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. An easy start to the week. Found this more straightforward than the Concise! FOI Rhea, LOI Evidence. Thought Llama was a terrific clue.
  3. 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.)

  4. 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.”

  5. Couldn’t resist popping by to say that when I returned from my hols I did this in a PB of 10 minutes.
  6. 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?

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