24649 – the long-awaited weekday stinker?

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 17:10

Toughest weekday puzzle for ages, for me – I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a case of blogger’s nerves. Answers solved early on were fairly thin on the ground – and mostly in the bottom half of the grid – 12, 20, 26, 27, 7, 17, 22, 23, 24. Only two went in without full wordplay understanding – 3 and 13. The harder answers came pretty well in groups filling out the four corners in the order SW, SE, NE, NW.

There were a few bits of knowledge required, but most of the difficulty seems to come from crafty clue-writing.

On reflection: not quite a “stinker” – that’s probably reserved for the ones that take me more than 20 minutes. But a good stiff test all the same.

Across
1 CATEGORIC=unqualified – E in (Acrtic, go)* – it took a bit of effort to make sense of the cryptic reading but I think “A to travel in B” is OK for saying that A is an anagram of B
6 PAS(s) = “succeed in” as in “He passed Geography”,T.A. = (Territorial) Army
9 PROLO(N=noon)G – “prolog” being the US spelling
10 R,(ch)ICHEST(er) – made harder by a longer-than-usual “heart of” component
11 TAKE TO TASK – 2 defs, one cryptic
12 W.I. = West Indies, M.P. = representative
14 M=mass,O(c)TET – I wasn’t 100% sure that all motets are sacred pieces, but ODE agrees
15 LAM.=short book,PLIGHT=promise, usu. with “troth”
16 LYME REGIS = (grey slime)* – this took longer than it should have done because L?M? only suggested LIME to me. The literary reference is to Louisa Musgrove in “Persuasion” – full news at the Jane Austen blog (where some of the pictures may be slow to load)
18 TIPSY – 2 defs, one whimsical (“like some pieces of advice”=”like tips”)
20 S(teer),ARK – I’ve never visited Sark but was almost certainly conceived there.
21 BlUrB,BLEW=wasted,RAP=criticism – here is the ecological version, in which “Manic Mode” is strongly recommended.
25 ACCOUNT – 2 defs, one using the phrase “turn to account“
26 RENTIER = (retire,N=new)* – “a person living on income from property or investments” covers interest as well as rent
27 (r)EL(e.g.)Y
28 READY=prompt, MADE=”maid” – “beautifully suited” seemed hightly debatable but could be read as “very well suited”, for which I think there is some support in colloquial usage
 
Down
1 CAPE T(own) – here are the kings
2 TOO(L)K IT
3 GHOSTS=play (by Ibsen), TORY=right (ODE has “often the Right” so “right” alone is just the right side of the line)
4 ROGET = collector of words – letter-change in “roger” = “I acknowledge” in radio communications
5 CHRISTMAS – cryptic def (ho ho ho)
6 PECK – two defs, one an actor, he says in case someone’s never heard of him
7 SEE=”spot”,KING=ruler – relatively easy as the meanings of “spot” and “look for” are as closely related as the forms of the words they represent, though as the words have different origins, no crossword pedants can say “same roots!”
8 A(N.T.=New Testament=books,I)PATHY
13 S(LATTE=coffee,R.N.)LY – watch out for knowing = “sly” (or “fly”)
14 MILKS = takes advantage of, HAKE – “being in the” is a fairly long linking phrase that helps to confuse a bit. There’s also MILKS,T(r)OUT which comes quite close to matching both definition and wordplay
15 LEG=on,CUTTER=ship – as far as I can tell from this example, a leg cutter moves sharply away from the apparent direction, which may mean sharply towards the batsman or stumps
17 M=medium (clothes sizes),1=single,(o)RACLE
19 PER(D.I.)T,A=answer – the Wagdagger girl is in “ A The Winter’s Tale”
22 BERIA = “burier” – I suspect you need Home Counties pronunciations of both the henchman and the sexton here
23 today’s omission – it should be straightforward with checking letters
24 PUN=joke,Y=”why”

49 comments on “24649 – the long-awaited weekday stinker?”

  1. Delighted (amazed) to have finished this correctly! Glad to see that my two ‘it can’t be anything else’ solutions (3dn, 19dn) were correct: could not see the wordplay at all. Many thanks Peter for the brilliant elucidation.
  2. Well, I found this tough so am quite pleased it was reckoned so by PB. 37 minutes but unfortunately with Limp instead of Wimp which just didn’t see. COD Tipsy just for the insouciant nerve of the rationale.
  3. Having fallen at the last on my last 2 outings I was pleased to limp home here although no doubt lapped a few times by the speedsters (and even the “strollers”).
    CAPET from wordplay and ACCOUNT from definition and I can’t claim to have recalled Ms Musgrove but was aware that Lyme Regis was a place to be avoided by literary heroines. Didn’t know ORACLE could be a prophecy. Expect the cricket pedants to be out in force on LEG CUTTER. COD to GHOST STORY simply for giving me a rare feeling of smugness once I had figured it out.
    1. Were you expecting someone to complain that leg cutters (unlike leg breaks) involve a mild amount of spin and so don’t move sharply away?  If so, fair point – and a good excuse to revisit Shane Warne’s “ball of the century” (00:28–00:45), twice.
      1. Concise Oxford has (for sharp) “making a sudden change of direction – a sharp bend”, not “making a change of direction of at least n degrees”. Warne’s ball may have a greater change in direction, but that doesn’t disqualify the leg cutter. (Just as your 20 minutes today is a fast time, even though some were faster.)
        1. What you count as sharp (like what you count as fast) varies with the context.  If we’re talking about cricket balls, I wouldn’t count a leg cutter as turning sharply.  Indeed, a helpful way of explaining to a batsman the difference between a leg break and a leg cutter would be to say that the former turns sharply while the latter does not – even though a leg cutter admittedly turns more sharply than, say, the boundary rope.

          Clues evidently come without a context.  But that doesn’t mean setters should be free to choose their own contexts, because otherwise they could e.g. define elephants as small (which, after all, they are – compared to, say, Mars).  Instead, I suggest that any implicit context that a setter relies on should be constrained by predictable expectations at the solver’s end.

          Of course, we could agree on that general point while disagreeing about this particular clue.  For what it’s worth, though, I spent a while wondering whether the answer was some variant of LEG BREAK (e.g. a mistaken plural), and I think if it hadn’t been for the slightly misleading “sharply” I’d have thought of LEG CUTTER sooner than I did.

          1. I should have saved us both time by looking up cutter as well as ‘sharp’. The Oxford definition suggests to me that within the context provided by dictionary definitions, the clue is correct. (And the same context would also confirm the verbal size of an elephant.)

            I think you’re experiencing the local expert’s discovery that dictionary definitions don’t always say what you’d want them to say – I’m not sure you’d be happy with their leg cutter definition either. But for crossword clues, the dictionary is the umpire …

            1. I’m surprised at the definition given for “leg cutter”, which I hadn’t bothered to look up.  From the bowler’s point of view, leg cutters and leg breaks are very different beasts – the latter involves a violent rotation of the wrist that most bowlers can’t (or at least find it hard to) achieve, while the former is more in the fingers than the wrist, and much easier.  Of course, from the batsman’s point of view it’s more a matter of degree (though it helps to watch the hand to spot what kind of ball you’re dealing with).

              I speak as an amateur, by the way, and a lapsed one at that; I haven’t played cricket since chipping my shoulder (no, really) when I was 13 or 14.  But back then I would have been outraged at the assimilation of my peculiar art – which I’ve heard called that of the “dusky twirler”, as for some reason it seems to be a subcontinental speciality – to mere finger-spinning.

              But yes, if arbitration is called for, I suppose the umpire must be the dictionary – as long as it isn’t bloody Collins.

      2. Warne was a leg-spin bowler and the ball that bowled Mike Gatting – who incidentally I bumped into at this year’s Whitgift Festival, still visibly shaken – but had he been bowling to David Gower the ball would have moved sharply in rather than away, but doubtless with the same result.
  4. I feel much better about a bit of cheating to finish correctly in 40 min. Rather weird in that as the clues fell, they retrospectivly did not seem as difficult as the first reading led me to believe. It felt that I was continuously (and continually) being wrong-footed. Not sure whether this was a damp squib or a cracker.
    1. Hence a DNF for me also. The first in decades. (Insert sad emoticon.) Possibly the effect of new medication.
  5. Just pleased to finish this one, which I faffed about on for far too long. Symptomatic of my travails were 1 and 9 ac, where I homed right onto the right sense of the respective words (‘unqualified’ and ‘make last’) but didn’t let it help me until I was limping home. Wanted to put ‘pimp’ for the Caribbean gentleman before seeing the correct answer, which must be a nod at the subconscious level to my days repping in Brixton and Peckham, where, incidentally, to cash a cheque was to ‘sausage [& mash] a Gregory [Peck]’. At 15ac, I correcctly assumed LAM was an abbreviation for the Lamentations of Jeremiah and this helped me get the LEG part of the cricketing term. However, true to form, I fouled this one up, opting initially for ‘leg turner’, which means nothing in any sport – in any sphere – so far as I’m aware. Slowed myself up further by thinking the enumeration must be wrong as 14dn and by trying to make ‘Freet’ a family of kings. Hadn’t come across PERDITA in Shakespeare (only in 101 Dalmatians) – so ‘Portias’ had to do service until that one fell. Just another day at the office for me …
  6. Quite a nautical theme to this – two ships, sailors, fish, the drink. Even a Chichester, though not Sir Francis.

    I’d say it was tough but not a stinker. 80 minutes to finish, with most of the problems coming on the port side. COD to LEG CUTTER – simple and elegant.

  7. A leg cutter is generally understood to be movement from the leg side to the off side after the ball has pitched caused by the action of the fingers across the seam when the ball is delivered by a non-slow bowler (i.e., fast or medium-fast). Its rough equivalent for a slow bowler would be a leg break, although typically that involves wrist action. A leg cutter is sometimes difficult to distinguish from an away swinger (which moves the same way – from the leg side to the off), which owes more to the high action of the bowler and the closeness of his point of delivery to the stumps. (Plus, any vaseline he’s managed to rub from his hair onto the ball, of course.) And, as its name suggests, an away swinger tends to do much of its movement in the air.
  8. Had a go at this in the morning (rather than in the night when my brain is more awake), saw Christmas and richest straight away, rentier was easy because of the similarity to a Dutch word with the same meaning, and the dictionary confirmed its existence in English. Then Beria popped up and bubblewrap. After that nothing…
    So I came here, saw the heading and decided not to waste any more time and read the blog with interest, thank you Peter for saving me the time to try and figure it out myself, there are some clues I would never have solved.
  9. 20:00, after two minutes failing to justify the unknown PERDITA (19dn) because I still haven’t internalized the at best dubious use of “X stopping Y” to indicate Y’s containment within X.  Other unknowns were Louisa Musgrove (16ac LYME REGIS), CAPET (1dn) and BERIA (22dn).  RENTIER (26ac), Ghosts (3dn GHOST STORY) and SLATTERNLY (13dn) were unfamiliar.

    I found this an enjoyable challenge, despite various manifestations of what I’d call laxity.  (Besides “stopping”, I’d query “to travel in” as an anagram indicator (1ac CATEGORIC), the lack of question marks at the end of 11ac (TAKE TO TASK) and 28ac (READY-MADE), “that moves sharply away” as a definition (15dn LEG-CUTTER), and “listen to it” as a homophone indicator (24dn PUNY), and that’s ignoring the familiar grammatical divide.)  I’ve put all that in brackets because, as I say, I enjoyed it – it’s laxity without compensation that I can’t stand.

    Clue of the Day: the simple but effective 20ac (SARK).

  10. As a result of train disruption this morning I lost count of the exact time taken to complete this puzzle. Although it struck me as quite tricky I don’t think it took me any longer than some recent puzzles and I hadn’t considered it as a candidate for a “stinker” until reading the blog just now. Certainly, unlike yesterday’s, I was able to finish it without resort to aids apart from checking some things after the event. I would estimate it took me somewhere between 50-70 minutes but there were a lot of distractions re train information.

    Wasted time at 3dn trying to make the play GHOST TRAIN by Arnold Ridley.

    1. I was also convinced for a long time that it was GHOST TRAIN, a play I saw at the Bradford Alhambra when I was a teenager. Didn’t realise it was written by Arnold Ridley; oddly enough the production I saw starred his Dad’s Army colleague Ian Lavender, whose character, Pike, cropped up in a recent clue.
  11. Quite chuffed to finish this correctly in under an hour, given that even Peter B struggled a bit (at least by his high standards). Got a bit bogged down at the end in the NW corner. I’m with Jack in finding this puzzle definitely tricky, but not in proper stinker territory. It obviously helped if you immediately recognised the Austen and Waggledagger references, which I happened to do on this occasion. (On a pedantic note, Peter, it’s The Winter’s Tale and not A Winter’s Tale, though almost everyone calls it by the latter name). WIMP at 12ac raised a chuckle. I think we can expect some fireworks from Jimbo over the BERIA/busier pun, but I enjoyed it.
  12. 24 minutes, even more fun than yesterday. Clues you could really get your teeth in, and at least one reference (Louisa) that I didn’t know, but saved by a decent anagram. BERIA’s the only dodgy clue, where I think the soundalike should be qualified more than somewhat – maybe as high as PhD! Laughed out loud a couple of times, probably worrying the Central Line. WIMP, for that reason if nothing else, is my CoD, closely followed by the delicious TIPSY.
  14. First official timed puzzle in the run-up to Cheltenham, and was thoroughly disheartened with 20 minutes until I read the blog! Would have been quicker had I not originally opted for TAKE IN HAND rather than TAKE TO TASK.

    Lots in from the wordplay rather than full understanding, but no errors so maybe not quite as disheartening as I initially thought!

    Oli

    1. “No errors” is the key. I can’t remember whether you’ve competed before, but if you complete the puzzles in your preliminary round correctly inside the time limit, you can walk away with your head held high (and you’ll almost certainly beat one or two “hares” who go just a bit too fast).
  15. Too lazy to look up rentier so failed with that and Perdita. Put in lamplight without understanding why lam = short book. Still don’t. Assume I’m being thick
    1. It’s “short book” because it’s an abbreviation for the Old Testament book “Lamentations”, also called “Lamentations of Jeremiah”. This book played a part in an old Times crossword story – see comments in this posting for details.
    2. On 15ac, I’m guessing that LAM is short for Lamentations, one of the lesser known books of the OT. But I could be wrong.
  16. 58 minutes, with much of that time spent at 15 (I always dread the cricket clues) and a careless slip at 14 down when I put in MILK STOUT instead of MILK SHAKE; but a very good puzzle, I thought with a balance of analysis and rummaging through the mental lumber that suits me. BERIA raised a smile, if it’s possible to smile at the name of one of history’s monsters; the setter could have had some fun had he included Beria’s first name.
  17. Done in two sittings with an appointment in between so no time but certainly the toughest puzzle for some time, which is pleasing in itself.

    There is looseness that others have highlighted and some obscurity. At 15D I don’t think “that moves sharply away” is sufficient definition. I got it from word play and checkers. At 16A I got the anagram straight away (the place is just down the coast for me) but had no idea who Louisa was. Solved 22D BERIA from the definition but couldn’t make any sense of the cryptic – never even realised it was supposed to be a homophone – enough said!

  18. I finished this one in a relatively good time (for me), but got fed up with yesterday’s offering and abandoned it after only filling in five answers. So I was surprised to see Peter label today’s puzzle a “stinker.” Gradese
  19. 24:31 .. an improvement on recent days for me, perhaps because the challenge was more enjoyable.

    I’m going to call BERIA a hm..onym.

    Some looseness, sure, but generally in a good cause. This felt like a genuine battle of wits with the setter, which is how it should be.

  20. After two “Dude, Where’s My Car” references in consecutive days (SHIBBY and BUBBLEWRAP – look for DUDE, SWEET, or CONTINUUM TRANSFUNCTIONER tomorrow), I came undone on not having heard of 22 down and thought BURIA sounded like a good idea. It wasn’t.
  21. 24 mins, last in was BERIA where I’d have expected wordplay based on ‘Iberia’. I agree with all Mark’s reservations but enjoyed the puzzle and thought both 6A PASTA and 7D SEEKING were excellent, tight clues.

    Tom B.

    1. I forgot to give the setter a brownie point for not using Iberia (or more likely, Siberia) at 22D.
  22. This was a cracking puzzle, completed in 45 minutes. I thought that WIMP and TIPSY were lovely:and CHRISTMAS raised a loud giggle!

    After a run of EP puzzles, the last two have been progressively as one would expect. Stinker tomorrow or Friday, anyone?

  23. I don’t know exactly how long it took me to limp through to the end of this, but it must have been well over an hour – and of my two guesses at the end, one was definitely not RIGHT!
    Can we go back to the easier ones, please? pretty please?
  24. About 40 minutes here, ending with the unknown LEG CUTTER. Had no idea who Louisa was in 16A either, but the wordplay for both got me there. RENTIER was also new to me. But I got a perverse smile when I saw BERIA, not a piece of common knowledge any more, but a very clever clue. Nice puzzle, so hats off to the setter. Regards to all.
  25. Well, it might not be a stinker, but it took my lunchtime to polish off all but 8, with the rest falling in dribs and drabs through the rest of the day. I also questioned the definition in 28ac. And two obscure cricket references in one clue (15d)? Arghh!
    1. LEG CUTTER (15dn) is certainly not something you’d be expected to know, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to the equivalence between “on” and “leg” – it’s long been a cliché in the crossword world.
      1. After staring at that particular clue for what felt like an age, it’s one I’m unlikely to forget, I think! Famous last words…
  26. 12:15 Thought I had got on quite well today and the blog confirms it. It was good to get LAMPLIGHT quickly and knowing BERIA and LEG CUTTER helped. If you hadn’t heard of the former or know nothing about cricket you had a problem. Didn’t know Louisa Musgrave or the CAPET kings – thought this was going to be (Kin)Shasa at first. Didn’t see the wordplay for GHOST STORY (clever) and needed that before I could solve 1a and 1d which were last pair in. Good puzzle
  27. I struggled around until I only the NW was unconquered and then I stopped. I returned some time later, but can’t say the rest did me any good. Definitely a teeth puller. Unknowns abounded. Questioned the “to travel in” but not leg cutter. Still don’t get father’s day. And so to bed.
    1. CHRISTMAS is a Father’s Day (namely, Father Christmas’s Day).  I believe that’s all there is to it.
      1. Sorry to make it look like Argue with Mark Day, but although that’s all there is to it in explanation terms, the discovery that one card-buying occasion works as any kind of cryptic clue for another one is rather wonderful – and as far as I know, a new discovery.
        1. Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that it was a bad clue – only that there wasn’t much to “get”.
          1. Sorry, didn’t mean to start an argument. I thought Father Christmas might have something to do with it, but given the comments, I began to suspect I’d missed some religious overtones involving The Trinity (given the appearance of ghosts at 3d) or a sexual innuendo involving UK slang. My therapist agrees I must stop reading more into clues than is there. They are just clues and not instructions from a supreme alien life form. They are just clues and not instrutions …
  28. Out all day today so only got to this this evening.
    A rather odd solving experience: it felt extremely hard as I was solving it so I was very surprised to look at the clock and see I’d finished in just under half an hour.
    Lots to like and nice variety. A very good puzzle I thought.

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