Championship 2015, Grand Final, puzzle one.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Having survived the six qualifiers, blog-wise, I was preparing myself to face steeper slopes with the Final Three. However I found this one no trickier than the two toughest of the preliminary puzzles (the crampons may be needed next week). Apparently even Magoo paused for a few nanoseconds before realising 1a was an anagram, so perhaps I was just in good form, I even twigged 3d, and finished in 20 minutes. It’s another fine puzzle with only one unknown – a plant, of course – and no antelopes.

Across
1 HETEROSIS – (IS THERE SO)*, anagrind ‘bizarre’, D a tendency to be superior to parents.
6 FLAIR – Sounds like FLARE, D talent.
9 NUMBS – NUMBERS = holy book, remove the ER; D shocks.
10 DELIGHTED – Insert LIGHT into DEED; D sent, as in ecstatic; we see this meaning of ‘sent’ regularly in crosswordland.
11 MIRANDA – MIRA, also called Omicron Ceti, is a red giant star; in two parts is MIR AND A; D island’s banished female, as in The Tempest.
12 MATISSE – MAT – dull, ISS(U)E = children, removing the U (university); D artistic Frenchman.
13 DISCRIMINATORY – Eminently biffable, when in a hurry; D unfair. DIS is the city in the sixth level of hell, according to Dante, and who are we to argue. CR I for Charles I; MINATORY means threatening.
17 ELDER STATESMEN – (MATTER LESS NEED)*; D doyens.
21 RISIBLE – R = king, (V)ISIBLE; D grotesque.
23 BACKBIT – BACK = in the past, BIT = scrap; D slandered.
25 BROADCAST – BROADWAY CAST would be New York’s actors; lose the WAY; D show.
26 ACORN – A for ace, CORN for cereal; D fruit.
27 SAMEY – ‘SAY’ = statement of opinion, insert ME for this writer; D monotonous.
28 DUST SHEET – DUET = sort of performance, insert ST and SHE for street woman; D (it) can get filthy.

 

Down
1 HANDMADE – HANDE(L) is your ‘composer almost’; insert MAD; D as manuscript is produced.
2 TAMAR – D flower, river forming the boundary between Devon and Cornwall; TAMARIND is the African tree, remove the IN D (in days). There’s also a TAMARISK tree but it wouldn’t fit the clue.
3 RUS IN URBE – RUE = regret, about all of SIN = evil; UR – old city, B – bloke’s primarily; RU SIN UR B E; D parks, literally (Latin for) country in town.
4 SIDEARM – DD; weapon, and to throw like a discus.
5 SOLOMON – SOLO = acting alone, MON = day; D David’s boy.
6 FAGOT – GO = attempt, insert into FAT = big; D bundle, e.g. of firewood. More usually spelt FAGGOT.
7 ANTISERUM – (IT’S MANURE)*, anagrind ‘remarkably’; D giving protection from disease.
8 RIDLEY – RY = furthest parts of cemetery; insert IDLE = at rest; D martyr. Nicholas Ridley, Archbishop of London, tried for heresy and burned at the stake along with Latimer and Cranmer, the three Oxford Martyrs, by horrid Queen Mary.
14 SALESROOM – S for Southern capital, (ROME ALSO)*; D lots to see in this.
15 THEOCRATS – THE RATS = despicable people; insert OC = Officer Commanding; D rulers claiming religious authority. Like the Taliban, I guess.
16 INSTINCT – IN STINT – during period of work, insert C; D behavioural pattern.
18 STEWARD – ST = saint, good person; (R)EWARD = prize, not the first; D employee of the club?
19 ARBUTUS – A, BRUTUS = conspirator, move the R up, get RBUTUS; D tree. A plant I’d heard of.
20 ARABIS – ARAB = horse, IS; D plant. One I hadn’t heard of, but wordplay is clear.
22 BUDDY – BUY = purchase, insert DD = divine, D china, CRS for mate, buddy.
24 BOOZE – I saw this as BOO = alternative to raspberry (disapproving noise); ZE(ST) = half the flavour; D drink.

43 comments on “Championship 2015, Grand Final, puzzle one.”

  1. I rather fancy the Classical and literary flavour of this puzzle, especially words derived from – or indeed in – Latin and Greek may do for some solvers, but I found it, as our esteemed blogger did, more accessible than previous GF puzzles.

    Heterosis, eh? Finally, I know what my daughter’s proclivity is called…

    Edited at 2015-12-16 09:01 am (UTC)

  2. I was quite pleased with my progress on this having complete all but 5 answers in the NW corner within 30 minutes. I worked out HANDMADE, NUMBS and the unknown HETEROSIS eventually but had to cheat to get RUS IN URBE (also unknown). Then I gave up, unable to link any word-search options that fitted M?R?N?A either to definition or wordplay.
  3. Small typo in your excellent blog, “matter, less need” not “peed” as appears. I know it is nit picking but I got nowhere with the puzzle so looking for another way to feel superor!
  4. DNF with a quarter unsolved … respect to those who managed it and to our blogger. I am going to lie down in a darkened pub.
  5. RUS IN URBE completely did for me. I think I’ve managed to get this far in life without ever seeing it, and my every attempt to make the parsing worked out led to unlikely looking phrases (perhaps including the right one). End result: brain meltdown. And that’s really all I can remember from solving this a few weeks ago (not in the Grand Final, I should add!).
  6. Finally gave up after about 50 minutes as there was no way I was going to get the final three: 2d maybe, but 11a and 3d were beyond me. I spent too much time trying to fit Madeira, Majorca and Minorca in without success. 3d was clearly a Latin phrase but beyond my humble O-level standard of 50 years ago.
    My admiration for those that could complete this under competition conditions continues unabated.
  7. For me, the final puzzles comprised 1 stinker and 2 slightly-harder-than-average offerings, with this one in the latter category and taking about 12m on the day. Didn’t know HETEROSIS (which I was initially tempted to think might begin with HERE, as in words like hereditary), RUS IN URBE, FAGOT, or ARABIS, though none had particularly appealing alternatives from the wordplay. I associate the verbal SIDEARM with baseball and Ultimate (frisbee), neither of which are exactly Times staples, so that raised a smile. On the subject of wavelengths, the chap in front of me (a previous winner) thought that this was the hardest of the 3.

    Edited at 2015-12-16 09:17 am (UTC)

  8. I struggled with this one and didn’t enjoy it at all. Under exam conditions it would have been very bad news. LOI was BOOZE, on definition and checkers. Its parsing still strikes me as obscure but pipkirby’s explanation is better than anything I could come up with.
  9. I did this in 15m this morning, but completely failed to notice that I had already solved it, even when untangling the wordplay for RUS IN URBE. This is really quite worrying. The one factor I can take some small comfort from is that I tried to do all three GF puzzles together, and I didn’t go back through any of them after finishing, so I rather rushed through this one. Still.
    The one thing I do remember about doing it the first time (which was only a couple of weeks ago) is that it took me 20 minutes. The other two were both a bit harder, and I didn’t quite finish all three in an hour.
    I didn’t notice it when solving (either time) but I don’t think 2dn works, unless I’m missing something.

    Edited at 2015-12-16 09:39 am (UTC)

  10. Too hard for me. Resorted to aids after an hour or so and still got one wrong!!
    Hats off to any one who got through it in less than 42 minutes and 52 seconds.
    Thanks setter and Pip.
    1. ..to me. 43:10. Most of the bottom half all went in OK but NW corner held me up a lot. MIRANDA was my last one in by guessing from the wordplay, knowing neither the star nor the fate of the Shakespeare character. Dredged RUS IN URBE eventually from dusty corners of the memory. Could see HETEROSIS was an anagram but didn’t know the word. Tried lots of different rivers for 2d too, before solving 1a and 9a gave me the checkers. Relieved to finish all correct without aids. A good test, though!

      Edited at 2015-12-16 10:23 am (UTC)

  11. Rather unsatisfactory exercise in obscurity that didn’t give me much pleasure in solving and would have been a nightmare under test conditions

    At 2D I think D is an abreviation for “day” rather than “days”. Didn’t know 3D so went with wordplay. And so on. Not my cup of tea.

    1. Whether it’s day or days, are you happy with the parsing? It seems to me to be missing a couple of words.
      1. It struck me as clunky and improvable and I would expect better for a puzzle in the final. However I got the idea I had to think of a tree and take away (I thought) IN DD to get a river. T?M?R had to be TAMAR and I knew the tree from Mephisto.
    2. Unlike Chambers, Oxford does give ‘day(s) for d.
      I’m inclined to agree with you about the obscurity overall.
      1. Three days, two hours, five minutes, four seconds

        3d 2h 5m 4s

        (Not my time for the puzzle, as I did not finish it!)

  12. I call that an impressive time Pip. Pretty sure I’ve seen Central Park so described more than once. Ok on the martyr thanks to the landmark memorial (although I did wonder briefly if there might be a St. Rodney). I stuck fast at the axis of TAMAR and MIRANDA and had to go and take a bath to refresh the page in my brain. No finalist me. 36.15
  13. I see the idea but I can’t make it work. ‘Flower you must remove from African tree to get in days’ would work (from a wordplay standpoint) but as it stands I can’t make sense of it.
    1. Are you over-analysing this or am I under-analysing it?

      ‘Flower you must remove from African tree in days (5)’

      I had it as ‘to get a river you need to take away IN D[ays] from TAMARIND. I think one has to imagine a comma after ‘Flower’.

      2. I agree, it seemed clear and fine to me, although the river was quite top of mind from childhood holidays. Didn’t know or care whether tamarind is a tree native to Africa or not, although I did Google it afterwards and it seemed valid.
  14. After doing the rest in about half an hour, it looked as if 2d had to be TUMON – two days giving an unknown river &/or tree, which meant 11ac seemed to be MADONNA – which was bound to be wrong for many reasons. After brooding over those for several minutes, decided to submit, to see if there was nothing else wrong.
  15. I had FLASH for 6ac so for two days running DNF

    The whole thing was a grind. Quite spoilt my morning!

    The tamarind was originally native to India and introduced to East

    Africa many moons ago! So null and void!

    horryd Shanghai

    1. Tamarind recalls Buddha & Buddhism to me, so I’d be guessing east Asian as well without looking it up. However, on looking it up it seems to be a native African introduced to India so long ago as to be considered a local. Strange things you learn.
      DNF, beaten by the NW corner not knowing RUS…, MIRA, that Miranda was banished or HETEROSIS – guessed HERETOSIS matching the start of hereditary. I’m in the too much obscurity camp 😉

      Rob

  16. Struggled with this one, several coffees, time not admitted.Forgot Miranda was Prosperos daughter which is worrying but my excuse is that the the last time I saw the play was at the Globe (Vanessa Redgrave as Propero)and I’d had a few postprandial ales.As a groundling engaged Caliban (excellent) in some cheeky persiflage, his last riposte being “look I tell the jokes here !”
    At the interval a lovely American lady, obviously not familiar with the interactive tradition of Shakespearean theatres,approached me saying ..Gee you one of the cast! Made my day darlings
    1. Unspammed. It’s the missing spaces after full-stops that did for it. Three of them, although one would have been enough.
  17. I struggled for fifty minutes with this, the NW corner being the toughest. I probably would not have finished unaided had I not come across RUS IN URBE very recently. Convinced that ‘without’ was a container indication in 9 I toyed with BUMPS and similar, wondering what holy book BPS might be. Eventually HANDMADE gave me the initial letter.
  18. A game of two sessions, but still cruising in the vicinity of 30 minutes. One of those which led you to believe some answers were more obscure than they were, such as looking for one of those something in something else plants in 3 or something more exotic than an acorn in 26. That some answers were obscure – Arabis and heterosis for example – didn’t help. Fat finger typing slowed solution still more
  19. DNF – by a country mile . The difference between simple words clued fiendishly or fiendish words clued simply defines a good Times cryptic or not so for this long time solver .
  20. Not my puzzle, I’m afraid. Perhaps I’ll make it to the final in 2020! 😉

    Much thanks to pip for helping me learn some new words!

    1. SOED has one meaning of ‘Grotesque’ as ‘ludicrous from incongruity; fantastically absurd’ and ‘Risible’ as ‘capable of exciting laughter; laughable, ludicrous’.
  22. Finally crept home in 59:04 with MIRANDA a complete guess. I’d not parsed TAMAR which didn’t help my confidence in going with MIRANDA.

    I do enjoy a toughie like this but I’d have been in trouble under test conditions.

  23. Very happy to complete this in 30 mins with much thought going into the NW at the end. Always nice to get some benefit from my many years of Latin studies. Miranda even brought back happy memories of the gerundive!
  24. I had thought this one too hard and too obscure in places. Took me an hour, ending with MIRANDA, which has something of a double obscurity to it: the star itself, and recalling enough of The Tempest to not only place Miranda in it, but describe her as ‘Island’s banished female’, without any indication that we’re dealing with The Tempest in the first place. But I got that from the checking letters. The plant is also obscure, and ‘grotesque’ as ‘risible’ isn’t the greatest, although the wordplay makes it fairly clear. Congrats to those who waltzed through this in the competition, I’m no threat to you, ever. Regards.
  25. 30 mins. I’d like to use snooziness as an excuse but I can’t today. I had all but three clues in the NW done in about 20 mins but then had brain freeze. I finally cracked HETEROSIS after I realised I hadn’t looked at the anagram fodder correctly (for some reason I was trying to construct an answer that had two Is and no T), that led me to a parsed TAMAR, and MIRANDA was my LOI after I finally sussed the “Island’s banished female” definition and simultaneously saw the wordplay even though I wasn’t certain MIRA is a star. On the plus side RUS IN URBE rang a distant bell and the wordplay for it was helpful, and RIDLEY was helpfully clued once I realised where the R and Y were coming from.
  26. DNF. Undone by MIRANDA and BACKBIT. In desperation, bunged in ‘becurst’ for 23, and therefore stymied myself on BOOZE. Now drinking merlot and trying to forget the whole thing. Good puzzle, though.
  27. I’ve recorded my solving time, but with a caveat. I think that The Times let the cat out of the bag as far as ‘rus in urbe’ is concerned in its report on the Championship Finals. If my recollection is right, then I can’t really claim an unaided solution.
    It really annoys me when the paper publishes the answers to some of the trickier clues in the Championship story before the puzzles have appeared.
    I relied on ‘the likeliest option’ for ‘heterosis’ once I had the crossers, and only parsed the Tempest element of 11a, but, on the whole, satisfied, and I thought that the cluing was excellent.
    1. I think it just goes to show how few of us read the Thunderer – even those like me with a (free) subscription.
  28. Sadly I was so worn down by Janet’s and my attempts to move house that I was more or less running on empty by the afternoon of the Championship, but I would guess that I plodded through this one in 15-20 minutes.

    Fortunately the leafy estate in Ealing where we’ve lived since 1978 (and from where we will now be quite happy to be carried out in a long box) rejoices in describing itself as RUS IN URBE so 3dn presented no real problem (though even then I was slow to solve it), but I didn’t know the discus-throwing meaning of SIDEARM, and I was only vaguely familiar HETEROSIS.

    A fine puzzle, just the job for a Championship final.

    1. Well, I was a DNF today, which is a pretty clear indication that this was an unfair puzzle with an overemphasis on classical knowledge and foreign languages. Obviously, if I’d finished it would have been a challenging but fair puzzle, expertly set. But I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

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