Times 24,307

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
18 minutes today, so for the second consecutive blog, this wasn’t necessarily the most difficult puzzle, but was again one of the more inventive efforts of recent times. At the risk of re-opening the debate about where the boundary lies between “cliche” and “convention”, I think I can safely say this was refreshingly original for old hands without, I hope, some occasionally intricate wordplay making it too difficult for the less experienced. Q0-E8-D7

Across
1 SYRIA – SYRA(h) round I(ran) gives the country to the west of Iran; a certain knowledge of wine required to know that Shiraz is the New World name for the Syrah grape…to complete the circle, one thought is that the Syrah grape was brought to France from, and named after, its origin in the Iranian town of – Shiraz.
4 PERFORCE – (CREPE) round FOR; am I right in thinking the ‘of’ has to do double duty, i.e. ‘for ‘ can be ‘because of’ but not really ‘because’, while also being part of the definition ‘of necessity’?
8 RESPECTABILITY – (CITIES BE PARTLY)*.
10 IDENTICAL – (ChIp)rev. inside 1 dental = “same”.
11 DITTO – chippeD IT TOo = “and here”.
12 HAPPEN – P(arking) in H(ospital)+A(rea)+PEN.
14 PITTANCE – PIT + TAN + C.E. The pit is the old style dealing floor where the men in red braces used to shout “Buy!” or “Sell!” in days gone by.
17 EUROSTAR – (RAT+SO+RUE) all rev.
18 LITCHI – (g)LITCH + I(sland); homophone alert: it appears that what I call a lychee comes from the litchi tree; for good measure I’ve also seen it spelled ‘lichi’.
20 GUESS – GUES(t)S.
22 BLACK SPOT – B(ishop) LACKS POT (belly).
24 TERROR STRICKEN – ERRORS TRICK inside TEN.
25 FEATHERY – (HEFTY ARE)*.
26 GORGE – (E + GROG) rev.
 
Down
1 STRAIGHT EDGE – (SIT THE RAGGED)*.
2 ROSIE – double def., as “Rosie Lee” = “tea” in that favourite convention / awful cliche, Cockney rhyming slang; and the word “char” as a slang term for tea appears to come as a Chinese import when the tea started coming from there as well as India and Ceylon. Nice to see char not being ‘daily’ for a change.
3 ALERTNESS – (ETERNAL)* + S(econd)S(on); excellent surface referencing “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”, the words of Thomas Jefferson…or Wendell Phillips…or Patrick Henry…or Tom Paine. Any ex-colonials have a clearer view than Google on the origin?
4 PUTSCH – PUT SCH(ool); PUT as in “Let me put it this way.”
5 RABELAIS – RAIS(e) round ABEL, third man in the Bible after Adam and Cain. Rabelais was clearly an archetype, as lots of people and works are still described as Rabelaisian.
6 OILED – SOILED minus S(ulphur).
7 CATATONIC – CAT + A TONIC; I admit I paused over ‘chap’ = ‘CAT’; after thought, I’m presuming it’s in the Sixties sense of meaning just “a man”, as in “Check out that cat in the loon pants” – or am I staring too closely and missing something utterly obvious?
9 NON EXISTENCE – lift and separate to get the definition “not being”, and replace the 1 in N1CE with ONE SIX and TEN, with the SIX flipped over.
13 PERSEVERE – PER SE round EVER.
15 TWINKLING – double def, including the metaphorical, as in “It happened in a twinkling”; furthermore, as mctext ponts out, T(ime)W(ith)INKLING makes it an &lit.
16 JAMBOREE – JAM BORE E(nergy).
19 PASTRY – P.A.’S TRY. Mmmm…Danish.
21 STRUT – double def.
23 POKER – another double def., a fire-iron and a popular variety of the card game.

33 comments on “Times 24,307”

  1. A very pleasant 26 minutes over a slightly extended breakfast. Some very clever cluing I thought. And 9dn was a complete cryptographical effort. (Am I allowed to say “bastard”?) Held up by not having heard of the Eurostar — but then, not many commentators here will have heard of the Australind which passes my house four times a day! Enjoyed both the long but well-hidden anagrams at 8ac and 1dn. Had to ponder a few minutes over “stalk” and “strut” until the penny dropped — as in “He stalked out in a fit of pique”…
    And for barrywldm, a propos of yesterday’s discussion, did you notice the missing ellipsis at the start of 11ac? Haven’t seen one like that (single ellipsis) before — excused perhaps by the initial “and”. Still, a quite well-hidden inclusive.
    Pity 22ac didn’t reference Treasure Island! But I guess those of us in the Pro-Lit Brigade had already got enough attention at 5dn.
    1. Both ellipses are present in the printed version. Presumably the second one was lost in transcription.
    2. I put this comment on a word document in the hope that eventually I would be granted at least a minute of internet access in which to post it. What is worse than access which allows you long enough to start something before it throws you out is turning in exasperation to the TV only to be assaulted by BT ads telling you that never again need you miss the last 2 tickets to that holiday of a lifetime because of unreliable internet connection.

      Yes I noted the missing ellipsis, but of course I thought it just another devilish obfuscation, only to find from this site that it was just another glitch.

      Speaking of which, did anyone other than me have a problem with the extreme NE corner of Saturday’s daily? The only possible answer I can think of for 8 dn doesn’t work with the final checking letter and I can’t see anything wrong with that.

      Tim was right to suggest that newcomers might find today’s puzzle difficult but my first in was PERSEVERE which I took as salutary and eventually finished in a couple of hours. Cliche or not I loved ROSIE.

      1. The reason folk are ignoring your question about last Saturday is because it’s a prize puzzle and we don’t talk about them (other than in general terms) until the submission date has passed.

        I’ll just say that there was nothing particularly difficult about any part of last Saturday’s puzzle.

        1. Thin bishop surely.
          My question was so phrased because of the rule on prize crosswords. You have answered it anyway although I would have preferred someone to say there was a problem. The way things have been going computerwise over the last few days I wouldn’t be surprised if the version I got was different from others. (OK, more likely I have something wrong).
          Folk have not necessarily ignored the question incidentally (yet) as it only arrived on the site about 30 seconds before yours because of aforesaid problems.
  2. > TWINKLING – double def, including the metaphorical, as in “It happened in a twinkling”.

    Are we sure this is not an &lit?
    T= Time
    W = With
    Glimmering = Inkling.
    And a “time with glimmering” might be a twinkling?

    Just a humble guess.

  3. I had trouble getting started and finishing, but the middle bit flowed quite nicely.

    My first 10 minute session produced only four answers (12ac, 19dn, 25ac and 13dn). I eventually completed the puzzle in 35 minutes but with one cheat as I’d run out of time and ideas with 4dn (PUTSCH) unsolved.

    The other two late entries were LITCHI at 18ac and TWINKLING at 15dn.

  4. “Perhaps a Danish” made me smile! But the word play for 10 across had me confused for a while: I read “chip” as IC (Integrated Circuit), making “oddly back” completely superfluous.
  5. Back to normal following a trip “over East” as we say here in West Australia, and a very pleasant crossword to solve with pen and paper again. The online version seems to know exactly when I want to solve an across clue by selecting the nearest down clue out of some perverse machine logic.

    Agree with tim that this was an inventive delight. 35 mins all up. Didn’t know Syrah, but wines are not my strong suit and puzzled over cat=chap. Didn’t think of the real gone guy connection. Many good clues but COD to the Bishop’s paunch or lack thereof.

    Thanks to Uncle Yap for filling in for me yesterday. I picked a good day to phone in sick. When I finally tried to solve it I was left with several embarrasing gaps.

  6. 19:18 .. really enjoyable challenge. Much appreciated.

    First in RESPECTABILITY. Last in, ROSIE/SYRIA/STRAIGHT-EDGE all finally fell together, after more than a little barking up wrong trees.

    COD I enjoyed another colourful cleric at 22a. Well done on resisting “Bishop with stash pinched in dangerous area” or some such. Even the most modern vicars are expected to give up dope upon consecration.

  7. Had a dreadful 41 min with quite a bit of cheating. 10 min of that was trying to figure out 2 dn. I put ROSIE in out of desperation, and get no satisfaction from the unfamiliar CRS. Tried very hard to get some esoteric contruction for char(lotte) RUSSE.
  8. 32:09 after a slow start. Very few went in on the first reading, but I got 24 and worked up from there. I probably lost 5 minutes at the end on RABELAIS & LITCHI, both of which were new to me, but worked out eventually from the cryptic.

    COD probably 9 or 17.

  9. 11:23 – done on a train from Princes Risborough to High Wycombe. In my commuting days, people who knew me used to say “he always has the crossword done before the train gets to Wycombe”. Not quite true about the “always”, but just true today – filled in 16 as my last answer just as the doors opened.

    Knew that Shiraz had another name but still took quite a while to find it. Also made rather a meal of 25.

  10. An unusually brief 17 minutes for me. I found it far easier than yesterday’s. Only 2 down gave me slight trouble. It does help when one gets several long entries quickly, which was the case with 5 (“Racy writer” was a bit of a give-away”), 8 and 24.
    After that there was nothing else to do except tackle Brummie’s Guardian puzzle from last week.
  11. Just broke the 30 minute barrier.

    Worked my way up from the bottom woth RABELAIS, PERFORCE and PUTSCH the last three to go in.

    I often find myself working from the SE corner in both blocked and barred crosswords which makes me wonder whether there is something in the suggestion that compilers write easier clues at the end of both the Acrosses and the Downs because they have run out of enthusiasm for the current puzzle and want to get on to their next one.

    1. I think the SE corner aspect can also come from words having common endings – we have -ILITY, -NESS, -RY, -ENCE, -ANCE, -ONIC, -ED and -ING in today’s puzzle. If these cross in the SE corner that may explain why it’s an easy corner.

      If the setters are all like Azed and write the clues in their printed order, the “setter boredom” explanation could work, but other setters have told me that they do not do this.

  13. …l Iwas cut off in my prime. This is what you call an elliptical comment. I was going to say that everything was OK until I came to the innocuous-looking 4D. From the wordplay for “state school” I got Patech. I was surprised to find, on checking, that it has not made the dictionaries yet.
  14. 12:17 apart from 4D. I stared at the unlikely-looking P_T_C_ for about 10 minutes, rechecked all the crossing answers (even though I was 100% sure of all three), then gave up and went to Coach C to grab a sandwich and a Coke. As I was standing in the queue the word PUTSCH popped unbidden into my head. Some sort of subconscious vocabulary search must have been initiated without my knowing it. The human brain eh? Marvellous!
    1. Perhaps standing in a queue for a British Rail sandwich just makes a chap’s thoughts turn to violent revolution?
      1. Two good reasons not to live in Britain: BT and BR.
        One good reason so to do: you can buy the print version of the Times and so not miss the ellipses!
        In sunny Minjup, we have to wait about 6 weeks for The Oz to catch up with the print version!
    2. I think mine is a punch-card and slow at times – the letters eventually find the word if it is already stored and the time taken varies from instantaneous to overnight, and it seems to be unrelated to the rarity of the word, putsch came within 10 seconds, perforce took a little longer.
  15. What a contrast to last Tuesday. Here is an excellent puzzle full of inventiveness and unexpected twists and turns. Very much my cup of tea. 25 minutes to solve with no quibbles. Of several good clues I most enjoyed the slim Bishop.
  16. About 30 minutes for me, and I thought it very good puzzle. First in was STRAIGHT EDGE, last STRUT, where I was almost convinced to go with SPRIT, but which when checking afterwards I find doesn’t presently exist, as a shoot or stalk. Lucky guess. COD by a good distance for me is PUTSCH, which I didn’t get til late. “Change of administration” is a great definition and the surface works very well. Also liked NON-EXISTENCE. Things I learned today: ROSIE as CRS for tea, BLACK SPOT as an accident site, EUROSTAR as a train, different spelling for lychee/litchi. Regards to all.
    1. 50-odd years ago, “Accident black spot” used to be the text on a rather stark UK road sign. The closest pictures I can find to the sign I remember are here and here.

      Edited at 2009-08-18 08:02 pm (UTC)

  17. In answer to the comment on 4A, “for” can mean “because of” (He was well liked for his sunny disposition) but it can also mean “because” (He was well liked, for he had a sunny disposition).

    The original of 10A had just “chip” for IC but “oddly back” was added in the editing to make it more Times-friendly.

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