Times Crossword 25,415 – Tricky

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 24 minutes, so harder than average. I put in several answers on a wing and a prayer rather, and was relieved to find them all correct. I think there are a number of quite tricky clues here, some clever misdirection, and a fair bit harder than yesterday’s. But it all seemed very fair, so thank you setter.

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1 heathendom – passion = HEAT + HEN DO + M = male
7 mewl – a dd, one being a homophone for “mule.” I wasn’t terribly confident entering this, but indeed a mule is an equine. Note also the converse, called a hinny..
9 fixation – following = F + I TAXI rev, +about = ON
10 cutler – all rev: about = RE, + L, + TUC, the Trades Union Congress. How many cutlers are actually still working in Sheffield, I wonder..
11 crafty – A F(OO)T in shout = CRY, the definition being “fly.”
13 toiletry – cotton fabric = TOILE + TRY = to test, as in a try square for example
14 habit-forming – a dd, one jocular
17 hang out to dry – place = HANG OUT + D(EMOCRAT) in TORY
20 bristled – BRIST(O)L + ED
21 O’Neill – individual = ONE + (W)ILL as in the bard, to give (Eugene) O’Neill. I have heard of several of his plays but never actually seen or read one
22 hidden, seek and ye shall find..
23 rickshaw – piles of hay = RICKS + to sell = HAW(K)
25 keep – a dd, and another one I was nervous about, as I would not equate a keep and a dungeon, though the former might contain the latter. The word dungeon is derived from donjon, an archaic term for the central keep of a castle, but it seems a trifle tenuous to me. I don’t think the daily cryptic should rely on archaic derived meanings
26 daydreamer – *(ARMED + READY) – very neat clue
Down
2 Eritrean – Queen’s = ER + flag = TIRE both rev., + A N. I could see the answer but it took me a while to parse
3 tea – ThE bAr
4 Emily – green = LIME rev., + (JOURNE)Y
5 donator – *(TANDOOR)(I). Another neat clue
6 machinist – a feature = A CHIN in film = MIST – and another
7 Mother Goose – fairy = MOTH + O OGRE rev., + S(TAG)E. Another one that took me time to parse. Moth is a fairy servant of Titania, along with Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed etc., in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
8 wherry – German fellow = HERR in W(OBBL)Y. They are interesting boats
12 flight strip – (RA)F + lands = LIGHTS + expedition = TRIP. I had some trouble with this one, being slow to see what sort of expedition was needed, and finding it hard to picture a Eurofighter or F-22 landing on a “strip”
15 finalised – *(A + INFIDELS) – yet another I took time to find. Oh, that sort of settled, not Finland(ish) after all..
16 grillade – everyone = ALL rev. in G + journey = RIDE
18 orderly – East end crowd = (H)ORDE + RLY
19 bronze – BR(ITISH) + ONZE + eleven in France, a football team..
21 oncer – *(CORNE)(T), a tricky anagram.. Oh, that sort of note
24 ska – “scar,” which ODO defines as “a steep high cliff or rock outcrop, especially of limestone.” Yorkshire has dozens of them. Tricky to the last clue..

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

45 comments on “Times Crossword 25,415 – Tricky”

  1. Yes, a fine puzzle. Solved the bottom half first, then the NW; and left for a while with 7dn/8dn/10ac/13ac in the NE at the end. Looked at 17ac first and assumed HARD ROW TO HOE (all the Tories go to Harrow?)

    For the uninitiated (24dn): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAiQ-P7GoA
    NB: he doesn’t say “sca:r” as such; rather the a is short.

    Edited at 2013-03-06 01:44 am (UTC)

  2. 43′, with 13ac my LOI, but several others held out for an annoyingly long time. I believe we recently had a rare example of RLY instead of RY for ‘railway’, so I should have been quicker to accept that 18d didn’t end in RRY. Although I knew the word ‘scar’, my rhotic accent ensured that I was totally at a loss to explain what fortunately had to be the correct word. (Not to mention that I’d pronounce it [skae:], if I ever pronounced it.) Lots of lovely surfaces, including a very nice hidden at 22ac, but my COD goes to 17ac.

    Edited at 2013-03-06 01:47 am (UTC)

  3. I found this one very heavy going and limped home just over the hour at 65 minutes. Didn’t know SKA or GRILLADE. Wanted to have “iris” for “flag” in 2dn and “wings” for “sides of stage” as the second word at 7dn leading to further delays and distractions.

    Collins has “keep….also called dungeon or donjon” with no mention of it as an archaism so I think the setter is exonerated re 25ac.

    1. Seems fine to me. No one turned a hair yesterday with CURATE for “minister”. And that is assuredly archaic.
      1. Negative. I’ve been a curate myself, in my first position as a minister. And let me assure you, I was alive and well!
    2. Chambers also defines “dungeon” as “the principal tower of a castle” which is the same as a keep.
  4. Landing strip, yes, airstrip, yes, but FLIGHT STRIP sounded odd to me. The OED hasn’t heard of it either, apparently.
    1. I agree with my anonymous fellow. A case of tautology (tort-ology even) because under “strip” the OED (1993) has “… an area of ground where aircraft can take off and land, an airfield”.
      1. Online, freedictionary.com has ‘1. (Engineering / Aeronautics) a strip of cleared land used as an emergency runway for aircraft’, which they probably didn’t just invent. Having said that, it’s downright ugly. Perhaps we could do a little forum seeding of our own to provide it with the primary sense it is crying out for: mile-high pole-dancing.
  5. Must have been suffering withdrawal symptoms after missing yesterday’s with login problems – now happily resolved – as I got four wrong in my 53 minutes, not helped for the three in the SW by failing to spot the hidden and plumping for that leading Bauhaus figure, Ingaus, having dismissed the Basque surrealist, Ungais.

    Had ‘flight space’, which just about works, and ‘sea’ at 24, where the Jamaican music style had failed to stick from a previous puzzle. Hinny came up in a quiz the other day, and we all went for mule. Then United go out against Madrid. It’s been that sort of week.

    Edited at 2013-03-06 04:14 am (UTC)

  6. Managed all but the 21s today, not sure whether 21d was encor or ONCER (not heard of that meaning…). If they’d given us the apostrophe at 21a, I may have stood a chance.

    As vinyl, I put in words such as KEEP and FLIGHT STRIP without worrying too much, and as jack I wanted wings to be somewhere in 7d. Always thought the word was donor, but not too far a stretch to get to DONATOR (as with ANARCHISTIC, which came up recently, I always thought it was anarchic). You live and learn.

    Edited at 2013-03-06 07:08 am (UTC)

    1. I agree about ONEILL, the only reason I got it quite quickly was because it turned up recently (maybe in an Everyman) and caught me with egg on my face, given my lifetime interest in all things theatrical.
  7. 23 minutes, and a fine crossword. FLIGHT STRIP in with question marks (it DOES sound wrong) resolved by the lower crossers.
    I see I was undone, though, by HANG OUT TO DRY, where I put in the past tense, perfectly feasible from the definition but puzzling in the cryptic. Should have paid more attention to the niggle, though once I’d put it in, I believed there had to be an explanation when so many clues required a considerable twist of comprehension.
    Favourite of a good set during solve was BRONZE, the French team giving a frisson of delight. HABIT FORMING an amusing pun.
  8. Carelessly (?) had MEWS for MEWL and another who went for HUNG OUT TO DRY (on reflection, not fully justified by the cryptic). Also discomfited by most of the issues already raised (notably KEEP nd FLIGHT STRIP).
  9. A very enjoyable 13 minutes with a few I muttered over – not SKA as it was in another crossword I solved just before this one.
  10. Difficult, testing puzzle made harder by FLIGHT STRIP that I don’t think exists as an accepted phrase.

    At 17A Jerry I think “place frequented”=HANG OUT rather than “place” on its own.

    Didn’t know the fairy but easy enough to guess the answer. The rest was just hard work.

    1. has its own entry in Collins: 1)a strip of land used as an emergency runway for aircraft 2) another name for ‘runway’ 3) a continuous strip of aerial photographs.
  11. To add to what Jim says, it’s typically (always is a dangerous word) spelt as one word.
        1. Since when has the one word/two word distinction (or even where two words join) mattered to the cryptic part of a clue?
  12. Glad to see I wasn’t alone saying huh? to FLIGHT STRIP. I know these puzzles don’t separate the apostrophe but they catch me out every time (O’Casey the last time). At least this one was fairly obvious. I had no trouble with KEEP – I think because BRISTOL reminded me of nearby Berkeley Castle which has a rather famous (and creepy) dungeon. No trouble with HANGOUT either. 28 minutes.
  13. 45 minutes with a thick head, which the puzzle seems to have cleared.

    We had O’NEILL a couple of weeks ago, didn’t we? I confess that my knowledge of his plays comes solely from Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers. If you’re interested, look up “Pardon me, while I have a Strange Interlude” on YouTube.

    (I daren’t give the link for fear of having my comment dispatched to the spam bin.)

    1. Oh was it O’Neill then too John? You’re probably right which makes me all the denser. I just never see them coming. Thanks for the “Strange Interlude” reminder – great stuff.
  14. 16m. I found this pretty plain sailing. Mind you I did put in quite a lot from definition: some of the wordplay would no doubt have slowed me down if I had bothered with it.
  15. Over an hour in fits and starts to a glorious DNF with 9 and 14 across undone. But though difficult this all seemed fair if a bit gruelling in the execution. My COD to O’NEILL but lots of enjoyment elsewhere too. Thanks for blog as some of these definitely in on a wing, which I looked for as well in 7d, and a prayer, which didn’t in fact get answered.
  16. Found this reasonably straightforward (about 19 minutes) but carelessness and a brainstorm over my Roman numerals led me to CUTTER, rather than CUTLER. I came here hoping to see I wasn’t the only one, but apparently I am. How depressing.

    I liked HABIT-FORMING

  17. I came back down on the landing strip with a bump today after yesterday’s whizz-through. 30 minutes with two wrong.

    At 7a I went for mews, completely ignoring the fine detail of the clue and putting something that had a vague connection to animal noises and horses.

    At 25 I completely failed to make the keep/living connection (despite considering keep for the dungeon part) and went for deep, as “in dungeon” sort of satisfied it although I took a huge punt on deep and living being somehow synonymous.

    I knew wherry as much from the eponymous Woodforde’s ale as much as the boat. I done got me an 18 pint polybarrel of the stuff last Christmas. Yum.

  18. 57′ and a struggle. Was there much joy for me today? Well, perhaps I felt that I ought to have been tickled a wee bit more by some of the wordplay elements, but it was well put-together. I will get better at this, I’m sure.

    Many thanks to all,
    Chris.

  19. Took a while to get started, but then things were steady, didn’t have the timer out though. ONCER, CUTLER and GRILLADE from wordplay, MOTHER GOOSE from definition alone. Rather enjoyed this one.
  20. I rather enjoyed this one, too, especially since I managed to finish it (they are almost always easy except for the last two clues, but this time I managed those, too, in just under an hour [49 seconds under an hour, to be exact]). My first one in was DAYDREAMER, after not managing a single across clue the first time through, and my LOI were MEWL and GRILLADE. For MEWL I originally put in MOOS (are moose equine?) until I realised that the German fellow in 8d was HERR and not ER. GRILLADE stumped me until I realised that everybody was being gobbled UP. All in all a very pleasant puzzle. My COD is BRONZE with MACHINIST and FIXATION close runners up.
  21. I’ve been away for a week, and I found it pleasant to return to this. About 25 minutes, ending with SKA, although not seeing what ‘rock’ was doing at all. Nice puzzle. Regards.
  22. Also left high and dry with mews, after finally landing grillade and O’Neill. Time out of the window. Crafty, well-crafted. Back to the cricky.
  23. 14:45 for me, feeling tired and having difficulty getting going. Eventually I plodded home, slightly doubtful about the foodie GRILLADE – however, I find that it came up as recently as 18 October 2011 (No. 24,983). Nice puzzle.
  24. 25 minutes with GRILLADE as a guess because I’ve never heard of it. It took me a couple more minutes to check it out. Ann
    1. >… with GRILLADE as a guess because I’ve never heard of it

      Or maybe you had (if this blog entry is anything to go by ;-).

      1. So obviously I have seen it before and it didn’t give me any trouble! Well spotted. It must be senility.
        1. Senility? It sounds completely normal to me (but then …).

          I often make a note of a word I haven’t come across before (in real life rather than in a crossword), and looking over the list now, I’d swear that I’d never come across half of them before – particularly the foodie ones!

        2. Isn’t GRILLADE just one of those almost made-up words chefs use to make their dishes sound sexier? E.g. grillade de pain en tranches aux haricots en four would be baked beans on toast.
          1. It sounds quite possible that the French use it like that. However, good old English Chambers (2011) defines it as “(obs; cookery) anything grilled”, while the OED has “something grilled, a broiled dish” (also marked as Obs., with the latest citation coming from 1725).
  25. 24 Down – Scar, yes, but what, please is the relationship of SKA to music?

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