Times 24408 – Immediate good fortune for beginners?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 35 minutes

Music: Beethoven, Piano Sonatas, Kempff

I admit, I was in a bit of a panic when I couldn’t get anything on my first runthrough. However, that turned out to be because I had overlooked some of the easier clues. If I had seen the obvious ‘well-meaning’ and ‘hindsight’, I would have gotten off to a much quicker start than I did with ‘nay’ and ‘novices’.

After thirty minutes I was left with 14 across, which I tried to make into an anagram before realizing that I had got the wrong end of the stick.

Beginners are reminded that obvious answers are not blogged. Ask if you have questions.

Across
1 LUCKNOW, LUCK + WON reversed, not too hard if you weren’t expecting a US state capital, as I suspect many solvers will be.
9 UNUSUALLY, UN + U + S(U)ALLY. It was probably hard to clue all those ‘U’s without giving the whole thing away. This illustrates the three commonest ways.
11 CHINA. CHIN + A. The difficulty here is the literal, which is cockney rhyming slang ‘china plate’ = ‘mate’.
12 MONKEYISH, MONK(EY)ISH. Unusual two-in-one doubled definition, where capuchins the monks are ‘monkish’ and capuchins the monkeys are ‘monkeyish’. (Restored from backup copy)
14 ANAGRAMMATICAL, cryptic definition based on the relationship between ‘East Grimstead’ and ‘its tea gardens’.
17 EDUCATIONALIST, E[nglish} + DUCAT + I + ON + A + LIST. It is ‘English’, not ‘European’, that produces the initial ‘E’.
23 PANDA, P(AND)A. Simpler than it looks at first.
25 BIOGRAPHY, BI(O[ne])G + anagram of HARPY. The wordplay escaped me until just now, but ‘life’ is a giveaway.
26 AVERAGE, AVE + RAGE, a welcome relief from pronouncements of antiquity.
27 SWEETEN, S(WEE)TEN. I saw ‘sten’ immediately, but put the ‘T’ in the wrong slot, holding myself up.
 
Down
1 LAUNCH, LA + UN + CH. I expected the ‘church’ part to come first, but ‘with’ allows this sort of flexibility.
2 CAUTION, a double definition that treads very close to being a single one.
3 NEURALGIA, anagram of RULE AGAIN.
5 NAY, YAN[k] upside down. My first in.
6 VALSE V[enerable} + A + LSE. Very elusive for me until I thought of the London School of Economics, which you must lift and separate from ‘venerable’.
7 CARDIAC, CARD + I + AC, where ‘caution’ from 2 is equivalent to ‘card’ in the sense of an amusingly eccentric person.
8 SEASHELL, cryptic definition with good indirection.
13 NOMINATIONS, NO(MI)NATIONS. I was looking for something starting with ‘UN’ for a while, before I got on the right path.
15 TULIP TREE, T(UL)IPTREE. Put in by instinct, I am still not sure who ‘Tiptree’ refers to. Maybe an actor associated with David Lean? Film and theatre buffs are invited to fill in this gap .
16 BETHESDA, BET HE’S D.A. It was a chapel before it became a town in Maryland.
19 SUNSPOT, SUN’S POT. A slangy pension provision provides the cover here, or I would have spotted it straight off.
20 CANYON, CAN(Y)ON. This should be a dead giveaway if you can remember the lyrics to ‘My Darling Clementine’, but I could not immediately call them to mind.
22 SENNA, ANNE’S upside down. Not hard if you know the word.

39 comments on “Times 24408 – Immediate good fortune for beginners?”

  1. I parse this as TIP (“lean” … over) with UL inserted. Then the dreaded Beerbohm Tree. And if anyone thinks that neuralgia is necessarily intermittent, they ain’t suffered from it!
  2. I had the same experience of hardly being able to put anything in at first and then the whole thing went easily.

    7 dn, surely the “caution” means “card” as in “yellow card” in football.

    And Clementine’s dad lived in a cavern (admittedly in a canyon) which fits the space but doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the clue. Took me a moment before I clicked.

  3. “Caution” = “amusingly eccentric person” ????

    I don’t get it at all. But when the officer “cards” you (asks for ID), you might very well consider it a warning.

    I don’t follow football (soccer) and would have guessed being carded was beyond a warning. But I would have guessed wrongly. I appreciate paulmcl’s interpretation.

      1. I don’t know for sure what the ST was like back in 1968 but my guess is that it was easier than the Times (it usually has been) and somewhere between Times and Telegraph of those days in style – I’d expect at least a few dodgy clues by today’s standards.

        The New Yorker published a small cryptic puzzle for a few years when British journalist Tina Brown was editor (early 90s?). It was a good “starter” puzzle and I think got a few Americans interested in cryptics. When another (American) editor it was axed immediately.

        1. Those old puzzles on Google Books (New York Magazine) are touted as “World’s Most Challenging Crossword” and “from the Sunday Times of London”. They seem to me to be a bit tamer (but not necessarily easier) than today’s and occasionally include straightforward quotations (missing a word, of course) from literature.
    2. > amusingly eccentric person.
      Yep, that’s the (informal, dated) meaning of “caution”, and can be found in various std. dictionaries.
  4. About 25 minutes for me, and I also used Paul’s interpretation of ‘card’, as a warning received in soccer/football. I finished with BIOGRAPY/BEE. Didn’t know the VALSE. Also thought the actor was just TREE, after T(UL)IP. Other than that, well blogged vinyl, but not much else to say. If there’s to be a COD, I’ll nominate LAUNCH. Regards.
  5. Fairly straightforward with a guess at tulip tree. Had never heard of Beerbohm Tree but if he was famous enough to have a tulip named after him I suppose I should have done. DCH
      1. Thanks for the link. I am never sure what to make of clues referring to fairly obscure historical characters in this casual way – particularly if they have simply become crossword conventions. It seems to be in a different category from knowledge of obscure plants, rocks, stars or animals etc and designed to keep the uninitiated at arm’s length. But perhaps that is just my irrational bias. DCH
  6. As 12 is not blogged I assume the answer must be obvious, but it certainly wasn’t to this solver!

    I also missed the obvious explanation at 22dn having spotted SENNA immediately I took “an” to be part of the wordplay and spent ages trying to think who Queen NE(S) might have been.

    I thought “with effort” was redundant in 1ac and I certainly found it misleading but Collins supports it.

    40 minutes to complete most of this but I couldn’t solve 14ac so I put it aside for a while and saw it immediately when I went back to it later.

    I never felt confident that I would finish this puzzle without aids but I slogged away and got there in the end.

    1. Does this help? Capuchins are monks and also small monkeys: so called because they have a kind of tufty cowl on their heads — like said monks. They’re so incredibly cute too!
  7. For me at least, a worthy challenge to start the week.
    Welcome (or not?) return of the wooden thespian.
    “You’re such a caution” was a common enough expression hereabouts in my youth, so vinyl’s explanation gets my vote. Didn’t know BETHESDA as a chapel or HIND as a farm-worker, but easily guessed. COD to ANAGRAMMATICAL, a thing of beauty.
  8. Yes, I wonder how I have lived all these years and never met this meaning before. I would normally expect “farm worker” to clue “hand”.
  10. 7:13 for this one. Fell into the “US state capital” trap at 1A so that was solved at the end from L???N?W. I did hope that we might have seen the last of {actor = TREE} in the Times xwd.
  11. Not hard, but of the four long answers I only got well-meaning at first glance. I needed most of the checkers to get the others so I solved it back to front really. Last in were sunspot and canyon, probably two of the easier answers.

    I only know tulip tree from crosswords, as Vinyl says, put in by instinct.

  12. Liked this crossword, I thought it had some unusual features eg 14ac and 12ac quite inventive.
    Surely, card = caution = droll or amusing person. Not convinced by football interpretation, ingenious though it is.
    Never heard of hind = farmworker before, I just assumed it was a worker on a deer farm!
    cod 24ac, simple but effective
  13. Held myself up by plumping for ANAGRAMMATISED very early on when I should have at least left the last three letters blank until I was sure. That stopped me getting the NE corner, of course, especially annoying when I was thinking to myself “Hmmm, I’m looking for a sort of seashell that will fit S_A_H_D_, but what sort of seashell can it be?”

    I liked the monk / monkeys, but sighed at 15 down, as I thought we’d seen the last of the blasted Tree as well.

  14. At 40 minutes a reasonably easy start to the week. Put me down as another caution=card in the amusing person sense.

    As for Clementine, Chambers has it as the definition of earworm, or if it doesn’t it should. Mind you, the lyrics do read like a crossword clue badly in need of an editor “Herring boxes without topses, Sandals were for Clementine (6,5)”. According to Wiki it’s based on a real life incident; so not a spoof, despite what the number nines would imply. This is developing into a thesis, which I hadn’t intended, but here is another alternative ending, not mentioned amongst the smorgasboard in Wiki. I’m returning to the spoof hypothesis (see Lehrer et al (1957) op cit).

    I put a tick against MONKEYISH, which says something, and EDUCATIONALIST but COD to ANAGRAMMATICAL, which was close to my first thought but last in.

  15. 30 minutes. Just the sort of Monday puzzle I like. Not a walkover, but easy enough to leave me time to tie up loose ends in weekend puzzles. I liked the clues, though actor/TREE is long past it’s sell-by date and I wasn’t keen on the closeness of the definitions in 2. LUCKNOW took me too long because I didn’t shake free from LOT for ‘fortune’ until I had 2d. 21 seemed to give HANDSIGHT – had to check ‘hind’ in Chambers post-solve.

    12 and 14 got ticks of approval.

    For the second or third time when I’ve downloaded the current TFTT page I get a video to play which obliterates all the blog. I have to close the page and re-load, which usually works. Can anyone tell me what’s going on?

    1. Today was the third time that a message box has appeared when I tried to open this page. Internet explorer closes as the message appears. The message intimates my computer is infected by a virus. It cannot be closed without a download of an .exe file commencing, in what resembles an attempt to fulfil its prophecy. I don’t know what’s going on either, except that this has never happened on another computer I have which has an adblocker on it (as opposed to just anti-viral software).
      1. For what it’s worth, I’ve got three different broswers on this PC and can load the blog’s main page without incident.
        1. It happened again to me today! (or tomorrow if you’re reading this yesterday). This time my antivirus software was up to the task and blocked it. It’s called HTTP Fake AV Install Request 4 and emanated from antispywaresofttoday.com. Is no one else similarly afflicted?
      2. Relieved that I’m not the only one. I don’t think my computer is infected. I checked it with 2 malaware programs after updating and both reported negative. I don’t get it on any other site or web page. Thanks for your later post giving the name and source.
  16. I found this a very easy puzzle, 18 mins. COD LUCKNOW also esp liked AVERAGE and the idea behind ANAGRAMMATICAL, an answer I saw only near the end and helped me finish. (yellow) card = caution in football for me, but then I follow it.
  17. 14 minutes, nothing that was too outlandish, my last in was ANAGRAMMATICAL which I stared at for a while before seeing the connection. I guess I see “TEA GARDENS” and tune out. I was thinking referee’s warning cards for CAUTION as well, so maybe it’ll be majority rules.
  18. 13.55 Could have been a good bit quicker but I spent a bit of time on the difficult clues and, like Vinyl, didn’t notice some of the easier ones until late on. Also was thinking US state for 1a so the N-W had me on the Saginaw trail (I’m not 100% on US state capitals).
    The perennial actor TREE again! About time this one was sawn down. Wouldn’t the use of “live” names, in a non-controversial way so as not to open any cans of worms of course, not open up to setters a whole new world of possibilities – and allow the long departed Tree (and some others) to be left to rest in peace?
    COD for me was 14 although I wasn’t sure if your reference to EAST GRIMSTEAD was Freudian, Vinyl? Maybe you’ve been there!
  19. A puzzle rather easier below the equator than above it but nothing tremendously difficult. 25 minutes to solve.

    I think it takes a mixture of ignorance and a lack of imagination to press on with the wretched Tree and obscurities like Shadwell in 24401 from Saturday a week ago rather than branch out into other fields of human endeavour, as Mephisto 2572 managed to do on Sunday.

  20. A card in soccer can be yellow – a warning, or red, a sending off. The amusingly eccentric person seems much more likely to me.
  22. For many years my wife and I have done The Times Cryptic published daily in The Australian newspaper which is published between 30 and 38 days after the original, depending on the day of the week and the proximity of Easter and Christmas when the two papers get a bit “out of sync.”
    We really enjoy this blog, even if it has already been “dead” for around 5 weeks or so, and visit every day.
    To friends in the land down-under.
    Locating today’s (oz time) crossword is a bit tricky so I have used some of my immense store of leisure time to create a web-page to easily find any day’s blog and published it <a href = http://www.low.net.au/xwords/showlinks.html> here.</a>
    I thought I would share it with all those Times Cruciverbalists who have occasion to access this wonderful puzzle via Australia’s only truly national newspaper and who may wish to avail themselves of the wonderful wit and expertise of Peter, Jimbo, Barry, Mark, Sabine etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…..
    I would welcome any comments or suggestions for improvement.
    Regards roylow

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