24063 – It’s AXIS you half-wit!

Author   7dpenguinPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This is the first of a handful of “guest appearances” from me. It is a fortunate baptism into daily blogging as I’ve solved it previously.  It was the first puzzle in the second session of this year’s Championships. I think I did it in around 10 minutes on the day.

Across
1 EXCLAMATION MARK – EX CON around L+AMATI + MARK. the definition is there, right at the end (!). A really tricky clue for starters. AMATI were a family of violin makers.
11 STOR(M)Y – I think this was my first one in on the day
12 INDICATOR – included in inDICT A TORTurer. Another nice, easy one to settle the nerves
13 DE CENT
18 CAL,AMITY
19 BRAKES – two definiions, one being a horse-drawn carriage. An ex boss of mine used to call estate cars “shooting brakes”. I thought he was a bit odd
21 NORMALLY – NO M ALLY around R
23 S(I)MILE
26 A(U) DEN – Wystan Hugh himself. One of his poems was “Funeral Blues” . Sounds like he liked a laugh
27 TEA GARDEN – being (GREAT DANE)*
28 AVERSION THERAPY – (OTHER PAINS)* in A VERY. Another difficult long one.

Down
2 CON,DO – looks chestnutty, but I can’t remember seeing this before.
3 AD HOMINEM – (HIM MAD ONE)*
4 AXIS – A + SIX rev. This is the one I got wrong on the day. It was a Times crossword, it had the word “boundary” in it and I didn’t consider cricket! I wrote in AMIR, which felt wrong at the time but I couldn’t think of anything else. In the end I panicked myself into sticking my hand up. Two minutes later I realised what it should have been and was left to stew for 30 minutes. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have made much difference as I was the 26th to finish.
5 INTRIGUE – (UNITE)* around RIG
7 A(WEST) RUCK – as I was when I heard that Mark Goodliffe (the eventual winner) had completed all three puzzles in a little over 15 minutes.
8 KIND RED – Stalin presumably being an unkind red.
14 COL,E,RIDGE – another which looks chestnutty but which I haven’t seen before. Quite fitting that he was one of the Lake Poets. He also cross-checks with AUDEN at 26a
16 BARRI(CAD)E – there’s a lot of literature today, but it’s all pretty easy. Barrie wrote about Peter Pan, who turned out to be Cliff Richard
17 STILETTO – LIT rev in SET TO. A blade designed for stabbing rather than cutting. Oh dear, I’ve started thinking about being walked on by stiletto heels. I’d better go for a lie down.
18 CAN,TATA – nice to see a different way of clueing CAN. Also nice to see TATA for “so long”. Altogether a nice clue.
22 [h]AUNTS – Aunt Sally was played by Una Stubbs in Worzel Gummidge. Funny to have Una Stubbs AND Cliff Richard in the same crossword. They both appeared in the film Summer Holiday
24 INDIA – in the phonetic alphabet India is Juliet’s predecessor.. Clever stuff
25 TAUT – I’m going to stick my neck out here and guess that this soundalike works for everyone (any offers Jimbo?)

33 comments on “24063 – It’s AXIS you half-wit!”

  1. A 14 minute amble. I enjoyed this after the (self imposed) horrors of yesterday. Off to a great start with 1 ac and 9 going in as quickly as I could write them. I am sure I have seen a very similar exclamation mark before. 22 dn my COD.
  2. 16 minutes with a few interruptions from text messages about the election. There’s some nice clues in here, liked 28, which I had to work out backwards from the interior anagram, the insertication at 5 and 7d (though it printed awkwardly here).
  3. 11:29 .. Breezy, witty, lots of fun. And that’s just the blogger. Boom boom!

    Very enjoyable, if quite easy. Only question – where does the ‘ex’ in 1d come from? Isn’t a dummy posed? I’m missing something.

    1. I was thrown by this too, but with the correct squint of the eye, and a following wind, you can just about equate “from” and “like”, as in “ex officio”. Then again, perhaps not.
    2. The old bloggers trap – the one you miss is the one people have questions on. I think that dummy here refers to the bridge hand which is turned face up after the bidding process
  4. No idea of time – it was done in gaps between telephone calls, meetings and watching the US election results. A bit of a romp, with quite a few answers going in without bothering to work out the reasons (so thanks for the blog!). Spent too long trying to insert “Strad” in 1A instead of the other fiddle!

    I’m sure it’s a stupid question, but in 18D does “in advance” simply signify that CAN (meaning “record” as in “canned music”) precedes TATA? The clue would seem to work quite well without it.

    I thought 22D was nice.

    1. I took “in advance, record” to be the same as “record in advance” = “can”, rather than anything to do with the placement of part of the word.

      35 minutes today. No great problems though 15 eluded me until the last moment.

      1. There are also two defs involved – one where you identify the universe with your own god, and a form of worship that admits or tolerates all gods – both ‘most widespread’ in their own ways.
  6. A good blog Ken. We’re back to the very straightforward. Fun but hardly taxing. About 25 minutes but with 9A still not understood other than as a straight definition. As for 25D, Ken, I taut it was OK.
  7. 26 minutes for me with no problems until the end with 4. I also entered AMIR with no conviction, since I couldn’t think of anything other than TIP, RIM and LIP for the boundary. Fortunately I spent a minute at the end running through the alphabet. When I reached S I realised it was SIX. I also said to myself something like “It’s AXIS, you half-wit!”
  8. 5:59 when tried a few days after the championship in my own private version of prelim 2. I don’t think I’d heard about any clues, but was obviously aware that fast times had been recorded. I clocked just over 17 minutes, probably worth about 20 on the day, which I think would have been enough for a place around the middle of the first 12. I think the appearent chestnuts were new.
  10. Good fun. About 30 mins for me. 1ac particularly ingenious. Like sotira, and as a non-card player, I too had some difficulty in explaining the “ex” in “exposed” at 1dn. Clearly, 7dpenguin’s is the right explanation (Chambers gives “an exposed hand of cards” as one definition of dummy), for which thanks. Instead, I took “dummy” to be one of those jointed wooden models of the human form used by painters, which are unclothed and hence arguably “exposed”! A bit of a stretch, but it worked for me.

    I agree with others who can see nothing cryptic about 9ac. Are we all missing something?

    18ac: it seems to me that this can work in either of the ways suggested above – that is, taking “in advance, record” as meaning “record in advance” (the most convincing interpretation, I think), or as indicating that “can” should be placed in front of “ta ta”. Both versions require “can” to mean “to record”. I suppose a pedant might quibble that this meaning really only exists in the past participle form “canned” – “canned music” etc.

    Michael H

  12. ‘Somebody’ suggested to me that today’s is a cracking blog and that the setter deserves hearty congratulations (also by Cliff Richard), so hearty congratulations to the setter from me.

    15:37 with the .37 spent deciding between ad hominem and ad homenim and like kurihan I wanted to shoe-horn strad into 1ac. That’s twice in recent weeks that Amati has come up so I’ll be looking out for him next time.

    Nice to see Dangermouse’s arch enemy’s sidekick at 17.

    Re pantheism, is/was there a God known as Pan the first? Nope? (Hope that hasn’t got 7dp thinking about Pan’s People now).

    Q-0, E-6, D-4, COD 22

    1. “Hope that hasn’t got 7dp thinking about Pan’s People now”

      No, only about PANT HEISTs.

  13. That’s an improvement after yesterday’s monster, which I failed miserably to finish! Only slowed myself down by jotting in AT HIMSELF for 3d, which was obviously incorrect, and caused a few minutes of headscratching. COD 8d.
  14. Probably solved this in about 8 minutes on the day in Cheltenham and completed all three in about 28-30 minutes which was not nearly quick enough to qualify (top 12 went through – I was 19th).
    After printing it out today I quickly recognised it – pretty sharp eh? – and was able to polish it off in about 5 minutes (still probably slower than Mark Goodliffe took on this one)
    JohnPMarshall
  15. About 25-30 minutes while watching our election results last night, so a bit distracted. Pretty straightforward, although the cricket reference went over my head, as in ‘it’s gotta be AXIS, so why is ‘six’ a boundary?’ I decided to stop wondering and wrote it in on faith alone, same way I voted yesterday.
    That’s the only political commentary I’ll make. Regards to all.
    1. A cricket pitch is surrounded by a boundary rope that defines the playing area. If the batsman hits the ball along the gound and it hits the boundary rope he scores 4. If he hits it in the air (more dangerous because if a fielder catches the ball the batsman is dismissed) and the ball clears the boundary rope without bouncing he scores 6.

      1. Thank you both. I knew the term ‘to hit for six’ meant something good in cricket, sort of analogous to our home run in baseball, but I never knew exactly what that was. I appreciate it.
        1. Runs are normally taken in ones @ twos, occasional threes and rarely four actually run. Then there are the boundaries for four or six. It is not uncommon for five to be scored when the batsmen scamper a quick single, and a fieldsman tries to knock down the stumps to dismiss one of the batsmen, but misses and the ball crosses the boundary.

          It may be apocryphal, but I have seen reports of dozens of runs being scored off a single stroke during a game in Africa. The ball stopped short of the boundary, but uncomfortably close to a sleeping lion.

          1. Do you think it will confuse Kevin too much if we tell him you also get 5 runs for hitting short leg’s unused helmet, or for hitting the tree at Canterbury?
  18. To save any more confusion over 9a PANTHEIST I have come up with a new definition – see above.

    There are 6 omissions although some are discussed above:

    9a One who accepts the most widespread of beliefs (9)
    PANTHEIST. I don’t really follow the clue apart from being a pretty straightforward definition? The suggestions above, from the usual suspects, for a clue involving a smash and grab at a lingerie shop seem far more attractive.

    10a Like lettuce, raw as part of the course (5)
    GREEN. A triple-def.

    15a Going away, not in spring (8)
    OUT BOUND

    1d Like a dummy, vulnerable (7)
    EXPOSED. Thanks to the contributor above who enlightened us with the card game Bridge connection here. Although the successful bidder playing with Dummy is not necessarily “Vulnerable” in the context of the game?

    6d Time for turning in, almost on time (5)
    NIGH T

    20d In serious way, get behind liberty first and last (7)
    STERN L( ibert ) Y

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