Times 25900 – the setter’s revenge

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Maybe I am just dim this morning. Or I’ve been too blasé on past Wednesdays and upset the nice gentlemen who compose these masterpieces. After an hour and 22 minutes on this stinker, I have all but two clues (I think) sorted out; hopefully the last will come to mind while composing the blog, now being written and shortly to appear; or no doubt the sharper minds have their pencils poised to publish their sparkling times.

Across
1 FISHWIFE – I SH (keep it zipped) W(ith) inside FIFE; def. baggage?
5 FENCES – Double def; receives, as in stolen goods; fences to be jumped / negotiated. Very clever.
9 ORC – ORCA is a killer whale (one out of school), cut the A, def. warlike figure; one of the nastier types in LOTR.
10 SPRING A LEAK – SPEAK around RING AL. (Talk around syndicate, Al Capone).Def. start letting stuff out.
12 TABLE-D’HOTE – Anagram, (HEAD BOTTLE)*, I was put off by the (unwarranted?) hyphenation for a while.
13 IGOR – I GO R (one shot runs); first name of 8 dn.
15 AT REST – TA (cheers, thanks), reversed, REST = others, def. still.
16 DO A BUNK – Cryptic double def; build a bed, run away.
18 CORSICA – CORA(L) = short pink, around SIC(K) = in very poor taste, largely; island.
20 CANAPE – CAN = American name for the Gents; APE = do like, imitate; def. party food.
23 NUMB – NU (Greek letter), MB (doctor); def. insensitive.
24 STAY-AT-HOME – STAY = guy (rope), AT HOME = sort of party; becoming a non party goer.
26 PLAY FOR TIME – PLAY (toy, as in play with = toy with); F (fine), OR (gold); TIME (bird, prison time); def. stall.
27 ETH – last letters (east enders) of CrewE buT WelsH; an old letter used in Middle English and various Scandinavian tongues.
28 SHERRY – SHY = retiring, around ERR = are out; def. a drink.
29 IDOMENEO – I (one) DO (gathering) MEN (fellows) E(nglish) O (round); Mozart’s first opera.

Down
1 FROSTY – FRO (opposite of ‘to’, not ‘to’), STY (stay with the A dropped); def. very unfriendly.
2 SACKBUT – SACK = fire, BUT = save; def. old instrument. My FOI.
3 WASHETERIA – (WHITES ARE A)*; the Are A from are as, mostly; another name for a launderette.
4 FOR THAT MATTER – Hidden in HENCE(FORTH ATM AT TER)MINAL; def. indeed. Well hidden it was, too.
6 ERAS – ERAS(ED) = disappeared (sort of), without the Ed for our esteemed Editor; def. Times. The ‘The’ was misleading me. Thanks Jimbo.
7 CHENGDU – (CND HUGE)*, Chinese city.
8 SIKORSKY – KO (put out) inside SIR, then SKY = send up; def. Russian engineer, emigrated to the US in 1919 and founded his company which made the first flying boats for Pan Am and the first viable helicopters.
11 NOT A DICKY BIRD – Amusing cryptic definition; def. nothing.
14 MAINSTREAM – MA’AM (way to greet Queen), around (ER ISNT)*; def. conventional.
17 SCHNAPPS – SNAP (sudden) P’S (pressure’s), around CH; def. spirit.
19 RUMMAGE – RUM (eccentric), MAGE (old savant); def. not organised search.
21 PHONE-IN – PIN (clip) with HONE (perfect) inside; def. radio show.
22 JETHRO – JET (what’s released under pressure); HR (personnel dept.); O(ld); def. man’s name.
25 IFOR – One for, Welsh first name.

64 comments on “Times 25900 – the setter’s revenge”

  1. Took me almost an hour. I’m exhausted. Think I’ll sit in the garden and relax for a while; it’s a bit early for a brandy.

    Having said that, it is a very clever puzzle full of all sorts of ruses and deceptions, and a hidden clue that deserves to be framed and hung on my wall. Congratulations to the setter.

    1. Whenever my solving companion, Dr G and I felt we deserve a single malt for unravelling a particularly devilish clue, we never let time be a constraint. We would say “It’s 1 pm in Melbourne” when it is 10 am in Kuala Lumpur. Cheers!
  2. 29 minutes or so for a brilliant puzzle, full of good things. Thanks to the setter.

    Unfortunately, I forgot to go back and parse the Russian and so came a cropper with “Sikorski”.

    1. No checkers in place I had Sakharov, who gave way to Sikovsky before the real Russian revealed himself.
  4. For 6D an unusual transitive with sinister political implications. About the same time and frazzled state as the Lancashire Lad. Strewth.
  5. 22 minutes, so delighted to have clocked up a rare double Magoo. Agree about the excellence of so much of this puzzle. Pip’s travails are a timely reminder of what we owe him and all the other bloggers who occasionally suffer to provide our daily entertainment.
  6. Another tough one, with a couple of minutes at the end on the ERAS/FENCES crossing. Not massively keen on unnecessary articles such as the “The” at the beginning of the clue for ERAS but the surface wouldn’t have worked as well without it. Was sure FENCES was the right answer but took a while to justify the second definition. Didn’t know/had forgotten that meaning of baggage, and WASHETERIA is an ugly word.
  7. Pip, 6D is missing from blog. It’s ERAS(ed) I think, ED being the Editor. I struggled with “disappeared” as a definition but I can’t see it can be anything else

    A fine puzzle that yesterday’s setter should study and learn from. There are so many clever and misleading devices within a really entertaining solve

    Thank you setter

    Pip, don’t beat yourself up – it could happen to any of us

    1. As Joe has suggested above, Collins certainly (and possibly other sources) have the word as a transitive verb, usually with a sinister meaning from Latin America e.g. people in Chile under Pinochet were “disappeared”.
  9. Unfathomable, isn’t it, how you can find yourself on the wavelength one day but not the next. After thrashing around horribly yesterday, I found today’s to be testing but manageable, and clocked a respectable 22 minutes. Sorely tempted by that popular offering from the wine list, TABLE WHITE, but couldn’t see how to parse it, which is usually a pretty good indicator that you’re on the wrong track – and it’s always easy to forget about the possibility of that unindicated apostrophe in the real answer. As the time draws near, I reckon this felt like exactly the sort of puzzle you might expect to encounter on Finals Day.
  10. My time blown apart by spending around 15 (!) minutes on LOI the relatively easy WASHETERIA. I had got it into my head that it was a (5,5) and you try getting an aagram out of that! I may well have to book an appointment with the Stupid Clinic.
    Otherwise, yes, a dandy puzzle of reverse-engineering clues, including that fantastic hidden, unspotted until I had guessed the answer and struggled to do just about every other solving trick with the clue. How is that possible?
    What an extraordinary pioneer Sikorsky was! I discovered today that less than 4 years after Bleriot’s Channel hop, Sikorsky was flying a 4-engined airliner with 16 passengers and a loo aboard. I am shamed by my ignorance of such genius.
    1. I like the concept of an ‘aagram’, presumably an anagram that takes a long time to solve before finally seeing it.

      Edited at 2014-09-24 10:44 am (UTC)

  11. 49′ but with an invented Welshman, Afor, at 25d. Shame on me with 5 years in a Welsh Male Voice Choir under my belt. Not much use for making all those jokes (‘Afor Biggun’??) either.

    COD to the Frankie Howerdesque 11d.

  12. 24m. I seem to have been on the setter’s wavelength for this one, judging by the club leaderboard. I thought it was a smashing puzzle. As john_from_lancs says the hidden at 4dn is quite brilliant but there are lots of other great clues. Where they were hard it wasn’t by dint of obscurity, and the unfamiliars were clearly clued. Thanks setter.
  14. Very pleased to get through this in 63 minutes with only 2 cheats (at 7dn and 8dn – and I never feel so bad about cheating on unknown foreign words).

    There were several answers I thought I spotted immediately (and correctly as things turned out) but was unable to parse so they didn’t go in until the checkers confirmed they just had to be right, PLAY FOR TIME and IDOMENEO for example. This week has now had its share of hard puzzles and I’m hoping for something more relaxing tomorrow.

    1. Corrected. Typing too fast, somehow the HTML para got deleted. Was in a rush to get to the med lab before French lunchtime!
  16. I hope there’s at least one other solver who knows that indeed Eth was a character in Eastenders (inadvertently bumped off by Ben). I actually considered Eph far a moment as that’s what her mate Shirley called and still calls her, especially now Ben’s reappeared (enough, enough!). On edit: oh no, how awful, I’m thinking of Ev, maybe the clue’s referring to Ethel Skinner, Dot’s old friend now long gone.

    Edited at 2014-09-24 10:47 am (UTC)

  17. 23 mins. I thought this puzzle was an absolute belter, full of crafty definitions, inventive wordplay, and the truly superb hidden 4dn. At first I thought I was going to struggle like I did yesterday, but once I realised how quirky the cluing was I was able to get on the setter’s wavelength. It also helped that I knew SIKORSKY and the two K checkers from it were very helpful. Count me as another whose last two in were the ERAS/FENCES crossers.
  18. Wasn’t Eth the one with the extraordinarily ugly dog, whose soubriquet Willy was the source of endless mirth? I know nothing of current goings on in Walford.
    1. You could well be right. Current goings-on are worth tuning in to. Epic, abysmal, and brilliantly done.
  19. 37.3 and a real battle. I’m not sure about “fishwife” defined as “baggage” and I see Pip queries it (good blogging by the way). I think of the one as a scold and the other as a minx.
  20. Superb puzzle. I would love to have fully solved it but after an hour I threw in TABLE-WHITE unparsed. The anagrist had led me to TABLE-DHOTE, but I dismissed it immediately, failing to consider the possibility of the apostrophe.

    About twenty candidates for CoD, but it’s hard to go past NOT A DICKY BIRD.

    Thanks setter, more please. And thanks blogger, gutsy effort.

  21. Well it seems you and the setter do; I didn’t, have never watched it, although in the back of my mind I wondered; memories of Ron & Eth AKA the Glums.
  22. Agree with everyone’s comments about the high quality of today’s offering. However, I was very much in the “struggled” corner rather than the “on the setter’s wavelength” brigade. So just on the hour for me, and that included SIKORSKI. I managed to convince myself that SKY = SEND UP RUSSIAN; you know, the way one adds SKY to words when they have a Russian connection, as with Abramovich’s CHEALSKI. Ah well, it seemed fine at the time.
  23. Phew! 31:34, LOI technically Chengdu but I was really just waiting to confiem the C so in reality fences was last (with eras just before).

    The multi-word answers pretty much all went in on def and checkers with WP confirmation to follow. Conversely I had to construct Idomeneo piece by piece from the wordplay.

    Having once produced a hidden word clue for Spanish omelette it’ll take more than “for that matter” to win a prize from me so COD goes to canape. Not the hardest word in the world to clue with can + ape but very nicely done indeed.

    Top notch puzzle, thanks to setter and hardy blogger.

    Edited at 2014-09-24 12:20 pm (UTC)

    1. Having once produced a hidden word clue for Spanish omelette ..

      Well, you can’t say that and not give us the clue!

        2. Yes, but it was the wrong word, pip!

          keriothe — the toughest gig in town. At least at the Comedy Store they don’t heckle over grammar and spelling.

    4. Consumed by sadness, Pan is home. Let tears course (7,8)

      I might have used overwhelmed instead of consumed. Can’t remember.

      Edited at 2014-09-24 03:29 pm (UTC)

      1. By heck!, that’s elegant. Give yourself a Chocolate con Churro. Keriothe, too. ulaca, you can have a churro.
        1. It didn’t occur to me the clue was clueing an English ‘Spanish omelette’, not a term used in this bailiwick or indeed where we go for the winter … I’ll be tort a lesson today.
          1. Consider that groaned at.

            As for the other, I don’t know why those Spanish can’t use a proper English word like omelette, same as everyone else.

            1. You remind me of when I was a kid, and my mum made some unfamiliar dish for supper. My brother said ‘why can’t we have normal English food, like spaghetti bolognese or moussaka?’
  24. Pip, you have had a valiant struggle this month, doing my blogs as well as your own, and some quick cryptics as well – no wonder, if the pace is finally starting to tell!
    Very grateful, don’t forget I owe you a couple..

    I agree this was a fine crossword, though I tend to think most of them are.

    I always think of Sikorsky as American rather than Russian, so 8dn took a little longer than it should have. Mention of his name always reminds me of one of my great heroes, Air Commodore Brown, perhaps the greatest pilot the world has known. He was sent from Farnborough to Speke Aerodrome (Liverpool) during the war to collect a Sikorsky R-4B prototype helicopter and bring it back. No tuition, never even laid eyes on a helicopter before, he taught himself to fly it in the course of an afternoon and then flew it back to Farnborough! He is still alive, and I bet he drinks Carling Black label..

    1. Blimey, that’s an amazing achievement. I had a couple of helicopter lessons years ago and even with first class ex-RAF tuition, I never got as far as flying the thing without the instructor’s hands and feet on the dual controls.
  25. My most comprehensive failure since I discovered this board several weeks ago. Just couldn’t get started, despite seeing CANAPE and STAY-AT-HOME from the read-through, I just wasn’t bright enough to parse them, so they remained empty.

    Now I’ve seen the answers, I realise just how fair and good a puzzle this was, but way out of my league. Well done to all of you who got there unaided.

    Note to self: must try harder!

    Lovely hidden, as well as the tapas one given above. I wonder what the longest possible hidden might be?

    2. Pasted from Pip’s blog (above):
      13 IGOR – I GO R (one shot runs); first name of 8 dn.

      It might have been more courteous to read it before commenting!

      Edited at 2014-09-24 04:10 pm (UTC)

  27. Very, very difficult so delighted to have only one missing answer at the end (ERAS) but I did cheat for the Russian gent and the opera. It took me 90 minutes and I did not see the hidden at 4 down even after I had filled in the answer. Chengdu went in immediately as I have been there (I think). I thought that both setter and blogger were magnificent. Thanks
  28. Egad! What a puzzle, devilishly clever, that took me an hour. LOI’s were ERAS and CANAPE for me. The blogger deserves a reward, and the setter gets my admiration. Brilliant all around. Thanks Pip, and regards to all, setter too.

    Edited at 2014-09-24 05:54 pm (UTC)

  29. Fiendishly difficult puzzle but in the end no quibbles (well maybe about clueing proper names as anagrams), and a lot of head-smacking for not seeing many sooner. Took me three sittings to get them all with FENCES/SIKORSKY (now that’s how you clue a proper name) going in last.
    1. I thought about that, but then couldn’t really see any other way of placing the letters. CHEDGNU? To me this makes all the difference.
  30. DNF by a long way – most of the NW corner was left, and for that matter also parts of the NE, SW and SE corners.

    Reading the blog, none of the clues were especially unfair (at least, that’s what I’ve had said if I’d finished), but it was a bit of a stinker. COD for me was NOT A DICKY BIRD, though FOR THAT MATTER was very clever.

  31. Came back to this after leaving only half done for a few weeks; hoping that inspiration would hit when I’d given senior-ness a chance to erase all the false leads that I couldn’t ignore (eg LOI was SHERRY – couldn’t see that nurse was also a verb!)
    Brilliant puzzle which served to make non-leaguers like myself stop thinking we know it all (forehead sore from much smacking)

    Final note on 4d – not just hidden but indeed at the very centre, as the clue so obviously (now) points out
    Times setters are indeed a race apart

    JB

  32. Re the explanation for 29A, Idomeneo is generally considered to be Mozart’s first “great” opera, but is far from being his first, which he wrote some 14 years earlier at the age of 11. Ironically, as a huge fan of Mozart, I struggled to get this answer for some time!

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