Times 25,731

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Stopped the clock at 11:15 on what I thought was a very pleasant but not too demanding puzzle (with the caveat that it’s obviously impossible to tell in advance if everyone else will think the same, as proved by last Tuesday’s*). The major stumbling block might be the classical references, though there’s also a fair bit of natural history, not to mention a mathematician, but no poets, which will please my Tuesday co-tenant. I’d say this felt a little old-fashioned, but not in an overly dusty way.

*At time of writing, my only comparison on the leaderboard is with Jason, and as I’m just under twice his time, I’m pretty much where I’d expect to be by that measure. I shall wait for people to confirm if this puzzle is, in fact, dreadfully hard / insultingly easy [delete as appropriate].

Across
1 CONCLAVE – CONservative, Liberal in CAVE. Most famously when cardinals gather to elect a Pope.
9 REACTIVEfoR thE ACTIVE (the grammatical voice, as opposed to the passive).
10 SCUM – C in SUM. Scum, sub-human scum as Alan Partridge once said.
11 BILLINGSGATE – playful suggestion based on the fact that it’s now automatic for journalists to apply the suffix “-gate” to any scandal at all (and yet when a cabinet minister gets into a row with Downing Street police over using the correct exit, it’s Plebgate rather than Gategate, which I think is missing a trick). Anyway, an imaginary scandal relating to overcharging could be Billings-gate, as in the name of London’s traditional wholesale fish market.
13 PIGNUT – GNU in PIT; I didn’t know this, but was convinced enough by the obvious wordplay to put it in even before any checkers appeared. Anyway, it’s the underground tuber of a herb, which has many common names; this one indicates its popularity with foraging pigs, presumably when they can’t get truffles.
14 EMPLOYER – PLOY(subterfuge) in REME(rev.)
15 UNSTUCK – Slave in UN(a, if you’re French), TUCK (Robin Hood’s traditionally well-upholstered companion).
16 CHEETAH =”CHEATER”, as in the answer to the question why you shouldn’t play cards when you’re on safari.
20 PALOMINO – PAL O’ MINe, Owned. Wikipedia assures me that both Trigger and Mr. Ed were palominos.
22 CURATE – RAT in CUE.
23 ARISTOCRATIC – (AIR)*, Time in SOCRATIC.
25 ISIS – gIgS mIsS. The Thames, but only the bit which flows through Oxford, hence “part”.
26 EYEGLASS – Good in [Energy, YE(old form of “the”), LASS].
27 HABANERA – A BAN in HER Area. Another which went in from wordplay, because even though I’d never heard of it before, it certainly sounded very much like a dance (i.e. “steps taken”). And I did know the Habanero chilli, so it wasn’t inconceivable that Havana might give its name to more than one thing.
 
Down
2 ORCADIAN – Old ARCADIAN, the Arcadians being the proverbially happy and simple countryfolk of a bygone utopia. Though if you happen to know a) where Kirkwall is and b) what residents of Orkney are properly called, this answer will have gone in without needing to consider them.
3 COMBINATIONS – COMB(“dress”), NATION in IS. Combinations would be the ancestor of the onesie, I suppose…
4 ANALYTIC – ANA(“accounts”), Left, (CITY)rev.
5 ERMINEDrobE in [E.R. MIND].
6 HANG-UP – double def.
7 VISA – hidden in kieV IS An; possibly a comment on the slightly worrying situation in that part of the world.
8 RESEARCH – REES(the requisite Welshman) with half his letters reversed, ARCH(“chief”).
12 GEOMETRICIAN – (CAIROMEETING)*. Rene Descartes was influential in maths as well as philosophy, and quite literally a Renaissance Man.
15 UNPLACED – (PUNt)*, LACED(“beaten”).
17 HECATOMB – HECATE, the classical enchantress, with her final letter changed from E to O, then M.B. for the doctor. A hecatomb was a sacrifice of 100 oxen, so not the sort of thing to happen every day.
18 ANTERIOR – the port of RIO in [BANTER without the Bishop].
19 BOORISH – Old, O.R.(Other Ranks), in BISH. Another slightly old-fashioned one: I think it was Jennings who was regularly found committing some sort of fearful bish, though it may have been Nigel Molesworth.
21 ISOBAR – 1’S 0 BAR, as it might be written.
24 ILEX – Investigate, LEX (“law” in Latin). I think this is the clue where people are most likely to come to grief if they don’t have either the classical/legal knowledge to get the LEX part, or the botanical knowledge of what the holly family is called.

54 comments on “Times 25,731”

  1. 50 minutes but I think I nearly nodded off a couple of times. Mostly straightforward though I didn’t understand the workings at 2dn.
  2. I had all the required GK so this was quite easy for me, though I think it might well serve as a shibboleth-type crossword, dividing the scoopers from the lappers!

    Last in – and only unknown – was PIGNUT, which I certainly couldn’t have put in without checkers, partly because I never think of a gnu/wildebeest as an antelope. Must rewire the brain.

  3. Forgot to turn on the timer. Good to see René in his proper form, given that he spent hardly any of his life on philosophical matters.

    I’m with Ulaca on PIGNUT. Never heard of it.

    That’s the end of the gnus … now the weather forecast.

  4. About 15 minutes but I ignored the wordplay at 27 and went for the chilli. In my defence, I bought some habaneros last week so they were on my mind.

    I liked the gnu clue. You can’t have too many gnus. I have no idea what I mean by that.

    1. t cannot see the word GNU witout hearing Flanders & Swann’s The Gnu Song. It is on YouTube and if I was in any way competent, I would post a link.

  5. Came in under the half hour, but with two letters wrong: ibex (misremembering my plant-life), and unplayed (dnk laced=beaten, and didn’t think it through enough). Other than that, I had RESEARCH and REACTIVE in from definition alone, so thanks for parsing those two.

    DNK PIGNUT or HABANERA, but worked them out. Was helped that GNU came up recently.

  6. So today I typed perfectly, including ERMINES at 5d; “Why -s”, you may ask, and indeed so may I. I can’t answer; I simply threw it in without checking the parsing. As I did with a half-dozen clues, only this time it didn’t work. DNK PIGNUT, but reasoned a la Ulaca. I had thought that billingsgate was foul language, so ‘scandal’ took a while to register. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s cryptic to see how many clues I can botch. Vinyl’s joking, of course, but there is one other habanera, from Saint-Saens if memory serves.
  7. Not hard, and as Tim says, a bit old-fashioned, which I rather liked. Nothing unknown today.

    I went to Carmen at the Sydney Opera House last week, so HABANERA was a gimme. It was the only production I have seen where Carmen was taller than Don Jose, which added to the fun at times.

    In Spanish PALOMINO has another rather unpleasant meaning; luckily it’s just a horse in English.

    1. Google translate (I had to look it up) says young pigeon. I’m obviously missing something!
  8. As I solved this, I was thinking a certain man from Dorset’s going to be grumpy .. then the LH side went in quite straightforwardly but parts of the RH side took quite a lot of my total 17 mins. Agree that it does have an old-fashioned feel to it.
  9. 14 minutes, so quite a bit easier by my measure than yesterdays. I wonder if warming up on the Quickie helps?
    HABANERA from its non-mention in G&S’s “Dance a Cachuca” (worked for me – one of the advantages of encroaching senility).
    PIGNUT known but as a variation on peanuts, so wrong on that count (worked for me, etc). My only other antelope, the eland, had no hope of fitting in, so had to be the gnu.
    Liked the grin at BILLINGSGATE, though it was an image of Smithfield which came to mind (worked etc).
    EMPLOYER just about my CoD for the subterfuge involved in hiding the definition.
        1. Fair point. And blaubok, blesbok, bontebok, boschbok, gemsbok, grysbok, jambok, reebok, springbok and steenbok don’t fit any better than eland.
  10. I opted for “old fashioned” yesterday so to avoid repetition will call this one traditional. Using the stopwatch for the first time this was 15.30 having deducted 10 seconds for my fumbling attempts to insert the password on my Ipad at the end. Good idea to clue Descartes in a non-arty manner.
  11. Agreed Tim – a relatively easy 20 minutes with many going in from definition alone.

    When I first started work my train used to come into London close to where the old fish market used to be and occassionally one could see the fish mongers with those wicker baskets piled up on their heads.

    My grandfather used to wear combinations – a one piece vest plus long wooly under-trousers to keep him warm driving his taxi. My daughter sings the HABANERA from Carmen so all in all a family affair

    Overjoyed to see Descartes described as a mathematician – perhaps soon the likes of Poisson will appear!

    1. Jim, I think you’d like Stephen Gaukroger’s biography of Descartes. The focus on the geometry and optics is refreshing. Makes the philosophical work what it was, an afterthought effectively justifying the science (natural philosophy) in abstract form.

      However, you will learn that he did ballet as a schoolboy! It was on the curriculum at the time.

      Edited at 2014-03-11 09:58 am (UTC)

    2. I worked for a while IN the old fish market – but only after it was turned into that rather garish blue and glass office building.
      1. I haven’t been there for decades but I imagine things have improved. For many years after they closed the fish market the smell pervaded everything – especially on a hot day
    3. You may be interested to know Jim that the Billingsgate site was acquired by a clearing bank and used as a “dark” data centre, for use in emergency. Row upon row of pcs.. One of a number of IT assets under my control at that time.

      I believe it has moved on in recent years.

  12. 12 mins helped by adequate GK. REACTIVE was my LOI unparsed because I didn’t know the voice meaning of “active”, but I didn’t think the answer could have been anything else. I thought I was going to struggle to get 13ac until I remembered that a GNU is an antelope and not one of the bovine animals (although it does belong to the family Bovidae). The clue for BILLINGSGATE raised a smile.
  13. 16 min – no significant holdups, though 4d & 18d with their double unches took a bit longer than most.
    BILLINGS-GATE raised a smile, a refreshing change from the bad language option.
  14. Completed about three quarters after 50 minutes and am usually happy to continue but I had run out of anything to go on. I must go out and try to get hold of some of this GK stuff you all seem to have in abundance – didn’t know REME (RE yes, but not the ME), Hecate, bish or ilex – all of which would make Dorsetjimbo shake his head in horror – just to cheer him up, I got geometrician straight away!

    Edited at 2014-03-11 10:45 am (UTC)

  15. Could someone please explain how ‘ana’ = ‘accounts’. Googling gives everything from All Nippon Airways to anything American or from Oz, including Ana Beatriz Barros (don’t go there).
      1. Thanks for explaining that. I’ve looked it up in my [very old] Chambers and it’s hidden under “-ana …, also -iana”. I’m surprised it doesn’t appear more often in crosswords, given ‘ana’ can be found in so many words.
  16. . . . about the same time as for the Quick Cryptic :-((. I was obsessed with trying to shoehorn DA (acceptance in Kiev) into 7D. It is early days but I assume that I will in the end work out what is best for me in deciding the order in which to do the two puzzles.
  17. I was surprised to see that the clock stopped at 15:24 as there were times went I felt I was struggling with this.

    I didn’t know reactive as a voice or that poetic peasant and since Monty Python didn’t do a mathematicians’ song I didn’t know that Descartes was one.

    I was very pleased with myself for remembering hetacomb (sic) from a previous puzzle so that gave me issues with the crossing answers where I’d transposed the T and C.

    1. Interestingly, or not as the case may be, I was reading a novel this afternoon, The Windsor Faction by D.J. Taylor, and in one of the chapters HECATOMB had been misspelled as “hetacomb”. Coincidence or what ……….
  18. I struggled with this one- had never heard of kirkwall so had to resort to google. Other than that- was tricky but fair and enjoyable. I first thought exploratory wasn’t a very good synonym for analytic- but then couldnt think of a single synonym myself- shows how tricky setting must be.
    1. Hi Allan,

      If you’re still interested in blogging the Quick Cryptic can you drop me a PM with your personal email address so I can send you some helpful stuff. I think I already gave you posting access, but I have a template and some other instructions you’d find helpful.

  19. I struggled with this, completing it in a few sessions which totalled upwards of an hour.

    I didn’t know LEX or ILEX so 24D was a non starter. Not keen on having to know one or other obscure words to get that answer, but judging from lack of similar comments perhaps they are just obscure to me.

  20. 18m. This felt old-fashioned to me, because there were a lot of clues which gave me problems which I’m sure would not have been encountered by someone educated either twenty years before me or at a better school.
    16ac reminds me of the classic joke as recounted by my sister when she was about five:
    Q: Why don’t they play cards in the jungle?
    A: Because there are too many lions.
  21. 28/28 today. Slow going because Pignut, Combinations, Geometrician, Palomino, Hecatomb and Habanera didn’t come to mind and had to all be deduced from wordplay. Guessed Ilex, luckily.
    I’m now a complete fan of solving these puzzles on the iPad. It’s brilliant!
  22. Suited me nicely. I was held up a little by spotting ‘stoic’ in 23a and only slowly opening my mind up to the equally obvious. Like others, ‘pignut’ went in on the basis of wordplay rather than knowledge.
  23. I struggled somewhat with this, especially in the NW corner. Overall, about 40 minutes, with the most trouble arising from the COMBINATIONS and the ORCADIAN. It even took me a while to remember the well known friar, and my mind was stuck on ‘underground hollow’ as ‘U,D’, so that took a while. Regards.
  24. An enjoyable hour here, a good crossword for someone of my rather limited ability. I particularly like palomino, good clue.

    Sincere apologies for yesterday’s faux pas, haven’t lived in the UK for decades and didn’t know ST was a prize puzzle. Thanks for sorting it all out.

    Nairobi Wallah

  25. A game of two halves, or rather of a third and two thirds, as the first 10 went in on my ride into Victoria, and the remaining 18 on my ride back – 20 minutes in all. A nice, solid feel to this one. Oddly, the four short solutions, SCUM, ISIS, VISA and ILEX went in first, followed by the witty BILLINGSGATE and the taut COMBINATIONS.

    Thank you, Setter, for providing me with mental images of Callas in her prime, with the HABANERA, and of the Louvre’s shattering Poussin “Et in Arcadia Ego”, with ORCADIAN. (Odd thing with Callas, she utterly spoilt it for all her successors in so many roles, yet the voice was neither beautiful nor technically perfect. She was just unequalled as a musician and an actress, and in her ability to combine the two. Sheer genius.)

    PIGNUT was new to me, but inevitable from the wordplay. LOI the fiendishly misleading and clever (and short clued) REACTIVE. Chapeau bas Setter! Ad multos annos!

  26. About 40m for most of this but failed on ANALYTIC and RESEARCH so a glorious DNF – again. No complaints – I simply forgot ANA and REES and couldn’t get beyond them. Thanks for the blog – quite a few I bunged in without fully understanding!
  27. 45min for me. I enjoyed COMBINATIONS (even though I got it from the checkers rather than the wordplay, and then worked backwards), and particularly GEOMETRICIAN. Oddly, this site’s spell chequer doesn’t like GEOMETRICIAN, and instead suggests GEOMETRIC IAN.

    Failed to parse ANALYTIC (not knowing that meaning of ANA). ORCADIAN was a guess, as was HECATOMB – I knew neither the word itself, nor Hecate. However, henceforth I shall hold summer hecatombs rather than mere barbecues.

    I had heard of PIGNUT, and remembered it because it’s such a likeable, chubby little word. It’s also known as a kippernut. It’s words like that that make you realize how wonderful the English language is. Why all these foreign johnnies insist on using their own made-up languages is beyond me.

    Day off today, which in practice means a day doing the paperwork to explain all the mistakes I’ve made earlier in the week. Fortunately it’s only Tuesday, so a mere handful.

  28. 8:27 here for a puzzle very much more to my taste than yesterday’s. However, I lost time dithering over the justification of a couple of straightforward clues, trying to twist ARISTOTELIAN into ARISTOCRATIC (doh!) and taking simply ages to spot ARCADIAN. (Somehow I don’t think of ARCADIANs as “peasants” – probably influenced by Lionel Monckton & Co!)

    At least GEOMETRICIAN went straight in since Cartesian geometry was how I first came across the man.

    I think your description of this as “a very pleasant but not too demanding puzzle” sums it up nicely. And I agree with those who thought it a bit old-fashioned (which is fine by me, being a bit old-fashioned myself :-). If I had to guess the setter, I’d pick the previous crossword editor.

  29. Did this on a plane. All but four or five went in almost as fast as I ever go, then…things….ground….to….a….halt. Didn’t know the correct Orcanian spelling nor Kirkwall, and didn’t twig the Arcadians, but current reading of the Iliad put hecatomb front and center (plus I’ve been waiting eagerly to use MB ever since being taught it a month or two ago). Ilex was a guess.
    The Tennessee Stud would have been a palamino, too.

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dq-1G6Wif8s

  30. In my copy of the newspaper, the phrase in 27ac is “a bar in her area”, not “a ban in her area”.So I can’t see where the”n” comes from for the answer. Is this a misprint?
    1. Bar and ban are synonymous, so bar in the clues leads you to ban in the answer. It would be unusual for the setter to “give” you more than a couple of letters if they appear consecutively and in the right order in the answer.
    2. No, the clue’s asking for a simple replacement of “bar” by the synonym “ban”. Now you mention it, I can see why using another synonym which isn’t just one letter different might have been more elegant; but the setter may have thought it was better to be misleading than elegant in this case…

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