Times 26452: You spin me right round baby, right round.

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 27:07. Yikes! This is the most difficult puzzle I can recall in a while. It may have been that I started on it three pints in, but right now I am the only punter with a correct solution on the club timer, making me the winner by default. Yay, default!

Everything makes sense wordplay-wise, but there are some phrases in here that were not exactly the version that I use. Maybe there is a planet were people walk around saying 13 across, 4 down or 27 across.

Away we go…

Across
1 CATCHING: double definition
5 AGHAST: A, G, then anagram of HAT’S
9 ASPERITY: A, then PROSPERITY without PRO
10 LIMBER: CLIMBER missing the C
12 BINGO: after you BIN, GO, you get another game
13 AS REGARDS: RE(soldiers) in ASGARD’S (heaven’s – well for the Norse)
14 BILLINGSGATE: B, then an anagram ofLEGISLATING
18 DEAD AND ALIVE: double definition
21 SUPER,NOV,A
23 ROUGE: ROGE(r) – I acknowledge, detailed, containing U
24 EXTANT: remove the first letter from SEXTANT
25 MILL RACE: this was a biff for me – ground pepper comes out of a MILL, and now I look in Chambers to see RACE is a rootstock of ginger
26 SINGLE: S(h)INGLE
27 IN MY BOOK: double definition, though I had IN MY HAND and WORD before getting BOOK
 
Down
1 CRABBY: R in CABBY
2 TAPING: TAG surrounding PIN
3 HARMONICA: anagram of CHAIRMAN,(ma)O
4 NOT CALLED FOR: double definition, though I’m used to seeing SPOKEN FOR as the social one
6 GRIEG: E in GRIG(cricket)
7 ARBOREAL: BORE(drilled) in the ARAL sea
8 THRUSTER: RUST in THE, R
11 CRENELLATION: NELL in CREATION
15 SEVER,ALLY
16 ODYSSEUS: definition is “wanderer”. Reverse all of SUES(begs), S(hyl)Y, DO(ditto)
17 RASPUTIN: or RA’S PUT IN. Whether he was a bad influence or not is subjective
19 RUBATO: double sportsball! RU, then BAT ON missing the last letter. In Test cricket, once you reach your desired score, you have the option of declaring (closing the innings) or BATTING ON
20 BEDECK: BECK containing alternating letters in bEaD
22 RENAL: hidden in childREN ALter

48 comments on “Times 26452: You spin me right round baby, right round.”

  1. I had more trouble with other puzzles this week than today’s although I simply ignored the many elements here I didn’t know. These include grig, bat on, race as ginger, DEAD-AND-ALIVE, BILLINGSAGTE (thanks for the anagram) and asgards. ASPERITY from definition, but I didn’t parse it until after finishing everything else. So while that was my last understood, my actual last entry was RUBATO, after seeing the RU=rugby bit. And I of course misspelled ODYSSEUS at first, until reexamining the wordplay after seeing SUPERNOVA. About 30 minutes. Regards.
  2. I too carelessly went for “aspirate” at 9ac. Just about fitted the def, but not the wordplay.

    Tough puzzle. Thanks George and setter.

  3. 60 minutes on the dot for me, but with ASPIRATE. Funny that ASPERITY never occurred to me, since I know the word perfectly well, while I had to ‘invent’ ASPIRATE. Also got held up for ages by putting in PUSH AND SHOVE instead of the unknown DEAD AND ALIVE. Glad I’m not the only one to find this a bit stiff.
  5. 11:08 here for this interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

    For someone of my age and experience (which includes many years of Listener solving) all the references were pretty familiar, and I suspect I still occasionally (perhaps even “not infrequently”) use the phrases which others are condemning as archaic.

  6. Probably too late for anyone to see, but aren’t there a couple of issues with this?

    1) bore = drilled? Past tense of “bore” meaning drill is “bored”, not “bore”. That’s the past of “bear”.

    2) Arboreal may mean off the ground, but surely not “off the land”. The land includes trees.

    Anyone else troubled by these, or able to put me right?

    Orlando

  7. People in Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels were occasionally “merry as a grig”, causing me to look up what a grig was, now coming in handy donkey’s years later.
    Anne

Comments are closed.