Times 24146

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time 9:28

On the Crossword Club Bulletin board, someone asked why I continued to belong to and support the Times Crossword Club despite all the accessibility and other problems. I gave a long answer, but the short one is: because of puzzles like this. There’s not a weak surface in all 30 clues, and there’s a good mixture of familiar and novel words without anything horribly obscure, with challenging wordplay that also avoids the obscure. One to go straight into the relevant book of Times puzzles when they get selected, and I’d say a good model for fair puzzles of average difficuly for competition use – this would be just right for a preliminary round at Cheltenham.

First answers in were 11 and 18, so it was a slowish start. Biggest miss for me: getting the idea of a three-letter month abbreviation at 10, but not seeing wine=GRAVES. There are some other popular wordplay wines like ASTI, HOCK and PORT, but it’s probably worth always considering GRAVES.

Across
1 CHEQUE = “check” – a tricky one for North American solvers, whose cheques are already checks.
4 COTTAGEY – OTT (over the top)=exaggerated in CAGEY=suspicious
10 MARGRAVES – English form of the German word Markgraf. I picked this word up years ago when reading about Wagner and Bayreuth – in the town, there’s an old theatre called the Markgräfliches Opernhaus. As barred-grid solvers will know, there are various other -GRAVE nobles. Wordplay is MAR GRAVES=March Graves = “wine of the month”
11 AMAZE – ref. the fact that Hampton Court has A MAZE. Described most famously by Jerome K Jerome in Three Men in a Boat (back end of the chapter)
12 CHRISTMAS CHEER one of two I solved without understanding the full wordplay, having written down the wrong fodder for a full anag. (COLD HAM ETC SHERR) but still seen the right answer. It is of course I’S = one’s, in (C=cold, HAM ETC SHERR(y))*
14 PACER = rev. of (RE=on,CAP=top)
16 REPUDIATE = rev. of (ETA, I, DUPER)
18 ROAD TRAIN – a VERY big truck from Oz. ROA(m),DTARIN = (darn it)*
20 ROACH – alternate letters in aRrOgAnCe He
21 COUNTER ATTACKS – teller=counter (notes or votes), attacks=”a tax”
25 AFORE – old-fashioned ‘before’, best known from a whisky advertising slogan. Wordplay is A=a, FORE=warning (golf)
26 PAINTBALL = a war game for people on company outings – the modern-day equivalent of throwing wet sponges at the vicar at the summer fete. I in PANT=long,BALL=”bawl”=audible cry
27 MISQUOTE = QUO(ta) in TIMES*. Wordplay signals like “cut by 40%” are farily obvious once you’ve seen them a few times
28 STITCH – ref. running stich as well as the stitch you can get while running
 
Down
1 COMIC OPERA – MI=note in CO,CO then A REP rev., rep. being a repertory company.
3 UPRISER – PRISE in UR – an odd-looking answer word, but it is in Collins
5 OASIS = “O, a Sis” is the appeal to a family member
6 TRASHED = threads*
7 GUATEMALA = A in rev. of (A LAME TUG)
9 AVE MARIA (V, ME) in A ARIA = a song
13 METHUSELAH = ME,THUS,HALE rev. One of those long-lived OT patriarchs when not a big bottle of bubbly
15 CLAMOROUS = CL=class,A MO=a short time,ROUS(e)=get excited. My other one filled in without full wordplay understanding, probably from CL+AMOROUS=excited, not worrying about the ‘missing start of exam’.
17 PINDARIC = P,I,NDARIC=(in card)*
19 TONNEAU = (one aunt)* – French word for the back of an open car, or a protective cover for the back seats. The trickiest answer word in the puzzle but the anag. and a bit of spelling nous should be enough to get it.
20 RAT A TAT = (TATA=goodbye=cheers, TAR) rev. – this looked like new wordplay, though I wonder whether an opportunity was missed for “Hello, sailor”? Just the reverse!
22 EXPAT = (X=ten,P,A=per), in ET = “European tax originally”
23 CRAFT = RAF in C(ockpi)T
24 CALM = CAL.=state,M=Maoist leader – Pacific is the def., so California being a Pacific state is just a bonus.

31 comments on “Times 24146”

  1. As I did this on the commute with interruptions I’m not sure how long I spent on this but would estimate about 45 minutes arriving at work with one unsolved (PINDARIC) and three or four not fully understood. I was quite pleased I managed all but one without recourse to references, but if I’d thought of looking for an anagram at 17 I might have guessed it so that’s a bit disappointing.
    1. Going way back to my early days of solving, when 10 answers in a Times grid was a good result, I’m pretty sure that one of my horribly crude techniques was to try treating every clue as a potential anagram (full or partial), especially if checking letters were a subset of what looked like possible anag. fodder in the clue. This may have got so wired into my mental circuits that it still happens, though if so, it’s ‘unconscious competence’.
  2. Hear hear! Peter. I completed the NE corner easily enough, and thought this was going to be another easy solve, but soon realised that it was sterner stuff!

    Some very clever and inventive clueing here. All very good, but Iiked 21, 22 and 27 in particular. The only downside of the complexity was that in many cases (7, 15, 16, 18, 26) I had to work back from the answer to get the wordplay.,

    Peter, I’m glad you noted that UPRISER is in Collins – it is not in COED or Chambers, so I had to keep an open mind until I had the checking letters.

    At 10 I was glad to remember your advice about _GRAVE nobles (in respect of “palsgravines” in a Mephisto a few weeks back). I first considered words like “marchesas” before going for the 3-letter form of the month.

    Thanks to the setter!

  3. 29 minutes, and had to eventually go to the aids for “pindaric” and to confirm “margraves”. An excellent and enjoyable challenge.
  4. About 50 mins to do all but PINDARIC. Many I did by definition and then spent several minutes trying to work out how the rest of the wordplay worked. This strategy was never going to work for Pindar, so despite the protestations of my entire left hemisphere which was screaming “scribbled means more than simply include you idiot”, I googled Greek odes and there he was, hiding amongst the Homerics. He’s been in something recently, I’m sure, so put both wellies on. (Must ask that guy who tallies the answers to do Sundays and Jumbos as well.) Anyway, I like CHRISTMAS CHEER and AVE MARIA for the surfaces.

    And if you’ve ever been stuck behind a road train on a dirt road, you’ll know that they are indeed very long trucks. They used to be banned from metropolitan areas, but now they are allowed to roll right through town.

  5. I fully endorse your opening commentary Peter. This is what the Times crossword is supposed to be all about. An excellent, challenging puzzle – 35 minutes to solve.

    There are a number of instances where bar crossword solvers will have an advantage, which is why I was surprised that Peter missed “-graves” at 10A. At 22D A=per is from the same stable and at 17D the use of “scribbled” as an anagrind (it means to treat roughly as well as to write illegibly).

    In a whole collection of good stuff I particularly liked 12A, the neatness of 14A, and both 7D and 15D. Thanks to the setter.

  6. A very good and enjoyable crossword. My only slight quibble would be the &lit. at 12A, as I think it’s a bit of a leap from ‘cold ham’ to Christmas. I can’t decide for COD between 4A and 3D – both work perfectly, with not a wasted word.

    Tom B.

  7. Lots of interruptions while solving, so difficult to assess time, but 55 minutes in all, an estimated 40-45 minutes solving time. The main difficulty for me was completing the top half. For a long time I had only 1a, 11a, 2d, 6d and 8d. Last to solve were 10,12,and 5.

    I agree with Peter that the clue surfaces were very natural and convincing, and the wordplay was varied. Difficult to pick a COD, there were so many to choose from, but 7 and 20d appealed particularly. Pushed to make a choice I’d settle for 20d.

  8. 19:34 .. Yep, very good stuff. I especially liked the Frenchman in the trendy vest and the delightfully corny punning of COUNTER ATTACKS, which was my last in.
  9. About 15 minutes for me once I was able to get my pen out, although I did get a few in my head while I was stuck in a three-hour traffic jam on the A46 between Coventry and the M40 this morning!

    Excellent puzzle though – I agree with all the praise it’s already received, and add my own.

  10. Just me then. I though it was too, um, fiddly, with nothing amusing or original. It felt like trying to fix a broken appliance with lots of tiny components.

    I managed to stop the clock for an interruption and then forget to re-start, so I’ve no idea how long it took me to untangle the metaphorical wires with a pair of rusty tweezers and connect them up in the right order using sellotape instead of solder.

    Q-0, E-3, D-7, no COD.

    Maybe the Christmas clue brought out the humbug in me.

  11. Gosh! – that was hard, but fair.

    I had only completed half of the puzzle after 30 minutes and had to resort to Bradfords to get PINDARIC which gave me a couple of extra letters which led to solving ROAD TRAIN and REPUDIATE. The the rest fell steadily thereafter with a completion in just under 65 minutes.

    I had the right idea for the form of COTTAGEY but had the wrong kind of ‘suspicious’ for a long time.

    There seemed to be a lot of homophones or part homophones – 1a, 21a, 26a.

    My favourite clues were 18a and 12a.

    I guess I won’t be at Cheltenham in the foreseeable future!

    1. Now that quite a few times are in, I’d maybe move this puzzle from the prelims to the final. But I’d like to see the skill of solving this kind of puzzle in a good time (as in the 2006 and 2007 finals) rewarded as much as solving easy puzzles in really quick time (as in the 2008 final and prelims).
      1. Well said Peter. I don’t compete at Cheltenham but I do care about the standard of the puzzle and the merit of the champion. Taking nothing away from this year’s winner the vast majority of the 2008 puzzles were not in the right ballpark as championship puzzles. This one is a good benchmark and puzzles like it would maintain the proper status of a Cheltenham champion.
  12. Two babies trying to climb on me and / or destroy the newspaper probably didn’t help, but this was pretty tricky, about an hour, with one error – that well known Pacific State of SAYM for 24d, when inspiration failed me entirely. Doh! COD 8d.
    1. Something like that. I’m surprised you liked it so much. You normally start to feel a bit faint at the sight of a complex charade.
      1. I must have fallen in with the wrong crowd, or something – I definitely would have hated this one a year ago. I did enjoy it, though I wouldn’t put it in the same league as that one the other Wednesday that was universally admired. That was close to a 10, this more a 7.5 for entertainment.
  14. Got all but PINDARIC last night and slept on the rest, then came back and figured out the anagram and guessed correctly (phew – I’m often bad with my anagram guesses).
  15. Like almost everyone else, I found this an excellent puzzle of well above average difficulty. About 1 hr for me. My only minor gripe was UPRISER at 3dn, even more of an invented non-word than IMPOSINGNESS, which was foisted on us a few days back. However, as Peter B notes, it appears in at least one dictionary, so I guess, in cricketing parlance, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the setter.

    Michael H

  16. I agree with PB’s sentiments. I found this a really good puzzle that I was pleased to complete without any aids.
  17. After not finishing the last two puzzles this week, I felt like giving up. However, I did finish this one (two errors) in a couple of hours – with a lot of help from books etc. Had to look up tonneau, although I came across this word just a few days ago. Felt pleased I mostly got margrave from wordplay alone – so that is my COD
    Fran L-P
  18. Just to agree with Peter… surely nobody would seriously dispute that on average, overall, the Times Cryptic is the best crossword around?

    Of course we like to complain; we complain when its easy, and we complain when we find it hard. But it is very, very seldom that a genuine mistake is made. You only have to look at the ST cryptic to see what can happen 😉

    If only the website was up to the same standard, mutter, mutter…

  19. I agree with others that this was a nice puzzle, but a lot more difficult than those which appeared as championship puzzles when those appeared back this past year. About 40 minutes for me, with the last two entries being the crossing ROAD TRAIN and PINDARIC. The ode finally came, which made me guess on the truck from the wordplay. I then looked it up to confirm it existed, had never heard of a road train. Also, for a consecutive day, I think, my brain’s ‘translate to British spelling’ function was awfully slow, holding back 1A for a long time despite having all the checking letters. Must work on that. Appreciate the informative blog today, Peter. Regards everyone.
    1. Spelling here the same as over ‘ome. I worked on air on radio in Detroit and it took me a while to settle into Yankee pronunciations.
  20. I had an Austin-Healey Sprite back in the ’60s…black with a red interior. My first contact with the word ‘tonneau.’ It went from windscreen to boot.
    Unfortunately I have missed about a week’s worth of puzzles because any ‘backdoor’ URLs i have don’t work any more. Have to nip up to the reference library to photocopy them.

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