Times 24114

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
O dear – I seem to have deleted all the comments. I will re-add them at the bottom of this entry. Very sorry.

Solving time: 37 minutes – 16 of which spent on the NW corner. Found that part really hard. But good.
I enjoyed this – quite a few smiles to be had. Most clues were pretty good, although a few were very tricky to get into – but they were all gettable, eventually.
I liked Never-Never Land.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Across

1 ME(RI,DI)AN – last one in. COuldn’t make any sense of this apart from RI at first. Didn’t think of mean=close til right at the end.
5 SHREW,D – saw the Taming of the Shrew last year, so this was quite quick for me.
8 HYPO,TEN USE – I’d forgotten hypo was a type of fixer, but I think I’ve seen before. I really should have got HYPOTENUSE a bit quicker though.
11 S(W,IF,T)LY – If is the poem – I think I’ve said before that poem is often IF, but I still didn’t spot it at first.
13 SKIT,TER[m]
15 MIGRANT – MIGHT with RAN for H(hothead).
22 I(NT)O – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto didn’t fit in!
23 NEUTRALISE – anagram of A[varic]E+IN+ULSTER
24 A,SPIRE – looked for a word ending in A at first.
25 DE(FLAT)ED

Down

1 MO,HAWKS – this took a while (second to last), until I had the H and W and it fell into place. I didn’t know where Iroquois came from but it looked all right to me.
2 REP,ENT[er]ING
3 D(ET)ROIT – French for and(ET) with right(DROIT) – and that’s about the extent of my French. Actually I seem to recall that DROIT is a legal word for right. So only one French word, I guess.
5 S,HEEP’S KIN
7 WRANGLE = WANGLER with the R moved up.
12 L,ON,GRANGE
14 TIM,P[1]ANIST – neat clue.
16 INN,IN,GS – thought this was a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan – not sure, though.
18 IN,VI,TEE
20 REDHEAD – I remember where I was when I first learned that redheads were called blues in Australia. I was here.

Early comments, carelessly deleted by foggyweb

From kurihan:
Subject: Pre-blog thoughts
Back to work and back to form. My mind went to sleep during the break, but I thought 32 mins today wasn’t bad (for me anyway).
I liked this puzzle – generally good surfaces, some tricky bits but overall not hard. I thought 1dn and 11ac are very good.
I won’t anticipate Foggyweb’s comments, but just a note on 20dn. Richard Branson acknowledged this Australian peculiarity by having Virgin Blue’s planes painted red. Recently the word “ranga” has also appeared as a (mainly children’s) derogatory term for a redhead – something not fully understood by the good burghers of Adelaide! http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24417098-5006301,00.html

From jackkt:
30 minutes for all but 16, 20,23 & 25. I had thought of REDHEAD but I needed the dictionary to justify it as I never heard of either meaning. I should have spotted the anagram at 23 sooner than I did but with the “N” in place I was sidetracked into thinking it might end with an “I” and we would be in for another Ulster = NI argument. I really don’t know why 16 took so long to crack as I had been thinking INN—- and cricket from my first reading of the clue and I had the third “N” in place too.
I got as far as 6D before writing in my first answer today and was thankful for having watched the Two Fat Ladies who always referred to their recipes as “receipts”.

From petebiddlecombe:
I seem to be in a spell of slow solving – 20:19 for this, which I’m sure will be beaten hollow. Bottom half wasn’t too bad, but really struggled with the top, esp the NW, where ??HAWKS wasn’t enough to make the answer obvious at 1D, and I wanted the lady in 1A to have three letters rather than two, so wasted much time on close = END. Knew the Aussie redhead at 20 though not the duck.

From susiewales:
Once again today I cannot get at the crossword through the crossword club.Could some kind soul remind me of the “back door ” route please.
I await with trepidation the club’s threat to relaunch in January. I hope it is more efficient than the last attempt in Dec 07.

From paulww:
27 minutes. Q0 E7 D7
It took 10 minutes to solve the hard NW corner and another 5 minutes on REDHEAD (which I knew was a duck, but not a blue Australian).
PS: Backdoor to Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/crosswords/printOnly/1,,,00.html?linkName=&linkType=&crosswordID=&day=05&month=01&year=2009&type=1
PPS I found the Xmas Spectator Crossword incredibly difficult but very entertaining(Q1 E10 D10). It took several days to complete.

From glheard:
Did this pretty late last night while watching the cricket, 24 minutes, READHEAD went straight in, for some reason not seeing the anagram in 23 made it my last entry. I liked the surface at 14.

From penfold_61
During the last couple of weeks I’ve been solving crosswords at odd times on odd days and when I was in work lunchtime usually entailed a frantic trip to Argos rather than a leisurely solve.
Suffice to say that my rhythm has been disrupted so I was quite pleased to return to normality and solve today’s puzzle in 26 mins.
Pretty average I’d say, with nothing of note one way or the other.
Q-0, E-6, D-6, COD 21
I’d intended to write a nice note thanking bloggers and commenters alike for their help at the end of my first year as a user of this site but I never to round to it. Maybe on the first anniversary of my first post, eh?

27 comments on “Times 24114”

  1. 13:55 for me. No problems with the NW corner – the only hold-up was 20D, which I put in as a guess before coming here for confirmation.

    Looks like you’ve got a missing close bracket in the 3rd line of your html, which has caused a strange error. It’s deleted the original page with the other comments before you edited the placeholder. I wonder if they’ll come back after you correct it?

  2. Happy new year, all! A quickish 35 minutes, with most of the troubles in the top half. Thought 3d was very clever. Was it just me, or were there very few anagrams in this one? Looking back, I can only find the one (and I didn’t spot that when solving!)
    1. There was indeed just one anagram (23A). Maybe that’s what made it so difficult for me, he said, clutching at any straw.
  3. Hmm. I seem to be in a minority with Penfold in thinking this was a tad prosaic (rather like the cricket I was watching at the same time) except for the NE corner, which held me up inordinately. For no apparent reason, I thought a fiddler must be some kind of golf club I’d never heard of. Is it not time that IF was retired to stud? That all sounds very ungracious. Must be the heat again.
    1. “If” was voted Britain’s favourite poem in a BBC poll in 1995, and I suspect must still be one of the few poems that many people know at all well. So I don’t see why it should be ditched. But it is good when ‘poem’ means something else.
      1. OK, I admit to being churlish. It just seems to get used more than occasionally. There must be other ways to clue IF, and maybe other two letter poems, like the very dark ID by Kipling’s evil twin.
        1. IF is sometimes clued by “condition” (as in “ifs and buts”). I hope one day to see film=IF (using the 1968 Lindsay Anderson public school rebellion picture).
  4. … must mean G & S here, but it’s arguably wrong – the def in Collins is ‘characteristic of or resembling the style or whimsical humour of Sir WS Gilbert’. Not quite all of G was half of G&S. WS = William Schwenk, in case you ever need to know.

    Edited at 2009-01-05 01:55 pm (UTC)

  5. still scratching my head over detroit – where cars are made, obviously, but don’t see the other half of it. I was mislead by thinking 10A was something slipping, no purchase, must be the icy weather
      1. Did anyone else, having ??T?O??, try to make a case for CITROEN? Guess not….

        Neil

          1. Although some strange word-orders are permitted sometimes, I don’t think the Times puzzle would ever use “in Paris” for EN. “in in Paris”, “in from Paris”, “Parisian in”, or (just) “Paris in”, yes. But “in Paris” can’t mean “EN” outside a cryptic clue, so should be ruled out. Strictly speaking, the old favourite “The French” for LE/LA/LES fails too, but it’s too well-established (and useful!) to abandon.
  6. 10.41, with a couple of minutes at the end trying to justify REDHEAD where I wasn’t sure about either definition but did have a very vague idea about the Aussie blue – it’s probably turned up in the Times before.
  7. Straightforward 25 minutes with no particular problems except 20D where I knew the duck but not the Oz slang. I thought GS=Gilbertian a bit loose. I thought 1D was good.
  8. 31:49 .. solving experience was almost identical to foggyweb’s. I’m certain that before I started visiting here, around ten months back, I would have turned to solving aids to complete the NW of this one. My solving conscience (you lot) has made me more determined.

    Not really my sort of puzzle, having some awkward surfaces, but a good challenge. WINDOW SHOPPING was the one giveaway (and scarcely cryptic). Pedantic punctuators may question NEVER-NEVER LAND, but I enjoyed it. Apparently (which these days is a euphemism for ‘according to wikipedia’), Barrie’s first draft of Peter Pan had “Never Never Never Land, a name possibly influenced by the contemporary term for outback Australia” (which would be Utopia if you’re Ray Mears).

    My one real quibble is the possessive case in 18d. “woman’s support” for VI,TEE is less than convincing.

    Q-1, E-7, D-9 .. COD 1d MOHAWKS

    1. 18D: Don’t forget that ‘s has three possible meanings:

      Possessive – Jane’s blog
      “is” – Jane’s clever
      “has” – Jane’s got the idea.

      Using the last of these gives ‘IN VI has TEE’.

  9. 12.02 including at least one minute before first clue solved. Managed to get 1d from —-W-S , thought hawks then Mohawks which made the two ‘lines’ as 1a and 8 solvable for me as I had been struggling with both.
    The long 21 and a remembrance that Australians call redheads “Blue” made the bottom half easier
    JohnPMarshall
  10. Fun puzzle, took exactly 30 minutes, and I was held up in the NW as well. My last 2 entered were the crossing DETROIT and MERIDIAN. I also liked 1D a lot, and didn’t know the Aussie slang or the duck at 20D, but REDHEAD sounds like a kind of duck to me, so I guessed on it. Also, I have CHAR at 9A (correct?), and I can’t explain the “m” in AMNESTY, so if anyone wishes to enlighten the American , please do. Nice to see everyone back in the new year, regards.
    1. CHAR is right – over here, “saloon” is a type of car, as well as the type of bar referred to in the surface meaning. The M in AMNESTY is from MY = “motor yacht”. (Y = yacht isn’t in Collins or Concise Oxford, so wouldn’t work.)
      1. Thanks Peter. I thought of ‘motor yacht’, but never heard or saw the MY reference.
  11. For some reason this one just suited me, and although I didn’t time myself I suspect that had I done so I would have beaten Peter’s time. This hasn’t come close to happening before and in all likelihood won’t happen again. In fact I usually find Peter’s time multiplied by 3 a reasonable guide to a decent time for me. bc
  12. Thankyou paulww. Got the crossword finally from your link.Is it only me having trouble downloading?
  13. Where Blue and his mates go walkabout?
    Not likely to be many ducks there though – probably a bit dry for that.

    There are 8 “easies” including one where the numbers in brackets don’t match the spaces (6d).

    9a Drink husband imbibed in saloon? (4)
    C H AR

    10a Looking through lights, but making no purchase? (6-8)
    WINDOW – SHOPPING

    18a Recent arrival wages war ultimately (7)
    INCOME R

    21a Remain permanently airborne in utopian paradise (5-5,4)
    NEVER NEVER LAND

    4d Shelter in a yacht, given general pardon (7)
    A M NEST Y. Where “Yacht” = MY for motor yacht. Thanks to PB for that – I keep forgetting it.

    6d Written acknowledgement of old cook’s directions (4-5)
    RECEIPT?? There are only 7 spaces and not 9. I don’t know how this works. The checkers are R?C?I?T so that appears to be correct.

    17d Course leader a violinist embraces (7)
    RAVIOLI. Hidden in words 2-4. Probably not made by 6d’d old cook?

    19d Shorten hanging drapery, altering lower end (7)
    CURTAI (N) L

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