Times 25820 – Can we make that three concertos?

Solving time: 75 minutes

Music: Mozart, Violin Concertos, Grumiaux/Davis/LSO/

I found this rather hard, but I suspect most of the usual gang will not find it that difficult. I wasn’t sharp at solving it, and the lack of chestnuts and anagrams threw me off, as I usually get a foothold that way. For many of the clues, the way I thought the clue worked turned out to be wrong, and I had to reset my mind and go back to square one.

My solve was in two parts. After 50 minutes, or two concertos, I had the whole bottom half done, but was getting nowhere at the top. A fifteen-minute break for strawberries and ice cream was obviously called for. It is amazing how a solver suddenly sees the obvious after returning from a break, and I quickly filled in most of the top, including the key across clues. Then it was merely a matter of cleaning up and checking.

Across
1 BEST SELLER, BEST + sounds like CELLAR. I admit, I wasted a lot of time trying to work in ‘bodega’ somehow.
6 TWIT, double definition. An interesting word. The Old English ‘witan’ means ‘to blame’, and the ‘at’ suffix is an intensifier, giving ‘atwitan’. Substantial weakening was needed to produce the fool and teasing
9 AUTHORSHIP, AU + THOR’S + HIP. Glad to hear that the Norse gods are still relevant.
10 IOWA, I.O.W + A, the Isle of Wight, that is.
12 BUMPER-TO-BUMPER, double definition, the first jocular.
14 ORANGE, O RANGE, so very close.
15 MINSTREL, MI(N,S)TRE + L[ouche]. I wasted a lot of time looking for specific composer who might fit.
17 SEDATIVE, anagram of DEVIATES, one of the few starter clues.
19 IN CASE, INCAS + E[vent].
22 OVER MY DEAD BODY, double definition. I knew it was going to be something like this, but I couldn’t bring it to mind until I had a fair number of checkers.
24 PHEW, P + HEW.
25 ANTICLIMAX, anagram of IN TAX CLAIM.
26 RUTH, double definition. I wanted to put in ‘Acts’ for the longest time, but could not justify it. That’s because it was the wrong answer!
27 REPRESENTS, E.R. backwards + PRESENTS.
 
Down
1 BRAG, B(R)AG. I was thinking ‘rack’ or ‘board’ for a long time.
2 SATSUMA, SAT + SU + MA. If you thought ‘Parked’ = ‘P’, you were wrong.
3 STOPPAGE TIME, anagram of POST + PAGE + anagram of ITEM. I thought until the very end that I was looking for the name of a famous drama.
4 LUSTRE, LUST + R.E., that is to say Religious Education.
5 EPISODIC, EPI(SOD, I[nvasion])C. ‘Epic’ is not exactly ‘classic’, but close enough.
7 WHOPPER, W[ith] + HOPPER, an obvious one that I missed rather badly.
8 TEA TROLLEY, T(EAT ROLL)EY, with YET upside-down.
11 NUTS AND BOLTS, a sort of cryptic definition, with an allusion to the expression ‘get down to brass tacks’, in which ‘brass tacks’ do not have quite the same metaphorical meaning as ‘nuts and bolts’.
13 GOBSTOPPER, double definition, one jocular. This candy is known as a ‘jawbreaker’ in the US and Canada.
16 EVIDENCE, EVI(D[isput]E)NCE. Very clever, the cryptic took a while to figure out after putting in the obvious answer.
18 DEEPEST, DEE, PEST. This should be a write-in for most solvers.
20 ABDOMEN, anagram of BAD + OMEN.
21 RAPIER, RA(PI)ER, that is REAR upside down.
23 AXIS, A + SIX upside down, our cricket clue.

52 comments on “Times 25820 – Can we make that three concertos?”

  1. The long answers were so straight forward, I wrote them in right off and, with all those letters in the grid, the rest fell into place without a lot of trouble. Pleased to be under 10 — first for quite a while.

    I’d parse 12ac as BUMPER (massive), TOPER (drinker) inc BUM (behind).

  2. A couple of shady ladies I thought – I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of anyone called SU or DEE.
    1. Dee (yes); Su (no). The former was a young lady of my acquaintance c1984, unfortunately christened Deirdre.
    2. My first boss used to drive me mad by leaving the e off the end of Sue but his thought was that if you abbreviated Susan, there wouldn’t be any need for an E.
  3. That might have been more like 12:56 if I’d ever heard of BRAG or STOPPAGE TIME. I didn’t really parse 12ac, but roughly thought of it as Vinyl did. I finally accepted that 2d had to be SATSUMA, but SU? (ditto re DEE?) This is, I think, the 3d GOBSTOPPER we’ve had recently (one Quickie), which helped, since, as Vinyl notes, the US term is ‘jawbreaker’.
  4. Out of interest do Scrabble sets now include a bag for the tiles? I haven’t bought a set for some time, but I have never seen a bag included.
    We keep ours in a purple draw-string bag which once held a bottle of Crown whisky. I was amused some time ago to see that The Simpsons use an identical bag for their Scrabble tiles – not sure if I should read anything into that!

    Edited at 2014-06-23 03:08 am (UTC)

      1. For many years we had a similar drawstring bag, on which my grandmother had lovingly embroidered the word SCABBLE (sic). We allowed it of course.
  5. I read through a lot of clues before entering my first answer at 22ac but then things rolled along rather nicely and I completed the grid in 28 minutes. Sub-30 is a rarity for me these days so I was quite pleased about that. Very enjoyable as a whole with lots of fun clues and interesting wordplay.

    On the shady lady front, those of a certain UK vintage may remember the journalist and broadcaster Dee Wells, and as for the other one, the most famous I can think of is Su Pollard. Hi-di-hi!

    Edited at 2014-06-23 06:38 am (UTC)

    1. memo to self: read all the comments, before adding one! Ms Pollard is the only Su I know though I’m sure there are more. Almost any combination of letters, no matter how random, is treated as a christian name nowadays
      1. That’s exactly it; should we expect any combination of letters to show up in cryptics? Granted that Su is/was a celebrity, or so I take it, but still. A friend of mine, the son of a US Navy officer, knew a girl in school, also the child of a navy officer, who had the misfortune to be born while he was serving in the South Pacific Fleet. Her name was Sopac. Look for her in a ST cryptic.
  6. 11m. I thought for a while that this was going to be tough, because my first in was SEDATIVE. But the bottom half turned out to be pretty straightforward and I was able to use that to work my way up. I don’t remember ever coming across TWIT in the ‘taunt’ sense or ‘mitre’ as a joint. In the latter case I may well have done because I’m dimly aware that there are a number of such things whose names I can never remember.
  7. Similar experience to K, but FOI IOWA followed by SEDATIVE. Wrote in ‘move’ at 24ac (container clue, def. ‘power’ – still seems reasonable) but a straightforward 13d soon changed that. Then struggled horribly in the NW so a disappointing 19 minutes.
  8. Easy today, around 10 mins in all, having got 1ac and 1dn the rest sort of followed. I agree with mc’s parsing of 12ac. Having knocked off the final qualifier quickly too I’m crosswordless before breakfast is even over!
  9. 20 minutes, so quick for me, despite my incorrect FOI, initially thinking 1A to be SOUR GRAPES – I thought it was something to do with experiencing ‘sour grapes’ after a defeat and hitting the wine store being some sort of vineyard sabotage. I did at least think it seemed dubious.
  10. 20.43, last one in, aggravatingly, the static car-line. Seemed straightforward enough. 16 neat. – joekobi
  11. 16min.
    When we had a LibDem council here, Su Lawton was one of the councillors – another was surprisingly coincidentally Manny Doku !
  12. 10 mins, and I quite enjoyed this puzzle. I had a similar experience to Keriothe with SEDATIVE my FOI, but after that I made fairly rapid progress. It’s funny how one solver’s easy clue can be difficult for another solver because IOWA was my LOI.

    Count me as another who was considering an unparsed “Acts” for 26ac until the checker from 13dn put me right. I didn’t have a problem with “Su” or “Dee” as I had come across both names before.

  13. 13.54, which suggests easyish but belies the delight of many of the clues. NATO was indeed the obvious answer to 23d (1,1,1,1?) but I already had ANTICLIMAX, which couldn’t possibly be wrong. I still had to wait for the S.
    RAPIER I put in twice after all the checkers were in, once discarded for lack of parsing. Wondered if this was an escapee frdm the ST given the preponderance of bottoms (I read BUMPER etc the same way as mctext) and the abbreviated women. SuBo, anyone?
    Can’t see a bag in this scrabble game on the official Mattel site, but there may be a reason.
    The Quickie, as already noted, had GOBSTOPPER on Friday last, where the clue was “Gag for a sweet”. Times going out of its way to be helpful? Dumbing up of the Quickie? Dumbing down of the Slowie?
    Excellent start to the week.

    Edited at 2014-06-23 09:43 am (UTC)

  14. 43′, slowed up ever so slightly by putting ‘NATO’ at 23, thinking it was ‘a ton’ reversed. ‘Mitre’ was was beyond my DIY ken.
  15. 13:45 .. solved bottom up. Talking of which, the RAPIER clue made me smile. Another nice, bright Monday puzzle. TTTS.
  16. A pleasant start to the week.

    No problem with the names. After all, those of a certain age will remember Pans People on TotP, with a double dose of Dee, ie Dee Dee Wilde, although her given name was Patricia.

    1. As Norman Stanley Fletcher says in Porridge: “We could ring up those girls on Top of the Pops. Pan’s People. There’s one special one… beautiful Babs… dunno what her name is.”
  17. Exactly half an hour. Might have been faster had I not written WHEW instead of PHEW thinking that power was W (watts).

    Yes, I remember Dee Dee Wilde and Pan’s People. Brings misty-eyed, wistful smile to the faces of gentlemen of a certain age. PHEW

    1. The usual sources (online at any rate) suggest that whew fits the clue better than phew, as the former is applied to heat and the latter to smells.
      1. I suspect there was a shift in recognised meaning after the Sun’s (?) “Phew What a Scorcher” headline.
  18. Had one of those ‘helpful’ emails from a friend this morning who had ‘sailed through the Times’, which always puts me off. However, I finished 7:17 with SEDATIVE being my FOI, so can’t have been that put off.
    1. Chambers includes a definition for PI as ‘obtrusively religious, sanctimonious’
      1. I think the “for” is slightly clunky. Pi can be “good” but not really “good for”, and “for stabbing” is a little less elegant than just stabbing.

        Italian ultras on scooters like stabbing visiting football fans in the buttocks.

  19. I’m thinking that the ‘Su’ of Pollard is more of an affectation, allowable in an actress I’m sure, than a proper spelling of a first name. For crosswords I mean, as indeed anything goes elsewhere. For SI, ooh matron, I do like to feel secure.

    45 mins, nice puzzle, many thanks all.

    1. As i mentioned at the Club, Su is a relatively common feminine name in Turkey but I guess that this is GK too far.
  20. Very quick time for me (27 mins), with the last five spent alphabet-running to get LUSTRE.

    dnp BUMPER TO BUMPER, dnk the ‘tease’ bit of TWIT.

    TTTS = thanks to the setter? (Sotira)

    1. >TTTS = thanks to the setter? (Sotira)

      I hope it’s that and not the onset of Tourette’s combined with bad typing. KNTCKERS!

      1. Ah, the things I could do with that excuse …

        Yes, Janie. I feel a bit of a crawler writing it out in full too often.

  21. 10:10, all very straightforward starting with best seller and fanning out from there.

    The only WP I couldn’t unravel was for evidence so thanks for that one Vinyl.

    Edited at 2014-06-23 12:18 pm (UTC)

    1. 11:55 for me which, given that I started at 11:31 makes it just a whisker over the half hour.

      COD (and LOI) for me was AUTHORSHIP. RUTH was a guess, my knowledge of the bible being almost non existent. I also wasted a few minutes by having NATO for 23d, until I actually parsed the clue and realized that O TAN wouldn’t answer.

  22. Just what I needed after another scorching 18 holes. At last the ground is starting to harden

    Easy but pleasant puzzle – Ji.

  23. Late in the day, took me longer than it should have, watching cricket, England failing to dislodge tail enders again. LOI AUTHORSHIP, didn’t bother to parse a few (EVIDENCE, BUMPER…) and about 35 minutes overall. No problem with the ladies’ names here, I had a girlfriend once called SU and in Ireland DEE is frequently short for the lovely Deirdre. COD IOWA.
    1. Anyone in the UK could hardly avoid recently the publicity about Black Dee and (in particular) White Dee from the reality programme Benefits Street.

      Edited at 2014-06-23 05:18 pm (UTC)

  24. Didn’t do this last night so did it on a coffee break this morning – pretty straightforward, though I didn’t quite get SU as a name, but it had to be SATSUMA from the definition.

    BUM and REAR in a puzzle – now the Halpernian challenge comes, can one get BUM, REAR, ASS and ARSE in a crossword?

  25. 10:33 for me, never really finding the setter’s wavelength. I’ve no complaints, though, as I thought this was a very nice piece of work. I particularly liked “parked behind” in 2dn.
  26. Late today and a sub 20 for the first time in yonks – 19.20. Really enjoyed some of the cluing. My favourite definitely 7d for its economy and expansiveness. TTTS to echo Sotira.
  27. A slow start, but it went very quickly once I got one or two. Everyone else is lucky that I didn’t get round to this until very late – otherwise my usual complaint that words made up to mimic sounds (PHEW) should be disallowed whether they are in the dictionaries or not, would have earned me a raft. I don’t, however, find myself objecting to made up names (SU, DEE).
  28. I know I’m a day late, but… oh well—I managed to solve this one! This doesn’t happen very often so I wanted the fact recorded for future historians to poke fun at. No recorded time, but I solved it during Croatia v Mexico so it will be somewhere around the 1h20m mark, which for me is the equivalent of running a four minute mile.

    FOI – gobstopper; LOI – episodic

    Martin Hill

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