Times 24294 – Ich bin ein Schüler

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 1 hour

I found this difficult to get any purchase on. First in was the unlikely Leicester and last Berliner. I all but completed the left half before making any head way on the right. I can’t really put a finger on the difficulty now I peruse the answers. There were are few things new to me, though.

Across
1 CUR + LEW(is) for the CURLEW, a bird which in Europe resembles a godwit, which we also had recently. The Scottish island is Lewis and Harris, with Lewis being the northern bit of it, a geographical oddity unknown to me at the time of solving. In Australia, the Bush Stone Curlew is also called the Screaming Woman Bird, for obvious reasons if you have ever heard it late at night.
5 BE [(bee)R] LINER for J.F.K’s adopted birthplace.
9 INDI[G]E + NOUS for an adjectival native. Indie for record company is novel; usually one would lift and separate that. Nous for intelligence is also non-standard. A good clue all around.
10 ID ES(t) , that is short for IDES, a day to be wary of.
11 REF + ERRED. Appealed against as in referred to the third umpire, I’m presuming, which LBW decisions might one day be. OK, so Hawkeye is not yet 100% accurate, as opposed to umpires.
12 BOD + “eager” for BODEGA or establishment selling wine. The homophonic qualifier “some” excuses the phonetic indeterminate ending, but I thought the “e” in bodega had a long “a” sound.
13 B[O]AT for a catamaran..
15 N + E + W + S + “real” for NEWSREEL. All quarters for news is a standard ploy.
18 HE[BRA]IST for a Hebrew scholar. There’s that supporter again. I suppose it’s easier to work into a clue than a jock strap, say. And the first of our scholarly references, one which I arrived at via the wordplay.
19 DONE, a double definition, the second being what the vendor might say.
21 A + S(tudent) + SUM + E(nglish) for ASSUME or don in the sense of adopt or put on. A scholarly surface reading this time.
23 (m)UG[LINES]S for UGLINESS. Without is standard surroundicator, although the logic of it has been questioned before in these pages. A mug is a colloquial face.
25 TORC(h) for one of these, unknown to me at the time, but easy enough to guess.
26 ALDER + MANIC for “like a councillor”. My favourite clue today.
28 SETTLE, a double definition, with a settle being an uncomfortable early form of sofa with no padding.

Down
2 (rehcr)UL NAE(l) for bones of the forearm. I missed the significance of “up” and had to come back to this, having failed to find any bones on my first read through.
3 LEI(N + CE)STER for Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite courtier. I liked the “establish church for new” replacement instruction.
4 W[HE + R(epublican)]RY for a smallish canal or river boat, as in the phrase “don’t pay the wherry man”.
5 BL[DON HAD TO]*UNDER for BLOOD AND THUNDER or sensational. Also the name of a typical Australian pub. The clanger in this instance is a mistake.
6 ROSE + BOWL for something which can hold flowers or an American football or Hampshire cricket crowd. I can’t find it anywhere as a single word, though.
7 I + VIED for something covered in an …
8 E [REV]< + GREEN for EVERGREEN of which Scots pine is one. A Green is a brand of politician rather than any particular one, which makes a change from M.P.
14 OVER + SHOOT for go too far. Over = “with regard to” and shoot = project as in throw, cast or impel.
26 (AND TURNED)* for REDUNDANT or laid off. Good clue.
17 SI[DEW + A]LK for SIDEWALK or footpath.
20 F(ollowing) + LARES for bright lights. There’s those Roman household gods again. This time I was prepared.
22 (y)U[N(euroti)C]LE for UNCLE. More brackets than a LISP program in a yuletide scenario familiar to most.
24 SPILL, double definition, the second being a stick used to light a fire. Also a stick taken from a fire to light a pipe or cigarette.

38 comments on “Times 24294 – Ich bin ein Schüler”

  1. Nice blog! Very thorough and useful.
    Did this in two sessions (5 min and 17 min) interrupted by admin nonsense. Isn’t JFK famously wrong in using “Berliner” which turns out to be a cake? And indeed, various sources give the pronunciation of “bodega” as |bōˈdāgə|. But P. Simon (“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”) — the only place I’ve ever heard the word pronounced — has it somewhere between a long-a and a short-e. Long-e seems to be out of the question. Not being part of the Homophone Quibble Brigade, it doesn’t bother me. Liked the cross-ref. clues at 4 & 7dn. and the neat use of “don” in 21.
    With the easy part-anag. at 5dn and the nature of the grid, the right side was much easier than left. Still quite lot of fun here.
    1. JFK’s blunder wasn’t in the use of BERLINER, but in preceding it with the indefinite article, EIN, which changes the meaning completely.
      1. Quite so. JFK should have said “Ich bin Berliner”. German friends assure me that by putting the EIN in front he was saying “I am a doughnut”. A Berliner, in addition to being a citizen of the German capital, is apparently some kind of sugary jam-filled bun.
  2. Would have been ok but for 17 and 18. The former because I stupidly wrote ELDERMANIC and the latte because I still don’t like the use of “up” and spent ages trying to get ARB or REIP into it. All in all about 30 mins.
  3. Usually like to check guesses before coming here but in great rush again this morning, so FLARES, SPILL and IDES went in with fingers crossed. 60 odd years and this is first time I have come across the meaning of i.e. Oh dear! Bra again.

    Liked INDIGENOUS which like TUMBLING from recent puzzle shows the Times not to be as stuffy as some think.

  4. 21 mins, last in was 23A UGLINESS. An excellent crossword, I thought, with some very convincing surfaces – quite ‘donnish’ as has already been pointed out. My COD is 22D (UNCLE), for the image of a less-than-enjoyable Xmas. I didn’t know that Lewis is not an island in its own right and was puzzled by 1A until reading the blog.

    Tom B.

  5. 50 minutes and I’m glad to find I wasn’t the only one to struggle a bit with this one. I just couldn’t get things flowing and spent most of the time lurching about all over the place trying to pick off odd words here and there.

    The only word actually new to me was TORC.

    My last in was IVIED which only came to me having spotted a foolish error at 12 where I had mixed up Chinese tea with the Spanish wine-shop and created a new word “bohega” (“boh” sounding like “beau” = “bloke” being my reasoning).

    So a rather harder start to the new week than I would have liked.

  6. I have always called it a bodeega, never heard it pronounced, only read it, and never needed to consult a dictionary on it, so how would I know different? And re supporters, how about pier, prop, stay …. I think setters have a one-track brain.
      1. Half of Brazil (all 9.9 million of them) might think otherwise. Still … you have my support. I’m not wearing it.
        1. I can see why you’d think it a drag. The third supporter in a week, I think. Old friend? Bad penny. An unfinished boast.. a short, unruly child…. there have to be other ways.
            1. I’m all for the use of “old chestnuts” such as “supporter” for bra, particularly if a) it works into a nice surface and b) it offers some familiar handle in an otherwise difficult puzzle. Too many clever devices in the one puzzle can (I stress “can”) be irksome.
          2. OK. I can’t sleep, so I’ll play, while watching a cricket blog on the other screen.
            Half-witted: BRAiny.
  7. 18:06 here. The right-hand side went in very quickly but the left was a bit of a struggle, just the opposite experience to kororareka. I gradually worked up from the bottom, the last three in being CURLEW, WHERRY and REFERRED. COD 16D REDUNDANT.
  8. 5:42 – not a brilliant start, needing to eliminate LONDONER at 5A before finding the right -ER. 1 and 4D were last in.

    For BODEGA, Collins has both the Anglicised “berdeager” (non-rhotic) and the Spanish “bodayga”, though I read it as “ega” representing the non-rhotic version of “eager”.

  9. 22:23 .. nearly ten minutes puzzling over the CURLEW / WHERRY pair. I was convinced that the second element in 1a was (Is)LAY. Once you get these ideas in your mind, they can take a lot of shifting.
  10. 13:33. Berliner was first in for me then I sort of worked right to left but going back to the SE with flares and ugliness last in.

    Wherry was familiar to me as Woodforde’s Wherry from the Norfolk Broads area is one of my favourite beers.

    Like the latte-drinking fathippy2 above the “up” in 18 threw me momentarily and I nearly invented the hearbist. Can’t imagine what one might study mind.

    Enjoyable puzzle but no standout COD contenders.

  11. 30 minutes. I felt I should have been quicker because nothing was hard, and when I polished off the last few clues I wondered why I hadn’t got them sooner. I thought the clues were fine, but the clue to 27 is becoming a bit of an old chestnut. My first thought for 5ac was PARISIAN. I didn’t know there was an adjective from ALDERMAN. Might come in useful one day, but only in another crossword.
  12. 25 min. I rather liked this one. Just when I felt that I was irredeemably stuck, an answer would pop into my head. Not the one I was working on, but who cares!. No comments on of the ubiquitous supporter in 18 ac I note (And it was in evidence over the weekend). I guess we’ll have to do a Canute and bow to force majeure. COD? I’ll plug for the nicely delivered anagram in 16 dn, REDUNDANT.
  13. Just over an hour for me, but with several interruptions, so it’s hard to give an accurate time. I was also thrown by the ‘up’ in 18a, and tried to invent words like HEARBIST ans HEGELIST.

    New words to me were WHERRY, HEBRAIST, SETTLE (as a piece of furniture), LARES & LEICESTER being QEI’s favourite.

  14. I found this deceptively tricky and wrestled with it for 35 minutes. Strangely there was nothing that particularly stood out or that one would want to quibble about. I was just left feeling I should have done better.

    Now that Sotira has draw our attention to it I keep finding the wretched supporters everywhere. It really has become a cliché and I join in the appeal for something different.

  15. another two-sessioner, after a pretty quick sitting, I had all except 1, 3 and 18. Second time around was to bash my head against those three, wondering if 1 was CURNOW, and inventing NEICESTER as a royal favorite… eventually convinced myself LEICESTER was going to be right, and hoped CURLEW was a bird, since the E was in there anyway.

    Another mistake that amusingly resolved itself was OVERTHROW at 14 – unchecked letters correct, checked letters wrong.

  16. About 25 minutes here, first in ULNAE, last entry SPILL. Held up in various places by things I didn’t know: SPILL as a lighter, SETTLE as furniture, ‘clanger’ as a blunder. For COD, while I enjoyed UNCLE, my vote goes to REDUNDANT. Regards.
  17. Sorry, but can someone please properly explain why IDES is Day in Mid-month that is endless? I can only see Day as being ‘D’, I can see nothing that would indicate the rest of the answer, unless the times has gone seriously corsaire on us. IE = that is, fine, but the clue still makes no sense. Unless someone can please educate me….
    1. Day in mid-month that is endless – ides is a day in mid-month; “that is” = i.e., the Latin phrase “id est” contracted, and endless (missing final “t”)id est is ides. John
  19. Here in NYC, bodega is pronounced with a long “a” sound for the letter “e” and refers to a small Latino grocery store. I have never heard it pronounced with a long “e” sound for the “e”.
    We get the Times crossword reprinted in the New York Post, about 11 days after it appears in the Times.
  20. Oops – I was a little off – we get the Times crossword in the NY Post two weeks after it has appeared in the Times.
  21. By the way, I would appreciate it if the solver-of-the-day would list all of the answers – some answers that are quite obvious to a Brit are not at all obvious to an American.
    1. Thanks for the confirmation on the Paul Simon version of bodega. As Peter points out, the true pronunciation may be irrelevant. The homophone could only apply to the last half of the clue – “ega” – which might be pronounced as “eager” however it is actually pronounced in bodega.

      As for why we don’t explain them all, see “About This Blog” at the top of the page, but feel free to ask for clarification on anything that doesn’t travel well across the Atlantic, or anything at all really.

      I sometimes miss the old days of solving the Times in the Australian, some month and two days behind the Times, but I can highly recommend obtaining a subscription and solving in real time. It’s the best outlay of £25 you’ll ever make.

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