Solving time: 38 minutes
This was a medium-difficulty puzzle, where I was greatly aided by being able to get some of the long ones relatively early on. For me, 2 was a write-in, and 7 didn’t take very long to figure out. That gave me a lot of crossing letters, and I solved most of it in about 20 minutes only to get stuck for a bit at the end, mostly due to some well-concealed literals.
Music: Chopin, Mazurkas, Michelangeli
Across | |
---|---|
1 | NEED-BLIND, double definition, one semi-jocular. |
6 | DEPOT, double definition, where the first is ‘de-pot’. |
9 | VICTIMLESS CRIME, VIC + TIM + LESS CRIME, with a DBE properly indicated by ‘perhaps’. Not such a great example, however, at least from the point of view of the honest policyholders. |
10 | RUMBLE, [g]RUMBLE. |
11 | COMANCHE, CO(MA)NCH + E[xplode]. ‘Native’ is not a good literal to indicate any sort of primitive or tribal individual, because everyone is a native of somewhere. |
13 | TOURNIQUET, anagram of OUR QUINTET, with a twisted literal that has to be taken to mean that it is of use for non-bleeding. |
14 | ASHY, A + SHY, a starter clue. |
16 | IBID, I + BID, an bibliographical abbreviation of ‘ibidem’. |
17 | MATTERHORN, MATTE-R + HORN, another jokey one. |
19 | UNABATED, U + NAB A TED. Yeah, let’s send the rozzers to Dorset, they might be able to catch one of the last surviving ones. |
20 | COBWEB, C + OB[it] + WEB, one from Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
23 | PRIVY COUNSELLOR, anagram RUNS LIVERPOOL C[it]Y. |
24 | DONOR, DO(N)OR, another starter clue. |
25 | TOTALISER, anagram of ARISTOTLE. Would he have had a flutter?. |
Down | |
1 | NEVER, half of NEVER-NEVER, a UK expression many overseas solvers probably won’t know. |
2 | EXCOMMUNICATION, [t]EX[t] + COMMUNICATION, rather obsolete nowadays. |
3 | BRISLING, BRIS[t]LING, nothing to do with ‘ling’ as I first supposed. |
4 | IDLY, [b]I[g] D[e]L[a]Y, another rather easy one. |
5 | DISHONESTY, DISH(ONE’S [par]T[ner])Y. My last one, just shoved in from the literal. |
6 | DECLAW, DEC LAW, one that the cats probably voted against!. |
7 | PRINCESS OF WALES, anagram of C + ASPERSIONS FLEW. The title is vacant because Camilla did not think it would be proper to assume it. |
8 | TREVELYAN, T(REV + ELY)AN, where TAN = ‘tangent’, a trigonometric function. |
12 | SQUARE ROOT, SQUARE + R(O)OT, with an unindicated DBE of ‘for one, one’. |
13 | TRICUSPID, anagram of IS CURT + P[age] + ID. |
15 | ARBOREAL, [g]ARBO + REAL, another clever literal. |
18 | SAWYER, double definition, with ‘deal’ referring to pine boards, as is often the case. |
21 | BORER, BO(R)ER. Yes, the Boer War is certainly yesterday’s news. |
22 | KNIT, K(N)IT. I nearly put in ‘ring’, which fits the cryptic but not the literal. Sometimes you have to read the whole clue! |
This was one of those cases where I think the setter must live in a different world from me.
For what it’s worth I don’t think insurance fraud is a victimless crime – that normally refers to consensual (but illegal) acts such as prostitution, drug-taking and gambling.
Edited at 2014-03-31 03:46 am (UTC)
I too gave up on this one early doors, as I felt I was getting nowhere. Looking at the blog (thanks!), I’m glad I did… too much unknown vocab today (NEED-BLIND, COMANCHE, BRISLING, TREVELYAN…) for me to make it an enjoyable solve…
“Abbey, now owned by Deustche (sic) Bank, and Allied, part of Swiss insurer Zurich, routinely impose high exit fines on pension savers of up to 25%. Advisers have cited a case where Allied Dunbar demanded a 64% exit penalty on a personal pension.
Abbey Life told a customer that his small pension of £140 would be wiped out completely if he tried to leave.”
Not to mention the cold calling agents who try to sell you insurance you already have and in any case don’t need.
Edited at 2014-03-31 08:00 am (UTC)
Teddy boys nearly always get a bad press in Times puzzles and I have often remarked how unfair this is, but I have recently been reminded of unfortunate events in which some of them played a leading role in the late summer of 1958 and I imagine this may be the source of those negative connotations, however unjust that may be to the majority of them who were not involved.
Edited at 2014-03-31 02:28 am (UTC)
Vinyl, I doubt the Met know where Dorset is!
NEED-BLIND was my last in, not in my dictionary, the ever-popular Big Red Disc (2003) version. I was going to conjecture that it was Miltonian and nobody had bothered to use it since, but I see it’s alive and kicking in US college admission policies.
At least 7d wasn’t Princess of Hearts – yuk – but is took me a while to disentangle the anagram fodder, and even to see that it was an anagram – it was pretty smooth and appositely referenced conspiracy theories. Perhaps the setter has a moonlighting job on the Daily Express.
DECLAW was my Fave of the Day, with a special mention for TREVELYAN for spelling assistance.
Edited at 2014-03-31 08:01 am (UTC)
I’m glad somebody enjoyed DECLAW because I sure didn’t. I was imagining the look on my (non-solving) partner’s face while I tried to explain that ‘Dec law’ was a ‘rule for Christmas’. I think the look would best be described as pitying.
Just not my cup of tea at all so I’ll shut up.
Of course, I shall now have to learn Cornish. I found a website which offers my sort of language learning, kicking off with:
Leun a sylli yw ow skath bargesi (My hovercraft
is full of eels), which I gather will be immediately familiar to certain Python-loving visitors to this site.
I’m bunking in a holiday flat as of yesterday, jimbo, but the great house search starts tomorrow.
Anyone who drives a car in the UK is a victim of insurance fraud in the form of bogus whiplash claims.
Always think of Beyond Our Ken when seeing the answer to 17, vaguely remembering a recurring joke about “What’s the matter, Horne?”
Teds. The Battle of St Mary Cray, Saturday 24 April 1954. From the Orpington & Kentish Times:
”Gang Battle” At Railway Station: Edwardian Youths In Half Hour Fight: Wooden Stakes, Sand Filled Socks As Weapons
The national press gave the story wider publicity and Teddy Boys became symbols of indiscipline and moral decline. They also provided the theme for a gruesome playground song, sung to the tune of Davy Crockett.
Need-blind unknown, Trevelyan and brisling dredged from outlying parts of my knowledge pool (if my brain were the solar system they were floating around between Jupiter and Saturn).
Delighted to hear that our precious cargo has arrived safely in that Cornwall. According to Wiki Trevelyan is “is a Cornish surname derived from a Cornish place meaning “Village of Elian” so even the crossword is paying tribute.
And thank you. “Precious cargo” definitely beats “excess baggage”, which was a valid alternative.
joined the Teds when he was only three.
Coshed a cop when he was only four,
and now he’s in Dartmoor for ever more
Davy, Davy Crocket, king of the Teddy Boys.
Edited at 2014-03-31 02:04 pm (UTC)
Since only one person has said they know the expression, and I’ve never heard it, can you give an example please of how ‘need-blind’ is used and/or what it means?
One of the great joys of cryptic crossword solving is that you don’t have to have a word in your vocabulary to solve it. If the clue had just been the concise “Regardless of circumstances” I would have struggled. With its wordplay, it’s gettable, and even amusing.
Isn’t Google great? 😉
Edited at 2014-03-31 01:41 pm (UTC)
That was certainly true today with probably less than half done in 40 minutes but perseverance paid off, limping home in about 90 minutes.
I particularly liked the clueing of SQUARE ROOT as ‘For one, one’.
All correct today but only thanks to a lucky guess at the unknown Need Blind.
I beg to differ with you Sarah, Mike and pipkirby – I thought Declaw was great fun!
FOI Excommunication, LOI Need Blind.
Cheers,
Tony please reply to anthonyspender@yahoo.co.uk as I probably won’t be able to find your reply otherwise.
Question
Does anyone know why the Quick Cryptic is not available in the Irish version of the hard copy newspaper?
bannman ie Editor
RE: New Crossword in the Times From Monday 10 March
posted 29/03/14 09:08
I’ve made some enquiries about that. The Mind Games section of the paper is scaled down in Irish Republic editions. I guess it just hasn’t “made the cut”
RR
“
Edited at 2014-03-31 06:46 pm (UTC)
“One fine day in the month of May
She found her true romance.
He was tall and sleek with a scar on his cheek
And a pair of drainpipe pants….”
This protagonist also ended up in clink
“He went before a man of the law
Who said ‘This will not do.
I have had enough of the sort of stuff
That I get from the likes of you…'”
Sung and written by Paddy somebody. Ann
I know I am old fashioned in this view, but Trevelyan is one of my favourite historians. Yes he was biased but his analysis was excellent and I always found his writing elegant.
Nairobi Wallah
I used to teach a composition class where I had students learn conventions of clueing and wrote their own clues – one of my clueing challenges was ARISTOTLE and I got almost the reverse of the TOTALISER clue from a student.
TRICUSPID slightly easier than last week’s PAEDODONTIC, but gives rise to the thought that our esteemed setter has just got round to reading that long-ignored “Dentistry for Beginners” volume.
VICTIMLESS CRIME reminds me of Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) explaining to Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) “… one farthing, on all the premiums, on all the policies, for all the next year …” (film clip on YouTube under “The Ladykillers (1955) – Can’t return the money”).
Thanks.
Ob., v.
intr. Placed before the date of a person’s death (past tense): died.
Etymology: Shortened < classical Latin obiit, 3rd singular perfect indicative of obīre to die
Edited at 2014-04-01 04:19 am (UTC)
Like many here, I loathe NEED-BLIND as a phrase, and it seems to be generally unfamiliar. On the other hand, I’d probably say the same about a wide range of cricketing terms, obscure trees and alternate names for salmon.
Didn’t know TREVELYAN as a historian, but got it from wordplay. I also misspelled COUNSELLOR as COUNCILLOR initially, until I stopped and checked the available letters properly.
COD for me was SQUARE ROOT, because I thought it was cleverly disguised, and because it made me slap my forehead (it being the nearest to hand) when it clicked.
FOI IDLY, LOI DISHONESTY.
Nice to see a little triptych of medical terms appearing in the SW, especially TOURNIQUET. Brings to mind an episode a couple of years ago where a gentleman turned up with a badly gashed hand, and a piece of bungee cord wrapped tightly around his upper forearm as a tourniquet. He was very proud of himself for having stopped both the bleeding and the pain, so effectively that he’d been able to finish his afternoon’s work before coming in. His hand was a discouraging shade of grey by this point. In blatant contradiction of received medical wisdom, he only lost one and a half fingers. I suppose it’s lucky he hadn’t gashed his head.
Like others I hadn’t heard of NEED-BLIND; and I’d forgotten (if I ever knew) that PRIVY COUNSELLOR could be spelled that way, and wasted some time wondering if ARBOREAL could conceivably by spelled with an I instead of an E.
On the subject of “teddy boy” songs, there’s one that includes the lines
I once heard someone attribute this to Noel Coward – but I’m not convinced.