Times 25,994

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
10 and a half minutes. By no means a write-in, but not a daunting challenge either – nothing very obscure in vocabulary or required knowledge, as far as I can judge, so all in all, a pretty standard and perfectly entertaining daily puzzle.

Across
1 PROMPT – ROMP(=to run about wildly) in P.T.(physical training).
5 LAMBSKIN – L{earner}, [M.B. in ASKING]. Quite difficult to picture how the clue works while you’re still thinking of a white lab coat. In fact, the coat in question is much more John Motson.
9 UNDERSEA – (DUNESARE)*.
10 HAUNTS – H{usband} + AUNTS.
11 PASTRAMI – PAST(=former) RAM(Royal Academy of Music) 1.
12 ABOUND – A BUD holding UN(the United Nations being invariably “peacekeepers” in Crossword Land).
13 SWINGING – W{ife} in SINGING.
15 REDO – E{uropean} in [R{epublican} DO].
17 LYRE – hidden in extremeLY REgularly. When you see the word “regularly”, the instinct is to look for odd letters and the like, so this was a nicely disguised hidden word.
19 INDUSTRY – {H}INDUS (=Brahmans, say) TRY(=attempt). I was slightly put off by Brahman, which I’ve only ever seen as Brahmin, but it seems both are equally used.
20 FABRIC – oF A BRICk, when trimmed at the edges.
21 STRAINER – double def. As was no doubt intended, I faffed around picturing a gardener at work before realising we were talking about tea leaves.
22 AMULET – A MULE {withou}T.
23 INEDIBLE – IN{CR}EDIBLE minus the C{ouncillo}R.
24 FRIESIAN – FRIES(=chips) + IAN(as the UN are peacekeepers in Crossword Land, so Ian is the regular Scotsman). The black and white cow seen in great numbers in the UK.
25 YATTER – [RE: T{his} TAY]all rev. Time wasted here as I tried to justify BANTER despite the non-existence of the River Nab.
 
Down
2 RENTABLE – (E{nglish}BARNLET)* &lit.
3 MAESTOSO – MAE (West) + [T{ower} in SO-SO]. A musical term meaning “majestic” which crops up fairly regularly.
4 TASMANIAN – T.A.’S MANIA + {actio}N.
5 LEADING QUESTION – the principal first violin is “leader” of the orchestra, so a question about who should take that role might be cryptically described as the “leading” question, while the whole clue takes the form of an actual leading question, i.e. one which suggests which answer it wants.
6 BEANBAG – [A in BEN], (GAB)rev.
7 KENTUCKY – KEN(=know), TUCK(=Friar, the supporting character from the legend of Robin Hood) Y(=unknown). Kentucky is “Derby area” not because of any connection to the English East Midlands but because of the famous race held in Louisville every year.
8 NOSEDIVE – (E{astern} SON)rev. + DIVE(=seedy bar).
14 NOTORIETY – [I.E.(that is), T{errible}] in “NO TORY”, which is an injunction you might encounter in strict Labour circles.
15 RIFF-RAFF – RIFF(=play jazz), R.A.F.(armed service) F(=loud/noisy).
16 DJIBOUTI – [JIB(=sail) OUT(=away)] in DI, the crossword setter’s favourite girl.
17 LYRICIST – (IT’SCYRIL)*. Oscar, well-remembered for putting words to the music of Richard Rodgers among others.
18 REVEILLE – REV.(=vicar) + [ILL in E,E(the drug Ecstasy twice)].
19 ICINESS – ICI(=French for “here”), NESS(=cape).

36 comments on “Times 25,994”

  1. Easy peasy today, about the same time as you tim. But still a few neat touches, enjoyable as ever
  2. Agreed a real stroll in the park. Not keen on 5D but other than that no quibbles – or jumps for joy for that matter.
  3. 15 minutes but had pencilled in LEADING MUSICIAN without being comfortable, so stuck on LOI 21a beginning with I, then the PDM, “see U think Q”, another 4 minutes to tidy that up. Otherwise a stroll in the park with Jimbo.
    1. Ditto, pencilling in MUSICIAN without conviction. Did not know the term “principal first violin”, so thought the clue might be doing something clever with the tautology. Otherwise easy, 21 minutes with 5 at the end getting STRAINER & guessing QUESTION, but not liking the clue.
      Rob
  4. 10 mins. Not too different from my time yesterday but this felt slightly harder because the definitions weren’t quite as blatant. The PROMPT/RENTABLE crossers were my last ones in.
  5. At 27 minutes this took me ten minutes longer than yesterday. I got rather stuck in the SW corner with 15d,16 and 20, and also the last word of 5d, where I pencilled in MUSICIAN initially. No at at all keen on the clue.
  6. About 50 minutes and nothing like as easy as yesterday, with the SW corner holding me up until I saw the light with RIFF RAFF, which I admit I parsed slightly differently to Tim, taking noisily to indicate a homophone for service, i.e. RAFF, the clue still being rabble, but I think either works.

    I was another who had MUSICIAN instead of QUESTION initially until I read the tea leaves and saw the future.

  7. Felt that I made this harder than it was, confirmed by earlier comments.

    Got bogged down in the NW corner, staring for ages at West thinking “this means something in Crosswordland, but what? Adam? Probably not dead”. Can’t believe I forgot about Mae.

    Even less forgivable was failing to spot the Tasmanian (but thankful that Ulaca wasn’t blogging).

    All good fun and no complaints. Enjoyed 5dn for its originality. Thanks setter and blogger.

  8. 11m. Only slightly easier but somehow more satisfying than yesterday’s. No unknowns, although I was slightly surprised that YATTER was a word (Scottish, according to Chambers) and I wondered for a while if ‘principle first violin’ was a pleonasm.
  9. Like Pip, assumed 5d was LEADING MUSICIAN but unlike Pip, I couldn’t get past this faux pas, so 21a became impossible. Up to that slip-up, it had been fairly straightforward too.
  10. 16:52 .. well, quite a bit chewier than yesterday’s in my estimation, but I may have made it harder for myself by going down a few blind alleys.

    I found this very enjoyable, too. LEADING QUESTION made me smile, and I owe the setter a pint of creme de menthe for giving me a way to remember how to spell DJIBOUTI in future. One never knows when that kind of thing will prove vital.

  11. 16:49 so more than twice as difficult as yesterday’s on a linear basis.

    I was thrown a bit by 10 as I was looking for a word meaning relatives made from H in a word meaning places. I’m not sure that “by” is entirely fair as the link word between def and WP.

    I don’t recall having seen maestoso before so I’m a bit worried about TT’s assertion that it “crops up fairly regularly”.

    1. For some reason, that one has stuck (and I speak as someone who regularly claims “never to have heard of” words which I then turn out to have “never heard of” the previous month, and twice more before that…) but as I’m no musician, I’m pretty sure it’s entered my vocabulary from crosswords.

      In fact, a search shows it last cropping up when I blogged it in the Jumbo from 6/12/14, which may explain why it was comparatively fresh in my mind (and why you may not have seen it). Before that, 27/6/11, 22/2/11, 11/4/10(ST), and 3/5/07, so I guess it depends on your definition of “regularly”…

      1. I’m almost off the hook.

        I only started doing these wretched puzzles in 2008, probably didn’t do the Sundays in 2010 and rarely get time for the Jumbo.

        That just leaves Feb and June 2011. I didn’t comment on the latter and probably didn’t do the puzzle given other things that were going on around that time.

        So far so good, until we get to 24779 on 22/2/11 when I wrote:

        “…unknowns such as maestoso, goose and tipstaff.”

        Ah well.

        (For anybody wondering how goose could be unknown on this occasion it was a tailor’s iron).


        1. Haha! Have just done same as you, and found I wrote:

          Only unknown words today were easily gettable from cryptic (MAESTOSO, BEEFALO).

          in June 2011.

          As you say, Ah well.

          1. Excellent. These days I confidently expect that every time I say “This was a new one on me”, a QI-style klaxon will go off and an automated message will appear saying “That’s exactly what you said last time, doofus”.
            1. I’m not sure what the conclusion of this maestoso discussion is, but if you’ve only seen a word twice since 2011, and both of those in that year, and only then as answers you’ve probably constructed from the cyptic,that counts as never really having seen it at all.

              Anyway, nice friendly crossword that. I got them all except 3D which was impossible as I’ve never seen it before. Ever.

      2. How did you find that, may I ask? The Google cache only seems to contain your placeholder for that Jumbo blog (even though the link then points to the updated version), so if I search for MAESTOSO on Google then that blog doesn’t show up.
        1. After I’d done a site-specific search and come up with the other ones, I still couldn’t shake the conviction that I’d seen it much more recently, so I searched again more generally for maestoso times crossword and it was on the first page as a topic of discussion in another crossword forum.
          1. Ah, thanks. I’m also prone to the occasional incorrect “never seen it before” claim, and it’s a tad annoying that a simple site search isn’t always enough to point out the error of my ways.

  12. ca 45mins, so about double yesterday’s time for me, too. Most went in quickly, then I took some time to unravel MAESTOSO (don’t think I’ve seen it before, either), and to get STRAINER, my LOI. I was convinced it was going to be some sort of cricketing ref. Ho hum.
  13. Got stuck on 6d and 21a (got bogged down trying to fit an extra letter into STRIVER).
  14. 23 minutes of which the last 5 were spent looking at “leading/-u-s-i-n”. Like others, I tried to convince myself against “strainer” so that “musician” would fit but eventually the penny dropped. A tad more difficult than yesterday I thought.
  15. All but 20ac and 16dn solved in 30 minutes, but technically a DNF because as the ticking clock reached 45 minutes I used aids to come up with DJIBOUTI. Shame, as it had all been going so well to that point apart from wasting time thinking ‘natter’ at 25ac.
  16. This took me 45 minutes, ending with the ‘never seen before’ YATTER. I’m not going to try any searches to see if I’m correct about that. Also held up by MAESTOSO, being diverted by ‘West’ having to be ‘W’, and not remembering Mae until PROMPT went in. The bulk of the puzzle though, wasn’t hard. Regards.
  17. I thought that this was like yesterdays until I hit the SW corner, where it all went wrong, not helped by ROCK MASS. Ground through it in the end but at just over 30mins .
  18. A more typical 41m for me today with no real excuses except for also wandering up a few blind alleys like Sotira and probably finding a few that were perfectly clear until I tried to go down them: w for West 3d, Ascot for Derby area 7d, Moleskin for 5a – well it nearly worked apart from the ‘e’; oh and it’s a notebook not a coat to name but three. Thanks for the blog and to the setter – perfectly fair, I was just too easily led!
    1. Good thinking, except that the Derby is run at Epsom.

      I was left wondering if Knowsley was near enough to Derby to count.

  19. A quick time for me; probably solving in a dentist’s waiting room focused the mind. Had I been the patient it would doubtless have been a different story.
  20. Also in a dentist’s waiting room. Thankfully I knew LEADING QUESTION as a phrase so after the LEADING part went in the checking letters gave the rest of the answer. Otherwise it all went in rather quickly. We must be on for a stinker on Thursday when it’s my turn, wheee.
  21. For some reason, I could not for the life of me see “PROMPT”, despite thinking of “romp”. I think I thought (at least, I think I think I thought) that the training was PE, and dismissed “prome”. Then I was trying to make “permit” make sense. In the end, I plumped for “premit”, which is a word but only just. With any luck, one of our more argumentative customers will kick me later to save me the trouble.

    YATTER was new to me, and it took me an inordinately long time to remember that TASMANIA was the other antipode.

  22. 21:25. Harder than yesterday but felt harder than it was I think. Disappointed it took so long, to be honest.
  23. 9:18 for me. I thought it was about the same difficulty as yesterday’s, but I was far less on the ball and so took a lot longer than I felt I should have done. Nice puzzle, though.
  25. Exactly – it’s a perfect example of my gift for making a blind alley out of a three lane motorway!
  26. Collins dictionary has ‘prompt’ as it’s third definition of ready with the example ‘ he gave a prompt reply’ as the same as ‘he had a ready reply’.

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