24715

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 8:23

This felt harder work than the time might suggest, so maybe I was in good form today – I finished faster than one or two people on the Club leaderboard who have beaten me in the past. Solved without full wordplay understanding: 21, 7, 15, 17. Last in: 4, 11, 6, 8 – probably not in that order.

Across
1 NAGOYA – NA = “recalling an” (to recall being to bring back), GOYA = artist from Spain
4 BLAN(CHE (Guevara))D, with “vanilla” for BLAND – solved by thinking of “blancoed” and then seeing which parts worked and which didn’t. (Seb Coe was a Tory in his political career, but more importantly for Times xwd purposes, is still alive.)
10 TENACIOUS = (use action)*
11 MOUSE – 2 defs, one referring to the device I’m just about to use to put the cursor in the right place for the next answer
12 QUARTER-POUNDER – CD referring to a crown as 5 shillings or 25p – a quarter of 20 shillings or 100p. It was 5 shillings in the days when you could actually spend one, though in my life it was rarely seen but known about, as a half-crown was 2 shillings and sixpence, and the going rate as a birthday gift from a distant or honorary relative. Commemorative crowns have been nominally worth £5 since 1990.
14 ELGAR = “Worcestershire barman” – L = line, in rev. of rage = fashion – a mild pity that the clue couldn’t be made to suggest Worcestershire sauce
16 DEVILFISH = ray – F = female, in DEVILISH. ODE has the fish as one word, before anyone asks
18 TARDINESS = “being behind quality” – (red stains)*
20 STEER – 2 defs. Some might say that “cattle” means more than one beast …
21 PL(A, INCH = little bit, OCOL = rev. of loco = nuts)ATE – the combination of nuts and chocolate gives me a feeble excuse for this bit of nostalgia
25 RUM,BA(ll)
26 D from “imprisoned”, INNER = secret, SET = group – “China” being the def. Beginners: take note of the two possible readings when “A at last B” appears in a clue
27 HAY FEVER – cryptic def
28 today’s omitted clue for you to work out
 
Down
1 NE(TIQUE = quiet*)TT,E – here’s an old example of the moral code
2 GENOA = “d’you know ‘er?”
3 YACHTER = sailor – C = clubs, in hearty*
5 LA(SS = Nazis)O(s)
6 NO(r)M(IN)AL
7 HO(b), U from dusting, SEW = mend clothes, I, FE = iron
8 DEE,R – easy construction to spot, but it took a while to find the right choices
9 PORRIDGE – 2 defs – the first presumably from porridge being a heated dish that warms you up on a chilly morning, and the second this kind of “time”
13 CHARLESTON = (short clean)*
15 GO(R)B,LIMEY = Briton – a nice example of a “functional” def (“Briton’s expression of amazement”) from which you’re maybe more likely to see the answer than from the true def according to cryptic clue rules (“expression of amazement”)
17 VI = “figure of our last king“, SCOU(N)T
19 IMITATE = “do” – IT = “sex appeal”, in I MATE. Nicely deceptive clue, suggesting an “AM I …” trick
20 SLOVEN = ragamuffin,E
22 CA(D)GE – the “pound” being the kind for dogs
23 A from argument,SSAM = rev. of mass
24 (l)ARCH

51 comments on “24715”

  1. Like others, I found this one very slow to start but it eventually gathered pace and I got to the end in a smidgen over 30 min, which isn’t bad for me. Spotting PORRIDGE actually saved me from myself, since I had written in TARNISHED without fully checking the anagrist. And PLAIN CHOCOLATE is my favourite – time for some now with a coffee, I think!
  2. Very pleased to finish unaided in 38 minutes. Not helped by my first in answers of BLEACHED and WHITE CHOCOLATE. One where I kept stalling, then on deciding I would have to go for help, something would leap out. I suspect that the mental cold shower that goes with the admission of defeat unleashes some intuitive mental survival mechanism.

    Cracking good puzzle. My COD to the last in: PORRIDGE, maybe just from sheer relief, but who cares.

  3. Peter,

    I queried cattle as plural, then thought ‘steer’ like ‘deer’ could be both singular and plural. Looked it up & not so sure. Nobody else seems to have picked up on this. Any further thoughts?

    1. I still think it’s strictly a minor mistake – deer has the same plural, clearly indicated in dictionaries, but they say nothing about steer, implying that its plural is formed in the usual way. Conversely, cattle is a plural noun.

      I think this minor mistake has been hidden from some people by the liveliness of the rest of the puzzle, and others have chosen not to go on about it for the same reason.

      1. Isn’t there a construction where you can use the singular to stand for the plural, particularly where groups of animals are concerned? I’m afraid I can’t recall the correct term for it, but here’s an example from Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags:

        “There were duck on the lake and she let Freddy talk about them.” (p 17, Penguin edition)

          1. Fowler (aptly) makes a distinction between “nouns that make no plural form but are used as both singular and plural e.g. … deer, grouse, sheep, trout, ….”, and “nouns that make plural forms in the normal way but whose singular form may also be used as a plural, sometimes with little if any difference of meaning e.g. cannon, duck, fish … but more often with some special implication. For instance … elephant and lion are in the bush, elephants and lions in the zoo.”

            Is “steer” such a word? Head of steer is /are all I can think of.

          2. “Drive cattle beast” could have tidied this up, as this form can be singular or plural.
    2. Interestingly, I was reading a commentary on Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles last night, which contained discussion of the declension of nouns in Middle English. Although ‘steer’ wasn’t among the examples cited (‘deer’ and ‘oxen’ were), ‘steer’ can be used as a plural, especially in a collective sense (like ‘cattle’). Thus, while one is unlikely to find ‘We have seven steer’, the following usage, taken from an online farming resource, is acceptable and, I would imagine, fairly common in that field: ‘it was recommended that the calves be sorted into those males that would be brought up as bulls and those to be gelded for steer’.
  4. really pleased with a solving time of just under 30 minutes stuck in Schipol airport and just back for tomorrow’s puzzle

    does anyone know how to put the answers in on an ipad on the club website? i can get to the puxxle and press play but then i dont know how to activate the keyboard part

    alternatively is there an app for this?

    1. Quote from david_ch in a comment on 24 Nov: “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.”
  5. This was a highly original puzzle and yet, like Peter, I solved it fairly quickly. Also, like Peter perhaps, it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to have been a lot slower. I think it helps to get on the setter’s devious wavelength. In that respect the puzzle was consistent – consistently devious!

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