Times 25776 – Blogged Out

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This was a classic puzzle of two halves for me. The bottom half and the two long Down answers went in smoothly and tidily but then I ground to a halt and had real problems making progress in the top half. In the end I took well over an hour to polish it off. I’m always pleased to see shorter clues but the absence of 3- and even 4-letter words today weighed badly in the balance.

I noted that at 2 AM there was only one entry on the Club leader board, Neil R at 22 minutes (a long time for him) and with 2 errors. Revisiting at 3:30 there are only two entries, the latest timed at 59 minutes with 1 error. I’m now getting nervous that I may have something wrong!

Across

1 STEEPLECHASE – STEEP (difficult) + anagram of CHELSEA
8 AGA SAGA – There’s not much to go on here other than a straight definition and an indication we’re looking for a palindrome. I didn’t know that a country setting necessarily applied to this but Wikipedia says so. The usual sources only have ‘semi-rural’, whatever that means.
9 ERASMUS – ERAS (times), SUM (chief) reversed. I’m not entirely convinced the second part works.
11 EMOTION – E (online – as in email), MOTION (movement)
12 TIEPOLO – TIE (obligation), LOP (cut) reversed, O (over). My last one in and I needed PB’s dunce’s cap and the self-kicking boot when the penny eventually dropped because this artist has caught me out so many times over the years, yet I still can never remember his name.
13 ENSUE – U (university) in a jumble of random points of the compass (directions). My most hated type of clue.
14 EXTROVERT – EXTRa (wide – cricket), OVERT (open)
16 LITERATIM – Anagram of REMITTAL I. Not a word I’m over familiar with but easily gettable from the anagram fodder.
19 TURIN – “One after the other” is I in TURN – geddit?
21 ANTONIO – ON (leg – cricket again) inside ANTI (opposed to), O (over – again). He’s the Merchant of Venice.
23 PEANUTS – NUT (fruit) inside PEAS (vegetables)
24 TINFOIL – IN (trendy) + F (following) inside TOIL (work)
25 ECHIDNA – Anagram of CHAINED
26 CARNEGIE HALL – Anagram of A CHALLENGER I (one). The premier concert venue in New York.

Down
1 SHADOWS – Double definition. “60s band” seems rather a narrow definition for The Shadows who were active continuously for some 30 years from the late 50s onwards and I believe they have reformed more recently.
2 EXAMINE – EXA (mega-mega-mega), MINE (explosive). No doubt the scientists among us will pick over the finer details but I think the idea is that ‘mega’ represents a million or 10 to the power 6, so three of those is 10 to the power 18 which is represented by ‘exa’. Whether this holds up in practice I have no idea and care even less.
3 PLAIN TEXT – I (current) inside PLAN (proposal), TEXT (theme). It means not encrypted, apparently.
4 EJECT finE + C (about) inside JET (black)
5 HEAVE-HO – Double definition. “Call to work” as in “heave-ho, me hearties” in old-fashioned nautical speak, and “notice” as in being given the old heave-ho when one is given notice to quit or sacked.
6 SOMEONE – SO (extremely), MousE, ONE (only). The definition is ‘big cheese’ as in an important person or someone of note.
7 BAKEWELL TART – BAKE (cook), WELL (clearly) TART. I was going to argue that a tart is not a flan but the dictionaries disagree with me.
10 SHOOTING STAR – SHOO (get out), TING (ring) STAR (brilliant). The song “When you wish upon a star” from Pinocchio illustrates the idea behind the definition here.
15 TIMEPIECE – ME (setter) + PIE (prize) + C (caught) inside TIE (ribbon)
17 TITANIA – TITAN (moon – of Saturn) + I, A gives us another moon (of Uranus)
18 RANGOON – NARk (spy) reversed, GO ON (continue), the capital of Burma as was.
19 TRACHEA – Hidden
20 ROUNDEL – ROUND (encircling) + carnegiE halL (last letters at 26ac)
22 OFLAG – O (old), F (fine), LAG (convict). The Nazi prison camp for enemy officers. It sounds as if it ought to be responsible for regulating prisons in present-day UK!

44 comments on “Times 25776 – Blogged Out”

  1. Woke with a clear head — must have been the very cold morning — and didn’t find too much difficulty here. Had to guess at EXAMINE though; so thanks for Jack’s parsing which sounds very plausible to me now.

    Liked the “in TURN” device at 19ac; not easy to spot at first bush. Especially when you’ve missed the hidden at 19dn and punted at URETHRA!

  2. Went off-line at 30′ and was going to try to finish over dinner, but then I actually saw this blog and AGA SAGA before scrolling down, and decided to finish. Maybe another 5′, but I doubt I would have got AGA SAGA on my own, although this makes the 3d time I can remember when it’s appeared here. Still can’t remember what it means. It’s just as well, then, that I missed 4d; put in ‘evert’ (turn out), didn’t understand how black fitted in, and forgot to go back and think about it. I also started with ‘Trier’ at 19ac (try, try again?). DNK 7d.
    1. An AGA SAGA is a book supposedly enjoyed by the type of people who have AGA Cookers. looks like marketing hype to me.
      1. I always vaguely thought it was more to do with being middle-class than rural, but it’s not my bag either way.
  3. Not my finest hour (actually, more like two). Finally crawled home, but with ‘heave-to’ for HEAVE-HO. Didn’t know AGA-SAGA – though I did spot the palindronme ‘early’ – which meant I was running through the alphabet trying to find a plausible country. We had an aga at our old place in semi-rural Herefordshire in the 1960s, when I used to listen to ‘Foot Tapper’ by The Shadows repeatedly on the gramophone and obviously didn’t pay attention during ‘Colditz’ on telly, as I only knew stalag.

    Thanks to the setter for the torture and to JAck for explaining TURIN. Don’t get chief/sum either.

  4. Too many unknowns for me today – AGA SAGA, LITERATIM, ANTONIO, CARNEGIE HALL, EXA, TITANIA, SUM=chief, PIE=prize.

    It may just be that I have been tired this week (I have), but the crosswords seem to be taking a turn for the obscure. Is this a deliberate policy to separate the main crossword in difficulty from the Quick Cryptic?

    1. I meant to say in the blog that I couldn’t find pie/prize in the usual sources but I found it later in the SOED. The expression ‘takes the pie’ meaning ‘wins the prize’ seemed familiar enough though, so I didn’t lose time over this one.

      I’ve certainly had a bad week solving the main cryptic but I hope this is purely random and there has been no decision to deliberately beef up the level of difficulty. I don’t want to struggle to finish every day.

      Edited at 2014-05-02 06:39 am (UTC)

      1. When do you sleep jack? (I assume you are in London!)

        If it’s based on “take the pie”, PIE/prize seems to be another case where the substitution test may be misleading – I suppose you could justify BISCUIT and CAKE on the same basis

        Edited at 2014-05-02 06:48 am (UTC)

        1. Freed some years ago from the routine of working for a living I now sleep when I’m tired which very rarely seems to coincide with the more usual sleep patterns.
  5. dereklam’s comment reminded me that I’d put this one in on checkers and def; but I, too, wouldn’t have associated pie-prize. And Jack, you left out the C (cut?).
    1. Thanks, Kevin. I have restored it now. Yet another cricket reference!
  6. 27:04 .. a great workout. Tough, but I never felt entirely stuck.

    There are some beautifully pithy surfaces in here, not least 1a (the editor must have been delighted when Chelsea went out of Europe this week — either that or he’s psychic).

    And nice to see ‘en clair’ turning up in a clue. Tony Sever clued it as an answer for our Christmas Turkey. It’s a phrase that just belongs in a crossword.

  7. Where exactly was your 1960s semi-rural Hertfordshire? At that time I was right on its borders in semi-rural Middlesex but only knew of one household with an Aga.
  8. A Marmite puzzle – you’ll either love it or hate it

    I’m with Jack on many of his comments, particularly the SHADOWS who were not simply a “1960s band”. I’m not convinced that 2D works: mega-mega-mega did not suggest EXA to me and I only saw what the setter was up to after solving. At 14A we have a DBE of “extra” clued by “wide” (other extras include byes, no-balls etc) with no indication.

    30 minutes during which I was pleased I didn’t have to write the blog

    1. I agree, Jim, quite a loose puzzle, with a few which didn’t work for me, caused a grimace not a smile. And the Shadows were a Group not a band, in the speak of that time. 45 minutes.
  9. Tough stuff interrupted by a phone call. so no time (that I’m prepared to admit to).
    I would not have been able to state “pie=prize” in a court of law, but my Chambers gives it en clair. I missed the cleverness of TURIN, gave an ignorant (and staying that way – there’s nothing I need to count which requires 18 zeroes) shrug at EXA-, and derived LITERATIM solely from cod-latin and anagram fodder. PEANUTS I left unparsed, not getting away from nuts plural for fruit and assuming something was going on with a pea as a round vegetable, which it incontrovertibly is.
    On the other hand, I did stay long enough with ERASMUS to deduce that “chief points” could be SUM the wrong way, so I’m with kororareka on that.
    A huge round of applause to the heroic Jack for unravelling all that lot. While the leaderboard is better populated now, even Magoo took more that 6 minutes. My, that’s tough!
  10. 32 mins of struggle for me, but all correct in the end. Like Jack I finished the bottom half in a reasonable time but the top half seemed to take ages. It was only after I finally got STEEPLECHASE that I saw SHADOWS, EXAMINE (unparsed), PLAIN TEXT, HEAVE-HO and SOMEONE. After that my last two in were EMOTION and AGA SAGA. It has certainly been a week of extremes as far as difficulty levels are concerned.
  11. Another who wasn’t on the wavelength: all done in 25 minutes, but the wrong sort of struggle, if you see what I mean. Not a criticism, just an observation that it’s always interesting how one crossword can produce quite different reactions in different solvers.
  12. Well-written puzzle, but made hard by obscurity rather than some kind of genuine difficulty. I don’t like that, even though I’m sure it’s accidental. Tough stuff, and an absolutely awful solving time from me!

    Cheers
    Chris.

  13. I knew AGA SAGA and always associate it with the country as the only one that I have ever seen was in my uncle’s farmhouse kitchen. ETA means nothing to me mathematically, and I simply do not see “chief points = SUM”.

    More generally and as you would expect, things feel different under a different editor.

    1. One way to see ‘chief points’ as SUM is to look at the definition of SUM in Chambers!
      Personally I don’t think that necessarily validates it though. In Mephisto everything is fair game but when the setters rely on these nooks and crannies of Chambers in the daily puzzle it feels to me a bit like someone picking up the ball in the middle of a game of football.
  14. 29m in two sessions. Another toughie, but this one I didn’t like at all:
    > I wouldn’t hold it against you if you didn’t know what an AGA SAGA is, and there’s no way into the clue if you don’t
    > ‘Chief parts’ for SUM?
    > ENSUE: one of those ‘some letters’ clues
    > ‘Mega mega mega’. Really?
    > ‘Theme’ for TEXT?
    > A BAKEWELL TART is not a flan.
    > ‘Prize’ for PIE?
    It happens that all the obscure meanings are in Chambers, so I wonder if this is a Mephisto setter. Perhaps one who likes cricket…
  15. 12 for everything but the AGA SAGA and then another 5 mins spent working through the alphabet and muttering to get that one.

    I think it was Joanna Trollope who started the whole Aga Saga genre as her early novels always featured a heroine with an Aga in her kitchen.

  16. The word Saga has appeared two days running now. Is someone trying to promote the recently announced flotation of the over 50s company?
  17. Has anyone any gen on the Nina? (62 appears in roman numerals in unchecked letters both down the central column and across the central row.)
    1. Probably the setter’s 62nd crossword – whether just for the Times or in wider crosswordland remains to be seen!
    2. Thank you so much for pointing this out.
      I did not know what a Nina was but Googling brought me to the beautiful one in The Times in July 1967 on the occasion of Alfred Bately’s retirement from teaching Mathematics at Westcliffe College.
  18. I found this a brutal 80m workout. Too much GK I either didn’t know or didn’t know well enough to recall when required. In particular ERASMUS, TIEPOLO, TITANIA, OFLAG and ANTONIO (I presume he is the merchant of Venice and I am a philistine).
  19. Definitely too much GK in this, and my sympathies to those who didn’t know it- for once I actually vaguely knew most of it (oddly except roundel which everyone else seems to have known). I enjoyed the rather devilish clueing, and it’s a pity the GK spoilt it for quite a few. Nice Nina, never spot these.

    Edited at 2014-05-02 03:27 pm (UTC)

  20. Over the 60m and used aids to get AGA SAGA. Share all of Keriothe’s queries and struggled to see Roundel as refrain. Thanks for blog – needed it for a few today!
    1. Cannot argue about ROUNDEL although to my mind, these are the round things on Spitfires etc.
  21. I’m usually not critical, because it’s not in my nature and besides, I’m not even from your country, but this one took me over an hour, and I’m utterly surprised to be all correct because many were so unconvincing. “Mega-mega-mega”? “ting”=ring? “pie”=prize? As the younger set over here says: “seriously?” To make matters worse I had to resort to aids to fill in the BAKEWELL TART. Last in were the EXTROVERT/PLAIN TEXT pair, defined as ‘mixer’ and ‘en clair’. Huh? So, sorry setter, no endorsement today except for Jack who had to persevere and did an excellent job parsing all this. The whole point of doing this is that it’s fun…this was not.
  22. My second DNF of the week! The killer for me was AGA SAGA, which I did know about, so kicking myself hard for not twigging. But then, how long can one spend on a crossword? I spent about 90 minutes, off and on, before calling time. A lot of this was OK, indeed quite enjoyable, in a knotty sort of way.

    The science stream should be happy today, with exa = mega-mega-mega and the (largest) moons of Saturn and Uranus respectively. And hats off to the setter for combining two Times old faithfuls, the Shakespeare and the cricketing clues, in ANTONIO.

    FOI ERASMUS – what would he make, I wonder, of the bunch of spittle-flecked loonies who (loudly) describe themselves as “humanists” nowadays? LOI, HEAVE HO, where the sacking meaning, again known to me, eluded me, so couldn’t nail the parsing.

    COD has to be SOMEONE, which held me up for ages! Nice one. Hats off to the setter, who did the “complex clues to straightforward words” thing to perfection today!

  23. At 30 minutes I was left with A-A-A-A and what I thought was S-M-U-E at 6dn, the latter thanks to a combination of dodgy handwriting and an even dodgier biro. Probably just as well I had my second life’s too short moment in two days. Quite liked mega-mega-mega and twigged it early on by analogy with hemi-demi-semi. I’m a Marmite fan so liked this one.
  24. Oh dear! That was going quite well, with all but three clues solved in (I suppose) about 12 minutes. I took another 3 or 4 minutes to get SHOOTING STAR, but then lost it completely, took well over 10 minutes to get PEANUTS, and finally bunged in ROUNDAL in desperation, making my second mistake of the year.

    I keep worrying that these occasional brainstorms are a sign of incipient dementia. What seems to happen is that panic overtakes me when I get stuck, and my brain somehow seizes up. All very depressing.

    Having said all that, and looked back over it at my leisure, I rate this an extremely fine puzzle. My compliments to the setter.

    Edited at 2014-05-02 10:33 pm (UTC)

    1. My diagnosis, sir, is that you suffer from what the rest of us do – if less often – that once you’ve been worn down by the recalcitrant clue or two, you are ripe for a little bamboozlement. I think “heavy care” in the home is yet a way off!

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