Times 25806

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 30:32

I see no blog up for today’s cryptic by mid-afternoon so I thought I’d throw one together. I’m supposed to have retired from Fridays now, but we’ll allow this one for old times’ sake.

I have no idea how the wordplay works for 25a so someone will have to help me out.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 KIT + Eat
3 PORT OF CALL = (POOL + L + CRAFT)*
9 SHINGLEs
11 WHITe + SUN – White for ‘decent’ as in white lie or white magic. I suspect there are racist origins in this. Ulaca’s explanation is better – WHIT (a little) + SUN (decent weather) – I was overcomplicating
12 MAD COW DISEASE = MAD (very keen) + DIS (detectives) + EASE (have no trouble) all about COW (subdue)
14 KINGS – triple def – Men promoted (in chess no, draughts) / two books (of the bible) / a number of colleges
15 S(P)EED + WELL
17 THERMIDOR = (ROME THIRD)* – I didn’t know this was a month, I only knew it in connection with lobsters
19 QU(O)IT – ’empty’ indicates ‘contains nothing’
21 HORIZONTAL BAR – dd
24 WIN + STONy
25 OVERRUN – I can’t work this one out, I’m afraid. Anybody? It’s O + VERDUN (battle) with guarD replaced (wiped out) by R (king). – Thanks to Deke below for the explanation.
26 RE + LENT + LESS
27 SET + H
Down
1 KISS ME KATE – dd
2 TRIES ON = TIES ON about collaR
4 OVERDOSED – O (pill?) + VERSED (skilful) about DO (the same) – Not sure about O for pill.
5 TOWNS – As in To W/N/S (but not E)
6 FAIR AND SQUARE = FAIR + (SQUANDER A)*
7 AUSTERE – It looks like ?USTER in gAmE – I can only come up with MUSTER as in ‘muster out’ but really the word means to gather together not dismiss. Apparently, an OUSTER is a dismissal – Deke again
8 L + INK
10 GOOD SAMARITAN = GOODS + (AT AIRMAN)*
13 SLIT TRENCH = (Captain + SHIRT LENT)*
16 ERRONEOUS = SURE rev about ROMEO with M changed to N.
18 ETHANOL – hidden
20 OS + BORNE
22 ZONAL = L (pound) + AN OZ (a fraction of a pound) all rev
23 EWE + Roasting

48 comments on “Times 25806”

  1. Nice to see you back, if only pro tem, Dave. Cheeky little number, this, if not quite as fearsome as some Fridays have been in recent months.

    25ac is O(ld), then VERDUN is the battle, with guarD replaced by Rex. I got that one, but couldn’t for the life of me work out what on earth A NOZ was until I came here, so we can consider that a fair swap of information. Also, I think it’s OUSTER which is decapitated in 7dn: I also got that because it had to be what it is, but Collins confirms “(property law) the act of dispossessing of freehold property; eviction; ejection”, which I shall file alongside estoppel in my mental list of obscure legal terms which come up in crosswords.

    Edited at 2014-06-06 02:50 pm (UTC)

    1. Thanks Tim, but Deke beat you to the punch on both of those. Yes, it’s quite good to be back. I have Sunday’s blog all written and ready to post.
      1. Damn my sluggish one-fingered typing skills. You snooze, you lose, as the young people say.
        1. Not just young people, it’s a slang term for certain features of bank loan documentation.
          1. Ah, the joys of banking documentation jargon. I don’t expect ‘yank the bank’ to feature in the Times crossword any time soon.
  2. Welcome back Dave, and thanks for picking up on this one.

    22 mins, and I was slow to see some answers that should have been much easier to get, such as SLIT TRENCH, OVERRUN, MAD COW DISEASE and HORIZONTAL BAR. I had the most trouble in the SW, and the EWER/RELENTLESS crossers took a while even though their wordplay was fairly straightforward. In both cases I was looking for more in the cluing than was actually there. ZONAL was my LOI and went in with a shrug, although I did parse it between finishing the puzzle and this blog being posted. What threw me, as it may have done plenty of solvers, was the misdirection involving a pound sterling and a fraction of a pound weight.

    1. Funny you should say that about mad cow disease , bigtone ; I thought of rabies and mad dog disease just as my dear Rosie was looking up at me , demanding a walk! Then I failed to check GOOS SAMARITAN ; not a good end to a very straightforward puzzle .
  3. Welcome back Dave. 25A is O(ld) + VERDUN (battle) with D (guarD finally) replaced (wiped out) by R (king).

    Deke

    1. Thanks Deke, I’m sure there are many WWI battles I’ve never heard of, and this is among them.
    1. Thanks again. I didn’t realise an ouster could be an act of dismissal rather the person responsible for it.
      1. By coincidence I was just reading the leading article in the Economist which says that in any other industry Sepp Blatter would have been ‘oustered’ years ago.
  4. Thanks Dave, I was wondering if the LJ server had crashed and was prevented postings, like it did for me on Wednesday.

    I think 25 ac is O (old) then D (guard finally), replacing the D with a R for king, in the battle of VERDUN.

    1. Anon Deke got there while I was busy typing.

      Edited at 2014-06-06 02:48 pm (UTC)

  5. Welcome back, Dave. I parsed 11a as WHIT (a little) + SUN (decent weather).

    I believe it’s draughts in which men are ‘crowned’ as kings.

    Edited at 2014-06-06 02:51 pm (UTC)

    1. Yes, ulaca, on reflection your explanation makes better sense. I’m clearly out of practice at this blogging malarkey.
    2. As for draughts, you may well be right. The clue talks about promotion rather than crowning, but chess allows other pieces as well as kings to be the end result of promotion.
      1. I haven’t played serious chess for a while, but I thought a king was the only piece you couldn’t choose when promoting a pawn, since you can’t have two kings for the opponent to try to ‘mate’?
        Draughts, yes indeed.
        1. Yes, of course, I’m being dense. It must be draughts be referenced.
      2. In regular chess, though, it’s queens that are typically the result of promotion, though knights, bishops and rooks can also be opted for.

        Edited at 2014-06-06 03:15 pm (UTC)

  6. …finishing with the hidden alcohol, which is par for the course for me. I’ve managed to live for 55 years without hearing of the French Revolutionary Calendar, and ouster as an action rather than a person was also new. I thought 1d – which I took to be a play on ‘Kiss me Hardy’ (redirected to Kate) – was rather weak. Otherwise, pleasant enough.
    1. Yes, that’s what I assumed, although I do believe that what he actually said was far more likely to be ‘Kismet, Hardy’.
  7. A big welcome back Dave from me too.

    10 minutes exactly for this one. No 1 son and I had discussed Lobster Thermidor for his 30th birthday treat last weekend – he didn’t get it – but having mentioned the Roman month to him, it helped with today’s crossword.

  8. Having thought about this a bit, I think pill = ball (as in ‘he nicked the new pill to the keeper’) = O.
    1. Golfers might be aware of the following little ditty

      Oh, the dirty litte pill
      Went rolling down the hill
      And dropped right in to the bunker.
      From there to the green
      I took eighteen
      and then by God I sunk her.

      MAD DOG DISEASE apparently is real (ie rabies) but of course it does not parse. Did not stop me from putting it in though.

      Nice to see you back Dave.

  9. Great to have you back Dave.
    I was tired when I solved this, and it felt like a real struggle, but then I finished it in 20m. Not really sure what to make of that.
  10. Welcome back, Dave.

    38:33 … with one ETHANAL for no good reason. Solved very early this morning. I’m sure I had most of it solved in 15 minutes and I honestly have no recollection of what happened in the other 23 or why it took me so long.

    There are a few references appropriate to D-Day in here but I can’t see a pattern to them.

    1. Just replying to myself … anyone looking for themed puzzles today might like to do the Telegraph Cryptic.
      1. . . . or indeed today’s QC, where some of the references are better hidden than others.
  11. About 30 minutes, all correct but I couldn’t parse ZONAL, WINSTON (what’s stony?), and I didn’t know that ETHANOL was another name for common alcohol; I thought it was a fuel. Everything else was OK. Thanks to Dave for stepping into the breach, and welcome back. Thanks, and regards.
  12. Yes, welcome back indeed, Dave, and many thanks for picking this one up. I was wondering whether I should step in once I had checked several times over that it was not my Friday on duty but I ran out of time. I imagine the new blogger forgot, but if one doesn’t contribute to the discussions on other days I guess that’s an easy thing to do.

    Whilst solving this I had the impression it was a hard one but I completed the grid in 42 minutes which for me is not bad going at all.

    I didn’t ‘get’ 22dn which I suppose is quite a clever clue, nor understand what ‘cuts’ is doing in 26ac. WHITSUN is not a holiday (no more than any other Sunday, anyway) and if the setter was thinking of Whit Monday, that ceased to be a public holiday back in the early 1970s, IIRC, though occasionally the date on which it would have fallen may coincide with the newer Spring Bank Holiday.

    Edited at 2014-06-06 05:18 pm (UTC)

  13. Embarrassingly over the hour for me.

    I too am not convinced by “pill”=”o”. I don’t see the fact that a pill is round makes it an obvious “o”; nor do I think that “pill”=”ball” makes much more sense (especially as “ball”=”o” isn’t a standard crossword reference, or is it?).

    I’m tempted to assume that the setter was just careless and forgot to clue the initial “o”, but perhaps I am being uncharitable.

    Equally confused by “ouster” = “dismissal” – is this another of those damned cricket references? It seems a needlessly obscure way to clue “uster”.

    Still, nice to see one of my favourite organic molecules making an appearance at 18d.

    MAD COW DISEASE brings back memories of when we were all planning for the impending arrival of hordes of sponge-brained burger-eaters. Fortunately, this never seems to have happened, although since I’m based in East Anglia it’s possible that it did and nobody noticed.

    Edited at 2014-06-06 07:42 pm (UTC)

      1. It seems to me that most legal terms exist to ensure that only those in the profession can understand the law. Then again, medical terminology… pot/kettle.
        1. Trust me, thud, accountants can weave the same magic with figures. As part of the old joke goes, Client ‘What is 2+2?’. Accountant ‘What figure did you have in mind?’
    1. “Ouster” meaning “dismissal” is a term used in property law. I wouldn’t say it’s a standard crossword reference but I have seen O clued by “ball” in the Times crossword.
  14. I thought my 22:05 was a bit slow but looking at other times it seems not to be so bad after all.

    I was in a right panic at 12 until the penny dropped, thinking I was looking for an unknown (to me) literary character from a book I haven’t read, like, for instance, Mad Dog D’Essage, the mad axe murderer in Pride and Prejudice.

    Edit to say good to see you back Dave and thanks for saving the day.

    Edited at 2014-06-06 08:08 pm (UTC)

  15. Ah, we have a similar joke here. It starts with “which leg was the one that needed amputating again?”
  16. A sluggish 13:23 for me. I dithered over OVERDOSED, typing it in, failing to parse it, and then erasing DOSED as I couldn’t think of a word matching D‑S‑A‑E for 12ac. (Doh!) Eventually MAD COW DISEASE and a retyped OVERDOSED were my L2I. I’ve a feeling I’ve come across “pill” = O before, but unless I’m missing something subtle, I’m not terribly keen on it.
  17. Nothing to say about the puzzle, but I did want to add my voice to the chorus of welcome-backs, Dave.
  18. Yep, good to have you on board again, Dave, and thanks for parsing ZONAL.
  19. Nice one Dave. Nothing much to say about the puzzle but good to see that smart DJ again.

    And where is the new blogger who since a first blog has not made a single appearance here – I seem to recall a boast about being lazy in that single offering?

  20. Started on Friday evening, left it barely started after half an hour, and finished on Saturday morning, altogether about 50 minutes. As most of it went in this morning reasonably quickly, must have been especially dense yesterday.

    Stand out clue for me was GOOD SAMARITAN, as I’d tried SCHNEIDER (airman, eponymous trophy) from “merchandise” and fussed for ages thinking of a four letter first name with an “M” in it (it was actually Jacques) until the penny dropped, and the reasonably straightforward solution presented itself. This one edges out the excellent MAD COW DISEASE as my COD.

    Saw HORIZONTAL BAR quite quickly, but did not enter it until I’d tied down ZONAL, which didn’t come easily.

  21. Nice blog Dave, and thanks for stepping into the breach. I didn’t even get to solve this puzzle until yesterday evening, so hadn’t been here either. I’ve managed to get hold of Verlaine, who was very apologetic for missing his turn, but found himself in Berlin with a laptop and no power supply. He’ll definitely be back for his next slot on the 20th.
  22. Nice to see you back, Dave. I hadn’t worked this puzzle, so I was lucky to stumble across the re-inaugural offering.
  23. Several days late and several $s short but just chiming in to say how nice it is to see you back Dave. Thanks for the emergency blog.

    For some reason I was completely out to lunch on this one. After about 20 minutes with about 6 left to go I went and packed for the weekend and had a look at the TLS offering (which I found equally addling) and then came back to it. With assorted Zs, Ks and Qs I was so sure it was a pangram…. I guess we have days like that. Something in the 45 minute range with a break in the middle. Worst outing in I dunno.

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