24723 – All answers confined to characters in the first 25…

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: 40 minutes. Most of this went in quite easily, especially the SW where I was solving faster than I could write (a rare experience for me) but I slowed towards the end and took a while to sort out the 5s and 11ac. The four words used to clue a single letter at 5ac threw me completely and in the end I solved it by finding a word that fitted the checkers and the definition in the final word of the clue. There’s not a great deal of complexity here but it was a pleasant enough work-out for a blogging day.

Across
1 FACILITY – Anagram of ‘clay if it’.
5 GROUND – G,ROUND – My last one in as I was distracted by the first three words of the clue. I had assumed that G was clued by ‘gravity’ whereas it is actually ‘acceleration due to gravity’.
8 RYE – Double definition. I lost time here trying to accommodate ‘Rio’, the usual 3-letter port starting with R. RYE in East Sussex was one of the ‘Cinque Ports’.
9 TORCHLIGHT – TORCH,LIGHT – The defintion ‘portable beams’ amused me.
10 PEKINESE – Anagram of ‘keeps, in East‘.
11 AUNTIE – A,UNTIE
12 OOPS – I solved this thinking Old,OPS but on reflection it needs to be O(Old)PS to account for ‘restricted’. On edit: On further reflection perhaps either would work – see Jerry’s comment below.
14 SEE-THROUGH – Double definition, one of them cryptic.
17 I’m leaving this easy anagram out.
20 TALL – TALLy  – As in ‘tall story’ meaning a lie.
23 STATUE – STAT(U)E
24 SPARSITY – S,PARTY around IS (reversed).
25 ART GALLERY – ART(GALL)ERY
26 AGO – A, GO – GO is a Japanese board-game that I only know of through crosswords. 
27 HEARTY – tHE pARTY
28 FEEDBACK –  This clue is a rather cheeky instruction to find a word meaning ‘response’ using a selection of the letters A-K!
 
Down
1 FIREPROOF – IF (reversed), REPROOF
2 CHECK-UP – I think of ‘up’ as meaning ‘at or to university’ rather than ‘in university’.
3 LATENT – L,A,TENT
4 THRESHERS – THRE(SH)E RS – I’m not sure how far abroad the expression ‘The Three Rs’ has travelled. For anyone who doesn’t know, they are ‘Reading, Writing and Arithmetic’, hence ‘early schoolwork’. Brewer’s advises that it was originated by an illiterate lord mayor of London by the name of Sir William Curtis (1752-1829) who gave as a toast ‘Riting, Reading and Rithmetic’.
5 GOLIATH – ‘Trouble’ = AIL which is then reversed inside GOTH to give the Philistine giant slain by David in the first book of Samuel.
6 ORGAN LOFT – Cryptic definition, ‘voluntary’ being an organ solo.
7 NOTHING – Those of a certain generation may remember Brenda Lee singing ‘Sweet Nothin’s’ which seem to be defined as inconsequential messages of love. ‘Love’ also serves as the definition here.
15 TAILPIECE – Sounds like ‘tale peace’ with a reference to Tolstoy’s most famous work ‘War and Peace’. A coda in music is a section tacked on at the end usually in addition to the main structure of the composition.
16 HOLLYHOCK – HOLLY,HOCK – ‘a white’ clueing ‘wine’ caught me out when it came up a couple of weeks ago but I remembered it today. HOCK is a dry white wine from the Rhineland.
18 RAT RACE – R,A,TRACE
19 DIETARY – DIET,A,RY – A diet can be a legislative assembly, hence ‘parliament’ in the clue.
21 ALI BABA – ALI(B,AB)A – B for bowled in cricket and Jack (Tar) being a sailor accounts for AB here. Ali Baba’s spell used to open the door of the robbers’ cave was “Open sesame!”
22 ‘fraid I’m omitting this one!

36 comments on “24723 – All answers confined to characters in the first 25…”

  1. Deceptively tricky fellow, this, with the 15/24 crossing pair last to fall. I had jotted SPARSITY down early in the piece, but hadn’t been able to spot the wordplay and was a little uncertain whether it could be used as an alternative to ‘sparseness’. TAILPIECE was also unfamiliar, and in this case I only saw the wordplay post-solve.

    Six consecutive downs (3, 4, 5, 6, 7 &13) went in on the first reading, which means either I’m getting better or they were pretty straightforward. 73 minutes.

  2. Forgot to time this, but around 35 minutes. Thought 28a was a bit below the standard of the rest of it.
      1. Perhaps I’m being too picky. I guess it is okay as a one-off, but it does seem a little broad as a cryptic – particularly given the wide range of letters involved – but at least you knew it had to have a K in it somewhere.
  3. Nice crossword, a steady solve at 18 mins.
    In 12ac “restricted” could be a containment indicator but it could also mean abbreviated, so it seems to me either parsing works.
  4. Defeated by RYE even with two checking letters! Otherwise 14ac brought a smile and so is my COD.
  5. Was determined to finish today, after yesterday’s DNF, and I did, but at 6d got POST instead of LOFT
    🙁

    Found LHS much easier than R, didn’t get the HOCK = white (wine) before checking here. SPARSITY and THRESHERS last ones in (liked 3 Rs), but my COD is AUNTIE for its simplicity. Took me ages to get that one!

    1. Yep, I fell at the post too, and had the maternal relative last in. 30 minute solve except for the error.
  6. I am really not sure about 28 across but there we go!
    nice crossword. disappointed in the cricket but i guess we need to make a match of it
  7. Straightforward puzzle, 20 minutes to solve, not much to say really. Thought 28A FEEDBACK a bit odd – you could clue all sorts like that (26 across say). You’re clearly not a mathematician Jack. When learning Newton’s equations of motion one has g=rate of acceleration of a body falling in air dinned into one.
    1. I learned a lot of stuff like that by rote in order to pass my O-level physics in 1965 having failed it the first time in 1964, but I’ve never had any use for it since, until today. I can live with that!
  8. About 20 mins, but I put in ORGAN POST like Janie. I suppose I should have figured out ORGAN LOFT. 28A FEEDBACK works fine for me: I think it’s only fair to use ‘confined to characters in the first eleven’ as wordplay for answers of reasonable length that consist of letters up to and including K, but FEEDBACK fits this bill. 25A would be my COD.

    Tom B.

  9. A slowish 31 minutes today. A good honest puzzle (apart from pushing the envelope with argument = fray) – nothing spectacular. I think 28 is OK as the sort of joke you can’t tell twice. Rather like 12 and 14 on the same line.
  10. The left hand side came together very quickly. Slowed down a bit in the righthand side. Was very pleased to get Hollyhock as I am not normally good at anything plant, flower or tree related. Organ Loft was a guess but sounded feasible. Last in was Dietary as didnt really understand the cryptic part.
    Louise
  11. 21 minutes, so standard fare on the face of it, probably easy adjusting for post-Christmas party head fog. In 4dn I puzzled over what the word “threers” might mean so I was clearly a bit thick this morning.
    A very small point but in 26ac I didn’t see a specific reference to the Japanese game: I thought “go” was clued by “move in a board game”.
    Like others I thought 28ac was cheeky but the K made it OK.
  12. “I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night to put in Goliath.” There are too many people boasting on this site!
  13. 16 minutes today, so average, perhaps reflecting a puzzle that mixed the really easy with the rather tricky, some excellent clues with 28ac. I had AGO as a triple definition: “earlier”, “a move”, “a board game” and can’t really see what “earlier” is doing there otherwise.
    Best clues ALI BABA, ORGAN LOFT (if you know it’s “loft”) and THRESHERS, the first two for their cheeky definitions, the third for that 3Rs device.
    I also thought the lift and separate “road works” in 25 was very pretty.
    The exam at 2d worried me because I half remembered the Cambridge exams that end in GO (subsequently checked as Great and Little) and couldn’t think outside that dead end. That and RYE were my last in for that reason.
    CoD to ALI BABA.
    1. >AGO as a triple definition
      I thought it was a double: “ago” and “a move in a board game”. I think it works either way but as a triple it’s a better clue.
  14. 19:15 … well, if it was hard to concentrate while solving the previous puzzle as Aussie wickets tumbled in Perth, it was nigh on impossible last night as England rediscovered the ancient art of the pitiful collapse.

    Seemed liked a game of two halves (the puzzle, not the cricket), the left being fairly easy and full of anagrams, the right being somewhat tricky.

    Last in AUNTIE

  15. Struggled in the eastern hemisphere today, not helped by confidently putting in ORGAN SEAT. Liked SEE THROUGH and FEEDBACK, neither of which I got even with aids for want of checking letters…

    … Finished reading Robert Harris’s “Enigma” earlier this week – a thriller set against the backdrop of Bletchley Park in 1943. There are several references within it to Times and Telegraph cryptic crosswords. In one part three Times clues are given. It’d be fascinating to know if they’re part of a real 1943 puzzle:

    German town partly in French disagreement with Hamelin (8)
    Fill up ten (9)
    Morning snack as far as it goes (5)

    Answers: RATISBON (Rat is good… not the view in Hamelin), PLENTIFUL (anagram) and AMBIT.

    Nowadays PLENTIFUL would be a grossly unfair clue but AMBIT and maybe RATISBON wouldn’t be out of place in Saturday’s or Monday’s puzzle.

    The other solutions given for the same puzzle are ASTER, TASSO, LOVEAGE and LANDAU, which to me look more like answers from a Mephisto puzzle not the daily cryptic!!

    1. If they’re not genuine they’re passable imitations of the style at the time. I enjoy tackling old crosswords, even if I’m not always successful. I found a couple of yellowing copies of The Times in the attic a while back, and managed to solve the puzzles. If I find out how, I should like to make them available to everyone and perhaps write them up in the style of this blog.
      1. I’m another solver who enjoys old crosswords, John, so if you do find a way to make them available, that would be great.
        1. I do recommend the book ’75 Years of The Times Crosswords’. I’m working my way through, just doing one every month or so. I started in the middle and I alternate, one forward, one back. I’m in the 60’s going backwards right now and the puzzles are a real, but fascinating, challenge.
          1. Not so old but still a little dated (to a certain extent in style of setting and to a greater extent in clue type, vocab and general knowledge drawn upon) are the 12 practice puzzles at the end of Tim Moorey’s How To Master The Times Crossword. Together with the oldies in Don Manley’s Chambers Crossword Manual, they provide a different, and equally enjoyable, type of challenge.

            John, put me down as another who’d be interested in this project.

  16. Came in at 20 mins today which is a good time for me. I have a dreary eye complaint, diabetic retinopathy, which always makes it a bit of a struggle just to read the clues and adds precious minutes to the solving time. (But since I’ve started using the online version things have become much clearer!) Today’s puzzle just fell into place although I didn’t think SPARSITY looked like a word. I ended up bunging it in and hoping for the best. An enjoyable solve.
  17. This took 30 minutes, ending with HOLLYHOCK/SPARSITY. The left side went in mostly at first read, but the right was more of a challenge. COD to GROUND for me, with an honorable mention to SEE THROUGH. I thought the ‘go’ in 26A referred to passing ‘Go” in the Monopoly board game, but I don’t know if you have that in the UK. Regards to all.
  18. Continuing the pattern of easy/hard/easy, this one was a quick 22 minutes. Being as ignorant of physics as I am, I was worried about the ‘acceleration’ in 5ac. And I did not in the least like 28; I don’t think I’d have liked it even if the surface had been much more impressive.
  19. Just realised I unintentionally omitted this one without mention. It’s another simple anagram, of ‘a sport etc’.
  20. About 15 minutes in an exceptionally crowded TransPennine railway carriage. Enjoyed this very much: must be my sort of crossword. AUNTIE raised a chuckle: can’t think of anyone daring to describe any of my late aunts as a loose woman. The physicist in me was unsettled by writing “little g” as “Big G”.
  21. A clean sweep on this one for me, but Jimbo: I must take issue with
    “g=rate of acceleration of a body falling in air”.

    Surely, g is the acceleration due to gravity in a vacuum because you eventually run into terminal velocity due to air resistance. g itself is supposed to be constant, as I recall.

    …Robert

    1. Big G is a constant. Little g is GM/r*r, where M and r are the earth’s mass and radius, for object close to the earth’s surface. g is therefore only constant close to the earth’s surface. Doesn’t work on another planet (wrong M) and doesn’t work when object is getting a decent distance from earth, as earth’s radius is no longer a good approximation for the separation of the centres of mass of the two bodies experiencing the gravitational force.

      I think!

  22. What I did, I did in an hour, but I didn’t get the SE corner without massive aid. I suspected HOLLYHOCK (or HOLLYWOOD, having the crossing H,L and O) but didn’t exactly know that HOCK is white wine (as I live in the country where it’s made and it’s not called that here). FEEDBACK I thought vastly unfair — is that really the only word meaning response made up of the first eleven letters? I didn’t even pursue that idea because I was sure it couldn’t be an adequate indicator for a Times clue. And having SPARSELY for 24 ac prevented me from seeing ALI BABA until my dictionary helped, and then I still didn’t understand the wordplay.

    So not a good showing. As for the three-letter port, I grew up in Port Chester, NY, which is right next to a coastal town called RYE (first stop on the railway to New York). I didn’t even think of Rio.

  23. I’ll be coming here like tail-end-charlie, as the Australian newspaper has these crosswords a month later. This is Times Cryptic 8904 of 18 Jan 2011 (though I suspect I started on the 17th).
    Reason for this post (even if no-one reads it) is that 16d put me on the wrong track completely. I ended up with silveroak; may not be a single word but when split is a eucalypt. Silver for white and there is an Oak river. Notice that my definition is at the other end of the clue – how appropriate.

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