Times 25850 – Biological charades

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
31 minutes for a very nice Monday offering with just enough to keep the seasoned solver honest. When was the last time a puzzle had five hyphenated double-word clues, all in the acrosses? Oh, and I managed one of the most embarrassing mombles of all time.

ACROSS

1 HEART-THROB – anagram* of BOTH RATHER.
7 AFRO – A[bnormal] + FRO (not ‘to’).
9 WATER-SKI – I wanted this to be ‘apres-ski’ despite the helpful Mitty stuff; it’s WALTER’S minus the L[ake] + KIN minus the last letter, and an &lit, I reckon.
10 INTEND – ‘mean’; [ratio]N in I TEND (‘I’m apt’).
11 STOCKY – ‘solid and thickset’ is the literal; STOCK (‘conventional’ as in stock figures, expressions or responses) + Y[outh].
13 CHARCOAL – ‘sketch’ (as in a drawing made with charcoal); and not ‘coalchar’ as I entered with a puzzled backward glance: it’s our old friend CHAR for daily (as in she who does or Mrs Mopp) followed by A in COL. But YOU all knew that anyway.
14 COURT-MARTIAL – ‘one tries’; COURT as in suck up to plus MARTIAL, the Roman poet who is to epigrams as Juvenal is to satires and Horace to odes.
17 ALLITERATION – I’m not sure what to call this, especially given the form I’m in, but is it maybe, perhaps a semi &lit? The literal is ‘device used a lot in Lear’ with the wordplay element provided by A LOT IN LEAR IT anagrammised by ‘turns out’.
20 REALISED – ‘brought in’ (realised in its financial sense); simple but elegant wordplay REAL + ED around IS.
21 ODDS-ON – unless I’m wrong again, this time the faux pas is the setter’s, as the godparent is the sponsor not the godchild; anyway, the wordplay as given is [g]ODSON around D[aughter].
22 BOLERO – I dabbled with various invented steps, before the Frenchman Ravel’s most famous piece came to my rescue via Torvill and Dean; a BOLERO is also a short jacket.
23 OXTONGUE – you get quite a few plants for your money with this name, as it covers a dandelion-like thing as well as various sharp-leaved things, such as mother-in-law’s tongue, surely the most evocatively named plant of them all. Also available in hyphenated and two-word forms; it’s X in O + TONGUE.
25 ADIT – ‘entrance to mine’ from the Latin for approach; it’s ADMIT minus its M (miners’ leader).
26 ELEVEN-PLUS – the exam ushered in by the Education Act of 1944 (AKA the Butler Act), which did so much for the independent schools; it’s PL in ELEVEN + US (where US is British slang for unserviceable or useless).

DOWN

2 EXACTION – I liked this clue, which focuses on the demand for money when it slips over the borderline of legality and becomes extortion; simple and elegant again: EX + ACTION.
3 RUE – another plant, this time a perennial, which shares its name with the French word for road.
4 TESTY – hidden.
5 RAILCAR – another charade: RAIL + C + A + R.
6 BRIGADIER – A (an) + DIER (sounds like ‘dear’) after BRIG.
7 ARTICULATED – double definition – clearly enunciated and segmented.
8 RENTAL – REAL around NT.
12 CURTAILMENT – another charade CURT (short) + AILMENT (illness) with an extended tongue-in-cheek definition.
15 MILLSTONE – ‘heavy burden’; JS MILL shows he has his uses by joining in the charades and taking TO and NE.
16 HONOLULU – ‘port’; the slightly more intricate wordplay is HON (unpaid) + LULU around O[ld]. My dictionary sweep shows outstanding and remarkable rather than marvellous for Lulu, but that’s probably trumped in one I haven’t seen and is arguably close enough anyway.
18 TADPOLE – ‘one that’s legless’, indeed; another charade: TAD + POLE.
19 SECOND – ‘tick’ as in ‘I’ll have this posted in a tick’; put ON on D (‘dog’s head) and SEC on top of that.
21OUTRE – ‘unusual’; T[ime] in OUR (“yours and my’) + E[ast].
24 NAP – double definition.

54 comments on “Times 25850 – Biological charades”

  1. Or more importantly, U minus 2.

    Agree that 21ac seems a bit strange. Tried “of sponsor” as the definition, but I don’t think that works either. Hopefully someone will be able to clarify, otherwise it’s the setter’s head on a plate.

  2. Pretty easy puzzle and also underlined “sponsor” and noted LULU. The former for reasons already given. The second because the usual sources give it as a noun; e.g., “an outstanding example”.
    1. I read it as unpaid=HON, person who’s marvelous=LULU; doesn’t that work?
      1. Overlooked the obvious … again! (Must be because I’m currently an upaid person!)
      2. And isn’t Glasgow’s own Lulu still considered a “person who’s marvellous”?
      3. Very possibly, Kevin. I was being a bit elliptic – what I meant was that ‘person who is remarkable’ is a bit different from ‘person who is marvellous’, but then maybe I’m thinking too fantastically.

        Edited at 2014-07-28 03:35 am (UTC)

  3. The SE slowed me down a bunch, first because, as Ulaca points out, 21ac is wrong, but more because I simply couldn’t get 23ac and 16d; since I’ve lived in Honolulu and am there every year, this last was all the more embarrassing (I persisted in thinking there must be a port that ends in -eau). DNK NAP.
  4. I can imagine it turning up in the Urban Dictionary one day, but with a rather different meaning.
  5. I completed all but three answers in 25 minutes but then got stuck. 7ac with A??? in place should have been a write-in but I simply couldn’t think of a hairstyle, bushy or not, that fitted. Disgraceful. The ‘R’ checker would then have put me on course to work out that the Brazilian money needed at 8dn must be the REAL – something I didn’t know. 23ac baffled me too as I have never met this plant without a hyphen or a space in its name as sanctioned by Collins alone among the usual sources. With five hyphenated double-words already in the grid it wouldn’t have hurt to have a sixth.

    I think ADIT is one of those crossword puzzle words you either know or don’t, and fortunately I do since I met it for the first time in a DT puzzle about 50 years ago and spent the best part of a day trying to work it out.

    1. Me too, re: adit. It would be interesting to know all the words and trivia I know only due to puzzles.
  6. A definite pb for me at 20:25 on the online timer, but with a couple unparsed: RAILCAR, HONOLULU (never come across Lulu in that sense), BRIGADIER, 11+.

    I agree with Jack about ADIT, a word I’ve only learnt since doing the crossie regularly. Didn’t stop to think about GODSON being either sponsor or sponsee as the lit was so obvious.

  8. 20.46, most of the time accounted for by panicking over OXTONGUE. Arrgh! A bloomer! I probably don’t know it! -U- at the end, must be -EUM or -IUM. Unknown person: that accounts for the N. So all I need is a language that goes -T–UM after O for old. Or possibly an old language like Oscan, but fitting the checkers.
    The panic ripples spread outward to clues that I was only just sure of: OUTRE and HONOLULU, and maybe ODDS-ON which surely had to be right even though it’s obviously wrong. Eventually resorted to electric Chambers, but got a null response. Which is (more or less) when the penny dropped. Is it still a technical DNF if you resort to aids and the aids don’t help and then you get the answer anyway?
    The rest of the puzzle not particularly easy but good quirky fun: I liked the short illness and “one tries”. Could have done with one more L in the Lear clue somewhere for better effect.
    So nearly had COALCHAR myself. Boy George, anyone?
    1. Excellent description of my mental processes when ‘plant’, ‘bloomer’, or one of their siblings appears. Apparently you didn’t waste time trying to fit (John) Doe in. And, of course, liked CONSUMPTION until it clearly didn’t work
  9. 24.30, going through pretty well the same contortions at the end as z8 over oxtongue but not resorting to aids. The sponsor error does seem an egregious one. Missing word (e.g. sponsor’s pick)?
  10. 16 min: raced through this, and than came to shuddering halt at 21, which looked like OCTONIUM. As that’s not a real word (and I couldn’t parse it) eventually resorted to my trusty Chambers Crossword Companion, and all was clear.
  11. 28 minutes, but with one wrong. I found this fairly gentle until I was left with the HONOLULU/OXTONGUE crossers. HONOLULU went in unparsed which left me with O_T_N_U_. Being unable to parse the clue I threw in the only thing I could fit in which was OCTONAUT. Sadly my suspicion that this was a CBeebies programme rather than a plant proved to be correct.
    1. Me too! I knew it was wrong (I am more familiar with Captain Barnacles and his crew than I would like) but it was the only thing I could come up with.
  13. As for most others enjoyable without being too difficult but containing what appears to be a mistaken sponsor and a missing hyphen. 20 minute ramble.

    I well remember the 11+ an exam that changed my life because by passing it and getting a place at a grammar school I took a path that enabled me to escape the surroundings I grew up in. When I meet with my old school mates for a round of golf we drink a toast to dear old Rab.

    1. I failed it twice. As with solving cryptic puzzles you need to know how the questions work, and nobody ever taught me how to approach them. It didn’t hold me back though as I passed the entrance exams to a private school which were more along the lines of what I’d learnt at my prep school.
      1. Fascinating story Jack. When I was 9 my father purchased several books of past papers. Every evening when he was at work I had to complete one paper which he would then mark during the day whilst I was school. The regime was relentless but by the time I took the exams I was “word perfect”.

        The saddest thing is that the education moved me away from my parents – who were typical products of education for the 1930s working class – but I never saw that until I was much older. I think he had a shrewd idea what would happen but pushed me nonethe less

          1. Battersea Grammar taught me disciplined self reliance and I found I related strongly to the pioneers of science and the scientific approach to problem solving. So, for example I was less interested in Ohm’s Law than in the way he developed his theory.

            Of course their work was so intertwined with politics and religion that I inevitably became interested in those factors as well.

            My prime academic interest was maths and it was my English teacher who introduced me to the Times Crossword as a way of broadening my knowledge base into the arts

  14. A gentle Monday stroll at 11:17, finishing by working through the alphabet to get the bloomer. No problems with the mine entrance, it has been the staple of many a quick crossword for years. I too marked ‘sponsor’ as being incorrect.

  15. No major hold ups today, other than at the end with LOI Court Martial (which I got only after correcting the spelling of Brigadeer (sic)). Didn’t fully understand Rue, Honolulu or Afro so thanks ulaca for explaining those and for the entertaining blog.
  16. 17:15. I should have been quicker but a careless EER ending for brigadier meant that court martial took longer to get than it should have (although I’d forgotten the epigrammer).

    Both plants unknown, adit remembered as a bit of a crossowrd staple.

    I though some of the definitions were a bit woolly where the clues weren’t quite &Lits (this, device used, made shorter by this).

    Well done Janie!

  17. Twenty minutes watching England doing better than usual at cricket. Nothing too difficult, OXTONGUE my LOI and same concern about the Godson / Godparent issue. Thanks for parsing HONOLULU, I just got it from the checkers and didn’t know the LULU meaning.
  18. 11 mins. It took me longer than it should have done to get on the setter’s wavelength, although that could have been because I was solving a few hours later than usual. Although I didn’t know OXTONGUE I saw the wordplay fairly quickly, and because I already had ELEVEN-PLUS the two U checkers led me straight to HONOLULU which helped my time considerably. ODDS-ON went in with a shrug, and INTEND was my LOI after RENTAL.
      1. I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times. On more than one occasion I’ve been able to solve clues involving obscure sea creatures (blenny, oarfish) because they have featured in an episode.
  20. Strange experience. About 7 minutes for all but my last two. After another five or so I managed to remember ‘lulu’, an expression last used in about 1962, from a previous crossword, but the bloomer proved impossible. Is ‘unidentified person’ supposed to be X? I’m obviously being particularly thick today because I don’t see how that is so.
    1. I think it is Mr X isn’t it?

      DNF also. I found several parts of this beyond my GK as usual.

      1. ‘Mr X’ would be an unidentified person, yes. But X?
        I have a friend whose first encounter with the rather intimidating old chap who was to be his tutor at Oxford consisted of said don saying ‘ah yes, good morning. And you are X, where X is…?’
        1. Well in the Collins on-line dictionary:

          “2. denoting any unknown, unspecified, or variable factor, number, person, or thing”

          I don’t really like it but I suppose this definition legitimises its use in a clue?

          Edited at 2014-07-28 02:02 pm (UTC)

          1. Yes I suppose it does. I still don’t like it either, but that’s mostly because I didn’t think of it!
            1. I know what you mean.

              As a relative novice, I come across several obscure meanings that are new to me in almost every puzzle. Most of the time they only affect my ability to parse a clue but occasionally they throw me right off. I find them just slightly less irritating than gaps in my GK in the areas of Classics, arts and plants.

              Thank goodness for this blog. I would not be getting better at solving without it.

              1. Just stick at it, and you’ll find that
                1) You start recognising the obscure words more often. I put ADIT straight in, for instance, and it’s a word I’ve only ever encountered in crosswords.
                2) Your GK improves. A large proportion of what I know about Classics, for instance, comes from these puzzles.
                3) You get better at solving clues even when there are gaps in your knowledge. There’s almost always something I don’t know in these puzzles but I almost always finish: it’s a knack.
                You’re absolutely right about the blog. When I discovered it a little over four years ago I failed to finish a lot, and there were always clues I couldn’t parse. I never bothered to look at the answers the next day to find out where I had gone wrong, which of course meant I never learned. Looking at this blog every day resulted in a very rapid improvement, and I’m still getting a little better at these darned things every day.
      1. Hmm. I’m not sure that establishes common usage! ‘John Doe’ was one of the things I thought of for ‘unidentified person’ in the long process of not thinking of ‘X’.
  21. Relatively easy puzzle, but many nice clues. I liked COURT-MARTIAL, ALLITERATION, EXACTION and CURTAILMENT.

    I agree with all those objecting to “sponsor”=”godson” at 21A. Explain yourself, please, setter!

  22. Due to driving back from north Norfolk, a rare chance to do this with a biro, hence the quicker time.. 19d = Tick? On board with all on 21ac
  23. I read X as the signature by a person unable to write his/her name – an unidentified person.
    Stronon
    1. I thought about that too but discounted it on the basis that an illiterate person signing a document with an X is actually identifying him/herself by doing so either above or below their printed name.
  24. Aargh! About 6 minutes for 27 of the 28 clues followed by about 20 minutes puzzling over 23ac (giving me 26:13 in total). I kept wanting “unidentified person” to be ONE. Eventually I started writing down possible endings and possible beginnings, and I see from my piece of rough paper that I’d already written the O for OYT when light at last dawned. I came perilously close to bunging in OSTONEUM as the least unlikely word I could come up with.

    This could be the one time when I might have been happier with a foodie clue to OX-TONGUE!!!

    Still I’m thankful that a) I got it right in the end, and b) the clue didn’t come up in the Championship.

  25. I’m pretty sure ADIT turns up somewhere in the Arthur Ransome canon: those resourceful youngsters ‘prospecting’.
  26. Just wanted to throw in that I was perfectly happy with both CONSUMPTION and CONFINEMENT for 12dn until checkers persuaded me otherwise. A clue where you can justify three answers that long is rare indeed!

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