This was a fairly straightforward puzzle – possibly my quickest Times cryptic since doing them online as my normal routine. Still room for improvement, as I typed 15D incorrectly (or “iignorantly” if you like) twice over, forcing the fairly easy 22 to be my last answer. From memory, 10 and 11 were the clues that got the ball rolling. There are some really good clues here, with 2D alone worth any money you paid for this puzzle.
A question before we start: Now that the Times Crossword Club site has a leaderboard showing the best 100 times and scores for each of the crosswords covered here (barring Mephisto), and a “cryptics” 30-day leaderboard based on average scores for puzzles that we cover; do you want any information about these scores to be shown here? My gut feeling is that those who care about these times and scores will probably be club members already, so we don’t need to repeat them – we already have a clear indication of the difficulty of a puzzle from our own times and successes or failures. But speak up if you disagree – bearing in mind that collecting the information is extra work for someone.
Using those times and scores as an initial assessment of difficulty, this one looks quite tricky – only 3 sub-30 times so far (23 entries)
Those of you waiting for a crossword pub gathering outside London: click on “Previous Entry” for the answer to your dreams. (I was going to just announce it in this report, but a separate announcement is easier to find if you need it a few weeks from now.)
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PAN(PIP = stone, of cherry or similar)ES – I left this one to come from checkers and just had to reject the BAGPIPES (not difficult for an Englishman who likes music – he says, running for cover) |
| 9 | CARRY-OUT – very nicely done double def – “Kind of meal one can bear” and “to complete” (for the hyphenless version) |
| 10 | CASINO – a card game as well as the obvious |
| 11 | FOR CERTAIN = (refraction)* |
| 12 | CANT = a secret language, e.g. of thieves, sounding (indisputably, I hope) like Immanuel Kant. |
| 13 | SONGWRITER = (tries wrong)* – def punning on “numbers” = songs |
| 16 | A = a, SCE(p)TIC = “penniless (person full of doubt)” |
| 17 | SIGN = subscribe, IF = although (e.g. “the puzzle was fair if difficult”), Y = “ultimately very” |
| 20 | SCREEN = broadcast, TEST = big match, with the “player” switching from jock to thesp for the cryptic reading |
| 22 | RANK = “it could be major”, “row”, and “creating stink” |
| 23 | NONSTARTER – straight and whimsical defs |
| 25 | IN(T)UIT – the Inuit being the ultimate “Northerners”, and “over time” being interpreted in the one-dimensional context of an answer written in a grid. |
| 26 | SNOWBALL = “quickly grow” and this bush |
| 27 | E = Eng., VERY, ONE = united |
| Down | |
| 2 | ANAGRAMS – (stuck one)* = (‘s neck out)* – a very cleverly made clue |
| 3 | PRIVATE = soldier, EYE (vb.) = keep watch on |
| 4 | PROFESSION – double def |
| 5 | S(COR = French for horn, or musical jargon/slang for various kinds of instrument called “cor” in French)ING |
| 6 | today’s one for you to find for yourself |
| 7 | COBALT = metal – AB reversed in Colt = gun |
| 8 | S = small, TIN = can, GRAY = poet – doubtless this one though “Gray poet” on wikipedia finds you several others |
| 14 | WHIST DRIVE – CD with “partners” and “deals” as the key misleading words. Potentially difficult for US solvers as I don’t think you have Whist or Beetle drives in your equivalent of the village hall |
| 15 | IGNORANTLY = (trying loan)* |
| 16 | ARSONIST = criminal – A = a, then SIN rev. in sort* |
| 18 | F, UNCTION = ointment – if like me you only remember “unction” from “extreme unction” (the phrase, not the experience!), this wiki article should bridge the gap |
| 19 | REP = theatre, TILE = piece played, in Scrabble or similar |
| 21 | RANSOM = (Romans)* – “ready to release prisoner” being the well-worked definition |
| 24 | AWAY – the kind of games for which you need coaches with wheels, as well as ones with tracksuits. |
I don’t much like 23A because a NON-STARTER can occur in all sorts of endeavours so it’s an unsigned definition by example. I think 21D should be “readies”. I like 16A ASCETIC which is rather clever.
That said, the link with horse racing seems plenty strong enough for me. If necessary, count it as a cryptic definition rather than a pair of defs.
I took the second part of the clue ‘or a jumper’ – in its sense ‘won’t jump from the starting gates’ – to be the essential part of the clue. Indeed, the clue could read simply ‘Kind of horse that is not a jumper’. It seems the setter added the ‘racer’ bit for those solvers who are not followers of the turf. A cryptic most definitely, I’d have thought.
Deprived of PC and printer, I did the last couple of crosswords direct from the Times newspaper application on an iPad. The crossword function in the app is basic but does the job. As well as timing you, it highlights any mistakes after you have finished, which is a nice little freebie.
80 minutes. Grrrrr. And fell into the ‘bagpipes’ trap too, I now see.
That left me with 2dn and 12ac outstanding where I needed to look up KANT once I had thought of CANT. Never heard of him before.
Pondered long and hard over 2dn and then used a solver to look for alternatives to ANAGRAMS but didn’t find any. Nor did I find out why ANAGRAMS was correct before coming here.
Some of this was really easy but the later debacle is what I shall remember about this one.
Don’t let George hear you say that. This is where I learned all my names of philosophers from, and Kant is first:
Philosophy song
I nearly put ‘mushroom’, but waited for crossing letters, and then remembered the bushes in our yard in Southport – more than 50 years ago. I was rather baffled by ‘away’ and ‘anagram’ for quite a while, but my biggest problem was knowing ‘ascetic’ from the definition but not being able to remember the word. At least ‘reptile’ was obvious for me, since I spotted the wordplay right off.
However, having said that, still a DNF, as ANAGRAMS was way too clever for me! Definitely needed Peter’s explanation for that one, thanks.
PS Can thoroughly recommend planting snowball viburnums (vibernum opulus) in the garden – they look absolutely stunning when in flower, and need very little looking after!
The problem areas were anagrams/ascetic and most of the SW.
I’m with Zabadak in finding away rather weak but elsewhere there were some superb defintions such as ready to release prisoner, kind of meal one can bear and one who works with numbers. COD to signify though.
Finally put in 2 without understanding, thinking there must be a pair of anagrams in there somewhere, but just couldn’t find them. Thanks to Peter for pointing them out. Also made an identical fat-fingered mistake to PB at 15, writing IGNOTANTLY, then staring at T-N- for 10 minutes before spotting the error.
Still, under an hour without aids or mistakes, so a win nonetheless.
Too clever for me today.
There should be dispute on the pronunciation of “Kant”. It’s certainly not pronounced like “Cant” in German. It’s more like another word I sincerely hope never to find in a Times crossword. Or, for some at least, more like “can’t” in RP. Try this.
Peter – re. bagpipes. If you ever come to Nova Scotia, bring earplugs. In fact, after your comment on 1a you should definitely avoid the town of New Glasgow, where I imagine your name will now be on some sort of list.
Last in: AWAY. COD: ANAGRAMS
We had Billy Connolly in town the other night. He has a soft spot for Nova Scotia, I think, but he did a withering riff on the ‘professional Scotsmen’ of the world.
Some men there are love not a gaping pig,
Some that are mad if they behold a cat,
And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ th’ nose,
Cannot contain their urine.
The Northumbrian smallpipes, for example, sound like a clarinet with a drone.
Stumbled slightly on the way with a stab at WORLD TRADE for 14d, which swiftly proved wrong, and did myself no favours for an age on 8d by insisting that the answer was the name of a poet with TUNA stuck somewhere in the middle.
If you take the 16-letter phrase “Stuck one’s neck out” and split it into two equal parts, you get “stuck one” and “‘s neck out”, which are anagrams of each other.
…shouldn’t 23A use “nor” rather than “or” ? I cant get it to work logically as it is, since the dash creates two parts to the text such that “not” cannot apply to the second part. I know the setters are allowed to confuse with punctuation, but I am not sure in this case that is reasonable. Any thoughts?