Times 24,086 Euclid Stars

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 20 minutes

A very straightforward pleasant enough puzzle with no outstanding features or queries but two mathematical references – things are looking up!

Across
1 KINGS,CROSS – honours=KINGS (playing cards); decoration=CROSS; infamous London railway station;
9 TESTUDO – TEST-U-DO; Roman army defence created by putting their shields over their heads;
10 THWACKS – (whats)* surrounds KC=Kings Council reversed;
13 BEET,SUGAR – (use bar get)*;
14 NUTCRACKER,SUITE – NUT-CRACKERS-(q)UITE; q=question; Tchaikovsky ballet;
17 RAIN,CATS,AND,DOGS – (grandads actions)*; bucket (down) = rain;
20 GEOMETRIC – GEO-MET-RI-C(onditions); RI=Rhode Island; Euclidian forte; a maths reference – wow!
21 SET,TO – two meanings; a spat is a minor row;
23 GO,TO,SEA – GOT-(h)OSEA; ‘ackneyed rendition of Hosea, a book in the Christian Bible;
24 AMOEBIC – C(I-BE)OMA all reversed; the well known protozoa;
25 I-SPY – (w)ISPY; w=wicket (cricket);
26 BEACHY,HEAD – BE-ACHY-HEAD; not sure “achy head” adequately describes migraine; soutch coast cliff top;
 
Down
1 KITCHENER – KIT-CHE(N)ER; effects=KIT; finger pointing Lord Kitchener of Khartoum 1850-1916;
3 SQUASH,RACKETS – put an end to=SQUASH; fraudulent schemes=RACKETS; over energetic game;
4 RHOMBIC – (rich mob)*; another maths reference – I’m overcome;
5 SO,THERE – (i)SOTHERE; an isothere is a line joining places with same summer temperatures;
7 INCOGNITO – (gin+tonic)-O; round=O;
8 MISER – M(ove) I(n) S(eeking) E(asy) R(eward); close=mean;
11 WEST,SIDE,STORY – WEST-SIDE-‘S-TORY; right=TORY (UK politics);
15 THIN,ON,TOP – THIN(e) ON(e) TOP(e); e=energy; going bald;
18 TERRACE – T(ER)RACE; ER=Her Majesty;
19 ARCHAIC – ARCH-(CIA reversed);
20 GIGLI – GI-G(L)I; Beniamino Gigli 1890-1957 wonderful Italian tenor;
22 TABLE – three meanings; board; put forward; a schedule;

27 comments on “Times 24,086 Euclid Stars”

  1. 31 minutes when I ran out of time with two unsolved (22 & 24) and several unexplained. I thought DO = “study” at 9 was rather poor though I realise one can substute them in e.g. What subjects are you doing/studying?
  2. About 25 mins which makes it fairly easy. I found the bottom half went very quickly, the NW corner a bit longer.

    OK, time to own up. Who else was in a hurry and put SUGAR BEET at 13? (It was such an easy anagram that it was one of the first in and held me up for a while until the penny dropped.)

    1. Yep, I’m a dunce. Never heard of beet sugar even though it isn’t much of a leap …
      Wasn’t until the very easy 8D that I realised the error 🙁
  3. A rather relaxed 18 min, in spite of a Merlot induced overhang. It was 24086, not 24068, but who cares. Enjoyed all four long clues.
  4. 12:41 for me. Mostly straightforward, but it took me an age to work out the long anagram at 17, and also the easy hidden word at 16D.

    Kurihan, what I always do before starting is to thicken the gridlines between the words of multi-word answers. This prevents me ever doing anything like you did at 13.

    1. I normally do that when I am thinking about a clue, but here I just jumped in boots and all.
      1. You’re getting far too accustomed to doing Mephisto, where you’re not told the length of the individual words. This clue could have been a little troublesome in a bar crossword.
  5. When I was at school a RACKET was a noise, but a RACQUET was used to hit a ball in sports like badminton, squash and tennis. I’m disappointed that this old nicety has disappeared
    1. COED and Chambers give “racquet” as an alternative to the standard “racket” to describe the implement. OED gives numerous regional variations including “racquet” which in shown as N American. The game “squash rackets” has no alternative spelling and that is the spelling used by the English Squash Rackets Association.

      By contrast the US game is “racquet ball”, although it seems to be spelt “racketball” in England. “Squash rackets” in the US seems to be called just “squash” which sidesteps the issue nicely.

      I have always viewed “racquet” as American and “racket” as English, which seems to be a fair generalisation.

  6. I ambled through this, taking 35 minutes. It took me ages to get 14 and 17 but when the penny dropped I liked the deceptive use of ‘bucket’ in the latter. Am I alone in finding 23 questionable? It seems to me that a ‘Cockney’ clue should relate to the sound of the word, not the appearance in print. If I dropped my aitches I still would not pronounce HOSEA as OOSEE.
  7. 27 minutes, but done while making dinner, so there was a kitchen disaster in the middle. I did an even stupider one than kurihan suggested, seeing SUGAR in 12 and writing in CUBE SUGAR without thinking of the rest of the anagram. BEACHY HEAD (from a Monty Python sketch) and GIGLI were familiar – the former might cause some knitted brows over here though I liked the wordplay when I saw it.
  8. 6:10 for this, as there was lots of stuff to suit me – it was raining on this morning for 17, I once lived in Eastbourne for 26, and my radiotherapy (less than a week to go!) is making me a bit more 15. Had I not carelessly put SQASSH as the first word of 3, probably sub-6. Didn’t fall into any trap at 18 as I’d got 7 and 8 down by then from testing out an initial wrong guess at 6 against intersecting downs.

    One bit of pedantry: the Nutcracker Suite is not the ballet itself, but some orchestral highlights.

    If you’re wondering about Gigli is, here’s a bit of Bohème to show how good he was.

    Edited at 2008-12-02 12:50 pm (UTC)

  9. 11:32 .. A functional puzzle, with no real standouts. Like jackkt, I had a ‘hm’ against do/study in 9a. Similarly, is 24a equating ‘be’ with ‘stay’? How does that work, then?

    No major grumbles, though, and a few nice things, especially grandad’s bucket.

    Q-2, E-6, D-5 .. COD 17a RAIN CATS AND DOGS

    1. There’s a def: “to remain in the same place or condition”. So “He stayed in Eastbourne for a while, and then went to university in London” is the same as “He was in Eastbourne ….” (remembering that ‘was’ is a form of ‘(to) be’).
      1. That’s a better example, for sure. And I’ll buy it, but a little grudgingly. I wish setters would just avoid using ‘be’ as a synonym for anything. It always feels like a cheap way of achieving difficulty.
  10. 21:30, another mildly diverting challenge with a smattering of very good clues.

    First in: beet sugar (correctly but I spotted the possible trap and checked it was 4,5 and not t’other way round), last in: firm.

    Q-0, E-7, D-6, COD – the bucket one.

  11. A quite fast 40 minutes, many of these entered based on definition / checking letters alone, only coming back to the wordplay afterwards (which was lucky, in the case of 5d!) COD 14ac, purely because there were so many false anagram indicators in there, wasting 5 minutes of the above trying to decipher various combinations of dancemusicmakesloony.
  12. I’m guessing this took me about 15 minutes – to be honest, didn’t keep an eye on the time.

    Had no problem with DO=STUDY as they’re very easily interchangeable in the “reading” sense. This is the kind of cryptic devilry that makes the PDM all the more satisfying.

    Enjoyable puzzle all round, no complaints. I was solving the interactive online version and did wonder why it doesn’t include a timer button. The software used is Crossword Compiler and adding this button is just a case of ticking a box when it’s exported to html.

    Q-0 E-6 D-6 COD 26A BEACHY HEAD

    PS: The Imperator puzzle has been updated to iron out the quibbles. Here be it:

    http://www.ukpuzzle.com/bonus/Imperator001.html

  13. Two lots of 20 mins for me today. Got 24A but did not see why until I read the blog.Sounds rather West country again. Here “I be ” means “I am”. See also anax’ ps above.
  14. 7.21. Found this fairly straightforward. Would have been about a minute quicker if I hadn’t needed to go through the whole rigmarole of writing out “Grandad’s actions”, crossing out the used ones and staring blankly at the remainder in order to (eventually) solve 17a.
  15. Thought this was good, though I also worried about the ‘be’ in AMOEBIC, COD 17 ac, so well disguised. 29 mins which is about average for me.
  16. About 25 minutes or so. My last in was TESTUDO, a guess, but when faced with T_S_U_O it seemed the only possible answer. In that circumstance I don’t have any great problem with ‘do’=’study’. I looked up TESTUDO afterwards, unfamiliar with it, but I think it’s a great word that I’ll probably remember. Yes, kurihan, you’re quite correct that over here the implement is the racquet, and we play racquetball and squash. I also had to cross off the letters of ‘grandads actions’ to solve 17, which was very well disguised, at least from me. That’s my co-COD, along with BEACHY HEAD, which drew a grin here. Regards all.
  17. Yes – an easy one. FOI was GO TO SEA at 23a and LOI was NUT CRACKERS (Q) UITE at 14a.

    There are 4 omissions from the blog:

    6a House and stable (4)
    FIRM

    12a Hurries round back of yard and lies low (5)
    HI D ES. Hies for hurries is Scots I think?

    2d Moved slowly upwards, thus gaining access into shelter (5)
    N OS ED. The upwards applies to thus (SO) and shelter (DEN) despite being separated from them with a comma – fair game in cryptic land.

    16d Some chickens conceded and settled (9)
    ENS CONCED. Hidden in words 2 & 3.

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