Times 24719 – Tinker’s Belle?

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving Time: 40 minutes

There’s nothing like a week at a statistics conference to completely anaesthetise the few brain cells I possess which remain active, so maybe it’s just me, but this was by no means a walk in the park, with some easy clues interspersed with some tricky ones, making for a somewhat untidy solve. Here’s my take on it, anyway.

Across
1 Deliberately omitted. I got this one straight off the bat, which is something to brag about.
3 F for fine + AIRY for breezy + CYCLE for song collection = FAIRY CYCLE, a generic term for a child’s bicycle, according to Collins, although completely unfamiliar to me. Here’s one worthy of the name and another which isn’t.
9 REVISIT = REV for minister + IS + IT for “just what’s needed”. My second last in. I couldn’t make head or tail of this one (in fact I’ve only just seen how it works), and 2d was no help.
11 MAID for young woman, reversed around G for good and RA for artist = DIAGRAM
12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY = (BY PARIAH GO OUT)*. Another one which troubled me, mainly because I took “out” to be the anagrind.
14 TERRA = TERRApin. Terra is Latin for earth or land (in legal contexts) according to Collins. Definitely not a case of terra incognita for me.
15 APPREHEND, double definition.
17 APATHETIC = PATH for way + CITE for refer, reversed, (next) to A for article. I’m not sure if the first “to” also means “next to” or whether cite = to refer.
19 YAHOO = YO for greeting (as in “Yo bro”) containing A HO for house. Jonathan Swift’s creation. Maybe if they had been given that fairy cycle they wanted for their sixth birthday instead of a pair of sensible shoes, things would have turned out differently.
21 CWT for “coal we took initially”, is short for HUNDREDWEIGHT. Another which required almost all the checkers for the penny to drop. The number of pennies in a hundredweight depends on whether it’s short, long or metric. The only thing I remember for sure is the number of foot poundals in a second.
24 FORAGED = FOR for “on behalf of” + AGED for “folk over the hill” (!). This meaning of forage I only knew via the American Civil War (see the War Between the North & South) soldiers called “foragers”
25 INSPIRE = IN for popular + SIRE for male parent around P for power
26 (IS BEST ONLY)* = OSTENSIBLY, an unlikely looking possibility which didn’t exactly spring to mind.
27 THE US for “area across the pond” minus the E for energy = THUS or so. When both checkers finally appeared I have to admit being taken aback. I was working on a foot poundal hypothesis.

Down
1 GARGANTUAN = GAG for joke about R for king + AN + AUNT*. Some Rabelais to accompany Swift.
2 RIVER for “Test possibly”, around EfficienT = RIVETER. My last in, having been completely taken in by the River Test and wanting it to have two t’s; but that would be Rosie the Rivetter (see blog title).
4 ASTRONAUT = AS for like + TAUT for tight with RON for Reagan in situ. Another which took longer than it need have, since I had the Ron and the strait early on. Oh!, I see the problem.
5 RIDER, double definition. Arab for horse is an old favourite, like She for Haggard novel.
6 CHAMPS for sports stars + ELY for see + SEES for sights = CHAMPS ELYSEES
7 CARLYLE = CLEARLY*
8 EMMY is the answer, composed of MY for “this writer’s” and ME, being “the right person to turn up with this wrier’s award”, reversed. I’ll accept alternative suggestions.
10 SUB-MACHINE-GUN = (HUMAN BEINGS Used Carelessly)*
13 A + DRONE’S for skiver’s + S for son, with IT inserted = ADROITNESS
16 PACK-DRILL, double definition, the second facetious.
18 S for second inside A THIRTy = ATHIRST, “wanting a drink”.
20 HAGGISH, double definition, the second sounding like a marinated haggis. Yum.
22 Deliberately omitted. You’ve probably run circles around these.
23 AFRO = Aspired + FRO for the opposite of to.

48 comments on “Times 24719 – Tinker’s Belle?”

  1. For EMMY, I took ‘the right person’ to be a command to find the correct form of the personal pronoun (‘me’ reversed = em), to be followed by ‘this writer’s’ = my to give the ‘award’.

    Crept under the 30-minute mark for only the third time this year, I believe, with THUS last in. That, as well as 21 entered without full wordplay understanding. ATHIRST is a word that will always lure some into entering ‘thirsty’ first.

    1. Yeah, me for one so had to REVISIT (still don’t get?) before finishing SW. Didn’t know FAIRY CYCLE (does anyone?) and only got the dubious EMMY once I stopped being convinced that it ended ME. Consoled by getting HUNDREDWEIGHT from cryptic, the only grin of the day apart from Koro’s comment to 1a.
      1. In the immortal words of Bananarama, referencing the goddess of love, ‘She’s got it, Yeah, baby, she’s got it’. Not sex appeal, but, um, ‘just what’s needed’.
  2. A 20 minute solve, but I didn’t understand everything. PACK DRILL is new to me, as is FAIRY CYCLE, my last entry. Didn’t know of the ‘skiver’, either. I entered HUNDREDWEIGHT from the checking letters alone. Thanks for that Koro, it’s pretty clever. Regards to all.
  3. A couple of months ago I made a mild protest about ‘states’ being used in clues because it could indicate any of 50 combinations of letters. And somebody replied – rather sniffily, I thought – that RI was the first thing they always tried.

    I was planning to sit it out for a year or so before coming back with a witty response…but now, the very next time we get a state, it’s RI again. So whoever it was, I apologise for my lack of faith, and thanks for the tip! 24 minutes, with a lot of answers going in from definitions and checkers. The unknown FAIRY CYCLE and the unconvincing EMMY were last in.

  4. 22″. I don’t think I’ve seen a clue like 21ac before; it was nice to see the old ‘initially’ used differently. I entered 8d and 27ac correctly, as it turned out, but was worried about both, especially 27; ‘THE US’ somehow never occurred to me. Never heard of fairy cycle, but somehow it came to me.
  5. All fairly straightforward. Got HUNDREDWEIGHT from def and checkers and didn’t see the cryptic before coming here. 31 minutes.
  6. 58 minutes which was disappointing as I had got off to a cracking start with all of the NE going straight in having solved FAIRY CYCLE on first reading of the clue. I then became increasingly bogged down and fell for THIRSTY at 18dn which didn’t help matters. Having corrected that, WEIGHT became apparent as the second part of 21ac and the reference to coal made me think of HUNDREDWEIGHT because this used to be the standard measure of a sack of coal.I wonder if the setter chose ‘coal’ deliberately for this reason. I didn’t see the correct explanation until after the grid was complete.

  7. 17 minutes, with a scattering solved without seeing rationales. I like Hundredweight (which was one of them). One used to see them around, too – the actual weight for use on a scale. Now I look at it, I rather like Emmy too – neat.
  8. 16mins, or just about average difficulty. I got 1ac, 3ac (sorry Barry; I actually possessed one, when aged about 4) and 1dn straight off, and thought it would be a very quick solve but got held up a little in the SE.
  9. A pleasant 45 minutes or so, with no great hold-ups. Didn’t know FAIRY CYCLE but ‘fairy circle’ pointed me in the right direction!
    1. I’m willing to countenance alternative solutions, but you’d have to explain why you thought EMMA more fitting.
      1. There is an award called an EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Award). Looking at the CV of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, I notice “EMMA award for journalism 2004”. Reading upwards “Am me” + literary reference to the novel. Any takers?
          1. No, you’re right. Ignore me; I’m having a senior moment. EMMY is much better. (I was trying to turn the whole thing up and looking for a writers’ award instead of just an award.That’s a DNF then!
  11. That’s a toughie for a monday, 12 minutes and a bit. Thanks to the blogger, statistic conference sounds like living hell.
    1. Actually, I learnt some interesting things. There are some very clever people doing extraordinary things in the fields of spatial statistics, image processing, genomics, machine learning (spam detecting, for example) and the like. It’s just the bad talks tend to be very, very bad; more through presentation than content. Watching someone unaccustomed to public speaking mumble incoherently at the floor for half an hour is no fun, and Australian audiences are generally too polite to just walk out en masse.
      1. I once gave a key note presentation at Caesar’s Palace on the east coast at which the predominantly Australian audience behaved exactly as you described. I was followed by a politician who foolishly decided to start making party political points rather than stick to his brief. The Aussies didn’t just walk out they hurled abuse at him as they went!
  12. 12 minutes, so straight enough. Spent time on last in, EMMY, essaying EMMA (ME reversed and an academic award of MA, giving a person who was right for no apparent reason) before getting the “right” answer. CoD from an average competition to ASTRONAUT.
  13. An unconfident 11:00, being one of the apparently many people who couldn’t parse EMMY, and had never heard of a FAIRY CYCLE.
  14. 17 minutes. A fairly gentle Monday after a bonus weekend with two different Saturday puzzles, one of which (in the paper) was a bit of a stinker.
    I completely failed to understand HUNDREDWEIGHT, so thanks for that. A very neat clue now that I do!
    I still don’t understand EMMY. From the wordplay it looks like “me” has to be “the right person”.
  15. Fastest for a while at 15 minutes, but with one or two not immediately understood (HUNDREDWEIGHT for one) and had never heard of a FAIRY CYCLE.
  16. An easy Monday makes a change from the last few weeks. 20 minutes. I should have solved 15 more quickly than I did, and 21 went in from letters in the grid rather than the wordplay, which eluded me.
  17. About 15 minutes – Pimlico to Warren Street on a delayed Victoria line train. Straightforward enough, but got stuck on REVISIT and RIVETER for some reason.

    Oli

  18. As I understood it, eventually, “this writer’s” gives you the MY. The only person (so the “right person”) who can possess “my” award is ME, then turned up/reversed. It sort of works.
    1. Or you could read “the right person” as “the person to the right”, i.e. “this writer”.
      Hmm.
  19. A fairly breezy 30 minutes or so, with quite a few entered without full understanding of the wordplay, notably 21ac, but with one mistake – FAIRY CACHE for 3ac. OK, a CACHE is a collection rather than a song collection, but it makes about as much sense to me as the real answer. COD 9ac.
  20. 21:50 online.

    Fairly standard Times fare really, but that’s no bad thing.

    Fairy cycle was new to me but fairly clued. Haggish served as a timely reminder that I need to come up with a speech to toast the lassies at a Burns supper next month.

    1. I love the fact that Australia Day and Bairns night are on the same date. If only I could chuck another haggis on the barbie!
  21. Well, they say you learn something new every day and today I learned the correct spelling of CHAMPS ELYSEES… couldn’t see how the wordplay fitted CHAMPS D’ELYSEE until I realised my spelling mistake! Only other hiccup was ATHIRST where like others I first put in THIRSTY. I found the rest plain sailing and this was my smoothest solve for a long time starting with getting 1ac GARB while the puzzle was spewing out of the printer. HAGGISH raised a smile and reminded me of a clue in the Indy about twenty years ago to which the answer was SHELLFISH – a slurred pronunciation of SELFISH.
  22. Several seem unsure as to how this works. Surely ‘this writer’s’ is ‘my’ and if any person is the right one to turn up with ‘my’ it’s ‘me’.

    Several seem to be unsure as to how this works. Surely ‘this writer’s’ is ‘my’ and if any person is the right one to turn up with ‘my’ it’s ‘me’; the surface reading makes it pleasing and the more acceptable.

  23. expecting arctic winds later in the week so again delighted with a 29 minute light breeze…anyone understand what happened on saturday. I did the online version and when i came to fill in the physical grid in saturday’s paper lo and behold a differnet puzzle. anyway did both!
    what happened?
  24. Another puzzle of two parts, where some of the answers went straight in, and others took much, much longer. Last ones in DIAGRAM (kept trying to fit GIRL in)/EMMY. Same probs as others (never heard of the bike, didn’t get the cryptic for the weight…), but an enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

    Thanks for clear and amusing blog!

  25. A good puzzle I thought, just a little easier that the average perhaps – 20 minutes to solve. I also owned a FAIRY CYCLE in the days when such a name would not have caused a raised eyebrow. I strongly object to “over the hill” for “aged” – another type of prejudice we can do without.
  26. I had lots of interruptions and phone calls while I was doing this which probably accounted for a slowish time of 38 minutes. I found this to be a solid, but not very exciting, crossword. It didn’t have the kind of clues that give you the eureka moment of revelation. Just a steady and straightforward solve.

    Re. Last Saturday’s cryptic. Do we know why the puzzle here was not the one in the paper? Will you be blogging both? I’m glad someone here drew this discrepency to my attention – otherwise the puzzle in my newspaper would have already been in the recycle bin!

    1. As the puzzle in Saturday’s paper was such a good one (certainly better than the online one), I’ll try to find the time to blog both. Luckily for me I was out shopping on Saturday when I saw the email about the discrepancy on my phone, so I bought the paper and solved both. My worry is that they accidentally published next week’s puzzle on the website though, in which case I’ll wait.
  27. Very busy all of a sudden, so late solve and post – 6:18 online, with a couple of old rivals quicker than that. Should really have improved it be getting 1A on first look. I’ll check that linxit knows about his double ration for next Saturday.
  28. Approx 32 Minutes based on end of train and the tube journey.
    I will try and discipline myself into solving this at a regular point in the day with an eye on the clock. I always start with the DT and Toughie and this is 3rd place in the solving day.

    Not too hard today although I was held up (as others) by THIRSTY/ATHIRST which made me question other as yet unfilled ideas.
    All came together in the end.

  29. Ditto your remarks except I had the ‘MY’ part in EMMY right off. As to REVISIT I must
    revisit that clue. About 40 minutes in two sessions.
  30. 15:37 after a careless weekend caused me to doublecheck. Got hundredweight but couldn’t see why. Doubted more when misled by thirsty – then saw the light on both.
  31. I was quite pleased about having completed the puzzle in somewhat like my usual time (over an hour, but not much) until I read the blog and discovered I had concentrated so much on the NW corner that I forgot to complete 27ac. Oh well, I would never have got that one anyway. I filled in HUNDREDWEIGHT without understanding the wordplay at all, but it’s quite amusing, but I also liked REVISIT (last in of the ones I did) and CHAMPS ELYSEES for the way “see sights” is to be read.

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