Times 26223

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this a medium level puzzle and a bit of a plod; it took 35 minutes of unscrambling wordplay but nothing particularly made me nod in appreciation or chuckle. When I read it now I can’t see why it took me so long.

As I mentioned last Friday, if any current bloggers or aspirants would like to take over my every Friday quickie slot, I shall be happy to step down from that; I think jackkt indicated he would do it fortnightly if a virgin blogger wanted to ease into the role. Please post here or message me and andy a.k.a. linxit.

D = definition, DD = double D, [A] = anagrind, if amusing or not obvious.

Across
1 COMEDY – COY (short for company, army) around MED (sea); D entertainment.
4 DONNISH – DOSH (funds) around INN reversed; D like lecturers.
9 IDIOM – I’D = this writer had, IOM = Isle of Man; D style.
10 VIRGILIAN – V (see) IR (Irish) GILIAN sounds like GILLIAN; D descrtiption of the Aeneid.
11 AMBERGRIS – AMBER = light, as in traffic light; GRIS sounds like GREASE; D used in perfumes.
12 EDIFY – Well I try each week to leave one clue hanging, not fully understood, so the experts can chime in; this is it. I can see we substitute IF (the poem) for the second D in EDDY, D is ‘improve mind of’; but I thought the epic poem was an EDDA not an EDDY?
13 TAXI – TA (army) XI (team); D mode of transport. I think the ‘unexpected’ is superfluous?
14 TARANTELLA – AT reversed, RANT (empty talk) ELLA (girl); D dance.
18 COW PARSLEY – COW (intimidate), PARLEY (discussion) with S inserted; D that grows wild.
20 SHOE – SHE around O; D trainer, perhaps. Chestnutty.
23 MAGMA – MAG = periodical, MA, D rock. Also chestnutty.
24 BUTTERCUP – B (bishop), UTTER (say), CUP (trophy); D bloomer.
25 NON-PERSON – N (note), ON, PERON with S (spies finally) inserted; D cipher.
26 OFLAG – O LAG around F; D POW camp, for officers.
27 HORATIO – H O (first letters of Hardy’s operations), RATIO (correspondence); D e.g. Nelson.
28 KANSAS – KAN sounds like CAN = penitentiary, SAS = crack troops; D state.

Down
1 CLIMACTIC – Insert C into climatic; D critical.
2 MAILBOX – MAIL sounds like MALE, BOX = fight; D repository for post. My FOI.
3 DEMURE – DEMUR = object, verb; E = rear of circle; D reserved.
4 DARTS – DD.
5 NOISETTE – D meat or chocolate; NOISE (report) over T T E = times, key). At least, I think so.
6 INITIAL – Insert I into IN ITAL(Y); D sign.
7 HANDY – AND (joiner) inserted into H Y (outskirts of Hackney); D skilled.
8 OVERPASS – (PROVES AS)*; D superior road.
15 ABETTING – A BING (Crosby) insert E TT (abstainer); D backing. As in ‘aiding and abetting’ which often go together, although it seems tautological to me.
16 AREOPAGUS – (OAPS ARGUE)*; D High Court. Latinised name of one of the hills of ancient Athens, and the high court so named because it met there. The word aréopage is still extant in French to mean any meeting of high level people.
17 PARAKEET – PET = display of pique; insert A RAKE = a seducer; D flyer. Easy enough but my LOI, it took me an age to see the other meaning of PET.
19 WAGONER – Richard WAGNER was the Ring master; insert O; D carter.
21 HECKLES – HECK! a mild expression of surprise; LES = the, French; D barracks.
22 SENORA – (REASON)*; D married woman. As opposed to senorita, I presume.
23 MUNCH – MUNICH misses the I; D champ, as in chew.
24 BASSO – BO(Y) = lad, de-tailed; insert ASS = mount; D singer.

35 comments on “Times 26223”

  1. I was wondering about EDIFY, too, and couldn’t get any farther along than you on the parsing. 11ac was a bit irritating, as I was sure the S was silent; so sure that I wrote a huffy comment in the Club forum. But having just now checked SOED, I recant. The Areopagus is also the source of Milton’s great ‘Areopagetica’:
    I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
  2. Felt sadly out of form today, was glad to eventually finish. The leaderboard suggests that others had no such problems.

    Good crossword, no standout clues for me.

    Thanks setter and Pip.

    BTW Pip, re EDIFY: Eddy is the fellow, If is the poem, no EDDA required.

  3. … than Pip’s experience. AREOPAGUS was a step too far.

    Re “aiding and abetting”: it occurs to me that English loves to say things twice; a kind of redundancy for emphasis I suspect. So: pillage and plunder; will and testament; sad and blue; as and when; let or hindrance; snatch and grab; pale and wan; without delay or ado. And from Tennyson: mete and dole. No doubt the list could be much longer.

    Again, I point out the semantic reversal of “barrack” (21dn) once it gets to the antipodes.

    Edited at 2015-10-07 09:10 am (UTC)

  5. Tricky, but finished in just over an hour, with TARANTELLA being my LOI. I so wanted it to start with ‘lav’ or ‘las’ (girl recalled). Actually, 16dn was my VLOI, as I just bunged in the letters and hoped for the best!


  6. Just under 25 min for this very enjoyable offering. For me, just the right level of challenge and satisfaction. Thanks, setter.
    Hadn’t heard of Areopagus but it sounded right, and wasn’t sure why non-person equals cipher, but again, very gettable from the excellent cryptic.
  7. I think this setter described him/her-self at 4A. What a dry and rarher boring offering that involved slog with no light relief and no stand out clues.

    I agree Pip, remove “unexpected” from 13A and the clue works 100% – so pure and misleading padding.

    16D is getting close to being a Mephisto clue and once again a setter is allowed to clue a very obscure word with an anagram. If you don’t know the word you guess and check your answer in a dictionary. Not good practice.

  8. 45 mins. DNK the old rock (16d not 23a). Thought OFLAG was the prison regulator. COD to 8d for its surface (not the tarmac).
    Eddy is the fellow?

    Edited at 2015-10-07 08:50 am (UTC)

  9. 23min with 17dn LOI – only word I could think of to fit was MALAPERT, who could possibly be the seducer, but nothing else in clue works. So resorted to aid to find something else from checkers, and answer was obvious.
  10. 32 minutes. DKs were COY as “army section” and the obscure “High Court”. I rather liked “unexpected” at 13ac which although strictly unnecessary for wordplay added a hint of humour by extending the definition in the context of the surface reading.

    I confirm my willingness to cover alternate Friday Quickies as an interim measure.

  11. 9:16 with Tippex – might have been a smidge quicker if I’d ever heard of 16d and hadn’t had to spend time working out which likely order of vowels left in the anagram fodder fitted the gaps between the checking letters to make a sensible word.
  12. 21m. Some of this had a similar feel to yesterday’s (‘unexpected mode of transport’) but overall I enjoyed it much more. Perhaps I’m feeling better, although getting up at 4.30 is usually guaranteed to make me grumpy.
    I usually hate clues like 16dn but on this occasion it seemed clear where the letters were supposed to go. Still I think this sort of thing is better avoided.
    PARAKEETs are another thing that make me grumpy: they are a more and more of them around us and they are noisy pests.
  13. Am I alone in having TANK for 13a (TA & Not Known for “unexpected”)? OK, it’s dubious as a form of transport, but it seems a better surface.

    Other than that, a reasonable solve, spoiled for me by my pet (display of pique?) hate of random proper names: Gillian, Eddy, Ella.

    BTW Jackkt, COY is short for “Company” in military writing.

  14. 36 minutes. Easier and more enjoyable than yesterday’s, though I felt some of the cryptic constructions were inelegantly convoluted. I agree with jackkt that ‘unexpected’ is appropriate given the surface, but I couldn’t see the point of another superfluous word, ‘perhaps’ in 7d. I came across ‘areopagus’ very recently so it didn’t cause me too much trouble, but it’s an unusual word for a daily puzzle, so to clue it with an anagram is a bit unfair.
  15. Just under 20 mins with no tippex (the iPad doesn’t like it). Brooded for a long time about what CANNISH has to do with lecturers, or indeed anything. Thanks setter and pip
  16. 14.30 and I’ll join tringmardo in thanking the setter for an enjoyable and reasonably straightforward challenge. I think ‘unexpected’ simply adds a touch of humour that was clearly lost on some. Get well soon K 😉 Loved Kevin’s quotation – seems to fit those like me who shrink from the challenge of the annual championship!

    Edited at 2015-10-07 11:55 am (UTC)

  17. This felt like something of a victory when I finished in 32:57 having struggled along the way. Toyed with AREOPAGUS or AREAPOGUS but something about the former sounded right to me. With hindsight I can’t think why Crosby didn’t make me think Bing; the only crosby I could think of was the 1/3 of Crosby, Stills and Nash.

    For VIRGILIAN I’ve forgotten why see = V. Could someone remind me please?

  18. Took the entire 20 minute train journey and a quick-ish revisit at lunchtime to crack the South-East; what is about the brain that means the intractable 20ac in the morning immediately falls into place on a later look?
    LOI was 16dn and I too played “where might these vowels most sensibly fit”. Fortunately, this time, I guessed right.
  19. I polished off about 3/4 of this in about 5 minutes, almost in a clean sweep, but then shuddered to a halt with the NE corner blank and 16d with all the gaps. Eventually I got there in 17:24.

    I agree with K (as usual on these matters) that cluing an unusual/foreign word (16) as an anagram isn’t cricket but disagree that it was clear on this occasion where the letters should go. I guessed right, but Areapogus looks no less likely.

    1. Identical start to yours, Penfold, though my shuddering halt took longer to reverse than yours (another 20 minutes). I didn’t help myself by confidently entering VERSELESS at 10a, which sort of more or less works (and I was pretty sure the poem didn’t have verses, as such).
    2. Fair enough, particularly as it seems to have caught some people out. I’m not sure why I thought AREOPAGUS looked more likely than AREAPOGUS, but I did. There are more words starting ‘areo-‘ than ‘area-‘ in Chambers, but there are a few different etymologies (and in some cases ‘areo’ actually derives from ‘area’) so this isn’t one of those cases where someone can claim that the answer is completely obvious based on the Latin/Greek we all learned at school. 😉
  21. 15 minutes of methodical solving without getting too excited about anything for good or ill. Once more that classical education proved its value, saving me from needing to guess the most recondite answer.
  23. No problem with AREOPAGUS – thanks to Milton. But I didn’t notice “IF” as a poem and finally had to put in EDIFY from the definition alone and trust to luck. 24 minutes. Ann
  24. No proper time because I nodded off mid-solve and was struggling to concentrate for the entire solve, all of which was caused by a mostly sleepless night followed by a day at the office. Not recommended. From start to finish it took 31 mins, with a vaguely familiar AREOPAGUS my LOI after TARANTELLA.
  26. 8:54 for me, making heavy weather of some easy clues, as so often.

    I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised any more at how many people are unfamiliar with AREOPAGUS, but there you go. (Even if you haven’t come across the word in the course of normal existence, it last came up in No. 24,761 from 1 Feb 2011, so less than five years ago.)

    A pleasant, straightforward solve.

  27. For those who get the real newspaper, I understand that there will now be a Latin crossword each Saturday. Bona fortuna.
  28. Thanks to all who pointed EDDY out as the chap. I had never seen him spelt other than EDDIE (except as a surname Duane eddy) so ruled this our too quickly. Sorry for late response, been out all day.
  29. A late 51m solve – nothing new to add but I also wanted to say thank you setter for an enjoyable puzzle : ring master made me smile.
  30. A full 51 minutes for me. I’m pretty sure age and alcohol are shrinking my brain; in any event, it’s becoming denser.

    LOI was TAXI, which should have been easy enough but for the fact that I had “mailbag” for 2d for a long time. Quite how I arrived at the conclusion that a “bag” was a “fight” is completely unclear to me. Evidently my brain has a mind of its own.

    AREOPAGUS was completly unknown. With all the checkers in, I just plumped for the likeliest arrangement of the remaining letter, perhaps biased by knowing “-pagus” as a component of certain medical terms.

  31. 21:28. Next morning solve for me. Count me as another ignoramus for never having heard 16d.. I had to guess the spelling from the checkers and it was my LOI. I’m glad I wasn’t the only unsure of the parsing of 5d, Pip. COD 18a.
  32. Hi
    Did anyone volunteer to do this? If not, I’d quite like to give it a go. Could you message me, please, with info on how it all works?
    Thanks.
    Emma

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