Times 24386

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 24:37

A real struggle this one, though maybe I was under the “blogger’s curse”. Apart from a pencilled-in VERB at the end of 17, 26A was my first answer. I then misunderstood the wordplay in 22D and invented an “IDIST” from a replacement of the E in “id est”. This was only entered lightly, but overconfidence in it led me down the duff path of pondering what “grient” might mean from “these days = A.D.” and decline =?= GRADIENT at 21. But all solved in the end, and there’s some good deception in this one, little of which seems unfair. With PIPETTE and BARYON included, Jimbo should be in clover!

PS – just did Times 2 puzzle no. 5000 – a classic bit of fun from John Grimshaw and a good excuse to repeat my occasional advice not to ignore your paper’s quick crossword.

Across
1 S(UP)PORT – two difficulties here for me – “further forward” being UP rather than ON, and “game” leading to a synonym rather than an example.
5 POT = lot of money, O.M. = order (of merit), A/C = (an) account. If you want to be really picky, the Potomac flows into Washington as well as out of it, but the deception in “capital outflow” is worth the slight inexactness.
10 DUE(t) – the key here being to see “one” in “song one can’t sing” as a number, not a synonym for “you”. And to see how to separate “not quite as expected” into truncation indicator, link word and def.
11 AT TEN = “when news is on”,D – overseas solvers may not know that “The News at Ten” has been ITV’s flagship bulletin for most of the last 42 years – here’s a sample including the current opening sequence and “bongs”.
12 COMB INES = “to tidy Spaniard’s hair” – a classic “close the gap” trick
14 EMINENT DO = (mentioned)*, MAIN = “gas supplier” – very hard because I simply didn’t know the phrase – essentially it’s the legal principle behind compulsory purchase. And also because “government right or wrong” needs separating in the right way
17 IRREGULAR = partisan, VERB = “part of speech” – “part of speech” immediately suggested verb or noun, and “go” is more obviously verb than noun, but I coudn’t see partisan = IRREGULAR = a soldier not belonging to an established army unit.
21 DEC(A.D.)ENT
23 SIESTA = “see Esther” – “when one’s out in the heat” is a nice deceptive def., but replay my usual mutter about “good book” for a single book of the Bible.
25 AD(vertisement) = “one trying to sell”,A=a – I wondered about AVA, with the false abbreviation V = vendor, before seeing the light
26 INVOLUNTARY – (to run, vainly)*, with “jogging” as the anagram indicator
27 DE(ME)TER – Demeter is a Greek goddess and hence “Olympian”. Dimly remembered her after seeing the wordplay
28 BR(END)AN – bran is refuse from milling. Brendan was an Irish monk who possibly visited North America – used by former Times xwd editor Brian Greer for use as his Guardian xwd pseudonym – he’s also “Virgilius”, another Irish monk, and has worked in the US for a number of years. Whether this is his “signature”, a nod from another setter, or simple coincidence is anybody’s guess
 
Down
1 SALA(A)M(i) – “sliced” seemed a surprising truncation indicator, but when slicing a salami, you start at one end, so it’s fine
2 PIPETTE = “Pip ate” – Pip is the main character in Great Expectations. I know some of you pronounce “ate” differently but you must have heard the “ett” version. If anyone needs explanation about pipettes, it’s amazing what you can find on YouTube.
3 OFF = unsatisfactory, ENDING = conclusion – minor confusion possible because “unsatisfactory” could be the def.
4 T = temperature, OOT = reversal of too=excessively
5 PROM = esplanade = walk, ON = further, TORY = right
6 THROB = (both, R=run)*
7 MAD = crazy, ON = about, N.A. = not available = unavailable
8 C(R)EASING – R in ????ING was easy to guess, but the right verb took me a long time to find
13 WELL I NEVER – cryptic def (“Always sick, me?”) and plain def
15 O(BED(I)E)NCE – the Venerable Bede was another monk, and monks take vows of obedience. Trouble for me from thinking of the “silence” also observed by some monks
16 WIN = “have success in”,D(WAR = fight)D – “two died” = two instances of d. = died
18 R(E.C.,L.A. = “two cities”)IM – had to be “re-something” but {RIM = limit} was difficult, as was the implication that reclaimed land is “rescued”
19 BUST = breast, ‘ARD = “commonly not tender” – initial puzzlement because BUZZARD fits the def and some of the wordplay
20 BAR(Y)ON – a subatomic particle at least as heavy as a proton, which just happened to get a mention in a University Challenge question the other day. A good show for practice purposes – as well as general knowledge, it includes questions like “Which four letter word can mean all of the following ….”
22 DEIST – move the I at the beginning of “id est” (= that is, Lat.) to the middle
24 B(L)OB – a nice easy one to give me some encouragement just after getting 26.

38 comments on “Times 24386”

  1. Really struggled this morning. Had only solved 13 of the 30 after half an hour and still have another ten left after using aids. Knew if was going to be a tough one when POTOMAC was defined as ‘Capital outflow’. Liked PIPETTE and WELL I NEVER. Have never heard of EMINENT DOMAIN. Looking forward to understanding the ten answers I’m still missing!
  2. If PB found this tough then I’m more than happy that I solved it in 45 minutes with only one resort to aids, to get BARYON at 20dn. I started out very much on the setter’s wavelength and apart from 14ac the top half went in with hardly a pause for breath. I spotted EMINENT and DOMAIN as the two most likely words to fit with all the checkers but I didn’t know the expression.

    In the lower half I had IRREGULAR VERB, WELL I NEVER,INVOLUNTARY and BLOB in place quite early but then I became really bogged down in the SE corner. After a while I decided to use a thesaurus to remind me of various ranks of peer and spotted BARON as a possible, making the word BARYON which I’ve definitely never met, so I looked it up to check it. Once that was in the SE fell quite quickly and the SW which I hadn’t given much attention to this point went in with very little delay.

    Did anyone else have trouble accessing the puzzle this morning? I kept getting 404 errors.

    1. Forgot to say, I don’t often do CODs these days but I really liked 1dn.

      The Times have now replied to my complaint and acknowledged there were technical problems.

  3. 22:18 here. One of my rare times faster than Pete. Yay!
    1D SALAAM was first in, which gave me ATTEND, but I didn’t get much else straight away and it became a bit of a slog without ever getting totally stuck. I’ll go for PIPETTE as COD, even though I tried to make TWIST fit in there for a while!
  4. 30 min, but needed assistance for 14 ac EMINENT DOMAIN, and don’t understand the PROMONTORY wordplay. Otherwise there seemed to be less to this than initially met the eye. COD, the aforementioned 14 ac. Very neat indeed.
  5. I really enjoyed this.

    Promontory made me laugh when I finally untangled it, prom = walk, further = on, right = tory, definition = point.

  6. This was a tricky solve with one mistake. There was lots of amusing wordplay and I particularly liked the clues to the 3-letter words with “one trying to sell” making a nice change from “poster”. Eminent domain was totally unknown for me but, after I got the main bit the rest came easily from the anagram.

    I was unsure whether or not I had made up baryon. This made my attempt to solve 23 all the more tentative. I ended up with miasma for no good reason. After I realised what the right answer was it took me an even longer time to see Esther.

  7. An excellent fun puzzle which, if I timed myself more accurately, I might have solved faster than Peter, even if he was suffering the “I might not finish this” panic that comes in the early morning when it’s your turn to write the blog. As it is I can only claim 25 minutes.

    Lots of really good clues and only one real horror – the awful use of Esther at 23A – what a shame. I was convinced 19D had to be a tit of some sort until 26A scuppered that idea. Good to see BARYON from particle physics.

    Thanks to the setter

  8. I must have been lucky today, because I finished in 24 mins and had all but the SE corner filled up in about 12 mins. Curiously no clue stood out but I like it when everything is unambiguously clear after solving as here. It may have helped that I had come across EMINENT DOMAIN in a puzzle before without recalling precisely what it meant.
  9. Thank you for your detailed blog Peter. My grid’s no longer an embarrassment of white squares!
  10. Not the easiest, but finished in just under half an hour.

    Am I the only one who spent too long trying to get “tit” into 19D?

      1. I tried both “tit” and “boob” before getting to BUST! Notwithstanding my exchange with Lennyco yesterday over GODDAM, I think that both “tit” and “boob” in their rude sense would still be a a mite too risqué for The Times cyptic, but these days one never knows.
  11. Like everyone else I did not know EMINENT DOMAIN, or BARYON. My one quibble concerns 23a SIESTA. Surely you have the SIESTA out OF the heat, rather than IN it.
    1. I think you can read “in” as “during” – here’s a site with “in the heat of the day” in relation to siestas.
  12. really tough but so satsfying to finish. had to be Eminenet Domain i guess but my chambers 20C doesnt have it as a phrase at all and doesnt appear on firts couple of pages of google -at least it didnt
    when i looked

    i would like to nominate Salaam as COD or Obedience…
    took me a long 90 minutes
    agree with peter about 1 across too

    2. I’m a bit surprised by this – “eminent domain” is in the entry for “eminent” for all the recent copies of C I’ve got (back to 1988), and in my old 1930s copy of the original 1901 version plus supplement. But it’s possible that it dropped out for some versions 40-odd years ago.
  13. I made steady progress through most of this in the first 30 minutes and was then left with 5, 6, 12, 14, 20 and 23. Eventually saw what I should have seen far earlier, that 6 was a simple anagram, but I was hooked on a homophone. 12 and 5 followed quickly, 14 (a pure guess, though I was sure of DOMAIN) rather more slowly. I had no idea for 20 and resorted to Bradfords, though that was perhaps premature because the wordplay is pretty clear. That gave me SIESTA though I failed to understand the wordplay. Ditto 17. Fifty minutes in the end.
  14. Did this in 8mins Peter, though I’d never heard of EMINENT DOMAIN, last one in. I too put IDIST at first.

    But, I’ll wager, despite BRENDAN, it’s not one of Brian’s!

    (off to buy a hat to eat)

    1. 50? Who are the other 49 enigmatists? I’d make the same bet because I can’t imagine Brian using “good book” for Esther – I’d make a small bet that this trick didn’t appear in his reign as xwd ed.

      Like many slow solves, I can imagine a faster alternative in which “back = SUPPORT” comes to mind instantly and a couple of freebie downs come from it. But well done anyway, he says through gritted teeth.

  15. 29:19 .. much delayed by SALAAM and LAP OF HONOUR (which I was sure was ‘cup’ or ‘top’ of something).

    A gale force 8 puzzle, gusting storm force 10.

    COD to 12a COMBINE for pure devilment.

  16. A slow start coupled with a slower middle and slowest end. The only thing completely new was the eminence, but the rest was very well hidden. I didn’t help myself by penning voluntarily at 26, thinking that didn’t sound quite right but all the letters were there (except they weren’t). That rather delayed the bottom half for a while. I was thinking more along the lines of booby or boobook at 19. Too many good clues for a COD. I think I’ll chalk that one up as a win for the setter. Well done.
  17. Had two left after an hour, and I resorted to aids for those. I don’t think I would have got them otherwise. Those were 22 & 28.

    I didn’t know EMINENT DOMAIN, DEIST or St BRENDAN.

    Quite glad everyone else found this hard. Not just me for a change!

  18. Slow off the mark and had to abandon half-done for a meeting. 13, 20, 26 first in (I love particle physics words). On return finished quicker apart from 14, put in the two words with no idea why as they seemed all that fitted and relieved to see not alone in that. No exact idea of time, about 15 mins twice I suppose. Other last-ins were siesta and bustard – I did wonder briefly if buzz was a slang term that had escaped me.
  19. 13.40 so a speedy time. Always good to be inside PB’s time. BUT 1 mistake… I was left with a choice between EMINENT and EVIDENT DOMAIN and could not make a better case for either so, you guessed, I plumped for the former.
    BARYON was only vaguely known and only got SIESTA from the cryptic definition.
  20. A corker of a puzzle. Some very clever, ingenious and deceptive stuff, but nothing unfair. All times under 15 mins seem to me superlatively good. No measurable time for me. Completed in stages over the day, with a little help from an old friend (Bradford’s for a list of saints that would fit). Like most others, I’d never heard of EMINENT DOMAIN nor of BARYON, getting both from the wordplay alone. I was pretty sure Jimbo wouldn’t like the SIESTA/see Esther stuff. It’s OK by me, but then my homophone standards are not as exacting as his. The convention that “good book”, as opposed to “the good book”, can denote a single book rather than the whole Bible now seems sufficiently well-established to pass muster, albeit at the risk of irritating Peter B.
    1. I don’t think “well-established” is the point – if something’s wrong it remains wrong, however many people do it – like doing 35 m.p.h in a built-up area. But even then, it’s only well-established at the Times as far as I know – in other puzzles, I don’t think you’ll see it.

      For me, clues should be explainable to beginners without having to use previous crosswords as an excuse for anything, or uttering the dreadful words “cryptic crossword convention”.

      1. I understand what you’re saying. But I don’t think we are dealing here with a simple matter of right or wrong, as in observing or not observing a speed limit. Like it or not, there are such things as xword conventions. For example, some definitions (“banker”=”river” is, I suppose, the most famous/notorious) exist only in the world of xwords, but you learn to watch out for them. And interpretation of the conventions varies a bit from paper to paper. Personally, I’m with you in not much caring for the “good book” usage that has now crept into the Times cryptic, but I think a case can be made for denoting any one of the books in the Bible as a “good book” – not a great one, maybe, but at least as good a case as for calling a river a banker.
        1. I used to moan about “banker” for river too – until I was reminded of the considerable range of meanings of the “-er” suffix. Now it makes sense, though it does still seem odd that the meaning which justifies “banker” is almost never used for any other -er word, in the same inventive way as the meaning for “flower”.

          I don’t mind explaining to people that words may be used in a perverse but still logical way – that seems like what you should expect from a cryptic crossword.

  21. Found the downs a lot easier than the acrosses and the top half harder than the bottom. EMINENT DOMAIN was a big issue in Australia (and in the US) in recent years so it was close to mind. I was walking along the POTOMAC yesterday.
  22. Took an hour to get this, very clever all round. “See Esther” is of course a bit of a stretch. DUE is very very good. No time for more. Regards.
  23. I put in ‘siesta’, but only because I had the i, s, and a and couldn’t for the life of me think of any other word. I suspect I wouldn’t have twigged to it even if I had pulled down my bible and gone through the table of contents chapter by chapter.
    Having got ‘pipette’, ‘offending’, ‘toot’,& ‘throb’ in at the beginning, I imagine ‘lap of honour’ would have come soon enough, but it helped that it had appeared in another puzzle fairly recently; I don’t think I had known the term.
    ‘baryon’ is the kind of clue I like: I had never heard the term, but having got the ‘y’, I knew it had to be the solution. As I think Peter has said, quoting Sherlock Holmes, once you eliminate the impossible, etc. (‘couynt’?)
  24. I spent too much time trying to make FIESTA work, after all it is an outdoor celebration in a hot country. Also fell for BUZZARD and IDIST at first. I would be very surprised to see the slang meaning of TIT in the Times.

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