Solving time: 58 minutes
This puzzle should not have taken as long as it did. I put in most of it in twenty minutes, only to get most thoroughly stuck. It was mostly the SW corner that did it, where I could not get a single thing until I realized Caliban must be an ‘islander’.
Music: Resphigi, Ancient Airs and Dances, Dorati/HPhil
Across | |
---|---|
1 | PARISIAN, PARIS + IAN, quite easy if you know who Priam’s son is. |
5 | SLEAZE, S + L(E)AZE. |
9 | FAD, every other letter in F[r]A[u]D[s]. |
10 | SATISFIABLE, anagram of BASE, IT FAILS. |
12 | LOCKER ROOM, LOCKE + R[un] + MOOR backwards. I can never remember Locke, and he pops up quite often. |
13 | ITCH, [d]ITCH. I couldn’t parse this for the longest time, then saw it. |
15 | BEHALF, BE HALF, or on someone’s BEHALF. |
16 | THEOREM, THE(O[ld] R.E.)M. At first I thought the soldiers were O.R., but that doesn’t work. |
18 | SPECIES, SPEC(I E[xtolled])S. |
20 | EGOIST, E.G. + O + anagram of IT’S. |
23 | ARCH, A(R.C.)H, an surprisingly elaborate clue for such a short word. |
24 | DISPOSSESS, D.I.’S POSSE + S, S. |
26 | DUAL CONTROL, sounds like DUEL + CONTROL, which is not actually spelled out on your CNTL key, is it? |
27 | AXE, EXA[m] backwards. |
28 | REMAND, RE(MAN)D. ‘In the red’ for owing or in debt is a common trick. |
29 | ADHERENT, A D[uke] HERE N.T. A compendium of cryptic cliches. |
Down | |
1 | PIFFLE, PI(F,F)LE, my first in. |
2 | RADICLE, R.A. DIC(L)E. I tried to use ‘dare’ for a while, then saw the answer from the literal. |
3 | SYSTEMATIC, anagram MESSY ACT, IT. |
4 | AFTER A FASHION, double definition, one rather literal-minded. It took me a long time to think of this, although it was on the tip of my brain. |
6 | LAID, DIAL upside down. |
7 | ARBITER, A ([c]R[ufts] BITER. Crufts is the UK dog show. |
8 | EYE RHYME, cryptic definition by example. My last in after going through the alphabet, and I’ve blogged it before! Same sort of clue, too. See puzzle 24515, April 19, 2010. |
11 | SHORT-TEMPERED, SHORT + TEMPERED in different senses. |
14 | DEMOISELLE, DE MO(I)SELLE, where ‘single’ = ‘I’. A very clever clue that was tough to crack. |
17 | ISLANDER, anagram of IN LEAR’S + [moul]D. Better Caliban than a goalie, I suppose. |
19 | EXCLAIM, EX-CLA(I)M. |
21 | SEEPAGE, SEE PAGE ??. |
22 | ASSERT, TRESS + A, all upside down |
25 | ICON, double definition. |
A nice puzzle, but definitely one for those who did French A-level.
This from someone who had never heard of an eye rhyme until it appeared here recently.
Have a good holiday, vinyl
Edited at 2014-06-30 02:50 am (UTC)
Thanks setter and blogger.
V, I don’t know if that’s a typo at 26ac, but my keyboard has Ctrl.
Edited at 2014-06-30 03:00 am (UTC)
Same DAMOISELLE issues as many others.
Like Paul, I was pleasantly misled into thinking about George Smiley, cleaning his glasses on his tie (must have been the specs in 18a that did it).
Very much enjoyed EXCLAIM
I managed to go from key to control without troubling the user interface device, though now I write it down I’m not sure how.
http://www.pablopicasso.org/avignon.jsp
If the Crossword Club finishes today as promised I think this will be my last Times puzzle. The only access for non-UK solvers seems to be a digital pack at GBP6 per week which is well beyond my means . I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for the Crossword Club, but being forced into a full subscription when all you want is the crossword is frustrating.
Thanks for the fun. From tomorrow I shall be a Guardian and Indie solver.
When left with _E_O_S_L_E at 14D I resorted to alphabet trawling hoping that the 9th letter would be revealing and thankfully this proved right when I hit L and somehow made the leap to DEMOISELLE. I still wasn’t confident as I only knew MOSEL without LE at the end so was relieved when I came here to check.
Had no problems with this in 20 minutes, all except the ITCH – EYE RHYME cross, then went into town for market day coffee, returning to find Mme had inadvertently tidied my printout into the recycling. So DNF on paper, only in my head while out and about.
My Cod SEEPAGE.
Will it be a ghost town around here tomorrow? I plan on continuing if it’s not too big a hit, but actually trying to sign up for things on that silly site seems to be a bother.
By way of comparison, the NY Times is $2 per day at the newsstand ($5 on Sunday) and my online sub, which doesn’t include the crosswords @ an additional $7 p/m because I don’t do them much, is $24 per month. My crossword webpack is $14p/m. In other words bigtone has a point about the expense (or not).
However I quite agree that the whole thing was handled very badly from the get-go so I don’t wonder that many are fed up. If only the suits had asked us I daresay most would have been quite ok with a reasonable increase in the club membership fee – L25 per annum was pretty much a steal. And then we wouldn’t be having all this upheaval.
Theorem was my NTLOI, after which I had to trawl the alphabet for the “rhyme” of EYE RHYME, which is also my COD. I do think that the “my” in the clue was a bit surplus to requirements, though. I also liked PIFFLE, which I think would have delayed many of our colonial brethren – not only is PIFFLE a gloriously English word, but “pile” for a stately home couldn’t originate from anywhere else.
ISLANDER was a bit of a guess, as the Caliban reference was over my head – my knowledge of Greek legends/Shakespeare/the Bible [delete as appropriate] is completely non-whelming.
Today’s award for Best Performer in an Ealing Comedy went to a child who, endearingly, got his head stuck in railings. It warms my heart to know that there are still children who can do this, rather than developing carpal tunnel syndrome from their Gameboys. Somewhat less endearingly, his friends (and I use the term cautiously) reasoned that he could be extricated from the fence by them all pushing on the top of his head. In theory, that should have worked; in practice it resulted in his ear being torn halfway off. As with so many things in life, a lubricant is always advisable. Still, it’s just as well they didn’t try pulling from the other side.
I blame wide reading and long-time cryptic experience.
1. ‘For example, my’, because ‘my’ rhymes with EYE, so it is an EYE RHYME in one sense.
2. ‘Move in relation to love’, because ‘move’ and ‘love’ constitute an EYE RHYME in the conventional sense, i.e. words that look the same.
This could be my final comment on the Times crosswords from Monday to Friday, as I’m expecting to lose access to the Times Crossword Club imminently – though at the time of writing (between midnight BST and midnight GMT) I’m still hanging in there! I may well join in at weekends (I’ll continue to buy the paper on Saturdays), but I’ll miss the day-to-day exchanges.
Meanwhile I plan to have an occasional skirmish with the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times crosswords, and I’ll be tackling five crosswords chosen pseudo-randomly from the years 1930 to 1969 (inclusive), which I’ll be reporting on – and asking for explanations of any clues I don’t understand – in my RTC3 blog (see the side panel) which now enters its third incarnation as “Recherché Times Crossword Clues Considered”.