Times 24103

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 1 hour + 1 minute

A very slow start this morning, but I eventually got the hang of it. Looking back, there is nothing too tricky but there are some well constructed, misleading clues, so I wasn’t always sure where I was going.

Across

1 CAP,SIC,UM – the surface reading didn’t seem to make much sense, but I didn’t dwell on it.
6 LOCUS,T
9 MOR(O)SE – always worth seeing if the inspector could be Morse – a crossword favourite.
10 N,OVE(MBE)R – I said the rhyme to see if November actually had thirty days; then sussed the wordplay.
12 ATMOS,P,HERE – the Greek island is Patmos, with the P (quietly) moving.
14 ASS,ASS,IN
16 NAIL – reverse of LIAN[a], this was vaguely familiar, but I looked it up to check.
19 ANI,MISTS – animism is the belief in non-human souls.
22 ARNO – hidden word – I’m getting better at spotting rivers these days.
24 VEN(O,MO)US – MO is Missouri.
26 I(M,PUG)N
28 NA,Z,A,RITE – Z is the unknown. I tried to think of Jews with X then Y before Nazarite leapt out.

Down

2 AT,ONE
3 SHORTHAND,ED
4 C(REV,A,SS)E – I initially pencilled in COLL,APSE – thinking APSE was a vessel in the church and COLL an abbreviation for some kind of parson.
5 MONUMENTAL,MASON – I don’t think I’ve seen the phrase before but it al fitted in once I had a few letters. Perry Mason is the American detective.
6 [s]LAVISH
7 CAM – The Cam runs into the Great Ouse. An eccentric cam is some kind of rotating disc – I’ve only ever used the word in crosswords – see some examples here.
8 S(P)EAR,MINT – cheeky as brand-new has to be split into two words.
13 HANDICAPPER – sounds like ‘handy kappa’.
15 SACRAMENT – anagram of ‘master can’
17 B(1)AR,RITZ – I’m not too hot on French resorts but the Z made it quite easy.
20 RE,PORT – I thought of Stanley Baldwin first (probably with 11 still in mind) then Port Stanley. Bang is the noise of a gun, as is a report. I think I knew this, but haven’t seen for a while.
23 [k]NIGHT

21 comments on “Times 24103”

  2. I struggled with this one and never settled into any sort of rhythm with it. At 7 I couldn’t think of anything but RUM which only fitted half of the clue and this prevented me from solving 6A, and 8 also defeated me so after an hour I decided to use on-line assistance to polish off the NE corner.

    Further on 5D I’m sure we have had Perry Mason wrongly clued as a detective before as I seem to remember it being discussed in this forum. The detective regularly featured in the stories is Paul Drake.

  3. well having pencilled in Capsicum while downloading the puxxle i thought we were going to be in for startightforward one. like Jackt i found this quite hard…Locus t was quite challenging as was Atone for somre reason.. well over an hour i am afraid but 75% done in around 40 minutes
    a christmas cracker
    which days are we missing over Xmas? just christmas day?
  4. Harder than the usual Monday offering, but I didn’t have too much trouble apart from the NE corner. I had SPEARMINT in mind well before the end, but couldn’t see how it all worked, so scrubbed it. Once I got LAVISH, then LOCUST (considering LOCALE and LOCATE en route) SPEARMINT was confirmed. The rest struck me as fairly straightforward, so what ought to have been about 25 minutes turned into 35.
  5. Probably just over 20 minutes. Solved at night during a winter blizzard which knocked the power out several times, so I had plenty of chance to think about it.

    Definitely tricky in parts, and if, like me, you were slow to tune in to the long 5d, it was hard to get going. Seeing SPEARMINT and a ‘stripper’ in intersecting clues does make me wonder which gentlemen’s clubs the setter’s been hanging out in.

    Some good things here, with MOROSE being pick of the bunch for me – a sublime surface.

    Q-1 [surprised to see Mason offered as a detective], E-7, D-7 … COD 9a MOROSE

  6. 19.05 today. Found this harder than normal, 8 , 19 and 28 all took a bit of time but most difficulty with 24/20. I misread ‘state’ as being the definition at 24 and spent ages trying to remember the name of that ‘spiteful goddess’ , last to go in was 20 which was my COD.
    JohnPMarshall
  7. For the next week or so I’m travelling so trying the online version, which I never quite got the hang of.

    Silly me did myself in by putting in PARIST at 6ac and never recovered. FAIL

  8. Did everything in 15 minutes save 7, 20 and 24. Then spent another 30 minutes on those. I do have REPORT for 20, but I don’t fully understand how it works. I had to confirm that CAM=eccentric via references, and finally sussed out VENOMOUS, which is cleverly put together. Regards everyone.
  9. This gave me no trouble and I chugged through in 25 minutes. Knowing about eccentric cams is a rare advantage for we science types and the wrongly described Mason appeared here a little while back, so I knew him OK. I like the “some say” at 13D but no so keen on the definition by example at 14A. ANIMISTS was a bit of a guess from word play.
    1. Agreed on 14ac (where ‘Booth’ in the clue leads to ASSASSIN). The more I see this kind of thing in the Times, the less I like it.

      Both this and 8dn (where ‘brand-new’ = SEAR + MINT) have a question mark at the end of the clue, but unless the element in question is the last thing in the clue (and so next to the question mark), I can’t see that that’s any justification.

  10. I got “report” wrong and put “retort” with the, I thought, brilliant reasoning that “Bang on Stanley” was maybe the retort to “Doctor Livingstone I presume”. Oh well, too clever by half.
  12. Did anyone else wonder even for a moment if there was such as thing as a SMUG missile (at 18)?
  16. Quite a tricky one to get into bit I got on a roll with it. Quite a few where I benefitted from having done plenty of puzzles (maybe even this one 10 years ago) before – the Assassin Booth at 14a is an example.

    There are 5 “easies”:

    11a Pressure an old MP endlessly encountered (4)
    HEAT (H)

    18a Missile giving squadron leader something to chew over (4)
    S CUD

    21a Visionary armed ready for manoeuvres (3-7)
    DAY DREAMER. Anagram of (armed ready). Not really an accurate literal?

    27a Confirm whereabouts of top cricketers (6)
    AT TEST

    25d Poem that’s outstanding when read aloud (3)
    ODE. Sounds like OWED.

Comments are closed.