23726

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 51 mins

Writing this very late – sorry. I have spent two long days working in the offices of an ICT company, but Livejournal is on their pornography black list and so couldn’t be accessed.

I think this went ok – despite unfamiliar words – but I spent far too long at the end figuring out BASS and SUSPENSE.
I didn’t know PANICLES and had a lucky guess. I’ve never heard of TYR or SATYRID but this looked the most likely for SATY?ID. MELANESIAN was also a new one. And I don’t think I knew BACK-NUMBER.

Across

1 C(LEM[on])AT,IS
11 YEAR(L,1)N,G
12 BASTARDISE – anag of ‘birds at sea’ – I think this was the first one I got.
14 PLEA[sure]
17 M(IND)SET
22 BACK(NUMB)ER – a back-number is a person or thing considered to be old fashioned – not seen this meaning before.
23 LI(B)RETT,O – book=B in anagram of litter
26 SET, A BOUT
27 S(US)PENSE[r] – last one to go in, shortly after BASS at 24d – I think earlier I was looking for the US later in the word.

Down

2 L,1,BERATE
3 M(ON,ASTI)C
5 SA(TYR)ID – Tyr is the Norse god of War.
6 MELANESIAN – anagram of ‘animal seen’
7 PANICLES – anagram of ‘nice pals’
8 STAG,N,ANT
15 POP,U,LIST
18 DE(MARCH)E
19 E(REMIT)ES – REMIT in reverse of SEE
24 B[r]ASS – not being very musical I thought of string, woodwind and percussio, before moving on…

16 comments on “23726”

  1. Back down to earth with a bump – most of this was easy enough, but at 7D for the anag. of nice pals, I had ?A?I?L?S, and a toss-up between PANICLES and CANIPLES, gardening being one of my weakest areas. I reasoned that if panicles was right, I might have seen clues before based on the panic (at the beginning), so plumped for caniples – wrongly. Stopped the clock at 7:40 for what its worth. Needless to say, any botanist would have written in this answer instantly!
  2. I found this quite tricky but fair. There were two answers 5D & 7D that I didn’t know but worked out.

    There seemed to be an abundance of words containing B today (11, I think) including one actual B-word.

  3. Many congratulations on your victory, Peter, and nice to see you the other day at my party. On today’s puzzle, it took me 7:07, but in my hurry I didn’t bother to work out the wordplay to 15D, and put in POPULISM, so that’s one wrong. I wasn’t tempted by CANIPLES, having come across PANICLES before, and I also dimly remembered SATYRID, although it was one of the last to go in.
  4. 16-17 minutes here, but lucky to have plumped for panicles over caniples, and guessed that the most likely 5th letter of 5d was an R. Having never heard of SATYRID or TYR, this somewhat spoiled an otherwise enjoyable crossword for me. I don’t mind an obscure word as the solution as long as the word play doesn’t also contain one. Apparently Tyr was “the god of single combat and heroic glory”. Hardly Thor, then, was he!

    Mind you, I beat the 2007 Times Crossword Champion today 😉

  5. Maybe it was the fatigue of doing 8 of the Cheltenham puzzles yesterday, but I found this a struggle all the way. Like Peter, I thought of changing my PANICLES to MANICLES for the same reason, but PANICLES rang some sort of faint bell with me (or so I imagined) and a clue based on PANIC LES(S) seemed to me to be not in the style of the rest of the clues.
    And I’m still stuck on one 🙁
    Congrats not only to Peter on his exciting win yesterday but also to Mr and Mrs Magoo on their new arrival William, a future conqueror no doubt !!
  6. No idea how long this took, as there was such a long gap between the penultimate entry and the final one at 24D. A real kick in the teeth this one – shortly after leaving school some friends and I decided to form a band. Originally I was the singer. Not a great choice. So I decided to play something instead and, 30 years later, I still play it. Can you guess what it is yet?
    1. I’m not musical as it is, but that’s one of those answers that probably would never have come, straightforward tho in theory it is. I also dared to suppose that the “score” I was looking for wasn’t a musical one.

      (Of course it was CANIPLES not MANIPLES that wasn’t the correct answer elsewhere 🙂 )

    1. I guess I’ve seen it once or twice – the checking letters seem quite handy. I was grateful not to follow up my idea that it might end “-nese”.
  8. Had to dive for a dictionary to check 5d and 7d, rest of it pretty straightforward. 22ac is a term I’m not familiar with, but obvious from the word play (I was trying to work DONOR around for a while).
  9. Pretty tired after 6 puzzles yesterday,especially the last uncompleted two. (I suppose the evening beers and late curry didn’t help either!)
    Pure lucky guess at panicles and assumed satyrid had to be correct , so all in all 15 minutes not bad
    JohnPMarshall
  10. no web access. Borrowing a kind sole’s phone to say this. Won’t be able to post til tue night.
  11. anaxcrosswords that has to be Bass guitar i’d say probably electric as it was a group not a jazz combo.
    I am known to be able to play bass myself as it happens alanjc
    1. Electric it is Alan. Embarrassingly, my first influence was Mark King who I tried to emulate despite having rather fewer than the requisite number of fingers on one hand. Not sure if anyone noticed to be honest; I had a habit of hiding at the back as the “unseen muso”.
  12. A total of nine “easies” left out here:

    9a Transgressing President has little right to sound off (8)
    ABE R RANT

    10a More than enough cake eaten by a boy getting fat ultimately (8)
    A BUN DAN T

    15a Bird brings bill round in bite (7)
    PE AC O CK

    21a Audible support for member of the Lords (4)
    PEER. SL PIER.

    25a Poverty to leave a mark on big town (8)
    SCAR CITY.

    4d Duck given meal on lake (4)
    TEA L

    13d Hard bed at such a price is heavily reduced (4-6)
    ROCK BOTTOM

    16d When rattled, (I react by)* showing bitterness (8)
    ACERBITY

    20d Grabs bill to get expenses added (7)
    AC COSTS

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