Times 28225 – Hateable speech

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
What a few days it has been! While things unravel in Eastern Europe, the New York Times attends to really serious matters by imposing sanctions on the popular word game WORDLE, which it recently bought off the creator, Mr Wardle (naturally). Words that are rejected by the guardians of our morality include SLAVE, BITCH, and CHINK. For some reason best known to those who might be said to combine ignorance and arrogance in equal measure, F*CKS and C*NTS are given a pass. Is there possibly a hidden message here? Could they be describing themselves subliminally?

On with the puzzle…

ACROSS

1 Conservative member not happy making U-turn (9)
CLIMBDOWN – C LIMB DOWN
6 Pilgrim‘s greeting, welcoming a couple of judges (5)
HAJJI – A JJ in HI; ‘a Muslim who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca’
9 One trembles, sent without cover after killer (5)
ASPEN -ASP [s]EN[t]; a shimmery tree
10 Edgar gutted by cryptic containing nothing designed to be easy (9)
ERGONOMIC – E[dga]R O in GNOMIC (cryptic)
11 Lack of feeling shown by Richardson? (4-11)
HARD-HEARTEDNESS – HARD are the medial letters of [ric]HARD[son]
13 Crack about taking in queen’s minder (8)
CHAPERON – ER (queen) in CHAP (crack as in lips needing balm) ON (about); alternative to chaperone
14 Woman I see hiding gun (6)
AGATHA – GAT in AHA
16 Half of news two journalists wanted (6)
NEEDED – NE[ws] ED ED
18 Compose music for the monastery, showing taste (8)
PENCHANT – PEN (compose) CHANT (music for the monastery)
21 To a militarist, an awful approach to government (15)
TOTALITARIANISM – anagram* of TO A MILITARIST AN; sadly, such an approach is a feature of two major powers in Asia; my family and I suffer under one of them. Ten of my daughter’s eleven closest friends (nine in their 20s, one in his early 30s – all ethnic Chinese born in Hong Kong) will have left their home, Hong Kong, by the spring. It’s a similar story for my tennis, Scrabble and quizzing buddies (Occidental and Oriental). Fortunately, the women and children among them do not need to leave their menfolk behind to fight invaders.
23 Degenerate bum stealing pounds (9)
BACKSLIDE – L in BACKSIDE
25 Fellow feeling California escapes disaster (5)
AMITY – [cal]AMITY
26 Clare’s town losing time in activity in court (5)
ENNIS – [t]ENNIS
27 Something corny cut by Irish writer, one from Dublin or Antrim? (9)
EASTERNER – STERNE (Laurence – author of the wonderful Tristram Shandy) in EAR

DOWN

1 Train, or alternative to it? (5)
COACH – double definition
2 Passing one chap pinning hairstyle with fancy net (11)
IMPERMANENT – PERM in I MAN NET*
3 Source of distress overwhelming woman’s spirit (7)
BANSHEE – SHE in BANE; a product of Irish superstition which was adopted by Siouxsie
4 Artwork flipping rubbish, which may be a minus (8)
OPERATOR – OPERA (artwork – well, a work of art, anyway) ROT reversed; a mathematical operator (any symbol, term, letter, etc, used to indicate or express a specific operation or process) may be negative – or so I am told
5 Deny wife gets released from prison once (6)
NEGATE – NE[w]GATE; a prison in London which closed 120 years ago – much featured in Dickens
6 Guilty-seeming way to fall foul of the RSPCA? (7)
HANGDOG – if you hang a dog (or indeed kick and slap a cat), you are likely to incur the wrath of this august body
7 Preserve agreement to put in German marks (3)
JAM – JA (agreement put in German) M (marks)
8 Cat’s nine lives ultimately running non-stop (9)
INCESSANT – CATS NINE [live]S*
12 Actor with speech not having caught handover (11)
EXTRADITION – EXTRA (actor) DI[c]TION
13 Where criminals eat is top drawer? (9)
CONSTABLE – a CONS TABLE may have been a feature of Newgate
15 Bold female lugs around large, empty ewers (8)
FEARLESS – L E[wer]S in F (female) EARS
17 Recruits being regularly on the field of combat once (7)
ENLISTS – [b]E[i]N[g] LISTS (field of combat in jousting days – thus ‘enter the lists’ against)
19 After drink, read novel that’s flimsy fiction? (7)
CHARADE – CHA READ*; ‘a pretense or fiction that can be seen through readily’ (Collins)
20 Band‘s tour plugging covers of single (6)
STRIPE – TRIP (tour) in S[ingl]E
22 Public official dressing king (5)
MAYOR – MAYO R
24 Where Americans go around noon (3)
CAN – CA (around) N (noon); American for ‘loo’

53 comments on “Times 28225 – Hateable speech”

  1. Happy Monday.

    Relaxed start to the week — didn’t have to think too hard except for the BANSHEE/CHAPERON crossing where I’d pencilled in HER at the end of the former before the scales fell from my eyes.

  2. One hour. FOI needed, LOL. LO’sI can and backslide. I had cold-heartedness, which coach and impermanent corrected for me. ?g????a looked like iguana, which had a gun in it, but I couldn’t see the woman’s name except Anna missing an n, and why the i? So I left it, and saw Aha! then the Gat. Much to enjoy here, many nuances in the parsing explained in the blog. (Clue for 4d should be artworks, surely, as “opera” is plural).
    Thanks, U, and setter.

    Edited at 2022-02-28 02:34 pm (UTC)

    1. It’s not plural when it refers to a sung drama, which I think is the meaning here – you go to see and hear an opera, which is (arguably, in some opinions), an artwork.

      Edited at 2022-02-28 05:55 pm (UTC)

  3. About 2 hours of application across 4 visits over about 6 hours of the day. Was about to concede defeat twice but found enough progress on each revisit….apart from ENLISTS where I was looking at every variation in the clue to come up with some old or legendary battlefield.

    Really liked BACKSLIDE, EASTERNER and CAN.

    Thanks setter and Ulaca.

  4. ….only limited enjoyment, with a typo sting in its tail because I didn’t check before submitting, having lost interest by then. 10:44 with the typo, nothing else worthy of comment.
  5. After a number of years of solving Times Crosswords, or attempting to do so, with gradually increasing success, I am finally moved to register on TftT, though not from any sense of my own worthiness; rather,the comments of last week about possibly disappearing from the Live Journal site into the ether where Anon could not follow have prompted a hasty decision to attach myself officially. I have posted the odd comment in the past, though always adding my name (Gill D). I couldn’t hope to emulate the quick times posted by many of this august company, but I have to say that if I could do the puzzles in 10 minutes I’d have to find a new hobby for my mornings. I also print out and solve on paper by preference, so have no registered times anyway. I have learnt so much about solving and much else from this blog, so thank you all!
    A good Monday offering, no problems with parsing or vocabulary, apart from NHO Hajji, but it had to be. Thanks to setter and Ulaca.
  6. 13.45. An enjoyable quick solve. Nothing to hold me up. I wondered about the one trembles definition for aspen but the word play seemed clear.

    This week’s Listener puzzle (4700 Hear, Hear! by Vagans) is at the easier end of The Listener spectrum. It would be a good one to start with for any solvers who haven’t done a Listener puzzle before but would like to try one.

    If the solution to tomorrow’s Wordle is either f*cks or c*nts I shall eat my h*t!

    1. From Wikipedia: ‘In North America, the aspen is referred to as quaking aspen or trembling aspen because the leaves “quake” or tremble in the wind.’

      Tennyson also uses the verb ‘quiver’ to describe them in The Lady of Shallot

  7. Felt I should have been quicker because it wasn’t hard. But I’ve been off crosswords for a week, so maybe that explains it. Second time we’ve had Ennis recently, methinks though perhaps last time it was part of the answer not all of it. I remember going there as a child, and have an image in my head of racing water in a weir. The French for lists in this sense is lice. To be en lice means to be in the running for something, like the presidency.
  8. For some reason I spent 3 minutes puzzling about EASTERNER at the end — just couldn’t unravel the w/p but I couldn’t see what else the answer might be. No one else seemed to have the same problem so it was probably just last clue brain-scramble

    Pleasant enough otherwise and liked the Richardson clue

    Thanks all

Comments are closed.