Times 24208

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time taken to solve: 26 minutes.
 
Mostly straightforward stuff requiring little special knowledge. I learnt one new book title (18d) and one new meaning of a familiar word (6d) but both were obvious from the wordplay. I spotted nearly all the reasoning as I went along which made a nice change for me. I suspect there will be some very fast times today.

Across
1 HARROW – References to the farm implement and the school on Harrow Hill or “the dump on the lump” as I believe Etonians call it. Winston Churchill and Byron went there.
5 SHORT, C(U)T – “You” sounds like “U” – geddit?
9 F(RIGHT)EN
10 AT T(L)EE – Clement Attlee became Britain’s first post-WWII Prime Minister having beaten Churchill at the polls
12 FOURTH – Sounds like “forth” meaning “out”
13 DIOGENES – (Is on edge)* – Presumably this is Diogenes of Sinope, though Wikipedia lists four other Diogenes of various places who were also philosophers.
15 FE(T)E
19 TOP, NOT,CH
20 SIMONY – A hidden word which I recognised but couldn’t have said what it meant. It’s the buying and selling of pardons.
22 A(RA,RA)T – Two Royal Academicians inside AT, “stopping” being the containment indicator. The Biblical mountain is where Noah’s Ark was supposed to have come to rest.
23 TRI(NID)AD – TRIAD containing DIN (rev)
24 FIELD DAY – (Ladyfied)*
25 HIGH,L(ivel)Y
 
Down
2 AIR, FOR,CE
3 REGI(CID)E – C.I.D inside EIGER (rev). Regicide is the killing of a king, hence “high level murder”.
4 WATER POLO – (A wet pool)* contains R
5 SUNRISE, INDUS,TRY – This was my last one in, and coming back to it now I realise I’m not quite sure why “of fish” is there. I got “sunrise” from “daily surfacing” which seems perfectly adequate to me. Perhaps I’m missing something or “sunrise” has a particular meaning in fishing circles that I haven’t found in the usual dictionaries. On edit, with thanks to Tom B:  “Sun” = “daily” (as in newspaper)  and “rise” = “surfacing of fish”. I knew I was missing something. I had real problems with this clue having started off by wrongly thinking of  “char” because of  its “daily” and “fish” meanings.
6 RATIONS – “Commons” meaning “rations” is new to me. On edit: (o)RATIONS – Thanks to Peter  for  pointing out this omission. I had it but forgot to blog it.
7 COLOR,ADO – The American spelling of “colour” is indicated here
14 E(STAB)LISH(a)
15 F,(ALSTA)F,F – (A last)* inside lots of Fs. Sir John Falstaff appears in both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
16 TEAM MATE – Meat* x 2
18 FREE FALL – Having had Lord of the Flies forced on me at school I was not interested in exploring William Golding’s other works, so I didn’t know this title.
19 T(errible),ANKAR(a),D(eal)

51 comments on “Times 24208”

  1. I failed to finish, being defeated by TRINIDAD and SUNRISE INDUSTRY, a phrase I’ve never heard. Looking back, I notice I’d marked 5dn into (8,7) which certainly didn’t help. I must’ve been more tired than I thought!

    I wonder if “fish” is some sort of slang or colloquialism for the Sun, but I can find nothing of the kind. It doesn’t seem to serve any other porpoise – er, purpose. There is a sun fish, but I don’t see how that justifies the clue. It is not so called because of a habit of jumping out of the water at sunrise.

    The rest of it all seemed fairly easy, once I’d remember that HARROW is a popular entry and (break n)* was never very likely to yield a word, much less a well-known school.

    I’ve only ever come across “commons=rations” in the phrase “short commons,” which usually refers to eg. an expedition which is low on food and must string it out for the remainder of the trip.

  2. Not sure of the time as I did the thing while watching Spooks on the tube. However, they all fell into place readily except for RATIONS which I finally guessed. Still not sure where that comes from.
    Same goes for the 2d qualifier which I flew through with the exception of two answers that I’m still scratching my head over.
    Cheltenham?…not in my wildest…
  3. 9 mins. I think SUN is ‘daily’ and RISE ‘surfacing of fish’ in 5D.

    Tom B.

    1. “rise” is indeed listed in Chambers as “a coming to the surface of eg. a fish,” I see.

      You’ve just nullified half of my post. *grrrr* ;-P

      1. DINER: Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.
        WAITER: Here’s a net in case a trout rises to it.
  4. 7:32 – also ended with 5D – the first word in particular (“River Test” for INDUS,TRY sounds a bit familiar), and failed to see daily = Sun. Good surface reading as the Test is “known throughout the world for the excellent quality of its fly fishing for trout” (Wiki). 5A and 3 (as well as 5D) written in without full understanding of wordplay.

    Easy enough puzzle but just enough to ponder to prevent a really short time – a difficult 5D probably added 30 secs on its own.

    Minor surprise with “tee” sans “off” in the verbal meaning in 10, and wonder whether Jimbo will comment on this after his round (seems OK in COED). Liked 17A for reversing the usual [soft => P] order between clue and answer. Knowing how often people are baffled by subtractions, maybe worth mentioning that the speeches in 6D are (o)rations.

    1. In 10ac I think “about to drive ” is “at [the] tee” the “tee” here meaning the teeing ground. Sorry I don’t have a COED handy, in case it says anything different.
  5. I though this was the easiest of the week – 16 mins.
    Quite a lot of answers went in without having to work through the wordplay, which is always a bit unsatisfying.
    I have a copy of Free Fall on my bookshelf but haven’t read it for ages.
    In 12ac shouldn’t FOURTH come after “third”, not “three”? Maybe I’m missing the obvious.

    By the way did anyone else have problems printing the 2nd qualifier? All I got was an imaged document which would not print in its entirety on A4 paper.

    1. If something comes after three other things, it’s the fourth thing. I guess we should watch out for the extreme version of this logic “after none” = FIRST.
    2. I printed it successfully on A4 at the second attempt (first time, nothing happened & Print Preview showed a blank sheet). Try a right-click on the PDF and then choosing Print from the context menu.

      Someone needs to give the Times staff some lessons in producing PDFs – even when you get it this one is blown up from an image and the whole thing is blurry – both grid and text.

      1. Is this a reference to the (entertaining) championship qualifier? Easiest is to download it and open it in your own version of adobe reader, when all facilities will work.. It sounds as if you opened it within the browser, circumstances which often cause weirdnesses. Agree the print quality is poor. They just scanned it from the printed page I think, lazy so-and-sos
  6. 13:03 here. I had to buy the paper today as my internet connection died sometime overnight. Last one in for me was SUNRISE INDUSTRY too – never heard of the expression and didn’t spot the “daily = SUN” wordplay until afterwards. I hadn’t heard of the Golding book either, but it was easy enough to get from wordplay.
  7. After a golf day-away yesterday I did both yesterday’s and today’s this morning with this very easy puzzle taking just over 15 minutes and the two of them just under 40 minutes.

    I solved ATTLEE from the definition so didn’t even clock the “at tee” construction until I’d finished. The clue to FALSTAFF is very similar to the clue for the same character that appeared in an easy Mephisto that I blogged a couple of weeks ago.

    I’m surprised that people haven’t heard the term SUNRISE INDUSTRY which for me means the new electronics based industries. Could we count this as a piece of science?

  8. 6:24.  No real hold-ups, though I did spend some time trying to justify TINHEAD for 19dn (TANKARD), and slowed myself down by stupidly writing a pre-emptive D at the end of 21ac (UNBEATEN).

    I didn’t know SUNRISE INDUSTRY (5dn) either, but got it fairly quickly by having the first letter and thinking immediately of SUN.  I wasn’t sure that “commons” were RATIONS (6dn), but again I had the first letter, and the wordplay was easy enough.  And likewise for FREE FALL (18dn).  Incidentally, I’m intrigued to learn that it was Golding who suggested the name ‘Gaia’ to James Lovelock.

    No technical quibbles here, but the surface readings aren’t great – many of them could only be crossword clues.  And it seems from “like a spoilt child?” in 21ac (UNBEATEN) that the setter is rather old school.

    Clues of the Day: 19ac (TOP-NOTCH), with a neat piece of misdirection in “not”, the topical 20ac (SIMONY), and 5dn (SUNRISE INDUSTRY).

      1. Whoops!  The reference was lost on me.  Apologies to the setter, if s/he’s reading this.
  9. An easy one for me also, at 20 mins, which must be close to a PB. Sunrise industry was a buzz word in Australia through the 80’s and possibly beyond, going hand in hand with greenfield sites, so no problems there, although like Jack, I was puzzled by the fish. Daily surfacing = sunrise seemed OK to me. I wasn’t familiar with Free Fall either, but read quite a bit of Golding in my youth, despite doing “The Spire” for your equivalent of A levels. (a very different novel to Lord of the Flies). I liked FRIGHTEN (always a sucker for a fen), HIGHLY, TEAM MATE among some well constructed clues.
    1. “Daily surfacing” for sunrise does indeed work on its own, which makes the “of fish” unnecessary but not actually superfluous, since the wordplay as given leads to sunrise in a different way. I’ve not come across such an example before. I had “daily=SUN” but couldn’t come up with anything after that to fit my erroneous (8,7) marking. I strongly suspect that if I hadn’t made such a schoolboy, half-asleep error, I’d have got it despite never having heard of it.
  10. Seems most of us finished with 5D but has anyone ever heard of the expression? (Other than what you lot get up to at the crack of dawn, judging from comment submission times).
    1. Business and finance are quite fond of “sunrise” and “sunset” in the jargon – we often come across “sunset date” meaning the last day by which something must happen.

      For 5dn I had the inital S, the U and the Y – the second word was obviously INDUSTRY, the daily had to be the SUN and I didn’t think beyond that.

  11. This one seemed to suit me and I found it about as easy as the Times gets. I’ve read several of Golding’s novels (not including Free Fall, but I knew of it) and earn my living advising businesses so “sunrise industry” was familiar. That took care of perhaps the only two tricky clues, leaving a beginner’s level puzzle. I rather like the occasional very easy one. bc
  12. The point I forgot to mention is that “daily surfacing on River Test” is less convincing as a surface reading. What surfaces?
  13. I concur with the general view that this was very straightforward, particularly for a Friday puzzle – one or two answers – e.g. SOFT at 17ac – were almost too easy. 21 mins, which is very quick for me. In football parlance, I would place myself somewhere around the middle to bottom half of the First Division as regards speed, so it came as no surprise to see the Premier League performers turning in some very fast times. I’d heard of sunset industries so the sunrise variety at 5dn didn’t pose too much difficulty, though, like some others, I was unable to explain the “fish” reference until reading Tom B’s note.

  14. I think we learnt about ‘sunrise’ as opposed to ‘smokestack’ industries at school in the 70s/80s, and I wonder whether the phrase goes back to Harold Wilson’s hailing the ‘white heat of technology’ in the 60s?

    Tom B.

    1. Apparently “sunrise industry” means any modern, recently-developed industry. It’s not a technologically-specific term, but in today’s world almost any such industry is very probably going to revolve around new technology.

      It doesn’t appear to have made its way into the general consciousness, which leads me to suspect it’s one of those business-jargon terms that my dad was very fond of in his “bovine excrement generator” – a device of concentric spinning rings, with various buzzwords in various spaces, such that spinning it randomly would lead to “connective quality feedback” or other such nonsense.

      1. I don’t think I would include it in those meaningless buzzwords. It has a distinct – and in certain circumstances useful – meaning. I have a book called “Weasel Words” which are essentially pretentious or misleading words which can readily be substituted by plain English words, and it does not include “sunrise industry”.

        It’s interesting to see that The Economist used it; that magazine has a house policy of using only simple, plain, concise English and avoids BS words. (Our firm follows similar principles in its legal drafting.)

        1. Happy to be corrected. I’m always suspicious of any business-related term which is unfamiliar to me, because so many people in business have invented so many utterly meaningless gibberish catchphrases, while they suck money away from the people who are actually doing useful work.

          This one does appear to make good sense.

        2. Their belief in good English is so strong that a shortened version of their style guide is freely available on the web. Packed with good practical advice for anyone writing material they’d like someone else to read.

          Edited at 2009-04-24 01:26 pm (UTC)

    2. Tom, Harold Wilson lifted that phrase out of The Economist as I recall. He subsequently went on to demonstrate that he didn’t understand what it meant! I think the phrase was first used to describe the new industry of Silicon Valley so that would be 1970s. I hope my memory isn’t playing tricks with me on that one.
    3. If it goes back as far as Harold Wilson, the OED haven’t found it. Their citations:

      1980 L. C. THUROW Zero-Sum Society (1981) iv. 95 We do need the national equivalent of a corporate investment committee to redirect investment flows from our ‘sunset’ industries to our ‘sunrise’ industries.

      1980 Economist 23 Aug. 16/2 Those who try to shelter dying jobs in sunset industries, and thereby blight the prospects of growth of good jobs in sunrise ones.

      1983 Times 20 Apr. 21/7 The traditional ‘sunset’ industries are a pain in the neck for the Industry Secretary. However much he tries to brush them under the carpet in favour of the glamorous ‘sunrise’ sector of high technology, they persist in creeping back into the public consciousness.

      Edited at 2009-04-24 11:41 am (UTC)

  15. my first post since discovering this site about six weeks ago and deciding to take solving the times cryptic more seriously. so a big thank you to those who blog and comment, sharing their knowledge: i just wish i had discovered it sooner.
    i thought i had finished it today without aids in quite a nifty time, before realising that in my excitement i had written in hugely instead of highly!
    1. Welcome, and commiserations on HUGELY. Although the dictionaries don’t support huge=euphoric, the rest of the clue fits perfectly (with ‘very’ as the def), so makes it look temptingly plausible.
  16. Just over 20 minutes with ESTABLISH the last to go in after I realised that the spoilt child clue was UNBEATEN.

    Got sidetracked by IDE for fish in 5d so was looking at S_N_IDE for too long. Probably a result of trying to solve too many barred grids where IDE and ID swim past regularly.

    I found the acrosses much easier than the downs on my initial cold solve of all the clues. I suspect I would be quicker if I built up across and down as I go along but I quite like seeing how many I can cold solve before using the letters I have already got.

    I liked ATTLEE, TEAM MATE and HIGHLY.

  17. 9:57 .. mostly easy, but made enjoyable by some nice surfaces and Machiavellian misdirections. The ‘not particularly good’ in 19a when the def is ‘particularly good’, is particularly good. But 5d is just a very fine clue all round and my COD.

    One Across Rock .. Forest of Dean hardcore folk purists Harrow and Tankard, whose success has been somewhat constrained by their insistence on steam-powered recording equipment.

    1. … which famously and somewhat catastrophically failed at the 1973 Harvest Festival held in Tintern Abbey. The place hasn’t been the same since.
  18. At 21 minutes, the easiest for a couple of weeks, though no less enjoyable! A couple of new words (11ac / 20ac / 5d), but nothing that was hard to get. COD 16d.
  19. I approached this gingerly because I was expecting a Friday stinker to bring an end to my all-complete week. It was, by far, the easiest of the week and I finished it off very quickly.
  20. 14 minutes – which was a relief after a bad week, with PANTIHOSE and ZENANA stumping me! Would have been less but for SUNRISE INDUSTRY and TRINIDAD!

    Oli

  21. A PB for me, and enjoyed. Two fun _almost_ errors:

    First, 25A: I started by penciling in ‘GIGGLY’ (which I think works as a double-def [although the very is redundant]); luckily saved by 14D (which took a minute).

    And then, just as I was putting the puzzle down, something in the back of my mind screamed “CONCERTI” at me; which was fortunate, since I’d written in “CONCORDI” for 11A. If only it was an accepted musical term, eh? I still maintain that it sounds like one…

    My COD nomination goes to 17D.

  22. 7.21 Fairly quick and helped by getting HARROW straight off , held up for a bit by 10 which I wanted to be STALIN. 20 is quite topical (but then I suppose it has ever been so)
    Liked ATTLEE clue once I got it and 16 was quite good
  23. Of course Stalin is both pre and post war whereas Attlee is only the latter (As leader, that is).
  24. A very easy outing today, in the 12 minute range for me. No hold-ups at all, just reading clues, a bit of thought, and the answers came, with a wait for checking letters at times. SUNRISE INDUSTRY was the last in, like others. I hadn’t heard it before, for what that’s worth. I thought 14 and 17 were clever. Regards all.
  25. A straightforward 13 min. Last in DIOGENES. No problem with SUNRISE INDUSTRY. I thought the term was common currency. If pushed for a COD I would dither between TOP NOTCH and WATER POLO.
  26. I’ve been trying the Times cryptic for about 9 months now, and recorded a PB of 35 mins without any aids for this puzzle. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to progress like this without this blog, so I thought I’d break from lurking to thank you all and I’ll let you know if I better that in the near future!

    Jonathan

    1. Congrats on your PB, Jonathan, and welcome as a contributor to the blog! Hope to hear from you regularly in future.

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