16 minutes, and felt as if it should have been less. However, I came away with the conclusion that for everything I thought was good today, there was something else that made me raise an eyebrow. Perhaps I’m feeling sub-par after eating too many chocolate mini-eggs; time and other people’s comments will show if I’m being needlessly picky / missing the point in any of my queries. Q1.5 (one large, a few little)-E5-D5
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PASTA – PAST (It)A(ly) |
| 4 | BOWSTRING – BOW + S + TRING. I began by trying to justify BOWCHASER, having read too much Hornblower as a boy; then I was looking for towns in Lancashire before realising that it was just ‘to north-west’, not ‘in the north-west’. I have crossed the Tring Summit on the Grand Union Canal by narrowboat; admittedly it’s not on a par with crossing the Rockies by rail, but I’m glad I didn’t have to do the digging. |
| 10 |
HARRY – this was the one which gave me most pause for thought. I’m presuming, of course, that I’m right in thinking the definition is (H)assle = HARRY? The only way I can get there, however, is via Flash Harry, being an exemplar of the sort of man who might drop his aitches. In other words the clue says “The answer means ‘Hassle’; and it describes a man who uses traditional Cockney speech (at least as accepted by convention in crossword circles)”. But I’m not convincing myself by this reverse engineering – anybody have an explanation with more conviction?
ETA See second comment below, |
| 12 | MASTHEAD – M(onday) AS THE AD; this is the bit listing editorial contributors etc. |
| 14 | SUBMISSION – SUB (as in sub me a fiver till payday) + MISSION. |
| 20 | MOTIONLESS – last one in because for ages I was trying to find an anagram of (DOINGMILES) and not the correct (MILESNOTSO). |
| 22 | SEDATIVE – various drugs here, an E(cstasy) in S(econd) DATIVE gives the opposite of a stimulant. |
| 23 | FINGER – double def. as in that which one is instructed to pull out by demanding superiors, and the notoriously variable measure of home-poured drinks. |
| 27 | LEISURELY – LEI + SURELY. |
| 28 | WORLD BANK – WORD round L + BANK, a topical recessionary clue, should you have needed reminding about the state of the economy. |
| 29 | SITAR – iS IT A Raga. I knew that a raga was something musical and Indian, but it would be untruthful to claim my knowledge extended any further… |
| Down | |
| 1 | POSSESSED – POSSES + S ED. = “had”. I like it when the definition is so short and thus disguised. |
| 2 | STOIC – TO inside SIC. |
| 4 | BACH – I believe ‘bach’ is the Welsh for little, so Dai bach is Little Dai. But saying it’s a ‘non-English’ term and leaving you to work out that means ‘Welsh’ seems vague and unsatisfactory to me: does that mean that Chianti is a ‘non-French’ wine, or Toyota a ‘non-German’ car? Meanwhile, at the weekend Cardiff Blues reached the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup under their coach Dai Young, whose name is one of those that sub-editors must love. |
| 5 | WORKAHOLIC – cryptic def. assisted by the capitalisation. |
| 6 | TAHITI – TA + HIT + 1; nice to see a clue which doesn’t involve some variation on HAITI+T. |
| 7 | ISRAELITE – IS + ELITE round R(oyal)A(cademician). This is great in the misdirection which suggests that the David in question is the neo-classical painter, rather than King David. However, I was left wondering why “French” in the clue (other than it adds to the suggestion that the answer is something to do with French art?) The suggestion is that “elite” is a French term – which of course it is; but you wouldn’t suggest that a rendez-vous was an assignment that only two French people could arrange, would you? My thought was that an elite is an elite in any English-speaking country just as much as in France, and the extra word is redundant. |
| 8 | GUYED – As has been established before, most recently yesterday, it’s always worth checking everybody’s mileage with homophones, but I can’t see how anyone could seriously dispute this one. |
| 17 | DESTROYER – TROY inside DESER(t). |
| 21 | STOLID – emo(T)ion inside SOLID, with a nice &lit. |
| 22 | SHREW – R(egina) in SHEW, an archaic version of SHOW; Katharina is the eponymous shrew in Taming of the Shrew. |
| 24 | GUEST – =”GUESSED”: once more, I stand back and await the general verdict on whether this homophone is valid (my verdict = fine); but that element aside, why American? is it really only Americans who say “I guess” when someone else might equally well say “I suppose”? Not in my experience, certainly, but I throw it open for comment in case it’s just me… |
The OED offers this on HARRY:
” 2. As a generic name for: a. A country fellow (?obs.). b. A young Englishman of a low-class type: cf. ‘ARRY.
1796 GROSE Dict. Vulg. Tongue, Harry, a country fellow. 1828 Craven Dial., Harry, a country man, a rude boor. 1874 All Year Round XII. 617 We have all been introduced to Harry at home..We do not style him ‘Arry, as some offensively and in the worst taste do. “
No problem with either of the homophones.
In the end I had one wrong at 23 (incidentally Tim, you have a typo on this clue number,as it reads 21 at the moment). In desperation I had bunged in BINGER having previously considered GINGER but not FINGER.
But it was the NE corner that gave me my worst problems with only WORKAHOLIC and BIRD in place for ages. I thought of BACH and HARRY quite early but couldn’t justify them so of course I fully agree with Tim’s comments on both.
As for the town in 4a I realised it was probably going to be one to the NW of London (where I have lived all my life) rather than “Oop North” but I couldn’t think of anything that fitted. Maybe if I’d been travelling to work this morning my brain would have woken up when the guard announced “We are now arriving at Tring”. I’m gutted, as the saying has it!
On a positive note I liked BOUND OVER at 15D and I have no problem with the homophones. However…
In BOWSTRING I don’t think “to NW” is good enough and would prefer “London area and town NW of it”. I didn’t understand HARRY and don’t feel I should have to look up names in reference works to understand clues. I don’t think “may be soft or hard” is a satisfactory definition of DRUG – so is water to name but one other alternative. In ASTEROID at 3D, a steroid is not a harmful substance per se only if misused – many asthmatics are kept alive by their steroid based inhalers. The word “French” in 7D is pure padding and brings absolutely nothing to the clue. Much the same can be said of “see” in ASTON VILLA at 13D (a football team for overseas solvers)and “American” in 24D.
Like many others, the “frantically doing miles” held me up for quite some time; and 7dn sent me down various blind alleys. BACH gave me no trouble at all, as I’m very familiar with it as a Welsh term of affection; if I wasn’t, I’m not sure I would be happy with the clue either.
I find STEROID=harmful substance, to be less of a quibble. Granted it’s not harmful in all situations, but then, neither is strychnine – it’s available on the NHS for certain heart conditions. I’d still call that a harmful substance. I suspect, besides, that nowadays steroids are far better known for being abused by sportsmen than they are for being properly used in medicine.
Is it regrettable that people use scientific terms in such an imprecise way? Yes. Would restricting cryptic xwd setters to scientific accuracy make any significant difference to this state of affairs? No!
Edited at 2009-04-14 12:35 pm (UTC)
Unfortunately, ‘finger’ did have an alternative, so I put in ‘jigger’.
‘I guess’ was an Americanism in the 19th century, but not today.
Didn’t we have ‘submission’ within the past few weeks? Maybe it was a Jumbo, don’t remember.
When I played Boggle with my flatmate Alan many years ago, I taught him ‘shew’ and ‘quean’, which were in the dictionary we were using. We’re still waiting for ‘quean’ in the puzzles.
“He had a smoothly husky voice, a hard Harry straining himself through a silk handkerchief.”
It looks as if Harry may have a similar meaning in US slang (at least in Chandler’s 1930’s slang).
Steroids harmful? My cat lives on them.
A good start and a good five minutes from 20 to 25, but only got FINGER and GUEST after a long pause and finished near to 35 minutes.
Like other, I was working on the wrong anagram at 20a for a long time until I realised it probably ended in LESS.
I liked WORLD BANK and POSSESSED (I was looking at anagram of HAD GROUPS for a while even though it looked an unlikely combination)
On the guessed/supposed point, there’s a (possibly apocryphal) story about WC Fields taking a young lady out: “What’ll you have to drink my dear?” “Champagne, I guess.” “…guess again!”
Q-2, E-5, D-4 COD possessed
No quibbles from me for any of the clues. I thought of ‘Arry Redknapp when putting in 10A too, although I’m glad the H was checked or I may have thought I was missing something. No problems with BACH or FINGER – pulling (or taking) out one’s JIGGER seems a bit rude! 😉
Vinyl1 – SUBMISSION last appeared on 28th March in No. 24185, the Saturday prize puzzle. I think today’s was the better clue though.
Oli
I also have a ‘?’ next to bowstring for missile-launcher. Surely a bow is the missile-launcher; the string is just a part of the device.
A “finger” is supposedly the amount of say scotch that can be put into a tumbler to just come to the top of a finger placed round the bottom of the glass to hold it whilst the drink is poured. Interpretation is normally liberal!!
Oli
On the whole, perhaps we ought to agree that the answer is jigger.
I think it’s linked to “sitting on your hands” meaning doing nothing. The implication is what your finger might have been doing while you were sat on it.
Apart from that, it wasn’t too hard – about 30 mins for me.
Funnily enough it took me ages to do 16A because my mind has been warped by crosswords. It took too long occur to me that a rook might simply be a bird, not a chessman, to rip someone off etc! Whenever I see charming, I think of wizards, flower I think of rivers and so on.
Started: As Chelsea & Liverpool kicked off for the second half
Finished: Before the final whistle
I was pleased to see that naff clues like 10 across are not exclusive to the Sunday Telegraph, and like many others I was not impressed by 4 down. Other than that, I enjoyed it as a light relaxation from my usual diet of Telegraph puzzles.
The danger of water is well-publicised. Many councils in the US banned DHMO after the following website was drawn to their attention:
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
But GUYED was no prob: the American light versifier (and whilom lawyer) Newman Levy, one of my faves, wrote two amusing collections of verse recounting the plots of various plays and operas, which he entitled “Theatre Guyed” and “Opera Guyed.”
So it just goes to show.
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