Times 28213 – All You Need is Love

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A gentle introduction to the week, which I completed in 19 minutes. Today, in memory of the good old days when you had to rely on your memory and wouldn’t by challenged by someone Googling on their iPhone, I will do the blog without recourse to electronic aids. Radical, I know, but desperate times (the lunacy of ‘patriotism’ being made a criterion of fitness to stand for public election, for example) call for desperate measures…

ACROSS

1 Spot right idiot in wrinkly fabric (10)
SEERSUCKER – SEE R SUCKER
6 Old people’s home had no room, finally (4)
EDOM – final letters of [hom]E [ha]D [n]O [roo]M; the Edomites pop up in the Bible along with their neighbours the Moabites (they of washpot fame)
9 One with a suit: a male with more awful clothing (7)
ADMIRER – A M (male) in DIRER (more awful)
10 Overly serious, following whizz in school (2-5)
PO-FACED – F (following) ACE (whizz = brilliant) in POD (school of whales etc)
12 Don still sleeping around (3,2)
PUT ON – NOT UP reversed
13 Clashes with crook getting 100 in darts (9)
CONFLICTS – CON (crook) C (hundred) in FLITS (darts)
14 Wind, say, from a green beer, newly brewed (9,6)
RENEWABLE ENERGY – anagram* of A GREEN BEER NEWLY
17 How one may get remit, perhaps, to regress (3,4,3,5)
PUT BACK THE CLOCK – if you reverse (‘put back’) ‘timer’ (‘the clock)’, you get ‘remit’
20 Lie heavily on stone, at first? This is breaking now (4,5)
STOP PRESS – OPPRESS (lie heavily) on ST (stone)
21 European footballer’s caught plague (5)
BESET – E (European) in [George] BEST
23 Stink about to permeate shoe (7)
SCANDAL – C (about) in SANDAL
24 New leader leaves artillery where order is put up (7)
NUNNERY – N (new) [g]UNNERY
25 I won’t keep mum’s provisions (4)
NOSH – if you will insist on talking, then you may be said to say NO to SH!
26 Defence playing worst during time off (10)
BREASTWORK – WORST* in BREAK; the sort of tiny barricade thingummy behind which cannon-fodder have been slaughtered down the ages, especially in the Great War

DOWN

1 One who’s quick to obtain drink, holding head (7,2)
SNAPPER UP – NAPPER (must be a slang term for head) in SUP (drink)
2 First person set up police force, getting local six-footer (5)
EMMET – ME reversed MET (Metropolitan Police); I think an EMMET is a dialect word for an ant, as well as being a word used by Cornish people to describe tourists
3 Doctor loudly rebuked how supermarket food may be (6-7)
SHRINK-WRAPPED – SHRINK (doctor) sounds like RAPPED (rebuked)
4 Horse with hardened skin on part of ear (7)
CORNCOB – CORN (hardened skin) on COB (horse)
5 Bill could be one in river astride swans (7)
EXPENSE – PENS (female swans) in EXE (river in Devon)
7 Goods to transport? Pack vehicle and then drive (4,5)
DECK CARGO – DECK (pack – of cards) CAR (vehicle) GO (drive)
8 ’60s youths adopting upper-class manner (5)
MODUS – U (upper-class) in MODS (more 50s than 60s, I’d have thought) for MODUS as in modus operandi
11 Where records go in affair involving current ministers (6,7)
FILING CABINET – I (electrical current) in FLING (affair) CABINET (ministers)
15 Distressed annalist penning nothing in papers (9)
NATIONALS – O (nothing) in ANNALIST*
16 Rabbit gently, at intervals, parting pair of bovines (6-3)
YAKETY-YAK – [g]E[n]T[l]Y in YAK YAK
18 Maybe one proposing name aboard boat? I don’t know (7)
KNEELER – N (name) in KEEL (boat – an example of metonymy) ER (I don’t know)
19 Remark praising short stockings on Tolstoy heroine (7)
HOSANNA – HOS[e] ANNA [Karenina] – a book I found quite a comedown after War and Peace
20 Partners hugging country girl who’s sometimes lazy (5)
SUSAN – USA (country) in SN (bridge partners); a Lazy Suzan is a turntable for serving food
22 Deal with English, entering fight without heart (3,2)
SEE TO – E (English) in SE[t] TO (a set-to is an argument or fight)

57 comments on “Times 28213 – All You Need is Love”

  1. 22mins. Alternately whizzing through and plodding. V good clues hidden among the write-ins. Like Pootle73, got hung up on ARMORER — my LOI — but obviously couldn’t make it work.
  2. ….the children of EDOM” (Psalm 137). I forgot all about them until they became my SLOI. A little trickier than a normal Monday IMHO.

    FOI ADMIRER
    LOI DECK CARGO (I had the cargo early)
    COD PUT BACK THE CLOCK (indirect anagram!)
    TIME 10:28

  3. A sudden inspiration saw SEERSUCKER entered just as I was about to move on to the next clue. EXPENSE and PO-FACED led to MODUS which encouraged me to consider the EDOMites. Not much later SNAPPER UP finished off the puzzle. 18:46. Thanks setter and U.
  5. I had to work at this, so it certainly wasn’t easy for me.
    EDOM wa so unfamiliar that I didn’t enter it until the D was confirmed, otherwise it would have been my FOI. Is this the religious setter? LOI NOSH.
    37 minutes.
  6. Found this surprisingly tough given the SNITCH. Having bunged in six answers right off the bat, it was a slow trudge thenceafter.

    Particularly gripy about finishing with four rubbish words: SNAPPER UP, EMMET, SEERSUCKER and EDOM (impossible if you’ve never heard of it).

    While I’m in this mood, PUT BACK THE CLOCK isn’t what most people would say, in my humble opinion — TURN BACK THE CLOCK would seem more likely.

  7. Disagree that EDOM was impossible. I’d certainly never heard of it, but following the fairly generous cryptic seemed like a reasonable course of action.

  8. Yes, I had one left and all I could see was ARMORER so I bunged it in without pausing, or indeed parsing, for thought.
  9. Must be because it’s late, but I found that much harder than the 85 snitch. After 7 or 8 minutes all I had was Susan, but then I got into the rhythm only to be stymied again at the end by the edom-deck cargo crosser. Reminded of the Coasters’ song of yakety-yak and the Rolling Stones’ assistant west coast promotion man, who wore a sssseersucker suit. And Napper Tandy, Irish patriot.
  10. Really struggled at the end in the NW. No idea that SEERSUCKER was crinkly; SNAPPER UP was a “Really, but what else?” Whilst I made the rookie error of failing to separate the a and the m in admirer. Was seriously putting in DAMIRER. Yes, really 😂😬🤔😫👏

    Thanks Ulaca and setter

  11. 18.29. I found it required a bit more effort than normal to put this Monday puzzle away.

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