Times 25,767

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
16:06 on the Club timer, so by that measure this wasn’t the hardest puzzle of recent times; but in amongst some entry-level clues were a number of very clever ones, so it wasn’t the easiest either. I imagine how much people like or dislike this one might well depend on how long those particular pennies take to drop.

Across
1 FLAWLESS – Following, LAW(system of rules), LESS(not so).
9 UNFASTEN – one which took while to unpack, it’s a lift and separate to get the definition “open”, then take New Female (Jane) AUSTEN and move the University to the front.
10 CATS – (ACTS)*. First of those entry-level clues I was talking about.
11 TWELFTH NIGHT – the next one after eleven is the TWELFTH, then NIGH(“near”) + piTch.
13 HELIUM – a lovely bit of misdirection, the simple “He” at the start is the definition, and the wordplay is I and “U” in the HELM.
14 CONSPIRE – C (the constant, as seen in the equation E=MC2), found ON a SPIRE, as crosses often are.
15 TRAGEDY – AGED in TRY, to give the work of Sophocles.
16 OLIVIER – Lord Sir Larry, made by inserting 1 into OLIVER, who famously demanded more in Lionel Bart’s version.
20 SPANKING – SPAN(“bridge”), KING(“high card”).
22 WAR CRY – CRedit in WARY.
23 COWARDLINESS – LINES, which actors have to learn, inside (Noel) COWARD’S.
25 HACK – double def.
26 STRANGLE – Learner in STRANGE.
27 DREADING – Daughter, READING(“recital”).
 
Down
2 LEAP YEAR – E(today’s random musical note) in (APLAYER)*; nice surface, though it turns out to be 1984 in a purely calendar sense.
3 WEST VIRGINIA – (ISVIEWINGART)*.
4 ESTEEMED – European, [wesT in SEEMED].
5 SUFFICE – C.E. attached to SUFFIx, leaving “do” as about the shortest definition you can have.
6 AFGHAN – FGH(the three letters immediately before “I”) inside A, AN.
7 STAG – “sooner or later” because it’s hidden twice, in proteST AGainst and againST A Greedy. A “stag” in this sense is a speculator who buys new shares which are undervalued and sells immediately at a profit; anyone old enough to remember the raft of Thatcherite privatisations will be familiar with the concept. See also: the Post Office. I wonder if today’s setter is trying to make a point?
8 KNITWEAR – (INK,WATER)*.
12 IMPOVERISHED – IMP, OVER, I SHED.
15 TEST CASE – TEST(international, as in the sporting occasion), CASE(“traveller’s requirement”). A test case affects future actions in the legal sense.
17 LAWRENCE – (Sir Christopher) WREN in LACE.
18 ETRUSCAN – (TRUE)*, SCAN(“view”). The Etruscans were Romans before the Romans were Romans.
19 IGNITED – (EDITING)*.
21 INDIGO – IN(“batting”), oxforD, I GO.
24 WERE – double def. HM the Queen uses the “royal we”, of course, so her I’M is a WE’RE.

34 comments on “Times 25,767”

  1. About 50 mins for me but with one wrong. I totally overthought 24dn and put in WERT, the old form.

    It doesn’t make much difference but 8dn is technically (INK)* (WATER)* which makes the anagram really easy.

    Took a long time to get TESTCASE. Trying to justify TODO LIST as something that affects future actions, or perhaps are the future actions.

  2. Raced through most of this but then ground to a halt with only KNITWEAR, OLIVIER and IMPOV in the NE quarter. Took for ever to get going again. Maddened because AFGHAN as ‘shawl’ appeared somewhere very recently and ‘AUSTEN’ was the authoress who lent her name to wordplay in the Quickie I blogged only yesterday.

    The quickie link worked today but I note that if the “backdoor” is required now the formula for calculating the last part of the url has changed to ‘100 + puzzle number +5’ instead of +1. All is not well however as the print buttons for the main cryptic accessed via the Club have stopped working. I had to print via the newspaper where I note the Print in Grey button has no effect on the amount of ink used.

  3. DNK STAG, and wondered about ‘sooner or later, but I could think of nothing other than a hidden, so… It also took a while for the penny to drop with ‘more demanding’. AFGHAN took a while, since I never thought of it as a shawl (as children,my brother and I had Afghans on our beds knitted by our grandmother). COD to LOI HELIUM.
  4. Good puzzle with lots of distractions deflecting from the defs. 13ac is perhaps the best example. Also, haven’t seen a double inclusive (hidden answer) before … I think. Not on my best form at the moment so not looking forward to a blog tomorrow.
  5. A very similar experience to yours, Tim: 16m, some of it easy, some of it much less so. Some really nice stuff in here: ‘more demanding musical part’, ‘triplet before I’, ‘endless end of term do’, the double hidden and ‘He’ as a definition.
  6. Me too – quick 15 minute solve thanks to the entry level clues but with much appreciation for 13A HELIUM, 16A OLIVIER, 6D AFGHAN.

    I don’t like 24D WERE and a STAG isn’t necessarily greedy – they’re just part of the system.

    1. Though “greedy” isn’t actually part of the definition, is it? (Admittedly, the surface remains fairly uncomplimentary…)
      1. You’re right of course Tim – I was just a little critical of the bias in the surface reading

        I’ve sent you a message via Facebook

  7. Really, really slow start: only got a couple on the first read through but it was 8d that got me going and opened up the grid. Much relieved to find no arcane GK or Mephisto vocabulary needed.
    I eventually finished in about 45 minutes, which supports my contention that very often it’s just a matter of self-confidence.

  8. 18 minutes, nearly giving up on my LOI UNFASTEN because I convinced myself I didn’t know the author that fitted the checkers. That Italian one that starts with U? The Swedish URFOSTEN? Ah, the power of a really sticky “lift and separate”!
    Otherwise a relatively gentle solve (once I got going) but with entertaining clues, as noted variously above. SUFFICE, I think, for my CoD, “do” having so many variant possibilities even once you’d spotted it was the definition.

    Edited at 2014-04-22 08:24 am (UTC)

  9. I too enjoyed the gems mentioned by keriothe. All done in 20 mins save the unfasten/afghan crossing and a fixation on stonking that I knew was wrong but could not budge for a while When the pennies dropped I had still enjoyed the puzzle – if anyone really does like or dislike according to personal competence/incompetence I can only suggest that they get out more.

    Edited at 2014-04-22 08:45 am (UTC)

  10. Some top-class clues here with the prize being shared by 13ac for the original definition and 7d for the double hidden.
  11. 29 mins because I got completely bogged down in the NE. It took me much longer than it should have done to get SUFFICE, TWELFTH NIGHT and CONSPIRE, and even after I got them I still spent a long time on my last two, the AFGHAN/UNFASTEN crossers. As some of you have already mentioned, this puzzle was a bizarre mix of the ridiculously easy and the very cunning.
  12. 27.32 with much appreciation for a number of clever twists and turns on the trail. As for Oliver asking for more, Dickens’ version beat Bart’s to it mirabile dictu. Oh, the musical role. 24 seems fair enough – rather nice.

    Edited at 2014-04-22 10:13 am (UTC)

  13. Agree with jimbo that STAGS are not necessarily greedy. Back in the days when the London Stock Exchange had brokers and jobbers, settlement (ie delivery of the stock or payment) was fortnightly. It was possible to defer settlement or payment through contango or backwardation payments. A Stag however would want to complete the buy/sell process (not necessarily of new issues) within the settlement period (hopefully for a profit) so that it was not necessary either to have the stock or find the cash to pay for it at the end.

    Edited at 2014-04-22 10:55 am (UTC)

    1. It’s a fair point, but I think the “greedy” is part of the wordplay, not the definition, isn’t it?
  14. Quite so – “speculator” is the def, not “greedy speculator”. In any case, I’d be prepared to defend the implications of the surface read: stags may, as Jimbo says, just be part of the system, but then so, arguably, is greed – as Gordon “Greed is good” Gekko famously asserted.
  15. I can only echo most of the comments above – as Tim says, not the hardest of puzzles (which means 45mins or so for me) but with lots of clever stuff. HELIUM was my LOI – it took me an age to see that “He” might be the def. OLIVIER and AFGHAN were also very good. In addition i liked UNFASTEN, which took a lot of desconstructing, and the unusual double hidden at 7dn.
  17. About an hour that came in spurts – a word would go in, then a rush based on the crossers. But I stopped without getting helium and were. Even without those two, some very clever clues.

    Edited at 2014-04-22 12:10 pm (UTC)

  18. 22m – quick by my standards so the Easter break must have done me good.

    I particularly liked Oliver as the ‘more demanding musical role’. I hadn’t parsed UNFASTEN or WERE so thanks to Tim for these.

  19. Two missing for me – Helium and Suffice. Cross with myself for not spotting ‘He’ as the definition.
    FOI Ignited.
  20. About 30 minutes, ending with STAG, finally seeing the double hidden, which was necessary since I didn’t know that definition. COD to SUFFICE, as I’m a sucker for brevity, and HELIUM is clever also. Regards.
  21. Another pleasant solve, held up for ages by we’re and helium but got there in the end, about 90 minutes. Enjoyed this puzzle.

    Regards to all,

    Nairobi Wallah

  22. 50 mins for me – my best yet after a month of a sometimes painful learning curve.Loved HELIUM and OLIVIER clues – very clever.
    Had put in UNBUTTON for UNFASTEN (Lana Button is a new female author…..) but thankfully AFGHAN provided the checkers to correct me.
    Thanks for this blog – it has really helped me get started.
  23. Completed over three separate snatched periods during the day, not uninterrupted, so exact timing tricky, about 40 minutes. I share the general admiration for the excellent clueing, highlighted by keriothe, above.

    FOI CATS, LOI the deceptively clever HELIUM. Even the straightforward IMPOVERISHED had me chasing non-existent anagrams. Nominating a COD today would be invidious. Congratulations to the setter.

    1. Just realised that my first draft of my comment, which I thought had vanished into the ether, has ended up as “anonymous” two entries above. Apologies for the double portion.
  24. No timing, as done over three separate snatched periods today – maybe 45 mins in all. I share the general admiration for some excellent clueing, the shining examples listed by keriothe, above.

    FOI CATS, LOI the clever HELIUM. The straightforward IMPOVERISHED had me chasing non-existent anagrams before the penny dropped.

  25. 9:07 for me, finding the setter’s wavelength reasonably quickly for once, though I was helped by variants of some old chestnuts which went straight in: 13ac (HELIUM) and 6dn (AFGHAN) among them.

    There was also some good stuff that was new to me though. I didn’t spot the definition in 7dn (STAG) until after I’d finished, and I particularly liked 24dn (WERE).

    All in all a most enjoyable puzzle.

  27. 34 minutes upon return from Macau. Once I sussed out the setter’s penchant for short definitions (do, open, He), I found this quite straightforward, even if full parsing had to wait.

    Edited at 2014-04-23 12:22 pm (UTC)

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