24950 – Another straightforward Friday

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This would have been my third solve this week under 30 minutes but for a slight delay on my last in at 28ac. As it was, I finished on exactly 30. Much of this is really elementary stuff with many of the answers going in on definitions alone without the need to consider the wordplay until I came to write the blog. I’m afraid there’s really very little to say about it.

Across
1 PISTOL – Anagram of PILOTS. ‘Piece’ meaning a firearm has come up a number of times recently. ‘Rotate’ is the anagrind and ‘must’ pads things out a bit but ‘many of’ appears redundant to me and misleading as all of pilots must rotate to give the answer. On edit: Mctext’s first comment below explains how it’s supposed to work.
4 STOCKPOrT – This used to be a town in Cheshire but is now incorporated in Greater Manchester.
10 M(ULT,IT)ASK
11 S(MAR)T
12 DUNe
13 ELECT,RIC E,EL
14 COUP(L)E – A coupé is a two-door car with a sloping rear.
16 TENSILE – Anagram of IN STEEL.
19 AIRPORT – A rather corny cryptic.
20 EN(DIN)G
22 EAR-PIERCING – Double definition.
25 Deliberately omitted
26 E(X)UD,E – It’s all reversed.
27 I,LLIB,ERA,L – So is this one with BILL for ‘advertise’ and I for ‘current’.
28 SONORITY – My last in. A ‘sorority’ is a society of female students in the US. Its first R is replaced by N for ‘name’.
29 AD,HERE 
Down
1 PO,MADE – We discussed various hair dressings recently. This is another one.
2 Scapa,P(LEND)OUR – ‘Sub’ meaning to lend, or the sum of money lent may not be familiar to all.
3 ON (I)CE
5 TAKE TO THE HILLS
6 C,US,HI(ONE)D
7 P(PeteR)ATE – I enjoyed the surface reading of this one.
8 TOT(ALL)ED
9 PAVEMENT ARTIST – Another cryptic.
15 Deliberately omitted
17 INN,IS,FREE – I didn’t know this island. Apparently there’s a song called The Isle of Innisfree featured in The Quiet Man – a film I avoid like the plague because it’s John Ford directing Irish whimsy – but I imagine the reference here is to the Lake Island of Innisfree as featured in the poem of that name by WB Yeats.
18 B(ASE)LESS – A turbulent SEA provides the filling here.
21 TWE(LV)E
23 ROUE,N – N for knight, our chess reference for the day. Did I miss a cricket reference anywhere? If not, this must be my first ever blog without one.
24 GO (B)AD

49 comments on “24950 – Another straightforward Friday”

  1. 34 minutes; so not quite as easy for me. Pondered TAKE TO THE SKIES for 5dn, which held me up a bit with 22ac — surprising as I’ve used the EAR-PIERCING pun myself a few times.

    And re 1ac: isn’t the conceit here that the LOTS (many) bit of PI-LOTS has to (must) be reversed (rotated) to get PI-STOL?

    Edited at 2011-09-09 01:53 am (UTC)

    2. TAKE TO THE SKIES was my first thought also. I guess with ‘fly’ in the clue it was almost inevitable.
  2. A rare sub-30 for me – 26 minutes – and agree with Jack that this puzzle is two scoops of vanilla. Also went along McT’s route for the parsing of 1ac, but it’s rather a waste of a clever cryptic device as most solvers won’t use it. Like the great Liverpuddlian, I also toyed with the Douglas Baderesque ‘take to the skies’. Last in, and COD, to PRATE.
    1. Having indicated the correct parsing on the grid it seems foolish to then write something else in the blog. Blame it on blogging way past my bedtime. Duly amended.
  5. Sub ten mins but annoyingly didn’t time it exactly so could have been a PB. Nevertheless very straightforward and enjoyable.
    The explanation of 1ac much appreciated.
  6. As for others a 15 minute stroll in the park with only SKIES causing a problem at 5D. Didn’t spot the parsing of 1A, just thought it was a rather weak anagram with “many” acting as padding!! Thought the TENSILE anagram rather good.

    Two trips down memory lane. I recall getting completely lost in Rouen and going round the one way system about four times before spotting the Angers road.

    I always watch The Quiet Man because as a teenager I had the hots for Maureen O’Hara and indeed the fair isle is mentioned in the film

  7. Yep, easy one today. 11 minutes for me, and it would have been quicker if I hadn’t not just considered TAKE TO THE SKIES, but put it in with confidence.
    Thanks to mctext for explaining PISTOL, where my reaction was identical to Jack’s. As ulaca says, this is a waste of a very neat device, and more generally in this puzzle I failed to notice a number of neat clues because the answers went straight in from definition. This does make for a slightly less satisfying puzzle but it must be extraordinarily difficult for setters to predict this when they’re writing the clues.
    COD, only partly for sentimental reasons, to Mr McGregor’s lunch.
  8. Yes, easy today, as I confidently wrote in both “take to the skies” AND “basement cinema” and still managed to finish in under 20mins, albeit with a somewhat messed up grid.

    And DON’T talk to me about getting lost in Rouen, I still bear the scars…

  9. Another delayed by taking to the SKIES. Otherwise remarkably straightforward sub 30 minute solve. INNISFREE known, principally, from Yeats’s poem.
  10. 28:46 – Much the same experience as others. Put in SKIES at first, only realizing my mistake when I got to the bottom half. Couldn’t parse 1a properly until reading mctext’s explanation. Rather liked the CD at 9.

    Jack, it could be argued that W for wide in 25a is technically a cricket reference, so I don’t think you quite escaped without one.

    1. Thanks Dave. I think it most definitely is and I failed to spot it. W outside the world of cricket would surely be Width rather than Wide.
  11. Hmm. My post disappeared into cyberspace, so I’ll try again. I agree with others that this was an easy solve that took me 25 minutes over a cuppa. The double definition at 22 was rather weak, and I don’t know how a street can have internal damage (11) but a few other clues rescued the puzzle from mediocrity: 2 (my last solve), 10 and 16.
  12. Did anyone NOT have ‘skies’ for HILLS to begin with?

    All but one in pretty quick time, so, I agree, a straightforward one.

    ps … I misread ‘charge’ for ‘change’ and invented an Irish island called INNISTRUE – doh!

    1. I also misread this as ‘change’ and spent ages trying to make an Irish island out of ‘pub doesnt’.
    2. SKIES never occurred to me, since my progression was “head for the hills” – no, the enumeration is wrong; maybe in the UK they say “head to the hills” – no, that doesn’t really work with “affinity” – must be “take to the hills”.
  13. Yes, too easy today. Also put in ‘skies’ at first. I like the puzzle to occupy me for longer than 20 minutes, so I’m back down the newsagents to buy another paper for lunch hour – probably Irish Times (the excellent Crosaire puzzle), as all other British papers will have sold out by now here in West Cork.
      1. Not sure exactly what you mean – I’m actually a blow-in here – but I’ve finally managed to create a livejournal account! And yes, I could have appended my name, but does anyone really care? Anyway, no more anonymity.
  14. 6:12, a reasonably encouraging start to a belated run-up to the Championship.  INNISFREE (17dn) rang only a very faint bell, but otherwise yes, this was pretty straightforward, especially as it’s only a week till I next TAKE TO THE HILLS (5dn) myself.

    POMADE (1dn) put me in mind of George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou?; and as someone who grew up 3 miles south of Stockport (4ac), I’m proud to provide a link to the local anthem.

    1. Proud you may be, but it is likely that you have done Stockport no favours by including that appalling song!!
    2. Did you really, Mark? Where was that? Poynton, or High Lane perhaps? I live in Hazel Grove myself.

      Incidentally, I too was reminded of George Clooney’s Dapper Dan pomade from one of the Cohen Brothers finest movies.

      1. Hehe. First someone shares my birthday (couple of days ago) and now we have a fellow south Stockportian / Stockportalist / whatever it is. I’m just down the road in the currently impenetrable mess of Poynton.
  15. sub 10 minutes for me and a very enjoyable start to Friday morning. I too was in the ‘skies’ corner.
  16. Nothing much to say about this except that it must have been exceptionally easy for me to get home in 18 minutes.
  17. There was an article re common grammar mistakes in the Times this week. One of the items related to ‘lie and ‘lay’ ;’lay’ in 6 down is the present tense of the sense required here(unless the American was horizontal!). To have led us to ‘hid’, it should surely have been ‘laid’. By the way,thanks to bloggers and all providing comments -I look forward to finding out where I’ve misunderstood every day! I’ve certainly improved since finding this site.
    1. I’m not an expert but I think you have to consider that it’s ‘lay low’ here, not just ‘lay’. The OED cites two examples of ‘lay low’ being used in the past tense.
  18. About a half hour whilst instilling the eye drop regimen post cataract surgery…both eyes a week apart. The difference is phenomenal and would recommend it to anyone. Best part is that it was done under Canada’s version of public health and didn’t cost a farthing. They slipped in silicone lenses after removing the old ones with ultrasound…12 minutes per eye by a surgical team
    that was all women.
    With that done and the pacemaker/defibrillator I’m truly becoming the bionic man.
  19. A record time of a tad under 40 mins. Here a tad = 8 seconds. Yes, “skies” here, initially, as well, so I was in good company. Like the chat about Stockport. Way back in the late 60s I and something like 28,000 other folk packed the Goldstone Ground at Hove to watch Brighton beat Stockport on their way up from Div 4. I thought it was still in Cheshire! Also enjoyed Scapa Flow. In the late 70s I worked in the Shetlands. On the flight up from Glasgow, if it was a sunny day and the sea was calm you could still see the outline of sunken warships from 12,000ft; presumably they were both German and British. Anyone else remember the Judy Collins’ sung version of Innisfree in the 70s? Yes, I could go a bee-loud glade as long as there was a major art museum, county cricket ground,well-stocked library, decent pub and good links golf course within a rowing boat ride of my lake isle. COD to Electric Eel.
  20. 7:58 for me – but, like everyone else, I’d have been faster if I hadn’t bunged in SKIES.
  21. Poynton and Hazel Grove are familiar enough – and, further afield, White Nancy‘s still the biggest thrill of all – but I’m actually from Bramhall (specifically, not far from the tennis club).  It’s a shame you’re not from Handforth, Dean! </localjoke>
  22. This one (Working in steel that can be stretched) bothers me a bit. The answer is obvious, but what exactly is the definition? Tensile is an adjective meaning able-to-be-stretched (I think) and where is this? ‘That can be stretched’ might be the definition, where ‘that’ is a demonstrative pronoun, but that would make tensile a noun; what about ‘can be stretched’? Surely this is not quite adjectival?
    1. I took ‘that’ as padding and the definition as ‘can be stretched’ for which one could substitute the adjective ‘stretchable’ and therefore ‘tensile’ too. It seems okay to me.
      1. I’m surprised to see this go unchallenged. The “that” is crucial to the correct definition. “Metal that-can-be-stretched by wiremakers” is exactly equal to “metal stretchable by wiremakers”; “metal can-be-stretched by wiremakers” is simply ungrammatical.
  23. 43 minutes for me, which by my standards means that I also found it very easy (yet enjoyable). By the time I also took to the skies I already had ILLIBERAL or EAR-PIERCING filled in, which led to an immediate correction. I didn’t understand MULTITASK until coming here, but there were no other real problems. My COD would be SONORITY, perhaps.

    And oh, yes, I am still alive and have actually been solving puzzles, though I haven’t posted to the blog much recently. Too busy and too tired by the time I get the puzzle done.

    P.S. I recall also having spent a long time trying to get out of Rouen, but it was 25 years ago and I don’t remember much of the details.

  24. can’t we just have the answers without the smug “I solved it in near record time” comments ?
    1. The clue’s in the title: “Times for the Times”.  And see e.g. here.  (I would write a friendlier post on the subject, as I have previously – though I can’t find it from a quick Google – but I’m afraid your tone isn’t much of an invitation.)
      1. I had mixed feelings when I saw your time, Mark. On the one hand it put my modest 7:58 (which might sound fast to a less experienced solver) into perspective :-), but on the other hand it showed me that reaching the final of this year’s Championship is going to be tough :-(.

        However, I’m slightly encouraged that INNISFREE “rang only a very faint bell” and am hoping for something a little more testing on the literary front on 22 October ;-).

        1. Yes, I’m afraid my knowledge of 19th-century literature is embarrassingly poor, especially in cruciverbal company – if there are any clues that could be solved in a trice by readers of Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, rest assured that I’ll be piecing the answer together from the wordplay, as the most I’ve managed from any of them is A Christmas Carol!
        2. Yes, I’m afraid my knowledge of 19th-century literature is embarrassingly poor, especially in cruciverbal company – if there are any clues that could be solved in a trice by readers of Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, rest assured that I’ll be piecing the answer together from the wordplay, as the most I’ve managed from any of them is A Christmas Carol!
    2. Firstly, I think most people find the times helpful as an objective measure of difficulty (cf. name of blog). I certainly do.
      Secondly, please don’t eat me because my brother, the middle-sized goat, will be over shortly and he will make a much more satisfying meal.

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