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. Oh dear! A DNF with the usual suspects missing plus a couple I have no excuse for not getting. As a student at Oxford in the late 60’s I lived a very debauched life but strangely only smoked Embassy which is presumably why I have never heard of ROACH.
  2. Lots of comments – I also was torn by GOOEY and GOOPY and since I like using the latter I put it in. Agreed this is a fun offering, I particularly liked the clue for COLON
  3. What a superb puzzle (even if it took me an hour to complete it). My very LOI was GOOEY, corrected just in time from GOOFY after I realized that the extra stroke must be doing something. COD to ROACH (eventually corrected from ROAST, but the T wouldn’t work for 29 ac) and SHOE. COLON disturbed me a bit until I realized I had been thinking of a semi-colon all the time — I didn’t really know the Morse code for I but dot-dot made MUCH more sense than dot-comma when I finally came to my senses.
  4. 30m but a swift Hodgson-like resignation with 2 still undone: ROACH and SHOE – and I’m glad I did give in as would never have got there, not having the what strikes me as rather obscure general knowledge leading to a more obscure cryptic definition. So SHOE as Jimbo sagely remarks without the H was also ungettable for me. So unlike my fellow contributors I didn’t much care for this one. Setter could do better and solver could do a lot better! Thanks for blog.
  5. A bog-standard 43 minutes for me.

    Just to complicate the ‘roach’ issue, I remember it as referring not to the soggy fag-end, but to the little roll of cardboard that was slid into the end of the joint to stop it closing up, especially if the smoker was prone to ‘bum sucking.’

    A bit of googling tells me both definitions are correct. In the words of one expert, ‘duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude, this is like seroiusly confusing.’

  6. 27 mins, and I’m glad I was alert for this one despite a long day at work. I was held up at the end by three pairs of crossers; like almost everyone it took me ages to get ROACH/SHOE but they weren’t my last in. That distinction goes to the COLON/LYNX crossers, but I should really have seen the latter long before I eventually did. The other pair I had trouble with was SORDID/TOKYO ROSE, and I was grateful for the helpful WP for SHIVAH. I echo the “excellent puzzle” sentiments, and a tip of the hat goes to the setter.
  7. I agree with comments saying this is a fine puzzle, hats off to the setter. Doubly so, for I was stumped, or incorrect rather, on 3 separate clues. I missed SA as ‘it’ and misremembered the Fiji place as SUVO, I fouled up the clue reading and left GOOFY, and incredibly I assumed another dodgy homophone was working and that the creature at 8D was a lion, and the course by the sea had to be LINE. Heavens, what a bad set of thoughts by me, considering I got all the ones everyone else found difficult. Better luck for me tomorrow, and regards to all of you.
    1. Regards to you too Kevin. Your courtesy and amity is never returned often enough.

      Edited at 2016-06-29 09:15 pm (UTC)

  8. Another DNF but better than yesterday, having read the blog I feel it would have been a no chance of finishing, some words I had never heard of, ROACH is the local river, that’s all (I don’t do drugs), should have got LINKS, just been to the driving range, and PLACID,as for NO-TECH, I mean, 27d my COD even though I didn’t get it.
  9. 17:11 here for this very fine puzzle. I raise my hat to the setter.

    Like others I struggled with the SE corner, particularly ROACH and SHOE, my L2I.

  10. As you can see, I’m still a day behind, and this one didn’t help. I failed, thanks to 11ac and not knowing my Morse code – I ended up with “Colin”, for no better reason than it fit.

    SUVA was an NHO, and it was only blind luck that made me choose that over Suvi, Suvo or Suvu, as I failed to parse the SA.

    TOKYO ROSE was a half-NHO. I was vaguely aware something/someone similar, and figured ROSE was the only euphonious option.

    All in all, I was completely off-wavelength and got the best part of two hours’ worth of entertainment out of this one.

  11. Put me down for ROAST and therefore couldn’t get SHOE. I thought the ‘AS’ in ROAST was the ‘when’ of ‘when in the kitchen’, not that I could see how ROT was the kitchen.
    Anne

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