24340 – Murder!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I made rather heavy weather of this one and must have spent over an hour on it. I printed it just past midnight in case the site was down again for maintenance and as it was printing I solved 1ac and 2dn immediately, so I went to bed thinking I was in for an easy ride for once. However, coming back to it this morning none of the other words hanging down from 1ac would come to mind and I really struggled to get going. The NW wasn’t too bad (assuming I have 4dn correct) but the NE and SE gave me a lot of problems. After that the SW seemed a doddle and contained a brilliant intersection of clues if it was intentional, otherwise an amusing coincidence.

Across
1 TOP OF THE MORNING – (for one MP tonight)* – Brewer’s has it as “Top o’ the morning to ye! –  A cheery greeting on a fine day, regarded as typical of the Irish”
9 RU(m)INATION
10 M(ODE)L
11 1(N)TAKE
12 PAST,1,CHE – One more outing for the old chestnut Che = revolutionary
15 R(evolution),AS,PUT,IN
18 CHRISTIE – Dame Agatha. The first letter of “money” is removed from “this crime” to provide the anagrist.
19 BOARDS – Two meanings
21 PAN(OR)AMA – The definition may present some problems to solvers outside the UK. Panorama is a BBC TV current affairs programme that has been running since 1953. I imagine most people who remember it in the 50s think of Richard Dimbleby as being its original presenter but his long tenure didn’t start until 1955.
23 GENT,00 – The name of this wretched penguin just won’t stick in my brain. I forgot it yet again and struggled with this one.
27 BAL,LAD,E’ER – “The Party’s Over” clues LAB(our) (rev.). So we have balladeer and reference to an old song by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green which also brings to mind an even older song “The Party’s Over Now” whose composer gets a mention in 8dn. My cup runneth over!
28 TH(REE-L,EGGED-)RACE – The old country being THRACE
 
Down
1 T[ER,R(aised)]IER – A terrier is a member of the Territorial Army
2 POINT – Double meaning
3 F,RANKNESS
4 c(HAIR)s – I may be wrong about this one but I can’t think of anything else that fits. Hair can be used for stuffing seats but if that’s really all there is to the clue I think it’s feeble. I hope I am missing something.    Just worked it out!
5 MAND,A,LAY – MAND sounds like “manned”. Ooh, another old song comes to mind. Good old Peter Dawson!
7 INDIC(A)T,OR – “Other Ranks” twice in the same puzzle….
8 GAL,LEON – …but I’ll forgive the setter as I enjoyed the reference here to Sir Noel (NOEL, LAG rev) ….
14 ST,R(ANGLE)R – …and the intersection of this answer with CHRISTIE, the name of an infamous strangler.
16 PH(ONE)CA,RD – Having worked out PHONECA _ _  (anagram of “chap” around “one”)  all I could think of was PHONECALL until the final checking letter was in place. I’ve never possessed a mobile phone so “phonecards” don’t really feature in my life.
17 F[IL,M(afia)]ABLE – The Godfather is a film I have never seen in any of its incarnations.
18 C(are)O(f),PI,LOT – One of those words which in my opinion looks silly without its hyphen but Collins says it’s okay.
20 S,COUR(a)GE – I assume S for Singular must be on the list of permitted  one-letter abbreviations, if such a thing actually exists.
22 REC,CE – I wonder if REC=Park will cause any problems overseas, and possibly RECCE itself meaning reconnaissance?
24 TREFA – Reversed inside “wAFER-Thin” it means, of food, not complying with Jewish law. I’ve never heard of this one. COD has this spelling with “trifa” and “trayf” as alternatives. Collins doesn’t list any of those but offers “tref”, “treif” and “treifa”. I hope never to meet it again in a crossword in any of its forms. Life’s too short.

31 comments on “24340 – Murder!”

  1. 25 minutes about 5 of which were spent trying to solve TREFA and find an alternative to HAIR.

    I can’t think of anything else but HAIR that remotely fits the clue but can’t believe that I’m not missing something. I guessed TREFA from checking letters and eventually spotting the hidden reversal. I then verified the answer in C. This is the sort of word I would expect to find in a bar crossword not here.

    Like Jack I enjoyed the CHRISTIE/STRANGLER moment but began to wonder how many more references to old songs would feature.

    1. It might have been worse, Jimbo, I could have referenced this one but I’ve only just thought of it:

      The head of the herd was calling
      Far, far away
      They met one night in the silver light
      On the road to Mandalay

      So Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk
      And said goodbye to the circus
      Off she went with a trumpety-trump
      Trump, trump, trump

  2. COD to 1ac. Splendid way to be greeted in the morning. Good mood of setter and this solver maintained throughout although did dwell wondering what the Russian Prime Minister was doing in RASPUTIN and believing there was no such word as COPILOT, well not if you empahasise the last syllable. (I can think of definitions for “copilot” but too riske for these pages).
    Obscurities gettable from wordplay so my kind of puzzle. Lovely jubbly.
  3. 28 mins. Only got TREFA from having supervised a PhD thesis on Jewish food in Australia. It’s one of the alternatives in, at least, Chambers. And no particular idea about HAIR. My COD has to go to CHRISTIE for the &lit nature of the clue — I’m a sucker for those; as against the four double defs in this puzzle. Though I could be tempted to clue 28ac as “Manx event?” Quibble: isn’t the def in 3ac (either “being outspoken” or just “outspoken”) the wrong part of speech?
    1. I think you can regard “being outspoken” as an equivalent descriptive phrase – “Arthur is known for being outspoken” = “Arthur is known for frankness”.
  4. A real struggle, this one, taking 21:51. Much of the delay caused by putting PUNCHCARD at 16D and then unpicking the resulting mess. Last batch of answers were 10, 6, 7, 12, 15, 16, 23, 19. So I have the same trouble as Jack in remembering the gentoo (and in my case, dismissing any resemblance between the cuck of cuckoo and cock=male). Also had TABLES as a feeble possibility for 19 – tables=proposes=”puts up”, and tables = flat surfaces = panels. Good thing that didn’t match up with the punchcard.

    I don’t think phonecards relate to mobile phones – I think they’re those credit-card-sized ones you can insert into payphones instead of cursing BT for the high denomination coins required and the fact that in the 21st century a telephone cannot give you proper change.

    Missed the Christie/strangler crossing, but can explain 4D – HAIR is found in “chairs” and is hence “stuffing for certain seats”.

    Edited at 2009-09-25 08:16 am (UTC)

      1. Standing in the compulsory queue in the bank I suddenly said out loud “chairs”. Local reputation as a loony strongly enhanced.
    3. Just goes to prove that I know nothing about the workings of mobile phones. And I doubt I have used a public call-box since the days of buttons A and B.
  5. Most enjoyable for me.

    Although I couldn’t get 24dn, and no amount of guess work was going to get it!

    Personal CODs for me were 14dn (spent an age looking for a killer fish) and 8dn (for the noel coward reference).

    Like others I struggled to justify hair, but I see it now. That bloody penguin held me up for a while as well even though I am quite familiar with the word and animal.

    W

  6. I thought this was going to be slow but then it seemed to fall into place. Put HAIR without understanding the wordplay. Jimbo is right about TREFA – it and TREF occur fairly often in barred crosswords, so it wasn’t so difficult to spot. 10 and a half mins.
  7. Oh my gawd. Yes I did finish (in 49 min, and with aids for a couple) but what a cold shower. Mind you, that fits in with the weather, which has flipped from an early balmy spring, into snow down to a few hundred feet, and lots of it. TREFA was the major hang up, and thinking that BULLFINCH might be the singer was of little use. But then, worth it for some cracking clues. CHRISTIE and RASPUTIN can fight it out for COD, as long as I can watch.
  8. 18 mins, whizzed through the top half but ground to a halt in the South. Some very nice clues, I choose 19A BOARDS as COD ahead of 20D SCOURGE. Clever double definitions a feature of this one: I enjoyed all of 2D POINT, 6D REMIT, 19A BOARDS and 25D PLUG. I also thought 4D HAIR was rather good.

    Tom B.

  9. 21:32 .. Very enjoyable challenge and full of interesting cultural references. There’s another element in the STRANGLER intersection with The Godfather, given how Luca Brasi ended up sleeping with the fishes. Still makes me wince to think of it.

    My money’s on Rasputin to take Christie in the ninth. Russia’s Greatest Love Machine v. The Whispering Strangler – coming soon to HBO.

    THREE-LEGGED RACE appeared in this week’s ST puzzle. Even if you don’t solve the ST, you might want to drop in on talbinho’s blog this weekend for some crossword intrigue.

  10. Just over 48 minutes. A slow and gradual slog, with few clues going straight in, but equally, few long hold-ups.

    Started with 1a quite quickly, raising my hopes of a quick solve, but these were quicky dashed as I could only get one of the down clues come off it on the first pass (POINT).

    Didn’t understand PI LOT before coming here, but should’ve done; and TREFA was a new word for me, but easily picked out as a hidden word. I wondered for a while whether COCKOO could be a variant spelling of CUCKOO but fortunately PHONECARD discounted it before I could talk myself round.

    Overall, some good constructions and an enjoyable solve. A relief after yesterday’s abyssmal failure (4 wrong – and that was after resorting to aids!). A good end to the week.

    COD 17.

  11. 15:33 here. After 1A went in straight away I only managed POINT and GALLEON coming down from it until I got a few more checkers, then was also slowed down by TABLES at 19A, but INDICATOR eventually sorted that out for me and the rest gradually fell into place. No problems with GENTOO (a Linux distribution as well as a penguin) or TREFA (well-known from barred puzzles).
  12. Started at the top (o’ the morning to you, setter) and worked down to the waistline comfortably then found trefa in brain (and clue) which started to open up a slow bottom half. Last in 17d and stuck for ages on 21a – never watch current affairs programmes – and the primary school sports day special. I have some memory that phonecards were once a big deal in France and were actually sold in special editions and collected in sets like stamps! 35m.
  13. 9.27 I can see how this was of the more difficult order but was fortunate here to see GENTOO- TREFA – PHONECARD pretty quickly. I also struggled to see HAIR and entered it first before justifying it.
    Last in were MODEL and REMIT , the latter giving me a bit of thought as I didn’t pick up on the first definition quickly.
    COD – 17.
  14. I found this another relatively easy one, though I did slow down considerably after filling most of the top third in a few minutes (helped by getting 1 ac. immediately). In the end solving time was 30 minutes . I suppose it helped that I was familar with GENTOO and TREFA from barred puzzles. PLUG and SCOURGE held me up at the end. I suppose “singular” for S is common enough, but I just didn’t recall it’s use and focused on that word as the definition. I liked the deceptively placed definition in 10 and there were plenty of pleasing surfaces.
  15. Given the number of associated pairs already pointed out, I have to wonder if Sir Noel in 8dn is in any way connected with MANDALAY at 5dn.
    1. I can’t think of any obvious connection though I’m almost sure NC travelled to Mandalay and possibly performed the song. Did you have anything particular in mind?
  16. Just couldn’t see SCOURGE, no idea why.
    Lots of previously encountered codewords monarch=er, soldiers/men=or, church=ce, always=eer, revolutionary=che.
    Today’s inventions religious=pi, ducks=oo, gentoo, trefa.
  17. I know this is an oft debated subject but it still intrigues me as to how the daily puzzles are organised. Mr B will no doubt tell me that it is fairly random, perhaps with harder ones later in the week, and that day to day are different authors, and that even given one authors output, there is great variation in hardness, but…..

    ….I cant help thinking these things come in batches. This week for example was to a day, much easier than last week. I also find that if you go into the interactive archive and pick four or five successive puzzles from the past you find groups that are a different calibre to others.

    I am sure some people will tell me there is a statistical or psychological reason (ie you only remember when the pattern happens and not when it doesnt) but I am not so sure…..

    1. All I can say is that none of the limited information I have about the sequencing of puzzles includes a deliberate policy about levels of difficulty, individually or for groups of puzzles, except the stated intention about the resonably educated train traveller being expectd to finish in half an hour or so without books.

      I strongly favour that psychological explanation, along with the fact that even with random levels of difficulty there would be mostly easy and mostly hard weeks, just as there are heady and taily clusters in a sequence of coin tosses.

  18. This completes a satisfying all-correct week for me. I have not posted because I have been in Paris. Maybe paying over £3 for The Times each morning has concentrated my mind. I have not yet checked back over previous days’ blogs but this, to me, seems by far the hardest of the week. I do not know about the reasonably educated train traveller but I needed the whole hour’s delay at Roissy. I finished with the crossing Gentoo and Trefa somewhere over the English Channel. I was pleased to get home and find that I had not made them both up.

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