Solving time: 9:12
That’s 9:12 just after midnight, so possibly a soft target for Peter beaters. There are no obscure answers in the grid, and the grid pattern is one of those “natural” grids that’s generous to the solver – put 11/3, 9/5, 7/7 and 5/9 pairs in the top rows of an ‘odd rows and columns’ lattice, then use four-way rotational symmetry to copy the same pairs into the rest of the grid. Result: no isolated corners, and four each of 3-letter and 11-letter words, both easily left out of grid patterns. There are 9 M’s in the grid, 7 of them checked – I think this counts as significant. It also leaves the setter with 3 RAMs in down answers at the top, but I didn’t notice the M’s or RAMs until afterwards.
While writing up, I noted a fairly large collection of single-letter elements in clues – R in 10, A/13, A and C/22, O/25, T/2, A/3, P/5, Y/7, G/14, T/18 and R/19, though whether this is more than usual I have no idea (and it may not be the full list for this puzzle). I wonder whether one of the unnoticed skills of quick solvers is spotting these and exploiting the logical implications about the structure of the clue. As an example, if “runs” in 19 represents R, and the following “on” means that it goes at the beginning of the down answer, you’re already looking for “soft cheese” = R??????. Unless you never visit a supermarket or Italian restaurant, the relative obscurity of “priest’s garment” = COTTA is just a side-show.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | RETURN=profit, MATCH=fellow, a return match being a second contest between the same opponents, probably reversing the home/away sides in sports where this is important. Not solved immediately, probably because I didn’t see MATCH for “fellow”. It puzzled me slightly after solving, until I looked up “match” and found “a person or thing able to contend with another as an equal”, and “a thing of the same kind as or otherwise associated with another”. The second of these is a bit more clearly the same thing as “fellow”, but the first would have been enough for me. |
| 7 | COW=bully (both verbs) – initial letters of ‘can of worms’, nicely indicated by “opening”, but the combination of a ‘starters’ word and the right number of words afterwards made it easy. |
| 9 | MONOMANIA – cryptic def using “one thing” to mean “obsessive preoccupation with one thing” (COED), and “thing” = as in “Crosswords are Peter’s thing”. |
| 10 | MO(R)ON – an unusually simple set of insertion instructions, with stupid = “Informal a stupid person” (Collins, not COED), and moon as a literary/humorous month |
| 11 | TROJANS – Cryptic def exploiting the mythological Paris – son of Priam, King of Troy. Arguably a double def if you’re happy to link “noted for hard work” with “people”. |
| 12 | The one we’re hiding from you today – ask if you can’t see it. |
| 13 | K,A=”artist initially”,PUT=submitted |
| 15 | URSA MINOR = “Little Bear” – a constellation very similar to Ursa Major, a.k.a. the Plough/Great Bear/Big Dipper/Charles’s Wain, both in shape and in giving you a way to find Polaris, the North star. (Follow links for detail, or we’ll be here all day.) I spotted Paddington=BEAR and took this a little too literally – with a final R from 8D, I lightly pencilled an initial B based on “in [BEAR = Paddington, for example]”, and waited for the BEA? ??N?R phrase similar to BEAT COMBO = “group” to emerge – until the right answer for 4 or 16 came along. |
| 17 | HEAR(TFEL=left*)T or more likely HEART,FELT=left* – thanks to lennyco – like the R in 10, “transformation of left” is very clear as long as you don’t assume that “it can’t be that easy” – and the anagram of LEFT is to the right of HEART=centre. Very nicely done, with a political party surface reading. |
| 19 | RAY=fish,ON=about – dead easy in principle, though RAY isn’t up there with IDE and GAR at the top of the crossword fish hit parade. |
| 20 | MAM=mother,MOTH=insect – ditto for both MAM and MOTH – likewise “huge” for mammoth is a bit tougher than “Woolly beast” |
| 22 | A=article,C=about, COUNT=nobleman |
| 24 | PAGAN(ini) – demon fiddler Niccolò was a composer too. As it can apply to almost anything, “up to a point” is a Times favourite for some number of letters at the beginning of a word that can’t be described in words matching a more specific surface meaning. I’m being a bit unfair – “having no faith … up to a point” works quite well. See anonymous Andrew R’s comment for a well-observed precise wordplay interpretation. |
| 25 | UNIT TRUST – (it turns out – 0)* – “none the less” is a common way to indicate removing an O. |
| 27 | YEN – 2 def’s, one the Japanese currency unit, the other a longing or yearning – not some ancient variant of “yearn” as I guessed, but from a Chinese word meaning a longing for drugs – opium in particular. |
| 28 | EATING APPLE = (get appeal in)* – the definition is yet another crossword exploitation of the first few chapters of Genesis – traditionally the fruit of the “tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat” is an apple, so “eating apple” is “first offence” just as EVE is “first lady” or “first mate”. |
| Down | |
| 1 | RAM – for once let’s avoid one of my favourite mistakes – trying to explain a triple def as a double. “Strike force” does not mean RAM, but “strike” and “force” both do. And the related noun was the conversion of the front of a ship into a piercing weapon. |
| 2 | TANGO – the letter T from broadcasT in the radio alphabet |
| 3 | R(A M.P.)ANT – I had R(A M.P.)AGE for a while, hastily getting meaning but not the right part of speech from the back end of the clue – and see anonymous Barbara’s comment for the important point about heraldry which didn’t make it from my scrawl of jotted notes |
| 4 | MINUS=not having,CULE=clue* – the wordplay will hopefully protect solvers from the common misspelling “miniscule”. |
| 5 | TRAM=vehicle,P=parking |
| 6 | HUMDRUM – hum and drum being rhymes = rhyming words. kororareka points out below that they are specifically “some” rhymes. Same trick as “rough lough” a week or so ago, but in the answer rather than the clue |
| 7 | CERTAINT=interact*,(jur)Y – straightforward as long as you remember that “conviction” has multiple meanings |
| 8 | WINDSOR KNOT = (Don won’t risk)* – not too hard as the connection between Don (Oxbridge prof or any particular Don someone) and the sporting “tie” presumably intended in the surface is fairly weak. |
| 11 | TAKE-HOME PAY – cryptic def based on “screw” as “Brit informal, dated an amount of salary or wages” |
| 14 | PTARMIGAN – G = “getting head”, in (main trap)* – straightforward unless the bird is new to you, in which case putting the T in the right unchecked spot might be tricky. If anyone put PRATMIGAN they may feel a prat but have my sympathy. |
| 16 | SATIATION – AT 1 = “at one” inserted twice in SON – there’s not much in the way of alternatives to ‘repeatedly’, so other old hands must have been writing ATIATI where the checking letters allowed it and then seeing the SON. The first of a run of three “food, glorious food” clues. |
| 18 | T=”tea”,R=right,OUNCE=a little weight – to “cream” someone is to trounce them. (Food in the clue) |
| 19 | R,1,COTTA (Food in the answer) – a cotta is a short surplice, cotta being Medieval Latin for “cut off” |
| 21 | H(A)UNT – “frequent” being a verb |
| 23 | USURP = take over. The business is usury (lending at exorbitant rates), which has often been illegal, with its final Y=unknown replaced by P=quietly |
| 26 | TOE – def and allusion to “toe the line” = comply |
We’re therefore in the same situation as with OKAPI or OMANI for O?A?I – if you can see the def and keep things precise, you need nothing else. But this time you don’t need three out of three checking letters, but two out of six – the final Y of BLUE-EYED BOY and the M from TIME in the two jobs are the only checking letters for which any other answer is possible – so if you have two checkers, all you need is a (4-4,3) phrase that fits.
Also appreciated “up in arms” for RAMPANT, even if it’s probably not the first time it’s been seen by a long way, and “first offence” for EATING APPLE even if I took it as a noun cryptically until reading the blog.
Favourite of the day was TROJANS for its cutesy People of Paris definition. Last in was RAM, because I didn’t think it could be that easy.
Paddington Bear first appeared in 1958, already old enough to have made the journey from Peru. I can’t see how he can possibly be a MINOR.
I was a little puzzled by 24 as I thought the wordplay was Pag AN but Pag is an opera not a composer. Then I thought of Paganini but still did not quite work out that it was him up to a point.
I had a much happier time with this crossword than yesterday’s, helped by clear definitions, although I blundered by putting RAMPAGE for RAMPANT and therefore didn’t get KAPUT. MONOMANIA, TROJANS, URSA MINOR, HAUNT, YEN and EATING APPLE all raised smiles. MINUSCULE with two U’s and one I was a new spelling for me. TAKE HOME PAY, HEARTFELT and USURP entered without understanding the wordplay.
Football fans will note RETURN MATCH heralds tonight’s Barcelona v Inter Milan semi-final second leg at the Nou Camp.
I was slightly puzzled by 28ac. “Eating apple” is a recognisable term of the sort crossword answers are generally made of but only if it’s describing something that isn’t a cooking apple, which is not mentioned in the clue. Am I just trying to impose a non-existent convention?
And, yes, I beat Peter on the handicap.
I thought of RETURN MATCH for 1ac on the very first reading but couldn’t justify any part of the wordplay until eventually when confronted with all the checking letters there was obviously no alternative.
I arrived at work with all the gaps mentioned above still apparent and cheated to find URSA MINOR. Once that was in everything else fell into place. I reckon I was on this for an hour in all.
Barbara
Cryptic definitions usually give me trouble, but not here.
At 3dn I thought the heraldic meaning noted by Barbara was the whole point of the clue. (“Couchant” or lying down is the opposite, by the way – wait for “lying in arms”.)
8dn reminded me that it always annoys me to see James Bond wearing a tie with a Windsor knot in a film. In “From Russia with Love” 007 expresses a dislike of Windsor knots as “the mark of a cad”. Quite right too.
Andrew R
If I’m right in thinking that the answer is a noun (an eater not a cooker) then I think you just have to accept that it (the answer) is not referred to in the clue, because the cryptic definition is not a cryptic definition of an eater. In this sense the clue is unlike 9ac, for instance.
On the basis that it didn’t give me any trouble I’m happy to accept it – I’m still happy finishing the puzzle in the shortest possible time (if at all)!
I’d say this type of clue is the standard anagram clue with an artful definition, thereas 9 across is a traditional, standard Times stand-alone cryptic definition. The definition used by the setter for EATING APPLE today, may well have been acceptable on its own in Times puzzles of the past, but certainly would not be these days. Whether that is a good thing, and whether cookers existed at the time of the Garden of Eden, are questions of differing types of theology: the answers may be hotly debated 🙂
But I’m also a bit bemused by the cooker/eater distinction. The cryptic def. surely leads to a headline-style version of the act of eating said apple, as the fruit itself (cooker, eater, crab, whatever) was not the offence!
The point of all this is, I think, that EATING APPLE appears in the dictionary as a noun meaning an apple for eating, not as a verbal phrase meaning “EATING an APPLE”. So to clue it as the latter – as the main definition – would not be correct. Therefore you have to read the offence referred to, stretch though that might be, as a noun. Then you have to ask “Ok, but was the apple actually perhaps a cooker?” which would invalidate the definition once again.
Back at the EATING APPLE, I guess we’re using different things as overriding principles that take us down particular lines of thought. For me, this is “EATING (the/an) APPLE” as something that fits “original sin” better than the noun “eating apple”; for you it’s equating the definition with the meaning of the ‘eating apple’ defined in the dictionary because that’s the kind of def you’re expecting.
I guess another question here is whether “cryptic def plus wordplay” is a permissible clue type in Times puzzles. It’s not one that I can recall from other recent puzzles, but for me, if we can have CD-only and “CD plus plain def” clues, there’s no compelling logical reason why we shouldn’t sometimes have “CD plus wordplay”, just as we have some triple (or more) rather than double defs, or occasional clues with two wordplays and one def.
(fgbp is a current Times setter, which is one reason for me continuing this day-old saga in such detail.)
The same would apply to “eating apple” were it not for the fact that “eating apple” IS a recognisable phrase, meaning a type of apple that can be eaten raw. However clear it is (and it is perfectly clear), the cryptic does not refer to THIS definition, which is the ONLY definition that constitutes an acceptable crossword answer. In this sense there is no refrence to the answer in the clue.
Is it dead yet?!
plus plain def” clues, there’s no compelling logical reason why we
shouldn’t sometimes have “CD plus wordplay”]
Absolutely not – in fact we see such clues all the time. The RAMPANT clue is a good example: “Up in arms” would do very nicely for many on its own, for example.
I think keriothe’s concern arises from the fact here we have + wordplay as opposed to + wordplay/no wordplay.
I think keriothe’s concern arises from the fact here we have “very allusive CD” + wordplay as opposed to “artful paraphrase or later thinking version of dictionary def” + wordplay/no wordplay.
(that’ll teach me to use “greater than” and “less than” brackets in posts!)
And it’s not really a concern anyway, just curiosity!
Cryptic puzzles often use stretches and extensions of meaning which in certain cases are too much for some, and maybe not enough for others. Some would say it’s all part of the fun!
An interesting debate that helped me not one jot with today’s puzzle.
* there’s nothing in the clue to indicate that “in Italian” has to be subtracted from the composer – just having something you can equate to “INI” somewhere in the clue is not enough for this.
* I = Italy is OK from International Vehicle Registrations (and one you could reasonably expect to see on a British road), but I = Italian is not in COED or Collins (nor in Chambers) so “Italian” it would need “initially” or similar to indicate I.
Another short recommendation is (quoting Azed from memory) that books have their place, but there’s no substitute for getting to grips with clues using your own wits as often as possible.
Anyone got tips for working out long anagrams? I got the CHEMICAL AGENT = CLIMATE CHANGE one at first sight (and UNITED NATIONS last week), but I struggled with my writing them out in a circle today (PTARMIGAN was an exception).
I thought HEARTFELT the pick of the clues today.
GEPI
NEAA
PLT
from ‘get appeal in’. I cross out any letters already there as checkers. If I can’t see an answer, I try a different order. If you have some checkers close together, you may be able to identify one of the remaining letters as the only possibility, or a likely sequence of letters which reduces the possibilities elsewhere enough for success -TION endings are the classic example. You can also focus on the unusual letters – the P’s in this case, and try out possible locations for them.