24445

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 7:44 – with one careless mistake

A fairly easy puzzle for me, with quite a few double defs – I counted 6, along with a couple of cryptic defs. Of these 8, I think I got 4 on first look, which is probably about the average for the puzzle as a whole. I think 24 was last in but I don’t remember getting noticeably stuck anywhere. 3 and 14 went in without full wordplay understanding. I slipped up at 3D, as revealed when writing this up.

Sainsbury’s offer: it seems from the puzzle grapevine that for a couple of days, Sainsbury’s have been giving away Tim Moorey’s How to Master The “Times” Crossword with copies of the paper. If you’ve only just started the puzzle or have some friend or relative you’re trying to encourage, this is a genuine bargain. It may even include a tip about getting spellings from wordplay if you don’t know them.

Across
1 SANDWICH – 2 defs. The first is a golf club – club in the organisation sense for once. The town of Sandwich in Kent is blessed with two posh golf clubs. Strictly speaking, neither of them is called Sandwich, but if someone talked about the Open being at Sandwich, one of these clubs would be understood. Nowadays it would be Royal St George’s, but Prince’s has also been an Open championship course in the past. The other is your everyday sandwich, famously named after the card-playing fourth earl of S, which uses two rounds=slices of bread.
9 OKLAHOMA(!) – another double def
10 SCYLLA – C=constant, in reversal of ALLY’S = mate’s – Wake up chaps – no-one picked me up on this slip! Until recently I’d have said that as C=constant is not in COED or Collins, it must be justified by way of c (=the speed of light) being a famous constant. Peddling this claim elsewhere led to gentle correction – apparently the list of abbreviations used by Times setters says: “c = constant (ubiquitous in mathematics)”. Scylla and Charybdis were legendary sea monsters on either side of the Strait of Messina.
11 BUT = yet,TRESSED = rev. of dessert
12 The one I’m leaving out today
13 ENGLISHMAN – 2 defs, both referring to quotes about the English – Napoleon’s “nation of shopkeepers” and the anonymous “an Englishman’s home is his castle”. According to my memory anyway – ODQ has both in its list of proverbs (next door to each other), and both attributed to people too – Boney and “Edward Coke, 1552-1634, English jurist”
16 TRINITY – a term at Oxford and Dublin universities, and also one of the four legal terms in the UK (Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter, Trinity). It’s also the name of colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge (among other places) – hence “Oxbridge” in the clue. If Cambridge had a Trinity term too (they call it “Easter term” instead), it would have been a double def which worked with the split in two different places, as “Term in Oxbridge = college” would have worked too
17 STELLAR – move the T in “sell art”
20 CAPITAL (IS) M – this clue reads well as a plain definition, so you could easily fail to notice the containment wordplay. For old hands, the familiar use of “primarily” as a first-letter indicator is a strong hint that there’s something else going on.
22 COP = policeman = PC,Y from secretary.
23 LEG,I,SLATED – a stock way of carving up this word, though I’m sure they try to vary the wording.
25 AS=like,TRAY=carrier – nicely done surface with carrier=transport company
26 SPECI = spice*,MEN=servants – nicely done again, with “for example” being the link-word and def., not an indication of def. by example.
27 THEARCHY = (her yacht)* – rule by a god or gods, or rather by his/their local representatives. If you recall that “rule” words end in -ARCHY, the rest (so to speak!) is easy. Not a very precise def., but if they’d put “rule by gods” they might as well have printed THEARCHY in the grid.
 
Down
2 ASCENDER = “a sender” – a homophone that should be bulletproof (famous last words). Look here for more techie names for letter parts then you’ll ever need for Times xwds.
3 D(efended) (ILETT = title*), ANTI=against – I wrote DILLETANTI and was caught out by the double unch. My fault entirely as the wordplay (and the sound of the bloody word, Peter) tells you which it must be, if you’re humble enough to use it. I’m feel I must have said before: “Note to self: DON’T do this with foreign words”
4 IN ABSENTIA – a Latin term=word, for being somewhere else
5 HOST = “ancient [term for] army”,AGE
6 ALAR(m) – alar = “pertaining to wings” should be on the “Barred grid 101” word list.
7 POSSUM – CD referring to “play possum” = “play dead [or strictly, asleep]”
8 PARDONER – one of Chaucer’s pilgrims, and DONE=cooked, in PARR=salmon (life-cycle stage, between fry and smolt)
14 INTIM(ID)ATE
15 HELICOPTER = (cheer pilot)*
16 TICKLISH – double def – one def probably relating to a ticklish foot – sole = “soul, so to speak” – suggestion from sghanson below
18 APPROACH – double def again
19 DISTANT = cold = unfriendly – T in (and it’s)*
21 PIG=something difficult,LET – Hundred Acre Wood, variously spelled, is where the Pooh bear stories take place
24 LAMB – a clue about Charles Lamb with no role for Elia, his psuedonym. He and his sister Mary produced Tales from Shakespeare, which for a while might have been as influential as the Disney version of Pooh. Though I don’t think Walt killed anyone with a carving knife – shock news for me from the Mary link. And of course the clue also uses a famous nursery rhyme, apparently much more recent than you might expect, and imported from the US.

34 comments on “24445”

  1. Fantastic time Peter.
    Not sure how ENGLISHMAN and HELICOPTER got in here given the rest of the puzzle, perhaps editorial decree. Delighted to finish despite outrageous cheating. Was unhappy with SANDWICH as a club and thought for a while it might have something to do with club sandwich. Thought tray was just something to carry things on in which case why at sea? HOSTAGE also seemed to have more than required. Never heard of ALAR.
    If all the regulars think this was easy I think I might disappear for a year or two.
    1. > why at sea?
      My suspicion is: the different use of the phrase just below (at 27) and “lost at sea, perhaps” seems OK for ASTRAY.
  2. finished correctly without aids for the first time in a while. held up by a mis-spelling “dilettante”, and had not fully understood wordplay for alar and lamb before coming here. i actually feel a little bit dubious about flap = alarm. nothing outstanding but cod 28ac.
  3. 3o minutes again plus several more considering the options at 6dn by going through the alphabet. In the end I put ALAR (which I’ve never heard of) on the basis that it might have a connection with “aileron” which is a sort of flap on the wing of an aircraft. It was only after I confirmed the word existed that I spotted the correct wordplay and the missing “m”.

    Other than that I found this a very satisfying puzzle that gave me no real problems and I probably solved more clues via wordplay than I usually do.

  5. 23 mins. So, slowing down after a quickish week, including a PB for a Saturday. Ta to Peter for relieving me of conniptions at 20ac. I even went to my internal list of “Ordinary Words With Extraordinary Meanings” for “as”, coming up with the Roman coin (plural: “asses”, so watch out!) — and figured any kind of currency, even such a small amount, could just about be capital. COD has to go to 11ac. With an initial B, it just had to be BACK… But wasn’t. Well set.
  6. Enjoyed this a great deal, some excellent clues. Helped by a golfing background, got off to a flying start with a birdie at the first followed by others at the third and the fourth. Was heading towards a record score before i choked, not for the first time, with six to go. Took far too long to see THEARCHY, lost momentum, and eventually got there in 29 minutes. Still, a sub-par round by my standards.
    I liked the simplicity of the Charles LAMB clue, and was amused to see another cop appearing in 22ac after that business with the bizzies yesterday.
  7. Enjoyed this one, c17m and had no trouble with it. Alar came up only a few days ago, in I forget which xword. Last in, possum & astray.

    Enjoyed the Wikipedia article on Mary’s Lamb even more, thanks for the link Peter! Sterling, Mass. sounds a lively place..

  8. No comments really, just a pleasant mid-week puzzle and a good example I think of how a very easy puzzle can still be fun.

    11. BUTTRESSED – which the bridge over the Silv’ry Tay famously wasn’t, of course.

  9. No problem here either, Barry. About 20 minutes. But don’t despair, the style of this one is perhaps not quite run of the mill and that can cause problems when you’re not used to them.

    In truth it’s not my type of puzzle. Too many double definitions and cryptic definitions. I prefer misleading definitions and tricky wordplay. I think 20A CAPITALISM is a clever construction but unfortunately ridiculously easy. SANDWICH clued like that is almost a cliché. No real gripes though.

  10. Am off to Sainsbury’s this arvo so will see if still doing the book.
    Sainsbury’s in Purley Way, Croydon has been giving away sandwich (topical) boxes over the last few days. The problem is you can’t get the lids off. I know that Tim Moorey’s book is rather more accessible.
    1. More topical than you realised – if you’re successful, you’ll see that “sandwich” is one of his well-chosen revisions to the traditional names for clue types. It replaces “container and contents” with a single word that says it all.
  11. I found this a straightforward solve, though perhaps took longer than I should have (30 minutes), feeling very grotty with flu. I see that I also need the dunce’s hat, having entered TACTLESS for 16, for no good reason other than it fitted. LAMB was last in.
    I quite liked the misdirection in 8, which looked so like an jumble of SALMON around something.
  12. This is one for the barred-crossword fans, which is where I got ALAR and the PARR part of the pilgrim (was trying to figure out if GARDINER worked somehow until the penny dropped). Didn’t get a time but about 20 minutes I suspect. Also got trapped by trying to work OFFICIATED in at 23.
  13. 14:31 .. I thought this was a nice change of pace from some recent wordplay torture (I’m still reeling from yesterday’s EXEC which utterly foxed me). I managed to spell DILETTANTI three different ways in the grid before arriving at the right one. Do they let you use Tippex in the Championship?

    ALAR has cropped up before in the daily puzzle (I’m pretty sure I blogged it way back when).

    COD 24d LAMB – neat.

    One Across Rock is of course Harry and the Potters and their debut album Wizard Sandwiches.

      1. Or correction fluid which sounds very much more English and might be the answer to an interesting cryptic clue. Rubber is also slang for a condom eraser being the preferred term over here. Didn’t you used to call them Forex? Always crosses my mind when calculating foreign exchange.
        I got hung up on the ending of 3d until realizing it was an Italian plural. Also chuffed about getting the cricket clue so quickly. COD….loved PIGLET.
    2. The Potters featured Karl “Full” Marx playing the possums arco, as I recall; a sound once heard, never forgotten.
  14. Polished off the top half quite quickly but bogged myself down terribly in the SW corner, limping home in 34 minutes.

    Biggest problems were:
    1. Wanting 23 to be officiated (forgetting, despite being a cricket fan, that the on side is also occasionally the leg side in crosswords as well as at Old Trafford);
    2. Failing to see how 20 worked so not knowing which ism to go for;
    3. Trying to make 19 an anagram of “its and” with a c inside;
    4. Not knowing that Lamb had a sister, never mind what her bloody name was;
    5. General numptyness.

    I wasn’t keen on any of the CDs either. Bah.

  15. Just under 20 minutes so towards the easy end of the spectrum for me.

    Initially thought of ARCHETYPE for 27a (THEARCHY) but quickly realised it couldn’t be for at least two reasons. Knew ALAR from barred grids. Had to think about the spelling of DILETTANTI

    Liked PARDONER and PIGLET. Not too keen on all the double definitions.

  16. I needed two stabs at this, not finishing until after lunch. I think I had more trouble with the definitions than with the wordplay. Not being a Winnie the Pooh fan I had to reject both Eeyore and Tigger before I finally thought of Piglet. Also I did not see the purpose of “so to speak” in 16D. I was looking for a homophone when it was just a DD.

    Peter’s point about the pronunciation of dilettanti helping you with the spelling is probably only true if your Italian accent is good enough. Double consonants are always pronounced in Italian. My Italian dictionary has dilettante as dilet’ tante but both my English dictionaries only have a single t in the pronunciation guide.

    1. I think the so to speak in 16D refers to a sensitive sole – ticklish feet! I’m not claiming any credit for spotting this as I went through however – it came to me later.
    2. I’m not an expert at Italian, but my impression is that the right way is to linger on the double consonants a bit – here’s dilettante dalla bocca del cavallo.
  17. After 90 minutes I was still bemused and contemplating the southwest corner. Not helped by having 3d as DILETTANTE nor fixating on ON instead of LEG at 23a. Enjoyed 16 down TICKLISH, and 11 across BUTTRESSED. I was unimpressed with SANDWICH – I suspect BAKEWELL has a golf club but wouldn’t expect a reference to TART
    1. I’m sure there’s a club at Bakewell too – but not one used in 14 Opens (including next year’s). I don’t know whether it’s a yardstick used by the setters, but restricting named golf courses to Augusta (US Masters), the Open rotation and Ryder Cup venues seems about right. I doubt they’ve used any outside that list.

      Edited at 2010-01-27 04:13 pm (UTC)

  18. Not so easy but I enjoyed it in the main. I liked SPECIMEN, HELICOPTER & ASTRAY but COD to BUTTRESSES. The dilettanti had me carefully reading the wordplay but I had no trouble spelling Oklahoma (exits singing O-K-L-A-H etc)

  19. I’m in the group that didn’t find this so easy, but upon finishing in about 45 minutes I really couldn’t see why it took so long. The top went in quickly, but I couldn’t see through the lower half without a lot of head scratching. I went down a few wrong paths, thinking on/off for the cricket thing, sure that ‘carrier’ was ‘tote’ instead of ‘tray’, thinking 27 must end in ‘-racy’, not ‘-archy’. Eventually worked through it. Last in, finally, THEARCHY. Regards all.
  20. 1a would have had late f-in-law spluttering – he member of both Sandwich Courses ( n.b. education reference for future use) and the one at Deal (Cinque Ports?). You can apparently play all 3 in a day if you get the hole order right on each. So that went in fast as did most till 23, 26 and why was I so slow to see how 19 worked? In the car again, but timed it, 19 m. Got 3d right in one, but only got the second t in 11 as I clicked with the wordplay. COD definitely Charles and Mary, I was so pleased with it at the time of solving!.
  21. well interesting how around 2/3 of the solvers/bloggers found it easy and around 1/3 (myself included) found it tricky. i too searched vainly for a spelling of msahie or niblick until the penny dropped!
    COD for me was Piglet-vwey neat!
  22. I was a possum away from my second ever completion, in a fraction over 3 hours. It’s always slightly demoralising for the beginner to hear how easy a puzzle is on the rare occasions they do well. I do appreciate the help though.

    Possum was the only word I could think of that fit _O_S_M but I’d never heard of ‘play possum’ before in my life.

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