Times 26245 – Health and Efficiency Issue

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A trickier than usual Monday number, in which the right-hand side gave up its secrets before the somewhat more recalcitrant left. Lots of nice stuff, if rather a plethora of insertion-style clues, but my COD nod goes to the saucy 19 down. 33 minutes.

I cannot end this preamble without a word of thanks to New Zealand and Australia for serving up the best world cup final since 2003.

ACROSS

1. PLATONIC – a nice crypticky definition where the addition of the comma makes things a tad more difficult.
5. ACUMEN – AMEN around CU. Hands up who had ‘acuity’? Okay, no one else, as I thought.
10. LURID – L I’D around U R.
11. SANGFROID – anagram* of IF DRAGONS.
12. TENTACLES – TENT + L in ACES.
13. EASES – [c]EASES, with the literal ‘eases’, although, interestingly, ‘stops’ could also be the literal (think rain).
14. LEATHER – LEAR around THE. See ‘hide’, think LEATHER.
16. NOTION – I in NOT ON.
18. SPARSE – S in SPARE.
20. SUBJECT – SUB + C in JET.
22. EARTH – hidden.
24. PORCELAIN – ALICE* in PORN. An interesting image, which has, I am sure, been exploited.
25. CATAMARAN – CAT + AR in A MAN. Over to ODO for cat: ‘informal, chiefly North American (Especially among jazz enthusiasts) a man’. I think it’s time to add and in crosswords to the definition.
26. OFFER – [c]OFFER.
27. MISUSE – IS in MUSE.
28. BERKELEY – BERK + E in ELY. My daughter’s choice for her third-year exchange programme if Cambridge turn her down. Yes, I’m no longer talking to her…

DOWNS

1. POLITELY – ITE[m] in POLLY.
2. APRON – PRO in AN.
3. OLD FATHER THAMES – MOST HALF-HEARTED*. A biffer’s delight.
4. INSULAR – ‘as island’ is the literal; clipped is doing ‘double duty’: INSUL[t] (deletion marked by ‘cut’) + AR[k/t] (deletion marked by ‘clipped’). Nice clue. [Thanks to eagle-eyed lurkers for spotting today’s deliberate error]
6. COFFEE TABLE BOOK – CO + F + FEE followed by TABLE and BOOK.
7. MOONSTONE – ON in MOST + ONE. A sodium potassium aluminium silicate, with the chemical formula (Na,K)AlSi3O8, or a novel by Wilkie Collins, if you prefer.
8. NUDISM – a barely concealed cryptic definition.
9. UNISON – U[nited] + SIN reversed + ON; the literal is ‘identity of pitch’.
15. APPARATUS – PARA in APT + US. See soldier, think ANT, GI and PARA.
17. STING-RAY – R + A in STINGY. See near or close, and think CLOSE or NEAR, or MEAN, TIGHT or STINGY. The setter/editor sold us a bit of a dummy with this, as all the usual sources, as well as the classic British 60s’ TV series have it as one word. All together now: ‘Marina, Aqua Marina…’
19 EXPERT – ooh, sailor; ‘the buff’ is the literal and someone who is no longer saucy might be described as ‘ex pert’.
20. SYRINGE – RING in YES*.
21. WEBCAM – CAB* in MEW reversed.
24. AWFUL – [l]AWFUL; a gentle one to see us home.

43 comments on “Times 26245 – Health and Efficiency Issue”

  1. Started this one with the highest of hopes. Failed to get any traction early on, partly due to some sloppy errors and a couple of close calls (ASPARAGUS, anyone?). Then a brief burst in the second half gave me hope that I might have the setter’s measure. But ultimately his class prevailed and I was defeated by a more than worthy opponent. Four more years to contemplate what might have been.

    No wait, this is crosswordland. I only have to wait another day. Thanks setter and U.

    1. At least you didn’t have the tip-tackle that was ‘acuity’. Ten minutes in the bin and you just can’t post a time.
  2. Nudism, in the buff, topless? Hence U’s title I guess, giving away his age and schooling somewhat? (A title well used for their study of health economics in the UK by Ashmore, Mulkay and Pinch, 1989.)

    All pretty simple with a few hold-ups in the top left. Though I thought the comma in 1ac actually helped separate the two defs nicely — once I’d got there that is.

  3. Slowed down a bit by the enumeration of 11ac; where I come from, and where the SOED comes from for that matter, it’s hyphenated. On the other hand, I didn’t even notice that STING-RAY was. DNK UNISON in that sense, and it struck me as less than ept to clue it with ‘united’. COD to PLATONIC, where I worked for too long on ‘excluding relations’ as indicating deletion of KIN from something. LOI NUDISM. I don’t know what US jazz enthusiasts say these days, but I associate ‘cat’ with ‘hep’, which is to say with the distant past.
    1. Identity of pitch – all singing on the same note? I thought the inclusion of united was rather clever discombobulation!
    2. ODO has one word, but based on the French which is hyphenated.
      Voici l’Anglais avec son sang-froid habituel: “Here comes the Englishman with his usual bloody cold”.
  4. Very slow but steady. Lost time having biffed MONOSTONE at 7dn which made 11ac difficult to resolve. I’d rashly taken ‘one gem’ as the definition and imagined something along the lines of a solitaire ring. I don’t recall meeting AR for ‘Arab’ before but it’s in Chambers if nowhere else. Others have it as Arabia(n) and Arabic, the language. I just realised that CAT clued as ‘guy’ came up as recently as 9th October and I wasn’t keen on it but this time I hardly noticed it.

    Edited at 2015-11-02 05:45 am (UTC)

    1. … who pondered “arab” = AR (25ac), but was too afraid to say so in case it was a missed old chestnut. Or am I mixing horses of a different colour?
  6. 15m. I’ve got a bit of a stinking SANGFROID myself so was feeling a bit dopey this morning. Brain fog to match the actual fog.
    No real problems with the vocab today, although this meaning of UNISON was unfamiliar. I have the advantage of never having the faintest idea whether or not words are ‘supposed’ to be hyphenated. Given the amount of variety of usage and disagreement between dictionaries on the matter I tend to regard it as a matter of personal taste.
    As I think I may have said before the word ‘cat’ always reminds me of The Fast Show, just as the word ‘caution’ the other day reminded my of Colin Hunt. Apparently the show made quite an impression on me.
  7. 35 mins. I am worried about this setter. Not just nudism, in the buff and topless but lurid webcam porn and leather apparatus. Nurse! The screens …..
  8. Almost very easy except I put in NUDITY instead of NUDISM so 13a took some working out until I realised my mistake..
  9. 17 minutes and some , with the left half waiting for the right to work round to it before anything made sense. That said, I spent quite a lot of time on BERKELEY before leaving it as “couldn’t be anything else”, mostly because I inexplicably thought I needed the ending of fool as well as the ending of college, and knew of no English city called Berkey. I am, of course, familiar with berk for fool (I have watched the occasional Fools and Horses) but was put off a bit by also knowing its rather unprintable origin. With all the rest of the nudge-nudge stuff in here, do we have Dean subjecting himself to the disciplines of the daily?
    1. I was going to make a similar comment about ‘berk’, as I have done several times in the past. It seems to be accepted as harmless by the current editor, but it always grates a bit with me.
      1. This blog is a continuous adult education course! My thanks in this instance to Z8 and Keriothe. I was quite unaware of the less than polite roots of “berk” until, prompted by their comments, I googled it. That said, I’m not persuaded that words deserve to be banished because of their unsavoury etymology, particularly if they’ve cleaned up their act over time.
        1. Whether you think this one has cleaned up its act depends of course on whether you know the origin! I don’t mind the word itself (I am not so easily shocked) but I’m always a bit surprised to see it here.
      1. Yes, I had AR{k} too but I can see AR{t} is also valid and may have been the setter’s intention.
  11. 19 minutes, with an unparsed catamaran. Good one for a Monday. Unlike our blogger, I had finished the LHS before tackling the right. CoD 11a.
  12. Enjoyable Monday morning fare — some clues instantly biffable, mixed in with much more chewy stuff. I particularly liked PLATONIC, SANGFROID, PORCELAIN and COFFEE TABLE BOOK.
  13. 30 minutes. A little harder than the norm for Monday, but not much. Enjoyable clues, particularly the ones singled out by melrosemike above. I also threw in NUDITY, and took a while to get 13 and correct the error.
  14. Seven minutes something. A perfect start-of-week puzzle I thought, and I really enjoyed it, until I discovered I was well outside the 2xJason bracket, sigh. COD to 11ac, a hard word to spot even when I realised it was surely an anagram, and a rather lovely surface to boot.
  15. Not that it makes much difference, but I didn’t read “clipped” as doing double duty – rather, I had slight = insult “cut” to give insul with craft = art clipped to give ar.
    Bob
  16. 17:37. I was going along quite nicely but got horribly bogged down with the last few, namely platonic, insular, sangfroid and unison.

    Ulaca, as well as the arc/art/ark thing at 4d there’s no double duty – cut is the truncaticator for insul(t).

  17. About 30 minutes. Enjoyed SANGFROID, hyphenated or not. To me, a bit chewy for Monday, but not a complaint. Regards.
    1. Oh dear – that was soooo disappointing last night Kevin. Oh well – we’ll wait for the spring. At least my son-in-law had tickets for the home game the Mets won.
      1. Well, we didn’t expect to get that far in the first place, so we can still be (or at least act) happy. Yes, wait til next year.
  18. Didn’t have the timer on for this, but I reckon it was around the 15 minute mark. Held up for a while by writing MONOSTONE for some reason.
  20. 12 mins. I had the same experience as Pip and finished the LHS much faster than the RHS. STINGRAY was my LOI after SUBJECT.
  21. Breezed through this one late last night and I think we’ve had SANGFROID as one word before – though I did put in NUDITY at a first pass.
  22. It’s probably a bit late to mention it here but there’s a delightful Nina in today’s Quick Cryptic (430 by Juno).
  23. 6:35 for me, but with a careless NUDIST for NUDISM, the result of departing from my usual slow by steady progress, thus squandering the benefit of a pleasant, straightforward start to the week. (Deep sigh!)
  24. Well, send me to the back of the class but I found this one quite chewy. As usual, looking back at it, I can’t see why it took me so long.

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