Times 24303 – getting wet all over again

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 27 minutes with one phone call distraction. I found this the hardest of the week so far, grinding to a halt with 9, 17, 16 and 23 unfilled. The break for a phone call helped, but there was still a good couple of minutes staring at 23 wondering what it was that I could miss on such a short word. There were a few sneaky traps laid, all of which I managed to fall into. After writing the blog, I realised there’s a bit of a general knowledge here and many proper nouns making parts of the clues, so I was probably lucky to get through.

Across
1 BRAHMS: BAR* and then HMS (pinafore)
4 S,COWLING: From the definition, I thought COWLING sounded like a contender, I didn’t know it meant the cap piece that goes over an engine
10 REHYDRATE: (HARDY TREE)* – anyone else on autopilot write in DEHYRDRATE?
12 SIR ISAAC NEWTON: nice wordplay here – SIRIUS(star) without the U, A (article), ACNE (spots), WONT*
14 (l)IMPLY
16 COWARDICE: WAR entered in COD (fake – definition #4 in Chambers), ICE
20 B,LESS: like the surface
21 SECOND WORLD WAR: got this from the definition before seeing the wordplay – SECOND(back), WORLD(the Earth), WAR (RAW reversed)
25 MAORI: A in MORI – I got this from definition, had not heard of the research firm
26 ON THIN ICE: January is (m)ONTH 1
28 IN,VERT: I thought I’d check up VERT in Chambers too, having for a long time presumed that everyone knew it was French for “green”. But it’s got several other meanings, including a green bar in heraldry. You learn something every month
 
Down
1 BURNS NIGHT: second part is THING* – a holiday on January 25 to celebrate Robert Burns
2 ABHOR: H in A BOR(n) and a well-hidden definition
3 MO,DEST(in)Y: tricky wordplay, but should be easy to get from the definition
7 IMPROVISE: IS in 1,M,PROVE(show) – I liked using show at the end of the clue
8 GUY’S: sounds like GUISE, didn’t know the hospital, but wordplay and checking letters generous
9 DAMASCUS: CU in AMASS with D at the top (van)
13 SEA SERPENT: EASE,R in SPENT
15 PADDED OUT: ADDED in POUT(bib) – yes, I fell for it and wrote in PADDED BRA thinking it was a cryptic definition
17 WEYMOUTH: M in WE YOUTH – another new place.
19 OX,ON,IAN
20 BULL,I,ON: BULL being the city optimist at the stock exchange
23 WAIVE: VIA (pass) reversed in W,E (bridge partners) and an &lit clue Edit: or not… I messed the wordplay up, it’s A in WIVE(s), thanks to many commenters
24 O.M,I.T: acronyms with acronyms!

43 comments on “Times 24303 – getting wet all over again”

  1. Close to your time glheard: 26 mins. The anagram at 27ac is really good. Chambers Anagrams (a great resource) consulted after the fact, brings up these:
    ANTISTES / ANTSIEST / INSTATES / NASTIEST / SATINETS/ TITANESS
    (I’m keeping a whole-word anagram file if anyone wants it.)
    So we shall surely see one of these again. Is 6dn a double def or a cryptic def?
    2. 6D is borderline, but I think the punctuation in “Fight – for pay rise?” fairly indicates that the two defs are “fight” and “fight for pay rise?”, so I’d call it a double def.

      Edited at 2009-08-13 08:40 am (UTC)

  2. I got confused by the W.E. (bridge partners) but eventually thought the “partners shortly” must be
    WIVE(s)round A.
  3. Finished in ten minutes, enjoyable, but a couple of questions not answered:
    9D Why is “in the van” at the top?
    19D: Why might an Oxonian’s cause be lost?
    1. Oxford University was tagged by someone (who I will check up on) as the “spiritual home of lost causes”
    2. van for vanguard, so “at the front”. I’m as mystified as you about the lost cause.
  4. goodness me, do you people never sleep?
    perhaps I should get up earlier while the crossword club login is still working.
    This is twice within a couple of weeks, I do hope they’re not going back to their bad old ways.
    1. Mine was fine last week, but not today. As you say, hope this doesn’t mean it’s slipping back to the old ways.

      Rupert Murdoch has, of course, floated the idea of charging for all his newspapers’ online content – if the Crossword Club is any guide, the experiment will not be a success…

  5. 32 minutes today which wasn’t too bad considering my very slow start – I had got all the way to 21ac without solving anything. But after that, progress was steady and it flowed quite nicely.

    I must admit that at least 10 of them went in without fully understanding the reasoning. Indeed when I first considered SIR ISAAC NEWTON at 12ac, before I had a single checking letter, I couldn’t see any connection with the clue other than “scientist” and (3,5,6). I enjoyed working out most of the wordplay after completing the puzzle as there was some good stuff here, but I still don’t understand the “lost cause” at 19dn.

    I thought the inclusion of two GUYs in the NE was a bit weak. And does OMIT = “leave”? I can’t think of a context where it doesn’t mean “leave out” but perhaps someone can enlighten me as I don’t have the dictionaries to hand at the moment.

    1. I’ve just looked up both leave and omit in COED and Collins. I can’t justify omit=leave rather than “leave out”.
  6. 23 min. For me much easier than yesterdays assisted 33 min (perhaps hangover fuelled). A lot put in on a wing and a prayer, but then justified after finishing correctly. I really liked this one. Too many satisfying moments to pick out a special COD. Oh all right then … COWARDICE. Embarrassed as an NZer to be held up by MAORI.
  7. About 10 minutes for this, after deducting a bit for interruptions. Missed the wordplay on Sir Isaac, and failed to notice the double guy in the NE corner (mainly because I didn’t get 4A on first look, so my first sights of 11A and 8D were separated by most of the other clues). And I hastily put DEHYDRATE too, thinking at the time that the def. was rather perverse.
    Wordplays for 2 and 15 both took a while to spot, and I didn’t gamble on these without understanding them. Tickled a bit by the juxtaposition of Damascus and Weymouth. Agree that 23D is W(A)IVE(s) – via is a preposition so cannot be defined by ‘pass’, which is a noun or adjective.

    1. Chambers (but not COED) has “via” as a noun meaning “a way or road”, and “pass” as “a way by which one may pass”, so George’s wordplay could be feasible, but it seems clear that the definition is “pass up” – I don’t see that it works as an & lit.
      1. True, but for the Times puzzle Chambers is simply irrelevant* – the reference dictionaries are COED and Collins which don’t have the required meanings. Having rejected George’s suggested wordplay for this reason, I didn’t worry about the &lit point, but you’re right – only “pass up” is the def so this would not be a true &lit.

        VIA could be clued as “Roman Road” or similar, as we’d then be in the realm of “general knowledge” rather than “dictionary definitions”.

        *I think Chambers can be appealed to in exceptional circumstances: e.g. meanings of a word or phrase so common that COED and Collins seem obviously deficient.

        Edited at 2009-08-13 11:26 am (UTC)

  8. 19 mins, like George I stuck in DEHYDRATE at 10A which cost me a couple of minutes at the end. Very nice crossword with some excellent surfaces. I liked 1D BURNS NIGHT but plump for 26A ON THIN ICE as COD – I thought ‘in danger of a soaking?’ as def. was the highlight of the whole puzzle.

    Tom B.

    1. If I’m not mistaken we’ve had something very similar within the past year in the Times, Jumbo or ST.
  9. 12:25 here, slowed down by two bloopers already mentioned – DEHYDRATE and W…E for partners, which made me stick in WASTE briefly before I got ON THIN ICE. I needed a minute or so at the end to get BURNS NIGHT and correct 10A.
  10. I was pleased to finish this as I went all the way through without getting an answer. I was about to reach for my dictionary when everything started to fall into place. There were eventually sufficient old friends in both definition and wordplay to help me through: Lowering, guppy, Newton, criminal, back etc. Some originality too, the clueing of HMS in Brahms and city optimist for Bull, but I suppose someone will tell me that they are clichés.

    There was a higher than average number of definitions that were phases, which always makes things more difficult: “in danger of soaking”, “how confessor comes”, “not bravery either”. “is his cause lost?” This latter totally lost me but fortunately Steer is and old friend for Ox.

    The last time Sir Isaac turned up, I noted that he was the only entry under Scientist in my crossword database. If I had trusted my own research I could have got started quicker.

    Waive is unsatisfactory whatever way you look at it. Via can be a noun, meaning way or road, usually found in phrases such as Via Dolorosa, so it could conceivably stretch to meaning pass. The problem with this solution is that the clue does not parse very well, the wordplay and definition overlap. The Wive(s) solution parses more satisfactorily but Wive(s) for partners shortly is just awful.

  11. Fast today with 7 mins – puzzle seemed to be on my waivelength! This despite joining the DEHYDRATE club initially.
  12. Most agreed that yesterday’s was a terrific puzzle but relatively easy. I thought it stunning (much more so than today’s offering) but it took me 2 1/2 hours to complete with much resort to aids.
    Judging from the times and comments today (George from 8 mins yesterday to 27 mins today being fairly representative) solvers found this much trickier but I finished in about an hour (fast for me) with no aids and only OXONIAN and POUT not understood before coming here.
    Perhaps yesterday’s introduced me to a whole new level of inventiveness which experienced solvers have embraced?
      1. Mine too – but I think all we’re discovering is the randomness of cryptic xwd difficulty. Given two Times puzzles of roughly avarage difficulty this sort of difference in relative times isn’t surprising to me.
  13. 13 mins for me, so definitely agreeing with this new technique of treating the thing like an extended Times2 crossword and gambling on just definitions where possible. I am sure this will come a cropper one day, but so far so good. One such mistake was IMPROMPTU for IMPROVISE, but BLESS soon sorted it out. Also put in PADDED BRA as a kneejerk reaction, but really couldnt justify it from the first instance, and the word play was quite clear.
  14. 19:46 .. very satisfying solve. Really good range of clues, vocab and general knowledge.

    I, too, quibblified ‘leave’ for OMIT, and I’m in the W(A)IVE(s) club.

    First in CLEAN, last in OXONIAN.

    COD 14a IMPLY, which I’m now going to start pronouncing to rhyme with ‘limply’. It’s the sort of thing I do anyway, once humiliating myself translating in Latin class by pronouncing Pericles to rhyme with ‘miracles’, which makes it a far better name in my view. And it was only through an equally embarrassing public correction (from a professor who clearly thought I was taking the p) that I discovered ’emeritus’ doesn’t more or less rhyme with ‘toncilitis’. I have a long and mostly painful track record of this stuff.

  15. 27 mins. I found this the easiest of the week so far. I don’t beat the half-hour very often! Some good clues, but nothing that held me up for any length of time.

    ABHOR was my last in, and I didn’t really understand it until I came here. But then I didn’t ponder it for long.

    I don’t have a problem with 23, so long as it’s A in WIVE(s). I don’t understand what’s so awful about partners shortly being WIVE. Surely WIVES is a perfectly acceptable word for partners, and shortly is often used to mean ‘remove the last letter’.

    COD 12, but lots of other good ones.

  16. I romped though this in 16 minutes in the hospital waiting area, ignoring a 4-minute interruption while my BP and temperature were taken. That left me with nothing to do for another 15 minutes.

    Although I found it easy, that was more to do with the design of the grid and my early entries, allowing me to enter answers from definitions only, without fully understanding the wordplay (notably 3, 7, 15, 16, 26), though I eventually worked out all except 15. I also entered DEHYDRATE instead of REHYDRATE at first.

    Lots of good clues in this, such as 3, 7, 17, 26. I think I’d pick 7 as COD for it’s combination of neat surface and complex cryptic structure.

  17. Just about to start today’s puzzle but we are unable to log on at the moment. In the past I’ve seen a link to a print today’s crossword but can’t remember it…Can anyone help?
    Mike and Fay
    1. I had problems getting in early this morning but can do so now (just checked). Unfortunately the old “back door” route no longer works – all the pages on the club site now require you to be logged in – which is perfectly reasonable for a pay site as long as it works ….

      Information just seen elsewhere indicates that you may well need to clear your cookies for the site – I did so between my failed and successful attempts. In Firefox, this is: Tools > Options > Privacy > Show Cookies > select the “entertainment.timesonline.co.uk” folder > Remove Cookies (worth remembering how, as a cookie clear-out often does the job with Times club access trouble)

      1. There have certainly been problems this week. Sunday night (around 2am to 5am GMT) I spent ages trying to log in before I realised it was a site problem.

        I really wish sites like Timesonline would have a service status page where techies could post fault reports and updates. It would save a lot of anger and frustration. I wasted nearly an hour of my life the other night, not for the first time, trying to work out what I was doing wrong. Technical problems I can appreciate. It’s the not knowing that’s infuriating.

      2. I have had problems logging in for ages, in the sense that when I try and log in it just brings me right back to the login page without showing any error. But I’m actually logged in, it just won’t take me to the main page for some reason.

        If I then go to a link I keep in favorites for today’s cryptic (http://crosswordclub.timesonline.co.uk/crossword/print?type=1) it works just fine (and change that final 1 to a 2 if it is Saturday, 11 for Sunday, etc)

        1. I tried exactly that Sunday evening and it wasn’t working. Definitely a site failure on that occasion.
  18. 10.10 Took a bit too long to get 1a and 1d so a sluggish start. I also worked out wordplay for 12 before entering which is unusual for me as I usually just bash ahead with the obvious answer (as I did for 19 where I would never has got the ‘lost cause’ bit anyway). I think the clue for WAIVE was good with a nice little bit of deception if you have the W-E ‘partners’ letters.
    Last in ABHOR where the definition was nicely concealed. So these last two and 17 were my favourite clues
  19. Log in problems here, eventually cleared. A decent enough puzzle of fairly average level of difficulty – 25 minutes to solve.

    Sir Isaac is the Tiepolo of the scientific world and appears to be the only mathematician or scientist known to Times setters – read the clue and wrote in the answer. I didn’t fall for “dehydrate” probably because I write the anagram fodder out and then cross it off to verify the answer – usually essential in Mephisto it’s slower but more accurate than guessing!

    I had “wive(s)” at 23D and hadn’t even seen the “via” possibility until I read George’s blog. I also query OMIT=leave. I think DAMASCUS is an excellent clue.

    1. I was sure you were going to object to 9D DAMASCUS, Jimbo! I think the noun for a motorway smash is PILE-UP, not PILE UP which the setter needed for AMAS/S. So I don’t think the surface works.

      Tom B.

      1. Reading at speed, I didn’t notice that the surface really needs the hyphen. As Jimbo claims not to worry about the surface meanings, I think he’d only have complained if the hyphen had been included for the sake of the surface, spoiling the wordplay. Me too – if the punctuation can only fit one reading, I want it to fit the wordplay. If that means that careful readers see the cryptic meaning easily, good for them!
        1. I also didn’t notice the missing hyphen and Peter knows me too well. I would have cribbed at its inclusion for surface reading to the detriment of wordplay.
  20. Thanks to everyone pointing out that the wordplay is A in WIVE(s) – I’m so inured to think of “partners” being of the bridge kind that I didn’t consider other possibilities, especially with the W and E already in the grid (it was my last entry). I’ll add a note in the blog.
  21. Many thanks Peter and others for advice on log in. Clearing cookies solved the problem. Very enjoyable puzzle time 2.5 hours with the odd post prandial nap.Was confused with 16, expecting battle to be on the outside.
    Mike and Fay
  22. About 25 mostly enjoyable minutes. I fell for ‘dehydrate’, yeah, which left me puzzled by 1D. I eventually rechecked the anagram fodder for 10, and corrected it, thus allowing me to guess at BURNS NIGHT, sorry, but that’s a new one on me. Same for the ‘lost cause’ connection with Oxford. Otherwise a lot of fun stuff again, COD for me DAMASCUS, BRAHMS and HIDEOUSLY very good too. First in GUPPY, last entry OXONIAN. I do, though, join the quibbling re leave/leave out=omit, and I’m not delighted by ‘ogre’=’titaness’ either. Beyond that, still felt like a fun solve. Regards.
    1. If ever you get a chance to go to a proper Burns Night Kevin, you should take it. There is a whole ceremonial in which a cooked haggis is escorted to the table by a piper and then split open by the skene-dhu, the Scots Bard is read aloud before the haggis is eaten with tatties, neeps and plenty of the amber liquid. Great fun.

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