Times 230363 from 1963 – from me to you

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Today’s retro puzzle in place of the Championship qualifier (q.v., it took me [deleted see below} minutes) is from 1963; a memorable year in many ways. Aged 15 I tackled nine O Levels (see 20a below); the Beatles reached No. 1 for the first time, Harold Mac resigned, JFK was shot by someone, possibly it was a conspiracy. I’d never seen a Times crossword or indeed the newspaper, my parents being loyal Daily Mail people.

I had a few palpitations when I saw today’s offering was an oldie; I’ve struggled before with these, especially pre-war ones, the wavelength seems different. Yet I soon found I had 80% of this done in ten minutes, with a few stubborn ones in the NE and SW to polish off. Another ten minutes and we were all done (I hope). And I did enjoy it, even if it was mostly easy and had some real chestnuts.

Across
1 BADGER – a nice easy DD for starters.
4 FLATIRON – My LOI. /after wrestling with A, L(earner) going inside something, I saw it was TIRO (beginner) inside FLAN (pastry); D heavy production.
10 TALLEST – ALL inside TEST; D the biggest.
11 VATICAN – I between VAT and CAN; D city.
12 TUBA – A BUT (an objection) reversed; D &lit.
13 INUNDATING – I (me) NUN (votary) DATING making an assignation); D overwhelming!
16 BORROW – DD; George Borrow, English author d. 1881.
17 DEMEANS – ME inside DEANS; D lowers.
20 STREAMS – (MASTERS)*; D scholastic sets. In my grammar school the policy in 1963 was to run an X(press) stream, taking O and A levels a year early, if you were bright. IMO it was a bad idea, as it left me with a ‘gap year’ before university, during which time I worked for the Scientific Civil Service (I use the word ‘work’ loosely, nobody did much there) and forgot how to be a studious person. I’d be interested in the views of any contemporaries who went through this ‘X streaming’ system.
21 FEARED – FARED (travelled) about E; D alarmed.
24 DESPAIRING – DESIRING around PA; D hopeless.
25 RICE – R, ICE; something to eat. Barely good enough for today’s quickie.
27 CARRION – A joke, at last! CARRION is found in a crow’s nest and it sounds (quite) like a CARRY-ON, being a to-do.
29 PANACHE – PAN for universal, ACHE for anguish; D display / &lit?
30 DEMONIST – (TOM DINES)*; D with the devil. No anagrind?
31 THREAT – Insert H into TREAT (outing); D a menace.

Down
1 BATHTUBS – Insert TH(E) and BUT reversed into BA’S; D washing facilities.
2 DELIBERATES – Insert RATE (the value) into DELIBES (a composer); D considers.
3 EDEN – DD; The river EDEN floods Carlisle fairly regularly so is well known, for its modest size.
5 LAVENDER – (LAD NEVER)*, anagrind ‘scattered’, D flowers.
6 TETRAMETER – Cryptic definition. A tetrameter is “a line consisting of four dipodies in trochaic, iambic, or anapestic meter”; i.e. it has four feet.
7 ROC – ROC(K) would be almost something stony; the ROC is not so much ‘old’ as mythical, a huge bird of prey.
8 NONAGE – Today’s hidden word, which took me a while to spot; MA(N ON A GE)NERAL; D immaturity, not yet of age.
9 STING – Add PA to get yourself a pasting, a beating; D painful experience.
14 INNER CIRCLE – Cryptic double definition, referring to London’s Circle tube line.
15 MODERATION – MODE = fashion, RATION = allowance; D self-restraint. At first I thought the fashion bit was MOD (as in 1963) but it isn’t.
18 IMPRINTS – Rather weak cryptic definition.
19 ADHERENT – (THERE AND)*; D supporter.
22 EDUCED – DUC (French duke) in DEE reversed; D extracted.
23 SNIPS – SPINS = turns, ‘up’; D cuts.
26 INCH – DD chestnut. The island is in Lough Swilly in Donegal and in loads of crosswords.
28 RUM – As in RUM BABA dessert; RUM is an island in the west of Scotland, correctly spelt Rùm.

31 comments on “Times 230363 from 1963 – from me to you”

  1. 45 minutes. You definitely need a different mindset for these, especially when the clues are a bit vague, as in 18d. There are several possibilities with that clue and I caused myself problems by typing in a couple of wrong ones — EMBOSSES then IMITATES (which I thought was quite clever!).

    Thanks for the entertaining period blog, Pip, and for omitting the other notable event of 1963. Sometimes I claim as late as ’68, if I think I can get away with it.

  2. This one predates me by a few months, but I found it mostly easy. I also put EMBOSSES in for 18D, and also CROPS for 23D, which made 24A impossible until I saw the error of my ways.

    One minor correction – the reason INCH for island is in loads of crosswords is that it’s a dialect word for an island.

    Edited at 2016-04-20 09:21 am (UTC)

    1. well, sort of, Andy, I think it’s an anglicisation of innis, gaelic / Irish for island, as in ‘Innisfree’ in the poem. So it becomes the name of any island in those parts which hasn’t been given another name.
  3. I was 10 (that is where the 53 comes from in my name). It took me a while to realise that this was an oldie but once I switched half my crossword brain off, it went in very quickly 18:07. Like horryd, I was expecting to see a quotation.
  4. A pre-Xim puzzle that should have been be stifled at birth. And the real one (26391) was the usual Qual to suck folks into trying to compete with Magoo et al. Think I’ll go back to the Groan after this kind of rubbish.
  5. I was thirteen and the Beatles were omnipotent.
    I used to toy with the Telegraph Crossword – my parents
    took the Daily Express.

    I was expecting a quotation or two, which were standard fare back in the day.

    FOI 7dn ROC LOI 18dn IMPRINTS COD 14dn INNER CIRCLE. Only tricky word was 6 dn TETRAMETER. All somewhat anodyne so no nostalagia. 32 mins.

    horryd Shanghai

  6. I saw that FLATIRON fitted in OK and I fiddled around with the letter L. I always though TYRO was the correct spelling. An altogether grotty clue.
  7. Well I quite enjoy these once in a great while. EDEN ROC is a posh hotel in the S of France (it turns up in Maugham’s Three Fat Women of Antibes). Of course now I want to know what the omitted notable event of 1963 is. Alec is right about the Qualifier. 15.35
    1. I think Sotira means her arrival on this planet, although of course people think it was much later.
      1. Indeed. In fact, press coverage of my arrival on earth was cut short by certain events in Dallas.
  8. Can’t say I enjoyed this much but it was better than some of the vintage offerings that turn up in the Qualifying season. Incidentally, not that it bothers me in slightest as I have no interest in competition, but I think there’s supposed to be an embargo on discussing solving times for qualifying puzzles.

    The homophone without an indicator at 27ac was a bit of a surprise.

    Edited at 2016-04-20 12:04 pm (UTC)

    1. That was my time for the vintage Jack (sorry, should have made that clear), and you’re right about the non-discussion for the qualifier.

      Edited at 2016-04-20 01:30 pm (UTC)

      1. Sorry about that, it is was my time in the intro you were referring to – I was not aware it was a non-topic, apart from the answers obviously. Where does someone display this edict?
        1. Nowhere I believe. It is just that the qualifiers are like super prize crosswords so no discussion of anything.
  9. No time today as I did it in chunks but it took longer then normal. I didn’t cotton on that it was a vintage puzzle until I came here – just thought it was a bit different. Like Pip I was also in a 4 year “O” level stream, and having also gone to grammar school a year early took mine in 1963 aged 14 though only took 8 subjects ( we didn’t sit at “O” level subjects we were taking for “A” level – in my case Latin and Greek). Unfortunately it has been downhill ever since.
  10. I agree with Jack – I too wondered where the homophone indicator had gone in 27. In ’63 it probably went the same place as the yellow went – oh those were the days. I was 12 and had just started at grammar school, yet to be streamed.

    I found this a bit tough, completing just inside the hour, and didn’t realise that it was retro until I came here. There is no indicator except the No, and I hadn’t worked that out.

    1. Heh. I was born ten years later, but my mum would sometimes spontaneously burst into the Pepsodent song while I was growing up!
  11. I was in Grade 3 at the local school in 1963, being taught (and I use the word loosely) by the much feared Old Ma Jones. Thwack! with the ruler for talking in class. Ah, those weren’t the days.

    I thought this was OK. It was interesting to see the different style of the clueing compared to today, eg with a missing anagram and homophone indicator and there were a few words such as FLATIRON which I don’t remember having come across in a cryptic before. Still, it will be good to go back to the present (I hope) tomorrow.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  12. A vintage typo invalidated my 13 minutes, but rather more fun then the qualifier, which sent me soundly to sleep, making any time meaningless. Please note, I’m not disclosing anything about the qualifier, except that it was dull.
  13. Not bad for an oldie (the puzzle, not me). All done in thirty minutes except for FLATIRON, which I eventually plumped for in desperation as the parsing completely eluded me.

    COD to TETRAMETER I think.

    Thanks setter and Pip.

  14. I would dearly have loved to have had a year between school and university – I went up to Oxford aged 17, and was frankly just too young and silly… a year of hard graft in advance might just have rendered me useful for something vocational, or just taught me the actual value of taking your academics seriously! Of course I know nothing of O levels, having been only -11 in 1963…
  15. About half an hour for this, with a little nap in the middle (I was on a plane). I got progressively more cross at the unacceptable looseness of the clues as time went on, twigging that it must be a vintage job far later in the solve than I’d like to admit. I’d have placed it much later than 1963 though, purely on the basis that I managed to finish it at all.
    I was in a class that did O level French a year early, and as a result of this fact, and my age, I am in the rare position of being able to compare the experience of doing O levels (or rather an O level) and GCSEs. From what I remember the O level had a lot more French in it than any of the GCSEs.
    1. My O-level French in 1966 involved a 10-minute oral exam. As I recall it, it went along the lines of

      Q (in French) what is your name?
      Answer
      Q (in French) where do you live? (I was at a boarding school miles from home)
      A; Dartford
      Q (In English), Wow, I know Dartford well. Where abouts? etc etc with the rest in English.

      Edited at 2016-04-20 06:38 pm (UTC)

  16. I can never do these vintage puzzles, but this one was far more approachable than the free association versions we’ve seen at times. I actually got all the way through this one, except that my island at 28 went in as RAM instead of RUM. I saw the Rum Baba, but thought it has an ‘H’ in it somewhere, and didn’t think there was such an island, so I interpreted the ‘baba’ as coming from the black sheep, and essayed RAM. I thought it looked more island-like than RUM. Wrong. I don’t feel bad. No great challenge on the qualifier, either. Regards.
  17. 8:25 for me. I’d have posted quite a decent time but for dithering over FLATIRON which I’d have expected to be enumerated (4,4) and where, like you and others, I assumed that the learner was L, and wondered whether a FAT IRON could be distantly related to a FAT RASCAL – the sort of thing you can buy in Betty’s Tea Rooms. (It didn’t sound very likely though.) It was only when I came to write the word down (after searching through the alphabet for a better alternative) that light dawned.

    I must almost certainly have solved (or at least attempted) this when it first appeared, but there was nothing particularly memorable about it, and it wasn’t wacky enough to give me any real advantage today beyond not being fazed by looser clues than modern solvers are used to. (NB: To achieve the right mindset when solving crosswords from those days (or earlier), you need to take “clue” as meaning “vague hint”.)

    Here’s a clue (ancient or modern) that you might like to try: “Babar’s island? (11)”.

  18. Solving time: 53 years. On the other hand, I was 1 at the time this was set, so it’s not surprising.

    Definitely a different flavour from today’s puzzles. I would say that it’s just not quite as clever, somehow. Perhaps the Times cryptic over the years is subject to the Flynn effect.

    As for “Babar’s island” – no idea!

    1. I think you have to be of a certain vintage, but I’m reckoning ELEPHANTINE (island), one of Von Daniken’s favourites because they would only have known it was elephant shaped from the visiting aliens. It isn’t, unless it’s an alien elephant, I suppose. Babar was elephant shaped, and often depicted wearing a natty green suit.
      1. Ah, that would make sense. I know of an “Elephant Island”, which perhaps is the same one.

        As for von Daniken, I think he missed a bigger trick – I mean, how did they know to call the continent “Africa” when it’s only from space that you can see that it’s actually shaped _exactly_ like Africa…

      2. Excellent! 10/10.

        I wasn’t aware of the Von Daniken connection, but know of the island because of the archaeological sites there – familiar from trips to the British Museum rather than to Egypt! I keep waiting for that clue (or a similar one) to appear in The Times crossword, but haven’t come across it so far.

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