Times 25625: First Prelim, Puzzle 3 — GENA, MEG AND RON (x2) HUG?

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 34:27

As the time suggests, far too difficult for me. Gives me even greater admiration for the folk who complete the Prelims (let alone the Grand Finals) all correct and in the given time. All my woes came in the supposed starting corner, NW. So concentrated on the RH side where the long answer came easily (unlike 3dn) and led to a few “ins”.

Across

1. CUT-GLASS. G (good) inside CUTLASS. And there I was looking for a homophone-type (see 16ac).

5. THROAT. Cryptic def. First assumption: “a frog” = UN or UNE.

10. SWING. Last letter of “1920S”, WING (flapper). Seamless surface.

11. BIOSPHERE. Anagram of “bishop”, ERE (before).

12. BREATHING. BREA{k} (separation), THING (affair). No McT, it wasn’t “fling” (see 3dn).

13. ARGOT. The R from “woRds”, GOT (understood) after (by) A. And an almost complete &lit.

14. CAPRICE. This is “cap”, “price” (limit cost). If they share the P (pence) from the end of the first and start of the second, you get CA-P-RICE. Could I see this without the initial C?

16. DRAGON. I.e., “drag on” (seem interminable). Another one where I was looking for a homophone (see 1ac).

18. NOGGIN. {s}NOGGIN{g}. One for lovers of Postgate and Firmin’s Samizdat adult novel Snoggin’ with Noggin and Nooka, or What Really Goes on Under the Hill.

20. CONCERN. C (class), ONCE (whenever), RN (Navy, service).

22. ADEPT. Hidden, reversed.

23. PRINTABLE. PR (public relations), IN TABLE (arranged by columns … and rows?). Another semi-&lit (see 13ac).

25. PATRICIDE. PATRIC{k} (saint), IDE{a}.

26. OLDER. {p}OLDER. Land protected by dikes.

27. SORBET. ORB (globe) inside SET (prescribed for study).

28. FARE,WELL. Will be familiar to those who did ST 4561 on 27th October (see 12ac there).

Down

1. CASHBACK. B (billions) in SHACK after CA (circa, “give or take”). Is “give or take” quite right for “circa”?  I recently saw a program on the history of the Universe where the narrator said something like “… give or take about six billion years” where I took the “about” to be the same as “circa”. And the “give or take” to mean “plus or minus”. No doubt someone will find a suitable alternative usage.

2. TWINE. TINE (prong of a fork, antler, etc. … that sticks out), inc W (with). I won’t say how long I looked at this one trying to fit in AS for “when”.

3. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Two meanings, one industrial, one meteorological. Wish I’d got this earlier without having to wait for crossing letters. The F (for FLING) pencilled in at 12ac was little use.

4. SUBLIME. S{oviet} U{nion}, BLIME{y}. One for me and the other two people in the world who do the Times and read Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft. Not to be confused with the “ubslime” which he doesn’t mention.

6. HOPE AGAINST HOPE. Two meanings, one … ahem … comic.

7. OVEN GLOVE. Cryptic def. Spoiled the rest of the brilliant clueing. Well, perhaps not all, given …

… 8. TREATY.  Two meanings where we are invited to hear the second as “like a treat”.

9. DOGGED. Lift and separate “grand” and “duke”. So G from the first inside DOGE, then D from the second at the end. One for lovers of Guardi.

15. PROTESTER. PESTER (nag) inc ROT (baloney). Something to do with horse meat in the hmburgers?

17. INTEGRAL. Anagram. There’s also: ALERTING, ALTERING, RELATING and TANGLIER. Watch out!

19. NAPKIN. KIN (flesh and blood) under NAP (raised threads).

20.CHIMERA. HIM (that man) in {i}C{e}, ERA. One to go with 14ac if you fancy.

21. CAMPUS. CAMP (temporary lodging), US. A certain Vice-Chancellor I knew threatened/promised to write a book called Mein Campfus.

24. BUDGE{t}. Hence the expression frequently used by Vice-Chancellors: “Budget or budge!”

• How come the font changed? Anyone know?

173 comments on “Times 25625: First Prelim, Puzzle 3 — GENA, MEG AND RON (x2) HUG?”

  1. About 10 minutes in I thought I was going to have to give up on this one as progress was so slow, but I stuck at it and was thankful to complete it eventually, without aids, in 54 minutes.

    I also wasted time thinking ‘fling’ as part of 12ac and ‘talent’ seemed a possibility at 8dn. Was pleased to remember the required meaning of ‘cashback’ from a previous puzzle in which it was completely new to me.

    Edited at 2013-11-06 01:14 am (UTC)

  2. 47 minutes for me. so no point in booking a plane flight to the finals for me either. also struggled in NW and finished with CASHBACK.
  3. My struggles were in the SW. CAPRICE far too clever for me, but I liked NOGGIN, which brought back a few memories. 52 minutes.

    Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoir Hope Against Hope – part literary biography (of her husband Osip), part domestic diary – is rightly considered one of the essential memoirs of the 20th century. One example of the black humour is her story of a school “inspector” in the 1930s pleading with staff on one visit to cut down the number of denunciations they’re writing, threatening not to read the anonymous ones at all.

    Edited at 2013-11-06 01:35 am (UTC)

    1. It’s said that those who read too many memoirs will never write their own. Or, as Socrates didn’t say: the unlived life is not with examining.
  4. With reference to yesterday’s debate about science, scientific knowledge and “metaknowledge”, something George MacDonald wrote rather sums up my position – and perhaps, to a greater or lesser extent, that of some others: ‘To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it’.
  5. Thank goodness for that! As Gore Vidal said, ‘”Write about what you know” is the advice we give to people who shouldn’t be writing at all’.
  6. I found the cluing to be particularly tight ( with the exceptions noted by mct) – necessary I guess for a championship puzzle. Tight or not, it was also way too clever for me. I had hoped to be in under an hour, but alas. I didn’t fall for fling, but I did very much want the crude accommodation to be a cesspool.

    I’m absolutely not going to pick a side in the Great Debate, but I was wondering overnight if it isn’t just the tiniest bit unfair to be able to enlist the golden words of the most articulate minds of our times to defend, well, the value of being the most articulate.

    Edited at 2013-11-06 02:42 am (UTC)

      1. Yes, Olivia – it was fun for me to put real flesh and blood to the contributors.

        Ulaca – you’re probably right; it was a convoluted thought and I might have lost myself, too. I was just thinking that, when a scientist says “There’s a real beauty to the maths describing how the planets move”, our reaction is “Dweeb”. The scientist’s special gift is in understanding the maths, not in discussing their beauty. But when Stanley Kubrick floats planets around like ballet dancers we think “Wow”. Kubrick’s special gift is communicating beauty and thereby communicating something about the essence of life. So getting the best liberal humanist’s reflections on art, beauty, and the purpose of life is using part of their special gift (communication) to argue for the rest of their special gift (a particular, meta, insight). My meta view says I should stop right there, and I’ll bet everyone agrees with that!

      2. How do I make replies appear in a green box and be part of the discussion? Link? Reply? Thread?
        1. If you “reply” to a white message yours will be green (like mine) and vice versa (like yours)
    2. Hi Paul. Very nice to meet you on the day of. I moved rapidly on to this one after staring blankly for several long moments at puzzle #2, only to flip right back again. I did manage to grind out about 20 of the 30 answers before time was up. The one that gave me the worst agita was “cashback”.
  7. Well, I was just congratulating myself on a pretty respectable 20:37 when the all-knowing computer came back with “one error”. But as everyone on the leader board so far has one error, including some pretty hot solvers, I’m hoping for once it really is the computer that’s messed up (it’s always the computer, never the operator.. at least in our house).

    As far as I can see I have the answers exactly as mctext gives them.

    Cracking good puzzle, anyway. I can see why it was chosen for the Champs.

    1. Guess we’ll have to wait until the official solution comes out. I’ve run through the puzzle again and can’t see where anything could be wrong.
      1. Doing this via The Times app gives the same ‘one error’ but by trial and error, I see that the app accepts ORDER as the correct answer for 26A. Since the correct answer is so obviously OLDER, I wonder whether someone’s finger has slipped when inputting the correct solution.
        Must have taken about 30mins but the plumber arrived half-way through and time and plumbers wait for no man.

        Edited at 2013-11-06 09:43 am (UTC)

        1. Thanks, bigtone. Good to have an explanation. I hadn’t realised the Times app details the errors (almost as helpful as the Telegraph’s format which tells you which you have wrong before you submit – the ultimate feel-good approach!).
          1. Sotira,
            The Times app highlights wrong entries but deletes the clock, presumably on the basis that you have not finished properly.
  8. We’re all on the Titanic?

    I’ve got 1 error as well.
    I’ve submitted an e-mail to The Times Crossword Club “contact us” address,
    help @ timesplus.co.uk
    pointing out that not a single submission is error free, so perhaps it’s their fault.

    The couple of e-mails I’ve previously sent to that address (all on other Mind Games) have all gone unanswered, so I’d suggest that all disgruntled friends of this blog send them a suitable broadside, and perhaps that will elicit a public response.

  10. I think the error is on the part of The Times IT squad; the answers above are the same as the official ones given out on the day.

  11. All correct in 45 mins (without aids), so not too bad a time for me…

    Last one in PRINTABLE (after BUDGE) and it’s the only one I couldn’t parse…kept thinking PRINT for ‘image’, and couldn’t get past that.

    Wasn’t sure what the ‘about “beef” ‘ was doing in 15dn. Seems a bit superfluous.

    1. I think the beef – as well as contributing to the horsemeat scandal surface – is part of the literal: ‘someone being vocal about beef [grievance]’.

      Edited at 2013-11-06 08:49 am (UTC)

  12. The NW corner of this one nearly did for me on the day and I ended up with one wrong there too, a last-minute panic put in a word that fits sort of moment.
  13. Managed this in 19 minutes, which would give me just enough time to do the other two if they weren’t harder.
    Definitely a game of three halves. I found the NW almost impenetrable, the NE (almost) fatuous – THROAT, OVEN GLOVE, ARGOT, DRAGON – and the S more or less normal.
    Both long ‘uns went in with relative ease.
    I did wonder about the definition of CUT GLASS, presuming (perhaps wrongly) that it was pointing towards Brief Encounter accents, which my dictionary says is one word. But “sharp”? Maybe I’m just being picky.
    Clues like TREATY tickle my fancy, having more than a touch of the Uxbridge English Dictionary about it. To be used sparingly, though.

    Edited at 2013-11-06 08:55 am (UTC)

  14. 9m, but admittedly it’s the second time I’ve done it. I did it again because according to the official results I made a mistake, but I couldn’t find it, so I thought redoing the puzzle might reveal it. Sure enough I had one error, and as the iPad shows you your mistakes I know that my “error” was OLDER instead of ORDER. So I can reveal where the mistake is on the part of the Times today but I’m none the wiser as to where I went wrong. Not that it would have made any difference.
  15. From memory I found this the hardest of the three on the day, but I did get it all correct and just in time. A quick bit of checking revealed that I’d out CASHBACC so that was worth it, and I held up my number on the S of STOP WRITING.

    NW corner was definitely the hardest area to crack.

  16. On the day, came to this one slightly worried as I’d had to leave several TBD in puzzle 2, but it came out in 12 or 13 minutes. I remember some frustration at LIGHTNING STRIKE taking longer to yield than perhaps it should have.
  17. My approach on the day was to turn over the paper and do the last puzzle first; in retrospect, it probably didn’t hurt that I was at my freshest tackling this one, which I found by some distance the hardest of the three. I didn’t keep a continual eye on the clock, but I must have taken 20-25 minutes.

    When CASHBACK went in at quite a late stage, I did a short and purely internal Alan Partridge impression.

  18. 18 mins but if I had been there on the day I think nerves would have prevented me from getting close to that time.

    On first read through of the acrosses I only had ADEPT and POLDER, and the rest of the across clues had looked pretty impenetrable at that point. However, some of the down clues went in a little more quickly, I started to feel more comfortable with the setter’s style, and the rest fell at a steady pace. My last three in, in the order I solved them, were PATRICIDE, CAPRICE and CASHBACK. There was some excellent cluing and I thought this was a top-notch puzzle.

  19. I struggled a bit with this one and limped home in 30 minutes with the NW proving to be the hardest. It took me too long to tune into the setter’s wavelength and that always results in problems. But an excellent puzzle with some superb clues.

    I’m always struck doing these competition puzzles by the huge difference in level of difficulty between puzzles used on the day and those tempters that appear in the paper inviting people to submit their competition entry with sums of money. Can anybody think of a reason why the Times does that?

    1. I’d hazard a guess that the reason is to encourage people to enter by not presenting too difficult a challenge. And these days, now that you have to record your own solving time, it’s probably unlikely that many people are going to put themselves (and their money) forward if they’ve been required to time themselves and are consequently discouraged by the result.

      A far cry from the old days when an annual Eliminator had to be used to reduce the numbers for certain heats, following over-subscription on account of a much more straightforward opener.

    2. Jimbo, I think we can file your question alongside Mrs.Merton’s: “So, what first, Debbie, attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”
  20. Really good puzzle, tried to fit it into the time allowed but after 30 minutes had to put in 2 wrong words in desperation, viz. CAPSIZE (an unaccountable change!) and SURVEY for SORBET which I totally failed to see. I must remember ORB for globe more often.
  21. As I didn’t submit the puzzle before the error on the site had been fixed, didn’t have the ‘one error’ problem.
    Thanks for parsing 1dn: I assumed it was CAB SHACK with the former giving a B, taken by the latter, but couldn’t see how the clue indicated that.

    Paul: I found it really beautiful how Kepler got rid of all the ugly and messy Ptolemaic model of the solar system, with its epicycles, deferents and equants with the idea of heliocentric elliptical orbits. Then it is really lovely how Newton showed that just three simple laws could account for it all, devising a whole new branch of mathematics on the way.

    2. I would add the Planck-Einstein explanation of quanta that launched quantum theory and finally moved us away drom Dalton’s atom based model
    3. If you want a highly entertaining account of how Kepler really made it hard for himself to come up with his 3 laws based on Tycho de Brahe’s observations, I recommend The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler. You get Copernicus and Galileo thrown in for free!
  22. I worked through this steadily, with no real hold-ups, but it still took me forty-five minutes to complete, the NW corner being the trickiest. The clues were very good, though I didn’t care at all for the dreadfully contrived definition in 5 across.
  23. I see the Club leader board has magically turned all the 1s into 0s – they must use the same counting software as Florida’s electoral division.
  24. An excellent puzzle.

    About 1 hr for me. For a long time I had BIOGRAPHY at 12A, which sneakily appeared to fit the literal and meshed with some of the cross-checkers. CAPRICE was very clever – the CAP bit was explicable enough but I never came close to working out how the rest worked. Thanks Mctext for letting daylight in on my darkness.

    I have a mild quibble over 8D (TREATY). Fair enough, of course, in a cyptic to invent an adjective “treaty” meaning “like a treat” but I felt that the clue needed a ? at the end to indicate we were in this sort of territory. Still, as I say, only a small quibble.

  25. Not too difficult under non-exam conditions. All correct except for one – a wrong guess of captive for the unknown-to-me caprice.
    Much to enjoy today – thank you setter. I thought the definition of sorbet as ‘refresher course’ was terrific.
    Noggin, older and printable all from defs and checkers. Didn’t understand them so thanks mctext for the explanations.
  26. Thought this a very fine puzzle indeed; just the sort I like, being both challenging and enjoyable at the same time. 29:05 for me, though held up by stupidly having put in ‘thumb’ at 2d instead of ‘twine’ – but think about it! It sort of answers the clue! (sticks out like a sore thumb; and putting it on the knot when tying…) OK, OK I can see how silly I was.
    Anyway, this led me to s.u.g for 10ac and b.b.t.i.g for 12ac. Suspicion eventually came and I then finished in about 30 sec!
  27. After 5 minutes of not getting a single clue, I finally started moving, and had the right half of the puzzle done in 20 minutes. However, after another 20 minutes, I hadn’t managed to make any progress into the left half. By the hour mark I’d only found a few clues, so I cheated with CUT-GLASS and SWING (tried too hard to make SBIRD work), and that was enough to help me finish the puzzle.

    I got very caught up trying to make OIL work for the ‘crude accommodation’, as well as a MAY container for 27’s ‘possibly prescribed’.

  28. I hadn’t noticed that this was one of the Preliminary puzzles from the Championship Finals (it’s in small print under the puzzle in the newspaper), so I was especially pleased with my time today. I think someone once said that the definition of an easy question is ‘one to which you know the answer’, and I feel that I was exceptionally fortunate that the General Knowledge requirements today were in my databank.
    I also agree that it is unlikely that I would have achieved the time I did in under competition pressure.
    George Clements
  29. This was a very good puzzle, I thought. Finished in about 30 minutes, after finally cracking the NW area, and then the “P” in CAPRICE allowed me to see my one outlier, PROTESTER, the LOI. Well done by the setter, and by those who got through it in the competition. Almost every clue is very well put together. Regards to all.
  30. Over an hour for me, though there wasn’t any one clue that held me up; it was just a gradual process of attrition.

    Without wishing to wage into the ongoing debate on the merits of the scientific versus the artistic approach, I feel I must do exactly that. Someone here quoted George MacDonald saying: ‘To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it’.

    I have no idea who George MacDonald was (which is fair enough – I doubt he’s heard of me), but I can tell you that he was remarkably small-minded. In the primrose’s every cell – each smaller than a speck of dust – is a genetic tapestry a hundred times more complex than it takes to make a human, containing more stitches than there are stars in the milky way. That genetic code is a text which has been copied, mis-copied, re-copied and handed down in an unbroken line from the origin of life on Earth fifty million centuries ago. Made of the same atoms as dust and diamonds, that code tells blind, purposeless molecules how to join, bend, shape and grow into a flower. Those very atoms were themselves forged in an ancient star which, in exploding as a supernova brighter than a trillion suns, spewed them out into space to be re-gathered here on Earth.

    And knowing all that, I can still smell the damned primrose just as well as old MacDonald.

    So, “to know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it”? George MacDonald had no idea whatsoever of how glorious a primrose is, nor the remotest inkling of how impoverished he was.

    Well, that’s my rant for the day, and I feel better for it. Just don’t get me started on begonias.

    Quiet evening here, enlivened only by a gentleman who attended in order to have bottle removed. On such a respectable and sober forum as this, I will refrain from telling you where he needed it removed from. If you ever suffer a peculiarly embarrassing injury and are reluctant to attend A&E, please be reassured: you will be treated with the utmost dignity, discretion and professionalism. Besides, it’s this sort of thing that provides the only laughs we get in this job.

    1. Thanks for your comments about the primrose and for using your own words rather than a quote from some nonentity. I had to stop myself being very rude about that MacDonald rubbish – so well done you
  31. I didn’t even think of trying this online, so I was all the more surprised to finish–and correctly, even!–in such a time. Some of the clues–e.g. 5ac or 7d–did strike me as awfully easy, but there were some lovely ones, too.
    I forget who it was who responded to Wordsworth’s “A primrose on the river’s brim,/A yellow primrose was to him/And it was nothing more,” by saying, “Well, what else COULD it have been?”
  32. An excellent occasional companion on an otherwise grim day. Stragglers (NOGGIN, SORBET, CAMPUS and ADEPT) polished off after a three-hour armchair sleep following a late merlot-fuelled supper, hence the 1.45 am time stamp!

    CUT GLASS my first in followed by HOPE AGAINST HOPE which brought back memories of a Catholic education: “What’s the greatest sin against hope?” “Crosby.”

    The whole right hand side fell reasonably quickly, but the NW proved trickier. Loved the neatness of triangle/INTEGRAL, and NAPKIN raised a smile. Agree with comments praising the precision of today’s clueing. A joy!

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