Times Crossword 25,284 by Jupiter

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: a shade under 29 minutes. I found this a little harder than average, with a number of quite tricky clues. Overall I thought the quality of the clues a bit uneven, but some were very good indeed. Good stuff!

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–).

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1 kebab – BABE + K all rev.
4 perimeter – lord = PEER containing R + I + satisfied = MET
9 nonentity – “noon and the next hour” = N + ONE + *(TINY) containing time = T
10 nasal – spacemen = NASA + (HOPEFU)L
11 joiner – dd
12 all fours – another dd, the second being today’s cricket reference, as will be clear to anyone who has been watching the world 20/20 championships
14 halfway house – a weak cd.
17 Great Red Spot – *(PREDATOR GETS). This is a rather fine clue, which makes up for the previous one. The Great Red Spot is an anticyclonic storm on Jupiter, two or three times the size of earth
20 abashing – a sack = A BAG containing bone = SHIN. Not a word easy to slip into casual conversation
21 usurer – RU rev., containing definitely = SURE. Shark being as in loan shark..
23 corfu – my = COR + FU(N)
24 serviette – dog almost = SETTE(R) containing (EA)R + VIE = rival. Liked the definition!
25 pretended – paper extremely = P(APE)R, + long = E(X)TENDED
26 yearn – Y(E)ARN
Down
1 King John – (chess) piece = KING + JOHN, the christian name of the two composers mentioned. King John being one of Shakespeare’s least known plays, though the Victorians couldn’t get enough of it, it seems.
2 bone idle – *(LIE ON BED)
3 bonded warehouse – OK, let’s see: joined = BONDED + battle = WAR, + sorry = EH and to no avail = O USE. There is a very fine, large bonded warehouse underneath London Bridge Station that I have collected wine from on several occasions. Having paid the duty, of course…
4 pain – fastener = PIN containing A. Easy , once I’d got over my “zip” fixation
5 Royal Court – two boys are ROY and AL, and riskily invite is COURT, as in to court danger. The Royal Court is a London theatre (there is one in Liverpool too) which is described as “non-commercial,” which so far as I can tell means that you and I are paying for it
6 manifest destiny – passenger list = MANIFEST, of French = DES + very modest = TINY. The term itself is a 19th century American political idea
7 toss-up – TO, + PUSS rev. I am firmly against cat-swinging in any form
8 relish – RELI(C) + SH
13 tyrannised – *(DESTINY) containing managed = RAN. Another cleverly constructed clue
15 operetta – *(APE + OTTER)
16 sturgeon – cutter = SURGEON containing (NE)T
18 madcap – plan = MAP containing ADC, an aide-de-camp or military advisor, a sort of army PA
19 Barrie – BARRIE(R). Referring of course to Sir James Barrie, Bt, author of Peter Pan
22 bred – short race = DERB(Y), rev.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

33 comments on “Times Crossword 25,284 by Jupiter”

  1. And then at least that time again to work out the parsings of many clues after getting them from the defs: so very glad it wasn’t my Wednesday. Had no idea, for example, about Ireland or Stainer. And just the opposite for MANIFEST DESTINY where the wordplay was obvious but the answer unknown. The CD at 14ac, agreed, is weak — but then they tend to be. Though there is (or was) a pub called The Halfway House on Woodchurch Road, Birkenhead. Always wondered where it was half way from or to.

    Wasn’t GREAT RED SPOT a dog?

    Edited at 2012-10-03 12:53 am (UTC)

  2. Once again I made swift progress and then came to grief with problems in the NE corner and by not knowing GREAT RED SPOT. Not helped by having WALLOW for a while at 8dn: WALL (of silence) followed by (sacred)cOW.

    Didn’t know MANIFEST DESTINY either but managed to work it out.

    Loved 21ac.

    Edited at 2012-10-04 11:24 am (UTC)

  3. Held up by putting in KING LEAR for a (4,4) clue that started “play..” with the first letter K. Forgot about John.

    At 12 across I was thinking music. And four-four time isn’t always fast. So not a great clue…then I realize it is boundaries in cricket!

    Edited at 2012-10-03 02:19 am (UTC)

  4. An inexplicable brain-f*rt saw me ‘home’ in 76 minutes but with ‘manifold destiny’ causing me to change the weak CD to ‘halfway jolly’.

    How is it that I could say ‘Ah, menu = manifest!’ and think of Karl Popper’s excellent writing on ‘manifest truth’ in his later works such as The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, and still stick in ‘manifold’?

    Perhaps it’s time I read the great man’s autobiography The Self and Its Brain to find out…

    Oh, yes, nice puzzle, with ticks against 9, 18, 21 and 24.

  5. 21:51; at a couple of points I was sure it was going to be much longer, and I was on the verge of going offline and taking it home with me. Irritatingly, I thought of STURGEON and BRED almost immediately, but couldn’t see how they worked until much later. I had thought that 7 was a dd –‘to swing’ and ‘cat’=retch=toss up, having just learned that term from a recent cryptic; didn’t think of PUSS. MANIFEST DESTINY went in from ‘passenger list’ alone; worked out the wordplay later. For once it helped to be a Murcan. Manifest D is our special version of the white man’s burden, la mission civilatrice, etc. To quote a Nebraska senator from the 1940’s, “With God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City.” COD to 24ac.

    Edited at 2012-10-03 05:46 am (UTC)

  6. 23m. Average sort of puzzle I thought, which is of course very good. Ireland and Stainer were new to me, but no other unknowns today. I raised an eyebrow at “of” (as opposed to “of the”) for “des”: I’m sure we’ve covered the subject before, but I can’t remember the conclusion.
  7. 32 minutes, almost completely stymied by 1d, because I had NAILER for 11 across, imagining it to be a reverse (almost) of reliant. Why I thought it would be such a clue is now beyond me.
    Thought this tough stuff, with panic setting in the longer I had nothing solved – 2d was my first in.
    CoD to Jupiter’s feature: the knowing wink at the two blockbuster SF franchises was a stroke of genius.
    1. Funny how you equate them…

      In my mind Alien (the original, anyway) involved a story, characters, things you’d expect to see in a real movie. While Predator was a steaming pile of ordure lacking all the above, being merely a vehicle for The Inseminator to flex his pecs and shoot guns.

      And while anti-Arnie bias might be evident, I thought Total Recall was excellent, having story, character, plot, all those things you find in real movies. And a twist at the end… was it all a dream, or did it happen?

      Rob

  8. 25 minutes so a bit on the harder side with some very good wordplays at times. Some very easy like STURGEON but some quite complex like BONDED….. which I solved from definition and B.N as checkers.

    Liked the Jupiter reference. We really have come on as far as broadening the horizons of this puzzle beyond the rather tired type of clue for KING JOHN. Didn’t know or had forgotten MANIFEST…. but the cryptic was obvious

  9. 39 minutes with the last 9, ridiculously, on abashing after firmly rejecting ash=bone and bing =sack. Suitably abashed.
  10. One of those puzzles I classify as “hard, but worth the effort”. It took me three-quarters of an hour.
  11. Loved this puzzle, at first thought it would be a toughie but once I got started with GREAT RED SPOT and the MOR pub it went along smoothly, finished in 25 minutes with the last 5 spent on MADCAP and PRETENDED. Didn’t know the origin of Manifest Destiny but the word play easily solved that. Didn’t much care for EH = sorry in the parsing of WAREHOUSE, but maybe that’s a regular indicator even without a ? after sorry ?
  12. Spent more time parsing the clues to justify the answers than actually deriving them. Despite this still couldn’t understand Bonded Warehouse (tho’ I had the answer immediately upon reading the clue) and Manifest Destiny was unknown to me (and I would have been happy to stay that way). So not my cup of tea.

    Felt more like hard work than fun. No wry grins, no mirthful smirks.

    Phew!

  13. What felt like a sluggish 22:52. I was completely becalmed for a while with much of the bottom half blank until I saw PR for “paper extremely” which gave me pretender and thence the rest of the missing words in fairly short order, finishing, like others, with “the ash bone’s connected to the, um, er…”.

    I also hesitated for too long before writing in bonded warehouse which I saw must be the answer from B…, the def and “joined”. I waited until I had more checkers before taking the plunge but still couldn’t figure out the wordplay so thanks to Jerry for that.

    COD to serviette.

    Right, I’m off to the Halfway House for a pint of Great Red Spot and a sturgeon kebab.

  15. Jerry, I’m sure Grumpy is very pleased you would never, in any circumstances, consider swinging a cat around. Our late, lamented Huey would doubtless agree. Thanks a lot for the blog, particularly the bonded warehouse and for kebab. Great Red Spot sounds to me like a breed of pig or, as penfold_61 says, a pint of ale. I did have a problem with the planetary storm as, like Olivia, initially I couldn’t spell tyrannise. And like paulmcl I was thinking of music in “brisk scoring” but also thinking that 4/4 isn’t that fast. But the one that gave me the most bother was kebab. I read the clue as containing a comma between infant and king and was looking for a word for infant from which I could eject K. No time posted as, of late, I have been printing the puzzle then solving at my leisure over the course of the day. Presume they say napkin in Downton Abbey. Don’t watch it so don’t know.
  17. 1 hour 8 mins and 3 secs.

    Abashed by my time but pleased I stuck at it and managed to complete it accurately when there was lots of stuff I didn’t know. .

    My areas of ignorance included Manifest. Manifest Destiny. Bonded Warehouse. Both composing Johns. ADC. Great Red Spot.

    I thought it a very good puzzle and particularly liked Serviette and Bone Idle. I also liked Halfway House which I note not everyone here liked.

  18. I needed about 40 minutes because I entered WORKING CLASS for the middle of the road pub quite early on, with only the crossing ‘S’ in place, and that screwed everything up big time. It took quite a while to sort that out, but when I finally realized how to spell TYRANNISE (I’m apparently in fine company) it set me straight. COD to the GREAT RED SPOT, a fine clue. Regards.
  19. Why is it “My entertainment UN-limited?” I would have thought that taking the N from fun would make it instead read limited or am I missing something obviously simple??
    Thanks for any help, Roger
  20. Interesting point. However unlimited down the crossword avenue tends to suggest without its limit i.e.end. – joekobi

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