Times 26248 – a self-referential pangram

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 10:32, but a lazy typo is keeping me off the leaderboard. Interesting puzzle this one, it is not too difficult, and I expect a lot of the longer answers will be susceptible to biffing. It is a pangram, but that didn’t help me in solving, as most of the outlier letters went in pretty quickly.

There are also no direct anagrams! I can’t think of a daily where there haven’t been any at all – there are a few partial anagrams. In all the wordplay is exceptionally sound, the sort of puzzle that is straightforward to blog. I was very impressed by 8 down with tricky wordplay and an excellent surface.

Away we go….

Across
1 DISCIPLINE: P, LINE(score) after DISC,1
6 LAZE: sounds like LAYS
9 MALEVOLENT: MALE and then we’ll take the middle away from VOL-au-vENT
10 JUNE: two bits of French here, JE(I) holding UN(a)
12 BRIGHT AND EARLY: RIGHT(proper) with BAN(outlaw), DEARLY(much) surrounding it
14 ABOARD: ABROAD with the R moved
15 FOOTPATH: FOOT(pay the cost of), P, AT, H
17 FRONTIER: N, in FR(French),O,TIER(level). Glad I didn’t have to know the name of the French version of O-Level – is it Baccalaureate?
19 BEACON: or BE A CON
22 THELONIOUS MONK: (IN,HOTEL)* then MONK(brother) after O,US
24 HOAX: H, and OX holding A
25 COTTONTAIL: TT(crosswordlands favorite races) inside (LOCATION)*
26 DOES: DOPES missing a P
27 MENDICANCY: D,ICY(showing no warmth) around CAN, with MEN(people) at the start
 
Down
1 DUMB: Take the end off of DUMBO
2 SALERNO: SR(sister) containing ALE then NO
3 IN,V,I,GO,RATION
4 L,O,LIT(books),A: The Russian-American being Nabokov. I used to work with a Nabokov scholar, who recently passed away, and was friends with his wife and translator, Vera, until her death
5 NON-UNION: NUN,1 in NOON
7 AQUARIA: A QUAR(t) then A1 reversed
8 EVERYTHING: VERY THIN inside EG
11 WEST GERMANIC: WE and then C(elebrate) after (MASTERING)*
13 FAR-FETCHED: double definition
16 SEMITONE: TIMES(a national newspaper) reversed then ONE
18 O(ut),PE,RATE
20 CONTAIN: CON(Tory), then alternating letters in TeAm, IN(elected)
21 HUNTED: an old German in drainpipe trousers could be a HUN TED
23 CLAY: hidden reversed in roYAL Castle

83 comments on “Times 26248 – a self-referential pangram”

  1. 31 mins from start to finish but that included starting to nod off and then nodding off completely, so I haven’t got a clue how long it really took me. The top half went in quite quickly and the bottom half followed suit once I woke up, with SEMITONE my LOI after FRONTIER, and you can count me as another who wasn’t aware that the “note” definition isn’t strictly correct. If I had seen the clue for EVERYTHING in a Guardian or Indy puzzle I would have assumed the setter was trying to push the envelope a bit, and I confess I’m a little surprised to see it in a Times puzzle.
  2. Good puzzle. Not a quick time, but I am listening nervously to the Tottenham/Anderlecht match on the radio.
  3. Deal is a building material and surely counts as a royal castle. That made 25 and 27 across rather difficult. Didnt get close to semitone. Top half went in very quickly the bottom half painfully slowly.

    Jonathan Calverley

  4. No idea of the time (I left the puzzle window open during a long break), but probably about 45min, which is slow even for me.

    I found this chewy to begin with – a first pass gave me only three measly answers. Fortunately, I then had the good sense to lubricate the brain a little, and got more-or-less on wavelength.

    No problem with Thelonious Monk – not the sort of name one would forget, although I’d have spelled it without that second “o” – it looks far too adjectivious. A little Wikipediaing reveals that his middle name was “Sphere”, after his grandfather Sphere Batts, which is perhaps an even odder name than Thelonious Monk.

    CODs: 15ac and 8d, each for slipping the definition in so quietly.

  5. 18:28 for me, not even remotely on the setter’s wavelength. For no good reason, I assumed that the first word of 11dn was WELL and that the answer to 15ac must therefore be TOLLPATH. (Doh!)

    16dn was a definite LOI. Since I couldn’t think of an obvious “note”, I assumed the answer must be a “national” of some sort (possibly ending in OGE, even though that did seem a bit unlikely). I can’t see any way of justifying SEMITONE and I suspect a simple cock-up on behalf of both setter and editor.

  6. Linguistically speaking, single-word commands can serve as one-word clauses, e.g ‘Start!’
  7. Sorry to be dim but I cannot parse “self-referential pangram”. I feel I am missing something good here.

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