Times 25,968: To Infinity And Beyond

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Afflicted as I am by a perennial plague of sick children, I resorted to an online stopwatch for this week’s puzzle, which showing a final time of a little under 16 minutes, as compared to almost an hour and a half on the more inexorable clock. My life, ladies and gentlemen: over 80% interruptions.

Anyway I found today’s puzzle very serviceable, if not especially memorable. It took me a while to find an “in”, I think possibly 25A, combined with the conviction that 23A must end with “light”, but once some letters were in progress was quite steady, in the aforementioned stop-start kind of way. No really obnoxious vocab or requisite knowledge, apart from perhaps Auster, the south wind: an old friend to any classicist. I think my LOI was a classical one though, at 9A. 18D caused me the most puzzlement in the event, remaining unparsed until after I’d finished and submitted, though the penny did drop eventually.

“Things” in the sense of “crazes” makes a reappearance from a few weeks ago: I still don’t think I 100% get it, but at least I was ready for it this time. Also I seem to remember an outing for the mighty river Yangtze in recent months, which seems unlikely, but I suppose if the letters start to fall that way it must be irresistible for any setter worth their NaCl. COD-wise nothing blew my socks off inordinately, but I did enjoy the nicely tidy and deceptive cluing in e.g. 12D and 16D. A very solid puzzle all told, merci beaucoup setter!

Across
1 FAVA BEAN – plant: F A VAN [following a vehicle] “outside” ABE [Lincoln]
5 ROBUST – tough: OB [old boy] in RUST [brown coat]
8 GASTRIC FLU – disorder: GAS [fuel] + TRIC{k} [scam “briefly”] + FLU{id} [liquid “I’d nicked”]
9 TROY – old city: {des}TROY [“some French abandon” wreck]
10 NAME AND ADDRESS – “police often demand them”: NAME [to call] + AND [with] + ADDRESS [tackle]
11 SONNETS – “works with fixed number of lines”: SON [young man] + NETS [scores]
13 RE-ENTRY – “risky time for Buzz”: RE{p}ENT [to rue “losing power”] + RY [lines]
15 AUSTERE – severe: blow [AUSTER] + E [{ey}E’s “closing”]
18 IDEALLY – if possible: I’D [I would] + {r}EALLY [without doubt, “shed top”]
21 RAILWAY STATION – Victoria, say: (IT ALWAYS*) [“has gone wrong”] in RATION [helping]
22 TIRE – “exhaust”: double def with “other car part in Daytona”, i.e. tyre spelt the American way
23 FLOODLIGHT – beam: in FLIGHT [trip], LOO D [can daughter]
24 TEA SET – china: T T [Times] “keeps” EASE [calm]
25 GEMSTONE – maybe ruby: GET ONE [secure unit] “binding” MS [document]

Down
1 FAG ENDS – useless bits: GEN [dope] “opens” FADS [things]
2 VESTMENTS – clothing: {in}VESTMENTS [shares possibly, “less” trendy]
3 BARRAGE – shelling: RA [gunners] “admitted to” BARGE [lighter]
4 ARCADES – “games here”: “partly” {cau}SED A CRA{ze} “in recession”
5 ROUNDHEAD – Parliamentarian: UND [and German] + HE [ambassador] “opened” ROAD [route]
6 BITTERN – BIT TERN [part diver], but a BITTERN is “all wader”
7 SPONSOR – double def of “the Godfather, perhaps” and “back”
12 THROW A FIT – blow up: (WAIT FOR TH{e} [the “unceasing”] *) [“winds”]
14 TALKING TO – carpeting: (TOTAL*) [“fiasco”] “without” KING [ruler]
16 UKRAINE – country: UK [this country] + RAIN [drops] + E [European]
17 TRICEPS – muscle: (PR{a}CTISE [“after pulling a”] *) [“wrestling”]
18 INSHORE – “not that far out in the deep”: homophone [“caught”] of INSURE, “by some”, i.e. those who don’t pronounce it to rhyme with “pure” instead
19 ENABLES – activates: E [European] + BAN [veto “over”] + LES [French article]
20 YANGTZE – “big flower”: (ANY Z{innia} [“initially”] GET*) [“freakishly”]

55 comments on “Times 25,968: To Infinity And Beyond”

  1. One or two nice clues here, esp. 17dn, tres elegant.
    I am tolerant of homophones but thought insure/inshore rather a stretch.
    Auster familiar to aviation buffs as well as classicists..
    1. Oh yes, I think I meant to add 17D to my list of nice constructions. A really good little gaggle of down clues, there!
  2. 24 minutes, all done but two not parsed to satisfaction (INSHORE and THROW a FIT) so thanks Verlaine for your toils amid the nursery mayhem. I liked 6d and congrats to Mr Setter for finding a way to work the Chinese river into it.
  3. Considering the problems I had getting started and then, having completed all the bottom half, getting a foothold at the top, I was very surprised to find that I had completed the grid in only 35 minutes. It all suddenly came together at the top. “Inshore” doesn’t sound anything like “Insure” to me as quite apart from the dodgy vowel issue, the stress goes on different syllables.
  4. I rather liked this, and today was one of those Fridays when breaking 15 minutes felt more than respectable – lots of clues which needed a second look (or even a third or fourth) to work out where the definition lay and what a solver was supposed to be looking for. This means you end up with a puzzle which looks much easier with hindsight than it felt at the time, which I think is the sign of a good one.

    I got 18dn comparatively early, but I thought to myself, even as I wrote it in, that the editor’s ears will be burning with all the comments of exasperated campaigners against debatable homophones, no matter how much the clue flags up the fact that it’s not supposed to be exact…

  6. Half an hour, after gazing at the fava bean and investments for too long. I’m happy for the plant (unknown) to be there but old Buzz (Aldrin, known) is a stretch I’d say. Also, for the reason of stress given by jackkt, inshore. Otherwise neat enough.
  7. Coming to the aid of the setter here – although I seem to be in the minority on this. For once the homophone tracks perfectly for me. Now granted I’m either speaking NewYorkese or St.Paul’s girls school circa 1966 (we emigres tend to keep the accents we fled with so we date noticeably), but it works either way in this neck of the woods. I really enjoyed this puzzle. 13.38
    1. I also did not strongly object to the homophone. If anything, it was the “by some” part that threw me off.
  8. I made a good start with both the long ones going in early from whence I continued steadily for 24 minutes. I hadn’t parsed INSHORE, GEMSTONE or AUSTERE (never heard of AUSTER) so thanks to verlaine for those.

    I only knew FAVA BEAN from the well known recommendation that they go well with chianti and a human liver.

    1. In a fit for madness I’ve recently committed to watching all the movies in the Criterion Collection in spine number order (11 down, only ~737 to go!) and The Silence of the Lambs is coming up for me next week. Synchronicity!
      1. I’m no expert, but I’ve always had doubts about whether chianti is the right choice for liver and beans – would depend on the sauce I suppose.
  9. Wouldn’t the convention about not using living people in clues prevent 13a from referring to Buzz Aldrin? Given the title of the blog, I assume Verlaine took it as a reference to Woody’s mate.
  10. Fair enough but nothing outstanding, at least for me. Pootle has beaten me to it but I would not have ever heard of FAVA BEAN apart from the quote.
  11. Pretty slow, but an all-correct week, so I’ll take it. Had the entire bottom half completed before I had a single answer in the top half, but all very fairly clued.

    Some nice surfaces such as 12dn and 17dn. Also enjoyed the Buzz reference, and who doesn’t love a dodgy homophone?

    Great stuff, with a quality blog to boot.

  13. Maybe this is one for us expat brits. Inshore and insure sound the same out of my mouth. Tire. I figured buzz must be buzz lightyear due to the living person rule but i always assumed buzz lightyear was named after buzz aldrin so i guess it is living person name laundering.

    And fava beans are what americans call broad beans

    Edited at 2014-12-12 01:40 pm (UTC)

    1. I also assumed it was a reference to Buzz Lightyear, not that I’ve ever seen the film(s?) in question. I just took it as something that everyone else would know for sure that I was only vaguely aware of.

      Edited at 2014-12-12 02:18 pm (UTC)

      1. I’m shocked at this consensus that Buzz Lightyear doesn’t qualify as “a living person”, frankly. With Toy Story 4 in the offing and everything!
  14. That’s a very good point – I was imagining it *did* refer to Buzz Aldrin, but I’d forgotten the Times’ no-living-persons rule.

    I’m not sure if Woody’s chum’s astronautical career wasn’t mostly in his head, now I come to think of it…

  15. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away…I started on this puzzle and finished it only just now. About 90 minutes for me, and 30 or more of those were before I got a single answer (if you discount putting AND in the middle of 10 out of desperation!). It was ROBUST that finally broke my duck.

    I found this really tough, but got there in the end, but did have to resort to aids for a couple. Now I’ve finished, it all looks fair and reasonable.

    Put me firmly in the Lightyear camp for Buzz, without even knowing the rule re living peeps.

    1. Hmm, apparently Buzz Lightyear’s suit contains a shield generator “to protect against the heat of re-entry”…
  16. No problem with the ‘dodgy’ homphone. My only raised eyebrow: isn’t the whole point of a 23a the fact that it isn’t a beam?
    1. A swift Google finds at least one definition of a floodlight as “artificial light in an intensely bright and broad beam.” (Not to be confused with a fava beam.)
  17. 32 minutes with the Chinese river last to drop. Didn’t bother to parse the Buzz clue, or the dodgily homophonic one so am keeping well out of those discussions, but did like the Classical stuff, which even our more ockeresque Austeralians really ought to have had little trouble with.
  18. About 30 minutes, ending with AUSTERE as the only thing that fit the definition. I DNK of ‘auster’. The other completely unparsed thing was INSHORE, which had to be the answer but I had no idea why. Now that I know, I have to say I would never have considered that INSHORE and insure sound alike at all. I did like the two birds in 6D. Regards.
  20. Whizzed through this one and giggled when I saw FAVA BEAN which I think almost everyone knows from the film. Glad the I and E were checked in 22, and I also worried about Mr. Aldrin, though we’ve had a living conductor in the puzzle a few months ago. Not sure if it’s Editor’s Choice (isn’t everything?)
  21. No time recorded for this one because I had to attack it in bits and pieces in between calls from visitors and some jobs around the flat that took me far longer than I had anticipated. Like galspray I found the bottom half much more straightforward than the top half, and I finished in the NW with VESTMENTS after FAVA BEAN and SONNETS.

    I’m with topicaltim, inasmuch as the puzzle didn’t feel easy while I was doing it and I enjoyed it.

    Count me as an ALDRIN, and I had no problem with the clue for INSHORE because of the “by some” in the clue.

  22. Happy with this, if not quite perfectly. 7 is a poor double definition and Victoria is surely more importantly a state than a train station. Does anyone still say ‘railway station’, by the way?
    Ocker Austroylians would have no quarrel with the homophone.
    1. …would have the same trouble flagged first by Jack and agreed by many – the stress is entirely different. Intrigued by Verlaine’s suggestion some can rhyme insure with pure – not even the most unintelligible Scotsman could do that, surely? But for me no problem with the homophone, definitely groanworthy. And agree 7d is the same sense twice, not a double definition.
      19:54, with no real holdups, and Buzz Lightyear – even not knowing Aldrin was still alive.
      Rob (Ocker)

      1. Dictionary.com has pure as [pyoo r] and insure as [in-shoo r, -shur], not entirely sure what that all means, but it *looks* like a legit rhyme. I pronounce them such that they rhyme, for what it’s worth!
        1. Indeed? Are you SE English, or somewhere where the accent is stronger?
          As an Australian, insure and inshore have the same vowel sounds, but in insure both vowels are shorter. Pure comes out as PEW-ER, a maker of church benches, almost stretching past dipthong to double syllable. Nothing like insure.
          The comment above came from a previous disputed homophone – a Scot claimed POOR rhymed with INURE, and sounded nothing like PORE. POOR/PORE is a perfect homophone for Aussies, and Londoners too I’m guessing.
          Rob
  23. I can’t understand this: It should surely be ‘Some French abandons wreck …’. You can’t say ‘Some French abandon wreck ..’ any more than you can say ‘the new kettle boil quickly’. Or is ‘abandon’ imperative and it has some sort of tortuous construction?
    1. This jarred with me too, as did “China Times keeps calm” for the same reason. I don’t get too het up about it but it’s something I’d try to avoid if I were writing a clue.
  24. I decided that it worked for either of the Buzzes – then had to look up to see if Aldrin was still alive.

    Meantime, can someone help me with Barge = Light? Thx

    Edited at 2014-12-12 11:03 pm (UTC)

    1. It’s ‘lighter’. A lighter is a barge.
      Very late solve, very late comment. I seem to have found the wavelength with this one though and did it in 8:45, with a couple at the end on 15ac, which eventually went in from the definition. I didn’t know or had forgotten the wind. A shrug of the shoulders for the homophone. I thought Buzz was Aldrin and the living person rule didn’t occur to me.
      1. Thx keriothe. I looked up barge, but didn’t think to try the other way around. Now that you (and galspray below) mention it, it does ring a distant bell. thx to both
    2. noun: lighter; plural noun: lighters

      a flat-bottomed barge or other unpowered boat used to transfer goods to and from ships in harbour.

      Who knew?

        1. Yeah. Reminds me to mention that we could put together a pretty good team for one of the tougher pub quizes out of this group, couldn’t we?
          Thanks,
      2. Going all the way back to 1 September this year (No. 25,880), we had “Fellow on boat less serious having got to isle (10)” – answer LIGHTERMAN.
          1. But if you hadn’t come across the word LIGHTERMAN before and wondered where the LIGHTER part of it came from, wouldn’t you look it up in the dictionary? The Oxford Dictionary of English (always the best one to go to first – see side panel) defines it as “A flat-bottomed barge or other unpowered boat used to transfer goods to and from ships in harbour”.
  25. 30m DNF – yet again an obscurity defined by an obscurity defeated me at AUSTERE. Evidently easy if you happened to have the information but otherwise unsolvable from the clue. No dictionary to hand but how does this equal severe? An austere cold? Otherwise a pleasant puzzle but a better blog! Thanks to our blogger!
    1. I think it’s more a case of an austere man/personality. I would suspect the word derives from the bitter character of the south wind as well…
  26. 9:21 for me – a bit sluggish, but nowadays I’m quite relieved to break 10 minutes!

    An interesting and enjoyable puzzle, about which I’ve no complaints. Andy Borrows is absolutely right to point out “by some” in 18dn, a usage which I’m pretty sure Ximenes would have entirely approved of. He’d probably have been less keen on “Some French abandon …” in 9ac, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

    I half-assumed from 13ac that Buzz Aldrin had snuffed it, but I’m pleased to find that, like Umberto Eco (who appeared in No. 25,951), he’s still alive. Perhaps the convention about not including names of living people is being gradually relaxed.

    Thanks for the interesting blog (and further comments) BTW, particularly as I hadn’t come across the Criterion Collection before. Sadly it’s a bit late for me to hope to catch up on more than a small fraction of those I’ve missed – of which The Silence of the Lambs is one I’ll happily omit!

    1. Only the third ever film to win all five top Academy Awards, did you know? (After It Happened One Night and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.) I think it got a bit lucky though, to be honest.
      1. No, I didn’t know that. Or even that the others had, though I’ve seen both of them, and am particularly fond of Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.
        1. Well, I am back from Malaya, and have been trying to catch up on my crosswords. Sadly, it seems that the humidity has rotted my brain. Fifty-three minutes for this one, for no good reason.

          Failed to parse RE-ENTRY, INSHORE, VESTMENTS.

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