Times Cryptic 25965

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I found this one pretty tough and solving took me a little over an hour, partly because I also had problems with parsing several clues and I was determined if possible to sort these out along the way. I’m still left with two explanations that I’m not entirely happy with and I’ve mentioned this in blog, so if anyone has better interpretations I’ll incorporate them later. For once I found no unknown words or shades of meaning.

{..} deletions

Across
1 DOODLE – OD (take too much – over-dose) inside DOLE (state benefit)
4 JUPITER – PIT (hole) + {som}E inside JUR{y} (panel)
9 GUEST – sounds like “guessed” (fancied)
10 IN THE BUFF – I (one), NT (books – New Testament), HE (male), BUFF (leather)
11 ARTILLERY – A, then TILLER (plough) inside RY (line – railway)
12 HOIST – {p}I{e}S inside HOT (baking)
13 DUPE – hidden and reversed inside “repudiation”
14 DISPARAGED – DI (girl), SPAR (fight), AGED (senior)
18 GRASS SKIRT – GRASS (green), SKIRT (bypass)
20 STUN – STUN{t} (arrest)
23 TULSA – last letters of {wha}T {yo}U {wil}L {cros}S {Oklahom}A
24 PIGGYBACK – anagram [pants] of BAGGY inside PICK (cream)
25 MARGARITA – anagram [disturbed] of A RIGA TRAM
26 INIGO – IN, I, GO i.e. what I, the writer, might say on the way in to bat. “Jones” refers to the architect Inigo Jones who needs to be separated from “the writer” for the clue to work. A very devious piece of misdirection by the setter here!
27 KEY WEST – KEY (escape – as in the Esc key on your keyboard), then S (second) inside WET (rainy)
28 ADMASS – ADM (admiral), A, SS (ship). This is the group of people most likely to be drawn in by advertising campaigns. “Promotion’s target” is the definition.

Down
1 DOG EAT DOG – {h}EAT (qualifier) inside DOG DOG (setters maybe)
2 ONE-STOP – ONE (I), STOP (check). It’s rather odd that both convenience stores and hypermarkets seem to qualify as “one-stop shops”
3 LET FLY – Hm. If a plane is no longer (on the) ground then I suppose it has been let fly, but this seems a bit forced to me as without the bracketed words that part of the clue is ungrammatical. “No longer grounded” would be better in that respect but would mess up the surface reading. Maybe there’s a better interpretation that I haven’t thought of?
4 JETTY – a double definition of sorts. The first JET-TY (like the Jumbo – jet) very much tongue in cheek.
5 PLETHORA – THOR (god) inside PLEA (prayer)
6 TOURING – 0 (zero) inside TURING (mathematician – Alan, who’s been busy here lately)
7 REFIT – Another Hm. I assume this is REF (one blowing – his whistle) then IT (computers) which seems to leave “up” unaccounted for. I’m not sure we should be expected to consider such a loaded word as mere padding so once again I wonder if I’m missing something?
8 SIDEKICK – SIDE (party), KICK (quit)
15 PARAGUAY – RAG (charity event) then AU (to the, French) reversed inside PAY (money)
16 DON’T KNOWS – &lit – I wasted ages thinking the first word was DEAD from “passing on”
17 ESCAPADE – PAD (writer’s block) inside anagram of CEASE
19 ALLERGY – ERG (some work) inside ALLY (partner)
21 TSARINA – Anagram of ARTISAN
22 MYRIAD – DAIRYM{aid} (girl milking cow) reversed
23 TOMSK – TO, M{a}SK. I often turn to Tom Lehrer not only for names of chemical elements but also for Russian cities:
” I have a friend in Minsk, who has a friend in Pinsk
Whose friend in Omsk has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk
His friend in Alexandrovsk has friend in Petropavlovsk
Whose friend somehow is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.
And when his work is done – ha ha! – begins the fun
From Dnepropetrovsk to Petropavlovsk
By way of Iliysk and Novorossiysk
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk to Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run…”
24 PAINT – PAIN (pain), {artis}T

31 comments on “Times Cryptic 25965”

  1. Last ten minutes spent trying to get IDEALS into 28ac until I eventually remembered ADMASS from a previous Times puzzle, a couple of years ago I think?

    No problems with 3dn. I can ground a plane, or I can let it fly. Well, not me personally, but you know what I mean.

    Enjoyed 4dn. Thanks setter and blogger.

  2. It’s fairly common parlance to have a referee ‘blow up’ something, especially in rugby, as in ‘He’s blown that scrum up and made them set it again’.
    Terentius
    1. Okay, we’ll see what others think. I can’t find support for your saying in the usual sources but that doesn’t necessarily make it ineligible as an explanation. Whilst checking that, I came across (in Collins) “blow up” = “reprimand” which I’d be happy to accept as fitting the clue pretty well.

      Edited at 2014-12-09 07:50 am (UTC)


  3. Took about an hour before I realised that LET rip (unparsed) may in fact be wrong, and I changed it, which then let me see ARTILLERY.

    I too had a ? at the ‘up’ bit of the 7dn clue.

    The only one left totally unparsed, last of all, was TULSA. Doh!

    1. I wasn’t going to say this but that was my last one parsed too. I’d had several strange theories starting with “what you will cross” = “T” and did “ULSA” mean anything!

  4. Tough and made tougher by solving on-line on a “14 x 16 +1” grid, with the down clues running diagonally.

    No problem with 7dn, where I agree with Terentius. OED has “to sound a whistle as a signal” and quotes an example from a rugby match commentary.

    ADMASS unknown and guessed from the cryptic.

    Edited at 2014-12-09 08:55 am (UTC)

    1. I meant to say earlier, I’ve had this problem with diagonal down clues in the past, and I found that changing the zoom sorted it out.
  5. A struggle and not a particularly fun one. In football, the ref can be said to “blow up” as well as just “blow” – the meaning is similar, though “blowing up” often seems to be reserved for just the final whistle. It’s not in the dictionaries but can be found on the web, e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26742351
  6. A lovely crossword this one, with some super clues.. look at 24ac, 26ac or 22dn for example. Very neat.
    Slightly held up by at first thinking 16dn must be “exit polls.”
    Referees do blow up.. the OED has this meaning and even an example: “The referee blew up to see who was actually lying on the ball.”

    Edited at 2014-12-09 09:13 am (UTC)

  7. 25 minutes on this one, on paper and therefore without fat finger typos.
    TULSA was a late entry, because I first entered YOKEL (the wordplay works, believe me) thinking the definition was on the extreme side of both vague and iffy. No problem with LET FLY, which I thought rather a good clue in a sea of similar. I’m with galspray: If you no longer ground an aircraft (or a teenager) you allow it to fly.
    Toughie, hard work, satisfying struggle if with little joy along the way

    Edited at 2014-12-09 09:16 am (UTC)

  8. 27m. I thought this was a cracker, and I enjoyed it enormously. There are lots of tricky clues in here, but very few of them are tricky because of obscure words: you just have to see them right.
    No problem with LET FLY, as per galspray and z8. I wasn’t quite happy with ‘up’ as an indication to put REF on top of IT, so I’m glad to hear there’s a better explanation.
  9. 65 minutes with the 23s last in, Tomsk being unknown.

    At 10a, it might be helpful to newer solvers to make it explicit that ‘clad’ indicates the insertion of HE in the other stuff.

    1. It did occur to me to do that but I must have decided against it as I don’t expect to blog a 15×15 in the detail I do for the Quickie, and one has to draw a line somewhere. I rather take the view that I (or another contributor) can always explain further if requested to do so.
      1. I only mention it because I didn’t get the parsing at first, not knowing buff for leather.
  10. 55 min – last was TULSA, not parsed, with same problem as jackkt. Otherwise SE corner was recalcitrant until I realised 16dn wasn’t DEAD anything.
  11. Not on this setter’s wavelength and had to struggle all the way through. No problem with ref blowing up or allowing planes to fly but took ages to see TULSA and DONT KNOWS.

    Well blogged Jack – the tough ones are always a nightmare

  12. 23 mins so back to some kind of form considering it was a much trickier puzzle than yesterday’s, although I still didn’t feel at my sharpest. I had the NW and SE completed first, followed by the SW. After I finally saw HOIST my last three, in order, were PLETHORA, JUPITER and JETTY. Count me as another who had no problem with the “official blowing up” definition of REF.
  13. 23:40 for a tricky but enjoyable puzzle.

    My only query was in respect Tulsa, not because I didn’t see the wordplay but because I don’t see why you’d leave that particular city until last and even the QM isn’t quite enough, for me at least, to gain forgiveness.

    No problem with do not ground any longer or David Elleray blowing up for a foul.

    NE corner was last to yield. Not knowing buff/leather didn’t help.

  14. I confess I gave up on this at around 70% after well over an hour. I’m no rookie but nor am I a 20 minute sprinter (typical completion times 60-75 minutes – I reckon I get more enjoyment per minute than you people!)
    What interested me about the other comments was the very different ways you sprinters had difficulties where I didn’t. (And vice versa of course.)
    My conclusion? There’s no such thing as an inherently difficult clue, yet there certainly seems to be such a thing as an inherently difficult grid – such as today’s.
    Not sure if that paradox can be resolved!
    1. I cite “They hang from trees in the book of Jeremiah (6)” from the second eliminator in the first Times Crossword Championship as a counter-example to your assertion that there’s no such thing as an inherently difficult clue. Only 42 people managed to solve it correctly.
  15. 13:55 for me. I was a bit tired – as so often on a Tuesday – and wasted time trying to fit PORTUGAL into 15dn (I had P‑R‑‑‑A‑ in place) and trying to think of an answer meaning “jack in” for 12ac. And I was held up by senior moments with other clues that I’d parsed correctly.

    Despite all that, I found this a most enjoyable puzzle.

  16. If you’d been travelling across OK all day and finally saw that city, that would mean that you were:

      “Only 24 hours from Tulsa”

    First thing to hit me which, as a less-than-an-hour-is-good type of solver, makes me feel slightly (and inapporpriately) smug with myself

    JB

    two more rookie don’t knows:
    what does penfold_61 mean by QM?
    what’s the answer to the Jeremiah clue?

  17. The answer to the Jeremiah clue (and more information about the first Times Crossword Championship) can be found here.
  18. Wonderful. So near and yet so far. I was at a London regional final in the sixties and another in the early seventies but wasn’t close to making it through to the final. But glad to be there.
  19. I confidently wrote in YOKEL for this one – it parses beautifully until you try to check it.

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