Time: 23:39
Music: Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers
This was pretty much an ordinary Monday puzzle, with a few clever constructions that are starting to creep in, along with one or two rather loose constructions. Skilled solvers should not have much difficulty. I did get into trouble by putting backhoe instead of bicycle, but I realized quickly that the long across clue had to start with first-class. I was also afraid I couldn’t get what turned out to be mess, as the crossing letters were very unhelpful, but I left it for later, and when I came back it was obvious.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | House instruction to make Cabot king (4-2-4) |
| BACK-TO-BACK – If you back TO BACK, you get K CABOT! I had not heard of this type of house, but the cryptic gives it to you. | |
| 6 | Type of glass from old China (4) |
| OPAL – O + PAL. A decorative type of glass first developed in the 19th century. | |
| 10 | Relative in one financial city area in northeast (5) |
| NIECE – N(I, E.C.)E, a compendium of cryptic cliches. | |
| 11 | Competition certain to involve zero sang-froid (9) |
| COMPOSURE – COMP (O) SURE. | |
| 12 | Mail used by top-rated fencer? (5-5,4) |
| FIRST-CLASS POST – FIRST-CLASS + POST, to be used by the kind of fencer who builds fences. | |
| 14 | Person no longer working on Scottish island (7) |
| RETIREE – RE + TIREE – unless, of course, you volunteer to run the crossword blog. | |
| 15 | Put pressure on Doctor Milligan? (7) |
| DRAGOON – DR + A GOON, which is what Spike Milligan was. | |
| 17 | Terribly shy in pictures which will include mechanics (7) |
| PHYSICS – P(anagram of SHY)ICS. Either Newtonian or quantum will do. | |
| 19 | Pet bird for example (7) |
| PATTERN – PAT + TERN. | |
| 20 | Small pub, possibly one worlds away from here (6,5,3) |
| LITTLE GREEN MAN – LITTLE + GREEN MAN, a likely enough name for a pub. | |
| 23 | Popular assembly holding society unfeeling (9) |
| INSENSATE – IN + SEN(S)ATE. | |
| 24 | Some cats showed excessive curiosity, it’s said (5) |
| PRIDE – Sounds like PRIED. | |
| 25 | Style and verve of some Romance languages (4) |
| ELAN – Hidden in [Romanc]E LAN[guages]. | |
| 26 | Court activity let a sinner off (4,6) |
| REAL TENNIS – Anagram of LET A SINNER. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Group not allowed on the radio (4) |
| BAND – Sounds like BANNED. | |
| 2 | Moan about hard times unravelling special relationship? (9) |
| CHEMISTRY – C(anagram of H TIMES)RY. | |
| 3 | Book something else on Crete? (8,6) |
| TREASURE ISLAND – TREASURE + CRETE, invoking the slang meanings of something else and treasure. | |
| 4 | Reported what harvester may have needed to do for vehicle (7) |
| BICYCLE – Sounds like BUY SICKLE. Backhoe nearly works, but doesn’t fit the crossers. | |
| 5 | Order of butterfly with tails of green and red (7) |
| COMMAND – COMMA + [gree]N, [re]D. The setter’s favorite butterfly. | |
| 7 | Hades! Plus two but losing both points (5) |
| PLUTO – PLU[s] T[w]O. | |
| 8 | Rank place getting on top of renter (10) |
| LIEUTENANT – LIEU + TENANT. This should be a chestnut, but is not. | |
| 9 | Work in line running underneath Eternal City (14) |
| CONSTANTINOPLE – CONSTANT + IN(OP)LE, i.e. an anagram of line. The setter is trying to trick you into using Rome or Roma at the top. | |
| 13 | Pushing previous LP spun (10) |
| PROPULSIVE – Anagram of PREVIOUS LP. According to my listening spreadsheet, it was Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. | |
| 16 | Medical procedure involved atropine and oxygen (9) |
| OPERATION – Anagram of ATROPINE + O. | |
| 18 | Perhaps hoarding autograph over a number of years (7) |
| SIGNAGE – SIGN + AGE – the trick here is the literal. | |
| 19 | Obtain early buyer of gift with lines for books (7) |
| PRESELL – PRESE(-nt,+LL), a clever letter replacement clue with an extended definition. | |
| 21 | A lot of rubbish about opera (5) |
| TOSCA – TOS[h] + CA. | |
| 22 | Awkward situation — he is out of nets (4) |
| MESS – MES[he]S. | |
19’30” but looking at others’ times I know that’s not good. Still don’t quite follow the TREASURE = SOMETHING ELSE link. I get that SOMETHING ELSE means excellent (viz. Eddie Cochran’s She’s somethin’ else). But who’d ever swap it with TREASURE? She’s a treasure? Not the same league or register or dimension of excellence. -OON words connected to Milligan invite the answer PUCKOON but luckily it didn’t match. Only last Saturday I was at the REAL TENNIS court in Fontainebleau — where a group of young boys were getting coaching. Many thanks.
39 minutes, but still very easy except for what held me up for the last ten or so: PRIDE (fortunately I did eventually see the alternative to PRIZE, which of course didn’t really fit the verb tense in the wordplay) and TOSCA, which made no sense at all until I saw what kind of rubbish was partially involved. PRIDE is actually quite good, but there were many other clues I didn’t really like.
18:40. Have read through hoping that someone would explain why “treasure” = “something else”, but everyone who’s commented seems to be as baffled as I am. Would someone kindly put me out of my misery?
COD LITTLE GREEN MAN, cracking clue.
Thanks vinyl.
Not much trouble with this one, although there were two I couldn’t parse (I don’t try very hard if I’m happy that the answer is correct).
These were TOSCA, which I now understand (thanks to blogger), and TREASURE ISLAND, which I still don’t understand; Crete = ISLAND, obviously, but how does ‘something else’ = TREASURE? What “slang” expression are we talking about here? My imagination fails me and I remain baffled.
22 mins. Maybe should have been a bit quicker but at least all finished.
I knew back to back, having enjoyed the National Trust tour in Birmingham.
The reference to Spike raised a smile, as did remembering the hunt for his modest grave. I biffed presell, thanks for the explanation.
Nice puzzle. Only the 3rd or 4th time I’ve completed the cryptic without aids (aka cheating), so I’ll take that as a late Xmas present.
Thanks setter and vinyl
My first attempt at doing the Times crossword on my phone app whilst waiting for my partner who was in an optometrist appointment – was able to complete it in 39m 4s which is about average time for a Monday puzzle.
Didn’t know of the BACK-TO-BACK houses, but did like the clue a lot when I worked out how the word-play went. Had FIRST GRADE POST initially until BICYCLE fixed it in the end. Didn’t pick up on the homophone ‘buy sickle’ – clever when it was explained – had gone down the bi-cycle path where a farmer would use the land differently between crops.
Finished with INSENSATE (not a word that I was familiar with) and DRAGOON (after twigging to the GOON connection).