Times 24354 – Wooden Blinds

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 40mins

A curious mix of the easy, the should have been easy and the impossible; much like life itself. Whilst checking up on Horus, a theme began to emerge. I’ve no idea what might have precipitated its appearance. No doubt somebody will tell me either what the occasion is or that I’ve made it all up. Let the evidence speak for itself.

Across
1 C + HORUS. Horus is the Egyptian god with a falcon’s head. If you scroll down to the Conqueror of Set section and make it past the lettuce incident, you’ll find this interesting little snippet. “Horus and Set challenged each other to a boat race, where they each raced in a boat made of stone… But Horus had an edge: his boat was made of wood painted to resemble stone”. (Horus was obviously wise in the ways of Science).
5 BOA + TRACE. See 1 ac.
9 INFLAMES or IN FLAMES
10 GAMBOL sounds like”gamble”, to have a flutter on the horses, say. Did Horus & Set have a shilling on the side? My last in. I wanted it to be something “ON” with SUMMON my best working hypothesis.
11 MAKE-UP, a double definition; slap being a slang term for make-up and bury the hatchet more figurative.
12 sNUg + THATCH for our friend the NUTHATCH. Should have seen this earlier than I did, but wanted it to be nightjar, the only other bird I could think of beginning with NU.
14 SNOW-IN-SUMMER. In Australia this is the common name for Melaleuca linariifolia. In Europe it is Cerastium tomentosum. Doubtless most countries have there own version.
17 (TEAM ORGANISE)* = MENAGE A TROIS. “Irregular” is the anagrind, but also looks forward to the answer. I couldn’t find any evidence that this was theme related.
20 MO[RE]ESQUE
22 P[SHAW]S
23 HOOD + OO
25 MAJOR + CAN. Another one which I could not see, despite having MAJOR. I wanted the preserve to be the JAM backwards, and was looking for something exceedingly clever.

The last two I’ll leave for discussion; if your stumped by them, just ask.

Down
2 Hill side + “anger” = HANGAR. That’s the best I can do. Collins gives wood adj. Obsolete . raging or raving like a maniac. This would seem to imply “wood” = “angry”. No doubt others will have something to say about this, the hillside, the homophone and all, but wood does play an integral role in our theme. On further research, “wood” = “anger” seems to come from Chinese Medicine, wood (or tree) being one of the five elements: wood, water, fire, earth, metal. Alternatively, you could accept the far simpler and more reasonable explanation that a hanger is a “wood on a hill”. (Thanks to anon, below). Phew.
3 ROLLERS + KATE
4 (HEROES)* around MAP = SEMAPHORE
5 BASE + N.[Judge]I. for a dog from Africa, which fortunately for me features in Spike Milligan’s memoirs. As the Wiki article attests, “Dogs resembling modern Basenjis can be seen on stelae in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, sitting at the feet of their masters…”, so I claim that as another theme related clue.
6 cAUGHT. My second last in. I was looking to take the head off a fish, having seen very early that NAUGHT didn’t fit in the space allotted.
7 RUM
8 CRO[perfecT]CHET = CROTCHET. When you’ve gone through the alphabet as far as H, sang “doh, a dear…” up to “jam and bread”, tried to remember what the augmented and diminished notes are called (without success) there’s always the crotchets and minims to consider.
13 (COMPARE THIS)* = ATMOSPHERIC
15 S[L]OPPY JOE, a loose cotton windcheater in Australia, but apparently not elsewhere. (Sorry, I missed this one on first blogging.)
16 ZERO HOUR, double definition.
18 Reception inside (HAMLET)* = THERMAL, for warm as an adjective.
19 S.[WEAR]S. = SWEARS. Blinds as in “effs and blinds”, attorneys at law. To quote Wiki again, “It was also said that during a new-moon, Horus had become blinded and was titled Mekhenty-er-irty (‘He who has no eyes’),…”
21 QU[O]IT

And the last I leave to you.

30 comments on “Times 24354 – Wooden Blinds”

  1. About an hour I think, but I fell asleep in the middle so I’m not sure. Took an age to get moresque, quoit and hoodoo and once I got one they all were obvious.

    You say that you “wanted it to be nightjar, the only other bird I could think of beginning with NU”…err, doesn’t it begin wth NI?

    1. That would make a lot more sense of the clue. I can tear up my letter to the editor then. Such usage is unfamiliar to me and to my dictionary resources.

      Now all I have to worry about is the whole Horus thing being some elaborate hoax. It’s seeming less and less likely to me as the sun rises higher in the sky. Even though nothing would surprise me when it comes to stories of the pharaohs, the author admits to more or less complete ignorance of the topic.

      1. By “the author” I meant the Wiki article author, although the statement could equally apply to me.
  3. Boy, a hard one to blog if my solve is anything to go by: heaps of answers in early, esp. in the bottom left; then … stasis. Only got into the top by a fluke: assuming CHOIRS at 1ac from the def. and then suitably altering it. Too many double defs for me today; so saved by the angrams again. (Though I should not dare say so after failing to spot an obvious one in the Sat. puzzle.) 32 minutes.
  4. 30 minutes, so a rare occasion when I’m ahead of the field so far but I expect to be overtaken at any moment. Never heard of SNOW-IN-SUMMER, HANGER meaning a wood on a steep hillside or BASENJI.
  5. Similar agonising to koro over HANGAR until I looked up hanger in Chambers. Also didn’t know BASJENI, Horus, SNOW-IN-SUMMER or MORESQUE. Bad weekend failing even to finish the S Times so was hoping for some Monday relief but 75 mins with aids.

    Mark Goodliffe on the championship final puzzles describes the clues as “tortuous” yet managed each in an average of 9 minutes. Mr Goodliffe should come round to mine if he wants to know the meaning of tortuous.

  6. 5:18 – nice and easy after yesterday’s hard grind. Any theme passed me by, though I did think 1 was very neat. The plant was new but the checking letters suggested the answer and it seemed like several other common names for plants. Nearly a pangram but no V, even though 3D could have been GALLEY SLAVE and 1A THIGHS. Maybe that means the esoteric theme is deliberate?
  8. Hope you enjoy the club and the blog – if you do the Times Two puzzle there’s a blog for that too – linked on the right of this page.

    Edited at 2009-10-12 08:03 am (UTC)

    1. Thank you. Twenty five quid’s a bit of a bargain, unfortunately I can see my printing costs escalating.

      sidey

  9. Hello, not been here before. I only signed up for the crossword club on Saturday. Nice place you’ve got here.
    I found this pretty straightforward, probably took around 30 minutes.
    Basenjis are funny little dogs, they can’t bark and their tails curl round more than a full circle.

    sidey

    1. Welcome to the blog. All contributions are gratefully received. As for signing up to the club, it’s the most fun you can have for under £25 a year.
  10. A reasonably comfortable 18 min. I go for hangar (A large building) which sounds like a tree (or wood) which hangs on a hillside, and is thence a hanger. I found this a very tight and tidy puzzle.
  11. At least I’m making some progress. I remember being totally stumped by Pshaws a few months ago and today it went in at first glance. Likewise I got the dog and the plant despite initially pencilling in Snow in August. I also got Gambol because flutter was similarly clued in one of the weekend puzzles.

    I failed on 6 though. Correctly reasoning that it was something taken by the fisherman with the first letter removed I had (m)aggot

  12. 13:02 here, but my mind was still reeling from a 25:48 slog on the puzzle from the final of the championships that they printed on page 14. I see all three are now available online here. If the other two are as hard as the one I solved this morning, I don’t fancy my chances of finishing all three within the hour.
  13. 16:01 .. Great self-restraint on the setter’s part to resist going for the “three pointer” by squeezing in a ‘v’.

    Nothing really stood out or delayed, though MORESQUE and QUOIT were a testing pair. I’m filing kororareka’s arcane theme under “should be true, even if it isn’t”.

    Off to find a quiet place to try those Championship puzzles and to write a letter demanding a DNA test on Mark Goodliffe, which I fully expect to reveal extra-terrestrial origins.

  14. 14:26 including a phone call. I too remebered BASENJI from Spike Milligan’s memoirs but couldn’t quite remember the details. I googled “basenji milligan memoirs” and was a bit amazed to find that this very page has already been indexed by Google, coming in at a very creditable 2nd position.
    I enjoyed this one. Yes, there were obscurities but I though they were all fairly clued. Last in QUOIT after MORESQUE made it obvious that SHOOT was wrong.
  15. Liked this one, did it in car on way to shops (not driving!), a 10-15 minute trip. Shaw is another wood for you…
    Finals puzzle in paper took nearly an hour.
  16. I found this kind of tough – about 30 minutes in two sittings. HANGAR a guess, last in MORESQUE
  17. 20 minutes here with no major problems. The “theme” completely passed me by. I have a nagging thought in the back of my mind that “Hanger” as a wood is used in some place names. I thought QUOIT was a good clue.
    1. I think you’re right Jimbo. Near Walsall is a village called Clayhanger – it is (or used to be) fairly rural so your suggestion would make sense.
      1. I’ve just looked Clayhanger up in the Oxford Names and “hanger” does indeed mean wooded slope from the Old English “hangra”. I wasn’t aware of Clayhanger so I think there must be other examples.
        2. and the notorious Hanger Lane (gyratory system)..

          “Hanger Lane is a stretch of the North Circular Road in the Ealing and Park Royal areas of London. It takes its name from nearby Hanger Hill Park, whose name comes from the Old English word hangra, meaning a wooded slope”

  18. I’ve just realised why I imagined that aggot might be a dialect word for nothing. It was the song from Porgy and Bess: ”Aggot Plenty of Nothing”.
  19. Selborne Hanger in Hampshire was made famous by the naturalist Gilbert White. My wife and I spent 4 hours there in glorious autumn sunshine last Saturday afternoon.
  20. Plus Deanshanger, Moggerhanger, Oakhanger(2) and Westenhanger. Aint computers marvelous!

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