Times 25,997: Undercover Cops

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
At the risk of turning into a stuck record: I thought this was yet another unimpeachable Friday puzzle. Pitched at just the right level of challenge (easy entry points, but not without a few real stinkers to pose problems later on), rigorous fairness, and lovely craftsmanship, with multiple fully sensical surfaces that are often actually beautiful.

I really like a good surface, had you noticed? A great one hides in plain sight, and you may not realise how hard they are to turn until you’ve spent months and years as part of a community of Facebook compilerasters, rolling your eyes at all the square pegs being hammered into round holes. Look at all the good ones in this grid! Topical items (8A, 18D, and then 24A to maintain some political neutrality), ingenious concealments of what’s really going on (14A, 2D), models of simplicity and elegance (6A), and then clues that just tell a superficially funny story, like the Asians who have finally forgiven us for perceived racism in The King & I, or what was possibly my COTD this time, the insane rambling resignation letter written in bright red ink. Either this is crosswords aspiring to the level of art, or else I stayed up till 1am doing the puzzle, my beloved daughters woke me up before 7am, and this was not nearly enough sleep. Or both?

Alright, on to the stats. I clocked out at just under 18 minutes this time, though that did include going on a hunt for a laptop charging cable halfway through to avert possible disaster. My FOI was 10A, except that even despite parsing “wings” properly immediately, I still managed to put in TZAR. So glad that the first letter was checked there. So my real FOI was 14A, and I was able to make some real headway in the southeastern corner from there.

In pleasing symmetry, the same corner was where I found myself struggling a little at the end. Not being a big cognac drinker I found myself struggling with 16D, and perhaps shamefully did a quick Google search for cognac brands before the penny dropped. (Other tricky things I had to double-check later were galley proofs, and the unknown-to-me “salep”.) 25A was the next to fall: I have a real blind spot when Asian means anything west of India, and even though K____I_I doesn’t admit many things I’d become fixated on something Japanese, after KIRIBATI failed to pass muster on two fronts. Which left my actual LOI, probably unjustifiably as 22A. As this was obviously an anagram of either IMP SURE CAN or URE CAN HELP, I feel like I might have got this much quicker if I’d been doing the puzzle with old-fashioned pen and paper, affording the opportunity to play with the letters in the margins. Technology is killing crosswords! (But not really.)

Across
1 MUTE BUTTON – microphone switch: NOT TUBE TUM [something other than | TV | corporation] “flipping”
6 SPAN – bridge: AN [article] on SP [odds, i.e. Starting Price]
8 STERLING – banking standard: STEALING [larceny] has R [right] for A
9 GALLEY – proof: G ALLEY [grand | passage]
10 CZAR – ruler: “wings of” C{hint}Z A{rmchai}R
11 UP THE SPOUT – ruined: THESP OUT [actor | openly gay] after U P [universal | pressure]
12 ADDICTION – habit: AD DICTION = “word use in commercials”
14 RIFLE – root: L [{cana}L “finally”] “stops” RIFE [teeming]
17 LIBEL – false report: L [large] + {dec}IBEL [degree of noise “obscuring” Dec(ember)]
19 VEHEMENCE – vigour: HE-MEN C [macho types | caught] in VEE [flying formation, “say”]
22 LEPRECHAUN – mischievous imp: ({s}URE CAN HELP*) [“out”, scrapping “sons” i.e. minus the S]
23 JILT – dump: J{a}IL [PRISON “has no answer” i.e. minus an A] with T [time]
24 ORWELL – socialist author: OR WELL [otherwise | sensible]
25 KASHMIRI – Asian: IRK [anger slightly] “turned around” AS HM I [since | The King | (and) I]
26 WEFT – “strands (carried across by shuttle)”: WEF [with effect from] + T [start of T{hursday}]
27 DIRTY HARRY – cop film: HARRY [trouble] follows DIRTY [lewd]

Down
1 MUSIC HALL – a place for variety: MUCH [often] “involving” “upright” IS [lives] + ALL [everything]
2 THE YARD – Met base: THEY [people generally] on A RD [a thoroughfare]
3 UBIQUITY – being all over the place: I QUIT [resignation speech] “written in” {r}UBY [red “without intro”]
4 TIGHTROPE WALKER – cryptic def
5 NUGGET – valuable fragment: GUN [piece] “lifted” + GET [to obtain]
6 SALE PRICE – “one’s discounted”: SALEP [starchy tubers] + RICE [starchy grass]
7 ASEXUAL – “spurning congress”: AS USUAL [customarily] when EX [former partner] “stands for” US [American]
13 IN EARNEST – with determination: I NEAR NEST = I get close to home
15 ELECTRIFY – thrill: (FIERY CELT*) [“excited”]
16 HENNESSY – brand of cognac: {heat}HENNESS [spiritless state, maybe “gets heat taken off”] + Y [unknown]
18 ICE-FREE – “warming Arctic may become so”: (FIERCE*) [“spoiling”] + E [“one of” E{arth}’s “extremes”]
20 NOISIER – “perhaps more disturbing”: V [volume] “excluded from” “upcoming” RE{v}ISION [exam preparation]
21 PC PLOD – police officer: CPL [corporal] entering POD [school]

53 comments on “Times 25,997: Undercover Cops”

  1. Agreed that this was another well crafted puzzle. When I was well into it I found myself with several isolated unanswered clues, which always concerns me, but all eventually gave way in 37:55.

    Having been looking for a decent bottle of brandy for my dad’s 70th helped with HENNESSY. I hesitated over GALLEY for a while not knowing the meaning used here, and finished with LOI a partially parsed WEFT.

  2. Yep, thought this was another beauty. Spent ages on LOI WEFT, not understanding the shuttle reference, nor knowing the WEF abbreviation.

    CODs everywhere, great surfaces at 11, 19 and 24, excellent blog by Verlaine. As young Mr Grace would say, “You’ve all done very well!!!”.

  3. Pangram? Even if not I was certainly looking for an X as I neared the end in the NE. An enjoyable and clever puzzle so thanks setter and blogger.
  4. At 29 minutes this was a very rare sub-30-on-a-Friday, though I took somewhat longer after completing the grid to work out the parsing at 8ac and 16dn and trying to do so (but failing) at 25ac where I was fixated on K{ing} and I accounting for the first and last letters.

    BTW it’s a pangram.

    1. If there’s a person in the world less good at spotting Ninas than me I haven’t met them. All the good things I enthused about and a pangram too, marvellous!
  5. Great puzzle, but I had two left at the end: ICE FREE (inexplicably), and WEFT, where I didn’t know the WEF ref, and didn’t think of the shuttle ref.

    Lots unparsed: SALE PRICE, GALLEY, KASHMIRI, HENNESSY. Wasted time thinking 4dn must be something ‘banker’, (thinking bankers balanced books?).

    Yes, lots to award CODs: I’ll opt for ASEXUAL. Or maybe UBIQUITY.

    Great blog, thanks, Verlaine.

  6. 29m. We were expecting a little bit of a stinker after a week of very easy (but also very enjoyable) puzzles, and here it is. But it’s also a first class effort with lots of really smooth clues that couldn’t be unlocked without grappling properly with the wordplay. Just my cup of tea.
    I got stuck for ages at the end because I didn’t read the clue properly at 10ac and bunged in the contained TZAR. This made the pretty easy 1dn impossible. As usual with a difficult clue like this I started to question the crossers… except that one. It’s a containment clue, for Pete’s sake, it’s obviously not going to be wrong!
    Solving on an iPad on a busy train I had the same thought as Verlaine on the anagram for LEPRECHAUN, and also ELECTRIFY. When solving online though I always keep a scrap of paper and a pen next to the computer.
    Unknowns today: salep, galley.
    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2015-01-16 09:41 am (UTC)

  7. Definitely the hardest of the week with some parsing proving very elusive, especially KASHMIRI that I put in based upon K……I and “Asian”!

    I’m trying to recall a previous use of a trade name as an answer to a clue. One sees things like ICI and RR in cryptics but HENNESSY or similar as the answer? My memory isn’t what it once was – anybody recall a similar occurrence?

    1. I thought of KASHMIRI almost immediately but couldn’t shake the feeling that something else might fit so spent ages trying to figure out the wordplay.
      I had the same thought about HENNESSY. A quick google reveals that we’ve had MACE quite recently, and I think I remember seeing SKY before.
      1. You’re right but both SKY and MACE have ordinary everyday meanings that are nothing to do with TV or grocery respectively. The same isn’t true of HENNESSY. Even Cognac is both a region and, like “hoover”, a trade name used to mean the product. This is going to bug me for hours!
        1. I take your point on Mace being a bit like Hoover, but if a clue refers to Sky as a TV provider than I think that’s more like HENNESSY. Having said that I’m not actually sure that Sky has been used in this sense!
          1. My undependable memory tells me the Sky reference did happen, but on a Sunday, which is when such thrilling deviance from the unwritten rules usually occurs.
  8. A mere 2 Magoos today at 24.35, though I suspect that great measure of excellence went off for a cup of tea halfway through.
    Half way through the thing myself, I was thinking “there aren’t many literary references in this” and was already penning my comment for the TLS board. Such is early onset thingy.
    But a fine crossword, and I echo V’s eulogy for great surfaces. I would have had to look up salep to be sure, and LOI KASHMIRI went in (eventually) without parsing. It didn’t help that I was still looking for the Q. JILT took some time: there are too many slang terms for prison without using one that isn’t.
    LEPRECHAUN needed the anagram fodder to be sure, to be sure. It sort of helped with HENNESSY, because I inexplicably associate the brand with Ireland. Perhaps this bit of product placement bodes a new Championship sponsor?
    1. I too thought of Ireland thanks to Hennessey Tennessey tootling the flute in McNamarra’s band. Mind you, I had to look at the lyrics of Phil the Fluter’s Ball and Delaney’s Donkey before locating him correctly.
    2. Perhaps it was your subconscious tribute to Dozy from Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich who sadly died this week aged 70.
  9. It seemed fairly straightforward until I reached some with very complex wordplay. After forty minutes the NE corner did for me. I took ages to get 7, didn’t know SALEP so didn’t complete the first word of 6d, and couldn’t see what to put for 9. I didn’t know the term ‘galley proof.’ Definitely the toughest of the week, and possibly of the last two weeks.
  10. Tough but enjoyable, as I always rather like my Friday puzzle to be. Never heard of SALEP, and havered over which part of 8ac was definition and which wordplay, but got there in the end. Thought 7dn was a bit of a minor classic, with a brilliantly cryptic definition hidden by a well-crafted surface.
  11. 15 mins to round off what is probably by far my fastest aggregate time for all five weekly puzzles. WEFT was my LOI after IN EARNEST. Count me as another who couldn’t parse KASHMIRI because my first thought was K=king. I had spotted the possibility of HM=king but didn’t bother to follow the idea through because I was fairly sure the answer couldn’t be anything else. The required definition of GALLEY was only vaguely known but I trusted the wordplay, and I didn’t know the “salep” element of 6dn. I agree that this was a quality puzzle, although I thought the CD at 4dn was a little too obvious. Maybe I was just on the proverbial wavelength because nobody else has mentioned it.
    1. Mm, yes, I wasn’t particularly taken by that CD, though I’d probably class it as one of the easier clues that helps get the puzzle started. An act of generosity from the setter, perhaps, when it’s the longest solution in the grid.
  12. First-class Friday puzzle – challenging without being impossible. Got there in the end with no mistakes. Lovely surface reads and ingenious parsing, all already mentioned above. Like Verlaine I toyed with KIRIBATI for a while at 25A despite its all too evident geographical impossibility. Never got close to parsing KASHMIRI or SALE PRICE properly, having never heard of “salep”. Thanks to Verlaine for explaining them.

    I shared Jimbo’s surprise over the trade name at 16D, but once the cross checkers were in place, there wasn’t much else it could be.

    It goes without saying that I failed to spot the pangram.

  13. 18 minutes, so a PB week here too, being all sub-20 and a 1.5Mg today to boot. Thought I was going to achieve that minor milestone last week but was undone by schmaltz and lulls on Friday so was expecting the worst today. I am warming to the use of wavelength, remembering the struggles with my grandmother’s old wireless trying to conjure intelligible content out of random noise. A very enjoyable puzzle to end the week.
  15. I definitely seem to have had my lucky wavelength socks on this week, only taking 12:55 today (WEBCATS*).

    I’ve come across galley proofs somewhere in the real world so my only unknown was salep. The only other one I didn’t parse while solving was Kashmiri. Very clever.

    Super puzzle and blog.

    I’ll be in Ulaca-land for most of next week so probably won’t be calling in here, except possibly on Monday from Manchester Airport.

    * While Eating Butterbean, Chorizo And Tomato Soup. Pity it didn’t contain mutton, marjoram or mascarpone.

    1. I hope I’m not the only person who just thought ‘Eh?! WEMCATS?!… WEBMATS?!… Oh.’
  16. Excellent puzzle as everyone else has said. Started with TZAR, same as Verlaine, but quickly amended it when the lights came on in the MUSIC HALL. I thought 4d was a nice gift. For some reason I put in UP THE CREEK (I’m not actually sure if the character is openly gay or not as I’ve never watched it), and that held me up in the NE for ages. In particular, it left me looking for something to do with abstinence for 7 down. Never heard of salep until now. Thanks all, very entertaining puzzle, blog and posts.
  17. After reading such an eloquent prologue to the blog it feels somewhat heretical to admit that I rarely even consider the surface reading of a clue. Sometimes there’s no option but if I can solve it without, that’s what I do.
    1. Well, if a speedy solve is the overriding objective then stopping to smell the roses is probably a bad plan. But for the purposes of doing a blog I do like to take some time to appreciate the artistry…
      1. Yes, I must say this is something I feel sorry for you poor speedsters are missing.
        A cryptic crossword is a thing to enjoy, always. It’s a standard crossword with a story tell. Going back to appreciate the clues afterwards doesn’t work either. That’s like cycling up a hill as lung-burstingly hard as possible, then looking at a video of the ride at a later date. If you read, solve, ‘smell the roses’ as you go along, the whole event is a pleasure rather than sprint and recap.

        This one was smashing. The warm glow of solving stoked by the quality of the clues.

        1. I always think of the speedsters as the crosswordian equivalent of the “slam, bam, thank you ma’am” folk 🙂 For me, this was the most enjoyable Times cryptic of the week. Thanks to both setter and blogger.
    2. As one of the slowest solvers of the regulars around here I’m amused by references to “speedster” etc being applied to myself! And I always attempt to understand the wordplay as I go, even if I don’t always succeed. It’s just that so often the surface reading is there to mislead so I tend to ignore it. I’m not recommending it though; each to his/her own.
      1. Agree totally with jackkt. For me successful completion is the only and ultimate goal. There are those for whom this is rarely or never a problem. Bunging in from definition is in my case the result of not understanding the cryptic rather than a desire for speed. I believe “wavelength” with the setter is the factor which has most influence on speed.
  18. 40m all correct today with a fairly steady solve until I hit the Asian cognac crossing.
    I BIFD the Asian so glad it was right and for the eloquent blogger’s explanation. Some 5m later with a mental shrug I BIFD cognac too. I have misgivings about use of the trade name – if it extends to other products my ignorance of all things retail will definitely catch me out!
  19. 35 mins with most of the same problems as other contributors. TZAR bunged in initially and never heard of SALEP. Top half went in reasonably quickly but I had to down my iPad and pick up treeware and pencil to solve the anagrams in the bottom half. LOI was LEPRECHAUN.
  20. About 20 minutes, ending with being completely undone by ?E?T at 26A, and tossing in PELT because it at least has something to do with hair. I confess I didn’t know the word WEFT, nor any abbreviation or anything having to do with shuttles. I assume, now that Verlaine has clarified, that it’s the shuttle on a loom. I still was completely stumped. So one for the setter, and another one for the setter as regards the rest of the puzzle, which was completely enjoyable. Thanks to Verlaine, and regards.
  21. Phew. After stupid mitsakes on the last two, I was relieved to finish this one correctly.

    LOI was RIFLE, which took me a very long time to see, even with all the checkers. CODs for me were MUTE BUTTON and THE YARD. Never heard of SALEP.

    I spent a long time agonising over HENNESSY, trying to remember if brand names were allowed. I also flubbed the parsing – I was convinced that the “spiritless state” was Tennessee – but apparently Tennessee was never (except during prohibition) a “dry” state. Plus I couldn’t see how to lose the couple of e’s at the end. So, all in all, I was barking up the wrong tree without a paddle.

  22. Great puzzle today. Didn’t know SALEP like many, but apparently it’s from an orchid genus! Never thought to eat mine. Favourites today WEFT for misdirection and the wonderful ASEXUAL. Just over an hour of satisfying ‘aha’ moments
  23. I think that you have it jackkt, ie each to their own. We would not all be here if we did not derive pleasure from how we do what we do.
  24. 15:56 for me, held up for several minutes at the end agonising over 16dn.

    As someone whose knowledge of foodie (including drinkie) words is decidedly shaky, I was very uncertain about SALEP and HENNESSY, both of which rang only the faintest of bells. However, while SALE PRICE convinced me that the former was a goer, I’m still not at all sure why HEATHENNESS = “spiritless state” – though it’s quite possible that I’m missing something obvious. Eventually I decided to go for it, but was dreading finding that I’d made yet another mistake.

    Apart from that (or maybe with that, if someone can explain it to me), I thought this was a very fine puzzle. I particularly liked “spurning congress” = ASEXUAL in 7dn.

    1. I supposed the “spirit” in question to be a deity, or perhaps the Holy Spirit itself. A godless heathen having no truck with such things.
      1. No, that won’t do at all. For example Chambers (2011) defines “manitou” as “a spirit or sacred object among certain Native American tribes”, and members of said tribes are surely exactly the sort of people conventionally regarded as heathens.

        At school we used to sing Reginald Heber’s hymn “From Greenland’s icy mountains” with its lines “The heathen in his blindness / Bows down to wood and stone”, but surely the reason he bows down to them is because they’re inhabited by some spirit or other. It’s just that that spirit has no connection with Heber’s Christian God.

        1. Mm, yes, I do think “heathen” does get conflated with atheists and other godless hordes, but only in a a sloppy, terminologically confused kind of way. It looks as though the setter or editor got sufficiently cold feet about what they were doing to stick a “maybe” in there, at least.
          1. I’m not convinced, even with the “maybe”. It looks to me like a weak clue in an otherwise sound crossword.
  25. Really enjoyed this one – now managed to complete 3 main crosswords in a row, so I’m definitely getting the hang. Good job I only do Friday’s & Saturday’s since at an average 80 minutes it’s a bit of a time investment.

    Count me among those who’ve never heard of salep (including this site’s spell checker), but everything pointed in the right direction. Same with galley proof.

    I have to admit to not even considering (heat)henness(y). I was going along the lines of “spiritless state, maybe” = Tennessee; “Gets Heat” = + the H; “taken off” = remove synonym for taken = – tee; with unknown = + y. Knew it was shaky at the time since that meant equating tee with taken & Tennessee being a dry state (although took the “maybe” to indicate Tennessee was once upon a time dry). A happy outcome for all the wrong reasons. Didn’t even know there was a (potential) rule against trademarks – that really would have scuppered me.

    COD was “Spurning Congress” = asexual. Substitution clues have been my Achilles heel to date so really pleased to spot the “ex” for “us”.

    Thanks to the setter, plus Verlaine & everyone else for the entertaining & informative blog.

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