24854

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve: 45 minutes with one cheat on the final answer. This was mostly fairly straightforward  with one notable exception. In many cases I solved the clues from definition alone but the wordplay was worth untangling later as there are at least a couple of gems that gave added value once spotted.

* = anagram

Across
1 OPEN SHOP – There’s also ‘closed shop’ where workers are required to join a union.
9 EX(A,MINE)E
10 HER(BARI)A – BARI, a port in Italy which I confess I didn’t know, inside HERA, both wife and sister of Zeus, apparently.
11 RUM,IN,ANT
12 CU,R(M)UDG,EON – CU for copper has M for ‘male’ inside DRUG* then ONE*
14 sLIME
15 REMNANT – REGNANT with the G for ‘good’ replaced by M for ‘male’, again! I wasn’t sure about the meaning but it’s a term used in Christian theology, apparently.
17 AD(MIRE)D
21 Deliberately omitted. The definition is at the end, if that helps.
22 NOVA SCOTIA – A VOCATION’S*. Halifax is the capital of this Canadian province.
23 WAR,FARINg – It’s an anticoagulant used to treat thrombosis and as a rat poison. Can’t find a proper song reference today so I’ll make do with The Warfarin’ Stranger.
25 TONALITY – TINY ALTO*
26 RUSH,MORE – Where the US Presidents’ heads are carved. Not the first name that comes to mind when thinking of mountains.
27 RAP,ID EST
 
Down
2 PLEA,SURE
3 NOB,LEMAN – LEMAN is a medieval term for mistress or lover. Chaucer spells it with double M.
4 HARE – I thought of HARE immediately when I had H??? but couldn’t justify it. But when the checker R arrived I thought a bit harder and realised ‘who often got stiff’ refers to the murderers, Burke and Hare, who in Victorian times sold corpses for dissection. Best clue of the day.
5 PEARLER – Sounds like “purler”, a headlong fall..
6 MAIM,ON(ID)ES – My last in, and the one I cheated on as I wanted to get on with writing the blog. I’ve never heard of this Jewish philosopher and couldn’t deduce him from the wordplay. ‘Papers’ = ID here which eluded me until this very minute. Just to add to the confusion when I fed the checkers into a solver I was also offered ‘Parmenides’, another philosopher, this one a Greek, who I’ve also never heard of.
7 Deliberately omitted. The definition is at the front this time.
8 MEA{T(HE)A}D – High Explosive in the Territorial Army in the field. It’s not often I have to use two lots of brackets these days. Isn’t there a convention [{( )}] ? I seem to remember it from Maths O-level.
13 DIN,IN,G ROOM
15 RING,Wife,OR,Medic
16 M(Old,TOR)IST
18 IRONCLAD – I knew an IRONCLAD was a type of warship and I was going for a double definition re ‘frigate’ but I just spotted that it begins with F and ends with E so the word itself can be said to be clad in iron. Another good clue that delivered more than at first sight.
19 EM(IRATE)S – The European Monetary System was a forerunner to the current arrangements.
20 raceE,Very,ENTER
24 SNAP – Double definition.

37 comments on “24854”

  1. I enjoyed this immensely and rather wished the 44m it took had been longer. The Frigate clue is especially good as we have a capital-F and a lower-case e, making the chemical symbol just right. The lift-and-separate in 1ac is also excellent.

    Only two very well-known (as per: possible in the Times) ‘Jewish philosophers’: so he went in right away (Mendelssohn = 11 letters). And before Maimonides gets wrapped up in the arts/science warfare-in-progress, check out his work in medical science and logic, as well as his negative views of astrology. Unfortunately, the right term for what he did, “natural philosophy”, has now been appropriated by the rather narrow group of technical folk we know as physicists.

  2. A minute more than the blogger, but with two wrong: ‘hard’ for HARE (agreed – very good clue), and ‘Marmonides’ as my philosopher, who I had vaguely heard of. MAR (‘seriously damage’) + I (‘one’) in MONDES (‘papers’ – geddit?). Proud of that, I was.
  3. And another 20 minute exercise that was always fun to solve. I loved HARE and IRONCLAD. Derived the philosopher from wordplay but checked him out before entering in grid. Had vague memories of LEMAN, probably from a bar crossword. Nice puzzle.
  4. 23 excellent minutes, though I am indebted to Jack for the understanding of HARE – so brilliant I was blinded by the light. Lots of disentangling to do, and some useful wordplay to get the spelling right on MAIMONIDES (my spellchecker recommends Maidstone) and HERBARIA, where I would have put an O in the middle.
    REMNANT was a fine clue of the “take this letter out, put this letter in” variety, not least because I thought for some time “king” had to be part of it, as a reigning male.
    CoD though to IRONCLAD for a splendid penny drop moment, and thanks to Mctext for pointing out the accuracy of the capitalisation.
  5. Cheat for the philosopher and guess for WARFARIN. Didn’t see the Fe in IRONCLAD. Still, a good week for me (during cricket season I need to get these things done pretty quick or not at all), although I had EGEST and BEER GARDEN yesterday. Give me another year and I might just feel less of a fraud when contributing here.
    1. … you should be a doctor, Barry. Days when you don’t drop by are all the greyer for it.
      1. Bless you. My mood was good anyway after yesterday watching Essex allrounder Graham Napier equal the world record for 6s scored in a first class innings, even though against my hapless team (Surrey).
        1. I saw the headline. Also a Surrey fan, but, alas, an absent one. I didn’t know he equalled the world record – will scurry off and find out whose.

          I was at Edgbaston in 1995 when Lara broke the world record. Arriving just after lunch, I saw the board move onto 200 – he’d resumed on around 110, as I recall – and said to the fellow next to me, “90 in the morning session – some going.” To which he replied, “Look at the board again!” And they’d changed the first digit and it was 300 – 190 in a session. He spent the rest of the afternoon telling me I’d missed the best bit.

        2. Cricket certainly seems to have changed. I used to go and watch county cricket now and then in the seventies and eighties and I don’t recall there being much to distract one from the crossword or a good book. I’m not sure I approve of all this activity.
  6. This took a bit of time to get into but was worth the struggle. Lots of challenging clues. I had PARMENIDES for a while because I’d done him in college but the cryptic didn’t work so I had to resort to Google. It took a while but I was pleased to finish at all. 50 minutes
  7. 40 minutes, with one wrong: the little-known philosopher HARMONIDES. I was pretty sure that was right, too.
    I found this very difficult, and a bit of a mixed bag.
    There’s quite a lot of (tries very hard not to use the O word) arcane stuff. REMNANT, for example: I think I can safely say that the “faithful” part of this isn’t common knowledge and it’s only in one of three dictionaries I have been able to check.
    On the other hand there’s some great stuff: IRONCLAD, for example. Quite brilliant, and my last in, so I finished on a high.
    1. I guess the “faithful remnant” bit is more familiar to hymn singers and such: “a remnant weak and small” comes in “All hail the power of Jesus’s name”, for example. Its origins as an idea are mostly in the Jewish survivors of the Babylonian exile who stayed loyal to Yahweh, but to appreciate its power you need to visit one of the cavernous Welsh revival chapels, especially one kept going by a devoted half dozen. The sense of being a faithful fragment while the rest of the world goes by can be most moving.
  8. DNF. Didn’t have a clue about IRONCLAD. A pity, because it looks a strong contender for COD. Another in the HARMONIDES camp, too. Purler also unknown, but at least I knew the divers. COD to HARE. Too clever for me today.
  9. 16:38 here, but I also had HARMONIDES. I considered MAIMONIDES too, but it just didn’t ‘look’ right. Oh well…
  10. Another who guessed at HARMONIDES, having rejected MAIMONIDES.

    Thanks for a great blog, jackkt. I’d utterly missed the subtleties in REMNANT, HARE and IRONCLAD. I’d enjoyed the puzzle; coming here adds to the pleasure.

  11. 17:31 .. agree that HARE and IRONCLAD are outstanding. Happy to see Halifax, NS get a mention – I can see it across the bay from my window.
  12. Highly enjoyable, as all have said. MAIMONIDES – until recently unknown to me – caused no problems as by one of those felicitous coincidences I had this morning finished reading Howard Jacobson’s funny and sad The Finkler Question, in which novel there are numerous references to said Jewish philosopher. At times I felt slightly that the setter was casting pearls before swine, at least in my case, in the sense that his/her cleverness went to waste because I was able to guess the correct solution without appreciating all the cryptic subtleties – the brilliant IRONCLAD, where the full relevance of the “frigate” reference completely passed me by, being a case in point.
  13. As everyone has said, really enjoyable and subtle. But access to the online club is a bit problematical today, I find.
  14. …….of there being two philosophers who fit the checking letters in 6dn? i put in parminides having actually heard of him. of course, i could not make sense of the rest of the clue, but that was the case with so many of the other clues as well (nobleman, hare, remnant). oh well. moral of the story – if in doubt google it out.

    ak

  15. I’d never classify SLIME as FILTH, and I object strongly to MEATHEAD as an AMERICAN term…. Consequently I got neither….
    1. I’m curious: are you objecting to MEATHEAD because it’s an American term and shouldn’t be in a (British) English crossword or to its classification as American? And I suspect slime is not filth only in the Ghostbuster series, where, if I remember rightly, it’s either green or pink.
    2. MEATHEAD may have originated in the US but it dates from the 1920s and has long since crossed the Atlantic along with thousands of other words. It’s in one of the source dictionaries for the Times puzzle (COED) so is perfectly eligible for inclusion. Similarly, SLIME = FILTH is in the other (Collins).
  16. I had to come here for last few as I couldn’t figure out what 12 across was or 5 down and had Herbar in for 10 across but couldnt decide the end of the word! Brain definitely on a go slow as it took me ages to think of the word to put after Open for 1 across or Iron for 18 down. Likewise I couldn’t figure what sort of head 8 down was or room 13 down was!! Is it too early for a drink to start the weekend?
    Louise
  17. I got all of this in less than 30 minutes but am left staring at N_T_ for 21a and I still don’t get it.
      1. Sorry, I should have picked it up sooner.

        “One….losing round figure” = NE
        “not drinking” (tee-total) = TT
        “Not gross” = NETT

        1. I’d thought that but was confused as we spell it ‘net’ and I’d never encountered the double-T spelling. Thanks Jack
  18. Regards all, sorry to be late. About 30 minutes but I fell in with the HARMONIDES-ers. Oops. Agreed that IRONCLAD was great, but HARE went in on def. alone; I would never see that wordplay. Regards.
  19. A very rare finish for me but had PARMENIDES so one wrong. Being in the trade I saw WARFARIN and RINGWORM almost immediately and also got HARE on the def. – great clue.
  20. I was yet another who invented this philosopher. It seemed more likely than anything else and I just put it in and didn’t think again about it until I came here. Got HERBARIA, but couldn’t explain it, thinking that Hebe was in some way connected with it, or is Hebe a god not a goddess anyway?
  21. About 50 minutes (quite good for me) but frustrated when I tried to submit my solved puzzle for the leaderboard by having it vanish before my very eyes! Of course it was no problem to refill the diagram and submit that, but the time was 8 minutes and it just didn’t seem fair.

    No problem with MAIMONIDES (for once not being Christian was a help) but there were some other interesting entries. I knew WARFARIN only because I once read a novel in Swedish in which it was used as a murder weapon! And IRONCLAD just seemed to fit, but I agree that the definition with the Frigate is very clever indeed — also my COD.

  22. 20 minutes; surprisingly fast, when I look at some of the other scores. Like Hydrochoos, I got MAIMONIDES quickly, partly because Spinoza wouldn’t work. I remember from Sunday school that it used to be said, ‘From Moses to Moses [Mendelssohn], there was none like Moses [ben Maimon].’ But pretty obscure, I’d think. I know WARFARIN because it seems that every drug I’m prescribed includes a warning not to take it if I’m also taking warfarin. HARE and IRONCLAD truly top-notch clues.
  23. What a pity I did this one a day late, on one of the rare occasions when my all-correct in 29 minutes compares so favourably with many far superior solvers on this blog.
    I’ll have to enjoy the warm inner glow all alone.

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