Times 25,600

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18:22 on the club timer. Slower than I might have been on a non-blogging day, partly because I thought this was quite ticklish, especially in the NW corner, and partly because I had trouble getting the exact parsing on a couple, and wanted to be sure; as it turned out, not sure that ever happened…still, all correct as it turns out, so onward and upward, and let’s check that they were right for something resembling the reasons I thought they were.

Something of an old fashioned feel to this one generally, with more than a smattering of classical and Biblical knowledge required in particular. I suspect this may not be to all tastes, but as always, the proof of the puzzle will be in the solving.

Across
1 RECOURSE – R.E. COURSE, i.e. a course of training for the Royal Engineers, for whom building bridges might be a regular task. I’m afraid it took me quite a while to realise that the bridges were literal (rather than stemming from Religious Education, which did seem a little odd, I must admit).
5 STEPPE – (PETS)rev. + P.E.(=exercise).
10 PLASTERER – cryptic def. I had a penny-drop moment here when I suddenly remembered that one of the many meanings of “key” is the roughing of the surface on which the smooth plaster finish will go.
11 RISER – rev. hidden in azoRES I Recalled; the part of the stair which goes vertically, unsurprisingly.
12 AGIN – A GIN specifically, as opposed to any non-specific sort of trap.
13 DIP SWITCH – Duke, [boughT in IPSWICH (county town of Suffolk)]. This didn’t ring a bell while solving, and happily Google didn’t subsequently suggest that it came up three months ago and reveal that I said exactly the same thing then, which is always embarrassing. They are this sort of switch, anyway.
15 BUDGERIGAR – BUDGER round RIGA. Did I imagine it, or did this bird cause problems for North American solvers when it came up last time? If I’ve imagined that, forget I spoke.
17 JEHU – Judge, [Had in E.U.] A test of how much attention you paid at Sunday School, this (or local equivalent according to denomination and geography). An early exponent of road rage; as ODO has it, “A King of Israel. He was famous for driving his chariot furiously (2 Kings 9)”.
19 INFO – i.e. IN F.O., with “intelligence” as in information; we seem to have had the predecessor of what is now the Foreign & Commonwealth Office a lot recently.
20 YELLOWBACK – YELLOW(=”chicken”), BACK(=”advocate”). Not sure I’d seen this before, but it seemed a logical combination of the yellow press, which I did know, and a paperback.
22 AMAZONIAN – [A-Z, ON 1] in A MAN.
24 EARN =”URN”. In these times of austerity, it’s probably inappropriate to ask “What’s a Greek earn?”
26 ORRIS =”‘ORACE”, as Horace would be in the crossword convention of East London pronunciation. Horace isn’t best known for his Satires, which preceded the more renowned Odes, but apart from anything else, it makes a change from Juvenal. Orris root is the basis of pot-pourri, so you may well have inhaled it without realising.
27 LASSITUDE – LAST, (DUTIES)*.
28 YES-MEN – English Sergeant-Major in YEN.
29 ASPHODEL – (OLDSHAPE)*. I’m not much good at plants generally, but I can recognise the classical ones; asphodel was what traditionally proliferated on the Elysian Fields.
 
Down
1 RAPT – P in RAT.
2 CHARGE D’AFFAIRES – CHARGE(=duty), [AIRE in DAFFS]. The convention is that apostrophes aren’t shown in enumeration, which can be quite annoying when you’re completely stumped for a word which fits the checkers and don’t consider the possibility of the apostrophe until much, much later.
3 UNTENDED – U, INTENDED, minus the 1.
4 SHRED – Rabble in SHED.
6 THROWN – double def.
7 PASS THE HAT ROUND – true Panamas actually originate in Ecuador, hat trivia fans.
8 EARTHQUAKE – (HEART)*, QUA(=”as”) King, Explaining.
9 TRAP-BALL – (PART)rev. + [Large LABrador]. I have never come across this game in the flesh, due to not living in the North of England or the 19th century.
14 OBLIGATORY – (BAG,OIL)*, TORY(=”blue”).
16 ICE-FIELD – Cold in I.E., FIELD(=”discipline”).
18 SWEETISH – (TEE)rev. in SWISH.
21 MOUSSE – Maiden, [Second in OUSE].
23 NOSES – NO SE, S.
25 TEAL – TEA, Left.

33 comments on “Times 25,600”

  1. Made a right mess of the NW by assuming 4dn was SHERD. And that made PLASTERER almost impossible. Didn’t know that meaning of “key” as the plasterer’s undercoat.

    At 17ac, I’d assumed that JEHU was a reckless driver because he drove out the House of Ahab. No idea about the chariot. Thanks for that shred of info Tim. A biblical hoon then!

    COD to 14dn, OBLIGATORY for its nicely hidden literal.

    1. SHRED was my last in and very cunning I thought. First, many of us (i.e. me) would have been taking ‘slough’ in its ‘mirey’ sense, and second many would have been taking ‘scrap’ in its nominal senses. Finally, ‘shred’ and ‘scrap’ are in the same lexical area, of course, but hardly synonyms as such.

      I think I’ve talked it into COD.

          1. Sorry Sir! Just trying to point out that the answer and the literal can both be taken nominally and that, read as such, they pass the substitution test.

            Edited at 2013-10-08 07:46 am (UTC)

            1. Is the substitution test enough though? Is “damn” synonymous with “hoot” or “toss”? Not that I give a monkey’s.
      2. I took “slough” in its snakey sense (SHED), stuck an “r” in and came up with SHERD. That all seemed quite satisfactory. Just wrong.
  3. ‘To drive like Jehu’ is quite a well known idiom – certainly, used to be. 61 minutes for me, but with ‘orras’ for ORRIS. I have to say I did take some time considering alternatives – ‘orres’, to be precise…

    Joint CODS to OBLIGATORY and RECOURSE.

  4. 50 minutes here. The RH mostly went in easily but I slowed down considerably LH. My unknowns were JEHU, TRAP-BALL and YELLOWBACK and I failed to parse QUAKE in EARTHQUAKE.

    Edited at 2013-10-08 02:24 am (UTC)


  5. About 40 mins or so, so a good time for me today…

    Similar to Jack in that I didn’t know YELLOWBACK, JEHU or TRAP-BALL (or ASHPHODEL, where I correctly guessed where the vowels went), but they were neatly clued. Never heard of the idiom: ‘to drive like JEHU’. Might have to use that one… Also had forgotten that meaning of ‘to key’ for 10ac.

    Also like Jack, the LHS much slower than the right. Last ones in were RECOURSE and BUDGERIGAR, neither of which I managed to parse.

  6. 23:26 .. thanks, Tim, for explaining -QUAKE, which had to be right but had me fuddled. Fortunately, JEHU parsed precisely and helped confirm it.

    Raced through half of this then rather ground to a halt. Tricky one to finish.

  7. 16 minutes, in which the East side opened up with little fuss and the NW corner proved obdurate. My first shot at SHRED (with no checkers) was MARSH (R in mash, some sort of fight) – thank goodness that didn’t last long.
    JEHU from literature (though where I’m not sure) rather than the Bible ref. It’s also a permitted way of getting rid of some awkward letters in WWF. And Drive Like Jehu is apparently a post-hardcore alternative rock band from San Diego. You heard it here first.
    I thought TRAP BALL might be related to the (reversed order) French art of clay pigeon shooting, advertised ubiquitously on the N roads. Apparently not, but it worked for me.
    Surprised to find YELLOWBACK is British, and YESMEN, inspired an acute frisson of déja vu, though it’s against the rules to say why.
    Couldn’t distinguish a CoD today: all worthy and, as Tim noted, slightly old-fashioned.
  8. Not my type of puzzle. Difficulty through obscurity rather than clever cluing and a musty old fashioned feel to the whole offering.

    Never heard of JEHU and will not be bringing him into my conversation. Likewise TRAP BALL. ORRIS is hackneyed (pun intended) and ASPHODEL obscure. No balancing clever stuff.

    20 minutes for a very forgettable solve.

  9. 18 mins, and I found this to be a strange puzzle.

    CHARGE D’AFFAIRES went in from the definition once a few checkers were in place and I didn’t bother to parse it. JEHU was only vaguely known and I didn’t know TRAP-BALL, but the wordplay for both of them was clear enough. The “Elysian” in 29ac was presumably there to make a straightforward anagram clue a little more confusing because “plant” would have served just as well as a definition. I was probably fortunate that I saw the CD for PLASTERER very quickly because that meant I never had to consider “sherd” for 4dn. RECOURSE was my LOI after I finally deciphered the wordplay for UNTENDED.

  10. 14.03 – finishing with the RECOURSE after I had read 3d properly!! It might have been slighly old-fashioned but it was nice to find that I hadn’t lost the ability to solve the Times crossword without take ages to do so.
  11. 25/30 today with Recourse, Charge D’affaires, Info (should have got that one), Obligatory (was looking for a word ending –sky) and the unknown-to-me Orris missing.
    Yellowback, Jehu and Trap-Ball all from wordplay.
    Penfold – I raised an eyebrow at Heartbroken too.
  12. I had him from the ever-reliable Georgette Heyer. You may have had him from O Henry. 18.19 with a slight stutter after nearly walking into the trap on 9d.
    1. I guessed GH might have it, but mine I think came from Boys Own stuff, in the days when you could describe a mad driver as “a veritable Jehu” and reliably expect your readership to get it.
  13. Indeed, a nice, solid, old-fashioned feel about today’s. With the biblical, classical, military and diplomatic allusions we could almost be back in the 60s – only the Shakespeare reference was missing. A pleasant solve on the tube ride to and from Bloomsbury this morning, plus a bit of mopping up interspersed with a pre-prandial snooze. I liked the deceptively simple Budgerigar and Recourse – which sprang out fully-formed once the checkers were in. If I could only think of Horace as a satirist, I would have liked Orris, but as it was, thought it a bit sneaky.

    Now, if 25d had been “Duck, trying to catch a saint”, we really would have been back in the 60s!

    1. >…
      >Now, if 25d had been “Duck, trying to catch a saint”, we really would have been back in the 60s!

      You think so? It sounds a bit low-brow for a 60s Times crossword.

  14. Despite getting off to a “flying” start with LEGOLAND at 1a I still managed to complete this in 16:46. It also didn’t seem to matter that all the potential unknowns on offer were unknown to me.

    I had no idea that sherd was an alternative spelling of shard so I escaped that trap.

    The heartbroken device smacked more of the Guardian than the Times and I’m surprised that no-one else has thought to mention it.

    Living in Yorkshire my only comment on the game is that I’ve never heard of it. I, too, was put in mind of balltrap, having actually been clay shooting in France, and also of bat and trap, a very similar game to trap ball played in pubs in Kent, where I used to live.

  15. Didn’t read clue to 3d properly, so got completely stuck on 1ac, having R.C.I.S. – so couldn’t do any better than ROCKIEST, which didn’t make much sense.
  16. 29m. I found this really tricky. Lots I didn’t know: “key” (24th definition in Chambers!!), JEHU, YELLOWBACK, TRAP BALL. At least it turned out that I did know the perfume ingredient and satirist: ORRIS was my last in and I thought for a few minutes I wouldn’t know either.
    Yes, a slightly old-fashioned feel, but it’s all perfectly clear. It’s quite satisfying to get a singularly unlikely-looking word like JEHU from the wordplay. A leap of faith rewarded.
  17. About 25 minutes, which as I look back after reading the above, leaves me somewhat surprised given the number of absolute unknowns that required reliance on wordplay only: TRAP-BALL, JEHU, DIP-SWITCH and YELLOWBACK. The fact that I solved them is, I suppose, an endorsement of the setter, so thanks to him/her. But no real COD today, as far as I can see. Regards.
  18. Early evening before I could get to this one, but I enjoyed it when I did.
    Like others, I threw myself by being convinced that 4d was ‘sherd’, which delayed me in getting ‘plasterer’, when all became clear.
    I also struggled with R.E. In 1a, and was trying to make Religious Education relevant without stretching the meaning too far, and failed to make the connection with Royal Engineers, relying, eventually, on definition alone, so thanks to topicaltim for the parsing.
    If this is an old fashioned puzzle, I’ll settle for old fashioned.
    George Clements
  19. 9:06 here for a puzzle that was right up my street – but I still made ridiculously heavy weather of some easy clues, and I agonised for ages over ICE-FIELD, having somehow missed the word “first”! As another old-fashioned solver, I found this most enjoyable.
  20. Earn = urn?
    Not here it dosen’t
    Otherwise no complaints. Jehu reminded me of my mother, who was wont to describe my driving so!

    Edited at 2013-10-09 07:21 am (UTC)

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