Times 25981 – Now if 6, turned out to be 9, I don’t mind….

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 42 minutes

Music: Prokovieff, Symphony #6, Leinsdorf/BSo

I had taken a week off from solving, so this was my first puzzle in a while. My trepidation was most thoroughly confirmed when, after ten minutes, I did not have a single answer. Moreover, the first one I did solve, I entered in the completely wrong place. So I was definitely not off to a good start, but after another 13 minutes I had answers in every quadrant of the grid, with maybe half of the puzzle solved. However, I slowed down considerably after that, and really struggled before the last few yielded.

Looking over the completed puzzle, I would have to say that this was a relatively difficult puzzle for a Monday. Many of the literals were well-hidden, and some of the cryptics are a bit convoluted. At least none of the answers are very obscure, although one is more often seen as a component of a cryptic than the target of one.

Across
1 STOCK CAR, COTS backwards + RACK backwards. A vehicle, all right, but far from stock
9 ESTIMATE, EST(I + M[illions])ATE, where ‘must’ is just a filler.
10 MINOTAUR, anagram of RUN OUT + MI. Tell Theseus that the Minotaur has been run over by highway traffic, so there’s no need for the sword of Aegeus.
11 OBEISANT, OBE + anagram of SAINT.
12 PASS MUSTER, PAS + SUMS backwards + TER[m]. The literal is the exiguous ‘do’.
14 VAIN, VA(I)N, i.e. I in the VAN. If you solved 4 down first, this pretty much a repeat.
15 HENDRIX, HE + N(DR)IX. I was quite surprised, I was expecting a 19th-century geologist.
17 INSTALL, INST. + ALL. We must all remember that commercial English, now forgotten by everyone else.
21 TAUT, sounds like TAUGHT, but you need to solve 13 first.
22 FOUR SQUARE, FOUR + SQUARE. If ‘hip’ is ‘in’, then ‘square’ must be ‘out’, right?
23 AGITPROP, A GIT PRO P, a rare clue where both the clue and the answer work as a complete phrase, very neat.
25 UPHOLDER, [c]UPHOLDER, where ‘c’ = ‘circa’, so ‘about’.
26 TEA CHEST, T(ACHE)EST. Much easier in the end than I expected.
27 STILETTO, S(TIL[t])ET-TO.
 
Down
2 TRIPLANE, TRIP + LANE. This clue suffers from an imperfect equivalency, since a ‘high’ is not a ‘trip’, but the way the clue is supposed to work is clear enough.
3 CHORUSED, CHOR(USE)D. I thought for a long time that C, E, and D were the notes, and could not figure out what Horus was doing in there.
4 COAT, C(O)AT, i.e. a cat with nothing in it.
5 REROUTE, R.E. + ROUT + E[nergy].
6 OTHER RANKS, O T(HERR)ANKS, where crossword solvers should at least have heard of the phrase, even if it has never appeared spelled-out like this.
7 MAHARAJA, A JAR + A HAM upside down, a bit of a chestnut by now.
8 SENTINEL, SENT IN + E[nemyh] L[ines].
13 UNINFORMED, UNI + N FORM + E[cite]D.
15 HOT PANTS, anagram of POSH, NATT[y].
16 NAUTICAL, sounds like NAUGHTY + CAL[m].
18 TRUE BLUE, TR(U)EBL(U)E, a very clever clue.
19 LORIKEET, L(OR)IKE + [n]E[s]T.
20 PUT-PUTS, PUT + PUT + S[team].
24 THAI, hidden in [shor]T-HAI[red].

43 comments on “Times 25981 – Now if 6, turned out to be 9, I don’t mind….”

  1. But … yes … a bit harder than your average Monday. Another one here who pondered HORUS at 3dn. Was pleased to see Jimi in a daily Times; but less so LORIKEET. The Rainbow variety may be a very beautiful bird but it’s a pest.

    Native to Eastern Australia, someone let a mob of them out some years ago and now they’re taking over the resources of the locally-native Western Rosella. It’s sad but necessary to see them shot. Best place for them is a secure bird park at Metricup, near Margaret River, where you can take pictures of them sitting on your head.

    CoD to TRUE-BLUE. Beautifully constructed clue — even if it brings memories of Australia’s worst ever popular song.

    1. I’d never heard of “True Blue” – it’s not been in Rolf Harris’s repertoire and now never will be. So I looked it up. I couldn’t work out whether it was a hymn to some mythical image of white Australian mateship or an appeal for us all to get on together. But it must be the only song which has ever contained the word “Vegemite” (as Australian as – um – Toblerone). What happens when it’s sung in Aussie bars? Does everyone melt and smile lovingly at each other, like Americans listening to Stand By Your Man, or do they throw beer bottles at the singer?
      2. It’s a hymn to that which is good in human nature. It’s not mythical, not just mateship, not just male and not just white. Australia is not mentioned but the use of Australian idioms might lead some to think the song an anthem to ockerism.
        Vegemite was used as a symbol of commercialised effete nationalism.
        “Is it standing by your mate when she’s in a fight, or just Vegemite?”. Vegemite must have complained because its name has been replaced in the later version.
        The reference to “another dying race” is taken to acknowledge Australian Aborigines who were long thought, wrongly, to be dying out. Mum and Dad are family, a cockatoo is nature. And so on.
        The song is rough around the edges but it’s much better than mctext allows and deserves more than flippancy.
        terencep
        1. Thanks for that. I genuinely had never heard of it – over here our repertoire of genuine Australian songs is pretty well limited to Rolf Harris. On first hearing (with lyrics), and obviously well out of context, it did sound a lot like a yearning for a disappearing era of mateship, which might make it an anthem for the Aussie equivalent of UKIP. I can see from McT’s comment that it divides opinion, even if by the margin of the entire Australian population to 1. Perhaps it could be described as a Vegemite song, either loved or hated.
          I’d still like an answer to my question about its current status and use. Does it still get sung? does it still provoke patriotic/matey emotions?
          From internet comment, it seemed the Vegemite line was dropped because Vegemite was owned by Kraft’s parent body while your comment suggests that’s pretty much why it was originally included.
          My apologies for any offence caused, especially if it were perceived as the equivalent of an Aussie rubbishing, say, “Jerusalem”.
          1. No offence taken. I think the song still forms part of John Williamson’s concerts and I suspect it stirs some emotions, good or bad.
            terencep
          2. No offence taken. I think the song still forms part of John Williamson’s concerts and I suspect it stirs some emotions, good or bad.
            terencep
  2. Another thoroughly enjoyable puzzle that delayed me for 50 minutes but at no time did I feel stuck or that I was running short of ideas.

    Not knowing much about it, I assumed that ‘high’ and ‘trip’ were equivalent in drug terminology so if there is a difference it didn’t occur to me. On checking the dictionaries I find that Collins defines ‘a high’ as ‘a state of altered consciousness’ which I’d have thought was a fairly broad catch-all definition to get the setter off any perceived hook, but I’m prepared to bow to others’ extensive experience of such matters.

    Edited at 2014-12-29 03:40 am (UTC)

    1. I’d just assumed that ” … on a trip” could easily be an instance of ” … on a high”, rather in the way that a zebra is an instance of an animal. Of course, there are other highs and other animals … but that’s no problem at all. Setter duly exonerated.
  4. 26 minutes but a careless dinosaur at 10. I blame it on the reminiscing about I Am Weasel, Teletubbies and the dreaded Barney with my daughter in Macau yesterday evening…
    1. Ah, the Teletubbies. Last week, an 18yo student revealed that she was the splendid baby whose face was used as the sun. It all came flooding back!
  5. I have been caught out once too often in the past with OBEISANT so did not get it wrong this time. Started getting excited about a pangram but it was not to be (no Z). Agreed a bit harder than a usual Monday but everything fair. 24:36.
  6. A steady 25 minute solve of a decent enough puzzle that was reasonably entertaining

    I agree that “must” at 9A is unnecessary. The clue works just fine without the word so why is it there?

    Don’t recall seeing PUT-PUTS in a Times before

    2. I agree that 9A would work without “must”, and initially wondered myself why it was there. But on reflection I think the surface reads more smoothly with it if you take “must have” to indicate the ingredients required to provide the solution — that is, I + M[illions] inside (invested in) ESTATE (property). I don’t agree with Dyste that I here is the letter and not the the first-person pronoun.
      1. I don’t see how your last sentence can be justified. The basis of cryptic clues is that some words are codes for letters or groups of letters, and the surface is not to be taken literally, which is what you seem to be doing. ‘Millions’ indicates the letter M, and ‘I’ indicates the letter ‘I’. Even if you choose to regard ‘I’ as the personal pronoun, it still needs a singular verb, as a comparison between the following two examples will illustrate:
        1. I am singular
        2. ‘I’ is singular
        It’s the second example that is applicable to cryptic grammar.
        Perhaps, like Tony Sever below, you are not especially bothered by strict Ximenean principles (many aren’t), but the point of my original comment was to highlight the irony of a clue that is beyond reproach (in fact a very nice clue) receiving comments that the surface has otiose words in it.
        1. I am sure you are right, as Tony Sever says, according to strict Ximenean rules, which, I guess, only goes to show that, like him, I am not too fussed if they are bent a little from time to time. it is of course true that the surface of cryptic clues are not generally to be taken literally, but bits of the clues may be. It seems to me that “I have millions” could be read as meaning “I am in possession of millions”, which could in turn be taken to indicate that M (for millions) should be placed next to I in the solution. The personal pronoun seems to me to work equally well in the “I must have” version.

          At least we are agreed that 9A is a very nice clue and that it is better with “must” (though for me this has less to do with strict observance of Ximenean rules than with the smoothness of the surface read)!

  7. Looks like I was doing rather well at 16.07 – a fair bit of time spent trying to evict Horus from 3d and thinking about how acerbic I’d be about the lazy setter’s recourse to “several notes”. A propos an argument arising from the Christmas Day puzzle about finishing the puzzle in short order without understanding all the clues, I think this particular clue is an argument for parsing everything before hitting the submit button: I would have been uneasy entering CHORUSED without seeing how it worked.
    Entertaining puzzle with some quirky clues: COAT and VAIN playing with the same idea, TRUE BLUE requiring some careful maths. And many fine surfaces.
  8. Rather a period feel to this with “hot pants” and Hendrix and “high”. Not speaking from personal experience but I agree that on an acid trip one might (although not necessarily because it might be a bad trip) be on a “high”. While not ever being turned on I was definitely tuned in here at 15.38.
  9. 20:50 … same problems as others, plus a bonus obstacle produced by somehow confusing the enumeration of 18 with its neighbour and looking hard for a bird which was (4,4).

    Some very canny stuff for a Monday (or any other day) with both neat surfaces and clever wordplay.

  10. Vinyl – 7d A JAR not A JAM.

    Great puzzle, especially for a Monday, was on the wavelength for once, loved to see Jimi featuring and some super clueing.

  11. I found this a a pleasantly gentle Monday puzzle after a weekend of tough ones, taking me 32 minutes. A slight hold-up in the NE where some checked letters suggested SCIMITAR for 27, so wasted time trying to justify it. It’s a very nice clue.

    I beg to differ with vinyl1 and dorsetjimbo about 9ac. This is a setter who is clearly scrupulous about cryptic grammar,unlike some, and ‘must’ is necessary, not just a filler. Without it the clue would be faulty. In the cryptic reading ‘I’ is not the first person, but a letter, therefore takes the third-person singular verb form, ‘has’. Since that mucks up the surface the setter has opted for the standard way round the problem by inserting the auxiliary, ‘must’.

  12. A solid crossword with some good words and clues, which made for a steady solve. Untimed of course but about a (cold turkey, we’re still eating it) sandwich and coffee.
    Shame about the lorikeets. We rarely see them here, inland from the east coast.
    terencep
  13. 26 mins but I was nodding off midway through, something that has become a worrying habit of late. I’m with those who are of the opinion that this was a tricky puzzle for a Monday and the excellent PASS MUSTER was my LOI.
  14. A nice point by dyste, with which I concur completely.

    I think there are quite a few lorikeets living wild in currently freezing-cold London. I’m not completely sure how they got there! Perhaps the lorie lobby activists set them all free.

    1. The ones we have here in SW London are parakeets, which are apparently a slightly different species to lorikeets. Local folklore has it that they were being transported to Shepperton studios as set-dressing for “The African Queen” (despite not being an African species), when the lorry ran into a railway bridge and released them into the wild.
  15. About 30 minutes here, for what I thought a very good puzzle. A lot of cleverness. I think ‘a high’ and ‘a trip’ are generally close enough for cryptics. PASS MUSTER was very nice too. There were several today where I saw the solution quickly, but struggled with the parsing. But when I did unravel the wordplay most were very pleasing. Regards.
  16. Just under 20 minutes, more difficult than usual for a Monday, which is fine when you don’t have to go to work. I was another who havered over Horus for a while, chuntering to myself all the while about “some notes” style clues until the penny dropped, so apologies to the setter for doubting him/her. Enjoyable puzzle.
  17. Agree about the Lorikeet. We used to live in Sydney and they used to boss the (larger) Crimson Rosellas with their arrogance.
  18. A bit over an hour in two enjoyable goes. Thank you, setter. I had to see both coat and vain before I got the “inside of” joke. Nice blog, Vinyl
  20. 14:02 for me, simply not on the ball today – though I agree that this was perhaps more difficult than usual for a Monday puzzle.

    Ximenes is firmly on dyste’s side. In the chapter “Cluemanship” in Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword, he suggests using “I must [have]” or “I can [have]” or “one [has]” in clues like 9ac. Of course those (like me) who aren’t strict Ximeneans may not be too fussed about this sort of thing.

  21. Late solve today but all correct in 47m though bunged in CHORUSED without parsing – another in the HORUS camp! I did enjoy this – I must be getting used to those pesky question marks at last.
  23. It’s a country song by a country singer, hence probably totally disregarded/ignored/unknown by 99.99999% of Australians. Never sung by anyone anywhere – especially not in pubs – except the bloke who wrote it when he goes to Tamworth. I know of it, but have no opinion of it, except that I don’t like it because I don’t like country music.
    IT IS NOT AN ANTHEM.
    Sorry for shouting.
    Rob
    37 minutes so slow, didn’t really like COAT, even though it’s a very TIMES clue. UPHOLDER was a guess, didn’t see the cupholder.
  24. Here in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reproduces the Times Crossword, but is always a few months behind. I don’t know why – maybe it’s still delivered here by steamship? So this December puzzle has only just been published here. I don’t know if anyone will read my late comment.

    I normally finish, though not in the hyper-speedy times reported here. On this one, I was stuck with *three* obvious answers that I couldn’t fully rationalize. (Hence my journey to this forum.) HORUS & SQUARE baffled me like many others, and I found a new mis-parse for LORIKEET. I thought that “Fancy!” = “Oh, surprising!” = “Lor!”, which doesn’t quite ring true but was still enough to distract.

    I agree with the Ximenean must of “must” in 9A. Why cheapen with sloppy grammar the beautiful art of the surface?

    Thanks,
    Anselan.

  25. This blog entry is, confusingly, linked from 28 December 2014 – rather than the date the puzzle appeared: 29 December.

    25 Across: Defender about to be ignored by current champion? (8)
    UPHOLDER
    CUPHOLDER with ‘C’=’about’ missing.
    I do not understand how “by” in the clue can be justified. “in” would seem to be required (at the expense of the surface reading).

Comments are closed.