Times Crossword 25,308 – Marine Life edition

Solving Time: This is the second of the puzzles in the first preliminary round of the 2012 Championships. I solved it on the day in about 20 mins, but in such a rush and with so little care for the wordplay that blogging it now, it’s as if I’d never seen it before. It strikes me as just a tad harder than average, though there was only one word new to me (13ac). There are a lot of fine, and in some cases rather intricate, clues to enjoy.

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1 tipsiest – end = TIP + short nap = SIEST(A).
5 random – well, you can have RAM = random access memory, so there is a connection there. But still this clue seems a bit random to me. Is it just a cd?
10 Barcelona – little nipper = CRAB, rev., + *(ALONE). What’s with the “little?” Even down the road from me, in Whitstable say, you can find crabs that you would not want to meet in a dark alley
11 mason – motorway = M + for instance = AS, + working = ON.
12 sofa – ShOw FlAt
13 madrasahs – curry = MADRAS + expressions of surprise = AHS. A madrasah is an Islamic indoctrination centre, a new word for me but not hard to find.
15 leafcutter – field = LEA, + footballers = FC, + say = UTTER
17 stir – dd
19 oath – (N)O ATH(EISTS)
20 journalese – cd, a reference to the Daily Mirror
22 sea nettle – port = SEATTLE containing (O)NE. Sea nettles sound like a plant but are in fact types of jellyfish so can in fact swim. Though not much more
24 exam – former = EX + morning = AM
26 ounce – strike = (P)OUNCE. Wikipedia tells me this is a way of referring to the snow leopard. Much more common in crosswords than it is in the wild..
27 nectarine – “drink say” = NEC + seaman = TAR + favoured = IN + energy = E
28 throne – THE containing fellow = RON.
29 dead beat – *(DEBATE) containing bill = AD.
Down
1 toby – play = TOY containing B, presumably equating to the second row, row B. I was not sure about man = toby either.. according to Chambers, toby is either a mug or highway robbery. Maybe strict accuracy has been sacrificed, in the interests of a beautifully neat surface reading – anyway, it was my first in..or maybe not.. it’s just a man’s name, thanks Jackkt
2 personal trainer – gym = PE + shoe = TRAINER, containing runs = R + *(SALON)
3 ice dance – *(ACCIDEN(T)).. Torvill, Dean, Bolero, bring it on.. Britain’s finest hour, on ice anyway
4 storm – (INVE)STOR + M
6 aims at – top = A1 + marks = M + SAT, conventionally the end of the (christian) week
7 distant relative – I confess I didn’t even try to parse this at the time. It’s *(INVITED AT LAST) containing about = RE. A very finely constructed clue
8 miniseries – bombs = MINES containing one’s = I’S, + anger = IRE rev.
9 Landseer – countryside = LAND + view = SEE + R. Best known for the Trafalgar Square lions, and cheesy pictures of stags etc.
14 blood sport – family relationship = BLOOD + sport, an Australian alternative to Bruce
16 trotting – time = T + going off = ROTTING
18 face card – following = F + wicked = ACE + character = CARD
21 demean – squalid room = DEN containing M(ANY) E(NGLISHMEN) A(CCOMMODATED)
23 emcee – sounds like MC, Roman for 1100. A horrid word, emcee.. if you can’t be bothered using the full Master of Ceremonies, or the proper abbreviation MC, there is still compère to fall back on
25 jest – spout = JET containing small = S

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

31 comments on “Times Crossword 25,308 – Marine Life edition”

  1. 5ac: R AND OM are the components of (e.g.cd) ROM.

    1dn: TOBY is simply a man’s name.

    It’s a shame that whenever one of these puzzles appears we STILL lose the puzzle number on printing it out. It might also be useful to state what the time limit is when informing us that only 39% of competitors achieved a correct solve within it.

    I think it’s 30 minutes, in which case I would have failed by 6 minutes as 13ac, 1ac and 1dn delayed me a little right at the end.

    I didn’t know, or had forgotten that SEA NETTLE is a jellyfish. I never heard of MADRASAHS and it doesn’t come up in the LJ search so it appears to be something new around here. The google crossword blogs search lists it as having appeared quite recently in an Independent Inquisitor puzzle in which I’d not even heard of about half the answers.

    Edited at 2012-10-31 01:53 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks. That would have left me 24 minutes for the other two so I still reckon I’d have failed. I might do one puzzle in 12 minutes some day, but two in the same sitting would be way beyond the realms of possibility.
    1. There are several spellings of MADRASAH (5 in Chambers (2002) alone). On the day, I put in the one I’m most familiar with (MADRASSA) without even bothering to check the wordplay – not for the first (or last) time, this caused trouble further down the line.
    2. 1D TOBY – Second Row (eg of a theatre) is row B. Absorbed by PLAY (as a verb, not a noun) = TOY makes TOBY
  2. So … most of the morning. One of those that’s a wonderful puzzle on completion but a complete dog at the time. Expected a DNF, with the (now obvious) DEMEAN and THRONE joint last in. Not knowing MADRASAHS, LEAFCUTTER and SEA NETTLE didn’t help at all.

    Another who doesn’t like the word EMCEE, but easily got as former goalkeeper for the European Travellers who got chucked out of the Perth Seniors League for insisting on wearing roman numerals. (Nothing in the rules forbade it but.) Natch: I was MC, in memory of my old Dad’s Austin.

  3. 58 minutes, with DEMEAN last in, following STORM, which embarrassingly I got after rather than before the unknown MADRASAHS. TIPSIEST and THRONE were very good, I thought.

    Ounce occurs, besides in crosswords, in Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound: ‘as hooded ounces cling to the driven hind’.

    I imagine this might be might be a reference to the Eurasian lynx, which preys on deer among other animals.

    Edited at 2012-10-31 02:59 am (UTC)

  4. No time for this, because I jumped between the puzzles on the day. I found it harder than the first but easier than the third.
    I made one mistake: cards are a serious blind spot for me and I didn’t know FACE CARD, which I’ve no doubt is extremely common. The best I could come up with was BASE CARD.
    MADRASAH, on the other hand, caused no problems: this word has appeared in the news quite regularly in recent years. The accepted definition for TV purposes appears to be “an institution for training terrorists”.
  5. 26 minutes, so I’m glad I was in the other prelim – though perhaps the adrenalin would have sped things up. As it was, a quickish start deteriorated to a slow crawl as I circled towards the NE: JOURNALESE was my last in, still wondering what it had to do with Leonardo.
    RANDOM I think (with Jack) is R and OM, the components of ROM, though during solve I blinked at least as much as Jerry.
    NECTARINE I misunderstood because I went all the way with nectar as the drink and couldn’t fathom the rest. Is there another LEAFCUTTER beside the ant?
    CoD to the cheeky THRONE – is this a British or more universal euphemism?
    1. It’s used in Aussie slang too, along with dunny and the peerless thunder box. Doubtless many other terms, too.
  6. A slow and steady 35 minutes. A madrasa (far more common without the h) is a school or other learning centre where the Islamic faith is one of the subjects studied. Though there may be a number that do indeed double as indoctrination centres or institutions for training terrorists it’s an unfortunate error to assume all are such and that that’s what they’re for. On the recent topic of words one wearies of emcee is about top of my list.
    1. Massive tops my list. Good, solid word being stripped of its meaning to become little more than a shibboleth marking the sheep from the chavs.
    2. For the avoidance of doubt my comment was not intended as an endorsement of the CNN definition!
      On the matter of spelling, madrasah is an arabic word so is transliterated in all sorts of ways. As well as its five definitions, Chambers gives a catch-all “etc”. I didn’t have a clue how to spell it was aware of this ambiguity so paid attention to the wordplay.

      Edited at 2012-10-31 12:07 pm (UTC)

      1. Arabic words transliterated into some sort of English are no end of use for “Words with Friends” and other similar games. How else a we going to profitably use Js, Qs and such? Their dictionary allows dozens of variations: so long as, for example, hadj, suq or djin look vaguely possible, they seems to be allowed.
  7. 20:14, so compared to last Wednesday’s offering, this was definitely a degree of difficulty or two higher (and the current club leaderboard would seem to back me up on that). I didn’t know the spelling of MADRASAS with the extra S/H, and had never knowingly accounted the SEA NETTLE; but as you’d hope and expect from finals day puzzles, the wordplay left me in no doubt that I’d worked both out correctly.
  8. This was the puzzle that really did for me on the day. 26/30.

    I had complete brain freeze here. Journalese was left blank, I just couldn’t see it, missing the obvious hint at the newspaper.

    I also failed to put anything for the fairly easy emcee. In mentally fumbling for abbreviations for 1000 I stopped after discounting G and K. What a muppet.

    The other blank was sea nettle. I’d considered it but without the final E hadn’t the confidence to go for it. Foolishly I couldn’t see beyond the port being sea- something (sea harbour, sea dock etc) and sea ttle didn’t look too likely for that!

    Where I lost the 4th mark I’ve no idea. Probably a typo down to lack of checking time.

  9. 29/30 today – missed Throne. The SW corner caused me bother elsewhere too – initially I punted on Sea Turtle for 22 and then once corrected didn’t quite see Demean. Thanks for explaining that one Jerry. The Storm / Madrasahs pair held me up as well. Steady if slow solve elsewhere. Sport for “Australian address” raised a smile.
  10. I might have just about struggled in under the 30 minutes, with sea NETTLE and MADRASAHS (spelt a new way for me) written in without any certainty. Had WILD CARD for a while which delayed things until I got EXAM. All in all a fair and medium-hard puzzle IMO.
    I would second the proposal to delete EMCEE from all dictionaries. We have CEO not CEEEEOH and MP not EMPEE so why is EMCEE a word?
  11. This one took me the longest to solve of the 3 puzzles in Preliminary 1 – 19 minutes. Agree with everyone about EMCEE, particularly as I can never remember it!
  12. Ouch. Popped VENT in to 25 dn without too much of a thought. After all to give vent to can mean to spout, and a vent can be a small opening or crack. Ah well. Otherwise 22 min which for me is pretty useful.
    1. Ross,

      You’re in good company. On the day some contestants went for vent and appealed (unsuccessfully).

    1. Indeed – can’t see the reasoning behind wanting EMCEE deleted from the dictionary. It’s there because it’s a word. The rather ridiculous CEEEOH or whatever isn’t a word. Why one is a word and not another (OK, obvious in this case) is a mystery but that is not for the lexicographer to worry about.
      1. Who wanted them removed? I only said I didn’t like them. I’m not keen on anonymous commenters either, but I wouldn’t want them removed 😉
  13. I don’t think this can have taken me much more than 10 minutes on the day, but I’d have been significantly faster if I hadn’t bunged FACE CARD in at 16dn. (Doh!)
  14. Well, I completed it correctly without aids but it took 81 minutes so no good for any contests. Loved working out my unkowns of leaf cutter and sea nettle – and I tried so hard to fit in sea turtle.
  15. Surprised at the 39% maybe I was on the setters wavelength but this took me just under 10 minutes with madrasahs and leafcutter coming from wordplay alone
  16. Well over an hour and for me, a quite intricate puzzle with many clues that needed to wait for just the right flash of inspiration: BARCELONA, MADRASAHS, JOURNALESE (I rather liked that), LANDSEER (whom I have never heard of, but apparently my subconscious has, or how else did I manage to fill it in), TOBY and more. When I started, only the four-letter clues went in quickly, but perseverance paid off eventually. No good for a contest, though.
  17. Thank you everyone, I just happened to pick up the Times on 31 October & managed just one answer, random, but not for all the right reasons. Oh, I had MC as well, but didn’t fill it in, didn’t know emcee was a word. Given a few weeks I might have made some progress. It’s helpful to get, not just the answers, but the explanations, so thanks for that. Landseer I should have known as I used to live in Bedford in a housing estate full of English painters; Turner Way, Ramsay Close, Constable Hill, Romney Walk, Landseer Gardens. Thanks for link to his stag, penfold_61 . I’d never heard of stir meaning prison. If I tried to do the crossword every day I’d never get anything else done.

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