Times 25,677

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Morning all; Jim (or more accurately, you’ll be glad to hear, his broadband connection) has fallen victim to the Great Dorset Inundation. Luckily he was able to get a message out by carrier pigeon first, so we have swapped shifts, and I’m back for a second week in a row while he waits for the waters to recede.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have as much trouble with this one as last week’s. Clock stopped at 23:07, but I thought this was quite a testing puzzle, so I don’t think that will turn out to be especially sluggish once there are a few more times to compare with. Also, after considering it at length while writing this, I have to say this puzzle has as elegant and smooth a set of clues as I’ve come across – beautifully concise, if you like that sort of thing (which I do). All in all, quite happy to have found myself blogging this one.

Across
1 BALLPARK – “BAWL”, PARK.
5 SPACES – Son PACES.
10 CUTIS – CUT, 1’S.
11 AMINO ACID – A MINOAN, C.I.D. Without checkers I was wondering about SPART ACID, which I suspected wasn’t really a thing.
12 STEPCHILD – cryptic def.
13 LATTE – LATTER.
14 DECIDER – (RED, ICED)rev.
16 PASTIS – PAST 1’S. Seemed a bit soon after CUT1’S, but who’s counting?
18 FELLOW – FELL(“dropped”), O, Wife.
20 TIE BEAM – TIE(=”match”), BEAM(“look delighted”). This term seemed familiar to me, even though I was finding it hard to picture what it might be exactly; and a quick check reveals it last occurred only a couple of months ago, where Jim described it as “the base beam of the triangular beams that form a roof”, which explains why I knew it without really knowing it.
22 BEAUT – University in BE AT.
23 STATUS QUO – STAT(“figure”), US(“our side”), QUORUM.
25 DRIVE HOME – double def. Last One In, as I gradually ruled out anything to do with ironing, and the checking letters told me it couldn’t be any sort of RAGE.
26 LEAST – A SMALL in LET.
27 MARTYR – ART in MY, River. This is the Justin in question.
28 MERCATOR – (MECARROT)*, whose projection probably gives most of us our default world view.
 
Down
1 BACKSIDE – (SACK)* in BIDE.
2 LETHE – cryptic def. Lethe was the river of the Greek underworld which caused souls to forget their previous lives before they were reincarnated.
3 POSTCODE LOTTERY – POST COD, [OTTER in ELY]. For those from non-UK regions who are unfamiliar with the concept, it’s often used these days in discussion of the NHS, when some treatments are more widely available in different parts of the country, in a way which appears undesirably random. And now an actual lottery, of course.
4 READIER – DIE in the REAR.
6 PEOPLES REPUBLIC – i.e. as Plato’s Republic might be in a popular edition; and the country most associated with the title these days.
7 CICATRICE – (ARCTIC)*, ICE.
8 SODDEN – SOD(“earth” as in land), DEN(“earth” as in an animal’s hide).
9 WIND UP – double def., depending on which way you pronounce it.
15 CHEVALIER – [(LAV)rev., 1] in CHEER.
17 IMPORTER – i.e. I’M PORTER. I confess I got this from the wordplay and the likely-looking assumption that there must be a Sir Joseph Porter; when I turned to Google for blog purposes, he turns out to be the First Lord of the Admiralty in HMS Pinafore, or – as even I then realised I knew, without ever having seen this, or any other Gilbert & Sullivan opera – “Ruler of the Queen’s Navee”.
19 WISDOM – “pearls of wisdom”? Geddit?
20 TRAPEZE – (PART)rev. + “E’S”.
21 IBIDEM – I in LIB DEM without the Line. The citation often seen in footnotes as just ibid. It strikes me there can’t be many words which allow setters to use the Lib Dems, certainly compared with their coalition partners.
24 QUART – QUARTer without the ER.

51 comments on “Times 25,677”

  1. 59 minutes, holding things up a bit by unaccountably putting ‘beatu’ at 22 and more accountably shoving ‘dampen’ in at 8. Last in was the cunning DRIVE HOME … oh yes, where I put in ‘drive time’ at first.

    A decent puzzle, but don’t quite share Topical’s enthusiasm. Not mad about the dental cryptic definition, for starters, but I’m going to keep shtum aboth that in case McT is about…..

    1. … and, yes, thought that CD was as bad as they get. 12ac wasn’t much better. (Always good to live up to expectations eh?)

      But I agree with Sotira (below) that 6dn is pretty darn good. Though there’s an argument that it’s not a CD as we have “mass market” = PEOPLE’S and “edition of Plato” = REPUBLIC.

      Can’t remember whether I thought much about LETHE.

      And: 30:32.

      Edited at 2014-01-07 04:15 am (UTC)

      2. Could someone please explain the reasons behind the anti-CD movement? Compared to many other clues of varying types, I found 19dn gettable and amusing.
        I hesitate to rattle this particular (and seemingly sensitive) cage but am genuinely interested in gaining understanding of why particular clue types are seen as poor as well as why a superfluous word may be seen as good or bad when trying to fool the solver (it all seems to fool me pretty well most of the time!).

        Edited at 2014-01-07 12:01 pm (UTC)

        1. I don’t think there’s a movement as such, although some here are not overly keen on CDs as a species of clue. Me, I think they’re the essence of a cryptic crossword (it’s the ‘Bletchley Park’ Mephistoesque clues with weird abbreviations that someone found in Chambers that get my goat!), but are difficult to ‘get right’ and are best when sparingly used. My personal feeling about the ‘wisdom’ clue was that it was rather too ‘in your face’, and of the crossword as a whole that it was a bit heavy in CDs. But having written one mediocre clue in my whole writing clue-career, I think the Times setters (and editors) do a superb job.

          As an aside, I think as a general rule that writers seldom make the best critics, and that’s where we come in. After a while, the regulars here recognise commenters’ styles and learn to take bald comments with a pinch of salt.

          Edited at 2014-01-07 01:38 pm (UTC)

  2. 23:47 … which felt like a good time for a toughish puzzle. I’m with Tim in liking this one a lot.

    Joint COD to 2 really nice cryptic definitions: PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC and LETHE.

    Last in TRAPEZE

    I was wondering yesterday whether Jimbo had fallen victim to the floods. Sounds like Dorset has been badly hit. Hope he and others down that way get dried out very soon.

  3. ….but with IMPOSTOR and QUANT, and having to cheat to get LETHE. I’m beginning to realise I’m not very good at this.

    STEPCHILD is a topical clue in Australia at the moment. We have an outspoken politician who believes they’re lesser beings.

  4. I struggled to finish in 65 minutes but I nodded off at least once and then couldn’t find my dropped pencil so wasted time hunting for it. At the end I cheated on CICATRICE, convinced I wouldn’t know the word, only then to remember meeting it before but without registering its meaning.

    The Z and Q alerted me to the possibility of a pangram so I checked and found we are missing X, J and , unaccountably, G!

  5. My original dental contribution was WHITES, as in pearly whites and like Tim, I knew TIE BEAM without knowing what it was. Still, it was worth getting up early for.

    At my Bunterish boarding school. the only time that we ever saw, let alone met, members of the other gender was the Debating Society and the School Play. I was keen on both and was a stage builder for the production of HMS Pinafore, so IMPORTER was a shoo-in.

    Although I am in the South, I am (touch wood) largely unaffected by storms etc but best wishes to Jim.

    Edited at 2014-01-07 08:34 am (UTC)

    1. Me too Bigtone. I put in ‘whites’ for the same reason and it was only when I got the ‘O’ from 25a that I wised up after which the SE started to flow.
  6. Best wishes to Jimbo and others caught in the weather. I was in Devon last week and there was a lot of it about.
    16m for this: in contrast to yesterday I seem to have been relatively on the wavelength.
    A cryptic definition for LETHE struck me as a bit harsh, but on the other hand it appears here all the time. Otherwise I wouldn’t know it. Ditto TIE BEAM. I got CICATRICE from French.
    I had no idea who Sir Joseph was. I’ve seen The Pirates of Penzance because my daughter was in a school production. I won’t be seeking out any more G&S unless and until she’s in another.

  7. Managed all correct, but took a long time. most of which seemed to be in the NW corner…

    Hadn’t heard of either Joseph or Justin, so got those from wordplay. Liked LETHE, and put in PEOPLES REPUBLIC without thinking too much about how the cryptic worked.

  8. No time for this, as I started it on tablet with the newspaper version (club doesn’t work on Android) and found everything I entered was also going in to 9 down. Doing the paper version took 25 minutes, but accounted neither for earlier few solves nor earlier frustrations.
    Another with WHITES initially (why not?).
    Couldn’t cope with the 1s until last, and struggled with the lottery, at one point trying IDE LO CAT with an anagram of outcome round it – ? locatum looks an appropriate and possible latin phrase!
    My jaundiced view of this one is unfair to the setter. But I did like IBIDEM and the Plato clue.
  9. 42min – never did parse IBIDEM in spite of being a member of the party (was thinking of BIDE in there).
    Technically, a TIE-BEAM is not a strut, the former being in tension while the latter is in compression.
  10. 30 mins but I couldn’t parse 17dn and entered an incorrect “imposter” guessing that “I play” was the definition, although in retrospect I should really have seen “trader”. I had a lot of trouble getting on this setter’s wavelength, especially on the LHS, and I have to confess that I didn’t enjoy this puzzle much.
  11. Well, this was a struggle but I’m very happy to say all present and correct in 59 minutes (any under-the-hour makes me happy). Was pleased to have dredged up Merctor, Tie-Beam, Cicatrice and Lethe and needed the checkers for Ibidem.
  12. Found this marginally (i.e. 18 seconds) easier than yesterday’s, but a tricky one all the same. Took well over 2 minutes to enter my FOI, CICATRICE, which didn’t bode well. As others above, had WHITES, DAMPEN and DRIVE TIME/RAGE to slow things down further, plus the stupid-in-retrospect POPULAR REPUBLIC. Also considered IMPOSTER due to having no knowledge of G&S but wasn’t happy with it and eventually saw the better answer. A well-constructed puzzle but it didn’t really tickle me.
  13. I’m with Tim and Sotira on this. An excellent puzzle, I thought, with no weak clues. Loved 6D (PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC) and don’t understand the objections to STEPCHILD or WISDOM, which seem fine to me.

    Glad to hear (if I understand Tim aright) that it’s only Jimbo’s broadband link and not his residence that’s been inundated.

    1. I don’t think there is any objection anywhere to WISDOM – it is just that many of us wrote something else in first which must have slowed things down.
      2. I was responding, I think, to Ulaca and McText, who didn’t seem to care for “cryptic dental definition”, but perhaps I misunderstood them.
  14. Nice to know I am in good company (being initially lacking in wisdom!). Once I’d corrected that mistake the SE corner sorted itself out nicely and I finished in 8.29.

  15. 26:17 but I couldn’t remember the name of the stupid river at 2d and as it was a CD I had absolutely no other way in so I’m crying foul on that one.

    Like others I started out with dampen and popular which slowed me down in the NE corner.

    Cicatrice was a bit of a guess as was importer and I kinda assumed that a mercator was some kind of magician who could project, er, things.

    At 23 I took the truncated needed numbers to be quotas. For it to be quorum then number in the singular would have done.

    Anyway, glad it wasn’t just me who found it tough as I thought I was losing my mojo.

    Some good stuff in there though. I’ll give COD to backside.

  16. I think CDs are great, but only when they’re great: that’s to say unequivocal, and either funny or telling. My bugbear I know, but that arch-practitioner Rufus in the Guardian, while he may produce the odd good one, litters his puzzles with second-rate jobs that always seem to irritate the fora. Another who should not attempt them, as far as I can tell, is Phi.

    But here, today, ‘WHITES me too’ is a popular comment! What is happening in the world?

    Agree about the general quality though, and here’s to Jim’s insurers being generous and helpful. And fast.

  17. Back online having escaped France to the sunny Costa Blanca. Sorry (Jim)to hear my native land is submerged.
    Liked this and yeaterday’s puzzle, both of which took me about 40 minutes with a couple of ‘oh no it isn’t’ moments. Today I had REARING instead of READIER for a while. However all came good and I thought today’s COD was IBIDEM for getting the Lib Dems involved, before they are consigned to history at the next election. And yesterday’s BATTERING RAM was even better.
  18. The “WISDOM” clue was my favourite, closely followed by that for “DRIVE HOME”. I can see why people might go for “WHITES” for the former, but it would be a pretty weak clue. Apart from anything else, I don’t think “whites” on its own can be a sort of teeth.
  19. Unlike some,I don’t have a problem with religion related clues, as much of it is a branch of general knowledge in my view. But I knew nothing of Saint Justin (foremost interpreter of the theory of the Logos in the 2nd century apparently)which leaves this clue hanging somewhat.
    I guess Sir Joseph Porter can be considered general knowledge too, but even though I didn’t know it, at least you knew he was a trader, so much more gettable.
    My colleagues don’t do cryptics as they “dont have the general knowledge” which I always say is secondary to solving. Add in Mercator and I might have to eat my words with this one.
    2. I can’t see the problem with needing “general knowledge”, which seems to be a term applied to things only other people know 🙂 I’d never heard of St Justin, but it seemed a likely name for a “martyr”, in the same way that “Porter” was guessable. Admittedly you’re stuffed if you don’t know “Lethe” but I suppose it’s a question of where you draw the line. It would be a shame if every single slightly obscure answer had to have bitty wordplay to identify it, in my opinion
    3. I didn’t know Justin either. Or Sir Joseph. In both cases I got the answer from the other bits of the clue, and as long as you can do that I think more or less anything goes.

      Edited at 2014-01-07 03:31 pm (UTC)

  20. Well I got there, but it took me three sessions and there was much groaning and question marks. Count me in on the not a big fan of cryptic definitions, and now we’ve got three of them. 19 went through three transformations, starting as IVORYS, becoming WHITES and then finally WISDOM. No idea who Joseph or Justin were, thankfully there was that thing that is missing from a cryptic definition, wordplay, to get me there.

    On the other hand, the clues for STATUS QUO and DECIDER were wonderful.

    IBIDEM brings back painful memories of being a universitry student and having to look up references, and finding that there were a bunch of papers I needed from a journal called “ibid”, which I couldn’t find anywhere in the journal stacks. So I went to the great Inorganic chemist R.J. Gillespie (founder of VSEPR theory) and said “I’m not having much luck, do we subscribe to this ibid journal?”. He eventually stopped laughing and politely corrected his very shamefaced young Aussie protege.

  21. Not even bright enough to think of “whites”. I convinced myself that oysters were some sort of teeth. Only on getting “drive home” did I see the light which meant ” fellow” was my LOI. About 35 minutes today.
  22. Well, my GK lacked Sir Joseph, Justin and a few others, but I managed to get through those. I came a cropper on POSTCODE LOTTERY. I actually got the POSTCODE part, but couldn’t fight my way through the wordplay to finish it off. I hope I can be pardoned for never having heard the term. I thought DRIVE HOME was today’s best. Regards.
      1. Maybe I missed that puzzle? Ahem. Obviously, it didn’t register on my ill-equipped brain, but thanks for that keriothe.
        1. One of the things I find useful about this site is that discussion of unknown answers helps to fix them in my memory. Some irritating so-and-so pointing out when you’ve forgotten something qualifies as discussion, I hope… 😉
  23. I’m with topicaltim on this one – beautifully concise. Started when tired and got little done but when resumed, not after nap but a different form of mind-work – alright, reading articles on feminist and anti-feminist theory regarding the Wife of Bath -found it chuntered along entertainingly and pleased to write in status quo and quart the last. Damn and blast – just seen my impostor for importer. And I sang in Ruddigore at school, though not him. Evening of poker coming up, only hope I can see what I’m doing a little more.
  24. Trust the Greeks to mess things up. You’d think Hades and Styx (was that them?) would be sufficient. So, I was a DNR on this one. No, I mean DNF.

    Everything else was a slow grind. Didn’t we have LATTE very recently?

    SPART ACID, as pondered briefly by our blogger, doesn’t exit. However, ASPARTIC ACID would give some nice clueing options, their being such a thing as the “Spartic League”, apparently.

    Slow day here at the little shop of horrors. Mostly either Band-aid and aspirin jobs, plus a couple of no hopers, neither of which give much opportunity for creative doctoring.

  25. I too liked this. Took forever to double pronounce WIND, and to double see SODDEN, but knew LETHE, and the rest fell in.
    Except, i still don’t understand the EZE part of 20d. What am I missing?
      1. Thank you, Penfold, appreciated, though feeling a little shortsighted and foolish.
  26. Enjoyed this one very much, completed over four tube/bus/train journeys this afternoon, about 40 minutes in all. Rather liked PEOPLES REPUBLIC, Justin MARTYR, and the return of Ely as a “see”, a nice change from lo!

  27. I’m in the ‘I liked this’ camp.
    As a long-term G & S aficionado, Sir Joseph Porter was no problem for me. I also knew ‘Lethe’ from many a crossword, and thought that (pearls of) ‘wisdom’ worked o.k.
    On the whole, ‘Never mind the whys and wherefores’ it was good fun.
  28. 8:21 for me. If I had to guess, I’d say this was the work of Don Manley. Anyway, my thanks to the setter, whoever he (or she) was, for a most enjoyable puzzle, taking me back to the good old days.
    1. I don’t think it’s the Don – not enough ecclesiastical references. And I was able to finsh it…

      Edited at 2014-01-08 12:53 am (UTC)

      1. I didn’t get his vibe either, but for some reason I associate him with chemistry references.
      2. I thought that 27ac, which associated the Christian name of the new archbishop of Canterbury with a 2nd-century Christian martyr, was a strong pointer!

Comments are closed.