Times 26451 – order amongst the chaos

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A fine Ximenean offering, after last week’s looser job from 1977. It took me 25 minutes of which 24d and 29a used up the last five or so. There’s much scope for biffing so no doubt there will be some fast times when solvers don’t bother to do the parsing.

Across
1 SUVA – UV = sun’s rays, inside SA = IT, sex appeal, D Pacific resort. I’ve been to the capital of Fiji and I’d hesitate to call it a resort, although the rest of Fiji is one of the nicest places on Earth IMO.
3 SCRAP METAL – SCRAP = battle, MET = came to, A, L = pound; D odd bits of armour, perhaps.
10 FAN-SHAPED – FAN’S = lover’s, H = husband, APED = sent up; D like the peacock’s tail.
11 COLON – The letter i in Morse code is .. , turn it upright and find your colon.
12 TEL AVIV – TE = note, LVIV is a city in Ukraine, insert A; D city.
13 PLACID – A PLC is a public company; insert A for answer, add ID for papers; D composed.
15 LET THERE BE LIGHT – (ETHELBERT)*, E, LIGHT = land; D first command? As in Genesis Ch. 1.
18 MAKE A BEELINE FOR – To MAKE A BEE would be to form a working party, as in e.g. a sewing bee; LINE = rule, FOR = in favour; D rush to.
21 SORDID – SOR(E) = endlessly aggravated; DID = committed; D foul.
23 ONTARIO – O = over, IO = a moon of Jupiter, insert N, TAR for new pitch; D province.
26 GOOEY – GOOFY is your cartoon character, add one stroke to the F to make an E; D sentimental.
27 STIR-CRAZY – Witty cryptic definition; I didn’t see it at first, although it’s an expression often used hereabouts when we golfers are house bound by some wet weather.
28 SEE THROUGH – A double definition; if you stick with something you see it through, and to see through something is to understand or twig it.
29 SHOE – A platform shoe; sounds like SHOO!. My LOI along with the tricky 24d.

Down
1 SAFETY LAMP – (PLAYMATE F)*; D light of mine. My FOI.
2 VINYL – Hidden reversed in LLEWEL(LYN IV)OR; D records.
4 CAPE VERDE – CAP = restriction, EVER = at all, DE = borders of desperate; D republic, somewhere off Africa.
5 ADD UP – Double definition; a ‘summer’ adds up, and ‘fit’ as in the solution fits the problem.
6 MICHAEL – (CLAIM HE)*; D a saint.
7 TALKING OF – (IT FOLK NAG)*, D now you mention.
8 LYNX – D creature, sounds link LINKS as in golf links.
9 SHIVAH – IV = four, inside SHAH = old king; D period of mourning. I often claim ignorance of things Hebrew but I had heard of this one.
14 STEREOTYPE – STEREO for player, TYPE for letters; D pigeonhole, as a verb. Brilliant.
16 TOKYO ROSE – TO KO ROSE would be to put out bloomer; insert Y being end of hostility; D wartime broadcaster. I’m in a hurry today so go see Wiki for the full story.
17 BILLOWING – Double definition, filling out, and a split into BILL OWING.
19 ALDWYCH – A, H, insert (CLWYD)*; D theatre. Famous old theatre in London just off the Strand in Aldwych.
20 NO-TECH – E inside notch = score; D relatively unsophisticated. This bugged me for a while, not an expression I knew, unlike low-tech; but nothing else fitted.
22 DISCO – DISCORD would be lack of harmony, discard the RD = no way, D music. Well, music but not my kind of music.
24 ROACH – Serious lateral thinking needed here. The nasty bit of a finished joint, as in cannabis cigarette, is known as a roach, and you don’t want (COCK)ROACHES in your kitchen. So it is a DD.
25 AGES – Cut W from WAGES; D is getting on.

68 comments on “Times 26451 – order amongst the chaos”

  1. … this a good deal, especially those perplexing bits. E.g., the temptation of St Colin at 11ac. Or: trying to find a word with an anagram of “Clywd” in it (19dn).

    Still not sure that the ROACH clue works — if my assumption is right and it’s intended that cockroaches in the kitchen mean the destruction of the whole dwelling/joint. If so, there’d be no houses in this one-horse town of ours. (One horse, that is, except for all the horses.) This whole line of thought is probably rubbish though, and there’s another way in that has escaped my twisted brain.

    My last was SORDID as I couldn’t see the exact def. Failed to lift and separate “committed” and “foul”.

    Oh and … here’s one for Ulaca. Could his absence be explained by this?:
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/28/capybara-captured-toronto-canada-bonnie-clyde

    Edited at 2016-06-29 07:47 am (UTC)

    1. After 3-0 in the rugby, and British “Independence Day”, I assume he’ll be back when he sobers up. At which point we can break the news to him about Iceland.

      And McT, surely you’ve spent enough time “over east” to know that our WA cockroaches are but pale imitations of their NSW cousins? We had cockroaches in student digs in Coogee (that’s Coogee, not Coogee) that had to do three-point turns to get through the kitchen door.

      1. My first foray into NSW was in the mid 70s, playing real football for ANU in the national universities comp. We stayed in digs in Kirribilli and the roaches ate all the hard skin from my feet during the first night. Sore feet stuffed up my star left-midfield part the next day.

        So yes, vicious. But hardly whiteants when it comes to whole buildings.
        Eh?

    2. I assumed it meant having to throw away a joint of meat, that had been left out, and now has roaches crawling all over it. Maybe I just have a nasty imagination…
      1. Janie (below) says much the same thing. As I said, I’m probably barking up the wrong joint.
  2. DNF … thanks, Pip, for explaining my two failures — ROACH and SHOE. I may not be alone in failing on these. I feel ‘send off’ for ‘shoo’ is a bit below the belt. It surely has the sense of ‘drive off’.

    Some great clues elsewhere, though.

  3. … which was at 1ac, where I had almost worked the wp out: I had ‘suvo’ for the unknown Pacific resort, with so (that) indicating ‘for’. That pesky little it=sa! And it’s not the first time it’s come up … *yawn*. Bit misleading having SEE THROUGH = stick (and not ‘stick at/with’). dnk TOKYO ROSE, so that went in on wp. I had it that if there were (cock) roaches in your kitchen, the Sunday roast would all be eaten by them! Bit convoluted, I know…

    About 45mins.

  4. One wrong, knowing that Morse the detective was created by COLIN Dexter. Oh well. Elsewhere, DNK NO-TECH. COD to ALDWYCH with congratulations to setter for finding a word including an anagram of CLWYD. Thanks pip

    Edited at 2016-06-29 08:22 am (UTC)

  5. Not as difficult as it first appeared, though missed SORDID and there were a few I couldn’t parse such as COLON and TEL AVIV. I liked ROACH (also elsewhere in the last few days), for which I had roughly the same explanation as Janie_l_b, and the &lit’ish (I think) MICHAEL. I didn’t know that he was really an Archangel rather than a saint. The things you learn from cryptic crosswords.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  6. …which is faster than a number of solvers who are always faster than me. Not sure how that came about, some sort of space-time singularity I guess.

    I thought this was an absolute cracker, with clever surfaces everywhere. Nice work setter, and thanks for the blog Pip.

  7. Same as Sotira. A bit of trouble in the SE but enjoyed it. Couldn’t get ROAST out of my head for a long while. Put SUVA in as S for Sun and UVA …. so thanks Pip.
  8. Failed to finish in my hour with about a half-dozen left. I’d got as far as SUV_ for 1a, and had lightly pencilled in SUVA, but I yet again failed to remember that IT = SA in crosswordland.

    I missed SORDID, ONTARIO, SHOE and STEREOTYPE (because my mind just insisted on STAR for player.) . Should have probably got ROACH, but didn’t. DNK TOKYO ROSE. Despite (because of?) working in tech for my entire life I’d never heard of NO-TECH, and didn’t get it.

    Very glad of yesterday’s sentimental clue, otherwise I might not have got to GOOEY (and yes, I did also consider GOOPY, anon.) Pleased with myself for getting the COLON, which was my COD. Thanks for the parsing on my biffs!

  9. Held up in the lower east side by ROACH and SHOE and I agree with jackkt’s “unfortunate intersection” comment. Still, all’s well that ends well. Some very neat clueing, with SEE THROUGH and DISCO, although not terribly difficult, the best of the bunch.
  10. 24d I parsed as meaning a catering outlet (not a house) would be closed down if a cockroach were found in the kitchen, ROACH just about remembered from undergraduate days in the 1970s. Michael is an archangel and a saint, although being an archangel he did not live on Earth. Some very nice clues today, whizzed through top half, but STIR CRAZY held me up for ages trying to fit in a lit. ’round the bend’. COD 28 ac. Thanks setter and blogger, 30′.
    2. Yes, that’s how I read it too. Although shutting down a restaurant because of a single cockroach struck me a s a bit harsh!
      1. You are right. It took a cluster to close down the Whizzo Chocolate company.
  11. Well I had GOOPY which also means sentimental and can in an angular sort of way be formed from F by adding a line. Acceptable?
  12. Pleased to find time to solve this and found it quite tricky – out of practice I guess

    Luckily knew ROACH from “end of joint” following years of training and refresher courses in drug abuse when fostering – wouldn’t have got it from “cockroach”. 29A is nearly impossible without that H checker – pity to end with such a weak clue.

    Don’t know NO-TECH but surely LOW-TECH is “relatively unsophisticated” whilst NO-TECH is just “unsophisticated”?

    1. I know all sorts of folks who are no-tech but quite sophisticated. Wouldn’t touch an iPad to save their lives; but quite at home with Verdi and Hendrix on the gramophone. Depends what you mean by “sophistication”.
      1. Can’t argue with that – but “sophistication” is setters word not mine. However one describes it I think by including “relatively” setter has clued LOW-TECH rather than NO-TECH.
  13. Abandoned after an hour in favour of calling up the solutions to 24dn and 29ac which because of the missing mutual checker I found impossible to crack even with the assistance of a solver. I didn’t know the druggy term and kitchen led me in the direction of food or utensil of some sort so “roast” for “joint” seemed the most likely solution with the remainder of the clue unexplained. As Sotira has already said, 29 seems a bit loose too. I think this is another case of an unfortunate intersection of slightly iffy clues, but the rest of the puzzle was great and I really enjoyed solving it.

    Edited at 2016-06-29 08:40 am (UTC)

  14. I thought this was brilliant, a real top-level Times Cryptic. I didn’t distinguish myself on it, taking (rare occurrence these days!) over 20 minutes in a blearly morning solve, making a particular meal of the bottom half and especially the SE. COD to 27ac; an excellent cryptic definition that was utterly mystifying until I suddenly saw it, at which point it was perfect.

    Thanks for parsing 11ac – I assumed it was something to do with COLIN Dexter… the I becoming an O… somehow… what an elegant and lateral clue it turns out to have been!

    Thanks to today’s setter, a perfect performance as far this judge is concerned.

  15. Having spent my teenage years in Birkdale, and now having a holiday apartment in Lytham St Annes, should have spotted 8d rather quicker. DNF, not knowing ROACH and only dimly aware of STIR CRAZY. Otherwise very enjoyable. The drug references always get me, although I read Physics at Oxford the same three years as Howard Marks. We’d nod Hello, but I never did ask what he carried in his guitar case.
  16. 23 minutes and tuppence. I’m intrigued that only Jim and I (and our esteemed and possibly stoned setter) seem to know that a roach is the fag and of a spliff, which made solving 24d a lot easier. Even so, that and the crossing shoe added a lot of time to my final score.
    Interesting to see an increase in the character morphing clues – add a leg to P to get R, stand two dots upright to get a colon and add a stroke to an F to get E – all perfectly fair but requiring a newish flexibility in the solver’s thinking and more legitimate that the pair of spectacles variety, methinks.
    1. I knew it, z8, I admit from personal experience 45 years ago, I thought I’d explained it in the blog, although I was in a hurry. The JOINT reference is nothing to do with meat, and there are two meanings for ROACH, that was the point I think.
      1. My most sincere apologies: when I read it initially I must have skimmed over the relevant words, and I was transfixed to a degree by everyone else (except Jim) trying to understand the joint as in meat or of all the gin varieties, with some startlingly inventive suggestions. I could suggest that my knowledge came from the same kind of source as Jim’s, and indeed I was once responsible for teaching Personal and Social Development to 13 year olds, which translated easily as sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, so better than basic knowledge was necessary. But I also had friends, and lived in Totnes. On a good day, when the police were burning the contents of yet another vast acreage of greenhouse, the whole town was pretty well stoned.
  17. Just a reminder to those who have already indicated they will be there as well as others who would like to join us that there will be an informal gathering of cruciverbalists at the Old Red Lion on Kennington Park Road, SE11 4RS, this evening. The nearest tube station is Kennington.

    I will be wearing a navy blue jacket and in possession of a copy of the Times, and will be in the garden if clemency prevails.

    2. I’d love to join you but I am in the wrong continent today. Next time, maybe.
    3. Ah, yes, good, I’ll be there! I’ll be the tall one in what, now that I check, appears to be a grey hoodie and grey boots. I might bring some of the Telegraph Toughie bloggers along to gatecrash; there goes the neighbourhood…

      ETA: won’t be there till 7, 7.30ish so hopefully you’re stopping for more than a quick half!

      Edited at 2016-06-29 04:17 pm (UTC)

  18. Hit the buffers after 20 minutes with the identified suspects NO TECH, ROACH and SHOE. Nevertheless, I did admire the compiler’s originality especially their resistance to using crossword cliches – apart from IT=SA, which always gets me.
  19. So far it’s been wavelength week for me. I won’t be clocking in ahead of Verlaine again this side of Christmas. I see Galspray had an even better outing – chapeau. A lot of Vs and Ys which helped, although I still think of the city as LvOv. In my salad days I saw the Peter Brook Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Aldwych – wow. It’s also the location of a “ghost” tube station. SEE THROUGH was excellent and so was MICHAEL (reminded me of Marks & Sparks). 20.14

    Edited at 2016-06-29 10:31 am (UTC)

  20. Which initially I thought was probably quite a long time – I will now however spend a little time basking in my own little pool of “for once in my life being faster than Verlaine” glory. Which will quite probably never happen again.

    Jimbo – Count me in with the “low-v-no-tech” query too – I also knew the doper’s butt, although from different experiences to yours. Having said that, we are (subject to final ratification in a fortnight) about to embark on a fostering journey of our own – any tips for someone who’s pretty much cacking their pants at the prospect?

    1. Dear me I could write a book on our 20 years but I guess the golden rules are:

      Never foster a child that’s older than your youngest – if you do you lay your child open to deliberate and/or accidental corruption

      Keep your own children fully in the picture all the time. Make sure they know why your foster children are in care and what is happening to them during the placement

      Be aware of allegations of abuse at all times and you especially take appropriate safeguards (eg don’t be alone in the house with a fostered child, especially a girl)

      Your biggest problems are likely to come from natural parents and social workers. Once the children trust and respect you they will see you as allies but they will be influenced by their natural parents who are likely to be devious

      Try to find a small number of other local carers to share experiences with and who you can ask for help. Write to me if you wish off-piste

      Fostering is a business and you should approach it as such – your local authority certainly will

      Good luck to you and Mrs Mike

      1. Thank you Jim, much appreciated and very sage advice. We are off to Panel on the 13th so the first arrivals should be with us once we come back from our August hols.

        I will keep you posted on progress, and look out for random emails in the probably not too distant future!

  21. Another one who did not finish, with 1a, 29a and 24d unsolved. Gave up after 35 minutes. I could cope with the tricky bits until then, but SUVA and the meaning of ROACH were complete unknowns.
  22. Another struggle for me, having got to 55 minutes with 21a 24d and 29a unfilled. I gave up the struggle and biffed ((p)RODDED = Shafted)for SORDID, and could only think of ROAST for 29d not having come across the spliff usage. The only platform I could then think of to fit _T_E was FTSE. A dismal failure. Well done for unravelling it Pip.
  23. 38m, so in the time this took me I could have solved Monday’s puzzle seven times and still had time left over to check my answers. It’s a funny old something or other.
    Really great puzzle though. I struggled pretty much everywhere, including TOKYO ROSE (unknown or forgotten)/SORDID/GOOEY for a long time, but like others the ROACH/SHOE pair were my last in. ROACH is very familiar to me from my youth (some might call it misspent, but I am all like totes Edith Piaf about it tbh) but when I finally twigged I was very surprised to see it in a Times crossword. O tempora, O munchies.
    Thanks for explaining COLON: I put it in from checkers really but didn’t have a Scooby.
  24. Agreed Jimbo, that was my feeling as well.

    Hope Mrs Jimbo is thriving under your care.

    1. Thanks Penfold. She’s out of plaster and now wears a robo-cop boot and gets around on a zimmer. Somehow remains unable to shop, cook, wash-up, ….
  25. 26:02 for what was a splendid puzzle despite the little nigglettes. As appears to be de rigueur my last two were SHOE then ROACH.

    Edited at 2016-06-29 01:08 pm (UTC)

  26. I nearly gave up with only these two unfinished. But later I would have felt pretty stupid, because I am an inveterate pot head (though I no longer produce roaches, as I no longer smoke‚ I only vaporize). At least it was not my LOI. “Platform” is a nicely oblique definition; reminded me of yesterday’s “shoe” cluing SLINGBACK.

    Edited at 2016-06-29 02:32 pm (UTC)

  27. Bit late in the day, but I can’t understand why no one has drawn attention to the fact that Tel Aviv is not in fact a capital city (12ac), unless I have missed something.

    Andrew R

    1. I took it to mean modern, first class, full of night life, etc rather than “The Capital City”
      1. I wondered about this, apparently Israel law in 1950 designated Jerusalem as its Capital but other countries locate their embassies in Tel Aviv, and treat it as the de facto capital.
        1. This is true, because under international law Jerusalem is considered occupied and so not recognised das the capital, but nobody actually calls Tel Aviv the capital as far as I know. Like so much in this case simple vocabulary is a minefield: I remember a similar discussion about ‘disputed territories’ a few years ago.
    2. Isn’t, but briefly was in 1948/9. It’s also the place where most (if not all) embassies are, and ambitious development plans aim to establish it as Israel’s finance capital. It also describes itself as the “party capital” of Israel, something Jerusalem probably couldn’t match as the Charedim would probably throw rocks at it.
      But you’re right, it’s not the capital. A capital, maybe.
      1. My apologies, Pip, I appear to have rather done it again. Are you using invisible ink, by any chance?
  28. Bit late in the day, but I can’t understand why no one has drawn attention to the fact that Tel Aviv is not in fact a capital city (12ac), unless I have missed something.

    Andrew R

  29. Apologies for double posting original comment. I didn’t think of capital in any way other than centre of government. It’s definitely more capital in the second sense than Jerusalem. Thanks

    Andrew R

  30. Perfectly good crossword with a very tough SE corner.

    Although I put it in early I couldn’t quite parse 23ac – ONTARIO so I was never quite sure

    It took me an hour with 24dn ROACH LOI which is a terribly iffy clue IMO

    16dn TOKYO ROSE was my WOD 29ac SHOE was my COD

    horryd Shanghai

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