Times Cryptic 25887

49 comments on “Times Cryptic 25887”

1. …at about 34 minutes. For some reason, I always do better at the harder puzzles.

   I did have to put in ‘paternoster’ and ‘arbitrage’ from the cryptics, without being able to make much sense of the literals, but that is always the best plan in a puzzle like this.

   The literal for 5 down is a bit of a joke, since of all the states Rhode Island is the one most likely to end up with no money at all in its treasury.

   1. Interesting about RI

      I thought the 3 most likely to go broke were Illinois, California and Michigan?

2. Good puzzle of middling difficulty I thought. Strange that a stomacher should be worn on the chest. (My bit of new GK for the day.) Trivia: the fodder in 11dn also leads to SINFONIETTA. And has 25ac ever been clued via “American girl group”?
   1. I like that!
3. 14d looks like NO (deny) in ONE SOWN, but is ‘no’ accepted as a verb?

   Edited at 2014-09-09 04:01 am (UTC)

   1. I made up: O! NONE SOWN.
      Most likely wrong again.
      1. I think that’s the best suggestion yet!
4. 
   All ok, but the same dnks as Jack (STOMACHER, INSULT), plus some (SAP, R AND A). Also wasn’t sure what ‘literally’ is doing in 23dn?
   1. Probably from ODO:
      ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from Spanish, literally ‘place’.
5. 20.28, the last 5 minutes or so on ARBITRAGE, BROADBAND (I know, I know) and my LOI DOT, because unitl I had both checkers it could have been anything (so long as it ended in T, of course).
   I found this very much on the oblique side: solved by the “inspired guess, justify by wordplay, work out what the deuce it has to do with any word left in the clue” method. ARBITRAGE is the prime case in point: one of those words which you know (sort of) with a hazy idea of what it may mean. Once (like Jack) you’ve discounted BATE for paddy and used up the wordplay, what you have left must be the definition. “Making a turn”? Something similar to making a profit? Looked just plausible enough to risk.
   PATERNOSTER turned up in the Jumbo a couple of weeks ago, reviving memories of the library at Brum University. At some time, or another, everyone just had to find out what happened when you went over the top, and experienced the little frisson of relief that the whole thing didn’t turn upside down.
   I put in CHENNAI because Madras didn’t fit. I’ll believe it’s really changed its name when I can buy a chicken chennai at the Star of India.
   1. Yes, I had the same worry when my old dad failed to get off at the required floor on one in Múnster and was relieved to see him arrive the right way up on the way down.
6. Just over 16 minutes. One or two gimmes (e.g. PIP, NUN, TRUSS), though fewer than yesterday, but needing more thought overall. I had a pre-university job with the local firm that made the paternosters and, like Z and his contemporaries, couldn’t resist the occasional trip over the top. Several went in unparsed so thanks Jack.
7. I like “oblique” to describe this as I also found myself trying to justify an answer derived from wordplay. The “medically” in 11A and the “literally” in 23D were prime examples. Not sure if I’d come across STOMACHER before but the answer could hardly be anything else. I took 14D to be two meanings and didn’t even look for a cryptic construction.

   Still, it was enjoyable and solvable with application in 25 minutes

8. 19 mins. I agree with the opinion that this was an enjoyable puzzle, although one of the definitions that I thought didn’t quite work was “not a living soul” for ROBOT. I had the most trouble in the SE and two pairs of crossers were my last ones in; BARCELONA/ARBITRAGE and BROADBAND/PLAZA.
9. 19m. I liked this: a smattering of unknown or unfamiliar words that had to be teased out from wordplay, which I always enjoy. STOMACHER was the only out-and-out unknown for me. I remembered PATERNOSTER from its last appearance, and figured SAP from sapper. ARBITRAGE was my last in. It shouldn’t have been – the term is very familiar to us City types – but I wanted it to be ARBITRATE for ages. I can see how the medical meaning of the word INSULT might cause problems but it’s very familiar to me, unfortunately.
   Like mctext I had 14dn as O! NONE SOWN.
   On the subject of A/AN I think I can see what you mean: AN is only not A by virtue of the word it precedes, so arguably it can’t be separated. Personally I don’t mind it: I wonder if there’s a policy in the daily puzzles.
   Following on from a discussion yesterday, is it always ONES and not YOUR in expressions like GET ONES SKATES ON? If so it’s a rule I’ve never noticed before and I can recall a number of occasions where it would have been helpful… including yesterday.
   1. My guess is that if the house rule is that an answer should be a dictionary phrase, then it will always be ONES.

      As far as AN/A are concerned I cannot really see an issue. A can indicate AN whether what follows it begins with a vowel or not, just as AN can indicate A. If a setter chooses to clue ANDANTE as “a poet” I wouldn’t expect him to be obliged to write “an poet”.

      1. Yes obviously that would be stupid, but I’m not convinced that “a poet” would be a good, or even valid clue for ANDANTE. Surely we expect a little more refinement from our setters?
         1. I wasn’t trying to make up a good clue. I was merely using it for the purpose illustration.
      2. Is that a house rule? I don’t know. In any event I will always put in ONES first from now on!
         The issue with A/AN is that if you choose to define A strictly as ‘the indefinite article when preceding a consonant’ then you can’t use it to define AN, which is something different: the indefinite article when preceding a vowel. If you just regard them both as ‘the indefinite article’ you can do as you please.
         1. ONES/YOUR – there’s a discussion about this in the blog for 24,117 (which I found by chance when I was looking for Gesualdo from yesterday’s concise). PB’s comment that the Times crossword editor would consider KEEP ONE’S HAIR ON to be ridiculous turned out not to be the case (see 25414) – as ST editor he approved KEEP YOUR HAIR ON in 4434.
            1. Thanks. I do think ‘KEEP ONE’S HAIR ON’ is a bit daft, I must say. But I’m still going to remember to go with ONES first.
         2. “Is that a house rule?”
            I don’t know either. It was just my guess as to why we generally see ONES rather than YOUR.

            I don’t think I agree with you. I wouldn’t ‘define’ A as ‘the indefinite article when preceding a consonant’ anyway; Surely ‘when preceding a consonant’ is a rule for its use, not a definition. While they are not interchangeable in a given phrase, they mean the same,’a single one’ so in the cryptic reading they are interchangeable. I’ve seen A for AN and AN for A so often that I’ve assumed editors and setter alike are happy with that. If we query clue elements on grounds of context of use, a lot of clues would fall, particularly some of those Times clues using ‘X’s Y’ for X has Y (ie is adjacent to Y).

            1. I think you do agree with me, because I wouldn’t either! I can just see Jack’s point and was trying to explain it as I understand it.
               I don’t think ‘X’s Y’ is quite the same: it’s just a double meaning, in the same category as ‘bearing’ in 15dn today. I’ve tried to think of an equivalent to AN/A but failed. Unlike most other languages we don’t often alter words according to context in English! In French you would encounter a similar problem (or absence of a problem, depending on your view) if you used ‘l’arbre’ to clue ‘lapin’.

               Edited at 2014-09-09 02:52 pm (UTC)

10. I get the tern inside the poster but why is the Lord’s Prayer a ‘lift’?
    1. A paternoster lift is a chain of cabins moving continually in a loop. You just hop on according to whether you want to go up or down. We speculated “paternoster” because you took your life in your hands every time, and a prayer wouldn’t go amiss. Paternoster is the “Lords prayer”
       1. I always understood it’s called this because the connected cabins resemble rosary beads. (although in RC it’s Hail Marys you repeat at each bead rather than Our Fathers.
          1. Sadly, that is of course the right answer.
             1. I didn’t know the lift, so assumed a very devious clue, since the Mass begins (the opening bill) with the Paternoster. I was still trying to figure out the lift/poster bit when the blog wised me up.
11. Helped by the fact that I knew a nun was a religious, and had heard of both the lift and the stomacher, I finished in just over 9 mins, with ARBITRAGE being the last one in. I knew it couldn’t really be arbitrate, but did have to really look at the wordplay to see what it was.
12. Damn. I’m still not allowed to post comments. But hell, I’ll post one anyway!

    This one is a little bit difficult for difficult’s sake in my view, since when one analyses the word-splits etc it’s all eminently gettable. So waguan? Devious setting, that’s what!

    Cheers
    PB

13. 45 minutes for this one, so double the time to finish yesterday’s. I didn’t get my first solve until 20a, but things proceeded smoothly, if slowly, after that. I didn’t understand ‘medically’ in 11, and I haven’t come across ‘religious’ used as a noun before.
14. Thanks for the blog, much needed for me today. Is the barcelona clue based on barcelona being somewhere where a lot of seafood is presumably served or is there more to it than that?
    1. I think there may actually be less to it than that! I suppose Barcelona could be famous for its seafood, but I think the setter just pushes in that direction because CRAB (backwards) is part of the clue In purely crossword terms, it wouldn’t matter if Barcelona never served anything fishier than a tuna sandwich.
    2. I interpreted the “here?” as meaning that the previous parts of the clue (OLE and CRAB) were relevant to the answer, and would have been a tad disgruntled if the answer had been an inland location not in Spain.
       1. Thanks Mohn2 and z8 for your thoughts, always great that bloggers are willing to answer my questions. Must admit I prefer clues where the definition is more clear cut.
15. 17:44. Slow start (looked at all the 3-letter words and couldn’t get one), quick second phase, slow middle and quick finish ending with Barcelona and arbitrage.

    Quite a few QMs dotted around:
    Sap unknown but like others deduced from sappers;
    What was medical doing in 11?
    DNK stomacher (I guessed it was armour rather than a garment);
    What’s the def at 27? (I’m not sure I’ve come across religious as a noun before);
    How does 14 work? (I came up with ON for thereby then ONE SOWN (if you only sowed one then no scattering was involved)); and
    What is literally doing in 23?

    Nice puzzle, COD to Simon says, thanks for the blog.

    The last time paternoster came up I spent ages watching youtube vidoes of them.

    Edited at 2014-09-09 12:19 pm (UTC)

16. Much slower than yesterday at 30 minutes, but still good by my standards.

    Though I sometimes drink at The Paternoster in Paternoster Square I didn’t know what one was until now. My other unknowns were similar to others here but all were gettable from the cryptic.

17. So more than five times as long as yesterday. Which tells me that I should strive to be more consistent, and not go drinking after work.

    COD for me was BROADBAND.

18. I like that thought, McText.
    Took approx. 45 minutes with some interruptions, ending with STOMACHER which seemed plausible but needed checking out. I knew the lift and how to make a turn. Still not clear exactly how 14 dn works, apart from the obvious def. Underwhelmed by a few defs today, such as ROBOT, and of course 1 dn was annoying.
    Chicken Chennai sounds tastier to me than chicken Madras!
19. 45 minutes, with the gimme ‘pip’ my last in, as I was clueless about the figurative Lord’s Prayer. Quirky feel to this one, with 14d and the Barcelona one seeming a bit underclued.
20. Similar experiences to many others, but a very pleasant solve for me.
21. I found this hard, and took 45 minutes or so, ending with ARBITRAGE, and having still no idea how a rage is a paddy. BARCELONA, PLAZA and BROADBAND also held me up for a long time. I’m frankly surprised I was all correct. Regards.
    1. No real explanation, but here’s the full OED entry for this meaning of PADDY:
       colloq. A fit of temper, a rage; a hot temper. Esp. in in a paddy. Cf. paddywhack n. 4.

       1894 G. A. Henty Dorothy’s Double I. 132 They goes out looking red in the face, and in a regular paddy.

       1929 J. Owen Shepherd & Child i. 14 Tristina went—and that without pulling the door behind her ‘in a paddy’, as she would have done if the order had come from Miss Trellis.

       1933 E. Partridge Words, Words, Words! i. 9 Both Irish and the colloquial Paddy are used for anger.

       1959 ‘O. Mills’ Stairway to Murder v. 56 It was my awful temper. I used to get into the biggest paddies when I was a kiddie.

       1975 J. Cowley Mandrake Root (1976) xvi. 280 You’re a pigheaded Stilwell… Got a real paddy when you let go.

       1991 A. Campbell Sidewinder v. 69, I could see that old Sidewinder was working himself into a paddy, so I decided it was healthier to back-pedal.

       1. Thanks Jack. I appreciate it.
       2. I’m late to get onto the blog, but I liked the puzzle, and needed some of the blog (including this part, on paddy). But can you help me with a last bit, Jack: Virtually idle = LAZ(y) ? Is that virtually in an ‘almost’ sense, or am I missing something more obvious? I thought virtually meant exactly.
          1. Yes, it means “almost”. “Those twins are virtually identical” means nearly identical but not quite.
             1. Exact, not virtual, thanks, DJ
22. Did this during a few breaks (seems that is the norm rather than the exception these days) and had question marks next to STOMACHER, ARBITRAGE and AT ISSUE but they’re all cleared up now.
23. 12:58 for me, held up (like you) by trying to fit BATE into 15ac.

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