Times 26379 – Gaping gaps here, to whit.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
After yesterday’s amazing NINA I finished this, parsed, in 17 minutes and spent a couple searching for another, to no avail; the day you get one is of course the day you don’t think to look. Anyway this was a fairly straightforward job with a few unusual words (10a, 14a, 27a) all of which could be guessed from wordplay I imagine. Not much chemistry for us, unless you include 17d, but my avatar gets a mention.

Across
1 COFFIN – Insert F F (francs, although ought to be Fr really) into COIN: D box.
4 GAP YEAR – (PAY)* inside GEAR = harness, D time out of education.
9 MEANS – Double def.
10 RAPTORIAL – RAPT = enthralled, ORIAL sounds like Oriel (Oxford college); D like an owl, raptor-like.
11 LIFESAVER – (IF SEVERAL)*, D I may sit by the pool.
12 HOTLY – T (central letter of culTure) inside HOLY; D angrily.
13 ALLY – PALLY = like a chum, remove P, D associate.
14 TREMATODES – MAT = dull, O(L)D = old, left to wither; insert all into TREES = oaks; convoluted parsing, D parasites, genus of flukes or flatworms.
18 TARANTELLA – ANT = worker, between TAR and ELLA: D dance, an Italian folk dance.
20 CHAD – CH = church, A(I)D; D country.
23 BITCH – BIT = nipped, CH = small child; D female beast.
24 TIP-AND-RUN – Double def., one whimsical.
25 DUNGAREES – DUNG= muck, ARE, (B)ES(T); D overalls.
26 HOO-HA – HO for house, the A HO reversed; D commotion.
27 THEURGY – THE URG(E), Y = unknown; D magic. Theurgy is ritual behaviour invoking Gods, often considered a form of magic.
28 ARTERY – ER inside ARTY; D vessel.

Down
1 COMPLIANT – COMPLAINT = protest, has the I ‘rising slightly’; D easily handled.
2 FEARFUL – F, EARFUL = diatribe; D scared.
3 INSIST – IN = home, SIST(ER) = girl, without ER; D hold firm!
4 GAPER – APE = mammal, inside GR = gross; a bivalve mollusc.
5 PROPHETS – D more than one holy man, sounds like PROFITS = gains.
6 EXISTED – EX (old lover), IS, TED (yesteryear’s rocker); D survived.
7 RELAY – REPLAY = second game, loses P; D broadcast.
8 TRAVERSE – RAVERS = people going wild, inside TE = note; D cross.
15 MILEPOST – (POLE)* inside MIST; D that may mark a traveller’s progress.
16 SEDENTARY – (YES DAREN’T)*; D inactive.
17 IN THE AIR – Double def. A bit of a weak clue.
19 RETINUE – E TIN (English money) inside RUE; D company.
21 HORMONE – Today’s hidden word, in TOUC(H OR MONE)YLESS; D body regulator.
22 ANCHOR – AN, CHOR(E); D holder-down.
23 BIDET – Insert I’D into BET = bank (on); D facility for washing.
24 TEENY – TEEN = young girl perhaps, Y = yen, D mini.

44 comments on “Times 26379 – Gaping gaps here, to whit.”

  1. Would probably have come in under the ten minute mark, if it hadn’t been for children shrieking in the same room as me and my wireless keyboard dying half way through and requiring the location of a plug. This seemed fairly straightforward for the most part but with some quite technical vocabulary – TREMATODES and GAPERs? I do like a little bit of that in my puzzles I must say…
  2. Again, but this time out of relief that this dog could see the rabbit for a change. Had no idea about the mollusc (4dn) but the cryptic worked well enough. Also unsure about the “magic” sense of THEURGY. Only knew it in the theological sense. Obviously need to brush up on the rituals of the Neoplatonists. Don’t we all though?

    Not sure how the second ‘s in 6dn works. Good for the surface but unaccountable in terms of parsing. Might perhaps have been better with a simple plural, so that the lover (quite plausibly) could be the rocker himself (herself?). But I’m now starting to whine about a perfectly good puzzle.

  3. A positive whiz for me, accelerating from a slow and bemused start, in 13’12”. As often happens, the “hidden” was (almost) my last one in, the word “moneyless” not quite sufficiently odd to give the game away. I liked COMPLIANT.
  4. Same DNKs–GAPERS, TREMATODES,–but also a couple of BKs (barely knowns) maybe seen once each here–GAP YEAR, TIP-AND-RUN. But these didn’t trouble me that much, once I had checkers anyway. On the other hand, I made needless heavy weather of eg 1ac (thought of ‘coffer’, for heaven’s sake, and couldn’t come up with COFFIN) and 28ac. All in all, despite the odd words, this had rather a meh feeling to it.
  5. Held up by the unknown THEURGY at the end. Enjoyed constructing that and TREMATODES from the wordplay. Nice when you can enter an unknown word with complete confidence.

    Also DNK GAPER, but what else could it be?

    COD to TARANTELLA, as it pretty much describes my solving style…”chancing, glancing, dancing, backing and advancing”.

    Thanks setter and Pip.

    1. At least it involves advancing! Wouldn’t mind a bit of that if you’ve any spare.
  6. Right up my street as Mephisto techniques led to the construction of the unknowns from the good wordplay. Enjoyable puzzle.
  8. That’s how we played cricket with the bats of old when only blacksmiths hit sixes. 18 minutes with RAPTORIAL and THEURGY barely known and TREMATODES and GAPER not at all but clear from the clue.
  9. 42 minutes delayed by several unknowns or forgottens that needed to be deduced from wordplay: GAPER, TREMATODES and the magical connotations of THEURGY, none of which, I’m relieved to find, has ever come up here before.
  10. 8:16, but with SEDANTARY. I’m not even sure if this is a typo or fundamental spelling incompetence. Otherwise I liked this: I enjoy constructing unknowns from wordplay.
      1. Pedentic? Well such commentary is perhaps not complimentary, but the error is so elementary, nay rudimentary, that it can hardly be called unparliamentary.
  11. As a mover up from the quick cryptic was very pleased with myself for completing this in about an hour. Held up by putting coffer instead of coffin- the wrong box!

    Rita

    1. I spent a very long time only being able to think of COFFER… you’re in good (well, semi-good) company!
  12. After yesterday’s amazing NINA I was on the lookout for more – but to no avail.I’m always the last one to spot a NINA!Is there such a thing as FREDERIK?

    Top NE corner slowed me to a ponderous 45 mins.

    I was convinced that 10ac would be NOCTURNAL but RAPTORIAL was – far more elegant.

    9ac I originally put in STAID but MEANS it was.

    6dn In my book a TED(DDY BOY)is not a ROCKER! The Teds were done and dusted by 1959 and Rockers emerged in 1960 but not entirely from that stock.

    FOI 2dn FEARFUL LOI 4 dn GAPER EEK!5dn PROPHETS

    27ac THEURGY was new to me. COD 1dn COMPLIANT very smooth.

    horryd Shanghai

    1. I’m expecting a magisterial rebuttal from Dorset, but in the meantime, while I might agree that Teds are not Rockers any more than Mods are, a rocker (small r) might well also be a Ted, as my neighbour in the late fifties would happily allow. He introduced me to Lonnie Donegan and the joys of skiffle, and Jerry Lee Lewis and “Great Balls of Fire” which we thought was very funny.
      And “done and dusted by 1959”? Over to you Jim…
  13. Knew TARANTELLA from Ibsen, delayed by TREMATODES. Spent ages thinking of 9 letter word ending in – ORIAL and meaning wise. 26′ today.
  14. Struggled to a 50 minute finish, being held up by the NE corner where TREMATODES and GAPER were unknown but constructed from the wordplay. I also couldn’t get past COFFER until 3d pointed the way to COFFIN. Didn’t know THEURGY, but again the wordplay was obvious. Liked 12ac once I’d separated angrily from religious. Failed to spot the parsing for 1d, so thanks to Pip for that. Nice puzzle.
  15. A straightforward exercise, with the GAPER/RAPTORIAL cross last in after a pretty quick run. TARANTELLA always reminds me of Dean Martin’s That’s Amore, tippy-tippy-tay.
  16. A very straightforward 20-minute solve. 27a was only dimly remembered but the wordplay was transparent so I had no trouble with it. A temporary hold-up caused by my initial entry of SET-TO for 26.
  17. Solved most of this in an airport car park, and polished off the rest in a few minutes. I liked the wordplay in this one, like Jim said, the Mephisto solving skills come in handy on GAPER and TREMATODES and the like.

    I’m in dress rehearsals for a show so tomorrow’ blog may be a little late.

  18. 11:33. I was pleased to see Rita pop by (above) as I though this would be a good try-out for anyone looking to make the transition from the quickie to the 15×15: no craftily concealed definitions, nothing particularly quirky in the constructions and the difficult words capable of being entered confidently by following the wordplay.
  19. Not a tricky one today, 8m 13s all told. LOI was THEURGY, which wasn’t a word I knew but had some helpful wordplay.
  20. It wasn’t really mockery – I believe there is some kind of logic to whether Latin-ancestry words end with -ant or -ent, but it often escapes me nevertheless: I still don’t understand why a dependant should be dependent on others, but not the other way around.
    1. Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t take it as such. Just saw an excuse to be silly and took it. The fact remains there isn’t a group of English words ending ANTARY, so this was a bit of a daft error.

      Edited at 2016-04-06 05:38 pm (UTC)

  21. I whizzed through most of this, and thought I was headed for a personal record, but then came the worms, the snails and the owls and I ground to a halt. Finally finished at 43 minutes, my bog-standard time.

    Haven’t heard the phrase ‘tip-and-run’ in forty years. Does it still exist, I wonder?

    Edited at 2016-04-06 03:51 pm (UTC)

  25. Somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, ending with the well hidden HORMONE, which was very good. As others have said, the unknowns were deduced from the user-friendly wordplay, so far less head-scratching than usual. The surface for the ANCHOR clue is very nice. Regards to all.
  26. An increasingly rare knock-free solve of 15 mins. Count me as another who spent time trying to justify “coffer” before the penny dropped, and with just the T checker I condfidently biffed “tic-tac-toe” for the game without reading the clue properly until HORMONE set me straight. Like others I was grateful for the helpful wordplay for GAPER and TREMATODES. I finished on the LHS with the COMPLIANT/MEANS crossers after the BITCH/BIDET crossers.
  27. Sorry, but COFFIN was my FYI. The rest took some 17 minutes but greatly helped by the clear elucidations of the unknowns. An enjoyable start to the day.
  28. 9:35 for me, held up at the end dithering over whether THEURGY would really be described as “magic” (and that despite being a paid-up member of the British Humanist Association).

    A pleasant straightforward solve.

  29. As a newbie, trying to learn the Times crossword I can only describe this particular crossword as 23 Across!
    1. Out of interest what did you find particularly difficult? As you’ll see from my earlier comment I thought this would be a good test for someone who had been making good progress on the quick cryptic.
    1. Is that the same stray apostrophe that was mentioned in the third comment yesterday morning? That one?
  31. In today’s South China Morning Post….

    I found this one an easy solve.

    Just wanted to mention that the unnecessary apostrophe is still present in 6D, and so has not been corrected after the first printing in the Times.

    Jezz in Hong Kong.

Comments are closed.