Times 26,213: I Crimethink Therefore I Am

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Is it possible to not be on the proverbial wavelength at all, but still post a decent time? I finished this one slap bang in the middle of the 12-14 minute range I’m usually quite happy with for a difficultish puzzle, and that was including spending a minute at the end staring blankly at 10ac, trying to convince myself it definitely couldn’t be ROB or RUB instead, and how RIB worked. (Still not sure the justification I found is convincing, so do correct me if necessary.) And there were quite a few other clues where I thought I saw roughly how it worked, but still felt slightly uneasy, at least until thinking it all through again after the event. Still, seems to have worked out more or less okay in the end.

I do have to say that I liked the vocabulary in this puzzle: something about it feels properly Timesy – ABSEILER, PRUNELLA, CORELLI, AGGRANDISE, etc – the sort of words that feel like old friends in a puzzle, but would be alarming if they started to crop up regularly in one’s everyday life (unless you’re Timothy West I suppose, in the case of 16dn). And there are certainly some pretty good surfaces and cunning devices in here – I see 1dn got an approving mention in the Club forum, but I think my personal COD might have been 22dn, not at all difficult given a crosser or two, but concise and clever. (See also 7dn and 16dn for further entries in the “concise and clever” parade). Thanks very much setter!

Across
1 GIRAFFE – browser: GAFFE [error] “closes” I R [one | run]
4 FRANCES – girl: R [right] “to replace” IN [home] in FINANCES [money situation]
9 AT A LOOSE END – unemployed: and suggested by “ready to unravel”
10 RIB – part of vault: R.I.B.{a} [architect “hasn’t finished”]
11 SKIMPY – short of substance: SPY [espionage], KIM [novel] “held”
12 ABSEILER – he swings on rope: AB [sailor] + reverse of RELIES [hangs “in turn”]
14 THOUGHT POLICE – stiflers of dissent: THOUGH [still] + (PLOT*) [“shattering”] + ICE [to kill, “American”]
17 REINFORCEMENT – something for concrete: REIN FOR CEMENT [check “| behind | building material]
21 NOCTURNE – genre of music: C [{C}hopin’s “first”] + TURN [go] in (ONE*) [“new”]
23 CLOCHE – hat: HE [man] “used to obscure one side of” CLOC{k} [face]
25 LAM – repeatedly bash: LAM{b} [meat “chopping the end”]
26 HAIR-RAISING – frightful: HAG [witch] “locks away” {m}I{r}R{o}R {m}A{g}I{c} [“regularly going”] + SIN [wrong]
27 AIRDRIE – Scottish town: AIR DRIE{D} [like washing pegged out, “endlessly”]
28 BUGBEAR – source of irritation: BUG BEAR [arrange to eavesdrop on | big beast]

Down
1 GDANSK – port: G D [“extremely” G{oo}D] + N [any number], ASK [request] “to circulate it”
2 REALIST – who has feet on ground: in REST [repose], ALI [Muslim perhaps]
3 FOOLPROOF – very simple: FOOL [pudding] + PROOF [“what eating it constitutes” – because proverbially the proof of the pudding is in the eating]
4 ERSE – language: {v}ERSE [“very” (i.e. V) “lacking in” poetry]
5 FLEA-BITTEN – trivially wounded: (FINE BATTLE*) [“raging”]
6 ANDRE – Frenchman: emergent from {b}AND RE{placed}
7 CORELLI – composer: CORE [heart] + reverse of ILL [sick “over”]
8 SUBORDER – small group of families: reverse of US [“upset” American] + BORDER [immigration point]
13 AGGRANDISE – exaggerate: (GRADES + GAIN*) [“improperly”]
15 OVERLYING – showing some coincidence, as in spatially coexisting: OVER LYING [finished | telling story]
16 PRUNELLA – worsted: PRUNE [cut] + reverse of ALL [everything “up”]
18 INCOMER – one newly settling: INCOME [money] on R [{daughte}R “at last”]
19 TACTILE – touching: TILE [ceramic], ACT [pretending] “to break it”
20 LEDGER – book: “to held in” L R [both hands], EDGE [an advantage]
22 USHER – escort: “a minimum of three people” being US [two plus persons] + HER [another person]
24 GRUB – double def: beetle potentially / something to eat

30 comments on “Times 26,213: I Crimethink Therefore I Am”

  1. 32:02. Nice puzzle with a good difficulty level for my tastes. Enough to keep me thinking without ever feeling completely stumped.

    Like keriothe I was hesitant about CLOCHE as I thought ‘side of face’ was giving me the CE and I wondered where the LOCH was coming from. So thanks to verlaine for clearing that up.

  2. A really nice crossword. One where the answers are sensible words rather than the rag bag of words in yesterdays number 26212. Well done to the setter. I had to resort to the iPad to solve a few clues but so what.
  3. Struggled a bit and came home in about 50 minutes. LOI was RIB on the basis that vaults can have ribs in their ceilings and RIBA is a tag used by architects like artists use RA. Didn’t know there was necessarily a repeated element to lamming. SUBORDER gave most trouble.

    Edited at 2015-09-25 09:01 am (UTC)

    1. Just to clarify, when used as a qualification to designate a person’s job or title RIBA stands for: Chartered member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It’s used in exactly the same way as that old crossword favourite RA which stands both for the institution, Royal Academy of Arts, and its individual appointed members designated Royal Academician. The clue is fine as it stands and does not need altering to accommodate the plural as suggested elsewhere below.

      Edited at 2015-09-26 05:15 am (UTC)

  4. 50 mins. I had RIB from RIBA. Couldn’t parse USHER. DNK PRUNELLA was a cloth. COD to SUBORDER. Thanks Verlaine for filling in the gaps.
  5. 20m. I felt much the same about this one: it felt extremely tough going while I solved it, but I managed to get it done in what felt like a reasonable time, considering the struggle involved.
    I’d have been a bit quicker but I agonised over 23ac: I just couldn’t see how the wordplay worked for the life of me, and didn’t feel confident enough to biff it. In the end I just gave up and biffed it anyway, at which point I immediately saw what was going on. As if the only thing preventing me from getting it was the effort of trying.
    I wondered about 10ac as well, but according to Wiki RIBA is a designation for architects as well as an organisation: a bit like RA. [Edit: great minds think alike I see!]

    Edited at 2015-09-25 09:11 am (UTC)

    1. I was not unhesitant about 23ac myself I have to admit, as it’s an unusual cluing device and I wasn’t at all sure about “clock” for “face”, but given the crossers I thought it just had to be…
  6. 24:22 … just right for a Friday puzzle. PRUNELLA unknown or forgotten, but guessable once NOCTURNE fell.

    COD … probably SUBORDER for the very neat surface.

    Unfortunately, I’ve had to withdraw from the Champs for this year. A case of duty before pleasure. Hope to be back next year, though. Good luck to all heading for Murdoch Towers in October.

    1. Oh, good spot! I should have seen it. I’m just ploughing through Robert Littell’s epic The Company, which features ‘our Adrian’ rather a lot.
  8. The Royal Institute of British Architects

    I liked GDANSK

    Not too bad for a Friday

    Anyone know if The Times uses any American setters?

    horryd Shanghai

  9. 35mins. I got stuck on the left hand side and had to resort to aids to find PRUNELLA – I never new that was a fabric. The N then got me NOCTURNE – I’d never thought of that as a ‘genre’. Goodd testing puzzle. 3d my favourite, but liked 1a and 22d too.
  10. An epic fail to end the week – I hope it doesn’t presage defeat by the Taffs – with a (perhaps Cambrian inspired) ‘subbreed’ and a typo.

    Oh to be at Twickers tomorrow belting out the two greatest national anthems on the planet!

  11. Struggled with this, partly due to dealing with the chimney sweep chap here asking questions. Didn’t know PRUNELLA was a cloth and was blanked for ages by 8d and 23a. I did know RIBA for the architect though, liked 1a (giraffes being my fav animals as owls are for birds). Once done, I appreciated it was a fine puzzle, best of the week IMO.
    Thanks V for explaining CLOCHE, I was also looking for LOCH and CE.
    As above, the irony of KIM in SPY at 11a is superb, presumably deliberate.
  12. Tricky, I thought, with a variety of words I didn’t know which took grey cells some time to get and, for LOI ‘Prunella’ a degree of going through the alphabet to get a five letter word for cut. Didn’t know ‘Kim’ was a novel, would have guessed cloches were worn elsewhere on the body, barely know what worsted is let alone varieties of the same, thank goodness Corelli featured in a film etc. Probably should be pretty pleased with 35 minutes in that case…
    1. I wonder how much Arcangelo’s Corelli’s violin has been eclipsed in popular consciousness by Captain Corelli’s mandolin, at this stage in the game?
  13. I agree, a very nice puzzle with just the right level of difficulty. I took longer than I should after inexplicably entering TENSILE in 19d when my head was saying TACTILE. It might have had something to do with my simultaneous disembarkation from the rattler. Anyhow, it made getting 23a very difficult (FLANGE was the best I could think of) until I saw the error.
  14. 45m today but needed aids for the cloth, the music genre and the hat. Thanks for the blog, V – I thought nocturne as genre, spy as espionage and clock as face were all a bit ‘skimpy’ but enjoyed 3d and 8d.
  15. It simply had to be Corelli – so in it went without wondering who. Although not totally immune to the charms of Chopin, Satie or Bach, I’m much more likely to be completing while listening to Anthrax, Saxon, UFO or Megadeth. Most of the composers, even when I answer them, are simply crossword answers. I long for the day when something as obscure in my musical world is deemed an acceptable answer; for once, I might be threatening the top of the leader board!

    Edited at 2015-09-25 01:01 pm (UTC)

    1. I thought about mentioning that I solved this crossword after coming back home from Beirut, but decided in the end that it wasn’t worth explaining that I meant Brixton Academy and not the Lebanon. Of course Beirut’s gentle world-music-indie-rock might be closer to the Corelli end of the spectrum than the Joey Belladonna end, not sure…
      1. Anthrax and Megadeth were amongst my bands of choice 20 years ago (I’d have thought Saxon and UFO too light) but advancing years have mellowed me and now I enjoy Beirut.

        I find words distracting when I solve though so the solving band of choice are Mogwai – perhaps a happy medium between thrash metal and indie world music?

  16. 18 mins, so it seems that I was pretty much on the setter’s wavelength after reading the comments above. SUBORDER was my LOI after RIB. I confess to biffing ANDRE once I had all the checkers, and I didn’t bother to think too hard about parsing it. Although the cluing device for CLOCHE was unusual I was happy with its parsing, and I really liked the clue for USHER.
  17. A disappointing 13:13 for me, starting slowly and not properly finding the setter’s wavelength when, looking back, I would have expected to have made short work of several clues I struggled over.

    Worst were 5ac, which I kept wanting to be FIANCEE even though I could see that the answer ought to contain FRANCE (I once went out with a girl called FRANCES as well!), and 8dn (which I wanted to be something to do with EMBARK (to go with FIANCEE) even though it would have had to have been something to do with DISEMBARK to fit “immigration point”.

    If I’d been the crossword editor, I’d have changed 10ac to “Part of vault architects haven’t finished (3)”. Apart from that, an interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

  18. Didn’t have too many problems with this one though I had a question mark next to RIB – I thought there were neat clues for GDANSK, CORELLI and ABSEILER
  19. Hello. Relative newbie here.
    Am I being too literal to see an issue with spy for espionage? They don’t mean quite the same thing do they?
    Thanks to anyone who happens to be reading this oldish thread & can be bothered to answer!
    Alan
    1. This did give me a moment’s pause too, but substitution-test-wise… I thought “spy novel”, “spy genre” was probably close enough to directly substitutable with “espionage novel” etc.

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