Times 24168

Author   foggywebPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time – in a few sessions, probably about 40 minutes.

All good fun. Struggled a bit after I’d got about half quite quickly – last two in took a while – 11 (MARTELLO) and 4 (SUBALPINE). No problem with 1 (CLIFFS): last night I’d arranged to go to Cliffs Pavillion in Southend, so the word was probably at the front of my mind.

Across

9 S(TAT)ABLE – SABLE was straight in my mind, and TAT was probably there from the previous clue.
11 MAR,TELL,O – RAM reversed; William Tell,O=old. I don’t remember seeing this word before, so it took some time to unravel (last one in).
12 ATTILA (not ATILLA as I originally wrote) – sounds like A TILLER.
13 C([w]RITER)IA -spys is often CIA.
17 ALAR – hidden word. This was also new to me.
19 SEASON[g],A,L
20 R(EM)AKE – I don’t hear much talk of rakes and roués these days.
21 HIERATIC – sounds like HIRE ATTIC.
24 PEN(Z)ANCE
25 R(AND)OM or RA(NDO)M – I think I’ve seen a similar clue making use of both RAM and ROM in this way.

Down

2 LOTH(ARI)O
3 FATS,TOCK – Fats Waller and regular letters of ‘took cake’. I thought of FATS straight away, wasn’t confident because I didn’t know his first name.
4 S(U,BAL)PINE – U is the university, LAB is the party and SPINE is the ridge – took a while for all of this to come together.
5 THE POWERS THAT BE – I liked this – and not just because I got it quickly, but it certainly helps if the long ones come easily.
6 M(IL,IT)IA – I originally thought this was MIA (AIM reversed) with IL (the in Italian) and IT (Italian wine) inside. I don’t think that’s right as Italian is used twice, so I guess IT (Italian vermouth) is just wine.
7 RE(QUIT)AL
8 TEE,NA[g]GER
14 [s]INN(KEEP)ER – two different types of support in consecutive clues – I like it.
16 OX,Y,MORON – neat (!) clue.
17 AL,BAN,IAN –
18 ANTI-HERO. I initially thought of MALE-LEAD, thinking that Leander was unlikely to be lead by males, whatever that might mean.
19 ST,K,[h]ILDA – took a while, but popped up from some corner of my mind.

30 comments on “Times 24168”

  1. I thought this was another very good Monday puzzle. It took a while to get going and 36 mins to finish.

    I got held up for a while by having CLIFFY at 1ac (very Australian) before realising that Cliff is already a diminutive. It took me a while at 7dn to remember that Brazil has swapped the cruzeiro for the real. I expect 19dn will make George think of Melbourne rather than the Hebrides. I think 25ac is the first time I’ve seen alternative wordplay on offer!

    A nice start to the week.

  3. 9:18 – started off with S…ABLE at 9 and the easy 10, then good progress in all parts except NW, where 1, rest of 9, 11, 2, 3, 4 all put up some kind of fight.

    Pondered a pangram briefly, having seen Z X and Q, but decided that all of FGJV was unlikely in the remaining slots. 3D was the poorest effort in the corner – got confused with Waller the poet (Edmund). Good geographical accuracy at 19D where St K is the group of islands, not any one of them.

    10, 17, 14 had wordplays seen before, but there was enough new stuff elsewhere.

  4. A lively and interesting puzzle which I completed in 29 minutes. Spotting the reference to the great stride pianist got me off to a good start and I made steady progress throughout the remaining clues. Words unfamiliar or new to me: REQUITAL, ALAR and HIERATIC with reference to priests.
  5. Started off with STO…LE at 9, thought Thomas Waller was probably some minor lieutenant in Cromwell’s army and things went downhill from there. Some many interruptions later 9 & 3 were the last in. How could I not immediatetly link Waller with FATS? That’s a balloonable offense. Liked shanty = seasong, always pleased to see oxymoron, particularly when teamed with ox = neat, pleased 15d wasn’t a homophone (although I might have solved it more quickly), thought 25 was like, totally random (have I got the phraseology correct there?) and now understand why love is unrequited.

    So, a good workout for me.

  6. I enjoyed this, not least because I managed to finish it unaided in reasonable time for me of around 25 mins, something I haven’t been managing so often recently. Took me a while to realise the Waller referred to was Fats and not Edmund, who I know mainly through Ezra Pound’s very beautiful Envoi (from Mauberly & based on Waller’s Go Lovely Rose):

    GO, dumb-born book,
    Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
    Hadst thou but song
    As thou hast subjects known,
    Then were there cause in thee that should condone
    Even my faults that heavy upon me lie,
    And build her glories their longevity.

    Tell her that sheds
    Such treasure in the air,
    Recking naught else but that her graces give
    Life to the moment,
    I would bid them live
    As roses might, in magic amber laid,
    Red overwrought with orange and all made
    One substance and one color
    Braving time.

    Tell her that goes
    With song upon her lips
    But sings not out the song, nor knows
    The maker of it, some other mouth
    May be as fair as hers,
    Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,
    When our two dusts with Waller’s shall be laid,
    Siftings on siftings in oblivion,
    Till change hath broken down
    All things save beauty alone.

    bc

      1. Done – my Waller knowledge is restricted to “On a Girdle”, referenced in an old Listener puzzle.
        1. Thanks Peter. I don’t know Edmund Waller’s poetry well, but in the context of a Times crossword he came to mind more quickly than Fats.
  7. I found this pretty straightforward until I came to finish off the NW corner with 1 and 4. Despite seeing the likelihood of UBIL or UBAL in 4dn, SUBALPINE just didn’t come. I couldn’t get UMBELLIFEROUS out of my mind, so wondered if there was a word UMBELLIFE. So 25 minutes with two unsolved. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the week.
  8. 23:57 .. For the last few weeks the standard of puzzles has been terrific. Another interesting, challenging offering today.

    All kinds of good clues. I’ll single out REQUITAL and the great surface of TOMMY-ROT. Props to HIERATIC – a really good and uncontroversial (?) homophone clue. And to HEIRSHIP – for not being another homophone clue!

  9. Yes I know it’s SPINE plus U BAL(L). Where does it say drop the L off BALL?
    1. I think that’s the setter’s intention, though I suspect you could find a sporting context in which to book is at least temporarily to ban (to a sin-bin), which makes foggyweb’s version quite convincing.

      Edited at 2009-03-09 05:59 pm (UTC)

      1. I too went for foggyweb’s reading of 17dn – AL[BAN]IAN – though on reflection I think you’re undoubtedly right, Peter, that the setter intended AL[B]AN,IAN, which cannot be argued with. Nice as it is, the difficulty with BOOK=BAN is that in soccer a booking only becomes a banning if followed by a red card, which is not necessarily the case. I’m not sure what happens in Rugby Union. Is a sojourn in the sin-bin (certainly a ban of sorts) an automatic consequence of being “booked” by the ref?

        Good puzzle. 40 mins for me.

        Michael H

  11. Although I did, I probably shouldn’t have.

    The above may be the worst constructed sentence in the English language.

    First, confidently write ATILLA (like Foggyweb did in the blog) at 12 making 7 down RE–L-AL. Second, while still thinking about where those bloody pirates could be, see an island beginning with STK and put in ST KITTS. Combine that with HE,IR,ARCH and you have a completely unsolvable corner. Way to go. Third, second-guess yourself on a perfectly-good answer, decide that the musical must be HAIR, since nothing is fitting RE–L-AL and look for —-H AIR, rendering two corners unsolvable.

    So I fell for every trick in the book, and finally realised the mistakes in reverse order. 22 minutes, well-played.

    Why are a bunch of islands named after a terrible footy team?

    1. Corrected ATTILA – I think I don’t know how to spell it. But I am reminded of a joke from my youth:
      What do Attila the Hun and Winnie the Pooh have in common? The same middle name.
  12. Nothing like as adventurous as some, just a quiet 25 minute very pleasant solve of a good standard puzzle. I remember going on a school trip circa 1950 to see a martello tower somewhere near the white cliffs of Dover and was mad about Fats once I discovered jazz in my teens. I even knew Leander fancied Hero – must be a good day.
  13. This took me nearly an hour although I was handicapped by simultaneously helping my 90 year-old mother to do the quick crossword. Alternating between literal and cryptic mode is quite difficult. I had to drive home with two clues to go, but I quickly got heirship and pensance on arrival.
    I quickly got Fats, never having heard of Edmond Waller.
    I knew Martello from chapter 1 of Ulysses which begins in a Martello tower near Dublin. Fortunately the reference is in chapter 1 because I have tried to read it three times and have never got past page 50.
    Tommy-rot was a favourite expression of my father’s. I don’t know if he picked it up during the war since it is unclear whether the derivation has anything to do with soldier tommies.
    1. Classic tricky word-origin territory. Could just be an arbitrary name as in johnny-head-in-air or tomcat.

      In his Slang Dict., Eric Partridge suggests possible connections with tommy=truck=wage payment by goods rather than cash (presumed to be poor-quality goods), or tommy=”bloody” – by way of the red uniforms of long-ago soldier “tommies”. (He also says that “Tommy Atkins” goes back to the early 19th C). None of which proves or stops your father having picked it up in the war – I’m sure it was much more common then than now.

      1. I imagine Pete Townshend would say it was rot to have his rock opera Tommy described as a musical.
  14. Nice crossword this, took me about the same time as it apparently took glheard to nearly do it twice!

    I loved 25ac, never ever having seen before, to my recollection, a choice of wordplay for one solution 🙂

  15. I liked this one. Just a tad more difficult that your average Monday offering. Was interrupted a number of times, but probably ca 35 min. Alar, martello and hieratic were all out there on the very fringes of my knowledge, almost certainly from past encounters of the crossword kind. Nice to be able to reel them in again. The powers that be, oxymoron, and teenager all appealed, but the so did many others.
  16. An entertaining little number.

    There are 7 “easies” omitted from the blog:

    1a Little chap’s view on sailing into Dover?
    CLIFFS. Little chap presumably because CLIFF is short for Clifford? Not in the case of Cliff Richard as it is short for Harry Roger Webb.

    5a Decline to be associated with musical – it’s rubbish! (5-3)
    TOMMY-ROT. The musical based on The Who’s “rock-opera” album Tommy.

    10a Commemorative tablet removed by dentist (6)
    PLAQUE

    15a House approved for curved spit of land (4)
    HO OK. I only know of Hoek van Holland.

    22a Line penned by English novelist with difficulty (6)
    HARD L Y

    23a Leading figure shaking up Interpol (3-5)
    TOP-LINER. Anagram of INTERPOL.

    15d He’s clued-up about Irish succession (8)
    HE IR S HIP. I thought HIP was “with-it” in the fashion sense but here it infers that it can mean in-the-know?

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