Times 24366 – “…fast women, slow horses, unreliable sources…”

Author   kororarekaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 35mins

I would have been about 10 minutes faster had it not been for the NE corner, which I found to be the only tricky bit, despite a number of things which were beyond my ken at other places in the puzzle. First in 4d, last 7d. Looking back on it, there were a lot of neat constructions, succinctly described.

Across
1 KENT + lUCKY, with Derby being the horserace, (cue Tom Waits) not the city. William Kent is more a landscape architect than a shoveller. If I had heard of him before now, I can’t recall where.
5 S.A. + F[A]RIday = SAFARI. It, as in “It girl” = S.A. (sex appeal) is crossword arcana, although It-girlness still has some currency. It took me a while to see what exactly went around, and I wasn’t helped by thinking the day was Saturday.
9 BRAND + N, E & W for latest. Brand is an Ibsen play, which was news to me.
10 MA[M + M.O.]N for one of the two masters. M for male is standard, and M.O. = medical officer is one of many crossword doctors, of which you should have a list.
12 Ask if stuck
13 OFF + CENT + RE=on. The first of our cricketing references.
14 T[(IN HOME)*]OURED = TIME HONOURED
18 S[LEDGE]HAMMER, a very useful tool for the do-it-yourselfer.
21 HIGH CHAIR, double definition, the second more cryptic than the first.
23 STAGE. Another d.d. with mount being a verb in both surface and cryptic reading.
24 D + AIN’T + unsteadY = DAINTY
25 A C[COLonel]ADE = ACCOLADE. If you’re not familiar with Jack Cade, then your solving future is limited.
26 LOG + (REG)< = LOGGER with definition I fell
27 UN + STEADY. Steady (boy/girlfriend) = date.

Down
1 King’s[I + (SOB)< ]Head = KIBOSH or nonsense, and not the more familiar sense of “a restraining mechanism”.
2 N.[EARL]Y.
3 UNDERLINe + Grip = UNDERLING
4 Ask if stuck
6 A + BAT + E and another cricketer. The ‘s is short for has in the cryptic.
7 A[R]MATURE for a framework or keeper, as in “something that serves to hold in place”. I think that works better than keeper as in some kind of guard or defence, but I leave that open to the forum.
8 INN + Union + EN + DO = INNUENDO. With the obliqueness and functionality, I vainly struggled to get tangent in there somewhere.
11 (MARIA A FORCE)* + N for new = AFRO-AMERICAN
15 O + (REV)< + SHOOT = OVERSHOOT or go past.
16 (LAPSED)* around HO=house for ASPHODEL, which is a bit like a buttercup, only green and wooden. Here’s one for comparative purposes. I’m not familiar with these plants and I hope I’m not allergic to them.
17 (AGGIE’S ON)* = SEAGOING, like some sailors=salts.
19 MAN + ANA = mañana, Spanish for tomorrow. Ana is “a collection of miscellaneous information about a particular subject, person, place, or thing”.
20 hiRE ME DYing
21 CUT + I.E. for a dish, as in pretty girl, once.

33 comments on “Times 24366 – “…fast women, slow horses, unreliable sources…””

  1. 50 minutes but was defeated by SAFARI at 5ac and MANANA at 19dn so had to use aids. Having done that I still didn’t understand them until coming here. Very annoyed to have overlooked SA for IT which I thought had finally penetrated my thick skull and even more disappointed to have missed ANA which I met, I think for the first time, only a couple of weeks ago yet had forgotten already.

    At 1ac I never heard of William Kent

    On 11dn, I noted that the writer Bonnie Greer objected to the use of AFRO-AMERICAN by another member of the Question Time panel last week, saying that African-American is the correct term. I can’t find anything in the dictionaries that prefers one over the other so perhaps this is a new area of controversy.

  2. Ditto Koro and Jack.

    I liked very much the neatness of the constructions here apart from SAFARI and MANANA. I doubt many would have solved those 2 without the checkers and the wordplay was tricky, thus out of character with the rest of the puzzle. A shame because otherwise it would have been one of those doable for beginners with enough to satisfy the experts. Needed to come here for the explanations for the 2 in question.

    1. MANANA was one of the clues I got immediately without any checking letters. “literary gossip” to indicate ANA is becoming very common these days, especially in the barred cryptics.
  3. Same sort of speed as kororareka – a bit over 20 mins, first in 4 and 11, very quickly, last corner NE because of armature – I think framework, did not know it as keeper so just solved on wordplay. 14a took far too long to get, no idea why, probably distracted by delight in 18a and trying to invent a story line that could use all today’s words!.
  4. I don’t think it was Ms Greer who objected to AFRO AMERICAN, but a member of the audience.

    About 30 minutes for me, struggling only with SAFARI and MANANA, as jackkt.

    1. Yes, I just checked and you are right that it was a member of the audience. And her objection was to Afro-Caribbean, saying it should be African-Caribbean. However her version is not in any of my dictionaries whereas the term she objected to is in all of them.
      1. Yes, I couldn’t see what the difference was supposed to be.  Perhaps the rejection of the normal term is grounded in some lunatic linguistic theory.  Or perhaps racists use the normal term as an insult often enough for some people to want a new one.  Does anyone here actually know?
        1. I think the only panelists who used the term “Afro-Caribbean” were Jack Straw and Baroness Warsi.
  5. Safari tripped me up too.

    Got manana – though through more luck than judgement.

    The other that I didn’t get was mammon, new word or rather definition.

    Thought I was going to really struggle today, but enjoyed this one in parts.

    W

  6. safari, which i guessed at having used an aid to get armature, was the only clue not understood before coming here; however i would disagree on manana which i thought was an excellent clue in an entertaining puzzle and my cod.
    1. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t be at all upset if that particular one was banished. On the other hand, it occurs regularly enough that it should almost be a conditioned response for experienced solvers; but somehow it usually manages to fool me, it does.
  8. 16 minutes, nothing too troubling, though SAFARI and KENTUCKY went in without full understanding of wordplay. MANANA is a kind of derogatory term over here, and a friend of mine uses MAMMON as his sign-in name at blogger, so those two came quickly.
  9. Beaten by MAMMON, where I recklessly threw in ‘batman’ after 20 minutes.

    Interesting puzzle. I particularly liked INNUENDO and the ‘open fire’ for SHOOT in 15d (my COD).

  10. Unlike the blogger, it was the NW corner that slowed me up. All I had was a tentative KENTUCKY (I didn’t recognize the landscape gardener). I filled the rest of the grid in 15 minutes, then racked my brains to think of a Norwegian beginning with B (thinking ‘drama’ was the definition), then Ibsen’s play came to me, after which the remaining clues came quickly. 21 minutes altogether.
    The two clues that stand out for me from a good bunch are 27 for it’s smooth surface and 17 for it’s deceptive use of ‘salts’. That delayed me getting ‘seagoing’; I would use a hyphen in that word as per Chambers, but I see COD lists it as one word.
    1. To avoid pedantic reponses like this one, it’s worth remembering the difference between it’s and its!
      1. I don’t regard your comment as pedantic, because it’s correct. I do regard it as a totally unnecessary and unwelcome comment, not worth making. If you cannot overlook a typing error in an informal expression of opinion you must be a rather sad creature. Presumably that’s why you choose to remain anonymous. You must have a compulsion to point out people’s errors if you do so two days after their post, when it’s a dead issue.
  11. Foolishly put in scale at 23 thinking it might be one of the seemingy endless list of horse-drawn contraptions that I can’t be bothered to bone up on (should that be “up on which I can’t be bothered to bone”?)

    That apart, 26 minutes. Like others I didn’t see how safari worked and forgot about ana.

    I’m with Sotira on COD with my pick also being overshoot for the use of open fire.

    Right, I’m off to water my asphodels.

  12. Hello all. Returning after a week away and out of touch in Bermuda. This one was about 20 minutes for me. The tough ones were SAFARI, where I took too long to see the familiar ‘it’=’S.A.’, and ASPHODEL, because I’d never heard of it. First in ABATE, last, the ASPHODEL. What I didn’t know today: Kent, Brand as a play, ARMATURE as a ‘keeper’. COD: INNUENDO. Regards to everyone.
  13. Welcome back Kevin.

    This is a straightforward puzzle with little touches of obscurity (such as BRAND = play) and old hat (such as IT=SA, which really is a knee-jerk response). I agree MANANA is easy if you do the bar crosswords, where ANA often crops up. I thought the device of cluing “Y” by using “27 ultimately” was a bit odd given the range of words ending in “y” the setter could have used.

    A pleasant enough 20 minutes.

  14. No problem except for SAFARI, which defeated me completely – with the checking letters I should have got it, but what a chewy clue.
    CUTIE was amusing.
  15. Too many embarrassing mistakes today to list them all. Probably the most embarrassing is not being able to work out the anagram of seagoing. My (feeble) excuse is that it should be (3-5). Chambers supports me but, unfortunately, Collins is with the setter at (8).
  16. I found this very easy except for the NE corner which took me a while to finish, solving time, 18 mins. Liked INNUENDO and SAFARI.
  17. 11:03, which felt slow.  Last in were LOGGER (26ac) and the elusive SEAGOING (17dn).  Unknowns were KENT, KENTUCKY (1ac), BRAND (9ac), KIBOSH meaning rubbish (1dn), and ARMATURE (7dn).

    On “it = sex appeal = SA”, I’m with Anonymous in “Beginners corner”.  From the meagre resources I have to hand, I see that SA was in the 8th edition of the Concise Oxford (1990) but is not in the 11th edition (2004), no doubt because it hasn’t been in use for donkey’s years.  Fair play in advanced puzzles, obviously, but a needless barrier to even the most verbidexterous newcomer.

    Clue of the Day: 20dn (REMEDY) – simple but effective.

    1. Interesting that SA / Sex Appeal has been taken out of the COED. It’s in the 6th edition Shorter Oxford (2007) as the second meaning.
  18. A ponderous 37 min after becoming becalmed in the NE. Kicked myself for no getting INNUENDO without assistance. SAFARI went in without being fully understood. MANANA was no trouble, but I got it a right tizzy trying to unscramble SEAGOING, even with the checking letters!
  19. … what’s the deal with writing “Ask if stuck”??! I got 4D but am still at a loss for 4A… can anyone help? thanks!
  20. 13:03 in my post-holiday catch-up. Also got 1A without knowing anything of Mr Kent.

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