24911 – Today I analysed it – a dry hobby (8,3)

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 10 minutes

Apologies for the delay in posting. I’m unable to access Live Journal and Andy is posting this for me.

Daily Telegraph standard and style of puzzle – it’s very difficult to find much to say about either individual clues or the puzzle overall.

Across
1 HABITAT – H-A-BIT-AT;
5 MACABRE – MA(CAB)RE;
9 DIGITALLY – DIG-I-TALLY;
10 SCOTT – S-C-OTT;
11 ELITE – hidden (d)ELI-TE(mporarily);
12 RANSACKER – RAN-S-ACKER(s); “ackers” is old slang for money;
13 PASS,THE,PARCEL – (castle perhaps)*;
17 HARD,TO,SWALLOW – two definitions; “tall” as in “tall story”;
21 MINIDRESS – MI-(in red)*-SS;
24 CARER – CA(RE)R;
25 IMPRO – I-MPR-O; MPR from M(y) P(a)R(t);
26 PROFUSION – PRO-FUSION;
27 GILBERT – (gerbil + t)*; tail without trouble=”tail” without “ail”=t;
28 TORPEDO – TO(R)PE-DO; R from “last of motheR”;
 
Down
1 HODMEN – HO-MEND then raise D;
2 BIG,DIPPER – two meanings;
3 TETHERS – TE(THE)RS(e); short=terse;
4 TOLERATES – (role state)*;
5 MAYAN – NAY-AM reversed;
6 CASSATA – C-A-S-SATA(y);
7 BLOCK – two meanings;
8 ENTIRELY – E(N-TIRE)LY; N from “end of marathoN”;
14 E-PASSPORT – (validat)E-(pop star’s)*;
15 COWARDICE – CO-WAR-DICE;
16 THUMPING – TH-UMP(ire)-ING;
18 TADPOLE – TAD-POLE;
19 LACQUER – sounds like “lacker”=someone needing;
20 BRANDO – BRAND-O; BRAND=line; [ Edited – I agree with fathippy2 ]
22 NEPAL – NE(arby)-PAL;
23 EXPAT – (n)EX-PA-T;

17 comments on “24911 – Today I analysed it – a dry hobby (8,3)”

  1. Happy Birthday Jim! I didn’t find it quite so easy – about 16 mins here. I got stuck on the last pair of 28A and 20D for some reason, although I have no idea why now.
  2. Agreed this was a quick one – perhaps 15m or so, although I held off RANSACKER for a while as I did not know of the word ACKERS, even though it was surely the answer.

    I thought that 20D was merely line=brand as in a line of clothing. My last in was GILBERT as I got sidetracked into assuming that tail indicated the last letter of something and couldnt shake that thought.

  3. Yes, I agree, very easy (even for me…). Didn’t get that it was an anagram in 13ac, and had not heard of ACKERS, but, despite this, this was the first time in ages that I had confidence in all the answers.

    Quite liked the ‘T=tail without trouble’ at 27ac, but otherwise, not a lot stood out.

  4. 30 minutes but with two wrong at the 5dn/9ac intersection. This was careless as I had queries in the margin against both answers so I should have realised something was wrong and thought it through again. I went for DIGITALIS (with no explanation other than it fits) and MASON (NO, (uncle)SAM rev).

    Never heard of ACKERs.

  5. 42 minutes, with one wrong: I put in ‘hodges’, even though I understood the instruction in the clue to move a letter. Never heard of ACKERs, or PASS THE PARCEL, or IMPRO for that matter (where I come from, it’s improv), not that that mattered much. Once again, the repetition of a word from a recent puzzle came in handy: I only got CASSATA because I recalled ‘satay’. No COD, perhaps, but 3d is a lovely surface.
  6. An easy puzzle, finished in 20 minutes, partly because the two long acrosses were gifts to be unwrapped immediately. Some verbosity in places. I wondered initially, for instance, whether “with gruesome result” works grammatically as a definition. I think it does make it, but I’m slightly uneasy about it. In addition, I couldn’t see the point of “in Coney Island” at the end of 2. It looks like a double definition where one of the definitions is sandwiched between two halves of the other definition, looking rather messy.

    I like clues with a very natural surface, such as 3.

    1. I wondered about this too but apparently The Big Dipper as a name for this constellation originated in the US and its use remains more prevalent there than elsewhere.
      1. Indeed, I had always been under the impression that ‘we’ call it the Big Dipper while ‘you’ call it the Plough.
  7. Happy Birthday Jimbo. Are you shooting your age yet on the golf course?!

    Haven’t contributed here for a long while but I check in daily so thanks to the bloggers and commentators for the good read! It’s always entertaining and educational.

    I don’t remember seeing tadpole clued as “Little European creature” before – what fun! Spent last weekend on Anglesey and the clear nights were perfect for stargazing. Saw the Big Dipper and the Milky Way and an occasional shooting star. At 23:40 ish on Saturday night the moon rose out of the sea – it was an orange crescent.

    Do e-passports really exist? Having cruised around the Baltic this summer I don’t think they’d have passed muster with the immigration officers at St Petersburg!

  8. Less easy for me due to unfamiliarity with PASS THE PAARCEL, especially where it crosses CASSATA, also unknown, and my knowledge of MAlaysian food is limited as well (sorry, Uncle Yap). Happily, it’s limited to satay, so that, as a guess, finally broke those open for me, as my last entries. About 40 minutes. My regards to all, and birthday best to Jimbo.
  9. I thought it was easy (as I finished it in under the usual hour or more) and I agree that there were no particularly memorable clues, but as usual, some new vocabulary to learn (like ACKERS and PASS THE PARCEL). I did like the wordplay for DIGITALLY, my first in, with HODMEN, THUMPING (to correct WHOPPING) and MINIDRESS being the last.
  10. Me too, Jimbo! There’s obviously something in our stars which has drawn us together, although I’m sure that you, like I, go into a fit of apoplexy when you see Astrology under the Science banner in book shops (or perhaps that’s peculiar to Southern Hemisphere book shops).

    As for the crossword, a fairly easy but none-the-less fun run to the line, confused only by entering INHABIT at 1ac and wondering where the definition had gone, and by being totally non-plussed by ACKERS. COD to CASSATA; I have to say satay ice-cream is a particular favourite of mine.

    This is the first time in two days I’ve been able to access the site, so I don’t know how others managed it. No amount of cookie crumbling worked for me.

  11. Ackers unknown, but obvious. Everything else pretty straightforward, for a sub 30-minute solve.
    Many happy returns to the blogger.
  12. Many Happy Returns! Thanks for the blog. Only just managed to get on again this morning.

    I am sure this may well have been discussed but I couldn’t find any threads anywhere. Has there been any consideration given to moving the blog? I’ve never been to a blog that seems to give so much trouble to folk with access. I blogged for years at wordpress.com and I don’t recall a single problem with a wordpress.com blog being down. In addition, there are no annoying adverts.

    I realise it would be a lot of work to move everyone (and archives) over but it seems to be a real difficulty on a disappointingly regular basis. It’s a great little blog and deserves a better platform than LiveJournal seems to be offering.

    1. That was from me. I’m not sure why it posted as anonymous there – that may have been my error or another LiveJournal glitch!
      1. There was some discussion about this when Peter temporarily changed the London skyline some months ago and it appeared that it was lost for ever. I can’t remember now whether the discussion was open to all or just to the blog-writers but if I remember correctly there was some opposition to the idea of moving elsewhere and it was dropped.

        Actually the LJ problems of the past few days and the recent attack on their servers are the only serious disruptions to the service in the time I have been contributing (3+ years). I posted a lot a few months ago about problems I was having but nobody else reported difficulties and it turned out to be a glitch affecting my ISP only.

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