Times 28189 – Winds moderate, doing their thing from the north

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, I was an epic fail in 40 minutes on what is not a particularly hard test. My major problem was 10a, in spite of having been one once. Too clever for me. I imagine those of superior intelligence will find this quite easy, but a tad tougher than an average Monday. SNITCH at 85, anyone?

ACROSS

1 Ready to complain, losing head (4)
RIPE – [g]RIPE
3 Copper perhaps, crashing tractor into drink (10)
TERRACOTTA – anagram* of TRACTOR in TEA (especially for horryd – terracotta, besides being a material and stuff made from the material, is the colour of said material/stuff – ‘a strong reddish-brown to brownish-orange colour’, AKA copper the colour)
10 Subsequent payment, though not in regard to student (7)
FRESHER – [re]FRESHER (REFRESHER is the subsequent payment and ‘in regard to’ is dropped -‘though not’)
11 Press to join mature holiday scheme (7)
PACKAGE – PACK (press) AGE (mature)
12 Source of protection potentially rickety and unstable (8,7)
SECURITY BLANKET – RICKETY UNSTABLE*
13 Observe — it’s acceptable to block fool (4,2)
LOOK ON – OK in LOON (fool)
14 Youth, or one coming in fresh? (8)
MINORITY – OR I in MINTY (fresh)
17 Recalled brief comment about hot TV show (8)
TELETHON – H in NOTELET reversed
18 Old King heading for European conflict in days (6)
EDWARD – E (initial letter of European) WAR (conflict) in DD (days)
21 Story of boy’s encounter with animal, domestic one — he went for lad, unfortunately (5,3,3,4)
PETER AND THE WOLF – PET (domestic one, i.e. animal) HE WENT FOR LAD* (amended from original nonsense as per Jeremy’s comment). More about the story, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_the_Wolf#Plot
23 Love, in different ways, being swamped in a lake’s spray (7)
AEROSOL – EROS O (two ways of expressing love) in A L
24 Reduced charge securing very large article with little sparkle? (7)
PROSAIC – OS A in PRIC[e]
25 Slowly move cart backwards, attaining timber store (10)
LUMBERYARD – LUMBER (slowly move) DRAY reversed
26 Dressing medic must stock indeed (4)
MAYO – AY in MO. AIOLI and MAYO are the two Crosswordland dressings

DOWN

1 Declining to accept a lot of commotion — genuine about that (7)
REFUSAL – REAL around FUS[s]
2 Shortage of staff restricting chores when working in nursery (9)
PRESCHOOL – CHORES* in POL[e]
4 Rascal in time will make mistakes (6)
ERRATA – RAT in ERA
5 Country memorial housing a tavern (8)
REPUBLIC – PUB in RELIC
6 Get ready to shoot a picture, opening mostly depicting crow (4-1-6-3)
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO – COCK (get ready to shoot) A (a) DOODLE (picture) DOO[r] (opening mostly)
7 Recording movement of yacht around river (5)
TRACK – R (river) in TACK (movement of yacht). TACK can mean to steer and YACHT can mean to sail, so perhaps that´s close enough. Over to the sailing types…Thanks to isla for sorting this out: the literal is not the weird ‘recording movement’, as I had it, but merely ‘recording’. No one would believe I went sailing for the first time in 40 years on Friday!
8 Forward missing header collared by supporter with a keen eye (7)
ALERTLY – [p]ERT (forward) in ALLY (supporter)
9 Dessert needing Chartreuse — lots — sloshed (9,5)
CHARLOTTE RUSSE – CHARTREUSE LOTS* (anagram indicator being ‘sloshed’)
15 Exotic lover? Over being embraced by a Martian that’s besotted (9)
INAMORATA – O in A MARTIAN*. Exotic inasmuch that it´s an Italian word, I suppose
16 Give less attention to Northern Irish drama? (8)
DOWNPLAY – DOWN PLAY. Keinty Dign is in Nrn Irn…
17 Operations in stern or other part of vessel (7)
TOPSAIL – OPS in TAIL
19 Actually, excellent performer has run off (2,5)
DE FACTO – DEF (excellent in Estuary English) ACTO[r]
20 Goes off climbing, keeping to a higher level in sort of fog? (6)
STUPOR – UP (to a higher level) in ROTS reversed
22 Monotonous sound of personnel in corporation (5)
THRUM – HR in TUM (CORPORATION is Crosswordese for stomach)

69 comments on “Times 28189 – Winds moderate, doing their thing from the north”

  1. No time – did it in bits.
    Quite tough, in a kind of ‘where do i get a hold on this smooth rockface?’ way. Got through it in the end.
  2. A crossword for those of us who’ve done these before. CHARLOTTE RUSSE appeared not so long ago and INAMORATA appears in almost every crossword these days. As above, I struggled at the end with ALERTLY and MINORITY, and it wasn’t till I had submitted that I worked them out.
    A nice challenge for a Monday.
  3. Rubbish start but steady solve once I’d got going — finishing ahead of my Snitch (103) target.

    Failed to parse FRESHER — didn’t think of REFRESHER as a subsequent payment, but fortunately my second son is a FRESHER this year, so it was in mind.

    PRESCHOOL and the unparsed TELETHON were last two in.

    Liked COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO.

  4. 46:48. Like our esteemed blogger, I felt I was struggling with a puzzle that would turn out to have been really easy for everyone else. So I’m relieved to find out it was really a bit hard. COD TERRACOTTA and WOD minty
    1. Was 105, currently 98.

      It always falls during the day, as latecomers seems to have, um, an advantage on early birds.

      1. The snitch only uses the top 100, meaning the slower times — which are more likely to have a higher nitch — are not accounted for, resulting in a lower snitch
  5. Left FRESHER with all its crossers in to finish—with a shrug—just after waking. Thanks for the elucidation. Also had still to complete TERRACOTTA and ALERTLY. I really should do these earlier in the evening.
  6. Some fairly hard ones here to my eye! Not helped by me putting DRONE for 22D as FOI, thinking it is a fair DD
  7. Took a while to get going, but everything answered to a bit of crossword logic ruthlessly applied. By the way, does anyone have a mnemonic for remembering the difference between bow and stern? I just can’t fix in my brain which is front and which is back!
        1. My pleasure. When I was doing my wine studies I could never remember the Burgundy wine villages in the Côtés de Nuits so I came up with (heading south from Fixin) four good men carrying Vougeot vines Northwards. Got me through at least one exam!
  8. Ended up using aids for my last two in — Terracotta, Alertly. I should have persevered but ran out of steam.

  9. A real struggle for me. I wonder why some puzzles with higher snitches seem easier than this. Is it a similarity of setter and solver’s mind set? Or is it just good days and bad days?
    Time taken, all day. Got there in the end *phew*.

    1. I’ve always thought that well constructed and properly difficult puzzles have tighter cluing — no terracotta = copper, for example. As a weaker solver, if I know I can trust the cluing I find the solving goes more smoothly
  10. A stray ‘a’ in 5d. And terracotta the colour is most certainly NOT the colour copper.
  11. DNF. I left a huge chunk of the NE undone on this one. Just couldn’t get to grips with it.
  12. 38 minutes and I didn’t really find it that hard, though like almost everyone else I got off to a very slow start. Originally I thought 9dn would turn out to be CHOCOLATE MOUSSE, but of course that wouldn’t have the right letter count. A decent and enjoyable puzzle, revealing its secrets slowly but steadily.

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