Times 25912

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’ve been off duty for a couple of weeks (thanks Jerry for subbing) so was relieved to find this a straightforward and pleasant solve top-down in twenty minutes; the last two or three of which were spent staring at O-N- for 24a until the lightbulb moment. No doubt someone has posted a sub 10 minute time.

Across
1 E-FIT – Last letter of Bonnie, or Clyde, then fit = suit, def. criminal image.
4 DAYDREAMER – (ARMED READY)*, def. fantasist.
9 ON ALL FOURS – ON = cricket side, ALL FOURS = every boundary, def. crawling along. Even those for whom cricket is an arcane subject should decode this one.
10 SCOT – S = son, to BED = cot, def. old settler, e.g. of Ulster.
11 WEASEL – W = with, EASEL = supporter of the arts, def. double dealer.
12 HAT STAND – cryptic def. Nothing to do with Clarkson et al. being removed forcibly from Argentina, but an excuse to comment. I read that the odds of the number plate H982FKL happening randomly are 114 million to 1. Coincidence my fat aunt.
14 INCH – FINCH = winger, lose F, def. part of foot.
15 STONEHENGE – (GETS)* around ONE HEN (whole chicken), def. tourist site.
17 DISPIRITED – Cryptic def, vaguely amusing.
20 PATH – PAT = hit softly, H = hard, def. the way.
21 ISTANBUL – (SLAIN BUT)*, Byzantium was the original name for the city, from ca. 660 BC to its time as Constantinople before it became Istanbul.
23 ARRANT – A, R(ecruit), RANT = wild words, def. utter, as in arrant nonsense.
24 OINK – O INK = run out of ink; def. noise emanating from (pig) pen. Ha Ha.
25 CRIMEAN WAR – CRIME = evil act, ANWAR = first name of Mr Sadat, def. conflict.
26 FLY-BY-NIGHT – Not very subtle cryptic def.
27 OVER – Double def., six balls in a cricket over, and over = remaining. A clue more suited to the Quickie methinks.

Down
2 FINGERNAILS – FINGER = identify, NAIL = catch, S(uspect), def. things often filed.
3 TALKS SHOP – (TO SPLASH)* around K = £1000, def. gossips around work.
4 DEFILES – DES = short chap, around FILE = papers, def. passes.
5 YOUTH HOSTELLING – (SOUTH HOY)* then TELLING = revealing, def. activity for teens. EDIT: My parsing works up to a point but vinyl’s is better (see 17th comment below); swap tips of SOUTH HOY = YOUTH HOS then TELLING = revealing.
6 ROSETTE – O SETTER = old compiler, with the R moved from end to front; def. prize.
7 MOCHA – MO = instant, CHA = tea, def. coffee.
8 RATED – X-RATED = explicit, with the X cut, def. reckoned.
13 NIGHTINGALE – NIGHT (dark), IN (at home), G(ood), ALE (drink); def. nurse, as in Florence.
16 ESPERANTO – (OPERATES)* around N (noun), def. language.
18 RUBICON – RUB = polish, CON = trick, across I (one), def. ancient border.
19 DEAREST – Double def. Another one escaped from the Quickie.
21 IN-OFF – IN (home) OFF (away), def. shot going wrong, as in snooker.
22 TINNY – Cryptic double def., allegedly Australians refer to cans of their horrible beer as ‘tinnies’.

44 comments on “Times 25912”

  1. Yes, a nice quick one here for me too, with all but a couple going in in 30 mins. OINK was my second from last, just before DEFILES (which I parsed as DE(n) + FILES). No other problems with either vocab or parsing. Which makes a change…
  2. Very easy again today.. you wait for weeks, and then three come along all at once
    Whether an in-off is a good shot or a bad one depends entirely on whether you are playing billiards or snooker, doesn’t it? It has not necessarily “gone wrong”
    The pathetic, infantile Clarkson should be forcibly removed from television, as well as from Argentina
  3. 25 minutes and a classic case of more haste, less speed here.

    All but 3 clues solved under 10 minutes, then nearly twice as long again to realise that several typos had made the remaining clues near unsolvable.

    I’d like to say lesson learnt, but I think I’ve said that before.

    Shame, because I was really enjoying the crossword! DAYDREAMER is a peach.

  4. The crossword’s getting easier (discuss). 12.14 for this one, with pleasant entertainment on the way. “Part of foot” as a definition for INCH a special delight, not least for the relief that it wasn’t ARCH with an intersecting typo.
  5. Including interruptions, and three or four minutes wondering if DEFILES could be correct. Didn’t know or had forgotten the noun def.

    Agree with Z re INCH, agree with Jerry re Jeremy.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  6. 8 mins. As has already been said, a straightforward puzzle but an enjoyable one. ROSETTE was my LOI after HAT STAND.
  7. A quarter of an hour, which is probably about as fast as I can go. (How folks can read the clues and write in the answers in 5 minutes, let alone solve them in that time has always astonished me.)

    Benefited from tackling the clues in the right order today; often think when I struggle with a puzzle: “Now if I had solved that one first, all would have been clear”.

    The puzzle itself had some elegant clues, succinctly written and with a light-hearted feel to them; so it gets my vote as a good one. Compliments to the compiler.

  8. Yes, a quick one here too (for me at least), all completed in a sub-30 minute journey on the rattler. So quick in fact that I got here before the blogger, although I got nowhere near his time. COD to OINK. Last ones in for me were the DEFILES / WEASEL crossers.
  9. The gentlest puzzle for several months, though I did enjoy a number of the clues (e.g. for DAYDREAMER and ISTANBUL). The pen/ink/oink thing has cropped up several times in the last year (here and other places) and CRIMEAN WAR was clued very similarly in the Indy a couple of weeks ago, so those went straight in. My experiences of youth hostelling are that teens are a minority of the clientele.
    1. I can’t access the leaderboard from this device, but from memory you recorded an astonishing time, ahead of Jason and Magoo I think?

      Outstanding!

      Edited at 2014-10-08 09:51 am (UTC)

      1. If a dozen years in IT taught me anything, it’s how to type quickly! Having said that, I take the leaderboard with a pinch of salt as it’s always possible that other solvers had to take a phone call, or ran out of Hobnobs, or experienced some other interruption.
  11. A gentle sub-10 minute workout, but perfectly enjoyable all the same (I’ve always thought it’s probably harder to create a good easy puzzle than a difficult one).
  12. 20 minutes, so just about as good as things get for me. Didn’t know the relevant meaning of DEFILES but the wordplay was clear. We’ve had {f}INCH somewhere within the past few days I think.

    The problem with the userpics has resolved itself.

    Edited at 2014-10-08 08:47 am (UTC)

    1. I still see the generic pile of books (Chrome on W7). Of course, if this is now your userpic, then the problem is indeed resolved.
      1. The pile of books has been my “userpic” on TftT for years but I use a different one (currently a cartoon cat solving a puzzle) when I post re Quickies. In order to ring these changes I can’t have a default set, I select each time I post. The problem over the last few days was that whichever picture I selected did not appear in the blog when I posted a comment. I had to open Edit and select the picture again then save to insert it. Anyway the problem has now been resolved somehow or other.

        1. There must be a word that combines embarrassment with memory collapse and gross assumption.
          Whatever it is, it describes me perfectly.

          1. Don’t worry about it. Probably the majority of my comments go up without pics because I try only to use them for my first posting of the day in each thread in the hope that people might not notice it’s me coming back again and again.
  13. 19 minutes (or comfortably sub-Rabbitoh). Rather too easy, methinks.

    E-FIT unknown, which makes me feel virtuous.

  14. 6:13. As this is my second fastest time ever it seems worth recording the seconds. I wish the editor would make the puzzles a bit harder. 😉
    I actually enjoyed this: it seemed elegant, if brief.
      1. It doesn’t really matter: based in the last couple of years’ experience I’ll make at least one mistake!
  15. Back to the iPad after yesterday’s written version but still a gentle stroll. Enjoyable though.
  16. 18 minutes. One of the easiest for a long time. ESPERANTO went in without even looking at the clue, one of the dangers of having an entry ending in O.
  17. 28 minutes here, leaving me with far too much time on my hands and nothing to fill it apart from work.
  18. Similar experience as others, finishing in 15 minutes. I had tentatively thrown in ARCH for part of foot whilst noting that I couldn’t think of a suitable bird. Thankfully it proved not to be my achilles heel.
  19. 9:36 for me. I didn’t know that meaning of defile so wasn’t 100% sure on that. I was also a bit puzzled by Scot as a settler. I originally wrote in Pict carelessly ignoring the fact that C does not equate to son.

    Thanks to Vinyl for unravelling youth hostelling. I’d twigged that it was an anagram plus telling and also that if you reversed the final letters of South Hoy you got YH = Youth Hostel, but neither explanation seemd to work.

    Some fun clues with rosette just about the pick I think for the clever misdirection of “first prize”.

  20. 7 minutes, with the only question mark being SCOT for settler (my history of Scotland is restricted to what I’ve picked up from doing crosswords). Hmmm, three easy ones in a row, whose turn is it to blog the next one? Yep, it’s me. D’oh.
  21. From similar experiences with the QC, I do understand the disappointment when a crossword is too easy. On the plus side though, easy ones like this help bridge the gap for those of us new to the ‘proper’ crossword! Didn’t manage to complete it without the blog but 70-odd% is a great result for me and very much enjoyed the more complex clue construction (e.g. Youth hostelling). Thanks for the blog!
  22. 18.30 here so another easy one but some pleasing clues – I liked the double hint in INCH around the lost F and also thought ROSETTE very elegantly put. Thanks for blog.
  23. Nice puzzle. I didn’t fly through it, though, held up by unknowns in the SW corner, i.e. IN-OFF and TINNY. I put it down and later picked it up and wrote them in directly, which allowed me to see OINK, LOI. I also hadn’t known of an E-FIT, although whenever I say such a thing here, someone reminds me of when it last came up. So apologies in advance, and regards to all.
    1. Electronic Facial Identification Technique, E-FIT, see Wiki article; what do they call it in the USA? regards
  24. Thank you, setter, for an opportunity to record a personal best of 21 minutes, just over a third of my normal target. I hope we get a few (slightly) tougher ones next, though.
  25. Substantially my first sub-30 minute time. As a relative beginner it is a fun on occasion to breathe in the rarified air! Good fun, particularly liked ‘rosette’, DNK defiles as a noun. Every day is a school day. Oink also very good.
  26. This must have been very easy since it was my best time ever in 52 years of doing this crossword! Just under 10 minutes which is as fast as I can read the clues… I’d not heard of IN-OFF but it was easy to guess from the cryptic.(I solve from a print-out so my time can never be absolutely accurate) Ann
  27. Nicely constructed . The true test of difficulty is how solvable the clues are in isolation sans grid. How about “com–nce 5,7,2″…..start without me
  28. 8:36 here for a pleasant, straightforward puzzle – so not quite as disastrously slow as the last couple of days, but (judging from today’s TCC leaderboard) I’ll sink in next week’s Championship without a trace unless I manage to get my wits together.
  29. Achieving a PB is comparatively easy when you’re still a beginner; achieving a PB after 52 years is a triumph!

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