Times 24,391 –

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time somewhere in the region of 25-30 minutes (forgot to stop timer), which makes it on the hard side for me, though one of those where, on analysis, I can’t really see why: I got terribly bogged down in the NW corner in particular, though I don’t now think it was any more difficult than the other quarters. Anyway, as is well established, no two people see a puzzle the same way, so I imagine this is just me.

 
Across
1 COSINESS – CO-SINES + S(on); the Jumbo I just blogged caught me out with “functions” as the mathematical term, so I was more prepared this time.
5 MALIGN – M(otorway) + ALIGN.
9 RELIANCE – [EC (postcode of the City of London) + NAILER] all rev.
10 GIDEON – “GIDDY” + ON. Gideon, of course, will be familiar to anyone who has gone through their hotel room in search of reading material and found his Bible.
12 PLANTAIN LILY – (LATINPLAINLY)*. As usual, my solution came entirely from wordplay and eliminating the impossible / improbable from checking letters, though doubtless this leapt out at those with green fingers.
15 SWARM – WAR in S(ergeant)M(ajor) – a non-commissioned officer, but an officer all the same.
16 FETISHIST – (TESTSHIFI)*.
18 TOURNEDOS – 0 in TURNED + (SO)rev; I have memories of seeing this on menus, hopefully when someone else was paying; one of a number of culinary terms related to this cut of beef; your local butcher or steakhouse may call it something slightly different.
19 UNLIT – L(itre) in UNIT.
20 EVANGELICALS – [SLAC(k) + I + LEG + NAVE]all rev. At first I thought there was something missing but that cheeky little “on” does service as “LEG” from cricketing terminology (for non-cricketers, the leg side = the on side).
24 MAILER – This is the Norman in question, though I wasn’t convinced that one who puts on mail is necessarily a mailer. Though as usual, the defence might be that if it’s not certifiably wrong, and the sense is obvious, there is no problem.
25 GOLD LACE – dyin(G) + OLD LACE. I took an age to eliminate GOLD LAME, and was trying to insert the chemical symbol AS, before I had a “D’oh!” moment when I remembered the most obvious companion to arsenic…
26 LUNATE – LUN(g) + ATE, i.e. (crescent) moon-shaped.
27 ASSYRIAN – AS + ([YR + I] in SAN(atorium)).
Down
1 CURL – double def; those from Scotland or the north of the Americas will doubtless leap to the correct sport more quickly than I did.
2 SOLE – cryptic def.
3 NEARLY MAN – another double def.
4 SECOND FIDDLE – SECOND = back, FIDDLE = awkward job.
6 APIAN – A(rea) + PIAN(o), the buzzers here being bees.
7 INELIGIBLE – I can only take this as a straightforward definition in the second part, with the first being a sort of cryptic reversal of the adjective as used in the phrase “eligible bachelor”, though this barely seems cryptic to me. Anybody care to add?
8 NANNY STATE – ANN in N.Y. STATE, which is what lies on the US side of Niagara.
11 MALTESE CROSS – (MOSTCARELESS)*.
13 ISOTHERMAL – hidden in thIS OTHER MALady.
14 TABULATION – TABU + 0 in LATIN.
17 SQUALIDLY – [A L in QUID] in SLY.
21 GHENT – HEN in G(rea)T, which is a major city in Flanders. It is testament to the pervasiveness of Homer Simpson that when Belgium had its recent constitutional crisis, every time it was mentioned on Radio 4 news, I couldn’t help myself from thinking “Stupid Flanders”.
22 WADI – WAD(e) = 1.
23 DEAN – E(nergy) in DAN; the Dan in question has been appearing in the Dandy for long enough that I imagine every British based solver knows him without thinking, though he might be more obscure to overseas solvers.

32 comments on “Times 24,391 –”

  1. This flowed quite nicely and took me 40 minutes before I got stuck with 7dn,10ac and 26ac unsolved. Then I took a break and resumed, spotting INELIGIBLE and GIDEON immediately but 26ac still wouldn’t come to me. I then resorted to a solver and the answers it suggested made me realise that something was wrong so I checked everything in the SW and found I had carelessly put TABULATING instead of TABULATION at 14dn. Once I had corrected that, LUNATE fell into place. After this week’s ST puzzle I’m relieved the answer to 25ac isn’t LACE GOLD
  2. An easy puzzle for me – 20 minutes to solve with no problems or queries other than 7D, my last in, which I also don’t fully understand. I liked RELIANCE – a neat clue.

    As anticipated not even a nod towards the 150th anniversary of publication of “Origins”. Poor show really.

  3. I got completely stuck with this one after over an hour, so thanks for the explanations. Most difficult, NW corner and GOLD-LACE. COD CURL.
  4. This one stumped me as well, perhaps 40 mins in fits and starts. Lots of good stuff and my COD choice is 6D APIAN, where ‘of buzzers’ is very nice. Not sure about 5A, however: if ‘and be’ is just a link to help the surface, it doesn’t work for me.

    Tom B.

  5. Is it a bizarre coincidence or a conscious decision by the crossword editor that two answers in today’s crossword also appear in the Times 2 grid?

    Finished in just under 35 minutes with GIDEON and INELIGIBLE being the last to fall.

    Slow but steady from beginning to end. The hidden word at 13d took longer to fall than it should. On TOURNEDOS I was thinking of ‘doorstep’ for thick slice for a long time.

    1. I am assured by the respective xwd editors that “bizarre coincidence” is the correct description. I’ll save any further comment for a while just in case anyone still has one of the two left to solve.
      1. I hope I did it discreetly enough! Nice classic puzzle, not hard, down in 20 m helped by anagram placings. Last in top left corner 1d, as was not in maths mood for functions thinking parties… Did not like definition of mailer (wrong dic again?) Clue most pleased to solve – lunate.
        1. Cross-blog responses! (fmks’s comment appeared on Tony Sever’s RTC blog)

          I’d hope that anyone who would be really troubled by comments like this would solve both puzzles before looking at any blogs …

          I don’t think you’ll see mailer = “one who puts on mail” in any dictionary – I think it’s based on the same kind of logic as flower=river (mail = cover with (chain-)mail is there) – and if we allow that kind of trick I like seeing some new ones rather than just a small list of clue-writing clichés.

  6. Over 30 minutes. Like TT I found the NW corner toughest, with cosiness, nearly man, sole and curl last to succumb.

    I couldn’t see the wordplay for evangelicals at all so thanks for the explanation.

  7. Resorted to aids after an hour with 7 still unsolved. Filled in 5/7/10 using aids, but still couldn’t crack the NW corner. I eventually got 1a and realised my 3d was wrong. I’d put in LITTLE MAN rather than NEARLY MAN. With this corrected, the rest went in quite easily.

    The only word I didn’t know was PLANTAIN LILY, and that was my first one in! How weird is that?

  8. 20:14 for me, so definitely harder than average, although it would have been 3 minutes quicker but for 1D, which took a long time coming at the end. I also took far too long to spot the hidden ISOTHERMAL, with MALIGN and NEARLY MAN also holding me up for no good reason.
  9. Done in dribs and drabs over the course of the day in less than ideal solving conditions, but I’m sure it would have been a similar story if all the crossword planets were in alignment; I found it difficult in other words. The LHS was almost impregnable until I saw COSINESS and corected CROWD at 15. The SW was last to fall, having completely missed the hidden ISOTHERMAL. I was completely unfamiliar with TOURNEDOS (by that name) & NEARLY MAN. Apart from that you see before you a beaten and cowed man.
  10. 12:21 – nicely challenging. Saw 12A as a possibility immediately but plant-name paranoia nade me wait for some checkers before writing it. last answers were all in the northern half, with 7 and 5 last in.
    I think the only crypticness in 7 is the possibility of reading it as one statement and not dividing it at the comma. It’s just about possible to see UNSUITABLE as a valid answer too, if you think of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy.
  12. got stuck finally in the NW corner. took a long time to see curl and cosiness and reliance
    tricky tuesday puzzle
  13. I did this in a couple of sessions with wadi being my last in. No-one else has mentioned it so it must be in everyone else’s vocabulary. Paci and wadi both fit the wordplay but I decided that wadi was the most plausible because of Wadi Halfa and possibly also the Irrawaddy and Showaddywaddy.
    1. As yesterday’s blogger noted, “stop” has two meanings that are exploited by Times setters – if A stops B, it can either go inside B, as in “stopping a tooth”, or outside it by way of the arrest/hold meaning of “stop”, which matches “limited at both ends”. So for any use of “stop” you must consider both options. Either could apply and you might see both in the same puzzle.
  18. Took much too long, and didn’t record a time. About 25 min to do all but the NE corner. INELIGIBLE and GIDEON came slowly, then I ground to a halt with 2 left (MALIGN,APIAN). I then went for on-line assistance, but had to spend half an hour trying to find out why I couldn’t get through. Moral: Don’t let your cat play with modem cables. A very nice crossword. I particularly liked COSINESS for its double take value, and the nicely hidden ISOTHERMAL, but COD to my nemisis, MALIGN.
  19. A long and slow solve for me, taking about 55 minutes. I also had trouble with INELIGIBLE, trying to see how the wordplay could be unravelled, but deciding in the end it’s just a cryptic. But my main slowdown was in the NW with NEARLY MAN/SWARM, my last entries. NEARLY MAN is not a term in use over here, at least within my earshot, ever; I long considered that it must be NEARLY RUN, which with liberal use of imagination might fit the ‘not the expected success’ def. But there was no reasonable word I could think of that would have 15 end with ‘R’. So I went with SWARM despite the fact that the SM for ‘officer’ was one of those that just had to be even if I didn’t get it. It eluded me until I came here to see the Sgt Major explanation, thanks. First entry: CURL. My COD: GIDEON. Regards to all.
  21. Early away this morning and little time to do xwd so went straight to aids and finished quite quick. Had I not used aids I think I would have struggled. Took an age to see the hidden word but was thrilled, as only the barely numerate would be, to put COSINESS straight in.
  23. I didn’t find this at all easy, but 7dn was my last in as well. On reflection, this seems to me a good example of an essentially straighforward clue that disguises its straightforwardness rather effectively. As I see it, the clue simple exploits the reverse of two different meanings of “eligible” – eligible as in “he is eligible for a British passport” and elegible as in “an eligible bachelor”, a man considered a good catch for a woman seeking a husband.

    I agree about the failure to mark the Darwin anniversary.

  24. The 24 Nov Times2 puzzle had SECOND FIDDLE across the middle row, and MOMENT VIOLIN (synonyms of these words) down the middle column, forming a cross. Elsewhere in the grid, MALTESE CROSS was another answer. The cryptic puzzle had SECOND FIDDLE and MALTESE CROSS as its two centrally positioned down answers.

    But the two crossword editors have assured me by e-mail that this all happened entirely by accident.

  25. This flowed smoothly until the last few entries, mainly NE corner and GOLD LACE, when I came to a halt, and, receiving a call to bring forward an appointment, I left it until the following day, when I got APIAN, MALIGN and GOLD LACE quite quickly, but failed to get 10 in the end. I thought the clues to these last few words were rather good. Time for the grid minus one was something like 20 minutes + 10 minutes.

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