Times 24243 – sad songs say so coronach

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 17 minutes, so for me the hardest of the week, and it looks like one with a few deliberately thorny and trappy answers, including one device (21 down) that I’ve seen a few times in barred-grid crosswords, but don’t recall as making an appearance in the daily puzzle. I don’t recall, in writing the blog, having to check as many answers after working through the crossword to make sure my guesses from wordplay were right. Here we go…

Across
1 DIRECTIONLESS: double definition, one cryptic on NEWS
9 RAPPORTEUR: RAP, then U in PORTER – from wordplay, turns out to be one who is in charge of keeping notes in an investigation
10 PRE(tty),TENDS: in as a joining word maybe to throw you off the wordplay?
11 SLEEVE: the cryptic definition being that your radius is in your arm and could be in the SLEEVE – my last one in
16 IONA: sounds like “I own a”
17 GAGA: rotor A,GAG
18 SEA CAPTAIN: (ANAPAESTIC)*
20 ST,(d)ODGE: Had the “ST” part before the rest
22 TREE FERN: rather neat – REEF in TERN
24 RECLAIMING: (M,A,NICE,GIRL)*
27 TIME AFTER TIME: looking for a bizarre job? In my town, there is a special branch of the police to make sure that nobody is drinking after 3am
 
Down
1 DETEERMINANT: DETER then IN in M,ANT
2 (f)RIGHT: nice (if cheesy) surface
3 CORONACHS: (CASH,CROON) – toyed with CHRONO…. variations for a while and the H was more likely at the other end – cries or wails
4 I’M PAST O: boom boom!
5 NO,OK’s
6 EXTR(a),EMIST: the last part being (TIMES)*
7 SOU(r)
12 V,IN,AIGRETTE: got this one from definition, an AIGRETTE can mean an egret or a feather plume
15 SC,AVENGER: SC as short for scilicet (namely) appears occasionally
19 ATTAINT: sounds like “A TAINT” – from wordplay
21 ERIC,A: ERIC as an Irish blood-fine is one I have only seen in barred-grid puzzles before
25 (l)EFT: though the Tolkienite in me wanted to put in (w)ENT

33 comments on “Times 24243 – sad songs say so coronach”

  1. About 45 mins, with a fair few half guesses and things I was only reasonably sure of, like ERICA, ATTAINT, CORONACHS, RAPPORTEUR & AIGRETTE. I think I’ve met ERIC before but couldn’t say where; NY Times? It feels a lot better taking as long as I did on this one as compared to Monday’s; this felt more satisfying in the end. I liked IMPASTO and the truly inspired SLEEVE, but COD for the SEA CAPTAIN, because its poesy is anapaestic.
  2. 11:00 for this, with 22 and 19 last in. I can’t remember whether I’ve seen fine=ERIC in the Times before, but it’s in Collins so fair game. My best solving moment here was probably remembering CORONACHS promptly, also doubtless from barred-grid solving.
  3. 3 days of new solver smugness portended this failure.
    Left to solve: SLEEVE, TREE FERN, IONA and VINAIGRETTE (which I might have got had I had SLEEVE).
    Also 26ac which isn’t blogged – could it be NETT???
    Guesses with look-up confirms for ERIC as a fine, CORONACHS, EFT and SC in SCAVENGERS (Jesus!).
    I put in DIRECTIONLESS without knowing why, and I still don’t???
    1. 26A: you’ve got it. 1A: Variation on an old theme – news = N,E,W,S so consists entirely of “directions”.
      Add “such” to your mental list of ways for the setter to refer to the answer.

      Watch out for similar tricks with “notes” and the letters A-G. SC: don’t forget that one!

      1. Thanks Peter. Wow! So much to learn, so little time.

        As to not forgetting namely SC, I don’t think I ever will.

  4. I had to tackle this in 5 sessions on the way to work so I can’t give accurate timings but I think it took me just under an hour with one error. I scored 50/50 on my two guesses, getting ERICA right (having toyed with ELIZA and EVITA) but CORONACHS wrong.

    All the words I didn’t know have been mentioned already.

    I thought it was something of a beast as I took ages to get properly started (only 7 clues solved at the end of the first 15 minute session) and I felt I was struggling a bit without ever completely grinding to a halt. However, having read the comments so far I see that others fared a lot better so I now fear we are not yet through the worst of the week and I may be in for a harder time tomorrow when it’s my turn to write the blog.

    I agree 11ac was inspired.

  5. 10:08, with one mistake: CHRONACOS for CORONACHS (3dn).  I felt it was 50-50 whether the H would go at the beginning or the end, and CORONACHS was my alternative answer.  Ach, well.  At least it has a nice etymology: comh- together + rànach roaring, outcry.  Last in were that, ERICA (21dn), ATTAINT (19dn) and finally SLEEVE (11ac).

    Lots to like here, but for me the standouts are 11ac (SLEEVE) and 18ac (SEA CAPTAIN).

    1. Ochone! Ochone! (Lamentation) I feel in exalted company to have also had the nous to come up with CHRONACOS (Sotira as well). Well done to the three of us!
      I also originally has POSTURES for 10 so this made 1d and 3d a problem.
      Tomorrow is another day
  6. Slightly less than half an hour and slightly more than one mistake – Evita and chronacos – the penalty, it seems, for avoiding bars (not something I’ve often been accused of).

    One of those where I don’t mind at all being flummoxed when I get to enjoy little works of art like SLEEVE and IMPASTO (I’m happy to be corn-fed). Great fun. Thanks to the setter.

    1. Bit of a struggle and left with 2 uncompleted (erica and coronachs). I did think these the likeliest possibilities given the checking letters etc but only marginally, so I didn’t put them in. bc
  7. after three days ofd relatively simple ones this one crept up on me and was a rather difficult puzzle i felt. i mangaed to come up with directionless from the definition but needed the blog to see why…thank you!
    had never come across Eric=fine so that was new
    rather liked 13 across as well
    lets hope tomorrow isnt as hard as recent Fridays
  8. No timing as this was done in bursts during the course of the morning. One of those puzzles where I was glad merely to have completed correctly. Some guesses from wordplay, and other solutions where I did not fully understand the wordplay until coming here (e.g. I missed the “news” = all points of the compass reference at 1ac, and could not explain the “radius” reference at 11ac (SLEEVE). ERICA, at 21dn, was a guess, albeit a fairly obvious one, having never heard of “eric” meaning some kind of financial penalty (though “erica” as some kind of heather appears quite often). At 3dn I guessed CORONACHS from the anagram fodder, though, like some others, spent a fair while fruitlessly trying to make a word beginning “CHRO…..” work. Then the thought occurred that gaelic was preeminently the language of mournful songs and dirges and that gaelic words might end in “…ACH”. A toughie. Makes one a little apprehensive as to what Friday’s will be like.

  9. At last something to get the mental teeth into – 40 mins including checking eric and coronachs. I agree, sleeve and sea captain were lovely, both in early actually. Nice lot of variation in clueing.
  10. The hardest of the week, at 43 minutes (with one mistake), but also the best of the week I thought.

    I didn’t get 21d, and guessed at ELIZA, given a choice of that or ERICA. Doh!

    The only other two I didn’t understand fully before coming here were 22ac and 12d, which is good for me, and probably means the clueing was nice and clear today.

    Lots of ticks – 16ac, 17ac, 18ac, 2d, 4d, 14d, 23d in particular, but COD goes to 4d.

  11. Enjoyable middle of the road puzzle. I decided to start with the down clues today and solved 1 through 7 with hardly a pause which made the whole top half very straightforward. Slowed a bit at the bottom and was held up by TREE FERN. I knew Irish “eric” as did other bar crossword solvers. Finished in 25 minutes with SEA CAPTAIN my favourite.
  12. A late post for me as I was walking round Warwickshire and this was definitely not one that I could finish over my lunchtime sandwich at Avon Dassett.. I managed to get the vowels in the right place for Coronachs and finished with Nett and Vinaigrette. I mentally went through a whole delicatessen-full of dressings: mayonaisse, hollandaise, béchamel, thousand island before I eventually arrived at the, more obvious, right answer..

    I knew Eric because, only last week I had Eriach in a barred crossword and, on looking it up, I noticed that Eric and Erick are other variants. It tends bear out what Peter and Jimbo are always saying about the usefulness of doing barred puzzles.

    My favourite answer was Impasto, corny or not. I do not share everyone else’s enthusiasm for Sleeve as I think the radius bit is rather strained

  13. While solving I felt this was tough, and untangling a lot of wordplay through bits and pieces I didn’t fully understand seemed to be taking a lot of time. But, when done it was the 25 minute mark, though it seemed longer. I must have seen ‘eric’ before, because when running through the women’s names that fit, when I came to ERICA, I realized it had to be correct. I correctly guessed CORONACHS over ‘chronachs’, and admit it was a 50/50 proposition. I checked it’s existence afterward, likewise NETT. Those were my last entries. Other things new to me: RAPPORTEUR, aigrette, sc=namely. COD: KINGS CROSS, and IMPASTO. Regards to everyone.
  14. About 20 mins but at least I got them all right.

    SLEEVE last to go in like many others, trying to get SWERVE or SHEAVE to fit the clue. Hesitated on ERICA but thought it unlikelier that eliz was a fine. Smiled at 4D and 13A. I wouldn’t describe 1A as a ‘double definition’, btw.

    Has 18A been appreciated for its anapaestic definition? I had to look it up, but it is a metre of two short and one long syllable, such as ’tis the man’ and ‘on the bridge’.

    Finally, may I make a little comment on the blog? How did you manage to lodge it at 10.29 on the day before the crossword it related to? Admirable efficiency, but it does have two consequences: people may have difficulty finding it (only 20 commments so far) and may happen across it without wanting to when looking for yesterday’s entry (as happened to me – and it is difficult to avoid the answer to a clue in the heading). Would it be possible to wait until midnight before blogging?

    1. George does wait until midnight, but unfortunately LiveJournal takes its timestamp from the his own PC clock, and George is in North Carolina – so his 10:30 pm yesterday is our 3:30 am today. In theory he can amend the timestamp when blogging but that’s a bit of a bind to remember. The best way of looking for an individual report without seeing others is probably a Google Search for (e.g.) 24242 “Times for the Times”, followed (if the number search fails because we left out the number or got it wrong) by using a “single day” URL like http://community.livejournal.com/times_xwd_times/2009/06/03/, which should show the older of two postings on the same day first.

      Or there’s the bullet-proof method: don’t look at the blog until you have tackled all the daily puzzles from the last week or so.

      1. It would help for number searches if the titles were consistent on whether or not to include a comma.  From a quick look at the archives, it seems that each blogger has a consistent practice, and that those who include commas are outnumbered.
        1. In doing searches, commas make no odds as far as I can tell – try this one. If there’s a context where commas matter, I’ll request consistency.
          1. Sorry, you’re quite right.  There is such a context, and that’s where I’d got the idea from: the Firefox “Smart Location Bar” (address bar).  But in that context there’s no problem, as Firefox will find the relevant URL given just the last three digits.
    2. Hi angus

      That was maybe a little naughty of me to put an answer in the heading, though we do it sometimes. I’ll try to avoid it.

      The crossword goes live online at midnight local time, which is 7pm my time (I’m on the East coast of the US). So I typically do the “next day’s” crossword the night before, and always if I write the blog, if I waited until I got up in the morning then there wouldn’t be a blog until early afternoon UK time. LiveJournal uses my computer clock time as the time the blog goes online, so that was 10:29pm US Eastern Summer time, about 3:30am UK time.

      I didn’t look up anapaestic when I wrote things up, but that is a really nice touch.

        1. Thank you for your scarily swift replies!

          I didn’t realise that LiveJournal took its cue from the blogger’s PC nor that you were in the US, sorry.

          I also think it should be fine to use one of the answers in the blog heading as it will often be a theme or inspiration for the day, but perhaps if you know that your blog will be posted on the day before’s page, not to do it in that limited situation.

          How is that for a compromise?!

          1. I just did a trail of changing the time, I didn’t know that was an option, so next time I write a blog (I’m alternate Thursdays), I’ll set it to the day after.
    3. I’m sure Kororareka would be too modest to remind us but he did point out that the clue was anapaestic on the first blog of the day.

      While giving credit, I might mention that Vinyl gave a comprehensive explanation of the time difference problem a week or two ago in response to a similar query. His own solution is to have his blogging computer permanently set to UTC but not all of us can affort the luxury of a separate blogging computer.

  15. As this is my first name, if I ever wrote an autobiography, it would be called :- Eric – a bloody fine name.

    Bracoman

  16. 23 min here (but did cheat with the last in – ERICA), so easily my best of the week. I was lucky in that all of the long answers just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. And as for CORONACHS: looked at the anagram fodder, shuddered and moved on. Came back later and wrote in the answer without pausing for thought! Lots of enjoyable clues, so won’t single out a COD.
  17. KINGS CROSS is slightly reminiscent of that old chestnut “Parson’s Green? Must be something he ate!”.
    SC for scilicet might be easier to remember if you bear in mind that the more familiar viz is short for videlicet. Why viz with a Z? Well, it’s a long, but googlable/bingable, story.
    Still on the subject of memory, last Friday’s KAMEEZ may appear less forbidding once you know that it’s probably the same word as chemise (though even the OED hedges its bets on this).
    I’d never seen ERIC before with this meaning. Wasn’t it once always clued with reference to that inspiring tale Eric, or Little by Little?
    Several enjoyable clues here: I liked the surface of FUNGI.
    1. Eric: The book ref was common but I think it’s rightly been given the boot in this puzzle with some other old stuff like Birkenhead = FES – as unforgettable for me (in a clue for FESCUE!) as namely=sc now is for Barry.

Comments are closed.