Times 25,660

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
As I was feeling a bit tired last night, I decided not to stay up for a midnight solve and blog (also, for once, the prospect of staying up to catch the end of the cricket didn’t inspire me…congratulations to our Australian friends on the win, but I’m sure you understand my lack of enthusiasm for necessarily seeing it as it happened). Anyway, I found today’s puzzle about as easy to master as a Mitchell Johnson bouncer, and only just crept in under the half hour mark, even when I was nice and fresh this morning. At time of writing, the leaderboard suggests that lots of other people struggled as well (only about a dozen sub-30 minutes and not a neutrino in sight), so I am going to go out on a limb and suggest this was a tough puzzle, and there may well be lots of people waiting for answers.

Across
1 UTOPIA – University, I in TOP, A.
5 SHOELACE – (HOLES)*, ACE(=”one”) &lit.
9 PILLOWCASE – LOW(=”short”) in (SPECIAL)*.
10 BRIG – River in BIG(=”major”); a brig is also a two-masted ship which regularly appears in crosswordland, and the short version of brigadier.
11 AFTER YOU – dAFTER YOUngster; with the word break in the right place, this rather leapt off the page.
12 CHATTY – Husband in CATTY.
13 SPAT – double def.; unless your name is Spiggott and you’re auditioning for the part of Tarzan, it’s obviously more normal to come across spats in the plural, there being one for each foot.
15 OBSCURED – I liked the fact that the breakdown of this clue involves splitting it into a very large chunk and a single word chunk; OB=Old Boy=alumnus, so when an alumnus who hasn’t been well has good news, it’s because O.B.’S CURED.
18 MOORFOWL – Male 0(=”duck”) OR Female OWL.
19 SOUL – indicating that SEOUL, the Asian capital, is pronounced the same but written differently, hence “only heard” to indicate the homophone. Not sure why “likewise”, as the clue appears to work perfectly well without it? See jack’s comment, in fact it’s a double homophone.
21 MALIGN – Minutes ALIGN.
23 BLAST OFF – LAST in BOFFIN after dropping the IN.
25 AIDA – AID(=”promote”, as in the slogan “Lucozade aids recovery”), A. If you pronounce that very differently you get the opera AIDA. My last one in.
26 LARYNGITIS – (ITSANGRILY)*.
27 ANTONYMY – (Mark) ANTONY is the general, followed by MY(=”the writer’s”); “ups” and “downs” are two obvious antonyms.
28 PIGSTY – Grammar Schools in PITY.
 
Down
2 THIEF – HIE(=”HIGH”) in Time, Fine
3 POLYESTER – YES(=”indeed”) in (PETROL)*.
4 ALWAYS – GALWAY’S.
5 STATUE OF LIBERTY – cryptic def. which suddenly looks very obvious when you spot it.
6 OVERCAST – OVER(=”surplus”), CAST(=”projected”).
7 LIBRA – LIBRA is the “L” in LSD (the pre-decimal currency rather than the drug), so here is just “pound”; the rest is B(“note”) in LIRA, one of several European currencies which was replaced by the Euro, and is thus no longer valid currency on the continent.
8 COINTREAU – (ANEUROTIC)*. One of those drinks which I suddenly notice being heavily pushed around Christmas (and in my experience results in a half-drunk bottle of same hanging around untouched the rest of the year). See also: advocaat; Bailey’s.
14 PROBATION – PRO(=”for”), BAT(“one at the wicket”), 1, ON(“bowling”). The obligatory cricket clue to mark the passing of the Ashes.
16 UPSETTING – If you have a traditional thermostat, you might raise the temperature by UPping the SETTING.
17 DOWNPLAY – DOWN(=”drink”), PLAY(=”performance”).
20 CATNIP – C(scientifically, the constant speed of light, as in e=mc2), (PINTA)rev. You probably have to be of a certain age to remember the Milk Marketing Board, and their slogan “Drinka Pinta Milk A Day”.
22 IMAGO – Maiden in IAGO; the imago is the adult stage of development of a butterfly, and a monarch is a type of butterfly..
24 FAINT Female AIN’T.

50 comments on “Times 25,660”

  1. Isn’t it “taps” reversed, rather than DD? Well, maybe not. Still – saliva ain’t water, and that past tense tends not to be used in US English.
    1. I’ll accept the point about saliva not being water (though you can obviously spit out water if that’s what happens to be in your mouth at the time) but a) not at all sure how you could get the required meaning from reversing taps, and b) you can’t be entirely surprised if a London paper uses English English rather than US English…
    2. It took me a while to remember that USE uses “spit” for the past tense. I spent a while contemplating a comment on spitted before I realised that would make me look doubly ignorant. But here’s a question: in USE does (eg) I Spit on Your Grave have a present or past tense feel? no Anglo-US teasing, I just wondered.
      1. Interestingly in spite of being the usual US moaner, I use spat in enough circumstances that there’s no whinging today from me.
        Didn’t know imago, found many others quite clear once I had got them but quite obscure before. Thanks for the explanation on Old Boy, and on Brig as an abbreviation

        Edited at 2013-12-17 05:38 pm (UTC)

  2. 28 mins and I’m glad I’m not alone in having found this one tough.

    I thought it was going to be easy when UTOPIA and THIEF went in right away, but after that there were some very chewy clues. I even struggled to see STATUE OF LIBERTY, which shows how much my brain felt like it was being fried. I had trouble with the LIBRA/BRIG crossers and the SW corner in general. AIDA was my LOI.

    I agree with Tim’s parsing of SPAT.

  3. Nice stuff , which took me over the hour. COD to ANTONYMY, but last in DOWNPLAY. My sister, aged about 7, demanded a sip of Cointreau from my father – who would give her anything – went into shock and then uttered the immortal line, ‘It burnt my tongue!’
  4. Yes, a tough slowish solve, no time as a long phone-call in the middle. Puzzled by the catnip def. till I looked it up – hadn’t realised cats like its scent and was wondering whether an orgiastic kitten into S and M wasn’t too much for the Times. Aida my last in too – I didn’t look at it long but found it wearisome, one of those clues with a low interest coefficient. Which – or the avoidance of which – is partly what it’s all about.
  5. It’s a 3-way homophone SOUL SEOUL and SOLE (only). “Likewise” indicates the additional one.
    1. That makes sense now, though I still think it adds an unnecessary layer to a good clue which didn’t really need it.
  6. Surely it’s little details like that that add to the enjoyment? BTW the butterfly at 22ac is ‘monarch’ not ’emperor’. There is an emperor, but involving that would add an extra layer that I don’t think is intended in this instance.

    Edited at 2013-12-17 11:33 am (UTC)

    1. I was wondering who’d be first to spot that. Yes, I think as I wrote, I was musing on the number of other possibilities for examples of butterflies, of which emperor, for one, would have worked equally well, and crept surreptitiously from brain to hand.

      Edited at 2013-12-17 11:40 am (UTC)

  7. What a strange experience. Initially got into “the zone” (yeuch!) solving by intuition – S of L went in on first three checkers and a confirming glance at the clue – and sped up my writing in anticipation of a sub-10.
    Then bounced off most of the bottom half, especially its Western shores. 22 was a tentative HENRY (monarch finally gives H, short for the unit) and the rest a rather unconvincing cryptic definition. I believe that’s more or less what we were supposed to think.
    DOWNPLAY was being obfuscated by FOREPLAY at the same time, forgetting this is not the ST. And in any case, I couldn’t understand how any word could end ?Y?Y Overall time pushed to 22 minutes.
    Even when I wrote it in, I didn’t twig what ANTONYMY meant – it looked like the sort of word the Bard would invent if he was short of 4 syllable for the pentameter – “the multitudinous seas antonymy”, that sort of thing.
    I’ve never been able to pronounce Seoul properly (or spell it without checking, for that matter) so it might just as well sound that way. And how odd to have a “doesn’t sound like” for AIDA.
    OB’S CURED pleased me most. Interesting grid

    Edited at 2013-12-17 11:37 am (UTC)

  8. 23m. I seem to have got off relatively lightly with this one. I found it mostly straightforward but got badly stuck in the SW. Enjoyable puzzle.
    A couple of queries:
    > Is “with a very different sound” just supposed to indicate that AIDA isn’t pronounced the same as AID, A? If so it seems odd, and entirely superfluous.
    > Does 5ac SHOELACE work? The whole clue works as a definition, but the wordplay implies that the one (ACE) has to go “in” the anagram of HOLES, which it doesn’t.
  9. After struggling to the finish line (well over an hour in 3 separate sittings), it’s very comforting to come to this blog and find you are not alone. One doesn’t feel quite so inadequate.
    Thanks for explaining 27a. Mark Antony indeed! Clever though.
  10. A bit of a slowly slowly catchee monkey puzzle where each clue had to be worked over. I think 13A needs a “perhaps” or “for example” because without it one has saliva which isn’t water. And does 2D work, “hie” being pronounced “hee” rather than “high”? Thought 5D was a bit daft – hardly cryptic at all. All in all a bit of a grind.
    1. I’ve always pronounced “hie” as “high”, Jim, and assumed that was universal, though I probably should have learned from this blog never to assume anything about pronunciation. That said, the only on-line sources I can find agree with “high”.

      I take the point about 5dn barely seeming cryptic at all once you have the answer, but speaking as someone who took quite a while to get that answer, I certainly didn’t put it into the category of those clues we occasionally get which are best described as “non-cryptic cryptics”. If you spot it at first look, I can see how your mileage might vary, though.

      1. Like Tim I have never encountered hie other than as “high”, but I thought I agreed with Jim about water/saliva until I discovered to my surprise that Chambers gives one definition of water as “saliva”.
          1. I wondered about this clue also, when I solved it, because of course “HIE” is pronounced always as “HIGH” and even if it were pronounced “HEE” then it still wouldn’t work as a traditional homophone clue.
            However, the way the clue is worded excuses it IMO. “What sounds like high” suggests : “take this bit of the word “thief” i.e. the word “hie”, which does indeed sound like “high”. If it had been something like “hurry, we’re told” (or even “high, we’re told”) or similar, then it wouldn’t have worked.

            I thought the clues to OBSCURED and ANTONYMY in particular were masterful.

      2. It’s a pityI was busy yesterday organising a dance so didn’t get a chance to explore this further

        Taken in isolation of course “hie” would probably sound like “high” but it isn’t in isolation. It’s part of THEIF in which it’s pronounced “hee”. To use a homophone in the way the setter has is for me very unsatisfactory

  11. Talk about a sting in the tail! I raced through 3/4 of the puzzle with everything flowing nicely, completing each section in turn until I was left with only the SW corner bounded by SPAT and OF LIBERTY and the LAR of 26ac. And there I remained with absolutely nothing coming to mind for half-an-hour or more. Managed eventually to work out MOORFOWL and nearly to complete the grid but in the end I gave up on 27ac and used aids.

    Edited at 2013-12-17 07:06 pm (UTC)

  12. I thought the setter went over the top with extra definitions, extra bits of wordplay (which didn’t always enhance the surface), additional verbiage to suit the surface but serving to distract. Each individual case could be justified, but taken en masse it all made for a “bit of a grind”, as dorsetjimbo said.

    ‘Likewise’ in 19, ‘with very different sound’ in 25 just seemed pointless. And although 2 is technically sound I cannot see the point of a homophone element that bears no relation to the sound of the letters in the answer.

    After 40 minutes, with about 80% of the grid completed I was rather stuck, with gaps in the NE and SW corners. Being pushed for time I resorted to aids to get me going again, so congratulations to all who persevered and finished under their own steam.

  13. But darn close to a DNF. So many strange things here with the 2 defs at 10ac, the two homophones at 19ac, the absence of an N in 22dn … I could go on.

    Though I won’t mention General Antino (27ac) who left me contemplating PORTALOO at 17dn. AIDA was last but … 14dn as COD on a great day in cricketing history. The surface perfectly describes Ben Stokes before yesterday and today. All power to him in the future. (But not too much eh?)

    N.R.U.E.H.T (6,2,3,3)

  15. I think it’s needed, otherwise you have the ‘heard’ going both ways a touch clumsily.
  16. I had this down as unnecessarily strange too, wondering whether there were some editorial doubts being addressed. Unfortunately that seems to have slowed down rather than sped up the local quorum, with my own time completely dismal. In the end, I felt the puzzle needn’t have hedged quite so many bets – you’re just as well hung (whoops) for mutton as lamb, are you not? – and would have been the better for it. Good though, all in all.

    ++thanks to those in the breach once again.

    1. This is what I find myself thinking after having a while to digest the blog. As you say, I wonder how much was the setter setting and how much was the editor editing; and I suspect having two definitions where one will do, and would be more natural, actually has a tendency to make a clue more obscure, not less (though perhaps that was the idea, of course).
  17. As Geoffrey would say, coming in off the long run after close of play … poor shot selection, her brain’s scrambled, the quicks ‘ave got into her head and she’s ‘ad it, she’s lost it, she’s gone.

    Just on the 29 minute mark I typed my last one in, AIDA, having glimpsed some instinctive understanding of it. Then I stared at it and thought: it doesn’t make sense. So I spent 10 more minutes working through a raft of possibilities before getting so confused I bunged in DIVA [A,VID with promoted somehow meaning reversed, despite it being an across clue] and dollied a catch to the Crossword Club computer.

    Otherwise, I enjoyed it immensely, especially the challenge of SPAT/PROBATION / ANTONYMY /MOORFOWL … a fiendish corner.

    Tomorrow: my granny wi’ a stick o’ rhubarb.

    1. Sotira, that’s a frighteningly good Geoffrey. He’s been in rare form on the media circuit this time around. It seems the older he gets the better he was.
  18. Presumably it’s a three way for the benefit of those of us who pronounce Seoul to sound like Searle.
  19. Was doing very well – for me.
    Got antonymy from “Ups & Downs” and the check letters, without clocking the “general” connection. Must admit surprised at number of people that apparently didn’t know the antonym of synonymy.

    Then – bad day!
    screwed up NW by deciding 7d was
    L(pound) E(note) PTA(peseta – old money mk1) =
    LEPTA(Greek – old money MK2)
    ergo 10a had to be PIG (officer) + R for some (G&S?) Major I DKN called Prig

    + compounded by check-letter typo in SW. DOHHH!

  20. I echo much of the comment above. Got there all present and correct in the end, but it was a real slog. I’ve no objection to the equation of “saliva” with “water”, but the def for SHOELACE didn’t seem to me to be adequately indicated in the clue.

    STATUE OF LIBERTY was indeed an oddity – a barely cryptic cryptic def/&lit that I nevertheless took a long time to twig (and am relieved to see that I was in high-quality company in doing so). An interesting instance, perhaps, of the obviousness of the solution working as a paradoxically effective deceptive device.

  21. Just over an hour – more than double on the timer, as when I got completely stuck in the SW, I saved it and went away for a while, and after resorting to an aid to find the possibilities for words ending -YMY, polished it off in a few minutes. (Though didn’t look for a General Antony, as nothing else was plausible)
    I agree with many of the above comments that some of the cluing wasn’t very satisfactory.

    Edited at 2013-12-17 05:19 pm (UTC)

  22. 50m DNF as done for by the SW corner and AIDA and ANTONYMY. At least I’ll remember how to spell the latter now! Thanks for blog, Tim, as even some of those I guessed correctly I could not fathom- PILLOWCASE for one, the which I am now in need of!
  23. About 45 minutes, held up like everyone else in the SW corner. But my LOI was the unknown to me LIBRA, from wordplay only, after a lot of head-scratching. I surely did not know it as a name for a pound. I hadn’t parsed BLAST OFF either, so thanks to Tim for that. Regards.
    1. Interesting Kevin. It’s a pound in weight rather than currency and the old short form was lb which went with oz for ounces
  24. Saw Lady Liberty almost immediately, just didn’t believe it and left it blank long after I had several checkers. That sort of clue. All in all, a bit of a slog, about 45 minutes solving time spread over a couple of hours.

    Liked OBSCURED and POLYESTER, and the putting together of MOORFOWL was quite elegant, but thought ANTONYMY and SHOELACE were both a bit desperate. SPAT was clever – images of George Raft sending up his stock gangster character in Some Like It Hot!

  25. Had SPIT for SPAT, inexplicably. Tough puzzle as I was badly distracted by the grief that your man Stokes was giving us. What an innings by the young bloke, something positive for England to take away from an unhappy tour so far.
  26. Am new to this site- would just like to thank those who blog this site and do such an excellent job- seeing the solutions parsed has really added to my enjoyment and improved my skills after years of stumbling in the dark. I took 28 minutes today, got bogged in the SW corner, but really liked some of the clues- particularly obscured. Can I ask where the leaderboard is?
    1. You’re very welcome, Allan. The leaderboard I talk about is the one shown on the Times Crossword Club for on-line solvers. It’s not always entirely dependable (there are ways of cheating to produce an artificially fast time), but there are lots of regular solvers who use it honestly (many of them also posting here, of course), so it gives you an idea how everyone else has found that day’s puzzle before coming here for a bit more detail…

      Edited at 2013-12-17 07:46 pm (UTC)

    2. Welcome Allan. Please join in and never hesitate to ask if you don’t fully understand. And don’t get too caught up in times – it can detract from the enjoyment which is what it should really be about
  27. Surely ejected water can come from a source other than a mouth. Water can be SPAT out off a pipe or tap.

    The ‘pronounce very differently’ in 25a is redundant, and so causing a lot of confusion, for me also.

    Is ‘the writer’s’ equivalent to my, in 27a?

    1. Yes, it’s another convention, though there are plenty of times when it can also give “pen” or some such. It can also give “mine”. “The writer” can give “I” or “me”.
  28. 10:43 for me – a little disappointing as I was mostly bang on the setter’s wavelength but was held back by senior moments (in particular I wasted ages desperately trying to think of PROBATION before moving on reluctantly) and felt generally old and slow. Again. (Sigh!)
  29. Saliva/water seems fair enough. After all in the expression ‘ my mouth is watering’ the ‘water’ is saliva.

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