24236

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 8:17

A bit harder than yesterday, with some fairly intricate wordplays. For me it used a few too many “before your very eyes” methods – we have two whole answers which are ‘first letters’ or a reverse hidden word, and then four part answers which are first, alternate or outside letters of words in the clue, with both alternate letter ones using the same indicator word. It’s that last fact that really brought this area to my attention.

Across
1 MI(n)DS,HIPS=joints. “Is careful about” = minds – as in “Mind your Ps and Qs”.
9 DE(a)N – A=area
10 LABOUR,FOR,C.E.=Church of England=church – beginners note that in cryptic xwds the Church of England is “CE” about 50 ties more often than it’s “C of E”.
12 SUEZ=Zeus rev.(CR),ISIS=goddess. Our 1956 contretemps with Colonel Nasser is dealt with at length on Wikipedia
13 (s)WELL – “spring” is the def – noun or verb. S=”the start of summer” – maybe another for the “before your very eyes” count …
15 TRIP(O)S – O = “Oxbridge’s first” (ditto). “Tripos” is the name for final exams at Cambridge
16 F(LATTE)N – FN = “case for FlaN”
18 NUCLEAR = “with powerful weapons” – reverse hidden in “Israel cunningly”. This might have been related to 12A, Israel being one of Egypt’s opponents.
20 READE,R – Reade is Charles Reade. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of him – apparently Reade fell out of fashion by the turn of the century—”it is unusual to meet anyone who has voluntarily read him,” wrote George Orwell
23 (g)AUNT
24 C(ADA)VERO,US – CVERO being cover*
26 LOOSESTRIFE – S.E.=”Home Counties” in (roof tiles)*. Loosestrife is a common name for several plants – “common name” meaning one in English rather than Latin, not necessarily “a name encountered frequently”!
27 (n)ICE – lovely=nice
28 O,UT,LET – UT = note? Yes, the original form of “Do(h)”, still used (to mean the note C) sur le continent, as in Beethoven Symphonie no 5 en Ut mineur, Op. 67. Look it up in your dictionary if it’s new. If you’ve got Chambers, look up “Aretinian” for the whole story.
29 (in)VESTMENT – nicely done clue.
 
Down
1 M,E,D,USA – Medusa was one of the three Gorgons in Gk myth. The other two seem to be anonymous.
2 DANSEUR=asunder* – a male ballet dancer, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring being a ballet as well as a revolutionary piece of music.
3 HE=man,LI(COP)T,ER
4 PUBLIC SERVANT = (inscrutable VIP)* – slightly obscure phrase but if you think of “Civil Servant” you’re halfway there.
6 R.A.F.,T – watch out for service being military rather than religious (though ‘servant’ in 4D probably helps).
7 SE(RaPiEr)NT
8 (d)OVER,LAND – I was delayed slightly by thinking of OSTEN(d) first, which is waiting for its turn in similar wordplay for OSTENSIBLY.
11 UNINFORMATIVE – take UNIFORM,NATIVE and then put the N in native “much too high”
14 MAN=”one of them”,AGE,MEN=workers (=”them”),T=leader of team.
17 IN,TAG,uLtImO – a gem with an incised design, as well as an artistic techinique involving incised designs
19 CON=prisoner,SORT=kind
21 E(MOT,I)VE
22 A,SPECT(re)
25 FE(T)E – “celebration or festival” in N America, which I guess is closer to “lavish entertainment” than a summer village green event.

33 comments on “24236”

  1. 35 minutes today with the last 10 of these spent thinking about 17 and 26. I eventually guessed INTAGLIO and LOOSESTRIFE from the wordplay but I don’t remember meeting either before. I agree with the comments about the surfeit of “before your very eyes” clues today. I had noticed it too and tired of them long before I had completed the puzzle. Otherwise it was enjoyable enough.
  2. 25 min. Made good time with this after a horrible start (23 ac AUNT first in) Two left, then a total mental meltdown. Eventually had to cheat to get DANCEUR and MANAGEMENT. Why I stalled with these clues I do not know, as both are excellent, and not too difficult. COD: 24 ac CADAVEROUS, or there again maybe 4 dn PUBLIC SERVANT.
  3. day off today so able to do the xword properly, and post at a reasonable hour. was feeling very good about it having done 90% in under ten minutes, and then looked forlornly at the 14,20,24,26 group for a while. 14 came after kicking myself, and in an attempt to beat 15 mins i stuck in 20 without knowing the real reason and 24 as CANAVEROUS (doh!) before reaching for the dictionary and looking up words beginning with LOOSE to get the plant. Bit of an anticlimax at 18 mins with one mistake after all that.

    Keep telling myself that I should go and learn a whole load of plant names, and authors, and classical composers/symphonies/works. Probably with no background info, but just the ability to remember the words and/or recognise them from wordplay. Otherwise I will forever have one last clue that is only gettable with “aids”.

    1. Searches like this one for composers will give you examples from the life of this blog. If you read through the results you’ll see some things coming up more than once. Noting their names is probably much more worthwhile than staring at 5 pages of plants or a page and a half of composers in Bradfords Crossword Dictionary (which is made from real crossword content over a much longer period). I did once suggest a list of books that could help with particular areas.

      But as someone pointed out in comments on that post, books and lists aren’t really the answer. You’re much better off developing your nose for wordplay, which should have been telling you that you’ve got L?O?E?T?I?E and {SE in (roof tiles)*}, so if LOOSE is the beginning (which looks a good bet), FRS are the remaining letters for the last three ?s. From there, LOOSESTRIFE looks a good contender, with LOOSESTFIRE just possible.

    2. I say just keep reading. Any book may yield fascinating vocab – Modesty Blaise and Flashman as well as fantasy fiction and schoolroom classics – all grist to the cruciverbalist’s mill. I just can’t get to grips with Spenser however useful his odd spellings seem to be.
  4. 6:56.  Last in was WELL (13ac), which I kept parsing as S plus a curtailed word for “surge”.  I didn’t know Charles READE (20ac), and I didn’t get “lovely with topping” for [n]ICE (27ac).  LOOSESTRIFE (26ac) was familiar from the wonderful Watership Down, which I recently read for the first time and can recommend for those who need plant names to ring a bell.

    The surface reading of 20ac (READER) looks like an allusion to the amusing anecdote about Lewis Carroll answering Queen Victoria’s request for a copy of his next book by sending her a volume on mathematics.  Elsewhere, I thought “Gorgon missiles” (1dn MEDUSA) were a wonderful invention, but they turn out to have actually existed.

    I agree that to use “regularly” twice looks like carelessness, and I don’t see why 15ac (TRIPOS) used “Oxbridge” instead of “Oxford”, which would have given a better surface reading.  But the definitions were more solid than in some recent puzzles – erring if anything on the straightforward side – and the surface readings were mostly good, so I liked this puzzle.

    Clues of the Day: 20ac (READER), 29ac (VESTMENT).

    1. Mark, I agree about the over-use of “regularly” – though there was a degree of variation in that at 7dn we were reguired to pick the odd letters of “rapier” and at 17dn the even letters of “ultimo”. A useful reminder for me, at any rate, that “regularly” can mean “all the odds” as well as “all the evens”, or, I suppose, every 3rd, 4th, 5th or even 6th letter, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used in that way. Like you, I’m mystified that the setter went for “Oxbridge” rather than “Oxford” at 15ac. As far as I know the tripos is an exclusively Cambridge exam, so “Oxford”, justified by the wordplay, would have added an extra layer of deception to the surface reading. Some of the other “pick-your-letters” clues were very neat – e.g. 5ac. I spent an unconscionable amount of time trying justify MEDICI before spotting FRESCO! On the whole an enjoyable puzzle.
      1. I caused some confusion in an Oxford Today crossword last year with a clue that used the triangular numbers:

          Progression of heavenly bodies in Asian capital (5)

        With four letters checked, it was easy to get the answer, but I don’t think many people got the wordplay!

          1. HANOI: “heavenly bodies in”.  The triangular numbers are 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, etc – think of 3 as ∴
  5. Thanks Pete for pointing this out.
    I hadn’t noticed until you did so.
    Had moderate fun with this this morning over a bowl of cereal.
    But I don’t put on the stopwatch: though I’d say about 20 mins.
    Would have liked it to last longer so as to avoid a pile of essays blocking the light from my kitchen window.
    Actually I’m not one for strict timing and like the Times to last as much of the day as possible.
    There’s a poem by Roger McGough that goes something like this (and sums up my usual performance):

    Woke up
    Shaved
    Did the Times crossword
    Shaved again

    1. You’ve got the gist of it: Got up / Had a shave / Did Times crossword / Had another shave
  6. 25 minutes for a largely straightforward puzzle solved top to bottom, left to right.

    Although the “pick your letters” clues do irritate after a while I thought FRESCO at 5A and NUCLEAR at 18A were well constructed and had they been the only specimens would have been better received. I also liked VESTMENT at 29A.

    1. As yours, top down left to right, 20 minutes or so, no weird vocab – and no very special clues either. May I say dull?
  7. 22:43 .. one glance at the structure of 1a and I knew the morning egg was going to be decidedly hard-boiled. A good work-out, though, for those of us who aren’t so strong on the orthographic gymnastics.

    COD – I enjoyed FLATTEN

  8. About 30mins, so on the easier side for me. I also enjoyed it, possibly because of some smooth clueing. Didn’t particulalry mind the “in your face” clues, but did notice their prevalence. Particularly liked SUEZ CRISIS, OVERLAND and MANAGEMENT. Made the wrong choice at 26, with LOOSESTFIRE; obviously a member of the same intertidal botanic family as LOOSEFIRE & LOOSERFIRE.

    As for ut, it disappeared rapidly from the english lexicon following the long overdue recognition of women’s equal status in society. The Sound of Music was mentioned yesterday, and its iconic song ‘ut a shed, no females ‘ere no longer had a place in the new world order and had to be amended.

  9. Late start as early morning devoted to an obligation to wade through 2 long articles in London Review of Books (not my favourite journal)so thought the xwd would be a breeze. Indeed the exercise helped instantly to decipher the clever obfuscation resulting in FRESCO, which was first in. Then the usual story, fast away, slow to finish.
    Guesses at LOOSESTRIFE and OUTLET (yes Peter, the UT bit), and not particularly happy with CADAVEROUS as thin.
    1. The definition in 24ac is actually “Thin, bony” – is that better?
      1. Yes sorry Mark, lazy blog. I did parse (note the jargon) fully but my 7th Ed COED has cadaverous as “corpselike, deathly pale”. No doubt 11th ED, Collins or the elusive Chambers will have “thin, bony”.
        Reading LRB inevitably leaves me fractious.
        1. COED 11: resembling a corpse in being very pale, thin or bony

          A bit strange in a world where obesity is supposed to be bad for you!

  10. Sorry… I hate gardening so have no knowledge at all of plants, however common! The wordplay was obvious, but the outcome wasn’t. I hate guessing answers. I haven’t seen this in a crossword until now, unlike INTAGLIO which is a regular participant….
  11. 11:20 for me, but should have been under 10 mins. Like Mark, the last one I put in was WELL. After a minute or so trying to parse it the same way, I went through the alphabet and got the answer. If it had been BELL I’d have saved myself quite a bit of time!
  12. Funnily enough, I found this the easiest of the week, with one qualification. I filled all the grid except 13 in 19 minutes, then stared at 13, wondering whether I should enter SEAL or SELL, for no other reason than they met the apparent requirement of S. After staring at it for several minutes I put it aside and went to Monday’s Jumbo. When I came back to it and tried a different approach I saw that S might be the letter that’s cut, and eureka.
    What made it easy for me was that many of the answers could be got from the definition and only a few letters in the grid, or the definition alone (eg 12). I often didn’t pause to check the wordplay.

    Since it fooled me for so long I think I’d nominate 13 for COD, but I did like 29 and 3.

  13. 11 minutes, pretty much a rip-through, I’d been beaten by LOOSESTRIFE before so it wasn’t going to get me this time. I liked 24 and the surface at 3. My last in was MIDSHIPS, doing a double-take at seeing “middle” in the clue.
  14. Add me to the list of people who got Well last. I checked with my cd-rom version of Chambers afterwards and see that there are 61 possibilities for ?E?L, and that’s just the common nouns. I think I must have gone through most of them.

    My other kick-yourself moment came with Danseur. Even after I had concluded that it was the only possible answer it was a long time before I realised it was a straight anagram. Possibly “Participant in Le Sacre du Printemps…” would have made a better clue.

    I arrived at Loosestrife in exactly the way described by Peter above. I must be learning something.

  15. I found this a fairly easy exercise, going through with no real delays in about 15 minutes. My last two entries were MANAGEMENT and FLATTEN. I solved TRIPOS and INTAGLIO from wordplay alone, never heard of those before, but the wordplay was so clear that they didn’t cause much hesitation. No problem with LOOSESTRIFE, since even though it is not a native plant, it has over time overspread much of the eastern US. We have the Purple Loosestrife variety here, and always use both words to identify it. COD: VESTMENT. Regards.
  16. Seems to derive its name from a literal translation of one of the genera so called (Lysimachia). For the classically inclined, not too hard to remember if you think of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, who also loosed strife (or “disbanded armies”) by organizing a sex strike.
    I expect that the Home Counties come up often enough for even non-UK solvers to know they’re in the South East of England (Kevin? Or are you an expat living in Gotham?).
    I too was puzzled by Oxbridge: I agree that “Oxford” would have been even craftier.
    COD: perhaps 18ac. Was there a sly reference there to If I forget thee, O Jerusalem …?
    1. Hi Nigel. The Home Counties bit has appeared often enough that US participants soon catch on. I admit it took a couple of appearances for this American (not a UK expat) to get it through my head, but eventually it took root.
      1. The pronunciation of Loosestrife given in COED looks pretty dodgy to me. I certainly can’t find any other source (including the OED itself!) that makes it rhyme with “tiff”.
        1. I think you need to read the pronunciation guide in the introduction. Not all letters in the indicated pronunciation sound exactly as you would expect, especially when they’re part of a diphthong.

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