Times Crossword 25,535 – welcome back to blogging edition

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: Hmm, is it just me or is this quite a hard crossword? I am out of blogging practice, and it took me over forty minutes to solve this. However it felt like a top class crossword, with some very misleading and inventive clues, one of the best I have seen for quite some time.

Grateful thanks to those of my fellow bloggers who stood in for me, while I was away in the Pyrenees

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across
1 body blow – chap = BOD + BY rev., + deep = LOW
5 red top – A clue to tease our overseas solvers. Liverpool FC wear red and “red top” is a term for trashy downmarket newspapers, of which the Star is indubitably one.
10 anger management – A + N + GERMAN AGENT containing ME. A very fine clue. Look at that surface reading..
11 Eustace – Europe = EU + STANCE, with the N(OT) removed.. my last in, and took a while to parse becaue I decided the final E must be for Europe
12 flaneur – road = LANE in FUR
13 tide over – ie EDIT = correct, get it? A sort of dd
15 how do – *(WHO) + D(itt)O
18 sleep – removes clothing = PEELS, rev.
20 terrapin – quietly = P(iano) in ground = TERRAIN. another fine clue
23 applier – software = APP + unreliable report = LIE + R(ight)
25 squeeze – a dd, squeeze being an informal term for one’s significant other
26 be at ones wit’s end – defeat = BEAT + *(IS TENSE + DOWN)
27 layers – add, since it turns out that layers is a term for a plant shoot. OED: “a shoot fastened down to take root while attached to the parent plant”
28 educator – Roman censor = CATO, in RUDE rev. A reference to Cato the Elder
Down
1 brazen – extremists = AZ in gun = BREN. I always struggle rather with clues containing “quite the opposite,” “just the reverse” or similar
2 digestive – periodical = DIGEST + (G)IVE(N)
3 barrage – dd, anger management being intended to “bar rage”
4 Osage – S(UMMER), in love = O + time = AGE. Does this clue work? I can’t seem to make it all fit together quite right
6 eyewash – (SEPT)E(MBER) + *(why sea)
7 these – The SE, supposedly the most affluent part of England
8 Peterson – numbers = NOS + on = RE = T(HIS) + old recording = EP, all rev. Yet another remarkable clue, a reference to Oscar Peterson, a jazz pianist so famous even I have heard of him
9 wayfarer – not sure about this one, but it seems to be: with = W, + A, + (VIS)A in *(FERRY)
14 votaries – changes = holy scriptures = OT in VARIES
16 white meat – W(IFE) + H(USBAND) + ITEM + EAT.
17 Istanbul – a fine hidden clue
19 pair-oar – PA + I + ROAR. I hadn’t heard the term before but it is not hard to guess at
21 aquatic – A QUA(R)T + IC, or 1degC I suppose. I got this some time before solving 20ac!
22 header – A reference to “Hedda” Gabler, heroine of an Ibsen play. A header is a brick laid across a wall so that you see its shorter side only. As opposed to a stretcher.
24 peaky – because Derbyshire is where the Peak District is..
25 sowed – very good = SO + WED(NESDAY). Not the radio type of broadcast, then..

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

36 comments on “Times Crossword 25,535 – welcome back to blogging edition”

  1. Welcome back Jerry — glad I didn’t have to blog this one. For me, it all held together around the 4 difficult centre clues, particularly 9dn and 14dn; but also their crossers at 13 and 20ac. And that left AQUATIC which I just couldn’t parse until well after the solve. (Trying to get two PTs out of some strange name for a river).

    On 4dn, I read this as O (love) + AGE (time) outside S{ummer}. I agree it looks odd, but I think “love-having-time outside” just means conjoin (“having”) the O and the AGE and put it all around the S.

    At 9dn, you need another A. So: W{ith} A … then another A (from “visA”) inside an anagram of “ferry”.

    5ac is very apt as Liverpool face their largest crowd ever: 95,000 predicted at the MCG for the friendly with Melbourne Victory.

    Among the strange hidden words today are UKASE and the COENS.

    Edited at 2013-07-24 02:57 am (UTC)

  3. Top puzzle, indeed. I particularly liked the unsung multiword clues, RED TOP AND HOW DO. Hadn’t heard of HEADER, but had heard of Hedder, or PAIR-OAR, and OSAGE only from crosswords. I’ll keep schtum on the time, but it occupied several sessions.

    McT, once LFC have finished buying up all the properties round Anfield, they’ll have room for a stadium larger than the MCG.

  4. I set my all-time record for the long solve last Saturday but this one beat it by nearly an hour having taken 20 minutes before writing in my first answer at 22dn. I simply couldn’t get on the setter’s wavelength and stay there.

    I found the lower half a little easier than the top despite it containing the unknown HEADER, ‘seedy’ meaning ‘unwell’ hence PEAKY, PAIR-OAR and VOTARIES.

    Eventually there were lots of “D’oh!” moments for the clues that had given me most trouble at the top, in particular ANGER MANAGEMENT which if spotted early on as it should have been, might have changed the whole sorry course of events.

    Edited at 2013-07-24 02:35 am (UTC)

    1. If it’s any consolation, my solving experience was much the same. Not only is ANGER MANAGEMENT a particularly fine clue, but the fact that BRAZEN is another meansa that many solvers will be looking at a first word of the shape –g-r, and only with hindsight does ANGER leap from those letters, especially given the wording of the clue, which focuses on the management rather than the ire!
  5. Ulp! All that time, 46′ and some, and still one wrong at 1d, where I had BRACED: race (which CAN mean gun) inside B(ol)D with “just the opposite” of something or other to do with guns or something giving the definition. Nearly as good as the official answer if you’re desperate.
    I got AQUATIC before I got TERRAPIN, and it didn’t help. Is it just that terrapin is an aquatic (creature)? Does that work? If Jimbo complains about DBE’s today (RED TOP is surely another) I think I’m with him this time.
    All very, very clever stuff. Admirable in a way. But not much fun, especially when the struggle turns out to be futile.
      1. I think you’re right. Blame it on a middle-of-the-night solve and something akin to shell shock.
  6. I cannot access TCC via Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Caches cleared and no response whatever, via bookmark or Times online links. I see that the last comment here was about 5 o’clock this morning. A phone call to Timesonline revealed that they are dealing with the problem and I was advised to try again later. Is this problem global?
    Patricia

    Edited at 2013-07-24 08:25 am (UTC)

  7. When I submitted the crossword at ~9AM UK time I got an error message and have been unable to access the site since.
  8. I could not access the club through my bookmarked page but managed to get the crossword by going to the “paper” page (www.thetimes.co.uk) and then following the links to puzzles and then crossword. Hope you have success.
    1. I also could not access the puzzle via the Club and got a continuing message of : “Error: Crossword_Connection_Bad”, for what it’s worth. That was with Firefox. After a couple of hours I tried Internet Explorer, and got the puzzle without any problem.
  9. A little over an hour and glad to finish. Last in that fellow Eustace. A really excellent crossword in my view, hard and fair. I like the two long answers, somewhat apposite, never mind their clues.
  10. Found this desperately difficult and was beginning to feel like Useless EUSTACE (who used to appear regularly in one of our national RED TOPs) as the grandfather clock chimed the hour once more. Took me an hour and a quarter; but, as others have remarked, it was a fine puzzle, if somewhat humourless.

    If I’m being picky, I should have liked the question mark after “Star” in the clue to 5, but I suppose the one at the end suffices.

    I think I’ll go and lie down.

  12. I could not access the club through my bookmarked page but managed to get the crossword by going to the “paper” page (www.thetimes.co.uk) and then following the links to puzzles and then crossword. Hope you have success.
  13. Yesterday I had a very easy puzzle to blog. Today Jerry gets one as far towards the other end of the spectrum as one can go! Luck of the draw I guess.

    As predicted I don’t like 5A. Too much parochial knowledge is needed (colour of football shirts sometimes worn by a team, somewhat obscure newspaper) and a DBE as well. Pity, because the rest of it is first class. 40 minutes to solve.

    1. As a transatlantic solver and non-football fan I would have had no chance at 5a, but there was a very similar clue about a year ago (can’t pinpoint it) which exasperated me at the time and I did manage to remember how it worked.
  14. A slog, with too much vagueness to appeal to me (e.g. the “in one view” in TIDE OVER). Didn’t know LAYERS or PAIR-OAR.
  15. 38 mins mid-morning, and I’m glad to see I wasn’t alone in finding it a hard one.

    I was lulled into a false sense of security when RED TOP and EYEWASH went in straight away, but I didn’t solve another clue during my first read-through. This really was the sort of puzzle in which the wordplay required a lot of concentration. I found that the RHS yielded more quickly than the LHS.

    I was reluctant to put OSAGE in at 4dn because although all of the elements for it were there the wordplay didn’t seem to be in the right order. In the end it was my LOI after I got the final checker from EUSTACE and convinced myself the wordplay worked at a pinch.

  16. 30m. Tough, but I enjoyed it immensely. Just my cup of tea.
    I felt rather pleased with myself when, for I think the first time ever, I spotted the pangram mid-solve. So I spent a bit of time towards the end looking for an X that wasn’t there.
    1. I was also thinking about a pangram but chose another absent letter (J) to try to shoehorn into the final couple of clues.
  17. As the site had fallen over when I attempted to submit, I tried another which also failed, so I switched off and tried later. When I got back on, found a blank grid with clock still running, so had to retype all – of course one typo not seen before submitting.
    Actual time about an hour – quite hard, gottom half done before getting much of top.
  18. Took me 27.45 to solve this beast of a thing. I was almost 26a but now just need a 18a!
  19. After 30 minutes I’d solved only 9 clues and thought I wouldn’t finish. The breakthrough came with the symmetrical quartet of 9, 13, 14 and 20, but it still took me 1 hour and 10 minutes in all.

    Excellent clues. I particularly liked 6, but there were plenty of other contenders for COD. The only one I wasn’t all that happy with was 2; the wordplay’s fine but the definition strikes me as misleading, with the otiose, “That takes the”. Even if “That” refers to the preceding wordplay, ‘takes’ seems an inappropriate link to the definition. Perhaps there’s another explanation that I’ve missed.

  20. No time recorded today as I had to tackle the puzzle in several sessions, but I would estimate the time as roughly the duration of Lent plus Ramadan. I was glad to get everything correct without aids, especially as ‘layers’ and ‘pair- oar’ went in solely on wordplay.
    George Clements
  21. Couldn’t print this when I woke up but a few hours later it was there. Bashed away at it in breaks during a rehearsal and it was a toughie! RED TOP went in with s shrug and a hope; FLANEUR, VOTARIES and PAIR-OAR and HEADER from wordplay, but LAYERS and PEAKY from definition alone. ISTANBUL is one of the best hidden word clues in a long time. Good stuff, setter!
  22. Hey, what’s going on here? This one was way out of the normal range. After not being able to print it until very late, I was tired and had to put it aside and look it over this morning. So no real time but altogether well over an hour, maybe closer to 1:30. As some have said, very tough and only a few smiles. My LOI was PEAKY, as a guess and hoping that’s where the Peak District really lies. Seedy doesn’t have the same meaning over here, it most often means ‘dishevelment’, and usually refers to a place rather than a person, and I don’t think PEAKY has any meaning over here at all. But I did like EUSTACE. After Ivor yesterday, who’s next? Regards to all, and a respectful nod but no embrace for the setter.
    1. As a Brit, I’d never heard of seedy in this meaning – it’s typically used, as in the States, of a bar, etc. to indicate the place is a ‘dive’. Peaky, on the other hand, is pretty common, among middle-class speakers, anyway, to mean a bit under the weather.
  23. Welcome back, Jerry. Do you have any plans to walk the Camino Real to SantIago de Compostela?
    1. No Martin, I prefer the high mountains.. I did stay the night in the pilgrims’ hall in Roncesvalles once; not an experience I am keen to repeat 😉
  24. 22:46 for me. I’m relieved to see I wasn’t the only one who found it tough – definitely Championship-Final grade IMO.
  25. I struggled with that clue – but looked it up and Osage is a name of an American Indian tribe x x x

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