Times 26275 – Unhinged Treachery

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Simpler even than your average Monday, so long as you trust the wordplay for an Irish nationalist and a boiled sweet – or happen to know them from real and/or cruciverbal life. Sadly, my time of 21 minutes left me a tad outside my target, but I will work on an excuse even as I write the blog.

Although I was around 6, and 10,000 miles away from the two Saturday anniversary events, I raised a glass of Château Flaunys to Times setters and blogger/commenters everywhere, with a special toast to our founding father, and look forward to having a go at the two puzzles the event has spawned.

ACROSS

1. PICKS UP – S[elf] in PICK-UP.
5. LIMBO – double definition.
9. HAULS – U in HALS. I’d never heard of Frans Hals, but the surname sounded sufficiently Flemish to belong to a dauber.
10. ALONGSIDE – effectively, another double definition, with the second one owing something to whimsy.
11. DREAM ON – anagram* of A MODERN; a nice clue, though easily gettable via the enumeration once one had cottoned onto the lift-and-separate device. (I reckon I lost 30 seconds here.)
12. RIOTOUS – SUITOR* around O (‘love’). (Another 30 seconds lost here thinking ‘wild’ was the anagram indicator.).
13. SECOND HOME – SECOND (‘mo’ – as in ‘just a mo’) + HOME (‘in’); again, a fine clue, but more suited to a barred-grid puzzle where one is just told ‘two words’, methinks.
15. HERE – [somew]HERE; those given to overthinking may have trouble with this one.
18. ALSO – ‘further’; a nice, if not over-taxing, hidden.
20. PAPERBACKS – ‘books’; APE in PR + BACKS (as, essentially, in ‘she backs the car out of the garage each morning’). My last in, as I had no clue whether the answer lay at the front or rear.
23. ACCURST – CURS (‘dirty dogs’ is metaphorical here, referring to people) in ACT (as in ‘Newcastle United and Bournemouth performed a good act’ / ‘did us a good turn’).
24. PORTRAY – PORT + RAY.
25. SLOTH BEAR – HOTEL BARS*. (I lost a whole minute here trying to work in horse, rat, ratel etc.)
26. AMASS – A + MASS[ive].
27. TIRED – ‘done in’; T for A in AIRED.
28. SWEETIE – S + E in WE TIE; a bull’s-eye is a sugary, minty tooth-rotter.

DOWNS

1. POULENC – POUNC[e] around LE[nt]; I am particularly fond of his Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor, as my brother played the third movement in concert 40 odd years ago.
2. CASEMENT – CASE + ME[a]NT gives us not a window but Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916), who juggled the roles of British diplomat and Irish nationalist and was hanged for his troubles.
3. STAIN – ST + AIN (as in ‘my ain true love’).
4. PROGRAMME – PRO + GR + Jane Austen’s EMMA reversed.
5. LAGOON – LA[d] followed by GO ON! (The Chinese say ‘Add oil!’, but then again they love their stir-frying.)
6. MOIDORE – ID (‘I had’) in [Henry] MOORE for the coin that is unlikely to be withdrawn from circulation in crosswords for some time yet.
7. OMENS – NEMO reversed + S; not the clownfish, but the Verne character, who is not too keen on the Brits and first appears in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
8. RHODESIA – SO I HEARD*; Salisbury became Harare as Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
14. HEARTLESS – HE + ARTLESS. For a tougher clue in the same lexical area, try Arachne’s recent prize Guardian (26735), where the clue is ‘Becoming callous and cool over time (10)’.
16. ESSAYIST – SAY (‘report’) + IS in EST.
17. ABERRANT – ‘straying’; ABE followed by RAN (‘sought office’) in [cha]RT[res].
19. SUCCOUR – ‘help’; sounds like ‘sucker’ (’gull’ as in a dupe).
21. CARTAGE – CART[h]AGE (the act of conveying); Carthage is famous for three things: being home to Queen Dido, needing to be destroyed (‘Carthago delenda est!’) and popping up in quizzes which ask you which modern country it may be found in.
22. ORCHID – O + RC + HID.
23. ASSET – A + S + SET (‘firm’ as in determined).
24. PURSE – double definition, where the first refers to what one does with his lips if he is so inclined.

46 comments on “Times 26275 – Unhinged Treachery”

  1. Monday with knobs on, although I was slowed down here and there, e.g. 23ac since I don’t spell it that way, or 21d since ‘old city’ automatically triggers UR. POULENC was a nice clue, spoiled for me by its biffability (composer, P***C). DNK SLOTH BEAR, which I will now look up to see if it’s the same as a sloth. Liked PICKS UP.
  2. I’m an overthinker. Here was my last one in. No time since I got interrupted and had to do some other stuff and I am wary of turning off the timer on the site since my experience has been that it doesn’t always come back on again.

    I had PERKED UP at 1a for some time with no real justification.

    I liked the Salisbury clue. Isn’t Carthage famous for Hannibal and his elephants too.

      1. As an engineer, I always marveled at the transport. It’s 200BC. Somehow you have a whole lot of elephants. First, they are from India since I don’t think you can domesticate the African kind.

        Now you are in Carthage (Tunisia for people who don’t know quite where it is) and you want them across the Mediterranean. The shipbuilding of that era must have been pretty impressive. Even all the grain that grew in Tunisia, well a lot, had to be got to Rome.

        1. A quick search suggests Hannibal used elephants from Syria and a local smaller North African breed, from the days when the area was forested.
  3. A tad inside my target.

    Held up in the NW, until I finally saw RHODESIA. DNK the painter or the gold coin, but pretty straightforward overall.

    COD to the HYPOTENUSE in recognition of its contribution to right-angled triangles everywhere.

    Thanks setter and U.

  4. After attending the NYC T4TT meetup, I felt incredibly thankful for this blog and everyone involved with it, and was inspired to redouble my solving efforts. I’ve started timing myself and am keeping a list of new vocabulary. My “score” for this puzzle is 47 minutes, with two incompletes and one error.

    I had real trouble focussing at the start, and by 20 minutes had only a few words in. By 25 minutes I was fast asleep in my chair. I awoke refreshed, and by 47 minutes had it down to the SWEETIE/CARTAGE cross, at which point I considered myself done — in the sense of 27A, or a roast chicken. (Cryptics usually end for me with one or two crosses I can’t solve, even after carrying the puzzle around with me the whole day.)

    Thanks to ulaca for the blog, which helped me with that final cross, not to mention the painters and sculptors (and sloth bears). And which helped me correct MAIDORE to MOIDORE. I parsed ‘I had gold’ as ID+OR and assumed the sculptor was Mae West, of course. Well, Moe from the Three Stooges didn’t seem any more likely…

  5. A very pleasing solve but I missed my target by 4 minutes, accounted for by time wasted thinking ACCURSED at 23ac which wouldn’t fit in the grid so I then tried to persuade myself that ACCURSE might work instead. Not only did it not, but it doesn’t even exist.

    Unknowns were SLOTH BEAR and MOIDORE though I now find the latter came up in January 2013 when I also worked it out from wordplay with MOIRE clued as ‘given a watered appearance’ which I’d guess was pretty obscure to most solvers. Henry Moore is one of the few names that leap immediately to my mind when I see ‘sculptor’ in a clue.

  6. Fairly easy although I had to use the iPad to confirm that Poulenc and Hals were real people.
  7. … so very much on the easy side. Probably helped by all the arty stuff (POULENC, MOORE, HALS). HERE was quickly biffed, didn’t have time for any of that over-thinking stuff today; MOIDORE the only unknown.
  8. 9m. Gentle Monday stuff, although I didn’t know HALS and had forgotten Sir Roger (who now rings a bell) so those went in with fingers crossed. Another over-thinker with HERE as my last in, but I didn’t over-think it for long. This definition of LAGOON was unfamiliar to me too: I’m more familiar with the Venetian variety.
  9. I whizzed through the top half, only to be brought down to a snail’s pace in the SE corner, finally coming in at around 40 minutes.
    Franz Hals’ most famous painting is the Laughing Cavalier in the Wallace Collection in London, but having seen more of his portraiture in other galleries, I’m a great fan of his and would definitely recommend his work.
    And of course I knew moidore from that good ol’ setter’s favourite Masefield’s “Cargoes”
  10. 10 and a half. A few things in here that I would file under “easy after the first twenty years of solving”. ALONGSIDE is great fun, and I enjoyed the mammoth in 26a.

    I think the rule is: if it’s got a hole in it it’s probably a Moore. Two holes, more likely a Hepworth.

      1. if you’re thinking of exhibiting, I believe the art critics call them “negative space”.

        Edited at 2015-12-07 12:09 pm (UTC)

  11. 17:30. All was going swimmingly, despite not knowing CASEMENT, SLOTH BEAR and MOIDORE (got from wordplay), and initially trying to put in ADJACENT for 10a, but got stuck on 9a, 8d and 18a for the last 7 minutes. I should have remembered HARARE used to be SALISBURY more quickly – I was there on holiday as a boy when it was still called that. SWEETIE my favourite.

    Edited at 2015-12-07 09:34 am (UTC)

  12. I didn’t find this particularly easy, finishing in 24:49. The top left corner was where I spent most time, not knowing HALS and having no clue why 2D could be CASEMENT though in the end I went with faith in my parsing.

    As a mathematician by academic background, my COD to ALONGSIDE.

  13. Typical Monday with some witty clues too, 16 minutes, only unknown was MOIDORE got from wordplay alone. I prefer Poulenc’s organ concerto, which I first heard in 1966 or so, in Ch Ch cathedral played by my mate Johnny Marsden.
    Am now intrigued about the elephants transport, never thought about it before.
  14. Very nice puzzle, in which I started out feeling certain I was being asked to demonstrate knowledge I didn’t have, then realising I did have it after all. This is definitely the best way round to make for an enjoyable challenge (and as sotira says, a lot of the acquired knowledge came from nothing more than two or three decades of doing these things).

    6dn put me in mind of the vintage detective series Hart to Hart, as I’m pretty sure when they met, it was moidore.

    Hello, is this thing on?

  15. 25 minutes-ish. I found this much harder than usual Mondays with a host of names and items which I only ever come across in crosswords, if ever: Poulenc, Moore and Hals for example. Casement, on the other hand, was familiar, being my grammar school’s most famous old boy and yet strangely never mentioned there! Shame there was no punctuation in that clue; it would have been fitting if it had hung on a comma.

    Edited at 2015-12-07 12:18 pm (UTC)

  16. 14:42. I knew the painter and composer but not the diplomat and didn’t recall the coin from its last outing.

    Does “here” not count as a hidden then? It caused me a momentary pause when I looked at the “also” clue having just got “here”.

  17. 8 minutes something (2 seconds slower than Jason IIRC – I am a big failure). I didn’t think this was the easiest of Monday puzzles, despite there being nothing *too* outrageous to contend with.

    I was chatting with John Grimshaw in the pub at the weekend and he claimed, perhaps controversially, that there was precisely zero truth in the rumour that Monday puzzles were weighted to be easier than the rest of the week. Maybe we’re all just fresher after a nice relaxing weekend?

    1. This rumour has indeed been consistently denied by every editor who I’ve ever heard pronounce on the subject. On reflection, I must admit that when I consider Monday puzzles, they fall into two camps:

      i) easy puzzles, which prove the hypothesis that Monday is deliberately chosen as a gentle start to the week

      ii) difficult puzzles: these are the exceptions which prove the rule

      QED

      1. Can anyone find an example of a Monday puzzle that was a real three-alarm stinker? I am willing to testify on the stand that Friday puzzles aren’t any harder than the rest of the week, but I can’t remember a really REALLY tough Monday puzzle.
        1. I’ve blogged nearly 100 Monday puzzles over four years and I can’t remember a really challenging one. Of course, that is not to say that I personally have not been found wanting, but that is a different matter altogether. I also have more sub-30s on Monday than on any other day.
      1. Agree. The same kind of porky as the one about unusual words appearing in a number of puzzles nearly simultaneously (recently, eg, OATES) being purely random.
        1. There maybe something in that, especially if the same setter keeps popping in OATES, or whatever appears to be mot du jour, but since the setters are anonymous we just don’t know in respect of this aspect. Also, setters submit puzzles typically, so I believe, weeks or months in advance, so I’m not sure how any influence would work. Maybe it’s as much to do with grids as anything else, with certainty grids throwing up, say, five or even six 5-letter words, and *A*E* being common crossing letters.
    3. I don’t know what the reason is, and it may not be deliberate, but if my solving times are anything to go by then Mondays are certainly the easiest of the week on average. I can prove it with a graph, which is very sad.
      If feeling fresh were the deciding factor this would absolutely not be the case.
  18. Made a stupid error by biffing 1 dn BOULENC bounc(e)round Le(nt)- LOI BUCKS UP!! Boulenc is a chef.

    Mondays are normally easier with Wednedsdays and Thursdays being

    tougher.

    RHODESIA was natty as was CARTAGE

    MOIDORE was no problem and HERE somewhat obvious.

    hey-ho!

    horryd Shanghai

  19. Well, this one kept me occupied for 44 minutes (my new winter average, it seems).

    SWEETIES held me up inordinately, and only yielded to an alphabet-trawl, whereupon the penny dropped and the machinery started to whir.

    MOIDORE was my only NHO, and I wasn’t at all sure of it when I submitted. I was convinced that the “gold” in the clue was the OR of the answer, without realizing that I was looking not just for a coin, but for one made of actual gold (as opposed to the OR and Au variety peculiar to crosswordland). That left me wondering if there had been any famous sculptors called Moe, which it appears there are not.

  20. Hello all, about 20 minutes ending with the mysterious SWEETIE as bull’s-eye, which doesn’t work over here, but was pretty clear after unraveling the wordplay. The MOIDORE also went in from wordplay only, but those were the only problems after realizing the anagram fodder led to SLOTH BEAR. Which must be some kind of animal with an identity crisis. Thanks to the gracious Paul in London for hosting the NYC TfTT get together. I enjoyed meeting you in person. Regards to those locals (in NY) and everyone else as well.
  21. Just over an hour and I didn’t find it easy at all — too many unknowns (CASEMENT, MOIDORE, bull’s-eye as a SWEETIE) and too many false starts on the knowns. For example, ADJOINING and ABOUNDING as a first try for ALONGSIDE, POLAND (LA in POND) rather than LAGOON, ARCHBISHOP or ARCHDEACON tentatively where PAPERBACKS belongs, MOBILE HOME rather than SECOND HOME, all eventually corrected but of course costing time. And on HERE I too overthought, lengthily. LAGOON perhaps my COD, or ALONGSIDE once the penny dropped.

    Edited at 2015-12-07 06:47 pm (UTC)

  22. I did like ALONGSIDE. That was great fun. RHODESIA reminded me of a joke in Lynne Truss’ wonderful book ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’. ‘If Zimbabwe used to be called Rhodesia, what was the former name of Iceland? Bejam.’ TST: 38m 51s

    Edited at 2015-12-07 07:05 pm (UTC)

  23. 15 mins, so from my perspective it definitely wasn’t one of the easier Monday puzzles. It seemed to take me an age to get on the setter’s wavelength, but once I was on it I rattled off the remainder of the puzzle fairly quickly. RHODESIA was my LOI and I have a feeling I had a similar mental block the last time “Salisbury” appeared in a clue in such a manner.
  24. Despite a slow start (as so often) I suddenly found the setter’s wavelength and had hopes of a half-decent time. However, I lost it again and finished even more slowly than I’d started, eventually posting a disappointing 10:53.

    A pleasant solve, with a few old chestnuts to help you along the way.

    1. The events held in NYC and London to celebrate the tenth birthday of this blog, founded by current Sunday Times crossword editor and two-time Times solving champion, Peter Biddlecombe. Originally, it was a single-handed thing, for a year or so, before he rebranded it and, no doubt, dumbed it down rather with the arrival of (some of) us riff-raff.
  29. Monday’s Puzzle, 26,275 was for me one of the most richly rewarding for a long time. One that looked impenetrable at first sight . . then gradually revealed itself in a series of wonderfully witty clues. I mark my favourite clues as I solve them and found no fewer than seven that earned an exclamation mark in the margin: from alongside, through Rhodesia, stain and dream on. . . ending with the delicious sweetie that I only cracked at bedtime

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