Times 25704 – Not a stinker!

59 comments on “Times 25704 – Not a stinker!”

1. Indeed, if I ever had to blog one of these I’d want it to be like this one. I started off slow, though, and I don’t think I got an across clue besides RACER on the first round. DNK PADDY=fit, and only put it in when I had the checkers. Also DNK TIPPER. And what IS ‘or office’ doing in 4d? It seems worse than extraneous.
2. 26:16 .. had everything except STOP in about 15 minutes. Thought I was never going to figure it out.

   A lot of smiles in this one.

   I assume the office in 4d is the register office

   COD .. DISHY – great surface.

   1. Thanks, I have noted your comment in my blog.
3. 28 minutes, finishing with DISHY BRIDE; my COD to the latter for the penny drop moment. CRETONNE forgotten. Liked the construction type at 1 across.
4. ….as I got the wrong end of the stick on many clues, only to see the obvious after leaving it and coming back. I didn’t get the cryptic for ‘focused’ and still don’t understand ‘paddy’, but the answers were fairly obvious.

   I don’t think this is as easy a puzzle as the early commenters think, we will see what the stragglers have to say.

   1. If a child (or adult) has a paddy, he throws the toys out of the cot, ie loses his/her temper, or has a fit.
      1. Ignotus mihi, gracias.
5. My last answer in after quite an enjoyable solve. The root word for the rice field connection is spelt PADI in Malay. Had to look up CRO-MAGNON but the wordplay was scrupulously fair.
6. 28:59, which is not straggling by my standards, but would love to have shaved a minute off it. Just one minute.

   Thanks Jack for parsing FOCUSED, too religious for me. Didn’t know PADRONE or CRETONNE, but they weren’t too hard.

   As an aside, I think of my youth as generally misspent, but not particularly troublesome.

   Good puzzle.

   Edited at 2014-02-07 03:30 am (UTC)

   1. Maybe the setter was taking your parents’ perspective? Anything under 30 minutes pretty good, no, or are you in training for the championships?
      1. Yes, one of my daily objectives is a sub-30 solve. It was my other objective that I missed by one minute today.

         Edited at 2014-02-07 05:07 am (UTC)

   2. Sorry I should have mentioned in the blog that FOC is not to do with religion (as far as I’m aware) he’s the shop steward for the trades union in a newspaper printing room, or was in the days of hot metal. I don’t know whether the position still exists.

      Edited at 2014-02-07 03:58 am (UTC)

      1. It wasn’t until galspray’s posting that I remembered that I’d put in FOCUSED without having the vaguest idea of how the clue worked. Another DNK to add to my list.
      2. Thanks Jack, I’ve googled it now. From my point of view that makes it even more obscure, but much more interesting. As far as I know that term hasn’t reached the Antipodes, but I could be wrong.
7. About 25 minutes to solve, but I’m discontented with STOP. I get the ‘pull out all the stops’ bit, but STOP as ‘meeting’ doesn’t feel right. EURIPIDES is nice, if not very tough. DNK PADDY as ‘fit’ either. Regards.
   1. Kevin, I took “meeting” as part of the cryptic, not as a definition.
   2. I took the whole clue as the definition, reading it as:

      Meeting demand for extra effort, more than one (of these, i.e. a STOP) is pulled out.

      Edited at 2014-02-07 08:01 am (UTC)

      1. Thank you both. Apparently I was being thick (again).
8. 45 mins for me.

   Love it when I get 1ac on first reading, and I raced through most of the top half, but found the bottom a lot more tricky.

   DNK: CRO-MAGNON, CRETONNE, FOC (not sure that the term’s made it to Lincs, either), and didn’t get the ‘office’ bit at 4d. All others ok. Thanks, Jack!

   PS I read STOP (my LOI) as ‘meeting demand’

9. I guess that LEONINE is indeed ‘of or relating to Pope Leo’ but I admit that I parsed it at the time as a reference to Pope Leo IX. A pleasant end to what would have been the end of the working week if I was still working. LOI BRIDE.

   Edited at 2014-02-07 08:47 am (UTC)

10. Don’t beat yourself up about the blog Jack. You can only work with what the setter gives you and there’s precious little here. A rather easy 15 minute vanilla offering

    There’s some padding: “badly” at 4A; “farm” at 24A. And I too had a MISSPENT youth that involved girls more than learning without being troublesome.

    I worked for a time just off Fleet Street and the Father of the Chapel was the top man when the print unions ruled the newspaper roost

    1. Can’t resist it – how did the girls describe your “involvement”?
       1. Passionately
11. The National Union of Journalists still has heads of local union branches called father or mother of chapel. It seems rather obscure to me, too, for a daily crossword. Thanks for the blog and greetings to all. Gradese
12. Why is ‘badly’ padding? If you are injured, you might have a bruise: if you are badly injured, you might bleed. Given that there is no easy synonym for ‘bleed’ I’d say the setter was to be commended fro trying to be helpful!
    1. If you remove the word “badly” from the clue does it still work in the cryptic sense – not does it read well – does it work? And it does because “injured” is a satisfactory indication of “bled”
    2. I bled this morning from a little razor nick. I didn’t call 999.
13. Well I enjoyed the ten minutes ish I spent on this nice crossword – now for a probably not so nice journey from Kent to Wiltshire!
14. 17 minutes, so less straightforward than yesterday.
    I contented myself at 2d with FC being an abbreviation for Free Church (which does mean chapel) containing Old and the used bit coming from somewhere else. Worked for me!
    But then I also wrote in surplanted despite the anagrist, and only twigged when I couldn’t crack 19.
    BARELY was annoying for those of us who think they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Church terms – so what else do you call a chancel? Lots of dredging time misspent for my LOI.
    The clue for PIN UP smacked of a Dean Mayer ST naughty, but (and?) was my favourite of the day.
15. 29 mins with two wrong, and I was never on this setter’s wavelength.

    My errors were at 20ac where I didn’t see the CD and I put in ATOP on the basis that if something is atop of something else it is meeting it, but that obviously didn’t explain the rest of the clue, and at 14ac where I carelessly put in DISCONCERT. I also found the clue construction for 1ac a little strange, and I’m genuinely surprised that so many of you found the whole puzzle relatively straightforward. I even struggled with the BUMBLED/MISSPENT crossers, which in retrospect shouldn’t have been difficult at all. Maybe I’m just having a bad day.

16. Once again I failed to check through an anagram and misspelled ‘Euripides’. Serves me right for praising literary clues. Must take Mr Gove’s advice and give myself a hundred lines.
    1. Euripides sticks in my mind for the wrong reasons, namely the schoolboy connections of

       Euripides? Iripidose

       Iphigenea? Youphiginthere

       1. Knock knock.
          Who’s there?
          Euripides
          Euripides who?
          Euripides tights and you can buy me a new pair…

          (Sorry)

17. Going pretty well (by my pedestrian standards) until I hit the south east corner. Shot self in foot by misspelling cretonne (came up with crettone) which then meant I missed out on PROPAGATE and things got worse from there…

    24DN triggered troubling images and more troubling lack of solutions. I had always thought – maybe naively – a nipple was not susceptible to division (I wait with bated breath for Thud and Blunder to recount a tale of a Norfolk lass that… but hey, let’s not go there). I now see NIP, but still fail to see any indicator in the clue regarding reversal (or UP for that matter).

    Any enlightenment appreciated!

    And thanks to all who sent such friendly welcoming messages to me yesterday on my debut here – you really are a lovely bunch of folk.

    Nick

    1. The Half Nipple Troublesome sounds like one up in difficulty from the Triple Misty Octograb or whatever it was mentioned yesterday.

       I’m now following the Facebook page of TfTT’s official Olympian, Woodsy, which includes one of the funniest pictures I’ve seen this year. I would pay serious money to know what’s going through the mind of this Russian policeman …

       https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=669148283149192&set=a.359270354136988.85801.344939402236750&type=1&relevant_count=1

       1. He is connected with TfTT?!
          1. You may have missed yesterday’s blog. He’s the son of our commenter chrisw91.
             1. Yes, you are right Sotira, I did. But I am fully briefed now.. that is not a sport I recognise (nor much of his vocab) but he certainly seems to know what he is doing, and it looks difficult, which is good enough for me. I will keep an eye out for him.. i agree with all your second comment yesterday, and see what he does as much more of a proper olympic sport than, say, football or tennis.
                I am a huge Biathlon fan myself.

             2. Guess I missed the second half of yesterday, too. Now au courant – and with something to give purpose to Olympic watching. Thanks for letting us know
    2. ‘Pin-up’ is the example of a reversal, where the answer is a cryptic clue for the literal in the clue. If ‘pin’ were up, it would be ‘half a nipple’.
18. I can only remeber the tailor’s shop joke with EURIPIDES? EUMENIDES? but that’s not too relevant.

    Not sure about this week’s fare really. No real blinders.

    Cheers
    Chris.

19. 16m. Plain vanilla, as others have said, but nothing wrong with that. I didn’t know CRETONNE or FOC but I didn’t need to.
20. 17:39 so not a stinker but not a doddle either. I’ll add my gratitude to those thanking Jack for parsing focused as I was completely in the dark.

    I could have done with some of Sue’s tippex as my first confident answer to 1a was SELFI, at which point I discovered that the printers hadn’t left me enough white squares. I hope the FOC has had a stern word.

    Cro-magnon was my LOI as, like Jack, I got fixated on COO and wasn’t overly familiar with the term.

    One across film club: Paddy Cretonne in The Elfish Padrone.

21. Easy today though mystified by 2dn til enlightened by Jack. FOCs are not as common or as influential as once they were, thank heavens.
    Also agree with the comment above, that 6dn is a reference to pope Leo IX specifically, and not to Leos generally. Leonine means “like a lion,” which Pope Leos manifestly are not

    1. But ‘Leonine’ also means ‘connected with one of the popes called Leo’ (Collins), which makes more sense as a literal given the apostrophe, I reckon.
       1. That was my reckoning too. Thanks for saving me the need to explain. And to Vinyl1 for tackling the query about PIN-UP which would have done my head in at the momoent!
22. Things went smoothly here, though it took a while to bumble through the NE. As with Ulaca and z8, I liked the elfish and pin-up constructions. Didnt know PADDY or FOC, now I know both (though i expect paddy to be more useful). Thank you, Jack et al
23. Livejournal tells me it is Tony Sever’s birthday today.. so happy birthday, Tony! I think we know him well enough to be sure he will turn up here later, birthday or not..
    1. I wonder if he has anything else in common with Garth Brooks …
24. Enjoyed this crossword, nicely clued. Glad that quite a few others hadn’t heard of FOC either.
    1. The only conext I’ve heard it in is Friends of Carlotta in the brilliant Steve Martin film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.
25. Technically a DNF – albeit a very quick 20 minute DNF – as I could not parse three apparently correct answers, PADDY (=fit?), FOCUSED (did not remember Father Of Chapel, now thankfully ancient history), and BRIDE (of a generation and mindset which does not associate registry office contracts with “proper” weddings).

    The -A-E-Y at 28ac was so strongly suggestive of Naseby that it obscured a quite pretty, and straightforward, clue!

    Unaccountably held up in the NE until PRIVY unlocked the rest.

    Nice to see the return of Ur as the ancient city. 11ac would not have worked with Rawalpindi.

    24dn had me reminiscing about the late Vivien Neves, and the storm caused by her appearance as the first ever nude model to grace the pages of The Times back in the pre-Murdoch days of 1971. It prompted a memorable letter: “Sir, … I hope this delightful picture has the same effect on The Times’s circulation as it does on mine.”

26. I only had 20 minutes to spare today before I had to go to my regular U3A piano-playing commitment, so I was delighted to finish in 19 minutes. Just under the wire… Nothing too complicated, although I toyed with HOBBLED at 4a and spent a while trying to fit SPY into 12a. Enjoyable. Ann
27. Late solve today and had all the left half in 11m but then hit a blank and eventually crawled home in 38m with a big hold up in the SE until PROPAGATE fell. I did like 28a which gets my COD vote.
    1. 8:40 here for a pleasant, Mondayish sort of puzzle.

       After another damnably slow start, spending simple ages on the first six across clues followed by the first five down clues, I suddenly found the setter’s wavelength and only missed PACKS at a first reading thereafter.

       [*** Pedantry Alert ***]
       Oh, and BTW, it’s a “register office” (as Sotira wrote).

       1. I claim the same rights as setters! It’s in the dictionary (Collins) so I’m allowed to use it.
28. Sorry but page 1 says 56 comments but when I click on page 2 it only has one over the 50. A glitch with Safari I think. Anyway, if I post a new comment the rest miraculously appear.
29. I didn’t find this as easy as some others (but then again, I never do), but got there in about 40min, with BARELY my LOI. I spent a long time trying to justify EATERY for 28ac to go with the gastronomic theme.

    If I were in the mood (which I am not) to rant about the relative levels of scientific versus cultural literacy in the world, I would ask why the setter expects his readers to know “father of the chapel”, “Euripides” (what on Earth is an euripide?) and “cretonne”, yet considers “Cro-Magnon” – the first known example of our own species, and your great*60,000 grandparents – a challenge? So, on balance, it’s a good thing I’m not in a ranty mood. It was a damn near thing there, though.

    It would be rather fun (and this still isn’t a rant, incidentally) to have one puzzle per year – perhaps on the anniversary of the death of a famous scientist – in which the answers were things like “kinase”, “tesseract” and “Burkholderia”, perhaps with the odd “Hastings” or “Churchill” thrown in for balance.

    Ahem.

    Anyway, at least this one was free of obscure place names (apart from “Canada”, wherever that is) and perverse cricketing terms.

    Well, the night’s fun here is due to begin in, oh, a couple of hours or less. Injury of the Day so far goes to a young gentleman who had managed to slam his fingers violently in a sliding patio door. It wasn’t (he explained) his fault – he had been trying to slam the door on the head of another young gentleman, who had wisely moved out of the way. Fortunately, I don’t think any real harm was done – those doors can stand up to a lot of abuse.

    1. It will be even more fun to read the blog on that famous, all-technology, day!

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