Times 25805 – meep

Solving time : OK – I’ll admit. I’m in no state to be solving or blogging and it’s showing through – 1 hour and 5 minutes later I’m being told I have a correct solution, which is a minor woohoo moment, but I’m not quite sure how. I had to load the grid three times and this blog twice.

I’m going to finish this and pass out, so any corrections/edits/sober thoughts are likely to be found in the comments.

And away we go…

Across
1 SACK: double definition
3 SCAFFOLDER: CAFF in SOLDIER minus I
10 APENNINIES: PEN,NINE(a “small” number) in A,S
11 DEMO,B
12 KNOW-ALL: OK reversed over N, then WALL
13 DANISH: NIB minus B in DASH
15 ESCALATOR CLAUSE: anagram of CALCULATORS+EASE
18 OCCASIONAL TABLE: or OCCASION,ALT,ABLE
21 UP(in court),DATE(partner)
23 IVANHOE: (I,HAVE,NO)*
26 FJORD: J(unk) in FORD
27 CREAM SODA: SO(very),DA(y) after CREAM(finest)
28 ROYAL FLUSH: ROY and AL are the boys, then FLUSH(drunk) As pointed out in comments, this is more probably ROY,ALF,LUSH
29 RAZE: CRAZE missing the first letter
 
Down
1 S,HACK,LET ON
2 CREDO: DO(party) under CRE(w)
4 CANALETTO: (A,TALENT)* in CO
5 F,USED
6 ORDINAL: DIN in ORAL
7 DAMP SQUIB: MPS,QUI inside DAB
8 ROB(mug),E
9 ENTAIL: LINE reversed with TA inside
14 DEGENERATE: (TEENAGER)* in D(isgrac)E
16 CACOPHONY: CA(about),CO(n),PHONY
17 READINESS: READ,NESS about 1
19 SCAN,DAL(i)
20 TRAUMA: ART reversed then (h)UMA(n)
22 EXCEL: sounds like “XL”(very large)
24 HOO-HA: HOO(c)H,A
25 AFAR: hidden reversed in gReAt FeAr

32 comments on “Times 25805 – meep”

  1. DNK 7d, which appropriately enough was my LOI; spent some time thinking of French politicians. I twigged to OCCASIONAL fast enough, but I couldn’t remember what the piece of furniture is; since I took ‘key’ to be A, I dithered and whimpered a bit until I finally remembered it’s TABLE. I also dithered over 29ac, worrying that there was a US/UK spelling difference, and of course ‘rase’ wouldn’t work. And I had to wait for George to show me how ROYAL=’boys’; duh. All in all, I’m surprised it didn’t take me much longer. Liked UPDATE & EXCEL.

    Edited at 2014-06-05 03:56 am (UTC)

  2. A good deal of which spent looking at •A•E at 29ac. “Bug”? Tease? Then the penny dropped when I saw we were a Z short of a pangram, so it had to go in there.
  3. The clause was new to me, and the table went from being operating to ornamental before ending up as the right one, but apart from that it was a steady solve ending with two six-letter words, DANISH and UPDATE. CACOPHONY gets my COD nod.
  4. I think 28ac is ROY, ALF, LUSH as ‘flush’ means having plenty of money in my book though of course it may have drunken consequences!

    Also 42 minutes with 29ac as last one in having realised a Z was needed to complete the pangram. I knew ESCALATOR CLAUSE having benefited from it several times in my working life, but I took for ever to bring the first word to mind from the remnants of the anagrist.

    Edited at 2014-06-05 05:31 am (UTC)

      1. Same here – it put in mind of the classic Billy Strayhorn number ‘Lush Life’
  5. 14m. I thought for a while this was going to be difficult, but then the answers started coming steadily. I agree with jackkt on 28ac: I wondered for a while how ‘flush’ could mean ‘drunk’ before realising that it didn’t have to.
  6. 19.46, leaving the dreaded ?A?E until last, and omitting to take advantage of the likely pangram, what with FJORD and SQUIB and EXCEL taking care of the other tricky letters. Somehow cottoned on by the time I’d got to C, so no great hold-up. With “bug” having so many options, I did wonder if there might be an alternative.
    Nominate SACK for the most instantly recognisable clue in the crossword lexicon.
  7. . . . and another who benefitted from the pangram to do LOI 29ac. This felt a bit like yesterday, with the top half going straight in but then slower progress below.
  8. 37 minutes. Started off like the proverbial express train but just over halfway through fell foul of leaves on the track.
    Couldn’t parse 13a,29a & 20d so thanks v much for enlightening me.

    Talking of enlightenment, down here in Somerset we fear 7d’s. “Squibbing” is a custom at the end of our Bridgwater Carnival in November (the largest illuminated carnival in Europe – worth a Google). About 100 squibs on long poles are lit up along the high street. It’s pretty spectacular and a singular honour to be a squibber. Damp squibs are the last thing we want.

    Edited at 2014-06-05 07:33 am (UTC)

  9. 11.50, progressing steadily from top left to bottom right. Helped by the two long across answers being write-ins but lost time on LOI 29ac because I had not thought about the pangram.
  10. Entertaining, even if the only real head-scratching moment came with the universally dreaded _A_E at the end. Obviously I was another one who spotted the pangram as soon as I read about it here, so I suppose I should count myself lucky to have got the right sort of bug reasonably quickly.

    I remember Nadine Dorries on Have I Got news For You describing something as a “damp squid”, which, to be fair, most of them are unless they end up as calamari.

  11. Another somewhat anodyne puzzle with its share of old chestnuts like SACK. Once the J went in at FJORD (that could just as easily have been fiord, which would be easier to clue) I was looking for the Z in RAZE. A rather unexciting 20 minutes to solve.
  12. 37min: bottom half almost complete before top, bar 29ac.
    Having J&X made RAZE likely, though couldn’t think of the bug – hence looking for Q was helpful in finding 7dn and then completing solution.
  13. This was the perfect puzzle for me, filling the entirety of a 40 minute commute. At the end I was stuck with UP_A_E and was tempted to throw in either UPTAKE, as it was the only word I could think of, or UPMATE as it was the only parsing I could manage. Finally saw UPDATE to avoid my recent run of one-wrongs.

    I can’t hear the word FJORD without thinking of dead parrots. I’ve had great fun recently introducing my two boys, aged 11 and 9, to the joys of Monty Python.

  14. 17 mins that would have been less than 15 if I’d spotted the likely pangram. I’d thought of RAZE as a possible answer from the definition but it took a while before I saw that the sort of bug being referred to was a “craze”. READINESS also took a little longer than it should have done because it isn’t the most common synonym of “alacrity”.
  15. 10:41 with 29a being the last one in. My late mother-in-law (who made Mrs Malaprop sound like a rank amateur)always referred to ‘damp squids’ so I really have to concentrate to make sure I write in the correct word when required.
    1. Strangely enough, I actually wrote in “damp squid’ despite having solved the clue correctly. Well, squids are damp surely?
    2. Did we have the same late mother-in-law? Mine referred to the former French president Giscard D’Estaing as “discard”. And the science fiction of L.Ron Hubbard as “diuretics”.

      Edited at 2014-06-05 01:27 pm (UTC)

      1. James Thurber had a maid who was very proud of her son when he passed his silver service eliminations.
      2. The (1980s?) movie Repo Man was full of fantastic, understated visual gags. In one scene, a supermarket checkout counter had a rack of books including ‘Diuretics’ by Elroy Hubbard.

        Rob
        40 minutes with an interruption. Hard to finish, 10/13/26/29 all took some thinking.

  16. A lush can be a drunk, so I agree with jackkt about 28 ac, ROY ALF LUSH. Pangram helped me find the X for EXCEL and LOI was UPDATE, all done 25 minutes.
    Spent another hour on and off trying to post this to LJ, seems their server was down?
  17. A rather nice puzzle, I thought, not at all anodyne. A rather odd solve for me as I fell asleep after ten minutes with only about a fifth of the grid filled, the sleep being induced by medication. When I came to an hour later I completed the rest in twenty minutes. I had RAZE provisionally entered long before I saw the beheaded word.
  18. As sleep-inducing puzzles go, I thought this one inadequate. I was still awake after 31 minutes, my rather slow time for solving. Mind you …

    Pangram helpful, as always.

    Cheers
    Chris

  19. 18:02 with update and excel holding me up a bit at the death.

    I saw the likelihood of a pangram for once which gave me the confidence to enter raze although I didn’t know what sort of bug was required until coming here.

    I’m pretty sure I’d have bombed on cacophony in a spelling bee so the wordplay was useful there.

    I wasn’t confident about readiness either for the same reason as Andy B (and with read/understand not being particularly close either).

  20. Half an hour to solve this, a good time for me. Didn’t understand the ‘bug’ part of 28, so thanks for the explanation. Didn’t spot the pangram either, so even less justification for my guess at ‘raze’.
  21. About 20 minutes, ending with _A_E, and getting no help from the pangram since I never remember to look for them. But entered RAZE from the definition anyway, and I thought of ‘craze’, but it isn’t overtly convincing, even now. Regards.
  22. A rather disappointing 9:34 for me, slowed by two or three bizarre brainstorms. Basically a pleasant straightforward solve.
  23. Of late, I have been measuring these crosswords in terms of train journeys – today’s was Balham – New Malden (via Clapham Jct) and back this evening, about 40 minutes. This one spread from NW to NE, then SW to SE, with UPDATE and EXCEL – absurdly simple in retrospect – bringing up a struggling rear.

    Starting smartly with CREDO, SACK and SHACKLETON, the 10,5 piece of furniture could only have been an OCCASIONAL TABLE, although getting my brain round produce=occasion wasn’t easy. DAMP SQUIB was quite clever, also, for different reasons, DANISH which had me chasing round European writers with (or without) a “B”, and running out after about six or seven.

    Edited at 2014-06-05 10:49 pm (UTC)

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