Times 26043

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Not as intractable as I had feared at first; the NE corner went in, then the two longer across clues, and the rest followed steadily, with the NW corner providing the most resistance. 1a and 1d were my LOI after 35 minutes with a few distractions.

Across
1 LUSTIEST – US TIES = fixtures in the States, inside LT; def. extremely stout.
5 BEMOAN – MOA = bird no longer seen, inside BEN = Northern height; def. feel sorry for.
8 CONSEQUENT – CON = sting, (QUEEN’S)*, T = temperature; def. following.
9 SKIP – PICKS = opts for, reversed, ditch the C, def. leader. Took me a while to parse this one.
10 FLOATING VOTERS – (TOTALS GIVEN FOR)*; def. variable constituents. Nice surface for the anagram.
11 RANSACK – RAN = smuggled, SACK = Spanish wine; def. rob.
13 SHARPEN – P = pressure, inside SHARE = dividend, then N = noon; def. slightly raise, e.g. as in a musical note.
15 CARPING – CARING = compassionate, insert P = quietly, def. critical.
18 CLOBBER – COBBLER = last worker (shoe maker); the L shifts; def. gear.
21 DOUBLE STOPPING – DOUBLES TOPPING = puts more icing on the cake; def. violinist’s technique.
22 KNOB – BONK = hit, reversed, def. boss.
23 MATCH POINT – Cryptic double def; use a match to set alight; critical point in tennis etc.
24 DEBRIS – SIR BED (IVERE) = Arthurian knight, just more than half, reversed DEB RIS; def. remains.
25 DEFRAYED – DEFRA = gov. department, YED = first letters of York Ending Dispute; def. met, as in paid expenses.

Down
1 LUCIFER – LUCKIER = with more success; delete K = a thousand, insert F = force; def. scratch. I wasn’t sure about the lucifer = scratch idea, I suppose you scratch a match. EDIT apparently ‘Old Scratch’ is another (Nick)name for Satan, would have been nice to be offered the ‘old’ bit.
2 SUNDOWNER – SUN = star, D = departs, OWNER = one having, def. timely drink. Thankfully, it’s always sundown somewhere in the world.
3 INERTIA – IN, (TRE)* = tree briefly on the move, AI reversed (an AI is a sort of sloth); def. sloth.
4 SPUTNIK – SP = special, then KIN and TU reversed; def. Soviet high flyer.
5 BETROTHAL – (AT BROTHEL)*; def. arrangement to join; anagrind ‘marshal’.
6 MASSEUR – MA’S = Mum’s; SOEUR = French for sister; drop the O = over; def. physio, perhaps.
7 AT ISSUE – Def. under discussion; sounds like ‘ATISHOO’ or a sneeze = evidence of cold.
12 CANDLEMAS – C AND L = extremists in capital; SAME = unchanged, reversed; def. festival.
14 PUBLICITY – PUB = local, LICIT = warranted; Y = end of year; def. promotion.
16 AL DENTE – ARDENT = earnest, change the R for L = AL DENT, add E = European; def. not gone soft.
17 PLUMBER – Amusing cryptic double def; plumber = artisan, and you’d use a plumbline to sound, so you’d be a plumber. I love this one.
18 CUTICLE – CUBICLE = changing room, change B (bachelor) for T (towel primarily); def. protective cover.
19 ON PAPER – Condemned man = GONER, drop the G = good, insert PAP = mush; def. in theory.
20 RIGHTED – SIGHTED = with vision; drop the capital, after R = Republican; def. fixed.

36 comments on “Times 26043”

  1. Lucifer and (Old) Scratch are both names visited on Satan, though I also thought of matches first.
    20.28 for this devious number: a lot went in before parsing or spotting the definition. I nearly came complaining about the lack of definition in 9 SKIP before realising that leader was the definition, not the qualifier for Conservative. LUSTIEST also my LOI, having essayed LARDIEST , which would at least be most stout even if Americans don’t have ardies cluttering up their homes.
    DEFRA might scuttle a few non-locals – it nearly scuttled me, and I live here. It’ll be called something else soon, it often is.
  2. Phew! 50 minutes if I ignore the 7 it took me to find my first answer. Having read all the clues with nothing springing to mind I went back to the top and managed to work out BEMOAN at 5ac.

    I then made fairly swift progress on the RH side but eventually ground to a halt with four or five clues outstanding that all but doubled my solving time.

    “Old Scratch” as the Devil (1dn) was one of several unknowns, others being the two-letter sloth and the Arthurian knight, although I suspect I have met all these before and probably even blogged them in the past. The two long Acrosses turned out to be gifts once I had a checker or two in place but I lost more time having SUBSEQUENT at 8ac for a while.

    Edited at 2015-03-11 08:38 am (UTC)

  3. Never on the wavelength, limping home in 70 minutes (with SKIP and LUSTIEST last in), but since it was my first all-correct of the week, I suppose I must be grateful for small mercies. Liked RANSACK. Some don’t care for cricketing terms; I get the goat at the silly ephemera of govt. departments.
  4. Agree with Pip, not as hard as it seemed.

    My knowledge of Arthurian knights (and philosophers) is totally dependent on the Monty Python team, and once again they didn’t let me down.

    Had no idea that AI was a sloth and obviously didn’t know DEFRA, but all fair and quite a bit of fun.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  5. … but an all correct, phew, with last two DEBRIS going in on def, and SKIP going in on wp.

    DEFRAYED also on wp, don’t think I’ve come across that word before.

  6. 22:19 … tricky but fun. Last in LUSTIEST. Didn’t know Scratch for LUCIFER.

    Favourites BONK, SKIP and MASSEUR (together a sort of Footballers’ Wives Nina)

  7. Straightforward if slightly turgid solve with much removing of one letter to substitute another and so on. Being a long standing Mephisto solver I’m familiar with all the various names for the devil of which old scratch and lucifer and common. Not wholly convinced that “scratch” can stand on its own without “old”

    Well blogged Pip – some tricky parsings at times in this one

    1. Oxford and Collins online don’t have Scratch as Lucifer, so definitely at the obscure -> non-existent (i.e. made up by Chambers editors) end of the English language.
      Chambers has “Scratch (also Old Scratch)” as definition, making it technically OK: if it’s in Chambers, it’s a valid obscurity for setters to use, they tell me.
      41:24 so very tricky, DEFRA a guess on a wing and a prayer: MOD didn’t fit.
      Rob
  8. 12m. I seem to have been very much on the wavelength for this one, and it actually felt easier than my time suggested, because the answers went in in a steady stream and I never got stuck except very briefly at the end over DEBRIS and DEFRAYED. I was helped I think by identifying some of the definitions reasonably quickly and not bothering with the parsing on quite a few occasions.
    I had forgotten the crossword sloth and Old Scratch but they’ve both definitely come up before.
  9. Managed to wrestle this one to submission eventually, but with a couple unparsed (thanks Pip for the explanations). DNK the AI sloth, and the Scratch reference left me in the lurch.

    Re. 6d, I suppose Riviera should really point me to France but, as a west country boy, I kept thinking Torquay so was trying to justify EUR plus an O omitted for a place in Devon…

    Some really nice clues I thought – AL DENTE being my pick of the crop

  10. same as others on SKIP. ok on DEFRAYED because husband takes country life magazine – ostensibly for me but really because he likes to drool over the property pages – and they are always railing about DEFRA. 21.11
  11. A 42 min nightmare, particularly in the SW corner where I had another bad case of brain freeze. If I could have remembered DOUBLE STOPPING it would have saved me a lot of time as it would have meant I wasn’t continually wondering if a “sounder” was a sort of nautical rope to justify “painter” for 17dn. I didn’t see AL DENTE for ages and it was only after I did that the violinist clue fell into place, and the KNOB/PLUMBER crossers were my last ones in.
  12. Persistence needed, but I thought there were a lot of good surfaces with well-hidden, second (or third) usage definitions. Never got SKIP or SHARPEN, because I went with MOTHERS for mum’s, with the physio over an almost Sister Theresa. Never quite figured out how the French beach stole my last E and A. That should have been the not well hidden clue to pick up the eraser.
  13. 28:03. Similar to pip and galspray I found this wasn’t as tough as I first thought and was surprised to finish in under half an hour.

    I really liked the clue for CLOBBER, which went in by definition before the penny dropped regarding “Last worker”.

    Candlemas always puts me in mind of my oldest friend whose birthday falls on that day (Feb 2) which led to him receiving Candlemas cards from me each year once I discovered the fact. I’ve since found it’s also Groundhog Day since when he’s received the same card each year!

  14. 17:54 and like K I was held up a bit at the end by debris and defrayed.

    At 3 whilst it’s another sloth coming the other way in the surface reading shouldn’t it be a tree in the cryptic reading?

    Sloth – def
    In – link to WP
    Tree briefly on the move meets another coming up – wordplay.

    Other queries today were whether stout and lusty were synonyms, whether sharpen and slightly raise were synonymous and what scratch had to do with Lucifer.

    2. I did gasman – I thought that way it was the only weak link in the puzzle. But seeing the better atchoo, I’m a convert

      Edited at 2015-03-12 12:03 am (UTC)

  16. Definitely on wavelength today with my fastest solve for quite a while – 18 mins of which the last 3 or so were spent on 24ac and 1ac which was my LOI.

    Edited at 2015-03-11 03:40 pm (UTC)

  17. Not on the wavelength at all – towel landed in ring after 60m with NW hardly started. I didn’t care much for 1a or 1d. Unlike Jimbo I’ve never done the Mephisto so old scratch never mind just scratch was beyond me. Even worse I still struggle to see why luckier is with more success so it gets my WOD vote (worst clue of the day). No doubt it’s in a dictionary somewhere but ‘extremely stout’ for ‘lustiest’ doesn’t work for me either. So as you can see I’m not at all bitter about not finishing today! I did appreciate the blog without which I’d be even more frustrated.
    1. Chambers give “vigorous, healthy, stout” for lusty, so I suppose you’ll just have to disagree. Stout does not just mean fat, lusty does not just mean full of sexual passion, though perhaps the usages implied here are rather more dated.Extreme clearly indicates the superlative.
      On luckier, I’m not sure I see the problem. Wouldn’t a luckier person (assuming luck has something to do with it) come away with more wins from a one armed bandit? Surely there would be more success there than with the doomed sap who loses everything?
      1. Z, apologies for not responding. Only just seen this! I wasn’t expecting anyone to take the trouble and I appreciate your doing so. As ever I bow to your superior skills and knowledge. I was merely trying to justify my own shortcomings!

        However I think ‘luckier’ in my head has more of a sense of chance than would be merited by the concept of success so I wouldn’t apply ‘success’ to something like winning money via an irrational act such as gambling. But I accept it might carry that general meaning. And I guess ‘luckier’ might be ‘not achieving success’ if what you wanted to achieve was a negative: the failed suicide whose rope snapped was luckier than his pal who died’.

        On ‘lustiest’ …well,I disagree mildly that extremely has necessarily the concept of a superlative in general parlance, though it might carry that meaning in Times Crossword land. ‘He was the quickest of the runners’ doesn’t for me carry the idea he was ‘extremely quick’, though it might given an appropriate context. No real quibbles with ‘lusty’ and ‘stout’ – a wench might be either for example with no sexual connotation.

  18. Untimed today as I had to solve this partly in a supermarket cafe while waiting for a car repair. Definitely not quick, but I was satisfied to be able to tease out all the parsings.
    Good stuff I thought.

    Edited at 2015-03-11 05:16 pm (UTC)

  19. Something between 30 and 40 minutes, lost track. It took a while due to unfamiliarity with scratch=Lucifer, the sloth, DEFRA, the knight, the French word for sister and forgetting what a physio might be. But got there in the end unaided somehow, and a COD nomination for AL DENTE. Regards to all.

  20. 13:52 here for another interesting and enjoyable solve. I was slightly nervous about KNOB = “boss” but plumped for it as I couldn’t come up with a better alternative.
  21. Pip, apropos last Friday’s Quickie (259), a chap has been looking for the blog, but appears unable to find it because it is numbered in the heading as 251.
  23. Well, better late than never. But, in my case, it’s the former as I DNF’d yet again. Failed on BEMOAN and LUSTIEST (which, it seems to me, could have been more fairly clued as “most stout”, rather than “extremely stout”). And if anyone can explain why “SKIP” = “reactionary”, I’d be grateful.
    1. ‘Reactionary’ signals the reversal of PICKS (‘opts for’), while ‘ditching Conservative’ (rather than ‘ditching Conservative leader’) is the instruction to delete C, which leaves ‘leader’ as the definition!
      1. Ah – now I get it! I assumed I was looking for a synonym of “reactionary”; I also entirely missed “skip(per)”=”leader”. Thanks!

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