Times 24,080 – Pulp Fiction

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A straightforward puzzle, albeit one that gave me a perfect demonstration of how putting in just one wrong solution without thinking can bring an entire corner (in this case the Geordie one) to a complete standstill; so I’ll say I’d expect people to be doing this in whatever they’d describe as a reasonably good time, based on the fact that I would have estimated 15-20 minutes were it not for tripping myself up and adding an unnecessary 5 minutes of staring before I erased the offending word…

Across
1 ARRIVALS – A R(epublican) RIVAL’S, the JFK in question being the airport rather than the man himself.
8 ROWING BOAT – Lift and separate to find the definition “maybe eight” made up of R(upees)OWING + 0 in BAT.
9 PULP – Spotting that this was going to be A Three Letter Animal around ‘L’, meaning “crush”, I wrote in CLUB and moved on. It nagged me slightly that CLUB was in the previous clue, and it seemed a trifle insensitive to have a clue based on the notion of seal-clubbing, but it wasn’t till later that I spotted the error…
10 GERRYMANDERING – (ANGRYREMINDER+G)* a form of electoral malpractice named after its first notable practitioner.
13 STETSON – STET (printer’s instruction meaning ‘this should stay’ + ON around Texa(S).
18 UNTWIST – I suspect this, effectively a definition by example, will prove unpopular as always, given that a Manhattan dance can be described as a U.N. TWIST, after all, the UN HQ is indeed in Manhattan; but there again, so are the New York Stock Exchange, and Central Park, and Madison Square Garden.
21 GOAL DIFFERENCE – those whose favoured brand of football is not Association may be unfamiliar with this method of separating sports teams who are tied on points in a league.
22 PAPA – in the NATO phonetic alphabet O=Oscar, followed by P=PAPA.
24 JEWESS – EWES inside J(udge)S, the most notable of whom would presumably be Deborah.
28 ITERATED – “Done over” in the sense of “repeated”, I.E. around T(ime) + RATED.
 
Down
2 REWARDING – A R(oa)D inside (b)REWING.
3 VAN DYCK – VAN = front, DYCK sounds like DYKE, the whole thing is this man.
4 LIBRARY – LIBRA + RY: once I realised that the “line” was not the L at the start but the R(ailwa)Y at the end, the scales dropped from my eyes. Sorry.
5 MOTH-EATEN – the Emperor Moth is described here (and, of course, if we’re being pedantic, doesn’t endanger anybody’s clothes). I am intrigued, however, to learn “The males, which have bright orange hindwings, fly during the daytime in search of the greyer females, which fly at night.” Frankly, if it’s not an endangered species, it deserves to be.
7 SOPHIST – (ITSPOSH)*.
14 SKINNIEST – KIN = blood, inside (SETSIN)*.
16 INGRATE – simple charade, but nicely presented.
17 LEAKAGE – AKA inside (GLEE)*.
16 UP FOR IT – UP=happy, FOR IT=for the high jump, i.e. in trouble (not sure if this is a purely UK-centric expression, so possibly worth saying).
18 TURF WAR – TURF + (RAW)rev.

All in all, I was only tripped up by myself, so I shall say Q0-E7-D7, and that I liked STETSON and INGRATE.

41 comments on “Times 24,080 – Pulp Fiction”

  1. 28 rather drunk minutes, and thanks for explaining the ones I couldn’t get the wordplay for – UP FOR IT, UNTWIST, PAPA. I found I was using definitions a lot more than wordplay to fill out the grid.
  2. Also 28 minutes, and I don’t even have an excuse. Did they get harder while I was away? Or did I just get dumber? I found this very tough, but enjoyable. I lost count of how many wrong trees I barked up in the process, but it was really LIBRARY (same blind spot as Tim), JEWESS and LEAKAGE that had me flummoxed.

    Q-0, E-7, D-9 .. COD – ITERATED

  3. I was about to tack on to Kurihan’s comments, but they disappeared whilst I went away to log in.

    Anyway I thought it was a stinker too, my only excuse being that I didn’t get an uninterrupted run at it on my commute to work. I reckon I took an hour and for the second consecutive day I needed on-line help to polish it off so I could get on with other things.

  4. Maybe I was just tired, but I found this a real stinker, and certainly harder than yesterday’s. I gave up keeping time after an hour, and was pleased just to finish unaided.

    In 20dn, I play golf, but don’t see in what sense a driver should pay heed to a tee? And as Tim anticipates, Manhattan=UN? Please!

    Some time ago I suggested that “Chinaman” (as applied to a person) was offensive, and someone else recently complained about “squaw” (although I was unaware of its offensive connotation and thought that was OK in the Hiawatha context). I have Jewish friends and colleagues and would never use “Jewess” .

  5. What is 11ac?
    I have t _ i_esy

    In fringes of teleplay, strains to get involved (7)
    Barbara

    2. TRICKSY – RICKS (strains) in TY (the first and last letters of “teleplay”)

      You may have got DYKE instead of DYCK at 3dn

      1. I fell for exactly the same one. Found this to be the toughest in a couple of months at least.
  7. As tough as I can remember. Adjusting for a break, probably three times my average time. Lots of clever stuff, but I agree that 18A goes a bit far. 4D is my favourite.

    Tom B.

  8. I certainly didn’t find this straightforward. It took a lot of persistance and brain cudgelling. About 50 minutes to solve.

    There were a few rather easy clues, a lot of very good clues and then, sad to say, two rather poor ones both already mentioned. UN-TWIST is a nonsense as far I’m concerned and as a fellow golfer I also don’t understand how TEE,HEED equates to “that driver should pay” and would welcome an explanation.

  9. 14:55 for this – could have improved it by entering SKINNIEST earlier, but somehow thought I was looking for four letters in the middle rather than three. I didn’t mind “Manhattan dance?”, with question mark, as much as some. A reference to the East side might have been more accurate but then expecting Brits to know which part of Manhattan the UN can be found in might have been optimistic. Jewess: not listed as offensive in Collins or COED, but Chambers has “offensive when used by a non-Jew”.

    Edited at 2008-11-25 12:31 pm (UTC)

    1. Some consider adding ‘-ess’ to any gender-neutral term as offensive. If the term itself refers to race, religion, sexual preference etc it surely a good idea to search the mental thesaurus for an alternative…
    2. Chambers on-line has “sometimes considered offensive”. My new COED has “often offensive”.

      In general I am not politically correct. In general I hate the way PC-ness is impoverishing the language, and I would mourn the passing of “actress” and “waitress” which strike me as perfectly useful and inoffensive words. Further, I can see that there may be an argument that any word in the dictionary should be fair game for the setter.

      I do think though that racially offensive words in particular should be avoided – I cringed at “Jewess” and my notes have “!!” against 24A. I continue to have the same view of “Chinaman” as applied to a person.

  10. 19.22. I found this terribly difficult – I’d guess it took fully two minutes to find a clue I could solve. And once I got started I kept making mistakes, initially putting SAME DIFFERENCE at 21a, GO FOR IT at 18d (distracted by the “Game” at the start of the clue) and, worst of all, ESTHER at 24, where I figured the Bible might have Judges 1 and Judges 2, with Esther being located somewhere between. I was unable to see PAPA for ages due to a mistaken belief that P in the phonetic alphabet was PERU. Taking all of this into account I was just relieved to finish the thing at all.
  11. I wish that helped, Peter, but unfortunately not. A golfer standing on a tee to drive will take heed of such things as the wind, the topography, and his own ability as matched against the difficulty of the hole. The tee itself will play no part in his deliberations.
    1. I hesitate to contribute, Jimbo, as I know very little about golf, but from the context of your last message it appears you have in mind “tee”, the whole area from which the ball is struck. When I solved I was thinking more of “tee”, the peg itself, and that seems to fit better because if the driver doesn’t pay heed to it (it’s exact position)he would miss the ball.
      1. Sorry, but I don’t buy it Jack. Assuming he uses one (and it’s not manditory) the golfer puts his own tee peg into the ground and then balances the ball on it. He then aims at the ball – not the tee peg. He would take heed of the “tee marker” which indicates where on the tee he has to stand but that’s not the same as the tee peg or tee area. My guess is that Anax has put his finger on it. The use of the words “driver” and “tee” make this easier to solve if you know little of the detail of the game.
        1. I have occasionally played golf and even watched a few times on the telly and I don’t see how you can successfully go through the process of driving without at some point paying heed to the tee. I think it’s one of those where you don’t want to pay too much er heed to the technicalities of the game. Those with a passing acquaintance with the game (the lucky ones!) will see what is meant perhaps.
          And a UN Twist would be in Manhattan, probably. I rather like that idea 🙂
          1. I rather liked the idea of Ban Ki-moon getting down to Chubby Checker, too. Bet he’d be good.
  12. I found this tough, but very satisfying, pleased to understand everything – 47 mins. Favourite clues, 18,21,25 across – 4,7, 12 down with 25 COD
  13. Tough for me too, around 40 minutes in all.

    As well as the other “iffy” clues mentioned I’d like to add 19, where patch=turf is the same meaning of turf as in the definition (I think) so it loses half of its crypticity.

    In 15 how does leaf=flip?

    One mistake as well as I went for Van Eyck at 3. Apart from Ike Turner being ditched by Tina I can’t justify that part of the clue.

    Q-1, E-7, D-9, COD 4

  14. Should have taken longer than 12 minutes but a quick read-through of the clues flagged up a number of potentially clever moments and, by and large, smooth surface readings, so I think I went into this knowing what to expect.

    No quibbles. I see Jimbo’s point about TEE-HEED, but for the average solver with perhaps very little knowledge of golf the familiar word TEE and the overall suggestion made the clue would make sense.

    Looking at comments above, my ticks seem to represent the usual suspects. Slightly larger than the others was the tick at 12D, this is turn being usurped size-wise by 4D; beautifully succinct and misleading.

    Q-0 E-8 D8 COD 4D

    1. I’ll go along with 12D but thought 4D spurious. Without the standard reference works I have:
      on-line as being either ‘located on a major route’ or ‘on’ (as in tv/radio broadcasts) or even ‘available via the internet/computer’. But none of that works. And I don’t see that ‘on-line’ = ‘on line’. But maybe the references do?

  15. Is 5 across Muscat? And if so why?
    I found this puzzle very hard. Maybe being tired and hungover are two excuses. Un equals Manhattan. I don’t think so.
    1. Yes – it took me a long time (after solving) to see that the CAT following the fairly obvious {MUS=problem returning} is CA=”in the region of”, and T=”Central Austria” (i.e. the middle letter).

      Edited at 2008-11-25 04:34 pm (UTC)

    2. Wine producer = MUSCAT (the grape)
      problem returning = SUM<=
      in the region of = Ca
      Central Austria = t
  16. I was going to say 35 minutes: one error. But it bizarrely turns out to be simply ’35 minutes’. Tee-heed is, in my opinion, terrible : but just happened to be the same silliness that I pencilled in.

    I’m with the others who, as anticipated, disliked 18A.

    I initially scratched in ‘LIP SYNC’ for 3D, having read ‘afront’ instead of ‘front’ so had afront=lip + sync=sink… almost worked…

  17. COD 4D, which I thought was beautifully misleading, without arguing about the hyphen. 13 mins, which seems to be better than I thought after reading everyone’s comments.
  18. Found this very difficult and all the more enjoyable to solve for that. 24 minutes and I can only use the wrongly entered CLUB and DYKE to account for 4 minutes or so. I liked 1a,6,16 and 18.
    Goal Difference must have been a stinker for those not of a football bent as Tim says.
    JohnPMarshall
  19. This may have been straightforward for topicaltim, but definitely a toughie for me. Appropriately enough, in view of the disputed (see above) golfing allusion at 20dn, I did about a third of the puzzle at my local golf club while waiting for competitors in a Ladies’ Medal competition to relinquish their occupation of the 1st Tee (a scenario my fellow golf addict, dorsetjimbo, will doubtless recognise). I polished off the rest after completing my round – about 1hr 30mins in all, I should think. Jimbo, I think you protest a bit too much over TEE-HEED. A driver could be said, as Peter B says, to pay heed to his tee [peg]. He/she has to place it in the ground, adjust the height and place the ball on it. Even if the driver decides not to use a tee at all, and to play the ball off the turf, he will still have “paid heed to the tee” in coming to this decision. A tad far-fetched, I agree, but we all seem to have arrived at the right answer.

    Michael H

  20. After yesterday’s success this was a disaster for me. Only managed NW corner all day.Cannot see any reference in blog to 12d.Solution please someone?
    I was going to blame my lack of success on shopping trip to John Lewis which dulled the senses, so rather relieved to see others foud it tough too.
    Susie
        1. That occurred to me, except that the definition refers to the cross rather than the golf course.

          I wouldn’t worry about not finishing. Some puzzles are a walk in the park, some are more strenuous hikes. This was a yomp across Dartmoor on a wet night in January.

  21. Another late entry! I did this in about the same time as yesterday’s, which was probably a fluke, as it felt much much harder. The SW corner caused me the most problems. Will the week get any easier?

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