Times 24,186 (Mar 30th) – Kingdom for a Norse

Author   sotiraPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
25:44 .. Quite tricky in parts, but plenty of satisfying moments. I only realised after agreeing to step in and blog this that I couldn’t untangle the wordplay for 5 down. Answers on a postcard, please. Now sorted out (ish). Thanks to all who pointed out the explanation, though the answer dawned on me shortly after hitting ‘post’, the blogger’s equivalent of ‘carriage wit’.

ACROSS
1  A,SGARD – home of the Aesir, one of the two tribes of the Norse gods, and the land where Valhalla is found
5   FO(R)E,TELL – cleverly concealed def. (divine – vb.). Those who disapproved of ‘Tell’ for archer’ the other day are unlikely to have changed their minds
9  BLOOMS,BURY – Leopold Bloom of Joyce’s Ulysses and his wife, Molly (Marion)
10 PO,GO – Petty Officer + (get up and) GO
12 LOCATE – that would be ‘low Kate’
13 AM,MO – another nicely concealed definition – ’rounds’. For the uninitiated, M.O. is Medical Officer, often cued with ‘doctor’ in the Times.
18 IR(RIG)ATE – did anyone else waste a lot of time trying to find some anagrammatical wordplay in here?
19 GI,TE – clever, ‘hollow tree’ being T..E
21 KERNEL – ie Colonel. Whether this is a homophone for you may depend on how posh you are. Me, I’m vay, vay posh.
23 WOOD SAGE – ‘Wood’s age’, he being Sir Henry Wood, forever associated with the Promenade Concerts
25 CO(R)D
27 F(EARL)ESS – ‘fess’ being ‘an ordinary in the form of a broad horizontal band across the middle of an escutcheon’. Obviously.

DOWN

2  SO(L)AR
3  A FORTIORI – (for a riot I)* – ‘for a still stronger reason’
4  DE SICA – Vittoria De Sica, neorealist Italian director/actor, whose La Ciociara got Sophia Loren an Oscar. Reversed in ‘ostrACISED’.
5  FOUR-LETTER WORDS – When solving, I assumed this was an anagram of (few lewd retorts). But it’s not. I’m sure I’m being spectacularly dim. Help. Just realised that it’s ‘four’ followed by (lewd retorts)*. Somehow I’ve always regarded ‘few’ as ending at three.
6  (t)ROY,A,LIST
7  TOPI,C
8  MARIE ROSE – two girls, one sauce
16 AEG,IS,THUS – if you don’t know his story, it’s worth looking into
17 CARLIS,LE – A Carlis(t) + ‘le’ for a border city
20 YOR(I,C)K
22 NADIR – Sheridan (Richard Brinsley) reversed when SHE’s gone

45 comments on “Times 24,186 (Mar 30th) – Kingdom for a Norse”

  1. 10:23 for this – much of it easy enough but had a real struggle with 18 at the end, where I couldn’t see the def. or RIG for the platform, mainly because I wanted to find an anagram of AMID – poor decision making not to ditch this idea much faster. Didn’t know about De Sica, wood sage or Carlists, and also took quite a while to find Aegisthus – my Greek mythology is so bad that I only remember him from Richard Strauss’s Elektra.
    1. I enjoyed this one, which seemed to suit me. I didn’t know wood sage either, and although Aegisthus and Carlists were in there somewhere, they were buried pretty deep. But the wordplay got me there in each case without too much of a struggle. Around 25 mins. bc
  2. 10:54. Now that I’m doing the daily puzzle once more, I find it a constant reminder of how much I don’t know. This time it was PO for petty officer; WOOD SAGE (luckily Henry Wood rang a bell); DE SICA (despite knowing the phrase ‘if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium’); FESS (which I’m sure I’ve come across before); TOPI; LIGHT OUT meaning to decamp; MARIE ROSE dressing; and AEGISTHUS.

    Like Peter, I dragged out 18ac for longer than was necessary, but my choice of anagram fodder was WATER rather than AMID.

    Clues of the day: AMMO (though I may have seen it before), CORD, FOUR-LETTER WORDS and MARIE ROSE.

    No quibbles for once!

  3. 23 mins here, except for 14 dn which I had to look up later. When I found out what goes into it, I realised why I had never heard of it. (I found it hard to see past “Morse code”!)

    Plenty of new stuff – as well as MARIE ROSE, DE SICA, LIGHTS OUT (in the sense of the definition) AEGISTHUS and WOOD SAGE were all new to me but gettable from the wordplay.

    A FORTIORI and TESTATOR were gimmes for a lawyer!

    I had the odd feeling that the puzzle flattered – while solving I felt that I was doing well with a hard puzzle (which really wasn’t that hard at all).

  4. FOUR (a few) + LETTER WORDS (anag. of ‘lewd retorts’, indicated by ‘out of order’).

    I thought the same as sotira while solving.

  6. I found this pretty straightforward, as evidenced by the fact that my time was about the same as sotira’s, whereas normally I take considerably longer. I didn’t know AEGISTHUS, but the wordplay was easy. Less easy to guess was MARIE ROSE, which I didn’t know, and, like Peter, for too long I thought 18 involved a jumble of AMID. DE SICA was very familiar, though the only one of his films I could name off the top of my head is “Bicycle thieves”.
  7. I found this quite hard going, at 50 minutes, with a few problems of my own making. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the holiday home in 19ac, so spent an age and a half trying to hollow out a particular tree – GIPE, anybody, before the truth dawned. In 6d, I convinced myself I was looking for a particular name for far too long.

    Never heard of Marie Rose dressing, so that was a complete guess. (There’s a typo in the blog, BTW, 8d = 14d).

    COD 5d, even if I didn’t understand it fully at first.

  8. 13 mins for me today. I’d never heard of DE SICA, but was OK with the rest. Tried to make the anagram at 5D out of “a few lewd retorts” and saw WORDS, then LETTER, then the penny dropped.
  9. 16:30 so on the easy side of average for me. I’ve had Marie Rose on my bed (of lettuce, topped with prawns) so she didn’t vex me at all. I had to rely on wordplay for De Sica, Aegisthus and wood sage whilst Asgard, A fortiori and Carlists were dredged up from somewhere at the back of my mind, behind a stack of old LPs. Lighting out was a new meaning as well.

    Some well-disguised definitions here and there and I liked the &LIt at 5 down.

    Q-0, E-7, D-6, COD foretell, 1 across rock – Asgard Pogo, the punk-tinged side project of Morten Harket from a-ha.

  10. Has anyone explained 5d yet? I think “A few” defines “FOUR” and “lewd reports” is the anagram fodder that makes up the rest of it, the whole clue defining the solution.

    1a was last in, and although I had considered ASGARD, I didn’t know the word so I settled for ISLAND instead, assuming “land fit for heroes” was a reference to this sceptered isle or some such.

    I didn’t get the “does a runner” ref at 8d

    45 minutes with one error, so not a good start to the week.

  12. Not my cup of tea this one. Far too much obscurity for one puzzle, definition by example, weak homophone, outright guess at 14D (having failed to justify morse code of all things) etc. I trudged home in 35 minutes but it was a slog.
    1. Where’s the definition by example? The only things I can think of are Molly and Leopold in 9ac and Sir Henry in 23ac, but the distinction between general terms and specific examples isn’t obviously applicable to names – it’s not like putting ‘Mars’ in a clue and expecting your solvers to write GOD in the grid, as happened in one of the 2006 Grand Final puzzles.
      1. It’s at 5a. We had exactly the same example last Friday otherwise it might have caused me more difficulty today.
        1. This is not definition by example. Archer is a category, of which (William) Tell is a possible member. This is no different to “God” in the clue leading to “Mars” in the answer. Definition by example would be Tell in the clue leading to Archer in the answer, or Mars leading to God, as in Mark’s, er, example.
          1. Quite so.  If I’m ever confused about this sort of thing, I think of trees.  It’s obviously fine to have ‘tree’ in a clue leading to OAK in the grid; the clue is then telling you to select a tree from your list of trees.  Likewise, 5ac here requires you to select an archer from your list of archers.

            What’s problematic is being asked to guess a list from an example, without being told that that’s what you have to do.  So ‘oak, for example’ is fine for TREE, and likewise ‘Tell, for example’ would be fine for ARCHER.  Puzzle 24180 last Monday sinned by omitting any indication that 19dn was a definition by example.

            1. I don’t really want to repeat the great D by E war of a year or two ago, but my impression from the amended practice permitted at the Times since about 2004 is that once you’re prepared for the possibility, D by E is not difficult to deal with, the answer to “how many categories does X belong to?” usually being less than “how many things are in category Y?”.

              Edited at 2009-03-30 07:53 pm (UTC)

    1. eek, thank you. Corrected. I did have it right in the puzzle, though thousands wouldn’t believe that.
  14. A longish slog for me also at 45 mins. The tide was definitely out on the Tyne today, with POGO last in. Fell into a goodly subset of previously mentioned pits: anagram of water (how many words do start with WRR? I could only think of 3), full anagram at 5d (I like it less knowing that it isn’t), etc. I thought ASGARD was somewhere in Narnia. Philosophy 100 finally of some use at 3d. COD 18.

    As for lighting out, I was convinced the lyrics of Ives’ (Burl not Charles) The Fox included “and the fox lit out for his den, oh!”, but apparently not in the official ringtone version.

    1. I think you are right about The Fox. Unfortunately I lost my Burl Ives song book when moving house years ago so I can’t confirm the official lyric. But now you have used the past tense I recognise the meaning I missed previously and have thought of another example in a lyric:

      When he come home his politickin’ done
      the western march had just begun
      So he packed his gear an’ his trusty gun
      an’ lit out grinnin’ to follow the sun
      Davy, Davy Crockett, leadin’ the pioneer!

  15. Did this way too late last night, and found it a real plod, though eventually had everything except 9, 18 and 14. After convincing myself that there wasn’t “LEO” in the answer to 9, BLOOMSBURY came with a smile. Finally IRRIGATE fell and I was left with the girls dressing. It had to be somthing ROSE, and I couldn’t think of any sauce that ended in ROSE and figured maybe it was a type of spread and wrote in MARGE ROSE. Hadn’t heard of MARIE ROSE, but now I look it up, it sounds like what I would call cocktail sauce?
  16. Had a real struggle with this, and went to the aids after 25 min, finally limping home in 40. Most annoying clue was 18 ac, because it was so obvious after being led round be the nose for ages. De Sica and aegisthus were new, but probables from the word play. COD: 5 dn. Suspected Bloomsbury, but had to check. Is Ulysses the most discussed and least read book in the English language?
  17. I’m amused (tickled pink?) by the fact that Marie Rose sauce has caused as much trouble as the mythology and other “obscure” stuff. As far as I can tell, it’s a common name in the UK for the pink goop on a prawn cocktail. Anyone who’s read a few restaurant menus in this country must surely have seen it.

    Those in other countries will probably know it as something else – cocktail, seafood, fry or burger sauce all seem to be much the same – essentially a simplified version of “Thousand Island”. My favourite name is from the Netherlands – “chip war” – though apparently that can include satay too.

    Edited at 2009-03-30 04:01 pm (UTC)

    1. Any time I see “prawn” on a menu I immediately skip to the next item anyway, so that would be no help.

      Quick, again, for me (c.12 minutes). Apart from guessing MARIE-ROSE and fumbling over IRRIGATE, no real problems. Can I count 27ac as being one for the Heraldic Mafia?

      1. 27ac I’m presently in the office and the only dictionary I have access to is the online OED. Out of interest I checked “fess” to see just what it is and the OED gives only “fesse” with that meaning. I expect that either the COED or my nemesis Collins has “fess” but it’s odd that it’s not in the OED which should be an authority on established usage like heraldic terms.
        1. It seems even odder to me. In such books on heraldry as I’ve read – I’m far from an expert in the field, but for gaming purposes I once needed to know a bunch of stuff about designing shields – I’ve never come across that spelling. I hazard a guess that it’s the original Middle-English version which, like so many words, lost the ending E. (“It’s written in Old, before they invented spelling.”)
  18. Took about 40 minutes, same list of new words and obscurities as mentioned by others already. Confess I looked up AEGISTHUS to see if he existed. Like others, MARIE ROSE was a complete guess. Regards.
  19. (Now that my internet situation has changed I can comment here–and save a few euros–as The Times arrives in Germany one day late!)

    Took a little, but partly because I wrote ‘topis’ for ‘topic’ as I thought it was an anagram of ‘posit’–and apparently a topis is a variant of ‘topi’! I never heard of ‘Marie Rose’, but found the clue guessable, as the other ones involving new words (of which there were many for me).

    But it actually felt OK for me–I think it was because a lot of the answers were proper nouns that I kinda sorta heard of, and there were no cricket references 🙂

    1. To save you a bit of time in future, the Times clueing style does not permit indirect anagrams. So question = posit and then anagram to get topis was never a possibility (thankfully), although well done to spot it.
  21. Tim Moorey in his book “How to solve the Times Crossword” is keen to say (and I paraphrase) -anyone can do it -you don’t have to be a well read educated genius. Well I think that for example 1a & 9a disprove this. I have never heard of Asgard and while I’ve heard of Bloomsbury (indeed I journeyed through it today) how can those without knowledge of Ulysses possibly know what Molly and Leopold is referring to?
    1. I can honestly say that although I have never read more than a few pages of Ulysses, I saw what Leopold and Molly meant. In both cases, you have wordplay too, and it seems from comments that quite a few people completed the puzzle from wordplay without knowing all the bits of knowledge.

      Tim’s point is that you need considerably less knowledge than (a) most people think and (b) you used to for Times puzzles of 30-odd years ago. In both cases, he’s correct.

      If you haven’t quoted 4D because you knew about De Sica, it’s a case of swings and roundabouts. I had Asgard and the Blooms, but he was new to me.

  22. Blogging late as been all over the place
    Very fair puzzle-lots of intersting answers
    5D is a complet anagram or it was when i did it!
    1. I thought it was also; but there is no U in “a few lewd retorts” so pure anagram is straight out.
  23. It’s funny what people do and do not know. As usual, there was loads that was news to me — Molly and Leopold, TOPI, ASGARD, Sir Henry Wood (don’t know much about varieties of sage either!), FESS, LIGHT UP = decamp.

    Given my apparent ignorance, it’s surprising to see so many more learned types finding difficulty with what I regard as the very familiar MARIE ROSE dressing (or sauce I would usually say) which is a key ingredient in the classic retro starter ‘Prawn cocktail’. Not only have I heard of it I also know how to make it — it’s just ketchup and mayonaise mixed together!

  24. Took 30 mins, and, like some others, my last entry (hard to distangle but no complaints when found) was IRRIGATE.
  25. I thought this was a lot of fun – probably because my GK included Molly and Leo at 9a as well as the fellow of infinite jest at 20d. The unknown film-maker at 4d was easily recognisable from the clue with the 3 checkers in place. I already knew about Asgard from a vague familiarity with Norse mythology. We had to wait a couple of years after this puzzle to see Anthony Hopkins starring as Odin – inhabiting the land for heroes – whilst Thor has been banished to the land of men.

    There are 6 left out of the blog:

    11a Fault-finding is all-important (11a)
    CRITICAL. The checkers allow PROTOCOL but you just can’t justify that from the clue. I tried.

    15a Will signatory try to get roster back? (8)
    TEST ATOR

    26a Sat upright, falsely or truly (8,2)
    STRAIGHT UP. Anagram of (sat upright).

    28a Sikes is mad – Dodger at first is slightly touched (6)
    KISSE D. Anagram of (Sikes) plus D(odger).

    14d Girls dressing (5,4)
    MARIE ROSE. Standard on a prawn cocktail? My LOI.

    24d Look round university for first-aid material (5)
    GA U ZE

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