Times 25,926: More Haste, Less Speed

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, after my freak respectable performance last weekend – 9th in the second prelim, 16th in the finals – alright, alright, I’ll stop “casually” mentioning it everywhere I go now – I’ve been trying to speed-solve every puzzle I do, but I definitely hit a brick wall on that front today, taking 10 minutes to make any real inroads and inking in the last few letters at just past the half hour mark. As a Friday puzzle it seemed trick(s)y but not egregiously so, and I definitely put part of the blame on early morning exhaustion: my littler daughter turned 2 since last we blogged, and has been taking to her new remit to be “terrible” with extra gusto in the long watches of the night.

FOI was 1D – thanks, classical education – and then it was a case of chipping away at the shorter words to try and find entry points to the longer and more convoluted solutions. I ended in the bottom right corner, making heavy we(a)ther of 17D and then just staring blankly at 16D, even though I’d completely parsed how it worked and was racking my brains for the name of that chap with the violin, but somehow just couldn’t summon up anyone apart from STRADIVARI. Like I said, exhaustion.

I do sort of quibble with “lacking belief” as a definition for pagan, but that’s just the injured pride talking. Oh, the other clue that stymied me for the longest time was 2D: the solution was very obvious from the crossing letters but for the longest time I was trying to find some kind of degree in chauffeuring abbreviating to L.A. – perhaps the Knowledge of a cabbie was “London Accreditation” or similar? When the penny finally dropped (at least another half-hour after the half-hour) my groans were audible for afar. Slightly tortuous…

On the COD front, I do love crossword clues about crossword clues, so 6D was a winner in my book, but the devious-on-multiple-fronts 24A met all my criteria for a clever clue, concealing all sorts of complex things in plain sight, while at the same time generating a surface that could be a scene from classical mythology, the adventures of Odysseus perhaps. So that’s my personal favourite.

I should stop my yapping now, but lovely to meet those I met at the weekend, sorry to miss those that I missed, and see lots of you and the next one I hope!

Across
1 SILK – “person taking case”, i.e. legal case: S [“entrance to” station] + ILK [kind]
3 VAUDEVILLE – show: U [university] + DEVIL [Dickens] in VALE [farewell]
9 BOMBING – double def, in senses of going very fast and failing miserably
11 VACCINE – “that’s used for certain shots”: VAC [holiday] + CINE [sort of camera]
12 HYDROFOIL – method of transport: HYDRO [hotel] + FOIL [block]
13 ON ICE – “being held back”: O NICE [appreciative exclamation]
14 LICKETY-SPLIT – quickly: LICK [defeat] + (YET*) [“re-formed”] + SPLIT [disunited]
18 WELL I DECLARE – gracious: WELL ID [healthy credentials] + E CLARE [European girl]
21 OLLIE – “Hardy maybe”: O L [“tips from” original] + LIE [tale]
22 OSTEOPATH – “profession manipulating”: (A PHOTOSET*) [“fantastically”]
24 FLYLEAF – “sheet with nothing on”: LEA [“where cattle graze”] “is wrapped in” FLY F [cunning female]
25 PASTIER – “looking less healthy”: PA’S TIER [rank of secretary]
26 HYPOTENUSE – long line: HYPO TEN USE [needle shared by a few]
27 WIRY – tough: WI [organisation associated with jam] + RY [line]

Down
1 SUBPHYLA – groups: H [hours] in (PLAYBUS*) [“organised”]
2 LAME DUCK – “one useless”: L [chauffeur learning, i.e. learner driver] + A DUCK [zero] about ME [yours truly]
4 AGGRO – difficulties: GR [gross] “interfering in” AGO [past]
5 DEVELOPED – picked up: DERV – R [fuel “having run out”] + ELOPED [made off]
6 VICTORIA CROSS – award: VICTOR [winner] + I ACROSS [top clue]
7 LAID IN – reserved: L [professional “finally”] + AI DIN [smashing racket]
8 EXETER – see: {t}EXTER [one sending SMS “without beginning”] “to grasp” E [English]
10 IN ONES ELEMENT – at home: I + NONES [service] + ELEMENT [heating component]
15 YELLOWFIN – fish: (FEW ONLY I L*) [“remarkably”]
16 PAGANINI – PAGAN [lacking belief] IN I [in one]
17 WETHERBY – Yorkshire racecourse: HER [the girl’s] with WET BY [soaked through] “going round”
19 LOOFAH – bath cleaner: LOO [toilet] “tops” FAH [note]
20 PLAY UP – double def: cause trouble / stress
23 TYPES – sorts: TYPE [letters] + S [“opening of” sack]

57 comments on “Times 25,926: More Haste, Less Speed”

  1. Found my way in (eventually) at 9ac, remembering George’s blog title from yesterday. One of those bits of serendipity that happen from time to time.

    Then got stuck in the SW, assuming (from the surface only) that 24ac had to be FIGLEAF. That left me with CLOG UP or PLUG UP as candidates for 20dn. Neither, obviously, worked. So back to actually parsing 24ac.

    Not sure, with our esteemed blogger, that PAGANs lack belief. The ones I once knew (for my sins?) banged on about the most ridiculous rubbish all the time. Even ODO’s first entry is: “a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions”. Or else the perfectly ordinary expression “pagan god” makes no sense.

    COD has to go to VICTOR, 1 ACROSS. Could have won the clueing comp??

    Lastly, I hope the NINA in the middle column was unintented rather than ominous.

    On edit re 26ac: should you have had the misfortune to share needles, you would re-write the clue as “Needle shared by quite a few …” where the last three words mean “far too many”.

    Edited at 2014-10-24 09:21 am (UTC)

  2. About 35 mins. I thought that while this was quite chewy there were some nice clues. I was going to mutter about OSTEOPATH but having seen keriothe’s comment, I will shut up.
    1. I can’t remember what the word was when this came up before, but from memory the point was that you can say ‘the profession of OSTEOPATH’.
  3. … slightly naughty comment:

    Does 10dn concern the perverted mahout with a speech defect?

    1. Why is it that sniggerers don’t realise that sniggers are unpleasant for those who have not signed up for a sniggerers’ forum?
  4. Another good test I thought although sadly with some strange entries

    The last thing I’d say about a pagan is that they lack belief – indeed (like others) quite the contrary in my experience

    A HYPOTENUSE is the “longest line” (in a right angled triangle) but not necessarily a “long line” – could be microscopic in length

    But some excellent clues to balance such things so thank you setter

    1. Long in comparison to its brethren, perhaps. I guess length is always going to be relative…
      1. Not necessarily – it could be virtually identical in length to one of them and both of those would be comparitively long compared to the third side

        The clue works better if you substitute “a” for “long” to give “….a few forming a line”

  5. Nothing too demanding in this one, though I was held up for a bit in the NW due to assuming 1D would end in S. I feel like the “gracious” or “my” type of clue as exemplified by 18A has been overdone in the last year or so, though on the plus side I’m grateful that we haven’t seen much in the way of “pants” recently.
  6. 23:46 .. pretty tricky, and a lot of “write first, explain later” solving going on here.

    LICKETY-SPLIT and VAUDEVILLE worth a mention for sheer cunning, but WELL I DECLARE wins my fickle heart today.

  8. 14m. I found this quite straightforward, with quite a few going in unparsed from the definition, so I’m sure tiredness is to blame in your case. I shared your reservations about ‘lacking belief’.
    I wondered about ‘profession’ for OSTEOPATH (rather than OSTEOPATHY) but then I remembered we’ve done this one before, and it’s fine.
    I didn’t know HYDRO for ‘hotel’

    Edited at 2014-10-24 09:01 am (UTC)

    1. It took me some time to feel confident of HYDRO, even though I’d thought of HYDROFOIL, but then I remembered it was some kind of spa and assumed it probably all made sense somehow…
      1. Short for “Hydropathic”. I know of several in Scotland, but not elsewhere.

        Edited at 2014-10-25 07:04 am (UTC)

        1. Nice tidbit, thanks.

          Luckily for us Antipodeans, the famous Hydro Majestic in Sydney’s Blue Mountains reopened this very weekend after years of refurbishing.

  9. 25 mins. I thought this puzzle was a good challenge. Strange that we had the speed versions of “bomb” in a clue yesterday and BOMBING as an answer today, and if I had seen LAME DUCK quicker I’d have solved it a little faster. I struggled most in the NE but that’s entirely my own fault because I took much too long to get VICTORIA CROSS, and it was only once I had that I saw VAUDEVILLE. ON ICE was eventually my LOI after LAID IN.
    1. ‘if I had seen LAME DUCK quicker I’d have solved it a little faster’

      Good to see that yesterday’s seminar on tautology has been taken on board.

      Sorry, Andy. Couldn’t resist it.

  10. Like Keriothe, I found this a medium test, another 6 on my Richter, 27 minutes of steady going. I wasn’t sure whether LICKETY or LICKEDY so looked it up, and so read the article in the Urban Dictionary online; seems there are several other meanings to the phrase concerning activities I didn’t even know were practised; take a read if you want to know, I rather wish I hadn’t. Well done Verlaine on blogging under influence of sleep deprivation, never an ideal basis for honing the little grey cells.
  11. Got there eventually with resort to aids in a couple of places. I was 10 minutes finding my first answer (LAID IN). DK 1dn, 15dn and 14ac. Wasted time thinking of RAC as ‘organisation associated with jam’ and trying to justify ‘racy’ as ‘tough’.
  12. Disaster here taking 50 minutes with last five on Paganini and still not getting it (agreed, clue too loose but no excuse). Nevertheless enjoyed the wit and edge of this one, some rather fine stuff, so no disaster at all.
  13. I came at this fresh from my team’s valiant second place in the company quiz last night. My personal highlight was dragging from memory the original artist who did Tainted Love as popularised by Soft Cell. The team highlight was an educated guess at the first novel to be written on a typewriter.

    My old next door neighbour sat next to me on the train this morning so I did the crossword in between chatting. Thus I’m not exactly sure of my time, but somewhere around 30 minutes. I did take advantage of his horse racing knowledge by getting him to give me WETHERBY before I’d tackled the clue. Another good quality crossword I thought.

  14. I am going to blame having to solve and part-blog a tricky puzzle elsewhere today for the fact that my grey matter took an absolute age to see what was going on in the top half of this crossword. I stopped the clock at 20:25 and am now going to look for a darkened room to lie down in for what is left of my lunch hour.
  15. Yes, definitely not lacking belief, unless the belief the setter specifies is exclusively Goddist. Hmm.

    Another nice puzzle after yesterday’s. Good on yer ed. Many thanks for the lovely blog too.

    Chris.

  16. More like ‘could not start’ than ‘did not finish’ for me today, as I decided to resort to aids after about 25 minutes with nothing but a tentative SKIN, at 1ac.
    After having a couple of anagrams sorted for me, and finding 14ac from L + enumeration, was able to finish in another half-hour with 1ac. LOI. (Whenever I see ILK, I think ‘same’ and only afterwards remember that most people misunderstand it as ‘sort’)
    Like Joe, PAGANINI went in without parsing

    1. Unfortunately, for me it was the other sense of not getting it. (Went for Sabatini, shrug.)
  17. Solved in lickety splity silk like fashion. But entered hydropool instead of ….foil..my reasoning – transport ..ie somewhere that transports one to a heavenly state of mind – which an hydropool.surely would?
  18. Thanks to Verlaine for the blog and for making me feel better about my 33 mins and well done to Keriothe on today’s time. At 1.65 Sues I fell short of one of my targets which is in fact a sub-Sue, the other being a double-Magoo and both very rare.
  19. 25:35 so tricky but largely all fair and very enjoyable.

    My lack of a classical education made 1d difficult. Conversely, my decision to make my home in a village 2.5 miles from the lovely Yorkshire market town of Wetherby made 17 easy.

    I don’t think I’ve heard anyone other than Mary Poppins say lickety-split.


  20. 50mins for me, enjoyable puzzle with SUBPHYLA the only unknown, and VAUDEVILLE the only unparsed.

    Thanks to both setter and blogger.

    1. I wondered about these allegations, but preliminary investigations have only suggested that common parlance now treats “ilk” interchangeably with “kind”. Anyone got any links to a treatise on the true lineage of the word?

      ETA: Aha!

      “In modern use, ilk is used in phrases such as of his ilk, of that ilk, to mean ‘type’ or ‘sort.’ The use arose out of a misunderstanding of the earlier, Scottish use in the phrase of that ilk, where it means ‘of the same name or place.’ For this reason, some traditionalists regard the modern use as incorrect. It is, however, the only common current use and is now part of standard English.”

      Edited at 2014-10-24 02:30 pm (UTC)

  22. About 45 minutes because I fouled up the SE corner badly, throwing in UGLY at 27A and letting that hold up PAGANINI endlessly. Of course, this is due to not knowing why WI has anything special to do with ‘jam’, despite the WI appearing here somewhat chronically through the years. I know they sing; is that it? In any event, thanks to Verlaine and the setter, esp. for VICTORIA CROSS. Regards.
      1. Well, now, there you have it. Thanks Z8, I was quite unaware they had a subtitle. I shall try to remember that, but as you may have noticed, that doesn’t always work.
  23. Difficult enough to remind me it was Friday, not so difficult as to outstay its welcome. Like others, I love a good clue which references setting/solving, so VICTORIA CROSS is a classic in my book.
  24. Hopelessly lost on 1ac, which I parsed without any hope of solution as S[tation]; some word for Samaritan minus its outer letters, definition “by” in any of its multifarious meanings.
    Time taken 10.20.34 mercifully unrecorded as the program crashed on submit. Could not find value 0 or some such.
    VC was a fun clue. Pagans will just have to put up with being “without belief” until setters and editor change their minds. Chambers does give: “more recently, someone who has no religion” but I’m incline to agree with those above whose personal experience of pagans suggests too much belief.
  25. Not my day today. First post (which an error message says “can’t delete”) wouldn’t post because (apparently) someone was chewing on the wires (sic). So I tediously rewrote and entered, only to find my original post already there. Have a third post. Possibly.
    On edit. Ah, there my first post isn’t.

    Edited at 2014-10-24 05:44 pm (UTC)

  26. Well bugger me – I got caught twice in the one week by the exact same definition… a definition I blogged! I stared at 9 across for a good five minutes before smacking myself on the head.

    I rather liked this – VAUDEVILLE, DEVELOPED, VICTORIA CROSS and FLYLEAF wonderfully cunningly clued.

    Got WETHERBY completely from wordplay, so thanks for making that nice and clear setter.

  27. …with ‘flyleaf’, ‘wiry’, ‘Paganini’ and ‘hydrofoil’ all, as John Dunn would say, ‘Wrong!’

    Richard Hooker – 16th century theologian – numbered Judaism, Christianity and Paganism as the three great religions.

    1. In 1792, William Carey’s astonishing “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens” available on project Gutenberg, uses “pagan” throughout for anyone who isn’t Christian, Jew Papist, or Mohametan. What makes it astonishing is his survey of the world’s nations and populations, giving a world population of 731 million, 420 million of which “still live in pagan darkness”.

  29. 18:25 for me, finding the right half pretty straightforward but for some reason making terribly heavy weather of the left.

    Like you I was confused by the A in LAME DUCK, and I’m still not terribly keen on it, but overall I thought this was a very fine puzzle. My compliments to the setter.

  30. Well, once again I appear to have left my best brain in my other coat. I’m now nervous of using my stethoscope, in case the earpieces meet in the middle.

    After an hour, I gave in and resorted to the “reveal” option for the first letter of WETHERBY. Wasn’t helped by having “WIRE” (“tough line”) instead of “WIRY” at 27ac.

    Like others, I’m not completely sure about LAME DUCK – clueing “a duck” as “zero” (rather than “a zero”) doesn’t feel right to me. And we had “bomb” recently, did we not? Still, a nice puzzle, and my compliments to the setter.

    Today’s ‘Accident of the Day’ award (which was also nominated for ‘Dental Misadventure of the Week’) goes to an elderly gentleman who, having a deep-seated fear of dentists, attempted to remove his own decayed molar. He did succeed, at the cost of a fractured lower jaw, but removed the wrong tooth. It really does make you wonder if evolution was worth all the trouble.

    Edited at 2014-10-24 11:37 pm (UTC)

      1. Mm, I felt much the same way once I finally parsed it. To be honest I had more issues with “chauffeur learning” for L… try making that pass the substitution test!
  31. A fine crossword this one, top drawer.

    Can’t see what all the fuss is re pagan, Collins says “a person without any religion; heathen” which is good enough for me. Or re ilk or a duck, for that matter

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