Times 24,295 – Old and New

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
21 minutes today, a time which on the surface suggests a puzzle of merely average difficulty; however, it was actually a combination of some pretty straightforward clueing (including some very hoary old wordplay amongst the short words), mixed with some quite obscure vocabulary which was rendered perfectly fair by the wordplay, some of which was first class. Overall I thought the strengths outweighed the weaknesses, and this was one of the most entertaining puzzles I’ve solved for blogging purposes. Q0-E9-D8

Across
1 THEOSOPHY – HE in (TOYSHOP)*; I had no idea who Blavatsky was, and the word was one of those I knew without knowing the meaning, but I’d have thought checking letters and the SOPHY suffix ought to make it easily deduced.
6 GET AT – GET A(partmen)T = “mean”.
9 BANDEAU – AND inside BEAU; given the nature of the garment, it’s a somewhat saucy image.
10 TRICEPS – TRICE + P(ower)S(upply).
11 ROAST – R(ight) + OAST. This one gave me a Proustian rush back to my first attempts at cryptic crosswords (which were of a standard somewhat less demanding than the Times) several decades ago…
12 RAINDROPS – R(oyal)A(cademician) + IN + DROPS (“no longer includes”). “Shower units” to mean “the constituent parts of a rain shower” was clever.
14 GAS – double def.
15 COBBLESTONE – BLEST ONE after COB; another clever definition in “part of the way”.
17 BUFFER STATE – BUFF + E.R. + STATE; always good when a word such as “say” turns out to be a straight part of the clue, and not a suggestion that there is a double def. to be spotted.
19 COL – COL(onel).
20 THEREUNTO – (hous)E in THE RUNT + (w)O(lf).
22 PARKA – K(ilo) in PARA(trooper). Palm to forehead time when I’d worked my way from PARGA (clearly doesn’t exist) to PARMA, and come up with any number of ways to justify that. Before spotting the obvious.
24 ESCHEAT – ESC + HEAT; brilliant. I solve online, so the answer to “key characters” was literally staring me in the face at the top left of the keyboard. Not a word commonly used in my household, mind you, the common law relating to feudal tenure tending to be low on the list of conversational topics.
26 RODRIGO – ROD + RIG + 0 gives you the Spanish composer, most noted for the piece featured in the film “Brassed Off” as Concerto de Orange Juice. Even though I had to fight to ignore the non-existent composer RODKITO who kept trying to work his way in.
27 NASTY – ST(reet) in NAY.
28 RED SPIDER – double defs requiring some knowledge of “English” billiards, to wit, that the three balls are the red, the white, and the spot; and that there is a special (long) rest for the cue called a spider.
 
Down
1 TABOR – TAB (f)OR, a sort of traditional drum.
2 ENNEADS – NEA(rly) in ENDS; without the benefit of a classical education, I’d say this might be the trickiest word to deduce in today’s puzzle.
3 SPECTACLE – SPEC(k)+TAC(k)LE. Very elegant.
4 PAUL ROBESON – (OPENSLABOUR)*; becoming an &lit if you know the man was not just a singer but a political activist. I think he’d definitely be counted as “Old Labour”.
5 YET – YE + T(ime).
6 GRIND – G(ood)+RIND. Again “Hard outside” turns out to be a definition rather than an instruction; I had to get there via GRIST and GRIFT for no particular reason.
7 TREMOLO – (LOT MORE)*.
8 TUSK SHELL – TELL round USK + S(ave)H(abitat); after the much discussed wentletrap comes another marine mollusc which I’d never heard of.
13 ILL FAVOURED – (OLDFURAVILE)*.
14 GO BETWEEN – (BEGTO)* + WEEN; “ween” = old English for “to think, supose, i,e. fancy”.
16 STEPPED UP – STEPPE + D.U.P. The Democratic Unionist Party was the creation of Ian Paisley and others. Not to be confused with the Ulster Unionist Party or the Popular Unionist Party (not to mention the Popular Front of Judaea or the Judaean Popular People’s Front).
18 FRESCOS – [SOC(iety)+SERF] all rev.
19 CARRIED – double def, took me far too long to spot that it was “bore” as in the past tense of “to bear”.
21 ELEGY – E(venson)G in ELY.
23 AMOUR – sounds like A MOOR; as always, those with regional accents are free to speak up if they think it doesn’t.
25 TOR – (ROT)rev.

30 comments on “Times 24,295 – Old and New”

  1. I liked today’s effort, only a 1 coffee level of difficulty but entertaining. Wife says the pest is strictly “red spider mite” and not “red spider” but I wouldn’t know…
    1. Definitely right about mite – and the spider rest is not especially long but has lots of legs.
      1. In fact, on further investigation, it seems that the main characteristic of the spider rest is being taller than a normal one, so that it can reach over an intervening ball, rather than the length or the legs (long time since I played snooker or billiards is my excuse).
  2. Time taken: for bleeding ever. The only things that got me going were the part-anagram at 1ac and the well-disguised anagram at 13dn. At 14dn I thought the “Beg to differ with” bit = {GO-BETW…}, but the rest went over my head. So thanks to Tim for the explanation. Must have been having a bad morning. (Note to self: find Sotira’s Garfield avatar for use on these occasions.) COD has to go to 18dn for sheer cunning.
  3. Once again I was unable to access the Times site and had to go and buy the paper, so fortunate I was not doing the blog.

    Helena Blavatsky 1831-1891 was the founder of the Theosophical Society (thank you Wiki). A tad obscure? Along with ENNEADS, BANDEAU, ESCHEAT, and TUSK,SHELL quite a collection of trivial pursuit answers. ENNEADS and ESCHEAT I knew from bar crosswords but the others were new to me.

    However, I agree with Tim. It is a fun puzzle that kept me amused for 25 minutes and the fact that the obscurities could be derived from the wordplay is a credit to the setter.

  4. Blue soprano? Actually Red Bass.

    Not so entertained as others for some reason.
    COD to GRIND (le mot juste).

  5. Average difficulty for me, but I finished with one unsolved (enneads). I knew I didn’t know of a word for “groups of nine”. Agree an entertaining puzzle. bc
  6. 9:30 for this one – flying start with Madame Blavatsky at 1A – fondly remembered as in university days, LSE cross-country club used “M Blavatsky” as an alternative to “A N Other” – the blokes who organized it when I joined had a mild occult fascination (no names as both are now respectable academics). Also remembered enneads from previous puzzles. But slipped up at 1D by thinking of a TENOR drum and ten = a 10 dollar bill. So I ended up trying to fit N?N?E?U at 9, though the solidity of the answers providing the other checkers saved the day after a brief panic. Also enjoyed the appositeness of the Paul Robeson clue, and the double-bluffs with “say” and “hard outside”.

    Couldn’t find a youtube clip showing a spider rest in action, but here’s Steve Davis demonstrating a gizmo that can be “used as a spider” and confirming that it’s the height of the cue that makes it a spider rather than the number of legs.

  7. I enjoyed this one too, although I made it hard on myself by putting in Blue Soprano instead of Paul Robeson. I saw ‘soprano’ immediately in the anagram fodder and with the ramining letters ‘BLUE’ figured I was on a winner. I wasn’t, but I was able to have a laugh at myself.
  8. 16:44 for me, held up by FRESCOS and ESCHEAT at the end for a few minutes, although I’m not sure why now. I’d never heard of a TUSK SHELL, but I used to live near Brecon and the River Usk flowed past the bottom of my garden. I’d also never heard of Blavatsky, but that wasn’t necessary to solve the clue. No problems with any other vocabulary. COD 12A RAINDROPS for the “shower units” definition.
  9. I’ve been following this site for quite a while now in a desperate effort to improve. It’s really helped – thanks to all!

    I have one question:

    What do comments like Q0-E9-D8 refer to?

    I could hazard a few guesses, but that’s all they would be!

    Thanks

    1. It’s an informal system some of us use in an attempt to indicate a bit more than just the time taken. It means you can point out, say, a puzzle which is very easy but not very satisfying to solve, or one which took ages to solve but which it was a joy to be baffled by…

      Q = number of questionable items (usually a small number, happily)
      E = marks for entertainment out of 10
      D = level of difficulty, also out of 10

      Not everyone believes in this system, so don’t take it as anything but another very personal view from the person concerned!

      1. Well, it seems that any of my guesses would have been wide of the mark.

        Thanks for clearing that up; had been mulling it over for days!

  10. After 25 minutes I had all but 18 and 24 solved, then came to a grinding halt, and only got going again later when I used an aid to get FRESCOS, whereupon I saw ESCHEAT. Nothing tricky about either of the clues, so no excuses.
    I’m not certain that the cryptic grammar of 3 works. The clue is saying: SPECK, TACKLE – when K’s come out for SPECTACLE, whereas it needs to be SPECK, TACKLE – when K’s come out – SPECTACLE or SPECK, TACKLE – K’s come out for SPECTACLE. Perhaps there’s another way of reading it to justify both ‘when’ and ‘for’, but I haven’t seen it yet.
  11. 21 minutes (same as Tim) , made the TENOR mistake which took a bit of time to rectify (same as Peter).
    Then had a real problem in the last pair of FRESCOES and ESCHEAT which both hoodwinked me. I wanted the latter to be ELEMENT.No complaints and some good clues alongside run of the mill sorts
  12. After 29 minutes I had all but 2dn, 18dn and 24ac and I must have spent nearly as long again staring blankly at these last three until I arrived at work and used a solver.

    At one point I actually considered ENNEADS but dismissed it partly because I never heard of it but mainly because I couldn’t get the wordplay to work. I was thinking NEA(r)inside ENDS which would require three-quarters rather than the stipulated half.

    I may have met ESCHEAT before but it wouldn’t come to mind. I like to think I’d have thought of it if I’d had the missing checking letter. I should have got FRESCOS.

  13. Modern poetry fans know Madame Blavatsky well as her theories massively influenced Yeats, and she appears in Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. Whatever the merits of theosophy (and I’m not qualified to judge) she can lay claim to influencing the work of arguably the two most celebrated twentieth century poets in English. bc
  14. Mme Blavatsky also features in “Archy and Mehitabel”, although I don’t think you can say she influenced Don Marquis!. I think Conan Doyle was also a Theosophist.

    Did anyone else get held up by having CLOSE at 27ac? – it just about works as a double def.

  15. 20:01 .. Last two in – ENNEADS and ESCHEAT – I happened to know, which was just as well since the wordplay for both defeated me. Thanks, topicaltim, for explaining them.

    Some really good surfaces made this one a pleasure. COD 9a BANDEAU

    One Across Rock – Guildford electro-Goth legends The Osophy.

  16. 30 min, with some cheating on the 18 & 24 pair. An excellent work-out with a good spread of clues.
  17. A very nice puzzle with clever clues. About 35 enjoyable minutes to solve, and like many my last entries were the crossing FRESCOS and ESCHEAT. What I didn’t know today were DUP, BANDEAU, ‘ween’=’fancy’, and the billiards device. I enjoyed the PAUL ROBESON clue, and the RAINDROPS def., but my COD goes to FRESCOS. Regards to all.
  18. Sorry to be dim but I don’t see the double definition. Please help.
    I look at this site daily and much enjoy it and the comments from the regulars. There must be many others like me who usually finish but sometimes have difficulty with the word play.
    Barry J
    1. “Something delightful” as in “It’s a gas”, and gas, when stepped on, as in stepping on the gas = quickly.

      I wonder how old you have to be to decscribe something as a gas these days – possibly Mick Jagger’s age, as I’m now being earwormed by “Jumping Jack Flash” At any rate, it sounds as if it belongs in the street speech of the sixties.

  19. Serf, “A member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labour in return for certain legal or customary rights” and cryptically paraphrased here as “one bound”.
  20. Sorry, can you explain the word play to FRESCOS? I can see the SOC bit. What is FRES or SERF?
  22. 20 mins today. I do this crossword a day late so I don’t usually bother to comment. However, I have to say how thrilled I was to see my favourite singer, Paul Robeson, make an appearance. (Saw him at Stratford in Othello and also at the Ebbw Vale Eisteddford in the 50s) It’s similar to the feeling I had when I first saw “Star Trek” as a Times Crossword answer. The ultimate accolade.

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