24212 – c’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 7:40, one mistake

When they put foreign phrases into the puzzle, I reckon to gain time from good memory of French and other spelling – “faute de mieux” made hay for me in one Times championship regional final. So once I’d seen an answer to 5D and a few checkers, “embarras du choix” went in confidently, with no wimpy anagram checking. Now of course I see that it’s wrong – choix being a word with no change in the plural, you can also have “de choix” at the end. A time when I’d have been better off not knowing either version and working it out. (The quote at the top is “it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder” (spoken of a particular French revolution execution, and corrected here courtesy of delurker mmagus.).

1A was last in, and apart from 5D, 17 also went in without complete understanding of the wordplay. There were a few odd echoes of yesterday’s puzzle which I doubt are more than coincidence but just might be the xwd ed having a little joke.

Across
1 ZON(K)E,D=Land’s End – some time wasted on “A K” = “a thousand”, looking at words like SOAKED.
5 (t)EST(I’M)ATE – “with a will” = testate – tricky container/subtraction combo
9 RE=on=concerning,PORTABLE=radio
10 LEAD – 2 defs
11 (TICK OVER)=”credit no longer available” – best read as a two word phrase, I think – “over” = “no longer available” didn’t quite work for me.
13 SHOO = “shoe” = one meaning of Oxford – also marmalade, type of bags = trousers, and probably more
15 A,ME(RIC(h))AN – (statesman=American) is the same kind of invention as flower=river
18 IRONISED = derision* – new word to me, derived from ironist apparently, but the ‘irony’ bit seemed so sure that I still put it in first time
19 AGED – hidden – though “partly written off” presumably indicates deleting the rest of “mortgage debts” so maybe you count it as a subtraction
21 DEN=retreat (noun),VER = Rev. reversed – got briefly mixed up in my head with yesterday’s “Ven.”, thanks to the ‘env’ in there.
23 CAR FERRY – (E,Fr.) rev. inside CARRY – and probably clue of the day with this nice excellent reference to summer cross-Channel travel.
25 CHAR – 2 defs. If not seen before, the char is one of the stock xwd fish like gar, ling and id(e).
26 CROWN,DERBY = two items of headgear (the latter US for a bowler), and (next look back at yesterday) a kind of dinner service, not one with a Gloria in it.
27 A,P.(PEN),DIX=509. A bit disappointed with this – one point of pride for me about the Times puzzle is the rarity of the “51=LI2 cliché which seemed to come up about twice a week when I did the Guardian puzzle regularly. 509 is different, but equally obvious.
28 ON SONG – N for Neddy in Goons* – another look back – this time no Goons knowledge is needed, except to enjoy the surface meaning – Neddy Seagoon was a main character invented and played by Harry Secombe. Available on Youtube from the obvious sewarch if you’d like to hear him
 
Down
2 O,B,ELI – (Eli=priest) is one of the original crossword clichés. An obelus is a mark (like a minus/division sign) indicating doubtful text.
3 KNOCK-DOWN – 2 defs, one for “knock down”
4 DATIVE – first letters of “detectives …. elusive”, “case” being the def. A doddle for anyone taught Latin at school. The six usual cases are NVAGDA = Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative. The Locative floats around somewhere but I’ve forgotten the details.
5 EMBARRAS DE CHOIX – (E,exam board’s rich)* – an embarrassment of choices – or in this case, the concept of “choice” I guess
6 T(WENT)IES – a score = 20 of something – an old favourite non-obvious meaning for surface reading confusion
7 MALA(d)Y – ironic to see “Asian flu” given current news stories of “piggy flu” as it’s already known at the hospital where Mrs B has been testing alleged samples already.
8 TRAIN=school,FARE=food – I’m sure they usually do something about the dining car for this answer
14 H,ORSEWHIP=(his power)*
16 I’M AGELESS, which P Pan might have said – if you see “(person)’s profession”, you can practically write in IM at the start of the answer.
17 OS,TRA(p),COD – after making it “the opposite”, the wordplay is from “(net mostly) caught in enormous fish”
20 F,RAN,CO – for very young solvers, General Franco ruled Spain from 1936 to 1975.
22 V,ERSE=Irish (language)
24 RO=or rev.,BIN=container

49 comments on “24212 – c’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute”

  1. 18 mins, last in by far was OSTRACOD which I didn’t know. 23A is my COD also. I think ‘statesman’ in 15A is a bit too fanciful – much more so than ‘flower’.

    Tom B.

    1. If we can’t stretch our imaginations to see, or want to use, “STATESMAN” for “AMERICAN” then I’m afraid we are really not entering into the true spirit of crytic puzzles IMO. If anything that one is old hat …
  2. 32 minutes today with no major problems or hold-ups. The bottom half went in first and I worked up from there.

    I didn’t know 5d but having established it was an anagram and with the checking letters D? C?O?X in place to suggest a possible French expression, there was little else it could be.

    My only real guess was OSTRACOD as I didn’t know the word and couldn’t work out the middle bit of wordplay, so I took a stab at a couple of likely letters to fill the gaps in OS?R?COD and picked the right ones.

    1. That’s too cryptic for me. If you’re saying that there’s a mistake in the report, please say where – I’ll happily fix it and give you the credit. If you mean that the heading should start “c’est pire”, “plus” is an alternative given in Chambers and seemed easier for people with schoolboy French like mine.

      Other than that, apart from a rephrase of my comment on 27 and correction of anag fodder in 14 (both imminent), the text is what I intended to write. (Though that’s where we came in …)

  3. Apart from ZONKED and OSTRACOD I kept feeling I’d seen a lot of this before in one way or another but it kept me amused for 25 minutes. Surely there must be an alternative to Oxford for shoe. “So called outlaw” is a yawn for “Hood” and ROBIN (a bit like “al” for gangster), the use of “im” as mentioned by PETER etc etc

    I liked the clue to HORSEWHIP and CAR,FERRY is excellent.

    1. I think the other basic style of shoe (which I prefer) is the Derby, but I suppose that’s ruled out by 26ac today!
      1. Derby=shoe is Chambers-only. Candidates for surface meaning deception, courtesy of Bradford: Balmoral, Boot, Brogue, Clog, Creeper, Loafer, Pump, Trainer. (Bradford = Anne B’s Crossword Dictionary – these seem to be the shoes with another meaning and no need for “shoe” as part of the name, which rules out “court” for example.)
    2. 12 minutes and grabbing an early lunch as I wrote – I agree this is a very trad sort of puzzle, and one can enjoy meeting old friends, but I liked zonked best.
  4. 2 hours with mechanical help with ostracod and 1AC incomplete, but ecstatic as only into my second week with only previous experience once a fortnight with Telegraph (a good place to start if you ignore the editorial). Peter, I am awestruck with your times. I must say finding this site has been an enormous help and a great pleasure. What dictionary do I need that defines zonked as spent? (fall asleep = zonked-out). And does anyone know if Chambers paperback is identical to the hardback, before I purchase?
    1. Got it – now corrected from “un faute” to “une faute”. Not that cryptic if I’d looked more carefully.

      At Archbishop Tenison’s school, Croydon in the 1970s, the girls were always better than the boys at French as they weren’t distracted by the rather unbuttoned blouse of Mrs H_____.

      1. I didn’t realise you went to Tenisons. I played cricket against them in the 1950s in the middle of Croydon on what is now a sea of concrete offices and shops. Never met the French mistress, worse luck – our teachers were still all male at that time.
        1. Tenison’s was dire at male sport when I was there. No representative teams, and I won the cross-country race mainly from being the skinniest boy there. Partly down to a different site, with minimal playing field. Bizarrely, cricketer Mark Butcher is the best-known Old Tenisonian – I doubt Tenison’s had much to do with his coaching, though they did regain a cricket team some time after 1976. Another school of the same name is opposite the Oval, so I suspect Butcher has sometimes had to clarify which school he went to.

          If Mrs H_____ was teaching in the 50s, she and her embonpoint aged very well indeed.

          1. Thanks!  I do like Poe, so I’ve ordered three.  When I was looking for a crossword-setting pseudonym, I was excited to find that the notorious inquisitor Bernard Gui – active during my period, and a key character in The Name of the Rose – had been rewarded for his efforts by being made bishop of Tui, and that the tui of New Zealand was also known as the poe-bird.  (I abandoned this as too obscure.)
    2. Concise Oxford seems to allow “zonked” as an alternative to “zonked out”. Then the trick is too look up “spent” and find “exhausted”. I didn’t mind the assumption that exhausted implied ‘asleep’, but I’m a well-known “dormouse”.

      As far as I know, Chambers don’t do a paperback of their latest complete dictionary (11th ed., 2008). But for the Times crossword, you don’t really need Chambers. C comes in when you move on to the barred-grid puzzles like Mephisto, though that’s recommended ASAP anyway.

      The “official” dictionaries for the Times are the Concise Oxford and Collins – if a word is in one of the two, it’s fair game. If only in Chambers, I think the setter has to convince the editor that it should be in COED/Collins. The vast majority of the points that puzzle solvers, including me, can be settled with the trusty old Concise Oxford. Conclusion: if you’re content with daily puzzles for the moment, get COED. If you want to be ready for more, the latest hardback Chambers – the current one should be the latest until 2013 if they’re on the usual 5-year cycle.

    3. Chambers (hardback) has “zonked (out)” as meaning either exhausted, or fast asleep. However, you should never need Chambers to complete the Times Cryptic; it operates from two standard dictionaries, both of which I’ve forgotten the exact titles of. One’s an Oxford and one’s a Collins, and neither are anywhere near as huge as the Chambers volume – regarding which I can’t answer your hard/softback question.

      You appear to be taking to the puzzles far more quickly than I did when I started, and I’m now here finishing in a quarter of an hour as often as not. (Today, not!) I didn’t get ZONKED either, but I have heard of prehistoric ostracoderms, which led fairly easily to OSTRACOD. My ignorance of French also let me down as I bunged in CROIX (crowns? riches?) at the end, leaving EMBARHAS which didn’t look very French but had to do.

      1. CROIX: cross(es) – maybe best remembered by way of mots croisés = crossword
    4. Don’t feel that you have to be a quick in order to comment. Opinions from those who finish Monday’s puzzle on Thursday week, are just as welcome as those who can time the proverbial egg by it. If you think you have something interesting to say, or a question to raise, or just want to vent your spleen at getting stuck for the 743rd time, feel free.
    5. Just a quick non-crossword-related tip: to reply to a particular post, click “Reply” immediately underneath it (instead of “Leave a comment” at the top/bottom of the section).  That way your post will appear indented below the one you’re replying to.
    6. I found the CD-ROM version of Chambers invaluable when I started to take crosswords seriously. It is also an excellent entrée into the world of barred puzzles. It’s obviously quicker to use than the printed version and it also does wildcard searches. It can also do inverted searches, so, in addition to looking up Maw to find Seagull, you can look up Seagull to find Maw. It costs less than the printed version but I don’t think it has been updated since the 9th (2003) edition.

      Needless to say, I only use it these days to check my answers after I have finished the Times crossword.

      1. The CD-ROM is great on content and searches, but has mistakes such as counting spaces or hyphens in multi-word phrases as letters, so you need to search for at??? to find at it (many “crossword-solver” gizmos do the same). Ironically, today’s crucial phrase can be with searches for “embarras de” or “du choix”, but neither of the correct versions. I believe they employed an Eastern European software house and didn’t check their work properly. On a forum mainly used by Listener solvers (and hence representing a big chunk of potential sales) these problems and others got them a real roasting, most of which I’m afraid they richly deserved, given their apparent close contacts with some of the xwd community who could have arranged some very cheap and effective user testing.

        The electronic version is now done through their website – a new copy of Chambers gets you free access for 6 months. As long as you’ve got a connection, the new version is far better, but also far dearer if you compare 5 years of subs to the cost of the book. Unless I become a committed Listener solver chasing an all-correct record for the year, the book and occasional use of the CD-Rom will do me.

        1. The other virtue of the dictionary is that one can browse the words around the one initially looked up. This may often yield an unexpected solution or expose a potential error.
        2. I’ve just tried A??? and it found at it. I think the problem is more that it ignores spaces and hyphens in wildcard searches and in search results so that it tends to over-report. Not a serious problem. The only other problem is that the wildcard search does not work on accented words, so clich? does not find cliché. These quibbles should not put off anyone who is thinking of buying the product. In my experience it finds 99% of words in barred crosswords and, in the other 1% of cases, I immediately know I am looking for an accented word.
          1. I’m intrigued – can’t get mine to find AT IT with A??? despite having installed a ‘patch’ version which fixed some initial problems. I guess it’s possible that a later & better version is out there, but I didn’t know about it. Fair enough point on the accented chars, and some of the initial issues were certainly fixed, but the whole story didn’t seem like a great bit of software project management.
            1. We’re wandering a bit off-topic here but, under Settings, Wildcard search, you can choose between Crossword Solver and Standard. You want Crossword Solver
    7. Once your technique is sound, speed is not as hard to gain as most people think. I’m not promising you’ll ever get down to a 10-minute average, but 20 should be perfectly possible. I’d rate that as similar to being able to run a marathon in 2:45. When the winner finished, you’d be just past 20 miles, but you’d beat most of the field comfortably, and anyone wanting to run with you for 3 miles would need to be in good shape.
  5. 8:58. I spent the last minute and a half needlessly on 26ac (CROWN DERBY) and understandably on 17dn (OSTRACOD), which was new to me.  I hadn’t come across ON SONG (28ac) either.  ZONKED (1ac) is a word I frequently use and hear in the required sense – it seems the Concise hasn’t quite caught up.

    For those of us who dislike definition by example (aka false generalization), “say” in 13ac (SHOO) does double duty as a homophone indicator and an example indicator.  I’m with Tom B on “statesman” in 15ac (AMERICAN), which would be fairer with a capital (easily disguised at the start of a clue, or via “New Statesman”).  And much as I like the surface reading of 5dn (EMBARRAS DE CHOIX), I don’t see how “complex” can be construed as an anagram indicator.  (I would have used “complicated” instead.)

    Clues of the Day: 11ac (TICK OVER), 23ac (CAR FERRY), 25ac (CHAR), and 14dn (HORSEWHIP).

  6. Progress was (relatively) rapid until I hit the OSTRACOD, CROWN DERBY crossing and came to a halt, staring at that, REPORTABLE and ROBIN (hence the balloon) for about 20 mins. I eventually plumped for REPORTABLE thinking it was a fairly weak pun on a report being both written and audible. Thanks for the correct interpretation, Peter, and apologies to the setter. I couldn’t get BROWN BERET out of my head at 26, even though I very much doubted their existence and as for ROURN, ROTIN and ROCAN, they were far too obscure for me to have heard of. So, tomorrow is another day. COD has to be 23, although I liked CROWN DERBY and OSTRACOD in the end.
  7. I managed to finish this in two sessions. At 5, the checking D and X indicated a French phrase. My French is probably not as good as Peter’s, so I carefully ticked off the anagram letters to get it right. After that, I quickly got everything except 1 & 17. I went away and did my aerobics, and when I came back, feeling zonked, I quickly got 1 Across.

    17 was difficult for a non-zoologist because there was an embarras de choix in the wordplay. I did not know whether I was looking for a 4-letter short net in OS…ID or a 3-letter short net in OS…COD, but I managed to guess correctly

  8. Done on the train home from work, so 35 mins today. Held up for a long time on 1ac, 9ac and of course 17dn.

    I wondered whether there were going to be any complaints about FRANCO after yesterday’s discussion of ADLAI.

    For the other half of the story on OBELI see my note under ST 4304 on 30 November 2008.

    1. My guess kurihan is that unless you were around at the time you’re not likely to know about Stevenson and the famous “answer yes or no” exchange with the Russians over the Cuban missiles so for many he was very obscure. FRANCO on the other hand is more recent and ran Spain for many years. I’m advised there are still parts of northern Spain where it is wise to steer clear of the topic.
    2. There’s a tangible difference in recency and a massive difference in notability.  FRANCO ruled Spain for almost 40 years, ending in 1975.  Stevenson lost presidential elections in 1952 and 1956 and said one famous thing in 1962.  In 50 years’ time, no one will have heard of Stevenson except historians, but kids will still be taught about Franco.  There’s obviously no comparison to be made.
      1. No comparison in overall fame, no. But that’s partly reflected by the way the’re clued. Today you actually needed to know something significant about Franco. Yesterday, you needed to know that a “famous” Adlai Stevenson once existed but is now dead (or fictitious). Whether he was presidential candidate, mass murderer or Yorkshire cricketer did not matter.
  9. I think I have an alternative to 1ac but I’m sure I’ll be shot down! I have FORKED (as in forked out) with K in FORE (area near) + D. Hmmm, it does look a bit weak now I look at it again!
    Apart from that, a pretty enjoyable 14 minutes. EMBARRAS DE CHOIX had to be shoehorned in with all the checkers in place and using a best-fit method. I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t work out why it was IMAGELESS so thanks to PB for the explanation.
  10. 30 minutes, with 5d giving me the most grief. Luckily, I saw the DE, and had C_O_X, so my schoolboy French helped me stagger to the finish line. I didn’t understand 9ac / 23ac at the time, thinking they might be fairly weak CD’s, so thanks for those. COD 26ac.
  11. I found this fairly easy, finishing in 25 minutes, but as I was enjoying a drink and a sunset I didn’t rush it. The only one I had to think hard about was 1. With ‘a’ in the clue I was working on _ OAK_D. Even when I ditched the A, I still had to go through the alphabet for the first letter trying to think of a suitable place near Land’s End. I fell for an old trick. I liked the clue to IMAGELESS.
  12. Just under half an hour with 5 minutes spent going through the alphabet before getting ZONKED.

    A ‘bête noire’ of mine in recent months has been crosswords with foreign language answers, so 5 down was a bit of a struggle playing with all the letters forming the anagram and ticking them off one by one. The only languages I can even vaguely speak other than English are computer languages.

    Apart from ZONKED, the top half went in far faster today than the bottom half. I have always considered TICK OVER to mean more than ‘just about going’. If I had a business today that was ticking over nicely, I would be reasonably happy, but I nore from dictionaries that tick over can mean to operate at a low level of activity.

  13. 19:20 for me today, and no holdups at the end for a change – I was just too slow at the start. My first read through of the clues almost drew a complete blank (CHAR was the first to go in, followed by KNOCK-DOWN). After 10 minutes I still only had a third of the grid filled, then gradually picked up speed as the number of checking letters increased.

    Re: schoolboy Latin – I remember we were taught the various cases as Form A, Form B etc. From memory, Nominative was A, Accusative B, Dative C, Genitive D and Ablative E. Those are the only ones I can remember though (it was over 30 years ago).

  14. 17.30 today. Last in was OSTRACOD which was a bit of a struggle, ZONKED also took ages as I thought it would be AK in the middle.Wasn’t familiar with 5d but managed to avoid Peter’s faute.
    All in all a good challenge.
  15. Clearly i am the only one to dislike the use of profession in 16d. Whilst i understand from Pete’s earlier comment that the word is a common template for the IM bit suggesting anything professed, is there another one that might better fit the surface. The concept of a picture of a job doesnt quite work for me. Unless of course it is doubly shrewd by implying that peter pans lack of obvious vocation may be the reason why there is no picture? I tried to think of a better one, however got mentally stuck on view (which doubles up as opinion and also is better as something to have a picture of) but even that I didnt much like !
    1. It’s “profession” in the sense of saying something not the job sense. So Pan would have said (professed) “I’m age less”
      1. Hang on, it’s the surface meaning that’s being queried here – the part you’ve learned to ignore…

        On reflection I agree that it doesn’t really hang together. Maybe a different synonym for “image” could be found which would fit better, possibly with a change of “profession” to (e.g.) “confession” or “claim”. But I can’t instantly think of an improved version.

  16. Didn’t see ZONKED late last night, and remembered back to conic sections and put in CONKED. I’m making a lot of these sillies lately, might try solving while sober and before midnight. Or not.
  17. About 40 minutes for me today, held up by OSTRACOD, CROWN DERBY, OBELI, and ZONKED, this last being my final entry. The clever misdirection about Land’s End and smooth surface makes this one of my COD choices, along with the superior CAR FERRY. The long French anagram took me a while also. Overall I thought it a very good puzzle today, though I have never heard of ON SONG. Best to all.
  18. Congratulations to the setter on taking a good few scalps today. After 17 minutes (several on a grim unravelling of the OSTRACOD wordplay) I was left with A_E_ at 19a and no amount of staring at it got me anywhere. At one point I even searched for a hidden word and still didn’t see the blessed thing.

    Entertaining puzzle, especially Peter Pan and ZONKED.

  19. did anybody else come up with tide over for 11ac taking the cr out of credit leaves edit ergo tide over?
    1. You’re seeing too much! Your reading needs an indication that cr=credit is subtracted from itself, which isn’t there in the clue.
  20. 39 min, and with recourse to on-line aids. Don’t know why I had so much difficulty because there is little that is recondite apart from OSTRACOD and perhaps the long 5 dn anagram ( A definite pain if you don’t speak French as it occupies such a central place). I did know that CHOIX was French for choice, and Googling “de choix” cracked things wide open. Then again, when was the last time anyone used IRONISED, REPORTABLE, or IMAGELESS in casual conversation. OBELI must be due for a rest. COD: CAR FERRY, with MALAY a close runner-up.

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