Times 24284

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 11:29

I made a good start to this puzzle but got bogged down fairly soon afterwards. All four of the long answers were pretty tricky, and so was the SE corner. The last few answers, in orders, were 25, 17, 27, 13, 19. Answers entered without understanding the wordplay: 14, 13, 15. Lots of cultural references here – I doubt I’ve used this many Wikipedia links for a long time.

Across
1 NASSER – Gamal Abdel Nasser was President of Egypt 1956-1970. Possibly best remembered in the UK for nationalising the Suez Canal. Apposite hidden word clue, as “many in the general Arab populace still view Nasser as a symbol of Arab dignity and freedom.”
5 DO=party,L,DRUMS=beats
9 P.A.=each year,GO=leave,P.A.,GO – Pago Pago is the capital of American Samoa
10 (dayligh)T,HEIST – “one who believes” meaning “one who believes in a God” – justified by the “have religious faith” definition of “believe” in COED
11 G,HOSTS
12 STRAPPED – 2 defs, one as in “strapped for cash” – again justified in COED
14 OR,GANG(RIND)ER – a ganger is the foreman of a gang of labourers
17 SUR(PASSING)LY – “rarely” matches the “rare” of yesterday’s “rare Ben Jonson”
20 T(empted),(p)ETRARCH – Petrarch was a poet, and Herod Antipas was a tetrach – ruler of a quarter of the kingdom of his father Herod the Great. Petrarch gives us an unlikely link to the Tour de France – he climbed Mont Ventoux, where the winner of this year’s race may well be decided later this week.
22 SEE=notice,SAW=saying
23 J(ok)ER,BOA=snake – a jerboa is a desert rat.
25 (h)ARROGATE – Harrogate is a spa town in Yorkshire.
26 ST.(END),HAL=Henry – Stendahl was a French writer, also remembered for “Stendahl Syndrome” – being physically overcome by the cultural richness of Florence.
27 RE=about,TORT=wrong
 
Down
2 APAC(H)E – Les Apaches were members of a Parisian underworld subculture.
3 SHOWS,TOPPER – “prime number” here = principal song
4 ROAD SIGNS = (I’d grass on)* – “other” is the anagram indicator
5 DROP SIN = reform
6 LATER = rev. of RETA(i)L
7 RYE = type of whisky and Cinque Port
8 MASS=choral work,ENET=teen* – here’s Fritz Kreisler playing the piece of Massenet which most people will have heard.
13 PENNY,W=with,EIGHT – a pennyweight is 24 grains or a twentieth of a troy ounce, and three eights are twentyfour.
15 RE(GIST,R)AR – rear = tower seemed a bit of a stretch, but COED has “extend to a great height”, of a biulding, mountain, etc., for “rear”
16 QUIETEST – ET=and, inside QUI EST=”who is”. Point for beginners: “abroad” very often just means “in France”.
18 ISHMAEL=(has mile)* – “Call me Ishmael” says the narrator in the first line of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
19 NATTER(jack) – it was Jack Sprat who could eat no fat. See and hear the natterjack toad here
21 REACH – 2 defs

25 comments on “Times 24284”

  1. Much quicker for me today and altogether a more pleasant experience but still fell at the last with Pago Pago (even with post-solve research). Knew it was the same word twice, knew it was Go Go, but could I see the P.A.?

    Look-up confirms for APACHE and PENNYWEIGHT.

    COD = SHOW STOPPER which recalls the delights of Wednesday last (same setter I wonder?).

    Peter. Re the Massenet, saw Thais earlier this year again with the divine Renee.

  2. Slower when guesses needed from wordplay – Pago Pago, Ishmael and apache – rather than confident gk. 31m from 1a to 9a, a scattered solve, no special part slower.
  3. This was a tough one for me – will keep shtum about solving time. All of the GK answers came without resorting to aids, relying on unravelling wordplay until something vaguely familiar/plausible popped up.

    Wasn’t sure about DROP SIN = reform – seems a bit loose but if no-one else complains I’ll go wi’ t’flow. And the anagrind “other” has always felt like an odd one, but it’s a good ‘gram, so, you know…

    None of the ticks was huge, but the use of “daylight robbery” at 10A shows a setter putting the effort in.

    Q-0 E-6 D-8 COD 10A THEIST

  4. …and what were the chances of STENDHAL turning up today in the Indy as well?
    1. I know that’s probably a rhetorical question, but “matches” have been occurring quite often of late, leading one to suspect either a)collusion between or within setters or b)the probablity of a match is higher than you’d intuitively think. Of course, any match appears noteworthy, because it’s a match. It’s a bit like the sharing of birthdays phenomena.

      If the crossword bucket has n thousand words in it and crosswords are compiled by taking words from the bucket at random then the probability that two crosswords of 30 words share a word (any word) is roughly 1/n (it says here on the back of my envelope). I don’t know what n is, but maybe 200 is in the ball park, remembering that there are many restrictions on acceptable words. Long odds, but there’s a lot of crosswords being written. The crossed words nature of crosswords is likely to increase this probability, as the number of possible words in the bucket rapidly diminishes as the crossword fills up.

  5. 45 minutes for this one. I got off to a flying start but then ran into difficulties. Having successfully worked out PAGO PAGO I had a gap at 2dn which eventually became my last in. I believe I have met APACHE = “Parisian hooligan” before but it eluded me until the very end.

    In the SW it was JERBOA (never heard of it) that held me up longest, but it was the SE that caused most problems and apart from ISHMAEL, NATTER and GRINDER I was unable to get a proper foothold for ages.

    I particularly liked 1ac.

    1. Fast for me generally but left with two, jerboa and pago pago, neither of which I knew. This must be about the least satisfying type of crossword experience for me, generally straightforward but with one or two unsolved because very obscure vocabulary is matched with convoluted wordplay. I suspect some setters think this is being fiendishly clever when it’s nothing of the sort.

      Re Massenet, there was a delightfully OTT and I thought unfairly under-appreciated production of Manon by Scottish Opera this year. Would have loved to see Renee in Thais. bc

  6. MOre like an hour today, with a lot of that on APACHE and PAGOPAGO both of which I had never heard of and struggled to work out from the wordplay with difficulty. Suddenly clicked on the PA thing and then everything fell into place.
  7. 34:51 .. very tough going – almost nothing went in straight off the bat. Last in was the unknown (to me) PAGO PAGO. No complaints – this was a mental mauling from a heavyweight puzzle. Happy just to finish.
  8. 24 minutes dead here. I knew all the General Knowledge apart from PAGO PAGO, which I got from wordplay, but others only came to mind slowly, e.g. APACHE as a Parisian yob, HARROGATE as the spa town.
  9. 50 mins for me. I’m glad a few others found this a workout. I stared at it for some time before I got going with THEIST. Last in was the ARROGATE/NATTER crossing, which were both guesses. Am I alone in never having met the word arrogate before? I thought abrogate was the only word that would fit, but that’s the antithesis of claim. In the end I thought Harrogate sounded remotely like a spa and then had to look up both natterjack and arrogate.
    There were other uncertainties in APACHE, JERBOA and STENDHAL and words like SURPASSINGLY whhich just didn’t want to spring to mind. Some very clever clueing here; well done that setter.
  10. Top two acrosses and 13 down went in immediately, then it was un uphill struggle from there. After about 5 minutes getting precious little more I saw STENDHAL and gradually I filled the SW corner and slowly worked up the grid. As Peter says, the SE corner was tricky, and after 35 minutes I was left with 25 and 27 and a tentative REGISTRAR because I couldn’t see how tower gave REAR. Finally got RETORT (very neat clue) after about 5 minutes head-scratching, but 25 defeated me until I had access to a dictionary. All I could think of was ABROGATE, which didn’t fit the definition (or the wordplay come to that). ORGAN GRINDER was also a struggle, and I didn’t get all of the wordplay until I saw Peter’s blog.

    A good, challenging puzzle.

  11. 36 minutes with the last 6 of those spent on apache. I thought I was looking for an Italian musical notation meaning stopping quickly made up from a Parisian Hooligan + HO. Even when I’d worked out that I needed to put H inside something meaning quickly I still strayed down the Italian musical notation route and took forever to come up with apace, never having come across the Parisian gangster meaning of apache.

    Like Anax I liked the neatness of the clue for theist but my COD is show-stopper for the clever definition.

  12. 15.40. Steady progress which became slower and slower as I tended southwards. Probably took a minute too long to get ARROGATE. Petrarch eventually came to mind to give TETRARCH then was left staring at 15 and 17 for 3 or 4 minutes trying to get any word which would fit.Eventually hit on REGISTRAR which gave away 15 as it had to end -INGLY. Good tough puzzle
    Thought that there were some nice clues,1 and 11 spring to mind.
    1. Yep, you followed exactly the same path as me through the puzzle (although 9 minutes faster in the end).
  13. Like others this took a long time, somewhere in the range of 45 minutes to an hour (sorry for the imprecision but there were stops and starts). Various problems arose all over this puzzle. What I didn’t know: APACHE as a hooligan, JERBOA, NATTERjack=toad, Harrogate, GANGER=foreman. Worked them all from wordplay, except APACHE, which was merely a guess from the checkers. First entry, NASSER, which went straight in, last entries APACHE, NATTER. COD: ISHMAEL, with grateful nods to ROAD SIGNS, SURPASSINGLY. Regards to all.
  14. 35 min, but had to cheat to restart a couple of times. Was held up for a long time on SURPASSINGLY, and am not entirely happy that is equates to “rarely”. Pago Pago (pronounced pango pango) was the other stumbling block, but should not have been since it is in our neck of the woods. Oh, and I had to look up Moby Dick to unscramble ISHMAEL. One of those that just wouldn’t come. (If I had seen “Ishmael” in a clue, I would immediately have looked for Melville or Moby Dick). Generally a good work out. COD: ROAD SIGNS. Only spotted the anagram after the fact.
  15. Never did get NATTER; or rather, I did, faute de mieux, but had no idea why. Fascinating to see what other solvers found difficult, or easy. 9ac I knew had to be Pago Pago, simply because I know of no other 4,4 capital; took me a while before the PA penny dropped, though.Similarly, 2down I could think of no word other than APACHE (I’m old enough to remember the dance), then figured the justification for it.
  16. I must write out 100 times – it’s JERBOA not GERBOA. It gets me every time. Association with GERBIL, I suspect.
    R. Saunders
  17. 17:37.  Didn’t know PAGO PAGO, GANGER, JERBOA, ARROGATE, Les Apaches, MASSENET, or NATTERJACK.  Setters have no right to use “other” as an anagram indicator.

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