Times Crossword 25,930 – gazetteer edition

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 16 minutes, so a bit quicker than normal. I had the left side done in no time, but then got a little bogged down in the East. Something of an overseas feel about today’s clues, what with taking 19 acrosses of 22dns, on a 5ac in 3dn or 1ac, etc. Enjoyable stuff

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

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online


Across
1 Latvians – A TV (a box) in *(NAILS)
5 safari – A F(emale) in SARI, the enveloping garment
9 chaperon – CHA (tea) with PERON, the well-known Argentinian politician and his even better-known musical wife
10 format – MA (graduate) in FORT (keep)
12 balladmonger – BALL (dance) + D(ied) in AMONG (surrounded by) + ER (retired Royal Engineers)
15 naiad – sounds like nigh a d, ie (pon)D
16 skedaddle – KED in SADDLE. I had come across keds before.. not often, though
18 capuchins – CAP (top) + U + CHINS (features). Capuchins are properly referred to as friars, rather than monks
19 photo – HO(use), in P(ug) + TO. a tricky little clue
20 archdeaconry – *(CAD HARRY ONCE). An awkward anagram to solve, but clearly signalled
24 origin – O + RIG (equipment) + IN (home)
25 ugliness – LINES (wrinkles) in (M)UGS. Naturally it would be quite wrong to assume that the setter agrees with the sentiments expressed by this, or any other clue – but I can’t resist saying I think the exact opposite, ie, it is only the lines produced by experiencing life that make a face truly beautiful.
26 toggle – L(ake) in EG (say) + GOT (secured) both rev. So, toggle, and not woggle…
27 teenager – TEE (support) + REGAN, daughter of King Lear, rev.

Down
1 loco – dd, one a reference to a locomotive
2 tray – R(iver) in TAY, the longest river in Scotland, and in fact the UK’s largest river by volume of water discharged
3 Icelandic – IC + ELAND + IC. The eland comes in giant or common versions, respectively the largest and second largest antelope species.
4 neoclassical – *(CALL SOANE SIC), a mercifully straightforward anagram given that I had no idea what style of architecture Sir John Soane espoused
6 a gogo – GO (turn) in AG (silver) + O(bjects). a word I rather associate with sleazy nightclubs, but the def., “in abundance,” is quite right. Collins says: “(informal) as much as one likes; galore ⇒ “wine à gogo””
7 armageddon – A + RM (royal marine, a jolly) + AGED DON. A biblical battle that some crackpot religion or other is always predicting will happen next week
8 interferon – IN (prevailing) + FRET (worry) rev., + ER (monarch, an Elizabeth or an Edward) + ON, regularly taking as in “I’ve been on warfarin for years.” Only now have I parsed this properly. Does in = prevailing? Probably it does, perhaps “jeans are in this year” would do?
11 adder’s tongue – a cd, and the name of several different plants. A little time was wasted musing over fortran, pascal, assembler etc etc
13 knockabout – AB (rating, ie an able seaman) in KNOCKOUT, a big blow
14 nit-picking – IT(alian) + P(iazza) in NICKING (stealing)
17 aspersion – I (i, electric current) in A + S(econd) + PERSON (individual)
21 drill – cd
22 berg – GREB(E) rev. Apparently berg is a S African word for mountain.
23 user – US (solver, setter & blogger) + ER, a hesitation

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

28 comments on “Times Crossword 25,930 – gazetteer edition”

  1. Only about 1 minute over my target 30 for this one which did not seem too bad considering I took nearly 5 to find my first answer at 20ac. The middle stretch was very productive but I slowed at the end with 8dn putting up most resistance. As with the past few puzzles several unknown answers went in with confidence thanks to very clear wordplay. I’d say the “in thing” could well be the prevailing fashion, so I had no worries on that score.
  2. I thought I was in PB territory as answers flew from my pen but it was not to last as I ground to a halt on 8, 11 and 12. I felt rather virtuous for considering EULERS TONGUE, having never heard of the chap until joining this community. The things you learn – and occasionally remember. Like that Adder’s Tongue (Ophioglossum) has the highest chromosome count (1,260) of any known living organism.

    Like Jerry, INTERFERON only understood post-solve. I should really have chucked it in as soon as I thought about it, for all the good trying to work it out before ‘submitting’ did me.

  3. Speed gained at the cost of understanding, as in 8d, which I didn’t parse until I came here (and of course didn’t parse here, either, since Jerry was kind enough to do it for me).’ked’ fortunately surfaced to consciousness. Like Ulaca, I was trying to come up with the name of a mathematician–didn’t even think of Euler–but then I remembered the plant somehow. DNK LOCO as a short form of ‘locomotive’, but there wasn’t a lot of doubt with the checkers and definition.
  4. 17:59 .. got a bit bogged down trying to work out needless things.

    Last in INTERFERON, which I did manage to parse (necessarily — I’d heard of it in “beta interferon” but had no idea what it was … wouldn’t have known it from cup-a-soup, to be honest).

  5. A sprightly 14.47, realising here that I hadn’t broken INTERFERON down enough – I was falsely satisfied with IN ON somehow being “regularly taking” kind of prevailing over the rest. Nothing to see here, move on.
    Liked ADDERS TONGUE best, not least out of relief that it was a plant I knew of, even if I couldn’t draw you a picture.
    I suppose it’s possible I developed crossword word association skills to avoid the kind of embarrassment that LOCO calls to mind, stammering in Spanish class to translate “como uno loco” as “like a steam engine” when everyone else knew it’s “mad man”. Obviously. Why do these things stick in the mind?
    Here’s one more. Only here did I discover that I’d read Soane with an intruding L. I was going to embark on a learned dissertation to do with Neo-Classical architecture in the Square that bears his name – wrong on just about every count. Thank G-e for saving me from that.
    1. I visited Sir John Soane’s Museum as a nipper and always remembered it (largely on account of its funny name), but was still trying to fit Soames in here. Too much Forsyte Saga as said nipper…
      1. ….so of course I had to look that up, and discovered that in nearly every portrait, the man is actually smiling – such a refreshing change from all his grimly earnest contemporaries.
  6. Pleasant solve which revealed I knew more than I thought I did about proteins and African geology. I, too, had EULERS TONGUE pencilled in until checkers made me look again, which demonstrates that I am more confident with mathematicians than plants.
  7. Not sure I’d describe Peron as a statesman but that’s just nit-picking, or casting nasturtiums. Back in the day, when my fellow Lincoln’s Inn pupil wanted a smoke he’d say he was just popping over to the Soane Museum (or visiting the Inn library). And yes Soane was a neo-classicist. 17.14
  8. 24m for this, of which over half was spent on my last two in. SAFARI isn’t hard at all, and I should have got it quicker than I did, but INTERFERON took me over ten minutes. Like Sotira I’ve heard of the Beta version, but I had little idea what it was and certainly would never have got it from the definition. This left me at the mercy of the wordplay, which is downright sadistic, with a series of components that aren’t what they usually are. ‘Worry’ isn’t ‘eat’, ‘over’ isn’t O, IN isn’t ‘fashionable’, ‘regularly’ doesn’t refer to the letters of a word. Staring at I_T_R_E_O_ gave me nothing beyond an assumption that the R was probably somehow involved with ‘monarch’ (which of course it isn’t) for ages. Eventually twisting the damned thing every which way gave me FRET and I constructed it from there.
    Nice work setter. You b@$£@. 😉
  9. 38′ after a long lay-off at the end on interferon/photo. The long words took longer than usual. I’d have thought a balladmonger composed and sold the stuff at street corners for others to sing it. I’d have been in the former category (no doubt nit-picking).
  10. After 25 minutes had all but 3 in the the NE corner, couldn’t see SAFARI or PHOTO for ages, put in ARMAGEDDON without fully understanding it (why is RM = jolly?) and in spite of knowing quite a bit about interferons, was on another wavelength looking for ‘prevailing’ as the definition. These 3 took me another 30 minutes including a break for coffee and emails, although the little grey cells were probably ticking over behind the scenes.
    2. A ‘jolly’ is a Royal Marine, whose 350th Birthday was yesterday.

      Kipling:

      AS I was spittin’ into the Ditch aboard o’ the Crocodile,
      I seed a man on a man-o’-war got up in the Reg’lars’ style.
      ’E was scrapin’ the paint from off of ’er plates, an’ I sez to ’im, “’Oo are you?”
      Sez ’e, “I’m a Jolly—’Er Majesty’s Jolly—soldier an’ sailor too!”

  11. After being 10 or 15 minutes off the pace so far this week it was a relief to find that finishing in just under 18 minutes today is about par. SAFARI and INTERFERON were my LOsI too. SAFARI really should have gone in on first pass but I avoided Keriothe’s double bogey by spotting the latter from definition and I-T-R-E-O- (after writing it out in large letters across the bottom of the page) so didn’t have to worry about the wordplay.
  12. Overshot my half-hour target by a couple of minutes, held up by trying to justify INTERFERON and deciding between NAIAD and NEIAD. (I chose correctly but could have easily been deceived by dwelling on NEREID.)

    Enjoyed the subtleties of today’s clues: little touches such as the “bit boring” and IC “north and south”, though I did share Olivia’s reservations about Juan Perón.

    Good to see antelopes grazing once again on the crossword veld; I feared they were extinct. At one time every solver was familiar with a host of boks, gnus and dik-diks; I think I prefer those to the sordid gobbets we’re sometimes expected to recall these days.

  13. 24 mins. A very similar experience to keriothe except that LATVIAN (inexplicably) rather than SAFARI was the second of the answers I struggled with, the other one being INTERFERON which I never did parse. Not my best ever solve.
  14. 22min – thought I might have a record time after first four acrosses went straight in, but then got slightly bogged down.
    INTERFERON was LOI, from definition & checkers – I never did manage to parse it, so thanks for explanation.
  15. 25 minutes after a visit to the dentist. A very pleasant puzzle I thought. Had no problem with INTERFERON but did ponder both Euler and Pascal before seeing ADDER (hardly a mathematician, but not to worry)

    Agree with you Jerry about facial wrinkles – never ugly and a key part of an interesting face

  16. The top left pretty much wrote itself in straight away (Latvians was FOI) but in the end I was happy just to finish all correct in 19:35 after the abject failures of the last two days.

    Safari was last in (until I had all the checkers I though the answer was a garment) preceded by interferon which I, too, had to write out horizontally.

    I thought the clue for ugliness was pretty clever.

    Put me down as another who considered Euler’s tongue.

    A good example of my current dimwittedness was considering and rejecting FOMART for 10 and moving on to another clue.

    Edited at 2014-10-29 01:04 pm (UTC)

  17. Thanks for parsing some of the tough ones. I’m another who learned jolly today. Otherwise just tough enough for me. Wasted a lot of time on the left with a certainty regarding Djinn – how many homophones for gin spirits can there be next to the d in pond I asked myself.

    Edited at 2014-10-29 11:39 pm (UTC)

  18. About 20 minutes today for a good puzzle. I also considered Euler as part of the plant before seeing the unusual BALLADMONGER. My LOI was LOCO, because I was being thick, I suppose. INTERFERON from wordplay which I agree was a tad byzantine. And I guess I’ve been doing these long enough that the ‘jolly’ was no problem at all. Regards.
  19. DNF in 50m after 15m staring at the grid for INTERFERON, a new word for me and defined in a rather fiendish way. This makes me at least feel better – an obscure word defined obscurely so I’m off the hook! Other than that I enjoyed the tussle and was pleased to get the rest all correct. Thanks for the blog – apart from 8d I also couldn’t explain others such as the minstrel.
  20. Just under the 20 minute mark with many (including INTERFERON) unparsed so thanks, jerry. BALLADMONGER was new to me although it went in and I agree with joek and Chambers that a BALLADMONGER composes and sells the things, rather than singing them. An OK day though.
        1. I reckon so. From the OED’s definitions of “minstrel”: “Chiefly poet. In extended use: a person likened to a minstrel [sc. in its original sense] for playing music, singing ballads, etc.”

          Edited at 2014-10-29 11:13 pm (UTC)

  21. A rather disappointing 10:31 for me. As usual I started slowly, this time with a ghastly senior moment over LATVIANS: I could have pointed to the damned country on the map, but just couldn’t think of its name. Eventually I got going, but missed several easy answers first time through.

    Like others I finished on INTERFERON. I was pretty sure it was going to be the answer, but spent ages making sure I understood the wordplay in case there was another possibility. A nice puzzle, but it left me feeling old and slow. (Sigh!)

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