Times Championship 2015: Prelim Two, puzzle three.

For me, the most enjoyable but hardest of the three in this set, 25 minutes, although hopefully I have it correct; no repeat of last week’s embarrassing NIT NOT NUT nonsense. (How’s that for alliterative poetry?). It’s a fine puzzle worthy of the event, with a scientist, a Trojan, a gas, and a poetic hot place, to balance the books.

Across
1 STOICISM – iNSERT C (constant) into (MISS OTI)*; D phlegm.
5 FRUGAL – RUG (carpet) inserted into FAL (river in Cornwall, whence Falmouth); D not wanting waste.
10 INTENSIFICATION – IN TENS = decimally, I, FICTION = lie, insert A; D magnifying.
11 AFFLICT – AFT = stern, insert FLIC(K) = film with last cut; D trouble.
12 HEIRESS – Hidden reversed in BRA(SSERIE-H)OTEL; D woman who’s left something.
13 VIRGINIA – Insert IR GIN into VIA (through); D state.
15 MEDIA – Delete the CO and N from COMEDIAN, to leave media; D who’ll deliver news.
18 DWELT – LEWD (mucky) reversed, T; D frequently thought, as in ‘my mind dwelt on what he had told me’.
20 TOP BRASS – TOSS = lurch; insert PB (lead) and RA (gunners); D they might / &lit.
23 INFERNO – (NON-FIRE)*; D &lit. Easiest anagram of the year?
25 COCAINE – Insert odd bit of CHAN = C A into COINE(R) = short money-maker; D Charlie, friendly sounding name for the naughty white stuff.
26 BECAUSE IT’S THERE – (THE SAUCIEST BEER)*; D reason for mounting desire. Why do you climb a mountain? Brilliant.
27 RELIEF – Cryptic definition.
28 DETRITUS – STIR = move, insert U = secondary bit of Putney; gives you SUTIR. Then add TED for grocer HEATH; Reverse it all (westward); D refuse. From French, from Latin deterere, to wear away, the original meaning being pieces of rock etc. like a glacial moraine.

 

Down
1 SPIRAL – DD.
2 OUT OF TIME – Double definition, where in one TIME = prison sentence.
3 CANTING – CAN and TIN two metal containers, G for good, D on a slope.
4 SKIRT – TRIKS = activities of magicians, without the letter C; up to reverse; D fringe.
6 REALISM – Insert IS into REALM = kingdom; D reliance on the facts.
7 GRIME – (ED)GE half = GE, insert RIM = another edge; D dirt.
8 LINESMAN – Cryptic definition, I presume there are still some sports which have linesmen / lineswomen as opposed to referee’s assistants.
9 HIGH CAMP – DD.
14 NITROGEN – NIT = Charlie, ROGE(R) = understood, unfinished, N = note; D dominant in the air, 79% or thereabouts.
16 DISSIDENT – D (duke) ISN’T insert SIDE = faction, D IS SIDE NT; D rebel.
17 AD LIBBER – Sort of double cryptic definition, a LIBBER of ADS could be a supporter of commercial rights. LIBBER is apparently a real word, defined as “a member or advocate of a movement calling for the liberation of people or animals.”
19 TORTURE – TORE = did race, around TUR = RUT (groove) inverted; D cause extreme discomfort. Something of an understatement perhaps.
21 RICHTER – RICH = productive, TER(M) = period shortened; D scientist associated with shake-ups. As in Charles Francis Richter who in 1935 devised the logarithmic scale for measuring earth tremors and quakes. Shake-ups, indeed.
22 AENEAS – Delete L from ELENA, (EENA)*, AS = like; D Trojan. You classicists will know he was the son of Prince Anchises and the goddess Venus, and something of a hero, but I’ve never read the ILIAD or the AENEID and don’t intend to.
24 FOCAL – The homophone clue, sounds like FOLK’LL for people are going to; D relating to a centre.
25 CUTIE – CUT = piece of meat, IE = that’s; D a dish. Not PC perhaps.

36 comments on “Times Championship 2015: Prelim Two, puzzle three.”

  1. This one demonstrates clearly why my attempting to enter the competition would be pointless. It took me 5 minutes under an hour but I was pleased to get there without resort to aids and with only one unknown, CANTING meaning ‘on a slope’.
  2. Could have got in under the half-hour, but I dithered over 25ac, which I could make no sense of, finally deciding what the hell, nothing else seems to fit the checkers. Nothing else seemed that daunting at the time, although I remember wasting time thinking ‘like a Trojan’ was the def, which resulted for a while in ‘Aenean’
  3. 40 minutes, with the two Charlies the last to fall. DETRITUS a very pleasant biff. Liked the Hillary (the heroic one) clue.
  4. Very high quality puzzle that I really enjoyed with two mugs of black coffee – wouldn’t want to do it under test conditions.

    Loved RICHTER “associated with shake-ups” and the “reason for mounting desire”. Great stuff setter and well done Pip

  5. About 50mins. dnk CANTING, or the river FAL (should have thought of Falmouth), and didn’t really get the AD LIBBER clue. Also TOP BRASS was biffed. Finished (a long time after the rest) with DETRITUS and NITROGEN.

    cod to the ‘mounting desire’ def of 26ac.

  6. I found this pretty tough, finishing in 30:50. I do like a good hidden definition, so I’m with jimbo in appreciating RICHTER and BECAUSE ITS THERE.

    I hadn’t parsed DETRITUS or TOP BRASS when I finished so thanks to pip for unravelling these.

  7. 22:00 … with some clues ‘not fully understood’ in an effort to get a half-decent time. I had to go through it again at some length to appreciate the ingenuity at work here.

    As Pip says, this was very challenging but beautifully done. I just started to go through it again, circling those clues I thought especially tricky, but realised that was going to be most of them! I’m pretty sure AFFLICT, INTENSIFICATION and CANTING were my last ones in so I’ll name those as particular blighters.

    Too many good clues to pick a COD so I’ll highlight TOP BRASS as a terrific &lit., and BECAUSE IT’S THERE as a clue which must have brought a few smiles on the day in the midst of all that frowning.

    Edit: on the off-chance that someone cares, I solved the 3 puzzles of the second heat (which I was due to take part in before having to withdraw) at one sitting a few weeks ago in a time of 55:20, which is a little faster than my effort at last year’s Champs. I would have had one error, though — the notorious NUT from the second puzzle. On the plus side, that’s two errors fewer than last year! Of course, under competition conditions …. who knows?

    Edited at 2015-12-09 11:08 am (UTC)

  8. A very good crossword. COCAINE last in because I’d forgotten Charlie, and was wondering what he, or she, was doing there. 26ac for COD. Re Pip’s PC query at 25dn, I guess dishes and cuties come in any gender. The ‘piece of meat’ part of the clue might be read as a comment?
  9. Eliminated again. No idea for 28a and 22d. Just about understood the explanations. Guessed DWELT so that’s another explanation I appreciated, I missed the ‘over’ hint in the clue.
  10. 32:14, so in the eliminated camp again. I should have been closer to the target 20 minutes, but the NW corner held me up for nearly 10 minutes. It took me forever to spot 1a (my LOI) was an anagram of most of MISS OTIS and the answer wasn’t a sort of CATARRH, and I was fixated on the film in 11a being IF for too long. At least I finished without aids. Excellent puzzle I thought. COD to 26a.
  11. I had some interruptions, but still can’t claim to have met my daily target.

    Brilliant crossword, and a brilliant demonstration of why I don’t go to the championships. I mean, I’d only be there for the drinking, and by the time I finished three of these all the pubs would be closed.

    Big time-wasters were COCAINE (forgot the “charlie” thing), RELIEF (nice one Centurion, like it, like it) and TOP BRASS, where I missed the point entirely and wondered how “lurch” could clue BSS.

    Compliments to the setter and thanks for the blog Pip.

  12. I completed most of the top half in under fifteen minutes, helped by an early solve of the long 10a, but found the bottom half far tougher. I might have been a little quicker if I’d had the courage to enter TOP BRASS as soon as I had T_P, but I couldn’t see the ‘lurch’ bit. Exactly forty minutes in the end.
  13. This was a hard but fair slog, with the remaining problems sitting in the SE. Perhaps I am better at the long clues as both 10ac and 26 ac went straight in on sight without checkers.
    In my 13th year, I was set the summer holiday task of translating as much as I could of Virgil’s Aeneid 2 (the one with ‘Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes’ – I fear Greeks, even when bearing gifts) so no problem there. Even 50 years later, I can still recite the first dozen lines or so. This goes down a treat at parties.

    Edited at 2015-12-09 11:47 am (UTC)

  14. About 35 min, but really DNF as after 5 or 6 minutes thinking about 28ac, resorted to aid to find something to fir checkers & definition – then after submitting needed blog to explain parsing.
    Last solved was 22dn, where I’d been trying to see if HELENA could be made to work.
  15. I found this the easiest of the competition puzzles so far – perhaps more a comment on a more relaxed mental state this week compared to the past several, or perhaps I learned something from Vinyl, Olivia, and Kevin on the weekend. Still, a time of just over the hour won’t see me lifting any silverware in London next October. LOI cocaine, not being familiar with that Charlie. I’m with everyone else, no COD because each is better than the next.
  16. I don’t remember much about this, other than loving 26ac. I found it the second hardest puzzle, finishing it in one go before returning to finish off the second.
  17. Back on line after meeting a few of you at the weekend, and back to a real cracker. Excellent puzzle taking me at least an hour, with a number of interruptions. Thanks setter and blogger – I biffed AENEAS.
  18. Trickiest for me of all the prelim puzzles, some very crafty definitions. All parsed in the end, so very nice job, setter.
  19. This took me 46 minutes, but I got there in the end so it was clearly an excellent and fair puzzle, as opposed to the unfair and underhanded ones that I don’t finish.

    Too many good clues to pick a COD. INTENSIFICATION took ages to spot, and for some reason I discarded DISSIDENT for a long time because it wouldn’t fit. However, this turned out to be due to my having misconstrued the numbers of Ss and Ds, and all was well in the end.

  20. I think this is a puzzle suitable for a championship, exceptional all around, and took me somewhere around 45 minutes. Deviousness from the setter made anything quicker impossible for me, and should make clear to me at least that the competitors that day were truly excellent at this if they got through it in any reasonable time, and that I’m not in that league. NITROGEN was the one that struck me as the most outstanding among many brilliant clues. Thanks to the setter, hat’s off to Pip for parsing all this, and regards to all.
  21. I’m not in your league, folks, though I solve the crossword most days. But please help me: what does “biff” mean in your world?
    1. Some time ago one of the regular contributors coined the word from “bunged in from definition” which became BIFD which became biffed. It has caught on.

      Bob

  22. What a frustrating but also satisfying puzzle! I thought I was doing well, on track to finish around 45 minutes, and then things came to a halt, especially in the NW corner. I spent another half an hour biffing and grinding away. At 1 h 16 m, I finally gave up on the HIGH of HIGH CAMP, lobbing a guess with PITH CAMP. (Ugh.)

    Thanks to pipkirby for help parsing MEDIA and NITROGEN. I’ve also learned some new definitions of ‘charlie’ and who Heath was. (Is that the Heath from the Beatles’ song ‘Taxman’?)

    I think I worked too hard on this puzzle, but it was awfully satisfying to finally crack clues like DWELT, AENEAS, and INTENS.

    Here’s to a better tomorrow…

    1. Yes Mr Heath was mentioned but it was the high taxes introduced by Harold Wilson which were the main nub. See Wiki article.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxman
      Having read that I didn’t realise the complexity of the chord structure and musical analysis I was at the time trying to master!
  23. Very nice puzzle, though I took nearly an hour and had one mistake (LINKSMAN rather than LINESMAN). That’s what I get for never watching sports — I assumed a LINKSMAN might be someone who waves a flag at a hole on a golf course (hence the links), and of course a linksman would stay in touch. (I was going to ask why a linesman stays in touch, but now I see).

    Many nice clues, but I particularly liked INTENSIFICATION and of course the reason for mounting desire.

    Thanks for explaining “biffed”. I’ve been wondering about that too, but somehow I never dared to ask.

  24. 30 mins, but it was a very similar solve to yesterday’s inasmuch as I was tired when I started it, I nodded off in the middle of it, and then I got to grips with the rest of it fairly quickly after I became more alert. This was definitely a puzzle which didn’t lend itself to a lot of biffing and I enjoyed the challenge. The AD LIBBER raised a smile, and I finished back in the NW with SPIRAL after AFFLICT.
  25. Can’t give a time as I was wrapped up in the Arsenal/Olympiakos match on the radio while I tackled this one. For no particular reason, ‘Nitrogen’ eluded me until the match had finished, whereupon I returned to the puzzle and the answer leapt up at me. Wonderful what giving the brain a chance to cool down can do.
  26. Oh dear! This was very much my sort of puzzle, and there was a time when I’d have made short work of it. But what with a ghastly senior moment over RICHTER (I wasted far too long desperately hoping that his name would come to mind, before abandoning him until I had some checked letters in place) and a number of other similar hang-ups, I struggled to a disappointing 11:09, leaving me feeling old and slow. (Again. Sigh!)

    Despite all that, I thought this was a most interesting and enjoyable crossword.

  27. I found this the easiest of the three Heat 2 puzzles but after 15 minutes (which took my accumulated time for all 3 past one hour) I still had a gap where nitrogen should have been so it’s just as well I was in Heat 1.

Comments are closed.