24583

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 18:13

A pretty difficult puzzle for me, and a slightly jammy correct solution (see 27). There are some difficult words here but also some easy clues, so my guess is that times will vary widely. Last few answers: 8, 6A, 23 (changing S to Z), 26, and then a minute or so looking for alternatives to the unexplained 27. Answers written without full wordplay understanding: 27, 28, 3, 13.

Across
1 P(END=goal,U=United)LUM – with PLUM=best – I guessed correctly that “lead swinging” needed to stay as a 2-word phrase for the def., but thought of “lead-swinging” rather than “lead, swinging” until the answer came from checking letters
6 CANOPY = topmost (tree) branches – AN=article, in COPY=parrot
9 P,OZ.=light weight,NAN=bread – more on Poznan here. Doubtless some will grumble about needing to make ‘lightweight’ in to two words to understand it
10 KEY’S TONE = ‘sound of part of piano’ – another poor early idea here as I thought of KEY=vital and BOARD=?=some kind of ‘support’, though dared not write it in
11 Today’s deliberate omission
12 MA(A,ST.,RICH=”rolling”)T(t) – here’s the city, best-known by Brits for the treaty signed there
14 UNIVERSE = (Venus, ire)* – a fairly transparent anagram. Beginners/new Times solvers should note this as an example of “split fodder”, one way of protecting anagram clues from the crude technique of just looking for consecutive words with the right total length.
16 A(dvisable),FRO as in “to and fro”
18 AGIN = “not for” – replace 0 by 1 in agon(y)
19 LIVE=’as it happens’,UP TO = “busy at” – ‘busy’ here may be a decoy intended to make you think of busy=detective, but that’s used at 20
21 LIPIZZANER – hidden in “chilli pizza nervously”
22 SAVE – double definition using “deliver” as in the Litany’s “From …., Good Lord deliver us”, borrowed elsewhere in phrases like “From Hull and Halifax and Hell, good Lord deliver me”
24 SEED LEAF =(else fade)* – I didn’t know this term (a leaf grown before the plant sprouts from the seed), but the fairly transparent anagram meant ‘leaf seed’ or ‘seed leaf’ had to be the answer.
26 WHEEZE – 2 defs, one using “inspiration” to mean “breathing”
27 (di)STRESS – stress=weight – I solved this from stress=anguish and hoped to find some reason why “weight” could represent the MI in mistress, or find another -stress word. The ‘anguish’ is actually ‘distress’.
28 RE,DALE=depression,R(ecovery),T(hen)
 
Down
2 ECO- = environmentally friendly,L,I – some strains of E. coli can cause food poisoning
3 DONG = “Character of Lear” (the one with the luminous nose),I(O)VAN,NI=rev. of ‘in’ – nice use of ‘Russian revolutionary’ which we have to lift and separate. Here’s a bit of the opera for those who think Mozart is always nice
4 LAND=gain=win,MARK=’old German ready’ – according to ODE, “readies” can also be “the ready”, so I don’t think this is a back-formation singular
5 MAKE=”to form”,A BEE(LINE FO=(if one, L)*)R
6 COYOTE – backwards alternate letters in ‘nExT tO mY pOoCh”
7 NET – two defs. goal=net seems a bit of a stretch but it’s in COED, in the sense used in “The Dutch found the net three times against Uruguay”.
8 PANKHURST=campaigner – change R to N in Parkhurst, former high security prison, now apparently part of HMP Isle of Wight, a title which the local populace must be really chuffed about
13 I(N.A.,NUT=head,SHE)LL – “head girl” and “with complaint”=ILL are good bits of deception
15 NEGLIGENT = not minding = not caring – GEN=dope in tingle*
17 OVERAWED=”with great reverence” – rev. of “a rev.” in OWED=outstanding
20 A(Z,TEC=busy (slang)),S=second
23 VIZ.=videlicet=”that is”,(f)OR – I had “visor” for a while from def alone, until realising this was a rare appearance of “viz.” as opposed to “i.e.” or “sc.”
25 DIE – three defs

32 comments on “24583”

  1. 16:26 here, but a lot of guesswork and back-formation to get it finished. I estimate maybe a third of the answers went in without full understanding of the wordplay, although I was able to go back and confirm everything afterwards.
  2. A real struggle for me, around an hour. re 27 is it not distress=anguish?
  3. Only a sprinkling of answers after half-an-hour so decided a cheat might give me a kick-start. The cheat gave me the bread in POZNAN which instantly gave me DON GIOVANNI. Then 10 minutes of self-flagellation as Da Ponte’s libretto is currently open on my desk and have just shelled-out 50 quid to see the new Glyndebourne production in October. Steady solve thereafter with AFRO from definition and LIPIZZANER on the what else can it possibly be basis. (First time I have seen a hidden word so indicated). Slapped in AGON using that theory (reminder welcome) that the obvious is probably right, so this was the exception which proves the rule. PANKHURST was one of those clues where the surface is so obvious but only once solved, and thus gets my COD. Nice to see WIKI get a much deserved acknowledgement.
    Another terrific puzzle and for me personally an indication of progress as I don’t think I would have got far with this even 3 months ago.
  4. Not ashamed of 25 m including establishing existence of Poznan. Rather a lot of reading before writing, wrong thoughts (keyboard, idle lead-swingers), and slow to see things till Maastricht sorted itself out, then lipizzaner leapt off the page and the bottom half resolved. Last in NE corner and Pankhurst, I had forgotten the name of the prison till all crossers in!
    Liked the Dong and the two uses of busy.
  5. 63 minutes and glad to get it done, and see all rationales (a few after finishing). This is a gem: so many clues read simply once you’ve seen the unexpected angles they come from. linxit’s time is something else. At four times that I feel as if I’ve discovered the double helix or something. Got 21 from a recent Le Carre novel, ‘A Most Wanted Man’, the best of his recent crop for me but still nowhere near his masterpieces of old.
  6. 25 minutes on this one, with much appreciation for the devilish construction of so many of the clues, with definitions being fiendishly hidden: “not for” in 18, “meet” in 19. SEED LEAF was unknown but not difficult. LIPIZZANER I thought an education in hiding in plain sight, with a far from usual (but appropriate on the surface) indication of hiddenness. CoD to last in PANKHURST for its many misdirections.
  7. Just an aside. Two of today’s entries (5, 19) ended with a preposition. Is this something up with which we should be obliged to put?
  8. I was quite surprised by Peter’s time – 25 minutes for me with the top half going in quite quickly but a bit tougher below the equator.

    This is very much my sort of puzzle with clues like those in bar crosswords that one can analyse out into the constituent parts and then synthesise the answer. Well done Barry because I think experience helps a great deal with this style of puzzle. Speaking of which I also thought of KEYBOARD at 10A but some instinct told me it was wrong – much as I suspect happened to Peter. That also only comes with time.

    Some excellent clues overall, no quibbles and I particularly liked WIKI for an excellent clue to a potential difficult word for the setter – to whom thanks and congratulations

    1. Thanks Jimbo. Nice, and encouraging when the old pros take an interest. I remember being tickled pink when Mark elevated me from “Beginner” to “ Intermediate” status a while back. Progress is incremental to the point where it is undetectable. Even though I have been completing these things more often than not for a while now, increasingly unaided, it is literally only over the last couple of weeks that I have approached the morning challenge believing that I will answer any at all.
      And although you don’t need me to defend you, this week’s fare has beautifully illustrated the point you were at pains to make last week, so obdurately misunderstood by some. On the other hand this kind of standard can’t be easy to maintain.
  9. Thanks for so brilliantly putting me out of my misery! 16ac, 21ac, 8dn, 20dn were, despite using references, well beyond me.

    What about ‘agon’ for 18ac? Greek competition with prizes (i.e. ‘not for nothing’)?

  10. 45 minutes in three sessions. No aids needed and nothing to look up afterwards apart from SEED LEAF just to find out what it is; I didn’t doubt its existence. A really good puzzle with some tricky stuff but all readily deducable.

    Had to get up a bit early today as my only link to the internet at home is via Dial-Up and it takes for ever to open the log-in page. How did we ever manage before broadband came along?

    Further to my commments about Times On Line, I am now advised that before you can access it you need an access code then to register and fill in two or three screens of personal information. They say they sent CC Members the access code on 1st July but I definitely didn’t get it. If you’re in the same boat you need to contact Times Customer Services. My access is now sorted.

  11. Darn it! Had to resort to aids for 20 and 21 after an hour and 19 minutes, but still failed to get them, as I was foiled – not for the first time – by the hidden clue. Also failed to get the crossing AZTECS – got quite close, but didn’t know TEC = busy.

    Enjoyable workout, though, with LANDMARK my COD, as I’ll take any victory over the Germans, as long as it doesn’t involve a penalty shootout.

  12. Is it worth just mentioning that TEC = “busy” in the sense that both are slang for a policeman?
    1. Best source I can find for this is Urban Dictionary (online), which says a busy is a Geordie word for a policeman. Can anyone confirm?
      1. COED just has “Brit. informal, a police officer”. Previous discussions here have mentioned the same word being used by scousers, I think.
  13. I was determined to finish this because I hated it and, otherwise, it would have seemed like sour grapes to complain. I particularly disliked the clunky surface to 5D but elsewhere it was mainly fiendish obscurity unleavened by any wit or ingenuity. I have to say mainly because I grudgingly enjoyed Agin, Pankhurst and the hidden word.

    I made a meal of the intersecting Landmark/Maastricht. That was my own fault in not immediately seeing through “old German ready”. Then I finished by guessing Stress. At least I was in good company there.

  14. I am surprised that lennyco disliked (nay hated!) this puzzle. I thought it was an interesting challenge, certainly not boring, and was pleased to finish in 40 minutes, aidless.

    I had never heard of LIPIZZANER but I had all the checkers, and this was my last in.

    Look forward to seeing more puzzles like this. Thank you Mr Setter.

  15. Found this very difficult. In the end, finished with 25d wrong (are DOEs spotted?), and had to use a solver to get 21ac, only then realising that it was an extremely well hidden word!
  16. Done over soss, egg ‘n’ chips hen a cup of tea in a London Square so about an hour all told.
    Patted myself on the back for spotting the bread (although I had P OUNCE first).
    Old German ready made me laugh! Very enjoyable!.
    when are they posting the Clue Writing results btw? I got an email yesterday telling me I had won the £50!
  17. Found this to be a real struggle, and had to cheat for a couple to finish in 48 min. The PANKHURST/Parkhurst pairing, particularly the “island” reference went over my head, and for some reason the blindingly obvious IN A NUTSHELL was anything but. Like others, a number went in without understanding. Not a puzzle to be attacked after a night on the Aussie shiraz, and can understand those thinking it was overly convoluted, but it gets my tick of approval. COD probably LIPIZZANER because it seemed so unlikely.
  18. 20 minutes with quite a few stumbling blocks. Got LIPIZZANER without noticing it was a hidden word.Some good deception in the clues, 28 for example.Last in was PANKHURST. I spent a while seeing PEN as the stir and looking for an island where the R became a N.
    Couldn’t work out how AFRO worked , thought it was FROM unfinished
    Good puzzle
  19. never heard of Tec = busy but it had to be aztecz i guessed corretly
    done on plane to Edinburgh this morning
    Hd trouble logging on to times on line this morning!
    nice puzzle-well blogged thank you!
  20. My idea of hell. I usually complete it or get close most days but I gave up after 40 minutes with 3.5 clues filled in. If anyone wants to know why more people don’t do the Times crossword, this is a good example. So many bitty clues that seemed to be too biased towards what the setter wanted to achieve than allowing the solver a way in.

    Lightweight = POZ is the sort of thing you’d think they’d criticise to high heaven if you’d submit it to the Cluing Competition.

    “Rolling in it” is RICH but hardly “Rolling”?

    1. Lightweight = OZ, surely, not POZ ??
      “Rolling” = “rich” is in Collins and I’d have thought was fairly common usage
    2. Maybe it just caught you on a bad day. It was a difficult puzzle, but there were clues to get you started – three “before your very eyes” clues (hidden words and other letter patterns in clue words), and some anagrams and multiple defs that seem relatively easy.

      I don’t know exactly what you mean by “bitty clues”, but I guess those with a lot of wordplay components would count. Looking back, and counting the wordplays with 4 or more parts, I found just 4: 12, 3, 5, 13.

  21. A very enjoyable puzzle, except that I know nothing of Pankhurst and will have to Google him or her (sic) now. I thought the answer might be Pinehurst or Panchrist (a Greek crusader?), but neither checked out when Googled. I also know nothing of Parkhurst. A doubly tough clue for a Yankee.
    Also, when using hillbilly slang here in the States, the opposite of “agin” is “fer”, so shouldn’t the clue for 18 be “Not fer nothing is one in endless agony”?
    1. Pankhurst: I’ve already done the Googling – you should be able to click on the green underlined name on this page to see information about her (or right click to get this information in a new window or tab.)

      “fer” isn’t in British dictionaries so wouldn’t be used in the Times puzzle. Even if it was, in cryptics there isn’t the same obligation to use slang to clue slang as there is in US-style puzzles (because you get wordplay as well as a definition). [When a clue uses something like a Cockney dropped H in the clue to match the answer or part of it – e.g. ‘irsute to clue AIRY – that’s because neither ‘airy or ‘irsute is in the dictionary.]

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