Times 25778 – Slap and Tickle

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Not too much to tax the seasoned solver here, but a smattering of Classics and a knotty plant to trip perchance the unwary, and an unusual grid to please the gridologists. A little cricket and a whiff of kinkiness of the Stephen Fry persuasion. 26 minutes.

Across

1 EVEN SO – ‘nevertheless’; EVEN (level) + SO (therefore).
4 FRACTION – ‘a little bit’; R in FACTION.
10 HERB PARIS – ‘a woodland plant’ (also known as True Lover’s Knot); HER + B + IS around PAR (‘norm’). Sounds better to me the other way round…
11 UNTIE – ‘free’; [A]UNTIE. The BBC is affectionately known as either Auntie or the Beeb.
12 STRIP SEARCH – ‘examination’; TRIPS + EAR in SCH[ool].
14 NIL – ‘a duck’ (no runs in cricket); LIN[e] reversed.
15 APPAREL – ‘what’s worn’; RE (Royal Engineers, nickname sappers) in APPAL.
17 EROTIC – ‘sexy’; thing (IT) is breaking heart (CORE), but backwards. My last in.
19 UNFAIR – ‘not just’; [f[UNFAIR. You see amusement park and not just in the same clue and you bung in UNFAIR.
21 AGAINST – ‘opposed to’; GAINS in A + T[ax].
23 A+CT – ‘ordinance’; I think this one escaped from the Quickie. [Eagle-eyed cozzielex has noticed that there is a misprint in the Crossword Club online version, at any rate, which has ‘ordnance’.]
24 DEUTERONOMY – ‘book’ (literally ‘second law’, the fifth book of the Bible and concluding part of the Pentateuch); TUDOR YEOMEN* (anagram).
26 AIOLI – ‘dressing’; hidden in alternate letters of cAlIcO pLaIn.
27 IN THE MOOD – ‘a big band tune’; THE IN DOMINO*. A tune synonymous with Glenn Miller and his band.
29 SERGEANT – ‘officer’; GEAR* in SENT.
30 HAVE ON – double definition. I don’t get to work with many ’30s’.

Down

1 EPHESIAN – ‘Ancient Greek’; SHEEP IN A*. Ephesus was a city in Ionia (modern Turkey) best known for receiving a letter from a man steeped in Deuteronomy and the rest of the Tanakh.
2 ERROR – ‘mistake’; [t]ERROR.
3 SOP – ‘concession’; SO (think do-re-mi) + P.
5 RESERVE – ‘keep back’; [p]RESERVE.
6 COUCH POTATO – ‘lounger’; COUCH (frame as in the advice was framed/couched in these terms…) + POT + AT + O[dyssey].
7 INTENTION – ‘purpose’; IN TENT (under canvas) + I + ON.
8 NEEDLE – pointer’; [k]NEE + LED*.
9 IRWELL – ‘river’; IR + WELL. I confused this with the Orwell (which flows through Ipswich and is so beauteous that Eric Blair chose his pen-name after the river). The Irwell is a river you cross at 80mph on the M6, flowing from the marvellously named Bacup into the Mersey near Irlam.
13 PARK AND RIDE – ‘transportation scheme’; PRIDE (satisfaction as in ‘He took great pride in his blogs’) around ARK + AND.
16 PINOT NOIR – ‘wine’; INN IT POOR*.
18 STAYED ON – ‘remained’; STAYED (sounds like staid = sober) + ON (performing). Nice lift-and-separate (sober from remained) clue.
20 REUNION – double definition (Réunion is technically an overseas department (English spelling) of France – near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean).
21 ALECTO – ‘fury’; ALEC + TO[y]. Alecto and her sisters Tisiphone and Megaera were not the sort of people you wanted a visit from, as Orestes found out.
22 CALAIS – ‘French port’; C[aught] + (I in ALAS) for the Royal heart-breaker turned ferry terminal.
25 O+ZONE – ‘gas’.
26 E+RA – ‘age’.

29 comments on “Times 25778 – Slap and Tickle”

  1. A strange mix of very easy clues and some nice disguises. 1dn for example: it looks for all the world like a container/contained clue, thereby hiding the anagram. And I wasn’t expecting that having lightly written in an initial J, assuming 1ac to be JUST SO before I realised I hadn’t read the clue properly.

    LOI: CALAIS. A very good clue.

  2. 34 minutes here. DK Alecto (though must have seen it before), HERB PARIS (probably ditto), the French REUNION and IRWELL was only vaguely familiar. We don’t often see SO without an H or an L as the fifth note of the musical scale.
  3. Am I missing something re 23a which refers to ‘ORDNANCE’ (Artillery etc) as opposed to ‘ORDINANCE’, which, as you note Ulaca, refers to Acts etc.
    (As you are probably aware Ulaca, HK, because of it’s colonial past, does not have ‘ACTS’ in it’s legal system and refers to Ordinances instead)
    1. I completely missed that, reading it as what it had to be rather than what it was.

      Re Acts/Ordinances, does this reflect practice in England in the mid-19th century? I hadn’t given that any thought either!

      1. I don’t think you were in error, it seems to be the Setter’s mistake and it threw me at first.

        Only Parliament, with the assent of the Queen can make an Act (i.e. Act of Parliament). Colonial legislative bodies can make laws, but only as Ordinances. In practice it makes not a jot of difference.


  4. Was misled into thinking this was going to be a very easy puzzle (by clues such as ERA and ERROR), but came unstuck a couple of times: HERB PARKS (bk for book? does this ever happen?), and I mistyped pinto noir, giving amo (alternative for ammo???) without worrying too much about the court bit.

    More haste, less speed…

  5. 14′ 50″ on the timer, I have twitchy fingers at the moment and managed to hit the reset button after about a dozen clues, so with my typing speed, (I’ll never be a neutrino) that probably added about half an hour to my solving time.
    Not difficult, though it felt like it occasionally. I just couldn’t get STRIP SEARCH until last, and I didn’t parse EROTIC (thanks Ulaca). I’m sure noone would expect me to know HERB PARIS (and his Tivoli Brass?) and I am grateful to Ulaca (again) for placing the IRWELL on a map.
    3 Bible books today, if two of them in the singular, must be some kind of record. Cozzilex is surely right about ord(i)nance – well spotted, but it got past me in the sense that I saw it as spelt and decided that was the right version after all.
    CoD to PINOT NOIR for slander. Poor wine, indeed.
  6. 11:24 .. another nice Monday puzzle. I’d like to pretend that I spotted the ‘ordnance’ misprint, tutted and solved it anyway. The truth is less impressive.

    Last in COUCH POTATO.

    COD .. STRIP SEARCH — beautifully put together

  7. Easy one today, though not helped by the typo in 23ac, and my heart also sinks when I see the words “just the opposite” or “just the reverse” in a clue.

    Still there are some lovely clues, such as 4ac, 22dn, tres elegant

  8. For the most part, this looked like a fugitive from QC-land but one or two were fun. LOI ACT as I was thrown by the spelling mistake, which is also in the app version of the crossword.
  9. 8 mins so very much on the setter’s wavelength, although it was quite an enjoyable solve while it lasted. FRACTION was my LOI after COUCH POTATO. Count me as another who didn’t spot the “ordnance” error in the paper.
  10. “Ordnance” is in the paper as well as on-line, so it’s most probably a mistake originating way back.
    I’ve got to mention 24a which was a lovely anagram – the setter must have been delighted when that one fell out.
  11. 8:13. Very gentle stuff, but enjoyable. A couple of unknowns, but very clearly clued. I put in HERB PARIS on the first look, even though I don’t remember coming across it before. The spelling mistake passed me by completely.
  12. This Monday morning offering flowed nicely, bottom to top, before getting me stuck in the NE corner. All in all, about 25 minutes. FOI DEUTERONOMY (Ye Olde Tudor Yeomen a wee bit too obvious as anagram fodder to be wholly satisfactory, especially as the clue was presented in “quick crossword” fashion), followed by the next four across clues as write-ins, LOI NEEDLE (this had me fixated on “ankle” until the penny dropped).

    Agree that the anagram of EPHESIAN was nicely hidden. Didn’t know the HERB PARIS, but it fell out of the wordplay (and checkers). There were some very nice clues, but the majority made no attempt at clever surfaces, making the whole a rather unsatisfactory exercise.

    Stuck on ACT, as the print version has “ordnance”, so held up wondering whether ACT was something to do with ack-ack, until I plumped for the misprint reasoning – not good to have a misprint so soon after the fiasco of a few weeks ago.

  13. As I get a little better, I’m beginning to get at least the easy ones I don’ t know – today I dutifully followed the rules for the unknown Herb Paris and the vaguely remembered Alecto. Then, like Jannie, I dutifully followed them to get AMO – which I assumed to be a variant. I was thrown off by the ‘in’ in 6d.
  14. 13 minutes, with the same experience as others, i.e. a lot of entry-level clues, but also definite scope to go wrong, whether because of the temptation to ignore the wordplay and go with ORWELL for IRWELL (luckily I knew both), botanic ignorance (and to my eye, HERB PARIS still looks an unlikely name when written down), or misprint (having laboured in vain through all the munitions I could think of, I suddenly twigged what the problem must be).
  15. After some beasts last week this was a pleasant start to the week, I was probably under 30 mins. Spotted the ordnance/ordinance error. 1d threw me a bit as I always thought Ephesus was in Asia Minor and not Greece but I am not an expert in Roman provinces.

    13d is very topical here as Nairobi now has a Park and Ride, a train not a bus.

    Regards to all

    Nairobi Wallah

  16. 6:51 – might have been quicker if I was on my own in the office but Mr CS kept wondering out loud how I manage to solve crosswords fast! Certainly contained a lot of stuff well-known to seasoned solvers.

    Once had an interesting ‘discussion’ with Son No2’s geography teacher who had marked him down for not spelling Ordnance Survey Map ‘Ordinance Survey Map’!

  17. 29 minutes pleasure, did frown at ‘ordnance’ but it had to be a typo, slow to finish the NW corner, took ages to realise 1 dn was an anagram, my LOI along with the HERB PARIS from wordplay. Could RESERVE be the most commonly occurring 7 letter crossword-answer?
  18. Hmm. Looking at the times of others my 16:44 looks a bit on the slow side.

    I don’t know what the correct acronym for my excuse is but it involves a late night with 40+ “youths” in the conservatory and garden, getting them all on the last bus into Leeds to go clubbing, daughter number 1 eventually coming home at 4:30 this morning and now the anticipation of when she’ll be well enough to get out of bed to open her 18th birthday presents.

  19. 61 mins, so good for me. I got stuck on PINOT NOIR being totally misdirected by the clue as to what the anagrinds were. Looking back now it seems obvious but well done the setter:)
  20. 9 minutes, but a bit of that on wondering if there were better options than HERB PARIS and IRWELL – never happy when the two I need to get from wordplay cross each other.
    1. George,

      I’d have though a man with your comedic background would be familiar with Marriott Edgar’s Three Ha’Pence a Foot. That would have given you Irwell.

  21. About 20 minutes but it felt easier than that. Only hold ups were the spelling misprint, and deciding between HERB PARKS and HERB PARIS. The latter looked more likely to exist as a plant, but the wordplay, to me, could take you either way. I finally just looked it up in Onelook, so perhaps a technical DNF, but I wanted to know the actual answer instead of guessing. Regards.
  22. 9:34 here for a pleasant start to the week.

    I wasted a couple of minutes on 1dn. With the initial E in place, I assumed the compound was going to be ESTER (as it so often is) and tried fitting all those 3-letter sheep into it; and then when I had the H and A in place as well, making that particular combination less likely, I still persisted in looking for other 5-letter compounds. Finally light dawned making the answer my LOI. (Doh!)

  23. A pretty good time for me. I realised straight away that ‘ordnance’ was a misprint or other error, as the solution was so obviously ‘act’. Consequently, I just tutted to myself and continued on.

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