Times 25621 – The New Monday

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I expect to see some fast solving times today as most of this was very easy indeed. I got held up towards the end by a couple of shades of meaning I didn’t quite see though the answers should have been plain enough. There’s not much to say so I won’t waste time saying it.

* = anagram “


Across
1 GOSSIPER – GO (quit), 1 inside PRESS*
6 BALLAD – BALd (plain), LAD (youth). I wasn’t sure about ‘romance’ = ‘ballad’ but the dictionaries have it with specific reference to Spanish literature.
9 VACANT – CAN (tin) inside VAT (large tank)
10 GYRATION – GrindleY, RATION (allotment)
11 TYPE – Hidden inside ‘fifTY PEnce’
12 ENTOMOLOGY – (GLOOMY TONE)*
14 HUMORIST – RI (religious subject) inside MOUTHS*
16 MAID – I AM reversed, D (diamonds)
18 USED – US (American), ED (media chief)
19 ENROLLED – ROLLEr (sort of blind), in END (so ‘finally’)
21 STORYBOARD – (BROODY STAR)*
22 GIBE – GIB (Gibralter, rock), E (English)
24 ALL-CLEAR – ALL (everyone), CLEAR (tidy away)
26 EXTENT – X TEN (ten by ten) inside feET
27 ADJUST – AD (plug), JUST (precisely)
28 SATIRIST – SAT (posed), 1, wRIST (joint)

Down
2 OVARY – 0 (shape of egg), VARY (change)
3 STAKEHOLDER – dd, one humorous
4 PATHETIC – PATH (way), CITE (evidence) reversed
5 ROGET’S THESAURUS – (SOUGHT TREASURES)*
6 BIREME – B (British), I, REME (military engineers)
7 LOT – LOTh
8 ALONGSIDE – A LONG SIDE (hypotenuse)
13 LAMPLIGHTER – PLIGHT (promise) inside LAMER (comparatively weak)
15 UNSETTLED – SETT (where to find badger) inside UNLED (lacking guidance)
17 GRADIENT – (GET DRAIN)*
20 ABSENT – AB (sailor), SENT (told to leave)
23 BONUS – B (bishop), O (over), SUN (newspaper) reversed
25 CRU – CRUd. I didn’t know this can mean ‘nonsense’ in addition to its more usual meaning, but COED has it.

43 comments on “Times 25621 – The New Monday”

  1. 38 minutes, held up in the NW and by the BALLAD/ALONGSIDE crossing in the NE. Thoguht TYPE was a clever hidden, but my COD goes to STAKEHOLDER, even though it is a McKinseyesque word I cannot abide.
  2. Not too difficult this morning, with ENROLLED being the only answer I couldn’t see quickly. Many got from defs. with cryptics worked out later. The 26ac/23dn pair went in last. ALONGSIDE probably has the best clue.
  3. 15:04 … some light relief after yesterday’s fearsome test.

    I also liked ALONGSIDE but I must admit that STAKEHOLDER made me laugh out loud, unlovely and much abused word that it may be.

    LOI .. ROGETS THESAURUS, which I had to work out very painstakingly, just as I had to the last time it was anagramatized.

  4. I wasted some time trying to justify OVARY to myself, especially as TYPE took me a long time to get; the O+VARY reading escaped me totally. I also didn’t help myself by putting in ‘gyrating’ at first. LOT was my LOI, since I spell it ‘loath’, or would if I did.
  5. 12 minutes, so about talc on the Mohs scale. Last in TYPE because I was uneasy about OVARY, not seeing the (quite obvious, really) wordplay and looking for a P or D at the end of some variation of oval. I was playing with something to do with the equilaterally curved heptagons (as if) before the 50p dropped – this crossword’s not that clever. Good “hidden”, though.
    CoD STAKEHOLDER, just for being amusing.
  6. I also liked the stakeholder even if she’s a day late. (Can’t see why anyone should take against the word itself – says what it means quite refreshingly.) Unclear about the definition of Roget’s Thesaurus. 16.50.
    1. I took it to be an &littish sort of clue, the definition “this” qualified by the rest of the surface.
      1. Ah, I now remember “thesaurus” in Greek means “treasure”. I think, &littish clue notwithstanding, it’s pushing it.
  7. Possibly the easiest of the week. Not sure I quite understand the structure of 19A ENROLLED – is “recruited” doing double duty as both insertion indicator and definition?

    Touch of the 1940s with ALL CLEAR – I can still hear those sirens that they used to test for years after the war ended – and LAMPLIGHTER who walked round every evening and every morning to switch the gas lamps on and off

    1. I’m not 100% sure but I took ENROLLED as the definition with ‘finally’ as the insertion indicator – in the END (geddit?). I tried to indicate this in the blog but may not have made my thoughts clear.
    2. 23:18

      Were they really testing the sirens? In my part of the world (North Kent) the air-raid siren became the signal in the 50s for the voluntary fire engine crew to get to the Fire Station at once.

      1. Most definitely. The story as I recall it was that the WW2 sirens would be used to warn of an incoming nuclear attack. Sounds barmy now!
  8. 23 minutes, TYPE my Loi, liked the Rogets anagram (no doubt others have seen it before) and GIB for rock. Now staring blankly at the Club Monthly, it might take a month. Jimbo if you remember the lamplighters that must be an old pic of you and Lady Jimbo…
    1. The pic is exactly one year old!

      Where I grew up in one of the rougher parts of London the gas lamps were around until well into the 1950s. They were nearly useless and left large stretches of very dark road between little pools of light. Those dark patches were put to good use by we teenage boys and girls!

      The lamplighter would walk round with a long pole that he used to pull down on a chain that switched the light on. In the morning he did the reverse.

    2. My local station, Farningham Road, had the chain-operated gaslights (and the need for a lighter with his pole) until at least the late 60s

      Edited at 2013-11-01 12:06 pm (UTC)

      1. Well, I stand corrected, admonished and apologetic for casting aspersions on Jim’s nice picture. Nevertheless, to be a teenager in the fifties, you must be even older than I am, and you’re wearing better.
  9. It was a pretty easy puzzle and I filled a fair amount in 10 minutes but my slowness in the NW corner meant that my time was a disappointing 30 minutes.
    I don’t quite see how ‘pieces’ works as a container indicator in 11.

    I saw the wordplay for 19 once I had the answer, but I don’t think it really works very well. The synonymous phrase for finally is ‘in the end’, not ‘in end’. I like this sort of cryptic wordplay but it’s got to be precise to be kosher.

      1. Yep. I was looking at it the wrong way round and seeing ‘pieces’ as a verb. One of those ‘blind spot’ occasions.
  10. Is it just me or am I alone in thinking the anagram indicator ‘runs out’ for 21ac is rather dodgy – or have I missed something?
  11. I can’t remember which publication ran it, but there was a puzzle a few years back about vampire-slayers in which STAKEHOLDER PENSION was an answer. Very, very witty it was, as I recall. And as you can probably imagine.

    Easy as pie today with 17 minutes on my clock.

    1. “Crud” is defined by “nonsense” and “a lot of” indicates that the word is not complete, leaving CRU as defined by “vintage, as applied to wine”.
  12. 24 mins and I struggled a little more than I should have done. I’m putting it down to the fact that I started the puzzle about four hours later than usual because I had a busy morning, so I was out of my usual routine.

    I don’t remember having seen the anagram at 5dn before and it took me a while to see that “puzzling” was doing double duty as both the anagrind and part of the definition. TYPE was my LOI after I finally saw the wordplay for OVARY.

  13. Got there eventually but the NW corner proved almost intractable. A wrong guess at Crossworder (!!) at 3dn didn’t help. Feared I’d got completely stuck but finally worked out Gossiper and then things opened up. Very slow to spot the well hidden Type and to crack Vacant.
    LOI Stakeholder, which made me chuckle. FOI Gradient.
  14. I also chuckled at the STAKEHOLDER. Overall, about 20 minutes, ending with the not connected ABSENT and ENROLLED, the first because I didn’t like the definition, the latter due to not seeing the wordplay. I wouldn’t have thought of plight as promise, nor a SATIRIST as a burlesque artist, but they had to be. ALONGSIDE is also very good. Regards.
    1. Plight as pledge or promise is a somewhat old-fashioned usage, I think, but it survived through the years in the traditional marriage vows: “for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
      1. Thanks for that Jack. I don’t think marriage vows over here ever used that term, but if they had, I wouldn’t have had to raise the point. Regards to you.
  15. A delight, but short-lived, and like all short-lived delights leaving one vaguely unsatisfied.

    FOI the cricket clue. Enjoyed STAKEHOLDER, a “laugh out loud” moment, but rather sad to read it’s an old chestnut. Also enjoyed the surface of 28ac – no doubt male solvers went haring down some amusing but ultimately futile rabbit-holes. Liked ALONGSIDE, VACANT and PATHETIC, but thought the clueing for BIREME (a potentially tricky word) was, well, pathetic. LAMPLIGHTER brought back memories, not only of childhood in Yorkshire but also of the Smiley novels. 5d nicely constructed – the anagram could have been at either end, so needed checkers before wasting time by trying both.

    My LOI was ABSENT – truth to tell I’d thought of it early on, but it didn’t feel right, either in the cryptic or in the definition: sent = “told to leave” just seemed too vague, and I wasted time looking for something more precise.

    Perhaps next week they’ll bowl a googly and give us a stinker for Monday?

    Edited at 2013-11-01 06:51 pm (UTC)

  16. Interesting how this word has turned into someone with an interest in a concern or business from its original definition as the exact opposite, namely a person who is not involved in the betting who held the stakes on behalf of the eventual winner.
  17. It is strange that nobody ever plights anything but a troth, is it not?
    Apparently, only 50% of troths are still plighted, 10 years later…
  18. … which is a best time for me. It probably says something about my approach to life that this makes me think the puzzles are getting easier rather than me getting smarter.

    Wasn’t convinced by the clue for “ROGETS THESAURUS”. Taking “for puzzling” as the cue for an anagram, where does the “treatment in this” come in? And if, as [joekobi] pointed out, a “thesaurus” is a “treasure”, it’s still a bit of a disorganised clue.

    ‘Stakeholder’ never fails to irritate me. In the modern NHS, stakeholders are treated by other stakeholders, often having been X-rayd, CTd and probed by yet more stakeholders. It’s this sort of ambiguity that leads to the wrong bits being amputated from the wrong people. Bring back the old days, when doctors were doctors and patients were patient.

    Day off today, so I have time to earn a really good hangover for tomorrow. It’s always nice to have a common bond with the patients.

    //Apparently, only 50% of troths are still plighted, 10 years later…// Wouldn’t that be ‘plought’?

    Edited at 2013-11-01 09:36 pm (UTC)

  19. Took me longer to read the blog today than to solve the puzzle.
    If I have the misfortune to be rushed to hospital, I want to be treated by Thud – I may not get cured but I’ll certainly be entertained. I hope it doesn’t hurt when I laugh.
    George Clements
  20. A disappointing 12:43 for me. I took simply ages to get going properly, and then got stuck for a couple of minutes at the end on 3dn.

    With S‑A‑E‑‑‑D‑R in place, SHAREHOLDER seemed the obvious answer, so when the O was confirmed, I was convinced that had to be it. Wasn’t the name of the solicitor in Bram Stoker’s Dracula something like HARE? Eventually I decided I must be on the wrong track, and kicked myself when light dawned. (The solicitor’s name is of course HARKER.)

    It took me a long time to get ROGET’S THESAURUS as well – like others, I’m not entirely convinced by the clue.

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