Times Crossword 25,906 – DIY Time!

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 20 minutes, which surprised me a bit since I thought this would be much harder than it turned out to be. My first thought was oh, great.. just my luck to get a blog where I can’t criticise any one clue without upsetting at least two people. But it is in fact a rather delightful crossword, brimming with invention and cleverness and a privilege to blog. I did find both the long clues 10ac and 25ac hard to unravel, and 17ac was new to me, but otherwise it went in quite smoothly from top to bottom, though I still have one or two unparsed; hopefully all will become clear in due course..

Well done to all the contributors. A worthy effort by all concerned, and with so much creativity, a favourite clue is hard to pick. I confess I did like 3dn, such a very neat clue, but 5ac, 15dn and 23dn also excellent.

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across

1 solution – (AB)SOLUTION, though exactly how absolution works I have never quite understood.
5 frugal – *(GULF AIR), with the I removed. Neat surface reading
10 bats-in-the-belfry – STAB (pop, ie attempt) rev., + *(BRIEFLY THEN). I found this a hard clue to resolve
11 orchestral – *(CARTHORSE + (footbal)L). This on the other hand was a write-in, I’m sure I must have seen carthorse/orchestra half a dozen times
13 over – well, if something is over it’s history; and something that repeats itself is done over and over, thus literally repeating itself.. is that it, do you think?
15 airdrop – AI (excellent) +RD (way, ie road) + R(esistance) + OP(eration), and an &lit, a very nice one
17 iracund – an anagram of CR (chromium) I(odine), U(ranium) and AND. Another very neat clue I might have appreciated more if I’d come across the word before
18 Douglas – *(U GOAL’S + D(ay)), Douglas being capital of the Isle of Man. A difficult lift-and-separate, made easier for me because Douglas came up in the club monthly only recently
19 marshal – SH (silence) in *(ALARM)
21 khan – hidden in bacKHANd
22 remastered – MASTER (teacher) in REED (rush)
25 discombobulated – COMB (search) in *(ADULT BODIES). It was easy to see how this clue worked, but that is still a hard word to come up with!
27 my word – well the def. of course is “good heavens,” and I can see where the rest of the clue is coming from, do I have to spell it out?
28 emissary – *(S(econd) + ME + SYRIA)

Down

1 sub rosa – very cleverly hidden, rev., in brAS OR BUStiers. Strange that 1ac and 1dn should both be Catholic references
2 lit – I think it’s L(ondon) + (r)IT(e), and another, impressively long, &lit
3 toilet roll – *(TILL LOOTER) another write-in, sadly for a clue with such a very good surface
4 octet – first letters of: Of Countries Talking Economic Turkey
6 reed – (C)REED, polling here as in removing the top of
7 gift voucher – GIFT (bent) VOUCHER (someone who vouches, ie a witness). A very economical clue but somehow I didn’t quite like it.. perhaps because I don’t really see “voucher” being used like that in the real world
8 layered – *(LEERY AD) another easy but entertaining clue (and another &lit!)
9 geranium – *(CUEING ARM) with the C dispensed with. Initially I supposed it would be the A that went, but not so
12 circular saw – I think this is CIRCULARS, meaning bumf or spam, + A(sparagus) W(hich). Very good def. but are circulars and spam quite synonymous?
14 fairy tales – *(SAFETY RAIL).
16 passer-by – PASS (decline to bid) + (D)ERBY porcelain
18 dukedom – hmm, a reference I suppose to the late John Wayne, known as Duke, and also to the well-known film which sadly passed rather over my head
20 lady day – according to Wikipedia, Lady Day is “the traditional name of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin,” hence the def., “Time to recal Mary.” Then it’s LAD (boy) + DA in two Y(ears). Look up DA if you haven’t come across it before, preferably in Chambers Dictionary…
23 album – A (article) + L(eft) + BUM (seat). Another very neat clue
24 door – OO (two ducks) in DR (doctor, a quack maybe)
26 tea – TEA(M) “Tips for the cup,” a reference to PG Tips, or perhaps to the fact that only the last inch or two of each shoot is (normally) harvested

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

69 comments on “Times Crossword 25,906 – DIY Time!”

  1. With Jerry, thought I was in for a hard ride at first but the puzzle turned out to be reasonably easy, perhaps apart from IRACUND; but then it was one of many full and part anagrams in the piece. (I counted 11; perhaps more anagrams than in a standard Times?)

    I remember dipping into the clue-writing comp. some years ago when ORCHESTRA or ORCHESTRAL was set. Our editor and judge specifically ruled out any carthorses.

    Pure coincidence that REED crops up twice: 6dn and 22ac? Or that REMASTERED and ALBUM cross each other? Joint CsOD to the pair at 18 & 20dn. Really liked the anatine bahookie.

    Congrats to all our setters.

    Edited at 2014-10-01 03:14 am (UTC)

    1. Anatine bahookie? Now that might well count as unfair cluing. I had to look both words up, and even then tried DOOR and ALBUM as candidates before recognising the Barbershop epithet. Bravo! (I think).
        1. Even more impressive, though without a presence on line as far as I can see. Indeed, the two words together are precious close to a Goooglewhack.
          1. Two impromptu gigs in a pub on The Wirral one weekend in the late 60s, covering for a no-show. Google chances would be low. But Jerry could have been there! The name came from that rarest of phenomena: a literate drummer.
            1. Ha! I don’t remember much of the 1960s, but I think I would remember that all right.

              Literate drummer? We have a bass playing setter in Anax, so I suppose anything is possible. As for drummers:

              Humphrey Littleton: “Well sonny, and what do you want to do when you leave school?”
              Boy: “Please Mr Littleton, I want to be a drummer when I grow up”
              Humph: “You can do the one thing, sonny, or you can do the other. Not both..”

              2. Paul Bringloe (Tees in the Indy and I think he’s also a Times setter) is a drumming compiler.
  2. On 13ac, there’s an expression “that’s /it’s history” meaning something is over which adds support to your theory. What’s “harshly” doing in 11ac?

    I thought I’d never get started but once off the mark it wasn’t too bad apart from a couple of unknowns. But I nodded off towards the end and lost track of my solving time.

    Edited at 2014-10-01 12:57 am (UTC)

  3. 18m. I thought this was pretty straightforward, apart from 17ac, where I spent nearly half my time 1) figuring out what the anagram fodder was 2) realising the clue was impossible to solve with certainty 3) retrieving my iPad from where I had thrown it in a fit of iracundity and 4) writing in ICARUND.
    I really wish they wouldn’t do this.
  4. 38 minutes, finishing with REMASTERED after I’d cracked IRACUND. I have to disagree with K for once – ire (‘ira’) is a pretty good way into the clue once you have worked out what the anagrist is. I tried first with CH and then CM for Chromium before trying CR, at which point it fell into place, much as these things are meant to do.

    My overall feeling about the puzzle is less positive than many others’, it seems, occasioned by the fact that too many of the answers were write-ins. I actually don’t think our Christmas Turkey was a million miles off this one. Notwithstanding that, thanks to all the setters, some of whom I rather imagine will be regulars here, and most of the rest of whom will be reading these comments.

    Edited at 2014-10-01 05:59 am (UTC)

    1. Icarus seemed like a reasonable way into a word meaning something adjacent to ‘flammable’ to me. Perhaps one is more likely than the other, but when you don’t know it’s rather hard to be sure, and it is perfectly possible to construct a clue that doesn’t force us to guess.

      Edited at 2014-10-01 06:18 am (UTC)

  5. 25:10 … entertaining change of pace and definitely more coherent than it might have been. AIR-DROP the star of the show for me.
  6. There are a host of (common) words with the ‘ira’ root and very few with the ‘Icar-‘ one, so I’d say they’re not really commensurable.
      1. I fear you could be on a sticky wicket, keriothe, with not just the ira- but the -cund suffix, which was my rationale for where to put the consonants. Quick Google:

        “-cund (-cundus) is indeed a Latin suffix in words like jocund, fecund, rubicund, secundus, iracund and gesithcund, meaning of that kind or inclining to.”

        Mind you, I didn’t like the clue either! But that’s mostly a Pavlovian response to the mere thought of chemical symbols (traumatic memories from o’level days).

          1. I did my Googling after, honest. But I did think about ‘fecund’ and ‘rotund’ while solving. I’ll confess to having given “gesithcund” no thought whatsoever, though I’m pretty sure it popped up in the Old English course I did at uni.
            1. Now there’s a dead language I did study! But I confess I don’t remember that one.
              1. So you probably have a copy of Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader kicking about somewhere, too (I think mine is in my mum and dad’s attic). Anyway, it seems that -cund is “of that kind”, which cunda makes sense.
                1. I must still have it somewhere…
                  Yes I suppose it is clear that ‘iracund’ would mean ‘inclined to get angry easily’, just as ‘rubicund’ means ‘inclined to blush easily’. And ICARUND is clearly wrong, because the derivation of gerundium from gerere, to bear, is completely different from the derivation iracundus from ira. Bloody obvious really, I don’t know why I’m complaining.
                  😉
                  1. As a non-classicist I was entirely untroubled by thoughts of suffixes, prefixes and root words. I just went with a vague feeling that I’d encountered iracund before. But for that I might well have considered a variant of Icarus-like.
                    1. You must have known that ‘irate’ and ‘irascible’ are from the same root though, just like ‘area’, ‘arena’ and ‘arefy’. Bloody obvious, no prior knowledge required…
                    2. I’m just glad I didn’t think of Icarund. It really should be a word (what was our word for words that should be words but aren’t, again?). It would be great as an adjective for bad tempered over-achievers: high-flying and prone to spontaneous auto-combustion.
      2. There’s a certain implausibility about Icarund – as opposed to Icarian, or, say, Icarist – that, combined with the greater fertility of the ‘ira’ root, pushes the solver firmly in that direction.
        1. My previous comment was missing a ‘not’!
          There are two other words in English starting ‘Ira’, so the score is 2-1. This doesn’t strike me as conclusive.
          Perhaps if I had payed more attention in Latin lessons I would know more about the construction of words like moribund, rotund, fecund or gerund, and ICARUND would have been obviously implausible. Unfortunately I never had any, so it looked like a reasonable guess. I prefer not having to guess.
          1. Not sure about your stats – it’s essentially Icarian v the irate, irascible and iracund stables. Quite a few words there!
            1. Other words. So irascible and irate against Icarian. Including iracund is circular logic!

              Edited at 2014-10-01 09:26 am (UTC)

              1. Watching the debate with interest.. but I would have thought the existence of irate and irascible would be fairly conclusive, in helping to decide which of iracund or icarund is right. Worked for me, anyhow
          2. Not sure about your stats – it’s essentially Icarian v the irate, irascible and iracund stables. Quite a few words there!
  7. I’m with keriothe on IRACUND. Just yesterday I was talking to a fellow solver about the unfairness of clueing obscure words ambiguously and then we have an example. For me it could have been IRACUND or ICARUND and I plumped for ICARUND on the basis it might relate to Icarus.

    Other than that I thought there were some great definitions – “into Economy”, “of many players”, “One might inadvertantly witness”.

    Not sure about time as my old next door neighbour sat next to me on the train so I was intermittently chatting through it. Certainly on the easier side though.

  8. 26.51 An enjoyable exercise, with no sense of wavelength, just a lot of decent clues. My favourite was the laconic Wayne’s world. Highly commended: everybody else.
    Having not entered the clue writing competition at any time, I did wonder about the emphatic “entirely” in the rubric. It seems incredible that this collection of words should have emerged by serendipity, so presumably it’s been a long time in the planning. Does anybody remember when IRACUND came up? Is the setter here by any chance?
    1. In the paper today, Richard explains that he created the crossword and then used the words one a month in the competition so with 30 clues, it is a 2 1/2 year project.

      on edit: actually Richard says 3 1/2 years

      Edited at 2014-10-01 08:08 am (UTC)

  9. Enjoyable so congratulations setters and thanks jerry for the blog, You need another S (second) in 28ac though.
  10. 15 minutes, which betters yesterday’s 13.30 in that I remembered to solve all the clues before stopping the clock. Anyone else write in KINGDOM at 18d before the checkers put the kibosh on it? That’s one good way to resolve an ambiguity.
  11. Similar to others, thought this would be an ordeal but turned out to be not so bad. Quite enjoyable in fact.

    I too was left with a choice between ICARUND and IRACUND, but felt that on balance the latter was slightly more likely.

    If that means I’m siding with Ulaca, that’s just something I’ll have to come to terms with.

    Thanks setters and blogger.

  12. Trudged through discombobulatedly in 43′. Last in iracund: with ulaca and sotira both on the ira/ire/explosive indication and the -cund suffix, as the likely result, though have to admit a dim memory of the Latin iracundus finally saw me home. Wasn’t helped by first one in Douglas in the wrong place. Odd to get the two reeds.
    1. Now you’ve got me looking for the twisted flax and the eye of Horus. Always thought a team from this crew would do well on Only Connect.
        1. Not sure – Cruciverbalists have come and gone. Perhaps for this crew TimesX3? Old Timers? Solutionists? Cryptographers? Cryptonites? Inspired Unches?
          I’m sure others could do better!
            1. Well remembered! We were connected by an association with an East Enfield Baptist Church, so enticingly styled ourselves the Freezywater Wets. We were allegedly on standby for the current series.
              1. No, we weren’t on standby, we were told we hadn’t made it. We were on standby for our previous 3-some attempt at getting on a TV quiz in the ’80’s!
  13. 27 mins, but another ICARUND for the reasons already mentioned by keriothe and pootle. Cluing such an obscure word with anagram fodder isn’t exactly fair IMHO. A good job by all the setters.
  14. Just missed my half-hour target and took a break as I was getting my hair cut (Not a DA!)

    Took me a while to work out IRACUND, not a word I know, and messed up the SW by writing in STARDOM, which took some time to correct; the rest went in reasonably easily. An enjoyable, inventive puzzle particularly for those who are fond of anagrams; but my favourites were the short clues such as 7 dn and 13 ac.

  15. Most enjoyable puzzle. Congrats to all the setters.

    I thought it was going to be an easy ride when the first two across clues went in immediately, but it became something of a challenge after that. The clue for TOILET ROLL at 3D was a lovely surface read, but, as so often happens in such cases, the setter paid the price of signalling the definition almost too easily. I also liked ALBUM at 24D for its neatness and entertainment value.

    When it came to 17A, I had no qualms about cheating, I’m afraid, Sotira. I twigged that some synonym for “irascible” or “easily angered” was required and resorted to the Thesaurus which came up with, among much else, IRACUND, previously unknown to me.

  16. 25 min. – no problem with IRACUND: faint memories of my crash course in Latin for Cambridge entrance ensured -CUND, whilst ‘explosive’ suggested ‘irate’ (Icarus never crossed my mind).
    LOI was OVER, as I was also thinking of EVER, the definition not being particularly clear to me.
  17. A 35m all correct – my first for a while – so I did like this offering. LOI was 17a though it took a few minutes to work out the anagrist in that I was unsure of the chemical symbols. The word itself though was familiar vaguely. Plenty of straightforward clues I thought, mostly anagrams. My COD to the laconic OVER though despite the question mark I did enjoy DUKEDOM too. Thanks to all the setters and the blogger.
  18. 20m minutes whilst wrestling with a bowl of salad.

    I was worried this might be really tough as competition-winning clues can often be tricky but there were enough straightforward clues to keep things ticking over.

    I particularly enjoyed the clues for Khan, discombobulated and geranium.

    Well done to all involved.

  19. On a completely non-iracund theme, had anyone else never come across bats-in-the-belfry in the required sense? I put it in (eventually) with a shrug and a feeling it had something to do with a Gerald Durrell book, subsequently discovered to be Beasts in My Belfry.
  20. Well, I finished! But IRACUND was new to me too, so was entered as a bit of a guess. The anagram was loudly sign-posted, and I never really considered any alternative, thinking of the fecund ending which left no other real option. The son of Daedalus never even crossed my mind.

    Nice puzzle, with SOLUTION and TOILET ROLL going straight in before my train even arrived, giving me a good start.

  21. Like others, thought this was going to be a real toughie, but it turned out not. 19 minutes for me, with IRACUND the last one in – not quite a dnk, but dredged from deep in the memory. Thanks to setter and blogger.
  22. I’m a little surprised there’s no support so far for my concerns about 17ac – even leaving aside the obscurity of the word. The indirect route to part of the anagrist seems a step too far for me. Going down that road what’s to prevent “eleven peers” as an anagram cluing EXPIRES, for example?

    I would add that I’ve no idea whether this sort of thing goes on in the Mephisto and other more advanced puzzles, but I don’t expect it in a Times cryptic.

    Edited at 2014-10-01 02:39 pm (UTC)

    1. Since you are insisting, Jack, I’m afraid I have no patience at all with those that want to form “rules” of their own to eliminate entire types of clue.
      The test is: does the clue work? Is it solvable? Is it entertaining?
      The test is *not*: is the setter going about things in the way I “expect,” using unwritten rules that I happen to like?

      I don’t have any problem with 17ac, except that I didn’t know the word. But I did solve the clue! And so did most of us.

      Try to be more inclusive, not exclusive, would be my advice. It is hard enough setting crosswords as it is, without being forced into someone else’s undocumented straitjacket

      Edited at 2014-10-01 02:43 pm (UTC)

      1. That’s me well and truly told and in no uncertain manner! Thank you for your advice which I shall bear in mind.

        I have no problem with anagrams of abbreviations, but including a two letter abbreviation and splitting the letters up is not something I recall seeing before and I can’t say I’m keen on it.

        I take some comfort from the Editor’s contribution (below) in which he admits that the device “was certainly pushing it and not helped by the obscurity of the word” and I rather hope this means we shall not be seeing much if anything of it in the future.

  23. Firstly,
    I am pleased to see that this puzzle has generally gone down well, at least with the people posting here.
    On re-solving it myself some time later my feeling about it was largely similar to that of Jerry i.e. that it displayed much cleverness and creativity. A credit to the people involved indeed.
    Of course there will inevitably be anomalies : things I might have edited out of a normal puzzle by one setter I could not in all fairness change here if it was to be the authentic work of the winners, although I did tweak one clue slightly. And there was a huge number of anagrams, by comparison with normal.
    As for IRACUND, one thing the Times crossword does allow is anagrams of abbreviations, although not, generally, 2-letter ones (as with Chromium here). That was certainly pushing it, and not helped by the obscurity of the word, which I must say I felt ought to be guessable from the IRA- stem as some have suggested.

    The whole exercise took longer than it might have as I interspersed words for the competition from this puzzle with others.
    And a further drawback with the idea was that it meant there were some rather dull words to clue, in contrast to most clue-writing competitions where unusually interesting words or phrases seem invariably to be chosen to tempt and test the contestants!

    RR

  24. Thanks to the editor for passing by. I must say I disagree with “I felt ought to be guessable from the IRA- stem..). If most people here have to guess at an English word, it being an anagram besides, it’s too obscure to be included. On the other hand, I fully agree that the puzzle as a whole exhibits cleverness, creativity, and was a whole lot of fun. Thanks for the effort, Mr. Editor, all the participants, and Jerry for the blog. Regards to all.
  25. 14:06 for me, helped slightly by having seen 18dn quite recently (I think the editor mentioned it in the TCC’s Cryptic Forum).

    Some very neat clues. I particularly liked 5ac and 13ac, and I had to look hard at 7dn to see how it worked. No problem with IRACUND.

  26. As a regular contributor to the Clue Competition I found this puzzle rather easy, since I could fill in many answers from memory and then think about how to parse them. Still, what a delight to see my own clue starting off the puzzle at 1ac. And Jerry, that 1ac and 1dn are Catholic references is really just a coincidence — Richard chose the words to be clued (and SOLUTION is not Catholic, it’s only the clue that may give that impression). Actually I’m Jewish, so any Catholicism in a clue I wrote can only be superficial.
  27. Well, I seem to have arrived a little late. I was stumped by this one on the day but, having finished Friday’s with uncharacteristic haste, I went back to this one and got there in the end. Perhaps my difficulties were because there was no single wavelength on which to get.

    CODs for me were DUKEDOM and GIFT VOUCHER, which I thought were pithy.

    SUB ROSA was new to me, and I wasn’t confident enough to put it in until I had all the checkers. I also didn’t parse “ORCHESTRAL” fully – “term” for “terminus” (the L in “football”) was new to me.

    LOI (as for many others) was IRACUND, which still looks implausible to me – I could have gone for ICARUND or INACURD with almost as much confidence. Still I suppose if someone can be jocund rather than jovial, they can be iracund rather than irascible. I wasn’t sure if “and” was part of the anagrist, but this could only have been made clearer by “Chromium, Iodine, and and Uranium”, which wouldn’t really work at all. Also, I’m not sure why the element names were capitalised.

    Overall, very enjoyable. Perhaps, as noted, a little anagram-heavy, but my compliments to the cluists and the setter!

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