24439

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 5:34

An easy puzzle for me, probably because there were 5 fairly easy double defs, and some pretty clear anagrams. There are some novel clues here as well as the easy stuff. And I wondered in the down clues whether we’d got some guest clues from the Telegraph setter who forces himself to write clues of 8 words or less (only 5D exceeds this).

Across
1 SOUND = reliable, BOARD = decision-making group
6 C,HI,C
9 The one I’m leaving out – ask if baffled by the clue/wordplay
10 KNOT – 2 meanings – a bird in the sandpiper family, and ravel = entangle – ravel being one of those words like cleave and sanction, with opposite meanings
12 IRIS’S = Murdoch‘s, CANNING = putting an end to – iris scanning is the way for frequent travellers not to queue up to enter their own country at Heathrow. And canning is another word with opposite meanings (for xwd purposes at least) – it could have been “Murdoch’s preserving ….” instead of “Murdoch’s putting an end to …”
15 HEB. = Hebrews = scripture epistle (the book that sounds as if it’s in the wrong testament), R.I. = Relig. Instruction = scripture lesson, DEAN = cleric – neat confusion from the possible {scripture lesson = RI}. I jotted down “isle / 3 men in a boat”? for Harris, not getting the answer on first look, so knew that the isle was more likely when I read it again after getting 25. Wordplay and crass remark corrected courtesy of kurihan.
17 C(1,G from get)AR
18 CLEAN – 2 def’s, one as in “he was knocked clean off his feet”
19 BALTI = spicy food, MORE
20 LIVER SAUSAGE = (as a rule, gives)*
24 TENT – 2 def’s. Wine = tent is an old crossword favourite – watch out for Falstaff’s sack too. (Both words derived from surviving wine terms (tinto, sec), and both also blunt descriptions of dresses.)
25 PUN(IS,H from Harris,MEN)T – the surface referring, of course, to J K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat – as relived by modern comics for the BBC.
26 NEED – last letters of “in Providence, Rhode Island” – I got the right interpretation of “ultimately” on first look, but misapplied it, marking the G in “lacking”
27 WE’LL, SPRING = “get (someone) out of jail”
 
Down
1 S(AS)H – AS = Anglo-Saxon is maybe uncommon, but easily guessable
2 UGLY – 2 defs – not fair=pretty, and a reference to this song
3 DI(VERSION=form)ARY
4 (r)OA(d),TES = set rev. – Titus Oates is the conspirator.
5 ROOT CANAL = “oral passage” = (a contralto – T)*
7 HUNTING,DON – a place near Cambridge – Cromwell’s birthplace, as Oates has taken us back to that era.
8 CATEGORIES = (agree, Stoic)*
11 KNOCKING = critical, SHOP = business talk – and a “knocking shop” is a brothel. Minor quibble over “talk” – “talking shop” is the main instance where shop means “business talk”, and arguably it just means “business” in that phrase. It also seems unnecessary – “Critical business in brothel” seems an equally good clue, without the bizarre notion (based on my extensive experience, of course) that one goes to brothels for conversation. Brothels in the Times crossword – my dear, whatever next?
13 SHACK = hut, LET ON = revealed – that’s much more like it – a nice upright explorer (though [buried in S Georgia at his wife’s request] makes you wonder a bit).
14 OBSERVANCE = (cover beans)* – an observance is a rule followed by a monastic order. Note that “as a rule” appears in the clue for a second time. Just like Harris, it means something different in each case.
16 EMBRA = amber*,SURE = guaranteed – an embrasure is a gap with arrow slit in a castle or similar
21 STILL – 2 defs
22 PERI(l) – {peri = fairy} is an old crossword favourite though she also appears in a work by Dukas – today’s excuse for some brass music.
23 S(T)AG

45 comments on “24439”

  1. Unlike yesterday, the lunchtime coffee here in Sydney was still warm (well, almost) at the end of this one. 27 minutes.
    Like PB I noticed the repetition of ‘As a rule’ and ‘Harris’, but the Three Men in a Boat reference flew over my head and I had it down as the handiwork of occasional setter Asarule Harris.
    Not the most satisfying puzzle, no LOL moments. Last in was the pairing of PUNISHMENT and PERI.
  2. 32 minutes. Helped by the four big anagrams … except that I miswrote CATEGORISE at 8dn, leaving me (sans EMBRASURE as yet) with ??L?I?O?S. So I was looking for something to do with ILLINOIS, even though it’s a state not a city and despite watching The Wire last night (set in Baltimore). Clearing that up, things fell in without too much trouble.
    Of note and as already noted: two different uses of “as a rule” in horizontally adjacent anagram clues; and two different Harrises — one in the deep North, the other in the tri-manned boat — to say nothing of the dog. COD to the latter. And, as to the former, I took a while to justify HEB as “epistle” until the Pauline Penny dropped. I sometimes wonder why they never published the replies: “Dear Paul, nice day today in Corinth. Wish you were here. Schism seems to be resolved … “.
    Peter: slight typo at 16: EM[B]RA.

  3. A reasonably leisurely and enjoyable 35 minutes. I too liked the two double references to Harris and rules, although the “Three Men in a Boat” connection escaped me at 25. Some extremely deft clueing indeed. COD to DIVERSIONARY, which I think I’ve only just properly caught the drift of.

    BALTIMORE is timely since it is where Edgar Allan Poe died; yesterday being the 200th anniversary of his birth. I only know this from a headline that appeared today in Breaking News. I went searching for other references but could only find

    Increasingly unstable after his wife’s death, Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island.

    in his Wiki entry. Was liver sausage his favourite meal? Anybody? I’ll leave you with Randy Newman singing a song which could well be about Poe’s mysterious final days.

  4. 20 minutes. 10 at home and another 10 waiting at the station. This is my first puzzle completed before boarding the train.

    I had already considered a Harris/3 Men In A Boat connection at 15ac before finding it was needed at 25ac. And at 4dn I immediately considered Titus before realising I had the right man but the wrong bit of his name.

    1. And, of explorers, perhaps 4dn should have referenced Lawrence (aka LEGO) rather than Titus? Would have been a nice(ish) fit with 13dn. I am just going outside … to take out the recycling!

    2. Jackkt, you should try South West trains. They nearly always allow me to finish on the platform.

      Nick

    3. Same here, Jack!

      Nine-and-a-half minutes whilst waiting for Worst Great Western to get their act together this morning.

      So my ‘double first’ – record, that is – is completion before boarding AND in a snowstorm…

  5. See (or hear) Eddie Izzard on the subject! I forget which show it’s in but it’s fabulous.
  6. Good start, slow finish.
    Guessed SHACKLETON had a hut (once I had discarded BO as the start of 18,and nope I still don’t get the cryptic for CLEAN), that there is a sandpiper called a KNOT and an epistle HEB. Couldn’t get Three Men in a Boat out of my head even though I knew I must.
    Despite initial reservations came to appreciate KNOT for its concision but COD to STAG for the same reason.
    Don’t know what a KNOCKING SHOP is m’lud.
    1. Barry, I can claim some experience in this area, living just down the street from one of Sydney’s most upmarket establishments. This arrangement has its pros and cons. Its sometimes gets busy with customers arriving for conversations etc, but on the other hand we get their all-night security service thrown in for free.
    2. CLEAN: Just two def’s – quite = completely = clean, and “attentive to personal hygiene”. The first is so inconspicuous that you could read “Quite attentive to personal hygiene” as a single def, with the same meaning of “quite”. Sometimes, understanding why a clue is cryptic is harder than finding the answer.
  7. This was in the quirky style that I know well from Guardian puzzles so I rattled through it with words such as sash, knot, tent, peri and stag going in at first glance. I took a long time at the end to get Iris because I could not get Rupert out of my head.

  8. I can’t time myself these days as I am subject to constant interruption when solving, but I am sure this is one of the easiest for a while. About half of the answers went in on the first read through, and the rest followed without much trouble.

    I have to say that in 15 I thought HEB = epistle, and RI = scripture lesson, which works for me – I don’t quite understand Peter’s separation of scripture / lesson, or have I quite (clean?) misunderstood the blog?

    1. My mistake – speed-merchant’s invention of wordplay from the minimum possible material. Will correct.
  9. Easy 17mins today. Nice to see my old home town Huntingdon make an appearance. I still mourn the untimely loss of Hundingdonshire, a fine county.
    Re 24ac, TENT has surely attained cliche status long since. Moreover, despite a keen interest in wine I have never yet seen any, or even any reference to it apart from in crosswords.. no doubt ELI was fond of it!
    1. Peter should be able to help you with this. Although it’s originally Spanish I believe it was the cause of some Christian religious dissent way back as to its use as altar wine?
      1. There are differences between churches about what (if anything) you drink, but I’m not aware of any particular dissent about tent. If you accept the Oxford definition (deep red sweet wine) it’s likely to be used as communion wine (our local sacristan has admitted to using port once or twice). But Collins and Chambers don’t agree that it’s sweet – Collins has “table wine”. I guess that’s why xwd defs are usually just wine / red wine.
        1. In general, TENT is an obsolete term for cheap, low alcohol Spanish wine. It comes from the same era as sack and clairette, as opposed to claret, and to me it is nowadays a very lazy way for setters to clue the word. All the more so, since I find the OED has a very wide range of meanings for TENT.. no less than 12 separate entries, 6 noun, 5 verb and 1 adv., mostly with multiple usages therein.
          1. Jerry, I know you signed up to report on the Club Monthly Special, but even for that puzzle, the OED should not be where setters or solvers are looking. In one-volume dictionaries, tent is, apart from the obvious meaning and associated verbs, a bit of material used in surgery, red wine, and a Scots verb = “pay attention”. The last is not in COED so more obscure than the rest. As a single-word deceptive (for beginners at least) def, “wine” is hard to beat.

            Edited at 2010-01-20 01:33 pm (UTC)

  10. Re epistles to the Corinthians, I think the one you mean is Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week. It’s about two minutes in here, and very funny.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFc3ulirNvI
    I wondered whether Shackleton and Oates pointed to an explorer theme, but I guess it was just coincidence.
    Quite a quick solve, I liked IRIS SCANNING, and nice to see a phrase like KNOCKING SHOP finding its way into the crossword.
    1. Eddie is here – I liked the comparison to Alistair Cooke, and “Whose idea was it to be a pen pal with St Paul anyway?”
  11. I agree with Lennyco that there is a Guardian flavour about this (even the slightly loose use of Ravel’s) although the difficulty level is barely Daily Telegraph. I don’t think there’s a stretching clue in the whole puzzle and much of it can be solved from definition alone. We are surely due a hard one.
    1. Although it doesn’t give the meaning of ravel that obviously corresponds to unravel, it has:

      ravel (n.): a tangle, cluster or knot

      1. I was thinking also of the use of the apostrophe. Not a real quibble, just a comment en passant.
  12. Enjoyable leisurely 50 minutes. steady solve. Thrown off the scent for a while by looking for the wrong anagrams in 9ac SALIVATION and 26ac LIVER SAUSAGE. Enjoyed 3d DIVERSIONARY. Failed to grasp the wordplay in CLEAN and HEBRIDEAN and no way is a tent a pavilion here up north
  13. Started with chic, then down rhs and across middle, observance, diversionary , steady progress ending with iris (scanning in much earlier but fixated by rupert till other clues in), just over 10 minutes. Agree a toughie due, but it is important how the toughness is generated, preferably by clever red-herring clues not esoteric GK requirements.
  14. Just under 19 minutes so relatively easy.

    Last in was CLEAN without fully understanding why. Not really convinced that ‘clean’ equates with ‘quite’. I am always wary of the ‘a=b=c, hence a=c’ derivations as you can end up with some complete nonsenses via that route. Of course, that’s why English is such a good language for cryptic crosswords.

    I have just been through the thirty-one different definitons in Collins and can’t see a satisfying link between ‘clean’ and ‘quite’. However, I have to admit though that Bradfords gives ‘clean’ as a definition for ‘quite’.

    1. The OED gives for clean (adv.):

      “Without anything omitted or left; without any exception that may vitiate the statement, without qualification; wholly, entirely, quite, absolutely.”

      Found this almost as easy as last Friday’s, most clues on first reading and some, like 7d, a bit too obvious? A complete contrast to yesterday’s long, drawn out process. And fairly sure we’ve seen a similar clue for 19a in the recent past?

      Ian

  15. A new PB for me at 8:08, thanks ultimately to a frantic lucky guess at knot rather than knit (Bill Oddie I ain’t).

    Simple this may have been but some witty clues made it enjoyable.

    I spent a horrible 9 months working away from home in Huntingdon so don’t hold it in the same regard as Jerry, although in its favour it’s the only town I’ve been to where you can see cows from the bus station.

  16. I found this disappointingly easy, completing it in 16 minutes with little else to do for the rest of my “solving slot”. I was expecting a few sub-five-minute times from some. Still, there were one or two things to enjoy, such as “amber fluid” and the slightly risque 11 (why can’t Livejournal cope with a French accent?.
    1. If you make your accented characters with sequences like Alt+0233 (memorised as e-acute is the commonest requirement), or paste them in from Character Map, LJ copes fine.

      Awaits “ah, but I’m using Snow Leopard / Ubuntu” …

      1. I’m using an ordinary PC with ordinary Windows XP. I can never remember the Alt code number, so I paste from a prepared (non-windows) clipboard that can cope with more than one item. In this case when I pasted the accent and went to ‘preview’ it appeared as risqu??, so I just removed the accented e. Perhaps if I’d submitted before the removal it would have come out all right.
  18. I didn’t get the references to Harris, but that didn’t hold things up. A phone call did, but even with the call I was done in 12 minutes. LIVER SAUSAGE from wordplay (I’m not likely to be buying one of those anytime too) and agonized at the end of KNIT vs KNOT not knowing the bird.
    1. If you think liver sausage sounds a bit dodgy, watch out for the blog for the current mephisto.
      1. When I solved that clue I was sure it was my turn to blog, I always seem to get the ones with crappit-head and the like.
  19. Ditto me for KNIT, it was a toss up not being a bird person, and I actually feel knit seems more appropriate for ravel/tangle/mesh etc, since it is more suggestive of a general intertwining whereas (to me) knot is far more specific of a tight, bound single point on a fibre.
  20. About 20 minutes, no real problems. First entry CHIC, last HEBRIDEAN. A fairly straightforward solve, despite not being familiar with Harris in either sense. Not much else to say today. Regards to all.
  21. Yep, another SNAFU. I enjoyed this quirky puzzle and was feeling fairly good about my 17:20 time until I came here and realised I’d goofed again. I’m thinking about taking up Soduko.
  22. 8:15 here, one of my fastest times for a while. Maybe because I solved it on the train home this evening rather than this morning when still half asleep.

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