Times 24,074 Ludwig’s Fixation

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 25 minutes

Another straightforward puzzle, interesting but not particularly difficult. I worked my way down from top to bottom with no hold-ups. Whilst doing the blog I was conscious of quite a lot of fact checking in clues that had not given me any particular difficulty. There are quite a few arty references and one piece of scientific jargon. I didn’t spot any particularly outstandiung clues nor any real problem ones.

Across
1 UNBECOMING – UN(ion)-BECOMING;
6 SMUG – SMUG(gler); to run is to smuggle, as we know in Dorset
9 INCOMPLETE – INCOM(P-LET)E;
10 TRIO – (banque)T-RIO; reference Beethoven’s Archduke Trio Number 7 Op 97 in B-flat major
12 ALSACE-LORRAINE – AL’S-ACE-LORRAINE; Reference singer Al Jolson 1886-1950; much fought over area of France
14 ORIGIN – NI-GIRO all reversed; Belfast=NI=Northern Ireland; a GIRO is a type of cheque
15 MEANTIME – MEANT-I(M)E; intended=MEANT; that’s=IE; married=M;
19 TIMBER – deal is a type of wood;
22 PAPUA,NEW,GUINEA – PAP(U)A-NEW-GUINEA; U=posh; a GUINEA is an obsolete coin=currency?
25 ATTAINMENT – ATTAIN(MEN)T; disgrace=ATTAINT
26 OVER – two meanings; for non-cricketers, an OVER is 6 deliveries by the bowler in England (8 in Australia)
27 PLATELAYER – P(LATE)LAYER; a railway worker who maintains the lines
 
Down
1 UNIT – UN-IT; a in French=UN; (Italian) vermouth=IT as in “gin and it” in crossword land
2 BACILLI – B(unny)-AC-I-(ILL reversed); AC=aircraftsman;
3 COMPANION-WAY – (panic+woman+y+o)*; “y” and “o” start “yell” and “on”;
4 MILLER – two references; Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale
5 NITROGEN – (ring tone)*; fixation is the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into a compound form
7 MARTINI – M(ART)INI; reference Simone Martini 1285-1344;
8 GOOSEBERRY – two meanings; to play gooseberry is slang for being an unwanted companion to two lovers
11 TRANSITIONAL – TRA(D becomes NS)ITIONAL;
13 FORTEPIANO – FOR-(PET reversed)-IAN-O; pro=FOR; particular=PET; old=O; Beethoven’s piano perhaps
18 NEPTUNE – (PEN reversed)-(E-NUT reversed); NUT=National Union of Teachers; revolutionary body=planet;
20 BREWERY – “bitter” is English beer, best drunk warm and with no gas content;
23 STIR – two meanings; “stir” is slang for prison;

37 comments on “Times 24,074 Ludwig’s Fixation”

  1. 40 minutes again today. Took ages to spot PAPUA NEW GUINEA for some reason even with all the checking letters of the second and third words in place. And FORTEPIANO was the last in, which is an absolute disgrace for someone who has a degree in music!

    ATTAINT was new to me but didn’t prevent me solving the clue quite quickly.

    I was amused to find Vermouth/IT and MARTINI in the same puzzle and wondered if the Setter had something else on his mind at the time.

  2. Or alternatively Francesco di Giorgio Martini – Italian painter, sculptor, architect and military engineer – also of Siena.
  3. Is this TENON SAW, and if so why? I can see TEN=number but why ON SAW=’treading the boards’ eludes me.
      1. OK thanks, that was very slow of me – I missed the SAW=observed connection. Oh well!

        Nice blog btw

    2. Took me aback for a moment, but observed “saw” beside (does’t say which side) “ten” treading the boards “on”. “ten””on””saw”. Bugger!
        1. I took it to be an arcane technical term.

          This is one of those clues that one never quite knows to include or not. I wish now that I had blogged it!

  4. 20 min. This one grew on me. The keying allowed a lot of “Couldn’t be anything else” answers to be popped in before going back to appreciate the classiness of the whole
  5. Just under ten minutes for me, which is my fastest for a while – not counting a sub-8 mins for the day before yesterday’s ST cryptic.

    Nice blog, Jimbo: just a couple of thoughts –

    – Don’t I remember a reading somewhere (probably here) that a GIRO is also known as a ‘Belfast cheque?’

    – Like you, I grew up when overs in Australia were 8-ball. They have been six for a good many years now! Ho hum.

    Neil

    1. I’m not familiar with “Belfast cheque” but you could be correct. The phrase is not mentioned by either Collins of Chambers.

      As to the cricket – thanks for that. As a youngster I was a keen school/club player and watcher at the London, Kennington Oval but the game so lost its way that I long ago switched off from it.

      2. It’s nothing per se about a “Belfast cheque”.

        Belfast = N(orthern) I(reland)
        A giro cheque is the slang term for, for example, unemployment benefit which used to be paid by a special type of cheque that could be cashed in easily at a post office.

        Hence the clue is looking for a NI Giro…

        Hope this helps.

        Scott

  6. Just the sort of puzzle I like for a relaxing solve, with literature, music and art, and the minimm of sport. I took about 23 minutes, but took too long getting BACILLI, GOOSEBERRY and FORTEPIANO.
    Thanks to the setter for reminding me that I’d not got round to ordering The Archduke Trio from Amazon.
  7. Another straightforwardish and enjoyable puzzle. 31 mins for me, so I would expect some very fast times from the premiership performers. I entered both FORTEPIANO and PLATELAYER without fully understanding the cryptic parsing until reading Jimbo’s explanations, for which thanks. I didn’t mind the “arty” references, though I know that cryptic purists dislike the specialist knowledge ingredient in clues. But is there such a thing as a totally pure cryptic clue? In-depth knowledge of the English language, itself likely to be the product of wide reading, is pretty much a requirement for successful cruciverbalists and might be said to be a form of specialist knowledge.

    Michael H

  8. One of my quicker times at 7 mins – all pretty straightforward. Pleased to see the ref to Canterbury Tales, which was one of my specialist topics at university. In contrast, I wasn’t familiar with FORTEPIANO, to the incredulity of my wife, who seems to regard it as an everyday term.
  9. 7:45 for this, so well done Mike. I thought the general knowledge side was OK today as there was geography, science, woodwork and railway engineering to go with the arty stuff.
  10. I agree with jimbo’s assessment – “interesting but not particularly difficult” but a nice puzzle. About 23 mins today.

    My only possible minor quibble is in 17A – the dictionaries are not very clear on the point but I would normally understand “tread the boards” as meaning “to be an actor” rather than to refer to being “on” (i.e. on stage at any particular time).

    I thought 19 and 26 were a bit hackneyed.

    Only 2 anagrams (3 and 5) which seems an unusually low count?

    1. Thanks for your encouraging comments yesterday, and guess what!— I finished today’s as well. Things are looking up.
      Susie
            1. That’s why you need a log-in! (It’s actually Joseph Conrad, but I think I might change it to something a bit less pretentious. Watch this space.)
  11. 16 minutes and the last few were spent agonizing over whether TIMBER was right for 19. After it beating me a few weeks ago, GIRO has been added to the vocab and helped out in the hippy corner.
  12. I’m quite surprised so many found this one straightforward. It took me 21 minutes which was a bit slower than usual. Last two in were MARTINI and TRIO – I had TRIO at first look but couldn’t link it to an archduke and I though the unknown painter must be MOPSINI, so I had a clash until the lightbulb came on and I twigged that works=ART, not OPS. I was a bit disgruntled at having to endure double Eng Lit at 4dn, but overall found this a marvellously crafted effort – and not easy at all!
  13. 45 minutes, so I found it trickier than yesterday. I didn’t fully understand the wordplay for 9ac / 14ac / 19ac / 2d / 13d before coming here, but the missing words were clear enough by that point. COD 20d, mainly because it baffled me for far too long!
  14. 22:55 but with one error. In 13d I took “pro knocked” to be a jumble of PRO and convinced myself that pat = particular and so invented the PORTAPIANO, a must for all pianists on the go, which probably looks a lot like this: Portapiano

    Martini, attaint, nitrogen fixation, the Archduke Ellington trio and AC for flier were all new but not too difficult and I thought companionway was one word so that took a while to sink in.

    A nice puzzle overall with some neat constructions such as comanion-way and incomplete.

    Q-0, E-8, D-7, COD 3 for the image conjured up by the surface reading and the well disguised definition.

  15. 8:20 – should have been quicker really as I thought there was quite a high chestnut count. 17, 18 and 24 accounted for more time than they should have, the “revolutionary body” at 18 finally succumbing with an appreciative “doh!” moment.

    Everything seems to work pretty well, although 2D might have been smoother with “…drawn up” at the end.

    Q-0 E-5 D-6 COD 3D

  16. This took me a good 45 minutes before resorting to google for 8D and 27A; the ‘third wheel’ meaning of GOOSEBERRY is apparently a UK-ism unknown to me, and we have ‘tracklayers’ over here, not PLATELAYERS. I also had forgotten the ‘giro’ meaning for ‘check’, which appeared in a recent puzzle and which I promptly forgot, and while I know a ‘pianoforte’ I didn’t know there was a ‘fortepiano’. So overall this needed a while to sort out, for me. But it was an entertaining while, no complaints, and I particularly liked 6D. Regards to all.
  17. The Grauniad Nov 14th (Orlando) –

    21 Old man turning up once more with money in the country (5,3,6)

    The Times Nov 18th –

    22 Country posh old man goes round, taking modern currency (5,3,6)

    Ah well, recycling is all the rage at the moment 🙂

    In passing, why doesn’t The Times identify its setters? Sometimes I can recognize them, but mostly not. I’m sure it used to?

    Brendan

  18. The Times never has identified its setters as far as I am aware and still will not in 10 years time. The Sunday Times will, within a decade, have a triumvirate of named setters – some of these – well at least one – may be familiar to denizens of TftT?

    This was a nice relaxing solve with the only hold-ups being the FORTE (as opposed to PIANO) and the Archduke TRIO which I am afraid that I was ignorant of despite having had FORTE lessons when a child.

    There is a Quartet of “easies”:

    17a Tool observed by a number treading the boards (5-3)
    TEN ON SAW. On as in the instruction to actors from the stage manager – “you’re ON”.

    24a More or less surrendering old border (4)
    AB (O) UT

    16d Friend accepts an opening, like mum and dad (8)
    P A RENT AL

    21d Content of bag has thief horrified (6)
    AGHAST. Hidden in words 3,4,5.

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