Times Crossword 25,870

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: Just over 22 minutes. An easy start but it took me a while to mop up the last few, down the rhs. Then copying it into the club website I found I had one wrong, a simple typo as it turned out. Oh well. It was a nice crossword, so no complaints otherwise

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 Traitor’s Gate – TRAIT (characteristic) + *(STORAGE) for the famous entry to the Tower of London
9 Nolan – hidden, rev., in emulsioN ALONg. I suppose it must be this chap, with whom I am not familiar
10 commodore – CO (officer) + MOD (Whitehall dept) in MORE, extra.
11 thalamus – (poiro)T + HAL (computer, from the film 2001 Space Odyssey) + AMUS(e).
12 Haggai – HAGGA(rd) (gaunt, with the way = rd removed) + I. A minor prophet from the bible
13 pince-nez – PIN (stick) + CE (church, ie of England), + ZEN rev. Though saying Zen = meditation, is pretty much the same as saying Christianity = prayer
15 owlish – O + L(eft) in WISH (want). This meaning is well-supported in dictionaries, but do owls look solemn to you? They look rather fierce to me
17 canape – dd., the first indicating CAN APE
18 deprives – ExPeRt in DIVES, seedy nightclubs
20 lustre – *(RESULT), a clever anagram
21 so-called – SOC(i)AL (party ones left) + LED, a light, the def. being “not real”
24 plaintive – V(ery) in PLAIN TIE
25 glade – GLAD (pleased) + (haz)E
26 hospital pass – HOSPITAL (scene of operations) + PASS (I don’t know). Collins: “”(informal)
(sport) a pass made to a team-mate who will be tackled heavily as soon as the ball is received””

Down
1 tank top – TANK + POT rev. ODO says: “A close-fitting sleeveless top typically worn over a shirt or blouse.” Is that a jumper, then?
2 a flea in one’s ear – sounds like “A flee” or bolt…
3 tonga – N(oon) in TOGA, what your Roman wears. Tonga, it turns out, is a type of cart used in India, as well as a Polynesian island nation with a fine rugby team
4 recouped – COUPE (sports car) in RED
5 gamy – G(ood) + AMY. Whether gamy means spoilt, or even rotten (as opposed to slightly high), is debatable
6 Trojan War – TROJAN (malware, a type of computer virus) + WAR (conflict). The def. being “Extensive investment,” the Greeks having invested Troy for ten years or so..
7 bougainvillaea – *(UNAVAILABLE I GO). A clever clue for a beautiful flower. Here is one, outside my daughter’s house in Qatar:

20140102_110854
8 delish – DELI (food store) + SH (can it, ie shut up)
14 Esperanto – ESP (intuition) + ERA (time) + *(NOT)
16 redolent – REDO (again go over) + LENT, that part of the church year where you pretend to give something up
17 caliph – CAL(m) + IPH, sounds like “IF”
19 sadness – END (die) + AS (when), both rev., + SS (ship)
22 angel – G(rand) in (p)ANEL, a jury without the P(age)
23 wisp – W (ith) + ISP, an Internet Service Provider..

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

51 comments on “Times Crossword 25,870”

  1. I had the even more minor prophet TANGUI, which didn’t seem that likely but was all I could think of (anagram of GAUNT).

    I also had some of the same quibbles: a tank-top doesn’t seem to be a jumper to me, and zen isn’t really meditation.


  2. Ah well, after an hour I had wangoi as my prophet, and a blank at THALMUS. Think I’ve come across HAL before, probably on this site, but not that often.

    DNK: NOLAN or the definition of HOSPITAL PASS, all others went in surely, but slowly. Except I wanted COMMODORE to be constable for the longest time…

  3. I go straight to the top of the class with not one, nor two wrong, but three: a hopeless guess at 11a, Paul’s prophet at 12a and ‘recovert’ at 16d (I forgot to go back to this after finally getting HOSPITAL PASS). Nice puzzle this, despite the tank-top. 71 minutes for my effort.

    A couple my wife and I know have just completed what they call an ‘intense’ tantra course in Ronda (Spain not South Wales). Quite a lot of meditation, I am told, though not quite so sure about the *e*.

    1. I was intrigued by this, as my sister lives in Ronda and has never mentioned it being a tantric hotbed – tapas and toros sure, tantra not so much. I wonder if this is what attracts the Camerons to the area.
      1. It sounds like something out of Ab Fab, but the International School of Tantra has branches in India (naturally), Mexico and even Qatar. No wonder that bougainvillaea is blushing.
    2. I’ve heard about “intense” Tantric activity; not sure if it has all that much to do with meditation.. more the reverse, not that I know a great deal about it
  4. Nolan is one of my all-time favourites. Check his Ned Kelly series. And if you think Bougainvillaea is pretty, try planting it out and then pruning it when it gets really big and starts taking over everything around! Beware … it will bite!

    Edited at 2014-08-20 04:47 am (UTC)

    1. warning duly noted.. though not many plants are able to get big in Qatar, not enough rain
  5. 60 minutes exactly but only because I gave up and cheated at 55, firstly by looking up the spelling of BOUGAINVILLAEA (never knew the alternative required here) and then by using aids to get THALAMUS, HAGGAI and SO-CALLED. I worked out the unknown NOLAN, and HOSPITAL PASS (eventually) which has come up here before. I’ve no idea what “only one” is doing in 4dn.
    1. It’s what I call a “surf-actant”: works for the surface only and isn’t needed for the cryptic as such.

      My beef was with COUPÉ for “sports car”. Plenty of coupés are or were not. The Ford Capris (all three of them) come to mind. Though there was a Tickford version that might just have passed muster.

      1. I didn’t complain about coupe/sports car because both are such vague terms anyway.. plenty of each are not the other, but then again, plenty are. And I think most would say that a coupe version was intended to be more sporty than the equivalent saloon
  6. 34’37” and 6th on the list at 7.35, which says a mouthful about this crossword. Some stretchy definitions – I’ll add “not real” for so-called and “rotten” for gamy to those already given. And a serious spelling test at 7d, for which I needed the anagram fodder and several revisions as the checkers went in. A lot of blundering around, piecemeal solving, pure guesswork and reverse-engineering.
    As an example, I had no idea what was even being looked for in 26, with many possible definitions lurking amidst the verbiage and (given the setter’s previous in this grid) several more I probably wasn’t going to spot. With all the checkers in place, I filled in the blanks, remembered my rugby slang, and worked out what the rest of the clue was there for.
    From McText’s reminder of the Ned Kelly paintings, I realise I knew Sidney Nolan all along, but have to confess I put it in from the (for once) generous clue without the association. Did any of the Nolan sisters take up painting?
  7. . . . with no unknowns except the required spelling of the flower where I got lucky. I smiled at HOSPITAL PASS although as a front-row forward I was rarely the recipient of one.

    Incidentally, we are all saying SO-CALLED but the enumeration at least on The Times app is (2,6), ie no hyphen. Is this the same elsewhere?

  8. Sorry to be pedantic but the Bougainvillaea’s purple bits are not the flowers – they are its bracts.
    The flowers are the insignificant white and yellow centres.
    Some consider it to be a dangerous non-native (it’s from Brazil) that sprouts willy-nilly – and not terribly beautiful.
    It is also a bugger to spell!

    horryd

    1. As far as I can see, Jerry never referred to the bits, just the plant (AKA flower) itself.
  9. A tough one, with a couple of minutes at the end staring at the unknown prophet because I was convinced that “way” was referring to ST rather than RD. Only knew the plant spelling ending -LEA so had to dig out pen and paper to find the extra letter. A few definitions that wouldn’t necessarily have sprung to mind without the checkers/wordplay, which I suppose is one way of making them hard, but there were some good ones too such as that for HOSPITAL PASS. COD to 1A.
  10. 37′ but with tangui and actually forgot to revisit 1 dn which was left incomplete. So a poor show here; but nevertheless there’s an edge to this one I rather appreciate. I like the pitch.
  11. I found this a bit irritating for all the reasons given above. Came to feel I couldn’t really completely trust the definitions and some other word usage plus silly obscurity such as TONGA and the spelling of the long plant at 7D. 25 minutes with slightly gritted teeth.

    Agree with you about owls, Jerry. Not only do they look fierce they are fierce – very efficient predators.

    1. As a long-time student of owls, I can confirm that they are solemn, wise and fierce. It’s the frontal eyes that do all three!
    2. I find owls fascinating, yes they are very efficient and well designed for purpose.
      Apparently it was that chap Goethe who said ‘solemn as an owl’ (well in German he did) and another quote:
      “Can grave and formal pass for wise, When Men the solemn Owl despise?” (Benjamin Franklin). Do we despise them? No.
      My little white one just looks a bit dopey, like me.
  12. An hour or so, while also responding to quickie IT issues on the blog. Had to resort to aid for the prophet and to check the plant ended -AEA… a tough one with several debatable quasi-defs as noted above; coupe, zen, gamy, tank-top. Glad this was not my day to stand in for jerry; well blogged.

    Edited at 2014-08-20 08:23 am (UTC)

  13. Never heard of the sports meaning. I just made up a convoluted explanation along the lines of – if you were wounded in a dangerous battle you were given a pass to go to the field hospital. Or something…. Ok on “tonga” thanks to the Raj Quartet. I thought “owlish” meant looking foolishly or would-be solemn, and I agree that owls are anything but. 25.1
    1. Billy Bunter, the ‘Fat Owl of the Remove’ at Greyfriars School, regularly ‘blinked owlishly’ behind his specs. Bunter of course was anything but solemn wise and fierce.

      The classic hospital pass is a pass from the scrum by the scrum-half to the fly-half which instead of speeding directly to its recipient, traces a gentle parabola, arriving at the fly-half at the same time as at least one fast moving opposition flanker/wing-forward with a keen interest in discussing the matter further.

      Edited at 2014-08-20 10:55 am (UTC)

    2. I didn’t know the sports meaning either, but I hear it quite a lot at work to describe the delegation of a project that is particularly troublesome or doomed to failure.
  14. 37:30, much of that on 12ac trying – and failing – to come up with something better than TANGUI, which didn’t look likely. Not that HAGGAI looks much more likely.
    Otherwise this was vaguely irritating for reasons already mentioned. I like a challenging puzzle as much as the next person but I prefer it when setters achieve this while avoiding gratuitous obscurity and sticking to actual synonyms.
  16. Too difficult for me today and I had several missing even with the help of Onelook. Thanks for explaining everthing Jerry.
    FOI the flea.
  17. Resorted to aids to get finished under the hour.

    Didn’t help myself by having PINCH-NEZ and A CLIP ON ONE’S EAR, but would have struggled with THALAMUS anyway.

    Enjoyed HOSPITAL PASS for the unhappy memories and BOUGAINVILLAEA for the spelling challenge, but thought HAGGAI was a terrible clue.

    There was no sense of “ah, should have got that” or “must brush up on that area of GK”. Of all the areas of expertise in which I’m lacking, the list of minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible is one that I’m not inclined to do much about.

  18. Yep, I’ve never seen a bougainvillea as well-behaved as the one in Jerry’s photo. Bloody awful things to retrieve backyard cricket balls from.
  19. 43 mins. I found it difficult to get on this setter’s wavelength and overall it wasn’t a lot of fun. There again, I almost always say that when I have trouble with a puzzle. In the end I was able to parse all the answers, but it was a struggle getting there and it took me quite a while to get my last four answers. For RECOUPED I should have thought of coupe/sports car much quicker than I did. For COMMODORE I hadn’t been able to get away from thinking about “police officers” for some reason, and GAMY only fell into place when I got the M checker. 11ac was my LOI and I thought the wordplay for it was much tricksier than it needed to be, especially as it contained “computer endlessly” and the checkers A?A?U within the answer, so I was misled into thinking that “abacu(s)” was a possibility. It was only when I dredged up THALAMUS from deep in my memory that I was able to reverse-engineer the wordplay. Happy was I not.

    Edited at 2014-08-20 06:37 pm (UTC)

  20. That was merder! Surprised to find myself not (quite) abottom the leaderboard after a nightmare. Not sure I would have finished it even looking things up.
  21. Over the hour, not helped by initially having “rabbit” for 17d (rabbi + t = talking), “owling” for 15 (l in owing – yes it’s a neologism for people taking photos of themselves posing as a owl!), trying to shove a “Q” in 11 as this would have made it a pangram (following the maxim “…if you see a ‘u’, try a ‘q’…”), not being able to spell “bougainvillaea and getting “no-balled” for 21 (don’t ask). All but the last I managed to correct – eventually.
    Quite a struggle, but I sort of actually quite enjoyed it.

    Edited at 2014-08-20 01:55 pm (UTC)

  22. Found this a bit of a struggle and limped home in just under the half hour, thanks to the use of aids for HAGGAI, THALAMUS and RECOUPED. Completely missed the meaning of EXTENSIVE INVESTMENT in 6d -thanks for the blog – now I see it, I like the clue a lot, as I did 8d and 26a. Shared other contributors’ doubts about GAMY and had never heard of Sid the painter, but thought TONGA was fairly common.
  23. …didn’t finish, or get very close, mostly due to not being able to squeeze in any quality thinking time after getting most of the long ones fairly quickly on the rattler.

    Ref. that part of the church year in 16, next year, I’ve decided to give up giving things up for Lent (sorry, old joke I know)

  24. Put down my pen at 34 mins with THALAMUS missing. Should have carried on dredging like Andy because it is not an unknown and I had twigged the brain connection. And then to complete the sorry tale saw I had put RELISH instead of DELISH. While I feel it was not the most enjoyable of puzzles I don’t share some of the gripes. TONGA was unknown but the clue could hardly have been simpler, ditto the spelling of the flower once I was left with two As and an E to arrange at the end, and I always associate GAMY with putrefaction. I’ll be interested to see what Tony Sever thinks of it. The good news is that, unlike yesterday, the newspaper wholesaler failed to stick his delivery label across the down clues.
  25. I felt rather pleased to get this all sorted out in 24 minutes or so, only to discover that I’d messed up one of the simpler clues. I had pencilled in DELISH at first blush with only partial understanding. Checking through, I changed it to RELISH on dodgy cryptic definition grounds. My apologies to the setter for assuming the worst — at least I got my just deserts.
  26. Never mind the blooming spelling, can anyone help with the pronunciation of 7? I first came across this when reading My Family and Other Animals by G Durrell for “O” level Eng. Lit. “back in the day”, and remember being stumped by the sound of it then. Is the “ll” pronounced “yeu” a bit like the start of a South African yeus (for yes)?

    Edited at 2014-08-20 03:35 pm (UTC)

    1. I first came across boug-thingy in the same book, though I was reading it for pleasure and have re-read it a couple of times since. I’ve always been bamboozle by both the pronunciation AND the spelling of it (I always want to stick an ‘r’ in it), so I can’t help at all!
    2. I don’t see this as rocket science, though I do live in an area where they aren’t. I would pronounce it BOO GAN VILLIA, emphasis on front and back not on the gan. And its gan as in Regan
      No doubt in Perth (either) or Johannesburg it would differ
      1. The only pronunciation I’ve heard in Australia rhymes with HOGAN SILLIER.

        That doesn’t make it right though!

  27. I resorted to aids for the unknowns HAGGAI and HOSPITAL PASS. Prior to that I had struggled on for an hour. While I agree there was more than ample obscurity today, I liked the SH=’can it’ device, and now that I’ve learned what a HOSPITAL PASS is, the definition makes me smile. I hadn’t heard of the TONGA before either, but the wordplay was very clear, and spelling the BOUGA… was a challenge. Regards to all.
  28. Struggled along, and I might have been a bit quicker (but not much) if I didn’t have the Fulham/Wolves match on the radio. I feel in good company with Z8 in adjusting the spelling of 7d as the checkers fell into place.
    In the end, just chuffed to complete successfully.
  29. 15:59 for me, tired at the end of a busy day – though at least today’s archive Times crossword (from 1963) was straightforward apart from a Tennyson quotation which I didn’t know (but which was fortunately guessable).

    Most of the puzzle went pretty well. I’m afraid NOLAN isn’t one of my favourite artists, but at least he went straight in. In fact most of the puzzle flowed pretty well, until I stuck on RECOUPED and THALAMUS and, finally, HAGGAI, where for some reason I managed to convince myself that the “way” was going to be ST rather than RD – until I finally switched to the latter and twigged the answer straight away. (Doh!) Still at least I resisted the temptation to bung in TANGUI.

    All in all an interesting and enjoyable solve.

  30. In Ste..en Pinker’s excellent article in a recent Guardian he said that there were times when a split infinitive is the best way of expressing yourself. In this clue the setter is trying so hard to avoid the split infinitive that the clue is made harder than necessary, and arguably unsound: he or she says ‘computer endlessly to entertain’ when what should be said is ‘computer to endlessly entertain’. Perhaps ‘computer to entertain endlessly’ is OK. It’s certainly better than the actual clue.
    1. Of course it’s fine. Blame the 19th century armchair grammarians who tried to impose Latin grammatical ‘rules’ on a Germanic language.

      I agree with your proposed revision, by the way, not least because that way I might at least have got the answer!

  31. Over an hour, even with aids for anagram and finding possibles to fit checkers. Couldn’t make anything of 26, so used “reveal” for first letter: then I saw I’d put ARGUS at 22 without parsing, so could complete, though I assumed it was a military expression
  32. Thank you! This is the first time I have used your answers and it is just great!
    As I am now retired (living in the south of France) I find myself with time on my hands and delighted to get back into doing the crosswords which I haven’t had time for, for about 20 years. Your answers and comments have been so helpful, thank you.

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