Times 25772 – A Stroll in the Stroller?

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A pleasant enough puzzle, but not much more taxing than a Quickie. I never thought I’d be talking about accessible puzzles and Dean Mayer in the same breath, but yesterday’s Sunday Times is another ideal introduction to the crossword world, spiced by trademark Anax wit. 20 minutes for today’s.

Across

1 FASHIONABLE – let’s start with my COD; the definition is ‘in’ and the wordplay FABLE around SH + IONA.
7 FOG – GOLF reversed minus the L[abrador].
9 DEBUTANTE – TUBE reversed in DANTE (who vies with Donne for the five-letter poetical slot in Crosswordland).
10 CLEAR – double definition; for the second, think of fences in showjumping or steeplechasing.
11 HIRSUTE – well it’s how I at any rate pronounce ‘her suit’; the literal is ‘rough and shaggy’.
12 TWITCHY – definition ‘in a stew’, wordplay last letter of [marro]W in TITCHY.
13 RIFLE – double definition: ‘security provider with stock’ = rifle + ‘plunder’ (as in rifling someone’s drawers – if they’ll let you…)
15 SHANGRI-LA – anagram* of HIS GAL RAN; easy for me as the hotel chain is a big presence out east.
17 BRITANNIA – am I the only Briton who tries to spell this with two Ts? IN A BARN IT* for the legendary Amazon.
19 DRYAD – naturally, a DRYad doesn’t live in a river, so a NAIAD must. That’s how I remember them, anyway. DRY + AD, of course.
20 APPAREL – PARE (‘crop’ as in cut) in PAL*.
22 ALL-STAR – L[eft] + S[on] in ALTAR; ‘celebrity’ and ‘all-star’ being used adjectivally as modifiers.
24 NINJA – I panicked, as I know about as much about Eastern fisticuffs as I do about obscure scientists, and nearly put in Uwani. It’s hidden a little later in the string.
25 RECUMBENT – RE (‘about’) followed by U[niversity] + MB (an abbreviated Latin ‘doctor’) in CENT (‘petty cash’) – the definition is ‘lying’.
27 DAY – a clue that strives for crypticity without, I think, ever quite attaining its objective; every other letter in DiArY.
28 LOOSE CANNON – ‘say’ because a dissolute member of the Cathedral staff would in reality be called a ‘loose canon’; the literal is ‘a cause of indsicriminate damage’.

Down

1 FED – I struggled with this, I must confess; it’s a double definition: ‘provided courses for’ (fed) and ‘US agent’ (Fed).
2 SOBER – struggled even more with this, my last in: literal ‘grave’; wordplay SOB (‘cry’) followed by ER (‘re’ reversed – indicated by ‘raised’, ‘up’ etc. in a Down clue).
3 INTRUDE – IN (Crossword setters are always giving ‘at homes’, tweedy lot that they are with their debutantes and other gels) + [gues]T + RUDE .
4 NON-PERSON – the literal is ‘insignificant type’, derived from N[ew} + ON + (S[tage] in PERON).
5 BLEAT – I’m not sure if this is a kind of &lit or merely a write-in; the literal is the whole thing and the wordplay B[lack] and [goa]T surrounding LEA (Crosswordland’s major type of pastoral grassland).
6 ETCHING – quite cunning this one: the literal is ‘art work’, obtained by taking FETCHING (‘attractive’) and removing the F[emale].
7 FRENCHIFY – is this a cryptic definition? I reckon it just might be, non? If someone wants to act like (AKA ‘make like’) a French person (especially one from Nice on the Cote d’Azur – geddit?), he or she would be FRENCHIFYing.
8 GERRYMANDER – nothing to do with Jerry of the Club Monthly; this is the gubernatorial equivalent of football players diving to gain an advantage – mucking about with electoral boundaries so you can win two seats instead of losing them. GERMANDER is your plant, which has twined itself around RY.
11 HARE-BRAINED – ‘scatty’ is the literal; the wordplay a charade of HARE (‘fast runner’) + B[aton] + RAINED (‘threw it down’ as in ‘chucked it down’, as in ‘inundated Dorset Jimbo’).
14 FLIPPANCY – literal ‘frivolity’; FANCY (‘inclination’ as in partiality) around most of LIPP[i], some painter.
16 AVALANCHE – another in the write-in category; ‘landslide’, represented by V[ictory] in A + ALAN + our old friend, the Argentinian medico turned bandito (CHE).
18 AIRMAIL – the way your mail goes missing, you wonder just how ‘qualified’ these blokes (and blokesses) are; I’m not really sure why ‘pilots’ is qualified by ‘qualified’, but I think we all get the idea. I reckon this clue could be the final nail in Macca’s coffin after the Reds were mugged by Mourinho yesterday…
19 DILEMMA – is it just me, or is this puzzle running out of crypticity? If one is on the horns of a dilemma, he or she is faced with a tough decision.
21 LARGO – LAGO[s] with R[epublican] inserted; the definition is [musical] ‘movement’.
23 THEGN – a variation on ‘thane’ (also look out or ‘thayn’) for the landed aristo in times of yore; [cashin]G in THEN (‘at that time’).
26 TAN – literal is ‘beat’; wordplay is (A + T[rail] reversed) + [Helvelly]N. Ascen/descend via Striding and Swirral Edges and repair to the pub.

39 comments on “Times 25772 – A Stroll in the Stroller?”

  1. So congrats on your time Ulaca! No idea why this took so long. I must not have been reading properly in the dull morning light. (It’s been chucking it down here … finally after the driest April on record.)

    For a start, the “son” in 22ac came out of the printer with a mark on the page and it looked like “sop”. Then I tried to write BRITANNIA into 28ac. No excuses though. (Bit like Steve Gerrard? Though I don’t understand what 18dn has to do with that particular disaster.)

  2. …or 1.35 U’s. Well done blogger.

    Hopefully someone will come up with a better explanation for FRENCHIFY, but it won’t be me.

    My biggest dilemma was the spelling of DILEMMA. Cruel to leave that second M unchecked.

    1. Ulaca’s suspicion is right. It’s just a cryptic def. with the corny old pun on “Nice”.
      1. Ah, right. Thanks McT, and apologies to Ulaca for skimming over his explanation.
  3. No, Ulaca, you are not the only one; I did, although I know better, and didn’t notice until I saw the club leaderboard. 14:36, too. 14:38 and I would have had a completed puzzle. I spent some time trying to work ‘deb’ into 9ac before the light finally dawned. I also wondered about the ‘qualified’ in TIRMAIL. Ulaca, you’ve got a typo yourself at 23.
  4. 40 minutes of mostly straightforward solving though for most of that time I was convinced I was looking for an island as the definition at 1ac. Never heard of THEGN.
    1. As in Cawdor and Glamis; I’ve seen the spelling on occasion, although not often.
      1. Seems it’s the other way around. ODO has:

        ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: modern representation of Old English theg(e)n, adopted to distinguish the Old English use of thane from the Scots use made familiar by Shakespeare.

  5. galloped through this, just a one-cup today.
    I would see a rifle more as a source of insecurity, especially if someone else was holding it
    I have occasionally been subjected to jokes about gerrymandering, Ulaca. Not keen on geriatric, either.. 🙂

  6. Cliche ridden yawn-inducing offering with 7D heading the parade of poor fare. 15 minute solve.

    It’s still persistently raining in Dorset – just not quite as hard as it was

  7. 15 minutes, with the only real hold up being FRENCHIFY, which I originally entered as FRENCHMEN, getting very twitchy when the first three crossers worked but the last two didn’t. For reasons of insanity, or possibly just senility, I also initially entered HAIR-BRAINED.
    BRITANNIA is my second favourite steam locomotive (she just looks so right) so there’s not the slightest chance I would misspell it/her.
    Germander is added to my list of flowers I might randomly “recognise” at the roadside to impress my travelling companions, with a fair degree of certainty that it wouldn’t be gainsaid. I checked via google images. Any one of hundreds. I also thought it would pass similar muster as a breed of duck.
  8. 14 mins which would have been quicker had I not also initially spelled 17ac “Brittania”. Had I spelled it correctly I would have got 28ac a lot quicker, which in turn would have led me to LARGO and DILEMMA faster. As it was I needed all of them before I realised that 18dn wasn’t going to be T?R?A?L and I saw my spelling error in 17ac, so AIRMAIL was actually my LOI despite it being a very simple CD. Not my best effort and for some reason I struggle on Monday mornings.
  9. 10m. Very straightforward vanilla puzzle as others have noted. Nothing wrong with that from time to time.
    I don’t pronounce HIRSUTE like ‘her suit’ but many people do, which is good enough for me.
  10. Nice to be back to the traditional Monday morning canter! 20 minutes, mostly write-ins or near write-ins. FOI FED, LOI AIRMAIL, qualified by not understanding “qualified” in the clue. Didn’t know the germander, but the wordplay was so clear it couldn’t have been anything else. Had come across THEGN before – too much obscure reading – so at least that one didn’t hold me up. FRENCHIFY and FASHIONABLE needed a few crossers for the respective pennies to drop.

    Agree with ulaca that FASHIONABLE qualifies for COD – quite a crop recently of the seemingly insignificant word in the clue being the definition. Good trend – keeps us on our toes!

    1. Postscript – I got to APPAREL as an anagram of PAL + REAP (= gather crop), with “sported” as the anagram indicator. Not as elegant as ulaca’s, which is obviously the correct parsing.
  11. 20m, fastest for me in a while. A lot were easy from definition so FASHIONABLE stood out for the definition being well hidden.

    I like GERRYMANDER purely for being a great word. Always puts me in mind of carpetbagging and filibustering as well.

  12. 18 minutes. One of my quicker solves, with many answers going in from the definition alone. I agree that it was rather dull; I thought 7dn was particularly weak. Didn’t know the painter (14d) but the answer was obvious.
  13. Quite a lacklustre job this, but very professionally written. Having said that, the day I need entertaining more than any other is Monday!

    Re one T and two NNs there are rather a lot of words like that, I find, put there just to annoy me.

    Thanks to all,
    Chris.

  14. 18 min for me which, easy or not, I was pleased with.

    THEGN was a new one on me – I knew “thane”, but agonized over this alternate form.

  15. 14:39 .. I rather enjoyed this and didn’t have a problem with FRENCHIFY (which took me a few checkers to see) or with AIRMAIL. Okay, the ‘qualified’ isn’t strictly necessary, but then Lincoln could have started the Gettysburg Address with “Eighty-seven years back …”, which would have been a bit rubbish.

    COD .. the dissolute priest.

  16. I prefer keriothe’s “straightforward vanilla puzzle” to some of the testier comments. It’s on days like this that I think Thumper’s law should apply. 12 minutes.
    1. Would you care to remind us, Malc, as I think I may agree with it? I’m not happy with slagging off setters for producing perfectly acceptable but perhaps workaday puzzles. It’s unreasonable to expect the exceptional every day.
      1. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Not something I would care to say to my grandchildren without correcting the grammar.
        1. Thanks, malc. As it happens I don’t agree with it in all circumstances and I’ll have my say on occasions when I think something is wrong, but generally speaking in a civilised environment such as this I think it’s probably good policy to save one’s ire for occasions when there really is something to complain about.
  17. 20 minutes, guessing THEGN from wordlplay.
    I thought 7 dn was FRENCH = from Nice and IFY = perhaps? IFFY with alternative spelling?
  18. One missing today (Frenchify). Thegn from wordplay and Clear entered with some uncertainty.
  19. 8 minutes. Monday gallop is a good way of describing such puzzles. Not that it’s the sort of thing which requires everyone to take sides, of course, but I’m quite happy with such a puzzle occasionally.
  20. Just less than 15 minutes, ending with THEGN from wordplay. I’d never seen this alternative form, at least as far as I remember. I liked the dissolute priest too, and FED was clever. No complaints here. Regards.
  21. Nice friendly puzzle which hopefully some of the quick cryptic solvers had a crack at. In 20ac is sported an anagrind because it can mean frolicked?
    1. I found this in Collins online: (biology) ‘to produce or undergo a mutation’. Good spot, Allan! It isn’t in the usual Internet anagrind lists, and is in Bradford’s as ‘may indicate an anagram’, which isn’t that helpful.
      1. Thanks Ulaca. That definition is more anagrammatic than the one I presumed.
  22. 7:59 for me – after another ridiculously slow start in which (for example) I read the enumeration of 7ac (FOG) as (5) and wasted time wondering if TREAT would do for 10ac. At least I’d got going properly by the time I reached 7dn, so FRENCHIFY went in straight away without the need for any checked letters.

    A pleasant straightforward start to the week.

  23. For some reason, I could not see ‘twitchy’ Otherwise would have been 21m 35s.

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