Times 24206

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 10:03

This should please Jimbo more than yesterday’s, I think. Arts has three people (if you count Icarus) to science’s one (Piaget), but there’s lots of inventive wordplay and not much reliance on knowledge.

Across
1 I(CAR)U.S. – a fairly easy start – anything for a 6-letter answer about “unwise flight” or similar should have you thinking of him.
5 IN=at home,DE(s)CENT – descent=dive
9 S(N)UGGEST – N=”any number” as in “n = 1 to 100”, table = suggest (of motions in official meetings)
11 WALL(FL.)OWER – wallflower=a shy person, esp. at a dance. Wasn’t certain that fl.=fluid worked outside combos like fl. oz., but COED has it.
13 OGLE=stare at, from bogle – a phantom/goblin – first of two difficult words involved in this puzzle
14 MOOD = doom rev.
15 BAR,BAR(YAP)E – nounal yap (= talking) was a surprise, but Collins has “annoying or stupid speech; jabber”
18 A,POS(TROPH(e)) – this uses a sneaky def for a bit of punctuation – an example in the clue, in the word “winner’s”. New solvers: watch out for this trick being used again.
20 SA(N)D – Writer = George Sand, whose best-known amour was Frederic Chopin, so this works as a plain def.
21 S(PA)N – fiendish disguise here – S,N are not “bridge partners”, but “partners at table”, so that “bridge” can act as the def.
23 ANTI-THESIS = “like very critical PhD examiner”, plus “bit of the argument” as second def. One to raise a smile from our Oxford D Phil candidate …
25 CAN’T,HI – the other difficult word today. It wasn’t much of a surprise that there’s a word for the corner of your eye, but I didn’t know what it was
26 W(ALL,A,R)OO – woo=court. A wallaroo is a large stocky kangaroo from hilly country, not the wallaby/kangaroo cross that I’d imagined by analogy with tigon and liger.
28 TERM,IN,A,L – simple enough wordplay, but made into a very smooth clue. If you want to be really fussy, this is the second use of home=IN in the same puzzle.
29 PI(AGE)T – Jean Piaget, whose wide range of activities includes psychology.
 
Down
2 C(ANT,A,LO)UP – the melon doesn’t have to have a final E.
3 RE(GALE)D – first of a few easy downs
4 SEE(k)
5 INTO,W
6 DISARMAMENT = (A mastermind)*
7 CUR,SO(r)RY
8 NAVEL – CD referring to navel-gazing as well as navel oranges. For once, “that is” does not represent IE in the answer.
12 LIB(E)R(T)ARIAN
16 RIP = R.I.P. – “rip” is an immoral/unpleasant person, and a worthless horse
17 PAN T(I)HOSE – our second variant spelling
19 SANCTUM – (manusc(rip)t)*
20 SMETANA = (man’s tea)* – Bedrich Smetana wrote Má vlast (“My Country”), which contains one big tune you all know, and a comic opera “The Bartered Bride”, converted by musical wags into “battered bride” in the finest “Best pair of nylons” tradition.
22 PLATE = shallow vessel and the most useful S American river – a.k.a. the Rio de la Plata, on whose estuary Buenos Aires and Montevideo stand. Best known for a WWII naval battle or an Argentine soccer club, depending on your age and inclinations.
24 TOWEL from tower = keep.
27 LAP = pal rev. – a revolution of a circuit such as a running track.

40 comments on “Times 24206”

  1. Main stumbling blocks were RIP APOSTROPHE CANTALOUP SNUGGEST TOWEL and WALLAROO.

    I liked the clever and misleading wordplay in 9, 18 and 21.

    I had a few question marks – DOOM=catastrophe, SNUG=welcoming – but don’t have a COED at hand to check: I expect they are fine.

    And I suppose a wallaroo is a wild beast. Technically at least.

    1. Wallaroo apparently not being some sort of cross between a wallaby and a kangaroo, as I (and probably others) imagined, you’d have to concede it is “wild” in the sense of not domesticated. At least nobody will complain about “creature from far-distant land” cf. ALICE SPRINGS yesterday.

      I had half of this grid complete in barely five minutes, then crashed and burned. I ended up taking half an hour to finish the thing. For some reason, INDECENT eluded me until the end, even though I’d thought of “home=IN, and dive is some kind of drop or fall” at the very first read-through. I too wasn’t sure about SNUG=welcoming and that was a late entry, though I was entirely happy with MOOD at 14ac. In modern usage, DOOM almost always does mean disaster and cataclysm, rather than simply “fate” as it once did (“it is my doom to become King of this country..”

      Never heard of CANTHI, and had to rely on wordplay for it. PIAGET, if I remember correctly, had something to do with the psychology of learning language, which is a subject my ex-wife was studying as part of her degree course. I’d never have heard of him otherwise. Others that held me up, really shouldn’t have done.

      I wasn’t sure about YAP for “talking.” The sense didn’t seem right, but perhaps YAP can be defined as “incessant boring conversation” or something similar. I’ve always thought of it as a verb “to yap” which could only be defined as talk, not as talking.

      1. I omitted to say that I had a similar experience – mostly done in a short time and then ages to finish – 40 mins all up.
  2. An excellent work-out. 26 min.(Does anyone else have problems with a tabby cat trying to stick their paw in) OK she’s gone. I really liked this one. Whenever I thought “OK this is it, I will have to go to the aids” something would jump out of the woodwork. The two nasties, 23 ac ANTITHETIC, and 25 CANTHI were well constructed, and, with the checking letters, could be nothing else.
      1. AHA But “like” surely sends you looking for an ajectival form, otherwise why is “like” there?
        1. ANTI- can do the adjectival work all by itself – compare ‘antiwar’, ‘antitheft’, ‘anti-Sally’.
        2. See Mark on the adjectival side. For me, the real killer for your your answer is that “thetic” doesn’t mean “relating to a thesis” (of the PhD kind at least). It would need to for ANTITHETIC to fit, because ‘antithetic’, just like ‘antithesis’, doesn’t have the “anti-thesis” meaning needed for the donnish gag. (THETIC = “about a thesis?” on its own might just pass muster as an outrageous idea, but piling one invention onto another seems too much.)
    2. see my picture… he likes sleeping on the keyboard and also poking the onscreen cursor/mouse trail.

      Liked this crossword. I never mind difficult words like canthi if the clue is so well constructed that you can enter them confidently, even never having come across them before. I DON’T like clues where the difficult word is used simply as a convenient device to make the clue itself harder. 🙂

  3. I struggled with this one and it took me nearly an hour to complete it with no access to aids. CANTHI and PIAGET were guessed from the wordplay. Last in would have been APOSTROPHE but having spotted it meant that my RAT at 16d was wrong. I knew I couldn’t justify it but it was all I could think of. Luckiest solve of the day was 14a where I had ???D in place and thought of MOO for “Low”!
    1. If it’s any consolation, I popped in RAT as well, before finding that it messed up the across.
  4. Absolutely right Peter – a far better puzzle which I thoroughly enjoyed for 25 minutes. I found the NW and SE corners easier than both the NE and the SW was last to be completed with a guess of CANTHI last in. Chambers also has fl=fluid by the way.

    Among a lot of good clues SAND is easy but well constructed and SPAN is very clever. Experience helped as I wasn’t fooled by APOSTROPHE or the device of removing “rip” from “manuscript” at SANCTUM. I wondered if I’d invented WALLAROO so was pleased to find it did exist.

  5. I saw pop = PAWN….and at least W and N are at the table playing bridge as well.
    1. The complete answer breakdown is;

      bridge = SPAN; partners at table = S-N; pop = PA. The partners are “drinking,” ie. taking in, the pop.

      PAWN is another example of an answer of the kind my dad often comes up with, and that I myself would in times past. To think of “pawn” as a definition for “pop” is a good piece of reasoning, actually, but it just turns out to be wrong on this occasion. W-N could be bridge players, but not bridge partners. It’s close, but by the exacting standards of the Times Cryptic, it’s not close enough.

      Quite likely, the next time we get a —N and the clue includes “pop,” PAWN will be the right answer and we won’t think of it. 😀

    2. Heyesey saved me some typing. The unspoken parts of his reply are “where does the PA come from?”, and “why is the word ‘drinking’ in the clue?”. You should be able to analyse most of the clues in a Times puzzle like this:

      Bridge [verb] = def. for SPAN
      partners at table = S,N
      drinking = containment indicator
      pop = PA

      Left of each = is the whole clue, and the stuff on the right shows that each word plays exactly one part in the wordplay or def. I don’t promise that all Times clues are this precise, but if you start off by treating clues as if they are precise, you’ll normally get enough solid answers to fill in any vague ones with help from checking letters. I would recommend this style of analysis to beginners because it needs no special notation and no knowledge of “official” names for clue types.

      If you’re about to remind me that I often admit to not understanding the wordplay, and usually get away with it, my answer (apart from experience teaching me when to guess) is that I try to avoid guesswork with short answers (up to 6 letters say) – when you just have ???N, as you presumably did, there are just too many possible answers for guesswork.

      1. I’d just like to add here that – on the assumption that you’re the same Anonymous as yesterday – I hope my answers appear to the reader as constructive criticism and encouragement, rather than as “pah. You’re rubbish. I passed this stage of achievement years ago.”

        Since I’m (a) paranoid and (b) socially inept, I frequently lose sleep worrying about someone having been upset by some internet comment I made that was intended to sound friendly. The point here is that by comparing your own attempts to solve with ours, we don’t want to make you feel small and pathetic, only to help you grow. Everyone was a beginner once – even Peter, although it’s easy to imagine his midwife having turned to the parents and said, “Congratulations! It’s a crossword solver!”

        1. Nice idea, but I spent about ten years stumbling around and clutching at straws in the way that would lead to “how about PAWN?” as a fairly convincing idea for 21A. It was only when I started to read the right books that I realised how precise the clues were.

          It’s like learning a language (as I’m sure I’ve said before). You need the right mixture of textbook (How to solve books) and language lab/reading room (trying to solve puzzles). You should spend most time in the lab, but read the textbook and review it from time to time.

          As far as “Do we look all superior?” goes, I rely on new readers noticing that the bloggers and regular commenters report their inept moments as often as their best ones – possibly more often, as the cock-ups are much easier to remember after solving.

  6. 14:59.  Two bits of total ignorance (WALLAROO, PIAGET) and one dim recollection (SMETANA, which I can’t seem to internalize despite having been to Prague twice) held me up in the SE corner.  The ones I didn’t know in the SW corner (PLATE, CANTHI) weren’t as difficult.  I spent my final minute trying to get 16dn (R.P), eventually guessing at RIP without spotting the obvious connection with “Final hope”.  (RIP as a worthless horse or degenerate person is new to me.)

    The definition in 9ac (SNUGGEST) is fine by me; it’s not sanctioned by dictionaries because there’s no hint of synonymy, but surely being snug is one way of being welcoming.  My quibble is instead that “can” is too weak – it’s not that N can tuck into SUGGEST, but that it must (or at least does).

    I did indeed raise a smile at 23ac (ANTITHESIS), though not before I’d spent a while (a) trying to incorporate VIVA and (b) worrying that the answer would be something philosophical that I would kick myself over.

    It’s hard to choose Clues of the Day, not least because only four of them have anything less than perfect surface readings (11ac for WALLFLOWER, 8dn for NAVEL, 12dn for LIBERTARIAN and 20dn for SMETANA).  But I’ll plump for 13ac (OGLE), 21ac (SPAN), 26ac (WALLAROO), 3dn (REGALED), and 17dn (PANTIHOSE).

  7. I was quite pleased with 40 mins after a slow start. Some excellent clues here, not the least being the short SAND & SPAN; also SNUGGEST, APOSTROPHE, PANTIHOSE and DISARMAMENT. But COD to NAVEL. Piaget was the acknowledged authority of childhood development for many years, although I think he has latterly fallen out of favour, along with most “There are four periods of development” type theories.

    For future reference here is a marsupial checklist. It doesn’t include kurihan’s rare and endangered pink angora wallaroo. I hope the setters keep away from the carnivorous ones although the vegetarian quokka would be good fodder for a pangrammist (were they not protected).

  8. That crossword favourite the aurochs features on page 1 of today’s Times and the beastly theme is continued in today’s puzzle. I really enjoyed this and, like several others, found most of it easy but then struggled to finish.

    Of Peter’s two difficult words, I had to guess the existence of the bogle but fortunately my medical daughter taught me canthus a couple of weeks ago when we were doing the Guardian Easter crossword together. The other difficult word for me was wallaroo. I got it from the wordplay but it took some time to convince me that there really is such a beast.

    Like, Jimbo, I have seen the apostrophe trick several times before but it still took some time for the penny to drop. This was not helped by my being convinced that cantaloupe had to have an E at the end.

  9. 14:13 .. with a few going in on a wing and a prayer but turning out okay. Anyone who’s ever taken a teaching qualification is likely to know more than they ever wanted, or indeed needed, to know about Piaget.
  10. I thought this was excellent. Lots and lots of a-ha moments especially with APOSTROPHE, SNUGGEST and ANTITHESIS. I couldn’t work out TOWEL so thanks for the explanation. Count me among the “never heard of CANTHI” crowd. Was I the only one to confidently write SHRINK at 29a – long time in depression = HR in SINK ? Thankfully SMETANA came to my aid.

    Nice one setter

    1. I thought of shrink but couldn’t explain it from the word play – I’m glad I wasn’t as smart as you on that one!
    2. Brilliant piece of reasoning but the setter obviously expected everyone to know that a shrink is a psychiatrist not a psychologist.
      1. I’ve never really understood the difference, although I’m well aware that there is one. Most of my knowledge of psychiatry comes from watching Frasier, which is hardly a textbook education.
        1. The (admittedly non-PC) definitions from when I studied psychology in the 1960s are:
          Psychiatrist: A Jewish doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood
          Psychologist: A man who goes to a strip club to watch the audience.
  11. I did this in three short sittings, so no idea of time. Since I did the bulk of it while on hold with my internet provider, it seemed like it took 23 years.

    A lot that I got from wordplay – CANTHI, SMETANA (though I think I had heard of the composer after writing it in), PIAGET. RIP went in with some hesitation.

  12. Around 33 minutes, with quite a bit of that gazing at 18ac / 21ac / 22d. Nothing felt that difficult along the way, but bits of the wordplay eluded me until I came here to have a look. Esp. the phantom, orange and anything in 18ac, though the answer couldn’t really have been anything else. Nice, clear, clueing made this a pleasant lunchtime solve. COD 19d.
    1. Enjoyed this but gave up with “span” not completed, a pretty spectacular “senior moment”. I identified “pop” as likely to be “pa” before I had any checking letters. I then forgot this at the end even though I was fairly sure the solution must be s?an (on the grounds that s&n were “bridge partners”). Not spotting the well-hidden definition “bridge” I therefore failed to solve a 4 letter word despite having 2 checking letters and correctly guessing the other two letters at different points in time. D’oh. bc
  13. Am i the only one to have put in ORB at 27 – seemed to make some sense at the time anyway – eventually got PIAGET which put me right.Also had Y for I in 17 but soon spotted that one.
    Some enjoyable clues. 20a was easy but a nice clue. 17 looked to be a toughie on first read but the P-N gave it to me
    13.25 today so not held up too much by my errors
    1. You’re not alone – I initially pencilled in both ‘orb’ and ‘pantyhose’, too.
    2. No, John, putting in ORB (and then BRO) at 27D was my undoing also. That and writing in DISARRMAMET at 6D, which made 15A and 18A rather tricky. I’m not sure whether ORB can be ‘revolution’, but it’s close. I thought it was a very nice crossword, despite making a complete mess of it,

      Tom B.

  15. One thing the internet teaches you is that you’re rarely the only person to have done anything! Putting in SHRINK held me up for a good while, while a nagging voice kept telling me that an hour wasn’t really a long time…in these cases I usually come to the correct conclusion eventually i.e. that it’s more likely I have produced an initially plausible but incorrect answer than that a shaky clue has slipped through the net.

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