Times 25684: The bare necessities

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 24:13

Well, that’s how long it took to put a letter in every square, plus as many attempts at parsing as I could manage along the way. Still not sure of a couple, so will try to understand as I write the blog. Which … now … I do!

Across

1. NEPALESE. PALE (stake) in NE & SE (parts of East). So not an anagram of “east” after all.

5. MURPHY. As in his Law; also a potato (King Edward).

8. GIN. Included in “{ori}GIN{al}”; as in “cotton gin” and similar machines. I guess others will, like me, have been tempted by “piece” = GUN?

9. SHOT-PUTTER. SHOT (photographed), PUTTER (golfing stick).

10. TICK OVER. “Idle” as in engines. TICK (short time); OVER (part of test match cricket, of which we seem to be getting fewer per day).

11. THIRTY. Anagram: hit & try. Score=20; score-and-a-half=30.

12. LEAP. Two defs; one to do with 366-day years. 1984 has been cropping up a fair bit over the last few days; including a $19.84 grocery bill yesterday. It wasn’t my favourite year and I prefer not to be reminded.

14. TEA SERVICE. Cf. TEASER | VICE.

17. BANANA SKIN. Cf. BANANAS | KIN. In a recently replayed episode of Jonathan Creek, our hero tested the slapstick trope empirically only to realise that you have to be unaware of the banana skin for it to work.

20. RUMP. “Are you MP?” (The answer to which is “MPs R US”.)

23. OYSTER. Two defs. “The world is your oyster” (Shakespeare); “The world is my ashtray” (Someone Else).

24. UNSUITED. Two defs.

25. STRIP POKER. A cryptic def that I didn’t mind too much.

26. GUT. From “everythinG yoU wanT”.
On edit: Jim et al might have preferred some kind of ref to a Grand Unified Theory, a theory of everythinG yoU projecT?

27. ASIDES. A side’s = a team’s.

28. PREDATOR. Anagram: dart & rope.

Down

1. NIGHTCLUB. NIGH (near), {wes}T, CLUB (hit).

2. PANACEA. AN ACE in PA (personal assistant).

3. LESS,ON. Ho ho.

4. SCORELESS. Two defs, one slightly humorous (as in musicians being sans score). Of course, all the decent ones can play without them.

5. MO,UNTIE. Most solvers will have seen something along these lines before.

6. RETRIEVER. Anagram: terrier & ve{t}.

7. HERE,TIC. See 5dn.

13. PLASTERED. Anagram of “plates” + RED.

15. SPINNAKER. AK (A King) inside SPINNER (bowler; more cricket).

16. EXPEDITOR. EX (one-time) EDITOR, inc P (pressure).

18. ABYSSES. ASSES inc BY (beyond, as in “the ball went by the keeper”).

19. APROPOS. A propos{al}.

21. UPTIGHT. From” {c}UP, {i}T, {m}IGHT.

22. PUTRID. PUT (position, verb), RID (clear, verb).

36 comments on “Times 25684: The bare necessities”

  1. Well, this other, like you, put in ‘gun’ (started off with ‘man’: Machine’s original, ‘piece’; but gave that up as a bad job early on). I got too many of these from checkers and definition, only parsing post hoc. And a couple of them–8ac (obviously),14ac–I didn’t get until coming here.
  2. 12:34 .. slow start but solved bottom up and everything just fell into place (can things fall upwards?).

    20a is a heck of a convoluted way to get to a very short word, but then, as many of us discovered around Christmas, concision can often be the hardest part of setting a clue.

    COD .. BANANA SKIN .. I think I’ve seen it similarly clued before but, like the pratfall itself, it never really gets old.

    1. I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a competition among setters to get the longest possible clue for short words and (maybe) vice versa.
  3. 44 minutes, being held up for ever in the SE by UNSUITED and PUTRID (among others). Also fell into the ‘gun’ trap (well, there’s a machine and a piece) trap. Wondered about ‘dedicated’ for the humble secretary until I saw the other meaning (‘exclusively allocted’), which fits nicely.

    With the enormous repertoire professional musicians have (and their aversity to practice – giving private lessons pays more), decent or not, most need their scores.

    Edited at 2014-01-15 02:51 am (UTC)

  4. Yes – I am another gunning fool. Too little thinking and too much “shoot first and answer questions later”. Trigger happy – that is me! Ouch!
  5. 26 minutes, and my best time for a while. Avoided GUN but only just. Surely orchestral musicians don’t usually play without music in front of them, however it’s less common to play from a score, I’d have thought as that’s what the conductor would use.
    1. Indeed! The key word being “orchestral”. I’ll give that a go when the Telecaster becomes a regular desk.

      Edited at 2014-01-15 06:58 am (UTC)

    2. Perhaps ‘Without success in sport though not yet ready to beat?’ would be more accurate, if a little hard to get one’s head round.
  6. My best time for the year, but definitely didn’t parse everything as I solved. Thanks for doing the hard work Mctext.

  7. Just under 18 minutes, with the slowest section being the SE. The editor didn’t immediately strike as a writer’s helper, and I think I was looking for some kind of psychiatrist. Or traffic cop. Or demolition expert.
    MURPHY (d’oh) and the revised GIN my last two in.
    Do you think the setter was tempted by another link to STRIP POKER at 24? I think I might have been, so maybe it’s just as well I’m not a setter.
    Not much of a solver either – I didn’t get “parts of East” in 1ac, nor “part of test” in 10. Thanks to Mct for both.

    Edited at 2014-01-15 08:12 am (UTC)

    1. I managed to read those three words as one – ‘past’ – which fitted. Must be the effects of all this speed-solving I do nowadays…
    2. I took the editor to be just “writer” and helper part of the def but then there’d be no need for the QM.

  8. Yep, I’m another GUNner too…

    All others in about thirty minutes except for last three, EXPEDITOR, UNSUITED (thought it started in-) and PUTRID, which took a while longer. Didn’t parse NEPALESE, but all others ok.

    Hmm…solving on the laptop can lead to unexpected errors… after I had SHOT PUTTER, I carelessly typed in ‘pointless’ at 4dn, only realising some moments later the scatological mistake. That wouldn’t have happened had I been solving the old-fashioned way…

  9. Easiest so far this week but with the treacherous GIN/GUN lurking in there. I just couldn’t justify GUN and eventually saw GIN for my LOI in 20 minutes.

    I agree with McT that the setter missed a great opportunity with GUT to push a little bit of particle physics our way – one day they will be as aware of the world around them as they are of their old poets.

  10. 11m. I slowed myself down a little bit by putting in RIG for 8ac (it fits) but fortunately 1dn NIGHTCLUB was fairly obvious. There were quite a few others where the clue could be solved from definition and checkers, and one answer with two clues: I solved 25ac from 3dn.
  11. Luckily, GUN did not occur to me as GIN went straight in. I see janie’s problem, which would not arise if solving on an iPad with The Times app, as existing letters are ‘skipped’ when inserting crossings. Also nice to be reminded of Arthur Daley ‘The world is your lobster’
  12. No GUN here although was tempted with RIG (hidden) for a while. 26 minutes, with 5 or 6 spent on my LOI UNSUITED and PUTRID. Excellent puzzle of moderate difficulty.
  13. No solutions suggested themselves until OYSTER at 23A and I thought I was in for a long haul, but then it all fell into place fairly steadily.

    But, alas, I too went for GUN at 8A – all the more inexplicably as I’d at first entered GIN, but was then lured into error by the “piece”=”gun” possibility. Doh!

  14. 3o minutes. Another easyish solve, though like metrosemike I didn’t get my first answer until OYSTER. No problems, but failed to understand the second definition in 4, so it was a rather tentative entry. MURPHY was last in. I should have got it earlier since it’s a bit of an old chestnut, but doesn’t come up often enough to lodge in my brain.
  15. 10:39, starting in the SE with gut and somehow finishing back where I started with putrid.

    My only QM was at 1a where I wasn’t totally sure that NE & SE qualified as parts of East.

  16. Just on the 30m but a lazy GUN here too. Guessed MURPHY and the rest was straightforward.
  17. A pleasant steady solve in the half hour before lunch. FOI LEAP, then PLASTERED, a nice clue, followed by PANACEA, too obvious once ACE was spotted. Otherwise nothing over-complicated or particularly memorable. Was held up trying to find the crazy “family that” anagram for BANANA SKIN. Hey ho! Ended up in the SE, with LOI EXPEDITOR / PUTRID / UNSUITED.
  18. 11 mins. Originally 10 mins with “gun” but decided it couldn’t be parsed and finally saw the hidden GIN. The UNSUITED/PUTRID crossers held me up and OYSTER was my LOI before my final change. If the wordplay hadn’t been so unambiguous at 16dn I would have spelled it “expediter”.
  19. FOI Murphy, LOI Unsuited. SE corner detained me the longest.
    One error though (Gun not Gin) which at least puts me in distinquished company!
  20. 23.20 but another slow gun. Reminded of a book I liked as a child, ‘Susannah of the Mounties’.
  21. 10 minutes… three relative simple ones in a row means it must be my turn to blog tomorrow… yep. gulp.
  22. Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? No real hold-ups, although it took me a stupidly long time to get MURPHY.

    //Reminded of a book I liked as a child, ‘Susannah of the Mounties’.// I’m sure that title will reappear in a less salubrious form, probably on the internet.

    //One error though (Gun not Gin) which at least puts me in distinquished company!// Daniel, I think you mean “vanguished”.

    Didn’t think of “gun” for 8ac, mainly because I didn’t really notice the “piece” in the clue, but also perhaps because I like the word “gin” in any context. In fact, I may start applying the term to various pieces of medical equipment just to liven things up. “We’ll just see if the scanning gin shows anything…” – yes, I quite like the sound of that.

    Got slightly delayed by having “take five” in 10ac for a while. Childishly enjoyed BANANA SKIN. All in all, I thought it was a pleasant though not overtaxing puzzle.

    Heard on a radio interview this afternoon that A&E staff are demoralized and discouraged by the number of time-wasters and the futility of most of what we do. That’s an hackneyed opinion that belongs in the 1990’s – things are much worse now.

    Edited at 2014-01-15 07:33 pm (UTC)

  23. Another Gunner, I hastilly took ‘Machine’ as reference to the first word in ‘Machine-gun’
  24. 20 minutes with LOI being PUTRID. However I too had GUN perhaps subconsciously swayed by it being adjacent to SHOT on row three.
  25. Sorry to be so late but I’ve actually had to work while at work the last couple of days. The puzzle took about 25 minutes, but I didn’t know whether to put in GIN or GUN. I looked at it again later and saw the hidden, but it was a treacherous misdirection, if intended. Regards.
  26. Completed successfully, and I was pleased that I took a little extra time to avoid the pitfall of ‘gun’. Like others, I failed to parse the ‘parts of the East’ in 1d, and I spent some time trying to think of a way to make an anagram of East around ‘pale’ work before deciding that ‘Nepalese’ just had to be right.
  27. 11:27 for me (+ 0:21 while my Submit took, but at least it didn’t time out so I didn’t have to type everything in again). I made heavy weather of MURPHY (for no good reason), UNSUITED (wanted it to start with IN) and EXPEDITOR (which I’d have spelt EXPEDITER if I spelt it at all).

    Like others I was tempted by GUN (but managed to resist 🙂 and took ages to twig “parts of the east”.

    Having said all that, I thought this was rather a good puzzle.

    Edited at 2014-01-16 12:39 am (UTC)

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