Times 24182

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 14:10

The SW corner was the hardest part of this for me – pretty blank when the rest was filled in. 14 and 13 were both new words for me. 4, 19, 7 and 22’s INRO were on the difficult side but known. Surface readings are good and there are quite a few unexpected definitions. Often, most def’s in a puzzle are just one or two words, but here I counted ten non-cryptic def’s of three or more words. So although there was nothng that made me laugh, a good puzzle.

Across
5 PAST=history,I,CHE (Guevara) = “cult warrior” – not calling him “revolutionary” was a promising start to the puzzle.
9 PRO=for,MISER=one worried about the pennies
10 A TODD’S – ref. Sweeney Todd, demon barber of Fleet Street
11 CHILL,I
12 PART,A,KEN as “beyond my ken”
14 CON=fiddle,SEC(t),RATION=helping
17 CENTRE OF MASS – wordplay in the answer for as=mASs. Correct version of what used to be “centre of gravity”.
20 COLD FEET – two defs
22 INRO,A,D – an inro is a Japanse pill box – barred-grid fare.
23 S,(f)IESTA
25 GATEPOST – cryptic def. – which might also suggest ERECTION = building …
26 BA(LINE)SE
27 (in)CREASE
 
Down
2 EARTHY – move the H in ‘hearty’
3 COMPLI(CAT)ED – “went along” = complied – Collins lets you omit the with in “go along with”, COED doesn’t
4 N.E.,SCIENCE – Durham being in the Geordie corner
5 PORK PIE = type of hat, and lie – Cockney rhyming slang
6 ST(A)IR
7 IDO(later) – Ido is an artificial language from barred-grid vocab. Wordplay is a variation on the old favourite procrastinating worshipper’s “I do later”
8 HEDGEHO(g),P – to hedgehop is to fly low
13 ANTISTROPHE = (this poet ran)* – apparently, in an ancient Gk. ode, the strophe comes first, and then the antistrophe – I saw “strophe” and assumed the rest of the word
15 REALISTIC = (article is)* – there’s something about ‘article/recital’ (three nice vowels maybe) which suggests anag. fodder in combination – (recital + N) is stock fodder for ‘clarinet’ for instance
16 VERON(I/C)A – nicely done. If you’ve got a dictionary to hand, look up veronica to see what could have been done to you with this one. She’s a handy grid-filler, so you’ll probably see at least one of those defs by Christmas.
18 FATIGUE – (if a gut)*,E=energy
19 C,ASS IS – cassis is the blackcurrant goop in Kir. Classic kind of drink that you buy when on holiday and then have half a bottle lying around in the kitchen for ages because drinks belong in their locales more than you realise.
21 ERAS,E
24 SKI – 2 defs and our second Russky surname-ending in a week or so.

31 comments on “Times 24182”

  1. A similar solving pattern here with over a third of the time taken spent in the SW corner where I was missing 16,21, 23 and 26 with a question-mark over CENTRE at 17 until I spotted how the wordplay worked.

    Are we all happy with 12, I wonder? I’d have expected it to be defined by “joined in” rather than “join” alone. But I don’t have the reference bibles to hand at the moment and maybe they’ve got it covered.

    2. Also in my original message I meant to write: “joined” alone.

      Damn this system which is not allowing me to delete and post corrections today. I get an IE message “JS_ASSERT no xtr now, but earlier?”.

      Does anyone know what this means?

    3. At least one usage example in Collins has “partake in”, like “join in”. COED defines partake “partake in” as “join in” (but then doesn’t seem to define “join in”).

      [Corrected after next comment made me read more carefully.]

      Edited at 2009-03-25 08:00 am (UTC)

  2. I rate this as quite difficult – about 45 mins I think. It was one of those puzzles which I am quite happy to have completed without aids, regardless of time.

    LIke Peter I saw STROPHE at 13dn and guessed the rest.

    SW corner was the last in. For some reason it took ages to see the obvious SKI – I even had OFF pencilled lightly for a while!

    12ac COED has “partake in” = “join in” and Chambers shows it as both vt and vi, so I guess it’s OK.

  3. So far we all seem to have had a similar experience with the SW corner giving trouble. I took too long to see the excellent CENTRE OF MASS but once I had that I twigged VERONICA, which I also thought very clever. I also guessed ANTISTROPHE and we’re not making a fuss anon, just commenting that it’s a new word to us so we had to guess it from the clue and partial knowledge (strophe). A very enjoyable 35 minutes.
    1. Pleased with my performance here – possibly the most difficult puzzle I’ve managed to solve entirely without aids, and a sign of further (albeit extremely gradual) improvement. SW was also last for me except “inroads” which I guessed early but was still uncertain about when I penned it in last (I’d vaguely heard of “inro” but what it was wouldn’t come to mind).

      Didn’t time myself but I’d guess 40-45 mins. There were some excellent clues, but overall I thought this puzzle not entirely pleasing although not easy to put my finger on why. bc

  4. By the way the re seems to be an unusual number of C’s in the grid – not overwhelming, but 12 is 4 times what would be expected from random text.

    Setter’s hundredth puzzle?

  5. 20:53 .. Another very satisfying puzzle. Haven’t they been good lately?

    I liked the cordial idiot and the tiger hunt, but the mind-bending 17a stands out.

    One Across Rock – Jethro Tull breakaway Earthy Beacon, whose ‘Pork Pies and a Glass of Pastiche’ will be well known to anyone with corn braids, a penny whistle and a dog on a string.

      1. “You expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”
        “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to diet.”
  6. Similar experience to you all. Slightly easier going than yesterday for me. Although I ticked many as good clues, last in and COD for me was VERONICA, in the plural Australia’s very own One Across Rock. Strangely, Earthy Beacon’s own spin-off range of clothing never quite took off (the rocket boosted flares quickly ran out of propellant) and their second album “Centre of a Balinese Siesta” was a bit sparse for most people’s taste, even with the overdubbed gamelan ostinato.
  7. After 45 minutes, I still had 16, 23, 26, 24 and 21 blank, so similar to others it would appear. At that point I ran out of time. I liked 4d and 10ac…
  8. This was a most peculiar solving experience. After 20 minutes I only had a handful (less than several) of clues answered and was taken back to the days of staring at the puzzle and having no hope of even coming close to filling it in. Then all of a sudden something clicked and I polished it off in a further 12 minutes.

    Nescience, ido, inro and antistrophe were all new. I liked 17 & 5d but 16 gets my COD nod.

  9. A bit of struggle that I completed in about 45 minutes. Some of the cluing would not be out of place in a Mephisto puzzle.

    I found the top half much easier than the bottom half. I hadn’t come across either of NESCIENCE or CENTRE OF MASS before.

  10. Didn’t finish the SW corner as I’d put ‘Sunday’ for 23ac – s(abotage) (f)unday! Use of ‘inro’ in 22ac was a bit much for me.
  11. 25 minutes. Slow to get started and held up by quite a few – ANTISTROPHE was new and would have got VERONICA more easily if it had had a bullfighting reference.
    Last to go in was 17 which was another new one ,centre of gravity in my era.
    A good challenge but nothing which really raised a smile although 16 was good.
  12. Didn’t record a time, but probably around an hour, much of it mired in the SW. I found this tough and somewhat unsatisfying. Too much “Oh Really?” not enough “Aha!” Missed 12 ac, and not at all happy with partaken = joined sans the in.

    And Peter, if you do have some of that cassis gloop hanging around the kitchen, whack it on some vanilla ice cream. Delicious!

  13. 13 mins 23 secs.

    Unusual to see INRO used in the wordplay in a daily puzzle. I wasn’t sure about ‘timidity’ as a definition of COLD FEET, but it’s fine by the dictionaries. Didn’t know that a PORK PIE was a type of hat. Stupidly, what caused me most grief was CHILLI, which I kept parsing as C + HILL + I. (That’s what happens when certain abbreviations become too standard, I guess.)

    Clues of the Day: AT ODDS, CENTRE OF MASS, FATIGUE.

  14. Regards all. I thought this a good puzzle, but not as tough as some recent outings. About 30 minutes. Like others many words new to me: ANTISTROPHE, NESCIENCE, INRO, CENTRE OF MASS (we use ‘center of gravity’ also). I’d seen IDO before in some puzzle. Very appreciative of AT ODDS and VERONICA, the latter being the COD in my view. My problem was the NW corner, especially the unexpected spelling of CHILLI, my last entry. Best to all.
  15. SW corner was also the trickiest for me with all checked letters in VERONICA and BALINESE being vowels, but got there in the end. 31 mins. Fave clues, PORK PIE and VERONICA. And, Peter re NESCIENCE, Geordies do not cover the whole North East, far from it.
  16. Disaster for me today, mainly due to a massive hangover from last night (well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). Put it down after half an hour with 8 clues unsolved, four in the NE corner, four in the SW. Got them gradually during the morning as I sobered up at my desk, but the whole thing probably took an hour.
  17. I know im bein thick guys, but centre of mass is the only one I dont really get the word play for. I hate asking about a clue everyone is applauding.
    1. From memory, the clue had something like “as seen in this”, as well as the definition. Literally speaking, the centre of “MASS” is “AS”, the middle two letters.

      The fiendish part is that you have to read the answer as a bit of cryptic clue ‘wordplay’, to get something mentioned in the clue – the reverse of the usual procedure. That’s what we call “wordplay in the answer”. It’s a more tidily done version of the old chestnut “Gegs (4)” = SCRAMBLED EGGS.

  18. Just the one omission and that has been commented on:

    1a Have life as prisoner, giving a warning signal(6)
    BE A CON. I always think of Mavis when I see Beacon. As far as I remember Mavis Beacon wrote tutorials for typing. Mrs npbull followed her method and can type quite respectably. Not so your contrite correspondent.

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