Times 25802– The Law and the Prophets

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Had to resort to the dreaded aids to finish this one off – I’m putting it down to the jet-lag as it’s not a difficult puzzle. That said, the north-east (taken to include 17ac) has some tricky stuff, though why I struggled so with 6ac will remain one of the great mysteries, like how Disney can keep making mush like Frozen. If you haven’t seen it, think Shrek with a reindeer instead of a donkey…

ACROSS

1 ALLIGATOR – A + GILL reversed + A + TOR
6 PIQUE – sounds like ‘peak’; to pique is to aggravate.
9 LOSE ONES FOOTING – LOOTING around an anagram* of FEES + SO + ON
10 TUBING – [Alan] TURING with a B[lack] for the R.
11 PARTAKEN – the literal is ‘shared’, derived from P(ART)A + KEN .
13 VITUPERATE – not a word I use every day; ‘worried about’ needs to be subject to a bit of lifting-and-separating, since it indicates that VIPER + ATE go round TU (‘Trades Union’)
14 FILM – double definition, one starring either Caine or Law, depending on your generation
16 ROOM – ‘moor’ reversed
17 HEBRAISTIC – definitely the toughest of the bunch, as evidenced by the fact I was working around HE and IC – oh yes, and ITS reversed – and still managed an epic fail. Literal ‘of Semitic culture’; wordplay HE (male) + BRA (supporter) + IC (in charge) around ITS reversed.
19 UNLOADED – two definitions, one jocular
20 STUDIO – STUD (boss – as on a shield) + I + O
23 STATE DEPARTMENT – STATEMENT about LEAVE
24 CATER – CARTER minus his first R
25 THEORISER – RIOTS HERE*

DOWN

1 ALLOT – sounds like ‘a lot’
2 LAST BUT NOT LEAST – the literal is ‘ultimately still important’, the wordplay an indication that LAST is spelled like LEAST but without the E. I think. But maybe there are hidden depths which I cannot plumb.
3 GROWN-UPS – in case anyone is wondering about the W, it stands for ‘with’; so, W + N (last letter of parson) in GROUPS
4 TEEN – hidden
5 REFRACTORY – I like both the clue and this very Stephen Fryish sort of word; RE + [spanne]R in FACTORY
6 PRONTO – PRO + NOT*
7 QUICK-WITTEDNESS – ‘astuteness’; some won’t like the undifferentiated use of TED for ‘male’ in QUICK (‘once living’, ie old word for living) + WIT[h] (‘mostly with’) + TED + NESS
8 ERGONOMIC – ‘of work efficiency’; GO (‘spirit’) in NO CRIME*
12 IRREVERENT – ‘impious’; IR (‘Irish’) + RENT about EVER, where ‘that’ refers back to the word ‘permanently’ – a device not often seen in crosswords.
13 VIRTUOSIC – ‘showing great skill’; TOURS* + I in VIC (as in the Old Vic Theatre)
15 DICTATOR – CID reversed + TA + TO + R
18 CAREER – double definition. Does the question mark indicate that a career is not a job? Perhaps we should be told.
21 OTTER – ‘fish-eater’ is the – to me – perfectly acceptable literal; from OTT (over the top) + ER
22 WAKE – ‘late vigil’ is a nice description of a wake; a boat produces a wake or wash as long as you remember to start it.

59 comments on “Times 25802– The Law and the Prophets”

  1. This only seemed relatively straightfoward after a couple of early hours on the Club Monthly. (Which comes recommended if you haven’t tried it yet.) Liked the distractive syntax of the clue for 12dn. (Though it has to be said that the device rather gives away where the literal lies.)

    I have admit to thinking the transporter in 24ac was a CRATER!

    1. Sorry to hear you’re leaving the Wed. slot, Alec. I hope I can continue to enjoy early-morning same-time-zone banter!
  2. The Club site is currently inaccessible, at least to me, and I forgot to write down my time, but it was a near-pb 7 and maybe a half minutes, spoiled by 22d, where I flung in ‘lave’. wash=wake would likely never have occurred to me anyway, but I certainly didn’t give it a chance to. Thanks for explaining 9ac, which I didn’t parse at the time. Nice to see Alan Turing.
  3. 20:32 … a solve of two halves, Gary, with not much happening in the shorter first half then a rash of controversial decisions and moments of individual brilliance in the longer, smaller second half (think they’ll have me on Match of the Day for the World Cup? I talk enough nonsense).

    I made it difficult for myself by pencilling in …..-MINDEDNESS for 7d and totally forgetting the possibility of the once ubiquitous bra in 17a.

    PIQUE, PARTAKEN and PRONTO all took a lot of felling.

    1. Not so much a game of two halves here – this was one long half of steady, workmanlike progress and relentless pressure [apart from a toilet break] with no real flashes of individual brilliance but disciplined defence and well-worked attacking moves honed to perfection in hours of training on the paddock……

      Good puzzle I thought – interesting words readily accessible through the cryptics.

    2. You’d be a natural commentator Sotira. Do you read Ann Treneman, the Times’ parliamentary sketch-writer? Soul-sisters.
      1. I don’t, Joe, but I’m going to assume she’s brilliant, witty, charming, and yet somehow strangely profound. So thank you.
        1. Raucous, lighthearted, hits the target, loves words…as well as all of the above of course. Uncanny.
  4. Like Sotira I slowed myself down at 7d with ‘MINDEDNESS’, but I couldn’t think of a word to go before it and BLOODY didn’t work anyway, finally parsing 17a correctly got me back on track.

    By the way Ulaca, you have this marked as 25515 which confused me as I have 25802 online. Is there a simple explanation which hasn’t occurred to me…not that it matters very much anyway!

    1. Thanks, amended. I c-and-p’ed from an old file at home, today being yet another Public Holiday in Hong Kong. (Wish they’d let us choose our own holidays…)

      Edited at 2014-06-02 08:11 am (UTC)

  5. I have no problem accessing the Club at the moment.

    I completed all but 17ac in 26 minutes including time wasted considering LAVE at 22 before seeing the correct answer. Unfortunately like the blogger I have to confess to using aids to fill in the three remaining unchecked letters at 17. I’d already spent 5 minutes on them and once I had crossed the 30-minute line I wasn’t prepared to hang around any longer.

  6. 11m, with a bit of a pause at the end before realising that the available fodder for 17ac meant SINGLE-MINDEDNESS must be wrong.
    Shrek with a reindeer instead of a donkey’… you say it like it’s a bad thing…
    1. The upside is that the reindeer can’t speak English, unlike Eddie Murphy’s donkey. The downside is that the Shrek character in Frozen does voiceovers for the antlered one, as he has been gifted with the ability to intuit what “Sven” means. With gifts like that, who needs afflictions?
  7. 25.48 of which half on NE, having rejected partaken as a non-word (hearing it in the Spartacus rhythm). Liked the Caine ‘Alfie’.
  8. You have a small typo in 8dn Ulaca, s/be..Nomic
    In 18dn, maybe the ? is because a job is not necessarily a career

    I enjoyed this, though made things difficult by writing quick-headedness to start with, ironic or what? Soon realised, when Michael Caine (and not Jude Law) showed me I was wrong..

      1. No, you were suggesting that a career is not a job.. it works one way round, but not the other, is what I’m saying
        1. Seems to work either way round to me, but, to use a formulation I learned while back in England, “Evs!”
          1. Sorry, don’t understand evs, English though I am

            I am suggesting that a career in that sense is necessarily and unavoidably a job. However a job can be a one-off or unrepeatable event which could not be built into a career.. never mind though!

            Edited at 2014-06-02 09:19 am (UTC)

            1. The “comedian” who keeps crashing football events to have his picture taken with the 100,000-pounds-a-week lot makes a career of his exhibitionism, but it’s not his job.

              Whatever! (Evs)

  9. A pleasant enough puzzle with the ones that I did not know (eg 17ac) readily parsable from the cryptic.

    Solvers using the iPad app (keriothe?) will notice with horror that the keyboard for the QC has changed to the unpleasant one used for the ST. I hope that this is not a taste of things to come.

    Edited at 2014-06-02 08:53 am (UTC)

    1. I haven’t done the QC today, but the ST format is absolutely awful so I’m with you.
      1. Count me in with those feelings about the ST keyboard. Really awful. Why do they do it? I spend half the time backtracking because unless you have fingers the size of a three year-old it is a real pain to use. Editor please take note!
        Nice crossword today – 65 minutes of steady and satisfying solving. I had LAVE too until WAKE suddenly popped into my head…..
  10. 22 minutes, of which the last 6 were spent on 17 ac and 11 ac; once the K of QUICK went in, the rest followed. Like others, I was minded to put in MINDEDNESS at first so struggled with the Hebrew clue. We were overdue for a BRA, I suppose. CoD WAKE.
  11. 17min: still slowed significantly by current clue not being highlighted (it’s stuck on 1ac) – problem doesn’t happen on the ST or the lesser puzzle.
    18: I’d say a career is a sequence of jobs.
    LOI FILM, after being another who was held up by writing MINDEDNESS.
  12. 13 mins. I was also thinking “mindedness” for the second word of 7dn but I wasn’t convinced so didn’t enter it. It took me a while to see the PRONTO/PIQUE crossers, but once I had I got QUICK-WITTEDNESS, and PARTAKEN was then my LOI.

    I might have been slightly quicker in the SW but it took me a little while to convince myself that VIRTUOSIC was a word. I don’t exactly use VITUPERATE, HEBRAISTIC and REFRACTORY on a daily basis either.

    1. Believe me, debates between almost always refractory Hebraists get extremely vituperative and can result in burning down the other Hebraist’s synagogue.
  13. A tad under 16 minutes (tad is a technical term used when you’re analogue timing for the big hand being just a bit after the minute mark when you start, and on it when you finish). Thought I should have been quicker: ALLIGATOR went in at a glance and I was about to switch to the Quickie for a proper workout. But then none of the long ‘uns went in without a fight. LAST… was almost my last in and I think ulaca’s analysis is accurate: nothing else to see here.
    Terror awaited at 22, actually my LOI, with ?A?E, the alphabet soup strainer’s nightmare. LAVE was the swine of a first thought, obliterating other meanings of wash, but it fell surprisingly quickly for a’ that.
    UNLOADED as CoD for the whimsy. Do cryptics like this only work in English?
  14. About 20 minutes in the dentist’s waiting room. Quite a fast time by my standards: must be trying to ignore the sound of drilling that concentrates the mind.

    Definitely Michael Caine for me at 14, so it didn’t take too long to Get Carter in 24.

    1. Being more of the Jude Law generation, I can confirm that ALFIE is definitely Michael Caine.
  15. In the slipstream on this one at a fast (for me) 14.59. We once bought a table that was described in the catalogue as a “refractory table”, which conjured up an image of vituperating monks. Neat puzzle. Glad to see you’re still around Alec.
    1. Thanks. My subs still seem to be holding up. Seems the Club sub runs out on my brithday in the middle of June.
          1. Mct, I don’t suppose it’s any use to you but there’s news of a special offer on the Webpack in the Club general forum, posted by a Mike from News UK. It’s in the “Times Crossword Club Access” thread and is the last posting there at the moment. Just thought I’d mention it.
    1. Tks, K. I’d only remembered the shape of the word from the conversation with my with-it friend, went to Google to get help, and the rest, as they say, is history.
  16. Slightly more taxing than Mondays sometimes are, but the difficult words were all clearly explained by the wordplay, so despite some early blind alleys (the wrong sort of “works” made me think there might be such a word as REFRICTION; MINDEDNESS? No. HEADEDNESS. Not that either) it was mostly a case of reading the clue carefully and following the instructions in an “Insert Tab A into Slot B” style, so all good.

  17. A nice gentle start to the week at 11:53. I quite liked the wit of the clue for last but not least.

    No doubt there are harder puzzles to come this week but at this level you have to take them one puzzle at a time. Obviously today has given us the confidence to push on and hopefully we’ll do well at the end of the day.

    1. That’s a quality delivery into the Comment box. It’s early doors, but the lad reminds me of a young Graham Taylor.
    2. Don’t forget the wise words of Neville Southall ‘If you don’t believe you can win, there is no point in getting out of bed at the end of the day.’
  18. 19m of steady paced solving which is the best I can remember doing for a little while.

    I didn’t know HEBRAISTIC but it was quite straightforward from definition. In a Rumsfeldian vein I’d say VITUPERATE was an unknown known – I didn’t know I knew the word until I needed it here. Or does that make it a known unknown?

  19. It’s an unknown known. You didn’t know you knew it. If you knew you didn’t know it, it would be a known unknown. You knew that.
  20. Ten seconds short of 13 mins for an enjoyable puzzle other than our old supporter. Given its propensity to lift and separate can we expect to see it clued as ‘divider’ any time soon? Or maybe that’s a particular brand which would make it a DBE.
  21. My best round of golf for some time – a medal and came in two under net par – yes!

    Followed up by a workman like puzzle that never really taxed – 20 minute meander.

    I may yet go into purdah for the duration of the dreaded world cup.

  22. Breezed through in 15 minutes, but like the other Kevin I entered LAVE. Oops. So one wrong for me today in what I thought was a relatively basic offering. The QUICK…/HEBRAISTIC crossing was my LOI. Better luck tomorrow for me, and regards.
  23. I got bogged down on this one early on so I put it to one side for a while and then raced through the rest of it – I thought it was a pretty fun puzzle with very clear wordplay for the entries I was either not familiar with, or had forgotten how to spell – VIUTPERATE and HERBAISTIC
  24. Most of this went in “quick crossword” fashion on my inward commute, with the remainder slotting in during the 10 minutes on the platform waiting for my return train – total about 30 minutes. A pleasant start to the week, probably assisted by my hitting the setter’s wavelength.

    FOI ALLIGATOR, LOI PARTAKEN. If “Foreign Office” = STATE DEPARTMENT, then are we to expect “Foreign Office” = “Quai d’Orsay” any time in the future? Admittedly, “Foreign Foreign Office” would have made it too easy, but still …

    HEBRAISTIC took some working out, but my COD goes to my LOI PARTAKEN – always good when the seemingly insignificant word in the clue is the definition!

    1. Aaaagh – just realised that I’d entered LAVE (with a question mark) as L(ate) + eve. So it’s a one wrong! Well, that’s wiped the smile off my face! For the ultimate tripper-upper, WAKE becomes my COD!
  25. 9:29 for me, spending far too long checking that I really had understood all the wordplay, which left me feeling old and tired. Again! (Sigh!)

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