Times Crossword 25,702 – sporting no undies?

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 24 minutes, once again with one wrong, this time a simple typo. I solve on paper and then tend to be a bit 8dn filling in the online grid, leaving me 27ac when errors flag up. This crossword seemed otherwise quite straightforward, with few obscurities other than our Victorian composer and I suppose the African soldier, both gettable. It makes me laugh that someone like Stainer is considered acceptable crossword fodder but JJ Thomson, his far more eminent contemporary, probably would not be

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 role player – *(REP REALLY + Othello)
6 pish – skiP IS Humming. Often (but not that often, nowadays) seen with tush, a word that changes its meaning as it crosses the Atlantic
9 propertied – really = PROPER + TIED = “owned by brewery.” This seems OK, as one can say “He was proper drunk” or similar, though I wouldn’t personally
10 lama – Leave After Mass Actually
12 constabularies – no criminals = CONS TABU + Large + ARIES, the zodiac sign of the ram
14 apache – A PAC(K) + HE
15 begetter – a jocular cd, I suppose. Be an acquirer.. It might work if English is your father’s second language
17 escargot – somE lorrieS + CARGO + Tons
19 Edison – IS in E DON. Today’s token science element, though he was more of an engineer really
22 at ones disposal – *(EAST POLAND IS SO)
24 nude – No UnDiEs. A good spot by the setter, if that is original.. my cod I think
25 Rawalpindi – W + ALPIN(E) in *(RAID). It was news to me that Rawalpindi is ancient, but almost any fact about the place would be news to me
26 ring – doctor = RIG containing Neuralgia
27 bewildered – (Oscar) WILDE in BE RED

Down
1 ripe – (T)RIPE, a totally inedible part of a cow, that my grandmother liked
2 Leonora – ON (working) + OR (men) in LEA, a field
3 press charges – Press = newspapers + CHARGES = costs
4 astray – A + STreet + RAY (of light)
5 executed – senior manager = EXEC + UTE + Departs. Ute turns up quite regularly
7 imagist – MAGI in IST. Imagists were a group of early c20 poets
8 headstrong – *(THE DRAGON’S)
11 eavesdropped – cd.. the eaves dropped, geddit?
13 wage earner – With + AGE + (L)EARNER
16 cold wave – warning = CAVE containing OLD W. Not a hair treatment I am familiar with, Collins says “a permanent wave made by chemical agents applied at normal temperatures”
18 Croydon – colleague = CRONY + DO, with the N dropping to the end. I won’t give my opinion of Croydon, for fear of causing offence… it’s gave birth to Tracy Emin, I will say no more. To be fair there are quite a lot of famous Croydonians
20 Stainer – cd. Presumably a reference to John Stainer
21 askari – ASK + *(AIR). I thought Askaris were policemen, but apparently they were soldiers also
23 find – FI(E)ND

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

45 comments on “Times Crossword 25,702 – sporting no undies?”

  1. Glad I didn’t have to blog. And sorry to have missed yesterday’s which I really liked. Though I took the puzzle from the paper and wrangled the horrible sans-serif font (where “rn” looks like “m” and vice versa). They’ll have to go back to a Times font when the Club dies its death, methinks.

    Today … the clues for CONSTABULARIES and ESCARGOT* are very good indeed. But had no idea about the composer or the soldier.

    * Though I was sure this had to end in TTES.

    Personal COD though to 26ac. I do actually have to do this from time to time! As in:
    http://www.mayfieldclinic.com/PE-TRIN.htm#.UvGXv3lxIvm

    Edited at 2014-02-05 01:51 am (UTC)

  2. I enjoyed this one especially PROPERTIED and NUDE.

    I took 1dn to be [g]RIPE (beef).

    I got bogged down in the SE corner by having (Dave) STAMPER as the composer until I eventually deciphered RAWALPINDI.

  3. Like yesterday’s puzzle for me this was a straightforward and orderly solve for the most part but then I hit a wall, this time in the SE corner, where the proximity of several unfamiliar words did for me and knocked my solving time off the scale.

    I didn’t know COLD WAVE (and I was fixated on FORE being the word of warning) or ASKARI. STAINER wouldn’t come to mind although I know him well. I didn’t know RAWALPINDI was ancient, and anyway I needed every checker in place before I thought of it. Another fixation, that the second word at 22 was OPEN, hindered the resolution of the anagram.

    Up to that point I had been enjoying it.

  4. With panic setting in as my last minute started to disappear, I finally decided it had to be STAINER (LOI), who I’d never heard of (nor of J.J. Thomson; but one can hardly blame a setter for preferring the former). ‘Ancient’ threw me off, too–persisted in looking for a -polis. Thrown off by ‘Science master’ as well, and –all in all, a good deal of deception — by ‘name-dropping’, thinking of deletion not movement. It occurred to me to wonder how long ASKARI will continue in the regular cryptics before moving on to Mephisto.
  5. 22:58 .. phew! Became thoroughly becalmed in the SE before finally putting the fiendish RAWALPINDI together. Really only knew the name from falling asleep to Test Match Special on cold winter nights in England.

    Some very nice things in this one. I’ve always like ‘fiend’ for ‘addict’. I believe the memorable ‘tobacco fiend’ was an early term for a heavy smoker, back when we had an empire and the colonials weren’t allowed to win cricket matches. Where did it all go wrong?

    COD .. RAWALPINDI, because:
    a) it’s a beautiful name
    b) I spelt it right

  6. I enjoyed this one!
    Then found I, like Jerry, had also made a typo (check letter).

    I worked 1D on tripe, but can see that both tripe and gripe comply, assuming the “eating” only refers to the answer rather than qualifying the beef as edible.

    There are still plenty of butchers selling tripe in Manchester, some actually specialize in it, and some also sell tripe from the stomachs of sheep and pigs.
    Recipes abound for it.
    But it looks revolting, and (fortunately) I’ve never had to eat it in the 30 years I’ve lived up here.

    1. I don’t know if they still exist but there used to be a chain of UCP (United Cattle Products) Tripe Shops around the North-West; walking past the window as a kid was not my favourite experience.

      Anyway, at 1d I also took ‘beef’ in the sense of Gripe….don’t suppose it matters in the end!

      Edited at 2014-02-05 08:55 am (UTC)

  7. Similar to previous commenters, didn’t know COLD WAVE or STAINER (tried STAMPER for a while), got RAWALPINDI thanks to cricket and thought NUDE was pretty good.

    Thanks setter, thanks blogger.

  8. I had intended to mention 1dn in my original comments but forgot and anyway by the time I posted it two people had already come up with (g)RIPE which was my parsing too so I let things ride.

    However I see now that (t)RIPE is gaining some support here so I’ve come back after all to have my twopenny’s worth.

    Despite its source there is no way that tripe is ‘beef’. Beef is flesh, flesh is not internal organs or parts thereof. Try substituting tripe when selling ‘beef’ and Trading Standards will come a-calling before the day is out!

    Edited at 2014-02-05 07:21 am (UTC)

    1. I am sure the setter intended (g) ripe.. and I did see that at the time, Jack. But then I thought of tripe, all the old memories came flooding back, and I forgot about the gripe parsing.
    2. Hi Jack,
      I know that one of the butchers in Ashton-under-Lyne Indoor Market sells
      Beef Tripe
      Ox Tripe
      Sheep Tripe
      Pig Tripe
      Next time I’m there, I’ll ask him what the difference is between Beef & Ox, and whether he’s ever had hassle from Trading Standards.
      Keef
      1. Hi, Keef,

        I’m not disputing that ‘beef tripe’ exists as an expression in order identify the animal it comes from (as opposed to, say, sheep), however the product is still tripe, not beef.

  9. This will go down as one of the very delightful Times puzzles. As I solved it this morning, I was laughing out loud between every other clue that SWMBO must have thought I was going bonkers. Absolutely, entertaining. Thank you, setter, whoever you are
  10. 25m. Tricky, but I liked this one a lot. Very little went in without full understanding, which I think of as a mark of a really good puzzle. I didn’t know the hairdo, the soldier or the composer but they were all perfectly gettable.
    I was an auditor many years ago and I had to go to CROYDON for one of my clients, which felt like adding insult to injury.
  11. Forgot to set start time, but must have been somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes. Fine crossword, dear Setter, with many clues finely balanced between devious definition and workable wordplay – my favourite during solve being CONSTABULARIES, though I concede the merits of others’ choices.
    Of course, I’ve sung Stainer – his Crucifixion is a staple of churchy choral societies at Easter. “Sir Thomas Beecham, what do you think of Stainer’s Crucifixion?” “I’m all for it”.
    LOI FIND, for the third day running running through the alphabet for a 4-letter word with a wide choice of fillers.
    1. Good point, it’s amazing that it hasn’t been mentioned at all in any of the earlier comments.
  13. 25min. LOI 16, as DNK, so got from wordplay; FOLD WARE rejected as a possible. (First thought from checkers was ROAD RAGE, but couldn’t relate it to clue.) ASKARI known from his appearance in other puzzles fairly recently.
  14. Thank goodness, an excellent puzzle today that provided 20 minutes of first class fun with a levening of humour – I really like 24A in that respect

    I associate PISH with north of the border for some reason – don’t hear it ever down here

    As a teenager I played cricket in the middle of Croydon against Whitgift School. The beautiful cricket pitch is now an ugly shopping centre – tells you all you need to know about the place really

  15. 22 mins so definitely the toughest of the week so far for me, but it was a very good puzzle as others have noted.

    PROPERTIED was my LOI after I spent a lot of time in the SE. For 25ac I only had the P checker for a while, and because of the “ancient” in the clue I was convinced the city was going to end in “polis”. It took me too long to see 22ac despite knowing it had to start “at one’s”, and I confess that I didn’t bother to parse CONSTABULARIES. Oh, and count me in the “gripe” camp for 1dn.

    1. I didn’t parse CONSTABULARIES while solving last night, either, but looking at it now I realise what a fantastic clue it is. That’s some surface and wordplay. I’m changing my COD vote.
  16. Greetings to all from Nairobi. Enjoyed this crossword, some fun parts to it and quite a challenge. Askari is Swahili but not at all used for soldier now, only for the night watchman that every house here needs due to insecurity. Again had no idea it was acceptable in English. Soldiers here would be furious if they were called Askari!!

    Nairobi Wallah

  17. Good to hear from you again Nairobi Wallah.

    To me, TISH is pure Stephen Fry but despite that, I wrote it in. COD 12A. An enjoyable half-hour.

  18. 1dn ; ” beef ” not meat , but complaint ” gripe “
    therefore ans is still the same but different interpretation : both acceptable ?
  19. A slowish, but steady solve, taking 40 minutes. 25 took a while because I was trying to think of a city of classical antiquity, and FIND was my last in. No real problems, but took me some time to work out the wordplay to 14, which I thought was APACHE as soon as I had the initial A.
    I wasn’t keen on 15. One might say, “Be a getter”, but not “be getter”. I agree with the blogger on this. Otherwise a decent set of clues.
  20. Am I missing something or is there no means of inputting letters on a Nexus7 because no keyboard appears?
    1. If you belong to the Times website or Crossword club go to the forum there and lengthy threads will explain all

      The short answers are no you aren’t and yes there is no means. I believe there is an Android browser (Puffin?) which will enforce a keyboard, though it may still be a bit clunky. But you can do them..

      ps: you will get more help by not being anonymous

      Edited at 2014-02-05 02:35 pm (UTC)

  22. 17:08 with find, Rawalpindi and the unknown Stainer last to fall.

    COD from a fine bunch to constabularies.

    16 also unknown but makes sense. For a while I wondered if we were in therapy territory rather than in the salon. In Scarborough you can you can get both sorts along the front.

  23. 52m here but all correct and a bit of challenge especially in SE where the delightful RAWALPINDI took a few minutes to unpick though my COD to the popular CONSTABULARIES. Mind time not helped by looking for a name for 1a – RORY O’LEAPE anyone? Thanks to blogger and setter today for an enjoyable solve.

    Edited at 2014-02-05 03:39 pm (UTC)

    1. Ah, good old Rory O’Leape. He co-starred with Finland’s actor/singer Funco Ignir in The Cold Wave didn’t he?
  24. Delightful today, with all going swimmingly until got totally stuck at the CONSTABULARIES / EXECUTED crosser, which I left and kept returning to. Never being a fan of Ozzie soaps, had never heard of a “ute”, indeed thought of “Australian” in this clue as an indicator of turning an element upside-down (what’s an “etu”?), so got nowhere with the parsing of EXECUTED, hence thought it was wrong.

    CONSTABULARIES my COD, not least for holding me up for at least as long as the rest of the crossword took to do (about half an hour)!

    Share the blogger’s amusement at RAWALPINDI. With others, I looked for -polis – indeed, initially pencilled in Persepolis until the non-checkers ruled it out.

    Liked the list of Croydonians, though thought including denizens of Purley and South Norwood smacks of desperation, a bit like saying that residents of Clapham South “live” in Lambeth …

  26. About 25 minutes ending with FIND, after finally thinking of ‘fiend’ but not feeling totally convinced. I was held up by first entering COLD BATH for the shock treatment, but BEWILDERED set me straight. I’m a griper, by the way. Regards.
  27. PISH. You already know what I think: PISH
    Didn’t know UTE the truck, but do now. (Useful info for when you next try something like Mephisto: UTE and OTOE, sometimes OTO, are Native American tribes which show up often in US puzzles. )
    Pleased to see Thomas Alva.
      1. I was thinking that there really aren’t many ways to be deceptive with the idea of “Australian lorry”, so I’ll probably recognise it when it comes back again.
  28. I was DNFd by RAWALPINDI, which I’ve never heard of and, frankly, haven’t missed. I was trying to fit in an LP (west of mountains cut off), which left me short to the tune of one WAIN.

    It has to be said that the world was a better place when we English went around giving places proper names, instead of leaving them with these heathen ones. You only have to glance at a map of Wales to appreciate this.

    I’m with the majority in favouring “gripe” over “tripe”. I’d definitely gripe if I ordered beef and received tripe. In fact, even if I’d ordered tripe I’d still be disappointed if I received tripe.

    Just realised also that I had the American composer STAMPER for 20d. He wrote a lot more than STAINER, and he fits the checkers and the clue, so I’m counting that one as a win on points. [EDIT – damn and blast those subcontinental place names; RAWALPINDI would have disposed of STAMPER.]

    As for EDISON – definitely not a “science master”. Engineer, plagiarist and marketing expert yes, but no scientist.

    Little fun to be had in A&E today. Admittedly, we had a stabbing mid-afternoon, but it was so amateurishly done as to present no real challenge.

    Edited at 2014-02-06 12:17 am (UTC)

  29. Unfortunately I wasn’t on the ball and struggled to a disappointing 14:57, but this was another first-rate puzzle, with 12ac a fine COD.

    I’m inclined to agree that it’s about time STAINER was pensioned off, and I don’t see why THOMSON (J. J.) shouldn’t take his place immediately.

  30. 71 minutes, with the last ten spent on FIND. Never heard of JJ Thomson. Must be the bloke who turned up in Tintin with Thompson? Probably the only one here to have ‘Iranian’ at 7d for some while…

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