Times 24,779 You Need Flare

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 20 minutes

Reasonably straightforward puzzle spoiled a little by the rather weak clue to the long central down light. 1A may cause some problems with “source of report” as the definition for a probably lesser known meaning of maroon although the cryptic is easy enough. Other than that there’s something for nearly everybody.

Across
1 MAROON – MA(ROO)N; being=MAN; Australian native=ROO; a maroon is a distress flare that goes bang;
5 RIESLING – (f)RIES-LING; very tasty German white wine from the Rhine area;
9 SYMPOSIA – (o=old + spys + aim)*;
10 HAVANA – H(A-VAN)A; a cigar for Essex Man;
11 TIPSTAFF – TIP-STAFF; crown=TIP; crook=STAFF; sheriff’s officer in charge of gratuities, perhaps?
12 UNITED – hidden (gordonsto)UN IT ED(ucates); Gordonstoun is a Scottish boarding school attended by Prince Charles – what might “it” be?
13 TIGERISH – (conflic)T-(GI reversed)-(p)ERISH;
15 GLEE – GLE(b)E; the glebe land was land attached to a parish church;
17 SEER – (REES reversed);
19 MAESTOSO – (to some as)*; one for Jack, musical term for play majestically as in Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory; ;
20 EXEUNT – EX-(tune)*;
21 AUGUSTUS – AUGUST-US; your artist for today Augustus John 1878-1961;
22 INNATE – sounds like “in eight”; no two man sculls in the Times, Oxbridge boat race crews only;
23 IROQUOIS – IR-O-QU-O-IS; Russian doll type clue; the original New Yorkers;
24 DALESMAN – traveller=salesman then replace s=son by d=daughter; rough northerner ‘app’n;
25 EFFIGY – first weak cryptic definition;
 
Down
2 ATYPICAL – A-(pity)*-CAL;
3 OPPOSITE – OP-PO(SIT)E; your author for today Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849;
4 NOSTALGIA – (a=area + its long a)*;
5 REAFFORESTATION – even weaker second cryptic definition;
6 STAUNCH – vessel=launch then replace its prow=L by ST=street=way;
7 INACTIVE – IN-ACT-IV-E(at);
8 GRANDEUR – GR-AND-E(U)R; GR=George Rex; ER=Edward Rex; universal=U;
14 SNOW,GOOSE – S-NOW-GOOSE; spades=S; tailor’s iron=GOOSE (from the shape of the handle);
15 GAME,BIRD – nap,possibly=GAME; time (in prison)=BIRD; a reference to Maggie Thatcher perhaps?
16 EXTERNAL – hidden (suss)EX TERN AL(ways);
17 SOB,STUFF – (boss)*-TUFF; volcanic rock=TUFF;
18 ENDURING – two meanings 1=lasting 2=showing toleration;
19 MINUTES – MINU(TE)S;

39 comments on “Times 24,779 You Need Flare”

  1. 1ac beyond me, but so glad it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it might, especially for our antipodean friends.
    Identical story to Monday except my SW corner became my SE. I wonder how many others will have a similar sob story.
  2. 18:03 today for all except 1ac. I thought it might be MAROON, but coudn’t justify it as I didn’t know that definition. I agree with you about EFFIGY, but had no problem with 5D.
  3. 19 minutes, with MAROON last in and taking an inordinate amount of time, even though I suspected a bang! early on. Samoan made a brief appearance, as did the residents of the lesser known island of Canoa. I’m glad it wasn’t the other Ozzie native in the end.

    Otherwise, the SE was slow, though I felt EFFIGY should have come along sooner. I was trying for a while to equate Tory with rock in 17d, as I’ve not encountered SOB STUFF as an entity before. Tuff I know about having lived in Totnes.

    TWO hidden clues?

    CoD to INACTIVE for the rather cute dramatic device.

  4. Well, at least my offering at 1ac, ‘gaboon’, turns out to be a word, although this particular reptile is found only in sub-Saharan Africa, and not among, the, er, indigenous folk of Terra Australis. Prior to that, MAROON was among my three finalists – all rather mundane and ending in ‘-oon’, which proves just how prosaic my mind must be compared to some here! 71 minutes. SOB-STUFF, IROQUOIS and TIPSTAFF all good as new to me.
  5. I didn’t enjoy this I’m afraid. The weak cryptic definitions were an irritant, particularly the long one. I saw it about half way through but couldn’t quite believe that there wasn’t something to the clue I was missing. And when there were things I didn’t know they managed to annoy me. SOB STUFF in particular, because I had written in SOB STORY without really thinking and both the whole answer and TUFF were unknown to me.
    Perhaps my mood was influenced by my eventual defeat by MAROON. I had a few options for this one:
    CANOAN: “canon” being the source of the report. A “native” of, er, somewhere…
    LAROON: “No oral” being a “source of report being written”. Some sort of obscure Australian animal…
    MAROON and SAMOAN: at least recognisable words but couldn’t make them fit the clue.
    Drat.
      1. Yes, now you mention it I did too. I speculated that ACO might be some sort of abbreviation for a phrase meaning “being written”, with R as “source of report” and ON as “about”. When you’re thinking along those sort of lines you know you’re in trouble. I dismissed it because as far as I know there aren’t any racoons in Australia.
  6. 30 minutes before leaving home and 15 minutes on the commute to solve all but 14, 21, 23 and 25. Then another 15 minutes on the train in which I made no progress whatsoever.

    I had SNOW at 14 but couldn’t think what might follow. It’s maddening that I didn’t get GOOSE because a) it’s so obvious and b) I recognised it as the tailor’s iron as soon as I cheated and looked it up on arrival at the office. I have met it before.

    As things turned out I had also not solved 17dn where I had put SOB STORY, thinking TOR = rock, though I couldn’t account for the Y. Like keriothe I have never heard of SOB STUFF nor of TUFF.

    I had no problems with the long down answer but 1ac was missing 3 letters for a long time before the penny dropped.

  7. Bumbled along on auto until totally marooned on 1ac. Had heard of a maroon as a flare, but was unaware that it also went with a bang, so spent 10 minutes plus checking all sorts of outlandish possibilities. Overall was less than inspired, though perhaps that was down to concerns for family in poor old Christchurch (all OK, thankfully).
  8. Add me to the list of DNFs. You’ve heard it all before – trouble in the SE before being completely stumped by MAROON. Before I consulted the dictionary I also invented masseoto as a musical term.

    I like the idea behind DALESMAN, but is ‘traveller’ an adequate definition of ‘salesman’?

    1. In my repping days, quite a few of the older shop folk used to call us Cortina and Cavalier driving sales folk ‘travellers’.
      1. Now that you mention it, I got passed by a (souped-up) Cortina in Sydney on Sunday. Haven’t seen one for donkey’s years. The driver was certainly a traveller, but he wasn’t necessarily a salesman.
    2. More correctly commercial travellers. It was a euphamism for sales rep in the days when selling was considered a bit infra dig – now gone thankfully
  9. I had a similar thought process to jackkt on 17dn not having heard of SOB STUFF I wanted to justify SOB STORY and kept reviewing the spelling of IROQUOIS to make sure I hadn’t got an O in the wrong place. I only settled on STUFF when I eventually got the rather awful EFFIGY. At least I had heard of TUFF.
  10. In most respects easier than Tuesday puzzles have been in recent weeks. It took me 28 minutes to fill the grid but one wrong with a desperate entry of RACOON for 1a. I was pretty sure a racoon was an American not Australian creature, but I couldn’t think of anything better, having convinced myself that “source of report” indicated R.
  11. A rather unenjoyable 33-minute plod here.

    At 1ac I eventually plumped for maroon as a word I knew that contained “roo”, having rejected, like others, racoon and baboon.

    I also got in the same mess as others with sob story and encountered other unknowns such as maestoso, goose and tipstaff.

    Also caused my own problems by taking for ever to spot the hidden word at 16 (but as has been alluded to I was probaly put off by already having found “the” hidden word at 12) and by misreading remembrance as romance.

    Here’s hoping for soemthing a little more witty and original tomorrow.

  12. About an hour for me, although I had to google ‘tailor’s iron’ to get GOOSE, and I tried using aids on 1a, but I could neither justify nor improve on the MAROON I already had, so went with it in the end over other possibilities like RACOON, BABOON, SAMOAN, LAGOON, etc.
    I agree with other comments about it not being overly enjoyable, with too many weak cds. I’ve seen ACTIVE clued like this before, but I liked it nonetheless.
  13. I knew the goose in 14 from the porter’s speech in Shakespeare’s Scottish play. “Come in, tailor, here you may roast your goose”, which was explained to us endlessly when studying it for O level.

    The LING in 5ac reminds me that this is another of those creatures that survives only thanks to the Times crossword, along with all those antelopes. I sometimes feel tempted to go along to my local fishmonger’s and ask for an ide, a couple of orfe, and half a pound of ling, just to see what the response is.

    1. You would get your ling in these parts. In many ways simililar in versatility to monk by taking up flavour well and keeping its texture.
  14. Pretty much the same solve as everyone else with last in MAROON, thinking I’d be ceremonially stripped of my Akubra and Driza-Bone for not getting it first. The colour rhymes with throne here, by the way – a source of constant irritation to new chums. Good to see 7th cousin thrice removed Augustus getting a guernsey.
  15. A near personal best here at 16 minutes. No problem with any of the clues. I live by the sea and knew a maroon was a kind of rocket flare with a bang attached. It also appears a lot in nautical novels. My only hesitation was with the long down clue where I spent time trying to fit REFORESTATION into the space. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of REAFFORESTATION but with the checking letters it became obvious.
  16. 23 minutes online. I also had problems with 1 but evetually clicked on ROO as the native (thinking OZ first) but my bi hod-up was about 7 or 8 minutes trying to get the EFFIGY /SOB STUFF. I just couldn’t get the ‘burning’ connection on the cryptic definition and had never heard of tuff. A few different languages in the across answers today, n’est pas?
  17. Always associate maroons with launching the lifeboat, but Elf ‘n Safety might have declared them a hazard.

    Used to buy ling from the fishmongers on Blackburn market, but I’ve not been there for over fifteen years and haven’t seen it in supermarkets. It’s a meaty, almost translucent white fish.

    Agree that two hiddens are most unusual; I thought only one was allowed by the house rules.

  18. Hopelessly lost in the SE corner, justifying (SOBS)* – TORY (an island, or rock, off Donegal), and like others wondering if I had spelt Iroquois with the u and o transposed. Other than that, lots of fun.
  19. 18 minutes, plus 10 devoted to stupidly staring at 1ac, running through the alphabet, and finally throwing in MAROON rather than the towel. The ‘being’ should have told me something, but I ignored it. There was a sort of ST feeling to this puzzle, with a number of unnatural surface readings (4d,8d,20ac,16d).I’d give an anti-COD to 19ac:wordy and barely cryptic.
  20. Similar story from here; farly straightforward until reaching a hold up with 4 to go: 1A, R?A?FORESTATION, and the crossing SOB STUFF/EFFIGY. The long 5D had me mentally pacing through the alphabet, and when in on ‘what else could it be?’ reasoning. I tried SOB STORY too, couldn’t make it work, and I also thought that 25A was ENOUGH, for a time, with ‘one’ being the def. and ‘UGH’ expressing contempt, but I finally saw EFFIGY, so both went in. Finally, I interpreted MAROON as those radiomen in WWII dropped off on uninhabited islands (hence, a maroon) to warn of Japanese movements, a la Michener’s SOUTH PACIFIC. Never heard of the flare, clearly, so necessity needed to reprise her role as the mother of invention there. As an American and a New Yorker, IROQUOIS was easy, and as an American, I remember that ‘raccoon’ has 2 ‘C’s”. Regards to all.
    1. Racoon is actually an accepted alternative spelling if you believe the dictionaries. Of course it may only be accepted because of the sheer weight of ignorant Limeys getting it wrong!
  21. 21 minutes but with Samoan as a guess (I think I saw a moa and just hoped). The trouble with 5 down is not getting the word but knowing the word – not how a good crossword works. Still, the rest was OK apart from the slightly forced grimace of 25.
  22. Over an hour and I still didn’t finish, needing a dictionary for TIPSTAFF (which I’ve never heard of but at least was on my list of candidates) and after trying all of the possibilities offered by Chambers fitting the crossing letters of 1ac and rejecting all of them (although MAROON seemed most likely, containing ROO). MAN = being? Also CAT, BIRD, DINOSAUR, PARAMECIUM and lots of other things, many of them having 3 letters. I got everything else right although partly by guesswork (SNOW GOOSE, GAME BIRD, and so on). Not really very enjoyable and it seems to have frustrated many others as well.
  23. 7:03 for me. I’m afraid I’m going against the trend today as MAROON went straight in, getting me off to a good start, and I particularly liked the two cryptic definitions!
  24. Silly goose me had ‘sob-story’ which held me up…so about an hour.
    Kind of a ho-hum puzzle.
  25. My, 1ac does seem to have caused some problems. I knew the term from my sailing days but it was still one of the last in. The SE corner caused me some grief, as it did for others. I spent ages agonising over “sob story” but hung up on the U of Iroquois. Surprisingly, being a resident of Sydney, it took me a while to get the “roo” connection, but there again ,not many of the bounders in my inner city suburb! Similarly, the “abo” connection never suggested itself to me for 1ac, as it did for some others
  26. Ages ago, the policy wasno more than one hidden-in-the-clue answer per puzzle, yet here we have 12ac and 16dn. Wassupwiddat?

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