Times 25993 – Catch as many as you like!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 32 minutes or so

Music: None – golf is back on TV!

This was quite an easy puzzle, only I was watching golf as I did it, which may have slowed me down a bit. After 28 minutes, I had all but a couple of answers, but couldn’t see the missing ones. So I paused for a cup of tea and a snack; when I came back, as usually happens, I finished the puzzle off in short order. My only problem was with ‘equip’, a chestnut that I frequently fail to recognize no matter how often it comes up. When you see I ‘u’, try a ‘q’….as I keep telling myself.

Things are pretty dull here in New York, as the really cold weather has set in and the days are short. I have been doing both the Times and the Guardian puzzles every day, and while I always complete the Times I still frequently get stuck on some of the more difficult Guardian puzzles.

After completing the blog, I have started to realize how very elementary many of the clues in this puzzle are. I probably would have solved it quicker if I had not been trying to follow the Hyundai TOC at the same time. In any case, I always have difficulty adjusting to very easy puzzles, not being able to believe how obvious the answers are. But we should see some fast times from the regulars today.

Across
1 BOULEVARD, D(RAVEL)UO B, all backwards. Most solvers will not need the cryptic.
9 IVANHOE, anagram of I’VE NOAH.
10 FLORIST, anagram of LIST FOR, and a ridiculously obvious literal.
11 LLAMA, M ALL backwards + A[ndes], a nice &lit.
12 RECHERCHE, R (E) CHE + R CHE. The literal is not quite as much of an oxymoron as you might think, at least in the 19th century. Nowadays, things are different.
13 RIPOSTE, R(I POST)E.
15 CHORE, C(H)ORE.
17 SPITE, SPIT[fir]E.
18 ASCOT, double definition. I thought of ‘Ascot’ at once, but only later did I remember it is also a kind of tie.
19 ENTER, [c]ENTER. Although the answer was obvious, I had a lot of trouble figuring out the cryptic.
20 FIDDLER, double definition, as in a fiddler crab.
23 PRETENDER, PRE-TENDER.
25 STEAM, S + TEAM. I had originally put in ‘moxie’, that is MO + XI + E. It’s a great &lit clue, but it gives you a real mess for the crossing letters. The actual answer is much less amusing.
27 URANIUM, [p]UR[e] [p]ANI[c] + [l]UM[p], very clever, but obvious.
28 ARCHIVE, [l]ARC[h] + HIVE.
29 REPUTEDLY, REP(anagram of DUET)LY.
 
Down
1 BEFORE, sounds like B FORE, although there is no ‘sounds like’ indicator BE FOR E, i.e. substitute the two letters for the one.
2 UNOCCUPIED, U.N. + OCCUPIED.
3 EVIDENCE, DIVE upside-down + ‘ENCE. I had a very difficult time with the cryptic, since the enclosing ‘e,e’ for East End, the E[ast] C[entral] upside-down at the end, and the ‘den’ in the middle all offer distracting possibilities.
4 ATTIC, CI(T[erroris]T)A upside-down.
5 DIFFERENT, D(IF FE, R)ENT.
6 WALLOP, WALL + OP.
7 RHEA, hidden twice in [a]R[e] H[y]E[n]A [o]R [c]H[e]E[t]A[h].
8 DECADENT, anagram of ACT ENDED.
14 SECOND WIND, SECOND + WIND in different senses. ‘Earlier’ seems to be an unnecessary location indicator.
16 OVERPOWER, OVER + POWER. I would have made this a cricket clue.
17 SOFT SOAP, S + OFT + S([st]O[ck])AP
18 ARTEFACT, anagram of TART CAFE.
21 LIMPID, LIMP + I.D.
22 GRUMPY, G(RUM)P + Y.
24 EQUIP, E + QUIP.
26 EACH, [t]EACH.

58 comments on “Times 25993 – Catch as many as you like!”

    1. Good spot. My rationale (below) is much worse! I’d have posted it earlier (prior to 04:00 UTC) if my net connection was working at the time.
  2. An element of park strolling this morning — a bit like golf except without the clubs or a ball. LOI was SPITE where I couldn’t see the wood (fir) … for the trees. The only post-solve parsing was BEFORE. Again, I couldn’t see the conceit: that putting a B (spelled ‘be’?) in front (‘fore’) turns ‘end’ into ‘bend’. At least, that’s my rationale for the absence of a homophone indicator. Not the best clue in the puzzle, but B_F_R_ doesn’t yield much else.

    As for ASCOT, the two meanings are closely connected, I found post-solve. ODO has:

    “ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from the place name Ascot, by association with formal dress at race meetings held there”.

    Edited at 2015-01-12 04:13 am (UTC)

  3. Rather unsatisfying puzzle, where almost everything went in before I knew why. In the case of 1d, without my knowing why until I came here and read Anon’s explanation. There was a period, many years ago, when I sometimes wore an ascot; I’m rather more sufferable now.
  4. I found too many of the definitions were rather obvious and I left a lot of clues unparsed so thank you vinyl.

    Even ignoring the lack of homophone indicator I still can’t quite make 1dn work. [EDIT: I see that since I’ve been writing this anon has explained it. Thanks.]

    I love the idea of MOXIE at 25ac but I think it would have been a bit too clever for this puzzle!

    Edited at 2015-01-12 04:20 am (UTC)

    1. Moxie wouldn’t work as an &lit for me (second eleven as part of def?), so it would require ENERGY doing double duty and fail as a Times clue. Not to mention needing a US-slang indicator.

      Otherwise a bit unsatisfactory as noted, too many write-ins. 16:47 including a couple of minutes break in the middle and a couple of minutes at the end overcoming a typo (DECEDENT -> L-A-E for LLAMA crossers). So close to fastest solve ever.
      Rob


  5. Yep, quick (too quick?) here, too, maybe even a PB with the clock stopping at 21:14. As others, i needed to come here to understand how BEFORE works. Only other one unparsed was EVIDENCE, so thanks for that one. LOI: LLAMA.
  6. A fast time by my standards, but I’m not overly chuffed.
    I’VE NOAH is barely even an anagram, and CHORE, ASCOT, FIDDLER, ARCHIVE, ATTIC, DIFFERENT, RHEA and DECADENT would all be more at home in the Quickie.

    Still, nothing wrong with the occasional easy one, I’m sure we’ll pay for it later in the week.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

        1. I’ve no idea. It’s one of the mysteries of the universe.
          By ‘anomaly’ I think you mean ‘sign of things to come’. 😉
  7. Too quick for sure and ASCOT is a bit iffy but otherwise no complaints. I thought ARCHIVE stood out as COD, and would make a good caption in National Geographic.
  8. 17 minutes, so a very rare trip for me into PB territory though I don’t know for sure exactly what my PB is and I couldn’t swear that I ever cracked the 15 minute barrier.

    Along with several others above I had failed to see how 1dn worked, so thanks to “anon” for the explanation.

    The best clue of the day was 11ac which made me smile.

    ASCOT is short for ‘Ascot tie’ so there’s no valid query as far as I can see

    Those who wish to access today’s Quickie which is currently unavailable via the usual button can do so on my own Live Journal page (click jackkt under my userpic) where I have placed a copy temporarily until the Times sort their problem out.

    Edited at 2015-01-12 06:17 am (UTC)

    1. I’m betting this means something other than British Institute of Funeral Directors. Aha! Bunged in from definition?

      Edited at 2015-01-12 07:46 am (UTC)

  10. 9:11 … mais oui, une promenade sur le boulevard, except BEFORE, qui plié le mind un peu.

    I’m another fan of vinyl’s MOXIE alternative.

  11. Under 15m so approaching PB territory but nevertheless strangely unsatisfying, with many just being scribbled in and very few Doh moments. Thanks for the blog vinyl and thanks also to anon for 1d.
  12. 10.24 with the feeling all the way through that I should be going faster on this.
    MOXIE is brilliant, and should turn up as the right answer any day now if setters read this blog. One of my favourite games is to treat the concise as a cryptic puzzle and end up with a complete set of wrong answers. There’s usually a preponderance of very, very stretched CDs, but it’s more fun than doing it properly.
  13. Maybe it’s because it’s a Monday morning, maybe it’s because I wasn’t in the groove, but despite the comments above about its simplicity it actually took me a while to get going today on this – 15a was my first one in! However when the brain eventually clicked into gear the bottom half sorted itself out before eventually working round to the NW. DNK Ascot as a tie (Windsor, yes, but not Ascot) and parsing 1d defeated me.
    I should have got 9a quicker – I loved the film with the Taylors: Robert & Elizabeth, as well as the old 50’s TV series with a pre-Saint & Bond Roger Moore in the lead. I can still sing the theme song…
    1. I see that Roger Moore was asked recently whether he still kept in touch with his ‘The Persuaders’ co-star Tony Curtis. “Not since he died” the great man responded
  14. 9 mins. The relatively straightforward (from the definition) BOULEVARD was actually my LOI because it took me a while to see BEFORE (which I never did parse). It also took me longer than it should have done to see the DECADENT/LLAMA crossers. I agree that MOXIE is a superb alternative reading of 25ac.

    1. It took me longer than it should have done to see the DECADENT/LLAMA crossers

      I now have in my mind the image of a group of old roués conducting clandestine breeding experiments in Peru.

      Edited at 2015-01-12 11:51 am (UTC)

        1. Of course. Camouflage Hefner silk pyjamas perhaps, which would help explain why they’re so hard to see.
  16. Agreed, straightforward stuff, mainly owing to some very thinly disguised defs that rendered the cryptic parsing redundant. A case in point was 27A (URANIUM), where the word-play was clever but wasted because the answer was so obvious, particularly once the cross-checkers were in place. But, hey, I’m not complaining. Nice to have an easyish start to the week.
  17. Thanks for sorting out BEFORE, I couldn’t. The word BOULEVARD being rather on our minds lately, I finally realized why Richard-Lenoir was familiar – it’s where Simenon’s Chief Inspector and Madame Maigret live, though no doubt it’s a bit different now. Which prompted me to re-watch some of the early 90s tv series with Michael Gambon where (I think) Prague stands in perfectly for 1930s Paris. Excellent. 9.22
  18. Equal PB, 11 minutes with a couple unparsed (EVIDENCE, BEFORE), so thanks Vinyl. Agree with others, good wordplays but defs often too obvious to make you bother. No doubt Wednesday (blog-day) will be a different story.
  19. 14 min – and I had MOXIE till I got on to the downs, No problem with 1d, as the ‘X for(or as) Y’ is a favourite device in barred puzzles. 1a took a while, having been trying to use RUE somehow.
    1. It could be but probably wasn’t. But I think it’s better. On edit: no, perhaps it doesn’t quite work. Close though.

      Edited at 2015-01-12 02:16 pm (UTC)

  21. 16 minutes. Another disappointingly easy puzzle. The most complex cryptic was 1a, but once I had a few letters in place the answer was obvious and I didn’t bother to work out the wordplay until the end. 3 was another easy one, which could be entered on the definition alone. As has been noted earlier, the anagrams for 9 and 10 are hardly disguised, particularly 9, where the answer begins with the first two letters of the anagram. I quite liked 1d.
  22. Am I alone in being disappointed by the dumbed-down puzzles (both literate and numerate) in The Times on Mondays? I’ve corresponded with the new Puzzles Editor (david.parfitt@news.co.uk) but he seems to think that we need this gentle introduction to the week. He’s said that he’ll review the situation if he gets further complaints. Any takers?
    1. I like the variety of standards in the crossword and in general I find more that are too hard for me – either DNF or well over the hour – than are too easy – which I define for me as sub 20m. On the other hand I only ever do the Fiendish or Superfiendish Sudoku but it would seem selfish to only want to see that standard of puzzle, wouldn’t it?
    2. Your comment might carry more weight if you were not posting completely anonymously. I am unaware of any such policy and haven’t heard of the appointment of a new puzzles editor going by the name you have quoted.

      But anyway there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a wide variety of difficulty in Times puzzles as solving them is not an elite pastime. Today’s may be at the easier end of the spectrum for some, but the clues are well-constructed and intelligent. If it was too easy for you and you solved it quickly then you have the rest of your day free to go and do something else 🙂

      1. To be clear, my original complaint to the Puzzles Editor reflected the lack of a single demanding numeracy puzzle in Times2 on Mondays (out of 6 such puzzles). But I see that it has spread to the Crossword which for the first time ever I completed in a single (relatively brief) session.
        And, try as I might, I’m unable to create an account to remove my anonymity – I apparently create such an account only to be told that it’s an unknown user name. Any tips?
        1. Anon,
          A first step would be to put whatever name you like at the end of your postings. I defer to the experts on why setting up an account at the top of the page is now an issue, but welcome anyway.
  23. 7:35 with a lot of BIFFING when I realised I should be trying for a quick time. I saw how BEFORE worked but not evidence (for the reasons articulated by Vinyl, to whom I’m grateful for the untangling).

    I wasn’t overly familiar with the required meaning of decadent but I love K’s vision of the llama breeding centre run by libertines.

  24. About 14 minutes between 3 of us. I think it probably would have been even quicker if we hadn’t been in a Monday frame of mind. I understand the idea of the Monday puzzle being easier, but I would consider this a little too easy. I imagine it’s probably quite hard to write a decent but intentionally straightforward one though.
  25. 18m so on my easy side as any sub 20m is. Like others I BIFD my way through a lot of this but needed checkers to get 1a and the blog to explain it. I’m quite happy to have a few that I can complete quickly which in my mind makes up for the rather larger group of those I struggle to complete under the hour.
  26. 14.35 after little sleep so OK. I quite enjoy the odd easier one though it’s never a stroll, always a thudding “why-can’t-I-go-faster?” jog. 12 clever.
  27. First back page cryptic I’ve ever finished. I accept its a rather easy offering (must be!) but please allow me to retain this little glow of satisfaction. Until tomorrow at least.
  28. Finished whilst still on the rattler, so sub 30 minutes (good for me)despite accidentally and unknowingly (initially) sitting next to a lady acquaintance who insisted on talking to me and breaking the concentration from time to time.

    There is an army regiment somewhere that I heard about that has a convention that if a cove is wearing his hat at breakfast in the mess, it means that he doesn’t want to be spoken to. I think we need a similar convention for cruciverbalists on train journeys. Could have been a PB otherwise.

  29. Indeed very easy (27 minutes, but that’s my second best time). No problem with BEFORE, but I had mctext’s parsing of it and didn’t like it very much. I don’t mind the occasional easy puzzle, just to boost my ego a little — there have been weeks in which I couldn’t finish a single puzzle, just two crossing words missing at the end which I couldn’t for the life of me figure out. So occasional successes are welcome.

    I nearly forgot: MOXIE would have been brilliant!

    Edited at 2015-01-12 06:56 pm (UTC)

  30. Apart from recherché which is new word to me I finished the crossword! Completely! So yes it will have been easy but wasn’t that the point of the quick cryptic- to open up the main cryptic? in which case having an easier day is an excellent way of maintaining interest for us newbies. No doubt normal service will be resumed tomorrow but for today I can be pleased!
  31. An easy start to the week. Found this more straightforward than the Concise! FOI Rhea, LOI Evidence. Thought Llama was a terrific clue.
  33. 6:29 for me after another slow start. Somehow this puzzle felt slightly unsatisfactory – probably because too many of the surface readings seemed clunky.

    MOXIE is excellent! (Glad I didn’t think of it.)

  34. I still seem to be catching up post-Christmas (actually, I’ve been catching up since about 1962), and am a day behind.

    However, this one took a whisker under eleven minutes, which I’m sure is my fastest time by far (and only 1.7 Severs). Like many here, I found that a lot of the answers went in quickly from the definitions, with the wordplay lagging behind.

    It was, admittedly, a relatively simple one. If I’d tried it on Monday, and didn’t have today’s (Tuesday’s) to move on to, I think I’d feel a little cheated. However, in response to {anonymous}, there is no such thing as an “easy” Times cryptic, and finishing your first is no mean feat. I can well remember being happy to get half a dozen answers.

    Should the Monday puzzles be toughened up? I’m not sure. The gentler ones, if not too frequent, can draw in people who would be intimidated by some of the monsters. As Tom Lehrer once said (or sung) – “He gives the kids free samples/Because he knows full well/That today’s young innocent faces/Will be tomorrow’s clientele.”

  35. Couldn’t resist popping by to say that when I returned from my hols I did this in a PB of 10 minutes.
  36. Olivia, the thing I thought added authenticity to the Gambon Maigrets was the paint peeling off the walls in the apartment buildings; but then again, maybe they wouldn’t have been peeling yet in the 1930’s?

Comments are closed.