Times 25,923

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
12:49 on the Club timer, and based on the current leaderboard (on which I’m about half-way down page 2) that time was about par for me. An interesting puzzle, where I quite often had to pick up a clue and examine it from a couple of perspectives before realising how it worked, so the definitions weren’t always obvious. A good challenge, all in all.

I hope everyone else got what they wanted from the weekend’s competition. I wasn’t able to hang around, sadly, but I was there long enough to put faces to a few more names (at the current rate of progress, I should be able to identify everyone from here who attends Finals Day by about 2027). I finished Heat One in 21st place, so I’m happy to have achieved my usual ambition of automatically qualifying for next year, which I think is the real world equivalent of being half-way down Page 2 of the leaderboard.

Across
1 COALESCE – hidden in alfresCO ALE SCEne.
5 RABBIT – R.A.(artist), Book, BIT(=piece). Nice lift and separate to get the definition “conversation”. Normally a verb, but can also be a noun (apparently from Cockney rhyming slang, rabbit and pork=”talk”, which makes no sense to me…since when has rabbit and pork been a natural pairing? I digress).
10 RUN A TEMPERATURE – because in crossword solving circles, run=R, a=A(obviously), temperature=T, put them together and you get a phrase meaning “to be feverish”.
11 STONY BROKE – [BY NO (=”past refusal”)]rev., in STROKE(“single action”).
13 POET – purchasE in POT(=”accumulated money”). Stephen Spender, one of those 20th century poets whose name is very familiar to me, though his works are less so.
15 SAPHEAD – SAP(“undermine”), HEAD(“senior teacher”). I suspect American solvers will have got this more quickly than I did.
17 BROWNIE – OWN(“to have”) surrounded by BRIE. Mmmm…brownie.
18 CANNERY – CAYENNE(pepper) minus YE(“old the”), plus RY(railway line). One of those where the definition – “plant that preserves” – took a while to become clear, so I was sure it was going to be some obscure plant, which is always a problem area for me.
19 OUTSELL – (SOULLET)*, “hawk” in the sense of selling at a market or door-to-door.
21 PREY =”PRAY”. Does it need an extra “on” if it’s the verb? If it’s the noun, it doesn’t really mean “hunt”, does it? Minor quibble, perhaps, as the meaning is clear.
22 SETTLEMENT – double def.
25 IMMERSION HEATER – convoluted crosswordy way of describing that using an immersion (dipping) heater will result in your water getting hotter, and the temperature rising.
27 TIRADE – AD in TIRE.
28 WESTERLY – WE – the “royal we” as traditionally ascribed to Queen Vic, especially in the phrase “We are not amused”; STERNLY without Name.
 
Down
1 CORPSES – double def.; corpsing in the acting world is being overcome by laughter when it’s not in the script.
2 AWN – Area, With, New. This meaning of “awn”, a bristle on a cereal plant, is one I’ve only ever seen used in crosswords.
3 ENTRY LEVEL – EN(in printing you get em-dashes and en-dashes), TRY(“attempt”), LEVEL(“even”). For detailed dash chat, go here.
4 COMER – COMPUTER without PUT.
6 AWAY – LAW(“legislation”), DAY(“period”) minus the Liberal and Democrat.
7 BOUTONNIERE – [OUT(“in bloom”), in BONNIER(“prettier” in a Scot’s vocabulary)], English. If you don’t know this, you might well get it from some combination of wordplay / knowing the French “bouton”, which will suggest something along the same lines as the English “buttonhole”, so it’s “flower one wears”.
8 TRESTLE – double def., of which I only knew the second one; the first is “a horizontal piece on a ship’s lower mast supporting the topmast”. Or it might, just maybe, be REST(=support) replacing AB(=sailor) in TABLE.
9 PEEKABOO – P.E.(“sports”), (BAKE)rev., O,O(rings).
12 OPPENHEIMER – (HEMPPIONEER)*; Dr Robert O., director of the Manhattan project, a very nice clue.
14 FOR THE BEST – THEBES (important city-state in classical Greece – the local myths, including the stories of Oedipus and Heracles, are obviously still well-known today) inside FORT(“stronghold”).
16 DAY-LEWIS – (WIDELYAS)*; Cecil Day-Lewis, former Poet Laureate (see 13ac) and father of Daniel. For whatever reason, I think it’s comparatively rare in the Times to get clues which reference other clues.
18 CYPRIOT – CanveY, Piano, RIOT(he’s a riot=he’s an absolute scream).
20 LITURGY – IT(“the thing”) in LURGY(“vague complaint”).
23 TINGE – N/G(“no good”) in TIE(“dead heat”).
24 PROD – sPuRgOaD.
26 TAR – sTARt, where tarring might be a preliminary to feathering.

38 comments on “Times 25,923”


  1. On the quickish side for me today, all done in about 30mins, with another 15 or so for the last three: CANNERY, SAPHEAD (unknown) and AWAY.

    Thanks for explanation of the rat bit of 10ac. Oh, and looking at the blog, I see I hadn’t parsed STONY BROKE, so thanks for that, too.

  2. Bit more of a challenge than yesterday but not too difficult to see through over a coffee. Liked the reversal of the usual cluing letters in 10ac and also wondered about RABBIT as a noun. ODO’s example is “we had quite a heated rabbit about it”. Can’t imagine saying that.

    Didn’t know the nautical TRESTLE, but “Hawk quicker …” was a good decoy.

  3. A whisker under 14 minutes on the clock for me today, with only one interruption by a 2-year-old with a spurious complaint regarding her trousers being hitched too far down. (Not sure how I managed to do so well at the weekend, 9th in the second prelim and then 16th overall, but I was very happy with that result!)

    In a continuing spirit of speed-solving, I threw BUCKAROO in at 9D, though quickly changed that as it was obviously wrong, and also ENTRY POINT at 3D, which messed up 15A and 18A for me almost to the end. 6D was my LOI. Fortunately in the final moments I did not go with a wild guess that there might be a legislative period called an ALAN (possibly in the world of Norfolk local radio).

      1. Chapeau indeed. If Tony S is right (and he usually is on these things), you were the only new finalist on Saturday, which shows what a difficult club it is to break into.
        1. I’m not sure if I’ve counted the Williamses correctly, but I reckon that 17 out of the 24 finalists have now appeared at least five times, and five (all former champions, including Mark G) have appeared at least 10 times.
  4. About 25 minutes. Thought that TRESTLE was about substituting REST for AB in TABLE. Enjoyable puzzle.
  5. 17 mins. I struggled in the NE where it took me longer than it should have done to see BOUTONNIERE and RABBIT. These were followed by AWAY and TRESTLE, my LOI because I only knew one of the two definitions and I wasn’t sure if I was missing something. I also struggled with CORPSES until I had SAPHEAD because it was another DD for which I only knew one of the definitions.
    1. The best example of corpsing is still surely Brian Johnston’s complete collapse on Test Match Special. It’s been posted here before, but I think it’s worth doing again for the sheer joy of it.
  6. A shade over 16 mins today. Thought this was going to be a romp at first but brain freeze half way through was exacerbated by pondering how much worse it might be in competition mode. Had same thought as Tim re PREY.
  7. 15 minute stroll. Thought 25A daft. All the rest straightforward.

    Very much liked 12D and good to see Dr Robert make an appearance

    1. Prompted by that epithet I just wikied Dr Robert to see if the Beatles song was written about Oppenheimer.

      It wasn’t.

      1. To me, Dr Robert means the singer of the Blow Monkeys, though I don’t think his name came from either Oppenheimer or the Beatles.
        1. Same here but I think it’s unlikely that either Jimbo or Lennon and McCartney had him in mind.
  8. Sailing through this with a gentle 28a until becalmed by 19a/20d for 15m and then abandoned ship or more properly to continue the metaphor called out the RNLI via the blog. Many thanks for the response time! Irritatingly I wrestled with the anagrist and still made no headway as I couldn’t see past the raptor version of hawk. Hat off to setter and to our blogger for today and Saturday in his maiden voyage through the championship. I doubt l will enter until there is a prize for the feeblest attempt at the prelim stage!
  9. 10:47 on the club timer. I will refrain from using the word ‘wavelength’. I didn’t know SAPHEAD (although I did know ‘sap’) but no other unknowns. AWN from crosswords past, of course.
    I don’t think 8dn is meant to be a DD Tim: I think ‘support for the sailor in table’ is telling us to replace AB with REST in TABLE.
    Nice to meet you, if briefly, on Saturday.
    1. Well done, everyone, I was wondering who’d be first to spot that.

      I have to agree this is probably the intended wordplay, though I still think mine just about works. However, Occam’s Razor and all that.

      1. Yes, I agree it also works as a DD, even if unintended. One of the definitions of TRESTLE in Chambers is ‘a braced framework’, which also suggests that ‘table’ is supposed to be part of the wordplay.
        1. Also, well done on Saturday – as you said elsewhere, possibly better to finish 14th than 13th, which has to be the worst good result anyone can achieve.

          (*adds keriothe to list of people who must be quietly eliminated before next year’s competition*)

  10. All done and dusted in 2 Verlaines (which according to my maths means I would have come 28th in the Grand Final), except that ‘with no idea of the clue, I entered the Ancient Greek φεῦ’ at 21.

    An on would’ve helped indeed.

  11. I certainly felt like a saphead because I couldn’t see “comer” at all until someone on the club forum spelled it out for me. Also struggled with “away” like Verlaine, another eminent poet here. Until the last minute I had “ajar” thinking that “legislation period” might be a newish euphemism for a visit to the pub for a jar. Yes I know. Despite that I zoomed through the rest for a fast (for me) finish at 9.40. “Cannery” was very nice.
  12. All I can say is that if you lot are Premiership League, I’m floundering about in the Conference.
    About 50 minutes all told. DNK boutonniere – I thought of buttonhole almost first off, but why have a snobby word such as that when there’s a perfectly good English word instead?
    OK, that’s a rhetorical question.
  13. Finished, but a struggle in a little over an hour. Even then, TRESTLE went in unparsed. I misled myself with BLUEBONNETS for a while until the sunlight pervaded the shady corners of my mind, making the NE the last quarter to fall.
  14. A dozy 28 dead for me – possibly starting too early in the morning before eyes and brain begin to focus.
    BOUTONIERE new but gettable from French and wordplay. BUTTONHOLE would’ve fit the space. English words for English crosswords?
    Stymied myself by misremembering Ithaca as Oedipus’ home (Odysseus, stupid), and falling for every well laid trap the setter tried on: not splitting Canvey Island, for example.
    I’m with Jim on 25: I suppose there is a kind of Zodiacal thing happening, but I associate mercury rising with pressure more than temperature, and my understanding is that mercury thermometers can no longer be sold to the general public in the UK – not that anachronism has ever deterred Times setters. My association with the heaters is in using them to heat water in the large tanks used by Baptists for – um – baptism to mitigate the impact of being fully immersed. I did once achieve something close to hot bath temperature, but as I remember the temperature measuring was done by good old fashioned digital means – sticking you hand in.
    CANNERY the best of the bunch until I parsed TRESTLE just as I pressed the submit button.

    Edited at 2014-10-21 01:12 pm (UTC)

      1. The CoE is kind enough to give me current shelter, but I do indeed have a murky Baptist past, which includes both ordination and an episode of excommunication. One day I’ll write the book!

  15. Untimed, but about 20 minutes. Probably 21, as I hardly ever beat McText.

    Unenthusiastic solve today. Distracted by the many reflections on the legacy of former PM Gough Whitlam who passed away this morning at the age of 98. A giant of Australian politics and a hero to my family.

  16. A disappointing 22:39 which I attribute to an attack of the “vague complaint”.

    Thanks for the parsings for cannery, westerly and trestle which eluded me.

  17. 20:22 .. not sure where the time went on this one, but AWAY and the wabbit held me up at the end. I couldn’t make anything of A_A_ until I scribbled it down horizontally on paper.

    COD to the CANNERY

  18. Two short sittings, so in the easierish side, though I’m embarrassed to say I missed the other definition for CORPSES and the wordplay for TRESTLE while I was working through it, but the definition and checking letters left little to the imagination.
  19. A lively and interesting puzzle that would have delayed me only a minute or two past my 30 minute target but for 6dn which took me another 20 minutes to unravel. I had considered ‘out’ = AWAY quite early in the proceedings but couldn’t parse the rest of it so it didn’t go in.

    Didn’t know SAP = ‘undermine’ or BOUTONNIERE or the nautical associations of TRESTLE, and the substitution REST for AB completely passed me by.

    Edited at 2014-10-21 03:38 pm (UTC)

  20. Bonny is also used here in Lancashire, but with a slightly different shade of meaning from the one it has in Scotland. To call a girl “a bonny lass” is usually complimentary, though it does imply a certain buxomness. I’ve also heard it used to describe animals, especially horses: someone recently told me a particularly handsome bay was “a bonny animal”.
  21. 13 hours for me – started at breakfast and finished after supper. FOI Awn and LOI Saphead. Thought the ‘royal we’ was the stand out item – don’t remember seeing that before.
  22. Oh dear. 51 minutes here, at least 15 of which were spent on 6d (AWAY). I had the clue completely farce about ace, thinking that I was looking for a word meaning “legislation”. In the end, I put in AWAY with no hope of its being correct, so was pleasantly surprised to find that it was.

    I also failed to parse 18ac and 10ac despite repeated efforts, and there were a couple that I just didn’t bother to parse. Didn’t know BOUTONNIERE but got there thanks to basic French and the wordplay. Nor did I know SAPHEAD (which looks very much as if it should be hyp-henated), though again it was clear enough from wordplay.

    Not a lot for us technophiles recently, though it was nice to see OPPENHEIMER putting in an appearance. I once met an Oppenheimer who was very put out when I asked if he was related to “the” Oppenheimer, because he considered himself to be “the” Oppenheimer.

    Brisk trade at work today, thanks in large part to gusty winds and lightweight cyclists.

  23. 15:11 for me, still feeling a bit jaded after the weekend (and at the end of a busy day).

    I’m sorry we didn’t meet on Saturday, Tim. Commiserations on missing the cut for the final.

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