Times 24390 – What do you call a man …?

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 50mins

It’s been a long time since I put so many answers in on trust; this crossword exposing numerous gaps in my knowledge. When solving there seemed to be a preponderance of anagrams and part anagrams, although this really wasn’t born out by a post-solve count; maybe the superb one at 5d and the merely cracking one at 13ac clouded my perceptions. I did a double take at 1d, following some discussion of one of the Principia Mathematicae a week or two ago.

Across
1 RE + PUT + onE = REPUTE, reputation or credit.
4 (ALLIES)* containing A British = ISABELLA, presumably the I, of Christopher Columbus fame, who also had something to do with expelling the Moors from Spain (see question 3).
10 STO[NEW + A]RE = STONEWARE
11 V + O + WEDnesday = VOWED. Victor and Oscar are from the NATO phonetic alphabet and so “initially” was a kindly gesture from the setter.
12 Deliberately omitted. Ask you can’t see it in there.
13 (A SHARP SPEAR)* = PARAPHRASES. An excellent misleading definition.
14 HE[Boat]RON = HEBRON, City of the Patriarchs of many religions. My last in. I had real trouble parsing it, even when it became apparent that it had to be Hebron. The “‘s” is short for “has”. I know Hebron more from the news than the Bible.
16 (BOUND TO)* = NO DOUBT. The anagrind doesn’t really work for me.
19 SATS + U + M.A. = SATSUMA, “a seedless mandarin orange native to Japan” says The American Heritage Dictionary, also known as mikan. Like many plants “native to Japan” it comes from somewhere else. I thought it was a type of plum, which it is, but it’s too early in the morning to be quibbling over fruit. I also presume they are the Sats and not the SATS. Scholastic Aptitude Test Reasoning Tests? That’s like PIN numbers.
20 Omitted with intent. Ask if stuck.
22 INSIDE TRACK. Car is seen reversed …
25 ROOk, of A.A.Milne fame
26 A “veil” = AVAIL
27 NOTTingham outside (=without) SOFAS = NOT SO FAST. I can’t find any reference to an historic Ingham actually leaving a city without furniture, although this one was born in Hebron and his namesake wanted to rid a country of paper money and petticoats. The one I know is a city in its own right. What about this one?
28 Centre of Fleet = E + S[SAY, IS]T = ESSAYIST
29 STREAM, double definition, the second being internet speak.

Down
1 “Russell” = RUSTLE, the first of our “What do you call a man…” jokes. Bertrand Russell is famous for his paradox, which proves there can’t be a set of all sets; which rather did for axiomatic set theory, although various workarounds are available. Put succinctly, either you believe in the law of the excluded middle or you don’t.
2 P for penny + R[OVID]ENT = PROVIDENT. “Stopping”, the well known containicator/inserticator, in this instance has the “plugging a hole in” meaning.
3 TIE UP, a double definition, the second as in moor a boat. I thought back room, Yorkshire and Othello before finally seeing why it had to be what it was.
5 (EYE-PLEASING BUT)* = SLEEPING BEAUTY. Truly awe inspiring.
6 B[EVE]RIDGE for this “reporter”. One of my wing and a prayer clues.
7 SackvilLEWESt, which I take it is in Sussex, although the Sackville-Wests were more your typical Kentish folk.
8 (IT AND SEE)* = ANDESITE, a rock, not to be found in Peruvian mountain ranges. It sounded like a rock, but I wasn’t familiar with it. Three unknowns in a row. Having gone out on a limb by mentioning “work”, I now have to say “crack” doesn’t work for me as an anagrind. Why not “cracks”?
9 WARREN HASTINGS, the second of our “what do you call a man …” jokes who was the first Governor-General of India or non-voting chairman of the local board of the East India Company, whichever you prefer. Make that four in a row. It is not unusual for Governors-General to have unspecified roles and no apparent function beyond having cups of tea with visiting dignitaries, until one day you discover they can sack a duly elected government.
15 ROUND + E[A]LY = ROUNDELAY, “a song in which a phrase, line, or the like, is continually repeated”. That definition would seem to include most modern pop songs.
17 UPPER + CASE. I managed to catch the last 15 minutes of Quadrophenia on tellie at the weekend, so upper = drug was an easy get, although it can’t still be common parlance can it? Lots of Teddy Boys though.
18 EST[I for one M for mile]ATE = ESTIMATE. I had estate = car in my last blog two weeks ago.
21 BOTTOM. Another double definition, with reference to the weaver in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
23 STAYS. D.d. As found in corsets and back braces.
24 OUT (= revealed) by KN (= characters in Heart of Darkness) for KNOUT. “By” is a non position-specific co-joiner.

35 comments on “Times 24390 – What do you call a man …?”

  1. 40 minutes with one cheat at 14ac where I had wasted time looking for a five letter type of boat with an “F” in it so that I could tack “IN” on the end to make Biblical city. I had actually considered “fisher” = “heron” at one point but it didn’t lead me HEBRON as it wasn’t on my mental list of Biblical cities.

    This was another puzzle that didn’t flow in the solving and I had gaps all over the place most of the time. A harder than average Monday for me.

    I agree that 5dn is an excellent clue.

    1. That was me. I ran Ccleaner yesterday and lost all my automatic logins.

      On 14ac, I meant I was planning to remove the “F” from the five letter boat and then tack “IN” on the end.

        1. Many thanks. I knew this but I had just upgraded and lost my previous “keeps” in the process.
  2. Some pupils play in real time.(6)
    Please enlighten me as to the second def.here,’play in real time’ ??
    Barbara
    1. I’m not sure I can provide a clear distinction between “streaming” and ,say, podcasting, but Wiki offers this. I work from home “streaming” from my computer at work and am quite upset when it doesn’t quite happen in real time. I also see the ads where concerts are streamed live to your phone, but the price is never mentioned. You’re communicating with someone who assumed “capped” meant just that, instead of “that’s how much you can spend before we start charging you again”.
    2. Chambers has Stream: To play sound or video on a computer in real time as it is downloaded from the internet.
  3. Only 2 in on first run through, LEI and ESTIMATE (latter courtesy of Jimbo’s rants) so something of a triumph for me to finish at all. Guessed at HEBRON, last in.
    Yet another high quality puzzle. COD to NOT SO FAST.
  4. 11:22 – not an easy puzzle, though I made it harder with the dreaded “double letter” slip, putting SLEEPPING BEAUT at 5D – would-be champions who can train themselves to check that the last letter they write is the last letter of the intended answer (and isn’t written on a black square!) may save themselves from a few disasters. Last few answers were 27 (most checkers needed to see “sofas” and then the rest), 9 (in my head Warrens Hastings and Harding seem to be the same person), 14 (wordplay confusion already mentioned, and difficulty of fisher=>HERON).

    Edited at 2009-11-23 09:17 am (UTC)

  5. given we are nearly in December, may I suggest a rummage through the CODs to find candidates for COY. This has entirely been prompted by 5D which would be an easy nomination, given how short and crisply it covers a fair amount of info. Being able to double up the anagram fodder for the beauty part and the anagrind for the sleeping part is truly a work of art.

    I suspect mephisto solvers may point out that this sort of thing is far more commonplace “over there” but for me it was an exceptional clue.

  6. 15:01 here, SLEEPING BEAUTY straight in, which helped fill the top half very quickly. A bit slower at the bottom, with 27 holding me up the longest. I saw NOTT(Ingham) straight away, but put it at the front of the answer, so I had NOT TO …. and no room for the SOFAS.
  7. A lot of diverse general knowledge needed for this one but none of it really obscure. Like others I knew it had to be HEBRON from checking letters but had a blind spot over heron=fisher. I also put NOT T at the start of 27A and thus caused myself needless problems. BEVERIDGE was a little gift (I was born in 1942 so associate him and the year). I had heard of Mr Hastings, which helped. I thought SLEEPING BEAUTY absolutely superb. 25 minutes to solve.
  8. This was an unsatisfying mixture of very easy and very obscure. I did two-thirds quickly and then limped through to the end. Beveridge was fine but Warren Hastings was new to me. For a time I had Burrow Hastings and I had to crack Hebron before I twigged the right answer. Coming from Birmingham, I spent a lot of time trying to slot Birm into the wordplay for 27 before realising that I was looking for a small city to the east.
    1. I think the term semi-&lit has been coined for this type of clue, where the wordplay is a proper subset of the definition.
      1. Correct analysis, but a classic case of the inferior-sounding “semi-&lit” being just as clever as the real thing.
  10. I’m relieved that others found it tougher than normal for Monday. Actually, I did find it easy to begin with and solved over half the clues in the first ten minutes, then things became progressively tougher until I was left with a few in the SE corner that came very slowly (21, 24, 27, 29) It was a fatal error to think 21 must be a superlative, apparently confirmed by ‘time’ at the end of the clue for 29. Once I threw off the shackles of that mindset I saw who ‘weaver’ must refer to. My other error was to assume that in 24 KN was a container rather than the first two letters. 27 was the last to fall, having erroneously entered NOT TO .a.t, thinking the second O indicated a lack of whatever furniture might follow.
    This catalogue of errors stretched my time to almost 40 minutes.

    I share the pleasure of others in 5. I also thought that 16 was an effective, albeit simple, anagram.
    Have I missed something in 22? If the wordplay does no more than indicate the reversal of CAR in an answer of 11 letters it seems a touch deficient.

    1. 22 is reverse wordplay – car’s reversal is inside tRACk. If you try to invent another “inside ?rac?” phrase, the checked letters should save the day.
      1. Thanks. I did miss the significance of ‘inside’. I was trying to parse it as IN SIDE, wondering whether IN could mean advantageous.
  11. About 50 minutes. Hampered by the large number of unfamiliar words.

    BEVERIDGE, ANDESITE, WARREN HASTINGS, ROUNDELAY, KNOUT & HEBRON were all new to me. At least having studied at the University of Sussex, which is a stonesthrow from Lewes, made this one a shoo-in.

    COD to 5d (obviously)

    1. I’m solving this somewhat in arrears but just have to express my admiration for the SLEEPING BEAUTY clue – incredible.

      kororareka, nobody seems to have responded to your comments on the anagram indicators ‘work’ and ‘crack’, so I will. I think the intention is that the preceding anagram fodder is viewed as a(plural) set of words, so (e.g.) the words ‘it and see’ together ‘crack’ to give ANDESITE. Is it this ‘plurality’ that you are unhappy with?

      1. Thanks for your response, I hestitate to say “Behind the Times” as it is. Yes, the problem I have is with the plurality. I have it on reliable authority (from a current Times setter who I won’t embarrass by naming) that anagram fodder is always singular. Mark Thakkar has also spoken on this topic in these pages. Mark’s trick is to replace the anagram fodder with “string” as in “string of characters”, since as fodder, the characters have no meaning. For example, the cryptic reading of 8d would become the grammatically incorrect Rock, string crack. It surely should be Rock, string cracks. The latter has the advantage of making no less surface sense than the original when “it and see” replaces “string”; both surface and cryptic are grammatically correct and the surface has some meaning. The problem with the original is that “and” is part of the fodder and not an indicator of concatenation, as in say Rock string1 and string2 crack; an entirely different situation. (Sorry I couldn’t come up with an example which made any surface sense; I could only muster the equally incorrect “Rock its end and a statue ultimately cracks”).

        I have the same problem at 16ac, Surely bound to work. The cryptic reading is Surely, string work. Unless I’m missing something here, this is also grammatically incorrect. I could only think I’m meant to read “string work” as “stringwork”, something which I’m sure would be an anathema to many Times solvers. Either that or Surely, string (has) work, which also seemed unlikely.

        Given that the singularity of anagram fodder is enshrined in the pantheon, it’s clear that something is happening here and I don’t know what it is.

        1. I meant to say that at 16ac, the “quick fix” of changing “work” to “works” completely destroys the surface, as opposed to the situation at 8d.
          1. Interesting to read that anagram fodder is always considered to be singular in The Times; I didn’t know that. (In (e.g.) the Listener, multiple words can be considered singular or plural in this context, with or without a concatenator.)

            If that’s the case then these clues would appear to indicate a shift in editorial policy. I’ll try to remember to keep an eye on this.

  14. Made heavy weather of this at 32 minutes but looking back on it there’s nothing unfair, and the unfamiliarities (Hastings, Beveridge, andesite and knout) were all gettable from WP.

    Put me down as another who considered Birm at 27 and thought KN was a container at 24. It took an age to realise that 17 wasn’t going to be a capital city, even with “upper” in place.

    Satsumas are popular in the UK – very much standard fare at Christmas time. I’d advise against looking up the difference between satsuma/mandarin/clementine/tangerine – I tried last week and nearly died of boredom.

    I gave 5d two ticks which is bit like 3 Michelin stars.

  15. How I did enjoy this. RH half romped in and echo deep obeisance to the Beauty clue. However LH was sluggish and Mr Hastings followed Hebreon as last ones in. Liked the odd mix of GK needed and of clue types.
  16. I knew it wasn’t going to be my day – crossword club wouldn’t load on firefox last night, tried for an hour or so and then resorted to Opera (which prints funny on my PC). Then got through the easy stuff in a flash and was stuck with those proper names! Slept on it and managed to piece those names from wordplay. Only G-G I have ever heard of or remembered is John Kerr.

    From wordplay: HEBRON, BEVERIDGE, WARREN HASTINGS, LEWES, ANDESITE.

    Fans of proper names without wordplay can go do today’s Granuiad.

  17. 13.50 ANDESITE unknown but seemed the only reasonable answer. Had heard of WARREN HASTINGS but still needed all the checking letters to get him. Most problem with 2 which was last in , mainly caused by carelessly writing SASTUMA for 19. This caused a couple of minute delay but still took a minute to work out the word play for PROVIDENT.
    Agreed 5 was a good clue as were a few others including 2 and 22
  18. I found this quite easy, 18 mins, so must have been lucky – esp getting SLEEPING BEAUTY on first run through and knowing most of the GK items referred to. Was toying with Birm also but once I thought of Nott, that gave me NOT SO FAST (my COD), WARREN HASTINGS and HEBRON (my last answer).
  20. About 40 minutes here, needing a lot of checking letters to get the unknown HASTINGS, BEVERIDGE, and ANDESITE, which came form wordplay. First entry: ISABELLA, my last two were the crossing BOTTOM and STREAM. Everything else was OK, and I agree with the admiration for the elegance of SLEEPING BEAUTY.

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