Times 25732: A 17ac stravaig in warmish morning weather … and 15ac to all our readers

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 29:11

Took my time this morning. Just strolling through this, bit by bit, and writing down the parsings along the way. Needed a coffee to finish off in the top right. Suspect the speedsters will be out in force.

Across

1. JURIST. RIS{k} in JUT (project).

4. SPECIFIC. SIC (so) including PEC (muscle) and IF (condition).

10. LEVIATHAN. VIA, T (through, time) & H (hard) inside LEAN (efficient). Always worth going back to Hobbes.

11. ROUTE. Pronounced “root” (beginning) if you’re not a septic. I shall leave the Australian meaning of the latter unmentioned. See 9dn.

12. PORTMANTEAU. Anagram: men to part. & AU (gold).

14. RUT. Included reversed.

15. NAMASTE. ET is the alien. MAN is the fellow. Both of these reversed around AS (while). Pretty sure this cropped up on my watch at some time in the past. Something to do with ashrams and the like. Of which I know nought. (On second thoughts … it was here, a year and a bit ago.)

17. SLEEPY. LEE inside SPY (spot).

19. DURESS. U (united) inside DRESS (array).

21. COTERIE. C (about, circa), OT (rev. of TO), ERIE (Lake). The def. is “set”.

23. IDE{a}.

24. OPPROBRIOUS. OPUS (work) inc PRO (expert) & BRIO (vigour).
26. CARAT.  Reverse AC (account), RAT.
27. O,VERB,LOW,N.

29. IMP,UNITY.

30. CAN,DID. To end our line of 3 straight charades.

Down

1. JALAPENO. JAPE (prank) inc A + L (large) & NO (drama).

2. R,AVER. With the R from “{poo}R”.

3. SKA. You just have to ASK, if in doubt.

5. PINCERS. PIN (fasten), anagram of SCRE{w}.

6. CAR | BURET | TOR. CAR (vehicle), anagram of BRUTE, TOR (hill).

7. FLUORSPAR. R (from “surveyoR”) inside RAP (criticism) & SOUL (being), F (fine) all reversed. No idea what it is but.

8. CRE(A)TE. Where “found” is a verb.

9. WHINGE. WING (fly) & E (east) inc H (height). Of English persons … no comment.

13. MISBEGOTTEN. S (second) BEG (appeal), OTT (excessive), all inside MIEN (appearance).

16. MOUSETRAP. MO (doctor), anagram of UPSET around RA (radium).

18. SEASONED. AS (since), ON (working), inside SEED (beginning).

20. SUPPORT. UP (ahead) in SPORT (game).

21. CLOSET. CT (court) inc LOSE (fail). “Cases” is the indicator.

22. LITCHI. {g}LITCH, 1.

25. OVOID. {manifest}O, VOID.

28. BOA{t}.

40 comments on “Times 25732: A 17ac stravaig in warmish morning weather … and 15ac to all our readers”

  1. Another one that started well for me but time gradually slipped away and I needed the better part of an hour to complete the grid. Didn’t know or had forgotten NAMASTE and FLUORSPAR.

    You have some missing answers and wrong numbering around 24ac, mct.

    Annoyed to find that the Quickie is still “Coming” i.e. unavailable though with a little rejigging of the url to yesterday’s puzzle I managed to get to today’s clues which are set by Grumpy (I know how he feels!). Unfortunately there was no grid and the answers were shown too so I averted my eyes and backed out of the screen pdq.

    Edited at 2014-03-12 02:13 am (UTC)

  2. No multi-word answers, crossword’s favourite three-letter fish (I don’t consider an eel a real fish), arguably its favourite lake too. What more could you wish? All bar 4 in the NE in 28 minutes, needing another 11 to complete, finishing as so many will with the mineral. Soul for being was cunning – I was working around reproof for rather longer than the intricate wordplay would appear in retrospect to permit.
  3. Having made a hash of the last two puzzles this week, I was relieved to get through this one with no errors, although it took me 5 or 6 minutes to get 7d, my LOI (duh). I noticed after the fact that there are 2 clues using ‘beginning’, 11ac and 18d. On looking at the clues post hoc, I thought there were a number of rather cleverly done ones, like 13d or 16d, a couple of those that I got without understanding why at the time.
  4. 12 minutes and while I know what FLUORSPAR is I didn’t quite manage to unravel the wordplay. OPPROBRIOUS is a great example of how to clue an obscure word. Rather enjoyed this one!
  5. How kind of The Times not to bother updating the cryptic puzzle on their app from yesterday’s one. Now what to do?
    1. If you have access to the website (which you should if you have the app) you can print the puzzle from the Puzzles section. That’s what I did, because I had the same problem as you with my iPad.
  6. 22’19”, one that left me with multiple bruising on the shins from self applied kicking. Nothing looked difficult once I got it, and left me with a curious sense of being stupid not to get it quicker. Exempli gratia: SEASONED, working for too long on an anagram of SINCE in something meaning beginning just at the edge of recall, to mean underwent; COTERIE scuppered by set=TV in one of its many disguises, and imagining the definition was “lake”, which is when ONTARIO got in the way; OPPROBRIOUS, where I did not think initially of OPUS in its full, four-letter glory, started writing opprobrium before realising I’d run out of letters and gave up until the mists cleared. A lot of clever (setter) or stupid (self) confusion, then, of answer and wordplay.
    FLUORSPAR was constructed from remembering feldspar (too short) and then dredging up the stuff where the O and U are the wrong way round, only on writing it in spotting soul=being.
    Score several to the setter, I think.
  7. 35 minutes, with the last 5 of these spent coaxing out FLUORSPAR.

    I knew NAMASTE from the Cafe Spice Namaste, a good Indian restaurant on the East side of the City (at least it was good when I last went about 15 years ago).

    It seems from my experience and other comments that The Times are showing their usual ineptitude when making technical changes.

  8. An excellent puzzle this one. Some really clever “lift and separate” and cunning synomyms. Once the penny drops you wonder why it took you so long. So thank you setter for 25 minutes of great fun.

    FLUORSPAR (calcium fluoride) is/was used in making highquality lens and in the back of my mind from A Level chemistry gave fluorine its name.

  9. A lot to enjoy and a similar feeling about the penny-drop moments. Sold myself a dummy by reading 1ac and 1d and immediately writing in jalapeño at 4ac. Luckily didn’t spend the next hour puzzling over the NE downs and finished in 21 minutes.
  10. One of those where I glanced at it before breakfast, 1ac and 1dn went in as write-ins, hit the setter’s wavelength and everything went in without too much fuss in about 20 minutes, except for my LOI CLOSET, where I just stared and stared for further five.

    Got held up a bit by wanting COTERIE to be “Ontario”, but there you go. Fortunate to have remembered the wretched SKA from a previous crossword, and also knew NAMASTE from the restaurant, so the “difficult” words proved within the bounds (just) of my GK. A good night’s sleep probably helped!

    With a different wind, I can see that this one could have been quite tricky, so NAMASTE to the setter!

  11. Well, finally managed to print a copy of todays and what an enjoyable reminder of the pleasure of completing on paper rather than by iPad. As in addition it was a good crossword, all is now right with the world, if not necessarily The Times IT mob.
    1. Glad you got it finally. I was just about to go back to the club forum and add a P.S. to my comment saying that you could try the General forum there because Mike at NewsInt is pretty good at keeping an eye on it and responding.
  12. 21 mins. I started quickly in the NW but then ground to a halt for a while. MOUSETRAP, IMPUNITY and SEASONED all took me much longer than they should have done. I needed all the checkers for NAMASTE, and FLUORSPAR was my LOI after I teased it out from the wordplay. A very good puzzle indeed.

    With the appearance of MISBEGOTTEN and OPPROBRIOUS in the same puzzle was the setter trying to tell us something?

  13. A pen and paper solve for me today because the puzzle in today’s iPad edition of The Times has not been updated from yesterday’s.
    All correct with FOI Boa and LOI Duress. Plain sailing until the last five – Misbegotten, Opprobrious, Impunity, Support and Duress – which all required careful thought and deduction from wordplay.
    The Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire is famous for its fluorspar (fluorite).
    1. I initially read the last comment as “Blue John Craven”, which suggests my mind has been affected by press coverage of Operation Yewtree…
  14. 16m, once I’d managed to print the puzzle out from the website. About half of this was very easy, and about half of it wasn’t.
    FLUORSPAR wasn’t my last in, but it took me by far the longest. It’s very satisfying to solve this kind of unknown from wordplay. Like z8 I was helped by knowing feldspar: without that I don’t think I’d have got there.
  15. 14 minutes, and quite entertaining for all the rather chestnutty IDEs and ERIEs and the like. Another person here in the camp of not knowing 7dn, but knowing FELDSPAR, from which it wasn’t too big a leap to fill in the gaps in F_U_RSPAR from wordplay (eventually).
  16. 20 min: no problem with FLUORSPAR as I used to have a lump of blue john from Castleton on a shelf in my bedroom as a memento of a family holiday.
  17. Thanks for the blog mctext. Found this one really hard and your explanations really helped me learn.

    NO for drama on 1d? NO=NOH as in Japanese dance theatre? Groan. Probably well known amongst you seasoned practitioners I suppose.

    1. Exactly. It’s very common in crosswords (if nowhere else) so look out for it.
  18. 18:50 for me but I’m afraid I didn’t find this as enjoyable as others clearly did. My main beef is that all the definitions were there in plain sight, with not a cleverly disguised one among them. That meant that for too much of the puzzle the solving process was based on def and checkers and reverse-engineering the wordplay (e.g. mousetrap, leviathan, portmanteau). I like a puzzle where that’s balanced by a bit more of the opposite way round.

    On area where I got a bit held up was in having forgotten how to spell lychee.

    It was interesting to see jut again so soon after the jut/stick debate and to see jalapeno after yesterday’s not habanero.

    LOI duress, only unknown opprobrious (which I obviously did need the wordplay for).

  19. 16:34 agree with Keriothe about the half easy half not nature of this crossword.
    1. Excellent puzzle I thought. Agree with glheard that opprobrious was an obscure word very well clued. Fluorspar a bit obscure for some, I remembered it from boring geology lessons, am pleased to finally derive some value from.
  20. About 40 minutes, so perhaps on the easier side (can’t be that I am actually getting better at this game!). I think No (the theatrical version), Ide and Erie should perhaps be given a rest from Times Crossword land.

    Was growing up in western Kenya when they started mining fluorspar here so it was familiar to me, not sure if they are still mining it. I continue to be amazed at how many Hindi words are in the English dictionary (if not in common English use). Fancy good old Namaste turning up. The equally popular Namaskar isn’t in the dictionary though, wonder why? Practically means the same thing and we use it just as often.

    Nairobi Wallah

    1. Namaskar is in Chambers but if it appeared in a crossword I would get nowhere. Namaste I know.

      Collins says
      ORIGIN: Sans namas obeisance, salutation, bow, and te, dative of tuam you, or kara doing

      1. Meharban, Bigtone. My Chambers (which is an old one) didn’t have it.

        Yes, the etymology is Sanskrit, namas means bowing, etc, and te is the second person singular. You can see how namaskar is similar: I do bow whereas namaste is I bow to you. By the way you may have worked out that karma is from kara: kara, I do; karma, deed(s).

        Also by the way meharban, which as far as I know is not in any dictionary, means thank you.

        Nairobi Wallah.

  21. Did this in the cafe waiting for 2 new tyres being fitted (pain in wallet) romped home in 16 minutes, LOI OPPROBRIOUS and only a vague recall of NAMASTE. Good puzzle!
  22. Very happy to have eventually completed this thoroughly enjoyable tussle in just under the hour. COD to 24ac. There are some words I can’t see without thinking of Jeeves. Also thanks to the setter as I now have a faint chance of being able to spell carburettor in the future.
  23. Hello all. About 35 minutes, ending with the mineral, and finally seeing the inclusion of ‘soul’. A bit too clever for my liking, though. Perhaps I was put off by your UK spelling of CARBURETTOR, which looked wrong to me (and is wrong, over here!) so I held off entering it despite the clear wordplay. Much of the rest had gone in fairly quickly, including NAMASTE, since I once had a work colleague who signed all his emails with that. It sticks in one’s mind as a result. Regards to all.
  24. I was feeling quite smug, having remembered that “lychee” is spelled “litchi” (but is nevertheless pronounced “lychee”), and having constructed “NAMASTE” from scratch. Then, unexplicably and inaccountably, I put “CLOSER” for 21d, which was a pity.

    Fluorspar shouldn’t be that obscure, [allan sidcup] – it’s the mineral that gave the name to “fluorescence”, since some crystals of it are. In much the same way, the sedimentary rock ‘negligite’, which crumbles under pressure, lends its name to the familiar medical term.

    My LOI was DURESS, for which I had to trawl the alphabet, taking me up to about 40min.

    Surprisingly brisk business here for a Thursday, and I am spoilt for choice as regards Accident of the Day. A very close runner-up goes to a six-foot gentleman [this is his height; I don’t mean that he comes from Norfolk] whose jaw was cracked by his 5ft girlfriend who swung at him with one of his judo trophies. They both seemed quite lighthearted about the whole thing, though he didn’t seem able to laugh about it.

    Winner, though, was a young man trying to emulate a video demonstrating that, if you dip your hand first in water and then in petrol, you can set fire to it without burning yourself. You probably can, but not if you dip the cuff of your coat in the petrol as well.

  25. Very satisfactory as I didn’t know ‘namaste’ or ‘jalapeño’ and deduced them from the wordplay.
  26. Unfortunately I tackled this when feeling very tired at the end of a couple of busy days and posted a disappointing 13:24 when this was a puzzle I would have expected to make short work of. I struggled with several straightforward clues, but finished off making particularly heavy weather of 7dn. The annoying thing is that when I’d first reached it with just the F in place, I’d thought of FELDSPAR; but when I looked at it with all the checked letters there, I completely forgot about the SPAR ending. Eventually I remembered it (and thought of FLUOR immediately), but it’s the sort of thing that leaves me worried that I’m losing my marbles.

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