Times 24291 – throwing a bone to the Antipodeans

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 9 minutes, I expect there’ll be some greased-lightning times, there’s not a lot obscure here and the wordplay is crystal-clear. I did have one advantage that 15 across is a song that is taught to children in Australia at a very young age, reminding us that stealing is good, sheep are delicious, and suicide is painless. I’m also fancy of a drop of 9, over-usage of 16, watching Australia’s 1s decimate England (that may be proven true or untrue by the time many of you read this, right now it’s a humid Thursday Wednesday evening in North Carolina), and the occasional game of 14. Hope everyone else had as fun a time with this one as I did.

Across
1 FUN,D: Should have been obvious, but I saw this, drew a blank and decided to start the puzzle on the downs – that made it a lot easier
3 ASTROLOGER: (STAR,GO,ROLE) and a slightly cryptic definition. Being a Virgo, I don’t believe in astrology.
10 SOUTH POLE: Easy to get from the definition, SO and UT (another form of DO or DOH) are the notes, then P in HOLE
11 CLEAN: E in CLAN
12 BLURRED: LUR(e) in BRED
13 MANTRA(p): liked this surface
15 WALTZ(k)ING,MATHILDA: Strauss was the King of waltzes… maybe a stretch, but an interesting way of clueing a well known Australian song
21 C AND ID: snicker Edit: CID can be made from C and ID sorry wasn’t more explicit there
27 INDECORUM: (IM,NO,CRUDE)*
28 PREFECTURE: REF,ECT (shock treatment) in PURE
29 SIGN: G in SIN, nice definition to add to the surface
 
Down
1 FAST,BOWLER: Come through for me today, Siddle!
2 N,AU,RU(n): Once applied for a job there, thought it would be fun to be a professional beach bum. Didn’t get it. Edit: that bit at the end is RU(sh), which one shouldn’t do when trying to write a blog
5 RHEUM: HE in RUM – that sleep you wipe from your eyes first thing in the afternoon
7 GUERRILLA: ERR,ILL in GUA(m)
8 (f)RANK: I got this before knowing 21, not many LEVELS that fit R_N_
9 SHIR(e),A-Z: I knew it was a district and a wine, didn’t know it was a city
14 BACK,GAMMON: GAMMON is a cut of bacon or ham
16 LUCRATIVE: EVITA reversed after LaUnCh,R
19 A,N,DANTE: Comedy of a divine sort
20 NOTICE: O.T. in NICE
24 VERDI: (o)VER then DonizettI
25 WARP: PRAW(n) reversed

36 comments on “Times 24291 – throwing a bone to the Antipodeans”

  1. 19 min, but one wrong. I forgot to revisit the top of my head PREFECTORY in 28 ac. Ah well, that should teach me. COD? after some deliberation it has to be (groan) CANDID. The odds of a stinker tomorrow must be short indeed.
  2. Yes, a fun puzzle, with no problematic clues, except, apparently, for 21ac, which I read, maybe wrongly, as CAN (“may”) + DI (Detective Inspector) and D (detective), making police investigators in plural. Being thick, I’m not getting the “snicker” at C AND ID. What does the C stand for?
    1. I’ve added a bit further explanation – CID is C and I,D. The snicker was me laughing.
  3. a simple puzzle. i would have had a fast time but got stuck on !
    anyway a 29 minute stroll in andante fashion!
    will be tough tomorrow i am sure!
    sunny in Napa!
  4. Thanks for the bone!
    Also 9 mins here with only a slight pause in the SW to be sure the CANDID-RANK connection worked. (Well … RUNG was just about a possibility.) And the two full and two part anagrams were quite good I thought. 5dn always makes me think of Peter Sellers — has it ever been clued this way? Slight gripe with the surperfluous “this” in 4dn — a device that almost always gives away the literal/definition. Much loved by the pommies who set the “Sunday Times” puzzle in the Australian Weekend edition, aka the Ozzzzzzzzzzz.
  5. A pleasant 25 minutes. I didn’t get CANDID at the time; these things usually go right over my head. The can=may route described above was the best I could do. Should 15 be WALTZING MATILDA OR MAUD? COD to ANDANTE.
  6. George: you still want to go to Nauru? Here’s how you can get there for free. Burn your passport, then set off back here in a leaky boat. Downside: there’s a chance it may be Christmas Island they send you to.
  7. 7:04 here – should really have been 5-something, but fell for a couple of near-miss synonyms at 22D and wrote DRIVE – it took a while to see that the lack of a slot for ECT in ??E?E?E?R? at 28 indicated a mistake, and find DRIFT. (Like ROSS, I was looking for a -RY ending in 28 for a while). 25 and 28 were last in.

    Answers without full understanding of wordplay: 10,18,21,9,16.

    I don’t think there’s a stretch at 15 – “Waltz King” was a well-known name for Johann Strauss the Younger – sufficiently well-known to be copied when Sousa became the “March King”.

    Edited at 2009-07-30 06:03 am (UTC)

  8. Fast by my standards, under the hour without understanding CANDID but then I never do with these AND answers. Must put it in my repertoire.

    Expect debate on spelling of MATILDA but must be H less here.

    Sorry to say George (honestly) that the short and long range weather forecast mean it’s odds-on a 1 nil series win to England.

    Adored ANDANTE.

  9. A slow start for me this morning but I eventually found a foothold in the NE and worked away at it from there, hit a good patch and had all but 4 clues solved in 20 minutes.

    The missing ones were in the SW corner (21,22,25 and 28) and they took me another 10 minutes with one error at 28 where I wrote PREFESTURE thinking of Electric Shock Treatment, I expect. A silly mistake having done most of the hard work with this one.

    I failed to understand 21 though I spotted the presence of CID/DI in CANDID. This was my last in because for a long time I couldn’t see past YARD–. Also I forgot about the cross-reference at 8dn solved early on which would surely have helped if I’d remembered it.

    Elsewhere NAURU was a guess; I know it as the Pleasant Island from my stamp-collecting days.

    1. If you see a number in a clue (which nearly always means a cross-ref in the puzzle), and can’t crack the pair on first look, it’s probably worth making sure you can’t forget, by ringing the number in the clue and in the cross-referenced clue, and drawing a line to link the two ringed numbers. (Always assuming you’re not attempting to look extra clever by writing nothing on the paper except the answers)
  10. Always fun for me to crack 10 mins, irrespective of how easy the puzzle may have been. The only downside means there is sometimes a lack of appreciation of the word play where the answer “just has to be” whatever jumps out. There seemed to be several in that category here 2,8,10,12,21,and 28 all fitted in, which goes to show that a good ability in Times 2 or other non cryptic crosswords can transfer into cryptics when it comes to speeding up. Its all about “seeing” things and cross-referencing defs to answers I guess.

    Was looking at another PB after five minutes, but took another 4 to get the NUT bit of LOCKNUT, then MANTRA and RHEUM, and finally to confirm my slight guess at PREFECTURE (trying so hard to stick in a J at letter four for the judge, but not really finding a suitable word to hold it !!)

  11. 8 mins in all – thought I would be faster but stuck a bit on one or two. Quite a few were solved by definition plus intersecting letters without taking time to check the wordplay, which I know can be dangerous, but necessary when you’re trying to catch up with Peter B.

    Liked 1D. I hope George will be disappointed, but the British press is being naively optimistic on the basis of one win, so he may well not be. Personally, I see continuous rain for a couple of months as our best chance.

  12. It’s nice to do a crossword all the way thorugh without being devoured by a Wentletrap at the end. There were lots of old friends here: Nauru and Snowdonia both have their vowels in the right place and pop up frequently. When I got Shiraz I was on the lookout for a pangram but it didn’t quite make it. Rather too many clues involved adding a letter to a word or subtracting a letter from a word. I also thought that, at 15, taking king from king to get ing was a bit clumsy.

    There was a time, before Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland rekindled interest in bel canto when 24 would have been considered to be an &Lit. At least I hope the setter did not intend it as an &Lit.

  13. As always when I think, oh, I can really do these crosswords now, I suddenly realise it must be an easy one today. Doesn’t spoil my fun though.
    One question: 2 down. I worked it out as N, AU, RUsh, take off the sh = destroys quiet.
    And I don’t understand the explanation RU(n)

    Isabel

    1. I think you’ve got the right wordplay for 2D – I can’t justify n=quiet.
      1. George: this is how I figured it too. Change “RU(n)” to “RU(sh)”? Sorry not to have read the blog more closely this morning.
        1. You’re right, was in a hurry to get the blog up last night and didn’t check the notes properly – will be amended.
  14. 12:45 .. no quibbles, no stand-outs, no real problems.

    England will be fine against the Aussies, who have now resorted to Tweeting their personal disappointments. Twitter? Maybe they can get round their self-imposed sledging ban by texting insults to Ian Bell.

  15. 48 mins all told, but had all but three done within half an hour (8, 19, 21). I’m not sure why it took so long to get these, but I’m quite pleased to have got them without succumbing to the temptation to use aids.

    No words I hadn’t come across before, and no clues jumped out at me as being worthy of COD. A couple of old chestnuts, though – I’m sure I’ve come across both 14 & 26 before.

  16. 8.30. Held up by the WRAP and PREFECTURE pairing after some plain sailing. I wanted something like CLERESTORY linking with a clam or crab like thing detailed and upended. Eventually though of PREFECTORY then was almost there. Lazy holiday in Spain this week so first puzzle this week. Will now go and print off the earlier ones for some light relief with a cool aperitif or two.
  17. 12:49, only slight query is the def for 18. Is it just shriek? How does that work then? (Doubtless someone will pop up and tell me it’s in the dictionary.)
    1. I don’t know if it’s in the dictionary, but I’ve heard ‘shriek’ used as a quick way to say exclamation mark. In fact, I’m sure my Dad used to say it when reading aloud crossword clues. Although, my old maths teacher used to say ‘bang’ rather than ‘shriek’.
  18. “exlamation mark (informal)” is indeed one of the COED definitions for “shriek”. Also for bang, though this is marked as “computing, chiefly N Amer.”.
    1. Thanks Peter.

      I can remember saying to myself “11 bang”* (or whatever) when using the factorial button on my calculator (x!).

      * Just done it. 11x10x9…x2x1 = 39,916,800

  19. Quite easy, after realising that 1A wasn’t ‘ha-ha’. Of course, it would have needed a hyphen. Quite a good fit though, apart from that!
  20. This was back to the easy feel of Monday and Tuesday. About 20 minutes, also initially falling for PREFECTORY but correcting later, since the ‘innocent’ part clearly didn’t work. My last two entries were the associated clues for CANDID and RANK. Even the cricket clue was easy, shriek. COD’s to ANDANTE, OCTAVIA. Regards everyone.
  21. My third solo Times puzzle, since moving up from ‘Everyman’- the puzzle I started cryptics with in December last year. Last ones in were ‘CANDID’ and ‘ANDANTE’. I did this leisurely in bits over the day when childcare allowed.

    I think doing AZED at weekends helps with my ‘crossword apprenticeship’-building words from the wordplay etc., but it is a different game altogether dealing with The Times cryptic definitions.

    1. If your typical solving method in daily puzzles is to guess an answer from a possible def and the word length(s) and then see if you can read the rest as wordplay, Azed/Mephisto puzzles are great for giving you practice at solving in a different way when the answer can’t be guessed because it’s a word you don’t know yet.
      1. Thanks Pete
        yes, I tend to look for the definition and wordPlay is my check. I think that’s why I find charade clues and container clues difficult
  22. Well I’ve read all the comments hoping to find out how 15ac works, but no. OK it’s a song and it fits (8,7), but could someone please explain what all this is about the queen and the king. Sousa was the waltz king, but who was the queen?

    ‘…Australia’s 1s decimate …’: just what happens when people blithely say 1 instead of 1ac or 1dn. ‘…Australia’s funds decimate …’? In my opinion people should always say whether it’s across or down even if there is only one possibility. We aren’t psychic.

  23. Wife of UK king Stephen a long time ago. And “screamer” also used by journos (inc. my mum)m for ! in 50’s.
  24. 7:40, with the last minute spent on 28ac (PREFECTURE) – like John, I had a TORY fixation and eventually got there via PREFECTORY.  Didn’t know WALTZ KING or LOCKNUT.

Comments are closed.