Times 25,878: A Patsy Complexion

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Really enjoyed this puzzle, which, and I must stress I have no definite knowledge here, seemed to me bear the stylistic hallmarks of our esteemed editor. Whoever the craftsperson responsible, I hope you agreed with me that there’s a real mastery of surface going on here: lots of clues that superficially tell one straightforward and coherent story, but where every part has a double meaning, leading to something entirely new as the solution. I’m thinking 24A, where “handset” gives us a very clear picture of a “square base”, but it’s a different kind of square, and a different kind of base; or 8D, where all the talk of computers has put one kind of mouse in our mind’s eye, but of course it’s going to be the other. Add this to some lovely &lits and some pretty good examples of logodaedal humour (I think “the first shoe” in 25A was my favourite, but 10A and 4D, if I parsed the latter correctly, also deserve a mention).

I should probably deny to the Times Crossword team that I’m brown-nosing them at this point. Still, if they *wanted* to go a little easy on me at the October Championship event…

I did this online for a change so I can finally offer a time that isn’t based on guesswork and the average time between stations in the SE London rail network: 23 minutes. Well, maybe not: I’m ashamed to say that, given just a couple of clues to go in the northwest quadrant, the vexing letters R___E_A_, and that temptress the internet, I searched up some words capable of filling the gap, so maybe that time is null and void, and I should be struck off the blogging register forthwith? Either way I can’t say my time was achieved under exam conditions. Curse that one, solitary, ruinous moment of weakness…

Across
1 SUMO – sport: “that doesn’t amount to anything” is, in longhand, sum: zero
3 TEAM SPIRIT – cooperative attitude: MS [writing] + PI [very good] in TEAR IT [hurry + it]
10 IMPALED – stuck: “I follow secretary’s inititative” = I’m P.A. led
11 RHENIUM – metal: HEN I [layer I] in RUM [curious]
12 LEE HARVEY OSWALD – killer: (SO VERY WELL AHEAD*) “organised”
13 RHESUS – a factor: fou{R HE SUS}pects
14 TEARAWAY – unruly youth: double def with “roughly separate” (4, 4)
17 RIFLEMAN – private: IF [given] in R{esentfu}L + EMAN [name “rejected”]
18 SCAMPS – works perfunctorily: P [a tiny amount] in SCAMS [frauds]
21 POWER OF ATTORNEY – one’s right to act: POW [prisoner] + EROF [at the front “returned”] + (ON TREATY*)
23 ACCRUED – collected: A CC [a small volume] + homophone of “rude” [discourteous]
24 ADENINE – base: h{A}n{D}s{E}t [“oddly missing”] + NINE [square]
25 STAND-ALONE – by itself: T [time] in SANDAL ONE [“the first shoe”]
26 IDES – date: I DESIRE [I want] – IRE [anger]

Down
1 STILLER – less busy: DISTILLER [“man of spirit”] – DI [girl]
2 MAPLE LEAF – “one turns beautifully in Canada”: MAPLE [wood] + LEAF [part of table]
4 ENDIVE – leaves: E + N [quarters] + DIVE [“to go to bed” – a river or sea bed I assume?]
5 MORAY EEL – fish: AYE [always] in MORE L [extra length]
6 PRESSURE COOKER – “firmly closed pot”: RES [result “half”] + SURE [decided] + CO [officer] in POKER [gambling game]
7 RAITA – dish in Delhi: homophone of “writer”
8 TIMIDLY – like a mouse: M [miles] + IDLY [not thinking] after TI [computer stuff, i.e. IT, lifted]
9 PLEASURE GROUND – recreational space: SURE GROUND [certain reason] after PLEA [appeal]
15 WOMANKIND – (MAID KNOWN)* “somehow”, &lit;
16 DAFFODIL – national symbol: FFOD [take off “raised”] in DAIL [parliament]
17 REPEALS – cancels: R [runs] + lat{E} [“in the end”] + PEALS [rings]
19 SHYNESS – thi{S} pos{H} bo{Y} i{N} th{E} clas{S} speechles{S} “at the back”, &lit
20 STRAIN – double def, “make an effort”, “breed”
22 WICCA – pagan practices: WI [women organised] + C [clubs] + CA [around]

54 comments on “Times 25,878: A Patsy Complexion”


  1. Yay! All completed and understood, but I did take about 70mins or so…

    Would have been a lot quicker had I not had recalls for REPEALS for ages, but eventually ACCRUED put paid to that.

    A great puzzle to end a week of challenging puzzles…

    PS I’ve often hesitated over the pronunciation of RAITA – now I know!

    1. I put RECALLS in initially, but quickly had to reverse my decision given that C_W__ looked terrible for the across clue. In any case, you were not alone!
    2. Don’t be so sure, janie, as on a previous occasion there was an almighty argument about it!

      Edited at 2014-08-29 08:15 am (UTC)

    3. No quibble about the pronunciation of “raita” but I can clearly see two “r”s in “writer”, both of which deserve to be pronounced.
  2. It’s been a hard week! But, as with others this week, another difficult-but-enjoyable.

    Didn’t like RAITA much and wondered if all riflemen were privates; but, otherwise, a fine showing. COD to SHYNESS for escaping my notice until the very end.

  3. The club timer says two hours, but I was distracted for half of that time. Honest.

    Thought 12ac was a brilliant anagram, took ages to see it. In hindsight it looks like it should have been a write-in given the enumeration, but I think I was looking for the wrong sort of killer.

    RIFLEMAN was my LOI. I was as vexed as Verlaine with the checkers until I sorted things out.

    BTW Verlaine, I think 16dn is DOFF=”take off” raised in DAIL.

    Thanks setter and blogger, it’s been a fun week.

    1. You can tell I’m not a morning person, can’t you. Thank you so much, and amended!
  4. Very good stuff, contrasting with my solving ability today, which seems to have fallen away somewhat from the sub-20 yesterday. After many, many blank minutes at the start, I was (sort of) relieved to come home in 38.12.
    STAND ALONE gets maximum stars for me for being perfectly fair, witty and having a plausible, if eccentric, surface.
    The Dallas RIFLEMAN evaded capture even when I had most of the checkers in place: though it was clearly (ish) an anagram, that it was also a named killer somehow didn’t occur. I was looking for a virus or snake or something. Lee Valley disease (perhaps not as deadly as Ebola) in some variant was an enticingly invented candidate at one stage.
    I don’t quite (at all) get why the Maple Leaf “turns beautifully” in Canada. Enlightenment, please!

    Edited at 2014-08-29 08:38 am (UTC)

    1. I didn’t think of RIFLEMAN as being thematic with LEE HARVEY OSWALD – I guess that could have made a tricky clue slightly easier to solve…

      October 18th is LHO’s 75th birthday so maybe this is all a way of priming us for the London event…

      1. Obviously the real question is was this a STAND ALONE effort or (at the opposite end of the grid) an example of TEAM SPIRIT?
      1. I imagined it turning gently as it dropped to the ground, but that is much less convincing than your explanation…
      2. Yep, that’ll do. Better than trying to find it in The Maple Leaf for Ever. Which I did and, of course, failed.
        Would red-green colour blind people be entitled to say “no it doesn’t”?
  5. 37 minutes. I’ve decided to spend time parsing the answers I’ve put in by definition only in the hope that this will improve my solving. TEAM SPIRIT and MORAY EEL took a while and I didn’t manage ENDIVE so thanks to verlaine for explaining that one.

    My esteemed Indian colleague has it that RAITA is a homophone of writer contrary to how I’ve always pronounced it.

  6. What a week this has been and it ends with probably the best of a very good bunch. My solving paper is covered in attempted parsings and ticks against first class clues. 45 minutes for this one.

    What’s the current thinking in the US about Lee H-O? There certainly used to be quite a body of opinion that he was a fall guy and that somebody else actually killed JFK

    1. On a more serious note, saw a reasonably convincing doco saying JFK was killed by a Secret Service agent hastily pulling his gun up and mistakenly hitting the trigger, after hearing the first shot. Oswald had only 2 shots, both missed. Supporting evidence included: direction bullet appeared to come from/brain appeared to go; smell of cordite at ground level; short time between 2nd & 3rd shots impossible with the rifle Oswald had.

      30:36, RIFLEMAN last in. DNK AYE=always, SCAMPS, DAFFODIL as a symbol, unsure of ADENINE without wordplay. Liked SANDAL ONE.

  7. Another tricky one – too convoluted for my tastes, though clearly I found this quite different to other solvers as RIFLEMAN was my FOI (perhaps due to playing a fair amount of Warcraft when I was younger). Didn’t help myself by whacking in rhodium at 11A and recalls at 17D. Also mulled for a while over SCAMPS, as I didn’t know that meaning even though it fitted the wordplay.
  8. RR has disavowed to me having compiled this particular puzzle, by the way – I get it wrong every time! Who would have thought there’d be two (or more) people of such deviousness in the Times Cryptic gang…
    1. Yes, but if you asked him if he shot JFK or LHO, he wouldn’t tell you that either.

      Or he might, but then…

      Edited at 2014-08-29 09:27 am (UTC)

  9. A stuttering 40′. Adenine new to me. The killer took far too long; I too had valley on the go. Nice grid – liked the mix of long and shorter answers. Also the maid known to womankind anagram (with the Biblical suggestion).
  10. I also resorted to aids but not until the hour had passed, at which point all timings become irrelevant in my book as by then I’m ready to concede the setter has the better of me. I was pleased however to get my only unknown words (ADENINE and WICCA) from wordplay, and having read the blog solving R___E_A_ without aids counts as another small achievement. My other unknown was the meaning required at 18ac.

    I lost time along the way going down many blind alleys, thinking SLACKER at 1dn, RECALLS at 17dn, PLEASURE GARDEN at 9dn and CURRY/CURRIE at 7dn which was actually the wrong way round to fit the grid and anyway the author is not dead.

    I was very pleased not to be blogging this Friday.

    Edited at 2014-08-29 08:16 am (UTC)

    1. Yep, I didn’t know 18A, thought of SKIMPS at first, but SCAMPS fits the wordplay better (and Chambers assured me it was all kosher).

      In my defence resorting to a hint so early, there was a 1 year old daughter stirring in her cot upstairs, which could have *really* sabotaged my time to finish…

  11. Yes, another nice one to round off the week. Last in were Verlaine’s Bane followed by the excellent TEARAWAY.

    Incidentally, the normal policy is not to include any part of an answer in the title, as some people may, for instance, be popping by to check the Quickie blog before doing the main crossword, and if they see a solution it can be a bit miffing!

    1. That is a good rule, and one which I shall adhere to henceforth. What a greenhorn I am!
    2. Have changed the title on a better-late-than-never basis. Also, the new one was just too groanworthy to resist.
  12. Another great puzzle; no actual unknowns or resort to aids but it still took me just over an hour of serious pondering. Add me to those who had RECALLS at first go. Also didn’t spot DOFF rather than OFF and wondered where the D came from, or the parsing of SHYNESS until staring at the clue (my almost LOI) for quite a while. LOI the NW corner STILLER MAPLE LEAF and IMPALED all of which in retrospect were not difficult.
  13. I have an Irish writer friend who has been obsessed with the JFK assassination for years and can talk non stop for hours about it, but has been unable to come to any definite conclusions; probably why his book on it has yet to appear in print.
  14. I thought this might be chewy when only 26ac and 22dn went in on the first pass (having only thought of JUDO and POLO for 1ac, d’oh). After 15 minutes the bottom third was complete and I had to go to play for a funeral. On my return I didn’t restart the stopwatch and resume before I had made a strong coffee and the rest fell bit by bit. Great stuff and a great week. 43 minutes.
  15. Slow to get going with this one but got there in the end and finished faster than yesterday.
    FOI Rhesus and LOI Shyness. The raita/writer homophone doesn’t work for me: I pronounce raita as rye-eater.
    I don’t remember ever seeing the words ‘Pleasure Ground’ in any book I’ve read!
    1. You’re obviously not reading German books, where it is used as a loan-word to describe a glorified lawn. Never heard if it either, though there is now one at Runnemede, near where I used to live, I learn from Wicca – I mean Wiki. A glorified children’s playground…
  16. 23m. Another excellent and chewy puzzle. Four in a row looks like it can’t be coincidence, but of course it can.
    I didn’t know SCAMPS or ADENINE. Like others I had RECALLS for a while but C_W_R looked unlikely, and the words ‘prisoner at the front’ in 21ac made me think it must start with a P. Right for the wrong reason is fine by me.
    Like z8 I thought there must be something more specific going on at 2dn, but I had forgotten this meaning of ‘turning’, which has come up recently (Quickie 83) in a very similar context.
  17. Yes, another superb offering. Immensely well structured and enjoyable. Thanks to the setter, whoever it may be! 31:12
  18. I believe the latest thinking is that he didn’t shoot JFK, but he did fake the moon landings.
  19. Four toughies on the trot – are we lucky or what? Found this by some way the hardest of the four – completed fully parsed in just on 40 minutes; the first time I’ve been over the half hour for quite a while. Strangely, given that I like a chewy puzzle a great deal, I wasn’t so enthusiastic about this as others seem to be; struggled to get a start – STRAIN FOI, followed by RHESUS – but thereafter, it felt like each clue solved was like pulling teeth. Feeling of relief when I finally got my LOI STILLER following LEE HARVEY OSWALD rather than a sense of achievement. All the way through, I kept thinking I wasn’t going to be able to get it out – that horrible sinking feeling. Dnk ADENINE or WIKKA (although I think I’ve come across the latter somewhere) and I don’t think I’ve come across SCAMPS with this meaning. I, too, struggled to see how TURNS BEAUTIFULLY worked in 2dn, but now I see – thank to Verlaine for a very helpful blog. COD to 17ac for deceiving me for so long!
  20. 30 mins. I agree that this was another excellent puzzle. I didn’t know that meaning of SCAMPS and I can’t recall having seen ADENINE before, so although they both seemed to fit the wordplay I didn’t want to enter them until I had solved 19dn, the absolutely superb &lit SHYNESS, and the three of them were my last ones in.
  21. Not as tricky as some this week, perhaps because I knew the ‘unknowns’ like adenine (it must have been in a recent crossword but I solve so many each week, who knows). An enjoyable 14:33 although I will admit to the use of Tippex (I too had recalls before I realised about ‘power’ in 21a).
  22. A tough end to a tough week. I expected a 30-minute solve, but it was double that. The two long entries at 12 & 21 held me up for ages, but I was one of those with RECALLS for 17dn until I decided it couldn’t be right (I was never convinced anyway). I had several question marks where the wordplay partly eluded me even when I had the answers.
    I’ve never pronounced 7dn in the way needed for the clue, but I see Chambers includes it as one of two pronunciations.
    I’m inclined to agree with dj that this is probably the best of this week’s offerings.
  23. Agreed, a continuation of the week’s series of excellent puzzles. I got through in 45 minutes, ending with RIFLEMAN. I even parsed everything, although I admit SCAMPS and ADENINE are unknown. I don’t pronounce RAITA very often at all, so I’ll stay out of the homophone discussion. Jimbo, my US opinion is that most here fail to swallow that the Warren Commission report can be fully accurate, and that much is unknown; beyond that too much time has passed for the question to stir much further debate. The Warren Commission version (magic bullet, etc.) became the butt of comedy sketches years ago. But I will point out that the 12A clue, with a great surface and cunning anagram, is outstanding. Thanks setter, and regards all.
  24. Well, I was glad to finish this one, after several DNFs in a row. I found it tough going, but pleased to see ADENINE, RHENIUM and RHESUS representing science, and WICCA as a nod to medical practice. SCAMPS was my LOI, because I couldn’t convince myself of its meaning.

    What struck me most about this one was its consistency – I can’t remember my FOI (it was so long ago), but after that every clue was equally chewy, and there were no shortcuts.

    1. I didn’t say what my own FOI was, but it was RHENIUM, because “layer” is almost always going to be HEN these days, isn’t it…
      1. RHENIUM was one of my LOIs, because I got diverted by “metal layer” and was trying to fit either “plating” or “gilding”.
      2. I spotted immediately that I needed a metal containing HEN, but it still took me a long time and some checkers to work out what it was. An English degree isn’t a lot of help for this sort of thing (or much else, arguably), but I’m very much in favour.
  25. It’s the end of the day but I think SANDAL ONE for “the first shoe” is not really acceptable. Yes, with checkers, you can get the answer but in my opinion it’s a leap to far for the show.
    1. I’ve already replied to the same comment in the TCC Cryptic Forum, but it’s a complete mystery to me why you find “the first shoe” unacceptable.
        1. Let’s go back to pre-historic times when Mr Ug, who’d got fed up of walking around barefoot, constructed the first shoe out of a leather sole with leather thongs to hold it in place.

          “That looks nice,” said Mrs Ug. “What are you going to call it?”

          Mr Ug scratched his head for a moment. “I think I’ll call it a ‘sandal’,” he said, “but it’s only a prototype, and I expect I’ll produce better versions, so I’ll call it SANDAL ONE.”

          And ever since then, inventors have followed the same formula, so we have “Sputnik 1” and “Explorer 1” and “Apollo 1” and …

          Edited at 2014-08-30 10:26 am (UTC)

  26. It’s all been said – excellent end to a banner week. My last in was RIFLEMEN, but in the end no question marks which is the sign of a good offering!
  27. 10:30 for me – not as fast as I should have been given that I was on the setter’s wavelength most of the time, but at least not a complete disgrace.

    As Dr Thud says, it’s nice to have a bit of science in there, though I’m surprised how many people hadn’t come across ADENINE before. (Perhaps DNA doesn’t figure as largely on the Planet Zog!?)

    I enjoyed this puzzle, but its more convoluted clues make me rate it less highly than the other four puzzles so far this week – and suspect that it isn’t the crossword editor’s handiwork.

  28. I looked at this at midnight last night and prudently decided that it wasn’t going to be a quick solve for me. I came back to it this evening and managed to complete, but it certainly was not quick.
    I’m pretty sure I came across ‘scamp’ in the sense in which it is used here in ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ which I started to read many years ago and really must finish one day.

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