca.

    “Working” from home this morning so on here earlier than normal. I’m off to the docs in a bit to see if I need any jabs for a trip to Hong Kong in November so it’s fitting that Ulaca is today’s blogger.

  9. 20 minutes, so the easiest for some time for me. The one bit I didn’t get was MER(ely). I should have seen it, but I see I’m not the only one.
  10. 15 minutes including replying to a few texts. Also didn’t quite understand TOME wordplay, ditto FRAGRANT which went in from the definition
  11. A zippy and very pleasant 10 minute solve, which is how I like my Mondays to start. Meanwhile, for the benefit of people who don’t do the Twitter, I thought I should share this lovely topical clue from Paul Sinha (disclaimer: requires knowledge of the biggest football story of the day).

    Real bag the mercurial footballer (6,4)

  13. Too easy. Less than fifteen minutes, which is impossible for me. There a lot of single-letters indicated here, or so it seems.
  14. Just under 10 minutes, while eating cold soup, another Monday doddle, parsed all except TOM-E so thanks mctext.
  15. 16:09 .. solved the morning after a (now all too rare) night before, so it must have been easy. Thank heavens for a traditional Monday puzzle which was still very nicely put together.

    Nice to note that it detained Jason and Magoo for almost 9 minutes …. between them.

  16. 29/29 today. Quick solve (ca. 3x(Jason + Magoo)) helped by lots of plain definitions.
    Liked Yobbery – don’t remember seeing that word in a grid before – and the Tom, Dick & Harry reference.

    Edited at 2013-09-02 08:21 pm (UTC)

  17. I usually labour a little after golf (it’s the walking – nothing to do with the 19th) but even then this was very easy. Also wondered about “seaside” but didn’t let it delay me. 15 minute stroll in the park.
  18. Quick and pretty humdrum, although I must confess to not catching the TOM part until after submitting. DNK YARD of ale, and also wondered about the ‘seaside’; since ‘funfair’ is not a US term (at least I don’t think it is; it’s certainly not in my idiolect), I was wondering if its use was limited to seaside resorts.
    1. No Keven, a funfair can be found on any suitable open space. In my courting days a favourite evening out was to Mitcham Fair and then to the local pub – all miles from the sea!
  19. Just to add that funfairs in parks etc tend to appear just for a few days over Bank Holiday weekends, while those at the seaside are a bit more permanent, at least during the summer. This hardly justifies the use of seaside in 11ac, though.
  20. I found this quite tough (I never really found the setter’s wavelength), and struggled to a disappointing 11:10.
  21. I found it hard to get DREAMER out of my head, but (try as I might) I couldn’t really equate it to “she plans”.

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