Times Crossword 25,619 – Championship First Preliminary, Second Crossword

… at least I hope it is, since I am writing this blog up in advance, having done the crossword on the day. I did complete all the three crosswords in Prelim. 1 (as a guest) – almost, but not quite, inside the hour. It took me about 1hr 10m in all, of which this one perhaps 25 mins. Since the Prelim 2 crosswords were significantly harder, and the finals were harder still, this tells me all I need to know about the prospect of entering the competition next year..

However this is not in fact a particularly hard crossword; and in the privacy of your own armchair, with a nice glass of 5ac, should not take you too long.

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 clanger – CLass + ANGER
5 Chablis – drink = CHA + BLISs. One of my favourite drinks.. it always annoys me in pubs when they say they have “a Chardonnay,” and what they mean is some anonymous Australian plonk (sorry mc 🙂 and never Chablis..
9 signature – GIS rev., + NATURE. That totally illegible thing that is supposed to tell people who you are..
10 Donne – “done,” and of course not “don.”
11 Arras – ARRAyS. Arras is a very pretty town, an easy hour or so’s drive from Calais along the autoroute and just right for a weekend getaway.. it has one of the best markets in Northern France, on a Saturday. Sorry, Samedi
12 Ezra Pound Ezra, a book of the Hebrew bible, + POUND
14 ran out of petrol – a cd, I suppose
17 hedges ones bets – *(OBSESSED GENT HE). However hedging one’s bets does not so much “reduce the chance of losing,” as to mitigate the consequences of losing. The original bet still stands.
21 dead march – another clue I struggled with, slightly. A dead march is a piece of music suitable for a funeral, so far so good.. but why would a wintry March be dead? More likely the opposite, surely? Snow, gales.. maybe I’m missing something
23 riser – king = R + IS + queen = ER
24 ogham – Old + GAM containing Hard. Gam = school is typical crosswordese, not seen elsewhere. I defy anyone to say it came up in conversation only the other day.. even marine biologists would say “pod.”
25 bee-eaters – BEEfEATERS. Neat clue
26 DR + A GOON.. meaning a cavalier, in the sense of a horse rider.
27 Tuscany – abroad you = TU, + survey = SCAN, + ItalY. Where Chianti comes from, hurrah!

Down
1 casbah – BAnk in money = CASH. An easy clue with checkers in place, not so easy though as a means of getting started
2 Algeria – *(ELGAR) + very good = A1, rev.
3 Gladstone – the old age concerned being the stone one..
4 Rouge et Noir – *(ERRONEOUS GIT) without the Spades. Rouge et Noir is the name of a dull game similar to what English people call “patience,” and a much more interesting game played in casinos at which you may actually win; it has the highest winning odds of any casino game.
5 cue – “q”estion
6 add up – A DD UP.. a doctor of divinity at university
7 languor – *(GUANO) in two hands = L + R
8 steadily – Small + TEA + DaILY
13 refreshment – new intake = FRESHMEN in about = RE + Time
15 ember days – *(SAD MY BEER). Ember days being fasting days in some christian liturgies
16 shedload – HE’D + LO in grave = SAD
18 drachma – CHurch in crisis = DRAMA. Greek currency before they went berserk with the Euro
19 tessera – TESS + ERA, Tess being Tess Durbeyfield/D’Urberville. I wish I liked Thomas Hardy’s books more than I do
20 frisky – F + RISKY
22 mambo – doctor = MB in MAO. I knew mambo only as a dance I would never do – one of many – but it has a surprising number of other meanings too
25 bin – BINgo

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

49 comments on “Times Crossword 25,619 – Championship First Preliminary, Second Crossword”

  1. Tells me as much as it did Jerry about my (non-) Championship form. Did this just before it appeared on the Club site so as not have to wait until 8:00am for it appear. And though I was slowish, I did enjoy the puzzle.

    Not with a Chablis though, Jerry, just a coffee. And no need to apologise re dissing the cheap Chardonnays you get from us in the UK. We keep the good ones for ourselves!

    Had a look at the gambling version of Rouge et Noir. Hoyles has the fabulous instruction: “The dealer shuffles together six 52-card packs”. (Much the same info on Jerry’s Wiki link.) Imagine shuffling 312 cards by hand — which I guess they don’t.

    Friday will be the anniversary of the death of 12ac in 1972. Next to his obit in The Times (?) was a cartoon showing Anthony Barber (Chancellor) on the roof of a high building looking like he’s about to jump. On the street below, a news ad reading “POUND DIES”. Ted Heath is looking up at Barber saying “Don’t worry, it’s just some old poet”.

    Edited at 2013-10-30 01:05 am (UTC)

  2. 37 minutes – hadn’t heard of the card game, and failed at the 22/23 crossing, where I considered the unknown (but more likely sounding) correct answer on the basis that the unknown ‘ophod’ was more likely than, well, something else – at least, I’m with the marine biologists. So, ‘madro’ was my witch.

    Congratulations to Jerry on his predictive skills and to McT for managing to do the crossword even before it appeared. As if I wasn’t feeling humbled enough…

    1. The Wednesday team have had a fair idea of the Club arrangements for the six weeks starting 23rd October. No surprises there!
  3. Midnight was my first sight of this puzzle. Mostly straightforward though I got stuck for a while in the SW corner by not knowing OGHAM or the required meaning of MAMBO and puzzling over DEAD MARCH like the blogger. Still don’t get it. Having finally cracked that I realised I had left 11ac to come back to and that delayed me further. Wondered too about ‘every evening / daily’ at 8dn.

    Edited at 2013-10-30 01:21 am (UTC)

  4. 21:57 … very slow to catch onto CLANGER and GLADSTONE but otherwise pretty plain sailing.

    I think the idea behind a ‘dead March’ is simply that of a late spring.

    1. I’d thought along the lines of the “dead of winter” being extended into the supposed first month of spring (N. Hemisphere).
  5. Not best pleased, 1 error.

    ESRA instead of EZRA.

    mea culpa! Should have double checked.

  6. Thought this was the hardest of the 3, taking 15-16 minutes on the day, a couple of which were spent pondering why DEAD MARCH was correct as well as debating the alternative mamoo for the unknown MAMBO. EMBER DAYS only vaguely familiar but not many other options from the wordplay.
  7. Having got as far as I could with puzzle 1, I turned to puzzle 2, looked at a couple of clues and thought ‘I know who set this, you can do his puzzles, pull yourself together and get on’ which I did, helped greatly by actually remembering which way round the U and the O go in languor and knowing Ogham. Puzzle 3 took a while to sort out too so for me this was the easiest of the three on the day.

    So thank you Mr M!

  8. Wouldn’t have guessed this was a Championship puzzle unless I’d been told. Found it all straightforward except for the cd Ran Out of Petrol (cds being a weakness of mine) which took a long time to get (and was my penultimate one in).
    Sadly, one error though – misspelling Donne as Dunne.
    FOI hedges ones bets and LOI steadily.
    Needed the wordplay to get casbah and rouge et noir and had a lucky guess with ogham.
    Thought bin and bee-eaters were particularly good.
  9. I usually really like these Championship puzzles but this one doesn’t appeal.

    With two poets and dear old Tess but no scientific content it lacks balance. Is 14A even cryptic? I agree with Jerry that the definition in 17A is not quite right and what on earth is 17A all about?

    25 somewhat unsatisfactory minutes to solve

  10. Didn’t know you weren’t competing Jerry – were you marking? If so I hope you didn’t see my lamentable effort. Didn’t stop to parse so having put “Algarve” in 2d meant I couldn’t get the first word in 14a (“ded” out of petrol?) and didn’t have time to go back and fix.

    As for the SW corner, better draw a veil. The principal problem was that “shedload” absolutely refused to show itself and, like others, I only knew “mambo” as a dance.

    As Jerry says, this was quite doable under home conditions but a shedload of trouble on the day of.

    Edited at 2013-10-30 09:46 am (UTC)

  11. Done in too by SW; otherwise straightforward enough. Can’t say I like 14 but it does work in its way. Thanks for the EP recollection mct – the cartoon, which I probably saw but have forgotten, sounds a tasteless one. But it brings back the days when with EP and TSE around the literary world had a bang about it, rather than a whimper.
  12. Not sure what my time on the day was, but I think if it was possible to tot up the chunks of time I spent as I jumped from one puzzle to another, overall this would be the one I found easiest (possibly that should be “least tough”). My major stumbling block was in the NW, where I couldn’t get a grip on the ROUGE ET NOIR anagram, clearly having total brain freeze when it came to spotting that the possible words might not be English. Elsewhere I had a similar panic when it came to spelling LANGUOR, which looks much more natural as LANGOUR to my eye.
  13. When I handed in my solutions on the day I had a strong feeling I’d have made a mistake, because there were several clues where I was unsure of my answers. However 24ac and 22dn in this puzzle were not among them. Unknown terms, sure, but with such crystal clear wordplay I entered OPHOD and MADRO with confidence.
    Ah well, there’s always next year.
  14. I solved this in the Town of Ramsgate pub on the day and it occurred to me at the time that the puzzle contained a lot of obscure answers. However, reading this blog and reviewing the clues and answers, I’m not sure why I thought that. There were one or two obscurities but nothing outrageous.
    I think a “wintry” March would be “dead” actually. A windy one would be a sign we were on our way to spring, surely.

    RR

  15. 16 mins so definitely on the setter’s wavelength, but I’m not sure I would have completed it anywhere near as quickly under competition conditions.

    Like Sue I was unsure about the spelling of LANGUOR and waited until I’d solved 12ac before I completed the answer. In the SW I knew OGHAM from the definition so was never tempted by “ophod”, and although I didn’t know the required meaning of MAMBO it was far more likely than “mamoo”. ROUGE ET NOIR was my LOI.

  16. Solvers of a certain age (ie mine) will recall a series of children’s books in the 50s that have long since disappeared from the shelves as being grossly racially offensive. One of them had MAMBO in the title so that went straight in. OGHAM seems to pop up pretty regularly.
  17. Having solved all but 1 clue in the first prelim in 12-13 mins I moved on to this one and found it a lot chewier. I probably had half a dozen gaps when I moved on the puzzle 3 about 17-18 mins later.

    When I came back to it with very little of the hour left I fell into the ophod/madro “trap” which eventually left me in 34th place with all puzzles done in the hour (just) and 2 errors.

    I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered both madra and ophod in Wodehouse…

    Most aunts have the power to make a nephew squirm from a range of about twenty paces I’d say. Aunt Agatha, being a madra, or voodoo woman if you will, can cause this particular n to s from fully fifty miles.
    ~~~~
    “I can’t read this Jeeves, it’s all squiggly,” I complained, brushing toast crumbs from my dressing gown.
    “Indeed Sir, it has been written in ophod”
    “Oh what Jeeves?”
    “Ophod, sir, an ancient Celtic script.”
    “Celtic eh? What the devil is that wretch Spode up to, passing secret messages written in ancient scripts? Tell me Jeeves, can you read ophod?”
    “Regrettably not, sir, but I know a man who can.”
    “Then what are you waiting for Jeeves? Bring this ophod-reader to me at once…

  18. Around 14 minutes on the day I think, middle difficulty of the three for me, which were very approximately 12, 14 and 16 minutes, so not a lot in it really. The only one I put in with some hesitation was MAMBO as I didn’t know that meaning. I’d never heard of the card game either but that was pretty obvious once a couple of checkers were in.

    I was surprised Jerry thought the second prelim was harder though – I timed myself on them when I finally had a chance to look at them a couple of days later, and finished all three in just over half an hour. Mind you, most of the “big guns” were in that half, so I probably wouldn’t have qualified anyway.

    1. I thought the second prelim was harder when I solved it at the kitchen table. I tackled the three final puzzles under ‘test’ conditions last Sunday – well I set the timer for an hour and the cat glared at me because I was sitting in what he considers his chair! All I can say is that I would never have got anywhere near finishing any of the final three and am in awe of those who did.
  19. I solved most of the top half in ten minutes, then spent another thirty filling in the rest, ending with SHEDLOAD after getting the O from the penultimate solve, OGHAM. 15dn also caused problems; I didn’t know the phrase and tried to make SOBER DAYS fit the wordplay.

    I don’t agree with the grumbles about this puzzle. I think 14 is fine as a CD, and to hedge ones bets does reduce the chances of losing overall. And I fail to see why the absence of a scientist should mean the puzzle lacks balance. On top of the literary figures there’s a politician and a musician; looks balanced enough to me.

  20. I started off at a fair clip, solving both the long across clues quickly (I endorse Jimbo’s doubts about whether 14A is truly cryptic), but then got seriously mired in the SW corner where 24A (OGHAM) and 18D caused me, well, a SHEDLOAD of difficulty.

    I agree with others in questioning whether DEAD MARCH really conveys the sense of “a prolonged wintry period”. For a long time I had SLOW MARCH, which seems to me to fit the meaning rather better.

    1. But wouldn’t a “slow” March be one that was a bit dull and seemed to drag rather than a wintry one? I could see “slow” as in “late” but that wouldn’t make any sense unless it was a Groundhog Day scenario 🙂
      1. Ah, that reminds me – I put in SLOW MARCH at first too, then made the same mistake when solving it again this morning! In fact now I think about it, that held me up for a while first time round as SHEDLOAD was one of my last ones in.
      2. My reading of “a prolonged wintry period” was that March was the “wintry period” (the last month of winter) and that “prolonged” implied a March that seems to go on longer than usual, hence my initial choice of “slow”, which seemed to me to fit the sense perfectly but not, alas, as it turned out, the cross-checkers. A “dead march” is, of course, also a slow march, so the idea of slowness (“prolonged”) is conveyed in both phrases.
  21. March is when plants spring to life, so a ‘dead march’ would be a prolonged winter. That’s how I saw it anyway.
    1. Fresh from Mao down below, I scribbled in LONG MARCH (prolonged wintry period) but changed it as a) it did not fit the clue and b) it did not fit most of the others either.
  22. Not convinced by any of the above explanations for DEAD MARCH, but with a couple of hopefuls and once Languor was re-spelt correctly I finished in 21 minutes, LOI STEADILY for some reason. CoD 25ac.
  23. A pleasant solve, with the two poets going in first of all, eventually being held up in the SW. Wanted SHEDLOAD to be thousand, which didn’t help. Didn’t like the clueing of DEAD MARCH, and was irritated with 14ac – the sort of solution which could be anything until a few checkers go in – not at all the function of the “long” solutions. And perhaps someone should take the setter to one side and tell him (her?), politely and sensitively, that a DRAGOON is not “quite” a cavalryman – a bit cavalier with the definition, maybe?

    LOI OGHAM: although I’d dredged the word up out of dim memory, I couldn’t parse it (which, for me, means I didn’t finish). Gam=school? Always thought it was leg. Conversely school=pod. So pod=gam! Never mind, learnt something new …

  24. 37 minutes, so hardly in the winning zone. And had to double check on OGHAM, which is only in one of my dictionaries (Chambers). Don’t have a problem with DEAD MARCH or HEDGE ONE’S BETS.
  25. I was quite pleased to complete this in 35m. I had the impression that it was taking me far longer. I’d never head of the card game but it was quite easy to work out, given the anagram material and the checkers. 12a was a reminder of my college days when Kingsley Amis taught me all I don’t know about Ezra Pound. Ann
  26. 32m all correct! Yippee at last. However had I noticed it was a championship puzzle before rather than after I may well have psyched myself out of it. I was helped by knowing the unusual answers for once. On DEAD MARCH I was reminded of Edward Thomas’s fine poem March which includes the line (I think) Spring is here but winter has not gone. Almost a motto for life these days!
  27. All correct, but just failed to creep under the half-hour bar, but I submit in mitigation that I had at least half an ear on the radio commentary on extra time and the penalty shoutout in the Tottenham/Hull match, which has just ended.
    George Clements
  28. …until I even filled in my second answer. After that it was all downhill. If it weren’t for two particularly amusing patients tonight (milk bottle and stapler – don’t ask) I’d be getting quite depressed. A tip for anyone wanting fast service in A&E: the greater the novelty of your injury, the greater the number of doctors who will come to look at it.

    Since when has “ran out of petrol” been a sufficiently distinctive phrase to warrant being in a crossword? Should we also expect to see “made some toast”, “bought new socks” or “fed the goldfish” in future crosswords? Or is “Ran out of petrol” the title of an obscure Ealing comedy or something? Still, these are all rhetorical questions, and there’s no point in them, is there?

    Spent a lot of time on 9ac, which I was convinced was “ARCHETYPE”: R(oyal) A(rtillery) ‘revolutionary’ = AR; CHE (Guevara) also a revolutionary soldier; then “TYPE” for “kind”. I actually prefer my answer and parsing (especially the two “revolutionary soldiers”), but it made a mess of the NW corner.

    “Ogham” was a bit of a guess, and was dredged up from the bowels of my memory only when I’d got all the crossing words in. Actually, I guess memory has no bowels, and one can’t dredge from bowels anyway, which explains why it took so long. “Ember days” was new to me, but inevitable.

    21ac (“dead march”) was also new to me, and I fretted over it because I didn’t (and still don’t) see how “dead” can mean “prolonged” by any stretch of the imagination. I have encountered many people who were decidedly the former, and who were definitely not the latter.

    Tonight’s game of “slip all the answers into conversation” has defeated me (it now being past midnight). You would be astonished at how little the word “bee-eaters” finds a natural use late at night in A&E. I did tell one patient that their stomach upset was probably just a touch of viral algeria, but “casbah”, “ogham” and “drachma” were stubbornly unslipinnable.

    1. You must have been on the ether – or whatever they use for anaesthetics these days. “You would-bee-eaters of Vegemite, beware! Clinically proven to have no taste, don’t you know.” Useful the next time you have a back-packer from Earls Court on the gurney.
  29. I am out of place here (check the date – it’s been a week) but I have never managed to get so far in a Times cryptic. All but 5 clues done, though I had DANTE instead of DONNE (and could not see any explanation, but now I do).

    I suspected SHEDLOAD but had no explanation … and a few others without a complete explanation.

    I am ashamed that as an ex-beekeeper I missed BEE EATERS. 🙁

    I should have know OGHAM. But GAM? A new word learned.

    1. Welcome to this blog… if you take time to check here all the answers you didn’t get, you will be completing the crossword in no time..

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