Times 24822 — Magic Pudding

Author   mctextPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 17 minutes

Most trouble in the top left today. So solved more or less backwards; mostly because, of the two long clues, 9dn was easy while 3dn took a while to spot. Also a bit perplexed initially by one bit of 13ac and the (slightly) concealed anagram in 22dn.


Across
 1 THREADBARE. Here we have READ and BAR inside THE. (There are purists who will insist that the ‘piece of music’ is a measure and that the bar is the line separating such.)
 6 Omitted. (This was hard?)
10 O(EDI)PUS. Anagram of ‘die’.
11 CHEMISE. ‘Chemist’, like an unemployed cobbler, missing his last; E for ‘European’.
12 T(ERMAGAN)T. Anagram of ‘manager’, T: all after (another) T.
13 T(OS)CA. SO (‘very good’) inside ACT; all reversed. Chambers has (for ‘so’, interjection): “… that will do; very good; so what?” (The Opera is currently on in Perth. I was offered a freebie at the weekend but didn’t take it up.)
14 PIECE. Three defs; the first a piece of money, the others of chess.
15 DIA,CRITIC. Reversal of ‘aid’. Cf. Mötley Crüe.
17 TEST(IF,I)ED.
20 C,ATTY. Abbrev. of ‘attorney’.
21 INDIA. From the letter ‘I’ in the NATO/International Civil Aviation Organization alphabet.
23 FOOL,PROOF. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. (Though some politicians seem to prefer ‘The proof is in the pudding’; thus displaying that they are, indeed, puddings!). Either: pudding = desert → FOOL (puréed fruit mixed or served with cream). Or just: pudding → FOOL.
25 TRI(LL)ED.
26 LATT(IC)E. The def is ‘bars forming network’.
27 C(IT)E. IT is ‘exactly what’s needed’.
28 F(LASH)LIGHT.
Down
 1 T,ROUT. Last letter of ‘West’; Waterloo was an example of a ROUT, but wasn’t signalled as such in advance.
 2 RIDERLESS. Two defs. The second by reference to “a condition or proviso added to something already said or decreed”.
 3 ALPHABETICALLY. The word ‘films’ is in alpha order; the word ‘plays’ isn’t.
 4 BA(STAR)D.
 5 RI,COTTA. RI(gatoni); COTTA(ge).
 7 Omitted. (Very good, I had a volte-face.)
 8 HIERARCH,Y. Anagram of ‘her chair’.
 9 VENTURE CAPITAL. Anagram of ‘alternative cup’.
14 PATRIOTIC. Inclusive.
16 TATT(OO)ING.
18 INFIDEL. IN, FIELD with the D (Democrat) centrally relocated.
19 D,OODLES.
22 DEIST. Anagram of id est (‘ie’ in full). Had trouble parsing this at first. If a concealed anagram is ever OK, I guess this one is.
24 FLEET. Two defs; the first Shakespearean.
Gloucester in Henry VI (2):
Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:
So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

 

38 comments on “Times 24822 — Magic Pudding”

  1. 23 minutes – last in the harridan. Held myself up by chucking in ‘testifier’. Thanks to McT for unravelling DEIST for me.
  2. 30 minutes, being held up in the end by 3d & 14ac, even though I’ve got a few sovereigns which I’m holding onto until they become really valuable. Currently they’re worth about a pound. This was a two exclamation mark puzzle for me. The so close to being an indirect anagram DEIST (which only held me up long enough to say “surely not” and write the exclamation mark next to the clue), and the unusually non-specific RICOTTA (likewise). As to puddings, my proofs were always in such a state. COD to ALPHABETICALLY, my last in, thinking it must just be a cryptic definition and then finding it was very clever.
  3. After yesterday’s discussion on ‘cantilena’ I am wary of pronouncing here on things musical despite having thought I might be qualified to do so, but my understanding is that ‘measure’ is the American term for ‘bar’ and both mean a piece of music. The things that divide them one from another I would call ‘bar lines’ but would concede that the second word may well be omitted if the meaning is otherwise clear from the context.
  4. This was a relief after yesterday’s; 16’40” compared to yesterday’s 56’+. For some reason, a number of solutions just presented themselves to me instantly, and I entered them without checking: 12ac, 9d, 17ac, 23ac, 21ac (a giveaway), 19d. Luckily, for once my instincts were correct. I couldn’t parse 22d either, and was about to echo Vallaw’s comment to that effect in the club forum, when it hit me.
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clue like 5d before–‘Take 2 letters from X, and as many from Y as you need’–and I’d be happy not to see any more. But I liked 1ac and 1d, and 22d, now that I’ve figured it out.
    1. They’re all over the place like dog shit in the Weekend Australian’s version of the “Sunday Times” (which, indeed, stems from London.
  5. 11 minutes, and no quibbles about the music today, as in choir practice we are for ever singing from bar such and such. My musical director is a purist if ever there was one (and was bemused by cantilena – good man!) so that’s an end to that argument.
    Lots to like about this one: I felt the cluster of clues in the SE were particularly pretty, and felt DEIST was one of those “what else could it be?” clues. Didn’t we have similar wordplay with id est not so long ago?
    CoD to the inventive ABC.
    1. As a simple rock’n’roller, I only know about bars. But Gardner Read, in Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice says that the correct use of the word ‘bar’ refers only to the vertical line itself, while the word ‘measure’ refers to the beats contained between bars. Me? I wouldn’t have a bar of it.
      1. Wouldn’t that make a 12 bar blues a 13 bar blues, counting the fenceposts and not the railings?
        1. I am composing as I write! (2 X B7 turn around to add to the suspense.)

          Edited at 2011-04-13 09:47 am (UTC)

            1. You read my mind! But I had to switch to the key of A: where it’s E7sus4. Hendrix would have approved I think.

              Oh … but … he was left-handed! Not to mention American!

              Edited at 2011-04-13 10:39 am (UTC)

              1. Well, I got the 13 bar blues, it fits well with my aphasia
                Well, I got the 13 bar blues, from deep down Australasia
                It’s just like those 12 bar blues
                But with one more thrown in for good measure
      3. By my reckoning, that’s two days running the “authorities” have got it wrong on musical terms.
  6. 65 mins, good for me. Much easier than yesterday’s. Thanks mctext for 13ac, 3d and 22d. Now that you’ve explained 22d I seem to remember we’ve had ID EST recently. 11ac made me think, at first that it would be a scientist I had never heard of (most of them).
    TOSCA reminds me of an entry in a book called something like “Great Opera Disasters”: The under-rehearsed firing squad in that opera. Firstly not knowing who to aim at but thinking that “It’s opera, the heroine usually dies”, they aimed at the wrong person. Then, their only stage directions were “exit with the principals”…so, over the battlements they went!
  7. 6m 51s for me, so one of the easier ones, but enjoyable. COD to the excellent ALPHABETICALLY.
  8. 27 minutes today, which is around average for me. This was an entertaining puzzle. I particularly liked the alphabetical films and the infallible pudding. I agree with Mr Unpronounceable above that choirs wouldn’t be able to function if we didn’t have a term for the space between bar-lines. And how can a player or singer “start from the middle of a bar” if it’s just the line. I loved Koro’s comment about the “13 bar blues”. (Along with the “middle 9”, I presume) From my experience “bar” by itself is never actually used to mean the bar line – except in dictionaries.
  9. Wouldn’t it be great if all musical terms were banned as clues or answers from cryptic crosswords?
    1. Couldn’t agree more. Maybe there should be separate categories of crosswords, those with musical (and religious) references, and those without!
  10. Easiest of the week so far at just under 20 minutes. Was Waterloo a rout? Surely a bit too close to a defeat to be called that? I think 22D crosses a line into the murky world of indirect anagrams. The rest of it is a straightforward, pleasant stroll in the park.
    1. I think most historians would agree with you, Jimbo – not to mention the Duke of Wellington himself, whose own verdict on the battle was “a damned near-run thing”. But I suppose it could fairly be said that it turned into a rout at the end after the timely (from the English point of view) arrival of Blucher and his Prussians.
  11. Enjoyable and on the whole fairly straightforward puzzle, I thought. Count me among those nominating ALPHABETICALLY for COD – an excellent trick clue. I also liked DEIST, a cleverly disguised but perfectly fair anagram. I didn’t much care for the “so=very good” device in the parsing of TOSCA, whatever Chambers may say. A classic example of a dictionary definition which is never used by anyone in normal speech. Thanks to mctext for explaining INDIA at 21ac. Believe it or not I had tried to justify the solution as a (truly awful) homophone on the basis that INDIA might possibly be made to sound like “in de air” (communicated on radio) if pronounced by an Indian. Glad I was wrong!
  12. 11 minutes from a print version, so on the easier size. Didn’t understand the wordplay for DEIST. TERMAGANT holds a special place somewhere for being the last clue in the first Sunday Times crossword I ever finished without help.
  13. 25 minutes for this one but it didn’t flow as I had words all over the grid before eventually they started to join up.

    I’m not sure about “so” for “very good” as I’d have thought that was “just so” and why would “so so” be used to express reservations about quality?

    I’ve never heard of “atty” as an abreviation of “attorney” so I didn’t understand that one.

    I think we have had a clue previously that depended on the letters of one word appearing alphabetically but not in another.

    1. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was yet another UK/US thing, but ‘atty’ shows up frequently enough here, perhaps especially in the NY Times crossword.
      1. I’ve now consulted the official books and they both have it as an abbreviation for “attorney” so that’s good enough for me. I guess it turns up often in documents and books in the legal world.
  14. Oh Lord. Saw “very good in perfomance” as being an “asset”, which of course is “tessa” backwards, as in “Tessa of The..”. I will slink away quietly.
  15. All complete without aids in thirty minutes. Solutions …27, 28, 29 and 30 …trout, threadbare, alphabetically and piece.

    Riderless would have been a good one for Saturday’s puzzle given the big betting race at Aintree.

  16. 51 minutes, says the stopped clock after submission, which is all right for me (at least under an hour). Actually it was more like forty minutes but for the last three entries (RIDERLESS, then TERMAGANT, a lucky guess and PIECE). I entered DEIST, removed it and then reentered it when I understood the wordplay, and did the same with ALPHABETICALLY (which is also my COD), removing it briefly after reading the clue too literally and not believing the statement so understood would be true, until I caught on that it was referring to the actual letters in FILMS and PLAYS.

    Quite a few definitions involving courts, court proceedings and attorneys — is the setter a lawyer? I also found RI COTTA a bit strange, but not really unfair.

  17. 35:47, so must have been relatively easy. Was surprised to get the all-clear, because I entered TOSCA with no confidence at all. Terrible clue, as others have noted.
  18. I started this at 4am and made much faster progress than I normally do when I start at a more reasonable hour! I got Alphabetically quite early on as I couldn’t see what else it could be. But I had to look at the explanation here as I completely missed the point!
    Louise
  19. About 25 minutes, and I was doing my stepson’s US income tax return simultaneously, so it’s on the easy side, I agree. I also agree with our blogger that the NW area presented the hold up. I ended with the PIECE/ALPHABETICALLY crossing. I would never have thought of Waterloo as a rout either, Jimbo, and I still won’t. And even though some here hesitate, I liked the RICOTTA clue, which had a very nice surface. Regards to everybody.
  22. 7:58 for me. FLEET as a verb didn’t feel too familiar until I thought of “fleeting”.

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