Times crossword 25823: enough to drive you potty.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
21.23 for this one, with a strong feeling that it should have been a lot quicker. The Wedgwood caused the most trouble, probably because I got fixated on gazunders and other products of the Staffordshire pottery, and couldn’t pick anything remotely appropriate from the shot list of checker-fillers. I was about to give up and start googling when the penny dropped with enough force to chip a priceless piece of jasperware.
I’m trying out a new layout this week to avoid those linebreaks that Apple products aren’t smart enough to deal with. I’m still using the visual editor, since I’m reluctant to commit to a system that christens itself by leaving out the vowels in Hotmail. Here we go.

Across

1 HOTCHPOTCH – Traditional stew
Not quite sure why traditional, though I suppose it’s more often used in a figurative rather than edible sense. Warm gives HOT, the POT for “dish” (Wedgwood, maybe?) is consumed by a brace of C(ompanions of) H(onour)
7 CASH – Accountant’s hobby-horse, principally
A neat little &lit, where clue and wordplay are the same. The Accountant’s (chartered variety) gives CA’S, the hyphenated fixation principally gives just the one H you need.
9 STRONTIA – a white substance
A guess based on the probable anagram fodder “tar is not” and my knowledge of Strontium, element no. 38. After yesterday’s discussion on referenda I earnestly hoped this was not some kind of gerund-derived deal. It’s not, it’s just the name for Strontium oxide, which is indeed white. If you still own a CRT screen, you possess some SrO bonded into the glass, to prevent you being zapped by those TV rays that your grandmother warned you about.
10 NINJAS – Martial artists
Extra brownie points for bothering with the wordplay on this. It’s IN (wearing), odd letters of JeAnS, all following the end of sessioN
11 STATIN – drug
Pfizer’s best seller, having convinced everyone that all d’un certain age will live for ever if they take their one a day. Empty your S(ache)T to A TIN.
13 PROVENCE – French region
Best known for its year.  Provenance as place of origin, minus its A N(orthern)
14 DIRECTORS CUT – version of film
One where the wordplay is way too clever. If you reverse “Trade Union’s decline” you get TORS’CUT. Put C(irca) for “about” ahead of that and after DIRE for “disastrous”.
17 TECHNOBABBLE – modern foreign language
It’s all Geek to me. School=TECH, head=NOB and an initially delinquent (r)ABBLE completes the structure.
20 COVENANT – promise
COVE for fellow, NAN bread and T(on). Solomon Binding, anyone?
21 CREDIT believe
Derived from the first six letters of 14ac, “mishandled”
22 KIMONO – garment
This compiler’s gives I’M, appearing give ON, both contained in KO
23 BLINDING – dazzling
Jewellery (doesn’t matter if it’s dazzling or not) can be BLING. Include therein D(iamonds) and IN “all the rage”. B-ly obvious.
25 CHAR – Clean fish tea
Pick any one of three definitions. Grill the fish on a sandbank for two more.
26 GREEN BERET Commando
Soubriquet derived from the headgear the best of the best were given to wear. BET is risk, which accepts R(oyal) E(ngineers), and follows the colour of inexperience.

Down

2 OUTSTRIP – top
In the sense of beat, outdo. Anagram of TUTOR IS followed by P(ressure)
3 COO – I’m surprised
Small business gives CO(mpany), nought=, um, 0
4 PUT ON – don
If you’re boycotting your Uni, you’re NOT UP. reverse it and get dress (that don).
5 TRAPPER – one hoping to catch
A role in provincial theatre is a REP PART. Reverse it. Quite.
6 HANSOM CAB – carriage
Sherlock Holmes’ transport of choice. An anagram if ever I saw one: BANS MACHO the fodder.
7 CONTESTABLE – likely to be questioned
The extremes of T(roublesom)E seized by your friendly painter/copper.
8 SEARCH – examination
Whether or not a Count is an Earl, they are of equivalent rank. The EAR(l) does not reach (Roman) 50, so has to confine himself to SCH(ool)
12 THEATREGOER – Surgery-bound patient
Properly the definition is the whole clue, being a cryptic definition.
15 TICK ALONG – to make progress
Listen to yourself saying TICKER (dicky or otherwise) and LONG, forgetting that nasty rhotic habit, and you might just hear the intended answer.
16 ALLIANCE – coalition
About as politically current as this thing gets. A couple of LL(iberals) – virtually the entire party – remove the leader from their intended, or (f)IANCÉ. Lose the accent.
18 NOTABLE Significant.
If you have NO TABLE, dinner parties are tricky. Tee hee.
19 JOSIAH – Wedgwood perhaps
Well of course it is. The founder of the chinaware dynasty, now owned by a private equity firm uninspiringly called KPS Capital Partners. “What a charming KPS Capital Partners teacup. Is it one of a set?” Rag in its bantering sense gives JOSH, and A1, crosswordland’s synonym for best, is absorbed in reverse form, or “up”
21 CAIRN – dog
Fully a Cairn Terrier, I imagine. IN CAR poorly presented
24 DEE – Welsh banker
For which read afon. The Dee isn’t confined to Wales (where it’s the Dyfrdwy anyway) and could be confused with other Dees planet wide. I conjectured that the wordplay was simply a vocalisation of d, old and proper English for penny, but I think the setter intends us to put away, or lose, P(ence), a bit of money, from DEEP, meaning devious. Open to suggestions.

48 comments on “Times crossword 25823: enough to drive you potty.”

  1. A devious piece of work. SEARCH (8dn) was last in, and I didn’t understand it until reading Z8’s explanation. Thanks muchly.

    Admin: The Crossword Club site has finally chucked me out. No notification. No offers. Nothing. But I got the puzzle from logging on to The Times. Strange.

  2. Thrown as Z was by DEE_. Secretive, mysterious, yes; perhaps devious is given in some dictionary somewhere.

    Pleasant enough puzzle – enjoyed SEARCH especially. Of course, count had to go for the same reason as coney (the original word for rabbit – a rabbit was a young coney). Too many titters when said by the great unwashed classes.

  3. Came here for an answer to the 24dn mystery. Z’s explanation (DEEP minus P) is probably right, and it’s miles better than my shrug of the shoulders, but it’s not the most satisfying of clues IMHO.

    Other than that, excellent setting and blogging as usual!

  4. I seemed to be heading for quite a respectable 35-40 minute solve on this very enjoyable puzzle but then a handful of clues delayed me towards the end and I needed a minute or two short of an hour to tie up the loose ends and complete the grid. The culprits were the first parts of 17ac and 15dn (never heard of TICK ALONG), 20ac, 13ac, 8dn and, most infuriatingly, 24dn.

    I also went for the DEE(p) explanation at 24 and I later found that Collins has: Deep – devious e.g. a deep plot, and Chambers has: Deep – cunning, which seems to cover it too, but none of the usual sources mentions ‘deep’ under ‘devious’.

    Unlike yesterday (when there were ten) there was only one clue today, 14ac, in which I was unable to explain the wordplay whilst the clock was still ticking. I was much happier with this puzzle although there was very little difference in my solving times.

    Edited at 2014-06-26 05:19 am (UTC)

  5. 25 minutes for a pleasant middle of the road puzzle that was an enjoyable solve.

    Like others I’m not keen on 24D where as z8 says in addition to concern over “deep” the definition “Welsh banker” is misleading. Also 15D is more usually “tick over” or “move along” – I’m not familiar with TICK ALONG but for once the homophone worked!

    A number of excellent clues but 16D my favourite for good surface and topicality

      1. My major contribution to the hippie movement was refusing to wear a bowler hat to work in The City in the early 1960s – cool or what, man?
        1. Super-cool, I’d say. It must have been around the same time my father stopped wearing his to work, which was fine by me, as I could dress up in it in the holidays.
    2. Getting back to yesterday, I’m puzzled by the concern over “let us”=”lettuce”. For me, that’s a perfect match. I can’t envisage an alternative pronunciation for either. Can anyone enlighten me?
  6. 20:16 … very fast, then very slow.

    DEE, CASH, STRONTIA and SEARCH were the awkward blighters at the end for me.

    Enjoyed NOTABLE and NINJAS especially.


  7. Hit my target of 30 mins today, with queries at DEE and the unknown STRONTIA. Didn’t stop to parse DIRECTORS CUT, but all others understood.

  8. 12m. No real problems today, although I had my fingers crossed for STRONTIA (I’m sure I had the same reasoning as you, z8: mine was just subconscious) and DEE, where I also read it as DEEP but wondered about ‘devious’.
    To win today’s Pedant of the Day prize, I’ll point out that 14ac says ‘trade unions’ decline’. ‘Trade union’s decline’ doesn’t work.

    Edited at 2014-06-26 06:34 am (UTC)

    1. Ay, comrade, and I would also like to point out to members that TUC stands for Trades Union Congress.
    2. K, if you read my comment before I deleted it, I’m sorry I missed your point when I first read it.
    3. You are right at least once, in that “Unions'” is what the clue says. But I was at least a bit influenced by the impending outcome, which was, of course, TUC’S ROT. TUCS’ ROT is – um – rot.
      1. Indeed it is, but my point is that the TUC is not a union, but a, well, congress of unions. So union’s cannot give TUC’s, whereas unions’ can.
  9. Exactly 20 minutes, helped by having a couple of answers fresh in my mind from recent use.

    Following the announcement of the death of Eli Wallach, friends and I were discussing the assorted so-called DIRECTOR’S CUTs of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly only last night.

    Josiah Wedgewood is remembered because of my history teacher’s memorable impersonations of old man stamping round his workshops smashing inferior pots with his stick and chalking “Not good enough for Josiah Wedgewood” on the unfortunate potter’s bench.

    Didn’t have time to comment on yesterday’s puzzle (which took a good three-quarters of an hour) but we’ve certainly had a good variety this week. Thank you setters and editor.

    1. There was a version recently that included all sorts of additional stuff, but apparently they had lost the soundtrack. Clint and Eli were happy to voiceover the additional bits (Lee was for obvious reasons unavailable but a mimic was used). What stuck in my mind was that Eli had forgotten how to do his Tuco accent and had to relearn it from scratch.
      1. As he was a method actor, getting into the character of Tuco again might have taken some time. There’s a quote in the Times’s obituary today from Charles Laughton, who was directing Wallach in Major Barbara and who told him directly: “No Stanislavski crap from you!”
  10. . . . with Strontia being a complete guess and Dee going in without thinking.

    Only yesterday was I reminded of my hippy days when out of nowhere, my daughter wanted to know how to tie-dye. That took a bit of thinking about!

  11. 33m today, held up in the corners by CASH/SEARCH, BLINDING/DEE and JOSIAH/CHAR.

    Where z8b8d8k referred to a couple more definitions of CHAR it made me wonder have we ever seen more than triple definitions used in a clue?

    1. I believe we had a four not all that long ago. Anyone with a better memory (or search procedure)than me?
  12. A mostly straightforward but engaging puzzle, taking 28 minutes. I was greatly helped by 21. I skipped 14 on first reading as it looked far to complex to work out without checkers; then my first thought for 21 was CREDIT, so 14 went in immediately after that. I didn’t waste time working out the wordplay, so thanks to the blog for the explanation.
  13. 15 mins exactly with a considerable time spent on Mr Wedgwood – and why when I walk every afternoon with my friend and her 21d do I always take a long time to get the dog when it appears in a crossword?
  14. We had a quadruple in the ST of 1 Sep 2013 and a quintuple in the Times of 18 December 2012.
  15. 14 mins. A much better experience than yesterday and all parsed. DEE was my LOI and I parsed it the same way as Z8, eventually. Count me as another who got STRONTIA from the anagram fodder and its probable association with strontium. My time was helped by seeing JOSIAH straight away and TECHNOBABBLE with only a couple of checkers in place.
  16. 16 minutes (WET AS A P*)

    I was left puzzled by Dee (I didn’t even get as far as DEEP) and was thankful that strontia was correct.

    Being even more pedantic than K (and this isn’t aimed at Z) accountants aren’t bothered about cash. That’s left to we (us?) treasurers while they concentrate on P&L.

    * While eating toast and soupe aux poissons.

  17. I vaguely remember some discussion earlier this week about the variable quality of puzzles. That is as nothing compared to the variable quality of my solving. After a brisk finish yesterday I recorded a DNF after 20 mins today and drove my wife to the hairdresser with STRONTIA and COVENANT missing. A bit surprised that 3d wasn’t ‘come to naught’ but as we were reminded yesterday, in matters of language (which I assume includes orthography) there are no such thing as correct.
    1. Good spot, but ‘nought’ is given as a variant spelling of ‘naught’ in ODO.
    2. That is certainly a sentence that does not conform to any grammatical English usage that I recognise. However if you had said ‘we was reminded’, that would have been a very different matter.

      Edited at 2014-06-26 07:09 pm (UTC)

  18. Breezed through this in a coffee break, with a little hang-up at JOSIAH which came from wordplay and DEE which came from checking letters. I think it’s about all been said here.
  19. Far easier than yesterday’s. Hotpot seems to lie lurking in 1 as well as its parts. Quite liked 17. – joekobi
  21. 36 of your finest imperial minutes for me, although that includes the periods when my view of the screen was obscured by a beer glass.

    Like our esteemed blogger, I had heard of (or had long forgotten) STRONTIA. I arrived at the right answer for the wrong means – I had a notion that strontium was so called because it gave a white flame when burned (it doesn’t – it’s yellow), and that “stront-something” must therefore be Greek for “white” or some white thing. As it turns out, strontium is named after Strontian, a Scotch village. Still, all’s well that ends well.

    Nice also to see STATINs making an appearance, even though they’re currently bad for you. The trick with all these medical novelties is to keep abreast of the news, and only take them during the periods when they’re good for you. The same goes for dietary recommendations – take them with a pinch of salt.

    Regarding DEE, I have to respectfully take issue with our blogger stating that it’s called the Dyfrdwy in Wales. It really doesn’t do to encourage our unfortunate Western brethren in their linguistic perversity. For one thing, “Dyfrdwy” has a wild excess of consonants – a particular vice amongst the Welsh.

    HOTCHPOTCH held me up for a while because, lacking several of the checkers, I was determined to find some spelling of “succotash” which would (a) fit the grid and (b) fit the parsing. I failed.

    CODs for me were TECHNOBABBLE and DIRECTOR’S CUT.

    1. The first time I came across SUCCOTASH was in a London Regional Final sometime in the 1970s. I seem to remember that the wordplay was simply an anagram, so that I was reduced to taking a chance with what looked like the most likely combination given the checked letters – which fortunately turned out to be right. (Phew!)
    2. How funny. As a result of a silly little Guardian quiz about one-hit wonders I’ve had Groove is in the Heart going round (rather irritatingly) in my head all day. This of course includes the word ‘succotash’: a word I have never until now encountered in any other context. It never even occurred to me that it was a real word. What exactly a ‘succotash wish’ is remains a mystery.
        1. Of course he did! I had forgotten that, perhaps because it never occurred to me that it might be a real word in that context either.
          1. I can’t say I particularly remember ever watching Sylvester the Cat but the kid who sat next to me at secondary school kept using the expression. It was such a contrast to the effing and blinding coming out of everyone else’s mouths that I eventually asked him where it came from.
  22. 11:45 for me. Unfortunately I was feeling desperately tired, which meant that I didn’t enjoy this puzzle quite as much as I would have done if I’d been wide awake; but, looking back over it, I can see that it’s very nicely put together.
  23. A late solve and home in 28m but didn’t parse the harder ( or is that the more obvious?) ones such as the film. Held up slightly by bunging in an unthinking WYE and did like the clue for 7a with its neat cryptic as well as the possibly sniffy subtext. Good stuff setter and blogger today. And Z I liked the new format – thanks!
  24. Quite late coming here, sorry. About 20 minutes, LOI STRONTIA from checkers, about 20 minutes all told. Regards.
  25. Enjoyable puzzle, which I solved correctly without aids, but I would have been a good deal slower if I had tried to parse everything, especially ‘Director’s Cut’, which I worked out after recording my time. Strontia was also a ‘most likely’ guess for me, and I just plumped for ‘Dee’ on the basis that it couldn’t really be anything else.
    Good night all.
  26. I can’t remember particularly watching it either, but I’m certainly aware of it. Along with ‘I tawd I taw a puddy tat’, possibly from the same source. I can’t even be bothered to google it.

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