Times 120430 – Times have changed for the better.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
It was in the back of my mind that this week a second Championship qualifier was due, and I was correct; you can find a PDF of it here http://www.harrystottle.com/timesq2.pdf if you don’t have a newspaper. I’ll blog it for publication on Thursday 25th May.
Meanwhile our sadistic editor has tested my patience with this pre-Ximenean job from 1970.
Now, some of these ancient relics I quite enjoy, although they can expose my lack of literature or mythological knowledge, including the dreaded poetry, but this one just cheesed me off. There are plenty of loose cryptic definitions with no supporting wordplay, so without the checkers you’re just guessing what the setter had in mind. I’ll do my best to ‘explain’ the answers but some are just ‘well, that’s the answer’ answers.
I was held up at the end because I had a brilliant but wrong answer in, early on, for 29a, so 14d became impossible. I hope you do better than I did, half an hour of I-suppose-so solving.

Across
1 No 1 Platform? (5,5)
FIRST STAGE – Cryptic definition.
6 Revolutionary movement in prison (4)
STIR – Double definition.
10 No conveyance back, but something to eat (5)
BACON – NO CAB reversed.
11 Ark used by a forest hunter? (9)
WOODCRAFT – Double def.
12 A dish for Adam (5,3)
SPARE RIB – Cryptic def. I think the dish is more usually known as spare ribs, one would hardly satisfy, but maybe in 1970 they were bigger?
13 Assistance in the can-can? (3,2)
LEG UP – Crpytic def, groan.
15 They might be made against one’s convictions (7)
APPEALS – Cryptic definition.
17 Yes, cats go wild in rapture (7)
ECSTASY – (YES CATS)*.
19 Like beauty, a dowry entraps the right man (7
DORMANT – I have no real idea what is going on here. I suppose Sleeping Beauty was dormant. R MAN inside DOT. Does DOT = dowry?
21 Member of a Savings Group? (7)
RESCUER – Another cryptic def. Why does a rescuer need to be in a Group though?
22 Brown grayling (5)
UMBER – Double def. Mephisto experts will know that an umber is another name for said fish. I’m not a Mephisto expert but I know my fish.
24 Not necessarily ill-natured people (8)
INVALIDS – Like I said, that’s the answer. No idea exactly why.
27 Pressure is put on it, naturally, for recording (9)
BAROMETER – Another vaguely cryptic def.
28 Fruity order of dismissal (5)
MANGO – Double def; MAN GO = order of dismissal. Mangoes are fruity. Yeah.
29 Among the gunners he gets the bird (4)
RHEA – This one really cheesed me off. I saw the (‘among’) hidden SHEG in gunner(s he g)ets and remembered a sheg is a seabird (as is a shag). but no, it’s HE inside RA.
30 Ill-feeling disturbs ten men in repose (10)
RESENTMENT – REST = repose, insert (TEN)*, MEN.

Down
1 Children’s stories (4)
FIBS – Not very cryptic def.
2 Paddy might find it correspondingly useful (9)
RICEPAPER – As in paddy fields where rice grows, and you write on rice paper, how else can I explain it?
3 He takes care of the pitch (5)
TUNER – Another not very cryptic def.
4 In the direction of the hospital, perhaps (7)
TOWARDS – TO WARDS being in the direction of the hospital.
5 A departure in song-writing (7)
GOODBYE – That’s the answer. I can’t say why in song-writing though.
7 Is the accent on pluck? (5)
TWANG – A real DD, well sort of.
8 Men of property as contributors (10)
RATEPAYERS – Yes well if you own property you pay rates, or did in 1970. Before Council Tax.
9 People might be a sight better for their attentions (8)
OCULISTS – A pun type cryptic def.
14 Member of the “Awkward Squad” aboard (10)
LANDLUBBERS – My LOI not least because I had it ending in B-S for ages. Not worthy of extended discussion IMO.
16 Puzzling conventions of letter-sorters (8)
ANAGRAMS – Yes, it was that straightforward as a cryptic definition.
18 Plenty have a hair-style that is on the ball (9)
ABUNDANCE – Wordplay! A Bun = hairstyle, DANCE = ball.
20 As a national emblem it has its points (7)
THISTLE – A weak CD. I thought, surely it can’t be thistle, but it was.
21 Carmen will get some backing in this (7)
REVERSE – Separate CARMEN into CAR MEN and send them backwards in reverse gear. Wordplay of a sort.
23 “Slowly answered Arthur from the ____” (Tennyson) (5)
BARGE – Needless to say, I am proud of not knowing Morte d’Arthur word for word, or indeed any word of it, but I guessed it and checked it afterwards.
25 So far, so good, as the extremist might say (5)
LIMIT – I can’t offer more than a vague explanation of this; that’s the limit?
26 Disagreeable habit, so to speak (4)
WONT – Well a DD I suppose, if you won’t you’re being disagreeable, and one’s WONT is one’s habit.

43 comments on “Times 120430 – Times have changed for the better.”

  1. Had to do the Quick to get my fix early this morning. Thankfully Vinyl posted a working URL for the Qual on the Quick blog. Did that, then this. Agree with Pip’s comments to a T. What I find strange is that I was an occasional Times solver in 1970 and never found such puzzles to be peculiar. There must have been a conversion to Macnutt somewhere along the line.

    OK … to the puzzle. Stuffed the bottom right corner. I had a confident CONGÉ for 28ac — a dismissal for sure and, I thought, some kind of fruit pudding. Isn’t there something of that sort?

    That left me with BENT at 26dn — the only thing I could think of that might be a habit. Then, nothing else to bung in at 25dn but LICIT.

    2. I was thinking of the Goodbye song from “White Horse Inn”. But Goodbyee would fit just as well (or as badly – don’t get this clue)
  3. Umber is a moth too apparently
    Dot is an archaic term for dowry apparently
    Didn’t Pete and Dud used to sing Goodby-eee at the end of NOBA can’t
  6. Well, having done both of today’s efforts now, I know which one I enjoyed most and for all its mechanical precision it was not the modern one. The 1970 crossword seemed more interesting to me and I think that its vagueness is part of its charm. To call it “rot” or similar is harsh, in fact it is just different, much as an MG TD (google it) or an Alvis is different to a Fiesta or Golf. They may not have synchromesh but still they fetch a higher price than the Fiesta ..
    1. I agree Jerry, it’s not ‘rot’, but like jackkt I’d find another hobby if they were all like this. As the past owner of a 2.5l, 4 cylinder, dodgy servos Riley Pathfinder ca. 1954, I definitely prefer my ultra reliable VW Passat diesel nowadays.
      1. You do get used to them .. serving the odd one up at irregular intervals is not to see them at their best, perhaps. I distinctly remember enjoying doing them at the time. The grid needs a broader, more holistic approach than modern ones do, fitting them together to get an accurate result, as it were, as individual clues may not be definitively correct.. perhaps you had to be there at the time 🙂
  7. Same queries as others so far. Had RENTPAYER at 8dn so failed to finish correctly. If this sort of rot was served up every day I’d find something else to do.
    1. I did manage this in just under the 20-minute mark but I had thrown in ‘tenor’ for 3d, intending to revisit it and inevitably forgetting.

      A couple of things I like. WONT made me smile, so I’ll pick that out. But a lot of eyebrow-raising elsewhere.

      I’d have to agree with the consensus: they don’t make ’em like this any more and thank heavens for that.

  8. Printed this while half asleep, wondering about the funny number but not catching on until I had done the NW with eyebrows raising and falling like a fiddler’s elbow. Not everyone’s cup of tea. So I printed the ‘proper’ one and got on with enjoying toast and lime marmalade.
    Thanks Pip for soldiering on.

  9. Ref GOODBYE (as opposed to goodbye-ee). The reference may be to the popular song from the operetta “White Horse Inn” as performed here by the incomparable Dr Evadne Hinge (and Dame Hilda Bracket): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzICnqh8Rv4N. A small section of this was pinched in the 1960s by Dudley Moore for the end of the Cook and Moore sign-off song of the same title, and that could be a candidate for the reference in the clue too.
    1. I recall Mary Hopkin had a hit with a song of this name around the same era as this puzzle.
      1. True, but I somehow doubt the Times puzzles of 1970 would have contained references to contemporary popular culture any more than they do today (apart from the STs of course). For that reason I think I’d discount the possibility of a reference to Pete and Dud’s sign-off too.
    2. Pete and Dud only took about 5 notes. I’d never thought of it as a reference to White Horse Inn. But now you’ve mentioned it I can’t get the blasted Pete and Dud song out of my head. I took the clue to refer to the musical show (which I remember well btw) not the WW1 song.
        1. I was thinking of the way the 1st 4 notes of Pete and Dud echo the Goodbyes that open the show chorus. I’d never noticed it before but it does seem that the boys were parodying WHI whether consciously or not.
  10. In 1970 I was into the Daily Mail cryptics which I’m sure were more like those of today’s ilk rather than this one which depends considerably on wordplay.
    Is 24a a cunning use of the homonym INVALID meaning “not true” i.e. “not necessarily”?
    As for a lot of the rest, I’m as much in the dark as you, Pip.
  11. I did about two thirds of this on the train and didn’t really feel like carrying on when I got to the office. I quite enjoy the looseness of the old-style clues at times, and there is some of that in this one, but it is a decidedly mixed bag. To pick a couple at random, I rather like 25dn but 24ac is awful.
    I’m not sure whether I would do the puzzles if they were still like this: I expect I probably would. It’s just a question of what you’re used to.

    Edited at 2017-05-17 08:45 am (UTC)

  12. I think really all you had to do with this was to switch your cryptic definition radar on and leave it on for the duration.
    I did (temporarily, of course, I recorded a fault free 23 minutes or so) fall foul of the UMBER clue, because as it happens a brown TROUT is also in the same family as grayling. Had to change my mind when nothing else fit around it.
    I was only doing the Sunday Times back in the day, and the Times only a couple of years further on, and I don’t recall this level of “guess what the setter is thinking” but had no difficulty enjoying this example. Answers still “felt” right, though I’m rather glad I didn’t think of TENOR first.
    And didn’t a very similar clue for MANGO come up just recently? Some things don’t change that much.
  13. Apart from 24 I quite enjoyed this, I recall spastic being a commonly used derogatory term at school at this time. Glad we’ve moved on. Limit.. Left I’m it ? 19 was pleasantly quirky 27 rather good 11 I liked…perhaps I’m just an old fart.
  14. Actually I didn’t think it was that bad. My two errors were of my own making, misspelling ECSTASY and stopping at TENOR without considering TUNER.

    As Z said, just a collection of cryptics mainly, some of them pretty good I thought. And of course the no-googling rule is out the window for straight literary quotation clues, but mercifully there was only one of them.

    An interesting insight into the evolution of the crossword. Thanks setter and Pip.

  15. Under 10 minutes, which I was pretty pleased with, but like others I had TENOR instead of TUNER. One wonders if I would have had second thoughts about that if this was a modern puzzle, in which less looseness was clearly abounding, but perhaps not. All I know is that going off by one for the first time in a month has really damaged my position on the Club leaderboard… I believe I was even above Jason and Magoo at one point, somehow! BAH.

    Great to see the likes of Tony Sever and Specialbitter at the George yesterday, and also to spend time (and drink pisco sours) with setters the likes of Don Manley, Roger Philips, Paul Bringloe and Jon Grimshaw… I’m not worthy!

  16. I think this is the first of the historical puzzles that I’ve correctly completed—albeit in two sessions totalling an hour and twenty—so I’m pretty pleased with myself. Top half went in in the first session; the south was a bit more teeth-pully.

    A lot of question marks, but all my guesses were right, even the unknown Tennyson quote, and I could just about justify most of my answers.

    I too considered “sheg”, thinking it might be an alternate of “shag”, but luckily I wasn’t sure, so kept going until I stumbled across the RHEA. That was the only place I was close to entering the wrong answer.

    I also assumed the beauty was sleeping, and I had vague memories of a “dot” for dowry—my ODE suggests it’s a specific type where “only the interest or annual income was available to the husband”.

    Right. Time for a bit more work, then I’ll have a bash at the championship puzzle, just for larks.

  17. Could somebody, yet again, tell me where I can get today’s crossword? Why is it not available in the newspaper edition? I am using an iPad so do not have a right click button, if that makes sense.
    Thank you
    Brian
    1. if you click on screen on the link in my preamble above (refresh page first in case you had it cached) it should open the PDF or download it then open. But I don’t have an ipad I’m an Android, so no expert on said tablets. It works on my Samsung. There’s also a link on the C club page for today’s 1970 puzzle. If you PM me I can email you the file. pip
  18. Add me to the list of people who didn’t dislike this one as much as some of the out-of-time offerings we have had before (as well as the list of people who put in TENOR instead of TUNER). The usual mixture of things which would certainly pass muster today, and the odd thing which probably wouldn’t; and mostly a reminder that I’m glad to have avoided the need for a compendious knowledge of Tennyson in order to solve with any confidence.
      1. Everyone should have a hobby, especially one which can be indulged in the pub.
  19. The next line from the poem is rather apt here. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” I quite enjoy these vintage ones – up to a point. The last one we had was too much even for my masochism, a DNF, but I completed this correctly in about 20 minutes. The DORMANT thing may be a reference to the original Perrault fairy tale which was entitled La Belle Au Bois Dormant.

    This was certainly a trip down memory lane for me – it’s from the time my late father was trying to get me to do the puzzles with him and I was recalcitrant. He must be laughing now!

    I meant to say that DOT is French for dowry, so evidently a 1970 solver was expected to know that.

    Edited at 2017-05-17 12:11 pm (UTC)

    1. Well done, Olivia, I’ve been in France for 10 years and thought my vocab was quite good, but dowry isn’t a word I’ve needed to know as yet!
    2. I think the divine Georgette has DOT somewhere. I get most of my arcane vocab from her. Ann
      1. You could well be right about Georgette as the source! But I also had a vague recollection about the strange practices of the French matrimonial bar some 30 plus years ago when the lawyers’ fee for a divorce was based on the size of the “dot”. Sort of a contingency fee idea.
  20. Just over an hour and a half for me. Like pulling teeth in places, but I gritted mine and carried on. Like Galspray, I have no compunction in using aids for these old crosswords, but it still took an effort to get it completed. I did finish all correct in the end. Thought of TENOR, but TUNER came to mind as well and seemed a better fit. Lots went in with a shrug. I suppose Sleeping Beauty just about covers DORMANT now it’s been pointed out. Like Jack I had RENTPAYERS until WOODCRAFT made it impossible. I’d been trying to make an anagram from (property as) for a while. I did get PAYERS from it. LIMIT went in as I couldn’t think of anything else. Did the Qualifier in 22:27, so that was definitely more to my taste. Thanks to Pip for gritting his teeth and providing the blog.

    Edited at 2017-05-17 01:57 pm (UTC)

  21. An interesting week so far, with 11 minutes something today and 8.19 on Monday sandwiching about 35 minutes yesterday (with a mistyped WARMOMGER). I enjoyed today’s but felt a bit disappointed and undernourished by Monday’s, although it was probably a PB. All in all, I enjoyed yesterday’s struggle and occasional PDMs the most. Didn’t fall into the TENOR trap because ‘takes care of the pitch’ sadly doesn’t apply to many of the tenors I encounter.
  22. 22 minutes on this but I fell at 26 down. Desperately bunged in SOOT. SOOT is unpleasant and sounds like SUIT which is a sort of habit. I was doing this crossword regularly by 1970 so must have done it before. I wonder if I got 26d first time round. Ann
  23. Didn’t bother with this ancient one, but took just 14 minutes on the qualifier. Have booked the flight for October and am off to airb&b now…

    Watch out, V, K, Z, P and the rest of you.

  25. 6:40 for me, though I must have done it previously.

    Slowed briefly by bunging in WATER ICE (referencing Adam’s ale) at 12ac and PATIENTS at 24ac, but then very considerably by 26dn when my brain turned to marshmallow as it sensed a decent time slipping away. (I eventually had to work through the alphabet for the first letter (did I stop around V?) and then the third letter.)

    As usual I’m with Jerry when it comes to these old puzzles. Most enjoyable. You simply got used to the style.

    The Tennyson quote was a doddle of course. It was indeed good to see Verlaine yesterday, especially as we had a happy time reciting poetry at each other – though I think the only Tennyson we, or to be precise he, came up with was a few lines from Tithonus. Perhaps another time I’ll respond with a few lines from Ulysses, another great favourite of mine.

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