Times 25579

Solving time: 51:24

I plodded my way through this one fairly steadily, if not particularly quickly, without getting held up for more than a few minutes at any point. When I finished just before 1am, there were already half a dozen quicker than me on the leader board. I imagine there might be some quick times out there.

Nothing really jumped out at me as being particularly clever or noteworthy. The definition part of 1a is quite neat, but using chemical symbols as definitions in this way is a technique I’ve come across before, as there are several others that are also words – I, At, He, Be, In, Am & Er

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

Across
1 ARSENIC = SENIor (more highly ranked – Other Ranks dropped) in ARC (line) – ‘As’ is the sneaky definition, the chemical symbol for Arsenic.
5 PHARAOH = Herod in PARA (soldier) + OH (what a surprise)
9 CA(MEMBER)T
10 HOUR + I
11 SO(N)AR
12 IN GENERAL – dd
14 CROCODILE TEARS – cd
17 SIMPLE F(lageR)ACTION
21 RARE EARTH = EAR (attention) in (RATHER)*
23 schooL + EARN
24 librarieS + HUSH
25 BAR(CAROL)E
26 ODYSSEY = YES + SCARY + DO all rev with CAR removed
27 GREMLIN = KREMLIN with initial letter changed
Down
1 AC(COS)T
2 SEMINAR = SEMI + RAN rev
3 NUMERICAL = (I’M UNCLEAR)*
4 CHEMIN DE FER = CHIN about ME rev + DEFER – An early version of Baccarat, favoured by James Bond
5 PIT = TIP rev
6 ASHE + prisoN – Arthur Ashe is the tennis player (racketeer)
7 A + QUARt + I + A
8 Hirsute + AIRLESS (close)
13 GOLIATH FROG = GO + (FOR A LIGHT)*
15 TIT + ILL + ATE
16 ESPRESSO = bESt + PRESS 0
18 MERCURY – dd – Mercury is poisonous and overexposure to it can cause madness. Milliners used to use mercury a lot when working with felt, hence as mad as a hatter.
19 ON A ROLL – dd
20 INTERN = IN (hip) + (RENT)*
22 ET + gHOSt
25 BAY – dd

28 comments on “Times 25579”

  1. Quite a tricky puzzle, I thought, but consistently entertaining and with some neat and unusual clueing. It took me 50 minutes, working out as much of the wordplay as I could as I went along. I didn’t quite make sense of 1ac apart from spotting the tricky definition which has caught me out on a previous occasion. Earlier, before I had the answer, I had tried taking the OR off ‘superior’ so I don’t know why I didn’t think of applying the same principle to ‘senior’.

    I can imagine that some ideas in the clues might be hard to fathom, such as equating mercury with madness and knowing that a BARCAROLE is a gondola song, hence the reference to Venice. Also pressing ‘0’ for room service, if that IS the idea.

    Edited at 2013-09-13 01:21 am (UTC)

    1. Can’t have an ESPRESSO clue without a whiff of controversy, Jack! If I’m in a hotel room and can’t be bothered to read the booklet, I’ll always try 0 first.

      Edited at 2013-09-13 01:35 am (UTC)

  2. 39 minutes, finishing with the pesky chemical one, where, unlike Jack, I was onto the wordplay in a flash but couldn’t find a literal. The GOLIATH FROG was new to me. Much to like here – best croswword of the week and all that – with ticks at 1ac (reluctantly!), 5ac (where I was scratching my head for Herods other than Great and Antipas), 6dn, 8dn and 22dn. Thanks to Dave for explaining the mad connection of Mercury (which I should cottoned onto having recently read Michael Ward’s rather fanciful book about CS Lewis’s Narnia books) and to the setter for a nice workout.

    Oscar-winning film La Vita è Bella brought the barcarolle (sic) from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, featuring La Stupenda and Huguette Tourangeau, to a wide audience, whether they realised it or not. They also did a rather nice version of the Flower Duet from Delibes’s Lakme.

  3. Had to retro-parse ARSENIC, having spotted the abbrev. Wasn’t too chuffed with “component” as MEMBER in 9ac or “go to work” as EARN in 23ac. Still … much to like in this puzzle. Especially the well-hidden anagram in 13dn
  4. After more than 40 minutes, I was left with M?R?U?Y which could only be MERCURY. After reading Dave’s parsing (Thanks, Dave), I think the clue is unfair. Otherwise, the rest was superb especially ARSENIC, my COD

  5. All ok, but took time. One of those puzzles where I knew I would finish it in the end…

    Didn’t take time to parse ARSENIC, didn’t know about MERCURY making you mad, hadn’t heard of the GOLIATH FROG.

    LOI: CROCODILE TEARS

  6. About 40 mins. No problem with ESPRESSO this time around and having brooded over SONAR (instead of SCUBA) a few days ago, it is good to see that the time was not wasted.

    LOI INTERN ,mainly because I try and work from NW to SE.

  7. No particular problems with this, another in an extending line of not-very-hard crosswords that I expect will extend right up to when my next blog is due

    No hesitation over mercury, which I don’t see as in any way unfair, any more than using As would be. Its effects are well known, and moreover encapsulated in a well-known cliche, as Dave points out..

    And you see, setters can spell espresso correctly, when it suits them 🙂

    Edited at 2013-09-13 08:46 am (UTC)

    1. Spoken by the man who solves the Club Monthly in under an hour!

      I don’t really think ‘mad as a hatter’ is a cliche; nor does it have much encapsulation of mercury, as far as I can see. 🙂

      1. Whenever I see one of these neat explanations for a common phrase my reflex reaction is “I bet that’s not true”. Nine times out of ten I’m right. After a bit of googling I’d say the jury’s out on this one.
          1. Well yes, if we’re to judge the truth of a proposition by how confidently it’s stated! But they don’t offer any evidence, and I haven’t found a source that does. There are also alternative explanations such as a corruption of “mad as an adder”. So the milliner explanation appears to be no more than conjecture.
            1. You are a hard person keriothe! It is pretty clearly a fact, as attested by its medicinal usage for mad hatter syndrome… how about the OED, will that do? .. “in this, and in the phrase mad as a hatter (see Phrases 2), the allusion is to the effects of mercury poisoning sometimes formerly suffered by hat-makers as a result of the use of mercurous nitrate in the manufacture of felt hats.”

              Still, in your defence Snopes.com is less decided:
              http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/hatter.asp
              .. I will rest with the OED, if a trifle less happily than hitherto 🙂

              Edited at 2013-09-14 03:54 pm (UTC)

              1. Well the OED is certainly a respectable source! Mind you I’d still be interested to know what evidence they have, other than a possible connection with a medical condition.
                I’m generally sceptical about these very neat etymological explanations, because they usually turn out to be dodgy: language doesn’t usually work in such an orderly way. I’m particularly sceptical about this one because I find it hard to believe that the link between milliners and madness was sufficiently well-known. The reality is probably that no-one really knows.
  8. Thanks, Dave, for the parsing of ARSENIC (I twigged the ‘As’ definition but not the rest) and ODYSSEY in particular. Apart from these two, this presented no great difficulties and I finished in under 20 minutes: even the unknown GOLIATH FROG was easily worked out from the wordplay. the clue for CROCODILE TEARS seemed a bit lame.
  9. The hardest of the week I think but not really a toughie and no stand out clues. I had no real problems, getting 21A on definition and 18D from definition plus M?R????. Can’t say I like 18D very much – far too obscure.

    With the 100th anniversary of WW1 approaching not entirely sure that 12A is very sound advice!

  10. 35 minutes for this enjoyable puzzle. Pleased that the word play for PHARAOH was so precise: it’s one of those words that I always have trouble spelling.

    Most papers today have a photograph of NASA’s LADEE rocket launch showing an unfortunate frog blown out of its pond to a great height by the blast: not a GOLIATH FROG, but certainly a giant leap.

  11. 11 mins, and from what has been said above I must just have been on the setter’s wavelength.

    I didn’t think the definitions were particularly well hidden in a lot of cases, but maybe I’m just getting better at spotting them with certain setters.

    SONAR was my FOI, followed by CROCODILE TEARS, and it opened up nicely from then on. SHUSH was my LOI after I solved ETHOS. I didn’t know GOLIATH FROG but the wordplay made the answer clear once enough checkers were in place. I knew the MERCURY/madness connection, but even if I hadn’t I agree with keriothe that the answer couldn’t be anything else with all the checkers in place.

  12. Pleased with my time again today, though I delayed myself a little by initially sticking in ‘vulgar fraction’ at 17a without checking the parsing. Also, happy to be able to access the blog on my iPad at a reasonable hour today. Still awaiting and dreading the toughie.
    George Clements
  13. 16m for the third day in a row. I liked this one a lot.
    I had to chuckle when I saw the version of ESPRESSO preferred by foodies and language snobs (I include myself in both categories). A coincidence, no doubt.
    I didn’t get the MERCURY/madness connection but I can’t see how a clue where the definition is “world” and the checkers give you M_R_U_Y can be called unfair.
  14. 40 minutes of fun today. No problems with Mercury or Arsenic or rare earths, but wasn’t convinced a HOURI was a virgin – well I guess she may be for a short while.
  15. 11:14 .. came easily to me, too, perhaps because I solved it sort of bottom up and ARSENIC was the very last clue I looked at. Maybe if it doesn’t occur to you that a puzzle is hard, the thing itself is changed.

    COD ..CROCODILE TEARS and SIMPLE FRACTION both made me smile.

    I shall now go and weep quietly for that blasted frog.

  16. 8:24 for me. It seemed to me to have a lot of ‘old favourites’ or else I am just solving far too many cryptic crosswords these days. Pleased that for once I actually remembered about chemical symbols.
  17. 32 minutes. Still no toughie. The only thing that made this harder than yesterday’s easy puzzle was the NE corner (5, 6, 8 & 10), which took me longer than it should have done. The rest, with the possible exception of 9, was very straightforward indeed and completed in 20 minutes.
    One reason for my slowness in getting 10 was the definition, which was unfamiliar to me. I normally use Chambers as a reference and that says nothing about virgin, though I suppose it sort of implies it in one of its definitions. I see that COD is far more specific.
  18. The Times will lose its reputation as the most difficult daily crossword soon. It’s a couple of weeks since we’ve had a corker.
    1. I’m not sure that the Times crossword has been viewed as the most difficult for a while. A good Times puzzle contains cluing elegance that others don’t always have, but, as somebody who solves three puzzles every day, I can assure you that the Indy and the Guardian can sometimes be more difficult, occasionally considerably so. It all depends on the setter.

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