Times 24868 – Just horsing around

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 36 minutes

Music: Trees, Garden of Jane Delawney

A rather vanilla puzzle, this one should not have been much of a challenge. However, a serious mental lapse held me up in the NW corner; although 1 down specifically cross-references 22 down, I was looking at 22 across! You’ll never have a fast time that way.

There is a slightly chemical cast to this puzzle, with Dakin’s solution and cyclamate, but nothing very esoteric. Even if you don’t have a clue about Dakin, you should be able to work out the anagram with the crossers.

Across
1 CHEESY, double definition, where you must resist the temptation to equate ‘on board’ with inside ‘SS’.
4 BENJAMIN, BEN(JAM)IN. Surprisingly simple, once you find the right literal, and don’t try to use ‘T’ for the first letter.
9 COUSINS, CO(US)INS. The noble was an English gold coin of the late Middle Ages; if you don’t know that, you may get stuck for a bit.
11 COCONUT, double definition, one alluding to the coconut shys at a country fair.
12 AGENT, double definition, with a secondary meaning of ‘vehicle’. I had spotted that, but I still had to think for a bit to get this, my last in.
13 APPREHEND, double definition
14 ANTISEPTIC, anagram of PITTANCE IS. I was afraid Dakin’s solution was going to be something terribly obscure, but not so.
16 NOUS, double definition in Greek and French.
19 ETUI, [b]E[a]T [m]U[s]I[c]. A staple of US puzzles, where vowels are desperately needed.
20 GRANDSTAND, jocular cryptic definition.
22 SPHERICAL, anagram of [cluste]R + HIS PLACE. A globular cluster is an astronomical object, but here it must be broken into its component words.
23 ALLOW, L.A backwards + LOW. A clever use of ‘on the horizon’, but most solvers will just put it in from the literal.
25 GNOCCHI, G(NOC + CH)I, where ‘noc’ is ‘con’ backwards, and ‘CH’ is ‘Companion of Honour’, a cryptic mainstay.
26 YOGHURT, [a]YOG + HURT, i.e. Goya backwards without his final letter.
27 Omitted, a compendium of chestnuts.
28 ETCHER, ET(C)HER, easy if you happen to think of ether.
 
Down
1 CYCLAMATE, CYCL(A MAT)E. ‘Mat’ is more usually spelt ‘matte’ in the US, but that would not be nearly as useful to constructors, would it? As for the substance, it is famous for being banned in the US and the UK, but not elsewhere.
2 ELUDE, [p][r]ELUDE. A double letter-removal clue, where at least the letters to remove are clearly specified.
3 SKITTISH, S(KIT)T + I’S H. A rather elaborate and tricky cryptic. I got stuck because I could not remember what a young fox is called, although I tried to see if ‘kittenish’ would fit. It’s all in the subconscious.
5 EXCEPTIONALLY, EXCEPTION + ALLY.
6 Omitted, a very weak clue with distinctive crossing letters.
7 MINNESOTA, M + INN + E(SO)TA. Easy from the literal, while the cryptic is work.
8 Omitted, another set of common cryptic elements.
10 SHARP PRACTICE, double definition, one referring to the famous Thackeray character Becky Sharp. Well, I suppose she’s still famous, you never know nowadays.
15 TOUCHWOOD, double definition. Surprisingly, touchwood is not literally wood, but ‘dried fungi used as tinder; especially, the Polyporus igniarius’.
17 SODA WATER, anagram of EASTWARD + O[ne’s].
18 ESCARGOT, anagram of GRACES + O[ur] T[ables]. I was afraid the food was going to be something obscure, mais non.
21 ORACLE, O RAC(L)E. While an oracle did offer advice, ‘adviser’ seems a little weak as a definition. I would expect accurate, if ambiguous, predictions of future events.
22 SUGAR, RAG US upside down. ‘Sugar and spice, and everything nice’….we hope.
24 LAUGH, LA + UGH. I nearly put ‘dough’, imagining an esoteric meaning of ‘chuckle’.

29 comments on “Times 24868 – Just horsing around”

  1. 36 minutes; though it should have been quicker I felt. Of note were the several foodstuffs (and one drink) all either aligned or intersecting except the COCONUT outlier. Also of possible interest is the NOAD2 note on JOCKEY:

    ORIGIN late 16th cent.: diminutive of Jock ‘ordinary man; a rustic,’ Scots form of the given name Jack. The word came to mean [mounted courier,] hence the current sense (late 17th cent.). Another early use [horse dealer] (long a byword for dishonesty) probably gave rise to the verb sense [manipulate,] whereas the main verb sense probably relates to the behavior of jockeys maneuvering for an advantageous position during a race.

  2. 46′. I was rather proud of myself for resisting the temptation to look up ‘Dakin’s solution’. Never did figure out 17d and 23ac; thanks for the explanation. I also didn’t understand 6d; apparently, used car salesmen have a history. I wasted a few seconds wondering if there was a knockwood — where I come from, it’s ‘knock on wood’ not ‘touch wood’ — but memory came through. Vanillaish, true; but I did like 18d.
  3. This took me far too long. The bottom half went in steadily and after a hold-up in the NE it was resolved quickly once I had cracked the “umbrage” part of 5dn.

    But my downfall was the NW (I wonder if this is what you meant in your intro, sotira, as you say NE but cite 1dn as a problem for you). I had SHARP, ANTISEPTIC and ETUI in that corner but was stuck for ages trying to get another foothold. It didn’t help that the only two artificial sweeteners I could think of were ‘saccharine’ which didn’t fit (but could I be sure of its spelling?) and ‘aspartame’ which did.

    My access and navigation problems on LJ are still not resolved. I wish I were not alone in having these. LJ support request placed on Friday and auto-acknowledged but I’ve still had no other response.

  4. Spent too long trying to find another ‘c’ which would have allowed me to enter CACHET for 4dn. And then seriously held up at the end by the two vehicles in the NE and by the fact I usually buy MATT paint (that’s what it says on the tin). About to give up (or cheat) when, from somewhere, CYCLAMATE sprang to mind.

    Thanks, vinyl, in particular for the full wordplay for GNOCCHI and MINNESOTA. Enjoyable blog and enjoyable challenge overall.

    1. MAT with a single T came up here very recently, possibly in one I blogged.
      1. … yes, thank you. And of course I meant ‘vehicles in the NW’ (lifelong confusion of East and West)!
  5. 16 minutes: a pleasant light-gauge puzzle suitable for a rainy Monday morning.
    I didn’t know CYCLAMATE and wanted it to be aspartame for a while. I didn’t have a clue about Dakin but worked it out from the fodder and crossers.
    My first thought for 4ac was that little-known term for a tribal leader YEMJAMEN. If you asked me to place Benin on a map I’d struggle but fortunately even I know that Yemen isn’t west of Nigeria.
  6. 18 minutes, distracted by the redirection to 22d where I started, since SUGAR was easier than any of the sweeteners. I’m intolerant of aspartame (it tastes excruciatingly bitter) so wouldn’t have entered that even if it was right! CYCLAMATE waited more or less until I got round to it going clockwise, and 1a and 2d were last in possibly because I was convinced they were harder than they turned out to be.
    For some reason not associated with my usual grasp of geography, I placed Nigeria in my mind’s eye as being on the western bulge of Africa, and was therefore thinking in Atlantis terms for anything further west. Tenerife, maybe. For similar reasons, MANITOBA (spelt wrong, and not a state, of course, was my first shot at 7d.
    CoD to COCONUT, for the “shy occupier” definition, which if it didn’t make me laugh, at least made me chuckle – are the two really synonymous?
    On a personal note, the main reason for distraction this morning is that my wife is in today for amputation surgery, which makes me feel (and perhaps look like) the guy in the joke on his way to the golf course who tips his hat to his wife’s passing funeral cortège. I’m taking it a bit more seriously than that!
  7. 41 minutes with a long hold-up in the NW corner, just to be different. Couldn’t work out MINNESOTA until reading the blog, for which thanks.
  8. I don’t know how long I stared blankly at the NW corner before giving up on it. A second attempt some hours later resolved the problems but raised my chagrin. They weren’t that hard after all. I’m grateful I swapped blogging days with vinyl1 though. COD to YOGHURT over COCONUT and GNOCCHI. A win to the setter on a TKO.

    Incidentally, those who haven’t had a go at Saturday’s Jumbo should. There’s some very fancy cluework to be found.


  9. … 1, 9, 12. Should have managed the two cross clues, but am not surprised I didn’t get CYCLAMATE. Otherwise fairly straightforward, despite being unfamiliar with either Mr Dakin or Ms Sharp.

    Best wishes to Mrs z8b8d8k, hope all goes well.

  10. I, like quite a few others, it would seem, found the NW corner the hardest to crack. AGENT was the last in, though on reflection it should not have caused much problem. I got mired in a search for a synonym for the more literal meaning of “vehicle”. (Note to self: remember to consider the less obvious definition – a rule that ought by now to be second nature but too often isn’t). SKITTISH had to be the solution at 3dn, even though I could find nothing in my Chambers or Concise OED to support the use of “kit” as the term for a young fox (the COED says it can denote the young of beavers, mink and ferrets, but makes no mention of foxes). Presumably it is in Collins, the xword setter’s Bible?
    1. Collins does indeed have “a cub of various small mammals, such as the ferret or fox”.
      I confess I for one didn’t even query this. I just thought “kit must be another term for a fox cub” and moved on.
      1. Thanks, Keriothe. I suspected as much. Peter B used, from time to time, to urge the wisdom of having a Collins always to hand. It’s time I belatedly acted on his advice.
          1. Thanks. It looks like an excellent website. Ive added it to my bookmarks.

  11. Back after an absence, first trip to the States, top venue the Chess and Checkers Club in Central Park. This flowed along fairly easily with one or two slight hitches and 22 minutes in sum. Of course in 11 there’s also an allusion to a song of some slight raucous charm. May i echo Janie’s good wishes for Mrs z…
  12. 14 minutes – stuck for a while in the top left – BENJAMIN and MINNESOTA from definition without checking wordplay, SHARP PRACTICE from the checking letters, so relieved to find it was right.
  13. 23:47, with no excuse for entering CHEESE at 1a. Best wishes to Mrs Z8b8d8k.
  14. I took far too long to find CHEESY, which eventaully opened up the NW corner for me. I had to start from the bottom with SUGAR and work my way up.I got a giggle out of COCONUT, a lovely definition, and a reference to a nutty song I used to play in my local pub on a Saturday night! 29 minutes, but it felt even longer.
  15. Attempted while very tired and my 27:46 was nullified by a frankly silly SIDE WATER at 17d. I don’t know what a SIDE WATER is either, but I went with it. Just point me towards Dunce’s Corner.

    Thoughts and best wishes very much with Z8 and his good lady.

  16. I too struggled a little to finish off the NW corner.. small foxes are cubs, everybody knows that, and aspartame fitted unfortunately well.. got there in the end, of course, now to finish off sunday’s jumbo which has also been a bit of a fight!

    Jack, if your isp solve your access problem and can explain it to you i would be interested to hear sometime what caused it

    1. Jerry, Thanks for your interest over my access problems. I closed my router down today at my ISP’s request and they were going to do some tests logging into LJ using my router ID. When I went on-line some hours later they had sent me a message saying they were unable to do the test today because of some maintenance issue at their end and they would try again tomorrow.

      But mysteriously LJ is now working correctly for the first time in 4 days so I don’t know whether they found a problem and fixed it or possibly resting and rebooting my router has done the trick. I had already rebooted a couple of times over the weekend to no effect. If I find out anything more from my ISP I’ll let you know. I was very impressed that they were supportive as I thought they might have taken the view that it was my problem not theirs.

  17. About 20 minutes here, starting with SUGAR, ending with the TOUCHWOOD/REDEEMED crossing. I really didn’t have much of a problem with anytthing else, although it took a while to see the ‘cycle’ vehicle. Best wishes to Mrs. Z8 as well, and regards to all.
  18. About 40 minutes in three stabs being held up by BENJAMIN (VERY CLEVER) and playing with car for vehicle (Saccharin) before twigging to cycle and CYCLAMATE.
    Liked ver much GNOCCHI, YOGHURT and SPHERICAL.
  19. A disappointing 13:01 for me, with probably more than half of that spent on the NW corner. I don’t think I’d write it off as “rather vanilla”, as there was some interesting stuff in there.
  20. Thanks to all for kind messages – the op has gone well enough and we are on the road to recovery.

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