24380 – Back in harness …

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 20:20

A fairly slow solve after three weeks away from cryptics apart from yesterday when I did about four of the Times puzzles I missed. While on the trip, which included some long train journeys, I did most of a book of New York Sun puzzles, so the lack of practice wasn’t too bad. Also a fairly slow blog today – about 10 minutes of work just lost to a power blip.

This seemed quite a tough puzzle – although I had quite a few answers early on, several look quite a while with 3 and 18 the last in. 13 went in without full wordplay understanding and probably wasn’t alone in that.

Across
1 BAY = howl, OF PIGS = “from greedy types”. This 1961 invasion attempt was one of the less glorious moments of JFK’s presidency.
6 B = British,LEEP = rev. of Peel = Prime Minister
9 GAS = air, TRIC = “trick” = con. So-called gastric flu is really gastroenteritis
10 R = Rex = king,IGHTON = (nothing – n)*
11 LOCKE(t) – the philosopher is John Locke
13 RABBINATE = collection of teachers (Rabbi = “teacher”). Reversal of (ETA = foreign letter, NIB = writer, BAR = block = obstruct)
14 SIMPL(wEnT)ON – the Simplon Tunnel used to be the world’s longest
16 MO(A)T – for foreign solvers, the MOT test is a regular check on the condition of a motor vehicle
18 (to)BIAS – it took me a long time to recall what Toby is short for
19 THE M(E.P.)ARK
22 WASTELAND = (dawn’s late)*
24 SWELL – found in “All’s Well that Ends Well” – Shak. play title
25 TOOL = “perhaps saw”,BAR(e) – I should add that a “toolbar” is a panel showing a set of controls (mostly buttons) in an application like Excel or Word. You can probably see one near the top of your browser window.
26 ARIA,DaNcE – Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss (originally an absurd play/opera combo as described by the wiki article)
28 (w)HEELS
29 MAN, GET OUT = leave = depart
 
Down
1 BIGG(L)ES(t) – foreign and youger solvers may not know Biggles as a pilot.
2 YES – I think this is the final Y in Molly, converted from an abbreviation back into a word – I can’t see anything in the clue leading to the ES in a (Y,ES) charade. See vinyl1’s note below for the literary reference which explains the answer.
3 FOR = “in favour of” ,MER(e)LY = “just ignoring a European”, “a European” indicating one of the E’s in “merely”
4 IN,CUR(t)
6 BIG WIG – a wig “lies ahead”
7 EXTRA = “perhaps wide”,P(O)LATE – “empty” = “with nothing inside”
8 P(INK)EST
12 COMPASS = “to limit”,ROSE = wine – a “compass rose” is the black and white disc in a ship’s compass
15 TETRAGRAM = rev. of Margar(t)et. “say damn (but not blast)” is the def, damn having four letters
17 PER = for each, SPIRE = pointer to heaven
18 B(E,W)ITCH
20 KIL(VER(y))T – Francis Kilvert was a Victorian diarist
21 LES(BlOg)S – a nice clue to see when you’re a blogger just returning from a holiday!
23 DRAIN = nadir* – “wasted down here” is a rather allusive def, referring to “down the drain”.
27 D(U)O – (stay = detain) is the containment indicator

36 comments on “24380 – Back in harness …”

  1. Welcome back Peter to what for me was the hardest puzzle in some time – particularly the bottom half and once again the SE corner.

    I managed to find an alternative answer for 20D with MINIVER (MINI-VER(y)) which didn’t help. I should have spotted the V at the end of 26A earlier and been suspicious. I also can’t see any other explanation for YES at 2D and if we’re correct think it a tad weak.

    Other than that a really good puzzle that made me work hard for 35 minutes. Some really good clues. I liked “row of buttons” and even the little words like DUO are very well done.

  2. Too difficult for me. I didn’t have a clue at 20d and eventually resorted to aids. I can’t say I’m familiar with his oeuvre. Apart from that there were some good & tricky clues here, as well as some hyphenated cheekiness at 9ac & 13ac. I liked the DUO, MANGETOUT couple particularly, as well as the two cracking anagrams at 5 (SARABANDE) & 22 (WASTELAND).

    Compass roses also appear on maps. The deep water pearl divers in Broome refer to going out to the compass rose as if they can tie their boats up to it.

  3. Yet another disaster for me as I had less than a third of this completed by the end of my commute and in all I must have spent at least 90 minutes on it resorting eventually to considerable use of aids. Even then I didn’t have it completed as I had thought because I just discovered I still hadn’t decided on the answer to 16ac where the only word I could think of was FORT which I knew was wrong.

    I never heard of COMPASS ROSE or KILVERT, didn’t understand YES and am not sure I do even now.

    If only I had thought of BAY OF PIGS sooner things might have been a lot different because it was my failure to get a foothold on the LH side that led to so much grief. Having guessed the Y at the end of the first word I became fixated on it being CRY (for “howl”) and that scuppered me.

  5. This was about as tough as yesterday’s but I’m on a good run of all-correct puzzles so I was not going to let it beat me. The intersecting toolbar and tetgragram were tough. I liked toolbar but I thought “damn (but not blast)” a very weak definition for tetragram. I finished with 20, having run through all the diarists I know: Evelyn, Nobody, Pepys, Frank, Mole…I finally got Kilvert from the wordplay.

    I did not get the wordplay for bias or yes until I came here. I just showed the clue to 2 to a young friend who is staying with me at the moment. She thought it was blindingly obvious. She is doing a PhD in Modernism though.

    1. Perhaps I should expand on this. Only in conversation with my Modernist friend did I realise that the two key works of Modernist literature, both published in 1922 were Ulysses and The 22A, so I think we have a Nina.
    2. While did not come out too clearly in the blog and comments, I think what the setter may have had in mind here was a “four-letter word”. “Damn” is probably as far as the Times would have gone in printing one.
      1. Yes you’re right. Apologies to the setter. So the definition of tetragram is not weak but brilliant.
  6. 44:55 .. I would have given up on this puzzle a couple of years ago but I should thank PB and the others for the fact that I can now work my way to the finish line relatively unscathed.

    Last in, as the kilt dropped (there’s an arresting image), was KILVERT.

  7. 18a – “Toby doesn’t have to” equalled BY in my book.
    18d – Entrance was DOOR. Felt clue should have said “to entrance” rather than “in entrance”, which suggested shoving letters inside DOOR. Did not help that I could not see WHEELS/HEELS.

  8. Had to go to hospital with EXTRAPOLATE unsolved and only ARIADNE from SW corner solved. (Hospital appointment was prearranged and nothing to do with the difficulty of this puzzle). Thought I would race through on my return but no such luck, so did not finish before coming here.
    Hard as it was, of those I solved I thought BLEEP, HEELS, DUO and TOOLBAR were marvellous.
  9. welcome back Peter. golly this was a hard one. Like Jimbo i found the south east corner hardest. but to be honest it was all a struggle. Thought Mangetout was the COD. Hadnt heard of Kilvert. thought dandy had to be swell but thought 20 down was Keenest. hadnt heard of Kilvert but have now
    well over 2 hours with one wrong. a long struggle!!

  10. I found this extremely tough too, 58 mins. I got BAY OF PIGS straightaway but almost nothing else. Found NE corner the hardest. COD TOOLBAR Also esp liked MANGETOUT. Did not understand SWELL or YES before coming here, but, now that they have been explained, they are fine and very good, but grateful to the setter for definitions on the easy side in both.
  11. 26:17 here. I also found it tough, not helped by putting MINIVER in until I got the K from THEME PARK. However, I knew of Kilvert’s Diary so that wasn’t too much of a problem. I put in YES without understanding why, but the rest of it was just slow but steady.
  12. LH half in fairly smoothly, then stuck till 6a came and expressed my feelings exactly….Last in 13a and 3; have read some Kilvert but not Joyce, interesting clue now. 40 mins. Rather a lot of GK needed, but enjoyable. Compass Rose was an MTB in The Cruel Sea, I think.
  13. Very tough. Still short of 5 answers after an hour – 15, 19 20, 24, 25, then resorted to an aid to get 15 and 20 to get me home and dry.
    Not keen on the misleading hyphens in 9 and 13, but otherwise there were some excellent clues. 28 seemed a bit week on the surface; “take to one’s heels” means to flee. Why one should flee because the car won’t start I don’t know. But I’m nit-picking. It was a good, challenging puzzle.
  14. Had to resort to wizardry for the second day running, this time clocking in at 36 minutes. More fun than yesterday though, especially Biggles and mangetout.

    I thought 5 was a weakish anagram with band in both the grist and the answer and I still don’t see how wasted down here can possibly define drain (waste down here I could live with).

    A few unknowns – Kilvert, Locke, rabbinate and sarabande.

  15. 31 minutes. Admirably fiendish puzzle. Like Jimbo and linxit, MINIVER seemed an obvious answer and was so convinced by this that I had THEME FARM !! in mind for 19. I thought some of the cluing was deceptive and original (e.g 13). I read Ulysses a long time ago and stuck with it until the final yes but I think I understood as much of it as if I had been reading Principia Mathematica or Das Kapital (which I haven’t)
  16. Still havent finished…about 90 mins and counting…. will touch base when i get to the end 🙂
  17. I think to be fair the number of people who know there’s a final section of Ulysses in which Molly Bloom repeats the word “yes”, and/or that the book ends with “yes”, would be a fairly sizeable multiple of readers who have read the novel in it’s entirety. Not nearly as obscure as “Klivert” I suspect.

    I’m not sure the “Principia Mathematica” analogy is is a good one. The vast majority of its readers will be professional mathematicians (or in a profession where a sophisticated understanding of mathematics is necessary or desirable) – or at least people who read mathematics or philosophy at degree level. “Ulysses” on the other hand is mainly read by men hoping to impress girls who look like Marilyn Monroe. In some cases that didn’t work and we’re consoling ourselves with the Times crossword. It’s nice for the setter to throw us a bone. bc

  18. After an hour I had to resort to aids. Yikes. This seems to me the toughest puzzle in some time. I screwed myself up by throwing in TASKBAR instead of TOOLBAR, so that held up the SW area, plus the unknowns: Simplon, SARABANDE, KILVERT, BIGGLES, MANGETOUT (although I now recall that this last appeared here before, but didn’t make enough of an impression on my brain). Didn’t get to the end of Ulysses, so thanks to vinyl for that. COD to TETRAGRAM. Don’t know what else to say. Well done to those who finished this one. Regards.
  19. Took exactly an hour with some on-line assistance, so for me, the second toughie in a row (DIVES and SOUTANE) did for me yesterday. Today it was pure deviousness, along with YES and KILVERT which put the brakes on. KILVERT finally came (and hasn’t it appeared before within the last year or so?). Now let us leave him to luxuriate in his well deserved obscurity. As for Joyce: Give me Russel and Whitehead any day. Yes? Spoilt for choice for COD – MANGETOUT or RABBINATE or WASTELAND or …
    1. Sorry – Russell. (And sorry Kororareka? Was Bertrand a relation of yours. His Gran was an Elliot.).
      1. I can’t claim any direct lineage to Bertrand; Russel is my given name rather than my surname. I think the Pricipia Jimbo is referring to is Newton’s rather than Russell & Whtiehead’s. Although I studied both Philosophy (briefly) and Mathematics at university, I have to confess not having read either work, seminal though they are. I have read Ulysses though (see bc’s comment above). This could be described as my very own “Russel’s paradox”.
  20. Some consolation, as always, when the aces also had a hard time of it. Never did figure out Toby, and had to look up Kilvert. ‘yes’ was a quickie; and I’d urge people to give ‘Ulysses’ a try. (Wouldn’t dream of trying ‘Finnegan’s Wake’, mind you.)
    3d: I was thrown off by the ‘a’ of ‘a European’; wasted a lot of time trying to think of a word that I could chop an ‘a’ off of. Wouldn’t ‘…ignoring European’ have worked?
    1. If you “ignore European” in “merely”, the most logical result is MRLY rather than MERLY. Some solvers appreciate it when setters clearly indicate that only one occurrence of a letter needs deleting.

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