Times 25712 – In which I get in for an answer

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 19 minutes

Music: Brahms, Piano Quintet, Richter/Borodin Quartet

This is just about as fast as I can do a puzzle. I was looking for an easy one, having been delayed a little by the post-concert dinner, and this was just up my alley.

However, lest you think I am a skilled solver, rest assured I am still struggling with Saturday’s. Sometimes these things take a while, and I seem to be more tolerant of a week-long solve than many of my fellow bloggers.

Across
1 IMPLICIT, IMP LICIT.
9 ORATORIO, OR A T(O)RIO.
10 CRAVEN, C + RAVEN.
11 TOLERANTLY T[ory] + anagram of NOT REALLY.
12 STOA, hidden in [piraeu]S TO A[thens], a staple of vowel-hungry US puzzles.
13 SANDWICHED, anagram of WENCH DID AS. ‘Ordered’ is a dead giveaway anagram indicator, but the literal takes seeing.
16 ORBITAL, O + anagram of TRIBAL.
17 HABITAT, H(A BIT)AT.
20 FLIGHT PATH, double definition, neither one very cryptic.
22 KNEW, K[afka] + NEW.
23 TICKED OVER, TICK + E + DOVER. ‘Tick’ here has the meaning of a very short time, not a check mark indicating agreement.
25 IMBIBE, I(M BIB)E, where ‘bib’ is Trisopterus luscus – just what you wanted to know, no doubt.
26 GEMSTONE, GE(anagram of MOST)NE.
27 SIGHTSEE, SIGHT + SEE as verbs, matching ‘spot’ as a verb.
 
Down
2 MERCATOR, M[apmaking] + anagram of CREATOR, a nice &lit.
3 LEVERAGING, L + EVER + AGING. Not necessarily speculative.
4 CONTESTANT, CON(T[o] E[xcel])STANT.
5 TOWLINE, T(OWL)INE.
6 PAIR, PA(I)R, a golf clue for those who didn’t get it.
7 WRETCH, W[a]R + ETC + H[ard].
8 COPY EDIT, anagram of DICY POET.
14 WEATHERING, WEA(THE)RING, as in ‘weathering the storm’. If, however, something is ‘weathered’, then it didn’t come through completely.
15 CRICKET BAT, double definition that will fool very few.
16 OFF STAGE, another cod double definition.
18 AMENABLE, A + M + ENABLE.
19 NAVVIES, NAV(V)IES.
21 INCOME, reversal of COME IN.
24 DHOW, D[inghy] + HOW. Not very PC, but the whole idea of cartoon cliches is that they cater to the lowest common denominator.

41 comments on “Times 25712 – In which I get in for an answer”

  1. 26 minutes with the last 5 spent going through the alphabet to solve 5dn and eventually spotting PAIR as a literal for “two”. Then I reverse engineered to come up with the golfing reference.

    I’m not sure I have met BIB as a fish before. I’d not thought of owls as being solemn rather than wise but the dictionary has it so it’s fine.

    Edited at 2014-02-17 02:26 am (UTC)

  2. Like Jack, I ran through the alphabet for 5d (my LOI); and put it in on the basis of the definition. I also hadn’t thought of an owl as solemn, and couldn’t parse this until I came here. (Thinking of ‘point’ as compass point didn’t help; I wondered if ‘towlie’ was britspeak for a solemn person.) DNK BIB; it’s a change from ‘ide’, anyway. I could have done without the Indian greeting, although it did make for a smooth surface.
  3. 21 minutes, with TOWLINE last in after due solemnity was accorded to the bird.

    “How!” took me back to the children’s TV programme of the 60s-70s where a chap dressed up in suitably befeathered headgear used to raise his hand, intone the word and then tell you how to make something. Made a change from Valerie Singleton…

  4. re PAIR – like Jack, having spotted “two”, I guessed at the correct answer, but can someone please explain the connection with golf?

    HOW! – an excellent kids program, very educational.
    Jack Hargreaves, Fred Dinenage and Jon Miller, with a variety of female 4th presenters.

      1. eureka, ulaca, my thanks

        mental block on my part – not a game I’ve ever played (back problem due to collapsed scrum playing for Surrey schoolboys in 1965), so it never crossed my tiny mind.

    2. Fred Dinenage popped up in HOW 2 in the 90s and is currently a News Presenter with Meridian TV. And guess what? His hair looks just the same.
      1. Anyone who’s flicked through the higher-numbered satellite channels in search of something to watch may have encountered “Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook” on the Crime Channel, which always strikes me as the most Alan Partridgesque real programme on TV.
  5. Saved this for a 3/4 hour’s bus journey, but had all but two done before the bus arrived. Those were the ORATORIO/TOWLINE pair. And I’m pecking myself for not seeing that OWLs are solemn. (They are my personal creatures I’m told; but it may just be a pun.)

    6dn reminded me to say something more about the Women’s golf in Australia at the moment. Very exciting indeed. The world will have to keep its eyes on Minjee Lee (Royal Fremantle amateur). But I’d probably get another rap on the knuckles for off-topic comments. So I won’t say anything.

    [Or … is golf one of those “off-topic” topics that passes without reprimand?]

    Edited at 2014-02-17 08:36 am (UTC)

  6. 12 minutes, with some very likeable clues, PAIR, MERCATOR and INCOME piquing particular approval. As for others, it seems, PAIR only emerged once its checkers were in; indeed, when I first looked at the clue, I thought immediately I’d have to leave it until I had something to work on. It just looked that bit cleverer than most.
    I wonder if my local Tesco’s has ever passed off BIB (otherwise unknown until now) as cod? Would we know? Or care?
  7. 15 minute paddle in the shallows. I liked 2D and 6D. I think 15D is insect=CRICKET, mammal=BAT rather than a double definition. Not much to say about it really.
  9. 9m. My last in was PAIR: it’s the kind of clue that could have taken me ages but fortunately I saw how it worked quickly.
    A couple of obscurities that will be familiar to anyone who’s been solving crosswords for long enough (STOA and DHOW) and one that won’t (BIB).
    I was a bit puzzled by LEVERAGING, which doesn’t really mean “operating speculatively”, but once I had a few checkers it clearly wasn’t going to be anything else.
  10. A very Mondayish puzzle, but the last time I checked it was Monday, so that’s fine. No quibbles, and perfectly entertaining clues at the easy end of things.
  11. 9 mins, and I’m another whose LOI was PAIR which went in from the definition alone. Now that I see how it works it is my COD.
  12. New PB – 24 mins. Got very few from a first pass of the across clues but then built up steam with the downs. Bunged in DIGA as a guess for 24 dn – first letters of 4 words – so got held up in SW until gemstone cleared things up. I join the band of 6dn LOI got on definition. Thanks for the explanation vinyl1.
  13. Untimed, but definitely sub 30mins. Felt fast for me. DNK STOA, BIB, or the golfing ref at 6dn, all others parsed ok.

    LOI and COD: INCOME

  14. a US term also known here as gearing. If I have £10 and I borrow £90 I can invest £100. If the investment goes up 10%, I can cash in, repay the loan and double my original money. If it goes down 10%, I lose my original stake as I have to repay the loan. So it is not so much speculative as risk-enhancing

    Edited at 2014-02-17 12:04 pm (UTC)

  15. 8 minutes all seemed to go in fine. BIB seemed familiar. Some very nice surfaces here and really liked 6d
  16. 21m here with the last 6m on the 25a/18d crossing not helped by having put in an unthinking imbrue! So on my easy side but still entertaining and 6d was my first down clue in. Thanks for blog as BIB and OWL were unknown references.
  17. It may have only taken me 5:10 but this is probably today’s most enjoyable cryptic offering (and yes sadly I have done them all!)
  18. 10:42. I missed the retrospectively easy implicit and had to start lower down, eventually returning to the NW to finish with mercator, craven and the unknown Stoa. Bib unknown too.

    COD to income.

  19. I can heartily agree with you there, Cryptic Sue, though the Indy is okay, just about.

    A very easy outing this, and only 15 mins for me, which is very good by my somewhat glacial appreciations of time passing, and some solid, if not perhaps the prettiest, clues.

    I’m away on a short in duration but long in miles business trip for the rest of this week, so I’ll see you all, um well, it is actually next Tuesday, without wishing to be utterly crass. Have a good week.

    Chris.

  21. TOWLINE took a while, as in the UK it’s usually known as a towrope, and the owl reference completely passed me by. Toyed with a solemn ‘tolling’ for a while.
  22. 12:53 .. a bit of time spent admiring some beautifully crafted clues. SANDWICHED and PAIR the pick of the bunch for me.

    For those who follow the competitive side of things: if I’m not mistaken Jason will top Tony Sever’s leader board this week, having outperformed Magoo over last week’s 6 daily puzzles. That’s like someone who isn’t German winning a luge event. Splendid achievement.

  23. A gentle 20 minutes today. Delayed at the end by TOWLINE and PAIR, the latter of which was my COD once the penny dropped.
  24. Fast for me, too, though that means a longish 45 min. I rather liked PAIR, which clicked before I got either crosser. I’ve heard ‘solemn as an owl’ even though I’ve never thought of owls as particularly solemn, and thought I’d also (Dickens?) heard old geezers referred to as ‘an old owl’, or as owl-like.
    (And, like Vinyl, I’m still puzzling over the last 3 or 4 from Saturday).

    Edited at 2014-02-17 02:38 pm (UTC)

  25. Maybe it’s just me but I was very taken by 6D. That’s a particularly clever clue in my opinion – the sort that one reads and re-reads, even after solving it, because it’s so nicely constructed.
  26. Billy Bunter was often referred to as “the fat owl of the remove”. I don’t know whether he was solemn because he was always hungry, or because of the appalling bullying he suffered from his classmates.
    1. I think with Bunter the “owl” thing came from the size of his spectacles which in the text were described as “enormous”.
  27. Which for me is really good going! I enjoyed this puzzle, cleverly constructed clues. After last week though I fear this may be the calm before the storm and we may get real stinkers the next two days.

    Sorry you are having so much rain in the UK. Nairobi this time of the year is usually unbearably hot and we never see a cloud in the sky. Not this year though. Lots of rain and hardly any sun and (for us at least) rather cold. There must be some explanation for all this somewhere…

    Thank you for the blog, clear and helpful as always and thank you setter.

    Nairobi Wallah

  28. Didn’t find this anywhere near as easy as some of the recent offerings, and enjoyed it. Our setter’s ingenuity shone throughout.
  29. Whizzed through two thirds of this on the Balham to Victoria run, and the rest on the return leg, all except PAIR, which seemed right but the parsing took some time to tease out. And “bib” was new to me, but couldn’t be anything else.

    Beautiful surface on 15dn, taking me totally in the wrong direction. The blanks also screamed “guinea pig”. This is my COD.

    But Clue of the Week, nay, Month, must be 12ac in Saturday’s crossword! Still grinning.

  30. 20 minutes, with which I’m happy. PAIR held me up only for a moment – I had “SAME” to begin with (since three, four or five divided by one are the same, and two things are… well, it seemed like a good idea at the time), but PAIR was obvious with the checkers.

    Other than that, all pretty straightforward. I count myself lucky for knowing STOA – and still don’t know why I know it or what it is (OK, I checked – it’s a portico rather than a Greek umbrella). Didn’t know BIB, but assumed it was up there with “dab” – will consult my fishmonger (Bob) on the matter.

    Today’s award for Most Unexpected Injury was a two-part event involving a sea urchin. (See? I said it was unexpected.) A young lady threw it at a young gentleman (from whose marine aquarium she had unwisely plucked it in a fit of pique). Took slightly longer to remove the spine fragments from her fingers than from his cheek. Fate of sea urchin not disclosed.

  31. All correct today with FOI Implicit and LOI Pair. Solved the first seven clues I tried (all in the NW corner) all on first look – a personal best. Much slower after that, not least because of a wrong first stab at Flight Plan at 20ac.
    Didn’t understand Towline until reading your blog vinyl1 so thanks for explaining that one.
  32. 7:17 here for a pleasant start to the week. I thought of TOWLINE reasonably quickly once I’d got HOTLINE out of my mind (I reached it with the L and N in place), but approached 6dn as my final clue with a feeling of dread as I hadn’t been able to make head or tail of it up to that point. Fortunately light dawned reasonably quickly, though it still left me some way behind the leaders.
  33. Like others, I had not encountered ‘bib’ as a fish before, but, as Londoniensis says, it couldn’t be anything else.
    By the way, I have noted that Londoniensis counts his solution as a dnf if he fails to parse all the solutions. That can’t be right, and I recall a former National champion telling me once that he never takes the time to parse a clue when he is certain that his answer is correct. In serious competition conditions, there is no time for genuine contenders to take that luxury. For myself, if I get a correct answer by a process that some unkind people would call ‘guesswork’, I simply regard it as subconscious knowledge.
    1. George, not sure that you are comparing like with like. In a time competition, you scribble them in for whatever reason just to beat the clock. In a relaxed solve, most of the fun comes from delving into and cracking the parsings.

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