Times 24748 – Plenty of reprises

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 19 minutes

I should have put the stopwatch on this one, which I would say was very easy by anyone’s standards but enjoyable none the less or possibly for that reason. As time is of the essence I’ll say no more and get on with the explanations.

Across
1 TIRADE = I for one inserted in TRADE
4 WELL for healthy and again for source of water = WELL WELL
10 EASY for simple + GONG around I for one = EASY-GOING
11 GAMMA, the capital of Greece being G. All those gammas you got in assignments were really G for good.
12 OST for east in German + RICH for wealthy = OSTRICH. I thought of OSTEND, but that’s Belgian (or is it Oostende?), which is close enough to the German. There’s probably a reason for that.
13 (SEEING)* + Scott = GENESIS
14 Deliberately omitted. Ask not, for whom the bold tell might be charged a fee.
15 UP for northward + MARKET for mall = UPMARKET
18 CAST for found + IRON for golf club = CAST-IRON. Casting is what goes on in a foundry and founding is what goes on in a castle, mainly of dynasties.
20 IBSEN = IN for “at home” capturing BSE (mad cow disease)
23 TA reversed for “volunteers rolled” + TIMES for by = AT TIMES, my nomination for clue of the day.
25 ROSETTE = ROSE for girl into which goes winE and TT for dry (see 1d). Favours are what knights wear in battle, etc.
26 CANON = C for “caught out” (as in cricket) + ANON for soon. I can’t think what else the out could be.
27 RAN TO SEED = RAN for managed + TO + SEE for consult + Doctor
28 REMEMBER = RE for about + MEMBER for subscriber. Surety isn’t a characteristic I’d associate with my memory, but the context is more likely to be “Remember to put your socks on today, dear”
29 AMBLER = rAMBLER. It certainly sounded like a novelist and indeed it was Eric (think Topkapi, Pink Panther etc)

Down
1 TEE for support + TOTAL = TEETOTAL (see 25ac)
2 RISOTTO = Recipe + (IT’S TOO)*. We’ve had a gutful of risotto recently. I wonder what the reason for that is?
3 DOG for pet + VIOLENT without its N for new = DOG VIOLET, common name for any one of a number of species, including the Labrador Violet of Newfoundland (or is it Newfoundland and Labrador?).
5 ENGAGEMENT RING, a cryptic definition
6 Deliberately omitted. Edward is what you call a man with a …
7 (MAN SEES)* = EN MASSE
8 I for one inside LA for “the, French” + IS + Eager = LIAISE
9 WITHOUT RESERVE, a double definition
16 bRAINSTORM = RAINSTORM
17 ENGENDER = END for object in GREEN*
19 AN + TONY + M for male = ANTONYM, a subversion of a classic crosssword paradigm
21 SITWELL = S for succeeded + IT + WELL for “quite possibly” (see 4ac). I could only think of Edith but there are legions, apparently, and a poem by Ogden Nash to boot. Aren’t love-in-a-mist and dog violet synonymous? (see 19d)
22 DANCER = CARED* with Nureyev inserted
24 Motive placed after MINI for “very short” = MINIM

37 comments on “Times 24748 – Plenty of reprises”

  1. It’s 24748, no? Anyway, it was easy and pleasurable; 18 minutes for me, 14 plus time to look up ‘dog violet’ and figure out ‘liaise’. Thanks for the explanation of 23ac–I hadn’t thought of by=times.
  2. Managed a rare sub-30, getting home in 27 minutes, so am expecting some stellar times. Hesitated over SITWELL, as I was unsure how ‘quite possibly’ translated into ‘well’ (I see ‘very posibly’ is in Chambers as a definition of ‘well’, but could someone give an example?), and delayed at 22 by running through my mental list of ballerinas. Fortunately, the delay was not a long one, as that particular catalogue contains just two items, Fonteyn and Pavlova. Last in REMEMBER followed by ANTONYM (changed from ‘Antonia’).

    I wonder if anyone – besides me, that is – stuck in ‘log in’ as their first shot at 6dn. (Apologies for giving the game away on this deliberately omitted, easy-peasy one.)

    1. I was one of those who put in ‘log in’, and even wondered for a while what kind of symbol ‘logi’ was. And evidently I forgot to log in or on, since I’m the ‘anonymous’ at the top of the comments.
  3. Example: “It could well be the case”.

    Agree this was very easy – a record solve for me in 17 mins, about half my usual time, so I expect there will be a fair number of single figure times by the end of the day.

    1. I interpreted this as “quite” could possibly mean “well”, in the vernacular. As in “that Vinnie Jones is well hard”. but now that I’ve written it, I prefer the previous explanation!
  5. Talking of PB, I wonder if the new editor is responsible for upping the difficulty and lowering the tone in Sunday’s puzzle?
    But for the plant today’s would have been my fastest ever, indeed took about the same time as it took to get off the mark on Saturday.
    1. The first thing to learn about changes of crossword editorship is that they take a few months to come into effect. Some of the Sunday Times crossword setters write their puzzles a few months before publication, so what you’re seeing at present are mostly puzzles written before I got the job. Any changes I’ve made to these puzzles have mostly been intended to reduce difficulty. (And I haven’t requested a change in the difficulty level for the Sunday Times puzzle.)

      In the case of Sunday’s 4416, I noticed that it was harder than usual, but the clues seemed perfectly fair so I left it mostly untouched. I can’t see anything seriously tone-lowering, so I’ll await more detail about that next Sunday.

      1. Hi, Peter,

        I imagine this was a reference to 17ac. No great shakes if one is used to the Private Eye puzzle but it may have raised an eyebrow in certain quarters. And on a Sunday too!

  6. 20 minutes, after whipping through all but three too insignificant to detail: just took time to see them the right way. Don’t get the Edward ref. for 6 not that it matters. A quiet enough start to the week.
    1. Edward (pronounced Edwood to make the witticism work) and before anyone brings up the man with the 3 logs on his head, that’s Edward Woodward, relatively recently demised.
  7. … 13 minutes — but mostly from the telegraphed* definitions rather than the cryptic bits. I guess the only bit of GK required was for Eric at 29ac; though there will be those who won’t appreciate his intersection with the Sitwells, nor theirs with Ibsen. (Guess who?)
    * Should this word have a capital?
  8. 22 minutes which is not far off my PB if I remember it correctly. The only clues I had to return to were DOG VIOLET, CAST IRON and AMBLER and these probably cost me 4-5 minutes.

    I was going to query ‘be sure’ = REMEMBER but the example in the blog has made this unnecessary.

    Generally this was a fun puzzle but 22dn is feeble and an unsigned DBE to boot.

    1. I will henceforth always think of Dame Margot as ‘an unsigned DBE to boot’. Thanks, J!
  9. 11 mins on the nose so pretty straightforward. Agree about ‘dancer’ being a bit feeble. Liked 5D but I think I have seen something like it before. With regard to what the Greeks call their country (and my memory is dodgy here) isn’t there a ‘ before the E which at least makes it sound like an H?
  10. What can one say – too easy for a Times puzzle, would not even rate as difficult in the Telegraph. About 10 minutes.

    Just as well the over abundance of literary references were all very easy, the SE is scribbler’s corner. Like Jack thought 22D DANCER both weak and didn’t like the DBE

  11. A pretty easy one which would have been quicker had I not been slowed down in the South East having put Engineer in 17d.
    Louise
  12. Sub 20 minutes (by some way a record for me) and so it must have been very easy. With respect to jimbo, I would not however call it ‘too easy’. Just for once, it’s pleasant for a workaday jogger to experience a smidgeon of what the Olympian sprint cruciverbalists achieve day by day.
  13. This was definitely very easy because I beat my previous PB by over two and a half minutes to finish in 6:19. I rather doubt that I will ever beat that.
    I also put in LOG IN at first, and also GENISIS, but fortunately I spotted both errors immediately.
    As Barry mentions this was in stark contrast to both of the weekend puzzles: yesterday’s in particular making me wonder about an editorial change.
  14. 15 minutes, which these days seems to be as quick as I get. The eastern hemisphere went in first, which probably wasn’t the quickest way to do it, but I got WELL WELL first. RAN TO SEED caused a hold up only because I was looking for a 9 letter word – I keep forgetting to check the stuff in brackets at the end of the clues.
    Odd to see “well” clued a total of three times, and “Teetotal” twice in the same crossword.
    No great favourites today.
  15. 14 minutes. Concise, witty clues of the type I enjoy provided a welcome, light-hearted start to the week. Much prefer this to the solemn, humourless, turgid sort of puzzle that some editors seem to favour these days.
  16. 9:04 .. but I’m afraid I’m with Jimbo on this. Apparently today has been ‘scientifically’ established as the most depressing day of the year by some professor with time on his hands and a need for attention so maybe some of us are just a bit grumpy, but still…

    On the plus side… 1a TIRADE has a very neat surface.

  17. 7:54 today. Yes it was very easy and yes the Greek word for Greece is preceded by ‘ so normally rendered as Hellas in English.
  18. Even for beginners, this only took a gentle 35 minutes over lunch. It was pleasing not to have to resort to any aids for a change. Fortunately one of us is a gardener so the dog’s violet was known. We were surprised to discover that Ambler is still in print in the Penguin Modern Classic series. Maybe we’ll get round to reading one sometime.
  19. Apologies to the setter, but this must have been easy since I managed it in under 10 minutes while rather inebriated. I liked WELL WELL
  20. Apart from one tiny error, putting ‘RUN TO SEED’ instead of ‘RAN’, another unaided finish. Easier than yesterday’s ‘Everyman’.
    Regards
    Andrew K
  21. 6:19 for me, but I felt I should have been a lot faster. I expect the real speed merchants will break (or already have broken) 4 minutes.
    1. Since ‘lost vigour’ is in the active voice (past simple tense), I believe it must be ‘ran’ rather than ‘run’. Compare ‘managed well’, which could lead to ‘ran’ or ‘run’.
      1. Apologies for not understanding “active voice”, or “past simple tense”, but couldn’t the sentence “My boss appears to have lost vigour” be replaced with “My boss appears to have run to seed”, making “run” just as valid as “ran” in this case?
        1. ‘Lost vigour — managed to consult doctor, initially’

          As I understand/see things cruciverbal (and I’m frequently wrong, but it’s unlikely anyone else is still reading this, so you may be stuck with me), the clue needs to be taken as is. The definition (or literal meaning), ‘lost vigour’, could either be a noun phrase (vigour that has been lost) or a verb phrase (someone or something lost his/her or its vigour). The cryptic part of the definition, ‘managed to consult doctor, initially’, may yield either ‘ran to seed’ or ‘run to seed’. However, I can see no way in which ‘run to seed’ can substitute for ‘lost vigour’.

          Crossword clues by their nature are elliptical. Imagine someone asking “What happened to Rodney that made him throw in the towel?”; one could imagine someone, especially of the ilk of Jimmy in ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’, answering, ‘Lost vigour’ = ‘He lost his vigour’ = ‘He ran to seed’, where ‘run’ would be impossible.

          That’s how I see it.

  23. Tackled this a day after everyone else but it was still easy 24 hours later. 18:19, a personal best for me by around three minutes

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