Times 24244

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

This took me the best part of an hour using aids to get me started again after about 15 minutes in the doldrums with only half the puzzle completed. There are no difficult words or particularly specialist knowedge required apart from one book title which some may not know, and this may have been my problem, apart from still getting first night nerves after blogging for nearly 18 months. So many of the clues did nothing to set my mind immediately racing down the right track. By the same token nothing in the puzzle content has inspired me to write much in the blog other than explanations of the clues. Or maybe I’m just a bit jaded this morning.

Across
1 BAN,JO(IS)T
5 GROCER – RE,CORG(i) reversed
9 HAVE A BASH
11 S(eizing),A,MO,A    S(A,MO)A  – Thanks to mctext for pointing out this error. I saw it correctly when solving but blogged it wrongly in haste.
12 ALL TOLD
13 UNIFORM
14 SPLINTER GROUP – (Ruler stopping)*
16 IN,APPROPRIATE – I can’t find it in any of the dictionaries at the moment, but I seem to remember “in” = “burning” coming up once before in an expression such as “the fire is in”. I believe it’s north country and/or Scottish.
20 (e)QUIPPED
21 A,LI B,A,BA – I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a show called Ali Baba. Surely the panto is Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves?
24 RU,I,NATION
25 THRASH – Triple definition with “best”/”worst” meaning “defeat”
 
Down
1 BE,HE,AD
2 NOVEL – “Scoop” is a novel by Evelyn Waugh
4 STANDING, ORDER
6 RU(SHIN)G
7 C(OM,MOD)ORE – The naval rank above Captain and below Rear Admiral
8 ROAD MAPS – Sounds like “rowed” + “spam” reversed
10 HOUSE,BREAKING – “House” meaning a business here + sounds like “braking”
14 STATI(ONE)R – Artist* around “one”
15 DI’S,QUIET
17 PAP,YR,US
18 A,G(ITAT)O – The film director is Jacques Tati yet again, here reversed
19 GAR,NET – “Guy mounting” is “rag” reversed. “Clear” is “net” spelt with one “t” today.

51 comments on “Times 24244”

    1. Me too – A MO = “a second” inside it. I can’t see how you get the second A if the S is “initially seizing”
  2. 15:40. Started well at top left, spotting -IST as a possible ending for 1A and working back from the downs. Took about three goes to understand and write in BEHEAD, though. Then did the rest with pauses and bursts of answers. Very bad in SW corner, failing to get several clues that seem perfectly straightforward afterwards (and were, with the odd checking letter). Order for the last batch of answers: 14D, 20, 15, 16, 23, 17, 25. Among the wrong ideas: 23: H=hotel in something like “burnt”, 25: something+DO, 7D honour=MBE, 14 -LESS from “without …”, 17 drivel = ROT or TOSH, “year this document’s dated” = MMIX = 2009.

    Not too bothered by “Ali Baba” as the full title is now too long for even a Jumbo crossword entry.

  3. 27 min. But had to cheat in the SW after stalling. Having got INAPPROPRIATE (probably the most unsatisfying clue I have encountered in a year) the rest fell quickly.
  4. I was expecting, indeed hoping for, a cracker today but one look at Jack’s blog says it all – there is little to say about this very standard fare. Perhaps Saturday will be better and end the run of rather easy competition puzzles.

    I liked the triple definition for THRASH and the construction of BEHEAD. You’re correct about “in” Jack, it has appeared before using the fire context. About 30 minutes to solve.

    1. Thanks for confirming that, Jimbo. I’ve found it in Collins now: 19 Brit (of a fire) alight.
  5. Need to borrow Peter’s hat.
    In a rush so no time to to reassess before coming here. Guessed MAIDISM for UNIFORM (serving girl ??m – what else could it be, right?). This made COMMODORE impossible and then inexplicably I entered homee breaking, even managing to misspell the error.
    Otherwise not too bad (about an hour if you discount trying to solve 7dn with wrong checking letter in the middle).
    Maidism of course you will all know is a disease (pellagra) attributed to a maize diet.
    Some tricky stuff in here so well-done Jack.
  6. 14:10 here after a few hiccups. I started to put in SPAM MAIL at 8D before parsing the clue correctly. Also took a while to understand the wordplay for BANJOIST, NOVEL, INAPPROPRIATE and HOUSEBREAKING, but stuck them in anyway and let their crossing letters confirm themselves as I progressed. Last in was the SW corner, mainly because I didn’t really look at it until I’d got INAPPROPRIATE, after which I finished quickly.
  7. 13:50, with COMMODORE (7dn) and the cleverly clued SAMOA (11ac) the last in.  After a flying start I quickly ground to a halt.  It would have helped to have looked at 15dn (DISQUIET) earlier.

    Beginners should note the common cruciverbal use of “without” in 14dn (STATIONER) to mean “surrounding” – a usage justified on the grounds that a green hill without a city wall is a green hill outside a city wall.  (The hill obviously doesn’t surround the wall, any more than you surround your house when you go outside, but such thoughts are powerless in the face of convention.)

    I don’t see what’s cryptic about 12ac (ALL TOLD) and 13ac (UNIFORM).  Otherwise, though, I think Jimbo’s dismissal of the puzzle is a little harsh.

    1. 12ac: I take this to be a double def. If nothing is missed out, all is told (say, in a story); and “in sum” = “all told”.
      13ac: cryptic def.: we’re likely to think of a domestic servant but it’s a gal in the forces.
      1. I thought 13ac was also a double def., with the first being “like” as in alike and the second cryptic “dress of a serving girl”.
    2. “without” means “outside”, not “surrounding” (according to dictionaries at least). Other uses: the expression “within and without” (which seems less archaic than the rest so might become my preferred example!), and descriptions like “St Sepulchre-without-Newgate”. Unless we insist that all archaic uses are indicated and therefore the setter must say something like “formerly without”, I think the use of this meaning is crossword cliché rather than crossword convention (i.e. perfectly logical but maybe used a bit too often).

      I prefer to keep “convention” for stuff that says more than a dictionary def or GK fact can tell you, for reasons to do with clue setting or solving. Bad ones: student=L and charge=ION (neither used in Times puzzles). Both are just ways of making convincing surfaces easier to produce. Good conventions: a maths “unknown”, which could be any letter from > 1 alphabet, is always X, Y or Z. And “many”=L,C,D or M (Roman numerals) but not DI or MIX. These mean that a usefully misleading word doesn’t lead to too many possibilities. The first is definitely in force in Times puzzles, not sure about the second as I can’t remember seeing an example of “many” used this way.

      1. “There is a green hill far away without a city wall”?
        The cannier Scots invented “outwith” to avoid the ambiguity.
      2. Just the other day I threw in a line from Carry On Cleo which began “Caesar, there is a messenger without..”, which just goes to prove that you’re not educated proper if you don’t know your Sid James.
        1. Bilius: Caesar, there is a messenger here without.
          Julius Caesar: I’m not surprised, if we stay here much longer we’ll all be without.
          (A Jamesian)
      3. Not to mention Evelyn Waugh’s (since he is topical) St. Peter-without-the-walls in The Loved One complete with its parody of Heraclitus. (You’ll have to scroll down a screen or two).
      4. As should be clear from my post, I know that “without” in the relevant sense means “outside” and not “surrounding”.  The point is that the standard justification for the cruciverbal use would only work if “without” did mean “surrounding”.  In case this isn’t obvious, the reason why the cruciverbal use requires “without” to mean something like “surrounding” is because it requires “A without B” to mean something like “B inside A” – which is a crucially different thing from “A not inside B”.

        The thinking behind “without = outside = surrounding” is structurally the same as that behind “student = learner = L”: both rely on a false thesis about the transitivity of definition (cf. my comments on “stay = hold = contain”).

        1. Sorry, aiming at the wrong target – should have listened to the voice saying “Mark can’t get it this wrong can he?”.

          I agree with you on stay/hold/contain so this is indeed “xwd convention”, which has had more effect on my understanding of “without” than I’d realised.

          1. If it’s any consolation, familiarity has also blinded Azed to this point, going by slip 1762:  “I forget if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m not keen on ‘without’ to mean ‘outside’, as in ‘without a city wall’, which for some reason came up quite a bit this month.  Some setters seem happy to use ‘without’ in this way, though it is hardly current usage and is labelled as archaic in Chambers, so I avoid it.  You have been warned.”  (In my book, this counts as being right for the wrong reason.)

            I propose a new parlour game for crossword enthusiasts: invent your own “without”.  For instance:

            upon = on = slightly drunk (anagram)
            supporting = backing = reversing (reversal)
            exciting = gripping = holding (container)
            considered = held = contained (contents)

            The possibilities are intact (= unbroken = endless)!

  8. Quite liked this one, would have been pleased to have struggled less remembering Samoa to let me finish confidently with Commodore. We say the fire has kept in nicely if it is still going in the morning – never hunted origin.
  9. 22:02 .. which feels slow, on reflection. SPLINTER GROUP is a fine anagram with a smart surface. Definite COD, but I liked INNER, DISQUIET and BEHEAD, too.

    1a got me wondering where ‘banjo’ comes from. It seems to be from Kimbundu/Tshiluba via Jamaica. Somehow I’d always thought of it as being as Redneck as a Chevvy truck and a 6-pack of Miller. Which shows what I know.

  10. Struggled from INNER to ALL GOOD (oops!) in about 50 mins. Somehow felt cheated at the end, as in retrospect the answers didn’t look that difficult; must have been something to do with the clueing then, which was very tight and tricky throughout.

    Thanks to those who explained the real connection of in to burning; I thought it had something to do with a burning issue being a hot topic and threfore popular (how many removes is that?) Also didn’t know a thrash was a party (must get out more). Good to see ANITA returning; she was my saviour in the SE. Liked PAPYRUS for its definition, UNIFORM, DISQUIET but COD to BEHEAD, which finally gave me BANJOIST (I thought you said “musician”? – Ouch! and apologies in advance to all Bluegrass aficionados.)

      2. It only took one or two Youtube hops to find someone playing a Bach Cello Suite on the “tenor banjo”. Seemed daft until I remembered that trombonists steal exactly the same music.
  11. didnt like this at all. struggled on all fronts. did like Road Maps and disquiet…anyway all done now…around the hour mark
  12. 18.20 Surprised to see that Jimbo found this standard fare.This was fits and starts for me with 1a ,15,20(personal note – pleeease remember there are 26 letters in alphabet – Q!!!), 14,18 all causing a bit of a hold-up. Then a good couple of minutes getting 7 and, at last , GROCER.
    For me it was about 7 or 8 out of 10 on the difficulty scale – not a 5. The times of Peter and Mark tend to confirm this although it is always the case that one man’s meat….
  13. stuck at half way, needed help to continue. only one new word in = burning, against 7 yesterday, although one was in the clue. splinter group great anagram and my cod, i thought this was a good puzzle with deceptive surfaces, at least for me.
  14. My experience with this was similar to many others. I filled the NW and SE quadrants fairly quickly, then ground to a halt until STATIONER got me going again. 45 minutes ALL TOLD, but failing to understand 10 and 16 (the last entry).
  15. I enjoyed this. It must be just my level and it completes a rare all-correct week. Main hold-up was pencilling in “ Play a part” instead of “have a bash”. I can’t see any justification for “have a bash” meaning “be entertaining”

    I finished with Novel, which I noted was scrupulously fair. The deceptive capitalisation started the sentence and “say” indicated the DBE. Which reminds me, I shall not be posting for a week or so as I shall be walking in Croatia. Split personalities may be found there according to several setters.

      1. Thanks,Peter, you just beat me to it. I was just coming back to say the penny had dropped. Obviously I need a week off
  16. About 1:00 (hours, that is …) for me. I, too, felt that INAPPROPRIATE was a bit clunky — or is it simply that I find the word itself so ugly? Actually, the clue is rather good.
    10dn was also clever: “concern” had me fooled for some time.
    Wrote in AGITATO at the last minute, having toyed with ANIMATO (inexplicably missing from even the full online OED, despite being in Grove & Collins).
    Why am I getting just a bit tired of DI, lovely girl (or “gal”) though she may be?
  17. Took about 35-40 minutes, last entries being NOVEL, since I didn’t know the reference to the book, and THRASH, since I didn’t know it means ‘party’. I certainly didn’t know how to make ‘in’=’burning’ or ‘gar’=’guy mounting’ either, but took them on faith. Held up longest in the SW, as others have said. I agree SPLINTER GROUP is the COD today, but I also thought the surface for QUIPPED was nicely phrased, and ‘this document’s dated’ is a very clever definition. So I found enough here to make it entertaining (sorry, Jimbo). Regards to everybody.
    1. RAG = guy = tease, ridicule (may be UK-centric!).
      In many parts of the UK, a fire (in a hearth) is “in” until it, well, goes “out”.
      1. Thanks kindly Nigel. Neither ‘rag’ nor ‘guy’ means to tease over here, to my knowledge, so I’ve learned some new words today. We’ll see if I remember them.
  18. 15 minutes, felt on the wavelength of the setter and smiled quite a few times. Nice tricky clue for COMMODORE and BANJOIST, nothing solved completely from wordplay.
  19. This rank disappeared years ago. Isn’t it time this fact was mentioned in the clue?
  20. I hope you got your wish! Saturday’s seemed to end the run (though I didn’t find the last couple “rather easy”), by taking me over 20 mins.
      1. It sits there like an unwanted guest. Everytime I go to throw it away out another answer comes to me. 17 of 30 done, half not fully explained, and every bit of skulduggery I can imagine invoked.
        Is it really possible to do this in 20 minutes. I should live so long.
        (Did finish the jumbo though but, in about the time it is taking to get one of these clues).
        1. I rarely bother with the Jumbo but gave it a go today. It seemed a doddle after this Sat’s cryptic.
          1. Finished and all it cost was my soul and my Saturday.
            Sorry, had to tell someone.
  21. My strong reservation with INAPPROPRIATE is that I remember a fire being IN (or “banked”) when it had been allowed to burn down to glowing coals, then was almost smothered in ash so that it would burn very slowly during the night releasing just enough warmth to counter a frost. It could then be quickly brought back th life in the morning with a quick raking and a handful of dry fuel. So IN = burning? Very lax.
    1. As mentioned above, Collins has “In” as “Alight” so unless it can be argued “Alight” doesn’t mean “Burning” I don’t think setter has a case to answer.

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