Times 25631: Second Prelim, Puzzle 1

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 25:48

So not much harder than the first puzzle of the first prelim, that being the easiest so far in my book. Perhaps I got a (for me) decent time because I’d just done battle with the Saturday and Sunday puzzles when I came to this one and had the skills a bit more honed than they usually are at my normal solving hour, breakfast time. Now I understand why competitors warm up early on the big day. (I also have some sympathy for Finals setters who must be confined to Times grids with exactly 30 answers.)

Conclusion: this is a puzzle with two quite difficult 14-letter answers with the rest much easier to see on first read. So 5dn and 9dn could have made the sheep/goat cut on the day. Perhaps?

Housekeeping: subbing for Jerry today in exchange for a December puzzle.

Across

1. ACCOST. Sound-alike for “a cost”. Nice simple one to get us going.

3. BARB,I,CAN. The “centre” here is a ref to the Barbican Centre, I assume. Though it is indeed also pretty central (London EC2). I saw Judi Dench there in Mother Courage in 1984. A stray chip from a block of wood she was chopping hit me. She looked concerned for a second. Most famous eye contact I’ve had.

10. MARCO POLO. Reverse CRAM (back-pack!), O (old), POLO (sport). One where the literal rather gives it away. Also the title of one of P. Simon’s youthful compositions … which I’m sure he wished were dead and buried. The price of fame.

11. WORST. Because it’s the opposite of “best” and also synonymous with it. Why “verbally” exactly? I.e., “in words”. But of course in words.
See Z8B8D8K’s comment below for the other meaning of “verbally”.

12. NOW,HERE. The source of many a poetic pun.

13. EARL,O.B.E. Nothing too difficult so far.

14. SHYER. Anagram of “sherry” minus one R. “To pour” — an interesting anagram indicator.

15. B,LENDING. We could almost have had “traditionally” rather than “typically” given the current functions of libraries.

18. BROWBEAT. B{oy}, ROW (brawl), BE AT (attend).

20. FIFTY. There are 10 letters in “Post Office” and 10 by five = ?

23. HEM,LOCK. HEM = “ahem”, for attracting attention. Not often mentioned in the Socrates family to this day. Though I bet Xanthippe said “Told him so” on more than one occasion.

25. ORLEANS. Anagram of L and “reason”. SALERNO also works if you have no checkers.

26. STIFF. Hidden answer.

27. AVER,AGING.

28. DOGTROTS. DOG (plague), TROTS (left-wingers). Side note: the crossing letters also allow DIGERATI. Will we see this at some point?

29. ATTEST. T  (temperature) inside A, TEST. And so we get to the Downs without too many hiccups.

Down

1. ADMONISH. ADONIS inc M (maiden) + H. Our “handsome youth” was a rather obvious flag here. I seem to remember something to do with lettuces?

2. CARAWAY. CAR (wheels), AWAY (as in “away game”). Followed by another football reference.

3. SCORE DRAW. Our cryptic def for the day. I rather like the slightly paradoxical surface. A passable cd.

5. AFOREMENTIONED. This is FOREMEN inside an anagram of “idea not”. Now things are hotting up a bit. I’d guess this would be hard to get straight off.

6. BOWER. W (wife) inside BOER.

7. CARTOON. O (ring) inside CARTON (box).

8. N,UTTER. Took me a while to see this one. No idea why. Those concise surfaces always get me thinking of too many possibilities.

9. POWER BREAKFAST. FAST (quickly) which we are asked to set after POWER BREAK (outage). Again, needed a few checkers before this worked for me. Good clue though.

16. DEFOLIANT. Anagram: leaf don’t I. A well-made &lit. Bet George saw this right away.

17. EYESIGHT. Two sound-alikes — EYE (I), SIGHT (cite). I won’t go into the minor pedantic differences between citation and referencing.

19. RAMMING. RING (as in boxing) inc AMM (a male repeatedly).

21. FRAGILE. RAG (paper) inside FILE.

22. PHASED. Our third sound-alike: “fazed”.

24. OFFER. OFF (not taking), E (drug), R (right). Wot! Nothing to do with assassins?

39 comments on “Times 25631: Second Prelim, Puzzle 1”

  1. I wonder how many of the 21% who got this wrong followed me (or, more accurately, preceded me) by putting ‘abovementioned’. Apart fronm that, pretty straightforward at 28 minutes.
  2. Thought I was on for a PB with all but two solved in 12 minutes, but DOGTROTS and PHASED delayed me for an extra 4 between them. Took a while to see how 20ac worked and was not impressed.
    1. thanks for that .. and just so as I am can put that effort into context of my own limited endeavours – 3 puzzles, each of 30 clues, in 60 minutes = the solver consistently and repeatedly successfully solving 3 clues every 2 minutes.
  3. Count me in with Ulaca and ‘abovementioned’. I saw the checkers, the definition, and threw it in without bothering to see if it worked, so pleased with my time was I. Serves me right. Did the same with POWER BREAKFAST; knew it was ‘breakfast’, had the ‘power’ checkers, and finally thought of a word; didn’t parse the clue, but at least the solution was right.

  4. Hmm… I did the same as Kevin, and didn’t parse either 5 or 9 down. Got AFOREMENTIONED ok, but threw in ‘hotel BREAKFAST’ without conviction.

    Also had ‘phases’, which made DOGTROTS impossible. But then again, I’m not sure I’d have got it anyway…

  5. 9m, which is the fastest I did any of the prelim puzzles, but that probably says more about solving under competition conditions than the puzzles themselves.
  6. . . . luckily spotting the foremen. Further good news is that my days of 9Ds are over. LOI NUTTER
    1. I refrained from comment like an obedient Collie before, but it is right down there with ‘out of the box thinking’ and ‘win-win situation’ for me.
  7. 16 minutes, possibly slower today than on the day, with the same two – BARBICAN and DOGTROTS – causing most problems. You’d think I’d remember the tougher ones. In both cases, going to puzzle 2 and coming back later cracked them, something about the brain continuing to work on them without the blockages that sometimes come from concentration.
    I think verbally is in 11 because best=worst when they’re used as verbs, but not as adjectives.
  8. No idea how long I took because the Club site was misbehaving and when you tried to play you got gibberish and all the while the clock was ticking. Something under 20 anyway. I found this much easier than any of the first prelims, but of course it’s easier when you’re sitting comfortably at home.
  9. Same experience as Olivia, i.e. a) my solve coincided with the problems on the Club site, so my real solving time was considerably lower than the 2hrs 16min recorded on the timer, and b) that said, I can’t guarantee that I’d have been anything like as quick or confident under competition conditions.
  10. 30 minutes but one wrong at 9dn. I’ve never heard of a power breakfast, but then I don’t move in such high-powered executive circles. I could only think of ‘hotel’ or ‘cover’ to enter for the first word.
    Like jackkt, I didn’t think much of 20ac; it’s barely cryptic.
    1. I’m intrigued that 20ac might be thought of as “not cryptic”. Very cryptic surely? ( And very good, IMO, for what it’s worth 🙂 )

      (I hate livejournal btw)

      Edited at 2013-11-13 02:50 pm (UTC)

      1. “Barely cryptic” was perhaps an overstatement, but the trouble with the clue in my opinion is that the cryptic reading is so obvious that it obscures the surface; in a good clue it should be the other way round; the surface should distract the solver from the cryptic.
        1. In my case the surface it had me fooled – or at least perplexed, and it took me ages to see how the answer was arrived at. When I did see it I thought it was quite clever. But indeed if you happen to see through the deception immediately it’ll fall a bit flat. But then that applies to lots of clues.
  11. Not exactly a stroll in the park, more of a sprint! Under twenty minutes, in spite of being held up a little in the SW corner. This one was more or less “automatic writing” again, and flowed nicely top to bottom. The two long ones (on setter’s wavelength?) went in very early on, which no doubt helped. Disappointed by some of the clueing – the anagram in DEFOLIANT was not so much indicated as advertised in foot high neon, and 3dn was just a descriptive quick crossword clue. The clever FIFTY only slightly redeems the rest. But DOGTROTS raised a smile, recalling student days in the late 60s, so all’s well that ends as you like it!
    1. “This one was more or less “automatic writing” again,”

      You must be quite a slow writer then 🙂

  12. A few seconds under 9 minutes and I’m surprised this was chosen as one of the prelim puzzles, although I suppose it might just be that I was completely on the setter’s wavelength, and I probably wouldn’t have been close to that time if I had been there. It was pretty much a top-to-bottom solve with PHASED my LOI after HEMLOCK.

    I’ve always found the concept of a POWER BREAKFAST abhorrent, and for me it is one of the additions to modern business life that is an excellent example of what is going wrong with the world. Mini rant over.

    1. I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t want to speak to anyone in a professional capacity before about 9.30, let alone watch them eat.
      1. The last one I attended, some 27 years ago, featured Bertie Ahern (then Lord Mayor of Dublin) as speaker, with tie askew, clichés abundant, inspiring the business leaders of Ireland. A gruesome experience, but the bacon was good.
  13. Once the Times techies had sorted out their Java gremlins so I could print it off, I sped through this in 19 minutes, of which putting in POWER took far too long as my LOI.
  14. Found this surprisingly easy for a Championship puzzle and after a false start with Assail at 1ac got to the end in fits and starts without any major hold-ups.
    Dogtrots took time to suss out from wordplay as did Cartoon then LOI Worst. FOI Attest. Chuckled at earlobe.
  15. Piece of cake.
    Good job for the others that I wasn’t at the Champs this year; in this kind of form I’d have romped it. If it wasn’t for “phased” and “dogtrots” I might even have finished this one in under 10 minutes…. rather than 40.
  16. An easyish puzzle completed correctly in just over 30 mins.

    My LOI was POWER BREAKFAST – a term new to me, as it would seem for quite a few others. A repellent concept, I agree! The “breakfast” bit fell early on. It was the “power” prefix that foxed me. I had heard of “power-dressing”, a practice allegedly indulged in by women in executive positions, and that eventually put me on track to the right solution. Like Janie above, I too toyed for a while, and without any confidence, with HOTEL BREAKFAST, which might just as well have been MOTEL BREAKFAST.

    Thanks to Z8B8D8K for his explanation of “verbally” at 11A. Clever clue.

    1. Whenever I hear of power breakfasts, I automatically think “What would Fry & Laurie do?”

  17. 25 minutes for all but “dogtrots” for which I had to resort to an aid. My method of looking at all across clues in order then all the down clues in order does not seem conducive to fast times.
  18. Didn’t get to this until lunch but it’s only taken about 10 minutes of my lunch break. Odd puzzle, though I “got” FIFTY I can’t say it’s my favorite clue type. AFOREMENTIONED was my last in.
  19. I thought the explanation of “verbally” might originate from the colloquialism “do your worst”, meaning ironically(?) “do your best”.
    Otherwise, not being in the same league as most correspondents, I was happy to finish all except 9d and 28a in about 40 minutes. Those two fell into place after a morning’s gardening. Misread “outage” for “outrage” in 28, which slowed me down. Otherwise most enjoyable.
  20. from a 2 week Team Management course my employer sent me on at Manchester Business School about 25 years ago:-
    The “functions” (aka “phases”) of a process or project start with the “beginning” and finish with the “ending”.
    You don’t allocate “phases” (a vague word) to members of staff, you allocate “functions” (a positive word) which engenders a more professional approach from them as they feel they are Doing instead of Dabbling.

    thus my parsing was BL + ENDING

    (and when implemented within my team, it definitely got results)

    regards Keef

    Edited at 2013-11-13 05:36 pm (UTC)

  21. 21.51 of which over 5 minutes at the end on dogtrots. A gift I would have thought to the eventual finalists. I don’t object to the odd individualistic clue like 20. Sad in a way that Trotsky’s now remembered at large only by his followers in clue-land. Nothing wrong with ‘win-win situation’ for me, but ‘power breakfast’ must be one of those terms to give the species a bad name.
  22. As Olivia says, so much easier in the comfort of your own home. I did the three Round B puzzles a couple of days after the Championshps. This one took me 11:17. I liked the ‘FIFTY’.
  23. Once again failed to work through an anagram, so fell into the ‘abovementioned’ trap. Also initially misread ‘outage’ as ‘outrage’, but saw the correct answer then re-read the clue.
    But for the stupid mistake, would have been close to a personal best at 14m 03s – such is life.
  24. Chrome is still giving multiple error messages, and didn’t have time to solve with Mozilla before I needed to go out this morning, so leader board only records time elapsed since starting.
    Actual solving time was approximately 21:30m, LOI DOGTROTS.

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