Times 24,153

Author   richardvgPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 11:13

Fairly fast before I came to a screeching halt on 14D (PERSEPHONE).

As a young boy I read far too many Biggles books, so enjoyed 19Ac. His being such a bad writer had advantages – I remember (aged about 9) surprising my parents when doing a Telegraph puzzle together by knowing the word “opine” – all thanks to Captain W.E. Johns. On the other hand, sei whales and Princess Ida are really only known to me because of crosswords.

Across

1 POLO NEC K – LOP(rev) ON initial letters of Expensive Clothes and the start of Knit – For some reason I started with CREW NECK here, but fortunately I had doubts and fixed it quickly after getting 1D
5 A BATES – I did think of PSYCHO as an answer first time through.
9 REGISTER – two meanings, if only just
10 TROPPO – (OP(us)+PORT)(all rev)
12 WOO + (officia)L + GATHERING
15 N.(1 F.T.)Y.
16 RATION + ALE
17 LAND + SLIPS – that is “light” in the sense of “alight”
19 JOHNS(ON) – difficult to think of two more dissimilar writers than Samuel and W.E.
20 SHOULD ERST RAP – I do like the clash of registers – is there anywhere other than a crossword where “erst” and “rap” would appear in the same utterance?
22 PHENOL – (NO HELP)*
23 JO + AN MIRO – ie one of the Little Women followed by (A MINOR)*. I will confess that if the wordplay had not given the spelling I would probably have got it wrong with JUAN
25 MOD + IF + (finer)Y – seems rather long-winded, but perhaps it is aiming at a semi-&lit flavour?
26 SEI WHALE – (WHILE SEA)* – as a regulator IRL, I am not sure that I like the use of “regulate” as an anagram indicator.

Down

3 NOSE + GAY – NOSE being (=”knows”)
4 CHE(S(ea)T)ER + FIELD – waited for crossing letters, then entered from definition. Wordplay worked out afterwards
6 BURR + I + TO – with a gratuitous “finish” at the end
7 TOPOGRAPHER – (A PROPER GOTH)* – it was only noticing the T in GOTH that stopped me from starting to write in GEOGRAPHER, regardless of word-length
11 TESTOSTER + ONE, the first element being (STREETS TO)* – “male driver” is a great definition
13 OFF ONE’S HEAD – ho-ho. I guessed it was ONE’S rather than YOUR and got away with it
14 PER SE + PHONE – took me a couple of minutes after the rest was finished. It was so obviously PHONE at the end, and so obviously could not be a type of telephone
19 JUST NOW – did not know about Aristides the Just, but the rest was obvious enough
21 SPAM – MAPS(rev)
24 IDA(ho)

37 comments on “Times 24,153”

  1. 22:50 today. I found this quite tricky, mainly because for a while I had PHOTOGRAPHER written in at 11D as an anagram of “a proper Goth” from 7D! Duh! I’d never heard of SEI WHALE before and put it in last before confirming it in the dictionary.
  2. Another very easy puzzle, under 20 minutes to solve. 11D is a reasonable clue and slight obscurities at 14D, 23A and 26A are easy enough from wordplay. Younger solvers may not know W E Johns the creator of Biggles at 19A

    At the risk of being boring why can’t the editor get a sensible mix of difficulty instead of these runs of similar puzzles. Previous incumbents managed to grade puzzles Monday through Friday with difficulty increasing as the week progressed. I’m not advocating that but we currently appear to have management by abdication, with even the “no living person” rule broken last Saturday.

    I can recommend the latest Anax Imperator which can be found on his website – an excellent puzzle.

    1. I can’t agree with you about the level of difficulty, Jimbo. I think you’re just getting to good at them!

      I reckon I’ve done really well if I finish in under 30 minutes and okay up to 40. Anything over that is hard in my book. Today I took 45 minutes with several unexplained clues and two errors so it was quite difficult enough for me.

  3. I came in around 45 minutes on this one with loads of question marks re things to check later in books and on-line.

    I found it a somewhat traumatic experience as there were too many words and references I just didn’t know so I had to rely on guesswork. And I’m afraid, in desperation, I fouled up at the 1s having plumped for RAREWINKLE at 1d and ROLLNECK at 1a. Don’t ask me what a rarewinkle is but at least it would fit the wordplay if it existed. I suppose “blue” here refers to the sea where apparently the periwinkle lives.

    Going for a lie-down now.

    1. As anonymous says below, periwinkle is a shade of blue. Named after periwinkle the flower rather than the gastropod.
    1. I haven’t found the recent run of puzzles similar in level of difficulty, or particularly easy. Yesterday’s in particular was a struggle. I’m not nearly as good as many of the posters here, but manage to finish, or at least solve all but one or two particularly recalcitrant clues, unaided, most days: and for every solver of Jimbo’s standard attempting the daily puzzle there will be many like me. The simple fact is that if you reach a certain level of expertise a large percentage of the puzzles are likely to become rather easy, unless you race against the clock and take satisfaction from fast finishes. It hardly seems fair to beat up the editor about that. A large part of his job description, whether explicitly stated or not, will be to produce a crossword that attracts and retains purchasers for the newspaper; it won’t do that very effectively if aimed primarily at a small minority of very expert solvers. bc
    2. 1943 is pretty blank in my copy of the book – a couple of the other bald anagrams are in, and about two other answers. Based on one of these, the S in “peter’s choir” should be the 5th letter.
    4. Will “terpsichore” fit? A singing muse I seem to recall so the “choir” bit is leading you towards the answer – an old ruse.
      1. Singing and dancing. We have an obese cat named Terpsichore. I have never seen any animal less capable of doing either.
  5. Back again! I have recently had problems logging on to the site at work, and had to wait until I got home. Trying to do the crossword at 9pm after a day’s work proved impossible – generally I couldn’t even finish them. It’s amazing how mental capacity diminishes as the day wears on!

    Anyway back to normal today. This was quite straightforward, but fun in places.

    13dn. At the risk of repeating a discussion of a few weeks ago on the question of “one’s” or “your”, I have come to the conclusion that it is always “one’s” where either is possible. The only time it is “your” is when the definition demands it, particularly when the answer has to be an imperative phrase.

  6. 11:36 to solve this, so not easy for me, though I’m maybe not in great form today as 11 minutes for Richard is supposed to equate to about 9 for me.

    As far as I know, a Monday to Saturday progression of difficulty has never been a stated intention in the Times puzzle, and as you might imagine I’ve paid close attention to any public statements from crossword editors over the years (effectively starting with John Grant, xwd ed 1983-1995, who was in charge when my xwd obsession got really serious). The only relevant ones I can recall were some former xwd editors saying that Monday was intended to be easy (current editor Richard Browne does not claim to do this), and a fairly general implication that Saturday’s puzzle was chosen as a good one, which might imply originality and above-average difficulty.

    A challenge for Jimbo: print off three consecutive Mon-Sat weeks for 2000 or 2001, when Mike Laws was in charge. Get Mrs Jimbo to cut off the numbers and shuffle into random order, and then time the lot. My guess is that a “Mon < Tue < Wed < Thu < Fri < Sat” sequence of timings will not happen for any of the weeks.

    I don’t think we’re anywhere near “management by abdication”, given the steps we know are taken to avoid repetition of answers. I think that’s more useful than getting hung up on difficulty, which as every day’s set of comments shows, depends so much on the solver.

  7. 21:53 .. I certainly didn’t find this so easy. It took me a long time to get going, and it proved to be one of those where each clue solved helped to open up another blank area, which is how it should be.

    Jimbo seems to have much more retained crossword knowledge than most solvers, so perhaps there were a lot of unoriginal treatments here that we of the goldfish tendency thought we were seeing for the first time.

    No real champagne moments, but a balanced and challenging whole.

    The Polo-Neck Persephones were an all-girl a capella group of Harvard grad students best remembered, if at all, for calling Jay Leno a “grubby oik” on the Tonight Show.

    1. You could be right Sotira, it did have a bit of a “seen it before” flavour for me. Anyway, I seem to have been on form today so will withdraw my rant at the editor and retreat to a quiet corner.
  8. I found this fairly straightforward, some answers coming immediately (13, 19, 26), others taking longer. Perhaps a touch harder overall than yesterday’s, taking me 35 minutes, with pauses for chat in between. I was temporarily floored by 23, even though I thought of MIRO from the I of IDA – I thought the artist was JEAN not JOAN. WOOL-GATHERING was unfamiliar, though Captain W.E.JOHNS was, but somewhat passe. I should have thought it was time for Biggles’ retirement from The Times.
    I definitely did not like what Richard calls ‘a gratuitous “finish”‘ at the end of 6. Does it make any sense in the cryptic reading? I quite liked the use of “screened” in 5.
    I know passe should have an acute accent, but the preview box puts a a couple of question marks against it, so I’ve omitted it.
  9. I second kurihan’s comment about trying to do these after work. Not as bad as yesterday’s effort though. I also liked 11 and 20 and didn’t know the Sei Whale, which was last in. I used to think Joan Miro was right up there with Barbara Hepworth as one of the iconic 20th century female artists. What can you expect from a colonial?
  10. 18 mins, slowed at the end by not knowing Miro’s first name, uncertainty about SEI WHALE and PERSEPHONE. I thought 11D worked well and 5A made me smile, but my COD’s 22A.

    Tom B.

  11. I struggled on this one, completing in about 45 minutes. There was no particular corner that held me up, it was just a bit of a slog throughout.

    As a bit of a philistine, JOAN MIRO was new to me and I had to dredge my memory banks for PERSEPHONE, although once I twigged what ‘mobile’ meant, it got a bit easier.

    My favourite clue today was 11d

  12. I found it quite hard to get going on this, but eventually got there in 35 minutes, which is just above average for me, though it felt harder than that. Without a google search, ITA would be a very tempting answer for 24d, given my ignorance re: most things G&S. The wordplay for 19ac / 20ac eluded me until I came here, but all in all good fun. A misspent youth reading Biggles was the only thing that saved me in 19ac… COD 7d for me.
  13. 25:55 and at no point did I feel totally in control of the solving process. I think the high count of unconvincing surfaces was a bit off-putting.

    Sei whale was a guess and I’d never heard of whatshisface the just.

    Q-0, E-5, D-7, COD shoulderstrap, 1 across rock: Chesterfield “polo neck” Periwinkle, Boston’s answer to Perry Como, and more famous for his bad taste in jumpers than his singing voice.

    2. Testopolo “Troppo” Sterone: Known as the techno tenor of Toongabbie, whose version of Nessun Dorma was voted number 7 in the Queensland Insomniacs Association Top 100 Relaxation Hits. Prone to inappropriate onstage outbursts.
      1. I was going to mention Nifty Johnson before I realised it isn’t music he’s famous for.
  14. Welcome to the sigh of relief club, George. 35 whopping minutes because I was staring at those blank spaces at 1D and 17AC for eternity. PERSEPHONE? No worries, in she goes. SEI WHALE, you baleen that Canadians keep in bathtubs, you slot in easily. Love JOAN MIRO and have seen more PHENOLs and eaten more BURRITOs than I should. JOHNS a pretty quick guess.

    But PERIWINKLE and LANDSLIPS they would not come. Land SLIDES (particularly in this country where one sees a remaining mountain and decides whether it should be deforested and flattened for houses or golf courses or a but of both). Even with the P-R-W-N— I couldn’t think of PERIWINKLE forever, and then made the hail mary on LANSDSLIPS.

    My twa’pen’nor on difficulty during the week – interesting idea, difficult to achieve. The New Your Times does it by grid shape more than anything – those endless fingers of obscure 3-letter words crossing long phrases or names of places or actors. The Guarniad tries, but except for the Saturday, I don’t think they really succeed. The earlier in the week puzzles lean towards cryptic definitions which make them harder for me, and the end of the week is the domain of setters I’m more familiar with (hat tip to the M man) or use more global references in constructing funny clues (ye of the 4-letter words). I don’t think it’s going to work, so I’m happy with the random sprinkling of hard and easy ones during the week (though to me we’ve had few easy ones lately).

    This is what Biggles means to me

  15. 9.28, though SEI WHALE was a complete guess, and I think that if I’d been in a situation where it mattered, I’d probably have taken at least 5 minutes more trying to find a better answer “Is regulated” didn’t seem to be a sufficiently definitive anagram indicator to rule out other possibilities.
  16. 9.36 – no mistakes today although like Sabine ,had to guess SEI WHALE. TROPPO was a new term. Got the long answers at 7,11 and 12 quickly and knew of JOAN MIRO – even knew it was a he rather than a she!
    Liked 5 – ‘A motel owner screened” !!
    Last in was 20 and congrats to Richard and anyone else who was actually able to work this one out! I just put it in on faith – now I see it I appreciate how clever it is.
  17. Evidently those finding PERIWINKLE difficult or obscure never made the acquaintance (perhaps wisely) of Hyacinth Bucket whose renowned Candlelit Suppers were always adorned by her Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles – as she never tired of mentioning.
  18. JOHNS was the likely answer after having J_H_S but JASPER JOHNS the American painter occupied my thinking probably, in part, because of the JOAN MIRO answer.
    Thanks to jlheard for the ‘Biggles’ link. I have a spot of iritis going on so ‘biggles” looks like ‘biggies’. My mind wandered there while watching the secretary in the skit.wink wink nudge nudge

    affectionately
    The Dirty Vicar

  19. In two sittings.
    I Liked it. I thought the balance of subject matter was particularly good.

    COD:11

  20. 23 min, but just couldn’t see testosterone, even with all the checking letters in place. Eventually went to the aids. DOH!!! So my COD – 11 Dn.
  21. Sorry to be so late, but work is interfering with timely entries. I had done this last night, and I thought it well above the average difficulty, but no complaints or quibbles. About 45 minutes or so. Since most won’t see this post due to the time of day, that’s all I’ll say. COD: PERSEPHONE. Best to all.
  22. hi, i’m very new here (and to the times crossword) i’ve not managed to finish one yet but i got close on monday. and a got quite a few today, and reconized the types of more with out actually managing to solve them. Hopefullly i’ll do better tommorow. My goal at the moment it to finish one in under a day 🙂
    1. Welcome, llssande, and I hope you will stay around and I’m sure you will easily exceed your present goal before long.
    3. Llyssande,

      Regular attempts at the puzzle combined with reading the blog will help you a lot. But so will reading Tim Moorey’s recent book about solving the Times puzzle. Of course you may be be here because you’ve just read it – he says very nice things about us. I promise I’d still have recommended the book even if he’d not mentioned us at all.

      Edited at 2009-02-20 09:38 am (UTC)

    4. Welcome and I’m sure that if you stick with the blog you’ll easily reach your first target. If you need help or don’t understand something never hesitate to ask. We can all remember our early days and will enjoy helping you to succeed.

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