Times 24158

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
9:33 for this – so pretty much average difficulty. This is a slightly disappointing grid, with no very long answers, but it does have every answer-length from three to ten letters. Wordplays read well throughout and include some nice bits of gentle deception. And I learnt something at 21D.

Across
1 SCOTSMAN – 2 defs – National, newspaper. And works OK as a plain def too, the Scotsman being a “Scottish national newspaper”
6 CUBI(S)T – mild difficulty here when I expected “artist” to indicate a particular person
10 CAT=pet,CALLING=vocation. Never been sure what catcalls sound like – “a shrill whistle or shout of mockery or disapproval” says COED – not much help, really.
11 TABERNACLE = “a celebrant” – the celebrant being a person performing a rite, esp. a priest at a eucharist service
13 WORK = “W or K” as “choice of week-ends”
14 STUNT ME=”limit my development”,N=new
16 DANUBE = (a U-bend)*
18 C,RAVEN – nicely done, with “chicken” pretending to be a bird, but actually an adjective.
20 RINGSIDE=residing* – an easy anagram when the ING and SID parts stay together
22 A,BEL(t) – ref. Cain and Abel
24 CALIFORNIA = (a frolic in a)*
26 BARDOLATRY – old* in “bar a try” = “stop a bid”. A rather daft term for “Shakespeare worship”
28 TATE – founder of London’s Tate gallery, which has now turned itself into a chain. And “Central America” = the middle of “(The) States” = the US – colloquial. Full advantage taken of the cryptic clue convention that you can ignore “the” or “a” when it suits.
29 P=piano,LAYER=film
30 ME,R,CHANT – Antonio being the “Merchant of Venice” in the Bard’s play
 
Down
2 CHARACTER – 2 defs, play part and letter, with “Part I” a good bit of disguise
3 TRADE-IN – DE(al) in TRAIN = “work out”
4 MA(CO.)N
5 NET – 2 def’s – net of tax, and gain=”score” – informal – secure a success or advantage (COED)
6 CLARE(N)DON – name of a typeface, possibly familiar to some from older road signs in US National Parks
7 BALDWIN = a Prime Minister three times between the wars, and “bald win” = “barely achieved victory”
8 SENOR – one’s rev.,R
12 CENTRAL – referring to the answer’s position in the grid
15 MONOCULAR = (colour man)*
17 BADMINTON – some local sporting knowledge required here, as Badminton House is home of the Badminton Horse Trials, one of the major three-day events. (Burghley Horse Trials is the only other one in Britain, barring the 2012 Olympic event.) Although the game of badminton originated in India (as did snooker), “The new sport was definitively launched in 1873 at the Badminton House, Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort. During that time, the game was referred to as “The Game of Badminton,” and the game’s official name became Badminton.” (Wikipedia)
19 VALIDLY – V=very,I.D. in ALLY
21 SCRATCH – 2 defs, of which “informal, money” is today’s new word for me
23 B(R)AWL
25 FLY=quickly move,E.R.=queen
27 TOM=a male cat, and “to male bonding” = TO,M. I had HEM written down as a possible answer next to the clue, but some cautious instinct stopped me putting it into the grid.

27 comments on “Times 24158”

  1. 32mins here, so average difficulty. I started very fast and thought it was going to a sub-15 min job, and then came to a grinding halt for a while.

    I had to look up 26 across to see if it was BAN… or BAR… I had a blind spot at 7dn looking for a name ending …WON (achieved victory) until I got all the checking letters. I did remember “scratch” as one of that odd collection of informal words for “money”

    I’m sure it’s blindingly obvious, but I’ll be the first to ask it – what is the connection between TATE and Central America? Is it just United S(TATE)s of America?

  2. Went through this like a dose of salts – by my standards, not Pete’s! After 15 minutes all answers were in apart from 26. Nine hours and a sleep later I still couldn’t get it. I’d written HEM at 27, that’s why. It sort of fits; HE + M, and a hem is a sort of stitched bonding.
    Scratch = money is new to me as well. And I don’t think I’ve come across bardolatry before either; the word play in that clue is quite tricky.

    Dafydd.

    1. Dafydd,
      I did exactly the same thing – tho’ I spotted my error a bit earlier 🙂
      If you’re the Dafydd I think you are I can’t believe you’ve not heard of Bardolatry 🙂
      1. You can add me to the HEM brigade! Having put that in early on I completed the rest of the puzzle bar 26 and 25 in 34 minutes. I then sat on the train with nothing to do except stare at the unsolved corner for 20 minutes. I’ve no idea why FLYER gave me problems, but once that was in place I was able to run through the possible H_Y endings to 26 and realised that something must be wrong. As soon as I had rubbed the H out I thought of IDOLATARY = worship and it was a small step to work out BARDOLATARY although I have never heard of it. I’m ashamed to say that TOM was my last in and was only solved after both checking letters were in place.
      2. I laughed out loud when I saw that a chap called Tom had made the same mistake. Sorry!
        Dafydd.
  4. No trouble with this one, a gentle 25 minute stroll.

    As far as “hem” is concerned I try never to go firm on these 3 and 4 letter words without some checking letters because so many of these clues can give rise to more than one answer. Also an “h” in that position in 26A is suspicious especially when the wordplay is suggesting “try” = “bid” and “….try” for a worship of some kind at the end of the word.

  5. 18 min, which is on the quickish side for me. Slightly ho-hum with a number of obvious anagrams. No particular COD, but maybe 3 Dn.
  6. 8:51, with at least a minute at the end on 28A – TATE. Popped it in on the strength of the definition, and worked out the s(TATE)s wordplay afterwards. At first, this seemed unreasonably indirect, but I think that was just resentment at having taken so long.
  7. I found this very straightforward – with hindsight I felt that a record speed (for me) might even have been possible had I been motivated to time myself accurately and get a move on. As it was probably somewhere in the 15 – 18 mins range. bc
  8. An easy one, agreed. 23 minutes. I thought I was going to finish in under 20 minutes, but BARDOLATRY and BADMINTON (the clue to which I didn’t understand until I read Pater’s comment above) slowed me at the end. I thought 18 across was simple but neat.
  9. 15:15, about which I was feeling moderately smug, until I came here and realised I’d goofed with BANDOLATRY, which I’d assumed was a generic for Beetlemania, Take That fever and so on. It’s no more awkward a word than bardolatry, but I suppose ‘theatrical’ doesn’t really work with my creation.

    A strange mix, but some very entertaining clues and several top notch surfaces. I really liked MACON and TOM, CALIFORNIA, TABERNACLE, CRAVEN and RINGSIDE.

    Clare College rejected the uppity youth that was me, the fools. No wonder the country’s in such a mess.

    Q-0, E-8, D-7 .. COD 27d TOM .. One Across Rock, Virginia bluegrass legend Scratch ‘the Scotsman’ Craven.

  10. 17 minutes or so, also slowed by having hem in at 27 and only correcting it when 26 finally sorted itself out.

    Pretty easy on the whole but with scratch and clarendon unfamiliar meanings.

    Q-0, E-6, D-4, COD -, 1 across rock ‘Scotsman with a Mac on’, the comedy folk trio responsible for such novelty records as Doctor Finlay’s bookcase and Haggis in a coma.

  11. This took 35 minutes, which is not far off average for me, but it felt quite tricky along the way, with a moment or two of panic, especially in the SE corner. In retrospect, nothing was that difficult, it just took a while for the penny to drop with quite a few. 13ac I thought was quite novel, it took until I came here to fully understand 2d, and SCRATCH = money was new to me too! A lot of these looked deceptively simple, with quite a few double definitions that were a lot more devious than they appeared to begin with. 5d was my favourite.
  12. 14 minutes, add me to the HEM brigade, for a distressingly long time, I may have gone under 10 on this one.

    SCRATCH from half the definition, BADMINTON from half the definition, MACON from wordplay.

    I did a few burlesque shows (as a side-act and comedian, obviously) last year, so I can tell Peter all about cat-calling if he desires.

  15. About 25 minutes, the last two being the crossing TOM and BARDOLATRY. I had ‘hem’ in mind throughout solving, but didn’t write it in because of doubt about how the ‘h’ would succeed in 26, same logic as jimbo used. I had a thought that BARDOLATRY might be a word coined by the setter, since I’ve never seen it written nor heard it said, anywhere, but it appears some of you are familiar with it. SCRATCH=money is common over here, if a bit old-fashioned. Crossing it with CALIFORNIA was a softball for the Americans. COD: WORK. Regards.
  16. BANDOLATRY deserves a chance at life. Is there any other word for slavish and adoring devotion to a pop group in the English language? It certainly is a common phenomena.
  17. I didn’t have to start this until after the footie tonight. Must consider doing the puzzles late again as I got through this in 20 minutes. The final pair were BARDOLATRY and TOM. Like others I had considered HEM at 27d for a long time, but didn’t like the resulting H in 26 ac.

    Pleasant enough crossword with nothing really standing out as a brilliant clue.

  18. I like Will’s stuff as next as the next man but I stop well short of Bardolatry. On the other hand I think I did indulge in some Bandolatry in my youth with The Beatles, Free, Led Zeppelin etc.

    There was just the one omission at 9a:

    9a Miss a festive occasion (4)
    GAL A

Comments are closed.