Times 15493: Substitute … me for him

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Other Crosswords
Solving time: see below.

This is a substitute puzzle because 24816 is the 2nd Qualifier for the 2011 Championship. I’ll blog the latter on 13th April when the competition closes. Did both puzzles simultaneously in exactly 30 mins, including making two coffees. Interesting to compare them this way. And my conclusion is that I’d sooner blog the Qualifier today! It’s a better and fairer puzzle — reflecting the gradual change of Times styles — if (accordingly?) somewhat easier. And, yes, once done, I checked my solution with the back-files of the Times. So the solutions you read here are definitive: even if my parsing may not always be correct.

 

Across
 1 CAROL. My last in, because I needed 1dn. Checked Chambers: waits are folks who go around singing songs at Christmas and no doubt wanting money for their pleasure and your pain. So a kind of cryptic def that wouldn’t pass muster these days.
 4 UN,DAM,AGED.
 9 REGIMENTS. Anagram of ‘Tim Green’s’.
10 NIECE. Key (E) inside NICE.
11 UTTERS. Anagram of ‘trustee’ minus its final letter.
12 TOW,LINES. Tow is “the coarse and broken part of flax or hemp prepared for spinning”.
14 CHANCEL,LO,R.
16 TOPI. Because it tops one.
19 ETUI. Cryptic def. Cue The Searchers. ((Shudder))
20 ACCUS(TOM)ED.
22 MIDNIGHT. Cryptic def.
23 CLE,RIC. Second half of ‘circle’ (forwards) and the first half (backwards). I’ll pay this one.
26 VANYA. Chekhov’s dramatic Uncle.
27 UNIT TRUST. One (unit); faith (trust). The print version has the (4, 5) but not the (9).
28 SPE(EDWE)LL. Anagram of ‘weed’ in SPELL (turn).
29 Omitted. Ask if it’s not transparent.
Down
 1 CARBUNCLE. Cryptic ref to the Holmes story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Had to go into the library to check this.
 2 RIGHT. Allusion to ‘… as rain’.
 3 LIMERICK. Delete first letter of 29ac to get the famous-est limerick writer. Strictly, I guess, a double def if we lift and separate ‘beheaded in’.

There once was a fellow called Lear
Whose writings were (sometimes) un-29.
His rhyming was terse
And his scansion was worse
And he loved the extraneous line
Or two, too 2?
 4 U,RN,S.
 5 DISCOBOLUS. Cryptic def. Also a large pill taken at a dance club.
 6 MANTLE. Two defs; one a cryptic allusion to that which gives an incandescent light when heated — as in ‘gas mantle’.
 7 GREEN,ROOM. Reverse of MOOR.
 8 DR,ESS. Ho ho!
13 BLOCK,HOUSE.
15 ABUNDANCE. Double def; as in ‘to go abundance in Spades’. Nine or more tricks in whist.
17 IN(DIC)ATOR. The detectives reversed inside an anagram of ‘to rain’.
18 AT(H{L}E)TIC.
21 RIB,ALD. Anagram of ‘lad’. Was RIB for ‘tease’ dubious enough in 1981 to deserve a ‘some say’?
22 MA(V)IS. Anagram of ‘aims’.
24 Omitted. Ask if you’re startled.
25 GILL. A measure one may drink (quarter pint) so it ‘gets drunk’?; and: “(Arthur) Eric (Rowton) (1882–1940), English sculptor, engraver, and typographer. He did the relief carvings Stations of the Cross (1914–18) at Westminster Cathedral and the Prospero and Ariel (1931) on Broadcasting House in London. He also designed the first sans serif typeface, Gill Sans”.

 

31 comments on “Times 15493: Substitute … me for him”

  1. 25′, but submitted with fear and trembling, as I had not a clue as to why CAROL, why ABUNDANCE, or why TOWLINES. I went for ‘tow’ over ‘bow’ because a towhead is flaxen-haired, but it didn’t occur to me to lump flax and hemp together. 26ac is hardly cryptic, and adding ‘of 10?’ is gilding the proverbial. All in all, I’m glad this sort of puzzle doesn’t show up anymore.
  2. I do hope, mctext, that you mean the quality of the 1960s video and that you are not casting aspersions on one of my favourite bands, The Searchers, whose sound was, shall we say, borrowed, and to great effect, by The Byrds. Just for that you can have this!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSUH6YPM9oI
    It’s one of Steeleye Span’s gory folk tales and after 5mins 6 secs you will hear mention of a “silver mantle” to back up your comment on 6d.
    Thanks for the illuminating (sorry!) explanations. Like Kevin Gregg, I had no idea about CAROL or ABUNDANCE and I chose POTLINES because of the “hemp” connection. I felt that there must be an extremely obscure definition somewhere on a distant galaxy that would justify my choice. Had I but entered TOW into my online dictionary, all would have been revealed. April 1981?! Than as now, most of Britain was looking forward to THE Royal Wedding!
    1. I am aghast. And while I love The Byrds and (some incarnations of) Steeleye — I saw them live at U of Q — I can’t see the connections at all. Just another bunch of embarrassing Scouser wannabes? Like my first re-visit to Liverpool (late 1980s) where the once-3d. ferry had become a tourist attraction, replete with “boarding lounge”. When they played “Ferry Cross the Mersey” as the bugger finally docked, all the locals jumped overboard.

      Edited at 2011-04-06 05:30 am (UTC)

      1. One of those ferries was the “Royal Iris” wasn’t it? Those where the days when, on visits to Liverpool, we would take the tram to visit Auntie Queenie in Bootle.
        1. Yes it was. And there was the Royal Daffodil. Not to mention: the Leasowe, Egremont, Mountwood, Woodchurch and Overchurch. Also the Claughton, Bidston, Thurstaston and Upton. The Marlowe is probably not worth a mention.
  3. What a difference 30 years makes. Not much enjoyment to be had here. I threw in the towel after 40 minutes sensing that 5 and 12 were unfathomable – a good decision as it turned out. CLERIC was cunning, although you do wonder how much time the setter spent staring at it before he came up with such a mind-bending clue.
  4. 20 minutes for this but of course I have solved it before. It takes a few moments to get the necessary mind set for these but once you have it things flow along.

    Little point picking the clues to pieces. They had improved a bit over the 1960s but are clearly in many instances not up to modern standards. It doesn’t hurt to be reminded occasionally where we have evolved from.

    1. > of course I have solved it before …
      My God, Jim, your memory is amazing!

      Edited at 2011-04-06 09:40 am (UTC)

  5. Many thanks, mctext! I decided to give up on this and glad I am too: too many unknowns (TOWLINES, ETUI, DISCOBOLUS), too many errors (e.g. generic ‘uncle’ rather than VANYA) and too much not understood even when I was ‘right’ (e.g. RIGHT, CARBUNCLE). Perhaps explains why I gave up Times croswords way back then; I’m not sure even a great site (and blog) such as this would have encouraged me to persevere. Overall too oblique and elusive for my taste.
  6. I thought 6dn was a reference to the hoary chestnut (if that’s not a contradiction) of “night’s dark mantle” e.g.

    When night’s dark mantle veil’d the seas,
    And nature’s self was hush’d to sleep,–
    When gently blew the midnight breeze,
    Louisa sought the boundless deep.

    and

    WHEN night’s blacke Mantle could most darknesse prove,
    And sleepe (deaths Image) did my senses hyre,
    From Knowledge of my selfe, then thoughts did move
    Swifter then those, most switnesse neede require?

    Right up Jimbo’s alley.

  8. 29 mins. I rather enjoy these, though I tend to say it quietly! It’s like playing a links course on a windy day. It’s not always fair, but if you’re in the right frame of mind, it’s great fun. And it gives the world No.396 a chance of winning the Open. Perusing the club leaderboard today, I see our own Tiger Woods (I’m referring to Pete B’s solving ability, not – and I’m making an assumption here – his social life) has put one in the drink.

    Last in CAROL, after disentangling some early bad guesses, such as ‘turquoise’ for 1d.

    1. Not so much in the drink, but 12ac landed him, and many others such as myself, on the ROPES
  10. I didn’t notice this one when I printed off the Qualifier just after midnight and went to bed cursing the waste of ink yet again – not only for the main grid but for the solution to 24815 too, which I didn’t want anyway. No option to print grey -not that it works in Firefox any more and I now have to resort to IE.

    This morning LJ was broken yet again (has anyone received an apology for this continuing problem?) so it was not until I managed to get here at midday that I realised there was another puzzle on offer.

    I wrote in 1ac at first glance and raced through most of the rest of it but eventually foundered on DISCO?O?U?, ?O?LINES and ?I?L. I simply couldn’t find a way into those.

    Didn’t understand the Holmes reference though I had considered him as the Baker Street connection. ETUI like ‘adit’ is one of the words that stumped me early in my crossword career and I’ve never forgotten it.

    1. It’s been in and out like Swarbrick’s elbow all day. I’ve asked for a credit. No reply so far.
  11. First time I’ve been able to log in at all today, so hoping things pick up on that front. As far as the puzzle went, I have to say I rather enjoyed it. When this came out originally, I would have been dipping my toe in the cryptic waters, and probably would have been happy to solve half a dozen clues in any given Times puzzle, so finishing it feels like a belated victory!

    I was lucky, of course, that as well as getting older and, while maybe not wiser, at least more experienced, I found my personal knowledge – classics, Sherlock Holmes, Just William (he once joined the waits, and even when I read the story 35 years ago, it was an outdated usage which I needed explaining to me) – fitted perfectly with what was required here in the clues people found problematic, and which wouldn’t pass muster these days.

  12. 6:47 with pencil and paper back in 1981; 8:08 fumbling the answers into a spreadsheet grid today (since my printer’s decided to go on the blink) – but probably an accurate reflection of how much slower I am now. (Sigh!)

    An enjoyable reminder of the good old days.

    There’s currently a small display of Eric Gill’s work on at the British Museum.

  13. It’s now tomorrow. I tried until 5.30pm to get onto this site. Then I had to go out and just got in. This is the 3rd failure in about 10 days. What’s up?
    I must have done this crossword before – not that it helped. Some very dodgy clueing by today’s standards. What I find odd is how gradually the crosswords have changed for the better. I never noticed it happening at the time. 30 minutes with the occasional gritted teeth. (I never thought I’d see ETUI and the discus thrower ever again!)
  14. Having done 24,816, I can confirm mctext’s judgment on the two: Where today’s oldie took me 25′, the qualifier took 19′. And I didn’t have to flag any of the qualifier’s clues for closer examination; I’d say because they were better clues, rather than easier. Still, it’s always nice to have 2 puzzles in one day.
  16. I did slip up on the “ropey” clue. The skill of analysing all the possibilities carefully enough when left with a pattern like ?O?LINES and wordplay based on something you don’t know (or have forgotten) is probably not excercised so much these days as it was back then. In a competitive situation, with 2 or 3 other puzzles available for catching up on lost time, I’d happily have burned 5 minutes or so trying to find an alternative to the tempting BOWLINES.
    1. >…
      >In a competitive situation, with 2 or 3 other
      >puzzles available for catching up on lost time,
      >I’d happily have burned 5 minutes or so trying to
      >find an alternative to the tempting BOWLINES.

      Not if you were up against John Sykes or James Atkins or Roy Dean or Terry Girdlestone (or even me in my heyday), you wouldn’t! (Not if you wanted to come in the top five anyway 😉

      1. I started too late to compete against all of those people, but looking back at results of both regional and national finals since 1989, there are often big gaps at the top.

        Sample gaps between 1st and 5th:
        1993 London B (guessed year from sponsor name – you were equal 6th) 6 minutes
        1995 London B 14 minutes
        1989 London A 16 minutes
        1992 Final 14.5
        1996 Final 8

        And I’m sure the gaps between 1st and 12th in modern prelims are similar. So if you have the speed to be close to the top, 5 minutes on a single clue isn’t necessarily fatal.

        (For younger readers: London regional contestants were usually vying for one of 5 spots in the National Final)

        1. OK, I take your point, Peter. Thinking about it, I was 15 minutes ahead after three puzzles in 1981, giving me plenty of time to make sure I didn’t blow the final puzzle (and still finish with 12 minutes in hand :-). However, I’d have been very reluctant to risk 5 minutes on the first or second puzzles, or even the third.

          The 1979 London ‘A’ Regional Final provides an interesting contrast. The three qualifiers (and there were only three) were:1 Roy Dean (89 time bonus points), 2= James Atkins, Tony Sever (87) (I was a bit less tortoiselike in those days ;-). Unfortunately I don’t know the time bonus points for the final off-hand, but the top four were: 1 Roy Dean, 2 John Sykes, 3 James Atkins, 4 Tony Sever. I’m not sure what happened to Terry Girdlestone that year (he didn’t make the final), but he was generally very fast, and I think it would be fair to claim that the five of us were the main contenders around that time. If you’d squandered 5 minutes in London ‘A’ that year, you’d almost certainly have missed the cut.

  17. I enjoyed this and see it as an interesting change to modern disciplines.. they take some getting used to, but now I have become quite a convert to the freedom and variety of the older style, so much less formulaic and predictable than today’s..

    A bit like Livejournal, which I haven’t been able to access for some time!

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