Times 26304 (9th Jan) – Neutrino Storm To Destroy World!!!

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Sorry about the (hopefully) fake Daily Express headline, but it felt like that at the time. My 7:54 is languishing in 95th place on the leaderboard, 5 seconds behind Jason and about 8 seconds ahead of Verlaine (so a muted wahey!)

Judged on perceived (by me) difficulty, I reckon my online times are about 33% faster than my pen-and-paper times, and I’m not a very fast typist. I don’t solve online during the week as I like to do it on paper on the train, and I hardly ever break the 10-minute barrier.

Anyway, on to the puzzle. COD to 14ac, great anagram and a surface reading which throws you off the scent.

Across
1 Hostess returning pleasurable comments? That is good (6)
GEISHA – AHS (pleasurable comments) + IE (that is) + G(ood), all reversed.
5 Excited Eddie carries Ashes vessel about (6,2)
TURNED ON – TED (Eddie) around URN (Ashes vessel), + ON (about).
9 Lumber covers frame on Tower Bridge (8)
STRADDLE – SADDLE (lumber, as in burden with) around TR (frame on ToweR, cryptically speaking, the first and last letters).
10 Bear / to experience sore head? (6)
SUFFER – double definition, the second by example, hence the ? at the end.
11 Remove obstacle found in river (6)
DELETE – LET (obstacle) inside DEE (river).
12 First-rate cut of beef features in society publication (8)
SMASHING – SHIN (cut of beef) inside S(ociety), MAG (publication).
14 Best man dined out somewhere else (6-6)
ABSENT-MINDED – (best man dined)*.
17 Additional racehorses in reserve? (6-6)
SECOND-STRING – cryptic definition. In Chambers, a second string is an alternative choice (of anything), but a string can also refer to a trainer’s stable of racehorses. Neither definition requires a hyphen though.
20 Winged beings caught by current in furious Humber (8)
CHERUBIM – C(aught) + I (current) inside (Humber)*.
22 Players arrive finally at Kinross loch (6)
ELEVEN – (arriv)E + LEVEN (Kinross loch). Yeah well. I knew there was a loch called Leven, but I wouldn’t have got it from the Kinross hint! Got it from the definition and checkers, but still my LOI.
23 Outsiders in there stop school dance for now (3,3)
PRO TEM – T(her)E inside PROM (school dance). Short for pro tempore, Latin “for the time being”.
25 She flew solo to the West? Not straight (5,3)
ENOLA GAY – ALONE (solo) reversed (“to the West”) + GAY (not straight). The name of the bomber which dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima (apparently named after the pilot’s mother). Some people on the Times Forum admitted to not knowing this! Seriously???
26 Pleasure-seeker involves tutor in robbery (8)
HEDONIST – DON (tutor) inside HEIST (robbery).
27 Rivalry in game perhaps / that may get you stitched up (6)
NEEDLE – double defibition.

Down
2 Biblical beauty in Paris is that woman? (6)
ESTHER – EST (in Paris, is) + HER (that woman). There’s a Book of Esther in the OT, she was a queen of Persia.
3 Hard work to rescue party that Liberal divides (5,6)
SLAVE LABOUR – SAVE (rescue) + LABOUR (party), around L(iberal).
4 Notice habit newspaper boss confronted (9)
ADDRESSED – AD (notice) + DRESS (habit) + ED (newspaper boss).
5 Betrayal — that’s Timon’s initial motive (7)
TREASON – T(imon) + REASON (motive). Kind of an anti-&lit, as from what I remember of the Shakespeare play it’s Timon who gets betrayed by everybody else!.
6 Devotee overthrows an emperor (5)
RASTA – A TSAR (an emperor) reversed.
7 I must expel small and mischievous child (3)
ELF – SELF (I) minus the S for small. It’s in the dictionary, but anyone who’s read or seen the film LOTR surely can’t imagine an elf like that!
8 “Heroic” lover seen beneath old tree (8)
OLEANDER – LEANDER (lover of Hero) after O(ld).
13 Pineapple worker angered, or enraged, but upset! (4,7)
HAND GRENADE – HAND (worker) + either (angered)* or (enraged)* – take your pick!
15 Large cat came in, swishing round leg (5,4)
MAINE COON – (came in)* + O (round) + ON (leg, cricket term). Another one that stumped a lot of Forum commenters. As a cat lover I was familiar with the breed, so it was a write-in for me. A friend of mine has a couple of Norwegian Forest cats which are even bigger!
16 Restore power to soldiers before assault (8)
RECHARGE – RE (Royal Engineers, soldiers) + CHARGE (assault).
18 English politician in tax storm (7)
TEMPEST – E(nglish) + MP (politician) inside TEST (tax).
19 Point made by alien within Irish assembly (6)
DETAIL – ET (alien) inside DAIL (Irish assembly).
21 A certain King entertains a maiden — one’s an animated character (5)
BAMBI – BB (a certain King) around A, M(aiden) + I (one).
24 That word contains more than one (3)
TWO – hidden in “that word”.

16 comments on “Times 26304 (9th Jan) – Neutrino Storm To Destroy World!!!”

  1. OMD and cats – two of my favourite things in life, in the Times crossword, on my birthday 🙂
  2. We’ve had 4 Maine Coons in our lives Baxter is the most recent (see avatar) They are sometimes called the dogs of the cat world. They fetch and love water, even go swimming.
    Well under the half-hour on this puzzle. Happy Birthday mohn2.
  3. Less a cat person, but knew the Maine Coon cats. Knew pretty much everything else, too, after I gave up on IMP (I Must Pee maybe?). A nice Saturday solve when there were other things to do. Nice blog, as usual, Andy. And happy birthday, a week late I guess, Mohn

    Edited at 2016-01-16 02:32 am (UTC)

  4. DNK MAINE COON, got as far as MAINE (eliminating ‘maize corn’ first; honestly), then went to the dictionary. 22ac biffed, since I didn’t know of Loch L. World War II is fading from our collective memory, evidently; I can recall solvers not knowing Iwo Jima and Quisling, and now Enola Gay (and I’m getting red underlines for Iwo Jima and Enola). 11ac took time, as I was sure the word was EX-something and the river Exe. COD indeed to 14ac, but 13d was no slouch.
  5. At 32 minutes I found this rather on the easy side for a Saturday, as was today’s offering. Is this further evidence that the editor has a plan to confuse those of us with theories about levels of difficulty relating to days of the week?
  6. As Sotira said yesterday, we need new words for “Enjoyed this a lot.” I found it most felicitous.

    Richard Browne, the last Times Crossword editor, said he kept the most witty crosswords back for Saturdays on the grounds that solvers may have more time to appreciate them. But he never selected for difficulty because he could never tell which was which.. and had no idea at all where the easy Monday concept came from.

    Maybe we are just a bit sharper on Mondays!

  7. 11:01 … and indeed this was not unpleasing (filing away “felicitous” — thanks, Jerry).

    I had the required general knowledge — I try not to use the “I’m surprised … ” line here, but people didn’t know ENOLA GAY? Really? I’m surprised.

    PRO TEM and ‘pineapple’ for HAND GRENADE are the sort of things I now regard as commonplace entirely because I solve the Times crossword.

    1. From Latin felix… I always associate ‘Felix’ with ‘the Cat.’
      Hesitant to show my ignorance, but I was baffled by 8 down – didn’t know Hero and thought Leander was a lover in Shakespeare (that’s Lysander, idiot). And I know for a fact that an oleander is a bush – ripped up two in my yard, horrible things. 21 mins before going for aids.
      Rob
  8. I’d heard of it but had no idea what the creature was. If I’d ever thought about it I’d have said it was an Eastern mountain lion (they may or may not be extinct).

    Regular solvers of the NY Times weekend crosswords certainly know ENOLA GAY (and Iwo Jima). I was quite surprised (right Sotira) that a number of regulars on the Club Forum didn’t know the latter when it came up recently. The Marine Corps memorial in DC is a large sculpture representation of the famous photo of the raising of the flag on the island. 14.12

    Edited at 2016-01-16 10:47 am (UTC)

  9. Richard Browne, the last Times Crossword editor, said he kept the most witty crosswords back for Saturdays on the grounds that solvers may have more time to appreciate them. But he never selected for difficulty because he could never tell which was which.. and had no idea at all where the easy Monday concept came from.
    This quote reminded me that I sat next to the then current crossword editor at a competition probably in the early 80’s, think he said his name was Grant, and he said he tried to choose easier puzzles for Mondays because we all had enough other problems that day without adding to the burden.
  10. If the definition of ‘unfair in a crossword’ were things not known and not gettable by Ulaca, then the moggy clue would definitely be proscribed. It’s made harder for someone like me who lived in a new town in the early/mid 80s by the fact that ‘coons’ was used by a lot of London overspill people to refer to black people, and so the possible reference to, presumably, a raccoon (?) was rather lost on me and all but unguessable. (Of course, I might have got it direct from the wordplay, but that is always difficult for a word/phrase one doesn’t know.)

    Edited at 2016-01-16 12:43 pm (UTC)

    1. I hesitated over this but I think I will add it to your comment. When my husband was a young law clerk for a Federal judge in Delaware in the very early 70s a defendant named Koons came before the court. The judge was pronouncing sentence and said – Koons stand up! And all the black people in the court stood up … Of course it’s appalling but it also produces a loud nervous guffaw from anyone hearing the story for the first time. A lot has changed since then but a lot hasn’t.
  11. 30:19, but I did this very late and fell asleep while solving it, so.
    I knew MAINE COON, and I’m with mohn in that ENOLA GAY is primarily an OMD song for me (I now have it as an earworm again). I also knew where the name came from, but none of that prevented me from inexplicably typing in ELONA GAY. I was really tired.

    Edited at 2016-01-16 11:13 pm (UTC)

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