Times 25635 – It’s STILL not a football team!

Solving time: 29 minutes

Music: Vaughn Williams, Symphony #2, Previn/LSO

I had begun to lose faith in my solving ability, after failing to correctly finish about four or five in a row. Fortunately, there’s always Monday, and I found this one fairly easy. While I did not understand a fair number of the cryptics as I solved, the answers came readily enough.

This was a bit of a vanilla puzzle, with nothing particularly outstanding one way or another. There may be some quick times from the usual crew.

Across
1 EYEBALLED, sounds like I BAWLED in most dialects.
6 BLOOM, B(L)OOM.
9 HEARTEN, HEAR TEN.
10 YEREVAN, YE(AVER backwards)N. At first I thought this had something to do with Virginia, and had put in the answer from the literal before realizing my mistake.
11 SUPERSEDED, SUPER + sounds like CEDED. In Latin, ‘cedo’ and ‘sedeo’ do not sound at all alike, but in English anything is possible.
12 GRAB, G(R)AB, would be omitted if we still did that.
14 STELA, ST + ELA[n]. I had put ‘stele’ at first, then corrected it based on the cryptic.
15 MATCHLESS, double definition, one jocular. Once a make of motorcycle as well.
16 RESIDENCE, [diffe]RE(SIDE)NCE. A rather elaborate cryptic for the obvious answer.
18 ARGUS, ARGU[-e +S]. A simple letter-substitution clue.
20 ALMA, hidden in [minim]AL MA[ke-up].
21 STAGGERING, STAG(G)E + RING.
25 INSULAR, double definition, where Man is deceptively capitalized at the start of the clue.
26 APOSTLE, A PO(ST)LE.
27 GENET, GEN(E)T.
28 STOCKINGS, COTS backwards + KINGS.
 
Down
1 ETHOS, ETH + O.S., one an Old English letter, the other a nautical abbreviation. Careless solvers will put ‘ether’ without thinking.
2 EXAMPLE, EX + AMPLE, a clue identical in concept to Paul’s in last Friday’s Guardian puzzle.
3 AFTERWARDS, AFTER WARDS, which are used in District Council elections in some parts of the world.
4 LUNGE, L[o]UNGE.
5 DAY CENTRE, DA(Y + CENT)RE. This would be a Day Care Center in the U.S.
6 BURY, double definition, where ‘put down’ takes an oblique sense.
7 OBVERSE, anagram of VERBOSE.
8 MINIBUSES, M(I NIB)USES, where ‘inspiration’ is used literally as an enclosure indicator.
13 PHRASE BOOK, cryptic definition.
14 SPREADING, SP[a] + READING, perfectly simple although I tried ‘sprawling’ first.
15 MEN AT ARMS, anagram of MEAN + anagram of SMART. It’s not often we see two separate anagrams.
17 SIMPSON, PM IS upside down + SON. How Bart caused a constitutional crisis is not known….
19 GLISTEN, G + LISTEN, a chestnut.
22 GUANO, anagram of A G[r]OUN[d].
23 GUESS, GUES[t]S.
24 FLAT, triple definition, chestnuts all.

46 comments on “Times 25635 – It’s STILL not a football team!”

  1. Not quite yer typical Monday … at least for my money. Ripped through the right-hand side and struggled with the left. At the end, it was all down to the SW with the INSULAR/SPREADING pair. University town indeed! Though Ulaca will no doubt be on soon telling us all about his 20ac MATER.
  2. You explained something I couldn’t understand. I parsed STELA as ST=stone EL=dash and then the A before ‘slab’ in the clue. I couldn’t work out what on earth the “almost” was doing there.

    I was like mctext. Had the whole right side filled in in no time and then ground to a halt for a time. Don’t know why, nothing seems obscure in retrospect but crosswords are like that

  3. It took me 8-9′ to get my last 3: 3d, 14ac, 14d. I’d thought of ‘stele’ but naturally couldn’t parse it. I was lucky in that Reading showed up just a while ago as a university town, prompting a mctextian reaction from several. ARGUS took me unduly long because I only associated him with the eyes, not the size. After screwing up several last week, I’m hoping today’s is a good omen.
  4. I put in SUPERCEDED for 11a and checked OED which says “see Supersede”.
    Can either be the correct answer or am I missing something in the cryptic?
    Same as the above posts re the right side.
    1. ‘Supercede’ is a really common misspelling, no doubt influenced by ‘cede’ (and the absence of ‘sede’), but it is a misspelling.
    2. I initially put in SUPERCEDED too, but paused. The cryptic tells you you need something that sounds like “ceded”, which can’t really be the same word (although admittedly it does sound like itself). This enabled me to override my misspelling instinct.
      1. If the word SUPERCEDE is listed in the OED (my CD from the 11th edition)and it says ” Verb. See Supersede” Surely that indicates, to the OED at least, that it exists as a word and is an alternative and not a misspelling. Perhaps I’m being a bit dense (not unheard of) but it seems to me that …cede… or …sede… satisfy the cryptic element of the clue.
        By the way, for the benefit of those not blessed with a visit to 6d, it is not only the home of black pudding but also of Sir Robert Peel (who looking at the current state of the Met must be turning in his grave!)
        1. Keriorthe, on a further look I take your point that it looking for a word sounding like ceded. Thanks
          Cozzielex (I forgot to sign in)
  5. 35 minutes but I didn’t know YEREVAN. I wonder if this is the same setter who gave us Reading University on 4th November.
  6. alternative parsing as an anagram of YEARN + VE
    Since it couldn’t be VirginiA, I checked on acronymfinder . com for both EV and VE, and (along with another 90 options) it says that VE is the international abbreviation for Venezuela (country = state).
    That doesn’t preclude any of the other 90 options being an acronym for some sort of (chemical/physical/mental?) state.
    However, for cars & planes, it’s been YV since 1955.

    regards, Keef (pppd off, another crosscheck letter typo)

    Edited at 2013-11-18 05:55 am (UTC)

  7. 11m. A couple of hasty bung-ins (ATLAS and a hidden TERM at 6dn) that needed correction but otherwise no real problems.
    I wonder if I was the only person to see John-Paul and “disciple”, and immediately think “a pope… APOSTLE”. I didn’t see that he wasn’t actually here in his professional capacity until after the fact. This tells you something about the way I solve, and explains a lot of my mistakes.
    1. Glad to see another TERM; it stayed quite a while, since although I knew of Bury, I had no idea where to find it.
      1. Kevin, Bury is an old Lancashire mill town 10 miles north of Manchester. For other comments see anonymous above.
  8. No problem with Reading (just down the road from me and my niece went to the uni there) but I did not think that ARGUS was a giant (after all, all he had to do was watch a heifer) and I got caught up with ‘No man is an island’ which did not help 25A. A gentle start to the week though. Thanks for the blog vinyl.

    PS did not write in ANGUS, although that is the name of the collie

    Edited at 2013-11-18 08:45 am (UTC)

  9. Fifteen minutes and all done except 6 ac and 6 dn – Struggling to find **O*O for 6ac… ten minutes of agony then changed OMNI to MINI and all was ship shape. AFTER WARDS was worth a groan.
  10. 22.15 for an uneventful start to the week. Had thoughts of dog rescue for a time for 5. Quite liked the stockings.
  11. To my shame, I did not know YEREVAN but guessed the correct answer by mis-parsing (as indicated in other comments) virtually every element in the clue. Similarly I did not know ARGUS as a giant (fish, butterfly, yes) so guessed (wrongly) ‘argos’.
  12. A real struggle with this one, and forgot to go back to fit a couple of letters in B?R? having started with TERM. But where I really came to grief was in the STELA/SPREADING/ALMA intersections.
    STELA – initially looking for something that ended -ESA, assuming that the a in the clue was there for a reason. S can be (has been) stone. When I finally conceded that STELA was the slab, I still couldn’t work out why TEL was a short dash.
    SPREADING – Spa didn’t occur to me as a resort (tsk tsk) and I was looking for a resort (maybe even a last one) without A and U followed by Tring (the town), though that left me with a girl who was T?M?. I considered SCRUMPING at one point (I had the M), since it might whimsically be defined as taking over the local countryside.
    ALMA – in the make-up of minimum there she is, take a few letters away and mess about. I’d already ticked off my “hidden” for the day (not having unticked TERM). I was going to complain about pick ‘n’ mix anagrams.
    I’ve included this detailed account of my descent into complete mental rhubarb in the hope that it might a) be of help to other fellow nstrugglers and b) be cathartic. Not sure of the latter, can’t say anything about the former.
    PS SUPERSEDED has to be right, but in my inked copy you can’t see whether it’s a C on an S.
    1. That would have been fun if TRING had been clued as ‘not a university town’! It would have set the precedent for even more vague and inexact cluing in the future than “university town = Reading” offers.
      1. No, the “not a university” cut both the A and the U from the resort. I told you I was up to the neck in rhubarb! But, hey, lets not give the setters ideas, or we’ll get “not an English town” to clue Calcutta.
  13. Did anyone else put HERGE in at 27? Only realised it was wrong when 14d turned out to end in G. Otherwise a good chewy puzzle, I thought.

    Edited at 2013-11-18 10:41 am (UTC)

    1. Herge is on the very short list of famous Belgians, along with Jean-Marc Bosman, Rene Magritte, Hercule Poirot, Plasic Bertrand and Edward de Smedt (who isn’t famous but is a scientist so I’ve added him for Jimbo’s benefit).
      1. He invented asphalt so though you’ve never heard of him you have much to thank him for.
          1. I cannot tell a lie – I’d never heard of him but was pleased to get to know him. Better late than never.
  14. 16 mins and I had a similar experience to some of you, in as much as the RHS went in quickly and the SW was the last to be finished.

    I thought this was going to be much trickier than it eventually turned out to be, and on my first read-through of the acrosses I didn’t enter an answer until APOSTLE. However, I got onto the setter’s wavelength and picked up a lot of speed towards the end. I lived in Basingstoke for many years and as Reading is just up the road and I knew about the university 14dn didn’t present a problem. SIMPSON was my LOI after INSULAR.

  15. Not much to add because it is a rather vanilla offering, reasonably testing but never amusing or thought provoking. 20 minutes with the SW the hardest corner – must start thinking “reading” for university town rather than having to muse over it
  16. I’m another who had a bad week last week with daft errors, and I thought that I was going to struggle with this one. Very slow to get a foothold, but then ascended steadily, if not rapidly. Good to get one correct, without aids, to start the week.
  17. ” How Bart caused a constitutional crisis is not known….” The clue refers to Wallis Simpson, whom Edward VII married.
    I found this a bit harder than a typical Monday, but finished in 32 minutes. I couldn’t think of the French writer until I had the G in place, when it jumped out.
  18. 9:47 for me with the SW taking the longest to fall. Yerevan was in another crossword recently – but don’t ask me which one when. I really must get my crossword addiction under control!
  19. 13:33 and pretty unremarkable stuff. Yerevan only known from crosswords, stela an educated guess. I lived in Bury for 10 years so no probs there. In addition to Chadwick’s black pudding stall (as alluded to above) it’s worth a visit if you like a good choice of pawn, pound and charity shops.
    1. Last time it appeared I wondered if that was what the setter was thinking and decided if true it would be time for me to give up solving.
  20. 27:16, but fell into the SUPERCEDED trap.

    Couldn’t parse INSULAR, as I didn’t know the literal definition. Just decided that Man must lie somewhere in the previously unknown South ULAR sea (I know, I know..).

  21. Not a typical Monday walkover. For me, a steady 45 minute solve on the tube/train from Balham to Enfield. SW, then NE, then SE and a long stare before NW gave up the ghost. LOI STELA.

    Lots of fairly tricky clues which look easy in retrospect. Liked EXAMPLE and DAY CENTRE, and grinned/groaned at AFTERWARDS. The two classical references, though, were fairly tame “crosswordese”. If you want to know all about ALMA listen to Tom Lehrer’s song – it’s on YouTube.

    So, vinyl1, Bart Simpson caused the Constitutional Crisis? I’d always thought that was Wallis and Gromit …

    Stockings casually thrown over college beds, a nice image to finish on, raises thoughts of raffish student decadence … I suppose it’s all tights nowadays, not quite the same thing.

  22. 8:38 here in a reasonably straightforward start to the week.

    I didn’t know that BURY is part of Greater Manchester (but then, as a Yorkshireman, I don’t really give a damn whether it is or not :-).

    1. Watch out for other towns that used to be in Lancashire but are now in Greater Manchester like Oldham, Rochdale, Notlob and Wigan.
      1. Good grief! Wigan too? I thought that was some way from Manchester. (I bought a pair of dancing clogs there once many years ago. In fact I think I may even have performed there.)

        SALE was the one 4-letter place name I knew for certain, but it was ruled out by the checked letters.

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