Times 24100 – is the north-east corner trying to tell us something?

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 24 minutes, a very slow start, with a read through of the acrosses the only ones I saw the first time were 21, 22 and 23, and it was a slow climb upwards, relying on checking letters to get through this a word at a time. Last in was 20 across, spent about 5 minutes racking my brain for words that fit, eventually getting it by working backwards. With a Q, Z, Y, and X in the first few answers I got I thought we might have been heading for a pangram, but it was not to be.

Across
1 SQUIREARCH: QUIR(k) in SEARCH – had the S….EARCH here before seeing the middle bit
9 VEDANTIC: hidden – a new word to me, but as with any good school of ancient thought, there’s one in southern California
10 REAGAN: A in REGAN (King Lear’s daughter, who appears in about as many crossword puzzles as Shakespeare festivals)
12 THO,ROUGH: I’ve seen this before, but it’s still neat
14 GOLDEN OLDIES: LOG backwards, then (IDOL,NEEDS), with “pop” as a nifty anagrindicator. My little town of Asheville NC recently got rid of their oldies station (yay), and replaced it with an alt-rock station (yes!).
20 TURNSPIT: wordplay leading to definition – turn SPIT and you get TIPS
22 FRIEZE: sounds like “Freeze”
23 REEL’S,OFF: got the “off” part quickly
24 EYOT: (TO,YE)<=
25 EVEN,TU,ALLY: nice charade
 
Down
2 QUESTION: double definition
3 IDA: Triple definition! Direct, I,(AD)<= and Mount Ida, the birthplace of Zeus
4 EX,TOL(d)
6 HARROWING: With ETON and HARROW in this puzzle, there probably wasn’t room for RUGBY
7 HEAD OF STATE: (A,SHOT,DEFEAT)* – sly anagram here
12 INDEPENDENT: (ED)<=,PEN in INDENT. Odd to see that newspaper in here, the setter Phi told me a few weeks ago that you can do his puzzles in that paper online for free (no print, just solve online on the day).
15 NOSEPIECE: Homophone of KNOWS PEACE, bring on the dialecticians
16 SCOOPFUL: (SPOOF,CLU)* and we edge closer to compound anagrams being permitted
18 IN,TER SE: a new Latin phrase for me, got it from wordplay
19 SURREY: Double definition
21 BLEST: L in BEST

18 comments on “Times 24100 – is the north-east corner trying to tell us something?”

  1. 16:48 … A lot of clever things in here and I thought it was going to be another long haul, but things started falling into place in the south east and evolved from there. 20a TURNSPIT was my last in, too.

    I just love 17a, which made me think of Alan Bennett, or perhaps Victoria Wood. Oh, do have another walnut fancy.

    Terrific crossword.

    1. sounds like we had the same experience. 17 didn’t quite do it for me, I think I was looking at that juicy set of letters and the scatological possibilities, and it was ruined on some silly bun
  2. Hi there. Sorry I missed yesterday but the office internet connection went south. This was enjoyable but tough for me, about an hour, held up by the SW corner, including all of TURNSPIT, SURREY, EYOT, and FRIEZE. I should have seen FRIEZE earlier, mea culpa, but TURNSPIT as a servant, and EYOT were new to me, and I’m familiar with the SURREY as a coach/carriage only due to the show Oklahoma!, showing me to be one of those provincial Americans. Nevertheless, a very well put together puzzle, thanks to the setter. Regards.
  3. Sorry George, small correction in 7D, (A,SHOT,DEFEAT), you have a minor typo. By the way, why is INDENT in 12D the equivalent of “order’ or “order to produce”? Thanks in advance, I won’t see any reply til tomorrow, so if I don’t acknowledge right away don’t think me rude.
  4. I got a better run at this one and finished it long before arrival at the office with nothing needing to be looked up and checked. Like George, my first clues solved were in the lower half and having gained a firm foothold there I worked steadily upwards. Last in was ATRIAL. Another excellent puzzle.
  5. I got a few in the NW corner fairly quickly, but then ground to a halt, before 7d opened things up a bit. The SW corner I thought was pretty tricky – 20 and 25 were both quite obscure (for a long time I was convinced I’d made a mistake somewhere, as I couldn’t see how TURNSPIT met the definition, it took a Google search in the end to get it). But all in all reasonably easy. COD? 17ac tickled my fancy…
  6. 10.55. After noticing the Z and X I went on pangram alert which was almost fatal, since when I was down to the last 4 or 5 clues I became convinced by the U in 20a that this must be where the Q would go, and found myself seriously trying to justify QUINSPOT as some kind of obscure menial, probably responsible for the emptying of chamberpots or something worse. Only when I’d figured out SQUIREARCH was I able to clear my head of this notion.
  7. Here’s somebody else who worked from the bottom up. After a very lean time at the top suddenly the last 5 across clues went straight in. As a result the last 7 down were quite easy and it was steady progress after that – about 35 minutes in all. Nice puzzle.
  8. 21:50 – a very poor effort, taking ages at the end to understand 2D and see what fitted into S????EARCH. Also took a while to remember that SCOOPFUL was an alternative to the obviously wrong SPOONFUL. Can’t see that (spoof clue – e)* takes us close to the despised indirect anagram.
  9. 17:03 is starting to seem less bad now. Unlike some others, I wanted 1A to involve “squire” long before I realised “search” was part of it. And my last answer was 23A (REELS OFF) which George got first time round, and no one else seems to think worth mentioning.
  10. well it was more challenging than Monday thru Wednesday. some new words for me-like Squirearch and Atrial… quite liked it though and it did tickle my fancy too!
  11. Was quite pleased with an eventual time of about 15 mins. Only hold-up was SQUIREARCH – got as far as S….EARCH and couldn’t imagine a possible word to fit in at first. Once I twigged, I had a faint memory of seeing the word before, but not one you come across a lot!
  12. A slow but enjoyable 36 min. A number of fringe recall answers, and one new one (inter se) all cleverly clued and eminently gettable.
  13. Some interesting old words here …

    You just can’t get a good Turnspit these days – I’ve had to give up having Hog Roasts in the Atrium although I’ve had a Frieze of one carved in marble as a commemoration.

    I don’t think I’ve seen the likes of 3d before where a literal at each end surrounds a cryptic construction:

    3d Woman I notice climbing mountain (3)
    I DA. IDA = Woman, I AD climbing = I DA, and IDA = Mount IDA the highest mountain of Crete and, as GLH says above, the birthplace of Zeus.

    There are 7 “easies” omitted:

    7a Outlaw academic garment (4)
    HOOD

    11a Like main court and what takes place in one? (6)
    A TRIAL

    17a Offering one type of cake, wish for a second? (7,5)
    PASSING FANCY. I think I remember “Viennese Fancies” as a thing – perhaps so called to sound nicer than “Punschkrapfen”?

    21a British school offers French (6)
    BR ETON. Wasn’t it an Eton Boy that caused Brexit? Of course this is prescient talk for a 2008 blog.

    5d Article reviewed concert (7)
    RECITAL. Anagram of (article).

    8d Fruit orchard originally planted on open tract of land (6)
    O RANGE

    24d Said to show understanding that’s deep (3)
    SEA

Comments are closed.