Times Cryptic 25782 – Well I’ll be darned…

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I wasn’t expecting to be blogging tonight but Andy tells me that the sub who was to cover for Dave P is incommunicado at the moment so you’re stuck with me I’m afraid. I must admit I was a bit concerned when I approached this as I have had a very, very bad run of Times cryptics over the past week or two so it came as some relief when I spotted the long answer at 2dn whilst the puzzle was still printing off. I completed the grid in 36 minutes which is about as good as it can get for me at the moment and I was of the opinion it was an easyish puzzle until I looked at the leader board and saw that NeilR also took 36 minutes and had commented that he found it “so hard”. I’m rarely anywhere near his solving time. Quite apart from anything else I thought this was a lively and entertaining puzzle unlike some of the very dry stuff we have had recently.

Across

1 CATACOMB – Give a CAT A COMB is the answer to the riddle.
5 WYCLIF laWYer, CLIFf (bluff). I didn’t know this spelling of John Wycliffe but on checking I find that it’s one of very many alternatives.
10 GANGPLANK – A + NG (no good) + PLAN (mean) inside GK (Greek).
11 BROIL – BR (train company once), OIL (fuel). I wasn’t sure about ‘overheat’ as broiling is a recognised method of cooking but I think figuratively one might ‘broil’ as one might be ‘boiling’ on a hot summer’s day (if anyone in the UK can remember such an occasion!)
12 BULL – Double definition. Taurus is the sign and ‘bull’ as in ‘Papal Bull’ is the edict.
13 WINDOW BOX – WINDOW (light), BOX (punch)
15 WHARFINGER – Anagram of FAR inside WHINGER (person complaining). I didn’t know this word but the wordplay was clear.
17 SCOT – S (second), COT (crash site – geddit?)
19 TO-DO – TOD (on which you’ll find one solo), 0 (love)
20 PAY-PER-VIEW – Y (variable) inside PAPER (journal), VIEW (opinion)
22 HARD TIMES – R (king) inside HAD (entertained, as in having people to dinner), TIMES (by as in 1 x 2). The book is by Charles Dickens.
24 IVANdIVAN (bed)
26 VIOLA – VIOLAte (break). I thought there was an error here because ‘te’ is the seventh note of the musical scale, not the second one, but then I realised that in the word ‘violate’, ‘te’ is the second note – ‘LA’ being the first.
27 SON OF A GUN – SON (issue) GUN (firearm). I immediately think of Gabby Hayes or Walter Brennan when I hear this expression
28 RE-ECHO – Hidden
29 GREY AREA – Anagram of YEAR inside GREAt (jumbo)

Down

1 CAGE – Double definition, the second answer being the composer, John Cage
2 TONGUE-AND-GROOVE – TONGUE (Polish perhaps), anagram of DONOR GAVE
3 COPYLEFT – COPY (mirror), LEFT (labour, as in Labour Party). Another word I didn’t know.
4 MIAOW – WO (without) + AIM (end) all reversed. Queen is a female cat reference here. I suppose this is &lit but it doesn’t quite make sense to me. On edit: thanks to mct and verfatica for clarifying it’s simply the Queen who’s going miaow. I was imagining a tom being upset at being abandoned – or something like that.
6 YOBBOS – Y (year), OB (pupil once, ‘old boy’) + BO (ditto, reversed), S (shillings). Definition: more than one tough.
7 LOOK BACK IN ANGER – This was a write-in once I had a couple of checkers but I spent ages trying to work out the word play and eventually came up with this: When the space is removed from I ROLE we have IROLE or LO (look) backwards inside IRE (anger).
8 FELIXSTOWE – Anagram of LOTS EX WIFE. I was amused at the surface reading which appears to equate the Suffolk seaside resort with Sodom!
9 SKIN-DEEP – KIND (type) inside SEEP (leak)
14 SWITCHOVER – Anagram of COVER THIS W (with)
16 NEAR MISS – NEAR (reluctant to give), MISS (single person). A rather odd expression, I’ve always thought.
18 FRUIT FLY – Anagram of FURY LIFT
21 ATTACH – ATTACk (set on) with its last letter changed to H (hours).
23 SENOR – ONE ( I) reversed inside SR (sister). ‘Don’ as in Spanish gentleman or lord for once, instead of the professor.
25 ANNA – The old Indian currency that’s a palindrome

46 comments on “Times Cryptic 25782 – Well I’ll be darned…”

  1. … over the hour. At which point, I stopped the timer and made a hot drink in order to mull over the mostly missing left-hand side. 22ac indeed!

    Not knowing COPYLEFT didn’t help. And I really ought to given some of my interests. So I’m glad to be informed now. Second hot drink coming up. Though a stiff one would be better if it weren’t so early.

    Oh and … I took (4d) “that the Queen’s going” as a round-about def for MIAOW. Cf “that’s how the queen’s going”. Or something like that!

    Edited at 2014-05-09 01:59 am (UTC)

  2. Sure! Simply, cats go “miaow”. Actually, here they go “meow”. 🙂
    1. . . . and of course, in Belgium, dogs go WOAH WOAH as in Tintin’s Snowy
  3. After a week hovering in the depths with my fellow Monday and Friday bloggers, I struggled to a non-finsih in just over two hours, finally essaying ‘copeleft’ for the unknown (though I have heard of Creative Commons) COPYLEFT – which is about as sophomoric as a coined word can get.

    Enjoyed this the way I enjoy watching England play rugby; was on edge pretty much from the off, which happened after 9 minutes when I’d read through all the clues. 4, 5 and 21 got ticks, with 21 (ATTACH) getting two.

    In the meantime, I’ll have whatever the man from Beds is on!

    Edited at 2014-05-09 02:59 am (UTC)

  4. 32mins here. I found the right half went in quickly but the left took longer.
    As vinyl says this was a case of trusting the cryptics especially for COPYLEFT (which was new to me and seems a pretty awful coining)and WYCLIF.
    Jack I think you have a typo: at 25ac I took LA as the first note (consistent with TE).

    Edited at 2014-05-09 06:48 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks, Derek, I have amended accordingly, but of course it does work the other way too.
        1. Thanks. I struck the clue number through with relish when I solved it and then misread it. Corrected now.

  5. Love it when I get 1ac first off (not that often), but it went very slowly from there. Well over the hour when I threw in the towel with the unknown 3dn (COPYLEFT) blank, which I never would have got, having ‘rule’ (unparsed, obvs) at 12ac. Nearly had the momble wybluf at 5ac, but thought again. Not familiar with WYCLIF (or indeed Wycliffe). Thanks for parsing of ATTACH, which went in on def alone.
  6. Excellent properly hard puzzle, which I was cheered to complete in 26 minutes. I re-echo the comment that much depended on the wordplay, except for 7dn, where frankly getting the wordplay required you to guess the answer first and then really stretch – well broken, Jack, and on your day off too!
    The top left corner mystified for ages, except for the well-constructed GANGPLANK and the panelling, and I struggled to think of a word that would fill ??A?W, even with the provocative Queen in the clue. COPYLEFT was my LOI too, and the sooner it disappears from the language the better.
    Loved Sodom-on-Sea, and the really smooth surfaces for practically everything else.
    John Wyclif, however you spell him, deserves his place in history, a figure who so annoyed the establishment of the day that he merited post-mortem execution, being burned at the stake some 44 years after his death.
  7. 23m. I loved this: just my sort of puzzle. Lots of tricky, inventive and witty wordplay and a couple of unknowns (COPYLEFT, ANNA) to construct from wordplay. I did know WHARFINGER, presumably from another crossword.
    Funny to see PRE-ECHO from yesterday being echoed today in RE-ECHO. I wonder if we’ll get E-ECHO tomorrow.
  8. 53 min: 3d LOI – I had heard of it, but the checkers seemed to give COPULATE till I got 15ac (after eventually seeing 14dn – I always overlook with=w, so didn’t see the anagram, especially as I thought the word was hyphenated.)
    At 11ac ‘old railway’ always makes me think NER or GER (lots of others available, but not wordplay-friendly – the LBSCR (‘biscuit’ to its fans) is never going to appear in a clue!)
  9. Not knowing the reformer as anything other than Wycliffe, I ended up going for Wyclef with “cut short” being cleft without the t and assuming that Wycliffe was known for his bluff manner. Or maybe I just wanted to force a hip hop artist into the grid. Didn’t know WHARFINGER or LOI COPYLEFT. I think there have been more unknown words for me in the last 3 days than in the 3 weeks before that.
    1. I made exactly the same goof with clef(t) as the justification although I was left wondering what a bluff reformer might be. I’m happy to blame you and K for bringing hip-hop into the equation earlier in the week which was only reinforced this morning by news of the third headliner at Glastonbury and mention of how Jay-Z a few years ago was an equally unlikely choice.
      1. I offer my apologies though, in my (and K’s) defence, who would ever have predicted that two Times puzzles in one week would give the chance to reference that musical genre? I don’t particularly like hip hop but it’s much more familiar to me than anything from the classical world. Re Glastonbury headliners, I couldn’t sing (or even name) anything by Arcade Fire or Kasabian, but I could probably rustle up a couple of verses of “Enter Sandman” if forced.
        1. I enjoyed a lot of Metallica in my formative years but prefer something a bit lighter now. Arcade Fire, who I only discovered recently, fit the bill nicely.
      2. Not to mention the news that Dr Dre is about to sell his company to Apple for $3.2bn. He must be feeling jolly def about it.
            1. I was seriously impressed by this comment, showing as it does an intimate knowledge of hip-hop history. ‘Fo shizzle’ is an expression popularised by Snoop Dogg (or ‘D-O-double-Gizzle’), who was an early protégé of the very same Dr Dre, collaborating with him on many of his earlier works including of course the seminal 2001.

              Then I happened to see Alan Connors’ blog.

  10. Agree as to excellence of this tough puzzle. Very enjoyable, and perhaps better (again as others have said) than some of this week’s offerings.

    Liked ‘crash site’ lots.

    Many thanks, and a good w/e to all.

    1. You too? I simply can’t see “fruit fly” without thinking of that phrase and contrasting it with “Time flies like an arrow.”
  11. Much better for me. Last couple of days had me wanting to give up crosswords, but this was just right. Didn’t like “Miaow” much, but thanks setter.
  12. Well upwards of an hour and with one wrong for the fourth day running, having WYCLEF at 5A. I knew a bluff was a geological feature but didn’t know whether it was a cliff or could be a cleft. I plumped for cleft because like mohn2 I also knew the rapper Wyclef Jean.

    COD to CATACOMB for amusing me.

  13. 24:44 with the left hand side blank for quite a lot of that time – I know it is an “old friend” but I did smile at 1a.
  14. 24 mins so the toughest of the week for me time-wise. I started this a few hours later than my preferred solving time but I’m not using that as as excuse.

    I didn’t bother to parse 20ac and 7dn because the answers were obvious enough from their enumerations once a couple of checkers were in place. Count me as another who found the LHS much trickier than the RHS. The VIOLA/ATTACH crossers went in unparsed, it took me an age to see SWITCHOVER, WHARFINGER followed thanks to the W checker, and COPYLEFT was my LOI as it was for several of you. I didn’t enjoy this puzzle as much as some of you seem to have done, but it was a good challenge.

  15. Half an hour of serious grey matter strain, a tough one but enjoyable with some very clever clues, 7 dn, for example. Still don’t quite understand NEAR MISS parsing. At the end wasn’t sure about COPYLEFT or -LIFT or -LIFE but only the former made any sense of the clue so plumped and hoped. What a great week of puzzles this has been!
    1. I believe it refers to the two aspects of a near miss – the potential catastrophe and the actual safety. Broiling Jack has the rest!

  16. 28 minutes but with Wyclef as the bluff reformer.

    I’m not sure I’d have included the S in Felixstowe if asked to write it down. As A taurean I’m also ashamed to admit that bull was my LOI.

    Some lovely stuff in here, expecially miaow and to-do.

    Thanks for explaining Don’t Look B In A, Jack, I couldn’t see how that worked at all

  17. I thought this was a superb, imaginative puzzle. With respect to 11 across, there is apparently a cross-Atlantic usage difference; in North America, broiling means cooking with the heating element above the food (hence “overheat”).
    1. In the States broil is also used to mean personally overheated due to weather/sun, as Jack alludes to I think. So two Americanisms, and Bob’s your uncle.
  18. Stuck at it for over two hours as I didn’t want another DNF after yesterday’s defeat. An enjoyable puzzle, some unknowns. I thought Anna was still in use in India and Pakistan but maybe not.

    Wyclif is my hero, did a massive project on him in my degree course and enjoyed it, his contribution to the development of the English language is not appreciated.

    I wonder if copyleft came up as a phrase meaning not copyright?

    Good week-end everyone.

    Nairobi Wallah

      1. …and absolutely correct, according to the infallible Wiki. I Googled copyleft post solve to verify. And yes, that’s the symbol
  19. Most of this was a pleasure if not exactly a doddle, but with the play, which became fairly obvious early on, left unparsed, and with COPYLEFT just left – blank, that is. So DNF. Again this week. The rest of it took me about 40 minutes.

    Hats off to jackkt for unravelling, and the setter for devising, the clueing of the play. Very clever.

    I thought WYCLIF also quite clever – beware in future, there are other variant spellings around of the more familiar Wycliffe – but my COD goes to the well-hidden RE-ECHO. I never quite understand the cat/queen clues, but just put in MIAOW and sighed. FOI TONGUE-AND-GROOVE, LOI ATTACH.

  20. Nothing to do with this but slightly surprised at 21dn in The Guardian. Hopefully not the way that The Times is going !
  21. About 25 minutes, which I found was a relief compared to the toil of earlier days this week. I hadn’t heard of COPYLEFT before, but the wordplay (to me) seemed clear enough. LOI was SWITCHOVER/VIOLA crossing. Thanks to Jack for the LOOK… parsing, which I didn’t see. Very well spotted, deserving of some kind of blogging award. Regards to all.
  22. 55m DNF – gave up on 15a and 3d after staring blankly for 10m and coming up with copulate and weedkiller neither of which made any sense and for the latter didn’t fit the checkers! I was pleased that I’d heard of neither word. Thanks for the blog – impressive time too!
  23. Tricky because of WHARFINGER and COPYLEFT, neither of which I knew, so DNF even after 90 minutes which is my self-imposed cut-off. Thanks for the parsing on the LBIA. New to this, so I’m still a little confused as to why Queen = cat?
    1. An adult female cat is known as a queen. (Chambers etc). Probably why a cat can look at a queen.
  24. 17:26 for me, so the hardest one of the week so far. COPYLEFT was one of my first ones in though. It’s one of the paradigms of Open Source software (and I’ve made my living from Linux for a very long time now). It’s a form of licensing which grants anyone the right to make amendments to a work and redistribute them (e.g. computer software), but they can’t change the terms. So if the source code was freely available in the original, any amended version also has to provide the source code, and credit the original author(s). As most of the Internet runs on this type of software, you probably wouldn’t be reading this if it didn’t exist.

    Shame so few people on here have heard of it, yet there’s a serious discussion of hip-hop slang going on above!

    I “discovered” Arcade Fire very early on (after reading a review in the Saturday Times when I still used to get the paper) and have all their albums. Almost got to see them live at Brixton Academy a few years ago, but couldn’t get a ticket on the day. I think I have a Kasabian album too, and all of Metallica’s. Looking forward to Glasto this year (but only on the telly, I’ve never been).

  25. Over an hour of entertaining clue crunching but DNF as ‘Bull’ and ‘Attach’ eluded me. I’m also grateful to the blog for the parsings of 4dn and 7dn.

    Edited at 2014-05-09 09:53 pm (UTC)

  26. 14:51 for me, so harder than yesterday’s but not as hard as Wednesday’s. I was feeling tired again, and wondered whether solving it this evening was going to be a mistake, but it didn’t turn out too badly in the end.

    Time wasted at various points as usual: thought of GANGPLANK first time through, but failed to parse it; wondered briefly if 15ac could conceivably be TRAFFICKER; spent ages trying to think of a four-letter composer beginning with C (annoyingly obvious once I had the G in place); tried to remember Lot’s wife’s name; tried to find an anagram of THIS + W + LOOSE. Eventually the pennies all dropped, but it took time.

    Another delight from start to finish. My compliments to the setter.

  27. Finally got to it Saturday AM, and agree with all the likes. Hard, but fair and quite good fun. I even more agree with the “well done Jack” both for the fast solve and for figuring out all the difficult wordplay.

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