Times 24240 – “As the Miller told his tale….

56 comments on “Times 24240 – “As the Miller told his tale….”

1. Pretty straightforward this morning — about 20 mins.
   Good to see that the setter (19ac) knows we are a Commonwealth in our own right and not just part of some larger (and meaningless) one!
2. 17 min. For me, without aids, this is greased lightning. Got a number of them without understanding the answer, but they were so obvious I didn’t even go back to check. Glad to see I did the right thing! I agree that 23 dn is deficient in the word department.
3. Unaccountably slow this morning at 45 mins. Even took some time to discover Australia; for some reason the term Commonwealth seems un-Australian, for all manner of reasons. Perhaps that’s our ironic sense of humour in action again.

   Tried without success to justify BRAVADO. Thanks for the explanation. Equally puzzled at 23, until I opted for the absent word approach, and I can’t improve on your 4d. At 22, I thought play=try to land, as in fishing. No stand-outs for my thick brain this morning, although READY was inventively clued for an old favourite.

4. One of my fastest, at 8 minutes, so should be a bit of a canter for some. Some very generous double/cryptic definitions, the checking letters are a giveaway but I rather liked 10 ac.
5. 9:20 – a bit slow as I didn’t enter 4D until there was no alternative and twigged the wordplay. Also cagey about DO?SE at 11A – didn’t know that “dowse” was OK for the “put fire out” version, so “douse” for water-finding seemed equally possible. With kororareka on “play” in 27A. Not too bothered by the occasional repeat of an answer/wordplay within a few days, like 7D.

   Full clue for 23D in the paper version: “Model that all the players can see after play starts”. I’m claiming back about 15 seconds!

6. “Local” as in “local anaesthetic”.
   1. That makes more sense. Up till now I was in vinyl’s “Lo Cal” camp.
   2. Of course. I always miss the obvious, while seeing the hard ones quickly.
7. Vinyl1, some of the clue numbers are incorrect – first three and last one Across and last one Down are the ones I have noticed.

   I thought I was on course for a really quick solve this morning as most of the RH went in on first reading. The ones there that I didn’t get until later were 23, 25 and 27. Although I had thought of HORSEPLAY immediately I couldn’t justify it so didn’t write it in. I still don’t really get the “play” = “try” or “try to land”. But west of PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH proved more tricky and I eventually came in at 30 minutes.

   I never heard of BRAVA in all my years of concert-going, and neither have Collins or COED. Chambers has it but also informs me that BRAVI is the form to use when addressing a number of persons, so it seems that’s probably what we should be shouting some of of the time.

   1. I missed kororareka’s explanation of “play” = “try to land” on first reading which I now see must be the correct one.
   2. Oooops! Fixed.
8. 8 mins, despite mystification over 23D. Quite a lot to quibble about, for example ‘long run’ for the mile in 18A – isn’t it a ‘middle distance’?

   Tom B.

9. Oh vinyl! Cryptic crosswords and Mahler? I guess you must play golf? All for obsessives.

   Incandescent over horrid jumbo yesterday, full of never heard of plants, so grateful for this puzzle which even I finished in 40 minutes (a record, but early days).

   Local as in anaesthetic (although I guess someone will have pointed out).

   NO BID last in as know nothing of Bridge and DUMMY put in without knowing why,(apart from misprint) so expect that has something to do with Bridge.

   Chambers OK with dowse as dowse.

   Having been a regular opera goer for about 5 years I always wondered why so many in the audience couldn’t pronounce bravo. Now I know.

   1. Cryptic crosswords, golf, vinyl records, Unix, cars with manual transmissions – they all go together.

      We do everything the hard way!

10. quick one for me – about 12 mins, although a lot had gone in with no appreciation of word play. I guess most of this is to do with the nature of the checking letters and would postulate that (using scrabble scoring) the higher the scores of the checkers, the easier it is to fill in at first sight. This seems intuitive as the presence of higher letters reduces the available combinations of words, however the counter argument would be that (entirely statistically) there is “on average” a mixture of letters in any word, so if you have the rare ones already, there are more possibilities in the ones you dont have. That is contrived – I’ll go with the first argument….
    1. stick with the first argument! Something like the B in the middle of “NO BID” is a significant help towards possible answers, whatever the other letters may turn out to be. I have no idea whether the checkers in this puzzle are significantly more helpful than average though.
11. I started a new job today, and haven’t yet worked out how to fit solving time into my schedule, so no time today.
    Pretty easy except that I got held up with seeing KINGDOM and needed it to be sure about DUMMY. Quite a lot of answers went in without understanding of wordplay – GOLD MEDAL especially!
12. Not often I am up with PB – an under 10 today and enjoyed it, even the repeat of croci. Funny the brain’s tracking can be – croc to alligator to litigator – made a very fast corner. Last in 13d, no prob about def. of sight.
13. the only clue I had difficulty with was 2d. Is the answer so easy it doesn’t get a mention? I put GRABWHEEL…
    1. Must be bonkers. LEG WE HEAR (anag)= GEARWHEEL. But once again standard xword conventions are blown away. WE HEAR normally means sounds like. How can you tell the difference? And yes BREAKING may suggest anagram…
       1. The trouble with standard conventions is that the setters know what they are and will usually go out of their way to convince you that they apply to a particular clue when in fact they don’t. That is the nature of the beast, I’m afraid. Incidentally, I forgot to mention in my original comment that I liked this clue, precisely because of its paradigm subversion.
    2. Yes, that was an obvious anagram for me. ‘Rotating’ cause me to see ‘wheel’ in ‘leg we hear’ almost immediately.
       1. Not to me it wasn’t! Also the possibility of DO-U-SE rather than DO-W-SE caused more doubt about what was necessary for 2d. I completely discounted anagrams in this clue – COMPLETELY, and all because of the ‘we hear’ convention. And yes I accept that it’s almost a double-bluff, but not necessary.
          1. Sorry, but the setter’s little bit of deception is entirely in the spirit of cryptic clues. Two quotes for you which amount to the same thing:

             Chicago mafia boss Tony Accardo, to his well-armed associates, after he was done over at a pool table: “Let the bum go – he cheated me fair and square.”

             Old crossword setter Afrit in his famous “injuction”: “He [the setter] may attempt to mislead by using a form of words which can be taken in more than one way, and it is your fault if you take it the wrong way …”

14. 5:19.  A conjunction of the planets: no real difficulties here.  Six answers went in without the wordplay (LOCAL, BRAVADO, HORSEPLAY, DEFEATISM, GOLD MEDAL, READY).  It would be nice to claim a 15-second discount for 23dn (DUMMY), but by then I had D.M.. with a suspected Y, and it was obvious that the clue was misprinted, so it didn’t hold me up.

    The definition of MILER in 18ac seems OK to me, waiving a quibble about it being the long run (which is a long-standing cruciverbal tic).

    Clues of the Day: 9ac (BRAVADO), 11ac (DOWSE), 2dn (GEARWHEEL).

15. Was racing through this and thought I might be on course for a sub-15 mins PB, but ran out at 21 mins in the end. All my solutions were right but I didn’t fully understand the wordplay of BRAVADO, TRAVELLED and READY until coming here. Though a reasonably regular opera-goer, I, like some others, have never heard anyone shouting “brava” (still less “bravi”). Agree that 4dn is rather weak. I thought 2dn was clever, the “we hear” luring most of us, I suspect, into wasting some time looking for a homophone solution before spotting the anagram. In all, an enjoyable start to the week.
    1. Bravi? That will be shouted at the revival of ‘I Pedanti’, the only opera with a completely logical plot.
       1. Nice one! Possibly also at “I Puritani”? But it’s a long time since I’ve seen a production of it, so I can’t vouch for a logical plot.
16. It should not offend anyone today if I describe today’s puzzle as easy. I thought there was some elegant clueing nevertheless. 4 was clear enough to me but it would only really work if there were a saying: “There’s no such thing as a free ploughman’s lunch”.

    My only problem was in finishing with Gearwheel because I had entered the, equally valid, Douse at 11.

    I have never been in favour of capital punishment but there is possibly a case for retaining it for people who shout Bravo at the end of concerts and opera. The main objection is that it spoils the moments of silence at the end of a piece. A subsidiary objection is that it is usually ungrammatical. Chambers has bravo, brava and bravi but omits brave, presumably because you would only use it to cheer the Ivy Benson All Girls Band.

    1. It was easy if you were merely trying to get the correct answers. It was much harder if you wanted to understand all the clues correctly.

       The setter could have made it more difficult with less obvious literal definitions.

    2. DOUSE is not a valid alternative, as the word meaning search for water can’t be spelt this way.
    3. Life imprisonment for those who shout Bravo. Capital punishment should be reserved for those pedantic enough to shout any of the others!
    4. No offence taken. A puzzle that I can do in 21 mins is undoubtedly on the easy side. I share your dissatisfaction, and that of others, with PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH at 4dn. I suppose the idea is that the kind of ploughman’s lunch you can eat in a pub isn’t free, but the home-made sandwich or whatever that a real ploughman might take into the fields might be said to be. But, if so, pretty weak. I think I’m with jackkt (see below) on “bravo”, “bravi” etc.
17. 10:03 .. Ticks for NIGHTSPOT, FOLKDANCE and KINGDOM.
18. It must have been a puzzle on the easier end of the scale as I completed it! (2nd ever)

    However, I did enter some answers without getting the clues completely. Particularly 9ac, 6ac and 21dn. For 3dn and 12ac I worked out the musical references but couldn’t fit the entire clue together.

    Still an enjoyable morning workout. So maybe I should get back to some paid work now.

    W

19. 6:43. I didn’t understand INGRAIN or READY before coming here so thanks vinyl1. Can I claim 1min 44secs for the missing word at 23d?
    Liked GOLD MEDAL
20. 24 minutes, so not so bad, though I didn’t understand the wordplay for 4d / 1ac /23d, though the answers were fairly obvious. COD – I’m quite fond of 24ac.
21. A gentle start to the week as others have said, though I missed the easy 1 across on first scan, so MILER was my first answer. I don’t see why ‘touch’ is a better answer than ‘sight’ for 20; the latter seems a perfectly satisfactory answer. 25 minutes with pauses for liquid refreshment.
    I’m not mad keen on “none the less” to indicate removal of O, even punningly. Best clues to my mind were those to DOWSE, GEARWHEEL and GOLD MEDAL. I don’t see the last as a lame clue. The clue is merely saying in cryptic form that a runner-up won’t get this award.
22. Sorry. That was me, one can hardly mea culpa anonymously.

    Incidentally COD (comment of day) vinyl1’s revived opera – what can I say – bravo!

    1. I’m with you, especially if you keep quiet until that final curtain. When the performance is over, I’d much rather people showed honest emotions, even if that means booing. That can mean anything from deeply moved long silence to instant raucous cheering, depending on the performance and the ending of the piece – if you don’t want to shout something at the end of a good performance of Mahler 5, say, something’s wrong isn’t it? “honest emotions” means that the idiots whose main concern is to be the first to shout “Bravo!” are still idiots.

       It’s hard to care about the correctness of the words once you’ve discovered that the borrowed French word “Encore!” is not used for the same purpose by French-speakers.

23. Another who found it easy at about 12 minutes, last in horseplay then dummy.
24. 9.05 so no real problems.The missing word in 23 didn’t cause a problem as the checking letters came fairly quickly. Agree with Vinyl about the well-placed pairing of NO BID and DUMMY which in conjunction make for the boring part of a social bridge evening. Time to pour another G&T or put the kettle on as you prefer.Didn’t CROCI make a similar appearance the other day?
25. An easy puzzle that could have been made much harder by using clever definitions rather than obvious ones. For example Kind of pub=LOCAL is too easy when combined with the rather clever cryptic definition.

    P-LUNCH is very weak and I can’t imagine anybody shouting out brava. Nothing really stands out as very good.

26. Mea culpa
    How very English of you all.
    Personally, my enjoyment of opera, particular Italian opera, increased exponentially once I understood that I had to leave my critical faculties and my native reserve at home. Having recently watched, with jaw in lap, Elina Galanca singing the title role in La Cenerentola, a singer as breathtakingly beautiful to look at as she is thrilling to the ear, so excited was I at the curtain that I simply had to shout something, but made do with my telephone number.
27. 11:20 with a severe hangover this morning, so I have to agree with everyone who thought this was easy!
28. Perhaps I should have added that some people think there is no such thing as a ploughman’s lunch. There is a view, popularised in the 1983 film “The Ploughman’s Lunch”, that it is a phrase invented by marketing men in the 1970’s to popularise the eating of cheese at lunchtime
    1. Quite so – OED says: “Although often assumed to be a traditional rural meal, the ploughman’s lunch (now freq. abbreviated to ploughman’s) first appeared in British pubs in the late 1960s.” Earliest citation: 1975 Times 30 Aug. 10/2 The pubs specialize in lunchtime catering..and you can get a decent ‘ploughman’s’ for between 20p and 30p.

       1. I don’t suppose the Times citation mentions where you can get a ploughman’s for 20-30p. Presumably the beer is 10p a pint
       2. I can confirm seeing “Ploughman’s Lunch” on pub menus in Devon as early as 1964. And, lennyco, 10p a pint (i.e. 2 shillings) would about right but probably a little on the expensive side. 1/8 to 1/10 would be more like it.
29. I agree, an easy outing with very clear definitions, and some clever wordplay. About 15 minutes for me. My last entry was DUMMY, taking an extra couple of minutes, as I let myself investigate whether the clearly missing word(s) was a deliberate part of the wordplay. Couldn’t think of anything, though. COD: KINGDOM, had me fooled for a bit, and I found it amusing. Regards to all.
30. DUMMY also came at the end and, although I had all the checking letters, so did GEARWHEEL. Clever.15-20 minutes, but no longer.
    Best to all.
31. why has no one posted answers to this crossword?! i am at a loss for 19 down to cool down etc… (ive forgot the clue now) but would appreciate a response
    1. No-one has posted answers because the puzzles printed on Saturdays (sucvh as 24239) are competition puzzles, and we think that the winners should have solved the puzzle without copying answers from a web-site.

       A report on the puzzle will appear next Saturday, after the closing date for entries.

       1. ty very much for this, im new to the times as ive just graduated from the mail!
32. 7.02, which reduces my personal best by about two and a half minutes. Given that the puzzle was regarded as easy, but not ridiculously so, I’m at a loss to explain my new-found braininess (unless it’s a timing aberration – which I had to concede as probable on the occasion I solved in 1.48).
    Philip S.
33. “8 LITIGATOR, anagram of I GOT TRIAL. A weak clue because the legal theme of the anagram leads straight to the answer”

    Of course there’s a legal theme in the anagram. It’s an &lit. And rather a good one (or so at any rate it seemed to me).

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