Times 24296

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 9:19

This seemed a good representative of current Times puzzles – not that difficult, but with enough exotic vocabulary and original wordplay to keep experienced solvers thinking for a while, aided by a few clichés like P.M.=North and “half-hearted” in 15. My best solving moment was remembering TUSSORE very quickly, one of my worst was making a meal of IAGO, for which “villain in a play” was pretty obvious – I’ll attribute this to being very careful with 4-letter answers (18 was another poor moment as noted below).

Clues solved without full understanding of wordplay (with missed part in brackets): 17 ((s)IC(k)), 21 (derivation of MARIA), 1D (SET), 13 (e.g.). Last answer was 23

Across
1 ALL IN=exhausted,GOOD-TIME=pleasure-seeking
9 SITAR – I in rev. of RATS!=curse
10 S,LAUGHTER=hoots, with “in the van”=”in the front”
11 TOOTH FAIRY = (for toy hat I), with “supply” (adverb) as anag. indicator
12 LAIC = half of “official”, reversed – this took rather too long to see from ?A?C
14 T.U.(S)SORE=upset – coarse silk, from the Hindi for “shuttle” – as Wikipedia has nothing to say about it, this must count as a fairly obscure word. Wordplay was straightforward as long as you didn’t assume that “upset” was a reversal indicator
16 M(O,LOT)OV(e) – Vyacheslav Molotov was the Soviet Foreign Minister who negotiated the infamous pact with Ribbentrop.
17 (s)IC(k),EGREB=rev. of grebe – “main” is the ocean here
20 PeAr-TrEe – your pate is the top of your head and hence your crown – think of “Jack fell down and broke his crown” in the nursery rhyme.
21 BLACK=filthy,MARIA=rev. of (A1=road,RAM=Aries=sign (of the zodiac)). It seems that a Black Maria is a van for carrying prisoners on both sides of the Atlantic. There’s a discussion of possible etymology here. (“BLACK=filthy” corrected from BACK after eagle-eyed reading by mctext
24 N(ON, PAR=normal)EIL – a nonpareil is a one-off
25 NA(O)M,I – I liked ‘Nam=country
26 RISE TO THE BAIT = (I bet hesitator) – the crafty def. meant that this needed quite a few checking letters, despite the anagram and fodder being clear on first look and helpful word-lengths
 
Down
1 AS(SET)S,TRIPPING – “owned” as a containment indicator will maybe not delight everyone, but makes for a good surface.
2 LO(T,T)O – it’s that crossword cliché game again ((Lanter)loo)
3 NORTH = P.M.,KOREA = (rev. of E.R.,O.K.),A – Lord North was the PM during most of the American War of Independence.
4 ON=rev. of No.,STAGE=step – “house” here is a theatre audience
5 DI(AGRA)M – Agra was indeed the captial of the Mogul emperors
6 I,AGO=back as in “many years back”
7 ENTRACTES = (centres at)* – Entr’actes are fairly obviously intervals between acts, as well as pieces of music played then.
8 CRUCIVERBALIST – V in (criteria clubs)* – this daft word for a crossword setter/solver (hence the “You or I” def.) may be in the latest version of Collins – it’s not in COED, and even Chambers only has “cruciverbal”, correctly labelled “usually facetious”. Also corrected courtesy of mctext
13 BLANC(he),MAN,GE=e.g. rev. – some recent reviews of a Donmar warehouse production of A Streetcar Named Desire helped here with mentions of Blanche Dubois
15 S,WEE,TEN(n)ER
18 G.I.,(a)LBERT – poor solving here as I thought of Gilbert & Sullivan, but too hastily to see that one of them would fit
19 NECK=cheek=brass,LET=permit (verb)
22 RIO,JA(r)
23 BATS=mad=”out to lunch” – reversl of STAB=go=attempt

42 comments on “Times 24296”

  1. A plodder again, north of 30 mins. Many of the clues just took time to unravel with no obvious reason why although esp slowed at 14 where I was looking for the union backwards around the “S” I already had. Had N—LET for ages for 19D and took a while on 21A. Last in was 25A where the crime was not separating “old woman” quick enough.

    First in was indeed the amusing 8D which gets my COD just for self deferrence.

  2. 12 mins today. Synchronicity kicked in early when the 7 o’clock newsreader reported Bill Clinton’s exploits in 3dn as I was solving it. (Mention of said place always makes me think of Mark Waugh whose nickname is “Korea” — the forgotten Waugh.)
    Time was helped by the relative ease of the four long outside answers and the anagrams at 19ac, 26ac, 7dn & 8dn; but hindered by mis-spelling ENTRACTES for a moment. (Praise be to the manufacturers of liquid paper.) The self-reference at 8dn was apt; especially on the heels of 3dn in the last Mephisto (2553). Two distinct uses of “van” (10ac and 21ac) — the first signalling initial letters, the second literal — made for good symmetry. Slight quibble about ‘NAM for country at 25ac. — but at least it produced a good surface. (No Country for Old Women?)
    Only thing I hadn’t heard of was TUSSORE which, on look-up, turns out to be the name of the moth that produces it — the silk that is. Nice to see a derivation from Hindi/Sanskrit for a change. COD to 15dn for a tidy sequence and semantically-relevant surface reading.
    1. There’s an apparent difference about the origin of TUSSORE but we’re both right, assuming that the Hindi for “shuttle” is derived from the Sanskrit for “silkworm”
    2. There’s no shortage of Hindi words in English, including ones like dungaree and calico in the materials department.
    3. TUSSORE (tussar, tasar) is a common word in India meaning raw silk, every lady’s wardrobe boasts of a sari or two of tussore. I’m a native Hindi speaker and have studied Sanskrit for a couple of years, but don’t know the words for “shuttle” or “silkworm” in either of those languages!

      Tussore is well-known over here as the fabric, but I’ve no idea of its etymology.
      – Shuchi

      1. The OED says (as accurately as I can show here) Hindi (and Urdu) tasar (t^s^r): Skr. tasara (also trasara) shuttle, ‘perhaps from the form of the cocoon’ (Yule & Burnell).

        Remembering that Yule & Burnell wrote the linguistic relic of the Raj HOBSON-JOBSON A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, I looked it up in my copy. Rather than quote, I can direct you to the Google books copy.

        Edited at 2009-08-05 12:49 pm (UTC)

        1. Thanks, Peter. The word’s link with shuttle/silkworm is obscure knowledge even for a Hindi speaker, but we’d easily recognize TUSSORE as a type of silk.

          The above anon comment set me thinking that the reverse is also true – words like “silk” and “cotton” have become part of Hindi in a way, their “pure” equivalents (resham and sooti) are hardly used nowadays.

  5. 14:00 here. I thought I was heading for sub 10 minutes again, but got stuck on the last few: ENTRACTES, DIAGRAM and MOLOTOV (the latter because the V of CRUCIVERBALIST looked a bit like a U).
  7. I think Peter’s assessment of this puzzle is spot on. Interesting but not particularly difficult. Just under 30 minutes for me with no particular hold-ups. I didn’t know TUSSORE but got it from wordplay and checking letters. I’m easy about “nam” – it is (was?) such common currency in the 1960-70s and I think has appeared in a Mephisto not too long ago.
  8. No quibble on NAM if it is Namibia.

    Despite racing round the perimeter, electronic help needed to finish, with the wordplay for TUSSORE and DIAGRAM beyond me.
    Much gnashing of teeth here because of basic errors, like Mctext misspelled ENTRACTES and had MAFIA (criminals) half of 21ac instead of MARIA which left me needing a wine beginning F.

    Blind to word “go” in 23dn despite knowing the answer, forgetting Jimbo’s advice on separating all the words when justifying an answer.

    1. NAM is the IVR code for Namibia, but I think most people would object to “country” indicating any IVR code, as this would give you nearly 200 possibilities to choose from.

      Apart from some easy European ones like CH=Switzerland, IVR codes are usually not required for daily paper puzzles.

    2. You set me thinking Barry that perhaps younger solvers don’t recall the days of Nam, which was US slang for Vietnam. Not sure you qualify as “younger” though!
      1. Having done some journalistic stints in Saigon (as it then was) during the Vietnam War, I can’t complain that NAM was unfamiliar to me, but for some obscure reason I still don’t like it much. I can’t quite accept Peter B’s suggestion that it’s on a par with bus, phone and cello as an established abbreviation. While IVR codes have always made their appearance from time to time as country identifiers, I can’t recall a previous example of a colloquially shortened version of a country’s name being used in this way. But I may be wrong, and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a first time, I guess.

        I agree with yours and Peter’s assessment of the puzzle: not excessively difficult but enjoyably testing in parts. Somewhere in the 30-40 mins range for me. I remembered TUSSORE from a previous appearance about a year ago, or perhaps longer.

      2. Fact is I had to effect an escape from the Antipodes (where I was living as a £10 pom) after being called-up for the Army, which would have seen me fighting in ‘Nam. But bless you anyway.

        Not much excuse for “younger” solvers as every ageing hero in American films and fiction has a mysterious “past” which involves ‘Nam tours.

  9. I enjoyed this – oddly my only objection was to country=NAM, which I have always thought a particularly odious bit of slang.
    1. hmmm – are bus, phone and cello also “odious”? If not, what’s the difference except for how long they’ve been around?
      1. Odious because it was specifically used in reference to the Vietnam of the Vietnam war, an expression used by the US military to refer to a country they were destroying but couldn’t even bother to pronounce its name properly. That’s just an emotional reaction of course. On a more rational level, the words you cite have passed into standard English by a normal process of linguistic development. As far as I can tell ‘Nam, to the extent that it may still be used, means specifically “Vietnam at the time of the war”, never “Vietnam as it is now”. I don’t think such a limited abbreviation merits being defined by “country” I am trying to think of other short or slang forms of country names and can only come up with “the States”, “Oz” and “blighty” – they are more general in use but I don’t think it would be reasonable to use “country” to clue any of them. Rant over.
        1. Agree entirely. Suspect some very odd looks would arise from a request at the travel agent for a brochure about “Nam”
        3. I agree entirely. I don’t think, even if one must use ‘NAM like that, it deserves the plain definition “country”
  10. A very slow start indeed for me this morning. 4 minutes to find the first answer (PATE) and another 6 to find the next one (NECKLET). Fortunately things improved a bit from there until for the second day running, I met a sticky end and was unable to polish it off on the journey to work. So 45 minutes with two outstanding, at 23dn and 14ac.

    I got BATS eventually but needed aids to find TUSSORE. It was the “after” in 23db that distracted me for so long and I’m still unsure whether it is quite fair.

  11. 16:25 .. What an interesting arena this is today – a Hindi speaking student of Sanskrit on saris and silkworms, and a former Vietnam newshound on ‘Nam (which does slightly set my teeth on edge – it’s a loaded word, but I guess that shouldn’t rule it out of a crossword). Thanks to all for the entertaining commentary.
  12. I think Peter’s overall assessment is spot on. I got 1ac immediately, and followed it up with 2 and 6, making me think it would a quick solve, but I slowed down, ending up taking 35 minutes. No stinkers, but some needing a bit of thought or some letters in the grid to see. I wasn’t sure whether the country in 25 was Vietnam or North America. BATS was my last entry and it took a minute or two to get after the rest was done.
    10 gets my choice for COD for it’s neat surface and cryptic construction.
  13. i too struggled to se Laic as half of official reversed for some reason although once you have cruciverbaist how many 4 letter words are there that end in c that mean secular?

    bit of a struggle for me with a number of ry well hidden wordplays…

    Liked Diagram and Molotov…was thrown by the truncation of vietnam too!

    anyway all done now at sub the hour

  14. 28:33 so tricky for me. Probably 5 minutes at the end to get bats so I’ll give that my COD although sweetener ran it close.

    I notice that the unches in the second row read SOON IAN C. Ian C are my name and initial (surname) and I’m going on holiday tomorrow, which is pretty soon.

    The second line from the bottom has unches that read GET REG JS. Is that a coded instruction for John Stalker or Jerry Springer to assassinate Elton John?

    I’m off now to feed blancmange to the tooth fairy.

    1. I’ve long suspected that the Times crossword was used by ‘6 to send messages to agents in the field. Good work, Agent Penfold. Crikes.

      And have a great holiday.

      Or should I say ‘holiday’… (don’t forget your Walther PPK)

      1. Sotira: you must now set up a new competition — funniest post of the year. Penfold will surely be in the running. And the prize?
        1. Frankly, that’s a terrible idea – people would only start trying, and then where would we be? As dear old Oscar shurely said, organisation is the smotherer of invention.
    1. See explanation for 3D in the blog, remembering that PM = “Prime Minister” which I omitted thinking it was obvious. Nothing is obvious ….
      1. ty, i know pm means prime minister, i simply didnt read fully 3d, thanks for the reply
  16. About 30 minutes for me, held up at the end by the crossing BLANCMANGE/NAOMI duo. Unfortunately, I didn’t know of BLANCMANGE and had to sort it out from the wordplay, and then being pleasantly surprised that this unlikely looking construction was actually a word. That had given me the ‘N’ for NAOMI, and I realized NAM was intended as the country. I’m among those whose eyebrows were raised, thinking it can be seen as a slur, but I’m over here (US) and we may be more sensitive to that. It’s common, yes, as what the US servicemen called the place, but the suggestion that we have all adopted that term for the country feels incorrect. COD: DIAGRAM and the sort of inside joke CRUCIVERBALIST. Best to all.
  17. I started on the Times last week and just want to say thanks for providing such detailed deconstructions.

    RPS Glasgow

  18. “this daft word for a crossword setter/solver (hence the “You or I” def.) may be in the latest version of Collins – it’s not in COED, and even Chambers only has “cruciverbal”, correctly labelled “usually facetious”.”

    Just to confirm that it is in my Collins (2007 9th edition, so not the latest) defined simply as “crossword puzzle enthusiast”.

    1. C has cruciverbalist. As ever with C you just have to look a little closer!
  20. Fascinating comments throughout, gang, especially the quibble over “cruciverbalist.” Mustn’t have word-play in a Times crossword puzzle, must we? 😉

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