Times 25780: A slight religious flavour

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 37:04

Took my time over this and had my mind on more serious problems than the puzzle itself. Fair bit of dictionary work required post-solve. And, to boot, there’s one answer I don’t quite understand. Help appreciated as ever.

Across

1. GODOWN. A warehouse and also the two words GO, DOWN.

4. GRUBBER. G, RUBBER (series of matches in e.g., bridge, tennis, etc.). A ball bowled along the ground, usually by accident. (No comments on underarm bowling accepted.)

9. GOFER. A GOER might be a promising project. Insert F for “female”.

10. CALVINISM. Insert V (very), IN (well favoured) and IS inside CALM.

11. BACCHANTE. Insert CHANT in B (bishop), A and CE (church).

12. OP ART. Read as “zero part”.

13. THOR. This is the one I can’t quite justify. I suspect it’s THOREAU minus AU (gold). How we get to delete the E as well, I’m not sure. Scrap that, it’s the much simpler: {au}THOR. Thanks to Jack (first comment) for correcting my usual over-egging.

14. BEFRIENDED. BE FRIED including END.

18. SALIVATION. Insert I in SALVATION.

20. SPAM. Two indications here. (1) S{erved} + PAM; (2) SAM including P (quietly).

23. CAMEL. “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” — Matthew 19.

24. COTANGENT. A N (new) GENT, after COT.

25. DRACONIAN. Anagram of “rain and” containing CO.

26. GUESS. Hidden answer.

27. RED ARMY. Reverse REAR, insert D (democrat), add MY (gosh).

28. CROSSE. Sounds like “cross” and is a weapon used in lacrosse, whence the name. Apparently taken from a bishop’s crook. How I wonder?

Down

1. GIGABYTES. GIG (concert), anagram of “by seat”.

2. DE FACTO. DEF = excellent, I’m told. ACT (deed), 0 (nothing).

3. WORTHY. WOR{d}, THY.

4. GALLE{y}. On the SW coast of Sri Lanka. A new one on me.

5. UNIRONED. Anagram of “reunion” and D{ance}.

6. BRIGAND. BRAND including a reversal of GI.

7. REMIT. A reversal of TIMER.

8. SCAN,DENT. Which describes the bottom part of 24dn. Equally new to me but, again, the cryptic gives it away.

15. ROO,STING.

16. DEMITASSE. Which we have seen recently. Anagram: a side stem.

17. EVILDOER. Since “rode” might be clued as “evil doer”; with “evil” as the anagram indicator. This is a MBACF type: “might be a clue for”.

19. LOMBARD. L (Liberal), OM (Order of Merit), BARD (poet)

21. PEERESS. PRESS containing E{xhausted} E{ditor}. Is it true that the toilets in the House of Lords have the signage: PEERS and LADY PEERS?

22. ONAGER. Reversal of REGAN and O.

23. CIDER. {de}CIDER.

24. CHIVY. CH (Companion of Honour), IVY which, as we have learned, is scandent.

55 comments on “Times 25780: A slight religious flavour”

  1. 13 across is (au)THOR.

    Add about an hour to your solving time, mct, to get mine. And I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely unaided.

    There are far too many wordy clues for my taste and a higher than usual proportion of unknowns such as GODOWN, GRUBBER, BACCHANTE, SCANDENT, CHIVY with only one V, GALLE and CROSSE. I felt somewhat ashamed about the depth of my ignorance but I have just taken heart that each of these words apart from GRUBBER was underlined with a red wavy line as I typed it, indicating that the spell checker doesn’t recognise them either. RED ARMY came up very recently didn’t it?

    Edited at 2014-05-07 01:39 am (UTC)

    1. Of course it is. This arvo, I’m going for a brain scan. On this showing, I’ll be surprised if they find any brains at all!
  2. 1’43” so par for the course for at least 3 bloggers! Actually, this puzzle should have been right up my alley with the religion, mythology and cricket (Galle is an international venue in Sri Lanka that took a hammering from the tsunami – to be added to grubber), and SCANDENT the only unknown. Unfortunately, I took every garden path available, lokoing for a word staring SCEN- at 8, toying with OVEREDOR (a villainous matador) at 17 and trying to make something from ‘clincher’ at 23. The last four alone (8, 15, 28 and LOI 14) took nearly half of my time!

    That said, I really enjoyed the puzzle with my COD going to DRACONIAN.

    Edited at 2014-05-07 02:21 am (UTC)

    1. Your stellar time made me think I’d been getting hours, minutes and seconds notation mixed up all these years, so I entered in the mm:ss format just to be sure. Weird how what you think you know can become completely unglued.

  3. Wow… am happy with my time of just over an hour for all but three, then I went to bed, and got up to get the last three: SCANDENT, BEFRIENDED and CROSSE in that order.

    Lots of unknown vocab, but I felt the cryptics were for the most part fair, if tough.

    PS Ref Regan (22dn). Anyone else seen the superb production of King Lear at the National at the mo? Fantastic performances by Simon Russell Beale et al.

        1. Sorry, naughty of me to tease;)
          It was Ian Holm, also at the National, about 15-odd years ago.
  4. 29:38 .. with no time to check the answers before clicking submit. Miraculously, no typos.

    GALLE was familiar from TMS commentaries and from news reports of the ’04 Tsunami.

    I enjoyed this one the way I enjoy a hill walk on a cold day: nice when it’s over and I’m damned glad I did it. Very satisfying.

    And BEFRIENDED and CAMEL both made me chuckle.

    Nice, testing puzzle. Thanks, setter.

  5. I found this a pretty straightforward solve from top left to bottom right in about 25min the only exception being that I also failed to parse THOR (thanks jack!).

    My only possible quibble was the spelling of CHIVY which I thought should be CHIVVY; the OED agrees with me but I expect that there is another dictionary which justifies it.

    1. Chambers has it, along with chevy as an alternative. I’m just glad it was clued without reference to herbs.
  6. 23:08 which looks OK for today. Knew GODOWN but placed it geographically other than India, sort of South Africa -ish. Chambers says Malay.
    GRUBBER – thanks Jack (as for much else) for forestalling the argument over whether its legal or not. It is in GALLE.
    SCANDENT and CROSSE new to me but friendly enough wordplay.
    Was that SPAM SPAM SPAM I saw? I don’t like SPAM!
    CAMEL I got from the checkers well before the penny dropped. I’d like to point out there’s no I in needle.
    I got THOR from Thoreau too with more than a hint of smugness: what you don’t actually write in you don’t actually misspell.
    I liked best the inside out clue to EVILDOER, but there were many fine clues that you simply had to parse just for the satisfaction.
  7. 24 minutes, several of them spent on the 14ac/15dn crossing looking for an 8-letter animal from down under (d’oh). I like z8’s term ‘inside out clue’ for 17dn – a construction that always amuses me. I found another totally incorrect though quick way to get 13ac: gold=OR, god must be THOR, oops gold must be AU.
  8. 15 mins so I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength. I was helped at the start in the NW by seeing GOFER immediately, the helpful G and F checkers led me to 1dn and 2dn soon after, and the rest of the answers flowed out from there.

    I either didn’t know or had forgotten SCANDENT but the wordplay was clear enough, and CROSSE, my LOI, went in with fingers crossed from its possible lacrosse connection. I’ve come across GODOWN a few times before in other puzzles and I would be very surprised if none of them were Times puzzles.

    My only minor quibble is that the clue for UNIRONED seems to be suggesting that the D should be inserted somewhere inside the anagram fodder and not at the end of it. Nobody else has mentioned it so maybe I’m missing something.

    1. That dangling D was my one quibble, too, Andy, but by the end of the puzzle I’d forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder.
      1. Yes, surely it should read ‘Wrinkly beginning to dance after free-and-easy reunion’
  9. Almost 40 minutes, much messing with the SE corner, as I first wrote in ANNOYS (a noise = makes me angry) then AROUSE (A ROWS) (which doesn’t parse), then -R-S-E when I solved 21dn. Also chary about CHIVY option with one V, but am reassured by those of you with better dictionaries. And a ‘doh’ moment when realised it was AU-THOR not THOR-E-AU to parse 13. Good fun though and learnt 2 new words, SCANDENT and CROSSE as well as why the game is so called. CoD SALIVATION.
  10. Eerily I had the same experience as other people, including trying to work ‘Thoreau’ into the parsing of 13a until the proverbial penny dropped. ‘Crosse’ was also unknown to me, but I presumed that it must have a connection with lacrosse.
    Put me down as another who would always spell ‘chivvy’ with the double ‘y’. Nevertheless, all in all, a very satisfying puzzle.
  11. About 45 minutes, but with some dictionary/atlas cheating to confirm GRUBBER, GALLE, SCANDENT and CROSSE. Also didn’t parse DE FACTO (def?). So a technical DNF for me.

    Most of the time on this one seemed taken up by the NE corner, with CALVINISM providing the key. FOI THOR (nicely confusing AU and OR), LOI BEFRIENDED. Also my COD, for being nicely hidden.

    After the recent exabytes, mere GIGABYTES seemed a bit of a let-down! And after Regan, once again, when is Goneril ever going to make an appearance?

    1. She last appeared about a year ago, 28 March 2013. Her sister is bound to be more popular with crossword setters, though, being much more wordplay-friendly. Takes after her father in that way.
      1. Unfortunate name, Goneril, as available wordplay seems to evoke a rather nasty malady.
  12. 21m. I liked this one: as vinyl says, it’s always nice to enlarge your vocabulary by building a new word from the cryptic, and there was lots of that today: GODOWN (actually I’ve come across that before but had forgotten it), GRUBBER, COTANGENT, CROSSE, GALLE, SCANDENT, LOMBARD. Regan turning up was a bit of a coincidence after last night (see above).
    Nice to see a word like DEF appearing, and be reminded of the iconic Def Jam Recordings, which of course launched the careers of LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and various other hip-hop luminaries. No doubt everyone else here thought the same…
    1. Thank God we still get proper words like ‘cotangent’ (what did they teach at schools in the 80s?) and ‘grubber’ rather than this modern stuff. Any more talk like that and I suspect you will be defecting to the Guardian. (Never bothered to parse DE FACTO – not my day for that sort of caper, you know.)
      1. Actually I must have known COTANGENT at some point, even if I’ve long forgotten what to do with one.
  13. I agree with Jack that there were too many unknowns for me (reflecting my lack of knowledge of course) but a combination of parsing and pure guessing (CROSSE) got me over the line.
  14. That was hard work and there are more entertaining crosswords around today than this one – 27:21 although I did think I might have made some of the words up – and who spells chivy with only one V – it ought to have 2 to sound right – with one it sounds like relating to a herb in the allium family. The spell checker doesn’t like it either!
    1. Maybe a Classicist invented the spelling by analogy with Livy. Agreed that Nutmeg in the Guardian has a puzzle of the very first water today.
      1. The Micawber DT Toughie today isn’t tough at all but is a joy to solve from start to finish.
        1. Bummer. Now I have to go out and clutter up the house with two additional papers!
            1. . . . but trying to do it on an iPad is a nightmare, so worth the cost and the tree.
    2. It may be only 8 seconds, but I never thought that I would record a faster time that the Fast Lady. I suspect that it was an advantage today solving with pen and paper, and I do not expect lightning to strike twice, so I shall revel briefly in the glow of this minor miracle. I fully expect to get trounced henceforth.
      Please excuse the typo in my previous posting, I meant double ‘v’ of course.
  15. 25:13 and I’m quite shocked that I’m all correct and haven’t got a grid full of mombles (Bacchante, scandent, Galle, crosse).

    I didn’t enjoy this as much as others and found it rather uneven

    I only knew godown from having encountered it before in the Times Daily and a quick spot of Googlage reveals that it came up in April 2012. I’m shocked that I was able to recall a new word from so long ago.

    PS, seeing that the second qualifier is only a week away has anybody who submitted the first one heard back from David Levy?

    Edited at 2014-05-07 11:51 am (UTC)

    1. I’m still trying to work out how to enter when one doesn’t have a cheque book. I only recently opened a UK account and it seems I omitted to check that box.
      1. There is no evidence that anyone at Spurs is giving that any serious thought!
  16. I really struggled with this one, but very enjoyable. I agree with others about the GK being well clued and buildable from the cryptic. I too was very surprised befriend could mean assist and took a long time for the penny to drop for ‘de facto’. Could someone pls explain to me the cryptic for OP-ART?
    1. “not a thing” = 0… “some” = part… “needed” = they need to go together to make the literal (and the clue wouldn’t be a complete sentence if it ended at “some”).
  17. 14 minutes, but fell asleep wondering if there really was a SCANDENT, CHIVY, GODOWN or CROSSE. Relieved to find they are all there. I think I’d seen that wordplay for THOR before (cor).
  18. About two hours, really enjoyed this one, lots of blind alleys. Despite a life time of following cricket I have never heard of a grubber but did know Galle because of the cricket link (didn’t Peterson score a sensational century there?)

    Couldn’t parse 13 at all. Thank you for the blog.

    Nairobi Wallah

  19. Hard going today, about 45 minutes but got there in the end by following wordplays (GALLE, BACCHANTE, SCANDENT), and in some cases, definitions only (THOR, CAMEL). I thought DE FACTO was amusing, since when some new generation slang thing appears it makes me smile. Oh, also wordplay only for the cricket thing. COD’s to either DRACONIAN or BEFRIENDED, both well concealed. Regards.
  20. About an hour including post-work doziness en route. Forgot def if I ever knew it…but have recently encountered ogre as an adjective = awful, grim among my year 10 class. The year 13s when asked had never heard of the usage. It made me see a school for a moment as a kind of reverse archaeological dig. Godown an everyday word in India.
  21. The original crosses, used by the Native Americans who invented the game, were made by bending a piece of wood into a shape almost exactly like a Bishop’s Crook or Croiser then stringing the ‘hole’ with leather and gut webbing – but since they were first seen by French fur trappers, the came was called La Crosse.

    For those interested, the US college championships are played off over the end of May bank holiday weekend (Memorial Day in the US) (US Civil War), and may well be televised. If you understand football you will be able to follow the strategy and most of the rules.

  22. 19:46 for me, with quite a lot of time spent agonising over CROSSE (which I’m pretty sure I’ve come across before, but couldn’t be certain of at the time).

    I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one to waste time on THOREAU, wondering whether I’d been spelling him wrong all these years – that is until light finally dawned. I hadn’t heard of GALLE, but there didn’t seem to be any other possibility; and SCANDENT sounded just familiar enough for me not to be too worried about it. For the record I think I’ve always spelled CHIVY like that.

    Over all, an interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  23. A bit late to the party as I only got around to it this morning, but I raced through it in 12:24 with no unknowns, just a question mark over the spelling of CHIVY.

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