Times 24376

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time taken to solve – 30 minutes which would have been 10 minutes less but for a delay at the end trying to work out 1ac, 1dn and 15ac. Friday’s puzzle is often difficult so this one came as a welcome relief but there’s very little to say about it really.

Across
1 K(OP)ECK(s) – Kecks are breeches, originally in N.E. England apparently
4 H,AMPERE,D(epartment)
10 CATER,P(I’LL)AR
12 (s)TICKING
14 VEGETAL – G(r)E(a)T inside VEAL
15 RECALCITRANTLY – (Cleric at)* + L inside Tyrant*
17 WARS OF THE ROSES –   SOFT + Horse* inside WARES
21 RIDE OUT – Sounds like “Wry doubt”
22 S(PEN)DER – PEN inside Reds (rev). The poet is Sir Stephen Spender.
24 RHETORICIAN – R + (Hate ironic)*
26 D(aughter),OLOROSO – A musical direction meaning Sadly
27 CHEESE – See + H(usband) reversed inside C (of)  E. Lancashire is a type of cheese.
 
Down
1 KICK TURN – In skiing a kick turn is performed by swivelling each ski separately through 180 degrees
3 COR,DIAL – COR from My!
5 ALL OVER THE SHOP
6 P,ARAGON – The Spanish kingdom from which Henry VIII’s first wife took her title
7 REVITALISED – ITAL(ians) inside REVISED. Interesting that none of the usual dictionaries nor the SOED gives “cram” directly meaning “revise” yet it’s in the pocket Collins Thesaurus.   
8 DO,ABL,E(xpenses) – ABL from Lab*
9 PILGRIM FATHERS –  L + GRIM inside (Ship after)*
13 COCK AND BULL
16 ESTRANGE – Hidden
18 S(CO)URER
19 RHENISH – (Her shin)*. The German runner is the Rhine and the apostrophe indicates what’s required here. Many will know the word from the name of the wine.
20 FR,1,END

32 comments on “Times 24376”

  1. A good workout. Thanks for explaining the two I missed – KOPECK and DOLOROSO. The clue for FRIEND is a beauty. This puzzle was also a fine example of how to clue three-lettered words – all four were sublime, especially EMU AND ICE.
    Michael
  2. The mists of the past few days seem to be lifting. 23 minutes, but with much time trying to justify KOPECK. It just had to be what it was, but I could not find any supporting evidence. Won’t. single out a COD, because of overall quality.
    1. According to my recently acquired Chambers Slang Dictionary Kecks, Kacks, Kaks, Keks and Kex all derive from Kicks and were originally Liverpool slang for trousers, but from the 1960s onwards can also mean underpants or knickers. And Keck singular is US slang for pocket.
  3. Slowish by steady solve.
    Spent a while wondering if olorish was a sweet sherry and if dolorish was a word. Penultimate in was KOPECK which gave me the unknown KICK TURN.
  4. I went for kacks and got kopack, seemingly not perturbed by the fact that it wasn’t a word; an error compounded bu the fact that I knew what a kopeck was. Maybe next week will see an improvement. There was a lot to like here, but I ticked the PILGRIM FATHERS and the WARS, which gets my COD.
  5. I found this the easiest of the week, finishing in 25 minutes, but had some queries on the way. The only meaning of KECK that I knew was ‘retch’. On arriving home I checked the latest full Chambers and that doesn’t have the required meaning either, but seeing the comments above I note COD does.

    I’ve resolved query number two, which concerned VEGETAL, which is adjectival, yet there appeared to a plural noun definition. I wondered if there was a missing apostrophe, but on re-reading it I see the solver has to add an ellipsis or a ‘this’ after ‘are’ to get the adjectival form.

    Query number 3 concerns the cryptic grammar of 9, which I haven’t resolved. The wordplay intends us to put L+GRIM in a jumble of SHIP AFTER (as noted by jackkt), but the present indicative, ‘storms’ (which has to be taken as intransitive to work at all) at the end of the sentence interferes with that reading when it is part of a container clue. Surely what is needed is an adjectival or past/present participle anagram indicator if it is to be placed at the end. To put it another way, the clue, properly parsed, gives us L + GRIM + a jumble of IN SHIP AFTER.

    Several clues were rather nice, notably 21, 1dn, and 2 and 19 (for the possessive ‘runner’s’ in a very neat surface).

    1. my 10th edition Chambers certainly has keck = kex = trousers

      nor do I see that there is any problem with vegetal being what herbs are…

      nor, sorry, does the wordplay for 9dn seem difficult to follow. the pilgrim fathers are sailors from plymouth. This is found by incluint L + grim = dark in “ship after.”

    2. I think 9dn just about worls if you take “storms” as a plural noun, as you might (just) say, for example, “last week’s London storms”, meaning the storms last week in London.
      1. That’s an ingenious reading, though the cryptic reading becomes very strained. It means we have to take “ship after” as a sort of adjectival phrase to go with ‘storms’ as the plural noun. As you say, it can be made to work after a fashion with some very convoluted cryptic grammar, but I don’t find it satisfactory.
        1. I agree that it’s pushing the envelope of cryptic grammar and stretching anagram indicator convention, so not entirely satisfactory. But it was the only way I could make it work.
  6. Enjoyed this, 11 minutes, was a little surprised that’s as long as it took. A lot of inspired guesswork along the way – KOPECK from part wordplay, SPENDER from wordplay, DOLOROSO from definition, PILGRIM FATHERS from part wordplay (PILGRIM went in straight away, the rest took the checking letters).

    Really enjoyed the clues for CHEESE, FRIEND and RYE DOUBT.

  7. Kecks is in pretty common usage here “oop north” so no problems there.

    I remembered oloroso from the old sherry adverts that starred Orson Welles (I’m pretty sure Michael Palin spoofed them some time) so was able to take a safe guess at doloroso.

    So, 21 minutes and no passes.

    Nothing in the Uxbridge English dictionary (closest I found was paradox: flying doctors) but how about hampered: attacked with a picnic basket or via: what the gestapo used to strangle people with.

  8. A pleasant stroll. Last in, in common with other solvers, were the kopeck and kickturn pair. I don’t know why they were so difficult because I did know kecks for pants.
    1. 23:01 .. with the ‘flu. I had a lot of trouble with the 1s, KOPECK being the last one in.
  10. 26 mins, with, like, some others, KICK TURN (new to me) going in last, after I found KOPECK. Very easy apart from that NW corner. COD CORDIAL which I saw as three-part, two definitions and the wordplay.
  11. Is anybody else having trouble accessing the crossword on line? I’ve been getting the dreaded green parrot 404 error message since early this morning. I’m currently engaged in a fruitless exchange of e-mails with them in which they blame “circumstances beyond our control”
    1. No difficulty logging in here at the moment, jimbo. Perhaps try deleting cache and cookies and restarting the browser? Or switch browsers.
      1. Just now (using Internet Explorer) I found I had to delete not only my cache and cookies, but also my internet history.  Why this should be the case, I don’t know – but I doubt it’s circumstances beyond the control of those responsible for the wretched site!
      2. Finally got in using Internet Explorer after deleting everything in sight. Foxpro still won’t go in.
  12. 8:48, with the last couple of minutes spent on CORDIAL (3dn), KOPECK (1ac), and the unknown KICK TURN (1dn).

    Dyste’s grammatical queries about 14ac (VEGETAL) and 9dn (PILGRIM FATHERS) are spot on.  The setter must be right out on the “couldn’t give a toss” end of the spectrum, as 15ac (RECALCITRANTLY) suffers from the same problem as 9dn: the wordplay works out as RECALCI “at L is imprisoned by” TRANTY, which is obviously gibberish.

    Only one dubious definition, though: the over-optimistic “easy to achieve” for DOABLE (8dn).

    Clues of the Day: 21ac (RIDE OUT), 3dn (CORDIAL).

    1. I’m glad people have made the point about 15A and 9D. I’ve objected to this sort of thing being done with clauses containing finite verbs before.

      Tom B.

  13. Eventually got there and found it very easy – less than 15 minutes. I guessed Mark would be unhappy with some of it!! Strange puzzle to end the week with.
    1. Agree not hard – 14 mins in car on way to London – but I think I am getting too old to worry unduly about quibbles that did not stop me getting the answer correct, fun though they are to read. I agree with today’s, and the pilgrims were my last in.
  14. Took me 40 minutes, like others it took a while to unscramble the 1’s, as well as RECALCITRANTLY. Last in for me was DOLOROSO, since I’m not good with the musical directions. COD: FRIEND, nifty. BTW, I’m unaware of ‘keck’ being slang for anything over here in the States. Regards.
  15. Re some of the clues queried here in comments, some thoughts. VEGETAL – this seems to me OK unless the device of “herbs are ANSWER” in a clue is not accepted. Agree everyone does not like this idea and it’s only used sparingly but I do not see it as in principle wrong.
    PILGRIM FATHERS – I know one gets into deep water with arguments about nounal anagram indicators, but some say they can be used in certain circumstances, I think this is maybe what is intended here “ship after” “storms” ie plural noun. RECALCI TRANTLY – “organised” a cleric gave RECALCI (I think nobody’s disputed this) with the rest being L = length imprisoned by (tyrant)*. I saw ‘at’ as indicating position. I thought maybe ‘at length’ rather than ‘at length’s’ might have read a little better and been more logical but otherwise it seems OK.
    1. I overlooked the clue to RECALCITRANTLY until I read markthakkar’s post. He’s right that the clue is problematic. As you say, ‘at’ is just a positional indicator, which is fine, but then that rules out the ‘s after ‘length’. With the apostrophe s, it is, indeed, nonsensical. The odd thing is that removal of the apostrophe s does not harm the surface and makes the clue workable, so what’s it doing there?
  17. 8:59 in my post-holiday catch-up. Slowed slightly by drawing in the bars for 17A at 15A, though resolved failrly swiftly.

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