24136 – Ouch!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

The run of more difficult puzzles continues, at least as far as I am concerned. In fact I found this one the most difficult of the week, though it’s possible that some of this may have been the pressure of my turn to write the blog. After 15 minutes I had only 6, 22 and 1D in place and it took me another hour to crack the rest of it. I think the clues turned out to be fair with just one completely unknown word (Eddo) and I have only one minor quibble at 25 which I expect the more seasoned hands will assure me is perfectly acceptable.

Across
1 RE(PUB)LIC,AN
9 POST,RIDERS
10 EDDO – A hidden word I’ve never heard of
12 DIVER,TI(MEN)T,0 – I spotted the answer long before I worked it out having been misled by the plural.
15 OVEN GLOVE – (novel veg)*
17 (w)ARS,ON – Solved eventually from the reference to 3 down
18 FIL(e),MS –  Ms = handwritten text. Again this took me ages to reason out long after spotting the answer.
19 TIMES,HARE
20 PICTURE CARDS – Pict + crusader*
24 DAIS – Dail’s with L for liberal removed, the Dail being the Irish parliament
25 M(ARGUER)ITE – I wonder whether “by” is quite fair here? My last one in so maybe I have an axe to grind.
27 BLOOD S,PORT
 
Down
3 BURNING ISSUE
4 IN,(ban)D,I.E. – An Indie is a  non-major record label or pop group who record for it
5 AIRSTREAM – AIM around Sartre*
7 INDONESIAN – INDIAN around (h)ONES(t). Not sure whether it’s the done thing to refer to (red) Indians, braves, squaws etc these days. It was all in common parlance in my youth but things have moved on.
8 PRO,POUNDER
11 AM(B)ASS,A,DRESS – Another less than familiar word. I thought women holding this position were called lady ambassadors.
13 WOLF SPIDER – RE,DIPS,FLOW (rev)
14 REF,(e)LECTION
21 AGGRO – (b)A(g)G(a)G(e) R(o)O(m)
22 DID,0 – Dido and Aeneas is Henry Purcell’s only full opera mostly remembered for Dido’s Lament (When I am laid in earth) played every year at the Cenotaph.
23 On edit BE,AT – Thanks to Keith for this one. I originally posted MEET which I think could be argued though I wasn’t completely happy with it. On an easier day I might have given it more thought. 

35 comments on “24136 – Ouch!”

  2. 11:53 here – a mixture of good and bad solving – good included seeing eddo on first look, though it’s easier when you know the word. Bad included making ‘bar’ in 1A into PUBLIC and wondering what on earth REAN was. Likewise not seeing PRO,POUNDER despite seeing the def and the stock wordplay.

    MARGUERITE was my last entry too – also not really convinced that “planted by” equates to “contained by”. “eaten by” or similar seems fair without spoiling the surface.

    Here’s the lament as performed by Dido on stage rather the band of the Household Cavalry on a chilly November morning.

    Edited at 2009-01-30 09:13 am (UTC)

  3. I think the pressure is getting to you Jack. I didn’t think this was anywhere near the same class of difficulty or cleverness as last Wednesday. About 25 minutes for me.

    Nothing really stood out. I must have come across WOLF SPIDER before but had to work it out from wordplay. I knew EDDO and spotted it straight away. My last was also MARGUERITE, a form of chrysanthemum. I knew the flower but couldn’t (and still can’t) justify the clue construction of “planted by”=contained by.

    1. Well, Jimbo, it just goes to show. I really struggled to get going today apart from 6, 8 and 1d. But on Wednesday I just chipped steadily away at it and was never in doubt that I would finish without recourse to references, unlike today when I was very tempted to us a solver but resisted. I think the larger grid with more empty white space to fill worked against me too!
      1. Jack

        If like me you prefer the ‘old’ more compact print with the serif font, it still seems to be available if you use the back door entry route. How long for, though, I don’t know…

        Neil

  4. In case anybody is fretting over this, I’ve had an e-mail from Paul McKenna acknowledging that there are two very similar valid answers to this clue.
  5. At 45 minutes I found this easier than the previous two days but no less enjoyable. It just proves that difficulty can be a state of mind as well as puzzle. I liked 25 for its ARGUER and am prepared to forgive the “by”, although I agree it’s a stretch. Also liked 13, 20 and 15 for its “Chef has a hand in”, but I’ll for 12 as COD for its construction. Had to guess DAIS but I thought either DAIL or DALI could be a parliament, the latter somewhere in Spain perhaps. Most parliaments are somewhat surreal at the best of times.
  6. I’m with Peter and Jimbo on 25ac. No way that I can see how “planted by” can indicate “contained by”. Placed beside, yes, but not placed inside. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us? For the rest, not an easy puzzle, but not as hard as some earlier in the week. EDDO unknown to me but eventually spotted. WOLF SPIDER equally unknown, but I was pleased to get there in the end via the wordplay. A bit of a slog, however. About 1hr.

    Michael H

  7. I found this by far the easiest of the week, finishing in 20 minutes, though it took another couple of minutes to convince myself that DIVERTIMENTO and MARGUERITE were right. It was one of those times when a small element in the wordplay gave me the answer, so ‘chaps’ in 12 was enough to give suggest DIVERTIMENTO without any help from crossing letters.
    I agree with those who feel “planted by” is suspect as a container indication. I’m also not sure about the indication of a hidden word in 10; I cannot quite get my head round the cryptic syntax of “being” followed by “shrink quite a lot”.
  8. I didn’t get MARGUERITE, and having seen the answer and wordplay here, I feel more sinned against than sinning.

    A dry old puzzle in which I didn’t feel the urge to tick any clues, but I suppose everything is looking pale after Wednesday’s masterpiece.

  9. 21 minutes, most of what I thought while solving was said above, BLOODSPORT and MARGUERITE were the last two in. I enjoyed some of the clues a lot, I thought 20 was well-crafted, and the connection between 3 and 17.
  10. Two camps, then. For what it’s worth I fall toward Jack’s end rather than Jimbo’s.

    Ages to get going properly, then a run of answers, then one or two stubborn ones at the end, my last in also being the dodgily-clued MARGUERITE.

    So 55 minutes, which I don’t mind if a stubborn crossword reveals some elegant clues. I don’t think this one did. Grump grump.

    Neil

  11. Couldn’t time this properly but I think it was somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes so pretty average toughness.

    I, too, liked the “Chef has a hand in this” def so that gets my COD.

    I’m not sure which comic it was who came up with this but it bears repeating: “The Dodo died. Dando died. Di and Dodi died. No wonder Dido always looks worried.”

  12. Three tricky ones in a row! This one defeated me in the SE corner where, after an hour, I still had 25ac / 27ac / 22d and 23d blank, and decided enough was enough (and I didn’t fancy finishing off tonight with my pint of beer and packet of crisps!) I thought I’d finish this in no time, whipping through the NW corner in no time at all, before I quickly got bogged down, with too many I didn’t understand. No real complaints, beyond my own incompetence.
  13. 4 left at 30 minutes, 3 of which were in the SE corner. Neither horticulture nor Purcell operas are among what few strengths I have. However I should have got DIDO from the wordplay as I had the O. I was trying to get TOT into the end of the flower.

    Overall a tough, but enjoyable week.

  14. I found this entertaining. I was completely stuffed by Marguerite (no, not too much pizza!), tho.
    I think the clue just about works, and I reckon the answer would have come if I’d been more patient, rather than inventing a new type of plant in desperation!
  15. 21 minutes. Last in was MARGUERITE which along with EDDO was a new one. Completely bamboozled by the birds despite getting DIVERTIMENTO. Held up on 9 by putting PLUG instead of PUSH which would have been ok if ‘hot’ hadn’t been in the wordplay.
    PS – I didn’t manage to comment on Wednesday but thought it was best puzzle for a long time and an enjoyable hour
  16. Was an enjoyable crossword. Had no problems with marguerite, felt it scanned well.Thanks for the link to the aria.
    COD 1 D.
  17. Filled in the grid with one exception reasonably quickly, but failed completely to get MARGUERITE until I used TEA, which I think disqualifies me from recording a time. Glad to see others struggled as well.
  18. I must be missing a subtlety here – but I had no problem with MARGUERITE.

    Surely it isn’t “planted by” but “planted”, “by”
    PLANTED=inserted, and
    BY = within the extent of (as in “by day” = within the extent of the day) or,
    BY = in, into (as in ‘come by my office’)?

    1. That’s sort of how I read it but I think it’s stretching things a bit. I’d have no problems with “adopted by small child”, but “planted by” to mean “inserted within the bounds of” strikes me playing rather loose with normal meaning.
    2. I think that’s a rather far-fetched suggestion. I think the clue stand or falls by whether you think it acceptable to read “planted by” as “planted inside oneself” The latter idea may be a stretch, but I think it’s much less of a stretch than other interpretations I can think of.
    3. {BY = during} is supported by the COED, so on that basis, “planted by” is justified.
  19. Thanks, angryvocab. I concede that on your reading of “by” the wordplay for MARGUERITE just about works.

    Michael H

    1. Thanks for that Michael!

      I can’t say I can see why sometimes ‘lift & separate’ is considered a clever device and othertimes everyone seems to think it’s a dodgy.

      Anyway, as Anax would probably say: with flower, ‘in a row’ (perhaps a reference to Mary, Mary, quite contrary… as mentioned above by mate KevNY) and ‘planted’ no one can argue that the clue didn’t direct the solver to a botanical answer could they?

      1. I don’t think there are any complaints about “lift and separate” itself, just occasional failures to see that lifting and separating is required.

        In case anyone’s asking “lift and separate?”, this is local jargon for the trick where a setter uses an apparent two-word (or longer) phrase in the surface reading, but this must be divided for the cryptic reading. In the case of 11D today, we have “Gather together a set of garments for clothing British diplomat (12)” – where the “British diplomat” provides the B in the wordplay and the one-word definition.

  20. Apart from marguerite I thought this was really easy, especially compared with last two days.So my plea for an indication of difficulty to accompany the crossword seems a nigh impossible challenge. Judgement would be far too subjective.
  21. 24 min, but needed on line assistance for the last few. Never hears of “indie”, probably because I detest all modern music (ie anything post WWI).
  22. I came through in about 40 minutes, finding it a challenge but not as tough as Wed or Thurs. Regarding the marguerite: I only solved this with all the checking letters in place and not seeing any other possibility that would result in an actual word. So I looked it up to see if it is a flower, and saw a google reference to ‘pretty maids’. Could not this be a reference to nursery rhyme? That would help explain the ‘planted in a row’ wording. I leave that to anyone who knows more about flowers than me, which I think is everyone.
    My other hold up was being convinced that the ‘handwritten text’ in 18 was ‘ps’, causing a useless goose chase for many minutes in the SW area. COD for me is OVEN GLOVE. Regards.
    1. Well spotted, Kevin! I’m sure the setter intended the nursery rhyme ref. (a semi-&lit.?) and it’s fiendishly clever, if the use of ‘by’ is legitimate. Lost on me, however – I didn’t even know of MARGUERITE, let alone that it’s a ‘pretty maid’. I claim at least an equal lack of botanical knowledge.

      Tom B.

    2. There may well be a nod to the nursery rhyme in the surface reading, but I can’t find a strong connection between it and a particular kind of flower. The best I can do is “daisies all in a row” in one version, marguerites being ox-eye daisies. See wiki on Mary, Mary, quite contrary

      I’m botanically ignorant too, but except for the possible link by way of the rhyme, I can’t find any evidence that “pretty maid” is used as a name for any flower.

      Edited at 2009-01-31 08:30 am (UTC)

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