Times 25653 – No mystery in this dance!

Solving time: 28 minutes

Music: Elvis Costello, Brutal Youth

Another easy Monday, I would say. I gained considerable confidence by finishing the Saturday and Sunday puzzles this weekend, so this did not prove to be much of a challenge. Not a bad puzzle, but one where the literals and enumerations will give you a lot of help.

I still have a few answers left unparsed as I start the blog, but I doubt there will be any clinkers. If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s making a misstep when it’s my turn to be the know-it-all.

Across
1 WILLPOWER, W(ILL POW) ER. In this one, ‘ER’ is most probably Elizabeth Regina.
6 SOFIA, SOF(I)A. A rather well-known clue.
9 ROMEO, cryptic definition, referring to the presence of ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’ in the NATO radio alphabet, although not in other widely-used ones.
10 OBSERVANT, O + B + SERVANT
11 ANTWERP, anagram of NEW PART, a very smooth anagram.
12 BREATHE, BR + E + A + THE, where ‘inspire’ has its literal meaning.
13 COUNTERFEITERS, anagram of SET FREE IN COURT, another smooth but not particularly challenging clue.
17 HENRY THE FOURTH, cryptic definition, referring the the historical plays of Shakespeare.
21 AFRICAN, A FR (I) CAN.
23 GLEANER, [bein]G + LEANER, just slapped in from the literal by me.
25 SCHOOLING, S C(H[igher])OOLING.
26 TACIT, T[imes] A[re] C[onservative] I[n] T[one]. My first in, would be omitted if we still did that.
27 WEDGE, double definition. I nearly put in ‘slice’, but it’s called a ‘fade’ if you’re trying to do it as your approach shot.
28 EIDERDOWN, anagram of ROW, INDEED.
 
Down
1 WAR DANCE, anagram of A NEW CARD. That’s two anagrams with ‘new’ spelled out.
2 LIMIT, cryptic definition, where a drunk is presumably over the legal limit.
3 PROTESTER, PRO + TESTER, where ‘demonstrating kind’ is the literal.
4 WHOPPER, double definition.
5 RISIBLE, RI(SIB)LE, where ‘sib’ = sibling.
6 SURGE, SUR(G[uerillas])E. This has become every politician’s solution to every problem.
7 FLATTERER, FLATTER + ER, which is most likely Edwardus Rex here. Imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery.
8 ANTHEM A + N + THEM[e].
14 UNEARTHED, double definition. I started to put in ‘ungrounded’, and had to switch from American English to British English in mid-entry.
15 TWO-SEATER, anagram of ROA[d] TEST WE. I was held up because I was looking for 6-3 instead of 3-6 for a while.
16 SHERATON, S(HERAT)ON. An elegant style of furniture, to be exact.
18 TONTINE, cryptic definition, as far as I can tell. The ‘one’ and ‘totally’ are tempting, but don’t seem to lead anywhere.
19 ENGAGED, double definition.
20 WARSAW, WAS RAW upside down.
22 CHOSE, double definition, where French ‘chose’ = ‘an article’ May be tough for monolingual solvers.
24 NACHO, found in [Tijua]NA CHO[ose], I would not say hidden.

56 comments on “Times 25653 – No mystery in this dance!”

  1. 33 minutes with 18, 16 and 22 responsible for taking me over the half-hour. I also lost some time previously after writing in SLICE at 27 but the ‘I’ checker in 14dn resulting from this looked unlikely from the start.

    18dn looks barely cryptic to me, pretty much a straight definition, surely? I thought of TONTINE immediately once all the checkers were in place but didn’t know exactly what it meant so I was hoping for confirmation from wordplay which turned out to be absent.

    1. I remeber many decades ago in some atuarial test being asked to define a TONTINE and then, given some information on the participants, to work out who was likely to pocket how much. I think this clue would have got full marks for the definition part of the question.

      Tontines are illegal in the UK for obvious reasons since actuarial factors are most unlikely to decide who gains the pot!

  2. Undone by the two unknowns, SHERATON (Kabul is the only city I know in Afghanistan – I plumped for ‘Sharpton’) and TONTINE. The latter is impossible to get if you don’t know it, since, as Vinyl points out, it is a mere cryptic definition. Eugh! as they might say in the Square Mile.
  3. Off to a very slow start, with I think TACIT my FOI. I suppose the crypticity of 18d, if there is any, comes from ‘totally’: ‘I totally enjoyed that movie’ doesn’t mean no one else did. I knew I knew one other city besides Kabul, but I couldn’t recall it until I got HENRY THE FOURTH in. CHOSE my LOI, as I was stuck on ‘une’ and ‘le’ for ‘French article’.
    1. Not sure I quite get your meaning, but ‘totally’ in 18dn surely is to be taken literally: last ‘man’ standing gets the lot…Surely there’s no Hanna Montanaesque West Coast talk allusion intended here!
      1. It has to be taken literally, or we don’t have a definition. But I meant that it could also be taken in West Coast sense–which is in fact how I first read it–and that second sense might (just) save the clue from pure non-crypticity. (Who’s Hanna Montana when she’s at home? Or would I rather not know?)
    2. I think the crypticity resides in ‘one’, which one first reads as the impersonal one, if one is anything like one (in the royal sense), but then realises is in fact the cardinal ‘one’, that being the total number enjoying the bounty in the end.
      1. Memorably put. But I can’t help feeling that with ‘tin’, ‘one’ and the last letter of ‘at’ the letters are there to shamble into position somehow as well. On edit – that’s it. the letters are generated, ‘one’ engulfing ‘tin’ en route. Well, could be.

        Edited at 2013-12-09 09:02 am (UTC)

  4. Not a lot to say really, except to co-moan about the clue for TONTINE. (Dare I say “cobblers”?)

    Best of the day is the anagram at 13ac. It might be obvious, but I’d have been very happy to write such a clue.

  5. 15:17 … most time spent on the problematically unproblematic TONTINE, which I think works well enough.

    I liked WILLPOWER for the surface but COUNTERFEITERS is a beauty. If it’s original, it’s worth the price of admission.

  6. Yes, a nice pleasant Monday puzzle. No problem with TONTINE although I have to say that I only know it from crosswords.

    Oddly it is a brand name for pillows in Australia – I say “oddly” because I would think that being a participant in a tontine was hardly conducive to a good night’s sleep.

    1. Nice one! Well spotted. Quite a dated usage I’d have thought, but none the less valid.
      1. Maybe Eth, since it’s the radio, and Rambo, captivated by her sparkle, has punched the lights out of poor old Ron.

  7. Left with a blank at the unknown TONTINE, and with SHERATON put in with a ?, since I knew neither the style nor the town.

  8. No problem with TONTINE, which I knew from the very funny film The Wrong Box (Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellars etc) based on Robert Louis Stevenson.
  9. About 10 minutes for all but 18dn, and then a further ten wasted trying and failing to come up with something for that. What a dreadful clue.
  10. No finish from me today: interrupted by a telephone call but also ignorant of TONTINE (marshes in Rome, perhaps?). While I recognise that you can drag all the letters out of the clue, I don’t think there’s a way of assembling them in the right order, or even an indication that you should. It reads like a cryptic definition, and if you don’t know the word, you’re sunk. As I would be were I ever to be part of such as scheme – I’d be the last man standing only to discover it was either valueless due to inflation/interest rates/stock market collapse or it had all been spent on administration charges (you b’stards, you know who you are!).
    As for the rest of the puzzle, sailed through the top half, staggered through the rest. WARSAW is probably an oldie but is my pick for today’s goldie.
    My spellchecker also doesn’t know tontine. But then it doesn’t know spellchecker either

    Edited at 2013-12-09 09:23 am (UTC)

  11. Didn’t object to 18dn, but then I knew the word. In fact it turned up in some other crossword only the other day.
    But all else to one side, what a fantastic clue is 13ac. Such a lovely surface, and I didn’t find it straightforward since having the initial C I thought it might start CONS…
    This crossword is surely a good way of finding out who is a glass-half-empty person, and who half-full 🙂
  12. Straightforward Monday solve but needed to cheat for TONTINE: an elegant cryptic which probably deserves the criticism it is getting.
  13. Had to cheat for TONTINE. Never heard of it, except as a pillow brand. Came hear to have a whinge about it, only to find that it has been pre-whinged.

    Still, it was never going to ruin my day after going two-nil up.

  14. A straightforward puzzle with some smooth clues – at least until 18D. There’s a (locally) well-known hotel/restaurant called the TONTINE but I had no idea of its meaning so went for tinmine instead, which had some superficial plausibility. Though I encounter words I don’t know in the Times crossword several times a week, I think this is the first time I’ve met one clued via a cryptic definition, and it brought back exactly the same set of feelings I had when CALUMET cropped up in a similar fashion in the Guardian earlier this year.
    1. I cheated to get this, then you jogged my memory of theTontine Hotel in
      Peebles. Probably no connection …
      1. Based on a Google search, it doesn’t appear to be a common name, but I was referring to the one at Staddlebridge near Northallerton. Lower down, grestyman also mentions a Tontine, which I’m guessing might be the Staddlebridge one too (I think he lives in Yorkshire, though I’m not sure why I think that.)
  15. An easyish 20 minute start to the week with some very obvious definitions. 13A easily the best of the bunch. TONTINE easily the worst. It’s an obscure word and should never have been clued in this way.
  16. Clearly this was right up my street, as I knocked it off faster than Jason on the Club leaderboard, which is an event that happens about once a year (the real acid test, of course, is finishing faster than Magoo, which happens approximately no times a year). My only brief hold-up was SLICE instead of WEDGE to begin with, but as suggested above, that ‘I’ as an end letter always made it look a bit shaky.

    As regards the TONTINE, I am indebted to the film The Wrong Box, a very pleasant British comedy film of the 60s featuring a young Michael Caine and a whole raft of other stars. Ralph Richardson and John Mills play brothers who are the last two survivors of a tontine, and the plot (based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson) demonstrates why such schemes are now illegal, as various characters attempt to keep alive / dispose of each brother as appropriate, with hilarious consequences etc. etc. Anyway, the opening sequence explains exactly what a tontine is, and how it works, and clearly lodged in my mind, though it’s years since I saw the film.

  17. Nice leisurely Monday morning 40 mins cruise. I knew TONTINE as it was the name of my local many years ago on Penny Meadow, Ashton-under-Lyne. ‘Tonnies’, it seems were common schemes at one time in that neck of the woods.

    By the way Vinyl, to be mega-pedantic, ‘Chose’ as in article exists in English as a noun. A chose in action is a description of matterless property (see Theft Act 1968)

  18. I must be alone then in having TONTINE as COD. Probably because I really like the Bryant & May series of books by Christopher Fowler, one of which uses this arcane device as part of a plot-line.
  19. 16 mins. I knew TONTINE so no quibble from me about it, although I can understand why some of you are less than impressed. Big Tone and Tim beat me to it with their recollections of The Wrong Box. As a youngster I found the film hilarious.
  20. Pleasant and mostly easyish Monday puzzle, except for TONTINE, a word and concept I’d never encountered before, so had to cheat be resorting to the dictionary. Now that I know what the word means, I can’t quite see why this clue has drawn so much flak. It seems to me a perfectly reasonable cryptic def.
  21. Pleasant and easyish indeed – 7:41 – I knew TONTINE but did put slice (which I did sort of recognise as a golfing term) before realising I needed a wedge.
  22. Twenty minutes or a bit less, LOI ROMEO and LIMIT. Knew Herat having just read A Thousand Splendid Suns… knew TONTINE as a French legal thing you used to do to avoid your kids inheriting your house instead of your wife… no longer necessary if you have a French marriage contract.
    13 ac what a magnificent anagram.
    Golf course frozen solid in the sunshine.
  23. Since a TONTINE has been a focal point of excellent episodes of “The Simpsons” and “Archer” (seriously, check out the latter if it is available in the UK for some of the sharpest writing in the US).

    SHERATON from definition and part wordplay, and I guess we’re in the two cryptic defintion Monday phase of the Times.

  24. I quite like “slice” for 27a, as it does fit both parts of the double definition, a slice being used by a tennis player on his/her approach to the net, in order to keep the ball low in their opponent’s court. It held me up for a while, anyway, so perhaps it was an intentional ruse thrown in by the by the compiler.
  25. Had one missing today (tontine). Warsaw, Schooling and Chose all held me up for a long time. No trouble with the rest. Counterfeiters is a beauty.
  26. Luckily I did Warsaw before arriving at wedge. Was Tony Hancock also in the wrong box? I thought I recalled him and the great Peter Cook being in it. I’m also sure tontine has been in the puzzle on numerous previous occasions without protest. Perhaps it’s been better cryptically defined but the “one” gives it away if you know the word. All CDs are impossible without aids if you don’t.
  27. Not only did I know tontine from the Wrong Box (also had Ralph Richardson in as a boring polymath) but also a Miss Marple episode (the real ones with Joan Hickson, not the pale successors). The accountant is trying to tip Miss Marple off without breaching professional etiquette by of all things doing a crossword. He says he’s stuck on one clue then suddenly exclaims the answer is “tontine”. Jane Marple takes the hint..
  28. 25m DNF as had no idea about 18d which is annoying twice over. First the unhelpful cluing and second I live a few miles away from and have frequented a local restaurant called The Tontine but never knew that the name had a special significance. Hey ho! Live and learn and I did like the rest of the puzzle especially 13a and 17a. Will watch said old film when I can track it down.
  29. About 30 minutes, ending with TONTINE and CHOSE. I vaguely remembered TONTINE from other appearances here, and I confess that my speculation that ‘chose’ means ‘thing’ in French was a complete guess. I know a smattering of French words, but this wasn’t one of them, though the definition was pretty clear with all the checkers. Agreed, 13 is an achievement, so thanks to the setter and vinyl as well. Regards.
  30. A pleasant Monday solve, with some nice anagrams, about 35 mins in all. Knew TONTINE from an Agatha Christie mystery, where one supplied the plot impetus, and the clue was excellent misdirection – the wording implied all sorts of letter jumbling, but it was just a simple quick crossword definition after all.

    The clue could also at a pinch point to “tin mine” (yes I know it’s two words): A tin mine is “a scheme to generate money”, think Bolivia’s Simon Patino, and “one totally enjoys at last” is Tin! Mine! Mine! All Mine! (said in a Neddy Seagoon voice).

  31. 7:53 here for a nice straightforward Monday puzzle.

    I too remember the TONTINE in The Wrong Box, which featured a whole raft of British character actors (I particularly remember Wilfrid Lawson), but I recall that the word was already familiar – perhaps from the Times crossword where it appeared (and still appears) regularly.

  32. Same experience as others, knowing ‘tontine’ from the film plot, and being initially seduced by ‘slice’ at 27a before the checkers confirmed the unlikelihood of a final ‘I’ for 14d.
    Pleased to get it right after making a boo-boo in the Grauniad.

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