Times 25,648

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
When I choose to solve and blog at midnight rather than the next morning, there’s not usually enough of a sample of other online solvers to work out if I’ve been comparatively fast or slow, so we shall see; 13:05 on the Club timer suggests a puzzle which was pretty straightforward, though quite enjoyable. There was an unknown plant, but there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of plants I’ve never heard of in the dictionary, so this didn’t surprise me. Otherwise, I don’t think there were any major obscurities.

Across
1 SATANISM – (ANTIMASS)*.
5 ETHICS – trutH in (Singular CITE)rev.
9 RAINCOAT – R.A. INC. OAT.
10 METTLE – MET(=satisfied”) TaLE without A.
12 SUPERNATURAL – (TURNUPASREAL)*.
15 LEARN – Edward LEAR, Note.
16 HEADBOARD – EAch, (BeD)rev. in HOARD.
18 MUTILATED – Answer in MU, TILTED (as the Greek letter might be, if written in italics).
19 CURVE – Verse in CURE.
20 TRAMPOLINIST – cryptic def.
24 HEALTH – L in HEATH. If the setter’s intention was for me to run through a mental list – Cordoba, Granada etc. – before realising it was a more literal, and non-alphabetised moor, the setter was successful.
25 ABRASIVE – BRA in [AS,I’VE].
26 DATURA – UnpopulaR in DATA. I didn’t know the word, as I say, but once I had D_T_R_ from the checkers, and D_TUR_ from checkers and wordplay, DATURA looked a pretty likely candidate for yet another plant I’d never heard of.
27 BEDECKED – [(CEDE)rev., K] in BED.
 
Down
1 SERF – reverse hidden in oF RESidents.
2 TWIT – withouT, WIT &lit. This was last in after a good pause for thought, and for the life of me I can’t now see why (on reflection, and seeing that others had trouble spotting it as well, I should perhaps have said that this is, of course, one possible definition of a good clue…)
3 NOCTURNAL – OCTober in New URN, ALL.
4 SPACE SHUTTLE – Small PACE, [L in SHUTTER]. The ill-fated Challenger was one of six Space Shuttles; had the setter been so inclined, we might have seen the crossword world’s favourite detective, and had Endeavour instead.
6 TRENT – TORRENT without the OR.
7 INTERMARRY – another cryptic def.
8 STEPLADDER – (SET)*, PLace, ADDER, with an elegant semi&lit. surface. As Harry Hill said, this is my stepladder, not my real ladder. I never knew my real ladder.
11 UNPARDONABLE – (NOBLERPADUAN)*.
13 ILL-MATCHED – 1 Line, [Mass in LATCHED].
14 MARTIAL ART – cryptic def. and by some way the best of today’s.
17 BACKSPACE – BACK’S PACE, and the key up to the top right of your keyboard.
21 PETER – PET(=”caress”), ER(=”I’m not sure”).
22 MINK – MINKe. A whale which always makes me think of Inspector Clouseau.
23 FEUD =”FEW’D”.

52 comments on “Times 25,648”

  1. One of my favourite grids where a few quick answers will fill a lot of squares. Had a bit of trouble with the tilted mu at 18ac. Somehow Greek and italic don’t seem to go together. Last in were the 7dn/19ac pair. Darned cryptic defs!

    DATURA will be well known to folks nearer the equator. Very popular for masking the outside dunny. Very pretty and pretty lethal.

    NOCTURAL = “going abroad furtively”? Hmmm.

    Edited at 2013-12-03 01:42 am (UTC)

  2. 45 minutes with DATURA unknown and I thought the whale was MINKY rather than MINKE, not that it affected my answer at 22dn. But prior to that I lost time with SEAL as the answer which works perfectly as a double definition.
  3. 32 minutes for an enjoyable and not overly taxing puzzle, with one odd literal, already pointed out by McT (NOCTURNAL). A fine example of the economical but comprehensive blog, as ever, from TT, but I must beg to differ on choicest cryptic definition, with BACKSPACE getting my nod. TWIT was excellent too.

    Jack, I’m puzzled – how could 22dn be construed as a DD? (I’m probably missing something again.)

    2. I was referring to my original answer, SEAL defined as 1) marine mammal, and 2) its (short) fur, aka ‘sealskin’.
      1. Ah, thanks. I had forgotten that ‘seal’ could be used as shorthand for ‘sealskin’.
  4. i forget my time but i was on the phone so it is wrong anyway. like SILK i put for 22dn. a silky is a scottish word for a seal. should have realized it was too obscure for adaily puzzle
    1. I thought silkies were supernatural beings who took the form of a seal; I remember Joan Baez singing, at some length, about one.
  6. I thought this would be a DNF because of 26ac, but running through the alphabet got me there. I also wasted time by throwing in ‘thou’ at 2d, somehow thinking that removing ‘wit’ from ‘without’ would work.I only understood 18ac post hoc, but now I’d give it the COD.
  7. Standard stuff and a straightforward 20 minute solve. A raised eyebrow at NOCTURNAL, a vague Mephisto memory of DATURA and a nod of appreciation at TWIT and MUTILATED. Nothing to really get ones teeth into.
  8. Whoo hoo! 25 minutes after a DNF yesterday. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself. Was I the only one who went for “curare” at first for 26A?
  9. 18m, with a few wasted at the end trying to fit 14dn into the wrong enumeration (3, 7), which tends to make clues a bit harder I find. DATURA the only unknown.
  10. Made heavy weather of this in 24 minutes today, with three clues hanging around with just their tops showing, ILL-, INTER-, and, embarrassingly SPACE-. I think I was taken with complexitis, the belief that clues are harder than they look. I was looking for some clever reverse clue in 7, playing around with “lines”, and while I’m fully aware of what Challenger was, it didn’t occur to me just to put SHUTTLE. Perhaps because of the awful disaster by which it is chiefly remembered.
    To have one cryptic definition, Mr Worthing, is unfortunate, to have two looks like carelessness. Three… well, I’m not sure MARTIAL ART qualifies, as it does a bit of wordplay with war paint, I believe.
    TWIT was my favourite of the day – it had me staring at the checkers wondering which of the senses I’d forgotten, and fooling me into thinking it was something difficult. Twit.
    1. Thanks for making me feel less twittish. It was on the basis of 14 being adjudged a CD that I decided 17 must be one too.
    2. Only if “war”=MARTIAL and “paint”=ART. The first, as in “war games”, I can see. The second??
      1. I think you just take the two together. Surely war paint qualifies as martial art – art with a warlike intention?. We effectively have a DD clue, one whimsical.
  12. Pleasant solve with nothing particularly memorable. Started in my doctor’s waiting room this morning, completed on the walk back home, about 50 minutes elapsed time. Had come across DATURA before, but was held up – for no good reason – by the RAINCOAT/TWIT crosser, my last in.

    Liked BEDECKED (and to some extent HEADBOARD), where – for me at least – the definition and the cryptic worked nicely together towards the solution. Too often the definition drives, and the cryptic is “parsed” almost as an afterthought, for confirmation.

  13. 18 mins and an enjoyable solve.

    MUTILATED was my LOI after ILL-MATCHED and I didn’t bother to stop to parse it. Even though the anagram fodder for it must have been used plenty of times I still liked the clue for SATANISM. It took me a little longer than it should have done to make sense of the obvious anagram fodder for the 12ac/11dn crossers, and I needed all the checkers before I saw the cryptic definition for INTERMARRY. I vaguely remembered DATURA so wasn’t held up by it because the wordplay was clear enough. TWIT was excellent.

  14. I think the compilers are encouraged not to have ‘literals’ as definitions, at least not obvious ones, so either the wordplay bit (as with e.g. BACK’S PACE) has to send us off in the wrong direction, or the def itself has to be sufficiently cryptic so as mislead. In another paper, or more specifically in a Rufus crossword, such defs would qualify as full CDs I suspect, but you know what I mean!

    TWIT & BACKSPACE the two stand-outs for me.

  15. Just over the half hour, but an enjoyable puzzle. Thought TWIT had a very neat clue.

    I wonder when “twit“ came to mean a fool. When I was at school, a twit was someone who told tales to the teacher, someone who “grassed you up”, but I recall Spike Milligan using it to mean an idiot in The Goon Show”.

    DATURA: There was a panic about “thorn apples” whipped up in the press in the mid 1960s, so that’s why I know about this plant. When one appeared in our garden, the neighbours came round to inspect it and we wondered if we ought to report it to the authorities.

  16. Thanks for the Harry Hill gag, TT. Love it.
    Here’s another he did at the Royal Free charity event at the Adelphi on Sunday:
    “Never say never; whoops, said it twice”

    Nick M

  17. I made even heavierer weather than others at 31:05. I was left staring at most of the SW corner for ages until I got mutilated. Twit was then my LOI.

    I rather liked the war paint clue.

  18. 6 minutes for 3/4 of the crossword, then they made me start work, returning to the puzzle post lunch with some Danish visitors, I finally worked out what on earth the SW corner was on about in a further 8 minutes. Strange that one corner of the crossword should have a different difficulty level than the rest of it.
    1. Sue – I had exactly the same feeling about last Saturday’s Guardian Prize puzzle, although in that one it was SE corner.
  19. All but a couple in 30mins, I then went away and the last few came to me immediately (MARTIAL ART, TWIT, INTERMARRY). I then put together DATURA for the unknown plant.

    First one finished in a little while…

  20. 19:02 .. all rather fun, I thought. I liked the ‘lateral’ for nocturnal, MARTIAL ART and TWIT both got a smile from me.

    Thank you, Tim, for a blog dotted with entertaining gems (as usual).

  21. Don’t quite get the cryptic here. It makes more sense to me if it said “similar” rather than dissimilar. What am I missing?

    Thanks.

    1. I thought the same, but it turns out this is a word that can mean almost the opposite of itself:

      1. (of different groups, races, religions, creeds, etc.) to become connected by marriage
      2. (Sociology) to marry within one’s own family, clan, group, etc.

      Go figure.

      Edited at 2013-12-03 02:37 pm (UTC)

    2. I suspect you’re overlooking the first of the two possible meanings, those two being, as per ODO: a) “(of people belonging to different races, castes, or religions) become connected by marriage”, and b) “(of close relations) marry each other”, which obviously suggest two quite different things. As you suggest, the clue could be equally valid the other way round…

      Edit: great minds think alike even if one of them is a bit slower off the mark 🙂

      Edited at 2013-12-03 02:38 pm (UTC)

        1. I believe the technical term is contranym (ooo, get me!).

          ‘Stakeholder’ is another that’s been popping up recently.

  22. 28/28 today with Twit, Bedecked and LOI Mink holding me up for quite a while at the end.
    Space Shuttle reminded me of the file Gravity that I saw at an IMAX cinema last week. If you’ve not seen it do – terrific.
  23. Jimbo’s teeth are obviously in better shape than mine! Not a hugely difficult puzzle, but quite enough to chew on for me, plus some witty clueing. MARTIAL ART, TWIT and MUTILATED were all excellent, especially the last.

    I initially shared the doubts expressed elsewhere about 3D’s def – but on reflection it seems to me OK: to be out and about at night doesn’t of course necessarily imply furtive behaviour, but it could do. The ? at the end of the clue suggests that furtiveness is one, but only one, possible interpretation that might be put on nocturnal activity.

  24. Did this in the doctor’s waiting room, so it can’t have been all that difficult (or he kept me waiting a while, as I finished this and almost all of the Granuaid).

    I am going to keep trying this, I seem to have great difficulty commenting, I get a “no data sent” message when I hit “post comment” – that’s happened to me the last three days. It will be a bother if it happens on Thursday.

    Last in DATURA from wordplay, didn’t see the wordplay for MINK, but there can’t be that many furs that end in K, right?

    1. George, just smash the hell out of the refresh button when you first get the error and all should be fine.
    2. Ignore me if I’m at the grandmother / egg-sucking interface, George, but when LJ is behaving like this, I always copy the draft blog to Notepad before posting just in case it vanishes beyond restoration (only happened to me once, but once was enough).
  25. Pretty quick solve in about 15 minutes, just held up at the end by INTERMARRY. COD to the marvelous TWIT. Thanks to Tim for the blog and the parsing of MUTILATED, which I threw in from the definition. Regards.
    1. George,
      Are you doing this on iPad? Submitting things like this on iPad is now regularly (3/4) described as connection failed when it patently hasn’t
  27. 11:03 for me. I’d have done better to wait until I was less tired before tackling this one, as I was nicely on the setter’s wavelength for the most part but just couldn’t dredge up the required answers fast enough. Worst was 14dn which must have taken me two or three minutes. I was torn between ACT and ART for the second word, but kept trying to think of artistic genres for the latter.
  28. Surely someone else must be unhappy about ‘unknown to science’ as a definition for ‘supernatural’. UGH!
      1. What exactly is the objection? It seems to me to be a reasonable paraphrase of the COED definition, “attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature”.
        1. I think the key phrase is “Attributed to”. Few scientists or rationalists would countenance the proposal that anything in nature is conceptually beyond the possibility of our understanding, albeit at some future time. To attribute the word “Supernatural” to what is beyond our current understanding runs counter to the scientific method.
          1. Ok, but I don’t think “unknown to science” necessarily means “superior to science, which is incapable of explaining it”, or even “actually existing, even though science won’t admit it”. It could be read as “not a legitimate area of knowledge”.
  30. Oh frabjous day!

    For the first time ever, I have managed to finish a Times crossword. It probably took me about an hour in two sessions.

    FOI: Satanism
    LOI: Twit – and to be honest I didn’t fully parse it.

Comments are closed.