Times 25758

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 43:18

A couple of unknowns for me in SUPERCARGO & SURCEASE, but both were gettable from the wordplay.

I’m still blogging from holiday, so I’ll keep the preamble brief and move on to the clues.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 SH + TICK
4 CORSICAN = (OR + SIC) in CAN (preserved) – I saw OR and thought this was going to be some sort of PORCINE derivative, relating to Animal Farm, but no.
10 PENDULOUS = (DULSE UPON)*
11 UTTER – dd
12 RE(C(A + PIT)U)LATION
14 ALLOT = ALL + TO rev
16 PASSENGER = PAGER about NESS rev
18 GIRL POWER = GI (recruit) + (PROWLER)*
20 PANEL – dd
21 PEROXIDE BLONDE – cd
25 RHINO – dd
26 GASTROPUB = GAB (talk) about STROP (a bad mood) + menU – I took me a while to see the wordplay as I found it hard to move away from GAS being the ‘talk’.
27 PIT-A-PATS = PIT (mine) + APT (fitting) about A + Sink
28 POLYPS = SPY + LOP all rev
Down
1 SUPERCARGO = (SPRUCE)* + ARGO (ship)
2 TONIC = I in TON/C (two hundreds)
3 CRUMPET – dd
5 OUSE + L
6 SCUTTLE – dd
7 COTTON GIN = (IT CaNNOT GO)*)
8 NORM – presumably ‘lack of service’ implies NO R.M., although which service RM is is anyone’s guess. The postal service (Royal Mail) perhaps, or the armed services (Royal Marines). Actually, now I think about it, it’s probably room service.
9 SOUTH + PAW – Lord North, who was PM from 1770 – 1782, is something of a crossword stalwart.
13 TROLLEYBUS = BYE (extra, in cricket) rev in (TROLL + US)
15 LARCENIST = (CLARINETS)*
17 SURCEASE = (CASE)* in SURE – an archaic word that I had to get from the wordplay, but hence ‘old-fashioned’ in the clue.
19 P(HOT)OOP
20 PALER + MO
22 INGOT – hidden
23 NIPPY – dd
24 DRIP – dd

42 comments on “Times 25758”

  1. 36 minutes and only missed my 30 minute target by initially considering RAT-A-TATS at 27ac. I think I have met SURCEASE and even possibly SUPERCARGO before but neither leapt out at me. GI as a recruit was cause for comment last time it turned up and I’m not sure that I was ever convinced by it. Also I’ve never eaten nor even been offered a CRUMPET as breakfast food in my life but perhaps I don’t go to the right places.

    I took RM as Royal Marines.

    P.S. I forgot to mention an additional problem parsing 26ac was the ‘a’ in the clue being redundant other than as padding to help the surface reading. Prior to that I also wasted time on GAS being ‘talk’.

    Edited at 2014-04-11 06:19 am (UTC)

    1. Toasted with cheese on top they make an excellent breakfast – I use a Foreman-style grill. They last for ages in the fridge, where I keep a ready supply. If you like Marmite… (other yeast extract products are available)
      1. I don’t doubt crumpets can be enjoyed at breakfast (also as a tasty snack used as one would a pizza base to make crumpet pizzas) but that’s not really my point. And since you mention it, an old friend of mine eats Marmite every day at breakfast and has done so to my knowledge for 50+ years, however I would not expect to see it clued as a breakfast food.

        Edited at 2014-04-11 08:44 am (UTC)

        1. One is tempted to say “try it and see” but I take your point. It just so happens that crumpets in our household, prepared as a savoury, not sweet, food, are such a standard for breaking fast that it seems to me unexceptional, and perfectly well clued.
          Transforms the taste and texture of peanut butter, though spread after toasting. Not good with marmalade.
          1. I agree with Jack that crumpets aren’t normal breakfast fare, but I think the ? allows the setter to get away with it.
  2. Coming in early as I won’t be able to tomorrow during US daytime. Thanks for
    Blogging from vacation Dave. The puzzle itself needed around 15 minutes ending with RHINO. The only hold up was starting with a platinum blonde instead of the
    Chemically enhanced PEROXIDE type. INGOT quickly set me straight. SURCEASE
    remembered via “with his surcease, success”. I’m guessing a CRUMPET as hot stuff is sort of similar to “dishy”, but otherwise don’t know. Regards.
    1. You’re right, Kevin – the word is perhaps best known in the phrase “[she’s a] nice bit of crumpet!” Deliciously old-fashioned – more so than the real thing, in fact.
    2. I kicked off with platinum, then went bleached, and finally alighted on PEROXIDE.
  3. Sorry for the line breaks. I did this from an iPhone and obviously I’m not good at it.
  4. As the time indicates, a number of these went in without parsing. Like Jack, I didn’t like GI for recruit, and assumed RM was Royal Marines; like Kevin, I first threw in ‘platinum’. I remembered SURCEASE from Poe: ‘surcease of sorrow,/sorrow for the lost Lenore’; outclassed there by Kevin. A southpaw, throwing with his left hand, would lead with his right leg.
  5. Nothing too difficult here — but a mixed bag of clues. The clue for CRUMPET is just daft; while that for COTTON GIN is very elegant. For examples.

    RM has to be the Marines. And this southpaw can confirm Ulaca’s anaysis. (Not that I get into a lot of fights these days!)

  6. I enjoyed my first one in ‘platinum blonde’, which remained in until nothing else in that quadrant would seem to come. Stumbled home in 54 minutes.Also had ‘capsize’ at 6d because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

    In the SOUTHPAW clue, one would expect ‘leading with the right [hand]’, so I believe what the setter is getting at is, as Kevin Gregg alludes to, the fact that a southpaw boxer (usually a natural left-hander, but not always – as demonstrated by for example Manny Pacquiao) leads with both his right hand and his right leg, thus, ‘from the right’.

    Edited at 2014-04-11 03:30 am (UTC)

      1. From which the boxing use, of which the setter is probably thinking, is derived, they say.

        Edited at 2014-04-11 05:04 am (UTC)

  7. 18m. Bit tricky, this one, and a couple of unknowns to construct from wordplay: SOUTHPAW (which according to Chambers is just a boxer who leads with the right hand), SUPERCARGO. PENDLOUSS held me up for a while, as did being convinced that the ‘look’ in 28ac was LO.
    1. Odd; here I’d always thought that ‘southpaw’ was an Americanism and never expected it to be applied to boxers. And indeed, my SOED gives it as an Americanism, applied to baseball pitchers.
  8. 32 minutes – not helped by putting in platinum blonde as others did. Clever clue, but spoiled by its ambiguity.
    And crumpets are traditionally for teatime – along with muffins (by which I mean the English ones)!
    Particularly liked 28a.

    1. I’ve only ever eaten muffins for breakfast. I don’t have a strong position on crumpets, because I don’t really like them.
      However it seems clear that the whole question of when to eat baked goods is entirely too controversial and should be avoided at all costs by setters from now on.
      😉
  9. 13 minutes of th enjoyable kind: lets’s give special mention to CORSICAN for the “preserved” notion, which must have been done before but came up amusingly fresh for me today.
    As seen above, CRUMPET is fine by me as breakfast, though in the days of open fires in the “living room”, they were what you used a toasting fork for at teatime.
    And let’s pay tribute to a setter who manages to get PEROXIDE BLONDE, CRUMPET (phwoar!) and GIRL POWER in the same grid.
    Round here, a SOUTHPAW is the unorthodox boxer who leads with the right. What is this “baseball” of which you speak? Curiously, Henry Cooper’s ‘ammer, the one that knocked down Ali for a count of thirteen, was his left, and he should have boxed with a southpaw stance, but didn’t.
    Last in PHOTO OP. The checkers just looked so unlikely and I toyed with the invented phrase PROMO UP.
    1. Having a power punch in the front hand, as Cooper did with the ‘wrong’ stance, can be a great tool as it has a greater chance of finding its mark.
      1. Which it surely did. I wonder if this at 7.55 in counts as one of the finest moments in British boxing history? I’m pretty sure I watched it live on that 9″ TV, though what struck me on seeing it again was how scrawny Cooper looked compared to Clay/Ali. But what a punch! “Felt by my ancestors back in Africa”.
  10. 24.23. Amazing that rhino is still clued as money. 3 dn. is like a loud intruder from a sub-Times world. I suppose I should be grateful for the riveting discussion of what’s on the breakfast plate it’s inspired. The coal scuttle brought back childhood memories.
  11. Memories from the 50s here with toasting crumpets, like Z, on a fire lit with coal from the scuttle and going to school on the trolleybus. I liked 15D for its simple, elegant surface. 18 minutes.

    Edited at 2014-04-11 08:21 am (UTC)

    1. Gosh, yes, happy memories. And Diana Dors and Marilyn Monroe with the big blonde hairdos on the 9-inch TV. No wonder this felt as comfortable as an old slipper.
  12. A game of two halves here. After 10 minutes all I had in was SHTICK. Then PENDULOUS went in and the rest followed in another 15 minutes.

    Just two days ago I was telling my children about all the different terms for money but RHINO is a new one on me. I presumed it would be a specific amount of money like a monkey or a pony but Google tells me it’s just money in general.

  13. A pleasant half-hour plus, with just PASSENGER unparsed, thank you daveperry. COTTON GIN unknown to me, but eminently gettable from wordplay. FOI SHTICK, LOI the aforesaid COTTON GIN.

    It is irritating that sometimes each “a”, “as”, &c in a clue is utterly vital to the wordplay and sometimes utterly extraneous, as the “a” in the clue for GASTROPUB.

    I’m a great devotee of crumpets, but never yet for breakfast, de gustibus, etc. CRUMPET of course, is another matter.

  14. Reasonable but hardly difficult 20 minute puzzle.

    Some trips down memory lane with SCUTTLE and CRUMPET both toasted and eaten in front of the fire (breakfast – not where I grew up) and my sixties crush Joan Bakewell.

    At 21A you should wait for some checkers with these cryptic definitions – they’re quite often ambiguous

    1. The usage of CRUMPET put me in mind of “the thinking man’s crumpet” which I recall often being used to describe Joan Bakewell.
  15. Never heard SOUTHPAW in a non-boxing context.

    My 2nd-year room at uni had a gas fire and a previous inhabitant had tied a number of bits of wire on the grille so that the last half-inch or so of each stuck out. Toasting crumpets therefore only involved slapping them in to the wires where they stuck in front of the flame. Not for breakfast though.

  16. 9 mins so I was obviously on the setter’s wavelength. I got the 1ac/1dn crossers immediately and the majority of the rest of the answers just seemed to leap out at me. It took me ages to solve SUPERCARGO the first time I ever came across it in a puzzle, and it is one of those words that has stuck with me ever since.

    I needed all the checkers for CRUMPET because neither definition came to mind quickly. I’ve never had them for breakfast, but wouldn’t be averse to them if someone made the offer, especially with cheese on as suggested by Z8. I agree with Jimbo that the answer for a clue like 21ac shouldn’t be entered until a few checkers are in place. SCUTTLE was my LOI after PASSENGER.

    1. Once again, about 40min for me, although to be fair I’d have taken less time had I been faster.

      SOUTHPAW confused me too, though I put it in. Afterwards, I got down my copy of Wikipedia and discovered that being left- or right-handed doesn’t necessarily correspond with the stance one uses (ie, with which hand one leads). Marquess of Queensberry rules seldom enter into the fights the aftermaths of which I see.

      Spent a long time agonising over SUPERCARGO. I’d heard the word, but assumed it referred to the cargo (possibly stored above decks, or maybe just really super) rather than the person in charge of it.

      All in all, a pleasant but unexciting puzzle, I thought.

  17. Another Platinum here, but it didn’t hold me up for long as larcenist and ingot were easy clues. Unfortunately crumpets are very British and very hard to get here in Ireland (I think Tesco sells them, but Im not driving 40 miles to my nearest branch and certainly not before breakfast). Also realised I didn’t know the meaning of Recapitulation, thinking it meant ‘giving in again’. About 40 minutes.
  18. 11:47 with a double dose of virtual tippex at 9. I put in south paw straight away then couldn’t remember a PM called south so amended it immediately to north paw then couldn’t remember a boxer being referred to as such and, spotting the “opposite” in the clue, went back to south paw.

    Thanks for parsing polyps Dave. I got fixated on look being lo so the rest of the WP was beyond me.

    I already had larcenist before I looked at 21 so “platinum” didn’t occur to me.

  19. For a Friday puzzle, a reasonably straightforward 30-min solve. As for quite a few others, my first choice of lady companion at 21A was a “platinum blonde” before the cross-checkers made clear this wasn’t going to work and I switched to PEROXIDE. Are either of these hair treatments still in use? A strong retro feel to this puzzle. I can’t recall CRUMPET being used in the sense required at 3D since I was at university in the early 1960s.
  20. Good puzzle, but I was stuck for a while on Gastropub – clever clue.
    Macbeth, wasn’t it, who said “with his surcease, success”?
  21. Yes. Baseball fields, like churches, are meant to face east. That way the batter is not at risk of being blinded by the afternoon sun coming from behind the pitcher. So the pitcher faces west, and his left hand…

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