Times Crossword 25,182 – Look What The Cat Brought In

Solving Time: Well, it took me 35 minutes in all, but in fairness at least ten minutes should be deducted for the time I had to spend in rescuing a mouse that one of my cats brought in, normally the wife’s department.

As soon as I saw 1ac I knew I was going to like this crossword, and so it proved. I thought it fair, about the right level of difficulty and inventive, with lots of really slick surfaces. I was also struck by the unusually large number of references to people, in both the answers and the clues.

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–).
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1 Fibonacci – FIB + ON ACCI(DENT), a talented and influential mathematician, he of the Fibonacci numbers
6 Sahel – *(HEALS). Not a region I had heard of, I’m ashamed to say, especially given it covers more than a million square miles; so, a toss-up between sahel and sehal, but my guess proved right
9 tallies – introduction to titled = T + ALLIES = colleagues
10 newsman – NEW(S)MAN, a reference to John Henry Newman, author of the Dream of Gerontius, and of the (dreary) hymn “Lead Kindly Light.”
11 phase – = “FAY’S,” a homophonic reference to Fay Wray, she of the friendship with King Kong
12 in transit – INTRANSI(GEN)T
13 friction – FRACTION, with the A changed to an I
14 ACAS – (FR)ACAS
17 rive – RIVE(R). An unusual word these days, slightly more common in the past tense, as in riven apart.
18 tactless – T + ACT LESS
21 Annie Hall – concert venue = A HALL containing NNIE – nine “with the one deferred” – I confess I have only now worked that out!
22 clang – C + LANG, Fritz Lang being one of my favourite film directors. His Dr Mabuse films are wonderfully obscure.
24 high-hat – pedal operated cymbals, an essential part of every rock drummer’s kit. The snobbish meaning was not known to me.. I notice Chambers doesn’t say it is of US origin
25 Italian – I TALI(B)AN
26 Ah, one to leave out at last.. but it is in there somewhere
27 engrossed – ENG + ROSS + E(NGLAN)D. To start with I thought “explorer” was the definition, but no, it is a reference to James Clark Ross, an able Antarctic explorer. Not everyone has a seal, a seabird, an ice shelf, a crater on the moon, a strait and a sea named after them…
Down
1 fit up – deposit = PUT + IF = provided, all rev. Those years spent watching “The Sweeny” not wasted after all..
2 balsamic vinegar – *(MAGIC BEANS RIVAL) – and not an anagram of “beans rival fluid” as I stupidly first thought
3 noisette – anagram of (J)ETTISONE(D). Those weird Belgian jobbies that get brought out at Christmas
4 cast iron – learn = CON containing ASTIR, ie moving. Slick clueing!
5 ignite – (L)IGNITE. Lignite is a poor form of coal, with peat-like characteristics
6 so what – couples = TWOS, containing H(O)A(X), all rev.
7 home secretaries – in = HOME + closet = SECRET + stars = ARIES
8 linctuses – liberal = L + IN CT + applies = USES
13 forgather – criminal = FORGER containing AT (CHURC)H. I would spell it foregather myself, if I used it, which is unlikely
15 I think this can be left out too..
16 staccato – *(TOCCATAS). I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this anagram more than once before
19 nether – name = N + number = ETHER. Neat clue.
20 wattle – A simple dd., if you knew (as I did not) what Australia’s national flower is. Would you believe they have a National Wattle Day each year? No, really they do!
23 gonad – GOAD containing N = note.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

37 comments on “Times Crossword 25,182 – Look What The Cat Brought In”

  1. 22.00 .. much more my speed today. Very much enjoyed, apart from having to guess where to put the vowels in SAHEL.

    Quite a few ‘Aha!’ moments, not least when the penny dropped on FIBONACCI, one of the few mathematicians I know anything about. I have a pine cone on my desk which I picked up last year after hearing about the routine occurrence of Fibonacci number ratios in the spiralling lines of their scales. I didn’t quite believe it until I started counting… So Fibonacci was a pretty smart guy, but not as smart as a pine cone (which got there first). Heaven knows where that puts me – somewhere on a par with a mud puddle, I should think.

  2. Not such a good start for me because I never heard of 1ac and knew that immediately from having the first and last checkers in place, and 6ac was obviously an anagram I knew I didn’t know either. However most of the RH went in easily enough.

    I finished in 50 minutes without resort to aids but unfortunately I guessed the placement of vowels incorrectly at 6ac.

    Put me down as another who would write ‘foregather’. The long anagram at 2dn gave me some problems because I initially had (t)RENT at 17ac , a perfectly valid alternative I believe if one was solving the clue ‘cold’.

    Edited at 2012-06-06 01:11 am (UTC)

  3. 21:13, a comforting score after a series of botched jobs over the past several days. FIBONACCI is one of the two mathematicians I can think of (the other being Fermat), and I knew SAHEL from an earlier life when I knew lots about Africa. I did not, on the other hand, know LINCTUSES, ACAS, or HIGH-HAT, and had to go to the dictionary for LINCT___.I only noticed now, reading Jerry’s explanation, that I’d never figured out how 21ac worked.Thanks also to Monty Python: ‘This is the wattle/the symbol of our land/You can stick it in a bottle/or you can hold it in your hand.’
    1. Hmm, maybe you’ve also heard of Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus and author of “Principia Mathematica,” Kevin?
      Archimedes? Alan Turing? Euclid? Pascal? 🙂
      1. Well, you should never misunderestimate my mathematical ignorance, but note that I said ‘the two mathematicians I can think of’. I just came out of a committee meeting where there were a couple of colleagues whose names I’ve heard repeatedly, but couldn’t at the time think of. (This happens more and more often these days; can’t imagine why.)

        Edited at 2012-06-06 08:07 am (UTC)

  4. Had to guess SAHEL and ACAS. And had to have a kip to come up with FIBONACCI and NOISETTE.

    To Kevin: it ends “Australia, Australia, Australia, You ******* Beauty!”

    12ac: very appropriate as Venus is doing it now-ish? Without which, no Australia as we know it.

    My thanks to Jerry. Very fortunate for me that we swapped blogging days.

  5. I have to say, I’m having trouble concentrating on my report, as I can’t get the image of Jerry’s wife bringing mice into the house out of my mind!

    This was one of those sadly rare puzzles for me where all my guesses proved right. I can thank the desert for SAHEL. I’d heard of neither meaning of HIGH-HAT neither of WATTLE (wattle is the stuff which the huts people daubed in woad live in are made of), nor of the colour ‘cignite’, which isn’t surprising as I misread the clue – for once with impunity. I’ve learnt quite a lot about GONADS, which I was shocked to find in The Times until I read it could also mean an ovary – anything that produces gametes in fact, whatever that might be. I thought RALLYING (the omitted across) was pretty feeble. 58 minutes.

    Christopher Walken made an early appearance as a nutjob in Annie Hall.

  6. Ouch. About an hour, the last 20 minutes of which in the company of LINCTUSES/ACAS. I couldn’t get ‘linctures’ out of my mind, which held me up quite a while. As to ACAS, well, wordplay only. No knowledge of what ACAS really meant. Some went in without unravelling the wordplay, such as ANNIE HALL. COD to FIBONACCI, closely followed by the RALLYING cry trick, even though Jerry elected to omit it. It eluded me for a long time. Regards.

    Edited at 2012-06-06 04:26 am (UTC)

    1. Hi Kevin. Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. A quango designed to interfere in public sector wage disputes and ensure inflationary settlements.
      1. Jimbo, I take it you wouldn’t be too keen on the world’s superquango, the UN?
        1. Hi Ulaca. Too big a body with such a diversity of functions to have a simplistic view – a bit of a curate’s egg taken in the round I guess. Now Brussels on the other hand…..
          1. Thanks for the translation, Jimbo, but your label of it as a ‘quango’ sent me scurrying to the reference works. I see it’s listed in US dictionaries also, and not as a UK-ism, but I confess I’d never heard nor seen the word ‘quango’ before today.
    1. I agree “Praise to the Holiest” (and “The Dream”) is fabulous when assisted by the incomparable Elgar, but as a piece of poetry it’s pretty tortuous, with a fair bit of too-clever-by-half wordplay that regularly mystifies congregations!
      1. I understand what you mean, but the ‘O loving wisdom of our God’ verse always sends shivers down my spine.
  7. 14’39” on the clock, a steady solve helped by knowing most of the eclectic references. FIBONACCI was live in the mind from a recent Listener, just out of embargo, though getting the spelling right was helped by the cryptic.
    WATTLE known and most easily remembered from Python – near the end of the sketch for the relevant bit.
    The TRANSIT of Venus has been conjuring images of the delectable Uma Thurman in a van all week. Imagination can be a wonderful thing.
    I thought RALLYING was an odd sort of clue in an otherwise entertaining bunch. CoD to the neat NETHER.
  8. 65 minutes to fill all the blanks, but guessing wrong at SAHEL. I came to a complete standstill on the right having made reasonably short work of the left. I didn’t know ACAS or LANG and couldn’t believe RALLYING but I did know WATTLE (All sing: The bush was grey a week today… You can tell that clip was shot in Australia. That’s not the tune I sang it to.) Wattle Day is September 1, the first day of spring in Australia, but most would probably answer “Um…Tuesday?” if asked what day it was on the day.

    The source of the wattle in a bottle is disputed, without corroborating evidence.

    HOME SECRETARIES & ENGROSSED were good but COD to IN TRANSIT

  9. 25 minutes for a steady unspectacular solve.

    Knew FIBONACCI immediately – the fact that some folk haven’t heard of him reflects badly on education systems. Worth a little study even if you’re not particularly mathematical.

    Had to guess SAHEL but had heard of the WATTLE from old OZ colleagues. Other than RALLYING a very good puzzle. Well done Jerry – our bloggers are having to work hard at the moment.

  10. Can anyone explain why ACAS is allowed as a word when it is clearly an acronym? Shouldn’t it have been clued (1,1,1,1)? Acronyms are part and parcel of crossword fare, but I can’t remember any examples where they the complete answer (or maybe I’m suffering from SMS – selective memory syndrome). Given recent quibbles about Cote d’Azur being clued as (4,5), I’m surprised no one has mentioned this (yet). Thanks

    Andrew

    1. Probably because ACAS is used as a word in the language. Nobody gives it the full mouthfull with news bulletins talking about ACAS and everybody groaning as we await yet another cop out compromise.
  11. 10 minutes, but with SEHAL instead of SAHEL. There’s no way of being sure which makes this a poor clue in my view.
    Otherwise some very good stuff here. Nice to see FIBONACCI.
    I know the phrase HIGH HAT from Miller’s Crossing:
    You think that I’m some guinea, fresh off the boat, and you can kick me! But I’m too big for that now. I’m sick a’ takin the scrap from you, Leo. I’m sick a’ marching into this goddamn office to kiss your Irish ass. And I’M SICK A’ THE HIGH HAT!

    Edited at 2012-06-06 10:45 am (UTC)

  12. 10:48, ending with 11ac (PHASE).  Several unknowns: SAHEL (6ac), Fay Wray (11ac PHASE), ACAS (14ac), HIGH-HAT meaning snobbish (24ac), WATTLE as Australia’s emblem (20dn).  Unfamiliar: James Clark Ross (27ac ENGROSSED), lignite (5dn IGNITE), FORGATHER (13dn).

    Clue of the Day: 7dn (HOME SECRETARIES).


  13. … my last (blank) answer was one of the omitted ones! What with that, and Jimbo singling it out, I’m not sure what that says about me…

    Anyway, I found this tricky, and, other than the gap at RALLYING, I got two incorrect: misplaced vowels at 6ac, and ‘Iranian’ (?) at 25ac.

    Lots of unknown vocab here, too, so I’m glad I managed as much as I did. Many thanks for the enlightening blog, and all the comments above.

    1. My going-in advice to anyone who finds this hard is to put it to one side, and come back to it later; two or three or four times, if necessary. It is much better to do that, even if it takes a day or two or three to finish, than to just give in and use “aids,” or to come here to be given the answer. Why is time important, after all? They do all come, in the end!
      1. I followed this advice … before reading it! And it worked (just in time).

        One of the few problems with this site is that if you come late (i.e. the day after a puzzle or similar), it’s very difficult not to catch sight of the current blog before finding the one you want to look at. So I was pleased to finish at 2345 (BST) and be able to come here without running the risk of seeing George’s upcoming blog.

        Oh, and by the way, the ones causing difficulty seemed to come fairly easily for me: it was all the others which held me up!

        1. You can also tell Livejournal to send you an email whenever a new entry is added to TFTT. You can then click in this email to navigate directly to the entry.
  14. 28/30 today with Wattle and Rallying missing and a wrong guess at Plane for Phase. Hadn’t heard of Miss Wray.

    Fibonacci went straight in when I had eight blanks and a checking I.

    Sahel was in the news last week re a looming famine. Am I the only Radio 4 Today programme listener here?!

    COD to In Transit because of its topicality given Venus transited the sun last night/this morning. No chance of seeing it here in Cheshire though because of heavy cloud cover.

  15. Yikes, I made a meal of this, but did get there. My experience looks like the reverse of most people. Never heard of ACAS so that went in from wordplay, knew the Australian connection to WATTLE, but not the other. SAHEL from the same one or the other guess, and my last in was one of the omissions. Better bounce back tonight when it’s my turn to blog!
  16. 10:31 for me after another exhausting day – and tomorrow promises to be even worse!

    A most enjoyable puzzle, and right up my street (no unknowns – not even the foodie BALSAMIC VINEGAR), so I like to think I’d have posted a decent time if tiredness hadn’t got the better of me.

    I appear to have a considerably higher opinion of ACAS than dorsetjimbo does.

  17. i made the mistake of trying to do this one whilst watching the telly at the same time. After 2 hours I had the right hand side complete(with SEHAL instead of SAHEL. I agree with keriothe here) and only RARER and NETHER on the left side.
    I turned the TV off and finished the rest in about 30 minutes.I almost parsed ANNIE HALL but decided it was A N(umber)(EIN)rev HALL. Got me there though. I didn’t spot how CAST IRON worked so thanks to Jerry for the explanations.
    It wasn’t until I got IGNITE that FIBONACCI sprang to mind after discounting Pythagorus Euclid and Archimedes. This eventually led to BALSAMIC VINEGAR in which I had also been trying to use FLUID as part of the anagram. Doh. Some clever clues. I particularly liked NETHER. An enjoyable puzzle all round.

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