23,538 – Good stuff – worth two looks

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 7m34s – A dipangram (2 of each letter in the grid at least), and a demonstration that this can lead to interesting words, as well as just odd ones. Also, and more importantly, a demonstration that clueing innovation doesn’t have to mean a really hard puzzle, though this was a good test of mental agility, knowledge and speed.

Across

1 KI(t) in JUNE – Annoyingly, I immediately considered RI(g) in JUNE, gave up and moved on. This kind of failed nearly-instant solving seemed to happen regularly here.
5 BUZZWORD, pun – a bit laboured perhaps.
11 HOG TIE, pun – Given the checking, enumeration and definition, BOW-TIE will have tempted many, but I like this gag.
12 E + OFF in GREY, last one solved for me; having the O as a checking letter really militates against predicting the JE- sound at the start. I’m not used to seeing ‘point’ for E/N/S/W in The Times Crossword, though I have no objection to it occasionally.
14 MOUNTAINSIDE, anag (IN MAIDSTONE (yo)U) – I immediately parsed the clue correctly, then couldn’t do the anagram, despite having M and U placed. Grrr
20 A VI in RARA’S – for me, a pretty untidy clue, with the dated VI(olet) in a possessive – and a definition that will be simple for classicists and hard for others.
22 A in SEES + W – again the definition is almost too easy, especially combined with the enumeration (which is not as per Chambers and looks wrong and over-helpful to me)
25 ”BORE DOUGH” – nice homophone, though a (very) rare example of one that doesn’t work in my accent – the vowel phoneme in board/cord/pork/Bordeaux is different from that in bored/cored/poor/bore for my particular suburban RP.
26 QUA + (authentic)C + KER(r)Y – you really can’t argue about the precision of definitions in most of this puzzle!
27 (C)ENSURE(D) – a very nice innovatory wordplay method

Down

3 KLEPTOMANIA, anag – Neat misleading definition.
4 EX CHEQUER – I love this, so used to seeing ‘queen’ as ER, R, Q, QU or occasionally MAN (or other chess piece reference) that a draughts piece was a big surprise. Beautifully tied up with the literal meaning as well. As pointed out in comments, this is actually EX + QU in CHEER, &lit – probably an even better clue, though not what I thought!
5 BEER GUT, cryptic definition – ‘breadbasket’ is quite quaint for ‘stomach’, but probably familiar to cryptic solvers. Nice clue as all the surface misleads combine well.
13 E in FISHY + (H)ELEN’S – very tough clue, especially as I have barely heard of this term (and finally there’s not much definition precision here!). Eventually got it from the checking – though without the F at this stage.
15 INN IS FREE – this chestnut is worth trotting out regularly. No idea why the W of welcome got capitalised – some purists don’t like this and it’s quite unnecessary to the surface.
16 POT-AU-FEU, U + F in anag of OUT PEA – Got this from the blindingly obvious UF and the enumeration. On re-reading, there’s a very neat surface that I didn’t get at all.
19 AG + U in JAR – I haven’t seen ‘horseshoe’ for U before but I like it – luckily I have seen ‘grate’ = JAR a few times recently, otherwise this might have been a struggle.

12 comments on “23,538 – Good stuff – worth two looks”

  1. I found this puzzle enjoyable but slow going (19:15). Although I filled in 9A (WISEACRE) quickly, it took me a while to see how it worked, ie W(ith) + (CASE* in IRE). That was after I had spent some time trying to convince myself that “wire” could mean “passion” as some sort of back-formation from “wired”.
  2. Also struggled – 14:48. When you mentioned pair solving the other day, my first thought was “Who’s the scribe?” followed by wondering about communication processes like lip-reading in a silent competition. But I could have chipped in with the KI for junkie (I missed 30 days = June) and maybe a quicker spotting of FISHEYE LENS. Probably not alone in pondering LAH-DI-DAH at 16D, or then trying for “posh = F in (pea soup)*” before remembering the right bit of French.
  3. Defining GEOFFREY as just ‘chap’ seems pretty vague, i mean, grey. Definitely not cold-solvable — only got it with all the crosses in place.

    –ilan

  4. A very nice puzzle with some clever deceptons. It took me a long time to move on after completing the first three-quarters, and even then I failed to get GEOFFREY and QUACKERY. My mind was too set on “deducted” and “(Irish) county as definitions. No criticisms of this one.
  5. I can only see one M (although it does double duty). Am I missing something?
    1. Gee – Just now I realize I only exhaustively checked the back end of the frequency alphabet
  6. Please could someone explain 27A. I can’t see how c and d are to be lifted from “censured”. If it said “Guarantee CD lifted from produced rap”, or “Guarantee produced rap lifted CD” or some such it might be understandable.
    1. I don’t like this either.
      I suppose that “produced rap” gives CENSURED but it’s pretty ugly.
      However, “lifted from CD” is terrible.
      Mike O.
  7. I made the mistake of doing this puzzle when already quite tired, and in the end felt lucky to solve it in under 20 minutes (18:53). Some good clues, and some of them pretty tough so I suspect I might not have been all that much faster if I’d come to it fresh.
  8. I was one tempted by BOW TIE at 11a but as I could not parse it – entered it in “light write”. Finally saw it as my LOI whilst in the process of looking up the correct answer. That sometimes happens – some kind of flash of inspiration before capitulation. Geoffrey at 12a was my POI after finally getting FISHEYE LENS at 13d. The Pangram helped with QUACKERY at 26a as I often forget to follow the rule of “see a U a then try a Q”. I did eventually and it worked.

    Some “easies” left out:

    9a Smart guy with passion going about bad (case)* (8)
    W I SEAC RE

    10a Send up staff to divide wages (6)
    PA ROD Y

    17a Steps beyond the suburbs? (7,5)
    COUNTRY DANCE

    23a Not broadcasting rotten tune (3,3)
    OFF AIR

    2d Rugby touring side initially using the same pitch (6)
    UNISON. Nice sporting diversion from a musical meaning.

    6d Marx’s unknown work training classes in rising (5)
    Z EP PO. Not Groucho, Chico, Harpo nor even Karl.

    7d What might need endless room for casualties? (3)
    WAR (D). Only 3 letters but great clue. Probably a “chestnut” my bunnies?

    8d Angry-looking bosses to form ginger group (8)
    RED HEADS

    18d Disregard second honour in decorating oneself (7)
    DI S OBE Y

    21d SilVER VEstment’s concealed zip (5)
    VERVE

    24a is wAgneR epiC regularly selected extract from Ring?
    ARC. Here you have to deduce exactly what “regularly” means – in this case it appears to be every 4th letter. I have capitalised differently from the printed clue to illustrate this.

  9. If you turn off auto-format it nicks all your spaces! I was just trying to stop it auto correcting my irregular capitalisations. DOH!

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