Times 25,695 – The Blog What I Wrote

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
11:54 for a puzzle which I don’t think will pose insuperable problems for too many solvers. Where I wasn’t certain of the necessary vocabulary (a couple of clues), the wordplay pointed me in only one reasonable direction, which is all you ask in those circumstances. Held myself up by leaping to (wrong) conclusions at 12ac, and found one clue beyond my ability to parse, but mostly a steady and enjoyable solve.

Across
1 HIGH – double def., stinky or physically elevated.
3 HANKY-PANKY – HANKY (as in pocket handkerchief), PAN(“criticise”) KentuckY. I raised a metaphorical eyebrow at “criminal” as I thought hanky-panky usually referred to sexy shenanigans which weren’t actually illegal, just a bit naughty – the sort of thing a President and an actress might get up to, say; in fact the dictionaries confirm that it can be any sort of dishonest or actually criminal behaviour.
10 POLICEMAN – (COPINMALE)* &lit. Not sure the surface stands up to scrutiny, really, but it’s a write-in anyway.
11 DICKY – double def., one of them being a dicky bow, as worn by those in evening dress or antique dealers.
12 OLD MAID – singleton in the Bridget Jones usage, and a card game I remember playing as a child. I made the mistake of thinking the first word must be ONE and having to be disabused of that.
13 YEASTY – YEA(“truly”) STY(“home on a farm”). Clever clueing meant I was trying to find the “IN” suggested by “at home” and the anagram suggested by “turbulent”, neither of which exist.
15 ROYAL ALBERT HALL – I’m going to have to crowd-source the parsing here – I found it easy enough to see the answer, more difficult to see why it’s right… See early comments below, mctext wins the race to explain this one by a short head; well, it’s certainly intricate, to the extent I will be surprised if many people parse this, then solve it, rather than the other way round.
18 MUSIC TO ONE’S EARS – where “report” is the actual sound.
21 RECORD – double def.
23 EARLESS – FEARLESS minus the first letter i.e. scalped.
26 ON DIT – pOiNtDrIfTs. Either I never knew this or have forgotten it (it rings a vague bell), but the wordplay pointed towards a phrase which means “they say” in French, so seemed entirely plausible to mean “gossip” in English.
27 CHIPOLATA – CHIP, [L in OAT], A. Hmmm, can you really clue CHIP as “potato”?
28 FLY SWATTER – manY insectS noW in FLATTER; a clever &lit.
29 BLUE – double def. referring to a mood and, say, a film or comedian.
 
Down
1 HIPPODROME – HIP(“groovy”), POD(“school”), ROME. The racecourse in the classical world, rather than the music hall of the modern world.
2 GELID – (EG)rev. + LID. While I still thought 12ac must be ONE, I toyed with “GELEE” until I remembered the important thing, that IT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.
4 ARMADILLO – A, [MAD in RILL], Other. As I already had A_______O when I came to this, it was a case of write first, ask about parsing later.
5 KINKY – King, INKY.
6 PODCAST – [D.C., A] in POST.
7 NICOTIANA – [COT in II(a couple)] in NANA. As is traditional, I didn’t have any knowledge of the plant, but with the checkers and wordplay I didn’t have any doubts about my conclusion looking plausible. Gardeners will probably laugh at me as usual, and say they have literally nothing else in their herbaceous borders.
8 YOYO – reversal of TOY-TOY. This setter certainly likes an &lit.
9 SCRAWL – Scribble, CRAWL(as in freestyle swimming stroke) &lit., see above comment. As an aside, why has the swimming world not formally changed the name of the freestyle event to “front crawl”, given that everyone invariably (and unsurprisingly) chooses the fastest stroke?
14 CLOSE SHAVE – ho ho.
16 YESTERDAY – obviously this only works if you imagine that everyone crosses out the number of the previous day on their calendar as the days go by. They don’t, of course, but for the purposes of this clue I was prepared to accept that they might.
17 ERNIE WISE – ERNIE, the computer which chooses the numbers for Premium Bond winners, “Y”s. The play-writing one with the short fat hairy legs, Little Ern has been an answer before, though only in a weekend puzzle.
19 CHOCTAW – (CAT)* in CHOW. The other sort of “brave” from 23ac, despite that one being the clue with the scalping.
20 SERMON – SERF, MONday.
22 DUCAT – Demanded Until Conceded At Trial. Very clever construction. “Shylock’s money” as in “the currency used by Shylock”; the Merchant of Venice hinges on a debt of 3,000 ducats secured against a pound of flesh.
24 EMAIL – austraLIA MElbourne. Happy Australia Day for the weekend, Antipodeans, and let’s not mention the cricket.
25 GOLF – (FLOG)rev., a cryptic staple.

47 comments on “Times 25,695 – The Blog What I Wrote”

  1. I’m afraid I don’t get this one – could somebody explain it to me?
    Took 24:50 so not so easy for me, but quite enjoyable.
  2. 15ac was a parsing nightmare (though the answer was obvious enough). Too many boys in there: ROY, AL (x3), ALBERT, BERT, HAL; as well as an anagram of BOY. Only just seeing the reversal, giving LA LA LA, brought this home post-solve. That warbling goes after ROY and around BERTH (place); then close to “memoriaL”.

    Phew

  3. The way I think it works is as an &lit: Boy is ROY (for no particular reason), some warbling gives you LA LA LA, around the place=BERTH and the final L from memorial. The whole a rather strange sentence describing the great jelly mould.
  4. 30m. A strange solving experience: I did almost all of this in 10 minutes, but then got completely stuck on the last four clues. I should have seen PODCAST a lot more quickly, and the plant is fairly clued, although obviously I haven’t heard of it. But when I finally figured out that some dictionary or other might justify “turbulent” as “YEASTY”, and that “rotten” is synonymous with DICKY in the same way it’s synonymous with “below par” (i.e. not really) it was much more with a feeling of “well I suppose so, if you insist” than “Eureka”.
    1. Except podcast came quite quickly, and ended with a DNF – pencilled in yeasty and dicky with a “Really?”, but couldn’t make the leap to nicotiana.
      Otherwise the only eyebrow-raiser was LALALA for warbling.
      Rob
  5. Did OK until held up with the HANKY-PANKY—DICKY—KINKY—YEASTY mob at the end; especially the last two where I had no idea about that meaning of “yeasty”. (ODO has “characterized by upheaval; restless and turbulent: the yeasty days of yesterday’s revolution”.)

    Along with ALBERT, The FLY-SWATTER clue was a bit of a test. Must have been a test for the setter as well, finding a way of clueing YSW.

    Technically unfair, but I think we have to allow the double-duty in 9dn (S,CRAWL). Must be getting soft in my old age.

    1. I forgot to mention it in the blog, that at first I thought there must be something significant going on with all the Ys in the grid (not to mention Ernie Ys in the clues, of course) but actually there isn’t, really, is there? Just an unusually large number in the NE corner…
  6. I thought some of these definitions a bit out of date. HANKY PANKY is no longer associated with criminal activity surely; DICKY today means unsound as in DICKY TICKER rather than depraved and do people still call a bow tie a DICKY?; and so on

    I never bothered to even try to work out 15A where R-Y-L and 5,6,4 shouted the answer. Love to know if anybody solved from cryptic rather than just “place close to memorial”. Glad I didn’t have to blog it – life’s too short

    The rest of it’s all a bit twee at times. Not one of the best.

    1. We’re of roughly the same generation, Jim, and my understanding has always been than a ‘dicky’ is a false shirt front, or at a pinch, a collar but not a tie. That’s a dicky bow for wearing with the above. I think it’s a crappy clue anyway because, as you have pointed out, ‘dicky’ doesn’t mean ‘rotten’ either and the usual sources don’t say otherwise (on either point)!

      Edited at 2014-01-28 11:13 am (UTC)

      1. I think the idea is that “dicky” means “rotten” in the sense that both mean “ill”. To use z8’s neat phrase below, this kind of “three point turn in a thesaurus” is not my favourite way to make clues difficult.
    2. Of course I meant “rotten” for DICKY rather than “depraved”. I missed out that I also didn’t think KINKY meant “depraved” – there’s a touch of puritanism creeping in there
  7. About 27 minutes for this one, interrupted by a nice sub-continental gentleman who was informed about some errors on my computer. Seriously torn between getting on with the puzzle and seeing how far I could predict the script. Puzzle won after a short tease.
    YEASTY was my LOI, partly because I couldn’t undo the parsing, and partly because I’m wasn’t too convinced even now about its equivalence to “turbulent” (not sure what a turbulent farm looks like either). Some dictionaries give it, though, and suggest it might be used in contexts like the Ukraine at present. Not by me, it wouldn’t!.
    I freely admit I only parsed RAH after Tim threw down the gauntlet, and of course typed too slow. And is DICKY really equivalent to “rotten” other than by a three point turn in the Thesaurus? And shouldn’t it be timeless playthings in 8 to justify both toys?
    27 suggests a really gruesome meal of leftovers.
    Some very odd sentences dotted amongst the clues, then. But I liked the DUCAT. That worked.

  8. … and that wrong letter was the “I” in 26ac. Despite having a degree in French and many years of teaching under my belt, I’m often stymied by words/phrases from across the channel. It was my LOI, and unparsed, so no surprise it was wrong.

    Other than that, I didn’t take the time to parse RAH (it would have taken a looong time…) and needed to check a dictionary to verify the Indian. Top half went in much quicker than bottom today. Ooh, and didn’t really like RECORD for release. Surely you could record a piece of music, say, but only release it (for sale / to the public) at a later date? Or am I missing something…?

    1. I think the way to look at it is that a word is fair if it passes the substitution test, but that doesn’t mean it has to pass muster in every possible sentence. If you can imagine a radio DJ saying something like “That’s the latest release/record from X” more or less interchangeably, it’s probably fair. (I think we’ve had similar discussions about whether you can say someone “has a record out” when it may never exist in a physical format…)
      1. It gets mentioned a lot but I don’t set much store by this fabled substitution test. In today’s puzzle, for instance, DICKY and “rotten” pass the test because you could insert either into the sentence “little Johnny isn’t going to school because he’s feeling _____” but I don’t think that’s good enough. To me they’re synonymous in the way “Larry” is synonymous with “a sandboy”.
        1. I’d agree it isn’t a faultless idea. I usually think that those definitions which appear way down the entry in the dictionary (to the extent that they are technically correct but not easily reproduced in a normal context, or at least cause a raised eyebrow) are best left to barred crosswords.

          1. Absolutely: it’s a question of context. Uncovering the obscure definitions that would induce apoplexy if they appeared in the daily puzzle is one of the pleasures of Mephisto.
        2. K, surely the substitution test requires that the sentence retains its original meaning, which isn’t the case in your example?
            1. …which illustrates quite nicely what I meant by the “three point turn in the Thesaurus comment”. While neither matches directly, they may match via a third word, in this case (Collins) “poorly” fits the bill.
  10. This was a very enjoyable and entertaining solve that let itself down a bit in the NE corner, I thought. That was certainly the corner that gave me problems anyway and took me past my 30 minute target yet again – this time by 9 minutes.

    I wrote in 15ac immediately on the basis of the 2nd line of the clue alone and forgot to go back and parse it so I shall never know whether I could have worked it out.

    Edited at 2014-01-28 11:26 am (UTC)

  11. This was more difficult than it should have been because many of the clues were poor, I thought. BTW, surely ‘record’ does not mean release? You record something before you release it.
    1. See some of the other contributors’ comments above. It just about works as a noun.

      Edited at 2014-01-28 11:51 am (UTC)

    2. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this as explained by Tim above. It’s in all the usual sources, and Collins gives the example “the new release from Bob Dylan”
  12. Another reasonably pleasant solve, under the half hour, technically a DNF, as I didn’t parse the RAH or the FLY SWATTER. Knew the CHOCTAW from watching too many cowboy films. Too many rather iffy definitions to make it fully enjoyable. FOI the simple POLICEMAN, LOI the unsatisfactory RECORD.

    And funny to have KINKY and BLUE in the crossword just after reading a rather woolly article on pornography on the inside pages. (Perhaps feature writers should stay anonymous too, it might spare them embarrassment when they are merely being chatty rather than having something to say.)

  13. 10 mins so I was definitely on the setter’s wavelength.

    I had a similar start to yesterday and my FOI was ON DIT, but after that the bottom was completed very quickly and I worked my way back up. Count me as another who didn’t bother to parse 15ac. The NE was definitely the trickiest section of the puzzle and YEASTY was my LOI after KINKY.

  14. 15 minutes, didn’t bother to parse RAH as was obvious, a dicky bow and feeling dicky is fine with me, not as bad a puzzle as many above seem to think, IMO. I remembered CHOCTAW from Billy Jo McAllister being up on the …. ridge, anyone else?
  15. Nothing to add to what’s been said, except to note my time of 44 minutes, so I was defeated by the Aussie, who’s yet to report in. A familiar tale for Englishmen these days.
  16. I ripped through most of this then got tangled in a web of my own devising, having put ‘Chactow’ at 19d, thus making 21a insoluble. It turns out that I needn’t have bothered spending 10 minutes sorting that out — I’d put ODD CARD at 12a. Note to self: try not to be so thick.
  18. Reporting in now, Ulaca. And relax, you beat me.

    After five minutes my brain sent me two messages. This could be a fast time, and watch out, there’s a plant at 7D.

    Sure enough, I had everything but the plant after 20 minutes, which is fast for me. Now for the plant. COT and NANA were pretty obvious, so just needed a two-letter solution for couple, with the first letter being a vowel. Eventually resorted to Google to confirm that NICOTTANA was a plant (don’t ask me how “couple” = IT), and stumbled across NICOTIANA. So technically a DNF.

    Thought it was weak that I and then another I could be clued by “couple”, and was ready to vent my outrage until I put my Roman-coloured glasses on.

    Stupid plants.

  19. Seems this one has annoyed some folks, but, to place matters into context, not as much as the one over the way at Guardian, which is by Gordius. Indeed, over there, by which I mean @ 15 Squared, some people of late have been arguing that double-definition clues should have defs that are so far apart in the meaning spectrum as to be absolutely unequivocal. But life’s just not like that is it, and if the meanings are under different headwords in the thesaurus, that’s really got to be good enough. Where would a compiler otherwise draw the line?

    26 minutes for me, didn’t enjoy it all that much, but fair I would say, and all right for a murky Tuesday. Guessed ALBERT and his chums.

    Edited at 2014-01-28 01:29 pm (UTC)

  20. All pretty straightforward. Only a couple of things to say. I’m not sure what “then” is doing at 23ac. Knew YEASTY from Macbeth: “though the yesty waves confound and swallow navigation up” – different spelling but clearly meaning turbulent.
  22. i was surprised when I found that I was within my half-hour target time as it seemed to take longer. I also noted the proliferation of ‘y’s’ and thought that something must be going on, but couldn’t identify anything. Perhaps the compiler was just setting her/himself a challenge.
    I was another who thought that my remaining anticipated lifespan did not justify trying to parse 15a when the answer was so obvious.
  23. An odd puzzle. Felt a bit down when I saw that a plant was involved but without knowing it, got it right. Agree with jimbo and others that there is an old-fashioned feel about this one.
  24. 12 minutes – rare one with no holdups and everything understood on a first go in… must have been having a good brain night!
  25. 13:52 here. I never found the setter’s wavelength, and I’m afraid I didn’t really enjoy it – which for me is quite rare for a Times puzzle. Two &lits (10ac and 15ac) which IMO just aren’t good enough. If I’m feeling “rotten”, things are a lot worse than if I’m feeling “dicky”. 21ac seems weak. I could go on.
  26. Somewhat like yesterday’s — too many riddles, too few clues with real wordplay (and not very good ones at that). If I had to choose the best of a poor lot, they would be FLYSWATTER and perhaps HANKY-PANKY (despite the discussion about what it really means). Like almost everyone else, I also didn’t understand ROYAL ALBERT HALL before coming here, but maybe I should put that down to my own dimness rather than the clue’s being too involved; I simply didn’t register the third LA in LALALA reversed.

    I can heartily recommend turning on the spelling checker before submission — I get quite a laugh out of its suggestions for improvements (today it didn’t like HANKY, PANKY or LALALA).

  27. Bit of a mixed bag, I thought. Like most of you, I thought the some of the clues were lousy, esp. 15ac. Everybody got the answer, but the parsing has been a matter for discussion – this is surely putting the cart before the horse that’s bolted.

    No interesting, amusing or creative injuries today, so I returned to my game of Use All The Answers In Casual Conversation. Come to think of it, there was one amusing injury, which is how I managed to use “CHIPOLATA”. You don’t want to know about “YEASTY”.

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