Times 25650 – A 1ac ate my baby

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : a distracted 20:35 with one silly typo (JONN for JOHN at 7 down). I’m distracted by the first day of the Brisbane Adelaide (wow, I was distracted) Test and the culmination of a three-episode arc of South Park which is extremely funny (but very US-centric).

This is a tricky offering, and I worked a lot out from definition and came back to get at the wordplay – I suspect a few of the short answers will leave several scratching at the old noggins, though it all makes sense in the end – at least I think it does…

Away we go!

Across
1 DINGO: hidden in feeDING Outside
4 CRAB,(d)APPLE
9 LIGHTENED: LIGHT(land) then DENE reversed
10 QUEST: take the BE from BEQUEST
11 BEFORE THE MAST: BE FOR and then THEM in EAST
14 (g)RIND
15 UNMANNERLY: MANNER(air) in UN, L(ad)Y
18 THE LIKES OF: (THESE,FOLK,I)*
19 DOVE: DROVE without the R
21 SCARLET RUNNER: SCARLET being of dubious molarity morality – yes, I do too much chemistry, as in “The Scarlet Letter”
24 KHAKI: sounds like CAR KEY
25 HALF-LIGHT: FLIGHT after HAL(l)
27 ALLEGORIC: ALLEGRO with the last two letters swapped, then 1,C
28 DEMUR: EMU in DR
 
Down
1 DELIBERATE: if you free something you liberate it, so shutting it up again would be DE-LIBERATING
2 NAG: SAG with the S changed to N
3 OUTCRY: anagram of COUNTRY without the N(end of UN)
4 CON(with, musical – such as CON BRIO),STANCE(attitude)
5 ADDLE: take the W from WADDLE
6 AC,QUAINT
7 PRESTER JOHN: sounds like PRESSED A JOHN
8 EFTS: last letters in shakE ofF persistenT predatorS
12 FINGERS(gives away, as in tells on),TALL
13 TYPEWRITER: anagram of PRETTY+WEIR(d)
16 APOSTOLIC: (mem)O in (CAPITOL’S)*
17 PIRATING: RATING(sailor) after PI(private investigator)
20 HURLED: R(adica)L in HUED
22 LEHAR: H(Henry – the unit) in LEAR
23 SKUA: UK in AS all reversed
26 GUM: MUG reversed

47 comments on “Times 25650 – A 1ac ate my baby”

  1. That all makes sense to me George. I liked the symmetrical Aussie animals!

    I think you need to get out of the chem lab at 21ac! I think molarity can be determined with certainty, morality perhaps less so.

    “When I am dead I hope it may be said,
    His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

    Hilaire Belloc

    1. Hester Prynne
      Though covered in sin
      Was the first American girl to wear a letter
      On her sweater
      1. I Iove Clerihews and amuse myself (and no-one else) when travelling by creating new ones. My all time favourite (not of course mine) is
        Sir Godfrey Bradman
        Was a very sad man.
        He wished that his all-time test average of 99.94
        Was just 0.06 more.
  2. Like George, I had to come back for the wordplay with a number of these; unlike George, for a couple I had to come here to find the wordplay. I flat out missed the hidden at 1ac, for instance. Two that I did get, and liked a lot, were 11ac and 25ac. KHAKI may have been my LOI–I already forget–partly because I’ve never heard the word pronounced other than [kæki].
    1. I remember the khaki/car key pun from a joke book when I was a kid. Maybe the setter had the same book…
  3. After decent times on Monday and Tuesday, things seem to be going down hill. This one had me going something terrible.
    Firstly, the “on vacation” blind spot at 15ac. Always seems to get me undone. Bugger!
    Secondly, had to wonder about a double deletion of D at 4ac until I remembered the “dapple grey” from the interminable “Willy O’Winsbury”.
    Thirdly, saw 21ac with several checkers in place but didn’t see the sillier of the two defs.
    Fourthly, not convinced that the TYPEWRITER is the “PC’s predecessor” (13dn).
    Fifthly, I tried to make LUSITANIA work at 9ac.
    Sixthly … I could go on.

    A bad morning for time, with a great puzzle for quality.

    Edited at 2013-12-05 05:32 am (UTC)

    1. I am terrible at these cryptics but can usually understand the explanations here! How does “on vacation” reduce lady to ly?
  6. After yesterday’s debacle my solving time for this was more respectable at 40 minutes parsing as I went along, though I took nearly 5 minutes to write in my first answer (at 22dn). I’d have shaved off 5 minutes at the end if I had known (or possibly remembered) 7dn where I had gone for PRESTON JOHN which then made 15ac impossible to solve so I had to return to it and think again.

    I’m with McT on 13dn as I seem to remember we had word processors between typewriters and PCs, but otherwise I have no complaints.

    Edited at 2013-12-05 06:03 am (UTC)

    1. Finished off my PhD on an IBM “memory typewriter” in 1978. It was a golf-ball with a bank of boxes the size of a small office and normally the sole province of the VC and his oppo.
    2. If one takes ‘predecessor’ in its looser (also dcitionary) meaning (‘one that precedes something else’ – not necessarily immediately), then the quibble becomes academic anyway. 🙂
        1. So the vacuum tube would count? It precedes the transistor which precedes the printed circuit which is part of a PC, just as the keyboard is but a part of said?
          1. I suppose a setter could have ‘abacus’ and ‘fingers’ too. Not sure about MUSCLE, though… 🙂
              1. The quill would work … if PCs were only used for writing. Those with fond memories of playing Space Invaders on their typewriters will no doubt object.

  7. All correct, and parsed (except I didn’t see CON=with in music), but took a long time … partly because of unknowns (gumshoe, FINGERSTALL, PRESTER JOHN, DENE=valley), but mostly because of clever cryptics.

    COD to PIRATING for the misdirection of ‘running off illicitly’.

  8. A decent average difficulty puzzle – 25 minutes to solve. No quibbles.

    The setter is not so far off with TYPEWRITER. Not enough space here for detail but anybody interested should google WANG LABORATORIES for the marriage of the word processor and the electronic calculator.

    The history of the PC and the way in which it usurped the mainframe computer, eventually humbling even IBM, is indeed fascinating

  9. 21 mins, and this was another puzzle that I enjoyed a lot because there weren’t too many write-ins. Once I got on the setter’s wavelength the answers flowed at a steady pace, and while it wasn’t quite as devious as yesterday’s puzzle there were still some “ah-ha” moments along the way.

    I didn’t know FINGERSTALL but the answer was obvious enough from the wordplay. PIRATING was my LOI.

  10. This doesn’t necessarily relate to the Vatican: e.g. the CofE uses the Nicene Creed, which declares “I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church”.

    20min today – no holdups, though that gave me pause, also didn’t see with -> con to parse 4dn.

  11. 32 minutes. I thought this was a really nice puzzle. Not hard but lots of good clues. FINGERSTALL was my last in; I didn’t know the word and thought it might mean what you find at a finger buffet. I didn’t have a problem with ‘PC’s predecessor’ though a typewriter is a rather different sort of animal compared to a computer, so I can see why some would object.
  13. Another Grinding performance on a windy day up here in the NE. Well over the hour and an incomplete light at 8d though of course once I came to George’s excellent blog I remembered seeing it before (and had anyway missed the fairly obvious ‘finally’ device). Not really convinced by the typewriter definition but even dozy me saw it was an anagram of sorts! Would have likely given up after my usual 30m but lengthy delays on East Coast meant I had more time to spare. So far since start of November trains delayed for leaves, suicides, rain (in the electrics and the booking office) and now wind! Can’t wait for the winter to arrive!

    Edited at 2013-12-05 01:21 pm (UTC)

  14. Jack, you’re wrong about 15 being impossible to solve if you have Preston John (aka John from Lancs?) at 7. I ended up with Preston and then “solved” 15 as uncannonly. (Cannon = canon = musical work = air).

    I’m getting worse at this lark. Maybe I need a rest from it all.

  16. 55m. Blimey, there was clearly a wavelength for this puzzle and it and I were in different time zones. I had to cheat to finish, too, because I haven’t heard of this JOHN chappie and couldn’t see any reason to favour PRESTER over PRESTOR (or vice versa).
    There were several other unknowns in here today: dene, BEFORE THE MAST, SCARLET RUNNER, FINGERSTALL. This made life pretty darned difficult, but I didn’t do my self any favours by taking an embarrassingly long time to see a number of straightforward clues, including DINGO… doh!
    For the second time this week I need a lie down.
    1. “several other unknowns in here today: dene, BEFORE THE MAST, SCARLET RUNNER, FINGERSTALL.”
      Abusing the statistics, with billions of possible plants and only 10 or 20 you know, near enough 100% of all plants are unknown.

      45 minutes today, with breaks for 2 phone calls which probably helped more than hindered by getting me out of a solving rut. A few unknowns – Fingerstall, Scarlet Runner, Lehar; and a cuple guessed unable to parse – Quest and Unmannerly. Tricky
      Rob

  17. I had a go at this last night and couldn’t get going at all. Seemed fairly straightforward this morning (though I still managed a typo). Perhaps there are owl puzzles and lark puzzles.

    I rather liked ADDLE, among others.

  18. Found this straightforward apart from the unknowns BEFORE THE MAST, SCARLET RUNNER, and FINGERSTALL, though the wordplay for these didn’t offer (m)any other alternatives. Thought there were some nice clues in this, e.g. DINGO, PRESTER JOHN, and ADDLE, though I wasn’t keen on TYPEWRITER, as surely a PC requires a printer in order to have similar functionality.
  19. Off to a good start, including getting a couple I didn’t know from wordplay. But fell into some easy traps that fit but didn’t quite parse and certainly did muck up the checkers, and then – someone has to say it – was dispirited by the Khaki – Car Key (non)homophone. As always, I enjoyed finding words like Prester John in the mix (with e,t,o,n,s all there, I’m surprised not to have met him here before).

    Same generation as mctext, I wrote up my undergraduate theses on an IBM memory Selectric. I especially liked its feature of being able to cleanly ‘lift’ characters it had typed off the page by over-typing characters using a second ribbon backed with glue. Then, as now, the ability to correct is invaluable. Wish I had had a Selectric when I stuck mature into 3d.

    Edited at 2013-12-05 02:47 pm (UTC)

  20. 71 minutes, held up by pencilling in PRESTON PANS at 7d. Well, I’d heard of the battle, so it seemed plausible that he was a rebel who was defeated there, and anyway PANS seemed to relate to the privy, if it was a two-holer. Later, I remembered the novel by John Buchan.
    Thanks for elucidating the Private Investigator, the only one I couldn’t fully parse.

    Edited at 2013-12-05 03:08 pm (UTC)

    1. I had PRESTON KHAN at one point last night (Genghis’ fastidious younger brother). The Inuit may or may not have 47 different words for snow, but we seem to have an awful lot for a privy.
  21. So nobody else had raft instead of rind? I pondered G(raft)and so searched online for “raft skin” and of course rafts are often called skins by the cognoscenti…and they are tough! So no problems there, but it made “F-f-e-s-a-l” impossible. Hey ho.
    1. Raft was certainly my initial thought and I had a light F in place until I got the finger, as it were.
  22. Well I was convinced ‘Legendary leader insisted on a privy, we hear (7,4)was going to be the constipated Afghan warlord Mustafa Khan!
  23. This was a real G + 14a. Finally finished it well over the hour – probably nearer 90 minutes. Guessed at LOI 15a.
    After Monday’s success hubris has definitely kicked in these last few days.
  24. After yesterday’s ordeal, I found this more approachable than others appear to have. And, unusually, I managed to parse everything as I went along, so I’m chuffed with my completion time.
  25. Your holiday may have been ruined, but at least you have been able to do the crossword. Hope Mrs bt isn’t hopping mad that you’ve taken the time out.
  26. 7:52 for me, which I suppose sounds pretty good, but given that I hit the setter’s wavelength straight away and never really lost it, felt desperately slow. I solved the first two acrosses, switched to the downs and worked through them in order missing DELIBERATE (should have got that!), CONSTANCE (understandable?), PRESTER JOHN (understandable!) and PIRATING (understandable?), solved the remaining acrosses in order, and finally mopped up the missing downs.

    But so slowly! My poor 5dn’d brain felt as if it was wading through glue. Oh to be 30 or 40 years younger again. (Deep sigh!)

  27. 19’8″ with a lot of head scratching on the way. I knew Prester John from the book title, which somehow stayed with me from childhood (it’s quite a striking name). Knew little else about it. Fine blogging George – I’m not sure I would have cracked the parsing of LEHAR, though not many Austrians go L?H?R. I thought it might be an &lit, so had LA as a note, HR as a king, and no idea about the E or the instructions.
    The world of computing dawned for me with the advent of the Amstrad PCW. Happy days of liberating word-processing, programming in DRLogo and Mallard Basic, and persuading it to scan and do desk-top publishing. Now there was a true predecessor.
  28. Came to this a day late, so this was my “Friday morning” puzzle, and no less enjoyable for that. The clueing of PRESTER JOHN brought back memories of better-forgotten schoolboy jokes of the Mustafa —- variety. Happy days! The parsing of our ill-bred lady on vacation took time, but the penny finally dropped. Liked BEFORE THE MAST, and the tricksy THE LIKES OF. Enjoyed ADDLE “with flying”. LOI DOVE – probably because I don’t associate “political” doves with pacifism per se, and was running down rabbit-holes populated variously by Quakers, conscientious objectors, &c. Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right. Belloc right on the money, as usual.

Comments are closed.