Times 25,991: Nursery Crimes

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Enjoyed this one a lot. With a busy Friday morning schedule to contend with, I elected to stay up till midnight on Thursday to do it online, and was able to hit the submit button 16 and a half minutes later, which felt pretty good given that a large number of the clues here seemed just a touch more devious than normal. Fun stuff like “reduced by half, initially” at 24A and “dealt with by farmer’s wife?” at 8D. I’ve got to get moving or else I’d enthuse a bit more, but I think it’s obvious looking at my parsings below that extra cognitive gymnastics are needed in a lot of cases beyond the standard “X + Y = Z”. Thanks setter, much appreciated.

I’d better go get some girls dressed just now but I’ll be around to chat cryptics after lunch. See you later!

Across
1 ALLEGRO – fast: ALL EGO [“entirely self-obsessed”] that R [king] “breaks”
5 CORNCOB – “section of ear”: CORN [hardened skin] + CO B [firm (and) black]
9 BOY WONDER – “young talent”: (NOBODY WE R{ecognize} “at first”*) [“peculiarly”]
10 MAMBA – “one venomous”: “twin business graduates, one heartless” i.e. M{b}A MBA
11 SHORN – “unlocked” (as in, with locks removed): S HORN [small | warning device]
12 REFUSENIK – dissident: RE-FUSE [“once more to join”] + KIN [relations, “coming west”]
14 IN THE FAMILY WAY – with child: IN THE WAY [interfering] with FAMILY [line] “having been crossed”
17 CHANGE ONES MIND – rethink: CHANGE ONE MIND [money | I | worry] about S [“ultimately” {cause}S]
21 MASS MEDIA – radio etc: MA [parent] + (MISSED A*) [“broadcast”]
23 UNCLE – relative: A R [a | right] “to be dissociated from” UNCLE{AR} [dim]
24 LULLS – “stops for a while”: CULLS [killing] “reduced by half, initially” i.e. C [100] becomes L [50]
25 BRAZIL NUT – a little food: (BURNT*) [“badly”] wherein LIZA [girl] is “gulped back”
26 ZAMBIAN – “of African state”: ZAN{y} [“not completely” crazy] to cross AMBI{t} [“shortened” boundary]
27 EVEN OUT – leave flat: EVEN [literary soiree, i.e. a poetical word for “evening”] + OUT [al fresco]

Down
1 ABBESS – religious leader: AB [muscle] + B{l}ESS [to lay on hands “missing pound”, i.e. minus L]
2 LAY DOWN – establish: LAY [“what hens do”] + DOWN [feathers]
3 GROUNDHOG – rodent: GROUND [prepare] + HOG [corner]
4 OLD TRAFFORD – stadium: OLD [used] + AFFORD [grant] “following” T R [“tips from” T{reasure}R]
5 CAR – wheels: CA [“not exactly” i.e. circa] + R [R{ound} “at the top”]
6 REMUS – “early city planner”: RE [note] + SUM [“raised” amount of cash]
7 COME NOW – “be reasonable”: COW [to bully] “getting round” OMEN [warning]
8 BLACK EYE – mouse: LACKEY [servant] “found in” BE{d} [bed “dealt with by farmer’s wife”, i.e. getting its tail cut off]
13 FEMME FATALE – “attractive lass”: M M [twice married] in FEE [charge] + FAT [generous] + ALE [beer]
15 LIMOUSINE – 5, i.e. 5D, car: LIMOUSIN [supplier of beef] + E [additive number]
16 SCHMALTZ – syrupy stuff: SC [“that is” i.e. scilicet] + H [hot] + MALTZ [whisky’s “picked up”, i.e. homophone of “malt’s”]
18 ABSALOM – ancient King’s son: (MOB ALAS*) [“dismembered”]
19 NO CAN DO – off-putting response: CON [time-server “coming up”] + AND O [with | old]
20 BEAT IT – run away: BE A TIT [“take part of winger”]
22 MASAI – African people: {milit}IA’S AM{nesty} “in part overturned”
25 BAN – don’t allow: NAB [collar “to be raised”]

40 comments on “Times 25,991: Nursery Crimes”

  1. I was under the impression that Rome was named after Romulus, and that Remus died young–killed by Romulus, in fact (well, not in fact, of course).
    1. Romulus and Remus are twin brothers and the main characters in Rome’s foundation myth…While Romulus wanted to found the new city on the Palatine Hill, Remus preferred the Aventine Hill. They agree to determine the site through augury but when each claims the results in his own favor, they quarrel and Remus is killed.
      1. I had to look up augury. I think I might use it to decide what to have for tea tonight.
        1. You could use haruspicy – even if the divination fails, you can eat the remnants of the procedure! (Warning: not suitable for vegetarians.)

          Goodness there were some odd divination methods back in those days. In a fit of nostalgia I just went and read up on coscinomancy…

    2. Huh, I had long thought for some reason that Rome was named after Remus, despite sharing Romulus’s vowel, but this seems to have been a foolish misconception. Romulus is really a back-formation of Rome though by the looks of things, and the actual aetiology of the city’s name is something else entirely…
  2. Couldn’t make sense of 20d, even though a) I thought of TIT, and b) I thought of BEAT IT. I think I feel the icy breath of Dr. Alzheimer on my neck. Got LULLS, but there too the parsing was beyond me. DNK OLD TRAFFORD, but at least I was able to parse it. This comes of going on the wagon.
  3. . . . with quite a few going in unparsed so thank you verlaine. Some clever cluing here.
  4. Only just crept in under the hour, partially delayed by not having the confidence to write in some answers that jumped out at me but I was unable to parse until later e.g. CAR, LULLS, IN THE FAMILY WAY and NO CAN DO. Actually I never did crack CAR. Thoroughly entertaining.

    Edited at 2015-01-09 08:54 am (UTC)

  5. In both the Times and the Guardian, and I can remember the days when it was just The Sun (and was it also the Star? Never found many of those left on train seats…)

    Yes, I managed to completely miss the be-a-tittery at 20d, which makes me feel a bit of one, especially after I printed my ‘answer sheet’ out after doing it online today and gave myself a pat on the back for parsing the lot, tut-tutting at the setter for cluing BEAT IT by ‘take part of winger’.

    39 minutes, with my favourite still SHORN – an award I often give to my last in. 16d and 20d also very good, with a mention in dispatches for 12a and 24a.

  6. 30m. Most of this went in quickly, but then I got stuck on a few at the end:
    > LIMOUSINE, where I was looking for something meaning CORN COB (doh!)
    > SCHMALTZ, where for ages I was looking for a more literal sort of syrupy stuff
    > LULLS. In the end I just bunged this in. I had considered it early on but couldn’t convince myself that it means ‘stops for a while’ and never saw the rather clever wordplay. Post-solve I decided that it must be a noun, which I didn’t really like, but ODO has the verb meaning with the example ‘conversation lulled for an hour’. I don’t really know why I didn’t see this.
    Apart from these self-inflicted frustrations I thought this was an excellent puzzle, albeit with a number of DBBIs*.

    *definition-based bung-ins. Do you think it will catch on? Me neither.

    Edited at 2015-01-09 10:03 am (UTC)

    1. How about BIFD (biffed) as Bunged In From Definition (which in my case often leads to a bloody nose from the setter)?
      1. I like it. I don’t often come a cropper from this approach because I usually have some notion of at least an element of the wordplay. So for example 12ac and 14ac were both BIFD but as I wrote them in I saw the reversal of KIN and FAMILY = line, respectively. Where it does trip me up it’s usually because I think I know how to spell something but don’t.
  8. Definitely one where the pleasure is twofold: divining the answer and unravelling the clue (the latter of which I failed with 5d & 24, so thanks Verlaine).

    Regarding Romulus & Remus, thinking back to my Latin lessons I seem to remember they were joint founders of Rome but argued over which of the 7 hills to put it on, following which Romulus killed Remus. So it is certainly arguable that Remus was a city planner, even though he didn’t actually succeed.

  9. Stymied by the Yiddish again! Super puzzle knocked off quickly waiting for new tyres being fitted, then a lull with halts pencilled in for 24th unparsed and an 8 letter word ending in Z. Had to wander to the cafe and go online to search. Memo to self, if it ends in Z, think Yiddish. Good blog V, especially if done in the wee small hours.
  11. A pleasing 15 minutes with lots of weighing-up of right and wrong answers, post-dated parsing, and the odd blind alley (NEW BROODY never really caught on as a phrase, did it).
  12. Only one complaint with this, it allowed me to get through it more quickly than I wanted. Some great definitions and wordplay. Not convoluted, not esoteric, just very clever. I dips me lid.
  13. 20 minutes, but with ABSALOM embarrassingly spelt wrong. Just can’t count the numbers of A’s and O’s in the anagram fodder, and was thinking of Solomon at the same time. Go to the back of the Bible class!
    Thanks for parsing LULLS; I just couldn’t untangle all the halfs, initallys reductions and stops.
    I’d have spelt REFUSENIK without the E – it just doesn’t work in Russian, and I still think it looks wrong. But an excellent chewy puzzle.
  14. 23.50, held up at the last in SE. A refreshing new look to a number of clues. Wonderful word, schmaltz.
  15. 19 mins. I confess that LULLS was my LOI from definition alone so thanks for that Verlaine, and I needed all the checkers for LIMOUSINE. I hadn’t helped myself at the start because I didn’t read 6dn properly and I confidently bunged in “Sumer”.
  16. 37 minutes. A bit tougher than yesterday’s but not the killer I was expecting. I didn’t understand the wordplay to 24, nor the beef reference in 15, hence I held back from entering LIMOUSINE until I had 5d, which I didn’t get until I had 5a, which was also slow to emerge.
    A very pleasing variety of clues. We have been treated to an excellent batch of clues all week.
  17. 21 min – but couldn’t parse 24a, and thinking that 5 gave me the E (5th letter) meant that 15d was LOI, as I was trying to make ‘additive’ the definition.
  18. An enjoyable 7:26. There have been quite a lot of mambas around in crosswordland recently and also the ‘mouse’ which for some reason the sore eye definition always has to be dragged from the dark recesses of my memory banks.
  19. I wasn’t at all convinced about this (thought there was something missing in the clue) so thank you V for sorting it out – you must be right. “Beat it” is a rather Anax-style conceit and I think that’s where we’ve seen it before. I’d read somewhere about badger culls in the UK and I know we’ve had that device before too (C to L or vice versa) but can’t remember when or where. We were primed for the Yiddish clue this week but even so I got lead astray because I went looking for “ryes” rather than “malts”. Took me far too long to see what was going on in the limo clue. 15.36
  20. c20 minutes (BEANS)*

    I’m another who struggled with the schmaltz/lulls/ Zambian corner. For a while I thought the “whisky’s picked up” part might me a reversal of mac’s, even though I know full well that ginger wine isn’t whisky.

    Quite a few not fully parsed so thanks to V for the enlightement.

    Whenever I hear the phrase “be a tit” it’s invariably preceded by “don’t”. Joint COD to beat it and 1a for the clever “all ego”

    * Eating a Niçoise salad. No, I don’t know what the B stands for either.

  21. I liked this one a lot too, a nice challenge after yesterday with some stuff I don’t think I’ve seen before (e.g. the C->L trick in LULLS). All in all, I think we did well to finish in 25 minutes between 4 of us.
  22. Just inside the hour here after a long break away, with some very clever cluing. I didn’t help myself by bunging in Gambian unparsed, and I also played with whiskey macs reversed when I had the C and M crossers. Like many, I struggled with parsing LULLS, so thanks for that Verlaine.

  23. And that Blank was LULLS. I had thought of LULLS, but didn’t put it in because (a) I didn’t think it meant ‘stops for a while’ (thought it just meant ‘slowed for a while’), and (b) I couldn’t work it out. Hence no reason to bung it in!

    However, I did manage to parse all the others but SCHMALTZ (didn’t know that SC=’that is’), and thought it a terrific puzzle. Like Olivia, I was looking for ryes or rise at 16dn.

    COD: SHORN for the devious ‘unlocked’.

  24. A whisker over the hour with this, with LULLS the LOI. Thanks for the explanation.
    Remarkable how many words in this were of overseas origin – ALLEGRO, MAMBA, REFUSENIK, BRAZIL NUT, ZAMBIAN, SCHMALTZ, ABSALOM, GROUNDHOG, MASAI, FEMME FATALE, REMUS, LIMOUSIN(E). Just shows how the English language has benefited by pilfering from its neighbours
  25. Great fun today. Clever but very accessible. I managed it in 50 minutes, which is good for me, and enjoyed every minute.Thanks very much setter and blogger.
  26. On a roll at present – all done in 23m and all correct . Lots of BIFD (bunging in from definition) so thanks to V for the clear parsing. I enjoyed lots of these and smiled as I wrote in MAMBA and BRASIL NUT. Hats off to setter today.

    Edited at 2015-01-09 04:33 pm (UTC)

    1. Not all correct if you smiled when you wrote in BRASIL NUT. Brazil is one of many words I struggle with, where I know of a foreign spelling and am never sure which is the English spelling. I guessed BRAZIL NUT today, luckily. But failed completely on limousine, not knowing the cow. Couldn’t see LULLS, though I’ve seen and solved that device before.
      Rob 22 min with one blank.
  27. Tricky, testing and fun Friday puzzle. The clues for LULLS (24A) and BLACK EYE (8D) were particularly ingenious, I thought. I managed to finish correctly but was far from understanding the full parsing of several clues, among them the two just cited. Thanks to Verlaine for the explanations.
  28. Very good puzzle, which took 30 minutes, but I failed on LULLS. Obviously I couldn’t parse it, so a tip of the cap to the setter for cleverness. It took a while, but I did eventually figure out the ZAMBIAN, LIMOUSINE, and the delightful SCHMALTZ. Thanks setter and Verlaine, and regards.
  30. Oh phooey! I simply couldn’t find the setter’s wavelength with this one, took simply ages over it (stopping the clock at 14:33), and bunged in a lot of answers simply from the definitions without understanding the wordplay at the time. And to cap it all, I ended up making a half-witted mistake: I’d wanted 18dn to be SOLOMON (the S from “son” seemed like a good start), but then when I finally had a couple of checked letters, bunged in ABSOLOM!!! I had a niggling feeling something wasn’t quite right as well. And I’m particularly fond of the Tomkins setting of When David Heard, and had a discussion about the Weelkes and Whitacre settings on my RTC blog some years ago. So a stupid mistake, horribly early in the year, breaking what was building up to a decent run of all-corrects. (Deep sigh!)

    No complaints about the crossword, though, apart perhaps from 27ac (EVEN OUT), where (like Olivia) I’m not entirely convinced by the wordplay.

  31. Late to the party, but another big fan of the puzzle. I,too, have a tick next to SHORN as cod; didn’t know the SC in schmaltz, so thanks deforresitation the parsing Verliane.
    Might be worth saying that, in a different version of the Rome story Remus is killed because he insults Romuls’s beginning of building by jumping over the nascent walls.

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