Times 24111 – welcome to the New Year (almost)

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
New Year’s Resolution: To aid and abet in the breaking of others’ New Years Resolutions.

Solving time : Maybe I was feeling too rushed, but this took me almost half an hour and I should be at a New Year’s party by now. So an early Happy New Years (almost) from the US and a few quick notes on what I hope is as hard as I made it out to be

Across
1 TIP,TOP
2 GAME,COCK
9 WIDE-BODY: D in WIDE BOY
10 V,I,RILE
14 ADMINISTRATE: D(=500),MINIS in AT RATE
17 FEEL ONES FEET: LONE,S in FEE,FEE then T
20 SFORZATO: my first entry, some may have problems with the spelling
22 LAHORE: HAL and ORE(gon) reversed
23 J,E,JUNE
26 ASSEMBLY: anagram of S(tubbornl)Y,BLAMES – Diet being the Japanese parliament
27 ED,DIED: is that always sad? Edit: had a type of “EDDIES” originally
 
Down
2 IRISES: IS in IRES
3 TEE,TOTALLER
4 P,LOUGH,MAN
6 MAVEN: V in (NAME)*
8 CAL(m),AMITY
13 SCRATCH CARD: Took a while to see, the scratch-off lotto cards
15 SHE’LL,LIKE: used to this being an ear as opposed to a pasta
18 STOUTLY: TOUT in SLY
19 A,R,CANE: took way too long to see this
21 ACE,RB(=Brother reversed)

25 comments on “Times 24111 – welcome to the New Year (almost)”

  1. A bad start for me. Took two goes with a kip in between. Have no idea why I should feel so out of sorts. Did not get 19 dn, just too convoluted for my delicate state. No quibbles at all, indeed lots of nice constructions. Sforzato was new to me (sadly no musical education), but gettable. COD? probably 14 Ac for the nice surface, but also liked 7 Dn for doing well with a mundane little word.
        1. Thanks Ross. After posting I went for a shower and the answer came to me in the middle of the shampoo. I was misled by the capital K, and was looking for a person called King, or a particular king, or King’s College, or King’s Counsel, or…..
  2. I may be out of sorts today but I didn’t understand this at all. I filled the SW corner and a few others but that’s it. I still don’t see half of the clues George hasn’t seen necessary to blog.

    I think you have a typo in 27ac George – EDDIED = circulated.

    Shell-like = pasta? “feel ones feet”? I’ve only heard of “find ones feet”. How is 13dn cryptic? and indeed do scratch cards have a “score”? At 16dn why is “we freeze” a confession?

    Sorry, but I was just not on this setter’s wavelength at all.

    1. 13 Dn. To score is to scratch. The holder of a scratch card has a chance of winning when he scores it.

      16 Dd. The Wee Frees are the Free Church of Scotland, Sounds like they confess to being excessively cold. I quite liked this one.

      Some pasta is like a shell. A bit of a stretch to “she will like”. We won’t mention sheilas.

      Feel ones feet is new to me too. But who knows.

      1. Yes I missed score=scratch, thanks.

        We often eat “conchiglie” but to my mind “sort of pasta” is hardly a clue for “shell-like”.

        I know about the Wee Frees (and indeed the Wee Wee Frees) but why “confession”?

        As I said, just not on the wavelength.

        1. I think you might be too tightly wedded to the legal/clerical “admission of guilt” meaning of confession. think more of “acknowledgement” of feeling cold.
  3. Hello again everyone. Happy new Year.
    Started badly here. I cannot download today’s crossword, only yesterday’s. Is this me or them? I am trying hard to get to this site wihout looking at the solution as I get here!
  4. That looks less anonymous, if such can be said of atavaristic identity. I join this blog from the other side of the world and across the time barrier, having watched in hindsight for some time.

    I too stared blankly at many clues for longer than was later revealed to be necessary. The sound of pennies dropping eventually became deafening. Broke into “Pennies from Heaven” when I reached the Ploughman. No fault of the clues which were cleverly deceptive, or deceptive enough to fool me. Heartened to see the appearance of jejune and arcane. Even maven (could that be a word?) had educational value. A crossword where you learn something new is a good crossword.

    No time recorded (must get bigger egg-timer).

    1. Nice to see the Australasian representation increasing! 34C in Sydney today. And I went for a 2-hour bike ride!
  5. 50 minutes when I stopped counting as I thought I had finished. Later I noticed I had not solved 1A and had only -I-TOP in place. I started well in the SW corner with SFORZATO as my first in but then I slowed down and at one point entered only 2 words in 10 minutes. Once I got going again the answers came thick and fast.

    There were several words or meanings new to me. FEEL ONE’S FEET seemed odd but I Googled it and found a Chamber’s entry defining it. Never heard of MAVEN, UTE, ACERB without IC, nor SHELL-LIKE as a type of pasta though I know conchiglione.

    I’m not sure whether we have had a really difficult one this week as I have struggled when others did not. I rather hope we are over the worst as it’s my turn to blog tomorrow’s.

  6. About 35 mins for me, so I’d rank it as very difficult. 3D was last in – though I’m stone-cold sober this morning! 14A is my COD. The first six across answers are an interesting set,

    Tom B.

  7. I thouroughly enjoyed this puzzle which is full of good, misleading clues. About 45 minutes to solve and fully understand.

    I found the bottom half harder than the top where 1A and 5A went straight in (solved from definitions) but had no such help in the bottom where I struggled with both SCRATCH CARD and SHELL LIKE.

    I think 14A is excellent, I loved “no supper” for TEETOTALLER, but 26A is my favourite for the wonderfully misleading use of “diet” (which with a small “d” means any council/parliament/assembly and with a capital “D” the one specific to Japan)

  8. Hard going. Like some others I struggled with several clues – never heard of MAVEN – and was dubious about the soundness of SHELL-LIKE. About 25 mins, admittedly with one or two interruptions.
  9. 14.39, with a dismaying period of at least half that time where, with a third of the puzzle solved, I couldn’t get anything at all – then everything tumbled into place surprisingly quickly. I found the SE corner hardest – a false assumption that 19d would start with RA rather than AR didn’t help. There wasn’t an answer I hadn’t heard of, but only because WEE FREES appeared in a puzzle I blogged a couple of months ago.
  10. I can’t seem to get my brain working today. Could someone please explain 22A (LAHORE?), 25A (TRIMARAN?) and the significance of “press office” in 27A. Thanks.
    1. Sorry, I see LAHORE has already been explained. I was trying to fit WASHINGTON in somehow.
    2. If a press office issued a bulletin saying “Our Editor has died”, this would possibly be a call for sadness at said office. Then again, with the reputation of some Editors …

      To clip is to “Trim”. The “Aran” Islands in Galway Bay are famous for the Aran Island knitted jumper.

  11. A good start to 2009.

    Some quite tricky ones in here. I needed stuff from the back of the bonse from previous puzzles (could even have been this one 10 years ago) to get some of it.

    There are 7 “easies”. Some are explained above but here they are together in their full glory:

    11a Take a while to fit in (6)
    BE LONG

    12a Pleasing to see writing by true writer! (8)
    HAND SO ME. Where writing = HAND, true = SO and writer = ME. Simple yet tricky.

    25a Clip associated with knitwear craft (8)
    TRIM ARAN. The Aran islands off Ireland are where the knitwear comes from. Arran in Scotland is famous for Geology but not for whisky!

    5d Angry phone-in hosts being ordered to escort Alice (7)
    GRYPHON. A mythical being invented by Lewis Carroll. It was apparently ordered by the Queen of Hearts to escort Alice to see the Mock Turtle. What was young Dodgson on – I’ll have what he’s having.

    7d Not exactly King’s estate, perhaps (3)
    CA. R. Or Circa Rex abbreviated.

    16d Scottish churchgoers hear chilling confession (3,5)
    WEE FREES. Sounds like We Freeze. Scots nickname for the members of the Free Church of Scotland founded in 1843. I only know this from previous crosswords – possibly this one 10 years ago.

    24d Regularly used dustmen’s truck (3)
    UTE. Regular letters in d U s T m E n. Antipodean – (OZ & NZ) word for a Utility Vehicle. It is a Bakkie in Zuid Afrika.

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