Times 25633 – Slow Cha-Cha

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A minute or two over the hour, so another tricky one for me which on reflection might have been solved more quickly if I had not insisted on working out the wordplay as I went along. In some cases this was really quite involved whilst the corresponding answers were fairly obvious.  Once again there’s very little to say about individual clues so I won’t waste words as I blog the answers.

 * = anagram

Across
1 WIPE – sWIPE (hit)
3 PROHIBITED – PRO (player), BITE (personal assault) inside HID (did not appear)
10 ADRENAL – A,DR (doctor), LANE (course) reversed
11 GENITOR – (sINGER TO)*
12 PROTESTANT ETHIC – (THREAT TO INSPECT)*
13 RANKLE – theRapy, ANKLE (part of body)
14 COUSCOUS – sCOUSe, sCOUSe (northerner)
17 MALIGNED – M (motorway), ALIGNED (in a queue)
18 ANGELA – GEL (upper-class girl) inside AN  A (articles). I wasted time with ‘Anthea’ here.
21 SECOND IN COMMAND – CON (Tory), DIN (uproar), COMMA (,) all inside SEND (post)
23 CHANSON – CHAN (Chinese solver, the detective Charlie Chan), S, ON
24 EN SUITE – (SEE UNIT)*
25 LENTAMENTE – LENT (fast time), AMEN (final part of hymn), TE (note)
26 MESS – Hidden

Down
1 WRAPPER – World’s, RAPPER (performer)
2 PERSONNEL – ON inside LENS REP (glass salesman) reversed
4 RELATE – TALE (story) reversed inside RE (bible class)
5 HIGH NOON – HIGH (excited), NO (small number), ON (about)
6 BANGERS AND MASH – N (north), GER (German), SAND (writer), MA, all inside BASH (attempt)
7 TITCH – C (about) inside TITHe (tax)
8 DIRECTS – DIRE (urgent), CTS (court’s)
9 INTELLIGENTSIA – IN (popular), TELLI (TV broadcast – sounds like ‘telly’), GENTS (men), fInAl
15 OPERATIVE – O (over), imPERATIVE (key)
16 DEFIANCE – DE (of French), FIANCÉ (partner)
17 MUSICAL – US (American) inside IM reversed, CAL (state)
19 ADDRESS – AD (notice), DRESS (groom)
20 ACCENT – AC (CA – Chartered Accountant) reversed, CENT (very little money)
22 CHAIN – CHA (tea), IN

29 comments on “Times 25633 – Slow Cha-Cha”

  1. Don’t have my copy with me right now. But I remember thinking: Jack may have got his stinker today. And I guess that’s half right. Was determined to sort the long answers first but came to grief with SECOND IN COMMAND where “tory faces” looked like fodder and led me to PILLAR OF SOCIETY! “Chinese solver” also had me on the run. So the SW was the last bit to fall. Though OPERATIVE is even more fiendish. COD to that!

    Or perhaps to the double sCOUSe? I shall have to try serving said grains with a mighty bowl of sacred lamb stew!

  2. Did it again: In my rush to get in under the half-hour–having spent 8 or so minutes trying to figure out 11ac–I neglected to check to see if I actually understood 25ac, and put in ‘lentamento’. Oh, well. Jack, 17d lacks a definition, no? ‘such as Oklahoma’.
    1. I’m not sure what you mean about 17dn, Kevin. The definition is indeed ‘such as Oklahoma!’ but I very rarely include definitions in my blogs so its omission wasn’t an oversight. Always happy to have things clarified though and I thought this was a particularly good clue with its misdirections. I also liked that it included the exclamation mark which is part of the title of the show.

      Edited at 2013-11-15 07:56 am (UTC)

  3. 25 mins for this which I found pretty easy. But I was held up by 11a, failing to pick up on POP (father), and also in 18a I thought ‘revealed in articles’ meant made up of articles, so I was pretty confident that ANTHEA was the answer; until GEL (upper class girl) surrounded by articles came to me. I wonder if I’m the only one who will have fallen into this nice trap.
      1. I wasn’t quite so confident about ANTHEA although I wrote her in. I don’t think ANTHEA is necessarily upmarket these days so there had to be more to the clue. The error certainly lost me time solving 15dn.
        1. You are quite right jackkt, Anthea isn’t necessarily up market, so when I saw GEL, which definitely is, I realized, happily, that I had gone wrong and that OPERATIVE would work at 15d. I agree it wouldn’t have been as much fun if ANTHEA was the correct answer.

          By the way my COD was 6d, I got the M and S of the last word and immediately thought ‘Bangers and Mash’ but couldn’t make much sense of it, luckily I persisted and worked it out as you have explained in the blog.

    2. I think you’ll be one of many, including me, who got hung up on Anthea, not specifying which particular Anthea.
  4. Not so dim today, better in the mornings, so an acceptable 20 minutes. Had COUSCOUS written in but tried to parse it with S(CO)T twice until I saw the Liverpool connection instead. Held up at the end as others above by the ANTHEA temptation but then GEL sprang to mind and it all flowed. LOI GENITOR once I’d checked its definition although from progenitor it looked likely.
    My Cod the magnificent anagram and surface for 12 ac.
  5. Please explain – get pop = genitor but is it not the first of not as well a singer and how does the clue suggest it is both?

    2. Pop = definition

      Singer not the first gives INGER

      To = TO

      Fail = anagrind

      Edited at 2013-11-15 09:44 am (UTC)

  6. 23 minutes, fine crossword with some serious unravelling to do especially in the longer ones. I liked the cheeky use of the , in 21, though (because) it’s the sort of thing you can only really notice when you’re looking to justify the wordplay.
    I found this was one which repaid dwelling on the clues even when, as you first hit them, you bounced.
    I’ve not memorably come across the PROTESTANT ETHIC without its work, but think I should have done: apparently it’s from the title of an opus by sociologist Max Weber.
    Tempted by LENTAMENTO, despite music being a significant part of my life, but put the E at the end to match the wordplay. Glad it wasn’t I.
    CoD to COUSCOUS amongst many good ones. My first take was COCO-something (sCOt) but I couldn’t get the POPS or NUTS from the clue.

    Edited at 2013-11-15 09:45 am (UTC)

  8. Another first class puzzle that required a lot of analysis to reach always fair solutions

    I had no problem with ANGELA, upper-class girl=GEL being a knee-jerk reaction. Anybody would do well to get 21A purely from wordplay. Spotting that COMMA will mainly come after the event. I liked CHAN for Chinese solver. Not so keen as others on COUSCOUS because it’s far from original.

    I thought you might give Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly a mention Jack – and that haunting theme tune.

    1. Indeed. A fabulous song recorded for the film by Tex Ritter, though it was Frankie Laine who went on to make the hit parade version. Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington were the inspired songwriters.

      Edited at 2013-11-15 11:04 am (UTC)

  9. Just over the half-hour for a good old-fashioned Friday stinker. The NE was especially resilient because I’d written in SAUSAGE AND MASH (note to self: try to remember that if you can’t parse it, it’s probably wrong). The clever COUSCOUS was last in, and only once I had all the checkers, having thought I’d exhausted all the possibilities offered by Scots, Geordies, Mackems, Yorkies etc etc.

    Edited at 2013-11-15 10:26 am (UTC)

    1. Why is it that we keep ignoring this excellent piece of advice. Perhaps we all believe we’re smarter (or more likely dumber) than the setter.
  11. 23 mins but for the second day running I needed to check an answer at the end, this time LENTAMENTE, because I wasn’t sure of the term and “lentamenti” fits the wordplay just as well because “te” and “ti” are both acceptable spellings of the note.

    COUSCOUS was my FOI and pretty easy for someone from that part of the world, and GENITOR was my LOI.

  12. 20m today but with two errors:
    > GENETOR. I’ve never heard of a singer called Genet, but there could easily be one, right? And then the first letter of NOR for “not” fails, to give OR.
    > LENTAMENTO. Take one quantity of sketchy knowledge of musical terminology, mix with a measure of carelessness, and voila!
    Must try harder.
  13. Just over half an hour, with bottom half completed first, except 15dn (LOI) – I never did parse that, or several others, so thanks for blog.
    1. Couldn’t parse it either, very annoying. The answer was obvious, but for the wrong reason – I was lucky to geuess it right, looking at the wrong end for the definitiion:
      “Hand over key – I’m going (9)”
      I’d guessed GOING deined OPERATIVE – it works, not broken. Rather than the correct HAND for OPERATIVE – he’s a good hand.
      Ro
  15. A very long solve here. It took me forever to get MUSKOGEE (Oklahoma) out of my head (OK is the postal abbreviation for the State), and I was disappointed to have spent yesterday learning the MB abbreviation for DOCTOR, but having to use the pedestrian DR today. I had been hoping.

    And thank you for parsing SECOND IN COMMAND – the ‘,’ fooled me completely.

    Edited at 2013-11-15 02:10 pm (UTC)

  16. A steady 35 mins today with a slight hold up in the NE and a couple unparsed. I insanely focused on “gangsta” for 11ac seduced by the “rapper” in 1dn until I cracked “titch”.
  17. Oh dear! I’ve noticed before how mistakes often come in pairs, so I checked (or thought I’d checked) especially carefully today, but still managed to miss HIGN NOON, thus wasting a reasonable(ish) time of 16:28 (only 3 seconds slower than Magoo’s anyway, though he’s clearly going through a bad patch). I’d already picked up one typo (INTELLEGENTSIA), so perhaps I assumed that I couldn’t possibly have made another; or maybe I just need my eyes testing.

    Despite that, I thought this was another interesting and enjoyable puzzle, and I raise my hat to the setter.

  18. Also plumped for ‘lentamento’, and took some time to believe ‘genitor’ having previously only come across ‘progenitor’. Even with the error, time was a fairly tardy 38m 58s.
  19. About half an hour spread over three periods, with one wrong – I fell into the LENTAMENTO trap (despite a walkover Grade V Theory nearly 50 years ago) – and two entries left unparsed, TITCH and OPERATIVE, my LOI.

    Much to enjoy here: BANGERS AND MASH raised a rueful smile, it being a Friday and I had to make do with toasted mousetrap for supper despite some excellent Chadwick’s Lincolnshires in the fridge. COD a toss up between SECOND IN COMMAND, for that sneaky punctuation mark, and the Scouser COUSCOUS.

    Edited at 2013-11-16 02:49 am (UTC)

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