Times 24,237

Author   richardvgPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 9:46

I had never heard of ROCHET at 12A, and was close to guessing POCHET, on the basis that “going to POT” is somehow related to “decline”. Other words that I knew but don’t use every day were VERST (9A), GOTHA (3D) and REDINGOTE (14D) (as opposed to say BIREME and CROCI which I am forever discussing).

Lots of good and clever clues today. No clear favourite, but if pressed I would opt for 2D (MURDER MOST FOUL)

Across

1 DAM + AGED GOODS – DAM being MAD(rev)
9 VE(R)ST – took me a long time to see how clever this was – R(un) is wearing a VEST
10 RIG M.A. ROLE – I didn’t hesitate at the time, but it now seems slightly odd to indicate M.A. with “master”
11 C(REV. AS S(ermon))E
12 RO(CHE)T – never heard this word, even though in my youth I would occasionally wear a surplice. Perhaps because according to Chambers it is worn by bishops and abbots rather than say altar boys
13 SOMBRE + R(ed) O(minous) – odd (if only in the Times) to find that em-dash breaking up the cryptic reading
15 GIB(raltar) + BON (NOB(rev))
17 BE(D)SIDE – very clever, including “one” telling us that only one of the Ds is to be removed. As in 13, there is a piece of punctuation – a comma here – disrupting the cryptic reading.
18 MAGNETIC – (ACTING ME)*
20 RE(FUN)D – Ho ho
24 MAUSOLEUM – (MEMO USUAL)*
25 OPERA (hidden) – pleasing policing surface for a musical clue
26 SECOND FIDDLE

Down

1 DE-VICES
2 MUR + DER MOST FOUL – the first part being RUM(rev), the second (RESTFUL MOOD)*. I was misled (perhaps deliberately?) into thinking of Graves’s rather than Shakespeare’s Claudius.
3 GO THA(t)
4 DER(1’s 0)RY – Clever. I haven’t seen the two names of (London)derry used in this way before
5 OR(G)Y – ie GORY with the G dropped from first to third place
6 DRACONIAN – (RAIN CAN DO)*
8 NEW TON – Surprisingly, I don’t think the fact that weight is measured in Newtons is a part of this clue
14 RED INGOT + E(at)
16 FAT + HOME + D(ebate) – took me too long to lift and separate “Sounded thick”
17 BI+REME the first part (=”by”), the second is the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers
19 CAS(h) + CADE – life will get trickier when they start indicating Jack Cade with revolutionary and CHE and MAO as rebels
22 CROC + 1 – The “As” is a displaced link-word. I spent too long looking for a singular flower, reading “blooms” as a verb
23 N(E.R.)O – a nicely phrased chestnut

54 comments on “Times 24,237”

  1. Two mistakes today. This was a generally very easy puzzle with just one killer clue. The running in a vest clue was very clever but I wonder if anyone who has never heard of a Verst managed to derive the answer from the clue. I guessed Verkt as I thought the kilometre had to go somewhere.

    This also has a bearing on yesterday’s discussion on the usefulness of general reading for acquiring unusual words. Although I have read all 1400 pages of War and Peace I had no recollection of the word Verst. And I’ve just checked, it does crop up frequently in the text.

    My other mistake was misspelling redingote. I knew the word but could not get the spelling from the tricky wordplay with pig for ingot.

    What’s with all the vestments this week? Isn’t Rochet the third in three day?

    1. Clerical vestments seem to include lots of useful words – alb, cotta and amice spring to mind without looking at the dictionary. Watch out for a similar cluster of coaches one day.
      1. Do you mean like Sven and Diligence? I’ve seen both clued as “old coach” in recent weeks.
  2. I didn’t finish the NW corner. I suppose I have heard of GOTHA as in “Saxe-Coburg Gotha” but it would never have sprung to mind as a German town. I had DEFECTS at 1dn – to defect being to remove (ie relocate) and a defect being a weakness (possibly in a scheme) – which queered my chances at VERST which seems to be a bit of an obscure clue with an obscure solution.

    I’m not sure why “bad” is necessary in 7dn.

    ROCHET was new; I have come across REDINGOTE in French, though not before in English. I don’t remember seeing “pig” for INGOT before (although it was gettable from “pig-iron”)

    Overall, a clever puzzle with lots of interesting vocab.

    1. It hadn’t occurred to me, but I agree that 7D (How determinedly one sinks a bad pint? (2,3,6,3)) would work just as well without the word “bad”.
      1. Agreed. Can’t seen any justification for “bad” in the (otherwise excellent) clue to 7dn. Borders on unfair obfuscation.
  3. I’m mildly depressed that anyone could describe this as a “very easy” puzzle (see lennyco above). I had gone about as long as it took richardvg to complete the whole puzzle before entering my first solution, and the nightmare panic of a blank crossword was beginning to loom. But then I got DRACONIAN at 6dn, and thereafter plodded on fairly steadily to finish in about 1 hour. Was pleased to get ROCHET from wordplay alone. VERST – dimly dredged up from reading Russian novels – was the last word to go in. The “run in vest” = “appropriately clothed” device was very neat. Lots of similarly clever clues, and unusual words. Like Richard, I too enjoyed MURDER MOST FOUL at 2dn, but I guess there will be some who will say that if you know your Hamlet this becomes almost a straight literary general knowledge question, making the (admittedly v clever) wordplay and entertaining surface reading redundant.
    1. I can only apologise for my insensitivity. I know how annoyed I get when I spend over an hour on a puzzle and then come here to find other people describing it as a stroll in the park
  4. 30:30, though at the end I decided I was never going to get 14dn (REDINGOTE) and resorted to a dictionary.  I hope this etches a connection in my brain between pig and ingot.  I was significantly held up by an overconfident ROUNDERS at 21ac (CHECKERS); cricket’s idiot cousin turns out to be English.  I also spent ages on 1ac (DAMAGED GOODS) and 2dn (MURDER MOST FOUL), which I too expected to involve Clavdivs.

    Besides REDINGOTE, VERST (9ac) was new to me, but (to answer lennyco’s question) I derived it from the clue; likewise ROCHET (12ac) and GOTHA (3dn).  My ignorance of all things operatic extended to the Met, which may horrify some readers of this blog.

    I don’t see what’s wrong with clueing MA as “master” (10ac RIGMAROLE) – an MA is a master of arts (magister in artibus), and the use of “MA” to refer to the degree itself is parasitic on this sense.  BESIDE (17ac) is unusual in that it is only defined indirectly.  Purists will be unhappy with 1dn (DEVICES), where the whimsical question mark attaches to the first part of the clue.  In 8dn (NEWTON), “weight” is fine: physicists distinguish between mass and weight, the latter being a measure of force.

    Clue of the Day: 25ac (OPERA).

    1. You are probably right about master. I am happy with M = “master”, and wiht MA = “scholar”, “graduate” or any other rough synonym for Master of Arts. Allowing MA = “master” just seems a bit looser than those. MA = “masters” would sit better with me as that is used as a word for the degree in a way that the singular is not.
  5. I was beaten by REDINGOTE – no amount of brow-furrowing was getting me there. Around 35 minutes when I admitted defeat.

    Richard’s sub-ten minutes for this is, in my humble opinion, pretty spectacular. Well done.

  6. Totally undone today. Couldn’t even make a guess at VERST and opted for POCHET. Apart from that, all were correct but only after much head scratching. The setter was just too good. Another vote for FATHOMED as COD.
  7. 9:18 – for some reason I abandoned my usual “If nothing comes to mind, move on” rule for 1A, and tried the downs crossing it. None of these fell on first look either but after getting 11A most of this corner was done fairly quickly. I got 9 and 12 early on, so these two obscurities were out of the way. Much more trouble in the SE corner with easier vocabulary – last clues solved were 18, 15, 7, 26 (the second word – a definite “pass the boot” moment) and 22, where C?O?I looked distinctly unpromising until I saw one=I and then found the croc. Pondered ESSEN from (essence =?= energy) at 3D, but didn’t write it in. Confused Claudius with other -us people in other Shakespeare plays – most of Hamlet is a gaping hole in my knowledge.

    Definitely a puzzle where years of experience helped.

  8. I don’t think weight is measured in Newtons. I think that a Newton is a measure of force 🙂 But I’m very grateful for GOTHA and VERST, which I would never have got but for you! Sarah B.
    1. I think Richard is correct. Weight is a force dependent on gravity, whereas mass (measured in kg) isn’t. This Wiki article explains the distinction between the two concepts, which really only becomes important when one leaves this planet. I think a NASA Mars probe went horribly wrong when a pound-force was mistaken for a foot-poundal, or something similar.
      1. You can show that weight is a force with your bathroom scales – it’s the reason why you wait for the needle to stabilise before the weight measured by the scales is successfully converted to your mass in Kg by assuming that the weight is your mass times the acceleration due to gravity.
  9. 40 minutes but with one guessed wrongly and one abandoned. I don’t feel too badly about this because I didn’t know either of the words (REDINGOTE/VERST) and the alternative routes to the answers via wordplay were both somewhat obscure if not exactly devious so I didn’t stand much of a chance until I arrived at work and gained access to aids.

    My wrong guess was REDINGORE, thinking “Red” might be a well-known type of pig and “in gore” might account for it being ruddy. Incidentally on looking things up later I discovered that a different meaning of “Gore” is a feature of a “Redingote” and I shall try to remember this alternative meaning for future use. I don’t hold out much hope though as I have met “pig” = “ingot” before and that certainly didn’t stick.

  10. I had to resort to aids to get verst and redingote and I’m left feeling that the wordplay should have been more straightforward to make these unusual words gettable (as was the case with rochet and bireme).

    26 minutes in all so on the harder side of average.

  11. A very cleverly constructed and enjoyed puzzle.

    One question: I solved 12D via Bi / by homophone + re = engineers + me = I or one; and def = ‘makes progress with two tiers’.

    Of course it works beautifully with engineers = REME and ‘one makes …’, but is it REME or RE+ME?

    1. Well both ways work, so the setter could have intended either (and for an answer starting bi-, it could just be his little joke to write a clue with two wordplay interpretations – if so, now do trireme!). My instinct in such cases is (ceteris paribus) to believe they intended the one with the clearer definition, which for me is “one makes progress with two tiers.
  12. Have just this minute discovered that I needed to click on Recent Entries to see today’s blog. Had thought that blogger was, like me, doing wiki contortions to get VERST. Might have known that blogger would beat 10 minutes. VERST last but one in which led me to GOTHA. Otherwise would have finished under the hour (for me that is fast) albeit with dictionary confirmations for BIREME and ROCHET and with cheating that even Jimbo would find objectionable for REDINGOTE.
    Have to agree with all who think that putting very tricky wordplay with very obscure answers is a trifle Mephistophelean.
    This entry just interrupted by the arrival of Chambers (the cavalry).
    1. If there’s been a new posting since you last displayed the “home page” view, you can also see it by clicking the big “Times for the Times” title, or (in most browsers) pressing F5 or a “Reload page” toolbar button. You may also be able to get LiveJournal to send you an e-mail message when anyone creates a new posting – click “About This blog” and then look for a “Track” button at top right. (Handy if your e-mail makes sounds when messages arrive, or is the first thing you look at when you return to your computer, but this might require a paid LJ account.)

      There were Mephistophelean aspects of this puzzle, but it mostly just showed how much time the old hands can sometimes regain from the younger solvers who might have beaten them by a few minutes on an easy puzzle, simply because we’ve seen things like REDINGOTE before.

  13. As an habitual lurker on this board I must apologise for butting in to the discussion, but I too am in awe of a sub 10 minute finish for this not so very easy puzzle.

    1. Add my name to the roster of the awe-struck: a sub-10 minute time seems to me supernaturally good for this puzzle. Congratulations to Peter and Richard!
  14. I have just realised that from my entry above it might be interpreted that Jimbo cheats. This of course couldn’t be further from the truth. I was referring to Jimbo’s reassuring advice to beginners that using aids when starting out should not be regarded as cheating.
    1. Apology accepted and call to lawyer cancelled. Those wondering what on earth this is all about should see the comments for Mephisto 2542 blogged by Peter last Sunday. Good to see you now have Chambers.
  15. 25 minutes that would have been quicker but for VERST which if I’ve met before I don’t recall and verified in Chambers before entering in the grid. I agree with those that found this clever construction built around a very obscure word a tad OTT.

    The wordplay was enough to get me ROCHET and REDINGOTE (I’m familiar with pig=ingot, probably from bar crosswords). All the rest were fair with some good wordplay. Nice puzzle in the main.

  16. I guess that must be the explanation. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my condemnation, but I still think the clue would be better without “bad”.
  17. 15:25 here, slow to get VERST and GOTHA but last in was FATHOMED, convinced that “sounded” was a homophone indicator.
  18. Regards all. A challenging but fun puzzle today, about 35 minutes for me. I admit going to the computer afterward to check the existence of previously unheard of VERST, ROCHET, and REDINGOTE. My last entry, though, was to guess at GIBBON, which I was convinced was the only possible answer, but couldn’t understand any connection between GIBBON and the wordplay. It would never have occurred to me that Gibraltar is shortened to ‘Gib’, therefore GIB=rock. Is that really a common usage in the UK, or more of a crossword convention? Mildly surprised to see reference to the Met, so thanks, setter, for the handout. Lots of very, very good clues today, and I’ll cast my vote as a tie between FATHOMED and MURDER MOST FOUL. Kudos to the setter, best regards to everyone else.
    1. “Gib” for Gibraltar is common enough, and so is “Rock of Gibraltar” (apart from the rock, there’s not much else there!). So “Rock => GIB” is tricky but fair.
    2. Yes Kevin, fairly common usage in UK but not in Tapas Bars. Met is probably even better known and will be more so as more of its productions are broadcast live in our cinemas where as an impecunious opera lover I can often be found. (I am the one clutching a large box of Kleenex).
      1. Thank you both very kindly. I agree that ‘Gibraltar’=’the Rock’ is common enough everywhere, including over here. My query was about the prevalence of shortening Gibraltar to ‘Gib’, which I’d never heard nor seen in print. I assume Gib in this case rhymes with ‘jib’, like the sail.
        1. Indeed, Gib (pronounced Jib) in common use although most prevalent I suspect in diminutive circles who probably think America is still a colony.
          1. For me, “rock = Rock = Gibraltar = GIB” is a crossword thing that I’m reluctantly having to get used to.
  19. 32 min here, but had to cheat for VERST, REDINGOTE and (blush) FATHOMED. A really good crossword, so wouldn’t single out any particular COD.
  20. “Times 24236” I think should be 24237. Good puzzle, pleased to have solved it with minimal aid, no slower than usual. John
  21. Am slightly confused from the archives – there are often blogs entered from the previous evening (often from the expat community) – so I assumed that the crossword may be available online from say 8pm the night before, but this does not seem to be the case.

    How are people able to post so early?

      1. Still dont get it – times all seem to be in GMT on my PC and yet for example numbers 24219 and 24231 seem to have been blogged around 8pm the previous days??
  22. Now that verst has appeared, can pood, knout & ukase be far behind?
    Ruddy & Bloody in one puzzle — splendid!
    I was fooled for a long time by 1ac, in which I had D?M?G?D for the first word &, misled by the ancient virtues, convinced myself that it must be DEMIGOD.
    Guessed the unknown ROCHET from the wordplay.
    Unlike several others, I didn’t find 2 all that impressive. I must admit that at first I expected one of the 4-letter words to be rank (soliloquy Act III, scene 3) — but that must have been another layer of deviousness on the setter’s part!
    COD (if forced to choose among some crackers): 17ac. 16 was excellent as well.
  23. “Although I have read all 1400 pages of War and Peace I had no recollection of the word Verst”

    I speak semi-passable Russian and have many Russian speaking friends. I have even run through Kiev (admittedly not in Russia) in a vest (!) and I had never heard this word either!
    But I did get it from the wordplay I have to say.

    1. For the benefit of any other Russian-speakers here, the phrase za verstu vidno “you can see [it/him] a verst/mile off” is still in reasonably common use. And milestones are still “verst posts” in Russian.
  24. Just for the record, in case anyone skipped the etymology, it’s a re-import of the English “riding coat”, as garbled across the Channel.

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