Times 24,426 – Romanes Eunt Domus

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
17 minutes, during which I felt a little out of practice, after a Christmas holiday without access to papers or internets. One answer correctly guessed at rather than known, though it was scarcely a leap of faith to arrive at the obvious answer. Overall a nice straightforward puzzle, with a single (Roman) quibble, which you may or may not need to be a classicist to have picked up on – we shall soon find out.

In the meantime, Happy New Year to one and all!


Across
1 FARCICAL – FAR + C.I. + CAL.; happily the online puzzle appears to have resolved the old problems of printing numbers in clues.
6 BUILDS – IL + D(river) in BUS; the assumption here is obviously that IL is 49 in Roman numerals, but as far as I know it’s always XLIX, in the same way that 1999 is MCMXCIX, and is not allowed to be depicted as the more elegant MIM. If the setter, or another commenter, has expert knowledge beyond mine, I’ll happily defer, but I suspect it’s a false assumption about the nature of Roman numerals.
9 WILL – double def.; as the saying has it, where there’s a will, there are relatives looking for a legacy.
10 METTLESOME – ME (the writer = the setter) + T(a)LES in TOME; took me a long time to parse this one, and as so often that tricky little word “are” (abbrev. = A, when the meaning is the unit of area) was key.
11 WAR MACHINE – ARM + A CHIN(a) inside W + E.
13 AHOY – double def.; I assumed there must be a sort of boat called a hoy, and indeed there is.
14 PILOTAGE – PI(ous) + LOT + AGE.
16 OTTAWA – [A WATT + O(rganise)] all rev; and an engineer early in the year to please Jimbo.
18 deliberately omitted
20 ANTIHERO – A N(ew) (HERrIOT)*.
22 HOST – sHoOtS aT; unusually explicit instructions regarding the missing letters here.
24 LADYKILLER – LAD + (LIKELY)* + (daughte)R.
26 ON THE SLATE – double def., “tick” = “credit sales” = “on the slate”; most people seem to have adopted the third option of “on the tab” these days.
28 CHOW – double def.
29 PERSIA – [A(rea) + IS + REP] all rev.
30 MEDITATE – EDIT in MATE.

Down
2 AGITATION – (ITAGAINTO)*.
3 COLOMBO – L(ake) in COOMB + O(ld); COOMB can also be COMB or COMBE or CWM, depending on where you live.
4 COMIC – double def.
5 LET – LE(f)T.
6 deliberately omitted
7 INSTANT – twINS TANTrum.
8 DUMBO – M.B. in DUO.
12 IRELAND – (ILEARN)* + D(ied).
15 ANDALUSIA – AND + U.S. in ALIA; the “inter alia” device is a bit of a chestnut now, but it’s a nice one.
17 deliberately omitted
19 AITCHES – I.T. in ACHES.
21 HALF CUT – double def.
23 OUNCE – =(p)OUNCE.
25 KNEAD – =”NEED”.
27 AIM – A1 M(arks).

33 comments on “Times 24,426 – Romanes Eunt Domus”

  1. This was a puzzle where I found the Acrosses much harder than the Downs. After 30 minutes I had only one Down clue unsolved but seven aArosses were still defeating me. They eventually came in a bit of rush as I struggled to 43 minutes. However it was the first one this year I completed without a smidgen of help.

    A good day for the geographers.

    First in was BUILDS, last in was PILOTAGE. No clue really stood out, but I quite liked ANTIHERO and AITCHES.

  2. I made a bit of a meal out of this and struggled to get started. I eventually ended up solving from the bottom up, taking 30 minutes that really should have been less because it’s not a difficult puzzle.

    I think the point about 49 is or is not IL will be lost on most. I read the blog with great interest, having previously assumed that IL was correct.

    Today we have James Watt so some progress even if he is as well known as Newton and we are given the additional “Scottish” hint. Do the arts folk really need such hand-holding?

  3. I had the same thought on 6ac, and a little research suggests that XLIX is correct. Mind you I didn’t try to work that into the answer – I just assumed IL was intended and carried on.

    (Its laik Inglish – yu cann spel werdz qompleetli rong butt peepl kan stil no wot u meene.)

    K

    1. As with all quibbles, if everyone knows what the setter means, and nobody fails to solve the puzzle because of it, it’s difficult to get too exercised about it.
        1. It’s another version of what I’ve said many times in different forms – the “rules” in crosswords are there to ensure that the puzzle is solvable, not to provide reasons to grumble.
          1. Just catching up three days in one, so apologies for being out of sync, but from my school boy memories, I was under the impression that the rule of Roman numerals was that the “subtraction” part could only happen next to the adjacent category, but it couldnt “skip” a category (categories being decimal powers, but with V, L and D thrown in as stepping stones).

            I dont know whether that was taken as read in the discussion, but I find it simplifies it for me. That said I firmly agree that if you can get the answer anyway it is fine for xword purposes.

  4. 6:03 – confident start with 6A despite the same thought about whether IL would ever have been written, but it did at least make a plausible surface reading, and XLIX and XXXXIX were non-starters as parts of an answer.

    10 was last in without full wordplay understanding, though I think I saw “this writer” as one of the MEs, and TOME in there somewhere.

  5. Finished eventually with, unusually for me, complete understanding of the clues (I think). Solved quite grumpily as didn’t care much for COMIC, AIM, MEDITATE or LADYKILLER, and I thought METTLESOME a bit clunky. All was forgiven however with my last in and clue of the day ON THE SLATE, jubilation once the penny dropped on tick.
  6. Easy today, c15mins which is about as quick as I get, (but none of this “bung it in without understanding” nonsense :-)) and a relief after battling with the new year jumbo. Last in was mettlesome, mainly because I put “banged out” for 6dn initially
  7. This was some tricky wordplay here, such as in Mettlesome but there were also lots of old friends to help us out.

    I finished with meditate and aim, probably because the definitions, plan and train were not obvious.

    For the second day running I almost slipped up on a homophone spelling. I originally entered Kneed before deciding that it did not look quite right.

    1. 6D reminds me that my choirmaster’s nickname is Gusto because there is a notice in the church hall saying “Sing with Gusto – Join the Choir”
  8. 13:22 – a bit of a slow start with only six answers in after the first 5 minutes, but no real holdups once I got into the swing of it.
  9. Just over the half hour, including trying to watch a very ordinary performance by Australia in the Test. Like Barry, my last in was ON THE SLATE. With the crossing letters, I was toying with IN/ON THE: STAGE / SHADE /STAVE … Until the tick dropped — as they do around here at this time of year. Very much liked the &lit qualities of LADYKILLER; but I’ll give my COD to METTLESOME. It was obviously right … but then why? Then the tick landed again.
    MC (=1100) TEXT
  10. I found this a breeze to start with, but as usual slowed up towards the end, finishing with FARCICAL & PILOTAGE in 25 minutes. IL is certainly not 49, but I can’t say I noticed it. 20 doesn’t really say “jumble the letters of HERIOT”, but perhaps it just about works if one supposes that “Herriot novel” gives TIHRERO.
  11. No timing today as I was on the move and constantly distracted. I arrived at work with METTLESOME and LET unsolved so I cheated at 10ac where the only words I could think that fitted were MEDDLESOME or possibly MUDDLESOME, though it seems the latter does not exist anyway. Once I had the T in place 5dn became obvious and I’ve no idea why I couldn’t solve it beforehand.

    If I remember correctly most cuckoo clocks use IIII instead of IV. I don’t know whether this applies to clock faces generally.

    1. Jack,

      I believe that all clock faces using Roman numerals use IIII instead of IV (although I now fully expect someone to prove me wrong!)

      I read once that the reason is to balance visually the VIII on the other side of the dial.

      K

  12. At 40 minutes, this one felt a lot better than yesterday’s. All good fun, including IL (although certain of my teachers would be turning in their graves). COD to LADYKILLER. And thanks Tim for the nod to Monty Python. I had forgotten that scene.
  13. 20 minutes or so. Unlike Tim I’ve suffered crossword overload during Winterval and I actually retired bored from yesterday’s offering whereas today’s was much better.

    Is 17 “worked out”? What has that got to do with training and is it synonymous with “as planned”? Or am I, as usual, missing something?

    AS soon as I saw 49 I thought of IL so I think the clue passes on Tim’s rule.

    COD pilotage

    1. You’ve got the right answer, but I guess you don’t go and “work out” at the gym? (Me neither) And ODE has “work something out” = “plan something in detail: work out a seating plan” – crisper than my idea of a vague allusion to something that works out being something that goes as planned.

      Edited at 2010-01-05 10:14 pm (UTC)

  14. 9.04. No real problems today so feel a bit better after failing miserably on teachest yesterday.
    I didn’t even think twice about the Roman 49. A few old chestnuts and only real delay was METTLESOME which I entered without understanding the wordplay. Now I see it explained I make it my COD
  15. I found this reasonably straightforward – 45 mins or so – and certainly easier than the two preceding puzzles. Like nearly everyone else BUILDS suggested itself fairly promptly at 6ac, and (again like nearly everyone else)I assumed without giving it much thought that IL was “forty-nine”. There’s no doubt, as Tim says, that XLIX is the normally accepted representation of 49 in Roman numerals, but on the Roman logic that anything placed after the L is an addition to 50 and anything placed before it a substraction from 50, it is, I guess, not too big a stretch of cryptic xword logic to make IL equal 49. I did manage to find an entry in Wikipedia claiming that both XXXXVIIII and IL were possible variants of XLIX. So make of that what you will. I think I’m with Peter B in taking the view that if “banker” can mean “river” in cryptic land, then there’s no reason why IL should not mean 49, even if no ancient Roman would have recognised such a numeral.

    There was some ingenious wordplay in this puzzle, METTLESOME and LADYKILLER standing out for me. I also like ANDALUSIA. The “inter alia” device may be an old chestnut for the seasoned hands, but it’s the first time I’ve met it, so it was fresh for me.

  16. Tripped up on a small handful of clues. Not surprising OTTAWA didn’t come to mind when I had 17 as WORKED OUT (seemed very plausible to me!). Similarly 19 I had BITCHES – close but not close enough – so 18 still remains a mystery
    2. Your 17D being quite correct, I assume your problem was looking at O?T?W? and believing that anything could fit. An example of the kind of checking letter grief I mentioned in a comment yesterday – names transliterated from languages with different sets of sounds to English are prime territory for it.
  17. Around 30 minutes for me, pretty straightforward. I confess I was initially fouled up by the 49=IL device, and didn’t solve BUILDS til the checking letters were in place. Everything else went in without much strain; first entry AGITATION, last HALF CUT, a usage I’m not familiar with. Nor am I familiar with PILOTAGE as the act of flying a plane. I liked CHOW, but COD’s to me are METTLESOME and OTTAWA. Regards to everybody.
    1. It does seem from Google that most real life pilotage is maritime. Dictionaries can be rather vague about this kind of thing – ODE and Chambers say very little – Oxford just has “derivatives: pilotage (noun), pilotless (adj)”, and Chambers has “piloting, a pilot’s fee” (both implied by -age in Oxford). But Collins (you guessed it) has an aviation-specific one – “navigation of an aircraft by the observation of ground features and use of charts” (by contrast with an automatic pilot I guess).
  18. I only had 10 mins to look at this today and the only clue I got was 26a -fascinating in how different minds work in that it was the last clue in for Barry & Mctext.
  19. What is this habit of of omitting answers in the daily crossy analysis? It’s rather irritating. I check the definitions surreptitiously at work and cannot have other references to hand. If the clue/answer is banal or simple, why don’t you merely omit the analysis?
    1. You can find this, and other information about the daily blogs, over here…

      As it says, “We don’t give solutions to all the clues in each puzzle, for two reasons. One: lack of time – writing this stuff takes longer than you might think! Two: so that we’re not seen as completely ruining the paper’s chance to make money with their “Phone for today’s answers” service. But if we miss out the clue that stumps you, ask about it in a comment. If you do so on the day of publication, the answer will usually come quickly.”

      Bloggers vary in the number of clues they select for comment, and have their own ways of dealing with this convention, but if, as I used to do, you simply omit clues entirely, you then invariably get people commenting that you’ve missed one!

  20. Being a comparative crossword novice got 18a wrong. Untied being an anagram for United & meaning set free altho’ I knew it didn’t fulfill the whole clue. This, therefore, set me on the wrong path. Got mettlesome but had to refer to this blog to completely justify the answer.

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