Times 25760 – Advantage UK!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 65 minutes

Music: Malcolm Arnold, Symphony #2 and Eight English Dances, Groves/Bournemouth Symphony

My time was probably not that great, and I did have all but two answers inside of 45 minutes. I had not heard of ‘Leighton Buzzard’, but it should have been easily attainable from the cryptic; however, the ‘L’ in ‘glider’ looked like a ‘C’, and I didn’t notice for quite a while. A UK solver would probably just write it in without thinking.

My last two were ‘paintwork’ and ‘chocker’. I did suspect that ‘coats’ referred to coats of paint, but I was leaning towards an anagram of ‘torn’ in the middle. Then I had to laboriously get ‘chocker’ from the cryptic, not knowing this UK slang term. If it followed the logic of most UK slang, it would have been ‘chockers’, but then slang is never logical.

And since the hour is getting late, on to the blog.

Across
1 MEDICATE, E[cstasy] + T[ime] + ACID + ME, all backwards.
5 GLIDER, G(L)IDE + R.
10 AWAIT, A + WAIT, a nice starter clue.
11 APPOINTED, P.A. backwards + POINTED.
12 BALLADEER, BALL + sounds like A DEAR.
13 HINDU, backwards alternate letters in [s]U[d]D[e]N [w]I[s]H. The literal is not particularly accurate for Hinduism properly understood.
14 LECTERN, LE(CT)ER + [take]N.
16 SPORTY, anagram of TORY’S + P.
18 TRY OUT, TR(Y)OUT.
20 CABARET, CA(BARE)T, a hep cat one would imagine.
22 ONE UP, double definition. I wasted a lot of time trying to lift and separate ‘horse’ and ‘rider’ before seeing the obvious.
23 BRONZE AGE, BRO + NZ + EAGE[r]. The ‘New Zealand’ part gives the whole thing away.
25 PAINTWORK, PA(IN TWO)RK. Simple, elegant, and very difficult here.
26 A-LIST, er, well, that’s the answer I wrote in from the literal and enumeration. It should be right, but I’d be much more confident if I had a clue how the cryptic works. It’s [journ]ALIST, with Alec the first to the post, just nipping Janie by two minutes.
27 REGALE, R[ain] + E GALE, where ‘shower’ has a less literal meaning.
28 GRADUAND, GR(AD + U)AND. An inkhorn term easily gettable from the cryptic.
 
Down
1 MEATBALL, MEA(T.B.A + L)L.
2 DRAWL, hidden in [purchase]D RAW L[amb].
3 COTTAGE HOSPITAL, COT + TAG + anagam of IS A HELP TO. An instant write-in for me, which shows I do sometimes pay attention and remember things.
4 TRADE-IN, sounds like TRES DIN, hahaha! That’ll show those bloggers who keep complaining about all the silly homophones.
6 LEIGHTON BUZZARD, L(E)IGHT ON + BUZZ + A RD. I suppose that half of our UK brigade will report some connection with the place.
7 DETONATOR, ROTA NOTED upside down.
8 RADIUS, RADI[o] + U/S, just written in from the literal here.
9 SPURNS, SPUR(N)S. I admit, I couldn’t place the team, but the answer is obvious enough.
15 CORNERING, CORN + [fugitiv]E + RING.
17 ATTESTED, AT(TEST)ED, where the outer letters are an anagram of DATE. I carelessly wrote in ATESTTED, causing a bit of trouble for a while.
19 TABOOS, TA + BOOS, which should have been easy, but wasn’t.
20 CHOCKER, CH + [l]OCKER, quite hard if you don’t know the word.
21 TOPPER, REP + POT upside down. I hesitated until I saw the required sense of ‘pot’, which is applied a bit metaphorically here.
24 AVILA, A + VIL[l]A.

40 comments on “Times 25760 – Advantage UK!”

  2. 38 mins for me, so not too shabby…

    DNK the Spanish town
    26 a = (journ)ALIST
    Couldn’t for the life of me work out RADI+? = set, so thanks for the head up on that one!

    Oops…you beat me to it, McT!

    Edited at 2014-04-14 02:13 am (UTC)

  3. Like Vinyl, I hesitated on TOPPER; unlike him, I didn’t get the requisite meaning, but wotthehell. Also like Vinyl, I was looking for (torn)*, and that made PAINTWORK my LOI; I only parsed it once I typed it in and looked at it. LEIGHTON BUZZARD is one of the few entries in “Gregg’s British Gazetteer”, a work in (slow) progress. Didn’t care for HINDU, or SPORTY=’competitive’. DNK 28ac, 3d, or 20d. Nice enough start to the week, although nothing of note.
  4. So just slightly on the difficult side. I saw 3dn quickly and thought its mix of clue-forms was very good, especially the anagram. A1 clue altogether and worth the price of admission.

    Wish they’d get rid of the long title line (re the Quals). Means I have to print at 85%.

    They didn’t include it on the Saturday puzzle which, if you haven’t seen it yet, give it a go. Consumate craftsmanship there.

      1. Thanks for that. Just tried it and it looks like it’s for Win boxes only. Will search for a Mac version.
    2. “Wish they’d get rid of the long title line (re the Quals). Means I have to print at 85%.”

      Adjust font to required size, select grid and clues then print selected text.

  5. Well 6dn was always going to be easy for me, having lived in LB for 31 years! It has certainly come up here at least once before since I started contributing as I remember the last time I was still commuting and I thought of the answer whilst waiting for a train to work and staring blankly at the LB sign on the opposite platform.

    Other than that, I solved all but 5 clues within 30 minutes and took another 15 to fill the grid but I have rarely had so many unparsed to return to for further consideration. There was certainly some odd stuff here some of which have already been mentioned but I would add MEATBALL defined as ‘part of dish’, CABARET defined as ‘club’ (which I now gather is U.S. usage) and ‘land’ = POT. AVILA was unknown to me as was GRADUAND which I find very hard to believe.

    Edited at 2014-04-14 06:32 am (UTC)

    1. At formal grad ceremonies at proper universities — so probably not at Reading — the graduating students are called on to proceed to receive their testamurs as graduands. They are not graduates as such until they get their bit of paper from, usually, the Chancellor. In my case it was Princess Alexandra. It was for the MA; so technically I was already a graduate. But that doesn’t count.
        1. I vaguely remember getting a pat on the shoulder from someone (Roy Jenkins?) in the Sheldonian, for the MA, but never got a piece of paper.. or even parchment, and I’d never heard of a GRADUAND. I put in ‘graduate’ of course and was then stuck with ATTESTEE … otherwise a trickier Monday job than usual, half an hour or so.
  6. 25 minutes, with almost all the clues needing a helpful letter (or several) to break open. Thank Vishnu for HINDU, my first in, otherwise the grid may have stayed blank.
    Good cluing throughout, so until enlightened (thanks Vinyl) I was mystified by the poverty of 3d, where the setter seemed to have provided COT TAG and then run out of ideas in a bizarre kind of cross between a poor CD and a bit of wordplay. I’m glad it was better than that.
    Most other issues in SW with PAINTWORK (plural coats? Anagram of torn?), TOPPER (land?) CORNERING (much easier than it looked) and CHOCKER where I was looking for some cleverness with cupboards being full to mean check.
    Fooled into wondering why there wasn’t a homophone indicator for “great” in GRADUATE until ATTESTED forced itself in.
    LEIGHTON BUZZARD seems to be one of those towns that setters believe are well known. Can’t just be because Kajagoogoo (and Jack!) hail from there.
    1. If ‘hail from’ means what I think it means then I should clarify that I only live in LB. My home town (or village as it was in those days) is Stanmore in Middlesex (again as was).

      Edited at 2014-04-14 10:25 am (UTC)

      1. Stanmore I’m very familiar with, as the RNOH is where herself goes to get her undercarriage re engineered. I suppose for LB we need an intermediate past tense of the sort that English doesn’t do very well, as in I was for a while but not before and not since. Past determinate continuous?
        1. Herself, aka yours truly, doesn’t identify her prosthetic leg as ‘undercarriage’. I would think of that in terms of ‘backside’. Mine is definitely original.
  7. . . . with no particular stand-out clues. Have since looked at all 32 meanings of POT in Chambers and am no nearer to seeing what it has to do with land, so I am definitely in tune with the setter of the Quick Cryptic today.
    1. I think it’s 6: ‘to shoot (a creature) for the pot (ie as a meal), by a pot shot, or generally to bag, win, secure’.
  8. Just under 15 minutes. A bit chewy and completed with not a few unparsed. Thought 3D was very neat.
  9. 15 mins, and I quite enjoyed this puzzle. I had the most trouble in the SW where TOPPER was my LOI after I had finally broken down the wordplay correctly for REGALE and PAINTWORK. In the SE I had entered an unparsed “graduate” at 28ac before I saw that 17dn had to be ATTESTED, and I then decided to trust the wordplay for the previously unknown GRADUAND. 6dn was a write-in for me as soon as I had the first checker from GLIDER, and the helpful Z checker then gave me 23ac almost as quickly.
  10. Superb crossword. Loved paintwork, cottage hospital especially. 16:34.
    Will The Times still be charging its exorbitant entry fee I wonder for the champs?
  11. 12:36 on the club timer (I’m on holiday this week).
    I got BRONZE AGE on my first pass and the Z was enough for me to get the English town immediately.
    I was a bit puzzled by TOPPER, where I couldn’t see the required meaning of POT. I also hesitated over CHOCKER, which I would have spelled CHOCKA, short for ‘chock-a-block’.
  12. 25 min: agree that ‘pot’ = ‘land’ is rather strained, so 25 was LOI, as I spent several minutes wondering I need a raised hat (R…O.).
  13. About an hour twenty. Saw medicate and cottage hospital in the first 20 seconds and was revving the motor, but deciding that Facon was the unknown Frenchie (hence falcon, and ignore the r, but I didn’t see that until I parsed, later), that keen meant pliant (hence applicant, ignore the c, but I didn’t see that until…), and having man-up suggest itself before one-up slowed things down, as I’m not good enough yet to easily see past incorrect crossers. After that the clues started winning.

    Edited at 2014-04-14 11:31 am (UTC)

  14. Held up by several here. Finally 38.57. Not keen on do=ball or land=pot. Not bad otherwise, but lacking that knife of wit to make it superb I’d have thought: witness the somewhat disconnected 2 dn. Paintwork neat.
  16. Well possible a bit lacking in the flamboyance dept, but PAINTWORK I thought rather good. 35 mins for me today.

    Thanks all, thanks Vinyl.

    CG

  17. 20:06 and my copy ended up with more question marks than The Riddler’s onesie so I was grateful for confirmation of the unknowns and explantaions for the ones I couldn’t parse.

    I wonder if the surface reading of the Spurs clue has anything to do with Hull City, whose application to change their name to Hull Tigers was turned down by the FA last week.

    For Vinyl’s benefit my only very tenuous connection to Leighton Buzzard (I’ve never set foot in the place) is that I’ve heard music by 70s band the Leyton Buzzards whi hail from Leyton in East London.

    2. Checking in late, and glad to see I’m not alone — if you hadn’t mentioned them, Penfold, I would have.

      Saturday Night (Beneath the Plastic Palm Trees) goes through my head every time I see or hear the name Leighton Buzzard. High on my list of bestest ever songs.

  18. A pleasant 40 minutes, couldn’t parse topper at all, so thanks for the blog. The others went in fine, not sure how I knew of Leighton Buzzard, is it famous for anything? Really enjoyed both Saturday’s and yesterday’s as well.

    Nairobi Wallah

  19. All going well until I arrived at the SW where I share all of the above comments. Finally finished un parsed but all correct in about an hour. COD 4 dn – tres bon!
  20. Was enjoying this on my various commutes today, until floored by the entirely unknown CHOCKER. Unfortunately, I had never watched Neighbours, and the young Australians doing the meat of their world tours with our London office were quite civilised, so the word passed me by … Also left TOPPER unparsed so, after 40-ish minutes, a double DNF, and a sense of irritation.

    Otherwise, Bishop, parts of it were excellent: FOI A-LIST LOI the unparsed TOPPER. Once I had the “A” from A-LIST and the “D” from GRADUAND, LEIGHTON BUZZARD was a write in and my fourth one in, after which the RHS tumbled quickly. LHS trickier, and the early COTTAGE HOSPITAL proved less helpful. COD probably PAINTWORK – needed some application …

    Edited at 2014-04-14 04:58 pm (UTC)

  21. About 40min for me which, depressingly, seems to be the average to which I am asymptoting.

    I was startled by the raciness of our setter in equating “ball” with “do” (12ac). It was only some time later that I realized that both words were used as nouns, rather than as verbs.

    NHO AVILA, and FTP PAINTWORK and A-LIST, though all were clear enough.

    COD for me was DETONATOR, for no good reason.

    Accident of the Day (so far): young gentleman who had set about teaching himself to weld. He scored poorly in the Life Endangerment and Permanent Impairment categories, but got a perfect 10 under Ingenious Bypassing of Health and Safety. He knew the importance of wearing a welder’s mask (which protects the face and throat against the huge amounts of short UV) but, fed up with having to lift it up in order to see, had hit upon the excellent idea of removing the dark glass window in front of the eyes. On the plus side, though, it’ll be while before he’s able to see the livid red rectangle on his face.

  22. Let me quote Jack from a couple of years back:

    ‘TRING has come up several times before, usually clued as “Hertfordshire town”I believe, a distinction it shares in crosswordland with Ware. Tring’s larger neighbouring stations on the commuter route to London, Berkhamsted and Leighton Buzzard have also appeared.’

    Other places to look out for include Epping (in Essex – well known for its forest) and of course Milton Keynes. There will be others.

    1. We had Luton within the past fortnight, I think, and Dunstable has also appeared – both in Bedfordshire along with LB, but talking of Essex, I’m still waiting for Theydon Bois.

      Edited at 2014-04-15 12:24 am (UTC)

  24. 8:37 for me, held up at the end by agonising over TOPPER. Like keriothe I’ve only come across CHOCKA before, but didn’t hesitate too long over CHOCKER.

    A pleasing start to the week – simple but elegant.

  25. Most things have been said already. I enjoyed the puzzle, and can confirm that the word ‘graduand’ was certainly alive and kicking at Durham in 1999.

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