Times 25889 – QED? No, QVZ!

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 21:23, but a careless typo cost me an all-correct on the club timer. I wonder if we have some competition because even before I post there’s a few 3-4 minute times up on the board.

I don’t think this was particularly difficult, but the setter and I were on those completely separate wavelengths, meaning I had to poke and scratch to get the clues together. I nearly filled a page with scribble for the long anagrams at 15 and 9, and I suspect if you saw through the crafty definitions (particularly the one at 15) then there was really only one word that fit and you wouldn’t have to agonize over wordplay.

I wondered early on with a J, K and F placed if we were heading to a pangram but I think we are missing Q, V and Z.

Away we go…

Across
1 TABOUR: ABOUT(practically) with the T at the back moved to the front, then R(otate)
4 SKI SLOPE: anagram of KISS, then LOPE(bound)
10 PLANETARIUM: (ARENA,IT)* in PLUM
11 COB: double definition
12 EXCERPT: R in EXCEPT(but)
14 TOTALLY: TALL(unlikely) in TOY(play)
15 NYMPHOMANIACAL: (A,HOLY,MAN,IN,CAMP)* – and a terrificly precise definition
17 FUND,A,MENTALIST
21 EPITAPH: double container! IT in PAP in EH
22 ESSEN,C(ologn)E
23 SPA(n)
24 IRRELIGIOUS: anagram of GIRLS,II(a couple more upright characters) and ROUE
26 TWENTIES: WENT(passed) in TIES
27 WICKED: double definition – I guess Harry Potter revived the use of “wicked” to mean good, though for me it seems rooted in the Famous Five
 
Down
1 TUPPENNY: alternating letters in PePpEr in TUNNY
2 BRA: take the IN out of BRAIN
3 UNEARTH: hidden in perU NEAR THailand
5 KNITTING NEEDLE: KING(man) holding NIT(louse egg),T(time), then NEEDLE(worry)
6 SUM,AT,RA
7 OSCILLATION: (COLONIALIST)*
8 (lat)E,MB,RY,O(perations)
9 PANTOMIME HORSE: PAN(criticize) then (HEROISM)* in TOME
13 COMMUNICATE: N, I CA(n) IN COMMUTE
16 STRESSED: DESSERTS reversed
18 DIARIST: SIR,AID reversed then T
19 ASSEGAI: ASSE(t), then A in GI. A weapon I always associate with W.C. Fields in “The Bank Dick”
20 JET SET: double def
25 OI,(pilloc)K: possibly a reference to Mark “Jacko” Jackson (warning, cannot unwatch)

30 comments on “Times 25889 – QED? No, QVZ!”

  1. Excellent puzzle. I felt like I’d done well to get through this in just over the half hour, but we’ll see what times come in.

    COD to NYMPHO, where I spent far too long looking for a word beginning with POLY. As George says, should have focused on the definition rather than the wordplay.

    Thanks setter and well blogged George (ignoring the dredging up of the best-forgotten Jacko).

  2. But I know I spent ages in the SW where EPITAPH refused to be parsed — thanks George. Thought over every Frank except Anne and assumed 26 had something to do with TEENAGE.

    Could the FUN DAME in 17ac connect with 15ac?


  3. Quickish for me today, seemed like quite a lot that have been used before/recently (EXCE-R-PT; DESSERTS rev, BRA, ESSEN).

    cnp: SUMATRA (forgot about the Sun God) and EPITAPH, so they went in on def alone. Thanks for working out EPITAPH, don’t think I could have got that from wp.

    Also, couldn’t see where the “point’ bit came in COMMUNICATE, so thanks for that (just thought it was anag of ‘I can’).

    1. I completely missed that two – in the crossword and then in G’s blog.

      Stunning time, by the way – makes Galspray look quite pedestrian.

  4. After a very stressful day (at least by retiree standards – it didn’t really compare with a tough day at the office, but I’m out of practice dealing with it) I struggled my way through this in exactly an hour with one look-up along the way.

    That was on 15ac where I had been convinced the anagram had to start with POLY- to account for ‘many’ in the definition, and that fixation was preventing progress on several adjoining answers. In particular it stymied me on 13dn where it emerged that I had another error in place through having written SAN at 23ac based on S{p}AN, although I had wondered whether it was fair to expect the cut letter to be taken from the inside of a word without a more specific indication.

    Can we please have a moratorium on supporter/bra?

    Edited at 2014-09-11 05:46 am (UTC)

  6. 57′, with SKI-SLOPE last in, rather oddly. Thanks to George for the parsing of 21a, which the adrenalin of blogging day may or may not have helped me untangle. Like Gallers, I was looking for something else at 15a – something with a Kinseyan or Margaret Meadish quality to it, with exotic associations of libidinous South Sea Islanders, but it was not to be.

    Paul’s got an excellent puzzle of similar difficulty in today’s Guardian.

  7. Off the wavelength with this one too, also falling victim to assuming 15A would start with POLY. Ended up having to solve the anagram on paper even when I had all the checkers except the first.
  8. A pleasant puzzle with 2 nice long anagrams. Many went in unparsed so thank you George for the blog.
  9. Disrupted time of 30 minutes. There has to be a Duckworth-Lewis system around here somewhere that accounts for both time lost when the doorbell rings and the speeded up solving on return.
    POLY- was so obvious in 15 that I suspect everyone went for it, and it surely slowed me down. If only I’d got TUPPENNY first. I spent a few idle moments trying to remember the King in the Arabian nights. Looking up post solve, I found I had never known what it was, but he also enjoyed multiple relationships (1001 if memory serves).
    A satisfying and not at all irritating puzzle.
  10. 35 minutes for me today, so back to somewhere around average.

    I very much enjoyed this puzzle, particularly some of the definitions – “textile worker”, “it needs two actors”, “Frank, perhaps”…

  11. 17 mins. Count me as another held up by thinking “poly…….” at 15ac until I got the N checker from TUPPENNY. I had the most trouble in the SW and only cracked it after the checkers from the COMMUNICATE/FUNDAMENTALIST crossers led me to my last two, DIARIST and TWENTIES. As has been said above, a quality puzzle with some amusing definitions.
  12. I found this the easiest puzzle for some time, but also enjoyable. Just under half an hour, a good time for me.
  13. 36 minutes for this, slowed by one oversight. The long entries mad things tricky, but 9d was obvious as soon as I thought of PAN for ‘criticise’. Like most others I was distracted for too long by POLY as a starter for 15. My oversight was to enter KNITTING just from ‘louse’s egg’, but forgot that used the extra T, so was expecting the second word to begin with T. The error was only spotted when I got 17.
    12 has both an insertion indicator and a container for the R; I haven’t seen that before, but it seems to work here.
    A good puzzle, far more satisfying than yesterday’s.
  14. 9:46. My kind of puzzle, clearly. It was a bit of a game of spot the definition, with a lot of wordplay worked out afterwards. Fortunately I managed not to do this with 19dn: I have been caught out by something similar in the past so was aware that it’s not necessarily spelled ASSAGAI.
  15. Having had a very frustrating morning with computer problems, it was nice to sit down to a piece of paper that didn’t cause any problems at all. One second under 9 minutes for me today.
  16. I love the ‘satisfying and not at all irritating’ definition by z8. I personally could have suffered a bit more gristle, but it was a pleasant enough roam, I guess. 21 mins.

    BRA as supporter: yes, please can we be liberated.

  17. An excellent puzzle that provided a challenge without being in any way unfair. Some very ingenious wordplay – e.g EPITAPH – and the two long down clues, KNITTING NEEDLE and PANTOMIME HORSE were first-class. I also thought UNEARTH was a particularly well-disguised hidden word.

    I too was among those who wasted much time chasing the POLY will-o’-the-wisp at 15A. Nice piece of mis-direction by the setter.

  18. Did half of this in 10 minutes before golf (Aquitaine FFG team champs today and tomorrow) and the rest half asleep at home in 25 minutes, after 5 hours in the baking sun. I suspect it was an easy one but I was far from sharp. Didn’t get TUPPENNY for cheap, until resorted to aid; also wanted a POLY start to 15ac until then. I was also worried about TABOUR, thought it was a TAMBOUR and it seemed unlikely both were drums, which they are.
  19. Like Pip I knew TAMBOUR and also TABOR (usually when preceded by ‘pipe and’) but for some reason ignored the obvious in favour of a momble. Too embarrassing to spell it out here, but I knew I had seen it and realised afterwards that it was the unusual surname of a 19th century philanthropist I once had reason to look up. Other than that, 25 minutes and like others diverted on to the right lines in 15ac by TUPPENNY.
  20. Between 15 and 20 minutes or so, ending with TUPPENNY, because it looks like an unusual way to spell it. Since it isn’t a usage at all common over here, I’ll leave that to the home team. I thought this was all a lot of fun, and I join those who assumed 15 needed ‘POLY-‘. While ‘bra’ is indeed getting tiresome, so are many of the other clichés that appear regularly, so I would not single the supporter out from all the others. It could be used less, but still be helpful to the setters when the need arises. Thanks to today’s setter, by the way, and George also. Regards.
  21. All correct in 35m but a slow start wrestling to find the wavelength. Lots to enjoy as others have said with for me at least nothing obscure and only a handful of question marks. My COD for the textile workers. Thanks for blog.
  22. 21:35 thanks to my adding an additional buggeration factor at 15. Not only did I confidently write in POLY at the start, I equally confidently wrote in IC at the end.
  23. Beaten by the drum. Like some others, I’d vaguely heard of a “tambour”, but not the m-less variant. I thought the “practically” in the clue was “all but” to be mutilated somehow.

    Still, I enjoyed several of the clues including NYMPHOMANIACAL, IRRELIGIOUS and OSCILLATION. WICKED, on the other hand, seemed a bit feeble.

  24. 14:29 for me – another who was confident that 15ac was going to begin with POLY.

    It’s quite rare that I don’t enjoy a Times cryptic, but I’m afraid this just wasn’t my sort of puzzle: too many convoluted clues, some rather dreary surface readings, and nothing to raise even the hint of a smile.

  25. I’m sorry that Tony didn’t enjoy this puzzle: I thought that it was another good one. I also tried to fit ‘poly’ in at the beginning of 15a, and, if it was deliberate misdirection on the setter’s part, it clearly worked, with so many of us led up the garden path.
    i also enjoyed thud_n_ blunder’s role reversal in being beaten by the drum.

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