Times 24204 – Dhabi Day

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 40 mins
Music: Prokofiev Classical Symphony/Ivanov Caucasian Sketches, Rozhadestvensky/Moscow Philharmonic

I admit I was a little nervous printing this one off at 8:01 PM EDT, but solving the first clue before the page was out of the printer was a bit encouraging. I did find it a bit difficult in places, and had use the cryptic bits to come up with words and phrases I was only vaguely familiar with. There are a few answers that are a bit UK-centric, but nothing too obscure.

Across
1 ABU DHABI. A + B + U + sounds like DERBY. Not a homonym in the US, where we pronounce it as spelled, but the stereotyped aristocratic drawl pronounciation is widely known.
10 FLATNESS. FLAT + NESS, a lame bit of silliness.
11 TRIMETER. TRIME(S)TER. An improperly formed American academic term used to make a poetic line that is seldom seen outside of doggeral.
12 VERMICELLI, anagram of EVIL + CRIME + L. I do not really like the practice of defining every conceivable edible as ‘food’, but the editors do allow it.
14 ASTI. Evidently the only possible answer, but I don’t quite see the cryptic. It’s ‘is a’ backwards, but where the ‘t’ comes from I cannot say.
15 LEONARD. LEOPARD, with ‘N’ replacing ‘P’, a very clever clue. I wasted a lot of time trying to get a Northern fellow from the letters of ‘ANTHERS’ before I realized what I was expected to do.
17 LULLABY, LULL(A B)Y. I could not get Lalo out of my head for the longest time, but eventually I found the correct French musician..
23 RACEGOER, anagram of CAREER with GO inside. This gave me a lot of trouble even though I was pretty sure it ended in ‘OER’.
27 MONTEITH. MONTE(VERDI) + anagram of HIT. A word I did not explicitly know, although it seemed vaguely familiar. Fortunately, the trick of taking one Italian composer away from another is a bit of a cliche, so the cryptic should give it to you
 
Down
3 DUTCHMAN. A reference to the Wagnerian opera, The Flying Dutchman. The second half of the cryptic is clear enough, where ‘crew’ = ‘man’ as a verb, but how one gets from ‘wife’ to ‘Dutch’ is not clear to me.
7 FANTASIA, FAN + T + ASIA, not too hard if you have heard of the movie, which was a landmark in the popularization of classical music.
8 HEARTILY. HE(ART)(IL)Y. A ‘hey’ is an English folk dance. Fans of the Fairport scene might remember ‘The Shepherd’s Hey’ from Morris On.
13 CORNFLOWER. CORN(F)(LOW)ER. I was expecting some dreadfully obscure plant known only to dedicated gardeners, and was pleased to meet an old friend from the 64-colour Crayola set.
15 LIVERISH. LIVER + anagram of HIS. Previously unknown to me, but a typical ‘humour’ word and obvious from the cryptic.
18 LEVERAGE. EVE inside anagram of LAGER. Notable for a cleverly concealed literal clue, although as an experienced solver I suspected ‘purchase’ meant a grip or hold of some sort. I came to grief looking for a three-letter woman’s name starting with ‘V’ before realizing it was our old xwd friend Eve.
19 BUN FIGHT. NUB reversed + FIGHT. A UK expression that I did not actively know, although it’s a typical jocular slang formation for a highly formal affair.
24 STAN. (G)NATS backwards. Allusions to Stan Laurel no longer fool me, but you would think his partner might turn up in place of the gloomy novelist

52 comments on “Times 24204 – Dhabi Day”

  1. Welcome to the party! 13 minutes here, my one quibble being whether 16 down should be OVERCOME or OVERCAME (I went for the former). MONTEITH is a good New Zealand beer (hi to Phi if you’re reading). Dutch = wife is rhyming slang – “duchess of fife” (I remember it from the old song “My Old Dutch”). The rejected drink in 14 is IT (as in Italian Vermouth)
  2. Solving time, 30 mins. Drink, coffee. Music, general canteen noise.

    “U” and “non-U” in the first 2 clues. Just making the point I suppose. I thought the music was rather overdone and some of the clues a bit lame (as noted by vinyl).

  3. So my 21 min was not as dreadful as I thought. 5 min of that wasted trying to justify asti for 14 ac, which I still don’t get. So what is asti flavoured with: Wine? Grapes? Where does the “as” come from?
  4. “IT’s a” rejected. And the flavoured wine is vermouth, which is indeed what it is. Sneaky and perfectly OK! Sorry setter.
  5. 12:21 – struggled when I probably shouldn’t have. Monteith was new, and “not Verdi” didn’t ring any bells for quite a while. Also had HEN NIGHT as an optimistic “engagement party”, gradually looking more unlikely as the other letters of 17 arrived. ASTI took a long time to understand, and I felt I had to before stopping the clock – 4-letter word paranoia.

    I’m pretty sure we have had Hardy=>OLIVER at some point, maybe with BATH, which is roughly in the right territory for something about Wessex.

    Dutch=wife: COED and Collins both favour “abbreviation for duchess”. This article seems to have the right history, with the rhyming slang version coming later, when there were well-known Duchesses of Fife. (And you can sometimes hear “duchess” used at least by TV Cockneys – such as “Dirty Den” addressing Angie in past episodes of Eastenders.)

    Edited at 2009-04-20 05:53 am (UTC)

  6. Congratulations on your first blog, vinyl. They get easier from here on in (he says in anticipation). 35 mins for me, (inclding two phone calls) so fairly straightforward. I think explaining ASTI was the most difficult bit. I liked how it was cleverly meshed with “the italian” in 8D, as a huge clue.

    As for Hardy => OLIVER, quite a few of us used this device in the Times Clue Writing Competition last December (for OLIVER TWIST)and were disqualified on the grounds that the more likely connection was with the verbose Hardy rather than the silent one. I’ve searched for BATH OLIVER in this and last year’s answers and can’t find it, although I do remember it as being fairly recent. I’m guessing it was in the Sunday Times. Either that or more stringent rules are applied in the competition than to the regular setters (and I’d have absolutely no quibbles if that were to be the case).

    1. Is this another sign of how out of touch with the real world some Times people can be? I’d lay heavy odds that OLIVER Hardy is well-known by about one thousand times as many people as is THOMAS.
    2. Here’s what Roger Phillips actually said in the clue comp report:

      If someone opened a conversation with “I’m a great fan of Oliver,” we wouldn’t know whom he was talking about – Jamie Oliver might be a good guess. “Oliver” by itself doesn’t pinpoint Oliver Hardy as the subject, in the way that “Elvis” means Elvis Presley. Thus “Hardy” isn’t an adequate definition of OLIVER, which is unfortunate for the clues that achieved a good surface reading by apparently referring to Thomas Hardy.

      As well as the Elvis example putting Roger in about as much contact with the modern real world as the “dead people only” rule allows, that’s not the same as saying that Thomas Hardy is better known than Oliver, and implies that if the comp ever required you to clue DOUBTING THOMAS, using Hardy for THOMAS would also be a bad idea – consider “I’m a great fan of Thomas”. (I think Roger’s approach is stricter than Richard Browne’s, but as far as I can tell he applies his rules conistently, and explains them clearly, though you may need to read several comp judgements to find them.)

      My own view for Stan v. Ollie is that Laurel=>STAN is fairer than Hardy=>OLIVER, because Stan is pretty much the only well-known Mr/Ms Laurel. (Chambers Biographical Dictionary has nine Hardys to one Laurel). But my logic is different to Roger’s – he’d presumably ask whether “Stan” could identify anyone other than Stan Laurel.

      1. That’s certainly a fairer argument.

        I wonder if the example in today’s crossword would be more likely to meet his exacting standards, given that the *answer* is “Stan” and could therefore be clued as any famous Stan. Using the same thing in wordplay is perhaps a little less fair than defining the answer thus?

        I’m out of my depth here, when it comes to crossword-setting rules.

        1. If you compared the difficulty of answer defs and defs used to get wordplay components, I think you’d find that the answer defs were harder on average in most cryptics. But I don’t think you can necessarily conclude from observed behaviour that a rule applies. There’s no rule that blocked puzzles must have square grids with an odd number of rows and columns, for example – though the overwhelming majority do.

          I think there are two supreme rules for setters: 1. The answer should be derivable logically from the clue when the clue is understood correctly, and the derivation should be understandable when the answer is known. 2. A mythical “typical solver” should have at least some chance of solving the puzzle, and hence for each clue a chance of spotting the answer from definition and/or wordplay, possibly with some help from checking letters. Everything else comes from these, including some rules that are hardly ever stated but I’m sure are enforced by good xwd eds (or setter self-regulation), such as “don’t put several clues based on difficult literary knowledge in the same corner”, as well as the more familiar ones.

          In the case of Stan and Laurel, on reflection both Laurel=>STAN and Hardy=>OLIVER seem OK to me, for two reasons. First, the list of realistic alternatives is shorter than other examples we’re expected to deal with, like ‘little boy’=> Tim, Des, Len and all the others, or the various choices for ‘state’ or ‘note’. Secondly, Roger’s rule about Elvis uniquely identifying Presley seems at odds with the multiple meanings which are accepted as part of the fun for ordinary words. If “laurels” can be shrubs or honours, why shouldn’t Hardy mean Thomas or Oliver?

          Edited at 2009-04-20 04:47 pm (UTC)

      2. I think Ollie leads reliably to Hardy as Stan to Laurel, but not the full name Oliver. Is there a word ollie?
        1. “ollie” is in Chambers as a skate-/snowboarding trick. Not in COED, don’t know about Collins as my copy is too old.
      3. I’m glad you found Roger’s precise words, Peter. I went looking but couldn’t. There was always the chance that I had completely misinterprted the remarks. I don’t think my misunderstanding was complete, but neither would I claim my understanding to be so. I took the tenor of the last sentence to mean that if faced with Hardy, Thomas would spring to mind before Oliver. I don’t necessarily disagree with that. If clueing Hardy to get Oliver you’d have to cunningly include more information, just as (I now see Roger is saying) you would if clueing Hardy to get Thomas.

        I hadn’t meant to imply any criticism of Roger here. The message that obviously stuck with me was that the Times was not likely to have Hardy as a definition for Oliver anytime soon.

        I also should point out that my use of “disqualifed” was hyperbole. “Marked down” might have been a better choice of words. I can speak for my own effort only here, but any suggestion that it may have been a clear winner apart from this minor punctillio, could not be further from the truth, for any number of reasons (starting with the fact that it isn’t a minor punctillio and ending with the quality of the clue in question).

        1. “I took the tenor of the last sentence to mean that if faced with Hardy, Thomas would spring to mind before Oliver. “

          I don’t think that’s what he was getting at, though I could just as easily be wrong as you could. I think he was referring to clues which were cleverly misleading by having a surface reading which implied a writer Hardy, but which he felt obliged to mark down because HARDY isn’t an acceptable definition for OLIVER (or for THOMAS).

          having re-read the comment, I’m fairly sure he did *not* mean, “hardy = oliver is unacceptable because Thomas Hardy is a better/more common/more likely reference.” I also think that, as with many other occasions, things for which he will mark down an entry in “Best Clue of the Month competition” would pass muster as part of a complete crossword.

          1. Having re-read it again myself, I agree that your interpretation is precisely what he meant, and withdraw categorically any implication to the contrary. I could have saved us all a lot of trouble if I’d read it more carfully in the first instance. That only leaves us with Peter’s argument on whether or not Hardy is adequate for Oliver. In the context of a crossword with checking letters available maybe, but as far as I have gleaned from the competition, clues have to stand on their own and have to conform to very exacting standards (as one might expect in a competition).

  7. 34 minutes for this one, my best time for over a week including two ST puzzles.

    The LH went in first, then the SE corner where I worked out MONTEITH from the wordplay and then remembered meeting it before and making an association with the US comedian Kelly Monteith whom the BBC brought to our TV screens many years ago. Like Peter I was also distracted by the thought of HEN NIGHT at 19d.

    The NE corner put up most resistance today with 11a TRIMETER as the last to go in.

    SOMBRERO as a felt hat was new to me. I only knew of them made of straw.

    1. In Spanish it just means any hat. Following is from the OED:

      ” 2. A broad-brimmed hat, usually of felt or some soft material, of a type common in Spain and Spanish America. “

      I think you’re right that the word in English usually refers to the archetypical Mexican straw hats. I suspect they are the only “sombreros” to have passed into popular use because of Mexico’s proximity to the US and because they are distinctive.

      1. Thanks. COED and Collins both mention straw as an alternative to felt. Not sure it’s something I’ve ever thought much about before so one tends to go with the example one first encountered. Does anyone else remember Mexican Pete?
  8. 15:02 here, solving online at 9am rather than with a printed copy somewhen after midnight. I type a lot faster than I write, and at the moment I can barely write at all until my elbow sorts itself out.

    The last third of that was needed to solve just two remaining clues – MONTEITH (never heard of it) and BUN FIGHT. I fell into about the same trap as Peter – I had LULLABY, so HEN NIGHT clearly didn’t fit, but I was trying to use that as a starting point to arrive at something obscure.

    S for “is” (14ac) has caught me out before, and doubtless will do so again in future. And I like “FLAT NESS” for a lochside apartment – it appeals to my, frankly bizarre, sense of humour.

  9. This was my sort of puzzle, lots of composers and it even had my name at 15A. I had to think a bit about that one. I wanted to put Valkyrie at 3, with no justification and despite the fact that the answer was even more obvious. Like several others, I was tempted by Hen Night, again with no encouragement from the wordplay.
    Monteith was new to me but I have seen the Monte(Verdi) construction before. I had to have a long think before writing in Asti as my last answer. It’s the setters’ favourite drink simply because it’s just about the only word that fits the checked letter pattern apart from Ossi that we sometimes see in barred puzzles.
    1. Another barred grid standby, ASCI, fits the checkers and is in COED/Collins so fair game for the Times, but as a plural of a cell/structure found in some fungi, it’s harder to work into an interesting clue.
  10. 13:31 for me. I also had HEN NIGHT for 19D for a while, then toyed with BIN NIGHT before looking at the clue properly!
  12. Didn’t time myself but found this pretty straightforward. Monteith was a guess but the wordplay made it an easy one. Like others I wasn’t sure about asti and it was last in. bc
  13. Straightforward, with many good clues. After 20 mins I was all done bar 27ac(MONTEITH), which I only finally solved after abandoning puzzle and coming back to it later. Like others I entered ASTI at 14ac without fully understanding the wordplay until coming here and seeing rosselliot’s elegant (Take 2)explanation, in light of which it seems to me a very clever clue.
  14. 16:55.  The SE corner took ages.  I didn’t know MONTEITH (27ac), and the annoying reversed ‘with’ had me looking for a silver bowl to fit M.N.E.  Like others, I was fixated on HEN NIGHT (19dn), and like linxit I moved on to BIN NIGHT before seeing the light.  I also shot myself in the foot with STAN (24dn) by guessing that 25ac (OUTRANGE) would begin with OVER.

    The wordplay for INDIVIDUAL (6dn) had me stumped long after I’d finished: ‘current’ gives IN (not just I), and DIVI is apparently a variant spelling of DIVVY.

    Two quibbles.  Can a RACEGOER (23ac) really be said to be on a racecourse?  And why is 4dn (AHEM) past-tensed?

    Clues of the Day: 21ac (VEER), 26ac (SOMBRERO), 2dn (BALINESE), 19dn (BUN FIGHT).

    1. I think “made” is in the clue to link the definition to the wordplay, there wouldn’t be a sentence without the connection (ref page 9 of Tim Moorey’s book).
      1. I was reading ‘made’ as a link word – I just don’t see any justification for a link word to be past-tensed.  (Compare Poor Clare is plain with Poor Clare was plain, both giving CLEAR.)  Not that a clue has to be a sentence anyway; double definitions rarely are.
        1. Tenses: I can see the creation of answer from wordlay as happening when I solve the clue or when the setter wrote it, and I can read the clue as a statement made at either time too – which makes past, present and future tenses all valid for me. I’d object to a clue that used tense to mislead unfairly, but I can’t see that changing the tense of this clue has any effect on getting the answer, except a bit of surprise. I guess I’m treating clues like equations in algebra, which have a similar present tense convention – we read = as “equals” but it’s normally timeless – the two things on either side have been equal forever and will remain equal forever, so reading = as “has been equal to” or “will be equal to” is not wrong, just unconventional.
        2. I’m with Mark on the last point. Crossword clues tend not to be sentences – only 8 or 9 of the 28 clues in this crossword qualify, I’d say.

          Tom B.

          1. The ones that aren’t sentences are at least meaningful phrases. I think the main thing is that the surface reading isn’t gibberish – which in tabloid cryptic crossword, and some of my own early attempts, they often are. Either complete gibberish in that the words are don’t fit together syntactically, or referring to apparent nonsense (“Count an emu tree? Bizarre! (9)” being a recent example of my own. Works fine as a clue, makes a grammatically correct sentence, but what the hell is an emu tree?)
    2. Mark, I wondered about 4D while I considered ‘made’ to be a link-word, but on reflection I think it’s to be seen as a (superfluous) part of the word-play, ie. ‘In middle of game he made [=produced, formed]’ = A(HE)M.

      Tom B.

      1. That’s an ingenious alternative reading, but it seems a bit far-fetched to me – at least, I don’t recall having seen anything similar before.  It would be interesting to hear from the setter.
  15. A just about average half hour here, which I was pleased with given my slightly frazzled state of mind on my first day back in work. Didn’t understand 14ac either! COD 10ac.
  16. Confusingly, both the actual physical course itself, and the stands, fields and paraphernalia surrounding it, are referred to by racegoers as “the course” or “the track.” Therefore a racegoer could be on the course without actually being on the course.

    I don’t know if dictionary definitions justify such usage (as they should for it to appear in the xwd), but as a lifelong racegoer, and son and grandson of other lifelong racegoers, I’m sure of my ground when it comes to common usage.

  17. 19:04 .. Very entertaining, enough to make me slow down a bit and enjoy the scenery. Merci bien pour Le Groom – il me fait le hoot beaucoup. And an Ole! for the sombrero.
  19. Well done vinyl, not the easiest start with a tricky wordplay at ASTI, another Times special homophone at ABU DHABI, some very UK-centric stuff and a lot of musical references. Quite a gentle start to the week for me, about 25 minutes to solve.

    I was intrigued by the discussion about STAN’s mate Oliver. I cant recall him making an appearance although STAN has been around several times. I had never considered all that stuff about other Oliver and other Hardy. I think before I started doing the Times Hardy would have meant Stan’s mate to me but today I would think of the dreadful author first.

    1. Incidentally, does anyone know the “correct” pronunciation for Abu Dhabi? I’m familiar with both “Derby” and “dabby” and not sure if either is strictly accurate.
      1. Collins says that the “Dhabi” matches the SE England pronunciation of Derby – i.e. with “er” as in SE English “Berkshire” but not “berk”, with the R silent.
  20. Regards to all. About 30 minutes for me, but had to resort to aids to get both the crossing MONTEITH and BUN FIGHT. I have never heard these words before (ditto ‘hey’=dance, and M. Lully). Do the UKers actually throw buns at each other when in formal wear? Well done vinyl, I enjoyed all your explanations. I think BALINESE made a prior appearance here very recently. Interesting factoid: when checking google to finalize BUN FIGHT, I discovered there is also a new phenomenon called a BIN FIGHT, wherein inebriated young people don garbage cans (or trash bins, bowing to the home crowd) and run into each other, and usually crash to the ground. I don’t offer an opinion on whether that qualifies as a ‘party’, but ‘bin’ certainly could equate to ‘point raised’. Unless the setter is in his/her early 20’s or so, I doubt that’s what’s called for. Best to all.
  21. Anon – please read the ‘About this blog’ link at the top of the page for the explanation.
  22. Why some missing answers – are they so easy they dont require an explanation for those coming to terms with the Times Crossword?
  23. An anon poster added this Q to the 24205 report. I’m replying here to keep things together.

    I have ASTI as the answer also.
    I guess because: “IT” (Italian) “‘S A” (abbreviated speech) in reverse

    The correct explanation is rosselliot’s “take 2” version above. I think this matches what you mean, but full details just in case:

    The clue: Flavoured wine is a rejected drink

    “Flavoured wine” = Italian vermouth, known as “It.”
    is = ‘S
    A = A

    rejected = reversed, (It., ‘S A) makes ASTI=drink

  24. Stan was not one of the “easies” left out of the blog. There were 11 of these though. Some may have been mentioned & explained above but here they are in their full glory:

    9a Failure to employ socially unacceptable main of wisdom (3-5)
    NON-U SAGE

    21a Change direction, ever on the move (4)
    VEER

    22a Existing independently, at liberty to take benefice (4-6)
    FREE LIVING

    25a Shoot farther than Norse leader in fierce resentment (8)
    OUTRA N GE

    26a It may be felt over a Mexican’s head (8)
    SOMBRERO. Also a move in Rock n Roll dancing.

    2d Islanders making row in military depot (8)
    BA LINE SE

    4d In middle of game he made a sound to attract attention (4)
    A HE M. Where middle of GAME is the outside AM.

    5d Place in office with everything included across way (7)
    IN ST ALL. Where everything = IN ALL and way = ST.

    6d Single person’s current bonus in two parts (10)
    IN DIVI DUAL. Not sure exactly how this works?

    16d Emotionally affected, being best (8)
    OVERCOME. A double definition.

    20d Space the Parisian honeymooner demanded (3-4)
    LE GROOM

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