Times 25934 – Everything’s bottoms, isn’t it?

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
As easy as it gets [on edit – for me – I seem to have been in the zone today like that bloke who tonked the Aussies about for the world’s fastest ton]. 15 minutes.

ACROSS

1. SAVILE ROW – VILE + ROW behind our old friend SA = sex appeal = it.
6. CADGE – the first of two consecutive clues using a similar containicating device; D (first letter of Detention) in CAGE (‘locked up’).
9. NINNY – the second…INN (‘tavern’) in NY (‘Manhattan’ – at least, part of NYC, as indicated by the question mark).
10. VOICELESS – O in VICELESS.
11. CASTOR AND POLLUX – ‘matching’ cos they are twins (albeit with different fathers); ‘shiners’ coz they are stars. According to some accounts, Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra were their twin sisters. Dynasty had nothing on this lot.
13. GREEN TEA – GREEN + “TEE”.
14. STRATI – double definition; strati may refer to the uniform greyish clouds that cover the entire sky (common in the UK then); the only two artistic Strati I could find are Robert and Saimir, both very much alive and kicking, so something may have slipped through the editorial net here. Or not…as Jack points out, it’s an anagram of ARTIST. I reckon I could be alone with this particular howler, but somehow, sadly, one is never as unique as one likes to think oneself to be.
16. THICKO – HICK in TO.
18. MAN+DRILL.
21. CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR – an anagram* of LOCOS RACING around TUBE reversed.
23. ANCESTRAL – LANCASTER*; literal ‘past’.
25. IRATE – ‘spitting feathers’; ‘wipes mouth’ indicates you remove the first letter of PIRATE.
26. HOT UP – ‘become more exciting’; don’t quite get the logic of the rest of the clue, but perhaps there isn’t any. Just an image…Or not, once more – the Cuban goes to McT for his explanation: “as the sun is” (HOT), “in the sky” (UP).
27. SPARE TYRE – unless you have one of those vehicles with a rhino and a spade on the back door, in which case it’s keeping them company.

DOWN

1. SONIC – reverse hidden.
2. VENUS DE MILO – I’d like to see this one clued via the Nestlé drink I used to flog.
3. LAY DOWN – just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water after the attack of corny word-plays…
4. RE[VEAL]ED – I did toy with ‘remeated’, but not for long.
5. WEIRDO – O (‘love’) + DREW (‘tied’) reversed (‘up’) with I (‘one’) inserted (‘bound’).
6. CHEROOT – CHE (our ‘red’ du [tou]jour[s]) + ROOT for the cigar that does not taper.
7. DIE – double definition; my hamsters use to do this faithfully, unless they got stuck behind the wheel, or found their way onto the window ledge.
8. ESSEX GIRL – the wordplay – in case you are interested – is X on GI inside LESSER*. An ‘Essex Girl’ stands for the type of young woman (perhaps on reflection ‘young at heart’ is a better way of putting it) who in the popular and no doubt misconceived imagination likes nothing better than to have sex and to talk about having sex in an irritating Estuarine twang and a blonde rinse.
12. LEADING LADY – this time it’s LEA + DINGY around LAD.
13. GATECRASH – CRATE* in GASH.
15. MAGNOLIA – ‘pale colour’; reversal of I + LONG (‘stretched’) + AM (‘in the morning’) then add A . My last in.
17. KNEES-UP – SEE (‘understand’) inside (‘claimed by’) PUNK (‘anarchist’) reversed.
19. DECLINE – DEC[ember] + LINE (‘what’s yours?’).
20. HUBRIS – HUB + RIS[k]; ‘focus’ as in ‘the kitchen is the hub of any good party’. Nexus and hub have been hijacked by consultants and their dreadful management-speak in Hong Kong, at any rate.
22. RE+EVE – RE (‘on subject of’) + EVE (‘first female’); besides its nominal senses of magistrate, steward or Superman, reeve can also mean to ‘thread (a rope or rod) through a ring or other aperture’ if you’re a jolly tar.
24. CUT – double definition.

57 comments on “Times 25934 – Everything’s bottoms, isn’t it?”

  1. 14ac is an anagram. I didn’t find this nearly as easy as our blogger and slowed enough eventually to nod off briefly and lose track of my solving time.

    Edited at 2014-11-03 01:45 am (UTC)

  2. As noted … by no means difficult. Got the two 15s quickly and ran with it from there. 21ac is, of course, famous for having been said by Bill to Hillary after the Democrat pre-selection in 2008.

    As for 26ac: I read this as: “as the sun is” (HOT), “in the sky” (UP).

    Edited at 2014-11-03 03:56 am (UTC)

    1. My all-time favourite headline involved the Clintons, but I won’t risk repeating it here. I’ll save it for next time we have a coffee.

      Which reminds me, when are we having a coffee?

  3. Nice to have this after the weekend puzzles. I just now realized that I never did check REEVE–didn’t know the ‘thread’ meaning, but then it was hardly necessary to. Ditto for ESSEX GIRL, which I still don’t understand, but no doubt will be enlightened by Wikipedia. I’m glad someone else thought of ‘remeated’ (Ah, we meat again.).6ac my LOI. Liked 9ac.
    1. Girls fom Essex are – stereotypically – dyed blonde, dumb and of easy virtue. There is even a programme in England now abbreviated to TOWIE (yes, I had to look it up) because it is so famous: The Only Way is Essex.

      O tempora! O Daily Mirror!

      (I will amend the blog to allay further mystification about this core aspect of English culture.)

  5. Certainly not in the same class of difficulty as Saturday’s, but I didn’t find this as easy as ulaca clearly did. More of a standard steady solve really helped by the odd chestnut.

    Many years ago I had a girlfriend from Essex. She took a first at Oxford and is now a leading barrister of irreproachable virtue. So much for stereotypes.

      1. You have an extra S in the fodder at 23ac.
        Which I see you’ve now corrected.

        Edited at 2014-11-03 08:07 am (UTC)


  6. … and that One Error was ‘het up’ at 26ac for ‘become more exciting’. REEVE (unknown) was a lucky guess… could have gone in as RI+EVE (if the RE was for ‘subject’ not ‘on’). KNEES UP in unparsed.

    Otherwise a speedy solve, 27 minutes on the timer, but this included making a cuppa…

          1. As a counteraction to this madness, Tamim Iqbal of Bangladesh batted through the whole of today, reaching 74 not out in the 90 overs. Geoffrey Boycott will tell you that’s proper battin’.
  7. A sub-10 but with a typo, SAVILL, which I’ll blame on my being so busy thinking “Blimey, haven’t seen it=s.a. in ages. Hullo old friend.”

    A good Monday puzzle, though. I especially enjoyed “Charlie’s Manhattan Tavern?” — the kind of clue which can turn a dabbler into a crossword addict. Nice one, setter.

  8. 18.39. I’ve found a new way of slowing me down: completely random letters inserted into my answers, especially the long ones. And not spotting them until the crossing lights become impossible.
    This was pretty quirky, I thought, with NINNY and DECLINE the pick of the crop for me. Not a few clues could be excused parsing, especially the longer ones, and even more especially the longer ones that were only marginally cryptic in the first place.
    I don’t think I knew this meaning of REEVE, though I must have come across it. Solved from wordplay.
    Now for today’s “figure of speech” test. Nebulous clouds?

    Edited at 2014-11-03 09:45 am (UTC)

  9. I also found this easy with the long clues going straight in and several from definition (“Place for suits” for example). Liked the Lancaster clue.
  10. Anyone else put “cuppa” in 1d? That bogged me down nicely. 22.26. There actually is a Charlie’s bar in NYC but it’s in the Bronx.
    1. Another cuppa here before the ninny corrected it.

      A real Charlie’s in NY? Brilliant. I don’t suppose there’s a bar called NINNY, is there? For the trendy cryptic crowd?

    2. Ah yes, I did too … I thought there were too many old chestnuts in here, which makes for an easy solve for those who have been doing it every day for years but much harder for the rest of us
  11. Could Ulaca or someone please explain how locked up = cage (as opposed to caged) ? I can see DIE as singular of dice is a sort of DD and so the answer to 6a must be CADGE (as in to bum something off someone), but the parsing eludes me. Is it CAGED rearranged?

    Otherwise a medium fast solve 30 minutes with no queries.

  12. 11 mins. I got the impression that this was from one of the younger setters, and I enjoyed it even though I found it straightforward. The CADGE/DIE crossers were my last ones in.

    Pip – if D (heading for Detention) is in a CAGE it can be said to be locked up.

  13. Solved in around 15 minutes, but that was plenty of time to explore numerous blind alleys, so I can’t say it was all plain sailing. I, too, toyed with the CUPPA, thought the boot was footwear (and the shiners might be cleaning products), was pretty certain there must be a DUCLOS etc. and so on.
  14. Nice Monday puzzle, but my time suggests that I must have been concentrating as well as Nico Rosberg was yesterday.
  15. 17 minutes but with a misspelt POLLOX. Before I started I didn’t even know I knew CASTOR AND POLLUX so I was happy enough despite the misspelling.

    Being originally from Essex, I can confirm that the stereotypes are all true.

    1. Those who enjoy I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue – the antidote to panel games, will recall Humphrey Lyttleton’s sideswipe on Essex when hosting a show in Ipswich.

      “The fine Country Town of Ipswich is the undisputed jewel in Suffolk’s crown. Suffolk is bordered by Norfolk (with its historic Tudor villages and nature reserve coastline), by Cambridgeshire (with its fine university and unspoilt countryside) and Essex.”

  16. Pleasant start to the week. Toyed with CUPPA but got SAVILE ROW before I bothered to pencil it in. As a Gemini, I knew C&P so no problem there. ESSEX GIRLs also exist across the estuary, as one born in Dartford knows.
  17. About 45 minutes after also being slowed down by CUPPA. When I eventually saw SONIC I found it difficult to convince myself it was right; surely extra quick would be SUPERSONIC or HYPERSONIC?

    DIE and CADGE were last ones in, but I did enjoy the puzzle today after the struggle I had with yesterday’s. I did finish that one, but it took an awful long time – luckily it precipitated heavily for an hour or so in the AM so I wasn’t too distracted.

  20. 13.24 for me today which is very close to a PB for me so definitely on the easy side. I did throw a few in unparsed and go back later for that though. As someone involved in the property game, I am very familiar with 15D paint which tends to be our ubiquitous colour. I used to date a girl with the surname Reeve but was unaware of this particular definition. Regards to all.
  21. Re saturdays xword -was there a mistake regarding scattered/scattering and magnetic storm?
      1. As if it wasn’t tricky enough without a spelling error. Just over an hour it took me and I loved every minute of it. Magnificent puzzle. But isn’t there some sort of embargo on discussing it until next week?
      1. I have withdrawn this comment as the option to edit was still available. Thanks to ulaca for tactfully pointing out my careless error.

        Edited at 2014-11-04 06:18 am (UTC)

    1. Yes I know but it still seemed the answer. It has many spots,hence spotted, and it rolls over.
  25. About 15 minutes, though delayed at the end by KNEES UP, my LOI. Nice discovery by the setter on the ANCESTRAL anagram, if it is a discovery and not a recycling of a familiar item. It seems new to me, but, alas, every time I say that here someone points out when it last appeared, and that I had commented in the same vein then, so ignore that. Regards.
    1. Your suspicion was right on the Lancaster anagram Kevin – we’ve had it before but damned if I know when. Tony Sever has some sort of app that can retrieve these things. On the same lines I remember reading a while back that one of the regulars on the Club Forum said he was practising on some old puzzles and after a while one of them began to feel a bit familiar – turns out he was the setter but he’d completely forgotten. Nice time you got there.
      1. 21 minutes here, which means this was an easy one. Like some others, I had “cuppa” as 1d for a while. LOI WEIRDO which, in my excitement, I forgot to parse.

        This was a relief after the weekend, and I’m glad some others found some others also found the weekend puzzles challenging.

  26. 31m all correct which is something of a relief as I think it’s 3 hours for Saturday’s and still unfinished! And yes I did spot the misprint too. I enjoyed this one and like others admired the NY boozer and the Lancaster clues especially.
  28. 10:30 here for a pleasant start to the week with some nicely worded clues. Like others I rashly bunged in CUPPA for 1dn – despite having a strong suspicion that 11ac was going to be CASTOR AND POLLUX (which ESSEX GIRL duly confirmed). KNEES-UP took me an age to parse (I had to leave it until after I’d submitted).
  29. I’m 57 and have lived in England all my life. I have NEVER heard this phrase. Therefore I failed to finish.
  30. Yes, it was an easier one than usual – I managed to do it in just 36 hours which is good for me. I have only completed a Times twice now. (I do not need your pity!) Did not quite get KNEES UP tho.
    1. The early completions are still those remembered most fondly by many of us. Moving from the ‘Doomed Man’ state (as my cricket master used to say of one boy walking out to bat) to that in which I believed I could finish a puzzle was the key transition for me.

      Edited at 2014-11-05 06:28 am (UTC)

  31. Kind comment, ulaca. I have a similar experience. Still struggle, though. Some you win, some you lose. ernie (can’t change ‘anonymous’).

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