Times Crossword 25,583 – Dog Days..

49 comments on “Times Crossword 25,583 – Dog Days..”

1. LAMB is M in LAB & lit
2. Only really struggled at the end in the top left. Probably on account of the silly cryptic def there (SUPERHERO) and not being able to believe the double use of “turf” (in clue and answer) where 1ac crosses 3dn. Add an equal non-understanding of PAP to Jerry’s and the corner is pretty difficult.
3. 16:03 … of which 6 minutes were spent on SUPERHERO and TURKEY. The rest seemed very easy.

   I quite liked PAP for the surface, but I realise it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I’m re-reading The Honourable Schoolboy for the first time in many years and I’m certain George Smiley would reassign anyone heard using ‘pap’ as a verb to the Svalbard station.

4. I think it’s M(eat) inside LAB (dog).

   Edited at 2013-09-18 12:40 am (UTC)

5. I was held up by the end by SUPERHERO (which I don’t much like) and PAP which I had no hope of parsing. I agree with sotira in enjoying re-reading “The Honourable Schoolboy” (I just did) and with George Smiley in loathing PAP. Just horrible.

   Despite jerry’s nudge and wink, I still don’t understand 22 – could someone please explain?

   1. “On a phone” is a homophone indicator. iTunes is an app. So “iTunes will” gives “app’ll” which sounds like APPLE.
      1. Just amend the homophone indicator to ‘on a phone perhaps’ and we’re there, no?!
         1. As you say below, the “perhaps” goes with “iTunes”.
            1. I reckon it’s more likely that the homophone indicator is ‘on a phone, perhaps’, as, if one takes it to be ‘on a phone’, then the homophone indicator is not adjacent to the word it’s ‘controlling’ (‘will’).

               Taking the homophone indicator to be ‘on a phone, perhaps’ insructs us to treat the phrase ‘iTunes will’ (‘app’ll’), which just about works.

               Is this the sort of clue that will find little favour in Dorsetshire, I wonder?

               1. I don’t reckon. Prefer your “on a phone” (tout court) as the indicator. “Perhaps” has to go with “iTunes” to avoid a terrible (part) DBE. That’s the bit that would displease our Dorset colleague most. The indicator says “app’ll” (one word) sounds like “Apple”.

                  Edited at 2013-09-18 03:59 am (UTC)

                  1. Agree – with both of us (me originally)!

                     Not the first debate I’ve lost with myself….

   2. Don’t tell me how it ends… I’ve forgotten! (to be honest, I last read it as a teenager and I don’t think I understood half of what was going on).
      1. Of course! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it now.
         1. It’s a shame they didn’t have the funds to film the Hon Schoolboy in SE Asia as part of the tv series with Alec Guinness. Also Joss Ackland (the original Jerry Westerby), though a fine actor, would have been wrong for the part – too old.
            1. It’s odd that you should say that. In my reply to sotira I was going to comment that it was a pity the BBC hadn’t managed to include it in their excellent productions of Le Carre novels. I didn’t know cost was the reason but I suppose it’s obvious when you think about it.
               1. The makers of the recent Tinker Tailor film may just have an adaptation in the works. From Wiki:

                  “… producer Eric Fellner stated that fellow producer Tim Bevan is working with writer Straughan and director Alfredson on developing a sequel. Fellner did not specify if the sequel will be based on The Honourable Schoolboy or Smiley’s People, the two remaining Smiley novels in Le Carré’s “Karla Trilogy”.”

                  Even without Alec Guinness, it could be quite a movie if they went with The Hon. Schoolboy.

                  1. That’s interesting, but I found the Tinker Tailor film very poor. I much prefer the 6-hour BBC dramatisations of novels to the 2-hour films which have to omit so much. One of my great pleasures on a wet Sunday is to watch the DVD of Bleak House or Middlemarch or A Perfect Spy in a single sitting.
                     1. I haven’t got round to seeing the film. What a shame. I do see your point, of course, about how much has to be left out.
   3. I may be wrong, but I took ‘on a phone’ to be the homophone indicator, so the rest is APP (‘perhaps iTunes’) + LE (sounds like will when it’s contracted to ‘ll).

      Crossed with McT…Jerry, I think you need another ‘l’ in your parsing.

      Edited at 2013-09-18 02:10 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks to both ulaca and mctext.
6. 38 minutes parsing as I went, but I nodded off at one point along the way. I had thought it was going to prove harder than it turned out as I took a while to find my first answer after failing to write in either of the 3-letter words.
7. ….so struggled with more than just ‘pap’ and ‘superhero’. The whole SE gave trouble as well. I did think of ‘paparazzi’ fairly early, but still couldn’t see the obvious.

8. 22 minutes, so on the wavelength today.

   I have to say that when I wrote in CARNABY STREET, I was thinking Olivia Rhinebeck rather than Jerry W!

   1. Um, Ulaca, I was a micro-skirted teenager in London at the time it’s true (though I never set foot in that street). You smoked me out but how?

      I’m glad Jerry had as much trouble with parts of this as I did. The rest of the club leaderboard regulars seem to have breezed through. 24.5.

      1. Not smoke so much as mirrors (or ‘photo’, to be precise); your mugshot is redolent of an era – if not precisely that one.
9. 
   Oh dear… thought I’d done so well, but… I carelessly put in ‘dross’ at 28ac, and then couldn’t think of what would fit 26dn. Thought PAP was fine, and put in SUPERHERO with a shrug. Couldn’t really parse APPLE, so thanks for that. Didn’t know LIMPET MINE, but cryptic was clear.

10. As predicted not keen on parts of this rather poor offering. Most of it is not just easy but very obvious with no real cunning or deviousness displayed.

    9A SUPERHERO is awful. 2D PAP nearly as bad. 26D AXE is weak. 22D, APPLE, should be put in the museum of horrors. And the good stuff to balance that little collection – I didn’t find any!

    1. It would be interesting to read just how these clues are so bad. I don’t understand SUPERHERO and what it has to do with saver, so can’t comment; PAP seems fine, although maybe ‘as’ is cumbersome; AXE strikes me as a jolly good clue, and I was pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one to have been impressed by it; and APPLE strikes me as rather clever. Certainly these last three seem to me to be perfectly sound.
       1. A SUPERHERO is someone who saves people. I have to agree with Jimbo that this is a rather clunky clue. Otherwise I’m with you: I think the clues for PAP and APPLE are excellent. I’m less keen on 26dn but if you can’t allow a little licence when the checkers give you A_E, when can you?
          1. I’m astounded that a possible verdict for this puzzle might be “poor offering”. I thought it was full of delightful clues, and in fact noted AXE as being particularly fine.

             The repetition of “turf” raised a slight eyebrow, but in the end no harm done.

       2. I believe the idea is that superheroes tend to have special powers (extraordinary capacities) and go round saving things such as the world, damsels in distress etc etc.

          Sorry, k, you posted as I was writing but I’ll leave my comment in anyway.

          Edited at 2013-09-18 09:17 pm (UTC)

          1. Good – mine was a bit prosaic. I like the category “the world, damsels in distress etc”.
11. 19 minutes, with LAMB taken to be just another CD, though I see how it works now. Spent a little time trying to extract wordplay from SUPERHERO and TIME MACHINE, and puzzled over LIMPET MINE, where I’m not particularly convinced by loose=LIMP. I wondered for a while if Hull was a synonym for LIMP. I also went further than warranted trying to work pup with a letter exchange into PAP, but light dawned eventually.
12. Spent a lot of time on 2d trying to get PUP to fit in given the dog but eventually saw the light. I agree with jerry that Carnaby Street in the 60s was quite a place but then again, the 60s were quite a time, man.
13. 14 mins with all parsed even though I’m full of cold, so definitely on the setter’s wavelength.

    I was a little slow seeing some of the more obvious ones, such as PASSENGER and IN THE PIPELINE (my LOI). I thought the clue for DEPOT was actually quite good.

14. This was about the closest I shall ever come to a “clean sweep” and I logged on to the blog feeling very pleased with myself, only to discover I’d missed solving 14 across: “…. an haughty spirit before a fall …..” etc.

    CARNABY STREET brings back memories of clothes that were tight in all the wrong places, and my relief when roomy, double-breasted suits returned in the 1980s.

    1. Kudos on getting the quotation right. This has claims to being the ‘Play it again, Sam’ of the Biblical world.

       I wonder if you can provide the first part of the line that ends ‘or the leopard his spots?’

       1. Can the Ethiopian change his skin . ..

          Don’t forget ‘Money is the root of all evil’ in the “Play it again, Sam’ biblical stakes

          Edited at 2013-09-18 02:32 pm (UTC)

          1. It is a particularly interesting one as the Greek word translated in most versions as ‘all’ actually means ‘all kinds of’ to give us ‘the love of money is the root off all kinds of evil’, which not a lot of people would disagree with, I reckon.

             Edited at 2013-09-18 03:40 pm (UTC)

15. No problems accessing the blog today, and a fairly comfortable morning solve. I confess that it would have taken longer if I had tried to parse everything as I went along (such as 7d ‘graven image’) but some of the solutions were pretty obvious from the crossers and definitions so I decided to go for a time and sort out parsing retrospectively. No doubt I’ll come a cropper tomorrow, and I am still awaiting the real stinker.
    George Clements
16. What is the dog actually doing in that clue? Jason
    1. I eventually worked out that it is ‘dog’ in the sense of ‘pursue with intent to catch’ like a dogged detective. That is what paparazzi do.
17. 8:22 with the 2d dog causing the most headscratching. I did like IN THE PIPELINE.
18. Back to a relatively easy one, that took me 30 minutes, with the last couple of minutes getting DEPOT and choosing between PUP and PAP for 2,settling for the latter when I saw ‘pap’ as referring to paparazzo. As didn’t know ‘pap’ as a verb I assumed the setter was being particularly derogatory about paparazzi.

    The cd at 9 was very weak, and the use of turf in 1a, when it’s part of the wordplay in 3, seems rather careless (as some have already noted). 12 was a far better example of a successful cd. I thought the clue for AXE was fine – it works for me and it’s a novel approach.

    1. I’m glad to see someone standing up for ‘axe’ which works perfectly for me but I also have no problem with ‘turf’ as it’s used in different senses – in 3dn as a noun clued by ‘grassy earth’ and in 1ac in the verbal construction ‘turf out’ meaning to remove, although the surface reading suggests the noun, which is surely part of the fun.

       Edited at 2013-09-18 11:02 pm (UTC)

       1. My point about ‘turf’ was really connected with the word, irrespective of meaning, because its use in 1a gives a lot of help in interpreting ‘grassy ‘earth in 3 (despite differences in meaning), especially as the clue misleads you into thinking of the earthy meaning; also, many solvers, having solved 1a, will immediately look at the crossing downs, so the two clues can come close together.
          Having said that, in my case 1a was one of the last clues I solved, so it didn’t actually help me, and it’s admittedly a minor point anyway.
19. 12:24 so no problems anywhere and unlike Jimbo I found much to admire with some clever stuff and plenty of smiles.

    Particular highlights were de-pot, amateur works, the falling cat and the crossing out which Jimbo singled out for criticism but which I make my COD. Both 3-letter answers needed both checkers to solve and that made a pleasant change.

    Thanks setter!

20. 9:08 on the club timer. I got to this very late, and have to confess that by the time I did I was (am) a bit squiffy, so either this was right up my street or a little vinous lubrication helps. Hic.
    I welcome the inclusion of “pap” as a verb. On the other hand the definition in 21ac is just wrong. “Former fashion zone” would work. Or “tourist trap”.

    Edited at 2013-09-18 08:22 pm (UTC)

21. 17:05 for me. This simply wasn’t my sort of puzzle, and I completely failed to find the setter’s wavelength. I’m not complaining – just feeling my age a bit! (Sigh!)

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