Times 26623 – William Bradford needed one!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 32 minutes

Music: Bach, Cello Suite #3, Harnoncourt

At first I thought this was going to be easy, as my first few answers were write-ins. Then I got stuck for a while, and it started to look like trouble. Another burst brought me nearly to the finish, only to again run into a wall. The last few answers were biffed, and I really couldn’t see how the cryptics worked unless you used very loose or obscure meanings of the constructing words. In the end, I had to type in my paper copy just to make sure that I had indeed solved the puzzle correctly.

I was hoping to get going quicker at the end of a long day, not helped when I decided to watch the end of the golf tournament while eating dinner instead of starting the puzzle immediately. At least there was no playoff – far from it, indeed.

So I will now attempt the blog, and see if I can untangle the parsing of the clues that got solved through instinct and feel.

Across
1 SOMETIME, sounds like SUM + TIME, where ‘porridge’ is criminal slang for a prison sentence. My FOI, all good so far.
5 ENTRAP, E,N + PART backwards.
9 OURSELVES, anagram of USE LOVERS.
11 VICAR, VIC + A R. Head of a church, not the church.
12 CHEVRON, CHEVR[e], ON[e], where ‘left unfinished applies to both components.
13 MELANGE, anagram of GLEEMAN.
14 COMPACT CAMERA, COMPACT (as a verb) + CAME + RA.
16 THIMBLERIGGER, anagram of BEER GIRL MIGHT.
20 FREESIA, FREE + S(I)A, where ‘had’ is part of the construction instructions rather than an indicator for I’D, a subtlety that held me up for a long time.
21 GROWN-UP, G[i]R[l] + OWN UP.
23 OLIVE, O + LIVE, where the terminals are live, neutral, and ground.
24 EASY GOING, a reverse cryptic, where ‘EASY GOING’ turns UNEASY into UN. One I just biffed, of course.
25 DANGLE, [fan]DANGLE. I could only vaguely recall ‘fandangle’, which see, but that had to be it.
26 APPARENT, APP + A RENT.
 
Down
1 SCONCE, SCON(C)E.
2 MERGE, MER([workin]G)E.
3 THEOREM, anagram of THE[m] + MORE. A bit &litish, as a theorem is not the proof, but what is proven.
4 MOVING AVERAGE, MO + VIN GAVE RAGE, another one I just biffed.
6 NOVELLA, NO + V + ELLA.
7 RACONTEUR, RA(CON)T + EUR. Another biff.
8 PARMESAN, P(ARM[i]ES)AN, where I had to use the cryptic to check the spelling.
10 SOMETHING IS UP, SOMETHING I SUP.
14 CRITERION, C + anagram of INTERIOR. I spent the longest time looking for a banner or flag of some kind.
15 STAFFORD, STAFF + O + RD.
17 BOSWELL, BO[ok] + SWELL. I was thinking ‘excellent’ = ‘well’, and couldn’t parse the cryptic, but it is actually quite simple if you take a slangier approach.
18 GEORGIA, GEORG[e] + I + A.
19 SPIGOT, SPI(GO)T, a very tough cryptic to see, and I certainly didn’t see it.
22 NOISE, [l]ESION upside-down.

64 comments on “Times 26623 – William Bradford needed one!”

  2. 10m. Sconce FOI. Thimblerigger LOI, had to check it. Biffed Freesia and Parmesan for speed. A bit ho-hum, I thought.
  3. Well, my brain is definitely on the blink. I’ve tried turning it off and turning it on again; changed the lubricant; deleted lots of medical information I haven’t accessed in decades – no luck.

    I was beaten by, of all things BOSWELL, which is ironic because I only know seven things related to literature, and he is one of them.

    Apart from that, a lot of biffing took place, and THIMBLERIGGER untangled itself after a little letter-juggling. An excellent puzzle, I thought.

  4. 9:05 for me, feeling tired after a busy day.

    A pleasant enough start to the week, though I’m not too keen on THEOREM = “algebraic proof”.

  5. 10m. Sconce FOI. Thimblerigger LOI, had to check it. Biffed Freesia and Parmesan for speed. A bit ho-hum, I thought.

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