Times 25952 – The Bones of All Setters

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 55 minutes

Music: Mozart, Piano Sonatas, Mitsuko Uchida

Here is a puzzle that is a bit more difficult than the usual Monday offering. I had it nearly complete after 30 minutes, but the last three or four answers were slow in coming. I was particularly annoyed at not being able to recall ‘halva’ for the longest time, and had to work through the alphabet until I hit it.

The recent set of puzzles from the newish editor and his team have been of varying quality; the good ones are very good indeed, but in trying to stay away from the old chestnuts they sometimes get a little too clever for their own good. I certainly enjoyed this past week’s set of puzzles, although I’m still chewing on Saturday’s and Sunday’s. They do give you a full week to solve them, after all.

Across
1 DISTAFF, D(I ST)AFF, where ‘daff’ is evidently a slangish equivalent of ‘daffodil’. If you had supposed it was an obscure river, then at least you had the right answer.
5 RUBENS, RU(BE)NS. ‘Works’ as a verb, meaning something like ‘controls, manipulates, keeps going’.
8 CHRYSALIS, anagram of S[imply] H[uman], SCARILY. The comma kindly indicates that you take the first letters of only those two words, then the whole of ‘scarily’.
9 NEWEL, hidden in [o]NE WEL[comes]. Not a terribly well-known word.
11 WONKY, double definition, one from the 40s, one from the current meaning.
12 COME CLEAN, C[onscientious] O[bjector] + M[-a +E]CLEAN, i.e. Donald Maclean, one of the Cambridge Five.
13 TEA PARTY, TE(APART)Y, where the enclosing letters are YET backwards, and the literal is simply ‘function’. I wasted a little time with cosines and such, going off on a tangent.
15 GIMLET, double definition, since ‘screwdriver’ doesn’t fit.
17 DEFECT, D + EF[f]ECT.
19 PEDANTIC, P(E DANT)IC, where Dante’s final letter is moved to the front.
22 ANATOMISE, A NATO + MISE[r].
23 CARER, CAR[e]ER, finally a bit of a chestnut, we have had something like this before.
24 HALVA, HALV[e] + A, my last in, but not really that obscure or difficult.
25 PROVISION, PROVIS(I)O + N. ‘Proviso’ does not come up every day, but students of American history will remember the Wilmot Proviso.
26 IDLEST, ID (L) EST, the words behind the popular ‘i.e.’….well, popular with setters.
27 STERILE, double definition. I tried ‘aseptic’, and then ‘asexual’, before seeing the obvious.
 
Down
1 DICE WITH DEATH, cryptic definition, amusing but obvious.
2 SYRINGA, SYRI(NG)A. Those who don’t know the word can use the cryptic.
3 ASSAY, AS + SAY, a really subtle clue that puzzled me for a minute.
4 FELICITY, anagram of CITY LIFE, but not a very good one since ‘city’ is retained intact.
5 RESUME, [p]RESUME, the equivalent of a CV in the US.
6 BONE CHINA, BON[d] + ECHI[d]NA. I put this in from the literal; the cryptic is quite complex.
7 NEW DEAL, double definition, one with reference to a card game.
10 LUNATIC FRINGE, double definition, where one of the definitions is a reverse cryptic alluding to a possible anagram of ‘fringe’ giving an answer of ‘finger’.
14 ANCHORAGE, anagram of ON A CHARGE. Either the city in Alaska, or a general term.
16 HERE GOES, HER(E.G.)OES.
18 FLAILED, F(L)AILED. The current figurative meaning of ‘flail’ has somewhat obscured the original sense of hitting grain with a stick.
20 TERMINI, [win]TER + MINI. A very clever clue that gave considerable trouble.
21 LIMPET, double definition. The idea that ‘pit’ must play some role in the clue delayed me, and probably many others.
23 CHIDE, C + HIDE. Definitions found only in cryptic crosswords are used for ‘rate’ and ‘fell’, but we’re onto them, right?

44 comments on “Times 25952 – The Bones of All Setters”

  1. Somewhat browned off after this Monday marathon I’m inclined to agree with the “too clever for their own good” comment above and apply it to a couple of today’s clues e.g.11 and 12.

    I never heard of WONK in connection with “policy advising” though “policy wonk” is in COED. It’s not in the new Collins (which has all sorts of obscure rubbish) nor in the last-but-one Chambers. I went for WENDY here which might at a stretch fit “not quite straight” and I assumed an unknown literary reference accounted for the rest of the clue.

    Donald Maclean is somewhat obscure I’d have thought to be clued simply as “spy” and the non-specific “one change” without a hint as to which letters might be substituted just compounds the problems I have with this clue. Having said that, the answer was fairly apparent given the checkers. I got CO from “one that won’t fight” and “spy” gave me M, but after that I was stumped for any further explanation.

    All my other difficulties were in the SE corner with HERE GOES, PROVISION and worst of all CHIDE.

  2. DNK DISTAFF, NEWEL, HALVA or SYRINGA. Never heard of GIMLET as a cocktail, and only the vaguest notion that it was some sort of a tool, so was relieved to get an all-correct.

    Vinyl, you have an “r” instead of an “e” at 23ac, and the “d” is misplaced at 6dn (we’re very touchy about our monotremes down here!).

    Good blog though, thanks for parsing PROVISION. And I shared your thoughts about the FELICITY anagram. Somehow unsatisfying when half the mixed-up letters aren’t actually mixed-up.

    Edited at 2014-11-24 03:53 am (UTC)

  3. 21m. Rather a lot from definition today, which isn’t my favourite way of solving these. One of those where I happened to know the words though. I had a GIMLET a couple of weeks ago, which helped, both at the time and with this puzzle.
  4. 25.37, with most of the last 10 minutes spent on CHIDE and WONKY. CHIDE’s a good clue if you like the sort that demands remembrance of edge-of-the-Thesaurus connections. Rate does mean chide, and hide fell, but not so’s you’d exchange them in everyday speech. What are your shoes made of? Buffalo fell. Hm.
    WONKY was a blind spot, not in its definition (though WINDY would do just as well and was my other choice) but in the WONK bit – that bit of slang has more or less passed me by. My Chambers has “a serious or studious person, esp one with an interest in a trivial or unfashionable subject”, so even if I knew that I wouldn’t have connected it with the policy thing. We live and learn.
    Oh, and HERE GOES was nearly a disbelieving TELE GODS, who would, I suppose, be stars of a kind. Fortunately, nothing else in the clue delivered.
    Thanks for untangling TEA PARTY and BONE CHINA, which I didn’t. Presumably in the Guardian they’d have been cross-referenced.

    Edited at 2014-11-24 09:01 am (UTC)

  5. 22:27 … sped through 90% then stopped dead, with HERE GOES, CHIDE (keep forgetting that fell/hide one) and then WONKY taking a long time. ‘Wonk’ is only vaguely familiar to me and I would be happy were it not even that.

    The two or three hard-to-love clues rather distracted me from some really good ones: IDLEST, HERE GOES and PEDANTIC stood out.

    1. Was thinking about part of my solving process for this clue:

      1. Find a poet and move his or her last letter to the front.

      2. Let’s try Dante for starters.

      Can’t imagine jumping to step 2 if I hadn’t spent the last few years in crossword-land. What a strange and wonderful land it is.

      Edited at 2014-11-24 11:54 am (UTC)

  6. 19:46 for me, with several minutes at the end spent on CHIDE – well, the whole SE corner was slow actually and accounted for my last four or five to go in. I also failed with 11ac, putting in WINDY as I’d never come across a wonk before either.
  7. 35 min : spent several minutes trying to see why 11ac was WINDY (or possibly WENDY) but before submitting resorted to aid for other words that fit checkers – and WONKY was clearly right.

  8. … and that blank was HERE GOES. Doh.

    Some unparsed: ANATOMISE (still don’t see how ‘one near’ = MISER), COME CLEAN, BONE CHINA.

    DISTAFF and mine meaning of LIMPET unknown.

    1. Chambers has as one of its definitions for NEAR – Stingy, parsimonious (informal)
      I guess the progression could be Near, Close, Tight, Miserly
  10. . . . with the same grumbles as above with the weak 4d and the over-specialist 12a. No problem with WONK+Y
  11. A curious experience for me, this puzzle. I raced though the LHS, but then got bogged down on the right. It’s rare that I disagree with Jack, but I thought 11a (WONKY) and 12a (COME CLEAN) were both good and fair clues, unless you take the purist view that GK has no place at all in a cryptic. The fact that I happen to know the phrase “policy wonk” obviously colours my view, but Maclean, along with Burgess and Philby, must surely be among the world’s best known spies.
    1. Mike, I did imply that my comments may have been coloured by my bad experience on the day. I’d now admit that Maclean was probably okay for “spy” but given its relative obscurity I’d still say the lack of direction re letter substitution was a step too far and bordering on the unfair.
  12. Finished after 25 minutes, but had put in WINDY as in long and winding road, never heard of a WONK in this context; so an annoying DNF, I see I was not alone. Not my favourite puzzle and hard for a Monday. I liked 6d though.
    1. I knew fell from “fellmonger,” at one time a common Yorkshire occupation, ie curing and tanning hides.
  15. Hmm yes there were some unusual usages here. Took me ages, and of course I wasn’t expecting… the Spanish Inquisition! or whatever this was. Good standard of writing though, as ever, so thanks all v much.

    PS I re FELL, I was feeling a faint twitch, namely my memory clunking through its gears, and Googling produces this Indy clue:

    Fierce lambs went down hill (4)

    ….which seems to cover quite a few of those definitions!

    Edited at 2014-11-24 02:07 pm (UTC)

  16. Saturday’s offering was a DNF for me so I was relieved to find this one relatively straightforward, though not particularly fast. I didn’t understand COME CLEAN until reading this blog – pop music is not my strong suit. LOI was HERE GOES which I finally got by listing the possibilities of _E_E in the first word. (There are surprisingly few) 40 minutes. Ann
  17. An hour to get wrong with WINDY (thinking automatically of hot air and politics being synonymous)
    Didn’t think much of HERE GOES and HIDE=FELL was new to me. Tricky one for a Monday…
  18. About 40 minutes for me too, held up in the SE with PEDNATIC, PROVISION, HERE GOES and CHIDE taking a while. But my LOI was actually LIMPET which I knew as a mine, but where the ‘sticker’ part didn’t dawn on me until the end. Not easy. I knew WONKY but was surprised to see it across the pond, thinking it a US derogatory term. Regards.
  19. 40m DNF with HERE GOES and GIMLET defeating me and holding me up for the last 15m. I confess these days when I grind to such a complete standstill I rather expect it to be another misprint. Now I know the answers and parsing I doubt is ever have got them. Another day defeated partly by a wretched question mark clue which turns out to be an obscurity! Grrr!
  20. Somewhere between 21 and 23 minutes – the clock I used had no second hand. A bit slow in the middle but I had no trouble with either meaning of WONKY and it went in straight away. My father often used it in the traditional sense but I can’t remember where I first heard of WONK. I have a theory I picked it up from The Thick of It, which is a good excuse to watch all the episodes again! Several unparsed, one of which was a hasty ARCHANGEL, the other Times A-C port, until H-L-G for 24ac made me look again. and fortunately it didn’t take too long to dredge up CHIDE, my LOI. I thought that GIMLET and LIMPET were just weakish general knowledge clues, but many’s the time I’ve been grateful for some of those.
    1. The Thick of It is certainly part of why ‘spad’ is familiar to me. I considered illustrating it with a Malcolm Tucker quote, but obviously couldn’t find anything remotely appropriate for this genteel forum.
  21. I thought it was DIS (as in common slang parlance for disrespect) for cut and TAFF for river.
  22. A bit of a slog for me. I had the common problem with 11a, and considered ‘windy’ and ‘wendy’ before finally plumping for the correct answer, more in hope than expectation. Wonk as a policy adviser rang only the very faintest of bells.
    ‘Chide’ also took me a long time to see, and I too put in ‘bone china’ from the definition, with no idea how the parsing worked.
    If this is the Monday warm-up, heaven help me for the rest of the week.
  23. Rather belatedly just to say that I share the majority opinions on this one.

    I have never been much of a fan of the 10dn type of clue (where the answer constitutes the wordplay) if only because you have to get the answer before the wordplay is revealed, which is rather at odds with the idea of the wordplay providing a second route to the answer.

    For fans of Raymend Chandler the GIMLET (gin and Rose’s lime cordial)is memorable from The Long Goodbye.

    Edited at 2014-11-24 10:26 pm (UTC)

  24. Damn! I was heading for a clean sweep (albeit a rather slow one – with just the A and C in place, I’d been held up by PEDANTIC), but came completely unstuck with 23dn. Missing the final E, I spent ages trying to make CHILL fit the definition before eventually abandoning the clean sweep attempt. I returned to 23dn after filling in the easy STERILE (my one other missing answer) but then spend another 6 or 7 minutes on CHIDE, finishing in a miserable 15:05.

    No complaints about the puzzle, though.

  25. For those not familiar with ‘wonk’ I offer you Kevin Maher writing in Monday’s Times 2

    “No doubt they all started banging each others’ brains out as soon as I left, wonk-eyed, through the front door.”

    Oliver Kamm would probably defend this use (as no doubt he would the dubious placing of the apostrophe in others’). It would also be interesting, in view of the title of his weekly column, to hear his view on ‘pedantic’ meaning ‘particular’

    In the context of Kevin Maher’s piece, “Wonk-eyed” could of course just be a typo!

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