Times 24,272 – Dangerous, a Smooth Criminal… not Bad

Author   sotiraPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
19:10 .. This one seemed to get trickier as it went along, difficulty stemming from some intricate wordplay and a couple of answers that I had to check after solving. I’m a little uncertain of the wordplay in 23a, and very uncertain of that for 16d. Contributions welcomed.

Peter’s still tearing it up with the lads in Magalouf. He should be back next week (providing someone can scare up the bail money).

Across
5  POTAGE – (EG,ATOP) reversed
8  FREE-FOR-ALL – no one has paid (laid out)
9  LEAN – double definition
10 LOWER ONES GUARD – it’s (dangerous)* going after a cow (a ‘lower’)
11 SEA L,OCH – Och! A seal!
18 PEN,TADS
22 LIMP – hidden word
23 CAP,I,TO,LINE – the Capitoline Hill being a “rise of Rome”. I believe the wordplay is CAP(abbr.) + I(1) + TO + LINE (limit, line here being a noun).
24 LE,FT,IE
25 DOTT(y),ERE,L – as pretty as its name

Down
1  RAFFLES – fundraisers and the smooth criminal
2  OVERWRAPS – (Rover’s paw)*
3  IN,FERN,O
4  SC(RUN,C[lass])H
5  PALSGRAVE – a German nobleman , a count palatine (which happens to be another Roman hill)
7  G(RAND)P,A
12 CAR(TOUCH)E
16 A(FF)A,IRE – I don’t know where the middle ‘A’ comes from, unless it’s an abbreviation of ‘are’. I may have this quite wrong. Right answer with no understanding. ‘A’ is indeed the unit of area – an ‘are’ (= an area of 100 sq metres, thanks jackkt, mctext and others), the abbreviation being one of those things I ‘discover’ about once a year. The great thing about having a terrible memory – every day, something new.
17 TOS,SPOT – (tops sot) reversed
18 PROV(IS)O(st) – smart
20 SUR(e),RE,AL – smarter

28 comments on “Times 24,272 – Dangerous, a Smooth Criminal… not Bad”

  1. 36 min. In common with many recent puzzles, I strolled through 80%, then hit the wall. Didn’t get the wordplay for POTAGE. One that I meant to return to after entering the obvious answer, but forgot. Hi Sotira, 16 dn AFFAIRE is FF gripped by A (ie one each side) + IRE. CAPITOLINE was over my head, and I had to go to the aids. Nice puzzle. COD? Probably 24 LEFTIE. Not that difficult, but smoothly put together.
    1. Thanks, rosselliot. Seems likely, though does it work with singular A? I’ll check back in the morning and amend the blog after any other thoughts have been offered.
    2. A similar story here as I hit the wall at about 35 minutes but with 95% completed. Eventually I used aids for 12dn and 16dn.

      The second A in 12 is definitely from “are”, the measurement of land, and I’m annoyed this caught me out yet again.

      I never heard of CARTOUCHE. I had all the checking letters and had worked out it was _O_C_ inside CARE but never thought of TOUCH for “distinctive feature” as in “the touch of a Master”.

      The completely irrelevant use of “See” at 25ac caused me no end of problems firstthinking the answer might be a cathedral city or that it might refer to a bird starting with “LO” since the O checking letter was already in place. I even considered there may be an typo and it should have read “Sea bird”.

      A disappointing result after a very promising start.

      1. Similarly annoyed, having said “Won’t get Fooled Again” many times with ‘are’. Blog post amended. Thanks, chaps.
  2. I have a feeling that the other A does come from “are” (= an area of 100 sq metres), abbrev. to “A”. But just a feeling.
    Just over 20 mins for this one which I enjoyed a great deal. This is, if you count the fact that I forgot to write in RAFFLES. Like ross, I also had to look up CAPITOLINE.

  3. Entered AFFAIRE with doubts (is this not always the case?), and defer to Jack’s explanation, but that of Ross is more amusing and imaginative, if outrageous.

    Mucho aids for: palsgrave, dotterel (Jack – my notes say “why see – grrr”),capitoline, pentads, cartouche.

    Humiliating (2 hours) as this whole experience was I loved FREE FOR ALL and was dazzled by the concealment of N in “close to destination” (took me 10 minutes to work this out and it seems so obvious now).

    Congrats Sotira(when Anax is finished with you…)for 17 mins. You people are astonishing.

  4. Did not like POTAGE, DOTTEREL, CAPITOLINE or CARTOUCHE. And is 13a MAKE WAY or PAVE WAY, or even something else?

    4/10 for the compiler, sorry mate…

  5. Personally I can’s agree with Mr/Ms anonymous. For example, “make way” is an accepted nautical term for advancing whereas “pave way” means to precede or prepare the way for…

    Clearly the second A in 16dn comes from are and makes it into a clever clue that I didn’t originally quite follow the wordplay for

  6. 22 mins here, but with the last 10 spent on CARTOUCHE, CAPITOLINE and SURREAL (although I had to kick myself over that one). I’d convinced myself that 23A had to end in …CITY, so I was looking for words that fit S.R.Y.L (and couldn’t think of any).
  7. Finished in around 30m but with capitoline and cartouche uncompleted. I thought having two such rare words criss-crossing AND with very tricky wordplay in both cases was verging on the unfair in a daily cryptic. Nevertheless an enjoyable puzzle. bc
  8. I guess it is down to mind set. I had no other thought during solving that that the solution of 16 dn was premised on “gripped by” being equivalent to “delimited by” in which case the “a” could happily be singular or plural. The substitution of “a” for “are” in the surface is surely a bit odd: “In which females a gripped by a strong emotion?” ??? Come in setter.
  9. 13:27, with one mistake: POTTEREL for DOTTEREL (25ac).  Other unknowns were RAFFLES (1dn), OVERWRAPS (2dn), PALSGRAVE (5dn) and the architectural use of CARTOUCHE (12dn).

    This was a curate’s egg for me.  I prefer concise clueing, and can sympathize with Jack about “See” in 25ac.  The definition in 5ac (POTAGE) is presumably the clunky “Stock food item”, but what is “put” doing?  (As an instruction to the solver, it wouldn’t fit the grammar of the rest of the clue; cf. “put dog bites man”, or “put dog has no tail”.)  The weak anagram in 2dn (ROVERSPAW for OVERWRAPS) isn’t helped by the fact that the definition also contains OVER.

    The use of “are” to indicate A (16dn AFFAIRE) is common in advanced cryptics but very rare in daily puzzles – perhaps an exception was made here to allow the &lit.  As Ross says, the cryptic reading is awkward: structurally, it’s “In which X Y gripped by Z?”, which cries out for the insertion of “is” (or perhaps “are”).  It’s not invalid on that count, though.

    Clues of the Day: 8ac (FREE-FOR-ALL), 1dn (RAFFLES), 17dn (TOSSPOT).

    1. I think I first met A=Are here at the start of last year and it has come up at least half a dozen times since, so it’s not so very rare in the Times cryptic. I remember its reappearance either because I spot it and I’m pleased with myself or, as today, I don’t spot it and I’m annoyed that I fell for it yet again.
  10. I did not like this at all. It may be sour grapes on my part because it is the first time in a couple ofl weeks that I have had to have recourse to a dictionary to finish a puzzle. I had to look up Cartouche, Capitoline and Dotterel. Sometimes when I turn to the dictionary I am annoyed with myself because the answer is obvious but not today because I never would have got those three words.

    I agree with others’ comments about otiose words in the tricky clues: “see” in the dotterel clue, “put” in the potage clue and ”has” in the capitaline clue. Other than these tricky clues, most of the cluing was straightforward to the point of being pedestrian.

    Since when has a scrunch been a loud noise? It is the soft sound of paper or snow being crushed. I only regard it as a loud noise if the person behind me is scrunching their chocolate wrappers when I am at the opera.

    1. I had the same thought about SCRUNCH.  I didn’t complain about it because the Concise defines it as “a loud crunching noise”, but on reflection I think the complaint stands: a scrunch may be loud for a crunching noise, but it’s not loud for a noise.  (I spent ages trying to justify SCREECH, and only came up with SCRUNCH once I’d got all the letters.)
  11. I found this easier than some others this week and finished in under 25 minutes, though was slightly uncertain of PALSGRAVE and CAPITOLINE. I agree with sotira that it seemed to get trickier as one went on. Last to go in was 10 across.
    I agree with markthakkar’s criticism of 5ac (POTAGE). The clue just doesn’t work grammatically with “put” in it. Decorators that enhance the surface but ruin the grammar of the cryptic instruction should be avoided.
    On the other hand I don’t agree with rosselliot’s comment about 16. The substitution of A for “are” doesn’t affect the surface, but the cryptic reading, which must make logical, but not necessarily semantic sense. FF+A gripped by A+IRE is a perfectly logical equation.
  12. 2 minutes for the entire North-West corner, amother 20 for pretty much everything else then a final 8 minutes to get cartouche and Capitoline. A handful of unfamiliar words but mostly fairly clued.

    Good challenge.

  13. Gave up on CARTOUCHE and CAPITOLINE. At least I was spared a self kicking when I saw the answers. I was never going to get there. Otherwise a mixed bag, as has been said. Top marks to SURREAL. Exit to make list of hills of Rome.
  14. 9.55
    Usually I find four word answers relatively easy but didn’t see 21 despite having WATER until I got the F from AFFAIRE. CARTOUCHE was a word I knew , but not this definition (do I know any definition? mmm?)
    Badly injured as the anagrind in 2 confused me for a bit.
  15. 25 mins in the car so not hard to me (lucky with the gk again) just tiresome in some of the places commented on above. I thought “see” was saying, “not a homophone”, but agree redundant. Last in potage which I did not like as stock food item.
  16. So where I saw a slick fiendishness lies only mediocrity. Help police! I’ve been robbed!

    (Still a damned fine puzzle though)

    1. If we take a post-structuralist, Death of the Setter, view, as indeed I think we may, we can consider your earlier interpretation not only valid, but indeed, compelling. In a world of semiotic tensions – those binary oppositions, science and myth, darkness and light – the symmetric ‘A’ must be forever dogged by his shadow, the dark reflected ‘A’ (or The Man in The Mirror), as surely as Hyde inhabits the darkness just beyond the glow of Jeckyll’s lantern, as surely as antimatter must attend on matter. Thus your vision of females held in the grip of ‘A’ becomes a chilling conundrum, the seed of fear at the chapter’s end in a ghost story, as “It was only then that I thought to ask: Tomkins, if you and I are alone in this terrible place, and if I am busily making fast the storm doors, and if you are using both hands to hold aloft the lamp by whose light I see, then tell me who, in the name of all that is holy, is that playing the pianoforte?”

      Those females gripped by ‘A’ are the dread sound of one hand clapping in the darkness.

      1. It would be a shame if no one said this, so: thanks, that was wonderful!
  17. 19:38 – struggled with this one towards the end of my binge of puzzles printed while away. Not on the Costa del Crime but on a rather busman holiday trip split between choral concerts in and around the Cinque Terre and proper holiday stuff like walking some of the trails there and revisiting the city of Lucca.

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