24758 – A real toughie (or just me?)

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I took over 90 minutes to finish this, solving it late into the night but it was after a very long and tiring day at work and I’m not sure whether that was a major factor. I wonder how I would have done coming to it fresh this morning but I wanted to be free by 8:30 to watch tennis. I shall be interested how others fared. Some of the clues are a bit tricky to explain so maybe it really is a beast. It’s certainly a pangram.Off to watch the boy wonder now.

Across
1 HIMALAYAN – Anagram of H for ‘hard’, AA ‘couple of answers’ and MAINLY.
6 F(ACE)T – The Financial Times is the paper in question and ACE for ‘crack’ meaning ‘expert’. FACET can be the side of a cut gem which is clued by ‘rock’ here.
9 PAL,AVER – Cockney rhyming slang gives us PAL for ‘China’ as usual and ‘state’ for AVER is simple enough but some may not know PALAVER meaning to talk i.e. yak, unnecessarily and at length. I didn’t.
10 WOLF,RAM – ‘Bolt’ gives us WOLF as in rushing one’s food and ‘stuff’ gives us RAM. Together they make an alternative name for tungsten.
11 OEDIPUS REX – Anagram of PEROXIDE around US.
12 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
14 AS,COT – ‘Early crash site’ supplies the COT element, with ‘crash’ meaning to fall asleep.
15 Man,IS,QUOTED
16 JEALOUSLY – Anagram of SUE A JOLLY
18 POM,MY – Reversal of MOP meaning ‘shock’ (of hair) then MY as in ‘Goodness gracious me!’. ‘Victorian’ supplies the Australian context for the definition.
20 Z,ERO – The ultimate character is Z followed by ‘hero’ as spoken Cockney style.
21 JUST THE JOB
25 EX,PLO(1)T- The definition is ‘milk’.
26 RE,GORGE- ‘Sight’ here is a tourist sight, one of which in Cheddar is Cheddar Gorge. I can’t say I am familiar with this word for ‘vomit’.
27 A(BY)SS – Another gorge perhaps? BY for ‘times’ is familiar territory.
28 SKINNY,DIP – To swim naked.
 
Down
1 HIPPOcrates – With reference to the lover of mud, mud, glorious mud and the Ancient Greek physician.
2 MELODIC – Anagram of LEMOn aCID with NA for ‘not available’ removed.
3 LOVE PO(r)TION – LOVE has its tennis meaning here i.e. zero, not a thing.
4 YORKS – Our daily cricket term. There were or are three areas called Ridings in Yorks(hire). I believe they no longer exist as administrative divisions (hence ‘once’ in the clue) but they survive as social and cultural entities.
5 NEW JERSEY – Sounds like ‘knew’ followed by the breed of cattle.
6 Deliberately omitted. Please ask if baffled.
7 CUR,RENT – Our old friends the RUC reversed and followed by what’s paid to a landlord..
8 TIME OF DAY – It’s rude not to give someone this. ‘Even’ is an archaic word for ‘evening’.
13 JUMP THE GUN – A cryptic with reference to races and starting guns.
14 A,L (JA(ZEE)R)A – The Arabic news channel. If I’ve parsed this correctly the ‘letter from America’ is ZEE inside JER short for the bottle called a Jeroboam all inside A LA. I can’t find the JER abbreviation in any of the usual sources but I assume it’s valid in the wine trade or some such circles. JAR all inside A  LA. Thanks to those who pointed out my error. I wasn’t sure how to spell it and it’s not in the dictionaries so I went to Wikipedia and put in what I thought i.e. AL JEZ, and it was on the predictive search list so I selected it and failed to notice that it had redirected me to a page with the correct spelling. It’s not the first time I have fallen for this trap that awaits those daft enough to use Wiki for looking up spelling.
15 MO,S(QUIT)OS – The definition seems a bit loose to me but I have no fight left in me at this moment!
17 A,TROPHY
19 MAJORED – Anagram of OR MADE around J for Judge.
22 TAR,SI – Reversal of IS RATher. Bones of the foot.
23 BLEEP – Double definition. Bleep to page someone or bleep out swearing.
24 TOSS – Another double, not give a toss or toss a coin.

71 comments on “24758 – A real toughie (or just me?)”

  1. Very different kind of puzzle, I found, and very enjoyable. I needed 2 sessions, about 90 minutes altogether, but a lot of that was due to not knowing JUST THE JOB, not give a TOSS, YORKS, and not really knowing what a POMMY is, even though I’ve seen it used here often. Some of the rest was great, like yesterday’s. The setters have ratcheted up the cleverness quotient, it seems. Thanks to them for this puzzle, and others this week. Regards to all.
  2. Just to be clear: according to the COD, which is the Times setters’ “bible”, MOSQUITO the fly can only have the plural MOSQUITOES. MOSQUITO the American native can only have the plura MOSQUITOS :- Chambers disagrees. Perhaps if I had gone with the fly rather than the American Indian and used the Chambers-sanctioned plural
    spelling no-one would have noticed. Apologies for the obscurity.
    1. I wouldn’t bet on it, we love to nitpick. Please don’t let it detract from a wonderful effort.. anyway I’d have gone for the aircraft, myself 😉
  3. 15:09 for me. I liked some of the clues, but there were others where I felt the definitions (of the answers or used in the wordplay) were too far-fetched, so as a whole I didn’t really enjoy it all that much.
    1. This is a joke, yes? If not, I don’t think The Times Cryptic Crossword is for you. It’s certainly not aimed at “the family” whatever that term may imply.
    2. Regorge is disgusting?! What a life you must lead!
      I too will be charitable and assume a failed attempt at humour.
  5. I solved it all except for these three – we don’t use the term “vet” for “check” very much in the States and I had written in “hemo,” hoping that somehow it meant “stop.” “Wolfram” was not a term I knew. I wrote in “weldram” and, finally, I guessed “yards” for “Yorks,” and I still don’t understand this one. Does “yorks” mean “gets out?”
    1. Does “yorks” mean “gets out?”

      Yes it can do, or attempts to get out by bowling a yorker.

  6. Thank you, Jackkt! Maybe I can return the favor some time when they use an unfamiliar American term.
  7. Indeed, apart from the setter’s semi-apology for the stinging american, what have they ever done for us?

    Maybe I could be in the suicide squad?

    50 minutes, quite happy, surprised I missed the parsing with the ‘ero!

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