Times 25682 – One for the nursery slopes

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18 minutes and expecting records to fall faster than English wickets. Any dog-lovers with a bit of time on their hands (or indeed people who crave an American-sized kitchen) may enjoy this – one smart beagle. [On edit: This was obviously a bit harder than I gave it credit for being; I just happened to know the required GK. OTOH, Mark Goodliffe polished it off in just 3′ 40″!]

Across

1 HAPLESS – [c]HAP + LESS.
5 HECUBA – HE+CUB+A; providing me with my opportunity to show off (never shy, you know): I’m currently reading the Bard’s Troilus and Cressida and Priam’s wife pops up when Pandarus isn’t mincing about.
8 ILL-GOTTEN – TELLING* around OT.
9 DROOP – POOR + D reversed; a concept I’m not familiar with (Boom, boom!) [got to make this interesting somehow].
11 SAVVY – S for N in NAVVY.
12 CALVINIST – CT around A+L+VIN+IS; there were other reformers but try turning Oecolampadius into a clue.
13 LORIKEET – LIKE+ET around O+R; the -keet part of these birds (parakeet is better known) is a diminutive; the ‘lori’ part is apparently from Malay, so perhaps Uncle Yap can further elucidate [nothing like passing the buck]
15 AFGHAN – FA (Football Association – useless mob!) reversed + GHAN[a]; this country is something of the ‘in place’ for setters at the moment, with ‘Pathan’ and a province which wasn’t Helmand and which I didn’t know and can’t remember cropping up recently.
17 TURBOT – TROUT* around B for what sounds as if it should be a very fast fish.
19 SPRYNESS – [a lot of containicator clues, no?] S+PRESS around NY revoist.
22 INSULATOR – [here ‘installing’ is the inserticator] INSULT+OR around A.
23 NOISE – NOSE around I; my time would have been down around 17’30” if I’d have cottoned onto hooter=nose immediately.
24 GATED – GAT+ED; what used to happen at public schools when they were still bootcamps rather than five-star resort hotels; the punishments ranged from caning (for talking after lights out) to gating (having your exeats cancelled; for missing rugger) to rustication (being sent to the country – odd since most of these places were in the country – for being caught in flagrante delicto with matron) to expulsion (for being caught in flagrante delicto with the headmaster’s wife…or the headmaster).
25 BRATWURST more insertication; I think you’ve got the hang of it by now…
26 RECESS – REES’S (a possessive Cambrian) around C; I’ve never understood how a recess at school can last just 20 minutes when MPs get 3 months off. A perk of making the laws I guess.
27 SUN-LAMP – P following SUN (more a ‘newsy-paper’) + LAM.

Down

1 HAIR-SPLITTING – [start as you mean to continue as they say] AIRS+PL in HITTING.
2 PALAVER – PAL followed by a sort of anagram of RAVE.
3 EBONY – E + (BOY around N); hands up if you can hear this word without thinking of that dreadful song by Macca and Stevie Wonder. Just for Kevin Gregg, a nice parody of the song from Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo.
4 SET SCREW – simple charade and a write-in for the DIY brigade.
5 HANDLE – sounds like George Frideric, who we like to claim as one of our own cos he’s better than Purcell.
6 CADDIS-FLY – CADDIES minus E (end of game) + FLY (as in ‘fly boy’ – as far as the punter’s concerned he probably knows thngs you’d prefer him not to); according to the internet, ‘caddisflies are an order of insects with approximately 12,000 described species…they are small moth-like insects having two pairs of hairy membranous wings’. They engage one another in aerial combat to decide whether they will be rendered as two words, as one or (for the posh ones) with a hyphen.
7 BOOK+IS+H
10 PUT ONES FEET UP – a ‘CD’ (well, ‘supporters’ for ‘legs’ is sort of allusive)
14 KNOWLEDGE – K+NOW+LEDGE; this puzzle has many references to knowledge without actually requiring much. (Even McT should cope…)
16 SPARTANS – PART in SANS; if all had worked out between her boy and Helen, Hecuba could have visited her daughter-in-law’s ex in Sparta. But if it had all worked out, you’d have had riots on the streets of Athens with all those tragedians out of work.
18 ROSETTE – SET (again) in ROTE.
20 ERITREA – hidden.
21 STUBBS – B in (!) STUBS; there was another famous Stubbs, but he installed kitchens for Sybil Fawlty.
23 NO-WIN – variant of NOW IN and marginally more acceptable management speak than the dreadful WIN-WIN or its ineffable Hong Kong cousin WIN-WIN-WIN.

Going back to that dog, he she can’t have been that smart, as he she never answered the telephone. [The beagle has a name and it is Lucy.]

53 comments on “Times 25682 – One for the nursery slopes”

  1. 12:26 … Nice, breezy puzzle for a Monday.

    Re your footnote on the beagle, ulaca, he’s a she (called Lucy) and is therefore smart enough to know the phone call wasn’t for her!

    1. It was a punt to be honest – didn’t want to call it ‘it’. If my video had been less grainy, I guess I could have freeze-framed one of the leaping shots, but life is too short.

      Edited at 2014-01-13 02:26 am (UTC)

      1. I wasn’t using the zoom function, honest. I saw the video the other day in an article with her name.
  2. As Sotira says, a nice one for a Monday; nothing to write home about. I wasted some time by throwing in ‘canny’ and ‘parakeet’ for no good reason. It also took me a while to remember ‘screw’, which I’m pretty sure we don’t use. Thanks loads, Ulaca, for mentioning that ghastly song; I’d managed to get the clue in without being attacked by an earworm, but now…
  3. The trend continues. Amazing how easy it was to convince myself that there was a well-known horse painter named STABYS. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to paint a horse, they look lovely just the way they are.

  4. Not quite so easy for me. I didn’t known SET (SCREW) or HECUBA where I actually wrote in ‘Hecata’ so was unable to solve 7dn until the last minute. I was also thrown on that one by “to accumulate” which appears to serve no purpose whatsoever.
    1. Well, ‘Academic reserve is hard’ doesn’t make much sense, and the bits of the clue do accumulate, in the sense that they’re sequential, anyway. But still, it’s not the most elegant of clues.
  5. I always find it hard to maintain my academic reserve!

    Anyway … more great Liverpudlians today; Stubbs in this case. And the only thing else I have to add is that we’ve come to a pretty pass when “info” and KNOWLEDGE are so routinely conflated (14dn). “Wisdom” will be the next to fall.

    As I said, I always find it hard to maintain my academic reserve!

  6. I’m with Vinyl1 on this. Perhaps it was because I was expecting it to be trickier than it was, perhaps it took me too long to get onto the setter’s wavelength, but more likely it’s because it’s Monday morning. That’s why it took me 40 minutes and was a relief to finish.

    My FOI was Hecuba – which must tell you something.

  7. Plain sailing today until the very end where I was held up in the NE corner by Bookish, Handle and LOI Hecuba. FOI Ebony.
    Thanks Ulaca for the entertaining blog.
  8. Congratulations for a brilliant, witty blog. As for the dog, three ‘chairs’ for her! Brilliant.
  9. 17 minutes, delayed by being convinced that 5ac was HECATE, despite that fact that the E came from nowhere in particular and pretty well ignoring the “young”. I justified it by quoting Hamlet “What’s Hecate to him. or he to Hecate?”. Only when the diminishing rational part of my brain insisted that it had to be BOOKISH did I concede that HECUBA was slightly more accurate, and was not the witch in MacB.
    Otherwise a straightforward solve enlivened by an entertaining blog.
    Best of the bunch PALAVER, for the definition.
  10. 12m. Simple Monday fare, but all very smooth and enjoyable I thought.
    I bunged in HECATE but fortunately I saw that 7dn had to be BOOKISH pretty quickly so it didn’t slow me down unduly.
    Can someone explain the definition “one won’t buzz”? I put it in confidently, remembering that there is a type of fly that doesn’t make a sound, and thinking the CADDIS FLY must be it. But now I can find no evidence for this “memory”. Is the point just that this fly isn’t a fly?

    Edited at 2014-01-13 10:15 am (UTC)

    1. That was my thinking – caddis flies are not ‘true flies’ but more like moths, so whatever sound they make is presumably more of a flutter than a buzz. I don’t doubt there’s an entomologist out there who has devoted his or her life to the study of caddis fly flight dynamics, so if they happen to be reading this …
  11. 16.31 for something that has the flavour or intent of a work-out without burning the muscles too much. Lucy the beagle says it all. Sorry about the degeneration of the meaning of palaver. On the other hand a nice word to have in more general use. ‘Troilus and Cressida’ an underrated play on love’s hurt and war’s savagery. Thersites a searing minor character.
  12. Another rather irritating if quite easy 20 minute puzzle.

    Sometimes newish contributors ask what we mean by “smooth surface readings”. If you consider clues like 25A you’ll see the opposite.

    We also talk about “padding” which is extraneous words added to improve a surface reading. You’ll find those at 7D “to accumulate” and 26A “taken”

    A rather weak offering in my view

      2. Surely it’s needed to create the misleading sense of preferential treatment in the cryptic reading? It also makes sense to me in the literal reading. As CDs go I thought this one wasn’t bad.
  13. 13 mins, and I agree with vinyl1 that the RHS was easier than the LHS. Nothing much more to add, other than RECESS was my LOI.
  14. The easiest puzzle for some while – 25 mins, which is ultra-fast for me, so I’ll not be surprised to see some lightning quick times by the genuine speed merchants. Nothing hugely worth mentioning, though I liked HAIR-SPLITTING at 1D. Not sure I share Jimbo’s dim view of the surface reading at 25A (BRATWURST), which seems smooth enough to me, but I agree about the padding at 7D and 26A.

    Brilliant and entertaining blog by Ulaca. Many thanks.


  15. All ok, but I finished the LHS far quicker than the right, finishing with AFGHAN once I’d got PUT ONES FEET UP. I’d resisted ‘ONES’ for some time, as it’s a word in the clue.

    Thanks for the blog…cute dog clip! Love it when bloggers include random YouTubes…!

  16. 25 minutes. Pretty straightforward but I didn’t make quick progress to begin with, though HECUBA was a helpful early solve. I agree with with the negative comments on padding in 7dn, and with dorsetjimbo’s comment on the surface of 25; while one might trap a rodent using a sausage as bait, the initial ‘Exploded’ doesn’t enhance the surface exactly.

    Another grammatical mismatch between cryptic subject and verb in 6; seems to be getting quite common these days.
    Still, I enjoyed solving the puzzle despite some niggles.

    1. Does the problem with this go away if ‘miss’ is read as an instruction to the solver to miss (omit) the E??
  17. 12:10, pretty straightforward although I didn’t know the screw and had forgotten that I knew Hecuba (T&C was a set text at skool).

    Ulaca only fleetingly alluded to it but I was mildly surprised to see SET in 2 down clues clued similarly as firm and fixed.

    As has been said, todays blog was arguably more entertaining than the puzzle.

    FWIW I quite liked the exploding sausage.

  19. This is the first time I have finished a times crossword and only came here to check I had got it all right.
    Trying desperately to drop the telegraph.
    RHS was EASY LHS a little more tricky but Hair Splitting sorted that out. As for timing (am at work) so on and off took 5 hours.
    1. Many congratulations from a definite non-expert. Only last week I slaved away for 2 hours on one everyone else found a piece of cake – and got one wrong.

      Get an LJ account and join the fun. The natives are very friendly and the insights of the struggling solver can be more illuminating than some of our witterings.

      1. Seconded. Do join up and pile into the daily conversation. There are a few really gifted solvers here but most of us have just been solving The Times for (too?) many years.

        I do The Telegraph sometimes, having been gifted a subscription last year. It’s a nice change, although right now its main entertainment value is in watching the PR department post ever more creative versions of “”We’re sorry” as the online puzzles continue to be unavailable (must be getting on for 2 months now).

        1. Thirded. One of the advantages of signing up is that if you type something stupid (as I do regularly) you can edit it. More generally, it is nice to interact with a named person, even if the name is purely made-up. One suggestion is to ease in gently by still posting anonymously but giving yourself a name when signing off.
          Either way, you will be most welcome here.
    2. There’s no such thing as an easy Times cryptic, and congratulations on finishing – we’ve all been through that stage!

      This one was easier than some of late, but not a complete walk in the park. By analogy with pilots and landings, “any solution you walk away from is a good one”.

      Re. the dog – if it was that smart it would have ordered a takeaway.

  20. Easy-ish Monday fare. Great blog ulaca. LOI LORIKEET, 25 minutes because of the HECATE -> HECUBA temporary booboo.
    1. You probably need the **** stuff – would you like some more, I should think Dorset could start exporting the stuff!
  21. There’s a hint of niggliness in the air. To me ‘taken’ in 26 is OK as a surface-readable extension of ‘got hold of’; there’s no grammatical mismatch in 6; ‘to accumulate’ in 7 makes a good surface and is justified by the word-parts meaning the whole if they’re to be piled up together as it were; ‘before the rest’ in 10 is accurate is it not?…stop beating the setter with bits of straw. I do find the attempt at a colourful clue in 25 gets away with something but otherwise all signals good. If innovative to a small extent.
  22. 40.12 and a it of a grind though after 14m I had about half done and then stalled for ages. Once I’d twigged the anagram bit at 8a the rest seemed to fall easily. HECUBA was FOI mostly thanks to Hamlet’s soliloquy and LOI was AFGHAN which I didn’t link to Asian at all.
  23. About 35 minutes, held up by the left side until HAIR-SPLITTING emerged. LOI was GATED, after ROSETTE. I didn’t get the definition there. Other than that, not much else to say, other than that I agree there seemed to be a bit of extra padding at several places throughout, but it didn’t bother me very much. Regards to all, with the exception of the anonymous commenter just above; an unwelcome bit of discourtesy.
  24. Not easy at all and quite a disaster today. Usually it doesn’t matter all that much that I haven’t heard of half the people, places and things mentioned in the puzzle (and so I am actually quite pleased with having got LORIKEET and CADDIS FLY right, which are in that category), but STUBBS defeated me (is it certain that there is no horse painter named STABYS?) and then it didn’t matter all too much that I misinterpreted the “about” in 2dn and made up PALEVAR. The trouble is, PALAVER is also a German word so I convinced myself I was getting my languages mixed up and it couldn’t possible be English.

    Oh well…

  25. Romped through this one last night – 14 minutes and nothing that I had a question mark against by the end. Though I messed myself up by writing in ROSEATE for some reason originally, which kept GATED away temporarily.
  26. Nice one to start in the doctor’s waiting room this evening. FOI HECUBA, then the RHS proved mostly write-ins. LHS needed some thought, hampered by having to get both LORIKEET and SET SCREW, unknown to me, from the clues alone. Ended up stuck a bit in the SW. RECESS took ages, perhaps as Welsh choices are legion – Dai, Taffy, Evans, Ifor … About 40 minutes, at least 10 on the Welsh holiday!

    Thanks to ulaca for a very entertaining commentary. Don’t worry about that “pointless amble, ruins it for everybody” (5 letters).

    Edited at 2014-01-13 08:50 pm (UTC)

    1. I was rather confused as to what Kevin from NY and you might be talking about until I went to my email inbox. I’ve heard worse:)

      Edited at 2014-01-13 09:28 pm (UTC)

  27. Gutted to be a second slower than ulaca solving this one, but enjoyed it nearly as much as the blog and the beagle video clip.
    I think I’ve just about worked out the meaning of Londoniensis’s final paragraph, and wish that the creatures concerned would stick to hiding under bridges hoping to catch unwary goats.
    I add my congratulations to the anonymous first time solver. I think it is a fairly sizeable step from an average Telegraph puzzle to even a relatively straightforward Times one, but once you’ve cracked one for the first time I think they gradually become less daunting. I don’t intend any disrespect to the Telegraph crossword or its setters, I just believe that it is intended to be different from the Times.
  29. Thank you, ulaca for a most amusing and entertaining blog. I enjoyed the blog a tad more than the puzzle which was also very good

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