Times 24,355 – A Puzzle of Two Halves

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A very unevenly divided 17 minutes today, the first two-thirds falling very quickly indeed, before some more substantial thinking was required, especially in the NE corner, to finish it off. One new word which I guessed (correctly as it turned out) from wordplay, though I’m glad it didn’t turn up as a clue at Cheltenham.

Across
1 CORONER – O(ccur) in CORNER.
5 BRIBERY – RIB in BER(R)Y; couple of non-obvious definitions involved, in plant biology the dividing structures on leaves can be called either ‘ribs’ or ‘veins’, while the graft involved is not the plant sort, but the sort that appears in local paper headlines when there’s corruption afoot in local planning offices.
9 EIDER DUCK – = “I’d a duck”. As the old joke says, how do you get down from an elephant? You don’t, you get down from a duck. I theng yew.
10 TANGO – those who take their pleasure in lying on a beach for their summer holidays will have noticed this phenomenon.
11 PINTO – PINT + O(ld) gives the horse.
12 HARMONICA – H(oover) + AR(kansas) + MONICA.
13 OYSTERCATCHER – avian and Shakespearian knowledge required to dissect this: the Eurasian oystercatcher is one of a number of birds with red legs; and Pistol is the character who in The Merry Wives of Windsor says “The world is mine oyster”; if Shakespeare didn’t invent the phrase, he certainly seems to be the first to have written it down. I was distracted by the fact that I had an excellent red-legged partridge for dinner at the weekend, and couldn’t get it out of my thinking…
17 STEPPING STONE – ST(reet) + EPPING’S TONE.
21 ESPERANTO – (PERSON ATE)*.
24 BWANA – WAN in B.A.
25 INDUS – INDUS(try).
26 HEARTACHE – HEAR + ‘TACHE.
27 SHALLOW – ALL in SHOW.
28 TALLY HO – TALLY (=”match”)+ HO(use).
 
Down
1 CREEPY – (PEER)rev. in C(aught) and (jett)Y.
2 REDINGOTE – RE + DINGO + TE; the one I didn’t know, but guessed as being more likely-sounding than, say, “redingome”; it’s a garment derived from “riding coat”.
3 NARROWS – N + ARROW + S.
4 ROUGH HEWN – = “Ruff” + (WHEN)*.
5 BAKER – BA(N)KER.
6 INTROIT – INTO IT(alian) around R(ex); for those unfamiliar with the convention (which I think exists largely in crosswords these days, rather than in people’s actual drinking habits) the Italian referred to is vermouth, usually served in the guise of a “gin and It”.
7 ENNUI – E(nglish) + U(nion) in (INN)rev.
8 YEOMANRY – I knew that the yeoman classes were a sort of freeholder from the English feudal system, but started by thinking the Arabian reference must mean horses were involved, which puzzled me, until I realised it’s YE + OMAN + R(ailwa)Y.
14 COSMONAUT – (MOONASCUT)*.
15 HIERARCHY – = “higher” + ARCH + y; these days hierarchies can refer to any sort of progression, but the literal meaning refers to the priestly orders.
16 ASCETICS – AS (C.E.) TICS.
18 PERUSAL – PER US AL(l), as “setters and solvers” encompasses us all…
19 ORBITAL – LabradOR BIT A Lout.
20 MAKE DO – double def.
22 PADUA – PAD + U(niversity) A(rea). At first I thought it was perhaps a little imprecise to equate “pad” with “bedsit”, but the definition seems to originally have referred to a single bedroom as much as to an entire house.
23 NOHOW – = “know-how”; if I’d thought about it at all, I would have said this would be hyphenated, but it seems I didn’t know what I was talking about, not no way, not nohow.

As an aside, my Cheltenham experience was a flying visit (and not one where I was delayed by having to do a second set of puzzles); I had a dinner engagement which, while involving delicious red-legged birds, unfortunately kept me from going to the Saturday night pub-meet, and on the Sunday my lift home departed very soon after the first session of qualifying so I didn’t get the chance to speak to many people. I had to wait for the results to be published yesterday to confirm that I’d achieved my personal target, which was to finish inside the top 25 and qualify for next year ahead of schedule; and to be honest, that feels like a respectable achievement given the quality of the field – congratulations to all those from these parts who reached the Grand Final, but clearly it seemed everyone apart from Mark Goodliffe was in a separate race for second place on the day! Now, I am just going outside to have a go at the Grand Final puzzles without peeking at Peter’s write-ups first…I may be some time.

36 comments on “Times 24,355 – A Puzzle of Two Halves”

  1. 8:16 – nice puzzle with a few diversions like trying to squeeze LODE=vein into 6A, GAT=pistol (roughly!) in 13, and looking for coat = RAIN-something at 2, before I’d a solution to 9. Didn’t see “us al(l)” at 18 but a nice change from dear old “Peru Sal”. And a brownie point for the lady in 12 having 6 letters rather than the usual 2 or 3.

    Edited at 2009-10-13 08:53 am (UTC)

  2. It was nice to cope with something a little easier after dealing with those championship final crosswords yesterday. You really do have to try them to grasp the extraordinary feat represented by Mark Goodliffe’s time – superhuman comes to mind!

    This one took me about 20 minutes with a guess at REDINGOTE and no real understanding of Pistol’s world at 17A. We haven’t had one of these silly references for quite a while, so a pity to see one creeping back in. Other than that a very enjoyable puzzle.

    1. > these silly references…

      13ac?
      And surely “the world’s my oyster” (as opposed to ashtray?) is one of the best-known bits of Eng. Lit. — even to science types.
      It was interesting to read on PB’s Cheltenham post about the demise of direct quotations; but heaven forbit we should all now be expected to be unfamiliar with the greatest works written in English?

      If that ever happens, I want my £25 back please.

    2. Compare it to the example given by Tony Sever only yesterday, for DOGBERRY at a guess – a Mastermind question masquerading as a clue, with no wordplay at all – that really qualifies as “silly” in a cryptic crossword contest. OYSTER=world is surely guessable without the detail about Pistol (which I didn’t know either), and you get a definition too.
  3. Well, even I found this easy (although guessed at the coat and the bird), but then the winner of £20 WH Smith vouchers would I suppose. (Sat 24311).

    I mention the above to confirm that those submitting solutions online do win sometimes. (Actually I mention it cos I’m cock-a-hoop).

    1. Well done you. And you’re right, next time I press the Submit button I shall feel just that tiny bit more hopeful that it could be me…
  4. The bottom half went in very quickly but I also got held up at the top taking my time over 30mins. Last in Redingcote which I guessed after seeing ‘dingo’. I did not thing an Introit was necessarily ‘noted’.

    Anonymous Nick

  5. Well, I’d like to thank my parents, my agent…

    One of the 50 or so people I have informed of my triumph has sent me a few unfinished clues to solve (from where I have no idea). I mananged all but the following.
    Captain perhaps said to complain about the colour of neighbour in the kitchen.
    He has (although I can’t vouch for) ?E?T?E.

    I imagine the answer is KETTLE (Captain Kettle, kettle as kitchen utensil) but can’t for the life of parse it.
    Any ideas?

      1. Yes, Thanks, I guess that must be it, although isn’t it the pot calling the kettle black rather than the other way round? I am being thick no doubt.

        I had already done the wiki search for the writer. What a splendid name.

  6. Not much to report here but a few resonances.

    1. My relevant joke/puzzle re 9ac is: “If you’re on a high roof and you only have an umbrella, a pint of beer and a duck, how do you get down?”
    2. REDINGOTE is a great thing to remember. The Frogs took over “riding coat” and transformed it into “redingote”; then the Poms re-imported it when toute les choses Française were très chic.
    3. “to arrive in time for” = MAKE, at 20, only occurred to me because of the salient line from “A Day In The Life”.
    4. 1ac will be forever under my skull after a tussle with a Pommie publisher who refused to acknowledge “coronial” to be a real word.
    5. ENNUI and HEARTACHE in the same puzzle.

    OK, maybe I just had a hard day. 11 minutes.

      1. Strange, I was going to ask the same question, but since I can’t see this as a true &lit and “moon” is part of the anagrist, the definition must be “one visits”, unless moon is doing double duty. I frequently have cosmonauts around to tea, so I didn’t think to quibble.
      2. That struck me too – “cosmonauts” by convention seem to be exclusively Russian. I wasn’t very keen on “moon” being part of both the wordplay and the definition either when it’s not really an &lit, or have I misunderstood?
        1. I guess you could see the cosmonaut as an all-purpose visitor and just use “He visits” as the def. An astronaut might have to go to Saturn instead for xwd purposes ….
          1. “One visits” is surely too weak as a straight def?
            So there’s at least an &lit-ish thing going on here — and it doesn’t work.
            Unless, of course, I’m wrong and such a one did actually get to the Moon.
            But who am I to quibble about a straight anagram with, at least, the right kind of flavour?
            1. Yes, fair enough – with the surface’s cut being a financial one. Conspiracy theories aside, only astronauts got to the moon, but until we get someone who says that the puzzle was spoiled because they put ASTRONAUT for this reason, I can’t get that excited about it.
  7. Had to resort to aids to finish this after reaching a standstill in the top half. That said I got 1ac on first look which doesn’t happen often!

    Laughed out loud when I got EIDER DUCK.

    Couple of new words/meanings for me: graft meaning BRIBERY, INTROIT and HIERARCHY re priesthood.

    Having trekked near Nanga Parbat I knew of the INDUS river.

    All in all a fun start to the day.

    Daniel

  9. I found this relatively easy going, until I came to BRIBERY, INTROIT & MAKE DO, which I stared at for so long I went to sleep. Must have been the combined effects of attempting the grand final puzzles last night and this morning together with the antihistamines. When I awoke the fug had cleared and I finished it promptly, although why MAKE DO troubled me in the first place I’ll never know. I wanted it to be CAME TO (fittingly), but surprisingly couldn’t make it stick.

    Bloomers caught me out again for a time, and the Pistol reference was a mystery (and I heartily endorse mctext’s comments; how else is one supposed to learn these things without reading the Complete Works?). As for redingote, it crops up quite frequently (the last time in May) and no longer troubles me.

    1. In return, I’ve recently learned about Tesla and Erdos.
      No way in the world I’d have known otherwise.
  10. Ran out of time on the commute with 5ac, 6dn, 8dn, 13ac, 15dn and 24ac missing, then used a solver to polish them off and stop myself thinkg about them. I had thought of B(RIB)ER(r)Y at 5ac but didn’t know the meanings of “graft” or “rib” that would have made sense of it. I’m starting to think my solving speed peaked at a very modest level some months ago and it’s all downhill from here.
  11. No time as done while stirring quince chutney but it felt “normal level”. Bottom upwards after dear Monica, last in 5a and 8d; partridge my first red-leg thought too, did not know 13a had them too but the bard quote and the clue came together in the end.
  12. Wrote the above from memory.
    Now that I check, the actual line is:

    “Why, then the world’s mine oyster“.

  13. Somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes having stopped the clock to deal with an interruption and then forgetting to restart. Top left went in as fast as I could write including redingote which, like Koro, I remembered from earlier in the year. Thereafter I worked round anti-clockwise, finally slowing to a crawl to get yeomanry, introit and bribery. In common with others I didn’t know the vein/rib or graft/bribery interchangeabilityness so found that a tough clue.

    COD to eider duck for the titter.

  14. I recalled being stumped by Redingote in May so it was first in today. Otherwise, a straightforward but entertaining puzzle with the Bribery, Yeomanry, Introit triplet holding out till last. I knew I only had to get one to get them all but which one? I don’t think anyone has made the usual complaint yet about our not being told how many Rs to remove from berry, so I shall.

    My dictionary has bwana as obsolete. Quite right too.

  15. About 35 minutes all told for me, held up in the NE like many others. Most of the rest went in very fast. First in CORONER, last INTROIT, which came back to me from youthful altar boy days. Congrats to those who did well in the competition. Regards.
  16. Drew a complete mental blank late last night on 2D and scribbled in RIDINGOSE, may have gotten it if I’d come back this morning.
  17. Found this harder than average, not helped by convincing myself of the existence of ‘bilkery’ for 5 across, which then left me no chance with introit.

    Still don’t see tango. Can someone clarify ?

    Paul

    1. If you’d got a tan on your summer holidays, then you might find that by autumn you were starting to see your tan go…
  19. Had to cheat with BRIBERY to finish in 27 min. The vein/rib synonism eluded me, and graft in NZ (& OZ I believe) means hard work. Apparently grafting meant digging in English dialect, so the word was probably imported by the gold miners. Otherwise a nice puzzle. COD: HARMONICA. INTROIT appeared somewhere else within the last couple of days.

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