Times 25593 – The devil, you say?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 48 minutes

Music: Vaughn Williams, Symphony #6, Boult/LSO

This is the sort of puzzle the blogger fears. After reading all the clues, I had not a single answer in the grid. Seven minutes had elapsed. But then, I suddenly started solving at a rapid pace, and by the 20-minute mark had all but the SW corner. Then, nothing for quite a while. A wild guess of ‘shaddock’, a word I could not even vaguely recall, got me going again, and I limped home soon after the music reached its final bars.

I believe this puzzle was somewhat difficult for a Monday, although I would not be surprised if the usual crew all reported times of fifteen minutes or so, the proverbial walk in the park.

Across
1 EQUIPAGE, E(QUI)P + AGE. I do not actually own any record that could be described as an EP – I believe they were more common in the UK.
5 SCREAM, SCR(E)AM, where ‘without’ is a containment indicator, not a removal indicator as I thought.
9 CORDUROY, COR + D + anagram of YOUR.
10 BYWORD, BY + W/O + RD.
12 SHAKO, S[econd] + H[usband] + A + OK backwards, where ‘capital’ has its root sense of pertaining to your caput.
13 TRUCULENT, CURT backwards + U + LENT.
14 TRAMPOLINIST, TRAMP + [vi]OLINIST, an amusing word-removal clue given away by the the vagrant at the beginning.
18 HANG TOGETHER, double definition, with a hat-tip to Ben Franklin.
21 DIABLERIE, D (I ABLER) IE. I would say that ‘long to’ = ‘die’ is a bit of a stretch, but it’s the only parsing that makes sense, and the only way I was going to get the answer.
23 ALOHA, sounds like ‘A LOWER’ if you speak like a stereotypical toff.
24 OTHERS, [m]OTHERS, a simple clue that had me stumped for quite a while.
25 EPIDEMIC, EP(I + DEM)IC. We have already explained to beginners why current = ‘I’, so don’t ask again!
26 KIDNEY, KID + YEN backwards. The only possible rhyme for Sir Phillip Sydney, as Eliot pointed out.
27 STARTLED, S(TART)LED, almost too easy.
 
Down
1 EXCISE, EX[er]CISE, a disguised chestnut.
2 UPROAR, hidden backwards in [Maharasht]RA OR PU[njab]. Embarrasingly, I looked several times for a backwards hidden word without seeing it, and then put it in from the definition and checkers.
3 PLUTOCRAT, P(L + anagram of COURT)AT.
4 GOOD-TIME GIRL, anagram of GROOM – IDLE GIT. Here at TftT, a ‘good time’ has a very different meaning, right, ladies?
6 COYPU, COY + sounds like POOH, a chestnut that keeps fooling me.
7 ESOTERIC, E (SOT) ERIC.
8 MEDITATE, MEDI(-c+T)ATE. Letter-substitution clues often get me, but here’s an easy on.
11 PUT ON THE SPOT, PUT ON THE (S)POT. Quite easy without bothering with the cryptic.
15 ICELANDER, I[dustry] + CE + LANDER, a European politically and ethnically, but not geographically.
16 SHADDOCK, S[upper] + HADDOCK. I never heard of it, but I put it in on trial, and it seemed to work. AKA ‘pomelo’, which they are certainly capable of using as well.
17 UNWASHED, UNW(ASH)ED. ‘Grubby’ does not seem to be intended as the literal, although it was the word that pushed my mind in the right direction. The ‘Great Unwashed’ no longer exist because of the widespread adoption of inexpensive indoor plumbing.
19 FORMAL FO(RM)AL, a bit of DBE, but obvious enough.
20 RANCID, RAN + CID, another cleverly-altered chestnut.
22 LARGE, double definition, where criminals are ‘at large’.

49 comments on “Times 25593 – The devil, you say?”

  1. Agree with Vinyl: a bit harder than our usual Mondays. Most difficult were my last pair in: 17dn and 24ac. The former (UNWASHED) gave trouble because I too assumed “grubby” was the literal. Is it possible that we have two literals in the clue; or is “grubby remains” sufficient for ASH? In 24ac (OTHERS), the “head down” for deletion had me going to the end.

    The DIE in 21ac I assumed to be “long” (“longing for a coffee”, etc) with the “to” associated with “strangle” as the containment indicator.

    The Dubious Homophone Brigade will be out today re 23ac. (Here I’d assumed the setter was signalling that some people may say ALOHA as “a lower” rather than vice versa.)

    Edited at 2013-09-30 02:00 am (UTC)

    1. Surely 17d is a definition, cryptic, definition: grubby – remains in single setting – they were great once.
  2. I see the cryptic, but the definition? What is the “sort (of)” doing there”? My complimentary (ex crossword club) expires today and where is not enough value in the package offered for an overseas subscriber. What do you guys think. Have many dropped out?
    1. Sort is the definition. Something may be said to be of a very different kidney or sort as opposed to something else.
        1. Agree with Jack on this. A very nicely hidden literal. Several of the Oxfords have this:

          2. temperament, nature, or kind: I hoped that he would not prove of similar kidney.

        2. It’s altogether archaic. A long time ago I met a very old lady who referred to her departed husband, entrancingly, as “an engineer…of the first water”.
            1. Possibly it’s the sort of thing only ever said by the likes of Robert Robinson, as dealt with by Fry & Laurie here…

              Edited at 2013-09-30 09:26 am (UTC)

          2. No problems with first water. The best possible. From grading the clarity of diamonds – first, second, third etc. Common usage in my experience.
  3. 40 minutes for this one. I didn’t have problems getting started but having completed 4d and everything to its right I struggled to progress the grid to its left.

    I agree with Mct re DIE.

  4. The last several minutes were taken up with 17d, 24d, and 26ac, with 17 LOI. 23ac has to take some sort of prize for non-homophones; the H is pronounced, and the A is not a schwa. Other than that, of course, it’s fine, aside from the definition being a giveaway. A half-dozen of these went in on checkers alone, with parsing done post hoc, a lot more than I’d like; including CORDUROY, where yet once again I missed the my=cor. COD to KIDNEY.

    Edited at 2013-09-30 02:59 am (UTC)

    1. It does get slightly variant pronunciation in the name of the Hawai’ian-Scottish football team: Aloha Athletic.
  5. 10A wrong – mea culpa, I overlooked the import of “without”, and decided it was “byroad”, i.e. a minor road not in the (town/city) centre.

    1. Me too… I had ‘byroad’ for BYWORD.

      Enjoyed it, but I parsed lots post-solve. Mostly correctly.

  6. 19.27 with a fast time in the offing till a few in the SE. I take 17 to offer a double literal, a nice variant. A tad surprised at ‘head down’ for ‘head off’; and the plutocrat’s wealth ignored.
  7. 19 minutes, held up by a careless PANDEMIC at 25, making the phrase at 11d interesting. I reasoned that a blockbuster could be a panic in dated Hollywood slang, and ignored the I “current”.
    Does a Hawaiian policeman announce himself with “Aloha aloha aloha, what going on here then?” Punning, aloha form of wit. Doesn’t really work, does it, but I suppose it gives us something to splutter at over the hard boiled eggs and toast.
    I took 17 to be a clue with a generous extra nudge, while wondering if it would work with the “Grubby” missing.
    CoD to KIDNEY, if you’re lucky enough to be smug about the arcane meaning.
  8. 23:50 .. would have been a lot faster if I hadn’t misspelt CORDUROY then ‘corrected’ it to a different misspelling!

    UNWASHED is just brilliant.

    Edited at 2013-09-30 08:11 am (UTC)

  9. 30 mins +, not helped by scribbling in PANDEMIC but assisted by being lucky with SHADDOCK which I had never heard of. COD between UNWASHED and KIDNEY.
  10. Straightforward puzzle of average difficulty, interesting without ever being taxing, 20 minute solve.

    Apart from the homophone (setter, you must have realised it was dodgy for you to put “for some” in) no real complaints but no stand out clues either. The DBE at 19D is so easy that it doesn’t confuse.

    SHAKO and SHADDOCK have surely both appeared before

    1. Me too. I think it would be a better clue without “They were great once” but, that said, it did put me off the scent completely.
  12. 30m, with well over half of that staring with increasing desperation at the SW corner. I got there eventually.
    I didn’t know a BYWORD was a “saw”. SHAKO and SHADDOCK were both new too.
    I was surprised by the non-homophone at 23ac. I suppose some people might pronounce it “a lower”, but then some people pronounce “scone” as “scone”, and I’m sure the editor wouldn’t allow that error.
    1. I’ve always pronounced it “scone” myself. I expect the editor avoids using it for exactly that reason.
        1. I have heard SCONE pronounced in many ways but curiously, only one version of DROP SCONE, as in scone.
  13. 8:37, and thinking this was right up my street (even remembering that SHADDOCK is a plant rather than a fish, which makes me think it’s come up at least once before as well), until I realised I’d got one wrong. In what seems like a very stupid idea in retrospect (no insult intended to others who did similar), I convinced myself that BYROAD had another meaning which was some variety of “saw”, and didn’t give it another thought.

    Ah well, salutary reminder that if an answer seems dodgy, it’s probably an error at my end, not the setter’s…good to get it out of the system before the championships…pride cometh before a fall etc. etc.

  14. 12 mins so I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength, and the NW and SE were entered almost as soon as I read the clues.

    BYWORD was my LOI after I discounted “byroad” and finally understood the wordplay. I only parsed OTHERS post-solve because I thought that “head down” was telling me that the first letter of a word that means “gives protection” should be moved from the front of the word to another position within the word, although in retrospect such a device would make more sense in a down clue rather than an across clue, and I should have been quicker to see it as an instruction to drop the first letter.

    I’m not sure why some of you think 19dn is a DBE. Surely stuffy=formal is the definition and straightforward wordplay represents the subsidiary part of the clue.

      1. I dunno. Isn’t a young doberman a puppy? I can’t see why a young any-kind-of-horse shouldn’t be a decent indication of ‘foal’.
        1. Definition By Example. A setting sin under strict Ximenean rules, for reasons I’ve never really understood.
  15. Put in BYROAD at once without thinking, missing both actual definition and cryptic, although it struck me as a rather trivial clue, so ruining a pretty good time.
  17. Put me down as another one who settled for ‘byroad’ as I thought of ‘byword’ but could not parse it. I never gave a thought to w.o. as ‘without’.
    Good-time girl also had me thinking immediately of crypticsue as I don’t think I have ever managed to get anywhere near her completion time.
    George Clements
  18. A enjoyable puzzle taking longer than usual for a Monday. 35 minutes. However, I’m one of those who threw in BYROAD. I didn’t even see the alternative possibility.
  19. By the way, my time today would have been 23m 21s, but doesn’t count because of the error.
    George Clements
  22. Only a little held up in the SW, straightforward otherwise except for 10ac which it seems I got 10ac. A case could be made for saying byroad is as correct as byword… one word of padding is by no means unusual in the daily cryptic
  23. 14 minutes, no major hang-ups, didn’t see the definition for KIDNEY, and SHADDOCK came in from wordplay alone. I think DIABLERIE (or one of it’s kidney) has appeared here recently so it was at the front of the mind.
  24. 28/28 today finishing just now in the NE corner. The SW corner held me up for a long time too, especially Diablerie. Shaddock and Unwashed from wordplay, Others from definition.
  25. 9:32 for me, but with BYROAD! I’d been held up for ages agonising over OTHERS (I’m not keen on “getting head down”) and ALOHA, which I certainly don’t pronounce like “a lower” (and neither does the woman on Oxford Dictionaries Pro), but although I hadn’t been entirely happy with BYROAD, I didn’t go back and look at the clue more carefully. (Sigh!)

    I’d thought this would be my last weekday Times crossword before my access to the Times Crossword Club was blocked (I’m not going to subscribe to the Web Package), but I seem to have access still. I don’t expect it will last though.

Comments are closed.