Times 25651

Solving time: 1:10:27 – although I’m pretty sure I fell asleep in the middle somewhere, but I’m not sure how long for!

A tricky puzzle that I probably would have enjoyed more had I not been so tired. Lots of good wordplay.

It’s hard to pick a COD as there are several contenders, but I think I’ll go for 4d for it’s ‘chat about old times’ construction.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 BOAT RACE = BRACE about OATh
5 S + CATTY – A queen being a female cat
9 OVER (on) + LOOK (air)
10 REV + IE + noW
12 DISAPPOINTING = (AIDING TOPSPIN)*
15 R + OUSE
16 ARHYTHMIC = (CHARITY + HiM)*
17 SORTILEGE = LEG (member) in SORTIE (charge) – not a word I knew, and it took me a while to come up with it from the wordplay.
19 DUBAI = (I + BUD) rev about A
20 ASK FOR TROUBLE – dd
22 PICNIC = “PICK” (cream) + “NICK” (the jug, i.e. prison) – ‘Money for jam’ is an expression similar to ‘money for old rope’, and a picnic is something easy, more commonly used in the negative, as in ‘that was no picnic’.
23 PENLIGHT = mEN in PLIGHT
25 VOYAGE = O in VictorY + EG (say) rev after A
26 PERSONAL = PEAL (ringing) about aRSON
Down
1 Boxer + ROAD (way) + BRUSH (encounter)
2 pACE
3 RELAPSE = PALER rev + S/E (bridge opponents)
4 CHOCOLATE-BOX = (BE COOL + CHAT)* + O + X (times)
6 CHEMIST = C (key) + MIST (film) about HE (explosive)
7 THINGAMABOB = (HATING A BOMB)* – I was glad this was an anagram as I wouldn’t have spelt it ike this otherwise!
8 YAWL = LAY (song) about W (women) – A sailing boat
11 IN THE EXTREME = IN (popular) + TEXT (words) about HE (the man) + REME (part of army – Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers)
13 SQUIREARCHY = SEARCH + Y about QUIRe
14 OCCIDENTAL = (IDOL + ACCENT)*
18 INKLING = LINKING with the L moved down three places
19 DOODLES = DO (gathering, party) + SELDOm rev
21 SPIV = VIPS rev
24 GIN = GI (man fighting) + N (knight) – ‘a short’ is the definition

34 comments on “Times 25651”

  1. I’m glad this wasn’t my Friday as it took me a full 90 minutes with virtually every clue a struggle to solve. I kept expecting a breakthrough, an answer that would go in and unlock the rest of the puzzle, but it never came. I was however pleased to get there without resort to aids, even for my LOI, SORTILEGE where I was on the point of reaching for a dictionary when the wordplay suddenly clicked and gave me the solution. I never heard of it either, and I’d also have spelt THINGAMABOB differently but for the anagrist.
  2. DNF .. 17ac did for me.

    I did try various permutations around ‘LEG’, and I’m sure I considered SORTILEGE at one point but firmly rejected it as absolutely, definitely not a word. So eventually I turned to the aids and found it absolutely, definitely is a word…. ‘been that sort of a day. I’m going to bed.

    Edited at 2013-12-06 03:32 am (UTC)

  3. A decent puzzle once more, but the SW was made difficult by the crossing SORTILEGE and SQUIREARCHY – one unknown for most, the other unknown to some and unfamiliar to more. Had I heard of the Ravel opus, I think ‘elusive’ is the last thing SORTILEGE would have been…

  4. Thank you for the detailed parsing – which I definitely needed for picnic, gin (a guess), and ace. I made good progress otherwise until defeated by sortilege. I was pleased to get to write the newly learnt cat/queen directly in.
      1. I had tried the particular Mephisto ref below, (conclusion – not ready for Mehpisto yet), so I also quickly wrote thingamabob in, but did consider the gum/gam spelling. And I added REME to the various TA, RE, RA, SAS military acronyms.

        What I did think, re the cat, is that I do the puzzle for the real enjoyment of working clues out, to learn proper English (and improper colloquialisms – money for jam today), and perhaps like mctext and z8b8, for the pleasure of being reminded of good but less used words (yawl). I wouldn’t ever want to find that the solving had become a simple translation exercise (queen > cat or er, left > on or port, painter > ra, done). With only minor prejudice, that would be as boring as memorising all the 3 letter scrabble words. Or of working the US puzzles, where knowing a group of arcane three and four letter words and abbreviations (Eno, PDT, Ara, WBA, TOR, ELO, REO) is often the key to a fast solve. Less fun, that.

        1. One of the joys of doing your solving in public on this forum is that after coming across an unfamiliar or obscure word, you can comment “Well that’s a stupid word, how am I supposed to know that?” and then have it pointed out by someone that you said exactly the same thing 2 years earlier, the last time the unfamiliar or obscure word appeared.

          In other words, the vagaries of the human memory do their best to make sure nothing ever becomes too familiar and automatic…

          1. Yes, point noted. There are definitely a couple solving lessons which I have to re-learn almost weekly.

            And thanks for not embarrassing me by noticing that bacKatcha is meant to have a K not a C.

  5. Another quality and challenging puzzle. Appreciated the sly definitions (“rough” in 1dn, “very” in 11dn, etc.). Last in were BROAD BRUSH and the inevitable SORITILEGE. Like others I had to look it up. Now to wrangle it into the conversation during tonight’s cribbage.
  6. And there was I thinking it was 80 minutes of my life I’d never get back again and how inadequate I’d feel when completion times of 10 minutes or so would start rolling in. Now I feel the struggle was actually worthwhile.
    Like others, I’d heard of 17a, but had no idea what it meant – still one lives and learns.
    Oh, for some nice easy ones next week!
  7. 25 minutes, and now I have a rough idea of what SORTILEGE means. One of those “known unknowns”, the sort that occasionally turns up on Coutdown from one of the brighter sparks who knows most words in the dictionary but can’t string two of them together. Over to you, Susie…
    Lots of good deception around – On air to give over and look was beastly – and time lost wondering, for example, whether SKITTY was a word that might mean absent-minded. Even the 3-letter GIN took some head scratching with both crossers in place. Ah, yes, short’s the definition.
    Definitely needed help from the wordplay with the spelling of Whatsisface and ARHYTHMIC.
    It’s been a tricky week – credit to setters and bloggers alike.
  8. 40 minute struggle here with no real easy ones as I recall. 7D came up in a Mephisto I blogged a couple of weeks ago but with a different spelling so like others I was grateful it was an anagram!

    Didn’t connect SORTILEGE with “seeing what’s on the cards”. Derived it from wordplay and checkers (my LOI) but vaguely thought it had something to do with witch doctors and bones and I was taking “cards” literally and thinking of say Tarot. Took ages for the penny to drop.

    Great blog Dave

  9. L’Enfant et les Sortileges is an opera by Ravel. I’d heard of it so knew the word, but not what it meant.
  10. This felt like 2 separate puzzles in one – 3/4 quite straightforward but then the SE corner took an age. However my LOI was PICNIC, which was Monday’s FELLOE all over again – the wordplay pointed to it but the definition was unknown to me. After several mental alphabet run-throughs, pectin (potential jam connection?) was the only other word I could think of that fitted the checkers, but PICNIC won out. Also didn’t know SQUIREARCHY but the wordplay was clear enough.
  11. Another fail. I had all but 17 done in about 20 minutes but 8 minutes later I decided I was never going to get it so gave up.

    Roll on next week.

  12. Didn’t find this too hard,completing all but 17 in 38 minutes,but 17 really stumped me and I resorted to a dictionary. I have heard of sortilege because of the afore-mentioned opera, but I didn’t know what it meant, so even if I’d thought of it I may not have written it in with any confidence.
    Nice end to the week.
  13. So relieved that everyone else battled with this one – it took me 35 minutes and had I been at work, doing this in my lunch hour, I would have given up long before then. Luckily being at home, the urge to finish the crossord was greater than any interest in doing the dusting!
  14. Inconsistent to an extent this one, with a good many doable and some that required a lot of thought. I’ll agree that it is primarily a quality offering however, and I too really liked the OX play for ‘old times’.

    Thanks
    Chris G.

  15. A struggle again: left side completed before much in at right – even so needed aid to get SORTILEGE from checkers. (Ravel not really helpful)
    About 45min with 24 LOI, which I eventually had to be GUN – gu(y)+n ‘man fighting’ being definition – and two other errors from a typo, as forgot to check.
  16. 51 mins and I never felt that I was on the setter’s wavelength. There is nothing wrong with the cluing and it was mostly down to some well-disguised definitions and cleverly misleading wordplay. I don’t feel so bad now I’ve seen that Sue took 35 mins.

    My time would have been quicker had I seen the anagrammatical elements in the clues for OCCIDENTAL, ARYTHMIC and CHOCOLATE BOX. My brain was so fried that at one point I was considering “Gen” for 24dn as “a short man fighting”, i.e. short for General, but thankfully I decided that there isn’t a “Sir Gen” in a book that I haven’t read, and I finally parsed it correctly. Like quite a few of you SORTILEGE was my LOI.

    1. I quite fancied gen too, thinking that it might be gent without the t (“a short man”), but this left the definition as “fighting knight”, which didn’t look too promising.
  17. No idea re SORTILEGE, looked it up, and I entered PECTIN for PICNIC. “Money for jam”? Not in my vocabulary. I got through the rest, though, in about 40 minutes. Thought IN THE EXTREME was quite good. Better luck to me next week, hopefully, and regards.
  18. About an hour but with gen[t] as it seemed better than gun or gin. Not now. A decidedly tough number. Surprised by the strangeness of sortilege to so many. Picnic neat.
  19. 20m. In marked contrast to yesterday, I seem to have been on the right wavelength for this one, even though I didn’t get to it until very late. It helps when you know all the words. I didn’t know exactly what SORTILEGE meant, but I had a vague idea and that was enough. I was also helped by remembering that THINGAMABOB was spelled like this in a recent Mephisto (even though it wasn’t) and the fact that someone used the phrase CHOCOLATE BOX in a conversation today. A little dumb luck goes a long way.
  20. 18:24, so another who found this an obviously tricky puzzle which was also bang on the wavelength, having struggled elsewhere during the week. Very busy during the day, so I also reverted to the solving method of my early years doing the Times,, back when I was a student (see photo) and saved today’s to be a treat at what modern usage calls “beer o’clock”, which perhaps explains why I also enjoyed it a lot.
  21. Having “missed” a day, I did yesterday’s this morning, reasonably quickly, then started on this one on the homeward journey. Definitely not quickly. Some very adroit clueing, with seemingly not even one straightforward clue – Well done, setter! This was one of those tough ones which was actually very enjoyable.

    A DNF, as I had to resort to aids for SORTILEGE, still in the realms of the magical, but not in Ravel’s sense. Now mentally filed under divination, cartomancy.

  22. DNF. The day filled up by by having to take the dog for an hour and a half twice (Mrs bt broken bones in foot) and having to collect miss bt from Bristol Uni on a busy Friday night. Am much better first thing in am.

    Edited at 2013-12-06 11:30 pm (UTC)

  23. Having been bang on the setter’s wavelength yesterday, I was right off it for most of today’s puzzle and finished in a miserable 24:22. I wasn’t helped by wondering if the first word of 1dn could BLOOD when I had just the B in place, somehow imagining that BLOOD could = “rough” (as a noun). I even used the O to get OVERLOOK, and when the D was confirmed as well, I was sure I was on the right track. After five or ten minutes, I realised my mistake, but was so exhausted by that time that I made heavy weather of the last few clues – starting with SORTILEGE, a word I knew from the Ravel piece (which I’ve sung in a performance of) but didn’t associate with cards.
  24. Late start due to attending a superb concert at Sage Gateshead, but an enjoyable solve around midnight. Not quick, but solved without aids. I also toyed with ‘skitty’ and ‘gen’, but, thankfully, took the time to consider more carefully and got them right.

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