Times 24399 – for relief

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : Grrr – you know how it is, you get the crossword printed, you’re settled up nice and comfy on a cold wet night, you get about two thirds of the way through and you get a phone call. I completely understand those who cut themselves off completely from the outside world. Once I got off the phone I whizzed through the last few hold-outs (all on the left hand side) and was done in 28 interrupted minutes. It seemed to me that there were a lot of P’s in this crossword, four of them checking, I wonder if the setter was looking to cross the streams?

And a cheerio for now to Richard – for the last two years we’ve shared the Thursday spot, and before that he did it alone. Richard dates back to the beginning of this blog and the days where there were few comments and fewer bloggers. I’ll miss his gentle irreverence, and look forward to my new Thursday roommate (Peter hasn’t made an announcement yet, so I won’t spoil things).

Across
1 CAUCASUS: AS in CAUCUS – this tripped me once before, but I have a friend from Azerbaijan now, so I’m a bit more familiar with this Eurasian range
9 CATTLEYA: LEY in T.A. after CAT. Got this from wordplay, hadn’t heard of the orchid
10 BEAU: Sounds like BOW
13 PI,RATE: PI for good seems to be popping up more than G lately
14 CROUPIER: OUP in CRIER – the handler of a roulette table
15 PERDITA: (I,PARTED)* – reference to the character in “The Winter’s Tale”
16 SPOOFED: SPOON-FED without the N (either end of NutritioN) – I liked this wordplay
20 DEC,1,MATE: missed it by two days
22 TROOPS: SPORT reversed about O(=ball), I think I’ve seen this wordplay before
23 MOTHER TERESA: (EMOTES RATHER)*, amusing surface, but I don’t remember her doing a lot of emoting, just wandering around looking frail
26 NOSINESS: SINES (ratio of the opposite angle to the 12 down) in NOS
27 EXCUSE-ME: double definition, the dance being one where you change partners
 
Down
2 ADELAIDE: LED reversed in A,AIDE – she’s on the cheapo wine bottles!
3 CLUB SANDWICH: CLUBS(suit) then WHICH without the H around AND
4 SMOLLETT: MOLL(Flanders) in SETT(a badger’s burrow) – got this from the definition
6 STUDIO: I,DUT(y) reversed in SO
7 BETA: ABET with the A moved to the bottom (in the vertical answer)
8 M,ANNE,RED: got this from the wordplay – artificial or stilted
12 HIPPOPOTAMUS: (PUP SHAMPOO IT) – I loved this clue, great anagram and use of “mucky pup”. When I was in England a few years ago I saw a show called “Balderdash and Piffle” (never made it to the US, sadly) and that was one of the words they were hunting down.
15 (im)PEDIMENT: a small triangular crowning structure
17 PATHETIC: double definition
19 RELEASE: REAL EASE without an A
21 A,GREED: nice little clue
24 TOSH: H,SOT all reversed

32 comments on “Times 24399 – for relief”

  1. 34 min of fits and starts and eventually cheats after spluttering to a stop with 5 to go. ADELAIDE which I should have got and CATTLEYA which I would never have solved were the problems. I had fiddled around with CAT, LEA and TA and gave up. LEY I had only come across in ley lines. COD for me was SPOOFED.
  3. I ran out of quality solving time (40 minutes) with 7 unsolved and picked away at these in snatched moments until eventually giving up and using a solver to polish them off.

    Rosselliot’s comments about CATTLEYA also cover my experience exactly.

    I had noted an apparent shortage of anagrams today yet I failed to spot two amongst my unsolved clues, namely EMPORIUM and PERDITA. I didn’t know the Shakespeare character but if I’d realised 15ac was an anagram I expect I would have guessed the correct answer. I also didn’t know the term “pathetic fallacsy” and this prevented me from getting 17dn.

    I made heavy weather of this and was unable to finish it without resorting to aids so I am wondering if this was ths hard one we were expectig or is that to come tomorrow.

  4. Got there in 50 minutes. quite pleased…seeem to take an age to get going. Mother teresa first in….once had all 12 letter words some of the corners filled in quite quickly.
    i didnt like the double definition of fallacy and contempt as pathetic but there we go!
    Clue of day i agree was Spoofed-nice!
    I think we should havbe a weak clue of the day (WCOD) and my choice there would be Pathetic!

  5. Ta so much for the theor-ass!
    Next joke: what’s the difference between a caucus and a cactus?

  6. Ditto Jack on missed anagrams, and ditto Jack on everything else really.
    Cheated on the orchid, LEY for meadow being the stumbling block.
    Much pleasure from BEAU (first in), EXCUSE-ME, SMOLLETT (embarrassed by how long it took to see Moll) and my last in and COD SPOONED. Again I note how often the last to fall gets nominated COD.
  7. i needed help for cattleya and emporium curiously where i missed the anagram, and tried for a long time to justify euphuism, am still not sure what purpose “write” is performing. cod 16ac.
  8. Teensy bit more difficult that yesterday.. middle of the range, or thereabouts, it seemed to me.
    Somebody (Jimbo?) keeps banging on about the value of barred crosswords as training for the cryptic, and CATTLEYA is a case in point. Just looking for example at CATTx in the dictionary would soon have turned it up – even Chambers only has four or five such words.
  9. I found this an excellent puzzle with lots of splendid but entirely fair clues. 35 minutes to solve.

    Yes, Jerry, it is me (supported from time to time by Peter and George and perhaps now your good self) who bats on about doing bar crosswords to develop the skills needed for this type of puzzle. There are a lot of clues here that lend themselves to hypothesis followed by analysis and finally synthesis and I agree CATTLEYA is a good example – but only one amongst several. This site is such a good place to learn these skills.

    My best wishes to Richard

  10. 20:08 here. I found this quite a bit trickier than yesterday’s, with SMOLLETT my first entry, then mostly working in the bottom half of the grid before working my way back up, finally finishing with MANNERED and CATTLEYA (the latter got purely from wordplay).
  11. When I saw the word orchid in the clue to 6 I was fairly sure that my run of 13 perfect solves had come to an end. As suggested above, I did use my experience of solving Mephistos to narrow the field down to cattleaa, cattleya or cattleea. After that though the barred crossword experience did not help. I went for cattleea on the grounds that it was precisely the sort of unlikely letter combination that crops up in the Mephisto.
  12. Like George, I was interrupted mid-solve with the SE steadfastly refusing to fall. When I returned it seemed so much easier than it had been half an hour before. Three cheers for the subconscious. I didn’t know the reference to PERDITA, nor what a pathetic fallacy might be, but CATTLEYA struck a note of familiarity, so it must have seen it before somewhere, and LEY definitely has (I have been doing old Listeners of late, so there’s another plug for barred grids, hexagonal grids, etc etc). COD to HIPPOPOTAMUS, which raised a smile.
  13. I filled the bottom half in about 12 minutes then spent ages filling the top, especially the NW corner. I entered CATTALPA for 9 (ALP being pasture), which made 7 impossible. I finally resorted to aids to get the answer, when I realised LEA has an alternative spelling. I Finally saw CAUCASUS, which enabled me to get ADELAIDE, but I didn’t know there was a queen of that name. Last to go in was PERDITA, again using an aid since I failed to see the clue was a simple anagram. No idea of time, but too long.
    There were some good clues. 11 and 21 appealed particularly.
  14. Never thought hob-nobbing with flower arrangers would be useful – cattleya first in. Much enjoyment of classic clueing, and a happy 20 m finishing in top right corner. COD the hippo.
  15. The wrong side of 30 minutes for this.

    Someone the other day (Tim possibly) confessed that any mention of Flanders made him think immediately of Ned from The Simpsons. I took that as a synchronicisistic sign that Ned would be the insertion in 4 down. Shelnedl anyone? Didn’t think otherwise until Perdita, whom I didn’t know, fell into place.

    Didn’t get the wordplay for Caucasus, pediment and pathetic until coming here, COD ball and chain.

    1. I’m afraid Moll didn’t come at once. The only thought I had was Michael (F & Swann), although his daughter Stephanie is also well-known, but it wouldn’t be her because she’s alive. Mick Flan, England?
    2. Any mention of that around here would have one joining Tiger Woods in the
      doghouse. Definitely not pointing this one out to the better half.
  16. 20.12 This was my type of puzzle.Quite a bit of original and deceptive wordplay. I did take too long to see 11 (especially considering I’ve had one for 28 years – it’s ok, she doesn’t read this). 8,16,20 and 21 were good, liked the wordplay to give DEC 1.
    I’ve heard of a Ladies or Gentleman’s EXCUSE-ME dance but have absolutely no idea what it is.
    I toyed with CATTLEAA before recalling that the meadow can also be ley.
    1. Form of torture for shy young people. Ladies excuse me – girl can insist on swapping her partner for one she likes the look of more. Gentleman’s excuse me – he can go for his choice of totty. Embarrassing for the rejects and only one better than the awful Paul Jones.
      1. If he doesn’t know what an excuse-me dance is I doubt he knows what a Paul Jones is. In a Paul Jones when the music stops everybody has to change partners. Then there’s the taxi dance. All the women stand in a line and the men go and select a partner. They dance once around the floor and then park the lady at the end of the line of women and take the first lady in the line for a circuit of the hall to repeat the process.
    2. In an excuse-me dance a man (or woman as the case may be) who is not dancing is permitted to tap somebody who is dancing on the shoulder, say excuse me, and take over the partner. Not universally popular!!
  17. 13:04 – first tough puzzle of the week. 9A was indeed a barred-grid solver’s gift – solved on first look rather than constructed from checkers. 12D was another easy one – the 3 P’s are hard to conceal! Will have to look up Perdita to understand 15A fully.

    Your new Thursday blogger will be Yap Yok Foo, a.k.a. “Uncle Yap”, adding another continent to the places from which we reach you.

  18. This was tough but fun, about 35 minutes, but I needed aid at the end for the orchid. Didn’t think of LEY, was trying LEA, FEN, and anything else I could think of. My COD is also SPOOFED. I didn’t know PERDITA nor that PATHETIC could be a type of fallacy. I also didn’t understand the ‘cockney origin’ aspect of BEAU. Best to all, thanks to Richard.
    1. Cockneys are traditionally supposed to be born within earshot of Bow Bells – that’s St Mary-le-Bow which is in the City of London, not the East London district called Bow.
  19. Hope you don’t mind a starter posting, got the anagrams and a couple more quickly, then looked at it for about 5 hours, cheated a little, then filled out the rest by looking at your answers, kicking myself for not seeing the obvious. See you again tomorrow!
  20. Took a total of 2.5 hours in total today. Took two hours to get the first four clues before finally giving up on the remaining twenty-four and looking online. However, the computer had problems and needed re-starting twice, which added the additional half hour on.

    Hopefully it’ll go better tomorrow…!

  21. “Write” is just part of an instruction to the solver – effectively “write an anagram of …”.
  22. Another vote of thanks to Richard, one of our original bloggers as someone mentioned.
  23. I’d never heard of excuse-me’s or John Pauls; and the only taxi dance I knew of was the kind Ruth Etting sang of (’10 Cents a Dance’), where men bought a ticket to dance with one of the women hired by the hall for the purpose.
    Was anyone else bothered by the ‘offered’ in 16ac? To (spoon)feed is not to offer food but to give it. Wouldn’t ‘given’ have been preferable, or am I once more missing something?
    And I suppose it says something that I thought of Ned Flanders before thinking of Moll.

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