Times Cryptic 25788 – Complete this well-known phrase or saying…

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I got off to a pretty good start but ran out of steam about half way through and had problems getting going again particularly in the SW quarter. I completed the grid eventually in 53 minutes. On reflection I think it’s all quite straightforward with very little GK required (a type of gear, a plant and a saint being pretty much the extent of it) and no real obscurities or unknown words I’d have thought. I’m blogging last weekend’s ST puzzle for Dave P on Sunday and plan to include clues as Andy does for the Saturday puzzles, so I will have the means to do so in my regular Friday slot in future, but I wonder if there is any call for it on a weekday when the puzzle is still fresh in our minds? Comments gratefully received.

* = anagram

Across
1 BLOODY MARY – The drink is a cocktail of vodka and tomato juice usually with other additives such as Worcestershire sauce. The other reading can be taken together or separately but might well be  a reference to Queen Mary I who acquired her nickname through her fondness for executing protestants.
6 HISS – S (son) inside HI’S (greetings). Yes, I know about the apostrophe but it does make things clearer.
9 FREE-FOR-ALL – REEF (ridge) + OR (soldiers – Other Ranks) inside FALL (to be captured). The enclosure indicator is ‘pinning’.
10 WEIR – WEIRd (peculiar)
12 KEY SIGNATURE – KEY (what the new tenant receives…), SIGNATURE (and gives, in return). The definition is ‘one flat, say’ which on a sheet of music would indicate the key of F major or D minor.
15 NUMBER TWO – NUMB (being unfeeling), WROTE*
17 HALAL – A (article) inside HALL (dining room). Halal meat has been in the news in the UK a lot over the past couple of weeks.
18 ERUPT – PURE (clear, reversed), T (temperature)
19 ABSOLUTES – (LESS ABOUT)*
20 OLD MAN’S BEARD – OLD MAN (parent), S (son), BEAR (have), D (daughter). The definition here is a bit vague: ‘grows up fast’. It’s a type of clematis but none of the usual sources mentions that it has  a particularly fast-growing quality and certainly if I planted it in my garden it would wither and die within a month.
24 IN RE – statioN inside IRE (anger). This is a legal term that I shall probably have forgotten again by the next time it turns up.
25 DICTIONARY – (IN CITY ROAD)*
26 MADE – This is MEAD (alcoholic drink) with AD (bill) moved forward
27 BERNADETTE – Sounds like “burn a debt” (die at the stake, an obligation)

Down
1 BUFF – BUFFo (comic singer)
2 OVER – As in “over and out” used in radio communications. “Over” is also what the cricket umpire calls  though unfortunately (for me) it doesn’t usually indicate the proceedings are at an end.
3 DIFFERENTIAL – Double definition
4 MORES – As in “more’s the pity” plus a literal definition.Two of these in three clues!
5 RELIGIOUS – RE (note), LitIGIOUS (anxious to pursue case). I had forgotten yet again that this can be a noun meaning a member of a religious order.
7 INEQUALITY – IN,E (note), QUALITY (standard of excellence)
8 SURREALIST – R (right) inside SURE (certain), A-LIST (celebrities)
11 BACHELORHOOD – Double definition, one of them descriptive
13 IN MEMORIAM – I, N (note #1), MEMO (note #2), R (run), I AM (I’m). Perhaps by Tennyson or E.J. Thribb.
14 SMOULDERED – Substance, MOULDERED (crumbled)
16 TRANSPIRE – (PARTNER IS)*
21 EATEN – Hidden answer indicated by ‘morsel’
22 WAFT – W (weight), AFT (to the back)
23 LYRE – Sounds like “liar” (one telling stories)

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 25788 – Complete this well-known phrase or saying…”

  1. but I had to look up OLD MANS BEARD; or rather, I looked it up in my hurry to finish (stuff to do). Old man’s beard is evidently a pest in New Zealand, and characterized as ‘fast-growing’ there. Took me a while to see HALAL as ‘a kind of meat’.
  2. I started to read Tennyson’s In Memoriam once, but gave up as it was so long. CS Lewis’s preface to the translation of Athanasius’s De Incarnatione, on the other hand, by “a religious of C.S.M.V.” (AKA Sister Penelope of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin, Wantage), is well worth reading. It was later republished as ‘On the reading of old books’.

  3. Despite interruptions 21mins all up. Most of this went in quickly with a little resistance from the Home Counties corner and at least 5min spent on WAFT alone.

    Like Kevin I found HALAL a not very satisfactory definition.

    1. Chambers blurs the issue a little, but Collins and COED both clearly define the noun ‘Halal’ as ‘meat’.
      1. Well, that’s an odd definition. ‘Halal’ is Arabic for ‘permitted’ or ‘lawful’. Halal food is food that is permissible in Islam to consume. Pork, of course, is not halal, although it is meat. Beef is permitted, but not necessarily halal, since there are also e.g. restrictions on the method of slaughtering etc. Of course one can say that halal meat (or kosher meat) is a kind of meat, which is why I didn’t object to the definition in the clue; merely noted that it took me a while.
  4. Nice puzzle which I’ve all but forgtten having chewed on a Qaos number all morning (in boring a seminar).

    I do remember getting to 1ac and trying, with a few checkers,to justify BRANDY SOUR. Whatever that is. Also remember fluking KEY SIGNATURE with no checkers at all. And liked the anagram for DICTIONARY.

    1. Glad someone else is struggling with Qaos – my hopes of compelting over lunch proved to be optimistic.
      1. I struggled too but left it for an hour or so while indulging in retail therapy and when I came back the stragglers just wrote themselves in.
        1. I’m still struggling with the last Jumbo you blogged, CS – I knew it must be tough when you couldn’t finish it in 20 minutes.
  5. 18:05 .. this one felt a bit different. Clues like BLOODY MARY, OVER and MORES have an old school, lateral thinking flavour to them, a nice change from endless wordplay.

    Solved the morning after a rare and special night out. Went to see Glenn Tilbrook, a lifelong musical hero, playing the Minack Theatre down near Land’s End. It was a beautiful, still, cloudless night with a full moon rising out of the sea behind the stage. If you’ve never seen either the theatre or the man, I would heartily recommend both. Gush over.

    COD .. KEY SIGNATURE, which had me scratching my head for a good while.

    1. Ah, the Minack! Very special place. Thanks for resurrecting delightful memories: I was a camp follower (less of the former, more of the latter) for our uni drama society that played there on a regular basis in the summers of the ’70s.
    2. I saw Squeeze for the first time two or three years ago (unforgivable that I hadn’t seen them before) and up until then, despite having several of their albums, I hadn’t appreciated what a brilliant guitarist GT is.
      1. He really is. And last night was just him with an acoustic guitar — I couldn’t believe the things he was doing with it. He didn’t need a band. A couple of the old Squeeze songs sounded even better that way.

        He’s touring with Chris Difford this summer (I’ve already booked tickets for the opening date in Falmouth). He said that after 40 years of collaborating they’re trying something they’ve never done before: “talking to each other. So far it’s going okay.”

  6. jackkt – forgot to say, including the clues in a daily blog seems like extra effort to no great purpose. Unless you especially want to do it, I’d say don’t bother.
    1. I rather agree with you Sotira — anyone who is interested enough to read the blog will have a copy of the clue to hand. At least that’s what I always felt, but I was just about the last blogger on fifteensquared to go with the flow and to my surprise the change was universally welcomed, so far as I could see. What helped was a splendid piece of software that I now use which strips the clues from the Indy site and formats it all for me.
  7. 23 minutes, with a terrible start. My first in was IN MEMORIAM from the numeration and the fact that there was an I in it, probably at the beginning. After that, progressed steadily back round to the NW.
    For me, perhaps conditioned by my failure at the start, this was full of really good disguises, rarely being confident of what I was looking for: as Sotira says, a lot of lateral thinking.
    Only worked out FREE-FOR-ALL post solve, forcing the wordplay into shape.
    No problem with HALAL – surely it’s a “sort of” meat in the same way (nearly) that Kosher is. Free range might similarly be regarded as a sort of eggs. Went in unremarked in my grid.
    BERNADETTE is a horrible, wonderful piece of punning, and my CoD, though the DICTIONARY anagram was also very cool.
  8. 15m. Another nice puzzle, although there were a few where I didn’t bother with the sometimes rather convoluted wordplay.

    Edited at 2014-05-16 08:44 am (UTC)

  9. I thought this was going to be quick when 1A and 1D went straight in but then struggled as yesterday, again taking a 40m initial stint then glances here and there so about an hour all told.

    As yesterday I also thought it very fair with no obscure GK.

    I almost continued my recent run of getting one wrong having the unparsed and misspelt IN MEMORIUM but thankfully haste triumphed over speed in this case and I corrected it at the last.

  10. Nice puzzle, especially the signing for the key and the bachelor’s headwear, which both provided satisfying penny-drop moments. Led myself down a blind alley thinking 1ac must be something to do with Queen Anne being known as Brandy Nan, which was just persuasive enough to stop me thinking of any other monarch.

  11. Never got out of first gear on this one, perhaps due to attempting a rare mid-morning solve – clearly my brain is at its best straight out of bed, and it’s only downhill from then on. Re OLD MAN’S BEARD, I think we had a tree recently (SITKA?) that was clued in similarly vague fashion.

    Re clues, I would prefer to have them included in the blog, though it’s not an enormous effort to switch between a puzzle tab and a blog tab (for online solvers). I also like rummaging around to see how words have been clued in the past, so it would help with that. The downside is obviously how much time it takes the blogger to include them. Fifteensquared has some kind of plug-in that accesses the clues via software so there’s seemingly little effort required on the part of the blogger to include clues in the blog – I don’t know if it would be possible to adapt that plug-in, plus I don’t know if plug-ins are even possible on LiveJournal anyway.

  12. 18 min:LOI 5dn. as didn’t remember it could be a noun. Didn’t parse 13dn so thanks for that.

    I agree inclusion of clues for daily puzzles is unnecessary, but would be helpful for competition ones, where enough time has elapsed for details to be forgotten.

  13. I found this a lot easier than yesterday’s. I had no problem with HALAL but hesitated a while over OlD MANS BEARD. I knew the plant but didn’t recognise the definition. Besides, I couldn’t parse the BEAR bit. BERNADETTE was my LOI, entered with a little whoop of satisfaction – a lovely clue. I should think even the anti-homophone brigade would have liked that one. 29 minutes
  14. 25 minutes, having warmed up on the quickie and blogging it, expected to get stuck but didn’t, LOI WAFT and the excellent BERNADETTE.

    IMO the inclusion of clues is a good idea for weekends but not necessary for the daily puzzles, as the print-outs haven’t yet been binned.

  15. Under 25 minutes. Found the puzzle delightfully old fashioned (hums Jerome Kern tune from 1942 Astaire/ Hayworth film) and so to my liking.

    Reminded me of the puzzle from 1976 we had set to us on Wednesday, which I solved last night on the train home after a session at “The Marble Arch” in Manchester. I find being somewhat pixilated an aid to getting into these vintage puzzles, whereas an absolutely clear head is required for the more modern, analytical ones.

    1. I sometimes use a glass of wine or a cocktail as a timing device: when it’s about time to pour a second one, it’s also about time to stop working on the harder clues.

      p_i_london

  16. Pleasant enough with no real hold-ups. BERNADETTE LOI.

    keriothe, are you having any difficulties logging in here in iPad? I am doing this by laptop as I cannot proceed beyond the login page.

    Edited at 2014-05-16 12:04 pm (UTC)

    1. I’ve been using my PC in the office but it seems to be working fine on my iPad too.
  17. 13 mins exactly with major problems requiring liberal use of the white correcting fluid in the NE corner.
  18. Another enjoyable puzzle. I thought the F clue was especially inventive, though it was one of many fine examples.
  19. Excellent puzzle – 70 minutes of solving though. Loved the lateral thinking rather than the sometimes rather contrived wordplay of other setters. Favourite clue MORES, but BERNADETTE was lovely!
  20. 20 mins but with one wrong because I entered a stupid IN MEMORIUM. Eejit. I’m having a bad day for reasons I won’t bore you with. Of the other clues SMOULDERED was my LOI after OLD MAN’S BEARD.
  21. Good puzzle for my level, really liked dictionary.
    BUT
    I hate “grows up fast” as a definition of a plant. We had similar recently and I had not heard of that particular African tree. It just seems too vague and lazy to me. I know people who grew up fast, some good athletes too! Who decides the growing rate of a tree or plant, such that one can be deemed to “grow up fast”? I have some fast growing weeds, but they are not bamboo. Please join my crusade and ban this dreadful clue. Protest! Now!
    1. I’m afraid I’m not going to join your crusade. I thought “grows up fast” was just fine: it certainly left me in absolutely no doubt that I had the right answer.
  22. Came in just under 40 minutes on this one, held up by going through the alphabet for -A-T to get WAFT, my LOI. FOI BLOODY MARY, followed by the whole NW (apart from 5d) in quick order. Very enjoyable today, with what wordplay there was “confirmatory” rather than tediously necessary to get to an improbable solution. Much to like, especially BERNADETTE and SURREALIST. More, please!

    In all, a most pleasant week.

  23. For some reason I found this pretty straightforward, lingering only over waft at the last, and came in under 15 minutes for the second time in a week – and this time post-work as well. I don’t mind ‘that grows up fast’ as the definition, especially with the side-dish suggestion of the fast-ageing son. ‘In Memoriam’ is worth the read, but if ever a poem was to be taken gradually this is it.
  24. Well I came here expecting to see a huge debate about whether ERUCT was a valid alternative to ERUPT for 18 and there hasn’t even been a mention. I actually put ERUCT first but then scrawled a P over the C. Cure can be synonymous with clear (did that Chinese herbal stuff clear your acne?) and eruct can relate to “stuff” spewing from volcanoes. Ah well.

    I struggled with this, taking several minutes over 30, but I blame the train, conference fatigue and whisky withdrawal.

    I didn’t knowingly eat any ortolan in Glasgow but I did have something called Lorne sausage as part of a Glasgow breakfast on Thursday and that could have contained absolutely anything.

      1. You don’t scare me. As an impoverished student in Leeds I regularly ate a rather tasty cooked meat called Haslet. Many years later I made the mistake of looking it up on t’internet to see what was in it.
  25. 25m here with the longest pause over WAFT and a ‘tut’ at ‘grows fast’. Thanks for blog – needed the parsing on 9a. IMO it would add unnecessarily to the blogger’s burden to include clues excepting the competition ones where there is a gap between solve and blog.
    As a Tennyson fan I think In Memoriam is well worth the effort.
  26. Sorry to be so late. About 20 minutes, and I echo the comments that this was a rather different, offbeat kind of offering. LOI was DICTIONARY. Jack, no need for reprinting clues, in my opinion anyway. Regards.
  27. 7:22 for me – slightly disappointing as I thought I’d been a little faster. However, looking back, I find that as usual I made heavy weather of some straightforward clues; and I suspect I wasted too much time checking that my answers really did match the wordplay when there probably weren’t any sensible alternatives that would fit the checked letters.

    A pleasant, Mondayish sort of puzzle.

  28. Learned today that I can access TftT from the new job, but security gets notified when I try to post. I didn’t fall into the ERUPT/ERUCT trap, but I spent a lot of time with LOSS instead of HISS – I think the clue leads to either (though it does depend on the pseudo ‘Lo), but LOSS doesn’t cross very well. Agree with all the other comments regarding the pleasant tone of this one.

    Jack – I like having the clues on the weeklies, but I kind of find them in the way whenever I go to 15squared, so I’d say no for our dailies.

    Being in the US, and it being both cocktail hour and new-puzzle available time, I am going to work on my timing mechanism.

  29. Just catching up Jack after holiday. I’m not in favour of reproducing clues in daily posts – can’t really see the need and too much work when under pressure. Much easier for weekly puzzles.
    1. Thanks for your comment, Jim, and I hope you had a good holiday – we’ve missed you around here! Yes, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s too much hassle to include clues when blogging a weekday cryptic as I’m usually struggling to solve the b things anyway without additional unnecessary pressure. It’s just that I’m putting in the clues (due to popular demand) when I blog the Quickie once a fortnight and for the ST in Dave’s absence so I thought I’d ask.

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