Times 25,803

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
As we move towards the World Cup, this was a puzzle of two halves; the first one making me think this was going to be a stroll, the second turning out to present unexpected difficulties (this may well turn out to be a close parallel with how England perform, based on other recent tournaments). End result: a rather uneven but quite respectable 19:17, possibly the equivalent of a score-draw with Uruguay. I’ll lay off the football analogies there, and move on to the actual answers.

Across
1 ALL RIGHT – If nothing is left, then all must be right.
5 RELIEF – [Large Island] in REEF.
9 BIRDCAGE – BIRD (time, from the Cockernee Rhyming Slang “bird lime=time”), CAGE (John, composer of 4’33”). Birdcage Walk runs from Buckingham Palace to Westminster.
10 DAMSON – DAM(mother), SON(child).
12 DIVERSIONARY – VERSION in DIARY.
15 NIECErenegadE in NICE (respectable). My first stab was DAUNT, being accepteD plus AUNT, which was a perfect answer apart from the nagging doubt I had about aunts not necessarily being respectable, and – oh yes, it absolutely doesn’t mean “renegade”. As I say, otherwise perfect.
16 MALFORMED – hidden in “aniMAL FOR ME Defines”.
18 HINDSIGHT – (HIDTHINGS)*; the definition is easier to spot if you’re Scottish, being “ken after event”.
19 DENIM – (MINED)rev.
20 FRANCHE COMTE – (CATCHEROFMEN)*; a traditional province on the Swiss border – not the best known, I’d say, but given it’s an anagram and the several checkers, I’d expect it to be gettable even without knowing it already.
24 EITHER – (RE: Hearts TIE)all rev.
25 DIOGENES – OGEN(the sort of melon which isn’t honeydew) in DIES. Diogenes was a founder of the philosophy of Cynicism (which at that time meant something slightly more positive than it does now).
26 HUNTER – double def., one the old-fashioned pocket watch, one the pursuer of game.
27 STARLESS – South, TAR, LESS. A word which I can only hear in the voice of Richard Burton. “To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black…”
 
Down
1 ABBE – Bishop inside ABE.
2 LARDvicaR inside LAD (groom as in stable lad). A somewhat risque surface.
3 ITCHINESS – CHIN inside [1,TESS].
4 HUGGER MUGGER – HUGGER(one embracing) MUGGER(street criminal). One of those expressions I’ve heard, but never knowingly used.
6 ERATO – (O.T. ARE)rev. The Muse of lyric poetry.
7 INSTALMENT – [Lousy, ME(i.e. the setter)] inside INSTANT.
8 FANNY ADAMS – I must confess the answer went in before I’d worked out the elaborate parsing: FAN(admirer), then [MAD(frenzied), AY(indeed)]rev. inside N,S. All meaning “nothing”, as per the story explained here.
11 ISOLATIONIST – (LIAISONS,TITO)*.
13 IN THE FLESH – I(current, scientifically), (FLEET,NHS)* Hospital.
14 DEAN MARTIN – (Forest of) DEAN, MARTIN.
17 OLD STAGER – Left in (DO)rev., STAGE(leg), Right.
21 CRETE – CONCRETE minus the CON.
22 ONCE – double def.
23 ISIS – (1Succeeded)x2; the River Thames at Oxford.

31 comments on “Times 25,803”

  1. Quite quick to start with (as per the blog), then bogged down in the SW, not knowing the Burgundy region and pondering the fodder for ages. Also couldn’t immediately see Deano; making the EITHER/CRETE the last pair in.

    Good to see DIOGENES. He was arrested for (major charge) eating in the market place and (minor charge) “performing a lewd act” in the marketplace (14ac in Groan prize puzzle 26,274). Such were the mores of the time. At the trial, he is alleged to have said “Would that the former were as simple as the latter. Then I would simply have to rub my stomach in order to be satisfied”. Or have I got the wrong Diogenes? There were quite a few:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes

    On edit: yep … that’s the one. Diogenes of Sinope is the one known for his Cynicism and for flaunting his stuff in public.

    Edited at 2014-06-03 04:34 am (UTC)

  2. Could have got in under 20′ but for 24ac and 21d, which I seriously thought I’d never make sense of, until at last I did. I knew of FRANCHE-COMTE, although I started with -Rhone.And, sexist that I am, I somehow assumed that ‘warbler’ was a female singer. DNK the CRS origin of ‘bird’, although I’d learned of ‘bird’ from a cryptic, and had wondered why bird? COD to CRETE.
  3. 30 minutes for all bar the recondite Gallic region. Finally went with ‘Fiancee-Route’ for that, which I sort of enjoyed. Liked HINDSIGHT best.
  4. Once again needed aids to finish off the LOI at 20ac. If the rest of the puzzle had been harder I might have persevered with it. Anyway I was pleased to discover I’d never heard of it.

  5. Not so good for me… no problem with FRANCHE COMTE, but had HUNTER and CRETE without parsing, and blanks at DIOGENES and ONCE. Who’d have thought there was another melon after galia, honeydew, cantaloupe, water…
  6. Like others I sat and wrote the answers into the top half but then slowed in the southern hemisphere. Got BIRDCAGE straight from definition with the leading B already in place. Likewise dear old FANNY with a leading F.N showing the way.

    I actually knew DIOGENES thanks to years of solving these puzzles. I liked 17D.

    Our power is going off soon for the day as they repair infrastructure damaged by the floods. At least I shall escape all these irritating football analogies that are already driving me nuts before the wretched competition even gets underway

  7. 18 minutes, helped by having the required GK but held up for a while at the end having put ANON at 22d instead of ONCE (reasoning that yesterday indicated an archaism and ‘as soon as’ was a likely present day way of saying ASAP) which made 27ac more difficult than it was.
      1. Did for me on the grounds that “passed” could mean almost anything in crossword land. Both words having both meanings meant that I didn’t, admittedly, give it much thought.
              1. In fairness to your “better” half I also read it as Bird (a composer I haven’t heard of which would put him in a category of hundreds) with the whole being a sort of whimsical description of where he’d have passed time if incarcerated.

                I know what you’re thinking Munk1, I didn’t give it much thought either, and you’d be right.

                1. I read it as Bird, a composer I have heard of, even though as it turns out I haven’t. That didn’t require much thought.
  8. My 15 minute bid was doubled (thankfully not redoubled) by the curious mix of letters that was un département inconnu. Eventually decided there was only one rapprochement which believably used all the letters (having ruled out every conceivable variation in the cluing). Would have been easier if I’d had CRETE in place, but somehow CON for “against” eluded me, possibly because I was thinking in French and I’m remarkably clean-speaking.
    Everything else 1ac. DIOGENES is the name of un camping Naturiste located improbably near Rickmansworth, probably named for the eccentric’s market place habit, or rather lack thereof.
  9. 13 mins and all parsed so very much on the setter’s wavelength for this one. Unlike others I had no problem in the bottom half of the puzzle, probably because I knew both FRANCHE-COMTE and DIOGENES. I finished in the NE with FANNY ADAMS after RELIEF, where I had been looking for the name of an island until the penny dropped.
  10. 31min – but had to resort to Bradford’s lists to check that I’d sorted the anagram correctly at 20ac.
  11. 15m. Like others, the first half was very easy, the second half less so. No problem with FRANCHE-COMTE, the latter part of which is one of my favourite cheeses.
    I thought 25ac was a bit harsh: without knowledge of either the classics or unusual melons it’s impossible. The phrase ‘DIOGENES the cynic’ is wired into my brain but I’m not sure how it got there, or how G this K is these days.
    Thanks for explaining 9ac, Tim. I thought BIRD was the composer and AGE was the time, and I couldn’t explain the C or make the thing work.
  12. Same as others with the extra floating C. Thought for a while that we had 2 composers in there and some further redundancy in the clue. Finally remembered the first one was spelt with a Y. All a bit laboured considering that, as with Jim, the answer went in right off the bat. 18.2.
  13. 12:56 with Franche-Comte known but hugger-mugger not.

    That looks a pretty good time but I did give 110% today and you can’t put in any more effort than that.

    I went to the live show of I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue last night where there was a good round of Uxbridge English Dictionary including Tamper – what you take your food in on a Yorkshire picnic, and Midwifery – part way through breaking wind.

  14. Started this at a fast lick while waiting for a friend in a cafe, then slowed down leaving me with DIOGENES, STARLESS and ONCE to complete after lunch. Half an hour or so in total. Mainly straightforward, in that the solutions were fairly clear even if the parsings took some time to work out. FOI ALL RIGHT, LOI as above.

    Didn’t particularly like the vague STARLESS and ONCE – the sorts of solutions which don’t seem watertight and entirely depend on crossers for the decision to enter them.

    Liked FRANCHE COMTE, which had me chasing anagrams in all the wrong places, and the well hidden MALFORMED. My COD to OLD STAGER.

  15. All done in around 40 minutes, except for the French region, where I gave up on the anagram, knowing it was somewhere of which I’d never heard. Also held up by Diogenes, not knowing the melon. Got STARLESS without any of the checkers, so no dependency here.
  16. Needed all the checkers and a few anagram pokes to get FRANCHE-COMTE, and I’m relieved to find out there isn’t a FMACCEE NORTH or FHAMCEE CORTN. OLD STAGER and BIRDCAGE without seeing all the wordplay.
  17. 25 minutes, ending with STARLESS and ONCE, still not convinced that once is a synonym for yesterday, although I can see its sense for ‘as soon as’. Otherwise a pleasant medium density puzzle, cheered me up after a day of little mishaps and annoyances.
    The history of Fanny A was news to me, and interesting, thanks tim for the link.
    1. I wonder if The Carpenters realised they were being tautologous when they named their hit Yesterday Once More?
  18. Second 45m DNF in a row. The SW did for me but mostly as I had bunged in ANON for 22D and never thought about it until I came here and saw it was wrong. Mind you no excuses even then for not getting the cynic – will I remember OGEN next time it comes up? Thanks for the blog – I needed it today especially!
  19. Why is an isolationist a certain policy-maker? What indeed is a certain policy-maker?
  20. 8:19 for me. I had exactly the opposite experience to others. I struggled for about 5 minutes, completely failing to find the setter’s wavelength in the top half, but then suddenly hit it and polished of the remaining clues quite briskly, having no problems at all with the bottom half apart from wondering for a brief moment whether 22dn was going to be THEN.
  21. I think the composer (John Cage) passes (goes beyond, as in is to the right of) time (bird, as in prison). This is a guess.

    Well late to this, but a nice one for me, 22 mins as well, so quite speedy.

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