Times 24846 — Bo-de-O-doh!

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 28 minutes.

Music (apologies to Vinyl): as above.

Several cases of fill in the answers, then puzzle over the parsing. The problem with this approach is (as I did) to scrawl in SUBTITLE at 6dn, only to puzzle over an impossible B?D?O at 10ac. Much helped by the generous anagrams and a couple of classics (19ac and 26dn).
 

Across
 1 MIG,HT. The MIG fighter; HT for ‘height’.
 4 RELISHING. RELI{c}, SHIN (part of a cow you can eat), G (note).
 9 NOT(EPA)PER. Reverse of APE (do some copying) in a reversal of REPTON (a school). This is made more difficult by the possibilities of (a) ETON and (b) APE read forwards. Hence much scratching of the head over the missing P&R until the parsing became clear.
10 RODEO. First and last of ‘DirE’ inside ROO.
11 S,HARP PRACTICE.
14 {t}RUTH. Made more difficult by the possibility of {f}ACTS.
15 SAFE-BLOWER. Last letter of ‘makeS’; A FEB; LOWER.
18 EMOL(U,MEN)TS. Posh (U) blokes in an anagram of ‘motels’.
19 Omitted. You won’t be held up by this. (Unless you’re a wall.)
21 OUT OF ONES TREE. Two defs; one jocular-ish.
24 A(GIS)M.
25 REIT,E,RATE. Reverse of TIER (bank); RATE (charge); including E(€) for ‘Euro’.
27 DESERTION. Anagram: ‘ones tried’.
28 TWEE,D.
Down
 1 M(IN)ISERIES.
 2 Omitted. Obviously an inside job.
 3 TOP-UPS. Aka TO,PUPS.
 4 RE,PORTAGE.
 5 LYRIC. Even letters of (odd bits cut out): ‘pLaYeR pIeCe’.
 6 SUR(TIT,L)E. The def. is given by the whole clue: so &lit.
 7 IN DEEP WATER. Play on two meanings of ‘flounder’: the verb meaning “struggle or stagger helplessly or clumsily in water or mud”; and the fish. (Said fish prefers shallow water so, if it were in deep water, I guess it might be ‘in deep water’.)
 8 G(R)OW. Last letter of ‘scholaR’ inside GOW{n} from the phrase ‘town and gown’.
12 ANTHOLOGIES. Anagram: ‘Hooligan set’. (Didn’t we have ‘theologians’ somewhere recently?)
13 BRIDGE,HEAD. The clue suggested something more complicated than it actually was.
16 E(X,TEN)SION. Reversal of NOISE (row) including X & TEN (sum=20).
17 CUSTOMER. Anagram: ‘computers’; minus its P (pence, ‘very little money’).
20 ASSENT. Sounds like ‘ascent’.
22 FAR,SI. Reversal of IS (islands). “The modern Persian language that is the official language of Iran”.
23 RAN,D.
26 ALE. Sounds like ‘ail’. This was the first crossword pun I ever came across. It was in a puzzle by Trevor Salisbury in the Liverpool Echo. I was about 13 at the time. He also did a terrible line in dead Beatle puns: ‘pall-bearer’, etc.

 

36 comments on “Times 24846 — Bo-de-O-doh!”

  1. 2:35 .. having had a pop at the “two-minute wonders” on the Club leaderboard the other day, I’ve now joined them.

    Thanks to an ‘invalid response’ thing from the website when I submitted, I now know how long it takes me to type in all the answers when I already know them. I’ve always wondered. I was hoping it was still keeping track of my start time but apparently it doesn’t work like that.

    Neat, easier puzzle and I think my real time was somewhere around 14 or 15 minutes.

    Last in: SURTITLE .. COD SAFEBLOWER

  2. 39 minutes, LOI 6d, so it gets my COD, along with 16d. The trouble with 9ac is that it lets one (me, anyway) get the right answer for the wrong reason; I thought of Eton (also ‘poly’ for a moment), wondered about copying, thought the hell with it. I’ll have to remember Repton, as it’s come up once or twice in memory. As has jumper=ROO–once or twice a week, it feels like. Someone make it go away!
  3. 63 minutes, hampered by getting one ‘sounds like’ and cocking up the other, putting ‘ail’ for ‘ale’. So … the relatively easy TWEED was my last in.

    Many congratulations to McT for unravelling NOTEPAPER. I had it early but only entered it with all checkers in place. Not bothering with the wordplay was one of the better decisions I made today!

  4. 30 minutes after having to guess surtitle. Found this a little tricky for some reason. COD 8 for its neatness.
  5. 12 minutes, but with one wrong. I put in MINISTRIES for 1dn, thinking tries = fortunes. I hadn’t heard of the reality TV show based on the lives of the clergy that my answer required, which turns out to be because it doesn’t exist. Of course on reflection it is obvious that it couldn’t possibly exist without being called “I’m A Vicar… Get Me Out of Here!”, which wouldn’t fit in the grid.
    Anyhoo, I will blame my stupidity on getting up at 5am after a somewhat boozy evening and then unwisely attempting to solve before self-administering the recommended dose of coffee and bacon.
    Otherwise this was generally pretty easy, with quite a few bunged in from definition and a couple of minutes to get SAFEBLOWER at the end. Thanks to mctext for unravelling NOTEPAPER. I got as far as ETON and APE and gave up.
  6. 21 minutes, slowing inexplicably to a crawl in the NE. Having not seen it before (or it’s belonging in that part of my brain practising for senility), the “twenty” device in 16 earns it the CoD.
  7. Got the TV programme after changing ACTS to RUTH. MINISERIES reminds me of the first time I saw the word written down. I thought it must be the plural of minisery and then engaged in a fruitless search for that word in the dictionary.
  8. 45 minutes with at least the last 10 spent trying to fill the gaps in S?R?I?L? at 6dn. Got something that fitted the wordplay eventually and then recognised it as an actual word that fitted the surface reading.

    Put me down as another who hadn’t worked out the finer details of 9ac before coming here.

    I thought X & TEN in 16dn was quite clever and original but no doubt someone will claim it as a chestnut.

    I wonder if there will be errors solving on-line with the final unchecked letter in 11ac. I know the rule in UK English but not sure if this applies in American.

    1. As I find to my chagrin from reading student essays, in American (hence, increasingly, Australian) English, there is only “practise” for both noun and verb. Webster I suspect. I try to teach the difference on the model of “advise” vs “advice”. But it falls on numb typing fingers.
      1. Oh, damn, you’re right! I knew there was only one, but forgot which! Good job I don’t have to teach in America!
        1. My reply was intended to reply to jackkt; it looks sort of curt when following mctext’s. The trouble with advise/advice, of course, is that ‘advise’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘practise’. What do the Aussies do with ‘defence’? There’s a case where we use S and you folks use C. (I actually had to double-check that; I’m losing touch. 30+ years as an expat takes its toll on one’s native-speakerishness.)
          1. The AGPS Guide says “defence”; but we’re seeing the other. As with “license”.
  9. Straightforward but entertaining puzzle. If some of the definitions had been a bit cleverer this could have been a toughie. 25 casual minutes with no hold ups. The Repton/Eton confusion quite often occurs so after the knee-jerk school=Eton, Repton is always worth a try.
  10. About 40 minutes, managing to make this more difficult than it actually was – or was I cleverly misled by setter? For instance, I hesitated over BRIDGEHEAD because I initially convinced myself that BRIDGE referred to ‘position of captain’ (rather than ‘game’): this made the wordplay troublesome! Eventually stumbled on SURTITLE: I always find this sort of &lit clue a challenge (it would probably have been easier if I had known the word in the first place).

    Thanks, mctext, for unravelling the school in NOTEPAPER and for the ‘town and gown’ suggestion for GROW. ‘Town and gown’ is not a phrase I have associated with campus universities; I’m clearly out of touch.

    1. Martin &/or Fred,
      No, you’re completely IN touch. It’s such an old expression, dividing those on campus from those off it. If anyone has a recent use of the expression I’d be happily surprised.
      2. I had always associated ‘town and gown’ with the older collegiate (as opposed to newer campus) universities, in which ‘town’ and ‘gown’ necessarily more intermingled, and maybe came into more conflict, on a daily basis (the phrase suggests an antithesis between ‘town’ and ‘gown’?). Hence the reference to ‘campus’ in the clue did not trigger ‘town and gown’ in my mind.

        What I had missed was the broader (more benign) definition of ‘gown’ (OED online, paid version):”the members of a university as distinct from the permanent residents of the university town”. This must include ‘people on campus’ (not just people in colleges). Some of the examples for ‘town and gown’ given in the OED also seem to be recent (unfortunately they’re not dated).

  11. Ouch. Was travelling well until I came to the NE and came to a complete stockstill. NOTEPAPER was last to be understood, having been written in quite early on. I was going to complain bitterly about comprehend being used as a containicator in 6d, on the grounds it doesn’t mean “take in” in that sense, but find that yes it does; so COD to SURTITLE.
  12. Like yesterday’s puzzle this had a number of easy clues and some tougher ones, but the tougher ones were so by virtue of the wordplay, not the answer, making for a far more enjoyable solve in my opinion. 4,6 and 15 (lovely clue) took some time to fathom out.
  13. Very busy start to the week at work, so sat down to do three puzzles tonight. Dismal failures on Monday’s and Tuesday’s, but breezed through this one in 34 minutes. Would have been a spectacular (for me) time if I didn’t stew over SURTITLE for 10 minutes. Never heard the word, but the wordplay was fairly convincing.
  14. Yes, I too only got MINISERIES once I’d amended ACTS to RUTH, and wrote in NOTEPAPER without taking time to parse the clue. Fairly straightforward, otherwise, with little unknown vocab (I didn’t know EMOLUMENTS, though). Liked the X + TEN = twenty clue, so 16dn gets my COD.

  15. Not so tough, about 20 minutes ending with SURTITLE, from wordplay only. Also from wordplay only: TOP-UPS, news to me. COD to MIGHT, comment of the day to koro’s use of ‘stockstill’, above. That made me laugh out loud, so well done to koro, thanks to mctext and regards to everyone else.
  16. 14:00 here. I thought I was heading for a respectable time, but then took ages over SAFE-BLOWER and SURTITLE, though both look pretty obvious with hindsight. I also agonised for a short while over OUT OF ONE’S TREE, a phrase which didn’t seem at all familiar but which I now see came up in Cryptic 23,334 (6 July 2006). Memory not what it was. (Deep sigh!)
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