Times 25589: Getting “difficult or awkward treatment”

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 27:52

Happy to have managed this under the 30 today. Thought it was going to take much longer with, as yesterday, lengthy hold ups in the SE. It took the longish 15ac, 13dn and 21ac to crack it. All three were excellent clues as they turned out and worth the effort. Perhaps it was the puzzle? Perhaps just because my (physiological) system is a bit down at the moment? One parsing I don’t quite get; hopefully while writing up the blog.

ACROSS
1. DISPLACED. This is DECID{e} inc ALPS; all reversed.
6. CRAMP. “Crush” = CRAM; P{icnic}.
9. ANTIWAR. Reverse IT (Italian) inside ANWAR. (Mr Sadat, assassinated in 1981. Nothing much seems to go well for Egyptian presidents it would seem.)
10. MARENGO. MAN, as so often, is our island. Insert RE (soldiers). Add GO (head for).
11. ALAN TURING. Is our “code expert”. {c}AL{l}, ANT, U, RING. Great charade and one to please the science fraternity; even if, at the time, they did nothing to prevent him being hounded to death for his sexual preferences.
12. AS OF. The def is “from”. A SOF{a}.
14. TAKEN. Hidden answer.
15. PROPAGATE. Sounds like “proper” and “gait”. The def is “broadcast”.
16. PENNILESS. The river (“banker”) NILE’S inside PENS (pounds).
18. EL CID. Alternate letters of “fEeLs ChIlD”.
20. LOCO. Still not sure of the parsing here. I suspect it’s LOC{k} = “jam almost” + O for “over” (cricket). Alternatives welcome.
21. APOTHECARY. Made up of A, POTHE{r} (fuss), CA (about), RY (railway = lines).
25. GROWN-UP. Anagram of “wrong” + UP (in court).
26. REPLETE. REP (theatre), LE (“the” French), T{heatr}E.
27. TWERP. T{o}WER (keep, minus O), P{ub}.
28. RUNA{g}ROUND. Less familiar variant of “runabout”. The word has a more usual meaning — see title.

DOWN
1. DRAM,A.
2. SETBACK. Composed of SET (placed) and BACK (bet). Easy enough if your first in was the light inclusive (hidden answer) at 14ac.
3. LAWN TENNIS. The rules are LAWS. They include in reverse order: IN (home), NET (goal) and the N from “decisioN”.
4. CURER. Two meanings.
5. DO,MINIONS. Wondered about “favourites” = MINIONS but Chambers approves and refers specifically to Princes having them.
And, of course, “I caught this morning morning’s minion …”.
6. CA(R)P.
7. AMNESIA. Anagram of “men” in ASIA. Nicely deceptive definition.
8. PROOFREAD. P{age}; then OF, RE (religious ed.) inside ROAD.
13. GATEKEEPER. “Name” = TAG reversed = GAT. Then KEEP (subsistence) inside E’ER (always).
14. TOP-FLIGHT. This is TO LIGHT inc P{rivate} F{irm}. The literal is A1.
15. PIED PIPER. A cryptic definition.
17. NICE ONE. The cardinal (number) is NINE. Insert CE (church) and O{rganist}.
19. CHATEAU. Two drinks (CHA, TEA) + U (Universal, film rating, suitable for everyone — in the UK).
22. TUR(I)N.
23. YIELD. Anagram of {w}IDELY.
24. SNIP{e}.

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34 comments on “Times 25589: Getting “difficult or awkward treatment””

  1. Finally got there after desperately trying (but failing) to make 20 ac luck.def jam, bend u. My thanks for the blog.
  2. 40 leisurely minutes solving for me. I parsed 20ac as you have done, mct.

    Another very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

  3. 51 minutes. Agree with parsing of LOCO, my last in. Nice stuff – COD to TWERP, unheard since prep school days.
    1. Given the Dad’s Army allusions yesterday, it is suitable that the run-up to the funniest exchange in the series (‘What is your name?’ ‘Dont tell him, Pike’) is Pike singing ‘Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp .. . ‘ .

      An enjoyable start to the day.

  4. The man from Porlock, in the form of a colleague, knocked as I was desperately trying to finish before heading off to a meeting, so I didn’t have a chance to check my answers, and sure enough I typed in Marango for MARENGO; it didn’t look right (well, it wouldn’t, would it?), but there was nothing for it. I’ll add my vote to the LOCO parsing. Some nice clues; I’d have enjoyed them more if I’d had a little more time.
  5. 43 minutes, solving on the Times app version on the Android tablet: doesn’t let you submit/check answers, doesn’t time, does give you a keyboard. One day, my son, all things will be well.
    So hard going, but not without moments of pleasure. Tended to rely on flashes of inspiration allowing spurts of progress: LAWN TENNIS, for example, which had very good wordplay that sadly only became apparent once you’d solved the thing. Similarly APOTHECARY, ALAN TURING (a very good clue) and GATEKEPER.
    RUNAROUND I’ve never associated with a car though Chambers does. PIED PIPER a dangerous clue perhaps (and the laziest one of the set, in my opinion) in these days of Operation Yewtree.
    AS OF was nearly AS TO(ol), though the alarm system in my head kept saying they never knock two letters of the end of a word. Made PROOFREAD my LOI.
    A lot to like, and I have learned more about minions (not Jewish prayer groups, then?).

  6. All entered correctly, but failed to parse quite a few, so many thanks McT for the explanations of TWERP, APOTHECARY, PENNILESS, CHATEAU. I did, however, parse LOCO in the way you suggest.

    COD to ALAN TURING, which reminded me of a musical (yep, that’s right) of his life called The Universal Machine I saw earlier this year in a tiny theatre in London. So very sad, makes you really appreciate how times have changed.

  7. Enjoyed this one and solved it in under 40 minutes. Thought it was going to be a difficult Wednesday puzzle but it alternated between hard and easy clues.

    Suffering from an attack of “Crossword Coincidences” again, having just finished listening to a Ray Noble – Al Bowlly 1931 recording entitled “Pied Piper of Hamelin” as I sat down with the paper.

    1. Never heard that one before so I tracked it down on YT. Al sounds great, as does the band. Shame about the song!
      1. Quite so. It’s on a Vocalion CD, padding out “Down Sunnyside Lane”, “Got a Date with an Angel”, “Guilty”, “Twentieth Century Blues”, “Hold My Hand” and other popular songs from 1931 – 1934.

        There’s also a reference (appropriately enough for this blog) to “Puzzle Records”, discs that had three parallel grooves each producing a different song depending on where you placed the needle on the circumference. If you Google “Victor Puzzle Record” you’ll find one on You Tube, with Ray Noble and Al Bowlly credited as “Novelty Orchestra”.

  8. 21 mins so back to some kind of form, although I did this one mid-morning which is my preferred solving time after I had done the previous two mid-afternoon.

    I started slowly and EL CID, followed by GROWN UP, were the only two I had in after my first pass at the acrosses. The “p” checker from the latter helped me see PIED PIPER almost immediately, and I made steady progress after that. PROPAGATE was my LOI.

    This was a good puzzle from a technical perspective but was a little lacking in humour for my taste.

  9. Nearly finished in about half an hour – then after struggling with 13 for a while, realised I’d entered PROMENADE at 15 without parsing clue. That left 20: eventually guessed LOCK – ‘jam’ definition and U becomes O in LUCK ’round the bend’, but can’t really read clue to make that work.
  10. A bit of a struggle again today with the NW corner proving to be much more difficult than it should. As ever, once solved you can’t quite understand what the problems were. But a very enjoyable 30 minutes. Well done McT – not an easy one to blog – and thank you setter both for some excellent clues and for recalling Alan Turing, to whom we all owe a great deal.
  11. LOCO was nearly my downfall but I finished in 10:55 after working through the alphabet and seeing what worked with the clue.
  12. 40 minutes for me today, which wasn’t bad considering the relative difficulty, I suppose. Not the most whimsical of Times puzzles, but sound indeed and with some nice touches.

    I kept looking at TURING and TURIN suspiciously, expecting something of a thematic nature to jump out at me. I remained safe.

  13. An hour and one minute to get through this, the minute being the time to get my last three, 4 and 9 (clever) and 27. Some excellent, very tricky clues. I found the right-hand side easier than the left, and the NW the hardest of all.
  14. I thought I was on for a fast time having completed all of the LHS and the outer parts of the right in about 5 minutes but then I got really bogged down and eventually finished in 20:49.

    As has been noted, much of the wordplay was superfluous during solving as Turing, tennis, penniless and grown up all went in on def.

    Turin was the only one that still puzzled me at the end so thanks, McT, for that.

  15. 15:10, so though I felt pretty zippy, there were several places where correct answers went in before I was entirely sure why they were right (though I did parse them all sufficiently to avoid putting in GAMEKEEPER, for one). In other words, one of those puzzles which requires precision, and is a nightmare if you’re blogging, so well done, setter and blogger alike.
  16. Like yesterday’s, this felt tricky but only took me 20 minutes, which is about average. As others have noted there were lots that went in without unravelling the wordplay, and some of it took a lot of unravelling.
    I didn’t know minions could be favourites. To me they are primarily the little yellow chaps in the Despicable Me films.
    Does “head for” meant “go”? Doesn’t it mean “go towards”?

    Edited at 2013-09-25 02:09 pm (UTC)

    1. ‘For’ is the link word, methinks. ‘Head’ is ‘go’ as in ‘they were heading in the wrong direction’.
  17. Other than last weekend’s this is the first cryptic I’ve tackled since 8 September on account of being in USA with work for the past fortnight. I’ve been off the grid for a while, as they might say over there, and have a lot of puzzles to catch up on!
    Enjoyed this one very much and picked away at it all afternoon. 32/32 with FOI Drama and LOI Twerp. Liked Grown-Up and Snipe in particular.
    Thanks mctext for explaining Twerp and Penniless. Couldn’t suss the wordplay there. Didn’t know the battlesite and for a while I thought it might be Morengo until I thought about the wordplay a bit more and realised Marengo was a much better answer.

    Edited at 2013-09-25 03:33 pm (UTC)

  18. I saw penniless quite quickly but couldn’t believe it was right. Later spotted ‘Nile’ and ‘pens’ but still don’t get SAVED. How does that work?
  19. Saved means included, held safe inside as it were. 33 minutes here, thought very slow till saw several found it tricky. Mostly doing them after work now and muzzier on the grid. Agree this one was neat but a little lacking in humour.
  20. About 30 minutes, ending with both TWERP and LOCO from definitions, and not sure of the parsings. Bravo to ALAN TURING. Regards.
  21. 17:26 .. finally getting used (ish) to solving on the iPad. No real problems with this one, though TWERP took a bit of working out.

    COD … ALAN TURING, just because, though I thought YIELD was well done.

  22. nice to not have it clued as “Napoleon’s horse”, “named after the battle of 1800”.
    Historians have found no entry for Marengo in the register of Napoleon’s horses (150-ish), and it is believed to be his pet name – as was his want regarding his stable – for a horse registered as Ali (or Aly), which was reputedly captured during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
    As a note, if a clue is Napoleon’s horse at Waterloo, although Marengo was undoubtedly one of his horses present, and therefore possibly ridden at some time during that day, historians say that his primary mount was a mare named Desiree.
    Back to Marengo – captured at Waterloo, with it’s distinctive ‘N’ brand, and evermore known as Marengo, it was brought back to England, put on display in 1822, and then put out to stud, dying in 1831.
  23. A sluggish 16:10 for me, making heavy weather of parsing some of the clues, particularly 16ac (PENNILESS) and 27ac (TWERP).
  24. Another late solving session, and grateful to limbo under my half-hour target by just 24 seconds.
    George Clements
  25. Couldn’t remember the name of the battle at 10 across so put in MORANGO, which fits the wordplay. (other ranks). Not keen on slang terms for mental illness – isn’t it about time they were discontinued? I would have preferred to see LUCK – another kind of jam, as mentioned in the first comment above.

    Edited at 2013-09-26 07:01 am (UTC)

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