Times 25,743

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I felt too tired last night to face the prospect of solving and blogging post-midnight; with hindsight, that was a good decision, as I found this pretty stretching even after a good night’s sleep. On the whole, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t enjoy it, more that I found it quite heavy going; clock stopped at 18:17, which was well outside my daily target of 2 Magoos, but still well up the leaderboard so far, which suggests I wasn’t alone.

Across
1 NEGATIVE – E.G. (as an illustration), in NATIVE(original). Of course, in these days of megapixels, young people will only know photo negatives as a way cool filter on their Instagram.
5 CLOVER – Left in COVER. Non-cricketers will be pleased that another definition of “cover” was used today, this one being “The amount of ground covered by a vertical projection of the vegetation, usually expressed as a percentage”.
9 BUTTRESS – BUT, TRESS. If you’re not a rugby fan, I imagine the surface may have passed you by entirely (both lock and prop are positions in the scrum).
10 ICARUS – cryptic def. Hmmm. I know some people have been rumbling about the use of cryptic definition clues recently; mainly, they will say, because several of them haven’t been any good. Perhaps this has made me sensitive to them, but this one certainly made me wince a little; if you were describing what happened to Icarus, you’d say his wings were exposed to the sun, never in the sun; obviously the language has to be changed to make the surface look as if it’s about someone being splashed across the pages of a tabloid, but it made the clue sound forced and odd to my ear. Maybe I’m being too picky and just over-analysing because being blogger of the day makes you look more closely than usual…
12 DRESS – double def., as in dressing a wound or dressing an actor, helped by the multiple meanings of “theatre”.
13 TEMPERING – double def. because the word itself is one of those odd ones which can have two completely contradictory meanings, depending on whether you are tempering steel or tempering justice with mercy, for instance.
14 FOURTH ESTATE – THE in FOUR(“crew”), STATE(“say”). In crosswords, the rowing crew is usually the full eight, but rowers operate as fours or pairs as well (though I’m not sure you can call two people a crew).
18 EXACERBATION – EX(“no longer”), ACE(“expert”), Bishop in RATION(“helping”).
21 BARCAROLE – BAR(“piece of music”), CAROL(“something sung”), European and a nice &lit., the whole thing being a traditional Venetian gondoliers’ song.
23 CLEAR – double def.
24 TALLIS – TALL, IS, as in “a tall story”. Composer Thomas Tallis was associated with royalty at the courts of both Mary and Elizabeth. This sprang quickly to mind because Radio 4 recently repeated a play about his associate William Byrd, and the suspicions of him as a covert Catholic traitor, in which Tallis featured.
25 ATLANTIS – AT, Length, ANTIS.
26 MAYHEM – if you MAY HEM, in the sewing sense, you are able to create a border.
27 LETHARGY – Husband in (GREATLY)*.
 
Down
1 NOBODY – as in a) Diary of a Nobody, and b) the answer to the schoolboy joke “Why didn’t the ghost go to the party?”.
2 GATHER – concealed in toGA THE Romans.
3 TURNSTONE – spelling out that flying directly away from the South-West would mean turning to the North-East. A bird which often features in puzzles, and which gets its name from its habit of looking for food under…well I expect you’ve guessed.
4 VISITORS BOOK – another cryptic def. It’s not awful, but I doubt it’s going to convert anyone to the cause who doesn’t already love them.
6 LUCRE – (CRUEL)*. Is there any sort apart from the filthy?
7 VERTICAL – V, (ARTICLE)*.
8 RESIGNED – double def.; the meanings are made clear if you consider the alternatives as perhaps RESIGNED and RE-SIGNED.
11 AMPHITHEATRE – A MP(“representative”) HIT(“ran into”) HEAT(“criticism”) RE(“about”).
15 SLOWCOACH – LOW(“humble”) inside [Secondary, COACH(“school”)].
16 VERBATIM – (VIBRATE)*, Mass.
17 FAIR PLAY – FAIR(“blonde”), PLAY(“theatrical performance”).
19 MENTOR – MEN TO Right &lit.
20 FRISKY – Female, RISKY.
22 ALIVE – Answer, LIVE(“as it happens”). I was slightly puzzled here, as I initially took “no longer quick” to mean “dead”, in fact I was 100% wrong, as it seems to mean “alive, but a word which is no longer used to mean that”, which seemed a little odd. Obviously, it depends how well you know “quick” as meaning “alive” – still used in the Church phrase “the quick and the dead”, or in biting one’s nails to the quick” – but I wouldn’t have thought the signal was needed in the way it is in Mephisto-land where obscure Spenserian words are part of the scenery. I was confused, anyway, but maybe that was just me.

60 comments on “Times 25,743”


  1. Found it tough today, and had a couple of blanks…

    TALLIS (thought about the ‘tall’ bit, but dnk the composer
    NEGATIVE (was convinced N-G-T— had to have -GHT- in the middle)
    VISTORS BOOK (don’t usually mind cryptics. But that’s when I get them…)

    Otherwise, I too was a bit confused by ALIVE, and dnk TURNSTONE. That will hopefully be added to wherever I got BARCAROLE from, having only ever met it in crossword-land.

  2. Some good stuff here and some plain awful

    10A would do as a GK question in a quiz for 15 year olds. Why “home” in 4D – hotel maybe – and anyway just silly. Setters have got to stop using this device if it doesn’t suit their strengths

    And this setter can clearly produce good clues. 21A is top class. I don’t like 22D because I don’t think it quite works. 25 minutes to solve a slightly frustrating puzzle

  3. I knew the canon but didn’t know the royal connection and after being interrupted I just threw in “talkie” because I couldn’t think of anything else. I’m sure I took a good half hour altogether.
  4. Agree that “no longer quick” is literally wrong, but wrote “archaic?” on the puzzle as a possible (weak) defence. Not all that obscure. It was in the title of a recent movie.

    Our new editor can keep his stated fondness for CDs. These two are awful.

    Vinyl: didn’t know this composer either. Let us be spared. Made the 22/24 intersection very strange, especially when the ancient musician spelled his name with a Y.

    COD had to go to the charade at 11dn. Excellent. And a show of what this setter can do when out of CD-dom and into proper clue writing.

    (Am I sounding enough like Jimbo yet? — On edit: written before I’d seen his comment!)

    Edited at 2014-03-25 09:40 am (UTC)

  5. 49 minutes. After yesterday’s comparative doddle this one took me a while to get properly under way. I was also puzzled by ‘quick’ apparently meaning ‘no longer alive’ but eventually worked out what must be going on. TURNSTONE was my only unknown and I lost some time on it considering ‘tackstone’.
  6. I was also confused by ALIVE. My wife, in her generous way suggested a “NO LONGER QUICK” means that it is a word for QUICK that is “no longer” than quick (ie only 5 letters). What a kind lady she is to be so nice to the setter!
  7. Under half an hour; and yes, I enjoyed the puzzle, CDs an’ all.

    TALLIS’s 40-part motet, Spem in Alium, (supposedly composed for ER I’s birthday) is a favourite of mine, particularly the David Willcocks version from the early 70s.

    No objection to 10: wouldn’t you say someone had spent too long in the sun?

    Think I’ll spend a quarter of an hour with Spem in Alium on Spotify; it really is magnificent

    1. I watched a TV programme the other day “The English Renaissance”. They lauded “Spem in Alium” as one of the wonders of the age. Sometimes I’m grateful for the licence fee! Ann
  8. Very enjoyable today with a reasonable time of 19:26 so no complaints. I agree that Icarus is a bit obvious but at least some attempt was made to cryptify (!) it.
    Tallis was new to me but clearly correct.
  9. 45min – forgot about composer, so eventually put in TALKIE as only word to fit 24ac, to avoid a DNF.
    Toyed with SETTER at 19dn – a cd ?!
  10. 42 minutes. Nice to see Tallis get a mention.

    A most enjoyable puzzle, where I had to adjust ‘tackstone’ to TURNSTONE to get my last in, BUTTRESS. COD to the excellent CD, VISITORS BOOK.

  11. 18 minutes, with a sadly brief diversion via DUMB SHOW for 17d before I had any checkers. Wordplay and definition “just acting” seemed to work perfectly, though of course I realise that it’s wholly unfair to blonds and I should be drummed out of the regiment for even thinking of it.
    To be fair to the setter at 22, under QUICK Chambers gives “alive (archaic, church, Bible etc)” which puts the dear CofE firmly in its place. You’d have to access a 1662 service to hear it these days.
    I can’t remember how it connected, but TURNSTONE was fresh in the mind after checking odd birds for STONECROP a few days ago.
    TALLIS was an odd clue I though, with the royal bit not really helping – “stuff for church” might have been better, not using “stuff” would have been much better.
    I liked the rugby deception in BUTTRESS. I also liked the &lit for BARCAROLE.

    Edited at 2014-03-25 10:18 am (UTC)

  12. Strangely, given most of the comments above, I found this as easy as yesterday’s – that of course only means that I managed to do it in about 30 mins, or about 6 magoos, which counts as fast for me.

    I agree about the feebleness of ICARUS – GK rather than a genuinely cryptic clue and absurdly easy GK at that. I’d be prepared to make a case for VISITOR’S BOOK. Some (admittedly rather grand) people do have visitor’s books in their homes in which they invite comments from guests, and the CD seems to me of passable (if no more) quality.

    I shared the general puzzlement over ALIVE and, although the solution was pretty obvious, hesitated to put it in as it seemed to make no sense. Which is not surprising as it doesn’t.. “Quick” can mean “living” or “alive”, albeit only in a few rather special contexts. So “no longer” is factually inaccurate. “Seldom quick now …etc” might have worked, but even then it’s difficult to parse “with” satisfactorily.

    That said, there were excellent clues elsewhere in this puzzle. BUTTRESS, AMPHITHEATRE and BARCAROLE all took my fancy.

  13. 18:30 minutes but With One Error. I really enjoyed the puzzle, regardless.

    I suspect every Brit, whether they realise it or not, has heard Thomas Tallis, albeit through the filter of Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by …”. It often pops up in mainstream culture. Top Gear used it for their celebration of the British motor industry, and the Fast Show for a memorable and touching Ted and Ralph sketch (thank you, Wikipedia, for the reminder of both).

    My one error was RECTOR at 19d, which I took to be another double def. (-ish) and rather liked!

    Agree that BARCAROLE is a peach.

    Edited at 2014-03-25 10:51 am (UTC)

    1. What helped me with MENTOR was the fact that the setter used an identical cluing device for TURNSTONE. Your “rector” was a pretty good alternative though.
  14. 16 mins with the TALLIS/ALIVE crossers my last ones in. “Stuff” was a bizarre word to use in the clue for the former and put me off for a while, and the latter went in with a shrug, although I now see how it is supposed to work. I agree with those of you who think this puzzle contains a strange mix of clues.
  15. I never made that connection, Andy. I think I meant “cryptic def.”, didn’t I. I’ve got them on the brain now.
  16. I found this puzzle extremely baffling because the clue numbers don’t match up with the grid numbers!
  17. 10m for this, so I must have been on the wavelength, but like others I thought it was a bit of a mixed bag. I couldn’t quite believe 10ac ICARUS was what it was, and I didn’t think much of the clue for VISITORS BOOK either. I don’t object to CDs in principle but these struck me as weak.
    Like others I don’t think 22dn works. ‘Quick’ could be ‘no longer alive’ but ALIVE can’t be ‘no longer quick’.
    I also thought the non-existence of ATLANTIS should have been signalled in the clue somehow.
  18. Another “not on wavelength” morning, not helped by some weak/odd clueing noted in the comments above. Laid it down and took it up a few times, perhaps 90 minutes in all. Had to resort to aids for TURNSTONE, twitching never being one of my strong points.

    I take it all back about PROSPERO-US a few days back. ICARUS takes the palm for the weakest clue ever, anywhere. I remember being told the legend at school at the age of about eight, I even remember drawing a picture!

    Plea to setters: If you’re going to have “cryptic” clues at all, please at least make the connections more devious, more “lateral”.

    Edited at 2014-03-25 12:22 pm (UTC)

  19. Do all clues have to be equally difficult? Even The Listener puzzle usually has a few easy starters, just to help solvers gain a foothold. I smiled at the surface for ICARUS. Seems just fine to me.
  20. Twice as ‘hard’ as yesterday – 10:24 – agree with others about the mix in difficulty of the clues
  21. I was pleased with my time of 14:10 as this felt quite tricky in places and at times.

    I had squiggly lines under:

    – “part of field” as I failed to spot that this wasn’t a cricketing reference afetr all and needn’t be covers. And there was me thinking the setter didn’t know his/her Onions from his/her Panesar.

    – “criticism” but nobody else has queried the connection between criticism and heat so… just me then.

    – “No longer (quick)” for obvious reasons.

    LOI was mentor after an alph trawl (half the alphabet).

  22. Pleased to finish this one in 45 mins.

    Like the turnstone, I wanted to change course away from the SW but persevered to coax out the unknowns BARCAROLE and TALLIS and put in ALIVE despite nagging doubts.

  23. One missing today (Tallis) and one wrong (Fair Lady not Fair Play). Liked Turnstone but not Icarus. Got Alive from wordplay.

    Edited at 2014-03-25 01:18 pm (UTC)

  24. Sorry I couldn’t respond to those of you who responded to my inability to access yesterday’s quickie. Today’s is working just fine.

    I also put in ‘TALKIE’ at 24a out of desperation, but then parsed it from the second half of the clue, TALL (unbelievable)and IS (exists), but I’ve never heard of T.Tallis.

    I was also confused by 22d.

    Re dorsetjimbo’s comments about visitors books, I know many people who keep one on their front hall table, as did my parents. I don’t since I don’t have a front hall! However, none of that helped me since 4d was my LOI before 24a as above.

  25. I struggled with ICARUS, mainly because my C in LUCRE inadvertently went full circle and looked more like an O. I’d also over-clevered 8dn by thinking it must be a synonym for ANTONYMS with stopped/working and extended/contract (OK, I managed to convince myself that if a table wasn’t extended it was contract)
    15:17 in all and thoroughly enjoyable.
  26. There must be a pattern here but I can’t spot it yet. Last week Mon and Tue were dnfs, this week Mon and Tue clocked in at under the half hour mark, the first time in my life that has happened on successive days. Enjoyed this one and agree with the rest re Icarus and alive.

    Wiki says Tallis wrote music for Henry VIII (largely Catholic with some Protestant leanings), Edward VI (very Protestant), Mary (very Catholic) and Elizabeth I (largely Protestant with some Catholic leanings). He therefore wins the prize as the only man in 16th century England to have kept all sides happy and (more importantly) his head on his shoulders.

    On another note, I wonder if there is a special word to describe words like temper and cleave which have completely contradictory meanings. Does anyone know?

    Nairobi Wallah

      1. Thank you Sotira, once again I am in your debt. All the best for your return to good old Blighty.

        Nairobi Wallah

      1. I know I am going to look a fool but I honestly cannot see read=teach. Please would you explain Ulaca.

        Thanks

        Nairobi Wallah

        1. Well, it’s not a common usage, but read can mean “lecture on” – not too surprising when you consider the French word lecture means reading.
          1. I have never come across that use of the word read, and I am afraid my French isn’t that good. Thank you Ulaca, yet again I learn something by coming to this site.

            Nairobi Wallah

            1. The verb ‘to soldier’ means both to plod diligently and to loll around uselessly, both due to the behaviour of the troops. the phrase ‘yeah yeah’ could mean absolute agreement, or snide disagreement – though allowing sarcasm might bring quite a few phrases into the contranym fold. I thought purists didn’t admit cleave, due to ithe two meanings originating from two different words.
      1. Actually Nick we don’t get the Vicar of Bray here in Kenya but I have heard about her and yes, I think Tallis may have been something of a fore-runner!

        NW

  27. No real problems with this, 25 minutes, flirted with EXACERBATING before correcting it with SLOWCOACH crossing, put in ALIVE but share others view about the ‘no longer’ bit, the clue works fine and better without those two words. Diarist with no body the most amusing clue.
  28. This took ages mainly because I somehow wrote in ‘PLAY FAIR’ rather than ‘FAIR PLAY’ making the SW un-gettable until I saw my mistake.
  29. I’ve probably missed someone saying this already but I read this as quick (in this context)being archaic, i.e. we no longer use quick when we mean alive.

    John Mck

  30. Came to this after playing for eleven singing exams today and felt a bit brain dead so 20 mins seems quite reasonable. All musical theatre, so no Tallis. Bunged in dumb show without checkers just like Z. Back to the usual regime of strong coffee over breakfast tomorrow.
  31. I took just long enough dithering over 24ac to pass the half-hour, but since I didn’t get 24 right anyway, it hardly mattered. I knew TALLIS, and like John from Lancs love ‘Spem in Alium’, but I didn’t get the wordplay, and certainly wasn’t led to think of a composer by ‘Writer of stuff’. Agree with Jimbo about ICARUS. We must have had TURNSTONE before, or I wouldn’t have thought of it.

    Edited at 2014-03-25 04:25 pm (UTC)

  32. About 20 minutes for most of this, then 10 more on ALIVE/TALLIS. I finally got them both from wordplay, and looked up TALLIS to find out who he was. When I did, I was relieved a bit to know there really was a TALLIS, but describing him as ‘writer of stuff’ seems quite odd. I didn’t bother looking up ALIVE because I thought I knew what I’d find, and I certainly wouldn’t expect to find what others describe above. So to me, those last two are far more egregious than the CD’s today. But there were some high points here, NOBODY chief among them, so thanks to the setter and regards.
    1. I think this may let the setter off that particular hook:

      STUFF: Literary or artistic output or material; literary or artistic compositions collectively.

      That’s in the Shorter Oxford. I have to say though that I can’t find this meaning in any of the more usual sources for the Times Cryptic and I don’t recall ever meeting it before.

      1. That’s news to me, but thank you Jack for trying to help me/us out. “Stuff” as literary or artistic works clangs off my ear.
  33. I don’t have access to my SOED–does it give examples?–, but this seems like just an arbitrary example of the use of ‘stuff’: Tallis produced some great stuff, the new pitcher for the Yankees showed some great stuff in his first game, Macy’s has some great stuff in its lingerie department, … ‘Stuff’ is a ‘light’ noun, in the way that, say, ‘do’ is a light verb: when the painter does the bedroom, he paints its walls, when a burglar does the bedroom, he steals its valuables, etc., but ‘do’ does not have a definition ‘to paint walls’. I don’t see any reason to go from ‘writer of stuff’ to ‘writer of music’ as opposed to ‘writer of verse’ or ‘writer of philosophical essays’ for that matter.
    1. No, the entry is as posted above except it qualifies it as “now rare”. It’s listed as the 5th meaning of the noun.

      Edited at 2014-03-25 09:18 pm (UTC)

  34. I am surprised no-one mentioned the fact that the weak cryptic def for Icarus is almost identical to the one used in the “Guide to solving cryptic crosswords” that appears at the beginning of most of the Times crossword volumes.

    I say this bit from memory so am prepared to be contradicted, but it seemed to me that they used the same grid in a lot of the volumes 1 – 15 (I guess by now), so it must have had a lot of coverage.

    Maybe the pros on here have never bothered reading the guides!!

  35. 10:11 here for an interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

    I liked both CDs: although they were easy wins for old hands, they’re both neatly worded to give good surface readings. Anyway there’s nothing wrong with easy wins!

    I thought of ALIVE first time through, but didn’t put it in because (like others) I thought it didn’t match the definition. However, when I came to it again with the A and E in place (though no sign of Dr Thud), I reread the clue and realised that ALIVE was quite OK.

    I was a bit nervous about “writer of stuff for royalty” as the definition for TALLIS, and “early form of photo” as the definition for NEGATIVE, but with hindsight they’re both fair enough.

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