Times Crossword 25,643 – the end of the beginning..

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’m out partying this evening, so I fervently hope that this is the last of the Championship puzzles, the third from the second preliminary, as I will be in no great shape to start from scratch if it isn’t.
It is also, I calculate, my 100th blog for this august website, in this 100th year of the crossword.

I solved this on the day, though sadly about half of it on the train home.. it’s a very fine crossword, with some extremely neat clues, but I solved a *lot* of crosswords that day, and I can no longer remember how hard I found this particular one..

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 cat burglar – visiting city = AT BURG, in (County) CLARe
6 ibis – I + BIS. Bis is a musical direction, from the Latin for twice
9 Ramadan – nothing = NADA + wreck = MAR, all rev. Ramadan is the eleventh month of the Muslim calendar, and it is a moveable fast, ha ha, since the Muslim year is 11 days shorter than everyone elses.. starts near the end of June in 2014
10 Matisse – sign of affection = kISS, in partner = MATE.
12 barramundi – BARRA, + N in MUD, + Island. An Australian fish like a seabass. Barramundi is an Aboriginal word, originally for an entirely different fish, which according to Wikipedia was “appropriated for marketing reasons during the 1980s, a decision which has aided in raising the profile of this fish significantly”
13 eft – lEFT. A juvenile newt. Interestingly, for etymologists, eft used to be a synonym for newt and one word apparently morphed into the other: eft/ewt = an ewt = a newt..
15 height – I struggled a bit to parse this one, but I think it is a cryptic reference to h8, which in algebraic chess notation is the home of the black king’s rook. Like the choleric colonel who posted here once or twice, I shudder every time I see “castle” used this way. That apart it’s a clever idea, but does the clue quite work? Discuss..
16 mantilla – worker = ANT in factory = MILL + A. This is Georgette Heyer territory, without a doubt..
18 potation – I in something in vodka = POTATO + N. Vodka can be and has been made from all sorts of ingredients, some toxic, but 99% of it is grain based these days..
20 knight – bacK + faller = NIGHT, the def. being “gallant.”
23 odd – dd. One is odd, ie not even..
24 barbershop – cd.
26 loosest – LOOS + *(SET)
27 Groucho – crab = GROUCH + O. Not Karl, the other one..
28 dust – Dirt Unfortunately Spread Thinly
29 escritoire – *(I RESTORE + nICe)

Down
1 card – Right in knave = CAD
2 timpani – IN + A + P(M)IT, all rev., the M being from platforM.
3 under the table – dd. What I might be when this blog appears
4 genome – hidden rev., rather successfully I thought, in systEM ONE Gathers
5 Armenian – folk = MEN in spring baby = ARIAN, ie “born under Aries”. These days, it surely should be ARPEOPLEIAN
7 Boswell – literary work = BOok + great = SWELL. A very neat clue for a biographer who surely needs no introduction
8 sweatpants – *(WASTE) + PANTS. This use of the word pants, I do enjoy, unlike the garment in question
11 twist and shout – a dd, the clever point being that thousand is *(AND SHOUT). I can’t resist a link to a famous performance. They don’t make ’em like that any more. And just think of the fuss if Queen, Oasis etc were asked to perform on a stage set like that one! Still, the Queen Mum seemed to enjoy it..
14 shop-soiled – “jump aboard” = HOP in SS, + drunk = OILED. cf 3dn.
17 Socrates – such = SO + a load of beer = CRATES, for everyone’s favourite philosopher
19 tedious – *(OUTSIDE). Not the most difficult, but *what* a lovely surface! Top class.
21 gnocchi – line of dancers = CONGa, rev., + vital energy = CHI. No doubt Arians have it, both being equally tosh
22 Geiger – G + EIGER, the “White Spider” whose North face was first climbed by one of my heroes, Heinrich Harrer, making Hans Geiger, today’s Jimbo-pleaser. Interestingly Harrer and Geiger were contemporaries, and both had a rather iffy relationship with the nazi party at times.
25 sole – dd.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

56 comments on “Times Crossword 25,643 – the end of the beginning..”

  1. So the hardest of the prelims I found. (Z8: thus showing that the second prelims weren’t any easier than the first on the whole).

    Hardest corner was the SE where I was sure that 21dn would be GELATIN since we have ELAN and IT. Not to be! Only the anagram at 29ac saved the corner … and SOLE was my last in!

    However, SOCRATES went straight in. Our local has beer crates stacked up outside labelled WA-CRATES. Great name for an Australian philosopher? They occasionally serve BARRAMUNDI which (when genuine) is indeed all it’s cracked up to be.

    Thanks to Jerry for the TWIST AND SHOUT link. One of my favourite bass lines … along with “I Saw Her Standing There”. Also to Jerry: hope your blog for 8dn doesn’t mean the party was so good you’re not wearing any pants!

  2. I expect that I am missing the obvious, but what is the anagrind in 29ac?

    EDIT – On review I assume it is simply “off”

    Edited at 2013-11-27 12:50 am (UTC)

  3. I had far too many answers going in without understanding why, for my liking. The SE proved the most troublesome. I got there eventually but past the hour for the second time this week, and it’s only Wednesday! At this rate my Friday puzzle ought to be a write-in.
  4. 52 minutes, having warmed up a few jet-lagged hours earlier with yesterday’s, which was a right b*stard. [W]ENT for ‘ent’ instead of ‘eft’ at 13, thus creating a further alternative for the etym-/entom- ologists. Some of the wordplay (eg 1ac and 11dn) was way above my frazzled brain.
      1. You’re acting as Warner to my Trott 🙂

        Read your comments earlier about the ‘banter’ and have to agree. The stump microphone sounds shouldn’t be available to the public, in the same way that the words of the refs in the English Premier League are not available. A man should be free to make his oaths in private in the sporting arena.

        The ‘Barmy Army’ are a complete embarrassment. Pleased that Johnson exacted a measure of revenge.

        1. It’s a fine line. I don’t tolerate it (the “banter”) in the kids I coach, but Test cricket is a physically hard game, sometimes brutal. Plus there’s plenty of time for chat, and not all of it is going to be gracious or poetic.

          And don’t be embarrassed about the Barmy Army. They’re usually good-natured, and they spend truckloads of money. But they do know how to get under our skin. “Long to reign over YOU!!!” winds me up every time!

          Edited at 2013-11-27 03:24 am (UTC)

          1. Interesting when I did my ACC II umpiring course run by CA, their commentary on the Spirit of Cricket changed ‘abuse’ to ‘vilification’. Surreptitiously too – a bit naughty, I reckon.

            As an old fuddy-duddy and 36-year member of MCC, the football chants, with accompanying finger pointing gestures, of the BA – allied to the personal nature of some of the ‘chants’ – has no place in my idea of support. Singing per se is fine. Sure no one minds the cash, but I think most Aussies feel something like contempt for them.

  5. Originally had ENT for 13ac (scurried off = WENT). Then remembered that an ent was a fictional talking tree, probably not amphibian, and certainly not correct!
    LOI and COD to TEDIOUS.
  6. Channel 9 are considering offering the stump mic to subscribers as a premium extra. Be more interesting than their commentary! I like an Artful Sledge myself.
    1. If you really want to hear some interesting stuff, put a mike into the front row of a scrum of my era! I dont know how widespread it is but if you go to Twickenham, you can sign up to hear everything that the referee says
  7. 18:15 .. Another slow start but as soon as I got UNDER THE TABLE everything started to make sense (insert own joke; I’m too tired).

    Last in MANTILLA. Favourite definitely TWIST AND SHOUT. Great link, Jerry. And well done on reaching the ton. A thousand thanks.

  8. This one took me about 15 minutes.
    Congratulations and thanks to Jerry for the 100th blog.
    Off to see what everyone else thought of yesterday’s beast now.

    Edited at 2013-11-28 12:15 am (UTC)

  9. As Mctext says – I told you this was tricky. Took me about 15 minutes to do it fresh this morning, and the only reason it wasn’t longer was because I actually remembered the ones in the SE. On the day, those went in in the final frantic seconds as I just beat the clock.
    It was pleasant to savour it more, as there’s some very neat cluing here: TWIST AND SHOUT is probably my favourite as a “think up a clue”, but H8 gives it a very close run for its money: even seeing there was only one possible word left a lot of head scratching to do. Likewise BOSWELL and ARMENIAN, the latter I’ve only really understood today
  10. Welcome to the ton-up club Jerry. What an excellent puzzle to get on your 100th entry.

    This I think must have been difficult under exam conditions. I really enjoyed doing it relaxed at home where I could fully appreciate the quality of each clue and the overall balance of the puzzle.

    I think 15A works Jerry. Like you I prefer “rook” but “castle” triggers “chess” for me and h8 is I hope reasonably common knowledge. Then “how far up” H.I.H. can’t really be much else!

    1. They live pretty high up … in their nests. So “Rook’s” in the clue would have been fine I reckon, and equally misleading.

      And thanks for the prompt … forgot to congratulate my fellow Wednesday blogger. So I do here: Well done Jerry!

      Edited at 2013-11-27 10:21 am (UTC)

  11. 19 mins but with one wrong so this would have had me on the day. My patchy scientific knowledge was shown up with “Berger” at 22dn. I wasn’t happy with it but I had convinced myself that “berg” was the mountain and didn’t consider an alternative.
  12. Good puzzle and by some distance the toughest of the three for me. On the bald timings, I’d probably have done better to have chosen the second session on Finals day, but being realistic, I don’t think you can fairly compare a) three puzzles solved at the same time and under pressure, and b) three puzzles solved one at at time over a couple of weeks, while sitting at the kitchen table with a nice cup of tea.

    Anyway, 17:26, and particularly liked TWIST AND SHOUT.

    1. And of course even if they are easier all the other contestants (including in this case Magoo) have the same puzzles!
      1. Absolutely. I am not going to fool myself that I would have finished any higher up the standings, and you can drive yourself mad trying to work out if you’ve picked the right session (and whether this means you should pick the other one next time round). It’s like choosing a check-out in the supermarket: always the wrong one, apparently…
  13. Mazel Tov Jerry. This one would have dished me on the day because I didn’t know the fish (it’s the name of a well-known bar in downtown NYC) and panic would have set in. So I agree this evens up the score with the first prelims. Sitting at home, just as Tim says, I copped 19.51. Wondering if this was an Anax.
  14. Enjoyable puzzle, one or two written in without fully parsing so thanks jerrywh and congrats on the ton. 25 minutes with POTATION put in from cryptic as a guess.
    Re sledging, I think that rude words are water off a duck’s back but the finger pointing was a step too far. And I thought it was a bad idea to sledge a top fast bowler batting, when you’ve got to face him in the next innings?

    Edited at 2013-11-27 11:15 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks..

      like footballers, cricketers are not usually the product of finishing schools, and not always the sharpest knives in the box either… look at Peterson for example. I have no great expectations as regards their politeness or their good sense so am seldom disappointed.
      One of my rules for life is never to upset a hairdresser or a chef until after they have finished.. this idea could be extended to fast bowlers too.

      1. sorry that was me.. livejournal has developed a habit of signing me out that ticking the little box doesn’t seem to have cured
  15. Thought this was comfortably the hardest of the second prelim puzzles, with the long answers taking a while to yield (LOI UNDER THE TABLE). In total time, the first prelim took about 25% longer for me than the second, with similar comparison caveats as mentioned by topicaltim above. An additional “problem” at the Championships is having to fill in the grid by hand, which (for me) is not only much slower than typing but requires regular re-writes due to my normal scrawl making letters like O and D, say, look indistinguishable.
    1. I think at the time there was speculation that Magoo vanished from the Club leaderboard for a week before the championships for precisely this reason, and might well have gone off to practise the unfamiliar act of filling in the grid by hand. I imagine that if it survives, the competition will inevitably end up being solved on iPads, but not just yet…
      1. Interesting thought. I am far faster on the handwritten stuff than on the iPad that use now that I no longer commute. Is it a rule for instance that hand-written solutions have to be in capital letters? In the days of the M C C Rich Championships, I think that the answer just had to be clear.
        1. I can’t remember exactly how David Levy phrased it in his preamble, but that is still the gist of it – write in whatever style you like and with any implement, as long as the result is clear to the person marking it.
          1. bigtone – After a couple of years of solving online, I’m certain I’m much faster on paper. By chance, just yesterday I finally sat down to one of the 2012 Championship prelim booklets (which I’d been given and was saving for a rainy day). I found it a joy to be solving on paper again. The only reason I don’t normally do it is that computer printers, without exception, drive me absolutely nuts. But give me a pre-printed paper crossword any day. I somehow feel cognitively bullied by onscreen puzzles.
            1. As a hangover from my commuting days when I used to buy the paper each working day at the station, I get The Times delivered on Saturdays. The pleasure of filling in by hand is offset by the difficulty of some recent Saturday puzzles. Printing on iPad is easy-peasy but I tend to restrict myself to Friday’s Deadly Killer Sudoku.

              Edited at 2013-11-27 04:52 pm (UTC)

  16. Nice one today, with much to enjoy, slipped in under the half-hour. A reasonably steady NE, SE, NW, SW progression, held up for far too long at the end by the TEDIOUS POTATION crosser. I suppose SWEATPANTS are what we used to call track suit bottoms, an unnecessary and ugly word. But BARBERSHOP made me smile, a flash of the old Times clueing, and TWIST AND SHOUT was neat. Thank You, setter.
  17. . . . with many just written in without understanding the parsing, so thanks Jerry. I liked 15A.
  18. Just over 30min, but must confess to checking a few in the BRB.
    LOI was 5dn after eventually getting (but failing to parse) 1ac – I’d being trying to make something of ROMANIAN, which is wrong geographically, but ethnically possible.
  19. Just under 15 mins in the friendly surroundings of my kitchen. It was the hardest of the 3 Second Preliminary Puzzles.

    Even after factoring in the stress factor involved in solving on the day versus solving at home, I think the first prelim puzzles were still the more difficult set.

    I prefer to solve my crosswords ‘by hand’ as I am a touch typist who has no idea where the individual letters are on a keyboard.

    Edited at 2013-11-27 12:28 pm (UTC)

    1. I know what you mean. At a quiz recently one of the questions required a knowledge of where all the letters on a keyboard are. I’m a touch typist too and I found it surprisingly difficult to work out. I must have looked very odd typing out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on an imaginary keyboard with my eyes closed, over and over again.
      But for online solving I just touch-type, so I don’t have this problem.
      1. On some of those new fangled devices, the “keyboards” are far too small for my fingers to fit onto the keys in a way that enables me to type.

        It is useful to remember for quiz purposes that the only longest word that can be typed using only the top row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard is TYPEWRITER.

        1. Yes, fair enough. I type on an iPad in the morning and I’m quite a lot slower than on paper. If I solve online I use a PC so I can type properly: I think that’s my quickest medium.
          Thanks for the tip!
          1. I type ‘properly’ on an iPad with a Zagg case and keyboard. Does not help me to get things right though! Remember that if anyone tells you that ‘bookkeeper’ is the word with the most double consecutive letters, there is always subbookkeeper.
          2. When in the UK recently armed with iPad I was able to do the Guardian but not the Times. I think we’ve had this conversation before, but could you advise what software (‘function’, whatever) I need to get in order to be able to solve the Times online on iPad?
            1. I solve it on the Times app. The only way I know (thanks to sotira) to solve it online with an ipad is to use the Puffin browser, but I found it too fiddly.

              Edited at 2013-11-27 06:43 pm (UTC)

            2. I use The Times app. Yes it costs,but then again I do not have to buy the paper, which I read anyway. Don’t immediately know whether they give you a few free days
            3. At present, using android, I can do the crossword on the Times app, but can’t “submit” to find out whether I’m all correct or indeed register a time. Using the crossword club through chrome, I can’t enter a thing, and my time ticks away regardless. The nice man demonstrating upcoming technology at the TNCC said the new version in the Times app will allow submission for competition (or just for checking), plus timing, presumably ahead of ditching the crossword club. I can hardly wait.
  20. I don’t have a time to post, but I didn’t find it easy at all. I had DODO instead of IBIS for a long time which made the NE quarter more difficult than it needed to be, but my LOI was actually the fairly simple CARD. Clearly, it took me a long time to see it. I wouldn’t be a threat at a championship competition. Regards to all.
    1. Happy turkey day Kevin! I see the Hudson Valley had a bit of snow yesterday – here in the city it’s just rainy, windy and nasty. I don’t think the big Macy’s balloons will be flying tomorrow. P.S. I didn’t pose much of a threat at this year’s championship either.
  21. Well over the 60m today andike others had problems parsing quite a lot of answers -GNOCCHI and RAMADAN for example which were therefore simple guesses! Many thanks to the blogger and for the Beatles link. That raised a smile!
  22. No precise time today but definitely over the hour with the SE posing most problems. General knowledge was again no problem so it must be my logic circuits that are failing.
  23. Timed at 34m 35s but, incredibly, didn’t see ‘odd’ at 23a and put in ‘old’ on the basis that ‘old ones are the best ones’. Still, first Times error for a few days, which is more than I can say for my Grauniad efforts recently.
  24. Under 15 minutes, since I solved it while I was hooked up to a muscle stimulator thing for 15 minutes. Didn’t get the wordplay for GEIGER or HEIGHT but didn’t think they could be anything else.
    1. And Happy Turkey day to you George. How is your arm doing? I did a number on my wrist a while back and it still tells me about it, so I hope you are in better form than I was.
  25. Unlike most others I found this on the easier side of average, 23m 30s with everything fully parsed during the solve. SE was last to fall, GEIGER/ESCRITOIRE/GNOCCHI/SOLE in that order, Geiger from an alphabet trawl (wasn’t convinced it started with G) then the crossers gave the rest.
    Having studied lots of physics & maths at uni I felt confident of recognising a physicist; it’s composers, writers, artists, and religion that put the Fear of God into me while solving. Yesterday DNF for instance, gave up and went for aids after about 40 minutes with about 10 unfilled.
    Rob
  26. Just doing Book 21. With 4 correct crossers (T I N O), l was quite pleased to get 12d THIRD ONE ALONG — this being the third letter of “number”, which is M, which is “thousand”. That really messed me up the rest of the crossers!
  27. You might have the wrong crossword, since this one has no 12dn..

    Still thank you for reminding me of my glory days 🙂

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