Times 24375: – the day the hussy mis-stepped

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : 11 minutes – after disasters on Monday and Tuesday from not knowing obscure references, this was much more along my wavelength.

I made a few bungling guesses originally (particularly putting FISHING at 26 across), but the checking letters confirmed the correct answers. I had a few head starts here, I knew the city at 21 down (which I think appeared recently, so although it’s not the biggest place in the world, it could be still fresh in the mind). Not much to quibble about on the wordplay, so I expect there will be some pretty quick times. There’s even a little science and Latin in here! On with the show…

Across
1 METACARPAL: A CARP in METAL – one of the bones in the hand
6 SHAH: HASH with the S moved to the front
9 CH,A,GRIN: not sure why I didn’t get this the on the first look through, it was one of my last in
10 PAINTER: A in Harold PINTER who sadly recently became eligible for inclusion in the Times Crossword
12 FIGUREHEAD: my last in – not sure if it’s meant to be a double definition or the first half is a charade for FIGURE,HEAD
15 PAGODA: A, GOD in PA
16 POST,(s)URER: liked this charade
18 CAMELEER: ME(=this writer),LEE in CAR
20 BREWED: R in BE WED (have family) Edit: I think I was trying to write my own clue here, of course it’s W in BREED
23 CUT: got this from the definition, it’s TUC (Trade Union Congress) reversed
24 CHAPLAINCY: only saw partial wordplay while I was working the crossword – it’s CHAP, then IN in LACY, coming from “with broderie francaise” (oops – as pointed out in the comments, it is “broderie anglaise” – je me regrette)
27 G,RATIFY: the G coming from (signin)G
28 (s)TONE
29 ADULT,E,RATE: E from the start to E(xpect)
 
Down
1 M,ACE: M on top (on it)
2 TEA,RING: I was looking for a word that meant “becomes violent” at first, but the “becomes” is just a link word
3 CORPUS DELICTI: (CRUDE POLITICS)*
4 RAN,K,ER
5 APPLE,TON: easy enough from the wordplay, the name was vaguely familiar
8 HORSE TRADE: sounds like WHORE STRAYED. Not a phrase I’ve heard of, but gettable from the wordplay – hard bargaining, according to Chambers
11 INDETERMINATE: (EAT,DINNER,TIME)*
17 DERANGED: RANG in DEED, indeed
19 MUTAGEN: (ME,GAUNT)*
21 W,I,CHIT(=note),A: lengthy charade. A CHIT is a bill, and WICHITA is the largest city contained totally in Kansas (Kansas City is a larger city, but is mostly in Missouri)

30 comments on “Times 24375: – the day the hussy mis-stepped”

  2. Exactly 30 minutes. Didn’t know APPLETON, guessed MUTAGEN as the most likely placement of unchecked vowels. CHAPLAINCY was my last in.

    I also fell for FISHING at 26 before the realising my error.

    WICHITA may be small, George, but Glen Campbell’s song about the linesman was popular here so many will know it from that if from nothing else.

    I note yet another DBE at 1ac.

  3. 11 minutes? Oh well, guess I have a long way to go.
    Much of this was easy but there was stuff I found difficult and annoying.
    No doubt some doh moments to come but was stuck at 13ac with H?E and at 28ac with T?N? Got the latter like vinyl when started to think of S rather than ST for saint; the former I plumped for HIE and see that Chambers has it to hasten, but what within earshot is about I don’t know.
    If (big if) 22dn is PLAGAL then I am surprised at no blog explanation. Easy enough to guess but even after looking it up I still don’t know what it means.
    Came here for explanation to SHAH. I still have trouble with this sort of clue.
    Back to the drawing board.
    2. As lennyco points out below, the “within earshot” indicates the homophone pair of “hie” and “high”=”up”
    3. Coming back, I’m not sure why I left off plagal, it’s LAG in PAL, and a term used for a false (ish) ending in music
  4. I clicked the link for Appleton and was presented with a page from Britannica Online. Then, unbidden, a black rectangle with the words “Already a member? LOG IN” appeared over the middle of the window. I hit the X in the top right of the black rectangle to kill it and moments later the rectangle reappeared. Every time I killed it, it reappeared within seconds. They get today’s award for the most infuriating, blood-boiling web site.

    Rant over.

    Mike O, Skiathos.

  5. Anagrams provided the way in today, and mace and shah – isn’t the “much” redundant? No real delays, enjoyed working it all out as I went along so 20 mins, last in posturer.
  6. – Surely for 20ac it is BREED “have family”) with a W in, not R in BE WED?

    – I think the “much” in 6ac is trying to indicate that the S moves two places, right to the front, not just 1

  7. This was entertaining and much easier than the last three days. I had to guess at mutagen and plagal and thanks to Glen Campbell for Wichita. Hie also gave me some bother because I failed to lift and separate to get the High homophone.

    Solvers who struggled with Spotted Dog on Monday will be interested to see a recipe for it in today’s Times.

  8. I thought I had a clear round today and now find I’ve spelt delicti dilecti. No doubt the Latin scholars out there will tell me why this couldn’t be even considered a possibility. This one was a romp after yesterday’s. CODs to the two clever anagrams at 3d (the aforementioned delicti) and 19d (MUTAGEN).
  9. 18.03 .. took a long time to get going, but enjoyed the variety of clues and vocabulary. CAMELEER’s a brilliant word, and was my last one in.

    COD – has to be HORSE-TRADE, which certainly raised a smile.

  10. A fairly straightforward puzzle on the whole, though I had to wait for a fair number of letters in the grid before I got 24, being ignorant of the meaning of “broderie anglaise”. Even with every checked letter I was trying to think of some monastic order. That and 12 added 4 minutes to my solving time, making 34 minutes in all. Plagal was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t have confidence to enter it until I had the G and L to confirm it.
    I liked 6, 12, and 27 (all neat clues) and I smiled at 8, but thought the definition for ‘hitcher’ was very imprecise. Perhaps I’ve missed something, but I don’t see that a hitch-hiker is any more determined than any other sort of traveller. The wordplay thus far cried out for a punning definition.
    “After heading west” was a bit cheeky and verbose to indicate W. It could have presented problems in an across clue, but it was a satisfying puzzle to solve.
  11. Not on the right wavelength today, so it took nearly a full hour. Mind you, it’s the first one I’ve finished without aids in what seems like ages, so I’m happy with that.

    I agree that 20 has to be W in BREED, otherwise I don’t see where the R comes from.

    Like kororareka, I misspelt DELICTI. Dilecti seemed more plausible. I also didn’t know PLAGAL or MUTAGEN. Neither did I know CAMELEER or APPLETON, but both were easily derived.

    On a separate note – I’ve got the blog to Jumbo 840 ready for submitting, but I don’t think Pete gave me the access rights to permit me to post before he went away. Is there anyone else out there who can do it?

    2. Sorted now. I’ve been so busy at work today that I didn’t get to check my home email until I was on the train home, via my mobile phone. That was a frustrating experience in itself, with the signal going up and down like a yo-yo!

      You’re right, you didn’t have posting rights before.

  12. Back in the land of the living… sorry about the BREWED misfuddle, I didn’t write the blog that late or that drunk, maybe I was just making up wordplay that I wanted to see for the word.
  13. A pleasant if simple puzzle – a much more satisfactory 20 minutes than yesterday’s slog. Of all the truly great physicists that could be chosen, why the little known Appleton? It’s a bit like some of these obscure literary characters. At least the word play makes it easy. What with that, bones and some biochemistry things are looking up! HORSE TRADE made me laugh.
  14. The setter (BSc in Physics and O-Level in Latin) thanks you all for your comments. Why Appleton? Because he fitted the grid and he can be nicely clued with reference to Newton — and we should keep alive the memory of our Nobel prizewinners in Physics!
    1. Thanks for checking in from your blogger (B.Sc. in Chemistry). I used to have an office underneath B.N. Brockhouse (Nobel Prize for Physics, 1984) when I lived in Canada, he passed on a few years after I moved from there.
  15. Enjoyable puzzle, not too difficult, 27 mins. COD ANGLING, also esp liked HIE, HITCHER and SPACECRAFT.
  16. Got done in about 30 minutes, which last night equalled two innings of the World Series. First in SHAH, last METACARPAL/MACE. Fairly enjoyable all round. The straying lady at 8D raised both a smile and an eyebrow simultaneously since, I guess, we AMericans are a bit prudish. I also liked the CAMELEER and SPACECRAFT. Regards.
  17. Woe is me! Struggled mightily, but had to go to the aids to finish in somewhere abount an hour including interruptions, so a miserable failure. Like most of this week, on reviewing, I can’t see what the problems were. A tidy challenge with COD either HORSE TRADE (titter) or CAMELEER. Hopefully the antibiotics will clear my head as well as my bugs.
  18. 56 minutes – anything under an hour is good for me these days. Vaguely heard of corpus delicti without exactly knowing the definition: the body of evidence that constitute the offence; the objective proof that a crime has been committed, sometimes mistakenly thought to refer to the body of a homicide victim. (Latin: body of crime)

    I think the question mark in 1A is just enough to absolve it from accusations of definition by example.

  19. 9:55 with one mistake in my post-holiday catch-up – wrote CORPUS DELICTI, then remembered the term “predilection” and decided it must be derived from Latin (true in fact, but must be a different word), so went for “DILECTI”. Should have followed my first instinct like a sensible quiz contestant. Appleton was new to me but “had to be right”.
  20. In the US, a soldier may be a ranger (US Army), not a ranker. And George (G) was a king, so I submit ranger
    as the answer to 4dn (Soldier was in charge of King and Queen).

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